We are continuing the October Horror Binge here at EYG Doc’s Classic Movies Reviewed and now we come upon a horror/comedy classic from the early 1980s, Gremlins.

When inventor Rand (Hoyt Axton) purchases a cute, fuzzy creature called a Mogwai from a Chinatown store, he is given strict advice.  “Don’t expose him to bright light. Don’t ever get him wet. And don’t ever, ever feed him after midnight.”

Well, it is not long before Billy (Zach Galligan) has broken all three of these rules and the result?  The Mogwai, that the family has called Gizmo, starts to multiply.  And the results are not near as war and fuzzy as Gizmo.

My memory of seeing this movie originally when I was young was that I was not very thrilled by it.  In fact, I seem to remember even not liking the movie.  It has probably been over thirty years since I saw this movie and, while my opinion sometimes varies on some films, unfortunately, I had the same reaction to Gremlins that I did when I first saw it.

I was unimpressed.

I will say that I liked the practical effects of the movie.  There is no way we would get something like this today.  Today’s version would be full of CGI and special effects that would make the Gremlins feel more real and less special.  The cuteness of these little creatures more than made up for any lingering problems with practical effects.

The rest of the film was not great.  There was a forced story for side characters, including Phoebe Cates.  There was a horrific role for Polly Holliday (Flo from the Alice TV show) who appeared to be playing the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz.

Hoyt Axton did voice over at the very beginning and at the very end of the movie and it felt out of place after seeing the entire film.

Sure there were some cute moments and the Gremlins are imaginative, but the human characters are lacking and the story itself is simplistic.  I found myself bored by much of the movie and it reinforced my first impressions of Gremlins all those years ago.

I had not intended on doing this film, but as I was flipping around the TV, I came across Halloween H20: 20 Years Later on AMC.  So I decided to watch it as part of the October Horror Binge.

I know this movie has been expunged out of existence by the most recent Halloween (2018) that was a direct sequel to the original film.  All other Halloween movies are tossed aside into the world of non-canon.  That was probably a wise choice.

Here, Jamie Lee Curtis returned to her role as Laurie Strode, now living under a pseudonym and working as a dean of a northern school.  She is drastically over protective of her son (Josh Hartnett) who is getting tired of the family boogyman.  Unfortunately, it is Halloween and Michael Myers is back with his knife.

It was weird hearing Laurie call Michael her brother, as this was one of the twists in the series that had been expunged by the reboot.  That is a wise move as all of that connection felt very forced.

Then, this movie could not have crammed any more jump scares into the film’s run time.  There were jump scare after jump scare and most of them were simply the music getting louder and someone jumps out and surprises the character.  In other words, fake outs.  These may work once in a while, but I swear the first half of the movie was nothing but fake out jump scares knitted together with a thin connective tissue.

Jamie Lee Curtis is great as always. There is actually quite an impressive cast here as the cast included Michelle Williams, Adam Arkin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, LL Cool J, Janet Leigh, and Josh Hartnett.  Nobody gave their career best performance here though.

Michael Myers showed up in the third act and stomped around and really did not do much more than kill a few supporting characters.  It was not very well done.

I am not sorry this has been removed form canon.  It deserved to go.

With the October Horror Binge in full swing, I decided to take a step into the world of psychological thrillers with horror elements.  And what better film to fall into that category than the classic Oscar winning The Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins?

Has there been a more terrifying and intense performance than Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter?  It is why he was able to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role when he only actually appears on screen for a little over 16 minutes.

Jodie Foster brings the goods in this movie as Clarice Starling, a young FBI cadet who is sent in to see Lecter in an opportunity to pick Lecter’s brain about another serial killer, ‘Buffalo Bill’ (Ted Levine), who skins his victims.  Lecter takes a strange liking to Clarice and leads her to clues on the case.

While the leads get a lot of the well-deserved attention, Ted Levine does not get the credit he deserves for creating one of the most disturbing and frightening serial killers that we have sen on screen ever.  Some of Levine’s moments are absolutely menacing and horrifying.  It is unbelievable that the actor Ted Levine who played Buffalo Bill is the same actor who played Leland Stottlemeyer on Monk.

Director Jonathan Demme is masterful in the creation of suspense and tension. The shots are both disturbing and beautiful all in one.

If you have not seen The Silence of the Lambs, this is the ultimate film of suspense and tension.  The film contains a bunch of outstanding performances and some of the best direction you will ever see.  It is an all-time classic and worth the re-watch any time.

After the frightening horror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was ready for a change in the October Horror Binge.  So I went back to a couple of old friends:  Abbott & Costello.  This time, the comedic pair are meeting up with the Mummy.

The final of the Universal films featuring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meting up with Universal monsters.  They had met Frankenstein, the Invisible Man and then the Mummy.

The film contained all of the typical Abbott and Costello bits, including a take on the famous “Who’s on First” routine using the word “Mummy.”  Another bit that made its way into many Abbott & Costello films was Lou seeing something, being scared, running to Bud only to have the thing disappear by the time they returned.  It was a routine they did regularly, and it appeared here many times.

In fact, the repetition shows how the duo has started to slip.  The comedy of Abbott & Costello was losing steam after a long stretch of success and in Abbott & Costello Meets the Mummy, you can see the strain.

And yet, looking back there are funny moments.  I have loved Bud & Lou for years and this, albeit not their strongest work, was a nice palate cleanser after the insanity of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The October Horror Binge continued tonight with what many consider one of the most influential horror films of all time.  The film that helped create the genre of slasher films that included giant, faceless hulking beasts as killers:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre featured the killer known as Leatherface and a severely creepy film that is listed as “based on true events” though that it not actually true.  I mean, the story is fiction, but Leatherface himself is said to be based on serial killer Ed Gein.

The film has a realistic feel to it as it does not seem to be a studio movie.  The actors feel as if they are just kids coming across this monstrous killer and the whole film has a documentary type vibe going down.  That creates even more terror than something that is slick and perfect.

What is even more frightening is that this is something that could happen.  Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers are all characters that have some kind of supernatural/mystical binge to them, but Leatherface is basically a crazed cannibal in a mask with a chainsaw.  That is something that could happen.

And then it becomes so bat shit crazy that the horror really grips you.  The whole Grandpa bit was about as creepy as I could stand.  I had never seen this movie before and the portrayals of these crazy villains were not what I had expected.  Even Leatherface was one of the more original creatures you would ever see.

And all of that screaming.  And those extreme close ups.  Man, it is an unnerving film and I can see why it was controversial.

I found it somewhat unsatisfactory at the end because I was invested in seeing this weirdo family get what was coming to them and I only got a little of that.  Again, it is very much like other horror movies that do not end with a happy ending.  And truthfully, there was a survivor.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a film that I would want to watch on a regular basis, but I did appreciate seeing the classic film during this binge.

We are diving way back to the late 1960s for our next October Horror Binge as one of the iconic films, Rosemary’s Baby, was released.  Rosemary’s Baby is a psychological thriller/horror film directed by the infamous Roman Polanski featuring Mia Farrow as Rosemary, a young woman whose pregnancy may be more than it seems.

Rosemary and Guy moved into a new apartment despite the fact that their friend Hutch attempted to dissuade them from taking it considering the questionable past of the building.  Their neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet, immediately thrust themselves into the couple’s lives.  When Rosemary and Guy decided to have a baby, the Castvets got involved even more with special drinks and foods.

On the night when Rosemary is planning to be impregnated, she was drugged and raped by a demonic force.  She became pregnant.

When Rosemary believed , she became desperate to try and find out the truth.

The film was very tense.  Even though we saw the rape scene, the film built it as if Rosemary was paranoid and crazy.  There was always a slight doubt.

The movie is creepy as heck and the whole Satanic stuff works in the horror genre.  This is more subtle than you think and developed a really thrill ride that makes you desperate to cheer for Mia Farrow.

It is one of the great horror movies of all time.