SHOCKtober: 732-705

We are blasting through this list like a...like a...thing that blasts. Listen, I am only half-a-cup of coffee into what is looking to be a way more coffee than that day, okay? My words aren't all here yet! And YES, before you ask, I am drinking pumpkin spice. As expected my body rejects all other flavors during SHOCKtober.

Also as expected, each of the following films received one vote.

732. The Invisible Woman -- 1940, A. Edward Sutherland 

731. The Invisible Man -- 2020, Leigh Whannell

730. The Innocents (aka De uskyldige) -- 2021, Eskil Vogt 

729. The Initiation of Sarah -- 1978, Robert Day

728. The Incredible Shrinking Man -- 1957, Jack Arnold

727. The Hunt -- 2020, Craig Zobel

726. The House That Jack Built -- 2018, Lars von Trier

725. The House That Dripped Blood -- 1971, Peter Duffell

724. The House by the Cemetery -- 1981, Lucio Fulci

723. The Hourglass Sanitorium -- 1973, Wojciech Has

722. The Hills Have Eyes -- 2006, Alexandre Aja

721. The Grudge -- 2004, Takashi Shimizu

720. The Girl with All the Gifts -- 2016, Colm McCarthy

719. The Gate -- 1987, Tibor Takács

718. The Fourth Kind -- 2009, Olatunde Osunsanmi

717. The Final Terror -- 1983, Andrew Davis

716. The Final Destination -- 2009, David R. Ellis

715. The Fifth Cord -- 1971, Luigi Bazzoni

714. The Feast (aka Gwledd) -- 2021, Lee Haven Jones

713. The Eye 2 -- 2004, Danny Pang and Oxide Chun Pang 

712. The Endless -- 2017, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

711. The Dunwich Horror -- 1970, Daniel Haller

710. The Devil's Rejects -- 2005, Rob Zombie

709. The Devil's Rain -- 1975, Robert Fuest

708. The Devil's Carnival -- 2012, Darren Lynn Bousman

707. The Devil's Backbone -- 2001, Guillermo del Toro

706. The Devil Commands -- 1941, Edward Dmytryk

705. The Devil (aka Diabel) -- 1972, Andrzej Zulawski

 

• Ooooooooohhhh I can feel it! The mere mention of The House by the Cemetery has got me in my Fulci feelings. I'm gonna have to indulge in some weird nonsensical gross magic soon. Also, Bob kind of looks like all the members of ABBA smushed into one person. Bob? BOB!
• The House That Dripped Blood is such a great title...something about it just stirs up all kinds of monster kid vibes.
• I need to revisit a few movies on this list-chunk: The Devil's Rain and The Final Terror to name a couple. I remember being kind of lukewarm on the former, but it stars Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, and Ida Lupino (amongst a shitton of other names) and there are Satanists and peoples' faces melt off, so I don't know why I wasn't completely in love with it like one reader clearly was.
• Speaking of one reader, here is one reader on The Hourglass Sanitorium: "Very heavy mood, like a nightmare you can't wake up from. Accomplishes horror way better than many genre 'horror' films do."
• I think The Invisible Man and The Invisible Woman should get married and have The Invisible Baby <3 <3
• I love The Initiation of Sarah, it's so much fun. And Robert Hays, Morgan Fairchild, Kay Lenz, Shelley Winters, and Tisa Farrow? Please. Flawless. (Also, fun (?) fact: Gaylords of Darkness did a li'l feature on the Arrow Blu-ray of this movie talking about how very delightful (and oft gay) it is. That means you can hear me through your television speakers if that is how you watch Blu-rays.)
• Though it is now 20 years old (dafuq), I have still somehow never seen The Grudge. I know! I've been mulling over doing something about all of those mid-aughties remakes of Asian horror films, but so far I've yet to talk myself into it. I also want to do something with the Ju-on series, at the least finally untangling the actual order of them because man, it might even be more confusing than the order of the Zombie films.
• Oooh! Zombie! There go my Fulci feelings again...

Chilling Classics Cthursday: SCREAM BLOODY MURDER (1973)

I hesitate to call the 1973 exploitation flick Scream Bloody Murder a gem, but surely it qualifies as at least gem-adjacent. After all, this is a movie in which a young boy runs over and kills his father with a piece of farm equipment, only to promptly fall and lose his hand after being run over by the very same farm equipment...all in the first minute of the movie, before the title pops up.

Okay, yeah, by the end of this post I might just be calling Scream Bloody Murder a straight-up gem.

The young boy in question, Matthew, is promptly sent to an institution run by strict-looking nuns of the Silent Night, Deadly Night variety (as opposed to the fun-having nuns of the Sister Act variety, or the hot nuns of the Whichever Annabelle Movie That Was That Had the Nun In It variety). They replace his missing hand with a hook and eventually send him back home. Everyone in the movie continues to call Matthew a "boy," and he certainly speaks like a boy, but actor Fred Holbert was 28 at the time and looks every year of it. So who's to say what's going on with Matthew? Maybe it's none of my business.

One thing you can say about Matthew with total certainty, however, is that he was and continues to be a stone-cold hater. He hates that while he was away in the institution, his mother met an married a nice man and they sometimes touch each other in their private no-no parts, so he promptly kills his new stepfather and then accidentally kills his mother...all in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Matthew goes on the lam and is picked up by some kind newlyweds. They all stop to frolic in a stream (as you do) and when the newlyweds hug...well, you might figure out where this is going. That's right, Matthew is not just any hater, he is a sex hater who has tasked himself with "saving" women from the gross advances of men, whether the women enjoy said advances or not. He kills the men and he's plagued by weird visions of his dead mother Daisy, so then he kills the women, too. A Hater and a Killer: The Matthew Story.

Matthew goes on the lam 2.0 and ends up in Venice, where he meets a cool artist-prostitute named Vera, and well, you might figure out where this is going.

Vera is super chill, meeting johns in her house to pay the bills so she can spend the rest of her time painting. Matthew immediately becomes attached, and Vera is okay with being friends with him, but she's not interested in being saved: "You stay a nice little boy and I'll stay Vera who throws it down for a couple of bucks." 

Again I say: "little boy"? Whatever you say, Scream Bloody Murder! 

Matthew isn't happy taking "I'm happy" for an answer, however. He's concocted a wild tale, that he's from a wealthy family and lives near a mansion nearby, where Vera--whom he now calls 'Daisy' after his mother--can live out her artistic dreams without having to do all that gross sex stuff. He murders one of her johns and then sets out to make his wild tale a reality.

There is nobody Matthew won't kill to make this happen: innocents, old women, dogs...anyone that stands in the way of this dream will end up dead. After he clears the house of its rightful owner, Matthew brings Vera over for a visit, one he demands will be permanent. Vera, of course, says no thank you, so as you might expect, Matthew kidnaps her.

She continues to be ungrateful, even when Matthew points out the lengths he goes to to make her happy: "See what I do for you? I get groceries and clothes and art stuff and kill people."

This is the point when Scream Bloody Murder peters out a bit. Vera's tied up, and we get all the standard someone's being held captive sequences: the foiled escape attempts, the missed phone call, the missed visiting neighbor, and so on. One of these sequences features a pre-Tall Man Angus Scrimm, but I'll have to take imdb's word on that one because I didn't recognize him at all. 

Then again, I also didn't recognize that the same actress plays Vera and Daisy! In my defense, the print for this film is terrible and at times, faces (and end credits) aren't much more than a smear.

It all picks up again during the climax, which finds Matthew on the lam 3.0, literally running from his demons. It's got a somewhat bonkers end that sorta predicts the end of the 1980 Maniac, though Scream Bloody Murder's finale features 100% more cackling and a score that can only be called "church organ madness." 

Like Maniac, Scream Bloody Murder is not as exploitative as you might anticipate. More often than not it's having fun with its premise, which is remarkable because in a parallel universe this movie about a man who murders sex-enjoyers and takes a sex worker captive could be an uncomfortable watch to say the least. Instead, it's got some truly humorous sequences (a montage of one of Matthew's crime sprees is a delight) and Vera is really the rad hero of the hour-and-a-half. 

Like I said from the very start, Scream Bloody Murder is a straight-up gem!

SHOCKtober: 760-733

Folks, let me just say that I love the list. I love the list! During submissions month and every day of SHOCKtober proper, I get so pumped for horror movies. I want to watch everything right this minute--all the things I should have seen by now but haven't, the things I've already seen a million times, the things that are completely new to me in every which way...it's just the best. So let's get to today's chunk-o-list and get jazzed, shall we?

Each of the following films received one vote each.

760. The Shallows -- 2016, Jaume Collet-Serra

759. The Sender -- 1982, Roger Christian

758. The Satanic Rites of Dracula -- 1973, Alan Gibson

757. The Sadness -- 2021, Rob Jabbaz

756. The Ruins -- 2008, Carter Smith

755. The Return of the Vampire -- 1943, Lew Landers

754. The Raven -- 1963, Roger Corman

753. The Prophecy -- 1995, Gregory Widen

752. The Poughkeepsie Tapes -- 2007, John Erick Dowdle

751. The Perfection -- 2018, Richard Shepard

750. The Outwaters -- 2022, Robbie Banfitch

749. The Ninth Gate -- 1999, Roman Polanski

748. The Night Strangler -- 1973, Dan Curtis

747. The Mummy -- 1959, Terence Fisher

746. The Mummy -- 1999, Stephen Sommers

745. The Mothman Prophecies -- 2002, Mark Pellington

744. The Midnight Hour -- 1985, Jack Bender

743. The Mafu Cage -- 1978, Karen Arthur 

742. The Mad Magician -- 1954, John Brahm

741. The Lure -- 2015, Agnieszka Smoczynska

740. The Legend of Lizzie Borden -- 1975, Paul Wendkos

739. The Legend of Hell House -- 1973, John Hough

738. The Legend of Boggy Creek -- 1972, Charles B Pierce

737. The Legacy -- 1978, Richard Marquand

736. The Last Voyage of the Demeter -- 2023, André Øvredal

735. The Last Man on Earth -- 1964, Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow

734. The Killer Shrews -- 1959, Ray Kellogg

733. The Keep -- 1983, Michael Mann

• Just look at that ad. Just look at that cast. Just look at me, sitting here wondering why I've never seen The Midnight Hour when it feels like it was assembled from the magnetic poetry of my mind.
• How is The Lure almost ten years old? What is time? PS if you have never seen the absolute manic delight that is The Lure...stop whatever it is you're doing after reading the rest of this scintillating blog post and go watch The Lure! PLEASE!
• A reader on The Killer Shrews: "No budget, but lots of gumption. Has one jump scare that always gets me."
• This list always gives me big ideas about future SHOCKtobers and non-SHOCKtober events. You know, like "Ooh I should do all Vincent Price movies!" or "Ooh I should do all the Corman Poe movies!" or "Ooh a made-for-TV month!" or "Ooh a black and white month!" or or or. 
• Will I ever see The Sadness? I am intrigued but I think it will be too much for me. 
• I LOVE THE LEGACY! Yes, I had to shout that. There is just something about it that induces seriously good feelings. I think I saw it on a creature double feature or something when I was a kid and it really got me: the swimming pool scene, the creepy beef jerky fingers reaching out from behind the curtain...the whole thing was eerie English countryside vibes. It's still so good but now, of course, I'm really into the sweaters. And Sam Elliott and Kathryn Ross. And the beef jerky fingers. And, as I wrote once upon a time, all the ways Nurse Adams compares to Rebecca's Mrs Danvers. But did Mrs Danvers ever turn into a cat? NO. Checkmate, Daphne DuMaurier. The Legacy rules.

SHOCKtober: 788-761

Well well, we meet again. What say we take a peek at some more list, hmm? Each of the following films received one vote! (Spoiler alert we are going to be in The Land of the Single Vote for quite some time.)

788. Tower of Evil -- 1972, Jim O'Connolly

787. Tourist Trap -- 1979, David Schmoeller

786. Torso -- 1973, Sergio Martino

785. Tombs of the Blind Dead -- 1972, Amando de Ossorio

784. To Die For -- 1988, Deran Sarafian

783. Thundercrack! -- 1975, Curt McDowell 

782. Three...Extremes -- 2004, Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, and Takashi Miike

781. This House Possessed -- 1981, William Wiard

780. Thelma -- 2017, Joachim Trier

779. The Wolf House -- 2018, Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León 

778. The Witches -- 1990, Nicolas Roeg

777. The Witch Who Came from the Sea -- 1976, Matt Cimber

776. The Witch (aka La bruja) -- 1954, Chano Urueta

775. The Whisperer in Darkness -- 2011, Sean Branney

774. The Void -- 2016, Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski

773. The Victim -- 1972, Herschel Daugherty 

772. The Vast of Night -- 2019, Andrew Patterson 

771. The Unknown -- 1927, Tod Browning 

770. The Undertaker and His Pals -- 1966, T.L.P. Swicegood 

769. The Uncanny -- 1977, Denis Héroux 

768. The Twilight Zone: The Movie -- 1983, Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller, and Steven Spielberg

767. The Thing That Couldn't Die -- 1958, Will Cowan 

766. The Thing from Another World -- 1951, Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks

765. The 10th Victim -- 1965, Elio Petri

764. The Strangers -- 2008, Bryan Bertino 

763. The Stone Tape -- 1972, Peter Sasdy

762. The Stepfather -- 2009, Nelson McCormick 

761. The Skeleton of Mrs Morales -- 1960, Rogelio A. González

• Ooh Tombs of the Blind Dead! I...haven't seen it. But I have seen the third Blind Dead film, The Ghost Galleon, and lawdy I loved it. The aesthetics (and the gay) are right up my alley, and after seeing The Ghost Galleon I immediately wanted to inject all those shuffling, crusty Knights Templar films into my eyeballs. So why haven't I? Because I am waiting for the world to grace us with a Blu-ray box set. Has it been announced or even hinted at? No. But I have convinced myself that it will come to fruition one day, so I wait. It just makes sense, right? That DVD box set in the coffin-shaped package is long out of print. The movies seem scattered amongst different distributors and a couple have gotten modern-day releases. Anyone who is reading my Chilling Classics Cthursday series knows that pretty much every garbage movie has been reissued in like 10000k. So where are my Blind Deads in a box? WHERE? I'M WAITING.
• Thank you for letting me get my Tombs of the Blind Dead feelings out.
• Hey, The Uncanny! I just mentioned that yesterday. What a world.
• A reader on The Thing That Couldn't Die: "Taut little potboiler has more simmering under the surface than simply a disembodied head trying to find its body."
• The Victim is terrific: A made-for-TV film starring Elizabeth Montgomery, what more could you ask for?
• BESIDES A TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD BOX SET I MEAN
• Some of you imposed a ruleset on your submitted list: no "classics," all made-for-TV, that kind of thing. One reader included a shitton of Mexican horror films to get them some representation; I'd only seen a couple of them but they all sound intriguing and I'm fixin' to dive in. (Everybody knows that Mexican horror from all eras is lit and legit.) A couple of those titles appear in today's chunk o' list, so I guess it's time to start my homework.

It's the Time of the Season...

...for you-know-who! That's right, it's her, the almighty SHOCKtobra has risen from the depths to bring us all...uh, you know. SHOCKtober!

Y'all answered the clarion call and all month we are going to be counting down the hits, aka your favorite horror movies. There are a shitton of them! 816 to be exact. I didn't even know I could count that high.

This is the fourth time I'm running this little exercise and every time I'm, well, shocked to see how many films I ain't never heard of. I mean, I have a blog, you know. A horror blog. And there are times I feel like I've seen everything there is to see that was born before...mmm, let's say 2020. And then here you guys go, schooling the crap out of me with your faves. I love it.

Now then, the usual caveats: There could well be errors in this list. I don't think there are, but maybe there's some alternate title I missed or something. If that's the case, be gentle! We should all count ourselves fortunate that I can manage this thing at all, really. This is only the second time I've done this using a spreadsheet! The first two iterations found me writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of titles in a fucking spiral notebook and somehow keeping track, like what?? Madness. I have no idea what I was thinking. Or not thinking, I guess. The point is joining the computer age has made it easier but my eyes do still fall out of my head from time to time, so forgive me if I screwed it up somewhere. 

Anyway, they're listed mostly--but not exclusively--alphabetically in order of votes received. So yeah, film #816 and film...I don't know, #600 each received the same number of votes and should technically be tied, but a huge list is more fun. 

So! Let's get this thing going and begin the month-long journey counting down to this year's most favoritest movie. I wonder who will wear the crown?? (I actually already know, mua ha ha.)

Each of the following films received one vote each: 

816. Zombies of Mora Tau -- 1957, Edward L. Cahn

815. Zodiac -- 2007, David Fincher 

814. Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered -- 2024, Nick Funess 

813. You Won't Be Alone -- 2022, Goran Stolevski 

812. YellowBrickRoad -- 2010, Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton 

811. Wolf Creek -- 2005, Greg McLean 

810. Wolf -- 1994, Mike Nichols 

809. Winterbeast -- 1992, Christopher Thies 

808. Willow Creek -- 2013, Bobcat Goldthwait 

807. Willard -- 2003, Glen Morgan 

806. Whistle and I'll Come to You -- 1968, Jonathan Miller 

805. When Evil Lurks (aka Cuando achecha la maldad)-- 2023, Demián Rugna 

804. Werewolf of London -- 1935, Stuart Walker 

803. We're All Going to the World's Fair -- 2021, Jane Schoenbrun 

802. Waxwork -- 1988, Anthony Hickox 

801. Warlock -- 1989, Steve Miner 

800. Vertigo -- 1958, Alfred Hitchcock 

799. Verónica -- 2017, Paco Plaza 

798. Vampire -- 1979, E.W. Swackhamer 

797. Unsane -- 2018, Steven Soderbergh 

796. Uninvited -- 1988, Greydon Clark 

795. Underwater -- 2020, William Eubank 

794. Uncle Was a Vampire (aka Tempi duri per i vampiri) -- 1959, Steno 

793. B'Twixt Now and Sunrise -- 2022, Francis Ford Coppola 

792. Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness -- 1986, Tim Ritter and Yale Wilson 

791. Trouble Every Day -- 2001, Claire Denis 

790. Trilogy of Terror -- 1975, Dan Curtis 

789. Tragedy Girls -- 2017, Tyler MacIntyre

• Speaking of movies I ain't never heard of, this 1979 made-for-TV Vampire; Look at that cast! Not listed: Joe Spinell! And Barrie Youngfellow of television's It's a Living! Boy, I tells ya. 1979 was quite a year for vampires, eh? Made-for-TV, theatrical, romantic and handsome, gross and gross...pretty much whatever flavor you wanted you could find. What a time.
• Did I know that Mike Nichols directed Wolf? Huh.
• A reader who submitted Warlock: "I started a Warlock fan club in the 6th grade." I love to see that it's still going strong.
• I am always surprised when I see (or remember) that Uninvited, the cat-on-a-cruise-ship George Kennedy movie, came out in 1988. I feel like it should be older than that, although maybe that's just me thinking about that cats-in-an-anthology Peter Cushing movie The Uncanny, which was released in 1977. That's not an interesting story, I am just saying.
• A reader who submitted Underwater: "It is dumb, but it is entertaining, except for T.J. Miller's 'Paul' who is annoying. Kristen Stewart is really good at this kind of quiet, subdued emotionally intense performance." Agreed!