Two shorties got me home and sitting down at the pc with a cup of tea before 11 pm.
The first in our double header was Boogeyman, a door filled sluggish monster romp. That first scene really creeped me out and I felt goosebumps rush all over my body. The low music and the strange shapes the kid was seeing in the dark, imagining it was a monster or something out to get him. Happened to me when I was young, I used to hide under the covers, safe from the monsters. To this day I hardly like going into a dark room. As I get older I'm mostly afraid of falling down and getting hurt. The kid in the first scene with the scary closet that eats his dad, grows up with some issues about darkness and closed doors. Everyone thinks he is suffering some sort of trama from his dad leaving him and his mom. Now it's fifteen years later and his mom just died. He must go back home to the funeral and stay to clean out the house. You meet a bunch of people along the way, some of whom disappear, are they dead, where did they go? It got boring about an hour into this 89 minute movie, which alternates intense and quickly paced scary bits with long slow Japanese-like still bits. There are some ok effects and weird crap and I did like the reason for the monster. Don't want to give that away in case you see it. This is another film from Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert's Ghost House Pictures, which also did The Grudge, a remake of Japanese horror film Ju-on. They like those Asian films.
After Boogeyman we watched The Battle of the Worlds, a 1961 Italian crap-fest from that SciFi Classic 50 Movie box set. Luckily it was cut to 84 minutes from it's original 99 minute US cut. Claude Rains plays a cigar-smoking, know-it-all scientist, who yells a lot, but not enough to keep people awake. This movie certainly bored the chills I got from the first film right out of me. It handles the jeopady of earth's invasion in a most tedious way. I can't even remember, an hour later, if the earth got saved. I guess I should have paid more attention. I remember there was a lot of tinfoil on one set, and lots of hoses on another. The box once again makes the movie look a lot better than it does. Someone needs to get kicked in the nuts for this. I believe in sharing the pain.
Comments