Twentieth Century Fox and MGM Home Entertainment released a collection of horror classics on Blu-Ray on September 15th, and I got the lot of them. If you haven't made the jump to Blu-Ray yet, it is a leap worth leaping in my opinion - big screen TV and Blu-Ray together is the closest thing to being in the theater that I've experienced, with the added benefit of no cell phone rings or couples murmuring sweet nothings to each other in the row behind... not to mention that my feet rarely stick to the floor in my den. Rarely.

The weekend of September 19 and 20 was rainy and flooded in the East Tennessee town of Athens, where I live. With no outside work to do the time was ripe for a horror movie marathon. After gazing longingly at my new wood chipper sitting idle in the barn near a pile of branches soon to become mulch, I unwrapped the first of the new Blu-Rays and settled in...

Child's Play

Pretty much everyone has seen this film, but it had been a very long time for me. While not scary at all, Chucky has become an icon of horror, albeit silly horror. The crisp visuals did make watching this one more enjoyable than I remember and I exclaimed out loud more than once about how good it looked.

For those who don't know the story, a serial killer who is also into voodoo is cornered in a toy store where he makes his last stand against the homicide detective determined to take him down. The killer planned for immortality by learning an ancient voodoo spell capable of moving his soul into the body of another prior to death. I guess he planned to continue "hopping bodies" over and over again to cheat death through all eternity. Unfortunately for him, there are no available hosts in the toystore after hours, so he settles on a "Good Guys" doll.  The doll winds up in the hands of a little boy who soon discovers that it has come to life and embarked on a killing spree.

This one if actually pretty fun... a bit better than I remembered. I just had to try not to apply any logic to the situation. I can buy a doll coming to life via a voodoo curse, but the strength the doll had to knock over adults with no means of leverage took a bit more work.

I'm not usually one for "special features" on these DVDs, but the piece on special effects was pretty cool. The mechanical dolls used to give Chucky life, along with the scenes where a "little person" was dressed up as a a knife-wielding toy, were fascinating. On to the next...

Wrong Turn

I had actually never seen this one before. The premise is that a young medical student in a very hot Mustang speeds through the West Virginia countryside on his way to some very important meeting and makes a "wrong turn", later slamming into another car packed with camping gear and leaving himself and a group of youngsters without transportation and stranded in the middle of nowhere. In "The Hills Have Eyes" fashion the kids are picked off one by one by a family of grotesquely deformed folks who proceed to cook them up and chow down. Lots of gore and sillyness ensues, and the film is not bad.

I didn't look at any special features, but the shots of "West By-God" Virginia are amazing in Blu-Ray. I did particularly enjoy the chick in the tree getting her head cut in half also, and the way that her dead body hit against limb after limb as it hurled toward the ground was a nice touch.

Wrong Turn II

There was no question that the sequel to Wrong Turn had to be next. This one starts the same way as the first, except this time it is a hot chick in a hot car driving through the same West Virginia wilderness. She is an actress on her way to film a reality show with an end-of-the-world theme. She takes, you guessed it, a wrong turn... and hits a deformed guy crossing the road. He literally flies over the car and lands in a heap behind her - quite dramatic. After she gets out to investigate the carnage the accident victim gets up, straightens his body, and acts creepy, while another emerges from the woods and cuts her in half length-wise with a machete. AWESOME scene!!

The rest of the cast gets tired of waiting on the now-dead actress and begins filming. The host of the show is played by Henry Rollins, and he is fantastic as an ex-marine searching for a niche in the world. Rollins absolutely steals the show as he lurks around and plans the rescue of the reality actors who are dismembered and disembowled one by one.

This is an example of a sequel soundly surpassing it's predecessor - I really enjoyed Wrong Turn II. There was even some character development here, unlike many of the horror of late. Not a ton mind you, but just enough so that I shouted with glee when some of the losers met their ends, and cheered for others as they attempted their escapes. This is a good one.

Misery

What a classic this one is. I hadn't watched Kathy Bates as Annie in a long time.

Annie is a dorky country woman who "rescues" her favorite author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) after he has a terrible accident in a snow storm. Sheldon writes trashy novels about a woman named "Misery" and Annie is his "number 1 fan". After the rescue, Annie holds Sheldon hostage and he psychosis becomes more and more pronounced.

I was amazed by the preformance of Kathy Bates in this film. She won an Oscar for the performance, and it is very clear that she deserved every ounce of that little gold statue. Truly amazing... and the hobbling scene is worth the price of admission on it's own. Chances are that most have seen this film a few times, but another watch is always warranted, and the Blu-Ray experience just adds to it. This was a very good purchase.

The Hannibal Lector Collection

The saga of Hannibal Lector is presented all together here with three DVDs included, Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Of course, all had to be watched back to back in a Lector extravaganza Sunday afternoon.

Manhunter is the "prequel" that introduces us to the cannibal, Hannibal. Lector eats his way through respectible society with a determined cop on his trail. Lector is finally caught and imprisoned, setting us up for...

Silence of the Lambs, the classic film starring Jody Foster and Agent Starling. So many classic lines. So many enduring characters. Silence of the Lambs is a true classic that I can watch over and over. Blu-Ray is a nice touch, but I'd watch this film again in any form.

Hannibal is the sequel starring Julianne Moore as Starling. She does a fine job, but I would have liked to see Foster again in this Role. The follow-up to a classic is always difficult... where do you go next? Hannibal decides that grossly disfigured characters, man-eating hogs and feeding a victim his own brains for dinner is the perfect place to go. Good film, though not nearly as powerful as Jody Foster in the main event. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal is perfect throughout.

Slowly but surely my DVD collection is being transitioned to Blu-Ray because the experience is intensified with the almost 3-D quality of the picture. For the most part I am not replacing DVDs I already own but rather just buying my new ones in the new format... but this bunch was an exception that I don't regret. Oh, and I forgot to mention, both Child's Play and Misery include both the Blu-Ray and the DVD versions, so there's somethign for everyone. Good stuff, and highly recommended.

What a weekend!