Tag: Horror

No Escape Room A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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No Escape Room (2018) – A Movie A Day 2021 #56

No Escape Room poster

I had some extra time after watching the latest kung fu movie in my mini-marathon, so I turned on Netflix to see what was new. I don’t use Netflix as often as I probably should, so there were a lot of things added since the last time I browsed. I tend to spend way too long looking for something to watch when I begin browsing Netflix, so I decided to just take a look at the first thing that caught my eye. That movie ended up being No Escape Room, and I thought it was pretty good. 

No Escape Room is a supernatural horror movie about a father and daughter who get stranded in a small town and pass the time waiting for their car to be repaired by trying out a local escape room. If you’re unfamiliar with an escape room, it’s basically a game where people are locked in a room together and have to solve riddles and puzzles to unlock a door and escape. The father, Michael, and daughter, Karen, seem to have something of a strained relationship, and the weekend was supposed to be a bonding trip for the two of them. So, Michael tends to try too hard, and Karen tends to barely try at all when it comes to forming a good relationship. The activity of doing an escape room might be good for them though.

Michael and Karen are joined by three strangers, Andrew, Melanie, and Tyler, who are also there to participate in the escape room. Melanie is the escape room expert, her boyfriend Tyler doesn’t want to be there, and Andrew is something of a mystery. With all of the necessary character types included to help explain the game and create tension among themselves, the movie moves along well with only the necessary amount of exposition and explanation. Things seem off about the escape room right away though, and the escape room ends up being an escape house with some eerily realistic dangers lurking about. Mysteries are built and unraveled, people are separated, and scariness ensues. 

No Escape Room is a TV movie so there are clear spots where commercial breaks would be inserted, but if those weren’t there I wouldn’t have expected it to be made for TV. It’s kind of scary at times, there a bit of blood and violence, and overall I really enjoyed the mystery and the tone. As the movie goes on, the mystery of the house does feel like it begins to get a bit too convoluted to the point where it barely makes much sense anymore, but it was still fun enough to watch. By that point I was invested enough in Karen’s story that the parts of the movie that felt out of place didn’t bother me too much. The movie has a very campy ending, but again, I though it was fine. 

For me, the best bits were towards the middle of the movie where we were still learning things and the house still felt like a big puzzle. After a while it becomes more psychological and supernatural, and that wasn’t quite as fun for me. I still enjoyed it though. I’d recommend No Escape Room for a light horror movie with more mystery than scare, but don’t expect many satisfying conclusions for the characters. Some of them come to very abrupt ends once their usefulness to the plot has been exhausted. 

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Night Vision (1987) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Night Vision (1987) – A Movie A Day 2021 #54

Night Vision poster, in Spanish because, why not?

I thought I’d take a short break from my kung fu marathon to finish a movie I started watching the other night but fell asleep about halfway through. That’s not a good sign, is it? I did start the movie pretty late at night so falling asleep isn’t a great predictor about how I feel about the movie, but falling asleep during a movie I’ve never seen before isn’t a resounding endorsement either. The movie in question in Night Vision, a 1987 psychological thriller labelled as “horror” on Tubi and IMDB. I don not consider Night Vision a horror movie, and I don’t consider it a very good movie either. Even though the ideas are pretty good, the execution feels like it’s stretched out with not much happening for long periods of time.

Night Vision is about Andy, a naïve young man from Kansas who travels to the big city of Denver, Colorado to try to gain some life experience to help inspire his fledgling writing career. Andy meets a cast of colorful characters including a thief/street hustler named Vinnie and a video store clerk named Jill who is fed up with big city life. Vinnie and Andy become fast friends, and Vinnie gifts Andy a TV and VCR that he stole and is attracting unwanted attention from dangerous guys in black robes. There was a tape in the VCR that mostly shows static to begin with, but eventually begins to show Andy frightening images of violence and satanic rituals that may or may not be real. Meanwhile, Andy is forming a relationship with Jill, but Andy’s mental state is degenerating and causes problems between the two of them. Is the big city wearing Andy down like its worn down Jill, or is there something more sinister going on?

I enjoy the idea of a horror movie based on some sort of mystical/psychological influence of TV and videos, but it’s not like the idea was original even in 1987. The first movie that springs to mind like this is the great Videodrome from 1983, but as I’ve said before, I don’t mind a good rip-off. The issue I have with Night Vision is that it just drags too much for my taste.

There is a whole lot of character building in Night Vision which is fine, but at some point I’d like to have something happen to begin to ramp up the tension. Over an hour into the movie I still felt like the movie was just building Andy’s character, and the images on his TV barely seemed to play a part in the story. That changes in the final 40 minutes (the movie is 1 hour 40 minutes long), but nothing really happens until the final fifteen minutes or so. By that point I was kind of checked out, even watching it in two pieces since I fell asleep on the first try.

Maybe if I hadn’t expected a horror movie I would feel differently, but I couldn’t really get into Night Vision. If kind of just made me want to watch Videodrome.

I couldn’t find an official trailer, so here’s a poor copy of the full movie on YouTube.

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Psycho (1960) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Psycho (1960) – A Movie A Day 2021 #51

Psycho (1960) poster

I’m doing a little catch-up today after getting behind in posting (and watching) my movies of the day, so this entry might be shorter than most. But really, what is there to say about Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho that hasn’t already been said? Not much. Even so, I’ll take you through a little bit of my experience watching it again for the first time in quite a while.

If you’re unfamiliar, Psycho stars Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a woman who steals a great deal of money in a spur-of-the-moment decision. Marion drives out of town to surprise her lover with the money that could free them both from the debts keeping them apart, but a rain storm causes Marion to stop for the night at a secluded motel. Psycho also stars Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, the quiet and rather nervous young man who runs the motel. Norman seems nice, and he takes a liking to Marion, but when Marion overhears Norman’s elderly and overbearing mother yelling at Norman, it begins to become clear that there is something dark within the Bates family. If you’ve really never seen the movie and don’t know what happens after that, I certainly won’t spoil it here. Psycho is a must-watch for all people who love movies.

I’ve seen Psycho a fair number of times, and even though I hadn’t seen it in a while, many of the scenes came back to me right away. It had been long enough where I didn’t remember the specifics of the dialogue and performances though, and that’s what really struck me during this watch.

Anthony Perkins is amazing as Norman Bates. The complexity of emotions he displays in pretty much every scene is astounding. The character of Norman Bates would certainly typecast Perkins for much of his career, but what a role to be remembered for. Two scenes in particular stood out to me this time with regards to Perkins’ performance. The first is when he has a conversation with Marion in the lounge of the motel. Janet Leigh is fantastic as well, and both Marion and Norman leave the conversation as different people than we thought they were when they entered it. Then, later in the film, Norman has to speak to a private detective, and the mounting tension hidden just beneath Norman’s words and voice is incredible.

Norman has a way of unintentionally drawing people in with his quiet charm and slight naivete, and Perkins’ performance does the same to the audience. We start to feel for Norman, and that makes the twists and turns more effective when the darkness in the Bates family is revealed. Even if you know how the movie ends, and I’m sure you probably do, the characters are so well developed that the tension still works greatly.

I’ve never seen the sequels to Psycho, nor have I seen the 1998 remake. I kind of don’t want to watch any of them for different reasons, but with a movie a day to watch, I might try them out at some point.

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The Grudge 2 (2006) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Grudge 2 (2006) – A Movie A Day 2021 #50

The Grudge 2 poster

Today’s movie was an easy choice. As a follow-up to The Grudge (2004) yesterday, today’s movie of the day is The Grudge 2 (2006). Director Takashi Shimizu is back for the sequel to his American remake of his own movie, and even though The Grudge 2 isn’t as good as The Grudge (2004), it’s still quite effective in a lot of ways. Unlike The Grudge (2004) being a fairly close remake of Ju-On: The Grudge, The Grudge 2 is not a remake of Ju-On: The Grudge 2 despite bringing over some elements from previous Ju-On movies. Not being a remake helps The Grudge 2 feel a bit like a fresh start, and a bigger focus on Kayako’s curse venturing out of the house and over to America helps it feel different than a lot of what came before it.

Like The Grudge (2004) and other Ju-On movies, The Grudge 2 tells multiple stories that begin to converge as the movie goes on. One story follows Aubrey (Amber Tamblyn) as she travels to Japan to make an attempt to bring her sister Karen home. Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is still in the hospital after the events of the first movie, and Aubrey becomes overwhelmed with family baggage, her sister’s condition, and the mystery behind what happened to Karen and her boyfriend. Aubrey tries to find out what happened to Karen which leads her to the cursed Saeki house.

Another story follows three young women who attend an international school in Japan together. One of the girls, Allison, is tricked into entering the Saeki house by two bullies, Vanessa and Miyuki. The prank obviously goes bad, and the curse begins to follow them.

The third story takes place in Chicago, and it follows a young boy named Jake who is dealing with his father re-marrying after Jake’s mother passed away. As Jake is processing his feelings, something strange begins happening to the people around him, and the strangeness seems to be centered around a nearby apartment.

Each story is told linearly, and the intercutting between all three makes it feel like they’re all happening at the same time. If you’re paying attention to some early dialogue you can figure out when two of the stories are happening in relation to each other, but the third story’s time is left a mystery until the end. At first it’s not entirely clear how the stories are connected, but connections are made in a fun though not always unpredictable way. One of the reveals at the end is quite good, but another one isn’t so much of a reveal since it seemed pretty obvious what the connection was about halfway through the movie. It was still enjoyable watching the characters figure it out though. This movie feels a lot more linear than other Ju-On/Grudge movies I’ve seen, and despite the opening scene and a few overlaps, the three main stories never skip back and forth in time. That definitely makes the movie easier to follow than some of the Ju-On movies, though following the timeline was never a big deal in my opinion. As long as the narrative delivers tension ad scares, I’m fine with a bit of time and space ambiguity.

There are a good number of effective scares in The Grudge 2. One of my favorites is one that caught me a little off guard. I won’t spoil it, but it happens when Allison is talking to a counselor at her school. I thought the scare was going to be one thing, but then something else happened and it got me good. I also enjoyed some of the riffs Takashi Shimizu did on some familiar scares from the series. For example, there’s a shower scene, and one of the most iconic scares from the Ju-On/Grudge franchise involves a scare in the shower. Shimizu doesn’t do what you might expect though, and I enjoyed that very much. There’s also a reference to the scene he’d already done twice where a ghost creeps up on a person in their bedsheets, but again, Shimizu changes it up.

Watching some of the featurettes on the DVD helped give a little insight on Shimizu’s mindset and probably explains why he chose to change things up a bit with this movie. The Grudge 2 was Shimizu’s sixth feature length installment of the franchise in six years. Including the two short films that came before the features, Shimizu had been writing and directing the series for eight years. In come of Shimizu’s comments on the DVD, he talks about wanting to do something different if he was going to take the job to direct this second American installment. The Grudge 2 does feel different than what came before, but maybe not always for the best.

I enjoy The Grudge 2 quite a lot, but apparently it was quite a struggle to get the movie written. The Japanese writers (including Shimizu) and the American writers had very different ideas about what the movie should be and how they should approach it. Japanese and American storytelling can be quite different in a lot of ways, and Shimizu apparently had to make a lot of concessions with regards to how he wanted to tell the story. What I saw didn’t go into specifics about what Shimizu may have wanted versus what was actually shot and edited, but The Grudge 2 doesn’t feel quite as genuine as The Grudge (2004), if that makes any sense. The sequel feels a little too clean and easy to digest while there was some ambiguity to The Grudge (2004). The Grudge 2 dives into Kayako’s backstory a lot more, and the curse feels less mysterious because of it. The atmosphere is still often very good, but I suppose it felt like the movie was holding my hand a bit too much.

That said, I still think The Grudge 2 is a very good sequel. I like the story picks up pretty much where the first movie ended, and it continues to move Kayako’s curse forward. There are a bunch of creepy moments and nice scares, and that’s about as much as I can ask for from a sequel to a remake. Now I suppose I need to watch the third American Grudge, because I know I’ve never seen that one. Takashi Shimizu would not return to direct that, and in fact, The Grudge 2 was his last time directing any movie in the franchise. That’s a shame, but I can imagine wanting to move on to other things after spending so much time in the same mindset.

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The Grudge (2004) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Grudge (2004) – A Movie A Day 2021 #49

The Grudge (2004) poster

Cherry blossom season is coming up in about a month, and I’m making tentative plans to doing something during that time for my horror podcast The Last Theater. Thinking about what I want to do has made me want to watch certain Japanese horror movies, but I kind of want to wait until I figure out exactly what I’ll be doing before I dive into what will surely be a J-horror binge. So I did the next best thing to watching a Japanese horror movie and watched an American remake of a Japanese horror movie. Now, you might be thinking that watching an American remake of, well, anything is a bad idea, but there are good J-horror remakes out there. Today’s movie of the day is one of those good remakes, The Grudge (2004).

I did a podcast episode about my distaste for The Grudge (2020) about a year ago, but The Grudge from 2004 is a genuinely good movie, remake or not. First of all, Sarah Michelle Gellar is the star, and that already gives the film a bunch of points. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are among the producers of The Grudge (2004), and that adds a few more points. And the smartest thing the filmmakers did was to hire Takashi Shuimizu, the director of Ju-On: The Grudge which The Grudge (2004) is based on and the creator of the entire Ju-On franchise. Rather than hiring an American director to localize the movie for American audiences, Takashi Shimizu was basically allowed to recreate his original movie while trying to improve on things he thought could be better. The Grudge (2004) is basically a do-over for Shimizu. I don’t know if The Grudge (2004) is necessarily better that Ju-On: The Grudge, but it might be. I’ll need to watch the original again to really begin to make that assessment. What I do know is that The Grudge (2004) is a great horror movie that manages to deliver real Japanese horror from the perspective of a foreigner in Japan.

The Grudge (2004) stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as Karen, an American student living in Japan with her American boyfriend Doug. Karen volunteers as a care worker for school credit, and one day she is asked to go care for an elderly woman named Emma when the usual care worker doesn’t show up for work. Karen finds Emma incommunicative and living in filth, and after cleaning her up, Karen also discovers that there is something wrong with the house Emma lives in. Karen and Emma encounter a frightening presence, and from there the movie branches out to tell the stories of multiple people who have come into contact with the presence in the house.

Like most movies in The Grudge/Ju-On franchise, The Grudge (2004) is told in multiple vignettes that move forward and backward in time. Eventually the stories begin to come together and even overlap in a few ways. Karen seems to be the thread that connects everything, though a lot of that just has to do with the fact that Karen is the first character we really get to meet (after a brief, tone-setting intro sequence), and Karen is the last character we follow. Within the story, the connection for everyone is the house itself and its former residents. I know this is all kind of vague, but I don’t want to spoil anything if you’ve never seen any of these movies before. These early Grudge and Ju-On movies are quite good and well worth watching. I haven’t seen many of the later Japanese movies in the franchise, and I think there are two American releases I haven’t seen either, though I’ll be taking care of that very soon.

The Grudge (2004) is a very good and scary haunted house movie that emphasizes tone and tension over cheap scares or, really, even plot. Sometimes the weaving of the different times feels disconcerting, and some of the overlaps make you wonder what is actually happening, but it all comes together well to heighten the creepiness of the movie. There is some blood and gore in The Grudge (2004), but not nearly as much as in The Grudge (2020) which I complained about. The Grudge (2004) is rated PG-13, and it’s a great example of the fact that you don’t need a gory R rating to make a great haunted house movie.

One thing that really struck upon this latest viewing of The Grudge (2004) is the fear associated with being a foreigner in an unfamiliar country. Most of the people we follow in the movie are American, and they each have some degree of apprehension about living in a foreign country where communication can often be difficult. Maybe it’s because I haven’t watched The Grudge (2004) since before I lived in Japan for two years myself, but I totally understand the uneasiness a lot of the characters are feeling. It’s not that they dislike where they are, it’s just that it can be easy to feel isolated and alone even in everyday situations. These fears are made clear in the movie, and I feel like Takashi Shimizu was able to use those normal, understandable fears to heighten the supernatural fears that are a part of the American characters’ adopted country. I might not be explaining this very well because I haven’t taken the time to really iron out the ideas the movie presented to me this time, but I am impressed with how Shimizu was able to integrate those feelings of isolation into his movie. I think it’s something that he couldn’t have done in the same way with his original movie. It’s a great example of adding complexity in a remake rather than diluting it for a different audience.

I want to think more on that. But for now, I think I might move on to The Grudge 2 because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I’m also going to start planning out what I want to do for Sakura season, but that’s still a little ways away. Until then, I have a lot more movies to watch.

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Dead Space (2016) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Dead Space (2016) – A Movie A Day 2021 #48

Dead Space artwork

So, I was browsing through Tubi as I find myself doing quite often these days, and I came across a Chinese movie titled Dead Space with the following plot synopsis.

“One by one, a group of friends die in their nightmares. The last two decided to figure out why but they must not fall asleep until they do.”

Sounds familiar, right? Well, the movie art looked looked kind of neat, and I enjoy a good rip-off, so I decided to give Dead Space a watch. What I discovered was absolutely a rip-off. Specifically, it’s a remake of the 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street remake but with a much lower budget. A much, much lower budget. But is Dead Space any good? Well, if you’ve listened to the review my buddy Joey and I did for the Nightmare (2010) remake over at The Last Theater (here’s the episode!) then you know how I didn’t much care for that movie. Now, imagine taking the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), running it through Google Translate to convert it to Chinese, and making a movie off that Chinese script for about $150. Do you think the result will be better? No, probably not. But as a curiosity, I enjoyed the movie fine.

I won’t bother explaining the plot here, because it’s almost exactly the same as A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) down to the way people die and some of the aggravating plot twists. The problem is, something seems to be lost in translation. Dead Space is about twenty minutes shorter than Nightmare (2010), and even though I couldn’t tell you exactly what was left out since it’s been a while since I watched Nightmare (2010), Dead Space definitely felt like it was lacking a lot of connective tissue that was holding the just-okay scenes of Nightmare (2010) together. Dead Space feels like it just meanders from scene to scene in order to get to the next image it wants to try to recreate.

I mean, I guess I can commend the filmmakers on making a movie, but it feels more like a project put together by a fan who wants to learn how to make movies, not something to be taken seriously. I suppose it might have been localized for a certain market, but just like any movie, why not just watch a subtitled version of the original (or the original remake in this case)? I’m only speculating about the reasons for how and why Dead Space got made though, because I can’t find any information about its background. All that said, I guess the movie did what it was a supposed to. It got published online and nerds like me have seen it, so good job filmmakers!

There’s not really much else to talk about with Dead Space without just nitpicking the choices made by the filmmakers. I’m sure a lot of the differences between this and Nightmare (2010) were just due to budget constraints. The acting, directing, editing, and everything else are fine in a b-movie way, but none of its bad enough to be super cheesy and fun. It’s just alright. Oh, and why the title Dead Space? I know I complained about the title to another movie called Dead Space recently, but it makes even less sense here. Yes, there are dead people, but what space are they referring to? Maybe the title is another unfortunate causality of Google Translate. 

I do need to mention one more thing before I go. The killer. The characters in the movie talk about the killer’s burned face, but what the filmmakers decided to go with instead of burn makeup is a knockoff version of Heath Ledger’s Joker makeup. It’s a bizarre choice that makes absolutely no sense. I’m sure the real reason was, again, the budget, but there’s not even a line in the movie that gives a reason for his white face, wide red smile, and black eyes. It’s so strange. At least his Freddy glove looked good.

So would I recommend Dead Space to anyone? No, I wouldn’t. I thought it was interesting just as a curiosity, watching to see how close they would follow the Nightmare (2010) script and how they would handle some of the scenes I knew would be difficult to pull off. I can’t see myself ever watching it again though.

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Frozen Scream A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Frozen Scream (1975) – A Movie A Day 2021 #46

Frozen Scream poster

Today I was trapped inside by an unprecedented winter storm with some of the lowest sustained temperatures in decades for where I live, so my daily movie search ended on a movie titled Frozen Scream. It’s not a good movie, and the Tubi plot summary was entirely misleading, so I didn’t have a very good time with it. Tubi (and the IMDB plot summary) promised me frozen zombies killing people, but that’s not at all what I watched. Allow me to explain.

Frozen Scream is about two scientists who hope to unlock the key to immortality. Their experiments have led them to injecting people with some sot of serum that heals them while reducing their body temperatures to slow the aging process. The procedure increases hostility in some subjects, and those people are the “frozen zombies” described in the various synopses I read. There are a few murders in Frozen Scream, but it isn’t anything like the zombie violence I was hoping for. It was really just guys in black robes swinging something, then a cut to a shot of some blood on the victim. The production values are almost non-existent, and that makes the little action there is completely baffling. It’s really hard to tell what’s going on a lot of the time until the action is already done with.

The story focuses on a detective, Kevin McGuire, as he investigates the disappearance of a few medical students. His ex-girlfriend, Ann, is a medical student who is unknowingly mixed up in the scientists’ zombie plot, and the action focuses on Kevin and Ann as they try to solve the mystery before becoming frozen zombies themselves. It’s a fine premise, but the presentation makes the movie rather difficult to watch.

As I stated above, any action in the movie is edited in a way that is more confusing than exciting. There is also narration by Kevin throughout the movie, but it seems like this was added in later because not enough footage was shot for the movie to make sense. Kevin explains exactly what he’s thinking and what is happening, and his narration often covers dialogue spoken by the characters in the scene. It’s really odd to watch. I enjoy poorly made b-movies, but Frozen Scream felt like it tried its best to keep the audience at a distance from what was happening. There were some neat ideas and likeable images, but overall it was a tough watch.

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Back Sunday (1960) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Black Sunday (1960) – A Movie A Day 2021 #44

Italian poster for Black Sunday (aka The Mask of The Demon/Satan)

Around this time last year I started reading and collecting The Dark Side magazine, a publication from the United Kingdom that seems to focus largely on older horror movies, though it does do reviews on more modern films as well. In the latest issue I purchased, there is an advertisement for a book published by The Dark Side that chronicles Italian horror cinema. As a huge fan of Italian horror and exploitation movies in general, it was a quick and easy purchase to make. Some of my favorite horror movies are from Italy, and I’m always eager to learn more about what I have and haven’t seen yet. The book, titled Italian Horrors: Cannibals, Zombies, Strange Vices and Guilty Pleasures, arrived just the other day, and it’s already inspired me to dive head-first into a bunch of Italian horror movies. So for today’s movie, I picked an Italian classic that I’m almost embarrassed to say I hadn’t seen before. Today I watched Mario Bava’s Black Sunday.

I’ve seen a handful of Bava’s later horror movies, but Black Sunday is the earliest of his films I’ve watched so far. According to IMDB it’s also the first non-documentary movie where he was actually given a directing credit, although Italian Horrors mentions that he helped finish other directors’ work prior to Black Sunday. Bava’s direction is confident and evocative. Bava gives Black Sunday a classically gothic feel while incorporating many beautifully gruesome images that would tend to become associated with Italian horror in the following decades. 

Black Sunday stars Barbara Steele in a dual role as an evil witch, Asa, and the witch’s beautiful descendant, Katia. Two centuries ago, Asa was captured by villagers and sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft. The first step in the witch-killing process is to hammer a mask of Satan (a bronze mask filled with spikes) onto her face, but before that happens, Asa curses the man in charge of her demise. That man is Asa’s own brother, and the curse she places on him will be passed along to his descendants. The mask is then applied with a gush of blood. An attempt to burn Asa at the stake is then made, but it is thwarted by a sudden downpour. Regardless, Asa’s body is placed in a tomb with the mask of Satan to keep her powers in check and a cross placed on her stone coffin as added insurance.

Two hundred years later, a professor, Dr. Kruvajan, and his assistant, Dr. Gorobec, stumble upon Asa’s tomb. Their curiosity gets the better of them, and, one giant bat attack later, Asa’s stone coffin is busted and all of the safeguards keeping her dead are removed. A few drops of the professor’s blood after the bat attack begins the process of revival for Asa, and the bulk of the movie follows Asa’s attempts at regaining her full strength with the help of her undead lover Javutich. Asa feels a connection to Katia, and her ultimate goal is to drain Katia of her life force. What ensues is gothic horror complete with a creepy castle, mysterious deaths, and torch-bearing villagers. 

I’m glad I finally watched Black Sunday, because it’s great. I love the mood, and Barbara Steele is magnetic in both of her roles. The story itself is good but maybe not too far away from a lot of other gothic horror movies, but the way its presented makes it memorable. There are many images that are now going to be vivid parts of my memory. One of the more iconic images is Asa’s hole-covered face after the mask of spikes is removed, but there are a good amount of creepy moments just as memorable. From Asa’s desiccated head with bugs crawling out of her eye sockets, to the spurt of blood when a not-so-dead dead guy is stabbed in the eye, to the flame-licked face of Asa as she stares through the fire meant to kill her, Black Sunday is a beautiful movie. 

Italian Horrors (the book I keep referencing)

If you’re a fan of gothic horror, Black Sunday is a must-watch. I should have seen it years ago, but hey, at least I’ve seen it now. If nothing else, for historic purposes Black Sunday should be seen by pretty much any fan of horror. For one thing, Mario Bava had a tremendous influence not just on Italian horror, but on horror movies around the world. Also, in reading Italian Horror, Black Sunday was one of the early horror movies in Italy after the genre had been forbidden when Mussolini took power in the 1920s. There were horror movies in the very early 1920s, but it took until 1956’s I Vampiri for the genre to start its comeback in Italy. The Italians certainly made up for lost time by producing some of the most gruesome and transgressive horror films ever made, but even if you’re not into that, Black Sunday feels like it made up for lost time in a different way. It feels more akin to one of the Universal monster movies from the ’30s and ’40s, which, by the way, were regaining attention thanks to the Hammer horror movies being produced in Great Britain beginning in the mid-1950s. It was such an interesting time period for European horror. 

As I sit here writing this, I want to dig back into Italian Horrors. The first main chapter covers some of the writers of the yellow-covered crime paperback books that inspired one of my favorite sub-genres, the giallo. So don’t be surprised if you see a deluge of black-gloved killers in some of my upcoming movies of the day. Oh yeah, and if you want to check out the book I’ve been referencing this whole time, you can order it here: https://thedarksidemagazine.com/product/italian-horrors-cannibals-zombies-strange-vices-and-guilty-pleasures/

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Centipede Horror A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Centipede Horror (1982) – A Movie A Day 2021 #42

Centipede Horror DVD

Today’s movie is one I discovered a while back while part of a movie group on Facebook based on a shared love of gross and trashy movies. One day someone posted an image of a DVD cover for a movie titled Centipede Horror, and the name combined with a crude drawing of centipedes crawling out of someone’s mouth and all over their face had me doing some Google and eBay searches until I found it. It was easy to track down, and since I bought it I’ve watched it a few times. Why? Because I enjoy gross and trashy movies. 

Centipede Horror is a Hong Kong horror movie from 1982 featuring lots and lots of centipedes. The movie starts with close-ups of centipedes skittering around while a voice-over tells us how gross and dangerous they are. The danger is, of course, overblown, but it’s a good and creepy way to start the film. The story follows a man named Kai-Lum Pak as he tries to track down the cause and reasons behind his sister’s death. His sister died after coming down with a mysterious illness after a trip to the ambiguously referred-to location of “Southeast Asia,” and after she died centipedes started crawling out of her body. The focus of the movie is on the mystery behind her death, so I won’t spoil the story any more than that if you by some chance want to watch Centipede Horror, but I will say magic is involved. Lots of great and gross magic. 

Centipede Horror uses loads of live centipedes in a few particularly skin-crawling scenes, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you’ll maybe want to skip this movie. I have to commend the actors for their dedication. They allow themselves to be covered with live centipedes, and at least one actor has to put some in her mouth (which is the scene the crude DVD cover drawing is based on). There’s also a scene where a shaman performs a kind of exorcism on a young woman which forces her to vomit up blood and live scorpions. The scorpions are revealed in a cutaway, so they weren’t actually in her mouth thankfully. But yeah, I’m sure by now you’re getting the idea about what the main draw of the movie is. Bug stuff. Or, I guess, arthropod stuff, but that doesn’t sound as fun. 

Beyond the bugs, another big draw is the magic. Kai’s investigation meanders a bit, but many different magical guys get involved to try to harm or protect Kai and those around him. At certain points this leads to dueling shamans who are trying to out-magic each other from afar. It’s kind of silly, and it’s great. 

There is a lot of downtime while we’re following Kai, so the movie does drag in places. The backstory is interesting enough and involves a grudge that goes back generations, but when there aren’t any bugs or magic on the screen, I just kind of want to get to the next scene. The final third of the movie is paced well though, so overall it’s well put-together.

I think I’ll skip the recommendations on this one, because if you’ve read this far then you already know if you’re ever going to watch it or not (and fair warning, the trailer below shows a bunch of what I talked about above). Me? I’m sure I’ll watch it again at some point. 

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Haunted Office A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Haunted Office (2002) – A Movie A Day 2021 #41

Haunted Office DVD cover

For today’s movie, I wanted to pick something with one of my favorite actors of all time, Shu Qi. I became a huge fan of Shu Qi’s back around the year 2000 when I saw her in the movie Gorgeous. After watching her steal scenes from one of my favorites of all time, Jackie Chan, I had to see more. So, I imported and watched a bunch of her movies on DVD, and I’ve been a superfan ever since. There are still lots of her movies I haven’t seen yet though. She’s been in tons of stuff, and finding her movies in the United States can be difficult and pricey in a lot of situations, but I’ve been trying to slowly see everything Shu Qi has done. Some of her movies are easier to track down than others, and today’s movie of the day is one that wasn’t too difficult to find. Plus, it gets bonus points for co-starring Karen Mok, another great actor I discovered while I was collecting a bunch of Hong Kong DVDs nearly two decades ago. Today’s movie is Haunted Office, a Hong King supernatural horror movie that is fairly light on scares but has a nice twist at the end.

Haunted Office feels like an anthology movie even though the stories do sort of overlap in places. Effectively though, the movie is made up of three separate short stories that all happen to take place in the same office building. The first story stars Karen Mok as Pat, an office worker who encounters some ghostly happenings centered around the bathroom on the floor her office is on. The second story stars Jordan Chan as Richard, a young and spoiled head of a small business who connives to get a nice old lady to quit so he doesn’t have to pay her pension. And the third story features Shu Qi as Shan, an office worker haunted by a female ghost, and Stephen Fung as Ken, Shan’s new fellow employee who tries to help her out. All three stories are simple and fun ghost stories with little twists at the end. Then at the very end of the movie, all three stories are brought together for one big final twist. They’re all enjoyable, but I don’t want to say any more than that about the plots for fear of ruining any surprises if you happen to watch the movie.

Shu Qi’s story was my favorite, then Karen Mok’s, then Jordan Chan’s. Jordan’s Chan’s story was basically a comedy while the other two were more serious, so there’s good variety in the film. I didn’t realize Haunted Office is basically an anthology movie until I got well into it, so the pacing seemed really odd at first. We see Shu Qi and Stephen Fung in one of the first scenes with Karen Mok, but then we follow Karen Mok and don’t see the other two until over halfway through the movie. Jordan Chan’s story acts as kind of a bridge in the middle, but really, there’s no meaningful crossover until the final couple of minutes of the movie. It works fine, I just wasn’t expecting it at first.

That’s really all I have to say about Haunted Office right now. It’s light and fun, and there’s just enough going on in the background that you can probably start piecing together some of the mystery that is revealed later on in the movie. I give it a recommendation for fans of Hong Kong horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

 

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