It's that time of the month, by which I mean it's that time of the year

GUESS WHAT EVERYONE 

While it is still so hot and humid outside that one feels as if one lives all snuggled-n-tucked up underneath Satan's ballsack, I recently bought not one but TWO bags of pumpkin spice coffee in preparation for the forthcoming season. That's right, I can feel it in the air: it's almost SHOCKtoberin' time.

I've been a-ponderin' and a-wonderin' what to do for this year's festivities, and sure, I had a couple of ideas. And while I might make one of those ideas a reality come SHOCKtober, I also might not. That's right, I'm playing it fast and loose with no commitments at this time, like the carefree zoomer that I am. But! While I am leaving those ideas out in the ether for the moment, I am committing here and now to another round of that ol' SHOCKtober favorite: the huge month-long countdown of y'allses (that's a word) Top 20 Favorite Horror Movies.

It is always an exercise in madness for me to tally 'em up, but it's an exercise I enjoy. I like reading what you guys have to say! I love to see what you love! It's great fun to count them down over the course of 31 days, and as we haven't done it since 2020, I figure why not now? It's been a few years, maybe y'all have some new faves? I'm not sure if I do, but I might? Guess I'll have to, you know, think about it. As must you, so get to it! Get to it and abide these rules, please, to make this manageable for your pal me.

SAID RULES

• email me a list of YOUR TWENTY **FAVORITE** HORROR FILMS at stacieponder (at) gmail (dot) (c) (o) (m)
• put "my list" or "list" or "list-o" or something in the subject line so I know what's up
• DO NOT submit your list here in the comments or via Facebook message or Facebook comment or any other social media or anything like that. EMAIL ONLY BLESS YOU THANK YOU
• Remember, it doesn't matter if these movies are considered the "best" or classics, they just have to be your faves. Final Girl is strictly a NO JERKS ZONE, and I don't truck with making fun of peoples' loves. Not in my comment section, buster!
• Unless you indicate otherwise, if there is more than one version of a film I will assume you mean the original. So if you mean The Fog (2005) and not The Fog (1980), please tell me.
• Honestly I would be shocked if anyone preferred The Fog 2005 over The Fog 1980, but that is your business.
• If you write something like "The Saw Series," I am just going to include Saw, so specificity is better!
• No short films and no TV shows, please! Feature films only. Made for TV movies are a-okay!
• You don't have to submit a full list of 20! Maybe you only have one favorite horror film. Again, that is your business. But 20 titles is the max.
• The list order doesn't matter! You don't have to rank them.
• You don't have to comment on any of your choices, unless you want to! But comments are always welcome and I like to read 'em. Sometimes I even post 'em during the festivities! (If you want to include a comment but you don't want it published, you can tell me! Either way rest assured I ain't doxxing nobody.)
• The deadline is the end of Tuesday September 24th. After that, submissions will go directly in the ol' cybergarbage, sorry.

That's it, I think. The last time I did this, the list was 951 movies long. Absolute insanity. Who knows how many films will be included this year? What will be your number one favorite? I am excited to find out, so put on your thinking wig and get to thinking (and submitting)! Fuck yeah SHOCKtober!

Chilling Classics Cthursday: A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959)

If you're still wigged out over the black-n-white beatnik-n-bongos stylings of previous Chilling Classic The Bloody Brood, well you're about to blow your jets, daddy-o, because today we're heading back to the café and diving into A Bucket of Blood. 

There ain't much to this li'l black comedy, to be honest, what, with its scant 64-minute runtime. But hey, those 64 minutes come courtesy of Roger Corman in the director's seat and feature Dick Miller in the leading role--so what kind of John Joe Jim Jerk wouldn't want to check it out? I don't want to know!

Miller stars as Walter Paisley, a simple and affable busboy in a beatnik café. He soaks up every saxophone toot and line of poetry, parroting their beat ethos and trying his darndest to become an artist himself so's to earn a little respect and, hopefully, win the heart of pretty patron Carla (Barboura Morris). Unfortunately for Walter, his artistic abilities add up to precisely zilch.

But all is not lost! When he accidentally kills his landlady's cat, inspiration strikes and soon Paisley presents café patrons with his first successful sculpture, simply called "Dead Cat."

As you probably anticipated, it's a hit and there's more demand for Paisley's "genius." When a wacky heroin mixup with an undercover cop sees Walter lashing out in self-defense, he's got a new sculpture to unveil: "Murdered Man."

Side note, it always trips me up when heroin is mentioned in films from anytime before...oh, let's say 1992. Heroin just feels like a 90s invention to me, even if I know it ain't.

And on and on. Walter must go to more and more extremes to keep up the charade, even as he basks in his newfound elevation from busboy to king of the café. I wonder if he had the duds, a beret, and a cigarette holder already, anticipating the day he'd become a "real artist," or if he went and purchased them with his "Dead Cat" earnings. Either way, I delight in it.

Look, are you going to be "sick, sick, sick from LAUGHING" as the film's poster claims? Personally I was not, but even my dour ass found A Bucket of Blood smile-worthy. Anything that takes the piss out of snooty artist types (especially those who don't simply own their snootiness) is fine by moi, and Corman and Co have a good time doing it. The implied violence is actually a wee bit brutal, the cast is winsome, and the beatnik vibes are an undeniable gas. Miller--already a Corman mainstay by 1959--is terrific as Walter Paisley, a nebbish you can't help but root for even with his misplaced ideals and flashes of serious creepiness. 

Yet again, I got my kicks with a real cookin' Chilling Classic. Thinking about covering this one in clay and calling it "Fun Movie."

Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE COLD (1984)

Aw yeah baby, I've been waiting for this movie's number to come up: It's The Cold, another "$50,000 wonder" from Wisconsin's own Bill Rebane. You might remember him from an earlier Chilling Classique, the train station-space virus-quarantine flick The Alpha Incident. This won't be the last we see of his work on Chilling Classics Cthursday--he truly is the multi-pack maestro--but it's quite possibly my favorite.

My love of The Cold starts right at the start (go figure), when we are treated to the credit sequence, which features some jaunty bargain bin Scott Joplin tunes and static shots of printed cards on tableaus of various recognizable board games, including Clue, Monopoly, and the Mad Magazine Board Game, which you'd best believe I played the ever-loving shit out of when I was a wee bonny lass. 

The shadows of the center card and playing pieces are one thing, but it's the random shadow on the left that gets me. And the way the credit for the director is off-center. Remember the not-so-long-ago trend of having opening credits sequences (usually from Blur, usually for David Fincher films) be all fancy and made of computer and like five minutes long? That fad was all fine and well I suppose (though exhausting, really. I don't need five minute opening credits!), but the janky-ass verité of this Rebane production is where it's at.

Now if you are unfamiliar with this particular movie, you might be wondering what's up with the game boards. Again, this is a Rebane production so you wouldn't be out of line to think that those games boards have nothing to do with anything. But! This film is also known as The Game, which explains not only the credits but also the fact that it's all about a game called...The Game, which is pronounced THE GAME.

"Okay, so is there cold in The Cold at all?" you might ask. Yes, there is! We'll get to it. But first, THE GAME. 

THE GAME comes courtesy of three "millionaire eccentrics," George, Horace, and Maude, who grew tired of Cribbage ages ago and had to really up their personal entertainment stakes. You can tell Maude is rich, especially, because she uses a cigarette holder.

They make things exciting for themselves by inviting a bunch of random people to The Northernaire, a Wisconsin island resort, where they will be tasked with...enduring some...stuff...for a while? Survivors who don't leave the island will win a million dollars. On the surface this sounds like a most dangerous kinda game, and I suppose it is. But it's all vague and nonsensical, and even the participants are confused, like they don't even know why they're there. If only they knew that this was all simply ~*~REBANE MAGIC~*~ at work, amirite?

So. How does THE GAME play out exactly? First and foremost, there is a dance party. No, I am not lying. The millionaire eccentrics get down with all the participants, to a tune that is obviously not played by the band, who are also participants in THE GAME. This movie weaves a complex web, I tells ya.

Things begin proper and random shit happens...and I do mean random. There is a shark in a swimming pool. There is an Alien homage of a type that only Bill Rebane could deliver.

Participants disappear mysteriously, sometimes leaving behind clues: "That's Ronnie's bandanna! What's happened? He never goes anywhere without it!" Sometimes a tarantula will appear, sometimes there are rats, or maybe a snake. And yes, sometimes, there is...THE COLD, which rolls out of vents or doorways or wherever and is clearly dry ice. But the actors sell it, man, from their shivering to their delivery of dialogue such as "There was the smell of death in that room. And the cold. Like a December grave."

Meanwhile, the millionaire eccentrics are having the time of their lives engaging in their Spirit Halloween foolery, often dancing and skipping down hallways, singing hits like "Jimmy Crack Corn," or going "mwa ha ha" over the intercom. I love them.

This guy is also randomly wandering around. No one sees him, but someone knows he's there and tells us he used to be in a mental asylum, but now he's the gardener, but only when THE GAME isn't happening.

Exactly who is involved in THE GAME, who ends up dead, what is really happening? If you don't really know the answers to those questions at the end of this thing, that's okay. A voiceover bookends the film, and before the final credits roll, said voiceover is basically like..."Exactly who is involved in THE GAME, who ends up dead, what is really happening? Fuck if I know."

Even Bill Rebane himself calls this semi-scripted story a "brain fart." The Cold is the quintessential cheapie quickie: one location, 3-4 crew, actors straight outta Milwaukee central casting, and a shoot lasting maybe a week, all done simply so Rebane could make another movie and maybe get his friends some publicity for their Northernaire Resort.

And as far as I'm concerned, like all of the director's other films, it's a weirdo bonkers delight. It's got all the Rebane hallmarks: the occasional out-of-focus shot, the copious (terrible) foley work, the floozy-music nudie shots, the odd clothed T-n-A shots that are filmed in such close-up that it takes a moment to register exactly what body part you're looking at, and so on.

As I mentioned in my review of The Alpha Incident, and on Evolution of Horror, when Mike Muncer and I briefly discussed Rebane's Giant Spider Invasion (which actually makes a cameo in The Cold!), these films are a decidedly acquired taste. Their journeys and their destinations are inscrutable to be sure. But I'm also sure that it's a taste I've definitely acquired, so I'm telling you now: when it's time for the next Rebane-helmed Chilling Classique 'round these parts, I will be dancing and skipping down all the hallways. Jimmy Crack Corn and I do care!

Chilling Classics Cthursday: DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974)

Ah, well, if it isn't Devil Times Five. We've met before, you and I, 'round about fifteen years or so ago--yep, in the early years of this here blog. In the era when I first gave a peep-see to many a movie from the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. (That is her Christian name.) And now here we are again, you and I, meeting once more in the interests of this here blog. When your number came up courtesy of RNGesus, I immediately remembered a few things about you. 

I remembered that you featured Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard and Rosario from Will and Grace, the latter of whom eats a banana at one point in the proceedings. 

I remembered that teen heartthrob Leif Garrett stars, though it's a bit before his teen heartthrob-dom, and he cries about his "beautiful face" after he gets hurt. 

While those are about all the specifics that have remained with me over the years, I will say that you left such an impression on me that a big feeling about you also remained: a feeling that I don't like you. Sorry to say it but that's right! It was a negative impression because you were godawful boring.

But hey, that was 2007 Final Girl. I am now 2024 Final Crone. And as was the hope when I revisited another 2007 Chilling Classic I disliked (The House of the Dead), I felt a rumblin' in my nethers that (blessedly) was merely my hope springing eternal. "How could I not enjoy a movie about killer kids wherein Rosario from Will and Grace eats a banana? Was not such a movie made just for me?" Armed with this hope and my modern-day crusade against finding movies "boring," I settled in, ready for you and I to merge and become Devil Times Six.

Look, I'm just gonna cut to the chase: Sad to say, but we are destined to remain Devil Times Five and Devil Times One.

I did find more to take with me into the future as rememberin's though. Like the couple I called "That's Really Not a Mustachioed Ken Howard?" and "Dollar Tree Lynda Day George."

Fun (??) Fact #1: I recently spied Dollar Tree Lynda Day George (aka Joan McCall) in a rewatch of Grizzly for my recent spot on The Evolution of Horror. In Grizzly she is Christopher George's love interest, which really drives home the "why are you not Lynda Day George"-ness of it all.

Fun (??) Fact #2: As an alternate name to "That's Really Not a Mustachioed Ken Howard?" I will also accept "White John Amos."

You know I'm not wrong!

There's also the kid who dresses up as a nun...she's giving a young Sister Wendy.

You feature a corpse party, Devil Times Five! One of my very favorite slasher things!

You've got a real nasty streak. Whether it's kids setting someone on fire, causing death-by-piranha (or "piraña," as one character says it), or beating someone to death with a variety of tools, when these kids get to murderin' they really get to it.

The issue remains, though, that it takes too long for the kids to get to murderin' and you can't figure out what you want to be in the meantime. Your soundtrack says "fourth rate sexploitation," and you try to go there a couple of times. You bust out some drama with all the married couples, but it just drags. 

And speaking of drag...I want to know what is up with Leif Garrett's character occasionally dressing up as a woman! But you give it naught but a throwaway moment or two.

Sigh. Given all of that, it's surprising that we are not Devil Times Six, is it not? My impulse is to say "it's not you, it's me," because that is the polite thing to do. But fuck it! It's not me at all. It's you! You're a mess! Your original cut was a paltry 40 minutes and your director quit, which left others holding the bag and having to do a whole lotta padding...and we can feel all 50 minutes of padding, lemme tell ya. That's your biggest problem, I think, and it's one I can't really surmount.

I mean, maybe I could if I'd watched you on Tubi, where I nabbed all these nice screencaps from. Or maybe if I watched you on the upcoming 4K Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray? (I can't believe you're getting a $40 4K Blu-ray, if I'm being totally honest, but hey.) But I watched the Chilling Classics version of you, which....phew. Muddy, dark, dreary, brown. Color was MIA, as were crisp edges to shapes. Resolution, man. It's kinda great.

Sigh I don't know. I don't know if that would really have helped. Sometimes a movie and a blogger simply aren't compatible, even if one of those things includes Rosario eating a banana and Leif Garrett in a series of wigs. To cling to each other after trying--and writing!--twice is a bit unseemly, no? Best to let go. 

And so I release you, Devil Times Five. I release your Boss Hogg (not a euphemism), your wigs, your corpse party, your pretend nuns...I release them so someone else--perhaps someone who will spend $40 on you via Vinegar Syndrome, or maybe someone who will spend $0 on you via Tubi--will give you and get from you what you both need. I'll always remember your "beautiful face." Probably.