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Top 10 Graphic Horror Films
Top 10 Graphic Horror Films
Once completing my mini-goals watching movies for this site, I often like to end with a nice list featuring some of the best in that category. Now that we’re at the end of October, almost to Halloween I’ve completed watching every horror movie that I can find based on a comic book. If you haven’t been following along, graphic horror is my term for these movies based on horror comics. Graphic violence, graphic novel, it works for me. And for this list, I’m excluding thrillers and sticking with movies that have a notable horror aspect to them. They can be action horror, horror comedy, or straight up horror just so long as there’s plenty of horror in it. Enough chit chat, let’s get on with the list!
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Graphic Horror: Faust: Love of the Damned
Faust: Love of the Damned 2000
And with just a few days left before Halloween, I finished my goal of watching the last horror movie on my list of films based on comics. This was a bit of an odd one, I even tried watching it about a year ago but only made it about a half hour in before I got sidetracked with other things and just never got back to it until now. It’s a low budget horror movie that has elements of exploitation cinema with just a touch of a superhero plot mixed in. It’s incredibly bizarre with a guy who sells his soul to a demon, a lot of sex, a bit of torture, plenty of gore, and a demon summoning ritual slash orgy at the end. There’s even a bit of a love story mixed in, but it’s so bizarre and convoluted that it’s difficult to put into words.
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Graphic Horror: Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell
Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell 2016
This might be a little bit of a stretch to call this a horror movie, but it’s a brand new, straight to home video animated movie from Marvel. They seem to be continuing the holiday theme that they started with last year’s Christmas themed Frost Fight and now continue with this year’s Where Monsters Dwell which is quite obviously a Halloween themed movie featuring Hulk, Dr. Strange, and a few other Halloween-themed heroes that most people won’t really be aware of. Similar to Frost Fight and the Heroes United movies before that, this is more of a kid-friendly film with less focus on any real scares or any complicated plot. Just a harmless little romp with a few monsters and a little bit of a lesson to it.
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Filmwhys #79 Trick R Treat and Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight
The Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast horror special where my guest is Chris Tanksi from The (title pending) Movie Podcast with Tank and Fogs who asks me why I hadn’t seen Trick R Treat, a cult film that has played a part in revitalizing the anthology film despite having been shelved for a few years. And in return, I ask him why he hadn’t seen Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight, the first theatrical movie from the popular HBO series.
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Graphic Horror: Trailer Park of Terror
Trailer Park of Terror 2008
I’m hopefully going to be finishing off my entire list of horror movies based on comic books this month. After this one, there are only two left that I know of. There’s quite possibly more out there, but I haven’t found them yet. This is one that I only recently realized was based on a comic book. It’s inspired by the Tales From the Crypt comics with a trailer park theme filled with stereotypes, at least the movie is. The movie itself has quite a bit of gore, plenty of character tropes, and a lot of sex that’s rarely sexy. There were moments throughout the film where it tried to be artistic, it tried to be funny, but it just never really worked for me.
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Graphic Horror: 13 Sins
13 Sins 2014
I feel like I’ve been slacking off a little bit in the horror department this year, but I did manage to get this film in. It’s a bit of an oddity as it’s a remake of a Thai film called 13 Beloved or 13: Game of Death which itself is based on a short comic called 13th Quiz Show from a series called My Mania. It’s interesting that from what I can tell, any reference to the origins of the story isn’t present in the marketing or special features of this film. It’s ultimately a cross between a reality show, a little bit of Saw, and a little Falling Down. There are some interesting ideas presented along with a bit of a distracting conspiracy theory element and a couple half-hearted twists. But overall, the film was an interesting psychological thriller with a bit of gore for good measure, and not only that but a surprising amount of dark comedy spread throughout.
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Graphic Horror: The Chair
The Chair 2016
This is one of the few movie fundraisers that I actually contributed money to. At the time (and now, and always but that’s not important) I didn’t have enough spare cash to contribute more than the minimum $1, but dammit I helped! But since this is an independent feature and I am an independent movie reviewer, I managed to get a hold of the screener of this film to watch it early so I can review it here for you ahead of its release here in a couple weeks and you can search for a theatrical release at tugg.com or host one of your own. The film itself is based on an indie comic from the founder of an indie comics label called Alterna comics and from the beginning it owes much of its visual style to what you might think of when it comes to a horror comic. It’s a film that doesn’t make you feel comfortable during its brief run time, and I honestly believe that’s entirely intended. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, you can see the seams of its budget show through here and there, but for the most part, it’s an intense and riveting psychological and visceral horror.
ABCs of Superheroes
ABCs of Superheroes aka League of Superheroes 2015
I really do love Twitter, something that I have stopped doing for a while is scouring the internet for possible superhero movie titles that I may have missed. Instead, until I run out of titles to review I merely sit back and keep an eye out for any that might cross my path, which just so happened with this film. I noticed a retweet from one of the producers by Lloyd Kaufman so I reached out to him to request a screener knowing literally nothing about the film aside from its title. After watching the film it made complete sense that Kaufman RT’d it for a couple reasons, one was that he made a cameo in the film, and second because it has a very Troma-esque feel to it. Blood and nudity abound alongside low budget effects, questionable acting skills, and a very tongue in cheek humor about itself. And just like the best Troma films, it all combined to make a very hilariously entertaining film.
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Graphic Horror: 30 Days of Night: Dark Days
30 Days of Night: Dark Days 2010
It’s March and I’m continuing my recent tradition of making March Graphic Horror month where I seek out and review horror and thriller films that are based on comic books and graphic novels. And while I haven’t made an official blogathon this year, if you would like to join in, here’s a list of films that fit the bill, just let me know via e-mail or Twitter and I’ll check it out and share the link. But for the first film I decided to go back to my other goal for the year and continue watching movies made in 2010 and later with this sequel to 2007’s 30 Days of Night. Unfortunately, while it did have a few moments of inspiration, it mostly fell flat into a rather trope-filled horror movie that fell into all the same routines filled with a rather boring cast. It wasn’t awful to watch, but there were way too many decisions that I questioned concerning the characters, the vampires, and mostly everything else.
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Graphic Horror: Tales of Halloween interview with Andrew Kasch
I haven’t had much time for movie watching lately, but one film that I did watch at home on VOD was a brand new anthology film called Tales of Halloween. One of the reasons that I watched it was because I was contacted with an interview opportunity for the film, it was inspired by other anthologies including Tales From the Crypt which I am a huge fan of, and was based on a horror comic. And also one of the opportunities was Andrew Kasch who happens to also work on two current/upcoming superhero TV shows the Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. He was a great guy to talk to and I had forgotten how time consuming transcribing interviews was. We talked a little about his career, his work on television, and of course his new film Tales of Halloween which he was a co-director of one of the ten segments in the film.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 