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Darthemed posted:Beyond Video is the one with a bunch of posters from Ghana, right? I'm not actually sure if it's got the Ghana posters. Just opened up early this year.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:21
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Going for 31 as well, and just finished Scream. Forgot how well made it was. Very good and much more enjoyable from the first time I watched it.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:31
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Friends Are Evil posted:
Ms. 45 is still my favorite of his. Great film. There's kinda graphic sexual assault in it, though. FancyMike got me to watch The Addiction for last year's challenge, and it's one of the best vampire films I've seen. Simultaneously deconstructs the tropes while also exploring the philosophical implications of undead immortality based around consuming life. I need to watch another one of his films for this year. edit: Ms. 45 is on several Greatest Horror Films, if you want to watch it for the challenge. I did two years ago, I think. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 20:04
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 2. Attack of the Puppet People dir. Bert I Gordon 1958 This movie is a bit of a bore for most of the runtime. It's a very, very long eighty minutes. At one point the characters just get bored and go see The Amazing Colossal Man at the drive in and watch like an entire scene of it. It was setting up the Colossal sequel that was paired with this although I find that confusing when people are already there for the double feature. But it gets decent enough once the plot starts in earnest--which takes way too long. It's a pretty basic shrinking sci/fi horror movie with a mad scientist kidnapping people, shrinking them, and sometimes keeping them in stasis to display as dolls. it distinguishes itself from Dr. Cyclops by having the villain come off as creepily pitiful. He's doing all of this because his wife left him, and he just doesn't want to be alone. It adds some extra creep factor and depth, the way he infantilizes his shrunken adults and how some of them grow to enjoy their life as dolls. It also implies that he is actually murdering the people in the process and just remaking them in their shrunken forms. The effects are pretty bad. There is a poor sense of scale with the shrunken victims, and there are rarely any impressive shots with the shrunken figures. The Amazing Colossal Man scene featured that has better prop work just emphasizes this. 1.5/5
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Oct 1, 2019 20:04
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Franchescanado posted:6. The Ruins I LOVE the Ruins. Not much I could add that you haven't. Its not a classic or anything but its one of those movies I can turn on whenever and end up watching 90% of it. Its a simple premise done well. Its an exceptional cast doing great work. The characters are kind of dumb and arrogant enough to get themselves into the mess, but not so much so that you can't just relate and sympathize. Its super hosed and gorey for people who want that. I'm not at all bothered that the monster is a plant. I actually think a kind of natural, isolated danger like that works for me as well as any hidden monster and sets up the locals in their "not really the bad guys" antagonist role well. Plus its a day time horror, and in a hot setting. I hate watching night time horrors during the day, especially a day like today when I'm sweating like crazy. But its the perfect movie for a day like this. Basically the reverse Storm of the Century. Also, I was totally planning to watch Dead at Night tonight. Snuck on a September borrow on Kanopy last night and everything. Did I accidently let you see my whole list? gey muckle mowser posted:Juan of the Dead is pretty decent if you like horror/comedy, plus it's neat to see a Cuban horror film.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:13
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2. Suspiria (2018) - Lot of mixed feelings on this one. If someone held a gun to your head and told you you had to remake Suspiria, the one thing you should definitely do is lean harder on the dance academy setting and this movie does an excellent job of that, so big points there. I thought I was going to be in for something really special after that first practice scene. I also really liked the coven-internal conflict angle, but they spent too much time on RAF news reports and not enough on developing actual characters there - about all we get is that Markos' faction are goofy cackling children and Blanc's faction...uh, like Blanc? If I'd enjoyed the experience enough to want to revisit this thing I'd go brush up on Badder-Meinhoff to see whether there are some strong parallels I missed for want of memory or focus, but on first viewing it felt sort of careless. Not attempting to copy the original's visual style was probably a good call because they would have failed, but it was replaced by a boring nothing - the magic-indicating rainbow shimmer was goofy and out of place, and there's a bunch of random visual flair (putting on a jacket in slow motion being the worst offender I remember offhand) without any real style or purpose. The climax was like 80% of the way to being great spectacle, the sort of thing I'd want looping as my desktop background, but the shot composition never really feels right and the red filter sucks the life out of it. There's too much exposition and too much dialogue in the wrong places; again, this is especially bad during the climax. "I am she" should have been the last spoken line in the movie and I don't understand how they hosed that up. I think a really vicious editor could have made something pretty good out of this, and there are glimpses of greatness, but there's so much wrong that it's mostly just frustrating. 3. Train to Busan (2018) - Like everyone promised this is a pretty ok zombie movie. I think it's probably even the best of the fast zombie sub-genre, but that's not saying a whole lot - when things move so quickly the entire affair shifts from inevitability to action set pieces and that's harder to make compelling. There were touches here I really liked, that came from them committing in a way 28 Days Later and its ilk never did - the swarms pressed up against glass, bodies pouring out and collapsing over each other, that stuff was pretty good. There was some solid character work although the villain felt pretty cartoony - he would have been better with either a mustache to twirl or a little more humanity. I guess I'm overall positive on it, but I would never recommend it - the entire thing feels like a generic sappy big budget studio production and it doesn't really have anything new to offer. It's just kind of there if you want to pass the time like you would with yet another Die Hard sequel, but zombies instead of explosions or whatever.
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Oct 1, 2019 20:35
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My theme to start the month was "2019 movies I put off for the October Challenge". Brilliant. 1. One Cut of the Dead (2017)  A delightful horror-comedy that really should be seen without knowing anything. Here are the very basics: a film crew that is working on a zombie film is hit by a zombie outbreak. It builds on that premise in ways that are fresh and unexpected, and I spent a good portion of the last segment grinning. My only real complaint is that the movie drags a little, though I guess they explain most of that.  .5/52. Child's Play (2019)  Good god I am not ready for Aubrey Plaza to play the mother of a preteen. Though the movie does directly address this - when someone questions her, she responds with a sardonic "I had a productive sweet sixteen". Anyway new Chucky movie, this time almost literally ripping off the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror where the doll's switch has been turned to evil. Not sure why a suicidal factory worker who also happens to individually program dolls at the factory where they are built would turn off the evil limiters, but hey, what can you do? The movie has some fun kills and is a pretty entertaining take on the series. However, there was one character in particular who did nothing to deserve their fate, and brought my enjoyment down. It's more fun when people deserve their comeuppance! .5/53. Crawl  A serviceable movie with insatiable alligators and rising waters. For a good chunk of the movie characters are trapped under a house, in a very poorly defined space that never really makes sense. Some areas are safe and some are not. Is the house this big upstairs? Some of the fear could come from a character being forced into known alligator territory, but since we can't tell where anything is, it's mostly just confusion and jump scares. /5
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Oct 1, 2019 21:30
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I'm in for 13 new movies again this month (and definitely quite a few rewatches). 1. K-12  This is a weird musical which caught my eye for the bright costumes/color, which were phenomenal. Some of the songs leaned a bit hard on the 'making a statement' angle, but it was a very unique ride throughout. The story/pacing side was a bit weak (it was filled with plotholes and sudden unexplained developments) but it was interesting enough on the musical and visual side that I'd likely rewatch it. : 3.5/5
Lhet fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 22:04
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Hit two duds in a row in the Mill Creek Fright Night box set (which doesn't even have any of the Fright Night movies...). First with The White Gorilla. which turned out to be a jungle adventure dubbed over footage taken from a silent film, then with The Island Monster, which, despite the title and Boris Karloff's presence, turned out to be a dull smuggling crime drama. Almost hit a third with Cry Wilderness, in Vinegar Syndrome's Horror and Exploitation volume of their 5 Films, 5 Years compilation series, but checked genres ahead of time, found out it was a family Sasquatch adventure, and switched over to this film from the same set. #24) Evil Come, Evil Go (1974) Low-budget film about a religiously traumatized woman who seduces men in order to kill them. One of her pick-up routines is to hang out in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre singing hymnals while playing an accordion. Yup. After trying unsuccessfully to hustle a free 53-cent hot dog, the main character convinces the only person shown to have given her money to become an accomplice to the killings, give her room and board, and spread the anti-sex gospel. There's a lot of hymnal singing in this movie, along with stiff line deliveries ("I'm the anti-sex lady from the street, remember? You gave me $10!"), awkward fully-nude heavy petting (which is the only thing this film does to earn its X rating), off-tone background music, very slow stabbing, weird set dressing choices, and scenes which padded time by repeating dialogue exchanges with slightly different wording. The setting, performances, film grade, and costuming put me in mind of Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things, but this movie didn't have anything going on as interesting as that film managed. Pretty dull on the whole, but with a couple of memorable moments tucked away in the tedium. That moment on the poster doesn't show up in the movie, by the way. rating: 4/10
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Oct 1, 2019 22:45
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2: A Quiet Place Not bad. Solid flick. I really liked how there wasn't some big plot thing, like they had to go to town to get medicine or they were trying to find other survivors or anything like that. It was just a very eventful day in the lives of this family. Maybe a little too eventful, when the kid fell in the grain silo I was like come the gently caress on. That was just gilding the lily at that point. But that's a minor complaint. I liked how much thought was put into how they live, all the soft stuff to avoid sounds and so on. The fires the guy lights at night just for a bit of connection with the other survivors they never meet. I didn't even mid the Office guy, probably because he didn't talk much. I'd say my one complaint is an aspect of the ending which there's no point in putting in spoiler tags. When super early on you see he's written "What is their WEAKNESS" in big bright letters on the white board, and the camera makes sure that's in center screen multiple times, and then it keeps showing up in focus, center screen multiple times throughout the film, it's like, Yeah, I get it. They're gonna discover the monster's weakness. And since the monsters are sound based, it's gonna be sound in some way. Very loud sounds, or specific frequencies, or something. And then yeah, it is. It actually took me out of the movie a bit how much they set up the incredibly obvious twist that you can hurt the monsters with sound. Like, recently I saw a completely unrelated movie called Penguin Highway. In that movie too, the protagonist thinks things through by writing stuff down, and the audience is shown what he's written down both to provide exposition and get a glimpse into how he thinks. It's done so naturally and realistically. It really looks like a journal the character would keep. And then I compare that to the loving whiteboard in The Quiet Place, where there's like 7 words of exposition written in giant block letters just to get across that information to the audience ASAP. It stands out so much because every other aspect of set design has so much thought put into it. But then there's this loving whiteboard just explicitly telling you what's going to happen at the end. And now I feel like a psychopath for being bugged so much by a whiteboard! But other than that, A Quiet Place, good movie.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:50
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1. Case 39 (Amazon Prime) This is a pretty paint by the numbers child horror flick. It shows it’s hand pretty early on, and certainly anyone who posts here will see the plot coming from a mile away. That said, it’s a fairly enjoyable and well made movie that is perfect viewing for someone who wants to get into horror but isn’t quite ready for FulciGreat performances as you would expect from Renée Zellwager, Bradley Cooper, and Ian McShane. Someone smarter than me can probably make a pretty compelling case for this movie being an unofficial sequel to Rosemary’s Baby. 2. Mayhem (Netflix) This movie is Meh incarnate. Steven Yeun is wonderful as the lead, though I would like to see him play a role where he isn’t covered in blood, and we can all get behind loving up uber-capitalist poo poo stains. Unfortunately, that’s about all the positive notes I have for this one. It manages to be both over the top while also underwhelming and needs constant suspension of disbelief to move the plot forward. If you’re looking for a quasi-revenge flick packed with tons of violence, this is it. If you’re looking for a better than average movie, look elsewhere.
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Oct 1, 2019 23:02
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 #25) Schlock (1973), a.k.a., The Banana Monster Hide your child actors, it's John Landis' directorial debut! Four years before Kentucky Fried Movie, Landis practiced his spoof work with this piece of monster movie silliness, which is very much in the spirit of a ZAZ production. Stuff like offering a TV station prize to the viewer who can correctly guess how many dismembered bodies were on the crime scene, a bystander telling the ape monster to get a haircut and a job, the police hero being a balding nebbish, a blind woman mistaking the ape for a doggy, The Monster goes to a theater and watches The Blob, etc. There's a lot of slow scenes, though, like the interview with a paleontologist(?) that goes on and on with little comedic payoff. The TV anchor is channeling a little bit of Leslie Nielsen, but not to great effect. The monster is described as a missing link, but it's just your standard gorilla costume (works for the comedy, though). Falls a little flat, and I wouldn't actually recommend that anyone watch this, but it put a smile on my face a few times. "I'm bringing all my records... The Archies, The Delfonics, Frank Zappa, Pat Boone..." rating: 5/10
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Oct 2, 2019 00:18
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Super Samhain Challenge #1: The Best Month 3. Vampyre I was originally going to do Videodrome for the 1st Samhain challenge, but I’m already working my way through Cronenberg’s movies and I thought doing this one would be more in the spirit of the challenges to expand my comfort zone of horror movies. I’m certainly glad I did and this movie was a quick and enjoyable 70 minutes. It had a fantastic use of shadow, lighting, and music to convey dread. I also liked the fact that Allan Gray had so few lines of dialogue. This made it easy for me to substitute myself for him and get drawn further into the movie. I was surprised at how intense some of the horror scenes in this movie were for the time, especially compared to universal’s Dracula. For example, shots looking out of a casket being sealed, watching a man be suffocated to death, and even the actual staking of the vampire. One final thought on this movie is how it liked to tease the audience with the appearance of the title character. For the first half of the movie it makes the audience ask the question, “is he a vampire!...nope, just German.” Favorite Fashion: The old man’s fuzzy robe.
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Oct 2, 2019 00:23
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 I need help! Ok so today is the night I officially start my personal challenge. I am doing 1 movie per letter of the alphabet, and I must not have seen it yet. With 5 additional free-picks after (also must not have seen it). I'm trying to knock off suggestions from other people and movies that I somehow just never got around to. I have my 26 films, and then 2 additional films already. I need 3 more movies. Please suggest me some of your top tier obscure picks that you'll go to the mat for. Don't worry about where they are available. Just looking for some suggestions! Here is the current list: https://letterboxd.com/nerdtime/list/31-days-of-halloween/
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Oct 2, 2019 01:00
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October 1 - The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmcgKQrwxrA  October is finally here and since I'm watching movies out of some collections I had a whole smorgasbord of options. The hardest part is going to be not devouring all the tasty bits up front and leaving myself with not a lot at the end of the month. So I decided to pick the category I had the most of, a Hammer film, and tried to pick something pleasant. And their version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a pretty good way to start the month. I don't think any film version of this story goes close to the Robert Lewis Stevenson original. And for good reason, it's not much of a story. This version doesn't use the bestial Hyde, it has a more charming but still off putting Hyde who takes pursues the things that Jekyll can't. Jekyll's wire is having an affair with his best friend and Hyde sets out to destroy them both. It's Paul Massie who really carries this film. His Jekyll is a bit lost under some not so great make up but his physical performance as Hyde is incredible. Always ramrod straight, always with a childlike tone of voice, his Hyde has the appearance of an angel descended to earth and not quite fitting in. And then he does something monstrous. Christopher Lee is fairly subdued in the movie as the rear end in a top hat best friend of Jekyll so Massie winds up dominating the scenes with him. I kind of wish the film had ended one minute earlier. At the very ending I thought the film was going to cut away as a brutal ending as Jekyll has a weak, "Help me!" escape from Hyde's lips. Ending with Hyde recovering from that and walking away a free man would have been an amazing ending. But instead, he just turns back and Jekyll says that he's destroyed Hyde and it just undercuts the tone of the rest of the film. Even with that complaint and the use of a ball python as a "dangerous" snake, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll was a pretty good film version of the story. I think I like it better than the 1931 version, too. Without Massie acting the hell out of the role, the film wouldn't have worked nearly as well, but he did and it's a good movie for it. Windows 98 posted:Please suggest me some of your top tier obscure picks that you'll go to the mat for. Don't worry about where they are available. Just looking for some suggestions! Black Cat Mansion/Borei Kaibyo Yashiki, a super obscure movie by Nobuo Nakagawa, Japan's first horror film director. It's not in the top tier of his movies (that would be Jigoku or Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan) but it's still pretty interesting and it features some of the flourishes that make him an interesting director. I don't think anyone besides myself has watched any of his movies beyond his most famous ones for these threads and it would be nice to see more people discover Nakagawa. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 2, 2019 |
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Oct 2, 2019 01:11
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Windows 98 posted:
If you get excited about practical effects, have the patience for questionable storytelling/pacing, and can get ahold of it, I highly recommend The Cat (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105796/). It's directed by Ngai Choi Lam of Riki-Oh fame and I personally think it's criminally under-seen. My quick pitch for it is that it's got a fully choreographed cat vs dog fight scene mixing live animals and puppets.
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Oct 2, 2019 01:20
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blood_dot_biz posted:If you get excited about practical effects, have the patience for questionable storytelling/pacing, and can get ahold of it, I highly recommend The Cat (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105796/). It's directed by Ngai Choi Lam of Riki-Oh fame and I personally think it's criminally under-seen. My quick pitch for it is that it's got a fully choreographed cat vs dog fight scene mixing live animals and puppets. I have seen it! I also suggest others check this out because it is worth a watch.
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Oct 2, 2019 01:23
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Oh while I am double posting. If you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend Utøya July 22, which I believe is still on Netflix. It is absolute bone chilling nightmare fuel. Truly something that hosed me up after seeing it. I am not someone who has trouble sleeping after a horror movie but that thing gave me nightmares for 2 days. I cannot stress enough how important it is you DO NOT LOOK THIS MOVIE UP or read the blurb. Go in absolutely cold with no knowledge about what it is. Just watch it. Trust me. It’s a must watch for horror fans who actually like feeling uneasy and frightened while watching, even as desensitized as they are in 2019.
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Oct 2, 2019 01:27
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Windows 98 posted:
How about X-Cross? Gripweed posted:1: X-Cross
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Oct 2, 2019 01:27
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#5) The Shining (1980) Everyone knows and loves this movie. It's the first movie my fiance and I watched together on our first date, which was on October 1st, so now it's a tradition. 5/5
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Oct 2, 2019 01:31
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Windows 98 posted:
I'm doing the exact same challenge just watch whatever I watch 👍
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Oct 2, 2019 01:33
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Windows 98 posted:
Viy! It’s great and counts towards the Samhain challenge!
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Oct 2, 2019 01:44
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5. Five Dolls For An August Moon (1970) Watched On: Kanopy I started Bay of Blood on Kanopy and wasn’t really feeling it so I started up this other Bava giallo instead, mostly because it starred classic spaghetti western dirtbag William Berger. It’s an Italian as gently caress murder mystery revolving around a very important and completely nondescript “formula” and a bunch of horrible men and beautiful women trying to get it. The plot is absolute nonsense and way too complicated for its own good, with a really dumb final twist, but the performers are still enjoyably over the top. The camerawork is straight out of the Kevin Dunn playbook, with insane crash zooms and nauseating swirls. The real standout is the music. The movie is scored by the guy who wrote Ma Nah Ma Nah and its like he’s getting paid by the instrument. It’s full of soaring organs, toy pianos, disco flute, spaghetti western guitar stings and rapid-fire bongos. It’s the funkiest goddamned soundtrack to multiple murders I’ve ever heard and absolutely worth watching the movie solely to experience it.
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Oct 2, 2019 01:49
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month Last year I misread the rules about the challenges and didn't realize I had to say a movie was being used for a challenge at the time of my review posting. I'd like to apologize to Franchescanado for any bother I've given as a result of that misunderstanding, and say thank you for making these threads such an enjoyable tradition.  #26) Son of Frankenstein (1939) And more of the jokes in Young Frankenstein fall into place! This was a very solid follow-up to the previous two movies, though with a few things to pick at. My partner asked why the Creature could no longer talk, and the explanation I went with was that he got some brain damage from the explosion at the end of Bride. Having Lugosi and Karloff in the same film (at this stage of their careers) was a treat, though I wish they'd had more scenes in which they played off of each other; in a lot of them, it felt as though the Creature was basically a prop for Ygor and Frankenstein Jr. to argue over. On hitting the last third, though, Karloff really gets to bring things to life, not just with storming about, but with some excellent facial work. I was happy to see the return of the odd-angled sets from the first film, and the parts of the story dealing with the roles of fathers in their offspring's lives was a much-appreciated addition to the base-line Frankenstein threads. I also liked how this set up the idea that Hammer would use so frequently, of Frankenstein's work being something that could always be picked back up again, whether by him or others. Wish they'd made all those darts games a tradition, too. Can't say I was too happy about that sudden happy ending, though. I hope that's not indicative of the tone the next two in the series will take. rating: 8/10
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Oct 2, 2019 02:04
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3. One Cut of the Dead dir. Shinichio Ueda, 2017  I don't want to write too much about this, because pretty much everyone else was right when they said you need to go into One Cut of the Dead as blind as possible. It's a brilliant antithesis to the nihilistic zombie films; a nice reminder that the core of the genre can be human emotion, rather than the nebulous notion of "humanity corrupted," and manages to engage in humour that isn't reliant on genre knowledge - something that even Shaun of the Dead struggled with. 4.5/5 Sept 2019: 1. House of 1000 Corpses (2003) 2. Metamorphosis (1990) 3. One Cut of the Dead (2017) The watchlist: Salo (rewatch), A Serbian Film (rewatch), Crawl
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Oct 2, 2019 02:08
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For the May challenge, I tried to watch a fair amount of horror from India, and I'd love to check out more this time - let me know if you have any suggestions. 4.) Game Over  2019, first watch, Netflix (Tamil) If there's a medal of honor for maids, Kalamma (Vaidyanathan) deserves two of them. Game Over is a great example of a film constructed just a little to the left of what you'd be expecting. It opens with a POV sequence from the perspective of the killer, ending with an image that'd definitely be my pick if I was doing animated gifs for these reviews. It's then almost an hour of runtime before we hear back from that part of the plot. Instead, we get to know our heroine, Swapna (Pannu), a literally-and-figuratively haunted young woman, and eventually get a biographic delve into Amudha (Natarajan), who survived cancer three times only to fall prey to the killer. Both of these characters have, effectively, microstories within Game Over. We see Swapna's trauma and response to it (including some truly grisly touches which are all too realistic - her parents blame her for being attacked, and some jackasses in a cafe pull up pictures of her assault on the internet.) Amudha gets the expected flashback sequence, here a memorializing film featuring her mother. It's fair to ask if too much time is spent here - and certainly a rogue VR sequence and the intercut short film seem a little indulgent - but as with other thriller/horror material, this stuff is the "reality" that precedes and underlies the horror elements. The more grounded stories of survival culminate in a much more literal battle to stay alive, as the killer returns to us after their long absence. The final act can be directly compared to a couple more obvious recent picks, but it felt most like Hush to me, with the killer toying with the captive and vulnerable Swapna. (Even among the sample group of masked intruders, messing with someone's wheelchair is rude as hell.) The music pulls the most striking parts of Game Over up quite a bit. While it's not ugly or anything, the scenes and shots that hit me the hardest did so with a lot of support from the sound - or sudden lack thereof, in a couple cases. On the other hand, some unnecessary flashbacks weaken the final act, breaking up a tense situation with recaps of things that the viewer saw mere minutes before. I've seen a review propose that Game Over's finale loses steam under analysis, and I can certainly respect that position - where you decide to place the locus of "fighting back" can transform things from celebratory to despicable. I did not fight alone. Watched: 1.) Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [Classics], 2.) Occult [J- and K-horror], 3.) Son of Frankenstein [Threequels, Samhain Challenge #1], 4.) Game Over [India]
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Oct 2, 2019 02:18
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Windows 98 posted:
Another good X choice would be "X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes" with Ray Milland.
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Oct 2, 2019 02:20
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month 3: Punishment Park  Well that's a fuckin bummer. The most realistic fake documentary I've ever seen. Even the best ones, like Alternative 3, usually they have at least one poorly written character or flat performance, but everyone in Punishment Park seems completely real. There's not a thing in the movie that feels fictional I dunno, it's just grim. Just a real bad time. That's a movie you put on when you want to feel real bad. Gripweed fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Oct 17, 2019 |
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Oct 2, 2019 02:38
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HOUSE, HOME and/or ROOM OF HORROR with special bonus AMITYVILLE ENNUI 4) Madhouse (1981) - watched on Shudder; also on Amazon Prime Trailer Julia Sullivan is a sweet young lady who teaches deaf children and has a supportive and loving boyfriend. But she's haunted by her childhood memories of being tormented at the hands of her deranged twin sister, Mary. One day, the girls' jovial priest uncle, Father James, encourages Julia to reconnect with Mary as an adult. Mary's not in great shape, though - she's been in a psychiatric hospital, a victim of a disfiguring virus and deteriorating mental condition - and when Julia visits, Mary vows to continue punishing Julia. Mary escapes the hospital, and with her obedient (and very bloodthirsty) Rottweiler, she begins stalking Julia and the people around her. After watching two duds last time (Demon House and the original Amityville Horror), it was refreshing to see something a little more creative and interesting. Directed by movie rip-off specialist Ovidio G. Assonitis (Tentacles, Beyond the Door, etc.), this Italian slasher flick shot in Savannah, Georgia is a slow-moving but weird and creepy affair. It doesn't pull many punches, and no one is safe! After one of Julia's students gets killed by Mary's dog, there's a scene where she has to break the news to the rest of the class and their reactions feel genuine, it's weird to have a moment so heartbreaking in a horror movie like this. This was a U.K. "video nasty," although I think Madhouse is kind of tame compared to other films on the list. There's a power drill kill here that is hysterical for all the wrong reasons (during attack scenes, the dog's head is clearly a puppet, so if you ever wanted to see a muppet drilled through the head, check this one out). There's also one big twist in the film that does a good job of making you think it's being telegraphed too hard, pulling you back and then nope, you were right, and it's great. The guy playing Father James is having a ball and he's unsettling as poo poo - both he and the actress playing Julia are really good.  5) Ghosthouse (1988) - watched on Tubi, also available on YouTube Trailer Play this while you read for the full effect Amateur ham radio operator Paul tunes into a radio frequency and overhears the dying words and screams of a man. Taking his girlfriend Martha with him, he manages to track the signal to an abandoned house in Massachusetts, where another operator, Jim, is vacationing with his brother, sister and girlfriend. It turns out that the man's voice on the broadcast is Jim's - and he doesn't remember it happening. Unbeknownst to the group, the horror they're about to face is linked to a pair of grisly murders that occured in the house two decades ago, when a girl was locked alone in a basement with a clown doll given to her by her father... The credits say this was directed by "Humphrey Humbert," but you know him better as Umberto Lenzi. This is Italian cheese in full effect. It gets to the gore real quick; the kills are well done and most are pretty brutal. Anytime the killer clown doll and his ghost girl companion are about to appear, the earworm music I linked above plays - and you hear it A LOT. One of the funniest parts of the movie is when Paul uses his computer to analyze the music and the backwards speech BURIAL BURIAL BURIAL. And yes, this whole thing is goofy as hell. The acting is not great; characters tend to wander off alone into known danger; there's an obnoxious black hitchhiker who shows up just to irritate people and be another victim (and we don't even see what happens to him, just the aftermath); and the cops are slow on the uptake the clown and ghost kid aren't the only killers here - the mentally disturbed groundskeeper is also killing folks, and when he gets away after attacking one of the group, the cops basically go "eh, he's slow, he can't get far" - and he manages to kill another person and almost one more before he meets his end! If you're really scared of dolls and clowns (and clown dolls), though, it'll be right up your alley. AMITYVILLE ENNUI  6) Amityville 2: The Possession (1982) - watched on Tubi Trailer In the original film (and book), the Lutz family manages to escape from the evil at 112 Ocean Avenue. Amityville 2: The Possession takes place a year before the events of the original, when the Montelli family (loosely based on the DeFeo family) moves in. This is a better film than the original - I mean, comparatively speaking - but it's way more lurid. The first film is such a staid, dry story, with very little actual horror and just a lot of griping between the married couple and some weird poo poo going down on the sides. In Amityville 2, it's made clear upon their arrival that things are a lot worse with the Montelli family. Patriarch Tony Montelli (Burt Young - Paulie from Rocky!) is a domineering, abusive, short-tempered poo poo; his wife, Delores, is nervous and obsessed with religion. Most troubling are the oldest siblings, brother Sonny and sister Patricia (Diane Franklin, in a very early role), who are, to put it lightly, kind of interested in each other. When the spooky poo poo quickly starts going down, Tony is quick to fly off the handle and beat his kids and wife. The demon in the house (represented here pretty effectively by a slow POV camera) takes an interest in Sonny and posseses him, courtesy of some good practical makeup FX. You never quite got the feeling in the original that the house was going to crack George Lutz, but the Montellis are so volatile, it's all but a foregone conclusion. Tony flips out when his wife brings over Father Adamsky to bless the house; Tony beats his two youngest kids in front of the clergyman after the demon pitches a fit and ruins the kitchen. Adamsky knows something is up but can't act on it. Meanwhile, a possessed Sonny seduces Patricia and they have incestuous sex, in a supremely uncomfortable scene that thankfully cuts just as they kiss. According to trivia online, director Damiano Damiani wanted to upset audiences, and he filmed the entire sex scene with them, as well as a scene where Tony anally rapes his wife - and test audiences protested so they were cut. The implication of marital rape is left in the film, however, in a discussion between Sonny and Patricia about their parents. This is some pretty  stuff. ( I should probably mention this movie is written by the guy who wrote and directed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, too)Oddly enough, it's at the halfway point of the film where a possessed Sonny brutally hunts the family down one-by-one and murders them with a rifle, something I thought would happen at the end (it's a tense and effective setpiece)...so I was surprised that the last half of the film cribs *heavily* from The Exorcist, as Father Adamsky tries to drive the demon out of Sonny against the orders of his superiors. The climactic confrontation actually feels like one, unlike the wet fart of the original - again there's some fantastic makeup FX here and it's particularly nuts at the end, as Sonny's head bloodily comes apart in chunks revealing the demon beneath! Oh and the house blows up, sort of, but not all the way since the Lutzes move in a year later, just a fixer-upper... BONUS SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best MonthGiven the "house" theme I'm using in the challenge, there are obviously individual challenge movies that won't fit that, so I'll just set 'em off separately here:  7) Evilspeak (1981) - seen on Tubi, copies also on YouTube (this one is on the second page of the Letterboxd list Fran posted for the challenge, if you're looking for it) Trailer Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard, B-movie legend and Ron Howard's brother), an orphaned student at a military academy, is teased, mocked and/or beaten on a regular basis by the students; the adults loathe him, too. The guy can't catch a break. One day, while on cleaning duty in the basement of the school's church, he finds the belongings of an exiled Satanist - and when he uses his computer to decipher the Latin writings found in a strange book, he realizes he may finally have the power to wreak havoc on his tormentors... I had this one on my list for the last two October challenges but never got around to it, so I'm glad I got the chance here to finally watch it. Evilspeak is a grungy, uncomfortable little film that slowly builds (50 minutes or so until someone actually dies) until you reach the last 10 minutes, when it quite literally cuts loose. It's got a cool soundtrack, Richard Moll as a villain (the second time on my list this year!), and some great shots (I love the decapitated head flying away cutting to the soccer ball). I love the Satanic computer graphics that no Apple II could produce in real life. Normally I'd complain about a movie that has a dark setting - like, literally dark, where Stanley sets up in the basement to do his research - but it just feels like it fits here. This is one of the rare movies where it makes you feel okay rooting for a guy summoning Satan because they make Stanley's tormentors just so over-the-top nasty to him, and the climactic carnage is immensely satisfying (it's clear why this ended up on the U.K. video nasties list). Watched so far: 1) House (1985) 2) Demon House (2018) 3) The Amityville Horror (1979) 4) Madhouse (1981) 5) Ghosthouse (1988) 6) Amityville 2: The Possession (1982) 7) Evilspeak (1981) SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month
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Oct 2, 2019 02:48
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 Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers And just like I've watched the first Friday the 13th last year and the sequel this year, I'm doing the same with the Sleepaway Camp movies. I liked the first one a lot. There was far between the killings and it was just more of an straight up movie about summer camp with the usual rear end in a top hat kids and dipshit staff you deal with. Almost not an horror movie. This one is a straight up slasher and they cranked up the kills in this one. I'd say the first one is a better movie, but this one is sure a lot more entertaining with someone getting brutally murdered all the time. It's a lot more campy this way. And there always heavy metal music blasting from the kid's radios and stuff. There's even a copy of Doomsday for the Deceiver by thrash metal band Flotsam and Jetsam propped up between two dead victims at a scene towards the end for no reason. I loving love it. Definitively a fun movie to just drink beer to and enjoy.
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Oct 2, 2019 02:57
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3. Chopping Mall dir. Jim Wynorski 1986 I've always slept on this movie because I don't think it was really rediscovered yet when I was watching 80s slashers as a kid, and I've always assumed people just like it to laugh at it. But it is a pretty fun movie, and the laughs are mostly intentional. I feel like some horror movies really have a "drama kids putting on a show" feel to them that can be fun. That tends to be what makes a good Friday the 13th entry for me. The actors feel like they're having fun in this which makes their characters likable even if the performances are uneven. Even the nudity feels more like bawdy fun that gratuitous exploitation like it does in some movies. 2.5/5
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Oct 2, 2019 03:10
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Windows 98 posted:Oh while I am double posting. If you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend Utøya July 22, which I believe is still on Netflix. It is absolute bone chilling nightmare fuel. Truly something that hosed me up after seeing it. I am not someone who has trouble sleeping after a horror movie but that thing gave me nightmares for 2 days. I cannot stress enough how important it is you DO NOT LOOK THIS MOVIE UP or read the blurb. Go in absolutely cold with no knowledge about what it is. Just watch it. Trust me. It’s a must watch for horror fans who actually like feeling uneasy and frightened while watching, even as desensitized as they are in 2019. Uh ok is this a movie about the youth camp massacre by that nazi nut. Hard pass if so.
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Oct 2, 2019 03:33
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married but discreet posted:Uh ok is this a movie about the youth camp massacre by that nazi nut. Hard pass if so. I looked it up and, yeah. It's about that.
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Oct 2, 2019 03:36
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married but discreet posted:Uh ok is this a movie about the youth camp massacre by that nazi nut. Hard pass if so. Yeah it is. It is a rough watch. Its all POV and 1 take. So it feels like you’re there.
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Oct 2, 2019 04:01
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17. Children of the Corn: Revelations (2001) Watched On: DVD  Things certainly happened in this here movie. It really feels like the people involved stopped giving a poo poo and I'm honestly having a hard time as well. There are a few cool scenes here and there but it's nothing but white noise in between. 18. Dracula 2000 (2000) Watched On: Hulu  Poor Wes Craven having his name slapped on this piece of poo poo. I mean... it's kinda fun in a trashy 2000s way but as far as Dracula stories go it's not great. Young Gerrard Butler and his curly hair is just adorable. You also get some neat vampire hunting gadgets and some very good looking vampire brides of Dracula. 19. See No Evil (2006) Watched On: TubiTV  Ya know, this is a perfect servicable slasher entry and I think it's a bit weird Glenn Jacobs (aka Kane) never really did much more in the horror genre, I'm guessing maybe when he set his sights on political office having more footage of his character trapping girls in cages and spanking it wouldn't have been too great. This movie always makes me feel like someone tossed Friday the 13th, Psycho, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a blender and while it doesn't come close those three it's got some merits. The sets look really good and grimy, kills are over the top, and as mentioned before Glenn Jacobs is actually scary as gently caress I just think they could have done more to make him less human, being huge just isn't really enough. I guess we'll see how it shakes out in the sequel. 20. See No Evil 2 (2014) Watched On: TubiTV  Eight years after the first movie but takes place immediatly after it chronologically. Jacob Goodnight sans an eye and with a big hole in his heart snaps back awake in the morgue and decides, "Welp, might as well keep killing!" and wouldn't you know there is a birthday party happening in the morgue! They really enhanced the look of Goodnight this go around, a great killer costume. See No Evil 2 has a really solid first half and gets really slow once the kills start happening, it's almost a bit of bummer considering how good I found the action to be when it was actually happening. But, this is still a pretty solid slasher, you could really do a lot worse on a blind pick.
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Oct 2, 2019 04:01
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 #5 The Unholy 1988 Tubi Were it not for a shocking phantasmagoric sequence of the protagonist’s descent into Hell, this would’ve felt like a movie tailor made for Catholic moms to catch on TV. I dig that, though; I’m a mark for movies that make priests out to be mystical figures that engage in occult struggle. I liked the huckster club promoter who plays up his satanic practices to draw crowds to his BDSM club. I wish they would’ve done more with this character, but he disappears in the third act. In the end, this is a movie that calls out for a protagonist that’s experiencing a crisis of faith, who has to reckon with doubt in the face of terrible tragedy. But the priest in this movie seems pretty resolute the whole time. Yes, he’s investigating a tragic murder, but there’s never a point where you get the sense that his faith is wavering, or that his convictions have changed. His temptation towards evil is a very straightforward “horny temptation” scene that doesn’t really read as believable. Because of that, the core of this movie is just missing something to add depth and relatability to the fantasy battle between good and evil taking place. It’s still a fun enough watch, with some splashy effects to reward viewers towards the end. 2/5
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Oct 2, 2019 04:02
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Long-time lurker, first time challenger. Shooting for 31 movies, all new to me. #1: Boar (2018) Watched on Shudder  A massive, wild boar terrorizes an Australian outback town Extremely gory and fun. I didn't particularly like any of the characters, but the film spent a fair bit of time introducing the whole cast, including peripheral characters, so that I felt like they all had distinct personalities before ending up as pig feed. Some legitimately disturbing violence, but the movie has a sense of humor, and good creature design. The lower budget showed once we started seeing more of the creature, but watching the actors punch a huge boar puppet was part of the charm. A great start spooky season! / 5
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Oct 2, 2019 04:10
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month #3. Horror of Dracula (1958) (Turner Classic Movies via YouTube TV) After Jonathan Harker tries to kill him, Dracula moves to London and begins stalking his family. It's "Dracula," you know how this goes. So, I'd watched The Curse of Frankenstein, I figured it would be worthwhile to check out the other famous Hammer series. There's a couple of things I do like - some of the early set design in Dracula's castle is impressive, and I do kind of like the approach to streamlining the material, by making this more of a personal vendetta movie on Dracula's part. Plus, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are always great. Unfortunately, I think the change made to streamline the story ultimately undermines the film, as it narrows the focus considerably. Combined with the decision to keep Dracula offscreen for large chunks of time, and the baffling decision to not have Lee actually speak after the opening section, and it becomes much harder to care about his incarnation. (He has a terrific entrance, and it's cool to see him appear more energetic and acrobatic, but all the hissing and leaping is a lot less interesting to the more mannered versions ingratiating themselves into London society.) This one was pretty dull, even duller than the 1931 Universal take. I'm not a terribly big fan of the Universal version, but I think I'd take that one over the Hammer version any day.  /5 #4. You're Next (2013) (Vudu) A wealthy estranged family gets together to celebrate their parents' anniversary... only to come under attack by a group of well-armed masked assailants. But one of the party guests is secretly a badass survivalist, and starts to fight back with anything at her disposal. This was a surprise when it came out, a clever home invasion thriller/slasher movie remix. The secret badass survivalist may seem a bit out of nowhere at first, but that allows the film to constantly play off the expected cliches of the home invasion genre. And as the film progresses and everyone - masked psycho and victims alike - get more and more bashed and beaten, you start to root more and more for crazy oneupsmanship, on everyone's part. More improvised Home Alone traps, more random military encounters crossed with random slasher antics, more everything. I'd seen this before, but what ended up playing better was the dark humor of the thing. There's a lot of really crassly funny lines, which goes well with a great play on the bad "disaffected rear end in a top hat family drama" cliche that runs throughout. The whole thing even ends on a grim joke in the end credits, as the one survivor ends up getting blamed for everything. Highly recommend this one if it managed to slip by before now. Also, more films need both synthesizer-scored scenes of improvised booby trap-setting, plus more death by blender. /5Watched so far: The Curse of Frankenstein, Villains, Horror of Dracula, You're Next
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Oct 2, 2019 04:44
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Next up in the world of Australian horror: #5: Lake Mungo (2008)  I watched this early this afternoon and then went to work thinking about it. I wasn't expecting it to be a "found footage" movie, which at heart it is, but it's framed through the narrative of a pseudo-documentary which in my opinion really helped to elevate it above other entries in the found footage genre. I think it might be me favorite of the bunch, actually. It tells the story of the death of young Alice Palmer, who drowns in a reservoir while on vacation with her family. Her brother is a budding photographer and decides to set up cameras in their house when he and his parents begin hearing strange sounds coming from Alice's room at night. I did some research on this, and it turns out that while the original "Paranormal Activity" was filmed in 2007, it didn't get released until 2009. "Lake Mungo" came out in 2008, which means it wasn't inspired by "Paranormal Activity," it was doing its own thing and frankly does it far better than "Activity" ever did. There are moments in this that legit had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. It's a fantastic ghost story told in a way that was very unique for its time, and considering I hadn't even heard of it until goons in the Horror thread recommended it, I don't think it gets enough credit for being a pioneer of its genre. Finding the body of Alice Palmer in the lake (which isn't the titular Lake Mungo by the way, apparently Lake Mungo is a massive dry lake that was actually an ancient burial ground, making what happens at the end that much cooler) felt like a nod to "Twin Peaks," in the "Who killed Laura Palmer?" sense. I loved the many twists and turns in the narrative, and the climax of the cell phone footage where Alice meets her own future corpse legitimately made me flinch. That was spooky as poo poo. Even if you're not a fan of found footage-type films, give this one a watch. It felt more like an early version of the true crime documentaries that would come later like "Making a Murderer." It builds a similar sense of unease that "Dear Zachary" drops in your stomach, which happened to come out that same year. Fortunately, this one didn't actually happen. 4.5/5 Watched: Midsommar; One Cut of the Dead; Apostle; Wolf Creek; Lake Mungo Total: 5
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Oct 2, 2019 05:06
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 07:55 |
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https://twitter.com/KennethJWaste2/status/1179246452511559685?s=20
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Oct 2, 2019 05:10
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