BEFORE: Happy Halloween! I wasn't sure I was going to get here on time, but even with a vacation, a birthday and a Comic-Con (and a NewFest and a New Yorker Festival) I was able to make it work. It took a lot of late nights and early mornings, but it's done, and now I can relax quite a bit on the way to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Twenty more films in 55 days - not a problem. Here's the format breakdown for October, then tomorrow come the November links:
11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Barbarian, Jeepers Creepers, Jeepers Creepers 2, Swamp Thing, Antlers, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Overlord, Devil, Species, Species II
7 Movies watched on cable (not saved): One Missed Call, The Fog (1980), Dead Ringers, Beautiful Creatures, Dark Skies, De Palma, Eight Legged Freaks
2 watched on Netflix: R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned, In the Shadow of the Moon
1 watched on iTunes: Coma
2 watched on Amazon Prime: Cocaine Bear, Godsend
2 watched on Amazon Prime: Cocaine Bear, Godsend
1 watched on Tubi: Creepshow 2
1 watched on a random site: Creepshow
TOTAL: 25 movies
Yeah, it's been quite a month. A lot of classic horror films got crossed off the list, and I worked in some newer ones, too. My thanks to Justin Long and Keri Russell and Bokeem Woodbine for choosing to appear in so many horror films and making this possible.
Three main actors carry over from "Species" - Marg Helgenberger, Natasha Henstridge and MIchael Madsen. Nobody from this film carried over to "Species III", so I'm not continuing with the franchise. If they don't respect my process then I'm done with them.
I'm working tonight at the theater - a special screening of "Five Nights at Freddy's" for one of the guilds, but it's open to students at the college, too. They only promoted it ONCE in the school newsletter, so we're not expecting a big crowd. I checked the cast list, that film won't fit into my chain so I'll have to catch up with it somewhere down the road. Also still on the watchlist for horror movies: "The Relic", "The Babadook", "Slender Man", "The Wolf of Snow Hollow", "Zombie Honeymoon", "Pet Sematary" (2019), "The Woman in Black 2", "Scream" (2022), "Smile", "Old", "Army of Darkness", "Blair Witch" (2016), "Freaky", "Maggie", "Dorian Gray", "The Amityville Horror" (1979), "The Night House", "The Haunting", "What Lies Beneath", 'Black Christmas", "Black Friday", "Dark Water", "Life After Beth", "Bones and All", "The Black Phone", "Ghost Ship", "Pearl", "X". "Jennifer's Body", "A Haunting in Venice", "Haunted Mansion" (2023), "Army of the Dead", "Army of Thieves", "Knock at the Cabin", "Day Shift", "Graveyard Shift", "M3GAN", "Prey", "Renfield", "The Pope's Exorcist" and several franchises like "Saw", "Final Destination", "Hocus Pocus", "The Ring" and "Child's Play", Whew, that's a lot and there's probably a lot more out there, I just don't know how much of it I can watch next October, or how many more years this is going to take. I'll have to go through everything next summer and connect what I can from this list.
THE PLOT: An astronaut gets infected with alien DNA during the first mission on Mars and runs amok on Earth. Preston and Laura team up with a peaceful, genetically re-engineered Sil to track the monster down.
AFTER: Well, at least this sequel wasn't just one big chase scene. I mean, it kind of was but at least it was less obvious about being that. There was also a big will-they-or-won't-they plotline - actually, two of those. After the reveal of the new deadly alien hybrid (male this time) they sort of got the team back together, what was left of it from the first movie, anyway. Namely Preston "Press" Lennox and Dr. Laura Baker, who got together physically in the first film, but then they must have drifted apart. Well, sure, he's a hard-scrabble mercenary and she's a molecular biologist, what did they really have in common besides hormones and desire to track down that alien? They're forced to work together again - awkward - and she's now working for the government, and in charge of the cloning of a NEW version of the female alien hybrid, now named Eve. Umm, even more awkward?
The new male alien hybrid is an astronaut, the son of a U.S. Senator, and when he comes back from Mars, he's SUPPOSED to wait 10 days in quarantine before having intimate relations with anyone, but of course he doesn't. Because all the ladies want to have sex with the astronaut who walked on Mars - wait, is that a thing? Did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have groupies back in 1969? Anyway, he kind of brought something back with him, and it's not an STD, unless STD stands for "Sexed to Death", because that's essentially what happens. But he also impregnates both women in a threesome, and they gestate and give birth very quickly, just before they die. It's not pretty, and now the astronaut has two rapidly-aging children, who he hides in a barn.
This alien DNA keeps motivating him to mate and kill, and then before long he's got a whole brood of half-alien kids living in that barn, and he just doesn't know what to do. Umm, did you try NOT having sex with every woman you meet, and then impregnating them and killing them? Because that might be a possible answer to the problem. Eve, the new "Sil" can sense from very far away when Patrick is having sex, so this leads one to wonder if these crazy kids are ever going to get together - nearly everybody agrees this would be a VERY BAD idea, because if one of them is destructive to women and the other is capable of being destructive to men, you have to figure the two of them together is bound to be TWICE as bad, right? Or hey, maybe not, maybe they'll just kill each other, and then problem solved, right?
Well, it takes nearly the whole movie, but it's just bound to happen, right? I mean, they didn't put a male alien hybrid and a female alien hybrid in the same movie for them to NOT HAVE SEX, right? As much as the team and the government try to keep Patrick away from Eve, they're just plain desperate for each other. SO the flesh-skin comes off and the fancy alien armorings come out, and then things that are probably not-dicks go into various holes (on him or on her, I can't really tell - anyway, does it matter?) and things that are probably not-knives also impale him (I think) so yeah, basically the climax of the film is a whole bunch of alien tentacle porn, so you've been warned if that's not your thing, or maybe you're enticed if that IS your thing, no judgements here, this is a safe space for your kinks after all.
Anyway, by saving this film for Halloween itself I pretty much nailed it, this is as monster-y as it gets, and it's full of silly, stupid, disgusting alien sex, and isn't this holiday all about things that are silly, stupid, disgusting and also a bit sexy? I mean, come on, that's Halloween in a nutshell. You watch disgusting horror movies and you act silly and you believe in stupid things like ghosts and witches, just for a day, and maybe you also see people in sexy costumes. It's OK, let your freak flag fly even if tentacle porn is your thing. (You sickos...)
This film takes place in an alternate U.S. history, where James Cromwell is a U.S. senator and Richard Belzer is the President. I don't hate this idea - too bad Belzer never ran for office, I would have voted for him.
Me, I'm putting the horror films back on hold for another 11 months, unless I need one of them to make a crucial link somewhere else, of course. I'm going to take tomorrow night off and then I'll begin the 13-film countdown to Thanksgiving. Stay safe out there while you're having your Halloween fun, and watch out for the sexy aliens.
Also starring Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Don't Let Go"), George Dzundza (last seen in "City by the Sea"), James Cromwell (last seen in "The Promise"), Justin Lazard, Myriam Cyr (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol") Sarah Wynter (last seen in "The 6th Day"), Baxter Harris (last seen in "Mermaids"), Scott Morgan (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Nancy La Scala (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Raquel Gardner, Tracy Metro, Kim Adams, with cameos by Bill Boggs (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Richard Belzer (last seen in "Gilbert"), Peter Boyle (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed")
RATING: 5 out of 10 boxes of Space Flakes cereal
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