Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

Well, today the genre so many of us love and are devoted to lost another strong personality that meant a great deal to Horror...Wes Craven. From brain cancer. I can recall listening to an audio commentary on the Nightmare on Elm Street film where Craven cracked that perhaps the boiler room building might contribute to their demise one day due to asbestos issues. I am not saying that was what caused the brain cancer that took Wes from us, but it came to mind immediately to me just the same. Certain filmmakers were active during a critical period of my development as a horror fan. I can remember so many instances of cable showing Shocker (a film I admit is loony tunes) and Deadly Friend (a film that is so tonally odd I love it) as a kid. I was nineteen when Scream (1996) became a surprise hit, and I firmly recollect the influence of his Freddy Krueger on us kids. I didn't watch The Hills Have Eyes or Last House on the Left until much later, in my 20s, but I don't deny their pl...

**** The Master's film returns to London. It is important to know, though, that the opening being told to beginning understudy, Eve Gill (Jane Wyman) is from a murder suspect on the lam. In a glamorous co-starring role, Marlene Dietrich is presented by the murder suspect as a theater actress, Mrs. Inwood, who supposedly sets up her actor lover, Robinson (Richard Todd, playing a potentially manipulated patsy), for the murder of her husband (a murder she maybe committed). He is motivated by Inwood to go to her home to retrieve a new dress (her old dress has a stain of her husband's blood), messing up the nearby study to make it all look like a robbery. Soon a maid for Inwood, Nellie Goode (Kay Walsh, turning out to be a deliciously wretched blackmailer), arrives, noticing (from a distance) Robinson in the study, but he flees without her getting a good enough look. Soon he's on the run, deciding to explain his situation to Eve, interrupting her while training on stage...

A few clips from the film I watched tonight, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1941)

29 August 2015 MGM spared no expense for this lavish production of the oft-told Jekyll & Hyde story (it had been filmed with the excellent Frederic March in the lead role(s) in 1931) with Spencer Tracy (uncharacteristically) taking the honors of portraying the memorable scientist experimenting with the notion of separating good and evil so that man could be free from the ill effects of the latter. Instead, the experiment, when reduced to a liquid form in a flask unleashes the scientist's dark side, and as each night continues, as does Hyde's control over Jekyll. Soon Jekyll's life begins to unravel, while Hyde remains an increasingly powerful nuisance, out and about in London to be a rotter, a malcontent, and a fiend. Was it truly worth it? The sets are a feast for the eyes if you love seeing 1887 London brought to life as only Hollywood could do in the 40s. Tracy is a curious casting choice for such a character, but it lead to Marsh achieving the Oscar, something ...

* I failed to write about this the other day because I kept thinking to myself, "Does such a worthless movie deserve any sort of energy dedicated to it?" I have hardly felt that way about many movies. I can always find something, anything, that might be worth noting even in terrible movies. Few positives came from me at all a few nights ago when I just numbed my way through it with so little care at all. It is such an insufferably lame premise. Just awful. How could even the most talented among filmmakers get something of quality out of a "video game Elizabeth Bathory character come to life to kill gamers" plot? Frankie Nunez had his moment in the sun during the Fox run of Malcolm in the Middle but here, the poor kid wears his cap upside down and tries to dress like Hip-Hoppers. Jon Foster, one of the most boring leads imaginable, heads the cast, while Jimmi Simpson (master of the smart-ass wit) and the smokin Sophia Bush (right before she is even better lookin...

*** Not bad fifth film in the Paranormal Activity series is a marked improvement over the previous installment. Moving the series to a Latino street setting is refreshing and allows us to spend time with a different set of characters, this time taking us away from affluent suburbia, transplanting us into a tough, working class neighborhood in Oxnard, California. I think the one mistake this film makes is at the end when it decides to tie into the very first PA film in a way that feels rather forced (it is almost like the filmmakers felt obligated to fit this film into the canon, instead of just allowing The Marked Ones to be its own animal).   After graduating high school, an 18 year old kid named Jesse starts to gradually deteriorate after discovering a bite on his arm. The same bite was on the arm of the high school valedictorian, Oscar, noticed at the home of a weird neighbor of Jesse’s named Ana. Ana, soon learned, is a “bruja”, a practitioner of witchcr...

Starting towards the end of August into early September, us horror fans start putting together our lists of films to watch for upcoming October. Summer's end, fall's beginning is exactly what I personally live for. There are those of us who just live for October. I don't think it as much about Halloween day as the entire month. Each day could produce a sleeper horror film perhaps barely mentioned during the year that will get extra attention once October begins. For me, it is returning to the films that truly mean something to me. The Draculas, Frankensteins, Wolfmans, Hammers, Amicuses, etc. are what I live for during October. I rarely watch them sadly (great films like Dracula & Frankenstein really shouldn't relegated to one certain time of the year, but it almost feels like a sin to do otherwise) except during October, but it makes them more special, I believe. Their importance is amplified, and they seem so right, like a cherry on top of the ice cream sundae. ...

Dolenz receives a night visitor in Jeff Burr's Pumpkinhead II: Bloodwings (1993) Understanding the difficult production history of Pumpkinhead II gives me pause to let director Jeff Burr have it. To tell you the truth, technically I think Burr did all he could with what he had available to him. He tries to utilize flashy camera work and some lighting aesthetics to compensate for the bone-headed script and characters populating this reimaging of the Pumpkinhead origin story.  This go-around, a misshapen-faced orphan boy, left to fend for himself, getting food from a kindly wilderness witch who sees after him the best she could as a kind of surrogate guardian angel, is attacked brutally by a gaggle of high school auto club scumbags with jackets, calling themselves the Red Wings. Pummeled with baseball bats, hung on a metal hook over an abandoned, seemingly bottomless well, and sliced numerous times by the Red Wings’ leader, Tommy succumbs to his injuries. Tommy has some...