Ouch! Oh, and the giveaway winner!

I'm a bit late in choosing a winner for our Lovecraft giveaway, but I'll get to why in a minute. First, to announce our winner! We made a chart, and Dave pulled out his trusty d20, and the winner of our Lovecraft giveaway is : The Zombie Crafter! Congratulations! Thanks to everyone who participated, be sure to come back often for other giveaways.

Now, to the ouch, and the reason it's taken a few days to announce our winner. David and I went out to sneak a peek at the new Games Workshop opening in our little town last Tuesday, then ran off to the theater to catch a showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After the movie, we got up to leave, and my back said no. I'm not sure what I did to it, but it put me down for nearly a week. I spent several days in bed, and took several trips to the chiropractor, but I'm up and walking again just in time for the Oklahoma Horror Film Festival! Still not back 100%, but feeling much better now than I did a week ago.

We watched several movies over the past week - not much else to do when you're stuck in bed - and we worked through a bunch of the random horror movies we've had on our Netflix queue for awhile now. Most of them were really bad, but we did find one gem.

First, we watched The Hunger, a movie featuring David Bowie from 1983. This movie was awful, which is sad, because it started out with something that could have turned into a really interesting film. Somewhere in the middle, the first story is tossed aside, and I got an eyefull of far more Susan Sarandon than I ever needed to see. It was disjointed, and bad, but not the sort of bad that I usually enjoy in a horror film.

We watched Suspiria, a 1977 film which was directed by Dario Argento. Joan Bennett, of Dark Shadows fame, played the head mistress of a prestigious ballet school. The art design was really striking, and disorienting, and it seemed like everything in the movie was red. It had a fairly interesting plot, but was told haphazardly and left several holes in the story.

Dead Snow is a Norwegian zombie film that mixed elements of classic slasher movies with zombies. From the start you know they're not going to take the plot too seriously, as all of the zombies are Nazis, and the college kids are on vacation in a cabin in the woods. This was hilarious, and totally enjoyable. I didn't think I'd care for it from the start, because the main characters aren't terribly likable, but it was a perfect bad zombie flick.

Fright Night... oh, what to say about this one... It's a vampire movie, it's terrible, and it's packed full of 80's. BUT if you're interested in special effects in horror films, I think it's worth watching. Some of the vampire transformations were really cool.

Purely out of morbid curiosity, we watched the first 30 seconds of Thankskilling. David insisted he had to see what a homicidal turkey looked like. 29 seconds of boob, 1 second of homicidal turkey, 5 full minutes of laughter. I'm sure this movie is just as awful all the way through.

We re-watched Bram Stoker's Dracula, which brought up the question that's been plaguing me for the past 18 years... who in their right mind would cast Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins next to Keanu Reves and Winona Ryder? Why?

And, for the diamond in the rough. Tonight, we sat down to what we had expected to be a typical slasher or haunting type movie; Session 9. From the start, I wasn't expecting much. The movie takes place in an abandoned asylum, and the film quality says from the get-go "Low Budget." However, they really make the best of it. The plot is interesting, and I got really drawn in to the story. There are several striking shots, and shots that make you uncomfortable. They had me hooked to the very last sentence. In my opinion, a good horror film is very difficult to make. You either have to focus more on character development and allow the horror to come second, or you have to keep the horror out of sight, allowing the mind to fill in the dark places. This movie successfully did both.