EVIL DEAD (1981)

Man, this is vicious. I’d only seen ARMY OF DARKNESS before this, and so I was expecting a kinda goofy comedy horror thing, but this is something else. It’s basically the first few minutes of AOD told movie-length, and it’s a nail-biting experience. A bunch of kids are spending a weekend (I think) in a cabin, find a tape recorder there, and play what’s on it. Turns out the previous tenants were an archaeologist and his wife who had found “the Book of the Dead” and were translating it. In doing so, they conjured up an ancient evil. But he’d read the translation on the tape recorder, so when the kids play it back…

 
The acting is about what you’d expect from a bunch of first-timers (even Bruce Campbell hasn’t become “Bruce Campbell” yet), but it’s the direction that grabs you. It’s a non-stop rollercoaster of zooming cameras, sharp edits, and pools of gore. Horror movies don’t get much more fun than this.

GODZILLA (1954)

This is the classic. Such a good movie. Growing up, all I’d seen was the American cut (GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS) with Raymond Burr, and while it was good, it’s nothing compared to the original Japanese version. Holy crap. If all you know are the kinda campy Godzilla movies where he’s the good guy fighting off various monsters who are threatening to destroy Tokyo, you have to see this. It’s totally serious, and Godzilla is the villain. It’s all about the A-bomb, too, so it’s got a serious message behind it. You all know the story: after nuclear testing, a mutated dinosaur rises from the ocean’s depths to wreak havoc on humankind. And he does. The miniatures are all amazing, the mixture of guy-in-suit and puppetry effects is really convincing (it helps that Godzilla’s not seen that often), and the fear of Japanese people basically running for their lives from nuclear annihilation is so convincing that it’ll move you almost to tears. It’s a must-see.

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

Way before George Romero made zombies the flesh-eating ghouls we all know and love, the word “zombie” meant walking corpses working under the rule of a Voodoo priest. And of all the early horror movies dealing with zombies, this is one of the best. It’s all about this woman who is hired as a nurse to take care of the wife of a Caribbean sugar plantation’s owner. The wife is in a semi-comatose state, basically sleepwalking, supposedly due to a tropical fever. The nurse soon suspects that the wife has been cursed and is a living zombie. She tries to cure her, even though she’s falling for the husband the whole time. There’s also some intrigue with the husband’s brother, who is also in love with the zombie wife. Jacques Tourneur directs everything with a creepy atmosphere and his typical restraint, and the performances are all really convincing. Carrefour is scary as hell! If you’re tired of the flesh-ripping and gore-spouting zombie flicks of today, give this a shot.

Here we go...

Hi all. First post! I'm Jupiter Butler. I'm a HUGE horror movie fan, and my dad's been saying I should start one of these things. I think it's mostly because he's tired of me bugging him about them all the time, so now I can just say "hey, did you read my blog?" and can sidestep trying to explain some of these movies to him. For such a "with it" kinda guy, he can be a total stick in the mud. Anyway, on with the show...