Hullo folks. It's 11:45 PM on Saturday night, I have just returned from a costume party, and since I am endeavoring to maintain the Wednesday - Saturday blogging schedule, I thought I'd pop in to regale you with my further explorations into the world of horror movies. As you know, I have vowed to watch one for every day in October, and right now I am precisely on schedule. So without further ado, here is what I've seen since last we met:

Final Prayer a.k.a The Borderlands (2013). I normally detest "found footage" films, but this small cast British movie about a small team of Vatican experts sent to a rural church to investigate, and in fact debunk, purported "miracles" is well-acted, offbeat, and comes to a thoroughly disturbing climax which is all the more disturbing for having been foreshadowed, albeit in very subtle ways. Gordon Kennedy is exceptional as an disillusioned, burned-out priest with a quick temper and a drinking problem.

Host (2020). Along with "mockumentaries" and "found footage" movies, there are now "screenlife" films which take place entirely in online formats. "Host" is just such a film. A large group of female friends, bored by Covid quarantine, hire a psychic to guide them through an online seance on Zoom, only to discover the spirit they have summoned has a definite taste for blood. I confess this was a much better film than I was expecting: it's lean, it's mean, the performances are good, and I have to respect the cleverness of the approach.

The Ritual (2017). This is a prime example of a movie which is well-made, well-acted, and has a simple but intriguing premise, yet ultimately fails to deliver. "The Ritual" is the story of four British lads who go on a hiking tour of northern Sweden, only to discover there is something in the woods hunting them, something very old and driven by a peculiar need. Seldom have I watched a horror movie this well-crafted and thoughtful, yet the payoff is lacking: it would have been more interesting had it stuck to its early explorations of friendship, grief, cowardice and courage.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023). This is a movie drawn out of a single, terrifying chapter of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," specifically the part where Dracula systematically murders the crew of the transport ship he is using to take himself from Transylvania to England. It's well crafted, and boasts the mighty Liam Cunningham in its cast, but after a fairly promising start, it runs head-first into every problem modern moviemaking throws at us: over-reliance on CGI, disrespect for the source material, wokeist themes. In the hands of a better writer and director, it could have been a kind of 19th century "Alien," but it ends up just another example of how modern writers cannot create anything, but only desecrate the work of their betters.

Crucible of Terror (1971). I confess my dumb ass found this by mistake. I was looking for the movie below, and by the time I'd figured out my blunder was too invested, timewise, to stop watching. "Terror" is a gritty, low-budget flick about a British artist who makes sculptures out of his subjects -- literally. Although not without some memorable moments and boasting some credible actors, it comes off as cheap and amateurish, a kind of sleazy knock-off of Hammer Horror, and its general air of cheesy weirdness doesn't help.

Crucible of Horror (1971). Also known simply as "The Corpse," this is a much better British flick shot in the same year which stars the normally cuddly Michael Gough as the stuffy, sadistic, misogynistic patriarch of an upper middle-class family. His long-suffering wife and daughter decide to murder him, but discover that this is a hell of a lot easier said than done. An often surreal movie full of cruel symbolism and very definite things to say about sexual and spiritual repression and their effects on the mind and soul, it resembles "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"...but with a corpse. Gough is superb as a man who clips roses, in more ways than one.

The Quiet Place (2018). While I wasn't enamored of this movie nearly as much as I expected to be given all the hype surrounding it, I found the story of a silent post-apocalyptic world where monsters hunt surviving humans by sound alone, engaging and quite well made. John Krasinski continues to show us that he can do a lot more than play Jim on "The Office," and in this film has to do it with almost no dialog at all, a challenge he accepts, and overcomes. The troublesome insistence on CGI over practical effects is increasingly tiresome to me, but in this case it's not much more than annoying.

Dog Soldiers (2002). Yet another British movie pits a squad of soldiers against a pack of slavering werewolves who have ambushed them deep in the Scottish wilderness. A fast, cleverly written, homage-laden action-horror piece with strong performances by Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee and Liam Cunningham, it retains a profane sense of humor throughout, but never slides too far into comedic territory to let audiences breathe easy. It's not at all scary, but damn, is it entertaining.

And that is as far as I've gotten, lads. I have ten more movies to go before Halloween night, but I have to say that with a few exceptions, the quality of the films I've seen lately is, overall, much better than those I watched last year. I make a point of mixing old ones with contemporary, and foreign flicks with American, but I never know just what the hell I'm going to encounter. And that, of course, is the essence of horror.