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STAC Goat posted:Excellent recommendation, blood_dot_biz. This isn’t a movie that was on my list. Its one I’ve kind of passed over a ton over the years but I was never really sure what to make of it or if it was me. Thank you very much. Glad you liked it! After watching it for the first time I remember being surprised that it isn't talked about more, because I really enjoyed it. Maybe I just hadn't been paying attention but I kind of had to stumble onto it. Your write-up is making me want to go back and give it a re-watch.
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Oct 26, 2019 16:49
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I think I screwed myself over here. The only X movie I can find is XX which I already watched for last year’s challenge. Any suggestions? X: the man with the X-ray eyes and Xtro are both nowhere to be found, and I can’t find anything else on any of the services I have
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Oct 26, 2019 17:08
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Retro Futurist posted:I think I screwed myself over here. The only X movie I can find is XX which I already watched for last year’s challenge. Any suggestions? X: the man with the X-ray eyes and Xtro are both nowhere to be found, and I can’t find anything else on any of the services I have X: the man with x-ray eyes is on youtube I’m pretty sure
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Oct 26, 2019 17:20
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Purno posted:X: the man with x-ray eyes is on youtube I’m pretty sure Purno you’re a goddamn hero. Maybe you guys can solve another problem for me, do any of these count for the holiday challenge: Train to Busan, Under the Skin, You’re next, Zodiac, or the aforementioned Man with the X-ray eyes Opopanax fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 26, 2019 17:26
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #9: Hackers #30) Unfriended (2014)  You know what? Hm. I uh. Hm. Okay let me say this first: it's NOT a good movie. But it DOES do some pretty interesting things. If I had seen this in 2014 when it came out, it would still be, like, 5 years behind the times. But I think it did tap into some interesting modern fears: Facebook, Skype, webcams, and how entwined our lives are in the World Wide Web. The "story" is pretty bleak and meanspirited, but I can see some pretty troubling parallels between it and some of the cyberbullying stories that have been in the news lately. If nothing else, Unfriended is an inevitable product of our time, and gets SO close to being poignant, but is ultimately let down by its annoying and unlikable characters.  2/5Challenges completed: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Challenges not completed: 10 11 12 13
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Oct 26, 2019 17:32
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29. The Addiction (1995) Abel Ferrara loves philosophy and hates drugs, but Abel Ferrara also loves drugs and hates philosophy. Typically, I find a film like this, with its very mannered, quotation-laden dialogue and twelve car pile up of metaphors (vampirism as addiction obviously, but also moral relativism, classism, contagion and disease academic satire, collective guilt, the loving Holocaust) at least as frustrating as rewarding, there are plenty of admirably ambitious films that fail to develop the fascinating ideas they lay out. But somehow this coheres, likely because all of them are tied to Lilli Taylor's remarkable performance, as she flits between various philosophies and perspectives while grappling with her newfound hunger. Her moral development (of a kind) is contrasted with great one-scene turns from two actors playing veteran vampires: Annabella Sciorra at the one who "inducts" the protagonist and espouses a philosophy of survival at any cost and Christopher Walken as a vampire who encourages a life of self-sacrifice and minimal exploitation (he is basically playing Ferrara here). Even more impressively, it manages all of this while being a drat effective horror film, with an incredibly shocking climax. A film that defies didacticism and easy solutions, and my favorite film I've seen during this challenge. And I'd like to share a little bit of what I've learned through these long, hard years of study... 5/5  30. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) Challenge #11: All Hail The King Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is not enough material for a complete feature film, which is probably why the pendulum doesn't show up until minute seventy of an eighty minute film. But luckily, Roger Corman had access to a castle, Barbara Steele, colored gel effects, and Vincent Price and that is definitely enough for a whole movie. Price is, as always, a joy to watch, here in full on camp-mode as a character who we're never quite sure will turn out to be more of a victim or a villain. And a surprising amount of this is devoted to a haunted castle mystery that works well enough, and delves into the legacy of atrocities the Spanish Inquisition on the families of the perpetrators. But this is all an appetizer to that final suspense sequence, which is just as much spooky fun as you want it to be. A stylish, short good time. 4/5 
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Oct 26, 2019 17:40
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Retro Futurist posted:Purno you’re a goddamn hero. Unfortunately not, but either version of The Wicker Man would count for "W".
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Oct 26, 2019 17:43
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Retro Futurist posted:Purno you’re a goddamn hero. It’s a bit of a stretch maybe but You’re Next takes place on the parents’ wedding anniversary
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Oct 26, 2019 17:46
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Countdown 2019, Theatre Samhain Challenge: Hackers Finally, a movie about an evil app. The premise isn’t really that bad - it’s an app that tells you how long you have to live so it’s really not much different from the concept of The Ring. Unfortunately this movie doesn’t even come close to matching the scares or urgency of that movie. This movie is a hard PG-13 and leans heavy into the jump scares and not much else. The countdown clock is really inconsistent so it fails to build a sense of urgency. I was going to give it a pass but the plot resolution is stupid so I’m going thumbs down. Watched (29): Brightburn, Tales from the Hood, Pet Semetary 2, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, One Cut of the Dead, Leatherface (1990), Summer of 84, Viy, Mandy, In the Tall Grass, Street Trash, See No Evil, Haunt, Idle Hands, Horror Noire, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2, Doom Asylum, Eaten Alive, The Craft, The Wolfman (2010), 3 from hell, The Most Powerful Witch 1&2, Zombieland 2, Eli, Return of the Living Dead 3, Psycho (1998), Monster Mash: The Movie, Evil Ed, Countdown Samhain Challenges: 1. The Best Month - Viy 2. Dead and Buried - 3 from Hell 3. Horror Noire - Horror Noire 4. Inktober (legend) - The Wolfman (2010) 5. Tourist Trap - The Most Powerful Witch 1&2 6. Sometimes they come back - Psycho (1998) 7. Monster Mash - Monster Mash: The Movie 8. Happy Holidays! - 9. Hackers - Countdown 10. Navel Gazing - Evil Ed 11. All Hail the King - 12. Cavalcade of Creepiness - 13. Maniac - CopywrightMMXI fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 26, 2019 17:54
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Dr. Puppykicker posted:Unfortunately not, but either version of The Wicker Man would count for "W". I watched the original for last year’s and don’t really feel the need to watch the Cage one. Also I’ve got Westworld in for that and need it for challenge 1. These are my letters that aren’t taken up by another challenge. Worst case I’ll just add an extra film on but at this point I already need to watch one a day up to and including halloween, plus I have to do a double viewing on 3 of those days. Not impossible but I don’t want to risk it too much gey muckle mowser posted:It’s a bit of a stretch maybe but You’re Next takes place on the parents’ wedding anniversary I got excited as that was already on my list and then I read an article that claimed it took place on thanksgiving, but apparently they just meant it has a thanksgiving feel.
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Oct 26, 2019 17:56
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#59: The Nun It's weird that the old nun at the beginning doesn't believe in dinosaurs. That's an American Protestant thing, not a British Catholic thing. The pacing of scares and the character's reaction to them are insane. An army priest turned fixer for the Vatican who is literally called a Miracle Hunter, an American trainee nun who was studying in England for some reason, and a villager turn up to a clearly haunted, obviously evil abbey. They enter, and the foyer is a medieval crypt with four giant stone coffins and a giant stone throne. Sitting on the throne is the abbess, whose face you can't see because she's wrapped head to toe in black rags, she looks like a loving ring wraith. No one comments on this. That night, each of them has their own scary experience. The trainee nun sees a shadow despite there being no one else in the room, that walks to a mirror and turns into a scary nun face. The villager is attacked by the ghost of the zombie of a nun. The Miracle Hunter sees the ghost of a possessed child which vomits a snake which chases him into a grave which instant magically fills up, where demon hands paw at him until the trainee nun comes out and digs him up. The next morning, they see that the bloodstain on the steps of the abbey has grown larger. The Miracle Hunter's response is, and this is an exact quote, "Hmm... another mystery." Later that day, the trainee nun is told that the abbey was originally a castle, built by an evil king for the express purpose of being a literal physical gateway to hell, who performed human sacrifices to successfully summon demons. Then he was killed by the Nights Templar, who sealed the physical gateway to hell with the blood of Christ(presumably the actual blood that was collected in the Holy Grail(which was stored in a vessel which I have to believe was intentionally modeled after The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch)) and then turned the castle into an abbey so that the constant prayer would keep the gateway closed. The nun telling trainee nun about this goes on to say that she believes the prayer has failed, the physical gateway to hell has opened, and a demon stalks the halls. The trainee nun's response is to look mildly concerned before retiring to her chamber for the night. How the gently caress are they not calling down Exterminatus on that place? And how did the Vatican forget that this abbey was the one that existed to keep the hellmouth closed? Towards the end there are a couple moments where The Nun seems to admit that it's way closer to Evil Dead 2 than it is to The Conjuring. Specifically in the final showdown, where the trainee nun saves the day by hiding the blood of Christ in her mouth and then spitting it into the mouth of the evil nun. That was pretty fantastic, and if the movie had let itself be the big horror comedy it should've been, The Nun could've been something really special. But as it is, The Nun is just a dumb, fun, wild ride. Things don't have to make sense, it's just scary nun stuff.
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Oct 26, 2019 17:57
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Retro Futurist posted:Purno you’re a goddamn hero. Also, Christmas Evil’s original title was You Better Watch Out, and that’s actually what the title card in the film says too. That would probably count.
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Oct 26, 2019 18:04
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32. Versus (2001) Watched On: YouTube SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #13: Watch your “guilty pleasure” horror film. Versus is an incredibly indulgent movie. It's two full hours of dudes looking cool, fighting in the woods, shooting guns and monologing at each other. It has that frantic teenage boy energy of "I'm gonna jam EVERY COOL IDEA I have into this one thing because it might be the last thing I ever make" and the end product definitely suffers as a result. There are entire subplots (the cops?) that could have been cut and not lost anything as a result. But I still have a lot of affection for it. It's one of my favorite low-budget passion projects of all time. Kitamura wears his influences on his sleeve and it gives the film this irrepressible air of fun. For a group of entirely unknown actors, the cast all carry themselves well. The highlight of the film is absolutely Kenji Matsuda as the yakuza leader. He spends the entire film smirking, cackling and flinging knives every which way, even when he's turned into a frog zombie. The fight choreography also deserves a mention: everyone gets their poo poo in and gets to show off their stuff. This movie is A Lot, occasionally it's to its detriment. It does drag in the middle and there were a couple of points where I was yelling at the screen to "get on with it." But more often, I was yelling "gently caress yeah, this poo poo rules."
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Oct 26, 2019 18:54
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T3hRen3gade posted:Yep, you need to watch The First Purge. Probably the best of the series. Your work isn't done yet. It's not available for free streaming, but I'll be the first to say it's totally in the spirit of the challenge so I'll take on your challenge. I guess I'm purging again this evening. My time crunch has become much, much worse, however. Four hours ago:  : "Hey [Stranger], can you come over right now and help me for a few hours..." : "Uh... sure." Okay, I've got to watch ten movies this weekend, I've gotten through three and I think if I just watch straight through when I get back I can still pull this off.[Twenty minutes later.] : "I desperately need you to drive four hundred miles round trip for me tomorrow.": "Okay." FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!
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Oct 26, 2019 19:16
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #10: Navel GazingCOOL CORN posted:Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires #24 The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974)  This is the type of movie where I'm into the concept enough that it'd have to try pretty hard to get me to not enjoy it. The combination of genres is really fun, the effects are goofy (the vampire designs in particular, but I also really really love all the the miscellaneous bats), the set design is cool, and Peter Cushing is really enjoyable to watch. I was a bit disappointed in the actual martial arts aspect though. None of the fight choreography really stood out to me, and it felt like a missed opportunity. The movie takes its time to set up lots of varied characters and even introduce some specifically as embodying a particular weapon, but that stuff doesn't really pay off. It's all perfectly fine, it's just nothing special. The final encounter with Dracula in particular felt lackluster, especially when compared to the action that came right before. Also, the way the movie treated women soured me to it a bit. They exist in the movie mostly as victims, and even the stronger characters are the direct targets of misogynist comments. I don't mean to just rag on the movie though, because I did legitimately have a good time watching it. As I said above, I think the idea behind everything is great and there was enough consistently enjoyable stuff thrown in throughout the movie's runtime that I was always engaged. Unexpectedly, I actually enjoyed the worldbuilding more than the action itself. I've seen a few other Hong Kong movies that combine martial arts with fantasy/horror, and it's a combo I really like. This particular movie wasn't really on my radar (I've barely seen any Hammer), so I appreciate the recommendation and I'm definitely glad I watched it! Watched (24/31): #1 Gozu (2003), #2 Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967), #3 Viy (1967), #4 Mondo Cane (1962), #5 Dark Water (2002), #6 Blood and Black Lace (1964), #7 Daughters of Darkness (1971), #8 Sliders of Ghost Town: Origins (2016), #9 One Cut of the Dead (2017), #10 Possum (2018), #11 EGG. (2005), #12 Adventures of Electric Rod Boy (1987), #13 House of 1000 Corpses (2003), #14 Ganja and Hess (1973), #15 Q (1982), #16 Hungry Stones (1960), #17 The Ruins (2008), #18 The Lighthouse (2019), #19 Pulgasari (1985), #20 Halloween (2018), #21 Freddy vs. Jason (2003), #22 The Phantom Carriage (1921), #23 Resident Evil (2002), #24 The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974) Challenges (10/13):
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Oct 26, 2019 19:19
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Glad you enjoyed it! It's a weird mashup for sure
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Oct 26, 2019 19:26
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #9: HACKERS 39. The Lawnmower Man (1992) Dir: Brett Leonard (Amazon VOD) Directed by Brett Leonard, who between this and Virtuosity, has to got to be the poet laureate of baffling accidental cyberpunk. The computer graphics have actually aged really well, but not in the way he probably intended. It's garbage as an actual depiction of virtual reality, but the aesthetic is so distinctive and divorced from reality that it wraps back around into being an extremely memorable vaporwave fever dream. Beautiful trash. Why does the VR treatment make him buff? Why did the director's cut need to be two and a half hours long? Has Brett Leonard ever seen a computer? 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 10. Ice Cream Man 11. Freaks 12.The Hills Have Eyes 13. Spider Baby 14. Lady Terminator 15. All The Colors of the Dark 16.Tales From The Hood 17. Man Bites Dog 18. Prime Evil 19. Bride of Re-Animator 20. The Phantom Carriage 21. Thinner 22. Robot Monster 23. Color Me Blood Red 24. A Bay of Blood 25. Errementari: The Devil and the Blacksmith 26. The Lighthouse 27. TerrorVision 28. Phantom of the Opera (1925) 29. Stay Alive 30. Hobgoblins 31. Knife + Heart 32. Rats: Night of Terror 33. Dog Soldiers 34. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) 35. Neon Maniacs 36. Hagazussa 37. Aenigma 38. Cure 39. The Lawnmower Man
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Oct 26, 2019 20:03
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7) Horror Express (1972) This is a rewatch for me but it doesn't feel like the Halloween season if I don't watch something with Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing in it, and this has both! I first saw this a couple of years ago on TCM and loved it and rewatching it last night I still do. It's just a really fun movie with some good bits of dialogue and a great cast. The effects used for the monster and it's victims is well done for the time and the movie clips along at a good place throughout, steadily introducing more complications to what's going on until the very chaotic climax. I only wish that Cushing's assistant got more to do before being killed off. The actress has great chemistry with him and she gets my favorite line of the movie when he asks her for help with an autopsy.
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Oct 26, 2019 20:30
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE 9 HAPPY HOLIDAYSRare Exports  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwT3wtUCv9Y I've been meaning to watch this for a while. I even poked at it for the tourist challenge but I've watched other Finnish horror films but I had seen another one. But here we are ready for the holidays with a movie that starts with the premise, "What if Santa Claus was the real monster?" In the remote north of Finland, a team is drilling into a mountain that they have determined is actually an enormous tomb for the original Santa Claus. A boy overhears their plans is scared because the stories he has read present Santa as a terrifying creature who takes children. As Christmas approaches, strange things are happening in the area and the boy's incredibly lovely father has to be convinced that someone is watching them be naughty and nice. I wanted to like this movie more than I did. I didn't mind the fact that it's a standard monster movie plot with "ancient demon" scribbled out and "Santa" written into its place. That's supposed to be part of the fun here. My problem was that they didn't really lean into the concept. I wanted people boarding up chimneys or ominous "Ho ho ho"'s behind someone right before they get gift wrapped to death. You're making a silly movie, feel free to be silly with it. Rare Exports is weirdly sedate for a horror film with this concept. Structurally this is an odd movie, too. The build up feels isolated from the second act turn where people realize they have Santa. The second act doesn't do anything to build tension or horror. And so the third act when the hoards of elves kicks in feels like a completely different movie. I get that it was supposed to be a comedy, but I wasn't finding it funny. Especially since a lot of the humor was centered on the shithead father who I really hated as a character. I feel like Rare Exports needed to be a more playful movie. As it is, this is just a kind of offbeat film that doesn't have the follow through on any of its concepts and it left me cold.
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Oct 26, 2019 20:44
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 #152) Hideous Sun Demon (1958), a.k.a., Blood on His Lips, a.k.a., Sun Demon, a.k.a., Man Turned Monster Tubi. I still think this would be a dope name for a doom band. Dr. Gilbert McKenna (expect to hear that name a lot if you watch this) gets radiation poisoning, and subsequently, solar exposure transforms him into a scaly beast. Despite the promise of that premise, this turned out to be pretty dull, with lengthy scenes of bad science babbling. The monster's actual victims are limited, as far as I could tell, to one unlucky rat and a gangster. The fight scenes are so poorly staged that it's laughable ('Let me lightly wave my fist in front of your chin, knocking you back four feet.'), and the whole story takes place in one small town, leading to some very small-scale chases. His scaliness doesn't make him any more resistant to bullets, it seems. Respect for the film-makers using an actual water tower when they could have easily gotten away with a miniature.Plenty here for Rifftrax to work with, hopefully they made a good one of it. rating: 4/10"The radiation spectrum of tungsten is quite different from that of sunlight."
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Oct 26, 2019 21:32
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE 9 HACKERSDead Rising: Watchtower  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhjZME4iXlI I wanted to find something really offbeat for this one. I was going to dig around and find an adaptation of some video game that nobody has heard of. But super duper time crunch meant punching in horror and scifi into a search and looking for the first thing thing that identifiably fit the requirements. So here I am with Dead Rising: Watchtower, from right around the time that the franchise went to poo poo. A zombie outbreak has started and the government has gathered people in the area for evacuation. The anti-zombie drug that they have for people who have been infected stops working, though, and it goes out of control. It's up to a reporter in the disaster zone to discover the truth behind these events. Things I want from a Dead Rising movie: people changing into stupid outfits including one servbot head, improved weapons that don't make any sense, dragging idiot survivors around to a safe room. No stupid outfits, though there was a servbot head. Wasn't a lot of hauling survivors around, either. They did have a lot of improvised weapons along with shittons of references to the game. They had Frank West saying, "I've covered wars you know." Another thing they didn't have was an interesting movie. Hey, you know how you pad your movie? Play two minutes from the middle of it at the beginning, then replay that later. Not that they needed padding because this thing was a solid two hours long for no good reason. This is a pretty bland zombie movie. There was one set piece in the middle of the movie that I thought had some promise where our hero is handcuffed to a forklift as zombies move in, but never delivered on the zombie vs. forklift free-for-all. There's no life in this zombie movie and the only signs of any creativity in it are the things they took from the games. And the games just borrowed those things from better movies. This was made for Sony's effectively defunct Crackle streaming service and it has about as much care as direct to streaming movies have these days. Somehow this was given a sequel titled Dead Rising: Endgame which sounds even more generic than this. If you absolutely, positively must watch a zombie movie, then Dead Rising meets the standard, but there's so many better options.
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Oct 26, 2019 22:52
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 #14. Lair of the White Worm (1988) (Rewatch) An archeologist unearths the skull of a god while the god's disciple tries to find him a sacrifice. This is an odd one. It's based on an old English song (I think). There are vampires and they're part vampire and part snake, take that how you will. It's neat to have a different take on 'em. The highlight of this are the surreal visions and dream sequences that the characters have. Fun.
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Oct 26, 2019 23:41
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 #153) Two Evil Eyes (1990) Tubi. Romero and Argento team up for a pair of Poe adaptations, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (Romero) and The Black Cat (Argento), both updated to modernity and set in Pittsburgh. Holy moley, what a cast! Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, Harvey Keitel, John Amos, Tom Atkins, and Martin Balsam are just some of the names attached. Romero's segment comes first, adjusting the story of its name-sake to follow Barbeau's character's efforts to get her husband to die and leave her everything, with the assistance of his physician. Argento's is a real Poe stew; our protagonist's surname is Usher, the first scene is him photographing the aftermath of a Pit and the Pendulum murder, Usher's girlfriend's name is Annabel (surname presumably Lee), there's a bar server named Eleonora, and so on. Anyway, Keitel's character strangles his girlfriend's cat, and is consumed with paranoid guilt over doing so. I'm bummed to say that I came away disappointed with this. Romero and Argento, come on! The cast did great, as did Savini with the make-up. But Romero's segment looked like it was right out of Cat's Eye, and is so workmanlike that without his name in the credits, there's very little to make you think it was his. Meanwhile, Argento's piece didn't have the hallucinatory shots or lighting, which are what I like most in his films. Some good tracking shots, though. But what really brought down his segment for me (aside from the violence against an animal) was Keitel's character being a violent and abusive drunk, with no explanation shown for why his girlfriend would stick with him. It also drags on way too long, and for all the weird interactions that Argento characters tend to have, the idea of a neighbor in a city giving any shits that someone is throwing away a drippy trash-bag is maybe the weirdest of all. Made Romero's look better in contrast, at least. Allegedly, Wes Craven and John Carpenter were supposed to have segments as well, and I have to imagine that had they not pulled out, this would have been a wildly more interesting film. I wonder which Poe Craven would have picked. rating: 7/10 (Romero: 7, Argento: 6)"I didn't kill her!" 
Darthemed fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 00:01
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As I thought, I've been pretty busy to couldn't watch a movie every day, so I'm sticking with the goal of 15 new to me movies. 13 would've been more appropriate but that's a bit too easy. I wanted to do all the Fran challenges too but the scheduling didn't always work out so I just had to watch whatever. Post this now to help keep track of it more than anything else, will add reviews later. 1. One Cut of the Dead 2. Memory the Origins of Alien 3. Crawl 4. Harpoon 5. Midsommar 6. The Vanishing (Tourist Trap) 7. Peeping Tom (The Best Month) 8. The Haunt 9. Exorcist 10. Prince of Darkness 11. Dead Zone (All Hail the King) 12. Lawnmower Man (Hackers) 13. Don't Look Now (Dead & Buried) 14. What we do in the Shadows (Inktober) 15. Tales from the Hood (Horror Noir / Cavalcade of Creepiness ) I was having trouble finding a movie to watch for Dead & Buried that wasn't "Dead and Buried" so I pulled some data from imdb. Unsurprisingly there aren't that many horror movies by directors that died in the last year. In case anyone still needs it (including all of 2018 so make sure it's actually after October): code:Cavalcade of Creepiness / Horror Noir #6. Sometimes They Come Back #7. Monster Mash-up #8 Happy Holidays! #10 Navel Gazing #13 Maniac mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 00:22
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Ok, gotta get some years done. 1947 is another “nothing available really seems like a true horror” year so I’m gonna pick one and hope for the best.  48 (60). The Red House (1947) Watched on Amazon Prime. Meg lives a perfect, tranquil life on the farm with her adopted parents Pete and Ellen and its made all the better when Pete hires dreamy Nath to help out on the farm. But Nath starts asking questions of “the Mysterious Morgans” that Meg doesn’t have answers to and the two of them become determined to find out the secrets that Pete has been keeping like why he’s so scared of those woods and where - or what - is the Red House? This one’s pretty borderline on horror or not but at least includes a lot of the ideas of it and plays with the mystery of the unknown and fear of “screams in the woods.” I’ve watched movies this month that probably are probably less and “mystery” and “noir” can be horror. I mean I just watched Bug that’s all about people’s issues and I never doubted it was horror. The tone is a little up and down and sometimes feels like an episode of Little House on the Prairie or something but I think a lot of that was intentional to juxtapose dark secrets and perilous mysteries. Its late in the month so lets go with it. Its led by a solid performance from Edward G. Robinson. The legendary actor does a strong job going from a kind, caring father figure to a terrified and menacing man. I suppose its no surprise that Robinson can do menacing well but the role demanded some back and forth and he carries a decent chunk of the film. The rest is a bunch of younger actors doing high school melodrama so he was mostly the drawing parts of the film. Mostly I enjoyed it. It wasn’t great and a little too soapy for my interests but mostly good. I can’t say I really have a lot to say about it though. It kind of drags out the big reveals and moments a lot longer than they need to be. Some definite pacing issues and a side story with characters that really don’t need to be there or have their whole other story. I guess. It wasn’t really that obtrusive and it served some purposes, but its just the overall pacing leading to it feeling a bit much. On to another iffy year - 1929. IMDB lists 6 horror movies for the year. 1 (The Last Warning) was my pick but was actually released with days left in December ’28. 3 - Cagliostro, House of Horror, and Chamber of Horror - I can’t find online and may be “lost.” That leaves a Sherlock Holmes film Der Hund von Baskerville which was presumed lost but allegedly rediscovered but all I can seem to find is a ’39 talkie version in German with no subtitles. So that leaves one choice, a movie that sounds fun and fairly horror but which only seems to be available in a “restored lost” format that has me iffy. But what options do I have?  49 (61). Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) Watched a “restored” version on Youtube A bored socialite couple are quite suddenly kidnapped on the eve of a great life change and taken to the bizarre home of a cult of Satan worshippers and are forced to frantically try and survive and escape a madhouse menagerie of worshippers, servants, and beasts of Satan. Restored in 2014 by Eric Stedman of https://www.serialsquadrom.com. As I am reminded by a persistent web address watermark on the bottom of the screen. Honestly, I’m not sure why I was so worried about the restoration but it was fine. I didn’t love the score but it didn’t really take away. The video quality wasn’t great but its a “lost” film so what can I expect? The run time is 17 minutes longer than what Wikipedia says but I’m gonna chalk that up to time of dialogue cards and credits. As far as the film itself its an utterly bizarre and nonstop run around. There’s really not much of a narrative and nothing really makes sense, but its not supposed to. The entire thing is about keeping us on our toes and spinning unable to get a handle on the situation and it succeeds in that purpose with bizarre characters, secret doors and passageways, random false hopes and quests, and a gorilla. Its like 1920s horror Benny Hill or something. The film is regarded as one of - if not the - last silent horror films and was done “part talkie”. From what I can gather the “talkie” version was less dialogue and more sound effects since there’s a lot of creaky door openings and gunshots and screams and gongs and wacky noise making things happening in the film. The restoration throws in these sound affects sometimes but I imagine if you wanted to you could have just had them happening constantly and negative reviews from the time seem to suggest that was the case and it was kind of just a “moronic” mess of “talkie” capability. I dozed off during it, but that wasn’t the film’s fault. I’m sick and sleep deprived and I ended up conking out for like 10 hours. Its on me for trying to sneak a short silent film in before bed (while in bed). I finished it today though, and had a full appreciation of it. I’d recommend this to people who don’t mind a silent film. Its not a masterpiece or anything but its freely available, short, and a fun, wild time that is clearly just someone setting out to make something nuts and having a ball doing it. September Pre-Game Tally - New (Total) 1. NOS4A2 (2019); - (2). Splice (2009); - (3). Drive Angry (2011); 2 (4). The Twilight Zone (2019); - (5). Event Horizon (1997); - (6). BrainDead (2016); 3 (7). The Dark Tower (2017); 4 (8). The Collector (2009); 5 (9). The Bad Batch (2016); - (10). Rose Red (2002); - (11). Salem’s Lot (1979) October Tally - New (Total) 1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920); 2. Nightmare Cinema (2018); 3. Dead of Night (1945); The Queen of Spades (1949); 5. Tragedy Girls (2017); 6. House of Wax (1953); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1: The Best Month: 7. The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016); 8. In the Tall Grass (2019); 9. The Night of the Hunter (1955); 10. The Thing (1951); - (11). The Thing (1982); 11 (12). The Thing (2011); - (13). Halloween (1978); 12 (14). Dracula (1931); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2: Dead & Buried: 13 (15). Q (1982); 14 (16). The Black Cat (1934); 15 (17). The Unknown (1927); - (18). Halloween II (1981); 16 (19). The Seventh Victim (1943); 17 (20). The Beast With Five Fingers (1946); 18 (21). The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923); 19 (22). The Curse of the Cat People (1944); - (23). George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (2005); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #3: Horror Noire: 20 (24). Ganja & Hess (1973); 21 (25). Drácula (1931); 22 (26). Universal Horror (1998); - (27). Happy Death Day (2017); 23 (28). The Phantom of the Opera (1925); - (29). Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #4: Inktober: 24 (30). Velvet Buzzsaw (2018); - (31). Frankenstein (1931); 25 (32). The Mummy (1932); 26 (33). The Raven (1935); - (34). Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988); 27 (35). The Man Who Laughs (1928); 28 (36). The Invisible Man (1933); - (37). Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989); 29 (38). The Black Castle (1952); 30 (39). Faust (1926); - (40). Halloween: The Curse of Micheal Myers (1995); - (41). The Bride of Frankenstein (1935); 31 (42). Dracula’s Daughter (1936); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #5: Tourist Trap: 32 (43). The Golem (2019); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #6: Sometimes They Come Back: 33 (44). Nightmare on Elm Street (2010); 34 (45). Happy Death Day 2U (2019); 35 (46). The Phantom Carriage (1921); 36 (47). The Invisible Man Returns (1940); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #7: Monster Mash-up: 37 (48). Blood Fest (2018); - (49). Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998); 38 (50). The Wolf Man (1941); 39 (51). Halloween: Resurrection (2002); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #8: Happy Holidays!: 40 (52). Holidays (2016); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #9: Hackers: 41 (53). Stay Alive (2006); 42 (54). The Fall of the House of Usher (1950); 43 (55). Son of Frankenstein (1939); 44 (56). The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942); 45 (57). Alraune (1930); 46 (58). Frankenstein Meets Wolf Man (1943); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #10: Navel Gazing: 47 (59). Bug (2006); 48 (60). The Red House (1947); 49 (61). Seven Footprints to Satan (1929)
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Oct 27, 2019 00:22
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness #60: The House That Dripped Blood  I'm not a big fan of anthologies. There's always at least one dud. And more often than not the stories I do like I wish were proper movies. And don't get me started on framing devices. You know what's a good framing device? Me sitting down to watch a full length movie and then getting up when it's over. The House That Dripped Blood excels in terms of acting and atmosphere. A fantastic cast that consistently hits it out of the par. And a lovely 70s Britain atmosphere infuses every frame. So even the relative "dud" story, what if there was a mannequin that all men wanted to gently caress?, is still quite good. But on the flipside, it just makes me wish the first story had been a full proper movie by itself even more. There's also a bit of tonal whiplash between the third and fourth stories. A dark, gothic tale of a man who decides to intentionally be the worst father in the world because he thinks that will make his daughter less inclined to kill him. And then a funny vampire story with the guy from Bagpuss. But it's an anthology, these things happen. If I knew how to do movie editing I'd take the scene where Cushing is mad because there are four candles in a box, and I'd edit it so when you saw inside the box instead of four candles in there, there were fork handles. So it would be like he was mad about the fork handles. It was great to see the lady who played the "foreign" vampire in Vampire Lovers show up. She's a great actress, and apparently every costume designer who works with her sees it as their goal to display the maximum amount of cleavage humanly possible. Even with my mild antipathy towards anthologies, I thoroughly enjoyed The House That Dripped Blood. Great acting, great atmosphere, just a good time for everyone. That loving house didn't drip blood though.
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Oct 27, 2019 00:47
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE 10 NAVEL GAZINGThe First Purge  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL29y0ah92w T3hRen3gade is to blame for this one.  I really hadn't planned on watching all of the Purge movies this month. I didn't even realize I had the first three in that Blumhouse box set when I bought it. But here we are and here I've run the entire series. And for a series of movies that started off weak and with an incompetently handled political message, they've generally made the right choices going forward with. The Purge got pretty drat lucky to arrive at the exact moment that fascism was ascendant in America and every movie after the first was smart enough to use that. To be there at at the historical moment when all the worst aspects of the country stopped hiding behind masks and have movies about that ready to go, it's syncronicity that movie studios can only dream of. For the most recent outing, it's a prequel taking us back to how it all began with the freshly installed fascist party deciding to try out this purging idea on Staten Island. The concept is met with disgust by the local population who have to be paid by the government even to stay in the area during it. When the island doesn't descend into an orgy of violence, the people running the experiment put their finger on the scales. This is a lot closer to what the Purge movies should have been all along. The filmmakers recognized the real world connections and leveraged them much better than they had been in the previous films. There's no white savior in this movie, no outsiders who come in to save the helpless impoverished city dwellers; the characters in this movie are the victims of the system and that plays better for the themes. I'm going to credit director Gerard McMurray for getting the visual language of this movie exactly right and there's a hundred little touches throughout the movie that emphasize the themes. This is only his second movie and I want to see more from him. However, as they hit these notes, they're also moving away from the horror genre. The First Purge is much more on the action movie side of things complete with outrunning a fiery explosion that was occurring less than ten feet away. The concept of the purge lends itself to action so I'm not surprised to see the movies run in that direction. So this is the first Purge movie that I'd unhesitatingly recommend. I thought the first one was better than its abysmal reputation, but not by that much. The second and third showed distinct improvements though the filmmaking was still crude. The First Purge gets things right and if McMurray comes back for the inevitable sequel I'm definitely going to see it.
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Oct 27, 2019 01:30
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 #154) Robo Vampire (1988), a.k.a., Robovamp Tubi. Following up a film I had high expectations for with a film I had bottomed-out expectations for. Incoherent nonsense involving drug smuggling, hopping vampires, a RoboCop knock-off, reckless dubbing, and a missing sister. If this lived up to its cover, this would be incredible, but it's a Godfrey Ho film, so that ain't happening. It was at least a mixed bag, in that the parts that bored me were broken up with moments that made me grin. I mean, it gets points for having a scene of a cyborg getting ambushed by vampires on a beach, if for nothing more than the rarity of that scenario. I appreciated the nuttiness of it, but at the same time, the looseness of its assemblage kept me from really caring about any of it. rating: 4/10"That's a great view, you should bathe more often!"
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Oct 27, 2019 01:36
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 #15. Haunting on Fraternity Row (2018) (First Watch) Frat guys release a demon in their house and it kills people. loving trash. I knew this would be bad, but this was unbearable. A good ten minutes of it was people dancing to music. Oh well. Never again.
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Oct 27, 2019 03:12
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 28. HALLOWEEN 4 - Shudder - Joe Bob Briggs I rewatched the original as part of a Joe Bob Briggs Halloween Hootenanny and was reminded of how tight a thriller it is. So, I was curious how Halloween FOUR would compare. I'm happy to say... pretty well! The character arcs are worthwhile, the atmosphere is top notch, and I think the thrills, chills, and k-k-kills are well done. My main complaint is that there's just a little too much flab on the film in the middle. The first and third acts are really great but the second act felt a little sluggish and could have used some trimming. Even so, I think it's absolutely a worthy player in the franchise. 4 out of 5 scared babysitters  29. HAUNT - SHUDDER Some friends try out an "extreme" haunted house and... boy, is it! This is a fine example of a horror film that brings nothing new to the table, but which I very much had fun watching. The haunted house tension building is pretty good (ugh spiderssss) and the escalation reminds me of the better SAW films or even something like THE STRANGERS or HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES a little. The performances were just what they needed to be, the thrills and gore were deliciously rated r, and the whole thing moves at a nice clip. Ultimately I think it's kind of a shallow film and when I think about the mechanics of it all for too long, it doesn't make a TON of sense (likewise, characters make absolutely nonsense decisions that irritated me out of my suspension of disbelief a few times). However, it's just gross silly fun and I gotta give it props for that. If you're itchin' for something to fill a SAW 2 kinda craving, I think HAUNT is a great spook-em-up 3 out of 5 improbable death traps
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Oct 27, 2019 03:15
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 #155) Mirror Mirror (1990) Tubi. An evil mirror gives dark powers to its owner. Rainbow Harvest (what a cool name) plays our hero, Megan, looking like she was modeled after Lydia Deetz (seriously, check out the screenshot at the bottom). Karen Black plays her mom, Charlie Spradling plays a mean girl, and Stephen Tobolowsky pops up as a high school teacher! I warmed up to this much more than I'd expected as it went on, mainly because it was like a lethal version of Teen Witch. I'm rating it as highly as I am more for that sense of fun than for creativity or technical prowess, though I did like the distorted bells used in the score. Not a lot I can say about the plot beyond 'high-schooler gets demonic powers,' since the ride is where the appeal lies. Thought the ending was gonna be a cop-out, and then it wasn't, and then it went right into the deep end. One of my more enjoyed finds from this month, for sure. I can't believe this didn't get a string of disappointing sequels. rating: 7/10"Poor old soul! Locked up in this house alone for all these years!" 
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Oct 27, 2019 03:31
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 Super Samhain Challenge 11 All Hail the KingThe Dark Half  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ekfkUfyVQE I haven't bothered watching this King adaptation since I recall it getting a strongly negative response on release. But a lot of people seem have been giving it a reappraisal A writer of tawdry but popular novels from Maine is, in fact, a bookish nerd and teacher. However, someone has tracked him down and threatens to expose Richard Bachman. Wait, did I say "Bachman"? I mean Stark. Don't know how I could make that silly mistake. The writer considers his pen name to be a whole separate identity. He talks about this violent, aggressive writer in the third person. And then the people who were causing trouble for Bachman... Stark. I definitely meant Stark. Anyway, the people who were causing him trouble start to die. So the literature professor has multiple Reader's Digest Condensed Books volumes prominently placed on his bookshelves. That might be the most unrealistic thing in a movie where a brain has an eyeball and teeth growing in it. Obviously, the source material was extremely autobiographical for King, leaning into both his experiences writing as Richard Bachman and his own substance abuse problems. The movie doesn't go far from that source material to the point that Timothy Hutton as the writer has his hair styled to look a bit like Stephen King. As a Jekyll and Hyde story, The Dark Half has one significant problem. Hutton just isn't great at the double role at the center of the film. He's totally unconvincing in the Richard Stark persona. The best he can do is a much more stabby and much less cool Johnny Cash. There's also the problem that by the halfway point in the movie it's impossible for the writer to be the killer, though the movie refuses to acknowledge that I've never been thrilled with George Romero as a director. Despite creating some classic films, he's never had much ability to elevate weaker material. He's very workmanlike and stuck in the mindset of the low budget filmmaker of the 1970's. The Dark Half isn't directed with any flair or style that stands out. It's a dull movie to look at. And the result is a middle of the road film. It's not a stinker, but it needs something more. Better performances, better direction, better something. If I want to watch a King adaptation about a writer trying to kill off an aspect of himself that he doesn't like and having it come back to bite him in the rear end, I'll watch Misery.
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Oct 27, 2019 03:39
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 26. The Lighthouse (2019): This is fantastic. Not a whole lot of scares in this movie but the ones that are there are effective. Willem Dafoe is great as the Sea Captain from The Simpsons. There was more humor than I expected. This has a definite Lynchian vibe to it and I really enjoyed it. Hard recommend. Super Samhain Challenge #11: All Hail the King 27. Gerald’s Game (2017): A married couple take a trip to a lake house hoping to spice up their sexhaving and things go wrong. The wife ends up handcuffed to a bed with no one around and has to confront her inner demons while trying to stay alive to either escape or be found. I liked this movie but have mixed feelings about the ending. I think that revealing the giant from Twin Peaks to be a real guy who robbed graves was either a misstep or at the very least clumsily handled. I get that it’s meant to provide her with closure when she confronts him in the courtroom, but it still feels out of place to me. Overall it’s a really good thriller with some horror elements. Would recommend.
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Oct 27, 2019 03:57
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#61: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken I'm gonna be honest, I had my doubts going in. Could a corny old Don Knotts hold up to a modern audience, namely, me? Could it entertain someone used to our modern super comedies like Walk Hard or Live at the Necropolis? But I gave it a shot, kept an open mind, and you know what? It can't. Absolutely not. Don't get me wrong, Don Knotts is a very talented comedic actor. His performance is top notch. But you can't build an entire movie on Don Knotts' face. The real problem is this movie is a liar. I was on board for Don Knotts in a haunted house. But he's in the house for like five minutes at most. The real story and the bulk of the movie is about the town's reaction to the story Knotts writes about his five minutes in the house, and the resulting libel trial. I swear to god, it's The Exorcism of Emily Rose all over again. One thing I will say to the movie's credit; unlike the previous film I reviewed, in this one the house actually does drip blood. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken has a few gentle laughs, but not worth the price of admission. 
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Oct 27, 2019 04:30
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE 12  Cavalcade of Creepiness  Vault of Horror  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QekOjRaEaw So I had planned on watching a different movie entirely, but some browser problems sent me scrambling. This was up on youtube, it's part of the Amicus horror anthology series which I have enjoyed some entries in, and it's based on EC comics. A group of men find themselves locked in an underground vault and to pass the time while waiting for someone to get them out they share the dreams that have been haunting them. A murderous man hunts for his sister in a town where they come out at night. The wife of a fastidious man causes chaos while trying to deal with his demands. A magician kills to steal a trick and gets more than he bargained for. A man fakes his own death for the insurance money and awakens in his own grave. Voodoo gives an artist the ability to revenge himself on those who have wronged him through his paintings. There's a lot of amazing visuals in this movie. Each segment has at least one, usually as the final, dramatic shot. Since these are from EC comics, that final stinger is pretty arresting. There's also a lot of classic imperialistic racism (which you might have guessed from one segment featuring voodoo, but India gets a turn too). I think my favorite was the last segment where Tom Baker plays the artist gleefully taking revenge. It starts slow but once he gets started on his vengence he's a lot of fun. But there isn't really a dud here. Even my least favorites have something cool about them. i like horror anthologies because the short format can often help horror when a concept can't carry a whole movie. And that's what happened with Vault of Horror, none of these would make a great full length movie but for ten or fifteen minutes they're pretty good. Thus ends my day of way too many movies. I'm drop dead exhausted after six movies today. And not even short ones. And I'll get up and start watching again so I have a chance of getting through my daily movie and the last Samhain Challenge.
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Oct 27, 2019 05:16
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #11: All Hail the King 31. In the Tall Grass (2019) (Netflix) While traveling cross-country through a remote rural area, Becky and her brother Cal pull over to the side of the road and hear a young boy shouting for help from a field of very dense tall grass. He is lost and cannot find his way out, so they enter the grass to help him, but end up lost themselves. They soon realize that something - maybe the field itself - is trying to keep them separated and stop them from escaping. This has some issues but I did enjoy it, mostly thanks to Patrick Wilson's scenery-chewing performance. He strikes a good balance between hammy and threatening, and he seems to be having a lot of fun with the role. I also really like the premise, it's a cool and creepy idea. Overall though, much of this movie felt flat to me in a way I can't quite put my finger on. Wilson is on screen enough to keep it from being boring, but there aren't much in the way of real scares and I didn't really care what happened to the characters. There is one scene (in which a pregnant woman is forced to eat her stillborn baby) that should've been really hosed up and disturbing, but it felt weirdly toothless. I enjoyed this, but not enough to give it a very strong recommendation. It's on Netflix, so if it sounds interesting to you it's probably worth checking out - maybe just go in with muted expectations. 3/5 Total: 31 Watched: Dead of Night | Child's Play (2019) | Escape Room | Hell Night | The Wind | Evil Dead (2013) | Cure (Challenge #1) | Tigers Are Not Afraid | The Craft | Tower of London | In Fabric | Popcorn | Cube | Uninvited | Galaxy of Terror (Challenge #2) | Brightburn | Body Bags | The Tingler | The Wax Mask | Cube 2: Hypercube | Dark Water (2002) | The Ruins (Challenge #4) | Viy | The Haunting | Bones (Challenge #3) | A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) (Challenge #6) | November (Challenge #5) | The Monster Squad (Challenge #7) | April Fool's Day (Challenge #8) | Fido (Challenge #10) | In the Tall Grass (Challenge #11) Samhain Challenges:
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Oct 27, 2019 05:25
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I’m honestly gonna miss these Universal films when I’m done. I was a little unsure they’d deliver but I’ve had an absolute ball with them.  50 (62). House of Frankenstein (1944) Watched on DVD. Mad and amoral Professor Neiman escapes from prison and attempts to recreate and perfect Frankenstein’s experiments and get revenge on those who put him in prison with the aid of his hunchback assistant, a leashed and resurrected Dracula, and poor Larry Talbot endlessly following false promises of a cure. OMG, Boris Karloff murdering unkempt mad scientist! OMG, John Carradine! OMG, Vengeance against the Burger Master! FINALLY! Ok, this isn’t a good movie. Carradine’s Dracula is… unfortunate, and the film follows the same odd “chapter” structure of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man where they just do a quick Dracula story in Act 1, a Wolf Man story in Act 2, and a Frankenstein story in Act 3. That’s unfortunate and I would have preferred a truer mash up but I think this one works better than the last because there’s more and Karloff’s Neiman is the central focus moving through these stories. It almost plays like an anthology through the Universal movies. And in the end if you want to sell me on something have Boris Karloff play a villain saying ominous things. I could listen to Karloff talk for hours. My annual Grinch viewing this December is gonna take on a new light. But seriously, poor Larry Talbot. That dude just got screwed. And Chaney continues to play him well as a likable guy who just is very justifiably depressed and desperate for it all to be over. At least he retained his preternatural ability to seduce any woman who meets him by just being there. Dracula ain’t got nothing on Larry. There’s actually decent little Wolf Man story in here. Glenn Strange’s Monster is… well we’re in full blown Herman Munster territory now. Its not a terrible little Frankenstein story and it mixes better with the Wolf Man one then it did in the last film focused on those two. And I can’t really say I wanted to see more of this Monster. In the end this isn’t very good, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting and I’d say quite a bit better than Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. We’re definitely into the territory where sequels are just being made cheap to cash in, and that’s a shame, but the fact that I skipped a lot of the sequels means its probably not as derivative as it could be. Mostly I’m just still having a lot of fun with these guys and it feels a lot like saying goodbye and wanting to get the most out of the time we have left. Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #11: All Hail The King This isn’t really keeping with the “keep it a challenge and go off list” policy I’ve had, but I’ve seen a bunch of Poe adaptions already this month and don’t see a glaring option left, I’ve watched most of the big Lovecraft adaptions I know of available, and I seen a ton of King (although there’s always more). So I just went with the first thing that jumped to mind since its a film I’ve been meaning to watch for awhile but never get around to. And apparently I wasn't remotely alone.  51 (63). Gerald’s Game (2017) A Netflix film. Carla Gugino is Jessie who agrees to take a weekend away with her older husband Gerald to try some “adventurous” sex games to try and save their marriage, despite her deep uncomfortableness with it But Gerald suffers a heart attack after handcuffing her to the bed and suddenly Jessie is left alone, isolated, helpless, losing her mind, and with no one but herself to wrestle with to try and save her from death by starvation, dehydration, or something worse. That was very, very intense. I love King, I like Mike Flanagan, I love Carla Gugino. I’d been meaning to watch this for years but I keep putting it off because the subject matter is so uncomfortable. And it was definitely deeply uncomfortable, more than I even expected. But the trio of talent I’m a fan of all work well together and deliver greatly. While Gugino isn’t quite alone she still has to carry a great deal of the film on her own and does so handedly. I never really doubted that, as I said, I’m a fan. A day after watching Bug its tough to put her against Ashley Judd and Micheal Shannon’s similar performances of someone struggling with their own sanity but also unavoidable for me given the recency. Gugino doesn’t quite get where Judd and Shannon do but her character doesn’t go as far as they do. They’re different performances, but similar, and all three actors deliver. I’m not entirely sure I feel like the whole father molestation story needed to be in there. I’m not objecting because of content, but more time. It felt like Jessie had more than enough to deal with on her plate with Gerald, Jessie 2, the dog, and the Moonlight Man without needing more. But I suppose its not a King story if it doesn’t have some intensely uncomfortable sex and family abuse stuff and isn’t possibly a bit unnecessarily dense and long. And Gugino does a tremendous job with it to help us get to know Jessie more and make it all more personal (although again, I'm not sure the stakes needed to be any bigger). I’m also not sure we needed the epilogue. I was ready to blame that on Flanagan since he seems to be developing a pattern of somewhat unnecessary sentimental epilogues like that but it turns out that in King’s original story. The two really do strike me as a good fit together. Either way while it might not have been totally necessary I didn’t necessarily dislike it, or at least not enough to take away from the overall piece. Ultimately its another strong Flanagan piece and a somewhat rare good King adaption without need for qualifiers. The content is rough and there should be a lot of trigger warnings, but as long as you don’t think its a “poser” opinion to like Flanagan or King this is a good watch I’d recommend. I’d probably put it below Hush but not much (and similar in a lot of ways, while also extremely different).
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Oct 27, 2019 05:37
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Watch a Stephen King adaptation that you haven't seen.
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 30. THE CANAL - SHUDDER A guy moves his family into a house where, wouldntcha know it, another guy murdered his whole family. I'm sure this won't come back to- aw heck... This is a pretty bleak, unnerving haunted house film. The haunted house scares remind me of an INSIDIOUS-type film, but there's a little teeny bit of BASKIN thrown in in places. This is more of a moody piece with few jump scares. I really liked the performances, particularly the lead and his nanny and coworker. The child actor isn't too bad either. The beats feel familiar, but the Irishness went a long way for me to make it feel fresh and I think the canal setting is compelling. The main consideration with this film is that it is a pretty big bummer. There's violence against women, children in danger, and various depictions of historical murders of both women and children. This is not a fun horror film. It is pretty unsettling and well-crafted, so if you're in the mood for something dark as h*ck, I think it's a great addition to the canon. 4 out of 5 hidden crawlspaces That Dang Dad fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 05:44
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Out of town for a week so I fell way behind, and have just now caught up on the thread. I have a busy few days ahead of me. Anyway, now to catch up on the writeups: 22. Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (1959)  Wow, Iemon sucks. Echoes of Black Hair, that first story from Kwaidan but with all possible sympathy for this guy excised. At least Naosuke is sort of endearingly slimy, but Iemon is just a big dumb lump of murder. I think the real standout for me is when Naosuke pitches two different plans for killing his wife and Iemon just decides to execute both of them at the same time because...I'm still not clear on why. Anyway, movie. Like all the Japanese stuff I've watched this month, fantastic sets that make for some easy extremely enjoyable shots. Just look at this thing. I really appreciate that once the haunting kicks off, it's not the sort of slow burn creepy build-up you'd normally expect. We go from zero to this ghost wants you dead instantly, and although she can't make it happen directly she's not shy about loving things up however she can. The final sword fight merits special mention; Iemon's outnumbered, actively hampered by ghost interference, and still somehow has the upper hand for most of the duration while he's stumbling around in a daze. I don't think we're supposed to believe that Yomoshichi was completely incompetent, so either Iemon's just a really exceptional fighter (which we haven't seen much other evidence of, but it's plausible) or Yomoshichi and Osode are holding back; maybe because they can see something's wrong and aren't sure what, maybe because they're not really as ready for this revenge thing as they thought. It's also pretty strongly reminiscent of the murders that kicked this whole thing off, with lots of people spending all their time backing away from Iemon - like he's the only person in the story who is comfortable and committed when he makes the decision to kill. It's really an exceptional finale that it doesn't feel like the characters or story have earned. Per wikipedia and prior poster, this is apparently the best filmed adaptation of the story, but either it's not a very good story in the first place or this is still a pretty sloppy telling that expects you to know everything from the outset. I don't think I'm curious enough to seek out lesser versions. And this finally brings me to... 23. SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #4: Inktober - Over Your Dead Body (2016) This could easily fit several of the prompts (Frail, Pattern, Legend, Ornament, Ghost, Ancient, Dark, Injured...), but really I picked it because it centers around a stage play, and theater's always been fertile ground for horror movies. Stagefright and Theater of Blood are the first two that pop into my head, but there's also all the Phantom stuff, some great crossover with Jeffrey Combs and Stuart Gordon, etc. I have no idea how common this sentiment is, but even though I don't much care for stage plays in person they're amazing subject matter and setting for pretty much everything else. Anyway, on to the movie. I had no idea until I got through the credits that this was Miike, but in retrospect it feels pretty obvious. The setup is that we've got a stage production of Yotsuya Kaidan happening, and the story follows the central actors. Everyone is in the process of loving or attempting to gently caress everyone else, there's some mirroring of the roles in the actors' off-set lives, etc. I know I've said that basically every Japanese movie I've watched so far this month has been gorgeous, and it's still true - this is a constant joy to look at. Special mention goes to every shot involving the revolving stage used for the play. This also fills in a lot of gaps in the Yotsuya Kaidan story as presented in the 1959 movie - Iemon here is more of an actual character and less of a bumbling murder hobo, the entire thing with Ume's family wanting to bring him in has some sort of actual motivation, there are no longer multiple completely redundant plots for him to get rid of his first wife, etc. I get the impression that 1959 was a heavily sanitized version of the story that just couldn't be bothered to meaningfully rework the excised content it wanted to keep the consequences of. So in addition to this being an excellent movie in its own right, it retroactively helped me enjoy Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan more. Thanks, Miike. 24. SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #5: Tourist Trap - November (2017)  Gorgeous and full of tonal whiplash akin to the best Korean stuff, but with softer extremes and a feel that's a little off even by those standards. By far my favorite score of any movie this month, and as a previous poster mentioned almost every scene could be printed and hung on your wall. It's a silly little movie that starts with a cownapping and features peasants cheating the devil with currants, but it's also a beautiful and melancholy story of doomed love. At one point a plague is murdered. 25. One Cut of the Dead - 2017 Fun and technically impressive. I didn't love it as much as most people in the thread have seemed to, but still worth a watch - just not when you're in the mood for horror.
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Oct 27, 2019 06:38
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23: Silver Bullet ABCs: S Challenge 11: All Hail the King I had the same massive Stephen King phase in middle school that I’m sure most of you had, but I never got around to reading this one so not sure how it is as an adaptation. On its own it’s good, though nothing revolutionary. I liked Busey as the fun, drunk uncle, and Everett McGill makes an intimidating villain (it’s funny how I’ve been a Twin Peaks fan for ages but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in anything else, and now that’s 2 roles This month both very different from Big Ed). The werewolf suit is pretty good and the transformation scenes are well done. One thing that stands out is how little this feels like a King story to me, though. Maybe the book has more of his style and it didn’t carry over. Also I’m a motorcycle mechanic and I’m very tempted to go making a replica now. You know, if I wouldn’t be immediately thrown in jail for child endangerment. 24: Train to Busan ABCs: S This has been sitting in my Netflix queue since last October so I’m glad I finally had an excuse to watch it. Very well done; it’s tough to make a good zombie movie these days as it doesn’t really lend itself to reinvention, but this one works with that by staying small and doing what it does well. A train is a unique place for something like this and leads to some neat set pieces. I’m also a sucker for a good “things going terribly wrong and completely falling apart” scene and this has multiple good ones. Strong recommend if you’re into zombie flicks.
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Oct 27, 2019 06:40
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