Halloween on Australian TV - third times a charm?

October 31st, 2008

Well it’s that time of year again and since Quit Your Day Job has been running every year I’ve lamented what poor network programming we have for Halloween here in Australia.  Yes Halloween is an American custom, yes Australia is not America (not that you would know it if our obsession over American politics is any indication) but marketeers have latched on to the idea of another day of the year in which they can sell chocolate and disposible skulls (you have to love that I suppose).

So once again I head off to the TV Guide to see what frightful fare the free to air television stations have to offer.  Remember I’m excluding pay/cable TV - this is just free to air broadcast channels.

Now last year the only channel to offer up anything was SBS (which is like our international channel), they showed the original Ringu which I still have no intention of seeing because frankly just the ads give me the willies.

So lets go to SBS first:  The only movie on tonight on SBS is From Subway with Love: The only horror here is that the daughter of some lady falls in love with an older man… yuck but certainly not spooky scary.  Next channel please.

Channel Ten whom you may remember me ranting about not showing 90210 and Torchwood has Jerry Maguire on.  It is way too obvious for me to make Tom Cruise jokes about that one, needless to say that whilst JM is a solid enjoyable film it is not quite Elm Street.

Channel Nine has two movies for us this evening and one of them nearly makes sense.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is on and whilst the argument about witches and wizards may hold some water I really don’t think it is a Halloween movie and besides they showed the first one last week so it isn’t exactly inspired programming it is simply following on from last week and will continue next week.  The second film tonight is Austin Powers: Goldmember.

Channel Seven has gone with Sweet Home Alabama and the less said about that the better me thinks.

The ABC does not have any movies on.

The only potential Halloween movie is not actually on during Halloween, it’s on at 12.50 and is the 2001 film Valentine which has Angel (I’m not trying to spell his real name) and Denise Richards in it. Pop Matters has a great review of the film (the review is great, not the film):

In a roundabout way,Valentine‘s message is that women who overstep their bounds deserve physical, motional, and sexual abuse, because of how they perpetually victimize men. And so, what is actually scariest about Valentine is the film’s tacit attitude that these girls had it coming. 

Read it all here

Actually whilst reading that review I realise that I have indeed seen this film and it is indeed lame. It is a very poor cousin to I know what you did last summer. (ouch - bitchy)

So maybe this year I might curl up and watch a DVD or do a spot of drawing… who am I kidding I’ll probably watch Harry Potter.

****UPDATE

Channel Ten is showing Terminator 2 instead of JM!!!  That’s awesome.

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Mr Krueger and Mr Vorhees

June 16th, 2008

I’ve recently been talking about how much I used to love the old school Elm St and Camp Crystal Lake movies when I was in my teens.   I suppose it shows how much we change and our tastes develop over the years because the idea of a Freddy versus Jason movie did not interest me at all.

I did have a similar experience though with comic, it wasn’t that I wasn’t in to them, they just weren’t registering in my life.

Jason and Freddy watching the TVSo the other night when I heard the familiar Elm St theme being played over the opening New Line logo I was more than pleased to be catching up with an old friend (a pointy fingered nasty friend granted).   At first I expected it to be one of the later instalments but just couldn’t work out which one, I saw scenes from Freddy’s Dead (Elm St 6) and realised that it must be Freddy vs Jason.   So that really got my attention which at the time was hard because on one channel Snatch was showing and on the other Bachelor Party was just starting (yes there was some flicking during the ad breaks).

After the movie finished I was struck by how good an instalment in either franchise that it was.   Some careful thought went into the way they got these two horror icons together in the same movie.   I was concerned it would be badly done but I was pleasantly surprised.   The idea that Freddy needs Jason to help the kids of Elm St to remember him was clever (there’s obviously a little more to it than that).

I also liked that no matter which franchise that you’re a fan of both characters were looked after and had nods to their respective movie history.

With all the remakes going on I can’t imagine someone replacing Robert Englund in the role of Freddy, it just doesn’t feel right!!!

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They’re doing a Friday the 13th remake

June 15th, 2008

I didn’t catch the Halloween remake because I can’t say that I was ever a huge fan of the franchise, I recognise the first one for its iconic contribution to Hollywood horror but I never got into it.   The icon yes, the actual movies not so much.

So when it was announced that they were doing a remake of it I didn’t really pay much attention.   Now I was a slight fan of the Friday the 13th series, I owned a couple of the movies and I really like most of them but I don’t like them as much as I do the Elm St series so again when they announce a remake coming out I registered it in the back of my mind and left it at that.

But I saw yesterday the first footage released from it to MTV and they revealed the famous mask as it will appear in the new film which obviously doesn’t follow the original version:

The famous Jason hockey mask

Mania have the footage on their site too.

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A Friday the 13th special top five list

June 13th, 2008

What else could the Friday five list be on a Friday the 13th?   Obviously my top five horror movies, I will however point out that these aren’t the scariest movies.   I don’t go into all that freaky deaky Ring and Grudge type of horror that the kids are all digging now days.   Nor do I enjoy mutilation films like Saw and Hostel (in fairness to both I haven’t seen either but I don’t really have any intention on it, well maybe Saw if it’s on late one night).

No my favourite horror movies are all probably considered old school today and lame by current standards but I grew up on these ones and it is my list.   You write your own list.   Give me credit.   Or money.

Quit Your Day Job Friday top five horror movies

  1. Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors - there are reasons why I chose the second sequel, it brought Wes Craven back into the Elm St fold after the left of centre Elm St 2 and it was banned in Queensland, something I had trouble wrapping my head around when I first moved into the state.   I still chuckle at the reasons why it was banned too, not because the main character slashes teenagers to their death in their sleep but because there is drug use???   Freddy was always my favourite character in the 80s/90s horror films.   I wasn’t so keen on Freddy vs Jason but I found a lot of depth in those films, especially as a teenager who used to average a couple of hours of sleep per night at best.   The characters avoiding sleep always appealed to me.   The art direction of the films always impressed me.

  2. Evil Dead 2 - Bruce Campbell is a living god.   The evil got into his hand and he lopped it off and replaced it with a chainsaw, I mean dude!?!   Groovy. It had plenty of gore, plenty of innovative sequences and a dead girlfriend who dances in the moonlight and loses her head.

  3. The Creature from the Black Lagoon - I had to put a Universal monster in the list and Gill-man is my favourite of them so he gets the nod (the other Universal monsters are all awesome though).   It was a very clever film for its time too, the underwater photography was brilliant, that suit must have been unpleasant under the water like that.

  4. Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan - Sigh.   OK now just give me a chance here and I’ll try and explain, yes there are probably better instalments, no it isn’t Jason X, you’ve all made that very clear.   But I have to have one of the franchise in here and I choose this one because Jason uppercuts a boxer and sends his head flying off into the distance.   Classic.   If I had to choose another I would say part three (the 3D one) it was nice standard edition.

  5. Hellraiser - Clive Barker is an amazing writer, his Books of Blood are just mind numbingly great and so it comes to no surprise that I really enjoyed Hellraiser.   Pinhead is a horror icon and the Hellraiser box has got to be one of the coolest props.   The second film was banned in Queensland also (so was Near Dark) I’m not sure why but it may have been because of sexual content?   I even enjoyed part three that starred a pre Star Trek Terry Farrell and had a Cenobite DJ that throws killer CDs.

Oh man there are a lot of films that could be on the list ranging from Jaws to Halloween (dig that Shatner face mask).

Check out my guest post over on Aussie Bloggers (after 6.30 Aussie time) too as I talk about truly awful Australian horror films.

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Great pumpkin of the universe misses Australian TV again

October 31st, 2007

After taking the trip down memory lane I checked out my post from this time last year and it was in regards to the lack of horror films showing on Halloween here on Australian free to air television.

The scariest thing on that night was a Power Rangers show that I mistook when reading the TV guide to be a movie but it turned out to be just an episode.

So today is Halloween and once again I’m taking a look at the TV guide to see what clever programming the good people at Australian television have for us. Before I go on and I believe I made a similar statement back then but I’m not hoping for Australia to adopt the Halloween tradition. It’s an American thing and should probably remain so, from what I can tell it’s hugely commercial and promotes binge candy eating in children. It does however appear to a whole lot of fun and has themes that I’m interested in. Sometimes you just have to let commercialism be.

So flipping through the guide I discover that all the commercial networks have once again decided to forget about clever programming and show, well… nothing.

No Elm Street.
No Halloween (duh)
No Friday the 13th

Lame much?

There is however a shining light amongst the mucky muck. That is SBS which is our cultural diversity programmer who shows programs from overseas and movies with subtitles etc. They are showing tonight Ringu which I must admit I have never seen and more than likely never will, despite my fascination with horror as a younger man I have developed quite the weak constitution for it over the past couple of years.

OK that’s quite enough thank you.I have seen most of the western remake “The Ring” and found that one bit of terrifying film. I have since heard that the original Japanese version is better and scarier. Hence my avoidance of it. I will just assume everything I have heard is true and it is as good as people say. I’m more of a universal pictures monster movie kind of guy nowadays (”I never drink… wine”).

So congratulations SBS for actually thinking about your programming and I hope some people will watch it and huddle behind the couch.

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