SHOCKtober: DAY OF THE DEAD

Dr. Tongue brings you...

Day of the Dead (1985)

Now that is a title screen: zombie front and center. Liberal amounts of grossness. Solid, weighty logo. All of it combining to let you know that George Romero ain't fucking around here. All of it as the climax of a fantastic opening sequence, one that well introduces some of our cast of caricatures (come on, you know they are) and shows just how screwed and desolate the world has become in the wake of the zombie apocalypse.

The font and the soundtrack cry zombie action movie and my heart cries yes!

SHOCKtober: CREEPSHOW

Come on, you lunkheads!

Creepshow (1982)

I bet it would take, like, more than seven hands for me to count how many times I've seen Creepshow and more than a baker's dozen's hearts to contain all the love I have for it. It's so perfect. It's so perfect! By turns gory, scary, and funny, it's an EC horror comic come amazingly to life. Secretly– okay, not so secretly– I think it's some of the best work that either director George Romero or writer Stephen King have done. Romero's visuals are an absolute treat. He plays with comic book framing conventions and the colors and monsters pop off the screen. King gives us five stories and a framing narrative full of frights, humor, and characters, dammit, who deliver dialogue that's got that signature vintage King folksy-realistic charm. Relatable and a bit theatrical, but not artificial and cloying. Everyone is eminently quotable and you love them, hate them, and love to hate them.

Just the little snippet of the title sequence in the GIF I've posted– even without the Bernie Wrightson-inspired illustrations and the thudding "dun DUN!" of the piano in the theme song– encapsulates the feel of the whole thing. It's a funhouse. It's going to scare you, but you'll have a smile on your face the entire time. It's so perfect you guys.

SHOCKtober: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD

I was gonna post about John Carpenter's The Thing today, but you know what? I think we need to go OG on this because Carpenter didn't much change the original title sequence for his remake-ening of...

The Thing from Another World (1951)

It's unusual (particularly for the time) that the names of the actors do not appear until the end credits of the film. Instead, it's "The Thing" itself that's the star here, hidden away in the darkness and emerging slowly until it's front and center. This theme is much better utilized in Carpenter's 1982 remake/adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella Who Goes There? In Carpenter's version, the alien entity is able to assimilate and imitate other life forms (man being the warmest place to hide, mind you) until the jig is up and it bursts forth in a big red mess of grue and grossness.

Also, Wilford Brimley. And MacReady's ludicrous oversized novelty sideways cowboy hat! Wait, here I am talking about The Thing instead of The Thing from Another World. Ehhhh SO SUE ME.

SHOCKtober: THE SHINING

Fire up the snowcat and get out of the tub, today we're looking at...

The Shining (1980)

So beautiful, so ominous, right? Notes pinched from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique crash as words scroll by quickly, almost as if they're a necessary nuisance. The camera zooms and winds through a relentless wilderness. The Torrance Family's VW Bug is as insignificant as its namesake out here, dwarfed by the endless Evergreens, the looming mountains, and even its final destination, The Overlook Hotel. It's as if the entirety of nature set out to swallow up this family long before the ghosts of the Overlook gave it a shot. Long before the credits finished rolling, even!

SHOCKtober: ROSEMARY'S BABY

Treat yo self to...

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Love the elegant curly pink font splashed all over the unforgiving brown and grey angles of New York City. It's got me craving Ambrosia salad, really, but that's neither here nor there.

That song, masquerading as a lullaby, unsettles more than it soothes and even at the outset, you might begin to suspect that there's going to be something very wrong with Rosemary's baby.

(Aside: I always forget that this is a William Castle Production. I mean, who could guess that?)

SHOCKtober: THE RING

Okay, today's title sequence is one that was a talking point for quite a while after my friends and I saw the film.

The Ring (2002)

But whaaa? That is not a title sequence and does The Ring even have one? Ha ha ha psych oh DIP I got you! The Ring is, in fact, title sequence-free and I love it. Why mess around with names and animations and blah blah blah? Let's get right to business, the film seems to say, and get right to business it do.

I don't even know how I'd feel about The Ring if I were to watch it today. The bits of CGI are likely dodgy by today's standards, and there have been so many "long-haired ghost girl" flicks in the last decade that the trope has been just about stripped of all its power. It's probably best if I leave my feelings and memories of The Ring in my horror movie hope chest for a while longer, where they are protected from the detrimental effects of time and air, and they smell of cedar and "potpourri sachet."

What a breath of fresh air this movie was, unlike anything else happening in American horror at the time...and part of that was the brazen–brazen I say!– lack of a title sequence. Nothing to lull you into the action. Nothing to soothe you after, say, a shocking five-minute cold open. You just sit down and the movie starts and The Ring happens to you and you get no relief. I love that. We all have shit to do, right? There ain't no time for cinematic gewgaws, we only have seven days!

SHOCKtober: DRAG ME TO HELL

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

I remember how excited my friends and I were when we sat down in the theater to see Drag Me to Hell on opening night. I didn't know much beyond that it marked writer/director Sam Raimi's return to horror. That was enough to get me giddy, and man, the movie did not disappoint.

The opening sequence ends with a cursed child getting...well, dragged to hell, and then you're slapped in the face by the film's title and a shriek of orchestral strings and horns. The credits that immediately follow feature illustrations of demons and assorted occult goodies accompanied by some sinister carnival-style music, promising a sideshow full of fucked up scary shit and good times, and boy does Drag Me to Hell deliver.

But it was that title's sudden appearance, the assault on all of your senses, that prompted a friend to lean over and simply whisper "Fuck. Yes." I concurred. I concurred so hard. I still do! Sam Raimi dragged me to hell and I loved every minute of it.

SHOCKtober: THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE

Having indulged in the new 40th Anniversary Blu-ray earlier this week, this film has been on my mind even more than it usually is. That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Pure, unadulterated grindhouse, my friends. That title– one of the most lurid in all of cinema– laid out as simple and no-nonsense as you please against the roiling, unsettling background of blood and gore and...no wait, it's the sun. It's just the sun. Well what's so scary about the sun?

Nothing, usually. It's "things that go bump in the night" after all, and most horror movies eschew the daytime hours in favor of the dark. It's understandable, obviously, but Chain Saw flips it around and gives us pure terror out in the bright sunshine.

The grueling Texas summer heat is as much a character in the film as any of the beautiful teens, the wackadoo cannibals, or Franklin.

(Aside: holy crap, I don't know what happened when I saw the movie this time, but I loved Franklin. I thought he was pretty great. And I wonder if that sausage he munched on was made of some other unlucky young folk...?)

The weather here is a touchstone, something that makes the world of the film feel more alive. Everyone knows by now what the actors had to endure during the shoot, those stifling temperatures that made them all sick and miserable. And we're right alongside with them, knowing what it feels like to be subjected to the relentless, inescapable, suffocating heat. Their shirts and brows are soaked with sweat. There's a lot of flesh on display, bare chests and backs and legs, but it's not to titillate, it's to survive the weather. What else is there to worry about? Nothing bad ever happens under skies this blue.

Except in Chain Saw, where a man wearing someone else's face will snatch you right out in the sunshine, hang you on a meat hook, and serve you up for dinner.

It's still a shock to me when Sally Hardesty jumps through yet another window in order to save herself and she lands outside...in daylight. It feels like safety, as it always does after a night full of terrors real or imagined. But again, the movie takes that away from us as we're left knowing that Leatherface is still out there, twirling in his manic dance of frustration with his chain saw set against the orange skies of the rising sun. Even so early, it looks to be another hot one.

SHOCKtober: FRIDAY THE 13th

Well you guys, what can I say. As I remarked yon about a fortnight ago on the Final Girl Facebook page, the October Excitement Spirits seem to have passed ol' Stately Final Girl Manor by this year. Why that is, I do not know. The world is drenched in Pumpkin Spice everything, sweater weather is upon us, and my local Rite Aid is fully stocked with glittery skull-shaped candles and crappy-looking "Turtle Ninja" costumes. This is normally my– nay, our– time to shine, so why-oh-whyfor do I feel ever-so meh about the whole thing? How did SHOCKtober sneak up on me without a single blat of fanfare from my brain place? How is it that not a single idea for this year's celebration came to me?

I was resigned to simply give it a rest this year, to close up shop for a month and pretend October never happened. Dire times, dear reader! But pal o' Final Girl Brent Schoonover came up with an idea that struck my fancy, and so here we are at SHOCKtober Day 1. This month I'll be taking a look at horror movie title screens and treatments and talkin' about what's what. Maybe Halloween will happen after all!

Let's kick things off with...

Friday the 13th (1980)

What in the world, Friday the 13th? What is that? It is 100% pure ridiculous, although future entries in the series would defy all laws of math and physics and reach even higher percentages of pure ridiculousness with exploding logos, a James Bond-esque Jason Voorhees, and more.

But it's also absolutely perfect, isn't it? Coming on the heels of more serious and/or artistic horror offerings like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, Friday the 13th came out of nowhere and smashed through audience expectations with its explicit gore and simplistic teens-for-the-slaughter formula. The title sequence doesn't need a "scary" font or dripping blood or any of that; it's a heavy, silly monolith that gets in your face with a punch and a fuck you. It immediately bull in a china shops its way into your consciousness, where it will stay forever whether you want it to or not. I mean, look at it! It's not a logo as much as it's a monument. It seems as if it's 30 feet high and carved from marble...in fact, it should be. I want my picture taken in front of that damn thing!