31 Horror Movies In 31 Days – Check Out What We Saw, Including Best and Worst! (Part One of Three)

3 November 2014

This is going to have to be split up into three posts, since we already needed to take a month to watch the movies and don’t want to take another month writing this.

Even with the number of horror movies ole Mrs. Horror Boom sees being more in a month that the average movie-goer sees in a year, you’d think finding 31 I hadn’t seen yet would be a cinch, right? Wrong! Fortunately, there was a huge number of new releases for the month of October 2014. I actually saw more than 31, but some were so shitty I don’t even want to add them to the list. A couple of them literally put me to sleep, and there were a couple of others that were so bad I blew a mental fuse just sitting through and trying to tolerate the goddamned things, and either picked up my iPad for some task/game that required most of my attention, or just said the hell with it and turned it off, then re-watched something I knew was a sure thing and would not disappoint me (thus, the few re-watches on the list).

However, let’s just start with the list. I could put them in the order I saw them, but then I would have to look at a detail of our Amazon Instant Video and the VOD cable bill, which I am too nervous to look at and see how fast the charges added up (I’ve seen enough scary movies, I don’t need scary real-life). Let’s try alphabetical order. An asterisk means that the movie was a fairly new release, say available on VOD less than six weeks.

Oh, and if there is an R-Rated and an Unrated version available for a flick, assume I watched the Unrated (such as the very torture porn-y Carver. Also if they ever tried to make an R-Rated version of The ABCs of Death 2,* it would probably cut the running time by a good 10 minutes, depending how much of a prude the ratings board members were for that project. For PG-13, there would be about 200 words that you cannot say in a PG-13 movie cut out, and some of the shorts (they usually average 3-4 minutes) would last maybe 30 seconds and you would not definitely know what the fuck was going on with most of them. So thank you, Magnet Releasing!

I also added links to the IMDB pages (or pieces Horror Boom did on the fright flick in question previously), and stuck in a few of the better trailers to keep things interesting. Turns out roughly a third of the horror movies on the list are found footage, and while at least a couple will end up on the “worst” list, there were some nice surprises (including the “mockumentary” The Gerber Syndrome).

The list, and links:

*The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

(Here’s the gory Red Band trailer, NSFW–enjoy!)

Alyce Kills (2011)

American Mary (re-watch, 2012)

Any Minute Now (2013)

Antisocial (2013)

Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)

Black Death (re-watch, 2010)

Here’s the Black Death HD trailer (and yeah, it’s as grim and bleak as it looks)

*Cabin Fever – Patient Zero (2014)

*The Canal (2014)

Carver (2008)

Chasing The Devil (2014)

*Chemical Peel (2014)

Dark Mountain (2013)

*Dead Snow 2 – Red VS Dead (2014)

*Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

Evil Things (2009)

*Found (completed in 2012, but not released on VOD till Fall 2014). Trailer is below, and it earned every blurb and award)

The Gerber Syndrome (2011)

*Horns (2013, but only released recently)

*Housebound (2014)

*The Houses October Built (2014)

Here’s a clip for you from the above movie (yep, more found footage).

*Inner Demons (2014)

The Monkey’s Paw (2013) (quit laughing! I was scraping the bottom of the barrel by this point, I believe Day 29.)

Open Grave (2013)

The Possession of Michael King (2014)

Here’s the trailer for the latter:

*See No Evil 2 (2014)

Sleepy Hollow (1999, re-watch…on Halloween, Day 31)

*The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014 – sale rental on Amazon, free on Netflix streaming)

*V/H/S Viral (2014)

Witching and Bitching (2013)

*Wrong Turn Six- The Last Resort (2014)

Up next? The ten worst films on the list; after that we’ll get to the ten best.

* We will have a review of ABCs of Death 2 coming up where we name the top ten entries. This will actually take some work, because the shorts were so much better it’d be faster just to name the few stupid or lazy ones. In the first ABCs of Death, I couldn’t even get a list of the top ten together; after “X is for XXL”, “L is for Libido”, “T is For Toilet”, “Young Buck”, and “Dog Fight”, picking five more would be a stretch. A list of the ten worst for the same movie, however, would pretty much write itself. I was happy to discover after the sequel roared to a finish that I could barely list the five worst. But I digress…

See what evil looks like in the first trailer for Dark Touch

12 September 2013

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We’re among the ones feeling hesitant about the Carrie remake – we’d prefer at this point that they’d just re-release the 1976 version. Marina De Van’s Dark Touch, though, just went on our watch list, thanks to this trailer. You’ll notice a Fangoria review is referenced several times in the trailer – click here if you’d like to give it a read, too –recommended. Don’t miss the trailer!

“Are you giving me a good-night kiss?”

CARRIE Remake Trailer Gives Away As Much As Original CARRIE Trailer (badassdigest.com)
Preview Review: Trailers shown before You’re Next and Blue Jasmine (redheadatthemovies.wordpress.com)
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW Trailer: One Of The Most Important Movies Of The Year! (badassdigest.com)

Grabbers

31 July 2013

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If you haven’t heard of this movie, check it out… various VOD outlets have it right now to watch (shockingly, Netflix doesn’t even have a release date). Trusty old IFC Midnight had it for us tonight, and it’s a fun monster movie. I’ve seen Syfy movies with more gore, but WAIT! Hear us out! Don’t let that deter you. There are several Syfy monster movies with surprisingly nasty moments, but the shitty CGI (especially the CGI blood that is maybe one notch above looking like someone just colored over the print with a red Sharpie in a hurry) ruins the gore 99 times out of 100. No CGI blood in Grabbers – unless it was some effect that was completely impossible to do without CGI, they used prosthetics and composite shots – and nothing looked remotely phony, which is hard to pull off with a relatively small budget and a monster that moves and looks like nothing you’ve seen in a long while. Obviously, a lot more care and craftsmanship was taken with Grabbers. Better acting, better story, better script, characters that you aren’t wishing horrible deaths upon and are actually rooting for …and you can bet your ass it has top-notch special effects. The monsters of the title refreshingly come from outer space (in the vein of say, Slither, or The Blob) rather than a military or government experiment that was botched and covered up. Grabbers has a modest budget, but never looks like it, and the monsters are especially cool; writhing masses of tentacles, with some of the attributes of spiders, squid, and even starfish (when they’re chilling) that look like nothing seen in recent memory. A Fangoria interview with director John Wright said they went out of their way to come up with a unique creature design, and they succeeded with gooey flying colors. If you’re still on the fence, check out this Dread Central review, which we are happy to report this fun flick lives up to. It’s also a great choice for when you need some light horror, such as when, say, you’ve recently watched two New French Extremist horror movies too close together, and realized it was a bad judgement call after it was too late (especially if one of them was Martyrs). For Grabbers, you can break out the popcorn and kick back for a fun time – and it might not hurt to have some recreational booze on hand.

Learn how booze could save your life in the poster for Grabbers (io9.com)
Win a Grabbers One-Sheet and See the Flick on Us! (dreadcentral.com)
Horror’s Top 13 Craziest Monsters (dreadcentral.com)
Irish horror comedy ‘Grabbers’ released in US theatres and ‘On Demand’ (irishcentral.com)

Red Band Trailer of the Week – STITCHES! (2012) Everybody Happy? (We Are!)

20 October 2012

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“Sleaziest clown working the circuit”… “that Big Top in the Sky”… “black magic clown cult”? Hey, I can’t see that calender too good. Does that say Christmas morning over there?

Holy shit, this looks awesome! I was already psyched up about it when I re-blogged a great piece on this, and it sounded pretty fun even with no trailer. It just got better! OK, let’s get to the impressive, gory UK Red Band trailer for horror/comedy out of Ireland, Stitches, starring Ross Noble, below:

If I wasn’t sold before (oh, I was sold, but figured I could wait patiently for it until Scarecrow Video got a PAL copy in to rent) I am now. As soon as I publish this I’m rifling frantically through the internet to try to find a US release date. I would in fact go out of my way to see it– I’d wait in line in the rain to buy tickets for a midnight showing at a film festival within driving distance. I’d maybe even lose sleep to see it, and since I hit thirty-five, I have to be REALLY committed to drag myself out of bed if I haven’t gotten at least six hours of sleep.*

Love that shot (above) of what appears to be Stitches rising from the dead in a graveyard in a flurry of playing cards. The entertainingly-written basics about the movie, again (they had me at “the sleaziest clown working the children’s party circuit in Ireland”):

Jaded Richard Grindle (Ross Noble) is the sleaziest clown working the children’s party circuit in Ireland. Arriving late to one birthday, his timing is off, the bratty kids a nightmare and a prank goes horribly wrong – he falls on a kitchen knife and goes to that Big Top in the sky.
Years later the same nasty kids attend another more grown up bash. Little do they know, thanks to a black magic clown cult, Stitches will be the uninvited guest of honour seeking revenge on those responsible for his untimely death. Laughs and gore combine in this twisted tale of one very bad clown.

DEAL! “Sleaziest clown”… “that Big Top in the Sky”… “black magic clown cult”? Hey, I can’t see that calendar too well from here! Does it say it’s Christmas morning there? I also found a couple other features (with more HD footage, most of it hilarious) for you to watch. First up, a sort of behind-the-scenes teaser with Ross Noble (whose work I’m not familiar with, nor have I heard of, but has a built-in cult following in the UK) who apparently worked as a street performer before he got into comedy) happily talking about the role of Stitches and how fun it was to play:

I started giggling during the footage of him barreling along riding that tricycle. Also, here’s one where he talks about the movie, starting off with his favorite kill involving a grisly version of creating balloon animals (setting it up but not spoiling the whole thing – and I’d see the movie just for the scene as described):

All the You Tube comments say Ross Noble seems pretty hammered during the interview, but I wouldn’t know, since I’m unfamiliar with his work and what he sounds like normally. Who am I to judge? He deserves it, as does the director of Stitches, Conor McMahon, who also co-wrote the film with David O’Brien.

The movie debuted in May of this year at the Cannes Film Festival in France, then made a UK debut at Frightfest in August. Stitches opens in the UK and Ireland at the end of October. I haven’t been able to track down a US release date yet, but I’ll update you as soon as I know. According to the official Facebook page for Stitches, tickets are now on sale for the US premiere on Halloween at Lincoln Center in NYC, but that doesn’t help out those of us not able to travel to NYC. The Facebook page also has lots of exclusive content worth checking out. Oh, one more You Tube item: I found a link here to a UK interview with Mr. Noble that features a brief but hilarious NSFW clip of ole “Stitches” Grindle in the film’s prologue arriving at the kid’s birthday party before he meets his untimely end. (Below)

Kid’s mum: “You’re late.” Stitches: “And you’re fookin’ ugly. Cash up front.”

Lastly, Mr. Noble also mentioned another kill in the movie involving an umbrella. I’m pretty sure that’s what the below frame from the trailer depicts…

*Oh yeah, I have what seems now to be my third Annual Jury Duty Summons on Monday. Since both times before were in the winter, it was easier (as every year it takes me a couple weeks longer to adjust to the longer nights and shorter days) to just stay up and write, then get ready to go down there rather than fall asleep between 4-5AM as usual then have to get up two hours later. Let’s hope I don’t get chosen, because it’s going to mess up my sleep cycle even if I get lucky and don’t get my name called Monday. I’ll still do my best not to miss a post, though.

**Speaking of Facebook, Horror Boom also now has an official Facebook page. If you have time to ‘like’ Horror Boom on Facebook (assuming you do like Horror Boom in the first place, though you probably would have stopped reading long before now if you hated it). I’d appreciate it, since I need thirty ‘likes’ to really get creative and network more. I added a “Facebook Like Box” to our sidebar so you don’t have to bother with even going on Facebook, just click from here (also, only having only two likes showing now ~~when they’re~~ ~~both from family members~~ just looks really sad, which is why I waited till I reached a thousand hits before I even added one)!