Halloween Horror Month 2021

[Guy87]

Halloween Horror #1 was surreal, psychedelic, brutal cult revenge flick "Mandy".

The first hour here is an extremely slow burn, following lumberjack Nicholas Cage spending his evenings with his wife in their glass-walled cabin in the woods. As the running time goes on we're slowly introduced to an LSD driven murder-cult as well as a group of satanic, possibly otherworldly, spike covered, demon bikers, and the movie's second half morphs into a hyper-violent drugged fueled, alcohol soaked rampage.

The entire film is visually inspired by prog-rock album covers (as well as the hazy, drug-addled nights the director has assumedly had whilst listening to them). There's a lot of slow cross fades, and every shot is bathed in one unnatural light source or another. Theres a few funky looking chapter titles, and even some animation thrown in for good measure. It's also an extremely meandering movie...until it's very suddenly not.

By the time the credits role, Cage has spent an hour or so in 'Rage Cage' mode and this film completely suits his unhinged best. Say what you want about Nic Cage, but his willingness to experiment with lower budget/indie filmmakers, and to throw himself into the projects fully, has given him an extremely interesting late career boost, and puts paycheck cashing, straight-to-dvd half arsers like Bruce Willis to further shame.

This film has cult classic all over it, but grindhouse lovers should be aware, you'll get your thrills but the film makes you earn them with a hazy, drawn out, experimental first hour.

Also the director's name is Panos Cosmatos, which is both fun to say and tonally appropriate.


This year the movie's will most likely be followed with an episode or two of "Christopher Lee's Theatre Macabre", a polish produced anthology series focusing on classic literature, or "Hammer's House of Horror" a British produced anthology series focusing on Hammer Studios desperate last ditch attempt to stay in business.