31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 20-24

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 20 - 24

20. Nosferatu (1979)

21. House of 1,000 Corpses (2003)

22. Terror Train (1980)

23. Vampyr (1932)

24. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

After watching the silent "Nosferatu" last week, we wanted to see Werner Herzog's remake, which is a rare example of a remake that honors the spirit of the original while also taking the story in a slightly new direction and even improving upon some aspects of the original.  Herzog emphasizes the vampire as the embodiment of the plague, an idea touched upon in the original but not fully developed.  He also makes the story more haunting by giving it a pessimistic ending.

 

What I find so appealing about Rob Zombie's movies is that they are clearly made by a horror fan for other horror fans.  "House of 1,000 Corpses" reveals his love for the "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the Italian horror movie "House by the Cemetery, but rather than simply imitating these movies, he incorporates elements of each into his own vision of a family of psychopaths.  The result is a disturbing but highly entertaining movie about a group of friends on a road trip who end up spending Halloween Eve in the home of the murderous Firefly family, where they're terrorized by a cast of memorable characters, notably Captain Spalding, a clown who runs a horror-themed roadside attraction, and a mad-scientist named Dr. Satan, who attempts to create a master race by performing brain surgery on mental patients.

Set mostly on a train that a fraternity has reserved for a party, "Terror Train" is a dull slasher that fails to take advantage of its setting that seems designed for a high body count.  I had always been curious about this one, so I'm glad I finally saw it, but I won't be suffering through it again.

"Vampyr" is an interesting if somewhat disappointing early horror film that is something between a late silent film and an early talkie.  It features only about a dozen lines of dialogue, and it relies heavily on the kinds of intertitles used to clarify key plot points in silent movies.  It has moments of true horror that it achieves with eerie shadow effects.  It also features a haunting scene in which a man has a vision of his own death, and we see from his point out of as he peers out a window in his coffin.  But it drags with too much nonsense in the middle, so by the end I had lost interest.

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is one of the first horror movies ever made and remains one of the best.  It's a silent movie that even those who refuse to watch anything that's not in color can appreciate.  With its painted sets full of jagged lines and off-kilter buildings, its visuals are so engaging that you have the sense of watching a demented cartoon rather than a classic of the silent era.

31 Days of Horror 2013: Days 14-19

15. Nosferatu (1929)

16. The Reptile (1966)

17. The House that Dripped Blood (1971)

18. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

19. Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

This week we've watched mostly European horror, starting with F.W. Murnau's silent "Nosferatu."  The

absence of audible dialogue in silent horror movies gives them a kind of other worldly eeriness.  It can also give them an element of authenticity that's often missing in sound movies, making them feel like reel-to-reel footage of actual events that happened in the distant past.  As a result, although I've lost all interest in vampire movies, I'm always up for a viewing of "Nosferatu."

I had no idea what to expect from "The Reptile," another Hammer Production, but it's been one of the most entertaining movies of the month.  It's essentially a re-working of the basic vampire myth that replaces the vampire and its vulnerability to sunlight with a humanoid cobra that must be kept warm throughout the British winters.  The Reptile is the daughter of an anthropologist who intruded in the lives of the secretive snake people of Borneo.  In response, they kidnapped his daughter and then returned her several months later after having transformed her into one of them.  The anthropologist returns to England along with his cobra-daughter and a snake charmer to help control her.  Soon, residents of a British village begin dying mysteriously with two punctures wounds in their necks.  "The Reptile" enthralled me with its sheer bizarreness, but it also does a good job of creating suspense by drawing suspicion on its many oddly behaving characters and keeping viewers guessing until the end about the identity of the the reptile and the involvement other villagers might have in the murders.

An Amicus anthology, "The House that Dripped Blood" contains four stories that supposedly illustrate the evilness of an old house.  The protagonists of all four stories are residents of the house, but the connection between the horrors they experience and the house they live in are mostly unrelated, a fact that doesn't make the movie any less entertaining.  The first segment features a horror writer who keeps having visions of the the killer from his latest novel appearing throughout the house.  This one is a bit dull, but it's saved by a strong ending. The second is an oddity about two aging men who become obsessed with a figure in a wax museum that resembles a woman they both loved when they were younger.  It's hard to go wrong with wax-museum horror, an underrepresented sub genre that I wish more filmmakers would explore.  The third segment is about a man played by Christopher Lee who is terrified by his young daughter who turns out to be a witch.  Seeing Christopher Lee terrified by anything, especially a little girl, is reason enough to watch this one.  The final segment is a deliberately campy tale about a horror actor whose vampire costume turns him into a real vampire.  Jon Pertwee, better known for his role as the Third Doctor in "Doctor Who," plays the vampire, and the scene in which he flies with the assistance of very visible strings adds a nice dose of laugh-out-loud comedy to an otherwise fairly straightforward horror anthology. 

The only American movie of the week so far, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" felt like a lame attempt to bore Brad to death.  It has a strong ending, but after I had to watch hippies sitting around a farm house playing music for an hour, even Godzilla appearing from nowhere, stomping on the house, and killing everyone inside wouldn't have saved it for me. 

Hammer Production "Kiss of the Vampire" starts strong with a drunk, hard-boiled priest interrupting a funeral by spearing the coffin with a shovel, piercing the heart of the dearly departed, and sending blood spewing out of the coffin.  It then bores with a lot of bullshit about a newlywed couple running out of gas near a chateau and going to lots of parties with the residents who turn out to be vampires.

After a double-feature of snoozers, we're going to have to inject new life into 31 days of horror by watching something more intense.