31 Days of Horror 2015: The Mummy and Bad Milo

8. The Mummy (1959)

I'm always bored by Universal Studios' "The Mummy" (1932), but the Hammer Studios version is much better. It's the same basic story of British archaeologists finding a lost Egyptian tomb and unwittingly awakening a mummy who follows them back to London.  One advantage the Hammer version has is Peter Cushing. It also benefits from a stronger, more agile mummy who bursts through doors and windows and throws people around when they get in his way. Better mummy makeup and a climatic chase scene through a swamp add to the entertainment. If you like the idea of mummy movies but can't stay awake through the Universal classic and can't stomach the modern versions, check out Hammer's "The Mummy."

9. Bad Milo (2013)

"Bad Milo" is a good example of the limitations of Netflix rating system, which uses stars to show your expected rating rather than the average of the ratings submitted by other viewers. My expected rating for "Bad Milo" was only 2 1/2 stars out of 5, but if Netflix knew how much I love the the movies of Frank Henenlotter, it would have been a 5. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, Henenlotter made several very entertaining, tongue-in-cheek horror movies which are best described as body horror creature features. The best is "Basket Case" (1982), in which two siamese twins take revenge on the doctors who separated them and attempted to kill Belial, the malformed twin who is a little more than a blob with a face and arms. His brother Duane carries him around in a basket. Both sequels are also very entertaining. The tagline for the third gives you a good idea of what to expect: "It's time to get a bigger basket."

Jacob Vaughn, the director of "Bad Milo", was clearly inspired by Henenlotter, and I'm glad to see that someone is carrying on the tradition. Milo is a stress-induced stomach polyp that develops into a small creature that looks a bit like a human baby with sharp teeth. Milo lives inside a man named Duncan, and when anyone causes Duncan stress, Milo exits through his asshole and kills them. He then crawls back inside through the same hole. Vaughn takes full advantage of his story's many opportunities for toilet humor, but he also avoids taking the jokes so far that the eclipse his horror story. This is a trap that catches most horror comedies, and the reason why I usually lose interest less than half way through. ("What We Do in the Shadows" (2014) is a recent example.)

31 Days of Horror 2015: Werewolves

6. Ginger Snaps (2000)

John Landis's "An American Werewolf in London" (1981) ruined werewolf movies for me years ago. It was the first werewolf movie I ever saw, and it towers so far above other werewolf movies, not to mention most other horror movies, that they almost always leave me disappointed. It would be a bit like seeing Iron Maiden open for King Diamond and Motorhead. Both are excellent bands, but nothing compares to a live Maiden show.

When I watch "The Wolf Man" (1941), which is often cited as a classic of the subgenre, I just want Lon Chaney, Jr. to stop whining and for the movie to end. I like "The Howling" (1981) but for whatever reason, it's just not very memorable, and although the sequels are terrible, "An American Werewolf in Paris" (1997), makes them look good. (Here's a cinema axiom: If Julie Delpy is in it, it sucks, and yes, this applies to the Richard Linklater movies, too. In fact, here's another cinema axiom: If Richard Linklater made it, it sucks.) "Silver Bullet" (1985) is actually very good, and Dog Soldiers" (2002) isn't bad.

However, the only werewolf movie that even approaches the level of "An American Werewolf in London" is "Ginger Snaps." Like Landis before him, director John Fawcett presents the werewolf as a victim of her condition. However, he goes further by using the werewolf myth to explore the horror of puberty. Ginger's period starts the day after she is bitten by a werewolf, and the onset of puberty is linked with lycanthropy.

Werewolf movies often unfold as if the highpoint is the transformation scene, and it's almost always disappointing because it's never as good as the one in "An American Werewolf in London." Fawcett avoids this scene altogether, and takes the much more interesting approach of having Ginger transform gradually. This enables him to show her vacillation between resisting and accepting her body's changes.

"Ginger Snaps" is an excellent horror movie. It reminds us that although the werewolf myth offers rich source material, movies based on the myth work well only when they elicit the right amount of sympathy and horror for their werewolf characters.

7. Werewolf of London (1935)

I never understand why "The Wolf Man" (1941) is always considered the classic Universal werewolf movie, not only because it's not very good, but also because "Werewolf of London" is so much better. "The Wolf Man" fails because its werewolf is neither sympathetic nor horrifying. He's just annoying, and he looks ridiculous. The werewolf in "Werewolf of London" isn't sympathetic or horrifying either, but he at least looks cool. The make up and transformation scenes are very effective.

However, the more important factor in the movie's success is that it's just weird. It throws in a bit of mad science, as the werewolf is also a botanist who is cultivating a flower that blooms only by moonlight. His collection of plants includes one that eats mice, and inside his laboratory is a monitor that shows who's outside. (Remember, this was 1935!) To make things even more interesting, "Werewolf of London" actually features two werewolves, and they fight over a plant that provides a temporary cure for their condition.

This one doesn't explore the full potential of the werewolf myth like "An American Werewolf in London" and "Ginger Snaps," but it takes a unique approach, and no matter how many times I watch it, it remains fascinating.

7.5. Unfriended (2015)

This is an hour and a half of college students in a video chat. I don't know what we were thinking when we tried watching this piece of shit. It's worse than it sounds, and we only lasted thirty minutes. It did cause me to pause for a few minutes to wonder if college students like it, which of course made me ask, will this end up being one of many experiences to come when I'll hate a movie because I'm too old to get it? Was my response to this movie akin to my grandmother complaining that she's discriminated against because she doesn't have an email address? If so, fuck it. No amount of annoying horror movies for younger people can take my "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" away from me.

31 Days of Horror 2015: Bloodfreak

5. Bloodfreak (1972)

I've been a fan of bizarre movies for at least twenty years, but because I'm too young to have experienced the drive-in in its heyday, until recently, most of my experiences with cinematic oddities were on the small screen. I have many fond memories of watching classics like "Basket Case," "Reptilicus," and "El Santo vs. Dracula and the Wolfman" on home video with a small group of friends, and I expect to create many more. However, there's also something special about sitting in a room full of strangers, staring at a movie screen, and witnessing a serial killer with the head of a turkey hacking up his victims and drinking their blood.

I was able to have this experience thanks to the local independent theater, the Nickelodeon, and its series "First Friday Lowbrow Cinema Explosion." This month's movie was "Bloodfreak," and to call it "bizarre" is a bit like calling Donald Trump "unscrupulous." The depth of weirdness almost defies description. I'll only add that in addition to featuring a turkey-headed killer, it's also a morality tale intended to persuade its audience to forsake sex and drugs and turn to God.

31 Days of Horror 2015: Cannibals

3. The Green Inferno (2015)

I'm not a fan of Eli Roth. I liked "Cabin Fever," but he tried my patience with "Hostel," and "Hemlock Grove" is just laughable. However, his latest movie, "The Green Inferno," made in the tradition of 1980s Italian cannibal movies like "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal Ferox," gets everything right. Few outside the small subset of horror fans familiar with the Italian cannibal genre will appreciate it, but for those of us who know the names Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi, "The Green Inferno" is a rare treat. It takes all the essential elements of the genre and updates them for 2015.

Italian cannibal movies typically follow a group of American filmmakers who travel to the Amazon to document an isolated tribe that ends up eating them. In Roth's update, the characters are a group of American college students who travel to the jungle in Peru and chain themselves to trees to stop loggers and save an isolated tribe that lives in the path of the bulldozers. They document the event with their mobile phones and broadcast live streams through the Internet. They stop the loggers, but the small plane flying them out of the jungle crashes, and they are soon captured and eaten by the tribe they were trying to protect.

It wouldn't be a cannibal movie if it didn't revel in sadistic gore, but "The Green Inferno" also satirizes wealthy college students with simplistic ideas about solving the world's problems. Moreover, because the gruesome acts committed by everyone involved--the natives, the loggers, their guards, and the college students-- it also suggests that there's a savage lurking in all of us. If this is a sign of where Roth's career is heading, then I excited to see what he'll do next.

4. Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

It had been several years since I'd seen an Italian cannibal movie, and while watching "The Green Inferno," I 

realized it was time to revisit Ruggero Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust." It's a better movie than I remembered and also more gruesome. The words "disturbing" and "fucked up" are used to describe horror movies so often that that they have become meaningless, but they apply here. The warning label about "extreme violence" is not a gimmick.

  

"Cannibal Holocaust" is sometimes called the first "found footage" film, and more than half of the movie consists of footage filmed by an American documentary crew who were eaten by their subjects. As you watch the footage, you realize that they got what they deserved. The flesh eating scenes are very gory and often hard to watch, particularly the scene in which a man's penis is cut off. However, it's not the gore that makes the film so disturbing; it's the behavior of the film crew as they cruelly slaughter animals, and harass, rape, and kill the members of the isolated tribe they discover. The "civilized" Americans are much more savage than the "primitive" natives. It left me feeling a bit sick, and it'll be another several years before I watch this one again.

31 Days of Horror 2015: It Begins

I didn't even come close to watching 31 horror movies last October, and I gave up on the blog after only a few posts. This October is going to be busy, and I probably won't make it through 31 horror movies this year either, so I'm approaching this year's month of horror a bit differently. Rather than focusing exclusively on horror movies, it will be filled with horror events, which means lots of horror movies, but also the Halloween party and Ghost and Danzig concerts. I'll count each movie as an event, and that gives me a realistic chance of enjoying 31 horror events this October.

1. "Kill Baby, Kill" (1966)

Kids in Italian horror movies are either insufferable or terrifying. For an example of the former, subject yourself to the first ten minutes of Lucio Fulci's "Manhattan Baby," in which an annoying little shit calls his sister a "lousy lesbian." Mario Bava's "Kill Baby, Kill" is the best example of the latter. The terrifying child is the ghost of a little girl who chases her ball through the streets of an isolated village. Residents who see her end up dead with coins in their hearts.

Sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of Italian horror," Bava made several very effective gothic horror movies and is often credited as creating the "giallo," a distinctively Italian subgenre that combines elements of thrillers and slasher films. Bava is one of my favorite directors, but my attempts to get Vicki excited about him have been mixed. I'm happy to report that she likes this one as much as I do.

2. "The Prowler" (1981)

For casual horror watchers, slasher movies begin and end with "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th," but those of us who dig deeper quickly learn that there are dozens of lesser-known gems, and Joseph Zito's "The Prowler" is one of the best. Its brutal killer is a man in camouflage fatigues who stalks a graduation dance. His arsenal includes a pitchfork and a serrated knife that he uses in inventive ways.