I’ve made it a personal goal to watch at least one ‘scary’ movie per day in the month of October–I have to keep it lighter or cheesier on days when Amy is around as she doesn’t do so well with anything gruesome (or just watch them in my room), much in the same way that I feel I should include ‘When Harry Met Sally’ on this list; romantic comedies make my stomach churn. So far, I’m doing really well; and as an added bonus, the movies have helped me keep my Halloween mojo up so that I’m motivated to continue to sew while I watch, when ordinarily, I would’ve become disinterested/lazed off by this point.
October 1st The Haunted History of Halloween color, 1997 This documentary focused on how the holiday arrived in its present incarnation from its roots as the pagan holiday Samhain; when the Christians could not do away with it, they instead blended it with their beliefs. World Wars I and II also had an effect on the holiday, putting the emphasis more on children as adults did not have the time nor resources to celebrate, and when the children of those periods grew up, it began again to have more adult-oriented activities. At 50 minutes, it was entirely too short and never really had the opportunity to go in-depth, instead merely touching on a number of subjects. One nitpick: No matter how much they insist that everyone around the world celebrates Halloween, that Dia De Los Muertos is the same–they really don’t, and it’s really not.
South Park: Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery color, 1999 Pirate Ghosts or Ghost Pirates? The world may never know.
October 2nd Frankenhooker color, 1990 As soon as I read the synopsis, I knew I’d be delighted by this movie: “When his pretty fiancee is literally torn to pieces by a runaway lawnmower, Jeffrey Franken creates a scheme to bring her back to life: reassemble her from the body parts of New York City prostitutes.” WIN. This movie has it all–exploding hookers, mad scientists, SUPER CRACK, a pimp named Zorro, and “a human salad…a salad that was once named Elizabeth”.
October 3rd Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors color, 1987 The last seven elm street kids have been confined to a mental hospital staffed by Morpheus, who does not give them a choice between the red and blue pills, but rather administers sedatives so they have no choice but to dream. Whenever Will Stanton shouts “I AM THE WIZARD MASTER” it cracks me up like a woman flying upside down. But he keeps going! “In the name of Lowrek, Prince of Elves… demon, begone!” STOP IT WIZARD MASTER, YOU ARE KILLING ME. Nancy from the original Nightmare is back, and she’s supposedly ‘grown up’…but as only three years have passed since the original, the effect is of a little girl playing dress-up.
October 4th Nightmare on Elm Street 6: Freddy’s Dead color, 1991 This movie features a funnier, more cruel Freddy, and as a bonus, the ending is in glorious 3-D–I wish the WHOLE MOVIE was in 3-D, mainly because I’d love to see someone slain with a q-tip in 3-D. Sadly, the director lacked the vision necessary to make that happen for me. Cameos by Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper top off this class act.
October 5th Alien Vs. Predator color, 2004 Say what you will, I actually kind of liked this movie. It’s not a cinematic masterpiece by any means, but it has a couple of high points. I think it could’ve used less humans and more fights between the Aliens and Predators. If I start to think about it too much, the nitpicks I have are: Why is it that the Aliens only incubate for a few minutes in the human, but it takes half the movie to incubate in a Predator? How the fuck did it turn into an Alien/Predator hybrid, merely via incubation? By that logic, wouldn’t aliens incubated in humans have a different form from the Queen? (Barring the white Alien from Resurrection as it’s not quite the same thing–being liveborn vs the typical incubation.) How is cold water supposed to kill the Queen or prevent her from laying more eggs when it couldn’t kill a garden-variety alien in Alien³? Why weren’t there more Alien & Predator fights in a movie called Alien vs Predator? As you see, you really can’t think about this one too much. Ideally, if you can watch it merely with your lizard brain, you’ll come away quite satisfied.
In the following poll, YOU decide the criteria. It can be who you think would win in a fight, who you think is cooler, who you’d rather have a beer with, who you think would wink in the most cute manner during a nationally televised debate. It’s your call. I’m just keeping your voting skills prepped for November, when you’ll vote me in for Benevolent Dictator.
Up tonight: Halloween, the 2007 Rob Zombie remake.
AvP is also a guilty pleasure of mine. Even the plot kinda sucked it was very watchable.
AvP-R, however, blows goats.
What about it blows goats so that I might know why exactly I am avoiding it? I’d avoided AvP thus far because I thought it’d be pretty bad, but as it turns out, I can enjoy schlocky if it’s done properly.
This may be one of the most difficult polls ever. I mean, what if Tim Curry WAS Batman?
What if Batman was Darth Vader AND your father?
This comment has nothing to do with your post, but I thought you’d be interested in seeing Crystal Head Vodka on G4!
I knew those G4 people were douches ever since they knocked me out of their way at E3–rejecting vodka served up in a skull just proves it!
Hmmm…well let’s see here…
Tim Curry, as awesome as he is, would be iced quicker than you can say “red shirt.” Sorry, Tim.
Michael Myers, being an ordinary slasher ghoul, would be dismembered by half of the characters on this list pretty early on. He doesn’t have any particular powers to speak of, and his offensive capability is limited to what, a machete?
Batman would put up a good fight, but eventually even he’d fall to some of the larger forces involved here.
Dracula would normally stand a pretty good chance, being undead and all, but his weaknesses are widely publicized, so it’s likely even Batman would get him before any of the real power players got to take a stab at him.
Blackbeard, being a sort of anachronistic anomaly notwithstanding, probably doesn’t have any talents particularly suited to combating aliens and the undead. Unless he, himself, is an undead ghost pirate, then his chances improve significantly.
Jaws is just a big fish, and can’t technically leave the water no matter what the Xbox game might have implied. He’s deadly to most of this list if the battle happens to take place in the water, but unfortunately for him it probably wouldn’t.
Darth Vader by himself is a lot less of a threat than an entire imperial armada, but he could still hold his own in this battle royale, as long as he gets to use Force powers and throw his lightsaber and not just hobble around breathing heavily.
Motley Crue, already at a disadvantage because they’re not KISS, would probably be eaten by one or more of the carnivorous creatures before they got a chance to ask where the tourbus went. Raw, stringy 80’s rocker buffet for all.
Freddy Krueger has a nice portfolio of powers, as well as the whole otherdimensional presence thing going on, but not everything in this list sleeps, so he might be left twiddling his thumbs until someone takes a nap.
Agents are sort of unfair, because if we’re including AI overlords in this list, then the rest of it is a wash, because the entire known universe is fake. It’s kinda hard to top that.
They may be pack hunters, but a single Velociraptor is probably going to chew up Motley Crue and possibly Tim Curry before someone else offs it. Unfortunately there are bigger and nastier predatory creatures in this fight.
Even one Borg is likely to be quite a contender, but ultimately they are kind of slow, and adapt all you want — something slipping out of the shadows and decapitating you from behind is pretty fatal. I could imagine a slow, trundling battle between the Borg and Vader, until Vader simply crushes the Borg’s skull with the Force.
Terminator could wipe the floor with most of the fleshier competitors, being a metal death robot and all, though any properly armed opponents could defeat him with a little doing — after all, Skynet builds them in quantity, not quality.
Predators definitely have some odds in their favor, with the assortment of weaponry and cloaking and all, but nevertheless, they are still fleshy creatures who can be stabbed, shot, blown up, or eaten with little difficulty. And lasers don’t work on ghosts. Best case scenario: Predators goes down, self destructs, takes out his opponent.
Assuming we’re talking about the Giger Aliens, they have a lot of things going for them, but one Alien alone doesn’t stand much of a chance out in the open. Their strength is in numbers, and stealthy use of their environment. Acidy blood is a cool trait, excepting for the part where you have to be cut wide open to put it to good use.
So in the Mary Sue nature of Deus Ex Machina, I gotta vote for the Agents. After all, the overseers of reality itself can just freeze time and erase everyone else.
…you just thoroughly rocked my socks off. <3
What if the following adjustments took place:
-Tim Curry has his Worst Witch powers, plus evil clown abilities, and he just might be Satan
-The battle takes place in a terrarium of sorts that is partly land and partly water, land areas providing shade and cover
-In the water, Blackbeard is solid, but on land is a ghost pirate
-Freddy Krueger can also operate in the real world, not just in dreams, as evidenced in Nightmare on Elm Street 6
-Agent powers are restricted to creating other agents and mimicry but not altering time or the environment.
Hmm…in that case, Tim Curry becomes a serious threat! Because up to this point, we don’t have any real witchcraft practitioners — supernatural threats, yes, but no Gandalf-level magicians. And if Agents are nerfed, he might well win this thing.
Cause that way, he can easily dispatch Freddy and any other spirit beings… and unless I’m mistaken, he’s the ONLY character who would be able to FLY.
Blackbeard goes up a few ranks, but he’s still gonna lose. Especially if he’s solid, in water, without a boat, fighting Jaws.
The Agents may very will still come in first place though, since all they really have to do is touch any of the other combatants to make more agents.
Remember, though, that giant cape makes Tim Curry a huge flying target. I was really talking more about super music video powers, but anything that keeps him in the game a little longer is fine by me.
What if Blackbeard had a boat with some cannons?
You’re just going to keep adjusting the rules until Tim Curry or a Pirate wins, aren’t you? 😉
No, I’m just trying to balance things so the outcome isn’t so obvious from the outset–as in any other competitive arena, things are much more entertaining when the opponents are more evenly matched. This is a show I’d pay to see regardless of who or what wins! 🙂
ahh good ol’ KoRn scary scary SP Halloween
The nerd in me picked the Borg but I would have picked Tim Curry also. He’s mad scary.
I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any non-nerdy answers on this poll. 😀
indeed. maybe the guy from the Army of Darkness should be on there too.
I liked the comics AvP better. The movies are watchable, but not as good as they could have been.
For the record, Batman always wins. Always.
That’s why I picked Batman, too. 😀
I haven’t read the AvP comics–I often have a really difficult time interpreting action sequences in comics, to the point where if one is particularly action-heavy, I might walk away not being entirely sure what happened.
I too was bothered by the incubation speed, but more, I think, and I only saw the movie once, by the apparent difference between the incubation time in the human in “Alien” and the time it took (much faster) in “AVP”…
But…
How the fuck did it turn into an Alien/Predator hybrid, merely via incubation?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the alien in “Alien 3” more dog-like and running on four legs because it incubated in a dog?
Oh, the fact that they drastically lowered the incubation time in humans in AVP bothered me as well, but I get why they did it for the purposes of story–in that way, the difference between humans and the predator bothered me more because if they aren’t going to be consistent with Alien canon, at the very least they could maintain consistency within the context of their own damn movie.
I honestly don’t remember a dog-like Alien3, but it has been a while since I saw it last. If you’re right, that is veeeery interesting. Particularly since it doesn’t seem to share human characteristics when incubated in humans with the exception of being a biped–but with the predator, it changed facial features completely. HMM. Perhaps tomorrow’s movie will be Alien3.
If you must watch it in the interest of science-fiction science, then do so, because science is, of course, important, but to me it is definitely the weakest of the “Alien” saga … everything about that movie is more depressing than scary…
Here’s a statue of the Dog Alien with a detailed explanation…
hahaha Look at the product number (the ID in the address)…
That dog thing is pretty interesting but raises at least one more issue for me–it seems odd that a dog would be selected when in previous incarnations the aliens show no interest in life forms lower than humans. Like the cat in Alien, for example.
I thought Alien3 was the weakest of the saga, too, which is why I don’t remember a whole lot about it. I hated that Newt and Hicks were killed off immediately because it made the struggle of ‘Aliens’ seem pointless. “Oh hey, you went head to head with the Queen for nothing!”
But my friend disagrees–this is what he said when I posted my disappointment with 3:
“Alien3 was awesome! Fantastic sets, great cinematography, the BEST lighting of the series, the most believable cast (Paul Riser and “Game over man, game over…mostly” come ON), the best Alien and a really interesting premise and fantastic ending.
Part 1 was “horror”, part 2 was “action” but part 3 was the best combination of both! There were way too many Aliens in 2, but part 3 was such a…free-for-all.
Don’t give up on part 3. Movies like that and Event Horizon really had the most interesting an unique sci-fi themes. The time between Star Wars and The Matrix in the 90’s there is really underappreciated IMO.
I don’t think we would have developed any sort of interest in the prisoners if it had still been about Newt and Hicks. Especially because Hicks was strong. Without him you got to contrast the strength of a woman (Ripley) with the strength of a group of hardened convicts.
Also, Aliens had too much of the James Cameron stain to it. Hicks was not a particularly interesting character and Newt served her purpose is showing Ripley as a mother figure.”
So I’m going to give it another shot, for science if nothing else.
Though now the more I think about it, the more issue I take with the aliens hunting and killing their means of reproduction…but I suppose if they can use any mammal as a host, it is less significant.
OK:
1. Is there a size limit? Perhaps a cat is too small…
2. Pointless! Yes!
3. No, no, no! … at least in the first two, you actually CARED about the characters and what happened to them … not so in 3 … no matter what this person says…
Don’t give up on part 3. Movies like that and Event Horizon really had the most interesting an unique sci-fi themes
I just … “Event Horizon” SUCKS!
“Aliens” is a great movie, action all the way … it is not a classic like the haunted house/suspense story in “Alien,” but still…
Hell, Winona Ryder couldn’t even make 4 worse than 3…
Where do you think midget Aliens come from?
I actually really enjoyed 4, it was campy in just the right ways to entertain me–it’s not a classic like the first two, but I think it still stands on its own.
4 was better than I expected … then again, my expectations had been lowered by 3 … but underwater aliens will always=cool…
You have to watch “Zombie Strippers” at some point. Jenna Jameson *and* Freddy Kruger!
Added to my netflix queue. 🙂
You’re gonna want to go to one of those mass quantities stores and get a lot of crackers for all that cheese.
I figured I’d go for a large bottle of wine.
You’re gonna need a keg.
A keg of wine? :\ What if I just jab one of those huge bubble tea straws into a box of Franzia to make an adult juice box? It seems like it might be as classy, if not classier than Zombie Strippers.
hahahahahaha
Have you seen Olivia Munn drink from the skull?
http://www.hulu.com/watch/38072/attack-of-the-show-kevin-and-olivia-drink-vodka-from-skulls
It won’t let me embed the thing now…
Yeah, showed it to me. Frankly, I think Olivia should be horsewhipped for disrespecting the magic crystal vodka skull.