Quick recap: After escaping from a mental asylum, a psychotic killer roams through his hometown searching for more helpless, busty teens to kill.

No wire hangers! I mean…..yes wire hangers! ALL the wire hangers!

Fun (?) fact: Apparently everyone knows this but me (Thanks, second rate American education) but Janet Leigh (of Psycho fame) is the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis.

also, I thought Curtis was like 30, but really she’s the only one who was actually a teenager

My thoughts: In a quest to scare myself before the end of the month, what better movie to watch than Halloween? And unlike Jaws, I distinctly remember watching the original back when I was a kid. Actually, I think I watched it several times when I was younger but I don’t remember it scaring me all that much. Back then I had a very sophisticated system where I was able to rank all movies by their scariness, called the ‘It test’. The test consisted of one question: Was I watching the Stephen King movie It? If I was, then the movie was deemed ‘scary’ and if not, ‘not scary’. Like I said, very sophisticated. And although this movie had scary elements, it ultimately failed at scaring me then…….or now.

So first of all, this is the mother of all horror films. Most would argue that that title should be given to Psycho, but what I am referring to is the sort of horror film teenage girls watch at a sleepover and then spend all night staying up and scaring each other even more. The whole plot of the movie revolves around Michael Myers (back then referred to as The Shape) stalking teenage girls and murdering them. He had a town full of potential victims but all he wanted were the busty teens.  Therefore, this is a perfect movie for a 16 year old but for a 30 year old woman, not so much. I’ve been a little sad about getting older but after watching Halloween, I realize that I’m out of the demographic for Michael Myers murdering me. Hooray!

Halloween never really had any moments that surprised me, either. Thanks to the music I knew exactly when The Shape was going to show up. The death scenes themselves were also campy, especially with the fake blood. The scene with the tombstone creeped me out, but that was about it. What ruined it for me was the end when The Shape is stabbed with knitting needles, a wire hanger, shot several times and also fell out of a two story house, only to walk away seemingly unscathed. Leaving it at ‘psychotic killer’ would’ve been frightening enough but to turn it into a supernatural element of evil just made the whole movie seem silly.

Final review: In terms of scaring me, I’d give it a 2/5 but for the horror film it is, I’ll bump it up to a 4/5.

Up next: Horrorfest!

Quick recap: A young socialite goes out of her way to play a practical joke on a lawyer. And also something about murderous birds but that’s like the C plot so it’s not really important.

Fun (?) fact: A group of crows is called a murder. 

This one is just being a jerk

My thoughts: Welcome to Horrorfest 2014! I made the decision last year to only review the horror movies on my list during the month of October and it was loads of fun. I plan on doing the same this year, the only difference being that I’m going to actually try and scare myself this time around. Seeing as how almost everything frightens me, it shouldn’t be too difficult a task.

First up on my list is The Birds, which didn’t seem all that scary to me when I put it on the Netflix list. I want to be scared, mind you, not traumatized. The beginning of the movie seemed to justify my choice because it was all very silly. Now, it might just be that humor was different back then, but I didn’t find the ‘joke’ of Melanie buying the lovebirds, driving out to Bodega Bay and sneaking into Mitch’s house to leave the gift for the little sister all that funny. Psychotic perhaps. OH MY GOD. Maybe Melanie is really psychotic and goes on a murderous rampage after Mitch fails to get her lame joke. In a moment of clarity she realizes the horror of what she has done and blames it on the birds. It even explains Annie’s death because it was really done out of jealousy, not lousy crows pecking her eyes out. Then again, this movie could’ve literally been about birds. Probably that.

Ultimately, the question comes down to if I was scared or not and the answer is….kind of? I mean, the scene where the birds attacked the children was suspenseful but also kind of funny because it was obvious the birds weren’t real. Also because birds aren’t all that terrifying. Now if this was a pack (?) of man eating spiders, I’d totally get it. With that being said, the final scene when the birds descend on the house was scarier than I expected. The horror comes from hearing all the awful noises and having nowhere to hide, not necessarily that they were birds. Also,the scene were Melanie hears sounds upstairs and goes to investigate made me nervous and I was reminded of it as I walked up my own stairs that night. Hitchcock is the master of suspense after all,and in the end does a fine job making something ordinary turn seem utterly terrifying. Kind of.

Final review: 4/5. Maybe not ‘horror’ in the traditional sense but I enjoyed myself, nonetheless.

Up next: Horrorfest continues…..