Lady Omega

October is the Halloween month. The nature is going through it’s gothic phaze, the nights become colder, darker, longer and spookier, and it’s the perfect time to have Shocktober-fest. Shocktober is our “movie festival” we have every October, which means watching nothing but the horror/weird/freaky movies every night of the month. This way, by the end of the month, you are perfectly prepared for Halloween.

Since the beginning of October, we have watched quite a handful of movies. I thought it would be fun to make a list of the ones we’ve watched so far, so here you go (in more or less chronological order):

We started out with -

I’ve seen this movie before but not all of it. I always liked Evil Dead 1 and 2, and this one is also very entertaining and funny, I enjoyed it a lot, but there’s nothing scary about it whatsoever, it’s more of a fantasy than a horror movie.

This is a Portuguese exorcism/cursed house movie. The atmosphere of the movie is good, you get to see the grim places in Portugal, but the story unfolds a bit slow, and the “grand finale” is too short and a little confusing.

This is one of the first movies of George Romero, it’s about a suburban housewife who gets interested in witchcraft and slowly goes crazy. It’s more of a suspense movie than a horror. It has a great 70’s atmosphere, so it is quite interesting to watch, not so much for getting scared though. In the 70s this movie was probably considered scary, but today it wouldn’t, because our minds are too accustomed to horrific and truly scary images and stories.

They did a good job but I liked the original, Gin gwai, much more. The American versions of The Ring and The Grudge are far superior to this movie.

This Brazilian movie is pretty awesome and very entertaining. Coffin Joe plays an evil gravedigger who doesn’t believe in any supernatural powers, pisses people off and kills them if they get in his way.

Total crap. A movie about a bunch of friends who share a trauma from the past, being brought up in an asylum where they were experimented on. They come back to the place and die one after another. The storyline is pretty dull, not much going on throughout the movie, not so many good effects, and the movie leaves you with a thought – what the hell did i just watch and why did i choose this movie?

These are 3 short movies based on Edgar Allan Poe’s stories: “Metzengerstein”, “Toby Dammit” and “William Wilson”. It’s a must-see classic.

A very interesting Asian ghost movie, really good storyline and great effects. It’s both horror and sci-fi, which makes it more original than many Asian ghost story movies.

This remake of the 1970’s movie is pretty confusing and hard to follow. After watching it, we were trying to figure out what exactly was going on in the movie, but eventually gave up. It’s always good to have some mystery in a movie, but this one has too much of it. Although i haven’t seen it, i am sure that the original movie by Herschell Gordon Lewis is much better.

The Holy Mountain is one of the most artistic and awesome movies I have ever seen. This was the first movie of Alejandro Jodorowsky i’ve seen, and i am planning to watch more now. Every single set in the movie is a perfect work of art. The movie has lots of symbolism and occult connotations. A must-see for everyone (although it’s not a horror movie).

Really weird movie by Coffin Joe, has strange sex and drug-taking scenes.

It was not bad, but i like Dario Argento’s old movies more. Some parts of the movie were pretty funny. Also, the soundtrack in the end is pretty ridiculous. One of the best things about the old Argento movies is that the soundtracks were written and performed by the spooky Italian progressive rock band, Goblin, thus making the movies very special.

This movie is an unusual vampire flick, set in an obscure town in Alaska ( actually filmed in New Zealand ). It has a really spooky atmosphere, great cinematography, pretty decent film score and lots of good gore. The vampires in the film are not the elegant sophisticated types, but rather savage and vicious killers who speak some weird unknown language.

This movie has 3 different short stories: “The Telephone” – more of a suspense story, “The Wurdalak” – a vampire story featuring Boris Karloff and “A Drop of Water” – a creepy ghost story with a scary looking dead granny- the best one in my opinion. This is the movie, which the band Black Sabbath took their name from. It was pretty amusing to imagine Ozzy shivering with fear on the chair in the movie theater, pleading to go home and Tony Iommi trying to calm him down.

To be continued….