Over the past week or so:
John Carpenter's "The Fog" - i think this is a classic case of misaligned expectations for me. Somehow I had never watched "the Fog" until last week and I guess I was expecting something more violent and gore-y than what I got. Adrienne Barbeau was great and Tom Atkins played his usual angry, young girl banging self, but in terms of actual horror/suspense it didn't work for me. Even the underlying plot seemed relatively cool but the overall execution literally put me to sleep several times during the movie.
"Event Horizon" - I saw this one in theaters way back when. I was 10 years old and it scared the shit out of me. In the several viewings since my opinion has fluctuated. As of my most recent viewing, it's a damn enjoyable movie! Like some crossbreed of Hellraiser and the Shining in space, but with a visual style all its own. I understand the movie was rushed out of post-production and never truly finished. That's definitely the feeling I get when most of the last 30 minutes is significantly weaker than the first 2/3rds of the movie. But I still really enjoyed this way more than I expected to on this latest viewing.
feeling a need to see Sam Neill's beautiful face again, last night was John Carpenter's "In The Mouth of Madness". I started watching it a few years ago but wasn't really in the mood and never picked it back up. Watching the whole thing last night, I was kicking myself for not giving it a proper viewing sooner. I really really liked this one. Pretty solid dialogue, good practical effects, an overall very cool plot. and HP Lovecraft references galore! I think it's up there with some of Carpenter's best films from the '80s! It probably helps that I'm going through another cycle of obsessing over HP Lovecraft and anything related but I feel pretty confident I'd like this one in 6 months as much as I did last night.
