Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned

October.

I've never strongly associated it with horror anything. The increasing commercialization of fright as it is tied into our cultural cycle is probably worthy of study. I don't understand why or exactly how the ghoulish partnered with the greedish. Candy companies want to sell candy. Costume companies want to sell costumes. Lawn decorations want to be on lawns. People, I guess, just want to have some naughty fun. Mostly, though, I find it all tacky and lacking any real resonance.

This annual celebration of scary things means very little to me. But there is another annual celebration at the end of October that I pay very close attention to every year. It also involves a great deal of manufacturing, selling, and buying. It is definitely a commercial holiday. I am of course speaking of the Internationale Spieltage SPIEL'17!!! That's the official name. Almost everyone in the U.S. refers to the event by the name of its city: Essen. This event at Essen is the biggest board game fair of the year, where most companies release their newest and best games for the year.

The past several weeks, I've scrolled through long lists of announced games. I've read previews and reviews. Later this week, as the fair is happening, I'll have a livestream of video coverage on throughout the day. This is all an annual ritual for me. (I also pay attention to Origins and GenCon, but Essen is really the highlight of the year). Eventually, throughout next year, I'll get a chance to play a tiny fraction of the nearly 1,000 new games released. I've already pre-ordered 5 games which will probably be delivered in November or December. I'll likely buy at least another half dozen or so over the next few months. And I'll get to try many, many more if I make it out to any cons next year.

I'll spare you all my Top Ten Most Anticipated Essen Games 2017 List. Moving on...

All of that is an introduction to the fact that I'm on boardgamegeek.com a lot, especially this time of year. It's the only website that I check nearly daily, and have been doing so for 12+ years. But BGG isn't all games. There is a lot of social activity there all over the map. At the end of last month, I stumbled upon a "geeklist" dedicated to watching horror movies in October, watching a film a day. I hadn't been watching much so figured this might be a good impetus to get me to watch some stuff. And watching horror movies specifically means that I probably get to argue with Brandon, right? The Giants win 17-17. This one was a no-brainer for me. Because the zombies got my brain....ha ha groan.

I haven't kept up the pace of a film a day. Not even close. Here's what I have watched. I'm copying and pasting my quick comments from over on BGG:

Oct 2:
I re-watched Lost Boys this morning for the first time in a loooonng time. It was one of the first horror movies I ever watched, at age 9, at my friend Dave's sleepover birthday party. Between this film and the new video game he had received (Castlevania!), this night is burned into my memory, now and forever.

Re-watching it now, so many years later, I'm struck by how much of a kid's movie it really is. It's r-rated, but it has the same vibe as many of the pg-rated films of the 80s (which usually contained more swearing at least than a pg film could get away with today), where kids band together against unknown evils.

I don't recommend the film unless you're 9, at which age you shouldn't be watching it.

Oct 3:

Little Evil

Basic plot: Your stepson is the spawn of Satan.

Seen Before? N
Recommend? N

This one was more of a comedy in horror trappings. There were a few good moments in which I smiled or chuckled, but mostly it didn't work for me. I called the story arc from the beginning. There were no real surprises for me, so it was all about how it got there, and the humor just landed flat for me most of the time.

October 3rd: Les yeux sans visage (d.Georges Franju)
(English title is Eyes Without a Face)

Basic plot: A brilliant skin surgeon's daughter has a mangled face. He steals new faces for her from young girls off the streets.

Seen before? N
Recommend? YES!

This isn't just one of the best horror films I've ever seen. It's one of the best films that I've ever seen. There are no real "jump scare" moments, but there is a steady ratcheting up of dis-ease, an atmosphere of despair and decay that is suffocating. There is very little gore, but the subtle moments of violence are deeply disturbing.

October 7th: The Green Inferno (2013, Eli Roth)

Basic plot: A group of idealistic student activists go to the jungle to save a village from bulldozers. They get eaten by the tribe they're trying to save.

Seen before? N

Recommend? No

I wanted to like this one. I did like it up to a certain point.

My biggest problem was when the activist leader was revealed as a selfish, compromised jerk. This is a twist that takes the edge off of the horror of do-gooders realizing that their conception of the world was way too simplistic. Being confronted by this betrayal becomes worse than being eaten alive by cannibals. This is especially clear in the way that the rest of the film plays out and especially in how it ends. Ugh. 

I was also bored by much of the body horror/gore. The first kill is staged pretty wonderfully, almost comically, but it gets old fast. And the film completely lost me in the scene of almost but not quite saved at the last minute female genital mutilation. It's not that I wanted to see this depicted onscreen, but the staging of this and the way it is resolved just led me to believe that Roth was acting cowardly, playing it safe in the land of horror conventions instead of doing anything really scary. The fact that our privileged point of view character gets away lets the viewer get away. We're able to feel good about ourselves and log another film on the BGG Slashing Through Cinema geeklist.

Oct 12th: 

DAY OF THE DEAD.

Seen before? Nope

Recommend? Yup

I never knew that I was such a huge Romero fan until I watched Dawn of the Dead several years ago. Day isn't quite as good as Dawn, but it's pretty danged good.

October 24th: The Driller Killer (1979, Abel Ferrara)

Basic plot: A struggling painter goes insane. A power drill is involved.

Seen before? N
Recommend? I don't know

I don't really recommend this one, but I don't know, maybe I do. Abel Ferrara has always been a frustrating filmmaker for me. I can't help but be drawn into the dirtiness of his New York. There's something authentic about his violent and sexual aesthetic (the two are often tied in his work, as perhaps they too often are in NYC itself) that is lacking elsewhere. The Driller Killer is the most raw punk rock film I've seen in a while. It does what it wants. Its ballsiness, its flaunting of horror conventions, its i-dont-care-ness, demands some level of respect. It's not the straight slasher film that the title makes it out to be. It's really more of a psychological horror film.
There's a decent case to be made that all of the violence that occurs in the film takes place only in the head of the increasingly insane protagonist.


That's it for the horror. Besides the horror, I started the month by watching Things to Come and Destination Moon, two classic science fiction films I hadn't seen before. I was on a panel at RoberCon with a couple of BCF friends on the history of science fiction films. It went really well.

Both of those films are pretty amazing. You could have heard what I thought of them at the panel. I don't feel like writing about them now.

I saw Blade Runner 2049 last week. I forced myself to go see it. Was it worth seeing? I guess so. I'm glad I saw it. But it's not so great.

I recently completed my full re-watch of Breaking Bad. This has been a slow affair over the course of most of this year. I've now seen the entire series three full times (with some episodes seen much more than that). There are flaws. I was especially mindful of how grating some of the handheld camera work was this time through. Sometimes the plotting seemed too tidy, sometimes it seemed to almost lose itself. But mostly the show is still a glorious success. Its highs are really freaking high and its lows are dirty down-dogged low. Vince Gilligan and his crew are the best. I am so happy to have Better Call Saul to look forward to each year. I pray for Gilligan's continued good health and long, active career!!!

In other TV Club news, I've been watching....

The Gifted. Three episodes of this. I know that I should give up on it. It's not good. Three whole episodes have passed and nothing has happened. Just a lot of mutant shuffling and huffing and puffing. I'll probably drop it sooner or later, but right now I'm stubbornly holding onto it as my guilty superhero pleasure since I've dropped all other superhero shows (I made it a few episodes into last year's Flash season before finally giving up on it for good).

Star Trek: Discovery. It's not an accident that this show shares initials with sexually transmitted diseases. So, so bad.

The Orville. This, on the other hand, is the Star Trek show that I have been waiting 20 years for. I've never been a Seth MacFarlane fan. I've never been able to watch a full episode of family guy. I ruthlessly mocked the Ted Laugher. I didn't know anything else about the guy. But it's fall and there's new TV on, so I had my antenna out and randomly caught a new show called The Orville one night. And I've since gone to track down and watch the previous 4 episodes. The Orville is not perfect. But it's so much fun that I forgive it all of its imperfections and immaturities. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but it's the show that I am most looking forward to on a weekly basis right now.

I guess that's it. I've watched some more bad tv not worth mentioning. I'm looking forward to Season 2 of Stranger Things in a few days, but based on that trailer, I'm prepared to be disappointed big time. I was pleasantly surprised by Stranger Things last year and fell for it, enjoying every bit of it. But I haven't wanted to revisit Season 1 since then. And I'm not sure that I feel the need for a sequel any more. I definitely don't want one that opens up to a bigger mythology. The show was at its best when it was about small things, small relationships.

I still haven't seen mother! I couldn't get myself to care. Same with It. And Chris' and Brandon's recent posts havn't done anything to convince me otherwise.

And Brandon, I'm still not on the Spielberg wagon. I do think that most of his "legacy" consists of "products." Everyone has their Schindler's List lunch pails and Catch Me If You Can travel thermoses. And I still can't care. Even his best work does feel like so much corporate product to me. Maybe I've fallen for the PR line.