October Horror Movie Challenge 2021 - Fundraising Begins!

 It's that time again.  Take us away Silver Shamrock!

Yep, we're approaching another Hallow'een season, and this will mark my tenth (TENTH!) go-through of the October Horror Movie Challenge.  As always, we have the same rules; across the 31 days of October, I have to watch at least 31 horror/monster movies, and at least half of them (so at least 16) must be films I am seeing for the first time.  Like the previous years, I will be venturing into these strange titles (and I do have some real doozies to get through this time!) raising money for Crisis, as my fear, confusion, and pain should serve a good purpose.  And like the last few years, there is a chance for you to influence my viewing choices, three titles in particular...

Lessons Not Learned - The Room

 So The Room, it's not very good, isn't it?  It's pretty terrible, and not just in a filmmaking manner, it has a lot of really ugly, deeply mysogynistic baggage in it's story which I'm saddened that we don't really discuss more.  However, in a way we should have seen this as a warning for what was to come, how Tommy Wiseau's... bafflepiece was in a way a precursor to what another director called Tom would do, only instead of risking his own money, he did it with a big studio's...

Faux Voorhees - Canary faces Friday the 13th A New Beginning

Here's a little addendum to my October Horror Movie Challenge posts; this month I'm trying a little something coined #NewWatchNovember, trying to make all movies, TV etc. I see new to me.  Not going to make it formal or anything, it's purely for fun, and it's helping me be more decisive about what things from the unwatched Blu Ray pile I do next.  Part of this is taking care of a few leftover things from the October Challenge Pile, both clearing out the spreadsheet (yes, I have spreadsheets to organise my movie viewings) and making space on the DVD rack. Well during this sorting out, I realised that I had on the spreadsheet something that's been on there for ages which I still hadn't seen; Friday the 13th Part V.  The only reason I actually have a copy of it is that it's on the same Blu Ray disc as Part VI Jason Lives, easily my favourite of the entire run, but I've never even bothered to watch V normally, because of its terrible reputation.  When something is considered "the worst one" in a series like Friday the 13th, which isn't exactly a critical darling at the best of times, you know that's something pretty bad.  So given it was the date itself yesterday, I decided to have a mini-challenge; see if I could get a bunch more donations on the Fundraiser on the promise that I spend that evening (on a Friday the 13th that had started out very, very, very well) slogging through this.  Well, the people spoke with their wallets, so let's dig into the Friday that even a lot of die hard Jason fans have turned their backs upon.  Spoilers ahoy...

The Morlocks Will Be Right! - Leaving with Dignity? Yeah, right!

Wow, haven't done one of these in a little while.  This is the heading I use for a little political rant, and in case you didn't notice, quite a major political development happened this weekend.  The day I've been dreaming of for four years, The Furious Orange defeated.  But of course, from before the election, I knew that if Biden did win, Orange Julius would be a sore loser, and not go away without causing a whole heap of trouble.  Now thankfully, despite all of The Cheeto's boasting, and his lawyer displaying his legal prowess at in a car park between a crematorium and a dildo store on Saturday (that will never stop being hilarious!) his chances at actually changing the result are at a very low to negligible probability.  Here's a thread that can explain a lot of these reasons why better than I can.  The short version is that plain and simple, the sheer scale of electoral fraud he'd have to prove across many states, to get five digits' worth of votes disqualified in each one, when so far the only possible case of voter fraud to be seen is... a Republican voter trying to vote twice, it's impossible. (Mind, I am still touching wood after saying that; this is 2020!)  What I'm going to do here is just give my thoughts on why the administration is doing this, why some Republicans are going along with it... and a little prediction for something that might happen before this all ends.

What Would Ingmar Think? - The Canary Visits The Last House on the Left

Well, I decided to tackle the other big video nasty from the pile whilst I was at it.  Tackling Cannibal Holocaust actually did generate a bunch of donations (is that what it takes to make you give, MY SUFFERING?!?), so might as well see if I can go for a double.  It's the film that I think more than any other personified the sheer brutality of US exploitation cinema at the time, really got the ball rolling on quite a few other horror projects later in the decade, and had one of the best movie taglines of all time, which you can see in that trailer below... pity then it's such utter shite (oh, Spoiler for the review I guess).  It's 1972's The Last House on the Left.

Canary vs. The Ultimate Nasty - Cannibal Holocaust

Well, I was going to watch this one when the fundraising hit a certain level, but I decided to go ahead with this before then because I figured that I didn't want to have it lurking in the corner of the bedroom until next year.  So I decided to face it, a real challenge for me to sit through the whole thing.  As promised, I'm going to give my full thoughts on this one, mainly so I can properly purge the memory, and have something constructive from putting myself through it.  It's the poster child for the whole Video Nasties moral panic (somewhat literally, its poster was the main image used in a lot of news stories at the time), it's 1979's Cannibal Holocaust.

I'm not going to embed the real trailer, as even that is shockingly explicit, you can see it here if you like.  So I'll pepper this article with some trailers and clips for other cannibalism movies that I actually like.

Trailer of the Week - Theatre of Blood

Getting back into the blogging saddle again, so amongst other things, we're doing this again!  However, there is a sad reason for this week's choice.  Today we all received the terrible news that legend of stage and screen Dame Diana Rigg has passed away aged 82.  She has had a huge, notable career; in recent years she gained a whole new legion of fans for the part of Oleanna Tyrell in Game of Thrones, however she first became a household name thanks for her role of Mrs. Emma Peel in The Avengers.  Taking over as Honor Blackman had departed the role of Cathy Gale, she instantly became a true icon of a character, not least for her fashions.  (Fun fact comics fans; one particular episode of The Avengers, A Touch of Brimstone, was a big influence on The Dark Phoenix Saga in the X-Men, down to the outfit Rigg wore).  She then followed that up with her role as Tracey in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; not just a Bond girl though, this was the one that 007 actually fell in love with, and with Rigg in the role, you can believe why.  The ending of OHMSS still knocks me for six to this day, it's my favourite of the whole series.  She had a whole bundle of great roles over the years, including a few wonderfully OTT turns, like in The Great Muppet Caper and Evil Under the Sun.  To pay tribute to her, I'd like to reference a personal favourite of mine, one where it's clear she's having the time of her life in the part; 1973's Theatre of Blood...