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Entries in horror film (49)

Wednesday
Oct062010

pumpktoberfest #19 - take me to the river.

film: mega piranha
beer: river horse hipp-o-lantern imperial pumpkin ale

when it comes to making a horror film, sometimes it helps to serve it up with a big ol helping of cheese. when it comes to movie cheese, the asylum, a movie studio that's known for films such as transmorphers, titanic II & mega shark vs giant octopus, takes the proverbial cake. one of their latest gems is their 2010 film, mega piranha, which shows what happens when piranhas mutate & grow to ridiculous proportions. it stars paul logan as special forces member jason fitch, former teen pop star tiffany as genetics researcher sarah monroe & barry williams (greg brady) as secretary of state bob grady. it premiered back in april on syfy & due to its high quantity of awesomeness, it got the channel's highest ratings of the year, as 2.2 million people tuned in. oh snap, ghost hunters! you got beat by a bunch of fish!

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Tuesday
Oct052010

pumpktoberfest #18 - zombified!

 

film: zombieland
beer: buffalo bill's brewery pumpkin ale

dude. why are people so friggin obsessed with zombies? i mean, these days peeps organize "zombie crawls" in cities all across the country, events where people dress up like zombies & roam the city "looking for brains." there was a bunch of buzz last year when pride and prejudice and zombies, a novel which puts the classic jane austen tale in a world filled with zombies, was released. over the past decade, there have been a ton of zombie films made, stuff like 28 days later and shaun of the dead. i don't get it really. i guess zombies are kinda cool, but if i'm picking something to obsess over i'm going with ninjas or pirates.

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Friday
Oct012010

pumpktoberfest #17 - oh hell no!

film: drag me to hell
beer: weyerbacher imperial pumpkin ale

happy friday! happy october! HAPPY PUMPKTOBERFEST EVERYONE! after the overwhelming success of last year's pumpktoberfest revelry, where we showcased my top fifteen horror films alongside fifteen pumpkin beers, this year we're back with a whole new round of horror films, none of which i've seen before & a (mostly) brand new round of pumpkin beers! can you feel the PUMPKTOBERFEST EXCITEMENT? i sure as hell can. without further ado, let's get to it!

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Saturday
Oct312009

pumpktoberfest #16 - horror in the heartland.

pumpktoberfest #16 - horror in the heartland.
film: halloween
beer: heartland brewery smiling pumpkin ale



for me, the scariest films have always been the ones whose plot make me think "damn, that could actually happen." i'm talking about films sans killer leprechauns or murderous dudes from other dimensions. of these realistic horror films, the pinnacle is john carpenter's 1978 classic, halloween. the film, which centers on a masked, escaped mental patient & non-snl dude named michael myers who terrorizes the midwestern town of haddonfield, IL on halloween night, was the first in what has since become an iconic ten film franchise. over time, the pale white michael myers mask has become synonymous with horror & carpenter's direction, which was occasionally first person & showed little to no gore but was still scary, has been copied by many directors.

the film stars a twenty-year old jamie lee curtis (in her first film role) as a babysitting teenager stalked by michael myers & donald pleasance as myers' doctor. on halloween night, myers escapes from a mental institution & returns to his childhood home to reunite with his baby sister (curtis) & murder people. with the doctor hot on his trail, myers slashes the heck out of haddonfield's horny teenagers & continues to do so until his doctor (who has been with him since myers was a child & has labeled him as "pure evil") shoots him six times in the chest, sending him over the side of a balcony. the kicker? when the doctor looks down over the side of the balcony to check on myers, he's gone. from there, the realistic aspect of halloween goes away, as myers returns for seven more films & two remakes (directed by rob zombie). regardless, the first film left me with significant, psychotically horrific chills.

my final pumpktoberfest beer is the heartland brewery smiling pumpkin ale. for years, i've been seeing heartland brewery's ads for the smiling pumpkin ale, with that slightly psychotic dude holding a pumpkin, but i never got around to trying it because it meant that i had to go to one of the city's heartland breweries, which are essentially tourist traps with good beer. case in point...tonight, i ventured into the city to finally try the smiling pumpkin ale. when i got there, i grabbed myself a seat at the bar & ordered up a pint of the smiling pumpkin ale. to the left of me was a guy whose costume was a shirt that read "mike hunt's diving school" & one of those lifeguard floatation devices on his back with the words "muff diver" written on it. he struck up a conversation with me & i learned what should have been obvious. he was from new jersey.

as for the smiling pumpkin ale, it's the only pumpktoberfest beer i've had from a tap & i'm not sure if that made much of a difference, but as far as pumpkin beers go, it's pretty damn good. in addition to the "honey roasted pumpkin," it's made with ginger, cloves, cinnamon & nutmeg, but those spices don't dominate the flavor or smell. the pumpkin flavor is definitely noticeable & it's a smooth beer that went down nicely despite the dude from jersey sitting next to me. while i'm 100% sure that i won't find myself back at heartland brewery any time soon, i'm happy that my final beer of the pumpktoberfest season ended up being a winner.

Friday
Oct302009

pumpktoberfest #15 - end of the road.

pumpktoberfest #15 - end of the road.
film: a nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors
beer: post road pumpkin ale



as far as horror films go, wes craven has definitely solidified his spot as one of the top directors of all time, with an almost forty year resume that includes the hills have eyes, the serpent & the rainbow, shocker & the scream franchise. the most enduring of his films has been a nightmare on elm street, about freddy kreuger, a janitor who was killed by the citizens of springwood, OH & is now obsessed with getting revenge on them by killing their kids in their dreams. it's since become a cult classic, spawning seven more movies (only one of which craven both wrote & directed--1994's new nightmare), with a michael bay-directed remake of the original film set to come out in the spring of 2010. my favorite of the series & the only other one (other than new nightmare) that craven wrote the screenplay for is 1987's a nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors.

it was the first nightmare on elm street film i saw & it features both the debut of a young patricia arquette & one of the best theme songs ever, "dream warriors," written by the 80s hair metal band dokken. arquette plays kristen parker, a girl who meets freddy early on in the film when he tries to slash her in her dreams with his iconic bladed glove. he doesn't kill her but when she awakens, she has cuts on her arms & her mother thinks she tried to commit suicide, so she sends her to a psych ward. when she arrives, she realizes that the other patients are the last remaining children of the mob that killed freddy & decides that she needs to protect them. freddy still manages to kill a bunch of them, usually with some wisecrack like "welcome to prime time, bitch" (when he kills a girl with a TV). as is par for the course with the films, he's defeated in the end but in the final scene, we learn that he's not actually dead. sequel!

the word on the street in brooklyn these days is that you should probably try brooklyn brewery's post road pumpkin ale before the pumpktoberfest season is over & you can no longer get one. living in brooklyn, i see this pumpkin beer pretty much everywhere i go. to be honest, since brooklyn brewery's beers are in coolers & bars all over the place, i'm starting to think of them as new york's version of sam adams. by that, i mean that while i enjoy their beers & i'd choose them over a budweiser any day of the week, i no longer think of them as anything special. in that tradition, i've sort of already grown tired of the pumpkin ale, but it's still pretty good.

one of the first things that i noticed when i opened it was that, unlike most pumpkin beers, it doesn't have an overwhelming spice smell to it. in fact, when i took my first sip, i was surprised at how little spice there actually is in it. i tasted a little bit of nutmeg, but the spices really just sit back & let the beer speak for itself. in addition, there are apparently hundreds of pounds of pumpkins in every batch, but i guess it must be a seriously big batch because while you can taste the pumpkin, there's really only a hint of it. since the spices & the pumpkin are so tame, it has a relatively smooth taste. so yeah, it's tasty but it's nothing to dream about. that's ok though, because as we've learned from the nightmare on elm street films, dreaming will get you killed.

tomorrow! my #1 horror film in the entire universe & our final pumpkin beer of the pumpktoberfest season! don't miss it!