Midnight Movie of the Week #200 - Halloween

Not gonna go in depth on this one, you all know what Halloween is. I've spent 200 weeks writing these columns now, and as we roll toward the end of the horror family's favorite holiday I just want to say how much I love being able to share my love for horror with you all. When I started this list almost four years ago I was trying to convince myself that I could keep this thing going on a weekly basis, and - despite some real world hurdles and plenty of good old-fashioned lack of motivation, we made it to another Halloween together.

If you need to know why you should watch Halloween - just like I once did as a teenager who thought horror movies were just fun and stupid and not on par with really great movies in other genres - I'll tell you that I believe nothing about any movie more than I believe that Halloween is a movie about man (or woman, in the case of Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode) vs. nature, not man (or woman) vs. man. People get it wrong and see this as just another slasher movie, or even worse they get it wrong and think of Michael Myers as an inhuman monster going on motor function and killing for the sake of killing.

I know that stuff about fate and evil that is peppered into John Carpenter's script feels like fluff, but if you buy into it it really pushes Halloween to a new level of fear. That might sound similar to asking an atheist to believe in the Bible, and I've wasted more time than I'd like to admit over the years trying to convince people of this when they don't want to see Halloween the way I do.

People come to horror for many reasons. My reason for loving horror, for being moved by horror, and for continuing to seek out horror all the time is because I'm looking for movies that dare me to feel that there is evil in this world that I might have to feel with. And I believe Halloween does this as well as any other movie. I'd compare it's conflict between humanity and the nature of evil to that presented in The Exorcist, which sits next to it as my second favorite horror film. That film approaches evil more directly than John Carpenter does, but both films create the same underlying fear in me.

In short, Halloween is the movie that made horror a cinematic power in my mind. I'd always loved horror, and there are probably a dozen other movies that I love now that I could have seen when I was young and that could have inspired me to feel the way I do about horror movies. Thanks to fate, Halloween was that movie that hit me and made me believe horror cinema could be great cinema. And I'm still indebted to it. Without it there might never have been one Midnight Movie of the Week, let alone two-hundred. It inspired me, and I hope that anyone out there who might be trying to love horror can find a movie that makes them feel as excited about their pursuit as Halloween makes me feel.

Midnight Movie of the Week #159 - In the Mouth of Madness

The last time I mentioned In the Mouth of Madness on this here site, I said something like "It's about time we recognize this as one of Carpenter's classics."  I'm not sure I wasn't talking myself there.  Carpenter's always been my favorite post-Hitchcock topic when it comes to genre cinema, and I've never denied the fact that this film is a fascinating piece of horror. But there's always been something about the film that's kept me from listing it alongside my favorite films by the director - and I have no idea what that something is or if that something should exist. So, since it was freakin' John Carpenter's BIRTHDAY(!) this week, let's investigate.

Released in 1994, In the Mouth of Madness was only Carpenter's second film of the 1990s (following the studio misfire Memoirs of an Invisible Man) and is probably the last pure horror film Carpenter made until 2010's The Ward sixteen years later.  And pure horror might be an understatement when it comes to In the Mouth of Madness, because the film manages to pay heed to the two most loved horror writers of all-time - H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King - while creating an apocalyptic world that's all Carpenter's own.

Sam Neill stars as a skeptical insurance investigator who's hired (by Charlton Heston, BTW) to look into the disappearance of horror author Sutter Cane, an enigmatic writer whose fiction has caused a bit of psychosis in his "less stable readers." His job leads him to the fictional small town Hobb's End, in which strange things like mutant killer children and tentacled beasts are only some of the tricks that Cane - played by Jurgen Prochnow - has up his sleeve. What follows is a lot of Neill screaming and a lot of bizarre special effects. And that sounds like it could be a bad thing, but it is completely not.

This is one of the rare Carpenter films that doesn't have the director (or one of his pseudonyms) given a writing credit, but unlike Memoirs of an Invisible Man before it you can still feel the stamp of the director throughout the story. In fact, many have labeled this as the third installment in Carpenter's 'Apocalypse Trilogy' - following influence of The Thing and Prince of Darkness - thanks to the increasingly pessimistic tone of each film. Like the other two films, In the Mouth of Madness unleashes an evil force that can not easily be seen or classified; which is also a force of evil that has the power to take over the human mind.  Many of Carpenter's earlier/great films hide their evils behind "things" - a gang, a shape, some fog, a car, etc. - but you could probably argue that this is his most abstract representation of evil outside of The Thing.

In fact, it's the film's willingness to shift through different visions of evil that is most fascinating to me. The first major madness in the film comes from an ax toting maniac (who we later find out was Cane's agent), but the film then seems to allow terror to seep into all areas if the main character's life. Throughout his wonderfully hammy performance, we see Neill deal with everything from zomified nightmares to visual and auditory hallucinations, consistently blurring the line between reality and what can only be described as Hell. There are some truly random moments - like one involving the color blue - that wouldn't work in a lesser film. But Carpenter's ability to tell a story and Neill's approach to the skeptic-driven-crazy role go a long way toward making the film feel so full of evil.

There's a comic undertone throughout the film - supported by Neill's grandiose performance and the increasingly uncommon series of twists - that makes it hard to see In the Mouth of Madness as a truly "scary" piece of horror.  If anything, the film's tone probably endears the film more to horror fans than anyone else because, like many other horror successes of the 1990s, the film is a horror movie about horror stories. I think the tone might be a big part of why I've never loved this film as much as I do The Thing (which never stops being serious for a second) or Prince of Darkness (which compliments its own wacky plot with a straight face that never wavers).  And yet, every time I see the final scenes of In the Mouth of Madness I am reminded just how vast and terrible the film's idea would be in a real world society. No one will ever mistake this film for a cautionary tale about human horror, but a more open minded viewer who loves to speculate in "what if"s as much as the characters here do - should have a lot of fun with one of Carpenter's unsung successes.

The Mike's Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown: #1 - Halloween

Previously on the Countdown: Number 50 - Happy Birthday to Me  Number 49 - Prince of Darkness  Number 48 - House on Haunted Hill  Number 47 - The Monster Squad  Number 46 - Hellraiser  Number 45 - The Fog  Number 44 - Creature From the Black Lagoon  Number 43 - Zombie  Number 42 - Tales from the Crypt  Number 41 - Bubba Ho-Tep  Number 40 - Phantom of the Paradise  Number 39 - Dog Soldiers Number 38 - Pontypool  Number 37 - Dark Water  Number 36 - Army of Darkness Number 35 - The Legend of Hell House  Number 34 - Poltergeist  Number 33 - The Abominable Dr. Phibes  Number 32 - The Phantom of the Opera  Number 31 - The House of the Devil   Number 30 - Evil Dead II  Number 29 - Dead of Night  Number 28 - Carnival of Souls  Number 27 - Nosferatu  Number 26 - Candyman  Number 25 - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre  Number 24 - Horror of Dracula  Number 23 - The Wicker Man  Number 22 - Suspiria  Number 21 - The Omen  Number 20 - Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told  Number 19 - Rosemary's Baby  Number 18 - The Devil Rides Out  Number 17 - The Blob  Number 16 - Gremlins  Number 15 - Targets  Number 14 - Fright Night   Number 13 - Frankenstein  Number 12 - Alien  Number 11 - The Shining  Number 10 - An American Werewolf in London  Number 9 - The Thing  Number 8 - Dawn of the Dead  Number 7 - The Evil Dead  Number 6 - Night of the Living Dead  Number 5 - The Innocents  Number 4 - The Wolf Man  Number 3 - Psycho  Number 2 - The Exorcist

Halloween

(1978, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

 Why It's Here:

Horror, as a genre, is about the existence of evil.  I believe that idea as much as I believe anything.  And, for my money, there is not a representation of evil that is as simple and effective as Michael Myers.  People bring up that revelation from the sequel that retroactively changed the plot of this film, and people bring up Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees as killers with more of a "personality", and PEOPLE ARE MISSING THE DAMN POINT.  This is not a movie about a man killing for a reason, it is a movie about a force of evil being unleashed upon a normal world in a completely random way. It's not just scary - and it is scary - it's a completely fascinating concept that reinvented the genre (for better or worse) and it's a movie that still draws out my imagination every time I watch it.

The Moment That Changes Everything:

Another thing about Halloween, for me, is that it builds its tension while showing an extraordinary bit of restraint.  I often feel like about 80 of the movie's 95 minutes go by before it really hits the gas and takes off. But there are so many little things in those 80 minutes that just make you ready for the explosion. Most effective might be an early scene where Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode walks down the sidewalk...and the camera sits behind the shoulder of Michael and picks up his breathing.  Every time I see this scene, I'm reminded that the film wasn't trying to shock us repeatedly - it wanted to get under our skin and stay there. And it achieves that goal.

It Makes a Great Double Feature With:

There is a relatively endless debate about whether or not Halloween is a "ripoff" of Black Christmas. I always get a little defensive when it comes up, which is probably why I've historically shunned Bob Clark's slasher.  I still think the film lacks tension and can't match the perfect pacing of Carpenter's film, but they are probably the two most effective slasher films in existence. If you ever needed a slasher film for another holiday, here you go.

What It Means To Me:

 There was never any question that John Carpenter's seminal slasher was going to end this list - but I have to admit the timing of this finish is a happy accident.  After coming up with this list at the beginning of March(!), I flip-flopped the list a bunch of times as I wrote these posts.  There were changes as recently as #4 on the list, but I haven't wavered in my belief that Halloween is the best horror movie ever made since I first saw it.  Now that I'm at this point in the list, I kind of can't figure out what to say without getting all dramatic and cheesy. I just - I just really like Halloween a lot.  Go back and read some of the other posts in this list. The ones where I use outlandish terms like "best" and "of all time" and "perfect". And then realize that I like Halloween more than all the rest of those movies. Hell, I like it more than anything not made by Hitchcock. It's my own personal perfect horror movie.

And that's the list! Come back later, whence I will post a wrap-up, one-stop-shop, kind of post about the list that took me seven freaking months to finish, in which I will break the list down a bit and share some random thoughts.  Oh, and, in case I don't see you.....

HAVE A HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!

The Mike's Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown: #9 - The Thing

Previously on the Countdown: Number 50 - Happy Birthday to Me  Number 49 - Prince of Darkness  Number 48 - House on Haunted Hill  Number 47 - The Monster Squad  Number 46 - Hellraiser  Number 45 - The Fog  Number 44 - Creature From the Black Lagoon  Number 43 - Zombie  Number 42 - Tales from the Crypt  Number 41 - Bubba Ho-Tep  Number 40 - Phantom of the Paradise  Number 39 - Dog Soldiers Number 38 - Pontypool  Number 37 - Dark Water  Number 36 - Army of Darkness Number 35 - The Legend of Hell House  Number 34 - Poltergeist  Number 33 - The Abominable Dr. Phibes  Number 32 - The Phantom of the Opera  Number 31 - The House of the Devil   Number 30 - Evil Dead II  Number 29 - Dead of Night  Number 28 - Carnival of Souls  Number 27 - Nosferatu  Number 26 - Candyman  Number 25 - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre  Number 24 - Horror of Dracula  Number 23 - The Wicker Man  Number 22 - Suspiria  Number 21 - The Omen  Number 20 - Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told  Number 19 - Rosemary's Baby  Number 18 - The Devil Rides Out  Number 17 - The Blob  Number 16 - Gremlins  Number 15 - Targets  Number 14 - Fright Night   Number 13 - Frankenstein  Number 12 - Alien  Number 11 - The Shining  Number 10 - An American Werewolf in London 

The Thing

(1982, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

 Why It's Here:

Well, The Thing has won about every award FMWL has ever had, so the list certainly wouldn't be complete without it.  Why it's ONLY number nine on the list is a much more difficult conversation for me to have with y'all. John Carpenter's film has long been a favorite of mind and I can't find a single friggin' technical flaw with the thing. I think that maybe sometimes it feels too sterile and not as human as some other horror films...but I've also argued at times that that's the point.

The Moment That Changes Everything:

From the first "bum-bum" of the Ennio Morricone musical score, the tension in The Thing is pretty darn high.  But I can't deny that the film hits the lightning round of suspense right around the time the men perform their test to see who is "one of them."  It's got manly debate, gooey special effects, people tied to a (expletive deleted) couch, and a flame thrower. What more can a scene offer?

It Makes a Great Double Feature With:

The Thing is a remake of a very good movie, The Thing From Another World. 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is also a remake and also a tale of shape-seizing invaders, and it's also a pretty effective chiller.  I prefer the 1955 version of the story, but it's a better double feature with the 1951 The Thing.  Heck, just watch all four of 'em and thank me later. (And then cap it off with Abel Ferrara's 1993 Body Snatchers for dessert.)

What It Means To Me:

John Carpenter has long been my second favorite director in the history of the world (Alfred Hitchcock can not be challenged, unfortunately), and The Thing has always been among his most profound works to me.  I often find myself preferring some of his more lighthearted films, but when pure craftsmanship is the topic then this one just has to be part of the conversation. It's universally loved for a reason, and it's a true must see for anyone interested in horror.  The only problem is...so are the next 8 movies I'll list.

1981 - The Year The Mike Made Contact

When Eric from over at The Movie Waffler asked me to take part in a little Blogathon he's got going on, I got a little psyched.  The topic, should I choose to accept it, is what he calls "The Year I Made Contact" - asking folks who love movies to talk about the movies from the year in which said movie lover was born. (Like, could I say movie a few more times?  Movie.  There, I did.)

If you wanna go straight to what other people said, click the baby!

When I got offered the chance to write about this topic, I took a moment to ask myself some questions. "Hey, The Mike...do you think the movies from the year you were born had an impact on you?  Like, maybe there's some kind of magical juju in the air that wafted off the movie screen and made you The Mike you are?"  And I was like "Nah, man, that's crazy."  But then I looked at the list of movies I've seen from 1981 (thanks to my good friends over at Flickchart, I can do that kind of stuff easily) and I was like "Whoa, The Mike...1981 and you is like...a magical conjunction!"

(Don't worry, I have Valley Girl-ish conversations with myself all the time. It's totally tubular and also normal for me.  Just run with it.)

Back on topic - 1981.  As far as I can count, there are 50 movies from 1981 that I've seen. And I can say with little hesitation that every single one of them makes me at least a little bit excited.  They're not all excellent films, and some struggle to get anywhere near good, but I swear with all my Mikeness that every movie I've seen from that year has something unique and catchy and attention-grabbing about it.

Jillian Kesner in the kung-fu/exploitation cheese-o-rama Firecracker.

When I try to break down 1981 - which is seriously no easy task for me when I'm this stoked about movies that aren't even good like Firecracker or The Nesting or The Survivor - I see a few distinct categories of movies that fit my cinema lovin' persona.  I'm a little afraid to start this next part - because I know I'm going to forget to mention something my gut thinks is great - but here's a run down of what sticks out (the most) to me from 1981.

Heads will roll - but not float - in Eyes of a Stranger.

The Slashers

As I discussed when I covered The Slasher Movie Book a few weeks ago, 1981 was right in the middle of the slasher movie's "golden age".  There are a few movies from the year that I will watch despite their silliness - stuff like, Graduation Day, The Burning, Hell Night, and Eyes of a Stranger (Oh, man, Eyes of a Stranger is something else!) - but there are also some big dogs of slasherdom too.  Halloween II and Friday the 13th Part 2 both took their brands down defining paths, with the former introducing the family ties between killer and victims and the latter introducing the fully grown Jason.  Both films are highly flawed, but pretty iconic at times, with a couple of the best moments in either series hidden within.  Alongside those films are three of my favorite stand-alone slasher films, My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, and Just Before Dawn.  These are three movies that represent exactly what the slasher was at the peak of its popularity, embracing the cliches while finding unique ways to make viewers love their kind of carnage.

The Non-Horror Stuff

I know I'm all about the genre stuff and the wacky stuff here, but there are a lot of 1981 movies I need to mention to feel OK about myself.  Some are pretty obvious - most anyone talking about 1981 will surely mention Raiders of the Lost Ark, which has to be the year's most popular and enduring film - while others were big hits at the time that are slightly obscure to the masses these days.  Films like Body Heat, The Cannonball Run, Stripes, and The Road Warrior are still loved in circles of movie buffs, but have primarily been relegated to "Movies that people pillage and update to make fresh young movies" status by greedy Hollywoodians and ignorant kids.

I will always miss John Belushi.

For me, there are a few lesser known films from the year that still stick out too.  The fantastic John Belushi, who's still my favorite comedian ever and kind of a hero to me, had his last two movies - the sweet and heartfelt Continental Divide and the zany and psychotic Neighbors - released in 1981, before his untimely death in 1982.  Another comedic favorite, Mel Brooks, released History of the World - Part 1, which is not among my favorite of his films, but is still a cracking spoof at times.  Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, and Rutger Hauer starred in the ridiculously serious serial killer thriller Nighthawks, which stands tall as one of the greatest facial hair movies of all-time.  George A. Romero took a break from zombies with the renaissance fairs and motorcycles epic Knightriders - buoyed by a young and intense Ed Harris - and made a ridiculous premise stick out as one of his better post Dawn of the Dead films.

Hey everybody! It's Ron Perlman!

1981 also featured one of the most unique films I've ever seen; a film that I find endlessly watchable despite little facts like next to nothing happening and no comprehensible dialogue. Jean-Jacques Annaud's Quest For Fire, about cavemen who have to gain and protect fire back in the days long before matches is a one-of-a-kind epic that I dig.  I don't have a clue what it's saying most of the time - but I think I like what it means.  And it's pretty once you get past all the hair.

The Horrors That Aren't All Slashy

While the slashers dominated the horror scene of the early '80s in many regards, there are several horror movies from 1981 that shine in other ways.  But, like the slashers, not all of them are firing on all cylinders.  Ghost Story is swimming in atmosphere and has a dynamite cast of Hollywood legends, but has some pacing issues.  Similar concerns took some spotlight away from Wolfen, in which Albert Finney faces New York City werewolves that have something to do with a Native American ritual - which means the movie's slow and also batstuff crazy.  Oliver Stone wrote and directed (Seriously! Oliver Stone! I'm not making this up!) The Hand, in which Michael Caine (Seriously!) deals with the loss of his hand which is now killing people, a movie that I love dearly but have a hard time defending. Maybe it's the gorgeous Andrea Marcovicci that draws me in and tricks me, or maybe it's the fact that the film is a psychological look at the effect of Thing from The Addams Family going on a rampage.   Either way, I can't stop loving The Hand.

On the more successful side of 1981, we find a couple more interesting horrors.  I'm not the biggest fan of Joe Dante's The Howling - I think it lacks too much of the comedic charm of his other films and is kind of poorly cast - but it's a great throwback to The Wolf Man with Dee Wallace at the top of her game and some great special effects.  Dead and Buried, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of straight-faced horror film, as the combination of writer Dan O'Bannon and director Gary Sherman brings forth an atmospheric and genuinely scary small town horror film. 

Just go watch The Pit and tell me it's not creepy/awkward. I dare ya.

If you're a regular reader of this site, you know that the Midnight Movie of the Week is pretty much my signature post.  I've been running it for 130 straight weeks now, and I wasn't surprised when I learned that no less than six (6!) of the movies I've picked for what I think is a prestigious honor came from 1981.  Among these are two surprisingly shocking horrors featuring mini-sized terrors, The Pit and Bloody Birthday.  The Pit has a little boy who's controlled by his teddy bear and some cave-dwelling trogs, and it's a film that never stops being its own brand of entertaining crazy.  Bloody Birthday is more straight forward, with three evil kids doing evil things for the sake of evil, but it is unsubtle in every way and goes out of its way to show extreme violence around (and sometimes toward) little children.

Though it might not be strictly a horror film, Roadgames features Jamie Lee Curtis in an early role and sports one of my favorite sensational movie posters of all-time.  For the most part, the film is Stacy Keach playing Rear Window from the cab of a semi that's crossing Australia, which makes it one of the most rewatchable films in my collection.  It's been relatively forgotten - it didn't even make the cut in the discussion of Jamie Lee's early roles in Scream - but Richard Franklin's thriller has long been a favorite of mine.  It's also been Midnight Movie of the Week.

The Top Five

When I really - and I mean really, those last thirteen paragraphs were just me warming up - break it down, there are five movies from 1981 that stand out as the gems of the year to me.  (Yes, I know Raiders of the Lost Ark should be here too, but I'm leaving it to the smarter people...and I'm more of a Last Crusade guy, to be honest.)  Here's a brief look at each of them.

If I'm being snooty and not acknowledging Halloween as a slasher - sometimes I like to pretend that it's "above" the moniker since it started the fire burning - Happy Birthday to Me easily takes the bithday cake as my favorite.  Another former MMOTW, the movie only came to my attention because one of those "The Day You Were Born" things my mom hung outside my bedroom had it listed as a popular movie of the time, and I found that terribly ironic.  It's perhaps the Lawrence of Arabia of slasher movies - I swear it's almost two hours long! - but it's got awesome kills, goofy characters, and all the '80s cheese you need. And the kids make references to classic movies, which makes me long for the days when we weren't being force fed so much new crap and we still remembered things like The Hunchback of Notre Dame or High Noon.  But that's another topic for another day...

Part of the reason I'm not so wild about The Howling might be the fact that I am wild about An American Werewolf in London.  I know it would be the nice thing to do if I accepted both movies for what they are - and I do still dig The Howling, dammit! - but An American Werewolf in London just sticks out to me as such a perfect film.  As I once wrote in a piece for the Flickchart Blog, it is truly a "one of a kind" movie with the perfect mix of comedy, action, and horror.  It too pays tribute to The Wolf Man in a great way, and it never keeps me from smiling.

The Evil Dead needs no introduction to most horror fans.  I feel terribly blessed that I, despite my age, found the original film first - unlike most of my classmates in school, who met Ash in Army of Darkness.  The Evil Dead still intrigues me on many levels, as it's one of the most immersive movie experiences I've ever been a part of.  Some remember the series for Bruce Campbell and the gags of the later films - and sometimes I do too - but the original Evil Dead deserves mad love for being a non-stop attack on the viewer.  

Another movie that I love for its bleakness - man, when you get down to it, 1981 was all about how we're doomed - is Brian De Palma's Blow Out.  John Travolta and Nancy Allen star in what looks like an average thriller, but the twists and turns of the plot lead up to a fantastic conclusion that is perhaps the most heart-breaking thing ever filmed.  It's full of De Palma's trademark sleaze and features a psychotic John Lithgow and a slimy Dennis Franz, which makes it the kind of film (Another past MMOTW!) that just traps my eyeballs and never lets them go.

Lastly, we reach the man I admire more than almost anyone - Snake Plissken.  You may call him a fictional character who was played by Kurt Russell, but I call him an ideal.  I call him an institution. I call him the spirit of everyone who's ever been fed up with having to go along with society's expectations and I call him the champion of every man who ever just wanted to sit down and be done with the crap.  I honestly call him a hero.

Escape From New York isn't the best movie of the year by any technical regard, and some may even say it's a little light in the plot department.  Some even knock the one-note antihero, but they miss the things that makes me love Snake Plissken and this film so dearly.  You might see Escape From New York as a silly film that guessed wrong about 1997, but I see it as a statement about society that features a character who has the resolve to stand up against anything.  As I said when I named it Midnight Movie of the Week on a decidedly low day, Escape From New York gives me a satisfaction about my course in life.

Snake Plissken is certainly my champion of 1981, but as I look back at the year I find so many movies to love that represent just what it is I love about movies.  They're not the happy-go-lucky movies that most people prefer - but those aren't the movies that I'm here for.  In an almost fatalistic way, the films of 1981 and I share many of the same opinions on what cinema can be, and this chance to look back at that year's films has been a thrill for me.

Don't forget to click the baby!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thing - which I really thought would be shorter! - you can check out the rest of the The Year I Made Contact Blogathon over at The Movie Waffler.  So head on over and see what's up. If you have your own site, check in over there and join the party.  Or, you can just tell me what you think of your birth year (or what you think of 1981) in the comments below.  The possibilities, like my love-filled ramblings about 1981, are nearly endless.

Here's A Podcast I Did About They Live

Gosh you guys, I've been supposed to tell you about this for like two weeks. And I'm stupid sometimes, so I forgot.

Anyway, I'm very honored to have been given a chance to be a guest on The Sinister Spotlight over at Mephisto's Castle, where good ol' Jose let me pick any movie in the world that I wanted to talk about.  He hit me over the head with a hammer when I picked Take The Lead starring Antonio Banderas as a dance teacher, so then I changed my mind and picked They Live.

What follows is the YouTube link to said podcast.  It features some good thoughts and an unconstitutional amount of "uh huhs", "yeahs", and "yeps".  There's a reason I keep to using this keyboard, folks.

Anyway, if you'd like to peep it....here you go.

The Mike's Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown: #45 - The Fog

Previously on the Countdown: Number 50 - Happy Birthday to Me  Number 49 - Prince of Darkness Number 48 - House on Haunted Hill  Number 47 - The Monster Squad  Number 46 - Hellraiser

The Fog

(1980, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

Why It's Here:

John Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween - a movie you just might see later on this list - is one of those horror films that is truly one-of-a-kind.  Aside from a haphazard remake, there are very few supernatural tales out there that capitalize on the same supernatural feeling that exists in most of the film's scenes.  The movie plays like a mixed bowl of horror standards with a few slasher movie tricks thrown in, and a cast of wonderful actors keeps the film afloat while Carpenter shows off his mastery of the genre.

The Moment That Changes Everything:

I think the opening moments - from the Edgar Allan Poe quote to a campfire story by John Houseman to opening credits full of paranormal hijinx - do as much for setting the tone for this film than any opening sequence ever has.  It's immediately established that anything can happen in the world of The Fog, and we're already uneasy before the characters and setting are set up during the following daylight hours.

It Makes a Great Double Feature With:

Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter had one heckuva falling out around the end of the '70s, but that doesn't mean their styles stopped working together.  The O'Bannon scripted Dead & Buried - directed by the severely underrated Gary Sherman - shares the same ominous mood and sets its story in a similar seaside town.  The stories differ greatly, but the combo seems like a fun dose of supernatural fun to me.

What It Means To Me:

The Fog has never been my favorite Carpenter film - it probably would struggle to make my top five, even - but that doesn't mean I don't dig it greatly.  It's a prototype for what I want from a "midnight movie", and it seems like it's gotten better with each viewing.  I still have some issues with the story to work out, but I can take in the cast and the style of The Fog any day.

The Mike's Top 50 Horror Films Countdown: #49 - Prince of Darkness

Previously on the Countdown: Number 50

Prince of Darkness

(1987, Dir. by John Carpenter.)

Why It's Here: 

John Carpenter's bizarre mixture of physics, philosophy, and religion is one of the most curious horror films to come out of the 1980s.  In the middle of its convoluted plot - that centers on what I've always called a "vat of liquid Satan" - are some genuine chills and a lot of Carpenter's trademark dark humor.  It all leads to a thought-provoking open-ended finale (Then again, what Carpenter film doesn't?) that keeps me loving the film every time.

The Moment That Changes Everything:

A fantastic series of "dream" images provides some of my favorite goosebumps of all-time.  Carpenter uses these brief flashes to keep us wondering about the sciencey side of the plot, leading to a payoff that gets me every time.

It Makes a Great Double Feature With:

Prince of Darkness is a movie that's hard to compare to anything else - its tone sets it apart from other religio-horrors while its plot sets it apart from most of its '80s brethren.  An easy pick to double it up with would be In the Mouth of Madness - which follows it in Carpenter's unofficial "Apocalypse Trilogy" - while a cheesier choice would be another kooky '80s flick, The Vineyard.

What It Means To Me:

I hate to use this cliche, but I've always thought Prince of Darkness is one of the most underrated films in horror.  It's got legitimate chills, it's more thoughtful than most horror films, and it provides something that is truly unique.  It's a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow - the film bombed at the box office in its day - but I've gone to it often since I was a youngster.  There's really nothing else quite like this film.

Plus Alice Cooper is in it as a homeless dude who serves the liquid Satan!  How can people not love that?

The Mike's Top 11 Alien Invasion Films of 1950-2000

When my good buddy Russ of Dead End Drive-In asked me to participate in his Alien Invasion Weekend, I didn't even have to think about my response.  Russ asked me to cover some of my favorite alien invasion flicks made before the year 2000 (because we all know Y2K ended civilization back then, of course), and I did what I do: I made a list.

I'm being kind of picky on semantics here, and a couple of my very favorite sci-fi films ever - The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind - are getting the shaft due to this.  Look, Gort wasn't here to take us out, he was just forced to get a little angry.  And those Close Encounters things? Heck, they were just curious.  Yes, these might be two of my five favorite sci-fi films, but I'm looking for good old fashioned destructive invaders here.

Also, I cheated several times on this list.  There are a few cases once in a while - though most horror fans won't believe me - where both original films and their remakes were awesome.  And I've lumped them together here so I can cover more of my favorite invasion flicks.  You like more awesome, don't you?

Honorable Mentions? Yeah, we got some honorable mentions for you.

Honorable Mention: War of the Worlds (1953), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), Mars Needs Women (1967), Superman II (1980), Night of the Creeps (1986), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Independence Day (1996), The Faculty (1998)

Some notes on those Honorable Mentions:

• A lot of people will probably balk at the exclusion of War of the Worlds, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, and Independence Day, which have a lot of great publicity and a lot of great special effects for their eras.  While each film features a pretty widespread invasion, I got a few more cerebral picks ahead of them. (And a couple that are much dumber too.)
• Sure, any Superman film could technically be an Alien Invasion film, but General Zod and his awkward friends are pretty much the best kind of invaders.  I won't quite kneel, but I'll give him some props.
• YOU GUYS! The Faculty is seriously underrated. There, I said it.

Now, let's see that list!

Number 11 - Bloodsuckers from Outer Space (1984)

Bloodsuckers from Outer Space is certainly one of those movies that is so bad that it's....bad.  But at the same time it's kind of not.  Heck,  the IMDB voters - who are generally the cruelest and most genre unfriendly people on our planet - even have given it a 5.2 out of ten rating.  A 5.2 on IMDB for a movie with these production values is like a Nobel Peace Prize for someone with Hitler's racial beliefs.  Anyway, Bloodsuckers from Outer Space is terribly silly, but it's got that odd feeling like this whole small town was in on the joke and everyone chipped in and made this goofy flick a ton of fun. So it's kind of awesome.

Number 10 - Not of this Earth (1957, 1988)

Speaking of silly, you won't find two filmmakers who are more open to cheese than Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski.  And the story behind Not of this Earth, featuring a nurse who works for an odd character who turns out to be an emissary from a distant land (and I don't mean Kansas), lends itself to their kind of cheese.  The former film is a black and white drive-in classic led by Paul "Marlboro Man" Birch, the latter is full of comedic turns and led by former porn star Traci Lords.  Both films are charming enough to hit this list, in their own ways.

Number 9 - The Arrival (1996)

It's probably not a good idea to put a Charlie Sheen film this close to one starring a porn star, but I'm gonna risk it.  The Arrival arrived (oof, that stung) early in the Summer of 1996 - just before Independence Day was released to much hype - and kind of fell on deaf ears throughout the world.  But director David Twohy's film is a pretty smart sci-fi chiller, with Sheen's Zane Zaminski (major bonus points for cool character name!) uncovering a secret signal and then battling wits with a dastardly Ron Silver (and you all should know just how much The Mike loves Ron Silver - it's a lot).  The action and the effects that big budget sci-fi flicks are known for aren't here, but I'll take it over its much bigger 1996 counterpart any day of the week.

Number 8 - The Hidden (1987)

I've written about The Hidden before, but it bears repeating that this might be the '80s coolest sci-fi flick.  The action packed story follows a creature that inhabits human bodies and gets a little silly when the special effects come into play, but the brisk pace keeps the film going so fast that you barely notice anything amiss.  The Hidden also capitalizes on political concerns of the '80s and seems to throw a huge middle finger at the culture of the time, particularly in ritzy Los Angeles. I can dig it.

Number 7 - Men in Black (1997)

The legendary guardians against all kinds of alien invasiony nonsense take form in Barry Sonnenfeld's summer blockbuster, and face off with a one alien wrecking crew: "The Bug", portrayed in human form by Vincent D'Onofrio.  Sure, the invasion is a secondary part of the film to Will Smith's evolution from cool dude to wise and cool dude, but it's still one of the most charming sci-fi comedies out there.  And Tommy Lee Jones' straight man opposite utter chaos is always welcome.

Number 6 - Invaders from Mars (1953, 1986)

One of the first invasion films to make a connection to the Cold War and communism, the original Invaders from Mars comes to the viewer from the perspective of a young boy who witnesses an invasion. The invasion that follows has the required amount of military involvement and parent manipulation, which helps the film overcome some problems in acting and direction.  Tobe Hooper's 1986 remake uses more comedy and more special effects, and is a good time-passer.

Number 5 - The Blob (1958)

Did you really think I wasn't gonna mention The Blob?  Sure, his (Or is it a her? Do Blobs even have genders? Are there more than one Blob? We never really know!) invasion was stopped pretty quickly by really old teenagers, but he wins plenty of style points for being one of the few amorphous invaders in film history.  And I love The Blob, so it's on the list.  NEXT.

Number 4 - Predator (1987)

I'm sure he wasn't voted "Most Likely to Blow Himself Up on Another Planet Because of an Austrian Lunkhead" when he graduated his planet's equivalent of high school, which makes the ill-fated invasion by the Predator all the more sad.  But his movie is still pretty amazing, so I'm willing to give some credit to the Predator for being the baddest humanoid one-man invasion crew ever.  He couldn't have predicted that he was going to run into Schwarzenegger, Weathers, and the rest of the bad-asses, and we can't hold that against him.

Number 3 - The Thing From Another World/The Thing (1951, 1982)

I'm probably undervaluing The Thing here, mostly because it wins almost every time I make a list.  Both versions of this story vary greatly, and both represent different kinds of invaders.  Much like the last two films, the invaders are slowed by factors outside their control - in these cases, location.  The original Thing gets bonus points for basically birthing the "watch the skies" craze of the '50s, while the remake gets bonus points for just being really awesome.

Number 2 - They Live (1988)

What if the invasion is already here?  That's the question asked - and answered by a nameless blue-collar worker - in They Live, which has has long been one of my favorite movies to talk about.  Like The Hidden, we get a look at how greed can be involved in an '80s Los Angeles invasion, but this time it's human greed taking the lead instead of alien greed.  I've spent a lot of words on how important I think They Live is before, so I'm just gonna let it tell its own story this time around.

Number 1 - Invasion of Body Snatchers/Body Snatchers (1956, 1978, 1993)

First things first - I'm not as wild about the '78 remake as everyone else is.  Yes, Sutherland and Nimoy.  No, it's not as scary as people say and the ending's kind of dumb.  And it's way too long.  It's good. It's not great.

That said, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the definitive sci-fi paranoia epic.  From Kevin McCarthy's howling lead performance to the cool pod people effects, there's plenty to love about the movie that's spawned three remakes.  My favorite of those, as evidenced above, is Abel Ferrara's 1993 Body Snatchers. With a script by horror maestros Stuart Gordon and Larry Cohen, an ominous army base setting, and wonderful performances by the Gabrielle Anwar, Meg Tilly, and Forest Whitaker.

Though the flying saucers and little green men get the most headlines, it's the invaders that we can't easily see that provide the most chills and thrills for viewers.  Siegel knew that, and the story he created lives on - in many different tellings (though it's best we just don't mention The Invasion, isn't it?) - as my favorite alien invasion.

Except for maybe this one....

Midnight Movie of the Week #99 - The Fog

John Carpenter and I have always been pretty much best buds when it comes to genre cinema.  Halloween opened my mind, Assault on Precinct 13 thrilled me, Prince of Darkness made me realize critics could be the wrongest people ever....I could go on and on.  Heck, dude's previously had 5 movies named Midnight Movie of the Week here - with The Fog presently becoming number 6 - and this is about the 25th of my 500+ posts that will get tagged with Carpenter's name.  But what some might find hard to believe is that The Fog - which many horror fans regard as one of Carpenter's best films - and I didn't get along extremely well for a long, long time.  There's a story that explains my resistance to Carpenter's seaside ghost story - which, to be fair, I've always LIKED, just haven't always LOVED - and, since this is my blog, I'm gonna tell you that story now.

From the start, Carpenter's tale of the supernatural has the feel of something special.  The opening, in which an old man played by veteran actor John Houseman (who I've always thought was kind of another version of the great Donald Pleasence) tells a group of kids a scary story around a campfire at five til' midnight just reeks of awesomeness.  And when you combine this ominous scene with the Edgar Allan Poe quote that opens the film - "Is all that we see or seem just a dream with in a dream?" - and the strange paranormal events that occur throughout the fascinating seaside villa of Antonio Bay while the film's opening credits are rolling, you have to think there's something deeply supernatural that's gonna happen in this movie.

I was probably 15 or 16 years old when I first met The Fog - which had been strongly recommended by my mother while I begged for horror movies in our country home - and I was still a long way from becoming The Mike that I am today.  But these setting events seemed to represent everything I wanted to love about horror movies - particularly tales of hauntings - and my mind started racing pretty quickly as the film went on.  And that's when I became hyperfocused on a detail that derailed my enjoyment of the movie for more than a decade.

If you don't know, The Fog settles in around the story of the Elizabeth Dane after its opening.  In the film, a priest (played by one of my favorite dudes, Hal Holbrook) discovers that the church he presides over and much of Antonio Bay itself was founded after his ancestors deceived the crew of the Elizabeth Dane - a ship full of rich leper colonists - into crashing into nearby rocks, allowing the "conspirators" to pillage the gold from the ship and bolster their own leper-less community.  And that these events just happened to occur 100 years ago that day.

Father Malone's revelation comes shortly after midnight on that anniversary - which is precisely the same time that several other events in the film occur.  Inanimate objects all over town, mostly electrical devices, malfunction or act out for no good reason; leaving the town confused by the likes of repetitive car horns or self-moving armchairs.  More relevant to the title, a fog bank appears and dooms a ship that's out to sea, setting up the connection to the foggy night when the lepers were sacrificed in the name of fear and greed.  But there's also a third event that occurs at that time, and that's the one that I became convinced meant more than the film thought it meant.

At the same time the town was freaking out and three seamen were doomed by what have been mistakenly called "pirate ghosts", a simple man played by Tom Atkins picks up a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth played by Jamie Lee Curtis.  And that's where my imagination began to get the best of me and makes me mad at John Carpenter (and co-writer Debra Hill).  They introduce a character named Elizabeth at the same time as the fate of a ship named the Elizabeth Dane was discovered, and then had her jump right into bed with Tom Atkins, who didn't seem to have his Night of the Creeps charm yet. Seriously?

So, to sum up, we've got a character named Elizabeth showing up in a town exactly 100 years after a ship named Elizabeth was doomed by the founders of said town.  And I was absolutely positively convinced that that coincidence meant something. (SPOILER ALERT: It did not mean something.)  So, for the rest of the film, I kept expecting this nice young girl who seems like an average Jamie Lee Curtis character and is squeamish around corpses and whose only sin is jumping into bed with Tom Atkins within minutes of meeting him to turn into an undead leper.  In the end, I actually convinced myself that she did turn in to undead leper for several years.  It took many viewings of the film before I looked at myself and went "Hey, The Mike, that girl didn't turn into Fog and come out from under a door, you made that up because of her name."  And when I did call myself out, and really realized that the film didn't intend to have Elizabeth as part of the evil....well, then I got mad at Carpenter and his movie.

This seems like a random enough moment for me to say that I love that Assault on Precinct 13 star Darwin Joston appears in The Fog as a coroner named Dr. Phibes. LOVE IT.

I convinced myself that I liked my ending of the film better than Carpenter and Hill's, because who wouldn't want to see Jamie Lee Curtis turn heel at the end of a movie?  Heck, she was already in full scream queen/good girl mode at this point, it would have been amazing to look back and see her as a nicer version of the bathtub ghost from The Shining or something like that. Alas, my ending to The Fog was completely created by my overactive mind, and after probably a dozen viewings of Carpenter's film I can finally feel safe saying that I was a fool to condemn Elizabeth as a leper ghost just because her name was Elizabeth.

Besides always being mad at the movie for not perfecting a plot twist that I invented in my stupid teenage brain, there's not much else I don't love about The Fog.  I think it might be Carpenter's most well shot film - props to cinematographer Dean Cundey, who went on to get some Oscar nominations and work on hits like Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Apollo 13 - and it's incredibly interesting.  So interesting that it made a teenager create his own ghost story, actually.  That has to mean something.

Now that I've grown out of my overactive teenage mindset - at least in some ways - The Fog gets better and better each time I see it.  And the more I see it, the more I remember that I should have never doubted John Carpenter while he was on his perfect run from 1976-1988.  I've occasionally criticized filmgoers who have - in my mind again - misread Carpenter films that I consider classics, and I have to admit my own mistake in once misreading The Fog.  It's an effective and well-done horror tale that deserves better than I once gave it.

(One more random note - The 2005 remake of the film, which is truly horrible, actually used a plot twist similar to the one my teenage mind invented which tied its Elizabeth to the events of 100 years ago. I honestly yelled at the screen and start blabbering like Kevin McCarthy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers when I saw it unfold.  And yes, I was in a public theater.  I regret nothing.)