Narnianwizard - Unequivocal Dumbass

Halloween Film Frightstival Day 3: John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)

Initial thoughts:

1. Holy 80’s computer animation Batman

2. The pupper already has my heart and soul, is just a happy little snow dog running in the snow, can do no wrong (for the record I maintain that Cujo did nothing wrong as well)

3. Oops I forgot that I think Kurt Russell in the 80s was kinda hot

4. The chef guy on the roller skates is gonna die (maybe first), calling it now

5. I know it’s supposed to be scary, but the concept of bloodcicles is strangely amusing to me

I know the costume department can’t cover the lead actors faces but these men are seriously underdressed for Antarctica, where’s that meme of that Irish kid talking about frostbit when you need it?

80’s movie? Flamethrower. Always with the flamethrower.

This is on par with The Fly for proof that 80s practical effects are a million times grosser than modern CGI stuff

Old white doctor man with a nose ring is a vibe and a half

Oh my god the defibrillator going straight through the guy’s chest and the ribs just munching the doctor’s hands off was probably supposed to be scary a la the chest scene in Alien, but I was legitimately cackling

The guy sticking his fingers through the other guy’s face was actually a really cool effect, it reminded me of Cassandra Nova fingering everybody’s brains in Deadpool and Wolverine, except with special effects makeup instead of CGI

Okay I totally didn’t get bored and zone out in the middle part of the movie (except I did because it was just a lot of dudes grumbling at and blaming each other, there were no stakes, I could hardly keep the characters straight and didn’t care about any of them)

I also lowkey zoned out during the very end because I didn’t realize it was the end, I hate when movies just end abruptly like that. So I don’t actually know if my prediction about roller skate guy dying was right oh well

The action was very actiony, over the top and at times overacted. The effects are really good, but the gore was way too cheesy to actually be scary. I mean come on there were like 30 seconds straight of a very obvious mannequin being eaten head first by a creature while flailing about and fake blood spraying everywhere, that’s so silly. I think the creature stuff could’ve been really scary if I couldn’t visually see the texture of whatever clay material they crafted them out of, it was really impressive as art, not so much as something designed to give me the heebie-jeebies.

It wasn’t bad per se but it wasn’t good either. The special effects and prop stuff were really good, but the plot, writing, characters, acting, etc were extremely mid. It’s gonna be a meh from me dawg 🫤

Halloween Film Frightstival Day 5: Ginger Snaps (2000)

I would like to implore horror movie writers to stop killing dogs in the first five fucking minutes of the film, why do they always do that? Stop murdering the puppers you motherfuckers

Anyway other than the gratuitous dog deaths, that was quite good, very vibesy, very angsty, definitely felt like Brigitte and Ginger actually were the macabre school weirdos without being the satanic mall goth stereotype that movies often use for that type of character

I’ve wondered for ages what the title referred to since it sounds more vampiric than werewolfy to me but now I’m realizing it’s a verb rather than a plural noun and not only does it make sense but it’s also a fun play on words which I appreciate

The costuming and sfx makeup were baller too, I lowkey want like all of their shoes, several of Ginger’s outfits, and a necklace with a bird skull on it

I also thought it was kind of queer coded, idk if that was intentional or not or if it’s just because werewolf stories tend to be inherently queer coded. Or maybe that was just because the dynamic reminded me of Jennifer’s Body which obviously is queer

Anyway, no more thoughts, head empty, good film 👍

Halloween Film Frightstival Day 6: The Evil Dead (1981)

Okay so I’ve been wanting to watch the original Evil Dead for fucking ever and it’s finally on a streaming service (it’s on tubi rn) and during spooky season too!

I watched the 2013 one several years back when I was a horror wimp, but still enjoyed it as an early foray into the actually scary stuff (I specifically recall enjoying making fun of the characters for doing immensely stupid shit like opening and reading aloud from a cursed book that has warnings written all over it)

Okay I was gonna try and just watch instead of keeping track of a running commentary but 10 minutes in and I just noticed one of the characters is wearing a Michigan State sweatshirt, alma mater mention! It’s fitting cause MSU is haunted as shit (well so is the entire state in general but)

Ooh the creepy exterior shots looking through the windows are goood, in fact a lot of the cinematography was good, I liked the interesting uses of angles and zooms for unsettling atmosphere. There were even oblique angles which is one of the only things I remember from the film class I took in high school and that’s the only reason I mentioned it

~ This is movie is exactly why the woods are scary, if you’d shown me this as a child who was afraid of the woods and any suspiciously woods-ish groups of trees I would’ve shit bricks ~

They all have such old people midcentury names (random thought I had because I can’t watch movies like a normal person and have to constantly make fun of the characters)

The prosthetics and makeup are soo fucking good though (the fakeness of the gore kind of throws it off sometimes, but to some degree it’s what I would expect a Sumerian demon killing coeds to look like in real life)

I think it’s interesting that they subvert the final girl trope with the order of killings, I knew enough about the franchise going in to know that there wasn’t a final girl but to have them all go first was different. I guess with Ash as the main character there’s more implications of the difficulty he’d have killing them since he has a girlfriend and a sister there

I also found it the tiniest bit campy with the wild kind of silly things that happen and the disregard for physics vis-à-vis chopping a head off with a shovel

Okay and the stop motion, while useful for what they needed to do and executed well, is not the vibe imo (I’m not the most fond of stop motion in general but that application of it brought the scare factor down for me)

The ending scream into upbeat credits music was a vibe though, I love when they put peppy music at the end of horror movies it’s so silly

Anyway I very much enjoyed that, it’s my favorite era of horror movies and borders on my favorite subgenres, I think I might have held it to too high a standard while watching because it was lower budget than probably a lot of the other horror movies I like (I just looked it up and it had like half the budget of Friday the 13th) and taking that into account it seems like even more of an impressive film. I’d probably say that was my favorite so far this week, I’ll probably check out the sequels sometime 👍