Many Thanks to the bloggers that participated and allowed me to add their links/reviews to this page 🙂
Have you reviewed any horror books this year on your blog?
Put your link in the comments and I’ll post a pic and link on this page. (sci-fi books too!)
Directed by Dan Attias
Starring:
Corey Haim
Gary Busey
Everett McGill
Megan Follows
More than a horror tale, Silver Bullet is a family story. It portrays the reconciliation between a brother and sister from a small town family, whose lives could have went on a path of division, considering their relationship. Marty (Corey Haim) is your average 10-year old but crippled and confined to a wheelchair. Jane, approx. 15, is resentful of Marty because their parents always expects her to look after him. Uncle Red (Gary Busey) comes by for dinner one night and secretly gives Marty some fireworks. Marty sneaks off in the late hour of the night, down the road in his motorized wheelchair to shoot off his fireworks. There, he witnesses a werewolf killing one of the townsfolk. When the werewolf attacks Marty, he shoots him in the eye with a rocket and makes his
narrow escape. As more townsfolk go missing it’s up to Marty and Jane to work together to find the person with the injured eye and alert the authorities to the werewolf’s true identity. However, the werewolf knows of their plan and comes for them.
Some of the highlights of the film include a scene where a vigilante posse heads out into the woods to hunt the beast and ends up being the hunted. Another fantastic scene is a dream sequence that has the town’s preacher, Reverend Lowe, witnessing his whole church congregation turning into werewolves before his eyes. Aside from these sensationalist scenes, the film does have a story with heart and leads into highly suspenseful territory.
Cory Haim is a natural actor with a likeability that reaches beyond the screen and gives the viewer instant empathy. The werewolf isn’t anything super as far as FX and make-up but the story allows for some real tense moments when he’s on the prowl. Gary Busey plays one of his best parts as Uncle Red, (pretty much just being himself) a familiar styled character in many families. The ending has a tense build-up as Marty and Jane finally convince Uncle Red they are being stalked by a werewolf and the three of them defend their home against the evil that has embodied their town for the past year. Despite the “R” rating, I’ve watched SB with my kids when they were 10-12 years of age and they were able to handle the violence, but make that decision at your own discretion.
Trivia: Adapted from Stephen King’s “Cycle of the Werewolf”
The 1985 version included illustrations by Berni Wright
Corey Haim: Anyone alive in the 1980’s would know the bright spirited personality of child/teen actor, Corey Haim. His smile lit up the screen in a dozen films and he was especially known for horror films (Watchers, Lost Boys). He became good friends with his Lost Boys co-star Corey Feldman, leading to a reality show as an adult called, The Two Corey’s (2007 – 08). Ironically, his childhood fame lead to a troubled adulthood and he died of a prescription drug overdose in 2010.
(Photo by NBC Television/Courtesy of Getty Images)
Directed by Michael Gornick
Based on stories by Stephen King
Screenplay by George A. Romero and Lucille Fletcher
Many movie critics called Creepshow II, lackluster and gave it generally negative reviews. I strongly disagree. How many of us that originally saw this film spent the rest of 1987 gurgling out the phrase, “thanks for the ride, lady!” If you remember that phrase then you remember The Hitchhiker segment from which the line was spoken. I’m sure you all had a s much fun with it as I did. We’ll get to that segment, but I want to review the stories in order so let’s start from the top.
The first story, Old Chief Wooden Head concerns an elderly couple, owners of a general store in a dying Midwest town, loaning goods to the local tribe. They can barely afford to loan products to the tribe chief, but trust his word to be paid back in full. When a young renegade native from the tribe decides to make his own path in life and rob the store’s proprietor, he is not prepared for the wooden statue with the soul of a native warrior to take offense by his actions. Flush with cash and valuables the renegade and his henchmen prepare to leave the dusty old town in their rear 
view mirror forever. Unfortunately for them, old Chief Wooden Head has other plans for the thieving youth.
In The Raft, two young couples find a beautiful roadside lake calling them for a swim. The warm morning leads to a swim to the diving raft secured some 30 yards out in the lake. The swimmers soon find that an oily-tar looking sludge seems to be following their every move. At first chance the oil slick swallows one of the swimmers, digesting them in its folds. The remaining three have to decide how they will survive and escape the confines of The Raft.
In the last story, The Hitchhiker, a woman having an affair overslept in the hotel room and needs to get back home before her husband gets suspicious. She pushes the limits of speed on the highway while concentrating on an alibi. With her mind distracted she doesn’t see the hitchhiker at roadside and accidentally runs him over. She leaves the scene of the incident, leaving the man to die. When she finally seems to be calming down she sees the hitchhiker ahead on the road again. He’s calling, “how bout a ride lady.” She keeps seeing him every few miles and finally runs him down again, making sure he could not possibly survive. It’s only a few miles more when she sees him once again exclaiming, “thanks for the ride lady!” This continues until the spectacular and horrifying ending, when she finally reaches home.
The cartoon/comic wrap around story is a simple but coherent story involving a boy who is bullied and purchases a Venus Fly Trap from the back page ads in his comics. When I was that age, the mail order items in the back of comics and Famous Monsters magazine kept my young mind active with possibilities. I completely related to this aspect of the film and found it wonderfully portrayed.
The only reason I have for thinking the first Creepshow was better than II is it had more stories. The truth is you could exchange any of the stories in II with those in I and not notice much of a difference. I think both films are equally good.
Trivia:
Another segment called, The Cat from Hell, was originally planned for Creepshow II, but trimming of the budget caused it to be abandoned. It was later filmed for the Tales from the Dark Side movie in 1990.
Quiet horror in this coming of age story…
We have a genuine masterpiece here and I’m so glad I’ve had the pleasure to read the work of this very talented author.
(There are slight spoilers though this whole review, but I have to convince you why you should read this book)
If you want to be blessed by an emotional moving story, you have to read the tale of a young boy whose hopes and dreams are about to be dashed by a non-loving, alcoholic mother and the intervening finger of fate. The 12-year-old boy, Denny, lost his father several years ago, left to be raised by his neglectful and perpetually boozed up mother. Denny’s dad had one time won a ‘spelling bee’ at his hometown school and Denny cherished th
e ribbon award as a great memory from his father. Denny had never entered the spelling bee because of lack of confidence and drive. However, this year was supposed to be different. Denny had studied since the beginning of the school year, practicing, rehearsing the spellings, and preparing himself to do good in his father’s eyes and follow in his footsteps. With the Spelling Bee fast approaching there was nothing that was going to stop him from paying this ultimate homage to his dad. Then a few days before the big event, his mother dies overnight on the living room couch. In the first few minutes of this event, Denny makes a big decision. He is not going to miss the spelling bee. His mom was dead; calling the police now or at the end of the week was not going to change that. Now Denny just has to bluff his way through a few days, foiling his neighbors, ducking friends, and keeping his dog out of trouble. Throughout the tale young Denny comes to terms with the strained relationship he had with his alcoholic mother, bringing tears to my eyes several times.
It’s not straight up horror but shades of King abound with the dead body of Denny’s mom doing what dead bodies do best, being creepy.
(spoilers ahead)
To show you how the depth of a story affects the variant of horror, the scariest part of the book is the night before the spelling bee, when Denny has made it almost to his goal. His mother’s boozer, card playing girlfriends come by for their weekly card game ringing the bell and twisting the door knob ready to expose his mother’s rotting maggot infested body to the world. Only seconds before this Denny had caught sight of hundreds of squirming maggots devouring her forehead. He threw up on himself and had to answer the door that way, covered in puke. It probably doesn’t sound like much here but in context, this scene really made me tense.
(end of spoilers)
The story built such density that it made the spelling bee seem as exciting as being chased by velociraptors or being in a car chase and gun fight with a serial killer. The outcome is fantastic.
The final few pages when Denny calls the police and they arrive to the scene of the ‘crime’ are incredibly written and pulled on my heart-strings the way few stories have in a long time. It was gut-wrenching sadness and happiness at once; a strange combination. My chest was tight and I felt for Denny like a real person would feel for a neighbor or friend.
You may ask why a story such as this would make me feel so good? Because life is a struggle and not always a nice place, but we have to move through our darkest days to find better ones ahead. That is what Denny did in this story and against all odds found those brighter days on the other side of death. I want to tell everyone that reads to get a copy of this; I want to yell from a mountain top with a bull horn, it’s just that damn good!
Get it now@ Of Foster Homes and Flies – Chad Lutzke on Amazon.com
recommended if you like:
Stephen King’ s The Body/ Stand by Me, Robert McCammons’s Boys Life, William Goldman’s Temple of Gold, James Newman’s Midnight Rain, and movies such as The Rivers Edge, Bottle Rocket, and Ghost World. Also a touch of them old classics; Tom Sawyer, Catcher in the Rye, and even Stephen King’s, Silver Bullet (movie).
Stephen King finds cars to be very scary. It’s almost like he had been run over by a car himself…oh wait, I forgot about that. Well, he wrote stories about scary cars before he got run over, it’s almost like he had a precognitive awareness of his own future danger…now that’s scary! Anyways, in Mile 81, he finds a way to make you feel his fear of the automobile. I do think this is one of his scariest cars to date. Alone at a closed highway truck stop the car in question sits, waiting for victims.
In Batman and Robin Have an Altercation, we meet Sanders and his pop, who he picks up at ‘the home’ on Sunday to go out for lunch. His pop has Alzheimer’s and his memories are scrambled at best. It’s a wonderful tale because a chance memory of father and son surfaces of a Halloween when they had dressed as the dynamic duo for trick or treat. This surfaced memory reminds pops that he loves his son and saves a bad incident from concluding in the worst possible way.
The Dune has an elderly gentleman contemplating his own old age and mortality. He’s a retired Judge that lives on the gulf coast Florida where he’d been living since he was a boy. Within kayak distance of his home is a small sandy island that nobody knows about, or cares about, that seems to hold special powers.
From a very young age, George has seen an evil red-haired, freckled-faced boy cause violent accidents involving people he loves. Speaking to his lawyer from death row, he tells the tale that led him to killing a child in Bad Little Kid. Is he crazy or is there something more to his tall tale?
Blockade Billy is a great story about old time baseball with a wonderful character voice by a one time manager of the NJ Titans. It brought the real excitement of the sport to light while twisting it into a King style deranged knot.
Each story has an introduction about its origin which I find as entertaining as the stories themselves. Having grown up and grown older reading King, it is fitting that his stories now reflect the problems, concerns and dealings of older persons. In this book it’s about wills, sickness, the aged body, and taking care of your elderly parents…and the fear of scary young people. There’s a few stories for the younger gens here too, a particularly good one about a trash culture news site whose obit columns lead to a difficult decisions, an entertaining tale for all.
The short story is an art form like know other. You have to sink your teeth into the reader, engage them with an interesting character, turn a situation on its ear and leave them a satisfying conclusion, all within a short span of time. Sometimes you have to do these things simultaneously. King is a master at this craft and Bazaar is another testament to his prowess.
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Directed by Rob Letterman
Based on stories by R.L. Stine
Music by Danny Elfman
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starring:
Jack Black
Dylan Minnette
Odeya Rush
Amy Ryan
Halston Sage
Ryan Lee
Jillian Bell
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In the mid-1990s Goosebumps was a television show for youngsters that liked horror, but were not necessarily able to handle adult horror flicks. My daughter loved the series and soon found interest in the book series of the same name. The plots were simple and the storylines predictable, but that didn’t hinder the enjoyment of the show for my daughter or her parents, myself and my wife. We engaged in the tales becoming familiar with Carlie-Beth and the Mask, Slappy the ventriloquist dummy, the Snowman of Pasadena, and many more wonderful stories and characters of the show.
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We finally watched the Goosebumps Movie with equal parts excitement and trepidation. We’ve read some bad reviews of the film, but wanted to watch it for nostalgic entertainment. The film took a full 26 minutes before anything remotely Goosebumps related happened. The characters were cardboard cut outs with little depth, the kind that we’ve seen so many times in many other films. The plot was simple but decent enough. I think the problem with the film was they were trying to reach both the parents and the children at the same time. This is something Disney has perfected but many other filmmakers struggle with. The kids that grew up watching the show or reading the books weren’t engaged by the characters and the mature jokes and aspects were too watered down to create impact with adults.
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That being said, the monsters were fantastic and portrayed in usual Goosebumps fashion, somewhere between comical and monstrous. The action was fast-paced and at a higher level than the TV Show. The giant praying mantis was intense and being a giant monster fan, my favorite part of the film. The abominable snow man, the werewolf, and fan favorite, Slappy, all added nostalgic value to the film. The scary garden gnomes added comedic aspects. The film moved along at a fast pace, helped by a wonderfully exciting score by Danny Elfman. Sure the film was predictable, simplistic and delivered mild horror entertainment, but the TV show fits that same description. I think the film was at the same level as the show, but perhaps some viewers were expecting more. All said, it delivered light horror entertainment and that’s all I expected so I wasn’t disappointed.
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I give it 3.2 fictional frights on the maniacal monster mash-up movie scale.
Based on a short story by Stephen King
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring:
David Soul
James Mason
Lance Kerwin
Bonnie Bedelia
Lew Ayres
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By 1979, a TV movie written by Stephen King was big news. Add to that the film was directed by Tobe Hooper, the guy that made Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and you have piqued interest in the film. Even us High School kids were abuzz with talk of the coming night’s horror flick about vampires in a small town in Maine. The young boy vampire, floating at his friend’s window chilled a generation of TV watching young horror fans. Salem’s Lot took a familiar horror staple and made it seem new. It told the story in a new way and entertained multiple generations. Some kids watched it with their parents,
some despite of their parents, but almost everyone from 15 to 25 stayed home those two nights to tune in. It also made a few of us (like me) think that writing books for a living could be interesting and exciting.
Author Ben Mears returns to his childhood town to write about an old rumored haunted house called the Marsten House. He finds it is occupied by new owners, mysterious in nature. Of course we all know Barlow is a vampire and his sidekick Straker is his cohort, protecting him in the daylight hours. As the town turns into vampire central, Ben, his love interest, Susan, and the boy, Mark, battle the vampire at the Martsen House. This film brings back the Nosferatu style vampire in Barlow with great success. The glowing eyes of Barlow and all that are turned to vampires are something that really stands out in this film.
I love the stunning main theme by Harry Sukman. Long loud horn blasts break between quieter notes in a push and pull sequence, then the theme jumps into a frantic eighth note pace reminiscent of the theme from Psycho with multiple key changes. Paul Monash wrote the screenplay after several writers attempted to with little success. King liked Paul’s script and was familiar with his work as he had adapted King’s novel, Carrie for film. The film is a little slow and quiet by today’s standards, but that makes the horrific parts all the more creepy.
The house was made to look like the description in the book by building a façade over the front of an existing home in Ferndale, CA.
Make up man, Jack Young invented the glowing eye contact lenses for the film. They could only be worn for 15 minutes at a time.
Unlike the novel, the Vampire Barlow does not speak a word in the Salem’s Lot movie/miniseries.
A shorter, edited version was released to theaters in Europe. This version, called Salem’s Lot, The Movie, was also released with Return to Salem’s Lot as a double feature home video. WB eventually released the original uncut version that was aired as the miniseries in 1979.
for the horror fan…
Winter is a great time to read. There’s more down time in your life because the weather limits you from outdoor activities. The isolated feel of the weather and the early sundown also set the ideal mood for a good horror tale. Here are some great horror fiction stories and books to read during the winter months. They all have winter themes running through them, cold, snow, holidays, and isolation.
Short stories:
The Windego – Algernon Blackwood
Christmas Eve at Aunt Elsie’s – Thomas Ligotti
The Chimney – Ramsey Campbell
The Vending Machine – Mark Lukens
The Glamour of the Snow – Algernon Blackwood
At the Mountains of Madness – HP Lovecraft
The Yattering and Jack – Clive Barker
Books:
Who Goes There – John W. Campbell
Storm of the Century – Stephen King
The Shining- Stephen King
Winter Wake – Rick Hatula
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Dead of Winter – Brian Moreland
Snow – Ronald Malfi
NOS4A2 – Joe Hill
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If you have any more suggestions, leave them in the comments.
I would love to know your favorite winter theme horror stories…and I’ll add them to the list.
parlor of horror 