31 Days of Halloween 2018

31 Days of Halloween 2018 - We shall see if I can manage to see something each of the 31 days to that most wonderful of holidays.
October 1:

The Frankenstein Theory (2013) - Kris Lemche doing his best Dennis Reynolds is the obsessed Jonathan Venkenhein wanting to prove his forefathers were the basis for the Frankenstein story by Mary Shelley and that the monster actually exists. He pays a documentary film team to travel to the frozen tundra of Canada to find said beast. Written by Vlady Pildysh and Andrew Weiner with story by Pildysh and Directed by Weiner the film is a buildup, naturally, to finding the rumored monster. Unfortunately the buildup is not worth the wait.  I slogged through the film trying to stay interested and the breadcrumbs towards the ending were too on the nose to leave any mystery. In the end they barely showed the monster played by veteran actor in this type of role Roger W. Morrissey. He does not get to strut his stuff for very long and really what the film needed was more monster. Just the premise alone promises that there will be a beast but to then limit the on screen time to a couple minutes at the end of the film was a crime. Not a great start to the month.

October 2:

Zombie High (1987) - This is a strange film, combination 80s teen comedy and horror film that sort of misses on both counts. The music and setting at a private school is strange upbeat in that 80s, "we are going to party" high school movie way. But that really is not what this film is. It is a story about the staff using the brain material of the students to produce a serum to keep them all from aging. There are a ton of logic flaws in this film to go along with the schizoid mood flaws.  If all the students from every class over the years are basically lobotomized where are they all in the world. It is established this serum has been keeping some of the staff alive since the civil war, so how is that secret kept if the students are damaged in the process? The class the main character is in are controlled through music on a PA system, so when kids graduate and leave what happens then? What happens during power outages? It was like it was written by different people and each were writing for a different genre. Starring Virginia Madsen  at age 25 playing an 18 year old did not fit great in the role. Sherilyn Fenn seemed a bit more believable as her roommate. All of this film is a mess, but at least some of the horror elements are well done. It really is unfortunate that the cut scene to the next bit always ruined the mood of the film.

I also watched Hold the Dark (2018) - A Netflix original film starring that was strange and wonderful in its meditated state, the is periodically interrupted by amazingly sudden and disturbing violence. Not really a horror film but directed by Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) who is fast becoming one of my favorite directors. He brings a feel to the film of isolation and lack of control for the part of the main character Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) that fits just so damn perfectly in this story. The story is that Core receives a letter from a Mother, Medora Slone ( Riley Keough) in northern Alaska claiming wolves had taken her son. She wants Core the wolf behaviorist to track the guilty wolves so she can have closure. It sets up a situations where Core is in the tiny village when Medora's husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) returns home from Iraq setting off a series of violent encounters between Vernon and the local police. There is so much more to this film though, and Core is the character set adrift in this strange world a witness to the madness. Totally worth a watch and on Netflix now.