Ten Days of Terror!: Horror Shorts

Film: The Call of Cthulhu; Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968); Outer Space
Format: Internet video on laptop.

People who read horror either love H.P. Lovecraft’s work or they hate it. I don’t know that there’s a lot of middle ground. One of the problems with Lovecraft’s writing is that, like Ray Bradbury’s writing, it doesn’t always translate well to film. In Bradbury’s case, it’s dialogue—no one actually speaks like Bradbury characters do. With Lovecraft, it’s the fact that his creepy crawlies and monsters defy description. This hasn’t prevented people from trying to film Lovecraft stories, but most of them don’t live up to the promise. The creature at the end of the original Hellboy is probably the closest we’ve seen to a true Lovecraftian horror on film. His story “The Call of Cthulhu” was thought to be unfilmable, but about 20 years ago, a group of independent filmmakers created The Call of Cthulhu as a traditional silent film…and it works.

Like a lot of Lovecraft (and Poe before him), the story is told in flashback, by a narrator who is relating his story to someone, trying to explain exactly what happened. In this case, a man (Matt Foyer) inherits the work of his great-uncle, who was obsessed with a religious cult called the Cthulhu Cult. The nephew pours through the work and becomes similarly obsessed himself. The fact that everyone who encounters or deals with the cult in some way seems to end up dead does not dissuade him. Encounters with the cult itself eventually leads the man to searching for the source of the cult, which leads him to the fabled city of R’lyeh, where great Cthulhu lies sleeping.

Ten Days of Terror!: Final Destination 5

Film: Final Destination 5
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

There is rumored to be a Final Destination 6 in the works, but until that happens, Final Destination 5 is the end of the series, and it means that I can put this series behind me, at least for now. Final Destination 5 seems like the end of the series that we deserve, though, or at least one that ties things up, regardless of whether or not it starts up again. On my end, I’m happy just to be done with it, even if that’s temporary.

By this time you know the setup. There’s going to be an inciting accident of which someone will have a terrible premonition. They will freak out, a group of people will follow them off whatever they are on or out of whatever they are in, and the accident will happen as foreseen. Death, having had his victims taken away, will then stalk the survivors and kill them via Rube Goldberg contraption in the order they were supposed to die. Eventually, our main character, the person who had the original premonition will figure out what is happening and will do some research on how they might survive what is happening, but Death will always win out in the end. The real question is always simply how the next person is going to die, since a) we know they will, and b) we know the order it’s going to happen.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Final Destination

Film: The Final Destination (Final Destination 4)
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

You do this long enough, you learn a few lessons. I watched We Need to Talk About Kevin some time ago and never want to see it again, but I didn’t bother to write it up. Now it’s on the They Shoot Zombies list, so I’m going to have to watch it again. What does that have to do with The Final Destination, a.k.a. Final Destination 4? It’s the only film in the Final Destination series that isn’t on the list. I’m reviewing it in self-defense. I don’t think it’s ever going to show up, but I sure as hell don’t want to sit through it again. This is entirely proactive.

The Final Destination is the low point in the series. There’s a reason it hasn’t shown up on the They Shoot Zombies list. While most of them have a sub-3.0 rating on Letterboxd, this one is the lowest by nearly a full point. There are reasons for this. In addition to me not wanting to have to watch this again, I’m hoping to prevent you from wasting the 82 minutes it takes to get through this one.

Ten Days of Terror!: Final Destination 3

Film: Final Destination 3
Format: DVD from Freeport Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

I like the conceit of the Final Destination movies. The idea that a couple of people have cheated death then become targets of Death in the literal sense and wind up dying in a series of Rube Goldberg-style accidents is a fantastic hook for a film. The problem with the series is that it reached its highpoint in the open scenes of Final Destination 2. Not a single person I know who has seen that movie will willingly drive behind a log truck. What that means for the rest of the films in the series is that the car crash sequence is always hanging over the films. Final Destination 3 tries desperately to match this and can’t.

The way the films work is that the opening sequence sets up the idea that someone has a terrible premonition of an accident, freaks out, and leaves the situation along with a few other people. Then the accident happens exactly like the premonition suggested it would. The people who managed to avoid their terrible fate in the freak accident are then picked off one by one, essentially in the order they would have died in the premonition. Where the first film used a plane crash and the second used a massive highway accident, Final Destination 3 opts for a freak accident on a rollercoaster.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Town that Dreaded Sundown

Film: The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I knew going into the original version of The Town that Dreaded Sundown that I had seen it before. There’s a moment or two that are nearly impossible to forget, not in a good way but in a weird horror/comedy way. What I forgot about this movie was how much of it is ridiculous and odd. I didn’t like the movie the first time I saw it and I didn’t like it this time, either, but this time, I can articulate the reasons I find the film lacking far better. I suppose this is the benefit of having done this for more than a dozen years.

One of those things is being a little more aware of who is making the movies in question. In this case, our auteur is Charles B. Pierce. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans may remember Pierce as the director and star of Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues. There are a lot of similarities between this film and that one, and since Pierce’s 1985 sasquatch-adjacent film is one that appeared on a show specifically made to mock bad movies, this isn’t a good thing.

Ten Days of Terror!: Homicidal

Film: Homicidal
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Were I another person, I would say that the films of William Castle are a guilty pleasure for me. The truth, though, is that I don’t subscribe to the idea of guilty pleasures; I like the movies I do for reasons that I am happy to articulate, and that includes movies that are generally disliked or, in the case of Castle’s films, are pure gimmick. I love how audacious Castle could be. His films were goofy and silly, and he gained audience with tricks like in-seat vibrators, glasses that revealed “ghosts” on the screen, and having people sign a waiver that they couldn’t sue if they died of fright. The gimmick for Homicidal was a timer that appeared at the film’s climax—patron’s too scared to continue could get a full refund, but were forced in a humiliating walk of shame. The truth is that Castle’s films were never really scary enough to force anyone to do this, but the idea is a dandy one.

However, the plot that drives Homicidal forward is one that needs to be fully discussed. There is a solid shock moment at the end that the film builds up to, but to really understand what is happening, that needs to be talked about. That being the case, the rest of this review should be considered to be under a spoiler warning. If you don’t want a movie that’s close to retirement age spoiled for you, you may not want to click the link to continue.

Ten Days of Terror!: Eden Lake

Film: Eden Lake
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

A bunch of the stuff that I had reserved to watch on Tubi left the service all at once, which put me in a bit of a bind—I had to watch a bunch of stuff as quickly as I could before it disappeared. That meant watching movies I knew I’d get to eventually much sooner than I planned. One of those movies was Eden Lake, a film with shades of torture porn and living as a close cousin to the home invasion genre, two areas of horror I’m not a huge fan of.

What’s more significant, though, is that from the opening moments I had the feeling that I’d seen this before. In fact, I felt it so strongly that I had to check through my records (yes, I keep records of the lists I’m pursuing) to see if I hadn’t already watched this and just forgotten to cross it off. It turns out I was both right and wrong--Eden Lake is very much a remake of the French Extremity film Ils.