Bookmonkey visits Hemlock Grove: Post Four

Without going into too much detail of the second episode, this is the one that confirms that yes, Peter is a werewolf, and it does it in one of the more startling transformations sequences I've seen in quite a while.

For me the gold standard will always be  Rick Baker's transformation effects in the 1981 film An American Werewolf in London (the makeup for that film was so good that the Academy Awards introduced a new category, Best Makeup, because of it), and although much of what you see in the episode is clearly computer generated, the effects are pretty impressive nonetheless.

The episode itself largely focuses on the murder mystery, but does introduce (through email), Roman's older sister Shelley, a giant girl suffering from some undefined deformities, who wheezes loudly and speaks through a small mechanical device in person, but through her emails, shows herself to be well spoken and quite intelligent.

I actually preferred the second episode to the pilot, and am definitely looking forward to the rest of the season.

Things I've Noticed: Cheesy horror is some of my favourite horror

For the last few months I've been revisiting old horror movies with my youngest daughter, a couple years ago we watched all the old Universal Horror movies from the 30s and 40s in preparation for Van Helsing, and then she decided to check out a newer horror film.

Against my wife's common sense, I picked Jaws, and after two weeks of nightmares (hers, not mine - I didn't get much sleep those weeks), my daughter decided to take a four year break from horror films.

Recently she's decided that as a junior high school student, she should take another look at the genre, so this time I've decided to focus on Horror comedies, and to let my wife veto any film she thinks our youngest might have difficulty handling.

So far we've checked out The Lost Boys, Fright Night, An American Werewolf in London, Alien, and a Kung Fu movie called Mr. Vampire - now I know that Alien is not a horror comedy in the strictest sense (or in any sense really, because if you found that film funny, I'd like you to stand waaaaaaaaay over there), but otherwise we've stayed with films that have more chuckles than scares.

And you know what - I'm really loving these movies! In most cases I haven't watched these movies since I was a kid, and I've got to say they are pretty amazing, good stories, good fun, and a wonderful amount of cheese.