Happy Halloween!
I love this AMC ad campaign! The commercials are even better than the stills, but I suppose it's bloody pointless to take a shot of the tele.
The Man in Gray show at Finally Fred's last night was great despite the rain, the ongoing CMJ music festival in the city, and the bar management-induced showtime delay. There was audience interaction, fake blood for Halloween, and many photos to be posted soon. Don't forget to check out next week's show in Springsteen-land, Asbury Park, NJ (details on the band site).
Since it's Halloween, here are my recommended picks for films, in chronological order, to rent tonight. Please bear with me, it's so long and rambling, it's frightening in itself. (Note: a * denotes a must, must-see)
The Hitch-hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953)
A total Communist-paranoia film. Two men unknowingly pick up a serial killer on the highway. How can you go wrong with this plot? The homoerotic undertones are lots of fun, too.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)
Another fear-of-Commies film. A young man and woman discover that Commies (well, oozing plant pods) have infiltrated their small town.
I Was a Teenage Werewolf (Gene Fowler, Jr., 1957)
A young Michael Landon grapples with puberty, entailing a werewolf transformation (hey, didn't that happen to you, too, during puberty?)
* Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Arguably the first slasher-stalker film that would pave the way for great 1980s horror flicks. A lovely soundtrack, innovative storytelling technique, and overall great classic.
Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966)
Another totally Cold War metaphor film. The ending is brilliant.
* Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
Encompassing themes of racism, sexism, and zombies (Commies?), Night of the Living Dead is perhaps the best text to summarize the turbluent era, the 60s.
* Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
Young yuppie couple gives birth to the devil. Sucks for them.
* Hatchet for the Honeymoon (Mario Bava, 1969)
An absolute must-see for Italian horror fans. A young wedding-gown designer with a multitude of psychological disturbances is haunted by the murders he regularly commits.
The Cat O' Nine Tails (Mario Bava, 1971)
A great Italian neo-noir film. The point-of-view shot with the milk glasses halfway through the film is brilliantly done.
* The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
Pea soup, anyone? A young girl is demonized by the devil. A wonderful metaphor for bad parenting and questionable faith in religion.
* The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
One of my all-time favorites. A group of five Texan teenagers runs into a backwoods cannibalistic family. Totally awesome and well-made -- one of the first films to feature the "final girl" motif, and including a thorough critique of American capitalism, the deterioration of family values, and the Watergate / Vietnam-induced loss of trust in American government in the 1970s.
Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976)
"They're all gonna laugh at you!" As much as the 'female hitting puberty and going crazy' theme can be interpreted as anti-feminist, Stephen King actually wrote the book as a metaphor for young boys being terrorized by other males. Instead, de Palma replaces this castration anxiety with a monstrous feminine character. Sissy Spacek and William Katt (okay, and John Travolta in a small role) are excellent.
Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)
A total attack on American consumerism in the most obvious way: Zombies infiltrate a shopping mall and shop 'til they, uh, drop.
Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1978)
Yeah boy. Cunningham really knows how to do horror. A precursor to hundreds of 80s movies to come, a group of scantilly-clad teenage camp counselors out in the middle of nowhere are offed one by one. Wait until you see who the killer really is! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) and witness Drew Barrymore's character's fatal mistake).
Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
The film that popularized the point-of-view shot. It was never one of my uber-favorities to watch, but it is very well-made and pretty creepy in some parts.
The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979)
Yuppie couple and kids move into a house in which, a few years prior, a family member murdered his entire clan execution-style. It's not like they didn't know about the circumstances upon moving in - the realtor even told them! Nice going, dumb yuppies.
* The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1980)
One of many installments of Fulci's early 80s maggot / zombie film phase. A young woman (the lovely Katriona MacColl, who looks suspiciously like Agnetha from ABBA) renovates an old New Orleans bed and breakfast, only to discover that the basement is teeming with maggots, corpses, and a passageway to hell. Do New Orleans homes even have basements?
* Dressed to Kill (Brian de Palma, 1980)
Ostensibly, a total rip-off of Hitchcock's Psycho. Lots of shower scenes, nudity, female punishment, sex, and graphic violence. But somehow, extremely entertaining.
* The Gates of Hell (a.k.a. City of the Living Dead) (Lucio Fulci, 1980)
Another one of my alltime favorites. After a priest commits suicide, a passageway to hell is opened. Katriona MacColl and colleagues must figure out how to close it, before all the dead can rise from their tombs. Great maggot sequences, and deaths with drills, internal organs, and zombies galore. The ending is great.
* The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
I wrote a paper on this film for my application to the Cinema Studies department years ago. It doesn't seem to be a favorite for most Kubrick fans, but the haunting visuals, soundtrack, and Jack Nicholson's acting suit me very fine.
House by the Cemetary (Lucio Fulci, 1981)
You cannot go wrong with a horror movie about possessed kids. The North by Northwest homage at the end is excellent. Also starring Katriona MacColl.
The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1982)
A total horror classic. Simultaneously funny and horrifying.
The New York Ripper (Lucio Fulci, 1982)
Absolutely offensive in every way to women, but Lucio Fulci really knows how to make films. In a throwback to noir films, a New York detective compulsively searches to get to the bottom of a serial killer's antics.
Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982)
Seemingly an attack on the media and bad parenting. Young Carol Anne gets sucked into some vortex of death via the family television set (by the way, please do not rent Poltergeist II. Go ahead, skip right on to Poltergeist III).
Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
Also an attack on mass media. James Woods is seduced by an evil videotape. And Deborah Harry of Blondie fame also stars.
* A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984)
A classic teen horror film that spawned numerous sequels. Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and friends must defeat Freddy Krugger, who was killed years before by the town's parents upon discovering that he was a child killer. Like most 80s films, a critiqique of bad parenting and inept authority figures.
* After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985)
Not a slasher/stalker flick like many on this list, but an effectively creepy and amusing picture about a hapless yuppie caught in the clutches of downtown Manhattan 'after hours.'
* House (Steve Miner, 1986)
So overlooked, so forgotten about, but one of my alltime favorite films and a totally effective social commentary about the 1960s and the 1980s. William Katt plays a young writer disturbed by his experiences in Vietnam, the disappearance of his son, and the haunted house in which he resides.
* Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986)
In the tradition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this horror-musical features a gigantic human-eating plant named Audrey who Rick Moranis attempts to kill. Notable sequences: Moranis' and Ellen Greene's love ballad numbers, Steve Martin's "Dentist" tune, and the throwback to 1950s both in plot and filmmaking style.
* Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987)
Yuppie's worst nightmare: An intelligent, powerful, and beautiful colleague seduces you. Aw, poor guy.
The Gate (Tibor Takács, 1987)
Another film featuring a passageway-to-Hell discovery, this time, by a couple of heavy metal-listening teens. Interesting flick, but it's no The Gates of Hell.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Chuck Russell, 1987)
That's right, skip right over a A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. This installment features a group of teens in a mental institution who develop their skills to defeat Freddy through their dreams. Heather Langenkamp reprises her role as Nancy (thank goodness she skipped out on Part 2, or I would have never watched "Just the Ten of Us" ever again).
* Opera (a.k.a. Terror at the Opera) (Dario Argento, 1987)
Arguably the master of horror, director Argento presents a beautifully shot film about a cursed production of Verdi's "Macbeth," complete with eye-pecking ravens and authentic stage fright. The raven's point of view / crane swings at the end are truly remarkable.
* Poltergeist III (Gary Sherman, 1988)
Tom Skerrit and Nancy Allen (of Carrie and Dressed to Kill fame) adopt Carol Anne after her parents give her up (wouldn't you, too, if she attracted ghouls all the time?). Set in upper-class Manhattan, this film is arguably a yuppie horror film as well as a psychological slasher flick.
* Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989)
The movie that Winona Ryder's agent begged her not to do, claiming it would ruin her career. It didn't. This movie takes teen angst to unprecedented levels of shock and comedy. It rules.
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (Rachel Talalay, 1991)
A group of teens formulaically walks into their deaths at the hands of Freddy. With each installment in the series, the deaths become more impressive and well-choreographed. Notably death in this particular film: A teenager is sucked into a Nintendo game and killed by Freddy electronically.
* The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
See Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) get stalked by everyone favorite cannibal, Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins).
The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999)
One of the most horrifying, innovative endings I've seen in recent years. Pretty creepy.
The Bone Collecter (Philip Noyce, 1999)
Overlooked and underrated, this film features Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, and Queen Latifah trying to uncover the identity of a Manhattan serial killer. Personally, I think this is one of the better horror films of the late 90s.
The Minus Man (Hampton Fancher, 1999)
Owen Wilson is effectively on-target as a serial killer. This film is overlooked, but despite some corny dialogue, a poor attempt at a romantic plot, and sloppy editing, it's interesting and creepy.
* American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
Yuppie Patrick Bateman (played amazingly by Christian Bale) is so obsessed with Reagan-era fixtures of wealth, power, and sex that he seems to kill all who stand in his way. A witty, scathing, and excellent adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel.
* The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 2001)
I just may well be the only film student who really digs this flick. See Edward Norton Jr. (Haley Joel Osment) see dead people.
* Donnie Darko (Richard A. Kelly, 2001)
My second favorite film of 2001, this vehicle is one of the most complex and intriguing tales of a young man's struggle with adolescence and the Reagan 1980s. Plus, the soundtrack is wonderful, teeming with some of my personal favorites (Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," Duran Duran's "Notorious," and The Church's "Under the Milky Way").
Jeeper Creepers (Victor Salva, 2001)
Features one of the scariest horror movie introductions in recent film history. After the first forty-five minutes or so, the film goes downhill, but it's worth watching because of the awesome introduction.
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
My favorite film of 2001. Dream-like, disturbing, and eerie, this is already a Lynchian classic.
My friend Dana is a master of horror cinema - don't forget to check out his excellent site.
After all this babble, if you're not bored asleep, what are your favorite horror flicks?
