The Rite - 2011

 Yikes.  I guessed this was about 20 years older than it was.  That is not a good sign, eh?

I've never cared too much for exorcism movies.  This broadly includes The Exorcist, I will even admit, which I feel like great music and great cinematography aside, is largely boring and not scary.  I don't find anything scary about devils or demons or satans or whatever depicted in movies, even including the demonic kid movies or whatever.  Cults and people as villains are cool, but not actual demons.

The Rite is about a mortician who decides to join the clergy, and is targeted to become a modern exorcist because of his background of being used to dark and scary stuff.  He is paired with Anthony Hopkins as a working exorcist, and they are sent to exorcise a pregnant woman and a young boy.  There's a lot of scenes of this, and basically not much happens except the younger main character stuggles to decide if he thinks exorcisms or even god are real.

Hopkins then himself becomes possessed by the devil, and it's up to our young protagonist to test his faith by clearing Hopkins of the demonic influence.  Again, I'm kinda like, I don't care,,,?  The dude finds Brazilian hottie Alice Braga and he's paired with her.  There are some tittilating teases to the audience with the hot pregnant woman, and Hopkins gets to play a villain again briefly.

There's not a whole lot to say about it other than if you like exorcism movies, here is another one for your consideration.  It goes straight down the line, and when it ended I wondered aloud, "did anything happen in that movie?"

I'll give it 1.5 stars for the acting and the basically "it made sense and was linear" aspect.

The Watcher - 2000

 The year was 2000 or 2001 when Ben Shannon and I rented this terrible Keanu Reeves "horror" movie and watched it at his house. I don't think we liked it even then. 

This movie was apparently made because Keanu signed off on a cameo role in the movie, then they rewrote it and expanded his role. He had signed and was legally obligated so he begrudgingly made it. It's one of his few "bad guy" performances. 

James Spader is a drug taking cop...  Drug taking as in it's seen once, never again, and apparently we are left to decide he "just simply beat it" based on what the movie tells us.  Marisa Tomei is a therapist, Ernie Hudson is a cop guy. It's a whatever plot, basically Keanu is killing women and taunting cops, Spader pursues, it's the "cat and mouse" thing you've seen before. Made all the worse by terrible 2000s over done style. Honestly, again, it's an awful time stamp. 

From minute 8ish I think you'll know how this one's gonna go. And guess what? You're right. It doesn't shock or surprise. The Watcher marches along, straight down the line, average in every conceivable way, and chock full of stupid early 2000s choices. 

I'll give it a star I guess.

The Crazies - 1973

 Guessed the year without even a moment of hesitation.  

Elephant in the room time here, I got a new GF and she lives a ways away and even when I'm not busy with her I have not been in the mood to watch movies.  I had two entire months of basically watching only partial eps of MST3K, and now I'm finally watching some things here and there, even if it was only on in the background like this movie here.

The Crazies starts with it's alternate title of "Code Name: Trixie" and it was directed by George A Romero.  This film was in a way Romero's return to horror, after making Night of the Living Dead he did a comedy and a drama, and though this has comedy elements, it is mostly suspense and/or horror lite.  

The plot of this one is that there is a government leak of a new virus into the local water supply - a virus which either will kill you or make you go insane and start killing people.  It's sort of like an almost remake of the idea of Night of the Living Dead except with an explanation this time.  Mobs of people after the main characters either way, just one has an explanation and one did not.  

Romero was always trying to become a real director throught his career.  I'm not slamming him right here or anything, but you can see that for all his stepping into other genres, he never escaped the horror genre, and after about 1980 never did much else outside of that.  But one thing he did return to was comedy, firmly keeping that as part of this movies.  Which...  he regretfully didn't do well, as exemplified here.

It ain't funny.  I am not even totally sure it's supposed to be, except it obviosuly is.  Truly though, it is too dumb to be scary and not well written enough to be funny, so instead it's kind of just "there".  Tuning it off would be no fault of yours.  So, I'll give it like a 2.

Earthquake - 1974

 Continuing on 1970s disaster films, as started in The Towering Inferno.

I mention Inferno, and honestly, this movie felt a LOT like it.  Charlton Heston, big building in trouble, natural disaster theme, and lots of character drama in between - these felt like the same movie.  To the degree where I once fast-forwarded to see if it contained a scene I specifically remembered because I was actually for a moment thinking I had seen this before.  That is how familiar it felt.

Charlton Heston is Stewart Graff, a no nonsense character who is actually quite nonsense since he's putting up with some bitch drama queen alcoholic suicidal bitch wife.  The other characters are "I don't play by the rules cop" George Kennedy, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree and Marjoe Gortner.  Marjoe Gortner, despite a bad intro to him, I guess was a real actor?

Earthquake is basically the average disaster movie with a decent budget from the 70s.  A small quake hits at minute 35 and people are worried, but the Jaws-ish mayor character says there's nothing to worry about while science says there is, guess who wins?  Then the big one hits.  This movie takes place in LA and it mostly affects a skyscraper which is 40 stories high.  There's a line of dialogue, basically "this is why we shouldn't build them this high".  Buddy, if you only knew what was coming.

Heston to the rescue, Kennedy to the rescue, Gortner goes nuts and other people do other things as the movie evolves into a "crisis" level affair.  It's what you expect, and how many times have I said that?  I wonder when the next disaster type movie will come along?  I like them, personally.  However that said, this is lesser than Towering Inferno, and it feels like a unnecessary follow up, 2.5 stars.

Land of Doom - 1986

 There must be something I am missing that made apocalyptic movies so fucking popular in the 80s. There were kazillions of them!

Land of Doom reminds me of that movie Hundra I watched like a million years ago. If only cuz it was another female protagonist led, oldy timey sword and sandal whatever. I guess Conan the Barbarian influenced this as well, on second thought. 

So basically it's girl warrior teaming up with good guy to take on huge gang of baddies blah blah. It's post apocalyptic but also sword and sandal, and if you think that's original you need to watch more movies. 

Trying to remember anything noteworthy about it... Hmm. I literally finished it like an hour ago. It's already a grey blob on my memory. Who knows. 1.5 stars. 

Cult of the Damned - 1971

 Its slow at work and I wanted something wierd or crazy on in the background. I put this on. 

The uncredited alternate name I came up with for this movie was "Things Happening: The Movie".  But as this movie kept going, and it dragged on as it really has a tendency to do, I downgraded it in my head to "Things Sorta Happening: The Movie".

This movie is some sort of wandering psuedo indictment of the rich. It has a fat girl (fat by 70s standards is probably under the average weight now...) with a gay dad and a cruel mom, and she begins to hang out with these annoying free spirited hippie types who give her drugs and make her feel sexy and accepted.  The guys are in a band and the lead singer starts seducing everyone. Along the way are "trippy" interjections and long, boring scenes. 

This was apparently written by some guy for his wife to star in, and if someone wrote this for me I'd probably fucking break up with them. 

I don't know what the point of it was or what it was supposed to be, but what it is instead is a giant waste of time. When the best thing about the movie is its creative newspaper collage opening, well, you know it's bad. No stars.

The Howling - 1981

 After two months of silence, I forced myself to watch something which would surely get a review posted.  It did.  And don't call me Shirley.

My grandmother used to record movies rented from the store onto VHS at home.  I know a lot of people who did this in the 90s.  VHS were expensive, and with just two VCRS (or one with two tape trays) and some blank tapes you could rip these movies off for relatively cheap, and very easily.  The crime was simple, and a lot of people took advantage, as well as of course recording movies and shows off of cable TV.

Anyways, we borrowed a bunch of VHS from time to time, and one of the ones I remember borrowing specifically had The Howling first and The Manitou second.  Now that I write about it, I wonder how and why this double feature VHS came to be, as well as I wonder specifically how we ended up with it.  Who chose to borrow this?  My dad is the clear candidate, and I wonder if he knew what this or The Manitou was, if he ever watched them, etc.

The Howling was the movie that got Joe Dante onto Gremlins, and cemented him as a horror director before he got later saddled as a kids film director, basically stemming from Gremlins.  Dante had done Piranha before this, and that was successful, but this was also successful and won awards and the effects especially got the movie noticed.  

The Howling stars Dee Wallace, Christopher Stone, Belinda Balasky, and oddly enough Robert Picardo as well as a whole ton of classic character actors like John Carradine and Dick Miller.  We begin with Dee Wallace as Karen being contacted by a serial killer and meeting him in a sleezy porn theater.  Karen works for the news, and is this guy's target basically because he's infatuated with her.  Once at the theater, he turns into a werewolf behind her, gets shot by the police, and leaves her scarred and scared, with a doctor's recommendation to take some time away at "The Colony," a creepy community with a scary secret.

I haven't said it yet, but given that we borrowed this on VHS for a long time, this was a childhood movie of mine that I absolutely loved.  I remembered every part of this, even the exact cadence and tone of some of the dialogue.  I watched this about 1000 times and it was my genesis of horror movie interest.  The script was rewritten by John Sayles, so there's a comedic and meta level to the film, it's a hair over 90 minutes, there's nudity, the vibe is fucking weird and creepy, and everything in this movie works extremely well.

I really love this movie, rewatching it I would say it still holds up.  It's a weird one, for sure, very unique and very tonally offset.  At parts The Howling feels like a 70's movie, but then other parts it feels exactly like a lurid gauzy 80's masturbation fest, so it bridges that line terrifically.  

I feel like I could talk about this movie forever, but overall what I love about it is the atmosphere, the B quality of it, it's full self awareness of what it is, and yet it is solidly backed up with acting and effects.  Nowadays, things lean into genres too much, and movies are seemingly not allowed to just be a little bit funny or off or horrific, they have to commit to things more.  I love that this didn't get roped into being just one thing, and instead it is multiple.

I cannot give this movie less than 5 stars.