Ohm My God

There is something alluring about ghost tales being told in the darkness of the night. . . the way in which John Carpenter’s 1980 horror thriller The Fog opens – with a grizzled seafarer (John Houseman) recounting (to a group of wide-eyed children) the story of a ship of sailors who died in a horrific manner off of the coast of their small town one hundred years earlier. Building off of the success of his hit from two years earlier, Halloween, Carpenter once again shows his skills at developing an immersive world – this time creating a realistic ocean-side town packed with intriguing personas (in both films, he does so with a very limited budget). The locale, Antonio Bay, California, is celebrating its one hundredth anniversary, something the townsfolk are very proud of, especially Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh), one of the organizers of the festivities.

The penultimate movie to watch on October 31st, John Carpenter’s 1978 motion picture Halloween is the king of the slasher horror genre, fusing a villain of pure evil with suspenseful subtlety that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat. Co-written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill (who also produces), the simple yet effective story begins with a young Michael Myers murdering his sister on Halloween night, 1963, in Haddonfield, Illinois. Committed to the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, the Myers home, even fifteen years later, sits empty, dilapidated and believed by most community members to be haunted.

As you can likely imagine, I go through quite a few horror movies every October. . . and not every one I watch meets my strict criteria and earns a review. But, that is not to say that these films may not interest you, so, instead of letting them fall behind in the forest for the proverbial psychopathic serial killer, I’ve decided to start this new blog feature in which I will provide you with the good, the bad and the ugly on those horror flicks that just missed the bloody cut. 2017's A Ghost Story, written and directed by David Lowery, is arguably one of the more creative and unique iterations on a spectre in some time. A deep philosophical rumination on love, life, death, loneliness, time and ghosts, it takes the rare position of showing the ghost’s point of view. Less a typical horror story and more along the lines of a fantasy drama, the movie stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as the two leads. Kind of a spoiler, but not really, Affleck dies early on, and, instead of moving on, he feels like he has unfinished business, and returns to live a pale existence of what life once was.

Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure Ozploitation. Had you going there, didn’t I?. . . you thought I was going full Willy Wonka, but rather, I am transporting you to a very different landscape, that of the Australian exploitation film. Growing out of the R rating after it was instituted (as well as helped by new tax cuts), this Australian New Wave rose out of the 1970s and 80s (a little later than its American counterpart), and is a broad term that refers to no specific genre, encompassing horror, comedy, sexploitation, post-apocalyptic, dystopic and so much more – though it does slant the traditional norms of culture at the time. It is hard to argue that the Mad Max franchise, directed by George Miller, would not be the best known example of this type of movie.

Imagine being wakened by a bright light, not like that of some sort of alien abduction, but rather as if someone was snapping your photo, with the flash on, in the pitch black of your own bedroom. . . well, that is the concept of the 2015 short film Polaroid. Produced, directed, filmed and edited by Alex “Pressplay” Wohleber, it is a vignette of sheer terror. Waking from the bright light and distinct sound of a Polaroid picture being taken, our lead, simply known as Guy (Matt Halpern – also a producer), not only finds himself in a possible robbery situation, but also quickly learns that the electricity in his home isn’t working.