October Horror Movie Challenge 2019 – Round Up & Awards

First of all, NOOOOOOO!!! I missed the last day of Blogtober!  My achievement ruined!  How will I cope?  Oh yeah, with this mindset.  Thanks Windsor!

Anyhoo, with the month finished, that's it for another year of my October Horror Movie Challenge!  Another October gone by, and yet more reasons for me to question why I am a fan of this genre at all.  Still, I've actually achieved a new record this year; last year was my previous best with 49 titles watched, this year I made it to 52!  W00t!  Now, whether I deliberately try to exceed that next time or not, I'll need to think about, this year was a bit exceptional with the Twilight and Halloween marathons.  I suppose it will depend if in charity shop hunting this year I find something that would make for a good marathon then.  Still, now it's time to have one last plug of the JustGiving appeal (which is already my most successful one to date!), and have a quick wrap up of my final thoughts on the films, giving out a few awards.

First of all, let's have a full recap of everything I've watched for the challenge this year.  I'll note if it's something I rewatched, or if it's something I saw for the first time, and unless I note otherwise all things listed were disks from my pile.

1. Faces of Death (New)
2. Firestarter (New)
3. Valentine (Rewatch... well, I only saw the last half before)
4. Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist (New, seen at #LFF)
5. The Antenna (Bira) (New, seen at #LFF)
6. John Carpenter's Halloween (Rewatch)
7. Wounds (New, seen at #LFF)
8. Little Monsters (New, seen at #LFF)
9. The Lighthouse (New, seen at #LFF)
10. Halloween II (1981) (Rewatch)
11. The Masque of the Red Death (Rewatch, seen at #LFF)
12. Halloween III: Season of the Watch (Rewatch)
13. Color Out of Space (New, seen at #LFF)
14. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Rewatch)
15. Zombieland (Rewatch)
16. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (New)
17. The Twilight Saga: Twilight (New)
18. The Lodge (2019) (New)
19. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (New)
20. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (New)
21. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (New)
22. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (New)
23. Ghost Rider (New)
24. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (New)
25. Halloween 6: Producer’s Cut (New)
26. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (New)
27. Halloween H20 (Rewatch)
28. Halloween Resurrection (New)
29. Halloween (2007) (Rewatch)
30. Halloween II (2009) (New)
31. Halloween (2018) (Rewatch)
32. Death Ship (New)
33. Wolfcop (Rewatch)
34. Another Wolfcop (New)
35. Stigmata (New)
36. John Carpenter's Vampires (Rewatch)
37. John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (New)
38. The Relic (New)
39. Under the Bed (Rewatch, from YouTube)
40. Road Kill (New)
41. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) (Rewatch)
42. The Nightmare Man (New)
43. Bedlam (New)
44. Dreamcatcher (New)
45. Day of the Dead (2008) (New)
46. The Unnamable (New)
47. The Unnamable Returns (New)
48. Extra Ordinary (Cinema, New)
49. Doctor Sleep (Cinema, New)
50. The Halloween Tree (Rewatch)
51. Frankenstein (1931) (Rewatch)
52. Borley Rectory (New)

So that makes it 35 new to 17 rewatches, a full October's worth of newbies, and about half of that's returns engagements.  Let's get into the awards then, starting with the most negative and going outward.

The Mary Whitehouse Was Right Award

No standard "Worst Film" award this year, as there are a whole different bunches of awful I had to get through.  To start with, my watch from the Video Nasties list this year was one of the big ones from list, one of the most notorious titles Faces of Death.  That was a real chore, and the cavalcade of real and made up violence had quite an alarming effect on me; for a brief moment, I thought those behind the whole Video Nasty business may have been on to something.  Well, OK, perhaps not that far, but when you are trying to argue that horror isn't this innately harmful movement but a genre worthy of artistic merit, having something like this as part of it really does not help your case one bit.  This is just a raw cavalcade of violence, but you know what, I might be inclined to actually defend it if in the end there was any kind of coherent point; there is no point bar ghastliness to Faces of Death!  Look at me, I'm beginning to sound like the Daily Mail at the time, that's what it did to me!  Ah well, at least that's one of the worst of the Nasties behind me; if I could get through that, the rest, where there are often actual plots, storylines, purposes, should be relatively smooth sailing. I hope.

The Pale Imitation Award

Now this is for the worst sequel/remake.  Specifically, that's for a disappointing follow up to a good film, so I can't really count any of the Twilight sequels in here.  Now with the whole Halloween series in here, that gave a lot of strong possibilities for this, as the series veered further and further away from the elegant simplicity that was the main strength of the original.  But towards the end, one obvious lead for this dubious honour became clear; Day of the Dead.  I'm one of the growing numbers of people who consider the 1985 original to be the true gem of George A. Romero's zombie films; nothing against Night and Dawn, but for me Day is the strongest story, and gets to many of his common themes the best.  This remake though... I really debate if remake even is the right word, as apart from some character names, having a friendly zombie, and there being bits set (very briefly) in a disused missile silo, there's no resemblance here!  They basically take the title and slap it on a not-very-good Resident Evil knock-off.  Seriously, there are even ridiculous super zombies in this capable of doing Spider-Man esque wall crawling.  The whole point of Romero's films is that the zombie crisis is shown as being one that can be overcome with proper teamwork, but people being people the necessary collaboration all falls apart, the undead win.  With this, it's just gunning down zombies, that's it.  Honestly, why get Ving Rhames in to be the new Captain Rhodes, and not have him act anything like Captain Rhodes?  Thankfully though, this remake seems to have slipped through the horror fandom's collective memories.  I had honestly forgot this had even happened until I saw the DVD in Oxfam.  That memory should have stayed buried.

The Blandest Film Award

Ah, the award for the film that took no brave steps, innovated in no way at all, and left the envelope safely unpushed.  Quite a few possibilities in here, including more of those Halloween sequels.  I have considered The Unnameable films, for whilst they tried for the themes of Lovecraft in fits and starts, both just descended into monster killing people runarounds.  But the winner here is part of that series which was my main obligation for the charity appeal this year; I'm going with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.  Often when talking about padding out a story's runtime, I would in the past joke about Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who, where they did often have a lot of running down corridors or getting imprisoned just to get to six episodes, but I truly did not know the meaning of padding until I saw this.  It's two hours (WHY IS IT TWO HOURs?) of very little real progress happening in the plot (Bella says yes, Jacob is still a bit mopey about it), no real stakes (for all it's hyped up, the big battle with the vampire NewBorns is really not impressive, and there are no real consequences for any of it.  For a series with pretty poor storytelling overall, to be the one that most people forget even exists (unless you know who exactly Bree Tanner is) is quite an achievement in mediocrity.

The MSTie/Rifftax Award

This is for the film that would work best as Riffing material, perfect for being made fun of.  Now at first I was thinking of going with Death Ship, as the sheer cheapness of that, and the shameless attempts to ape The Shining would give plenty of riffing material.  However, the use of Nazi imagery for some of it, especially in a tasteless fashion, does spoil the fun somewhat.  Fortunately, there is a fine alternative; Dreamcatcher.  Based on a book that Stephen King admits was written under the influence of Oxycontin (and it shows!), this is an embarrassment that managed to derail the careers of director Lawrence Kasdan, and screenwriter William Goldman.  Now I might have said "look what they had to work with", but considering what changes they made only made the story worse, that doesn't really work; you can make a good film out of anything, you just need to know what to leave out, what to keep in.  This one however cuts out a lot of the more interesting elements, like the hive-mind nature of the alien threat, and leaves in the utterly ridiculous monsters that are the "Shit Weasels".  Yes, they are referred to that in story.  They're like chest bursters in Alien, except they don't come out of the chest.  It would take a creator of great skill to make the sight of Jason Lee sat on a toilet trying to contain a monster in there actually scary.  Kasdan does not succeed.  This is prime Rifftrax material, from Morgan Freeman's J. Jonah Jameson haircut, to Damian Lewis' ridiculously silly villain voice when possessed.  Surprised that Mike Nelson and co. haven't gotten to this sooner to be honest.

The "What the Fuck am I Watching?" Award

Now this one award's name is rather self explanatory, but it can be used in both a positive or negative way.  In this case it's positive, as the winner here is for a most effective mindfuck indeed; The Lighthouse, the latest film from Robert Eggers, who previously gave us The VVitch.  Now that one, whilst having a character all of its own, was still derived from a long tradition of "folk horror".  This one on the other hand, whilst having a feel of an old sailor's tale, is a far less conventional piece of work, positively revelling in not letting the audience know whether the mad sights and actions that befall our leads are in the minds of one or both of them.  The fact that at least one of them is knowingly lying about various things really adds to that issue.  Now I can sometimes lose a bit of patience with stories that overdo the unreliable narrator card, to the point that you lose track of if there's even a story or not by the end.  This did come pretty close to that point, but the film does at least have a coherent throughline, there are actual character arcs.  It still leaves you wondering by the end if at least one or both of the characters really were secretly up to some Shape of Water shenanigans, or why there are quite so many fart jokes in here.  When this gets full release in January, it's going to lead to some interesting discussions.

Best Rewatch

Now just to clarify, this isn't necessarily the best film I rewatched, this is more about the film I got the most out of coming back to.  This year, I'm giving that nod to The Masque of the Red Death, which I saw the new restoration of on the big screen at the LFF.  It's a fine film anyway, one of my favourites, but this time I really noticed the whole theme of the decadent upper classes.  Given what's been going on in the real world the last few years, the whole theme of showing the rich engaged in utter debauchery, including debasing themselves if they think that it can get themselves one extra rung up the corporate ladder, whilst the world goes to utter shit... Yeah, dunno why that seems particularly resonant right now.  I hope that this comes to a region B blu ray soon, I'd love to share this one with everyone.  I know quite a few people not necessarily into classic horror who'd dig this.

Best Film Experience

Now for a while I was going to give this to Color Out of Space, both because I saw it with a good friend, and there was a fine Q&A with the cast, discussing the unique methods of Richard Stanley and Nicholas Cage.  However, in the end, my best was the last three on Halloween night; The Halloween Tree, Frankenstein, and Borley Rectory.  Not only because the titles were good, and it was fun introducing my friends to them, but it was just a fine Halloween night, watching them with friends.  Also, it was at a friend's place, and we joined by their cat, who used me as a cushion for a good amount of the evening.  Good company, spooky films, and a kitty wearing bat wings lying on top of me; what a combo for a Halloween night!

The "Came Outta Nowhere" Award

Now I didn't get round to seeing Zombieland 2 on the big screen as planned, probably going to see it this weekend, instead, however unexpectedly another horror comedy came out I did get to see, and one that Double Tap would have a pretty hard time beating.  Extra Ordinary is a modest Irish film, but one that succeeds admirably.  It's got a wonderfully deadpan sense of humour, whilst also playing it's supernatural elements very well.  There's quite an involved plot to this one, but the good thing is that the rules of it's take on ghosts, spells, and demonology is internally consistent, the story always plays by the rules it sets up.  This means that it's able to built up and pay off gags related to them well, and also let the audience know what the stakes are. It's great storytelling, and the fact that it's paired with genuinely hilarious character based comedy makes this a true gem.  This only got an extremely limited run in UK cinemas, so I really hope this gets a proper wide release on disc and/or streaming soon, it's a hoot!

Best Discovery

This is the best older film (older than the last year) that I saw for the first time this month.  Easy choice here, it's one I saw as a "homework assignment", Bedlam from 1946.  It's one I delayed watching for quite a while, as it's the last of the Val Lewton horrors, which I've been watching to follow along with The Secret History of Hollywood's series on him.  As such, I sort of didn't want to see it, as then that means a great run of films is over, I have nothing left to discover from his works.  But I'm glad I did; though it's not my favourite one of Lewton's (that would probably be either of the Cat People films), it's a great note to go out on, giving Karloff a strong role, and going for something more sophisticated than what Universal, much as I love them, were churning out then.  Now Shout Factory in the states had started releasing the Lewton back catalogue on Blu Ray, but that stopped rather abruptly, and now the Criterion Collection have got all the Lewton films on their streaming channel.  Hmm, might they be getting the rights together for a full Blu Ray set?  If so, and if it comes to the UK, I'm having that in a heartbeat!

Best New Film

Well this was a tough call, as there were plenty of interesting new titles to choose from.  I'm going to make this one a tie, for two films I'd really like to talk about.  For the film I had the most fun with, that's easy; Little Monsters.  There have been many zom coms over the years, many trying to be "the new Shaun of the Dead" or whatever, but this one really succeeds in that it wisely puts all the effort on a strong, character driven storyline.  It has a solid rom com storyline, a great sense of humour, a solid cast to pull it all off, and a real heart to it.  Hell, it has a moment where you wonder if the kids in the story might be in real danger, and it feels earned.  Plus it has perhaps the best horror scene involving a glove puppet I've ever seen!  Do not miss this one when it gets a limited cinema release on the 15th, it's a true crowd pleaser.

The one that's probably the best all round film is Doctor Sleep.  I'll do a full review blog as my next post, but for now I'll just say that it does a great balancing act telling a very Stephen King story, whilst also providing a fine tribute to the Kubrick version of the Shining.  It occasionally has to do a bit of stretching to do so, but it's a real treat of a film, the far more solid King sequel released this year, definitely check it out whilst in cinemas.

Well, that's that for another 11 months (slightly longer than usual since 2020's a leap year).  Thanks to those that have been following along with me through this silly journey, if you've enjoyed it please donate to the fundraiser, every penny will help the homeless as winter approaches.