Critic's Spooky Picks for Halloween

It's the witching hour, and I've got the goods for your ears and your eyes for a truly creepy evening! Read on if you dare....

Audiobook Spooky Spotlight: The Vanishing

Image courtesy of Audible, Inc.

Written by Wendy Webb

Narrated by Xe Sands

Julia Bishop's life as she knows it has been destroyed by her late husband, who has made a career out of embezzling people's funds. So when a strange visitor comes to her out of the blue with an offer to help care for Julia's favorite horror/suspense novelist, Amaris Sinclair - who up until that point was believed to be dead - she jumps at the opportunity. Sands gives our heroine a soft, ethereal voice that builds the suspense nicely as the plot twists and turns down the creepy corridors of Ms. Sinclair's remote mansion. Her vocal diversity is the sure sign of a master storyteller - she can switch expertly from a gruff, Scottish brogue to the ghostly, sandpapery tones of the inscrutable Ms. Sinclair herself. With an ending that both delivers and leaves the listener wondering, The Vanishing will have you jumping at shadows long after the intrigues of the story have unraveled themselves. Click here to listen to an audio sample. 

Creepy Cinema Classics

Image courtesy of IMDB

Nosferatu

1979, PG, 107 minutes
Long before vampires sparkled and acted like sullen teenagers, they were a dark force to contend with. This German film takes our favorite pain in the neck to a whole new level of creepy, remaking the 1922 silent film of the same title. Largely following the plot of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu takes over a small German village, reaching out to his victims with long, white fingers with cruel tips at the end. As the film progresses, Nosferatu becomes more physically desiccated as he attempts to spread his influence throughout the rest of the world. Critics have often related director Werner Herzog’s portrayal of this iconic monster of literature to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. It won the Outstanding Single Achievement award for production design at the 1979 Berlin International Film Festival and has become a classic of the horror genre. Rated PG, there are violent scenes of bloodshed that parents should be advised to take into consideration with small children. 

 

Image courtesy of IMDB

Young Frankenstein

1974, PG, 106 minutes
“No no no, it’s pronounced Fronk-en-STEEN.” This Mel Brook’s spoof on the classic horror tale by Mary Shelley is filmed in glorious black and white and is a great alternative for audiences looking for something on the lighter side this Halloween. Gene Wilder plays the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein, an eminent neurosurgeon who initially scoffs at his grandfathe’s work, calling it “doo doo.” He changes his tune though when he finds out that he has inherited the Frankenstein castle, as well as the shady characters that live within it. The monster he creates (played brilliantly by Peter Boyle) turns out to be a sensitive soul that much prefers a night out on the town in tux and tails rather than ransacking local villages. Rated PG for sexually suggestive humor, Young Frankenstein is a great graveyard romp for the whole family. 

Guest Review - Hunter X Hunter Reboot Offers Fresh Adventure for New Audiences while Satisfying Diehard Fans

The gang's all here - image courtesy of Shonen Jump

From time to time, I like to feature fresh writing voices to keep things interesting. I haven't featured an anime review on this blog for quite some time, so when Chris Smith, DJ and guest relations manager for 91.8 The Fan, a 24-hour online radio station by and for fans of the Japanese animation industry, offered to write a review of Hunter X Hunter, whose 2011 reboot recently (and temporarily) concluded, I said go for it! The result is below. Enjoy!

 Sometimes watching anime is hard. Do you decide to watch a new, up-and-coming show or should you watch a classic? Do you watch something you've been meaning to finish or do you start something anew? Back in 2011 I decided to pick start on an adventure of a series that was both old and new at the same time: the remake of Yoshiro Togashi's Hunter X Hunter. I was already a fan of Togashi's previous series, Yu Yu Hakusho so I had high hopes for my viewing experience.

Hunter X Hunter is a shonen series that follows the adventures of Gon Freecss on his quest to become  a Hunter and find his father. Along the way, he befriends Kurapika, Leorio, and Killua and the series focuses on each of them in turn instead of focusing solely on Gon, which I really enjoy. There are only two recap episodes throughout the entire 148-episode run and it also follows the manga very closely with minimal filler. Hunter X Hunter marks one of the rare few series that intrigued me to the point where I read all of the manga that is currently available in the US.

In a world of anime that follows the same tropes over and over again, this series is a breath of fresh air from high school romance or the random sports series. Oddly enough, it manages to accomplish this by just being a standard shonen series. While watching Hunter X Hunter, I had a familiar feeling of coming home from school to watch Dragonball Z and I had a moment where I found myself holding my breath due to how intense the show was. This feeling translated to when I read the manga to see what would happen next, where I got so absorbed into what was going on, I didn't realize that I was near the end of the volume until it finally appeared.

Some of the show's greatest hooks are the animation and music, and how they work in combination to draw you in and keep you there. The new 2011 version was animated by Madhouse, the studio responsible for such great shows as Trigun, Death Note and Black Lagoon. The opening theme song never really changes, it just switches between verses of the full song seemingly. Despite that, it never fails to capture that old style sensation of me as a little kid watching a cartoon.

I haven't had a chance to see the older version of this anime, but I would highly recommend checking this incarnation out, even though it's only available in Japanese with English subtitles at this time. All 148 episodes are available for viewing on Crunchyroll  and a good amount are also available on Netflix. For anyone looking to get into the manga like I did, you can find them digitally on the Viz Media website, which also has an app so you can read them on your phone.

While there is still more Hunter X Hunter to be had in the future, the series is currently on hiatus indefinitely due to Yoshihiro Togashi's back problems. There's not a real end to the series in sight, so the animation side of the product has ended itself at a decent stopping point until such a time that there is more to animate. Since the anime series has turned into something of a juggernaut in terms of episode length, it's highly unlikely that an American company will pick it up for a dub, but with Bleach running out of episodes to air on Toonami I am hopeful that someone will undertake the task while we wait for the author to write more of this series that has quickly become one of my favorites. Over the years, I have convinced many of my friends to get involved with this great show and this hiatus is a great time to jump in since you can see the definite ending point, however far off on the horizon it may be. I would be more than happy to experience it again in any facet, whether it be with a new dub, new episodes or just watching it from the beginning with someone who hasn't seen it before.

Chris can be found on Twitter at @christmas4477 as well as on Facebook, posting about awesome geeky things. 

Current Reels: Snowpiercer, the Sleeper Hit of 2014

Going off the rails in the engine room. Image courtesy of the Weinstein Company.

One of my biggest issues with many recent films is the need for a very specific moral to be driven home to the audience that is oftentimes so blatant that I'm being bludgeoned by ideals. (I'm looking at you, Iron Man 3). But sometimes, a film comes along with an intriguing premise, leaves it on the table, and walks away, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the so-called "moral" of the story. This is exactly what Snowpiercer does. It is stimulating on almost every level - viscerally, visually, and mentally - but it hit some rough track on its run to the US. It premiered in South Korea on August 1, 2013, and due to a bitter dispute over the final edit of the film between South Korean director Bong Joon-ho and The Weinstein Company, it did not open in the US until June 25 of this year, and to an extremely limited release at that. It opened to a wider audience on July 11 as more theatres got on board, and it also became available for viewing via the Internet. 

Original cover of 1982 comic. 

The year is 2031, and 17 years ago a failed attempt to solve global warming has left Earth a frozen wasteland. All that's left of humanity are the passengers aboard Snowpiercer, a massive train that continually circumnavigates the world thanks to an eternal engine created by a man named Wilford, played by an unctuous Ed Harris. Based on the French comic book Le Transperceneige, written by Jacques Lob and illustrated by Jean-Marc Rochette in 1982, the original concept of the train was that it was 1,001 cars long, whereas in the film (they never mention a specific number) it is probably around 200 with 1,000 passengers. Chris Evans, best known as the face of Captain America in Marvel's Avengers films, is almost unrecognizable as Curtis, the grubby leader of the "Tail Section", the part of humanity that has been treated the most poorly, subsisting only on blood-colored gelatinous bricks called "protein bars" of sketchy origins and being forced to survive in windowless, cramped corridors.

I was immediately hooked on the premise, as trains are my most-preferred method of transportation. There's a strict order to their operation, they are quick, efficient, and have an intriguing history. Most of all, there's a loss of control once you are on a train that is all at once comforting and uncomfortable. In many trains, the further towards the front one goes, the better life gets, and Snowpiercer is no exception. Curtis, along with his comrades, (featuring appearances by Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer and Korean actor Kang-ho Song) decide enough is enough. In just over two hours, the hunt to the front is on. This is the point where a lesser film would've descended into madcap violence and mayhem, with the final outcome blatantly clear. Not so with Snowpiercer. The further ahead  the "tails" get to the front, the murkier and darker the plot becomes, to the point where I began to grip the arm of the chair every time the party managed to get another carriage door to open.Tilda Swinton, a personal favorite of mine, plays the truly despicable Mason, Wilford's evangelistic right-hand woman whose watery eyes peer out onto the downtrodden masses through frames that should've been thrown out with the shag carpeting of the 1970s.

Most of the action takes place within the train, although we get glimpses of the frosty outside world. This makes for tense, telescopic cinematography, with plenty of  long corridor views and choppy action sequences shot from every angle. It succeeds in trapping the viewer, and I was disturbed most of all by the things left unseen and unsaid.

It took a long time for Snowpiercer to arrive at the station, but it has been well worth the wait. I'll be looking forward to owning my copy on Oct. 21!

Toby Sez:

Brilliant, haunting, and unpretentious, Snowpiercer is a thriller that will leave me food for thought for weeks to come.View the international trailer below!