Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

IMDb plot summary: When the brilliant but unorthodox scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein rejects the artificial man that he has created, the Creature escapes and later swears revenge.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Robert De Niro, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hulce, and Helena Bonham Carter.

I really love Kenneth Branagh as a film director because he turns every film, no matter the original genre, into a grandiose Greek tragedy and I love it. There is noooooo subltety in this film, which apparently really angered the screenwriter, but I found it captivating, especially as someone already very familiar with the original story. Characters scream and collapse and shake their fists at the heavens and RIP OUT OTHER CHARACTERS' HEARTS and SET THEMSELVES ON FIRE, and I love every minute of it. I really have to lean away from realism and into the aesthetic of a Branagh film to get the most out of it, but when I do, oh goodness is it a reward. This film is most definitely NOT for everybody, but it is very much for somebody, and that somebody is me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Queen of Katwe

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < Leap of Faith

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < The Muppets

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Blackbeard's Ghost

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Hidden Figures

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > The Fault in Our Stars

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein > Kwaidan

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein < The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Final spot: #710 out of 3231, or 78%.

Cemetery Man (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A cemetery man must kill the dead a second time when they become zombies.

Directed by Michele Soavi. Starring Rupert Everett, François Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi, and Mickey Knox.

This is a weird, surreal film with these little touches of bizarre black comedy, and I just did NOT grasp how this all came together or what the meaning of it was supposed to be. At first it comes across as just a quirky horror comedy, but it gets more and more surreal as it goes on -- at one point I wondered if maybe it was all in his mind or if it was trying to make some big symbolic point about life and death, and the ending did NOT help solidify that one way or the other for me. It's also a very *gross* movie, and I don't mean gore, I mean people are just always drooling and puking and that stuff gets to me more than basically anything else I can think of. I don't think I got anything out of this -- it's just bizarre and creepy and icky for no reason. Can't recommend this one.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Cemetery Man < Downfall

Cemetery Man < The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Cemetery Man < Monkey Business (1931)

Cemetery Man > A Cinderella Story

Cemetery Man > Live a Little, Love a Little

Cemetery Man < The Good Doctor

Cemetery Man < Bang the Drum Slowly

Cemetery Man > Roger Dodger

Cemetery Man < Fist Fight

Cemetery Man > The Ant Bully

Cemetery Man < The Host (2013)

Final spot: #2911 out of 3230, or 10%.

Dark and Stormy Night (2009)

IMDb plot summary: In the 1930s the family of old Sinas Cavinder, gathered for the reading of his will, find themselves being murdered by a mysterious phantom while two rival reporters compete for the story.

Directed by Larry Blamire. Starring Jennifer Blaire, Daniel Roebuck, Brian Howe, and Fay Masterson.

This is a parody of 1930s horror films, written and directed by Larry Blamire, whose 2003 B-movie parody The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is in my top 50 films of all time. This one doesn't land quite as well for me, though it features many of the same actors and follows the same path of just stuffing the movie chock-full of styles and tropes to poke fun at. We've got an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, a pair of witty fast-talking screwball comedy reporters, the frightened and/or ominous servants populating every gothic horror story... a little bit of everything. That does mean it moves along quickly enough that if a joke doesn't land, just wait a second and maybe the next one will. While I could see this one ultimately growing on me as a quotable delight much the same way Cadavra did, the first viewing produced mostly mild chuckles. The biggest laughs came from tiny throwaway lines, so I'm sure there are other gems to be found, but it's a little underwhelming.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Dark and Stormy Night > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Dark and Stormy Night < Queen of Katwe

Dark and Stormy Night < A Goofy Movie

Dark and Stormy Night < The Fall

Dark and Stormy Night < VeggieTales: Madame Blueberry

Dark and Stormy Night < Hustle & Flow

Dark and Stormy Night > One, Two, Three

Dark and Stormy Night > Nine Queens

Dark and Stormy Night > Mudbound

Dark and Stormy Night > The Misfits

Dark and Stormy Night > Frank

Dark and Stormy Night < Monsters

Final spot: #1566 out of 3229, or 52%.

The Conjuring (2013)

IMDb plot summary: Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse.

Directed by James Wan. Starring Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lil Taylor, and Ron Livingston.

It's probably worth pointing out that despite being religious and believing in the supernatural myself, demon possession movies typically don't do much for me. They don't really tap into any of my deep-seated fears. I do startle easily, so I definitely react to jump scares or "there's definitely going to be somebody standing behind her when she looks in the mirror," but it doesn't fill me with dread. I found the scares in this one fairly by-the-book, and the characters of the Warrens to take themselves *so* seriously that I couldn't. (I laughed out loud when, apparently at the *end* of a "how to hunt demons" lecture they give, someone asks them what their job title is. Surely that would have been shared at the beginning, but I guess they couldn't come up with a way to make it make sense AND have exposition.) If this is a subgenre of horror you find compelling, this is probably a worth addition. But it's not the one to draw in genre skeptics.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Conjuring < Downfall

The Conjuring > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

The Conjuring < Four Weddings and a Funeral

The Conjuring > My Six Loves

The Conjuring > Millions

The Conjuring < The Inspector General

The Conjuring > It's Complicated

The Conjuring < Paint Your Wagon

The Conjuring > The Ides of March

The Conjuring < Nine (2009)

The Conjuring > Burning Annie

Final spot: #2083 out of 3228, or 35%.

The Innocents (1961)

IMDb plot summary: A young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted.

Directed by Jack Clayton. Starring Deborah Kerr, Peter Wyngarde, Megs Jenkins, and Michael Redgrave.

This is apparently based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw, which I knew absolutely nothing about going into this -- had no idea it had ghosts in it at all. Apparently it's fairly ambiguous whether the ghosts exist or are manifestations of the protagonist's sexual repression, and various adaptations tend to lean to one side or the other. This one plays a little bit with both possibilities, but from the beginning, it becomes clear that this woman is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of a haunting. She pulls her confident solutions out of thin air, and a speech she gives in the latter half of the film about being determined to help people even if it hurts them it gave me chills. The plot of the movie, especially when she learns how the haunting affects the other occupants of the house, is very unsettling, possibly made even more so by 1960s restrictions on how explicitly adult themes could be discussed, which means that it becomes unclear what has and has not happened and creates an atmosphere rife with paranoia. The more I sit with this movie, the more I like it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Innocents > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The Innocents > Queen of Katwe

The Innocents > Revengers Tragedy

The Innocents < Jerry Maguire

The Innocents < Ernest & Celestine

The Innocents < Inglourious Basterds

The Innocents < The Edge of Seventeen

The Innocents > The Bride Wore Black

The Innocents < Shutter Island

The Innocents < Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Innocents > Her

The Innocents < The Devil's Backbone

Final spot: #388 out of 3227, or 88%.

The Black Cat (1934)

IMDb plot summary: American honeymooners in Hungary become trapped in the home of a Satan-worshiping priest when the bride is taken there for medical help following a road accident.

Directed by Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, and Julie Bishop.

I'm going to do it, I'm going to only watch horror movies this October. Not necessarily one every day, but everything I do watch will be a horror movie. Let's start with The Black Cat, a 1934 film starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, two actors synonymous with classic horror, only a couple years after their most famous monster roles. The nature of the enmity between the two leads is explained just enough to pique our interest, and watching them battle for both their revenge and the lives and souls of the innocent bystanders is a lot of fun. The film plays a bit with whether or not one of them is a hero or whether both are as villainous as they immediately seem. The plot reveals that do happen are pretty campy and melodramatic, and large eerie pieces are just left unexplained, but this is about atmosphere more than anything, and the film has that in spades. I would have liked maybe a little bit more back story and a stronger connection to the black cat of the title, but it's still very enjoyable.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Black Cat > The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The Black Cat > Barton Fink

The Black Cat < Leap of Faith

The Black Cat < Super 8

The Black Cat < Taxi Driver

The Black Cat < Sherlock Jr.

The Black Cat < Fruitvale Station

The Black Cat < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Black Cat < Jack Goes Boating

The Black Cat < Chronicle

The Black Cat > Robot and Frank

The Black Cat > Whip It

Final spot: #803 out of 3226, or 75%.

Village of the Damned (1960)

IMDb plot summary: In the English village of Midwich, the blonde-haired, glowing-eyed children of uncertain paternity prove to have frightening powers.

Directed by Wolf Rilla. Starring George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gwynn, and Laurence Naismith.

This movie has one of the creepiest opening scenes I've ever seen on film, and the rest doesn't quite live up to those expectations, but it's still solid. It's very short at just 75 minutes long and ends up functioning even better as a series of unsettling, unexplained encounters than it does as one long narrative. I had to do some googling to find out if the main child had been dubbed by an adult woman as it sounds, but, no, that was the child dubbing in his own voice, it just sounds so unnatural it brings out the horror atmosphere in full force. The central character struck a realistic balance for me between being eager to study these new creatures and being cautious of them, especially as he begins to see how they intend to use their powers. I knew very little about this movie before watching it, but it's definitely an underrated gem. If you like your horror light on gore and heavy on eerie atmosphere, definitely give this one a watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Village of the Damned > The Dinner Guest

Village of the Damned > Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

Village of the Damned > Revengers Tragedy

Village of the Damned < Jerry Maguire

Village of the Damned < Ernest & Celestine

Village of the Damned < Inglourious Basterds

Village of the Damned < The Edge of Seventeen

Village of the Damned < The Bride Wore Black

Village of the Damned < Best In Show

Village of the Damned > Marriage Story

Village of the Damned > The Ring

Village of the Damned < Knives Out

Final spot: #398 out of 3225, or 88%.