Boogla !! Boogla!!

Every year for my birthday I want a scary movie marathon. I'm no horror buff...but I do think certain horror movies are fun. Anything from the 50s thru the 80s is fun. Nothing really in the 90s appeals to me, and modern horror...now that that "torture-porn" style is so chic...ugh, I can't stand any o' that.

This year, Laura promised me pizza & Halloween movie marathon. I'm pretty easy to please...that's all I really want.

OK..degree of difficulty..this was something my 12 yr old niece wanted to be in on. And she is a wuss about scary movies. I thought maybe we could ease her into it with some light horror. But Laura said the first night she isn't able to sleep I was gonna be called in the middle of the night to go fetch her. So that wouldn't *really* happen but I got the general message-- put the scare in Chloe and suffer the wrath of her mum!!

I brought my whole selection of Halloweenish movies--scary and otherwise. I brought:
1. Ravenous
2. The Evil Dead
3. Shaun of the Dead
4. Suspira
5.Mad Monster Party (Rankin-Bass movie)
6. Halloween II
7. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (not entirely sure why I brought this one. Hardly fits the theme...)
8. 20 Blood Curdling Horror Classics ( cheap-o set that I got--20 movies on 6 DVDs: Maniac / Little Shop of Horrors / Moon of the Wolf / House on Haunted Hill / Creature from the Haunted Sea/ Tormented/ Dementia 13/ The Galaxy Invader/ Phantom of 10,000 Leagues /Attack of the Monsters/Blood Tide/The Terror /Laser Mission /The Astral Factor /They Came from Beyond Space/ The Last Man on Earth / Gamera the Invincible/ Snowbeast /Night of the Living Dead / War of the Planets)
9. April Fool's Day
10. Poltergeist
11.Young Frankenstein
12. The Tingler
13. Amityville Horror (the 2005 remake)

I thought maybe I could get Chloe to watch Poltergeist...I just looove that one and ultimately it's not that scary..after all, nobody dies in it. And even though I don't think it's all that scary, I hadn't realized (until perusing the DVD case today) the movie has actually got a PG rating. But she wasn't quite bold enough for that. But of that list there were a good deal I hadn't actually seen (#s 13, 12, 6, 4, 1 &none of the movies in the 20 movie collection *except* The Last Man on Earth) so I was good with seeing any of those. Ultimately, we ended up watching "The Tingler' only after I reassured Chloe that scary movies of the 50s just are not scary at all to a modern audience. And that movie proved that assertion true. Not only was there a lot of laughable hammy acting, but the villain-critter of the piece, meant to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers--it's a rubbery looking centipede-lobster tail mash-up and it's called...THE TINGLER. Not overly terrifying, that moniker. Sounds like a bit of battery powered fun, really.
Then we watched Beetlejuice (one that our friend Kristi brought) And then Chloe and Kristi (mostly Kristi) got all in to watching the Halloween ep of Ghost Hunters (which I thought was BOOOO-RING!! Is that show always so dull??)
Right now as I type this I'm watching Suspira. Getting near the end now. It's pretty good, but I don't know that I'd dub it "One of the Scariest Movies of all Time" (as Entertainment Weekly reportedly called it, according to the Suspira DVD case copy) I find, above all, it's a stylish horror film. I think a lot of times, when review calls a movie "stylish" they actually use that adjective to describe the plot or writing. But I mean it in the purest aesthetic sense of the word. The costumes are lovely..the set design gorrrgeous. The movie's a little gory, but I think the fact that all the blood is super technicolor vermillion --resembling hoochie nail polish more than anything else--squelches some of the gore-induced terror.