It’s come down to the final stretch.  I planned on 15 days of horror movies leading up to a Late Night Double Feature on Halloween Night of Little Shop of Horrors and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and it’s Halloween night right now (earlier in Taipei than back home) and I’m only two movies shy of what I thought I would watch.  I made it to 21 movies without the impending double bill and I have to say my taste for horror movies seems to have changed and things that freaked me out before just don’t do it for me now. 

I think one of the first movies that scared the crap out of me as a kid was a Disney movie The Watcher in the Woods.  I also remember my older sister sneaking me into The Lost Boys when I was supposed to see something else and from then on I started really liking being scared of movies.  Of course now most of it doesn’t scare me.  It made me realize that if I was to write a horror story, like I want to, I would have to make sure it scares me since most things out there don’t.  I have a few ideas now after my fifteen day marathon. 

So, here’s the final stretch into the double bill later tonight…


#16 – Day of the Dead (2008)
I needed more zombies after a few crap movies in the marathon.  Zombies always work for me (well, except for that awful novel World War Z) and I figured the Dead series is always a safe bet.  I know some of the Dead series are not as good as either version of Day of the Dead, but I figured a zombie movie with Ving Rhames in it would be good.  Day is a pretty good zombie movie, but they tried to alter the zombies a little too much.  They gave them more memory of their past and their reactions to things were more than just ‘brains, brains’.  The gore was great, the story wasn’t too bad with the zombies coming from an infection instead of dead rising from the ground, but then they came up with a vegetarian zombie who was still in love with a survivor.  That was a little wrong to me.  All in all it’s a pretty good zombie movie, much better than Land of the Dead was, and I imagine probably better than Diary Of and Survival Of… I think he best choice for zombies nowadays is either The Waling Dead or Dawn of the Dead, but who knows, maybe someone will out do them both and really show the reality of zombies and the gore that comes with it (and I do NOT mean World War Z).


#17 – The Crazies
Nice, nice, NICE!  A town goes crazy and turns into violent killers bent on pretty much destroying each other and everyone around them.  Tainted water, a tough guy sheriff who needs to get into the quarantined town to save his pregnant wife and crazy people everywhere killing people with guns, fire, wrenches and even a kick-ass pitchfork!  I didn’t expect much from this movie and I was surprised how much I liked it.  It’s no masterpiece of modern cinema, and it’s a remake of a little known George Romero movie from the 1970′s (which is why the Crazies are a little zombie-ish), but really, what more can you ask for.  Gore, killing, a stupid military who thinks they know what’s right and scenes with people trapped places with a Crazy coming very close to offing them.  I won’t buy it, but I sure will tell people it’s worth the seven day rental fee from the store.  They didn’t try to make anything but a freaky horror film and they succeeded nicely.  And I could actually stand Timothy Olyphant for, well, maybe the first time ever in a movie.


#18 – Rogue
What a load of crap!  This was in IMdB’ list of Top Ten Underrated Horror Movies for this year and it SUCKED!  IT wasn’t scary, you never see the damn crocodile until the end (but unlike JAWS, it makes the movie boring) and I actually found myself cheering for the croc to show up and pick off people.  Hell, it would have been better if the damn thing ate at least twice the amount of people it did in order to give me a small semblance of terror and fear, but it didn’t.  I have no idea who said this was a good crocodile/monster movie… hell, Lake Placid was a hundred times better and Anaconda was a classic compared to this.  The croc moved to silently that you never saw it coming, but when it did it took people quietly, which IS NOT SCARY!  I’m sorry, I’m pissed because I went to three different video stores in Taipei with their list of Top Ten (five of which I hadn’t seen) and this was the only one I could find.  I should have just re-watched Jaws and pretended it was about a crocodile instead.  DUMB!!!


#19 – Ringu
What’s the big freaking deal about this movie?  It’s slow, boring and not terrifying in the least.  I hate to admit it, but the American version was at least freaky.  This one kept close to the original novel (I read RING, SPIRAL and LOOP last year and loved them), but they seemed to actually leave things out of the movie for some reason.  Maybe I’m looking at it differently because I know the whole trilogy and what comes next, but come on, this movie was more about talking about the damn tape than actually seeing it.  How many people died?  Umm… two I think that we see.  Oh, we see footage of two others and hear about three others who die during the film, but NO ONE DIES ONSCREEN.  And the girl in the well/TV only comes out once and isn’t even freaky.  Usually I put the Japanese right up there with some of the best f’d up horrors movies ever (see: Organs), but this just let me down on so many levels.  Even the tape (which was more true to the book) was just a few images that didn’t matter much.  The book does a good job of getting to your through explanation, but the filmmakers seemed to miss the boat with visually recreating the horror and using it to scare us.  I have the Japanese sequels here, but I think I’m just going to pass by them and watch other things instead.  If the first was that bad, the others must be worse!


#20 – Pet Sematary
I was looking for a few other movies when I found this on the shelf and I couldn’t pass it up.  This is a classic Stephen King adaptation movie that still works well.  I love cats and Church still freaks me out in this.  Add the freaky cat to a the ghost of Paskow, a Chucky-like Gage, old Jed talking about the dead walking and a cool looking Micmac burial ground and you have the perfect blend of freaky and scary.  Oh, and Zelda… how can you forget Zelda?  I remember chasing my friend down the street after watching it one night at my house yelling ‘Zelda’s coming for you’ and him running home screaming.  It’s no Shining, but it beats the hell out of most movies made from King books and is definitely in the Top Five I think (with Shining, Carrie, Salem’s Lot and The Mist).  They adapted the book perfectly and when you can make a guy like me afraid of a cat, you did a great job!  I hope they never remake this one because it’s great just the way it is.


#21 – The Midnight Meat Train
I can only say two things about this movie AWE… wait for it… SOME!!!  I read Clive Barker’s Books of Blood earlier this year and was skeptical they could make a good movie out of a short story, but DAMN!  They got it dead on, and even with the additions to it in order to make it feature length, they didn’t mess up a thing.  Come on… a guy who butchers people on the subway like hogs at the slaughter, hanging them from the handles and covering the train with blood from end to end every night… and it’s Vinnie Jones!  AWESOME!  I loved this.  Forget the happy ending, no stupid haunting by ghosts or family histories that make the person a demented freak, IT’S JUST KILLING.  I’m going to buy this movie so I can watch it again with some of my other favorite horror movies.  The title may be strange, but it’s what Barker called the short story when he wrote it, and what more do you need to say?  The Midnight Meat Train may be the most surprising movie as well as one of my favorites of my entire Horror Movie Marathon.  I’m glad it was the last one I watched before the double bill tonight.  It was great, got me excited for horror again and now I can watch two of my favorites after being so happy about something new.  Once again… AWESOME!!!


So, it’s time to go and put in the first DVD of the Double Feature tonight.  I think I’m going to start at Mushnik’s Flower Shop then move myself over to the Frankenstein Place…

Well, I have kept up with my Horror Movie Marathon up until I watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween Night here in Taiwan.  I’ve watched a bunch of stuff I had on my shelves for a long time, found a few DVDs in bargain bins while shopping, and read about some I want to rent if I can fit them into the marathon.  I am realizing that now that I’m older a lot of the stuff just doesn’t get to me.  I do love zombies, and good, violent vampire stuff (not lovey-dovey blood suckers) still makes me jump, and I’m pretty much a sucker for anything to do with a haunted house. 

So, the marathon and the countdown to Rocky Horror continues…


#9 – The Invisible Man (1933)
I found these sets of classic horror films at a video store last week that had four classics (plus Van Helsing) in cool coffin boxes marked down from $70 to $6 a set.  I had to get them.  I didn’t know where to start and then I was listening to the Rocky Horror soundtrack and they told me ‘Claude Rains was the Invisible Man…’ and I knew that was the one to watch.  The Invisible Man was the first book I read when I came to Taiwan and this version of it was great!  They made it scarier and more horror for the times, but it really holds up over the decades.  They just don’t make them like this anymore, and I wish they did, but audiences and times have changed and people just wouldn’t get the simplicity of a movie like this.  One of the best I have watched so far!


#10 – The Amityville Horror (1979)
I read this book this year and although was not as sacred of the book as I was the movie when I watched it a long time ago, I really liked the more realistic haunting in the book.  Of course, now I watch the movie and it doesn’t do much for me.  The differences from the book to the movie are so huge, and really, it isn’t that scary.  The newer version I remember being scarier than this one, but this is a classic and I can’t hate it.  It just doesn’t seem to hold up over time as much as it has in my memory.  I wish it did since there aren’t many horror movies left from when I was a kid that are still scary, but the elements and the idea of this one still freak me out when I think about it.  I’s a classic, but not one I am going to rush to watch again for a long time.


#11 – A Chinese Ghost Story / 倩女幽魂
Now this really isn’t a horror movie, but it is a classic of Chinese cinema… and it has enough elements in it to fit into my marathon.  A hapless drifter (tax collector) wanders into a town where he isn’t welcome and ends up having to stay in an old haunted temple on the outskirts of the village.  Of course he meets a beautiful woman who is really a ghost who collects the souls of men for the 100 year old tree demon who has enslaved her soul.  Mix in a crazy Wu Xia Taoist swordsman who is out to rid China of the undead, a doomed romance between the living and the dead, and some cool Chinese zombies living in the basement and you have something that should be a B-movie, but is thought of as one of the best movies ever created in Hong Kong.  I have the trilogy and can’t wait to watch the next two as well.  Leslie Cheung is great in it, but he’s great in everything he did, and I hope movies like this make people forget about his tragic suicide and focus on just how fun he was to watch in so many movies.  I think as of #11, this has to be my favorite of the marathon so far… zombies, hot ghosts and kung fu!  You can’t ask for anything else!


#12 – The Messengers
Another bargain bin purchase, and not only because it was a cheap horror movie, but because it is a Pang Brothers movie (Bangkok Dangerous, The Eye).  They didn’t fare well early in the marathon with Forest of Death, so I gave them another shot with this one.  People don’t like this movie much, but I liked it.  It had the right elements to it; an old haunted farmhouse, a new family moving in and a creepy little kid who sees it all.  Maybe it just wasn’t horror enough for people and the killing was pretty scarce, but it was in Forest of Death too.  I liked the idea and I liked the film.  It’s nothing special, but it did make me just a little in a few spots, so it did more than some of the more classic horror movies I have been watching this past week.  I know there is a lot of better movies out there, but there are a lot more pieces of crap worse than this as well.


#13 – Return to House on Haunted Hill
Okay, in my defense, I was shopping, saw the DVD in a $1 bin and grabbed it without noticing I had bought the sequel, and not the original.  This movie was, to put it nicely, a flying, flaming bag of monkey feces!  I kinda remember the original (which I think I fell asleep during or never finished watching), but this one made no sense.  This one had a statue that people were hunting for that the doctor of the haunted house had, and they all went in to find it, there were bad guys, anthropologists and the usual T&A.  The visuals were cool and I liked the stye of some scenes, but the copy I bought was a former rental and the bastards edited it so the real gore was blurred.  Of course they left the zombie lesbian scene uncut, but I don’t get to see a guy’s arm ripped off?  WTF?  This movie was a waste of pretty much my time, the actors’ time and even the time of the poor guy who had to cater the food to the set of such a waste of film.  I can think of about ten thousand things I would rather have done instead of watching this movie.


#14 – Predators (2010)
YEAH!  I’m a sucker for a good Predator movie, and really, if there is a Predator in the movie, it has to be good.  I even liked the AVP movies, even though I am not a big Alien fan.  This movie kicked ass!  Action from the start, blood, gore and monsters from outer space that come out of nowhere and kill just for the hell of it.  I get excited just thinking about a Predator movie (yes, even Predator 2).  This movie was a great reboot/sequel/continuation to the other movies with a much cooler concept of being hunted on a distant planet instead of aliens coming to Earth.  And Topher Grace… how I hate you in everything.  And to see you die on screen, slowly and painfully, it made my day!  The Predator should become the James Bond of space horror/action movies and we should get a new one every few years for the next 30-40 years if we are lucky.  I will always cheer for the Predator, love the Predator and fear the Predator.  I may go watch it again now… I’m getting all geared up just writing about it!


#15 – The Frighteners
I realized when I started watching it that I had never seen the whole movie before.  I must have caught parts of it on TV, but never the movie in its entirety.  This was a cool ghost movie along the same lines as Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice and Little Shop of Horrors.  There were funny ghosts and there were some pretty freaky ones as well which makes me wonder if I can actually show this to my grade four kids next week or not.  They have seen Goonies, but this one may be a little scarier.  Ghost movies can be fun, but still a little scary, and I think this one got it just right.  Plus, come on, has Michael J McFly ever really done anything bad?  He fits into his roles perfectly and I liked him n this one as well.  This was definitely worth the dollar I paid for it from the video store!



So there it is… fifteen horror movies down and I have four nights to go.  Luckily I have the entire weekend to do a marathon in and hopefully since I have nothing to do I can get into some more I have read about, as well as get to some of those Japanese and Chinese horrors movies I already have lining my shelves.  And there has to be room for JAWS… I cannot leave that out of the marathon in any way…

We’re gonna need a bigger Ton-Ton…

I have too many DVDs here that I can’t even figure out what the hell to watch.  I got a few new horror releases from Hong Kong this month and I have stuff that has been sitting here for more than a year or two that I haven’t watched yet, so I figure I should just do a marathon of the horror movies.  I always watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween night, so I’ll fill the time until then with what I have, what I can find in Taipei video stores and DVD shops and maybe something downloaded if I really can’t find what I want that night…

#1 – 1408… It’s too bad that I remember this one being a lot more frightening than it was this time.  I guess you can make a really good, scary movie and really freak out an audience, but it takes a lot more skill to make something that holds up to multiple viewings.  1408 was boring this second time around with nothing to really make me drop my popcorn.  I still love both Stephen King and John Cusack, but kind of a disappointment to begin my marathon with.


#2 – The Shining… So my first movie was a disappointment so I figured I’d go with a tried and true scare the shit out of myself movie.  I have seen The Shining at least 30 times (maybe more) and the second they enter than hotel I’m freaked out.  I love when the kid is racing the hallways on his big wheel and or course Jack as a crazy bastard and Olive Oil screaming her face off at everything.  I read the book one summer when I was young and loved how different, but still scary the book was, but I do love this movie.  There’s nothing better than Jack and an Ax!


#3 – The Thing (2011)… This was cool!  I barely remember the original so this was a great movie.  Glad I saw it in the theater as it just gives it more impact.  They did a great job making it look like the film was from the 1980′s and they relied on the story  more than big actors which was good.  I was pretty geared up for the whole movie, and I loved the extra footage during the end credits.   They ended the movie in a great way, and then the epilogue after that tis to the old movie made it even better.  Someone needs to learn from this movie how to make a good monster/alien movie where you don’t need torture and over the top kills.  Just give us a creature and abunch of people who are not going to survive and I’m happy!


#4 – Tremors... What better combination can you have than massive underground slugs that burrow and eat people, Kevin Bacon as a redneck and the dad from Family ties as a crazy, gun toting survivalist?  I worked in the movie theater when this movie came out years ago and I would watch as much of it as I could every night when I was working.  The sequels get a little strange, but this one is a great Hollywood B-like movie that was and still is better than so much of the crap out there today.  There is no way you wouldn’t want to have this movie in your collection.


#5 – Tales from the Crypt… I got the entire series of this from Hong Kong last month and it’s still cool.  Watched a few episodes just to see if it was as dated as I thought it would be, but they are still cool stories.  I love seeing a lot of stars in these cheesy little tales, but they were actually good horror. the Crypt Keeper still rocks and the best thing is I watched five episodes so far and I think there are still about 80 more to go!


#6 – Forest of Death / 森冤… What a disappointment!  I ordered this special fro Hong Kong as I can’t get it here in Taiwan with English, and I finally get to watch it and it bored me to death!  I love (see: absolutely, positively, head over heels in love with) Shu Qi and even she wasn’t much in the movie other than something to distract me frm the actual story.  A forest in China where people go to kill themselves which is supposedly haunted and tries to keep people from leaving… good concept, but I seem to recall only ONE PERSON DIES in the movie.  Add in Ekin Cheng, a cool HK star, who believes that plants can speak to you and tell you things that have happened.  Put him together with Shu Qi’s detective trying to solve a rape/murder in the forest and you have… well… not much, which is sad.  I was looking forward to this one (not just due to my love of Shu Qi) and it just didn’t deliver.


#7 – John Carpenter’s The Ward… Now the trailers, the box art and the concept for the movie made me really want to see it.  Maybe it was nostalgia from the Nightmare on Elm Street to see a horror movie in an insane asylum again or just the hope that Carpenter can still pull it off… but I have to say, meh.  I admit the whole movie had me a little on edge, and I liked the ideas behind it, but there were two things I just didn’t like… the killing were a little weak and made me think something strange was going on, and of course the ending SUCKED!  If there was ever a cop out at the end of a horror movie it was this one.  They’ve dine this ending before and it worked (the first time) and they did not need to do it again here.  I’m amazed at how quickly the movie bottomed out at the end.  Come on John… you can do so much better!


#8 – Dawn of the Dead... Too many disappointments so far in my marathon, so I went with another solid guarantee.  I love both Dawn of the Dead movies, but the new one kicks ass more than The Walking Dead does.  Zombies that can run… blood everywhere and even the dad from Modern Family!  I really think the new version of this movie should be the standard for zombies movies now.  The movie has everything you want right down to the very ending and the credits.  Zombies from the first to the last minute.  I love this movie.  I haven’t seen any of the ones after this.  I may go try to find Day of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, Survival of the Dead, Breakfast with the Dead and George Clooney vs. the Dead to complete the series. 

Not a bad set of movies for the first seven nights.  I plan on some kind of a marathon within a marathon this weekend or next.  I have the entire run of Japanese Ring movies, the Asian Eye movies, plus the 28 Days/Weeks/Dresses set, the Resident Evil set, some cool Korean monster movies and even some good Japanese gore flicks like Tokyo Gore Police to keep me going.  Not sure what to watch when I get back from the night markets tonight, but I have the original Amityville Horror, a Taiwanese horror movie titled Invitation Only and an 8 DVD set of Drive In horror movies beside the TV ready to go.

I’m going to give myself nightmares this month… I know it!

1. Charlee’s real name was Sharlee when I got her, but it just didn’t suit her.  I was thinking about names for her, and changing it a little sounded right.  Plus it reminded me of those old commercials from the 1980’s for ‘Charlie’ perfume when they always said “She’s so Charlie.”
2. Charlee was listed by the shelter she came from as being 6-7 years old, which was a mistake since she was really only about three when I got her.  Her paperwork shows her birthday, but the shelter people couldn’t read I guess.
3. When she lived with me, Charlee loved playing with little mice made from rabbit fur.  We played a game where she would go to the far end of the apartment hallway and I would toss them over her head and she would stop them like an NHL goalie.  She was good.
4. Charlee’s favorite place to sleep in right into the side of someone’s neck, but as she shifts herself in her sleep to get more comfortable she usually ends up on your face, almost smothering you as you sleep.
5. Charlee’s favorite song is Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.  She always came in the room and meowed when it was playing.  A true Paul Simon fan.
6. Charlee will come to you for attention and loves to sit on someone’s lap, but she has to do it, you cannot force her.
7. Every day when I would give Charlee her treats I would put them on a shelf above her head.  She would always stand up and bat them down with her paw.  If she heard the treats, she would go directly to her shelf.
8. Charlee loves to sit in bookshelves with her bum on the bottom shelf and her front paws on the ground in front of the shelf.
9. Charlee was the last of our cats to live with George before he died.  They actually got along pretty well.
10. My dad still calls her Sharlee… but his memory is going and we can’t blame him for forgetting names.  He’s old.  We may have to put him down soon.
11. Charlee was the first mix I ever had.  She is more of a tortoise shell tabby with a lot of white as well.  Our cats before her were mostly tabbies, and Bubba was pure black.  Her marking are very bold and beautiful to look at and follow.
12. I got Charlee two days after Christmas.  I had to fill in the adoption form twice as they weren’t going to let me take her since I had lost a cat (Bubba) only a few months before.  When they said that I tore up the form, took another and filled it in saying I had lost Bubba a year earlier.  I wasn’t leaving without Charlee.
13. Charlee hid for the first day after coming to my house, which really upset me (even though I know this is normal) so I called my little sister.  She came over and within 15 minutes Charlee was up on the couch curling into Megan’s lap.
14. Charlee never played with Pumba… I think she knew it was Bubba’s.
15. The night I was leaving for Taiwan she sat with me in my parent’s front room watching me get things ready at the lest second.  She stayed with me until I left.  We’d only been together for ten months but I really felt bad for leaving her.
16. Charlee loved when I played the guitar, but she would always want to get right up in my face when I was singing and smell my mouth.  It’s hard to play guitar and sing when a cat is doing that, but I loved that she loved the music.
17. Charlee’s nickname is Tuna, both because she loves tuna and after the old Starkist Tuna cartoon spokesman Charlie Tuna.
18. Charlee loves to be with my dad all the time… which is weird since he gets her name wrong all the time!
19. After moving to my parent’s house she became a total outdoor cat, never wanting to come inside.  She loves to be outside all the time, chasing bugs, catching mice and eating moths.  Even in the winter, she wants to be outdoors.
20. Of all the cats Charlee was the easiest to get into a carrier to take her in the car.
21. Like most cats she loves to be in boxes, but she always finds the smallest box possible and then squeeze herself into it. 
22. I had my grandfather’s old recliner in my house which I used to sit in and read at night, but within days of her arriving it became her chair and she would spend her days sleeping on it and standing on the arm of to look out the window.
23. When I started to get things ready to move and shelves started clearing out (books, Cds, DVDs,) I would find her later on in that shelf like it was new space she had never tried out before.  She tried out each and ever shelf in my house.
24. She was never afraid of dogs.  Dogs came to our window (my apartment window was even with the ground outside) and she just talked to them.  She even scared my friend Amy’s dog when they came to visit since she just walked around and pretended like she didn’t care Andie was there.
25. Charlee and Koko have basically sectioned off my parent’s house; Charlee has the downstairs and Koko has the upstairs.  They share the kitchen, but only when they have to.
26. When I was thinking about adopting a cat I was also thinking about moving to Taiwan to teach so I was worried I was making a bad decision.  My mother told me if I wanted a cat to go ahead and they would take care of her while I was away.  I’m not sure she knew I would be gone for this long, but Charlee loves it with them.
27. Charlee only lived with me for about ten months, but has been at my parent’s house for five years now.
28. Charlee would sometimes come with me at night to the laundry room across the hall from my apartment, but only if I left both doors open so she could come and go as she pleased.  One day an old ladies dog from the building came in and Charlee was there.  She chased the dog to the far and of the hallway.  I don’t think the dog ever came to do laundry again.
29. Charlee was up for adoption during the month of December at a local petfood superstore.  I visited twice a week to see all the cats and play with them and she was there from the first day to the last.  I saw many cats adopted out, but Charlee always remained. 
30. The day I went to see Charlee after Christmas the girl at the shop told me she was going back to the shelter soon.  They felt she was severely depressed and was non-responsive to people by that point.  She had been up for adoption for almost six months and no one took her in.  They said she would be re-evaluated and maybe put down if she had become too lethargic.  They said she would never make a good pet and would never respond to anyone anymore.  She was just sitting in her cage in a ball in the corner, not paying attention.  I looked at her and almost started crying.  I told them I would take her and they actually told me to adopt another cat.  When I said no, I wanted her, they tried to convince me that it was a bad decision.  I was pissed off and just looked into her cage and said “Sharlee, you want to go home?” She got up, came to the cage and rubbed against it letting out a small meow in answer.  I opened the cage and she curled into my arms like I had held her a thousand times before.  The workers were shocked and I just looked at them and said “Don’t just stand there, wrap her up, I’m taking her home.”
31. I adopted Charlee only a few days after my girlfriend and I broke up (on Christmas… but she was Jewish, so it wasn’t wrong in her mind) and a few days later she had seen me write on my blog about finally sleeping in the same bed as Sharlee (name not changed yet).  She asked if she had been replaced already and I said yes.  When she asked where I met this girl, I told her at a petstore.  She laughed and said ‘Oh, so it’s only a cat, right?’  I remember looking at Charlee and thinking ‘No, she’s not just a cat.  She’s my cat.  You were only a girlfriend. She’ll last much longer.’ 

Charlee in her window and Charlee looking like she is either listening to the worst music
in the world or laughing at the funniest joke ever!



Charlee’s obsession with shelf space.



Heavy drinker and window watcher.



I always loved her tail curl when she sat.  Such a princess.



Charlee and her big brother George.