Hello again, everyone! Due to a combination of absolutely dreadful summer films, draining commutes to London and a random bout of pneumonia for a laugh, it looked like my beloved little film blog had died a predictable death. But as F Scott Fitzgerald said, life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. And thus my film blog is resurrected for my favourite time of year, in the lovely Midlands metropolis of Nottingham where I now reside. So without much further ado, I am going to give you a round up of my favourite Halloween appropriate horror films. Now, an important caveat I should probably make is that I have a rather low threshold for gore or torture porn. I don’t mind being a bit freaked, made to jump out of my skin or watch something through my fingers but if you want something genuinely disturbing go and watch an ISIS video or something(or seek help, preferably). My collection is solidly in the mainstream, Hollywood range. So wrap up warm, carve up a jack o' lantern, don some tights and vampy lipstick and make the most of the only decent imported American "holiday" before we all have to suffer through shitmas again. *cue Michael Myers music..* The Blair Witch Project (1999) This first one is a total marmite of a film. It either scared the living shit out of you or you thought it was shit. I've never met anyone on the fence about it. Well, I might have- I don't immediately ask everyone I meet for their opinion on this late 90s classic but everyone I have spoke to seems to be firmly in one camp or the other. I'm in the former. It came out when I was in year eight of high school and I still remember the-early-days-of-the-internet, viral "buzz" it generated. It was the scariest thing EVER, people had fainted at screenings of it, the legend was REAL etc etc. I even vividly recall Jon Snow talking about it on Channel 4 news in that weird period of history between Bill Clinton getting a nosh and September 11th when something like that would make the news agenda. Simpler times, eh? So when it finally rolled around to cinemas in the UK, my anticipation was at fever pitch. It was rated 15, but seeing as I insisted on dressing and acting like I was 25, I was sure I'd get in. It turns out I was right, but a couple of mates I'd roped along for the ride had the audacity to look their actual age and as an ensemble we didn't pass the test. After lording it over them and guilting them for "embarrassing" me for months afterwards like the Regina George little asshole I was at that age, you'll be pleased to know I got my just deserts(it's not desserts, I just checked) when we later watched it on VHS at a dimly lit sleepover and I nearly had a stroke from fear. Especially at that bit where they all bail from the tent and set off running through the woods with something chasing them in the middle of the night. Gah. Actually just freaked myself out a bit typing that. The backstory and the (completely fabricated) mythology struck a creepy chord with me and I totally bought into it. Yet I still maintain what actually made it work, despite a lot of people at the time thinking it was an anti-climactic dick move, was the decision to never unveil the titular witch. When I've spoken to people before about what they imagine the witch to look like, and even what they really think is going on, everyone has a distinctly different idea that works for them. By keeping it vague and suggestive, everyone is forced to project their own personal, worst fear and imagery onto the unseen evil. Another complaint I often hear levelled at it, is that the ad-libbed arguments and the characters in general are really annoying. Granted, head-strong and ambitious Heather getting me lost would have got right on my tits and by the time Mike admits he threw the map in the stream I would have disembowelled him myself. But the way they progress from slightly unnerved but mostly tired and pissed off bickering, the "not being able to get a taxi home pissed and cold after New Year's Eve" type we can all relate to, to all out terror, despair and desperation always felt chillingly realistic to me. People are annoying and don't talk or argue like a Hollywood script. Hell, take the fucking witch out of the picture and I'd still be annoying in that scenario. Despite the fact that from most accounts the actors were starving, knackered, cold and lost I still think they did a fantastic job. So good in fact, that according to a Broadly article I read recently, they barely worked again as no-one could dissociate them from the film. I'm definitely guilty of that as I remember seeing Heather Donohue pop up as a bit part in some inoffensive romantic comedy a few years later and I had to change the channel because her face was giving me a right whitey. I hear the 2016 sequel was actually not half bad, which is surprising and slightly intriguing but I'm still sticking with the 90s original. Even though the "found footage" shtick has been to death by now, Blair Witch stands the test of time, for me. It's understated, it's retro grungy and 90s, the woods are autumnal and creepy and it's finally been long enough since Heather's infamous, snot covered to camera monologue was parodied that you can take it seriously again. "We're gonna die out here..." GULP. Give it another watch. The Shining (1980) A pretty obvious(or even lazy) addition to the list, admittedly, but I'm a basic bitch at heart. Having said that, The Shining is a weird one because as much as I love to quote it, reference it without fail when I'm writing a dissertation/article/on deadline and generally pull Jack Nicholson faces when drunk, in all honestly I haven't a fucking clue what is going on in it for the most part. Having never read the book(yeah, yeah Stephen King fans wind it in) there's definitely some gaps in my understanding. But as was seemingly the way for a lot of horror films adapted from books in the 70s and 80s (I'm looking at you, The Exorcist) the filmmakers apparently thought it was fine to leave essential plot points from the book, out of the film- so I feel like this is not entirely my fault. Obviously I get the general gist, I'm not that dense, but I have no idea why or how Jack has "always been the caretaker.." and probably never will. Anyway, only understanding roughly 60% of the plot has never stopped me from enjoying this ridiculously OTT Kubrick fest. I adore the screechy, eerie score and the way it cuts in to seemingly innocuous scenes at absolutely deafening volume, I have to watch that mesmerising opening credits sequence every time and I even love Shelley Duvall. It's old school, unapologetically campy horror. But even though it's regarded as something of a classic now, it was pretty much panned by critics on its release. It took flak for being too long (which is funny as I once sat through the director's cut at a special Halloween screening after a long day at work with a boyfriend I hated and was like Kubrick, MATE, please wrap this shit up..THAT was long) for Shelley Duvall's performance(sexist 80s Hollywood, whatevs) and perhaps most interestingly for the casting of Jack Nicholson himself. Several critics, including King who HATED the film, pointed out that Jack Nicholson always seems fucking batshit(in so many words). The premise of the film- an all American man slowly going insane- would have been better carried by someone who could at least seem vaguely normal at the start, they argued. I think Harrison Ford was even floated as a more suitable Jack Torrance. Can you imagine? As much as I think with regards to the source material, they probably have a point, it is surely Nicholson's gurning, scenery chewing performance that makes the film such a favourite today. It just couldn't be anyone else. It also looks great, still. The dated, geometric patterns of the hotel carpets, the huge imposing rooms with the simultaneously chintzy and creepy interiors, the ballroom, the slow-mo crimson blood from the elevators and the snow in the maze- it all looks really intense and eerie. You could watch it on mute and it would still be freaky, it's such a visual film. On the contrary, I never found it that scary. I always maintain that I could probably watch it last thing before bed and be ok, whereas with say, The Blair Witch Project, I'd need at least 4 episode of FRIENDS or something equally twee to calm me down. Which is why if you're one of the few people who are even more chicken shit than I am, I really do recommend The Shining as a "not that scary, scary film". It's all subjective of course, but without wanting to give too many spoilers away, nothing really horrible ends up happening. So be a big boy and give it a go, if you haven't already. And don't forget to tell me "How do you like it?" *Maniacal Jack Nicholson grin* Rosemary's Baby (1968) Oh man, this is going to be hard to write well as I actually just love this film too much. So much so that it's difficult to articulate without being like "WATCHITRIGHTNOWIFYOUHAVEN'TITSFUCKINGACE". Rosemary's Baby is hands down one of my favourite films ever, Halloween and horror and all that stuff aside. It's a bloody masterpiece. I love the era and the aesthetic, like Mad Men the horror film. For the uninitiated, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are a young, married couple in 60s New York. They move into the fictional Bramford building(basically supposed to be the Dakota building) Rosemary gets pregnant in mysterious circumstances(it basically seems like Guy raped her in her sleep because it's the 60s and she is just like "oh..") and from there on out shit starts to get weird. There's something not quite right with her pregnancy, the baby she's carrying and the eccentric, elderly neighbour couple who have taken them under their wing. She becomes paranoid about everyone and their intentions towards her unborn child. But we, as the audience, only see what she sees so we're as in the dark as she is. Strangely, for a film made by unrepentant rapist and all-round scumbag Roman Polanski, it has a definite, subversive feminist undertone to it. Rosemary doesn't know whether to trust her (male) doctors and they, heartbreakingly, don't trust her- assuming that her paranoia is some form of hormonally induced hysteria. Seemingly harmless busybody neighbour, Minnie(played amazingly by the late, great Ruth Gordon) is constantly interfering in Rosemary's life and pregnancy in a way I'm sure plenty of women who have been pregnant can relate to. Basically, it all boils down to this idea that we're still very much wrestling with today, that a body ceases to be your own once you're pregnant-that your body and your pregnancy are everybody's business and that you, essentially, become a human incubator. Obviously this is a horror film so it takes that idea to an extreme, but with or without Lucifer's involvement it illustrates the struggles of 60s women well. Rosemary is alone in a city she is not from with an increasingly distant husband and no-one to take her seriously or help her. It's the ultimate lack of agency. Mia Farrow is brilliant as the naive and almost childlike Rosemary while still giving her enough guts and strength of character that you really root for her. Unlike the previous two films, set in the woods and a haunted, abandoned hotel respectively, Rosemary's Baby never leaves New York. But just as there is a natural eerieness to deserted places there is horror to be found in the most densely populated and Polanski plays New York itself as an extra villain in this film. The city that never sleeps has never looked creepier, more claustrophobic or indifferent. The opening shot of the Dakota building, with that freaky, freaky lullaby (sung by Farrow herself) over the credits sets the scene for this perfectly. Now I'm not one for ever buying into "X film was cursed because the boom guy's ex girlfriend died in a fiery car crash three years later" but there is something sinister and foreboding about the film given what came later both for Polanski's wife Sharon Tate and the general shift of the times toward a weird satanist/Manson family/generally freaky end to the 1960s in the US. Not because I would remotely suggest one thing had anything to do with the other, but because you cannot help but watch this ,very old, film now with the knowledge of what was to come. Despite my three picks for fave horror films all being about the occult, I've always said that films about blokes breaking in your house with a massive knife for no reason are scarier because, well.... read the paper, that happens. But for some reason stuff about the devil taps into some sort of latent, genetic Catholicism in me. By my reckoning Rosemary's Baby is the first, and by far the best, in that era of films obsessed with the devil. The film, like the book, is actually set in 1965-66 and even features the(real) famous Time cover "Is God dead?" It was clearly an era ripe for a bit of Satanism. God knows we all know the fuss our Catholic mums made about seeing The Exorcist, but for me this is so so much better. I guarantee you'll love it. Roman Polanski should be in jail but sadly, he can't half make a good film...Hail Satan.
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