Night 18 of "The 31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest"

I've joined in the fun over at Domestic Witch's October Blog Party. You can find a list of participating blogs that are having fun celebrating the season of Halloween. When you're done here take a broom ride over to her site and you'll see the list of blogs on the right side bar.

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Here at The Lounge we will have a "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest". Check back each day to see which movie is featured and some days you may get more than one. They will be a random selection of my favorites. You can see all past selections on the sidebar.

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Make sure to leave a comment for each movie as one lucky person will win their choice of pendant from Laughing Vixen Lounge at the end of the film fest. Please see rules at end of post.

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Night 18...."Urban Legend"

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Directed by Jamie Blanks (Valentine and Storm Warning ) and released on September 25, 1998 by TriStar Pictures. Students of Pendleton University start to drop like flies. Natalie (Alicia Witt) notices a pattern in the deaths. They all resemble the urban legends they are learning about in class. Can Natalie and amateur sleuth Paul (Jared Leto) find the killer before there is no one left. Trouble is everyone seems guilty. Hate it when that happens.

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The fun of this movie is the legends themselves. The hook on the car door (I remember telling this one at slumber parties), "Aren't you glad you didn't turn the light on?" (The one I remember actually falling for! 8) and lots more. My absolute favorite being the opening scene. If you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want it spoiled then skip to after the yellow stars!!! When I was in Junior High I remember the police finding a woman's body down the road from our house. They figure someone got into her car when she stopped at a red light, killed her and dumped her body in the wooded area on the side of the road. Her car had been left on the side of the road and is what led to finding her body. It was quite a shock in suburbia land and it always stuck with me. I still refer to it as Dead Lady Corner (I know it's in poor taste but we were teenagers). So the opening scene of the guy hiding in the back of the car always gives me chills! I always check the backseat before getting in a car.

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This is pretty much standard slasher area here but the urban legends make it a little more interesting. Not tons of gore or really too scary but a fun watch none the less. And it is a hard task trying to figure out just who is the killer! The two high points for me is the presence of Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger himself) as Professor Wexler and Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luther on Smallville) as Parker. As a big fan of both they are the frosting and cherry on the cupcake. 8)

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Some trivia about the movie...
1. When Paul and Natalie walk into the hidden room in Wexler's office, a puppet of Freddy Krueger can be seen just before they see the axe. Robert Englund, who plays Wexler, played Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

2. The book sitting on the desk in Professor Wexler's desk in his class is "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," which is one of the seminal texts on urban legends.

3. At the end of the movie, students from an unnamed college recount the movie's events as an urban legend. They joke about the tale's validity, and one says, "And I bet Brenda was the girl from the Noxzema commercials." Actress Rebecca Gayheart, who plays Brenda in the film, did indeed appear in several commercials for Noxzema.

4. Joshua Jackson (Damon Brooks) cranks his car before he takes Natalie to "that" spot in the woods; when it cranks the radio plays Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait" from the TV show "Dawson's Creek" (1998) also starring Jackson.

5. Brad Dourif, the actor who plays the stuttering gas station attendant at the beginning of the film, played the role of Billy Bibbit, who also had a speech impediment, in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

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Rules for pendant giveaway...
(1) comment about a movie per movie.
(1) extra entry by following this Blog and (1) extra for following on Twitter (You can only take the blog and twitter entries once for the whole contest).
(1) extra entry for Tweeting about this. Please use this message -Check out the "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest" to win your choice of pendant from @LaughingVixen http://bit.ly/1yMYdH -- 3 Tweets a day max and no more than 1 an hour.
(1) extra entry for guessing the next film. I will tweet hints on Twitter about the next days movie and you can post your guess as a comment. Doesn't have to be right just your best guess.
Make sure to post each entry as an individual comment on any of the movies comment pages. You can comment on past movies. Make sure you can be contacted from your post.