Well, the big day is finally here and that means that it’s time for a special Halloween edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse Trailers! Below you’ll find the trailers for some of my favorite horror films! Let’s take a look!
That I picked this trailer to start off this special edition should come as a surprise to no one. While I don’t think the trailer really does the film justice, Suspiria is still one of my favorite movies of all time. Don’t talk to me about the remake and we’ll get along just fine.
Some people, undoubtedly, will say, “Martin but no Night of the Living Dead?” Well, we’ll be featuring Night of the Living Dead later today. Martin is one of George Romero’s best films and it’s still criminally unknown. Check out the trailer but definitely be sure to track down the film as well.
Stephen King might not like it but Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining remains one of the best horror films ever made. It’s one of the few films that continues to scare me after multiple viewings. (It’s those two little girls in the hallway. They freak me out every time!)
Oh, The Silence of the Lambs, I have such mixed feelings about you.
On the one hand, I’m a horror fan and Silence of the Lambs is a very important film in the history of horror. Back in 1992, it was the first horror film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture! It even made history by winning all of the big “five” awards — Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay! It was the first film since One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and It Happened One Night to pull that off!
Beyond that, it’s one of the most influential films ever made. Every erudite serial killer owes a debt to Anthony Hopkins’s performance as Hannibal Lecter. Every competent but untested and unappreciated female FBI agent owes a debt to Jodie Foster’s performance as Clarice Starling. Even though the whole criminal profiler craze probably owes more to Manhunter (a film to which Silence of the Lambs is a sequel, though that often seems to go unacknowledged) than to anything else, this Oscar winner still definitely played a part. I mean, how many people watched Manhunter for the first time, specifically because Lecter mentioned the events in that earlier film in Silence of the Lambs?
Plus, this won an Oscar for Jonathan Demme, one of my favorite directors! And while I’m sure Jodie Foster would have gone on to have a strong career regardless of whether she had played Clarice Starling or not, it’s generally acknowledged that Silence of the Lambs revitalized the career of Anthony Hopkins. So for that, we should all be thankful.
And yet, it can be strange to watch Silence of the Lambs today. All of the imitations (not to mention some ill-thought sequels and prequels) have lessened its bite. I can only imagine how it must have freaked out audiences when it was first released but I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed the first time that I watched the film. Looking back, I can see that disappointment was due to having been told that it were one of the scariest movies of all time but, because, I had seen a countless number of imitations, parodies, and homages, I felt as if I had already watched the film. So, I wasn’t shocked when Lecter turned out to be ruthlessly manipulative and dangerously charismatic. Nor was I shocked when he managed to escape and poor Charles Napier ended up strung up in that cage. I’m sure that audiences in 1991 were freaked out, though.
Actually, as good as Foster and Hopkins and Scott Glenn are, I think the best performance in the film comes from Ted Levine, playing Buffalo Bill. Seriously, Levine’s performance still freaks me out. It’s the voice and the way he says, “Precious.” Levine’s performance, I found to be a hundred times more frightening than Anthony Hopkins’s and I think it’s due to the fact that Hannibal Lecter was clearly an author’s invention while Levin’s Buffalo Bill came across like he might very will be hiding in an alley somewhere, waiting for one of your friends to walk by. (Interestingly enough, I had the same reaction when I first saw Manhunter. Brian Cox did a good job as Lecter but he still came across as a bit cartoonish. Meanwhile, Tom Noonan was absolutely terrifying.) Levine has subsequently gone on to play a lot of nice guy roles. He was a detective on Monk, for instance. Good for him. I’m glad to see he was able to escape being typecast. Admittedly, I do kinda wonder how many serial killer roles he had to turn down immediately after the release of The Silence Of The Lambs.
Still, it’s a good film. Time may have lessened it’s power but The Silence of the Lambs is still an effective and well-directed thriller. It’s impossible not to cheer for Clarice. It’s impossible not to smile at the fun that Anthony Hopkins seems to be having in the role of Lecter. Jonathan Demme creates a world of shadows and darkness and still adds enough little quirks to keep things interesting. (I especially liked Lecter watching a stand-up special in his cell.) It’s the little details that makes the world of The Silence of the Lambs feel lived in, like Clarice’s nervous laugh as she gives a civilian instructions on what to do in case she accidentally gets trapped in a storage locker. Even the film’s final one liner will make you smile, even though it’s the type of thing that every film seemed to feel the need to do nowadays. It’s still a good movie, even if it no longer feels as fresh as it once may have.
Captive State came out in March and, before it was released, it seemed like it had the potential to be something special. The trailer looked good. The cast was impressive. Perhaps even more importantly, the film was directed by Rupert Wyatt, who did such a good job with Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Surely, if anyone had the talent to create a convincing film about life under an alien dictatorship, it would be Rupert Wyatt!
In fact, my only reason for concern had to do with when the film was being released. March seemed like a very strange time to be releasing a big “event” film. Don’t get me wrong. A March release isn’t as bad as a January or even a February release. I mean, unless your film is a romantic comedy, you definitely do not want it to be released in either one of those two months. Those months are where studios dump their worst films so that they can die a quiet death. March, on the other hand, is when the studio releases films that have the potential to be a success but which they’re still not expecting to set the world on fire.
Of course, there have been exceptions to that rule, as both Wes Anderson (Grand Budapest Hotel) and Jordan Peele (Get Out) can tell you. So, as Captive State’s release date approached, we were left to wonder. Would this be another case of a film being better than it’s release date or would this be just another forgettable but not terrible movie that the studio probably spent a bit too much money on?
Captive State, sadly, turned out to be more of a case of the latter than the former.
The film opens with Chicago being invaded in 2019. Significantly, unlike other recent invasion films, this one doesn’t spend too much time on the invasion itself or Earth’s initial attempts to fight back. Instead, it jumps forward eight years, to 2027. The aliens are in control of Earth, though the aliens themselves claim to only be “legislators” who are governing the planet for our own good. While the majority of Earthlings just seem to be resigned to accepting being conquered as their new normal, there are a few resistors. There’s also quite a few collaborators. The tricky part of life in 2027 is figuring out who you can and can not trust.
There’s a lot of characters in Captive State and, at times, it can be difficult to keep track of how everyone’s related and who is working for who. However, that seems to be intentional on the film’s part. Rather than telling a conventional tale of alien conquest, Captive State sets out to be a serious exploration of what life would be like for the people living under the thumb of not just an intergalactic dictatorship but actually any dictatorship. The Legislators rule by fear. The collaborators have their own individual reasons for collaborating but, now that they’ve declared which side they’re on, there’s no going back for them. One way or another, they’ve sealed their fate. The same can be said for those in the rebellion. Meanwhile, most people are just trying to not get caught in the crossfire.
And the thing is …. you want the film to work. It’s an intriguing idea and how can you not respect that fact that Wyatt wanted to try to do something a little bit different with his story of alien invasion? But sadly, the film never works the way that you’re hoping it will. The film tries to do a lot in just 109 minutes. In fact, it probably tries to do too much and, as a result, there’s little time to get to know the characters, the majority of whom come across as being underwritten and with murky motivations. Captive State hinges on the actions of a detective played by John Goodman but the film itself doesn’t seem to be sure of who Goodman’s supposed to be. Hence, the film’s final twist seems to come out of nowhere. It’s hard not to feel that the ideal way for Captive State to have told its story would have been as a 10-episode miniseries on HBO. Trying to stuff all of this into under two hours of running time just doesn’t work.
And it’s a shame, that it doesn’t. Ambition should never be faulted. If only the results, in this case, lived up to the ambition.
So, we all know that the Grinch once tried to steal to Christmas and then his heart grew a few sizes but did you know that apparently, the Grinch also tried to steal Halloween?
Until a few days ago, I did not. I was going through YouTube, searching for horror films that I could share here on the Shattered Lens, and guess what I came across?
A TV special from 1977 entitled Halloween is Grinch Night!
Unlike How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Halloween is Grinch Night apparently never became a holiday classic. Perhaps that’s because Halloween is Grinch Night is not exactly the most heart-warming of holiday specials. Whereas How The Grinch Stole Christmas tells us about how the Grinch learned the true meaning of Christmas, Halloween is Grinch Night gives us a Grinch who has no redeeming features. There is no hope for this Grinch. This Grinch will steal your soul and probably drink your blood. This Grinch is pure Grinchy evil.
This is the Grinch of our nightmares.
Check out Halloween is Grinch Night below and hope the Grinch doesn’t capture you this Halloween…
Hey, I’ve got an idea! It’s Spring Break so why don’t we spend it in a cabin in the middle of a snow storm!?
Great idea!
Let’s go!
Oh, look — we’re at the cabin now and there’s some strange woman passed out front. What should we do!?
Hey, let’s bring her inside!
Good idea!
Uh-oh, the woman’s inside and she’s alive but she’s acting kind of weird!
Hey, let’s eat dinner!
Now, in all fairness to the characters in 2018’s Dead Night, things are a bit more complex than that. It’s not just that they decided to go up to a snowy cabin for Spring Break. The cabin is actually supposed to be a therapeutic location. James Pollack (AJ Bowen) is dying of cancer and it’s felt that the cabin will not only ease his pain but perhaps increase his life. If nothing else, the wilderness will bring some sort of inner peace. Accompanying James are his wife, Casey (Brea Grant) and their two teenage children, Jessica (Sophie Dalah) and Jason (Joshua Hoffman), and Jessica’s best friend, Becky (Elsie Luthman).
As for the mysterious woman who shows up out front of the cabin, they’re just trying to be nice when they invite Leslie Bison (Barbara Crampton) to stay in the cabin with them. Even though Leslie can’t tell them how she ended up at their cabin, the Pollacks are not the type to just allow someone to die in the snow. Really, we should all be more like the Pollacks, I guess.
Still, Leslie does turn out to be really obnoxious. She makes inappropriate jokes. She rudely asks which member of the family is dying. She blows kisses at Jason and smirks when Jessica announces that they can’t eat until they’ve said grace. In fact, the family is on the verge of kicking Leslie out when …. well, things happen.
What things? We get some hints from a terrifically over the top true crime show, segments of which appear throughout the movie. Hosted by Jack Sterling (Daniel Roebuck), the show deals with the question of how a perfect wife and mother like Casey Pollack could eventually go insane and chop up her family and friends with an ax. Sterling tells us that, even though Casey called several people and told them that she had found a strange woman outside the cabin, the police were convinced that this was all just a part of an elaborate lie.
Hmmm….so, I guess we know what’s going to happen, right?
Well, no, Not quite. It turns out that the true story is a little bit different from what we might have seen on television. For instance, Jack Steling’s show says nothing about the weird incident that happened in the early 60s, when a young woman got lost in the wood and was apparently impregnated with a piece of a tree….
If you go over to this movie’s imdb page, you’ll find a lot of angry reviews from people who felt that this movie didn’t have a real plot and that it was too gory but I don’t know. I kind of liked it. I mean, it’s a horror movie about people stuck in the middle of the woods. What exactly are you expecting to get other than some nonsensical ax murders? I mean, yes, the film doesn’t make complete sense but the cabin and the woods are both wonderfully creepy locations and the film also featured the great Barbara Crampton playing a …. well, I won’t spoil it. Plus, I watch a lot of true crime television and I can tell you that this film’s satire of the particular genre is spot-on!
So, what can I say? Suck it, imdb. I kinda liked Dead Night.
You are trapped in a department store overnight! Can you survive even while being pursued by ghosts, monsters, and killer mannequins?
Or
You are trapped in a hotel! No one else seems to be around! Can you survive even while being pursued by ghosts, monsters, and a crazy doctor with a scalpel?
It all depends on which one of these two books you read!
These are two books that I ordered off of Amazon two years ago and they’re both enjoyable reads. They’re choose your own adventure-style books, where you get trapped in a location overnight and you have to try to survive while various monsters and ghosts try to kill you. Every few pages, you’re given an option for what you want to happen next in the story. What’s interesting is that, instead of it being the usual “If you run got page 75” sort of thing, it’s instead more like, “If you hear a noise, go to page 33. If you see something out of the corner of your eye, go to page 28.” So, to an extent, you get to decide how your scary story plays out. These books were written for children, of course but both of them still get surprisingly grisly and intense at time.
Of the two, I preferred Horror Hotel. The hotel was just a more interesting locations than the store and there was a lot more variety to the options and storylines in Horror Hotel. I mean, yes, it’s obvious that Horror Hotel is basically just The Shining for kids but so what? It had some scary moments! It also had some scary pictures to go along with the text. I wonder how many children in the 80s were traumatized by that picture of a scaly hand reaching out from underneath the bed and grabbing your ankle? Or how about the picture of the crazy-haired scientist running at you with a scalpel in his hand? AGCK!
Anyway, these are fun books. They can orered off of Amazon and and they’re an enjoyable way to kill a little time in between hauntings.
Through the Shattered Lens 