Halloween

No explanation is necessary to under stand why Halloween is such an amazing film. It helped mold slashers as a whole and still continues to influence the film industry to this day. Here it is...




Happy Halloween!

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Directed by George Mihalka.


"From the heart comes a warning, filled with bloody good - cheer, remember what happened as the 14th draws - near! "

As I walked through the "Miner's Revenge." maze as Canada's Wonderland I thought that My Bloody Valentine would be a perfect choice for Oct. 30. Not to mention that on the way, I intercepted a conversation regarding the remake and told the girls that they NEED to see the original before they can even consider that garbage. Might as well celebrate another holiday film seeing as I've almost exhausted good Halloween films...except the best Halloween film yet to come.



In the small mining town of Valentine Bluff's several miners are buried underground in the mind for weeks a t a time. When the rubble is cleared and rescuers make it into the mine shaft, where the trapped workers resided, they discover that only Harry Warden has survived. Warden survived be consuming the dead remains of his deceased co-workers, and of course, has lost his mind in the meantime. Warden is locked up but escapes on Valentine's Day, only to cut the heart out of the foreman out of the mind and leaving a message to the town...that if the town ever celebrates Valentine's Day again, then they'll will suffer the same carnage as this night.

Years later, the new young miners and their girlfriends decide to throw a Valentine's party. Heading the warnings of the town folk, they continue to decorate the town. As their disbelief is at its highest peak, the group decides to take their party in the mine. Here, they become hunted one by one by a miner, who means to spill their blood with his pick axe.



Released in 1981, the film along with Friday the 13th Pt.2 were cut by the MPAA extensively. My Bloody Valentine was cut by 9 minutes for its graphic scenes of gore and violence. Director Mihalka, also said that he believes the film was heavily due to John Lennon's murder the year before, causing a public backlash against violence.



Shot in Syndney, Nova Scotia, this film brings a feeling of familiarity for me, as the setting, accents and mannerisms are very similar to that of Newfoundlands.

The acting isn't mind blowing, but it's good. However, if you're into slashers than this film is a must, it's one of my favorites.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Trick 'r Treat as feels like an homage to time when practical effects and campy horror was accepted, yet more importantly, embraced. Standing as an anthology film, it consists of five short stories that intertwine with one another, revealing just how deeply so as the story progresses.

The film opens up with a couple coming home from the usual street party Halloween festivities. As the wife blows out the jack o'lantern and begs her husband to take down the decorations to prepare for her mother's arrival in the morning, he warns her about breaking Halloween traditions. Which sometimes come with supernatural repercussions. When she decides to start taking down decorations on Halloween night she must pay the the spirit of Halloween with her life for doing so...her throat is slit with a jagged Halloween sucker.



The second tale is of the local elementary school principal. He seems to be killing children and burying them in the backyard, all in the spirit of Halloween of course. In once instance when he answers his door he's covered in child's blood, but its authenticity is quickly brushed off by trick r treaters, after all, it is Halloween. Before long we see the principal's son ("Charlie Brown's an asshole!") descend into the basement, begging his dad to start carving. The principal holds a knife over the boys head...but when he strikes, the shot reveals that the principal has been severing the heads of his child victims, all the while teaching his son how to carve their faces like pumpkins.



The third tale is my favorite. Mixing vampire lore and werewolf lore, the tale tells the story of a group of girls looking for dates. When the virgin of the group breaks off from the rest to find a date, she becomes the victim of a stalker. Realizing she has no escape, the vampire reveals his fangs and the film cuts to a shot of her friends gathered...soon the vampire falls from the tree, wounded, broken and helpless. His victim shows up and we learn she was luring him the whole time. Werewolf transformations, feasting on humans and the stripping of one's flesh ensues...

The fourth tale is of three kids who are collecting pumpkins for unicef (BULLSHIT). They recruit and acquire a local, nerdy, Halloween obsessed outcast. With their strange new friend's wagon of personally carved pumpkins, they all travel to a stone reservoir. It was here years ago when a school bus, filled with mentally challenged kids, went off a cliff into the water, killing all the kids on board. The parents had gotten together and paid the bus driver to drown their burdens... ...later, the jerk kids pretend to disappear and reappear as the dead kids' ghostly figures, who chase and scare the timid outcast girl. When she hits her head and wakes up she's confused and frightened. Soon they hear real screams and eerie noises haunting, and begin their descent into torment by the very ghosts they mocked. Trying to escape. the kids become locked outside the elevator with no where to run and hide, holding her pumpkin, the girl smirks while her pranksters become just hunks of flesh.


The last tale is of a bitter old man who decides to scare chidren, skip out on giving out candy, and overall, being a jerk. However, when he's visited by the spirit of Halloween, he's soon reprimanded for his Halloween crimes filled with contempt for the holiday. The spirit tries desperatly to kill him but the old man proves to be resilient. He eventually saves his own skin by way of accidentally sacrificing a candy bar the spirit, breaking his anti Halloween tradition wats...the real trouble beings and when he sees the spirits of the school bus kids, appearing as if alive for one night, just to seek out their vengeance on their driver that drowned them.

TrT is shot incrdibly well and uses a deligtful mix between classic horror subjects, modern opinions on old traditions and preserving the spirit of Halloween.The film even seems to have a slightly orange tint at times, which of course, will tug at your Halloween heart strings. It tugs at mine.

The Changeling (1980)

"That house is not fit to live in. No one's been able to live in it. It doesn't want people. "

Peter Medak's The Changeling is one of the best ghost films that you haven't seen. Not to be confused with the recent theatrical release of the same name starring Angelina Jolie, the two are completely unrelated.

After John Russell's (George C Scott) family is killed in a horrible car accident while on vacation, he decides to escape his all too real reality and rent an old mansion in order to restart his life and return to normalcy.

Before long the mansion seems to come to life...Russell's spirit filled home becomes aggressive--shattering windows, making noises and slamming doors--but it's not enough to make him leave... yet.




After all this becomes too much for Russell, a seance is held in his home, causing the apparation to manifest itself and make its presence known. Russell's convinced that the spirit wants something from him, undoubtedly, he needs to find out before the spirit's presence is uncontrollable. Russell soon learns that a former senator lived in the house, the same house where a little boy was killed, combined it begins to seem that this may just be the cause of the haunting...watch as the spirit tears the house apart, and in many ways, tears itself apart.



This Canadian horror film is one of the best haunted house movies I've ever seen. With a brilliant score to match it's atmosphere, this film should be the archetype for all haunted house movies, and director's should be made to watch The Changeling before they spew out the familiar, yet boring regurgitated garbage that dozens have done before them. It's dated as it is one of the purest example of a well put together 80s horror film,with plenty of exterior shots, and subtle creepy occurrences, while focusing on eerie tones and building towards an over the top ending, typical of many great horror films of the time.

Empire Of Passion (1978)

Originally I had planned to blog about the Japanese film House (1977) which came out on dvd earlier this week. However, the distributor Paradox has not sent their shipments out, leaving me unable to find the dvd in the city of Toronto. Bogus.



As a result I've decided to focus on another Japanese film, Nagisa Oshima's Empire Of Passion. Considered to be Oshima's only true kwaidan, he doesn't stray too far from familiar territory of eroticism and betrayal.


Winning the prestigious best film award at Cannes in 1978, Empire Passion is combination of both drama and horror. Set in 1895, in an rural village in Japan, the film follows Seki: A loving wife who spends her time cleaning, cooking and tending to her husband, Gisaburo. As Gisaburo spends more time away, his friend Toyiji moves in and after time, convinces Seki to be his lover, secretly. Seki and Toyiji plot Gisaburo's death which they eventually execute. After they viciously strangle Gisaburo, they dump his lifeless body down a well in the forest. Seki explains her husbands absence by telling her neighbors that he has taken a job in Tokyo. Eventually rumours surface and Seki becomes haunted by her dead husband, practically driving her insane...


As her husband's disappearance becomes taken into the hands of an outside police authory in the area ,the hauntings become increasingly more intense and soon it becomes too much for Seki to handle.


Starting as an erotic drama, filled with sex, lies and passion, and changing into a ghost story filled with eerie scenes and haunting images, Empire Of passion is a beautifully made hybrid. A great drama but a much bettter ghost film, Empire of Passion has great cinemotograpy, incredible set locations and brilliant acting.

Watch and enjoy, Empire Of Passion.

The Prince Of Darkness (1987)

Undeniably a part of his masterworks, John Carpenter's The Prince Of Darkness is one of my favorite films, and one of the best films overall in regards to those which visit the joke of satan, evil and the apocalypse

"This is not a dream... not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation."


Play!




This film is infact the second film of Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy. The first being The Thing, and the last being In The Mouth Of Madness, however, none of the films are related in anyway.





The Prince Of Darkness is about an age old secret that the catholic church has been guarding for years. A vile of green liquid, sealed from the inside is said to contain the essence of evil itself, which existed before time and mankind, and the container is said to have been the vessel in which god sealed his follower's mutinous opposition. Now the liquid is brewing inside the container as people lose


their fate in the church and god.

A local preist seeks the help of a friend, a professor at a local university who teachers advanced physics to grad students. Recruiting his physics grad students, along with several other professors, they form a team to attempt to explain the liquid evil, residing, and gaining momentum in the bowels of the church. With physicists, historians, chemists staying the weekend in the church, the group attempts to make sense of this impossibility. Before long the liquid escapes and possesses some of the bodies. If the evil can reach its true potential, the gate between this world and the next will open and hell will spill across the land like the black plague.



The really attractive aspect of this film is the approach taken to address evil as a scientific anomaly not as religious fact or miracle. The vat is said to have existed before civilization, the book tells the story of the vile and how it's come to be, and according to physicists, the liquid inside denies reality and gravity simultaneously.



If all this isn't enough to grab your attention then perhaps the fact that Alice Cooper plays a homeless man controlled by other worldly forces may Most importantly, the soundtrack is one of the greatest eerie scores put together for a horror film. From the first moments of the film, Carpenter develops his characters early on so that later the film can really focus on their struggles instead of still trying to tell who they are. Host to great special effects, music, cinematography and great angles, and a truly creepy atmosphere, Prince Of Darkness never feels anything short of amazing, no matter how much you watch it.

April Fool's Day (1986)

From the writer of The Beverly Hills Cop series comes April Fool's Day!

Fred Walton's April Fool's Day can is almost like a really good episode of Saved By The Bell combined with Friday The 13th, where the teenagers are loaded with extra hormones.



On a remote island, Muffy and her friends retreat to her families cabin for a carefree weekend. Before they even arrive on shore, the tone is set when one teenager falls from the boat resulting in his face becoming gruesomely disfigured.

Shortly later, the rest of the kids begin settling in the house, pulling small pranks on each other here and there, but before long they start to go missing, one by one.

The group discovers that their host has a twin sister, whose completely mad. With the discovery of Muffy's head, the teenagers know that they're in for a rough weekend.



Starring Amy Steel from Friday The 13th Part II, April Fool's day is a not a film with a think heavy plot, but it's surprisingly well shot and well crafted considering the regurgitation of slasher films at the time. However, it seems that this film may of been a curse...the actors, director, and writer went on to do nothing substantial with their careers.

Despite everything else, this slasher is undeniably fun, lighthearted in nature, and of course, stands above the sea of boring, forgettable slashers that caused the genre to die out as the 80s progressed.