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@iiiiiii was over and we wanted to start the movie season right with something we knew would be great so we rewatched They Live (1988). It's definitely possible that the last time I saw this was ~5 years ago when we double featured it with Videodrome (1983).

God does this movie rules. 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper can act well enough to carry his role and Keith David is more-than-capable of doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I don't know if I've ever noticed this before but Piper is immediately stronger at carrying his lines once he's in a fight scene. I'm not sure if the dialogue itself is more in his wheelhouse or if he's just more comfortable acting from that position.

I've always felt like this soundtrack might be my favourite Carpenter soundtrack. It's basically one leitmotif but: that motif is good, it sometimes throws some great saxaphone over top, and it exeriments around that motif. It's also striking how through most of the movie, it moves between that motif and silence. The music changes once they reach the final location but before that it puts the theme in where it can and stays out of the way elsewhere. The famous fight scene feels so much more impactful for being silent.

I'm not saying anything new here, this movie has already gotten it's positive critical evaluation, but I feel like this movie is a good example of how a movie can be explicit in its themes but still be full of craft.

For my first new horror movie of the season, I watched Coherence (2013). Thanks to @atax1a for recommending it.

I had never heard of this movie before but I quite liked it. I'm always happy to see a movie build atmospheric horror with little-to-no budget, limited locations and cast, and without effects. I think this movie wisely keeps out of its own way by using a tried-and-true framing of 'comets make weird things happen'¹ and providing just enough hand-wavy science². The cast all act foolish in the most-fun ways. We get a climax that is at least a slight inversion of what I expect. Would recommend.

1. It's always good. Need the dead to come back to life? Comet. Need electronics to be evil? Certainly some kind of space phenomena. Want Cher to fall in love with her fiancé's pizza-making brother Nic Cage? That might need a full moon but what is the moon but a big ol' comet anyway?

2. I did flinch when I heard Schrodinger's cat mentioned briefly but I'm going to give this a pass. They wanted to get to something adjacent to it and it did seem like the simplest path.

Today, I showed @wayward The Wicker Man (1973) because they had never seen it.

Easily one of my favourite horror movies. Easily one of my favourite movies, period¹. The music in this is fantastic (and mostly diagetic, which is fun). It is able to maintain a tone that is fun and playful while remaining menacing. The mystery is well-paced and is paid off well². It was a lot of fun watching with @wayward and getting to see their reactions as things unfolded.

Please if you've never seen this movie and especially if you only know the name from the Nic Cage remake, make time for this one. I promise you'll have a great time.

1. Also, I am perpetually forgetting but the screenwriter for this wrote the play Sleuth and also the original adaptation of Sleuth (another movie high on my favourite movie list)

2. Wow, almost as if the person writing it made your favourite mystery? How do you keep forgetting this?

Today, I watched Hellraiser (1987). I've seen it before once or twice and my feelings going into it remain basically unchanged. As a movie, I think it's fine at best. You get to see some weird guys. You get to see some gross special effects. Often those effects are right on the edge of too goofy. I read the first book and that's also basically how I felt about it¹. All that's unimportant. What's important is Hellraiser as a high-level concept.

Hellraiser as a concept is one of the greatest horror movies ever made². I love to see a fucked-up guy. I love to refer to a lament configuration³. There should be more Hellraiser movies. Anyone should be able to make a Hellraiser movie. You should be able to get a grant from your government art council to make your Hellraiser movie. New directors should legally be required to make a Hellraiser movie. It can be interpreted as broadly as they want. It can be in whatever continuity they want⁴ as long as the average viewer would walk away from it saying "well, that was a Hellraiser". We would get so many wonderful and terrible movies beyond our wildest imaginations. They would erase the line between a pleasurable and a painful film. Panos Cosmatos dabbled with it in Mandy—other's should follow suit.

P.S. It's interesting that both Cube and Hellraiser agree that the humble cube is the most frightening platonic solid. Really makes you think.

1. In the book you're supposed to imagine the special effects.

2. In fact, greater than the movies made of it

3. Which, incidentally the first movie never does and the book also doesn't do because it calls it the Lemarchand Configuration

4. No, whatever continuity they want. Disney should not be able to stop someone from making a Star Wars Hellraiser.

Today, me and a friend watched The Fly (1958). I had only seen the Cronenberg remake before and this one is certainly a lot goofier. It was fun enough but not something I expect I'll revisit. I want my The Fly to be so unpleasant I have to look away from the screen.

Would I say that the scientist in this is so dangerously lax about basic lab safety that he deserved to get flied? yes. Would I say his wanton disregard for animal safety warranted him dying two different unpleasant deaths? yes. Should has brother have saved him from one of them? No.

Today, I rewatched The Innkeepers (2011). I saw it once a few years ago and absolutely loved it until the end which I hated. On a repeat watch, my sentiment is pretty much the same but I enjoyed the first 2/3 a little less.

It's tough because this movie has basically everything I could want in it and then the problem is that also there are ghosts? I really like the movie about two sort-of friends working at an empty hotel in the last days before it shuts down. They're trying to process losing their jobs and come to terms with the fact that the job might be the only thing actually keeping them together. Also they're hunting for ghosts in the hotel and that works for me both literally and allegorically. If I were making this movie I feel like they could have one ambiguous sign of a ghost. Something that, in the moment they both are sure is real but as the movie closes on them both leaving the now-closed hotel leaves them and the audience wondering whether that sure thing was just the two of them trying to find a way to hold onto each other? That would be ideal. Instead there's a fucking ghost.

Showed my first work horror movie of the month, Alien (1979). But it was just me and a friend because nobody else wanted to join. Their loss, Alien is great. God I wish I could watch it not knowing what Alien is.

Then, I went home and watched Berberian Sound Studio (2012) with a friend. Neither of us had ever seen it before. I think it was was fun. I do wish I had been watching a copy with subs. Not understanding Italian was properly isolating but I think some later scenese might have hit a bit harder with subs. Still found it fun and atmospheric. Also, I feel like the older other sound guy looked like Martin Balsam. Just needed to say that somewhere