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Darker Than Night (1975)

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It is a shame that Mexican horror films have the reputation of silliness that they do.  In a lot of cases one thinks of the black and white films featuring knockoffs of the Universal menagerie battling lucha libre heroes.  Basically, cheap movies cashing in on characters that have cross-border appeal, particularly with ex-pats and immigrants.  The truth is that Mexico has a long, rich history of cinema, and not just in the horror genre.  One of my favorite films, Macario , is a grand example, as are the movies that Alejandro Jodorowski and Luis Buñuel made in Mexico, the latter when unable to do so further under Francisco Franco's regime in Spain.  However, more and more I find myself interested in the movies made by directors who grew up and were part of the culture, and what they bring to their films.  One of those that I will need to explore further is Carlos Enrique Taboada, the director of the slow-burn horror film Darker Than Night .  Ofelia (Cla...

Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)

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The legend of La Huesera isn't the most frightening tale from Mexico, but it is one of the strangest.  It is of a female spirit of the desert that gathers the bones of wolves and other animals and, when the skeleton is complete, sings life back into them so that they may once again roam the wilderness.  It's kind of a beautiful tale of the cycles of nature and kind of a unique take on motherhood.   Although bones and the cracking of such come into play in Huesera: The Bone Woman , the connection with the legend is more allegorical.  Like a number of modern horror films the actual demon or spirit is not to be taken at face value, as it represents more worldly concerns, in this case trying to fit into societal norms due to pressure from family and tradition.   Valeria (Natalia Solián) and her husband Raúl (Alfonso Dosal) are living a happy, middle-class life and decide to have a child.  Their efforts are rewarded and Valeria becomes pregnant.  ...

Aquaman (2018)

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I am one of those weirdos that always kind of liked Aquaman.  Probably it was because Batman and Superman were the obvious go-to heroes from the Justice League and I have always liked going for the odd man out.  I haven't really watched any of the cartoons or read the comics since I was a kid so pretty much anything other than Aquaman talking to fish I had forgotten.  I pretty much even forgot he was supposed to have a secret identity, at least in the comics.  All I pretty much knew was that he came from Atlantis.  Since Atlantis and ancient aliens and such were all the rage at the time it gave Aquaman a few extra cool points.  I am not surprised that it took a long time for the character to get a movie.  For what it's worth, it took almost the same time for the entire Justice League to get their own film despite Superman and Batman both having successful franchises before petering out with worse and worse movies.  Although the theatrical version ...

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)

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The last we saw of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) was Alice (Lisa Wilcox) sending him back to hell.  A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master  was heavy on effects and light on plot, bringing Krueger back by having a hellhound urinate fire on his grave and then having the souls of his victims take revenge from the inside out.  Many of the sequences looked like music videos, which director Renny Harlin was mainly known for up to that point.  It also no longer was attempting to scare audiences, leaning into the humor from Dream Warriors   and giving Freddy more and more one-liners.  To me A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child was always the last consequential movie in the original trilogy, as it felt like Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare was barely a film and Wes Craven's New Nightmare was something unique to itself.  It also felt like a return to form, where there was a conscious effort to try to balance Freddy's quirks with a more frighten...

Don't Panic (1987)

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Rubén Galindo Jr. is a horror director from Mexico City who produced a number of films from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, starting with Cemetery of Terror .  As can be expected his films don't have much of a budget but he does put in some effort to emulate the European and American films that he is a fan of.  One of those is, of course, A Nightmare on Elm Street , and his 1987 movie Don't Panic tries hard to live up to its influence.   Michael (Jon Michael Bischof) has an affluent father (Eduardo Noriega) and an alcoholic mother (Helena Rojo).  He moves back to Mexico City from Beverly Hills right before his 17th birthday and, while celebrating, his friend Tony (Juan Ignacio Aranda) brings with him a Ouija board.  Tony has been in contact with a spirit called Virgil and Michael wants nothing to do with it.  He goes along with the game anyway to impress Alexandra (Gabriela Hassel), a new girl at his school that he has a crush on. Soon Michael's eyes ...

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

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I admit that I am not a big fan of the original Beetlejuice .  It has a lot going for it, like a unique vision of the afterlife, and some memorable performances from Winona Ryder, Geena Davis and Glenn Shaddix.  The problem I had was with the title character himself.  Michael Keaton is not in the movie much, but those times are supposed to be highlights since Beetlejuice is supposed to be the main antagonist.  In his efforts to come across as a whacky ghost, though, the portrayal of the character has always annoyed me. The reason I always came back to it every now and then is because the cartoon did the character justice and concentrated more on building a friendship between him and Lydia rather than being a creepy old ghost trying to marry a teenager.  There was also more emphasis on the afterlife, and it was that cartoon that kept the spirit of the original movie alive.  Tim Burton never really saw a reason for a sequel and it became even less likely as o...

Race with the Devil (1975)

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What The Exorcist managed to do was make the Devil quite the celebrity in the 1970s.  There had already been some resurgence of Old Nick with the Church of Satan and some albums by underground psychedelic bands like Coven, but what many were interested in was the same as what they had heard they could get out of Gardnerian Wicca: nude orgies.  Where Wicca didn't quite offer such - dancing around "skyclad" does not an orgy make - Anton La Vey did and, for a while, made some good money off of it. Hollywood followed suit, releasing a number of horror films in the wake of The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby , which had pretty much started the Satan trend in the U.S.  Evil devil cults were always a big thing in Hammer films especially as the '70s dawned and a bit more flesh could be shown, but those movies always took place in dark castles and vine-covered estates, lorded over by actual lords.  When it came to the Devil in America we needed something that spoke to us spe...

The Devil's Rain (1975)

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One thing I was wondering while watching this movie is why anyone would want to worship Satan if they still have to go to church to do it.  Even when I was a Christian church was a rare thing unless there was a pastor who could make the service interesting.  Not a full-on band singing trite worship songs interesting, but at least a sermon with a point.  Like most of the lectures I had to sit through The Devil's Rain has no point and, unfortunately, a tendency to put one to sleep as well.  This should not happen in a movie with both Ernest Borgnine and William Shatner along with Anton La Vey as a consultant.  During a deluge in the desert Emma Preston (Ida Lupino) is afraid something has happened to her husband.  Her son Mark (Shatner) returns home and tries to reassure her, but those assurances fall short when his father shows up, eyeless, and melts like wax in the rain.  While Mark is briefly gone his house is ransacked, their servant John (Woodrow Ch...

Blue Velvet (1986)

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Looking back it becomes apparent what a departure Blue Velvet was for David Lynch.  He had suffered from something that too many independent directors are put through these days, which is a studio plopping a big-budget movie in their lap and then pretty much poking their nose in every step of the way to the point that what comes out satisfies neither audiences nor the director.  That is what happened with Lynch's previous movie, an adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel Dune , that attempted to jam the story into a mere two hours and 20 minutes - something that no one who has followed Lynch has attempted.  Despite the weird mess Alejandro Jodorowsky's movie would have been I think he still understood he wasn't getting away with under three.  Messing up a Marvel or Star Wars film these days in such a capacity, whether the director is at fault or not, is pretty much a career killer.  Lynch had been offered Return of the Jedi before turning it down to make Dune, an...

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

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I had only one reason to watch Ouija , and that is because I heard good things about this prequel.  I have also heard that this one could be enjoyed without seeing the first, which is kind of true.  The thing this movie does right is concentrate on the only interesting part of the original movie which was the origin of the board itself.  Some futzing is done to make it a better story, none of the actors who played the ghosts in in Ouija return , but that's not a big deal.  The original movie was not that good, and in fact one of the worst examples of the PG-13 horror trend that stretched from the late '90s into the 2010s.  Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) is a fortune teller and fake psychic who often involves her older daughter Lina (Annalise Basso) in her act.  Her younger daughter Doris (Lulu Wilson) is, like the rest of the family, reeling from the loss of her father, and suffers teasing at school because of her mother's profession.  Lina has begun ...

Ouija (2014)

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Ouija boards are a readymade plot device in horror films.  There are so many rumors and tales about them despite the fact they are a product of the 1890s spiritist movement and, for over a century, have been marketed as a mere boardgame.  Despite frightening tales of possession and evil spirits the whole idea of moving a planchette around the board to answer questions boils down to either one of the participants pranking the others or involuntary movements giving subconscious answers to the questions. The fact that it is a board game is most important.  This form of "spirit board" was popularized by Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard who sold their patented version through the Kennard Novelty Company.  It eventually became the property of Parker Brothers, and later Hasbro when they acquired that company in 1991.  Ouija , the movie, was produced by Hasbro as well as Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes, so rather than being a creative, if flawed, independent horror film lik...

Dolores Claiborne (1995)

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Stephen King released two books in 1992.  One was Gerald's Game , which I didn't care for.  I'm not surprised it didn't get adapted at the time for a couple reasons.  One is that the book is not one of his best and the other is that it takes place almost exclusively in the bedroom of a lady named Jessie whose husband, Gerald, dies during some non-consensual rough sex play.  Mike Flanagan managed to bring it to Netflix in 2017 and proved that he was up to the task of adapting even some of the more difficult King material, with Gerald's Game being much better than its source.  The other book he released that year was Dolores Claiborne .  Neither book dwelt on supernatural elements as, at the time before getting into more bloated epics, King was dwelling more in reality than in his Dark Tower world or any of the usual supernatural tropes.  There is one incidence in the books, which occurs in neither movie, which is the exception.  At one point durin...

The Psychic (1977)

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I am one of those strange people that prefer Lucio Fulci's gialli to his horror films.  While those movies are well-made and visually appealing they are also quite surreal, whether intended or not.  There is a lot of effort put into making them as similar to Dario Argento's work as possible, while Fulci's earlier films seemed more of an effort by an artist to blaze his own path.   Besides, much of what would be in his later movies is present in his works from the 1970s.  They don't hold back on the blood or the sex - even though The Psychic is devoid of the latter - and they still have some crazy, and controversial, plot twists on occasion.  What I like about them, however, is that unlike most movies in the genre they are straightforward mysteries that are fun to work out while watching them.  Virginia Ducci (Jennifer O'Neill) is a clairvoyant who often has visions of things that have happened or that will happen.  Problem is they aren't consisten...

The Beyond (1981)

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Although one of my pieces of advice to anyone watching a Lucio Fulci horror film is not to look for much sense or plot, but just to go with what happens, I understand why his movies became increasingly surreal.  Much of his output before the 1980s was pretty straightforward, with even his gialli being logically put together.  Zombie was also pretty much what the title said despite some aspects being a bit muddled.  The Beyond is the second in his "death" trilogy.  Like some other so-called Italian horror trilogies this has more to do with fans connecting similar films than anything Fulci intended.  What he did intend was to try to get away from the zombie films and get more creative control, which he ended up getting for a good part of The Beyond with the trade-off that he had to agree to zombies in the finale.  The result is what should be a standard haunted house story turning into a bizarre series of events that is more of a series of visceral set piece...

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

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By 2023 pretty much everyone knew the DC Cinematic Universe was done.  James Gunn was taking over and rebooting the whole thing which, by that time, was the poster case of superhero fatigue.  Still, as long as it wasn't Batgirl , Warner Bros. had a number of movies that they were desperate to get out, mainly because there was still a glut from when theaters shut down for COVID-19.  One of those stragglers was a sequel to Shazam! , which was one of the few DC films that was any good.  The staff made from the tree of life now sits in a museum at the Acropolis in Athens and, it turns out, by breaking it in half Billy Batson (Zachary Levy, Asher Angel) released the Sisters of Atlas from the realm in which the Wizard (Djimon Hounsou) had imprisoned them.  Hespera (Helen Mirren), Kalypso (Lucy Liu) and Anthea (Rachel Zegler) intend to use the staff to take the powers from Batson and his friends, now working as a team of superheroes in Philadelphia. The ultimate goal i...