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Basebf555 posted:Lightning Power! Electricity fixed Max Dillon's teeth in Amazing Spider-Man 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdBlqvDNU8o&t=119s
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Oct 16, 2018 19:36
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graventy posted:17. Cannibal Holocaust - 1980 If I reviewed this one, I would've said pretty much the same. More like 'then be surprised at facing the consequences'.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:45
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Franchescanado posted:
19.  Cremator While this might get some people to split hairs and say "That isn't really horror because (technical nitpick here)", I say what's more horrible than real human atrocity? Ostensibly it's a movie about a mild-mannered, Buddhist-philosophizing cremator who quickly and easily becomes a tool of the fascist regime knocking at the door of his country of Czechoslovakia during WWII. He believes in "freeing souls" through cremation, and he has a half-Jewish wife and two quarter-Jewish kids and... I think you see where this is all going. The horror of Cremator comes with the readiness of Karl to throw away everything he loves and turn over his will to the Reich, and it's framed like a slow-burn horror movie of an already unstable man gradually growing madder until the inevitable conclusion. It's sort of The Shining meets Schindler's List, which is really a bad comparison but I have to leave to go to work in like 10 minutes and one could really spend loving hours unpacking this movie. It's a loving great movie, if you haven't seen it just watch it. Even if it's not October, it's really an any time movie and it's fantastic... like not to poo poo on the stuff I usually enjoy this time of year but this was an actual "movie-movie" and not, you know, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:45
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The film crew in Cannibal Holocaust are almost cartoonishly evil.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:49
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Franchescanado posted:This is a little confusing, because that's absolutely what the intention of the film was. The whole point is that the documentarians take a legitimately interesting premise for their doc and instead are absolute monsters to the natives so they can get good footage. It's not a feel-good movie at all, which I guess your rating is reflecting? I get it, or at least I think I get it. It felt like Deodato came up with his cool "No YOU are the monster" ending and then made it a reality by with moustache-twirling VICE assholes. I would like it to be at least a little grounded in reality and this goes ludicrously beyond pushing lemmings off of a cliff. It felt like even these jerks would get there, see the crazy poo poo the cannibals are doing, and decide that was enough for a crazy documentary, which it would be.
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Oct 16, 2018 20:41
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22) Scream 4 (2011) This one is for the Love What You Hate challenge, because what I really hate is franchise movies. No matter how good the original is, the meat gets stripped completely from the bone by the third installment at the latest. Unfortunately, Scream was no exception. For all it claims "New decade, new rules" it's actually an intentional retread of the original. And once you know that, you know who the killers are.
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Oct 16, 2018 21:39
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Jedit posted:22) Scream 4 (2011) Man, that first false ending had me so pumped for a hypothetical Scream 5 where the killer from the previous film is getting stalked by their own brand new copycat(s). Sort of a slasher vs. slasher scenario, which would be an interesting way to take this series instead of relying on Jamie Kennedy or his millennial stand-ins to come in and explain everything to me. But that all got tanked by the true ending, where the villain cousin is killed off and everyone from the previous movies survives, because no one can just let the power trio of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette go. The longer the Scream series goes on, the more annoyed I am that those characters are still around. Am I crazy?
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Oct 16, 2018 22:08
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Class3KillStorm posted:Man, that first false ending had me so pumped for a hypothetical Scream 5 where the killer from the previous film is getting stalked by their own brand new copycat(s). Sort of a slasher vs. slasher scenario, which would be an interesting way to take this series instead of relying on Jamie Kennedy or his millennial stand-ins to come in and explain everything to me. But that all got tanked by the true ending, where the villain cousin is killed off and everyone from the previous movies survives, because no one can just let the power trio of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette go. You're not crazy. I think Cox or Arquette should have been bumped off in 4.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:11
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graventy posted:I get it, or at least I think I get it. It felt like Deodato came up with his cool "No YOU are the monster" ending and then made it a reality by with moustache-twirling VICE assholes. I would like it to be at least a little grounded in reality and this goes ludicrously beyond pushing lemmings off of a cliff. It felt like even these jerks would get there, see the crazy poo poo the cannibals are doing, and decide that was enough for a crazy documentary, which it would be. WEELLLLLLL....The thing about Cannibal Holocaust's documentary team is that they were a very pointed criticism and caricature of Mondo filmmakers, specifically the guys who started the whole thing, Jacopetti and Prosperi, who were accused (and eventually found innocent) of a bunch of heinous stuff in order to get their footage. The whole firing squad thing shown early on was directly taken from controversy surrounding Africa Addio, where they filmed their own firing squad execution and were arrested for suspicion of the same kind of abetting they depict in CH. That's a portion of the film's meanings and messages that are kind of lost on today's audience because it's such an artifact of the times.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:17
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20. Child's Play 3 1991 Chucky continues tormenting Andy, this time at a Military school. This movie continues the streak from 2 of having the final confrontation take place in a really interesting location. This one takes place inside of a spooky amusement park ride. Overall this movie just felt really uninspired. The best part of this movie was watching how dedicated one of the kids at the military academy was to being murdered or used by Chucky. Chucky literally tells this kid he wants to play a game called "Hide the Soul" and the kid is like "sure, let's play." 2/5 21. Dead Alive 1992 A zombie cartoon come to life. Oh my god! I knew this one was going to be gory and gross but I had no freaking idea just how far it would go. This movie was loving nuts. I had a great time watching it. I can't even imagine how many models, props, and other effects had to be created for this movie. It's a non stop practical effect showcase. This was especially funny to watch in contrast to Crystal Lake Memories (about the Friday the 13th series). Each Friday the 13th installment had elaborate gore props created that always had to be cut down or toned down to maintain an R-rating while Dead Alive (obviously not made in America) goes full out and just dumps blood everywhere. 5/5 I'm curious. Did this get a theatrical release in America or was it straight to video?
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Oct 16, 2018 23:22
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23) Ghosts of Darkness (2017) Following a string of mysterious murder-suicides linked to demonic possession, the owner of the house where they all occurred calls in two paranormal investigators to spend three days and nights on the premises to try and solve the mystery. This one is for the Hometown Horror challenge. David Ryan Keith has made a (shoe)string of low budget horror movies in the Aberdeen area, and as he's pretty much the only person ever to make a horror movie here I'm stuck with him. He's been getting better since his first attempt, apparently, and on this movie even had the budget to hire as many as three actors who were not friends or family members: Michael Koltes (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story [1]), Paul Flannery (The Crystal Maze [2]) and Steve Weston (EastEnders [3]). He also got a nice location to use from the National Trust. It's probably true to say you get what you pay for, and as this movie cost a quarter of the budget of Halloween without adjusting for 38 years of inflation it's pleasant to find that it's more than a quarter as good. There's some OK injury effects, some really bad CGI - although on that much money it's amazing that there's any at all - and a definite sense that every penny made it to the screen. I also quite liked the dynamic between the two main characters, the true believer with no reason to believe and the sceptic with every reason to want to. The full movie is on YouTube if you want to check it out. [1] Casting Assistant. [2] The live stage show. [3] Seven episodes over 22 years.
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Oct 16, 2018 23:28
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King Vidiot posted:19. I watched this for the challenge a few years ago and yeah, it's great. Particularly Rudolf Hrušínský's performance (you're drat right I had to google that one) and the ending. Not very well know, too, which is a shame. There's a Criterion Collection release of it which means it's available for streaming on Kanopy if anyone is interested. Jolo posted:I'm curious. Did this get a theatrical release in America or was it straight to video? IIRC, it did get screened in the US as Braindead but it was never a wide release.
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Oct 16, 2018 23:39
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      #45. Critters (1986) Man, there was a lot of weird poo poo thrown together in this, and I loved it. Little animalistic aliens with quills and needle teeth, big humanoid aliens with BFGs and changing faces, a stressed farm family, a young Billy Zane as a preppie slime, a drunkard protagonist, a young boy in the mid-'80s dressed in pink shirt and pink hat, and lots of poo poo blowing up, from firecrackers to houses. That sequence for the first face transformation was great, as was the playful tone that the film kept up, whether shifting into a fake music video, naming a housecat 'Chewie,' or having a toy E.T. get chewed up (Dee Wallace plays the mom). Looking forward to seeing how the sequels do in comparison.  / 10    #46. Phantasm II, a.k.a., Phantasm II: The Never Dead Part Two (1988) A strange follow-up to a much stranger film. The stories of studio interference almost eclipse the movie itself, but under all the weird changes and mandated exclusions, there's a lot of charm, due mostly to Reggie 'Reggie' Bannister. Angus Scrimm is pretty much flawless in delivering what's called for by the script, and while the story change to hunting the Tall Man across a mid-apocalyptic America is abrupt, it keeps enough of a dreamlike vibe going to make the shift work to a fair degree. Respect for the quad-barrel shotgun, even if it does go under-utilized. Some more slime would have been appreciated, but the addition of acid to the embalming fluid was a neat jump. Felt like they overplayed the spheres a bit, but the busting through repeated doors was an excellent moment. In spite of all the fun moments, the movie ended up feeling disappointingly limited, even with a plot sprawling all over the map. / 10 #47. Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990) Goofy supernatural killing fun. Delirious to a degree that surpasses Evil Dead II at times. An opening shot of a Hell in which chained women dance in '80s underwear and tights leads into a story which turns the possession angle from Prom Night II into reality-warping hijinx. Tubby science teachers get staked with ice cream cones, then gutted and filled with banana splits, a couple has sex on an American flag while patriotic music plays, a thrown football turns into a cork-screw, a jukebox shoots saw-edged 45s, and more and more. Courtney Taylor is gorgeous in her debut film role as returning villain Mary Lou Maloney, Tim Conlon is amusing as the lead, a high schooler who can't stand how average he is, and Cynthia Preston is a lot of fun as his mortal girlfriend, who channels her anger into baked goods. Absurd and delightful, I just wish the contrast had been a little sharper in the underground scenes. / 10
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Oct 17, 2018 00:22
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14/31 - Dog Soldiers This is a rewatch and I remember really loving it when I saw it originally. A decade later and I still really enjoyed it but was a little disappointed by the lack of a real transformation scene. The wolves kind of look like the mask from Creep which was neat, as was recognizing Davos from GoT. I think I put this movie in my top 5 a few years ago but on rewatch it wouldn’t make that list though I do think it’s a better movie than say The Howling. 15/31 - John Carpenter’s Halloween Watching this after following along with the Halloween Unmasked podcast was an interesting experience. It really made things like the fact they had to keep racking up and reusing the same leaves over and over and Carpenter’s chain smoking wafting in to shots every now and then really stand out. Also why are there so many Jack-o-lanterns next to beds? Safety hazard! As for the film, it’s still great and I even noticed somethings I had never caught before (probably haven’t seen it in a decade or more) like the car door being unlocked and then the windows being all fogged up from Myers sitting in the car, or the little girls telling Annie’s boyfriend she was stuck in the window 2 seconds after Annie said not to tell anyone. The only thing I think would make this movie better is to remove some of the loud and somewhat corny synth noises whenever Michael pops into view. It’s a lot creepier if he’s just standing there in silence. 16/31 - Scream The opening scene as well as the climax of this movie are all timers. It does seem to drag a bit in the middle though I honestly can’t say which scenes I would remove. I can’t remember if it was this thread or the horror movie thread proper that people were discussing their distaste for Matthew Lillard but enjoying him in Scream. I’m the opposite. I enjoy quite a bit of his work but man I wanted to kick him in the face in this movie. Other than his performance the rest of the cast is great. 17/31 - 31 I must start this review by saying I generally enjoy what I’ve seen from Rob Zombie. I loved House of 1000 Corpses when it was originally released though I’m wondering how it will hold up, it’s on my list for a rewatch. Devils Rejects is great, imo, and I think the first half of Halloween is pretty drat good though the back half is meh. I really did not like this at all. It was like Rob Zombie turned up to 15 with no oversight. Again, thinking back on it, it’s quite possible I will feel the same way about Ho1kC on rewatch. The dialogue was try hard, and white trash Hunger Games is kind of a lame premise. The acting is fine and the sets, costumes, cinematography are all well done, but this one just didn’t grab me. TheBizzness fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Oct 17, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2018 00:27
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 35. Corridors of Blood (1958). Directed by Robert Day. Watched on FilmStruck Most underwhelming name I've seen all month. Still, this is a competently made film. Very dry by today's standards, but this must have been hard to watch in the 50's. The real horror here is how horrible and intense surgical procedures in the 19th century were, which in it's defense, is extremely fertile ground. I'm surprised more horror films didn't/don't mine this kind of material. Boris Karloff is great as a doctor who gets addicted to his own anesthetic, and Christopher Lee is a scary motherfucker in his Babadook-rear end resurrectionist getup. Friends Are Evil fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Oct 17, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2018 00:32
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TheBizzness posted:
When I watched it last October I described it something like "This just feels like what Rob Zombie and his friends do for fun on a bored weekend." It really didn't feel like they made any real effort for story and creative, which is odd since Zombie seems to actually put a lot of background thought into his stuff. I seem to recall him having entire biographies and backstories made up for the Fireflys. But this just felt like they decided one weekend "Lets make a movie for fun" and this is what naturally came out. Which is fine, maybe even charming. But it wasn't very good.
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Oct 17, 2018 00:59
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https://twitter.com/BAKKOOONN/status/1051957815978287104
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Oct 17, 2018 01:00
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STAC Goat posted:When I watched it last October I described it something like "This just feels like what Rob Zombie and his friends do for fun on a bored weekend." It really didn't feel like they made any real effort for story and creative, which is odd since Zombie seems to actually put a lot of background thought into his stuff. I seem to recall him having entire biographies and backstories made up for the Fireflys. But this just felt like they decided one weekend "Lets make a movie for fun" and this is what naturally came out. Have you seen Lords of Salem? I’ll probably finish off Zombies non animated movies by the end of the weekend but that one looks pretty iffy also.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:04
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I actually really really liked Lords of Salem and felt like it was kind of Zombie's evolution. He got past a lot of the crutches and gory/edgy stuff and just made a story that stood on its own. It felt like a throwback to old 70s and 80s atmospheric movies like The Fog. I've been meaning to give it a rewatch but I'd definitely recommend it as one of his better films based on my one viewing a few years back. A different tone from the "Zombie" one but I think that's good, and still plenty that feels like Zombie's style.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:09
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Lords of Salem is fantastic but I'm watching it later this week so I'll say more about it then.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:11
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That is very encouraging now I’m psyched to watch it.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:13
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STAC Goat posted:When I watched it last October I described it something like "This just feels like what Rob Zombie and his friends do for fun on a bored weekend." It really didn't feel like they made any real effort for story and creative, which is odd since Zombie seems to actually put a lot of background thought into his stuff. I seem to recall him having entire biographies and backstories made up for the Fireflys. But this just felt like they decided one weekend "Lets make a movie for fun" and this is what naturally came out. From what I'm aware, your read on the movie is basically what went down: Zombie had writer's block and threw something quick and dirty together to get his juices flowing again. I wanna say it was even shot in a single weekend.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:36
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Franchescanado posted:
24. Opera (1987) Watched On: Amazon Prime I was hoping to watch this as a thematic pair with Tenebrae for the Video Nasty challenge, but now I'm wondering if I should. This was my first Argento, so I don't know if the things that bothered me about Opera will persist into his other movies. Opera felt more like a series of vignettes than a cohesive whole movie. There were some incredible visuals (pretty much any scene in the opera house, the rich kid's bedroom area) but the storytelling just wasn't there. Pretty much all of the film's agency goes to its killer, which makes the confrontations with his victims fairly banal except for the gore. By the end of the movie I was completely checked out: I didn't care who the killer was, nor did I care about his motivations. Should I check out Tenebrae if these things bothered me about Argento or would I be better suited to watching The Beyond instead if I want to stick to Italian Horror for this pairing?
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Oct 17, 2018 01:39
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Watch a horror film made outside of the USA & Canada. If you live outside of the USA & Canada, you cannot choose a film made in your home country.
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:From what I'm aware, your read on the movie is basically what went down: Zombie had writer's block and threw something quick and dirty together to get his juices flowing again. I wanna say it was even shot in a single weekend. Heh, that's funny. But yeah, that's what it felt like to me. Like the filmmaking equivalent of a jam session.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:42
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Class3KillStorm posted:Man, that first false ending had me so pumped for a hypothetical Scream 5 where the killer from the previous film is getting stalked by their own brand new copycat(s). Sort of a slasher vs. slasher scenario, which would be an interesting way to take this series instead of relying on Jamie Kennedy or his millennial stand-ins to come in and explain everything to me. But that all got tanked by the true ending, where the villain cousin is killed off and everyone from the previous movies survives, because no one can just let the power trio of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette go. I hated Scream 4 but I totally disagree with you. I love that Scream is a franchise where the killer always changes but the main characters, especially Sidney Prescott, survive every time and keep kicking. The story's about them, not the assholes who keep trying to stab them. It's incredibly frustrating when the final girl of a movie dies in the opening of the sequel, or even partway through it. Beating the bad guy should count for something, just dying to the same guy(or sometimes his brother or something) a couple years later feels like a crappy ending to the arc of someone who overcame such odds. Honestly, one of Scream's big problems is that they kill off supporting cast members from the first movie in every installment, which does nothing but force them to introduce less interesting characters for Sydney to interact with (and for us to wonder if they might be the killer).
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Oct 17, 2018 01:44
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STAC Goat posted:Heh, that's funny. It's at the very least a testament to Rob Zombie's potential that a loving "jam session" is him calling up his buddy Malcolm Goddamn McDowell to shoot a movie with a Hitler Dwarf. Not to mention Meg Foster and Richard Brake, both giving amazing performances. I mean yeah it doesn't gel, but given the story of how it got made it was never really meant to gel.
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Oct 17, 2018 01:54
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Yeah, that's why I think its kind of charming. There's something deeper there to who Zombie is as a filmmaker that his "tossed together" nonsense is actually a competently done little film with a real cast and crew that just doesn't work the way tons of hugely expensive years long productions don't work. But like, its not a good movie. Just kind of an interesting footnote to Zombie's filmography. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Oct 17, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2018 01:57
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 FRAN CHALLENGE #9: Stranger Danger25. October 16 - Sleep Tight I showed my [REC]-loving buddy my Shudder queue and this is what he picked. It's more of a psychological thriller than a straight horror movie, but it's really well done. There's a scene in the first twenty minutes when you suddenly realize exactly what kind of story you're watching, and it literally made my skin crawl. I usually include the movie poster with my reviews here, but every single poster I can find for this movie is a massive spoiler for one of its most effective scenes. I recommend watching it without watching the trailer or reading anything about it. Total: 25 1. Hell House LLC 2. Channel Zero: Candle Cove 3. Grave Encounters 4. Channel Zero: No-End House 5. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil* 6. Rope* 7. Der Nachtmahr 8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre* 9. Survival of the Dead* 10. Lake Mungo 11. Jigsaw 12. Tenebrae* 13. Opera* 14. Halloween 15. Channel Zero: Butcher's Block 16. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night 17. Tetsuo: The Iron Man 18. The Eye* 19. Dark, Deadly & Dreadful 20. As Above So Below 21. Chernobyl Diaries 22. Hour of the Wolf* 23. Apostle 24. The Wicker Man 25. Sleep Tight* *Fran Challenge (9/9 Completed) [/quote]
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Oct 17, 2018 02:21
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Choco1980 posted:WEELLLLLLL....The thing about Cannibal Holocaust's documentary team is that they were a very pointed criticism and caricature of Mondo filmmakers, specifically the guys who started the whole thing, Jacopetti and Prosperi, who were accused (and eventually found innocent) of a bunch of heinous stuff in order to get their footage. The whole firing squad thing shown early on was directly taken from controversy surrounding Africa Addio, where they filmed their own firing squad execution and were arrested for suspicion of the same kind of abetting they depict in CH. That's a portion of the film's meanings and messages that are kind of lost on today's audience because it's such an artifact of the times. Thanks! That context is really helpful!
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Oct 17, 2018 02:45
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Day 16 - Ganja and Hess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEM9oEKC1Ow I'm coming away from Ganja and Hess with some mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's ambitious, explores deep themes, and refuses to dole out simple answers. On the other hand, a lot of the things it's trying to do just come across awkwardly and its unusual story structure mixing the allegorical with the actual leads to the film obfuscating simple things that should have been straightforward. Hess is an anthropologist who gets an unruly house guest. The guest stabs Hess with a bone knife that leaves him with a thirst for blood and an inability to die. Ganja is the guest's wife and when she comes looking for him, Ganja falls for Hess. Duane Jones plays Hess and he's the single best reason to watch this movie (no, I'm not talking about his full frontal nudity). His performance is incredible as he swings through the difficulties of vampirism. Sadly, Marlene Clark's Ganja is much less interesting and it doesn't help that she's introduced as a complete rear end in a top hat which made me wonder what Hess saw in her. The two should be playing off each other more than they do and some of that is the screenwriting and direction which seems to keep the characters apart even when they're supposed to be together. The film has a very dreamlike quality as it often drifts into other scenes and moments leaving the viewer to puzzle out exactly what is happening. Sometimes this works (the strange murder/suicide scene at the beginning) and sometimes it doesn't. Speaking of that scene, how are there two vampire movies that involve the newborn vampire lapping up blood off a bathroom floor? Though I'd put money on Del Toro's being an intentional homage given that he's the kind of person who would go out of his way to watch Ganja and Hess. I'm having trouble forming ideas about this movie because it is so contradictory. I'll acknowledge that I'm the wrong audience for a lot of the themes as well: for example, I could tell that the movie wanted to say something about successful African-Americans hiring black servants and while I felt like it never actually went anywhere with that idea I also know that I could have just missed it. Similarly, I'm not sure about the role of the church in this movie. Ganja and Hess strikes me as a really good effort that just didn't work for me but probably would for someone else.
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Oct 17, 2018 02:53
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       #48. Strait-Jacket (1964) Joan Crawford in a Robert Bloch script directed by William Castle. Dig it. Surprisingly reminiscent of Vertigo at times, though they copy Psycho's 'let's explain this for the dim bulbs in the audience' post-ending scene. After coming home one night to find her husband in bed with another woman, Crawford's character snaps and chops them to pieces with an axe (in a scene that's surprisingly brutal for the time). Twenty years later, she's released from the asylum, and comes home to live with her daughter, who's recently become engaged to a man with wealthy parents, and tries to deal with her memories and the suspicions of other characters towards her. I didn't see the twist coming at all, but in retrospect, it was clearly set up in the film, so that was satisfying. Lots of personalities to the different characters, even the small ones, and Crawford did a fine job separating her character's haggard and rejuvenated modes. My main complaint is that things were generally too airy or over-played to let Crawford's character have scenes of earnest suffering, so most of the moments which focus on her dealing with her trauma tended to turn into overwrought screaming. Good, but not as good as it could have been. / 10 #49. Blood (2000) I've had the DVD for this sitting on my shelf for years, and finally used this month to push myself into watching it. It wasn't as bad as I'd expected based on the pull quotes and Asylum distribution, and while it wasn't actually good, it was at least interesting. The film begins with a young woman held captive in a house full of junkies, and soon rescued. The reason they were holding her was because her biochemistry has been altered to give her blood narcotic properties when ingested, and her rescuer is the scientist who caused that alteration twenty years earlier. Once she's safely installed at his home, his curiosity eventually gets the better of him, and things begin to spiral out of control. There's a lot of amateurism on display with this film, with the blocking, lighting, sound, and acting, but the dialogue is usually natural-sounding, and the premise is an inventive twist on vampirism. The young woman (Lix, short for Elixir) needs to feed on blood to replace what she loses to draining, and so her users have to become her servants in that capacity, even while keeping a tight hold on her. The movie did a surprisingly good job of working the metaphor to depict the slide from curiosity to indulgence to dependency to addiction, and while other parts of the story suffered from the movie throwing itself into focusing on that one aspect, it was easily the most interesting part anyway. / 10  #50. Halloween II, a.k.a., Boogeyman, a.k.a., Halloween II: The Nightmare Isn't Over! (1981) Yeah, didn't live up to the standard set by the first Halloween. With three years between the two, it's a lot more disappointing that they didn't go the 'disconnected stories that all happen to be set on Halloween' route with the series. The third act was the best part, once Michael was outright stalking Laurie, and the scenes of him just pressing forward were head and shoulders above the hospital staff kills. Loomis running around town causing trouble was also more interesting than the hospital stuff, which felt like it was populated by Friday the 13th characters. On the petty side, Michael's hair looked weird, and while his way with cruelty and unnecessary embellishment to the kills had been established in the first movie, the scalding hydrotherapy bath behavior still felt like an odd fit. I'm sure there's a pretty good fanedit out there that splices the good parts of this one onto the first Halloween, but as a full separate movie, it runs too long with too little substance. / 10
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Oct 17, 2018 03:04
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Fran Challenge - Queer Horror: watch a horror movie by a LGBTQ+ director Basket Case (1982 - iTunes) This is another movie that’s been on my radar for ages but never had a chance to see until now. This was a complete blast. The concept itself is completely bizarre, as a young man named Dwayne and his deformed Siamese twin brother Belial (who looks like a piece of chewed up bubble gum with arms) go to New York to get revenge on the doctors who separated them. The movie is really weird, and the effects are really low budget but it’s the type of movie where you can tell someone’s demented vision is making its way to the big screen and you have to appreciate that. There is a lot of blood in this and some good kills too. It’s also a great depiction of the old, grimey New York City and the main apartment building where the movie takes place is full of great characters. My biggest complaint might be that the movie is too long, with characters constantly screaming. I realize it was a plot point but I felt like I was watching an adult version of the Goonies with the amount of screaming going on. As far a LGBTQ+ themes, I suppose Dwayne’s reaction to women’s affection could be read as him being in denial about his sexuality, but I felt the themes suggested more that the timid Dwayne and the aggressive Belial just represented two aspects of Dwayne’s sexuality. Overall this is probably my favourite movie I’ve watched so far for this year’s challenge so I definitely recommend it. Watched (24) : Always Watching: A Marble Hornets story; Terrifier; Boys in the Trees; Creature from Black Lake; Parents; Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat; Murder Party; Hell Fest; Alone in the Dark; House of Purgatory; 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity...; Phantom of the Paradise; Dead Silence; Blood Diner; the Toolbox Murders; bride of Re-Animator; Baskin; The Mummy’ Curse; Nightmare City; Mystery of the Wax Museum; Shocker; Boy Eats Girl; Malevolent; Basket Case
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Oct 17, 2018 03:46
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 Dracula's Daughter, 1936 I can't do these marathons without watching at least one old Universal Pictures movie. Instead of watching one of the big titles all over again, I watched one of the less known titles all over again. This one picks up right after Dracula is killed and Van Helsing is arrested for the murder on the count. There's a mysterious lady that steals Dracula's corpse to give him a funeral pyre. To no one's surprise, she is a vampire and the titular daughter. She don't want to be a vampire anymore and tries to get help from a famous coworker of Helsing. She can't fight her vampire urges and poo poo happens. It's a nice movie in the old 30s Universal Picture's style, and lived up to its title unlike Son of Dracula that came out in the 40s. Not masterpiece, but it was nice to see again.
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Oct 17, 2018 04:18
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 Fran Challenge #2: Queer Horror 19. The Old Dark House (1932) For challenge #2 I saw James Whale’s The Old Dark House. I liked it quite a bit, and had a queerness throughout, from the family’s name Femm, the bed-ridden patriarch played by a woman, Horace hitting on one of the male guests as someone here pointed out, and of course, James Whale was openly gay throughout his career. I’ll need to watch Bride again soon, but I may even like this more than it (gasp! probably just the high off this one hasn't worn off).  20. Cold Moon (2016) This movie was all over the place. Some really cool pieces followed by scenes that left you wondering if everyone involved was completely incompetent. A mystery is set up, only to be resolved a third of the way into the movie, moving from mystery to ghostly revenge story, which to be fair is what the description promised - but then why set it up as a mystery at first? Some reaction shots were bizarre, the camera operator couldn’t leave the drat zoom alone for more than 3 seconds, the dialogue was at times incomprehensible, the soundtrack sometimes was great in a subdued John Carpenter way and at other times sounded like the composer fell asleep on his keyboard but not in a good way. List (20): 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, The Old Dark House, Cold Moon Fran Challenges Fulfilled (6): #1 Love Something You Hate: Only Lovers Left Alive, #2 Queer Horror: The Old Dark House, #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 17, 2018 04:30
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 36. Pumpkinhead (1988). Directed by Stan Winston Watched on Hulu Mad respect to Stan Winston for using his effects money to try making an independent horror film in one of the worst times to make an independent horror film, but Pumpkinhead is the definition of missed potential. It's decent enough as a B-movie, but I think it has a few legitimate threads that could have been spun off into something more substantial. It tries to say something about the futility of vigilante justice, but it kind of abandons those themes in favor of cheap scares.The characterization in the script comes off as shallow at best and pretty classist at worse. The FX work on him is obviously incredible, but Pumpkinhead is the dirt weed of movie monsters. He doesn't really get much distinction from other monsters other than kind of copying the Xenomorph's mannerisms and a few small things that get discarded. Lance Henriksen's character was strong and I think he deserved a better film around him.
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Oct 17, 2018 05:03
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#16- Halloween Another classic rewatch. It's a very simple story executed with razor sharp precision by filmmakers who already really Had This poo poo Figured Out. There are a lot of subtle touches despite its elemental quality- there's a clear strong dynamic between Laurie and her friends, Michael Meyers is hammered home as this impersonal force with allusions to everything from classical literature to The Thing and Forbidden Planet, there's a lot going on. Jamie Lee Curtis couldn't have made a better debut either. Got to see this on a big screen for once.
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Oct 17, 2018 06:35
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There are 13 days until Halloween which means... I've been slacking! Actually, that's not entirely true, I've seen a couple horror movies since this thread has been up, I just haven't posted about them in here, which I will correct now: 1. Mandy (2018) Technically I saw this at the end of September but it was like the beginning of fall and so, it counts. I love me some Nic Cage and Panos Cosmatos has that eye that really makes things look amazing, so I went in expecting to be awestruck and by god if that didn't happen. I don't think I"m gonna say anything in here that hasn't been said already so just know that if you have a shot to see this on the big screen, do ittttttt. 2. Candyman (1992) To be perfectly honest, I don't think I had heard of this movie until recently, and while I knew intellectually that it was really good, I had never had any desire to really watch it. But then the theater I work at put Candyman alongside The Shining, The Exorcist and the 2017 It in our annual horror movie showcase and I got a text from a coworker one night asking if I wanted to watch it after hours, and I figured at the very least it would be an excuse to drink some hot apple cider with a little apple brandy in there for the first chilling night of year. And then the movie was great! At first I was able to laugh a little at how much that area of Chicago has change between the filming of the movie and when I lived there (a bakery I worked at was within walking distance of where the Cabrini Green projects once stood), but it very quickly got you into the mindset of the early 90s and comparisons could easily be drawn between how the south side of Chicago is seen now to what Cabrini Green was at that time. And it doesn't caricature the people who live there as much as you would expect an early 90s horror movie would. The people there, by and large, exist and work and have families just like everyone else, there was just a vengeful spirit residing in the area (and of course the cops couldn't help because like gently caress were they going down there for anything less than a brutal murder). The score is quite deservedly one of the most well-renown parts of the movie, and I would say that the story as a whole seems to feel less like a post-slasher era horror flick and more like a 1930s-40s Universal horror movie given a fresh coat of paint. I would love to see Jordan Peele take on a remake (as has been rumored), I think you could do great things with it, maybe even going in a David Gordon Green Halloween direction by having it exist in the same universe as the original (of course using some of that de-aging tech on Tony Todd to complete the effect) I'm gonna complete as many of the thread challenges as I can (starting tonight!), and watch some more stuff at work (possibly a Halloween/Halloween double feature?). The weather was weird for the first half of the Fall but it's crunchy leaves and jackets season so I'm gonna get my scare on.
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Oct 17, 2018 06:37
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 The List1. Welcome to Willits (Fran Challenge 1: Love Something You Hate) 2. Multiple Maniacs (Fran Challenge 2: Queer Horror) 3. The Phantom of the Opera 1925 Featuring commentary by Andrew Lloyd Webber (as portrayed by Paul F. Tompkins) 4. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (Fran Challenge 3: Hometown Horror) 5. Dawn of the Dead (2004) (Fran Challenge 4: Best of the Worst) 6. Creep 2 7. I am the Pretty Thing That Lives In The House 8. Silent Hill 9. The Undertaker and his Pals 10. Re-Animator 11. Hell House LLC 12. The Purge (2013)  In the climax of the film, Ethan Hawke is dispatching a number of masked Purge-ers attempting to come at him. All of them hide, run around, and lunge over his pool table, attempting to kill him with axes, pool cues, guns, and other weaponry. Instead, he manages to dodge, counter, and execute every last one of them. In this moment I realized the movie had an identity problem. It desperately wants to believe that it's a horror movie, rather than the action thriller that it actually is. What this movie suffers from is a lack of focus, and an over abundance of misguided vision. It's overstuffed with too many concepts, the home invasion, the mysterious stranger lurking hiding in shadows, the siege warfare, the broken family, the creepy army, the vengeful boyfriend, the jealous neighbors, etc. In theory they could have worked, but in practice it results in an overstuffed movie. This film deserved a leaner script, and much stronger villains. More aesthetically diverse ones, with a variety of personalities that encapsulate the politics this movie is railing against. As is, they are just a bunch of theater kids imitating what they think is creepy. If you would like a much more succinct indictment of White People, I would recommend Murder Party. If you want a much more intense siege film, try Assault on Precinct 13. Home Invasion, maybe The Strangers. Purge movie? I imagine Universal Studio's Halloween Horror Nights did the premise much better than this film. A Podcast I'm listening to is doing a rewatch of The Purge series, and watched this in preparation for listening to it. This movie certainly is a unique case of being both the first and the worst entry in the series, so I certainly hope to be pleasantly surprised by the sequels. 13. Interview With The Vampire (1994) (Fran Challenge 5: Birth of Horror)  I feel like my 20's were defined by my ability to make people feel old. A week after I turned 18, I went to go see Battle Royale at a local art house theatre. They were serving beer, so no one under age was allowed (to clarify, in some parts of Canada the age to drink is 18). I was required to show ID to the ticket taker, and she informed me I was too young to watch. I had to point out that 1994 was indeed 18 years ago, and you could see in this woman's eyes that her understanding of the world had completely changed. Understanding that from that moment forward she was growing ever closer to dying. It set a tone for the low key hostility the world treated my youth. But Battle Royale was pretty cool movie though. There's probably a pretty good through line I could draw between that, the immortality of vampires, and the way humanity's has vitriol for their existence. But that requires a lot more thought and consideration for this film than I actually have. Not that I necessarily hate it, it's more just an overall apathy and some aversion to it's style and content. The film is pretty much a romantic melodrama without an object of affection. A cradle to the grave biopic without a proper historical figure. A gothic horror that replaced simmering terror with overbearing guilt. An Epic by content rather than by scope. There's a lot going on, and that's probably by design due to it's source material. The only through line is Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, and unfortunately I can't help but believe Brad Pitt was miscast as Louis. Sure he can bring that vampiric sexiness, but not the weight of being alive for hundreds of years and through countless tragedies. In this period piece, his entire performance just feels anachronistic. However, Tom Cruise as Lestat is a low key joy to watch. He has the sexiness, and the charisma and attitude to bring this film to life. I'm not sure if I could call it great, but it has a Nic Cage-ian style fun to it. Also of mention is Kirsten Dunst, who also manages to act circles around Pitt with a decent performance of her own. In fact, it's only around her that I think Pitt manages to find his role in the character, the life and emotion he should be embodying. I'm sure this film was important to some people when this movie came out, and remains to be one to this day. But to me it was mainly forgettable. A film that I could barely pay attention to, even in it's more action packed moments. It's a film that I will admit is objectively a competently produced film, but it's one that has no chemistry with me.
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Oct 17, 2018 07:25
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Turns out I was right to have a bad feeling. I'm getting this out of the way so I can go back to watching good films.Franchescanado posted:
146- Cabin in the Woods 2012 - borrowed DVD TL,DR: I really hate this movie with a passion. This is the only film I have walked out of the show early and asked about getting a refund or a credit to see something better. I took the credit. As I refuse to spend any money on this, I borrowed a friend's DVD. To start, gently caress this film, gently caress Joss Whedon, gently caress the fuckers who gave this piece of poo poo awards and claimed this as anything other than a loving piece of poo poo that should've bombed at the box office. I remember my more nerdly friends who practically huff Whedon's farts praising this film as the only horror film they like and just how smart and funny it is poking at all those horror movie tropes. BULLSHIT! Tucker and Dale vs Evil is better, Student Bodies is better, Bloodbath at the House of Death is better, Pandemonium is better, Scream is better, the entire Scary Movie franchise is better. By now, I expect a few are thinking "drat, Sinistrari, tell us how you really feel." at this point. Here goes, told you all it'd be a wall of text. The story is pretty basic and poorly written, it's practically an SCP article, but from the perspective of the equivalent D class. A group of college kids go to spend a weekend at a cabin, in the basement they find a bunch of weird things and read from a diary which summons the undead Buckner family to attack. We also see a secondary aspect that there's an underground facility that's manipulating the college kids to act like how we expect victims in this sort of a film. Only one who isn't effected is Marty the pothead because he tokes so much it's made him immune. He's the one who finds evidence they're being monitored and the underground facility, and saves the other surviving member of the group. They go into the facility and learn that the facility is one of several around the world that has to do this annual ritual of a group of people to be killed in a particular manner to keep the Ancient Ones from destroying humanity. As each of the other facilities have failed this go around, it's down to the American one. The two survivors decide to just let the Ancient Ones loose and humanity dies. Now, I'm more than generous with letting schlocky writing have a pass according to the budget, and with how many Fulci films I've sat through, I'm used to plot holes so big you can drive two semi's through side by side. The flaws in Cabin are so bad that they're obvious even in turn off brain mode. First, I find it hard to believe the facility has absolutely no backup plan for what if each facility fails. Going with the reasoning of each facility is a backup for the others fails because with the fate of humanity at stake for aeons, anyone who paid even a quarter of attention in grade school history knows that each nation won't trust others with handling a scenario this serious on its own along with having bragging rights for saving humanity for another year. I have seriously hard to believe Marty's pot smoking making him surprisingly immune. A flaw like that in the manipulation chemicals would've been noticed during the 60s and fixed asap. Trying to counterpoint that we just didn't see the backup plans failing or the weed strains today are just stronger than the older ones is just moving goalposts. This film is not smart, funny, or satire, it's a condescending insult too busy patting itself on the back over just how clever it is. I remember Whedon calling this a 'loving hate letter' to the genre. My Sicilian rear end it is. This is a passive-aggressive post-it note of raw disdain. I'd say this was the equivalent of a hipster looking down thier nose at someone but that would be insulting hipsters. This film is not some revolutionary wake up call to revitalize the genre, it's the worst of modern nerdity happily wallowing in being able to poo poo on who they think is beneath them while circle jerking over just how awesome Whedon is for the billionth time. For all the bullshit said about this being satirical commentary on the state of horror films, it's an insult to film analysis. For everyone who insisted this piece of poo poo was a breath of fresh air with all that torture horror getting made, they sure as poo poo really weren't paying attention to what else came out around that time with Cockneys vs Zombies, The Innkeepers, John Dies at the End, Frankenstein's Army, Lords of Salem, Willow Creek, The Thing, Bad Milo, Apollo 18, Grabbers,the VHS movies, and Berberian Sound Studio. Gotta love that confirmation bias going on there. Whedon said about how he hated how stupid people acted in horror films and all the sadistic comeuppance, I guess he never read an EC comic book or any of the original folk tales collected by the Grimms. Every culture that's on this planet or ever been's myths, stories, parables, legends, and fables are full of this. Cinderella's step sister chopped off parts of their feet to fit in the glass slipper and had their eyes pecked out later, Snow White's step mother's made to wear red hot iron slippers and dance herself to death, and Der Struwwelpeter has the tailor who cuts off children's thumbs when they suck on them. It's not anything horror films invented, it's just a generations long storytelling convention that appeals to us regardless of culture or era we're from. I will admit, I did like the monster designs. Those were nice. As far as that ending....What the gently caress? Seriously, what the gently caress is that poo poo?? I'm fine with nihilistic endings when they fit. In the Mouth of Madness did this right. This ending was bullshit! They decide humanity gets to die? Guess it's no big deal that that means the people they care about will be killed by their actions. This is like if Donnie Darko chose to avoid correcting the temporal instability and let it all end. For everyone who said Cabin's just being meta seriously need to see examples of how meta done well is. There's Nothing Out There handled meta worlds better than Cabin does. Yes, a Troma film does it better than Whedon. For everyone that's said this is just a commentary on horror films as a genre, really, I can reach up my rear end and pull out that this is a commentary that college age people are too narcissistic and have no problem with letting the world end while they blaze up. For as much as said that a great film invokes decisive opinions, Cabin is not a great film by any means. It's the barometer of who sees it's a piece of poo poo, saying so and those who can't imagine Whedon doing no wrong or just want to generate revenue clicks for their review site by saying how great it is and the people who don't like it are some sort of genre grognard stuck in the past. Am I being harsh on Cabin? No, not by any stretch. I've sat through plenty of media satirizing horror films, criticizing horror films, and poking fun at horror films which have made me laugh, made me think, even made me reevaluate how I look at the genre. These films come from a deep knowledge and love of the genre. Cabin in the Woods does none of this. This is a slap in the face while condescendingly looking down at the genre as nothing but formulaic slashers and torture flicks and looks down at horror fans as if we can only see the genre as the narrow range it's creators do and need their ham fisted 'wit' to see clearly like they do. This isn't much different than the old panics insisting something had to be mentally wrong with horror fans for liking the genre. This is the cinematic equivalent of saying 'Ewww gross you like that stuff' while rubbing one's face in it repeating 'See how stupid it is'. Horror is so much more. It's the variety of subgenres that appeal to some and disgust others. It's the morality play for the modern era. It's the safe roller-coaster type thrills and scares. It's the unthinkable scenario that makes you think what would you do in that situation. It's the familiar comfort food of entertainment where you know what you're getting before you start watching. It's that 'Oh my God..I can't believe I just saw that?' moment. It can have you laughing one moment so hard it hurts from how ridiculous it can be and in the next so emotionally wrung out you feel it for days after. It is not just a bunch of slasher type films. Like I've said earlier in this, you can satirize, parody, criticize, and meta-commentary the genre, but it has to come from a love and/or solid knowledge of the genre for it to work. This was more some guy who thinks his Buffy cred's enough to write horror, and his disdain and contempt shows through. Go watch There's Nothing Out There or Tucker & Dale vs Evil instead of Cabin. These films are good and won't have you regretting you spent time out of your life watching them.
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Oct 17, 2018 07:41
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Friends Are Evil posted:
Lance apparently went all-out to get cool set dressings for his character, like an old WWII shotgun, fake teeth, a beater truck, and other stuff. But yeah this film is bad enough even by horror standards of quality that it's kind of a wonder it has three sequels.
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Oct 17, 2018 07:45
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