2011 October Horror Challenge (Part 6: Day 20-24)

There's only one week left of October! Only one more week until Halloween. And, only one week left of the October Horror Challenge. Click the links below to get caught up with what has already transpired.

The 2011 October Horror Challenge:

Part 1: Day 1

Part 2: Day 2-6

Part 3: Day 7-12

Part 4: Day 13

Part 5: Day 14-19

I've seen some cool stuff this month which hasn't quite qualified for the Challenge. This year's standards are just a wee bit tighter than last year's inagural edition of the Challenge. While I have counted "The Walking Dead", I have generally been trying to not count television show episodes this time. For instance, we just recently started receiving the channel MeTV. Over this past weekend they had a bunch great programming that I simply couldn't count. On Friday they had the "To Serve Man" episode of "The Twilight Zone" (1959-64). Last year I probably would have counted that classic episode, but not this time around. Saturday night I caught some of Svengoolie's presentation of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" on MeTV. Of course that one has already been counted. It's okay to have repeats from last year's list (not too many though), but it just wouldn't be right to count repeats from earlier in the month. I've also watched various Halloween-themed videos and DVDs with The Little Monster that won't count. The one that might have counted last year is the all-time classic "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966). We're also checking out a few of The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween episodes too. Finally, I've been able to make it to National Amusements' Silver Screen shows the past two weeks. While they're featuring early Alfred Hitchcock films throughout October--and they're all thrillers of one sort or another--I just can't justify adding the ones I've seen: "The Man Who Knew too Much" (1934) and "The 39 Steps" (1935). They were both good films that I've never seen before, but they're simply not "horror" enough to count.

OCTOBER 20

Item No. 27: LET ME IN

"Let Me In" (2010) is the American remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In"--which I watched earlier in the Challenge. I figured I should check both of these out, and it seemed like a good idea to start with the original. The American version is a perfectly fine film. I think that if I had only seen this version I would have enjoyed it quite a bit more. The original was a very well made film and didn't really need to be remade so quickly (other than to cash in on a good movie and let Americans watch it without having to read subtitles). The new one is fine, but pretty much just tells the same story in the same way. They made a few minor changes which were okay, but it was still basically the same movie with different people and in a different language. I did like the fact that it's set in the early 1980s (like the original). It didn't really seem necessary to set it in the semi-recent past (and probably made production just a bit tougher with having to make sure all the clothes, vehicles and scenery were time-appropriate). The main benefit of this setting was the 80s soundtrack! I might have to pick that one up at some point.

Item No. 28: THEM!

After watching a very recent horror movie like "Let Me In" I wanted to check out a classic one. I chose one of the best of the 1950s desert-based giant bug movies, "Them!" (1954). It had been a few years since I've seen "Them!" and it's a great movie, so it was nice to spend some time with an old favorite. I still have never been able to find a young Leonard Nimoy in his bit part as an Air Force Sergeant in the film, but that's just something to try to figure out the next time I see it.

OCTOBER 21

Item No. 29: CURSE OF THE FLY

I was happy to have managed to see the entire "The Fly" trilogy during this year's challenge. The last installment, "Curse of the Fly" (1965) was watched on the 21st. It's interesting that (unlike today's sequels) this three-movie series didn't feel the need to put numbers or Roman numerals after the title. It's also interesting that each sequel features characters from a generation after the previous film--yet all were filmed within seven years and they all seem to be set in what was the "present" at the time. The son of the original scientist who turned into a fly was a boy in the first film, an adult in the second and an old man in the third. The third one is also the first to not feature either Vincent Price or a fly. It was still a pretty good movie, but probably a good time to call it quits on the series.

Item No. 30: THE OTHERS

On the night of the 21st The Wife and I watched "The Others" (2002). This was the first film that we were able to watch together all the way through for the Challenge (after The Wife conked out halfway through "They Live" last week). I didn't think I'd seen "The Others" before this, but for some reason it seemed awfully familiar in places. Perhaps I had seen it? Strange that I could so completely forget a movie--especially one that wasn't bad. All in all it was a pretty good, spooky Nicole Kidman film with a genuinely surprising ending.

OCTOBER 22

Item No. 31: CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE

Not to be confused with the recently watched "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954), "Creature from Black Lake" (1976) is a much less well known monster movie. This one is about Bigfoot (keeping with what has become a bit of a trend in this year's Challenge). In fact, "Creature from Black Lake" is one of my all-time favorite Bigfoot movies. October 20th was the anniversary of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. I wanted to watch something to commemorate that, but it took a couple days to get around to it. October 20th was also Bela Lugosi's birthday. I still haven't watched anything to commemorate that--but plan to before the end of the month.

Item No. 32: I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF

"I Was a Teenage Werewolf" (1957) is a pretty rare film to find. Because of various legal and financial reasons it has never been legitimately released on DVD. But it was one of the classic films shown on Creature Double Feature when I was a kid. I was able to find it at the Rock and Shock show in Worcester a couple years back and had managed to put off watching it until now. The plan was to try to get together with some old friends to watch it, but that plan never came together. I figured that since I have the movie in my collection (and who knows when or if it will ever get a true DVD release) that I should just go ahead and watch it. It's a fun American International Pictures cheapie featuring a young Michael Landon as the titular teenager/werewolf. I hadn't seen this movie since I was a kid, and there was only one scene that I remembered from then--but I remembered it pretty vividly. It was the scene where Michael Landon is watching a gymnast practicing in the gym when a bell goes off near his ear--causing him to turn into a werewolf and attack the gymnast.

OCTOBER 23

Item No. 33: YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

I introduced The Little Monster to Mel Brooks' classic "Young Frankenstein" (1974) last year. We watched it together again on the 23rd. This was another repeat from last year's October Challenge, but it's a great one. I was surprised by some of the things The Little Monster forgot, as well as some of the details she remembered. After watching it last October it became one of her favorite movies for a while and she watched it a number of times over the next couple of weeks. "Young Frankenstein" and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" will probably be Halloween month traditions for us until she grows up too much to be my Little Monster anymore.

OCTOBER 24

Item No. 34: THE DREADFUL HALLOWGREEN SPECIAL

Monday October 24th marked one week until Halloween. I bought "The Dreadful Hallowgreen Special" (2010) quite a few months ago, but have managed to not watch it until now. How appropriate to finally see it one week before the big day.

Penny Dreadful is the host of the New Bedford, MA-based Horror Host show Shilling Shockers. I've gotten to know her pretty well over the past few years--we were both among the thousands of kids permanently affected by Creature Double Feature back in the 1970s and 80s. The Little Monster has also met Penny (and her husband/co-star Garou the Wolfman) on a few occasions. See my blog Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers for more on that topic. Anyway, last year, Penny Dreadful hooked up with Nashville, TN Horror Host Dr. Gangrene (who I am not familiar with at all) to make this Halloween special. It was shown on public access TV last year and then released on DVD by Alpha Video. I bought it through the website oldies.com. Here's a link to the DVD at the site.

The special itself is pretty good and funny. Penny (and Garou) and Dr. Gangrene have to join forces to try to save Halloween from a mysterious shift that has caused the holiday to become all cuddly and lovable instead of dark and scary. In an interesting twist, the two hosts come to the realization that they both unwittingly had a hand in causing the problem before they ultimately figure out how to fix it. As an added bonus the special is itself hosted by yet another Horror Host, Count Gore De Vol. There are also a number of entertaining special features on the disc.

Item No. 35: CURSE OF THE DEMON

The Wife agreed to try to watch another movie for the Challenge with me. I wanted to show her a longtime favorite, "Curse of the Demon" (1957). It's the American release of the British movie "Night of the Demon" (1957) (which is not to be confused with the grisly Bigfoot movie "Night of the Demon" (1980)--which shares the name, but not much else). Some friends and I first discovered "Curse of the Demon" at Blockbuster back in the 1990s. None of us had ever heard of it and it looked like a fun B-movie to watch on a Saturday night. Well, it turned out to be a very good quality movie all around, and also genuinely creepy in parts. It has been a favorite of mine ever since. "Curse of the Demon" was released a few years back on a double feature DVD that also includes the original British version. While The Wife was a real trooper to agree to watch it, she did fall asleep some twenty minutes before it ended (just at the most exciting part of the film).

With one week to go I have already gone past the 31 movie goal for the month. Now it's time to see how this all ends and find out if I can surpass the 46 movies and shows watched in last year's Challenge. It will be tough to reach that total, but at least this year the Challenge has featured far fewer television show episodes than were counted last year. Stick around to see how it all ends...

CURRENT SCORE

Monster Dad: 35

October: 24

From the end of "Curse of the Fly"

To Be Continued...

Movies My Sister Made Me Watch

In thinking about what kinds of things inspired me as a kid and what exactly made me the Monster Dad that I am today, a couple things seem like obvious influences. First was the fact that Boston-area TV stations (pre-cable days) showed TONS of great (and not-so-great) horror/sci-fi/monster movies--especially noteworthy was the WLVI Channel 56 Saturday afternoon show Creature Double Feature. The other impetus was my interest in paranormal/crypto mysteries: Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, ghosts, ancient astronauts, ESP, spontaneous human combustion...

Another thing which has to be considered when looking at what made me what I am today is the fact that my sister Dyan (and yes, I did ask her permission before calling her by name in this blog) took me to a number of movies when I was a kid that ranged from somewhat iffy to downright inappropriate. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not complaining in any way. In fact, I'm eternally grateful to Dyan for exposing me to some great (and ultimately very influential on me) movies that I never would have seen as a kid, or at least would have only seen the watered down TV versions later on.

And, don't get me wrong, she didn't only take me to see scary movies that I was really too young to be going to (actually there were probably only a couple of those). Many different kinds of movies were seen in those days. The scary ones stand out, but most of the ones covered here were important ones to me in one way or another, and I probably wouldn't have seen them for many years (if ever) if it weren't for my sister.

I remember going to see a lot of movies at the now-defunct Worcester (MA) Galleria cinema. It was a three-screen theater run by General Cinemas. When you went to the theater from the mall you used to pass by a big mural of the surface of the moon on the corridor wall. It was a great way to prepare for an imagination-firing movie experience. My nephew (Dyan's son, a few years younger than me) would also accompany us on most of these trips. To illustrate how young we actually were at the time, General Cinemas had a catchy tune that would play as the company's logo went up onscreen before the movie would start. My nephew and I would get up in the front of the theater and dance around to the little tune like a couple of...well...little kids.

Here's an example of General Cinema's intro:

Pretty catchy tune, huh?

So, what were the movies that I was subjected to? At The Galleria I remember seeing "Das Boot" when it was first released in America--in German, with subtitles and everything. That was an experience. That movie was a bit "grown-up" to me at the time, but not terribly inappropriate. The 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was another story. Now, that's a movie that freaked me out. It's a great combination of horror and science-fiction that I still think is a great movie to this day--but I'm not sure I was quite ready for it as a nine-year-old. Another fright-fest was "Creepshow". Some of the individual stories were scarier and more intense than others, but the one about the monster under the stairs was the standout one for me. It was one of those moments where I was convinced that something was going to grab me from under my chair. "Creepshow" came out in 1982, which means I would have been 13 at the time--not a tyke by any means, but I still remember it as being a very edge-of-my-seat experience. The fact that the monster reminded me a bit of Bigfoot (which I was very much into at the time...and still am for that matter) probably didn't help. I was lucky enough to meet Tom Savini--the special effects and make-up man responsible for making "Fluffy" (as the monster is affectionately nicknamed)--at a horror convention in Worcester in 2008. It was great to be able to tell him how much his creation scared the crap out of me all those years ago.

Another moment when I was convinced something was going to grab at me from under the movie seat was when we went to see "Young Frankenstein". Though the movie came out in 1974, when I would have been five, I'm pretty sure it was re-released a few years later. I'm not sure exactly how old I was when we went to see it, but can say that I really only remember the beginning. As much as this movie is decidedly a comedy, and has become one of my all-time favorites, when seeing it for the first time I didn't really get the comedy part of it. I thought it was a straight-out horror movie. The black-and-white photography and the accurate re-creation of the look and feel of a 1930s monster movie probably had a lot to do with that. I don't remember much from that screening (or how long it actually took me to realize that it was supposed to be funny), but I do recall that in the first few minutes I was indeed pretty scared and had that uncomfortable sensation that something was under my seat and about to grab me in the darkened theater.

I also saw a couple documentary-type movies with my sister which need to be mentioned in this conversation. She took me to see "In Search of Noah's Ark" (1976), which was right up my paranormal alley. as mentioned above, I had a keen interest in odd, unsolved mysteries like this. One of my favorite shows on TV was the Leonard Nimoy-hosted "In Search of...". "In Search of Noah's Ark" wasn't scary in any way, but I found it incredibly fascinating as a kid. I remember that when we left the cinema I looked up in the sky and saw a cloud formation that looked like a gigantic cross. It was probably just a couple of crossed contrails or something, but I was convinced that it was a sign from above that Noah's Ark was really sitting up on Mount Ararat, waiting to be found. I guess it didn't occur to me that we saw only one of many screenings of the movie in one of many cinemas that were showing it. If it had been a true sign, then I would assume that the same sky-based cross would have been made visible over every theater showing the movie every couple of hours as the movie ended and the audiences watching it went to the parking lots all across the country (and what about screenings that got out after dark?). But I digress...

Another "documentary" (which was actually a docu-drama of sorts, but was a documentary as far as my youthful mind was concerned) that we saw was "Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot" (1977). This would probably have to be considered the ultimate going-to-the-movies-with-my-sister movie. Not only was the movie supposed to be scary, the fact that I believed in Bigfoot and was very scared of the creature made it all the more terrifying to me. A few years ago I was finally able to watch the movie again on DVD (though I did see it once on TV a couple years after seeing it in the theater). It is pretty obvious now that the movie is a movie (and not a documentary), but as a kid I really did think that what I was watching was real. I remember that we saw this movie at the Interstate 495 cinema in Milford, MA. The reason I feel confident about this memory nearly thirty-five years later is that when we left the theater after the movie my sister had my nephew and myself climb up on a giant snow pile in the parking lot (of K-Mart, which shared the lot with the theater) and throw snow on her windshield--similar to how a number of Bigfoot (Bigfeet?) threw boulders from a cliff onto the cabin of some loggers in the movie--because she didn't have any windshield washer fluid and wanted to clean her windshield before we left.

Not every movie my sister took me to was at a traditional movie theater. I remember her bringing my nephew and myself to see Woody Allen's "Sleeper" (1973) at the Worcester Public Library (most likely sometime in the late-1970s). It was always cool to see an interesting movie in a non-traditional setting. True, like "Young Frankenstein" was more of a comedy than a horror movie, "Sleeper" is more of a comedy than a Science-Fiction movie, but as a kid watching it in a library it was very much straight-up sci-fi to me.

The best non-movie theater movie my sister brought me to was "Forbidden Planet" (1956) at the Worcester Art Museum. It was a great introduction to one of the best early science-fiction movies, and the art museum setting was a great place to see it for the first time.

Finally, here's an example of a movie that we didn't go out to see. While this one was watched on TV it still ranks as one of the scariest movie experiences of my youth--and my sister was once again very much involved. The movie "The Curse of Bigfoot" (1978) was being shown on late-night TV sometime in the early 1980s. I was sleeping over at my nephew's house and my sister (knowing of my interest in Bigfoot) wouldn't let us stay up late enough to watch it (it didn't come on until around 2:00AM) but agreed to set the alarm and wake us up in time to see it. Her house was out in the middle of the woods (literally surrounded by the woods and about a quarter-of-a-mile from the road on a gravel driveway). Not only that but the living room, where the TV was located, had a wall of windows that faced the woods. The movie is a terrible example of filmmaking, but the combination of my age, the fact that it was a Bigfoot movie, the very late hour and the fact that the entire wall facing the woods was made up of windows (that Bigfoot would have had no problem looking in at us through if he happened to come loping up to the house) made for one of the creepiest experiences of my whole life.

What would I be now if it weren't for these movie experiences I had as a kid? I might be a bit more "normal". I'm pretty sure I'd be a bit more boring. And I definitely don't think I'd be Monster Dad today. All I can say is Thank You Dyan for scaring me (and maybe "scarring" me a bit too in the process) all those years ago. I wouldn't change those priceless, terrifying memories for anything!