Sober Horror Fan

Day 63 of Sobriety. So, The Killing of a Sacred Deer opens with close-up footage of real open heart surgery. “Oh great,” I thought, “it’s Castle of the Creeping Flesh all over again…” But, for better or for worse, that is where the similarities end. I heard about The Killing of a Sacred Deer because it was on a list of “most disturbing horror films,” that I came across online, but having watched it, I’m not really sure it really deserves to ranked (as it was) alongside films like Martyrs (2008) and Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromatik (1987). The plot is about a heart surgeon who befriends a teenage boy who is the son of a former patient, but after he introduces the boy to his family, events take a strange and sinister turn. One interesting thing to note here is that, without giving away any spoilers, alcohol abuse plays a small but very significant role in the plot. The most striking thing about the film is the acting, and especially the way the actors deliver their dialogue. It ...

Day 61 of Sobriety.  Well, today marked the end of my second calendar month of sobriety. What better way to celebrate than sitting down to watch a film that no one in their right mind would watch sober. Also known as Hell of the Living Dead and Virus , I think this is the second film that I have seen that was helmed by notorious Italian exploitation director Bruno Mattei, the first being Zombi 3 , which was co-directed by Lucio Fulci and which I remember absolutely nothing about because I was drunk when I watched it. I do remember thinking it was mediocre though. “Mediocre” is not really a word that can be applied to Zombie Creeping Flesh , because in some ways it is astonishing—or maybe flabbergasting would be a more appropriate term. “Good” is also not really a word that could be applied. In fact, this film is so weird and messed up that almost no words can be applied without a lot of qualification. I was entertained though, so maybe “entertaining” would be the exc...

Day 59 of Sobriety. Here’s another film that I really don’t know where to begin with. Cathy’s Curse is a French-Canadian co-production that was shot in snowy Quebec. It is about a family who moves into the father’s old family home. However, the father’s family has a tragic history, and lingering supernatural forces in the house begin to exert a malevolent influence, particularly on their eight-year-old daughter, Cathy. This is one of those films that is either derided as complete garbage or enjoyed ironically as a “cult classic.” It is extremely low budget, the script is full of bizarre non-sequiturs, and the acting is generally pretty wooden. There are so many off-the-wall scenes and crazy one-liners that it would be the ideal film to watch while getting wrecked with a group of friends and laughing your asses off. But not me. I watched on my own, stone cold sober. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not frightening, and I couldn’t take it too seriously—I did shake my head ...

Day 56 of Sobriety.   Sheesh… Where to start with this one..? I was curious about Martyrs because, while it had a reputation for being extremely violent and disturbing, it also seemed to be pretty well regarded, garnering high positions in quite a lot of rankings of “best horror films of the decade,” and so on. I knew that the film involved graphic scenes of women and children being subjected to abuse, and was not going to be a comfortable experience, so it languished in my “to watch” pile for a considerable time before I felt mentally robust enough to sit down and watch it. And yeah, it was very grim viewing indeed. Without giving away the plot (and it does have a plot—it’s certainly not a mindless film) it is pretty much non-stop violence, trauma, and torture for its entire running time. Having looked at various reviews of the film online, one response that seemed to come up repeatedly in various iterations was, “It’s a good film, but I never, ever, want to sit thr...

Day 53 of Sobriety.  Another day, another horror film revolving around a creepy cat. I don’t know why but I have been coming across a lot of creepy cats recently. Since I started this blog less than two months ago, I have watched The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), The Legacy (1978), and now another one: Darker Than Night , which is my third and final film from the three-film set of Carlos Enrique Taboada films put out by Vinegar Syndrome under the title Mexican Gothic . Of the other two, I enjoyed one: Poison for the Fairies (1984), and did not really care much for the other: Rapiña (1973), so I went in hoping it would score two out of three. The plot of Darker Than Night concerns four attractive young women that move to a creepy old mansion that one of them has inherited from a deceased aunt. This surprises the woman, because the aunt was estranged from her while she was alive. However, she seems to have been a slightly eccentric character, and her one stipulation was that ...

Day 52 of Sobriety.    I had always been curious about this film, I think largely because I’ve always liked the band of the same name. (It seems hard to believe, but the band say that the naming was a coincidence, apparently—claiming that they were aware of the film when they decided on the name.) I have been watching quite a few “slasher” movies recently. Quite unusual for me, but I have enjoyed some of them a lot and I think I can now consider myself a fan of that sub-genre. The last one I saw, Happy Birthday to Me , was, like My Bloody Valentine a Canadian production from 1981 (well, a Canada-US co-production). That film fell flat with me, but not to be deterred I eagerly sat down for a sober Sunday evening with My Bloody Valentine . It has a lot in common with Happy Birthday to Me (and, I suppose, 90% of slasher movies). In Happy Birthday to Me , the plot revolves around a group of high school students throwing a birthday party, who get picked off one-by-one b...

Day 50 of Sobriety.    The Case of the Bloody Iris is an Italian giallo by a director called Giuliano Carnimeo, who I am totally unfamiliar with. Looking at his filmography, I realized that is probably because he mainly seems to have directed westerns and comedies—not much on the way of horror or gialli. I was, though, familiar with a couple of the faces that appeared in the movie, notably Edwige Fenech who always adds a bit of sparkle to anything that she appears in. In the film, Fenech plays a model (and former member of a weird sex cult) who moves into an apartment whose former female occupants were bumped off by a masked serial killer. I mean, as a young woman, why would you have any reservations about moving into an apartment like that?? Therein lies the biggest problem with The Case of the Bloody Iris : none of the characters in the film are remotely credible. Or is that really such a negative? After all, the same could be said for many gialli, and many ho...

Day 49 of Sobriety. I had been wanting to re-watch the first Ring (1998) movie for a while, as I saw it a few years after it came out and remember it being very creepy and really liking it. Then recently, as fortune would have it, I came across a copy of Arrow Video’s Ring blu-ray box for an incredibly cheap price. It includes Ring , Ring 2 , the prequel, Ring 0: Birthday (2000), and the “alternative” sequel that predated Ring 2 , called Spiral (1998). I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Spiral , and that I enjoyed it too. Apparently, though, the producers didn’t care much for the sci-fi-ish direction of the plot development in Spiral, so they quickly made another, more horror-oriented sequel: Ring 2 . Before watching Ring 2 , I watched the first Ring again—for the first time in about twenty years. I enjoyed it again, but not so much as I remember having done so the first time around. I guess it is just not so fresh as it once seemed, having been widely imitated. The creepy horror...

Day 47 of Sobriety. Before watching The Legacy , I thought it was strange that I had never come across it before. A British horror film (albeit a US co-production) that was frequently shown on British TV, which was scripted by Hammer mainstay Jimmy Sangster, and which features Roger Daltry (whose lavish mansion residence served as the location for the bulk of the film). It was directed by Richard Marquand, whose name didn’t really ring any bells, but it turns out he also directed Return of the Jedi (1983) and the 1985 thriller Jagged Edge . Watching the first few minutes of the film, it looked like it might be exactly what I was hoping it would be: a low-key, moody, late-70s horror movie focusing on the plight of everyday people in a contemporary setting. It opens in Los Angeles where a couple—Maggie and her boyfriend Pete, who are both interior decorators have just received a mysterious but lucrative job offer that entails a sojourn in England. Although they have misgiv...

Day 46 of Sobriety. Also known simply as Girly in the US, I first heard of this film’s existence a few months ago via the excellent Bedabbled fanzine, which is devoted to British cult and horror cinema. The film was discussed in such glowing terms—and sounded so strange—that I felt I had to see it. Unfortunately, however, this is not a film that has ever really been very widely available, and I ended up having to pay a premium for an out-of-print US blu-ray on eBay. The plot revolves around a bizarre ersatz “family,” who spend their days role-playing the titular mother, daughter, son, and nanny (there is no father). They inhabit a secluded English manor house, where they amuse themselves by luring in men (“new friends”), mainly through the wiles of “girly,” the teenage daughter. Once lured to the house, the victims are forced to take part in the game being played by its inhabitants, generally resulting in their abuse and eventual murder, which is recorded on film for the...

Day 44 of Sobriety.  Cry of the Banshee is one of a handful of Vincent Price films directed by Gordon Hessler that include The Oblong Box (1969), which I also watched recently. Like The Oblong Box , Cry of the Banshee  purports to be based on an Edgar Allen Poe story, a claim that is apparently completely spurious. It certainly doesn’t resemble any Poe stories that I have read. It has been on my radar for a while, though, as it is usually included in the wider cannon of British “folk horror” films. I had no idea what to expect going into this film: it’s regarded as folk horror. the title refers to a banshee, I’d heard that there is a werewolf in it, and it claims to be a Poe story. I couldn’t really fit all of those elements together cohesively in my mind to generate any kind of expectation. As it turned out, the film itself is also rather muddled. Apparently this is due to some extensive and hasty re-writing of the script at the behest of the director. First thi...

Day 42 of Sobriety. Not to be confused with the 2022 film of the same name, this film by Karyn Kusama is about a divorced man named Will who attends a dinner party thrown by his ex-wife, Eden, and her new partner after her return from a two-year sojourn in Mexico. Will and Eden have a troubled past, and old trauma reemerges during the party, along with other shocking revelations. This is my second time to watch The Invitation . I remembered it being excellent, and it is. Much of the film’s power comes from the way things—about both the past and the present—are gradually revealed, so the less viewers know about it going in, the better. Even on second viewing, however, it was a powerful and atmospheric experience. The couple’s shared bereavement and loss, and the effect that has on them—both as a couple and as individuals—is a major theme of the movie, and, in that respect, it reminded me a lot of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), although the setting of 2015 Hollywoo...

Day 40 of Sobriety.  I have never particularly thought of myself as a much of a fan of “slasher” films, but I have had such a good run on them recently that I was beginning to change that assessment. In recent months I have watched (or re-watched) Manaic (1980), The New York Ripper (1982), The Burning (1981), Friday the 13th Parts 1 and 2 (1980, 1981),   Sleepaway Camp (1983), and probably some others that I can’t remember right now. Sadly, that good run has now ended with Happy Birthday to Me , which I didn’t really have much of a great time with at all. So, where does Happy Birthday to Me fail where those others succeed? Well…where to start? The first thing I noticed about the film was its running time. One thing I really appreciated about, for example, Sleepaway Camp was that it packed itself into a taught 84-minute running time. This resulted in a lean fast-moving film. In contrast, Happy Birthday to Me is a ponderous 111 minutes—and it felt it. This was espec...