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T3hRen3gade
Jun 7, 2007

Look in my eye,
what do you see?
:spooky::siren:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2: Dead & Buried:siren::spooky:

#12: Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967)
feat. Sid Haig (1939-2019)



"Our diet is very austere."

Holy poo poo. I am a huge Rob Zombie fan, and I genuinely consider "The Devil's Rejects" to be one of the top if not my straight-up favorite horror film(s), and I had never seen this before. This is the 1960's version of "House of 1000 Corpses." Or to be more accurate, "House of 1000 Corpses" remade this movie by taking major cues from "Spider Baby." Right down to an exact shot between when Frumpy Meryl Streep (Carol Ohmart) gets overwhelmed by feral captive women, compared to when Denise gets overtaken by captives in the cage in Tiny's room. It's the weird story of a trio of siblings afflicted with "Merrye Syndrome," a genetic brain disease that basically sounds like the "Benjamin Button" disease but more psychotic. They are watched over by a family friend-slash-caretaker named Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), and are visited by a group of extended relatives looking to take hold of their wealthy estate. What ensues is a wonderfully weird and dark episode of "The Addams Family" where Sid Haig plays the lumbering half-witted mongoloid version of Uncle Fester. He has no actual spoken dialogue, but his physical performance (especially since this was early in his career when he was young and spry) is so much fun to watch.

While I was watching this I kept seeing things that I recognized from later films, from the obvious Rob Zombie influences to the costume design choices in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Seriously, Carol Ohmart looks like Meryl Streep's younger sister. And "Mr. Schlocker" has a name that is not only on the nose, but has a mustache that makes him look like Hitler and immediately makes you want to see him get done in by the Merrye sisters, who are themselves so much fun to watch. The entire cast is great, the tone is campy for its time and feels edgy, and has a genuine sense of humor.

Since I watched this because of Sid Haig, I can't stress enough how much fun it was to see a young and energetic Sid run around like a slack-jawed Igor. Rest in peace.

4.5/5

Watched: Midsommar; One Cut of the Dead; Apostle; Wolf Creek; Lake Mungo; Viy (Challenge #1); Demon Knight; Witchfinder General; Razorback; Joker; A Quiet Place; Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told (Challenge #2)
Total: 12

T3hRen3gade fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Oct 8, 2019

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Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


13. P (2005) - This loving sucks. I had high hopes - it's a Thai production and the setup is that there's a Khmer girl who lives with her grandmother, who is a witch and teaches her some magic. Local kids are jerks because her grandmother is a witch. Grandma gets sick and she doesn't have any money to buy food or medicine. She goes to one of the village women for help, who offers to send her to a friend in Bangkok where there might be a job for her. So in these early scenes we've got some really great footage of cool jungle locations and a setup for SE Asian black magic, which the Shaw Brothers taught me is a recipe for success.

Then she gets to the city and whoops surprise her job is in a bar/brothel for foreigners because of course. Some people are jerks, some aren't, there are antics and the movie turns into a worse Showgirls for a while, but with a whole lot more "How old are you?" "Eighteen." "Hahah ok but how old on your ID card?" which is obviously sort of uncomfortable but you know as much time as I spend trying to get people to step outside their comfort zones I feel like I have to roll with it a little bit, because maybe the movie's going somewhere worthwhile with this. Thai production and all. It sort of hints that it might, what with spending enough time on the characters to make you suspect it cares about them, more dialogue and shots of the patrons than long scenes focused on the girls dancing, etc.

But no, hope is a lie and there just wasn't anyone editing this loving thing it's like five hours long. Anyway. Our protagonist's grandmother taught her the "look better to men" spell and the "curse people to die or something" spell, with stern warnings about the latter and a list of rules to follow like "don't pass under a clothesline", "don't eat raw meat", and "don't murder people for bad reasons." So of course she promptly gremlins the gently caress out of herself, gets better at her job while doing chowing down on raw pork soup and doing some murders. Really bad murders with repeated, ill-advised CGI and then an anemic little splash of kool-aid blood.

Eventually the loving thing gets my hopes up yet again when a couple of her coworkers go to enlist the help of some guy who knows all about black magic and I think okay maybe they've been saving their budget to go totally off the rails at the end here. Nope. Things keep happening and none of the characters have any sort of arc to follow or any appreciable personality, and what passes for the horror-adjacent 20% of this movie is tamer than Full Moon's bad efforts. Eventually it ends without me getting a single black magic duel or anything, and the credits roll over that extended close-up of a girl dancing I was glad the movie had mostly avoided earlier. I mean not completely avoided, but tossing it in here still felt like a solid attempt to undermine any goodwill I had left. And after all that, it turns out the director was some loving British guy. gently caress off, Paul Spurrier.

Props to cinematographer Richie Moore, though. Nothing groundbreaking, but there are some legit good shots in this movie. I particularly liked a bit when our hero first gets to the big city and we get some random establishing shots of the city as you'd expect, but each one cuts a little bit faster until the segment ends as a blur. Probably not the first time that's been done, but the first time I can recall seeing it and it was efficient and effective. Unlike anything else in this movie.

bitterandtwisted
Sep 4, 2006




16) One Cut of the Dead 2017


I watched this because of everyone itt gushing over it. I concur.

It's not essential to go in blind but it does enhance the experience, so like everyone else I'm not going to say too much.

It's amazing what they achieved on such a no-budget production. They made a real movie. It looks good, the cast are good, I believed and cared about the characters. The whole third act was a blast, I loved the reveals of the causes of every odd decision in the opening movie. It was funny and charming and the human pyramid finale was adorable.

Without wanting to overhype this, I absolutely recommend it to everyone.

Bruteman
Apr 15, 2003

Can I ask ya somethin', Padre? When I was kickin' your ass back there... you get a little wood?

HOUSE, HOME and/or ROOM OF HORROR with special bonus AMITYVILLE ENNUI


15) The Horrible House on the Hill (1974) - watched on Tubi
Trailer

A group of five murderious children escape after the van taking them to a psych ward crashes. They're taken in by a group of adults (businessmen and their wives on a contentious vacation) in an isolated mountain house during a snowstorm. At first, the adults try to make their new guests comfortable for the night, but they begin to notice a little too late that something's off with the kids...

Per IMDB, this movie also goes by the titles "Peopletoys" and "Devil Times Five," which is the title the trailer linked above uses. I'm not a huge fan of the killer kid genre and this one isn't really changing my mind on it, either. All around it feels like a pretty exploitative bit of filmmaking - a woman spends upwards of five minutes trying to seduce a mentally handicapped guy, two of the wives have a catfight - but what's worse is it's slow and plodding. The first big kill scene is interminable, it's a 30-second sequence dragged out to nearly three minutes because they show the whole thing in slow motion, removing any impact it might have. There's really only two kills in the whole thing that are hard to watch; one because the person was nice to the kids all along, the other is a particularly nasty kill where a woman is held under the water in a tub while they dump piranha in with her :yikes:

There's some interesting casting here - venerable character actor Gene Evans is the head of the house, a very young pre-teen-idol Leif Garrett is one of the killer kids, and a pre-Dukes of Hazzard Sorrell Brooke is here as his foil. The rest of the kids are pretty generic and the movie spends a lot of time trying to make them "funny" which doesn't work so well.



16) The House That Dripped Blood (1971) - watched on Amazon Prime
Trailer

After a film star disappears while renting an old house, a Scotland Yard detective learns that this is not the only time something unusual happened at the residence.

IIRC this movie was shown during the Scream Stream year that anthologies were being shown; I missed it then but I'm glad I could catch it this year. One of the good things about anthologies is that there are usually one or two segments that can make up for weaker ones, and on the whole I thought this was pretty strong. The first story, about a writer (Denholm Elliott) grappling with whether a murderous character he's created has come to life, has a great punchline, and the last two stories (Christopher Lee has a strange daughter who he treats cruelly, but possibly with good reason; and Jon Pertwee as an actor famous for playing a vampire getting way into the part when he gets a magic cloak) are both creepy and, particularly with regard to the last story, funny as well. The only one I didn't care much for was the second, where Peter Cushing becomes obsessed with a wax mannequin in a museum that reminds him of someone he loved, but that was less on Cushing and more on the story itself.


AMITYVILLE ENNUI


17 Amityville: the Evil Escapes (aka Amityville 4: the Evil Escapes; 1989) - watched on Tubi
Trailer

:siren:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2: Dead & Buried:siren:
Aron Eisenberg, who plays one of the kids in this movie, died on September 21, 2019.

A team of priests finally exorcises the demonic forces at 112 Ocean Avenue...or so they think. The evil power has transferred itself into a lamp, which is sent across the country where it menaces a bunch of old ladies, kids and handymen.

Last year in the Scream Stream, there was a lot of joking that "Sometimes They Come Back" was like a Stephen King film adapated as a Lifetime Channel Original film. You could have told me this movie was a Lifetime Original movie too and I would have believed you. I remembered around the time of its release that it was in video stores, but when I looked at Wikipedia to satisfy my curiosity, I somehow missed that this was a freaking NBC made-for-TV movie before being released to video! There are one or two scenes in this that I think they may have added after the TV version, come to think of it.

It's been six years since Amityville 3-D, and welp, this is the best they could do. The iconic house (which was totally blown up and destroyed at the end of the third film, mind you) is only in the movie for the first 10 minutes (and per Wikipedia, it's actually a replica in California, where this was filmed), and the rest of the spookiness is the evil being placed in this stupid-looking tall lamp that we haven't seen in any of the previous movies. After the exorcism, they hold a loving YARD SALE (hahahaha) to get rid of the furniture in the house, and after it's bought by one old lady (who pricks her finger on it and ultimately dies), it's sent cross-country to her sister, played by Jane Wyatt, who is in turn being vistited by her daughter (Patty Duke!!) and her children. It's like Amityville comes to Nick at Nite.

In a way, it's a dynamic that could have been better explored - the first three movies had George Lutz, Sonny Montelli and the reporter guy, all troubled men that the house could prey on; this has the specter of Patty's dead husband, so the demon lamp tries to woo the youngest daughter to the side of evil while making poo poo blow up, maim or kill people around the house. Wyatt believes the kids are being bad/troubled because of their deceased father. A young priest that saw the demon enter the lamp is taunted cross-county so he eventually arrives to help them fight it off.

The demon lamp gets up to some real poo poo in this one - we get a parrot in a toaster oven, runaway chainsaws, and a malfunctioning garbage disposal (the one real moment of violence and blood - based on some reviews and comments I saw, this HAD to have been shortened for the NBC version and restored on video). My favorite kill is the house drowning a plumber in black goop, then making his van drive away on its own to fool the ladies!

So how does it stack up to the others? Eh, not as good as the first two, maybe a little better than the third, but definitely the most unintentionally hilarious one so far.

That Dang Dad
Apr 23, 2003

Well I am
over-fucking-whelmed...
Young Orc


9. SCREAM - Amazon Rental

Rewatched this after like 15 years. It still holds up, baby! Even though meta horror has been done to death now, this film's punchy pace, humor, and tight construction make it a pleasure to watch even in 2019.

My only real complaint is that the cast bantering about horror films they know often feels kinda inorganic or forced. However, I did notice this movie relied much less on deconstructing horror tropes than I remembered. It's mostly a straightforward slasher where characters just happen to have genre awareness. 4/5 stabs



10. LEVIATHAN

This is a fun, goofy little creature feature that feels like a mashup of THE THING and ALIEN and ABYSS. It's a blast once the horror starts happening, but I felt like it took too long to get going. There was a lot of downtime with people I didn't necessarily enjoy spending time with and I found myself dual-screening a bit.

Also, I'm sorry Sixpack, but in 2019 I haaate watching a guy openly sexually assault his crew mates in view of others and have it played for laughs. I know 1989 "wAS a dIFFerEnT TiME" but nowadays it just takes me right out of a movie.

If you can look past the awful sexual politics and the slow start, this will probably scratch that ABYSS or SPHERE itch. 3/5 groping assholes

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
When I rewatched Scream after like 15 years, like you did, I got extremely lightheaded and basically passed out in my chair(had I been standing I absolutely would've gone down) during the finale when they're stabbing each other. 13 year old me would be totally embarrassed by 30 year old me.

gey muckle mowser
Aug 5, 2003

Do you know anything about...
witches?



Buglord

mary had a little clam posted:



9. SCREAM - Amazon Rental

Rewatched this after like 15 years. It still holds up, baby! Even though meta horror has been done to death now, this film's punchy pace, humor, and tight construction make it a pleasure to watch even in 2019.

My only real complaint is that the cast bantering about horror films they know often feels kinda inorganic or forced. However, I did notice this movie relied much less on deconstructing horror tropes than I remembered. It's mostly a straightforward slasher where characters just happen to have genre awareness. 4/5 stabs



Scream is maybe my favorite horror film of the '90s (Candyman is the only other contender for the top spot) and one of my all-time favorites too. I love how they know the rules of horror movies but it doesn't help them at all. Casey does everything right - locks the doors and windows, arms herself, runs out the front door instead of upstairs, but she dies anyway because movies cheat. Randy is the biggest expert on horror films, but he stands there yelling at the characters in Halloween to turn around but doesn't do it himself.

Basebf555 posted:

When I rewatched Scream after like 15 years, like you did, I got extremely lightheaded and basically passed out in my chair(had I been standing I absolutely would've gone down) during the finale when they're stabbing each other. 13 year old me would be totally embarrassed by 30 year old me.

yeah it's hosed up

gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 8, 2019

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

#16: The Hills Have Eyes



Holy poo poo this movie is too long.

The family has very simple stock relationships. The teen son and daughter bicker, the dad doesn't respect the son-in-law, we get it. You can set all that up in a few minutes. We don't need 45 minutes of family interactions before anything happens. The big cannibal attack happens almost an hour in, I swear to god.

It wouldn't be so bad if the second half of the movie was built around those relationships. The surviving members of this fractious family have to team up to fight the cannibals. But no. They split up. The survivors split into two groups, each with a completely different but equally very dumb scheme. And then they go do their schemes, both of which work out solely by movie fiat because they are very dumb, and then come back together at the end with the schemes having had zero effect on each other. It's like they wrote two different scripts and then decided to just do both of them.

I can't get across how dumb their plans are. There are three major times where the cannibals could've and should've killed the son-in-law but they just don't. I guess to make the movie longer. Which ends up making you wonder how the gently caress the cannibals survived this long. One semi-competent family with a gun could've wiped them all out easily. So when the son-in-law gets his big revenge rampage it feels completely unearned. The cannibals basically went out of their way to allow him to have his rampage but he kept loving it up for like 20 minutes.

And the other ending plot, with the teen son and daughter, is just terrible. At least the the son-in-law plot had cannibal action. The teens plot is just them setting up an overly complicated dumb trap. Which they ended up not even needing! When the cannibal reached through the window they actually did something clever and grabbed his arm and restrained it, which wasn't part of the trap and a that point they could've just stabbed him or something, they didn't need the trap anymore! And when it ends with the teens hugging it's like, this is not satisfactory conclusion to their arc because they clearly had an OK relationship to start with! They bickered, but for teen siblings on a long road trip it was super tame bickering. They didn't need an experience to bring them together because they weren't apart to begin with!

The Hills Have Eyes does have some things working for it. The cannibal makeup looks great. The craters full of abandoned cars is a fantastic spooky setting. The abandoned nuclear test fake suburb is a fantastic setting. Although the fact that the cannibals decided to leave some of the houses pristine and some of the houses cannibaled up in order to have two different kinds of spooky in the same place was an odd choice for them to make. But when the one cannibal gives a speech explaining their backstory it's like, OK, I guess they're just aware of their narrative role and are leaning into it?

But overall, The Hills Have Eyes is way too long, takes way too long to get to the action, and has an unsatisfying and way too long ending.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004

mary had a little clam posted:

My only real complaint is that the cast bantering about horror films they know often feels kinda inorganic or forced.

Totally agreed. Watched the movie for the first time last year, and it felt like the sort of stuff that people who weren't fans of the genre would say about horror movies.

That Dang Dad
Apr 23, 2003

Well I am
over-fucking-whelmed...
Young Orc

Basebf555 posted:

When I rewatched Scream after like 15 years, like you did, I got extremely lightheaded and basically passed out in my chair(had I been standing I absolutely would've gone down) during the finale when they're stabbing each other. 13 year old me would be totally embarrassed by 30 year old me.



gey muckle mowser posted:


yeah it's hosed up

The extremeness of the violence was SHOCKING. I was 13 when I saw it and remember enjoying it, but last night as people are being gutted very violently and stabbed savagely, I was shocked at how raw it felt. I'm surprised the brutality didn't stick in my memory better!

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

mary had a little clam posted:

The extremeness of the violence was SHOCKING. I was 13 when I saw it and remember enjoying it, but last night as people are being gutted very violently and stabbed savagely, I was shocked at how raw it felt. I'm surprised the brutality didn't stick in my memory better!

Matthew Lillard deserves a lot of the credit there. His reaction to being stabbed and the realization that he's bleeding out is extremely disturbing.

Butch Cassidy
Jul 28, 2010

:roboluv: Super Samhain Challenge No. 1 :siren:





17. Westworld (1973)
Blu-ray

Still love this every bit as much as when child me first saw it. The control room of asphyxiated bodies is still horrific.

Watched - 1. Get My Gun (2017), 2. The Last Man on Earth (1964), 3. It Stains the Sands Red (2016), 4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), 5. Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil (2017) *Tied for Current Favorite*, 6. Halloween (1978), 7. One Cut of the Dead (2017), 8. Phamtasm II (1988), 9. Ramekin (2018), 10. Les Affamés (2017), 11. Braindead (1992), 12. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), 13. The Haunting (1963) *Tied for Current Favorite*, 14. House of Wax (1953), 15. Shock (1946), 16. Annihilation (2018), 17. Westworld (1973)

Decade - 1920s, 1930s, 1940s (II), 1950s (I), 1960s (II), 1970s (III), 1980s (I), 1990s (I), 2000s, 2010s (VII)

Black & White:Color - 4:13

By Country - Canada (I), Japan (I), 'Murica (XIII), New Zealand (I), Spain (I)

New:Rewatch - 13:4

Super Samhain Challenge - 1. Westworld (1973) 2. N/A

Butch Cassidy fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Oct 8, 2019

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

Horror of Dracula

A yearly watch for me, but this one was special because for the first time I was finally able to get my hands on Dracula: Prince of Darkness. It's always been frustrating to watch Horror of Dracula, then skip right to Dracula Has Risen From the Grave without having seen what happened in between. For whatever reason the streaming rights are all messed up and even when TCM played Prince of Darkness last year it was blacked out on Playstation Vue.

Anyway, Horror of Dracula is probably the high water mark for Peter Cushing in suave as gently caress outfits. This was the first Hammer Horror I saw and the costumes were a huge part of what drew me in.



The story also plays around with the usual Dracula story, so it's hard to predict what will happen to the characters. It was pretty ballsy to kill off Harker in the first 30 minutes but I think the film is better for it. Personally I enjoy this much more than Lugosi Dracula and I don't even think that's a hot take, I think a lot of people probably feel the same way.


Dracula: Prince of Darkness

This was my big purchase of the season, a somewhat overpriced blu ray but I caved and ordered it because this film was such a huge hole in my Hammer viewing. And it was certainly worth it, Hammer and blu ray are really a great combination. There are a ton of very stylish shots in the film and all sorts of dynamic lighting.



An interesting conflict exists about the production of the film. Christopher Lee famously claimed that the reason Dracula does not speak is that he vetoed the scripted lines he was given. "I said to Hammer, if you think I'm going to say any of these lines, you're very much mistaken." The screenwriter, however, claims that the mostly silent Dracula was an artistic choice, and that no lines were written in the script. In a documentary included on the blu ray, it's theorized that Lee may have conflated two different Dracula productions in his mind. One where the lines were terrible(perhaps Jess Franco's 1970 film?), and Prince of Darkness where Dracula does not speak.

As much as I loved the film, it's worth pointing out that this is really where the template was established for the Dracula sequels the come. Mostly due to Lee's hesitance to return to the role, the films began to repeat a pattern where the first half of the runtime(at least) would not feature Dracula at all. Then, when Dracula does rise from the grave(obviously), he ends up being defeated so quickly that you could argue his status as a threat was diminished as time went by and more sequels were made. Still, Prince of Darkness has a great and fairly unique ending that you don't see very often in vampire fiction and in general I always enjoy the creative ways Hammer had dispatched him over the years.

A bittersweet day for me actually, because that's it for Hammer Dracula. There will be no more and I can only ever rewatch them, never experience them for the first time again.

Watched: 1. Child's Play(1988) 2. Child's Play(2019) 3. VHS: Viral 4. Tales From the Crypt 5. Viy 6. House of Frankenstein 7. Van Helsing 8. The Shining 9. Salem's Lot 10. Poltergeist 2: The Other Side 11. Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings 12. The Ravenous 13. Alucarda 14. Horror of Dracula 15. Dracula: Prince of Darkness

M_Sinistrari
Sep 5, 2008

Do you like scary movies?




45) Blair Witch - 2016 - DVD

Count me in the crowd who said "After all this time they're making a what?" when they heard there was going to be a new Blair Witch movie.

Stylistically it's closer to the original, and doesn't mention anything from Blair Witch 2. Plotwise, it does expand on the mythos, though I don't think it was a good call to show the witch. I felt it flowed better when it was vague if there was a witch or something else going on.


Final Thoughts:

Much as this franchise was the 'beginning' of found footage as a genre and viral marketing as the new style of movie promotion, it's also the start of needing to consume as much related media as possible. On their own, the films are fairly average. It's when one watches the mockumentaries, reads the books and comics, play the games that they get the additional information that improve the movie. It's like what's happened with the Star Wars franchise where with the current trilogy you need to have read the novels and comics since the movies presume you have for the full story.

Eduardo Sanchez has expressed interest in a TV show and more movies in the franchise, but nothing more's been said since last year.

Franchescanado posted:

SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2: Dead & Buried

:ghost: Watch the film Dead & Buried.

46) Dead & Buried - 1981 - Shudder

If you asked my opinion of this one when I first saw it in my teens, I would've called it boring and promptly start griping that I spent hard earned allowance money on the rental for a movie that sucks. Turns out this was a film I had to do some growing on. Revisiting it decades later with an expanded horror movie palate and more life experience under my belt, I've come to appreciate it.

From the start, we know something ain't right with the town of Potter's Bluff since we see the brutal attack by the townies on a visiting photographer. In fact, anyone visiting the town gets murdered by the townies. It's when those murdered pop up again as townies, the 'why' of what's going on is the central point.

For as much as we're slightly more in the know than the town's sherrif on what's going on, we're following him along as he investigates the murders. Every bit of the movie's an atmospheric slow burn with the ever present fog giving it an almost otherworldly air, the murderous townies being mild mannered with each other, and the school teaching the occult to the kids.

The end reveal that the only living person in town's the mortician. Everyone else is an animated corpse he's essentially playing a live action version of The Sims with. is presented so matter of factly it's unnerving and is enough to make you want to watch again to try to pick up any of the signs of the truth.

The cast completely brings their A game to their roles, and if you're only familiar with Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka, you're in for a doozy of a surprise. This is also one of Stan Winston's early films and while some effects are a bit poorly like the acid death, his greatness shows in others like the reconstruction of a woman who's head was crushed by a rock.

If you're looking for slow subtle unease, this is a must watch. I also recommend the novelization if you can find it.

Dr. Puppykicker
Oct 16, 2012

Meanwhile

Accidental thematically similar double feature from Japan!

7. Audition (1999)

More than just providing an all-timer twist, Miike's strong character focus turns what could have been a Fatal Attraction style lady-psycho movie into something with genuine tragic weight. The first act portrait of Japan's systematic misogyny hits harder because our protagonist is more lonely than "bad", thoughtlessly playing along with a weird, unfair, rigged system his buddy laid out for him. Meanwhile, the reveal of Asami's true nature increases our sympathy and pity for her, even as she commits some of the most disturbing acts in horror movie history. I appreciate how the finale totally denies us any catharsis from her defeat, the overwhelming mood from the moment she first disappears is one of tragedy.

Also, thanks to apps, the audition scenes are basically what modern dating is for everyone!!! At least no one's pretending you'll get a job off of this poo poo.

5/5 :love:

8. Perfect Blue (1997)
:spooky:Challenge #1: The Best Month:spooky:

It ain't subtle, but it works.

Satoshi Kon-directed 1997 anime is the story of a pop idol in the midst of a career transition to being a "serious" (read: naked and fake-murdered) actress. Over the course of the film she's subject to strange and paranoid hallucinations related to her public perception and past life. Meanwhile, she's pursued by a strange stalker while some of the industry men who have exploited her are turning up dead.

Not every choice in this works but I absolutely love the multiple DePalma-style perspective shifts and the way this uses transitions and effects that would only be possible in animation. And while the critiques of systemic misogyny and the entertainment industry are very in-your-face they're also not only not wrong but prescient, anticipating everything from Weinstein to online hate campaigns. A justly legendary scene towards the middle of the film depicts the process of filming a scene containing graphic sexual violence is probably one of the smartest and most complicated ways I've seen the subject handled in a film and a showcase for how professionalism can be a veneer on exploitation. At the same time, the film is also critical of the hypocritical "purity" standards women in the public eye are held to and the impossibility of satisfying omnipresent, contradictory demands. A messy, weird, fascinating film.

4/5 :nyoron:

Lumbermouth
Mar 6, 2008

GREG IS BIG NOW


14. Mandy (2018)
Watched On: Blu Ray


I saw this movie in theaters last year because it was only screening in my area for one day and I felt that it had to be something I experienced in all its cinematic glory. Upon rewatch, I was definitely right.

Make no mistake, this movie is still beautiful. The production and lighting design are still some of the most insane things I've seen put to screen and the score gives the whole film this pervasive sense of both dread and wonder. Cage is one of the few actors in Hollywood today that I think could pull off the film's combination of manic insanity and emotional devastation. But the first time I saw it was lightning in a bottle and, for better or worse, I can't recapture that on a second viewing.

If you haven't seen it, absolutely do so. Crank the goddamned subwoofer, turn off your phone and just let it wash over you.

Friends Are Evil
Oct 25, 2010

cats cats cats




12. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Dir: Wes Craven

(Netflix DVD)
Another one I've been putting off for a while and yeah, this isn't Wes Craven's best work. It feels weird to say this about a movie this bleak and brutal, but it always feels like it's holding something back. The idea of two nuclear families (one literal) fighting for dominance is great and they do some interesting stuff with it, but there's some definite tone problems, especially with how goofy the mutants can be. It feels like it needed to either get bleaker or weirder. As is, it's in this awkward middle ground where it doesn't go far enough in either direction. Also would've been okay without the rape scene. I'd be curious to see how the Alexandre Aja remake compares.

:ghost::ghost: SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2 : Dead and Buried :ghost::ghost:

13. Spider Baby (1967)
Dir: Jack Hill

(Amazon Prime)
Watched this one in memoriam of Sid Haig. I'm in love with this film's tone. It embraces a level of hokey debauchery that helps turn the ...shortcomings of the budget into something very charming. Lon Chaney Jr really carries this one, but it's neat seeing young Sid Haig doing his thing. Rob Zombie clearly based his whole aesthetic off this film, but that doesn't make it worse by any means. The opening credits are up there with Enter The Void as one of the best tone-setters in a film.


Watched: 1. Candyman 2. The Wailing 3. Spookies 4. One Cut of the Dead 5. Viy 6. The Driller Killer 7. Tammy and the T-Rex 8. Friday the 13th Pt VI: Jason Lives 9. Scary Movie (not that one) 10. Ice Cream Man 11. Freaks 12. The Hills Have Eyes 13. Spider Baby

Class3KillStorm
Feb 17, 2011



Franchescanado posted:

SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2: Dead & Buried

:ghost: Watch a horror film featuring an actor who has passed away since last October.


#12. The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Purchased on Vudu)

A group of scientists goes searching in the Amazon for fossilized remains of a prehistoric creature - half-man, half-fish. However, one of these "Gill Men" is still alive and well in the Black Lagoon... and he's taken an interest in the lone female scientist of the group (RIP Julie Andrews).

Of the three Gill Man movies, the original is still probably the best. It's got the best, most simple setup - scientists in a lagoon, fish-man tries to kill them and kidnap the girl - and the best cinematography. (The underwater scenes are all simply beautiful looking; I love the scenes of the Creature swimming along with the lady scientist, totally entranced by her.) And the Creature has always been my favorite of the Universal Monsters, based on a strong costume design and his status as the first of the "A-tier" cast to be dropped from merchandising whenever numbers are limited or profits aren't expected to be high. (The Creature's relative obscurity compared to Dracula or Frankenstein makes him the obvious chaser for any merch he does show up in.)

That said, the film is not without issues, some of them pretty glaring. Julie Andrews is a striking presence in the film, but she's not really playing a true character here. The rest of the cast is paper thin, stereotypically 1950s strong-jawed he-man scientist types (somehow both quick with a right hook and also possessing a deep understanding of the Scientific Method), or populated with equally thin ethnic stereotypes (the Latino boat captain is broad but can be fun, while the tribal assistants are pretty much non-characters, there to just appear and be quickly dispatched).

Also, the Creature himself is something of a problem, in that the script doesn't really know what to do with him beyond letting him wander around and stick his hands through portholes or out of the water sometimes. He's something of an ersatz Frankenstein (in that he's a monster that largely wants to be left alone) and a stand-in Wolf Man (in that he's an animalistic creature entranced with a human beauty), and that combination doesn't really gel. There's also a proto-environmentalist theme that gets surfaced when the trapped scientists start dumping chemicals in the lagoon to kill the Creature, but that moment never really amounts to anything.

Oh, and I hope you like the trumpet section in the orchestra, because you are going to be hearing from them A LOT. I gave up counting how many times that three second blast was played in the film after about a dozen entries, and the film was barely half over at that point. (I believe the sequels are actually WORSE in that regard.)

If you can look past the repetitive score and the thin characters, this is a beautiful looking film, a fun adventure romp with a sci-fi fish monster occasionally springing in to spook ya, and the best entry for the best Universal Monster (though not the best Universal Monster film, in general). Recommended.

:ghost::ghost::ghost:/5


Watched so far: The Curse of Frankenstein, Villains, Horror of Dracula, You're Next, House on Haunted Hill (1959), Halloween 4, Army of Darkness, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Fly (1986), Joker, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Darthemed
Oct 28, 2007

"A data unit?
For me?
"




College Slice

#50) The Creeps (1997), a.k.a., Deformed Monsters
Wurgh. Working through Phil Fondacaro's filmography has me returning to Full Moon's catalog, and this is one of their worse premises. Famous literary monsters like Frankenstein's Creature, Dracula, and... the Wolfman are summoned out of the original manuscripts of their books, but there's a gently caress-up, and they emerge "three feet tall." The monsters aren't particularly happy with this situation, and force the mad scientist who incarnated them to try and fix it. Oh, and this is directed by Charles Band himself.

Dracula (played by Fondacaro) is the only one of the monsters to get lines beyond grunting and groaning. He also out-acts everyone else. Outside of his performance, this is a truly dull movie. The sets are dressed well enough (one appears to be using a local movie rental place, as there's a D2: The Mighty Ducks poster), lit fine, some of the jokes manage to land, there are no noticeable line fumbles... But there's also no tension, excitement, or scares. It just pushes from start to finish, and that's it. Past the basic premise, it's not even that exploitative; there's hardly any lines about the monsters being short that aren't coming from Fondacaro, and the few scenes in which they menace someone, the victim acts the same as they would with monsters of their own height. I can't imagine why they bothered to make this, unless Fondacaro really wanted to play Dracula, and someone at Full Moon owed him a favor.

:spooky: rating: 4/10

"Look, I don't know if I stumbled into some Fellini movie or something..."

Conrad_Birdie
Jul 10, 2009

I WAS THERE
WHEN CODY RHODES
FINISHED THE STORY

Basebf555 posted:

Matthew Lillard deserves a lot of the credit there. His reaction to being stabbed and the realization that he's bleeding out is extremely disturbing.

Matthew Lillard in the last few scenes of Scream is truly some next-level acting. Unhinged, terrifying, funny. It’s possibly my favorite aspect of one of my favorite scary movies (lol) of all time.

Casimir Radon
Aug 2, 2008


"Peer pressure" is one of the funniest lines in a horror movie.

Darthemed
Oct 28, 2007

"A data unit?
For me?
"




College Slice

#51) Talisman (1998)
One Full Moon deserves another. I think that's their business model, at least. This one's another DeCoteau entry, and within the first few seconds, the fact that he bothered to change up the lenses and camera angles already had this flying past The Creeps. The gory heart-rip didn't hurt, either. This turned out to be kind of a sex-swapped Suspiria, plot-wise, with a young man attending a boarding school (with, like, two dozen students, at most) who finds that there's some occult poo poo going on, with complicity between administration and some of the students. It goes off the blueprint a bit with the reveal that the main character and his sister are the last living blood descendants of some bigwig from the school's occult history, but it doesn't amount to much of a twist.

Some typically stiff sexual tension between the students, some sets that rise above Full Moon standards, extensive use of shadows, and some atypically restrained acting all help lend a veneer of decency to a story that, underneath all of that, is bland and predictable. They also had this one sound effect that they'd use every time the evil guy appeared, and that got really tiresome. The characters weren't developed enough to have much empathy for them, which left the conflict underwhelming. The third act would have been a sad fart even if the conflict hadn't been flat-lining, though, which is a real problem when you're pulling out a fallen angel to remove the barrier between Earth and Hell. For something that hits a lot of the same beats, but has more life and surprises to it, I'd recommend going with the Corey Feldman vehicle Voodoo instead.

:spooky: rating: 5/10

"Look, not that I'm suggesting that you can't tell the difference between a dream and reality, but maybe you just fell asleep out here somewhere and just sorta... Now you can't tell the difference between a dream and reality."

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

BioTech posted:

#12. Tragedy Girls


I absolutely loved The Voices and STAC comparing it to that meant I just had to watch it. Very glad I did, because this was great.
Smart, funny, playing with conventions and constantly trying to win you over only for new shocks to push you away again, it was wonderful.
The distorted portrayal of gruesome events did remind me of The Voices, but mainly I kept thinking of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.
Yeah, Voices probably wasn't the BEST comparison. Reynold's character in that is deluded and a big part of the movie is the agony of how not seeing the horror of what he's doing. The Tragedy Girls very much know what they're doing. The Leslie Vernon comparison is probably a better one in that way. All three kind of play with the ideas of "protagonists vs antagonists" and "good guys vs bad guys" and really kind of challenges you by doing a good job trying to make you genuinely like someone you really shouldn't with no real way that "relationship" you're building with them could end "happy." But Voices ends as darkly as possible for its protagonist while Tragedy Girls and Behind the Mask both basically have a "happy ending" for the killers who got everything they wanted, even if that's basically the "bad guy" winning.

TheOmegaWalrus
Feb 3, 2007

by Hand Knit
SAMHEIM CHALLENGE

Uncle Walrus' 3 Sentence Horror Review

4. Viy 1967



This month's movie challenge was a pleasant re-watch for me, courtesy of Soviet Russia. Despite being over 60 years old, the humor and special effects hold their own and the Slavic folklore angle is a breath of fresh air. An old spinster rides the protagonist around like a broom and the last ten minutes are a visual, spooky treat.

5. Alucarda 1977



Riding high on the wave of satanic panic, this movie glorifies and gorifies the dark lord in a spectacle of sleaze and torture porn. It's as if The Wicker Man kept it's folksy horror style but abandoned all pretense of decorum and became thinly-veiled pornography. Still, in a Kenneth Anger sort of way the movie worked and I was entertained.

Darthemed
Oct 28, 2007

"A data unit?
For me?
"




College Slice

#52) Necropolis (1986), a.k.a., Necropolis: City of the Dead
Thought I was getting away from the Bands with this one, but then "Empire Pictures Presents" faded up on screen. We start back in unspecified olden times (IMDb says 1600s Amsterdam) then cut to the witch from then busting out on a motorcycle in modern (1980s) times. The film follows her doing whatever the hell she feels like as she goes about resurrecting her cult or something. It doesn't matter too much, as it feels like the attempt at a plot is just an excuse to string together a bunch of weird scenes in service of the aesthetic.

Definitely a step up from the last two movies, this has a lot of sleazy '80s neon synth dungeon energy going for it. Wandering foggy city streets at night, dancing in her witch lair decorated with Halloween props (including a sweet goblin head atop her mirror), interfering with radio station testimonials from former druggies, and picking pointless fights with prostitutes, the witch (played by LeeAnne Baker) is absolutely the high point of this movie. While the other characters would be flat in a standard B-movie, when they're in the same film as her performance, they really suffer. And that's even before the scene in which she grows four extra breasts to feed ectoplasm to her followers. Too bad the ending doesn't have a good build-up or pay-off, because I was having a good time until it skidded to a halt.

Unlike latter-day Full Moon, there's enough effort put into the props, sets, and performances to bring some life to this thing, dumb as it may be. It probably helps that it's directed by the same guy who wrote the script, so there may have been some actual passion behind it. Trashy, junky fun, with just a few too many dead spots to make it something I'd unqualifiedly throw on as background visuals at a Halloween party.

:spooky: rating: 6/10

"Let's go home and gently caress."

Friends Are Evil
Oct 25, 2010

cats cats cats




14. Lady Terminator (1989)
Dir: Jalil Jackson

(DVD)

The definition of galaxy brain. An anthropologist goes to Indonesia to search for the South Sea Queen, an ancient sex goddess who kills people with a snake in her vagina, and she inexplicably becomes the Terminator (but with magic instead of time travel). Beyond that, it's about as direct a rip-off of the first Terminator as you could possibly get, with the addition of some of the most baffling editing you could possibly find. Some bits are almost lifted shot-for-shot. This isn't a good film, but it makes so many bewildering choices I can't help but love it. A masterpiece of trash cinema.

Watched: 1. Candyman 2. The Wailing 3. Spookies 4. One Cut of the Dead 5. Viy 6. The Driller Killer 7. Tammy and the T-Rex (gore cut) 8. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives 9. Scary Movie (not that one) 10. Ice Cream Man11. Freaks 12. The Hills Have Eyes 13. Spider Baby 14. Lady Terminator

smitster
Apr 9, 2004


Oven Wrangler
SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1 - MOTM
14. Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde (1931) - New to me #7



This was the best version of this I have yet seen. The first-person POV really added something, and the transformation into Hyde sequences were really well done cuts and fades. It looked better than The Wolfman transformations, to me. There was also some clever use of wiping between scenes, but keeping the wipe in the middle and starting the second scene and leaving two characters up, e.g., to contrast their experiences or for dramatic effect. The camera also felt very playful at times, panning over to a skeleton and back before he realizes that the potion might kill him, for example.

The extra pre-code salaciousness helped to prevent that kind of sterile feel that some of the later Universal movies had. This Hyde had such personality, while becoming more bestial with every transformation. The ending was a bit heavy-handed about not rejecting God in pursuit of science, but that's not surprising and this was a great movie.

SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2 - DEAD & BURIED
15. Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) - Watch What I Own #4



I could have counted this towards my rewatch, but I’m only counting each movie towards one category. This was a rewatch, and I’ve seen this a few times. This was the first time I saw it on the gorgeous bluray Universal Monsters collection, and it really pops. The underwater scenes are still impressive, the creature is dorky, there are questionable decisions all around, it’s great goofy fun.



Movies So Far - 15:
Rewatches: 4 - Deep Red, One Cut Of The Dead, The Endless, Train To Busan
New To Me: 7 - Dolls, Borderlands, Child’s Play (2019), Memory: Origins Of Alien, Who Can Kill A Child?, The Seventh Curse, Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde
Finally Watching Owned Movies: 4 - Werewolf Of London, She-Wolf Of London, Isle Of The Snake People, Creature From The Black Lagoon

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

Conrad_Birdie posted:

Matthew Lillard in the last few scenes of Scream is truly some next-level acting. Unhinged, terrifying, funny. It’s possibly my favorite aspect of one of my favorite scary movies (lol) of all time.

The dude's a super underrated actor. Like, She's All That is a rubbish, boring movie but he is phenomenal in it.

Conrad_Birdie
Jul 10, 2009

I WAS THERE
WHEN CODY RHODES
FINISHED THE STORY

TrixRabbi posted:

The dude's a super underrated actor. Like, She's All That is a rubbish, boring movie but he is phenomenal in it.

He’s honestly even doing fantastic work in the Scooby Doo movies. Makes that character believable in live-action.

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

Conrad_Birdie posted:

He’s honestly even doing fantastic work in the Scooby Doo movies. Makes that character believable in live-action.

Absolutely. I'm glad Lynch tapped him for Twin Peaks. He needs more work, guy's supremely talented.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004

Conrad_Birdie posted:

He’s honestly even doing fantastic work in the Scooby Doo movies. Makes that character believable in live-action.

I mean, Bob Denver did it better. But I watched a clip of one of the prequel live-action 'Doo movies the other day and woof, made me appreciate Lillard's work even more. The guy crushes it as the voice of the animated version, too.

StormOfDarkness
Oct 16, 2012

We know how to sing but we don't know how to handle money or women. Do-wap. do do wop.

Got behind on write ups because I am lazy.

7) Les Affamés (The Ravenous) (2017)
Another run of the mill zombie flick, almost. While it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, it is actually pretty good. The Cinematography is great, and there are some absolutely great shots. It’s sad, funny, sweet, and somber, all at once. While the plot is a basic some survivors try to survive, what really sells it is the fact the movie is all about connections.

7/10 Orange Kit Kats

8) Dead Snow (2009)
A bunch of unlikable jackasses go into a cabin in the woods to party and do drugs. Then they start dying, typical slasher fashion, and it seems like a generic run of the mill slasher film. And the first half is really boring. But then the premise of the movie kicks in, which is Zombie Nazi’s came back to reclaim thier stolen gold. The second half of the movie is great horror action with twists, a great scene of a guy hanging off a cliff with zombie intestines, twists, AND turns.
This is a movie of wasted potential, spending the first half being a slasher and not a Nazi Zombie movie. The second half of the movie is legit fun, so I’d give it a recommendation.
5/10 Orange Kit Kats

9) Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998)
I started the Phantasm movies last year, and this I finished them. These movies all follow a similar plot, Reggie, an Ice cream man turned soldier, is looking for his friend his Mike, while trying to thwart the dastardly plans of the Tall Man.
This one is more of Mike’s film, with him traveling through time and dimensions to figure out what the Tall Man’s whole deal is. Mike is slowly turning into one the Tall Man’s minions, which amounts to becoming a silver killing sphere.
The Phantasm movies never make much sense plot wise, but are always a blast to watch, and this might just be the best. Angus Scrimm as the Tall man is one of the most sinister villains in horror, even if his plan is just general evil or something. I’m still not sure. These are movies to watch if you want pure insanity, and Phantasm 4 delivers in spades.

10/10 Orange Kit Kats

10)]Alucarda (1977)
Alucarda and Justine are orphans who live in a catholic convent. They fall in love, then for some reason make a pact with the devil. This causes them to be possessed by Satan, and they wreak havoc on the convent.
I had no idea who I was supposed to root for in this. The clearly corrupt church? The clearly evil possessed Satanists? No one? It’s not a terrible film, it’s just kind of out there. Not my cup of tea.

4/10 Orange Kit Kats

11) Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (2014)
Like any movie that has Nazi Zombies should, this movie starts with an intense action sequence involinvg the surviving cast of the first film and the Zombie Nazis. This film doesn't try to be straight horror, instead going for more of action horror throughout. The Nazi Zombies, getting back thier gold, now want to finish thier mission, wipe out Talvik. Our heroes, the inept Zombie Squad, must raise an undead army of their own, WW2 russians to fight the Nazis.
This film rips off many other films, all to its benefit. The MC has a Nazi Zombie Arm from a transplant mix up that he can barley control like Idle hands, the MC seems ripped out of Evil dead, and the gore would not be mispalced in a troma film. And with a premise as outlandish as Zombie Nazis, this is all very good. Some of the humor misses the mark, with some jokes falling very flat. But the action is top notch.

8/10 Orange Kit Kats

12) Phantasm: RaVager (2016)
Reggie, an Ice cream man turned soldier, who may or may not have dementia, is looking for his friend Mike, who may or may not be dead, while trying to stop the Tall Man from his evil deeds. Reggie seemingly transports dimensions and time at will, with him being on the road looking for mike, him being in a nursing home, and him being in the post-apocalypse, fighting the Tall Man. If you ask me which one is really happening, all of them, none of them, I have no idea. It’s Phantasm.
It’s good, but not as good as four or one. What makes the Phantasm films interesting is it’s core cast hasn’t changed in almost 40 years. Reggie and Mike might have the most wholesome friendship in any horror franchise. Unfortunately, Angus Scrimm passed away shortly after filming this movie, leaving a number 6 in doubt. But watching this saga unfold is definitely a good time, but I’d recommend starting from the beginning.

8/10 Orange Kit Kats

Butch Cassidy
Jul 28, 2010


I laughed way harder at this than I should probably admit.

Darthemed
Oct 28, 2007

"A data unit?
For me?
"




College Slice

#53) Clinger (2015), a.k.a., The Stalking Dead
Nah, it ain't no teddy-bear horror. Well, it's mostly not. It's about a hetero high school romance which gets too intense, way too fast ("It's what our kid will look like! I made it on the internet."), and ends when a love declaration prop the boyfriend had set up goes awry and decapitates him. Very sad. But then that clingy MF pops back up as a ghost, and Fern, the girlfriend, has to put up with him until he floats off to his real afterlife.

We hit the ghost sex scene before the halfway point.

After seeing semi-recent quirky teen romance movies like The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns (I got them at Dollar Tree, okay?), this was a welcome deflation of their cliches and flaws. Also a good message for teenagers about not being a clingy creep. I wish I'd seen it as a freshie. Lots of good lines, good gags, some genuine creepiness (e.g., the scene in which Fern is trapped in a car that's filling up with teddy-bears and rose petals), surprisingly capable gore when it crops up, and the older sister's BF eventually had me cracking up with his slime-ball ways. Needing so many CGI effects on such a small budget was probably not a great idea, but it never looked outright bad, just rough around the edges. Fern's friends and family play to the comedy without feeling unreal (though the dad did look like an imperfect clone of Rob Corddry), and it built up to the weird-rear end finale in a natural-feeling way.

This won't be everyone's cup of tea, as I imagine it'll cause a lot of 'Why didn't they play up the comedy more?' and 'Why didn't they play up the horror more?' responses. But it was so far beyond what I expected, and had such a high rate of laugh-out-loud jokes, that it totally won me over. I'm glad I took a chance on this one.

:spooky: rating: 7/10

"What's in this pill?" "Ghost science, shut the gently caress up!"

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

I'm starting to worry that, despite it's inclusion in a Roger Corman horror collection DVD, She Gods of the Shark Reef is not actually a horror movie.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

I'm not even sure I'd call She Gods of Shark Reef a movie. It's one of those fifties movies where they'd just film some stuff in Hawaii and that was good enough for audiences of the time who were just happy to see a woman move her hips. And they sure as hell weren't going to give a native Hawaiian a major role so the local love interest is played by a white girl of Italian descent doing a super racist accent.

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

She Gods of Shark Reef was a complete waste of 62 minutes. And I looked up the fifth and final film in the Roger Corman Horror Collection DVD, Swamp Women, and it's not horror either! This horror collection only 3/5ths horror!

Anonymous Robot
Jun 1, 2007

Lost his leg in Robo War I
:siren:Super Samhain Challenge 1:siren:



#9
Viy

1967
Shudder

What a peculiar movie this is. It appeared that Shudder only had the dub, which is unfortunate. I get the sense that a fair bit was lost in the dub, because the story such as it was just feels...off. This is a comedic character drama about the internal life of a seminarian, but he’s a piece of poo poo right up until he bites it, which, while amusing, isn’t a very satisfying story.

That being said, it is funny, it’s only 70 minutes, and the visual effects towards the end are simply stunning. I find myself wishing that they were featured more through the film, but at the same time, I think the effect may have been diminished if they hadn’t stayed their hand and then walloped you with them all right at the end.

I’m glad I watched Viy, but I wish there was more to the story. This idea of being called back to speak prayer for 3 days over the corpse of one you killed, and being trapped in this weird little estate while you did so, is Kafkaesque and rich with potential that isn’t really investigated here.

3/5

:siren:Super Samhain Challenge 2:siren:



#10
King Cohen

2018
Shudder

This is a documentary about Larry Cohen, which we’re fortunate came out shortly before he passed, and features a lot of interview footage from him.

Cinematically speaking this is a stylistically flat and uninspired documentary. It mainly consists of footage from his films and full-frame interview footage, proceeding chronologically through Cohen’s career and recapping it.

However, I learned a lot from this, and it is a fascinating story. I didn’t know that Cohen got his start in TV, or that Black Caesar and Hell Up In Harlem were so influential (I also feel like I may need to fact check that, tbh.) Hell, I didn’t know that Cohen was writing movies as late as Phonebooth, so maybe I actually owe that a lot! I also had no idea just how impromptu and guerilla his filmmaking style was.

Plus, it turns out that the “famous Coens” gave Larry Cohen a shout out in The Big Lebowski! Who knew.

This is an interesting documentary for fans of Cohen’s work, but it doesn’t stand on its own as an engaging documentary. You have to come in with having seen at least some of these films to take anything from it.

3/5

Clayren
Jun 4, 2008

grandma plz don't folow me on twiter its embarassing, if u want to know what animes im watching jsut read the family newsletter like normal
7. Tourist Trap



Some great spooky imagery, good atmosphere and an interesting story, although it does seem to meander a bit in places. The gore wasn't great, I'm fine with sparse gore done well (in fact I prefer it to gratuitous gore and blood), but the blood here is sparse and poorly done, making the kill scenes less intense. Overall worth a viewing and maybe even two.

:spooky: :spooky: :spooky: :spooky:


quote:

1. The Shining [5/5 Spooks]
2. Noroi [4.5/5 Spooks]
3. The People Under the Stairs [5/5 Spooks]
4. The Ravenous [4/5 Spooks]
5. Trick R Treat [4.5/5 Spooks]
6. Alucarda [2/5 Spooks]
7. Tourist Trap [4/5 Spooks]

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M_Sinistrari
Sep 5, 2008

Do you like scary movies?




Franchise: Piranha

Yes, you read right. Piranha has a franchise.

While it would be expected that killer fish films would be lumped into this franchise, surprisingly this is not the case. Each one sticks within the boundaries of the original film.


47) Piranha - 1978 - DVD

I feel the 70s and a portion of the 80s was the heyday of the successful film knockoff since so many knockoffs ended up being good in their own right. Piranha is from the rush of 'The Ocean Hates You' wave of films that Jaws kicked off. Universal was ready to sue to prevent this film's release since they didn't want it to interfere with their release of Jaws 2, but Spielberg praising it made them change their mind.

Plotwise it's standard B movie goodness, and surprisingly for the time, does feature children getting eaten by piranha.

Highly recommend this one for the Joe Dante flair and Corman cheese.


48) Piranha 2: The Spawning - 1982 - DVD

This is another where the behind the scenes stuff could probably be its own movie. It's James Cameron's directorial debut. He's denied it for decades but did say it was the best flying piranha film ever made during a 2010 interview. He insists he only worked a couple weeks or so on it before getting fired and at one point broke into the editing room when no one was there to do his own edits since he claims he wasn't allowed to see any footage or editing. Years later he insisted he didn't break in, but described if he had, here's how he would've done it. He swears that he wanted to have his name taken off the credits, but didn't have the money or connections to do so.

If this is all the case, then there's a second version of this film out there (and I need to see it), and if he really didn't want his name on it, why didn't he have it taken off once he got clout in Hollywood?

Should he ever read this post on these sad sorry forums, I say own up that you make some glorious cheese. Embrace it, relish it, celebrate it. :toot:

If I ever meet him, I'm going to try my damnedest to get him to sign my copy. Again, highly recommend this one for the insanity of flying piranha on the loose.

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