rbrown498

This Year's Stats

This year marks my 11th Challenge.

Goal: To watch as few movies as possible to complete the checklist
Total Watched: 47

Theme nights, 31 film subset, and Checklist completed.

First Time Viewings: 32 (68%)

Formats Watched:

17½ Streaming (Google Drive, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, Shudder, Peacock) – 38%
15 DVD – 32%
11½ Blu-ray - 24%
2 Blu-ray 3D – 4%
1 DVD-R Recorded from VHS – 2%

Decades:

1930s: 1 (2%)
1940s: 1 (2%)
1950s: 2 (4%)
1960s: 3 (6%)
1970s: 10 (21%)
1980s: 11 (23%)
1990s: 5 (11%)
2000s: 6 (13%)
2010s: 4 (9%)
2020s: 4 (9%)

Longest Film Viewed: In Search of Darkness (264 minutes)
Shortest Film Viewed: Dark Intruder (59 minutes)

New favorites: Curse of the Demon, The Ninth Gate, Freaky, Possessor Uncut, Hell Fest

Will never willingly watch again: Cutting Class, Schramm, The Mortuary Collection, The Empty Man, Body Bags

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Orange Title - Denotes first-time-ever viewing

Caution: Spoilers may follow!

Last year's tally: Zero, zip, zilch - I took the year off

This year's goal: To watch just enough films to complete the Checklist; I think that I can do it in 45 films or fewer.

9/30/2021

Note: These films are not counted in my totals, as they were watched outside the actual month of October. I consider them to be a sort of pre-Challenge warm up.

XX Night of the Living Dead (1968) (Blu-ray) – I can't count the number of times that I've seen this movie; by my best estimate, I've seen it upwards of thirty times in the last 49 or so years. In 1980, when I first entered film school, all the students in one of the classes I took had to go around the room on the first night of class and tell what our favorite movie was. There were a lot of Citizen Kanes and Singin' in the Rains, but when I said that my favorite film was Night of the Living Dead, there were audible snickers. I guess that time has proven me correct, huh? Absolutely one of the top five horror films of all time.

XX Road Games (1981) (DVD) – I first saw this film years ago on HBO, right after my family first got it (illegally, by running about a million feet of antenna wire all through the house). I remembered very few things about it, so this was almost like a first-time view. It's an okay thriller, with a good performance by Stacy Keach and some nice directorial touches by Richard Franklin, but it does have some pacing problems and some weird logic gaps in the plot. It's not a bad film, but it's not a forgotten classic, either.


10/1/2021

1. Slither (2006) (Streaming--Amazon Prime) - Fun movie about alien slug things that take over the inhabitants of a small town. Gregg Henry as the supremely foul-mouthed mayor makes the movie for me; does he have any lines that wouldn’t automatically make this an R-rated film? Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker are a lot of fun, too, and that song by the Yayhoos on the soundtrack is eight kinds of awesome.

2. Target Earth (1954) (DVD) - Robots from Venus have overtaken a large city and only a handful of survivors are left to survive. Meanwhile, the army captures a fallen robot and tries to figure out how to defeat the alien army. What should be a fun sci-fi film starts off strong, but once the military guys show up, the pace slows to a crawl. Still, it’s a black-and-white science fiction film from the 1950s with Whit Bissell as a scientist, so it’s not ALL bad.


10/2/2021

3. Silent Madness (1984) (Blu-ray 3D) – I’m finding that I’ve developed quite a fondness for off-brand slasher flicks from the early ‘80s. At the time, if a slasher film wasn’t part of an established franchise (such as the Friday the 13th or Halloween films) or from a major studio (Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, etc.), I tended to avoid it because I mistakenly believed all non-Hollywood product to be crappy knock-offs of the good stuff. Obviously, I was wrong in my estimation. A couple of cases in point: Sleepaway Camp and Silent Madness. I’ll freely admit that I don’t find either of them scary in the least, but they both have a certain naïve charm that seems to be missing from the flashier studio product. The things that I loved about Silent Madness: its choice of an older-than-usual final girl; its amazing use of depth in the 3D version; an unhinged Viveca Lindfors (which is, obviously, the best kind) and a cussin’ Sydney Lassick; and some very nice cinematography that looks appropriately fall-like. I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to like the film, but once the action shifted from the dreary hospital corridors, I kinda fell in love with it a little. If you’re a Sleepaway Camp fan like me, you’ll recognize two of the stars of that film in Silent Madness pretty easily. I’m glad that I bought the 3D Vinegar Syndrome disc for this year’s Challenge; I foresee spending a lot of time with it.

4. Frightmare (1974) (DVD) - In the ‘50s, a couple who’ve committed some murders and cannibalized their victims get sent to an asylum, where they stay for fifteen years or so before being released...because they’re cured, you see. Of course, they’re NOT cured, or we wouldn’t have much of a movie, now would we? This Pete Walker film is listed as being a comedy on IMDB, but I didn’t see anything overtly comedic about the film. It’s got that wonderful feel that only British horror films made in the early ‘70s have, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.


10/3/2021

5. The Severed Arm (1973) (Streaming--Google Drive) - I’ve heard good things about this film from friends of mine over the years, so I was fairly excited to finally get around to watching it. I found it to be tough going, however, with unlikable characters, an easy-to-guess “twist,” and the most horrendous electronic musical score I’ve ever heard. The worst sin that the film committed was the cardinal sin of film-making: it was boring. I’m definitely in the “not a fan” camp on this one.


10/4/2021

6. A Bay of Blood (1971) (Streaming--Shudder) - I remember enjoying this the first time that I watched it, years ago on VHS (and under the much less socially-redeeming title Twitch of the Death Nerve). I didn’t like it quite as much this time out, mainly because I was more focused on the plot than the gore, and I found the story to be somewhat confusing. Still, it’s a Mario Bava film, so it gets the benefit of the doubt. Obviously the template for Friday the 13th Part 2, some of A Bay of Blood’s set-pieces are still quite shocking. The score by Stelvio Cipriani is quite nice.

7. Octaman (1971) (Blu-ray) – I watched this for the OHMC during my first year of participation, when it was a subset film back in 2010. I remembered absolutely nothing from that viewing this time around. Here’s what I wrote about it eleven years ago, since it still holds true for me: “If I had seen this when it was first released (and I was nine years old), this would probably be one of my favorites. As it stands, however, I saw this stinker for the first time tonight. One of the rules for a successful horror movie is that you don't show your monster too soon or too often, as everything that follows that first reveal is anticlimactic. Harry Essex, the writer, producer, and director of Octaman, had apparently not heard of that dictum at the time he shot this film, as the creature is revealed during the main credits. Essex then goes on to keep the monster on the screen in full view for at least half of the film's running time. I can only guess that he either loved the Octaman suit a whole lot, or he wanted to get his money's worth of monster suit up on the screen...or both. No matter his reasons, the Octaman is indeed on display throughout the entire film, and to make REALLY sure that we see the suit, Essex shoots the majority of the monster scenes IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. So, while the nine-year-old still inside me was pleased with the sheer amount of monster footage in the film, the adult in me ached for a little restraint, a little mystery.”

8. The Spiral Staircase (1946) (Streaming--Google Drive) - I’m surprised that I’ve never seen this wonderfully moody film before. It features a great cast (including Kent Smith from Cat People and Elsa Lanchester, the Bride of Frankenstein herself), sumptuous sets, and an air of real menace. The first closeup of the eye of the murderer reminded me a whole lot of a similar shot in Black Christmas, filmed nearly 30 years later. I really, really liked this one.


10/5/2021

9. Witchfinder General (1968) (Blu-ray) – Originally released in the U.S. as The Conqueror Worm, this film about real-life witch hunter Matthew Hopkins features Vincent Price in his least-hammy performance. The acting, cinematography, and soundtrack are all uniformly good, and the film ends a lot better than I expected it to. I don’t generally like period pieces, so I avoided this one for decades. I’m glad that the Challenge forced me to finally watch it.

10. Mark of the Devil (1970) (Blu-ray) – When Udo Kier plays the character who’s the conscience of the movie, you know you’re in for a rocky ride. Mark of the Devil is kind of like Witchfinder General’s chain-smoking, Euro-trash cousin—disreputable, sure, but fun in a dangerous sort of way. I don’t know that I’d necessarily call it a good movie, but it is effective, and Reggie Nalder makes an impressive villain. I found that the film got better as it went along. The ending is surprisingly (to me, anyway) pessimistic. My favorite line: “Torture him harder!”


10/6/2021

11. Cutting Class (1989) (Streaming--Google Drive) - A scantily-clad teenage girl, tugging her sleep shirt down to cover her underwear, sneaks out her front door and into her driveway, hoping not to be seen by her neighbors as she picks up the morning newspaper. As she turns to go back into the house, she’s intercepted by her father, who’s about to leave to go duck hunting for a week. After his somewhat odd admonitions to do her homework, not let boys in the house, and not cut class, he leaves, and she tosses the newspaper that she had just snuck out to get into the trash without reading it. It was at this exact point that I knew that this film was going to infuriate me, and it did so spectacularly. I hated this film quite a bit because it’s obvious that the people who made it had utter disdain for its intended audience. If Jill Schoelen weren’t in it, I wouldn’t have made it all the way through it, but I was a big fan of hers back in the late ‘80s, so her involvement kept me watching until the stupid, stupid end. I probably lost a couple dozen IQ points just by being in the same room where this dreck was playing. The director’s only other brush with directing was as second-unit director on Exorcist II: The Heretic, which is just as bad as this film. Subpar in almost every way.


10/7/2021

12. Carrie (1976) (Blu-ray) – I can’t heap enough superlatives on Brian DePalma’s version of Carrie to do it justice. I saw it for the first time in a theatrical re-release that occurred after the film was nominated for two Oscars (for Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie’s performances), and it absolutely terrified me. (It apparently also terrified a guy sitting a few rows in front of me, who leapt up after the “gotcha” shot and loudly proclaimed to his girlfriend that he was never going to let her drag him to another one of these horror films again. His exact description of the films in question was decidedly more…colorful.) After that first viewing, my terror was replaced with awe. DePalma, using practically every film-making trick in the book (fast motion, slow motion, split diopters, split screens, etc.), pulled out all the stops on this one, giving it an almost operatic grandiosity. It’s Spacek’s performance, however, that places the film in the pantheon of great horror films. All of its performances are spot-on, but it’s Spacek who makes Carrie truly the most heartbreaking of all horror films.

13. Carrie (2013) (Blu-ray) – This needless remake of the Brian DePalma classic updates Stephen King’s story to the cellphone age and picks up a minor subplot from the book that was left out of the earlier film, but it remains the lesser of the two films. While Sissy Spacek was able to effect a believable ugly duckling-to-swan transformation, Chloe Grace Moritz just can’t pull it off—the only real difference between her everyday look as Carrie and her dressed up-for-prom version of Carrie is that her hair has been fixed a little. And while I’m a big fan of Julianne Moore, she just doesn’t register as Margaret White, especially when her performance is compared to that of Piper Laurie. It’s certainly not a bad film per se, and I can see it appealing perhaps a bit more to today’s teenagers than the older version might, but if you’re already a fan of the original film version, I doubt that you’ll prefer it to DePalma’s film.


10/8/2021

14. Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) (Streaming--Google Drive) - What hath A Nightmare on Elm Street wrought? I have to be honest--I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a film quite as nonsensical as Slumber Party Massacre II. Generally, I tend to hate films like this one that don’t resolve themselves, but since this one started out wacka-wacka and only got worse from there, I have to give it credit for sticking to its convictions. Of course, a large part of its narrative was influenced by the “is it a dream, or is it real?” trope that Wes Craven’s film popularized, and perhaps the gonzo nature of Slumber Party Massacre II’s narrative was caused in part by some pre-release cutting (at the time that it was released through Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures, Corman was pretty adamant that all except the biggest films had to be sent out on four reels AT MOST to save on print and shipping costs, which kept the majority of the company’s releases to a run time of eighty minutes or less), but those two things don’t begin to cover any of the other bizarro things going on in the film, like the killer who sings rockabilly and kills people by using a guitar with a ginormous working drill bit poking out of the end of the neck. No, with this film, we’re in rarefied air indeed, and, since that’s the case, normal criticisms aren’t valid. Give it a watch; see what YOU think.

15. Friday the 13th Part III (1982) (Blu-ray 3D) – Released on the same day as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Friday the 13th Part III was the most successful of the first eight, Paramount-owned Friday the 13th films. It set the template for the remaining films in the series, with a hockey mask-clad Jason, the unstoppable murder machine, killing teenagers in ever more inventive ways. This one definitely had its share of creative gore, including three instances of eye trauma and a character split down the middle vertically with a machete. When seen in its flat, 2D form, it’s merely serviceable as entertainment, but in its 3D form, it plays like gangbusters. Yeah, I was in the theater opening weekend, and the buzz that went up from the audience when the titles came on and cascaded down to what looked like inches from everyone’s faces was electric. If you’re a 3D buff, grab the pricey Scream Factory set while you still can, because it’s currently the only way to see the film as it was intended to be seen. If you’re less picky about your 3D, or don’t have a polarized 3D setup, the cheapo Paramount anaglyph Blu-ray (or DVD) that uses the red/blue cardboard glasses ought to do you. Either way you go, however, this film was designed for 3D, and that’s the only way that it should be seen.


10/9/2021

16. Grave Robbers (Ladrones de Tumbas) (1989) (Streaming--Google Drive) - Some annoying teens find a secret underground crypt while robbing graves, and they inadvertently resurrect an ancient Satanist by pulling out the axe that’s found buried in his chest. Most of them get killed by the ungrateful revenant. This film steals ideas from EVERYWHERE; it’s really, really dumb, but I can’t say that it was boring.

17. Schramm (1993) (DVD) - An unlikable killer falls off a stepladder while painting his apartment (to try to cover up some blood stains from his murder of some door-to-door proselytizers) and we’re privy to his thoughts as he lies dying. Most of them have to do with his prostitute neighbor and leg, eye, and genital trauma. It’s not a fun watch, but it’s thankfully short.


10/10/2021

18. Battle Royale (Special version) (2001) (Blu-ray) – It’s hard to even fathom these days what a ruckus this film caused when it was released at the turn of the millennium. At the time, it was one of the most violent films ever made, and all of the violence involved 15-year-olds. I think that the film is a masterpiece, and what makes it so is the care the filmmakers took in world building. I don’t know how faithful an adaptation of the novel the film is (because it’s a hugely thick book), but I’m impressed that director Kenji Fukasaku was able to not only have the skill to allow the audience to be able to differentiate all of the characters in the exceedingly large cast from one another, but also to have us care so much about some of the characters via the use of flashbacks to fill out their backstories. I don’t know what was in the water in Japan from roughly 1997-2003, but there were a ton of amazing movies made during that time, and Battle Royale is near the top of the heap.

19. 2LDK (2003) (DVD) - Two roommates, both actresses and up for the same part, let the minor irritations of sharing an apartment become a major problem while waiting for the phone call that will tell them which of the two of them gets the role. The first half of this 70-minute film builds tension with each of the women getting more and more angry with the other, until, at around the halfway point in the film, the simmering aggressions stop simmering and come to a full boil. The rest of the film has them beating the ever-living crap out of each other until the blood-soaked finale. It’s a strange film, but the two actresses sell the scenario well, and I found myself enjoying the mayhem. It’s sort of like a live-action version of the old Mad Magazine “Spy vs. Spy” cartoons—if you liked those, you’ll probably like this movie. The title is newspaper real estate listing shorthand for “2 bedrooms, living room, dining room, and kitchen.”


10/11/2021

20. The Mortuary Collection (2019) (Streaming--Shudder) - Maybe it has something to do with the stomach flu that I developed yesterday (that’s continued into today), but The Mortuary Collection bored me silly. In it, a young woman shows up at a mortuary, ostensibly to apply for a position that was advertised on the sign outside. But first, she must listen to some creepy tales told by the mortician (played by Clancy Brown, doing his best Angus Scrimm/Tall Man imitation). And, since this is an anthology film, we get to see the tales come to life. None of the four tales are particularly involving or even scary, but all of them together sure make it seem that writer/producer/director Ryan Spindell has a fear of women. Maybe I’m reading too much into this trifle, but then again, there wasn’t a whole lot to keep my attention in the tales themselves. To give credit where credit is due, the film looked great, even if it did deliberately mix a whole lot of things from different decades together in an attempt to give it a timeless quality. It didn’t work, but I appreciate the effort anyway.


10/12/2021

21. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) (DVD) – Strictly by-the-numbers horror film rips off several horror films all at once, most notably Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street (yet again). Mary Lou Maloney, Hamilton High’s newly-crowned 1957 Prom Queen and resident slut, gets accidentally burned to death when her cuckolded boyfriend drops a stink bomb on her (and, no, that’s not a euphemism) and catches her dress on fire. Thirty years later, the cuckolded boyfriend is now the principal of Hamilton High, and the guy Mary Lou was cheating on him with is the town priest, because life’s neat like that. The principal’s son is dating Vicki, whose mother makes Carrie White’s mom…still look crazy, but not all that much more crazy. Anyway, from what I can gather, Mary Lou’s spirit is trapped in a trunk in the drama department’s prop room, because why not? Vicki, scrounging around for a dress to wear to prom because her mom won’t let her buy a new one, opens the trunk, and Mary Lou’s spirit possesses her and does a lot of naughty things. Then Mary Lou’s spirit gets sent back to her grave, because it sets up a convenient “twist” ending. The guy that wrote this now writes and directs Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, because sometimes life IS neat like that. I forthwith call for a moratorium on naming characters after famous horror film directors; it annoyed me in Final Destination, and it annoys me even more here. By my count, they name-dropped TEN horror directors, and that’s just annoying as shit. Stop it already.


10/13/2021

22. Curse of the Demon (a.k.a. Night of the Demon) (1957) (DVD) - I watched the full-length, unedited 95-minute British version of Curse of the Demon, and it scratched my autumn itch. In it, Dana Andrews goes to Britain for a parapsychology conference and gets caught up in an investigation of a devil worship cult. It’s a moody, gorgeously-photographed film that manages to build up a wonderful feeling of dread. I’m really, really surprised that it’s taken me this long to get around to watching it in its entirety; I’ve seen all the monster scenes in it before, but this was my first time to watch the film all the way through, and it was every bit the classic that I’d always heard that it was.


10/14/2021

23. In Search of Darkness (2019) (Streaming--Shudder) - Astoundingly long documentary about horror films of the ‘80s, which is probably my next-to-least favorite decade for horror movies. It takes a mostly year-by-year approach to covering the decade (with other topics thrown in between most of the years, like a section devoted to special effects, one about final girls, etc.), but the talking heads mostly gab about the films that have been discussed to death throughout the years. While this is okay, I guess, it hurts a little to see posters for films that are never talked about used prominently (like Beyond Evil and Scarecrows), while we have to listen to yet more “experts” expound on the virtues of films like Re-Animator and Pet Sematary. Most of the folks interviewed are interesting to hear from (and I was amazed at how good Caroline Williams looks these days), but I’m not a fan of James A. Janisse’s game-show host delivery. Overall, the documentary seemed to get most of its facts straight (although there was a poster for Vincent Price’s Madhouse from 1974 placed pretty prominently in the layout of 1983 posters), but it’s probably best viewed either in small chunks or as background noise if you’re cooking or cleaning.


10/15/2021

24. Cure (1997) (DVD) - Apparently, I am not on the same wavelength as Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the director of Cure. Because I’d heard that it was one of the scariest films ever, I’ve tried to watch his film Kairo (also known as Pulse) three times now, and each viewing has left me more puzzled than the last. While I’m happy to report that Cure wasn’t nearly as perplexing to me as Kairo, I still don’t think that I “got” it. In it, murders are being committed by various, seemingly unconnected people, with all the victims bearing X-shaped wounds on their necks, positioned so that both of their carotid arteries are cut. The detective on the case eventually figures out who’s behind the killings, but that only opens up more mysteries. I will admit that the last shot of the film before the end credits had me chuckling with nervous laughter through the first thirty seconds or so of the cast roll.


10/16/2021

25. Tower of Evil (1972) (Streaming--Google Drive) - I really quite enjoyed Tower of Evil; it’s a British film made in the early ‘70s set in an isolated spot, with plenty of violence and nudity. What’s not to love? The film takes place on Snape Island, a tiny, isolated island off the coast of England where a lot of people end up dead. The plot has a lot of twists and turns, but my biggest takeaways from the film were the poor American accents by the film’s younger cast members and the far-out fashions. It’s definitely worth a look on a slow afternoon.

26. Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967) (DVD) – Watching this film is becoming an annual October tradition for me. It’s really, really dumb, but I saw it as a kid (in the theater, no less!), and I’ve had a soft spot for it ever since. It’s kind of like what would happen if you threw a PRC programmer, a James Bond knock-off film, a Hee Haw episode, and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken into a blender and hit “puree.” If you’re a fan of ‘60s country music, you might enjoy this a lot more than most people, since it features Merle Haggard, Sonny James, Ferlin Husky, and others singing songs you’ve probably never heard before. It also features Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, and Lon Chaney, Jr. as three-quarters of a spy ring. I’ve got a 35mm theatrical print of this film slowly disintegrating in my garage.


10/17/2021

27. Fade to Black (1980) (DVD) – To say that Eric Binford is movie-obsessed is like saying the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground. No, he’s beyond obsessed, and it shows in his day-to-day dealings with everyone whom he comes into contact with on a daily basis, from his wheelbound-chair aunt with whom he lives to the bullies, including his boss, at his job at a film exchange. Eventually, after he’s stood up for a date by a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and then turned down by a prostitute in the same night, he snaps and starts killing people while costumed as some of his favorite movie characters. Being an obsessive film nut myself, I thought that I would be able to relate to the character of Binford (who’s played by Dennis Christopher), but the character is so socially inept and maladjusted even before he goes off the deep end into madness that I couldn’t work up much sympathy for him. It seems like writer/director Vernon Zimmerman wanted to eat his cake and have it, too—he wants us to feel sorry for Binford and cheer when he gives his enemies their comeuppance, but between the poor writing for the character and Christopher’s weaselly performance, I found it hard to work up any feeling for Binford (and the film itself, for that matter) except one of contempt.


10/18/2021

28. Planet Terror (2007) (DVD) – This feature was created to be part of Grindhouse, the instant double-feature that directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino made as an homage to the type of films that used to play at inner-city movie theaters and drive-ins forty-plus years ago. Rodriguez directed this (which, in the theatrical Grindhouse cut, played before Tarantino’s Death Proof), a wild amalgam of pretty much every horror, sci-fi, and action movie of the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Tonight was my first time to see the film as a standalone entity, which is the way that the two films that made up Grindhouse were released in the rest of the world. Both films were also cut by about twenty minutes each to make the Grindhouse double-feature theatrically viable (yet it still ran over three hours), so this was also my first time to see the full-length cut of the film. I think that I enjoyed it more this time than the two times I’ve previously seen it as part of Grindhouse. I can’t really put my finger on why I liked it more this time around, but knowing that there wasn’t another 90 minutes of movie after it probably helped a great deal. It’s gory, trashy fun, impossible to take seriously, so just buckle up for safety and surrender to the mayhem. Director Rodriguez also did the seriously groovy fuzz guitar-based score.

29. The Black Cat (1934) (DVD) – Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi star together for the first time in this in-name-only adaptation of one of Poe’s most famous short stories. The plot is overly complicated, especially when you consider that the film runs just a little over an hour, but it’s not the plot that matters so much as the interplay between the two horror greats. It’s kind of odd to see Lugosi as the good guy for a change, but he’s able to elicit quite a bit of audience sympathy. Karloff is appropriately menacing, but the real star of the film is the set design, which is atypical of the films of the period and quite stunning. My favorite line, spoken by Lugosi after another character says that there’s a lot of supernatural baloney going on: “Supernatural? Perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not.”


10/19/2021

30. The Ninth Gate (1999) (Blu-ray) – Roman Polanski’s film version of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novel El Club Dumas puts him squarely back into the territory of modern Satanism that he mined so successfully with Rosemary’s Baby back in the 1960s. In this one, Johnny Depp plays a rare book dealer who’s hired by a super-wealthy guy (Frank Langella) to compare his copy of a super-rare book (that reported was co-written by the devil himself) to the other two extant copies of the same book to see if his is a forgery. To do this, the book dealer has to travel to Portugal and France, and what he finds there is one big Satanic mystery. I enjoyed this film thoroughly; the film looks gorgeous, the mystery is intriguing, and Polanski doesn’t seem to have lost any of his filmmaking prowess in the thirty years that passed between Rosemary’s Baby and this film.

31. The Survivor (1981) (DVD) - This muddled, ineffectual adaptation of James Herbert’s novel of the same name about the lone survivor of a plane crash was directed by actor David Hemmings and has a great cast (including Robert Powell from The Asphyx, Jenny Agutter from An American Werewolf in London, and Joseph Cotten from Citizen Kane and Baron Blood). It just doesn’t work, however. I suppose that the ending was surprising when the film first came out, but a whole lot of films have had similar endings in the intervening 40 years, and it doesn’t pack the wallop that it should. The novel, however, scared me a lot when I read it back in high school. I suggest checking it out instead of watching this film.


10/20/2021

32. Daughters of Darkness (1971) (DVD) - A young, newly-married couple are the only guests at a huge hotel in Belgium until a vampiric countess and her “secretary” show up. Things go downhill rapidly. This is yet another film based on the legend of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who, for some inexplicable reason, became the subject of several movies in the early ‘70s. (Others of note are Countess Dracula, The Legend of Blood Castle, and one segment of Immoral Tales.) It also was one of even more films of the time to feature lesbian vampires, a sub-genre which Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers jump-started. By my count, Daughters of Darkness was one of at least seven lesbian vampire films released in 1971 alone. It stars Delphine Seyrig, who was a staple in art-house French cinema at the time, and John Karlen, just off his stint on Dark Shadows. I still haven’t decided whether I like it or not. I certainly liked aspects of it, but there were also things about it (most particularly John Karlen’s character and his mother) that just didn’t work for me at all. I’ll have to revisit it in the future to see if I like it any better, but for now, it’s not a favorite.


10/21/2021

33. The Collector (2009) (Blu-ray / Streaming--Amazon Prime) – (NOTE: I started watching this film via the Blu-ray that I bought a few weeks ago in anticipation of the Challenge...and it crapped out on me about halfway through, which necessitated my switch to Amazon Prime to finish watching it.) An ex-con safecracker goes to a house in the middle of nowhere late one night to steal a big honkin’ uncut gem from a wall safe. Once he gets there, he realizes that another criminal is already on the premises, and the other criminal isn’t a very nice guy. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen any other film that was as tense, squirm-inducing, and completely implausible as this film. Any time during the film that I felt myself tensing up, I would think about how patently stupid the set-up was, and it would take me right out of the film. I don’t want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the film, but ask yourself when you watch it how it’s even remotely plausible that “The Collector” could set up the house the way that he did without a massive moving van and several days’ worth of intense labor. I guess it’s possible that he DID have time and resources to do what he did, but if he did, then the director did a poor job of letting the audience in on the time sequence of the film. Don’t misunderstand—I didn’t hate The Collector, but due to my problems with the film’s logic, I really can only recommend it for those who won’t think about it too much. Also, did anyone else notice that this film, today’s subset film, didn’t fit the theme day?

34. The Creeping Flesh (1973) (Blu-ray) – Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee star in this misfire with enough plot for three or four films. In the late 1800s, Cushing brings back a particularly-big humanoid skeleton from New Guinea to his home in England, where his daughter waits. He’s protected her all her life from knowing that her mother, a former dancer in the Folies Bergère, had been committed to the asylum run by his half-brother (Lee), who’s doing unethical research involving electroshock therapy and other nasty practices on his patients, one of whom has escaped and is terrorizing the countryside. Got that? Good, because it gets deeper. Cushing finds out while cleaning the skeleton that water causes it to grow flesh back on the bones, so he allows only a finger to grow flesh before he amputates it and starts experimenting on it. He discovers that the blood of the “creeping flesh” isn’t made up of platelets like human blood; it’s made up of these spidery-looking cells that, because of his handy books on the folklore of New Guinea, he discovers are cells of pure evil. Since he now knows that evil has a physical makeup, he makes a serum that he believes can be used to vaccinate people and keep evil away from them. He tries it out on a blood sample on a microscope slide and, sensing victory, inoculates both a monkey in his lab and his daughter, because apparently that’s how scientists 125 years ago rolled. And then things get crazy. I rented this when it first hit VHS almost forty years ago, and I was hugely disappointed in it, after seeing stills from the film in various books and magazines. This is the first time I’ve seen it since, and I think that the film’s a complete mess. Cushing gives it the ol’ college try, and Lee is suitably menacing as the main villain (you can tell he’s the villain by his dark goatee), but the movie just doesn’t hang together, and there’s no real creature action until the last fifteen minutes or so. I think that all Cushing and Lee fans will want to see this once, but I also feel that once will be enough for the majority of them.


10/22/2021

35. The Empty Man (2020) (DVD) - After an intriguing pre-credits sequence set in Bhutan, The Empty Man moves the action to St. Louis, where a girl and several of her friends have gone missing. The girl’s mother calls a “family friend” in to investigate her disappearance, with the only clue being a message written in blood on the missing girl’s bathroom mirror: “The Empty Man made me do it.” The friend, a former police officer, questions one of the missing girl’s other friends and finds out that she, the missing girl, and all the missing friends had been out two nights before and had summoned the Empty Man by blowing on a bottle found on a bridge while thinking about him. Later, while visiting the bridge where the kids had summoned the Empty Man, the former cop finds the bodies of all of the missing kids (except the one he’s actually looking for) hung under the bridge. So far, the set-up for the movie’s great—I was enjoying it and getting Urban Legend vibes, but better. And then the movie shifts gears, with the former officer finding evidence that the missing girl was involved somehow with a New Age-y cult called the Pontifex Institute, and it all went down the tubes. It reminded me a lot of a film from a few years back, The Void, wherein the initial set-up was great, but then the filmmakers went all Lovecraft on the audience and killed the fun. This one’s the same way, except the film goes metaphysical and becomes confusing. I really, really wanted to like this one, but it lost me about halfway through and never regained my interest.

36. Dark Intruder (1965) (Blu-ray) – Leslie Nielsen stars as an occult detective in San Francisco in the last decade of the 19th century. Murders are being committed, and strange totemic carvings are being left at the crime scenes. Nielsen thinks that there might be a demon afoot, and he may be right. This exceptionally short feature (59 minutes) started life as a TV pilot made by Alfred Hitchcock’s production company, but when it didn’t sell, Universal sent it out as a feature to theaters. It’s fun, but it’s not quite the forgotten classic that everyone seems to want to make it out to be. Mark Richmond, the star of another TV project that went to theaters instead (Agent for H.A.R.M.), joins Nielsen in the cast.


10/23/2021

37. Freaky (2020) (Blu-ray) – A psychotic killer steals what turns out to be a dagger used in ancient Aztec rituals during a murder spree. He ends up using the dagger to try to kill his next victim, a teen-aged girl, but he’s interrupted after stabbing her once. He flees, but he has a mysterious wound on his chest in the exact same place that he stabbed the girl. The next morning, when he and the girl wake up (in different places, obviously), they eventually come to realize that they’ve swapped bodies…and it turns out that the body swap will become permanent if the dagger isn’t used in the same way by the same people within 24 hours. This film is obviously an homage to Freaky Friday by way of any number of slasher films (particularly the Friday the 13th films, as it even goes so far as to rip off a rather spectacular murder from Jason X). I figured that I would probably like it, since I’ve liked other films of a similar ilk lately (The Babysitter, Happy Death Day), but if the tone of a high-concept film like this one isn’t just right, it can crash and burn spectacularly. Writer/director Christopher Landon got it just right, however, and I had an absolute blast with it. I appreciate that it takes its horror seriously; there’s no jokey Freddie Krueger-esque wisecracks, and some of the murders are pretty icky. It also has the wonderful quality of making the audience care about its characters, which is an all-too-rare occurrence in the horror genre (especially in the last twenty years or so). Vince Vaughn’s performance as both the killer and the teenaged girl trapped in his body really anchors the film, as he never overplays either aspect of his role. I liked this one a lot.


10/24/2021

38. Triangle (2009) (Streaming--Google Drive) – Why is it that every horror film that I’ve ever seen that’s set on a yacht-sized boat or bigger doesn’t have a linear story? There’s always some sort of time warp or alternate realities or something else screwy going on, and there’s always a scene featuring food that is yummy one moment and rotting and worm-infested the next. And so it is with this film as well. A woman goes sailing with a friend and a group of his friends, but they encounter a massive storm which capsizes their yacht and leaves them stranded, until a passenger liner shows up and gets close enough to them for them to board it. Once on the ship, they seem to be the only ones there. Up until about the midway point of the film, I was pretty much hating the film’s setup and how the plot was unspooling, but somehow my curiosity got piqued, and I ended up becoming rather invested in how the film might play out. I ended up liking the film much more than I thought that I would. It’s still not perfect, and I still have a LOT of unanswered questions about it, but I think that it’s worth a watch for those with some patience and a high tolerance for ambiguity.

39. The Night of the Sorcerers (1974) (DVD-R recorded from VHS) – This wonderfully terrible voodoo movie is from Amando de Ossorio, the Spanish director who introduced the creepy skeletal resurrected Knights Templar in the “Blind Dead” series of films. It’s kind of hard to believe that this film came from the same guy, as it’s not scary in the least and has pretty much zero atmosphere. Still, it’s got a bunch of zombies and a passel of vampire women in leopard-print bikinis, so it’s definitely worth the eighty minutes that you’ll spend watching it. A detailed plot synopsis isn’t really necessary; all you need to know is that some researchers are in the African “forest” (as a couple of characters call it), and they find out that a local legend concerning a ceremonial voodoo site is all too true. Don’t look for logic within fifty yards of this film; just sit back and enjoy its gonzo shenanigans.


10/25/2021

40. Possessor Uncut (2020) (Streaming--Hulu) – The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. Brandon Cronenberg, David’s son, directed this most interesting sci-fi/horror film that would fit snugly into his father’s body of work. It even co-stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, who starred in Cronenberg pere’s kinda-sorta thematically-related film eXistenZ. In this one, Andrea Riseborough stars as an agent who, through brain-implant technology of some sort or another, is able to take over people’s bodies and get them to commit acts that they normally wouldn’t do, such as murder. Unfortunately for her, her latest unwitting host has a strong will, and she finds him fighting for control. I was a bit leery of this film at first, as it seemed to lean a little too much towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum, but it was so well-made that I got sucked in. I found it to be really intriguing, and now I’m looking forward to checking out his next film, Infinity Pool. The uncut version has a surprising amount of graphic violence and nudity, so if you decide to watch that version, be forewarned.


10/26/2021

41. The Gate (1987) (Streaming--Google Drive) – This low-budget, PG-13-rated horror film designed for young teenagers did major business at the box office on its opening weekend, probably most due to its saturation ad campaign that hit a week or so before it debuted. I know that it certainly piqued my interest, but I didn’t get around to seeing the film until it hit video. I enjoyed it then, and I’ve enjoyed it the two times that I’ve seen it since. In it, a couple of kids unknowingly unleash a horde of demonic little critters from a hole in one of their backyards, and they have to put everything right again before the kid’s mom and dad get home from a weekend trip. I like that the film takes the situation that it presents seriously and that the threat to the kids is actually dangerous. Stephen Dorff, in his first movie role, is great as one of the kids.


10/27/2021

42. The Untold Story (1993) (Streaming--Shudder) – I’m surprised that I’ve never seen this before tonight, because normally I’m all over some Category III (the equivalent of our NC-17 rating) films from Hong Kong, especially those whose reputations precede them. I’ve been hearing about this one for a couple of decades, so it was high time that I saw it. In it, a guy kills the owner of the restaurant where he works (and the rest of the owner’s family, while he’s at it) and declares himself the new owner. After the police are called in to investigate the disappearance of the family, the killer keeps killing to protect his secret, but he’s eventually found out. Like a lot of Hong Kong films, The Untold Story has a lot of unfunny “comic” relief; unlike most Category III films, however, this one doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the nasty stuff—there’s a rape in the film that’s difficult to watch and a LOT of fairly gruesome murders, including those of five (!) children. It would be quite difficult to watch if the cop antics weren’t so grating; apparently, Hong Kong is on some sort of quota system that requires at least one amazingly petulant female character per film. I can’t in good conscience say that I liked The Untold Story, but I did find it fascinating from a sociological standpoint. Fun trivia fact: the actor Anthony Wong, who played the killer, won the Best Actor award at Hong Kong’s version of the Oscars for his performance in this film.


10/28/2021

43. Body Bags (1993) (Streaming--Shudder) – Tales from the Crypt had proven to be a bonanza for HBO, so Showtime commissioned this film to be the pilot for their answer to that popular TV series. In it, John Carpenter stars as “the Coroner,” who was to be the proposed show’s answer to Tales from the Crypt’s Cryptkeeper. He introduces three stories that would have felt right at home on Tales from the Crypt (or Tales from the Darkside, for that matter), involving murderous gas station attendants, aliens, and eye transplants gone wrong. It’s all very pedestrian, but at least there are multiple cameos to watch for in the stories to help keep you awake. It’s pretty easy to see why this didn’t go to series.


10/29/2021

44. Opera (1987) (DVD) – Many consider Opera to be Dario Argento’s last great film. I’m not in that camp (as I think that Trauma is pretty cool, and I’m one of the few fans of The Card Player), but I can see where those people are coming from. In it, Verdi’s Macbeth is being staged as an edgy, new-wave kind of extravaganza, but the legendary curse of “the Scottish play” seems to have come down on this production. First, the opera’s leading lady is hit by a car, prompting the producers to move her understudy, Betty, into the role. After her first performance, someone starts killing members of the opera company, and Betty is the only witness to the killings, as the murderer ties her up and forces her to watch the murders. As is often the case with Argento’s films, the plot is fairly nonsensical, but the murders are staged with panache. The acting is all over the map, but Cristina Marsillach (who had just costarred with Tom Hanks in Every Time We Say Goodbye) makes an attractive leading lady, and Ian Charleson is delightfully rakish in his last film role. Overall, I’d rank this as a mid-tier Argento film, not as good as Suspiria, much better than The Phantom of the Opera, and in about the same league as Cat o’ Nine Tails.


10/30/2021

45. Evil Dead II (1987) (Blu-ray) – I think that if you were to ask anyone who saw the original The Evil Dead first run, they’d tell you that it was one of the scariest films that they’d ever seen. I know that it scared me into sleeplessness the night that I first saw it. At the time, the end credit of the film that called it “the ultimate experience in grueling horror” wasn’t hyperbole in the least, at least to me and my friends. After seeing it twice during its theatrical run, I probably watched the VHS tape of it at least a dozen times before this sequel came out. When my best friend and I got in line to see it on its opening night in 1987, we were pumped up beyond belief. We KNEW that this was going to be scarier than the original, and we were ready. By thirty minutes into the film, we realized that we’d been the victims of a bait-and-switch scam—not only wasn’t Evil Dead II scary, it was actually funny. We were in no mood for funny, and we got angrier and angrier as the film wore on. Everyone around us seemed to be enjoying the film a lot, but we weren’t. After it was over, my best friend had a headache from all the hatred that the film inspired, and he was threatening to write a letter to Sam Raimi to tell him exactly where he could store his film. Because of this bad experience, I’ve never taken to Evil Dead II much, although, due to his subsequent films, I’ve come to realize that it’s exactly the film that Raimi wanted to make. I have warmed to it a bit, but it’s still my least favorite of the original trilogy of films.


10/31/2021

46. Hell Fest (2018) (Streaming--Netflix) – I wasn’t expecting much from this film, so I was pretty surprised to enjoy it so much. In it, a group of friends go to a Halloween-themed amusement park, where they attract the attentions of a masked killer. The set-up’s not anywhere near original, but the film is nicely shot, the performers aren’t as annoying as the actors in this type of film often are, and the last scene of the film put a very interesting twist on things. Color me a fan.

47. Halloween Kills (2021) (Streaming--Peacock) – I’m in the minority of viewers who didn’t particularly like the 2018 revival of this franchise, so I wasn’t as pumped up about seeing this film as most folks seemed to be. I was more than willing to give it a chance, though, but as I expected, it lived down to my meager expectations. There’s a lot of carnage in this one, but almost no tension, as the film suffers from having too many characters to keep up with. While I like the idea of bringing back characters from the first film (Sheriff Brackett, Tommy, Lonnie, Lindsey, et al.), there were just too many of them to remember their relationships with each other and with the latter-day cast. On top of that, the film adds in flashbacks to 1978, with new characters inserted into the universe of the first film, which really muddied the waters. And once again, Jamie Lee Curtis is stuck in a hospital, wearing a bad wig. To give credit where credit is due, the film looks great; the lighting, especially, is gorgeous. For me, though, the worst thing about the film is that it’s so didactic—I hate to be lectured by something that’s supposed to be entertaining. Luckily, Halloween Ends will finish up this cycle of films next year.

Theme Nights -- Completed!

31 Films Subset -- Completed!

The Checklist -- Completed!

SterlingBen

Sep 30th
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1.) Vampyr (1932) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Ah, nothing like a near silent black and white expressionistic German film to really clear out the living room. Vampyr is pretty light on the vampires and mostly follows a man down the rabbit whole into... death? I mean I think I got everything but I am sure there is a deeper meaning here I am missing. And along those lines how do I even rate a movie like this? Pretentious high score, or didn't get it low score? It's a lose lose situation. Thinking objectively this movie came out at roughly the same time as Frankenstein, it tends to rely more on bizarre imagery and on screen reading than a movie probably should, even one from 1932. But then again it is a super early foreign film... I don't know. Most people will find this movie fairly bland and even appreciating it's historical significance and early special effects I did too. Anyway off to the commentary to see why I am a classless lughead.

(3 out of 5)




2.) Commentary For Vampyr (1932) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: While I may have bemoaned the limited genre choices available in the Criterion Crossover here the last few years, I gotta admit they do give good commentary. Wonderful stuffy Englishman giving a very deep track here and yes filling me in on a lot of what I didn't connect the dots on in my first viewing. Just the sort of thing you want to listen to with a glass of fine brandy and infrequently concur with an 'indubitably'. Here's a fancy excerpt: "By this point I think that Dreyer has pretty successfully completely undermined the notion that this needs to be seen either as a subjective dream or as an objective fantastic reality. It is inescapably both together".

(4 out of 5)




B-1.) Iron Monk: Oktoberfest (Oklahoma)

My Thoughts: Crisp almost apple-y scent... yeah I do think this local brew snuck in a bit of fruit somewhere. A very lightly carbonated Marzen style ale that hits with a deepening burnt caramel on the sides of your tongue that intensifies as you get that was of light wheat flavor. Pretty good start! Over the years Iron Monk has kind of hit all over the place with their Oktoberfest offering but they seem to have a good recipe down now. Glad I got this one in a 6-pack.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like chemically but taste amazing... mild but also taste like apple cider.




3.) Road Games (1981) (DVD)

My Thoughts: Stacy Keach doing Rear Window in a big rig driving across the Australian outback. Having seen several terrible trucker movies recently this one really shines as an outstanding example of that sub sub genre. Jamie Lee Curtis is at her Scream Queen height and there is a dog! What more could you want? This one is an old favorite of mine and one of my best blind buys ever. Glad that it was picked as a subset as it game me an excuse to dust it off for the first time in nearly a decade. I see a lot of other poster are watching the new Scream Factory blu but I am still rocking my old Anchor Bay release. One interesting thing I noticed was the Anchor Bay version has the rating listed as Not Rated instead of PG where it is listed as everywhere else. My guess is that they didn't want to put PG on the box thinking it might hurt sales of a genre title. And who knows maybe 18 years ago when I bought this disc the much younger me might have been swayed by that little bit of information. Glad I wasn't though. One thing I will note though is that having Stacy Keach as a truck driver elevates his manliness a bit too much and somewhat lessens the potential peril we see him in. You never think that the killer will be able to out muscle him, even if he is stuck up.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: It was good, I was wondering why Jamie Lee Curtis was in Australia movie and truck driver was too nice. If I was truck driver I won't do that... be nice. But it's not that scary. I thought it was more Halloween type scary suspense.

(3 out of 5)




B-2.) Schlafly Tap Room: Pumpkin Ale (Missouri)

My Thoughts: Nice clean pumpkin scent, smells a bit like our seasonal hand soap. Odd deep flavor to this one. Heavy vegetable with a bit of beef stock? It definitely doesn't skew beer.. ah well at least it's a 9%er.

(2.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like soap... taste like sour grape juice... not bad.


Oct 1st
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4-7.) Trailer Trauma 3: 80's Horrorthon (2017) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Fuck that was long. Running at almost 7 and a half hours and sporting 254 trailers Trailer Trauma 3 was a bit of a slog, at least between hours 4&6. As usual I did a bit of stats while watching, of the 254 trailer there were 78 trailers for movies I had not seen, 4 that I had seen but don't own and 4 that I owned and haven't watched yet. While on a normal I would count that as pretty bad stats considering I fashion myself a bit of an 80's horror aficionado I think that is pretty good. This collection is still lacking in the additional non-trailer go between type content but is decidedly better than the first 2 Trailer Traumas, admittedly do to it's source material. I had a thought while watching this, I think in my next movie room I want a smallish monitor set with a motion sensor that plays a random genre or grind house style trailer when it senses movement as a bit of ambiance. Also why is My Demon Lover and Moon Trap not in my collection, this is something that needs rectification.

(4 out of 5)




8.) Slither (2006) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Night of the Creeps 2 was flipping' amazing! I am not sure why I never got around to seeing thing movie, it's got the sci-fi, it mixes in some of the funny and it's got that goopy over the top gore, it's exactly my bag. I suppose the confession first. while I was looking over the list of movie that would qualify for my subset (thank you Chad) I came across Slither and thought to myself; "Great! I just bought that!." But it wasn't Slither I had just bought... it was Shivers. A less than ideal sale price later here we are and I am glad to have finally added this one to the collection. We have our classic meteor falls to earth with gooey alien nougat center leading to an invasion of slug critters which have to be repealed by our dashingly good looking small town sheriff (played by one Nathan Fillion). There is for sure shades of what director James Gunn would go on to do here with his Troma references, mismatched music to action and his miniaturized Starro-esk final act. I also adored the Society & Freakshow ascetic... this is just a movie after my own heart.

(4.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. I don’t know... there is just somehow I like when that big lady is like "i’m hungry!" I think the scariest part... you know that music... that music with one note? (that’s called a jump-scare) That’s mostly what scares me sometimes. The one I really shaked at was the one in the office (with the deer?)yeah that was the loudest one.




B-3.) Dogfish Head: Punkin Ale (Delaware) - 2021 vs 2019

2021 Thoughts: Even as I was pouring it the smell of this one hit me like the scent of a pack of smokes to a fella gone cold turkey a week before. Yeah she was a tall glass of pumpkin ale and she knew it, perfectly fizzy, orange in all the right places… Anyway a very fresh inviting fall scent to this one, Dogfish Head is always a treat and I figured there was no better day than the theme day based on my seasonal alcoholism to crack this one open. A full bodied beer, excellent balance of carbonation, strong rich wheat and barley flavor. Tad much on the hops for me as it will linger in your mouth kinda resting with that hoppy bite that diminishes along the edges for 20-30 seconds after a swig. As with previous years I am hard pressed to really get a sense of the pumpkin here... nutmeg yes, pumpkin maybe? I would have fallen back on maybe I am still a bit messed up from having covid earlier this year (butter and eggs still taste perpetually spoiled to the pallet) but checking my notes this seems to be par for the course for Punkin. Great all around seasonal and something I wouldn't mind having or sharing with others but for purposes of the challenge I am looking for something a bit more of a gimmicky with the pumpkin, just a bit more pumpkin to the face. Don’t recommend drinking in general while reclined as I think I have just a little bit of Punkin in my lungs now... but on a side note it for sure hits the pallet smoother and with less of a nutmeg bite when consumed only slightly chilled (who is even still reading this dribble?)

(3.5 out of 5)

2019 Thoughts: After 2 years in the aged beer drawer this 2019 vintage Punkin is looking noticeably darker and more opaque than it’s 2021 counterpart. Remarkably it hasn’t lost any carbonation though. Taste wise things might be sliding a bit. It has a sharper zing-ier taste a bit seltzer-y almost. After that initial zing you do get some of that pumpkin flavoring but it is quick to bitter in the mouth and also as you drink it your mouth feels like you hav been sucking on a candle as it leaves an odd coating of waxy residue on your tongue and the insides of your mouth. I am not sure what this is. Is it the fresher pumpkin part of the beer going bad or perhaps the breaking down of some other component? Either-way it is a bit less pleasurable feeling than the absence of such a feeling. Is this science or lunacy? Surly the alcohol keeps it it safe yeah?

(2.5 out of 5)


Oct 2nd
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9.) Commentary For Slither (2006) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: A lively track with James Gunn, Nathan Fillion & Michael Rooker recorded just after Gunn finished GOTG. Its a fun track but maybe a bit less informative than it could be as the participants seemed to have mostly not seen the movie in awhile and are just as likely to laugh along with the movie as oppose to deliver on the behind the scenes stories. Also James Gun yells most of the track to the point where there is no audio level where both he is reasonable level and you can hear the other participants. Perhaps I need to give the archival track run as I know a commentary on this can be good.

(2.5 out of 5)




10.) Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) (Theater)*

My Thoughts: While this movie was a lot more of the same it was decisively better more of the same. More Tom Harding doing his sweaty Brock, more Venom with the funny, more fights between completely CG but again all just a bit better. But the best part has to be our connective mid-credit sequence scene and the thoughts it spurs of it's eventualities. One things for sure though, I don't need to see Venom fight another symbiote, ever. Also Sony, can you not have such stand out commercials for your products in your movies? Giant Sony Bravia box center screen, side character: "wow what a great tv!" Much cringe. Otherwise I had good time and look forward to Venom's MCU debut.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. I like what the bad guy wearing the tuxedo thing... like Zombieland. The guy in Zombieland kinda reminds me of Yondu, are they similar? I think they are... the guy who always likes the Twinkie. "False Advertisement!" I thought that Venom thinks that boy looks yummy, wants to eat the boy.




11.) My Boyfriend's Back (1993) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: I saw the trailer for this movie so much as a kid but oddly enough I never actually rented it, it was definitely in my hand a time or two but it never made it up to the counter. And as such I was unprepared for the amount of weirdness this movie turned out to be. Think Tammy and the T-Rex except a zombie instead of a T-Rex. It was so weird that it really started to turn me around until the ending. Man why ruin what could easily have turned into a cult classic? This could easily have been a big in the cult aftermarket if they had really pushed it to the end. Maybe have the two in old age makeup on a porch at the end, the girl in a rocking chair and what's left of the boy in a bucket, he looks up at her and smile and she kisses him and goes back to reading her book. But perhaps there was a different ending originally and they had to scrub it for this lame happy one? The audio commentary for My Boyfriend's Back is assuredly in my future (something I am sure most people have thought to themselves over the years).

(3 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: This is giving me a little mixed up what’s in the comic book... what’s true ..its a lot of things and they are confusing me. It was good. I know that mom, maybe? (She recognized her from D.A.R.Y.L. but I didn't make that connection during this review). I think it was a little funny in some part. I thought it was weird when his ear fell off. I think it’s weird when his face is blue. (Was this a good love story?) (thumbs up) Good.




B-4.) Left Hand Brewing Company: Oktoberfest (Colorado)

My Thoughts: Has that fun Oktoberfest scent that fills you with memories of Chicken Dances and delicious sausages. And the, just like that, all of that good favor is out the window once I started drinking it. It just taste off. Too much bitterness here, it overshadows the traditional caramel marzen notes something fierce. There is just a second when you take a swig and your mouth is like yes I know this this is great, and then you wonder if you just drank it out of an ash tray… I had planned to give this one a fair shake after it warmed up as traditionally marzens do fair a bit better as they warm but right after writing the above (and just after the director’s introduction to Silent Madness) I promptly spilled it all over myself and the couch. So here I am after 20 minutes of cleaning later ready to jump into the Founders Oktoberfest I guess.

(2 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like German beer... very mild and crisp. I like it.




B-5.) Founders Brewing Company: Oktoberfest (Michigan)*

My Thoughts: Slightly hoppier and fruiter then the Left Hand, less of that traditional Oktoberfest scent for sure. Taste wise it is pretty middle of the road stuff, almost like an Oktoberfest that had been watered down. Nearly didn’t pick this up as the only way to get it was in a 15 pack but, oh well, they got me. It’s like when you get the low end option for a pitcher at Oktoberfest. I am suddenly feeling like I might have been a bit harsh with the Left Hand Oktoberfest...

(2 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: (Referring to beer disaster) That big how can you drop the shit?! (this beer(probably influenced by spill)) Less scent, very bitter, ew. I don't like it.




12.) Silent Madness 3D (1984) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: I really really liked this. As a disclaimer it should be noted I am a 3D fan, an 80's slasher fan and I was a little sauced by the end. As an 80's slasher it is pretty formulaic, when a madman is accidentally released from an insane asylum due to budget cuts it's up to one intrepid doctor to go undercover at a sorority to uncover the truth and save some co-eds along the way. The villain is almost comically bland, the back story is derivative as all hell but man there is just something about formulaic 80's slashers that really do it or me especially when they are decently made and not perpetually in the woods. Add to that some very intriguing (and yes sometimes bad) 3D and this was really a treat. Also this has that whole lost film thing going for it too as, if I am correct, there was no way to buy this movie previous to this release outside of VHS (in the US). My hats off to Vinegar Syndrome for this release and I am looking forward to checking out the commentaries on this disc.

(4.5 out of 5)


Oct 3rd
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13.) Dawn Of The Mummy (1981) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: I liked what this movie was trying to do. Travelog horror, set in Egypt with mummies that kill twenty somethings. That sound good like a movie I would enjoy, the end product though... not so good. This Italian zombie movie with 3 sets is pretty bland. There is something about the way that it is edited that just sucks all of the would be tension out of the movie. I picked this up after seeing the trailer on one of the Terror Trauma compilations last year and I would have been happier just having it as a trailer in my life. In this movie potential victims react to everything with an explosion of feat only to immediately forget what just feared them out within a few seconds. It's poorly written, acted, edited, there are no boobs, the transfer is so dark you can't see way may be decent gore (I mean it is an italian movie, right?) & to top it all off the version I bought off amazon is a DVD-R bootleg. Big Oasis Of Zombies vibes.

(2 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: It was good (you can say something is bad or you don't like it if you want) I like every movie we watch. Everyone is so scared in this movie.. and they're not mummies they are zombies, right?




B-6.) Prairie Artisan Ales: Mocha Noir (Oklahoma)*

My Thoughts: Not necessarily a seasonal or Halloween beer but it’s got that Silents of the Lambs reminiscent skull butterfly on the front so we are going with it. Pours pitch black with a very minuscule amount of brown head. Smells like a deep red whine poured at an occult book store coffee shop . It’s got the kind of flavor that really attacks your mouth, things that make you glah. Very small hint of a stout-y beer on the tip of your tongue that quickly turns into a vanilla whisky/coffee mess. Just 2 sips in and already I feel like I need a DD. As you drink it it has that feeling that you are drinking something you aren’t supposed to, you know like antifreeze. I am giving this a low score because I find it pretty unpalatable. That being said it is a 14% beer, guaranteed to get you sloshed in 1 bottle and is at the very least different… very different from anything else you are likely to drink for fun. Interest can be fun...

(1.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells definitely soy sauce... fermented soy sauce. Taste like sweet rum. Yeah, I don't thing that's a beer. Weird.




14.) The Severed Arm (1973) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: A solid grindhouse horror film. This is a title that was probably bound to languish in the 'to watch' pile for a few more years if not for the feverous adoration it received on the Force Five podcast from one of the guys involved with sourcing special feature material for Vinegar Syndrome (how do I get a dream job like that?). The story centers around a group of friends trapped for days in a cave when they come to the decision that the only way to live is to start donating arms. Unfortunately the short straw drawer disagrees and just a few minutes after relieving him of his right arm (that was uncalled for, at least do the left) they hear the sound of rescue workers digging to save them. The arm incident drives the one man insane and a few years later he starts hunting the other men, not to kill them but to take their arms! Something which does tend to kill people... Solid movie, great cast & I loved that police officers style. Its kinda fun to not have vulnerable teens as our would be victims, these were all able body men, I think I would have had a hard time with two arms taking some of these guys down. A slightly different title and advertising campaign and this might have been something way more talked about. As it sits you see that art and read the title and your brain kinda fills in the rest but this movie is much better than that autofill you might get off the title.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 4th
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15.) A Bay Of Blood (1971) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Finally marking this off the list of shame (especially considering I won this disc as an OHMC prize a few years back). The seminal Bava classic, widely heralded as an inspiration behind the first several Friday the 13th films and more so of the slasher genre to come, is a twisting giallo about the murder of an old woman dead set to keep her property so that no one can develop her picturesque bayside community. The mystery of the killer had be guessing until the end and the end and the end. It’s a movie with a lot of deaths, over the top gore, dark Italian eyes & blond hair. 50 years had done a lot to tame this film but I still found myself perpetually surprised during the last 20 minutes. I wonder if perhaps I should have watched it in Italian, I imagine the scene with the two girls would have played better with everyone speaking their respective languages. Onto the commentary!

(3.5 out of 5)




16.) Commentary For A Bay Of Blood (1971) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Wonderfully in-depth track covering many aspects of the Gialo sub-genre, behind the scenes stories and post film histories (so many heroin issues). I dig the speakers voice and cadence on the track and was also compelled to write down several movies that were mentioned and reccomended over the course of the recording. My one nit pick might be that tis track seemed a little less planned than historian tracks I have become accustomed to lately, frequently having longer stretches of silence. Still a great listen though.

(4 out of 5)




B-7.) Elysian Brewing Company: The Great Pumpkin (Washington)

My Thoughts: Considering some of the low scores I have been doling out to beers thus far this challenge I thought it might be time to give this little ditty from the aged beers drawer a re-sip. This was last years pick for Best Pumpkin Beer. Getting a little bit of the pumpkin scent on top, very light, kind of reminds me of a small upscale gift shop. Out onto the tongue… yeah, still good. Not sure what effect if any the year in the drawer had on this one, perhaps I should give the other one I squirreled away until 2025. Has the weight and initial taste of a nice wheat beer. The pumpkin taste develops on the sides of your tongue, it’s never crazy over-powering or bitter or chemically. I can see why this beer won last year, flipping delicious. It taste like a quality German Purity Law beer pumpkin-i-fied.

(4.5 out of 5)




17.) What The Waters Left Behind (2017) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Hey, an Argentinian horror movie! Fancy. Would like to thank SurfinHank for this one, a true gentlemen. This movie starts out pretty solid as a documentary crew heads into an area beset years ago by an ecological disaster. The ruins of a town years underwater make for a great stage for a horror film and I loved all the drone establishing shots. The movie does unfortunately become something of a Jack of all trades master of none as it shifts into Friday the 13th, Wrong Turn, The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre melange with just a spoonful of Hostel thrown in for good measure. Alas the baddies here never quite reach the level of scariness as any of the movies they are "homaging" but being in another language really helps. Had this been another meh low budget American movie I don't think I would have found it quite so bearable. But in Spanish and with that cast, especially those leading ladies, it was just passable.

(3 out of 5)


Oct 5th
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18.) Commentary For Trilogy Of Terror (1975) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: I have in the past been outspoken about my distaste for Karen Black, while I am sure she is a fine individual I just don't care for her in films. So when posed with the choice of two commentary tracks on this title, one an historian track and the other a Karen Black track, I decided that maybe I was just being too harsh on Ms Black and that it would be more prudent to give her track a go. And... I still don't like her. Seems pretty full of herself, never wanted to do this movie in the first place... sigh. I will say that I did enjoy it when she was talking about the third entry as she did relate some rather interesting behind the scenes and cut plot elements that were fun to hear about. So while it didn't really change my opinion of Ms Black at least I gleaned some inside into this classic.

(2.5 out of 5)




19.) Witching Time (1988) (VHS)*

My Thoughts: I would consider this a bit of a special purchase. As a lifelong fan of Casandra Peterson I have always been keen to pick up her older VHS exclusive Thriller Video releases but never at the market rate they seemed to demand. Fortunately I did happen across this one for a rather modest $20, if you can consider $20 for a 35 year old VHS tape in the age of 4K to be modest, so that I can finally experience some OG Elvira content. Compared to her Movie Macabre show that would be born from this line I was surprised at how little Elvira you actually get here. With no commercials to bumper you only get an intro and a post credits scene with Elvira and a not insubstantial amount of that is an ad for other Elvira Thriller video releases. She might be ever so slightly more risqué though? I can't ever recall her referring to herself as a "whore" before. The "movie" is actually an episode of a British TV show called Hammer House Of Horror. It involves a 1600's witch, played by Patricia Quinn of Rocky Horror fame, materializing in modern day England and tormenting a man and his lady friend. Trying to kill her, forcing herself on him and just generally trying to make the guy go crazy. A passable story, nothing spectacular. Really I think the box is probably the big appeal here. Looking back I have never scored Elvira vehicles very high but I do keep watching them.

(3.5 out of 5)




20.) Trilogy Of Terror II (1996) (Blu-Ray)

My Thoughts: Although it was fun to catch up with the Zuni fetish doll it was much less effective this time. To make up for the much larger setting they made him way too fast to the point of being somewhat comical, aside from the the other movements and the sounds he makes just weren't as good as that original 70's effort. This time the first two stories were more on point with an anthology but the goofy puppet rats in the first story and the less than stellar child actor in the second story deflate the effort quite a bit. Looking back at my review of the original Trilogy of Terror I pondered the notion of cutting out the best story from each horror anthology and pasting that into a best of reel. None of the stories in this one would have made that reel.

(2.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. My favorite story is probably the first one because it was the least scariest. (What about Bobby?) It was little too scary. (Trilogy of Terror or Trilogy of Terror II?) I kinda maybe like the second one... maybe because there was a little more horror in it.




21.) Commentary For Trilogy Of Terror II (1996) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Wow, now that's how you do an historian track. Did this guy even breath the whole time? It felt like I was being read a history of genre films, with emphasis on made-for-television, during this track. Certainly to the point were it elevated the source material. And he didn't stop with just info on these stories but also talked about the sub sub genres of each entry as well. Almost a perfect track it's a shame it's an extra feature on the Trilogy Of Terror II disc though as I would imagine it will get very little play after people watch the movie.

(4.5 out of 5)




B-8.) Karbach Brewing Co.: Karbachtober Fest Seasonal (Texas)*

My Thoughts: Looks the part, a crystal clear amber beer with a picturesque foamy head. Does smell a bit more supermarket than German.... Watery? Goes down thin and then hits you on the side of your pallet with an almost artificial bitter caramel flavor. And then just as soon as I get some of those traditional Oktoberfest notes in the front of my mouth they just dissolve away into a watery taste. I almost feel like this beer is hydrating me... weird. I gotta say... I am oddly kinda liking this, not unpleasant but does skew fake.

(3 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like American major brand scent. Very light.. less fizz. Almost like grape juice and apple juice without sugar, I don't taste any alcohol.




B-9.) Marshall Brewing Company: Oktoberfest (Oklahoma)

My Thoughts: Very floral almost soapy scent. Thicker, more full bodied than the Texas Oktoberfest and I am getting those deep caramel notes here, they are a bit more burnt and bitter than I would prefer though. As with most Oktoberfest lagers it does get better slightly as it warms hitting those notes clearer and with less bitter.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Very foamy, bitter, less scent... it's not bad. (Oklahoma or Texas?) Oklahoma. I thought the Texas one (would be) more stronger.




22.) Unhinged (2020) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This may be just just because I am a bit tipsy but this was pure exploitation trash and I loved it. Also kinda like Walking Tall as a horror movie? Russel Crowe plays a flabby tabby middle management type who goes off the deep end and runs afoul of our heroine in some heavy warning traffic. Already given up on life he decides to ruin hers by chasing her around town, stealing her phone and then methodically killing her contacts. Pretty ridiculous urban Hitcher where the bad guy is defiantly a former boss or two of mine.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: Well it was pretty good. I like it a lot but some situation is not realistic. You know whypolice didn't come quick enough at the cage or gas station, people seeing that. It's just like 'come on' but it's great. Oh my goodness what happened to Russle Crowe? He is always like hero type...

(4.5 out of 5)


Oct 6th
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23.) Cutting Class (1989) (VHS)

My Thoughts: This film didn't know what it wanted to be when it graduated. Filled with your classic 80's horror kills but lacking in the music and suspense. Also lots of comedy here but not enough were I would consider it really a horror comedy. It's weird. And to really stir the pot my ex-rental VHS tape has it sticker labeled as a drama, although that's probably an oversight of someone at the video store making a snap judgement based on the cover. Big draw to most here would be a young Brad Pit but this is also some of the worst acting I have ever seen from him... I don't know. I wanted to like this but in the end it was just kinda meh. Funny to see Roddy McDowel in such an inappropriate roll though. I can't say that I am not still interested in upgrading my VHS to the Blu-Ray though. One wonders about the effects of seeing a film like this all cleaned up and with a bevy of supporting features behind it. Oh! And I did dig seeing the girl from Slither again in here, that was fun.

(3 out of 5)




24.) Night School (1981) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Hey, it's the Wraith!? So I guess black clad motorcycle men were a lot more terrifying in the 80's than they are today. Really dug the laid back more mysterious tone of this early 80's slasher. This is before the craze hit so we are much more in Black Christmas territory here than we are in Friday the 13th territory. Also being set in Boston you really get some interesting historical settings for your American cast to live in that is quite different from most similar movies from this time frame. The mystery to this one becomes apparent, I think, much before what is intended. And I won't go into spoilers but I did not like the end of the narrative arc on this one, the end end I did enjoy. Decent little horror flick but not one that really stands out from the crowd.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 7th
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25.) Cursed Films (2020) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: I was not on board for the first part of this series. Perhaps I just lean too skeptical. In fact that's maybe one of the reasons why I like horror movies. With genre movies you get to turn off those areas of the brain an just believe that this werewolf is a real thing or that this zombie virus is possible. So when they were interviewing conspiracy podcasters and trumpeting the 'Did you know' section on IMDb I was dreading having to sit through 2+ hours of pseudo-science garbage. Then things took an interesting turn and with the closing of the first episode they completely eviscerated the notion of a 'cursed film' and called everyone who believed in it essentially a moron. And just like that I was back on board, each episode sets up the "curse" and then eloquently knocks it down turning this series more into a study of film safety and on set tragedy in genre films. I dug Troma's participation, Kane Hodders and all other cast and crew members who shared their stories here. Also damn on that final episode, I had never actually seen the footage before, wow. So after a rocky start Cursed Films did redeem it's self and is something I would enjoy watching again in the future (even if they already did all the big ones).

(4 out of 5)




26.) Jackals (2017) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Considering this was a Dollar Tree pickup, I went in with super low expectations and was quite surprised to find out it wasn't bad. After a Manhunter opening set back in the 80's we cut to current day where a family kidnaps an estranged relative to help deprogram him from whatever weird cult he's in. Alas it's a cult of The Strangers type characters and they proceed to Purge siege said family. It's super derivative but well done and you even get some c-listers, as far as horror movies go, and certainly as far as dollar store horror movies go, you could do a lot worse.

(3 out of 5)




27.) A Quiet Place Part II (2020) (4K UHD)*

My Thoughts: More of the same but also exactly what I wanted. Now that's how you do a grade a monster movie. So far during this challenge I have not had any issues pausing and coming back to movies after completing some set assigned task. But that was not the case with this movie as I was glued to my seat actively controlling the volume of my breathing. This next day sequel follows our remaining family back into town where it's not just the creatures you have to watch out for. Very satisfying sequel to the point where I rushed to my computer when it was done to look up the possibility of a Part 3, which it does look they are in pre-production of a spin off. Which is fine as I don't want to watch any more baby peril but I do want to spend some more time in this apocalypse..

(4.5 out of 5)




B-10.) Shiner: Oktoberfest (Texas)

My Thoughts: Very light scent but does skew Oktoberfest-y. It's is a particularly light Oktoberfest ale, lightly carbonated with just a hint go bitterness around the edges of your tongue. Yeah... I am digging it. I did come in with low expectations due to Shiner's previous challenge performance but.. yeah good job this year. This is a good fast drink (and I am drinking it fast because I know Wyvern is going to need the help). Few minutes later note: I was waffling on a 3.5 or a 4 but warmer this is totes a 4.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like American beer but it's a little bit fancy side. Light, hoppy, smooth taste... little bitter... I kinda like it.




B-11.) Rogue Farms: Pumpkin Patch Ale (Oregon)

My Thoughts: Delivering on that seasonal scent, this one smells like pumpkin ale that has been spilled on and soaked into a corduroy jacket. Much to my dismay Pumpkin Patch Ale did not come in it's large iconic orange bottle but comes to us (locally at any rate) in a festively decorated tallboy. Taking a sip I am immediately... yeah, yeah that's the kinda off the wall crazy pumpkin taste I am after. Heavy earthy pumpkin flavoring with just enough cinnamon added do that you know it's there but don't feel like you are at Starbucks. I like this beer and it is complementing Wyvern quite nicely.

(4.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like soy sauce again. Very foaming, bitter, sour.. little bit smells like very thick apple cider but taste awful.


Oct 8th
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28.) Wyvern (2009) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Yep, it's a made for TV Syfy channel movie and I now own it. But at least it was only $1.88? OK now for the embarrassing part, I didn't think this was terrible. Yeah it does sport a dragon-esk creature portrayed by some bad 10 years older than the feature CG, and it is full of dumb characters and some borderline acting but it had good bones. With slightly better CG and maybe a few actor touch ups this could even be something I may be comfortable talking about in public. Waking up from it's frozen slumber, due to a bit of the ol global warming, a wyvern starts attacking the small Alaskan town of Beaver Falls. There are some light Tremors & Eight Legged Freaks vibes here. In fact if they had cast Kari Wuhrer as the town DJ instead of the girl on the cover I would have been totally on board. But at least they got the sheriff from Critters 2. As it stands it was just fun enough to be passable. (Also I might have been a few deep when I watched it...)

(3 out of 5)




29.) Warlock Moon (1973) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: So, this is a background movie. Not a movie you really set out to see. It's the kinda thing that would play in the drive-in and you would talk to your date or engage in other activities and then maybe watch the more exploitative last 20 minutes. The bulk of this movie is set around a location. Here we have this cool abandoned structure, how can we make a movie out of this? We'll get a guy and a gal to go there and then maybe there is some ghost-y stuff maybe there is some gas lighting... An axe murderer? Woah woah, we gotta keep it PG for wider release. Overall very forgettable but to be fair I did only buy this for the Joe Bob hosting & commentary.

(2.5 out of 5)




30.) Deepstar Six (1989) (Blu-Ray)

My Thoughts: Something about the cover-art for this one and Def-Con 4 left quite an impression on me as a kid and I was drawn to them again and again in the video store. While I never got around to seeing Def-Con 4 as a kid both Deepstar Six and Leviathan had some heavy play in my youth. On VHS and a SD tv the dry for wet stuff looks seamless. Here on blu-ray you do start to see the edges of the set quite a bit more which is a bit of a bummer and a little fun all at the same time. Over the years Leviathan has cemented it's self as the ultimate non-Abyss Abyss film with its better cast, effects and monster but there is something very likable about Deepstar Six and I really enjoy the effort they take to make it Poseidon Adventure-esk in it's perpetually about to flood final reel..

(3.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: It was good, the monster looks like... you know the diggers from Finn & Jake? Like the big one, something like that. I kinda with there was a scene in the hospital of her holding the baby and then we could see the baby growing and getting older and older. You know to see what it looks like.




31.) Commentary For Deepstar Six (1989) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: I started out with the archival Sean S Cunningham and friend track but after about 20 minutes of them pretty much just watching the movie I decided to switch over to the screenwriters track. These guys were much livelier, they are constantly making fun of the movie, the scrip and themselves delving into such things like when they were fired from production and how they started making the movie before finishing the script (to beat Leviathan and Abyss to market). Maybe I have been too harsh with my avoidance of writers tracks in the past as these guys were a blast.

(4 out of 5)




B-12.) Schlafly Tap Room: Oktoberfest (Missouri)

My Thoughts: Pleasant floral hoppy malty scent... am I just saying the same thing every time on smell? I mean they are all beers, eh? I suppose it would only really be interesting if I said something like 'it smells like beer on a crisp October night out at the fair'. But would that be a lie? Is the plate of left over cotton candy from the fair interfering with the brain words right now? Anyway, skews too sharp or an Oktoberfest Ale. You get a mild Marzen up front but then a slightly sour apple taste that envelops your tongue from the outside in. Weird. Also the caramel notes that do develop are overly liquorish-y... yeah. No beueno on this one.

(2 out of 5)




32.) Commentary For Warlock Moon (1973) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Not one of Joe Bobs best commentaries but I think that has more to do with the movie than anything else. As usual he does a dynamite intro (something that he is of course known or and still does to this day). While I would consider this to be the worst of his commentaries I have seen from the dvd line he did in the mid 2000's it's still pretty good. I one about 5 of the releases now and their OOP-ness is making them harder and harder to come by at a respectable price. For the last few years I have tried to get a new one for each OHMC but it may end up being cheaper to just subscribe to Shudder next year. But who knows, fingers crossed I can continue to reasonably complete this line of titles I foolishly didn't buy a decade and a half ago.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 9th
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33.) The Neon Demon (2016) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: 314 has to be seen.I decided to watch this while having lunch today and while the screen was strobing and our beautiful heroine is slipping into the depraved world of modeling I was eating a Philly Cheese-stake sandwich and thinking to myself, I am not sure if this movie is really aimed at me. It is a stunningly beautiful film, in fact I kinda regret getting this on Blu-Ray as this is a title that begs for 4K. And while I may not be the target audience there was something almost hypnotic about this film, it made you feel a bit and that's more than most films. Some might see this as style over substance but there is quite a bit of substance to this one. Between this and Starry Eyes it's rough being a young lady L.A. and I for one am going to be on the look out. Not that I live in LA... or am young.. or a girl but still, on guard.

(4 out of 5)




34.) Killers From Space (1954) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: The call signals for the planes were Tar Baby. Terrible 50's sci-fi horror where Peter Graves (Airplane's gladiator loving pilot) is our straight man, abducted by aliens and programed to turn against the government and turn over our nuclear testing scheduling. It has legit some of the worst movie monsters I have ever seen, just guys with with half ping pong ball fake eyes over their real eyes, and there is some regular lizard projected large behind our hero, it's bad, it's all bad. But it does ventures so far into the bad that it came out the other end, not quite to so bad it's good territory but maybe into so bad it's bearable territory. Really I think Perter Graves Voice is what saved this from being a 1 or a 1.5 film.

(2 out of 5)




35.) Little Monsters (2019) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Whats the best way to ruin a zombie movie? Put little kids in it. Or at least that's what I used to think. Now older and a father and a bit more like the leading male than I would like to admit I really connected with this one. Loved the comedy, most I have lol'd all challenge and just the kinda redemptive arc I was looking for. If you liked Shaun Of The Dead there is a fair chance you will like this too. That is unless you really hate Tay Tay in which case maybe you should skip this one. It's too bad this Blu-Ray is bare bones, an audio commentary or a gag reel would have complemented this property well.

(4 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Shake it off, shake it off. I thought some of the kids might die, get eaten. My favorite character is the teacher. I thought that this was like a monster movie and not a zombie movie. I like how they actually said '1, 2, 3 eyes on me'.




36.) The Hunt (2020) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: One of the most American movies I have seen in a long time. Also probably a pretty divisive film as our most recent Deadliest Game adaptation has pissed of Democrats hunting Q-Anon types. And while the film comes off decisively against everyone people going to be jumping to conclusions. If you can get around that there is a ton of fun to be had here with our infectiously likable heroine and even with our misguided lead baddie. Add to that some fun over the top gore and the always present 'what would i do in this situation' and you got yourself a solid slice of Americana.

(4.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: It was interesting the beginning but too much blood, too gross stuff and I don't care for it. And story wise it's a little weird too. Thats guy movie.

(3 out of 5)


Oct 10th
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37.) Nightbooks (2021) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: What do you write when you don't know what to write about? Well you write about how hard it is to write stuff. Jessica Jones as the evil witch, I liked. The kids, I liked. But our lead kid I didn't believe at all. Not for lack of acting but I felt like I could practically see the 35 year old writer behind this thinly vailed cool child character. Oh man, I got kidnapped because I love Lost Boys and Pumpkin Pie... said no 8 year old ever. Well at least not in the last 20 years. But getting over that it is a very competent kids genre/mystery. We learn the rules, we do our teamwork, we secure our happy ending. All with some style along the way. It still felt a bit hollow but one must give some consideration to target audience.

(3 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Is there a second one? Is this part of the horror challenge? It's not horror at all, seems like, didn't really scare me. I like the witch. (What do you like about her?) I don't know, she is cool looking, it's just because she is cool looking.




38.) Malignant (2021) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: How do you even prosecute something like that?Now that was some fresh quality trash! It should be noted, if you haven't seen the movie then stop reading right now, this is a movie that lives and dies on the twist. A mysterious entity starts killing people around our battered heroine. But low and behold... she is Edward Mordrake-ing the whole thing! Alas this was partially spoiled for me when it was called out as a movie heavy in parallel with Basket Case but the reveal still got me in how over the top crazy it was! Not removed and grown up but trimmed down and pushed back in, jeez. The effects get a little overly CG at times but considering what they are trying to do I am willing to give a pass on it. It gave me great pleasure when this movie flipped the switch from run of the mill super-ghost story to head in the back of the head backwards hack and slashing cheese. James, more like this, please.

(4 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: It was good. It wasn't that scary. Yeah but imagine if there was another me right here (motions to back of head). I think Gabriel was a little weird. (Do any of your classmates have a secret person on the back of their head?) I don't think so.




39.) Corpse Mania (1981) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Is this movie set in the 1980's or the 1800's or the 1600's? It's hard to tell sometimes. This is a weird outlier in Chinese cinema, at least that I have ever come across. We have this odd Necromantic killer who is seemingly targeting a local brothel. Always fun to have them Chinese madams as a lead character and just as with movie Shaw Brothers films we get some satisfying fisticuffs and some humorous b-movie violence. Pretty good for a clearance title.

(3 out of 5)




B-13.) Marshall Brewing Company: Big Jamoke (Oklahoma)*

My Thoughts: Yeah, not really seasonal but... horror related? It's got a skeleton on the front rising a keg like Slim Pickens on the bomb. Anaggressive fruity bouquet with this one. I am getting blackberries, plumbs and maybe just a bit of a wood-y smell. And then it taste exactly like it smells, tart with a lot of deep red wine and blackberry with just a hint of a stout beer finish. I don't really drink porters but I am suddenly thinking that maybe I should?

(4 out of 5)


Oct 11th
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40.) Mandy (2018) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: As much as it seemed like Neon Demon wasn't really a movie aimed at me, this... this is a movie aimed exactly at me. It's hardworking 1980's vs weird druggie 1970's. Nicholas Cage plays an everyman logger-type guy, think Wolverine: Origins, who's wife falls afoul of a drugged out cult muscle backed by a group of Hills Have Eyes mother fuckers. Things don't go well and the film kinda revels in the aftermath. Admittedly slow in the first half but that goes a long way into getting you into the right headspace for this one. Of all the movies I have watch so far this month, none are quit so close to art as Mandy. Please don't see my 5 star rating as a glowing recommendation, this is only a movie for weirdos in the right headspace, but if you are one of those...

(5 out of 5)




41.) Teen Wolf Too (1987) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Werewolf hot rodding, werewolf mini-golf, werewolf boxing, werewolf musical numbers, alas it is as bad as I feared. I have avoided this movie for decades as I was afraid it would be... well exactly what it turned out to be. I am not sure if they couldn't get Michael back or if this was meant to be a Jason Bateman vehicle all along, especially with all them Batemen in the credits. In this one Bateman plays the cousin of Michael's character, off to college and then quickly into his wolf suit. He acts a fool, loses his friends, gets them back, super hackneyed stuff with lots borrowed from other 80's teen comedies. Very little redeeming qualities this one and I can't see anyone over 9 or so actually enjoying it.

(2 out of 5)




B-14.) Samuel Adams: Oktoberfest (Massachusetts)

My Thoughts: Very light Oktoberfest scent, skews much happier than it should. The flavor is not what I was expecting, way more barley and toasted oat-y caramel. Somewhat too hoppy for an Octoberfest... what are you doing here Samuel Adams? Tired of being boring and trying to spice it up this year? Light marzen malty beer on the center of the tongue but it's enveloped and extinguished by a ship hoppy taste that remains as the predominant aftertaste on the pallet. A good try to be different this year but kinda just taste like there is some shandy in my Oktoberfest.

(3 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: Smells sour... aged beer seems like. Very mild, bitter taste to it. But doesn't taste alcohol that much. Aftertaste is a little weird... I don't know something smells like seafood. I like seafood but it's not what I like the taste.




B-15.) Cabin Boys Brewery: Oktoberfest (Oklahoma)

My Thoughts: Do you think they named their brewery after the Chris Elliot movie? Nah, surely not. Very floral almost aggressively hoppy scent. Taste wise I am kinda digging it. Well better than the Sammy at any rate. Hop infused punch that quickly dissipates on the turn before turning to burnt caramel and then a bitter liquorish flavor. Still not quite right for Oktoberfest but I think I like this one a nit netter even if the way I a, describing it sounds worse than the previous beer. It just tastes... classier, a it more high quality... polished if you will.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: Too hoppy, smells like American beer, typical. Very bitter. First some kind of fruit taste but afterwards very bitter. I don't like it.


Oct 12th
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42.) Late Phases: Night Of The Lone Wolf (2014) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: After the tragedy of celluloid that was Teen Wolf Too I needed a hairy pallet cleanser. This was a good film, almost a great one if not for some amateur acting and a meh wolf suit. Our story follows an elderly blind man who is being relocated by his less cool than he used to be son Ethan Embry to a retirement community. The day he moves in his neighbor is viciously killed by a lycanthropic terror leaving the man just one month to prepare for the next full moon. Dug the investigation, and our protagonist just kinda being a dick to everyone the whole time, I have seen my old age future and it is this. And I gotta admit I didn't guess the werewolf right and that is another hallmark of a great werewolf movie. Now lets get this movie remade and pit the guy from Don't Breath against some werewolves.

(3.5 out of 5)




43.) Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This in name only sequel has white people falling afoul of some tribal black magic giving me heavy third Tales From The Crypt movie vibes. Otherwise it's a pretty standard black magic/monster movie with a fat Creature From The Black Lagoon. It does have Sir Christopher Lee for an added bit of class though.

(3 out of 5)




44.) Scared Stiff (1987) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Going in, based on the cover, I thought this would be a John Buechler-esk 80's puppet-monster movie. But low and behold it turned out to be a much more traditional ghost story, well at least until the final reel. Between pigeons, weird lamps and high 80's fashion our lead single mother moves in with her beau but unfortunately for her the house they move into carries a dark past and is out for blood. The movie is fairly run of the mill until it's final reel 80's effects extravaganza which is a must for any horror fan.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: And then the next move they can have experience from this movie! Why did you think it was going to be like Ghoulies? The Ghoulies are like in a carnival thing, in that one ride, the walk in ride. Let's stop talking about The Ghoulies. The stone kinda looks like the faces on the benches at the zoo in the rainforest part. (Did you like the movie?) I like every movie the same. (What about Dawn of the Mummy?) Except Dawn of the Mummy, it wasn't that good.




45.) Commentary For Scared Stiff (1987) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Run of the mill track with the director, producer and a moderator. Still plenty of interesting content, just nothing outstanding. Oh and we get to add this movie to the real bodies used list as it is confirmed on track as an India skeleton farm client. Something mentioned on track was a post shoot prop yard sale, I wonder how you find out about things like this as I need to up the moviedom with some prop-age.

(3 out of 5)




B-16.) Cabin Boys Brewery: Oktoberfest (Oklahoma)

My Thoughts: It's got one of those pitch black pits that make you wonder if you should really be putting this in your body. Heavy with the pumpkin spice scent and that forboding dark beer smell... kinda like someone transporting pumpkin spice cookies in a fancy car. Taste wise it is a dark barky stout. Pumpkin spice, wood lacker and chalk. Rough at first but you know that 9.5% makes it progressively easier to drink. Do expect to have that just sucked on a wood chip taste in your mouth the next morning though.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 13th
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46.) Metamorphosis (1990) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Hey it's a Fly ripoff! And it's got an older but still naked Laura Gemser, aka Black Emmanuelle. So, this movie has an odd feel to it. It's absolutely a fully American production, shot in Virginia but man it feels like an Italian film. The acting, the way people talk, the pacing are all super in line with what you would expect from an Italian production. About to lose his funding a scientist decides the only way to get results quick is to give himself the injection. It works! Until it doesn't. A brief google reveals that there is a longer unrated version of this movie floating around and quite frankly it could have used the extra kick.

(3 out of 5)

SterlingBen

47.) Love And Monsters (2020) (4K UHD)*

My Thoughts: Interesting trend into the lighter more friendlier apocalypse. I guess this is a big thing with PG-13 films, apocalypse but not that bad. No rape, no bad words, good lighting, cg baddies. Kinda reminded me of Warm Bodies, yes the world is gone but everyone on the inside is doing fine, taking showers and the menace on the outside is colorful and sometimes humorous. Our hero is the spastic non-survivalist type that just happened to be saved by a strong group at the beginning of the end of the world. Several years have passed and he get in touch with another bunker of survivors where is old girlfriend just happens to reside. The rest of the movie writes it's self, her sets out on a quest to see her, things go wrong, things go right, our hero grows. Pretty boiler plate stuff but this is an apocalypse with imaginative lore, monsters, a likable cast and a dog. This is kinda what I had hoped the 2010 movie Monsters would have been like. But hey, better late than never.

(4 out of 5)

My Daughters Thoughts: I like the movie, it was a good movie. I felt like that kid seems a little like me, in the movie. I don't think it was really worth it to go to the other colony, right? (Perhaps it was worth it for the journey?) Yeah because if he didn't go to the place everyone would die and have a little war.




48.) Disaster L.A. (2014) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: For a movie with no budget, seemingly shot with a group of friends, they did something here. I mean it wasn't good but it was surprisingly large in scope and pretty competently done. In a mixture of archival footage, sound effects, stolen shots, consumer grade computer graphics and pretty much just all around guerrilla shooting Disaster L.A. has the feel of a low budget Hollywood movie...well, except for the acting. Now don't get me wrong, it's bad but it's a pretty well put together bad movie and pretty good for what I am assuming is a student film.

(2 out of 5)




B-17.) Rahr & Son's Brewing Company: Oktoberfest (Texas)

My Thoughts:Rahr's Oktoberfest vs Oktoberfest has turned into somewhat of a yearly tradition at this point. And no matter how it turns out, it's nearly 7 point beer and nearly 10 point beer so it's always a good time. Smells on point. Oh, they have overly bittered that classic marine taste. You get just a hint of it and then your mouth is a wash with bitter lingering hops. Very Oktoberfest ashtray. Later: approaching room temp this is much more drinkable and harder hitting, I am really feeling this right now. I was almost difficult to take the picture of the Oaktoberfest.

(3 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like imported beer. Sour, hoppy but I don't taste that much Alcohol (It's 6.7%) Really? Getting sour after few taste, I don't care for it. Where does that come from? Smells like Germany. (Texas) Really? So many Texas beers. (They are regional).




B-18.) Rahr & Son's Brewing Company: Oaktoberfest (Texas)

My Thoughts: That oak barrel and liquorish scent on top. Taste wise it's not crazy. Kinda taste like doing beer shots off an old book. Very mild with just a small bitter liquorish closer. At 10% I was expecting something vicious but this is dangerously drinkable. The more I imbibe the more that marzan-y Oktoberfest comes out... man, this is pretty good.

(4.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like snow mountain. Very bitter and sour taste, very mild after the but I don't like it, not for me.


Oct 14th
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49.) Old Dracula (1974) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Now, I admit it might be the booze but this was the tall glass of water I was wanting. David Niven as a classy Dracula, playing up on the legend, doing tours and theme night stays in the castle all while extracting a bit of blood from each guest in the night. One night a group of photographers and Playboy bunnies books a stay (how long until that's a lost reference?) and it just so happens that one of them is the exceedingly rare blood-type needed to bring back his beloved. This is where the movie takes a fun and super politically incorrect twist that I would recommend no one look up, just go watch it. Originally titled Vampira it looks like this was a last minute re-brand to play off the success of Young Frankenstein. And definitely a title that works in your head much better as Vampira which seems like more of a European flesh film.

(4 out of 5)




50.) Commentary For Silent Madness (1984) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This is my second Hysteria Continues track, the first one being on the Vinegar Syndrome release of Graduation Day back in 2015. So I had kinda forgotten all about these guys and was a bit nervous here at the onset with the very relaxed podcast style of the commentary. But very quickly my fears were belayed as these guys really know what they are talking about when it comes to 80's horror. I found the scope of their knowledge on the subject quite vast. Loved the Fangoria articles excerpts and about the wide array of backgrounds of the cast and crew involved. Solid commentary.

(4 out of 5)




51.) Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (1967) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: A couple of steps down from the more known Godzilla & friends content but still a solidly put together bad Japanese monster movie. Something oddly comforting about watching Japanese people talk with poorly matched English audio while a guy in a suit destroys a model city (and this one has two guys!). Just me? This movie does the Kong opener by having a Japanese exploratory team head off to an uncharted island, there is natives and a cute little model volcano. They Shanghai a baby kaiju and then feel the wrath of it's parents in the final reel. All very traveled ground for the genre. Don't expect really anything original here. There is a Japanese boy painted black and wearing an afro wig though and they make him a main character so... there's that.

(2.5 out of 5)




52.) JeruZalem (2015) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Surprise, this found footage travelog movie was pretty good! And having the movie seen through a pair of smart glasses gets over that weird conceit that all found footage movies have of 'why are you still filming?' Two girls take a vacation to Jerusalem but unfortunately for them it is on the day of the biblical apocalypse. Dug the travelog stuff in a very underused local and perhaps one not unaccustomed to explosions and gunshots, our characters didn't necessarily make dumb decisions and a rather interesting apocalypse to top it all off. I dreaded what was to come when this movie turned out to be a found footage film but in the end I was looking up the directors to see what else they had done. I will note though that the worst actor in the entire film is the leading lady, fortunately she is good at voice acting and very rarely in-front of the camera as we are of course watching the events unfold from the bridge of her nose.

(4 out of 5)


Oct 15th
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53.) Midsommar (2019) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Black husband from US "Thats some white people shit right there" vibes. Lot of great lessons in this movie like don't stay with bad partners out of some weird sense of obligation, don't tag along on vacations you weren't invited to, don't do drugs and maybe the best lesson: don't go hang out with cults. I mean come on! Handsome Seth Rogan and Black Widow's sister in permanent Grumpy Cat face are that couple who both kinda hate each other. And along with a group of friends all decide to accept an offer to attend a weird festival at a religious commune in Europe. While this movie does deliver on the creeps I never thought it really approached the mystery and intrigue of something like the original Wicker Man as it is all pretty obvious what is slowly happening on screen. It's a good film but seems a bit on the overly praised side, especially when considered against the director's followup up Hereditary.

(3.5 out of 5)




54.) Child's Play (2019) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Like everyone else I was also worried when they said that Brad Dourif wouldn't be voicing Chucky in this version but they did get the very best next actor to do it. No black magic this time as our killer doll is actually a killer robot. Having Chucky be an internet enabled toy of today is a great way to modernize this character but I think they missed the mark somewhat by having him be too creepy as a base doll. The original Chucky was on point as a realistic toy of the 80's and this one... I just don't feel like it has a market penetrating look. That being said this robot gone bad film was pretty good, in fact I think it could have lived on its own without the Child's Play licensing. Also please put Aubrey Plaza in more horror movies!

(3.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: It wasn't as good as the other chucky because it was less horror and this chunky was a little more creepy. I think the other Chucky was better. There is only one thing that really scared me, it was when Andy thought it was Chucky bit it was just his mom came. (Jump scare)




55.) A Babysitter's Guide To Monster Hunting (2020) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: So, not my choice but you know it''s about give and take. A Babysitter's Guide To Monster Hunting is basically Netflix ripping of a kids TV show called Odd Squad but using slightly older actors. Our lead baby-sitter, with a troubled past, checks on her ward just a few minutes too late as he is spirited away by a group of lightly colored Troll-esk monsters. Lucky for her there is a Babysitters monster hunter team that swings into action to rescue her client and stop the big bad. Decisively a cinematic effort aimed at those under 10 and so far in the challenge it's the only thing I have watched I thought to myself that I am 'too old' to enjoy this.

(2.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Good. I like the bad guy, he reminds me a little bit of a pirate. And I feel like that blue monster is me. I have nothing else to say.


Oct 16th
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56.) Blood Cult (1985) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Shot on video trash. But the longer I watched it the more familiar everything looked. After a little IMDB-ing I discovered it was filmed locally! Which maybe not that shocking if you live in LA but if you live in Oklahoma, then that's something. The movie centers around a local Sheriff hot on the trail of a body part snatching killer who he is sure is tied up with Dungeons And Dragons somehow. It's got the gore and horror movie beats even if they are vastly mis-timed add to that a bizarre cast of people that you would probably never otherwise see in a film and you got... something... something different at any rate?. For lovers of trashy shot on video films and Oklahoma residents its interesting as a curiously but most will find it more of a bore.

(1.5 out of 5)




57.) The Haunted Castle Of Muskogee (2021) (In The Flesh) (Wild Card #1)

My Thoughts: This is the first Halloween event I have done since I first joined this challenge back in 2010. Outside of the normal stuff like trick or treating and what not. The last time I went to this event was about 15 years ago. I was single with friends and booze back then, now with the wife and kid it is a bit of a different experience. I must admit I over estimated the daughter's capability to handle the scarier bits. Seeing as how she is so great with the horror movies and forgetting that I am dead inside it didn't quite occur to me that it would really be all that scary for her. But hey everyone needs a little childhood trauma. Overall Hell Fest has ruined this kind of event for me as I will never go anywhere quite so spectacular. A haunted train raid through a trail of inflatable lawn decorations isn't really rocking my world. This is an event probably best for children, cosplayers and drunk people, none of which I was at the time. Also people, so many people, is this public? I don't wish to return to public.

(2.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: It was OK. I was expecting bigger castle, so a little disappointed but inside was pretty good. And where is mask policy? What happened to mask policy? And need more food stand.

(3 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I don't like the castle... inside the castle. Because it was too scary. It was scarier than a horror movie. I like the train ride because of the music. And I kinda liked the food there but the funnel cake wasn't that good.




58.) The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! (1972) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: You know, all these years and I had never seen an Andy Milligan film. And now that I have seen The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here I see why. This is the kind of bizarre trashy stuff that you get with a lot of Something Weird Video titles. Plots that make no sense, scenes that drag on to fill running time, random torture scenes. I have never been into this kind of movie, too much experimental hippy garbage for me. And I didn't need the animal cruelty scene, at least in Cannibal Holocaust they ate those animals and it served as another method to unease the audience and cryptically warn our protagonist, here it was just inserted for no thematically reason. The best part of this movie is truly the title.

(1.5 out of 5)




B-19.) Clown Shoes: Octofest German-Style Märzen Ale (Massachusetts)

My Thoughts: Flashback brew! This one has been in the aged beer drawer since 2018, it also made an appearance in the bottom right of my challenge "art" that year. Now there is some disconcerting brown floaties in it that... I am just going to ignore. There is a very light hops pellet smell on top and lets dive in. Oh... there has been some flavor change here... Looking back at my 2018 review on this one I marked it as an IPA in disguise with strong hoppy notes and little to none in the way of Marzen taste. Now it taste downright pleasant. There is no aggressive hops bite anymore, if I were going in blind I would think this was just a slightly hoppy apricot beer. I like this much better now than I did fresh in 2018 but also I have been a bit leery about aging cans so it is still a bit worrisome how much the flavor did change...

(3 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Taste like lemony. Very clear, christ, sour feel like lemon and grapefruit combination beer. I like it.


Oct 17th
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59.) Commentary For Fade To Black (1980) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Wow, three commentary tracks on this one! I opted for the Hysteria Continues track but will be checking out the historian and lead actor tracks in the future. This commentary was not quite as good as their Silent Madness or Graduation Day tracks and that seems to kind of play into them not growing up fans of this film but learning to appreciate it over time. Also maybe because it is less the slasher and more an odd ball character story but they do have quite the interesting view of labeling this as West Coast Manic. Additionally I really like how they reference original reviews for the movies they do, especially since it seems like every movie reviewer in the 80's hated genre films for some reason. Still worth a listen and I am eager to catch up with those other tracks after the challenge.

(3.5 out of 5)




60.) Chucky S01E01 Extended Version (2021) (Streaming) (Wild Card #2)*

My Thoughts: The one where Chucky gets woke. I found Chucky to be a bit heavy handed with the progressive politics, not that there is anything wrong with that but it almost seemed like every bit of character motivation from out lead was derived from their sexuality.
But I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as series are always a little uneasy on their premier episodes. In this continuation of the pre-reboot mythology Chucky or at least a Chucky has made his way into a garage sale and then into the possession of a trouble youth teen. So far I don't really like any of the characters but it is at least better than Childs Play 4 & 5. Chucky does his shtick and with the right voice although his murder rate does seem, at least in the first episode, to be unusually low. A shaky but acceptable start.

(3 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: I like way better than last Chucky Movies (Seed being the last one she saw) and Chucky changed his face feature, I loved that. And he slapped Jake's face, I like that too. Yeah that's a good start. Waiting to see the second one.

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. I would watch this show more. It's interesting and weird... the doll sculpture.




61.) Galaxy Of Terror (1981) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Grade A low budget Alien knock off. I felt myself captivated by the universe created here and the mystery of the story.. well until the last 20-30 minutes. Up until then though this movie goes all out on the low budget effects and creates a very satisfying and deep Sci-Fi universe to live in, yes you can see the edges of the budget from time to time but a fantastic effort from a smaller studio. Instead of calling out favorite comments I would just suggest if you are into sci-fi and more specifically horror sci-fi that you just take the time to see this one, knowing that the end is kinda meh. Greatly looking forward to listening to the commentary on this one.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 18th
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62.) Commentary For Galaxy Of Terror (1981) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This was a fun track with a mix of cast and crew, including the girl who had the close encounter with the worm. And they loved talking about it, a lot. You will hear a lot about that scene and a lot of fascinating behind the scenes stuff about James Cameron, Bill Paxton and Robert England. Before historian tracks became a thing this would have been a pinnacle track for me. But even though it's not quite up there with the top ranks of historian tracks but it was super enjoyable and a worthwhile listen for anyone who liked the movie or is into Roger Coman's menagerie of work.

(4.5 out of 5)




63.) Better Off Zed (2018) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Then to live without you! No, this movie is not the zombie apocalypse equivalent to Better Off Dead. What it is is a super low budget 1 house zombie movie about a couple who didn't flee at the start of the outbreak and now are starting to dig the calming serenity that the the zombie hoard brings. No more work, no more mortgage, power & water still work, why leave? As a genre fan I have seen a lot of low low budget horror movies. Mostly they are out in the woods and they suck. This movie has relatable characters, situations, and a bit of black comedy that hits. Yes it could have been better but I liked it as a tale of non-survivalists in the zombie apocalypse.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Gooood. Guy kind of reminds me of.. the guy from Walking Dead. (Rick?) Yeah, the one that looks similar to that guy. It's not great to be in a house in a zombie movie because then it's just going to get worse and worse. (What is your zombie apocalypse game plan?) Probably just walk around and kill zombies.




64.) Sleepy Hollow High (2000) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: The audacity to put three and a half stars on the cover. This shot on video garbage is an attempt to cash in on the Scream craze that hit in the late 90's. It involves a group of supposed high schoolers (some who look older than me) who have to pick up trash in the woods and get picked off one by one by a guy in a Halloween costume store pumpkin head. It has bad everything. Even the security stickers on the DVD case were so bad I just tossed the case and put it in a replacement as opposed to dealing with them, then after the movie lamented the fact that I squandered a replacement case on this title. This is the kind of trash that the guys at Red Letter Media like to torture themselves with, fun in concept but torture in practice.

(1 out of 5)




B-20.) Shipyard: Pumpkinhead (Maine)

My Thoughts: Challenge staple Pumpkinhead is always a sight for sore eyes when I see it's annual roll into the store. While not boasting the highest ABV I have come to look forward to this perpetually exemplar pumpkin elixir. And this year is no different. Very pleasant pumpkin Spice scent on top, basically the smell your brain conjures up when you try to imagine pumpkin spice beer. Very light, delicious pumpkin beer. Flavor shifts quickly from pumpkin to pumpkin spice with just a slight peppery hint around the outsides of the pallet. I am a fan of beers light on the hops and this is that. Taste like fall.

(4 out of 5)




B-21.) Pairie Artisan Ales: Pumpkin Kerfuffle (Oklahoma)*

My Thoughts: Smells like a pumpkin that's being used as a punch bowl (the punch being guava flavored). Over the lips and past the tongue... thats weird... It's a sour. With an oddly heavy salt chaser. I am not really getting any pumpkin... Mayne if I really concentrate there is just a hint of pumpkin spice at the end of the sip. Awesome can art but this is not the beer I was looking for.

(2.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like candle, some kind of. (Grumpy Cat facial expression) Strong fruity... cinnamon-y taste? I don't think that this is that high alcohol... taste bad. Blah.


Oct 19th
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65.) Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: This was a perfect genre film. Likable but flawed cast, ancient mystery, fantastic lore and memorable killers. I just dug this all around. Now I must admit that this was following up the worst movie I have seen all month but dang if I didn't one. Starting with its pre-Scream 1994 setting Fear Street knocked it out of the park with the music and the outfits in a way that Capitan Marvel should have. We have a Springfield/Shelbyville dynamic here where one town is prospering and doing great and the other town is kinda run down and also known as the flip out murder capital of the world. As we spend time with our lowly Shelbyville-esk cast we start to unravel that there is an ancient, dare I say Hocus Pocus-y, curse over the town. Great effects, handsome gore, suspense this movie was the while package. Kinda like a season of American Horror story distilled down into a movie where you don't get to used to or tired of the characters. Super excited for the 70's followup.

(5 out of 5)




66.) Fear Street Part Two: 1978 (2021) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: Oh no, I should have tried to sync it up where Part Three: 1666 was my number 66, what a fool I was. Not quite as good as the first one. And oddly enough for the same reason, in the first one the music was very on point but here it seemed a bit played out, a little too much Guardians Of The Galaxy in my horror movie. Dug the camp setting and how it went a bit more Meatballs than Friday The 13th... well until the end. Also we seem to get a pretty final wrap up here so I guess they are going for a Gingersnaps Threequel Prequel? Whatever the case I am really liking having a movie and two sequels put up at the same time as opposed to having to wait 2-3 years between each one. Keep that up Netflix.

(4 out of 5)




B-22.) Hacker-Pschorr: Oktoberfest Marzen (Germany)*

My Thoughts: A German classic and frequent winner/runner up for me in the Oktoberfest class of refreshments. A very nice floral and ever so slightly hoppy scene giving me that after the rain on a cool autumns day feel. Mmmm, suddenly I am in the mood for bratwurst and spaetzle. I don't know how many times I can really describe the taste of an Oktoberfest Marzen but this is it. The one might be a touch happier than it could have been but was still outstanding.

(4.5 out of 5)




B-23.) Samuel Adams: Jack-O (Massachusetts)*

My Thoughts: A little touch of New England to go with my Fear Street 1666 viewing. Heavy pumpkin spice scent to that one with maybe just a tad of liquorish and leather.... Now thats that witchy pumpkin taste I have been after. Perfect blend of pumpkin with not too much cinnamon and nutmeg. I don't say this lightly (and I am surprised to be saying it about a Sammy) but this is a perfect pumpkin beer. Currently best pumpkin in challenge and honestly I really don't see that changing.

(5 out of 5)




67.) Fear Street Part Three: 1666 (2021) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: Alas 1666 is just not as interesting at 1994 or 1978. And the American Horror story casting of our 1666 segment was a bit weak. Especially when thinking about the... situations that our Netflix ethically diverse cast would be actually subjected to back in 1666. Where this film did excel is when they used the 1666 story to tweak the 1994 one. Overall it was a good conclusion of the story, not a great one.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 20th
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68.) Count Yorga Vampire (1970) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: I am assuming that the is the American reaction to Hammers popular Dracula series. Not-Dracula moves from stuffy old Europe to sunny California where he's up to his old tricks again of feeding on the locals. This paint by numbers affair is a perfectly fine vampire movie but it is utterly unremarkable in any way. The is perhaps due to targeting a younger or more stuck up audience? It's a PG-13 film and you feel it. I am a bit curious how they are planning on resurrecting him for the sequel though as the last film seemed to end pretty finally for out titular count (assuming his hear is in his stomach of course).

(3 out of 5)




69.) Deadly Friend (1986) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This movie... easily the most I have laughed all challenge. Probably a big disappointment back in 1986 but 100% 'so bad it's good' 80's cheesetastrify now. Where to even begin. This is maybe one of the few movies I have seen this challenge that just didn't know what it wanted to be or what it's characters should be doing or anything. Starts out as maybe an evil Johnny 5 tale, which OK I would be down for. No, old lady from the Goonies shots guns it to pieces while out main cast of characters are trick or treating, which how old are our characters? Ones working in a college laboratory, one is delivering newspapers and then Kristy Swanson is 16 but made up to look older. It's bizarre. Expect to see every juvenile character bleeding from the nose at some point, Lifetime moments, basketball bloopers, parent doping, body snatching, corpse re-animation/robot-i-fication? And that flipping crazy end credits song. There is so much here, so so much. It's a terrible movie but I had a lot of fun watching it.

(3 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Good... this song is a little weird...BB BB BB. I don't like that cover. I like her more when she is a human, was Sam even real? Or was that just a robot all along? I saw something fake, I saw some fake skin. (wrist breaking scene)




70.) The Return Of Count Yorga (1971) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: They upped the rating to R but somehow it still ended up being more boring than the original. Yorga is back... somehow... and this time he is moving in next to an orphanage. He eats people, torments a deaf woman and drowns a pastor in some quicksand. The movie is notable for a having a young Craig T Nelson and the Scooby Doo-esk ending chase through the house with Yorga's vampire harem and the police. Otherwise it was a bit of a bore. The movie that killed the Yorga franchise!

(2.5 out of 5)




B-24.) Sierra Nevada Brewing Co: Oktoberfest (California)

My Thoughts: Overall on point for an Oktoberfest Marzen. A lot more barley than most other Oktos. Goes down smooth and a bit creamy. Caramel barley with a bit of a bitter liquorish finish in the corners of the mouth. Better showing this year than most for Sierra Nevada.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like thick old fashioned Germany type of beer scent. Very light flavor... crisp. And I don't think it's that much alcohol taste. I like it.




B-25.) Tupps Brewery: Full Grown Jack (Texas)*

My Thoughts: Smells like a study full of old books, rather a pleasant one despite it's ominous black pour. Taste like beer that's passed through a used coffee filter. A bit pumpkin to that coffee but it's mostly dark roast. This is a weird one. As far as drinkability foes it is a bit of a chore to muscle down but at 12% that is a chore that becomes progressively easier.

(2 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like soy sauce again. Too much foam. Very strong, very bitter... smells still soy sauce, ak, taste awful. I don't like it. Ah still stay in my nose, smell!




71.) The Omen (1976) (DVD)

My Thoughts: Foundational horror classic. It must have been nearly a quarter of a century since I have last seen this movie, it's one of those movies that is so parodied, so much in the public conscious that I have just never really felt the need to revisit it. Seeing it now I was quite pleased with the heavy travelog and conspiracy investigation aspects to this film that I had forgotten. Also being a father now the 'evil-ness' of the kid seems pretty normal, yeah? I mean I am always on guard when up a ladder with the kid around.

(4.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: It was very good, I was a little worried because it is old setting type of movie but it was very interesting. They go to trip various type of places I can see that scenic. But I think that many is the beginning, some curse happen, the second one.


Oct 21st
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72.) Harpoon (2019) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Three friends stranded on a boat, no food, no water, no hope. Yep it's one of those movies or at least almost. To make matters worse the friends are on a pretty big falling out right before things go bad. While this might normally yield a bit of a boring film there is quite a bit of effective dark humor that straddles the line a bit between budget Hitchcockian and McG. Admittedly the actors the best but once you get into it it's ok, especially in the final reel. Now I need to go buy a bunch of MREs to pack in my car just in case I get stranded somewhere.

(3.5 out of 5)




73.) Phantasm II (1988) (Blu-Ray)

My Thoughts: I have been wanting one of these Sphere collections for the Phantasm series for forever. Add to that this one containing Part V and the new Unrated Director's Cut not available on any other release and I knew I had to make it mine. Although then it turned out the Unrated Director's cut was only 15 seconds longer... I suppose it's really the Workprint cut where the real cut meat of this film is and fortunately that is included here as well. Nothing new really to say about this rewatch except for maybe with the clarity of blu-ray the first mortuary they go to looks super fake and in our post boobytrap scene you can see a crew member's arm to the left of frame. Even with those conceits this has always been a very satisfying sequel.

(4 out of 5)




B-26.) Tupps Brewery: McKinney Oktoberfest (Texas)

My Thoughts: Smells like a fruity beer, something with citrus. Now that I am tasting it it's orange. Deep with the barley and malty flavor. It's a beer you taste entirely on the back of your tongue. Was this suppose to be an Oktoberfest? Not hitting the marks there but a win for the tasters.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste:Smells like regular beer. Fruit flavor. But I don't know what... very mild. Ahh, pretty good taste. Maybe a ladies beer? (No)


Oct 22nd
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74.) Commentary For Phantasm II (1988) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: A laid back track with the director, the Tall Man and Reggie. Nice to finally get this as looking back at my review of Phantasm II from 2010 I was lamenting the lack of an audio commentary. Fun to hear the guys talk about bad reviews and Reggies past. Apparently he used to work in a mortuary and as an ice cream vendor, any job that didn't require too much effort, classic Reg. Angus Scrimm does his kindly grandfather thing and Don Coscarelli hits us with the behind the scenes trials and tribulation. Worth a listen for any Phantasm fan.

(3.5 out of 5)




75.) The Turn Of The Screw (2009) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Not sure how I really expected this 86 minute made for BBC film to compare to Netflix's 8+ hour epic version but it didn't. My favorite part was probably the BBC America promo at the beginning of the disc. Interesting seeing this right after watching a Phantasm movie as it would seem this pretty heavy handedly lifter the start of the Phantasm theme for their own theme. This telling of the classic tale fails to spook or really even being intriguing at all. Maybe it has better English snootiness though? Also there was something about the way this was shot where the lead actress looks Cabbage Patch-y fairly frequently.

(2.5 out of 5)




76.) Wacko (1982) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Hey it's the singer from Better Off Dead! And in a co-staring roll! What a bizarre film this was... It's an Airplane-esk film that rapid fires the jokes at you, most of which aren't particularly funny but enough land and with the horror emphasis I think I oddly liked this. It's weird, the movie was 70% maybe 80% bad but I had a really good time watching it. 13 Years after the original Lawnmower Massacre our killer is set to strike again at the annual pumpkin prom! filled with red herrings, inappropriate jokes, and some surprising star power, it's up to our leading lady, a local cop and.... Andrew Dice Clay to stop the killer? Weird, manic, horror themed comedy for those of peculiar tastes.

(4 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. There is a bunch of lawn mowers in this movie. The little lawn mower looks like an actual car, like a Hot Wheels car. Wacko reminds me of BB... I mean Deadly Friend. The way the head comes off. (did you think it was funny?) I think it was just a regular movie.




77.) Commentary For Wacko (1982) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: A peculiar commentary, delivers on the info, in fact I really liked the budget breakdown the director gives for the movie. The odd part is nearly the entire commentary is the director reading from his autobiography and then doing a little promo about it at the end of the disc. As such there is no down time and it is filled with the stuff you would be interested in hearing about but on the other hand it is a very sleep inducing old guy reading for an hour and a half.

(3.5 out of 5)




B-27.) O'Fallon Brewery: Vanilla Pumpkin Beer (Missouri)

My Thoughts: 2018 & 2019's best pumpkin winner now aged in the drawer for 4 years. I have yet to see this brand back in stores since I bought this 6 pack back in 2018. Smells of vanilla and sour apple. There has been some flavor shift during aging... Some tart fruit notes that were not here previously. And the pumpkin is... gone. You get a very light beer with just a touch of vanilla and grapes around the corners of your mouth and an odd lingering pepperiness on the back of the pallet. A bit sad that this amazing flavor is gone and it makes me wonder how much of it was just liquid flavoring added to a stock beer. Still is's a pleasant drink but no longer the 5 out of 5 that it used to be. Bottom of the glass comment: I might be getting some squash flavor here with the last few sips.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells like fruit kinda type vinegar. Fermented apple juice with alcohol. Very light. Smooth. Pretty good.




B-28.) Hoss: Oktoberfest Lager (Colorado)

My Thoughts: I... I don't think I can review anymore Oktoberfest Ales... Marzen this... caramel that. People just look at the pictures anyways. Well, at least this one is a little different. Tons more barley and malts added to the mix this time. Maybe more of an Oktoberfest inspired ale. Dang, even better as it warms.

(4.5 out of 5)


Oct 23rd
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78.) Yoga Hosers (2016) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts:I don't think I was drunk enough when I watched this. This is the kind of movie that really makes you think about your life. Is it worth trading an hour and a half of sleep or time with your family or time working on a side project or literally doing anything else then to watch. SO... I wrote that part before the alcohol kicked in. Drunk is the way to watch this movie. The more I drank the better Kevin Smiths daughter's acting got, the more I was okay with German sausage men and the more fun I started to have. Also i forgave a lot of this films flaws when Stan Lee popped up. This kinda reminded me of an episode of Lexx... season 4. If you don't go into this expecting an actual movie you might just possibly have a good time. Maybe? I don't know I feel kinda guilty giving it 3 stars. Maybe most other viewers didn't get drunk and give up on their standards while watching it? Yeah... thats probably the winner, absolutely do not watch lucid.

(3 out of 5)




79.) Hell Fest (2018) (Streaming)

My Thoughts: Got to thinking about this one too much the other day after going to a local Halloween carnival and had to give it a rewatch. And since it's such a comparatively recent rewatch here is the relevant recycled part of my 2018 review: "It's passable as a slasher but thats not really why you are watching it, you are watching it for setting. This vast and amazing horror theme park that is better than anything you will ever go to. At least I can only imagine that that is the case comparing this movie to horror events I have gone to here in Oklahoma. It scratches that horror itch, and them some. Also loved the ending sting."

(3.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Good. (How did this compare to your real life Halloween Festival?) I think it looks scarier. So the guy in Hell Fest just kill people to get the toy for his daughter? He just a crazy guy or a normal person? I like the cat ears but not as much as mine.




80.) Pulse (1988) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Every homeowners worst nightmare, multiple concurrent home repairs! Kind of like the Money Pit if the house was actively trying to kill you. This is one of those movies I have missed for the past 30 years somehow. It
takes the Maximum Overdrive route as an electricity monster(?) tries to eventually take out a Disney kid and his very familiar family. Nothing spectacular but it was enjoyable enough and I dug all the 80's tech macro shots.

(3 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. This is how I think of the pulse monster, he would be a monster but a little like Electro but not a human and he could go into stuff and travel around. I don't have anything else to talk about. No, don't put that, don't put that in.


Oct 24th
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81.) Naked Girl Murdered In The Park (1972) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Not the quite the letcherous Giallo that the title would indicate. It takes 55 minutes to find our Naked Girl murdered in the park and it's really more of a lawn than anything. There are quite a few murders in this film but they are all very tame. The film does a good job of presenting an interesting whodunit and is full stocked with beautiful dark eyed Italian ladies in frequent states of undress. Overall I thought it was a pretty decent crime flick. I watched the Italian version both for bragging rights in the checklist and because I have head so much negative feedback about the English dub. And while normally it's not something I would mention this film seems to have some serious color timing problems and a near lack of additional detail over what I would consider a good DVD transfer.

(3.5 out of 5)




82.) Chucky S01E02 Extended Version (2021) (Streaming) (Wild Card #3)*

My Thoughts: Ok, things are trending in the right direction. It does seem like, at this point, they are going for just one kill per episode which is a little off brand for the child's play franchise. I did like the seduction of youth and the hints that maybe there will be some complicit-ness with our lead and Chucky's planned murder spree. Favorite moment was when Chucky was convincing our lead that statistically it was very unlikely that an animated doll killed the housekeeper. Also, how is Chucky so good at video games with those tiny hands? A little more realism in my black magic killer doll tv show, please.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: It was good but I son't know why lady eat the apple, it's obvious see the blade and I love Chucky put the Hello Kitty and go trick or treating, it was funny. Some stuff is getting ridiculous because housekeeper is get killed and people doesn't think anything about Chucky.

My Daughter's Thoughts: Good. I Wonder if that apple is like the same apple.(From 1965? Probably not the same apple.) His Halloween costume is very simple but it was a little bit weird because of the cut out eye holes.




B-29.) Paulaner: Oktoberfest Bier (Germany)*

My Thoughts: What can I say, I am a sucker fro promotional glassware and unique cans. Nothing feels more like Oktoberfest at home than drinking from the gigantic Paulaner mug. Filling it up with 3 cans/bottles any other time of the year feels a bit weird but when it's just 1 can... Alas I am not the biggest fan of Paulaner's Oktoberfest Bier, their Marzen and Wizen is where it's at though. This one taste much more pedestrian than those. As a beer that made it all the way through You Might Be The Killer and into the first bit of Sputnik you almost can't not feel good drinking it. Paulaner has taken stop spot in the past for their Marzen and Wizen but I can't really say the same is true for their Octoberfest Bier. But the pageantry, oh the pageantry.

(3.5 out of 5)




83.) You Might Be The Killer (2018) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Hey they did the Friday the 13th Evil Mask plot line from the young adult books as a comedy! I loved reading those as a kid, felt so mischievous when I would read them at school always being sure the cover was always faced down so no one could see what I was reading. You Might Be The Killer is a fun Friday the 13th fan fiction where our unreliable narrator, played by Topher from The Dollhouse, calls his bff (Alyson Hannigan) in the middle of the third reel in a camp slasher movie only to realize that he is actually the one doing the killing. The movie is never quite as good as Final Girls but is an entertaining time for genre fans nonetheless less.

(3.5 out of 5)


Oct 25th
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84.) Sputnik (2020) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Soviet Stranger Things fan fic? This 80's set Russian thriller follows a young doctor brought in to assess a recently returned cosmonaut only to find out he didn't come back alone. The cover oversells things a little bit in my opinion but we do get a very good alien inside story that if only for the fact that it is told by a different culture is interesting again. Nothing Earth shattering but will scratch that gooey alien itch, also when is the last time you saw a Russian military film?

(3.5 out of 5)




85.) Pandemonium (1982) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This is one of those comedies that tries so hard but is always just a bit off the mark. An inconsequential plot follows a small cheer team practicing in a high cheerleader murder area. Each student is knocked off in a silly way but laughs are few and fare between in this movie. The best part of it is Pee Wee Herman's animosity towards a Canadian cop horse. Judge Reinhold was cringily bad in this to the point of almost being painful to watch. Overall despite it's surprising star power, Pandemoniums attempt to Airplane the 80's slasher genre don't make it off the ground. It's a movie made for adults with jokes that only kids will like.

(2.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. I like it because it's weird and it's kinda similar to Wacko. I liked the horse, I liked how he was wearing a costume, horses don't really wear costumes.




B-30.) Stonecloud Brewing Company: Festbier Autumn Lager (Oklahoma)*

My Thoughts: Sharp hoppy scent. What even is a Festbier? Just a term used to freestyle your Oktoberfest? The taste is unusual. Has the underpinnings of a traditional Oktoberfest with an extra serving of hops. It's not to IPA levels or anything but hops+Oktoberfest aren't really that completory as the hops tend to overshadow everything. Also aftertaste is like you just chewed on a dandelion. (Later reflection) As it warms it does get significantly better, the hops completely disappear and are replaced by a bit of green grape flavor. If it tasted like this the whole time I would have scored it a lot higher (this warm reminds me of Ginga Kogen cold).

(2 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Smells little sour weird smell. Very sharp first, thick but it's not that bad aftertaste.




86.) Skinner (1993) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Well, this was... something. Ted Rami stars as the psycho who has a pension for killing and skinning prostitutes so he can wear their skin. He is pursued by his only surviving victim played by Traci Lords and he rents a room in Rikki Lakes house. Very low budget and very derivative (even if the writer claims otherwise in the special features) but with a surprising amount of gore, especially for the 90's. There were scenes very reminiscent of the Guinea Pig series. And while I appreciated that bit of creativity in an era know for its' prudishness the movie wasn't that good. It was an OK phycho killer movie with some faces but did little (outside of gore effects) to stand out from the crowd.

(3 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: Ahh, it's very weird, if more people involved it's better. Just creepies and victims no other people, no cops or nothing. And a little slow too. And that psycho killer is putting someone's skin and walking in the daytime, really? Pick more like Unhinged next time.

(3 out of 5)


Oct 26th
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87.) Commentary For You Might Be The Killer (2018) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: You know I am a big fan of commentaries but I would suggest you skip this one if you liked the movie. I found knowing the origin of the story kinda messed how much I liked movie, maybe that more of a me problem though. Otherwise it was a fine enough track with the filmmakers with all the normal behind the scenes stuff you would expect but the how the sausage was made bit on the story killed some of my goodwill for the movie proper. Also come on with the Blu-Ray startup trailers, I can't even pause them?

(3 out of 5)




88.) The Dead Don't Die (2019) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: What a quirky laid back zombie apocalypse. This is a movie that takes awhile to get going and even then it goes slow. There are plot threads that go nowhere, randomness here and there, it feel like a complete mess of a film but I dug it. Focus Films always have a certain kind of cast in them and this film is no different, it's a Focus Films cast vs zombies. Lots of observational talking about the issue, not so much dealing with it. I could have just kept watching these characters if this had been a series, a Walking Dead with out all the constant interpersonal drama, that would be nice. Maybe it was a little heavy handed on the fourth wall breaks though.

(4 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. It wasn't really scary movie, it's kinda weird. I wish we could see some aliens or what if the aliens were the zombies?




B-31.) Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co: Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale (Kentucky)*

My Thoughts: Straight up smells like bourbon, nothing else. Not overly hoppy... bitter but a more chalky/dark chocolate bitterness to this one. It's a very light beer that goes down easy and the aftertaste/side of the mouth taste is bourbon. I am kinda getting some pumpkin spice cinnamon but the more I drink it the more that 12% makes it's self known. Not the best tasting pumpkin beer but I really like this high ABV + weird + doesn't taste like you are drinking it out of an ashtray or off a hobo's back. Love it.

(5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste:Smells like bitter beer, very thick scent. Ehhh, very sour weird fruity. I don't know, strong fruit scent but I don't know what. It's very sweet, seems high alcohol. I don't like it. (It's a 12%-er) Oh yeah, it's kicking very good.




89-91.) Parasyte E13-24 (2015) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: He does not have sex with his alien hand, most unbelievable part of the series. This series really started stagnating in the middle but things pick up again once the government gets in on the fight. In typical anime fashion we do get an unbeatable villain that our protagonist must go up against but it is nice that the series kind of neatly concludes and doesn't try to drag it out any further. Overall the uniqueness of the first few episodes is the high point in the series. I would definitely recommend checking out the first 4 episodes or so and if you like it it's not a terrible investment to finish.

(3-3.5 out of 5)


Oct 27th
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92.) Halloween Kills (2021) (Theater)*

My Thoughts: He kills sooooo many people this time, I frequently wondered if Rob Zombie was secretly behind the camera again. Looking it seems that HK40 is currently the raining champ for Halloween films with a body count of 27, just for comparison sake his count on the previous film was only 15. Micheal is Jason now but without the camp. This whole film is just weak plot, murder, weak plot, murder. It sucks some of the fun out of it when Michael isn't mortal anymore. Also Michale running in the 1978 flashback? Did they watch the 1978 film? With so many terrible sequels under his belt one really can't say that this is the worst Halloween but I would consider it one of the lesser ones. Michael vs Firefighters was cool though.

(2.5 out of 5)




93.) Sideshow (2000) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: A collaboration between Fred Olen Ray and Full Moon, both of which peaked in the late 80's and stopped making legitimately enjoyable content in the mid to late 90's. As with most of their post 1997 products we have really more of a 20-30 minute anthology segment that is stretched out to feature length. In this one we have a group of "teens" who are dicks at a local carnival and eventually get sucked in as features in it's freak show. The acting is all around bad, the effects are at times ok but usually pretty run of the mill and the locations are few. This is the kind of movie made specifically to sucker rental dollars out of people and it stays very out of 'so bad it's good' territory. Unless you are a big Phil Fondacaro fan there is no reason to ever watch this, I only watched it as it came free as a pack in title with Better Off Zed.

(2 out of 5)

SterlingBen

B-32.) Bell's Brewery: Oktoberfest Beer (Michigan)*

My Thoughts: Pleasant, slightly sharp floral scent. Hmm. Hops bite up front with a malt closer in the back of your mouth. Not wholly pleasant... a little skunky. Not great. (Later) As it warms it takes on a watered down Marzen taste, either way not great.

(2 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Sour weird smell. That pumpkin beer? (No) Really? Taste like pumpkin beer.




B-33.) Boulevard: Bob's '47 Oktoberfest (Kansas)

My Thoughts: Already smelling the part way more than the Bell's Oktoberfest... tasting the part more too. This one is a barley-ed up Oktoberfest. Wheaty and all around thicker. A manlier beer if you will. Smooth down the middle and then lights up the sides of your mouth with that malty barley flavor. Not bad, certainly better than the one before.

(3.5 out of 5)




94.) 3 A.M. 3D (2012) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: It's a Thai horror anthology! Also a chance to flex some import 3D content. We have haunted hair story, a necro-ghosty affair and office pranks gone wrong. The third story is far and away the best of the bunch and if I am thinking objectively it's because of it's heavy use of humor. There is something about Asian ghosts that if not done exactly right leads them to be somewhat less intimidating. It reminds me of when I went to a haunted house in Japan and then all the jump out actors were 5'-5'3". Cool to see the cultural differences in haunting entertainment but less effective than a huge barrel chested guy running at me with a chainsaw. Where was I? Oh the movie! I was ready to kind or write this off as a waste of time or perhaps a bit culturally incompatible after the first two segments but I really really liked the third segment. Wouldn't that be the coolest office to work in? This title was popular enough in Thailand for a sequel which I have a 3D release of on the watch shelf as well. 3D was meh but there was a few good ghost hands coming off the screen.

(3 out of 5)


Oct 28th
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95.) Funeral Home (1980) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Hey, it's Morty from Meatballs! This was actually a pretty good classic Grindhouse horror flick. Well, at least when I could see it. This film is notable for having one of the worst transfers I have seen in years, it is a super dark VHS digitization where someone really should have adjusted the tracking on the VCR before starting their capture. Anyway, a young girl returns to live with her grandmother in a funeral home turned bed and breakfast but look out, there is something hiding in the basement! Also don't look on the back of the DVD case as a screenshot of the reveal takes up about half of the back cover. This is a satisfying small town mystery that takes more than a little from Hitchcock in the form of inspiration. I enjoyed it but given the state of the DVD would not recommend anyone pick up this release.

(3.5 out of 5)




96.) Body Bags (1993) (Blu-Ray)

My Thoughts: One of the weaker anthologies but it's got enough going for it to keep the lights on. We have a psycho killer segment, hair gone wild and an evil eye. All with good star power, the first episode is the best but the hair is the one that will stick with you. Also I love how everyone is some sort of genre name, I saw you Greg Nicotero, walking that dog. Overall though this is a Tales From The Crypt knock off and it feels it. Super interested to give this Carpenter commentary a listen though.

(3 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: Good. (Favorite Episode?) Maybe the hair one because it is the least scary, kinda like peanut butter solution. I like the lady at the beginnings look. Like her hair style.




B-34.) Elysian Brewing Company: Punkuccino Coffee Pumpkin Ale (Washington)

My Thoughts: Oh thats so close to Dunkachino. Smells like cold black pumpkin spice blend coffee. Never having drank paint varnish I can on't guesstimate at what it may taste like and my brain tells me there might be some in here. Otherwise carbonated coffee, a dark and a little bitter lingering coffee flavor. Not bad, especially with how difficult to drink coffee beers can be.

(3.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Stinks... like coffee and vinegar put together smell. Like stinky expresso coffee. Very thick, tacit a little ahhh like coffee but sour. Awful, ek.



97.) Commentary For Body Bags (1993) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Surprisingly not a great commentary. Segment one has Carpenter and Revenge of the Nerds star Robbert Carradine struggling to find things to say, frequently just explaining what is happening on screen. Similarly on the second track it seems like Carpenter doesn't really know what to talk about but Keech saves a lot of that segment. It's weird because I remember him being very engaging on the various tracks he did with Kurt Russel. Segment 3 does not have Carpenter but a frequent producer of his and the maker of a Body Bags retrospective. This segment probably has the most interesting information and lots of talking about a naked Mark Hamill. Overall a bit of an underwhelming track and not quite the disc seller I thought it would be.

(2.5 out of 5)


Oct 29th
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98.) Cropsey (2009) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: Interesting documentary that starts as as look at a local urban legend, the apparently east cost based (Crop sea). It then transitions into an investigation on suspected real life kid killer who may have been the inspiration of said urban legend. Add to this a decent amount of urban exploration in an abandoned insane asylum and you've got some entertainment. Also it's split nature makes it a bit better than if they had just dedicated their production in any specific direction. The "ending" was a little hacky though with the 'you decide the truth' after nearly everything in the doc points to the guy having had done it. Yes there are a few things that don't like acquaintances and maybe the blood in the feet but his crazy serial killer letter from jail aren't doing anything for him. Highly worth checking out and quite frankly mandatory if you live in New York.

(4 out of 5)




99.) Stage Fright (2014) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: The songs weren't catchy. If there is one thing that has to be solid in a musical it's the songs. The actors were fine, the direction was fine but the music here was a chore to sit through. It's an unforgivable faux pas for a musical, I mean if Troma can make a musical with decent music then anyone can, right? You gotta wonder how many people passed said it was working all the way through for it to finally make it's way onto disc and be like this. But also I guess that's why it was being clearances at Dollar Tree.

(2 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it? To me it's not really horror-y. It's not horror enough, more musical enough. I like that song they sung during practice before that person grabs the girl, I mean not the killer, as part of the dancing... I don't know.




100-101.) Giallothon (2019) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: This is a... bonus film? Included with the All The Colors of Giallo documentary. Clocking in at a little over 4 hours this is a collection of 82 Giallo trailer from the 70's & 80's. This was a pretty good collection of films I had mostly not seen. Lots of violence, nudity, synthesizers and repeating of the titles. Seemed it wasn't uncommon at the time to repeat the title 5+ times in these Giallo trailers. Fun watch and definitely a candidate if I can ever realize my motion sensor movie room trailer set up.

(3.5 out of 5)




B-35.) Santa Fe Brewing Co: Oktoberfest (New Mexico)

My Thoughts: Wonderful, highly carbonated and lightly grape-y scent to this one. Yeah... I am digging this one. Slightly sharp cheesy onset that mellows into a lovely wheat and the malty marine beer. I feel like this would be an excellent food beer. Yes. Good job this year Santa Fe Brewing Co!

(4.5 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Not that much smell, very light beer... smell nothing special. Very mild. Seems low alcohol but little bitter and seems ike sake flavor aftertaste. Sake OK? I kinda like it.




B-36.) Erdinger Weissbrau: Oktoberfest Weissbier (Germany)*

My Thoughts: Grassy slightly hoppy scent. No... I do not care for this one. Hoppy/watery American grocery store taste. This beer is from Germany? It must be the junk they export because no one locally would want to drink it. House beer with a squirt of lemon at best.

(2 out of 5)

My Wife's Taste: Hoppy American beer smell like Budweiser. Sour, lemon-y, christ but very... I don't know... can drink well. Very smooth and a little sour, I don't feel alcohol. I mean don't taste alcohol.


Oct 30th
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102.) Mom And Dad (2017) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: If you are fed up with kids always being off limits in horror movies have I got a film for you!What a wonderful movie to watch with the wife. A mysterious signal get sent out across the country that causes parent to become homicidal maniacs with 1 goal, kill their kids. In most cases this turns out to be a very easy itch to scratch but our mains are resourceful enough to make the chase fun. Weird seeing Selma Blair as the burnt out mom, she will always be the teenage dream to me. Nick Cage is in his element and otherwise this movie turned out to be some pretty fun shlock with some delicious dark comedy War of the Roses meets The Crazies vibes. Notably though the ending does leave you without a sense of closure.

(4 out of 5)

My Wife's Thoughts: It is interesting but they dob't have any story why parent get crazy or what happen to the baby or anything, then ending is suck. I thought.. I expect a little better story wise. People just get crazy. I do not like that ending.

(3 out of 5)




103.) Leprechaun 3 (1995) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Before The Ring's deadly screen pop-out villainess there was the Leprecaun 3's magic hooker electrocution sex-bot. This is a movie made for 10 year old boys and the TV censors in mind. This time around the Leprechaun find himself in Las Vegas, or at least in a few Las Vegas themed sets interspersed with scope shots of the Strip. It's the lowest common denominator type stuff; terrible one liners, characters acting only in ways that service the plot, Leprechaunitus and low budget attempts to emulate Nightmare on Elm Street style kills. Also aside from Warwick we do take a step down in cast quality here from the second entry in the franchise. There is some nostalgic fun a certain audience might have with this title but otherwise there is no better example of the poor state of genre films in the mid 90's than Leprechaun 3.

(2 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: I like it. My favorite is the second one and this one. (Do you want to see Leprechaun 4?) How can the Leprechaun still be alive? I think it's because the coin is not destroyed.




104.) The Lords Of Salem (2012) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Perhaps the one Rob Zombie movie I am most likely to rewatch in the future. Set in old Salem our protagonist, Sheri Moon, is slowly sucked into a Rosemary's Baby-esk conspiracy but as an adult. I liked her flawed but functional adult character as it is very much in line with a few of my remaining friends and it was a fun projection to see them fall into this web of the occult. The movie is a little basic with it's creepiness and maybe holds a bit too long or is a bit too obvious with it's creep outs when compared to slightly more contemporary works like Hereditary but I liked it. And it undeniably had some style to it. It was more like Rob Zombie doing a regular movie instead of his usual interpretation of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

(3.5 out of 5)




B-37.) Flying Dog Brewery: The Fear: Imperial Pumpkin Ale (Maryland)

My Thoughts: Almost didn't pick this one up this year, something about that Hunter S Thompson art makes it seem like it not going to taste that good. Confusing smell. Grape soda spilt on a freshly cleaned grocery store floor? The taste... is rough. Bitter chalk brown beer that turns liquorish-y and really lingers with that bitterness. I taste some pumpkin spice at the back of the pallet but you really got to focus to get it, mostly you are just going to get root-y bitterness. This is one of those beers you try to drink without actively tasting.

(1.5 out of 5)


Oct 31st
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105.) Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: I think this was the surprise of the challenge for me, and on the last day no less! This a recorded off tv 80's period piece slasher spoof. Our normal cast of ladies is replace by a bunch of dude bros and our comedy is very much in that outlandish/awkward Adult Swim style. For whatever reason I really connected to the funny on this one. Obviously this is very specific humor that won't play to all audiences but for the right genre fan this is gold. Loved the little bits of cut off commercials and the way the movie started to bleed into them and now I have to look into this creative team as they very much seem like some sort of pre-existing comedy ensemble. Even if everything else I bought from Scream Team Releasing sucks it was worth it, just for this.

(4.5 out of 5)




106.) Commentary For Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Busy track, lots of people lots of talking. Seems like you are getting the majority of the cast here and they are all having a great time and are genuinely funny people. It is probably the loudest commentary I have listened to this challenge but if you dug the movie it's a fun continuation also you get to find out what 'beef' means.

(4 out of 5)




107.) Firestarter (1984) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: And my list of shame just got a little bit smaller after finally catching this 80's Stephen King classic. It's Scanners for the whole family when a couple imbued with physic powers after taking an experimental government treatment have a pyro-capable kid. As usual the government just can't contain their excitement, there is some running, some catching, some disturbing grooming and a spectacular finale. I am glad I finally got around to this one, it's a classic for a reason.

(4.5 out of 5)

My Daughter's Thoughts: It was good. Like her powers were kinda cool. (Were you sad about the dad?) Kind of. When her hair flows up it kinda look a little like the thing from Stranger Things... who's that bald kid? (Eleven) Because Eleven kinda does that thing like she does. Stranger Things kinda copied a little bit.




108.) Cemetery Of Terror (1985) (Blu-Ray)*

My Thoughts: Big time Spookies vibes with this one. It's got a house party with disposable teenagers, a lost group of trick or treaters, corps stealing, evil book reading, demonic resurrection, ghosts, zombies and a notable Italian genre actor. All of this while being set in Mexico gave this 80's spook show a little extra flavor. It had that kind of American but not quite thing going on, and Pepsi Free, I have never actually seen a Pepsi Free, I know Marty asks for one back in 1955 but I have never actually seen anyone drinking it! Had this been a US movie with the all the same plot and effects I don't think I would have liked it as much as I did, the culture barrier pushed it just a little over the top.

(3.5 out of 5)




B-38.) Great Divide Brewing Company: Pumpkin Ale (Colorado)*

My Thoughts: The penultimate beer of the challenge has a dark/hoppy forbidding smell to it with an ever so slight hint of pumpkin spice. Wood. Liquorish. Bitter. But it's not a mouth enveloping bitterness and tends to keep to the top back of the pallet. Not great but an interesting last pumpkin beer. Taste wise I might get a little pumpkin too. But this one really just taste like a slightly easier to drink Fear Imperial Pumpkin Stout. Digging the artwork though.

(2 out of 5)




109.) Red Letter Media's 2021 Halloween Spooktacular (2021) (Streaming)*

My Thoughts: This is the closest I have ever been on a Best Of The Worst. The three movies this year were Primal Rage, Dorm Of The Dead & Don't Panic. Primal Rage has been an eBay saved search for awhile and there goes my chances of getting that at a reasonable price and Don't Panic is in my 'to watch' pile. (Going to have to give it a few years before I watch it now). Quality wise I thought this was better than the last few Halloween Spooktaculars, and the secret ingredient seemed to be Mike super drunk. A few quotes that really stuck with me were "You gotta turn off the part of your brain that has seen movies", "Spirit tots" & "My eyes are down here". Oh and Jay with the VS merch. Only draw back was having the VS titled spoiled for me while it sat in the watch pile, otherwise quality content.

(4 out of 5)




B-39.) Paulaner: Oktoberfest Marzen (Germany)

My Thoughts: Last beer of the challenge. I couldn't just let the underwhelming Oktoberfest Bier be my Paulaner of the year so I had to sneak this one in at the last minute. Has that perfect mellow caramel-y toasted Oktoberfest scent. I really got a look up some more interesting synonyms for smell/scent. And taste wise... well I guess I am just full of it. This taste ver much in line with the Oktoberfest Beir from earlier in the challenge. I wonder if it's just this years batch wasn't quite up to snuff. Or maybe I still have some lingering Covid taste altering side effects. Whatever, the beer is at least doing it's job. Now to finish this glass and give my liver a few months off.

(3 out of 5)


Nov 1st
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110.) Slaxx (2020) (DVD)*

My Thoughts: I almost liked this. I was down with the setting, I was down with the premise but the acting wasn't quite there and the pacing was way way off. Even at 77 minutes (with credits) this dragged. Trimmed 20 minutes and make it part of some kooky duology and it could have killed. As it stands in this release, even as a fan of the ridiculous, I can't recommend it.

(2.5 out of 5)


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Theme Night:

Checklist:






In an effort to keep FTVs high, this was a year marked with b-string Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Aliens, Monsters & Garments. This was my 12th year of participation & my 12 year of hitting the coveted 100+ mark. The 110 films I watched this year were in 8 languages hit every theme night but as has been the case for the last several years did not complete the checklist.

Number of 1st time views:
101 out of 110 - 91.8% vs. (2020 - 89.8%)

Number of 1st time drinks:
13 out of 38 - 34.2% vs (2020 - 54.8%)

Number of titles viewed with wife or daughter:
33 out of 110 - 30% vs. (2020 - 28.7%)










Most watched Sub-Genre / Type
1). Slasher / Psycho / Homicidal Maniac - 40 out of 110 - (36.4%)
2). Comedy / Spoof - 19 out of 110 - (17.3%)
3). Witchcraft / Satanic / Religious - 17 out of 110 - (15.5%)

Highest Rated First Time Views
(4.5 out of 5 or better)
Slither - 4.5
Silent Madness 3D - 4.5
Commentary For Trilogy Of Terror II - 4.5
A Quiet Place Part II - 4.5
The Hunt - 4.5
Mandy - 5
Commentary For Galaxy Of Terror - 4.5
Fear Street Part One: 1994 - 5
The Omen - 4.5
Dude Bro Party Massacre III - 4.5
Firestarter - 4.5

Notable 4's
Trailer Trauma 3: 80's Horrorthon
Little Monsters
Malignant
Wacko
Mom And Dad

My Lowest Rated Titles Of The Challenge
(1.5 out of 5 or lower (1 being the lowest possible score))
Blood Cult - 1.5
The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! - 1.5
Sleepy Hollow High - 1


Best Oktoberfest Beer:
Rahr & Son's Brewing Company: Oaktoberfest

Best Pumpkin Beer:
Samuel Adams: Jack-O


Best Horror Companion Dog
Boy the dog from Love And Monsters
Runner Up
Not quite a Dingo from Road Games

Best 3D Gimmickry
Silent Madness 3D

Not So Terrible Baddie
Rape-y witch from the past from Witching Time

Special Feature Better Than The Feature
Commentary For Trilogy Of Terror II

Favorite Final Girl
Crystal from The Hunt

Most Cringe
David Niven In blackface in Old Dracula

WTF Award
Malignant