Halloween (1978) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - November 15, 1978

On October 25th my Facebook feed was peppered with posts celebrating the fact that John Carpenter's Halloween opened in theaters and drive-ins for the very first time on October 25, 1978. Because, more than likely, that is the earliest date that is listed on its IMDB page.

While this might be true, the number of theaters it played in was quite small. I was surprised to learn that Halloween never had a wide theatrical release. That it never played in more than 200 theaters at any given time. It would open in a market, play for a week or two, then move on to the next.

Which explains how and why Halloween first opened at a theater or drive-in near me on November 15, 1978. NOVEMBER!?! The celebration of Halloween would already have been a distant memory to 11-year-old me. My heart would be focused on Thanksgiving and, even better, Christmas.

So it should come as no surprise that I have no memory of this release, at all.

Halloween would first ping my blossoming horror geek radar when this issue of Newsweek arrived in the family mail.

Newsweek - June 18, 1979

This is where, buried amongst the coverage of the looming releases of Alien, Prophecy, and Dawn of the Dead, that I learned that a movie called Halloween existed. I am pretty sure that Phantasm, The Brood, and maybe even The Dark were also mentioned in the cover article.

Although the positive word of mouth of audiences, and the acclaim of critics, was beginning to grow around Halloween, the article's coverage was pretty basic. It stated that Halloween, a scary sleeper hit, would be getting another release in the fall and offered a single image from the film. That of a sheeted figure standing in a doorway. But it was enough to get me interested and excited about seeing this movie called Halloween.

Abulele (2015) - Soundtrack Collection

There are a couple of reasons for why I would buy the soundtrack for a movie I have not seen. 

First would be my being a fan of the composer. That does not apply here, though. I was unaware of Frank Ilfman prior to this release.

Second would be the genre of the film itself. If the score is for a horror, science-fiction, or fantasy film, well, chances of me buying it are pretty damn high. Abulele is fantasy film.

I did waffle about whether or not to buy the soundtrack for Abulele when it was first released. But after listening to some of the sample clips provided by Intrada, I knew that this score would be a welcome addition to my collection. 

Ilfman's music is a scrumptious blend of magic and melancholy, capturing the film's central themes of grief and loss with bittersweet perfection.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #2

The Blair Witch

I cannot be alone in thinking this "early illustration" of the Blair Witch was designed to invoke the cover illustration of Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, right? Considering just how detailed the fictional legend of the Blair Witch was, and how the project itself was inspired by the likes of In Search Of... and The Legend of Boggy Creek, I do not think it being intentional is all that big of a stretch.

By Reason of Insanity by Shane Stevens - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - April 8, 1979

I was searching for a different ad when I stumbled across this full page one for Shane Stevens' By Reason of Insanity.

I had no idea this book even existed until, just over a decade later, I read Stephen King's afterward to The Dark Half. That is where King shared his admiration for Stevens' body of work, writing, "These [books], where the so-called 'criminal mind' and a condition of irredeemable psychosis interweave to create their own closed system of perfect evil, are three of the finest novels ever written about the dark side of the American dream." King recommended Stevens' books only to those readers "with strong stomachs and stronger nerves."

Sold! 

Only in 1989/1990 there were no editions of Stevens' books to be found, anywhere. This situation was finally resolved in 1997, or thereabouts, when Carroll and Graf reissued Stevens' books, with King's praise for them plastered across their covers, of course.

That is when I was able to crack open By Reason Of Insanity and learn that King was not overselling the material with that strong stomach and nerves disclaimer. By Reason Of Insanity ends with a confounding gut punch of a reveal that, to this very day, makes a heavy knot of dread form in my stomach, sends a chill up my spine, and makes my skin want to crawl off my body and hide in a corner.

Halloween II - A 500 Piece Puzzle from Aquarius

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) - Soundtrack Collection

When composer Basil Kirchin first met with Vincent Price about working on The Abominable Dr. Phibes, he inquired as to how the actor would play the titular role. Straight or comedic? "Straight, of course," was Price's response. 

Kirchin's original music also played it straight. An approach that disappointed Robert Fuest, the film's director. While Fuest liked Kirchin's themes, he felt the orchestrations were too austere and understated for the film's overtly comedic tone. Enter composer John Gale, who, in Kirchin's words, "spoofed it up."

Because the original masters are lost, the "spoofed up" variations I am familiar with are absent from this soundtrack. Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 14 are from Kirchin's personal recordings and are the "serious" variations he intended for the film. Tracks 7, 8, and 9 are from the 1971 American International LP released with the film. Tracks 1, 11, 12, and 13 are from the film's actual soundtrack.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #1

The Blair Witch Project

While I did see The Blair Witch Project during its theatrical run, and had a DVD of it at one point, I cannot remember that last time I actually watched the film. It has to have been decades, at least. 

Wait. It has been decades!?! Shit. Where did all that time go?

Never mind. I also remember how fascinated I became with the film's viral marketing campaign and fabricated mythology, which managed to erase the line between fact and fiction. For a little while, at least...

Carrie by Stephen King - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - April 28, 1974

Terrifier 3 (2024) - Movie Review

After Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) recovers from his decapitation, he takes a five year rest before picking up where he left off with Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her brother, Jonathan (Elliot Fullam).

Before the release of Terrifier 2 (2022), I decided to give All Hallow's Eve (2013) a watch. Because that was the very first appearance of Damien Leone's evil trickster, Art the Clown. I was unimpressed and quite bored with that collection of short films. A fact that makes my decision to watch Terrifier (2016), Art the Clown's first feature length adventure in torturous carnage, the very next day something of a minor miracle.

While I thought there was a moderate amount of technical improvement with the feature, aided in no small part by David Howard Thornton's casting as Art the Clown, I was still bored. Very, very bored. It takes more than copious amounts of gore and special make-up effects to maintain my interest and enthusiasm with a film. I need to be engaged with the material on either an emotional or intellectual level. Neither film did that for me. So it goes.

But the word of mouth, despite a great deal of that word being gloating over how people were throwing up and/or passing out at various screenings, I decided to give Terrifier 2 a big screen test and was both surprised and delighted at how entertaining I found the sequel to be. Sure the gore and sadism were insanely over the top, but Terrifier 2 had something the previous films did not. Interesting characters that I enjoyed getting to know... before most of them were viciously slaughtered, of course.

Terrifier 3, at first, does a commendable job of doing the exact same thing all over again, only this time at Christmas, instead of Halloween. A whole bunch of new characters, every bit as doomed as the ones in the previous entries, are introduced and developed as if their stories and lives actually mattered. There is also some interesting and intriguing world-building that occurs. Which I liked, a lot.

I admired both Leone's dexterity at setting up and paying off several plot elements as well as his ability to create a palpable Christmas atmosphere in this entry. The "pass the rice" scene was, I think, a terrific way of showing just how bad Sienna's PTSD is. Just how traumatized she was by the events of the previous film. I also liked how the True Crime podcast storyline played out.

But those upswings were not enough to keep the film's narrative motor gunning for a two hour runtime. In the film's second half that narrative sputters and stalls. Which makes what should be a climatic smackdown between Art and Sienna nothing but an interminable and seemingly endless torture sequence. I began to squirm in my seat, somewhat from the discomfort of watching the torture, but also from the frustration of waiting for something interesting to happen.

Something interesting was teased and promised... for the inevitable Terrifier 4. Which had me walking out of the theater feeling disappointed, used, and abused. At this point there will need to be actual confirmation that Terrifier 4 bothers to deliver on that promised something before I agree to pay to see it on the big screen.

Italian Horror Movies by Antonio Tentori and Luigi Cozzi - Book Review

No visit to Rome would be complete for me without a visit to Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso store. While there I purchased a fistful of books. One of them being this informal guide to and perfunctory history of Italian Horror Movies.

Although the translation is attributed to one Roberto Curti, there were numerous times while reading Italian Horror Movies that had me thinking that, perhaps, Google Translate might have done most, if not all, of the actual translating here. The plethora of odd syntax and uneven structure suggests that this is a direct, word-for-word translation from the original Italian into English. A direct translation that does not account for, or even acknowledge, the many syntax and structural differences that exist between the Italian and English languages.

Here is one prime example, from the first paragraph of the first chapter, regarding Italy's very first horror movie: "Unfortunately we don't have many informations on this prototype, which nowadays is lost..." Said prototype is a 1920 film titled Il mostro di Frankenstein (The Frankenstein Monster), which was directed by Eugenio Testa and starred Luciano Albertini (as Dr. Frankenstein) and Umberto Guarracino (as the monster).

While the wonkiness of the translation had my reading experience vacillating back and forth between distracted irritation and amused bafflement, the lack of any and all true critical or contextual depth to the text itself proved both irksome and disappointing.

Tentori and Cozzi, in their introduction, state that Italian horror revolves around transgression and cruelty. That its "identification of the female gender with evil allows for an eroticism which is morbid and macabre at the same time, in depicting the most extreme sexual tendencies: sadomasochism, lesbianism, voyeurism." [Italian Horror Movies, Antonio Tentori and Luigi Cozzi, Page 11.] Too bad that, after making this observation, they do little to no exploration or investigation of their point(s).

The book is broken into three parts. Part One covers the general history of the genre, with individual chapters focusing on either a particular sub-genre (i.e. Gothic Horror, Psychedelic/Pop, Exorcism movies, Zombies, or Cannibals) or miscellaneous films or filmmakers that were briefly "contaminated" by horror genre tropes or atmospherics. Part Two covers the output of the genre's acknowledged Authors (Auteurs): Mario and Lamberto Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Michele Soavi, Luigi Cozzi, Antonio Margheriti, Joe D'Amato, Umberto Lenzi, and others.

These first two parts are mostly just a litany of titles and plot synopsis with an occasional surface level gloss of commentary, critique, context, or personal insight from either Tentori or Cozzi. I was hoping for a little more steak to go with all the sizzle, though.

Part Three, titled A Close Look and Other Memories Regarding Italian Horror, appears to be mostly by Cozzi and consists of reprints of interviews he conducted in the early 1970s with the filmmakers and actors making science-fiction and horror films at that time. He also shares his fond memory of meeting Lucio Fulci, his nightmarish experience working with Klaus Kinski on Nosferatu in Venice, and other personal and professional anecdotes.

The book closes with two narrative treatments for unmade movies. The first is the story Cozzi created, in 1974, for a version of Frankenstein that would have been set in the late 1920s or early 1930s Germany. Dario and Salvatore Argento were to produce, but the project failed to ignite the interest of financiers. Too bad, because this movie would have been wild.

The second treatment was written by Dardano Sacchetti for Lucio Fulci, who wanted to do a variation of The Mummy. It is also a period piece, set in 1922 Turin, that would have provided Fulci ample opportunities to indulge in his trademark combination of rich atmospherics and gruesome bloodletting. It might not have been as wild as the Frankenstein project, but it still would have made for an interesting Italian horror movie.

We could always do with more of those, I think.