Your horrifically, hideously, horrendously Hallowe'eny viewing choices?

Saturday night is the one that suits me best for my creepshow entertainment this year. I'll be kicking off with a BBC Radio 4 prog about the Hammer movie scores, then onto Host (a seance conducted over Zoom during Covid lockdown goes horribly wrong), followed by Stakeland (post-apocalyptic vampire action-horror) and rounding off with One Cut Of The Dead (Japanese comedy-horror about the cast and crew of a zombie B-movie being attacked by 'actual' zombies).

All accompanied by blood-red Shiraz, and all with the lights off (not only does it help with the atmosphere, it makes trick-or-treaters think that nobody's home).

So what about y'all?

I recently went through a 2- or 3-year period where I watched a steady diet of supernatural horror films. Saw almost all of the ones that are considred the best and the scariest. And then I watched The Witch. That film is not only about evil, it is evil. Watch it if you dare, although I wouldn't recommend doing so. Jacob's Ladder is also one of those films that is both extremely scary and exceptionally unpleasant. The double-whammy is tough to bounce back from.

I always overdo it with nothing but classic horrors every Halloween season. Universal, Hammer, silents, PreCode Horrors etc.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

I recently went through a 2- or 3-year period where I watched a steady diet of supernatural horror films. Saw almost all of the ones that are considred the best and the scariest. And then I watched The Witch. That film is not only about evil, it is evil. Watch it if you dare, although I wouldn't recommend doing so. Jacob's Ladder is also one of those films that is both extremely scary and exceptionally unpleasant. The double-whammy is tough to bounce back from.

Have The Witch on DVD, but am yet to watch it. Saw Jacob's Ladder on VHS at the time, but not since.

Been enjoying Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities.
Only four episodes released so far, we are getting two more each day today and tomorrow.
So far, really liked the Tim Blake Nelson episode "Lot 36" and the F. Murray Abraham episode "The Autopsy".

I will probably check out Cabinet of Curiosities, although I soured on Del Toro with Crimson Peak and really hated The Shape Of Water. Sitting in the theater I felt like Elaine Benes watching The English Patient. Everyone around me loving it but just squirming in my chair muttering obscenities at the screen.  

But I do like a good anthology series, and I'm guessing he's there for mostly branding.

I see they have an adaptation of Dreams In The Witch-House lined up. I just watched the Masters of Horror adaptation the other night, which is quite good. Be interested to see how it compares.

Shudder has a documentary (very long) we are partway through called WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED that explores Folk Horror as a subgenre. So far they've talked about BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL (aka CONQUEROR WORM) and THE WICKER MAN, and they have some very interesting interview subjects -- basically if a filmmaker is still alive, they seem to have talked with him.

I've got WICKER on DVD, but have to admit the 'cornbread and holly' song that is used over and over in it really sets my teeth on edge, which works against rewatches. WITCHFINDER i saw when I was only 9 years old or so and the sexual violence probably really traumatized me (the rest of the violence too, come to think of it.) The director fought with Price -- this is probably Vincent's last seriously menacing performnce -- throughout and died right after the film came out, in his mid-20s. Wonder if we lost a Polanski-level filmmaker there.

Shudder also has a couple of immensely long docs on 80s horror, one of which we got through and enjoyed for the cheesy recalls of mostly bad stuff. I think we have to rush to finish the BEWITCHED tonight because the 7 day free trial is ending, and we didn't see any actual horror movies on the channel that we wanted to see, just documentaries.

Most of my Halloween watching this year is television stuff.

I have always found that medium more conducive to scares than movies. I don't know why.

I've seen The Exorcist, The Shining, all the biggies...even The Witch!

But that feeling of looking over my shoulder and rushing to turn the lights back on...I can't really recall ever getting that from a film.

--

I was posting some of my tv selections over in the tv show thread but:

"The Grim Reaper" / Thriller - Great script from Psycho's Robert Bloch. Wealthy older woman purchases painting of the grim reaper whose previous owners have all died violently.

"Television Terror" / Tales From the Crypt - Great atmosphere, short, perfect length for the point. Kind of story you couldn't really do as a movie.

"Cigarette Burns" / Masters of Horror - From John Carpenter. I think this is by popular consensus the best of the Masters of Horror eps. Certainly a patchwork of disturbing materials. Not as good as either but evokes at least The Ninth Gate and 8MM.

"The Curse of Frank Black" / Millennium - "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" Very meditative, in fact a meditation on Halloween. Barely any dialogue. Lance Henriksen is great. Millennium is a show I have every intention of sitting down to watch from start to end soon-ish. I have only seen this episode (each of the last few Halloweens) and many years ago the one where the demons are sitting around the diner doing a kind of rendition of Screwtape Letters.

"Dreams In The Witch-House" / Masters of Horror - As I said above, I liked this one. Never been a Lovecraft guy but I liked it. First viewing. Watched it when I saw Stuart Gordon listed as director: he did a very memorable episode of NBC's Fear Itself (memorable in the sense that I saw it only once on airing in my teens but it stuck with me) but also another MOH ep adapting Poe's The Black Cat which was very well done.

"Die Hand Die Verletzt" / The X Files - Most usually go for "Home" (i.e. the one with the Amish mutants) as the show's scariest hour, but I go this one from the show's second year on the air. It starts off as a humorous satire (opens with a PTA board discussing the suitability of their students performing Jesus Christ Superstar before they are revealed as literal satanists) but gets increasingly horrific as the episode unwinds and it is revealed that the satanists have repeatedly raped and impregnated one of the students in order to subsequently sacrifice the resulting babies.

trevanian wrote:

Shudder has a documentary (very long) we are partway through called WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED that explores Folk Horror as a subgenre. So far they've talked about BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL (aka CONQUEROR WORM) and THE WICKER MAN, and they have some very interesting interview subjects -- basically if a filmmaker is still alive, they seem to have talked with him.

I have seen Witchfinder and Wicker Man. I enjoyed both, but have never re-watched. Blood On Satan's Claw has passed me by. Maybe I will give that a watch in the next few days.

Took a notion for the '82 Thing last night ... still a claustrophobic paranoid classic, with surely some of the gnarliest practical gore effects ever filmed.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Took a notion for the '82 Thing last night ... still a claustrophobic paranoid classic, with surely some of the gnarliest practical gore effects ever filmed.

Another very bleak and rather frightening film. The scene where the caged dog gets killed is hard to watch. Animal suffering probably affects me more than human suffering.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Took a notion for the '82 Thing last night ... still a claustrophobic paranoid classic, with surely some of the gnarliest practical gore effects ever filmed.

Another very bleak and rather frightening film. The scene where the caged dog gets killed is hard to watch. Animal suffering probably affects me more than human suffering.

When Max's dog is killed (off camera) in ROAD WARRIOR, it always takes me out of the movie. Might be the only serious objection I have to the film, but it is the first thing I think of when i consider rewatching it.

The dog stuff in THE THING never bothered me, though first time through, back in laserdisc days, my wife gave up on the movie. I finally showed her the making of stuff and got her semi-comfortable with it, but the sounds are pretty horrific, I grant you.

I have tried to avoid seeing anything real with animals -- pretty much takes most nature shows off the table, since they always seem to have to show some of that stuff -- when I was a teen there was a clip of BLESS THE BEASTS AND THE CHILDREN advertising it starting to run on local TV and they showed buffalo being shot down, which was a helluva terrible way to promote a flick.

John Carpenter said that the mostly negative critical response to and mediocre box-office of The Thing was the part of his career he found hardest to take, whilst conceding that E.T. is evidence that what the audience wanted at the time was positive depictions of alien visitors.

trevanian wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Took a notion for the '82 Thing last night ... still a claustrophobic paranoid classic, with surely some of the gnarliest practical gore effects ever filmed.

Another very bleak and rather frightening film. The scene where the caged dog gets killed is hard to watch. Animal suffering probably affects me more than human suffering.

When Max's dog is killed (off camera) in ROAD WARRIOR, it always takes me out of the movie. Might be the only serious objection I have to the film, but it is the first thing I think of when i consider rewatching it.

The dog stuff in THE THING never bothered me, though first time through, back in laserdisc days, my wife gave up on the movie. I finally showed her the making of stuff and got her semi-comfortable with it, but the sounds are pretty horrific, I grant you.

I have tried to avoid seeing anything real with animals -- pretty much takes most nature shows off the table, since they always seem to have to show some of that stuff -- when I was a teen there was a clip of BLESS THE BEASTS AND THE CHILDREN advertising it starting to run on local TV and they showed buffalo being shot down, which was a helluva terrible way to promote a flick.

I can handle animal violence in the animal kingdom--although I certainly don't enjoy it--because it is a natural occurrence. But human-on-animal violence repels me. There's a scene in The Last Exorcism where a demonically-possessed girl kills a cat; I'd much rather not even see it.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

John Carpenter said that the mostly negative critical response to and mediocre box-office of The Thing was the part of his career he found hardest to take, whilst conceding that E.T. is evidence that what the audience wanted at the time was positive depictions of alien visitors.  

Spielberg is versatile here. E.T. on the one hand, War of the Worlds on the other.

Ah yes.

Well, I enjoyed the radio prog and Host (jump scares aplenty), but found Stakeland just OK (basically came across as The Walking Dead with vamps instead of zombies) and One Cut Of The Dead was so smugly 'meta' I bailed halfway through. Ah well.

Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS (#3 on my list of his films, under THE THING and ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13), then Kubrick's THE SHINING. This viewing managed to succeed in a way no others have in the past 27 years (and there were LOTS of them), because my wife is finally interested in reading Stephen King. I think it came out of me always talking about how in the book Torrance changes from normal to whatever, whereas in the film he seems at least partly gone from the first eyebrow-raise. We'd rewatched BARBARIANS AT THE GATE recently (which is even better than I remembered and that is saying a lot) and I was thinking Peter Riegert as Torrance, which my wife improved upon by suggesting Karen Allen (his GF in ANIMAL HOUSE) as Wendy.

Watched The Changeling last night ... atmospheric and melancholy, with one particular absolute jolter of a scare involving a mirror.

Somerset wrote:

I will probably check out Cabinet of Curiosities, although I soured on Del Toro with Crimson Peak and really hated The Shape Of Water. Sitting in the theater I felt like Elaine Benes watching The English Patient. Everyone around me loving it but just squirming in my chair muttering obscenities at the screen.  

But I do like a good anthology series, and I'm guessing he's there for mostly branding.

I see they have an adaptation of Dreams In The Witch-House lined up. I just watched the Masters of Horror adaptation the other night, which is quite good. Be interested to see how it compares.

Finished it now. The best three episodes were the aforementioned Lot 36 and The Autopsy, as well as the final episode of the series, The Murmuring (from director Jennifer Kent).
Unfortunately I thought their two Lovecraft adaptations (Dreams in the Witch house and Pickman's Model) were the weakest two entries.

I only managed to watch two before Halloween, Salomé, but I'm going to go back in a watch a few more. I went for The Autopsy and Pickman's Model. There were elements in The Autopsy I really liked, but also some that weren't "my thing." Pickman's Model was all-around more up my alley though that was more the premise than the execution.

Either way I had a good enough time with both to keep watching. I'll go for Lot 36 and The Murmuring per your rec. (And probably skip "Dreams" altogether.)