The Howling & Moon of the Wolf

I need to watch more werewolf movies.
Really, heck, who don't, right?
I decided that the other morning while watching the 1972 tv movie The Moon of the Wolf, starring David Janssen as a small town sheriff in Louisiana where... something is killing people.  The poster sort of spoils it, while the movie itself is rather like a murder mystery, with suspects and clues, til the third act reveal, where you actually get to see the killer for the first time.
It was pretty by the numbers, but workable for the constraints of the medium   In fact, the murder mystery aspect of the story was reminiscent of The Beast Must Die, which was part of my decision to try and watch more in the genre- the idea that werewolf movies- at least the ones where the identity of the werewolf is unknown, like Silver Bullet or Moon of the Wolf, are sort of a cross genre thing, the horror mystery.  I'll be getting back to that in future posts.

One the other hand,  sometimes the werewolves are right in front of you, a point as old as Lon Chaney's The Wolfman and An American Werewolf in London... and of course, The Howling.

Dee Wallace plays a reporter who, after getting attacked while on an assignment, leaves the city to visit a colony/spa run by a psychotherapist to recuperate.

While there, she hears the howling of wolves and realizes... somethings wrong.

Because, yes, it's a colony of werewolves.  Things go downhill for her from there.  But not for the viewer- The Howling is full of references to wolfishness, from clips of the original The Wolfman, including an after the credits bit, vintage Big Bad Wolf cartoons, and (my favorite) a copy of Ginsberg's poem Howl on a character's desk.

I haven't seen this in years, and I was really surprised at how similar it was to Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, which was essentially another film version of Gary Brandner's novel the The Howling that the movie The Howling was based on.  Similar, but so very much better than IV to a degree of noon and midnight.

Children of the Corn

I recently decided I was going to try and not re watch  any movie I'd seen within the last five years.
Instead of limiting my choices, I've found myself revisiting things I'd consigned to background noise and I'm pleasantly surprised.  This morning's movie, Children of The Corn (1984), is a terrific example of this.

I remember when it came out in the mid eighties, the cover to Stephen King's short story collection Night Shift was changed to the poster art in a tie-in.

The movie stars a pre-Terminator Linda Hamilton and a pre-Thritysomething Peter Horton as Vicky and Burt, a couple driving to Seattle by way of Nebraska.  Unlike their bickering counterparts of the short story, they're a cute couple- Vicki sings along with a "school's out" song to celebrate Burt's graduation from med school and his getting a position in Washington state.

Of course their journey is interrupted by them running over someone in the middle of the road, a child who was a good as dead, since he'd had his throat cut.

Since the movie starts with a flashback to the small town of Gatlin being taken over by it's children, the slaughter of diner patrons after church being effective since they really do look like small town churchgoers eating at a diner after the service, the boy's death wasn't as much as a surprise as it was in the short story.  In fact, the flashback is kind of a flaw for me- what I loved about the short story is the eerie discovery, the reader is along for the ride with Burt and Vicky as they discover this town, empty of adults, a sense of unease seeps from the pages.
The viewer knows what the couple are getting into even if the reader doesn't.

The monster at the center of all this is... something.  Wisely unseen, He Who Walks Behind the Rows, works through the children, appearing for the most part as a travelling disturbance of earth, rather like a large mole, but later re-animates the body of a follower and appears as a technicolor stormcloud.

Despite some of the special effects not aging gracefully (the technicolor stormcloud), Children of the Corn holds up pretty well, thanks to a foundation of a good Stephen King short story and two pretty above average -for an eighties horror film- leads.

Apparently, there are eight sequels.  I've seen the second movie in the series, IN A THEATER!, because a classmate and an acquaintance had roles.  I may re watch that, but from what I've  read about the others, I'll probably be avoiding them.

Ghostwatch

I still haven’t seen many of the found footage/mocumentary movies other than  The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, but I’ve almost actively avoided the Paranormal Activity series, for… who knows why. I think perhaps the hype scared me away.

(Scared me.  Heh.)

So I decided to go back to one of the best examples of the genre, Ghostwatch, from the BBC in 1992.

A single mother and her two daughters are being bothered by a ghost in their suburban London house.  A paranormal researcher has joined with the BBC, broadcasting from the studio while a team of reporters is on the scene on Halloween night.

It’s amazingly effective.  It’s slow and quiet, aside from the shreiking of two little girls, until the end as things accelerate til things go very, very wrong.

Apparently the effect Ghostwatch had on the viewers was quite unsettling, including, tragically, a suicide. It reminded me of 1983's Special Bulletin, about an atomic bomb threat in Charleston, and 1938's The War of the Worlds., except there are time gaps in those pieces while Ghostwatch takes place in real time.

I have to say it’s one of the creepiest pieces I’ve seen, at one in the morning, chilling, raising goosebumps.

Normally, I wouldn't link to youtube for something like this, but it's just too good not to share.

Terror in the Aisles

I couldn't decide what to watch tonight, so I compromised- I watched Terror in the Aisles, a 1984 compilation movie of  scenes from over seventy-five horror movies, linked by commentary from Donald Pleasence from Halloween and Nancy Allen from Dressed to Kill.

It's like That's Entertainment, but with a body count.

Most of the clips are from Universal Studios movies, with extra attention paid to Halloween, Psycho, and, for some unknowable reason, the thrillers Vice Squad and Sylvester Stallone's Nighthawks.

It's great background noise for a mindless evening, since it's a lot of screaming and running, with the occasional montage of doors slamming or killers stabbing.

There's lots of "thoughtful" commentary that just serves to set up a new sequence of clips, but Pleasence does ask a good question- why do people like horror films?- and offers the beginning of an answer: "Perhaps we create artificial horrors to help us to cope with the real ones."

Looking at the recent news and that sounds as good a theory as any.

The House on Sorority Row

Tonight’s movie is The House on Sorority Row.  I’ve been watching the tv show “Scream Queens” and it’s more than inspired by the 1983 movie.

So if I’m going to properly appreciate the derivative work, I should be familiar with the original.  

Just after graduation, a group of sorority girls kills their housemother in a prank gone wrong.  Because they’re horrible people, they’re throwing a graduation for themselves while her corpse sits weighted at the bottom of their dirty, algae filled swimming pool.  When they’re killed off, one by one, the killer using the woman’s spike tipped walking stick, it’s not really a surprise.

They do a pretty good job obscuring the killer, several kills from the killers point of view, almost giallo style, while some of the deaths take place with a cut-away, one of the earlier ones is even done in silhouette, but there’s no shortage of red paint.

Because I’m doing this usually around 2 am, I miss some ideas until late in the game- like how this movie was influenced by the original 1974 Black Christmas,  with the sorority house setting and the attic based killer.  Which would mean Black Christmas would be an influence on Scream Queens as well.

I’m going to give Scream Queens a couple of more episodes to convince me, but I think the Glee + Slasher film mashup isn’t really working.  In the concept of humorous slasher stories, the genre savvy cast of Scream- both cinematic and television- is a better mix versus Mean Girls with a bodycount. 

Of course, both Scream Queens and Scream (the Series) don’t quite measure up when compared to Harper’s Island, a much more effective presentation of the slasher genre on television.  While all three have the structure of ensemble cast and kill of the week, Harper’s Island ups the ante by containing the cast in a limited range, an island(!), while honestly, someone from the other shows always has the option to leave town (yes, I know that NEVER works out, but they’ve got the option, still).

I may give the remake a try, just to see how badly they butcher it- I looked on IMDB and didn’t recognize any of the cast.  On the other hand, I’m probably going to give the remake of Black Christmas a view on the strength of the cast, including Kristen Cloke, Michelle Trachtenberg, Andrea Martin, and Oliver Hudson (who has a role on Scream Queens, so that brings this full circle for me.  Time for bed.)

Satan's School for Girls

Earlier this year, I was doing reasearch for something I was writing and it involved watching lots and lots of seventies movies, theatrical and televised.  Somehow I missed Satan's School for Girls (1973).

I'd seen it... or at least thought I'd seen it years ago.  Honestly, even while watching it, I'm not sure.  I dimly recall watching something girls school and occulty on RealPlayer back in the nineties or so (I vaguely remember watching Suspiria, which kind of pairs nicely with this, as well as this).

Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) Sayer's sister kills herself and she goes to her sister's school to find out why.  Her classmates at the Salem Academy for Women are the future Charlie's Angels Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd.

Soon her classmates start dying, and she has her suspicions regarding the professor responsible.

This is a great example of the early seventies fascination with the occult, actually pre-The Exorcist talk of Satan- but that's the seventies for you, when even McMillan and Wife go up against a Satanic cult a month later on NBC.

The Church

The nice thing about Shudder, it's allowed me to rewatch films I haven't seen in a long time, like tonight's movie La Chiesa- The Church.

During the Middle Ages, the Teutonic Knights massacre a village of people accused of witchcraft, and after the slaughter, a cathedral is built on the site to contain the evil.  This lasts until the eighties when an art restorer and a archivist accidentally break the seal.  The chance of this was expected by the alchemist architect, who designed the building to lock down in case of Demons.  And as these movies go, there's a diverse group of people in the church when it closes up- a school group, models and photographers for a photo shoot, tourists and parishioners.

They will, of course, die horribly.

The Church is the un-numbered third movie in the series started by Lamberto Bava, this instalment directed by Michele Soavi, who also directed the slasher movie Stage Fright as well as the Rupert Everett zombie movie, Cemetery Man.

It's a stylishly shot movie that balances contemporary Euro-ness of the late eighties with the timeless gothic atmosphere of the old cathedral that's the setting for more than three-quarters of the movie.

I think, so far, finding The Church, has been the highlight of my Shudder experience.