Paranormal Activity

Hello there......is your post Halloween hangover still lingering? I'll try to talk softly and not make too much noise....

Welcome. Welcome to the blog of the last person in in the blogosphere to see Paranormal Activity. I've spent the last couple of weeks avoiding reviews, previews, even skipping my brother's review over at Project Blue. I truly wanted my experience of the movie to be as untainted as possible. The only thing I had seen was the first trailer that came out - which was composed mostly of audience reactions - and I even turned that off before it was finished. So in honor of that, I'm going to attempt to give you my impressions without giving anything away about the movie.

I really tried my best to set aside all the hoopla and just focus on the film in front of me. So my review of the film itself is going to be short and sweet, but my review of my EXPERIENCE is going to be somewhat more extensive.

First of all - AWESOME job with a limited budget, cast, effects, sets.....you don't get much more basic than this movie. So huge, huge kudos to the filmmakers for doing what the big studios with a hella lot more cash can't manage to do - get us to care about the characters, get invested in the story, make us hide our eyes behind our fingers, and SCARE us.

My brother at Project Blue is completely right in his assessment that it is the suspense that makes this film. He's also correct in that they did an awesome job of building the dread as day turns to night......with the growing realization that maybe we're not safe at all, regardless of the time of day.

I think that you also need to suspend a bit of disbelief -that is, if you don't happen to believe that the actual events of the movie are possible. One of the downsides of the film is that it's being billed as 'the scariest thing ever' - and depending on what you think is truly frightening - you'll either have nightmares or be hugely disappointed. Putting aside the actual events of the film, what is scary to me is the loss of control of your environment and attempting to deal with a force that you have absolutely no framework of reference for.

In the end, I'm so glad that I avoided the media around this film as much as I could. I really think my plan to know as little as possible made a HUGE difference. Papa Cash said he only watched one or two previews but felt when the movie was over that he'd seen the scariest parts already......he went into the theater wondering 'what else are they going to show me?' and came away a little disappointed. I went in almost completely tabula rasa and came out scared. (One thing that was apparent to me is that reviews tended to fall either into loving the movie or feeling eh...so what) I'm wondering if P.C.'s experience isn't the reason for some of the 'eh..so what' reactions.

One thing I had heard was the opinion that seeing this movie in the theater was THE way to see it. I'm not 100% convinced of that. While the added experience of a dark, crowded theater had some positives - I did have the feeling several times last night that I was not getting the full effect of the soundtrack - which is not usual in a theater. But we're talking about a very low budget film and a very full, noisy theater. I anticipate that it'll be another experience on the surround sound in my quiet living room, and I'll be able to pick up on some of the more subtle moments of the film.

I'm looking forward to reading all the reviews I skipped to see if the audience reaction was mentioned. There were a few collective LOUD screams in the appropriate places (which was fun) but there were some weird reactions going on during the rest of the film.

First of all, there was a LOT of laughing - and sometimes it fell during very inappropriate places. There was the giggling that could have, I suppose, been interpreted as nervousness - waiting for the scare, wondering what was going to happen- although it was very rampant and kind of annoying. Then there was the laughing that seemed mean spiritied to me - such as when a character on the screen was genuinely upset and crying. There was a LOT of laughter from the audience during these moments - and I'm kind of at a loss to interpret it. These scenes were played without any amount of humor - and I felt they were very genuine and well- acted. I'm not sure why a huge part of the audience found it so amusing. As I listened to the reactions and comments from the audience as we left, it dawned on me that people treated the movie more like a Haunted House ride than an actual film. Which I think is kind of a travesty and doesn't give the film its due.

In retrospect, I wish I'd waited for another day to see it, in a different theater, with fewer people. I used to think there was a kind of fun element to watching horror movies in a packed theater, but after last night, I think I'm kind of over that. I don't think that I would have missed out on any of the experience if I'd just waited to watch it at home - and with what I paid for tickets last night, I could have just pre-ordered the Blu-Ray.

Bottom line is - this is an independent horror film made for next to nothing - and it's without a doubt the best horror film I saw this holiday season. While the studios continue to make Saw Part -Whatever, or remake some other film we loved twenty years ago, a group of the little guys made what I think is the scariest and most effective American horror movie this year. Whether you love the movie, or think it's over - hyped, I hope that we all as horror fans can at least get behind that.

Time to go watch the Packer-Vikings game....
Mother Firefly

Day 31: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Happy Halloween, Everybody!

Today is the first Halloween that I've been able to kick back, watch some movies, and do something FUN to celebrate in three years. There are no deadlines looming over my head, and everything I can do at this point is pretty much done.

So I've chosen the films for my daytime movie marathon and I've just realized that they're all of the Black & White variety. Nothing wrong with that....

So here's my list for the day-



Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein:

I blogged about A & C Meet F during last year's countdown, so I'll let y'all go read that post if you're so inclined. This movie is without a doubt a MUST WATCH for me every October. Love A & C, and this one is by far my favorite.


Movie #2: Young Frankenstein

Again, another MUST for Halloween. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this movie. It's my #3 Favorite Movie of All Time. It was in the #2 spot for many years, until Devil's Rejects replaced it. (Nothing -not Evah! will budge DOLD from the #1 spot). I can watch this movie over and over and over and never get sick of it. It's endless quotable - and I'd like to pause to give a shout out to my bestie, KK:
SEDAGIVE?????????

Thank you. Now back to our show.....

Movie #3: Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

There are soooooooooooooooooooo many movies that I would have LOVED to watch today, but I went with this one because it fits in with my theme of the month of watching movies that honor days gone by.....and this movie is, in my opinion, really the King of all those films. Not only does it do a great job of honoring the genre, it's funny as hell.

Then it'll probably be time to get ready to go out for dinner, and then....well, I still don't exactly know what we're doing. I'm sure it'll either be Paranormal Activity or Rocky Horror, or both. Either way, I'll be blogging tomorrow about it. It's kind of chilly out there, so going to Rocky Horror is going to require a few layers of clothing. (No matter what, there's always at least a half hour wait outside)

Since it's the last day, I'd like to take a moment to look back at this great month. I still can't believe that I managed to post EVERY day. I did prepare a handful of posts, but I used them up quickly - so I ended up writing almost every day.

I got to do some fun Halloween things this month - much more than I thought I would. Not only did I get to spend a whole weekend at Zombie Con, I went to a haunted high school, went to go see the play Dracula at midnight last weekend, and saw a bunch of scary movies at the theater: Halloween II, Jennifer's Body, and Zombieland.

I also discovered some great blogs that were also part of the Halloween Countdown.
Check out my list on the right: most of those bloggers were participants.

Also thanks to the fellow bloggers who took the time to leave comments. Here's links to their great blogs!

My little bro JL from Project Blue and Old Spooky House

Dane from All Eyes and Ears

Belle Dee from Doo Wacka Doodles

Jay Amabile from The Sexy Armpit

Dusty from Crass Pip ( and for putting my review of NOLD: The Puppet Show on their website!)

Tor Hershman from Tor Hershman

HarleyGirl from Old Spooky House and Halloween Horror Night

And a thanks to my two AWESOME friends, Mandy and KK for leaving comments on the blog or in my email. I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read the blog and leave feedback.

And, finally, a HUGE thanks to the three people that organize the Halloween Countdown.....much love and appreciation!!!!!!! It's been a blast - thanks so much for inviting me last year and remembering to include me this year.

John Rozum from John Rozum

Shawn Robare from Halloween Countdown

Jon K from Ultimate All-Star Random Acts of Geekery (among others)

Thanks to John and Shawn for their comments as well.

Also thanks to everyone who signed up to follow my blog this month! Check out their great blogs (some of them listed above) on the right.

I'm especially grateful for the feedback this month because I was thisclose to taking this down and closing up shop. I've been writing about the films I watch for a few years for my own enjoyment - mostly through a personal log I keep at home. My brother encouraged me to start doing this in August 2008. I didn't start off writing about horror movies exclusively and soon it evolved into another version of what I'd been doing in my log. But I wasn't sure I was going to try to keep it up - sometimes my posts have been very intermittent due to school. But I really wanted to do the Halloween Countdown - so I thought I'd decide what I wanted to do after that.

I had so much fun this month writing and reading other blogs - combined with also having more free time than I've had since starting nursing school - that I'm planning on hanging in there and continuing on. I doubt that I'll be able to post every day - I am on the verge of graduation and have a few obligations left to fulfill - but I think the worst of the craziness with all that is over.

Now....back to my movies and to thoroughly enjoy the rest of my Halloween.
Have an awesome and safe holiday and I'll be back soon to let you know how the rest of the evening unfolded......

I'll leave you with a screencap of my absolute favorite moment in A& C meet Frankenstein. It completely sums up about how I feel about the scary.
I might start out a little apprehensive:

But, in the end, it always ends up like this:Yummy and Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........

Taffeta, Darling.......
Mother Firefly

Day 30 - ONE More Day Till Halloween!!!!!

It's been a long week - much has been accomplished (including a job interview!!) - but tonight I just want to kick back and have myself a lil' Halloween marathon. I still don't know what tomorrow night will bring - maybe Rocky Horror, maybe Paranormal Activity......we're just playing it by ear here at the Mother Firefly Ranch.

First - I started out with something fun, Monsters Vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space. This was on NBC Wednesday night. I thought it was really fun (maybe even more fun than the actual movie?) and I loved the mutant pumpkins:
I decided that I'd end the month watching some old Halloween favorites that I haven't managed to get to yet. Since Mutant Pumpkins was so fun, I thought I'd go with this one:
I blogged about this one last year, so I won't say too much...except that this, Halloween III, and a couple of others are my on my MUST watch list for October.
I was a huge Rankin-Bass fan as a kid (as many of us were) and we always made sure we were home on the nights that Rudolph and their other Christmas specials aired.

MMP, however, was a little more elusive. I'm pretty sure I never saw it in prime time - I think it was probably on a Saturday afternoon or something. I don't even know how many times I saw it as a kid -it might have even been just 2 or 3 times - and then years went by before I was able to see it again. It wasn't available on VHS till I was MUCH older - by that time it might have been 10 years since I'd seen it - but I hadn't forgotten it. I bought it on DVD as soon as it came out a few years ago - and I watch it every Halloween. Nothing makes me feel as warm and fuzzy, or puts me in the Halloween mood more than MMP.

Tomorrow we'll see how many of my favorites I can get through before we go out for the evening......

Day 29: It's time for Something Weird!!!!!!

Or it's time for you to think I'M weird....because this review is part one of two - for a total of FOUR..yes, count them, FOUR....movies that feature monsters.....and naked wimmens.

I really have no good reason (or excuse) to sit through FOUR movies this goofy. But something about the combination of badly made monsters created only so that the filmmaker could throw some topless women in the storyline is amusing to me. And believe me, using the words 'storyline' or 'plot' anywhere NEAR these movies is realllllllllllllly stretching it.
Let us begin:
These fine films come to us courtesy of Something Weird Video - which I was first exposed to through the AWESOME tv show, Reel Wild Cinema, hosted by Sandra Bernhard.

Remember it? Well, hold on to your memories because I came up with zero when I tried to find anything on this great show.

SWV is the distributor of Herschell Gordon Lewis' films (BIG round of applause!!) as well as many other kinds of films. In short, SWV is the keeper of the flame for all kinds of movies that might have been forgotten or lost otherwise. And like them or hate them - I think it's important to preserve our film history - even if said history involves a man in a monkey suit and boobies.

As does,coincidentally enough, our first offering:
The Beast that Killed Women.

I'll give them this much - the filmmakers adhered to the slogan 'truth in advertising'. We do have a Beast - and he does Kill him some Women.
We have a crazy gorilla on the loose in a nudist camp(why? how? Pffft, such questions!!!) Because we're going to spend sixty minutes watching topless women sit around and talk about how scared they are. Not scared enough to put their clothes back on and leave the nudist camp, mind you......just freaked out enough to sit around in their underwear and talk about it. When they're not outside doing nudist activities, that is. Because heaven knows, when you have a killer gorilla knocking your fellow campers off left and right, you need lots and lots of ACTIVITIES.

With your top off.

Don't look at the camera Don't look at the camera.....never mind........

Going on to our second feature:
The Monster of Camp Sunshine:

In this movie, we have two roomies: a nurse and a model. The nurse is a nudist (hey, aren't we all?) and she's all about convincing her model friend about the wonderful world of the nudist camp.

Big surprise....she's successful. Then it's time for a drive up to the nudist camp - and lots of ragtime music while people take their clothes off, smoke, and run around naked....and smoke..Did I mention the smokin'?

The girls must have run out of cigarettes because eventually they leave the camp and go back to the city. There's some plot to do with something about something with rats and experiments ...which the nurse works with.....and that makes sense because......
IT FREAKIN' DOESN'T.

But somehow the rats get all crazed and stuff with some experiment gone bad....and they get disposed of in the river....which a fisherman picks up....then loses near the infamous Camp Sunshine...which Hugo finds and opens up .....which causes this chick to get this look on her face...while Hugo starts barking.


And while all the screaming and the barking is going on at Camp Sunshine, our model friend decides that being naked is all the rage, and decides to further her career by modeling a topless bathing suit.
Uh - ain't that called yer UNDERPANTS??????

Then it's the weekend! Time to head back to Camp - things don't appear right - people appear to be missing - but who cares, as long as we can get naked and smoke to bad banjo music, life is good!

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

So the caretaker is now some kind of axe carrying mutated monster-person,

and somehow naked nurse (we are pretty smart, after all) connects the dots in like two seconds, and then the doctor brings a serum he's just amazingly concocted, like ten minutes before the nurse called - and then, of course, the army gets called in....WTF???

I shit you not, this scene is actually in this movie.

So of course the monster gets taken down, but we have no time for sadness, folks, as the show must go on, as the movie says.
Seriously, the movie really does say this.
Did I mention that the movie is filled with silent movie cards like this? Or a full-on rats-flying-through-the-air-attack? Or horrible, I mean HORRIBLE dubbing? But I'll give the movie one thing, it manages to end on the important stuff:Smoke 'em if you got 'em,
Mother Firefly

Day 28: Last House on the Left

Another busy day and another short post....hopefully the rest of this week will be a little calmer and I can devote more time to finishing out the month. I spent the day in a meeting and then revising (again!) the Clinical Project paper. I was hoping to finish Version 3.0 as I was going to call it.....but we only managed to get through about half the paper - so I called it Version 2.5 instead. Whee! That's a little Clinical Project humor, y'all! Now I'm back to waiting for feedback on the rest.......

I thought I'd be seeing Paranormal Activity tonight (still crossing my fingers that it'll happen this weekend) but-nope. Spent my evening at the cinema with Vince Vaughn instead. (I gotta let Papa Cash pick the movies SOMETIMES). So instead, let's talk about what I watched last night.....

I'm normally not in a hurry to see a lot of remakes - and when I heard Last House was being remade, I thought I'd probably put it on my 'Do Not Want' list.

I am a big fan of the original - although it took me several viewings to really appreciate the film. I don't think it's a fun movie to watch, and the first time I saw it, I hated it. I only came to appreciate it in the last few years, and even with that appreciation, it's not something I just pop in the DVD player for kicks.

But since I'd read some positive reviews from people whose opinion I trust, (and since I'm STILL waiting for Trick R Treat and The Hills Run Red to become available on Netflix), I thought, what the heck.

I tried hard not to compare it to the original - although that's just about impossible. The basic story and characters are intact - with some minor changes and one HUGE one concerning the ending. I do think the bad guys in this movie can't compare with the originals - these new baddies are pretty despicable, but they can't hold a candle to the original Krug (David Hess), Sadie (Jeramie Rain), and the others. THOSE bad guys really made you feel like they might do anything, at any time - and you KNEW those girls weren't going to have a happy ending. These new guys were bad - but I wasn't as afraid of them - I didn't think they were as scary or unpredictable as Hess and Co.

Another change was to make the character of Junior (Krug's son) more of a victim than in the first movie. In the remake, it's made apparent that Junior (now called Justin) is abused and powerless and really doesn't want to be a part of what's happening. The original Junior is portrayed as being slower and dumber than his 2009 counterpart - and also more dangerous.

I probably wouldn't buy this, or watch it again, but as a remake - it beats most of them hands down. It was fine for an evening's entertainment - and I thought the depiction of the parents turning into vigilantes was appropriate. After all, if two professional adults suddenly find themselves fighting to defend (and revenge) themselves, they aren't going to immediately turn into professional killers. It's probably going to be a little sloppy and a little trial and error.

So if you're really in a mood for a horror flick, and you've either seen everything else, or your first choice is gone....I say check it out. The acting is decent, it moves along well, and even if you're familiar with the first film, there's enough that's changed to create a little bit of suspense.

And the road leads to nowhere,
Mother Firefly

Day 27: Groovy Ghoulies!!!

Groovy Ghoulies are one of those things that I just barely remember watching on TV - in fact, the memory is so hazy that you could probably convince me that I dreamt it if you tried hard enough.

Then I found them on Crackle, so you can't do that anymore.
Ha.

I think I remember them being part of the Archie show - my favorite part, of course. When I watched this, I definitely remembered the monster playing the vertebrae with femurs (at least they look like femurs to me now)

From Crackle: Groovie Goolies: Minisode 1

Day 26: The Monster of Phantom Lake

Extra time for things like movies and blogging was a little on the short side today - as it might be for the next few days. I've got school related things planned - as well as working on draft #3 of my clinical project. I'm hoping that things will wind down by the end of the week and I'll be able to enjoy the holiday weekend.

I did find time to fit this movie in today - it's the third in my Halloween series of movies that are a tribute to an era gone by.

This is another film (his first) by Christopher R. Mimh - the director of Terror from Beneath the Earth, which I watched earlier in the month.

As much as I liked Terror, I think I liked The Monster of Phantom Lake a little bit more. I liked the whole 'teenagers and rock-n-roll' aspect of the movie, and I really liked the storyline and chemistry between Professor Jackson (Josh Craig) and his graduate student Stephanie Yates (Leigha Horton). I think if you like any of Mimh's films, you'll like them all. And these two that I've reviewed are both available for rental on Netflix.

Booga,
Mother Firefly