Tag: Halloween
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The Curse of 31 Nights, 31 Frights wrap-up
Yet another All Hallow’s Eve has come and gone. I hope you enjoyed this year’s run of diabolical dread and devilish distress. This year we revisited some old favorites, conjured up some new scares, and assailed our ears with terrifying music. Join us next year as we return with some spooky spirits for The Ghost… Read more
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Score Card: Halloween
I find it difficult not to give the number one spot over to that classic slasher film that birthed the infamous killer known as Michael Myers, and tonight is no exception. The rightly-celebrated Halloween theme is as iconic as Bernard Hermann’s Psycho or John Williams’s Jaws. If Alfred Hitchcock can credit Hermann for 33% of… Read more
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Special Screaming: Halloween
For those of us disenchanted with the new films that have plagued theatres this year, the good news is there are a good many classic film revivals lighting up screens in the third quarter of 2012. Perhaps the imminent end of the worldis triggering a bout of movie nostalgia. Read more
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A Nightmare on Elm Street
Considering the wisecracking clown Freddy eventually became, it’s easy to forget how truly terrifying he was the first time around. Audiences didn’t know what to expect, having been inundated and dulled by countless slashers that followed in the wake of John Carpenter’s trend-setting Halloween. Read more
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Son of 31 Nights, 31 Frights: Below
Those of you who followed along last year may recall my affinity for ghost stories. In keeping with the best of them, director and co-writer David Twohy unravels this terrific little mystery that is, aside from being a good horror movie, an exceptionally well done World War II submarine thriller. Bruce Greenwood, always adept at… Read more
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Son of 31 Nights, 31 Frights: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
An unfairly-maligned meta-sequel that is in many ways cleverer, though not nearly as good or frightening as its predecessor. It’s also the reason that studios greenlight sequels that are virtually identical to their forerunners. Audiences positively hate when you don’t give them the exact same thing they saw before. Read more
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Son of 31 Nights, 31 Frights: Hannibal
You can keep your Silence of the Lambs. I’ll have none of it. Anthony Hopkins took a truly fascinating and authentically creepy sociopath and turned him into a farce, particularly when set against Jonathan Demme’s boilerplate police procedural. Fortunately, Ridley Scott came along and wrapped the character in a wonderfully tragic opera, giving the now… Read more
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Son of 31 Nights, 31 Frights: Treevenge
Depending on your disposition, after seeing this you may either get an artificial Christmas tree and spend the rest of your days in solemn repentence of your genocidal past, or buy a plot of land, plant some trees and wish that Christmas would come everyday (I suspect Eli Roth would choose the latter option). Read more
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Son of 31 Nights, 31 Frights: The Fly
In the remakes-can-be-good file comes this doozy of a gorefest from the captain of creepy, David Cronenberg. Retaining the basic foundation of the 1958 original, he amps up the flesh-defying transformation and truly heartbreaking tragedy. Utilizing Howard Shore’s bombastic score to soulful effect, the slow disintegration of lone and lonely genius Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum)… Read more
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Son of 31 Nights, 31 Frights: The Lost Boys
It’s hard to believe now but there was once a time when Joel Schumacher could make a popular film that was actually good. The vampire genre had been more or less languishing in spoof purgatory before Tom Holland came along with Fright Night to make them scary again. But who would have thought that the… Read more
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