Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 31: The Crow

A year after he was brutally slaughtered by a killer gang, a musician rises from the dead aided by a Crow to wreak vengeance!

I was in love with this movie for years and years, it still holds the record for the movie I saw most in theaters. Brandon Lee, son of the huge star Bruce Lee, died during the making of this movie too, it was a terrible tragedy. Plenty of other stars in the movie too – Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters fame, Michael Wincott of the amazing voice and acting talent,
Laurence Mason of Hackers, Tony Todd, even Bai Ling. The entire movie is full of graveyards and crows and stark imagery, backed by a soundtrack that rocks the world, like The Cure and Nine Inch Nails.

The movie starts off with the death of Shelley and Eric Draven, the day before Halloween now known as Devil’s Night in the inner city, due to the fires it provokes. Shelley gets beaten and raped and dies on the way to the hospital. And poor Eric takes a “six story swan dive out of a window”, with some help from T-Bird and his gang. So they die and get buried, and dear street kid Sarah is left to fend for herself. A year to the day later, Eric rises from the dead (still perfectly preserved mind you) with the aid of a Crow, and sets about wreaking vengeance and havoc on everyone who was involved in his and Shelley’s murders! Gideon and his pawnshop get a thorough trouncing, and for some reason I never quite understood, the showdown scene in Top Dollar’s lair, where Eric takes a hail of bullets, is referred to as the “Moby Dick scene”. Eric decorates Tin-Tin with his own blades, leaving a bloody Crow on the wall as a calling card. T-Bird gets strapped to his T-Bird as it explodes, and even Skank gets tossed out a window…eventually. For some reason, Funboy got a kind of mercy, being forced to do all his morphine all at once. And of course in the process Eric scares straight Sarah’s wayward mother. When the final showdown comes between Eric and Top Dollar, his manner of death made me want to cheer, it’s very appropriate.

Now I know, there are plenty of movies that deal with returning from the dead to avenge yourself and a loved one. This one, whether it be because of Producer Alex Proyas, dear heart Brandon Lee’s incomparable acting
skillz, or a fine story cast and crew; I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. The Crow, the first one at least, I won’t touch the sequels, is always and forever still my favorite dark love story and Halloween movie ever.

by

Alicia Glass

Disciplined Monkey Studios | Promote Your Page Too

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 30: The Maxx

“Most of us inhabit at least two worlds. The real world, where we’re at the mercy of circumstance; and the world within, the unconscious, a safe place, where we can escape. The Maxx shifts between these worlds against his will. Here homeless, he lives in a box in an alley. The only one who truly cares for him is Julie Winters, a freelance social worker. But in Pangea, the other world, he rules the Outback, and is the protector of Julie, his Jungle Queen. There he cares for her – but he always ends up back in the real world. And me, old Mr. Gone? Only I can see, that the secret which unites them, could destroy them both. I could be helpful….ah, screw it. I think I’ll have some fun with them first!”

The Maxx is a cartoon series that was on MTV’s Oddities some years ago, and for a nice dark Halloween showing, it has a bit of everything. There’s a psycho serial killer who also happens to be a sorcerer, a purple-clad homeless superhero, a social worker Jungle Queen, and all manner of odd creatures you’ve never heard of. My favorite happens to be the Iz, the eyeless creatures who turn black and razor-toothed when they get taken to the real world.

I actually own the entire first series of the comic books the show is based off of, and I can tell you the cartoon series is an almost frame by frame retelling, which I personally thought was amazing. Sam Keith has a unique, almost Anime way of telling his story, and it comes across in the show beautifully. Like Spawn, if you want a nice dark and unique story for Halloween, this one’s for you!

by

Alicia Glass

Disciplined Monkey Studios | Promote Your Page Too

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 27: Silent Hill

Studio: Sony Pictures

MPAA Rating: R

Director: Christophe Gans

Review Rating: 8

Based on the wildly popular video game, a woman goes looking for her beloved adopted daughter in the haunted town of Silent Hill.

I didn’t play the game, I did watch the husband play it, and was intrigued by the ending. So when the movie came out awhile later, many of the fans of the video game were displeased, and the movie sadly didn’t seem to generate a lot in the way of new fans of just the film. Well poo on that; I enjoyed the movie just fine, thank you. Radha Mitchell did just fine in the main role of Rose, hunting mother, though I do still think that part was a tad too generic and could have been handed to any number of actresses. Sean Bean is Christ, her husband, remember him? Poor guy. Jodelle Ferland gives a phenomenal performance as both Sharon, and Alessa. Which brings us to the rest of the movie.

So Rose and Chris adopted this girl Sharon, and she just happens to havenight fits about some town called Silent Hill. And Rose, being a caringmother, decides to take Sharon back to the old burned town of what was Silent Hill, to try and help her daughter. Once there, literally all hell breaks loose, and Rose finds herself battling psycho mutant nurses with no eyes, or Pyramidhead with his maul. A good deal of the movie is video game combat, but they try to bring back the story heavily towards the end, for the climactic scene where Alessa comes in her full dark vengeance and explains everything while she calmly rips people apart. It’s hard to guess which is more terrifying, the calm little girl with the black eyes who’s killing folk all around her with flailing barbed wire, or the circumstances and townsfolk who did this to her in the first place. Although that’s not entirely fair, Alessa made a deal with…Someone, and chose to become this dark revenging angel on the entire town. But then, according to the movie anyway, they deserved it. 

Silent Hill takes what most people thought impossible, that is a horror/action video game, and made it into a really believeable if not understandable movie. And hell, for Halloween even your signifigant other can be talked into watching Silent Hill with you!

by

Alicia Glass

Movie B-erated | Promote Your Page Too

Disciplined Monkey Studios | Promote Your Page Too

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 24: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Studio: New Line Cinema

MPAA Rating: R

Director: Wes Craven

Using the new Freddy Krueger movie as a conduit, demonic spirits plan to invade, and it’s up to Heather Langenkamp, the actress of Nancy in the original Nightmare movies, to stop it!

Arguably the best Freddy movie to date, it has to be understood that unless you know and love Freddy’s backstory and all his iconic moves and legend, this movie won’t mean as much to you. A movie, about the first Freddy movie on it’s ten year anniversary, a new movie being made inside the movie we’re watching – is a very Wes Craven gimmick, and one I always enjoyed. This particular episode of the Freddy Krueger chronicles styles our beloved Master of Nightmares as something much more sinister than usual – a monster from the Outside, like a Grimm fairy tale come to terrible life. These days, we have a healthy respect if not fear for those olden tales, so it actually works to make Freddy in theory that much more frightening. It even shows inside New Nightmare, where we see what we know damn well is Robert England in a lot of makeup, and then much later, when we see a much more demonic version of Freddy rise like an evil Djinn!

Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, and even Wes Craven himself all reprise their own roles in this movie, just you know, to make it all the more believeable. With the same question raised in John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness, “If enough people believe in something, does that make it real?”, brought to full frontal purported real life inside the film, that’s rather scary too. And yes I know, there’s a bunch of traditional Freddy scares – the tongue in Heather’s phone; the kid strapping steak knives to his fingers for Freddy’s glove; the oh OW death of the husband – it’s all but a requirement anyway. Half of everyone’s favorite burnt psycho nightmare, half of an in theory actually possible plot, and we have a Nightmare on Elm St. opus.

by

Alicia Glass

Movie B-erated | Promote Your Page Too

Disciplined Monkey Studios | Promote Your Page Too

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Movie Moxie’s 31 Days of Halloween Day 20: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

Studio: Touchstone Pictures

MPAA Rating: PG

Director: Henry Selick

Welcome to Halloweentown! We have a depressed Pumpkin King, a two-faced Mayor, a rag doll heroine who sews herself together, and all manner of witches, goblins, werewolves and everything else you can think of for Halloween! But Jack, our Pumpkin King, is depressed, has run out of ideas and is getting bored, so when he accidentally discovers the other holiday doors, he just has to take over Christmas too! 

Tim Burton is the man. A Nightmare Before Christmas has been a classic for more than ten years now. Who else would be able to get away with an entire claymated movie that combines Halloween and Christmas into one entire great story! The whole thing is very goth, and not necessarily for children under like 12, and the music is to die for. A love story between the Pumpkin King and the rag doll heroine, where they sing love songs to eachother and all, is just adorable in a very Burton kind of way. The songs themselves too are phenomenal, and have been reproduced any number of times, including by Marilyn Manson, gothic shock rocker himself. The songs are catchy and memorable, and if anyone catches you singing them, they’re likely to know the words and sing right along with you! Jack and Sally costumes are repeated often during Halloween, though personally I would love to see the gambling Oogie Boogie done as a costume at some point.

I know, it’s technically two holidays in one movie. Deal with it – every Halloween should have at least one showing of Nightmare! Burton managed to make an absolute classic for my generation, with something for kids and adults of all ages, and that’s awesome!

by

Alicia Glass

Movie B-erated | Promote Your Page Too

Disciplined Monkey Studios | Promote Your Page Too

make custom gifts at Zazzle