Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

2016

OoooOOooooOO! What can be scarier than the election? Why, All Hallows Eve of course! Time to celebrate with decorative gourds and by watching monster movies!

I'm not sure what other TV networks are doing for the season, but TCM is aiming to crush it this year with some of the best seasonal programming they've done:

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/?ecid=mai ... highlights

- Christopher Lee is Star of the Month, so Mondays are devoted to him, with the earlier two Mondays devoted to his non-horror work and then focusing purely to horror midway through the month.
- Frankenstein is Monster of the Month (pretty sure this feature is new! Hope they stay with it every year), Sunday nights will be chronological Frankenstein films beginning with Universal and then switching to Hammer
- Turner Classic Movies becomes Terror Classic Movies every Friday, hosted by Ron Perlman and divided into themes (silent horror, mad scientists, Universal horror, etc.)
- in addition: pretty much the entire last four days of the month is horror movies.

I got the jump on my requisite horror movie watchin' because Universal (and Mill Creek) released a bunch of classic Universal and Hammer Blu-Rays last month. I've already made my way through Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Werewolf of London, She-Wolf of London, and The Gorgon. It's a good thing, too, as my usual classic horror compulsion will be interrupted for the next week for Godzilla movies (obviously).

I've already watched a ton of movies including the first three Halloweens, Friday the 13th Part 3, Pit and the Pendulum, The Last Man on Earth, The Visit, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Fog, Prince of Darkness, Victor Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

what joy do monster movie bring.

Reptilicus
the wasp women
die monster die
the werewolf
alligator
ZAAT
the blob (1954) and should be the only blob movie allowed to Exist
the fly (1954)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Dr. Phibes Rises Again
The Giant Claw (1957)
The Hideous Sun Demon
The Monster That Challenged the World
The Black Scorpion

This year I'm actually going to watch a movie every day of the month no excuses this time.

So far I've watched:

-The Shallows
-Underworld Rise of the Lycans
-Resident Evil

I plan on going through the remaining Underworld and RE films, The Wolf Man 43 and the 2010 remake, Waxwork 1 and 2. Not sure what else I'll watch maybe some episodes of Tales from the Darkside because I did buy the complete series.

Fathom Events will be piping in Young Frankenstein into theaters tomorrow. I might go... seem to be fighting the beginnings of a cold, though, so I might just stay home and pop in the Blu-Ray.

Watched Hammer's Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, which is unremarkable aside from the fact it was one of the first horror movies I ever saw.

why cant we get monster movies like this any more.

IFC is also got a great Halloween gimmick: '50s/'60s B-movies every weekend morning! Horror of Party Beach and Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster get their day in the sun!

Too bad I don't get IFC.

BTW, I forgot to post this last week:



Oh yeah, and in the last week I have watched Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Halloween II-4, Tales from the Crypt Season 7, and the first Simpsons THoH.

Welcome to the wonderful gimmick of 3D as Friday the 13th kickstarted the 3D revolution in the 80s. However, was the movie more than just a gimmick? Watch to find out.

Need to get back on my Halloween viewing after that Godzilla detour...

Hasn't AMC's Fear Fest already started? You know, evertime I see the name 'FearFest' it just makes me nostalgic for 'Monsterfest.' I loved those marathons... probably had a dozen VHS tapes full of Monsterfest recordings!

--- edit ---

The animated wanted posters TCM is cooking up for the monsters on their twitter are awesome!

https://twitter.com/tcm?lang=en

So I've gotten a few movies over the last few days:

Halloween month continues as I take a look at the now classic The Thing. Is John Carpenter's supposed masterpiece really all that great? Or should it have stayed buried in the ice like its box office results? Watch to find out.

Now THIS is what I'm talking about:

https://www.facebook.com/KaijunoKami/po ... 4694502317

Hopefully the link lets you look at the pictures and the videos I took. This is down right awesome. We were on our way back from a haunted house and accidentally found this street on our way home. AMAZING!! Not just that, but it seems like on Halloween the police block the street off and the residents do a big party and one of them even has a tour of their house that they said up as a haunted place. We're going to try to go back on Monday to see this. The only thing missing is layers of fog.

Halloween Month concludes with a look at the night the filmmakers tried to do something different. Season of the Witch was a box office failure due to the lack of Michael. Was this movie justified or were people just immature? Watch to find out.

Since my last update I've watched...

The Fearless Vampire Killers
Horror Express
The Shining (in the theater)
The Curse of the Werewolf
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Black Cat (1934)
The Curse of Frankenstein
The Revenge of Frankenstein
The Devil Rides Out

Was gonna try to stick to my recently purchased Blu-Rays, but ended up relying on TCM more.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Since I tricked you into watching a review of Halloween III first, here is your treat, Halloween II. Does Halloween II joins the ranks of another mindless sequel or is it as good as the original? The only way to know is to watch this review as I bring Halloween month to a close, for real this time.

I enjoyed TCM's Monster of the Month on Sunday nights, I hadn't seen all of Universal's Frankenstein movies before and it's been at least a few years since last seeing the ones I had seen. Although I must admit to being a little disappointed that TCM did not run Frankenstein Conquers The World and War of the Gargantuas in their exploration of Frankenstein in the movies.

So the final movies for the night were a bunch of indie short films called Motel London, Motel London 2, and Night Mutilator. How were they? Well let me put it this way, the first one was the longest 17 minutes I have ever sat through. All three of them were awful as there was no semblance of a story, no character development, no suspense, tension, anything. I won't knock it on acting since these were short films made by nobodies, but my god, Nostalgia Critic has better production values and actors than these guys for his skits. In good conscience, I can't even bother giving these guys a score.

Halloween - 10/10

Trick r Treat - Love this movie. There is a reason it is on my top 10 horror movie list. The stories are all great, the plot twists rock even after having watched it sevearl times, and the music kicks ass. Also, Sam is adorable. A 9/10.

Oh, and I finished the third season to Tales from the Crypt, so next year I kick it off with Seaosn 4.

Finally, we went back to that area I talked about last week and I made a video of what was happening there along with all of the decorations. For obvious reasons, I couldn't record the haunted house one of the houses made, but it was quite fun for a homemade thing. And awesome.

My Halloween viewing was pretty minimal (10 Cloverfield Lane and the original Poltergeist - really liked both quite a bit). Life is just crazy busy with young kids.

But we had an awesome time trick or treating! The baby went as a triceratops in one of those ridiculously adorable baby costumes. And we only discovered last night as we headed out that it had a little button in the right paw that made a roaring sound. The recording was Godzilla's roar from the '60's. Sweet!

Our two year old, who's obsessed with rockets, space shuttles and astrounauts went as a space shuttle commander, naturally. And we built him a pretty sweet ride, if I do say so myself...



There's a lot of things I dislike about living in Houston, but one thing I LOVE is how my neighborhood goes ALL OUT for Halloween. People get pretty wild with the decorations, there's kids EVERYWHERE and a lot of the parent dress up too and pretty much everyone sits out on their front porch or driveway handing out candy. It's like a GIANT subdivision-wide block party. Halloween here is so much fun.

2017

Okay, on TCM Dracula is Monster of the Month, Tuesdays are all horror broken up by decade, and TCM's regular foreign film and silent movie slots are all skewing horror and my DVR is full and I need to watch these movies.

So far I've watched:

Mystics in Bali
Halloween (1978)
Burn, Witch, Burn!
Mad Love (1935)
Ju-on: The Grudge

Aside from the usual classic horror fare I go for I'm gonna try to watch some J-horror this year.

I have so little time for watching movies these days. So far, the only horror movies I've fit in this month have been:

Werewolf of London (1935)
The Ghost Ship (1943)

Werewolf of London has been one of my favorites since childhood (my dad pretty much raised me on Universal monster movies), but I hadn't watched it in several years, and my wife had never seen it. It realy holds up very well for me, and Jenn quite liked it as well. I love that Glendon retains so much of his intelligence and his werewolf form, and I think that the comedy, the melodrama and the horror are all really well balanced, and all three elements play very well. The movie never asks us to like Glendon, but it allows us to understand him and have sympathy for him. Honestly, this may by my favorite werewolf movie of all time.

I'd only watched The Ghost Ship once before, more than ten years ago, when the big Val Lewton boxed set was first released. It's obviously not the best or most iconic of the horror flicks Lewton produced, and it suffers from very stiff performances from its lead actors, but it's still got a fantastic atmosphere, the twisted psychology one expects from a Lewton flick, and some nice supporting performances. It's always a treat to see Skelton Knaggs pop up in a horror movie, and even though his character here tends to disappear from the narrative for long stretches and in the end is a bit of a deus ex machina, the movie manages to use his distinctive voice and features so well that I'm basically okay with it.

Aside from all of the Vincent Price movies I watched, so far I've done Season 4 of Tales from the Crypt, some Simpsons Halloween episodes, They Live, Halloween 4, Frankenstein vs Baragon, The Exorcist, The Fog, the first 5 episodes to Garo Season 1, and Kamen Rider Black.