The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence, 2025): 2.5/5

Not boring, exactly, and it does feature some talented young actors. However, I fail to see the point. The metaphor never happens. 

 

28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025): 3/5

[Post-Apocalyptic] I liked that some of the zombies had turned into animals—naked and formed into groups with an alpha, like lions or gorillas. I also enjoyed the more outré style elements, including rapid insert shots, play with color, jittering techniques—different and newish. Unfortunately, the third act was an utter disaster, and the last 5 minutes were completely baffling. Based on The Beach, 28 Days Later and this one, Garland is obsessed with Apocalypse Now—the breach of the sacred and profane sanctuary.

 

Hooptober 2025

In the end, I watched 19 movies on my Hooptober list, based on THESE rules. Lots of good movies here. Fun!

 

Living Dead in the Manchester Morgue (Jorge Grau, 1974): 4/5

[Zombie] An Italian-Spanish-English co-production recapitulates many of the thrills, chills and bigotry of the Night of the Living Dead in living color and in full daylight. Slow-moving but strong cannibals. Four years before Dawn of the Dead. An underrated gem.

 

A Virgin Among the Dead (Jesús Franco, 1973): 3/5 

[Zombie] Imagine a movie with images dreamy, strange, vivid and evocative enough to stand with Cocteau, Lynch, and Bunuel. Also soft core sex scenes and practically constant casual nudity and general sexiness. And (!) it’s also a bit boring. Cocteau’s dreamy Beauty and the Beast castle with its menagerie of weirdos is right there, thematically. And it’s fun that one of these phantoms from her family tree (slash subconscious) is a “a gibbering pervy idiot” (to quote Matt Lynch) played by Franco himself, of course. This is more of the erotic-film-for-people-who-like-a-bit of horror side of Franco (The tagline for it was “She’s Going Down”), but there’s still a very free-spirited and pretty blonde and a (blind) brunette drinking one other’s blood and stuff (while nude). 

 

Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989): 3/5

[Cult] An incestuous, polyamory sex cult among the rich—all with bright and colorful 80s-TV lighting. So: What’s really going down on Beverly Hills 90210 or Family Ties (our protagonist sports serious Michael J Fox hair and vibes). Also reminds me of John Waters in the 80s, but he would have been less judgmental about the perverse sexual deviants at the center of this film. 

 

The House That Screamed (Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, 1969): 3/5

[Cult] This one’s got it all—women-in-prison power games, group showers, voyeurism, whipping, a sneering Kapo, sadism, incest, and a killer—but doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

 

Pontypool (Bruce McDonald, 2008): 3.5/5 

[Canadian] Certainly the most intellectual horror movie I will watch this Hooptober, and of course it comes from Canada. It’s a zombie/virus outbreak, but almost completely experienced from inside of radio station, with reports being called in. This pays off thematically, since the virus travels by language—and the zombie-ish change begins with confused and repetitive logorrhea. This is creepy, original, and thematically resonant to the shit we’re dealing with these days. Ideas become meaningless echoes. Language is a virus, sez Burroughs.

 

Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946): 3.5/5

[1940s] Great Old Dark House murder mystery, complete with a storm and a who-done-it, including (Glass Onion-style but good) a serial killer, feuding half-brothers, a drunken Ilsa Lanchester, a kindly doctor, and a deaf mute. Light commentary on voyerism. 

 

The Sadness (Rob Jabbaz, 2021): 3.5/5

[Post-Apocalyptic] In this intense Taiwanese movie, a fast-moving virus turns humans into “homicidal, sadistic maniacs.” Taipei becomes (or is depicted as?) a ruthless wasteland. Lots of edge-of-your-seat action and every atrocity one can imagine, but it’s so damn entertaining and fast that it comes off a bit weightless. The second act, in the savage streets and parks of Taipei, is exceptionally well-made and outrageous.  The more interior third act bogs down.  

 

Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (Jack Sholder, 1985): 3/5

[Dreams] I’m shocked how gay coded this movie is, especially for the first sequel in a huge franchise. The protagonist (played by Mark Patton, who was closeted at the time but later came out) is struggling with “something inside himself” (ostensibly Freddie) that wants to come out. A common problem in Reagan-era America! There is some hardcore shorty-short baseball-field wrestling/tussling, and Freddie caresses our protagonist’s cheek, saying “You’re the body. I’m the brains.” Pretty hot!! There are also dreams about a snake circling our protagonists throat, and about visiting a BDSM club and running into one’s sadomasochistic high school PE and football coach (redundant) leading to bare-bottom shower spanking of said coach. This leads to a self-revelation that that “I am a murderer” (slash gay—cue screams). And because our protagonist is male, is certainly our “final girl.” And even after all of that, the most damning piece of evidence is the Kate Bush poster hanging in his room.

 

Venom (Piers Haggard, 1981): 3.5/5

[Animals] Sterling Hayden, Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski, and Susan George (all of whom certainly feature in my top 100 favorite actors) are involved in a kidnapping drama involving an asthmatic child who meanwhile has accidentally brought home a black mamba snake. An expert drama ensues. Do you want to see Klaus Kinski thrash around and scream with a black mamba wrapped around him, until eventually he shoots it in the head with a gun? Of course you do.

 

Audrey Rose (Robert Wise, 1977): 2/5

[Novel] The Afterschool Special version of The Exorcist and Birth. A (pretty good) Anthony Hopkins is convinced that (histrionic) Marsha Mason’s 10-year-old daughter is literally the reincarnation of his dead daughter. And indeed the daughter does seem possessed at times (in that she has bad dreams and sometimes runs around the room and cries). The conclusion, accomplished with a courtroom and hypnotherapy, ensures that this is the least horrific and dumbest of the movies on this list. Really highlights how feral and weird most horror movies tend to be. Fuck yeah.

 

Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon, 1985): 3.5/5

[Novel] A Frankenstein story emphasizing the nightmare and power of suddenly being alive again. The main draw here is the goofy, gonzo, homemade, so-serious-it’s-comic tone. Jeffrey Combs is perfect as the death-obsessed Dr. Frankenstein. The extremely practical gore effects are always a delight, especially all the disembodied head stuff.

 

Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (Jesús Franco, 1973): 3/5

[I would love to claim this as a Novel, based on Frankenstein, but really, this is a N/A] In which I discover that not all Franco movies are golden. And at 198 movies to his name, how could they be? This one is shot and edited with less engagement and interest than the others I’ve seen. Still, there are several uncanny and generally disturbing scenes where they use some technology to briefly wake up a dead guy— effectively played as twitchy and gasping. Also a disturbingly erotic scene where Frankenstein (who is silver) whips a stark naked man, handcuffed to a naked blonde. Actually, shit, this review is making me like it more. 

 

Demons (Lamberto Bava, 1985): 3.5/5

[A film from THIS list] A self-conscious, art-conscious concept: an abandoned movie theater lures its victims inside and then turns them into brainless zombies. But instead of a Goodbye Dragon Inn, we get lots of fun, over-the-top, cartoony but complex practical gore gags.

 

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Sergio Martino, 1972): 3.5/5

[Written by Ernesto Gastaldi] Begins with a cursed party scene where the husband publicly humiliates and degrades his wife, then later basically rapes her. Thereafter female bodies start piling up, though he claims innocence. So basically a giallo: a stylish who-do-it with a serial killer, five beautiful girls, bisexual triangles, voyeurism, incest, and a hugely ironic ending. Male lead Luigi Pistilli reminds me of James Caan—broad-shouldered some somehow both emotional impassive and volatile. He’s Italian exploitation royalty, featured in movies by Leone, Corbucci, Mario Bava, and Fernando Di Leo.

 

Doctor X (Michael Curtiz, 1932): 3.5/5

[1932] A who-done-it about a serial killer (in other words, a giallo), as swift and clever as we have come to expect from Curtiz. Also a technological marvel—it was colorized at the time with a lovely palette of with vivid greens and flesh colors. Lots of humor and a genuinely horrific climax: “Synthetic flesh! Synthetic flesh!”

 

Lifeforce (Tobe Hooper, 1985): 3/5

[Tobe Hooper] How do you follow up Poltergeist? With a bonkers naked-space-vampire movie, naturally. As a narrative, it resets every 15 minutes, the better to bring you a series of nutzo encounters whose primitive effects lend every scene a charming naïveté. It’s interesting to see The Stunt Man’s Steve Railsback empty-eyed charisma used in another context, and Patrick Stewart shows up for 20 minutes to show everyone else how a great actor gets it done. And this is pretty good description of a relationship from a guy’s point of view: “She took some of my energy, and she gave me some of her energy. She killed all of my men, but she wanted me to survive. She chose me. Why? Why?”

 

Jean Rollin Film Fest

A very pleasant surprise. These films are weird and exciting, while also being languid and elliptical in an Antonioni-ish way. Extreme and arty uses of sound and silence, image, sexuality and nudity, and gore. Characters wander to their death, blithe and amused. I am shocked that I haven’t heard more about their influence on Lynch. Similarities to Jesús Franco abound. Both like to use a lavish and exotic villa as the site of the main action. Both blend horror and erotic elements, vampires, and lesbian love. But these are less pulpy, more vacant, and more self-consciously arty.

 

Grapes of Death (Jean Rollin, 1978): 4/5

[Zombie] Simple and direct. Our protagonist fights for survival, minute to minute, in a world where almost everyone has been turned to zombie, and the film moves from one gnarly situation to the next. A last-minute conversation about pesticides, fascism, nuclear power, the military, and violence over healing offers some unnecessary contextualization for the brilliant randomness.

 

Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979): 4.5/5

[Cult] Similar to Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, an arrogant and capable thief escapes from some goons but finds himself in a much weirder trap—here a chateau (with moat) overseen by a couple of powerful, beautiful, violent, psychotic, and erotically charged lesbians. Slow, arty, dreamy and mostly trying to make images, which I appreciate. 

 

The Living Dead Girl (Jean Rollin, 1982): 3.5/5

[Zombie] An existentially haunted female Frankenstein. At first, she is remarkably vacant and remote, as if lost in thought. Then, increasingly she seems to remember with great melancholy her relationship with her 10-year-old best friend—perhaps a sexual awakening. Finally, she is overcome with intense self-loathing and horror that she is alive—and shouldn’t be. Overall, the movie’s narrative strategy is to sketch quick characters and a drama—and introduce the Living Dead Girl to abruptly and efficiently end it. The soundtrack is very quiet, and when we are outside there is always birdsong. Nature is always calling.

 

Lost in New York (Jean Rollin, 1989):2/5 

[N/A] A dreamy and self-consciously storybook narrative following two cute young women chasing one another through a touristy portrait of NYC, akin to Céline and Julie Go Boating. Voice-over explicitly name-checks Picnic at Hanging Rock, Moonfleet, Zero for Conduct, Eyes Without a Face, Dark Passage, Modern Times, Citizen Kane, Duel in the Sun, Night of the Hunter, and The Phantom of the Opera, and King Kong. But fails to earn a place in their company.