WATCHLIST - October 2024

October Watchlist 2024
A no-pressure walk through of an artisanal viewing experience

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, contributor, podcast czar, HWGW cohost

I love Halloween. Always have. I know, I'm not special. Most chain stores and companies start rolling out their Halloween offerings months in advance. But it feels false. It feels more like Hollow-een, if you catch my drift. It lacks the personal, home-spun touch of decorating that I remember from when I was a kid. Despite everyone living in the same neighborhood, every house had different decorations; a different aesthetic. It felt special.

In an effort to bring a little of the specialness back to the season, a few years ago I started composing watchlists. I'd pull out my trusty cauldron (smartphone), add a few eyes of newt (fair use photos and fonts), say "Double, double, toil and trouble" (spend a week brainstorming) and the result is a collection of film prompts - one for each day of October.

And I'm sharing this year's with YOU! Alakazam! (*)

(*) If you're a MovieJawn subscriber, a physical copy of the prompts list will be included in your Fall Zine, which you should be receiving shortly if you haven't already.

These watchlists began as a way to unite my house at the time (myself, my partner, and two roommates) with a sort of Family Movie Night, by giving everyone the chance to pick some titles for the month. As it turns out, some people I've shared these with over the years felt overwhelmed by being presented with so many open-ended choices, so in an effort to take some of the pressure off, allow me to walk you through exactly how low-pressure it is to choose titles for your very own, month-long film series!

First of all, if anything seems TOO open-ended for the moment, just come back to it later; start with the ones that are easiest for you to fill in. Remember, this is YOUR watchlist we're making, I've just given you the framework.

Secondly, there are NO wrong answers. There are no rules here. You can choose all films you've seen, or all first-time watches. If you choose a movie to fit a prompt - let's just use Oct. 1st: ROMANCE - and you've never seen it, or you remembered it differently, and it turns out you were wrong and there's no romance in it at all: Who cares? No harm, no foul.

Third: the search bar is your friend. Need some suggestions for FOOD? Typing "spooky food movies" brought up at least a dozen good suggestions from all across the horror spectrum. Need to know movies from a specific country or era? May I suggest signing up for a free Letterboxd account? You can sort films really easily there (also you can follow me @DrHBus and like every single one of my reviews).

Let's walk through the prompts, shall we? First off we have the wide-open ones: the decades ('50S - 2010S), B+W (black and white), REMAKE, and the international selections. These should be the easiest to cross off your list because you have so many options. Just pick a couple. And remember: no wrong answers! For '70S, you could choose a movie made in the 1970s like Halloween (1978) or you could pick Fear Street: 1978 (2021) which is set in that decade. Same goes for the international titles, they could be films that come from those countries, or they could take place there. Also, if you happen to live in Europe, Asia, or any Spanish-speaking country, feel free to sub in a different country. May I suggest Canada? Lot of good flicks originate up there.

Some people get in their head about what "should" or "can" go on their watchlist. Anything you want! Like SPACE for example. If, like me, you find 2013's Gravity to be an absolutely terrifying viewing experience (no joke; I had a full-on panic attack in that theater, hahaha), then that can be your SPACE movie. Or you can go with Aliens (1986), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), or Leprechaun 4 (1996). Your opinion of a movie is kind of all that matters. To that end GREAT TITLE, and SEXY should be no problem. Whether you think The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is the be-all end-all of movie titles, or you think Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh (1991) is: You Are Right! If you pick Species (1995) for SEXY because it's all about sex and breeding, or you pick the Fright Night remake from 2011 because Colin Farrell really revs your motor, both are equally valid choices.

The genre-centric ones are a piece of cake: ROMANCE, HISTORICAL, MUSICAL - those are easy enough. Just keep in mind, these things are defined however you decide they are. You can watch Shaun of the Dead (2004) as a musical because there are so many music-related moments in it. DAYLIGHT HORROR is any movie that has scary scenes during the day, FOLK HORROR is anything with that pastoral, cut-off from the modern world vibe, and NOT HORROR is anything that's still spooky season appropriate, but not a horror movie: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) comes to mind.

It's all free association. FOOD could be The Silence of the Lambs (1991) because we're all food to Hannibal the Cannibal; SONS + DAUGHTERS can be any movie where the family unit is threatened or upended, maybe The Faculty (1998) or Children of the Corn (1984). Don't stress about it. No one is going to come to your house and revoke your Movie Enjoyer card.

If the FRANCHISE ones seem intimidating, keep in mind that they don't have to be from the same series. You could only watch IT: Chapter One (2017) because it's technically a 2-part franchise but the 2nd one is garbage (don't @ me). Most franchises have at least three entries, so SEQUEL and THIRD shouldn't be too hard to assign titles for, I honestly don't even see 4TH being a huge roadblock, and FINAL can just be the final film in a franchise, or one of many films with "Final" in the title.

Now, there are a few prompts that I can imagine might throw a couple of people. What constitutes a LOW BUDGET? Well, if nothing jumps readily to mind, use the MST3k rule: if Mystery Science Theater 3000 has ever done an episode on it, that's probably right in the sweet spot. PICK A NUMBER can be any film with a numerical title. Heck, you could get a little meta, actually make a list of titles, and roll some dice to pick on that night. I just came up with that right now! See how easy this is?

ALL HALLOW'S EVE is my "free space". This is any damn thing you just LOVE watching on Halloween!

This October on my podcast Hate Watch/Great Watch, we're doing ALL vampire movies, so to show you an example of a completed watchlist, here's a hypothetical Vamp-tober watchlist:

The only ones I got tricksy with here were maybe The Apple for MUSICAL (it's definitely a musical, but really only briefly features a vampire. Though we are assured it's an "actual, actual, actual, vampiiiiiire!") and Twilight: Breaking Dawn Parts 1+2 for FINAL. In my mind, since they're one movie split into two parts, they count as one. Lost Boys might confuse some folks as my pick for FRANCHISE, but it may surprise you to know there were a few direct-to-dvd style sequels called The Tribe (2008) and The Thirst (2010). Fun Fact.

HWGW drop new episodes every other Wednesday, which means three episodes in October this year! Jugular Wine: A Vampire Odyssey (1994) for the prompt LOW BUDGET, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) for REMAKE, and a little film called Love Bites (1988) for SEXY. I imagine Herzog's Nosferatu might be streaming, but the other two I doubt will be. Fear not! You can just listen to our discussions of those films and decide if they're worth the time/money/effort to track down and watch for yourself.

And speaking of time and effort: I'm including a blank watchlist below for you to download, so you can fill in the titles on your own! If you end up making your own watchlist using this year's prompts, let us know! Share my prompts list and your selection of titles on social media with #spookyjawn and remember to tag @DrHBus, @MovieJawn & @HWGWpodcast anywhere applicable.

I hope this October finds you well, and that this watchlist makes your spooky season even more enjoyable. Long Live the Movies!

The Gospel of Brahms

The Gospel of Brahms

By “Doc” Hunter Bush


In the church of cinema, all are welcome.

When you watch a lot of movies as I do, it’s hard to find yourself really and truly reeling from a film. Not “surprised” in the usual “I’ve never seen that before”, or “I can’t believe we’re going there” ways. Numerous filmmakers’ entire filmographies are those kinds of films. No. I’m talking about a tricksier bit of cinematic magic: the kind where you think you’re well ahead of the movie you’re watching, savvy to all the coming reveals, when in fact you couldn’t be less on the trolley.


The Old Testament:


William Brent Bell’s 2016 slow burn thriller The Boy and 2020 sequel Brahms: The Boy 2 are exactly this kind of movie. I’ve spoken at length about my opinion of the original flick and my experience watching it for the first time (on the Hate Watch/Great Watch podcast, episode 45), but I’m always happy to do so again. I am not a religious man by inclination, but I will happily be the prophet of the Gospel of Brahms and to grow the film’s flock.

I implore you to seek out and experience these films for yourself before continuing, but for those still here: The Boy tells the story of Greta (Lauren Cohan), a young American woman taking a live-in childcare job for the Heelshire family in England. At first it seems like Greta will be caring for a doll which the Heelshires simply think is their deceased son Brahms - a phenomena called Animism - before Greta starts to think that perhaps Brahms is, in some way, a conduit for a spirit. The script by Stacey Menear even leaves breadcrumbs implying that the spirit in the house is not of the dead Heelshire boy but of a childhood playmate named Emily Cribbs who passed away under suspicious circumstances decades ago. This misdirection works so well because it appears as if it’s hidden, giving the viewer the feeling that they’re piecing everything together when in fact they’re ignoring much bigger, stranger clues hidden in plain sight.

The rules, for instance. Greta is left a list of rules that she must follow, lest she risk angering the temperamental Brahms. Some, such as Rule 6. Play Music Loud could be explained via supernatural predilections: maybe the afterlife is noisy? But others, like Rule 3. Leave Meals in Freezer seem to have no unearthly explanation. In the finale, it is revealed that Brahms’ shenanigans aren’t supernatural but rather the work of a human - albeit a very strange, obsessive, socially hampered one -  who has been living in the walls of his family home since childhood; a ruse intended to shirk any responsibility in the death of Emily Cribbs.

Watching the Brahms-the-man emerge from the wall (wearing a porcelain mask, as one does) is one of those transcendent film moments. To quote Rosalie Kicks “Your pants are shit.” I remember scooting forward until I was literally on the edge of my bed with my jaw wide open and my eyes even wider somehow. It was without a doubt one of the biggest viewing surprises in my adult life. So much so that I began to, slowly, quietly, devote my life to spreading the good word of Brahms.

The Boy was not a huge success. No one really made much of a fuss about it during its release. In fact, I only watched it on a whim via a streaming service some years later. The fact that there had been no chatter about a sequel or any inkling of an extended Brahms cinematic universe in all the time since release led me to presume that it would remain a secret, shared only among a chosen few. But lo and behold one day I heard the good word! A miracle had happened! Someone had greenlit a sequel! Huzzah! That sequel would end up being called Brahms: The Boy 2 and it would upend everything I thought I knew about Brahms.

The New Testament:


Though Brahms-the-man had apparently perished in the final moments of the Old Testament, here we are introduced to another traumatized family who end up finding Brahms-the-doll half buried in the woods around the former Heelshire estate and begin to experience similar, though less obtusely supernatural, activities. There are new rules this time, and more violence, and we learn that there is more to “Brahms” than we’d originally thought. Not only has Brahms-the-doll been around far longer than it previously seemed, but he’s always been associated with violence; killer children specifically.

Again, I urge you to seek out and experience both of the testaments for yourself, but having said that: In the climax of the New Testament, we see that the doll, previously thought to be only that, is actually the physical vessel for some gnarled, profane thing - headflesh pulsating, oozing fluids from it’s sphincteral mouth - despite being hundreds of years old! We learn that it whispers to its victims, who seem to historically be male, and take a kind of control of them where they are in its thrall and no longer fully in command of their own minds, nor actions. After seemingly destroying Brahms-the-doll, the family believe they have returned to some form of normalcy only for the film’s final moments to reveal that Brahms-the-thing still has its connection to son Jude (Christopher Convery).

Clearly we have not learned all there is to learn about “Brahms”.

The Gospel of Brahms


When the slasher franchises of the ‘80s lumbered their way into the theaters of the ‘90s, they took chances. Jason went to Manhattan, Hell, and eventually space; Michael Myers was revealed to bear an ancient rune which explained his supernatural singlemindedness; Freddy got meta. Your mileage may vary on how well any of these choices played out, but you have to admire the gusto. Both entries into the Boy franchise capture that same energy, the feeling of the rug dying to be pulled out from under you without a moment’s notice and with no care for your feelings on the matter.

In a better world, The Boy would have as many titles on the metaphorical video store shelf as Friday the 13th, or Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm St. There should be a new canon of post-millennial slasher boogeymen that includes Brahms, as well as Ma, Krampus and The Empty Man (each from their respective titles), maybe even Gabriel from Malignant. Why not? I feel less and less like filmmakers are being constrained by their genres, relying on audiences’ familiarity with certain clichés to set up the twists and turns ahead.

Any film can have a “twist ending”, but few pull it off as satisfyingly as The Boy. Each time I rewatch it, I notice some new subtle detail that supports the ending. Not even The Boy 2 can catch that lightning in a bottle twice, but I still admire its swagger. To commit so thoroughly to an ending as ludicrous as “the doll was really hiding an unknown creature” is …impressive if nothing else. I doubt we’ll get any further entries into the franchise, but I’d’ve said the same and been wrong before. Where could these possible future installments lead? What could they reveal? The franchise has proven that nothing is really off the table.

During the pandemic lockdown, MovieJawn adopted Brahms as a mascot for COVID safety, imploring everyone to “follow the rules”. Neither myself nor MovieJawn condone the actions, methodologies, or objectives of Brahms he/they/itself, because that’s not what the Gospel of Brahms is about. It’s about surprises. About the audience being guided on a journey where you think you know your destination. About that visceral pants-shit fun you can only have with movies. Each film takes a big swing and, when viewed on their own, can be extremely entertaining viewing experiences that defy the jaded “seen it all” feelings that, sadly, many genre efforts tend to elicit. When considered as parts of a larger story however, they become fascinatingly strange; hinting at a great, dark and glittering chasm beyond the confines of familiar, easy, genre expectations.

With his serene porcelain visage and fancy lad sweater vest ensemble, Brahms just seems so reasonable. And he is, so long as everyone follows the rules. But perhaps you have to know the rules to know when you can break the rules. And that is the Gospel of Brahms. Amen.

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This piece was written for MovieJawn, a fabulous site where you can find tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine, or listen to me on the  Hate Watch / Great Watch  podcast! Support the MovieJawn Patreon here!
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EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN, Vol. 32 - October 2021

Everything Old Is New Again

Volume 32 - October 2021

by Hunter Bush

Finally, the time has come! The spooky season is truly here! I know we crossed into "autumn" a few weeks ago, but it wasn't until now that I've begun to truly see the signs: My neighbor set up a giant spider on the front of their home, the local beer distributor has a bumper crop of seasonally spiced and labelled brews, and best of all, one day I pried the lid off my coffin and woke to find ...that it was chilly! So I spent the morning sipping coffee in my flannel robe! It finally feels like fall!

Did you see the Elvira 40th Anniversary special on Shudder? It was wonderful! I had actually watched Mistress of the Dark a few months back (and loved it) so I was primed for Elvira to invade my living room. She's so fabulous and pithy, and her horror host style included randomly popping into the movies to make the occasional snarky comment and I l-o-v-e-d it! I would love it if Shudder did two things: I would love for Elvira to get her own series a la The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs (and Darcy the Mail Girl), and I'd love for Shudder to give more horror hosts specials and expose them to a wider audience! I think those are very good ideas and I think Shudder should hire me. So three things.

But we're not here to talk about that, this is Everything Old Is New Again so we're here to talk about the Adaptations, Remakes, and Long-Gap Sequels based on other works that will be coming to screens great and small in the month of October, the year of our dark lord 2021. How I run things is: I watch the trailers, try to parse out what I think the movie/series is doing, and give my opinion on how it looks and if I'll see it. I'll also, down at the bottom include a few films that aren't new, but are still EOINA-friendly material that I'd like to shine a spotlight on.

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PREMIERS

All the brand new flicks and series coming to your eyes

1st

The Many Saints of Newark (dir. Alan Taylor)

Where: In theaters / HBO Max

All opinions expressed in this column are my own personal ones, obviously, AND I don't mean to yuck anyone's yum but before watching this trailer, I just did not get this. I enjoyed The Sopranos well enough (it has it's ups and downs for me) but at no point did I ever wonder "exactly how did Tony get into the business?" Not only because we've seen this concept explored in different mafia films, but even the show itself kind of covers it in degrees, right? You see characters coming up, finding their way, balancing their asperations with their ...desire not to be killed. It's, as the saying goes, a tale as old as time. BUT, there's just something about an organized crime story, which is a fundamentally American story, that appeals to most people. Add to that the candy coating of "IP characters I am already somewhat familiar with" and this seems like it'll be a hit. To be fair, it looks good. The use of The Flying Lizzards' song "Money" is a little jarring with the on screen visuals, which are largely of the '60s & '70s while "Money" was released in '79 and is inexorably linked to the 1980s. Having said all of the above, I think weirdly that now might be the exact right place for a prequel film to The (massively popular, but off the air for 14 years) Sopranos, which aired from 1999 - 2007, to drop: during the initial quarantine lockdowns, my social media feeds were awash in folks rewatching the series end-to-end, or finally finding the time to devote to the 86 episode juggernaut. So we'll see. I personally will give it a glance, but it's not super high on my list, especially heading towards Hallowe'en; it's just not the energy I'm after right now.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (dir. Andy Serkis?!?)

Where: In theaters

Meh. I never ended up seeing the original Venom (2018) so I'm not in much of a hurry to see Let There Be Carnage, both based on characters and storylines from assorted Marvel Comics' Spider-Man series. I think I'm just extremely, bone-deep weary from all these CGI fight scene movies. If I'm looking at something and I know it's going to be nothing but a more expensive cartoon, I'm kind of bored of it. Granted, there's not really any way to do Venom, or Carnage for that matter, without a pantload of computer visualizations, so then the draw for me becomes the non-CGI monster-fight moments. I like Tom Hardy but this trailer doesn't make anything about this movie seem appealing to me. It seems to me to be about duality: Eddie Brock (Hardy) and Venom (also Hardy, but doing a Dr. Claw voice), or Cletus Kassidy (Woody Harrelson) and his hairpiece. Seriously though, the "humor" in this largely didn't work for me: Eddie sees that his ex is now engaged and that's, like, a thing? My dude, you have an alien monster symbiote that lives in your body and mind; you have bigger fish to fry. Get over yourself and get your whole alter ego thing straightened out. I did like that Venom is apparently afraid of Carnage because Carnage is a different species/breed of symbiote, but that's not enough to get me in theaters.

6th

V/H/S '94 (dirs. Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, Timo Tjahjanto)

Where: Shudder

The V/H/S anthology series began in 2012, with 2 further installments in 2013 & 2014 respectively. Now, after a 6+ year gap, we're getting another. The framing device here seems to be a SWAT team entering some cult-ish compound and (I presume) finding a bunch of videotapes, which will contain short found footage horror stories in bite-size installments from the directors listed above who are responsible for such flicks as Knives & Skin, The Guest, The Night Comes For Us and tons more. The cut up nature of the trailer doesn't give me a ton of idea what the shorts will be about, though one seems to be set in a funeral home during a black out, there's one that seems heavily medical in nature (and may be linked to the bit near the end where someone affixes an Mega Man-style arm cannon to themselves), and there's some good, old fashioned creeping through some underground tunnels with a monster nearby. All in all this looks really fun, though the nature of all anthologies means that there will be ups and downs. Personally, I'm super excited! 

Aside: Last year I began a tradition in my house - Mt. Mausoleum - of picking themes for each day of October, to guide our spooky viewing. I made a new one for 2021 and was sure to include one spot specifically for a horror movie from the current year and I think, this time, I'm going to vote for V/H/S '94. I've included this year's in case you'd like some ideas:

8th

Muppets Haunted Mansion (dir. Kirk R. Thatcher)

Where: Disney+

Do I need to explain much about this one? It's the Muppets in a spooky Haunted Mansion (I mean, it's specifically the Disney one, but I've never been so I don't really care about the specifics of that)! It's got Will Arnett sporting a w-i-l-d moustache! It's got Taraji P. Henson moving around ethereally! It's got Danny Trejo winking at you! I guess the plot is that if Gonzo and Pepe can last all night in the Mansion, they'll get something (unclear) but if they fail they'll be trapped in the Mansion forever! The assorted other Muppets are playing various ghost parts. It's seems adorable and I'm sold.

Joe Bob's Halloween Hoedown (dir. Austin Jennings)

Where: Shudder

I have, of course, been a vocal proponent of Joe Bob Briggs and his return to screens in the recent years. In short he is someone I grew up with in reruns late night on the USA Network or TNT, and he helped open my eyes to genre cinema's highs and lows. I've diligently watched along with all of his specials and regular episodes so far on his Shudder run and even went to see the in-person Last Drive-In Mutantfest at the Mahoning Drive-In over the summer with some fellow mutants and MovieJawn Jawnies. No idea what films he'll be screening, but I will be there!

12th

Chucky (series)

Where: SyFy / the USA Network

This weekly series from Chucky originator Don Mancini starts with the premise that Jake (Zackary Arthur) finds a vintage (or "retro") Chucky doll at a yard sale. He brings it home to discover that even though it's talking and moving, it doesn't have any batteries! You see, as you may know and Jake will surely discover, Chucky is the spirit of a serial killer contained via voodoo in the form of a child's toy. I remember hearing some time ago that this series would continue where the films had left off, which involves a lot of hide-the-soul and even multiple dolls! And Jennifer Tilly! I don't want to spoil anything, even by theorizing, but the Child's Play/Chucky franchise has never failed to throw curveballs and surprises at fans, of which I'm firmly one. So if you're tuning in as I am, expect some big swings. Plus: Devon Sawa! 

15th

Halloween Kills (dir. David Gordon Green)

Where: In theaters / Peacock 

There once was a disturbed young boy named Michael Meyers. In 1979 he escaped containment, killed several people and attacked a babysitter named Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) who managed to fend him off. Then - if director David Gordon Green's timeline is the one you prefer - for a long time nothing happened. Until 2019, when the Michael escaped containment again and went to find Laurie. But she'd been ready and had filled her house with boobytraps, ultimately caging him in the basement and burning the house down around him. Somehow, he survived and, in this sequel which picks up immediately after the first, is still gunning for Laurie, but now also her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and, according to some expositional dialogue in this trailer, all the other people who narrowly avoided being killed by him on that night 40 years ago. I personally really enjoyed DGG's Halloween 2019, but didn't feel the need for sequels. But since we are in fact getting two, what I'm interested in is not mucking around in the tropes of the past by bringing back characters from the original. What I want is new cannon: have Laurie, Karen & Allyson work together to bring Michael Meyers down! I wanna watch Judy Greer whoop his big, mute ass with a fireplace poker! Let Andi Matichak whallop him all day with a surgical 2x4! And then let Jamie Lee Curtis pull his mask off and end this thing. I'm personally not going to theaters right now, but this is one of the films I'm most excited to see.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (series)

Where: Amazon Prime

This looks... fine. In a real case of "It Is What It Is", this is exactly what you expect from a TV series aimed at youths based on the book and movie of the same title. A group of friends on the eve of graduation accidentally kill someone with their car and dispose of the body. A year later however, someone begins taunting and tormenting them with knowledge of their crimes. As this is a series, these events will unfold slowly, across many weeks and occasionally be shoved to the wayside as these kids deal with interpersonal troubles (there's some voice over in the trailer of some female voice saying "You're totally fake. Sociopath. Drug addict. All you do is lie." before culminating with "You had sex with the one person I love." and while, yeah, that sucks, in a similar vein to Venom: You've got bigger fish to fry! This looks trashy in a way that appeals to me, but there's a lot of other series in a similar vein, so this one is low on my list unless I end up hearing great things.

28th

Horror Noire (series)

Where: Shudder

Hot on the heels of the 2019 documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, this anthology series is bringing more eyes and greater exposure to black voices in the milieu of horror. I unfortunately couldn't find a trailer for this series, but it's still supposedly dropping on the 28th. Here's hoping!

29th

Antlers (dir. Scott Cooper)

Where: In theaters

Originally set to be released in April of last year, and having endured two release date reschedulings, it seems Antlers is maybe finally perhaps ready to be seen. Based on Nick Antosca's story The Quiet Boy, this is a take on the myth of the wendigo, a hungry spirit that targets people in lonely places. Antlers is focused on Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas) who seems to be caring for someone or something that may be infected by the wendigo. When it gets loose, everything goes right to hell and local law enforcement (Jesse Plemons) and a teacher (Keri Russell) get involved, as well as a local man with knowledge of the wendigo (Graham Greene). I've written about Antlers before (maybe multiple times?) and have been eagerly awaiting seeing it, but at this point I can wait a little bit longer for VOD.

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SPOTLIGHT

A few EOINA-friendly entertainments to spookify your October.

11th

Nosferatu, the Vampyre (1979) (dir. Werner Herzog)

Where: Shudder

Actually the first version of Nosferatu I ever saw (having confused it on the video store shelf with the original), Werner Herzog's loving tribute to Murnau's 1922 silent film is beautiful. Nosferatu was based on Bram Stoker's story Dracula, but was made without rights, so the names were changed. Herzog allegedly began production on his on the day that Dracula entered the public domain so he would be able to use all the original names, and tread as close to the original text as he'd like. Klaus Kinski plays the titular vampyre with pathos and depth. While Herzog saw Nosferatu as a metaphor for change, Kinski viewed him as sympathetic and drives by forces out of his control. I haven't seen it in approximately a million years but I'm really interested in viewing it now that I have more familiarity with Herzog.

18th

Children of the Corn (1984) (dir. )

Where: Shudder

Based on the Stephen King story and co-starring friend of MovieJawn Courtney Gaines, Children of the Corn follows an unlucky couple (played by Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton) whose car breaks down in a small middle American town where a cult of children kill any and all adults, in service of their spooky eldritch deity He Who Walks Behind the Rows. This is pretty high on my list of ideal spooky season group viewing: it's the right vibe, has plenty of fun and scares and, most important to a group viewing experience, downtime in which to goof on the movie. This is classic, pre-meta horror stuff: these characters are undeniably in a horror movie and yet they remain blissfully unaware until it is almost entirely too late. Absolute chef's kiss of a movie here, folks.

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That's as good a note to end on as any, I suppose. If any of these flicks are on your personal watchlist, let me know what you think of 'em, and if you've got an October watchlist, share it my way, why dontcha?

Thank you for reading this, as always, and if you'd like more from me - aside from the many articles I have floating around on MovieJawn - you can catch me on Hate Watch/Great Watch the podcast I cohost, where we've got episodes on the Brucesploitation flick The Dragon Lives Again (a.k.a. Deadly Hands of Kung Fu) (1977) and the film that all but defines the phrase "troubled production" Wes Craven's werewolf mess Cursed (2005).

Until next time, stay spooky and Long Live the Movies!

Hold Me Tight: Callin' from Tobe Hooper's THE FUNHOUSE

"Hold Me Tight: Callin' from Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse"
by Hunter Bush



It wasn't until my second time watching Tobe Hooper's breakthrough horror flick - 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - that it dawned on me that it was nearly a perfect movie. Everything in it works to achieve its ends. In under 90 minutes, Hooper & co. had codified an entire subgenre of horror in such a way that the landscape would never be the same and also created a character in Leatherface (played by Gunnar Hansen) who, though slightly less prevalent in our cultural lexicon than his slasher cousins Freddy, Jason & Michael, is assuredly of their caliber.

That's when I decided I wanted to watch all of Hooper's flicks. I'd seen Poltergeist (though I wasn't at that time aware of the rumors surrounding it which would follow Hooper for the rest of his career) but I wanted to see more. Over the years I've checked a few off of my list, but The Funhouse eluded me. Until now.

"Halloween (2018)"

Is it weird to tell you I got emotional during Halloween 2018? Well I did. My eyes welled up during the finale, watching the culmination of a 40-year battle with evil reach its close. Seeing how the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers finally ends... for now. Because, let's be real: this won't be the last Halloween movie. By hook or by crook, there will be more but that knowledge shouldn't diminish your enjoyment of any of them.

As with all movies, the movie itself should be taken on its own merit as much as possible, and on its own merit, Halloween 2018 is a story about the cost of surviving.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN 5

You ever get the feeling you've been working too hard? Overthinking something that should be simple? I've been feeling that way about this column. Not that it, or you reading this, aren't worth the effort, mind you. It's just that I was reminded of a quote by Schumacher (that's E.F., not Joel) who said "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." So that's what I'm doing going forward with Everything Old Is New Again.

EOINA was never, itself overly complex; I watch trailers for the movies coming up that are based on some pre-existing concept and I weigh in on them. When I can, I contrast and compare them with their source materials, which isn't always possible. But instead of doing a bunch of digging to try and decode what's happening in the trailers, now I'll be taking them more at face value. These trailers are what they give us to go on, and while some flicks get multiple trailers to build anticipation, most only get one.

To remind you all: these are all based on some previously existing story; maybe they're a remake of an older or foreign language film, maybe they're adapted from a book or game or song, or maybe they're a soft reboot or relaunch of a franchise that might still be viable? Either way they're here, wringing every last drop of profitability from a concept, and I'm here to talk about them, so here we go: