Boris Karloff is here to creep you out...

3:30 AM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Body Snatcher
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in a movie about graverobbing and murder? Count me in! Directed by Robert Wise.

4:45 AM [Turner Classic Movies]
Isle of the Dead
People on a Balkan island think that a young woman is a vrykolakas. Really? When you got Boris Karloff hanging out there? If you're wondering what a vrykolakas, think vampire but:

"The bodies of vrykolakas have the same distinctive characteristics as the bodies of vampires in Balkan folklore. They do not decay; instead, they swell and may even attain a "drum-like" form, they have a ruddy complexion, and are, according to one account, "fresh and gorged with new blood". People with red hair and gray eyes at this time in history were thought to be vampires according to accounts near the region of modern Serbia. The activities of the vrykolakas are nearly always harmful, verging from merely leaving their grave and "roaming about", through engaging in poltergeist-like activity, and up to causing epidemics in the community. Among other things, the creature is believed to knock on the doors of houses and call out the name of the residents. If it gets no reply the first time, it will pass without causing any harm. If someone does answer the door, he or she will die a few days later and become another vrykolakas. For this reason, there is a superstition present in certain Greek villages that one should not answer a door until the second knock. Legends also say that the vrykolakas crushes or suffocates the sleeping by sitting on them, much like a mara or incubus (cf. sleep paralysis) — as does a vampire in Bulgarian folklore."-- Wikipedia

3:00 PM (2005) [SyFy]
The Dark
Odd film - Maria Bello plays a mom visiting her Welsh husband when her daughter disappears one day and another girl pops up. There's a religious cult, and sheep, and Sean Bean is confused about it all, and in the end, it's like Silent Hill.

6:35 PM [Independent Film Channel]
The Prophecy
Great movie about an angel (Christopher Walken) trying to destroy humanity, the people trying to stop it, and a little girl who has the soul of the most evil person on earth inside of her, though she's a nice kid. Oh, yeah, and Viggo Mortensen is the devil. Followed by a bunch of sequels - skip 2 and 3, but the ones set in Eastern Europe are pretty fun.

9:00 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Unknown (1927)
Okay, this movie is messed up. Apparently, Lon Chaney plays a knifethrower who uses his feet to throw knives, since he's missing arms. Except that he's totally pretending he doesn't have arms. Except that then he falls in love with Joan Crawford, who has this whole of guys touching her, but Lon's cool because he doesn't have arms. Except that he does because he totally kills the girl's dad and then has his arms chopped off so she'll be with him. Except now she's fallen in love with the strongman and is completely down with being touched. He goes crazy and tries to kill her lover, then saves her life, then gets stomped to death by a horse. The end. Yeah.

Skyhigh is the story of the gatekeeper for the gate of grudges and the souls that pass through. They may be young, old, male, female, rich, poor, but they all have two things in common: they were murdered and they get the same three choices in the afterlife:

1 - Accept your death and go to heaven for resurrection.
2 - Refuse your death and wander the earth forever as a ghost.
3 - Curse one person in the world and go to hell.

Most choose the last and that's where the horror really starts. Because the curse will never end well, because the one you think someone will choose is not necessarily the one to blame, and because in the end, the person's still dead. It's like reading a very dark version of The Twilight Zone, where there's a lesson to be learned at the end and it's usually a pretty nasty one.

The artwork, despite the subject matter, can be quite lovely, especially in the splash panels, and the self-contained nature of most of the stories allows for a self-paced read - you don't feel like you need to read the entire thing in one night (although it's entertaining enough that you can).

Followed by a sequel, Skyhigh Karma, which I still haven't read, made into a TV show, which I can't find, and a movie, which I watched and loved before I even read the manga.


Ark Sano - The Day The World Went Away
Lee Byeong-hun - Fantasy I from Voice
Colleen - I Was Deep In A Dream And I Didn't Know It