Christmas Horror WATCHathon....

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Paranormal Activity : The Ghost Dimension (2015)


Vanishing on 7th Street (2011)

Overlooked post-apocalyptic horror film starring Hayden Christansen,

Both currently on Pluto

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The Remaining (2014)

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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)


Re-watched this in memory of Hugh Keays-Byrne, who passed on December 1st.

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Christmas Blood (2017) aka Juleblod

Quite the nasty Norweigian slasher, similar to Black Christmas and Halloween.

This time the setting is a remote village in Norway.



House of the Devil (2009)

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Sheitan (2006)

French horror film starring/co-produbed by Vincent Cassel.

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Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)


Heard there's a lot of singing in this one.

But I'll give it a shot, very low expectations.

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Gremlins (1984)

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Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)


Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

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Silent Night (2012)

Remake of the 1984 film Silent Night, Deadly Night

Lake Alice (2017)

Family is attacked and terrorized by masked killers.

At their vacation cabin, while on Christmas break.

[someoldguy]

Back again. I have been busy and also had a huge recurrence of my ocular migraine that I thought was gone for good, it being well over a year since last time. This one was a doozy, lasting days. (What is not wrong with me?)

On TCM, yesterday and last night were especially good.

Sinbad the Sailor (1947)
Douglas Fairbanks at his heroic charmingnest.
Maureen O’Hara at her most exotic lusciousness.
Walter Slezak at his oiliest.
Anthony Quinn at his most royal greediness.
George Tobias as the essential comic second banana, his specialty.
Great color cinematography, great fun

Kismet (1955)
Howard Keel and Ann Blyth sing up a storm in this lush Technicolor musical.
Although she sang in many musicals, Ann is probably best known as the ungrateful daughter of Mildred Pierce.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Gort. Klaatu Barada Nicto!
Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and Sam Jaffe delivered exactly what this genuine SF movie classic needed. Along with young Billy Grey (soon to be Bud Anderson – what, you’re not that old?) And what this movie deserved and received was an intelligent script and dialog, believable acting and tight direction with a clear vision (Robert Wise). Also, just enough well-done FX to make it a credible SF tale but not get in the way of the story and its message.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Ray Harryhausen masterpiece, Cyclops, Rocs, other monsters, dueling with a skeleton, magic spells and lots more. Saw this in the movies with my first ‘date’.

The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
Also saw this in the movies but I believe it was the summer of 1961, not 1960. Fun, good FX for that era, good color. But really just fantasy adventure. Nowhere near the barbed satirical wit of the Jonathan Swift novel which I had previously read, although there was some. But then how many people taking children to a kid’s movie are even going to get what there was of it? (If you want Swift’s sharpest barbs, check out his essay A Modest Proposal.)

Mysterious Island (1961)
Very good, mostly faithful adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, but with more exotic stuff mixed in because that allowed some then impressive FX. And if you are going to add in a woman in less clothing than the norm for a Civil War era setting (marooned you know) ya gotta have monsters to fight off. Good action, suspense, excitement and surprises. I have read this novel several times over the years. It is a huge novel and much had to be cut for a movie, but that is not unusual. I am a big Verne fan. He knows how to tell a story. I have read everything he ever published.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Harryhausen’s peak opus. He did a bunch of good stuff after this. But as Tom Hank’s put it in a Harryhausen tribute years back “Some people say Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made. I think it is Jason and the Argonauts” This movie has everything you would expect from a Harryhausen creation including terrific FX. The extended swordfight with the hordes of skeletons alone is worth the price of admission.

That is when my usual insomnia reached its limits. I woke up to Rosalind Russell in Sister Kenny, which I have not seen in over 60 years, and recognized it in 5 seconds flat. But I could no longer avoid RL obligations and go on bingeing.

[someoldguy]

Miscellaneous TCM movies earlier in the month. These are the ones I recall best

Zero Hour
The movie that Airplane! spoofed. Recognizing where they got scenes from and what they did with them was fun.

The Dawn Patrol
WWI British fighter squadron with huge casualty rate because HQ insists on rushing young pilots barely out of training directly into combat against very experienced German pilots. Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn star. This 1938 remake of the 1930 film of the same name is not as strongly anti-war as the earlier film, although there is still a lot of punch in that arena, probably because Germany was already getting pushy military-wise in Europe by then. A very good watch anyway.

Fighter Squadron
WWII fighters this time, US P-47D to be exact. Lots of action of course, good combat photography, a lot of it real combat footage.

Some interesting tidbits about this movie.

There is a scene where the fighters finally get permission to drop their valuable aluminum external fuel tanks before going into combat, reducing weight and drag and making them more combat worthy. They all then dramatically drop their tanks at once and go clobber the enemy. But truth is even stranger than fiction. The actual fact was that until quite late in the war, US aircraft in Europe were forbidden to even carry external tanks. There was originally an expected aluminum shortage – a story in itself – and aluminum fuel tanks were all earmarked for the Pacific where the combat ranges involved were greater. And the aircraft was required to come back with the empty tanks for reuse. In Europe British external fuel tanks were made from 60-ply heavy paper saturated with glue. US forces were using these tanks with simple adapters. Someone in Washington got wind of this and wanted a bunch of samples of these tanks for testing. It was discovered that those paper tanks might start to leak after 24 hours of use. They could not grasp that the tanks were only expected to be employed for a maximum of 8 hours before being dropped. But dropping external tanks was not allowed because of the expected aluminum shortage. US forces were forbidden to use the British paper external drop tanks. This order was universally ignored.

Another interesting scene in the movie is where the fighters come down and strafe a bunch of German infantry. This was to be accomplished in the movie with the machine guns in the fighters really being propane torches with a pressure driven interrupter in the muzzle that made it flash very rapidly like machine guns firing. On the ground were strings of small charges that would go off rapidly along lines each throwing up some dirt in the air. When the hundreds of extras who were playing the Germans saw these fighters zooming toward them from the front, guns flashing and the ‘bullets’ hitting the ground in lines coming at them every single man turned and ran out of frame. The director went practically insane because it took a long time and a good amount of money to set up that shot. The next time, and this is the scene you see in the movie, the extras were not warned when it was going to happen. The fighters came in from the side initially screened by a tree line and the charges were going off before anyone realized what was happening. The extras fell down and ‘died’ as required,


Other memorable re-watches along the way.

Gojira

Them

It Came from Beneath the Sea
Harryhausen, yay! Had not seen this one in years.

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Welcome Back someoldguy, glad you're feeling better.



The Chill Factor (1993)

Three couples go on a Winter vacation in Wiscosin.

While racing on snowmobiles, one of the guys is seriously injured.

They seek shelter at an adandoned Religious Summer Camp.

While another goes for help, they find a Ouija board and play with it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Available on Tubi.

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Super Dark Times (2017)

A horrible incident drives a wedge between two teen close friends.

Set in Upstate NY during the mid 90's.

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Prometheus (2012)

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Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Out of the overtime game for the time being, so I cranked this one up this morning.

Great turn by Bela Lugosi as Ygor. I liked Lionel Atwill's Inspector Krogh, too.