Horrorfest 2022 Presents: Abby (1974, William Girdler)

William Girdler made some entertaining 1970s movies, and Abby was definitely one of those. I really liked this movie and am very amused at how it willfully ripped off both The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. It was the 1970s so of course someone decided to make a blaxploitation horror movie centered around demonic possession. Too bad Warner Brothers suppressed this movie in different ways-I watched a subpar print of it via YouTube. Years later The Man is still keeping people down, I guess, and copyright law is wielded decades later to suppress cinema. Lame.

Carol Speed is great in the title role, swerving from being a nice lady to being possessed and out of control. William H. Marshall is the bishop who shows up to perform an exorcism and save her soul, aided by Terry Carter and Austin Stoker. Although certain parts don’t quite work, this is a pretty good movie in it’s own right and has some cool scenes.

I guess I found out what Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood was making fun of with the evil demonic girlfriend scene. I wonder if maybe this movie inspired Def By Temptation in some ways, and it probably did. Criterion should snap this up, release it and give Warner the finger by doing so. It would be the righteous thing to do.

Horrorfest 2017 Presents: Legion-The Exorcist III Director’s Cut (1990, William Peter Blatty)

Years later on Shudder I watched the regular cut of The Exorcist III after having seeing the Director’s Cut thanks to my local public library. I prefer the DC although the theatrical cut is also fine, even though I feel that Legion is far more scarier and has a more effective and creepier ending. Both center on evil refusing to die, the past coming back to haunt people, and of course that epic nightmare fuel jump scare scene involving someone wielding a large pair of sheers. George C. Scott anchors this film as a policeman searching for answers that lead him back to a dead serial killer known as The Gemini Killer.

The opening for Legion is different and features an odd, wind filled sequence in a church that inspires dread. Legion is about how evil never really dies and how the devil has endless ways of maintaining evil , only in this case it is through a long dead killer showing back up again. Brad Dourif has always been good at playing evil and crazy people, yet I think he is at his most terrifying here as Gemini, the instrument of the film’s awful events. I can’t think of a movie that’s made me wary of garden sheers than this one, or at least one that’s been made recently. Ed Flanders and Scott Wilson also do a great job as part of the supporting cast as well. Wilson and Flanders both were also in the equally great The Ninth Configuration, which Blatty also directed.

Although this isn’t as good as The Exorcist, The Exorcist III is a worthy sequel and is one of the best horror films of the 1990s. It has also held up pretty well, particularly in it’s discussions of faith, belief, and fighting against the forces of darkness. The battle is a dirty daily job, but according to Scott’s policeman someone has to do it on a daily basis and the war never ends.

Horrorfest 2016 Presents: Insidious (2010, James Wan)

The opening shot is grainy, as if out of focus, centering on a children’s bedroom. The camera pans away from him sleeping blissfully, going towards the closet, quietly detailing everything happening. Only to rest on a freaky older lady, not moving, staring into the darkness. The music picks up and the title card slams onto the screen, violently. INSIDIOUS. From this point on I was bloody terrified. James Wan is a master of horror, crafting nightmares with ease.

Poor Renai and Josh (Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson) are parents dealing with their son being in what appears to be a coma. In a great twist on the haunted house genre he is in fact haunted, which means that the family is still in trouble no matter where they move. Wan is offering his own take on classic horror films such as Poltergeist and Burnt Offerings, movies where a family unit comes under attack from malevolent spirits. One scene where Byrne deals with a man invading her room left me scared to the point where I stopped the film midway through.

If anything the main complaint about this film is that by the last act you are so numb to the frightening elements that the film stops having the scare effect on you. There is a demon ghost that reminded me of the infamous face from The Exorcist and several other moments that encouraged me to sleep with the lights on. Oh and one hell of an ending that I did not see coming. This is probably his best film, even though I still have one other horror (this film’s sequel) and several other non horror films to see from Wan. I’m glad he’s become famous yet I’m bummed that he’s going away from horror.

Halloween Playlist

Look this is based only off the music I have on my iTunes, but its still a decent playlist. Not one I would go with overall if I could make a truly great one, however:

1. Wolf Like Me, TV On The Radio. From: Return To Cookie Mountain

2. Psycho Killer, Talking Heads. From: Sand In The Vaseline

3. The Skin Of The Night, M83. From: Saturdays=Youth

4. The Omen, Jerry Goldsmith. From: Classic Horror Films

5. Psycho, Bernard Herrmann. From: Classic Horror Films

6. Scream, Marco Beltrami. From: Classic Horror Films

7. Halloween, John Carpenter. From: Classic Horror Films

8. The Exorcist, London Bells. From: Classic Horror Films

9. Poltergeist, Jerry Goldsmith. From: Classic Horror Films

10. Friday the 13th (Part 3 score), Harry Manfredini. From: Classic Horror Films

11. Dracula, Various Artists. From: Classic Horror Films

12. Nightmare On Elm Street, Charles Bernstein. From: Classic Horror Films

13. The Prince of Darkness, John Carpenter. From: Classic Horror Films

14. The Silence of the Lambs, Howard Shore. From: Classic Horror Films

15. The Shining, Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind. From: Classic Horror Films

16. Little House of Savages, The Walkmen. From: Bows + Arrows

17. Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival. From: Chronicle, Vol. 1

18. Hush (Live), Deep Purple. From: Deep Purple Icon

19. Screaming Skull, Sonic Youth. From: Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star

20. Shopping For Blood, Franz Ferdinand. From: Franz Ferdinand (Special Edition)

21. Pet Sematary [Single Version], The Ramones. From: Greatest Hits

Overall Length: 21 Songs, 1 hour 16 minutes 36 seconds running time, 390.4 MB.

Top 20 Horror Films of the 2000s Presents: Bug (2007)

18. Bug (2007, William Friedkin)

Sometimes the more terrifying and creepiest horror films dive into the psyche of the human mind, taking a journey down the rabbit hole into pure insanity. Bug (2007) represents that fairly well as two individuals-played by Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon-go from considering a relationship into a full blown trip to Crazy Town. Whether or not the film’s ending is concrete or not is subject for debate, however everything that happens prior is what you get when you put a pair of mixed up, messed up and damaged people together in a small hotel room together.

Making matters worse is that Agnes, Judd’s character, has an abusive ex-boyfriend (played with intense menace by Harry Connick, Jr.) has been released from prison, and that he knows she has a dark and horrible secret that is the reason for her inability to move forward in her life. This secret is also partly the reason why she ends up buying into Peter (Shannon)’s paranoia and fear of not just bugs, but planted electronic bugs as well.

Because according to Peter, the government is after him, even though his damaged brain is imaging much of what he believes to be true. Lie and facts, reality and fantasy, all are blended as one by the film’s last act, and its rather nasty and hard to watch. As the title does in fact suggest, the film slowly digs under you skin, delivering a glimpse into a walking nightmare. Witnessing people fall apart in figurative sense is just as horrifying as it would be viewing people’s bodies falling apart literally (although there is some body horror later on, mostly concerning Peter), and Friedkin, who gave us the horror masterpiece The Exorcist (1973) delivers just that with Bug. Whatever the movie’s failings are, it still is a tightly paced thriller in a compact space with shades of Roman Polanski’s classic apartment films.