Top Tens:Sound Off Like You Gotta Pair,Soldiers!

To get more in tune with the Hallowe'en season,I'm gonna take this opportunity to kick up a good bit of dialogue between us all,chappies,and ask YOU,the Wopsploitation readers,"What are your ten favourite horror films of all-time?" You can post directly below this entry as a comment,or you can shoot me your list in an e-mail if you're the bashful type.YOUR favorites,for whatever reasons you may have.Technical merit,atmosphere,special makeup effects,it's all good,kiddies.From whatever era,whatever studios,whatever country of origin,whatever MPAA ratings.All tits to me.The only stipulation is that you list ten(10) movies only.'Tis the season here at Castle Wop,and I've been thinking we should do some genre chatting amongst ourselves about the movies we love the most to help get ourselves ready for All Hallows Eve this year.I'll kick it off right here and now,with my own favourites,and you can join in anytime you'd like.
In no particular order,and constantly subject to change:

(a little bit o' recent I,candy,for you bitches out there.)
The Exorcist(1973)-I can't think of another movie that drips pure evil the way this one does(apart from my own home movies!).For years I had a hard time watching it alone in the dark.Now,that's the only way I'll watch it!
Dawn of the Dead(1978)-My favourite of the series,hands down,though NOTLD still merits a spot in the second ten,for sure."Could be nuclear!"
Suspiria(1976)-Argento's eye and the sounds of Goblin make for a beautifully spooky ride through the world of witches.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre(1974)-The climax here is rivalled by few for nerve-wracking,white boned insanity."Look what yer brother did to the door!"
Halloween(1978)-The perfectly constructed slasher movie.
The Shining(1980)-Kubrick was a master filmmaker,is it any wonder he handled horror this well?
Black Christmas(1974)-You have no idea how much I love this movie.
Dellamorte,Dellamore(1992)-My favourite zombie movie,bar none.
Operazione paura(1966)-One of my fave Bava vehicles,although there are plenty.
Psycho(1960)-Do you like Hitchock?Yes.Yes I do.

Well,there you have it.Looking at my choices,pretty seventies-driven at the moment.I'll leave it at that though,before I go messing with it and changing it around.Get typing,droogies,let's hear yours!

Wicked as Always,
B-Dub

"Dark Night of the Scarecrow"(1981)d/Frank De Felitta

Ah,here's one that takes me back to the salad days when neighborhood vandalism replaced trick or treating for me.Seriously,if you happen to be one of the thousands of individuals I preyed upon every October 30th(I <3 Mischief Night),well,that'd make you pretty old,wouldn't it.What?You were expecting appy-polly-lodgies?Not a fuckin' chance,dicks.Be glad I finally grew too old for that sort of thing,or I'd be burnin' ya every year still.Anyway,back to the movie.After watching it debut a week before Halloween in 1981(it played seasonally for quite a while afterwards,too),I can remember calling my buddies on the phone and talking about it for days afterwards.Probably the last of the truly great made-for-television horror movies,directed by Frank De Felitta,who wrote the novels for Audrey Rose(...which he also produced."Hothothothothothothot!")and The Entity.It's safe to say that this is the best work he's ever done.A perfectly executed,poignantly cautionary tale that fits in with the Samhain spirit as well as jack o'lanterns and articulated cardboard skeletons thumbtacked to your front door.There are classic performances by Charles Durning,who you'll know as Peter's father in Family Guy and Pappy O'Daniel in the Coens' O Brother Where Art Thou?,Larry Drake of LA Law and Darkman fame,who also scored big genre points in 1971's This Stuff'll Kill Ya and 1977's The Electric Chair,directed by HGL-goremeister,J.G. "Pat" Patterson.Tonight's entry was officially released on dvd by VCI a few weeks ago,so you can finally put those grainy bootlegged dvd-r's out to pasture,and add this must-see to your collections just in time for the holiday.

"Aloha,you big dopey waterhead!", or Bubba(Larry Drake) gets lei'd.
Bubba Ritter(Drake) is a gentle oaf,hulking and harmless.He spends lazy afternoons with a young local girl named Marylee(Tonya Crowe) picking flowers in the meadow.Though theirs is an innocent friendship,the reality of intolerance in the south(the village idiot interacting with little girls is frowned upon,yet inevitable in such a place) is ever-present,looming over the man's head.After Bubba saves his tiny friend from a vicious dog attack,Otis(Durning),the town mailman(and judge and jury,apparently)wrongfully assumes the girl has been raped and killed by the retarded man after seeing her unconscious body lying at the doctor's office,and forms a lynch mob to dole out some backwoods justice,sending the terrified man running to the protection of his mama,who instructs him to play the "hiding game",where he disguises himself as a scarecrow posted in a field until the trouble subsides.The mailman's bloodhounds quickly sniff out the waterhead's whereabouts and he's soon on the receiving end of a hail of vigilante-administered bullets,eating scorching hot gunpowder death.Afterwards the letter-bringer and his three accomplices discover that not only is little Marylee alive and well,but the frightened retard they've just mowed down,had saved her from the cantankerous canine.Oops.Covering his tracks,Otis props a pitchfork in the corpse's hands,to veil their crime as an act of self defense,which,combined with a lack of witnesses,sees the four men go free in court,but not before Bubba's grief-stricken mother can offer a prophetic warning about judgement from a higher power.Knock,knock.Who's there?Violent.Violent who?Violent karmic implications for all sorry bastards involved,that's who.

Insert your own obligatory "mailman going postal" joke here.
The following evening,the aptly named Harliss Hocker gets chewed up and spit out real good by his own woodchipper,after noticing an ominous scarecrow not unlike the one Bubba hid inside mysteriously appearing in his field earlier that afternoon.Two of the other perpetrators,Skeeter and Philby(don't you love these names?)inform Otis of Harliss' fate,and when the mailman investigates the scene of the accident,nothing adds up.The mailman is quick to point the finger at Bubba's mother,who denies all involvement while promising an ice cold bowl of justice for the remaining guilty parties.When Philby discovers a scarecrow on his property,Otis goes to Mrs. Ritter for answers,and when she suffers a heart attack under the stress,he turns the gas stove up with the fireplace lit,effectively destroying all crime scene evidence.Meanwhile,the otherworldly scarecrow traps Philby in his own silo,turning on the conveyor belt in,burying the son of a bitch under a mountain of grain-based retribution.Skeeter panics and threatens to turn himself in,forcing Otis to prove that Bubba's body still lies dead in its grave by digging it up.Otis then turns the blade of his spade upon the back of the last remaining co-conspiritor's domepiece,and reburies both bodies before driving off.On the road he notices Marylee,who he chases into a pumpkin patch,accusing her of the rash of recent scarecrow shennanigans.A payloader/plougher turns itself on and chases the pudgy redneck into the patch,pulverizing gourds in its wake,causing the mailman to accidentally run into the scarecrow,who is holding a pitchfork that Otis realizes he has just shishkabobbed himself upon.He points at the scarecrow,who nods and walks off to Marylee,handing her a flower.She thanks her straw-stuffed friend,and promises to teach him the chasing game tomorrow.

All that violently retributive death reigned down upon the ignorant townsfolk,Bubba did,in fact,do.
The script was originally intended for independent release before being bought up by CBS,who wisely left it largely intact.The Key Video VHS fetches a pretty penny and is pretty hard to come by these days,but then,I can't understand the whole recent resurgence in video cassette popularity to begin with.I,for one,will never miss monkeying with the tracking adjustment on a beat-assed rental tape for ten minutes before being able to sit down to enjoy the movie.I dumped off literally thousands of VHS years ago when I came into the new millenium with the DVD format.Whatever floats your boats,folks.Seriously kiddies,on the matter of Dark Night,which I feel succeeds on all levels,you'll be hardpressed to find a finer shocker built for the small screen.We'll be examining some more cathode horror this week,going further back into the vaults.One of these days I'll post my top made-for-television horror movies of all-time,which tonight's entry easily finds itself in.Highly recommended,and the highest rating scale mark possible is in order.

Awwww.Happy endings always make me a little wet in the oculars.

"The Wolfman"(2009)d/Joe Johnston

Though I'm definitely a splatter-era horror aficionado,I spent most of my formative years taking in the classic originals,with The Wolfman at the top of my favorite list,due to my old man's equally nauseating love for said monster and film.
After hearing about all the problems leading up to the release of the remake of Universal's 1941 classic(musical directors,complete re-edits,reshoots,musical release dates),you'd expect the worst for such a seemingly cursed production.Having finally taken in the entry-in-question for myself,I can report to thee,my beauties,that it ain't nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be.Of course,if you're from the camp of people who expected this incarnation to blow Lon Chaney,Jr.'s clear out of the kennel,then this will be a very bitter Milk Bone for you to chew upon,indeed.The lush cinematography is atmospheric and artfully mapped out within for the film connoisseur to drink in,but upon a very schizophrenically scripted foundation,bogged down with a torrential downpour of cinematic cliches and in-jokes that could have the viewer wondering if he was watching an uber-expensive Howling prequel instead.Which is kind of the level it works on,strangely enough.
Del Toro,Hopkins,and even Hugo Weaving in a head-scratching turn as Abberline of the Yard(Shouldn't you be in Whitechapel investigating Saucy Jack,guv?)all turn in solid performances given the surroundings and circumstances.The delicious Emily Blunt is adequately sexy set decoration in her wood-inducing Victorian bustiers and corsets.Just as the money shot is to porn,so is the transformation scene to werewolf movies,and Wolfman's is nothing short of spectacular,if not perhaps a little too smooth,due to CGI.Despite mixed reviews,the film has grossed over 160 million to date,which means it has turned a profit,albeit a very marginal one,due to the ridiculous budget assessed to the production.Dog'll hunt,as they say.

"They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has failed and Moon is dead."
The scene is the Blackmoor forest,1891.Ben Talbot,brother of acclaimed thespian,Lawrence(Del Toro),is on the run from a nightmarish mashup of both man and wolf.He doesn't make it.Ben's fiance' Gwen(Blunt)travels to London to inform Lawrence of his brother's disappearance,motivating the actor to travel via locomotive back to Blackmoor for answers.On the train,he comes into possession of a finely crafted sword/cane with an intricately designed silver wolf's head,after hearing of its French lycanthropic origins from an elderly gent(Max Von Sydow)he shares a compartment with.At the family estate,reconnecting with his father,Sir John(Hopkins)opens up old wounds like his mother's alleged self-inflicted Columbian necktie and own subsequent institutionalizing at his father's hands,and new ones,like the discovery of his brother's savaged,unrecognizable corpse,which he grimly inspects for himself at the local slaughterhouse.The locals blame a passing caravan of gypos and their dancing bear for the vicious murder,and after the funeral and Gwen departs for London,Lawrence pays the gypsy camp a visit.Angry townsfolk descend upon the camp,demanding the bear from the fly-by-nights,but a wolflike beast attacks,slaughtering locals and gypsies alike,and biting Talbot in the process.Maleva sews the fallen actor back together amidst protest from her peers,citing the fact that he can only be killed by somewho loves him now.At this point Gwen returns to Talbot Hall to nurse Lawrence back to health,and he recuperates fully after only a few weeks.Sir John's manservant,Singh takes the opportunity to show the young man a munition of silver bullets he's been stockpiling.

Yeah,dunk him again for that Che movie he did for Soderbergh.And again.And again.
Inspector Abberline(Weaving)arrives on the scene,deducing that Talbot was fully capable of eighty-sixing his sibling,due to his uncanny ability to play mentally disturbed characters like Macbeth and Hamlet,which is enough for Lawrence to send Gwen back to the city for protection once again.He then follows his father into the catacombs beneath a family crypt,where he finds Sir John has built a shrine to his dead wife that includes a chair with various leather and chain restraints built into it.He locks himself in,explaining that he's been dead for years.At this point Lawrence abruptly transforms into the titular wolfman and serves up tooth,fang,and claw-based suffering to the townsfolk who had set a trap in the forest for the beast.The next morning,Sir John leads the constable and his men to the spot where his son lies,bloody and back in human form.Oh,it's shocky/dunky time at the asylum for you again,little Larry.His father visits him betwixt the state-of-the-art health treatment procedures,and relates that god-awful time he was bitten by an unidentified feral beast in a remote Indian cave,and how his Sikh had taken precautions,binding him up every full moon cycle,except the night that he happened to kill his own wife and the night he knocked the Hindu cold after a heated argument,and happened to kill his other son,which awakened the hunter's primal urges to the point that he shouldn't like to be bound up on those glorious nights any longer.Who could blame the guy.In an observation room,Lawrence transforms into the lycanthrope,murdering the doctor in front of a throng of terrified onlookers then escapes into the night.Cue the father-son werewolf-off at Talbot Hall,which catches ablaze in the process,and the bestial battle which finds Sir John kicked into a fireplace and beheaded by the younger lupine creature.The inspector arrives to bag himself a murderer,but Gwen foils his silver shot,buying the law officer a bite from Lawrence,who chases off after the girl into the forest.The beast corners Gwen by a waterfall,but her appeal to his human soul buys her enough time to plant the necessary silver slug into his heart,freeing him from the curse.Flames engulf the estate,as she ponders where the man ends and beast begins.A howl is heard in the distance.

Talbot serves up a nifty dew claw laryngotomy.
Mark Romanek was the original director on the picture,but he bowed out over creative diffences less than a year later,allegedly over the werewolf design with Del Toro,among other things.Del Toro wanted the new creature to more resemble Lon Chaney,Jr.'s incarnation,which gives the viewer what he or she sees in the finished product.Makeup wizard Rick Baker,who also vied for the retro-look,(claiming he didn't have to do much work on the actor,who was hairy to begin with)handled the job here,as well was cameoing as Talbot's first victim.There were also problems concerning Danny Elfman's soundtrack treatment,but relating to you all of the difficulty in completing the film here might take another sixty years.All-in-all,the film has an undeniably gory B feel to it,and I'm not usually anti-B myself,but I can't help to think the producers were shooting for a classic,epic movie here,a sort of horror Gone With The Wind.The movie,despite its many setbacks and flaws,did a decent job of entertaining me,regardless,and my father,Chick/Chuck/Chaz/Charlie or Monte,for short,as he sometimes introduces himself,also liked it.You could watch a lot worse these days.Two wops.

"Did he say,"All ye, all ye 'outs' in free!" or am I hearing things?"