My final entry for this year’s celebration came down to, once again, me trying to decide between two of my favorite vampire movies: 30 Days of Night (2007) and Fright Night (1985). 30 Days of Night is about the takeover of Barrow, Alaska (the northernmost city in Alaska that can go a solid month without daylight) by vicious, feral vampires, led by the incomparable Danny Huston. I love this movie because the vampires are ferocious and monstrous, the way vampires should be. Consider this my commentary on Twilight vampires and to an extent, Anne Rice’s vampires. I prefer for my vamps to be fucking savages.
10/31/2020
Horror 102: Body Horror
The Fly (1986) stars Jeff Goldblum as eccentric scientist Seth Brundle. Seth has invented a teleportation device, which garners the interest of investigative reporter Veronica Quaife, played by Geena Davis. Veronica wants to write an article about Seth’s research but Seth convinces her to wait, as there are some kinks that need to be ironed out. Veronica spends time with Seth while he works on the device and they eventually fall in love.
10/30/2020
Horror 102: Horror Comedy
Horror 102: Werewolf Horror
Directed by the homie Wes Craven, Cursed (2005) is a movie about siblings Ellie (Christina Ricci) and Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg) who get into a car accident and are injured by a large animal. They start to exhibit wolfish tendencies by being attracted to the smell of blood, eating raw meat, and being agile and able to move quickly. They realize that they were attacked by a werewolf, and other women are being ruthlessly murdered by it as well.
10/29/2020
Horror 102: Old Horror
A/N: I’ve been unavailable for the past couple of days and so I’ve gotten behind in my posting. But I will catch up by doing two-fers for the next couple of days. Halloween will be here soon!!
I went back and forth with this one for a long time. My top choices were Tod Browning’s Freaks (1930) and Elmer G. Unger’s The Black Cat (1934). While I love Freaks, especially the ending, I went with The Black Cat because in the end, it had Boris Karloff playing a Satan-worshipping villain and I am here for anything and everything Boris Karloff.
10/26/2020
Horror 102: Women in Horror
The Descent (2005) is a British horror film about a group of female thrill-seekers engaging in a spelunking trip in North Carolina. The women, led by the fearless Juno (Natalie Mendoza), are of the belief that they are exploring a known cave system. However, Juno has misled her friends and taken them to an unexplored system because she wanted them to be the ones credited for its discovery. Shortly after entering the caves, part of one collapses and the cave’s entry is sealed off, forcing the women to move deeper into the system in order to find another exit. What the women do not know is that the caves they’re traveling through are inhabited by feral creatures who hunt via sound. Situations occur and things happen, and the women end up getting separated, becoming fodder for the underground predators.
10/25/2020
Horror 102: Supernatural Horror
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) begins when the body of a woman is found unearthed in the basement of a house where a double murder took place. The body is taken to a mortuary, run by Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) and his son Austin (Emile Hirsch). They have been tasked to figure out the cause of death. Jane Doe’s body is layered with mysteries and as the father and son coroner team processes the body, the mysteries reveal themselves until Tommy and Austin figure out exactly who Jane Doe is and must suffer the consequences of knowing her identity.
This movie was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know what to expect, but once the autopsy began, I was hooked. Every time the coroners discovered one of Jane’s many, many injuries, it corresponded to a weird supernatural event in the real world of the autopsy room. By the time Tommy cracks open Jane’s skull to examine her brain, all hell breaks loose.
I love this movie, obviously. Definitely worth checking out.
10/23/2020
Horror 102: Horror Anthology
This wonderful little anthology came out in 2007. It’s a collection of five interrelated stories involving the “Rules of Halloween” and featuring a precious orange-pajama-burlap-sack-wearing little scamp named Sam. I adore Sam (which is a nickname for Samhain) and even when he gets unmasked, he’s still adorable. Sam is the keeper of Halloween and it is his job to make sure that the rules are followed.
10/20/2020
Horror 102: Black Horror
10/19/2020
Horror 102: Sci-Fi Horror
10/17/2020
Horror 102: Television Horror
NBC pulled a genius move in 2013 by hiring Bryan Fuller to run an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ characters from his novel Red Dragon. The show, called Hannibal, ran from April 2013 to August 2015. Mads Mikkelsen was tapped to play the character of Hannibal Lecter, and bay-bee...whew chile! There was a time when Anthony Hopkins was the definitive Lecter, but Mads has since supplanted Sir Anthony. He plays Hannibal as the Devil and does things just to see what happens. The co-star of this excellent show is the adorable Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, known to us fans of the book as the one who caught Hannibal Lecter. The cast also includes Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford and he killed that role.
10/15/2020
Horror 102: Holiday Horror
I saw the original Black Christmas (1974) about fifteen years ago after reading about how influential it was on later horror movies, such as When A Stranger Calls and my beloved Halloween. Being that it was from 1974, I felt good that it was going to be a worthwhile watch. One minute in, I was not disappointed. The movie opens from the killer’s perspective; he’s peeking into the windows of a sorority house, finds a rose trellis and climbs it, gaining entry to the house via the attic.
Downstairs, the sorority sisters are doing sorority sister things. What’s interesting is that periodically, one of the sisters will go upstairs to do something or get something and is murdered by the creepazoid and stashed either in the attic or in one of the bedrooms...and for the longest time, people don’t notice that they don’t come back downstairs. The killer crank calls the girls, using language that he heard them say in conversation. The father of the first girl that was murdered, Clare, comes to pick her up and is frustrated that she cannot be located.
10/13/2020
Horror 102: Alien Horror
Man, this was a toss-up between two of my absolute faves: Alien and The Thing. Both are horror classics. Both were game-changers; Alien more so than The Thing, but when I did mental gymnastics trying to decide between the two...I chose The Thing. Why? Because of that ending.
Based off J. W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?”, John Carpenter’s The Thing came out in 1982, around the same time as Steven Spielberg’s E.T. Most movie-goers at the time preferred to see a benevolent alien rather than a malevolent one, and as a result, The Thing flopped hard in theaters. But over time, people have come to realize that The Thing is an excellent film; one of Carpenter’s best works and perhaps one of the greatest movies of all time.
10/11/2020
Horror 102: Children in Horror
The Bad Seed (1956) is about a mother, Christine Penmark, who slowly comes to grips with the idea that her eight-year-old daughter, Rhoda, might be a serial killer. Rhoda, played by Patty McCormack, presents as almost perfect. Rhoda believes that she deserves all the good things and when she fails to win a penmanship award, it brings out her innate amoral ugliness. Her desire to have the things she wants leads to the deaths of two people. Christine believes that she passed that amoral trait on to her daughter and as such, blames herself. But Rhoda is very much her own person, and a very evil one at that.
I love, love, LOVE this movie.
10/09/2020
Horror 102: Foreign Horror
The Vanishing is a 1988 Dutch film about the abduction of a woman, Saskia, from a rest stop. This movie takes a different tack, as you know right up front who kidnapped her and why. Saskia’s boyfriend, Rex, has been tormented for three years wondering what happened to her. He starts to get postcards from Saskia’s abductor, which frustrates him even more.
Eventually, the two meet and the abductor, a mild-mannered chemistry professor named Raymond, tells Rex that in order to find out what happened to Saskia, he must be willing to experience what she did. Rex stupidly, foolishly agrees to Raymond’s demands. Is knowing what happened to her better than not knowing? Rex soon finds out.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m claustrophobic. The final few scenes in The Vanishing have stuck with me for decades and are the stuff of my nightmares. I can barely watch the end of the movie without getting anxious.
That’s horror done right.
10/08/2020
Horror 102: Creature Feature Horror
The Relic (1997) is one of my all-time favorite movies. My bestie and I caught it at the dollar theater waaaaay back in the day. A detective, Lt. D’Agosta is investigating the decapitation deaths of the crew of a cargo ship and they lead him to Chicago’s Museum of Natural History, where he meets an evolutionary biologist, Dr. Green. More murders happen in the museum and Green and D'Agosta have to work together to discover the culprit; which just so happens to be the Kothoga, a South American chimeric lizard god. The beast is quickly and constantly evolving due to rapid mutations in its DNA.
10/06/2020
Horror 102: Folk Horror
Sgt. Howie is a celibate Christian, and when he realizes that Summerisle’s citizens are pagans, he becomes disturbed by their behavior and frustrated that they won’t help him in finding out what happened to Rowan. What Sgt. Howie doesn’t know is that his presence on the island is deliberate, and what awaits him is drop-dead terrifying.
I watched this movie, bemused at the antics of the locals, and when I realized what was going on and saw Sgt. Howie’s ultimate fate, I was mesmerized. Folk horror is usually hit or miss for me, but The Wicker Man slaps!
10/04/2020
Horror 102: Satanic Horror
I watched Angel Heart (1987) shortly after it came out on video. The hype surrounding the movie at the time was the fact that Lisa Bonet (Denise from The Cosby Show) starred in the movie and did things that “soiled” her “good girl” image. But that’s a discussion for another day. I was a pre-teen when I first saw Angel Heart, and therefore a lot of it got past me. It wasn’t until I watched it again when I was older that I understood what was going on, and bay-bee....!
The movie is based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel, published in 1978. Basically, a well-dressed mysterious gentleman procures the services of private investigator Harry Angel to track down a singer named Johnny Favorite. Apparently, Johnny Favorite is in debt to the gentleman, one Mr. Louis Cyphere, played to the T by Robert DeNiro. Harry accepts the job, but soon finds himself deep into a web of mystery and intrigue, and waaaay over his head.
The ending scene, interspersed with the closing credits, sticks with me to this day. I’ll never look at an elevator ride the same.
10/03/2020
Horror 102: My Favorite Horror Movies
As you know, Dilettantes…the 10th month is here and I am overjoyed! It’s my favorite time of year and last year, I learned how to celebrate it as only I can. Last year, I began a series called Horror 101, where I brought to the forefront a mixture of my favorite horror novels, horror stories, horror movies and horror TV shows.
This year, I plan to continue the series. I am going to focus strictly on horror movies. When I first came up with this idea, I foolishly thought I could do a top 10 list of my favorite horror movies. I shared this idea with Noob, a fellow horror head, and she promptly laughed in my face.
9/26/2020
Update
Hey Dilettantes!
I've been in Senegal for six weeks now and have finally gotten over jet lag. So far, all is good. I love my new job, I like my new apartment, and I've made a few friends. One of the best things about moving here is knowing that I wasn't going to be the only black woman at the job. It is such a relief to be amongst my tribe...but I gotta brush up on my conversational French.
Now that things are settling down, I plan to resume posting on a regular basis. I got plans to celebrate the great month of October and my favorite holiday, Halloween, with the next phase in my homage to all things horror. More to come in that regard.
Just wanted to touch base with you guys! I'll check in with you soon.
6/29/2020
Update!
June has been a very busy month and I'm off my writing schedule (obvs). My posting here in Indonesia has ended and I am going home for a short break before moving to Africa. I've accepted a position in Senegal and I'm really excited about it. The opportunity for new opportunities awaits.
I've enjoyed my time in Asia, and it's time to give the Motherland some love. I will be traveling for the next two days, and after spending some time with my loved ones, I will be moving on.
If you'd told me ten years ago that I would be a world traveler, I wouldn't have believed you. Even though it was a dream of mine, at that time in my life I couldn't even believe it was possible. I was in a lot of mental and emotional pain and couldn't see past it. But now, I have the life that I want and worked hard for.
Goes to show you how funny life can be.
6/02/2020
Terminator: Dark Fate
5/27/2020
Midsommar
5/19/2020
Parasite
5/04/2020
The Mighty Elements of the Universe
4/29/2020
My Favorite Things: Matt Stonie
Source |
4/20/2020
My Favorite Things: How to Cake It
4/13/2020
My Favorite Things: Cosmo Queens
3/24/2020
Update
1/22/2020
Fic Update Alert!
1/10/2020
Fic Update Alert!
“I understand that Shantreyl is your sister and you have a dynamic. But as long as I’m with her—and I intend to be until death do us part—don’t you ever talk to her like that again. I don’t give a good goddamn about anyone’s feelings at this table except hers, and this is the second time you’ve disrespected her in front of me. I will not put up with it. You’re here on my dime at her request, so the least you can do is show her some respect. If you find that you can’t do that, then you are welcome—even encouraged—to leave my hotel immediately and find your own way back home.”