Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark

It seems that the Halloween season is beginning early this year. The Alamo Drafthouse is planning a great time for all with their annual even. There is a great amount of flicks coming out and this week has seen the release of the highly anticipated Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Personally I have been waiting for this flick for a while being a fan of the original stories by Allan  Schwartz and growing up during the banning of the books in the 80s while in elementary school and seeing their rise to immortality in the hands and eyes of readers like myself on the playgrounds, and this movie gives these stores a new meaning to that statement. 

Following his genre hits Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe director André Øvredal has joined genre master and Academy Award Winner Guillermo del Toro as producer of the film inspired by the infamous literary trilogy.

Now you will notice that I said Inspired. Well that is due to the fact that while there are many references to the books they aren’t exactly the same. 

Del Toro made the decision not to make the flick into an anthology movie in order to avoid comparisons to films like Creepshow and Trick R Treat and to go in a different direction. 

Now that direction makes me feel that the movie is a crossbreed between Hulu’s Castle Rock and the Goosebumps movie in the fact that the movie follows a trio of teenagers while enjoying what they feel will be their last night of Trick or Treating confront the town bully and meet a young outcast and decide to go to the local Haunted House and tell the local urban legend.

Our main character Stella, a local horror fan who is also in conflict after the abandonment of her mother, finds and steals a book belonging to Sarah Bellow, the local centerpiece of the legend. 

Fascinated by the stories Stella soon sees that the book writes itself with the fears of the people that it encounter and these fears are based on the stories that the victims have heard in the past. 

Stella and her friends now must stop the stories from happening while solving the mystery of Sarah Bellows and her magic book. 

Now I feel that it is more appropriate to say that the inspiration of the book takes the form of Easter Eggs as while the stories take life form that aren’t the same as the book and are completely different in their outcomes which makes it interesting for those of us familiar with the stories and their outcomes. 

That being said the film is in many ways predictable and runs the same as many of the films that you can find today with the Conjuring and Insidious films. 

Younger viewers will get a kick out of the Jump Scares and the suspense but I feel that they will find the flow of the film is slow in getting to the plot and may get board early on but when the scares begin they are good. 

I have to express my disappointment with the references to the book in the fact that there are too few of them. While the use of Harold and "Me Tie Dough-ty Walker" and the others are nice there are so many more that I would have liked to be seen. 

Granted The Hook has been done to Death but I would have liked to have seen The Thing and Wonderfull Sausage being shown through the eyes of the directors. 

Those issues aside this was not a bad flick and I can see it having a long life on the streaming sites especially around Halloween.

2 Dead Bodies

2 Disappeared Bodies

1 Disembodiment 

5 Beasts

Spiders

Stalking 

Stabbing

Arms Roll

Legs Roll

Torso Rolls 

And 

Head Rolls

3 Stars 

Check It out

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

What is this recent fascination with Ted Bundy that we are seeing on the net over the past year!?! 

It seems that Joe Berlinger is at it again Now as many of you may be aware is that I am a fan of Berlinger and you are all ranting about his two past flicks Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and the more recent Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile which are both available on Netflix. 

First off I have to do a disclaimer. 

The truth is that I don’t often do true crime as I have had my fair shares of runs ins with those on the net and it is often when I talk about this subgenre. I have received many not so friendly comments due to my support of the Death Penalty as well as my desire to bring back the Electric Chair. 

Ted Bundy is a firm reason for this belief. That and I am a Texan, What can I say. 

In contrast to that statement I am also a huge supporter of The West Memphis Three and in Joe Berlinger’ trilogy of documentaries that led to their freedom and my support of them has led to many backlashes on the internet as well. You can find my review of these documentaries in the archives.

Now on to the flicks. 

You see everyone is going on about these flicks because apparently they are trying to “Make us have Sympathy for Bundy” and to “Make Bundy appealing”. Okay I have a question...WHAT FLICKS ARE YOU PEOPLE WATCHING!!!

 Now first off Ted Bundy was a lying peace of work that got his jollies; and I mean that in the literal sense by bashing women’s skulls in and strangling them and then returning to them so he can perform some necrophilia on their corpses. He was also a thief and con-man who thought he was smarter than the every lawyer in judge that he came across and truly believed he would get away with it all.

In the end was so afraid of being taken to “Old Sparky” down there in Florida that he tried every trick in his book of con jobs that he was able to stay his execution for a decade. 

He even tried to help them find The Green River Killer to No avail. 

 Well the reason that I am asking What movie did everyone see is that when I saw these flicks myself I did not get the impression that everyone says that they got. 

Let’s start out with Conversations with a Killer, this documentary follows the format of the men sent to interview Bundy in regards to his crimes and his origin. Well the reactions from the journalists that were forced to work with him. They pretty much admitted that they despised him and that they were glad to see him get the chair. 

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile which I feel the need to point out that this flick is only Berlinger’s second foray into narrative film after Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows and features appearances from many of his past collaborators such as Jeffrey Donovan and Metallica frontman James Hetfield among others. 

Here is what everyone is going on about with this flick is that it makes Bundy look like a romantic figure as it is told primarily from the point of view from his girlfriend Liz Kendall who was in a real relationship with Bundy, and had no idea that while they were together and he was even a father figure to her young daughter he was killing his victims. 

The movie is based on on Kendall’s (whose real name is  Kloepfer) memoir The Phantom Prince about her life with the sadistic killer. 


The film begins at the moment where Liz first meets Ted and follows their relationship

It  does deviate from this primary narrative because, well let’s face it we all already know the story of Ted Bundy. That being said As a result the film focuses less on the actual murders and more emphasis is given to the characters that define The story, There is constant shifts in pointo of view primarily following Bundy in his escapes, recaptures and the trial. 


While all of this is going on Bundy relentlessly calls Liz driving her to dring and have trouble at work which leads to a relationship with her coworker  Jerry played by Haley Joel Osment.

For the record Haley Joel Osment’s character does not really exist as he is a combination of multiple people in Kendall’s life who tries to help her deal with the facts about her former lover. I personally like the scene where he tries to get tough with Bundy over the phone.

There are other fictional elements in the film that were added for artistic purposes such as the growling dog.

I admit that I don’t know too much about Zac Efron as I have only seen one of the flicks he is in but I feel that he was a good pick for Ted Bundy. 

Efron plays the character with the charm that was Bundy’s M.O. and how he was able to lure his victims and to avoid detection for so long. The depiction is quite accurate, especially in the way many “groupies” were going to the trial and Bundy even later got married and conceived a child while on death row. 

John Malkovich was great in the role of Judge Edward Cowart. 

As a fan of Joe Berlinger I would recommend this flick as well as for fans of True crime I recommend seeing flick along side The Stranger Beside based on the memoir from the late Ann Rule. 

Now due to the circumstances of this story there will be no totals out of respect for the victims in this horrific case. 

That being said please check this movie out. 

Scary Stories

While The Scary Stories Documentary seems like it would be the perfect special feature to the upcoming film being produced by Del Toro. I have been looking forward to this flick for quite sometime. 

First let me explain for those of you that are not aware. Scary Stories is a trilogy of books published in the 80s and marketed to children. The books the stories in the books were greatly researched by author Alvin Schwartz who took stories from folklore around the world and retold them for children all while instructing the reader how to tell the stories to receive the best reactions. 

These stories were accompanied by the morbid and dark artwork by Stephen Grammel. 

While keeping the drawings black and white the artwork features a surprisingly large amount of gore and creative framing to particularly shock the reader. It is this fact that many claim brought in the controversy. 

Scary Stories to tell in the Dark was banned in school libraries across the country, which effectively added to the desire for children to want to read them and many believe paved the way for other children’s books like Goosebumps among others. 

Those of you that have followed my work know  when I was growing up I was a rather large fan of the literary trilogy and they were a great influence in my works, as well as the works of other artists of my generation and the ones to follow.

In watching this documentary that followed the controversy that was generated by the frightening images and stories that made it the most challenged book for the past 20 years I was reminded of my own childhood and when I was introduced to Scary Stories to tell in the Dark and how fast it was removed from the shelves.

The funny thing about this ban in my school was that it was thwarted a few months later when the school had a book fair and Scary Stories to tell in the Dark was the number one seller at the fair. 

Years later I would reflect in one of my films on the amount of us that were reading the book on the playground at recess, I would also think of it when I was watching The Ring and Stay Alive as if Scary Stories was some kind of cursed literature that was now out in the mainstream. 

I would not view this as a bad thing rather than a victory over the censorship of the concerned parents that believed we would all become serial killers or would be scared to death of our own shadows. None of that happened. 

While focusing on the controversy the film also explains the history of the making of the books and the research that Schwartz put into the history and folklore of the regions where the stories originated from.

The Documentary also follows the influence that the trilogy had in the artistic communities as well as the loyal fandom that includes tattoo artists and photographers that seek to recreate the Grammel artistary. 

I enjoyed the  sequences in the film where in the recollections of the subjects cut to flashbacks of animated sequences where the characters were drawn to resemble characters form the artwork from the book. 

I would have loved to have been interviewed for this documentary but I am sure that the filmmakers weren’t aware of my history with this series. 

For fans of Scary Stories and folklore I would love to recommend this documentary. While short it still cuts to the point while also making us reminisce of our own experiences with the books and is also a great reminder about the evils and censorship and that we can't be silenced...Especially when the ones in power don't even read the books that they are protesting. 

I say Check it out.