Horror Fest IV Day One: The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and Night of the Creeps

It's kind of tricky updating after the movies this year because one of the beds is next to the computer, and Cranpire is awfully lazy. At any rate, let's quickly discuss the two movies that followed last night's field trip to Zombieland:

1. The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is maybe not a solid on a second viewing, although something curious happened. The beginning of the film, which I found to be a bit tedious in the theatre, was slightly more amusing. The ending, however, felt like it took forever to get to (not such a good thing for an 80 minute movie) and wasn't quite as much fun this time around. Oh well, at least a few people saw it for the first time.

2. Night of the Creeps, on the other hand, was excellent. I hadn't seen the movie in years, so it was a nice pleasure to rediscover the film, even as I was struggling to stay awake. For a horror-comedy, it strikes the right balance of laughs and spooks, and Tom Atkins owns most of the film. One of the questions that came up, however, was whether the alien subtitles during the beginning of the film are representative of their language, or if they exist for another alien species watching Night of the Creeps. Curious...


On a side note, we put on a disc called Monsters Crash the Pajama Party, a collection by Something Weird video of truly random horror related ephemera. In addition to a seemingly endless reel of text ads, there were a number of short films about strange hippies being scared by monsters, a "Mad Doctor", and a Gorilla doing all sorts of stupid things.

We also saw the worst 3-D footage ever. Note to people including 3-D footage on your dvd: if you want to really use the gimmick, it's better not to use washed out images that make the three dimensions look awful. Additionally, the menu on Monsters is so cumbersome and confusing that I couldn't actually tell you how to get from one set of footage to the other. Seriously.

Oh well, the next round of Horror Fest IV: The Final Chapter begins in about an hour. We have a good night lined up, and already watched Child's Play with the Chucky commentary. Classy.