Impress your friends at a Halloween viewing party with a ‘90s-tastic movie that has no discernible villain, takes place in an unspecified galaxy, and builds its nervous thrills out of solving elaborate math equations. An anti-capitalist explosion with plenty of cannibals, traps, and creepiness, “The People Under the Stairs” is one of Craven’s best. The young “Fool” (Brandon Adams) has to cut through their haunted house and endless cruelties, which makes for a film that alternates between realistically jarring and bitingly funny. Craven stuffs the house with plenty of practical effects and a tone that adds a silly bit of splatter to the Lynchian uncanniness of its "Twin Peaks" leads. Mommy (Wendy Robie) and Daddy ( Everett McGill) run their evil household in a hellish vision of white conservatism, where god’s love has abandoned the suburbs and slum landlords have darker secrets than financial exploitation. If Jordan Peele’s social satire “ Get Out” is your preferred flavor of horror, Wes Craven’s horror-comedy "The People Under the Stairs" addressed many of the former’s anxieties as the Reagan years came to a close. At the center of it are two terrific performances from Mary Beth Hurt and Randy Quaid as the parents who cannot figure out why their kid always looks so freaked out all the time. Imagine other more serious-minded movies about cannibals-“ We Are What We Are” or “ Raw”-put to the same soundtrack as “Ren & Stimpy.” Esquival music will never sound the same way again. It’s a wonder it all holds together with all these different tones coexisting in the same landscape. The tale of a boy ( Bryan Madorsky) in the Eisenhower-era suburbs who learns his parents have a taste for human remains has a wicked sense of humor, a general sense of unease and David Lynchian flourishes of surrealism. An underseen masterpiece of slow-burn euro-horror, “The House That Screamed” examines the cultish beliefs surrounding women’s shame and secrecy from director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, best known for the horror cult-favorite “Who Can Kill a Child?” ( Justine Smith)īob Balaban’s wonderfully weird and creepy “Parents” (or “Daddy Is A Cannibal” if you’re watching it in Germany) succeeds in being both fun to watch in the moment and hard to shake off after it ends. In a classic tale of isolated women driven mad by desire, female sexuality grows monstrous, out of control and boils over into violence as the mystery deepens and expands. Set in a large, brown Gothic house, every aspect of the girl's lives are controlled and this setting of repression leads to acts of rebellion and retaliatory punishments. A domineering headmistress claims they are running away, but the truth is far more sinister. In “The House That Screamed,” young female students keep disappearing from an isolated boarding school in the South of France. On top of all the sick, twisted moments of body horror and haunting by demons from beyond, “Drag Me to Hell” is a frightening reminder that we’re all just one fateful choice away from losing grip on our lives and being dragged down to the pits of Hell. It also stands out as one of the first post-Great Recession horror films, as young bank worker Christine Brown ( Alison Lohman) finds herself the subject of a gypsy woman’s curse when she denies the approval of a loan extension knowing full well that the choice will lead to foreclosure. Sam Raimi returned to his horror roots in 2009 following the immense commercial success of his “ Spider-Man” films with the devilishly fun “Drag Me to Hell.” Horror lovers are familiar with Raimi from his series of “ Evil Dead” films, and “Drag Me to Hell” featured many of the hallmarks that made him such a beloved directord-kinetic filmmaking, grotesque horror, and a twisted sense of humor that mixes the macabre with the Three Stooges. This one's freak flag waves proudly and then some. The film's cockeyed humor-"Like a gingerbread man!"-unabashed sexual kinks, and nightmarishly surreal creature effects (designed by John Carl Buechler and Mark Shostrom) suggest that Gordon and his collaborators really committed to delivering much more where "Re-Animator" came from, both in form and concept ("The machine is operating itself!"). McMichaels, a timid but ambitious psychiatrist who-with the help of traumatized physician Crawford Tillinghast (an endearingly hammy Combs) and wary Detective Bubba Brownlee (character actor god Ken Foree)-conducts a body-melting, mind-splitting experiment that stimulates the human brain's pineal gland. Horror maestro Stuart Gordon re-teamed with " Re-Animator" co-stars Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs (as well as "Re-Animator" co-writer Dennis Paoli and producer Brian Yuzna) for the 1986 gross-out gem "From Beyond," another loose and sticky homage to genre titan and noted racist H.P.
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