2024 Spooky Midpoint Check-In

Recent horror watches briefly considered

There are only a few weeks left in the spooky movie season so I’m issuing a status report now to leave ample time to accommodate any new recommendations that may yet come my way. (<— HINT)

Invisible Man (1933)

TCM is on our TV by default so we’ve been catching a lot of golden age horror this year. Bride of Frankenstein has an unimpeachable character design but she’s only in her damn movie for like 90 seconds!? What a rip. I couldn't stand Spencer Tracy's take on either half of Jekyll & Hyde (1941) but Ingrid Bergman is undeniable. But 1933’s Invisible Man was a hoot, with Claude Raines going full sicko mode in his film debut, definitely my favorite of this bunch.

Targets (1968)

This was the year Boris Karloff finally clicked for me, first in 1945's Body Snatcher where he plays a sadistic grave robber toying with his insidious doctor employer. Soaking in this era turned out to be perfect setup for watching Bogdanovich’s first feature Targets from 1968, in which Karloff plays a fictionalized version of himself. The way the movie came about is so remarkable that I'm just going to paste a long chunk about it:

After working for several months with Roger Corman, the greatest titan of exploitation filmmaking the world has ever known, Peter Bogdanovich was given the opportunity to make his own film. He was tasked by Corman to take twenty unused minutes from his notorious disaster The Terror (1963), shoot twenty minutes of footage with Boris Karloff, who contractually owed Corman two days, shoot about forty more minutes with other actors, and then tie it all together in some way. He would then be able to release a “new” Boris Karloff feature-length picture.

Desiring to make a film, Bogdanovich agreed having no idea how it could be done. He recounts how he and then-wife Polly Platt went about creating the story:

“So, Polly and I spent a long time trying to figure out what we were going to do. We saw The Terror and we couldn’t figure out how to make Boris Karloff a legitimate heavy in the modern world and how we were going to use this Victorian horror movie footage…we couldn’t figure out what to do. And in my frustration, I went to a joke. And I thought to myself, okay I know how to begin the picture. We’ll start in a projection room, The Terror will end, the lights come up and Boris Karloff will be sitting there. He’ll turn to Roger Corman and say, ‘Roger, that’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen.’ And I thought, wait a minute, that’s not a bad idea.” (Source)

Despite such ridiculous starting parameters, the movie completely works and knocked my damn socks off. Karloff’s career ruminations are criss-crossed with a sober rendition of a mass murderer clearly based on the University of Texas tower sniper. The movie clinched its status for me with the single line that Karloff delivers in the final moments as the twin plots converge.

Clockwise: Rear Window (1954), The Sixth Sense (1999), Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Village (2004)

The kids are both old enough now for the edgier PG-13 zone. We did Rear Window, a movie so obviously great I don’t have anything interesting to say about it. We showed them The Sixth Sense which held up nicely. I would've bet a billion that half the screen time was Haley Joel Osment hiding from ghosts, which turns out to just be a scant few minutes. Toni Colette rocks.

We also watched The Village, which I hadn't revisited since theatrical release and boy did my esteem for that movie grow. Knowing the twist really improves the movie; it's more successful as a fable than a mystery box. It's also just Shyamalan's most beautiful film (low bar). I was likewise very pleased by just how stunning Burton’s Sleepy Hollow was upon revisit. Big ol’ sets, I miss them! We also rewatched the wonderful animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall for the Nth time, as is annual autumn tradition.

Eyes of Fire (1983)

Last night TCM played The Wicker Man and Lair of the White Worm back-to-back, which is the absolute ideal British Isle pagan horror double feature. Can't say enough good things about those two movies, but this year I'm more stoked on the folk horror in 1983's Eyes of Fire, which I'd not previously heard of. The setup calls Eggers' The Witch to mind — a family (of sorts) in colonial America is cast from their settlement and forced to make ends meet in the grisly, supernatural frontier. The rough production belies the visual ambition going on here, and it makes sense that the director was primarily a still photographer. I wish they'd directed more.

Last year's The Last Voyage of the Demeter turns a footnote from Dracula into a feature about a merchant ship being slowly picked off by the vampire. The Terror is an all time show for us, so it would be hard to come up with a movie pitch that's more up our alley, but damn if this movie wasn’t a friggin’ snooze. Classic case of needing to be either smarter or dumber.

The Vourdalak (2023)

Fortunately The Vourdalak also came out last year, which delivers much better on the promise of old-timey vampire business. They could've made the incredible vampire puppet the entire draw of the film, but it's just one layer in this satisfying Tolstoy yarn.

I also rewatched Zodiac, a masterpiece. Less seasonally, I subsequently caught up on my Fincher with Mank and The Killer, both of which I adored and rewatched right away. I really relate to all three of those protagonists and find these very, very comforting movies to watch. They also all feel like Fincher making fun of himself, which I'm sure is why I respond to them so much.

Also landing squarely in the comfort zone for me was this year’s Lisa Frankenstein, a throwback ‘80s horror/comedy/romance penned by Diablo Cody. Seeing how many people did not care for this movie clarifies how squarely it's targeted at my kind of bullshit, but if you also want Heathers x Weird Science x Edward Scissorhands, they made one of those for perverts like us.

I got a lot of great recommendations on Notes that I’m picking through now, but please do give me even more!