Hoopla Halloween: Scary Good Films
Like other low-budget Italian horror films, Burial Ground doesn't waste time on character development or plot. Rather, it's focus is on zombies, guts, and gore. Intentionally derivative, director Andrea Bianchi isn't trying to reinvent the genre. Mostly, the film is hoping to dupe you into thinking it's related to Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was released in Europe as Zombi (one of the films alternate titles was Zombi 3).
Professor Ayers, studying an ancient tomb near his estate, accidentally unleashes an evil curse that reanimates the dead. He is then promptly eaten by them. Then, a bunch of people show up to the estate, apparently invited by the professor prior to his demise. They are also eaten by the zombies.
The obvious appeal here is how people are eaten by zombies, and Burial Ground is very creative in this regard. The common genre conventions are obeyed for the most part. The undead are slow, lumbering, rotted corpses that shuffle menacingly towards their victims. However, sometimes they use tools, weapons, and even work together, displaying an intelligence not often seen from the zombified. Now, that doesn't make them more effective necessarily, but it does mean that someone gets their head chopped off!
It's campy, goofy, gory, dumb and a whole lot of fun. If you're like me and you can't get enough of weird old Italian horror films, this is a must see.
Gritty, claustrophobic, and gross Shivers is an early offering from the twisted imagination of David Cronenberg.
In a luxury apartment complex outside Montreal, a parasite is spreading amongst the residents. Those infected become violent, sex crazed maniacs, desperate to spread the insidious little slugs to anyone and everyone they encounter. The complex's resident doctor, Roger St. Luc races to uncover the parasite's origin and alert the authorities. But first, he must survive.
Not for the faint of heart, Shivers delivers that classic Cronenberg body horror in all its bloody, gooey goodness. If you like movies that make you squirm in your seat, Shivers delivers.
From the master of horror himself, Sometimes They Come Back is a classic King ghost story that's just the right amount of spooky. It may sound strange, but this is an oddly cozy film that pairs perfectly with a dark, cold October evening at home with the lights out.
Jim Norman returns to his small hometown to teach at the local high school. It's a bittersweet reunion with past, as he battles with the memory of witnessing his brother's murder years ago in a train tunnel just outside of town. Jim's new life is thrown into chaos and terror as the perpetrators, killed shortly after the murder as their car is hit by a train, suddenly present themselves in his class as new students. The three greaser ghosts are back to tie up loose ends and settle old grudges, pulling Jim and his family into their twisted games of life or death.
A must for any Stephen King fan, Sometimes They Come Back harkens back to small town folk tales of tragedy and irony, where ghosts come to life over campfires and the past is ever present.
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