Moviephile

Well, Mr. Hall and I finally watched another Hammer horror movie. (Yes, since it is now Halloween we have officially failed our quest to watch all the Hammer Draculas and Frankensteins by Halloween - but, oh well! It was a fun endeavour and leaves us room for more Halloween viewing next time around). This one was called The Brides of Dracula. It really should have been called “Only Faintly Connected to Dracula” - because Dracula had almost nothing to do with it, and the Brides only somewhat figured in (and weren’t actually his bride, anyway). Mr. Hall suggested that it should have been called “Son of Dracula”, because the real villain was this young Baron who had been turned by Dracula. Not that he was much of a villain: he succeeded in vampirizing just three girls in this film, and one of them was his own mother (gross!). Then, in the climactic scenes, Van Helsing totally whaled on the guy - until the vampire choked Van Helsing with a chain. I was sitting there asking why the vampire wasn’t using any otherworldly powers on him (no explanation. Guess he was just tired of using his vampire powers and felt like besting Van Helsing using old-fashioned fisticuffs.) The film had a few boring moments, some inexplicable plot devices and a rather compressed ending - but we were more or less happy with it, and the way Van Helsing defeated the vampire was pretty original.

Last night, we viewed our official Halloween movie and carved pumpkins. Our “official” movie is Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting, which is THE MOST TERRIFYING MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN. You know what makes this movie so scary? You never see any of the monsters. You are left to imagine the horrors of Hill House, and that is far scarier than anything they could possibly have shown. It is highly, highly unsettling, and will leave you feeling that ghosts are going to get into your brain.

By the way, I am talking about the 1960’s version of the film, not the recent remake. That film, by all accounts, sucks.

Then, because we were scared of ghosts, we watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! This was a good way to finish off the evening. I don’t know if we’re going to do any Halloween viewing tonight, because last Halloween I was so swamped with Trick-or-Treaters that I didn’t get an opportunity to do anything but answer the door…