The Couch Potato Report – October 31st, 2013 – Halloween
It is Halloween and if you’re someone who likes to spend their movie time watching releases full of frightening delights and things that go bump in the night, then you’re in luck as this is a Couch Potato Report full of new releases just for Halloween!!!
The filmed-in-and-around Toronto series HANNIBAL brings the first frights. Based on characters from the novel “Red Dragon” by Thomas Harris HANNIBAL focuses on the manipulative and challenging relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham and Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a forensic psychiatrist who is destined to become Graham’s most cunning enemy.
SEASON ONE of HANNIBAL features some exceptionally horrific episodes that pay off both within the series and because of what we already know of the characters from the movies and books they’ve appeared in.
HANNIBAL features thirteen episodes and while not all of them are classics, almost all of them are very, very creepy. I enjoyed watching it, I highly recommend it and I’m looking forward to Season Two in 2014.
The premise behind THE PURGE is one that I also recommend – as far as horror based works of fiction are concerned – but I just can’t recommend the movie they made from that premise.
THE PURGE takes place in the not too distant future in a world that is crime free because once a year everyone gets to purge during a 12-hour period when any and all crimes – from petty theft to murder – are completely legal.
The film ultimately fails – and it does – fail – because once we find out that the supposed super secure home of the main family isn’t so secure after all, it’s just a film full of shooting and killing and on week Halloween I want horror, not just shooting and killing.
Now THE CONJURING, now that is a horror film!!
Oh yes, THE CONJURING is a movie full of some great jumps and scares!! It’s about a married couple, who are also paranormal investigators in the early 1970s. They go to work to help a family who are being terrorized by another family who appear to be residing in their remote farmhouse.
But not everyone can see them.
Not everything in THE CONJURING works, there are too many extra storylines that don’t need to be included, but the majority of it does. Pick this one up, turn down the lights and get ready…what you’re afraid of is right behind you!!
The creepiest release available for viewing this week before Halloween is the second season of the television series AMERICAN HORROR STORY. This one is called ASYLUM and even though it is nowhere near as great as the first, it is still super extra creepy and always unpredictable.
ASYLUM takes place in Briarcliff, an institution for the criminally insane, and some of the everyday activities here include medical experiments, terrifying evil, alien abduction AND demonic possession. Oh, and don’t forget the creature known as Bloody Face.
Even though it isn’t as great as the first season, and it doesn’t finish as strong as it starts, I still recommend AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ASYLUM because it offered up some things I didn’t see coming, things that shocked me, and I can’t forget them!!
That is the good stuff at this time of year.
John Carpenter’s classic 1978 film HALLOWEEN has imprinted many an image on my brain, and the brains of millions, specifically the image of a masked killer named Michael Myers stalking and killing promiscuous teenagers after breaking out of a mental hospital after being locked up for fifteen years.
There have been hundreds of films just like HALLOWEEN since it first came out, but the first is still the best and this new 35th ANNIVERSARY EDITION has some great new Bonus Features that feature both director John Carpenter and star Jamie Lee Curtis.
The 35th ANNIVERSARY EDITION of the horror classic HALLOWEEN; the unpredictable but not as good second edition of AMERICAN HORROR STORY called ASYLUM; the very, very creepy supernatural thriller THE CONJURING; the better premise that film THE PURGE; and SEASON ONE of the made in-and-around Toronto horror series HANNIBAL, about Hannibal Lechter, are all available now, either on disc or on demand.
And that’s this week’s COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies – Happy Halloween – and I’ll see you back here again next time on The Couch!