Saying you're not a fan of Mr. M Night Shyamalan's later work is a pretty basic opinion these days. No one enjoyed The Last Airbender; and while The Happening is generally pointed to as his worst film, I will go to my grave saying Lady in the Water is objectively worse. So I did not have high hopes for Old when I first heard about it. And now that I've seen it, I can say that it's another disappointment from a man who had so much potential. What a twist.
1.5 stars
Exasperated sigh and eyeroll.
Evil Toons (1992)
I would like to lodge a formal complaint. I was promised porn stars in a cheesy horror movie fighting to survive against evil cartoons brought to life, and yet there was only one titular evil toon. Yes, there is the suggestion that the Knockoffronomicon has more sinister animated beasties, but I'd argue that's still false advertising. Well att least I got to listen to some godawful rock music... Okay, maybe I should start from the beginning.
FleshEater (1988)
And so we end October of the Living Dead the same way we started: with Mr. Bill Hinzman. Remember back in Night of the Living Dead when I said to keep him in mind for later on? Well, that time is now! The man who played the first "ghoul" we see made a career out of that appearance, culminating in this film that he wrote, directed, and starred it. It's currently freely streaming on Tubi, so that kind of tells you the quality.
Return of the Living Dead: Part II (1988)
Stop me if you've heard this one: a vat of Trioxin leaks, Mr. Thom Mathews and Mr. James Karen get exposed and slowly become zombies, and the gas hits clouds which rains the chemical all over a nearby graveyard. Yes, that is the setup for The Return of the Living Dead, but it's also a good chunk of the setup for the sequel, Return of the Living Dead: Part II. Look, I figured the later sequels I'd watch as part of October of the Living Dead would be bad, but I didn't expect the first sequel to be so repetitive.
Devour (2005)
Even with Movie Night taking a hiatus and then back with a relaxed schedule for a while, I still watch a lot of movies in a year. I don't mean that so much as a brag, but as a defense in this case. Devour is a psychological horror film starring Mr. Jensen "Dean Winchester" Ackles, and its poster caught my eye enough that I put it on for Movie Night. Simple enough, right? Well, turns out we had watched it back in 2018 and none of us remembered a single detail about it. Not the best look!
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (2005)
Now wait, you might be saying to yourself. Didn't he already cover this? Well, yes and no. Yes, I started this week with a post on the 1920 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. But no, today's post is on the 2005 remake that I can't absolutely confirm is a shot-for-shot remake, but it's the exact same movie. Except the characters now talk. A lot. And it's not good.
Boo! (2018)
Did I not actually watch any movies over October that took place on Halloween? Is this really the first movie to have the "Halloween" tag? Huh. Anyway, my Movie Night group tends to watch horror movies, so it was inevitable that I'd watch a Halloween movie outside of October. I guess next year I'll try to add a few more seasonally themed horror movies to my list; but enough about plans 11 months out. Let's talk about Boo!, a lackluster horror flick. Happy belated Halloween!
Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)
All things must come to an end, and both the Hellbound Halloween event and the Hellraiser franchise count as part of "all things." I've covered 9 movies about Hell and Pinhead (with a brief interlude of other stories by Mr. Clive Barker), and Hellraiser: Judgment is the last. It's a bit of an over-exaggeration to say that the quality of the franchise decreased with every sequel, but the last half is more bad than good. Gary J Tunnicliffe--who also directed Hellraiser: Revelations--wanted to make a really good entry, and he ended up with two of the worst. Kind of like how Simon Kinberg wrote both X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Dark Phoenix! Nerd burn!
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Last year I said that The Blair Witch Project is a great film, and I will always stand by that statement. Sure, it unleashed a plague of cheap found footage garbage, but can you really blame the good thing for all the cheap knockoffs that follow? Speaking of cheap knockoffs, this year we're talking about Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, a mistake on just about every level. Sure, that sounds a bit unfair, but how else am I supposed to feel about a movie called "Book of Shadows" that doesn't ever feature--or even reference or mention--a spooky and/or witchy book? So the title is a lie, right out the gate? Fan-fuckin-tastic.
Paranormal Sexperiments (2016)
I fully know that I have no one to blame for this but me. I went down a weird rabbit hole on Tubi and found a horror porno called Haunted Hellcats, but IMDB had never heard of it. It had heard of Paranormal Sexperiments with the same cast and crew, as did Amazon dot com. But both the Amazon and Tubi versions were too short to be the full movie, and a couple minutes into the Tubi version--like hell am I going to give Amazon any of my money over porn for straight men--it was clear that it was heavily censored. So much like The Mummy's Kiss before it, I had to turn to porn sites to find the full movie. Was it worth it? No. No! Absolutely not! Why would you even ask that?!
Chwineka Watches 