[A favourite] exorcism film*

“Blood of Christ. Demon. A curse upon this man. A curse that he will never forget me. Blood of my body. Until the grave. A curse that he will never forget me.”

– Purificazione

When a rejected young woman puts a curse on her heart's desire, the locals see nothing less than witchcraft. It is decided that Purif must be possessed, and exorcised.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

(A favourite) zombie movie*

 

Now, settima. Of all the zombie movies in the world you had to pick a vampire story? Why yes. Yes I did.

“Again he shook his head. The world's gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in import. How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!”

– Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (1954)

Just like my actual favourite zombie film, that one from 1968, Soy leyenda is based on Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic horror novel I Am Legend (1954). The story describes a world where the living have become undead vampire-like creatures. A lone man tries to rationalise that new world through reason and science, and legend.

 

In the man's mind, the undead become the familiar, the vampire. In our mind, watching this, we believe to see the foreshadowing of the popculture zombie. The abandoned well-known landscapes, the ceaseless repetition of what the old life had instilled, the normalcy of the grotesque. Oh how familiar they have become.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

Soul or rhythm and blues for Ben E. King's birthday.

“Let's face it; the future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain.”

– Brian Jones

While then-manager Oldham's dream of an all-Stones A Clockwork Orange never manifested, there was an attempt to counter The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). That too, failed. Instead, Charlie became a cinéma vérité roadmovie of the Stones' touring Ireland in 1965. Whitehead's camera is there for Charlie.

A steam locomotive to celebrate the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives.

 

The Big Freeze of 1963 was one of the coldest winters recorded in British history. It was during this winter that filmmaker Geoffrey Jones was commissioned by British Transport Films to make a documentary about the British Railways Board. With the freeze setting in, Jones ran the footage in preparation of post-production, and was struck by the blackness of the locomotives against the white of the many feet of snow. This smaller experimental project became Snow. Accompanied by a stretched out version of the jazz tune Teen Beat, and BBC Radiophonic Workshop's own Daphne Oram, Snow is an improbable hypnotic trip in an impossible landscape.

Full title: En cuanto a la infancia, andar, regeneración y muerte de Jorge del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, quien se hace llamar también José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, Jorge Sandoval Espinoza, José Jorge Castillo Torres, alias el Campano, el Trucha, el Canaca, el Chacal de Nahueltoro

Italy or Sophia Loren for La Loren's birthday (1934).

“Film is kijken naar mensen die kijken.”

– Remco Campert, Het gangstermeisje (1965)

A writer tasked with writing a screenplay based on his novel Het gangstermeisje suffers from writer's block. Some time at his friends' house in France brings the inspiration needed but also a few twists and turns, similar to his book, leading him to Cinecittà.

An emergency room: ER debuts on this date in 1994.

 

A paralysed Czechoslovak partisan recovering from a shot in the back in an emergency ward, feverishly remembers the events that brought him to that moment. He particularly remembers Engelchen, the SS Sturmbannführer who killed his best friend and massacred the local villagers.

First love for National First Love Day (USA).

 

A boy and a girl fall in love at a resort at the Black Sea. He's the son of an architect, an optimist who sees creation where possible. She's the daughter of a nuclear scientist, the future an inevitable apocalypse.

Television documentary about the nuclear disarmament demonstration at Trafalgar Square on September 17, 1961 (description via aforementioned link in the caption).

 

El Grito de Independencia: ¡Viva México!

“¡Mexicanos! ¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron patria! ¡Viva Hidalgo! ¡Viva Morelos! ¡Viva Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez! ¡Viva Allende! ¡Vivan Aldama y Matamoros! ¡Viva la independencia nacional! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva México! ¡Viva México!”

– El Grito

Accompanied by Juan Rulfo's poem, Gámez explores Mexico's identity, and loss thereof. Crying out for the Mexican with Coca-Cola in the blood.