OCTOBER 9TH
Movie Watched: Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981) / 96 minutes / Not Rated
Directed by: Frank De Felitta

Review: I first saw Dark Night of the Scarecrow when I was at a daycare center at the age of five. (Oddly enough, this is also where I saw the original Nightmare on Elm St. for the first time). Some of the older kids loved horror flicks and taped them off TV, then brought them to daycare to watch, which was a real thrill because my mother strictly forbade me to watch such films. And even though these movies were heavily edited for television, they were still pretty damned scary to a five-year old.

It was during this crucial, formative period of my life when I saw, and fell in love with, Dark Night of the Scarecrow. The film revolves around a postman named Otis Hazelrigg (Charles Durning), a truly wretched man who has an unreasonable hatred for a local harmless halfwit named Bubba Ritter. (Larry Drake, a.k.a. Dr. Giggles; a.k.a. Durant from Darkman)

Otis and several of his buddies would love to do nothing more than put a major hurtin' on poor Bubba, but they stay their hand because they don't have any just cause. Unfortunately for Bubba, one afternoon, as he's playing games with a young girl named Marylee, she is attacked by a dog. Bubba saves her, but during all the confusion, he is blamed for her injuries. This is just what Otis has been waiting for, and he wastes absolutely no time in putting together a four-man lynch mob to hunt down Bubba.

The only question I have is this: Should we call Darkman or Batman to tackle this Scarecrow?

Bubba manages to evade his pursuers by cleverly camouflaging himself as a scarecrow, but eventually, Otis realizes that there's a man under the dirty clothes, straw, and burlap mask. He and his three cronies murder Bubba in cold blood, mere moments before they discover that they have just gunned down an innocent man. The four men are put on trial, and despite passionate pleading from the prosecuting attorney, they are acquitted of their heinous act.

But as Bubba's grieving mother tells them all... "The are other kinds of justice in this world." Soon after Bubba's demise, a scarecrow begins popping up in fields near each of the killers. After two of them meet a messy end, those remaining are left to wonder, "who will be next?" And this is where the movie gets really good and creepy, because Otis the mailman starts showing his true colors as he begins having a mental breakdown.

He creepily corners Marylee at a Halloween party at the local school to interrogate her (made all the more creepy because Otis may be a pedophile), assaults, threatens, and accidentally kills Bubba's mother (then covers up the murder by blowing up the house!), and even kills his friend Skeeter Morris (a local grease monkey and fellow Bubba slayer) then buries his body in Bubba's grave! (Good lord! This guy is human garbage!) Thankfully, at the film's finale, Otis finally gets his comeuppance (rather ironically I might add), and Bubba's soul can finally rest in peace.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a fantastic film with very powerful performances, particularly from Charles Durning, whose character is one of the most despicable human beings I've ever seen in a movie! For a made-for-TV film, it is quite graphic (look at all those bullet holes in poor Bubba!), and it manages to maintain a creepy atmosphere throughout its 96-minute running time.

Nostalgia aside, this is a very well-made production, that hits all the right emotional notes, and manages to keep viewers guessing at the killer's true identity, right up to the end. I definitely recommend Dark Night of the Scarecrow, especially if you're a parent whose children love scary movies. This is one childhood favorite of mine, that has withstood the test of time, and I couldn't possibly give this film anything less than:

FOUR 'RADS'

Buy this movie at: Amazon.com (DVD) or Movies Unlimited (DVD)

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OCTOBER 8TH
Movie Watched: Fiend Without a Face (1958) / 74 minutes / Not Rated
Directed by: Arthur Crabtree

Review: For years I've read about this U.K. sci-fi/thriller on various websites (most notably, Badmovies.Org) and haven't had the chance to see it... until now! I was pleasantly surprised by this black & white classic, which became infamous during its release in 1958 and garnered an actual "X" rating from the British Board of Film Censors. What was so shocking about this little movie? Well read on to find out!

Set during the Cold War era, Fiend Without a Face takes place at an atomic-powered military radar station that is located in a small backwoods town somewhere in Canada. The locals aren't big on the idea of having a nuclear reactor in their backyard; even more-so when some of their neighbors start dying in the vicinity of the U.S. airbase.

The Canadian civilians (aye?) blame the military for the mysterious deaths, but in truth, the real culprit is an invisible threat. Strange unseeable creatures have invaded the area and leap upon their unsuspecting human prey, then suck out their brains and spinal cords. Eventually it turns out that the creatures feed on atomic power, and were created during a telekinesis experiment by an old scientist named Professor Walgate.

The notorious "brain orgy" sequence from Fiend Without a Face.

By the end of the film, Walgate, his pretty assistant Barbara, and several U.S. army officers have barricaded themselves in the Professor's home. That's all well and good, but how do you fight against something you cannot even see? Well the illusive brain-sucking monstrosities manage to overload the power plant in the nearby airbase; the resulting outpouring of atomic power makes the monsters visible!

Soon, an army of (stop-motion animated) hopping brain monsters (that propel themselves along with their spinal cord tails) begin invading the house, leading to a whole lot of "brain damage." The creatures are shot with small arms fire and/or bludgeoned to death with various melee weapons, and gruesomely perish at the hands of their intended snacks.

During the siege, one of the military brass (Major James Cummings, played by Marshall Thompson) escapes and rushes to the airbase in order to somehow cut off the creatures' atomic lifeline. Will he be able to make it to the reactor alive? And if he does succeed, will he accomplish his task in time to save the woman he loves?! Get yourself a copy of this movie and find out for yourself!

Fiend Without a Face is a great old-fashioned monster movie and was definitely ahead of its time. The extremely gory deaths of the brain creatures, while not very shocking today, must have created quite an uproar back in 1958. With its eerie score, interesting storyline, and cool-looking monsters, this one is a definite winner in my book. That's why I'm giving Fiend Without a Face:


THREE AND-A-HALF 'RADS'
Buy this movie at: Amazon.com (DVD) or Movies Unlimited (DVD)

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OCTOBER 7TH
Movie Watched: Death Kappa (2010) / 79 minutes / Not Rated
Directed by: Tomo'o Haraguchi

Review: I know, I know, this movie technically isn't a horror film, but I had to sneak at least one giant monster flick in here. And truthfully, I believe that Death Kappa hits on enough plot points to make it worthy of this here marathon. Just compare it to any one of the Frankenstein films, which, very much like this movie, have a mad scientist attempting to either create life, or create an all new lifeform.

That's sort of what gets the ball rolling in Death Kappa. A female mad scientist, backed financially by an insane Imperialistic underground militia, want to create a new breed of amphibious humans/soldiers. All she needs for the task is a fresh batch of kappa DNA, so she attempts to capture one, which just so happens to be protected by a failed J-pop singer.

Kappa escapes from the bad guys, then later tails them to their hidden lair, where he sumo wrestles a trio of fish-men before the aforementioned mad scientist goes berserk and sets off a nuclear device. The resulting blast turns kappa into a gigantic, red-eyed, (blue) fire-breathing monster, and also brings about the sudden appearance of another giant creature. Soon, both kaiju are having a wrestling match in the middle of a city (that is designed to look like an actual wrestling ring, HA!), while jets and helicopters on strings fly overhead.

In the end, the nuclear-powered "Death Kappa" claims victory and goes on a short destruction spree, while the military watches helplessly from afar. But somehow, the kappa's J-pop protector survived the nuclear holocaust, and shows up to sing a poorly written song to calm the raging giant down. The uber-kappa recognizes his friend, then (most likely embarrassed by his kaiju-sized tantrum) swims out to sea until he is ever needed again.

"With these hands... I shall destroy thee!"

Death Kappa attempts to spoof the Japanese monster movies you and I grew up with, and I would classify it as a mild success. Everything about this movie is over-the-top, including the performances by most of the cast, and there are random things all over the place that just aren't explained. (e.g. - Hunchback at the train station, shopkeeper with a deformed face growing out of his cheek, a soldier with goofy buck teeth, and a transvestite fighter pilot?!)

Nothing about the film is taken seriously, which sometimes works in its favor, but that also keeps it from being something truly memorable. (And for that I blame screenwriter Masakazu Migita, whose previous writing credits include oddities like The Calamari Wrestler, The World Sinks, Except for Japan, and Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit.) To tell you the truth, because of all the juvenile attempts at humor, I was kind of on the fence about this movie.

I knew it was going to be a parody, but I thought that there would at least be an attempt to come up with a decent script for the proceedings. But my misgivings about the film began to vanish during the final act, when a giant monster randomly appears and starts battling the JSDF. While this is fun in-and-of-itself, I really got a kick out of the fact that no attempt was made to disguise the radio-controlled vehicles, or hide the strings on all the aircraft.

And naturally, the monster vs. military action is just a prelude to Death Kappa's main highlight: The kaiju battle! The brawl between "Death Kappa" and his foe is a brief, but fun one, filled with little homages to other classic kaiju duels. (Death Kappa and his foe bat spherical fuel storage tanks back and forth, which is reminscent of Godzilla and Ebirah's game of "volleyball" in Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster.)

All in all, Death Kappa is a seriously flawed movie that manages to remain fairly amusing and enjoyable. The film-makers had their hearts in the right place, but should have probably toned down the film's absurdity just a tad. Still, I actually liked (and got a few belly laughs from) Death Kappa and don't mind giving it:


THREE 'RADS'
Buy this movie at: Amazon.com (DVD), Amazon.com (Blu-ray), Movies Unlimited (DVD), or Movies Unlimited (Blu-ray)

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OCTOBER 5TH & 6TH
Movie Watched: The Call of Cthulhu (2005) / 48 minutes / Not Rated
Directed by: Andrew Leman

Review: So you may be wondering: Why did it take me two nights to watch a forty-eight minute short film? Well, on the night of October 5th, I passed out about twenty minutes into the movie. However, this was the result of simple fatigue and not at all caused by this fantastic adaptation of the classic H.P. Lovecraft tale.

After the passing of his great-uncle, Professor George Gammell Angell, an anthropologist by the name of Francis Wayland Thurston discovers his late relative's notes on the mysterious Cthulu cult. Entranced by his great-uncle's findings, Francis probes deeper and deeper into Professor Angell's occult studies. As is the case with the source material, the film's plot diverges into three different storylines.

In the first part, ("The Horror in Clay") Professor Angell begins interviewing an art student named Henry Wilcox. Angell is intrigued by a clay bas-relief that Henry created, which was based on a series of recurring dreams involving a "Cyclopean" city coated in green ooze and being home to an ancient evil. Eventually Henry has a mental breakdown and is hospitalized; when he regains his wits, he recalls nothing of the dreams, or the clay sculpture he made prior to his slip into delirium.

The second act of the film covers "The Tale of Inspector Legrasse," in which a New Orleans policeman named John Raymond Legrasse, visits a gathering of various archaelogically-minded scientists (including Professor Angell). His goal is to see if they can identify a statuette he obtained during a police raid on a ritualistic pagan sacrifice deep in the Louisianna bayous. One of the scientists at the meeting, William Channing Webb, recognizes the artifact as a Cthulhu idol and briefly tells of his encounter with a tribe of Cthulhu worshippers.

Cthulhu junkies... the horrible truth.

Francis is mystified after reading this in Angell's journal, and continues his own research into the Cthulhu cult, which finally comes to a head when he accidentally stumbles over an old newspaper article. Believing that the nautical mystery reported in the paper to be Cthulhu-related, Francis travels to New Zealand, Australia, and finally Oslo, Norway to talk to the lone survivor of a vessel called the Alert.

Once he reaches his destination, Francis is dismayed to find that his intended interviewee, Gustaf Johansen, is dead. However, Johansen chronicled his experiences in a notebook, which is given to Thurston by Gustaf's widow. Though he is compelled to toss the notebook into the sea on his journey home, he instead reads of Gustaf's horrifying encounter with the dreaded Cthulhu. (As told in "The Madness from the Sea.")

As the film comes to a close, we see that Francis Wayland Thurston is now locked up in an asylum, and has just just passed on all his Cthulhu knowledge to another man. Though Francis insists that all the notes and documents be burned, it seems that the curiosity of the Cthulhu mythos will drag yet another victim into the depths of insanity.

I've beared witness to several indie films that have attempted to capture the essence of either silent and/or classic black & white cinema, but most of them fail. With that said, I'm happy to report that director Andrew Leman and his production crew have pretty much pulled it off in The Call of Cthulhu. Though some modern film making techniques are utlized, this has the look and feel of an old silent movie from the 1920's.

Though it does scale back some of the more epic moments of the source material (e.g. In "The Madness from the Sea," Gustaf Johansen and his fellow sailors actually take the Alert by force, when attacked by sailing Cthulhu cultists, whereas in the film they simply board an abandoned ship.), this is probably the truest adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story to date. What's even cooler is that you actually, but very briefly, get to see Cthulhu himself in action via stop-motion animation!

At a mere forty-eight minutes, The Call of Cthulhu doesn't overstay its welcome and delivers a satisfying take on one of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous stories. While the silent film format may scare off most mainstream viewers, I urge you to give this fantastic short film a look.

Thus far this has been the best film I watched during my all-month marathon, and is easily one of the best Lovecraft adaptations I've ever witnessed. I am more than happy to award Andrew Leman's ode to Lovecraft:


THREE AND-A-HALF 'RADS'
Buy this movie at: Amazon.com (DVD) or Movies Unlimited (DVD)

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OCTOBER 4TH
Movie Watched: Destruction Kings (2006) / 71 minutes / Not Rated
Directed by: Chris Seaver

Review: Egads! Chris Seaver has done it again... he has given me some legitimate belly laughs and totally grossed me out with Destruction Kings. In this ultra low-budget spoof of The Monster Squad, Low Budget Pictures' trademark characters, Teen Ape and Mr. Bonejack (played by Chris Seaver), battle the three most (in)famous monsters of all time: Dracula, The Wolfman, and Funkenstein.

Aiding them in their fight against the forces of evil, are a trio of nerdy kids that know everything there is to know about monsters, and a busty fellow agent who holds the key to mankind's future. Eventually, it all boils down to a final climactic struggle between good and evil in an old abandoned warehouse. Will Mr. Bonejack and Teen Ape, the titular "Destruction Kings," come out on top?

A trip to Michael Jackson's subconscious mind.

If you're one of those folks that thinks you've seen everything, then give this movie (or any other film from Low Budget Pictures) a look. You'll be subjected to poo-flinging, some of the trashiest and most hilariously perverted dialogue ever written, penile punishment, and (the real coup-de-gras) bloody vaginal violence during a lesbian vampire scene.

Destruction Kings is clearly not for the faint of heart, and can only truly be appreciated by folks with a twisted sense of humor, and a devout love for low-to-no budget flicks. (If you like the films being released by Troma, Tempe Entertainment, or Full Moon Entertainment, then you are set!) I won't try to convince you that this is a good movie, because it isn't, but I will openly admit that it is quite entertaining!

Writer, director, and star Chris Seaver is totally unapologetic with his brand of humor; his films are almost guaranteed to offend some (maybe even most) viewers. But despite this, he has found a niche in the indie film community and has kept his fledgling production company going for (as of my writing this) nearly twenty years! That's no small feat, especially in this day and age, and here's hoping that Mr. Seaver continues to bring us more over-the-top horror-comedies for another twenty years or more.

Destruction Kings is a movie that sets out to entertain some, and shock and appall everyone else, and for that I'm willing to award this "Seaver-sploitation" epic:


TWO AND-A-HALF 'RADS'
Buy this movie at: Amazon.com (DVD) or Movies Unlimited (DVD).

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OCTOBER 3RD
Movie Watched: Survival of the Dead (2009) / 90 minutes / Rated R
Directed by: George A. Romero

Review: What the hell has happened to George A. Romero? The king of the modern zombie film seems to have lost his ability to tell a good tale, and/or provide the intriguing social commentary we've come to expect from him. (e.g. Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead dealt with mass consumerism.) This latest addition to Romero's growing number of "Living Dead" films is a followup to Diary of the Dead, (which I admittedly enjoyed), and seems to be yet another failure for this once amazing director.

In Survival, a small group of former National Guardsmen, led by Sarge "Nicotine" Crockett, decide to take a much needed break from the zombie apocalypse and head to the cozy Plum Island. Once there, they discover that the tiny isle is ruled over by Seamus Muldoon who shoots strangers on sight, but allows the living dead to continue their single-minded existence. Apparently Muldoon's main goal is to find a way to teach the undead to eat something other than humans.

Eventually Sarge Crockett and his small band of survivors get caught up in a bloody feud between Muldoon and his arch rival, Patrick O'Flynn (who believes that the only good zombie is a dead one). This of course leads to an inevitable showdown between these two men with opposing beliefs, and naturally, a bit of much-needed flesh-eating action. But by the time we get to this good stuff, it proves to be "too little, too late," making Survival of the Dead, by far, the most disappointing film in the Living Dead series. Though the movie has a cast of likeable characters, and some good gore effects, it fails to tell a truly engaging story.

Zombies just love "All You Can Eat Human Buffets!"

The O'Flyns and Muldoons have this whole "Hatfield and McCoy" thing going on, with the former wanting to brutally (and rightfully) eliminate the undead menace on the island, while the latter believes that their dead relatives can be trained to feast on animals instead of humans, and regain a bit of their lost humanity. I was just beginning to immerse myself in all of this drama when suddenly... a zombified girl galloped by on a horse. It was at that moment that I promptly told this movie that it could "f*ck right off."

By the time the climax approached, I had shed a tear or two for George Romero's career. The final act of Survival is just a mess, with a total "what the Hell?" ending that has probably caused a lot of anger in the zombie fan community. However, my biggest complaint (aside from the ending) is a severe lack of that great George Romero commentary that puts his zombie films above all of the usual zombie fare!

Usually something can be derived from one George's zombie films, but here, it seems like he's just telling the audience "People just can't get along and will ultimately bring about their own destruction." Or maybe the moral of the story was "You can teach an old zombie new tricks?" Christ, I don't know!

Survival of the Dead had so much going for it, but in the end, the movie was a big letdown. Romero fans, and quite possibly zombie fans in general, may just want to skip this one as it breaks a cardinal rule of zombie cinema (Zombies only crave human flesh damn it!), and totally wastes an interesting premise, and a talented cast. To be fair though, the movie isn't a total loss, as there are some really fun moments throughout, plus we do get a bit of good ole fashioned gut-munching. But that still isn't enough to save it from being one of the most disappointing horror films in recent memory.

It hurts me to do this but I wouldn't dare give Romero's latest anything more than:


TWO AND-A-HALF 'RADS'
Buy this movie at: Amazon.com (Blu-ray), Amazon.com (DVD), Movies Unlimited (Blu-ray), Movies Unlimited (DVD).

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OCTOBER 2ND
Movie Watched: N/A. Normal everyday life gets in the way; guess I'll try again tomorrow? (Yikes, this is the suckiest marathon ever... I better start watching some Horror flicks stat!)
Review: N/A
Buy this movie at: N/A

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OCTOBER 1ST
Movie Watched: N/A. Planned on seeing Hatchet II, but none of the theaters in the area were playing it. Great, first time I'm doing something like this and I've already failed! Guess I'll just have to double-up on a horror flick later in the month....
Review: N/A
Buy this movie at: N/A

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