Halloween Movie Roundup!

Happy Halloween everyone! As you probably know, this is the holiday when the barriers between the living and the dead are the most permeable, and supernatural creatures wander the earth. They’ll probably want to watch movies, so you’re gonna want to have some decent horror movies onhand. I mean, if you were a ghoul come over to this side of the veil, would you want to watch The Ugly Truth? I thought not. So here is a quick roundup of great scary movies to watch on Halloween. Many of these are movies that even scared me—and I have a protective layer of cynicism towards most horror films that keeps me insulated from their effects. Okay, so let’s get to it: Gunmonkey’s Best Movies for Halloween!

Nazis vs. the, uh, whatever: “The Keep”

And then there’s The Keep. As I mentioned in my post about director Michael Mann’s career, this film is not exactly a high-water mark for him, professionally. I dunno, maybe the movie seems better if you’ve been awake doing lines of coke for the past two days, but any objective (read: not-in-a-drug-induced-stupor) measure The Keep is a fucking mess. If it was a car, it’d be the type of car that explodes into flames the moment you put the key in the ignition and then continues to explode throughout the drive to work (and, really, aren’t you partially to blame for continuing to drive the thing after the first immolation?) It’s a blend of great actors slumming, reasonably-high production values, unrealized special effects, and an irresistible high-concept hook which ultimately disappoints. In other words: the perfect early ‘80s horror movie.

Dominate a world and still don’t get the girl: “Krull”

This is a repost of a review posted on 29 November 2008, but it fits perfectly here, so...

So, back during the summer of 1983, the world was awash in ads for the movie Krull. Being the little sci-fi geek I was, naturally I really, really wanted to see this movie. So did my friends. Somehow, though, we never managed to do it. You know, when you’re 11 you have to arrange for someone to give you a ride to the movie theater. It’s a big logistical mess. So the movie never quite had the longevity its creators hoped for and it disappeared from theaters pretty fast. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I saw the DVD in the store and realized that it was high time I filled in that Krull-shaped hole I’ve had in my life for the past 25 years.

Coasting along: “Fast & Furious” and “Lakeview Terrace”

  Another two-fer this week, since dedicating an entire review to either of these movies would probably break my brain. Not with their vast, mind-boggling complexity, mind you, but because they’re so lightweight that one or possibly both of frontal lobes would go to sleep. Besides, they have a commonality in that they serve as object lessons in what happens when actors stop trying to, well, act and simply play to their persona. The results are predictably disappointing. The two stars in question are Vin Diesel and Samuel L. Jackson in their respective movies Fast & Furious and Lakeview Terrace.

The therapeutic properties of home-cooking (and some serial murder): “Kitchen Privileges”

So, recently Kassandra the Work Wife asked me to help post an ad on CraigsList “This economic downturn’s hitting me hard. I took a bath on the market.”

“You play the market?” I asked, surprised.

“What? A hot chick with a great rack who could kill you six times before you even had a chance to ogle said rack can’t play the market? That’s pretty damn sexist, you know!”

“Um…”

The horror…the horror: “The Love Guru”

I had really wanted to avoid reviewing The Love Guru. I mean, there must be some sort of Geneva Convention for movie critics, I figured. Then I remembered that America gives more credibility to creationism than human rights and realized that I was screwed. I don’t invoke the Geneva Conventions arbitrarily—if we forced the poor dudes at Guantanamo to watch The Love Guru, they’d’ve begged to be waterboarded.

The wasteland: “License to Wed” (for Qui)

The best way to describe License to Wed is by way of simile. Once, I had to do a recon of a Forward Operating Base (FOB) about 50 miles from the Funplex here. I leaned out the door of the Blackhawk and watched as the landscape rolling beneath me changed from vast swatches of green date farms, to flat, irrigated fields, to geometric dunes. Finally, we seemed to cross some sort of line where habitable life ended, and the earth was just flat, sun-scorched rock. It looked like the surface of the moon, with about as many craters. Surely, they wouldn’t put a FOB here, I thought, in the middle of country that could only be described as God-forsaken. But then I saw the T-walls and the Compartmentalized Housing Units. And that’s what License to Wed is like—being stuck in an outpost in the middle of a wasteland.

It’s the End of the World As We Know It: “The Last Winter”

I was taken to task for my review of The Happening in the comments section by someone named (wait for it) “boogieboo” claiming that I completely missed the point of the movie—that the Earth would eventually fight back against the human infestation that was killing it—and that I was instead too hung up on trivial things like plot, acting, dialogue, etc. My response was that premise is only one element of a movie, and that when reviewing a movie you have to judge the whole thing, not just the idea behind it.

Making the World Safe for Indian Casinos: “Organizm: Living Hell”

Organizm (or Living Hell as it was retitled abroad to make it sound, er, scarier) begins with a prologue so devoid of good taste and that it plays so perfectly straight, you have to wonder if writer/director Richard Jefferies has, you know, normal human feelings or if he stalled out sometime around eleven years old.

Summer Safety Lesson: “Loch Ness Terror”

Well summer is upon us once again, and while we all want to have fun during these lazy, hazy, crazy days, we must always keep summer safety in the back of our minds. After all, no one wants their vacation ruined by a bad sunburn or a jet ski accident or a Loch Ness Monster attack. Thankfully the good folks at the Sci-Fi Channel have seen fit to give us the endlessly instructive cautionary tale Loch Ness Terror. Among the useful tips it contains regarding Nessie attacks are: