Ten horror classics that just don't do it for me.

Not sure how much attention I'm going to get with this (or whether I'm gonna post it where people can see it), but I think I've seen enough horror movies to be able to discern which classics just don't work for me. 

10. Willard - There's actually some good moments here, thanks to the cast, but the TV-movie style presentation nearly sinks it. And then you have the all-over-the-place score by Alex North. The industrial film main title. The quirky rat attack music. The attempted love theme. This guy scored Spartacus a decade ago and you can practically hear North lamenting it in every note.

9. The Birds - Another animal attack movie. Maybe, I'm one of those assholes who needs a reason for stuff to happen in narratives, but this was a sketch comedy premise at best, ludicrously stretched to two hours. There's only so much that Hitchcock's craft can do.

8. Nosferatu - Can you say 'Day-for-night shooting'? I knew you could. And this isn't even a case of 'Well, it was the first vampire movie. They were still feeling their way around the mythos.'. Well, smarty-pants, riddle me this: if the vampire is able to walk around in the sunlight, pretending to be a coach driver and carrying a coffin and such, why is sunlight the thing that kills him at the end?!

7. House on Haunted Hill - William Castle. William Castle? William Castle! Dressing his movies up with gimmicks made him something of a success and while he's done some good in his career (Mr. Sardonicus, inspiring Matinee, buying the rights to Rosemary's Baby), the gimmick thing hasn't resulted in interesting movies. I love Vincent Price (and who doesn't?), but this movie...rather dull.

6. The Fearless Vampire Killers - Speaking of Rosemary's Baby...one of the movies that inspired Robert Evans to seek Roman Polanski out. It's certainly well-made (and Sharon Tate was a lovely damsel), but the film is a series of incidents that feel like they should be funny, but aren't. It's a comedy for people too refined to laugh.

5. Black Christmas - This one started off so well: creepy direction, snappy dialogue, appealing characters (while it's a shame that her demons got the better of her, I think it can be argued - between this and Superman - that we lost a bright light in Margot Kidder)...then the story got more protracted (so, they check the basement, but not the attic which I'm sure they're aware exists?), the characters got dumber (way to protect the baby you're so desperate to keep; just go right upstairs for your friends after you've been told to get out) and the killer went from menacing to irritating. No wonder the 2006 remake sucked untold amounts of ass. Look what they had to work with!

4. Lake Placid - Pretty much the movie you'd expect from the description 'David E. Kelley's Jaws'...and that is not a compliment. "If I had a dick, this is where I'd tell you to suck it." You see? It's funny because an old woman said that and old people don't often talk like that...and it's Betty White, the sweetest old woman we know! Comedy! For real, money laundering is the only plausible explanation for how this became a franchise.

3. The Blob - If not for its groovy theme song and soon-to-be-famous leading man, there is no damn hell ass way we'd be talking about this now. It's little more than an Allied Artists rip-off of Rebel Without a Cause with monster scenes awkwardly stitched in. Definitely a time (much like #7 and #10) that you'd be better off checking out the remake. Killer Klowns from Outer Space will also do in a pinch.

2. Night of the Living Dead - The plotting and dialogue and long stretches where nothing happens smack of an amateur production. Thankfully, George Romero would get to make better movies...before getting stuck back in the same genre.

1. 13 Ghosts - Once again, William Castle confuses having a gimmick with telling a fleshed-out story. The remake is loud, narratively cluttered and downright annoying, at times...and it's still a better movie! How sad is that?

Maybe, my standards are too high or maybe, not everything older than dirt is a masterpiece. You be the judge.

Playroom - Okay, so there are two cuts of this movie on YouTube. I watched the shorter one, but there's a longer version (like a minute or so longer) showing a downer ending that is available in international cuts of the film. I'd heard about this before I sat down to watch it and I was sure I had guessed it. 

The actual ending: the survivor, Jenny, is locked up in an institution for the murders of the other characters (pretty sure I've been over how and why I hate this trope).

My guess: ...well, at one point, Jenny and archaeologist Chris have sex (in the underground tomb; your guess is as good as mine as to why) and it's established that Chris is slowly being influenced by the evil Prince Ilok (and at one point, he states that he can never leave the tomb), so what if no protection was used and Jenny has been knocked up with a possible reincarnation of Ilok inside of her?

If I was the type that leaned toward unhappy endings, I would probably try to have one of my scripts end like this.

Tech support.

Well, I had a lot of problems with technology recently. It started primarily with my supervisors reprising talk of me needing a second monitor if I'm gonna be working from home...and I still maintain that I was given the monitor because they need it and not me. It's been sitting in my room since it was ordered for me in April. The result when I was able to hook it up (both times I tried) is a fuzzy ass screen; thank the splitter I needed to buy because space is limited on the computer.

The instructions for connecting the monitor with the cords I was sent are lost somewhere in my room, but thankfully, I was able to find them online. I was able to get a clear picture on the second monitor. Might've been a loose cord that needed to be pushed in. As it happens, it's likely one of those things I needed to talk myself into.

And just today, I had an appointment to talk to a higher-up manager on Zoom. For some reason, the camera already attached to my mother's computer didn't turn on when I needed it to (and nor did it seem to have an on switch, which...what the fuck?). A trifling thing, but for the fact that the higher-up needed to see my vaccination card, instead of trusting that I have half a brain enough to protect myself against the virus. Even with my profuse apologies, the woman was quite understanding. I gave up on Zoom and she suggested I download WhatsApp to my phone...only for that to take even longer. Eventually, I was able to get her the information she wanted.

Even so, in this modern society, you'd think that things wouldn't have to get so screwed up.

"It's my theme music. Every good hero should have some."

So, the other day, I finished a review of Michael Abels's score for Nightbooks. Pretty enjoyable, even if you had to dig for the thematic content that you'd imagine to be part and parcel of the fantasy-horror genre. (Though, in fairness, it took me a few listens to uncover the themes in Abels's Get Out.)

Now, as I've mentioned before, I’ve made so many CD purchases that I have sort of a pile of titles that it takes me a while to work through. Hell, I've still got titles I haven't listened to that I bought months ago. While doing a project at work, I decided to pop in Marco Beltrami's Hellboy: the Deluxe Edition*. The original 44-minute program on its own is my favorite score from the composer but the Deluxe Edition. Holy shit. Now I haven’t seen the movie in the 17 years since its original release, but let me tell you about this score: there are themes for Hellboy, Liz, Abe, the villains, Prof. Broom, as well as a destiny motive. With the various ways of these themes interplaying with each other and in so many different variations, there were melodic surprises around every corner of this score. I’ll be the first to admit that Beltrami is a hit-and-miss composer, but my God, this is a hit. This is what I wanted from Nightbooks.

These days, it’s like movie makers and studio heads and even some composers are just ashamed to have bold, thematic film music in the movies anymore. The other day, I watched the 1991 thriller Body Parts featuring a score from Loek Dikker, perhaps most well-known (at least, to film music fans) as the composer of Paul Verhoeven's The Fourth Man. Just imagine a movie these days with a peculiar score like that or, even further, the one Wojciech Kilar wrote for Bram Stoker’s Dracula the following year? I’m not saying every genre movie these days should be scored like these two, but at least 65-70% to be fair, okay?

I’m reminded of the time I went to see Bill and Ted Face the Music last year at the drive-in. Mark Isham’s score didn’t really ruin the movie, but it didn’t really do anything to enhance it, either. On the drive home, I pulled up David Newman’s score for Bogus Journey on YouTube and let me tell you, the use of themes really made a difference, especially the goofily determined motif for the evil robot doubles. It speaks to how invaluable Newman was to the first two movies.

This is why I should be so determined to make it in the movie business: so that future generations will know what good film scores sound like via the scores from my movies. Otherwise, every score will probably end up sounding like Martin Todsharow’s Snake Eyes or Ludwig Goransson’s Tenet? Does that sound like a world worth living in?

* - Not long after my copy of the Hellboy: DE arrived, I saw a comment on the previous post mentioning it. To the person who offered it, I'm sorry. I've been at this blog-writing thing for 17 years and the total number of legit, non-spammy comments I've received in that time has been - at best - twice that number. Sometimes, you never know.