The Week Before Halloween: 7 Weird, Wonderful Films to Watch A Day
Halloween is the best holiday of the year. Hands down. It’s the time when it gets chilly out (and for almost a decade in Denver it was the first major snowfall), our thoughts turn to the macabre and we get to live outside of our skin. On what other holiday can we do that?
It’s also the time for weird movies, and here are seven of my favorite lesser-known films to watch, one every night, leading up to Halloween. These are guaranteed to fuck with you.
Tuesday, Oct. 25: The Other, Dir. Robert Mulligan , USA, 1972.
An all-time classic for me, hearkens back to the days when horror movies were about building up a slow dread, where you knew something was amiss from the very first frame. This was the first of the ‘creepy kid’ movies that really got to me.
Wednesday, Oct. 26: Calvaire / The Ordeal, Dir. Fabrice Du Welz, Belgium, 2004.
With horror films going for gross-out yuks more than true uncomfortable humor a la the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was such a breath of fresh, disquieting air to see this little Belgian gem of a movie about a man happening upon a small cabin in the woods. Mixing surreal terror and black humor, Calvaire is truly twisted, sadistic and brimming with originality. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but it’ll have you chuckling at things you should definitely not be finding very funny (like bestiality, for instance - like I said, the film is not for the meek). Beautifully shot and utterly bizarre, this one is for the adventurous.
Thursday, October 27: The Brotherhood of Satan, Dir. Bernard McEveety , USA, 1971.
This is an obscure American indie that really freaked me out. Standard people get lost and wind up in a creepy town plot, but that’s where the conventions end. A strange movie with an unexpected ending, it’s got a nasty vibe that reeks of pure evil. You can tell that director Bernard McEveety took his subject very seriously. Surreal.
Friday, October 28: 964 Pinocchio, Dir. Shozin Fukui, Japan, 1991.
What can you expect from a story about a cybernetic sex android let loose in Japan? Nothing short of pure batshit crazy. A true underground cult classic, I remember seeing this movie and having it imprint itself on my brain for years. It’s just that fucking bizarre and gross, but beautifully so. If you have an aversion to vomit on film, you’ve been warned.
Saturday, October 29: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, Dir. Kim Henkel, USA, 1994.
There have been countless unwarranted sequels and remakes of Tobe Hooper’s seminal classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but The Next Generation was the one that got away. Featuring the lead role debuts of Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger, this film is the perfect pre-Halloween run-up. It’s insane, funny, and brimming with an energy that would make Sam Raimi blush. McConaughey is completely off his rocker in this film, tapping the inner morbid clown we’ve been long waiting for him to show. Zellweger undergoes the actress rite-of-passage of getting absolutely worked raw in this film, she’s thrown from buildings, smacked, and psychologically brutalized to the point where one has to wonder if she became such a squinty-eyed weirdo because of this movie. An absolute joy, and one of my cult favorites.
Sunday, October 30: House of the Devil, Dir. Ti West, USA, 2009.
Ti West is an incredibly talented filmmaker who knows his horror films. His House of the Devil demonstrates it. It’s one of those films that meanders and swims on the other side, building up to a truly macabre and surreal experience. I loved every minute of it, plus getting to watch total hottie Jocelin Donahue dance to The Fixx is worth the price of admission alone.
Monday, October 31: Les Diaboliques, Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, France, 1955.
This is one of those great late-night, winding-down-after-a-long-night-of-debauchery kind of movies. Truly terrifying, but not in the blood n’ gore sense, but rather in the darkness of the human heart variety. Clouzot gives us one of the most terrifying characters ever committed to the screen in Simone Signoret’s seedy schoolmaster’s wife. There are plot turns and twists at every corner, and it’s razor sharp. On Halloween I like to be reminded as to why I love scary, suspenseful movies, and this is one of the very, very best.
