Horror Movie Recaps

I started this site in October 1, 2016 and my first project was attempting to recap a horror film a day during that month. I only got through 17 recaps, but that’s still watching and recapping (with as much humor as I could muster) a movie every other day. Listed below is what I produced in that month, and I hope to return to this concept again this year. I actually gained quite a lot of respect for the genre over the course of writing these recaps. Enjoy!

31 Days of Horror 2016: Introduction

Wherein I state my purpose of attempting to watch and recap a different horror movie every day that month; as you will eventually see, I did not reach that goal.

 

Cat’s Eye

(AKA “That Movie Whose VHS Artwork You Always Noticed When You Went to the Video Store and Assumed That Little Monster On The Cover Was the Main Villain of the Movie”) Stephen King is the American master of horror whose works.…


ps2_wide.jpgPet Sematary Two

First off: I’m not trying to start a trend on this blog by doing two Stephen King(ish) movies in a row that center around pet horror; I favorited about forty horror movies that are available On Demand for this project and am picking them somewhat at random…

h20.jpgHalloween H20: Twenty Years Later

This is a story about 1998 and an ode to the halcyon decade that year inhabited. I mean, the movie itself is about the murderous Michael Myers, his long-suffering sister, and the twentieth anniversary of his Halloween massacre that…

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

In 1974, a horror movie came out that forged a divergent path for the entire horror genre to follow and has since been so widely imitated that if you had never watched it before by 2016, you may wonder what the big deal was about it…

Candyman

OK: Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman. I had my boy Sherman set the Wayback Machine to 1992. He was promptly hacked to death by Michael Myers as we flew past Halloween H20, but I arrived safely for my viewing of Candyman. My interest was piqued when I saw in the credits that the music score…

sleepaway_camp_I.jpgSleepaway Camp

I never went to camp as a kid. Growing up in Missouri, there was plenty of open space and fresh air right where I lived, and besides that, my folks were never the type to want to ship their kids off for extended periods (also, I was a real sweety pie). After watching Sleepaway Camp,…

sleepaway_camp_II.jpgSleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers

How do you make a sequel of a horror movie whose original hinged on keeping the identity of the killer a secret until the end, since once you reveal this, there would be no way to pull that trick off again? By making the deranged killer from the first movie your protagonist in the second…

 
sleepaway_camp_III.jpgSleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland

Released just a year after SCII: Sleepaway Harder, it’s the last in the original trilogy of this franchise and the end of the line with my review of the whole shebang before moving onto gorier pastures. No preamble this time, you know the deal: camp, murder, Angela, yadda yadda yadda, LET’S DO THIS FUCKING THING!…

Image result for greasy strangler posterThe Greasy Strangler

I enjoy weird films. If it’s cult, obscure, transgressive, shocking, or just plain bizarre, I’ll seek it out and consume it like it’s garmonbozia. But why this sort of fare? I don’t have particularly bizarre habits, behaviors, or even interests (unless you think nerdy obsessions with rhetorical theory…

 

Image result for ghost of frankenstein movie posterThe Ghost of Frankenstein

After the rather salacious business yesterday’s selection traded in, snap back to reality/oh, there goes gravity because it’s a viewing of the horror classic(?) The Ghost of Frankenstein. I’m not very familiar with the original Universal horror film library in general, but since Frankie’s story has…

 

Image result for hellraiser movie posterHellraiser

There’s something very disturbing about the monsters of Hellraiser, and it’s not just their looks (although that aspect of them is terrifying). It’s that they’re so…calm. Almost like they’re bored with the idea of having to rip your soul apart, as if it’s an unwanted detour on their path to the next extreme S&M event…

 

nightmare_newframe.jpgNightmare

In the annuls of classic horror movies, there are thousands of b-movie also-rans that never reached the heights of Sleepaway Camp or the Halloween series, and this is one of them. With the success of Halloween in 1978, the American horror market had a glut of similar fare featuring a psychotic child all grown up and out for more murder; this…

Image result for intruder horror movie posterIntruder

OK, so the film begins by panning down from the opening credit moon to a square-looking grocery store (not one of those hip ones that are all the rage these days). Inside the store, we cruise the aisles via shopping cart cam…

 

society_1989_horror.jpgSociety

The movie begins with a young man that kinda looks like Emilio Estevez in a mansion wandering around. He hears gristly things afoot and grabs a knife from the kitchen as he hears someone chortling somewhere. The ticking of clocks begin to overwhelm the score, and he slides to the floor clutching the knife. Then…

 

Image result for the final terror poster The Final Terror

It’s never a good sign when the first frame of a movie starts off with an apology. This one comes from the studio handling the re-release, which states that all of the original film elements for The Final Terror are now lost in the sands of time, and what…

 

Madman

BOOM! RIGHT INTO THE CREDITS with a low, weird organ on the soundtrack, a wild musical sting appears as the title zooms up to the screen: Na na na na na na na, Madman! The credits scroll quickly on the screen…

 

NightoftheDemons_poster.jpgNight of the Demons

Roar roar goes the MGM lion, and with a synth-laden power theme, the animated credits begin. I’m thinking of doing some aerobics while this nifty little tune plays, and Flash animation ghouls and goblins float into the title card: With a solid opening credits sequence over with, we CUT TO a car zooming down the…

Tourist_Trap_poster.jpgTourist Trap

Bibbidi-bobbidi-BOO! It’s another fucking horror movie recap and live review. Again, I’m going in blind, so buckle up, chuckle nuts: It’s 1979’s Tourist Trap. Ancient Roman-sounding music begins the film, and it right to the goddamn point by rolling credits immediately.

31 Days of Horror Concluded

So I spent much of October 2016 watching horror movies and writing glib little reviews about them. It was an exercise in writing that I gave myself (initially much more ambitious than what transpired, but that explanation will come later)…

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