The End Draws Nigh...

Well, we're creeping up on the end of one of my favorite horror franchises.  In October, Saw 3D (aka Saw VII) will be released and, we're promised, the final answers to the entire series will be revealed.

I'm aware that there are plenty of people out there who assume that the Saw series is nothing but torture or gore porn.  That's not so, but I'll reserve my full diatribe for the seven-part series that's coming to this blog after Saw 3D is released.  No, today, I'm here to offer a sort of eulogy.

Review: Death of a Ghost Hunter (2007)

Going into this film, I wasn't sure what to expect.  The title and box/poster image made me think it might be some hokey attempt to translate all of the currently popular ghost hunting shows on television into a horror film.

I was close, but I wasn't quite on the mark.

New Zealand Horror Week: Day 4: Review: When Night Falls (2007)

This film, with shades of The Strangers and every other great "Someone's in the house" film, is certainly nothing new or particularly inventive.  However, the atmosphere and the great, spooky period style make this a must-see.  It was released in New Zealand back in 2007, but didn't gain distribution in North America until just this year.

New Zealand Horror Week: Day 2: Review: The Scarecrow (1982)

It's been a good while since I've seen this film, but it has always been a favorite of mine for several reasons:

1. New Zealand.
2.  John Carradine being his creepy self.
3.  It's a bucolic horror/thriller on a par with the books and films of Tom Tryon's The Other and Harvest Home and Tom Reamy's only novel, Blind Voices.
4. NEW ZEALAND!

New Zealand Horror Week: Day 1: Review: Black Sheep (2007)

This was one of the last films I ever got to watch with my mum, and so it holds special memories for me.  Mostly memories of laughing and going "whaaa?" and "whoa!" and being amazed at the effects; for what they're meant to convey, they're damn good.  Of course, they were done by the fine folks over at WETA Workshop.

Next Week

First, a little heads up...thanks to an alert over at Midnite Media, I can tell you that Turner Classic Movies will be running the Dan Curtis classic Burnt Offerings back-to-back with the William Castle chiller House on Haunted Hill starting at 1AM central.  Catch'em if you can, or set your recording devices.


Just a note: next week over on Exhaust Pipe Potatoes, my pop culture and general entertainment blog, I'll be focusing on films, music, and television from New Zealand.  Not wanting this blog to feel left out, I've decided to do a weeks worth of reviews here on the horror films of New Zealand.  Should be pretty interesting, so stay tuned.

Review: The Last Exorcism (2010)

I wanted to believe.  Oh, how I wanted to believe.

I wanted to believe that a film could come along and single-handedly revitalize the exorcism film genre.

Hungry Like the Wahrwilf Wuhrwulf Werewolf

(A companion piece to my earlier article on vampires...)

It is no surprise that, when humanity began to romanticize the vampire, the werewolf would also be enthusiastically reimagined and reinvented.
Where once the two sorts of creature were on something of an equal footing, being night-walking terrors that one wouldn't want to tangle with, they are now rather like opposite sides of the same coin flipped in the dark of a moonlit night.  The vampire is now most often seen as the slick, sophisticated monster, a gentleman (or woman) out for blood, seducing their victims along the way.  The werewolf, on the other hand, is ever the animal, a person transformed, whether through chance, fate, or will, into a ravening beast.

Why Vampires are OHMIGOD SOOO Romantic.

(This post started life as a set of comments on the blog of a friend who just doesn't understand why people so romanticize a bunch of walking corpses.  It was really an attempt to explain why they are romanticized when, face it...they're just dead people who drink blood.  It was first fully posted in this final form on my entertainment and pop culture blog, Exhaust Pipe Potatoes and it seemed a fitting starter for this blog...)

Vampires have long been romanticized.  However, if one reads up on some of the more ancient, classic vampire legends, particularly those from Eastern Europe, it quickly becomes clear that a vampire isn't a beautiful, romantic creature; it's a freaking WALKING CORPSE!  As one scholar put it, originally, being bitten by a vampire was about as romantic as being bitten by your dead Uncle Boris.

The concept of the vampire as more than just a walking corpse came about because, as well as being immortal, they were well-nigh invulnerable (fire was bad...and decapitation...but most other stuff was just a scratch. Oh, and staking wasn't originally to kill them...it was to pin them down so you COULD kill them...so you had to drive the stake ALL THE WAY THROUGH.) Invulnerability=you don't rot=you are eternally young/the way you were, which is a very attractive prospect to some.