A bunch more classics, most of which come from spooky season, 2024.

1920 – Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde – The silent film version of the old story. It’s pretty good even if its pacing is typically slow and there aren’t nearly enough title cards for the amount of pantomime dialog. Enjoyed seeing a Mr. Hyde I’ve seen in clips all my life.

1942 – The Ox-Bow Incident – a pretty good western / morality play about a posse gone off to lynch some cattle rustlers. The rustlers say they are innocent so the gang spits between taking them to prison or hangin’ ’em high on the spot.

1948 – Bicycle Thieves – a classis of Italian post-war filmmaking even if I didn’t grasp the metaphors and nuance of what they are trying to say. I knew it for its reputation and enjoyed it on a surface level but am not quite sure of all its themes.

1957 – Not of this Earth – it’s 1950s sci-fi B movie: The Movie. A pretty ok one of these from Roger Corman. Not a lot to say… aliens in the 50s.

1957 – Quatermass II – a very British, very 1950s sci-fi B movie about an invasion from space which includes the usual body snatching aliens. Only interesting because Quatermass and the Pit from a decade later is such a good movie.

1958 – The Day the Sky Exploded – a pretty banal but harmless piece of ’50s B movie whatever. The first rocket into space causes an asteroid swarm to approach Earth. It’s an early disaster movie about a deep impact Armageddon scenario.

1958 – Run Silent, Run Deep – a pretty darn good early WW2 submarine movie with all the usual bells and whistles of sub movie. Depth charges, sweaty sailors, etc. I rather liked it.

1971 – Klute – Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland: The movie. Not much else to recommend this rather tedious detective flick. I expected a lot more.

1977 – Alucarda – a little bit of heresy in one short very 70s horror film. A teenage girl is sent to a monastery where she meets Alucarda… a girl who quickly becomes possessed by the devil. Not bad.

1979 – The Visitor – a very very very 70s mashup of new age hokum and bad seed killer kid movie. Space Jesus sends a visitor to Earth to stop the child of Satan from being born. It’s not very good but it sure is the 1970s on screen.

1980 – The Boogey Man – an ok supernatural horror film with some imaginative imagery. A slow pace kind of kills it though.

1980 – Galaxina – a very very very bad sci-fi satire that only wishes it was as good as Barbarella. It’s not. It’s just bad.

1980 – Without Warning – Allegedly an inspiration for Predator. Spoiler alert: Predator was better. A bunch of idiots wander around the woods getting sniped by fleshy frisbees shot by an unconvincing alien.

1983 – Conquest – A quite terrible Italian Conan the Barbarian knockoff surprisingly directed by shlocky horror guy Lucio Fulci. It’s bad but it has its moments and eventually kind of gets to a zen vibes level of incoherence.

1986 – TerrorVision – a not exactly serious horror/comedy that puts the comedy in horror and the horror out on the street. It’s basically a live action cartoon with a goopy practical monster and a whole lot of silly nonsense. Kinda fun.

1987 – Aenigma – a rather tedious supernatural horror film from Lucio Fulci… he’s made better and he’s made worse.

1990 – Frankenhooker – as tawdry and cheesy as it sounds… but also fun junk about a mad scientist who wants to rebuild his fiancé who died due to a lawnmower accident. So he heads to NYC to find some body parts belonging to local hookers.

1992 – Tetsuo II: Body Hammer – the inferior sequel to the superior original Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Both are about a Japanese salaryman turning into a cybernetic bio-weapon… both make very little sense, this one loses all the original creative energy.

1993 – Ocean Waves – a Non-Miyazaki Studio Ghibli romance anime. Not terrible, not great.

1995 – Cruel Jaws – a cheap Jaws knockoff that stole plot, dialog, and even shots from Jaws 1-4… it was even called Jaws 5 in some regions (unofficially). It’s bad but kind of charming in its audacity… and that it’s somehow better than most of the bad shark movies of today (while still being quite bad).

1996 – Jack – Francis Ford Coppola slums it in an unfunny mess of a children’s movie that doesn’t even have the courage to  be about what it’s about. Robin Williams plays a ten year old with an aging disease… so he looks like an adult in elementary school. Does the fun ever start?

1996 – Space Truckers – A surprisingly fun bit of space camp from horror director Stuart Gordon. Somehow Dennis Hopper plays a space trucker hauling merchandise to Earth… only everyone wants to stop him. Pretty fun and quite inventive for its very low budget.