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Goddamn it, Hulu! Don't tell me you have a terrible movie that I've been meaning to watch and then reveal to me that it becomes available at 2am tonight! I wanted to watch my completely unfathomable video game tie in now! So, now I'm going to have to pick out another terrible movie I've managed to dodge. Day 14 - Poltergeist III  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKUY56RSzQ It does not speak well of a movie when it's best known for the death of a child actor, though the death of Heather O'Rourke didn't have anything to do with the production unlike a certain other 1980's horror movie. I think it's the tragedy surrounding the movie more than its terrible quality that got it quietly buried. Which made it pretty easy to miss seeing it. Everybody has seen Poltergeist (and for good reason) and Poltergeist II got plenty of television play in cheap movie syndication packages. III, on the other hand, just seemed to go away. The little girl who spent too much time watching television in the first movie is staying with relatives at the Hancock building in Chicago. Unfortunately, when they constructed the 100 story tall, mixed use structure they moved the headstones but not the bodies! So I knew going in that Poltergeist III would be bad, but is it entertainingly bad? And yeah, it kind of is. There's plotlines that come up and are just dropped, a script that feels like it was assembled from three other horror scripts before trying to slap the Poltergeist brand on it, and it never lives up to its promises of having a haunted high rise. But they keep the goofiness flowing which makes it kind of watchable even though it is a really lovely movie. I think I like it better than Poltergeist II which is just boring bad. It's weird to me that this movie leans so heavily into Poltergeist II and it's explanations for the hauntings. The evil ghost preacher Cain (note to screenwriters: you are not clever for naming a character "Cain") is still around and he's found the girl again at the skyscraper, though the initial manifestations were making me wonder if they were just doing some callbacks or if they were really going to keep going with that story line. The ghosts desperate to get the girl is a boring throughline for the movies and I wish they hadn't stuck with it. There was a strange obsession with mirrors in this movie which is part of what makes me think that the script started as a different movie entirely. It's mirrors everywhere and people keep getting pulled into or out of them or creepy things appear in mirrors or reflections don't behave like they're supposed to. Then there's the freezing stuff where the ghosts have cranked the AC up everywhere in the building and ice is everwhere. Pick a spooky theme and stick with it, Poltergeist III!
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Oct 14, 2018 22:03
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Franchescanado posted:
18.  I don't know what I expected going in to this movie, but I certainly didn't expect the best use of Silverchair in a film soundtrack I've seen all year. I'd guess the closest thing to compare this movie to would be something like The Stepfather. The basic conceit is roughly the same, except instead of, you know, a stepfather it's a lesbian wife taking her wife out for a nice getaway at a lakeside cabin. It's a cabin, it's in the woods, maybe you're expecting some slasher action but while there is some really painful moments of bodily harm this is all more in line with something like The Good Son. It's a Psycho Thriller more than traditional horror, the "horror" comes more from the horrible things some people can do to other people. The queer element of the film is just the fact that the two mains are a lesbian couple. Their relationship isn't propped up to be titillating which I appreciated, they just happen to be gay and you believe that they have a history together, even if it turns out that their history was entirely a sham and one of them is a psycho killer. The two leads are really good, and I liked the cat-and-mouse element with each (well, it's mostly one-sided in favor of the killer) trying to outwit and outlast the other. There's a few kind-of-stupid moments where the would-be victim makes a few silly decisions but mostly it's all reasonable and grounded. All in all, preeeetty good, I just kind of wish I watched it last month because it really doesn't feel Halloween-y and that's what I need right now.
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Oct 14, 2018 22:57
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FRAN CHALLENGE #2: Queer Horror
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FRAN CHALLENGE #8: Water Flowing Underground Kinda cheated a bit here since Gerard McMurray has only made two movies so far. But the first wasn't horror, it was some kinda drama about frats, The First Purge counts!  I've always liked the Purge movies. But I can admit that I've liked them maybe more for their spirit than their execution. Since the first trailer fir the first movie came out, showing a family terrorized in their home and cuts of brutal violence set to America the Beautiful, I've liked them. So it's so great to get a Purge movie that not only lives up to that spirit more than any before, but also is a really, really good movie! The first movie in the Purge series was pretty blanatntly political, but it was still somewhat subtle. They got less subtle as time went on, but The First Purge just completely drops all subtlety, with black people defending their neighborhoods from US-backed mercenaries in nazi costumes. Which I really appreciate. Not to get all political, but Donald Trump is president. The time for subtlety is over forever. The acting is solid, the characters are really good, the action is great, the creepy masked purgers are actually creepy instead of for the first time(they're still pretty silly tho). It's pretty strongly anarchist, with it's depiction of how the vast majority of people don't actually need laws to keep them from doing murder. For crying out loud sake, it's a movie where the good guy black gangsters go to war against the KKK, neonazis, and the US government. How could you not love that? The First Purge is fantastic, watch it!
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Oct 14, 2018 23:12
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I should say, I do have to knock a few points off my ranking of the First Purge for the title. They called the third Xbox Xbox One and they called the fourth Purge The First Purge.
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Oct 14, 2018 23:14
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Anybody got tips on getting a hold of Near Dark? I haven’t found it on any streaming services and Amazon’s got the Blu-Ray listed for $100 
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Oct 14, 2018 23:43
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ebay has some but most of them seem way overpriced too. Maybe try your local library? Weirdly JustWatch doesn't even show results for it. It just apparently isn't available for commercial sale anywhere or something.
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Oct 14, 2018 23:47
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STAC Goat posted:ebay has some but most of them seem way overpriced too. Yeah I’ll try the library this week, just weird that it’s not even available on VOD.
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Oct 14, 2018 23:48
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I bought a DVD of it for like $3 at a flea market so 
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Oct 15, 2018 00:33
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Franchescanado posted:
 139- Phase IV 1974 - YOUTUBE I really didn't like this one when I first saw it as a teen. I went in expecting your standard killer bugs movie and this sure as hell wasn't it. If you asked the teenaged me to pick between this one and Ants!, would've gone with Ants! hands down. So, here I am decades later giving it a watch again because I refuse to pass up a Fran movie challenge. I don't know if it's a matter of age, life experience or what, but I definitely appreciate this one better now. Yeah, it's got that standard 70s era artsy weirdness you'd expect with a more cerebral film, but set that aside and there's a pretty unnervingly creepy film here. We can all roughly assume how mammals think, but how would bugs think when given the opportunity? Would we be seen as something to destroyed as a rival or would they have other plans for us?
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Oct 15, 2018 00:53
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27) The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) This one was... rough. It didn't have any of the heart of the previous two Cushing Frankenstein films. The creature had nothing on Lee's, or even the creature from Revenge of Frankenstein. And there was so much exposition that I nearly lost interest until it picked up later in the movie. Even then I wasn't totally into it. 2/5 Watched (27): Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5, Terrifier, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Martyrs (2008), Mandy, Babadook, Ghost Stories, Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon, Curse of the Puppet Master, Devil's Candy, Curse of Frankenstein, Mummy, Shining, Horror of Dracula, Quatermass Xperiment, Plague of the Zombies, Revenge of Frankenstein, I Am The Pretty Thing..., Nail Gun Massacre, Tucker and Dale, Coraline, Children of the Corn, Brides of Dracula, Curse of the Werewolf, Splinter, Evil of Frankenstein Challenges completed: #1 (Babadook), #7 (The Brides of Dracula)
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Oct 15, 2018 01:00
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 22)The Apostle (netflix) I loved it. Thought the central conceit was great, and I'm a sucker for folk horror. It's a smidge long, and the final act is a little messy, but doesn't take that much away from it for me. 4/5
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Oct 15, 2018 01:20
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I watched both of the Halloween "remakes" and loved them so much I ended up writing drat near essays. Now that's 5/6 of Rob Zombie's movies that are favorites of mine. 36. Halloween (2007) - 4/5 quote:Update: I initially gave this 3.5 stars, but having now seen the sequel I have to revise. Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween II are inseparable. To judge one without the other is insane. My review for the second film is basically a review of both. 37. Halloween II (2009) - 5/5 quote:Y E S. This is the best god drat slasher I think I'll ever see, and one of my new horror favorites. The Rob Zombie Halloween films are the first slashers I've ever appreciated for their genuine horror, and not just for their novelty. Maybe it's just the more relatable modern aesthetic, but the sheer brutality and relentlessness actually got to me. Shooting on 16mm was a fantastic choice too. SMP fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 01:39
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Franchescanado posted:
 26. Beetlejuice (1988) - Blu-ray I won the birthday lottery and the world is my oyster. Decided to go with probably the most shameful of the films I have yet to see. Great stop-motion, awesome effects in general, suicides being forced into an eternity of civil service, good acting, fun script, and a pile of batshit insanity. God drat, I am in love with this movie. Thanks for the kick in the butt to see it, thread! Now to go watch pan's Labyrinthe which my mother-in-law just selected. 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), 18. Thirst (2009), 19. Horror Hotel (1960), 20. Event Horizon (1997)*, 21. In the Mouth of Madness (1994), 22. Frankenstein (1931)*, 23. Monster from a Prehistoric Planet (1967), 24. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), 25. The Funhouse (1981), Beetlejuice (1988) Years Spanned: 95 (1922-2017) Tally by Decade: '20s (I), '30s (IV), '40s (II), '50s (II), '60s (V), '70s (II), '80s (V), '90s (II), 2000s (III), 2010s (I) B&W/Color: 13/14 Rewatch/Total: 3/25 Fran Challenges Complete: 1 2 * Rewatch [/quote]
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Oct 15, 2018 02:53
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 Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, 1979 I'm starting to have a quite the collection of movies telling the tale of Dracula and I've often toyed with the idea of spending a week of a future marathon just watching movie versions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but I realized I was missing this one. It's an remake of the oldest surviving Dracula movie, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens from 1922. I knew very little about this one before playing it, so I was pretty much expecting an beat for beat remake of the 1922 Nosferatu, only in color and with sound. It kind of starts out that way, but it got plenty going for it that's its own take on the story as the movie gets closer toward the end. Being an remake of Nosferatu, it goes for the ugly monster version of Dracula, which I think is closer to how he was in the book (I haven't read it yet, just going with what I've heard). Dracula looks, moves and act very awkward, but that it is what makes him stand out like this utter creep. It's just what you expect from a shut in weirdo like he is suppose to be. It's definitely a movie with focus on atmosphere and not on action. I really liked it as I'm the type of guy that likes slow movies like that. I'll include it in a future marathon if I go through with my Dracula binge idea.
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Oct 15, 2018 03:43
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28) Pumpkinhead 2 (1993) Better than I thought it would be for a DTV sequel. The acting was awful but there were actually some interesting cinematography choices. 2/5. Watched (28): Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5, Terrifier, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Martyrs (2008), Mandy, Babadook, Ghost Stories, Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon, Curse of the Puppet Master, Devil's Candy, Curse of Frankenstein, Mummy, Shining, Horror of Dracula, Quatermass Xperiment, Plague of the Zombies, Revenge of Frankenstein, I Am The Pretty Thing..., Nail Gun Massacre, Tucker and Dale, Coraline, Children of the Corn, Brides of Dracula, Curse of the Werewolf, Splinter, Evil of Frankenstein, Pumpkinhead 2 Challenges completed: #1 (Babadook), #7 (The Brides of Dracula)
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Oct 15, 2018 03:57
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 16. The Endless (2018) - Amazon I really liked Resolution, so I was looking forward to The Endless, and I was not disappointed. It expands on some of what was going on in Resolution, but you don’t need to have seen Resolution (though maybe it helps). The larger scope of this movie hit all of the right cool buttons for me. I also apparently like movies about cults, so I’ll need to watch more of those (I’m definitely going to try and see Apostle this month), but what was cool about this is how the cult fits into the larger picture. It doesn’t have much in the way of gore or jump scares, but relies on an unsettling experience in the woods. I definitely liked this.  Fran Challenge #6: Video Nasties 17. The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976) - Amazon I picked this one because of the bad-rear end cover, promising the supernatural, witches, sickles and beheadings. None of those are in the movie. The plot is simple, a woman seduces and then kills several men for unknown reasons at first, though she clearly is not living a happy life. Flashbacks gradually tell us the reason for these murderous urges - her father was abusive, and had raped her as a child, and this had broken her. Despite that spoilered part, it definitely isn’t a super gory movie or anything - I haven’t seen a whole bunch of the 72 video nasties, but this doesn’t fit in with Cannibal Holocaust or some of the others, for example. The acting and production are all low budget. it wasn’t the most awful thing I’ve seen, but wasn’t particularly great, either.  18. Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon (2006) Behind The Mask started out with promise, the first two thirds being a lighter-hearted Man Bites Dog look at slashers that deconstructed the tropes in a fun documentarian way. The third act, though, really just wanted to be an actual slasher movie, and this is where it became pretty boring. Deconstructing slashers, and then just giving us the by-the-numbers slasher being described in the documentary-like portion, just seems... pointless. It also ended up not showing us, but literally telling us what was going to happen in the planning of the slash, showing us in the imagined visuals, then when it all went down telling us again as the crew tried to remember the plan - and then showing us again when they inexplicably followed the plan despite wanting to escape! Maybe that’s the point, that slashers are so rote we just keep watching them over and over again so why not watch a series of events over and over again in the same movie. The pieces were all pretty well done, though, and it was fun to see the switches from documentary style to “real world” third person. There were a couple of fun cameos from some horror luminaries, as well as Robert Englund with a real, if small, role. List (18): Savageland, Ghostbusters (2016), Creep, Vampyr, Hereditary, Frontier(s), Butterfly Effect 3, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Tenant, The Screaming Skull, Hell House LLC, Ringu 0, Cat People, Banshee Chapter, Critters 2, The Endless, The Witch Who Came From The Sea, Behind the Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon Fran Challenges Fulfilled(4): #1 Love Something You Hate: Only Lovers Left Alive, #3 Hometown Horror: Butterfly Effect 3, #5 Birth Of Horror: The Tenant, #6 Video Nasties: The Witch Who Came From The Sea, #7 The World Is A Scary Place: Ringu 0
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Oct 15, 2018 05:23
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#14- The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy Hooooo boy. I saw the MST3K episode of this but that was a long time ago, and man this movie is rough. It was the third in a trilogy of movies featuring La Momia Azteca, centering on him defending Aztec treasure from an evil scientist calling himself The Bat, and roughly half the screentime is given to summarizing and showing clips from the first two movies, framed by a bunch of people sitting in a drawing room. I had trouble staying awake. This time around the Bat designs a "Roboto Humano", a robot with a dead body inside, and the goal is to use the robot to kill the mummy. But by the time this happens the movie's close to done, and there's only time for a brief scrap between the two. Some cool scenes in a lab and that's it.
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Oct 15, 2018 05:32
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The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) The only thing that stops a bad guy with a drill is a good girl with a circular saw. Subtle. Often cited as a feminist parody/deconstruction of the slasher movie so I was surprised by how pure this was. In its own way, with the constant fakeout jump scares, beyond gratuitous nudity, and high and frequent body count, it's a purer slasher than Halloween. For all the great gags in here ("he's so cold!" "is the pizza?"), the focus on the girls' faces when they're killed or in the final "aftermath" scene is genuinely unsettling. 3.5/5  sThe Wicker Man (1973)  The hot people without hangups were up to something. I knew it. Fascinated by how thoroughly this tears down its completely pathetic and unlikable protagonist then asks for our sympathy as he has everything taken away from him. A symbol of capital-A authority who goes from overbearing to inadequate in the face of a kind of cruelty older and bigger than his. Also...Christopher Lee! In a dress! There's a shot of a lone woman crying during an early orgy sequence that's never explained or expanded upon that I feel is key to this in a way that I can't quite figure out. The people here may be sexually liberated, but life is still strictly regimented and the whole place is still named after its most prominent aristocrat after all... 4.5/5  s
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Oct 15, 2018 07:11
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#26 "You're a fool, Ed Harley." Pumpkinhead (1989) Beware, evildoers... Or E.T.'s ugly uncle will show up, pull you out of frame by your feet, and kill you in mostly vague ways. The eponymous Pumpkinhead demon has a lot of articulation, as is befitting a Stan Winston creature, but from some combination of technical limitation or artistic license, has little interaction with a host of forgettable actors playing forgettable parts. Outside of Lance Henriksen's less-is-more emotiveness and a few interior shots, this feels very pedestrian even with a practical effects monster advanced enough to leer menacingly at its victims. Winston knows how to light and shoot a witch here, but not how to inject pathos. 
Name Change fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 07:28
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smitster posted:
One thing thats weird about this movie is how instead of Final Girl they say “survivor girl” like the real term is copyrighted or something.
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Oct 15, 2018 07:32
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8. Re-Animator (1985) It's been just enough time since last seeing this that I plum forgot how just comically cheap some of the effects are, although it only serves to endear me more to the film. It's inspiring, even, like you could envision doing these effects yourself, so all you'd need are actors as entertaining as Jeffrey Combs and David Gale. That said, for this watching I found myself enjoying the hapless Dan Cain (played by Bruce Abbott) a lot more than usual. You totally get why he cannot give up on the deliriously ambitious research of Herbert West even as he's shaking him and yelling "Herbert, this has got to stop!" Obviously, a must-watch of camp horror. 9. The Gate (1987) Someone decided to make The Evil Dead for kids. Pretty good, actually likable kid actors, and a scene where they learn how to close a demonic gate from a heavy metal song. 10. Dolls ()1987 This movie is an absolute blast! A fairytale-horror about of group of incredibly unlikable soon-to-be murder vicitims who have to spend a night in a creepy old couple's mansion. The dolls themselves are hilarious and creepy at the same time. Easily one of the best new movies I've discovered so far.
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Oct 15, 2018 11:18
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Franchescanado posted:FRAN CHALLENGES Its been four days since my last film and when trying to watch another all i could think was “I don’t wanna watch more rape… I don’t wanna watch more rape… I don’t wanna watch more rape…” So the plan to do The Hills Have Eyes double feature as Wes Craven’s worst really had me down. And I thought about other directors but they all kind of got rejected because I’d either seen them all or didn’t think they fit for one reason or another (like I’ve barely seen any Roger Corman films so watching his “worst” would seem empty). I kept coming back to Wes Craven because he’s an unqualified Master I’m hugely familiar with but he’s also got some real clunkers. Ultimately I decided there’s so much debate in this thread alone about what his worst film is why should I just default to The Hills Have Eyes Part II? Some are saying Cursed (which I’ve seen before and didn’t think was that bad), some said Vampire in Brooklyn (which I already watched in September and was deeply flawed but not like condemnable), and as far as I’m concerned until anything proves otherwise I already saw Wes’ worst film with Last House on the Left. So I’m gonna go ahead and watch this movie that has a 8% rating on RT and say I have a pretty good sampling of Wes Craven’s “worst” unless Fran says otherwise. If nothing else I started this twice and stopped it so on some level I really don’t want to watch it. 18 (20). My Soul To Take (2010) Available on the SyFy app.  A schizophrenic family man turns out to also be the notorious and savage serial killer The Ripper, but the night he’s killed (after murdering his family) seven children are born at the same moment and some believe that they took in the personalities/souls of the dead killer. So when 16 years later on the anniversary/birthdays they start getting killed the fingers get pointed. This is the last film Wes wrote and second to last he directed (Scream 4 being the last). He really hadn’t written an original feature film since New Nightmare in ’94 and there’s something to be said for maybe him just losing the touch. Wes managed to reinvent the genre a couple of times with teen films in Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream but everyone gets old and out of touch eventually. And of course he didn’t write Scream himself. The kids act bizarrely in this. So strangely that it had that thing where i start to wonder if I’m just the one out of touch. The whole weird culty Ripper Seven thing feels like something you’d see in some isolated backwards village movie instead of just a random small town. I tried to give some pass for the weirdness of the “Ripper Seven” background and kids taking any excuse to be sadistic and weird, but I just kind of never bought in. And Fang is a bizarre character. I don’t know. I’m old so maybe its me but these kids are just loving weird. There’s an ambitious idea and you can see where Wes is trying take elements from Scream and Nightmare, but it just doesn’t work and the whole thing is a mildly confusing, but at the same time by the numbers slog. Is this Wes Craven’s “worst film”? Well, if we’re talking about purely how well a film is made I’m gonna say yes. All the other candidates I’ve seen are bad for some reason or another but they’re competent films and stories. Its part of what kind of bugged me about Last House on the Left. Despite it being a disgusting and vile piece with no redeeming value, it was actually made well enough to keep me watching. Wes was good at what he did even when his idea was bad. But this was the end of the guy’s career and just didn’t have that touch anymore, maybe. Or maybe he was just trying too hard to reinvent the magic one last time. I don’t know but this one just sucked. But I still stand by Last House on the Left being an all together worse film put to print than this, Vampire in Brooklyn, or Cursed. But this is arguably the worst made of the bunch. Franchescanado posted:FRAN CHALLENGES This is so much easier, man… My birth year is loaded with a couple of my absolute favorites in The Fog and The Shining, some cult classics I haven’t seen like Prom Night and Altered States, some beloved I don’t love like Friday the 13th, a couple of “trilogy” movies by masters I have to complete in Inferno and City of the Living Dead, and an infamous movie I ain’t touching in Cannibal Hollocaust. But looking at my options there was one movie I’ve always heard about but never even really thought of watching that just felt like the right pick for this challenge. 19 (21). Motel Hell (1980) Available on Amazon Prime.  Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats are the best in the county but his secret is that he kidnaps and traps people outside and in his Motel Hello and mixes them with the meat. That seems like the sort of thing that would get you in trouble with the law if it wasn’t your dumb, rapey little brother. Or might turn off potential suitors unless they’re prone to some really bad decision making. This was different. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was going for a straight horror or a full on dark comedy. Wikipedia says the original intent was straight horror but the low budget led them in the other direction, and that feels right. Like someone started making something serious and then half way through realized they were making a comedy by mistake so went with it. One of the negative reviews calls it "tasteless, gruesomely awkward and moronic" which I can’t really disagree with, but which also seems like its charm. It wasn’t quite my thing but I can see why its a cult classic and I enjoyed it well enough. Rory Calhoun puts in a strong performance as that straight laced psycho who totally doesn’t know he’s psycho at all. Seeing him swinging a chainsaw while wearing a pig mask and laughing maniacally was definitely a memorable element of the movie, as was the garden. But in the end I think the one thing I’m really going to take away from this is what an absolute mess Terry is. I mean, seriously, Terry. You just woke up in a strange place and some dude says your boyfriend died and he buried him and your reaction is “I love it here, lets get it on”? And then when you find out he’s shockingly a deranged killer (remember your boyfriend?) your next instinct is to hook up with his rapey little brother? Maybe you need a little time alone, Terry. Get to know yourself a little. Highlights include John Ratzenberger in his easiest acting credit ever and a Wolfman Jack sighting. That’s a name I haven’t thought of in awhile. September Tally - New (Total) 1. A Cure For Wellness (2016) / - (2). Slither (2006) / 2 (3). Castle Rock (2018) / - (4). The Forsaken (2001) / 3 (5). The Night Eats the World (2018) / 4 (6). The Girl With All The Gifts (2016) / 5 (7). The Voices (2014) / 6 (8). Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) / 7 (9). Jug Face (2013) / 8 (10). Coherence (2013) / 9 (11). A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) / - (12). Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) / 10 (13). Excision (2012) / 11 (14). Spring (2014) October Tally - New (Total) 1. Suspiria (1977) / 2. It (2017) / 3. The Beyond (1981) / 4. Trilogy of Terror (1979) / 5. House on Haunted Hill (1959) / 6. Demons (1985) / Fran’s Challenge #1: 7. The Green Inferno (2013) / 8. Martin (1978) / 9. Malevolent (2018) / - (10). Dead and Breakfast (2004) / 10 (11). Night of the Comet (1984) / 11 (12). Jaws (1975) / 12 (13). Black Swan (2010) / Fran’s Challenge #2: 13 (14). Happy Death Day (2017) / - (15). Hell House, LLC (2015) / Fran’s Challenge #3: 14 (16). Hell House, LLC 2: The Abaddon Hotel (2018) / 15 (17). Carnival of Souls (1962) / 16 (18). The Last House on the Left (1972) / 17 (19). The Haunting of Hill House (2018) / Fran’s Challenge #4: 18 (20). My Soul To Take (2010) / Fran’s Challenge #5:19 (21). Motel Hell (1980)
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Oct 15, 2018 12:36
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The last time I watched Motel Hell, I had a weird revelation that Terry's arc is textbook Stockholm Syndrome brought on from the accident.
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Oct 15, 2018 12:54
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25. The Bride of FrankensteinFranchescanado posted:
I haven't seen any of the classic Universal monster movies in over 10 years and even though I taught a course on the novel I only ever saw the original movie and none of the sequels. This was a really enjoyable experience. The theatricality of it, the gorgeous set pieces, it reminded me of why I loved these old movies in the first place. 26. Inferno Franchescanado posted:
Giallo never really clicked for me. I love the ideas, the atmosphere, the craziness, but it never really adds up to something that appeals to me. Perhaps it is because I started with Suspiria and that kinda skewed my expectations, but during past challenges I saw The Bird with the Crystal Plummage, Deep Red and a few more without really caring much for them. On the other hand I really enjoyed two movies about giallo; The Editor and Berberian Sound Studio, plus this is a sequel of sorts to Suspiria, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately it was not a movie I enjoyed. The underwater ballroom was very cool, but for the most part it feels like a bunch of decent horror ideas thrown together with "a witch did it" thrown in to justify the chaos. The visuals were not up to Suspiria's level, nor was the soundtrack, or did I care about the characters as much. Disappointing.
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Oct 15, 2018 14:15
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 140- Toxic Zombies 1980 - TUBI TV I first caught this back in my teens on USA channel's Saturday Nightmares. I'd missed the first few minutes so I didn't catch the title, but it stuck with me. Years later when I was working for Blockbuster and being assigned to special orders, I figured why not order the movie for myself on the company's dime and bullshit a reason up for why I'd end up PVTing it. Still hadn't a clue on the title other than it was zombies running amok on campers in the wood. Flipped through the distributor catalog we had and thought I'd found it. Nope, ended up being Redneck Zombies which was dramatically different. Still ended up PVTing it to myself since it was the principle of the thing. Eventually I did track down the title and pick it up on one of those 40+ movie collections. As I didn't feel like digging it up and risk being buried under movies, I found it streaming on TubiTV. Storyline's pretty standard for a film of this type. It feels more like a 70s film that sat on the shelf until they had the funds to release it. A grow operation's deep in the woods and they all get sprayed with an untested chemical to kill thier multimillion dollar crop. Well, we all know what happens when untested crap gets used and we have what I'm not even sure could be correctly called zombies roaming the woods killing off campers. Pretty much the reason this film's stuck with me over the years instead of joining the blur of bog standard zombie type films in my brain is Jimmy. He's a developmentally disabled guy on a camping trip with his family. His parents get eaten and it's just him and his sister trying to make it through this, and I had to see if he made it through to the end alive.  141- Redneck Zombies 1987 - DVD For what was a mistaken purchase, this wasn't a waste. It's completely over the top like you'd expect from an early Troma film. There is something to offend everyone in this film pretty much. Essentially some toxic waste contaminates the mash getting used by a moonshine still. While it looks odd and all, the moonshiners still distribute it because 'shine's 'shine. We all know where this is going to go. There's parts where I'm seriously wondering if the crew might've been under the influence like a guy tripping on acid doing an autopsy on a zombie which comes across more as an excuse to play around with the camera settings. Gore is completely over the top with closeups. I'd recommend this only to people I know who are into early Troma or over the top gore, otherwise it's skippable.
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Oct 15, 2018 14:25
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17. Hell House LLC 2015 A group renovates an abandoned building into a haunted house. Was it already haunted though?? This movie was really effective at selling the continued creepiness of a spooky old house. The setting is already unsettling and then it's worsened as they fill the house with more and more spooky looking poo poo in preparation of opening their "haunted house" attraction. The people in the house do a great job of selling how scared they are at points and I bought in to the whole thing. I don't love the way it wraps up in the end, but I had a great time watching this one and recommend it. 4/5 18. Audition 1999 A middle aged man creates a fake movie audition in order to find his ideal companion. I knew going in to this that something messed up was going to happen at some point. Years back I can remember this film being talked about as though it was the most extreme and gruesome picture out there. The way it was talked about made me think that the movie was going to be a gore fest that holds nothing back. Audition was far from that. It's too bad I couldn't have seen this without any preconceived notions. The movie really takes its time setting the scene and giving small signals to the protagonist that maybe the woman he's interested in is hiding something from him. If this film wasn't classified as horror, you might expect the film to shift into a mystery or a tragic drama in the end. The ending: is completely horrific, but wasn't as visually sadistic as I was expecting. What happens in the final scene hits so hard because you feel that while the protagonist was dishonest, he wasn't malicious to the point of deserving anything like this. My skin was crawling when his son returned. The whole end sequence was incredible and intense. The reveal of the man in the bag in her apartment was also incredibly disturbing and built up my imagination of what she was capable of before the climax. I highly recommend it. 5/5 19. Return of the Living Dead 1985 Braaaaiiinnnnssss. Boobs. Rock n roll. This movie was so fun and silly from start to finish. I had such a great time watching it. I had never heard of it prior to reading this thread and I'm so glad I have seen it. Will be recommending to friends. Highly recommended. 5/5
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Oct 15, 2018 15:07
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14. Don't Torture a Duckling Child murders happen in a southern Italian town, who did it? Giallo with an interesting location: it's not the generic hillbilly town, it's a place that has ostensibly been reached by civilization (most clearly exemplified by the elevated highways), but whose inhabitants still cling to the old ways inbetween fancy cars and telephones. It might not be a very apt comparison, but it sort of gave me similar vibes as parts of Memories of Murder. This is my third Fulci, and second that (pleasantly?) didnt meet my expectation of dorky face melting, but the villain still gets their face brutally destroyed in the end. 15. The Burbs  After new, weird people with a bad front lawn and a strange foreign sounding name move in next door, Tom Hanks assembles the WASP Squad to investigate. I generally don't watch comedies cause they're too hit or miss, but I thought I'd give the Joe Dante and Tom Hanks teamup a chance. It ended up being okay, but way too tame for a satire, not funny enough for a wholesome comedy, and there's barely any horror to start with. I like how the movie really does make it unclear whether anything weird is actuallly happening up until the ending. I wouldn't say the ending ruins it, but it just really hammered home how toothless the entire thing is. 16. The Cell  A psychologist must enter the mind of a serial killer to save his latest victim, but literally. They have a machine for it. A movie that starts by emulating two of the most famous scenes from Lawrence of Arabia and goes on to do its Kubrick, Jodorovsky etc. impressions, it's really just a showcase of cinematography and costumes. It feels like they haphazardly tacked some rejected Silence of the Lambs ripoff script onto the dream sequences as an excuse to let Tarsem Singh go nuts in the latter. Not that I mind, style is substance and all. Still the huge disconnect between the two parts of the movie ends up holding back both. There is literally one tiny detail in the dream sequences that ends up making a difference in real life (and it's something that without doubt they would have figured out anyways), and once that happens both parts keep going until the end of the film, with neither getting enough room to really turn out well. Oh and at one point an actor has to say the line "If you die in the dream, you die in real life". He hesitates after the comma, as if in disbelief that they're really making him say it. It rules. Previously: Creepshow II, Monster Squad, Mandy, Shock, Devil Fetus, Black Cat, Suspiria, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Vampire's Kiss, The Vampire Lovers, The Howling II, Deathwatch, Lord of Illusion married but discreet fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Oct 20, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 15:09
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I'm anxiously awaiting reviews of Winterbeast.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:28
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 Saw(2004) As I do a brief tour of the 2000s, I had to make a point of watching Saw. It's easy to dump on Saw in 2018, easy to act like you were above it all even in 2004 when Saw was making 100+ million at the box office on a 1.2 mil budget. Well, I wasn't. I loved this poo poo then, and you know what, I still enjoy it today. While the series has slipped down into torture porn territory at times, the original is still a tightly plotted, super intense thriller that keeps you guessing with an iconic and memorable ending to top it all off. If there's an elephant in the room I suppose it would be Elwes over the top performance, but for me it always seemed perfectly appropriate and actually necessary(a more consistent accent would've been even better of course). Leigh Whannell, while he's very good in the film, was a relatively green actor who needed someone else to provide that intensity. The movie absolutely needed someone like Elwes to chew scenery, but in that genuine way that only professional character actors can pull off. And I know that not everyone agrees that he DID pull it off, but I wouldn't want to see a version of Saw without that performance.  Drag Me To Hell(2009) An annual rewatch for me, I actually have more fun watching this than any other Raimi film with the exception of Evil Dead 2. Lohman and Long are perfectly cast, they're genuine and likeable, but fairly bland which allows the Looney Tunes shenanigans happening all around them to stay just grounded enough to work. There are moments of comedy, for sure, but in typical Raimi fashion the movie also pulls no punches story-wise. Bad things happen to the innocent, the protagonists of the movie do not get out of the situation unscathed, and there is no way to directly defeat the Lamia. I want to make special mention of Lorna Raver this year, because she absolutely makes the first half of this movie. Her performance drives and supports the entire set-up, had she been forgettable you'd have 40 minutes of twiddling your thumbs waiting for the good stuff to start. But she really knocked it out of the park, and she's a legit actress who contributed her own thoughts to the role as well. The accent she used was based on a Hungarian friend of hers, and her use of the word "szajha"(bitch, whore, etc.) when she attacks Christine in the parking garage was her own contribution that she'd learned from her Hungarian friend. And it's only one scene, but she totally pulls off both sides of the role too. She's a pitiable woman in her introduction, she has been shamed and we feel for her,  But uh oh, when she lets loose you're in trouble:  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) 34. Scream(1996) 35. Audition(1999) 36. Cursed(2005) 37. Saw(2004) 38. Drag Me To Hell(2009)
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Oct 15, 2018 16:08
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Spatulater bro! posted:I'm anxiously awaiting reviews of Winterbeast. #62. Bad Dreams (1988) A young girl is the sole survivor of a cult mass suicide in the seventies. Thirteen years later she awakens from her coma and is put into a group therapy at the hospital. While there, she starts seeing visions of her former leader, and those around her start dying off in ways that look like accidents. This is a curious film. In some ways it brings to mind Nightmare on Elm Street, with the protagonist seeing a burnt up villain that no one else sees, seemingly responsible for deaths around her. However, it really is its own thing, and tries to accurately show the way mood swings work in the mentally unstable. It's not bad, and Richard Lynch as the villain is always fun. out of 5#63. Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1993) A sheriff and his family move into the rural town he grew up in as a kid. His rebel daughter and the local troublemakers wind up setting fire to an old witch's house, and she calls forth the demon of vengeance to hunt them down and kill them all in return. I have such a soft spot for mid-90s monster movies. They're always so cheesy, but they're just before CGI became ubiquitous so the practical effects are still fun. This movie is no different, reusing the costume from the first film to good effect, as teens slowly get in worse and worse trouble, and Andrew Robinson pretends he's in a far better quality picture. out of 5#64. Winterbeast (1992) A Native American portal to Hell opens up in the mountains, unleashing a number of embiggened monstrosities, and it's up to some lowly forest rangers to try to stop them. I'll be brutally honest, I fell asleep for about 10 minutes while watching this, and I don't think I really missed a lot. I certainly didn't miss any plot. This feels way older than it is, by like, a decade at least, with very much a feeling of "let's put on a show! We can use my dad's barn!", not to mention most of the monsters being claymation. Of course, while that is a shoddy thing, the whole method brings about a lot of charm to it in my opinion, and reminds me of things like The Alien Factor for its creativity in the face of not much talent. out of 5#65. Road Games (1981) Quid is an American truck driver working in Australia. While hauling meat from one side of the continent to the other, he starts noticing a suspicious motorist that makes him think of news reports about a serial killer, and becomes obsessed with proving he's right. Along the way he picks up a young lady hitchhiker who joins him in the mystery. This movie should get more notice than it does. It's really more than anything a character piece about the intelligent yet blue collar Quid, played charmingly by Stacy Keach. The scenes he has with Jamie Lee Curtis as Hitch are incredibly likable and the two have a natural chemistry that is a delight to watch. The mystery itself also brings with it a great sense of urgency without diluting the road trip nature of the film and keeps up the suspense. out of 5#66. I bought a vampire motorcycle (1990) Noddy is a motorcycle buff. After he buys a motorcycle that was cursed by a satanic cult, it starts going around killing people for their blood. Noddy in turn has to recruit a priest to help him exorcise the machine before it kills more innocents. Well this is a goofy one. There's plenty of black humor in it, but the vampire angle is played remarkably straight. It's not a vampire that turns into a motorcycle or anything like that, it's a friggin animate bike that grows spikes and jaws and eats people. Also, I think this is the only non-Star Wars film I've seen Anthony Daniels in. Very silly. out of 5#67. Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996) The titular Leprechaun is in the process of arranging a marriage with a space princess when the space marines come and shoot him up with their space guns, and bring the princess up into their space ship, only for the guy to reform up there (by pulling an "Alien" on a guy's space-boner) and starts killing them all. In space. I knew going in this would be stupid. And it is! But at least it seems to KNOW it's stupid. The effects are below straight-to-syfy tv series level budget, and the dialog and acting are as generic as can be. Some of the kills can be fun however. If you're into cheesy movies, this is catnip for you, I assure you. out of 5
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Oct 15, 2018 16:17
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Basebf555 posted:Bad things happen to the innocent, the protagonists of the movie do not get out of the situation unscathed, and there is no way to directly defeat the Lamia. I’ve noticed that this is a real sticking point for a lot of people for some reason. Like, don’t go to a horror movie called Drag Me To Hell and expect a happy ending, you weirdos.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:25
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Drunkboxer posted:I’ve noticed that this is a real sticking point for a lot of people for some reason. Like, don’t go to a horror movie called Drag Me To Hell and expect a happy ending, you weirdos. Especially when a child is murdered in the first scene.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:30
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I also think practical effects purists are barking up the wrong tree when they complain about Drag Me to Hell. The scenes where it's used, it's moments Raimi was obviously going for a slapstick tone and for that I think it totally works. CG is just another tool and if it's used properly I have no problem with it at all.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:35
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Basebf555 posted:
I actually had to rewatch this last year for a horror film class I was taking in grad school. It’s still meticulously plotted, but the aesthetic looks so washed out and overexposed that it really takes me out of it. That look always bothered me more than the actual content, and I hate that Saw’s success made a lot of horror adopt similar aesthetics for a while. Thank the lord Jigsaw switched things up.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:44
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Friends Are Evil posted:I actually had to rewatch this last year for a horror film class I was taking in grad school. It’s still meticulously plotted, but the aesthetic looks so washed out and overexposed that it really takes me out of it. Yea I can't disagree with any of that, it's something that didn't bother me at the time but years later I've developed a little more of an eye for good looking film and Saw aint that.
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Oct 15, 2018 16:49
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Franchescanado posted:
I wasn't planning to add this one for the challenge but I can't really think of a good reason not to. Especially since it counts for a Fran Challenge. 26. Winterbeast (1992, Christopher Thies) Source: Scream Stream  This piece of crap is an absolute blast. I haven't laughed this much from a movie in years. Aside from being atrociously amateurish in its acting, effects and cinematography, the film is edited together in what can only be assessed as "incorrectly." Seriously, it's like the editor put on a blind fold, chopped the film up with scissors and then spliced it back together by picking the pieces out of a hat. The creature attacks are sudden, random and hilarious. The film utilizes wondrous low-tier claymation for both the monsters and humans, and it's truly a beautiful thing. We also get some live action effects work and it's equally stunning. We get a wide assortment of different sorts of creatures (chest bursters, demons, zombies, dinosaurs and totem monsters) and each one exists with little to no rhyme or reason. And randomly inserted into this mess of a motion picture is a genuinely unsettling scene. Mind you it's unsettling for all the wrong reasons, but unsettling nonetheless. There's a lispy, flamboyant man who acts as an antagonist of sorts, and there's a point where he dons a creepy clown mask and dances around a rotting corpse in an armchair, all while listening to a low-fi recording of the nursery rhyme "Oh, Dear! What Can the Matter Be?" When the man realizes he's being watched, he takes off his mask, omits a sinister grin, and his head melts. It's god drat outstanding. In fact this whole movie is outstanding. It's the most entertaining bad movie I've seen since Shark Attack 3. It's pure gold.  You know what, this one deserves a few more screenshots.       (4 plaid shirts out of 5) _____________________________________________ Total: 26 Watched: The Blob (4.5) | Mandy (5) | The Hands of Orloc (4) | Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (4.5) | Fright Night (3) | Black Magic Part II (4) | Body Melt (3.5) | Suspiria (5) | The Old Dark House (4.5) | The Nude Vampire (3.5) | The Thing From Another World (3) | Phantasm (4) | Basket Case 2 (3) | Murders in the Rue Morgue (2) | The Tenant (5) | The Howling (3) | Calvaire (3.5) | Hereditary (5) | Nothing Left to Fear (1) | The Black Cat (4) | The Killing of a Sacred Deer (4.5) | The Hills Have Eyes Part II (0.5) | Cannibal Holocaust (3) | Apostle (2) | Christine (3.5) | Winterbeast (4) Fran Challenges: Countries: USA (17) | Italy (3) | France (2) | Hong Kong (1) | Germany (1) | Belgium (1) | Australia (1) Decades: 1920s (1) | 1930s (3) | 1950s (1) | 1970s (6) | 1980s (6) | 1990s (3) | 2000s (1) | 2010s (5) Spatulater bro! fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 16:52
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Drunkboxer posted:One thing thats weird about this movie is how instead of Final Girl they say “survivor girl” like the real term is copyrighted or something. Yeah, I meant to say something about that. "final girl" is such a well understood term that every time they said "survivor girl" I felt like, despite appearances, Leslie really was an amateur at this whole thing. How do you get such a basic technical term wrong? What a scrub.
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Oct 15, 2018 17:23
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Day 15 - It Came From the Desert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8KsmuEXCn4 Thirty years ago there was a video game company named Cinemaware. Never heard of them? That's okay, they weren't very good. They specialized in what was considered "cinematic" experiences, but were basically some very nice graphics for the time cutscenes linked by some really boring minigames. So their games, typically released on the Commodore Amiga, looked pretty and played terribly. One of their biggest games was based on 1950's B-movies and in it a meteor turns ants giant and they rampage through a New Mexico town. When they expanded into CD-ROM games and consoles, it was this game that they remade with actors for the Turbografx-16. But the sales weren't there in 1990 for CD-ROM based video games and the expense of trying to make them bankrupted the already financially troubled company. Cue 2017 and for some reason that I'll never figure out, someone thought it was a good idea to license It Came From the Desert for a movie. I don't know why since the only people who would be lured into watching the movie by that license is weirdos like me who specifically collect strange video game things. There's a bunch of rear end in a top hat teenagers having a party in the desert right next to a secret base where government scientists were cross breeding aliens and ants to make super ants. The ants escape and go on a predictable rampage while the teens fight back with their motocross skills. This is a strange movie. I suspect (and I'm not doing research on it) that it was shot about ten years ago, then a tiny group worked on the effects as a labor of love since then. The reason is that the technology all seems to be mid-2000's rather than mid-2010's (everyone has flip phones, there are chunky computer monitors) and at the same time there is a surprising amount of CGI in this movie. Way more CGI than a "how much computer graphics can I get by maxing this credit card and throwing in a case of beer" budgeted movie should have. Now none of this is good CGI, just that there's a whole lot of it for what is essentially a no budget monster flick. This is definitely one of those cases where the scriptwriter thought he was a lot more clever than he actually was. Tons of out of date pop culture references, some really stupid running "gags", and plenty of other humor that totally fails to land. The second to last shot of the movie is a giant ant stealing a beer from the star of a series of movies that the characters are all obsessed with and chugging it, which sounds awesome but you haven't just spent ninety minutes with these characters going on about these movies and how they desperately wanted a beer. It's the kind of script where characters spout "cool" dialog even when it doesn't make sense for them to; it felt like a bad horror movie from the 90's in that way. It Came From the Desert definitely delivers on the giant ant front which is honestly more than I was expecting from it. And it keeps things moving so once you're part the opening character sequences it doesn't really let up. On the other hand, I was really sick of their attempts to be clever by the end of the movie. So, I guess that's a recommendation to watch Them! ?
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Oct 15, 2018 17:25
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 #25. Hotel Transylvania (YouTube TV/FX) -  /5Count Dracula opens a hotel for monsters, hidden away from the human world, to give them a safe place to unwind and relax. He also uses it to try and keep his daughter Mavis safe. But when a lone human accidentally wanders in and ends up falling for Mavis, Drac's world gets turned upside down... but maybe that's a good thing? I had it on as background noise for chores, but ended up getting sucked into watching it all the way through. I was kinda surprised how much I ended up liking it, even though I don't particularly care for almost all of the principal cast. It's the very definition of a "not terrible" kids' movie - harmless and engaging enough to keep your attention on the screen, but not necessarily brainless enough to insult your intelligence or taste. (Though it does love going to fart and butt jokes a bit more often than I'd like.) I will say the ending, where it turns out all the humans actually like monsters, through monster-themed street fairs, and have enough Dracula cosplayers to create a cape bridge to protect Drac from the sun was fairly contrived. Also, it ends on the now-standard "everyone shows up to sing and/or rap" lead-out to the end credits, and your tolerance for that could end up damaging your appreciation for it right as its ending. Recommended, but I don't think I'd ever care to check out the sequels.  #26. Psycho (1960) (Shudder) - /5A woman embezzles over $40,000 from her job and tries to run away, but ends up staying at the deserted Bates Motel, overseen by Norman Bates... and his domineering, never seen mother. When she ends up dead, her sister, her boyfriend and a private investigator all come calling, causing Norman to lose even more control of his mother, and the situation. Incredibly effective, even today, this film is a masterclass on setup and payoff. It's amazing how great Anthony Perkins is in this role, and how well he's able to sell Norman's affable nature, his dread at losing control, and the hidden steel underneath. Everyone knows that justifiably famous shower scene, but the rest of it is basically as great as that, especially the talk between Norman and Marion in the parlor, or Norman cleaning up after the shower, or the P.I. Arbogast entering The House. The ending psychiatrist explanation is still pretty much a bum note, but when that's the only one, you've still basically created a perfect symphony. Highly recommended if you've somehow managed to never see this one.  #27. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Shudder) - /5An Irish toymaker plans on using a chunk of stonehenge to power evil Halloween masks (available in three styles!) which, when a special television commercial is played, will cause children's heads to turn into a mess of snakes and crickets. Also he has robot henchmen, which seems like it should be a bigger deal. Only alcoholic Dr. Tom Atkinson and Some Woman can save the day. This one gets a bad rap for being the "odd one out" in the Halloween franchise, and not the follow up to 1 & 2 that audiences wanted. Taken on its own merits, though... it'd still probably be derided for being a weird mess, and would probably still exist as a cult oddity than anything else. I like the wavelength that this movie is working on, but I also admit it's a shaggy dog, with an overarching plot that doesn't make a lick of sense, a whole horde of Michael Myers stand-ins in the robot henchmen that still don't work half as well, and a general incoherence and lack of cohesion to the whole affair. It does have a pretty cool Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack, so I guess that bumps it up an extra point. 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, Children of the Corn II, The Mummy's Curse, The Prophecy, Child's Play 2, Halloween II (1981), Hotel Transylvania, Psycho (1960), Halloween III
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Oct 15, 2018 17:36
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 142- Fade To Black 1980 - YOUTUBE This one kinda hit a bit close to home for me. Much like my being the target in grade school had me sympathizing with Carrie like mad, Eric Binford's passion for movies clicks a bit too hard with me. Eric when not out of the house, watches movies non-stop. I'm guilty of this. Eric works for a movie distributor. I worked at Blockbuster along with other video rental places, and have repeatedly tried to get hired at movie theaters. Eric knows a shitload of movie facts and quotes to where he can recite on the spot. So do I though I don't do it at work. The big difference is Eric becomes a killer. I've only killed the occasional earwig or centipede. Story's pretty simple, Eric has a rough time living with his Aunt and dealing with the assholes around him. He falls for a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and we can guess where it all goes from here. His kills are for the most part bland, but what stands out is that he dresses up like movie characters when he does them. This one's one of Mickey Roarke's early roles and Tim Thomerson makes an appearance, probably one of earliest when he was still a comedian. I still remember parts of his stagecoach standup skit with the one guy determined to keep reading a book while they're bouncing along. There is a novelization which does a good job of going more into Eric's movie passion such as he acquires a suit of armor from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and has to try it on only to get stuck and has to be cut out of it. I have to admit, that I would do the same thing but hopefully not get stuck in the armor. M_Sinistrari fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Oct 15, 2018 |
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Oct 15, 2018 17:38
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