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Oct 29, 2018 18:21
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Spatulater bro! posted:A legend. Legit reviews too, like actual thought and effort put into each one. It really is a Ruthian performance. It's very much like how Ruth came on the scene and all of the sudden he was hitting more home runs than half the teams in the league, combined. A complete paradigm shift based on one dominant performer.
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Oct 29, 2018 18:34
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200, that's more than the number of days since this started by a factor of like 3. And here I don't even know if I'm gonna make 31... I mean my modest goal was 20 and I exceeded that but still. I'm going to at least try to watch a Very Special Movie that's coming in the mail today, which I've been wanting to watch since RedLetterMedia did it last Halloween.
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Oct 29, 2018 18:38
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FRAN CHALLENGE #13: What We've All Been Waiting For 31  This was my first Rob Zombie film. I don't know much about them, but I'd gathered that his movies had a reputation for being gross and violent. 31 certainly is both those things The idea is interesting, it's like, you know the menacing weirdo townsfolk you see in some horror movies, the ones that the protagonists encounter early on which lets them know that they've stumbled into a bad situation? What if those weirdos were the protagonists of their very own horror movie? What kind of killers would prey on the people at home with the the standard horror movie killers? You spend a lot of time with the characters before anything happens to them, which I always like in a horror movie. They're gross and weird and they all seem like they really could use a shower, but they've got their relationships with each other, and dreams and goals and so on. So you can relate to and root for them, gross as they may be Most of the killers are fine. They're supposed to be super gross and weird, to fit with the whole concept of a horror movie that's like, one level above a typical horror movie. So there's a nazi little person and rapist chainsaw hillbilly clowns and a completely normal German man. They work. But the end boss is great. The actor just oozes psycho clown, doesn't even the need the makeup. He looked really familiar, and at first I thought maybe he was Jackie Early Haley. But no, it turns out I recognized him from Doom. hosed up. Also Malcolm McDowell in a powdered wig chewing on the scenery like crazy. The move does start to drag a bit in the second half. It kept doing different locations, but it settles on blue-lit industrial setting for a while, and the story seems to slow down. It's not killer, but they really could've trimmed a couple minutes out and it wouldn't have lost as much energy as it does. The final fight chase is pretty lame. Sherri Moon Zombie absolutely sells being completely out of energy, just staying upright through pure willpower. But that's all she does, stay upright. There's no exciting fight, or really any fight at all. The killer just times out. And there's a last minute stinger that's just kinda ehh. Not quite ugh, but definitely ehh. I almost want to give it points for having the movie get just as tired as the character. 31 is definitely one of those movies where you get the impression that everyone involved really enjoyed making it. That energy does come through, especially in the beginning when all the cast is still there 31 is a decent gross little movie, but it just runs out of steam
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Oct 29, 2018 18:40
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M_Sinistrari posted:200- The Night Stalker 1972 - DVD  drat dude do you work in a video store or something? Franchescanado posted:
28. Diabolique (1955)  Directed by H.G. Clouzot (1907–1977) who also did Wags of Fear, this was the result of my search for the best horror film by a now dead director. There are of course some great movies in this category (that I've mostly already seen) but not as many as I thought there would be. Much like the fact that Roger Corman is still alive and kicking, the relatively young nature of the medium means surprisingly many of the prolific directors are still around. This feels very Hitchcockian and more of a crime thriller but I'd say it just barely qualifies as horror too. A husband and wife run a boarding school in post-war France with his mistress also employed as a principal. The husband is a dick and frequently abuses his wife and apparently the mistress as well, both verbally and physically. As a result the two women are pretty open about their situation and eventually agree that something needs to be done after a particularly unpleasant series of events. So the mistress helps kick off a full-proof plan of getting rid of him. Everything seems to go as planned despite a few scares, but not everything is what it seems! The setup takes a while and could probably be trimmed down a bit but once things get going it's a pretty thrilling ride. The acting and cinematography are on point and the Clouzot clearly knows what he's doing when it comes to building tension. There isn't really much else I could say without spoiling the conclusion, which the film even warns you not to do. Overall this is great and you should all see it.  .5/5Fran Challenges: 1 mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 19:16
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FRAN CHALLENGE #11: Dead & Buried
Watch a film made by a director who is now deceased.
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Guy Goodbody posted:31 is definitely one of those movies where you get the impression that everyone involved really enjoyed making it. That energy does come through, especially in the beginning when all the cast is still there No matter what you think of Rob Zombie as a filmmaker, every single one of his films has this quality and it's undeniable. And I think that's a drat good foundation to start from.
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Oct 29, 2018 20:06
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31 is somehow the best and worst film to introduce you to Zombie. On one hand its the worst of his films by a pretty big margin. On the other hand it really is Zombie's style distilled down to its raw parts. The recurring cast, the 70s grindhouse asthetic, the gore and violence, the obvious enjoyment and love for the genre in the filmmaking. If you at all enjoy 31 odds are you'll really enjoy Devil's Rejects or Halloween. And if you found his style distasteful then you're probably not gonna be into him since even his much better films still have that foundation.
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Oct 29, 2018 20:16
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STAC Goat posted:31 is somehow the best and worst film to introduce you to Zombie. On one hand its the worst of his films by a pretty big margin. On the other hand it really is Zombie's style distilled down to its raw parts. The recurring cast, the 70s grindhouse asthetic, the gore and violence, the obvious enjoyment and love for the genre in the filmmaking. If you at all enjoy 31 odds are you'll really enjoy Devil's Rejects or Halloween. And if you found his style distasteful then you're probably not gonna be into him since even his much better films still have that foundation. Now I'm scared to watch the Halloween remake. Because I didn't like the original Halloween, and "the first Halloween is pretty boring but the Rob Zombie one is good" would be an intensely obnoxious contrarian position for me to hold.
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Oct 29, 2018 20:37
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I actually don't think it would BE that contrarian around these parts. I've seen it be said before and its obvious some people's tastes fall more in line with Zombie's style than Carpenter's. And like, as a diehard Carpenter fan who loves the original I don't think that's really a big deal. Everything's not for everyone. And it so happens I also love Zombie.
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Oct 29, 2018 20:42
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STAC Goat posted:31 is somehow the best and worst film to introduce you to Zombie. On one hand its the worst of his films by a pretty big margin.
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Oct 29, 2018 20:55
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Cartoons don't count? Ok, I admit I haven't seen that one.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:08
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77 minutes, if you feel the need to experience it.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:10
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STAC Goat posted:Cartoons don't count? Cartoons count. People have logged Belladonna of Sadness.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:13
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Oh, I was just being snarky. I still have to get Coraline in.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:13
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   #97. I've Been Watching You, a.k.a., The Brotherhood (2001) Can't believe I almost ended the month without a David DeCoteau entry. In this film (which apparently spawned at least five sequels), a local fraternity is revealed to be a bunch of off-brand vampires, following their leader's efforts to recruit an unpledged young man, with the intent of transplanting his soul into the pledge's body. So, a gayer supernatural version of The Skulls, in short. It's a good show of how solid DeCoteau is at economizing, and the skills of DP Howard Wexler (who's since been stuck on Full Moon droppings like Ooga Booga and the Evil Bong series), as the budget is surely lower than worse stuff I've seen this month, but all the right work is done to make it come off looking as slick as a normal DTV or Lifetime feature. The dialogue is the worst part, with the acting not far behind, but at least everyone seems to be on the same page in terms of how much effort they're putting into it. Some cute story conceits give the predictable proceedings some extra life, fit young men in tightie-whity boxers are present, and a handful of the intentional jokes are genuinely funny. It might be getting some gloss from the next couple of films I watched, though. / 10 #98. Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill, a.k.a., Death Valley (2004) Crap. Pretty much a weak remake of Ghost Town (1988), with some Confederate links stirred in for weak shock value. Teenagers get carjacked (but taken along for the ride), end up in a literal ghost town haunted by a notorious killer from Civil War times. Killing ensues. No one in the cast has any charisma to speak of, the haunting resolution is painfully stupid, character actions tend to not make sense even with logic adjusted to the usual standards for this sort of schlock, and the effects are bad. The one touch I did like is that the ghost town's population marker goes up by one with each person killed, though the lingering cuts to show that are so ham-handed it leeches the fun. / 10  #99. 60 Seconds to Die (2017) Hey, everyone who thought that the segments in The ABCs of Death were too short to be effective! Have I got a horror anthology for you. Each of the sixty segments in this film is sixty seconds long (approximately). Unsurprisingly, it's largely poo poo. Most of the pieces go for shock (e.g., a woman strapped to a wall and shot, or an invalid being tortured), a few go for artsy (burning letters in a music box), and the best one focuses on just telling a couple of jokes. Due to great planning, a lot of the shorts also use up half of their run-time on their credits, with just a few being clever enough to have them run along the bottom while the scenes play, or find a similar solution. Most look to have been shot for about $1000, maybe. IMDb claims that the third in the series was released the same year, but that the second came out a year later. Quality all around. / 10 #100. 2 Bedroom 1 Bath (2014) Undone by the script, which just runs on far too long. A couple moves into an apartment with a tragic history of familial murders, haunting tensions hinder their efforts to get the wife pregnant, the husband starts leaning more about the previous inhabitants while the wife goes to pieces. But then the child is born, and things keep going long past the point of diminishing returns on the tension. The marital stresses, including the husband's attraction to a gothy girl at the college where he teaches, almost lead to a functional story, but the narrative pieces are slapped together so haphazardly that they just don't gel. Extensive structural rearrangement would be necessary to bring this into good form, or you could go with Baby Blues (2008) for a better low-budget piece of familial disintegration horror. / 10  #101. The Tooth Fairy (2006) Hey, not as bad as I expected. The former home of a killer woman considered a witch by the locals, due to her collection of a child's last baby tooth before killing them, is being renovated into a bed and breakfast. The man behind the renovation project (Lochlyn Munro, the manic roommate from Dead Man on Campus, the cop from Freddy vs. Jason) is the former boyfriend of a widow, who decides to visit with her daughter in tow. All the activity has stirred the witch's spirit, though, and only the help of her victims can keep the daughter from falling to the same fate. The little girl (who was also the main kid in The Tooth Fairy with The Rock, oddly enough) does a good job in her role, whether being terrified by all the people who keep getting killed around her (since the witch's spirit doesn't restrict herself to killing kids) or playing up the absurdities of interacting with a ghost kid who doesn't know what Harry Potter is. A pair of brothers who were squatting on the property before Munro's character bought it up give the pressures a push from another direction, but the film thankfully doesn't try drag out the question of whether the witch is responsible for the killings or not. The supporting characters introduced in the second act are bad, to put it lightly, but they serve to keep the main characters from wearing their parts in the story too thin. And P.J. Soles shows up as the local who tells them how to defeat the witch, so that's something. Did get me curious to revisit Darkness Falls, to see how the killer Tooth Fairy from that one holds up in comparison. / 10
Darthemed fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 21:20
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Darthemed posted:
Oh man, that reminds me, there's this fantastic movie called 2LDK. Short for 2 bedroom, Living room, Dining room, Kitchen. It was made as a challenge to make a movie with two characters, one setting, and filmed in one week. It's about these two aspiring actors who are roommates and competing for the same part. They start off being catty to each other and over the course of the evening it escalates to violence. Completely unrelated to the movie you were talking about, but really good.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:46
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How the gently caress can anyone take pet sematary or the brood seriously? How do you get killed by midgets or 2 year olds that arn't chucky?
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Oct 29, 2018 21:50
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You're nuts. Pet Sematary is loving horrifying. That being said the murdering zombie kid is only the final act and he only really catches people by surprise because the reality of it is so loving monstrous and impossible to process. When his dad actually takes him on it ends exactly how a fight with an infant should. But the kid isn't the actual monster, his dad is and all the poo poo he does in his pain and anguish. Which is the real horror of the film. Also zombie cat.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:55
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 48. Near Dark (1987, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) [blu-ray] Their first meeting is so good, with them both being predators of a sort, but otherwise the two romantic leads in this movie are very dull. Thankfully the four other vampires show up and own the rest of the movie. They are just the best, and that bar scene definitely earns its reputation. Too bad about the ending though. 4/5 Franchescanado posted:
 49. Tales From the Hood 2 (2018, dir. Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott) [netflix] The opening credits is all dancing and flaming skeletons, so that's pretty great. It's very low budget but I think holds up decently to the original for what it is. There are some moments where the writing doesn't feel great, specifically and disappointingly around the classic Mr Simms lines but Keith David is still solid and fun to watch. And the quality varies between segments, but they're all at least good for a laugh or wtf, none are wasted. The last segment was I think the best and the ghosts of Emmett Till and others showing up was pretty intense. It's good overall and really only suffers from a lack of budget and in comparison to the original 3/5 Franchescanado posted:
  50. The Crazies (1973, dir. George Romero) [prime] The opening scene is one of Romero's most intense and terrifying, but I had a hard time keeping with this one through a lot of it's running time. Just didn't hold my attention that well. It's got moments though and is at least worth a watch for anyone, not just completists. 3/5  51. Spooky Encounters (1980, dir. Sammo Hung) [dvd] Sammo's wife and his boss are having an affair and hire a priest to get rid of him discretely. It's got jiangshi, wizard battles, kung fu, and Sammo Hung doing his classic lovable goof. Not sure what else anyone could want in an 80s Hong Kong horror. It's mostly comedy, but manages to get pretty dark at times. I'm still trying to decide if the last seconds (Sammo calling his wife a bitch and beating her) are intended to be funny or scary. I like scary better so let's go with that. 4/5  52. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir. Terence Fisher) [filmstruck] Very good. The lab in this movie is awesome. All the lab shots and then the Viktor/Paul relationship reminded me quite a bit of The Invisible Man. 4/5  53. Onibaba (1964, dir. Kaneto Shindō) [filmstruck] Incredibly beautiful film. And so tightly constrained. There are the reeds, a couple huts, a few feet of river bank, three characters, and a hole. With just that it manages to tell a harrowing story about the cost of war, the loss of humanity and desperation that expands far from the battlefield. Magnificent. 4/5  54. Demons (1985, dir. Lamberto Bava) [blu-ray] *rewatch The setup is so short and then it never lets up for a second. Somehow gorier than I remembered. This one just gets me pumped, it's like pure excitement injected straight into my eyeballs. 5/5 Total: 54. The Untold Story (3/5), *The Sleep Curse (4/5), The Faculty (3/5), Demon Knight (4/5), Return of the Living Dead (4/5), The Evil of Frankenstein (3/5), Hellraiser: Judgment (1/5), Vampyres (3/5), We're Going to Eat You (3/5), The Slumber Party Massacre (4/5), The Eternal Evil of Asia (3/5), ~*28 Weeks Later (3/5), Phantasm II (4/5), Ravenous (4/5), Carrie (4/5), The Beyond (4/5), ~The Ward (1/5), Village of the Damned['95] (2/5), Amer (4/5), Halloween 4 (2/5), Halloween 5 (2/5), Manhunter (4/5), Revenge (5/5), ~Nightbreed (3/5), Mandy (4/5), Shivers (4/5), The Purge (2/5), The Purge: Anarchy (3/5), Satanico Pandemonium (2/5), The Purge: Election Year (2/5), ~Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (4/5), The First Purge (4/5), The Addiction (5/5), Tales From the Hood (5/5), ~Angst (4/5), Apostle (3/5), ~Tenebre (4/5), The Invisible Man (4/5), Halloween 6 (1/5), Halloween H20 (2/5), Possession (5/5), The Old Dark House (4/5), ~Alucarda (4/5), Halloween: Resurrection (1/5), The Pit and the Pendulum (4/5), Corpse Mania (4/5), ~The Oregonian (3/5), Near Dark (4/5), ~Tales From the Hood 2 (3/5), ~The Crazies (3/5), Spooky Encounters (4/5), The Curse of Frankenstein (4/5), Onibaba (4/5), *Demons (5/5) *-rewatch (3) ~-fran challenge (1-8, 10, 11 completed)
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Oct 29, 2018 22:00
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 Nosferatu - 1922 watched projected at a massive cathedral with a procession of ghouls afterward First up, the viewing experience here was next level. I caught this at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in NYC, which was fully bathed in eerie red light inside and decorated with gigantic spiders and goblins, greeted by a macabre cello player and followed a giant parade of incredible elaborate demonic puppetry afterward. It was scored live with an organ accompaniment by their massive 3-story organ. So I'm not really sure to what degree I can separate that experience from the film, which was projected on a giant screen suspended 30 feet off the ground in front of the pulpit. I don’t know who approved this hella-Satanic event, but lots of folks around me were saying that it’s been their favorite event in the city for years. Good job for once, religion! That out of the way, the film is terrific. I knew the history of the film so I was expecting a Dracula ripoff, but I wasn’t expecting quite so much of a Dracula ripoff. It streamlines and simplifies the story in really interesting ways without losing too much, and has some incredible imagery, some really fun humor, and is definitely one of the better paced films of its era that I’ve seen. That being said, like every Dracula adaptation it has pacing issues—though I feel the same about the book, so I guess that’s just inherent to the story. However in this quasi-adaptation the pacing issues rear their heads in a different way. Instead of the sag being in the castle as we’re waiting for Harker to escape, the sag is in Hutter’s return home that stretches on forever as Orlok closes in on Ellen. As compelling as the idea of the spread of plague is, though, they don’t do enough with it—and the most interesting scenes resulting from it are with the crew’s struggle as Orlok picks them off one-by-one. Which is cool, but ultimately took up much more screentime than it needed to. There were also some curious logic holes here and there (Ellen is Hutter’s wife, but the legend says that she must be a maiden? Hutter returns safely knowing Nosferatu is living across the way but does nothing about it despite rushing home to stop him? etc.) and several of the interesting characters are wasted—Bulwer has one cool scene but has nothing interesting going on otherwise, Knock seems relatively superfluous—but overall the whole thing is compelling despite any faults. Grade (movie): A Grade (experience): A+  The Love Witch - 2016 (rewatch) watched via Amazon My third time watching this gem. A lush and gorgeous film with such a brilliant and pointed vision behind it, focusing on the way women internalize emotional abuse from men and the way they carry the trauma from that abuse forward in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Astounding production design, perfect direction, perfect writing, and perfect acting from the entire cast. I really can’t say too many positive things about this movie, and I would recommend it to anyone who has yet to see it. Also, I didn’t realize until this time that The Love Witch would be a terrific double-feature with The Lobster. Grade: A+  The Thing - 1982 (rewatch) watched via Blu-ray One of my favorite horror movies of all time that I've seen a couple dozen times. Don't think I'll really be adding to the conversation to properly review this, but I can contribute by saying that I watched this with a group while playing the The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 board game. We played through once and got the rules down and it was enjoyable. The second time we put on the movie in the background and started to play again, but everyone was quickly distracted by how great the film was and we just ended up stopping the game to watch the movie. Grade: A+ The Thing (A+) Hausu (A+) Cast a Deadly Spell (A+) Return of the Living Dead (A+) The Love Witch (A+) Nosferatu (1922) (A) Pumpkinhead (A-) Curse of Frankenstein (A-) Revenge of Frankenstein (B+) Night Creatures (B+) Invasion of the Saucer Men (B-) Pieces (C+) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (C+) feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 22:18
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Just to round things off I finished watching every Halloween movie. 56. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Producer's Cut) - 1/5 quote:Producer's Cut. 57. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later - .5/5 quote:I cannot believe they gave Michael eyes. I cannot believe this soft reboot hosed the mask up even more. Just what the hell was going on in the 90s that made horror so bad? This movie is so 1998 it hurts. 58. Halloween: Resurrection - 2/5 quote:Hideously offensive to the ideas and themes of every film that came before it. It is undeniable that the existence of Resurrection is one of the greatest indictments of capitalism.
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Oct 29, 2018 22:31
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 Fran Challenge:what we've been waiting for 30)Halloween (2018) Loved it so much. Probably the best since the original. No, I haven't seen the zombie remakes. Not big on the h20 movies. I'm a thorn trilogy apologist, but they don't hold a cndle to the original. 3 is it's own great weird thing, and two is fine, but more of the same. This one though... drat. Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic. The cast and the effects are great... I could get nitpicky about some things, and in a year with A Quiet Place, Hereditary it's probably not the best horror flick from 2018, but drat is it a good Halloween flick. Loved the callbacks to the other movies. Didn't think they were too intrusive, but was I the only one who thought when you finally see the kid's tattoo, I thought it was going to be, or at least include the thorn design And I'm sure it would've been too cheeky a nod but I half-expected the kid and the babysitter to be watching Carpenter's The Thing /5
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Oct 29, 2018 22:31
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feedmyleg posted:
Jesus I'm so jealous I didn't know about this and attend.
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Oct 29, 2018 22:33
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They even had a demonic priest who looked like something straight out of Pan's Labyrinth conducting the procession from a cloud of backlit fog on the pulpit. e: Here's a video from a few years back. It doesn't capture how awesome it was, but you get a sense. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Oct 29, 2018 |
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Oct 29, 2018 22:38
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#112. Skull Forest (2012) Four friends go on a camping trip, only to find themselves in the middle of a group of aristocrats hunting humans in the wild. Well this was a steaming pile. Subpar acting and writing, camera work that alternated between constant dutch angles and seizure level steadiness. I've been told the filmmaker has made many films, all bad. Welp, learned that the hard way. out of 5#113. Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987) A girl band has a weekend getaway at a new house owned by one's parents, however one girl keeps having dreams and visions of being terrorized by a ghostly rockabilly with a guitar with a drill built in. This is such a goofy film. It tries to tie itself into the first film by having the main character return from a smaller role in the first, but it really has nothing to do with the previous movie. It's actually kind of a musical as well which just adds to the kookiness of everything. It's silly fluff. out of 5#114. The Phantom Empire (1988) After a man eating monster emerges from a cave, a group of adventurers go exploring in hopes of a lost city and untold riches. They find monsters, cavewomen, robots, dinosaurs, and aliens. Hoo boy is this a movie. I'm pretty sure that filmmaker Fred Olen Ray had the costumes and props first (many reclaimed from other films) and wrote a script around them second. And we all win for the ludicrous result. It's just all kinds of outlandish in all the best ways, and this is kind of a perfect movie to put on in the background at a party. out of 5#115. Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985) After a luxury cruise sinks, a lifeboat full of survivors crashes on a mysterious island. There they find acid pools, and swarms of strange, tiny, tribal creatures hungering for their flesh... This is just a miserable movie. Everyone seems upset to be involved in the seemingly amateur efforts except the puppeteers who actually put some thought into their mini-monsters. Seriously though, like that's the only place any effort was put down in this film. out of 5Franchescanado posted:
#116. Trick Or Treats (1982) A struggling actress winds up stuck on Halloween babysitting for a rotten child who is a wannabe magician and non-stop prankster. Unknown to them however, his father has recently broken out of an insane asylum and is coming back to his home for violence... This slow film is pretty low key, and is probably more interesting for its credit roll than anything else. Completely unassuming, near the bottom, suddenly Orson Welles pops up as a "Magic Advisor". This is some small pseudo-slasher with bad acting and not very eventful writing. What the heck is he doing there? out of 5
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Oct 29, 2018 22:57
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Its low key really amused me that Choco has racked up an insane number of movies but like, it totally doesn't register at all because M_Sini blew his rear end away.
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Oct 29, 2018 23:02
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STAC Goat posted:Its low key really amused me that Choco has racked up an insane number of movies but like, it totally doesn't register at all because M_Sini blew his rear end away. The real kicker is I introduced her to the concept of the challenge in the stream discord last month. Womp Womp
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Oct 29, 2018 23:04
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28. Tales From the I'll start by confessing, I had my own little Mandela Effect moment today where I completely believed that Clarence Williams III had passed away. I mean how else would you explain why he doesn't reprise his role as Mr. Simms in Tales From the Hood 2? Maybe he's just tired of working with Condieff and Scott... wait, what?  He's in a loving Condieff/Scott horror anthology, which came out this month? Am I in the twilight zone?  Yeah, well anyways I watched Tales From the Hood 2 today because I couldn't not watch it. I loved the original, rented it two or three times on VHS back in the day, and not too long ago rewatched it on blu ray. I think the first thing that needs to be said is that while I love Keith David, he's no Clarence Williams. And he really tries, he even throws in more "poo poo"s per minute than Williams's Simms because, well, audiences loved it so much the first time why not run it into the ground? Speaking of running it into the ground, why not bring back a cameo from one of the slave dolls from the original? Why not dedicate a story to... something about the young generation being numb to racist imagery with the payoff being a young white woman gleefully giving birth through her exploded uterus to a bunch of golliwog dolls? I mean, I'll give them credit for being that loving confident in their finished product that they open the movie with that. The next story is a pretty standard "what if a TV psychic had a real run-in with the supernatural?" story, except a white guy gets to act like a bunch of stereotypes. Then we get an even blander "predatory frat boys get their comeuppance" story that's been done way better before. Then there's the final story, which feels like the one tale Condieff and Scott really wanted to tell. And it's actually effective and it got to me, mostly because its message is way too real and relevant right now. I would've totally written the movie off if not for that final story, it actually felt like a return to form and one story that could've easily been included in the original. Then the movie concludes with the predictable ending to the wraparound, I mean if you didn't see that coming then I don't even know what to say. The first tale is okay but a little muddled on its message, two and three are really bland, the final tale is a gut punch and the standout of the bunch. Keith David is fine being Keith David pretending to be Clarence Williams III. Watch it if you want but it's definitely not essential, and you'll be let down if you loved the original.
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Oct 29, 2018 23:10
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34. Martin 1978 Fran Challenge: Dead & Buried Martin is about a young man with delusions of vampirism, OR ARE THEY DELUSIONS. He drugs ladies, slices their wrists, and drinks their blood. His delusion is fueled by his uncle, who also thinks he is a vampire, but allows him to live with him and his daughter. Why? I guess family comes first even if that family is someone you are convinced is killing people and drinking their blood. It was a quiet, contemplative vampire movie, with bursts of pretty horrific and startlingly incompetent violence. Didn't really grab me, but I think I'll end up liking this more on rewatch. /535. Phenomena 1985  Fran Challenge: (Self-Described) Masters of Horror One of my favorite aspects of the horror genre is that you really never know what you're going to get. Here, we have a girl who sleepwalks through Iron Maiden music videos attempting to solve a series of murders at her boarding school, while also learning to use her newly discovered psychic influence over insects with a wheelchair bound professor and his helper monkey. Like most of the giallo I have seen, I don't think it really worked for me, but I'm still glad to have seen it. It's an interesting and at times kind of crazy film. Is the non-English supposed to be subtitled? Amazon Prime doesn't think so. /536. Street Trash 1987  Wow. An absolutely vile movie with irredeemable characters, but some incredible special effects that make it worth a watch. This one's a real Catch-22, a movie that you might want to recommend to horror fans but you honestly can't, because literally every single thing outside of the meltings is awful and offensive. You would be better off skipping the middle of the film, which has plenty of rape and racism but no meltings. The movie needed more hobos stealing more booze so that more people would get melted. /5Gerald's Game 2017  rewatch I still find this movie creepy and effective, though I could do without the dad gas-lighting her in the past, and the goofily long prologue. /537. Minutes Past Midnight 2016  I don't generally like anthologies. For the most part, they are loosely (if at all) connected stories that can be summarized in one sentence. Frequently, that sentence is something Rod Serling might have said in the worst possible season of The Twilight Zone. This had a few good stories bogged down by more bad stories, with some pretty extreme tonal whiplash between each one. I think I enjoyed 'Crazy for You' the most, about a serial killer in love, with 'Roid Rage' an obvious and distant last. The marionettes in 'The Mill at Calder's End' were neat, but the story was boring. /5
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Oct 29, 2018 23:21
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graventy posted:35. Phenomena 1985 Yep, there was "lost" footage that was dubbed in Italian and I guess they couldn't find the English audio? So what Amazon has is the completely-restored version of the movie but they didn't bother to include the subtitles for the Italian audio-only bits. I think there's like three versions of the movie, there's "Phenomena", there's "Phenomena with extra scenes" and then there's "Creepers" which is the crappy heavily-edited North American cut.
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Oct 29, 2018 23:27
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Can someone repost the gif JetpackJeezus made from Street Trash where the shoplifter has the paper bag on his head and struts right through the glass door? I’ve been laughing about that since we watched that movie
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Oct 30, 2018 00:08
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Franchescanado posted:
73. Lord of Illusions - Probably closer to film noir than horror. It's a fun ride, but it didn't stick with me as much as Barker's other movies. Although this is truly nuts in the same ways that his other two movies are. It's a shame he hasn't gotten to direct more, but I think he might have been turned off by all the interference he got. I'll have to track down his original cut of this some day. 74. Hellraiser: Bloodline - I was talking with my dad the other day and he asked me if I thought people who made later entries in these types of franchises ever took a step back and thought "Wow. We're pretty far away from the spirit of the original." I wouldn't say this is exactly bad, but I'd hesitate to call it good. It really only works on a plot-level, which I suppose was true for the third one as well, but it's disappointing going from the first two to this. Not totally sure if I understand why the story unfolds in three separate time periods though. And I've heard the Hellraiser series gets much worse from here on, so, uh, yikes. Franchescanado posted:
75. Halloween: Resurrection - Dull and tensionless, but still a fascinating watch. The movie is premised on the idea of emerging technologies blurring the line between reality and fantasy. There's an actual audience within the film who veer between complete apathy to seeing murders and egging on Michael Myers to kill people, not realizing that it's actually happening. This may sound rote, but there is something to the movie's execution of the concept. (Also, the only connection between the first 15 minutes and the rest of the film is a thematic one. There's creepy connections made between real-life horrors and what entertains people, and the film isn't particularly happy about it.) I think this works much better as a response to Scream's meta-horror than H20, but it'd be improved if didn't have the baggage of being a Halloween movie. I can get why this one doesn't work for most people, but it's got more ideas than the previous several entries. Franchescanado posted:
76. Waxwork - A pretty fun watch! This would make for a good movie to put on during a party. It plays as a kind of anthology movie, so it would work well as something that people don't have to pay strict attention to. And they filled with just about every monster they could manage on their budget. I'll have to check out the sequel (with Bruce Campbell!) later. 77. Gremlins - I love this movie to bits, but the "mystical Chinese" elements always come across uncomfortable. Which is especially odd as the film is to me a critique of racial anxiety in small towns. Franchescanado posted:
78. Dracula 3D - Well this was certainly the worst Argento movie I've seen. I do enjoy some of his later work (Sleepless is pretty good), but there's just so little to recommend here. It wears its budget on its sleeve (and just about everywhere it can), which I don't mind too much. This is a low-budget movie and there's not much of an attempt to make it look like anything else. Wonky CG and awkward sets are forgivable and charming in their own way. But the look of the film has problems deeper than that. Several scenes seem to be accidentally overexposed, which is an issue I'd expect to see from a film student in their first semester, not someone's who's been making movies for over 40 years. The script is nothing special, which isn't that much of a surprise, as Argento often excels in other areas. He just doesn't bring that much of a sensibility to the material. Everything is so shot monotonously. And despite all that, there are occasional moments that are truly insane and audacious – not in style but in content – which provides the film with some interesting points. I do admire what is done with Jonathan Harker's character as it's a huge and unexpected departure from the source material. Rutger Hauer appears in the last 40 minutes or so (this movie is nearly two hours) and provides the most entertaining performance. Yet he feels like he's phoning it in, which I guess just goes to show how much of a slog this is. Franchescanado posted:
79. A Quiet Place - Works in a Saturday matinee sense, but I wish it went beyond its modest ambitions. Its anxieties revolve around the parental fears of protecting children and if it’s even right to bring children into a broken world, but nothing new is conveyed about this after the concept is introduced in the first ten minutes. Frankly, I think it would’ve worked better as a short film. I just wanted something more. More ideas and more confrontational ideas. I don't think a good horror movies necessarily has to do this, but it feels like a missed opportunity here that it never challenges the audience’s beliefs or attempts to provoke much thought. It actually comes very close to being feel-good-horror. I’m also kind of bugged by the movie switching between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Just pick one or the other, especially when the entire movie’s premise is based on sound. Franchescanado posted:
80. Insidious - I picked this movie for this challenge as I'm not that big on horror movies made in the past decade. I tried to go in with an open mind, but yikes. I don't know how anyone could talk about this movie without also talking about Poltergeist. Insidious is very nearly a scene-for-scene remake of that film. A little more than halfway through they start throwing in elements from Poltergeist's much worse sequel. This could've been okay if it were served up in an interesting way. But it's just so banal. It has no ideas of its own and almost nothing to say other than its fears about protecting children and how parents' issues can be passed on to them. Similarly to A Quiet Place, I just wanted more. Could've used more music by Tiny Tim. And with that I'm done with all the Fran Challenges!  I'll probably watch a few other horror movies over the next few days, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to do write-ups of them before the end of the challenge.
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Oct 30, 2018 00:30
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Dr.Caligari posted:Can someone repost the gif JetpackJeezus made from Street Trash where the shoplifter has the paper bag on his head and struts right through the glass door? I’ve been laughing about that since we watched that movie  
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Oct 30, 2018 00:32
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** FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Birth of Horror ** 14. The Reflecting Skin (1990)  What a strange, wonderful and disturbing movie. The Reflecting Skin looks and feels more like an art film than a horror film, but I would disagree with anyone claiming that it isn't horror. First of all, this is a beautiful film. Credit to Dick Pope the cinematographer for making all of the crazy poo poo I saw look visually amazing. Think Days of Heaven except with more daylight. The movie is filled with images ranging from weird and disturbing to downright shocking. For example, at the very beginning of the film some kids, our protagonist included, capture a bullfrog, inflate it like a balloon, and pop it with a slingshot when the local widow walks by it, covering her in blood and chunks of bullfrog. The children distrust and are fearful of this widow, the rumor being that she's a vampire. When our protagonist is sent by his mother to apologize to the widow at her house she supports the claim that she's a vampire, it's one weird moment in a movie filled with them. There are many other examples of images that nudge this film into the horror genre that I won't go into, but to me the most creepy and horrific was the dead fetus/infant in the barn that the kids identify as an angel. I had trouble looking at that one. So much of what's horrific or unnerving in the film is alluded to or implied rather than spoken about directly. Themes of homosexuality, child abuse by a parent, spousal abuse, pedophilia, child murder, witch hunts, and the disastrous effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons are all touched on but at arms length. The movie seems to squirm along with the audience when these uncomfortable topics are addressed in an indirect way. All of these themes feed into the main theme of the movie (imo) of real life vampirism that occurs in abusive households and the overall tragedy of it being part of a vicious cycle passed on. I could be way off on my interpretation and would love for others to chime in who have seen The Reflecting Skin. If I'm full of bs please let me know. Overall I thought the film was outstanding which gives it 5/5 rating from me. Recommended.
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Oct 30, 2018 01:02
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Castle Freak alright, number 2 in the Stuart Gordon box set It's good! When I think of movies in castles, I think of a few shots of the outside of some boring rear end British castle, and then the rest is filmed on sets. But Castle Freak was shot in an actual castle. Which is great, because modern castle interiors aren't all stone walls and fire sconces, they're just giant, ugly, lovely houses. When the movie has a theme of dark family secrets and depraved nobility, it works better to have the castle be realistically modern and lovely, I think The way the movie handles the relationship between the dad and the mom is great. You start off thinking the mom is being a little bitchy. The dad made a mistake, but he's trying to do good now. The mom's bitchiness is understandable, but still, cut the guy a break! Then you find out that no, the dad sucks. Literally no one on earth respects him, and rightfully so. Except the daughter, she respects her dad. the daughter is actually surprisingly well-developed, you get a real good sense of her and her struggles and motivations. The gore is great, but used extremely sparingly. There's only a couple real gory scenes, the longest and most shocking one being the lady eating scene. It's really gross, and I can understand people not being fond of the movie just for that alone. But it's important for the monster's character, and works really well thematically, establishing a link between the monster and the dad, and their uncontrolled destructive urges. The monster is great. The makeup is top notch, he looks genuinely, realistically freakish. The movie never lets you forget the horrors he went through that made him what he is, but it also never lets your sympathy override your knowledge that at this point he's just too far gone and dangerous. Castle Freak is really good, but it does have a graphic scene where a guy eats a lady, so viewer beware I'm starting to think this Stuart Gordon guy is good at movies.
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Oct 30, 2018 01:13
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Almost Blue posted:74. Hellraiser: Bloodline - I was talking with my dad the other day and he asked me if I thought people who made later entries in these types of franchises ever took a step back and thought "Wow. We're pretty far away from the spirit of the original." It's extremely funny to me that Bloodline is near a complete desecration of Clive Barker's original vision and it's somehow still in the higher echelon of quality as far as Hellraiser goes. It gets so much worse. Franchescanado posted:
 49. The Lure (2015). Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska. Watched on FilmStruck How the hell did it take me this long to see this? Man, I'm into this film's aesthetic. It's super confident about it's artificiality and formalistic qualities in a way that's really endearing. The way this film chooses to frame certain elements of the Little Mermaid in a body horror context is keen. I'm a hard sell on musicals (I get the talent that goes into making them, just not my thing), but this clicked with me.
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Oct 30, 2018 01:36
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Hellraiser is a series that I really love yet I can't, CAN'T, make myself watch any beyond part 4. I want to but I just can't do it.
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Oct 30, 2018 01:40
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 REWATCH - City Of The Dead (1960) Caught this again. Good old fashioned Christopher Lee satanic witch joint. Christopher Lee is always enjoyable to watch. Some great atmosphere, strong vampiric overtones. A lot of fun.
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Oct 30, 2018 02:21
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Friends Are Evil posted:It's extremely funny to me that Bloodline is near a complete desecration of Clive Barker's original vision and it's somehow still in the higher echelon of quality as far as Hellraiser goes. Because it's really not one, at least not compared to the later DTV entries. Like, Bloodline basically gets it; it makes Pinhead a bit more slasher-villain-y than the first two, but past that, everything it does is really just expanding stuff from Hellbound. Most of its problems are formal and technical, not spiritual or visionary.
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Oct 30, 2018 02:25
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29. Devil (2010): This is fine. I was happy to see Bokeem Woodbine. Didn’t know any others in the cast but one of the guys in the elevator looked like low rent Tom Hardy. The elevator scenes were reasonably tense but the movie kind of overdoes it with the foreshadowing. The voiceover is redundant with the security guard explaining the Devil’s Meeting to the cop. There’s a red herring about halfway through that’s pretty bad. But the short runtime helps it feel tighter than it is. A very okay movie.
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Oct 30, 2018 02:29
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