Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year, making it a perfect night to stay in and watch a movie without feeling guilty about not going out. I'd like to hear what people are watching. I realized recently that for all the junk I watch, I've never seen any of the HOWLING movies, so it's down to that or the new M.R. James disc. I've been reading a James story a day all month to get into the spirit of the season and that might win out.

Remember when TV used to show horror movies on Halloween? Tomorrow night it's all Kid Nation and Top Model, though the quirky WLNY is showing the remake of BODY SNATCHERS. I'd be all for a writers' strike if it meant showing movies again. It was at a grade-school sleepover 20 years ago tonight--Friday 10/30/87--that I watched the TV-premiere of FRIGHT NIGHT at 8pm on WWOR-9 and then followed it with a vhs of HALLOWEEN 3 I'd gotten off WNYW-5 with a couple friends. Oddly, neither of those channels is around any longer.

Hey, there is nothing more horrific than those shows!

I don't have anything specific lined up, but I do know I will be watching some kind of horror movie. I know I have plenty to chose from. More than likely it will be something from the 80s.

We're watching NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and the newly released remaster of the 1978 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.

Enjoy the holiday, everybody!

best,
FBC

Frank Coleman
Bambi Everson

I've narrowed it down to one of these four:

GHOSTWATCH
WOMAN IN BLACK
THE WITCH'S MIRROR
THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M

POSSESSED AND POSSESSED II would make a good double feature though...

Well, regardless, I'm going to make sure it's something I haven't seen before.

I've been wanting to watch HELLRAISER again for a while now. I figure tomorrow will be as good a night as any! Depending how tired I am I might take HALLOWEEN 3 for a spin as well.

Actually, there's quite a lot of Halloween goodness around cable tv land. Here's a list. All times pacific.

TCM
-----
Universal horror, Val Lewton and Ed Wood

3:00am THE DEVIL BAT
4:30am THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB
6:00am BRIDE OF THE MONSTER
7:30am THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN
9:15am CRY OF THE WEREWOLF
10:30am THE WEREWOLF
12:00pm THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM
1:30pm HOUSE OF USHER
3:00pm THE HAUNTING
5:00pm BEDLAM
6:30pm THE INVISIBLE RAY
8:00pm THE BODY SNATCHER
9:30pm THE OLD DARK HOUSE
11:00pm DIE, MONSTER, DIE!
12:30am THE WALKING DEAD
1:45am ISLE OF THE DEAD

Fox Movie Channel
----------------------
3:00am THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE
4:30am THE INNOCENTS
6:30am CABINET OF CALIGARI (1962)
8:30am VAULT OF HORROR
10:30am THE INNOCENTS
12:30pm HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE
3:00pm PRETTY POISON
5:00pm RACE WITH THE DEVIL
6:30pm TERROR TRAIN
8:30pm RACE WITH THE DEVIL
10:00pm TERROR TRAIN
12:00am FREAKED

Sundance Channel
---------------------
6:30pm FREEZE FRAME
8:15pm CLOSE YOUR EYES
10:00pm SESSION 9

Asia Extreme Sunday night: GEMINI

IFC
----
10:25am THE EYE
3:25pm AFRAID OF THE DARK
5:00pm MURDER BY NUMBERS (Mike Hodges doc)
6:00pm AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL
7:30pm THIS NIGHT I'LL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE
9:30pm AWAKENING OF THE BEAST

Plus late horror entries,

Thursday at 9:45pm WENDIGO
Friday at 9:05pm Q: THE WINGED SERPENT

IPLEX
-------
4:10pm LORD OF ILLUSIONS
6:00pm THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW
7:40pm THE BELIEVERS

Plus on Friday at 7:40pm ARMY OF DARKNESS

FLIX
-----
6:05pm FUTUREWORLD
8:00pm FRIGHT NIGHT
9:50pm DOLLS (not the Takeshi Kitano film)
11:10pm HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF

Plus:

Thursday at 12:05pm NEAR DARK, followed by FREE ENTERPRISE [not horror, just a movie I love]

Friday at 1:25am BLIND BEAST

[Flix never fails to surprise me when I remember to look at their schedule.]

If Flix runs to form, its prints of FUTUREWORLD and DOLLS should be in their proper aspect ratios, so be sure to record them. DOLLS is on DVD, but FUTUREWORLD is not (yet). FRIGHT NIGHT is pan-and-scan, or at least it was the last time I recorded it off Flix. I don't know about the others. Flix, the Movie Channel and Showtime are usually pretty good about airing letterboxed prints, but HBO, Cinemax and Encore never do, as far as I can tell. Plus, HBO and Cinemax copy-protect their signals so you can't record their movies to DVD-R, so I boycott them anyway.

Great double bill! ;)

best,
FBC

Really? I wonder why I don't have that problem... could it just be regionally true, or dependent on one's service? I know from past experience that Donna has encountered difficulties recording directly onto her computer from premium channels, but I've never had the problem with recording/storing shows on my Dish DVR or Panasonic DVD-R recorder's hard drive.

I’ve been watching some of horror movies on AMC. Yeah, I know the commercials ruin everything but it reminded me of the days when you had to watch commercials. No Tivo, nothing. If the movie was scary the commercials worked as a breather from the movie. Sometimes that was needed. So believe it or not this past week was the first time I had ever seen HALLOWEEN 4 and HALLOWEEN 5. At the time I was too much of a snob to see those movies. While not great these are entertaining movies that work well at feeding that Halloween hunger.

HALLOWEEN ****

This is the first and best in the series. They may never be anything like this again. One sequence that stands out is when Jamie Lee Curtis is hiding in the closet. Michael Myers is pounds and tears his way in. Like the Big Bad Wolf, He will huff and puff and blow that door in. Then the overhead light with the link is turned on. You see that white face. Myers/The Shape turns it off as fast as he can. He is embarrassed to be seen. As if the light is underscoring his actions. The only way he can continue is if he does so in the dark.

HALLOWEEN II **1/2

A serviceable sequel that could have been better but it wasn’t. I’m still not taken with Brother/Sister link but like STAR WARS it is here to stay. It is part of the mythology. What works is picking up where the last movie left off and kept going and going. Considering the strange continuity loops that would follow in later movies, Part II could almost pass for a dream that she is having while staying at the hospital. Two good set pieces include the slipping in the pool of blood (only to be copied in CAPE FEAR) and the boiling hot water. Not as crafty as the original but it is a good stab.

I’d love to elaborate more on these but perhaps later…..

HALLOWEEN III: SEAON OF THE WITCH **1/2

HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICAHEL MYERS ***

HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS **1/2

THE FOG ***

THE FURY ***

PSYCHO ****

I'll be doing the trick or treat thing with my kids, and then we'll all be watching the live 2-hour "Ghost Hunters" on Sci-Fi. That can be an intermittently creepy show, and it's always fun to watch even if they don't find any paranormal "evidence".

To start the day, middle-ager that I am, I caught the crew on "Today" dressed as The Munsters, recreating the first season credit sequence. Except for them forgetting to run the first two credits ("The Munsters" and "Meredith Viera as Lily") it went beautifully. Al was Grampa, and two of the female correspondents played Marilyn and Eddie. Since I had been predicting Matt would be Frankenstein's creation ever since I heard they were doing only monsters this year, I wasn't surprised when he came from under the stairs as Herman. A few moments later the stairs were opened again, to reveal Spot, as portrayed by Tiki Barber in a costume.* The stairway set was lovely, and the segment was broadcast in black and white.

Oh, and the absent, traveling Ann Curry "showed up" as a disembodied head in a crystal ball.

While I'm out and about baring my custom-made fangs tonight, I'll be recording THE HAUNTING tonight (6 pm, EST) since my pal Harry Long has told me that TCM's version is less acoustically flat than the DVD.

*No kiddin'.

Right, you can record HBO and Cinemax programming to your hard drive, but have you tried to burn them from there to DVD-R? Or record directly to DVD-R? I don't think it will work; it doesn't for me.

I have a Canopus ADVC-100 breakout box, which gives me S-VHS and RCA in/out jacks for audio and video plus two firewire ports, which allows me to "tape" from my DVR to my Mac (though the box itself is platform-agnostic). That intermediate step may do something to the signal or not -- not sure -- but in any event, I grab stuff off the DVR into iMovie or Final Cut and then burn to DVD-R using DVD Studio Pro. I've never once had an issue with programming from any channel.

The only downside is the recording happens in real time and the DVR must stay tuned to whatever I'm dubbing (though I can record a different station in the background) and technically I suppose it is a digital to analog conversion, but the resultant DVDs look virtually indistinguishable from the original.

I do, however, pine for a Tivo with a built-in DVD burner... there's only so many hours in the day.

best,
FBC

Marty,

what kind of connections are you using: S-video, standard video cable...?

Also, what exactly happens when you try to record? Does the picture roll, etc.?

No, I have a Panasonic DVD recorder with a hard drive, so I don't need cables to burn discs. I record directly to the hard drive, and then burn to DVD-R. It's possible to record directly to DVD-R without using the hard drive, but the flagged programming knows it's going to DVD-R and will not record.

Come to think of it, I have not actually tried to burn HBO or Cinemax programming on my new Panasonic, but I did with my old Toshiba DVD recorder. What happens is that the program just won't record--it stops after a few seconds, I guess when the DVD recorder picks up the copy-protection signal. No rolling or distortion or anything like that. Basically an error message that says I'm trying to record protected content. There also is a symbol that accompanies these programs on the hard drive menu that indicates it can not be recopied. I think my old Toshiba manual described these programs as "Once Record" or something similar.

I haven't had HBO or Cinemax since I discovered it was copy-protecting its programming, and that was before I purchased my current Panasonic, though I doubt it will let me burn discs either.

We were expecting to be away this year, but Tropical Storm Noel took care of that. So I think we'll watch BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE, about as "scary" as my wife will allow (it does have Kim Novak's most touching performance as a witch) and maybe, just maybe, THEATER OF BLOOD. Oh, and last night's season opener of the always chilling NIP/TUCK.

Anyway, it's sublime fall weather here in Brooklyn, perfect for boys and ghouls of all ages.

And in Lower Manhattan, as well, where I just saw a zombie during my lunch hour.

Bob, did you lose a comma, or was that a joke about "Kim Novak's most touching performance as a witch?" 'Splain, please.

No cables? Then how does the cable signal get to the DVD recorder? Are you passing the cable signal through the DVD recorder?

That could be your problem right there.

If so you should hook the cable directly to the TV and use one of the alternate cable outputs like the S-video to patch it to your DVD recorder.

Does your cable box have a DVR?

I'll be watching the new UK dvd of CREEPSHOW...the making of docu is great. And the film itself looks to be in great shape, and correctly framed. I love this movie so much.
So if you have the R1 disc, by all means throw it away, use it as a coaster, because the new DVD is awesome!

And maybe I'll watch STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS, has anyone seen this? I've heard some good things about it, and it has David Warner, which is a plus.

HBO/Cinemax set "Copy Once" flags, which doesn't allow recording to DVD-Rs, period.

Since his model of recorder recognizes and obeys the flags, he'd have trouble getting very far, once he tried to archive to disc.

There are a number of variables, such as the cable/sat provider and hardware used.

However, there are different restrictions when you are trying to simply record onto a hard drive vs. burning onto a disc. Programs will often happily record onto a hard drive for later viewing, but once you try to move them onto a disc: "Not so fast, Charlie!"

I saw this a few months ago. A very cool, low budget war pic from Jeff Burr. Probably his best work in years.

It seems Blockbuster.com has decided what I will watch tonight for me as FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD arrived. I'll make sure to take in something else classic to balance things out. And view some episodes of HAMMER'S HOUSE OF HORROR.

Only just got back from a weekend long horror fest where I watched plenty of old (Friday 13th Part IV, new print of Fright Night, the new BFI print of Dracula, and lots more) and new (Planet Terror is magnificent), but nope, my cinema going doesn't stop there. For tonight's Halloween viewing, I'm off to a midnight screening of Vampire Circus.

I figure instead of watching Saw IV, I'll take in Chuck Russell's remake of The Blob for my Shawnee Smith fix. Follow it up with some British Steele... Barbara, that is. I just realized that I've never seen any of the serious Corman adaptations of Poe, so I'm going with The Pit and the Pendulum.

Well, the viewing is a bit past tense at this point, but here's what I managed to watch this Halloween. At 5PM I popped in the 1936 THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND with Karloff, which I had never seen before and which turned out to be a treat. After dinner, following an evening stroll and a visit to a local haunted house attraction, I watched two episodes of the 80s series TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE - 'Trick or Treat' and 'Halloween Candy.' Then, it was of course time for the original HALLOWEEN, a film I've managed to watch every Halloween since I was fourteen. But I'm an insomniac, so the evening's far from over for me, and I've got a copy of 28 WEEKS LATER checked out from Netflix that I hope to watch before falling asleep. Oh, and there's DIE, MONSTER, DIE coming on TCM in the wee hours of the morning, and since I've never seen it before...

I went to a party, but I managed to squeeze in a viewing of last night's episode of REAPER. Ray Wise as Satan = pure genius.

Lost a comma, Bob. My wife was properly enchanted.

Now that the trick and treating seems to have ended, I think I'll play BLACK SABBATH by Bava.

I've watched LISA AND THE DEVIL with commentary and I'm about to finally put on BLACK X-MAS.

This morning I watched the THE NIGHT STALKER movie, and in the afternoon FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. Following trick or treating with my daughter, I dozed through most of REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES. (I have it on one of those Mill Creek collections. I had never seen it before and thought I'd give it a whirl. Ugh.) I perked up a bit for TCM's airing of DIE, MONSTER, DIE! (another new one for me), and now it's off to bed. Happy Halloween, everyone.

If you have the DVD of STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS be sure to watch the documentary on the making of the film, a great portrait of the trials involved filming a low-budget film in eastern Europe. It even includes some terrific footage of a greatly displeased Linda Thorson (who even goes topless in the film) lambasting her director. Jeff Burr clearly cared for this project and put a lot of effort into it.

BTW my Halloween viewing: MAN EATER OF HYDRA.

Well, BLACK X-MAS didn't necessarily suck but its no BLACK CHRISTMAS. I didn't care for any of the characters. Despite the stupid backstory on the killer, the filmmakers still depend on the original film to fill in the gaps for people who saw it (the gaps being, well, the better parts). Its more of a "shrug... whatever" film than anything. Really, without the grisly gore, there would be no reason to watch the film. If you don't want the gore but want to be scared, just get the original. Hell, if you don't want the gore AND want to be scared, get the original. I've also got the Masterpiece Theatre TURN OF THE SCREW and Hammer's THE WITCHES from Netflix at the moment (along with LA NOTTE but thats not really Halloween viewing).

I don't think I like the combination of big studios and unrated horror. Its one thing when a film with lesser resources goes over the top in the gore department (for instance, THE EVIL DEAD) but I don't think I like more convincing human gore effects (now, cool animatronic and latex monsters, that's another thing).

We managed to stay up late and watch the 1999 version of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, which I like. It has a good creepshow atmosphere, and Geoffrey Rush is fun to watch.


Hmmm, just last year I recorded some SOPRANOS episodes to a DVD-0R rewritable from the DVR hard drive to our Phillips recorder with no issues at all.

Woo-hoo! A great Halloween walking up to the West Village from Houston Street (I stopped at the card/bookstore there and found a copy of the novelization of FRIGHT NIGHT!). The extra hour of light really made it a perfect evening (if a few degrees warmer than my ideal) for seeing the kids going from store to residential building to store. Top that off with a hearty meal of chicken and mashed taters at Cowgirls', served by a waitress who'd been inspired by the book WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP and had a fake ax protruding from her chest, and it was one of my nicest Halloweens ever.

And Harry was right; my home-made DVD of THE HAUNTING is better from an audio point of view than the studio release.

I went with the M.R. James disc. The main feature is a 1979 48-minute ITV Playhouse episode of "Casting the Runes," starring Jan Francis and Iain Cuthbertson. It's been adapated and updated by Clive Exton, who wrote some good horror movies in the 70's, like 10 Rillington Place, and is directed by Lawrence Clark, who did the annual BBC Christmas ghost stories. It's a excellent example in our remake-heavy times on how to update a story the right way, because although it makes substantial changes to James's original (like making the protagonist a well-adjusted woman rather than a middle-aged bachelor, and changing the nature of the second big scarepiece, which is imported from "The Ash-Tree," my favorite James story), Exton is respectful of the tone and texture of James's vision and doesn't try to "modernize" it by appealing to late-70's sensibilities. However it does takes one surprisingly dark turn at the very end:

SPOILER START

After Karswell is secretly given back the runes at an airport, he gets on a plane which we learn crashes, making protagonist Dunning (Jan Francis) responsible for the deaths of a couple hundred people. In the original story, a falling stone from a churchtower drops onto Karswell's head, and in the Tourneur film Karswell is attacked alone in a railyard, both of which are much less nihilistic than this.

SPOILER END

The wintry Yorkshire landscapes captured on grainy 16mm add to the feeling of a bleak, godless universe closing in on Dunning, and Cuthbertson's Karswell is actually quite effective, reminding me of Tom Noonan from Manhunter, a hulking, pervy sort of creep. There are some dated video effects like the superimposition of a madly laughing Karswell's face on a spinning globe, but mainly the tone is tense and serious throughout.

Also on the disc is another James adaptation, a half-hour ITV show for schoolchildren from 1976 based on "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance," about a man who inherits a large piece of property with a possessed hedge maze on it. Shot on the cheap with penny ante effects, the show's intended purpose is to teach kids about the use of music in setting a mood. Which is a nice idea except that the music, introduced by the long-haired, eccentric-looking composer in a prologue, is pretty distracting! The final BOO! involves some kind of skeleton/ghost thing popping up and is haunted-house cheap but effective.

Finally there's a 50-minute "dramatic documentary" on James's life, which could easily have been shortened by half. Bill Wallis takes us on a tour of the places James lived and worked (like Eton) and tries desperately to figure out what motivated this milquetoast, devout Anglican to write the best ghost stories ever. Theories abound but none are convincingly supported by evidence, and ultimately I would have preferred a more straightforward, factual biography.

And the very Harry Long I just mentioned publishes a mag called VAN HELSING'S JOURNAL, which ran a long piece on those Brit Christmas ghost story programmes (note UK spelling!).

I brushed away a few years of dust and took the shrinkwrap off MEMENTO MORI. I have yet to find Asian horror films compelling, and this one was no exception in that regard. On the other hand, afterwards I had a rollicking sleep laden with wild nightmares all directly traceable to the movie, so I suppose there was something to it.

Well, I only got around to The Pit and the Pendulum last night. In some ways a lot of fun, in others (the Ms. Steele factor*) a disappointment.

Certainly a lot more psychedelic in ways that I would expect from a movie released in 1961, which leads me to suspect that Corman started dropping acid a lot earlier than I was led to believe. Great cinematography at times, though... the minimalism of the pendulum sequence doing a great job of disguising the low budget.

Also features (in John Kerr) the one of the most churlish protagonists I can recall, although under the circumstances I suppose it to be understandable.

As this if the first Price feature I've seen since I was a young'un, it's only now that I truly realize what a ham he was... in a fun way, of course.

The interesting part was that only about a week ago I read a short story by Ray Russell called "The Cage". At the end, I was disturbed at the out-of-proportion punishment inflicted on the adulteress for her misdeed... only to realize at the end of PatP that there is a suspicious amount of similarities between the last half-hour of the movie and the short story (originally published in 1959).

*SPOILER


Aside for a couple of blurry flashback sequences in the first half hour, the notable absence of Ms. Steele pretty much telegraphs the upcoming turn of events... and even then she only shows up in the last fifteen or so minutes to grace the feature for about five minutes (at best) of face time.

Does HBO/Cinemax allow recording to DVD-RAM? I have a Panasonic DVR/DVD-recorder combo unit too but I don't subscribe to HBO. I use DVD-RAM discs as hard drive extensions when my hard drive is maxed out. You can't play them on most DVD players, except Panasonic DVD-recorder units.