The Mike's Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown: #6 - Night of the Living Dead

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

Night of the Living Dead

(1968, Dir. by George A. Romero.)

 Why It's Here:

George Romero, for all intents and purposes, invented zombies in 1968.  Yeah, I know zombies were already a thing, but the common perception of zombies can be tied directly to the release of this film.  Some may say that it's dated at this point - I'd agree in regard to its perception of trauma, but not in regard to its plot and pacing - but it still strikes me as one of the most visceral and harrowing horror films out there.  George A. Romero didn't have his characters completely down yet - that would improve in Dawn of the Dead, which already made this here list - but the chaos that he unleashes fits perfectly with the simple characters here.

The Moment That Changes Everything:
"They're coming to get you, Barbara."

Like, seriously. Can you get a better moment in horror than "They're coming to get you, Barbara"?  This is exactly what horror is.  You introduce a threat, you build the threat, and then you bring in the threat.  But Romero and company pull the introduction and the build off in like 5 minutes with a simple exchange between a brother and sister and the random introduction of a zombie.  And that's it. Romero looked at the film and said "Alright - here's five minutes to make people think something might happen - and now it happened.  Just run with it."  Freaking brilliant.

 It Makes a Great Double Feature With:
I've used up almost all of the zombie movies I like on this list.  Dawn of the Dead, Zombie, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Last Man on Earth (technically vampires, but you could argue they fit Romero's mold) - all mentioned already.  There's a decent enough remake that came out in 1990 that you could pair with this one, or you could just do the cool kids thing and pair it with Shaun of the Dead.  Whatever you do, the zombies you see will fit with this one's.  Because they're all the children of Night of the Living Dead.

What It Means To Me:
I'm actually going to talk a little more about my personal experiences with Night of the Living Dead later this week, so I'm gonna go with a simple/vague answer here.  Night of the Living Dead represents the unpredictable nature of horror.  Sure, people look at it now and know exactly what's going on because of Shaun and remakes and The Walking Dead and the fact that zombies are suddenly hip.  But I think they're all wrong if they dismiss the relevance and power that the original Night of the Living Dead has, because I truly think this is one of the most game-changing films ever made.

Paranormal Activity 4

(2012, Dir. by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman.)

I have to admit, there was a moment near the end of Paranormal Activity 4 that had me rolling my eyes and considering a quick exit to beat the crowd.  As a character with a handheld camera frantically chases impending doom, I get the feeling that I've seen this a few times before.

I didn't walk out, of course, partially because I'm old now and have to pay for movies, but mostly because you just never know exactly what's around the corner with the Paranormal Activity franchise.  The formula repeats itself - and in this case, loses some touch with logic in the process - but the result of the formula still seems to be a surprise more often than not.

Moving forward following the events of Paranormal Activity 2 - and leaving numerous questions from the prequel Part 3 hanging in the balance - Paranormal Activity 4 is the first film in the series that is set in the 2010s.  Moving forward five years after the events of the first two films, this one follows a family of four in which the fifteen year old daughter seems to be obsessed with filming whatever is going on around her.  She also enjoys video chatting (Skype didn't offer to pay the producers, I guess) with her boyfriend, who sets up all the computers (and the XBox 360 with Kinect sensor, who must have paid the producers) to record what is going on in their house.  These recordings are deemed necessary after a strange boy from next door moves in for a few days while his mother (Katie Featherston, returning as the tie that binds these four films together) is (conveniently) in the hospital.  Oh, and Toby, the unseen force that talked to young Katie and her sister in part 3, is back too.  Which is bad news for this seemingly random family.

What follows is the same thing you expected from the first two sequels.  We're shown the camera of an empty room, and we wait until something surprising happens.  The people who watch this kind of movie and complain about things like "Why were they even filming this?" will surely shake their fists over the lack of logic shown by these characters, and rightfully so at times.  I probably spent too much time asking myself questions like "Why would she walk around with her laptop all the time?" or "Why did they start recording all of this to investigate events and then stop checking the footage for events?" myself.  This time around, it seems that the filmmakers - including directors Joost & Schulman, who return from Paranormal 3 - put less of an emphasis on involving the characters in the investigation and more of a focus on showing the audience what is going on in the house.  This takes us out of Paranormal Activity 4 slightly, but not enough to take me out of the film.

Despite the reliance on computers following characters, the film pulls off several scares because - like the other films in this subgenre - control over the timing of the film is taken from the viewer.  Most traditional films move with the camera and cut to the action, but these films leave their mark on us by making us sit there with the camera and wait for the action to come to us.  The tension that's created is just as real this time as it was in the other films, even if our interest in the characters and our involvement in the found footage gimmick is a little less evolved.  We get a little bit of a laugh when the camera conveniently makes its way to places it usually shouldn't be, but at the same time the scenes that follow are worth the trickery.  My favorite example of this was probably a moment where the camera ends up next to a bathtub, because what we witness through this camera is one of the most intense moments in the series.

Which brings us all the way back to where I started these ramblings - the ending.  The ending of Paranormal Activity 4 is exactly why I can't get enough of these movies.  I'm sitting there and I'm thinking that I know the film and  know that the camera is herding me toward a scare - and yet I'm still completely in awe of the scare that was presented to me.  It's a wonderfully abrupt ending that builds on events from the previous films while leaving more questions about where the film will go next. 

A lot of people write off this franchise as just a gimmick and the lowest form of horror, but I really like what creator Oren Peli and the writers/directors that have been brought in have done so far to keep this series moving in an interesting direction.  They've taken a simple haunting tale and turned it into a mythology that has shown us action from three decades and implied that the tale really could go anywhere in time. This time out they seem to slam the door on one storyline, but at the same time have opened up a lot of possibilities - including one that is teased in a post-credits sequence at the end of the film.  There's no sign of this storyline slowing down, it's only the gimmick that may go stale.

Though this one shows some obvious flaws and seems destined to be far less memorable than its predecessors, Paranormal Activity 4 still has enough tricks that work up its sleeve.  If you've enjoyed the series thus far, then you might as well head out to the theater and see this one with a raucous crowd while you can.  The Paranormal Activity series has become a horror tradition that's as old as time (or at least as old as this blog), and I've got little doubt that we'll be checking out another piece of this demonic puzzle next October.

Midnight Movie of the Week #146 - The Car

I really hope the people of the 1970s knew how awesome of a world they lived in, particularly if they liked horror films.  It's about the one time in the history of horror when nearly every single movie put all of its weight behind the ideas of evil and the devil, a trend that started around the release of Rosemary's Baby in 1968 and ended around the time that viewers mistook evil for a man in 1978's Halloween.  (Someday I'm gonna write my masterpiece on evil and Halloween, and it's gonna be glorious. But today is not that day.)

In that time span, with films like The Exorcist and The Omen standing tall above many horror films and actually earning respect from critical circles and Oscar voters, film studios of all sizes and shapes began to put their faith in people's willingness to fear devilish forces.  But while most took evil forces and embodiments of evil very seriously and focused on gritty realism, one film chose to lead with a quote from the leader of The Church of Satan and then follows with an unmanned and self-aware demon car.

That movie, of course, is The Car, in which the great and powerful James Brolin faces off with a customized 1971 Lincoln Continental.  As a Police Captain in fictional Santa Ynez, Utah, Brolin's Wade Parent is basically the everyman of the decade - which means he's a single dad who hooks up with a young music teacher and has a mustache and really cool sunglasses.  He's living the dream, until that black demon vehicle rolls into town and starts rolling over anyone and everyone it can.

The trick behind The Car is that this is literally all the film is about. A car. The cover of the DVD release suggests that the viewer consider "What evil drives...The Car", but do not expect much of a reveal during the film.  A lot of people would suggest that The Car needs a face to its terror, at least in the form of a deranged cult leader that controls it from afar or a scared priest who connects the terror to some prophecy.  Alas, director Elliot Silverstein - who previously helmed successful westerns Cat Ballou and A Man Called Horse and wrote episodes of The Twlight Zone and Tales from the Crypt - lets the car stand alone as the villain for the film.  (Which can be kind of confusing when I'm typing this. So for the rest of this post, I will refer to the vehicle as a character as "Boris".  And will still refer to the film as The Car.)

Anyway, Boris The Car, as I like to call him, is basically the biggest paradox in horror history. On one hand, Boris is something that could kill us, on the other, Boris is a big freakin' car in the middle of a Utah desert.  One one hand, we know Boris has some kind of evil force driving him, but on the other hand we have no idea why that makes any kind of sense.  I've seen The Car a few times now, and I keep going back to it willingly, yet there are so many moments throughout the film when I just don't get Boris.  I do know that I love that he doesn't have door handles, but the rest of Boris is confusing.

Am I overthinking Boris? Should I just sit back and be afraid of Boris and stop trying to rationalize Boris? Probably. Most horror fans will notice obvious similarities between The Car and Stephen King's Christine (which was published six years after The Car was released), and maybe that's why I struggle so much with accepting the fact that Boris simply is who Boris is.  King gives his killer car a name and a personality, while this film leaves me making up the name Boris and knowing no motive for a killer car rampage.

But, we get James Brolin reacting with fear, we get his girlfriend - Kathleen Lloyd, creating something out of nothing with a side character - fighting to protect children, and we get Ronny Cox as the unsure deputy who brings up the possibility that Boris is a force of biblical evil.  Like plenty of my favorite ridiculously plotted horrors - and like almost all horrors of the 1970s - The Car never winks at the audience and gives us a reason not to feel that Boris The Car is a credible threat to legitimate people in a legitimate movie. 

The film still probably works best as something to watch with friends and laugh at, thanks to its premise and how dated it is, but I still find it fascinating in its own way.  The final reveal isn't a Soylent Green-style punch to the gut, but it is grand and provokes more thought than anything else in the movie does.  The Car plays like a made for TV drama with a killer car, but if you're looking for a movie where James Brolin takes on an evil car then you're not going to find anything more fun than this one.

The Mike's Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown: #7 - The Evil Dead

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

The Evil Dead

(1981, Dir. by Sam Raimi.)

Why It's Here:

I don't know man. I'm really second guessing myself at this point in the list.  Maybe this is too high on the list for The Evil Dead.  But it might be too low too.

If the competition is dealing with inventiveness and ingenuity, then The Evil Dead would probably be in a class of its own.  Aside from its sequels, there just aren't a lot of films out there like it. Some might say it's just a splatter flick, but I dare them to name a movie that splatters like The Evil Dead does.  We've got glop of all colors and consistencies spraying from all over the place, we've got pencil stabbing, and - yes - we've got tree rape.  The whole thing is just so ridiculous, yet at the same time it manages to be incredibly tense and quite unsettling.  And that's pretty awesome.

The Moment That Changes Everything:

I simply can not talk about The Evil Dead without mentioning tree rape.  And I'm a dude. A fat one. I'm 99% less likely to be raped than anyone else (outside of a prison). And it still creeps me out to the max.  If there was ever a moment when a horror movie literally stuck it to the audience, this might be it.

It Makes a Great Double Feature With:
There aren't a lot of movies like Evil Dead out there, but fans of do-it-yourself horror and practical special effects should jump backwards in horror history and find Equinox, a low budget monster film from 1970 that has since been restored by the Criterion Collection.  It lacks the shock value and tension of Evil Dead, but the theme and the method behind the film are surprisingly similar and there's fun to be had there.  (Bonus pick from the low-budget and fun genre - Thou Shalt Not Kill...Except.  Raimi co-stars in friend Josh Becker's backwoods cult picture, which is ridiculous and fun in all the wrong ways.)

What It Means To Me:

When I dug up The Evil Dead as a teenager, I was promptly told I was doing it wrong.  It was the '90s, after all, and Army of Darkness was how the cool kids knew Ashley J. Williams.  Now I love Army of Darkness as much as the next guy - the poster's on the wall in front of me and the movie's already been talked about on this list - but I kind of feel bad for anyone who worked their way to The Evil Dead in reverse.  I wasn't ready for what I saw when this movie came to me, which left it as one of the most new and thought provoking movies I've ever seen. If you're like me, your first time with The Evil Dead is one of the most memorable movie events of your life.

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 2 - The Television

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

Once I got through the books that my parents gave me to test my awesomeness, I was ready for the real gift to children of the '80s and '90s - the television.  And though most of my youth was spent with a combination of Transformers/G.I. Joe/Masters of the Universe/Thundercats/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (OMG, there were so many awesome things!) on the tele, there were a few things scattered into the mix that helped push me toward my budding affection for the dark and dreary side of entertainment.

Like the books I listed in Volume One, these are some pretty common picks for folks my age - but that doesn't mean they didn't pack a lot of punch for little The Mike.  So let's take a look.

(And, if you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

A Pup Named Scooby Doo

Most kids love Scooby Doo (I do too) and loathe the many knock-offs of the show that occurred later in Scooby's run.  I agree with most of them - because, let's face it, NO ONE EVER liked Scrappy or that weird white version of Scooby with the goatee - but yet there was something about A Pup Named Scooby Doo that just enamored The Mike from day one.  I guess it's kind of the Army of Darkness to the original Scooby's Evil Dead.  And I'm OK with that.

Perhaps the thing that made me laugh most about A Pup Named Scooby Doo - and I did laugh at it often, still do on occasion - is the ridiculous monsters put forth on screen.  I'm not saying they were great, but I still love to draw my version of the "Totem Pole Monster" (which is LITERALLY the only thing I know how to draw) and can still sing the "Cheese Monster" song.  (Because any song with the lyrics "Mozzarella...nasty fella....here comes the Chhhhhheeeeeeeesssssseeee monster!" is worth singing.)  Was it a cheesy show? Absolutely, and literally at times. Did they introduce a character named Red Herring who was always accused but was only once the monster? Yes they did. Did it make little me smile and make me want to watch more monster mysteries? You betcha.

Disney's DTV Monster Hits

This thing was something special.

A one-time-only presentation that aired sometime in October of 1987, this one hour (with commercials) special featured Jeffrey "Mr. Rooney" Jones as the magic mirror on the wall that hosted a collection of animated music videos featuring some awesome music and plenty of Disney's favorite characters.  There was Michael Jackson's Thriller, Monster Mash, Ghostbusters, and plenty of other great tunes.  Even today, I still picture images from this special whenever I hear Stevie Wonder's Superstition or the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams - which was definitely the most bizarre and engrossing segment of the show.

Luckily for little me, my grandmother happened to tape this special when it aired, which means I watched it as many times as I could when I was at her house.  Sure, I could have watched any of the other videos she had - and there was one that I'll cover when we get to movies later this month - but this was the "scary" movie of the bunch.  So I sat, and I stared at the old Disney images, which had been matched up perfectly with pop music - and I loved every second of it.

And, like all good things, you can now watch it on You Tube. Ain't life grand?

Count Floyd

Horror hosts were a big deal a lot of places in the '80s, but little The Mike didn't get to see a lot of them.  I certainly knew who Elvira was, mostly because her breasts face were all over the place, but I never was up late enough to see her show.  No, the first horror host I really knew was the undeniable Count Floyd - and I'm still pretty excited to have viewed him.

Though the character originated on the sketch comedy bonanza SCTV, my experience with Count Floyd was due to Joe Flaherty's appearances on the animated spin-off The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.  On most episodes, Count Floyd would promise a "real scary story", though his show-within-a-show never seemed to turn out the way he wanted it too.  Count Floyd didn't necessarily teach me anything about horror - but it's another one of those things that kept horror in my mind and made me smile.

OK, now we're getting to the real stuff.

What, you're telling me a Nickelodeon show isn't the "real stuff" when it comes to horror? Boy, you're missing out.

It was a much simpler time in my life when SNICK was destination television for The Mike and family.  There was Ren and Stimpy that got me in the door, but then there was Are You Afraid of the Dark.  And this show, to those of us where were 9-11 years old, was basically The Twilight Zone with awesome early '90s kids telling the stories.

Unfortunately, Are You Afraid of the Dark has been a hard show to find on home video, so my memory of the show is pretty bare at this point.  But I remember the excitement, mostly that joyous feeling that seemed to run through the house every Saturday night as we sat down to watch the horror show that was completely OK for us to watch.  I'm not sure that I've been that excited about a TV show since then.

(And, now that I've written this, I find that tons of episodes are on YouTube.  I was dumb for not checking, wasn't I?)

Unsolved Mysteries

I don't think I'm overstating myself when I say that Unsolved Mysteries might have had the biggest impact on my sense of wonder than anything else I watched as a child.  If you don't believe me, talk to the counselor that I had to talk to after I emphatically claimed I saw a UFO at a high school football game.  In retrospect, I may have been a spaz.  But I was not afraid to believe.

And so it came to pass that I hid out in my childhood bedroom with a 13 inch black-and-white TV, listening to Robert Stack tell me about terrible true stories and fantastic tales from people that belonged in looney bins.  I was in awe of this show, and I - because I was about 8 or 9 years old when I started devouring every episode - kind of let myself believe everything I saw.  Seriously, I think this show is about 90% responsible for how insane I am now. And I kind of love that about it.  Robert Stack, you complete me. 

Tales From The Crypt

Like Stephen King was in my post on books, this was kind of my graduation from being a kid with horror.  My parents might not know it, but I was up way later than they thought on most Saturday nights during my teenage years.  But unlike others in the family - *cough*my sister*cough* - I wasn't out partying and missing curfew.  I was laying in bed and watching syndicated episodes of Tales from its first few seasons on network television.

By the time I got around to Tales From the Crypt I had already seen a lot of horror cinema - more on that next week - but there was something about the Cryptkeeper that made me feel like an official horror freak every time I watched Tales.  Did I still change the channel every time he unleashed his blood-curdling laugh in the opening? Well....I'm going to plead the fifth on that one. I'm not going to tell you that I was a giant scaredy cat who was tucked safely under the covers with his feet nowhere near the edge of the bed.  That would be too much incriminating information.  I'm not saying it.

But it might have happened.
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Television played a big part in leading me to horror, even if there was a heavy dose of comedy and  plenty of cheese involved.  It wasn't the biggest piece of my horror fandom, but these shows definitely filled some of the gaps and reminded me how much I loved the spooky and macabre in my entertainment.  But movies were always where I felt horror lived....which means we can talk about them next week.

As always, join in the comments and let me know what kind of TV shows inspired your love of horror.  Next week I'll talk more about my horror birth via movies. I promise you'll be a little surprised by what you learn.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm watching some Are You Afraid of the Dark.

October Horror Goodness From Around the Web, Part Two

We're like halfway through October you guys! I, for one, am a bit flummoxed. You know how they say time flies when you're having fun? Well I say time flies when you're having horror. 

I don't have a lot of time to share the goods with you this week, so this is gonna be a short and sweet post listing some good stuff going on.  So let's hit it!

(And, of course, all the folks I mentioned last time are still doing awesome stuff.  So catch up with them again too!)

• Chris and Mike, two dudes with attitudes from the undeniably cool All Things Horror, are hosting the second iteration of Shudder Fest on October 26th and 27th.  That poster above (and that link) have all the details, but the thing you need to know is that I'm totally heartbroken that I can't be there. If you're in the area, make sure you get your horror lovin' butt there. If not, make sure you keep your eyes on the site for reviews and plenty more goodness.

• The Vault of Horror has long been one of the titans of horror blogs, and B-Sol kicked off this October by revealing a list of The Top 25 Horror TV Shows of All-Time, as voted on by several of us folks who love horror.  I can even say "us" - because I was one of the voters. Now I'm not gonna tell you what my list looked like yet - never waste a good post topic, right? - but I will tell you that I'm probably the only guy who voted for Poltergeist: The Legacy. And that's probably a good thing.  (I'm sorry, there's a weird "I was a '90s teenager" nostalgia thing that propelled me.)

• I just recently found the blog of The Nitrate Diva, but it didn't take long to feel at home.  Anyone who's spending much of October talking about classic horror - and I'm talkin' 1930s classic horror here! - is awesome by me.  There's Fay Wray, there's Freaks, there's a breakdown of vampirism, and there's even a bunch of links to good stuff thanks to her own Horror Blogathon.  Dig that stuff, dudes and dudettes.

•  I'm a sucker for one-a-day horror lists in October, and Chris over at the bloody awesome blog The Conduit Speaks is bringing the goods this month.  For example, he's already mentioned C.H.U.D. and Clownhouse.  I don't want to tell you I'm in love with his picks, but I'd probably do something crazy like giving them my number and telling them to call me maybe. And you should too.

•  Blogger/Author/Jack of All Trades James Gracey, who pulls double duty while keeping up the wicked blog Behind the Couch, has dedicated the month of October to the macabre at his photo-a-day blog, Camera Obscura.  These pictures are worth a lot more words than I can give them, but you seriously would be missing out if you didn't click over and check out the spooky goodness there.

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That's just a small dose of the awesome horror stuff on the web, and I'll be sure to bring y'all more by the end of the month. In the mean time, feel free to leave links in the comments below and tell me what horror goodness you've been enjoying.

And, last but not least, here's the best thing in my October so far - my brand new niece. What has two thumbs and an awesome horror loving uncle who gives her Halloween outfits and Halloween monkeys? That girl!

Three hours old, but already a Midnight Warrior!

The Mike's Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown: #8 - Dawn of the Dead

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

Dawn of the Dead

(1978, Dir. by George A. Romero.)

Why It's Here:

I could sit here and argue that Dawn of the Dead is one of the least horror movie horror movies out there.  We're talking about a movie that runs about 50 minutes longer than the average film of the genre and might not feature a single "jump scare" that would send a teenage girl soaring through the air.  But it also has to be the bleakest vision of our world ever filmed.  Four people, one mall that represents our old behaviors, and the kind of shambling terrors that modern TV shows wish they could create.  With top notch special effects and biting social commentary, it's pretty much a perfect film - that just happens to have zombies in it.

The Moment That Changes Everything:

The opening scenes in Dawn of the Dead are a lot different than what you see in most horror movies. A normal life? A simple life? A false sense of hope? Nope, you won't find any of those things here.  Instead, we walk into a chaotic news room where people seem to have written off any hope for society and a run down tenement in which dead bodies and undead bodies are everywhere. Within the first five minutes, we know for a fact that we've walked into a situation where there is no happy ending.

It Makes a Great Double Feature With:

I'm gonna tell you a secret. I don't really like Day of the Dead. Yes, Romero's third Dead film continues the complete dread that we get in this one, but all the cinematic aspects - from the acting to the direction to the script - feel wrong to me. A lot of people disagree with me, so maybe you want to put that one next to this one. Me, I'd probably say you could watch the 2004 remake alongside it. It loses some of the pathos of the original, but is a fast-paced blast with strong characters and plenty of gore.

What It Means To Me:

Dawn of the Dead has always been one of my favorite films of any genre, because it packs an apocalyptic edge that is unmatched in most of cinema.  It's fascinating in its bleakness, but it's also thoroughly entertaining and a bit humorous and there's even that Goblin musical score. Oh! That Goblin musical score. Man, I love that Goblin musical score. So good.

Midnight Movie of the Week #145 - Stephen King's Thinner

Robert John Burke, who I'd previously discounted as merely a second-string Robocop (due to his work as the title character in the disastrous Robocop 3), takes the lead in Thinner, an odd Stephen King adaptation that initially left me a little flustered as I thought about it.  I'm not sure if the movie feels like a Tales from the Crypt episode that is stretched out way too long or if it feels like a deeper, more interesting story that is squeezed into 92 minutes.  Since King wrote it, I'm assuming the latter is closer to true, because many of his works have suffered when filmmakers attempted to squeeze them onto the big screen. There's a good reason that the most beloved King films are generally adaptations of his shortest stories - because the man writes deep horror tales like no one else in our lifetime has.

I have not had a chance to read Thinner yet, which probably is part of the reason I'm so willing to give this film a pass and actually find myself interested in applauding this piece of horror from the mid-1990s.  I'm still a little tentative - this might be one of those Midnight Movie of the Week picks that I look back on later and say "Really?" - but there's an incredible charm to this bizarre story of curses and revenge and wishes gone wrong.

The story is a kind of Monkey's Paw scenario with a twist. Obese lawyer Billy Halleck (Burke) wants to drop some pounds but doesn't want to change his habits, which include snacking, helping mobsters avoid prison, and mocking the pack of gypsies who are passing through his Maine town.  Worse, Billy accidentally runs over an old gypsy woman while driving carelessly due to a favor (insert wink here) from his wife, which leads to an angry old gypsy man cursing him to become (you guessed it) thinner.  It doesn't sound like a bad deal at first, but the increasing rate at which Billy loses his girth leads to some health concerns (most notably, imminent death) and he is forced to fight back to save his life.

I opened with Burke's name for a reason, which is the fact that the actor takes over the film's lead role and gives a terrifically entertaining performance.  The actor attacks the film with a hammy tone that's kind of comedic (now that it's the future, I couldn't help thinking he sounded a bit like Will Arnett), which helps make the character worth watching when you consider who and what the character is.  Viewers who are concerned about the morality of their characters might be put off by Billy, who is, to put it nicely, a gluttonous slob who lies, womanizes, and actually kills someone in a hit and run.  Despite all that, the only way the film works is if you sympathize, if only a little bit, with this man.  (Because, you know, the gypsies have curses. And curses are WRONG.)  Burke's approach to the film doesn't necessarily make us like Billy, but it does make him an interesting man to follow, and the combination of the actor's talents and some impressive special effects regarding his body transformation do enough to keep us feeling a little bit of sympathy for him.

Speaking of morality that's flown out the window, Joe Mantegna gives another pulpy performance in a side role as a gangster, and his presence helps the film immensely in the final act.  This is another part of the film that reminds us just how little the film cares about the viewer having positive feelings for the characters, as Billy enlists his gangster friend to take out one of the gypsies and kidnap the daughter of his curser (Kari Wuhrer in an early role) to try and get his curse lifted. Meanwhile, the only thing we really learn about the curser - played by Michael Constantine, who is also made-up wonderfully as a 109 year old man with a ugly visage - is that he likes to cackle and refers to Billy mostly as "White Man From Town."  Characterization isn't the film's strongest asset, but each of the characters meets a specific purpose within the film's twisted parable.  And the performers are having enough fun with the material that I didn't stop too often to notice the lack of depth.

Directed by horror veteran Tom Holland - the man behind Fright Night and Child's Play - Thinner works for me because it offers a very simple tale of unnatural vengeance with some fantastic special effects mixed in. I have to assume that King's story had a little more to it than this film does, but that doesn't take away from the fun I had watching it.  Burke and Mantegna's performances alone make Thinner a horror film worth seeing, and the final product is another entertaining, if not slight, adaptation of the author's work.

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.

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

I told y'all it was coming, and now it's here.  As the main course of From Midnight With Love's October festivities, I offer up an autobiography in four chapters, listing the inspirations that led me to become the dude I am today.

The first of four categories might be a surprise to some, as I discuss how books influenced my path to blogdom.  I often crack wise about books, because I'm lazy now that I'm old and mostly watch movies, but it would be a bald-faced lie if I told you all that books aren't important to the growth of anyone.  Do you think I could sit here and type these semi-sentences and use words that are probably too big for the point I'm trying to make if I hadn't read a butt-load of books? Of course I couldn't.  (Though, to be fair, few of the books I've read use words like "butt-load".  That's a different story for a different day.)
Not all of these books are exactly works of art...but they all had a special place in making The Mike happen.  And that's why I'm here tonight. So let's do this.

(And, if you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

The Spooky Old Tree

The legend may have grown over the years - I think one version of this story has me wrestling a bear - but one of my very first memories is "learning to read" The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree when I was not yet three years old. It was my absolute favorite bed time story, and it was read to me so many times that my parents and I claim that I could pick up the book and re-tell the story to myself while I was still two years old.  Again, I'm not sure if this actually happened - I don't believe I've ever been that smart - but I know that the first thing I remember loving to pieces was this horror tale for children.

It's been a long time since I was that little boy who (pretended to) read a book for its horror contents, but I'm relatively sure I can still recite the book word for word.  (It starts with "Three little bears. One with a light, one with a rope, and one with a stick.")  At my current age, I'm not sure there are many chills - or as the book calls them "shivers" - left for me in The Spooky Old Tree.  But I'm pretty sure that this was the first horror story I learned, and that makes it extraordinarily special to me.

Those Orange Back Monster Books from the Library

These books actually have a name - the Crestwood House Monsters Series - but if you ask any monster fan who grew up in the late '70s and early '80s they probably know what you mean when you mention "the orange back books".  At least in my neck of the woods, they were kind of a big deal.

As best as I can remember, each book focused on one classic monster and retold the story of their films in a matter of fact way.  Even though they were re-telling fictional events, the way they were presented made them feel like they were basically research books for monster nerds.  In fact, I did a project on monsters for a school fair when I was in 2nd grade, and these were my main source of information.  I'm not saying I was the star of the show - that'd be boasting - but I don't remember anyone else from that 2nd grade fair whose booth was as popular as mine. I don't remember anything else from that 2nd grade fair, actually. But I know that I was awesome, and that (at least according to my mother) I've been a superstar ever since. (My mom never actually said that. But I know she would say it.)

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Series

As I got a little older, things like The Spooky Old Tree just weren't scary enough for little The Mike.  So, I asked for more "scary" stories...and I literally found more scary stories.  In this case, I found scary in three books of folk tales compiled by Alvin Schwartz, which retold urban legends and ghost stories that have been passed down through the generations and complemented them with spooky illustrations.  I feel like a lot of my respect for horror history came from these books, because this was about the time when I started trying to remember these horror stories so I could re-tell them myself.  I understood the idea that these were passed down through time, and that really lit my horror fire.

One of the first horror tales to truly corrupt my mind came from one of these books.  It follows two farm brothers and an abused scarecrow named Harold, who - naturally by horror standards, but surprisingly by young The Mike standards - rises up and gets revenge on the farmers who torture him.  I forgot the details of this story for years - even lamenting my inability to recall the "perfect" scarecrow story I once loved in a review once - but I always had the image of the scarecrow atop the farmhouse in the distance stuck in my brain.  And then I remembered that everything is on YouTube and found the audio of the story. And it was good.

The Amityville Horror

My relationship with The Amityville Horror is kind of like that line from The Royal Tenenbaums. To paraphrase - "We all know that The Amityville Horror isn't true...but what I'm presupposing is: Maybe it is."  I mean, I'd seen the movie, I'd heard how it wasn't real, even though a bunch of money grubbing folks tried to say it was. I was smart enough to know crud when I heard crud.

At the same time, I must admit that the presentation of this tale - at least to a middle school version of The Mike - was quite convincing.  I know it's hard to explain, just like that circular Tenenbaums quote that was intended for comedic purposes, but the part of me that knew this was all bollocks also wanted to believe that it wasn't. I sat there and I read the book and I was like "This isn't real...but it could be." I guess I just wanted to keep the horror dream alive, and The Amityville Horror at least gave me a chance to talk about a horror story and say it was a little bit true.  (Even though none of the horror parts were.)

The works of Stephen King

There's not a lot I need to say about why Stephen King is important, and I already said most of what I could say about King last October.  Yet I'm sure that many other horror fanatics out there can relate to the feeling I had when I first read King's work.  It was as if I had graduated from childhood horror fan to adult horror fan.  Y'know that feeling you got when you first got to watch R-rated movies or got to drive the car without your parents? It was that feeling, but with horror stories.  I was in the horror big leagues.

My first King novel was Insomnia, his over-long tale of geriatric fright that isn't the best representation of his talents.  But I was too pumped up by the fact that I was reading Stephen King to care.  I kept reading his works throughout my teenage years, and my love for horror only continued to grow.  As I learned more about The Shining and The Dead Zone and all these other King tales I'd seen in movies and on TV, I learned that there's a lot that can be done for horror in print that can't be done on screen.

Frankenstein

I thought I loved Frankenstein from the moment I read those orange back books and even more when I saw the Karloff movie. But it wasn't until I went to college that I randomly picked up a copy of the book, mostly because I was buying textbooks and saw it on the shelf for an English course that I wasn't taking and bought it anyway.  And while I was sitting in the laundry room waiting for my laundry to get done (What? I'm from a small town, I didn't know if I could trust a tower full of 500 18-21 year olds), I read the whole thing over two nights. (This might be why I didn't have many friends, but that's OK. I'm an introvert anyway.)

Going from littleville to college was a big culture shock for me, but it was this reading of Frankenstein that reminded me of something great about horror.  People sometimes give horror a bad name by pointing out examples of the genre that aren't exactly high art, yet Mary Shelley's novel - which makes the monster a more introspective being than even Karloff could - reminded me that horror can tap into scholarly and artistic avenues as well.  I planned to grow up and be an intelligent adult, and Frankenstein was a reminder that I didn't need to leave horror behind to do so.

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I'm not sure that "intelligent adult" thing has worked out yet, but at least I still love my horror.  And next week I'll share another few items that strengthened this love of horror in Volume 2 of this series. So come on back then, and if you have your own favorite horror books from times in your life as a horror fan, please do share them in the comments below. Until then, enjoy another selection from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which presents a scenario that you may recognize from a horror film of the '70s.  Until next time!