
okay, since i'm working late the next few days i had a little mini-marathon today: vampires, werewolves, haunted houses and giant bugs! first up was William Castle's
House on Haunted Hill with vincent price. the only other william castle flick i've seen before is 13 ghosts which i also enjoyed. if anyone else has seen the movie Matinee with john goodman, thats loosely based on the kinds of things he did for his movies. anyways, this was fun and probably my favorite new discovery this year so far. i'd seen the remakes of this and 13 ghosts neither of which were very good (or faithful) to the originals so it didnt matter much. RECOMMENDED!
Them! was a pretty good sci-fi B movie about giant ants that must be destroyed. again, surprisingly well shot/acted/written considering its subject matter. B movies were actually done with a lot of care back then i guess. the highlight of the film (for me anyways) was a scene where they go into the giant ants cave underground and find the queens lair with a bunch of eggs lying around and a bunch of fog on the ground and they torch the eggs, hmmm.... where have i seen this before? ALIENS! it was great, cameron MUST've seen this movie when he came up with that scene. and aliens is one of my favorite films of all time, so that was a minor thrill. movie was RECOMMENDED!
Werewolf of London, which apparently was the FIRST werewolf movie ever made. for some reason although i'd always seen pictures from it, i'd never seen the film. it was pretty good (although i still prefer Wolf Man), had good werewolf makeup and a few cool transformation scenes. the main guy was sort of unlikable and the fact he put on a coat and hat as a werewolf was a little silly but overall it was pretty good. MILD RECOMMENDATION!
The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin who will forever be Dad from a Christmas Story for me, but thats a different holiday... anyways, this TV movie apparently was so huge it spawned another tv movie (the night strangler) and went onto be a successful tv series, which Chris Carter has cited as being one the the main inspirations for the X-Files. supercool, also script by Richard Matheson. it was great! i want to see more of this character, even downbeat 'the mans got us down' 70s ending. the only thing that stunk was a few of the fighting scenes with the vampire and the 'fadeouts' to commercial breaks. probably the second best thing i've seen this halloween, RECOMMENDED!
Silver Bullet, based on Steven Kings 'cycle of the werewolf' story was a movie that probably could've been better had a different director been on the case. as it was it was decent, watchable but not great werewolf story. corey haim and gary busey were in it. NOT REALLY RECOMMENDED BUT NOT TERRIBLE!