31 Days of Halloween - Day 30: Xtro

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 30: Xtro (Movie #509)

Xtro was one of those films I always read about on Horror Sites but could never find. My local video stores all seemed to have only purchased the sequels for some reason. It wasn't until about two years ago when I bought the double disc DVD of Xtro 1 and 2 that I finally saw the movie.

Going into rewatching this the only thing I remembered about the movie was the infamous birthing scene. Alien has it's chest-burster which terrified me as a kid (when I saw it parodied in Spaceballs) but it holds nothing to watching a woman give birth to a full grown man. It's so gross and disturbing that you simply have to applaud the film as whole for that moment alone. That being said, there's a lot to applaud with this movie.

There's no downtime in this movie. Not a single second of it's running time is wasted. It starts off with the alien abduction of a boy's father, we jump to three years later instantly with the boy having nightmares and bleeding all over his bed (but not his blood) and by ten minutes we're introduced to an awesome practical effect alien and the insane birthing sequence I mentioned earlier. 

I'll stop beating around the bush. This movie was fucking awesome. I don't know how I forgot how awesome it was. In fact as soon as I finish writing this I'm going to rewatch parts 2 and 3 and see how they hold up.  

So closing notes. Watch this. It's probably my favorite film I watched this month. 

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 26: Dead Alive

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 26: Dead Alive (Movie #110)

There are some movies that you will never forget the first time you saw it. At the time I had a friend named Adam that we would rent and watch horror movies together every weekend. I had read multiple times about Dead Alive on websites like Video Graveyard and BadMovies.org, the back cover provided lots of prepubescent nightmare fuel for me years earlier and the advertisement bragging "the goriest movie ever made" all forced me to HAVE to watch this movie.

This is a movie that you don't see, you experience it. While I enjoy watching this film by myself it's definitely a film that works ever better with a big group. As far as plot goes there's nothing super new. It's a zombie movie and follows most of the rules of zombie movies. It's the sense of humor, the level of gore and the general insanity and fast pace that makes this film stand out amongst the rest.

After watching this movie I don't think I was affected by gore ever again. I was completely desensitized to it until recently when films like Hostel and Human Centipede upped the levels of gore and tried to make everything more realistic. For me I'll always prefer the over the top cartoon violence of this infamous film. 

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 20: An American Werewolf in London

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 20: An American Werewolf in London (Movie #15)

I first discovered An American Werewolf in London through the Michael Jackson Making of Thriller VHS tape. I wanted to see the transformation scene that they spoke about in the doc being that I was obsessed with the music video for Thriller. However, I saw this when I was quite young and got so scared by David's nightmares early on in the film that I never made it to the transformation scene.

I actually don't remember when I actually DID see the full movie. I'm sure this was part of literally hundreds of mom and pops video rentals but I honestly don't remember. My memories are strictly of that first failed attempt at watching. I do know that it wasn't until college when I bought this on DVD that I fully able to appreciate the tone, sense of humor and impressive passing.

There's so much that makes this movie enjoyable but what I appreciate the most is the fact that this is John Landis' first attempt at a horror film. While his comedy background is put to fantastic use with Griffin Dunne's performance as Jack it's even more effective when the film goes from comedic immediately to horror and back to comedy. 

I've heard a bunch of websites refer to the special effects (and specifically the transformation sequence) as the real star of the film. While I can not argue that they're absolutely stunning for me I think Griffin Dunne's deliciously dark comedic performance is what will almost stick with me. I don't know if it's the way that he says "Hi David" with a Mickey Mouse dolly or the matter-of-fact way he tells David to kill himself but I love every second he's on the screen.

Chances are you've seen this movie but if you rewatch keep an ear out for all the "moon" songs throughout. Somehow I missed this little joke until that college viewing. 

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5: Stitches

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 5: Stitches (Movie #450)

Stitches is one of the newer movies on the list. It's one of four films released in the last two-three years. I first heard of the movie when Geekscape was emailed about it looking to see if anyone wanted to review it. I was slow to respond and someone else beat me to it but praised it so heavily that grabbed a copy of my own when it was on sale at Best Buy less than a month later.

This film is painfully underrated at this time and I genuinely hope it finds it audience in the future and develops the kind of cult following it deserves. It's got a genuinely good blend of horror and comedy, some amazing kills and most importantly the jokes actually are funny (a rare feat in horror comedies).

The story follows a group of kids who accidentally kill a clown at a birthday party. A couple years later the clown raises from the dead to exact vengeance on the kids who killed him. That's basically everything you need to know. There's a lot of weird and wacky twists but specifically given how new this movie is I don't feel right spoiling anything.

I will say that the film is extremely stylized in it's filming and editing and while it sometimes relies on CGI it's got a pretty heavily dose of practical effects. The only major issue is that the practical effects definitely makes the CGI parts look shittier.

Regardless I had a great time rewatching this and while it was only the second time I sat down to watch it I wouldn't be shocked if I decided to force some friends to watch this later on this movie.

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3: Feast

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 3: Feast (Movie #156)

I had never heard of Feast until I worked at a mom and pop's video store. The Manager was a big fan of Project Greenlight (which I had never seen) and wanted to order the film out of curiosity. I remember he hated it but the cover captivated me and I decided to rent it one night after work. I loved every insane, gory and bizarre moment of it.

This is gonna be a hard one to write up. While I make allusions to moments in my reviews I try to avoid spoiling anything so this one might be a little bit shorter than ones of the past. The film definitely is most effective (in my opinion) when you go in basically blind.

I will say that beyond the bizarre, offensive and gory effects the film has the greatest first 10 minutes of basically any film I've ever seen. Each character is introduced with an entertaining and hilarious title card telling us their name, occupation, life expectancy and a fun fact. I won't ruin any of these but I will say that damn near all of them made me laugh out loud even all these years later.

All in all this a film for Horror fans from a Horror fan. But I recommend avoiding the sequels at all costs.

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.