HALLOWEEN HORRORS

For the 2024 FALL SEASON!

X-TRO (1983)

Marketed as the ANTI E.T. - THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL (which was released several months prior) ‘‘X-TRO’’ is a bizarre, British horror film that is subtle in his brilliance. Dismissed as a TRASH CLASSIC, a ‘‘video nasty’’ (across the pond), X-TRO is actually an arthouse film that has atmosphere for DAYS and is genuinely disturbing. Roger Ebert famously called it, ‘‘mean spirited’’ and ‘‘depressing’’. It IS oddly ‘‘depressing’’ - but that is why it is brilliant.

It also is a snapshot of the deteriorating state of the UK in the early 80s. The Cold War is getting WHITE HOT again, Thatcher is trying to make Britain competitive again (after decades of failing state socialism), there is an undercurrent of menace and alienation (no pun intended).

This movie starts out as straightforward, body-horror-on-a-budget but then becomes something...DIFFERENT.

The PLOT is simple - a family man with a wife and young son in the English countryside inexplicably disappears one afternoon in the wake of a bizarre astronomical weather event. He returns years alter but has been - altered. What remains of his human intelligence drives him to reclaim his son - and transform the boy into whatever he HIMSELF is becoming. If this flick doesn’t weird you out, you got no imagination.

FOUND (2012)

Based on a sleeper novella by Todd Rigney, ‘‘FOUND’’ is a slow burn - but the payoff is brutal and shocking. This film is NOT for the squeamish. The story is straightforward - Marty is a pre-teen living in ANYTOWN, 1990s suburbia. He is obsessed with horror and slasher movies and comic books. His youngish parents seem like a cross section of White America of the era. His somewhat ‘‘ethnic’’ father and his still very attractive mother obviously are enduring marital tension. But the true conflict in the home is between the parents and 19 year old metalhead, ne’er do well firstborn ‘‘Steve’’.

The film is narrated by Marty and from his perspective. In the opening scene, he explains the horror of the day he discovered that Steve was a serial killer - having ‘‘FOUND’’ the severed head of a Black prostitute hidden among Steve’s belongings. Steve murders people (often Black women - although he does not discriminate. The implication is that Steve is murdering people he can conveniently capture and kill, but he is beginning to lose control of his homicidal impulses).

Marty laments that the, ‘‘Old Steve’’ who was his hero and protector is largely gone - and only the monster remains.

There is a ‘‘movie within a movie’’ subplot - wherein Steve and Marty both view a VHS tape of a gruesome, grindhouse slasher simply called, ‘‘Headless’’. (Deliberately) crude as the ‘‘Headless’’ segments are - they’re HIGHLY disturbing. Snuff-film like. Director Schirmer later filmed a complete version of ‘‘HEADLESS’’, in 2015 - and its one of the few slasher films I found really unsettling. Its disgusting, but its more the atmosphere and the nasty surrealism of it that makes it hit hard.

Watch ‘‘FOUND’’ alone with the lights low - if it doesn’t grab your attention you’re not an independent film junkie.

PHANTASM (1979)

PHANTASM (and the oeuvre of director Don Coscarelli generally) is sort of like Velvet Underground - his movies never hit big, never had big budgets or studio sponsorship (with the exception of PHANTASM II - which dropped in 1988 during the peak of big studio horror movies) but directors from Wes Craven to Nicholas Refn have paid direct homage to his movies and he remains massively influential in cult film.

PHANTASM came to Coscarelli in a nightmare. He dreamed he was being chased by glassine spheres through a mortuary. This dreamlike surrealism carries over into every aspect of the film.

On the surface, its a story about a young boy coming to terms with DEATH. But its much more than that. It poses questions about what is the true nature of EXPERIENCE? If events in the mind are things we truly experience, and if something is ‘‘real’’ to the person enduring it, does it even matter if its a purely psychological event.

Superficially, its about a sinister UNDERTAKER (known only as, ‘‘The Tall Man’’) who appears to be a graverobber and possibly a murderer. But subsequently, it becomes clear he is some sort of inter dimensional entity.

The setting is rural California in the late 1970s - and it captures that culture perfectly. This was also a time when young boys (and girls) were being HUNTED, brutalized and torn to pieces by real life fiends such as William Bonin, John Wayne Gacy, Larry Eyeler and other human monsters.

There’s a subtext of MENACE to this movie that anyone grew up in the 1970s and 1980s remembers all to well. Pre HI TECH, during the peak of the VIOLENCE epidemic, if you were a kid, you were being HUNTED. - and you knew it.

PHANTASM is great SCI FI/HORROR - even the (unintentional?) comedy is great (see the KILLER fly in the garbage disposal scene).

Fans will know Coscarelli as the director of ‘‘BUBBA HO TEP’’ - which, despite the ludicrousness of the film - portrayed ELVIS PRESLEY and the MEMPHIS MAFIA in truly reverential terms. ANY Peckerwood loves Elvis has a soft spot for Coscarelli for this reason alone.

MORE TO COME between NOW and ‘WEEN 2024!