Celebrating My 50th with 50 Favorites ~ Part 3

Still counting down - here's numbers 30-21...

30. Session 9 (2001)

Psychological horror makes an indelible impression on me. A movie need not have even a drop of blood, if the story-line is compelling and plays with my emotions, I'm hooked.  Session 9 is one of those films, with its subtle yet ominous mood.  It digs under your skin until it finds a place to relax, then it hits you when you least expect it.  With the benefit of probably one of the greatest movie locations, the former Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, the hulking ediface just screams haunted, so it is with great ease that one gets sucked into the atmosphere of quiet terror it presents. Gordon (Peter Mullen) owns a small asbestos removal company and he takes on the contract of removing the nasty product from the hospital, claiming that it will be done in one week.  He and his crew, led by Phil (David Caruso) begin the task as Gordon grapples with problems at home, and a sense of deja vu at the hospital.  Meanwhile, another crew member, Mike (Stephen Gevedon), becomes obsessed with the audio sessions of one of the patients, Mary Hobbes, who displays a number of distinct personalities.  To say more would ruin the film, so I'll leave it at that.  Seek this out if you haven't seen it.  It's disturbingly excellent.

29. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

"I'm sorry I called you a meatloaf, Jack."  John Landis's brilliant werewolf film is equal parts fright and fun.  Special effects by Rick Baker won an Academy Award and there's a reason for that - they are outstanding.  Poor David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), all they were trying to do is see the English countryside when even after being warned, they veer off the road and onto the moors, where they are promptly attacked by....something.  Injecting humor at every turn, Landis nonetheless creates a terrifying film with gruesome and suspenseful attacks. You're rooting for David to discover the truth, and with the help of new girlfriend Alex (Jenny Agutter), he's bound to figure things out, right?  I've loved this film since I was in high school, shortly after its release.  When it comes on TV, I'm compelled to watch it.  Likewise I can throw my BluRay in for some much needed comfort horror, it's just that good.

28. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) 

I love Donald Sutherland.  Who doesn't?  He's great in everything he does and this film is no exception.  With the benefit of a stellar cast including Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, and Veronica Cartwright, this remake of the 1956 classic is an unnerving look at an alien invasion that occurs much more inconspicuously than most sci-fi flicks.  When Elizabeth (Adams) comes to her co-worker at the Health Dept, Matthew, and describes the change in personality that her live-in boyfriend has been displaying, they take it upon themselves to investigate, realizing that something is happening all over the city.  People are devoid of emotion and completely unfazed by the growing epidemic.  Science fiction has never been my favorite, but when it's as exceptional as this I am totally all-in. 

27. The Fog (1980)

Following up with a film after Halloween must have been a difficult task for John Carpenter, and I'm not here to say The Fog is superior to Halloween even though it is higher on my list.  I just happen to find the themes and atmosphere of The Fog more intriguing.  I love the ocean, so anything creepy and set at the sea does it for me.  The Fog also has some serious horror heavyweights in it, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Adrienne Barbeau, and Janet Leigh.   When the town of Antonio Bay is set to celebrate its 100th Founders Anniversary, a curse is let loose upon them - seems the original founders sunk a ship full of lepers before they made shore and then proceeded to steal all their gold to build the current town.  And the ghosts of the pissed off sailors exact a nasty revenge....

26. Gojira (aka Godzilla, 1954)

First things first - stay away from the 1956 Americanized version with Raymond Burr....just NO.
When I was a young whippersnapper, Mom and I used to watch Godzilla movies on Saturday afternoons and this was my first experience with the great monster from the deep.  And I LOVED it.  I still have unwavering love for the big guy, but I will always count this one as my favorite.  Long story short, giant dinosaur-like creature is awakened deep under the sea by hydrogen bomb testing and wreaks havoc on unsuspecting Japanese folks. Some viewers may say this is hokey, and of course they'd be right.  But Godzilla is KING OF THE MONSTERS and don't let anyone tell you different.  If you've seen all the remakes and sequels but haven't seen the original, you need to rectify that shit right now.

25. From Beyond the Grave (1974)

Another Amicus anthology starring Peter Cushing as the owner of an antiques shoppe, it has four stories that involve antiques purchased at said shoppe.  Each customer tries to trick or rob the proprietor, but he has the last laugh.  A man buys a haunted mirror that talks to him and requests victims; a disgruntled husband finds love with a match & shoestring salesman's bizarre daughter; a witch warns a man of an 'elemental' on his shoulder; and after purchasing a door from the shoppe a man finds more than he bargains for after installing it in his home.  Of note, Donald Pleasence and his daughter Angela (who truly is very creepy, whether she means to be or not) star in the second segment. What can I say?  I love Amicus and their anthologies.  There are many more of them, such as Tales from the Crypt, Asylum, and The Vault of Horror, just to name a few. They are all fairly dated, having been produced in the late 60's and early 70's but they are all worth a look!

24. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

One of the newest films on my list of 50, this movie is a joy to behold. I don't particularly like comedy in my horror unless it's done right (as in An American Werewolf in London) but this is truly one of the funniest movies, any genre, that I have ever seen.  With a random group of vampires from many different eras all sharing a flat, you can expect laughs - and this delivers.  Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi wrote and directed this independent film from New Zealand that has a quartet of vampires trying to fit in to "normal" society, with hilarious results.  There is a supposed sequel in the works that involves the werewolves (not swearwolves) in the film, and an American television program based on the film heads our way in 2019.

23. Jurassic Park (1993)

I know what you're thinking.  Jurassic Park (and all its counterparts) is not a horror film, and while I would agree with you on a grander scale, this is my blog and I think anytime you have man-eating dinosaurs, it feels like horror to me.  As the Steven Spielberg train keeps a' rollin' down this prehistoric track even today, Jurassic Park is the one that started them all and still packs the biggest punch.  Who wasn't psyched to see those dinos out on the grasses just like Dr Grant & co?  But of course the greatest thrills in the film come from the Velociraptors and the big man himself, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  I can honestly say the huge lump in my throat when the T-Rex made his presence known is just as big as any other horror film I have been terrified by.  And those raptors in the kitchen? Yikes!  I love dinosaurs, and who doesn't? I would be happy if there was a Jurassic Park sequel every few years FOREVER.

22. House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

Yes, I know The Devil's Rejects is a better film.  No, I don't usually love exploitation films. Yes, I know this movie is trashy.  But damn if I don't adore it.   Rob Zombie has a mixed bag of tricks in his director bag, and there are a few of his I could toss by the wayside.  But I truly appreciate his devotion to the genre because I know he is a true-blue fan.  House of 1000 Corpses plays like a 90 minute music video by Zombie, which would seem unbearable.  And though the film falters a bit at the end, the first hour is just so much fun.  With humor (intentional or not) rife throughout, the 70's vibe is spot on and the disturbed Firefly family is ridiculously over the top, but in a good way.  Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon, has a starring role as is the norm in his movies, and here she plays Baby with all the demented intensity she can muster.  Playing her mom is genre favorite Karen Black, and Bill Moseley as Otis and Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding make up the craziest motley crew you've seen since the Sawyers in rural Texas.  Chris Harwick as Jerry and Rainn Wilson as Bill bring their girlfriends along on a road trip to discover unique roadside attractions.....and they hit the mother lode when they stop at Captain Spaudling's.

21. Candyman (1992)

Candyman is actually a fairly frightening film. It benefits by the great Tony Todd starring as the title character and Virginia Madsen as the fearless Helen Lyle, a graduate student focusing on urban legends for her thesis.  She hears the local story of Candyman and goes in search of the truth behind the speculation.  It's a gritty look at the seedy underbelly of a major city, where the lore usually comes from actual events in the past - and I'm not sure what's scarier, the made-up stories or the truth.  The Cabrini Green housing projects of Chicago figure prominently into the plot, and to me, they are vastly more scary than anything else on screen, with its graffiti-laden walls and fiercely protective gang members.  When Helen comes face to face with the evidence, it all backfires and she becomes the hunted, much like Candyman was in his bleak and depressing past, where just falling in love comes with a price.  Clive Barker's tale is brought to the screen with fervor and passion, and a captivating score by the great Philip Glass adds an extra layer of depth. 

Halloween 2013: Urban Legend Week: THE HOOK

Welcome to Urban Legends Week here on FWF!

 Marie and I are utterly fascinated by these tales that we have all grown up with, be it the story about the dreaded ghostly hitchhiker or the legend of the drugged-out babysitter who puts the baby in the oven instead of the turkey.  These tales have all been passed down from generation to generation, some of which you will swear are true! After all, didn't you hear it from a friend of a friend? Or around the campfire at summer camp? Or at that slumber party you went to with your sister?

There is a comfy little niche in American folklore that these urban tales fit into, and whether or not you believe they actually happened (because some of them you'll swear are true) is part of the stigma of the legends in the first place.  And the horror genre has taken many of these stories and turned them into feature-length films. That is where our focus lies here, on the movies that are directly related to urban legends.

First up, one of the most familiar urban legends known. The Hook.

The story goes like this: A boy and his girl are out parking late at night in a remote location. They are just starting to get busy when the music on the radio stops and a radio announcer comes on with a desperate warning about an escaped convict from a local asylum possibly being in the area. His most distinguishing feature is the fact that he has a hook for a hand.  Naturally the girl freaks out and wants to go home, and despite many kisses and much urging to stay, the boy reluctantly takes the girl home. Upon dropping her off, she gets out of the car and starts screaming. When the boy runs to her side of the car what does he see?  A bloody hook dangling from the door handle! 

There are a lot of adaptations with this story, one of which also involves a couple parking and an escaped, hook-handed lunatic on the prowl, only this time the car won't start and the boy decides to go for help. While waiting, the girl hears a tree branch scraping along the roof, back and forth...back and forth... until she has been waiting so long she begins to worry. She gets out of the car and to her horror discovers her boyfriend hanging from a tree, gutted like a fish by said hook. It's his shoes that make the scraping noise on the roof. 

Whatever incarnation you may have heard, one thing is clear: the villain is demented man with a hook for a hand. When we look to horror films to find the story of the hook-handed murderer, we needn't look too far.

 In the 1997 film, I Know What You Did Last Summer, a group of teens are menaced by a vengeful fisherman in a dark slicker with a hook for a weapon.  While he does not have the hook for a hand, another film puts a more literal spin on the urban legend: Candyman. 

Candyman moves the hook-handed antagonist out of back-roads suburbia and into the land of urban decay. Clive Barker weaves an entire twisted story around our anti-hero, making Candyman the victim of a horrible crime of bigotry and racial violence.  Candyman grew up the son of a former slave who had made his fortune and by all accounts was an aspiring painter with a bright future. But money and societal privilege meant nothing when he got a rich white man's daughter pregnant. The girl's father and his friends tortured Candyman, cutting off his painting hand and shoving a hook in its place. They then covered him in honey and set forth hundreds of bees to sting him to death. Not a pleasant end. And a perfect reason to come back from the dead for bloody revenge. 

The kills in Candyman are gut-wrenching, as for most he just rips his hook through the victim's innards and takes care of business quickly.  The bloody stump from which the hook protrudes is the stuff of nightmares, and its easy to see where Barker possibly got his inspiration...the legend of the hook-man, realized in film.

But let's remember we don't even have to stay in the horror genre to have a hook-handed villain. In J.M. Barrie's 1911 novel, Peter Pan: or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, we have ourselves a scoundrel of the highest proportions, one Captain Hook.  A terrible pirate who lost his hand to a crocodile and replaced it with a frightful hook. And to think that story was written for children!  But to this day, many a Halloween Costume turns out to be within the pirate theme, complete with that nasty hook.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events book series also has a hook-handed villain named Fernald, albeit he is missing both his hands and has hooks to replace them. So it's obvious that the hook-handed villains have been around a very long time.

On a side note, Candyman very efficiently uses yet another urban legend, the tale of Bloody Mary, in which a ghost will appear in a mirror if its name is said the required amount of times. In Candyman's case, it is five. Say his name five times and he will appear behind you in the mirror, his bloody stump at hand (sorry, couldn't resist).

31 days, 31 faves: Candyman

Let's get straight to the point. Candyman (1992) scared the pants right off me when it came out. Everything about it gave me the willies. I had already read the source material (a story out of a book of short stories (Books of Blood) by Clive Barker - 'The Forbidden') and knew it was a very scary and unnerving tale, so I had anticipated that the film version was going to be every bit as frightening as Barker's story.

Stop me if you've heard this one: A college freshman is telling the story of an urban legend that has been making the rounds. Promiscuous girl has bad boy over to hang out while she's babysitting. She decides to have sex with him but for some reason they are in the bathroom and she tells him the legend of Candyman first- say his name five times in front of a mirror and he'll appear and gut you like a fish with his hook. Naturally, she's stupid enough to utter his name the required amount of times and what happens? He shows up and (off-camera) splits her open.

We move on then to Helen (Virginia Madsen), a graduate student who is writing her thesis on urban legends and has set her focus on the lore of Candyman. She and her friend Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) are doing some interviews with students about the subject and while working late, Helen runs across a couple of cleaning ladies who give her a more in depth chat about the fiendish murderer. Apparently he is being blamed for the death of one Ruthie Jean, a young black woman from the projects. Helen and Bernadette decide to get the real story so off they trek to Cabrini-Green, an urban sprawl of gangs, crime, and the extremely disadvantaged.

Cabrini-Green scares the living hell out of me, even more than Candyman himself. I wasn't raised in the city, I'm a small town girl. The thought of having to walk past a ghetto like that -even in the middle of the day, packing heat - makes me quiver with fear. Helen does a bit of investigating and finds out that her condo was actually built with the exact same plan as Cabrini but they turned them into expensive condos. She realizes that the walls are just dry wall and the bathroom medicine chests are all that separate one apartment from the other.

Her and Bernadette make the journey to Cabrini and once past all the gang-bangers out front and in the hallways (who think the girls are cops due to their snappy dressing), they poke around in one of the empty apartments. Quite honestly the creepiest moment in the film for me is when Helen crawls through the hole where the medicine cabinet was and takes a look around. The room is covered in grungy graffiti and is downright appalling. But the worst part is when she steps through a bigger hole in the wall and we, as the audience, get to see that the wall on our side is painted with a giant mouth...Candyman's mouth. Just. So. Scary.

Helen and Bernadette are soon busted snooping around by Anne-Marie - one of the locals who is tending to her young baby and has a Rottweiler for an escort - and once she's calmed down, she reiterates the story about Candyman killing Ruthie Jean.

Later, Helen returns by herself (!!) to get more photos the next day, and she is led to an outside public bathroom which is a cesspool of foulness. There, she is attacked by one of the locals who claims to be Candyman and beat up pretty bad. Obviously, he's not - but he scares the bejesus out of Helen nonetheless.

We eventually learn the actual story behind the myth, the fact that Candyman was well educated and actually came from a well-off family. But that all ended when he fell in love with a (white) plantation owner's daughter. The girl's father had no time for his offspring getting jiggy with a black man. That in itself tells a lot about the film. The stigma of racial indifference and intolerance does make it seem rather controversial, in particular because a white woman is being terrorized by a black man. And as Candyman, Tony Todd casts a very commanding and scary presence - makes my blood run cold. We find out that his lover's father exacted a horrific revenge by, among other things, cutting off Candyman's arm and covering him with honey, then letting an entire hive of bees loose on him. Okay, that's certainly unique.

The scene in the parking garage, where Candyman calls to Helen, putting her into a trance, is a turning point in the film. Hypnotized by his deep, resonating voice, Helen loses consciousness. Coming to, she awakes in a pool of blood in Anne-Marie's apartment. Hearing the young mother's deafening cries for help, she races into the next room to see the Rottwieler's head severed from its body and Anne-Marie screaming beside the baby's crib. Young Anthony is missing, and when A-M sees Helen she runs to her, accusing her of murder. There is a major struggle, and conveniently the cops bust through the door to see Helen wielding a meat cleaver over Anne-Marie's body. Not a good thing.

Helen is arrested and when she uses her one phone call she finds out her hubby isn't home - and it's 3 am. Throughout the movie you come to realize Trevor (Xander Berkeley) is a louse. He's a swarmy college professor who is obviously having an affair with a student. He does however, come and get Helen at the police station, and seems to stand by her.

This changes when Helen finally comes face to face with Candyman at her condo. He jumps out at her, hook first, through the mirror and chases her through the hallway, reaching her and putting her into said trance yet again. When Bernadette comes to visit, things don't end well. Helen is booked for murder and is sent to be evaluated by a shrink. But the wheels are already set in motion - she escapes and is left to roam through the windy city to try to make some sense of everything. She has a half-baked idea that if she is able to find Anne-Marie's baby (which she knows Candyman is hiding), she'll be forgiven and won't have to be considered a fugitive nut case anymore.

Throughout the film, you really could ask yourself if Helen is going crazy or if the legends are true. At times, it certainly seems as though she's flipped her lid. For instance, when Helen is an escaped mental patient, she goes back to her and Trevor's apartment only to find the slutty girlfriend completely redecorating the place. When Trevor comes into the room there are a few moments when Helen's wide-eyed look seems purely psychotic. But as much as Helen proclaims her innocence, no one - not even her husband at this point - believes her.

Candyman also does not stray from gore. In fact, there are some seriously gruesome scenes of violence here. When you're ripping someone open from the groin to sternum, it ain't gonna be pretty. But we are talking Clive Barker here, the man behind Hellraiser, among other things. The dude has a sick mind that most horror fans can truly appreciate as a unique, daring voice of darkness. And to me, this film is every bit as good as Hellraiser. Yes, they are vastly different, but if I had to choose I'd pick Candyman over Pinhead every time. I'll always chose the tragic hero over the demon from hell. But hey, maybe that's just me.

And again, I would be negligent if I didn't mention the music of Candyman. The consummate composer, Philip Glass has given this film a true touch of class with his piano, organ and voice-oriented score. The main theme is haunting and unforgettable, and one of my favorites.
As is the film. If you haven't seen it, there's really no excuse for you not to go rent it or pick it up immediately. You will not be disappointed.