It's been a long-ass time since I've had the time to add a post here. As soon as I got to school, I found myself with 13 hours of school and 10 hours of work per week.... not to mention trying to find time to do homework and write reviews for the newspaper and applying to study abroad and applying for a film series internship... not to mention trying to stay healthy and failing. But let's talk about the month in horror. I haven't seen as much as I'd like (I'm taking 2 film classes and altogether have to watch 3 movies a week for my classes), but here it is...

Before I went back to school, I watched Urban Legend, Dead Silence, The Amityville Horror (1979), and The Backwoods. I also finished reading "The Ruins" and "The Stepford Wives."

The only reason why I slightly enjoyed "Urban Legend" was because I love urban legends and because it was filmed in a really nice location. For the most part, however, it was a rip-off of all the other 90s teen movies and I hated the main character. But this movie reminded me of those "Scary Stories to tell in the Dark" books that I used to read. Now I'm on the hunt for them.

I could definitely have lived without seeing "Dead Silence." It wasn't awful, but it was just... nothing. It didn't contribute in any way to my movie-watching. It was decent, the score was nice and I liked the atmosphere, but there was nothing to be taken away from this. As far as I can see, this film is really just another brick in the horror wall.

I thought "The Amityville Horror" was much more worth my time. I love the 70s. It's probably by favorite decade for any type of film, but horror especially. This is the decade where they were building the fine line between the stuff that Hitchcock and others did and the fun junk of the 80s. I've also found that every 70s horror movie has managed to deliver at least one or two decent scares, and I really liked the score to this. I admit that this one isn't the best 70s horror movie, but I did still enjoy it quite a bit. It's got that "70s air" that I really like.

"The Backwoods" is actually quite decent, which is more than I was expecting even with Gary Oldman in it. It wasn't as much a horror movie as I expected - more like horror in the way that some might consider "Straw Dogs" a horror movie. Sometimes I forget it isn't. The characters in this weren't entirely stupid, which was a nice change.

"The Ruins" by Scott Smith was frightening. It's always scarier to read something because it's more bearable to take in all the horror without actually seeing it but at the same time you're watching it in your head. This book was really frustrating. My friend and I are always talking about how frustrating it is when the villain feels "entitled" to cause the horror. I talked about this in my review of "Inside" for those of you who read it.  My friend and I both love horror, but we really do get frustrated with villains who think they have the right to do these things. Same with this book. The villains are the vines, and they are annoying. Still an awesome book.

"The Stepford Wives" by Ira Levin was awesome. I've seen the movie (er, the original, so all of this will be referring to that on since I haven't seen the one with Nicole Kidman), and I think I actually preferred the ending of the movie to the book. The same thing happens in both, but it's so abrupt in the book that it threw me off. Again, the villains are annoyingly "entitled" to doing this. This book makes me fear marriage, but it did come out at an opportune time because women were really going out of their way to claim their independence, so it was relevant. I liked it.

And then, with an unfortunate last trip to the movie theatre (my mother and I saw "The House Bunny" - gag), I was off to school. Since I got back to school, I have been watching and reading what I can between all the crap I have to do at school. I've read some Clive Barker short stories (yum) and I read "Flowers In The Attic," which I loved, and started the sequel but couldn't get through it. So far, movies have included....

"Deathdream." I forgot the year, but I think this just beats out "Black Christmas" as my favorite Bob Clark movie. This one is GREAT!! It's about a kid who goes off to Vietnam, dies, and returns home as a zombie. Symbolic, no? I think the best part was that the guy reminds me of my brother. Anyway, I thought this movie was pretty genuinely creepy, though the mother was the creepiest of all. Awesome movie, totally going to add it to my Christmas list.

"Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America." Three short films by the same guy, Douglas Buck, all deal with dysfunctional family situations in America gone awry. This is like "The Squid and the Whale" meets "The Shining" or something like that. The first one is quite possibly the creepiest short film I have ever seen. The second one is sort of a follow-up, and it's expected after the first one - not as creepy. The third one is altogether different. It's much longer, for one thing, and is completely devoid of blood (as opposed to the others). It's more of a horrific drama. All three are very grainy and all rather disturbing, especially the first one.

I watched "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" for my History of Cinema class and LOVED it. I loved it a lot more than I did "Dracula." I love watching early horror, especially the German expressionism stuff, like "M" (which we also saw but I've seen it before and I won't talk about it here, though I love it). By this point, filmmakers were figuring out that shadows are damn scary and that most of the horror is in atmosphere. The only thing I didn't like was that in the version we watched some parts had sound, like whenever people gasped or screamed. It was very distracting and tacky.

The second movie I showed for that Obscure Film Club I mentioned earlier was an early 60s movie called "The Innocents." It was beautifully shot, though I wasn't a huge fan of a lot of the dialogue and how it was delivered - very British. However, some of this was rather creepy. They were really figuring out how to make ghosts scary at this time and they did pretty well. None of us really liked the ending, though. It was pretty sudden and ambiguous. I didn't mind how ambiguous it was, but the ending was so abrupt that it was ridiculous.

My friend and I decided to watch the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" instead of doing Japanese homework. I liked that it followed the book a lot more accurately than the 1978 one did. I didn't write about this one right away, so I don't remember as much of what I liked about it as I would like to, but I did enjoy it.

"The Experiment" was a good chance for me to practice my German numbers. It was also a damn good movie. It came out a few years ago and is based on the Stanford prison experiment of the 70s, where random people were put in a fake prison as either guards or prisoners and were observed. It definitely had that frustrating villain aspect, but it was expected and these guys volunteered and, anyway, I think the amazing buildup was definitely worth it. Great movie.

That's it, except for the book that I am a chapter or so into called "Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender In the Modern Horror Film." I like it so far, and it's really put me in the mood to watch "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." I showed "Inside" at the beginning of the year to a group of about 8 or so friends, and they all hate me now. Maybe this is a good excuse to get them to like me again - another horror movie.