100 Scariest Movie Moments: #99 Creepshow

There are certain ideas that seem to be recycled every so often, which everyone is expected to treat as if they're incredibly original. I don't simply mean “comic book movies.” I mean things as specific as “a tribute to EC Comics horror stories. Just to name the movies I know of that used this formula: Vault of Horror, Tales from the Crypt (3 or 4 films, depending on how you count them, and two TV shows), Creepshow (3 films, two with the original creators), Tales from the Dark Side: The Movie(the unofficial Creepshow 3), and Trick 'R Treat. Sadly, in my view, the best by far is Trick 'R Treat, which is also among the least known. But, I wanted to start this writing by highlighting the fact that the gimmick of Creepshow has been done many times. Even removing the films that came after Creepshow from the list, it was still the third. (The original Tales form the Crypt, and The Vault of Horror movies were made roughly a decade earlier). Creepshow, however takes the tribute more literally than most, showing actual panels and coloring backgrounds to display emotions at key moments.

Moving on from the issue of originality to the issue of quality, I have mixed feelings. The movie is set as a frame-story and I'm uncertain how much to discuss in terms of plot. A little boy (Joe King) gets his comic taken away by his abusive father (Tom Atkins), who throws it in the trash. At the end, the boy kills his father with a Voodoo Doll that he ordered from the comic. What happens in between is a bit unclear, but best as I can understand a witch is letting the little boy experience the stories directly, since he didn't get the read them. (Just go with it. If I try to explain what's happening then I'll never talk about anything else in this review).

As with the original comic series, the stories tend to act as cautionary tales about the evils of patricide, revenge, racism, and so forth. The tones of the stories also vary on the scale of comedy and horror, with Stephen King personally starring in the most comedic as a hillbilly turned into a plant by a meteor. However, pretty much all the stories have an element of camp to them.

This movie was placed on the list primarily because of one story, “They're Creeping Up On You,” which is the unquestionably the most serious in the film. The humor is derived solely from the eccentricities and prejudices of Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall); the racist, germophobic executive, and the main character of the story. This was selected as the “movie moment” to highlight for good reason. It's the only story that I regard as truly disturbing.

The story is a metaphor for the way Pratt sees other humans. He lives in a “bug-proof, germ-proof apartment,” struggling to protect himself from vermin, both of the two-legged and six-legged variety. He mocks a rival executive whose company he was taking over, and he openly insults the black maintenance worker who was sent to help him deal with his bug problem. All the while he goes around his apartment killing cockroaches that have somehow continued to get in. Naturally, the roaches become more and more numerous, until the entire apartment is eventually flooded, killing him.

This movie, for the most part, is just gory fun. Most of the segments are enjoyable if you don't take them too seriously. And yeah, if you're a horror fan, you should see it.

Wednesday Review: The Gallows

My first Wednesday, and my first Wednesday Review(wow, I'm creative with that title). Why Wednesday? Halfway between the other two reviews for the week, so why not? Since Wednesday Reviews will be films still in theaters I'll try to give less spoilers, and I won't break my neck trying to identify every actor. I've only seen these films once, and the wikipedia entries are likely incomplete, so I'd probably get some actors wrong otherwise..

I feel like the Found Footage genre is one of the most misused in cinema today. This is sad, because the style has so much potential. It's as if the filmmakers forget that we're supposed to be watching edited footage presented to us by someone interested in the events. This means anything boring or irrelevant should be edited out, and narration could be used to explain known events that weren't filmed and exposit the narrator's theories about unknown events. Anyone who's seen The Last Broadcast can tell you that making the editor a character works.

That said, however, The Gallows at least manages to deliver scares, and avoid the boredom of the Paranormal Activityseries. It's actually something of an oddball for Blumhouse, which seems to make horror films exclusively about horrible things happening to people who were already severely depressed. That kind of melancholy acting can work some of the time in horror, but it was really starting to get old. In this film, however, most of the characters are varying shades of unlikeable, but they at least seem to be relatively happy teenagers before the evil arrives.

The film does have two things really going for it: the atmosphere, and the use of Nothing is Scarier. The film is about a group of High School students who break into their school in the middle of the night to wreck the set for a school play. The jock drafted as the play's lead doesn't want to do it, and hopes to get the whole thing canceled. However, over twenty years earlier another boy was killed in an accident during the same play, and the teens find themselves locked in and under attack by the student's hangman-hooded ghost.

The environment of a school after hours is creepy. It's an environment we all relate to, and without students and lights it's just looks wrong. The sense of “they shouldn't be here” is drilling into our brains through the entire movie. At the same time, the ghost isn't seen until near the end, but his actions are. Noises echo through the school, and objects move inexplicably. This is build-up done right.

While the ghost is seen, he's saved mostly for the end. I think the end hurts the film, however, as he goes from unseen to overused in the final twenty minutes or so, and is seen far too clearly. He was far scarier when he was cloaked partially in shadows, or not seen at all.

The final twist of the movie worked for me. It was specific enough to give us a final shock, while vague enough to leave us asking questions. It didn't blow me away or anything, but it did leave me wanting another viewing of the film when it comes to Netflix.

2015 has been a good year for horror. This film is probably fairly low on the scale of 2015 horror movies, not holding a candle to It Follows, and arguably also worse than Insidious Chapter 3 and the Poltergeistremake. Had it been released in 2014, however, it probably would have been among the best of the year, blowing away Annabelleand Ouija. I'm not sure what's changed, but it's changed for the better very quickly.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #100 28 Days Later

The plot of 28 Days Later: A man named Jim, played by Cillian Murphy wakes up to find England has been overrun by zombies. These aren't the traditional zombies, though. They're infected with the so-called “Rage Virus,” which makes them easier to kill (they're alive, anything that will kill a human will kill them), but at the same time, allows them to be fast, strong, and highly aggressive

Re-watching this movie, I found it interesting that the scariest scene is one that was not even highlighted in the 100 Scariest Movie Moments special. It was the opening scene in which a group of animal rights activists attempted to free chimps from a medical research facility. And a single researcher attempted to stop them, knowing what they were about to unleash. I'm uncertain if a hypothetical person who didn't know what this movie was about would be as terrified. But understanding that those activists were bringing about the apocalypse certainly gave me chills as the researcher screamed for them to stop, and then attempted to bludgeon the first one of them to have been bitten to death, knowing there was no other way to stop the infection.

There are several alternate endings to this movie. But the one that was chosen was the most unambiguously uplifting, with all three of the main characters who made it to the halfway point of the film surviving (two previous main characters having been killed off after being well-developed), and the zombie plague eventually dying of starvation (It was established earlier in the movie that this would almost certainly happen).

I find it interesting that, for all the complaining I've heard of happy-endings being tacked-on to otherwise depressing movies, this one works. This is most likely because the director always intended a happy ending, and thus the movie builds well to this point. In the original ending our protagonist Jim (Cillian Murphy) died, and his two companions, Selena and Hannah (Naomie Harris and Megan Burns), walked away. Danny Boyle originally filmed this scene to be bitter-sweet, giving the audience an idea that they would carry on and survive. But, too many audiences felt that they were marching to their deaths, causing Boyle to reject this ending.

Indeed, this movie would be ironically empty with a downer ending. While the movie is both terrifying and depressing, the protagonists throughout the film find ways to be smart without abandoning their humanity as we see numerous scenes of them having fun, eating, and joking around to remind us that they have something to live for. When we finally encounter a crazy band of Survivalist soldiers, led by Christopher Eccleston, they're portrayed not as smart, but as being downright crazy. The protagonists will kill anyone who’s infected in a heartbeat, but the soldiers have somehow developed the idea that they need to start raping any females to repopulate the human race effective immediately. And at one point a soldier points out that there's no way the virus could have possibly exited the UK, so humanity as a species is in absolutely no danger. He is completely ignored.

The lighter, more optimistic side of the film does nothing to make it less terrifying, as people we like are infected twice, and we know they have to die immediately. The film is scarier because the stakes are higher, and you feel that what happens to the characters actually matters.

There is not a single frame of this movie that is not glorious in both its horror, and its beauty.

Hello, Blogger!

Ah, my introductory post. This is an awkward one. On the one hand, no one has had time to find me yet, and I have my doubts that if people ever do find me anyone will bother to look back and find this post. On the other hand, do I really want to just dive right in without explaining who I am?

I decided a while ago that, unless this blog takes off in a major way, I want to be anonymous. So, I'm just Serpenthrope. You can call me Mr. Thrope, if you so desire. Or Serpy. Or whatever shortening you find most appropriate.

I'd like to say that I was raised on horror films, but sadly I wasn't. Until late High School I was very sheltered, living in a conservative home in the rural South. Shortly before I graduated, however, I happened to catch a special on Bravo called The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. I think it was the first year it aired, although Bravo played it every year at Halloween for some time (they may still play it, I don't really do television anymore). Something about that special stuck with me over the years, and as I went through college I found myself watching, and eventually actively seeking out, films from that list.

A few years ago I made it my goal to see every film on that list, and I made on-again-off-again attempts to seek them out. Then, a bit over a year ago, having seen a bit over half of them, I decided to up the ante: rather than simply watching them all, I wanted to write reviews of each of them. Maybe it seems a bit silly, but the idea appealed to me.

So I spent over a year on that project. Seeking out every last one of them by any means necessary (Amazon, Netflix, youtube, borrowing old VHSes from friends).

Now, at long last, they're ready! And I can enter to blogger community with a gigantic buffer!

 

I should note that while the special focused on key “moments” in the films, I do not. I considered the list my jumping-on point for the horror community. What I find memorable about films may not be the same as what others do.

My original plan was to release three a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. However, I've changed my mind about this. Instead, I will do one Monday, one Friday, and keep Wednesdays in reserve if I want to review a more recent film, or discuss some other horror-related subject. That way all my material won't automaticaly be over a year old.

I should also let everyone know that my rule for my Monday and Friday reviews is that I must have seen the film twice. This does not apply to Wednesday reviews, since I'm not paying to see a film twice in the theatre to review it. So, I apologize for inevitable errors in my Wednesday reviews.

  

With that, I suppose I've summed myself up. Any questions? Ask away! First review on Monday.

Sleepless AKA Two Moons

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