Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Spooky season is over! sol_se and I ended up watching 50 spooky movies over the course of the month. Plus, we're still in a spooky mood, so there may be more to come.

I finished all the DLC for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. I started Assassin's Creed III, which came free with Odyssey, but realized I'd rather be back in Ancient Greece. Yes, I started a New Game+ for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

I finally finished The Wicked + the Divine. I'm not sure I fully understood it. Something about stories being traps? I still liked it a great deal.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Tales of Terror (1962)
The Haunted Palace (1963)
Twice-Told Tales (1963)
Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1970)
Halloween (1978)
Halloween II (1981)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Halloween 5 (1989)
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (Producer's Cut) (1995)
Halloween H20 (1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Halloween (2018)
Prom Night (1980)
The Fog (1980)
Terror Train (1980)

We finished off the Corman-Poe-Price series (less The Raven, which we'd both watched before). I think Pit and the Pendulum is still my favorite, followed by The Raven. Tomb of Ligeia, despite being very pretty, is also very dull.

Twice-Told Tales is interesting in that it tries to make a horror anthology out of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The stories are mostly just Twilight Zone tales in the 19th Century. Vincent Price is a bastard in each one.

I really enjoyed An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (which I watched solo). Vincent Price gives some very spirited readings to three Poe tales, one of which (The Sphinx) I was unfamiliar with.

I took Thursday off of work (I usually have Friday-Saturday off) so that we could really binge horror. We watched the entire Halloween (Michael Myers) series (less the Rob Zombie reboot). My ranking:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween (2018)
3. Halloween H20
4. Halloween 4
5. Halloween 2
6. Halloween 5
7. Halloween 6
8. Halloween: Resurrection

For something a little different, here's my ranking of the Michael Myers masks:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween II
3. Halloween (2018)
4. Halloween H20
5. Halloween: Resurrection
6. Halloween 4
7. Halloween 6
8. Halloween 5

Seriously, the Halloween 5 mask had a neck frill. Made him look like a Cardassian.

We finished off Halloween with a trilogy of Jamie Lee Curtis 1980 horror films. None of them are spectacular (The Fog is probably the best of the bunch), but they were fun.

Title: White Telephone
Song: Charlotte Gainsbourg - White Telephone
Source: Halloween / Halloween H20
Length: 03:29
Warnings: Physical triggers (e.g., epilepsy or migraine: strobe lights, bright lights, "stuttery" cuts between 2-3 stills), violence, stalking.
Made for: terajk 

Summary: Portrait of a survivor.



Vimeo password: lauriestrode

 

Download HD MP4 (81MB) - highly recommended
Download SD MP4 (16MB)
 

( Notes under the cut )

My review of Rob Zombie's unfortunate re-imagining of Halloween has been posted.

"It would be best to consider writer-director Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's Halloween as a separate entity from its progenitor, allowing Zombie's film the space to create its own identity in the annals of horror. Unfortunately, Zombie can't appear to let go of the original, filling his film with references, duplicated shots and sequences, even as he tries to forge his own version of the tale."

The review breaks down the film section-by-section, something I'm usually loathe to do, but felt appropriate in this case.

Keep an eye out as we'll have a "Torchwood" article by Emily Langton up in the next day or so.