Voodoo, and Zombies, and Ghosts, Oh My

A kitschy, quirky cult classic, Fright Night (1985), written and directed by Tom Holland (no, not Spiderman – he wasn’t even born yet), fuses vampiric horror elements with satirical comedy, bringing with it comparisons to a film four years its senior, An American Werewolf in London. Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), is your prototypical teenager. . . a girl loving, movie obsessed high schooler growing up in boring suburbia. With a single mother, Judy Brewster (Dorothy Fielding), who is always working odd hours – she’s a nurse, most of his time is spent with his on again/off again girlfriend, Amy Peterson (Amanda Bearse). During one of their make-out sessions, Charley’s favourite show, Fright Night (hosted by actor Peter Vincent – named after Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, played by Roddy McDowall), is running in the background when he spots some unwonted activity next door.

If you’ve ever wanted to see what Freaky Friday mixed with Friday the 13th would look like (outside of a Wheel of Fortune ‘Before & After’ category), then you’re in luck, as 2020's Freaky, which deftly mixes horror and comedy, is for you. Co-written and directed by Christopher Landon, Millie (Kathryn Newton) is a senior in high school. . . a girl struggling with her depressed, alcoholic mother, Paula (Katie Finneran) – who is recently widowed, a group of manipulative female bullies, a prick of a teacher, Mr. Bernardi (Alan Ruck – channeling his inner Mr. Rooney), and going seemingly unnoticed by her crush, Booker Strode (Uriah Shelton). . . plus it doesn’t help that she is known as the school’s beaver – no, this isn’t some sort of hussy-infused sexual slang, she is actually their mascot (the majestic, often Canadian associated buck-toothed rodent). In fact, if it wasn’t for her two besties, Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich), she’d be completely lost.

The final Missed the Bloody Cut of this October (and this year), enjoy these three out-there horror movies that didn’t make the grade, but deserve to be recognized for a number of reasons anyway. Happy Halloween everyone!

When given a specific set of instructions, it is always best to follow them. . . after all, Ikea furniture can look pretty daunting if you’re missing that annoying Allen key and have to improvise. But, as horrific as the above scenario might sound, of course I’m actually talking about horror movies – specifically, a hair-raising four minute short film called Latch (2017), written and directed by Landon Stahmer. It all starts off simple enough – here are the instructions: “Hold out the match and say ‘show me the light or leave me in the darkness’. . . If you hear something, turn away, light the match and wait. DON’T LOOK BACK. . . but if you look, you might see something looking back at you”. A somewhat typical game teens might play late into the night during a sleep over, our girl receiving said instructions is Sofia (Sarah Bartholomew), a prototypical ‘I’m not scared of anything’ kind of teen. . . her brother, Daniel (Brandon Johnston), the one seemingly trying to spook her. But we know better, there is no Narnia in the wardrobe she is entering, but rather, she is playing with some sort of folkloric ritual.

One of the most infamous horror films of all-time, 1932's Freaks can arguably be called the most daunting watch of the pre-Code era. Transporting the viewer inside the private part of the very public lives of a Great Depression era traveling circus, the film is populated by only a few professional actors, most of the cast featuring sideshow performers with real disabilities. So controversial was it that negative test screenings forced the MGM studio execs to edit out some of its more disturbing elements, chopping twenty-six minutes of its (at that time) ninety minute runtime – the original cut has sadly been lost. Further adding to its dark mystique, the picture’s director, Tod Browning, fresh off of the success of his gargantuan hit of the previous year, Dracula, was able to choose the project he wanted (and he, in retrospect, made the wrong choice with this unusual horror drama with romantic tinges). So repulsed were some critics, sections of America (and the world), as well as Hollywood elites, that it brought forth the end of his career at the prime age of fifty-two.

A rare example of a remake done right, 2020's The Invisible Man, written and directed by Leigh Whannell, takes the general idea from the 1933 classic (as well as the 1897 novel by H.G. Wells) and updates it for the twenty-first century, never going too far, giving it a crisp, claustrophobic feeling. Stuck in a violent, psychologically draining relationship, we are dropped right into the troubled life of Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss), a woman who is trapped under the all-controlling dome of tech wiz millionaire Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) – who has hit it big in the field of optics. Disturbingly controlling, his abode, like the overall story, has been updated for the twenty-first century – instead of a gothic castle full of secret passages and torches, it is a sleek, ultra modern, hyper reflective open floor-plan mansion teetering on the edge of the ocean. . . with all of the technology needed to keep the outside world at bay (and the inside guests trapped).