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October Challenge 2020 - Progress Thread



Rules:

> At least 31 Horror films must be watched during the month of October. 16 of these must be first time viewings.
> You get 1 "point" per movie watched.
> The challenge will begin at 00:00 hours on October 1st in your time zone.
> Runtime is 45 minutes minimum.
> Documentaries and TV shows will not be accepted.
> To save arguments on whether a movie is classified as horror, it must be tagged as "horror" on either IMDb, RT, Wiki or any other notable movie reference site.

If there is anything I have missed as first time host, let me know over on the discussion thread: https://trashepics.com/post/30/35/

Previous year threads:

https://trashepics.com/post/9/160/
https://trashepics.com/post/9/218/
https://trashepics.com/post/142/130/

So make your spot and have fun!

Precursor to Aliens

No, not Alien. Well, that too. But, just look at this, this sounds pretty interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_of_Terror

The Gate II (1990)

I remember hearing a lot of positive things about The Gate, but walking away from it mostly apathetic. Due to a lack of choices, I gave the sequel a try, and the result wasn't too appauling.

Our protagonist is one of the kids from the first movie who can't seem to let the experience go. He holds a demonic seance to revisit the "other side" and ends up meeting a bully, his toadie, and the overly invested girlfriend played by Pamela Adlon (as Pamela Segall).

She sure was a cutie back then, wasn't she? What's funny about this is that she's romantically interested in our progatonist, and this dude is a fucking nerd. By no means is he a leading man, but he's been shoe-horned into that position and this movie feels awkward because of it. She seems to eat up everything this guy says or does, and he isn't charming in the least.

The plot kicks in pretty quickly when the seance brings a little minion (not the yellow fucks from Disney, but a little imp) to our world and on-and-off capture and fight the little thing in exchange for wishes that tend to go bad. The animation effects are still pretty cool, often stop-motion, but there could stand to be a few more fo them.

The movie never does anything too dramatic and is definitely not worthy of an R-rating. It tries to pack a punch at the end, but the "punch" is completely ineffective and negated to keep this movie a somewhat light-hearted turd.

#Review

The Roost (2005)

Something made me think of this movie recently... not sure what.

Directed by Ti West, and starring Tom Noonan and Larry Fessenden... OK, that makes it sound way better than it is. It's not bad though, IMHO.

It has the feel of a 70s B movie. Very low budget... some friends get lost and end up having encounters with some (more or less) vampire bats and zombies, in and around an old barn. It's the kind of thing you might imagine Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, etc doing, if they had some extra film, money, etc after filming The Evil Dead. It also made me think of some scenes in Race with the Devil (1975).

It also has a framing narrative, a little like V/H/S, or as if it were being shown by the Cryptkeeper, or Elvira, or whoever.

I haven't seen this in a while, but I remember thinking ot did what it tried to do, and was fairly fun. If you search on Youtube for The Roost 2005, you can find it, and also a few reviews, trailers, etc. Had to share.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roost

tommix's hairdo, seven months into the pandemic

hello, I'm trying to post a picture demonstrating my own total inability to cut my own hair... OK, I clicked on Insert Image, and typed in what I thought was the file name, but no cigar... grrrr...

Quotes that impact you! 

So I've been having a hard time lately. And one thing I always like doing is looking up quotes or repeating quotes to make me feel better. There are two quotes that I tend to think of. The first is:

"The Hardest thing in this world is to live. Be brave. Live."-Buffy Summers

The second:

"Happiness be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."- Albus Dumbledore


These two quotes are from the two things that got me through man issues as a kid. And they bring me comfort when I'm not feeling up to it anymore. So is there any saying, quote, mantra that you guys say, or think when the anxiety, and depression is at its strongest?

Seriously, I love discovering new quotes, so please share!

Humanoids from the Deep... 1996!

16 years after the original trash epic, a remake surfaced from the depths of tv-movie hell that's been relatively obscure until youtube came to the rescue. This one changes the plot a bit to revolve around convicts that are mutated into sea monsters, but it still utilizes a lot of the same ideas (and footage) from the original movie. Chemicals are still being used to grow salmon in a beach community, and a few of the scenes are very reminiscent of the original.

Hell, the whole climax uses a lot of the festival footage from the original movie, but it's done in a half-assed way. Our protagonists are there to find the monsters and go into a mirror maze, and they keep cutting away to external carnage at the fair that our heroes have nothing to do with. But I digress...

I don't know about you, but I really like the characters in the original movie. This time, our hero is Robert Carradine. He's reluctantly associated with Mark Rolston's asshole character who's been pouring hormones into the water to make the fish grow. Justin Walker protests this with his do-gooder friends while trying to make it with Carradine's daughter, and that sets the stage for our main set of characters.

The progression here isn't too bad. It's not exactly boring, but it isn't exactly thrilling most of the time either. This was a tv movie, but there is gore, nudity, and bad language, but it never outshines the original. One thing that this movie does have that the original didn't: small roles by Clint Howard and Walton Goggins!

The creature design is a bit different this time around, but it's mostly the same. However, the stock footage cuts to the original monsters a few times, and the difference is definitely noticable.

I used to think that I had seen the original on tv when I was a kid, which prompted my obsession with Humanoids, but I know now that it was this movie I had seen. It's an easy mistake, considering a lot of the same footage is rehashed, but I know for certain because this one featured underwater caves in which the monsters gestate their women, which is what I remember most about the version I saw as a kid.

So that's one more I can scratch off the ol' watchlist. Was it worthy of its namesake? Not really, but nothing can beat the perfection of that sleazy 1980 exploitaiton classic.

#Review

Shocking Dark: The Aliens of Italy

Oh boy... Even the description of this movie regards it as a blatant rip-off of Aliens. It's such a rip-off in fact that I'm surprised they didn't get their asses sued for this shit.

What we have here is a story about a dystopian Venice where the water and air is polluted and people don't go outside. The majority of the film takes place in an industrial setting very reminiscent of the colony in Aliens. We also have a team of marines working with some evil corporation for some reason, and before you know it, you have some goofy looking monsters coming out of the woodwork.

These aren't aliens mind you, but some kind of mutant that kind of look like the humanoids from the deep mixed with some laboratory made monsters from The Return of Swamp Thing. They have facehugger-ish things, they cocoon you, and shit bursts out of your chest. How original!

We follow this group of soldier characters for a while, and they are total clones of the marines in Aliens. We have the Captain/Vasquez, a Hicks, a Hudson, a Drake, and even a Ripley and a Newt knock-off. Then, we have a mash-up of Burke and Ash from the first movie, who just so happens to be a replicant and thus our Terminator rip-off too. After all, one of the alternate titles for the film is "Terminator 2", even though this is essentially a dumbed down remake of Aliens. So many scenes are directly lifted from Aliens, it's not even funny.


I would say that 80% of the screenplay is taken from Aliens, 10% from Terminator, and the last 10% is bologna. In a typical Italian fashion, the filmmakers didn't know what the fuck they were doing when they made this trash. They were simply trying to cash in on whatever was popular at the time, and the movies that make up the basis for this turkey are awesome, so what could go wrong?


I imagine the conception went something like this:

The crew finds a decent location and says to themselves, "Hey, this looks like the setting from that movie Terminator!"

"Oh, you mean 'Aliens', right?"

"Yes, Terminator! And that's what we'll call our movie!"

So they watched Aliens (not Terminator) and wrote a transcript of that, lost a few key details in translation, and filled the holes with bologna. Mind you, the execution is somewhat entertaining, but so very inferior to the movies it homages that you might as well watch the real deal instead of this Italian misunderstanding.

Everything about this movie is unoriginal. The setup, the characters, the progression, the "twists", and the ending. If they can get away with it, anybody can, but the real question... is why bother?

#Review

Favorite Allusions in Movies or Tv Shows.

Okay, so after catching the David Lynch Allusion in Buffy last night, I want to hear some of y'all's favorites, or just some you guys caught. Shows and movies allude to different works of pop culture, people, and ideas. I thought it could be fun!


A favorite of mine is from Friends. When phoebe finds out her sister is doing porn in her name, and one of the films is Buffay the Vampire Layer! This gets me every time!

I also tend to love it when actors play a character that alludes to one of their previous roles. It's cheesy, but I like it.

What have y'all caught?