Halloween 2026: September 2nd

 

The Wailing (2016)
Gokseong

Religion is kind of a worldwide phenomena, ya know? I think it's human nature to assign events to the actions of a higher power or otherworldly forces. We also tend to think of faith as following international borders. Those who write history have worked very hard to paint the Americas and the Anglo corners of the world as the Christian nations, middle Asian countries as Islamic, India as Hindu, and so forth. The East Asian parts of the world, from an ignorant American perspective, seem mostly characterized as a mix of Buddhist, Shinto, and ill-defined local mysticism. This is not accurate, of course. In South Korea, for example, 20% of the population identify as Protestant and 11% as Catholic. While Christianity has a decent sized congregation in the country, local shamanic beliefs are also commonly practiced, sometimes hand-in-hand. This interesting spiritual breakdown is reflected in Na Hong-jin's 2016 film, "The Wailing." Critically acclaimed, the film is what largely brought Na's name to Western fans' attention.

Jong-goo is a policeman in the South Korean village of Gokseong, a small community surrounded by mountains and forest. He is sent to investigate an unusually grisly murder, a man covered in strange boils and scars having brutally dismembered his wife. This is the first of a number of reported violent crimes in the area, often of someone murdering the other members of their family. Many of these incidents seem to link back to the appearance of a Japanese stranger in the village. Jong-goo begins to have nightmares about this unusual man. Shortly afterwards, his daughter Hyo-jin begins to exhibit increasingly strange, violent, and vulgar behavior. Jong-goo is convinced the stranger has possessed his daughter and is prompted to seek out a traditional shaman to exorcise the spirit. While this has some effect at first, the curse falling over Jong-goo and his family can not be so easily defeated. 

I'm pulling from a comparatively small sample size here and also making the same mistake I chastise others for in my opening paragraph, of grouping all Asian cultures together mindlessly. Having said that: A curse that easily passes from person to person seems to crop up in horror movies from that corner of the world sometimes. That's kind of how the mechanics of the haunting in “Ringu” operate. A more recent example would be “The Sadness” from Taiwan, where a literal virus prompts people to indulge their most depraved, violent impulses. In “The Wailing,” evil is similarly a communicable virus. It seemingly begins with the Japanese man coming into the village. He is said to commit sexual assaults, crawl around the forest in his underwear, or eat rotten meat. If this is patient zero for a corrupting otherworldly force is hard to say but, either way, it's spreading through this village. We see individuals in a zombie-like trance, rotting and covered in sores. Meanwhile, in the case of Jong-goo's daughter, the curse acts more like a traditional possession. Whatever the symptoms, this is a demonic outbreak that works very much like a pandemic. If one person in town has caught it, odds are good someone else has it too. 

This is a cool set-up for a fright film, seemingly mixing the familiar tropes of the zombie movie with a degree of demonic horror. However, it's only the jumping-off point for the themes “The Wailing” explores over its two and a half hour runtime. The film operates a lot like a detective mystery, with Jong-hoo attempting to track down the person responsible for these events. It's clear that he is caught in a chain reaction whose trigger event happened some time ago. This is evident in a well done sequence where the shaman performs an elaborate ritual, with a lot of dancing and physical movement, to cast the spirit out. This mostly results in Hyo-jin screaming in pain as her body contorts. As the story progresses, characters learn conflicting information about who is the source of these events and what to do about them. A Catholic priest concludes that the Japanese stranger – a cultural outsider who may be a mere scapegoat? - is a demon. The shaman believes a ghost is responsible. The media blames the consumption of psychedelic mushroom. Ultimately, it doesn't matter to Jong-goo because his daughter is still sick, isn't getting any better, and his home seems careening towards disaster. If all religion is merely an attempt to put a system of cause-and-effect on a universe that is merely random chaos, “The Wailing” is a good depiction of that. Its protagonist is the middle of the falling dominoes, with no chance of stopping the collapse even if he can trace things back to a source. 

A key moment occurs when Jong-hoo and his partner are investigating the home of the supposed demonic individual. Someone points out that a key object was casually picked up, contaminating the forensics and ruining any chance of it becoming evidence in the court of law. When compared to an earlier scene of Jong-hoo cowering from a ghostly image in the police station, the conclusion is difficult to avoid: This guy isn't a very good cop. As he grows more desperate, he uses violence and intimidating frequently to get what he wants. When combined with the dysfunction in his home life, another theme seems to emerge. The family calls on the shaman, under the belief that he knows what to do. He is revealed to be as clueless as anyone else. Doctors can't stop the spread. The Catholic priest is confused too. There is a systematic failure of authority in “The Wailing,” men who are stupid or irresponsible or corrupt or selfish being assigned power they cannot be trusted to wield. This outbreak of demonic influence is their fault and trusting them to stop it seems like a doomed effort. It feels a lot like, oh, every government in the world ever. How can we expect a system that caused these problems to then resolve them? 

Tying these ideas together is Na Hong-Jin's mastery of ambiance and ability to deliver a good shock. The scenic locations, beautifully captured by Hong Kyung-pyo's cinematography, only make the cast seem more isolated and alone as things get worst. Several sequences in “The Wailing” begin with seemingly normal circumstances being disrupted by unusual events that grow more disturbing. A lightning crash and black-out precedes the appearance of a shadowy spectre. A visit to the woods is disrupted by the strange man appearing, who crawls closer and closer. A nose bleed escalates to a torrent of vomit. A frantic drive down a freeway is disturbed by a swarm of bugs pelting the windshield. The movie does a fantastic job of staring at events as they grow more ominous, looking evil right in the face as it plays out in front of us. The result is the viewer feels as trapped with these unsettling revelations as the characters do. These aren't mere jump scares, that jolt the audience and then fade as the adrenaline dies down. These are sturdier chills, nightmare imagery that sticks in the mind and becomes harder to forget.

 

Good shit, in other words. Na Hong-Jing doesn't seem to have attracted the reputation as a lot of other South Korean horror filmmakers. His previous films, “The Chaser” and “The Yellow Sea,” got strong reviews. His follow-up to this one, “Hope,” got scooped up by Netflix and dropped on their streaming service with little promotion, as Netflix is prone to do. I'm definitely going to have to go back and check those out though. (Na also penned a film for Thai filmmaker Banjong Pisanthanakun that started life as a sequel to this one before turning into a stand-alone project. I'm considering making that my stop in Thailand on this year's world tour.)“The Wailing” is a potent dose of dread, featuring strong performances and heady ideas in service of fantastically directed scenes of horror. [8/10]

 

House of the Black Death (1965)
 

In the various circles of schlock movie perdition, Jerry Warren surely resides somewhere on the lower tiers. Ed Wood's surreal dialogue and irrepressible fetishes made his films cult classics. Andy Milligan's deeply felt misanthropy transformed Z-movies into windows to his personal hell. Coleman Francis created stifling works of highly quotable anti-art. I've never seen a single person who express anything but ironic enjoyment of Jerry Warren's work. His films, usually composed of thoughtlessly cut apart and reassembled international movies with utterly lifeless new footage providing the thinnest of connective tissue, have little camp factor and few merits of their own. So how bad does a movie have to be when Jerry Warren is called in to save it? Lora Crozetti, an early female writer in the world of sci-fi fandom, wrote a book called “The Widderburn Horror.” In 1965, director Harold Daniels attempted to adapt it into a movie. Reginald LeBorg apparently also shot some footage of people wandering around the woods. The producers deemed the project incomplete and brought in Warren to shoot additional material and cut it together into something releasable. Whether he succeeded is debatable. However, the film, now entitled “Blood of the Man Devil” and eventually re-titled again to “House of the Black Death,” did play in theaters before paying audiences. Which is something, I guess. 

The Desard family's legacy is one of witchcraft, devil worship, black magic, and arcane curses. At the family's foggy estate resides the bed-bound Andre, the eldest member who is deeply protective of the Desard's dark secrets. His brother, Belial, works with a coven of loyal followers to undermine Andre and claim the family's powers for his own. Andre's children, Paul and Valerie, arrive at the home to discuss these terms. Belial's followers kill their dog and go about attempting to activate a much discussed curse, that will turn Paul into a werewolf. Paul, his sister, a skeptical doctor, and dear old dad talk about ancient spells and tomes. Meanwhile, the literally horny Belial has his followers perform striptease outside the house as part of dark rituals, I guess.

“House of the Black Death” qualifies as a motion picture only on a technicality. It begins with a montage of the main players, their names and roles in the story being introduced by an off-screen Satanic voice. If that seems didactic, it's practically dynamic compared to how the rest of the movie plays out. Most of the film's thankfully short 74 minute runtime is devoted to people standing around within the undistinguished rooms of the family home. They ramble on about the family's demonic heritage and history of lycanthropy, often repeating the same points again and again. The visibly bored actors are usually in the center of the frame, footage cutting back and forth with the subtly of a power saw, as they talk about this incomprehensible bullshit. The word “coven” is repeatedly pronounced in such a manner as not to rhyme with oven, man. It is lifeless, feeling like stilted amateur theater unwisely committed to celluloid for all time. 

Considering his pedigree, I would expect these endless scenes of inane dialogue to be Mr. Warren's work. The exact breakdown of who shot what seems lost to the ages. We do know that Warren brought in his regular Katherine Victor, who appears in scenes of the cult bickering among itself. Otherwise, we can only speculate. The multiple scenes of female Satanists gyrating around in their lingerie before a demonic alter represents exploitation film making at its most desperate, throwing half-naked bodies on-screen in hopes of diverting audience attention for a second longer. Sure, the girls are attractive. Among them is legendarily proportioned British pin-up girl Sabrina, in her final film credit. Their dance routines are recorded without a sense of eroticism or basic energy. It's like “Orgy of the Dead” with all the fun parts cut out. Much like that particular piece of cheese, “House of the Black Death” links its tedious conversations and titillation-free lap dances with hokey horror movie atmosphere. There's a stone altar shaped like a saddle, the topic of several conversations. A rusty gate, a cardboard tombstone, a blanket of fog over the floor. Even someone with as much affection for elementary school Halloween party set-dressing as myself can only find so much here to be charmed by. The scene where someone finally turns into a werewolf – a split-second shot of foam gurgling through a gorilla mask – and Lon Chaney transforming into a paper skull instantly made me chuckle a little. But that's it.

I watched “House of the Black Death” because of its over-the-hill stars. As always, John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr. are professionals. Carradine never blinks or stutters when reading reams of droll exposition. He is one of the few actors in the film that actually do anything meaningful, called upon to perform a mostly off-screen fiery incantation at the end. It's impossible to care about any of it and I doubt Carradine did either. However, he does his best. Chaney was well into the drinking-himself-to-death portion of his career. He hams gratuitously for the camera, smiling wickedly and staring with evil lust at the various girls on display. The little horns on his head are kind of cute. These are, to say the least, the most modest of pleasures. The two horror legends never directly interact. You'll have to watch “The Black Sleep” for that, a movie that's also quite lame but is still considerably better than this one. 

I genuinely do try and find the best in every movie I watch. I've sat through some dire stuff simply because an old monster movie guy was propped up through a scene or two. I've seen films that tested my patience more than “House of the Black Death,” I suppose. However, it is an hour and change stunningly devoid of value. Many pieces of interesting cinema have been dismissed because “nothing happens” within them. This is a genuine description of “House of the Black Death.” It “moves,” and therefore is a movie, only because live humans were recorded for it. If you swapped them out, even the esteemed Mr. Carradine and Chaney, with motionless cut-outs, the film would be fundamentally unchanged. I feel no hatred towards it, only indifference, perhaps the most damnable sin of all. [2/10]

 

Wednesday: Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

The idea of Tim Burton being involved with some new version of “The Addams Family” is, to generalize, hack shit. To quote a sort of wise man, it's too obvious, a hat on a hat. This is so true that Burton had already been attached to a reboot of the property years before. However, the most obvious programming possible is what Netflix specializes in. This is presumably why the new series would revolve around Wednesday Addams. The upbeat, cheery little girl of the sixties sitcom has now been utterly eclipsed in pop culture by Christina Ricci's interpretation of her as an extremely sardonic, glaring, sadistic goth girl. Wednesday now exists more as a Halloween costume, the phenotype upon which a hundred OnlyFans providers have built their brand on, than as a character. Again, this made a show about her having adventures the most obvious choice. Nevertheless, none of this prevented Netflix's “Wednesday” from becoming a pop culture phenomena back in 2022, turning Jenna Ortega into a cult icon overnight. After watching the original “Addams Family” series over the last two years, I've decided to give this iteration a shot. 

And so I must grapple with the most ChatGPT-coded angle on “The Addams Family” you could imagine. In “Wednesday,” Gomez and Morticia's daughter has psychic powers. She has grim premonitions of the past and future upon touching someone, like she's in “The Dead Zone” or some shit. After filling her high school's swimming pool with piranhas to avenge Pugsley getting bullied, Wednesday is shifted off to Nevermore Academy. This is a private boarding school for monsters and freaks, which is where Gomez and Morticia met each other as teens. Meaning this premise is also “Harry Potter,” right down to the student body being sorted into four different groups. Wednesday's class mates include werewolves, sirens, gorgons, a telekinetic descendant of a witch hunter, and actual actual actual vampires. Having the Addamses exist along side literal monsters kind of defeats the purpose of them being the kookiest, spookiest family in town, does it not? Dropping Wednesday into Monster High is the definition of redundant. 

Again, the writers and producers of “Wednesday” were not inclined to resist the most obvious choices. This means that Wednesday's room mate is a perky and upbeat modern teenager, addicted to social media and prone to brightly colored accessories. This at least leads to the first episode's funniest moment, when Wednesday literally divides their room up. Another obvious writing choice here is to have Wednesday come into conflict with the local normies, which include the suspicious town sheriff. I was fine with this idea in the abstract until she started kung-fu fightin' some bullies. One of two way over-choreographed fight scenes here. I am less okay with the other choices here. The entire point of the Addams family is that they love and adore each other despite their outwardly morbid appearance. Here, Wednesday has teenage angst with her parents. She believes Gomez and Morticia are trying to turn her into a perfect copy of them and resents them for it. How trite. (Wednesday is also woke now, something I don't object on its face so much as it's difficult for me to imagine the Addams having an opinion on any modern political divides.)

I am trying my best to give this show a fair shot but, unfortunately, I can already see all the tendencies of streaming television that I despise at work. A dozen potential subplots, that can bounce back and forth over the next seven hours, are set up here. Despite her repeated insistence that she is not interested in such things, the first episode laboriously sets up multiple love interests for Wednesday. There's the straight-laced guy who works at the coffee shop, the handsome classmate with some connection to her, the skinny dweeb in the fencing class. Several rivals to lovers paths. There's implications about a dark family secret, connected to her parents' school days. Clearly, Wednesday's principal and court-mandated therapist are Up to Something. At least two potential villains with a grudge appear. There's a mystery to resolve too, a brutish beast with bulging Burton eyes introduced shortly before the credits roll. Such standard serialized drama elements is a rough fit for the farcical style of the Addams Family. How are characters such as these meant to function in a world where things like murder have actual legal consequences? 

The worst part of it all is the cast seems well chosen. At first, Jenna Ortega is doing a fairly straight impression of Ricci's work in the Sonnenfeld's films. However, as the hour goes on, she proves adapt with the kind of corny, morbid one-liners that made the original sitcom so much fun. Ricci herself is here, as is Riki Lindholm, and both seem like they fit in. While the verdict is still out on whether I agree with their characterization, I also like Luis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Gomez and Morticia. At least their devotion to each other and their family is intact. Shifting the focus from the familial unit to one member being in a strange location changes the key interaction, in such a way that I find rather boring. In general, I found “Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe” quite boring. I'm going to try and stick it out for at least the first season but if the rest of the show is this bland, I'm going to skip season two. [4/10]

 

NBC Matinee Theater: The Fall of the House of Usher

I don't pay for regular television anymore and I know I'm not alone in that regard. From what I've gathered from sitting in waiting rooms, daytime television is now dominated mostly by chat programs, game shows, and endless reruns. Things have changed a lot since the mid-fifties, when NBC deemed daytime audiences so valuable a demographic that they invested in a pricey, daily anthology series, filmed in color and broadcast live. That would be “NBC Matinee Theater,” which run for 650 episodes over the course of three years, a number that seems improbable today.  The series has faded utterly into obscurity in the years since but a handful of notable episodes still float around online. Like a lot of early anthology programs, “Matinee Theater” often drew from classy literary sources for material. This usually precluded anything spooky or macabre but the series delved into the accepted canon of respectable horror stories from time to time. One example is a version of “The Fall of the House of Usher” that aired in August of 1956. 

Adapter Robert Esson and director Boris Sagel maintain the broad strokes of Poe's story. The protagonist, named David here, arrives at the crumbling family estate of his old school mate, Roderick Usher. Roderick is gripped by a powerful melancholy and a malady that makes him sensitive to all sights and sounds. He attributes this to a family curse that has driven every Usher before him mad. His sister, Madeline, is also quite ill and dies while David is visiting. You probably know what happens next. This “House of Usher” underplays the isolation of the story by adding more characters: A faithful family housekeeper, a doctor called in to tend to the sick Madeline, and a police constable. It also ventures outside the titular location into the near-by town for a scene, which I think tellings of this tale probably should not do. 

While the producers of “Matinee Theater” sought to save money where they could by utilizing small cast and limited staging, the best thing about this “Fall” is its set. We never see the exterior of the home in full. Only a creaky gate, a sign bearing the family name swinging ominously in the wind. Roderick's room has an overflowing book shelf, an ornate throne, a window waiting to be dramatically thrown open. The family tomb, a pivotal location in any version of this story, has the neat detail of a wall of caskets. The shot of Roderick and David descending into this inner most chamber, lit by candlelight, is a good one. The reading of “The Haunted Palace” also ranks among the episode's better moments. It's not much but I think the producers did an okay job of summoning some gothic ambiance with the set dressing that was afforded to them. 

Otherwise, the tone of this take on “Hosue of Usher” veers more towards the hokey and melodramatic. Tom Tryon, best known to me from “I Married a Monster from Outer Space,” plays Usher at maximum staginess, bellowing his cries of misery and putting all his feelings into the character's descriptions of his mental agony. Marshall Thompson as the protagonist is so straight-laced and blandly heroic as to appear out-of-place in this tale. Probably owing to its TV-bound roots, the darker suggestions within Poe's text are downplayed. Madeline is introduced clawing at the walls of her room, making the family madness as broad as possible, and all the subtext of incest and depravity is gone. The image of Madeline's arm rising from her newly interned sarcophagus reminded me too much of Disney World's Haunted Mansion. And then the episode revisits that visual about three more times. It comes across as fairly defanged and hammy. Considering there's a dozen other adaptations of this story out there, the “Matinee Theater” version counts as inessential. The show did most of the public domain horror standard greatest hits (plus an occasional deeper cut, like The Queen of Spades or The Bottle Imp) and one imagines they are of a similar pedigree as this: Serviceable but a bit weak sauce. [5/10]

 

Halloween 2026: September 1st

 

Destiny (1921)
Der müde Tod 

Owing to German Expressionism's influence on the foundational films of the genre, Fritz Lang is heavily associated with the classic horror era. This is despite him debatedly never making a proper horror movie. “M” would birth cinema's first serial murderer but exists outside the conventions of the killer thrillers that would eventually form. Dr. Mabuse, with his hypnotic powers and ability to swap bodies, would go on to influence many mesmeric villains but Lang's films with the characters are as much crime stories as they are anything else. “Metropolis” is, of course, epic science fiction despite its mad scientist, inhuman android, and hellish machinery obviously inspiring countless horror films. Another good example is 1921's “Destiny.” An omnibus feature that, like “Waxworks,” features three tragic tales across time and, like “The Phantom Carriage,” is also a fable about Death as a personified being. That pushes it close to the margins of horror, so I supposed it's as good a silent classic as any to kick off this year's Halloween season.

A young couple, deeply in love, ride a carriage into a medieval village. They pick up a hitchhiker, unaware that the sunken-eyed passenger is Death himself. Years before, Death had bought a small plot of land in the village before erecting a massive, impenetrable wall around it. Later that day, the couple meet the strange man again in the tavern. It is during this encounter that the woman's lover seemingly vanishes. She quickly deduces the true identity of the man she met that day, wailing in front of that wall for her lover to be returned. Death takes pity on her and explains the situation, that he's merely following God's will and that it was her boyfriend's time to go. He makes a wager with the girl and presents her with three candles, each one representing another love story happening somewhere in the world. If love can triumph over death in these scenarios, he will give the woman her partner back. The three tales involves: An infidel in love with the sister of the Caliph deep within the Muslim world, a love triangle set in Venice, and a story of a Chinese emperor demanding the assistant of his court magician and the extreme steps she takes to escape his lust. 

“Destiny” is loosely adapted from the Hindu legend of Sati Savitri, as filtered through Lang's grief over the passing of his mother and a childhood fever dream of Death itself lingering over his bed. Fittingly, the film feels very much like a transcription of a genuine folk tale. The plot device of a chance meeting with the personification of Death is present in many European folk tales. As is the idea of making a wager with an otherworldly power, whether it be the Grim Reaper, the Devil, or some sort of fairy-like being. The idea that a giant wall was built by Death itself as an entrance point into its realm feels like a mythic origin for some ancient protoglyth. It's also a very suitable metaphor for the divide between the living and the dead, a barrier impossible to breach except for that final one-way trip. This is a fairy tale, in the Brothers Grimm sense, the kind of story that we – by which I mean, all people everywhere – have been telling for eons. 

At the same time, “Destiny” is a movie very specifically of the era in which it was made. The sample size of German Expressionistic films I've been exposed to is admittedly small, out of the already comparatively small number of films from this time and place that still exist. Having said that, it's weird that “Destiny” is the second omnibus feature from this period I've seen that also has an Arabian Nights inspired segment. Naturally, both the depiction of Islamic and Chinese cultures are not the most sensitive through modern eyes. In addition to featuring white actors in yellow and brown-ish face. That's to be expected from a 105 year old motion picture. So is a fair deal of melodrama. If anything drags “Destiny” down for me, it's that element. Both the first and second historical sequences are extremely heavy on the love triangles, secret betrayals, plotting and scheming, sneaking around, and all of that. The Venice segment is almost difficult to follow at times, because of its conflicting plot points. Even as someone fairly familiar with silent cinema, it can be a bit hard to follow at times and also not that compelling in its own right.

Of course, silent films can often overcome of-the-time stiffness with their stylized, striking visuals. “Destiny” has a number of those. The most iconic of which is a gothic arch-like opening in Death's wall, a massive staircase revealed on the other side. That's exactly the kind of dreamy visual that I seek out in older films like this, that appeal directly to the subconscious. Of the stories-within-the-story, the third tale is my favorite. Set in ancient China, it's the most outwardly fantastical. The emperor's wizard presents him with a miniature army of little humanoids. His magic wand can transfigure people into animals and objects, the most memorable example being when a human body twists into the shape of a cactus. There's also a flying carpet and a magic horse that can run across the sky. All of it brought to life with the quaint but suitably otherworldly special effects work of 1921. Filmmakers got stuck on the idea of realism eventually but that was less of a concern in the medium's early days, allowing cinema to be the shadow play and puppet shows it has always been. 

“Destiny” might be one of the rare omnibus features where I found myself far more invested in the framing device than the stories contained within. While the tale of the third candle is neat enough in its own right, I did feel my interest waning some during the other two segments. Meanwhile, the story of the young lovers and Death has an universal quality to it. We all must face our own mortality but I believe that love survives. Or, at least, that the acts of kindness that speak to the greater need for love and compassion ripple through time further than those of cruelty or selfishness. That's what the last act of “Destiny” is about. It is, unsurprisingly, the most poignant narrative collected here, despite also partaking in the same sort of protracted melodrama that you see throughout the film. Lil Dagover is, perhaps, a bit hammy as the girl but I do find her final act touching. 

Through it all, there's the enigmatic figure of Death, as played by Bernhard Goetzke. His glaring eyes, under a perpetually heavy brow, is a striking image. The reaper is characterized here as someone with a pretty shitty job. He is simply obeying the natural order of things, that all that is alive must also die, but everyone hates him for it. This is best displayed in a brief moment that is on most of the posters, in which Death arrives to take a newborn child. I don't think “Destiny” is as strong as the other Lang directed features I've seen. However, its mythic themes still resonate. There are definitely moments and imagery here that still has power over an audience, a century later. And a gloomy fable about what fades away and what lives on is probably a good pick to kick off my annual season of Halloween festivities, as the leaves are turning brown and the weather grows cooler. [7/10]

 

The Brain Eaters (1958)
 

Earlier this year, in what was either some early guerilla marketing for “Disclosure Day” or an attempt to distract from the casual malevolence and stupidity of the current administration, the United States government declassified a collection of documents about so-called unidentified flying objects. (Or unidentified anomalous phenomena, if you're nasty.) It was, as is usually the case with things of this nature, a whole lot of nothing: Blurry photos and videos of indeterminate shapes in the sky, among pages of reports of wildly varying credulity. If nothing else, it showed that the government's interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life is not a recent event. Not that I needed to be told this. As a genre dork raised on a steady diet of old B-movies, I'm well aware that covert government operations have been investigating possible alien invasions for decades now. Look at 1958's “The Brain Eaters,” a low-budget quickie distributed by A.I.P. and produced by/starring “Night of the Blood Beast's” Ed Nelson. The film contains what has to be among the earliest depictions of the feds going about and collecting Files on some eXtraterrestrial life. 

Weird shit is happening in the small town of Riverdale. Glenn Cameron discovers a large structure in the woods, shapes like a rocket's nose cone and surrounded by dead animals. People in town are acting strangely and there's been a rash of murders. With Archie presumably too busy at the malt shop to investigate, the government dispatches Senator Powers and a team of federal agents to look into matters. They find the interior of the cone is full of maze-like tunnels. Glenn's dad, the mayor, is discovered to be acting unusual and violent. This proceeds a more horrifying discovery: An otherworldly parasite has attached itself to the back of the mayor's neck, taking over his mind during a 48 hour process of fatally sucking his brains out. The mayor is not the only victim, as several of the town's residents are under the sway of these strange creatures. Cameron, Sen. Powers, and a group of scientists and assistants attempt to stop and control this invasion before it grows any more powerful. Yet any of them could also be possessed by these brain eaters at any time...

Roger Corman claimed to have been an uncredited producer on "The Brain Eaters," helping the filmmakers scrounge up a budget that maxed out at all of 26,000 dollars. With so little money at their disposal, the producers could not afford even a Paul Blesidel-made rubber monster suit. Instead, the film falls into that cheapest category of alien invasion stories, often favored by B-movie producers: The body snatcher narrative, in which humans are taken over by malevolent, otherworldly, and usually off-screen intelligences. Unlike the likes of "The Day Mars Invaded the Earth" or "They Came from Beyond Space," there are at least monsters of a sort here. As in Corman's "It Conquered the World" and Heinlien's "The Puppet Masters" – which the film resembles enough that the author sued – small beasties attached themselves to the spinal cord to take over the body. The special effects are not impressive. The brief glimpses we get at the Brain Eaters reveal them to be exactly what they are: Wind-up toys with fuzzy patches from a fur coat and pipe cleaner antennas glued on. Horror host Seymour derisively dubbed the movie "Attack of the Bunny Slippers" and that's not an unfair joke. 

Despite its obvious budgetary short-comings, I do think “The Brain Eaters” has some qualities that make it mildly interesting. Without spoiling too much about this obscure, sixty-eight year old monster movie, the eventual origin revealed for the titular menace may not be exactly what you are expecting. The finale features a future sci-fi icon, in make-up that makes him look like Moses but immediately recognizable because of his voice, appearing to pontificate on the nature of the parasites. He describes a society of collective conformity, without fear or anger. The obvious comparison is “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” which similarly had its otherworldly invaders promising a world of peaceful co-existence at the sacrifice of all individuality. “The Brain Eaters” does not have any room for ambiguity. The invaders are villains and are clearly meant to invoke fears of communist ideology that defined the Cold War period. They can look like any person on the street but an insidious outside threat lurks within them, a danger to our basic American freedoms, the script seems to say. Yet simply giving the monsters the space to express why they feel their way of life is superior does add an interesting wrinkle to the material. It fleshes the standard plot out a bit. 

“The Brain Eaters” was directed by Bruno VeSota, a distinctive looking character actor that had appeared in several previous Corman productions. VeSota had also previously co-directed the dream-like “Dementia.” While “The Brain Eaters” is not nearly as visually memorable a motion picture as that one, cinematographer Lawrence Raimond does engineer a few good shots. The sequence set inside the mayor's office are at an askew angle, to create a sense of disorientation. A shot of several mind-controlled citizens lurking outside the heroine's apartment are similarly moody. In general, “The Brain Eaters” is possessed of a certain noir-like pessimism. The ending is strangely downbeat. More-so than in your typical fifties creature feature, there's a sense that the government are almost powerless to stop the invaders. Scientists repeatedly emphasize that they have no idea where the structure came from or how it works. The local cops and politicians both fall victim to the brain-sucking manipulators, as if to suggest that our traditional voices of authorities are not exempt from the influence of outside threats. There's a sense throughout that the structures we trust to protect us are far less sturdy than they appear.  

This unexpected streak of cynicism is enough to distinguish “The Brain Eaters” from the many other similar movies from the same era. The film is definitely cheesy in terms of its special effects and plotting. The runtime is barely over an hour, leaving little room for any additional depth. Its characters are as stock-parts as you'd expect. However, the script throws in enough curve balls to keep me guessing and I was mildly impressed by how hopeless the movie ends up feeling at times. I guess, on the verge of a new decade, even the B-movie makers were beginning to loose some of that post-WWII optimism. It's entirely possible I am easily charmed by the quirks of motion pictures such as these and willing to forgive its flaws. But if you've not caught up with this one, and you've got a taste for bullshit of this strain like I do, give it a look. It might poke into your brain in unexpected ways. [7/10]

Blue Monkey (1987)
 

To anybody who has done a minute of research on such matters, it is understood that the world of low-budget film marketing is essentially a carny act. It's harder these days, when a simple glance at your phone can tell you more information on any given movie. Dig deep enough into the guts of Tubi, however, and you can still find motion pictures that depend on an intriguing or salacious title, eye-catching poster art, or the promise of a known star (who may only be on-screen for minutes at most) to get people to watch it. Back in the days of drive-in theaters or video stores, that was enough to get an audience to put their money down on a ticket or weekend rental. If the advertising was ultimately not exactly representative, it was not the producers' problem, as they already had your dollar. Or your loonie, as the case may be for our neighbors to the north. That's where a motion picture with an especially misleading – perhaps even confusing – title was produced and released straight-to-video in 1987. What would you assume the central threat in a horror flick called "Blue Monkey" to be? Probably a member of the Old World monkey species cercopithecus mitis. Or at the very least a periwinkle primate of some sort. An azure ape, perhaps. But no. "Blue Monkey" is about a giant mutated bug thing. The title, as far as I can tell, stems from a single scene where a child uses the phrase as if it is well-known slang for a generic boogeyman or creepy crawlie of any sort. I am not familiar with these words meaning that and it would seem most people who saw "Blue Monkey" aren't either, judging from the reviews. Nevertheless, it is certainly a memorable title, enough so that I immediately thought of this otherwise obscure film when I went in search of a Canadian movie to watch this September. So I guess misleading marketing does work. 

This tale of a monster that is neither blue nor a monkey begins in the greenhouse of an elderly woman. She has received a new species of flower, currently only found on a recently emerged volcanic island near Micronesia, that has grown extraordinarily overnight. A visiting handyman seems to prick his finger on a thorn, despite the plant not having thorns. He quickly grows sick and collapses, after which he's taken to a local hospital. Doctors Rachel and Judith are on the case, the man already developing gangrene and a high fever. The emergency team is distracted when police detective Jim Bishop arrives with his partner, who was recently shot. Shortly afterwards, an unidentifiable larva emerges from the sick man's mouth. It seems to bring with it a disease that takes the man's life, forcing the hospital to go into lock-down. All the regular staff and patients are now trapped inside. The weird larva continues to mutate, especially after some kids feed it some growth hormones. It grows into a giant cricket/mantis type thing that begins to prey on the unsuspecting staff. Detective Bishop, Doctor Rachel, and an etymologist are on the case to stop the creature before anymore lives are taken. 

While the monkey remains elusive, there is a lot of blue coloration in this film. "Blue Monkey" was directed by William Fruet, the Canuxploitation veteran who gifted the world with "Killer Party" and a few other titles of minor notoriety. Its cinematographer was Brenton Spencer, formerly an assistant cameraman on "The Changling" and "First Blood." Both of these guys would go on to mostly work in the world of low-budget, Canadian-lensed, genre television. The standards of such things were different in the eighties which means "Blue Monkey" actually looks pretty damn slick. The tunnels, storage rooms, and industrial areas of this hospital are often lit in atmospheric purples and, yes, blues. There's a lot of billowing mist, to add to the mysterious ambiance. The film utilizes quite a lot of point-of-view shots to suggest its beastie lurking around and sneaking up on potential victims, a trick that works decently to build a little suspense around the monster. I've seen a lot of generic creature features set in non-distinct buildings and warehouses so I can say that the "Blue Monkey" team went the extra step to light the hell out of these sets. 

So the film makes the most of whatever production values it had. What about that monkey, err, monster? The man-sized invertebrate is properly bug-eyed, mandibled, clawed, and chitinous to suggest any number of real world creepy crawlers. The effects are decent, with enough slime and pulsating thoraxes to make this creature intimidating. The only time the seams start to show is when the bug starts flopping around in insectoid frenzy or walks upright like a man. Otherwise, "Blue Monkey" does an okay job of mining some ick factor out of its beast. Victims are webbed up in fleshy cocoons, gooey eggs are squeezed out, and there's a good gag where somebody's chest explodes and tosses blood around. Obviously, "Alien" was the main source of inspiration here but Fruet and his team imitate Ridley Scott's masterpiece competently. The problem arises with how long the film takes to get to the good stuff. The monster remains in its larval stage for longer than is advisable. The middle section seems devoted largely to simply watching the bug stand around. It feels a bit like the action doesn't start until about the last half-hour. This was probably a conservation of budgetary resources, the filmmakers trying to build as much movie as they could around as little footage of an expensive, temperamental special effect. But it does not lead to the most exciting watching experience. 

In order to fill space when the monster isn't around, "Blue Monkey" occupies itself with a quarantine subplot. It makes sense that a weird creature getting out would lead to the government locking a public location down. Despite that, there's still a lot of coming and going around the building in its first half. The speed with which the government contains this building seems improbable to me. (I'm tempted to make a joke about efficient socialized Canadian healthcare but, despite its production origins, the movie appears to be set in the U.S.) The quarantine storyline results in only a handful of meaningful scenes of people in bio-hazard suits assembling around the hospital and shooting one person who attempts to escape. It is, obviously, an excuse to keep people in this building with a murderous monster when they otherwise could have simply left. The result feels half-formed. As if the producers decided to shove a pandemic thriller into their monster movie after realizing the big bug was not quite enough to support a feature length runtime. 

Hey, at least the actors being chased around this hospital are likable enough. Steve Railsback stars as our detective, bringing the amount of intensity you expect of him to a fairly generic part. Gwynyth Walsh makes a professional seeming heroine, a random doctor thrust into an extraordinary situation. The most familiar faces are maybe in the supporting cast. John Vernon plays a classically hard-assed John Vernon-ian part as the jerk administrator of the hospital. Don Lake is a name you probably don't know but you might recognize his face, from his appearance in nostalgic 90s favorites like "Terminator 2" or "Super Mario Bros." (I remember him as the Crazy Eddie parody in "Short Circuit 2.") He plays the insect specialist and brings a likable eccentricity to the part. I wondered if his character would play the expected arc of a scientist wanting to study the monster, but Lake is too affable for that and goes the humanist route. A name you'll recognize but a face you might not is Sarah Polley, the beloved Canadian character actress having an early career role as one of the obnoxiously adorable moppets wandering around the hospital. That's the kind of movie "Blue Monkey," investing its minor characters with more quirks than they probably otherwise needed. Like the alcoholic blind lady who convinces her teetotaler room mate to take up the bottle. Or Joe Flaherty randomly showing up as an expectant father who has done the math so exactly, he can perfectly pinpoint when his wife is going into labor.

Would Flaherty's Count Floyd character declare “Blue Monkey” to be “verry scarry” or not? Hard to say but I bet he would also be a bit bewildered by the title. Some overseas distributors made the decision to re-title the motion picture to “Insect.” Which might not also be strictly accurate. I didn't look to check if the bug monster had six legs and three body segments, but it's certainly a far more suitable title. Damned to VHS-only purgatory for many years, “Blue Monkey” has now been given the prestige Blu-Ray restoration, proving again that any eighties horror movie is going to get that treatment in the boutique DVD era. It's got one or two things about it that I can recommend while also being fairly un-extraordinary in other ways. Not to keep harping on this but maybe this one would have more of a cult following if it actually was about a sapphire sasquatch of some sort on a rampage. Just saying, that has more novelty than a mutated bug-thing! [6/10]
 

Cry_Wolf (2005)
 

Usually, when a film becomes best known for its ending, it's a testament to the impact a twist or reveal had on audiences. People remember that the Planet of the Apes is Earth or that Bruce Willis was a ghost because they add new context to everything that came before. Sometimes, however, an ending becomes famous for the wrong reasons. If all you hear about a film is that the ending cheapens the ninety minutes before it, someone fucked up during production. That was mostly what I heard in 2005 about "Cry_Wolf," that it had a deeply unsatisfying twist that made the entire experience feel like a prank. Despite that notoriety, like most wide release horror films of the last twenty years with the mildest of slasher vibe, defenders have since emerged. I skipped "Cry_Wolf" back in my own high school days but that was a long time ago now – two decades, in fact – so let me see if this one is as lame as everyone said or if it's actually a clever subversion of genre conventions. 

Following scholastic failures at past schools, rich British kid Owen is transferred to Westlake Academy, a fancy American boarding school. He quickly falls in with a group of friends led by Dodger, a pretty redhead with a mischievous glint in her eyes. The gang is composed of jockish Tom, preppy Mercedes, metal head Randall, nerdy Regina, token black guy Lewis and characteristics-free Graham. They gather every weekend. They drink and play a game call "Cry Wolf," in which someone is secretly designated with the role of the Wolf and everyone else must determine who that is. In recent news, a former student named Becky is found dead in the woods outside the academy. Dodger and Owen take inspiration from this for a school wide game of Cry Wolf, kicked off by a mass e-mail describing a masked serial killer. However, the "game" soon gets weird, as rooms are trashed, threatening private messages are sent, and people within the group begin to disappear. Owen begins to suspect that the Wolf is real, that he's targeting his friends, and that the killer is someone they all know. 

One of the first shots in "Cry_Wolf" is a close-up on the tiny screen of what I think is a Nokia cellphone, the blocky black-on-white text containing plot relevant information. A few scenes after that, Owen plays for a second on his N-Gage before flipping over to its notoriously cumbersome phone feature. Mobile phones are prevalent all throughout the film, such as when Mercedes sends Lewis a sexy selfie. He complains about how long it takes to receive the pic, a good indicator that the film is set in the paleolithic era of our modern wireless age. Characters use instant messenger and e-mails to communicate extensively. That marks "Cry_Wolf" as an obvious attempt to re-imagine the classic slasher movie set-up for the hip youth of 2005. Further evidence of this is seen in the then-trendy fashion, such as Randell's mall-goth eyebrow piercing or Mercedes' boy-shorts lingerie. "Cry_Wolf" is also dated precisely to my junior year of high school by the casualness of its ideological impropriety. Homophobic slurs are thrown around a few times. Young men boast proudly of their un-gentle sexual conquests. A teenage girl having an affair with an adult male teacher is a plot point. While the script briefly pauses to consider the obvious power imbalances in such a relationship, the ending basically plays the trope of a jailbait femme fatale entrapping an older man straight. 

I bring all this up not to clutch pearls or to mock the clumsiness of dated technology. Instead, it all points towards "Cry_Wolf's" hunger to be seen as a very cool film of its day. The movie was the result of a contest by Chrysler and Universal to award a new filmmaker with a million dollar budget, suggesting it was a deliberate attempt to capture the voice of a new generation. In some ways, the embracing of how mobile phones and the internet were already starting to change the way people communicate and the flow of (mis)information makes it tempting to call "Cry_Wolf" ahead of its time. However, "Serial Experiments Lain," this ain't. We hear about how rumors spread online but we don't see much evidence of it. The legend of the Wolf, an internet-birthed bugbear four years before Slenderman, seems to spread entirely off-screen. The movie ultimately uses the ever-present inter-connectivity of the online era as a gimmick added to a meatspace-centered thriller construct. The Wolf still mostly exists via scenes of him chasing people down or lurking around a corner. Suspicion grows via misplaced knives, bloody evidence, or a chance glimpse at a secret meeting. The film is ensouled with this "how do you do, fellow kids" attitude, desperate to appear in-the-know but unable to use these ideas in any way that isn't awkward.

 

The sheer 2005-ness of the movie is also unbearably present in its visuals. Some of the shots of life in the idyllic, New England setting have a nice autumnal warmth to it. The entire film has a lot of orange/red in it, to match its Halloween setting and the highly visible ski mask the villain wears. However, other shots are murky to an impenetrable degree. Since cell phones are so central to the story, maybe they were used to light the film too. In general, whenever the masked figure appears on-screen or their murderous rampage is being described, the film lapses into a shaky, intentionally washed-out, spasmodic style. In general, the editing is fast and choppy, making several overly dark scenes even harder to follow. "Cry_Wolf" was shot with an R-rating in mind, cut down to a PG-13 for theaters, and then restored to its bloodier nature in DVD. Despite that, the film does not seem that concerned with showcasing gory set pieces. The music video style inserts genuinely seem to be the only trick the film has up its sleeve. 

 

That strange lack of tension is present all throughout "Cry_Wolf." Even if you went into the film unaware of its "April Fools' Day" style plot, from the minute Lindy Booth's eyes sparkle mischievously at Owen, you can tell that this story is one of massive game being played. It's all a fake-out. While suspense could've been derived from the question of who is behind this manipulation, or how far it may progress, there's little doubt about the answers to those questions. The main character ends the film as a sap, perfectly strung along every step of the way by a game master whose identity is never a mystery. The result is a mystery completely devoid of intrigue and a thriller totally without thrills. This is further compounded by a cast of characters who are one-dimensional at best. Most of the performances are similarly one-note, with Jared Padalaki and Jesse Janzen especially blustering through their dialogue. Julian Morris is a wide-eyed wisp of a protagonist, with little depth. The weakness in the casting can also be seen in the decision to have Jon Bon Jovi, during his brief attempt at starting an acting career, as the grabby teacher. To say his on-screen presence is living on a prayer is giving his stiff shrug of a performance too much credit. 

As Dodger, Lindy Booth turns up the purring, pixie sensuality and it's very easy to see how a teenage boy could instantly fall for this redheaded trickster. The script denies her, and every other character, any depth though. Aside from that and the camp factor in its 2005 signifiers, "Cry_Wolf" has little else to give. Director Jeff Wadlow did not become the voice of a generation. After trying out action with "Never Back Down" and "Kick-Ass 2," he now specializes in the schlockiest of Blumhouse's horror flicks. This is an example of a film dressing in the drag of the slasher genre in service of an attempt at something clever, without any interest in what that style can do well. A straight ahead gory murder mystery assuredly would have been a lot more entertaining. Whatever defenders that have emerged for this one, I cannot count myself among them. [4/10]

Metalosis Maligna (2006) 

 

In April of 2025, thanks to my dog being too excited about meeting other puppies on her morning walk, I fell with an outstretched palm onto some asphalt and broke my arm in two places. To facilitate proper healing, I had a surgery in which a small metal plate was screwed into my bones. I guess this thing is just a part of me until the crematorium operator digs it out of my ashes. Shortly after I got my cast off and wrapped up physical therapy, I saw “Metalosis Maligna,” a 2006 film from Dutch animator/multi-media artist/prankster Floris Kaayk. The seven minute short operates as an educational documentary about the titular condition. It is a streptococcus bacteria that can infect the flesh around metal implants during their insertion. The disease lies dormant in the body for several years, symptoms starting and stopping without warning. Those symptoms include the metal implant “growing,” not merely spreading through the healthy tissue but replacing it entirely. What begins as painful bumps under the skin can quickly escalate to metal protrusions through the flesh. In extreme case, metalosis maligna can cause entire body parts to be replaced with jagged, metallic growths. There is no known cure for the disease.

Metalosis maligna is, thankfully, fictional. However, Kaayk's film does everything it can to convince a not-so-savvy viewer otherwise. It is done in the style of a television documentary, the kind of thing you would expect to see as part of a news program. Or broadcast as an infomercial to raise awareness of the condition. Clips of random people on the street, CGI animation depicting how the disease spreads, and interviews are included like you would expect to see in any scientific documentary about a specific pathogen. The presentation is intentionally low-key, the female narrator speaking softly, the musical score quiet and unintrusive. The interviewed doctor relates the details of the disease and how little we know about it with stone-faced seriousness. The specifics of the condition are obviously fantastical. I'm fairly confident metal can't “grow.” Tthat a human being would die if metallic matter started stabbing through multiple parts of their body. This contrast is most obvious in the last act, when we see people having whole areas of their limbs and head replaced with jagged collections of screws, plates, and metal bars. However, the dryness with which all of this is shown and assembled goes a long way towards making it seem that the titular infection is real. Show this to a child or someone especially gullible and they would probably think it was. 

The verisimilitude with which Kaayk depicts this made-up disease is furthered by some very convincing looking effects. A shot of red lumps rising up through the skin is wince inducing. The time-lapse sequences depicting the disease's progression through a series of X-rays or slowly consuming a man from the inside out feature some seriously unsettling sound effects. If the comments on YouTube are any indication, some people find "Metalosis Maligna" to be humorous. There is indeed an obvious absurdist element to what we are seeing. The climax has the same droll, unemotional doctor asking a man whose head has been entirely replaced with quasi-skeletal metal bones to attempt to speak. The final image is of an infected rat in a laboratory, its head similarly consumed by a mess of corkscrewing metal fibers. If you can detach yourself enough from "Metalosis Maligna's"  visuals, and really find the irony in the seriousness it's all treated with, I suppose you could find this humorous.

I, on the other hand, found "Metalosis Maligna" to be extremely unsettling. Maybe that's primarily because I'm right in the demographic to be freaked out by this, as someone who recently had a metal implant added to their body. The detail that the condition can lay dormant for years after the surgery before sprouting seems especially designed to make a viewer paranoid. I've always found the idea of invasive diseases that cause radical changes or internal growth through the body to be especially horrifying. "Metalosis" reminds me of especially extreme conditions like petrified muscle or treeman syndrome, which are only slightly less terrifying than scrap metal infecting your body.

 

The short also reminds me, obviously, of "Tetsuo: The Iron Man." Much like that weirdo cult classic, it's easy to read the Kaayk's work as a literalization of anxieties about technology overtaking our bodies. When this short was made in 2006, smart phones were only beginning to take shape but their current omnipresence must've been a natural extension of the way internet was already creeping into every corner of our lives back then. On the other hand, a fear of disease, deformity, and the failing of our own bodies is universal. "Metalosis Maligna" hits so hard for me because of how it marries the visceral horror of bodily decay with the age-old idea of modern convenience having unforeseen consequences. That it is carried out so convincingly results in one of the most disturbing seven minutes of film I've ever seen. I'll let you know if I start to sprout any metal barbs from my arm, which truly does sound like one of the more horrifying ways to die conceived by a filmmaker. [9/10]

 

 

Halloween 2026: Preamble

 

Halloween is always special. This is something I have believed for as long as I can remember. A very early memory of mine is of one of those kids board books, of trick-or-treators going about their October 31st ritual. I can recall thumbing through those extra thick pages over and over again, before I even really knew how to read, simply fascinated by the imagery. The morbid heart was always within me, drawing me towards monsters and shadows and candy corn and cheap plastic vampire fangs.

 

Halloween is always special but it is extra special this year. For, through a confluence of events that would seem improbable if not for the clear indication that they did in fact happen, I am getting married this October. Yes, this morbid heart of mine found another. One that understands the way I see the world and shares many of my pains, hopes, fears, and dreams. Sorry if I become insufferable at any point this season but I am in love. I am irreversibly infected with how much I adore this person and constantly astonished at how much she adores me. The Halloween season means maybe as much to my intended as it does to me, which is part of why we are a good match. This is also why we have decided that the start of October – which was already our anniversary, through a nice fluke of fate – is the date we are going to tie the knot. We both like this time of year more than most and it seemed the ideal day for us to make this on-going relationship thingy we've had for a bit into an actual binding legal status. 

Not to gush too much about the woman I love here but... At one point, as we were banding about ideas for our ceremony, she asked me if we could incorporate a slight Frankenstein theme into the decorations and so forth. I didn't suggest that! It was all her idea! Somehow, I have not only found a person who wants to marry me but also likes creaky old monster movies and gothic literature and bullshit like that enough to incorporate them subtly into our big day. Let me tell ya, that was one of many moments with where I realized how extraordinarily lucky I am to have them in my life. She's drawn little key chains of the two of us as the monster and the bride to give to guests! How adorable is that and also how the hell did I convince this spectacular human being to love me?

 

Alright, alright, I'll stop. You fine people probably don't want to read about the point where my self-loathing and my love for my almost-wife intersect. The point is, yes, I am going to be extra busy this September and October. Will that effect the Halloween Horror-fest Blog-a-thon? I mean, probably. My watching and writing schedule kind of went off-the-rails before the end of last October and I was only engaged then. Now that I've got actual places to go, people to transport and lodge, and a wife to marry and cherish forever, my time will definitely be occupied more-so this year than in ones past. It's entirely possible that I've simply reached the point in my life where writing in-depth reviews of two movies and two TV show episodes every day of September and October isn't practical or feasible anymore. 

I'm still going to try though. Yes, I've got a shit ton of stuff I wanna watch and write about this year. Hey, did you know they made a new “Killer Tomatoes” movie this year? Holy shit, what a perfect oppretunity to write about that particular cinematic endeavor! Hmmm, I've reviewed almost every film series or release represented in the old Movie Maniacs toyline except for a few exceptions. Maybe I should include those titles in my marathon this year, to satisfy an extremely obscure and random element of my autistic fixations? Am I also going to try and watch fifty horror movies from fifty different countries again, despite not really succeeding at doing that last year either? Yeah, because that's just what I do now, I guess. Oh yeah, I've got a line-up of classic and recent anthology shows and a few other vaguely spooky programs to occupy myself with as well. 

Ya know, nobody is reading these words. Blogging is a barely extant hobby these days and Blogspot continues to persist probably because nobody at Google notices they haven't deleted it or incorporated it into some other application already. I started doing this because I wanted to, way back when social media was an extremely different landscape than it is today, and now I continue to do it because I want to. Because it makes me happy. Will the person who is going to be my spouse soon find my obsession with watching and writing about a bunch of mostly old horror movies every September and October as important as I do? Well, I guess those are the kind of questions that you get answered to when you finally shack up with somebody! 

 

Anyway, yeah, that's the plan. If I miss a day or get a little behind, so be it. Halloween is about having fun! I think watching horror movies and TV shows is also fun! So I shall attempt to balance doing this alongside publicly declaring my love to the person I adore the most. If another human is indeed reading these words, thanks for caring enough to stop by and partake of some vintage horror fan shenanigans with me. 

And thus: Journey with me down to the cemetery and pantomime a danse macabre or two.  Let us do the Monster Mash. Perform the Time Warp with me umptenthly. The mortals among us who have withstood the Thriller in the past are called upon to withstand it again. Boys and girls and them/theys of every age, you clearly do like something strange. Ain't you afraid of no ghosts as well? I know I am. The spooky, scary season is upon us and I have more reasons than usual to celebrate. The Autumn Country calls to me once more and I have a bride to accompany me this time. She's not stitched together from pieces of corpses either, at least I don't think so. And so soft gusts of love and memory beat at the heart reproachfully. The lights that burn for those who die were flickering low but let them now flare high. For it is the haunting Hallowe'en!