Ten Days of Terror!: Frightmare

Film: Frightmare (1974)
Format: Streaming video from Mometu on Fire!

Things have changed in the movie business. I mean, we know that, but a film like Frightmare (the one from 1974, not the one from the early ‘80s) is clear evidence of those changes. Viewed today, this movie is a bit extreme in terms of its subject matter, but anyone who has watched some modern horror movies has seen things that go a lot further. In fact, the basic subject matter (cannibalism) isn’t that different from something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even if this one is a lot more graphic. This was given an X rating when it was first released. Today, it would certainly be R-rated, but five minutes of cuts would drop it to a PG-13.

Any film that touches on a subject like cannibalism is going to be potentially offensive. In the case of Frightmare, the offense isn’t specifically the cannibalism, but the depiction of the person who is the cannibal. In short, this is a film that stigmatizes the mentally ill, something that wasn’t that uncommon 50 years ago. I’m not saying that someone who is a cannibal doesn’t have a problem; I’m saying that the film is essentially depicting anyone with a mental illness as being someone who is dangerous, and that it’s evidently really easy to fake being severely mentally ill.

10 Days of Terror! Kick-Off

I always want to post more than I do, but for the last couple of years, life has really gotten in the way of things. But for years, regardless of anything going on around me, I have posted 40 times in the last ten days of October. Why stop now? I’ve been saving up horror movie posts for the last 12 months just so I can do this.

As usual, there’s a sort of theme to each day, as shown below. Reviews will go up at 1:00 and 7:00 AM and PM, Central time. So, here’s what’s coming:

Satanic Panic

Film: Race with the Devil
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I believe that I have mentioned my lack of religious belief on this blog before. I also believe that I have mentioned that I grew up in a town that is absolutely religion-soaked. One of claims to fame of the town I grew up in is that it had (and may still have—it was true when I lived there), the second-highest number of churches per capita in the United States. If you were a kid in the early 1980s in a town like that, you lived through the Satanic Panic in a very odd location. That’s going to affect the way that you see a movie like Race with the Devil.

If you don’t remember the Satanic Panic or aren’t old enough to have lived through it, a short primer is worth having. Essentially evangelical Christians decided that Satanic influences and rituals were becoming more and more common and were finding their way into culture and the lives of people around the country. There were alleged to be Satanic influences in movies and TV, in music, and, of course, games like Dungeons & Dragons were purely Satanic. Virtually all of it was nonsense, and the parts that weren’t were entirely fabricated. That’s especially true of the stories of Satanic rituals and ritual murder. It’s worth noting that there’s still a decent amount of Satanic Panic around in parts of the U.S. today.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Film: Primate
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

One of the current trends in horror films is adapting children’s stories to horror. Films like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Pinocchio Unstrung, and Popeye the Slayer Man, while not setting box office records, are becoming more and more common. I say this not because Primate is one of these films, but because it easily could have been. Wait until 1937 to release it, and this could very easily be titled Furious George and fit right in with the rest of them.

This should tell you that Primate is going to be a film about a killer monkey, specifically a killer chimpanzee, and that’s exactly what it is. The elevator pitch of this movie is “What if Cujo was a chimpanzee?” So, we’re going to have an antagonist that is strong, cunning, legitimately smart, and (of course) rabid.

What I've Caught Up With, September 2026

September is another month where my movie viewing faltered a great deal. I managed only 20 movies in September, far fewer than the 33 to keep pace for the yearly goal. Ah, well. Some years are like this, and both work and family pressure take time away. It is what it is.

Television-wise, I caught up with the second season of the excellent Batman: Caped Crusader. I also watched the recent fourth season of Reacher, which was fine, but was also definitely the least of the four seasons. We can hope that it will improve on a fifth season. Finally, I finished Person of Interest, which I enjoyed for Michael Emerson, could have lived without Jim Caveiezel, and ultimately feel like it comes across as apologia for AI. Still, it ain't the worst I've watched.

Lunchtime!

Film: Raw (Grave)
Format: DVD from Wilmington Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

Julia Ducournau is really early in her directorial career in terms of the number of films she has made. I think, for me, she’s going to be a director whose work I seek out, but only watch once. That’s definitely the case for Titane, which I think is a masterpiece. It’s equally true of Raw. (Grave in the French, which translates to “serious.” It would be Brute if we wanted the French to be the same as the English.) This is an important film and one I’m happy to have finally seen, but I’m not going to watch it again any time soon.

Let’s get the main points of this out in the open before we dive in: Raw is a film about cannibalism. This is not a zombie film, nor a film that pretends to be an ethnography and is actually just poorly-disguised racism. No, this is about people living in the modern world, in Western society, with inexplicable, terrible, monstrous cravings. And, importantly, it’s not clear that this is what the film is about until we’re a good distance in and already invested in the story, one of the realities that makes this such a masterful piece of cinema.

That's Really Super

Film: Supergirl
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various sources.

Before we talk too much about Supergirl, we need to spend some time talking about the toxicity of nerd culture. If Supergirl had been a perfect superhero movie, something that rivaled the cultural relevance and power of Avengers: Endgame, there would have been a sizable contingent of nerds online rating it 1-star, sight unseen. Why? Because it’s a superhero movie with a female lead who isn’t entirely dependent on a male character or even in any kind of relationship with a male character. Wonder Woman got a pass because of Steve Rogers. Birds of Prey was downgraded because Harley Quinn escaped from the toxic influence of the Joker in that film. There are a lot of nerds who project their desperate desire for male dominance on all movies, and none so much as those they seem to think are theirs by divine right. Oh, and probably Supergirl isn’t hot enough for the standards of guys who haven’t touched a woman other than their own mother.

The truth is that Supergirl is not a perfect superhero movie. It’s not even the best DC superhero movie of the last few years. It is, however, at least very good, and presents a very interesting view on the title character. It also does this without a lot of the expected “Grrl power” attitude. In fact, for a good portion of the movie, Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Milly Alcock) isn’t very likeable.