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 119- Dr. Jeckyll & Sister Hyde 1971 - DVD This is one where as you watch it you wonder why no one else attempted this take on the Jekyll/Hyde story other than the '95 comedy. It's one where if they remade it today, I'd be curious to see where they went with it. Again we have Dr. Jekyll being the humanitarian looking to cure all diseases. However instead of getting called out on so being caught up in work that he's not living his life, he's called out on with how long his experiments take to be proven, he'll be dead by the time the cures are proven. Henry decides to work on increasing his lifespan using hormones because women tend to live longer. We know where this is going from here. I liked that compared to the other tellings of the story, Edwina Hyde has her own motives and agenda. I thought the connections with Burke & Hare along with the Ripper murders a nice touch. I recommend this one just because it's such a stand out compared to the usual Jekyll/Hyde tellings.  120- Madhouse 1974 - DVD I love this one so much that Dr. Death's been one of my goto Halloween costumes for years. I think I have the makeup time down to the speed Jerry Only manages with his Misfits makeup. Paul Toombes is a successful horror actor who's career is ruined when his fiance's murdered at a wrap up party. He's committed to an asylum and upon release is contacted about resuming his successful Dr. Death role. The film business has changed since Paul was last there and when deaths start happening during filming, we know where things are going to go from here. I liked the portrayal of Paul as a veteran actor mostly looking back on his past successes while not sure where he stands in what's essentially a different world as he questions his sanity. I did like the upbeat to me at least ending. Needless to say, watch this movie.
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Oct 9, 2018 15:09
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Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Osborne might count, although that’s more of a weird sex thing than a comedy.
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Oct 9, 2018 15:13
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Dr.Caligari posted:
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Oct 9, 2018 15:52
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20. The Black Cat (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer) Source: DVD (library) This is the first Lugosi + Karloff film I've seen (I believe it was also the first one they did together). It's like watching the diner scene from Heat. Two acting legends finally sharing scenes together. But unlike Heat, Lugosi and Karloff share a bunch of screen time together. They play off of each other quite well. With their respective reputations for playing larger than life horror characters (often caked in makeup), it's easy to forget what fine actors they both are. Lugosi especially shines here. He's got a lot more nuance than one might assume from some of his more well known roles. Both characters are strange and menacing in their own ways and the film does an excellent job of keeping a tight lid on the precise motives of each one until the very end. And boy, that ending! Of all the pre-code films I've seen, this one is by far the most, eh, pre-code-y. There's a scene near the end that's strikingly sadistic for a film of this vintage. There's nothing graphic, but there's enough to make you squirm and marvel at how they got away with it. Well, if the film was released just a few months later, they wouldn't have. It sneaked in to release the same year that the Hays code took effect. The only thing I didn't love was the constant music score. It uses mostly (entirely?) famous pieces of classical music. It's overbearing at times and doesn't always fit the tone of the scene. But that's the only obvious flaw in an otherwise great film. I really liked this. It's got an intriguing and surprisingly dark story (although how this is an adaption of Poe's The Black Cat is beyond me), it's technically proficient, and it's got two horror icons in memorable roles. Good stuff.   (4 Lugosis out of 5)
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Oct 9, 2018 15:58
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Spatulater bro! posted:20. The Black Cat (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer) Source: DVD (library) I love that not only did Karloff’s character build a lever that explodes his entire castle, but Lugosi somehow knows about it.
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Oct 9, 2018 16:30
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Hays went into effect in 1930 but was strengthened to actually accomplish things in 1934. Speaking of! 17. Maniac (1934) - DVD Later retitled as Sex Maniac. A crazed shrink wants to bring the dead back to life despite his indentured servant's misgivings. He succeeds with the corpse of an attractive suicide. The Voodoo-type zombie is kept around in lingerie as one does. It goes from there and gets rather grotesque with a fair amount of T&A. Title cards are interspersed periodically with zero relation to the film. Their sole purpose was to get the movie filed as an educational item and skirt the Hays code. Plenty of animal-on-animal violence, tits, girlfight, and rape to bring on the carnival circuit. Sound godawful? It is but manages to be a fun ride through batshit insanity. Hildegarde Stadie wrote not only this but several other Worth watching if you at all care about the impact of the Hays code and history of sexploitation. Or just enjoy some mindless bugnuts insanity on the screen. By the way, runtime clocked in at 51 minutes. Call it an invalid entry to the challenge of you like but I'm leaving the number and will just count Psycho as a wildcard.  Tally: N/A Psycho (1960)*, 1. Halloween (1978), 2. Halloween II (1981), 3. Carnival of Souls (1962), 4. The Blob (1988), 5. I Bury the Living (1958), 6. Dead Men Walk (1943), 7. Nosferatu (1922), 8. Les Revenants (2002), 9. The Mummy's Hand (1940), 10. House on Haunted Hill (1959)*, 11. Lifeforce (1985), 12. The Gorilla (1939), 13. The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), 14. November (2017), 15. Doghouse (2009), 16 Sssssss (1973), 17. Maniac (1934) Years Spanned: 95 (1922-2017) Tally by Decade: '20s (I), '30s (II), '40s (II), '50s (II), '60s (III), '70s (II), '80s (III), '90s (0), 2000s (II), 2010s (I) B&W/Color: 10/8 * Rewatch Butch Cassidy fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 16:33
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15. I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) Scream Stream Unfortunately a group setting is not really the right atmosphere for this film. You want to be alone and in the dark, preferably in an old creaky house. It was ultimately too slow for me, and I found it hard to believe that someone who was so scared that she can't read a horror novel would stick around after the first spooky thing happens. The movie needed to give her a reason to still be there, and it doesn't really.  .5/516. Nail Gun Massacre (1985)  Scream Stream This movie really hits the ground running, with the group rape of a girl at a construction site. Six months later, a mysterious helmeted stranger with a nail gun begins to extract revenge on the rapists, and basically anyone else who gets in their way. This is amateur hour, from the camera man zooming in on the boobs to the terrible sound levels for everything to the first-take-only-take nature of every single scene. The movie has several long uncomfortable sex scenes, and no real discernible plot except for revenge. The nail gun itself is remarkably deadly. You take a nail anywhere and you're dead. It was a terrible movie but kind of fun to watch and make fun of. A perfect movie for a scream stream. /5
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Oct 9, 2018 16:38
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Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) Surprised by how completely this translates the Tales aesthetic and feeling to feature length, even though it's pretty obviously an unrelated script that's been repurposed as part of a franchise. Charming, goofy, and full of delightful low-budget creatures and goop while still working pretty well as a "homestead under siege" plot with a great sense of escalation. The cast all understand exactly how to pitch their performances for the movie they're in, with Billy Zane as a demonic live-action version of the Genie from Aladdin being the obvious highlight. It's also just always fun to see the Crypt Keeper doing his schtick. There was no reason not to make a million of these, Tales from the Crypt would have been a really good umbrella under which to produce quality horror/comedy scripts that might have struggled on their own in the marketplace. Too bad. 3.5/5  s
Dr. Puppykicker fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 16:42
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Drunkboxer posted:I love that not only did Karloff’s character build a lever that explodes his entire castle, but Lugosi somehow knows about it. Yeah I like how the two clearly have a checkered history together but the film leaves the details mostly to our imagination. Also for any metal fans, this film finally revealed to me the source of the clip used at the start of the Aborted song "Bit by Bit". "Did you ever see an animal skinned, Hjalmar? That's what I'm going to do to you now. Tear the skin from your body, slowly, bit by bit." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMUIVCGnydw Spatulater bro! fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 16:52
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 15. October 9 - Channel Zero: Butcher's Block Holy poo poo, I love this show. It's a SyFy original anthology series, each season is loosely based on a different internet "creepypasta," and it's so much better than that concept has any right to be. It's uniquely weird and dreamlike, with great music and atmosphere and striking, unsettling visuals. Each season is only six episodes long, so it never overstays its welcome. For the first time in my life I actually gave up and bought a digital copy of this season because it wasn't streaming anywhere, and I just couldn't wait. Bucher's Block is both goofier and more horrifying than the previous two, and it's my favorite so far. I am always entranced by stories about regular people stumbling into dreamlands where nothing makes sense, and this season has that in spades. It's also heavily influenced by Twin Peaks: The Return, which is impressive, considering the six month timespan between the finale of that show and the premiere of this one. Not to sound like an advertisement, but the fourth season premiers for six nights in a row in late October, and I think everybody in this thread should at least give it a shot.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:43
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 #19. The Mummy's Ghost (YouTube TV/TCM) -  /5A cheaply made and not terribly interesting Mummy sequel, this one apparently follows off more or less directly from the previous film, which I have yet to see. I did find it hilarious that small town Massachusetts was not only apparently totally aware of a living mummy wandering around killing people, but everyone bought into it explicitly and were all super quick to jump on the "guy was strangled, must be the Mummy!" bandwagon immediately. John Carradine was pretty good, if not given anything to do, but it seemed like a waste to put Lon Chaney Jr. into the Mummy makeup, since basically anyone can play "shuffle along, swipe ineffectually at dogs, one-handed strangle a guy." For all its boring faults, I have to credit the movie for actually having the Mummy win in the end, by taking the girl he's been targeting with him into the swamp as she ages into an ancient Egyptian corpse. That said, drowning yourself and your would-be love does seem to a Pyrrhic victory, at best. It's barely an hour long, even including the TCM intro and outro bits, so at least it knows not to overstay its welcome. Watched so far: Cat People, Halloween 5, Mom and Dad, Hell House LLC, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Beetlejuice, The Horror of Party Beach, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, The Return of the Living Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Murder Party, Anaconda, Dracula (1931), The Ritual, Blade II, The Beyond, Sleepaway Camp, Lord of Illusions, The Mummy's Ghost
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Oct 9, 2018 17:49
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Dr. Puppykicker posted:It's also just always fun to see the Crypt Keeper doing his schtick. There was no reason not to make a million of these, Tales from the Crypt would have been a really good umbrella under which to produce quality horror/comedy scripts that might have struggled on their own in the marketplace. Too bad. They were planning on making at least 3, but Dennis Miller ruined the second one so thoroughly that it essentially ended the entire tales from the crypt franchise.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:54
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Lurdiak posted:They were planning on making at least 3, but Dennis Miller ruined the second one so thoroughly that it essentially ended the entire tales from the crypt franchise. Was it Dennis Miller being Dennis Miller or something else?
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Oct 9, 2018 18:09
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M_Sinistrari posted:Was it Dennis Miller being Dennis Miller or something else? I blame the producer for putting Miller into it. Miller is going to act precisely how you’d expect. You don’t get mad at a puppy for pissing on the rug, and you don’t get mad when a film starring Denise Miller is annoying and kind of lovely.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:15
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I mean he also refused to read some of his lines or show up on set sometimes, and for no reason at all his salary was like half the movie's budget. Including him in the film basically ruined it on every front.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:20
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 I liked it! We're getting zany now. But only with the characters. The shop owner who grazes on his stock and lets a rabbit loose in his shop, the stoner couple, the freakin' biker gang. It's good. We got a lot of time with them. More time, it felt to me at least, than we did with the characters in Part 2. So even though they're kinda zany, you still get to know them and like them. The stoners especially, I really wanted them to make it  . Except Shelley. gently caress that guy. He called Vera a bitch just because she refused to immediately sleep with him. Transport him to modern day and he'd be a 4chan MAGA chud, guaranteed. Glad he died.And we finally got full Jason, with the mask and machete! The mask thing was just a blatant ripoff of Myers doing the ghost thing in Halloween, but it worked a lot better here. It was an established thing that Jason hides his deformed face. But in Halloween Michael Myers is a 100% evil, to the point where he's fully inhuman, but just for that one scene he decided to play a trick for no reason. I like how Part 3 treats Jason a lot more than Part 2 did. Part 2 had too much focus on his metal disabilities, you feel sad for him. Part 3 drops that entirely, he's just a murder machine. Much better for this kind of movie. Three movies in, I gotta say, I really like hos this series always keeps the characters ignorant of the murders until the very end. More time with the characters, less time running around screaming. I also really like the franchise staple of the female lead having an extended final fight with the killer, including getting in plenty of good hits and trying different stuff to try to either get out of the situation or defeat the bad guy. I gotta be honest, I was kinda worried about the series after Part 2, but Part 3 has me back on board. Part 2 wasn't bad, I liked it, but it was just the original movie again only not as good. Part 3 is the original movie again only a little zany, and I'm completely down for that. My final verdict: Friday the 13th Part 3 3D is good, the best Friday the 13th since the first. I will say though, they missed an opportunity with that biker gang. It kinda did what I wanted a bit with them, but it wasn't the main focus. Screenwriters of CineD, please write movies where a group of normal people run afoul of a biker gang and have to fight them, but then team up with them in order to fight a slasher villain. I think I would never get tired of movies with that premise.
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Oct 9, 2018 19:35
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 Mimic(1997) After C.H.U.D. it seemed like Mimic would make an interesting comparison, and when you think about it the two movies really are very similar. In both scenarios the monsters under the streets represent our old problems coming back to bite us, and how shortsightedness can cause catastrophe. The Judas bugs in Mimic prey on the most vulnerable, like the C.H.U.D.s, and the structure of the story is very similar with the first portion of both films being an investigation and then desperate attempts to convince the authorities that the monsters are real. By all accounts Del Toro had a terrible time in making Mimic, but really I don't think it shows in the final product. It's definitely better looking than the average 90's monster flick, it has a pretty unique and well designed monster, and the cast has a surprising amount of talent. Mira Sorvino is solid, but then you have Dutton, Gianini, Brolin, and a small role for F. Murray Abraham. The biggest complaint I can make, and it's one that you most often hear about Mimic, is that a few scenes feature CGI that looked very good at the time but has aged pretty badly. Still though, whatever else you want to say about Mimic, it has the creep factor. Not surprising with a Del Toro film, but there's just something about the design of the Judas' "face" and the way it holds it up in front of itself fool us, no matter how many times I see it I always go "drat that's creepy".  Total: 1. Frankenstein(1931) 2. The Old Dark House(1932) 3. The Bride of Frankenstein(1935) 4. The Mummy(1932) 5. The Invisible Man(1933) 6. The Wolfman(1941) 7. House of Frankenstein(1944) 8. House of Dracula(1945) 9. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein(1948) 10. The Boogeyman Will Get You(1942) 11. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms(1953) 12.Gojira(1954) 13. Creature From the Black Lagoon(1954) 14. The Night of the Hunter(1955) 15. The Curse of Frankenstein(1957) 16. Brides of Dracula(1960) 17. The Tomb of Ligeia(1964) 18. Blood and Black Lace(1964) 19. Frankenstein Created Woman(1967) 20. Quatermass and the Pit(1967) 21. Don't Look Now(1973)22. Dracula A.D. 1972 23. Phantom of the Paradise(1974) 24. The Wicker Man(1973) 25. Nosferatu The Vampyre(1979) 26. The Fog(1980) 27. An American Werewolf in London(1981) 28. Prince of Darkness(1987) 29. A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984) 30. C.H.U.D.(1984) 31. Candyman(1992) 32. Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh(1995) 33. Mimic(1997)
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Oct 9, 2018 19:52
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- (10). Dead and Breakfast (2004) Available on TubiTV  A group of pretty young people on a road trip to a wedding get lost and stay overnight in a small town only for a rash of slasher killings to happen. Also Tai black magic spirits. And zombies. And a musical narrator. Its a campy, gory affair that's got a bit of everything. This is my first rewatch of the month because I was in the mood for something light again to continue the palette cleansing from all the recent giallo and "video nasty" stuff. I saw this a few years ago and remembered really loving it, and I really enjoyed it again. Its not a GREAT film but its a fun little gory camp in the tradition of like Peter Jackson's stuff. Lots of little in jokes and nothing taken too seriously. Lots of body parts and heads and viscera through around. Oh, and a bunch of zombies doing the Thriller dance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcwP5wpNGyw&t=23s The cast is WEIRDLY loaded. I mean, David Carradine, Portia Di Rossa, and that guy from the Drew Carey show show up for roughly five minutes each. The main cast includes Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jeremy Sisto, Ever Carradine, and the girl from Jeeper Creeper. I could have swore i saw Nathan Fillon in a non speaking role but probably a lot of middle aged white dudes look like Nathan Fillion. And maybe the coolest is Oz Perkins, Anthony Perkin's son. Truthfully, he's not that good but the movie is so campy it really doesn't matter. He seems to have found more success writing and directing films such as The Blackcoat's Daughter and recent Scream Stream watch I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House. I'm actually kind of curious WHY the film is so loaded. The director Matthew Leutwyler doesn't seem to have anything else of real note on his resume. He was directing episodes of MTV's Undressed before this (a favorite dumb late night watch of my dorm mates in college). And he hasn't seemed to do much else of note besides Hellbenders, which I'm pretty sure i saw and hated. But this film is not only liked by me but won/was nominated for a bunch of film festival and Saturn awards. I'd say this is a definite thing to check out if you're looking for just something goofy and gore. A fine palette cleanser between more serious stuff if you need it.
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Oct 9, 2018 20:48
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    #23. Ice Cream Man (1995) Another video store memory, this actually turned out better than I expected. It knew exactly what tone it wanted, and followed that with consistency. Clint Howard plays a man who was committed to a sanatorium as a young boy and recently released, and has picked up the ice cream business of the local vendor, whose murder is implied to have been a major reason for Clint's psychosis. Clint doesn't just drive the van around and sell ice cream, he makes it as well, with all the sanitary quality you might expect from a bare-handed Clint Howard. His customers (which include some non-terrible kid actors) get weird vibes from him, and when his murderous urges come through, a group of children try to make adults realize he's a killer. Bodies in the ice cream cooler, along with eyeballs, mice, and roaches; severed heads on giant waffle cones; ice cream scoopers as weapons; industrial mixers handling bodies; and sieving out a diaphragm and earrings from a fresh ice cream batch. If there's some goofy gore angle to be pulled with ice cream paraphernalia, it's more than likely in this movie. And that's without addressing the sanatorium scenes, which bring their own strangeness. The sets do a good job of setting tone with sparse decoration, though the numerous outside scenes do make the cheapness of the indoor ones stand out. Honestly, Clint Howard's performance is perfect for this. Weird and creepy, damaged and vulnerable, over the top while matching the rest of the movie, and his interactions with normal people are delightfully off-key. Sad that the Kickstarter for a sequel hit less than 1% of its goal in pledges, but also unsurprising. / 10  #24. The Autopsy of Jane Doe, a.k.a., The Jane Doe Identity (2016) Solid. Good atmosphere, an uncommon twist on angering an evil spirit, Brian Cox playing a crusty but caring father. Could have done without the cat death, especially with how little impact it had on the proceedings, and the bell chiming on things which had been shown to not have a bell attached was a petty annoyance, but on the whole, this was a pleasant surprise of quality. The set-up involves a woman's body being dug up from a crime scene, transported to a morgue for forensic examination, and bad poo poo starting to happen as the examination proceeds. It's close to being a one-location story, and for much of the movie, there's only two (speaking) characters, which did a nice job of concentrating tension and keeping the narrative pushing along with firm focus. Between myself and my viewing partner, we managed to guess both sides of the big reveal, though we didn't put them together until the movie made it explicit. Some fun mystery elements made for an interesting pairing with the clinical gruesomeness of the body's disassembly, even if a few of the clues and conclusions were a little ridiculous. I appreciated seeing good color scheme usage, effective and sparing use of CGI, creative threat-building, and a believable father-son dynamic, and outside of some minor detail-picking and some loose threads (I guess the spirit just has a real fondness for a Flintstones song that happens to tie in with the dead mother's name, since it keeps tuning it in on radios even when there's no relevance to any present characters), I really don't have any strikes against this film. The limiting of scope is intentional, and well-used, but the movie doesn't really immerse itself in the setting the way, say, The Shining does (and I admit the unfairness of that comparison). Very good performances, good visuals, decent score; thumbs up. / 10 #25. Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, a.k.a., Pumpkinhead 2: The Demon Returns, a.k.a., The Revenge of Pumpkinhead: Blood Wings (1993) Aside from having seen the original, all I knew about this movie going in was that there was an abysmal video game tie-in. While it wasn't as good as the first Pumpkinhead, it wasn't complete trash. Linnea Quigley and Andrew Robinson (the dad from Hellraiser) were there, though neither seemed to be putting too much effort into their performance, and Kane Hodder gets killed as a bonus. The atmosphere and attention to lighting that served the first film so well are gone, some half-baked additions to the monster's mythology are thrown in, and the main story change-ups are the offending teens being in their hometown and the victims paying off decades-old evils. Not as much of a misfire as it could have been, but it does lose the sense of clueless intrusion on long-held traditions that really worked for the first. Eh, pretty lackluster all around, but not as bad as I thought it would be. / 10
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Oct 9, 2018 21:17
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Franchescanado posted:
 26. The House By The Cemetery (1981). Directed by Lucio Fulci. Watched on Shudder House By The Cemetery tries to be more of a classical Gothic horror than his other movies and I don't know if it works out quite as well as Fulci would have hoped. A touch awkward compared to The Beyond or City of the Living Dead, but I love that his movies end up being half-remembered hallucinations of America. Freudstein is low-key an amazing name. Bob's dubbing is one of the worst dubs I've ever heard and I love it. If you made a drinking game based on how many times they say his name, you'd be dead within the first half-hour.
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Oct 9, 2018 22:15
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FRAN CHALLENGE #6: Video Nasties
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The Fly Somehow I had never watched the whole thing, but this one holds up so well. A lean, perfectly paced movie, not a second feels wasted. And it all get so awesomely gross, it's a classic for a good reason. I also checked out a couple cut scene afterwards, the infamous "monkeycat" scene, which I don't think would have added to the movie anyway. There's no information in the scene that wasn't already there, thought the image of Brundle tearing off his own fly arm is pretty amazing. There was also a scene of Brundle liquefying and eating a foot that should have been left in because it is just wonderful. This is like porn for people who love fantastic special effects.
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Oct 9, 2018 22:40
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16) Possession (1981) (Video Nasty challenge) And that cover pretty much sums up the movie. In this live action hentai Isabelle Adjani shacks up with a tentacle monster with the power to make anyone in its presence overact grotesquely. Sam Neill responds by abusing her, the rest of the cast, and any scenery unfortunate enough to cross his path. There's no subtlety to any of it, no sense of character, everyone acts like they're in a bad stage play. Carlo Rambaldi made a good fist of the monster, though.
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Oct 9, 2018 22:49
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 16. October 9 - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night I think my attention span is getting worse as I age; I would have liked this a few years ago. I usually don't mind slower movies where not a lot happens, but there's just too much nothingness here. The setting is really interesting, but the movie never capitalizes on it. Having said that, it looks great, and the two leads are excellent. Maybe I'll check it out again down the road.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:45
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Lester Shy posted:16. October 9 - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night I don't think it's you, I like long movies and slower paced movies but A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night was a little too much nothing for me to call it great. I still thought it was ok for the reasons you mentioned but I was disappointed overall.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:49
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Yeah, I liked its style and performances and thought it was a very interesting "first time" piece from an auteur. But its veeeery slow and arguably there isn't really enough story to carry the down time. Its a good and interesting film, but a flawed one, I think. But I tend to grade "first time" pieces on a curve and it did well in that regard.
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Oct 9, 2018 23:55
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And now I'm already at my simple goal of 12. I think I'm going to make a much-too-bold statement of upping my prospective mark to a full 31 movies. Knowing how things tend to go in my life something bananas will happen in the next 48 hours that will completely derail this effort.Franchescanado posted:
 11) The Burning (1981) - Yeah you guys were right this is a lot better than Sleepaway Camp A deranged burn victim, freshly empowered by five years of convalescence, takes his anger out on teenagers at a camp near his old place of employment. In his time away he has mastered the arts of silent movement, setting traps on open water, and utilizing his bed-ridden superstrength on hapless victims. The killer is the only thing about the movie I dislike. The rest of the cast is primed and ready to be well-grounded and make smart choices given the information they have so it's disappointing to have the killer be a Jason-lite supernatural murderbeast. I guess it's hard to shake Friday the 13's influence given the time period. I guess there's one other aspect I don't like but it fits a kind of character arc so I'm not too upset. I really wanted Alfred to get got. Okay, sure, a bully picks on you a bloo boo everyone else in that cabin seems to get along with you and backs you up! Don't say you don't have friends, you goon! YOU HAVE FRIENDS! And stop peeping on the girls! But, again, they actually do something with it so I'm not going to totally knock the film for the execution. The cast is great and I feel bad for (most of) them when they get killed. I've heard that Jason Alexander isn't proud of the job he did but I like him anyway. It's basically His Shtick 1.0 so I can see why he doesn't want to look back on it but considering the kinds of performances generally turned in for these movies I had fun watching him. Acting all around is pretty solid for the genre and it's not a surprise that actual professionals both came in (Brian Backer) and carried on (Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, apparently Holly Hunter has one line). There is one category that I'd give a bit of a nod to Sleepaway Camp for between the two films: killer motivation. The Burning is a standard slasher rampage against people who happen to exist in his path while ostensibly being about revenge. Sleepaway Camp is a kid lashing out against real and perceived threats in a violent attempt to be left alone. The fuel behind The Burning is fine enough for more pared down films like some of the Friday the 13 sequels but the rest of the film's elements are too good to let such a basic slasher mentality be strong enough to hold up its end of the equation. Good film, good times, this could easily be an annual rewatch from me.  12) Daughters of Darkness (1971) - I'm not used to class and quality of this magnitude I don't have to make excuses for this one. It's a drama about corrosive relationship dynamics and the reverberations of abuse that also happens to feature lesbian vampires. There have been plenty of movies of all kinds and varieties that do the push-and-pull that happens here. What I like about this film is that it uses the supernatural elements in a very positive and constructive way that helps stitch and sew the narrative together in a way that would seem too broad or rushed in a simpler character drama. The locations, the wardrobes, and the makeup are all fantastic. I'm a sucker for a strong sense of style and doubly so when there's an emphasis on impactful uses of color and contrast. The acting is mostly good minus Valerie, the young wife, who is fine enough. Otherwise what I enjoyed about this movie were the conversations, the dialogue, and the personal interplay between characters. I have two complaints: one medium-sized and one minor. Both are less egregious than things I've handwaved or gotten past in most every other film I've watched this week. I'm just bringing them up here in case anyone else who has seen the movie agrees. The medium-sized complaint is so the retired cop either died or was grievously wounded from getting his bike nudged? I spent the rest of the movie waiting for him to show back up but nah, apparently his organs exploded when he slumped to the ground at 10 miles an hour. He wasn't even able to make it back in time for the dinner scene. It's fine for the narrative that he gets written out there but considering the care put in almost everything else it's shocking how bad the scene looks. The minor complaint is while the Countess' death is telegraphed in both an immediate and long-term sense (after the two commitments to vampires being weak to running water it was only a matter of time for another weakness to show) and, again, it serves the story well to see Valerie continue on her own it's messy in a way that the rest of the movie isn't. The cop getting booped made sense but was filmed poorly; the Countess dying was filmed well but I don't think it's a smooth transition to the epilogue. Full recommendation. For a taste of the horror to come, below is a still frame of what elicits the biggest scream of the movie: 
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Oct 10, 2018 00:13
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# 15 The Conjuring (2013) - a solidly crafted haunted house movie. The compelling leads (Patrick # 16 Hellboy (2004) - rife with creative monster designs, this Guillermo del Toro work finds strength in its practical effects but not so much its storyline or its characters who have great potential but are caged up by little to do or say besides battle beasts. 6/10 # 17 Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) - this is where I feel del Toro's Hellboy vision is finally realized with a massively improved story and some charisma injected into the characters. Krauss, a ghost in a machine (literally), is a welcome addition. No surprise the bland kid in the first one (forget his name) is written out in a throwaway line " you sent him to Antarctica", "well he said he liked the cold"). Too bad the cliche of the injured, near-dead hero coming back to health through magic is rehashed here again, done many times before and after this film. Extradinary monster design and execution in this one - del Toro at his "A" game in that regard. 7/10 #18 - Anaconda (1996) - could not resist going back and revisiting this. And you know what? It isn't all *that* appalling, for schlock at least, and is at least fun. Definitely was bolstered by Voight's performance, and the hilarity of J-Lo and Ice Cube as leads, who don't even do that bad of a job. The biggest dent in the movie is that it often makes little sense, namely the inconsistent and mind-boggling clueless and dumb behavior of characters. 5/10 Mokelumne Trekka fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Oct 10, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 00:30
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Day 9 - Invaders From Mars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8BXNW36vbc My video story had two posters up behind the register for years: the remake of Night of the Living Dead and the remake of Invaders From Mars. I never saw either of them, but I've wanted to check out Invaders forever. Especially since I heard that it was fun. It's an Invasion of the Body Snatchers riff gone full 80's movie. A kid sees the flying saucer land is the only one who knows that things in his small town are going horribly wrong. And then in the third act the totally awesome US military shows up to kick rear end and take names. But then it was all a dream... or was it?! No spoilers on that ending because really lovely endings like that deserve to get spoiled. I've got to say, I was not expecting Krang to show up. I was kind of enjoying the film for most of it. The monsters are some cool puppet suits and the controlled humans are all fun at being dicks to the kid. Not fantastic but a solid B. Then that last act came along and the kid became totally superfluous as the military handled everything efficiently and everything would have gone better if he wasn't there at all. Having it go to the "dream" ending was just going to leave a bad taste in my mouth. The child actor wasn't strong enough to carry the movie and it felt like Tobe Hooper may have been instructing the rest of the cast to lean into 1950's style performances. That was fine, but the lone adult who believes the kid becomes incredibly shrill when they're confronting the aliens. So, not a movie I'd recommend to anyone but I can see how kids in the 80's would have enjoyed it. I'm not sure how I missed seeing it at the time of release since it would have been right up my alley and I was going to see movies like King Kong Lives and Jaws 4 at the local discount cinema. Lester Shy posted:
It's not you. I don't mind slow paced if its atmospheric and interesting. I found A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night to be pretty weak mainly due to the direction which was terrible at building atmosphere and just made the movie feel plodding. There's good bits, but the rest feels like its meandering around in search of meaning. I had a similar reaction to The Blackcoat's Daughter, though it didn't help that the film also has a terrible plot twist.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:37
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:The Conjuring... Patrick Stewart A better movie.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:46
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Spatulater bro! posted:A better movie. drat, you caught me.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:48
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:drat, you caught me. It's a fair mistake because subconsciously we all wish Patrick Stewart was in every movie.
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Oct 10, 2018 00:51
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Patrick Wilson loving rules also so let’s pump the brakes a bit. 11/31 - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Another all-timer I had somehow not seen yet. Thanks Amazon Prime! To be honest I was a little worried at first when all the kills were happening off screen. I had always envisioned this movie to be something similar to the 1980 Maniac, which I think I still prefer even though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. Michael Rooker is excellent as is Tom Towles. Although you could tell what the end result would be as soon as they began their reign of terror, it was still an incredible ride especially after they procured the camcorder. My favorite scene is Henry explaining to Otis how to throw the cops off your scent despite the fact Otis is too reckless and stupid to bother listening. I honestly did not expect the ending even though I absolutely should have. 12/31 - Pumpkinhead I can’t lie, I had a hard time paying attention to this when Pumpkinhead wasn’t on screen. The set design and monster itself are very very well done, and it sure seemed like Independence Day borrowed a lot from this movie in the scene where the aliens and scientists communicate. Lance Henriksen gives a solid performance but the rest of the cast is meh if not outright terrible. I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching this but I also could probably live without ever seeing it again.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:19
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Since I forgot to state a goal, I'm just going to do the 20 by 20 Challenge. The 20th's my birthday, and I have a limited time to watch movies (and/or I just prefer to watch them on the weekends when I'm mostly free all day), so I'm just going to try and get five more in between now and then. I'll probably do more than 20 but that's all I'm shooting for, because this is about having fun and enjoying horror movies.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:22
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 19)Mohawk netflix Holy cow. This movie is drat good and a bit of a rough watch. It's definitely a horror movie, but most of the horror is american attrocities during the war of 1812. It's atmospheric, and well made, great cinematography and gruesome practical effects. And the third act. Loved it. 5/5
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Oct 10, 2018 01:50
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20. Infestation (2018) The horrifying story of a man driven to ahahahahaha my house is infested with mice, fuckin' kill me. Wanted to get another movie out tonight, but I'm cleaning my kitchen instead.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:01
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#19 Phantasm II (1988)  "Universal Studios, who took an interest in the film because they wanted a horror series, allocated three million dollars; this was the lowest budget of any of their films in the 1980s, but it was the highest budget of any Phantasm film." - Wikipedia After an uncommonly long hiatus for 80's horror franchises of nine years between I and II (Coscarelli didn't really see the need for a sequel), we return to the narratively disjointed dream universe of Phantasm. This begins the improbable transition of comedy relief act Reggie to main character status, as well as the transition to a road movie plot format. The other principle actors don't return, save for flashbacks--Universal wanted "working actors" for all the roles, and Phantasm is usually full of part-timers who only do Phantasm movies, or almost only. The film seemingly continues immediately where Phantasm left off, with the Tall Man invading Mike's house, but scene-to-scene continuity in Phantasm is strictly optional. "That story about me blowing up my house because it was infested with midgets?" Plot happens over the span of decades, only to sometimes be retconned as a bad dream. It's not actually clear if Phantasm I was all a bad dream or not, even to the viewer. Characters don't believe Mike about scenes they themselves were in, then he provides them evidence of Lovecraftian skullduggery, then more and more left turns. Reggie's house explodes--twice! It's unclear if the continuity is interrupted by budget problems or the introduction of foreign substances into Don Coscarelli's bloodstream. Sometimes Mike is psychic. I have to make special note that, all other problems aside, the Phantasm blu ray box set, which appears to be currently out of print, is really cool. The inside of every box has a poster print, it comes with a hangable poster, there's a production booklet, and every movie has a ton of special features if you're absolutely gaga about Phantasm. I have to say they kinda grow on me, but it's definitely an acquired taste.
Name Change fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Oct 10, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 02:55
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#8 Tale of Tales(2015) Tale of Tales is a collection of loosely intertwined stories based on fairy tales by Italian author Giambattista Basile. I wasn't familiar with any of them going in but I'm usually pretty into stuff like this so I was looking forward to it. Watching this movie for this thread definitely stretches the definition of horror a little, but it's one of the marked genres this movie has listed on IMDB and there are definitely horror themes throughout, so I think it comes close enough. Oh, I wanted to love this movie so bad. First things first, this film is gorgeous to look at. The costumes, the scenery, the sets, the cinematography... it was all gorgeous. The movie opens pretty perfectly as well. The first part of the first story we see is excellent and it set my expectations high. Unfortunately, things kinda went downhill from there for me. Not that there wasn't anything else good in the movie, because there was, but it really started to drag more and more as time went on, when you kinda want the opposite from something like this. The pacing was just, not really there for me. Each of the stories played out in tandem, so you got all the beginnings, all the middles, and all the ends in that order, but there was never any real build. This movie had no real definitive climax, what it had instead was 3 strangely spaced out mini-climaxes. With this sort of structure I'd expect a crescendo where each story builds tension in tandem and then releases it all in sequence. Each story definitely did this on its own, but in the context of the entire film what we get is the climax arc of a story starting from zero tension and slowly building you up over 20 or so minutes, and then dropping you right back into the zero-stakes start of the next one that takes an additional 20 minutes to get back to pace. I honestly think things might've worked better here if each story played out in its entirety before moving on. Pacing issues aside, there's also this strange pattern of characters sort of making the same sounds over and over without much variation. I don't exactly know how to describe it but I noticed it several times. Basically someone would be doing something like cooing at a baby or screaming in fear, but instead of just making that sound a few times, or varying each new sound in a natural way, they'd robotically cycle through the same few variations for a quite extended period of on-screen time. It was almost like they were under the impression that they were being recorded for multiple takes, but someone else decided to just go ahead and use the uncut sequence. This happened several times with multiple, otherwise strong actors and actresses. I dunno, it was weird. Anyways, there was still a lot I loved about this, and I think there's a really great movie trapped in there, but it didn't quite all come together for me. I still recommend it, but maybe don't set your expectations too high. Watched (8/15): #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), #7 Tag (2015), #8 Tale of Tales (2015) Fran Challenges (1/6): #1,
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Oct 10, 2018 03:03
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30. Blind Sun - 3.5/5 (Shudder)quote:Great movie, but Shudder has got to chill with these barely-a-horror-exclusives (though I'm glad they're giving these movies a wider release/platform). There's a wonderful sense of dread throughout the film�thanks to its Children of Men-lite setting�but the plays at being a paranoid thriller are never as interesting as the A-plot. The Kafkaesque nightmare of being a migrant in a resource starved country is horror enough. Another obscure Shudder exclusive. 31. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - 4/5 quote:Real quick, two things that really bothered me: Highly recommend the two Letterboxd reviews I linked there. Way more profound than any reading I could have came up with. Well I hit 31. I probably shouldn't have cheated by starting my count in September, but I'll definitely hit 31 in October alone anyways. SMP fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Oct 10, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 03:08
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Franchescanado posted:
 27. Multiple Maniacs (1970). Directed by John Waters. Watched on FilmStruck I've been on a big Waters kick this year (just went to the opening of his retrospective exhibition at Baltimore Museum of Art this weekend), so I figured I'd get around to one of his few horror-adjacent movies. He's still trying to find his voice as a filmmaker here and the pacing really suffers, but you can definitely see his wit and personality shine through. It's interesting that this early on, he was already mining America's obsession with the Manson murders/serial killers. It's technically amateurish and slipshod, but I wouldn't have any other way. The fact that this even existed when it did is punk as hell. Big ups to Criterion for putting together such a good restoration of this. Think I'm all caught up now. Friends Are Evil fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Oct 10, 2018 |
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Oct 10, 2018 03:14
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| # ? Jun 5, 2024 00:23 |
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 Frankenhooker, 1990 This movie is way better than you'd think it based on the title and premise. Yes, it's a dumb low budget horror comedy, but it is great at being just that. The main guy is a wannabe scientist who looses his fianc�e in a lawnmower accident, but manages to preserve her decapitated head. He wants to resurrect her Frankenstein style, but need body parts. He seeks prostitutes to find the ideal body parts to use. Because he is not an evil man, he don't want to kill them, but since they are already killing them selves with crack, he invents super crack to just speed up the process. Let's just say it got some pretty strong effects on the people that smoke it. The plot is as ridiculous as it gets, but it's one hell of a fun movie. I loved it and it got some surprisingly awesome body horror towards the end. It came out in 1990, but it looks 80s as gently caress and got everything I want from 80s movies like these. I strongly recommend this film.
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Oct 10, 2018 03:25
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