THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN

ON THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN ... I continued working on this, the last drawing for "The Feeble Light of Dreams."

I also continued watching a bunch of horror movies, which included revisiting some I hadn't seen for a long time: Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Q The Winged Serpent (1982), The Night Flier (1997), and The Spider Labyrinth (1988). 

Killer Klowns is kind of like Human Centipede in that its concept alone suffices to immortalize it, but its execution is mediocre. It does have some truly creepy vignette scenes in the middle, though, when individual Klowns are out on the town. This movie absolutely terrified me as a kid, particularly the idea that some homovorus creature could pass as a grotesque human and perform light entertainment to get closer to us. Something about the mocking tone of horror comedy made it much scarier to me than straight-faced horror.  

Q The Winged Serpent is a Larry Cohen classic that I remember being played on late night cable a lot. It's one of the few giant monster movies that actually works as horror: first, because the titular flying creature is worshipped by a cult that offers it gruesome human sacrifices; and second, because the creature stalks, snatches, and devours individual victims on rooftops, diving unseen out of the clouds from above. Very fun, weird movie! 

The Night Flier is another one that I would see parts of on late night TV. It's the only TV adaptation of a Stephen King work that is both good and less than 2 hours long. And Miguel Ferrer is great in it as a compellingly detestable tabloid reporter. 

Finally, The Spider Labyrinth is an Italian horror film that should be much more renowned, up there with other late 70s-80s Italian classics like Suspiria, The Beyond, and Demons. It's the only Italian film that really understands and nails Lovecraftian horror. In fact, it's one of the few films period that accomplishes this so well with an original narrative. And that narrative-- wherein a young anthropology professor's struggle to escape his predicament in a strange Eastern European town only serves to entangle him more and more in the seductive web of a spider god cult-- is perfect. I wish there were 100 more movies with exactly this plot.