Horror films have captivated audiences since before Universal’s wild heyday of Horror during the 1930s. Each era has had great scary films and some so good, they spawned sequels and created franchises. Jaws, a 1975 horror adventure from a new young director Steven Spielberg gave birth to the summer blockbuster! In fact, thanks to horror, some amazing technical achievements have been discoverd, like new camera and lighting tricks and, make-up, and special fx. Horror films are truly the backbone of Hollywood.
Art by Hao Shun Da
I personally have been a horror film fan for over 40 years and I pride myself on having seen a majority of scary films and always look forward to those I’ve havent found yet. But there’s just one thing I haven’t been able to figure out, and that’s which era had the best horror. Was it Universal’s monster era or the SciFi greatness of the 50s, or how about the great slasher films of the 80s? It’s so hard to choose! Help me out!
Spooky Sundays are all about reading, relaxing, and recharging our brooms. I just realized I forgot to put up last week, so I’ll include last week too. Here’s a visual recap of this past week.
Lately, I’ve been rewatching a lot old classic horror movies and the Universal monster movies are still my faves. Fans of the 1930s viewed the supernatural fantasy as an escape from the daily misery, living through the depression. The films may seem tame or not as scary or sophisticated as the films of today, but for some movie goers, the stories were based on popular cultural myths and legends, while others had never heard of these creatures at all. Swamp creatures and the reanimated dead were the super scary, particularly to those who were extremely religious.
I tried to figure out which monster I thought was scariest but I’m on the fence. Help me determine which monster is the scariest.
Title: Little Shop of Horrors Director: Roger Corman Screenwriter(s): Charles B. Griffith Starring: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, and Jack Nicholson Distributed by: The Filmgroup Year: 1960 Run Time: 1 hr 10 minutes
Bumbling florist assistant Seymour and his pretty colleague Audrey work in rundown floral shop on skid row, run by the cranky Mr. Gravis Musgnick. After getting fired for messing up order for crazy local dentist, Seymour claims to be growing a unique surprise plant for the owner. A flower-eating customer Burson Fouch tells Mushnick a special plant can help his businesses grow, so Mushnick gives Seymour one week to drum up business.
Named Audrey Jr., affectionately named after his co-worker, Audrey Jr. is a scrawny little bud cultivated from unknown seeds that were given to Seymour by a Japanese florist. Seymour has trouble feeding Audrey Jr., that is until he pricks his finger and he realizes the plant feeds on blood. So, he begins a feeding the plant a steady diet of his own blood.
With business blooming, Audrey Jr. grows bigger each day and even learns to talk, demanding more and more blood, leading poor Seymour to realize he’s got a big problem on his hands. One day during a walk, he accidentally knocks out a drunk, who then falls on the tracks and gets killed by a train. Guilt-ridden Seymour feeds the man’s body parts to Audrey Jr., who grows ten times bigger.
Of course, with a man-eating talking plant, the body count rises and eventually, the film’s narrator Sgt. Joe Fink and local homicide come calling.
One of Roger Corman’s earliest films was never meant to be a comedy. Corman originally wanted to write a detective story. Screenwriter Charles B. Griffith wanted to write a horror-comedy. At some point, during development, Corman learned that the sets they used for Bucket of Blood were about to be torn down. Never one to miss an opportunity to save money, Corman and Griffith hammered out their script, which was heavily influenced by the original science fiction short story ‘The Reluctant Orchid’ by Arthur C. Clarke and set out to film the movie in three days.
Corman never thought Little Shop of Horrors would make any money beyond its first theatrical run, much less become a cult hit, so he mistakenly let the movie fall into public domain by failing to secure the copyrights.
It can now be found on several streaming services, including Amazon Prime.
Recently, I posted my choices as the scariest horror scenes in movies. What you all may know was just how hard making that list was. There were a slew of great horror films to come out of the 70s generation and choosing which had the scariest scene was kinda agonizing. I kept questioning which movies I thought were the best, which had the best story and characters, which seemed most popular with movie goers, and which was my personal favorite.
So, in the spirt of the election year, help me determine which is the best.
Title: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Director: Charles T. Barton (animated sections by Walter Lantz) Screenwriter(s): Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, John Grant Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, Lenore Aubert Distributed by: Universal Pictures Year: 1948 Run Time: 1 hr 23minutes
Abbott and Costello play bumbling freight porters Wilbur Grey and Chick Young, who are supposed deliver the remains of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster to a new House of Horrors. Dracula escapes with the monster, where they meet a mad scientist who plans to swap out brains of the monster with Wilbur, with the help of Dr. Sandra Mornay, under Dracula’s trance of course. Larry Talbot aka the Wolfman arrives from London to thwart the plan, but then the full moon rises and all the fun begins.
By 1948, war was over, America wanted to laugh again, and the slapstick antics of these two charmers were the answer. The Universal monsters craze was dying down but film stars Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. were down for one last ride.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a perfect blend of monster movie and the zany hijnks typical of Abbott and Costello, who were at the height of their fame. Reprising their famous roles, Bela Lugosi stars as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman lend a certain credence to the scary thrills, along with newcomer Glenn Strange, stepping in as the Monster for Boris Karloff.
You can catch this madcap horror comedy on Amazon Prime this month.
Happy October! I can’t believe we’re celebrating our 6th Halloween season! This year, work has been crazy busy and finding the time to keep up with blogging is a huge challenge, but I’m not quitting yet!
Although, I’m going to scale back a bit, I will still be celebrating all 31 days of Halloween. Our theme this month is Halloween Vintage Classic, bringing together two of my favorite things in the whole world, vintage style Halloween decorations and old black and white spooky movies.
Be sure to check back every day this October for cool, fun, and inspirational Halloween, horror, and haiku.
HALLOWEEN SCHEDULE 2024
Monday Macabre
Every Monday, I’ll be posting a brand new Halloween Haiku, honoring the theme of Halloween Vintage Classic.
Trick or Treat Tuesdays
Play spooky games and win spooky prizes! Every Tuesday, head over to Instagram for some fun and a chance to win some cool Halloween stickers and pins.
Wicked Art Wednesdays
Every Wednesday, I’ll showcase original Halloween art that most represents our theme of “Halloween Vintage Classic” from the world’s most talented artists.
Thursday Time Travels
Every Thursday, let’s travel back in time and revisit some great black and white haunted classic movies.
Friday Fright Nightcaps
It’s the return of Friday Fright Nightcaps and we’re gonna put the boos in booze!
Sinister Saturdays
Saturday nights are alright for fighting. It’s election year in the USA and what better way to get ready for November than by voting for your favorite scary movies!
Spooky Sundays
Spooky Sundays are for reading, relaxing, and recharging our brooms.
Due to time constraints, I’ll be running a shorter challenge this year, starting in the last week in October, with me choosing a winner on Halloween night. More details to come, but for now, sharpen those pencils or pull up a blank page; I can’t wait to see those Halloween haiku!
As we say goodbye to Spooky September to usher in the haunted Halloween season, I thought I’d share my picks for some of the scariest scenes in some classic horror movies.
Horror is perhaps the most subjective genre of all films, because what’s scary for one person, may not be scary to another. Yet, there seems to be some type of collective conscience of fear that most of us tap into when we see a scary moment on film.
Art by Nathan Thomas Milliner
It’s that one scene that chills us to the bone, or makes us throw the blanket over our head, or creates a tiny wave of spiders that crawl over our skin. Sometimes it’s a jump scare and sometimes it’s 4 minutes of terror that turns our spines into butter.
Rec, 2007 (Spanish version) – End Scene
One of the best found-footage films to come out of the early 2000s, that spawned three sequels, this Spanish-language horror classic thrusts audiences into the dark and forces them to experience the frantic terror of a surviving film crew locked in an apartment building filled with zombies. There was an English remake called Quarantine in 2008, nearly identical to the original, scene for scene, as seen in the video below. The movie uses a shaky handheld camera to build tension and thr jump scares to terrorized movie goers, but perhaps the biggest scare ended up as the last shot of the movie.
Session 9, 2001 – Hello, Simon
A critical failure when first released, Session 9 is horror’s most underrated gem and now has a huge cult following. This slow-burn psychological horror is the story of an asbestos removal crew assigned to clean up the abandoned Danvers State Mental Hospital in less than a week. When one of the crew members Mike finds a box of session tapes belonging to a former patient named Mary, who suffers from dissociative identity disease, the terrifying truth of what happened to her one fateful night plays out as we slowly watch another member of the crew, Gordon, lose his grip on reality. By the end of the movie, we meet what we believe may be one of Mary’s most dangerous personalities, Simon, during session 9, the movie’s most chilling recording.
Taking of Deborah Logan, 2014 – Cave scene
Another found footage supernatural horror gem that plays out like a pseudo-documentary, follows the sad decline of a woman named Deborah Logan, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. At first, we feel sorry for the woman and her family, watching Deborah’s bone-chilling antics through the eyes of a camera lens, but soon we come to understand that a sinister being may actually be behind what’s taking hold of Deborah’s mind. It’s always scary whenever a movie uses real-life illnesses like Alzheimer’s or Cancer as a plot point, but no one was ready for that crazy cave scene.
Paranormal Activity, 2009 – The Bite
Smart marketing and strong word of mouth spun the little unknown film from first-time director Oren Peli into a popular supernatural franchise. The first film initially cost only $15,000 to make and went on to gross $194 million dollars. Part of the successful marketing campaign showed trailers with audience reactions to the movie about a young couple Katie and Micah, who moved into a suburban tract home inhabited by a demonic spirit. Filmed with shaky cam, there were numerous jump scares and long intense shots seen through security camera style footage, which showed the couple’s sleepless nights. The scariest moment was watching Katie get pulled out of her own bed and brutally dragged down the dark hallway on day 20 of their terrifying ordeal.
Conjuring, 2013 – Wanna play Hide and Clap?
Based on the untold files of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. In 1971, the Warrens followed up their case about a possessed doll named Annabelle, by helping the Perron family, who claimed their newly purchased Rhode Island farmhouse was haunted by a malevolent spirit. Lorraine learns that spirit is named Bathesheba, a local witch and Satanist from Puritan times who cursed the land. Back before the days of cable and internet, the Perron parents entertained their five daughters with a variation of Hide and Seek, where the hiders clap their hands to clue in the blindfolded seeker of their location. Apparently, ghosts like to play games too.
Sinister – Lawnmower Scene
Crowned the scariest film ever made by Broadband Choices in 2020, based on the analysis of viewer heart rates, Sinister follows a true crime writer Ellison Oswalt played by Ethan Hawk, as he moves his family to Pennsylvania, chasing inspiration for a new story that will bestow the same accolades and riches he gained for his first book. The new house is actually the sight of a gruesome murder that Oswalt has decided to write about. Oswalt finds a projector in the eerie attic and a box filled with old Super8 tapes spanning decades, all inconspicuously titled home movies, and all depicting a frightening juxtapose of several families enjoying their normal lives, followed by their grisly murders. The scariest is ‘Lawn Work ’86’, where viewers join the silent creepiness of the voyeuristic killer eyeing his next victims, that eventually cumulates into a giant jump scare involving a lawnmower. It’s a scene that’ll make anyone’s heart rate go up.
Alien, 1979 – Chestburster
In last month’s blog post about Best Deaths in the Alien Movies, I picked the chestburster scene in Alien as best death scene in the whole franchise, but it’s also the scariest. It’s a shocking, gruesome, bloody death scene that not only changed the tone of the film, but the entire genre, securing Alien as the greatest SciFi Horror film ever made. The scene often parodied and duplicated by its own sequels, it’s probably the greatest jump scare of all time too.
Jaws, 1975 – Opening Scene
Considered the first summer blockbuster ever, one of Steven Spielberg’s turned Peter Benchley’s commissioned best-selling novel into a sleek thriller about the seaside town of Amity Island terrorized by a man-eating shark over the July 4th weekend. The movie follows police chief Brody as he, a young marine biologist, and a colorful professional shark hunter track down the beast. Jaws is a study of fear and it all starts with the movie’s opening scene of a girl swimming naked in the ocean. This classic opener sets the tone of the movie and eventually becomes the catalyst of a fear of open water for millions of people worldwide.
The Shining, 1980 – Room 237
I had a hard time picking the scariest scene from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling horror novel, The Shining. The movie follows a writer Jack Torrance, who moves his wife Wendy and their son Danny to Colorado for the winter to become the caretaker of a magnificent haunted hotel. Between the ghosts and the cabin fever, this not so loving family slowly begins to unravel, espcially for young Danny who has the gift of telepathy, aka the Shine, which brings out the hotel’s former guests who never got a chance to properly checkout. There’s no jump scares, only a constant state of dread and mounting tension, accentuated by the unforgettable score. Nearly every scene is nightmare inducing, but if I have to pick the scariest, it’s gotta be Jack’s visit to the notorious Room 237.
The Exorcist, 1973 – Headturner
Deemed by many as the greatest supernatural horror film of all time, William Friedkin’s adaption of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, a story about an actress Christine MacNeil trying to save her young daughter Regan from demonic possession. Considered disturbing, shocking, and utterly vile by some viewers, the movie had people fainting and vomiting in the theaters. There was no doubt the movie was a cinematic masterpiece, as it won several Oscars, influenced pop culture, spawned sequels, influenced a new subgenre horror about demonic possession, and became the highest-grossing R-rated horror film until It in 2017, grossing a whopping $193 million with its theatrical run, a miracle considering how plagued the production was. The Exorcist went over budget and suffered several delays, including several crew deaths, leading to rumors that the film was actually cursed.
The infamous headturn scene, which has been parodied a thousand times over, is like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard. For all the foul-mouthed obscenities that are so commonplace nowadays, there’s just something morally reprehensible about the dialogue of this scene, the brutal violence shown, and the emotional agony from Christine trying to rescue Regan from a crafty demon. I’m not a particularly religious person, but it’s understandable why some people hate this film. My mother once said movies like this invite real evil into our world. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it were, this is the movie that opened the floodgates.
You can find the Exorcist screaming on Max and AMC will air an edited version at 8:15 PT on Wednesday, October 2nd.
Welcome back Ber months! The most memorable time of the year returns and Halloween season is underway. This month’s theme is Spooky September. I’m working on Fall bucket list and a photo challenge to share later this month. Please join me over on Instagram to share in the fun.
One thing that’s always on the Fall bucket list is watching scary movies. After revisting the entire Alien catalog in August, I decided to check out some other spooky sci-fi movies and ended up rewatching last year’s No One Will Save You on Hulu. It was a little cookie cutter, but otherwise well executed and inspired today’s haiku.
two deep set black eyes staring from the corner no sudden moves
There have been a lot deaths in the past 45 years, between 7 movies in the Alien franchise. I excluded the two vs. The Predator due to time constraints, but it feels like those movies should have their own list anyway.
It may seem a bit morbid to cheer on death scenes, but who doesn’t love a great villain, or a great hero, depending where your love for the Xenomorphs lie. Besides, some knucklehead characters definitely deserved to have their faces melted off.
Every fan has their favorites, but these are my picks for most memorable deaths in th Alien Franchise:
10. Ripley (Alien 3)
Picking up immediately after the sequel, Alien 3 starts out with the tragic demise of survivors Newt and Hicks by a stowaway chestburster. Ripley survives, but the ship crash lands on Fiorina 161, a planet housing a penal colony for violent male criminals. The alien, now a quadrapedal runner continues its rampage after the stowaway chestburster morphs with a dog named Spike. At some point, Ripley realizes the reason she’s been surviving all these attacks is because she’s hosting a queen alien embryo, something that apparently happened during thrilling finale fight with the Queen Mother in Aliens.
Faced with a grave choice, Ripley eventually chooses to throw herself into the furnace to end the Queen’s hopes in keeping her species alive. It’s the kind of sacrifice we expect from one of cinema’s greatest heroines, but it was still sad and shocking to let Ripley go after cheering her on for three whole movies.
9. Engineers (Alien: Covenant)
Alien Covenant saw the return of Alien creator and Director Ridley Scott who expanded the Xenomorph universe and attempted to answer the burning questions left by Promethesus. In a brief flashback scene, we see the synth David, who now believes himself a god, in pursuit of the perfect organism, unleash the terrible black goo on the unsuspecting engineers, wiping out the entire colony in mere seconds. If this isn’t an indicator that AI can’t be trusted, I don’t know what is.
Michael Fassbender as synthetic android David 8 with a god complex.
8. Ripley7 and the clones (Alien: Resurrection)
Set 200 years after Alien 3, Ripley is back, but this time as a cloned human-Xenomorph hybrid named Ripley8. Turns out the military has been doing experiments with Ripley’s blood and Xenomorph DNA in its lifelong search to create the perfect super soldier. Sadly, it took 8 interations before getting a decent clone of the original Ripley, and who knows how many failures.
Ripley8 comes across the ship lab and can barely control her emotions when viewing some of those failed abominations that came before her. She finds a badly disfigured mutant hybrid Ripley7 still alive but begging to be killed. Someone hands Ripley8 a flamethrower and she destroys every tortured creature in the entire room, providing the only decent scene in the entire movie. Well, at least until evil Dr. Wren loses his head (see best death #3).
7. Ovomorphs (Aliens)
After losing the protection of the space marines, Ripley and the lone colonist survivor Newt are on the run trying to escape. A wrong turn leads Ripley right smack into the Hive Monarch, the Queen Mother, and a brood of freshly laid eggs. Ripley blasts the flamethrower over the tops of the eggs as a warning, scaring the Queen Mother into telepathically communicating with the other grown Xenomorphs to back off and let them go, however, just as Ripley and Newt are in the clear, a pod opens. Knowing full well what comes next, Ripley uses the flamethrower to destroy the entire nest, infuriating the Queen Mother, and setting up one of greatest showdowns in cinema history.
6. Kay (Alien: Romulus)
Set after the events of first Alien film, Weyland-Yutani finds the wreckage of the Nostromo and collects a Xenomorph cocoon. Months later, a group of space miners led by Rain (inspired by Ripley heroine) who is shepparded over by a synth named Andy. The miners decide to improve their lives by raiding what they think is an empty space station, except it’s not. It’s filled all kinds of aliens, from facehuggers to warrior Xenomorphs, and while the crew manages to snag a good haul, no one is gonna collect a big payday if they don’t escape the ship. One by one, the miners are picked off.
Cailee Spaeny picks up the reins in Alien reboot.
After surviving an attack, a pregnant miner named Kay, against Andy android’s advice, chooses to inject herself with mysterious black goo, hoping it will only heal her wounds, but this black goo is actually filled with Queen alien DNA! Now, anyone who saw Alien: Covenant knows this is gonna get bad. Kay gives birth to the stuff of nightmares and this creature wastes no time trying to get a little protein from mama. I dont want to spoil anymore. Just know that motherhood is a killer.
5. Thomas Murphy (Alien 3)
A planet dedicated to violent inmates, sounds like a dream (that’s sarcasm, kids). With a demanding movie studio hellbent on capitalizing off the success of the action packed Aliens, young budding Director David Fincher only had to produce enough blood, guts, and acid baths to repeat box office numbers. Unfortunately that led to Fincher completely disavowing his own film and he might not have it wrong. Alien 3 is pretty abysmal and one of the most openly talked about problematic movie shoots in history. One of most glaring problems was the characters were all unredeemable bad guys, totally unlikable, uninteresting, and completely expendable. To no one’s surprise, the Xenomorphs become every bit the heroes that Ripley was.
Luckily, the movie did have some entertaining deaths, like when inmate Thomas Murphy looks for his missing dog Spike down a dark hole. Spike is a goner, and the inmate gets a face full of acid from fidomorph, but that’s not what kills him. Gravity sucks the man down into one of those giant industrial fans, and viola, memorable death scene #5.
4. Ledward (Alien: Covenant)
After touching down on Origae-6, Security detail Ledward joins the expeditionary team to investigate their surroundings. It doesnt take long before Ledward gets exposed to black fungal spores and immediately fall ill.
Back in medbay, we learn those spores bore an alien organism that has been growing inside of Ledward, but instead of exiting through the chest like a normal chestburster, this alien came out Ledward’s back! It was particularly gruesome and shocking death, if nothing else because it changed 3 decades worth of knowledge about chestbursters. I guess we do learn something new every day.
ALIEN: COVENANT
3. Purvis/Dr. Wren (Alien: Resurrection)
In each Alien movie, there’s always at least one jerk, human or synth, who truly deserves a gory, nasty end of life, and in the 4th installment of Alien franchise, that jerk is Dr. Mason Wren, a manical military scientist who mixed Ripley’s DNA with Xenomorph DNA and tortured his subjects for years. While attempting to escape the Xenomorphs, Wren takes another crew member Call hostage, just as Purvis, one of Wren’s recent test subjects, realizes his own end is nye because he’s been impregnated by a facehugger. Purvis attacks Dr. Wren in a frenzy and when the chest burster arrives, let’s just say we get a two for one and it felt like justice was served.
2. Ash (Alien)
When fellow crew member Ash attacks and sabotages Ripley’s efforts to kill the alien, Parker steps in, fights and decapitates him. Only then do they realize Ash is really a synth! The betrayal runs deeper than that though, after reconnecting the head to get some answers, Ripley and Parker learn Ash has been directed by their evil employer Weyland-Yutani Corporation to bring back the alien organism for study, even if it means sacrificing the crew. As they leave, Parker takes a flamethrower to Ash for good measure, ensuring the robot doesn’t interfere with their escape plan, and honestly, it’s one of the most satisfying deaths in the entire franchise.
1. Kane (Alien)
One of cinema’s most shocking moments was the death of Kane, Commander of the ill-fated USCSS Nostromo, after being impregnated by an alien organism, now affectionately known as a facehugger. Up until that moment, we were just an innocent unsuspecting audience watching some unlucky space crew eat dinner, after answering a distress call from a derelict spaceship and finding nothing but creepiness. The emergence of new parasitic creature chest bursting into our consciousness totally rocked our world.
Even today, some 45 years later, that scene still terrifies new audiences. Chestburster deaths have been included in every film since and it never gets old; it’s never not a gory surprise and that’s why the very first death in Alien, is the most memorable death in the entire franchise.
Halloween Horror Haiku 
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