DailyView: Day 168, Movie 249

This October, the DailyView has been doing a series of horror/thriller movies in honor of the upcoming Halloween. However, most of the films have been little known horror movies from the Shudder channel. Tonight, I pulled up one of the classic horror movies from one of the most iconic writer/director of the genre, Clive Barker. The film, which spawned nine sequels, is called Hellraiser.

Hellraiser introduced into the world of horror monsters the character of Pinhead (Doug Bradley), although that nomenclature would not come into existence until the sequel.

Synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes: “Sexual deviant Frank (Sean Chapman) inadvertently opens a portal to hell when he tinkers with a box he bought while abroad. The act unleashes gruesome beings called Cenobites, who tear Frank’s body apart. When Frank’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his wife, Julia (Clare Higgins), move into Frank’s old house, they accidentally bring what is left of Frank back to life. Frank then convinces Julia, his one-time lover, to lure men back to the house so he can use their blood to reconstruct himself.“

Although Pinhead would be the breakout character, he does not make too many appearances in Hellraiser. Our main villain is Frank and he is very freaky. When he began to wander around the house preying on the men lured into the trap by Julia, Frank becomes a true monster and is as frightening as any of the Cenobites.

The practical effects of the film are very effective, making it feel even more horrific than it would be with CGI. However, the third act horror-fest is a bit much to take.

I was not impressed with the acting of Hellraiser. Ashley Laurence, who played Larry’s daughter Kirsty, is so over-the-top that you do not buy her fear at all. All her facial expressions and screams did not make me feel fright for her. It nearly elicited laughter.

Certainly, the presence of Frank and the Cenobites are the stand out reasons to watch this movie. I was extremely engaged by these villainous monsters much more than I ever cared about Kristy.

Julia, on the other hand, and Larry were a fascinating pair and did carry their own in Hellraiser. Julia was confused and uncertain about what she was doing, but you could tell that she wanted to keep doing it. She was one of the most rotten characters in the film.

I can see where this movie could go to heights with the Pinhead character and the other Cenobites. Overall, Hellraiser was fine, weak acting, but solid scares and some A+ villains.

DailyView: Day 167, Movie 248

The October horror movie extravaganza continues during the DailyView as I returned to Shudder on Amazon Prime for a dark comedy called Prevenge.

Pregnant woman Ruth (Alice Rowe) has been recently widowed in a climbing accident. Carrying on conversations with her unborn baby which verbally pushes her to keep going, Ruth starts a mission of brutal murders against those people she holds responsible for her husband’s death.

The voice of the “baby” was so very creepy, especially when she was compelling Ruth on to continue her vicious slasher mission. I have not been able to find the actress who voiced the baby, but she was very effective (I saw one review that said the baby sounded like Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter films).

Alice Rowe wrote, directed and starred in Prevege while she was actually pregnant. In fact, she gave birth during the making of the movie and her actual baby daughter was able to play her on screen child.

Rowe does a tremendous job carrying this film. The dark comedy has a very British humor feel to it, and, there may be a time or two where the tone does not match. However, the feeling of creepiness outweighed any potential tone issues.

This was an entertaining film that was very dark and funny, with a character whose mental issues may be too much to overcome. Shudder has definitely a deep catalogue of engaging horror films.

DailyView: Day 166, Movie 247

I am continuing to search through Shudder in this October horror section of the DailyView, and there are just a ton of horror movies that I have never seen. Tonight, I came across a film called The Boy Behind the Door from last year.

Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) and Kevin (Ezra Dewey) were best friends. They would swear to be best friends until the end. Then, the boys are abducted and thrown into the trunk of a car. When they arrive at their destination, Kevin is taken out of the trunk and locked in a room in the isolated house. Bobby is able to get out of the trunk, but he would not leave his friend.

I loved this movie. The two boys did an amazing job in the film. Their friendship is at the very heart of the movie and is so strong that it was the distinct characteristic of these characters.

The debut of filmmakers David Charbonier and Justin Powell, The Boy Behind the Door truly amps up the anxiety and tension of the simple story of an abduction. I found myself yelling at the screen a few times when Bobby or Kevin would do something to survive.

I was so ready to have Kristin Bauer van Straten, one of the kidnappers of the film, get her comeuppance. The film was extremely satisfying in this manner. She brought a lot of menace and viciousness to the role.

The film is well paced and really gets you rooting for these boys to survive their encounter with these evil people. It is a well done horror movie that is totally entertaining.

DailyView: Day 165, Movie 246

I knew what kind of movie this was going to be when Julian McMahon’s head rolled out of his casket and it wasn’t supposed to be funny.

Sandra Bullock was Linda Hanson, a wife and mother of two whose life was uprooted when her husband Jim (Julian McMahon) was killed in a car crash. However, the next day, Linda awoke from her sleep to find Jim alive and well. The film then played with time and showed the events of the week out of order as Linda tried to figure out what exactly had happened.

There are so many silly things going on in this movie that it really undercuts the potentially interesting premise. The way the story is told narratively makes the tragic circumstances almost ridiculous. The melodrama here is cranked up to a huge level.

Sandra Bullock overacts like crazy, and, the end of the movie makes no sense. I can’t discuss it without spoiling, but let’s just say that her memory must make everything good.

She blocked out certain things during the week, but many of them are just not important. Her oldest daughter got hurt, but why does she block that out when it does not have anything to do with Jim’s accident. I can understand why she blocks out Jim’s accident, but looking back, she seems far more crazy than she is shown to be.

Best part about this movie is the cool movie poster.

Just a dumb movie that leaves Netflix on Oct. 31st. Not a day too soon.

DailyView: Day 164, Movie 245

Continuing the run of horror/thriller movies in the DailyView, October edition, I found a film called Session 9, a film that depends on mood and imagery to build the feelings of the audience. At that level, the film does a decent job. However, the film does not reach on too many other levels.

An asbestos abatement crew wins a contract to work on an old, abandoned mental institution that had a frightening past. When things from the past seem to start coming back and affecting the crew, troubles mount and dangers arrive.

This movie just never grabbed me the way it hoped. I was bored by the early part of the movie and the third act felt very forced and threw a twist into the story that did not make much sense.

The cast was decent, led by David Caruso. It also included Josh Lucas, Stephen Gevedon, Peter Mullan, Brendan Sexton III, and Paul Guilfoyle.

Part of the plot included one of the crew playing a tape from a session in the past of a person with multiple personalities, with the dominant, possible alter, “Simon.” While that sounds creepy, one of the problems is that some of the voices on the tape sounded so cartoonish that it negatively affected the mood they were trying to go for in the scene.

I had a lot of problems with the film, from its lack of characterization in many of the characters to the out of nowhere ending. While it does create a certain mood, Session 9 just cannot sustain that across the entire film.

DailyView: Day 163, Movie 244

As I was going through the list of different horror movies of the sixties, I found a mention of a film considered one of the worst ever made. A zombie movie that was a musical. What?

Of course, the ridiculous title was a drawing factor as well.

As I was looking for a version to watch, I saw that MST3K had done this on their program which, after seeing it, makes perfect sense. MST3K would improve this exponentially.

Full fledged ridiculousness, terrible acting, terrible special effects, a rambling story that makes no sense with no character motivation and a bunch of song/dance routines.

Now I do not consider this a musical because no one ever just broke out in song. All of the numbers took place on a stage in front of an audience. This is Spinal Tap is not a musical, but there is music that is a signature piece of the story.

I did not mean to compare this flaming pile to This is Spinal Tap, a true legendary film, but I needed an analogy.

The zombies were not the only ones in this movie that were mixed-up. I was too.

Legitimately, there is no protagonist. There was barely any zombies. However, we did get plenty of songs and dance numbers, so there is that.

I would like to see the RiffTrax guys do this one for Halloween or something like that. It truly is one of the worst films ever done.

Now I’m going to watch Muppets Haunted House. I expect better acting, for sure.

DailyView: Day 162, Movie 243

Cassandra Peterson was able to parlay a horror host job showing “classic” B movies into an iconic role as Elvira thanks to her huge… charisma.

Elvira was the stage name of Peterson and she became a national hit hosting the weekly LA television program Elvira’s Movie Macabre. She developed into a cult character and wound up with her own film, Elvira: Mistress of the Night.

In order to find money for a Vegas show, Elvira went to the reading of the Last Will and testament of her Aunt, an aunt she did not know she had. The local residents were too conservative (putting the Footloose people to shame) and wanted no part of Elvira and her tight-clothes, cleaving-showing, character. Meanwhile, her aunt’s brother Vincent (W. Morgan Sheppard) was in search of his sister’s “cook” book for all of the power it contained.

This film is a big, really dumb hoot for one reason only…Elvira. She is fantastic in this movie, providing the best sexual innuendos I can ever remember hearing in a movie. She delivers these lines in a perfect, dry tone that hits you with an unexpected blast. My eyes bulged out several times from the brazen dialogue, shocked that they were able to “go there.”

The acting is not good. The story was simplistic and dumb. However, I really loved Elvira’s work in this movie. She totally saved it.

DailyView: Day 161, Movie 242

With the Dodgers game tonight on TBS, I knew it would be difficult to get a movie watched for the DailyView today so, after watching What If…? this morning, I pulled up HBO Max and found one of the Charlie Chaplin movies, Shoulder Arms.

Shoulder Arms was just shy of forty minutes long and saw Charlie Chaplin out of his “Little Tramp” persona. Instead, he was Charlie, the Doughboy, an infantryman during World War I. Charlie, along with his real life brother Sydney Chaplin, were two soldiers dealing with all kinds of situations in the war. Set in France, the film became one of the first films that was a comedy set in wartime.

Shoulder Arms is very funny as Chaplin is the master of this brand of comedy. The slapstick and pantomime is top notch. This was one of Chaplin’s most popular films and felt more epic than a lot of his other, shorter films that I have done during the DailyView.

This was a lot of fun and worked well to keep the DailyView going. Go Dodgers!

DailyView: Day 160, Movie 241

How about a Victorian era London horror/mystery/thriller featuring a Jack the Ripper style killer and a mystery worthy of the Scotland Yard gentlemen detectives? Yes, please. I found this one going through the film available on Hulu tonight and this sounded like a good one.

I have always had a fascination with Jack the Ripper and other serial killers, which they would eventually be labeled.

So I wanted to go ahead and watch this movie from 2016 called The Limehouse Golem starring Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke.

The infamous Limehouse Golem killer was running around London causing panic and fear. Scotland Yard sent the well known detective John Kildare (Bill Nighy), an act that Kildare suspected was a plan to set him up as a scapegoat, a detective to be a failure to the public.

Kildare started investigating the case anyway and the evidence led him to the sensational trial of Lizzie Cree (Olivia Cooke) who was accused of poisoning her playwright husband John Cree (Sam Reid). She was facing losing the case and her life, but Kildare had the suspicion that John Cree was the Limehouse Golem killer.

The performances of the film were good, especially Bill Nighy as the Scotland Yard inspector. Olivia Cooke played her damaged character extremely well and you were never sure exactly what had happened with her. I liked how her character was played.

The story was filled with red herrings trying to make us confused with the killer. They did a neat thing during flashbacks of showing the suspect narrating the murder of the certain victims. It was clear that the film was using the technique to help tell the story and not just cause confusion. I liked that trick very much.

I did have a pretty good idea about who the killer was going to turn out to be. That did not bother mem even though it typically does. It all did fit together and I like when a movie works.

This was a good watch and a nice addition to the October DailyView.