THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1963) restoration!

From the news section of the DVD Savant page comes the welcome and unexpected news that THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is being lovingly restored. Film 'restorationist' Mike Hyatt has spent a lot of the last ten years picking tens of thousands of tiny particles out of the soft emulsion of the original negative- by hand! Last week he screened a 35mm print of his work in Hollywood. That's all fine and great but the good news for everyone else is that "Hyatt holds substantial rights to the picture and is hoping for an eventual DVD and Blu-ray release as well as making restored prints available for theatrical screenings." That means an eventual disc of this fantastic science fiction classic I can bring home and watch over and over again. I can't wait!

What I Watched In October

I didn't get in nearly as many horror films last month as I wanted. The trip to Florida cut into movie watching time but that isn't going to bother me in the long run. I didn't get out to the theater much either but there wasn't too much out there I wanted to see. I was kind of curious about Rob Zombie's latest Halloween disaster but after his remake two years ago the idea of giving him more money made my stomach turn. Maybe on video. With a lot of beer in my system. Maybe. Train wrecks can be fun to laugh at while drunk and H2 has 'tunnel crash' written all over it.

I spent a lot of time catching up to 70s & 80s movies I had never seen before and enjoyed doing that. Several duds but the gems were fun to finally see. Wish I had fit in more Hammer and at least one Vincent Price film, though.


RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS (1983)- 2 (abysmal Italian fantasy/action/thriller sci-fi mess)
ZOMBIELAND (2009)- 7 (good fun)
DEATH SHIP (1980)- 5 (seems to be missing parts to keep it to 90 minutes)
WAXWORKS (1988)- 4 (too unfocused and unfunny)
THE HOUSE OF FEAR (1939)- 6 (not bad mystery/scare pic)
BODYCOUNT (1987)- 4 (Deodato’s sloppy backwoods slasher)
SHOCK WAVES (1977)- 6 (rewatch)
MOH: DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE (2005)- 9 (rewatch)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (1981)- 5 (glad to finally see this)
THE FINAL DESTINATION (2009)- 5 (OK fourth installment in 3D)
THE MUMMY (1932)- 6 (still the least of the Universal classic monster films of the 30s)
TRICK R TREAT (2008)- 9 (excellent)
G.I. JOE (2009)- 3 (not as bad as I expected but awfully stupid anyway)
AMITYVILLE III: THE DEMON (1983)- 3 (pretty flat)
THE MUMMY’S GHOST (1944)- 6 (rewatch)
SUGAR HILL (1974)- 5 (only fair blaxploitation horror)
DAMIEN: OMEN II (1978)- 7 (rewatch)
THE BAT PEOPLE (1974)- 3 (mostly dull creature feature with an interesting ending)
THE MUMMY’S CURSE (1944)- 5 (rewatch)
SEIZURE! (1974)- 6 (interesting Faust variation)
THE HANGING WOMAN (1973)- 7 (excellent Eurotrash nonsense)
G-FORCE (2009)- 5 (predictable and not as funny as it should be but better than Transformers)
THE STEPFATHER (1987)- 7 (well done thriller)
SPLINTER (2008)- 7 (good modern monster film)
THE RAVEN (1936)- 8 (rewatch)
GRADUATION DAY (1981) - 2 (miserable slasher)
THE KEEP (1984)- 5 (rewatch)
DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)- 5 (not great but I still love it) (rewatch)

November already?

Still coming down off the Halloween high so here are a few nice posters to look at.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

THE KEEP (1983)-trailer

Rewatched this last night for the first time in years and once again I 'enjoyed' it. I say 'enjoyed' because it is such a mess of a movie and such a destruction of the book its based on that it could never really be a wholly great experience. But......I do like watching it and wondering what it might have been. What a cast! And it looks amazing too. But that score was a misstep. And I'm pretty sure at least 20 minutes of story was hacked out of the running time.

More Lovecraft Radio

I meant to add at least one more non-Lovecraft penned horror radio show to the blog in October but my trip to Florida has delayed things a bit. Here finally is Suspense's pretty smart version of The Dunwich Horror which recasts it as a radio broadcast much like the Mercury Theater altered War of the Worlds. Enjoy!

Horror movie marathons

(click to embiggen)
Back in the 1990s (feeling old now) each October I and a group of friends used to trek up to Columbus, Ohio to attend a 24 hour horror movie marathon. First held in the Drexal North Theater then moved to various places it was a long but fun trip that always made for great stories afterward. And the movies we got to see were great too! How else was I to see THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, THE TINGLER, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE EXORCIST, Jose Larraz's VAMPYRES, SCARS OF DRACULA or a host of other great movies on the big screen? Those were great days but we stopped going around 2000 when it just started to become too hard to get everyone's schedules in order. It appears that they have continued doing the show and I would have loved to go this year. *sigh* Sadly it was the weekend I was in Florida......and I had no idea until today! Maybe next year. Maybe.

LINK