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I'm starting my October Horror Challenge. I'm shooting for at least 30 horror films for this month.
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Oct 2, 2018 01:36
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Franchescanado posted:
17. The Lost Boys - 3.5/5 (HBOGo) quote:This is the most 80s poo poo I have ever seen, god drat, it's almost parody. The Lost Boys is mostly a corny teen version of Near Dark but it's good, campy fun. The biggest drag is probably Sam's b-plot, he's always cramping Michael's style, man, just be cool. It feels annoyingly realistic though. He's right at the age where in a years time, he'll go from being kid-lame to teen-lame like his older brother. Kiefer and the gang had a foot in each camp, but Edgar and Allen Frog...they're cool as hell.
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Oct 2, 2018 01:38
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FRAN CHALLENGE #4: Worst of the Best or Best of The Worst 
Watch a notoriously bad director's best movie.
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1) C.H.U.D. (Douglas Cheek, 1984. starring John Heard, Kim Greist, Daniel Stern, and Christopher Curry) Man, I love horror movies set in "Dirty New York". This is no exception. I really liked the themes of how the powers that be are either doing nothing to protect the common people or actively doing harm to the citizens. Like, the CHUDS themselves aren't the biggest monsters in the movie and it's up to the people and the "underclass" to stop them. Take Heard's character: a former fashion photographer with a chip on his shoulder who gives up the glamour of the runway for the dirt of the sewers, in order to show how the homeless live in those conditions. The heroes are all dirty and grimy. In fact, if someone has a nice set of clothes or a clean face, they more likely than not are villains in this movies. A nice not is how oddly...I don't wanna say progressive, but like, two steps forward ahead this movie is on some social issues, like women's choice and how the roles of "damsel in distress" and "hero" end up being reversed. I think most of the cast ended up being great character actors and it's great to see some known faces from TV and minor movie roles appear here every once in a while. For example:  CHUD is a solid 80's Dirty New York horror creature feature that's grimy, sweaty and a joy to watch. EXTRA: Can someone do me a solid and tell me what was going on with the shower scene though?
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Oct 2, 2018 01:53
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SMP posted:17. The Lost Boys - 3.5/5 (HBOGo) Wait wait, which one of those is it? I mean, it's your opinion and you're entitled to it but I really want to know if you think Joel Schumacher is terrible and it's his best film or if Schumacher is good but it's his worst film. I mean I could see the former, but I don't think Schumacher's work is that bad.
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Oct 2, 2018 01:56
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Is Legend enough horror to count for the challenge?
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Oct 2, 2018 02:02
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I'm watching Halloween and I had to pause it to find out the ages of these actresses because I felt like I was going insane. P.J. Soles was 28 loving years old when this movie was filmed. but oh look she's got pigtails so yeah I can believe she's a high schooler.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:04
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King Vidiot posted:Wait wait, which one of those is it? I mean, it's your opinion and you're entitled to it but I really want to know if you think Joel Schumacher is terrible and it's his best film or if Schumacher is good but it's his worst film. I mean hot takes on his Batman movies aside, I've never heard a single positive thing about Schumacher besides The Lost Boys.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:07
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SMP posted:I mean hot takes on his Batman movies aside, I've never heard a single positive thing about Schumacher besides The Lost Boys. Flatliners, Falling Down, and Phone Booth are all great. Schumacher's one of those directors who kind of disappears into whatever he's making, rather than having a particularly strong voice, which works really well sometimes and really badly at others.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:10
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Guy Goodbody posted:I'm watching Halloween and I had to pause it to find out the ages of these actresses because I felt like I was going insane. P.J. Soles was 28 loving years old when this movie was filmed. If 30 year olds playing high schoolers bothers you, maybe horror is not the genre for you.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:11
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Lurdiak posted:If 30 year olds playing high schoolers bothers you, maybe horror is not the genre for you. I feel like usually a little more effort is put in than just taking someone who's obviously 30 and giving them pigtails.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:23
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:I feel like usually a little more effort is put in than just taking someone who's obviously 30 and giving them pigtails. She says "totally" a lot, what more do you need?
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Oct 2, 2018 02:26
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Ah, the joys of taking a sick day from work. Got 3 watched today. 13) The Mummy (1959) My copy of Horror of Dracula wasn't playing well, so I went straight from Curse of Frankenstein to this. It wasn't as compelling as the previous movie, but still a very interesting watch. The set pieces were wonderful, and Cushing/Lee are just an absolute joy to watch. Not as good as Frankenstein but still holds its own very well. 14) The Shining (1980) What more can I say about this? It's a classic. A girl wanted to have a date and watch a horror movie, and this seemed like a good choice. Long enough for a good date, but not too distracting since we'd both seen it before. It had been many years for me, and I'm always impressed by some of the classic scenes (or, let's be real, the latter half of the movie). Great. Watched (14): Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5, Terrifier, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Martyrs (2008), Mandy, Babadook, Ghost Stories, Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon, Curse of the Puppet Master, Devil's Candy, Curse of Frankenstein, Mummy, Shining
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Oct 2, 2018 02:27
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Basebf555 posted:She says "totally" a lot, what more do you need? Dammit Fright Rags, you'd better pull through and make a reprint of this shirt in time for the new Halloween this month: https://www.fright-rags.com/products/halloween-totally?variant=329440395273
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Oct 2, 2018 02:29
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COOL CORN posted:Ah, the joys of taking a sick day from work. Got 3 watched today. You had a date during your sick day?
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Oct 2, 2018 02:30
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married but discreet posted:Is Legend enough horror to count for the challenge? Despite the brilliant horror that is Tim Curry's devil in that, I'm afraid not.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:34
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Getting in on this late, but I’ll try for 31.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:38
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Question: Do MST3K movies/episodes count?
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Oct 2, 2018 02:39
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Lurdiak posted:If 30 year olds playing high schoolers bothers you, maybe horror is not the genre for you. I just finished watching It Follows (2014), and this prompted me to look up the age of the lead actors (Maika Monroe and the dorky kid from Atypical) and lo and behold, they were in their early 20s during filming, which I suppose falls in the reasonable, non-laughable range of playing a high schooler. It's a relief there are exceptions. # 8 Aliens (1986) - one the best sci-fi action movies of all time and one of the best sci-fi horror movies of all time - this is Alien OD'd on steroids and boner pills. Only several years prior, James Cameron was working as a special effects technician on low budget Roger Corman films, but his talent elevated him to directing a huge blockbuster sequel in less than a decade. If you watch the Making of Aliens (on Youtube in HD!), the special effects crew remark on how James knew as much as they did. (I guess you could say I'm a James Cameron apologist - you can't undo the awesomeness of T2 or Aliens). ANYWAY, the movie itself, truly splendid and despite its reputation as a testostorone-fueled action flick, it actually does wisely take its time in the first third of the film by establishing the world that Ripley skipped out on for 57 years, focusing on the psychological aftermath of Ripley's ordeal aboard the Nostromo, and setting up the colony's backstory as the main area the film takes place in. The action is earned. 10/10 # 9 It Follows (2014) - at first I was a bit underwhelmed by this movie but in hindsight, not too long after watching it, I appreciate it more. It's a very simple horror thriller about a stalker of unknown origin and intention (if you are someone who needs questions answered you might be annoyed here). The sexual guilt and shame theme was kind of there but IMO mostly buried in superficial horror tropes and not explored at all. I'm not even sure if the 80s soundtrack fit the material well. What I'm warming up to is the fact that it was scary - most of important of all - often not in jump scares but suspense and eerie images (like the nude man standing on top of the roof . The final showdown in the pool was also thrilling, and how the electronics were being thrown directly at the main girl was intense - you could feel the pain in that one, thanks to some solid filmmaking that done in a different way would have left audiences bored. 6.5/10
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Oct 2, 2018 02:45
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Franchescanado posted:Despite the brilliant horror that is Tim Curry's devil in that, I'm afraid not. Yeah I'm watching it right now and it's so saccharine it hurts.
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Oct 2, 2018 02:46
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Day 1 - Mom and Dad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVicWnq_BU You know the best way to start October? Working for twelve hours on a project and then having your car's water pump die ten miles from home. But I got home eventually and I put Mom and Dad on immediately. The trailer had me hopeful and I had been saving it. Also, it's only 80 minutes long which is a point in its favor today. Something is making parents go crazy and kill their children. And Nicholas Cage plays a crazy dad. Nick Cage playing suburban dad who goes crazy and tries to kill his kids is all you need to say to sell me on watching the movie. The opening scenes of this movie a real mess. There are three children that the movie focuses on: one is a teenager and in high school, another is a teenager and has gone to take his SATs, and the third is ten years old and is playing around at home with a babysitter. So what day of the week is it? The teachers at the high school know about the phenomenon but don't tell the students about it even after a hoard of parents overrun the police blocking the school's entrance to get at their kids. Parents have been going crazy and killing their children for three or four hours and a woman gives birth in a hospital, so of course the doctors immediately hand the newborn over to her despite the fact that they should have seen hundreds of instances of parents attacking their children out of the blue by that point. Basically, people act in ways specifically to get the movie to the place that they wanted it to get to even though they didn't need to. It was like scenes were planned in isolation and then shoved in without consideration of how they fit together narratively. Another problem is that I hate all of these characters. They're all stereotypes of upper middle class suburbanites. The cliches are so heavy that the minority character in the film (yes, singular) is a smart kid who has an abusive single parent. The characters are all poo poo heads and not in a way that makes me go, "Oh boy I can't wait for them to get killed." More of a "Why should I care what happens to these assholes one way or the other." These are completely charmless characters. Well, until the half way mark when insane Nick Cage finally shows up and he's amazing. Nick Cage delivers exactly what I wanted in this movie but he's the only person who does. It feels like this movie is desperately grasping at something to say and with a theme like parents devouring their children you'd think it would be easy to find it. But they spin their wheels with tired concepts. Did you guys know that behind the perfect suburban facade are lives of quiet desperation? Who'da thunk it. Brian Taylor wrote and directed this movie and seems to have gotten all his knowledge on middle class families from movies that teach important life lessons about about being generic middle aged white people. I went in expecting a darkly comic movie about parents becoming wacky deranged killers going Home Alone on their kids. And there are great scenes of that but they come pretty late in the movie. I feel like the script needed a few more passes to clean up the garbage half-baked suburban melodrama and focus things. I can see the outline of a really great movie here which makes Mom and Dad so disappointing. Lurdiak posted:If 30 year olds playing high schoolers bothers you, maybe horror is not the genre for you. The actress playing the daughter in Mom and Dad is clearly around 25 and her character is supposed to be 14 or 15. At some point you just have to let those things go.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:03
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Honestly if they had actual teen actors in something like Carrie it would be grotesque to watch.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:06
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Lurdiak posted:Honestly if they had actual teen actors in something like Carrie it would be grotesque to watch. I dunno, I really sorta feel like that depends on how it's handled. As-is, yeah, but a version of Carrie with teen actors would probably look pretty different than the movie we got.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:12
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:I dunno, I really sorta feel like that depends on how it's handled. Yeah, it'd look like that boring remake.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:17
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Gonna try to make it this year. I've actually started keeping a brief log of the new movies I've watched with some thoughts, etc since I've found a couple people and we've been marathoning movies so I'm hopeful that I can make it. Gonna go for 31 in October.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:18
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Vincent posted:Question: Do MST3K movies/episodes count? Yep, I've been throwing in a handful of MST3K episodes over the last few challenges myself. Furthermore, my understanding is that TV show episodes in general can count, just so long as they exceed an hour in length.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:22
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Spatulater bro! posted:You had a date during your sick day? The show must go on, my dude. It's just a cold, nothing major.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:31
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Spatulater bro! posted:You had a date during your sick day? He got better.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:32
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October is here and I'm in for 31 first time viewings. 1. The Bat (Amazon) - I was a little hesitant to count this one at first, as it is more a crime thriller than horror. At the end of the day, though, I feel that a murdering cat burglar whose calling card is killing his victims with a set of steel claws on one of his gloves is Krueger-adjacent enough to make it count. There's a million dollars in securities missing from the local bank and there are reports in the local paper that notorious burglar and killer "The Bat" is back in town. Meanwhile, a famous author of mystery novels is renting out the remote mansion built by the owner of said bank who just died while out on a hunting trip with his physician. Not long after she arrives, eerie happenings in the mansion scare off the staff, with many claiming to have seen a faceless man skulking about. Overall, this was an enjoyable noir-ish mystery with some horror elements, elevated by the always fantastic Vincent Price. Definitely worth a watch. 2. Crush the Skull (Amazon) - After a job goes south and lands one of them in jail, burglars Blair and Ollie find themselves in debt to a local crime boss and need to pull another job quickly to get some funds and start paying it off. Things don't go as planned when their next job turns out to be the home of serial killer. A lot more fun than I expected, this is a low budget horror comedy that actually manages a good mix of tension and humor once things start to go awry. At times you can really feel the budget, and the whole thing has a very overly-hd digital video look to it that makes it look like a Funny or Die short, but overall an enjoyable little film. Fran Challenge #1: Love what you hate 3. Terrifier (Netflix) - I'm not a fan of the creepy clown craze. It's just hokey, and usually a sign you're dealing with a film that's short on original ideas or story. Pretty much the only exceptions to this rule for me are It and Killer allow a from Outer Space, both of which actually do something original with the concept. Given that it had been getting some love in this thread, I figured I would heck out Terrifier to see if it had anything interesting to add to the genre. It does not. I thought this movie was terrible. It was about an hour or so too long, as there's just no story involved to justify it being a feature length film. The characters basically don't exist other than as things to be killed. There's no real stakes, as you just don't care enough about anyone for there to be any suspense. Ultimately, I found it to be a boring slog through a series of pointless deaths that had no real impact whatsoever.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:33
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My second movie of the challenge was Halloween I didn't like it. Just to recap, the plot is that there is this guy, Michael Myers who is so insane, he's actually full evil and also magic. After fifteen years of being locked up in the hospital for very insane people he gets out and then steals a car by climbing all over it like Spiderman. Then he returns to his hometown and randomly selects three teenage girls to stalk and kill. But he has a sense of humor about it, he shows up and then vanishes when people look away, and one time he dresses up as a ghost, for some reason. I guess because he's just so insane. Meanwhile an old man in a trench coat that looks like a bathrobe in a lot of shots wanders around saying crazy sounding poo poo about how evil and insane Michael Myers is There absolutely is good stuff in the movie. All three of the female leads are really good. they do a fantastic job with the terrible dialogue they are given. I really liked how often Jamie Lee Curtis stabbed Michael Myers. The famous Halloween theme is very good. All the tracking shots following characters across the suburban streets look great and help establish a sense of place. The Michael Myers mask is great, it's genuinely spooky coming out of the dark, or shining out in the dark night. The keyword there being "dark". The first several times we see it is in full bright daylight. And that's not scary, it's just kinda weird. And we see him a lot. Just doing his little peekaboo game. Which I guess he enjoys? And about his mask, at one point Loomis describes Myers as having very pale skin and the blackest eyes. Like his mask. He wears a mask that is like how his psychiatrist describes his real face. Are they going for a thing there? Like Loomis is untrustworthy and his opinion about Myers is wrong? Because that would make sense, Loomis seems flat out crazy. But there's nothing else in the movie to suggest that. I think my biggest problem with the movie is Michael Myers. He gets so much buildup. Dr Loomis spends the entire movie talking him up, we get so many little glimpses of him just standing around. I just got tired of it. And when he finally does start killing people, it's kinda eh. He get stymied for like a solid minute by one of those slatted blind accordion closet doors, when I'm pretty sure an actual teen girl the age the characters were supposed to be could smash through one of those faster. I'm a big John Carpenter fan, but this just fell absolutely flat for me. My final review is: Halloween isn't very good
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Oct 2, 2018 03:37
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1) Raw This is one that was on my list to watch for awhile. It's a French film, and seems t fit in with the overall tone of the new wave of French horror from a few years ago that seemed to dry up. The movie starts off with Justine beginning at veterinary school where here sister Alexia is already a student. We are introduced to her family, where we find out they're vegetarians. Soon after arriving at the school a bunch of masked individuals trash her room and round up all the new students in what ends up being a hazing ritual. As an aside, I'm wondering if there isn't something I'm missing about the French school/college system, as the whole thing seemed a bit surreal and don't know if that was intentional extreme exaggeration, or typically how trade schools (?) operate there. But whatever. The next day, the hazing continues as the new students are forced to eat raw rabbit liver/other types f things, and have blood dumped on them. Justine protests this, but her sister, rather than backing her up, encourages her to take part. This causes food poisoning in Justine while also awakening other urges. The focus of the movie is largely on Justine and Alexia's interactions. Justine is the stereotypical "good girl" while Alexia is much more wild and adventurous. It plays out a lot more like a dark coming of age movie than a horror movie (I remember thinking that it reminded me somewhat of Ginger Snaps). As I mentioned above,, I have a feeling that there may be some cultural/societal nuance I'm not getting from the movie, but even with that it's still effective at telling the story. A lot of the more gross elements though come not so much from anything "horror", but the activities of the vet students in their classwork. Overall I enjoyed it. I went in pretty blind so I didn't have many expectations of how the movie would play out, but it still had a few surprises that emerged. I do feel the ending was a little flat and rushed, but not enough to really detract from my overall enjoyment f the movie.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:41
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13. The Seventh Curse (1986) Y'all were not kidding about this movie. I was attempting to describe what I was seeing in this to a friend of mine and it sounded like a lunatic fever dream. There's an amount of blood in this movie to rival Evil Dead 2 and it whiplashes from kung-fu fights to 80s Hong Kong comedy shtick to a literal child blood press all in like 80 minutes. The monster designs were creepy and gross and appear REALLY suddenly in a genuinely shocking way. I was hoping that Chow Yun-Fat was going to be in more of it, but he comes in the clutch when he's needed with a rocket launcher. Big Trouble In Little China and Raiders of the Lost Ark are two of my favorite all-time movies and this is like a Frankenstein fusion of the two. I can't wait to show it to my friends.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:41
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 85- Planet of the Vampires 1965 - DVD This one's one of a handful of films that I'd been so used to seeing the black and white pictures in Famous Monsters that when I finally saw it, I was surprised it was in color. It is known for heavily influencing Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon for Alien to the degree the accusation of them ripping off Planet of the Vampires is fairly common. I don't particularly care as I enjoy both films on thier own merits. The colors here are a delight, the camera angles really play up the alien aspects of the location and the reanimated dead are nicely gory for the era.  86- Plague of the Zombies 1966 - DVD I felt this one was a nice callback to White Zombie as this one involves zombies in Cornwall working in the tin mines. Overall a not bad watchthrough. And with this post I have to admit that doing a 'how many films can I fit in over the weekend' was not the best of choices. I'm pretty crisped out on 60s Horror for the time being. This leaves me with only one option left. Time to start on the 70s!
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Oct 2, 2018 03:44
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17. Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) HOMETOWN HORROR CHALLENGE Watched on Bluray  Luckily this satisfies my theme of anniversaries and the challenge. This particular movie was filmed about 30 minutes from where I'm sitting right now and my friend's dad was the fire martial on set for the house burning down at the end. If I'm feeling froggy I might go down to the location and take some pictures but the sets are all totally gone of course. I also noticed for the first time a boat in an early scene still has the "AL" for Alabama registration on the side of it. First out the gate. Kane Hodder as Jason is really overrated and it pisses me off to no end he makes a zombie heavily breathe to add character. Total hack poo poo. Otherwise though this wars with Part 6 as my favorite because I really like the characters in Part VII. They're mostly tropes you would see in any slasher movie but they're played well and seem fairly natural. Other than the mean girl, who the gently caress would keep such an awful person in their circle? The effects are generally great but the kills are pretty obviously hacked up by censors which is a shame. The nerdy kid getting a machete to the neck I bet looked amazing before they chopped it up. But maybe the most visceral kill has almost no gore and that's the sleeping bag against the tree. Also once the mask comes of Jason he's pretty drat gnarly. 4 out of 5. 18. Halloween (1978) Watched on 35th Anniversary Bluray  This was watched with commentary from John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. This is my hands down all time favorite horror movie. I can't really say more about it but the Halloween movies are responsible for getting me into the genre. Michael Myers as faceless evil is timeless, no matter how much the sequels try to gently caress all that up. My main take away from the commentary is that Jamie Lee Curtis is genuinely scared of this movie and points out things that are scary that I may no process from a male perspective. It's refreshing to hear her say what she finds scary as the movie goes on. I think it's also endearing she's never been too good for the genre films where she got her start. Jamie Lee Curtis owns.
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Oct 2, 2018 03:48
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Just moved, so I'm not sure how much free time I'll have, but I'm signing up for 10 this year. Also gonna aim for all the challenges.
Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 03:56
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11. Hell Comes to Frogtown The poster says it all  It's a contrast of two worlds   It has Roddy Piper ( They Live ) and Sandhal Bergman ( Valkyrie from Conan) It's directed by Donald G. Jackson. I would have thought this film was a fever dream if I had not watched it sober .  /5
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Oct 2, 2018 04:04
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15. The Tenant (1976, Roman Polanski) Source: DVD (library) Roman Polanski is a piece of poo poo. There, now that's out of the way. This movie gripped me, shook me and absolutely floored me. As a director and writer Polanski is excellent at painting a picture of normalcy and then skewing it just enough to totally gently caress with me. He did it expertly in Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby and he does it even better here. The paranoia and weirdness builds slowly. And when it hits its peaks it's delivered in some unexpected, highly creative ways. Take, for example, the shot where Trelkovsky awakes and reaches over to the chair by his bed. The chair looks normal. Just a wooden chair with some items on it including a bottle of booze. First his arm moves behind the chair, then in front of it as he tries to grab the bottle. But he can't reach anything because the chair - along with everything on it - has no dimensionality. It's literally two-dimensional, and its appearance as a normal object is done through clever force perspective. I've never seen anything like that. And there are plenty of other ingenious moments like it. As an actor Polanski plays the perfect good hearted, soft spoken floor mat. His character, as well as his odd privacy-invading incidents, reminded me of Jennifer Lawrence in Mother!. The world around him seems to ask so much of him but he asks nothing in return. Constant late night callers, constant unwarranted complaints. Can't a guy just move a table across the floor without the neighbors going apeshit? I started really feeling for him, especially once his reality started to dissolve. And boy does it ever dissolve. I described this to my wife as Repulsion meets Rosemary's Baby. I think that sums it up pretty well but still doesn't quite do it justice. It's actually a little better than those films, and I adore both of them. I loved this. It's top tier psychological horror and the best movie I've seen from Polanski.   (5 red lipsticks out of 5) Spatulater bro! fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 04:06
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15) Horror of Dracula (or just "Dracula") (1958) So now I've seen all three of the Hammer monster trilogy. This one was surprisingly my least favorite of the three. I think part of the problem is that Dracula is so passe at this point that I've seen this whole story before. But, that being said, it was still a very enjoyable watch, and Christopher Lee was practically born to play the Count - much as Cushing is perfect as Van Helsing. I'm excited to see the rest of the Hammer Dracula films, but this felt more like an introduction than anything. Watched (15): Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5, Terrifier, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Martyrs (2008), Mandy, Babadook, Ghost Stories, Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon, Curse of the Puppet Master, Devil's Candy, Curse of Frankenstein, Mummy, Shining, Horror of Dracula
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Oct 2, 2018 04:11
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Franchescanado posted:
18. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge - 3.5/5 quote:Man this was...kinda sad, actually. The Freddy poo poo is toned way down compared to the first, so a lot of the movie is just this kid struggling with being closeted. When he's breaking down to the point of tears I just feel really bad for the guy. There is no gay subtext in this film, just text. It's maybe not the most competent of films, but it went in such an interesting direction that I can't help but be generous. And now I'm all caught up on the challenges. alansmithee posted:1) Raw I absolutely love Raw, so what other movies from this wave should I check out? It occurs to me I haven't seen many French horror movies. I assume Martyrs is one of them. Spatulater bro! posted:14. The Tenant (1976, Roman Polanski) Source: DVD (library) I watched his apartment trilogy recently and cosign this. I wasn't big on Repulsion and mostly like Rosemary's Baby (save the ending), but ho boy The Tenant fuckin' got me. The bathroom window voyeurism is killer.
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Oct 2, 2018 04:16
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I'm aiming to watch 31 new-to-me movies. Last year I watched a lot more but was poo poo at writing anything down about them so fell off this challenge like Chris falling into the sunken place. This year I'll jump in with more gusto, like jumping into a room full of barbed wire. I'll have more words for movies when I start writing these closer to when I've seen them, but I'm writing these up now, days later, since I watched them after the start of this here challenge: Reanimator (1985) - REWATCH Reanimator is a movie I keep coming back to and highly recommend to folks with a stomach for subversive and gory violence. It had a wonderful disregard for science, an over-the-top camp sensibility and an intensely great performance from Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West. Absolutely one of my favorites. 5 Savageland (2015) - This was great. Savageland evoked movies like Lake Mungo, but where Lake Mungo builds and builds the tension and dread, Savageland puts it out there at the beginning - even before the title we know we're going to see some creepy photos as the climactic evidence. Ultimately, though, the movie stays true to its zombie roots and has a lot to say, about scapegoating. Ghostbusters (2016) - Melissa McCarthy gave a fun performance, and Chris Hemsworth was good comic relief, but I thought the rest of the cast swerved from unremarkable to annoying (Kate McKinnon’s character). Despite that, the movie clearly had a lot of fun with a fresh take, and it was nice to see the various cameos from original cast members. The ghosts were fun, the additional weapons were stupid, but its hard to find comedies that know how to tell jokes without running them into the ground these days - a one-liner with dead-pan delivery vs. just keep talking, keep hammering the joke home. 3 Creep (2014) - Found footage movie that kept me on edge pretty much all throughout, as you expected the weird guy to, well, be weird. And the movie didn’t disappoint. There were a few twists and turns and red herrings to keep it interesting. Overall, it was a pretty fun/uncomfortable ride. Vampyr (1932) - Vampyr had a strange atmosphere, and it seems like the way it was filmed, it comes across to me as earlier than it actually was. There is very little dialogue, and coupled with the way it was shot (sometimes gauze was placed across the cameras, apparently!) I was always surprised when someone did speak a line - it feels very much like an older silent movie. There were other things as well, camera movements, and certain staging and props, that didn’t add to the silent era feeling and thus lended an off-kilter feeling to the movie, but it all gave the movie a unique atmosphere that worked very well. List (4): Savageland, Ghostbusters (2016), Creep, Vampyr smitster fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 04:29
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8/31 Thank you to Hollismason for streaming! The Hidden is an action movie hidden (heh heh) as a horror movie. A quiet, unassuming Los Angeles man suddenly snaps and violently robs a bank, leading police on a wild high speed chase in his Ferrari. The classic "straight laced FBI agent and cowboy local cop" duo find themselves caught in a sci-fi horror scenario as it transpires that something else caused the man to go on a killing spree...and it can switch bodies. This film bleeds 80s. The opening chase takes place to "On Your Feet" by Shok Paris, a woman in a ridiculous leather jacket and tutu skirt finds a dead record store owner in the aftermath of the monster's crime spree, and a pre-Twin Peaks Kyle MacLachlan appears as a different creepy FBI agent. Most of the important cars are 80s Ferraris, Porsches, and Lamborghinis. Car salesmen offer cocaine to their white-suited customers. The soundtrack is full of synths and pounding synth drums when it's not obscure 80s rock and punk. It's arguable how much of the movie can truly be called "horror" as opposed to a sci-fi action film (beyond some excellent animatronics/puppetry), but it's certainly original in its presentation and writing. Kyle MacLachlan delivers an excellent performance that immediately endears you to him. The ending contains a legitimately unexpected twist with some far-reaching implications for the protagonist's life. While it may be a "horror" only in the loosest sense, I would never hesitate to recommend The Hidden to someone looking for the most 80s urban sci-fi imaginable. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 04:38
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