Friday Final Cut: 5th Cut

Dipper represents me.  That tree represents a good chunk of the films I watched this Cut.  I gave one-fifth of the films this time around a zero and a majority of those are because they were really slow and/or had a recycled plot.  In truth I would probably give more zeroes except I began to look for decent elements.  Visuals, concepts (even if not realized well), acting, whatever has now factored in a bit more than before.  I don't know if I'm scraping the barrel or the barrel is just empty when it comes to good horror.  Only four of this Cut's films were made before 2010 so what does that say of the state of a majority of current horror?

On the flip side, I did get to watch some great films such as Tales of Halloween (5/5) and White Coffin (4/5).  Also there was the revisit to the classic Young Frankenstein.  So it wasn't all red hot pokers in my eyes.  Speaking of which, one of the things I'm going to work on during this break is trying to set up at sidebar for some of the best films I've watched.  It has been mentioned to me that people want to know some good films to watch but no one wants to scroll through 166 films to what's good.

Bouncing off of that, yes, to date I have watched and reviewed 166 films for this blog (counting the short Cut 3.5).  It's a crazy feeling to look at that number.  It's an even crazier feeling to look at my handy list of films I've watched and know that at this moment there are movies I already forgot about that are from just 6 weeks ago.  Although, that list has saved my life and yours this cut because a I re-rolled a lot of movies I've watched previously.  You could've had two additional Hellraiser reviews this cut otherwise.

Wrapping this up, I'm looking forward to this break.  Living in New Orleans, this is our crazy hot season and unfortunately the AC in the room where I watch these is the loudest AC to ever exist.  It makes it tough to watch a film at midnight when I have to blast it over the noise.  The other option is to melt like a meat popcicle in the heat for an hour and half.

I'm also excited because when I begin the next Cut, it will be October!  So starting Sunday, October 8th will be the 6th Cut.  I'm already working on ideas for something special for Halloween as well.  I doubt I'm going to do another video but it'll be something fun.  Until then...

I'll be right back...

Tales of Halloween (2015) 1h 32m

Ten short films in roughly 90 minutes is pretty ambitious. When I saw that I thought it might be a bit too ambitious but resigned to settle in and watch Tales of Halloween.  As soon as the opening credits kicked in my attention became focused on the screen.  Doing an awesome take on pop-up books to introduce the titles of each of the shorts that were included was such a fresh idea to me.  I became hooked.

I can't do much of a review here without ruining some of the shorts but here is the gist of it.  All of these take place in the same town on Halloween night.  You actually see some of the same characters pop up for brief moments in other shorts and it helps to cover the seams.  You know you're getting ten stories here but that overlap makes them all cohesive.  Each transitions into the other with only a minor form of a narrator by way of a woman doing a radio broadcast.  Luckily she is used sparingly and rather than being the glue holding it together she becomes more of a decorative attachment.

Out of the ten shorts I'd say that there were only two weak ones, but they're only weak in comparison to the others which were outstanding.  With a bar set that high, you're pulling a B+ while everything else is an A.  Think of it as one of those shitty grading curves where an A was moved up to a 92% and these two shorts have a 90%.  Tales of Halloween could honestly be my Baskin or my Beyond the Gates for this cut.

My favorite shorts on this are: The Night Billy Raised Hell, The Weak and the Wicked, Friday the 31st, and Ding Dong.

I give Tales of Halloween 5 spooky jack-o-lantern faces out of 5:

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