The Library: Scary Movies
Three new reviews from my home library.
The Library is my attempt to watch at least 50% of the films in my DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra HD home library. It’s almost Halloween, so this edition focuses on scary movies! As I was deciding what discs to pull from the shelves, I realized that I was reaching for a particular kind of movie: all three movies are, coincidentally, early films from directors who went on to be considered masters of horror.
To be included in this column, I can't watch it streaming or catch it at a repertory screening - I have to watch the disc.
Current Count: 679 of 1,707 - 39%
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
A group of people try to survive an attack of bloodthirsty zombies while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse.
As I said on our recent Zombies episode of the Feature Presentation Podcast, zombies don't do it for me. I still have yet to find the zombie movie that will make things click. I just don't find them scary.
In the year 2023, am I supposed to find this horror pioneer scary? Probably not. But after feeling the appreciation for what it did for the subgenre (much less the genre), I'm just left cold.
To be fair, I felt the same way about Jaws for years until seeing it on the big screen last summer and realizing its brilliance. Maybe I can turn around on this one in the same way.
I have a million copies of this on DVD because, you know, the public domain thing. It's on every 30-pack and 50-pack and Elvira pack. Watched on the Criterion Blu-ray I got at Books A Million for $11.50.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
On the way to California, a family has the misfortune to have their car break down in an area closed to the public, and inhabited by violent savages ready to attack.
Wes Craven made his directorial debut with the horror exploitation flick The Last House on the Left and without the ability to move out of the genre, found work directing porno instead, (under the name Abe Snake, which is in contention for the Mt. Rushmore of Porno Director Aliases.) With no way to go but back to horror, he wrote and directed The Hills Have Eyes for his second film.
Above all, it's a flick that really strikes you in the parts of your brain that are concerned with primal survival responses. I think just about everyone is afraid of running out of gas, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, and being eaten alive by cannibalistic hillbillies. Right? I know I am. It's the kind of thing that makes you sweat just thinking about it and Wes knows that.
The other thing I really dug was the fact that this film is not a "one crazy night" movie. So many slashers, or really horror films of any subgenre, will be wrapping up just as the sun is coming up - filmmakers can't stay away from the metaphor. This film starts one afternoon, the terror begins in the evening, lasts overnight, and seems to last long into the next day - because that's how long it takes to tell this story! (It's probably really just a budgetary decision that I'm reading into, but it works!) Daylight horror can often manage to be even creepier because we know the darkness is scary - the light is supposed to be safe.
Watched the Arrow Video Blu-ray that was worth every penny. Not just because the movie is great and the disc is filled with features, but also because the Barnes & Noble lady thought it was a Criterion disc and gave me a free Criterion tote bag.
Absentia (2011)
Tricia’s husband Daniel has been missing for seven years. Her younger sister Callie comes to live with her as the pressure mounts to finally declare him ‘dead in absentia.’ As Tricia sifts through the wreckage and tries to move on with her life, Callie finds herself drawn to an ominous tunnel near the house. As she begins to link it to other mysterious disappearances, it becomes clear that Daniel’s presumed death might be anything but ‘natural.’
We're working our way through Mike Flanagan's latest Netflix outing The Fall of the House of Usher (podcast coming next week!) and I thought I would go back and check out some early Flanagan. Having only seen Hush (which I think is great), I thought I'd just start at the beginning.
Why do I have Absentia on DVD? Well, it's one of eight films on a DVD pack called "8 Horror Films" that I bought for like a buck because it had the film Scary or Die, which I one of the best bad movies I've ever seen. The other seven films were just a bonus.
Absentia is rough around the edges, there's no two ways about it. It looks like it has a budget of "we actually lost money on this movie," has a cast that leaves a bit to be desired, and focuses on a mystery that never feels particularly mysterious. But one thing I can tell about 2011 Flanagan and 2023 Flanagan (what a jump in a dozen years!) is that he's all about atmosphere. It's no wonder his movies and series seem to go down easy this time of year, he gets the vibes.
Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.