Watchlist
Offbeat DVD ideas for Halloween 2013
By Max Braden
October 31, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Who: Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Munchkins, Witches, a Wizard, and some terrifying simian/avian hybrids.
What: The classic musical adventure based on L. Frank Baum's novels stars Judy Garland as Dorothy, the girl who gets knocked out during a tornado and dreams of a land filled with very strange characters.
Availability: DVD and online on demand
Why: This isn't a movie you typically find on "horror" lists, but indeed it was the first movie I remember that terrified me. First of all it's weird enough to wake up in a place like the land of Oz - if you were lucid enough to believe you weren't dreaming you'd probably start to panic on the assumption that you're suffering some stroke-induced brain damage with no decent healthcare provider in sight. And the Wicked Witch of the West presents herself as a very ugly, scary, and intimidating foe early on. But what terrified me was the moment in the latter half of the movie when the road trip buddies plan to enter the witch's castle at night. It taps into that fear I think all humans have - of entering the dark cave - and you had a bunch of chanting guards ("Oh-wee-oh-ohhh-oh") adding to the atmosphere that creates a sense that capture is inevitable. And then, those flying, screeching monkies. I don't know how anyone believes this is a movie that kids should see. But given the unsettling moments of it and the varied costumes, it's perfect for a Halloween movie.
Night of the Comet (1984)
Who: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran, Geoffrey Lewis
What: Earth passes through a comet's tail, and most of the people directly exposed to the comet dust are turned to piles of red dust. Two sisters manage to survive the initial pass, but then encounter some partially-exposed humans who have been turned into talking zombies. The girls find a think tank working on a cure, but...
Availability: DVD and online on demand
Why: What ever happened to Catherine Mary Stewart? In 1984 she appeared in both this movie and The Last Starfighter, one of my favorite '80s movies, and then appeared in Weekend at Bernie's. All I knew as an early teenager back then was that she was a hot, feisty brunette, and this was a movie about hot chicks with guns fighting space-created zombies. There are various classes of zombies, from fast to slow and intelligent to dumb. The Night of the Comet zombies are basically equivalent to Monday morning office workers with a really bad hangover - the telltale symptom is their aversion to light. The movie is rated PG-13 so the gore level is mild, and there's a fair amount of '80s-style action humor. My favorite scene in this movie is when a zombie leader in a mall taunts Stewart by threatening: "Let's play a game! It's called Scary Noises." When Halley's Comet flew by in 1986, I probably wondered if there was some small chance of risk.
Bad Taste (1987)
Who: Peter Jackson
What: Aliens take over a small village in New Zealand with the intent to use humans as their own source of fast food. Four local guys decide to fight back, disguising themselves as the aliens before a big battle breaks out.
Availability: DVD rental
Why: Before Peter Jackson became the superstar director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, he directed Heavenly Creatures and Dead Alive. And before that, he directed Bad Taste. Bad Taste is appropriately named, because it's a very low budget horror-comedy filled with plenty of silly gore. It's unrated in the U.S., but if you liked the kind of gore in The Evil Dead, and the humor of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead, and The World's End, you'd probably be able to appreciate this movie. The aliens basically look like people wearing giant potato-shaped Halloween rubber masks. It contains one of my favorite very funny quick edits, as an alarmed sheep looks up just in time to see an errant rocket headed directly toward it.
House (1986)
Who: William Katt, George Wendt, Richard Moll, director Steve Miner
What: A horror-comedy about a haunted house. Katt plays a Vietnam veteran who has inherited his aunt's old house. He tries to work on a novel about his war experiences, but strange things happen to interrupt him, and eventually he realizes a door in the house leads to another dimension inhabited by a zombie that may have been responsible for the disappearance of his son before he went to war.
Availability: DVD, online on demand, and Netflix streaming
Why: What I enjoyed about this movie as a kid was, like Night of the Comet, the fact that it mixed comedy with horror. George Wendt of course was a regular on the TV series Cheers, and Richard Moll was one of the cast in Clue, though this wasn't as lightly comedic as those projects. Think of it more as a lighter version of Poltergeist (but still rated R). Director Steve Miner had previously directed the first two Friday the 13th sequels, but also went on to direct Soul Man and Forever Young.
Rawhead Rex (1986)
Who: David Dukes, Kelly Piper, director George Pavlou, writer Clive Barker
What: A religious archaeologist goes to Ireland to research some items at an old country church. While there, an ancient monster called Rawhead Rex is released from the ground and begins killing people. The researcher determines that something in the church holds the key to the pagan curse of Rawhead Rex.
Availability: You might need to buy this second-hand.
Why: To set the scene for this movie, first imagine the love child of the Predator and the sasquatch from Harry and the Hendersons. Rawhead Rex is a huge, ape-like monster. My favorite part about this horror is that although a lot of the attacks happen at night, you actually get to see Rex causing havoc right out in open daylight. That seems pretty rare for a horror movie, because it's not something that can be dismissed as just a shadow - no, he's *right* there on the lawn! The movie comes from one of Clive Barker's short stories (in Books of Blood) - he's probably best known for the Hellraiser franchise.
Dreamscape (1984)
Who: Dennis Quaid, Max Von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, David Patrick Kelly, Kate Capshaw, George Wendt, Redmond Gleeson
What: Quaid plays a psychic prodigy, who, with the help of think tank researchers (von Sydow and Capshaw), learns how to enter the minds of others during REM sleep. A novelist (Wendt) reveals that the scientific study is actually a dirty program run by the CIA. Quaid's character then faces threats from both real-world persons as well as the monsters created in the minds of the sleeping persons he links to.
Availability: DVD, online on demand, and Netflix streaming
Why: The most memorable part of the movie for me was Quaid's battle with a snake-headed monster. A little boy has been having nightmares so terrible that Quaid's predecessor went crazy trying to link to his mind. The snake monster in this movie gave me reoccurring nightmares for years. Think of this movie like Flatliners meets The Cell meets Insidious meets Inception. Wikipedia reports that this was the second movie ever released with the new PG-13 rating.
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Who: Jason Lively, Tom Atkins, Jill Whitlow, David Paymer, director Fred Dekker
What: Lively plays a college kid who wants to join a fraternity. He's instructed by the frat to steal a corpse, which he does, not realizing it contains a brain-eating parasite that thaws out, spreads, and infects the campus and townspeople, turning them into zombies.
Availability: DVD and online on demand
Why: This movie is shot kind of the style of 1950s teen horror movies; it reminds me of Animal House that way. The slimy parasites do a good job of triggering that "bugs, gross" instinct. One of my favorite elements of the movie is the hardboiled detective (Atkins) investigating the initial deaths, who uses the catchphrase "Thrill me." whenever he answers his radio or phone. Dekker wrote the story to House (above), and later worked on The Monster Squad, Tales From the Crypt, and RoboCop 3. Most of the characters are named in an homage to famous horror movie directors and writers.
Critters (1986)
Who: Dee Wallace Stone, M. Emmet Walsh, Billy Green Bush, Scott Grimes, Billy Zane, Terrence Mann
What: Small, furball aliens land in a small town. They look cute but in fact sport sharp teeth and will eat anything (including humans) around. This might be the typical horror threat, but here come some alien bounty hunters (Mann) who try to stop the Critters from spreading, but it's hard for the townspeople to know who's the enemy when the shooting starts.
Availability: DVD and online on demand
Why: You can see this as a Gremlins clone (which apparently the producers dispute) because of the cute-to-dangerous aliens, but it brings into play the the third-party alien to make the story more interesting. It's a fun comedy-horror action movie rated PG-13. The movie was followed by three sequels.
Once Bitten (1985)
Who: Lauren Hutton, Jim Carrey, Karen Kopins
What: Carrey plays a regular guy who becomes the target of a vampire countess because she needs the blood of a virgin to stay young. Carrey's biggest problem up to that point is just trying to get his girlfriend (Kopins) in bed.
Availability: DVD
Why: Jim Carrey hit it big in 1994 with Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb & Dumber. He'd had some notoriety prior to that by appearing on In Living Color, but some of his fans might not realize he had appeared in half a dozen movies in the '80s, including two with Clint Eastwood. Once Bitten is probably the most comedic of all the picks here, both for Carrey's antics, Hutton's sultry advances, and her disaffected assistant's side comments. Basically a fun mashup of teen hormones with vampire 'horror'. Kopins might be recognizable for playing Kay Lloyd in the original Dallas TV series. I would have liked to have seen her in more movies.
Cat's Eye (1985)
Who: Drew Barrymore, James Woods, Alan King, writer Stephen King
What: A Stephen King tale combining three stories - a man trying to quit smoking resorts to a company that uses extreme tactics to help him, a troll that tries to steal a young girl's breath while she sleeps, and a millionaire who makes the lover of his cheating wife walk a ledge - all tied together by a mysterious cat.
Availability: DVD and online on demand
Why: There are a number of Stephen King projects that would probably be listed first on more mainstream lists, but Cat's Eye is my favorite. ("Stephen King's It" freaked me out so much I didn't even want to profile the miniseries - it's surely the source of many people's fears of clowns). My favorite segment is when James Woods is trying to quit smoking, and the program he enters is ruthless enough to threaten his wife and enter his home in order to get a successful result. Maybe a good horror story in light of recent national healthcare developments.
Happy Halloween!