Hallo-Watch: Black Sabbath (1963)

Watched:  10/23/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mario Bava

This movie was baller.  

I haven't seen much in the way of Mario Bava, and maybe I need to remedy that.  Previously, I'd only seen Danger: Diabolik, which I still think kicks ass.  And I knew Bava was more famous for his horror films, so pairing his name with Boris Karloff, and I was in.

This is an anthology film.  And so I was able to check off my annual Halloween anthology film viewing, while also getting three very different stories.  

• The first was about a nurse called to tend to the body of her client/patient, who held seances as a spiritualist.  She steals a ring from the body, and immediately things go badly for her.  
• The second is a young woman who seems to have an active nightlife, and keeps receiving phone calls, threatening her, describing what she's wearing and what she's doing, although she's by herself in her apartment.  
• The third is a longer story about a nobleman who comes first upon a corpse and then upon a family who inform him that their father likely made the dead bandit into a corpse, but that the bandit was a sort of vampire.  Soon, the father (Karloff) returns from the mountains looking pretty rough.  

I've seen a few Amicus films and other anthologies, and other films by American International Pictures, and I guess it's Mario Bava working his magic on a budget, because this movie is just much better looking than 95% of the other movies in this budget range.  You can get a lot of mileage out of using a lot of colored lights, as it turns out.  Only cowards ask why there's purple and green light.  

The scenes also all really do have a pretty good scare factor.  The first one is pretty boilerplate stuff, with ghosts coming for a badly behaving nurse.  The second plays hard with the fear of a woman alone in her house (I do want to show Jamie the Joan Crawford movie Sudden Fear and Ida Lupino movie Beware, My Lovely.  The third movie lets Karloff go nuts, and we're all better for it.  He looks like a crazed Kurt Vonnegut as a 19th Century European vampire.  And it has some genuine great sequences that gave me genuine thrills, if not chills.  

In between, Karloff hams it up as a horror host, and it's gold.  

I had a groovy time watching this one, and recommend it. 

Hallo-Watch: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Watched:  10/22/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eli Craig

Ha!  I had zero idea what this was.  I just googled "Halloween Horror Comedy" and this came up on every list, so I gave it a spin.

I don't want to spoil this for anyone, but I'll say...  if you think the first twenty minutes are a little awkward or slow, hang in there.  There are absolute looney tunes moments in this that had me laughing so hard I missed the next minute.  Maybe that's me!  But I get why people love this movie.  

It's not perfect, but for a movie that knows "okay, you get it, we're out" just under the 90 minute mark, it's kinda ideal.  

Hallo-Watch: The Exorcist (1973)

Watched:  10/21/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Third or Fourth

Director:  William Friedkin

I put on The Exorcist (1973) before Jamie went to bed, and she immediately asked and then answered the question I'd asked myself.  When had I last seen this?  She informed me I'd shown her the movie circa 1998, so that is likely when I last saw it.  Which is wild.  I quite like The Exorcist.  But it is a journey.   It's not a movie I put on without wanting to watch the whole thing.  Obviously.

I have no notes.  I think this is one of those movies that is beyond comment in 2025, and has already been talked to death.  I wouldn't change a damn thing about this movie, and I have no questions about it.  

JLC HalloWatch: Halloween (1978)

Watched:  10/20/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  John Carpenter

I had been a bit dissatisfied with my Halloween horror movie viewing and decided to put on a favorite to cleanse the palette.  

Also, I don't always feel like an upgrade to 4K is necessary if I have a BluRay, but somehow I'd made it to 2025 without a BluRay of Halloween (1978), and I have to say, a 4K disc was the right choice.  The picture is phenomenal, the blacks and shadowing, which are key to the whole movie, are rendered perfectly (on my aging Samsung TV) and the image looks great without anything I detected as artificial or weird in the 4K transfer/ clean-up.

Halloween probably seems slow to modern audiences used to getting carried along on a rocket ride from the start of the credits, but I think for this movie to work, you need the sharp shock of the opener and then the hard gear shift to suburban normality as Michael Myers circles closer and closer, slowly building up the speed until we land in the red zone.  

That is far from a new observation, but what do you want from a free internet site?

Hallo-Watch: Werewolves Within (2021)

Watched:  10/19/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Josh Ruben

I recall Werewolves Within (2021) coming out right on the heels of The Wolf of Snow Hollow, a Jim Cummings film I highly recommend.  And, wanting to let Werewolves Within breathe and not draw comparisons between two movies about guys in uniforms being asked to hunt down werewolves, I punted, and then forgot about this movie until it came by on my Hulu menu.

A sort of comedy/ horror/ murder mystery - it's a movie set up to keep you guessing in a locked-room mystery where there may or may not be a werewolf.

SPOILERS

Hallo-Watch: Suitable Flesh (2023)

Watched:  10/18/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joe Lynch

Written by Dennis Paoli, who wrote Re-Animator, From Beyond, Bodysnatchers, and Castle Freak, which Stuart Gordon would film, Suitable Flesh (2023), directed by Joe Lynch, carries on the same tradition of adapting H.P. Lovecraft and creating a weird, off-kilter, occasionally hilarious horror film that was what I was looking for after a few Halloween horror movies had left me cold.

Heather Graham plays a psychiatrist associated with good ol' Miskatonic University who is in a padded room, speaking with her fellow doctor and friend, played by Barbara Crampton.  Graham relates the tale of how she was visited by a young man (Judah Lewis) who has found her as she wrote the book on out of body experiences.  And, boy howdy, is he, Asa, having them. He claims a man, his father who is not his father, is trying to steal his body.

Hallo-Watch: Barbarian (2022)

Watched:  10/17/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Zach Cregger

So, this is a movie by the guy behind the very popular 2025 film Weapons, which I do plan to watch at some point.  And when I said "yes, I will see Weapons", folks asked "but have you seen Barbarian (2022)?"  To which I would say "no".  Until NOW.

So...  this movie is part of the horror genre of inbred underground/ remotely dwelling folks who are going to give our unsuspecting leads a very bad time.  Or just weirdos living in a place.  So, movies like Death Line immediately come to mind.   But also The Hills Have Eyes.  The People Under the Stairs.  CHUD, I guess.  One could even point to Psycho (and I'll circle back to that)

I don't mean to say there's nothing special about this movie, but it feels like a Polly Pocket version of one of those movies.  Only, taking inspiration from some real-life cases of psychos kidnapping women and keeping them in their basement.  

Hallo-Watch: Salem's Lot (2024)

Watched:  10/15/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gary Dauberman

How does one make a movie that is supposed to be horrifying just weirdly annoying to watch?

Salem's Lot (2024) is here to crack this mystery wide open.  

Poor Steven King.  Probably tired of being mistaken for author Stephen King who wrote the book this movie is based on, which had a TV series or some such of it made back when I was a wee tot and missed the show.  And Stephen King has become a master of horror novels which have only been made into good movies if Stanley Kubrick takes the novel as a suggestion or its Rob Reiner making Stand By Me, which is not horror.    I do like Christine, though.  And Silver Bullet has its moments.  But neither is a patch on the books.*

Writer/ Director Gary Dauberman took a beloved American novel, wrote down "vampires" on a yellow pad, jotted down the character names from the book, and as near as Wikipedia can tell me, paid little attention to anything else.  And, instead, he wrote a nonsense script where everyone is dumb as a bag of rocks to the point where I was wondering if the movie was supposed to be a satire or spoof at times.  

Hallo-Watch: Hereditary (2018)

Watched:  10/12/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ari Aster

I really liked Midsommar by the same director, and I'd heard about 75% good things about Hereditary (2018) and maybe 25% meh to bad.  

Alas, the only scary thing in this movie is the pacing.   I get trying to build a mood, but holy cats, the mood should not be "for the love of Mike, get on with it".  The two hour run time felt like more than three.  And it just wasn't my bag, baby.  

I guess maybe if I hadn't already seen Midsommar, this might have been more effective, but that is not how things transpired.  Frankly, I was shocked at the audacity of Aster to have two movies with such similar endings back to back.  

The premise is fine, I guess.  Weird, controlling mother dies.  Daughter is accidentally killed.  Whoops, there's a secret cult worshipping an off-brand demon who has inhabited the daughter/ is merged with her? and now, in a ghostly fashion, slowly bothers this family to death.  And it's one of those movies where the evil wins (dramatic music).  Which would mean something if I cared what happened to any single character is this movie.  Temu Satan is going to take over the world because of these dopes?  I guess we got what we paid for.

I think the thing we're supposed to be impressed by are moods and the kooky connections we see, like Charlie, the girl, meaningfully cutting the head off a dead bird.  And oh boy, will decapitation ever be a motif.  Or her wanting to build effigies (much as her mother does in her own way).  

The selling point is supposed to be the family trauma.  Which, okay.  But... I didn't know these people at any point when they weren't brooding or gnashing their teeth or both.  So that's it - that's how I know them.  Unhappy people who become increasingly unhappy.

Meanwhile, the music is doing a lot of heavy lifting to insist scenes are intense or scary as we just kinda sit there as an audience waiting for the next piece of movie plot track to get laid down.  

I dunno, I just feel like I've seen one too many cult movies, and this one sort of just was that mixed with the 2010's horror trend of "the unknown" bothering nice white folks in their semi-rural house.  I didn't care about what was happening at any given moment, which is a weird way to feel when you're watching a movie.  If I'd turned it off and read the Wikipedia synopsis, I think I would have gotten the same amount out of the experience.

 

Hallo-Watch: Jakob's Wife (2021)

Watched:  10/07/2025

Format:  Shudder

Viewing:  First

Director:  Travis Stevens

During the Q&A for the screening of Re-Animator, star Barbara Crampton mentioned she'd produced and starred in a horror movie recently, Jakob's Wife (2021).  I recalled the name from last year's mini-dive into Crampton's work, but didn't get to the movie.  But we've fixed that.

One fun thing about horror is that even when you say "vampire movie", it only really means a potential set of rules and maybe a gentle push a few directions.  Eggers' Nosferatu is not Coogler's Sinners is not Garrard's Slay.  You can change up the rules, and change up the look, as long as you do a few key things, usually involving blood consumption and slow discovery of evil.  But not always!

The high concept of vampirism can be used to explore themes well beyond "a foreigner has moved in next door, and probably brought rats with him".  To that end, Jakob's Wife digs not just into the traditional roles of men and women, but of women as they reach a certain age, denied a life of their own in prescribed servitude.  

Our titular Jakob (Larry Fessenden) is a pastor of a church in a dying southern town.  He's leading his diminishing flock, preaching traditional values of a man's role in his family.  His wife, Anne (Barbara Crampton) is the dutiful pastor's wife.  She's past the point of youth, married thirty years and feeling life passing her by as the perpetual prop to her husband.

Hallo-Watch: Re-Animator (1985) - w/ Crampton and Combs at the Paramount Theatre, Austin, TX - 10/06/2025

Watched:  10/06/2025

Format:  Paramount Theatre, Austin, TX

Viewing:  unclear

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Well, what a spectacular evening.

Last year I watched Re-Animator (1985) for the first time in forever, and was reminded of (a) what a great movie Re-Animator really is, (b) fired up a new appreciation for what the movie is doing, and (c) was reminded that Barbara Crampton is just an excellent idea all around.  

She's on socials, and she does not disappoint.  And so it was that I learned she and Jeffrey Combs were traveling to some cities to hype up the 4K restoration of Re-Animator on its 40th Anniversary.  And, fortunately, they were coming to Austin.

Hallo-Watch: The Invisible Man (1933)

Watched:  10/04/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

Jamie had just read the book of The Invisible Man by HG Wells a month or so ago, so when we went to pick our first Halloween movie, this was her seasonal request.

comfy villainy

I've already seen The Invisible Man (1933) maybe five times since this blog was founded, so I thought, instead of writing it up, I'd just point out that our villain/ hero has the right idea.  Given his newfound power, when he isn't going around buck-ass naked in snow storms, he's wearing super cozy pajamas and lounge outfits.

Now that's how I want to be a diabolical mad man - in a cozy housecoat and slippers, and wearing bandages rather than having to comb my hair.

Horror Watch: Possession (1981)

Watched:  10/05/2025

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andrzej Zulawski

Possession (1981) is one of those movies you see get routinely mentioned, but very rarely with *specifics* as to why it's on lists and recommended. 

Look, this is not a movie where one bops along with an A-B-C plot.  It's absolutely one of those movies - maybe like Inland Empire - where folks sure seem certain about what it is about but nobody agrees, including critics.  It is an easy movie to get engrossed in and like, mostly because it falls just on this side of adding up, and your brain is working overtime trying to stitch the pieces together.  Is it religious symbolism?  Is it not?  Is this a commentary on Berlin or using Berlin to make a point about divorce?  What's with...  you know...  the, uh... creature, I guess?

Nunsploitation Watch: To The Devil A Daughter (1976)

Watched:  09/15/2025

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Peter Sykes

It's hard not to see To The Devil a Daughter (1976) as existing due to Rosemary's Baby's wild success, a dash of 1970's-style Satanic Panic, and a dollop of Hammer's latter-era horror output like The Devil Rides Out (this is a Hammer co-production).  It's based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley from the 1950's, so good on the printed word leading the way here.

For reasons that kinda make sense if what I understand about Hammer's financial state in the 70's, a German company was involved in financing and production.  

The movie stars an American, Richard Widmark, who made his name in noir - especially with Kiss of Death, with which he's still widely associated - and then went on to participate in a wide-range of movies and roles.  Widmark plays a writer who has written a sensationalistic best-seller about Satanism, who is represented by former Bond-girl Honor Blackman, his pal in London,* and her boyfriend, David.

Horror Watch: Alucarda (1977)

Watched:  09/08/2025

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Juan Lopez Moctezuma

Now that's how you make a horror movie.

Start with a base of Carmilla, the pre-Dracula vampire story about sapphic vampires (or 1970's The Vampire Lovers), sprinkle in some Dracula, add in some The Exorcist, probably three or four movies I'm not thinking of or aware of, and then a dollop of Carrie for the finale.  

A Mexican-produced film, Alucarda (1977) is just batshit from the first scene and then cranks it up to 11.  I'm not sure it's in any way scary - any more than a Hammer film ever feels frightening - but it's a crazy spectacle - and never fails to be *interesting*.

2010's Watch: Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

Watched:  06/29/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Writer/ Director:  Drew Goddard

It's possible in fifteen or twenty years, this movie will be found and puzzled over as featuring folks who are now established stars, mixed with longtime stars.  Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) features Cynthia Erivo in what I will say should have been a break-out performance and her entree into film stardom, rather than her having to wait until Wicked.  She's clearly already a star.  Lewis Pullman is here.  As are Chris Hemsworth, John Hamm, Jeff Bridges and a not-50 Shades-ing Dakota Johnson.  

But this movie came out and tanked.  That's neither here nor there, but it has meant that it's not exactly on the forefront of people's minds as few eyes saw the movie in the theater and it's not found an audience on home video. 

What's odd is that Metacritic comes in at a mid-range-ish 60, and the audience score is a generous 71.  And yet... no one saw this.

However, maybe in the same way of The Last of Sheila from 1973, it will find an audience that will make sure it has a cult following.  Or not.  (I heartily recommend The Last of Sheila.)

Chabert Watch: Sanitarium (2013)

Watched:  05/18/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Bryan Ramirez, Bryan Ortiz, Kerry Valderrama

So, this one turned into a bit more of a rabbit hole than I was expecting.  

Sanitarium (2013) is a movie independently produced in San Antonio, Texas - just down the road from my own Austin, TX.  It's a great town, and I recommend it.

The film is an anthology, three stories centering around how a trio of inmates landed in a sanitarium run by Malcolm McDowell, who sort of book-ends the film and shows up here and there.  But the movie is a testament to people figuring out they can afford the day rates for some actors and living out the dream of making a movie with actors they like.

Chabert Horror Watch! The Ghost of Goodnight Lane (2014)

Watched:  04/27/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Director:  Alin Bijan

Goodnight Lane is a very real street in northwest Dallas, where the Ghost of Goodnight Lane (2014) takes place, and was filmed, at least in part.  And if there's one spooky thing in this world, it is Dallas sprawl and suburbs.

The best thing about this movie is that Billy Zane is having a good time.  He knows what this movie is, and he's just happy to be there and dick around.  And, really, this movie is just an excuse for the filmmakers to have a good time and make a low-stakes horror-comedy.  It is silly.  It knows it's silly.  It is critic and taste proof.  If you don't like it, that's kind of on you, audience.  And the fact this exists in this form is proof I don't know how movie-making works.

The Ghost of Goodnight Lane is weirdly full of B to Z list working actors out of LA.  I say this, because this movie has the vibe that it doesn't feel like it should have anyone in it but local talent from the DFW area.  But it has Billy Zane and Lacey Chabert.  And still manages to look like a movie shot by people playing with equipment more than a movie that came out in 2014.  Like, it's weird to see real actors in set-ups and with lighting I associate with movies made by folks usually casting their pals, just something fun to enter into horror film festivals.  

It's maybe not Ouija Shark bad, but... 

So I wonder about the proposition for getting the financing - provided our writer/ director didn't finance himself. Did they blow it all on getting who they got?  The FX?  Which are brief but pretty okay for what this is?

Coogler Watch: Sinners (2025)

Watched:  04/26/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ryan Coogler

I guess Marshall is my "there's a vampire movie out, we're going" buddy.  And, really, Marshall was the ideal movie buddy for this one.  He's an avid music fan, a musician, and his rock sensibilities - when I met him in the early 1990's - were blues-based.  He's also a fan of vampire flicks, although I don't think I've convinced him to watch the Hammer vampire flicks yet. 

In addition, Marshall is well-read, and with an academic background in creative fiction, his critical analysis is always impressive.  But he refused to send me a blog post for this movie so that I didn't have to write one.  He is refusing me this one simple request, and so I am hoping if I butter him up enough with this high praise, next time, he'll do it.

Anyway - count me in with the people who loved Sinners (2025), and am excited about seeing it again.

SPOILERS

Horror Watch: I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Watched:  04/21/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jacques Tourneur

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) is @#$%ing *great*.  Holy cats.  I'm mad at myself I took so long to see it.

Fun fact:  apparently I finished watching this movie on the 82nd anniversary of the film's release.  How about that?

More than a decade after White Zombie - an okay movie that I think drags - RKO put this one out.  It's considered part of a retrospective high point for RKO as Val Lewton was producing cheap and effective thrillers.  

Apparently the title is lifted from an article by journalist Inez Wallace who spent time in Haiti and met people who were basically without will thanks to drugs.  It also borrows a bit from Jane Eyre, one of my favorite reads from college days.

The movie is a Gothic mystery set on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian.  The beautiful wife of a sugar plantation owner has fallen into an odd stupor, able to be given commands, but she's otherwise lifeless, emotionless... mostly still unless directed to move around.  Frances Dee plays a nurse brought from Canada to care for her - and expects she's being asked to live in paradise, but like a character from Bronte, Byron or Poe - the husband of the "zombie" sees only death on the island. 

There's a riddle for what really happened.  Two brothers at war.  A mother who is remote from them.  

The location of the plantation leans into the history of the cruelty of slavery and the family's part in what happened, keeping the haunting figurehead from one of their slaveships on the premises, a tortured man impaled with arrows - a reminder of what they did.  Pretty wild as elected leaders are, in 2025, trying to erase slavery of all things from our history books.  The family has tried to make amends now in the mid-20th Century, seeing themselves as stewards of the history and the people here, not interfering, but making sure people are healthy and the plantation provides an economy.