#Blacula (2024)

[thecheshirepath]

Happy World Dracula Day! 🧛🦇⚰️☥🩸💀

[shinyspacepirate]

"Sir, I suddenly find your manner as distasteful as your cognac."

Blacula

'24 Spooky Season Watchlist - Day 3

[ineachretelling]

Shami and Jas are short on novel to read and ideas on how to break the time loop this week, so we decided to discuss all of the varying adaptations of Dracula in these unprecedented times. We've got Moffat being on his bullshit, lady vampires that are tired of the Count's shit, a surprising amount of ballet, and a couple of adaptations that technically never were. This podcast contains swearing, and mentions of racism, misogyny, abusive relationships, and animal cruelty.

Trailers for all Dracula media mentioned in the episode are under the cut below for you to sink your teeth into:

Dracula (TV Mini Series 2020)

Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors Podcast

The Brides

A Dowry of Blood

The Invitation (2022)

The Dark Legion: House of Dracula (Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe Podcast)

Reluctant Immortals

Renfield

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors (Off-Broadway Production)

Mina and Lucy's Guide to Slaying Dracula

Dracula (Finnish National Ballet)

Abigail

Lucy Undying

Blacula (2024)

Nosferatu (2024)

Dracula: A Love Tale (2025)

[spilladabalia]

The Devils - Divine Is The Illusion

[moviesandmania]

BLACULA (2024) Reboot of the blaxploitation classic coming in 2024

Variety has reported that a reboot of the blaxploitation horror classic Blacula is still in the works! Reporting on a 50th-anniversary screening of the original classic taking place at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills on October 24th Variety notes that the upcoming Blacula reboot movie is “slated for release next Halloween.” That’s Halloween, 2024. “The new film is a modern reimagining of…

[bitter69uk]

In the countdown to Halloween, another “festive pin-up” … this time: William Marshall (1924 – 2003), the unforgettable and ultra-suave leading man of Blacula (1972) and its sequel Scream Blacula Scream (1973). This post is also apt considering it is still Black History Month in the UK (it’s every October here) – according to Wikipedia, Marshall was the screen’s first black vampire! Did any actor do more to meld the genres of horror and blaxploitation than Marshall? He also appeared in Abby (1974), the wild low-budget African American version of The Exorcist! And needless to say, I loved Marshall’s portrayal of the King of Cartoons on Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

William Marshall- BLACULA (1972)

[lets-steal-an-archive]

Screenplays (so far):

Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)

Shaft (1971)

Blacula (1972)

Cooley High (1975)

Car Wash (1976)

The Color Purple (1985)

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

Disorderlies (1987)

Coming to America (1988)

School Daze (1988)

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Harlem Nights (1989)

House Party (1990)

Mo' Better Blues (1990)

To Sleep With Anger (1990)

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

The Five Heartbeats (1991)

House Party II (1991)

Jungle Fever (1991)

New Jack City (1991)

Boomerang (1992)

Candyman (1992)

Malcolm X (1992)

Sister Act (1992)

Menace II Society (1993)

Poetic Justice (1993)

What's Love Got to Do With It (1993)

Blankman (1994)

CB4 (1994)

Crooklyn (1994)

Jason's Lyric (1994)

Low Down Dirty Shame (1994)

Bad Boys (1995)

Clockers (1995)

Dead Presidents (1995)

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Friday (1995)

Higher Learning (1995)

Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)

Waiting to Exhale (1995)

Get on the Bus (1996)

Girl 6 (1996)

Set It Off (1996)

The Nutty Professor (1996)

A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996)

The Preacher's Wife (1996)

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

B.A.P.S. (1997)

Booty Call (1997)

Eve's Bayou (1997)

Love Jones (1997)

Miss Evers' Boys (1997)

Soul Food (1997)

Belly (1998)

Beloved (1998)

He Got Game (1998)

How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)

Players' Club (1998)

Slam (1998)

The Best Man (1999)

Life (1999)

Love & Basketball (2000)

Baby Boy (2001)

Training Day (2001)

25th Hour (2002)

Barbershop (2002)

Brother to Brother (2004)

D.E.B.S. (2004)

Beauty Shop (2005)

Inside Man (2006)

I Think I Love My Wife (2007)

Notorious (2009)

Precious (2009)

The Book of Eli (2010)

For Colored Girls (2010)

Pariah (2011)

Middle of Nowhere (2012)

Sparkle (2012)

12 Years a Slave (2013)

Belle (2013)

Dear White People (2014)

Fruitvale Station (2014)

Selma (2014)

Bessie (2015)

Creed (2015)

Dope (2015)

Miles Ahead (2015)

Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Birth of a Nation (2016)

Fences (2016)

Hidden Figures (2016)

Moonlight (2016)

Detroit (2017)

Get Out (2017)

Girls Trip (2017)

Mudbound (2017)

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Black Panther (2018)

Creed II (2018)

The First Purge (2018)

The Hate U Give (2018)

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Widows (2018)

Harriet (2019)

Queen & Slim (2019)

Us (2019)

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020)

His House (2020)

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

One Night In Miami (2020)

Small Axe: Mangrove (2020)

Sylvie's Love (2020)

Candyman (2021)

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

The Harder They Fall (2021)

King Richard (2021)

Passing (2021)

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Zola (2021)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Master (2022)

Nanny (2022)

Nope (2022)

Till (2022)

The Woman King (2022)

American Fiction (2023)

The Color Purple (2023)

Creed III (2023)

Origin (2023)

Rustin (2023)

Rye Lane (2023)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

Nickel Boys (2024)

The Piano Lesson (2024)

[captainsamuelmorrigan]

"Twilight vampires are stupid! Twilight vampires are for little girls!"

NO! LISTEN!!

Twilight vampires are a direct result of Purity Culture of the 90s and early 2000s, the AIDS crisis, and the War on Drugs.

Many vampires are prolonged feeders. Hell, the original literary babes like Carmilla and Dracula, feed many times from people, and those folks never went through any change besides anemia, potentially becoming obsessed with or enslaved to the vampire, or DEATH.

Not to say that some vampires in between don't have a one-and-done in biting and turning (My Best Friend is a Vampire [1988], Blacula [1972], My Babysitter’s a Vampire [2010]), but Twilight vampires truly do it with every aspect of these guys. Bella meets Edward ONE TIME and is obsessed with him, drawn to him. He seems to be her first love, and they end up getting married. They have sex THE NIGHT AFTER THEY WED, and BOOM, PREGNANT! True Love Waits, the organization that formed in 1993 with the aim of reducing premarital sex (some members even thought actually dating before marriage was toeing the line), had its first Purity Ball only seven years before the novel came out. Stephanie Meyer herself is Mormon, so the purity culture runs DEEP. This is an important context to be looking at this media from!

This one bite thing is not a popular thing in vampire media in years since Twilight, many people seem to prefer the method of vampires swapping blood with their sires (True Blood [2009-14], Interview With the Vampire [2022-present], What We Do In The Shadows [2019-2024]). One of the inspirations for Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even has this method in place. But Twilight is in the age of D.A.R.E. where we gotta say, "Not even once!!"

These guys also really dig in on moral superiority of being "vegetarian." They are able to control their want to feed on humans, their LUST for blood, by feeding on animals. This is another product of purity culture! Vampires feeding has long been a metaphor for sex. They partake in a 'cleaner,' 'more moral' type of feeding, much like "soaking" or dating without engaging physically at all. Edward has been a good boy, basically his entire vampiric life, feeding on wild animals, and he constantly mentions that Bella even being close to him is a threat to her safety (and her mortal soul). This is straight-up purity culture nonsense!! Painting women as the gatekeepers of sex and pleasure, and men as wild monsters that seek to corrupt these delicate flowers.

Yeah, Twilight mainly appeals to teenage girls in terms of sincerely thinking that Edward or Jacob are good people worthy of being attracted to, but I think that the vampires in the franchise are incredibly fascinating in the wake of all of these important changes to how we as a culture view sex and sexuality! I've even seen cases made where these vampires are much closer to Mormon angels than vampires due to their diverse range of abilities and sparkly skin. These are bonkers versions of the vampire myth, but they are still important! All vampires ever are products of their time, and these sparkly, horny, guilt-ridden monsters are practically engineered for girls and women of the aughts, playing out the sexual and courting behaviors they have had shoved down their throats their entire sexual development.

Be nicer to the folks that like Twilight! And analyze your media!

[libraryleopard]

Going to make a masterlist of all vampire media I have consumed for fun and profit. (Not necessarily recommendations, just a comprehensive list.)

Movies

The Lost Boys (1987) dir. Joel Schumacher

Blacula (1972) dir. William Crain

Dracula (1931) dir. Tod Browning

Underworld (2003) dir. Len Wiseman

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans dir. Patrick Tatopolous

Vampyros Lesbos (1971) dir. Jésus Franco

What We Do in the Shadows (2014) dir. Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi

The Vourdalak (2023) dir. Adrien Beau

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) dir. André Øvredal

Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers

Sinners (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

Byzantium (2012) dir. Neil Jordan

Twilight (2008) dir. Catherine Hardwicke

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) dir. Chris Weitz

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) dir. David Slade

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011) dir. Bill Condon

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012) dir. Bill Condon

The Moth Diaries (2011) dir. Mary Harron

Bit (2019) dir. Brad Michael Elmore

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) dir. Jim Jarmusch

TV

AMC's Interview With the Vampire (s1-2)

What We Do in the Shadows (s1-5)

Castlevania (s1)

Novels

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

Heart of Stone by Johannes T. Evans

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

Vampires Never Get Old edited by Zoraida Córdova

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

Dracula by Bram Stoker

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

The Coldest Girl inn Coldtown by Holly Black

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

Short Fiction

"The House of Aunts" by Zen Cho

"The Vampyre" by John Polidor

Comics

The Accursed Vampire by Madeline McGrane

When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

Fangs by Sarah Anderson

Poetry

R E D by Chase Berggrun

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/8/2024 PART 3: ABBY

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: October 8 was another rabbit hole day of my Blogtober program, and I have managed to refrain from slapping a snarky nickname on this little marathon of American race-centric horror movies that raise some uncomfortable questions. Can white guys make compelling movies about Black anxieties? Can Black directors get away with making white actors say things white people shouldn't get away with saying? The answer is…it depends on who you ask!

And if you want to know why I'm capitalizing one word and not the other, it's because I generally agree with the AP statement about the lack of meaningful cultural commonalities between white-skinned people--other than generalized privilege, of course. In my mind, it is useful to talk about whiteness in political contexts, but it is not so useful to talk about a "White" ethnic identity unless you are into white pride, which I would prefer not to validate. I understand that this is not a perfect solution, and many people feel that the lowercase "w" supports the delusion of whiteness as the universal default for humanity. I do not want to invite a big heavy debate on my silly little movie blog, but you should feel free to comment with links to worthwhile discussions on this subject, as long as you are doing it in good faith and you are not a white supremacist asshole. END STANDARD DISCLAIMER

Due to Warner Bros' litigiousness, this poor movie is only available as a version pulled from a badly damaged print--but if you can make it through the fuzz and the scratches, it's pretty entertaining! The great William Marshall plays an archeologist-cum-exorcist who witlessly frees a Nigerian deity to possess his daughter-in-law Abby (Carol Speed), a pious suburban housewife. Abby soon transforms from a devout, hardworking preacher's wife into a sadistic sex maniac, and it will take more than the usual power of Christ to exorcise her.

ABBY is one of those films that reminds me to question what exactly is meant by "blaxploitation". There is a tendency to put that label on any all-Black genre film made between the 1960s and 1980s, though this is misguided. Blaxploitation is actually sort of hard to define. I tend to think of it as primarily describing movies that exploit Black stereotypes to entice audiences--Black or otherwise--who find them appealing; examples are BLACULA (great!) and BLACKENSTEIN (pretty dire). Such movies may be made by Black or white filmmakers. Blaxploitation can also describe exploitation movies made by and for Black audiences; Melvin van Peebles combined exploitation-style entertainment with sharp political messages, and Rudy Ray Moore made delightful vanity projects for himself and his friends from the Chitlin Circuit. You couldn't fairly say that either of those guys mainly exploited stereotypes and the audiences that enjoyed them, even though they did capitalize on them. On the other hand, I always bristle when people call GANJA & HESS a blaxploitation movie; I guess if the only older Black films you watch are in the blaxploitation category then that's what it looks like, but it is way too posh, intellectual, and experimental to participate in any exploitation category.

ABBY was made by William Girdler, who is white, and an interesting character in exploitation history. He turned out nine films in six years, including the incredible terrestrial JAWS knockoff GRIZZLY. Even when he was making a cash grab, he didn't skimp on entertainment value, and ABBY succeeds with its strong characters played by an absolutely stellar cast. This is certainly a blaxploitation film, as an African-flavored coattail-rider of a mainstream hit, replacing THE EXORCIST'S Pazuzu with a horny Yoruban Orisha. However, the main characters are all hardworking, upstanding suburbanites; even the nightclub scenes are full of regular folks having a good time, not insulting caricatures. Those scenes are actually the weakest of the film since they break up the movie's core cast with a bunch of extras.

William Marshall, best known as Blacula and also the King of Cartoons, is fabulous in this...although he also has a tendency to slow things down just because of his flamboyant style of speech-making. Carol Speed gives a gleefully perverted performance as Abby, though the Orisha is voiced by Bob Holt, who in 1972 voiced the Lorax and the Onceler. I know I shouldn't say "the Onceler" on this website, but the freaks who react to that could really stand to watch something as good as ABBY instead of continuously beating off to children's media. Uh anyway, the actual biggest star of this movie is Juanita Moore, who may not have much to do here, but she was nominated for a fucking Oscar for fucking Douglas Sirk's remake of fucking IMITATION OF LIFE. She is no fucking joke. And there's also the great Austin Stoker, famous for ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. This movie may be a typical exploitation picture in many respects, but it is full of talent and made with care.

With all that said, just so I don't run the risk of making ABBY sound like more than it is, I should note that William Marshall expressed dismay at the loosely-handled African elements of the story. It sounds like he recommended some more respectful revisions, and was ignored. However, Carol Speed defended the film, for all that it misrepresents and rips off, as a terrific piece of entertainment. What she said could be applied to any number of exploitation classics: "There are no (new) stories since the Bible."

[frankendykes-monster]

Countdown to Halloween 2024 ranked

54. The Willies (1990)

53. Hell High (1987)

52. Face of The Screaming Werewolf (1964)

51. Terrifier (2016)

50. The Last Halloween (1991)

49. Cathy's Curse (1977)

48. The Last Shark (1981)

47. Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire (2024)

46. Creepozoids (1987)

45. The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

44. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

43. Man Beast (1956)

42. Tourist Trap (1979)

41. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)

40. Fiend (1980)

39. Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

38. Devil Girl From Mars (1954)

37. Halloween Hall o' Fame (1977)

36. Nightmare (1981)

35. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

34. Peeping Tom (1960)

33. Violent Shit (1989)

32. Invaders From Mars (1986)

31. Eggshells (1969)

30. Night of The Ghouls (1959)

29. Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

28. The Strange World of Planet X (1958)

27. The Colossus of New York (1958)

26. The Scooby-Doo Project (1999)

25. Night of The Living Doo (2001)

24. Scooby-Doo! and The Reluctant Werewolf (1988)

23. The Great Bear Scare (1983)

22. The Wasp Woman (1995)

21. The Cyclops (1957)

20. Frankenstein and The Monster from Hell (1974)

19. The Tingler (1959)

18. The Boogey Man (1980)

17. The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

16. Quatermass and The Pit (1967)

15. The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

14. Mad Love (1935)

13. The Alien Factor (1978)

12. The Walking Dead (1935)

11. Dr. Caligari (1989)

10. The Deadly Spawn (1983)

9. Invaders From Mars (1953)

8. Alucarda (1977)

7. Uzumaki (2024)

6. Sole Survivor (1984)

5. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

4. Shock Waves (1977)

3. Frankenhooker (1990)

2. Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1978)

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

What a productive year. October lasts all of 30 seconds which is why I have to start watching these in July if I want to make any decent headway (31 films is not enough). I desperately tried to make this a year of "have not seens" after last year's top spots being flooded with films I already loved; we mostly did it, mostly. Another top heavy year with relatively few abysmal entries, let's get started.

The Willies is the grand shitshow for this year. It feels like it's an evolutionary precursor to something like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of The Dark?, but it mostly plays to gross out rather than scares. I don't normally care for anthology horror films to begin so to start off a film with brief segments like a woman eating a deep fried rat or a little white dog being microwave exploded and then doing extended stories on monsters hiding in the school bathroom does not do it for me. The most minimal points possible for some decent lighting and special effects but they are not enough by any means to make this worth watching. Stay away.

Onto the 1980's horror: Hell High is what happens when a film crew asks "what if we put a woman into a situation and didn't stop". I want to call it misogynistic torture porn, but I don't want to devalue that phrase for when I use it for a film later on here, but suffice to say a woman is tortured. Emotionally. For very little reason. Universal was right to block The Last Shark from US theatrical distribution. Not because it's a very blatant Jaws ripoff and they wanted to protect their copyright, but because it's abysmal and nobody should have to pay money to see this. I think the stock footage of sharks juxtaposed with the unmoving props between shots is funny, and some of the soundtrack elevates the experience, like the high shrill drones when the shark attacks a helicopter. Creepozoids is an odd one because 1987 was a bit late for a Mad Max/Escape from New York/Alien knockoff but also too early for some Full Moon tier/softcore porn adjacent 1990's production, so it loses out on both fronts. Fiend I'm struggling to even recall, I feel like Don Dohler had one movie in him (see: his plethora of alien invasion films) and him trying to branch out did him no favors. Nightmare is one I want to enjoy because it's beautifully shot but I feel like I've seen one too many slasher adjacent films at this point that include plot points like the killer having a troubled relationship with his mother or him moonlighting as a regular guy (still better than Pieces mind you). Same with Violent Shit. I feel like my tastes are pretty attuned to films that are just gore effects showcases but this one doesn't have any zany concepts to justify or compliment it, so it just falls flat.

The Boogey Man belongs to that tirade of Halloween knockoffs that flooded theaters up till about 1984 or so, but it puts in some extra effort like having a ghost be the main antagonist and a symbolic interest in mirrors, which is much more than could be asked of films like Terror Train which came out the same year. Dr. Caligari is the obligatory "this is what Tim Burton thinks he's doing" film of this year; its sets and its performances are perfectly otherworldly to a humorous degree. It's something of a quasi-sequel to the 1920 film but its relationship with logic is attuned to such a frequency that it's not a hindrance. Very hard to objectively quantify, you're either in the target audience or you aren't, so of all films here take its tier placement the least seriously. The Deadly Spawn is such a gloriously gross film. The house it's shot in isn't supposed to be disgusting on purpose, it's just one of those century's old buildings where I feel like I'd revulse if I had to touch any surface, and that's before fleshy alien monsters break in and start shredding people to bits. Sole Survivor is one of those magical "missing link" horror films, we've finally found what comes between Carnival of Souls and Final Destination. The actual scares in this film are incredibly minimal as it prioritizes atmosphere that balances between comfort and unease, something incredibly rare for films of virtually any genre. Don't go in expecting ghosts and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Taking a brief-ish detour to the 1960's, Face of The Screaming Werewolf is one of those films I'm more angry at than anything because it's one of those films that's just the combined stray footage of multiple previous films. Rare for these to be produced in the western market (most of the examples I think of are from (south)east Asia) but it's infuriating nonetheless to see something only to discover it's a worse version of multiple better things you could be seeing. Peeping Tom is our "most overrated" entry winner, I don't know why so many people applaud this one, I feel like barely anything of substance happens to such a degree that any ounce of suspense you could draw from this just disappears, and what a shame with the concept at play here that feels as if it would take another decade for everyone else to catch up. Eggshells is the directorial debut of Tobe Hooper and while cohesive narrative is virtually nonexistent here, the amount of experimental editing keeps this going throughout the entire runtime, you can definitely see where The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came from down the line. I feel like I'm somewhat disappointed with Quatermass and The Pit (not sure what "The Pit" refers to now that I think of it) mostly becasue the first two Quatermass films are among the best 1950's science fiction films. All three are theatrical remakes of television mini-series and that's most felt here with how so much of the film takes place in the single location of an unearthed Martian ship in the heart of London. I do love that we have a science fiction film positing that humans are partly the genetic ancestors of aliens prior to people taking that seriously with books like Chariot of The Gods. The Brain That Wouldn't Die is magical, sometimes those oft hated 1950's/1960's science fiction films have something to give back to the rest of us. Here it's a man so obsessed with his own work that he sees his wife's death as an opportunity to try and kill other women so that he can use their bodies as grounds to bring her back. Which sounds like something else I watched...

...said film being Frankenhooker, which has largely the same plot but now functions as a dark comedy. God. I hate so much that the capitalist enclosure on the production and distribution of film prevented us from getting so much more from Frank Henenlotter. The man is one of the best to ever direct horror, and anyone who thinks this film or any of his other work are "bad movies" just flat out do not know what they're talking about. I think compared to Basket Case and Brain Damage however, Frankenhooker is the one that "keeps giving". You think you've seen everything the film has to offer and then something like a hotel room full of women combusts as they succumb to the effects of exploding crack or Elizabeth (the titular character) has her head punched back and starts spewing smoke and electricity everywhere. Film is a magical medium of art.

Terrifier is what I held onto "misogynistic torture porn" for. No narrative, no character work, just opportunities to show Art the Clown dismember and murder women in revolting ways. It's one of those films that vindicates everyone that doesn't like this genre and makes me wonder what I'm doing sitting side by side with people that like this shit. I think Art cutting off a woman's breasts and scalp and attaching them to his nude body to disguise himself as another prior female victim of his is when my mouth went agape and audibly asked what the fuck am I watching, cannot stress enough how much it takes to get that reaction out of me. There's an upfront showcase that Terrifier knows that it's trash and revels in it, I mean there's an early scene where we see Art has spelled out his name in his own shit, and I'm not sure how to interpret that other than I feel like I might be landing in a Duchamp's Urinal trap. For reasons that allude even me I am still eyeing the prospect of watching both sequels.

I think my overall reaction to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is one of "whatever". A passably bad film is a definite improvement from the abomination that was Godzilla vs. Kong but it's admittedly easy to rise up when you start from the bottom. Adam Wingard more or less sucked all the joy I could muster out of the Monsterverse, I truly do not care anymore. If anything can be gleaned from this film it's that this is a film made to reconfirm people's existing biases of "I hate the boring human scenes, I'm only watching this for the monsters." Kong is the best actor in this film because the special effects team have to have him actually emote in response to a given situation, which is more than could be asked of anyone actually on the set, apparently. It's a miracle that this came out in the shadow of Godzilla Minus One than on its own terms.

The glut of 1950's science fiction films are a perennial staple of the Halloween countdown but they don't have a huge showing this year. Man Beast is one I'm going to confuse with all the other yeti movies of the decade though having a main antagonist that's actually a human hybrid gets it some points for originality. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll infuriates me because women who become monsters in film never get to be "hideous" and "scary" like their male counterparts, I'm throwing tomatoes at this one. Devil Girl From Mars is mostly memorable for having a giant clunky robot a la Gort, but the actual titular antagonist doesn't "serve cunt" enough to warrant interest, she should have taken notes from The Astounding She-Monster. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an honorable mention because it's a feature-length pastiche of the z-grade films of this era. I don't think it's particularly funny and I kind of wish they lampooned a "good" film of this type rather than make something that fits in line with the middling genre efforts. Night of The Ghouls is the last horror film directed by Ed Wood and I feel like I enjoy it slightly more than Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's far more competent in producing that lulling insomniac reaction than Wood's prior efforts but I still don't "get" the attention his work consistently gets. The Strange World of Planet X gets a special pass from me just because the finale has a bunch of giant bugs attacking stuff. Moving on.

The Colossus of New York is an oddball modern Frankenstein of sorts with a guy being transformed into a giant robot and struggling to maintain some attachment to his former life. It doesn't always work but once again giant clunky robots are giant clunky robots. I'm something of a Bert I. Gordon apologist so something like The Cyclops is going to hit harder for me than it does for most people. I just like people wandering around Bronson Cave and poor matte shots of giant animals moving in and out of frame, okay? The Tingler was the oddest revisit I've had in a while. I don't think I fully "get" William Castle's approach to film but what stuck out to me is how this one takes place in largely two locations and how Vincent Price's character is kind of the antagonist, experimenting on animals, himself, and other people (resulting in a murder) to get at the Tingler. Much like in House on Haunted Hill I'm not wholly sure how some of the spooky things in this film actually work and I don't think I'm meant to, adding to the bizarre nature of the entire series of affairs here.

Invaders From Mars...oh yes. One of the absolute best 1950's science fiction films is also the most lyrical and dreamlike. It reads at times like a Soviet parody of an American child's story would be like; a boy sees every institution designed to protect him as a child and as an American turn against him on account of some nefarious foreign invader, so his only course of action is to get the US military involved. It plays out so well because it's a POV piece from a young boy, which eases over any leaps in logic both in terms of form and content of this film. Which is more than can be said of the remake, part of the diminishing returns of Tobe Hooper's then contract with Cannon. The film largely follows the same plot structure but decenters the frame through which we see it unfold giving it a "the military is legit" vibe. It also is just a bit more mean-spirited in ways that are designed to taunt the audience versus the original film's more hardened edge to it. I think a great summation of the difference between the two is that the 1953 film had Martian bodyguards that are clearly guys in fuzzy green pajama suits, but they're more threatening than the ones in the 1986 film which are giant quadruped Stan Winston monsters. I digress. Had this come out 20 years later it would be classified as part of the wave of "why are they remaking everything?"

Speaking of remakes, briefly want to mention the 1995 Wasp Woman. It's The Wasp Woman for the 1990's, now with explosions and softcore sex scenes. I can't wholly defend the original 1959 film despite my affinity for it, so let's just say this one is of comparable quality.

The 1930's are a delightful treasure trove for horror but sadly we only have two up for offer. Mad Love makes me curious as to how other adaptations of The Hands of Orlac handle the material; I was convinced a guy got his head surgically reattached and with artificial hands to boot. Always good to see Colin Clive and Peter Lorre. The Walking Dead feels like a dry run for what Boris Karloff would do later that decade in the much better The Man They Could Not Hang, just with him as the victim here and not the mastermind. Truly some of his best work as an actor as he has to float through the world not being allowed to live or die, that shit sticks with you.

We watched a scant few Halloween specials proper, I always feel like I want to watch every Halloween special possible but sometimes the enthusiasm leaves me. The Last Halloween is trash, but that's on me for thinking something made for very small children would appeal to me as an adult. It crams far too much into its brief 22 minute runtime, so the only thing that manages to escape into the zone of interest is that the CGI aliens are actually very well done for a 1991 television production, had this been all about them (voiced by Hanna Barbara stalwarts such as Frank Welker and Don Messick, along with Paul Williams), this would have been far more tolerable. Halloween Hall o' Fame is the first of apparently several Disney television specials that repackaged their theatrical shorts inside a live-action framing device. It's quaint but this format would live and die by the quality of the shorts included; I'm not intimately familiar with Disney's back catalogue solely because they've barely released anything on home media but I absolutely adore the one where Pluto goes to Hell and is put in a kangaroo court with cats on the jury. I feel like the novelty of The Scooby-Doo Project and Night of The Living Doo have carried them along further than their actual quality have, stray artifacts from when Warner Bros was briefly testing to see if Scooby could be an adult property now, doomed to the same fate as Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The latter of these two specials made me come to terms with the fact that David Cross was "a big deal" at some point. The Great Bear Scare is the winner here. How could you not like an animated special where bears have to stand up and be brave against an oncoming horde of Halloween monsters? What makes this an oddity (sort of an obligation for me and Halloween specials) is that this is animated 100% without in-betweens, so every character in every scene cross-dissolves in real time between their keyframes. Depending on who you are it could be ridiculously distracting or make you step back and appreciate how hard animation is.

Clearing out our remaining animated showings, I felt like I would really get back into Scooby-Doo and The Reluctant Werewolf. In the mid-late 2000's when Cartoon Network was desperately trying to excise showing anything from their backlogs, this is one of those films that was on repeat constantly as midday viewings especially over summer. It's just so far removed from what Scooby-Doo "proper" is that it's an enigma, I go to bat to defend each of the "red shirt Shaggy" movies but this is brain melting at times, there is no mystery to solve, monsters are real, Fred/Daphne/Velma are completely absent, half the film is dedicated to a drag race, it goes on and on and on that I feel numb after a bit. Uzumaki...it's good. I feel like the fact that this was in production hell for five years following the first trailer release made me stop caring so all the shenanigans regarding the reaction to the animation dropping off (the production team got screwed over, how the fuck do studios not have the money for FOUR EPISODES, David Zlasv strikes again) brushed off of me. Regardless of that I think the actual pacing would have restricted this given how much sequential material from the manga now has to occur concurrently. It gets by solely because it's Uzumaki and as such it channels such a foreboding sense of dread and despair that is unreal. This more than anything is the true epitome of cosmic horror because there is no "source" or "identity" behind the threat that is warping reality around you, there is nothing to oppose and be defiant against, which was true of the manga and it remains true here. Bravo.

The 1970's prove to be another sporadic decade for horror. Cathy's Curse proves that no matter how good technical effects are, do not watch any Carrie knockoffs. Blah. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks...you took a movie where a Frankenstein monster fights a caveman and made it boring, congratulations. In the interim between 2021's viewing of Curse of Frankenstein and now, I've made the effort to watch the entirety of the Hammer Frankenstein series. They make for a brilliant reinterpretation of the source material with Frankenstein effectively being antagonist: he kills consistently for his experiments, which often time warp and alter people's identities along with their bodies. The "holy triumvirate" of the series as referred to by me would be The Revenge of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, all for showcasing new stuff that can be done with the character and any prior influences such as the Universal films being absent. Then comes The Horror of Frankenstein, a soft remake of Curse of Frankenstein, with Terence Fischer and Peter Cushing both absent. It's a dry and tedious affair that just rehashes what Curse already did, just now with a black comedic angle and no real consequences for Frankenstein himself. It's easily the worst of the series and why I'm glad Hammer backtracked for Frankenstein and The Monster From Hell. This is probably the first instance in film history where a sequel has consciously ignored a preceding remake, and while it's not wholly original either, it's comfort food for fans of this series, and now employs a darker more claustrophobic setting in an ~insane asylum~. Not the best ending for the series, but Hammer, along with Toho and Ray Harryhausen's efforts with Columbia, sort of represented the "old" styles of horror that were pretty quickly being replaced as the decade went on. This film specifically came out the same year as the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was a transitional period where what horror once was was cast away. Still not sure why the monster in this film looks like a Neanderthal man but that's just me.

Tourist Trap desperately tries to be one part Psycho and one part Texas Chainsaw, and it admittedly starts off with a nice hook of animatronic puppets being the main focus of the film, but it falls through the cracks and just becomes another random 1970's horror film. Vampyros Lesbos makes me realize that my infatuation with Zombi 3 last year did not mean I'm suddenly infatuated with Lucio Fulci's overall filmography, exceptions are not the rule. Come to think I don't think I've seen a single lesbian vampire film that I'm smitten with, how do you make this boring and not sexy at all, fuck you. Scream, Blacula, Scream is the obligatory Blacula cash-in sequel, nothing worthwhile to see here and none of the charm and significance of the first film is carried forward here, sigh. "DEDICATED TO THE MILLIONS THAT LOVE BRUCE LEE," The Dragon Lives Again is one of the plethora of films featuring Lee impersonators following his death, showing Lee in Hell as he has to find a way back to Earth while also fighting off The Godfather, Dracula, The Man with No Name, Emanuele, Zatoichi, and James Bond while allying himself with Popeye and Dr. Who. No I am not making any of this up, yes, this film was made with very little money so it sounds far more interesting than it actually ends up being, but it's a cute film, I can't be mad at a film made for me, nor can a movie showing Popeye eat spinach to fight mummies or Bruce Lee knocking out Dracula with his "third leg" be something you don't go out of your way to watch.

The Alien Factor is Don Dohler's first and best film. I love the fact that a dozen people made a small scale alien invasion/slasher film in their backyards with actually solid special effects for something that was probably made on the weekends. You can't hate this film, it's made from pure love for what was already decades old genre material. Had some of the script and acting been tightened up this could have become one of the more widely recognized independent films of the decade. Oh...Alucarda. I hate when they make a lesbian devil worshiper film between girls coming to terms with theirs sexual orientation and then they aren't the heroes of the story. We've come a long way since then.

Given that the Eggers film is still a few months out, I'd say Nosferatu the Vampyre is my preferred interpretation of the story (not my favorite Dracula adaptation overall mind you). Let me say that I think remaking Nosferatu is ridiculous solely because you're just doing Dracula, again, just with some stylistic details brought on from a specific prior Dracula. But this film goes all out. It's one of those times where I'm reminded of why slowly paced films with shots that last minutes at a time are so great. It relies very little on narrative (the extent/nature of Dracula's power of the geographic barriers between Wismar and Transylvania go unexplained) but you get so thoroughly sucked into the setting and the characters that you can't complain. This has undeniably the best portrayal of Mina in any Dracula film, she's effectively the protagonist by the second half and each of her encounters with Dracula are on her terms, he's effectively powerless against her even if she ensures they both die in the end. Also, rats. So many rats. Everywhere. The plague is in town.

Shock Waves is just great 1970's horror. Shoot on location, hold the camera in hand the entire time, do it cheap, have a dreamy distant narrator, and make it grisly. I do find the concept of Nazis engineering platoons of super soldiers and we only seeing just the one in this film is probably the scariest thing about it, it invites you to think about what else is happening out of sight. My favorite first watch of the year.

1978's Invasion of The Body Snatchers is also a phenomenal remake. This one is difficult for me to talk about because it just pushes all my buttons, I felt like I wanted to cry throughout the duration of this viewing, it is an incredibly mean film. Someone you know just one day turns on you, and then everyone else follows suit. You think you know your surroundings and your city but everything is flipped upside down and you can't even describe why. From the very start when you see the premature pods land on Earth it's made immediately clear that no one is making it out of here, it was too late as soon as it started.

But there can only be one #1, and this year it's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. Another instance of "nothing is going to beat this" as soon as I rewatched it. I feel like I'm alone in considering this one of the absolute best in the series, I feel like between the espionage and exploration and blood and laser fights that this is just one of the films that reminds you of why we make and why we watch movies, you get to have some semblance of every possible human emotion watching this. There's not much more you can ask for.

[bruce-morrow]

Sylvester, Blacula, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2024

Video: Bruce Morrow

[contentabnormal]

William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde in Scream Blacula Scream

Watercolors on Paper, 8.5" x 11", 2024

By Josh Ryals

[spilladabalia]

The Devils - Killer's Kiss

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

If you’re looking for something new to watch this Halloween, this is a fun new film to add to your spooky watchlist. I really cannot overstate how hard Nolasco killed it; he was charming, funny, creepy, and intimidating in equal measure. I certainly would not mind his Mr. Crocket appearing again; I honestly think he has what it takes to stand alongside Candyman and Blacula as an iconic black horror villain if he gets developed a bit more.

[autisticbillpotts]

[ID: posters of the 9 movies listed below /end ID]

favourite movies that I watched for the first time in 2024!

was so excited to make this post and then realised that THESE were my favourites, and I'm choosing not to be embarrassed about that! I like camp what can I say. I watched 66 new-to-me movies this last year! (of which 12 were godzilla movies and 5 were fast & furious movies. shrug!) so in no particular order:

Knightriders (1981)

Godzilla Final Wars (2004)

D.E.B.S (2004)

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

Challengers (2024)

Blacula (1972)

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

A League of Their Own (1992)