13 Nights of Shocktober: Beetlejuice

by A.J.

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween!

“There’s a word for people in our situation: Ghosts.”

Beetlejuice 

Even though I've recommended well seen, popular, and classic movies for Shocktober before, I hesitated at including Beetlejuice for those very reasons. If you haven't already rewatched Beetlejuice because of the sequel released just last month, there's a good chance you've already watched it or are already planning on watching it for Halloween. However, if it's been a while since you've seen it or even if you just watched it, you can't go wrong with combining this horror comedy classic and Halloween. 

There's a certain fondness for this movie from people that grew up in the late 80's and early 90's. It's not really a family movie or a kids movie, but it is zany and silly and very funny. There is certainly horror movie imagery, including unsightly creatures from the beyond, but it’s not really a horror movie either. The heightened, cartoonish atmosphere makes everything about this movie, from the look to the subject matter, easier to take and easier to enjoy than if it had a serious, straightforward tone. Director Tim Burton’s distinct surreal, goth macabre style is fully on display and is really the only explanation for a lot of things in the movie. 

It's strange that Beetlejuice begins like a pleasant, wholesome movie about pleasant wholesome people living in a country house, and somehow ends as a movie about wholesome, pleasant people living in a country house, but some of the people are now ghosts. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play the pleasant and wholesome Maitlands, who are surprised to find out after a car accident that they are in fact dead. The real shock for them comes when their house is sold to a nouveaux riche couple (Catherine O’Hara and Jeffery Jones). Their death obsessed goth daughter, Lydia, can see the ghosts and she finds more sympathy with them than her father and eccentric stepmother. The ghosts are horrified by the changes the new owners are making to the house, a sort of avant-garde post modern look to match the stepmother’s sculptures, which are bizarre but perfect for a Tim Burton movie. They can’t scare the new owners out (because possessing them and making them dance around to “Day-o” is actually pretty fun for everyone), so they turn to a “bio-exorcist” named Betelgeuse. Of course, Betelgeuse isn’t trustworthy to say the least and has ulterior motives. And yes, even though the title of the movie is spelled BEETLEJUICE, the character’s name is spelled like the star, Betelgeuse. Since he can only be summoned by saying his name three times, this becomes a running gag with Baldwin calling him Beetlegeist and Beetlemeyer. 

It's crazy that Beetlejuice has not one but two signature performances for performers with impressive careers: Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. Keaton’s Betelgeuse is gross and decaying and obnoxious and lascivious, but Keaton also plays him like an undead Groucho Marx: fast talking, wisecracking, and scheming. He lets Betelgeuse really enjoy being Betelgeuse and that adds a very strange charm to the character. Maybe it is because of how he is introduced that we don’t really hold it against him. When he starts causing chaos after the Maitland’s summon him, your reaction is more along the lines of, “well what did you expect?” Winona Ryder does not have as much screen time as you might remember but she really brings substance to her character so she’s more than just a moody kid. She’s still mourning the death of her mother and is even contemplating suicide so she can join her ghost friends. The scene where they have to talk her down is brief but surprisingly poignant. 

The special effects and makeup are still impressive. The stop motion creature effects might seem dated at first, but this artificial animated look, then and now, adds to the movie’s surreal nature. The monstrous worm from Saturn is pretty unsightly and even frightening but impressive so you can’t look away. The score by Danny Elfman, a long time Burton collaborator, with its booming horns is very memorable. It’s likely that whenever you think about Beetlejuice, you’re also hearing the score in your head.

I don't think it's a stretch to call Beetlejuice a classic, neither the movie nor the character ever fully left the pop culture consciousness. It still feels as wild and zany today as it did in 1988. I was cynical about the sequel–which so far has gotten very good reviews from critics–thinking that the original would be buried or swept aside, but there is no need to worry about that with this movie. It will be around for as long as there are misfit kids, people that love spooky things, and people that love creative, crazy movies. Happy Halloween.

Beetlejuice is available to stream on Max.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Thanksgiving

by A.J.

Night 12: Holiday Horror Night

“This year there will be no leftovers.”

Thanksgiving

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving began as one of the fake trailers that played in between features in the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino double feature spectacular Grindhouse (2007). The Thanksgiving trailer was the best and funniest of the fake trailers (the others were Robert Rodriguez's Machete, Edgar Wright's Don’t, and Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS, all of which are pretty funny). After Robert Rodriguez made a full feature out of his fake trailer, Machete, it seemed that these comedic trailers only work as fake trailers. However, the feature length version of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is a solid movie and is easily Roth’s best film in a long time. The key to the success of the feature length version is the approach taken by Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell. Instead of making a parody, like the trailer, they took a serious approach to the material and the result is a great modern slasher movie.

Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts on, you guessed it, Thanksgiving, a prologue shows us a gruesome and deadly riot at Ritemart, a big box store, that happens after the obnoxious teenager friends of Jessica (Nell Verlaque), daughter of the store owner, who got in early, tease and taunt the massive crowd waiting outside. The crowd charges the store and mayhem and carnage ensue. One year later, the greedy store owner has decided to open his store on Thanksgiving night again but this time he will hire more than two security guards. Jessica and her friends are being tagged in cryptic social media posts. Her ex-boyfriend who mysteriously disappeared after his arm was mangled in the riot–ending his hopes of a baseball career–mysteriously returns, embittered loved ones of the people killed in the riot are protesting the store, a restaurant is handing out masks of John Carver, first governor of Plymouth, and the stage is set for a slasher movie.

If you guess who the killer is way ahead of the reveal, and you just might, that doesn’t spoil any of the fun. It makes sense narratively and Roth and Rendell are more concerned with crafting a good story and entertaining the audience instead of outsmarting them. This is a bloody, gruesome horror movie, so if the violence you see in the riot is too much, then find a different Shocktober movie because the violence only gets more graphic and over the top. This movie does not cut away for effect or leave things up to the viewer’s imagination. We see the gruesome elaborate kills start to finish. And the kills get quite elaborate. The killer dunks one victim in a restaurant sink then sticks her face to the door of the walk-in refrigerator and eventually ends up running her over in an alley so that she is bisected by a dumpster. Yet, Thanksgiving definitely does not have the atmosphere of doom and dread that were a major part of Roth’s Hostel movies and the love it or hate it Cabin Fever. This is like a rollercoaster or amusement park dark ride: the goal is to excite and thrill and even scare you and then deliver you back to the ground where you can laugh off the scares and enjoy the experience you just had.

Nell Verlaque as Jessica Wright is a good “final girl", without feeling like she has been constructed as such. Among the other teens, Tomaso Sanelli as the obnoxious jock Evan deserves recognition for playing a character so believably crass and hateable, but still you don’t really want him to die. Gabriel Davenport as Scuba is also another stand out because he is a hothead who even buys an illegal gun, but then doesn’t know what to do with it. Among the adults, Patrick Dempsey is the stand out and pretty much the star of the movie as the town sheriff. Rick Hoffman is great as the greedy store owner and his redemptive turn midway through the movie is believable. You end up not wanting him to die too–which is impressive since it’s clear he is to blame for the entire fiasco that spawned a revenge driven killing spree. There is a lot of death and a lot of blood but the body count is relatively low. Nothing feels like a foregone conclusion so you never feel like you’re just watching a line up of teenagers/victims die elaborately.

Slasher movies are simple and are something of an oddity as a subgenre. If they are done well they are effective and memorable horror cinema. If they are done poorly they can be just as entertaining, maybe even more so. Thanksgiving is not a parody or a copycat. It does not seek to transcend or redefine the genre, and this is a welcome thing. It is effective, thrilling, gory entertainment in its own right while also being an homage to the genre.

Thanksgiving is streaming on Netflix.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Doctor X

by A.J.

Night 11: Classic Horror Night

Out Thrills Them All!

Doctor X

In the early 1930's, to compete with, and cash in on, the success Universal Studios had with Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Warner Bros. released Doctor X in 1932. It is a very peculiar horror film. Unlike Universal’s monster movies which were based on famous 19th century novels and involved castles and period settings, Doctor X was based on a play and has a contemporary, urban setting. It also has more of a mystery plot than a horror plot. The director is Michael Curtiz, who would become famous for directing classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Casablanca (1942). It's interesting to see his name on a horror movie the and skill he brings to a genre picture. The most peculiar element is its look. It is not a black and white film but it is not exactly a color movie either. It was shot on two strip technicolor film which used shades of only two colors: orange and green. The result looks like an eerie colorization of a black and white film or a faded color picture. This look works in the film’s favor giving it an eerie, mysterious atmosphere in every shot.

Doctor Xavier (Lionel Atwell), a renowned pathologist and researcher is assisting police in the investigation of the mysterious cannibalistic “moon killer” murders. Clues point to the killer being someone at Doctor Xavier’s research lab, where everyone is some degree of creepy or suspicious. 

All kinds of different research is done at Doctor Xavier’s lab. There are experiments that involve large machines and also psychological experiments. Doctor X is able to convince the police to let him conduct his own investigation to find the killer. For the sake of the plot, the police commissioner agrees. Complicating things as much as helping the investigation is a reporter played by Lee Tracy. He is basically comic relief but also one of the main characters. Fay Wray plays Doctor X’s daughter, and it’s only appropriate that her first line is a startled scream–she is the original scream queen after all.

The contemporary urban setting is unusual for a horror movie of this era and would be until the late 1960’s with the release of Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby. Warner Bros. was known for its urban gangster movies so it makes sense that their horror movie would have the same setting and aesthetic. The city setting and mystery story give this film an almost Noir-ish feel with green tinged backgrounds and skies substituting for stylistic shadows. There is also more of an edge than you might expect. Since this was a Pre-Code movie it was able to get away with some more gruesome visuals and disturbing subject matter for the time. By far the most memorable and shocking visual is the killer applying a mask of “synthetic flesh” giving them a truly monstrous and scary looking face. 

Doctor X’s experiment to determine the killer’s identity is very reminiscent of a famous scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing. The doctor restrains all of the suspects in a row while they watch a reenactment of the murder so he can gauge their reactions. When the real killer pops up, everyone else is trapped and struggles to get free. 

Fay Wray’s character could be more developed. She ends up being the screaming damsel in distress, but her screen presence makes up for lack of character depth. The reporter character is funny, but not very charming so his romance with Wray feels forced and obligatory. This movie isn’t scary but it is creepy and eerie and entertaining. Like many classic era horror movies it is also pretty short (76 minutes) and it's impressive how much it gets done in that time. If you’ve seen all of the more famous horror classics, I highly recommend Doctor X for an eerie Shocktober night. 

Doctor X airs on TCM on Thursday, October 31st at 5AM CT.

13 Nights of Shocktober: From Beyond the Grave

by A.J.

Night 10: Anthology Horror Night

“All tastes catered for. Oh, and a big novelty surprise goes with every purchase.”

From Beyond the Grave

Horror anthologies, or portmanteau films, are maybe my favorite horror subgenre. Multiple stories of different kinds wrapped up for the price of one movie. Many horror stories, in fact most, no matter what kind (monsters, slashers, allegories, whathaveyou) work best in short form simply because there is less time to pick apart details or overthink a thin premise. In the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s the British production company Amicus specialized in horror anthologies. Their most famous film is Tales From the Crypt (1972). Their 7th and final production, From Beyond the Grave (1977) did not fare well at the time, but it is quite entertaining and makes for great spooky-not-scary Shocktober viewing. 

From Beyond the Grave has four separate stories following people who visit an antiques store run by none other than horror legend Peter Cushing. Each story is based on a short story by British author R. Chetwynd-Hayes and all have the same director, Kevin Connor, and cinematographer Alan Hume (later to shoot Return of the Jedi and A Fish Called Wanda), so they all have a similar aesthetic while also having just enough variety in tone to feel distinct. Every anthology movie winds up feeling uneven to a certain degree and From Beyond the Grave is no exception, but overall there is more to enjoy than not. 

The first story, “The Gate Crasher”, has David Warner purchasing an old spooky looking mirror. He has some friends over and one of them says the mirror looks like something a medium would have. This prompts someone to suggest they have a séance, so they do, because why not. This calls forth an evil spirit trapped in the mirror who hypnotizes Warner into luring people to his apartment and killing them. The premise feels familiar if you’ve seen enough horror movies but it’s a good start and probably the darkest of the four stories. 

The second story “An Act of Kindness” is probably the best of the four. It stars Ian Bannen as a put-upon office manager with an overbearing wife who befriends a peddler played by Donald Pleasence. The peddler invites the office manager to his flat for dinner and to meet his daughter (played by Pleasence’s real life daughter, Angela). Of course, the peddler and his daughter are not what they seem. This segment benefits from the added layer of the office manager seeming to be a proper gentleman but actually being an undignified, pathetic man (he steals a war medal to impress the peddler) and the lowly peddler actually have the dignity and self respect the office manager only pretends to have. It also benefits from a great performance from Donald Pleasence. This story ends with a twist that plays a bit like a joke and seems to come out of nowhere but it fits the tone of the story. 

The third story has a man switching the price tags on snuff boxes in Cushing’s store. On the train ride home a goofy psychic calling herself Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) claims that he has a nasty elemental on his shoulder and gives him her card. When he gets home the dog won’t stop barking at him and his wife gets mysterious scratches, so he calls Madame Orloff to perform an exorcism. The exorcism is Madame Orloff giving him an insane shoulder massage while objects fly around the house. This is clearly a comedy and is a nice tonal switch up.

The final story is relatively straightforward. A young man asks to buy the extremely spooky looking door with a scary gargoyle carving. It’s crazy that this guy wants this; it’s even behind stuff that Cushing has to move out of the way. Perhaps the craziest thing about this story is that the guy uses this door for a simple closet in his otherwise average looking house. Of course later when he opens the closet he finds a big abandoned room covered in layers of dust and cobwebs. The room holds the spirit of a 17th century warlock who needs a body to finish a ritual and escape into the real world. There is not a lot to this story but the old room, lit with an eerie blue light and covered in cobwebs provides a good spooky atmosphere. 

There isn’t anything in From Beyond the Grave that will make you jump or cover your eyes, and there are more than a few moments that will make you laugh or even giggle. However, each story works well on its own and also as part of a larger anthology of people getting more than they bargained for and sometimes deserving what they get. 

From Beyond the Grave airs on TCM on Wednesday, October 30th and 6:15AM CT.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Haunted Palace

by A.J.

Night 9: Roger Corman Memorial Night/Vincent Price Night

“This isn’t a house. It’s a madman’s palace.”

The Haunted Palace

It’s not Shocktober without Vincent Price and here Price and legendary producer-director Roger Corman, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 98, take on the unfilmable eldritch horrors of H.P Lovecraft in The Haunted Palace. If you’re thinking that The Haunted Palace is an Edgar Allen Poe poem and not a Lovecraft story, you are correct. By 1963 Corman and Price had made several Poe adaptations, with varying degrees of success, including House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, three Poe stories in the anthology Tales of Terror, The Raven and Corman wanted to tackle new material. Corman’s investors were hesitant for him to stop making Poe adaptations, so the compromise was that he would adapt another American horror author, H.P. Lovecraft, but the title would be taken from an Edgar Allen Poe poem, which Price recites excerpts of to justify the title. So, the title was taken from Poe’s The Haunted Palace and the plot was taken from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The result is a Roger Corman/Vincent Price movie that checks all the right boxes, yet in some ways is darker than their previous collaborations.

The story opens in colonial New England with villagers capturing and burning Joseph Curwen, a warlock attempting to summon dark, evil forces. Before Curwen is burned, he puts a curse on the village of Arkham (a frequent setting for Lovecraft). 110 years later, presumably some non-specific decade of the 19th century, Charles Dexter Ward, a descendant of Curwen, and his wife Ann arrive in Arkham after Charles inherits the old Curwen castle. They do not receive a warm welcome from the villagers and are told either to avoid the castle or leave Arkham altogether. Of course, the castle comes with a creepy caretaker (Lon Chaney, Jr), as spooky castles often do. Charles becomes possessed by the spirit of his evil ancestor and once in control of Charles’s body, Curwen returns to his work of using the Necronomicon to summon the dark Elder Gods.

Unlike in The Pit and the Pendulum there is no young hero to duel with Price. Instead, Price gets to duel with himself as Charles and Curwen fight for control of his body. Price goes from sinister to sympathetic easily and believably. When he’s Curwen his skin takes on a greenish-yellow hue that no one seems to notice, but even without the makeup it would be easy to tell when he is Charles and when he is Curwen. It is great to see Price play both the villain and the hero in the same role. Curwen is a dark and evil character with a horrendous plan—Price’s darkest role would  come a few years later as the real-life “witch hunter” Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General.

The setting may be Arkham and the source material may be Lovecraft but The Haunted Palace has all the hallmarks of a Corman-Poe adaptation: period setting, vibrant period costumes, low cut gowns for the women, foggy exteriors, lightening, characters with torches, and a spacious gothic location with secret chambers and passageways. The main difference with this movie is that it is more sinister than you might expect. The curse Curwen puts on the village manifests itself as deformities (like being born with no eyes) in the village children. Also, Curwen’s plan to summon the Elder Gods involves mating humans with the monstrous, otherworldly beings.

My friend and podcast co-host Bryan Connolly and I had an in-depth review and discussion of The Haunted Palace as part of our series on Francis Ford Coppola (episode 20, Coppola Cast #2), who at the time in 1963 was Roger Corman’s “ace assistant." Like all the better Corman-Price movies, this is a spooky but not scary movie that still has great entertainment value. Nearly everything looks fake and artificial but that is part of the charm and atmosphere of the movie. Corman is presenting a tale of the fantastic so any noticeable artifice, even stiff acting or over acting, only enhances its storybook/campfire tone. 

The Haunted Palace is streaming for free on Tubi.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Grindhouse (2007)

 by A.J.

Night 1: Double Feature Night

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are back! But this time they’re Back to Back!

Grindhouse

13 Nights of Shocktober 2024 is starting with double feature night and there’s only one movie that fits the bill: the epic length Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez collaboration, Grindhouse. “Grindhouses” were rundown movie houses that would show low budget exploitation movies (horror, action, crime, even kung fu), usually as a double feature. The idea behind this film was to recreate the experience so Rodriguez and Tarantino each made their own modern “grindhouse” movies with Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie, and Eli Roth contributing fake trailers to play before each movie. After Grindhouse did poorly at the box office, the studio behind the movie, The Weinstein Company, split the movies up for the home video/DVD release with extra scenes added to each feature. This is the most common way to find Planet Terror and Death Proof, but the theatrical combination version of each movie eventually made its way to Blu-ray. So, you can play each movie back to back, track down the full Grindhouse version, or only watch whichever one sounds more appealing. The great thing about Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is that they work together and separately, so whichever way you choose to watch you’re in for a great time. 

First up is Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, a special effects heavy gross-out zombie movie about a virus that spreads over the course of a single night. The key phrase for this movie is “over-the-top.” The dialogue is ridiculous and there are a lot of things that just don’t make sense, but that’s part of the fun. The most ridiculous thing is also the movie’s signature image: Rose McGowan with a machine gun leg. How does it work? Doesn’t matter. Freddy Rodriguez plays the role of a mysterious former government agent with an intensity and seriousness that might seem out of place, but are actually perfect for the overall comedic tone. My favorite scene is when he’s finally given guns and twirls them with such ferocity that all the other characters are shocked and mesmerized, causing Jeff Fahey to say, “That boy’s got the devil in him.” Unlike a real grindhouse movie from the 1970’s, the special effects in Plant Terror are very well done. They are also very gross. The virus causes people to decay and develop pulsing boils that only get bigger and grosser. So, if the first time a patient shows up at the hospital with a bloody sore and you don’t like it, know that the movie will only get grosser, but also funnier. 

Tarantino noted that grindhouse double features never paired similar movies, even if they were in the same genre. So because Rodriguez already had his zombie movie written, Tarantino decided to come up with a horror movie that could actually happen. Death Proof is Tarantino’s version of a slasher movie but instead of wearing a mask and killing girls with a knife, this killer wears no mask and kills girls with his car. The villain and star is Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, who stalks two groups of girls throughout the movie. The first group and the first half of Death Proof are located in Austin. We get to know the Austin girls who just hangout and drink, just like characters in the first part of a slasher movie. Then Stuntman Mike actually becomes a big character. Russell brings all of his rugged charm to the role but he also conveys a thinly veiled menace and aggression. Just like Freddy Kruger, he really enjoys toying with his victims and, of course, the ultimate kills. Without giving away a potential spoiler, about halfway through,  Death Proof resets. This is a major weakness if you’re watching Grindhouse because when the second group of girls is introduced you feel like yet another movie has started. Now we have to get to know those girls, all crew members of a movie production, but this is also when Death Proof becomes something special. Again, without giving away too much, this group (Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms) turns the tables on Stuntman Mike and show that they are not just the final girls; they are badass protagonists. Stuntman Mike’s personality flip makes for an even better performance from Russell. It’s clear that the second half of Death Proof is what Tarantino was really interested in; all of the grindhouse gimmicks (artificial scratches, missing scenes, color saturation) from Planet Terror and the first half of Death Proof are gone. 

You’ll usually hear that Death Proof is the better movie and I would not argue. However, Planet Terror is a very entertaining and lively experience on every viewing. The jokes still land and the gimmicks still work. When placed before Death Proof , Planet Terror might even top Death Proof since it is clearly the more action packed of the two. However--on its own with additional scenes, or as part of Grindhouse--Death Proof offers a slightly different experience on each viewing. The amazing and ultra thrilling car chase and unexpected ending make up for any lulls in pacing, and if you’re watching Grindhouse it's a great way to close a 3 hour movie. So whether you watch them together as Grindhouse or separately, you’re in for an incredible one of a kind experience.

Planet Terror and Death Proof are available to stream for free on Tubi.