24 hours of horror w/ Brendon Small

8p.m. - "I started out with some of my favorite horror. Great ghost stories: I put that before slashers, before suspense. And the first scariest thing I ever experienced as a kid would had to have been Poltergeist....

I love Tobe Hooper anyway, even though they say Spielberg pretty much directed that movie himself. But that movie is so great, because it did something that horror failed to do constantly, as long as we’re actually talking about horror films, and not in a smarmy, smart, sarcastic way. That movie does something that’s great: It actually creates a world that is believable. That suburban house with that family is so believable. And the first 20 minutes or so is just the family going through its life. So when things start getting strange, they really start getting strange, because we believe that to be us. They do such an amazing job making this house feel like it’s lived in, the construction that’s going on, the pool they’re building, all that stuff. That suburban neighborhood, the neighbor with the same channel-changer, on the same frequency as his. Just all those little tiny things did so much to make that world believable."

10p.m. - "I’m going to put that on next, because it’s a classic, and I want to get some of these classics out of the way before I get into just absurdity and stupidity. I’ll have a lot of palate-cleansers....

I think compositionally, musically… I think about that movie often, because it sets a really great tone. And because I’m a film nut, I remember from the commentary, William Friedkin talking about louds and quiets throughout the whole movie. That’s how comedy works, and how horror works too. That’s how death metal works, and that’s how great music works. Contradictory sections. And that movie definitely has great contradictory sections, where things are incredibly quiet, then incredibly loud.

The other thing is the believability of that world. It’s not something we can totally understand. The father has gone away somewhere, and the mother is a famous actor. Where do I fit in? I don’t know. But the relationship between the mother and daughter is really real, and the acting is so believable and understated. And it’s filmed like a European art film."

12a.m. - "Again, some of these are not in any particular order. But I’m going to go with something really stupid. Palate-cleanser. There a lot of things that make things horrible. Just a horrible script sometimes, horrible acting. Sometimes a horrible sequel. In this case, I’ve picked Eddie And The Cruisers II....

I think if you watch things that are good all the time, then you start to go, “Oh yeah, well, that’s one’s great too.” It’s like living your life—I’m healthy, I’m fine, and then I get a cold every once in a while, and I go, “Oh, right! I forgot how good I had it before!” And that’s what Eddie And The Cruisers II does. It reminds you that you were much better off before."

2a.m. - "That’s a good one to wake you up. Unfortunately, some people have ruined the surprise to that movie, so if you know the surprise, don’t ruin it for your friends. It presents itself as a slasher movie, but it ends up being a little bit more. [Laughs.] You don’t see it coming unless your friend ruins it for you.

It’s basically a murder-by-numbers, so you’re still lining them up and killing them. There are some slasher films that I think are really fantastic, and there are some that are in one ear, out the other, and that’s why you can make 13 of them and go, “Hey, yeah, we still got plenty of story to tell.” Because there is no story to tell. But this one presents itself as a slasher and has one of the most bold, fucked-up twist endings I’ve seen in a movie."

4:30a.m. - "There’s something very wrong about this movie. It’s with the kid from The Facts Of Life, [Mackenzie Astin]. This is one of those movies that doesn’t function as a horror film in any way whatsoever.... I don’t really have much to say, other than this is another palate-cleanser, and this is so stupid, but you may thank me for reminding you of this movie. And it’s available on DVD. In the bargain bin."

6:30a.m. - "...this movie, it’s amazing. The major dialogue, the exposition, just stops [after a certain point]. It becomes almost a silent film. And he works so hard. His movie beforehand, Cabin Fever, was a really fun movie. What was Eli Roth, like 26 when he made that? Obviously he’s got a lot of energy, and he cares about what he’s doing. And that movie was fun, but this movie… I thought the score and the camera work were outstanding....I think you forget that that really is some of the most brutal slashing and killing and slaying and defingering and whatever that has happened in a movie.

There are Hitchcock moments. There’s a lot of craftsmanship. That was the thing that really attracted me. You see fight sequences and horror sequences and remakes of old John Carpenter movies, and it really is just slash/dab coverage chip-chopped together. But this guy, you can tell, boarded everything. There is no doubt in my mind that he knew exactly how every shot was going to happen before he got there. "

8a.m. - "I’m going to keep going with horror—Funhouse. I watched that again recently. Tobe Hooper. I love this movie. First off, they just don’t make movies that look like that anymore. I think it’s the film stock, it’s those lens flares and all that stuff Spielberg used in the early ’80s. They’re all over E.T. I’m a sucker for lens flares. The way this film looks, all the night shots, all the lights around the actual carnival, it’s just a really cool, moody film."

9:30a.m. - "My buddies Tim [Heidecker] and Eric [Wareheim] loaned me a copy of this one, but I saw a trailer of this on YouTube, and I became fascinated by it. It largely borrows from The Birds. It’s a story of a man making his own film. And it’s great. Watch the trailer if you can’t get a copy.... It’s a movie about environmental consciousness. You’ll get that. At one point, just like in The Birds, they’ll turn. But in this movie, these birds are computer-generated. In animation, we talk about frame cycles, and I think this is a two-frame cycle, like wings up and wings down. [Laughs.] “It’s a bird, right? You get the idea!” It’s like when you’re fascinated with the idea of making films early on, and you are like, “Yeah we’ll get some bird sound effects, some cawing, etc.” But they just reuse the same bird sample over and over again. They didn’t find some other bird sample, so you start to become very accustomed to this one sample."

11a.m. - " It has all the illusions, all the accoutrements of a horror film. It’s got a big scary monster. Maybe fast-forward through it a little bit. I was very excited to see this movie. I thought, “They’re doing it, they’re really doing it. And look at those monsters! Whoaaaaah! Those don’t look so good. But this must be what they want. This took like what, 10 years in the making?” But they really do look like a rock band, GWAR or something like that. Which is kind of awesome. But they don’t have guitars. Most movies would be so much better if the characters all had big electric guitars. This is one of them.

...I have a very strong stomach for terrible films that go nowhere, and every single shot is a Dutch angle. The acting in that… These are all great actors. Forest Whitaker won an Oscar. He’s an amazing actor. Travolta is a great actor. But these decisions they made, these choices and inflections… “Rat-brain!” And these long laughs, where they throw their heads back. I think there are two kinds of directors. There’s the kind of director who directs you into that place. And then there’s the kind of director who just sits down and has coffee and a doughnut and stares at the monitor and shrugs, and goes, “Yeah, that’s fine.” I think either of those two directors could have made this film."

1p.m. - "This is a movie I grew up loving. Dead Alive is… I don’t think there’s one dull moment. Every single frame of this has some fucked-up, weird thing going on. Him taking care of his mother, who’s clearly a zombie. The baby. And at the very end, it’s the lawnmower he uses—which is probably one of the more brutal things you’ll see in a movie, because he uses the open end to kill around a hundred people. And that’s Peter Jackson. Goofing off. Having fun."

3p.m. - "I’ve got some movies where you can just fast-forward to certain parts. The Sentinel: Just fast-forward to the end. It’s a story that’s slow-moving, but then at some point… The big blow-out is that they hired real freaks, like in the movie Freaks, people with strange facial deformities that are semi-nude all kind of wandering around in a dark room, and you just see bits and pieces of them and you go, “Okay, that’s pretty strange.” That’s The Sentinel. That’s why the movie’s famous."

3:15p.m. - "This is another one. This is one I show tons of people, and I don’t know if it’s hacky at this point, but… In great bad sequels, it just kind of missed the mark of the original. I haven’t seen the documentary about it, Best Worst Movie. I’d seen parts of it on cable, and was reminded about it about five years ago. And then I went on tour with the band Chimaira. Chimaira is a bunch of guys from Ohio. They were fascinated with this film. I in turn introduced them to The Room. We switched movies on this tour, and they showed me Troll 2. I immediately fell in love."

4:45p.m. - "I think for children, the idea of divorce is the scariest thing in the world. My parents stayed together, though I tried to send them divorce papers several times. I tried to perform a citizens’ divorce. It didn’t work. Great movie. Terrifying. When he breaks the glass, and that French-toast sequence… Great movie. It’s a palate-cleanser. That, or You Can Count On Me. You can choose."

6:45p.m. - "I hate when my things are cliché, but I think this is one of the best movies. I can’t think of a movie that tried to get inside a serial killer’s mind before that. Can you think of any?

AVC: I liked Manhunter, but Anthony Hopkins in Silence Of The Lambs… You kind of understand who this person is and where he’s coming from, and that’s terrifying.

BS: It really is. Jonathan Demme did such a great job making it terrifying and believable. If you remember what Hannibal Lecter was in the book, I think he had six fingers and red eyes. They made him a monster. And Demme did what he could to make every single part of it believable. It wasn’t fantastical, even though this guy was building a dress from women. It was all real enough in this world to be scary."