Hmm

I think I'm gonna update the way I do tags on this damned thing. This is what I'm thinking of;

Instead of stars, I might do the following; Meh (replaces 1 Star), Okay (replaces 2-3 Stars), Cool (replaces 4 Stars) and AWESOME (replaces 5 Stars).

I'll probably also do tags for the name of the thing that I'm reviewing, and tags for Movie, TV, Game, etc, you know whatever the media is.

Yeah, I'll do that.

A long time out in the cold

It has been a long time since I updated the A to Z, so I thought I'd return with a bit of a revisitation in my approach to the poor old neglected blog. From now on, I think I'm going to more randomly cover the old collection, but also broaden the scope a bit to include random bits of non-movie horror as well.

After a long hiatus

I'm back. Laziness and life in equal measure have intruded on the horror-lovin'.

That being said, a new review should be up today. Fingers crossed.

A question...

This is a question for my thriving, teeming audience of 4. Should I throw in some horror/supernatural TV at the end of this project? Should I avoid horror/supernatural TV? Should I establish a parallel blog?

Stuff I COULD cover includes;
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer
• Angel
• Moonlight
• True Blood
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Kolchak
• X-Files/Millennium
• Forever Knight

It's a dilemma alright...

The Swag

A random selection from the swag of films I picked up recently - some DVD replacements for old VHS copies, a bit of giallo, some devil horror, Rollin vampirism, and The Cell - a good film to watch with the sound off and industrial music played over the top of it.

Next

Next up we've got three little sweet gems;

• An American Haunting - Donald Sutherland meets the Bell Witch legend.
• An American Werewolf in London - John Landis does lycanthropy.
• And Now The Screaming Starts - Amicus ghostly revenge film.

And thus does the enthusiasm come flooding back...

Another Amityville Addendum

So I made a mistake, the Amityville house is not for sale for 1.5M USD. Still, check it out, now renumbered as 108 Ocean Avenue, and without the weird quarter circle windows: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/108-Ocean-Ave-Amityville-NY-11701/32596605_zpid/

Amityville addendum

Something I should have added to the wrap-up on Amityville. In one of the doco special features, Margot Kidder talked about meeting horror fans because of the film. She said that she liked meeting horror fans because, unlike a lot of other movie fans, horror fans were actually quite intelligent and seemed generally quite knowledgeable about cinema.

That's really nice isn't it? Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Margot Kidder, I salute you.

And now, shower me with your pity...

For next I must contend with not one, not two but THREE, THREE Amityville sequels.

(from the ever-helpful Wikipedia)
• Amityville II: The Possession (1982) based on the DeFeo story, and with some fascinatingly repulsive incest thrown in.
• Amityville 3D (1983) (made in 3-D, and has also been released as Amityville III: The Demon) Meg Ryan in trouble again.
• The Amityville Curse (1990). Where someone buys a haunted LAMP or some shit from an Amityville garage sale. EDIT: It's not a lamp, I just had no recollection of what happened in this film since I saw it 5 years ago.

Wikipedia also reliably informs me that nine Amityville movies have been made in total. NINE. The mind boggles.

Another interlude

Supernatural Romance must be stopped.
Look, I'm not averse to a Sookie Stackhouse book. They're a fun combination of mystery and soft porn, with monsters and mayhem thrown in for jollies. But I see bookstores increasingly dispersing their horror content across the store into thriller or general fiction settings, to replace that prime shelf space with 'Supernatural Romance'. Twilight books and books with covers where Fabio has been turned into a vampire or werewolf are becoming horribly predominant.

It is a pretty common thing for people to rip on Twilight. I confess, I am more often than not the ringleader of such discussions. But Stephanie Meyer, you have up-ended a proud and noble literary tradition with your series of twonk young romance novels. There's more to horror and the supernatural than getting shagged by a bare-chested vampire.

If you are reading this and care about horror, I urge you, grill your bookstores about why they have no horror section any more. Twilight and its ilk are a passing blip, a trend. Shonky hand shandy material for teens and soccer moms who should know better.

I don't mind if these books try to hang out IN a horror section, but the day they displace the horror section is the day the world goes topsy-turvy. I refuse to see why Poe, Lovecraft, Bierce, LeFanu, Stoker, Barker, King, Rice, Brite, Koontz and everyone else should stand aside for an illiterate Mormon with a penchant for writing domineering vamp boyfriends.

I implore you, stop them before the only place we can find a vampire is writhing on black silk sheets with a blank cypher Mary-Sue. It's not too late.

Rant over peeps. Go back about your business.

Laziness

So I was meant to do those two reviews (Phibes and After...) last weekend. I am a creature of terrible laziness. Still, to make up for it, I'll try to squeeze one extra in today if possible. Just don't hold your breath, is all I'm saying.

The tyranny of boxed sets

Something else I should also mention. I have a few boxed sets. I really didn't want to go through those as well when I was going alphabetically, so I've decided to leave them to the spot they're in on the shelf at home - ie last. I have a couple of Hammer boxed sets, so this means that the single films I have that tie into them, the Draculas and the Frankensteins notably, are going to wait until I get to those boxed sets. Life would be much simpler if I had all these just sitting on a hard drive, but I am a good person who purchases original copies, so my job is a little more complicated.

*sigh*

Next 3 films

Next up are the following;
• As mentioned earlier Vincent Price's classic 'The Abominable Dr Phibes'.
• The film that really, really wants to be Jacob's Ladder but isn't, After…
• And I know it's not really horror, but Altered States scared the shizz outta me when I was a kid, so it's on the list.

What's next

Up next are the following;
• 30 Days of Night, a classy modern vampire film based on the excellent graphic novel of the same name.
• Abandoned, a nice little film set in Russia, exploring the doppelganger legend.
• The Abominable Dr Phibes, starring the undisputed king of cheese horror, Vincent Price.

Some more recent purchases

Some more recent purchases to round out the collection;
• The Australian bizarre zombie film 'Undead'
• John Carpenter's cult classic 'They Live'
• and the 'based (loosely) on a true story' ghost film 'The Haunting In Connecticut'

Three Mothers trilogy

Finally got my hands on a copy of Inferno, so this means I can review the complete 'Three Mothers' trilogy. Sadly this Argento trilogy is going to have to wait until I reach 'S' for 'Suspiria'.

What's up next

Up first is the British Zombie apocalypse film '28 Days Later' and its sequel '28 Weeks Later'.

Format

After some thought, I'm going to try and follow a standard format in my reviews. Which will be something like this;

Title of post will be the films being reviewed.
First lines will be film name, year of release, director and any notable stars.
Premise: What the film is about in a nutshell.
Analysis: What I think of the film, the 'meat' of the review.
Rating: I generally don't like ratings, as I think they're a bit arbitrary, but I'm going to do them anyway. Each film reviewed gets a rating out of 5, which works on the following scale;
1 - Absolutely f#@king dire. Do not watch unless you are masochistic or insane.
2 - Not good. Could have been made by an alcoholic in his sleep.
3 - Not too bad. Enjoyable and entertaining.
4 - Quite good. Definitely worth watching.
5 - Excellent. A must-see, the dog's bollocks and the cat's pyjamas.

EDIT: I've subsequently decided to do a rating based on MEH (1 Star), OKAY (2-3 Stars), COOL (4 Stars) and AWESOME (5 Stars).

Okay so soon, I'm actually gonna put up reviews. First on the shelf is 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later.

Remakes

I'm not over-fond of remakes, in fact with only a few exceptions, most remakes seem to be glossy attempts to cash in on a viewer's nostalgia and line Michael Bay's pockets. With this is mind, I am going to try and give remakes somewhat of a fair go, and watch them back to back with their originals, and try to find any areas where they are actually better (this might be a bit of a fool's errand). There are a lot of remakes out there, especially of the big classics, and quite a few just in recent years.

I hope you all appreciate the sacrifice I'm making for you. I watch Platinum Dunes remakes so that you don't have to...

Welcome

Okay, so this idea is a bit crazy, but I've decided to review every film on my horror shelf, which is running to about 400 at present. Largely so I don't pick favourites, I'm going to do it more or less alphabetically. I say 'more or less' because I'm also going to try and cover a film's sequels at the same time as the original, so rather than do Dawn of the Dead at 'D', I'm going to get through to 'N' for Night of the Living Dead, and try and do Night, Night (Remake), Dawn, Dawn (Remake), Day, Day (Remake), Land, Diary and hopefully Survival (if i've picked it up by then) in one epic session.

Edit: Even if a trilogy or series has an overarching title, eg Argento's 'Three Mothers' trilogy, I'm going by the name of the first film in that series, so in that example, I cover Three Mothers under 'S' for 'Suspiria'.

An ambitious, perhaps insane, plan I know. Now I'm going to review each film in a retrospective sense, so this means I'm going to post SPOILERS. I'll try and put any notes on the ending of the film after a spoiler warning, but everything else in the film is completely fair game.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the show...