Have you ever wished for the tangible thrill of Hitchock’s Psycho set? Or the haunting chill of The Amityville Horror house? When it comes to our favorite frightening flicks, gruesome possibilities lurk in every shadow and creep around every corner — so, how cool would it be to see these shadows and corners with our very own eyes? And maybe even get a visit from Norman Bates in the process? Check out some accessible horror houses after the jump, and plan your next road trip (or Google Maps binge) accordingly.
As we discussed last week, it’s a weird month to be a movie buff it you’re not also a horror movie fan. All of your cinephile friends on Twitter and on message boards are breathlessly updating their progress on whatever insane Halloween-month horror movie challenge they’ve undertaken (some do the “31 Days, 31 Horror Movies” thing; others push even further, proclaiming that they’ll do a full 100 scary flicks by month’s end); creepshows of all stripes are analyzed, recommended, and quoted. It’s even tougher to get by if you’re expected to write about cinema — where are your horror movie lists? What’s your ten scariest? Ten scariest horror movie kids? Ten bloodiest? Ten goofiest? And so on, and so on.
For film fans who are not entirely obsessed with the horror genre, October can be a long and lonely month indeed, since we’re seemingly expected to spend our every spare movie-viewing moment consuming horror movies as a kind of extended Halloween celebration. The trouble is, some of us just aren’t that nuts about horror movies — but there’s all of these “31 Days of Horror” and “October Horror Movie Challenge” threads, and nobody wants to be the killjoy who spoils the party. But remember this, fellow indifferent film fanatics: the nice thing about the horror genre is that it’s adaptable. Elements of the scary movie not only can be easily combined with those forms you’re more at home with, but have been. After the jump, we’ll take a look at a few of our favorite horror hybrid movies.
Fantastic Fest, the genre film festival held annually in Austin, Texas (primarily at a Flavorwire favorite, the Alamo Drafthouse), kicked off last Thursday night, with one of this year’s most notorious entries running right off the bat: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence), the clamored-for-by-no-one follow-up to the 2010 geek show (and South Park target) The Human Centipede. That film portrayed, in graphic detail, the “100% medically accurate!” (uh huh) story of a mad scientist obsessed with, um, unorthodox surgery. (I’ll just accept my “understatement of the year” award now, thanks.) The sequel is the tale of a loathsome mental case obsessed with the first film (meta!), though, by all reports, its “story” is primarily a clothesline upon which to hang writer/director/sociopath Tom Six’s depravity.
Reviews, even among the open-minded Fantastic Fest crowd, were not kind. FEARnet’s Scott Weinberg called it “one of the most overtly, oppressively, and depressingly puerile experiences you’ll ever have with a movie,” and wrote that the film “is more than content to be the indie horror flick version of a low-rent carnival sideshow: at first you want to see how much ugliness you can take, but eventually it all becomes too base, too grueling, and too miserable.” (For his part, Movies.com’s Eric D. Snider ingeniously penned “A Proper Gentleman from 19th Century England Reacts to Seeing Human Centipede 2” — ya know, “I fear’d lest the gentlewomen in attendance should faint dead away from the shock of it!”). Weinberg raises an interesting point, and — truth be told — about the only credible explanation for the first film’s success (or at least, success enough to warrant a sequel): the presence of that “carnival sideshow” element in modern genre cinema, pushing moviegoers to ask themselves how much they’re willing to watch.
Horror fans, what’s your favorite Jason Voorhees murder? There’s the shish kebab formerly known as Jeff and Sandra; Sheriff Garris, who got ripped in half; and, of course, those poor ravers from Freddy vs. Jason. Well, you can take your time deciding, thanks to this great National Post infographic, which shows how each of Jason’s victims died, from Friday the 13th Part II through Freddy vs. Jason.The progression from 1981 through 2003 definitely says something about how our scary-movie body count expectations have risen over the past few decades. Click here to see a larger version. [via /Film]
Mosquitoes, sunburns, sweat — summer can be a bit of a nightmare. Don’t get us wrong, we know how magical the sun-soaked days from June to August can be; the beach, beer gardens, fireflies, ice cream cones, rooftop parties — as the Fresh Prince says, in the summertime there’s an air of love and of happiness. Yet, when we are sitting in our sweltering, unair-conditioned apartments, the love and happiness quickly fade. In these moments, perspective is important. In order to remind ourselves that there are worse things that humidity (like, you know, death), we’ve compiled a list of our ten favorite summertime horror movies, from bloodbaths at camp to road trips from hell.
In case you were one of the dangerously unaware, May is Zombie Awareness Month, as designated by the Zombie Research Society. While many would probably cite October as the more apt choice, it’s apparently a mistake to lump flesh-eating zombies together with the usual Halloween staples like vampires and sexy Spongebob Squarepants. According to the ZRS, “[m]any films important to the evolution of the modern zombie are set in the month of May, from the original Night of the Living Dead, 1968, to the well received Dawn of the Dead remake of 2004.” In order to promote awareness of the coming undead apocalypse and to share some knowledge that might come in handy when you are facing your own brain-hungry hoard, we’ve compiled the five best death scenes in zombie movie history. Perhaps you will learn from these fallen comrades’ fatal mistakes.
We scored a ticket to a preview screening of Rubber this week. For those who’ve not heard of it, it’s the debut feature film for Quentin Dupieux, better known as Mr. Oizo (and responsible for “Flat Beat,” which anyone of a certain age will remember as “that song with the puppet in the video”). Rubber is very silly and very postmodern –- it’s a horror film about a killer tire (yes, you read that right) and a bunch of people watching said killer tire do its killing. The film doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as comprehensively demolish it and encourage its characters to wander back and forth through the wreckage. As one of the characters says in the intro, the film is an “homage to the great cinematic ideal of ‘no reason,’” and as such it’s the latest in a long line of truly, entertainingly ridiculous horror films. Here’s a selection of some of the funniest (whether intentionally so or otherwise).
Well, it’s official: zombies are the new vampires. Entertainment Weekly reports that both the CW and NBC are developing zombie-based primetime shows, a trend that surely has nothing to do with AMC’s successful first season of The Walking Dead last fall. So you know what this means: soon there will be sparkly zombie romance books and movies for the tweens, and a T&A-heavy HBO zombie series, and a terrible zombie spoof film by those Epic Movie dudes. We’ve already given you advice on how to brush up on your zombie history, but now you need to prep for the inevitable mainstreaming of zombie culture. And what’s the best way to do that? By familiarizing yourself with the more obscure entries in the undead canon. That’s right, you too can impress your hipster friends by scoffing that Day of the Dead is so mainstream.
And with that, we proudly present ten obscure zombie movies that are well worth your time. (HT to our buddy Jeremy Biltz for sharing some of his considerable zombie movie knowledge.) Read More »
Good morning, class. This morning we present to you a supercut of clichéd “mirror scares” from horror films of yesteryear, courtesy of Four Four. The takeaway: Sarah Michelle Gellar has faced down a mirror demon or two in her time as reigning horror movie queen of the 90s, while Poltergeist is still scary as all get out, even in the midst of campy slasher flicks with similar scenes. Perhaps the funniest part, starting around 3:07, is the highlight reel of dramatic bathroom mirror scenes with no spooks in the background — it’s as if set designers all shop in the cabinetry aisle at the same Home Depot. Video after the jump. Read More »
