I had the day off which meant I could watch TWO spooky movies *and* read a horror comic with time enough to spare for other things!
First movie -
Teen Wolf:
I love werewolves, I was a fan of the 80s cartoon adaptation of this as a small child, and I've known about this movie for well over a decade but somehow NEVER SAW IT BEFORE TODAY. Well, I'm definitely not inspired to watch
Teen Wolf Too after seeing this. I didn't like it! What I want from my werewolves is at least some sort of bestial quality: a metaphor for socially unacceptable desires, a hunger for sex and/or violence, and a human character who is to some degree tormented by their guilt of being the monster that they are.
This movie has none of that. Instead the werewolf is, for some reason, SUPER POPULAR and once Michael J. Fox's character transforms, they're instantly the most popular kid in school? I guess they try to show there violent side of werewolves in one scene in which the Teen Wolf tears off a guy's shirt at a dance... but since that guy sucker-punched him immediately beforehand, his response doesn't seem especially frightening.
Some of the comedy in the movie works: I like how the basketball coach is profoundly useless. But mostly it's a lot more teen comedy than anything horror inspired. Oh well, I'm glad I can cross it off my list.
After that I watched
Bloody Birthday! This was definitely better than I expected. It's a "killer kids" movie and even though it's not as classy as
The Omen or
Village of the Damned it's pretty good for what it is, which is more of a slasher-film. Even though this film was released in the 80s, I got a pretty strong 1970s vibe. The story is pretty bare bones: three babies are born during a solar eclipse and I guess because of that they're evil. So they start killing people because their birthday is coming up and they want to kill people? There's not much of a motivation, but with kids as the killer, it makes for a more interesting slasher than typical "homicidal maniac" fare and it's especially engaging to see how they both commit and get away with their crimes. The male gaze is alive and well in this movie: there are multiple scenes in which boys peep on naked ladies. Boobs are always a plus!
Finally a comic book:
Berni Wrightson: Master of the Macabre #1I know a little bit about Wrightson: his illustrated version of
Frankenstein, the sequel comic
Frankenstein, Alive, Alive, and the Dark Horse mini-series
City of Others. I knew his reputation from old Warren Publishing horror comics (I know they had
Creepy and
Eerie... maybe others? And Vampirella?), but I've never read any of those. And that last point is important because this is just a color reprint of stories from Warren stories! These are some quality horror tales! The first one's a loose adaptation of Frankenstein, followed by an awesome story about a man hunting for a lake-monster, and an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Black Cat."
Let me tell you, these are definitely all high-quality horror comics! They blow away the Marvel and DC horror stories from that era that I'm familiar with. Now I'm inspired to look into getting some reprints of
Creepy and
Eerie! I know Richard Corben did work for them too and I love his stuff as well.
cracks me up every time.
