SHOCKTOBERFEST 2021 FINAL EDITION -SLASHTASTIC!

Jason and Me

How I caught air in the theater.

Slashers were once unwelcome companions on my horror movie journey. The stories about the deaths of obnoxious teenagers seemed more like pointless exercises in sadism than genuine horror. But they would do in a pinch. When I was a freshman in college, my girlfriend and I went to see Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. It was hard to keep my opinion quiet about how awful the movie was. Everything from the terrible choices the characters made to the predictable jump-scares were cause for complaint. Most irritating was the scene where Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) returns to the dark basement where she just witnessed Jason kill Rob (E. Erick Anderson). What was she thinking? Rob was dead and Jason was still lurking in the dark. When she turned to run back up the stairs, I whispered to my date, “Watch, he is going to grab her!”

Watching a good scary movie can be a real physical experience. Releasing intense emotions causes an equal release of energy. As my prediction came true and Jason grabbed Trish, my words were lost in the loud scream that came out instead and  I vaulted over the divider and onto my girlfriend’s lap.

Obviously, there was much to learn about the power slashers.

SHOCKTOBERFEST 2021 - WEEK 3 - IT'S HENENLOTTER WEEK!

HENENLOTTER WEEK!

Everything Old is New Again

For the third edition of this year’s Shocktoberfest, I found a link between a contemporary film and a filmmaker rooted The Golden Age of Exploitation.

James Wan, a modern filmmaker whose hits include The Conjuring, Saw, and Insidious, heads in a new direction with his latest film, Malignant. The movie has been making waves in the horror community since its release. Stephen King himself extolled it in a tweet, heaping the highest praise on it. While looking forward, Wan's film rely's on the dirty DNA of Frank Henenlotter’s gory masterpiece, Basket Case.

SHOCKTOBERFEST 2021 WEEK TWO, THE PIZZA RITUAL

 

The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show cast – Bob “Hoolihan” Wells, “Little” John Rinaldi, and “Big Chuck” Shodowski

Ever since I was old enough to stay up late and use the stove by myself, Friday nights were all about eating frozen pizzas and watching horror movies on TV. Before the Internet and VCRs, I was limited to the choices of whatever the local stations had on hand. Right after the nightly news, The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show would start its weekly program of movies, silly skits, and PSAs for activities in Cleveland. Eventually, my parents bought a VCR, and the local video stores expanded my access to horror movies.

Now, nearly four decades later, I celebrate my love of horror movies and frozen pizzas whenever I can. Here is the lineup from my latest Friday Night Pizza and Horror Movies ritual:

SHOCKTOBERFEST 2021, WEEK ONE!

 

Let’s get this party started! Time for this year’s round of Shocktoberfest mini-reviews!

I believe that horror can save us. Horror makes sense of the chaotic, unpredictable modern world. It provides solace to our stressed and grieving hearts. Horror paints vibrant colors over darkened existences. Horror helps us discover the best in all of us.

The stories themselves bring these changes. Discovering the strange and unusual helps us to bond with others. It encourages trust-building, attachment, vulnerability, and empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand and even feel what another person is experiencing. To paraphrase The Prayer For Peace, also known as the Prayer of Saint Francis, it is better to understand than to be understood*. Embracing the unknown brings us knowledge.

Of course, in horror, everything becomes subverted and twisted. A wily serial killer may use empathy to get closer to their victim. In the first Shocktoberfest 2021 movie, failing to understand can be a lethal thing.

Have the lambs stopped screaming yet?

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020 SIXTH AND FINAL EDITION

 

David Kajganich, screenwriter of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria spoke on The Gaylords of Darkness Podcast about there being two kinds of horror: Rigorous and less rigorous horror. To me, that defines the movies I watch once or twice and forget about and the ones that I rewatch many times because they offer plenty to ponder. For this edition, I mixed in some less rigorous films and reveled in their easy-going charms!

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020 FIFTH EDITION

Dear Past-Mike,

So much has happened in the world since you wrote to me in mid-September! Suffice it to say that life is still overwhelming, and our limbic systems are overburdened. The effects of long-term exposure to stress can lead to real changes in brain functionality and behavior. People can exhibit bizarre behavior and may become more susceptible to addiction and depression. Lucky for us, we have been dealing with those issues successfully for quite a while!

SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020 FOURTH EDITION, A ROUGH TRANSITION TO THE MODERN ERA

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This week’s edition of Shocktoberfest 2020 is about old world horrors under the modern world’s electric lights. A Bay of Blood, which I wrote about last week, is an apt milestone to delineate between the dignified, gloomy gothic horror films set in the past and the newer, present-day, violent, and gory horror films that began to push them aside. Viewers began to lose interest in watching movies set in the previous century and began to crave movies set in a more familiar world – the one they were living in now. 

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020, THIRD EDITION

 

Dear Future-Mike,

I am writing this on September 18th, 2020 just after I found out that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead. For the first time, I am considering giving up and letting hopelessness take over. I keep thinking of a social media post about trauma survivors  who watch the same movies and shows over and over. It is because they find comfort in the familiarity of the experience. Revisiting favorite shows and movies is a powerful antidote against the unpredictability of life. Pattern recognition for humans, where we examine the data,  looking for the reassurances that we will survive the present.

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020, SECOND EDITION

 

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020, FIRST EDITION

This week I revisited a film that after 50 years still gives me nightmares. I was surprised to find some curious links between it, modern horror films, and today's news cycle. Like Ripley tells the xenomorph in Alien 3, "You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else,"  I can't remember my life before images from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead started making started making an impression.  In fact, it was so powerful that I first viewed it subconsciously during my nighttime slumbers years before I was able to actually watch it. The world also said goodbye to Diana Rigg this week. This was perfect reason to watch her and Vincent Price ham it up in Douglas Hickox's Theater of Blood, a thriller-chiller of Shakespearean proportions.

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020, FIRST EDITION

 

[LISTS] SHOCKTOBERFEST 2020, FIRST EDITION

My first nightmare - Lon Chaney

Where did my love of horror come from? As near as I can tell, it is probably hard-coded into my DNA. I am certain that there is a specific gene sequence that is related to a passion for the macabre and ghastly. As a small child, maybe even as young as 5 or six, my dreams became populated with images that I would later recognize as monsters from movies. In the first dream I can remember, I was trapped in the dark, spooky side of our basement when a frightening creature lunged at me from behind the furnace. Later on, I would find a picture of that monster in a book on movies at the local public library. It was none other than the great Lon Chaney Sr. from London After Midnight that pursued me into the dark and damned spaces of imagination that I call home. In order to celebrate that first panic run into nightmare territory, here are the first week’s movies from my yearly Shocktoberfest! 

Shocktoberfest 2019 Final Edition

Shocktoberfest 2019 Final Edition

The Mask

Shocktoberfest 2019 Final Edition

What a long strange trip it was! We begin our Doris Day a Day a thon this weekend. Being married comes with some perks, but it is also duties. My non horror movie loving wife knows this is important to me, so she was willing to do without my presence for the last six weeks, but now it is time to show my appreciation to my greatest obsession, her. Let's get right to it.

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #6

Dream Home

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #6

So far, there has been a paucity of films from the Asiatic Region in this year's Shocktoberfest. This week's selections attempted to correct that omission. While none of this week's movies are considered Asian Extreme Horror, some of them are pretty close. Caveat emptor!

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #5

Crimes of Passion

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #5

Week off from work - Yay Fall Break! Obviously, I spent plenty of time watching films this week. There are some new films, some old favorites and also three movies that I consider to be modern stand outs in the horror genre.

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #4

2001:  A Space Odyssey

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #4

Seven more movies for Week 4! One first-time view, but numbers 25, 28, 30 & 31 were watched so long ago it was like seeing them as new. It was a treat to see them with what felt like new eyes.  Oh hey, I switched the list order in a way that makes more sense.

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #3

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #3

Illness came to my house this week and also a certain amount of horror film fatigue set in. Much time was spent tracking down lesser known films and re-watching some neglected films. I also realized that I picked a weird way to list my weekly choices! As a bonus, this week's post has some appropriate music to celebrate the  addition of Electric Wizard to my list of favorite bands.

Schocktoberfest 2019 Update #2

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #2

Week Two has been all about the new films. Five of the 7 were first time views. But I also visited some old favorites!

Schocktoberfest 2019 Update

The Night Sitter

 A popular thing to do in the horror movie loving community is to share pre-Halloween movie lists. Not much of a planner, I am putting out my list as I watch it. So far, I am one week in with nine movies watched. Six of them were first watches, and 5 can be considered as releases.  Submitted for your approval,  a brief review of  Shockoberfest 2019 celebrations:

Shocktoberfest 2019 Begins! Rabid (1977) [Cronenberg]

This is not the first time David Cronenberg’s 1977 film  Rabid has been reviewed at the Insomniac Theater. When I wrote about it in 2010, it was as a pre-AIDS metaphor for the devastation of a sexually transmitted epidemic. This time around, I tried to look at it from a different perspective.