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frankendykes-monster · 2 years

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Halloween 2022 Countdown Ranked

59. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

58. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995)

57. Curse of The Swamp Creature (1968)

56. Monster From The Ocean Floor (1954)

55. Billy the Kid versus Dracula (1966)

54. Teenage Cave Man (1958)

53. Lost Continent (1951)

52. Attack of The Killer B-Movies (1995)

51. Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

50. Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966)

49. Full Moon High (1981)

48. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

47. The Werewolf of Washington (1973)

46. The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

45. The Invisible Woman (1940)

44. Anthropophagous (1980)

43. The Slime People (1963)

42. Casper’s Halloween Special (1979)

41. The Crawling Hand (1963)

40. Scream (2022)

39. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

38. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

37. Invisible Agent (1942)

36. The Descent (2005)

35. Eegah (1962)

34. Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

33. The Midnight Hour (1985)

32. Ringu (1998)

31. Halloween is Grinch Night (1977)

30. Attack of The Giant Leeches (1959)

29. Monster Mash (2000)

28. Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006)

27. The Man From Planet X (1951)

26. Child’s Play 3 (1991)

25. Hansel and Gretel (1983)

24. Cat-Women of The Moon (1953)

23. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

22. The She-Creature (1956)

21. The Terror (1963)

20. The Exorcist (1973)

19. The Navy vs. The Night Monsters (1966)

18. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

17. The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t (1979)

16. Hobgoblins (1988)

15. Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

14. The Abomination (1986)

13. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

12. Lake Mungo (2008)

11. Day of The Animals (1977)

10. Atom Age Vampire (1960)

9. The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters (1972)

8. Night of The Blood Beast (1958)

7. Child’s Play 2 (1990)

6. The Crawling Eye (1958)

5. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

4. The Old Dark House (1932)

3. Child’s Play (1988)

2. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

God this was such a bottom-heavy marathon compared to last year, alright let’s get this shitshow started. I can’t believe I willingly put myself through some of this.

The 1950′s-1960′s science fiction extravaganza: Curse of The Swamp Creature is, I think, one of those TV remakes of 1950′s films starring monsters designed by Paul Blaisdell. This is one where I thought “okay should I give it credit for making me laugh in the first 30 seconds and then not once for the entire rest of the runtime?” The answer was no. Monster From The Ocean Floor is a dreary slog of a film, one of those cheap shits that only features the titular monster for all of 30 seconds while people just aimlessly do nothing for the entire runtime. Teenage Cave Man I only watched because the monster suit from this film was reused in Night of The Blood Beast, and otherwise it’s Ayn Rand wet dream of the freethinking teenager being magically smarter than everyone else on top of the offense of being a caveman movie with no dinosaurs. God, speaking of which, Lost Continent is another Lost World ripoff that’s decades behind the curve and who’s only saving grace is stop motion dinosaurs which magically improve any movie they star in. The Slime People is an oddity because the monster suits and concept are star studded but it just, I guess, doesn’t have the money to see through actually showing us slime people emerge from underground and completely take over Los Angeles. Weird and disappointing. The Crawling Hand has one of the best trailers for any monster movie I’ve seen complete with a slowed down version of “Surfin’ Bird” but aside from some humorous spouts of bad acting and the 100% out-of-nowhere gag ending, it’s nothing remarkable. Admittedly there has been a couple films about disembodied hands killing people and I can’t find the concept scary no matter what, sue me. Attack of The Giant Leeches is in decent/mid-tier territory, boosted by reusing music from Night of The Blood Beast (Roger Corman lives up to his cheap reputation) and genuinely gruesome scenes of the leeches’ human victims still being alive after progressively blood feedings, it mostly loses me for just not doing anything remarkable with its finale. The Man From Planet X is working with a pretty stock script but is boosted by how atmospheric its directing is, every shot is just littered with shadows or fog. Cat-Women of The Moon is definitely one of the more humorous genre outings I’ve seen of this type, living up to its title 100% other than I guess having long nails and sharp eyeliner making you a “cat” woman I guess. The She-Creature isn’t the best Paul Blaisdell monster movie I’ve seen but that’s expected given his work crops up in some really interesting ones, this one being a murder mystery involving both hypnosis and prehistoric evolutionary links somehow. The Navy vs. The Night Monsters is like a better version of The Thing From Another World what with an indeterminate number of US army guys having to deal with a monster(s) at their fort and their progressively more extreme methods of having to deal with it. Atom Age Vampire is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a *while*, an Italian knockoff of Eyes Without A Face that hits all the same plot points just far more crudely and with a manster (man-monster) thrown in to boot. Watch the English edit for full effect. Night of The Blood Beast is one I was excited to revisit and it did not disappoint, being one of the definitive genre precursors to Alien (1979) and just an all-around shock to the senses in general with how isolated the cast can be and what they have to be put up against. The star of the show is The Crawling Eye however, a genuinely insane film that actually got under my skin with this viewing with the sound design, effects work, and some really gorey moments like flesh being desolved or multiple decapitations. As far as alien invasion films of the 1950′s go, this is definitely up there.

We have a pair of oddity western-horror mashups between, uh, actual people and fictional characters with Billy the Kid versus Dracula and Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Only thing of note with the former is that John Carradine reprises the role of Dracula after playing the character in House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945). Carradine was one of the most prolific actors in the history of the medium so it’s not surprising to see him crop up here and there without expecting him, but suffice to say he brings nothing to the role and just blends in with the rest of the drab film. Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter gets extra points solely for featuring the creation of an awkward and haphazard Frankenstein monster, which is generally the only reason to seek out random odds-and-ends Frankenstein movies.

Full Moon High is another Larry Cohen film that looks good on paper but I don’t really find myself enjoying at all. As a comedy there are a decent number of funny lines (”I’m not one of those types to believe in vampires and werewolves and virgins, I’ve never seen any of those.“) but it almost forgets it’s a werewolf movie for a lot of the runtime as the main plot involves how being a werewolf prevents you from aging and blah blah blah I can’t be bothered to care when you present something I didn’t come here to see (1950′s football player returns to his school in the 1980′s to find it littered with violence and drug use). The Werewolf of Washington is similarly dreary experience that only exists to present lackluster post-Watergate political satire.

Oh how the mighty have fallen; I made an attempt at finishing out The Invisible Man series but couldn’t even bring myself to watch the dedicated Abbott/Costello film. Truly the worst Universal sequels barring whatever happened with The Mummy. The Invisible Woman and Invisible Agent are a full-on comedy and action-adventure film respectively, so in some way I feel cheated for how they’re consistently lumped in with the rest of the series as a whole, which are to say, horror (beyond not doing anything that hadn’t been shown to us in the first two installments). The Invisible Man’s Revenge makes an attempt at trying to get the series back on track but all it does is make me realize I could just be watching the first two films.

Anthropophagous has been one I’ve been curious about for years, mostly because the poster is a really gristly shot of a guy eating human entrails, and while I *guess* that does feature in this film it’s just another slog to get through with no interesting characters, locations, or plot beats to string you along. Avoid.

Scream 5 exists for no reason other than to drop the entire series’ GPA. It’s the entry wherein the genre commentary overshadows everything else to the detriment of this being the first Scream film where I can’t be bothered to care about any of the returning characters. I wrote extensively about this one in my Letterboxd review so I’m only going to touch on some finer points here. Scream (1996) is allowed to reference I Spit On Your Grave (1978) because the former is better, this one is not allowed to make snide remarks about The Witch (2015), I’m not having it. If you’re desperate for a creative shot to the arm that is a grand return after an 11 year absence, just watch Scream 4 (2011).

The Descent was borderline funny to me in the sense that my reaction to so much of what the characters are put through is “shit I would just die, what else is there to do?” I mentally tuned out when the film switched from “being trapped in a claustrophobic cave system with no sense of direction” to “being hunted by underground monsters.” I usually scoff and roll my eyes at “oh my god it’s scarier because it could actually happen” but this is rare case where, yeah, being trapped underground with no way out is more terrifying before you add monsters to the mix.

Alright, brief “worst of the worst” roundup: Eegah, in spite of being one of the most notable MST3K punching bags, is not *that* bad. It peters out by the finale but there are enough funny moments and actually good stuff (Eegah talking to the corpses of family members in a proto Texas Chainsaw scene) to string you along for the better part of an hour. The Terror is a fascinating film for me, made solely because Roger Corman finished The Raven (1963) two days early and still had access to Boris Karloff. What we get is a bizarre and haphazard jumbling of horror cliches in a story that is almost bursting at the seams over how overwritten it is, but the making of this one is so interesting to me personally that I can’t bring myself to dislike it, even if Jack Nicholson never was good at “charismatic leading man” type thing before he settled on crazy motherfuckers. Hobgoblins was one I was surprised over how hilarious it was, another convoluted mess you can’t help but laugh at. The hobgoblins hypnotize people to let them live out their greatest fantasies albeit with some horrific twist, giving us some golden scene like a guy going to makeout point with an imaginary woman so the hobgoblins can push the car over the edge. Lordy lordy lordy.

1970′s role call: Dracula vs. Frankenstein continues the trend of awkward and frustrating messes, this one originally being an unrelated horror film that later had the two characters thrown in mid-production. What ensues is an unusually violent at times boring at others movie that I can’t help but derive at least some ironic enjoyment from. The untimely tragedy of this film is that this was the last role for Lon Chaney Jr. Bela Lugosi got stuck with Ed Wood, Karloff with Corman, and Chaney Jr. with Al Adamson. Chaney Jr. could have been a great actor if it wasn’t for the horror typecasting and seeing play just another bumbling grunt in this is almost painful. See also: somehow this film is also the final role for J. Carrol Naish, who played Daniel in House of Frankenstein (1944). Odd. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death just blends in to the larger genre trends of leaning more towards provocative material what with explicit concerns of mental illness in our protagonist and questions of reality around her, but aside from the soundtrack this one has already completely left my memory. The Exorcist isn’t *quite* the most overrated horror film out there, but it does surprise me that is one of the ones that escaped into the mainstream; it’s mostly middling for the first hour of its runtime before becoming a decent enough demon story. I will say I can’t for the life of me find the devil scary in this, “your mother sucks cocks in hell!” will always be funny to me, they’re like a Freddy/Chucky joke dispensing precursor. The Town That Dreaded Sundown, hoo boy, had this one had a more consistent tone dodging the comedy relief, it could have been an all-time great from this decade with an entire town plunged into despair over unsuccessful efforts to apprehend an anonymous serial killer. This one goes all out when it comes to the more suspenseful moments, making the gags all the more frustrating. Day of The Animals narrowly edges out being just another part of the glut of killer animal films in the wake of Jaws (1975), by just having everything out to kill people. In spite of its inherent ridiculousness I can’t not say it’s better produced and more oppressively intimidating than it has any right to be, almost reminds me of a version of the environment itself is trying to kill you a la backrooms.

Ringu kind of sets in that the late-1990′s-early-2000′s period of J-horror just isn’t for me compared to the likes of films we saw in the 1960′s and 1970′s. They tend to bleed together in my mind and Ringu is disappointing in that way. I will say I was surprised that we get a satisfactory explanation for the origin of the tape and that only the final scene exhibits the famous “crawling out of the television” moment, which somehow became the most memorable thing from this one.

Bloodz vs. Wolvez I’m going to defend on the basis that this could have been a genuinely solid effort, what with the concept of bougie black vampires trying to integrate into human (read: white) society but working class black werewolves are stuck in poverty and this class disparity is the driver of the conflict between the two groups. What holds this back, and of all the films I watched for this season, this one pains me the most to say it’s only average, is the fact that this may be one of the lowest budget films I have ever seen. Everything is restrained by the fact that this must have been over consecutive weekends on $100. Holding out for a remake that does this one justice.

Brief 1930′s aside: I’ve never seen any adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde prior to this year so any amount of expectation or set ideas on what should be done with the story escape me. Suffice to say this is an impressive one overall, with a lot of POV shots and split screen effects that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a prior film. The 1931 film is another slow to start but when it gets going it unfolds into one of the most explosive finales to any 1930′s horror film (though admittedly I’m not sure what separates Mr. Hyde in this from your average London man but what have you). Oh yes, The Old Dark House. This is the ultimate “minimalist” horror film, using the absolute bare essentials it can to craft an uneasy atmosphere that dominates everything else. No supernatural phenomena, no body count, just extreme thunderstorms trapping everyone inside one dark house and them being forced to make it out with their minds intact. “This is an unlucky house, two of my children, died when they were 20, eh-he-he...” “Laughter and sin! Laughter and sin! This too will rot!”

Die, Monster, Die! is the rare pre-1980′s Lovecraft adaptation, very loosely taking from The Colour From Outer Space, and comes together thanks to starring roles by Karloff and Nick Adams along with going into some unusual territory concerning mutations that befit the subject matter. Slow to start but strong finish.

The Abomination is another one of those pushing-for-the-edge 1980′s obscurities that mostly exists to up the gore to previously unseen levels, and I can’t say it wasn’t successful, with practically an entire house being converted into an eldritch monstrosity that eats people piece by piece. It’s frankly disgusting at times but if you’re on the search for more of these have at it.

Out of all the bizarre mishmash that is the group of films that I decided to watch this year, Lake Mungo is the biggest outlier to the group. I’m not sure if I’d classify it as horror, it’s a piece of weird fiction that seems to escape genre. Unlike, it seems, pretty much everyone else, this one doesn’t really scare me at all, but I can’t help but be fascinated as the narrative ebbs back and forth in an emotional cacophony that leads to gut punches. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, it could have gone anywhere in the ranking and I wouldn’t be wholly satisfied with its position, but I guess that’s why you can’t truly assign a number value to art.

I made an effort to try and make it through as many actual Halloween specials as I could this year in between the feature lengths. Attack of The Killer B-Movies sees Elvira and a bunch of teenage schmucks watch several low-tier 1950′s science fiction films that have been colorized, cut for time, and with new soundtracks, with MST3K gags strewn in between. It somehow makes these films worse, which is a monumental accomplishment in cases like with Monster From Green Hell (1957). Avoid unless you and some pals have to see everything Elvira. I’m not familiar with anything related to Casper prior to the 1995 film and the seemingly deluge of material featuring the character for the following decade, and Casper’s Halloween Special didn’t do anything to convince me to rectify that, blah. The Midnight Hour is one I was disappointed to return to, not nearly as insane as I recall it being. Functionally a proto-Hocus Pocus (1993) wherein a witch returns from the dead to curse an entire town, The Midnight Hour wants to be a zombie film, a party film, a romance, and about two other things but doesn’t meet the manic energy required to pull it off. An absolute must see is the musical number riffing on “Thriller” in the middle of this one, “Get Dead.” “I’m dead, you’re dying, everyone should try and get dead!” Halloween is Grinch Night is a fascinating watch just being an unyielding onslaught of color and sound that doesn’t know what a quiet moment is, the oft mentioned “weird” Grinch scene makes perfect sense in context however, not sure what everyone was on about with that. Monster Mash is an adorable enough fist-shaking, involving Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Wolf Man being forced to assert that they’re still scary in spite of being sell-outs in a world of slashers. Best part is one of the monsters they’re up against is Freddy D. Spaghetti, who wears a pasta strainer in place of a hockey mask, love that dude. Hansel and Gretel is a retelling of the story by Tim Burton, and it makes for perfect background material at a party for its ambiance coming from the fact there are only like five characters existing on solid monochrome sets that have virtually no decorations. I’ve never cared for the story itself but the presentation here is hypnotizing. The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t is another cute and inoffensive one, with Dracula forced to call all the world’s monsters together to have a witch doing her scaring duties lest the holiday be cancelled all together. Ends on a disco party because it’s the 1970′s, fuck you. Nothing however can beat The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters, a reprise/semi-sequel to Mad Monster Party? (1967), which I watched for last year’s countdown, and one that perfectly rights the wrongs of that misfire. The light plot concerns Dr. Frankenstein making a bride for the Monster and calling in the rest of the major terrors to come to the wedding, and it’s almost entirely a springboard for gags. The difference between this and Mad Monster Party? is that this is actually funny, whether it be the reining-in of some obvious Halloween gags (ha-ha the monsters want to eat roast black widows) or there being two human characters to counterbalance the monsters, one absolutely terrified of them and one who’s a major Universal fanboy. Just when you think the film is ending it turns 90 degrees into another direction with 10 more jokes on the way. “Oh I’ve made a terrible mistake, the bride is alternating current, and the groom is direct current!”

There isn't much going on in The Blair Witch Project so I can't comment on much, suffice to say this one has still got it, marketing campaign or no marketing campaign. Slowly becomes more and more claustrophobic until you get to that final shot of standing in the corner. It having been spoiled for me years prior doesn't at all change how effective it is in context.

Time constraints prohibited me from watching every Child’s Play film but I enjoyed my time with the first three entries. If anything surprised me about the first film it’s that it is a genuinely scary experience, the only one where Chucky is intimidating. The people saying that they could just drop kick him? Yeah, Chucky will fucking kill you. This is what A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) wishes it was. Child’s Play 2 does its services as a not-quite-as-good horror sequel but it’s strong continuity with the first and upping the stakes and scope make it a worthwhile watch. Child’s Play 3 is decent enough but can grow tiring over how much it forgets it’s a Child’s Play sequel and not a Full Metal Jacket (1987) parody. Too much of the run time is eaten up by shit that is inconsequential and yeah, not too bad compared to a LOT of slasher sequels but I can see where people are coming from when they say this is the weakest entry in the series.

If your body horror film doesn’t make me feel like the person having their flesh twisted, you failed. Industrial music. Stop motion editing. Semi-undead mechanical sex. Tetsuo: The Iron Man commands it all. If you turn your head for five seconds while watching this you will have missed the equivalency of a Lord of The Rings prequel’s volume of information and even then a lot of this indecipherable on every level. The beauty of practical effects is a lot of the time I genuinely couldn’t tell you how the effect is done, and Tetsuo does that seemingly every 10 minutes. I’ve come and gone with this film but make no mistake, everyone needs to see this. It will change you.

Alright, final stretch. There is no series in the history of film that has a wider gap in quality between entries as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Watching the majority of the series this year also ran the gamut of how good or how bad a movie in general can be. I did not rewatch 2 because I figured it would get better on a rewatch (I don’t care for it) and I didn’t bother with Leatherface (2017) because come on just look at it. Let’s begin: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is relatively inoffensive, I’d say I prefer it to 2. It’s ostensibly a mainstream studio remake of the first film and while there are great scenes found within, it’s major drawback is that I can’t “buy” any of it. At no point do I believe these people are a group of mass murderers, they’re actors playing mass murderers. This is an issue plaguing the majority of the series but more money doesn’t mean you can effectively capture that feel. The Next Generation is the first of several abominations I had to sit through, featuring what might be the worst set of performances I’ve seen in any film. This is the one that reveals that the Sawyers are secretly working for the Illuminati as part of a massive fear spreading campaign and has an ending that resembles a Nirvana music video more than anything and makes me question everything that led up to committing to watching this, the less said the better. The 2003 remake is Leatherface, again, though it benefits from being the second entry in the series aside from the first to have some consistent aesthetic going. Can still be easily skipped. The Beginning is the first entry that devolves into pure torture porn, and doesn’t take any advantage of the fact that these characters can’t survive at the end, opting for just repeating bare slasher essentials except for killing off the final girl. Texas Chainsaw 3D opens with a montage of footage from the first film then hard pivots into a plot about the Swayers being murdered in mass by a vigilante mob and “the Sawyers didn’t deserve this!” No mention of the killing and cannibalism I guess as Leatherface, despite collecting a body count in this film alone, is turned into the good guy. “Do your thing cuz!” Just when you think things can’t get any worse, we are presented with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, no “The,” the new low bar for the series, if not the genre and maybe film as a whole. Make no mistake that this is easily one of the worst films I have ever seen, involving gen-Z gentrifiers trying to buy up a small town to make into an upscale getaway, but Leatherface is there and blah blah blah you could have called this film anything else and you know what would have happened? It would still be as bad but I wouldn’t have had to watch it, no one would have noticed it, no one would have to be as angry or anything because the only thing this has going for it is the connection to the first film. It’s like if the Star Wars prequels weren’t called “Star Wars” they’d be as easily forgotten as Jupiter Ascending (2015) or Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets (2017), where no one would have batted an eye, called them shit in a single breath and then easily forgotten about them without a second thought. Fuck this movie, fuck it for being another stain on the legacy of the original, fuck everyone that says “I just want to see stupid teenagers get killed,” fuck any defense of this.

Only thing that came of having to sit through these was another opportunity to rewatch the 1974 film. As soon as I had settled on this being up for viewing, the #1 spot was sealed. If someone were to say that this is the greatest horror film ever made, I don’t think I’d agree but at the same time I wouldn’t be able to put up a counter argument. I said a few days ago that I define horror as a genre by its presentation of violence, and this is a perfect example. The opening text crawl lets us know that even if this was a singular event, the resulting trauma and open wounds will be carried forever. The soundtrack itself is oppressive, camera shutters and industrial machinery in the place of actual music at times, the opening credits burned by footage of solar flares, the entire environment taking place in the blazing Texas sun with dried up water beds and radiators and dilapidated buildings. It’s one of the ultimate descents into hell that have ever been presented by any film, horror or not. Innocent people unknowingly walking to their doom, the discovery of seemingly endless amounts of human and animal remains and never putting the pieces together until it’s too late, the final survivor being forced to see how the meat we eat is made. “I just don’t take no pleasure in killing.” It’s been nearly 10 years since I first saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, this is one of the rare films that absolutely changed me, and while no subsequent viewing will have that same impact, I can’t not love it to the upmost extent that I can love any movie.

#long post #body horror

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