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Re: Phenomena Argento really had his finger on the pulse of pop culture circa 1986 with this one: did he have to make that shirt himself because there hadn't been any at the store since he did Suspiria? Although I guess the Megadeth and Motorhead music would have been vaguely contemporary. This one was appropriately weird, but the signature dream logic of Argento's movies derailed the plot of this more story-heavy one, where by the end Jennifer Connolly's screaming reaction to and easy abandonment of the cop to slowly wander around the basement while he strangled the killer seemed absolutely absurd to me, as did the car-door (?) attack at the end. And it really didn't make use of the amazing potential of scottish Professor X Donald Pleasance and his chimp friend as bug psychic mentors, outside of maybe the last scene of the movie. I don't know: Argento seems a little like a man out of time in the 80s, presenting a sensibility that clashes with the era in which he's working. And maybe it's just current events shading things for me, but there's something slightly unwholesome about the way he chooses to shoot the kids in this one.
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Oct 7, 2018 05:59
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Franchescanado posted:
I was unable to resist the siren song of Carnosaur having been released right on my birthday, and as soon as I saw a poorly articulated dinosaur puppet spasming on top of a group of teens, I knew I had made the right choice, with every subsequent dinosaur attack only reaffirming it as such. Exactly the kind of bad movie I can turn my brain off to and get behind, this movie is relentlessly, unapologetically dumb, and only gets dumber as it shifts focus from a fairly traditional escaped monster premise, to revealing more of Dr. Tiptree's plans to drive the human race to extinction to prove an incredibly stupid point. Also, there's a T-rex laser dungeon. Movies Watched (8): Mandy, Hobgoblins (MST3K), American Psycho, Mimic, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, Carnosaur Challenges Completed: #3 (American Psycho), #4 (Mimic), #5 (Carnosaur)
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Oct 7, 2018 06:26
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Watch a horror movie released in the year you were born.
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Ok, lets burn some Fran Challenges!Franchescanado posted:FRAN CHALLENGES I probably would have done this weeks ago but I struggled to define what I “hated”. The stuff I really hate is the really nihlistic human suffering for the sake of human suffering stuff and the stuff I REALLY avoid or hated is stuff I never want to actually put myself through. Life is cruel enough and suffering doesn’t offer me an escape. I went back and forth between this film and Friday the 13th Part III as films i hated at least in theory. I went so far as to pull my Friday the 13th Blu Ray set that a well meaning loved one gifted me this year off the shelf and start to look for the right disc when it hit me that if that was the film of the two I most wanted to watch out of the two it means I should watch the other one. So why do I think I “hate” this film going in? I hate the “torture porn” that was born out of Hostel and Saw (although ironically I don’t hate either of those films). As I said I hate nihlistic poo poo all about watching people suffer. I hate gore that’s just intended to shock and upset people. I think kind of hate Eli Roth, not so much as a director since the only films of his I’ve seen (Hostel and Cabin Fever) were fine but more as a general human being and decision maker, especially with the whole decision to remake Death Wish. And I sort of get the vibe that this movie is super racist which I definitely would hate. So I think its safe to say this qualifies. Because I really hate putting this on and would probably rather watch Jason right now or just about anything else I can think of. 7. The Green Inferno (2013) Available on Max Go.  Justine is one of a group of student activists who set out to Peru to intervene in a mining project that threatens an indigenous village only to end up at the mercy of those same people. Because, you know. “Activism is loving gay.” Right out the gate this is everything I expected it to be. Justine sorta gives a poo poo about things like female genital mutilation when told about them but she mostly just thinks the leader of the group is cute. Her best friend not only sums up the “loving gay” nature of activism but concludes the entire group are just posers trying to appease their “loving white jewish suburban guilt”. The cute leader Alejandro is a pretentious rear end in a top hat who kicks Justine out of her first student group meeting for being “insolent.” Pretty much everyone seems to be into this just to get laid (ok, that might not be a reach but its so overt and over the top). The dude backing this whole thing is naturally slimy and when Justine asks what his deal is she’s met with “just because he’s latino and has money doesn’t make him a drug dealer.” Oh, and it turns out that Justine was recruited so Alejandro could put her in harm’s way and use her father’s connections to the UN to draw media attention and its all a stunt by an opposing mining company to get in to the area ahead of their competitor. This movie is so jaded, man. I half suspect that the audience that exists for it is made up of a lot of people who laugh at the savage brown people owning the libtards virtue signaling. Sure enough the positive reviews I found of this include critiques like “The Green Inferno feels like an extended middle finger to everyone begging for political correctness and activism regarding saving nature.” or “If you buy into Roth's film, these cannibals are the worst nightmare of girls like Justine, a character who stubbornly has to convince herself that she knows what she's doing when she follows her impulse to translate her revulsion with genital mutilation into progressive political action. “. Or lets hear it straight from the horse’s mouth in an interview/article titled “Eli Roth's 'Green Inferno' devours the Internet's 'social justice warriors’.” http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-eli-roth-green-inferno-sjw-20150709-story.html “Eli Roth” posted:I wanted to write a movie that was about modern activism. I see that a lot of people want to care and want to help, but in general I feel like people don't really want to inconvenience their own lives. And I saw a lot of people just reacting to things on social media. These social justice warriors. 'This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.' And they're just tweeting and retweeting. They're not actually doing anything. Or you see people get involved in a cause that they don't really know a lot about and they go crazy about it. I wanted to make a movie about kids like that. I think there's a lot great things, obviously, about activism people commit their lives to it. But I want to make a story about kids who don't really know what they're getting into. Get in way over their heads, it actually works. And then the irony is on their way home their plane crashes and the very people they saved think that they're invaders, and just dart them and eat them. And make them the food supply of the village. Stephen King apparently loved it, though. I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway, putting aside that Eli Roth is a douchebag and this entire movie is basically his way to stick it to people who probably called something he did racist or sexist its just a bad movie. Its the most basic of "scared people with dangerous people" stories that both previous Roth films I've seen were as well, the characters all basically take turns being unlikable or forgettable, and he occasionally throws in bizarre gross out humor like someone getting diarrhea complete with comical sound effects and natives making smelly hand waves or someone jerking off while one of their friends dies to relieve stress. Eli Roth’s funny, guys. Honestly, I wasn’t even bothered by the gore. Somehow this was a less cringey cannibal movie than any of the films I’ve watched lately including ones 30 years old using obvious paper mache. Maybe that’s because Roth finds it funny to show more food preparation scenes than gore or maybe its just that it was presented so poorly and with so little art that it made no impact. Although for a completely worthless piece of poo poo film Lorenza Izzo actually does a pretty good job in a role that forces her to show the terror, shame, anger, guilt, and humiliation of everything from being sodomized to being used as a stupid pawn to having to abandon friends to their death to getting mutilated. I'd say this was a cruel ordeal to put her through but apparently she went on to marry Eli Roth after this film so she's obviously been through much worse. Which manages to make the film and Roth even creepier in retrospect. This movie is garbage. Worse, perhaps, its boring garbage. And I suspect garbage born out of Roth getting his ego bruised on Twitter by "SJWs". And maybe garbage where Roth hit on a young actress half his age while putting her through a humiliating ordeal. And yeah, I think it was kinda racist. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 07:55
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Been meaning to post updates a little more frequently, but I've been slammed with work for the first week of the month so it's mostly been a case of "go to work, come home, watch a spooky movie, go to bed". Next week isn't going to be a lot better - I'm going to a wedding on the other side of the country and I'll be gone for a week, but I've got like 10 movies queued up and downloaded to my phone to keep me busy so I should be able to stay on-schedule. At any rate, here we go. I decided that Monday-Friday of week 1 was going to be John Carpenter Week. 1. The Thing (1982) I've seen this movie a trillion times and it's my #2 movie of all time, but this was my first time watching the new Shout Factory blu ray transfer. I don't know that I got anything more out of it visually compared to my prior blu-ray copy, but the movie still loving rules so I don't care. It's just... it's just perfect. The creature effects are still loving crazy, the Thing as a monster keeps you guessing about not only who is a Thing, but also how the Thing is going to go insane and "Thing-out", Morricone's soundtrack rules, the whopping two jump scares in the movie are perfect and don't feel cheap or unearned, and it's got a smorgasbord of different kinds of horror all jumbled together in one movie. You've got paranoia of whether you can trust your fellow man, existential horror of whether or not you yourself are a Thing and if you'd even know it, body-horror because of what the Thing does to people when you piss it off, and a couple jump scares for good measure. It's just... the perfect horror movie, full stop. 2. Halloween (1978) I don't know that I'd ever seen this movie completely from beginning to end. I liked it, Michael Myers is ultra-creepy when he's just standing there doing nothing, and his borderline supernatural strength and resilience was convincing without quite straying into Jason Voorhees invincibility territory. Even when keeping the sensibilities of contemporary horror movies in mind, I think the movie could have used more blood. Like, every time Michael stabs someone (over and over), his knife comes away bizarrely clean. I don't know if Carpenter was trying to do a Texas Chain Saw Massacre and shoot for a PG rating and whiffed it, but the lack of blood felt out of place. I'm not talking BUCKETS OF BLOOD here, but just an indication that Michael actually injured people would suffice. Also, Michael taking his mask off briefly just before Loomis shoots the hell out of him was a mistake - he should have kept the mask on the whole way through. I did get a giggle out of the movie Laurie is watching on TV: it's 'The Thing' (1951).  3. In the Mouth of Madness (1994) Aside from some brief shots of shoddy creature effects, this movie owns. It really effectively conveys a Lovecraftian descent into madness with a wide array of weird poo poo. Sam Neill is always awesome, and Jurgen Prochnow chews scenery amazingly. If there's one shot I'd change, it's the coffee shop bit where Sam Neill is getting explained about Cane's disappearance and then Cane's agent comes through the window with an axe. Instead of constantly cutting to the agent marching menacingly across the street, I'd have left him in the background and not even focus on him as Sam Neill is getting talked to. Just have the agent cross the street from the background, not even drawing the audience's attention until he's suddenly coming through the window. 4. Christine (1983) "Bad to the Bone" is a pretty perfect addition to this movie's soundtrack, and both times it's used are pretty perfect. Christine conveys real menace, and the car effects are brilliant. Christine repairing herself, or mangling herself to fit in a narrow alley, or on loving fire while chasing someone down, they're all fantastic visuals and really help convey how unstoppable and fanatical the car is when it wants someone dead. Arnie's metamorphosis from a nerdy loser to a self-assured rear end in a top hat is believable, as is his obsession with his car. I also love the last shot of the movie, with cubed Christine's fender bending ever so slightly. 5. The Fog (1980) I'd actually never taken the time to watch this one, but it's early Carpenter so I figured it was worth a go. This movie sucked. Like, I'm sorry Mr. Carpenter, you're one of my favorite directors and all, but this movie felt like 70 minutes of buildup for like 20 minutes of spooky ghost pirates wading out of the fog to kill 5 people. It jumps around between an ensemble cast of characters that I can't really remember or describe other than Adrienne Barbeau. The ending's emphasis on "THE GHOSTS MUST KILL SIX PEOPLE" sputters out with no explanation when they only kill 5 people and vanish.... only to suddenly reappear at the last scene to kill the sixth person. Like, why? Maybe this doesn't count because I didn't expect it going in, but I'm tempted to count this towards Fran Challenge #4: Worst of the Best / Best of the Worst, because this is easily the worst Carpenter movie I've ever seen. 6. Deep Rising (1998) This movie rules. I've seen it several times before, and it never gets old. Treat Williams owns every scene he's in (and in retrospect, I think he'd have been a good Nathan Drake if an Uncharted movie was made in the late 90s), Kevin J O'Connor's mandatory presence in a Stephen Sommers movie is more than welcome, and Famke Janssen plays a great not-damsel-in-distress (and she's gorgeous). The mercs are distinct enough to be memorable, their deaths are equally pretty memorable, and Anthony Heald plays an amazingly smarmy bad guy. Even the CGI effects are juuuuust okay enough to be believable, even 20 years later. 29% on Rotten Tomatoes my rear end, this movie deserves a re-watch because it's a hell of a lot of fun.
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Oct 7, 2018 07:56
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Catching up with two movies, one I'm a little late reviewing and one I'm just finishing. #7 / 31 - Jigsaw (2017) ★★★★☆  I'm gonna be honest, this one surprised the absolute hell out of me. When I look for quality, I do not generally look at Saw sequels. The first movie is pretty decent, in my opinion; I like James Wan just fine, and the first Saw is basically just him trying to do a giallo, complete with his homage to the Suspiria piano wire death. The sequels, however, are diminishing returns, and fall off a loving cliff once Tobin Bell is shuffled off the stage beyond voice acting. A reboot of the Saw series in 2017 should be, by all rights, the worst loving thing on planet Earth. But no. Jigsaw, the latest entry in the Saw series (and I can't believe I'm saying this, but hopefully not the last) is a drat fun watch. The plot is, on its face, pretty simple. Ten years have passed since Jigsaw died. All of a sudden, bodies start piling up, including a guy with a remote for an apparent bomb asking for a particular detective and babbling about how "the game has just begun." Tellingly, all the bodies are mangled in bizarre ways and have a jigsaw puzzle piece cut out somewhere. Meanwhile, five people are locked in a barn, playing a Jigsaw game in which they must atone for each of the sins they've committed. This seems to be where the bodies are coming from, because whenever someone dies in the Jigsaw game, a body turns up for the detectives to find. Because it's a Saw sequel, there's... a twist that is delivered as several mini-twists. I really, really, really do not want to give it away, so I'm going to basically stop talking about the plot in any detail now. I will say this: well loving played, movie. Another striking thing about the movie, beyond the twist legitimately seriously catching me off guard, is that... it actually looks really, really good. It pretty much ditches the characteristic aesthetic established by Darren Lynn Bousman in Saw II. Instead, it uses a much cleaner one with less super-saturated green, which is simultaneously less distinctive and a whole lot nicer to look at. The gore is pretty fun, too- I can safely say I've never seen a guy's head get split like a chocolate orange until this movie. Overall, good poo poo. Even if you don't like the Saw series, if American faux-gialli are your poo poo, this is probably a good one to go for. #8 / 31 - A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) ★★★★★  Holy poo poo, this movie rules. If you haven't seen it, or if it's been a while since your last rewatch, go watch it right the gently caress now what are you even doing. I almost want to end my review there, but I'd feel bad, especially after spending so many words on a goddamn Saw reboot. Dream Warriors is the movie that cemented who Freddy Krueger was in pop culture. It's also Frank Darabont's audition to make Stephen King movies- it's almost hilarious how much this movie parallels IT, both thematically and in content (Freddy is basically Pennywise in this movie). It's also a loving rad as hell Dokken song that plays over the end credits of the movie (fun fact: I rewatched this mostly because that song has been stuck in my goddamn head for days). It's been three years since Nancy Thompson Home Aloned Freddy at the cost of her mom's life and her dad's sobriety. All of a sudden, a bunch of kids end up in a psych ward presided over by two doctors, one of whom is the dumbest motherfucker of all time and one of whom is... also not overly bright but eventually catches on to the obvious. They're in here because they've supposedly tried to kill themselves. I say "supposedly" because... oh come on, you know what movie this is a sequel to, in this case it's not even a remote spoiler because the literal first thing the movie shows the audience is one of them getting owned by Freddy. Anyhow. Nancy figures out what's up and gets into the hospital under cover of being a grad student. She then gets in contact with the kids, finds out that one of them can pull other people into dreams Inception-style, and uses this plus hypnosis to try and teach them to beat Freddy senseless, before they all die. This one is seriously loving great and needs to become part of my regular Halloween rotation. watchlist with links WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 08:51
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#29. Demon Wind (1990) Cory learns that his family history is connected to witchcraft and some terrible tragedy. So he gets a group of friends and goes to the remains of his grandmother's house, and finds himself trapped in a battle against a demon and his undead minions for the fate of the Earth. I'm really surprised this one doesn't get more notice. It's creative in the special effects, has a bonkers story, and has an honestly likable cast. I'd even go so far as to call it a spiritual successor to the Evil Dead franchise, it has the same feel as those. And who doesn't want more of that stuff?  out of 5#30. Lord of Tears (2013) When James' estranged mother passes away, he inherits the family Scottish Manor, as well as begins remembering repressed childhood bits about being scared of some strange monster shaped like a man with an owl's head. So he returns to the manor, where he meets American caretaker Evie, who happily agrees to help him figure out the mystery of the place, and slowly start coming closer and closer to one another, and Jamie becomes more and more convinced his home is haunted. This film feels very...British in its nature of being an eerie ghost story set in the Scottish Highlands, in an old empty manor along the cold hills and dales. It reminds me of the older stories of authors like MR James and his ilk in the way it captures that sort of unique feel it seems like you can't quite get anywhere else in the world. So I'll be doubly curious when I later try for a film the writer made later that's a sort of spiritual sequel, also involving the Owlman, but set in Mexico. My one big complaint however is with the actress playing Evie. Evie is certainly charming and flirtatious, but every single line of hers is delivered in over the top, community theater levels of emoting, and it gets very tiresome very quickly. out of 5#31 (!) Dead End Drive-In (1986) In a world of the far future of 2010, civilization is slowly starting to crumble, but only just at the seams at this point. Crabs (yes that's his nickname) takes his girlfriend on a date in his brother's classic car to the drive-in, only to get his wheels stolen, and to discover that the place is government trap for keeping the undesirable youths off the street, like some kind of concentration camp. Naturally this means a closed in area full of nothing but punks and degenerates and gang members, struggling each day to survive, while Crabs only struggles to find a way out. I can see why this film is so highly regarded in the exploitation circles. It's almost feels like a preclude to its fellow Australian film, Mad Max, and even features a climax full of wild car stunts, not to mention a plot that feels full to the gills with social commentary. I feel like I got a lot of it, but that there were probably just as much bits that were unique to 1980s Australia and went right over my head. That said, it's a good movie, with poster art that makes it seem like a kinda different film altogether. out of 
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Oct 7, 2018 09:11
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Didn't have much time to post recently, but I did watch plenty of movies! 12. Happy Death Day This started off great, but lost steam before reaching the halfway point and never recovered. Groundhog Day for a slasher victim is such a great premise and it started off creepy enough to draw me in, but halfway through it gets....I don't know...Hallmarky? It focuses more and more on the romance, the horror elements disappear, it loses its teeth and I couldn't help but think a different director shot the second half or the movie was gutted by an attempt to have it appeal to every single focus group out there. 13. The Transfiguration This is like Vampire's Kiss, but featuring a troubled teen in a public housing project and played completely straight. Some people say it reminds them of Martin, but I haven't seen that one yet. It is a very rewarding slowburn with some shocking moments that reminded me of The Eyes of My Mother. It is a bit different from most stuff that I'm watching, but I really dug it. Haven't seen a lot of people write about this movie around here, so I'd love to hear what you guys think. 14. Savageland This blew me away. Not a single jumpscare, scenes of gore or whatever, just pictures, eye witness accounts and theories of what happened and it is absolutely terrifying. Definitely my number 2 so far, right behind Mandy. Even if you think zombies are overdone (boo on you, classics never go out of style), please don't let that scare you away from this movie. It is amazing. 15. Wrong Turn 2 Good, dumb fun. Henry Rollins going all Schwarzenegger in Predator but hunting cannibal rednecks instead of aliens made me laugh. 16. The Company of Wolves Beautiful, dreamlike atmosphere that makes it easy to forgive the somewhat messy story. 17. Neon Maniacs Look at that title. It is also called Evil Dead Warriors The description says it features legions of the damned waiting under the Golden Gate bridge. The cover has a mutant samurai on it It starts with a voice-over. "When the world is ruled by violence, And the soul of mankind fades, the children's path shall be darkened by the shadows of the Neon Maniacs." I was two minutes in and knew this movie was made for me. Obviously it never managed to live up to all of that, but it was still an enjoyable 80s experience. It gave me the same vibe as Spookies, with tons of ideas just thrown at the screen and hoping something would stick. A zombie GI, zombie native American, werewolf, mutant samurai and another dozen or so completely random monsters attack a bunch of teens and hunt the survivor. They have their own trading cards. No, that isn't explained anywhere. Ofcourse the finale takes place at a band competition where some ridiculous hair metal band faces of against the main guy. Yes, they dissolve in water so people arm themselves with squirt guns. When a cop steals a young girls bike and she gets it back making oink noises he nearly draws a gun on her. I know none of this adds up, but neither does this movie and I love it.
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Oct 7, 2018 10:42
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BioTech posted:
I really feel like The Transfiguration flew under a lot of people’s radar. It’s not earth shatteringly great but it has a pretty unique setting and protagonist for a vampire movie. It was a pretty good (manipulative?) trick that whenever I thought “oh this is cribbing from Martin/Let the Right One In/Lost Boys” the main character seemed to mention that movie. It’s like the movie thinks you have to cite your references.
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Oct 7, 2018 13:05
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15) Murder Party Seen on: Scream Stream A lonely, meek NYPD ticket meter guy finds an invitation on the street to a "murder party" on Halloween. When he gets there, he's waylaid by a group of murderous art school students who plan to creatively kill him and record the result for their "art" (or should I say Art?) and to impress a mysterious sinister guy who promises them a large amount of grant money to the work he deems the best. However, the art students prove to be hilariously self-absorbed and incompetent, and things begin to go awry for everyone very, very quickly. This is a pretty short, intense and very funny (and violent) horror comedy shot on a super low budget. The makeup effects are pretty gnarly though and the writing is really clever, and a lot of the fun is watching the events of the evening accelerate into insanity as our hero watches everything helplessly around him. Also features a really great dog and cat, so bonus points there too.
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Oct 7, 2018 15:03
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3. The Fog (1980, John Carpenter) [Blu-ray] I really liked the simplistic, almost minimalist approach to this. It's a ghost story told tightly and delivers on the scares. It's actually a bit refreshing for a horror film to be this "small" in scale. As with all Carpenter films, this really makes use of Panavision, with some incredible compositions. Also love how it has strong female performances from Barbeau, Curtis, and Leigh. / 5
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Oct 7, 2018 15:11
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 113- Alice, Sweet Alice 1976 - PRIME The film best known for hyping up Brooke Shields being in it only for it to be her as a child and dying very early on. I'd have to say this is a very Catholic film. Several elements clicked with me as an Italian-Catholic with the division of the more traditional older generations and the not as traditional younger generations. The film centers around Alice with the Church everpresent to varying degrees. Alice's sister Karen is murdered on the day of her First Communion and everything spreads out from there during the investigation, including more deaths. A lot's been said about the anti-Catholic tone of the film and I kinda have to question that. At the time this movie came out, the Church was in a noticeable decline with younger parishioners. While Holy Mother Church is capable of change, it's excessively draggy and slooooooow about it. I can understand the jumping to the conclusion of being anti-Catholic when it's merely being critical. It probably didn't help that the director, Alfred Sole had already gotten formally excommunicated for the porn film he made earlier. While I'm not sure if this one's worth multiple rewatches, it's very much worth watching.  114- The Evil 1978 - DVD I love this film and it's not just because I absolutely adore Victor Buono. A psychiatrist buys an abandoned home to convert to a rehab facility and heads out with some volunteers to get the place ready. As they're working they find a trap door in the basement sealed with a cross. Once the cross is removed, we know no good is going to come of this. All in all, the pacing's good with this one even though I do laugh when one of the sounds the dog makes when it's growling and chasing people sounds exactly like a TIE fighter from Star Wars. Victor Buono does an excellent Devil and the touch of how he changes from looking like a harmless pleasant man to diabolic was nice. Definitely worth a watch.
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Oct 7, 2018 15:14
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Murder Party - Others here have covered it pretty well. I went into apprehensive but ended up really enjoying it. Video Dead  I discovered this movie on an unmarked VHS my dad had when I was way too young, so I have a special like for it. I'm glad it seemed like so many people saw it for the first time last night on the Stream. It's a cheap movie , but it does some unique things with the story and how it handles the zombies. Instead of doing the easy thing and making generic zombie #300, this movie just does whatever it feels like and it makes for a fun time /5 (includes nostalgia value)
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Oct 7, 2018 15:32
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So far I've watched movies I havent ever seen Belladonna of Sadness Return of the Living Dead Halloween Henry Pet Pet and Return of the Living Dead have been the best ones so far. Halloween was fine, more suspenseful than gory. Henry and Belladonna were unique, but I don't really like sexual assault in movies. They were well done, but not for me.
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Oct 7, 2018 15:54
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A stupid idea for an experiment involving The Fog popped into my mind, and I went through with it... What if I watched the remake BEFORE the original, not vice versa, what a brilliant idea huh? I hadn't seen either. # 12 - The Fog (2005) - everything about this movie was flat and boring. The blonde girl from Lost is in this, as well as Selma "No Not Hayek" Blair who gives a wooden performance. It isn't their fault, there is not much for them to do other than be seen in their underwear within the first 20 minutes of the movie. That's the thing - it seems like a Hollywood boardroom tried to sex up the original with a hot young cast. Kind of a weird shift because it is an old-fashioned ghost tale and giving it a "Scream" makeover is tonally bizarre. There is no sense of the town or community in this movie, therefore no sense of threat or what's at stake. People are killed in inconsistent ways (why does one person turn to ash upon being touched by a ghost, and another is touched and no such thing happens?) Ugh... 2.5/10 # 13 - The Fog (1980) - this is how you do a creepy ghost tale. I think the opening campfire scene greatly improved the movie (I read how it was added in later) because it gave the audience a sense of time, place, and community, unlike the remake. The night scenes are exceptionally eerie thanks to the talents of Carpenter and his lighting guy. The cast of actors is super cool! Adrienne Barbaeu, who I had only seen before in Creepshow donning a godawful curly hair wig (or was it a wig?) which intentionally made her look unattractive, I now realize from seeing her in The Fog, is a drat fine woman. Tom Atkins, who I adored in Halloween 3, once again hooks up with a girl at least a decade his junior (Jame Lee Curtis). Hal Halbrook too, wow! A few dents in the film: the fog special effects were at times lackluster and did not convince me, it did take some of the suspense out of the film. I also thought the whole thing with a golden cross was unnecessary - they just need the gold and they'll peace out..? Eh.. 7/10
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Oct 7, 2018 16:09
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Day 7 - Sadako vs. Kayako https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyLA6nfPvRo Sadako is a hipster ghost who likes the rich warmness of VHS and making her own low budget camcorder art films. Kayako is a ghost mother with an autistic son who meows. Sadako is into climbing out of televisions and keeping appointments. Kayako is into pre-venge on people who will trespass on her property. What happens when these two kooky kids get together? This is a Ring film where the Grudge house happens to occasionally appear rather than an equal billing. While there are two storylines that dovetail toward the end of the movie, there's about twice as many Ring scenes as Grudge scenes. Kayako doesn't even appear on camera until the hour and fifteen minute mark in this ninety minute movie. The characters that drive the story are all involved in the Ring portions and the victim of the Grudge is basically a total cypher who's along for the ride. There's a bit of a tone problem, too. There is the expected spookiness going in, but the kills are extremely goofy. There's an irreverent spiritualist who is fun but he often feels like he should be in a totally different movie. If they had leaned into the goofiness more it would have been fine, and probably preferred since it's a movie where you watch it because you want to see two ghosts fight. Switching gears between "Sadako is driving me insane" and "Sadako is making me headbutt people until their face is flat" was a bit much. And then there's the title bout. It's a total disappointment, completely perfunctory. It's incredibly brief and completely unsatisfying. There's aspects to it that you'd want to see, but its so abbreviated you don't feel it. For the first half of the movie I thought I was going to come away with a "decent and enjoyable, but not brilliant" view. For the next block of the film I was thinking, "Okay, it slips in the second half but its still not bad," and then the terrible fight tore the whole thing down. There's a really bad tendency in this movie to introduce ideas and then forget about them. The Ring video gets uploaded to the Internet and nothing happens with that plotline. A college professor watched the video because he wants to see a ghost and the plotline goes nowhere. In the fight Sadako and Kayako merge, but that's the last twenty seconds of the movie and nothing happens. Maybe it's for the best that there's so few Grudge scenes since the most it gets is a bunch of people killed at the house and nobody even shows up to look for their bodies. I'm still left wondering how people practically handle the problem that anyone who enters the Grudge house dies. After the fourth of fifth utility worker or estate agent winds up dead strangled by long hair in the shower, you'd think they'd get the hint and just drive a bulldozer through it.
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Oct 7, 2018 16:27
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13. The Shape of Water I really loved this film. You can tell a lot of love went into the production of the film. Del Toror's directing was phenomenal. Acting was amazing. It was interesting to me how he managed to make a 1950s horror movie and take it into the present and it still kind of remain in todays terms. I loved all the subtle stuff in this film. I think the role I loved the most was Richard Jenkins . He really should have won best supporting actor.
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Oct 7, 2018 16:34
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 FRAN CHALLENGE #6: Video Nasties  12. October 7 - Tenebrae I'd never seen a video nasty, an Argento film or even a giallo, so this one is a lot of firsts for me. It's great: stylish, creepy and dreamlike. The long scene of the young woman being chased by a dog until she unwittingly stumbles into the killer's house is simple, but it's so tense and uncomfortable. Tenebrae certainly has a lot of sex, nudity and violence, especially for the time period, but it's tamer than I was expecting. I figured you'd need Guinea Pig-levels of gore to get banned. Fountains of blood were probably a lot more shocking in a world where Kill Bill didn't exist. Or maybe this, like Possession, is an outlier. The ADR is really bad, but the soundtrack is amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5TOPI1375w I'm planning on watching Argento's Opera for the Birth of Horror challenge, and I'm a lot more excited for it now.
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Oct 7, 2018 16:55
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Franchescanado posted:
There are tons of movies set in NYC so this isn't much of a challenge for me, so I chose one that was filmed in upstate NY to make it even more local to me. Also my girlfriend went to high school with the director, a little over an hour away from where we live now.  17. Honeybee (2016) (Amazon Prime) A new family - a woman with five sons who make all the girls swoon - moves into the house across the street from 16-year-old Hillary. She falls for one of the boys, but when her father goes missing she begins to suspect that something strange is going on in that house... I'd expand on that summary, except I had no idea what the gently caress this movie was supposed to be about. This is a pretty low-budget indie film, and it shows. The story makes very little sense - it tries to play coy and leave things up to the viewer's imagination, but it takes that too far and never explains or even hints at what the hell is going on, so stuff just kind of happens and it feels like the director was making things up as she went. I'm not really going to pick apart the poor cinematography or terrible sound design or the bare ugly sets because it feels like making fun of the kids from the special ed class. The only nice thing I can say is that the two leads were pretty decent actors - especially compared to everyone else in the film. So... not good. We only watched it because my girlfriend went to high school with the director (and because it fit the challenge), and I would not recommend it to anyone else. Movies Seen: The Witching Season | Lifeforce | Terrifier | Unsane | I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House | From Beyond | 13 Ghosts | The Ritual | Child's Play | Twice-Told Tales | Beyond the Gates | Cat People (1982) | Fright Night | The Vampire Lovers | The Vampire Doll | Frightmare | Honeybee Total: 17 Fran challenges: gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 17:20
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14/31 Hereditary is one of the films that's been love-it-or-hate-it among SA horror fans. While the film has received critical claim far surpassing what a typical horror film accomplishes, some have said it's not as good or scary as its reputation deserves. So I decided to set out on my own. At its core, Hereditary is a story of mental illness. After Annie Graham's mother passes away, she reveals to the rest of her family that all of the other members of her family went insane before dying. This strikes a rather personal aspect for me, as one of the owners at my workplace has a similar situation and is now showing definite symptoms. What Hereditary understands is that in a good horror movie, "good" has to come before "horror". Horror fans have a strong stomach for the terrible, often enjoying films that are objectively awful because of the entertainment value provided by the creative imagery and trying to squeeze out as much gore for as few dollars as possible. It's a rare moment when a horror film actually tries to be something more. A lot of this is driven by Toni Collette, who delivers an engaging and realistic performance as a woman struggling with horrific events and the fear that her own mind may be playing tricks on her. By framing the film as a tragic drama with horror elements, it achieves more than some horror films could by going in with the thought of "This is horror, I don't need to do anything to make it good." When the horror comes, it comes masterfully and with more terror than almost anything I've seen. It relies more on the tension, atmosphere, and shock of what occurs than any kind of jump scare. The movie keeps you guessing from start to finish and constantly on your toes. It'll make you have nightmares of ants. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 17:27
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17. Ghost Stories (2017) This one was both interesting and frustrating at the same time. I loved the conceit of it: professional debunker has to confront both his own personal demons as well as those of his subjects on three cases that his inspiration couldn't solve. Each of the vignettes were appropriately spooky in different ways, owing in large part to the cinematography. I loved the grunginess of Tony Matthews and the creepy sterility of the mansion being haunted in Mike Priddles. Not to mention great performances all around (specifically Alex Lawther, jesus that kid could sell a nervous breakdown). But the ending was the exact kind of bait and switch that makes you forget all the good work the filmmakers just did. Yes, there were clues that made sense once you realized the extent of what was going on, but man is actually in a coma and dreaming all of the proceedings is a much weaker story than skeptical man has to contend with his world crashing down around him when he finds out that the supernatural is real. Overall, I'd say it's a movie that's less than the sum of its parts.
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Oct 7, 2018 17:37
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HELL HOUSE LLC 2 I'm not sure if they drop the LLC for this one, but regardless I dug this sequel to an underseen little gem from last year. The original was one of those movies that popped up on Amazon Prime and I just assumed it was going to be trash, but I really ended up liking it and I've caught it again since then. This one picks up years later with a bigger scope and ambition (And clearly a bigger budget) and while I don't think it's quite as effectively creepy as the first movie is, it still has some decent scares in it. For me though it's a case of having way too many ideas and not knowing what to cut before filming started. I appreciate what they were going for but I think they lost sight of what made the first one work and honestly I don't think the mythology is as deep and rewarded (or interesting) as they seem to think it is.
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Oct 7, 2018 17:49
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11. The Howling II: Your Sister is A Werewolf Warning spooky image ahead  Here is an incomplete list of things that are in this movie: - Werewolves getting mowed down by the dozens with guns, knives, axes, morning stars and holy hand grenades. - Multiple werewolf sex scenes, hairy boobs and butts but no nards. Two werewolves, three werewolves, a werewolf orgy. - A werewolf in knight's armor, but also he has an uzi - An ancient werewolf priestess in a Transsylvanian castle who looks like this  I generally really dislike it when people say 'this movie is dumb' because it often means 'I disliked it for reasons I can't articulate'. Plus, oftentimes a movie being 'dumb' means characters taking actions that whoever deems the movie dumb would not take, which is somehow meant to invalidate the movie. That being said this might as well be the most profoundly dumb movie I've ever seen. It's a true rarity to have a movie that's tongue in cheek about being dumb, but which then through some superhuman feat manages to still be dumb far above and beyond its intention. From start to finish, there's not a single scene where the story does not take an insanely stupid turn or the characters do not do or say something that is just downright baffling on a basic level of how humans talk or act. Oh the acting. This might also be one of the few movies that I've seen in my life where I actually noticed bad acting. It just doesn't register with me normally, but everyone except for Christopher Lee, who is a shining beacon of greatness, is just the absolute worst they could be. In conclusion it rules, and I'd highly recommend it. Previously: Creepshow II, Monster Squad, Mandy, Shock, Devil Fetus, Black Cat, Suspiria, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Vampire's Kiss, The Vampire Lovers married but discreet fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 17:55
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chitoryu12 posted:At its core, Hereditary is a story of mental illness. After Annie Graham's mother passes away, she reveals to the rest of her family that all of the other members of her family went insane before dying. This strikes a rather personal aspect for me, as one of the owners at my workplace has a similar situation and is now showing definite symptoms. I haven’t seen it come up much, but I think you could read all the poo poo that Peter experiences as symptoms of a latent mental illness that was triggered by the trauma of his sister’s death. Also the hereditary mental illness explains why Annie and Peter believe everything while the father does not. Toni Collette gets a lot of credit for her performance (and rightly so), but I think Alex Wolff is phenomenal too. In that long close up shot of his face in the car, you can just see the shock and horror and trauma and everything running across his features and it’s heartbreaking. God I love that movie.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:02
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The Mothman Of Point Pleasant 2017 documentary Seen on TubiTV I am a sucker for the Mothman. I grew up close enough to the area that I remember hearing stories about it, and always being fascinated by it. With that, I went into this brisk 67 minute documentary not expecting much but just a brief , quick summary like you can read in any number of books on the subject. I was surprised though, the movie does keep a quick pace, but it's never dull and follows a timeline that starts well before most other materials on the subject do. There were even several things I learned that were new to me Interviews, both in person and archival audio are presented by eyewitnesses and those close to them, are presented occasionally presented along with CGI re-enactments which (while done cheaply) work well enough as filler to go along with the grainy audio playing over top. Good modern day location shots, and plenty of archival photos, videos and interviews (some new to me) all make this a worthwhile documentary rather you are a Mothman junkie, or someone just hearing about it for the first time. The Silver Bridge collapse was so tragic to such a sparsley populated area, and I find it a shame that the 'supernatural events' surrounding it's collapse often put the devastation far onto the back burner. I have one book that goes into the how and why the bridge collapsed, and even some old 45 records that reflect how the disaster was addressed by folk music coming out of the region at the time. UFO's , mysterious creatures and 'men in black' all make for great campfire fodder, but the death of 46 people as their cars slowly submerged into that cold Ohio River water is a whole other kind of horror. I think this documentary does a good job of acknowledging this by showing rescue crews, aftermath images and talking to those that actually lost people they knew. Supernatural events or not, real, actual horror took place that December 15, 1967 in West Virginia /5
Dr.Caligari fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 18:10
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Just finished Society and it's amazing. Body horror is the best horror.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:20
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25. The Noonday Witch - 3/5 (Shudder)quote:More drama than horror, to be honest. It's a good movie about processing grief, but the horror elements are few and far between. There's a lot of comparisons drawn to The Babadook, which is pretty fair in my opinion, but it doesn't go as far with it's central concept. It's a little disappointing because I was hoping a movie billing itself as "daytime horror" would have more of the latter. Most of the film does indeed take place during the daytime, and it looks gorgeous. The sweltering Czech countryside is a fresh setting for the genre. Complaints aside it was an enjoyable watch, just not the kind of movie it's billed as. This one went pretty under the radar (just 173 logs on Letterboxd) and it's pretty good, so I'd recommend it sometime, just not for someone's October challenge.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:44
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I knew that was Sybil Danning the instant I saw her. I'm not sure she's ever done a role where she wasn't wearing a plunging top with her cleavage out and/or some kind of goofy sunglasses. And she was in loving everything seemingly. She was like Robert Z'dar, with boobs and shades instead of a massive chin.
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Oct 7, 2018 18:59
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The Howling 2 is pro tier bad movie watching. I love it so much.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:04
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#6 Blade II (2002) I honestly don't remember a ton about the first Blade, so I won't compare this to it. Guillermo del Toro feels like such a natural choice to direct this movie. His style fits it perfectly. Fun action, gross monsters, cool sets, vampire raves... pretty much what you'd want out of a movie like this. The fight scenes sometimes switch from live actors to CGI when the wilder choreography kicks in, but the movie's so cartoony in generally that it didn't feel that out of place to me. I guess I also didn't care a ton about the actual plot, but that wasn't really why I was watching it anyways. I don't have a ton to say about this one but it was a fun horror-themed action movie. Watched (6/15): #1 As Above, So Below (2014), #2 Shutter (2004), #3 A Dark Song (2016), #4 The Endless (2017), #5 Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), #6 Blade II (2002) Fran Challenges: #1,
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Oct 7, 2018 19:04
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Franchescanado posted:
Jeepers Creepers I remember seeing this in theatres and absolutely hating it. I don’t recall why other than the medium being wrong about which of the siblings the Creeper wanted (if she doesn’t know what she’s talking about her character is pointless)and the demon being invincible. Upon rewatch neither of those issues really bugged me, the medium never actually states which sibling the demon wants, the sister declares it, and the demon was actually pretty cool and by the end I wanted him to win. This movie is alright. Justin Long is pretty cool. If I have any complaint it’s just how dumb our main characters behave throughout. Originally it’s the brother making horrible decisions like “we just about lost our lives twice to a road rage rear end in a top hat we also witness dump a body, let’s go investigate his murder chute!” But then transfers to the sister who refuses to believe anything weird is actually going on or that the medium is clairvoyant despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. All in all it was better than I remembered but still requires huge amounts of stupidity to work, which is not an endearing quality for a movie.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:07
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6. Trick 'r Treat I had never seen this movie before, and a friend of mine told me it was part of the canon, and therefore I had to watch it, so he sent me a Blu-ray. This is such a weirdly bizarre and wonderful movie that fully leans into the spirit of the holiday. Between Dylan Baker chewing the scenery with as much gusto as he can muster, and Brian Cox doing his best John Carpenter impression, plus loving werewolves (quite literally), this had everything, and it will become an annual watch for me as long as I live.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:09
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blood_dot_biz posted:#6 Blade II (2002) The OG is the GOAT comic book movie. It’s so much better than the sequels. Imo of course.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:09
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TheBizzness posted:The OG is the GOAT comic book movie. It’s so much better than the sequels. I definitely need to watch it again at some point! It's been a while since I've seen it and about all I remember is the blood rave, which was of course great.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:14
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TheBizzness posted:The OG is the GOAT comic book movie. It’s so much better than the sequels. Definitely, and Blade II was a case of fantastic set up and disappointing follow through. As soon as the team goes into the sewers my interest in the film drops off a cliff.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:21
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Random Stranger posted:Definitely, and Blade II was a case of fantastic set up and disappointing follow through. As soon as the team goes into the sewers my interest in the film drops off a cliff. It's the Scud heel turn that blows the movie for me, because the setup of the bomb in Reinhardt's head has a nonsensical conclusion. It also has some conspicuously terrible editing in the last 45 minutes or so (the bit of Whistler throwing the sunglasses to Blade comes to mind).
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Oct 7, 2018 19:26
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^^^ I haven't seen Blade 2 since it was new but I thought it was pretty fun if not amazing back then. Of course I was a dumb teenager so who knows how it'd hold up. 3. A Nightmare on Elm Street  At least one or two goons watched this one before and I realized I've never actually seen any of these movies from beginning to the end, always only catching a small part on TV here or there. Everybody knows what it's about of course so I won't waste any time on that. There's a good reason it's a classic of course, and one of them I think is how it immediately jumps into action. No time wasted setting up the victims, or explaining the tragic background, just right into the poo poo. The teenagers are pretty disposable of course but Freddy's Freddy and if anything, I think it would help to give him a bit more time. There are only three kills and I thought two of them weren't that spectacular one is a hanging and the other one you just see some blood flying from the bed or I'm a bit too jaded so it didn't feel as scary as I thought it could be, but nevertheless a goof flick. I'll definitely watch parts 2 and 3 as well though maybe next year. /5
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Oct 7, 2018 19:32
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14. Jigsaw I'd say this is the weakest of the entries though. The kills were interesting and ridiculously over the top. Overall though just boring. It was nice seeing Tobin Bell but just really as a soft reboot or whatever the gently caress this was it just was really dull and nothing grabbed my attention. Better off really just watching a supercut of it on youtube. /5
Hollismason fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Oct 7, 2018 |
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Oct 7, 2018 19:35
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 18. Murder Party (2007) (Netflix) Unlike everyone else, I did not watch this during the Scream Stream - I will try to join that sometime soon though. I saw it back when it first came out, but all the talk in here made me want to see it again. It did not disappoint - I thought it was hilarious and a lot of fun. My girlfriend and several of my friends are artists, so I spend a lot of time with them and go to a lot of gallery openings and such, and a lot of the satire in this film is dead on. I especially loved the clip of the woman's video art that is just her laying in a bathtub while someone dumps hotdogs all over her - that isn't even particularly ridiculous compared to many real video art pieces. Movies Seen: The Witching Season | Lifeforce | Terrifier | Unsane | I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House | From Beyond | 13 Ghosts | The Ritual | Child's Play | Twice-Told Tales | Beyond the Gates | Cat People (1982) | Fright Night | The Vampire Lovers | The Vampire Doll | Frightmare | Honeybee | Murder Party Total: 18 Fran challenges:
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Oct 7, 2018 19:36
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I haven’t seen Blade 2 since it was in theatres but I remember being very disappointed in the bad CGI sand being completely out on it when the main baddie drops a loving wrestling elbow at some point?
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Oct 7, 2018 20:02
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 23:12 |
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TheBizzness posted:I haven’t seen Blade 2 since it was in theatres but I remember being very disappointed in the bad CGI sand being completely out on it when the main baddie drops a loving wrestling elbow at some point? Yeah, I think Luke Goss breaks his elbow bone out of his skin and tries to drop it on Blade during the final fight. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I have the DVD somewhere, I should pop it in sometime.
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Oct 7, 2018 20:09
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