Hands-on horror

On this lovely Halloween day, please let this slightly older blogger suggest a couple of slightly older horror movies that might provide a bit of frightful fun if you feel like watching something scary later on.  I picked these movies because they were both produced well before the CGI era, so if you see something that's memorably scary in them, it's because the filmmakers had to actually make that thing and film it, not simply animate it to life on a computer and cut and paste it into the movie later on. I'm not a CGI basher, but there is something to be said for the old hands-on approach to creating creatures and moody-looking spaceships and all the other things that went into making effective horror and horror/sci-fi movies in decades past.

Anyway, I'm just recommending two films for now: 1979's Alien, directed by Ridley Scott and 1982's The Thing, directed by John Carpenter.  Both were done in the pre-CGI era but both deliver very ambitious scares and monsters, some believing that the scares are much more effective because the actors were most likely interacting with elements right there in the shot with them at the time of filming. I often hold this outlook and you might, too, at least a little after seeing these films.  Both, by the way, are hard R-rated movies, given that rating for graphic violence and gore, as well as language. So, no, don't worry that these are quaint old horror movies.  They both still have bite.

And skill, too.  They both have skill.  Because if you are actually building a scary creature and filming it, that creature- and the things it does- better look good. Because a plastic and rubber monster will look like exactly that if your special effects people aren't top notch. And I guarantee that the best special effects artists and technicians were used in both of these movies.

Both Alien and The Thing shouldn't be too hard to find among all the available streaming services out there these days. Have fun hunting for them and have a fun Halloween!