Gabe Reviews Horror

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #77: Freaks (1932) So, in the past I've made comments to the effect of questioning who or what created this bucket list, due to the incredible number of films that either feel superfluous (like multiple instances of remakes being included along with the films they have recreated) or films that their inclusion on any sort of preferential list questions the creator's taste (like the many films that have just been awful). But the one thing that I keep finding myself going back to is a simple question: Is this horror? Today's movie, Freaks, really tugs on that last thread. Freaks is listed on IMDB as being a "Horror/Drama". But what, if anything, makes this film horror? It is, at its core, a story about a group of people's love lives. The ending is shocking, but does one single shocking sequence set the genre for an entire film? Nothing about the rest of the film is

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #76: The Mummy (1932) Man, this is another example of a movie that is NOTHING like its successors. I don't know what I expected from a Mummy movie but it certainly wasn't THIS. The Mummy starts off with an archaeological dig where a mummified Egyptian prince named Imhotep has been discovered, as has a box bearing a warning of a deadly curse and containing a scroll that grants power over life and death. Despite warnings against provoking the curse, one of the excavators opens it and transcribes part of the scroll, awakening the mummified Imhotep, who takes the scroll and leaves. Ten years later (!) Imhotep shows back up posing as a normal person, and tries to use magic to locate the reincarnated form of a woman he loved in life, but things get complicated I guess and it doesn't go according to plan. This movie is kind of bonkers. The eponymous Mummy is only seen wrapped up as a

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #75: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) I'm really conflicted about this movie. On one hand, a lot of work clearly went into making it, and I'm sure the intent was to make the viewer uncomfortable, but looking at it today the actions taken by the main character in this film are VERY problematic. Dr. Jekyll (pronounced "Jee-kal", wtf) is a well-respected doctor who has a radical hypothesis about the human soul: every person has two halves to their soul, a good half and a bad half. He seeks to use pharmaceuticals to allow a person to split these two halves apart (to what end I really don't understand, this part kind of lost me the more I thought about it) and so he develops a concoction that temporarily turns himself into an evil alter-ego, which he names Mr. Hyde. His main motivation behind doing this seems to be that he's really, really horny (I'm not kidding) an

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #74: Frankenstein (1931) Having already seen Young Frankenstein this year, I was really excited to see the sequel- the prospect of seeing Gene Wilder's character all grown up seemed like an interesting direction to take the series, though it was odd how they recast him with an actor that was ten years younger. I was also especially confused how Young Frankenstein came out forty years AFTER its sequel- am I missing something? (I kid, I kid.) Seriously though, this was a VERY bizarre watch. Rather than stick with my usual format of explaining the plot of the movie, first I'm going to explain the plot I ASSUMED the movie had: I assumed this was going to be a film about Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who is trying to create life by stitching together corpses of the newly-dead and animating the body with magic lightning. He is successful, but the monster he creates is temperamental a

This review was originally written on October 4th, 2022. Gabe's Bonus Anniversary Horror Film Review: My Best Friend's Exorcism (2022) It's my wedding anniversary and my wonderful wife likes reading my reviews, so here's a bonus review for a movie we just watched today: My Best Friend's Exorcism. The plot follows Abby, a teenage girl in the 80s, and her best friend Gretchen. (And also their two friends Margaret and Glee, but it's mainly about Abby and Gretchen.) After a weekend getaway where the four of them play what they think is Ouija and take what they think is LSD, Abby and Gretchen stumble upon some kind of a demonic altar in an abandoned home and Gretchen is affected by a dark force. Over the next few days she proceeds to have outrageous mood swings, sow discord between the friend group, and cause Abby to grow increasingly concerned for her friend. As things escalate, Abby reaches out to a Strength-based Cleric (D&D joke, sorry) she reaches out to a m

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #73: Dracula (1931) Talking pictures were first pioneered in 1927, and within a few years had revolutionized the medium of film. The last few movies I watched were silent films, and it definitely made them feel like they are something old, something out-of-touch with modern media, and that may be a bit unfair when judging them, but I can't really help it considering I was born almost sixty years after the industry had moved on. I guess this is all preamble to say that today's film is not a silent film, and the difference between this and the last few feels like night and day (no pun intended). Dracula is more or less an adaptation of the same thing that Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror was: it starts off with an estate agent who travels to Transylvania to facilitate the purchase of a new home in London to Count Dracula, who nowadays everybody instantly recognizes as a vampire, but

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #72: Phantom of the Opera (1925) "A movie about singing, surely this one isn't going to be another silent film" I said to myself. I was wrong, of course- though I'm pretty sure this is the last silent film on my list- but while Phantom of the Opera was another silent film, and it's pretty slow much like the last two (I watched it at 1.5x speed and it felt like it was moving normally), I was pleasantly surprised by this one! For anyone not familiar with this story, it follows the cast and crew at the Paris Opera House, where legend says a "phantom" has been living in secrecy and manipulating the events that unfold therein. The main characters are Christine, an understudy that has unknowingly been in close contact with the phantom for many years, and Raoul, a soldier that is in love with her (which is unwelcome news to the Phantom, who- since he's actuall

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #71: Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror (1922) Similar to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu is one of those films that's probably worth watching for the simple fact that it's such an early example of what would eventually become an iconic touchstone for popular culture. However, also like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, by modern standards I feel it's incredibly boring and confusing. Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror follows an estate agent named Hutter (not Butter, as the title cards made it seem and frankly would have been a much better name) who is sent by his creepy, vampire-like boss to travel to Transylvania to meet the creepy, vampire-like Count Orlok who is interested in buying a home in Hutter's town of Wisbourg for some reason. Hutter travels there, meets the creepy count, reads a pamphlet about vampires, and eventually recognizes Orlok for what he is, but not in

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #70: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) So... big spoilers ahead for this film. I didn't really like it but if you have any interest in seeing it you'd be better off not knowing where the plot goes. Said by many to be the first true horror film (which is arguable, there were other movies with dark or macabre subjects before), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a silent film where a man, Francis, is relaying a story of how he and his friend saw a sideshow attraction at a fair. The attraction is put on by a Dr. Caligari, and features a sleepwalker named Cesare whom the doctor can psychically command and also can tell the future for some reason? Anyway, after-hours Dr. Caligari uses Cesare to commit some murders and kidnappings, and when Francis catches on, he chases the doctor to the mental institute where he works, where he is exposed and committed for his crimes. However, we then see

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #69: The Vanishing (1988) The Vanishing is a Dutch-language film about Rex, a man, whose girlfriend, Saskia, disappears while the two are driving through France and he spends the next three years obsessing over her disappearance. The movie is also about Raymond, the man who abducted Saskia, and when the two finally come face-to-face, Rex has to learn about his enemy in order to find out what happened to the woman he loved. This is... a strange film, and I'm not entirely sure whether I liked it or not. (If I had known it was going to be such a bummer of a film I probably would have watched it sooner to get it out of the way, but c'est la vie.) It's told in a very strange manner, jumping forward and backward through time at various points (and sometimes into dreams) with very little fanfare, and I don't know if the version I was watching was poorly translated, but certain parts of t

This review was originally written on July 18th, 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #68: Arachnophobia (1980) I believe it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who said, "We have nothing to fear, but spiders". The fact that this was broadcast to the world during an American president's inaugural speech should show how important and indisputable it is. This film starts with a scientific expedition to a recently-unearthed canyon in Venezuela, to photograph and catalogue the creatures found there. When the bumbling photographer is killed by a particularly deadly new species of spider, it secretly hitches a ride with his corpse back to Small Town, USA where it causes serious problems for the arachnophobic doctor who's just moved in. First things first, I should say: I am deathly afraid of spiders. I can't say for certain, but this film MIGHT be partly responsible for that. I hadn't seen it before today- at least, not all the way through- but I remember

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #67: Frankenweenie (2012) This movie came out in late 2012, roughly the same time as ParaNorman (another animated horror movie about something supernatural happening to a child in a small town). I went to see ParaNorman due to, probably among other things, the fact that a story about the death of a pet doesn't strike me as particularly enjoyable. As such, I watched Frankenweenie for the first time today, and although there's more to the movie than that, I'd be lying if I said it didn't color my entire viewing experience. Frankenweenie is a modern re-imagining of the Frankenstein story, following a child Victor Frankenstein. When his pet dog Sparky is hit by a car, he resorts to using science to bring back his closest friend, but in a twist from the original story, this is only the beginning of the shenanigans to come when his classmates discover his project and misguidedly use it

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #66: Re-Animator (1985) Re-Animator is an adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft story, about a medical student named Herbert West who is on the brink of discovering how to bring the dead back to life. (Though, that's misleading... this film is "about" his roommate, Dan Cain, who gets caught up in West's shenanigans, but I think we all know who we're watching the movie for.) Despite never having seen this film until today, I'm pretty familiar with the story. It's a popular horror film, it's a popular Lovecraft story, and parts of it have bled into (no pun intended) lots of other media I've consumed. The story is well-worn territory by this point, but the movie stands on its own- Jeffrey Combs' portrayal of Herbert West is fantastic, as were the others. The special effects in this film are just plain jaw-dropping, and it moves at a nice pace- it was over before

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #65: Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Pan's Labyrinth is a Spanish film about a little girl who, during World War II, is taken by her mother to live with her new stepfather, a captain of the Spanish army. While there, she meets some fey creatures who claim that she is the reincarnated princess of their magical world, but in order to prove her worthiness she has to perform certain supernatural tasks before the next full moon. I definitely remember seeing part of this movie when it first came out- I recall watching the beginning with a bunch of friends in someone's basement back in like 2007- but my memories are strange, because I definitely left partway through the film, yet so much of the latter half of this movie still felt really familiar to me. I don't know if I've just gathered some of the scenes through cultural osmosis, or if certain story beats were just so well-worn by now that

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #64: Harpoon (2019) Harpoon is a movie about three friends who go out on a day cruise on a yacht in the ocean, when things go wrong. Tensions flare and secrets come to light when they get stranded with no food or water and no hope of rescue, and it sounds like history- and fiction- may end up repeating itself. This is a strange film and it took me a while before I could say whether I liked it or not. The whole film (but mainly the first half hour) suffers from some SEVERE tonal whiplash, as the subject matter eventually becomes incredibly bleak and terrifying but for the first portion of the film feels like a quirky dark comedy (complete with frequent narrations from well-known comic actor Brett Gelman). So not being able to tell whether I'm supposed to be laughing at the antics on screen, coupled with the fact that the first few scenes seem hellbent on making sure you hate all three of the p

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #63: Werckmeister Harmonies (2001) I'm just gonna get right out and say it: this movie sucks, and whoever made it clearly has no respect whatsoever for the time of any of its viewers. I've glanced at some of the reviews on IMDB and the vast majority seem to give it endless praise for some sort of visionary imagery and powerful music and yadda yadda yadda, but to me- pardon my language- that just sounds like pretentious, self-gratifying bullshit. Werckmeister Harmonies is a black-and-white Hungarian film about a small town where a riot is (very, very) slowly brewing. The movie seems to imply that this has something to do with a circus coming to town, but given how briefly this circus actually shows up in the film and how nobody seems to actually react to it, I fail to see the connection. (Also: nowhere except my Bucket List can I find anyone claiming this is horror!) As I said, this movie

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #62: Train to Busan (2016) I think this might be my new favorite zombie film? Maybe. I'm not sure. Return of the Living Dead is up there for being an absolute campy blast to watch, Army of the Dead is somewhere at the top too despite everyone else in the world being crazy and not liking it, but Train to Busan just squeezed its way up there like so many zombies fighting to get into the next train car. I'll have to give it some more time and re-watches to be sure. Train to Busan follows a busy hedge fund manager who realizes he's been too absent of a father to his daughter, and agrees to go with her to visit her mother in Busan on her birthday. Little do they know, a zombie outbreak is beginning, and when an infected individual manages to get onto their train just as it's leaving the station, this father has to decide whether to keep living for himself or start caring about the peop

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #61: The Witches (1990) I'll get this right out here: I'm well aware this is meant to be a children's film, so I'm not going to be particularly critical of the characters, or plot, or anything like that. If I was a child I probably would have been scared by this movie, but as an adult, I can see a lot of work went into it and there was plenty of fun to be had! The Witches is a story about a boy who grew up being told all about witches by his grandmother: What they are, why they do what they do, how to spot them, how to stay safe from them, and so on. After his parents' untimely death he travels with his grandmother, and he stumbles upon a convention of witches staying at their hotel, and he sets out to foil their plans after being transformed into a mouse. Apparently this movie was based on a Roald Dahl book, and that makes TOTAL sense given what we see. There's a lot of d

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #60: Cronos (1993) Cronos is a WEIRD film. It follows an antiques dealer who discovers a strange clockwork device hidden inside a statue in his shop, that when wound, pierces the holder's flesh and grants them some kind of good health, longevity, or possibly immortality. Some aging billionaire is trying to get his hands on the device, but once the protagonist learns what it does, he doesn't want to give it up... until it's too late. I don't know if I have much to say about this one. I didn't really care for any of the characters (Ron Perlman was a surprise to see in this movie, though I didn't really care for him even), and I didn't really understand why any of them did what they did. Like, obviously the main character realized that the device made him feel younger, stronger, whatever after he used it on himself by accident the first time, but there's a seemingly-p

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #59: The Loved Ones (2009) I had a dream a few days ago that I'd already watched this film, but forgot to write a review about it. After having watched it in the waking world, I can confidently say that the version from my dream was NOT accurate to the real movie. The Loved Ones is an Australian film about a teenage boy who is kidnapped and brutally tortured by a girl who he snubbed for a date to the prom. That's basically it- there's some connective tissue, like the fact that she's done this to many other men in the past, and the fact that the main character's father died in a car crash six months prior (which was, as it turns out, in a roundabout way related to the girl's penchant for kidnapping and brutal torture) but that's the main plot. First things first, if you're going to go into this movie, you have to know that this is a NASTY film. This is, bar none, th

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #58: The Invisible Man (2020) I went into this movie knowing nothing except that everyone I talked to didn't like it. I've heard plenty of people talk about this movie like it was the worst thing to come out of 2020, so I went in expecting a huge stinker. At first, I wasn't quite sure what the fuss was about; the first forty minutes or so isn't terrible- it's not fantastic, but nothing really to write about. Then came a BIG chunk of the film where I was openly angry at whoever made this huge stinker, because a stinker it was. But that, too, passed. The end kind of brought it around (while also ruining it; more on that later) so I can definitely see why people were upset at it, and I definitely think there was a LOT of bad stuff in here, but at the same time, it wasn't so bad. I'm probably going to spoil a lot of stuff so I'll say right here that this is probably a

This review was originally written in 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #57: Misery (1990) Can I just point out that the same people who brought us The Princess Bride (Director/Producer Rob Reiner and Screenplay Writer William Goldman) made THIS? Blew my mind. Misery is a film based on a book by Stephen King, where a writer of a famous book series crashes his car during a snowstorm and is nursed back to health by a woman who claims to be his biggest fan. But as he recuperates, she starts becoming more and more unhinged, and soon the writer will be fighting (writing?) for his life. While I'd never seen this movie before, I definitely picked up on the majority of it through cultural osmosis (particularly a Family Guy sketch that pretty closely parodied it). Considering how just the other day I watched Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, which also featured a famous person stuck in an abusive relationship with a caregiver who refuses to let them leave, a lot of this mo