Horror Movie Project

I first heard about Nightbreed from a few friends that were casual fans of horror. I had gone on this big Clive Barker kick and started reading the Books of Blood and Thief of Always. I had set my sights on reading Cabal when I heard about this movie. It wasn't long before a group of us threw the movie on. I fell in love.  There is a place that exists where the freaks and monsters live. A variable Shangri-La for the macabre and grotesque. It seemingly exists between two realms and is extremely challenging to find. You must be deemed worthy to even step inside it. However, young Aaron Boone has been accepted into their society in order to help them fight off a conniving serial killer and the imposing forces that the outside world is sending in. This film shows the war between the two worlds. It really is a superb tale of supernatural fun and intrigue.  Nightbreed is a gem. It's never really brought up in conversations about Horror...

Videodrome came to us during the peak of David Cronenberg's work. It's a strange yet wonderful journey into the bizarre mind of David Cronenberg. Seriously, Cronenberg put some really weird stuff in this movie, but that just makes it all that much more intriguing. It's brash and sleazy. It's perverted and brutal. It's a tough movie for some to watch and a breeze for those very few that appreciate good solid gore. Max Renn (James Woods) is a sordid television producer that picks up a pirate signal of some brutal snuff clips playing virtually twenty-four-seven. Once he begins investigating the source of the signal he gets mixed up in a psychological and bio-deforming experience that may be driving him to murder. We get scenes of trashy explicit savagery mixed with scenes of extreme sadomasochism and body manipulation. The actual storyline gets lost as this movie rolls on. It takes you down a bizarre path led by Woods' character. It's wonderful.  ...

David Cronenberg never fails to entertain me with the direction he takes. His movies have always come as a recommendation and with really good reason. Body Horror is very unique. Only a handful of Directors can actually pull them off. Cronenberg mastered the genre. He gave a face to the genre and created the path for it. This movie is a continuation of that path. It is a very strange affair. Quite possibly the strangest representative of Cronenberg's work. It's neck and neck with Velodrome.  In the near future a video game designer is the target of a terrorist plot. She had created this biotech that plugs directly into your spine. The biotech is a virtual reality video game that feels like reality. However, everything is curious and you start to lose control of your actions. You do things that the game wants you to do. It gets worse the further you go.  The designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her reluctant "Body guard" (Jude Law) are constantly und...

David Cronenberg is the father of Body Horror. The genre that features creative ways of destroying the human body. It connects with the viewer on a level that makes you cringe and squirm. Almost as if you might be feeling the pain that the character on screen is going through. His films like Scanners, Videodrome, and The Brood are all equally as creative as this remake. However, this film is truly his masterpiece. This is a remake of the 1950's original starring Vincent Price. Obviously, that version is much tamer than this. Instead of Price we get Jeff Goldblum and he does a fantastic job. Goldblum is a mad scientist of sorts that is obsessed with teleporting human beings between these two pod's that he had created. Time after time his experiments fail. He sends a chimp through and the chimp is, like, completely turned inside out. It's nuts. Some people that I watched this with got kind of sick when some of these scenes happened. Geena Davis does a great job as t...

The Dead Zone from 1983 is more of a dramatic thriller than an actual horror movie. However, the film does have a looming darkness that director David Cronenberg really brings to light, so to speak. It's not obvious, but subtleties are definitely Cronenberg's forte. This is a adaptation of a Stephen King short story. What horror movie marathon would be complete without a King picture? The film follows Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) after he awakens from a five year coma. Smith learns that he can see someone's future if he touches them. Obviously, this is something that he couldn't do before. He is bombarded by news reporters to show an example. This bothers him, as you can really see the frustration. He just wants to be left alone but has the task of town-hero thrust upon him. To make matters worse, his girlfriend from before the accident is now married and living happily with some local political jagoff. He is literally just trying to live his life and stay out...

The Brood is a disturbing and thought provoking movie that is brought to us by David Cronenberg. Some of the imagery he uses is just so intense and violent that it makes you shudder to watch it. You have to be in a certain mind set to really dive into this thing. The movie has the ability to incite all sorts of emotions in your brain, some parts of the movie are incredibly depressing and other parts are mortifying. Cronenberg does a great job of making his viewer feel a certain way when you watch his movies; I had never seen The Brood before and I didn't know what to expect, but suffice to say I became immersed in it. The movie is about a man who is raising a little girl on his own and dealing with a divorce. His ex-wife is undergoing a radical new therapy that physically manifests itself as deformities on the patients body. Her therapist is a tyrant who keeps her in isolation and has many lawsuits against him claiming psychological damages; throw in some tiny little kid-...

The next movie that I bring you is Scanners from 1981. A cornerstone when it comes to the Body Horror genre. Directed by veteran film director David Cronenberg who is also responsible The Fly, The Brood, Videodrome, and more recently Eastern Promises. This movie hits all of his usual features. The story is fantastic and presented in the best way it could have been for it's time. You can definitely see this movie as being an inspiration for the horror directors that followed. Namely, Clive Barker. Now you can't talk about Scanners without bringing up the gore. The blood spurting everywhere. The heads exploding! These are such detailed scenes, they're pretty gruesome. The most notable scene is the first 'head pop'. It's such a shocking and graphic scene and has been referenced in quite a number of other movies including Wayne's World, a personal favorite of mine. Scanners are people who have a sort of telepathic power that can take hold of others and make...