Gabe Reviews Horror

This blog post was originally written in October 2022. Alright, everyone! The hundred movies are over, and it's been a wild ride. Thanks again to all of you who read my reviews- I feel like I learned a lot about horror cinema this year, and although this was a LOT of time and work (seriously, you try setting aside like three hundred hours of next year and see how it goes) I'm still glad I did it. Instead of reviewing a movie today, I'm sort of going to be reviewing some highlights of the Bucket List as a whole.  To look back at this year of horror, I've come up with a few categories I'm going to use to pick some of the movies I've watched. It's not an exhaustive list, of course- if you have any ideas for more categories for me to assess, reply down below and I'll pick the movie/s that fits the best! Favorite Movie: The Cabin in the Woods (2011). It's just such a fun movie, and I'll never get sick of it. Least Favorite Movie: Werckmeister Harmonie...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #100: The Fly (1986) The Fly is a remake of the 1958 original, following a scientist (in this case, Seth Brundle) as he finishes developing and testing his newest invention, which will allow mankind to teleport. He develops a relationship with a journalist (Veronica) who is documenting his invention, but when it seems like she might be having an affair with her boss/ex-lover, Seth gets drunk and goes along with testing the teleporter on himself while she's away, and it appears to go successfully. However, he starts developing changes- first positive ones, and eventually horrifyingly negative ones. Can he figure out a way to turn himself back? And if he does, will the result be worth the cost? With both iterations of this story (as was the case with a lot of classic horror I've seen this month) I was shocked how little this seemed to parallel the pop culture interpretations of it. ...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #99: Nosferatu - Phantom der Nacht (1979) So, this is the fourth adaptation of Dracula I've seen this month. I'm not going to lament that fact as much as I did for Horror of Dracula (despite that being a better film overall I was a lot less frustrated with having to watch this one) but I am going to compare it to 1922's Nosferatu, of which this is a direct (almost shot-for-shot) remake. Nosferatu - Phantom der Nacht is a German film that follows Jonathan Harker, an estate agent, who travels to a remote part of Transylvania under orders to arrange a property deal with Count Dracula, who plans to move to Jonathan's town of Wismar. The locals warn him of the legends and superstitions that surround the count's castle, but he soldiers on and meets the bizarre, monstrous count. Once the deal has been made Dracula seemingly becomes infatuated with a cameo of Johnathan's w...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #98: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a film about a group of friends in San Francisco (Matthew, Elizabeth, Jack, and Nancy) when a rash of odd panic begins cropping up around town. Elizabeth notices her significant other acting unusually, meeting with strangers and conducting covert business, and Matthew tries to help her see through this irrational fear. But when Jack and Nancy discover a strange lifeless body has begun to materialize in their place of business that resembles Jack, it kicks off a sequence of events that make it clear that something supernatural and sinister is indeed manipulating the city of San Francisco- and possibly, the world. I think this was a very fun film. At the start, before anything concrete is established, a lot of work is done to show that something  is amiss, and also to lay the groundwork for what will eventually be ...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #97: Eraserhead (1977) I want to say at the top of this review that I knew nothing whatsoever about this film before watching it, except that it's made by David Lynch (and therefore I assumed it would be very, very weird). It is in fact very weird, but as the movie went on and I actually thought about what Lynch seemed to be trying to say and do, I'm not really sure "weird" is the word I would use to describe it. Watching this film distinctly reminded me of the term "deepity". A deepity is a saying or platitude, that at first seems deep or profound, but to the extent that it's true, it's trivially so; and to the extent that it's profound, it's false. An example is "Age is just a number." If you take it literally, it's so obvious nobody would have ever needed to state it. If you take it metaphorically or instructionally, it's no...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #96: Suspiria (1977) (I just noticed that these last two movies- Carrie and Suspiria- both had 2010s remakes starring Chloe Grace Moretz. I didn't mean to put them side-by-side, that's just how it happened.) Suspiria is a film about Suzy Bannion, an American girl who travels to Germany to join a prestigious ballet school. Once there she becomes strangely ill, other students are mysteriously murdered, and she begins to learn of a nefarious plot among the staff that could mean dark intentions are afoot. I spent the first thirty minutes of this film asking myself, "What the hell is this movie?" It redeemed itself by the end- not in a sense that I enjoyed it, but in a sense that I understood what the hell it even was, but I don't think this is a good film and I say without exaggeration that some of the sequences in it are so nonsensical that I can't accept them as be...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #95: Carrie (1976) I'd only ever seen the 2013 remake, and didn't have strong feelings about it, but I'm pretty sure I knew the plot of this movie even before that. This movie definitely felt like it held up pretty well, and actually manages to circumvent a lot of common problems I've been having with numerous older films this month. The film follows Carrie White, a shy teenage girl who has been struggling through her high school social life due to a very sheltered and religiously-extreme upbringing. But she discovers that she has telekinetic powers right around the time a group of bullies decide to assault her at the Senior Prom, so one way or another it all comes to a head. I just want to say: it has been shocking  how many movies this month seem to have been made under the assumption that the only way to write a story is to pad out the first 45 minutes with a whole lot ...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #94: Don't Look Now (1973) Don't Look Now follows a married couple, Laura and John Baxter, who have lost a daughter to an accidental drowning and are living in Venice while John works as an art restorer and their son is at a boarding school in London. The couple meets a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom is blind and claims to have psychic visions (and has communicated with the Baxters' deceased daughter). The blind psychic has a couple visions that seemingly come true, Laura leaves Venice to visit their son who has been injured, and John thinks he sees Laura still in town with the two sisters, so he searches for her and eventually gets the police involved. Laura (who did in fact leave town) comes back but she and John get separated. John thinks he sees their dead daughter run into an abandoned building or something, so he chases after her, but it turns out it's actually...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #93: Frenzy (1972) Frenzy is a film that takes place in London during a rash of serial murders, where the killer has been sexually assaulting women and then strangling them with a necktie. The story follows Richard Blaney, a down-on-his-luck barfly with a checkered past, who gets pinned early on as the prime suspect in the Necktie Murders, and does his best to evade capture. But every time it seems like he's found a way out of the spotlight, he gets pulled right back in. Movies like Frenzy are the prime example of why I feel justified in giving entries like Repulsion a low score. Frenzy is long (115 minutes) and most of it is pretty slow-paced, but the characters are all fully-realized people and each of them clearly has more going on than what you see in any given scene. Could you imagine how much less interesting this film would be if Blaney spent most of his scenes just staring bla...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #92: Repulsion (1965) I'm gonna get this right out there: I did not like this movie. Not at all. I'd be very comfortable placing this in the bottom five out of all of the movies I've watched this year, and that's saying something. At no point in this entire movie did I feel like I was enjoying myself, and reading some of the other reviews people have written about this just makes it all sound like pretentious nonsense. Repulsion is a film about Carol, a Belgian manicurist living in London with her sister Helen. Carol has some sort of serious cognitive disorder that causes her to hyper-focus and obsess over certain things to the great detriment of her social and professional life, and (possibly related) she also has some sort of underlying discomfort with sexuality and men in general. Her sister goes out of town leaving her on her own, and her cognitive disorder gets so bad...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #91: The Birds (1963) So, I really didn't know what to expect with this movie. On the one hand, it's held up by many as one of the horror classics that scared them to death as a child. On the other hand, there's been a lot of those so far this month, and most of them have been extremely unimpressive. On the third hand, this movie is TWO HOURS LONG and I have a hard time believing that it needed to be. On the fourth hand, it wasn't that bad. The Birds is a film about Melanie, a "modern rich socialite" as IMDB puts it, who runs into a lawyer, Mitch, and the two sort of flirt-prank each other and it ends up with Melanie driving out to Mitch's lake house in a seaside town called Bodega Bay. While there, the local birds suddenly start acting erratically- first by ramming into Melanie while she's out boating, to attacking kids at a party, to eventually storming...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #90: Eyes Without a Face (1962) Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage) is a French film about a surgeon, Dr. Génessier, whose daughter, Christiane, had her face disfigured in an automobile accident. With the help of his assistant Louise, they've taken to kidnapping young girls and performing surgeries on them, in the hopes of transplanting one of their faces onto Christiane. Over the course of the film they abduct three girls in this way- the first two transplants don't take, and by the time of the third, the police have begun to catch on to the trend of abductions. But ultimately Christiane lets the third girl go, kills Louise, and then lets loose a bunch of dogs which maul Dr. Génessier. This film has a creepy atmosphere I suppose, but I'd be lying if I said 99% of the heavy lifting wasn't being done by the creepy featureless mask that Christiane wears throughout mos...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #89: The Innocents (1961) The Innocents is a story about a young woman, Miss Giddens, being hired by a wealthy uncle to serve as governess (whatever that is) to his orphaned niece and nephew, Flora and Miles. (I mean, I can piece together through context clues that it's some kind of a housekeeper/babysitter/teacher/surrogate mother figure, but I guess I'm just starting off this review by expressing how completely disconnected I feel from the characters in this story because what could I possibly have in common with any of these people? Even the jobs they work are concepts that are utterly foreign, not to mention every single moment of their day to day lives. But I digress.) As the days go by, Miss Giddens begins to notice strange things around the house- shadowy silhouettes, disembodied voices, odd behavior from the children- and as she investigates, it seems to all be related to ...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #88: Psycho (1960) I'll be perfectly honest: I was not at all expecting to enjoy this movie. I'd seen the remake years ago (which was pretty accurate to my recollection) and wasn't impressed by it, so considering I already knew the big twist of this one I was expecting it to just be another slow, dry slog. But boy was I mistaken! This one moves at a nice clip, it's paced really well (even if a bit strange and unconventional) and there's enough going on that it never overstays its welcome. Psycho starts off following Marion Crane, a secretary who decides to steal a big thing of money from her employer and run away to live with her boyfriend. On the way she stops at a roadside motel, where the creepy innkeeper, Norman Bates, has an unhealthy relationship with his mother and a penchant for taxidermy. After he watches Marion in the shower, an unseen figure (presumably Norm...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #87: Horror of Dracula (1958) Yippee, another version of Dracula. That's three so far this month, and one more still to go. This one deviates slightly from the novel's story (though most of the deviation comes from swapping names around). It starts with Jonathan Harker arriving at Dracula's castle, posing as a librarian but with the intention of finding and killing the vampire. He ultimately fails (mainly because he stupidly chose not to kill Dracula when he had the chance) and so Dracula takes it upon himself to stalk and terrorize everyone Jonathan held dear. Dr. Van Helsing is on the case, though, and there's a bit of back-and-forth before Dracula's ultimate demise. Needless to say I really didn't care for this film. Not only is this story well-worn territory by this point, it's still incredibly slow and most of the scenes had me checking the clock numerous ...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #86: The Fly (1958) I'd never seen any version of The Fly, but of course I feel like I knew the basic story of it through cultural osmosis. This one is told in a particular way that had me unsure of exactly what was going on (as I'm sure was the intent) but in the end it came out pretty much as I thought it would. I was tempted to detail the entire plot and discuss it with full spoilers, but I don't think that's quite necessary, so I do urge you all to watch this film if you haven't- it's quite good. The Fly's plot is interesting in that a huge chunk (but not all) exists as a flashback, or a story being told. (If the ending were different this could be used as evidence that it's the result of an unreliable narrator; that's not the case but I feel like it could have gone either way.) We start off with the discovery that a scientist, Andre Delambre, has b...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #85: Godzilla (1954) I've never really been a big Godzilla fan; before today, I'd only seen the 1998 Matthew Broderick movie, 2019's Godzilla: King of Monsters, and for some reason 1966's Ebirah: Horror of the Deep (though I swear it was called something like "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" but I can't find that title anywhere). I've seen bits and pieces of various movies here and there, so it was nice to go back and see what the first entry was like. Godzilla has a fairly simple premise, padded out with a lot of reactions from the characters: a group of ships are seemingly attacked off the coast of Japan, and after some time and some investigation it's discovered that a giant, radioactive, prehistoric lizard has come from beneath the sea, and it's angry. Some people want to study it, others want to kill it, but it forces humanity's hand as thi...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #84: House of Wax (1953) I saw the 2005 House of Wax movie many years ago, and spent most of the time since assuming that it was a remake of this film. That's not at all the case- the two movies have nothing in common except for the title (and I actually recommend both movies, if you have the time). This is also the first color movie I'm watching this month, which was a welcome detail! (Unfortunately I'm not done with black and white films, as there's still six more of those, including tomorrow's movie.) House of Wax introduces us to Henry Jarrod, a wax sculptor whose passion for the medium outweighs his monetary ambitions. His business partner, Matthew Burke, feels differently and sets the museum and all of Jarrod's work on fire in order to collect insurance money, and Jarrod is assumed to be killed in the fire. But when Burke is killed shortly after by a grotesqu...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #83: Dead of Night (1945) So, one thing I want to preface this review: The audio quality of this film is kind of bad. I had to crank the volume up like 4x higher than usual to understand what anybody was saying since it all sounded kind of fuzzy, and there were still times I had to rewind it to catch something that was said because I didn't understand a transition between scenes. At first I thought this was just an issue with the version I was watching, but I've watched several clips on Youtube (as well as part of a documentary about it, which used some clips from the film) and all of them sounded the same, so I think that's just how the movie is. That being said, audio issues aside, I was kind of amazed at how good this movie was! Dead of Night starts off following Walter Craig, an architect who arrives at a country cottage to discuss a business offer with the owner. As he wa...

This review was originally written in October 2022. Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #82: The Wolf Man (1941) The Wolf Man is a film about a man, Larry Talbot, who comes home to live with his wealthy father after going off to work halfway across the world. When he arrives there, after peeping on a neighbor, he learns of a local legend about werewolves. He then goes with the peeped neighbor and her friend to see a fortune teller, and the friend gets killed by a wolf. Larry fights and kills the wolf, getting bitten in the process- but the next morning, the dead "wolf" turns out to be a dead man, and Larry's bite has completely healed, leaving behind a pentagram-shaped scar. As the days go on, he keeps noticing strange blanks of time- and more bodies start piling up. Has he become a werewolf, or is he going crazy? I've never seen any of the Wolf Man movies, and this first one wasn't bad, exactly. (It wasn't good either, for the record.) It sets up a...