Census Flashback: Girls School Screamers

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

This week, we are anticipating Annabelle: Creation, a spinoff prequel about a group of young orphan girls being menaced by a haunted doll. In honor of that film, we’re reviewing an 80’s slasher that pits another group of hapless schoolgirls against a deadly menace: Dario Argento’s Phenomena.

Year: 1985

Director: Dario Argento

Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Daria Nicolodi 

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Dario Argento is the Robert De Niro of Italian horror directors. Although he made some masterpieces in the 70’s, his career began to wobble a bit after a decade and a half, before flying completely off the rails into a creative decline that turned his name into a punch line despite still producing the occasional success. Whether it’s Dirty Grandpa or Dracula 3D, you wonder what could have possibly happened to the cinematic giant. Then you take a look at their late 80’s work, where the first whiffs of rot began to set in, and you’re on the road to understanding.

1985’s Phenomena, which was released in the States as Creepers, came out in the five years between Argento’s more respected works Tenebrae and Opera. It is one of those whiffs.

Clothespin your nose, we’re about to dive in.

Even the plot of Phenomena is a little ragged and patched, sampling Suspiria so thoroughly that it might actually count as a cover. Instead of a ballet school in Germany, it’s a boarding school in Switzerland. Instead of awkwardly shoehorning in Udo Kier for an exposition dump, we get a wheelchair-bound Donald Pleasence as an entomologist with a chimpanzee best friend. And instead of a doe-eyed Jessica Harper, we get a very young Jennifer Connelly, packed to the gills with guileless earnest.

The plot is altogether too simple, despite its unusually elaborate window dressing. Connelly is Jennifer Corvino, daughter of a famous beefcake actor. She arrives at the Swiss girls’ school smack dab in the middle of the reign of terror of a serial killer who targets young girls using a knife fixed to a metal pole. She has nightmares about these killings and attempts to use her telekinetic power to control bugs to find out who’s behind them.

Yeah, that sounds pretty normal for… wait, what?

Yup, the protagonist has a bug-controlling superpower, and it just barely factors into the plot. It’s about as tossed-off a character detail as her famous father, who figures into the story not one whit despite the massive amount of lip service the dialogue grants him in the first act. As far as I can tell, the bug thing was just intended as an excuse to torture Jennifer Connelly, because from the evidence of this film it seems like Argento hated her guts. 

She’s the Bruce Campbell to his Sam Raimi, forced through a gauntlet of onscreen misery, including being dunked in water filled with rotting corpses, smacked in the face by a jet of sewage, at one point actually sent to the ER because the chimp tried to bite her finger off, and at any given moment being covered in beetles, flies, or maggots.

Phenomena is the director’s vocal tirade against little girls (the victim in the opening sequence is played by his own young daughter) to the point that everything else – including his typical phantasmagoric approach to filmmaking – seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Parenthood, am I right?

Even without the weird kid angle, Phenomena is a spectacularly spotty entry in the Argento canon. He’s never really been great at crafting murder mysteries that make a lick of sense (“style over substance” is the mantra of the Italian giallo movement), but this one is especially muddled, so completely failing to introduce anything resembling a suspect that I just figured the monkey did it (yes, I know apes and monkeys are different – do I look like I care?).

And fankly, the monkey gives the best performance of the whole lot. Pleasence just sits there and sputters a bunch of dotty insect mythology, bringing neither the inspired manic energy of his Halloween role nor the gravity he was certainly capable of, and Connelly is flatly uninteresting in a role that asks nothing of her other than plaintive suffering.

Certain critics have called Phenomena “dreamlike,” and they’re not wrong. Dreams are pretty incoherent. I watched the cut of the film that fans of this sort of thing tend to agree is more legible, and even it was a jumbled mess. Scenes crash into each other (sometimes quite literally) with no rhyme or reason, dropped lines and major characters either amount to nothing or randomly teleport into the film midway through, the plot has no thrust, and even the dizzy effects spectacle of the third act fails to entirely redeem its anemically meandering quality.

This plot is more of a labyrinth than that OTHER Jennifer Connelly movie.

That’s not to say that Phenomena is a total failure. It’s mildly amusing enough that it’s never boring, and that finale really is incredibly gross, if that’s something you value as I do. But you can’t help but feel like some projectionist mixed up the reels, even if you’re watching it on DVD. The film just never manages to come together.

The kills have some Argento flourishes (particularly his favorite image of heads crashing through glass windows), but for the most party they’re pretty workmanlike, created without an iota of the feeling or glamour that typically accompany Argento’s murder sequences.

It’s a pale imitation of the far superior work displayed as recently as Tenebrae, the film immediately prior to this one. It’s 80’s Argento, so it’s still heaps more interesting than your average Italian slasher knockoff, but it’s a mélange of genre clichés that fails to flesh out any of the idiosyncratic details that threaten to make it interesting. It didn’t feel like a slog to get through, but I certainly wouldn’t dream of recommending it. Just watch Suspiria again instead.

Killer: [Mrs. Bruckner (Daria Nicolodi)]

Final Girl: Jenifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly)

Best Kill: A man is decapitated with a huge sheet of metal in a hilariously overreaching bit of excess.

Sign of the Times: A major tension sequence involves someone trying to lift a phone by its cord.

Scariest Moment: Jennifer Connelly has maggots under her fingernails. Icky!

Weirdest Moment: A group of boys hit Jennifer with their car, offer her a ride, and then end up dumping her out on a hill.

Champion Dialogue: “He’s got more hands than the entire basketball team!”

Body Count: 7

1. Vera is stabbed in the gut with scissors.
2. Gisela is knifed through the back of the head.
3. Sophie is stabbed.
4. Professor McGregor is stabbed in the gut.
5. Mutant Son is killed by bugs.
6. Morris is decapitated with a metal plate.
7. Ms. Bruckner is slashed to death.

TL;DR: Phenomena is a tremendously wonky motion picture with a muddled, unsatisfying mystery at the center of it.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1186

Census Bloodbath: Brae Yourself

For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.

Year: 1982

Director: Dario Argento

Cast: Anthony Franciosa, Giuliano Gemma, John Saxon

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Although the Italian giallo genre had started to peter out by the time the American slasher boom began in earnest, you can’t keep a good killer down. This deep into the 1980’s, the genre still had a thing or two to say, and the man to say it was Dario Argento, Italy’s premiere purveyor of beautiful murder and inscrutable nonsense. His 1982 offering was Tenebrae (also known as Tenebre for no discernible reason other than the fact that it’s required by law for Italian movies to have a half dozen alternate titles), which more or less automatically became the most interesting movie of the year by virtue of his stylish, idiosyncratic nature.

And his eagerness to expose breasts in ways no human has ever done before.

In Tenebrae, American author Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) arrives in Rome with his agent Bullmer (John Saxon of A Nightmare on Elm Street) and his personal assistant Anne (Daria Nicolodi, frequent Argento collaborator and his wife at the time; she also co-wrote Suspiria), to promote his new murder mystery novel, also titled Tenebrae. More or less immediately he is swept up in a real-life murder mystery as various vixens around town begin to be murdered with a straight razor, just like the victims in his book. Can the author solve his own mystery before the killer turns their sights on him?

And how young counts as TOO young for a sexy victim?

Tenebrae is the most typical giallo I’ve seen from Argento. Although he brings his usual flair to the murder setpieces, he indulges in altogether too many tropes of the dormant genre, including the black-gloved killer and a literal giallo novel actually incorporated into the plot. That’s not necessarily a problem. I dig the giallo clichés, but it just feels like his personal style is a little bit muffled here, at least in the way the plot and the basic imagery play out.

However, the same can’t be said for many other aspects of Tenebrae, especially the score, which is an electrical cacophony of beautifully catchy synthwork provided by the reliably frenetic band Goblin. It rivals the Suspiria score for pure operatic lunacy, though at least it’s performed in what are recognizable as “keys and “octaves.”

Argento also lets himself loose in the murder sequences, which find the director settled comfortable into his manic, off-kilter editing patterns. There’s a jagged beauty to his kills, which are executed with clockwork precision and a calculated flair. What is perhaps the most memorable kill scene (a double bill with a lesbian couple being murdered) is prefaced by a gorgeous tracking shot from outside a window, traveling over the roof of the apartment and down the other side. It’s a gloriously pointless shot, but it’s such a triumph of technical execution and sublime stylization that it almost doesn’t matter.

Except it does matter, at least a little bit. Argento’s nasty habit of halting a film dead in its tracks for an unrelated, dishwater dull sequence right when the tension is due to ramp up hits an all-time high here, clogging up multiple key moments with useless interludes.

The man does like to keep us on our toes.

Unfortunately, outside of the gonzo death scenes, the murder mystery plot is pretty rote. Argento falls back on his usual theme of exploring the fluidity of memory by having a character struggle to recall a vital detail of a scene he witnessed. Although this is cinematically interesting, it prevents us from getting a key clue toward the identity of the killer, and a murder mystery you can’t solve yourself isn’t worth the celluloid it’s printed on.

There are only two non-murder sequences that are remotely thrilling, and they both immediately precede a killing. The first is a slick reversal, where a dangerous hobo who is menacing a girl accidentally becomes a witness to her murder at the hands of someone else. The second depicts John Saxon waiting for a friend in a busy plaza. It’s a quiet moment, lazily watching the goings-on about town until increasingly bizarre shots of incredibly mundane tasks ratchet up the tension. These scenes are great, but Tenebrae is hardly scarier than your average stilted giallo.

Probably the most exciting aspect to Tenebrae is how chillingly self-aware it is. Peter Neal is so clearly a stand-in for Argento that he might as well have been played by a mirror. An author skilled a writing murder, Neal faces criticism of misogyny in his work. [SPOILERS The fact that he himself is driven to murder is both a thrilling twist and a bizarre case of cognitive dissonance on the part of Argento, whose life and work is full of these odd little conundrums.]

Overall, I’m glad I sat down with Tenebrae. It is a work of horror art. It just doesn’t show Argento challenging himself, and he’s at his best when he’s his weirdest.

Killer: [Christiano Berti (John Steiner) and Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa)]

Final Girl: This isn’t really applicable, but Detective Altieri (Carola Stagnero)

Best Kill: It can’t possibly be described. You just have to watch.

Sign of the Times: A woman shoplifts a book, because people actually read in 1982.

Scariest Moment: That hobo thing. We’ve already discussed it.

Weirdest Moment: In a flashback, a beautiful woman presses the back of her head against three guys’ crotches on a beach. A fourth guy slaps her and the others pin him down so she can stick her red heel in his mouth.

Champion Dialogue: “So passes the glory of lesbos.”

Body Count: 12

1. Shoplifter is choked with paper and has her throat slit.
2. Lesbian #1 is stabbed with a razor.
3. Lesbian #2 has her throat slit.
4. Maria is axed in the stomach.
5. Christiano is axed in the head.
6. Heels Lady is stabbed to death in flashback.
7. Bullmer is stabbed in the gut.
8. Gianni is garroted.
9. Jane has her arm chopped off and is axed to death.
10. Anne is axed in the back of the head.
11. Detective Germani is axed in the back.
12. Peter Neal is impaled on a statue.

TL;DR: Tenebrae is a typically stunning giallo from Argento, even if it's a little too generic in its plotting.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1064

Shannon Speaks: Cinema du Weird

Having bored friends is great for providing content. Today my good friend Shannon returns after the glowing success of her first Popcorn Culture feature with a piece about weirdness on film.

Let’s be honest: most people value their time and decide to spend it only watching fun, entertaining, insightful films. And then there’s Brennan, who gets an equal kick out of wasting, I mean investing, his time in any movie, almost purposefully being drawn to especially bad ones. I mentioned in my last submission to Brennan’s glorious blog that Brennan and I have watched some pretty strange movies together… some of which were his fault and some of which were not. Still, I thought that I should write another post and this time feature some of these movies that put the horrible in horror. Here are the five weirdest movies I have ever watched with Brennan, enjoy!

[EN: I do not endorse that ALL of these movies are horrible. Disclaimer: The opinions represented in this post do not necessarily reflect those of the blog author.]

The Five Weirdest Movies Brennan Has Made Me Watch

#5 Pieces (1982, dir. Juan Picquer Simón)

Brennan is always better at explaining this than I am, but essentially this movie is the Tacatá of movies, because like the club hit (and one of Brennan's and my favorite jams), it is a movie performed in one language but made by men from a different country who really have no need or business making a movie in a different, non-native language. It would be like if Brennan and I deciding to accomplish both our film homework and our Spanish homework in one project. Basically, it just sucks. So the dialogue in this movie is horrible, or amazing, depending on how you look at it.

[EN: Amazing is how I look at it. Pieces is one of the more electrifying bad movies with gonzo performances and a bonkers final shot. You can look forward to seeing it soon in Census Bloodbath!]

#4 Suspiria (1977, dir. Dario Argento)

Brennan and I watched this when I arrived home after a weekend Ultimate Frisbee tournament, and I was spent. So naturally I fell dead asleep in the middle of this horror classic. But even the fifteen minutes (give or take) that I saw of the movie was enough to dub this one of the weirdest movies. All I remember is ballet, (which is weird enough) and a girl getting thrown out of a window into a room full of needles. Why does a ballet academy have a room chock-full of needles? I would find that kind of need-less, wouldn’t you? (har har). But then again, when you have a ballet studio run by witches, I feel like needles would be the least of their worries.

[EN: Oh Shannon, your puns are worse than my dad's. This is the one film on this list that I view as an artistic masterwork. You can check out my review here.]

#3 The Wizard of Gore (1970, dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis)

I was really excited to see this movie! Brennan got it off of Netflix as a gift watch for me because he knew that I love the 2009 indie hit Juno, in which the main characters have a rather heated discussion comparing Dario Argento movies (Suspiria, see above) to Herschel Gordon Lewis movies, specifically The Wizard of Gore. As it was said in Juno, The Wizard of Gore did indeed have “buckets of goo.” However, it also had a thin plot and lots of loooooooong monologues by the Wizard himself. Instead of a heart, or a brain, or courage, this Wizard only awarded major gaping saw wounds in his “volunteers.” The adaptation is equally weird, but I think more entertaining, and not as slow.

[EN: You're welcome Shannon for showing you all the Juno films. Check out my review of Wizard of Gore here and its remake here.]

#2 Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966, dir. Harold P. Warren)

The camera could only take 27 seconds of film at a time. That should be enough to put this on the list, but you may as well add the overall weirdness of the plot and the strange Dracula-esque dude who collects wives like polygamy was going out of style. The ending of Manos is unfortunately amazing, which makes me kind of sad that I put this on the list, but then again this movie is indeed really freaking weird, so here it will stay.

[EN: Not for nothing is Manos the most popular episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you don't know what that show is, click here and thank me later.]

#1 Bubba Ho-Tep (2002, dir. Don Coscarelli)

Elvis is alive. John F. Kennedy was turned black by the government in an effort to keep him protected from another assassination attempt. They are room neighbors in a nursing home, where a cursed bug thing is killing old people. All of that was fine, but the fact that Bubba (Elvis) talked about how sad he was that his *ahem* “richard” no longer worked and was rather graphic in describing what was wrong with it just made the rest of the movie abhorrent. I DETEST THIS STUPID MOVIE. I WANT THOSE TWO HOURS OF MY LIFE BACK.

[EN: I would like to add that, in addition to the attention lavished upon Elvis' dick, a campy premise is played absolutely straight in the most stultifying manner possible. But Roger Ebert loved it so what do I know? Check out my review here.]

BONUS: Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! (2008, dir. Todd Stephens)

Brennan and I, in our first semester of college, got really into the American Pie series, binge-watching them all. After we finished the very heterosexual American Pies, we decided to compare it to the gay parody series called Another Gay Movie. The first movie was okay, making cheap jokes at the stereotypes of gay males and even the one lesbian in the film, but overall it was ridiculous and still fun. However, Brennan and I popped in the sequel to the already bad movie and watched it for less than five minutes before taking it out of the DVD player.

It just couldn’t be done. Keep in mind that Brennan and I sat through all the horrible movies listed above and pretty much enjoyed them (other than Bubba Ho-Tep), so the context should speak volumes about how gosh-darn horrible Another Gay Sequel was. You want a real, terrifying horror? Think about the fact that some people actually were able to sit through the entire movie. Now that’s scary.

[EN: There is no scientific evidence available that anybody has seen this film through to completion, not even the filmmakers. It might even close with 45 minutes of blackness. The world will never know.]

Fin!
Word Count: 1140

The Italian Nut Job

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 1977

Director: Dario Argento

Cast: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Italian horror movies from the 70's are a peculiar and off-putting breed. Favoring beautifully rendered phantasmagoria over comprehensible storylines, they are particularly difficult to access from a modern perspective. It also doesn't help that Italian films at the time were shot without sound and dubbed later, so each actor spoke their lines in their native language.

Because the film was dubbed for whatever countries it would be released in, it's no crime to watch the English version, unlike the foreign films of today. In fact, a large amount of the main cast at least attempt to mouth their lines in English. But the disparity between mouth and sound is frequently disconcerting. But hey, it's an Italian horror movie. Very few elements aren't disconcerting.

Nope, nothing wrong here.

Suspiria tells the story of Suzy Bannion (Shock Treatment's Jessica Harper, reminding us of how fabulous she is), a young American who comes to a prestigious ballet school in Germany to study, only to find out that it is run by a coven of witches and the other students are dying one by one.

That's about it for the plot, really. Suspiria is an exercise in slow burn pacing, like boiling a pot of water over a match. In fact, it's so slow that you have time to inspect each individual frame in minute detail, something which suits the movie's particular strengths. You see, Dario Argento's magnum opus is an unforgettable visual experience, lining up a relentless series of elegant shots and smashing them into one another, all lit like a Kool-Aid commercial.

Cherry reds, lime greens, and neon blues dominate the color scheme, creating an otherworldly atmosphere that is incomparable to any other film in history. Cutting between perfectly symmetrical shots that would make Wes Anderson spontaneously combust

and rooms seemingly lit by the ghost of Liberace 

or maybe by somebody with a vendetta against the colorblind.

Watching Suspiria is the visual equivalent of eating an entire sheet cake. It feels totally wrong, yet it is decadent and glorious. And afterwards you swear you'll never do it again.

One's enjoyment of Suspiria hinges on one and only one factor: your tolerance for Goblin, frequent Argento collaborators and composers of the score. Which is relentless, wall to wall, and sounds like an entire orchestra falling down the stairs while somebody whispers into a steel ceiling fan with some  Beach Boys surf rock guitars thrown in for good measure.

I bet you didn't believe me.

It's a little hard to take, but for better or worse it creates an inescapable atmosphere that drives the story, insofar as there is one. It's a masterfully made horror film with gracefully composed deaths, but don't pop it in for a Friday night fright. It's too slow and occasionally dull for that. You have to be in the right mood for Suspiria, but if you are, prepare to be blown away by a truly bizarre, totally nonsensical, completely chilling piece of cinema.

The film is certainly an acquired taste, but it will stay with you long after watching it, and that is more than I can say for most modern horror with higher entertainment value. Watch it to get an intimate glimpse into horror history and maybe attain a deeper understanding of what the genre is capable of producing with a deranged master at the helm.

TL;DR: Suspiria can be dull if you're not prepared for it, but it is intense and elegantly beautiful.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 601

Reviews In This Series

Suspiria (Argento, 1977)

Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018)

Italian Horror Blogathon: Bird of Prey

Year: 1970

Director: Dario Argento

Cast: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: GP

For the first time, I'm participating in a blog event that I've been following avidly for some time now, Kevin Olson's Italian Horror Blogathon, a yearly Halloween event around the movie blogging community. Basically, in the seven days before Halloween, any blogger who wants to can watch an Italian horror film (or as many as they like), write up a post, and submit the link to the Blogathon. It's an excellent way to discover new blogs and see what other people have to say!

I'm a big fan of Italian horror with its "Colorful violence first, plot later" mentality and the influence it holds over a lot of my favorite American slasher films (A Nightmare on Elm Street particularly). And while I have yet to plumb the depths of what I have heard is an indefatigable joy for gory zombie pictures, I have spent quite some time with the giallo films, the precursors to my beloved slashers. In fact, I've reviewed several of them here. Since I started this blog in June, I've reviewed Joe D'Amato's Video Nasty Anthropophagus, Mario Bava's seminal work Twitch of the Death Nerve, and even included Dario Argento's masterpiece Suspiria in my list of the five scariest films I've ever seen.

Considering the influence the genre has had on me (those are three of my favorite horror movies), I decided to expand my knowledge, beginning with Italian horror maven Dario Argento's debut film L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo or The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

Before it begins with me.

That screengrab alone is enough to make any fan of the gialli squeal with pleasure. The black-gloved killer was a staple of the genre, even more than hockey masks or chainsaws are today. And here is the shot where Argento begins his long and illustrious career - an array of knives laid out on a blood red cloth. Fitting, don't you think?

The plot of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is simple (and admirably comprehensible, considering the frequent nonsensical excesses of the genre). American writer and Patrick Dempsey doppelgänger Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is vacationing in Rome with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) when he witnesses a crime in an art gallery. A woman and a black gloved man grapple with a knife atop a staircase, but the shadowy man vanishes through a side door before Sam gets a chance to see his face.

Sam is trapped between two glass partitions, unable to escape and unable to help the woman, who he later learns is the gallery owner's wife Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi), who is writhing in pain on the floor of the gallery.

McSteamy's healing hands unfortunately can not penetrate solid glass.

Monica survives, but Inspector Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) suspects that her attempted murder is one of a string of mysterious killings that have been taking place over the last month. As the key witness, Sam's passport is confiscated, forcing him and Julia to cancel their trip back to America. They decide to help out in the investigation because apparently there's nothing else to do in freaking Rome.

As the investigation is underway, more and more beautiful women turn up murdered and Sam and Julia receive threatening phone calls from the deranged killer. Pretty standard Italian horror goings on. 

But let's back up a minute. At the gallery, Sam is between two barriers - immobile, helpless, forced to watch and ponder the imminent death of a young woman. Does that seem familiar, moviegoing audience? Perhaps that's too intimate a reading of the film, but remember this is Argento we're talking about.

Regardless, this is a unique and creative way to stage a horror sequence, and while it is maybe not as inspired as Argento's later works, it and many other sequences are clearly little seedlings of who this man was going to be. Besides, it's dreadfully unfair to compare any horror film to Suspiria, even one Argento made himself.

The original plan to make an Inspector Gadget film went very awry.

The visual style is strong in this one, but for every stylized sexual killing (and even for an Italian slasher film, the deaths are very sexual in nature - one takes place on a bed as the woman grabs handfuls of sheets while screaming - an idea that starts to make sense once you finish the film in its entirety), there is a policeman setting up a lineup and shouting "Bring in the perverts!" For every freeze frame flashback that mirrors the killer's habit of photographing his victims, there is a 70's supercomputer with so many spinning wheels it looks like the local laundromat or a painter who proclaims his genius after drawing a circle.

In short, although visually appealing, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage suffers from being a little cheesy, even taking the time period into consideration. This problem would be resolved as the director got practice and discovered his voice, but this film ain't as scary as some of the others that are just around the bend.

That doesn't mean it doesn't have a killer Final Girl sequence (which it does) and a dread filled atmosphere (which it does, despite occasional sputters). Just, with its stabs at atmospheric musical score that would later be perfected by frequent Argento collaborators, Goblin, and engaging but drab setups, it can't help but feel like a stepping stone. A very important and well composed one, but a stepping stone nonetheless.

Although this staircase shot is worth proclaiming to the Heavens.

TL;DR: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a cerebral and well crafted slasher thriller, but pales in comparison to Argento's later masterworks.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 968

Final Round KO

21. Best Family in Horror: The Myers Family

Well, let's see. There's Laurie Strode and her brother Michael Myers (whoops, spoilers), her daughter Jamie Lloyd - who survives two whole movies as an 8-year-old - and her son from an alternate universe who is Josh Hartnett and thus a modern Hercules.

22. Worst Recent Horror Movie You've Seen: Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

The very first movie I reviewed, way back when when I was on Tumblr and I called myself Blogreel. Those times have since been lost to the wind. Unfortunately, this movie has not. It will forever go down in history as the horror movie that got so obsessed with itself that it forgot to be scary.

23. Favorite 1970's Horror: Suspiria (1977)

A violent Italian surrealistic Technicolor horror fantasy epic (the more words it takes to describe a movie, the better it is), Dario Argento's masterpiece of horror cinema is one of the most truly bizarre and off-putting films ever to grace the silver screen.

24. Favorite Horror Theme Song: Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

Honestly one of the flat out weirdest slasher movies to come out of the late period. I talk about it in more detail at CinemaBeach, but let's just say the guitar wielding killer sings an ode to his drill called "Let's Buzz" and leave it at that.

25. Best Version of Jason Voorhees: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

This film features Kane Hodder in his first appearance as the hockey-masked curmudgeon, and just look at that attention to detail. It's no big surprise that director John Carl Buechler was also a make-up artist. With his inexplicably massive frame and impeccable physical acting, Hodder is the ruler of the kingdom of Crystal Lake.

26. A Horror You Can't Wait To See: The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982)

I've been obsessed with this film ever since Randy mentioned it in Scream 2. Don't ask me why, because I couldn't tell you. I think I'm drawn to the title. But anyway, it has been nearly impossible to find in a non-janky edition but I got it! It's coming in the mail! I am so Excitebike right now.

27. Best Beheading: Friday the 13th (1980)

Oh, Pamela Voorhees and her man hands (played by Tom Savini). A blissfully crass ending to a wonderfully bad horror movie that ignited a generation (and the flames of my burning heart).

28. Favorite B-Movie Horror: Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

You could film David Arquette eating a potato and I would give it a five star review. But throw him in the mix with giant spiders, and I'm so down I've come through on the other side of the globe.

29. Most Righteous Killer (For Good): Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

He murders the hell out of Trey Songz and for that, I thank him. Also, he does pretty great at protecting his cousin.

30. Horror With An Ending You Didn't Expect to Happen: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Spoilers: [                   PENIS                         ]

Word Count: 502
Reviews in This Series
Horror Lover Challenge Part 1 (August 16, 2013)
Horror Lover Challenge Part 2 (August 25, 2013)
Horror Lover Challenge Part 3 (August 28, 2013)