Tag: horror movies

The End of 56

Finally Friday! And the last day of age 56 for me. I don’t know what 57 holds in store, but it dang well had better be an improvement over 56, let me tell you. I’ll save any rehashing and revisiting for the Holidailies year-end recap (and probably cry when I write it), but let’s just say that I have some major goals for what I want to achieve over the next year. Some of them will have to wait until the 2024 because I’m traveling a lot in November and early December, and then there are the holidays, but I do think my life will look very different by the time I’m 58. Hey, I may look very different by this time next year. Happier, for one thing.

Also, not for nothing, as of 11:21 a.m. tomorrow I will have outlived everyone on my father’s side of the family except my father, who was 78 when he died. Bad tickers killed ’em all by 57, and I seem to have inherited the gene for that. Whee! However, he lived a normal lifespan by staying active, managing his blood pressure, watching his weight, not smoking, etc., and I intend to do the same. But just to be on the safe side, I’m not crossing any streets or putting any forks in any sockets this evening.

Maybe I shouldn’t watch anything with jump-scares tonight, either, heh. Gotta say, I was more impressed than I thought I would be with the Exorcist prequel. Well, one of the Exorcist prequels. There are two, the same story told by two different directors. The one I watched last night was Exorcist: The Beginning. It got lousy reviews, but it creeped me out and the underground church was absolutely stunning in its horrific beauty so I’ll call it a win. I may try to find the other prequel, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, just to compare the two.

And now for a little vampire haiku…

A white rose with blood drops.
Image: Pixabay

Thanks, Mom!

It’s Saturday night in October, which for me can mean only one thing: watching something spooky. Today is also my mother’s birthday, although she passed away in 2000. I have her to thank for my love of horror movies and TV shows. She used to let me stay up late to watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a series about a reporter who often ends up writing investigative pieces about homicides that involve the supernatural, none of which ever get published because his editor thinks he’s off his rocker. It was a great little series, and NBC made it available to watch online, so I’ll be indulging in that in her honor starting tonight.

TV character Carl Kolchak at a typewriter writing.
I’ll bet that typewriter is a Royal. (Image: NBC)

Ya know, I’ve always credited my choice of journalism as a career to watching too many episodes of Lou Grant as a kid, but now that I think of it, maybe Carl Kolchak had something to do with it.

Another of my mother’s favorites was was Trilogy of Terror. One night we watched it while we were on the phone, she on Long Island, me in Virginia. That’s one of my favorite memories of her, actually. We would both yell at our TVs at the same time, “Don’t open the door!”

An evil doll carrying a knife in its mouth.
Peace was never an option. (Image: ABC)

I wonder what my mother would think of today’s horror. It’s so much more graphic than it was when I was growing up, and the most popular shows, like American Horror Story (AHS), have an element of dark psychological suspense that can be triggering or traumatizing for some folks. She probably would have loved AHS, actually, although maybe not the seasons with Jessica Lange. My mother couldn’t stand her. She thought Lange “always had the same face, putting a puss on.” But my mother definitely would have loved the seasons with Kathy Bates, who became one of her heroes because of Fried Green Tomatoes.

My mother loved mysteries, as well, and would have loved shows that blended mystery with genres like southern gothic, like the first season of True Detectives—which I find to be some of the most terrifying TV ever made simply because it’s entirely possible that somewhere in the rural South, some dude is right this second walking around wearing tighty-whities and a gasmask and wielding a machete.

I don’t know how my mother would have felt about some of the darker movies, though. She might have liked the Conjuring series,but maybe the Sinister series would have been a little too dark. On the other hand, she probably would have found anything by Ari Aster as ridiculous as I do. Indeed, Florence Pugh very nearly became my Jessica Lange as the first time I saw her was her performance in Midsommar, where she ugly-cried through the whole thing. If I hadn’t decided to ignore my initial reaction to seeing her name as the lead in Don’t Worry Darling and consequently enjoyed the movie, I might still be avoiding her. However, only my deep and abiding adoration of Joaquin Phoenix will compel me to watch Aster’s latest effort, Beau is Afraid, and I’m hoping that Phoenix’s talent will override Aster’s penchant for downright stupid climaxes and flat endings.

What have you been watching this month? And are you a year-rounder like me?

A Nod to Subtlety

Decorative skull and arms reaching up from mulch.

That’s really a metaphor for my writer’s block. Didn’t get much sleep last night. Sometimes it’s like that. This little skeleton was in someone’s front yard and I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking down trying to close my phone after taking the picture in the previous entry. I appreciate the subtlety.

I caught a nice little possession flick tonight, The Last Rite. A jerky boyfriend, a shadowy figure in a hat, a few jump scares, some blood but no guts, and demonic conversation without profanity don’t sound like much on the surface, but the film had a gnawing tension. If you’re into very dark possession flicks like The Pope’s Exorcist, you might find it a little bland, but there’s levels to this stuff and I’d say it’s a good starter possession flick.