- Helene F.
- Friday, June 24, 2022
This new weekly blog series, published each Friday evening, will feature five films from streaming services which you can access for free using your library card. These five films selected this week have characters who are trying to make sense of their world, and are met with unimaginable circumstances, including a vampire, ghosts, mad scientists, and zombies.
As we take each week at a time, hopefully these films will help us feel that even if we are distant in space, we are still connected with sharing and watching these movies.
Hopefully they can open up our world even more. In these times we can also have a bit of philosophy with our scary movies and see that the monster might not be the creature that goes bump in the night. We can also see that the heroes transcend borders, ethnicities and languages. I therefore, chose this selection of films to have international characters that ask us to see things through different eyes.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night – 2014 Rated: NR.
This moody black and white film, written and directed by Ana Lili Amirpour, shows the life of an Iranian man, Arash, who is trying to survive in a town with drug dealers, death, and a vampire. The language spoken is Farsi with English subtitles. It is said to be the first Vampire Western in the Farsi language. You get to see bits of life in this Iranian community just as you would see in any other town in the world. It is full of sadness for their situation and longing of a life out of the town. So many movies have one character say, "Can we just leave town and start a new life?" Do Arash and The Girl do that? The music was wonderful and a language of its own. Nominated for Best of Next! at the Sundance Film Festival.
Available to stream on richlandlibrary.Kanopy.com
Blackenstein or The Black Frankenstein – 1973 Rated: R.
In this movie where Ivory Stone plays Dr. Winifred Walker, Winifred asks her former mentor if he can help her fiancé get better after he got hurt in Vietnam. Winifred is a smart African American woman. The professor, and his assistant named Malcomb, agree to help Eddie. She is so happy. Dr. Stein admits he is working on a way to make people's DNA accept his experiments, but for questionable reasons. After Winifred helps to surgically attach new hands and feet to Eddie’s arms and legs all seems to be going well. Then the assistant tells Winifred that he loves her and wants her to leave Eddie. Winifred refuses but is still trusting that the assistant will help with Eddie’s rehabilitation. They are completing DNA trials for different people, including Eddie, to see what works or what might backfire. Would you trust a doctor and his assistant who seem to have alternative reasons for helping Eddie?
Available to stream on richlandlibrary.Kanopy.com
The Complex or Kuroyuri danchi– 2013 Rated: NR. This movie is directed by Hideo Nakata, who also directed the Ringu series. It starts out seemingly normal with a family moving into a new building. Asuka is a young woman starting a new chapter in her life. Asuka keeps waking up to an alarm clock that rings in the next apartment. She says hello to her family each morning. Her parents have the same short discussion before she leaves for school each day. On her way home from school to be a caretaker, she meets a young boy, named Minoru, playing in a sandy playground by himself. She feels sorry for him and helps him build a sandcastle. She is told by fellow students that her complex is haunted. Minoru told Asuka that he lives across from her apartment, with his Grandfather who isn't his Grandfather. Asuka, wanting to check on her neighbors, goes into their apartment. What she finds is the poor old man dead. One of the Men hired to clean the apartment tries to help Asuka with her grief and shock. She still sees Minoru around the complex.There is something in Asuka's past that makes her the perfect target for the ghost of the complex. Asuka has to come to terms with what happened to her family years ago. Which world is the real one? She has to decide.
Available to stream on richlandlibrary.Kanopy.com
Creepy or Kurîpî: Itsuwari no rinjin– 2016 Rated:TV-14. This movie is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who also directed the Japanese movie Pulse. Koichi is a retired detective who is now a professor instructing the students of the different types of serial killers there are. Koichi and his wife move into a new home and meet the unusual neighbors. Then Koichi is brought onto a cold case with one survivor. Does this missing case have a connection to the strange neighbor he and his wife just met? When Koichi and his detective friend investigate the case from years ago, Kochi finds that some of the missing people were killed and hidden in a neighbor's home. It seems that the killer was great at hiding who he or she really were. There are major twists and coincidences that make you ask, "Who is really in control?" How do you stop a chameleon serial killer? "Winner of Best Director" - Fantasia Film Festival 2016
Available to stream on richlandlibrary.Kanopy.com
Night Of The Living Dead – 1968 Rated: NR This is the classic zombie movie by George Romero. It is in black and white but has great mysterious atmosphere about what is going on. Barbara and her brother don't know the danger they are in, and her brother Johnny turns off the car radio before they can be warned. They lay a flower display at their Father's grave complaining and arguing. Then Johnny says, "They're coming to get you, Barbara", unknowingly telling part of a truth. Barbara is ashamed of her brother, and doesn't avoid the man with the strangely torn jacket. The man attacks her and when her brother goes to protect her Barbara runs away. The stranger is determined to follow. Barbara makes it to a house only to find a dead phone and woman on the second floor. Barbara being totally freeked out, allows Ben, the second normal human being, to become the hero of the movie. He tries so hard to keep everyone calm, but is not going to let anyone bully others out of having their own true choice of what they will do to live through their mixed up situation. This was truly one of the first movies I saw with an emotional roller coaster ride for a script. The end was totally heartbreaking, but it is seeming to ask, "Then what would you do to change it?"
Available to stream on both hoopla and richlandlibrary.Kanopy.com, as well as download on hoopladigital.com
BONUS: House on Haunted Hill – 1959 Rated: NR. Vincent Price plays a man throwing a birthday party for his wife. The guests who show up are given a choice. The choice is to stay overnight locked in with the husband and wife they have never met, until morning and walk away with $10,000.00 for each person who stays, or leave and let go of the money. There is a catch though, people are warning the guests to leave before it's to late, or they end up murdered like other people who came before them. One of the guests says his brother is one of the ghosts that haunt that house, and they should leave. Does he take his own advise or is the choice made for him? Is the house really haunted, or have the guests been invited to see a strange scare match between husband and wife? Will you stay to the bitter end to see who the winners are? This was one of the first movies I watched to combine "Who did it" with "How was it done?"
Available to stream on both hoopla and richlandlibrary.Kanopy.com, as well as download on hoopladigital.com