1:00 AM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Old Dark House (1932)
Now this is more like it. The original film, not the William Castle version, this stars Boris Karloff as the creepy butler of a gloomy, deranged family. There's pyromania, alcoholism, religius fanaticism, and just plain strangeness with some great dialogue.

8:30 AM [SyFy]
The Insatiable
One of my favorite direct to video releases, it's the story of a young man who captures a vampire serial killer after he fails to kill her, having fallen in love. Mind games ensue, Michael Biehn plays a former marine in a wheelchair, and if you like bunnies, you probably shouldn't watch this.

2:45 PM (1991) [Independent Film Channel]
Afraid of the Dark
Odd movie where a young boy, facing an operation to recover his sight, believes that someone is stalking and killing blind women in his neighborhood. But is that actually happening? The second half goes into some bizarre territory and let's just say an unreliable narrator is putting it mildly.

8:00 PM [American Movie Classics]
Ghostbusters
Ray. If someone asks if you are a god, you say, "yes!"

10:30 PM [American Movie Classics]
Ghostbusters II
If my hands weren't tied by the unalterable fetters of the law, then I would invoke the tradition of our illustrious forebears, reach back to a purer, sterner justice, and have you BURNED AT THE STAKE!

Double feature on AMC, you can study up on all the ghost fighting while you're waiting to see if they're actually going to make a third one or not (still in scripting, release date says 2012, so I wouldn't get too excited yet). But hey, you can keep yourself company with the Stay-Puft Man, the most adorable giant marshmallow ever.

A fairly short anime series (4 OVAs) based on an older anime/manga I haven't seen, Demon Prince Enma is about a fire-based demon named Enma, who comes to earth to get rid of other demons that have escaped from Hell, along with an ice demon named Yukihime (who has that whole forbidden, two different worlds love going on with Enma), a kappa named Kapaeru, and a hat that's really an ancient demon named Grandpa Chapeauji.

It's a a bit of spoiler to say that you shouldn't get too attached to any character in the series. These OVAs have a nasty way of killing off the nicest ones - and also the most developed, character-wise. And the ending has all sorts of vicious moral lessons to impart on certain characters. Watch out in the fourth OVA for the painting depicting the Dance of Death because it's going to be the biggest clue to the entire series.

Sixteen Horsepower - Sinnerman
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Mercy Seat

A nifty TCM marathon of William Castle today, most likely to commemorate the fact that his movies are getting a fairly substantial DVD release this week.

5:00 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
Mr. Sardonicus
Man gets his face frozen into a huge grin when he robs a tomb. Since this is pre-Nip/Tuck, sadly, there will be no viable plastic surgery option for him.

6:45 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
Strait-Jacket
Joan Crawford murders her husband (Lee Majors!) with an axe and is released twenty years later to live with her brother at a farm. Then people start getting killed with an axe. Apparently, when this movie was first released, Castle handed out cardboard axes to people. Man, where did those days go?

8:30 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Tingler
Vincent Price figures out that when your spine tingles, it just means there's a parasite on your back feeding off your fear and the only way to destroy it is to scream. To ensure that happened in real life, Castle equipped theater seats with buzzers and put fake nurses in the theater lobby. Matinee makes so much more sense now.

10:00 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
13 Ghosts
Guy inherits haunted house and must get rid of ghosts to keep their real estate investment from killing them. Filmed in "Illusion-O", which is an odd sort of 3D that doesn't really work (you can choose whether or not to see the ghosts with special glasses except that you can totally see them without the glasses).

11:30 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Old Dark House (1963)
Remake of the 1932 James Whale movie, I have never seen this version. However, since it's a William Castle, expect unintentionally funny moments, some truly terrible acting, and plenty of schlock.

They remade this with Joshua Jackson, and it wasn't completely horrible, but you still should stick the original Shutter.

It's a bitter little morality tale of sorts, except that it has crazy ghosts and creepy photos. There's a couple that runs over a woman and then leaves her body in the road, which of course, is totally the correct thing to do if you want to suffer horrible consequences. And they do, as the photographer starts seeing strange things in his pictures and his girlfriend investigates why his friends keep dying.

It's got more than a few twists, so I won't spoil it, but everyone gets what they deserve in the end.

Badawi - Entrance
String Quartet - Sunburn

If we can take anything from this day, it's that writing books drives you crazy, though the bright side is that it also gives you the power to manipulate time and space. Good times there.

2:00 PM [SyFy]
In the Mouth of Madness
An insurance investigator is hired to find out what happened to a popular horror writer. It turns out everything he's written about really exists (or does it?) and oh yeah, there's a lot of Lovecraftian talk about ancient gods retaking the earth. Insanity, forbidden manuscripts, someone named Pickman... that certainly doesn't sound familiar.

5:30 PM [MoreMax]
The Guardian (1990)
Family hires a nanny who turns out to be a tree-worshipping Druid who wants to sacrifice their kid. Lesson to be learned here: always background check.

5:50 PM [Encore Drama]
The Dark Half
Underrated movie based on Stephen King book about a writer who tries to kill off his pseudonym that has managed to come to life and is now committing violent, gruesome acts. The movie ends fairly happily, the book less so.

There's so many version of Blood: The Last Vampire, it's hard to know where to begin. There's the original animated movie, the manga, the novels, a video game, an anime series that spawned its own novels, manga and video game, and a live action film. The last will be released onto DVD in the U.S. this week.

Basically, all feature the same concept: a girl named Saya with varying levels of vampirism (usually full-blooded) and a sword who fights other vampire-like creatures called Chiroptera. Naturally, there's quite a bit of blood. And you can't forget the schoolgirl uniform - it's to Japanese horror what teenagers having sex are to American ones.

Pretty cool - the original anime movie is the scariest and makes an excellent double feature with Vampire Hunter D.

BLAM HONEY - Enlarge Disorder
UNKLE - Nursery Rhyme/Breather
Add N to (X) - Revenge of the Black Regent

D&D last night means abbreviated films for today:

12:45 PM [Independent Film Channel]
The Vanishing
I'm presuming this is the original Dutch one, not the Kiefer one, which means you get an appropriately horrific ending to the story of a man who goes looking for his girlfriend who went missing three years ago.

2:35 PM [Independent Film Channel]
Sisters (1973)
A model is stalked by her former Siamese twin while a reporter and a private investigator try to figure it all out. It's Brian de Palma so expect a lot of Hitchcockian influence and weird camera tricks. It'll be stylish, but good luck figuring out any rationality to the plot.

7:00 PM [SyFy]
The Dunwich Horror (2009)
Jeffrey Combs as Wilbur Whateley and Dean Stockwell as Dr. Henry Armitage? Hee, even if the movie is completely horrible, this bit of casting makes me happy. Sadly, they apparently put in a young couple for a love story, so I think I'm going to it's going to go the way of many Lovecraft movies: could have been good, but they screwed up some key elements of the story.

9:00 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Phantom of the Opera
The original silent version with Lon Chaney as the eponymous phantom who just wants to enjoy his opera house and listen to some decent singers, for once.

11:00 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
Vampyr
Another silent film, this time with a young traveller who finds a village where a Vampyr has minions who make people kill themselves so their souls will go to hell. Clearly not your typical vampire movie.

Otherwise known as the season of True Blood, where everything went truly crazy. You've got the following: a maenad making truly disturbing food in Sookie's grandma's kitchen, a Viking vampire out to save his emo maker, a teenage vampire trying to figure out how to date and lose her virginity (sadly impossible for her), a waitress turning into a deer to impress her shapeshifter boyfriend, Tara dating a guy with a penchant for blackouts and rough sex, someone getting it on with a tree, Jason and the local deputy forming a crimefighting team, and Sookie and Bill trying to get some alone time in the midst of this mess.

The final episode is fairly insane and a bit messy in the wrap-up, but it does leave some decent cliffhangers for next season.

Iron & Wine - Evening On The Ground (Lilith's Song)
Bat for Lashes - Sleep Alone

Set your Tivo/DVR/VCR early this morning - there's a lot of good stuff then if you're willing to stay up and watch.

12:00 AM [Encore Action]
Cemetery Man
"The Living Dead and the dying living are all the same. Cut from the same cloth. But disposing of dead people is a public service, whereas you're in all sorts of trouble if you kill someone while they're still alive."

12:45 AM [Turner Classic Movies]
TerrorVision
The TCM website says: "A family's satellite television becomes a gateway to an alien invasion." No idea if it's good or not, but at least you know it has Chad Allen in it.

1:00 AM [American Movie Classics]
Puppet Master
The original creepy puppet movie - forget the love story aspect of this movie and concentrate on the fact that there are evil puppets killing people. Followed by several sequels of middling quality, all available in a boxed set for you completists (though why anyone would ever want to own Curse of the Puppet Master with its horrible main actor is beyond me).

3:00 AM [American Movie Classics]
Earth vs. the Spider (1958)
There's a small town with a valiant science teacher and plucky teenagers. There's a giant mutant spider resurrected by rock music. Let the rumble begin!

3:00 AM [Turner Classic Movies]
Freaks
One of those classic movies that never stops being deeply disturbing, it's the story of an affair gone wrong when a trapeze artist plots to murder her midget husband with the help of the circus strong man. But she didn't count on the circus 'freaks' and that's where the really horrific part is. The ending is still incredibly creepy and gah...

Another Scandinavian vampire movie, this time set in Lapland (Sweden). A doctor and her teenage daughter move to a small town after her divorce, and immediately begin noticing odd occurences. It doesn't help that there's a doctor experimenting with drugs that turn people into vampires and a bunch of teenagers get a hold of them. And then there's a party and the teenage daughter decides to attend...

Yep, lots of gore, blood, and darkly comic moments ensue. It's funnier than Let The Right One In as well as a lot less haunting - the movie's fluff but it's fun fluff. And the ending's not bad either, with a small, but neat twist.

Rob Zombie - Spookshow Baby
Zombina & The Skeletons - Nobody Likes You When You're Dead
Global Kryner - Toxic

From famine to feast... seriously, it's a great day for horror movies. And an Angela Lansbury double feature!

4:00 AM (1944) [Turner Classic Movies]
Gaslight
I love this movie so much. Ingrid Bergman marries Charles Boyer and immediately thinks she's going crazy. Angela Lansbury, her maid, agrees with her, but Joseph Cotten, a police detective, and Dame May Whitty, a nosy neighbor, aren't so sure. All Bergman knows is that the lights keep going down and someone's walking around upstairs... but she's alone, right? Right?

6:00 AM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
Man stays young and beautiful, painting gets old and ugly. It's the classic story of selling your soul to stay pretty and this version has Angela Lansbury and Donna Reed.

4:15 PM [Encore Mystery]
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?
Wow. I did not think I would ever see this one on TV. Shelley Winters is a crazy old lady who holds parties for orphans while also trying to contact her dead daughter. Two orphans play Hansel and Gretel to her evil old witch and it ends just like you would expect.

9:00 PM [Independent Film Channel]
Eaten Alive (1976)
Motel owner has pet crocodile and scythe. You guess the level of room service the guests get.

9:30 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
The Lodger (1944)
If you'd prefer an evil guest, instead, try the story where everyone thinks one of the boarding house lodgers is Jack the Ripper. But is he?

11:00 PM [Turner Classic Movies]
Videodrome
Just trying to explain this movie makes my brain turn to mush. There's James Woods and he's a TV executive who pirates a TV program called "Videodrome", which is apparently snuff. Debbie Harry's a psychologist, and Woods gets a VCR in his body, and everything is Cronenberg, which is to say, grotesque, surreal, and nonsensical.

They're going to remake Let The Right One In, which seems highly unnecessary, given that the original movie is perfect on its own. And something tells me they're going to cut out the ambiguity of Eli's true nature - which if you know the book (and I didn't before I watched the movie) makes it a bit harder for Overture/Hammer Films to sell as a boy meets vampire girl love story (as I suspect they'll try). I just have this horrible suspicion that a lot of the more 'problematic' elements of the book will be eliminated. I hope not, but...

All in all, the original Swedish film is a perfect vampire movie - it's gory and bloody and violent, and also tender, romantic, and wistful. And the scene above encapsulates what I love so much about it: it's unmistakably horrifying, but then there's the two of them smiling, and everything is all right for them, at least.

Ane Brun - This Voice
Ólafur Arnalds - Allt varð hljótt
Seppuku Paradigm - Your Witness
James Blackshaw - Fix
Fleet Foxes - Sun It Rises

Oh, sweet Turner Classic Movies. You turn an otherwise atrocious day for horror movies into merely a mildly boring one.

2:00 AM [TCM]
Son Of Kong
Because apparently learning your lesson the first time wasn't an option, producer Carl Denham decides he'll make another go of it on Skull Island. Unfortunately, Fay Wray is not around to tell him otherwise, so it'll all end in tears. Again.

10:00 AM [TCM]
I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958)
Woman suspects her husband is an alien - but this time, it's not Charlize Theron and Johnny Depp with blond hair. Supposedly in letterbox format, which just makes it that much classier.

11:30 AM [TCM]
War Of The Worlds, The (1953)
Martians want to destroy us, and both Orson Welles and Tom Cruise aren't around to save the day. Luckily, some dude named Dr. Clayton Forrester is, though don't count on TV's Frank to pitch in.

Drag Me To Hell is one of those movies where at some point, I start hoping it will end well, even though I know that this type of story never does. It starts out like a morality play: young loan officer refuses to give old woman a loan and she curses her, later physically attacking her in a parking lot. But somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking that it was one of those tales designed to teach the heroine a lesson, and I remembered: it's Sam Raimi. And in Raimi movies, sometimes bad things happen to people for the only reason of being in the wrong place at the right horrific time.

And because it's a Sam Raimi, you also get those trippy visuals and camera shots that make his movies so much fun. It doesn't seem quite as crazy as the Evil Dead series, but what is? There's plenty of dirt and gore to make up for it.

She & Him - I Put A Spell On You
Jen Titus - O Death
Murder By Death - End of the Line

10:30 AM [Fox Movie Channel]
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte
Oh, Southern Gothic at its finest. Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland are cousins who are trying to prevent their house from getting demolished. However, Olivia has a secret plan to drive Bette crazy, with the help of Joseph Cotten. And then Agnes Moorehead gets involved as Bette's housekeeper and Mary Astor's there too, and in the end, everyone's either dead or crazy in a melodramatic (and therefore, totally Southern) way.

11:00 AM [FX]
Halloween: H20
Twenty years after the original Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis is a headmistress for a school where her son, Josh Hartnett, attends. He's too busy trying to have a normal life and hook up with Michelle Williams to worry about his mom's increasing panic that Michael Myers might be back. Of course, she is totally correct and a number of people die before she can kill him for good. This being a horror movie franchise, however, did you actually think that death would stick? Pretty decent follow-up and I really wish they hadn't made the lameness that was Halloween: Resurrection.

6:00 PM [Encore Mystery]
Flatliners
Medical students try to find out what's on the other side by temporarily killing themselves. Since this involves the whole "meddling in God's domain," it doesn't go so well. Julia Roberts gets haunted by her dad, Kiefer Sutherland almost dies at the hand of a kid he accidentally killed, Kevin Bacon has to apologize, William Baldwin slept with a lot of women, and Oliver Platt's kind of just there.

If you like French movies with martial arts, a mysterious Vatican courtesan with a razor-tipped fan, tarot cards, wolves, hallucinations, people coming back from the dead, sheep, conspiracies, the French Revolution, and some great cinematography, then you've obviously seen this movie and appreciated its wonderful lunacy. If not, it really must be seen to be believed.

Esmerine - Quelques Mots Pleins d'Ombre
Amon Tobin - Bloodstone
Soap&Skin - Marche Funebre
Dan Levy - Wolves
Muse - Sing for Absolution

7:15 AM [Starz Edge]
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Ah, the classic animated Halloween/Christmas movie not directed by Tim Burton, which I had a hard time convincing certain people of until Coraline came out. Anyhow, it's stop-motion and awesome, and Danny Elfman wrote the quintessential Halloween song in it, which has been used on so many horror movie montages on YouTube. Plus, Marilyn Manson's cover didn't help lower that number. Panic At The Disco's version is creeping up there, too.

11:15 AM [Encore Mystery]
Dead of Winter
Creepy little movie where a woman who thinks she's getting a film part in a movie staged at a remote country house realizes she's actually being used for a murder plot. Since Roddy McDowell's hanging out there, you know it's going to get even creepier. Remake of "My Name is Julia Ross."

7:30 PM [FX]
Hellboy
Not scary, but certainly supernatural. Since it's on basic cable, it's likely to be edited, but hey, it's always worth a watch if you don't already own it. Because you can't go wrong with Ron Perlman as a big red guy who likes cats, kicking ass, and a certain fiery chick played by Selma Blair. Gratuitious Lovecraft references are a bonus.

11:00 PM [SyFy]
The Crow
Guy gets killed, comes back to life as disturbing white-faced dude and wreaks his revenge for his girlfriend's death as well as his own. Spawned a number of sequels, but the original with Brandon Lee is still the best. One of the first videotapes I ever owned.

Eternal Sabbath is a manga with an inherent contradiction probably best shown in its heroine, Mine Kujo: she's the 'nicest' person there and yet the most isolated as well. Her 'density' of mind allows her to meet Ryosuke Akiba, a psychic manipulator, and try to understand him, but this very blockage in her mind keeps him from being able to read her. As a rule, Izaku, the more irrational, childish psychic, uses people's dark emotions to get them to commit atrocious acts, yet their capacity to love and regret destroys him in the end.

It's a very cold manga - the artwork is clean and straightforward, but well-drawn. As for dialogue, there's quite a bit of scientific speculation, since the basis of the plot is the bioengineering of human immortality, but there's also a love story that gradually develops, culminating in a final plot twist that really makes perfect sense when you consider how Akiba was evolving. I read the manga a while ago, then reread it this month, and I found it held up very well to another visit - it's clearly a well-plotted story and there are reallly no parts where you feel the mangaka didn't know what she was doing.

Radiohead - Bodysnatchers
Hole - Violet [Psychoz mix]
Flyleaf - Something I Can Never Have
Radiohead - Climbing Up The Walls

Not a great day for new horror - I'd suggest watching Drag Me To Hell, but it doesn't come out until tomorrow. Meanwhile, Netflix is getting The Evil Dead and Scanners back from me. Huzzah for 80s cult classics!

4:00 AM [Logo]
The Hunger
Speaking of cult classics, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie are vampire lovers until Bowie gets a little too old and Susan Sarandon gets a little too attractive to Deneuve. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of this movie, but it is a fairly important movie in vampire film history.

7:00 AM [Showtime Extreme]
The Gate
Terry: May the old devils depart! May they burn in the fires of their own damnation! May they freeze in the infinite golden darkness of their own hideous creation!
Glen: Isn't that kind of insulting?
Terry: I guess it's supposed to be. I mean, we're trying to get rid of them.
There are demons in a surburban backyard and only a young Stephen Dorff and some other kids can stop them. Has its own special DVD release, since apparently, there's a lot of Dorff fans out there.

9:00 AM [G4]
Class of Nuke 'em High
There's mutants in a New Jersey high school [Americans: insert your own joke here]. Leave it to Troma to fulfill all our radioactive teenager needs.

8:00 PM [FX]
Snakes on a Plane
I'm really stretching the concept of horror here to include this, since ultimately snakes attacking random passengers until Samuel L. Jackson kicks their ass is not so much terrifying as really cheesy. But I have a special fondness for it and its wonderfully over the top theme song.

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