Halloween Movie Blowout Part 1

This weekend i planned to watch as many horror movies as i could until Halloween day. I didnt get to see as many as i wanted due to football, and other priorities that came up. I did still get to see quite a few so here are my thoughts of the first half of the movies so far.

Started off with a newly released French horror movie Calvaire. The first half of the movie i enjoyed quite a bit. It was shot and acted quite effectively. Its basically a story of a guy traveling in the French countryside and his van breaks down. He finds a hotel ran by a nice old guy that puts him up for the night and insists on helping him fix his van. There were some nice moments with the innkeeper and main guy talking one night and then a freaky scene of the man spying on the villagers w/ a boy and a some kind of animal. After that part it turns into another Misery clone and gets boring.

Next up i saw the Roost. A recent low budget movie about 4 friends that go on a trip and their car crashes and gets stuck in the ditch. They have to walk up to a house in the woods to get help. It had a cool concept about some infected bats that turned the people they bit into zombies. When they show up to the house there is a huge barn where the bats live. 2 of the friends go looking for help and the other two stay at the house waiting for the homeowners to come home. One of the friends goes the barn to explore and never comes back. They come back with a cop and go looking for the missing friend. The cop gets bit and zombified first. The other 3 friends are trapped in this huge barn. The way the movie was filmed it gave the impression the barn that had two levels to it was big enough to house a football game. They get taken out one by one. From this point on it was boring. Great concept but poor execution.

The 3rd one up was probably my favorite so far and that was The Monster Squad. Ive heard of the movie my whole life but never had a chance to see it. Its currently still only on vhs but i got a bootlegged version that was put on dvd. The movie lived up to the hype. Its basically the Goonies vs. movie monsters. The movie is about every 100 years a spell has to be read to get Dracula from ruling the earth. He gets sucked into a limbo and cant try to take over for another 100 years. So the 100 years is almost up and Dracula flies to America where the belongings of Van Helsing are kept at a house in the suburbs of anytown USA. He recruits the help of The Mummy, Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon and creature of Frankenstein to help him. In the way of the creatures is the Monster Squad a group of 5 kids that hang out in a treehouse and talk about monsters and how to kill them all day. They find out about the plot of Dracula and they go out to stop him. Its pretty ridiculous but it was all so damn fun and nostalgic. You had the Fat Kid, the nerdy kid, the cool kid, the kid with the hot sister and the normal kid all together in the group. There are some classic lines like "Wolf man got nards?" and other cheesy ones that will have you grinning all movie. It was pretty gory for a pg movie but can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike. Highly recommended

Then i went to the theater and saw Saw 3. Full review below.

Next up was Ghost of Mae Nak. Its basically another Asian long haired ghost girl getting revenge. Its a Thai production but by an English director. It has some good gore, but doesnt build up any suspense, so its another been there done that movie.

You cant have Halloween without watching at least one Halloween movie. Ive seen the first two Halloween a dozen times so i thought id watch one of the other sequels. I watched Halloween 4:The Return of Michael Myers which is really Michaels 3rd one if you dont count the crappy part 3 season of the witch. It was ok. A lot of action based moments instead of horror but it had a few cool scenes. Still the greatest horror movie music ever. A lot of plot holes and doesnt make sense how he can see since his eyes were shot out at the end of part 2. It was enjoyable and had a couple of good scares. Part 2 of these reviews will be up on Wednesday.

The Ghost of Mae Nak trailer