The Good Witch Marathon

No exciting horror movie review today because I've been watching "The Good Witch" marathon on the Hallmark Channel instead.

The new one—"The Good Witch's Destiny" (2013)—is on at 9pm.

In case you wonder why I watch these TV movies, here are some lovely pictures of Catherine Bell.

4 days left until Hallowe'en!

My Top Ten Witches' Cats

Only a week to go until Hallowe'en! Time for some cats!

Here's my top ten list of the most well known familiars.


1. Salem Saberhagen from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" (1996)

2. Grimalkin from "Night of the Demon" (1957)

3. Kit from "Charmed" (1998)

4. Miss Kitty Fantastico from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (2000)

5. Vesper from "The Witches" (1966)

6. Adams from "The Legacy" (1978)

7. Tansy Taylor's cat from "Burn, Witch, Burn" (1962)

8. Vivian Sotherland's cat from "Midnight Offerings" (1981)

9. Moira's cat from "Spectre" (2006)

10. Baba Yaga's cat from "Baby Yaga, Devil Witch" (1973)

Bonus: Cordelia Foxx's cat from "American Horror Story: Coven" (2013)

Can you fill in the missing names?

For more horror cats, please check out http://horrorcats.blogspot.com.

I have over 400,000 pageviews!

It's an omen!

Although I often half-joke about nobody ever reading my blog, and of course, my haters always claim that I'm somebody they've never heard of (even though they obviously have and they're jealous as shit), my stats indicate that I'm doing quite well. Thank you, whoever you may be and wherever you are, for reading.

To all the people who've purchased things from my affiliate links, I thank you even more. My cats are going to enjoy the bag of treats which I can almost afford now.

I'm hardly the best writer in the world, and most of my older reviews are utter crap with grammar and punctuation errors all over the place, but I'm working on tidying them up whenever I get the chance. I think I've improved slightly as a writer since I moved everything from my old website and MySpace to Blogger in 2010, but I'll never be famous for doing this. It's just a hobby, and I certainly don't want to write for any other site or magazine. I don't have any ambitions as a writer because, basically, this blog is just a blog, and it's what I use to keep track of what I've watched or highlight anything else that interests me. If it interests other people, for any reason whatsoever, it's a bonus.

Judging from my traffic sources, most of my hits tend to come from people looking up horror movie titles, so you can ignore that idiot (whose blog is all written with centred text like a poem) who often claims that horror movie review blogs are boring. If you also write horror movie reviews, I'm sure you'll have just as many hits (or more) as long as you stay current.

While I was checking my stats, I saw that a few hits were coming from Horror-Movies.ca, which is weird because we don't have anything to do with each other. Their forum is full of all those "hugs you" and "twirls you round the room dancing" thread-crappers rather than discussions about horror movies, so we haven't seen eye to eye for over six years. I'm not even going to hyperlink their address because they don't deserve the reciprocal traffic.

On further investigation, a link to one of my more viral posts, namely "Who are the Horror Lamers?", had been reposted recently in their forum by one of my jealous haters who thought she'd have everyone on her side tearing it apart. Unfortunately for her, it didn't quite turn out that way, which I find ironic and hilarious in my own special way.

I must be doing something right because one of the posters on that forum had this to say:

"I don't know this guy, or the history, but I actually loved that article. It started off as elitist, but then I realized he managed to knock pretty much every horror fan in a sarcastic way that had some honesty to it.

The 'Other horror cliques online' part at the end was nothing short of brilliant. Yeah its fairly extreme, but there is a thread of truth in all of it. The 'Horror Haters' and 'Horror Contrarians' in particular are very much dead on. I laughed out loud reading that section."

Nice! Thank you, whatever your name is. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I always get a kick out of people who find my articles funny (especially as I have no sense of humour).

In other news, it's nearly Hallowe'en!

That means that I only have to write a few more new reviews about shitty new horror movies, and then I'm done with all that nonsense. Nobody reads anything to do with horror after Hallowe'en anyway.

My Top Ten Sexiest Ghost Films

Since I'm always getting accused of sexualising women (as if that's a bad thing!), let's have another top ten list of hot chicks to upset the prudes even more.

This time, it's mostly about the dead 'uns, but not in a creepy, necrophiliac way.


1. Ghost Story (1981)

Ah, Alice Krige. Whether she's Eva Galli or Alma Mobley doesn't matter. She a free spirit whose attractiveness leads to tragedy, but she still has her wicked way with two brothers... from beyond the grave!


2. Haunted (1995)

David Ash (Aidan Quinn) and Christina Mariell (Kate Beckinsale) do the nasty before he knows she's a ghost. But since Ash is a paranormal investigator, I doubt that prior knowledge of her supernatural status would have stopped him. And she's Kate Beckinsale, guys!


3. The Haunting Passion (1983)

Julia Evans (Jane Seymour) gets ravished by a romantic spectre. Who cares if it's a TV movie which leaves more to the imagination than it shows? Who even cares if ripoff artists are selling it on bootleg DVDs for over $100 on Amazon? "The Haunting Passion" allowed a whole generation of horny pubescent boys to see Jane Seymour have orgasms all over the place.


4. Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007)

Lesbian ghosts (Oksana Borbat and Xeniya Fesenko) bring out the best in Michelle (Cerina Vincent), you know what I'm saying? If you have no idea what I mean, it's time for you to "Return to House on Haunted Hill" again!


5. Prom Night II (1987)

Probably the sexiest ghost from the late '80s, it's Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage). Give or take some minor possessions, she's behind all the naughtiness in this movie.


6. The Others (2001)

It's not just because Nicole Kidman is hot. Oh no, it's not that simple in a list like this. Don't forget that Christopher Eccelstone turns up half-way through to give her a good seeing to. Now that's sexy!


7. High Spirits (1988)

"Skelping takes a lot out of you," unless you're Darryl Hannah and it makes your performance in a comedy-horror (which isn't funny or horrific) a million times more memorable!


8. The Legend of Hell House (1973)

Technically, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) isn't diddled by a ghost, but she thinks she is. Gayle Hunnicutt gets all horny later too, which makes Emeric Belasco's possession something other than just rampantly heterosexual. Well, we are told that orgies occurred in Hell House, so Belasco must have been a right greedy bugger in his prime.


9. The Shining (1980)

I think we all know what happens when Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) thinks he's going to have sexy-funtime with Lia Beldam. It's hot until she changes unless you're into granny porn... and then it's even hotter!


10. The Entity (1982)

Again it's not technically a ghost who gives Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) a rough time—it's a demon—but it's not as if she doesn't get any pleasure out of it at all. Plus it's Barbara Hershey naked with invisible (compressed air) fingers prodding her boobs! What's not to like?


Bonus: American Horror Story (2011)

The young version of Moira (Alexandra Breckenridge) has lots of saucy moments in the first season of "American Horror Story", but the brief faux-lesbian scene with Elizabeth Short (Mena Suvari) has to be the icing on the cake! It's hard to believe that this aired nearly two years ago. Bring back Moira!


Can you think of any more?

My Top Ten Sexiest Witches

In case you've forgotten. Hallowe'en (when referred to by its original Gaelic/pagan name "Samhain") is one of the four big witches' sabbats. What the other ones are, I have no idea, but they probably all end in "mas", "ane" or "fumblebum". Witchcraft outside of a closed society is a load of bullshit anyway.

But with the big day approaching, what better way is there to celebrate the non-event/non-holiday than with a top ten list of the sexiest witches I've ever seen?

Okay, so trying to stuff four bags of Funyuns in your mouth at the same time and then washing them down with Tizer is equally entertaining, but I'm a blogger and this is all I've got. Enjoy!


1. Willow (Britt Ekland) from "The Wicker Man" (1973)

I honestly don't care if she's fully clothed, topless, or using a body double, Willow is the sexiest little witch ever! I would have kicked the bloody door down or smashed a glory hole in the wall if I'd been in Edward Woodward's place!


2. Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) from "Dark Shadows" (2012)

I'd never even heard of Eva Green before I watched "Dark Shadows" last year, but as she's very unlikely to repeat her sexy performance in anything else, I don't suppose it matters. My God, she's hot! Angelique likes things a tad too rough to be my number one though.


3. Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci) from "The Brothers Grimm" (2005)

It's a pity that "The Brother's Grimm" is such a crappy movie apart from having the most beautiful woman in the whole world in it. There's definitely something supernatural about the way Monica Bellucci never ages.


4. The Witch (Cassandra Gaviola) from "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

Back in the days of renting VHS tapes from Blockbuster, I wore the section with Cassandra Gaviola and Arnie out so badly by rewinding and pausing over and over again that they had to buy another copy! I only know this because they made me pay for the one I wrecked.


5. Mater Lacrimarum (Ania Pieroni) from "Inferno" (1980)

While it's true that I also like Moran Atias in "Mother of Tears" (2007) because she gets nude, I couldn't find a decent (SFW) picture of her online. Ania Peroni is equally sexy as Hell, plus she has a cat. Purrfection!


6. Prue Halliwell (Shannen Doherty) from "Charmed" (1998)

Since it's all about "The Power of Three" with the Halliwell sisters, I wouldn't turn any of them down, but Shannen Doherty (in the middle) is the one who really does it for me. I've watched every season of "Charmed" and still don't know the names of the other sisters!


7. Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997)

Ordinarily, Willow is a bit of a mouth-breathing drudge, but the day she turned into evil Willow, everybody perked up! It's hard to tell whether she's hotter as a bad vamp or a bad witch, but being bad is always good for Willow!


8. Muriel (Famke Janssen) from "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" (2013)

48-year-old Famke looks a bit worn here, but you can't deny that she's gorgeous for her age! That kinky black outfit with feathers kinda rocks too! She can keep it on or take it off, I'm hers either way.


9. Bonnie (Neve Campbell) from "The Craft" (1996)

The best bit for me is when she turns her hair blonde! "OMG, that's like so kewl! LOL" Neve Campbell looks fantastic as a blonde, but I couldn't find a screencap which didn't pixellate badly when resized. This is just the standard pretty Bonnie after her fizzog is fixed.


10. Princess Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) from "Black Sunday" (1960)

It was too difficult to find a photo of Barbara Steele from "Black Sunday" which wasn't scary-looking, so I gave up and used this one. It's not her sexiest moment in the film, but bizarrely, the bit where parts are falling off her is.


Just to make up a full coven of thirteen, here are three bonuses:


Bonus #1: Circe (Bernadette Peters) from "The Odyssey" (1997)

She gets between Armand Assante's knees and blackmails him into sleeping with her to save his men. I know that's the story of Odysseus and everything, but most of us wouldn't have needed such coercion. "Odysseus, the only way I will turn your soldiers back into men is if... you take me to bed," she purrs. Alrighty then.


Bonus #2: Medea (Maria Callas) from "Medea" (1969)

It's been so long since I've seen Pier Paolo Pasolini's adaptation of Euripides' play that I'd forgotten how beautiful Maria Callas used to be. From the IMDb: "It's a movie about a woman who beheads her brother, stabs her children, and sends her lover's wife up in flames. For Maria Callas, it's a natural." And yes, Pier Paolo Pasolini is the same director who made "Salo", in case you wondered.


Bonus #3: Morgana Le Fay (Helen Mirren) from "Excalibur" (1981)

When it comes to John Boorman's "Excalibur", it's usually Cherie Lunghi who floats my boat, but I can't deny Helen Mirren her finest hour either. Incest with King Arthur is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sexual nastiness in Morgana's mind, and her scenes with Merlin (the late Nicol Williamson) are priceless. Let's say the "Charm of Making" together: "Anáil nathrach, ortha bhas betha, do cheol déanta..."


Who are your favourites? And why?

Hallows' Eve (2013)

"Years after a tragic accident leaves a young child scarred for life, the people responsible pay - with their lives."

When I saw that Danielle Harris had top billing, and then noticed the huge similarity between the little girl (Isobel Rose Costello) who gets run over by a tractor in the opening scene and Danielle Harris at the same age, I expected something a lot different than the horrible mess that "Hallows' Eve" turned out to be. It may sound too predictable, but I honestly thought that Danielle Harris would be all disfigured like she was in Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" and be revealed as the psycho killing the now grown-up bullies in revenge for her face.

Maybe that's one of the red herrings which is designed to sell the mystery element of this feeble attempt at a slasher movie, and I've probably already spoiled the ending for you by telling you that it isn't how things play out, but I don't care. "Hallows' Eve" is so bad that it doesn't deserve to be watched by anyone, and is certainly not worth renting or buying. Unless you've recently become the recipient of a brain transplant operation involving a drunken chimpanzee, the lack of a cohesive story is excrutiating to get through. Even my cats who have brains the size of walnuts couldn't cope with this and left me to it.

There are too many characters to keep track of, and as usual, there's not one of the "teenagers" who isn't such a nasty piece of work that you don't just want him or her to die horribly, but the story jumps all over the place and is completely unsatisfying. Lots of boobs and blood, and an incongruous dream sequence half-way through which adds more gratuitous nudity, is nice but doesn't help matters. It's almost impossible to follow what's going on until the very end, and by that point, you'll be unlikely to care.

Don't worry, babe, you can still get a job in indie horror movies.

Among the cheap gore effects, uncreative kills, and bad camerawork lurk several horror c-listers including Ashley C. Williams and Tiffany Shepis, plus a bunch of male "actors" who are harder to recognise. Apparently, one of them was in "Pumpkinhead" (1988), but the rest vary from being hangers-on in the "indie scene" to fully-fledged TV actors who have some actual talent. Who's who or and who plays who, I couldn't possibly tell you even with the cast list in front of me. They all have generic character names like Nick, Todd, Dave, Brad, and whatever the female equivalents might be. I may be wrong about this because I was bored out of my mind, but I don't think that any of them call each other by name other than the disfigured girl being Eve.

How and why known genre actors get involved in half-arsed projects like this which can do them no good is the biggest mystery. There may be a very small financial reward, but no big-wig is going to look at their work in "Hallows' Eve" and think, "Oh, I really must hire that one for my next muti-million dollar blockbuster!" In fact, it's more likely to be the opposite. Movies like this kill careers, they don't make them! The only excuse anyone can use is that you could put Oscar award-winning actors in this low-budget trash and they would still come away from it reeking of shit because of the script. Having said that, Tiffany Shepis gets the best of the bad lines, and Danielle Harris doesn't have enough screen time to disgrace herself.

The only good thing I can say about "Hallows' Eve" is that setting it in one of the "Haunted Attractions" which a lot of farmers tend to set up every year in America is an original touch. I've been to a few of these Hallowe'en events, so the location felt real to me, and I liked it. Sadly, that's all I enjoyed about this movie other than what you can see in the image below and the bath scene which preceded it.

Definitely a long-leggedy beastie!

Three more weeks to Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en. Three more weeks to Hallowe'en. This film sucks ass.

My Top Ten Hallowe'en Horror Films

In previous years, I've gone through just about everything I like to watch during October, but I'm bored with doing that. Every day is Hallowe'en for me to some extent, and there's nothing special about one day compared to any other. Such is the life of a horror movie reviewer.

For the sake of making a definitive list of "must see" horror movies for Hallowe'en, however, here's my top ten. Click the pics to see what I had to say about them before.


1. The Amityville Horror (1979)

As a child of the '70s, I read all the books about Amityville in the years before the movie was made. It's a pity that none of it was true, but "The Amityville Horror" still holds up well. Margot Kidder was gorgeous back in the day.


2. Dracula (1958)

Hammer's best horror movie. Simple as that. Christopher Lee and lots of hot bloofer ladies. Ignore the rubber bats on strings, this is class!


3. The Wicker Man (1973)

You can't have Hallowe'en without recognising its pagan origin, and "The Wicker Man" is my "go to" movie for all things British and pagan. Britt Ekland topless is a bonus.


4. The Legend of Hell House (1973)

I prefer this to "The Haunting" because of Roddy McDowell. He steals the show despite a valiant effort from Pamela Franklin and horny Gayle Hunnicutt. There's a lovely black cat in it too.


5. The Haunting (1963)

A little bit dated now but still creepy. It's the definitive haunted house movie and a certified classic. I would never have known about it if it hadn't been for the late James Herbert talking about it on a Hallowe'en TV show.


6. The Changeling (1980)

This would be higher up the list if it wasn't for the mystery element. I've found that I can only watch it every couple of years because I know the ending too well.


7. The Others (2001)

The twist dooms this movie to being another that's hard to watch more than once, but it's all about Nicole Kidman as perfect eyecandy for me. As a remake of "Voices" (1973), it's a successful upgrade.


8. Lady in White (1988)

It's a supernatural murder-mystery set during Hallowe'en, and that's more than enough to justify it. It's also very well done. Easily Frank LaLoggia's best movie and full of nostalgia for those who like that sort of thing.


9. The Fog (1980)

The prologue with the old captain telling the ghost story by a campfire makes this movie a lot better than it should have been. Sexy Adrienne Barbeau in her lighthouse radio station is the other good reason to watch it. I always fast-forward through the cringeworthy bits with Tom Atkins and Jamie Lee Curtis.


10. Carnival of Souls (1962)

It's really a rip-off of "The Hitch Hiker" episode from "The Twilight Zone", but it's a little bit more adult. Eerie stuff and very accessible since it's in the Public Domain.


What are your Hallowe'en favourites?