{"id":28552,"date":"2011-11-03T09:45:49","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T16:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/?p=28552"},"modified":"2011-11-03T09:46:08","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T16:46:08","slug":"scorecard-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/scorecard-october\/","title":{"rendered":"Scorecard: October"},"content":{"rendered":"

[At the end of every month I post a rundown of the movies I saw that month, tallying them according to how much I did or didn’t like them. You can always see my recent watches here<\/a> and my ongoing list of bests for the whole year here<\/a>.]<\/b><\/p>\n

A<\/span>s usual in recent years, I devoted October almost solely to horror films, and actually managed to catch up on several that I’ve been meaning to see for a LONG time. I only loved a few of these, but I enjoyed watching them all. It was a good month, all in all, with a lot of variety despite sticking pretty much exclusively to a single genre. Horror has a lot of facets! Most of these capsules are recycled from posts at Row Three, so if you read me there, you’ve seen most of this – the only other film I saw in October was Take Shelter<\/em>, so that capsule is brand new. I kind of like focusing on a single theme for a month. Maybe I’ll do it more often. (I probably won’t – I always say stuff like that and then don’t do it.)<\/p>\n

What I Loved<\/h3>\n

The Cat and the Canary<\/h4>\n

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It figures that my favorite new-to-me film of the month would turn out to be a silent. I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m made backwards or something. Heh. Anyway, this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153old dark house\u00e2\u20ac\u009d film was namechecked at the screening of The Bat<\/em> I went to earlier this month (see capsule below), and even though I liked The Bat<\/em> well enough, THIS is the film it largely wanted to be. I saw \u00e2\u20ac\u0153largely\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because this film is not a crime film in the same way, and those crime elements are solid in The Bat<\/em>. The Cat and the Canary<\/em> focuses on a last testament left by a crotchety old man twenty years ago \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he stipulated waiting twenty years after his death to read it, and this is the time, with all his relatives gathered like vultures in his spooky old house to find out who will get his fortune. His instructions are complicated, involving a second inheritor if the main one proves to be insane, which leads to much suspicion all around. Add in a potential escaped lunatic running around through hidden passageways in the house and a mystery involving the family diamonds, plus some well-done comedy around the disparate group of people, not to mention the quite excellent Expressionist-style cinematography and really innovative animated titles, and this is a super-fun time. Is it scary? Well, maybe not, but there are some moments of genuine suspense and tension, and a few of the visuals are extremely creepy. I posted a longer review here<\/a>.
\n1927 USA. Director: Paul Leni. Starring: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Forrest Shanley, Tully Marshall, Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch, Arthur Edmund Carew, Martha Mattox.<\/em>
\nSeen October 25 on Netflix Instant.<\/em><\/p>\n

Carrie<\/h4>\n

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I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had Carrie<\/em> on my horror to-watch list every October for about three years \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in other words, as long as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had a horror to-watch list. I finally got to it! And despite its reputation and that I knew the basic beats of the menstruation-bullying-to-prom-night-revenge plot, the film still had a lot of surprises for me, most of them good. First off, Carrie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mom is CRAZY \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little disheartening to find yet another crazy Christian immortalized on celluloid, but I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty obvious that she is totally off the deep end, not only extremely strict on Carrie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interactions with boys, but insistent that natural biological functions are markers of specific sexual sins and that Carrie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s telepathic ability is a sign of demon possession. Although, to be fair, the film doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really explain where that comes from. Anyway, what makes the film strong and memorable is the focus on Carrie, whose transformation into queen of the prom is utterly beautiful and utterly heartbreaking because you know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in store for her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the lead-up, though, is so well-done (if a bit retroactively cliched) that you ache for her to have her perfect night. The denoument had me a little baffled, I will admit, though, and undermines Carrie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deserved revenge; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still not sure what I make of it. Plus De Palma has a tendency to go for flashy shots when he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the writing and acting here is strong enough that he could afford to save those flashy moments for really striking scenes, giving them greater impact. Longer review here<\/a>.
\n1976 USA. Director: Brian De Palma. Starring: Sissy Spacek, William Katt, Piper Laurie, John Travolta.<\/em>
\nSeen October 19 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Descent<\/h4>\n

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My interest in seeing this cave creature feature went up a lot after I quite enjoyed Neil Marshall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Centurion<\/em>, but the opportunity never presented itself until now. Six young women who have shared various outdoors adventures with each other meet up again to do a little spelunking a year after one member of the group lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. The trip is supposed to kind of bring the friends back together again after the trauma, but things, well, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go according the plan. Tensions rise when the trip planner reveals it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an unexplored cave and that cave-in might just block the only entrance; even this part of the film is good, with some quite intense cave-in and climbing scenes. But they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not alone in the cave, and the film continues to ramp up all the way to the end, balancing out and out action and thrills with quiet moments that are often just as nail-bitingly intense. The scares here are solid, and even though some are jump scares (which I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily like), a lot of them are also the quieter \u00e2\u20ac\u0153evil thing randomly in a shot\u00e2\u20ac\u009d kind of scares that I LOVE. The effects are surprisingly good despite what I assume is a relatively low budget, and though it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard to predict the order of deaths, there are still a lot of surprises in HOW they come. I apparently watched the director\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cut version, which has quite a different ending merely by having an extra couple of minutes of footage to the end of the theatrical cut \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from what my boyfriend was telling me, I muchly prefer the darker DVD cut.
\n2005 UK. Director: Neil Marshall. Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring, Nora-Jane Noone.<\/em>
\nSeen October 16 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

What I Liked<\/h3>\n

The Fog<\/h4>\n

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This was a nearly random pick off Netflix Instant (not totally random, because I have been meaning to watch more John Carpenter films), and I knew almost nothing about it. I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen the remake or anything. I ended up really enjoying it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Carpenter has a talent for the kind of creepy scares that I love. Not quite jump scares, but where something just appears (with no cut or music to make it a jump) or you become aware of the bad guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presence and it sends chills down your spine. I love that, and there are several scenes in here that did that for me. The story is based on a ghost story (told wonderfully by John Houseman to a bunch of kids in the first scene) about a group of people killed 100 years earlier when their ship wrecked in a massive fog. Legend has it that when the fog returns, so will they, and this apparently is the year for it. Fog is creepy anyway, hiding things until they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re right upon you and tending toward exactly the kind of reveals I just mentioned. And there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more to the story, as the priest in the town uncovers, that means these ghosts are not just unsettled due to their violent deaths, but actually seeking revenge. Not all of this plot works out totally, and the end is fairly nonsense-making, but on a scene-by-scene basis, I loved this. I actually liked it a little bit more than Halloween<\/em>, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get eviscerated for, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because I like the ghost back story more (despite the nonsense-making). Halloween<\/em> is the tighter, better movie, but The Fog<\/em> appealed to my sensibilities more.
\n1980 USA. Director: John Carpenter. Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Leigh, John Houseman.<\/em>
\nSeen October 24 on Netflix Instant.<\/em><\/p>\n

Halloween<\/h4>\n

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Yes, I had never seen this before, though it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been on my list for a few years. Really, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have much interest in slasher films, but I felt like I needed to see the first entry in each of the major franchises just to be able to say I had and have some level of competence as a film buff. I expected Halloween<\/em> to be one of the best of those initial films, and it pretty much is. The film establishes Michael Myers with a creepy first-person opening, then immediately jumps ahead to him escaping from the mental institution where he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been ever since \u00e2\u20ac\u201c enough back story to set him up as a character, but not enough to risk falling into the psychoanalysis explanations that too many remakes fall into. But we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re also introduced to Jamie Lee Curtis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character along with her less-well-grounded friends, giving us a connection to her that a lot of later slasher films eschew (to their detriment). And then the film does those creepy reveals and disappearances that I like so much, even if Carpenter here tends to announce them with obvious music cues. I like his score for the film, so I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind too much, but some of them I think would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been more effective if Michael had just appeared with no score backup. The moment in the screencap above is the best. Anyway, by the time the killing actually gets going, the atmosphere is sufficiently built and it steamrolls to the end nicely. Still, like I mentioned above under The Fog<\/em>, a psycho killing teenagers is not really that interesting to me as a basic plotline. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s handled here better than most movies I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really grab me beyond the level of craft.
\n1978 USA. Director: John Carpenter. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Tony Moran, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Ciphers.<\/em>
\nSeen October 27 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eyes Without a Face<\/h4>\n

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For once I made good on a promise to see a film soon after I made it, thanks to a couple of Row Three-ers talking it up recently<\/a>. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say I loved it immediately, but I can definitely see the haunting and disturbing beauty that draws people to it. Dr. G\u00c3\u00a9nessier is one of the most clinical and detached monsters I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen in cinema \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even seem to care that much about his daughter Christiane, whose facial scarring he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to fix via skin grafts. She even indicates that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more of a guinea pig to him, a convenient way for him to practice surgical grafts of this level of complexity. Despite our intellectual understanding of her plight, it remains a little hard to empathize with her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s partially due to the blank mask she wears to cover her injury, and also to her seeming indifference (for a while, at least) to the girls her father kidnaps and operates on to get faces for her \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but in a way, that very distance is horrific in and of itself. Christiane doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say a whole lot, so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re mostly left with this masked girl wandering around an ornate house, a house which is hers but yet she seems utterly alien in it. That otherworldly quality continues to the ambiguous but poetic ending; the film is more like a strange dream than a horror film (it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go for scares), though I will say, the operation scene was far more graphic than I expected!
\n1960 France. Director: Georges Franju. Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob.<\/em>
\nSeen October 23 on HuluPlus.<\/em><\/p>\n

Take Shelter<\/h4>\n

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My one new release, non-horror film of the month! Although, in a way, it is pretty scary – more on the level of a psychological drama\/thriller than horror, but still. Shannon turns in yet another fantastic performance as a working class husband and father plagued by nightmares (and sometimes daytime visions) of a massive encroaching storm. He knows mental illness runs in his family (his mother has been hospitalized since he was ten), and fears he may be suffering from schizophrenia, but even as he takes steps to seek medical treatment and therapy, he can’t fight the compulsion to fix up the old storm shelter outside his house to protect his family from the storm he dreads. This causes havoc in his family, already dealing with a lot due to the young daughter’s deafness – aside from his instability frightening his wife (one of several fine roles for Chastain this year) and child, his actions threaten his job and thus the medical insurance that would cover his daughter’s cochlear implant. It’s a lot to deal with, but writer\/director Nichols shows remarkable restraint in focusing on this family and their day-to-day interactions, many of which are wonderful and normal – the constant threat of breakdown is meaningful because all the actors, including young Stewart, do such a great job of making this family real to us. The storm metaphor is an obvious one, but it works, and a bunch of the scenes just play like gangbusters. It repeats itself a bit sometimes and could’ve been trimmed a bit, but this is a very strong second feature from Nichols (his previous Shotgun Stories<\/em> I actually own via some blog contest I won, but have never watched), with some great visuals ably supported by a great score and a raft of solid performances.
\n2011 USA. Director: Jeff Nichols. Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart, Shea Wingham.<\/em>
\nSeen October 29 at a Laemmle cinema.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wicker Man<\/h4>\n

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Another one that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been on my horror to-watch list for years; how I made it this long knowing as little about the story as I did I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure. I knew there was something about a remote village and cultists, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about it. Religious\/ideological battles are at the heart of this film much more strongly than I expected. Police detective Woodward heads to this remote Scottish village on a tip that a girl there has gone missing, but when he gets there, everyone (including the girl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother) denies that she even existed. Sensing something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up, the detective keeps poking around, running across rituals and teachings that hearken back to pre-Christian paganism. He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear to be a particularly strong Christian in a personal sense, but he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s explicitly saving his virginity for his upcoming marriage, and when confronted with the contented villagers practicing public orgies and teaching their children about the Maypole as a phallic symbol, he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite stand it and goes all holier-than-thou on them, much to their amusement. The film skews toward the pagans for much of its running time, as Woodward comes across as a bumbling interloper interfering in things that aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t his business, but that only makes the eventual climax that much more disturbing. Note I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153scary.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The film isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really scary in a visceral way, but by end (which is somehow both surprising and inevitable), it is existentially frightening. I suspect that sense will increase on rewatch, when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not as focused on figuring out what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to happen. Oh, and for the record, I did love the inclusion of all the weird folk music which almost threatens to make the film an out-and-out musical for a little while. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a weirder film than I was expecting, but a less scary one.
\n1973 UK. Director: Robin Hardy. Starring: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt.<\/em>
\nSeen October 13 on IFC (via DVR).<\/em><\/p>\n

[Rec] 2<\/h4>\n

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The first [rec]<\/em> was a fantastic example of the first-person camera found-footage technique (one of the few that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fairly internally consistent), and made great use of its claustrophobic environments. The second one picks up right where it left off, with our intrepid reporter in the attack on the verge of being caught by the virus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s progenitor, then cuts to a SWAT team about to enter the building to shut down whatever is causing the attacks. The scares here aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as effective because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re more out in the open \u00e2\u20ac\u201c instead of a creepy feeling of something being just out of sight, the infected here are right there in your face. Which is more gross, but less scary. There are some really interesting things done with structure, though, as parts of the film are done from the point of view of a group of kids who think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be cool to break into the building \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re pretty freaking annoying, but seeing some of the things from a different perspective is nice. The tension ramps up toward the end, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fairly neat use of night vision. I enjoyed the film, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the pure viseral thrills of the first.
\n2009 Spain. Directors: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza. Starring: Jonathan Mellor, Manuela Velasco, Óscar Zafra, Ariel Casas, Alejandro Casaseca.<\/em>
\nSeen October 6 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

Candyman<\/h4>\n

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I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even heard of this film before my boyfriend started telling me about it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he likes the Chicago ghetto location and the way the ending plays out, which of course he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell me about until after I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d watched it. I was apprehensive, and it was definitely more on the jump scare creepy side than I usually like, but it did have elements that I appreciated. For one, like he said, the location in the Chicago projects is quite interesting, and the way Virginia Madsen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character (very white, very middle-class) gets drawn in there through her academic research into urban legends works pretty well \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it creates a double element of danger because, really, she probably shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be there at all, mythical killer or no mythical killer. Then the way the plot turns as she starts seeing Candyman and somehow winding up at crime scenes in incriminating circumstances gave it a thriller angle that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect (I even wondered for a while if there was a non-supernatural explanation for everything). Some of the imagery (like the paintings in Candyman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lair) was nice and creepy, too. It goes on a bit too long at times, and even though I liked the ending on a visceral level, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite make sense to me, but that seems to be happening with a bunch of these horror films. Ah, well.
\n1992 USA. Director: Bernard Rose. Starring: Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley, Tony Todd, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams.<\/em>
\nSeen October 29 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Skeleton Key<\/h4>\n

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I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tended to avoid most mainstream horror movies for the past several years, mostly because they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t frankly very good. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d call The Skeleton Key<\/em> GOOD, per se, but I had an enjoyable time watching it, and it definitely has some intriguing concepts under the hood. Kate Hudson takes a job caring for an older man who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had a stroke at the old Southern mansion home he and his wife share in the bayous of Louisiana. You pretty much can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a supernatural horror flick set outside New Orleans without voodoo (or hoodoo, as the film distinguishes them), and sure enough, turns out the house originally belonged to a Southern gentleman who had no concept of his black servants being anything more than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the help,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when in fact, they were hoodoo practictioners of the highest order. Hudson stumbles into all this and OF COURSE won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let it go and OF COURSE goes investigating in locked rooms and OF COURSE starts playing with spells herself and OF COURSE gets herself into deep trouble. Most of it is fairly predictable, but it has a few genuinely interesting twists, and watching Gena Rowlands go to town in her hammy part more than makes up for some wooden line readings from Hudson. Plus Peter Sarsgaard is on hand to be his usual self, full of benevolent menace.
\n2005 USA. Director: Iain Softley. Starring: Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Joy Bryant.<\/em>
\nSeen October 9 on Netflix Instant.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bat<\/h4>\n

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October’s Silent Treatment program at Cinefamily screened the rare silent horror film The Bat<\/em>, one of several \u00e2\u20ac\u0153haunted\u00e2\u20ac\u009d house crime thrillers of the time. In the opening scene, a master criminal known as The Bat (because he dresses like a bat) manages to burgle a millionaire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home right under the noses of scads of police, who he magnanimously tipped off to his plans. It plays like Fantômas<\/em> or Les Vampires<\/em>, and has gorgeous Expressionist photography as we see him set off to another job, a bank robbery. But turns out the bank owner may not\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been on the up-and-up either, as he seems to have disappeared and the majority of the bank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s money as well. At least, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how it went down. I was in and out doing volunteering stuff during some of this exposition. Anyway. Before long, the plot converges on a country home owned by the bank owner, but currently being leased to the imposing Miss Cornelia and her niece, where police and private detectives, bank clerks and criminals, not to mention a hysterical maid, all try to figure out where the money is and stay safe from The Bat, whose identity is kept a secret to the bitter end. The promise of the early scenes is squandered a bit in the long, comedic center section with all the characters (except Miss Cornelia and the Bat, both of whom are self-possessed to a fault \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a real stand-off between these two would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been something to behold!) bumbling about. But the end pulls it back together for a satisfying conclusion. Bonus: Even though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read that this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the inspiration for Batman, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basically a batsignal moment that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty awesome to see.
\n1926 USA. Director: Roland West. Starring: Emily Fitzroy, George Beranger, Jack Pickford, Jewel Carmen, Tullio Carminati, Eddie Gribbon, Charles Herzinger, Louise Fazenda, Robert McKim.<\/em>
\nSeen October 5 at Cinefamily.<\/em><\/p>\n

Child’s Play<\/h4>\n

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My boyfriend cajoled me into watching this despite my protestations about doll fears (damn those ventriloquist dummies), arguing that it was the first of a franchise and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stated my intention to watch the originals of the major horror franchises. Turns out, it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as bad as I was expecting; the voodoo element of soul transference was a fun surprise, the pacing of the film is pretty solid, the effects on Chucky are good, the kid is quite good, and those swooping camera moves are fun if a bit over the top and cliched. I do think there were a few too many \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not dead YET?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d continuations, but aside from that, I was pretty entertained. I do not intend on watching the sequels, though.
\n1988 USA. Director: Tom Holland. Starring: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif.<\/em>
\nSeen October 22 on Netflix Instant.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pit and the Pendulum<\/h4>\n

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I quite enjoyed the Corman-Price take on The Masque of the Red Death<\/em>, so I figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d circle around for another dose of their Poe cycle, and I enjoyed it, too. Here John Kerr (a little wooden) hears that his sister has died suddenly and goes to visit her husband Price at his remote castle. Price is apparently devastated and eventually lets out that his wife died after a growing fixation on the castle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s torture chamber, left there by Price\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Inquisitor father. More and more macabre details emerge about Price\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s childhood and his father, as well as the potentiality that his wife was actually still alive when buried \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a fact that seems more likely as she takes to haunting the castle. It all builds to a climax with the titular pit and pendulum, but the more ghastly moments spread throughout involve B-movie scream queen Barbara Steele, who carries off the part of wife Elizabeth with panache that puts even Price in his place. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a splashy big colorful film (it is in color, despite my only finding quality promo images in B&W online), with lots of relatively mindless fun to be had.
\n1961 USA. Director: Roger Corman. Starring: Vincent Price, John Kerr, Barbara Steele, Luana Anders, Antony Carbone, Patrick Westwood, Lynette Bernay.<\/em>
\nSeen October 20 on Netflix Instant.<\/em><\/p>\n

What I Thought Was All Right<\/h3>\n

Friday the 13th<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And with this one, my quest to see all the firsts of the slasher franchises is complete, I think. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m told I still need to watch Black Christmas<\/em>, but that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a franchise, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m counting it separately. This is the one I was looking forward to the least, and it is pretty darn stupid. But it has a good bit of campy fun to it, too. Clearly influenced by Halloween<\/em> right down to the first-person opening kill and the twenty-year jump in time, this one doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother very much to create any empathy between us the teenage summer camp counselors being killed one by one. The fun in the film is all in seeing exactly how each one is going to be offed, with Kevin Bacon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post-coital knife-through-the-throat a high point. We never see the killer until the very end, though a lot of the time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the killer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perspective, which adds to our distance from the victims. In this way, Friday the 13th<\/em> is perhaps the clearest antecedent to the legions of slasher films to follow, which tend to lose human connection in favor of the most outrageous kills \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a trend I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly like, even though it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done with freshness and naivete here. The music is quite effective, evoking some combination of Psycho<\/em> and Jaws<\/em> with screeching violins and see-saw melodies, but again, none of the character depth or quality scripting that made those films so lasting.
\n1980 USA. Director: Sean S. Cunningham. Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bertram, Mark Nelson, Peter Brouwer.<\/em><\/p>\n

Paranormal Activity<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was more amused than intrigued by the first Paranormal Activity<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs marketing campaign, and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t rush out to see it, especially as reactions seemed pretty split between \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the scariest thing in the world ever\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (which I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly care to see) and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not scary, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s totally stupid\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (which also isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly tempting). As is typical for me with films that most people seem to either love or hate, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m right down the middle. I liked a lot of things about it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the evocation of the demon using very small touches, like a moving sheet or a shadow on a door, are evocative and effective. It does well with creating its mood. On the other hand, almost everything is telegraphed well in advance, so very little of it is actually scary. And the editing drove me crazy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if this is supposed to be a found footage film, with everything coming from the boyfriend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s camera, why are there so many random little edits everywhere? I mean, he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pause and unpause the camera as he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s walking across the room (the camera would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve jostled a bit while he did, besides why would he), and whoever found the camera later wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have bothered with editing out a half-second here and there as the guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crossing the room. And those edits were EVERYWHERE. So it succeeds on creepy, suggestive low-budget special effects, but it utterly fails as a found footage film, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a big part of it that I have to mark it down a lot for that.
\n2007 USA. Director: Oren Peli. Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs.<\/em>
\nSeen October 12 on Netflix Instant.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rewatches – Love<\/h3>\n

A Tale of Two Sisters<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I first watched this in October 2009, and it was my favorite film that month. I simply had to revisit it and share it with my boyfriend this year, and it did not disappoint on rewatch. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m notoriously bad at remembering endings, so even though I remembered part of the twist, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten the other part so slowly remembering it as the movie went on was quite enjoyable. I love that the film works equally well as a tragic drama as it does as a creeptastic horror film \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the very end is absolutely heartbreaking as well as chilling. It takes its time a bit more toward the ending than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like, threatening to delve into \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too many endings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d territory, but as I said, the final sequence makes it all totally worth it. And as I watch more horror films and nail down the approaches I like and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like and what scares me and doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, this film is an excellent example of what actually scares me. The sequence where Soo-mi sees a dark figure at the foot of her bed that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hunched over awkwardly and moves closer until it rushes above her…that whole part. Scares the crap out of me. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some combination of sound design, plain weirdness (the unnatural positioning of the figure) and the editing shifting from slow to incredibly fast without warning. So yeah. If you want to scare me, do stuff like that. Jump scares and gore don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it.
\n2005 South Korea. Director: Kim Jee-woon. Starring: Lim Su-jeong, Moon Geun-Young, Yum Jung-ah, Kim Kap-su.<\/em>
\nSeen October 30 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dead of Night<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This was one of the first horror films I remember seeing that I actually liked \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a trend in my tastes toward creepy B&W atmospheric horror that hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really abated, despite my new openness to other subsets of the genre. When TCM played it this week, I jumped at the opportunity to see it again. What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten before this rewatch was how quickly it jumps into the frame story, no explanation, just the guy driving up to the country house where he has a weird sense of having dreamt about all these people before and an incredible ability to predict things that will happen throughout the evening. Intrigued by his uncanny sixth sense, the other guests start telling about their own experiences with unexplained phenomena \u00e2\u20ac\u201c each of these stories could easily be a Twilight Zone episode, and they all have that feel of something just outside normal, none moreso than the frame story. Often frame stories in anthology films are throwaway and rather tiresome, but I really love this one, and the way it circles in on itself and the other stories at the end is surreal and genuinely intense, even though several of the stories are not particularly scary. I was a little afraid it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hold up to my memories on rewatch, but it did. I still love it.
\n1945 UK. Director: Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton. Starring: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Googie Withers, Frederick Valk, Anthony Baird, Sally Ann Howes, Robert Wyndam.<\/em>
\nSeen October 10 on TCM.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jaws<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Watching this again, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not entirely sure what genre it should be. I guess all creature features tend to be lumped into horror, but it plays more like a character drama punctuated by bursts of intense thrills. So, creature feature drama thriller, I guess. Whatever it is, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s damned impressive, even thirty-five years later. Countless films have tried to capture whatever it is that makes Jaws<\/em> special, but few even come close \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the pacing is perfect, building up the tension before the shark attacks and letting it go just at the last minute, or temporarily difusing it with a red herring. The fact that the film comes right out of the gate and makes a dog and a little boy among the first set of victims is telling \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it remains shocking. Thrills aside, the real pleasure here is the interactions between the three very different characters who go after him. Beginning as stereotypes, but not sticking to them, Brody, Quint, and Hooper have a competition\/companionship vibe among them that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much stronger than most creature features have time to establish. Sure, the movie has great special effects (you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll rarely notice the shark is animatronic), thrilling action, and even awkward humor in the form of the dumbass mayor and his cronies, but the depth of character and willingness to linger on the in-between moments are what make Jaws<\/em> great.
\n1975 USA. Director: Steven Spielberg. Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton.<\/em>
\nSeen October 7 on DVD.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rewatches – Like<\/h3>\n

The Uninvited<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been so long since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen this one I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember anything beyond the descriptor \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creepy haunted house movie.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which could describe umpteen different movies. A rewatch was definitely in order, especially since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve continued to mention the film as an example of the kind of 1940s quiet horror that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s closest to my heart even as my memory of it faded into nothingness. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey are brother and sister who buy a deserted seaside mansion, only to discover that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s routinely filled with noises of crying, flickering candles, creeping coldness, and a scent of mimosas, none of which can be explained scientifically. It all seems bound up in the former owner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s granddaughter, who lived in the house until she was three and her mother died falling off the cliff. The next logical step \u00e2\u20ac\u201c hold some seances! Of course. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a charming little film, really, with a nice crotchety performance from veteran Donald Crisp as the dour grandfather, and some really effective special effects on the ghost. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not particularly scary, but it definitely has the quietly chilling atmosphere down pat.
\n1944 USA. Director: Lewis Allen. Starring: Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Gail Russell, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Alan Napier.<\/em>
\nSeen October 10 on TCM.<\/em><\/p>\n

Totals<\/h3>\n

Films seen for the first time in October: 16
\nRewatches in October: 4
\nFilms seen in theatres in October: 2
\nList of Shame films seen in October: 3
\n2010s films seen in October: 1
\n2000s films seen in October: 5 (1 rewatch)
\n1990s films seen in October: 1
\n1980s films seen in October: 3
\n1970s films seen in October: 4 (1 rewatch)
\n1960s films seen in October: 2
\n1940s films seen in October: 2 (2 rewatches)
\n1920s films seen in October: 2
\nAmerican films seen in October: 14 (2 rewatches)
\nBritish films seen in October: 3 (1 rewatch)
\nSpanish films seen in October: 1
\nFrench films seen in October: 1
\nKorean films seen in October: 1 (1 rewatch)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[At the end of every month I post a rundown of the movies I saw that month, tallying them according to how much I did or didn’t like them. You can always see my recent watches here and my ongoing list of bests for the whole year here.] As usual in recent years, I devoted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,2220],"tags":[2323,2318,2315,1039,2305,2341,1735,2277,2314,2324,2284,2255,1480,2317,2256,2316,2313,2276,1868,2285],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/descent-feat.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":32879,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/scorecard-june-september-2013\/","url_meta":{"origin":28552,"position":0},"title":"Scorecard: June-September 2013","author":"Jandy","date":"October 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This has been a long time in the works. Even after I decided to just go with picture instead of blurbs and the whole bit, it still took me like two weeks to put together. Lots of interruptions lately. The baby is crawling, and she has the best cord-finding radar\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/SC-Much-Ado-About-Nothing.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3992,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/yep-im-doing-horror-too\/","url_meta":{"origin":28552,"position":1},"title":"Yep, I’m Doing Horror Too","author":"Jandy","date":"October 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, every film blog in the entire blogosphere is getting a little horror-happy this month, and I'm jumping on a very packed bandwagon. But I only really started watching horror films last year, so I feel like I've got a lot to catch up on. Here's a list of what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/deep-red-movie-still-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":30390,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/scorecard-february-2012\/","url_meta":{"origin":28552,"position":2},"title":"Scorecard: February 2012","author":"Jandy","date":"March 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"[At the end of every month I post a rundown of the movies I saw that month, tallying them according to how much I did or didn't like them. You can always see my recent watches here and my ongoing list of bests for the whole year here.] Well, my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/virginspring-lunch.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1777,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/a-month-of-horror\/","url_meta":{"origin":28552,"position":3},"title":"A Month of Horror","author":"Jandy","date":"December 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've never been a big fan of horror films and usually try to avoid them, but the horror genre has become such a significant gap in my cinematic experience (\"you've never seen Night of the Living Dead?! OMGWTFBBQ!\") that I decided to make a concerted effort during the month of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29747,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/scorecard-december-2011\/","url_meta":{"origin":28552,"position":4},"title":"Scorecard: December 2011","author":"Jandy","date":"January 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Only eight new-to-me films in December, thanks to a busy schedule moving, going home for Christmas, and, oh right, getting engaged (to this guy). But we were able to knock out a few more end-of-the-year films, including The Artist - one of my most highly anticipated films of the year\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/The-Artist.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":30035,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/my-2011-in-film-favorite-2011-films\/","url_meta":{"origin":28552,"position":5},"title":"My 2011 in Film: Favorite 2011 Films","author":"Jandy","date":"January 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"My Top Ten has already appeared over on Row Three, along with all the other contributors' lists. It's a good mix, you should check it out. Or, you could just read mine below, copied essentially verbatim, but with added pictures. Below the top ten are a loosely ordered (favorite to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/2011-in-Review-film.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}