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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #8: HAPPY HOLIDAYS 42. Blood Rage (1987) Dir: John Grissmer (Amazon Prime) Been a while since I've seen a Thanksgiving horror movie! This film does what it says on the tin, to the point where the opening credits list the movie as just Slasher. It's a pretty rudimentary slasher, functional but pretty shallow. There was enough goofy stuff to keep me entertained (the dad getting his beer hand cut off was a particular highlight) and the idea that the killer was well hidden in society the whole time is interesting, but it's pretty much baseline. Nothing less, not much more. It's probably still worth a watch if you're into that kind of thing. I find it hard to believe that people can't tell these two identical twins apart, especially when one of them gets soaked in blood. The score absolutely bumps, though. 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 40. The Last Wave 41. Body Bags 42. Blood Rage
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Oct 28, 2019 01:13
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #10: Navel Gazing 14. House Holy crap! What a ride! I was familiar with the horror movie House from the 80s but I never heard of this one before the thread. It felt like someone wrote a script for an anime and afterwards decided to use live actors instead. This movie is about 7 Japanese high school girls, each with a name that matches the 1 personality trait they’re each allowed to have. One girl’s personality is fat (shamefully weighs in the triple digits), and is constantly talking about food. They get invited to one of the girl’s aunt’s house for a vacation and you can figure out the rest. The movie was a mashup of horror, comedy, melodrama, and absurdity until things looped back into comedy again. It was so insane that it actually worked. I kept watching just to see what crazy new thing it would come up with in the next scene and the movie did not disappoint. House also reminded me of a story of how the band Cheap Trick got their name. After attending a Slade concert, one of the members remarked, “they used every cheap trick in the book.” This is exactly how I felt after watching this movie. Every cheap editing trick, transition, or special effect was crammed into this movie without any rhyme or reason. That being said, I have to recommend this insane masterpiece if you haven’t seen it.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:15
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The last of my “bad options” years is 1938. I always get these years during these countdowns, they’re just made a little harder this time around because in stead of just a few bad looking films on Prime to choose from its just a handful of films that were made and many of them “lost” or unavailable. The big film from the year is a french war film J’acusse! which I could watch on some Russian web site that would probably eat my computer or break a law or something. But despite it being mentioned in that Universal documentary I watched I’m not sure its horror after reading up on it. I mean, maybe it is but its more existential horror with a message, and if I’m being honest I’m a little mentally exhausted and looking for something more like things that go bump in the night. To that end this is the one most easily available that sounds like it might actually be horror. Fingers crossed. There’s also a Charlie Chan movie but my impression is that stuff is crazy rear end racist.  52 (64). The Black Doll (1938) Watched on Youtube. A dishonest businessman finds a voodoo doll on his desk and takes it as a threat on his life from past dealings. He brings in his ex partners and a night of hijinks and murder follow around the black doll. Ok, “is it horror?” No, not really. I mean, it has the trappings of horror. A creepy voodoo doll popping around killing people. A big house on a storm night. Masked slashers. But the bulk of the film is basically just the bumbling sheriff and the cocky rando who just kind of showed up walking around trading barbs and solving the murders. Its a… comedy? Murder mystery? Still, beggars can’t be choosers and I don’t really have other obvious options. It was people being killed in a big house on a stormy night with a voodoo doll. I’m counting it. Sue me. That aside, it was whatever. Kind of boring really. Like I said, it was mostly the comedy of the two leads and I wasn’t feeling it. The super smart guy who knew everything just kind of annoyed me and the bumbling detective was basically a cartoon. I didn’t care about the mystery or the 10 minute tie up scene. And hilariously in the pivotal moment when the killer is revealed there’s an awkward cut that caused me to skip it. I wonder if that was in the original print or just the youtube upload. drat it, I’m having second thoughts. If I had a clear horror alternative I’d watch it, but I really don’t. I don’t want to get viruses and whatever else comes from the Russian site or watch the racist detective, and I don’t think either of those are horror anyway. Blame 1938 for not making any actual horror films. There is a Japanese film Kaibyô nazo no shamisen but I’d have to sign up to sketchy sites and… can you guys give me this one? I need the block on the board.  Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness  53 (65). XX (2017) Watched on Netflix, also available on Hoopla. An anthology of stories focused on women and created by women - writers/directors Jovanka Vuckovic (Riot Girls), Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), Roxanne Benjamin (Southbound) and Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body). A solid set. Nothing really stands out but like most anthologies its backloaded with the meatier pieces finishing up. Vuckovic’s opener “The Box” is based on a Jack Ketchum story that I just don’t really get. I mean, I mostly get it I think. Consumerism, disconnection, nihilism, “there’s nothing in the box, there’s nothing, life is nothing”, nothing matters. I just don’t actually get anything from that kind of story or mindset. Clarke and Benjamin’s “The Birthday Party” was cute but a little too much one note for me. A really good joke at the end with alternative title though. Benjamin’s “Don’t Fall” is when it really started to win me over. The monster design was really good and that’s the kind of story that really benefits from the anthology format. A cool monster design, a vague idea of how people end up in a situation, some quick action, nothing more. But a full movie would have just been more of the same so it really works in a small piece. Kusama’s piece “Her Only Living Son” really works. Early in it feels like it might be a little more messagey about the white male having excuses made for him and people cleaning up after him when all common sense screams there’s something wrong. But as it gets more on the surface story its a really well acted and told little “What if Rosemary got away?” story. This is the story I would have liked to see as a fuller feature since there’s a lot that could have been touched on and expanded to tell a bigger story. Still, that’s the strength of anthologies that when you do it right it wants to wanting more. Like a lot of anthologies the directorial resumes of the group is limited with them mostly working in other anthologies, so it makes sense that Kusama who has the most feature film experience put the best story together and Benjamin who has a ton of anthology experience crafted some nice little stories. Mary Harron (American Psycho) and Jennifer Lynch (Boxing Helena; The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer; a ton of tv) were originally supposed to be involved and it would have been interesting to see what more experience would have produced. But ultimately I like that anthologies give the chance for people like Clarke and Vuckovic to get started and try some ideas. Its horror’s little testing ground, and its great to see more female voices in the genre since so much of it has been pretty lovely to the presentation and treatment of women. And hey, that’s my 65th movie which beats last year’s best. Not too bad. Or really tragic, depending on perspective. I’m still a few short of me “new” total of 58 from last year but I still have quite a few necessary challenge movies and a bunch of others so I think I’m gonna have to not chase a new total next year. What am I even doing next year? I’m gonna have some kind of existential crisis not having a clear plan. I’m like an animal raised in a zoo released to the wild. Oh well, next year’s problem. 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); 50 (62). House of Frankenstein (1944); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #11: All Hail The King: 51 (63). Gerald’s Game (2017); 52 (64). The Black Doll (1938); SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness: 53 (65). XX (2017)
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Oct 28, 2019 01:24
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 SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness  Watch an anthology film you haven’t seen.#37: Body Bags (1993)  Man, I love me some John Carpenter, but he makes for a really low-rent Crypt Keeper.  I think since I watched "Demon Knight" for the first time earlier in the challenge, knowing that this movie was supposed to be Showtime's answer to Tales from the Crypt hurt it by comparison. Granted, comparing anything to "Demon Knight" will make it hurt by comparison, but I digress. I did enjoy watching this anthology though, it's not bad by any means, it just doesn't find the same balance between cheesy and genuine horror to scratch that TFTC itch the same way. Especially when you consider the people involved in this movie, holy poo poo! Mark Hamill, Stacey Keach (who I am now convinced has also been Powers Boothe all along in an Andy Kaufman-esque twist), and Robert Carradine are all fun to watch and entertained the hell out of me in their respective stories. Also, after checking out the credits I had to go back and recognize cameos by Sam Raimi and Wes Craven, which was an awesome surprise I didn't initially catch. The first story is about a girl working her first night shift at a self-serve gas station, which happens to be located in Haddonfield (or nearby area) based on radio reports of a serial killer on the loose. Moral of the story: don't ever go to Haddonfield. The second story is about Stacey Keach having a midlife crisis about starting to go bald, so he goes to visit the scientist from TMNT 2: Secret of the Ooze for a miracle cure that gives him hilariously long, luscious locks that he (and his hot girlfriend) think looks awesome. It doesn't, but he's happy with it... at first. Moral of the story: people in 1993 were still suffering from 80's PTSD when it came to what they think "looks cool." The third story was easily my favorite, but I love Mark Hamill so that was a given. I think he easily gives the best performance of anybody in this entire movie, because I think his story has more heft to work with. He plays a minor league baseball player trying to bust into the majors, when he gets into a horrible car accident and loses his right eye. (Side note: I wonder if he was cast and accepted this role because of the allusions to his real-life accident right before filming ESB that left his face noticeably bruised in the wampa cave scene? Maybe not, but the thought kept popping up while I watched it,) He undergoes an experimental eye transplant, and viola, he gets his sight back... but with a rather disturbing caveat. The other two stories were fun in their own way, but this one made the movie for me. Probably why they closed with it. Moral of the story: Mark Hamill rules. Overall it was an entertaining and brisk movie with fair amounts of schlock and gore, and a little bit of gratuitous nudity because Showtime. I realized that I haven't seen many horror anthology movies, so this felt like a good starting off point. Recommended. 3/5 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); Hereditary; The First Purge (Challenge #3); Killer Condom; Road Games; Next of Kin; Zombie aka Zombi 2; Suspiria (1977) (Challenge #4); Phantom of the Paradise; In Her Skin; Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon; Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead; Troll Hunter aka Trollhunter (Challenge #5); The Tunnel; Profondo Rossa aka Deep Red; Body Melt; Suspiria (2018) (Challenge #6); Sadako vs. Kayako (Challenge #7); Black Christmas (Challenge #8); Unfriended (Challenge #9); Unfriended: Dark Web; Triangle; The Wailing (Challenge #10); Gerald's Game (Challenge #11); The Lighthouse; Body Bags (Challenge #12) Total: 37 T3hRen3gade fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 01:25
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15. Rabid:  I’ve been keeping up with my movie watching, but I’m starting to really fall behind on getting my reviews posted. So I plan on getting them up in a little more rapid fashion. This was my favorite of the three Cronenberg movies I’ve seen so far. (The other two are Scanners and Shivers) It felt like he took some of the concepts and lessons learned from Shivers and made a tighter, more effective movie. Much like Shivers, it’s still effectively a zombie movie. People are infected, spread the disease, panic sets in, and then cops just start doing cop things. Marilyn Chambers did an excellent job as Rose. I thought it was interesting and fairly progressive for 1977 that her whole hunting plan was be an attractive women, go somewhere and wait for about 2.5 seconds for a guy to creep on her. Her condition basically shifts the power dynamic of that typical situation back in her favor. As I was watching it, I thought it was a little weird that she kept finding reasons to take her top off. It made a little more sense when I went on Wikipedia and saw that she was an adult film star prior to acting in this. Favorite Fashion: Bellbottom Overalls. My dream is one day that bell bottoms will truly come back into fashion.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:41
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# 27 LAKE MUNGO (2008)Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #5: Tourist Trap  Australia… Full disclosure: this movie is so well-made that I got totally tricked by it. Supernatural subject matter is not what duped me. What duped me is that this is not based on real people, all the home videos and news footage was fake, the entire movie is a fake documentary!!! I had to read about the movie AFTER seeing it, to realize this. While the creepy photographs and video footage of blurry figures begin to wear-off and become redundant, I must admit I was freaked out. I mean, if me needing to turn on the lights half-way into the movie qualifies as being freaked out, then there’s no denying it. This is comparable to the most haunting segments on Unsolved Mysteries. Ghosts are one thing. The secrets buried deep in the repressed suburbs is another – you get the feeling that any horror lurks beneath. I’ll say no more about this. Like One Cut of the Dead, it is important to go into this blind. Lake Mungo is an obscurity that packs a serious punch. SCORE: 7.6 / 10 *** # 28 PREDATORS (2010) Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #6: Sometimes They Come Back  This movie is good! My guess as to why it is not more appreciated by fans: the movie is focused on the ensemble cast of human characters rather than the Predators, which do not get much screentime. I could be wrong though. The original was people-heavy too… Predators is a fresh approach to the series thanks to a storyline developed by Robert Rodriguez in the 90s: the biggest badasses of the human species – special ops, the Yakuza, FBI’s Most Wanted, etc. – are parachuted into a game reserve for the Predators to hunt. Woah, that’s nuts! What I liked is that the Predators, despite being technologically and physically superior, do not slaughter the humans outright. In fact, a one-on-one sword duel results in a draw, and a human and a Predator both perish from a surprise grenade. It would be boring to see the humans not be formidable and go down like suckers. The Predators are arrogant assholes, giving themselves every advantage imaginable, so gently caress them. What they do is the equivalent to deer-hunting with an assault rifle. The cast is very cool, and Adrien Brody does an excellent job being a tough guy. He is a counter-intuitive casting choice and it’s encouraging to see a risky decision pay-off. I think he was chosen to distinguish from the original. This movie was in 2010 which I suppose is long enough ago before franchises became too insecure to avoid fan service. This movie strives to be different, and does not rely on references or tributes to the original to prop it up. I was also worried the movie would look like CGI-filled crap with ugly coloring, however the aesthetic in the jungle feels real as do the sets and practical effects. Underrated! SCORE: 7.2 / 10 Mokelumne Trekka fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 02:00
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5. Apostle (2018) (Netflix Streaming)   Apostle tells the story of a man attempting to rescue his sister from a cult that has demanded a ransom. I appreciate so-called folk horror and this was no exception. The story flows organically, and I liked how not everything was explained. There is some nice cinematography as well. I recall a number of horror thread posters being down on this movie when it came out but I liked it. 3.5/5 6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) - Rewatch (DVD)    "We got special work to do here, you and me." - Freddy Krueger I saw this one some time in high school as well, but I don't remember if my friends and I picked up on the (very clear to me now) gay subtext. Watching it now, it's super obvious, and it kind of sucks that being in this movie cost Mark Patton a better career due to attitudes at the time. There's more Freddy in this movie compared to the last but the character isn't consistent. This is probably the least of the Nightmare movies but is interesting in that (as well as compared to its peers) it has a male protagonist. 2.5/5
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Oct 28, 2019 02:06
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 31!! THE MUTILATOR - Shudder A young boy accidentally kills his mom while cleaning a gun. Years later, his father lures the son and his friends to a beach house to exact revenge. This is a hysterically amazing early 80s thriller. The script is bizarre, the performances are strange, and the music choices are completely baffling. I had so much fun watching this. Is it a GOOD movie? god no. Is it something fun and retro and delightful like SLEEPAWAY CAMP or THE BURNING? hell yeah it is. 4 out of 5 outboard motor massacres
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Oct 28, 2019 02:16
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31. 28 Days Later (2002) It makes for boring reviews, but sometimes the conventional wisdom is true, this has an amazing opening, works well as a zombie apocalypse movie, and then kinda looses me once they reach the military base. The ending is particularly frustrating because it turns into a rape/revenge movie where the ninety pound boyfriend who spent a month in a coma is the one enacting the revenge, while the hardened zombie killer lady stands there helpless, doing a disservice to both characters. Fascinating how choices that felt bracing and novel at the time (fast zombies, juttery editing, weird digital) now just make it immediately identifiable as early 2000s. Remember fast zombies? This didn't end up being the future of the genre after all, but rather a neat, sometimes misjudged little side corner, with something different to offer than most. 3.5/5  32. Body Bags (1993) Challenge #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness We all have Shudder, huh? Wild that the Showtime ripoff of Tales from the Crypt that never took off would also be the one with this much talent behind the camera. This is definitely a lark for pretty much everyone involved but it's pretty charming. Carpenter could do this kind of thing in his sleep, so I ended up pretty surprised when I enjoyed Hooper's story the most for a wild and committed turn by Mark Hamil. Not a lot to say about this, but it's definitely worth a watch if you like this kind of thing and if you don't, why are you reading this? 3/5   
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Oct 28, 2019 02:32
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness #26 Tales from the Hood (1995)  I was gonna watch this last year but at the last minute ended up picking something else. Glad this challenge came up to give me a good reason to come back to it, because this movie is really fun! I felt a bit like I was watching an alternate version of The Twilight Zone. Each of the stories is about standard TV show episode length, and they all have a pretty strong central message and core conceit. It's not subtle stuff, but it doesn't really need to be in this context. There's a good mixture of comedy and legitimately dark stuff, but things are largely wrapped up in pretty cathartic ways as a nice contrast to some of those more serious topics. This feels like the type of movie that's begging you to see it in a group; it feels made for vocal reactions. You could also almost say this is a movie about art. I don't think the theme QUITE permeates the entire movie, but the first three segments all feature art pretty prominently, and you can make an argument for it in the fourth segment as well with the Clockwork Orange style film. I was all set to speak more about this, but the wrapper segment doesn't really do anything to connect to the 4 other segments on that topic. Regardless, it's cool that it's a theme at all, and I definitely don't think it's an accident that self expression is consistently shown in such a positive light. Oh yeah, and Clarence Williams III does an awesome job as the funeral director. I enjoyed that framing device a lot, and watching him between each segment was a huge treat. I feel like a lot of people in this thread have ended up checking this out already, but if you haven't seen it it's a great pick for this challenge and a good time in general! Watched (26/31): #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), #25 It (2017), #26 Tales from the Hood (1995) Challenges (12/13):
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Oct 28, 2019 02:33
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 #19. Doom Aslym (1988) (First Watch) A lawer kills people at an abandoned buildind years after he and his girlfriend get into a car accident and she dies. Complety absurd from start to finish. All the characters are hyper-exagerated to the point where they are all literally insane. It maintains this throughout and what results is just characters doing the dumbest poo poo possible for the sake of being cannon fodder. The kills are neat and there are some fun special effects, but i don't know if I could recommend it, despite tge fact that I enjoyed myself thoroughly.
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Oct 28, 2019 02:53
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 #156) The Visitor (1979), a.k.a., The Visitors Tubi. Wow, this movie pulled out the stops with the visuals at the start. Kind of spoiled me for the rest of it, even as weird as that remainder was. Uh, there's like a space cult, an evil and sassy kid, an unborn messiah or something, mucho birds, and a powerful funk main theme. And I couldn't begin to tell you how they fit together. A (relatively) young Lance Henriksen! An exploding basketball! Two shooting locations: Atlanta and Rome! Pre-teen gun violence! Angry gymnastics! Volatile accents! Violent ice-skating! This movie certainly provides plenty of oddities and memorable scenes. Very Italian. The connection from one scene to the next seemed to make sense on the face of it, but as soon as I'd think 'OK, but what's actually happening?' or 'Why is this happening?', things tended to fall apart. That and the sweet funk soundtrack made it hard to not throw out a few quips, mainly as a means to stay hooked into the events of the movie. Didn't really help, admittedly. I finished this out not really understanding either side's motivations, and while I'd like to blame that on being tired, I don't think I'd have done much better had I been fully rested. Maybe the weirdest movie I've watched this month? rating: 6/10"I'm a pretty bird." Darthemed fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 03:50
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Bonus Chicago Skeletons: 27. SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #6: Sometimes They Come Back - Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)I was tempted to skip this one since III is what I actually want to see, but earlier in this thread I told a man to watch all of the puppet master movies so I wouldn't feel right. Anyway, credit where credit is due: most boring movies have one or two ideas at most. This movie, despite being extremely boring, has tons of ideas. Some of them might even be good, but it's hard to tell through the script, performances, goofy locust effects, etc. The only actually good part of this movie is James Earl Jones as a surprise scientist after Richard Burton finishes stumbling through some dumb hallucination about mud huts. Which turns out to have contained actual important information so we loop back around to gently caress this movie, but still. It was a good scene in semi-isolation.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:01
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30. The Lighthouse I was already pretty much sold with "Willem Dafoe as a salty sea dog" but this managed to surpass my expectations. Robert Pattinson is an apprentice lighthouse keeper spending two months with Dafoe as his boss, at a lighthouse on an island somewhere off the coast. The loneliness and isolation get worse when a storm prevents the recovery ship from showing up, and the relationship between the men- as well as their hold on sanity- deteriorates. This is bleak, brutal, and fun, like there's this undercurrent of humor to it alongside some absolute bugfuck weirdness. The photography (not only black and white but in a narrow 1.19:1 frame) is wonderfully cluttered with textures, everything's awash with bilgewater, and of course some of the best visuals are just lingering on the men's faces. But you mainly wanna see this to see Dafoe and Pattinson go ham, and it's an amazing acting showcase. Dafoe just makes every line a treat, and Pattinson gets to really show off his range, his character going from quiet and reserved to utterly unhinged. The plot- well it's really hard to tell what's actually happening after a while, and that's fine, that's what this movie's doing. Like there may be some allegory here, but it's hard to reduce it to just that because there's so much going on. Wildly entertaining.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:01
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The Dead Zone (1983, amazon prime Samhain challenge: All Hail the King My original plan was to watch Salem’s Lot with my wife but we didn’t have time to watch anything that long together. So I went through what was available on Prime and settled on this. I was pleasantly surprised by this. I had not read the novel so I really didn’t know what to expect, but it’s about a guy who awakens from a coma with psychic powers and he learns that a rising politician will be the next hitler. I had no clue that David Cronenberg directed this either so that was another big plus. He doesn’t get into his trademark body horror but he does have a good understanding of King’s work and characters. I recommend this movie. The Willies (1990, youtube) Samhain challenge - cavalcade of horror I was going to watch Body Bags but everyone’s watched Body Bags. I wanted something more obscure and came across this anthology. The framing device is 3 kids telling scary stories/urban legends to each other. It starts out with quick vignettes and I was hoping the movie would stick with that but instead it has two longer segments. The first is about a monster in the school bathroom and the second is about a loner child obsessed with flies. Neither story is particularly great, but there is some okayish special effects. I do like the energy the kids have in this too, the dialogue felt very authentic for how kids would have talked back then. Overall it’s a pretty average -> below average movie so I don’t think I’d recommend it but it’s not a complete waste of time. And with that I’ve hit my target and all the Samhain challenges. My next few nights will be busy but I hope to get at least one more in before Halloween. Watched (32): 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, Prom Night (2008), The Dead Zone, The Willies 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! - Prom Night (2008) 9. Hackers - Countdown 10. Navel Gazing - Evil Ed 11. All Hail the King - The Dead Zone 12. Cavalcade of Creepiness - The Willies 13. Maniac - Hocus Pocus
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Oct 28, 2019 04:24
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I've hit my target of 31 and, now, have knocked out the Samhain challenges. It was a fun (and spooky) time! I wasn't sure I could manage it (compared to just 13 in May) but it turned out to be fairly painless. There's a couple more things I'd like to watch this month (my partner's never seen Shadow of the Vampire, and there's a remake of Hush with Nayanthara that I'm curious about), so I'll probably have a couple more reviews and a final summary post in the next few days.quote:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness 34.) XX  2017, first watch, Netflix We don't watch a lot of anthologies, so this challenge was almost completely open for me. I talked through the options with my partner, and in the end they thought this one sounded the most interesting. I liked it. One of the things that keeps me away from anthologies is how uneven many of them are, but XX maintains consistency in quality through its components, and while some of the shorts are stronger than others, there are no real duds. A problem anthologies have to struggle with is whether to open or close with their strongest material. Here, I differ from STAC Goat in how I'd order the shorts. While Only Living Son definitely merits that last slot, I think Don't Fall is more of an amuse-bouche, and should have been the opener. It's not at all bad or anything, but it's more of a punchy spooky experience or vignette. (Compare the depth of its setting to the world of Gwinnifers and preteen pilates that isolates the heroine of Birthday Party, for instance.) I'd be down for another one of these. quote:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #13: Maniac 35.) Sleepy Hollow  1999, rewatch, DVD copy I don't know that I have a "guilty pleasure" horror movie. I've seen this and the Thirteen Ghost remake far more times than they probably merit, though, and have watched the latter more recently, so here we go. As always, Sleepy Hollow is total cotton candy. The usual Burton eccentricities and morbid whimsies abound, and had yet to grow stale to the point of self-parody. The aesthetic - despite props ranging from enlightenment period to medieval archaisms to Ichabod's anachronistic forensic implements - holds steady and consistent, something I was sensitive to after recently watching Masque. I don't think I could call this a good movie, but the fundamentals of the craft are solid here - any of us could look at a costume or set and be confident whether it belonged in this movie (and, by extension, in a Hot Topic) or not. The ghost movie and the detective story tend to rub shoulders - many ghost movies involve an element of whodunnit - though this is a more obvious admixture than most: ghost as murder weapon. There's oodles of (sometimes bloodless) carnage, there's Christopher Walken, there's Christopher Lee for like a minute. In college, this was part of the standard rotation during the Halloween season for our dorm, and it was fun to return to it. Watch your head. Watched: 1.) Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [Classics], 2.) Occult [J- and K-horror], 3.) Son of Frankenstein [Threequels, Samhain Challenge #1], 4.) Game Over [India] 5.) Candyman [Clive Barker], 6.) Knife + Heart [New Releases], 7.) Butterfly Murders, 8.) The Phantom of the Opera (1925) [Classics], 9.) One Cut of the Dead [J- and K-Horror], 10.) Hatchet III [Threequels, Samhain Challenge #2], 11.) Neighbours: They Are Vampires [India], 12.) Midnight Meat Train [Clive Barker], 13.) Us [New Releases, Samhain Challenge #3], 14.) The Taking of Deborah Logan, 15.) People Under the Stairs, 16.) L'Inferno [Classics], 17.) The Host [J- and K-horror], 18.) Hell House LLC 3 [Threequels], 19.) Stree [India, Samhain Challenge #4], 20.) P [Samhain Challenge #5: Thailand], 21.) Lord of Illusiosn [Clive Barker], 22.) Child's Play [New Releases], 23.) Tigers Are Not Afraid, 24.) Creature from the Black Lagoon [Classics], 25.) Ju-on: The Grudge 2 [J- and K-Horror, Samhain Challenge #6], 26.) The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy [Threequels, Samhain Challenge #7], 27.) Rare Exports: A Christmas Story [Samhain Challenge #8], 28.) Unmatta [India] , 29.) Cast a Deadly Spell, 30.) Friend Request [Samhain Challenge #9] , 31.) Nightbreed [Clive Barker], 32.) Spookies [Samhain Challenge #10], 33.) The Masque of the Red Death [Samhain Challenge #11], 34.) XX [Samhain Challenge #12], 35.) Sleepy Hollow [Samhain Challenge #13]
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Oct 28, 2019 05:11
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Five Eyes posted:
Oh, I think I'd agree with you. Swapping Don't Fall and The Box would probably have helped the feature because it would have started things off with a punchy number, followed up with the lighter piece, gave you the think piece, and then finished with probably the best overall story. Instead The Box was kid of a slow way to ease me in and I was still thinking about through The Birthday Party. I didn't really start feeling things until Don't Fall. I wasn't really saying I like it when anthologies backload things, just that a lot of them seem to do exactly that. The best anthology I've watched this October is Dead at Night which clearly put a lot of thought into the placement of its stories to craft one big, cohesive feature where each story benefited the next. On the flipside I watched Nightmare Cinema that was kind of a mess with the loop around narrative and placement because it was obviously an aborted tv show thrown together into an anthology. But a lot of anthologies tend to just be a bunch of self contained stories like that that end up getting put from weakest to strongest. They'd certainly benefit more from a director overseeing the whole production who worked to make them fit together.
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Oct 28, 2019 05:21
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 28. The House of Frankenstein (1944): All your favorite monsters, together at last! Except none of them interact with one another. This is reminiscent of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in that it almost plays as an anthology. The first 25 minutes or so feature Dracula, who kills a guy and disappears. Then our mad scientist character finds the frozen bodies of Wolf Man and the Frankenstein monster and it plays out similarly to the previous movie, except Wolf Man doesn’t fight the monster. This had a decent amount of potential and squandered it.
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Oct 28, 2019 05:33
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25: Nightmare Before Christmas Challenge 13:Maniac I had a tough time with this challenge, as I don’t feel particularly “guilty” about any of the stuff I watch, but then this one popped into my head. I’m about 6 feet tall, 250 lbs, bearded, tattooed, and work as a mechanic, but I also know every line of this movie and can belt any of it out at a moment’s notice, so I’d say it counts as much as anything. 26: Beetlejuice It was on TV this afternoon so why not? I love it all; I love the bureaucracy of the dead, the weird aesthetics, Keaton just chewing the hell out out of every bit of scenery (sometimes literally). As much as I’m over Burton I’ll still always love these two. 27: Under the Skin ABCs: U Species as an arthouse film. Scarjo is an alien and rides around picking up men to eat, but not as exciting as that sounds. Meanders a lot and it’s shot in Glasgow so I couldn’t understand a single thing anyone said. Does have some Scarjo nudity in it so that’s cool. My partner is a massive Thom Yorke fan and I was teasing her about how it looked and sounded like one of his videos, and sure enough the director did a few Radiohead music videos. It was nice and I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d ever watch it again.
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Oct 28, 2019 05:45
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #13: Maniac #26b Tokyo Gore Police (2008)  Decided to go with Tokyo Gore Police, though I'm not counting it as one of my 31 since my personal goal was no rewatches. I don't think this is a bad movie, but I'd consider it a guilty pleasure because it's not exactly the type of movie I'd feel comfortable going around and recommending to most people. I watched this movie for the first time pretty soon after it was released because a friend described it to me and I was very morbidly curious. I remember really loving it. I hadn't ever seen anything like it before and it kind of opened my eyes to the world of more extreme movies. Not that I'm an expert in that sort of stuff now, but in 2008 I had probably seen fewer than 10 horror movies total, and had definitely not watched any of its more niche entries. So more than anything, this movie is nostalgiac for me as one of my early horror stepping stones. I genuinely really like it, but I also like that it lead me to so many other great movies. This movie's title is extremely accurate. If you've seen a lot of horror movies, you've undoubtedly come across more than a few that make promises they absolutely fail to deliver on with regards to their content. I'm happy to say that Tokyo Gore Police is set in Tokyo, prominently features the city's new privatized police force, and keeps up a nearly constant stream of wildy over-the-top, mostly practical, gore. And not just gore, but creative gore. This movie isn't just trying to paint the town red, it's trying to do it in a way you've never seen before, and it's consistently a lot of fun. Tokyo Gore Police centers around Ruka, an employee of Tokyo's privatized police force, who specializes in hunting "Engineers", a group of people genetically mutated in such a way that their injuries turn into weapons. Essentially, if one of their arms gets chopped off, a weapon of some sort will re-grow in its place, like a gun made from flesh and gore. Don't worry about wasted potential, because this concept is explored to its full extent, along with the general theme of extreme body modification. It'd been so long since I last watched this that I'd forgotten how amazingly dumb the backstory for the Engineers was. I'm glad I watched this again so I could be reminded. The plot's main purpose is probably mostly to string together fun set pieces, effects, and fights, but it's also clear that it was thought up with care, and it's definitely not throwaway. The music on the other hand, is sort of a mixed bag. There are some really fun song choices, and then there's also what sounds essentially like a cheap stock music version of a battle theme that plays a few times during some very dramatic moments. I should also say that the pacing of the movie drags a bit, particularly in the first half. The movie's almost 2 hours long and there's a bunch of interspersed action to break up the overall pacing, so it's not a matter of the amount of exciting content, but a lot of the scenes themselves are fairly slowly paced, so things can sometimes feel a bit slow even if you're watching someone's severed hands erupt in a geyser of blood. This movie is super gross and sometimes sleazy or in bad taste, but it's also very creative, impressive, goofy, and fun. It's not for everyone, but if you like practical effects and over the top, conceptually wild gore, I think it's a really good watch. -- And that means I've knocked out all the challenges! I've still got 5 more movies left to go, but for those I can watch whatever I want and I definitely have more than 5 interesting options to choose from. Feeling good about hitting my target this year. Watched (26/31): #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), #25 It (2017), #26 Tales from the Hood (1995), #26b Tokyo Gore Police (2008) Challenges (13/13):
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Oct 28, 2019 06:25
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  54 (66). House of Dracula (1945) Watched on DVD. Count Dracula and Larry Talbot are both alive… somehow… and they’ve bought sought out the help of Dr. Edelmann… for some reason… to help them be cured of their respective curses. And then he just finds Frankenstein’s Monster lying around and, well… things go badly. Is it considered “progress” if you cast the “hunchback” as a beautiful, selfless, young woman? Once again this isn’t really a good movie but its probably the best of the three team up movies at just integrating the different monster’s stories together. I mean, Carradine’s (still unfortunate) Dracula is kind of doing his own thing but he factors into the main story in a real way unlike the last movie. Talbot remains the sympathetic guy who all the ladies fall for. Edelmann is a nice change of pace as a doctor who actually makes the sensible moral choices. Well… moral at least. I knew what was gonna happen as soon as he had the bright idea of giving blood transfusions to a vampire. C’mon, man. Think this through. But someone said “maybe you shouldn’t revive the monster that always kills a bunch of people” and he actually said “yeah. good call.” That’s major points in this world. The film feels denser then the last though. Not long or slow, just like there was more meat to it. That probably has to do with the better integration of the plots and monster stories so like it felt like ewe were getting to something earlier in the movie. I guess that came at the cost of any vague attempt to explain why Dracula and Larry were alive and seeking out help from the same guy. Or why Dracula was seeking a cure all of a sudden while also trying to seduce a new Bride. Its sloppy. But it seems sloppy in the name of getting to the story they want to tell so I’m willing to give it a pass. But honestly, I’m just in full “sign my yearbook” phase with the Universal monsters at this stage. I know I’m coming to the end and I’m really trying to cherish this time I have with them making new memories that will last us. RIP Dr. Edelmann and Nina. It doesn’t pay to be kind, sympathetic people in the Photo Dark Universe. At least Larry caught a break.  - (67). Halloween (2007) Watched on Blu Ray, available on Fubo. Rob Zombie’s spin on Micheal Myers the disturbed boy who murders his sister and others at age 10 and then returns home 15 years later in a violent killing spree in search of his sister, the only family he has left. I know I’ve seen this before because I remembered Sheri Moon Zombie and Love Hurts and the whole abusive family backstory. But beyond that I really didn’t remember anything about the film. Lets get it out of the way. I love Carpenter’s Micheal Myers. I love the Shape who lurks in the shadows. I like the Boogeyman that says nothing, has no clear motivations, just IS and is most terrifying because you have absolutely no idea when, where, or why he’s gonna kill. But I respect that Zombie just said “I’m doing my own thing.” Its really probably better for it because as we’ve seen a million times if you just try and copy the classics it almost never works. Zombie decides he’s doing his own spin on Micheal and I can get on board with that and I’ll do my best to get past the instincts I have to be like “I don’t like that he’s motivated by an abused childhood or that he talks to Loomis.” So trying to get past “Not My Micheal” I till don’t really like the backstory because it just feels too common and overdone. The kid tortured and killed small animals, he had an abusive stepdad, he had a terrible home life, he got bullied, he broke. I guess the argument to be made is that’s scarier because it happens and deals with consequences of real problems, but it feels a bit redundant to me. I do like the paper mâché masks thing and I like Danny Trejo’s “I was good to you, Mikey!” helping establish that motivation or no motivation, Micheal’s just an uncaring killer. There’s no sentimentality. Of course that ends up in conflict with the whole “find my sister and kill her” thing, but who am I to try and make sense of the mind of a psychopath? Loomis is a different kind of bad doctor/rear end in a top hat this time around. Whereas Carpenter’s Loomis is just a man obsessed with the evil of Micheal and his own inability to stop it from bringing more paid and death into the world Zombie’s Loomis is just a self serving rear end in a top hat who has used Micheal as a case study for career advancement, fame, and fortune. But he’s also just not all that important. Or I guess he is, just in a really different way. We see him mostly dealing with kid Micheal and when the second half of the film comes he plays a much smaller role than he did in the original. There’s a lot about the film I just have to get myself over the “Not My Halloween” hump with. Like all of Zombie’s films this feels like a Zombie film and not a Halloween film. Its got his whole usual stable of actors include what I once saw one poster very cutely describe as “a fetish for loving his own wife.” There’s no classic Carpenter synth score, instead we’ve got Rush. Its different and sometime around meeting New Laurie I finally got myself to a place where I could say “ok, I’m watching something else.” Hilariously that’s immediately followed by Micheal finding his mask and Zombie paying tribute with the classic music and the scene of Micheal watching Laurie from their old house. Bless you, Zombie. No one will ever question that you love and respect the classics. Hey, Danielle Harris! Playing way too young a character! Its funny, I kind of feel like that’s Zombie’s problem. He doesn’t fully go “this is my own thing” and he doesn’t fully go “this is a remake.” He walks a line between both ideas and while he clearly puts a lot of love and effort into it it never really feels fully realized to me. One big difference is that Zombie really lingers on Micheal in his actions. He’s not “The Shape” here, he’s Micheal Myers. To that end while it sometimes feels like more of a traditional slasher than a spooky story, there’s some really gorgeous shots of Micheal’s mask and kills. I’m not one who usually uses the word “gorgeous” with slasher kills but Zombie’s got a great artistic eye. I also really love how by making his mask a holdover from 15 years earlier instead of just a random mask he swipes it ends up being all broken and dirty and gnarly. Its very visually impressive in a different way than Carpenter’s was. Big picture, Carpenter made a spooky film about Laurie Strode and the Boogeyman. Zombie made a brutal film about Micheal Myers. I didn’t dislike it but I now understand why I only really remembered the background story from my first viewing. Zombie’s desire to play both reinvention and homage results in kind of two different movies. Whether or not I like the decisions made in Zombie’s changes so many of them give way to classic Halloween in the second half that it feels kind of wasted or half done. Its a perfectly fine movie but if he had gone one way or another fully it probably could have been much better. I’ll just say it though, the fake ending recreating the original only to go off in a different direction entirely was just unnecessarily cutesy. I just wish Zombie had picked a lane instead of trying to be clever and do both.
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Oct 28, 2019 08:20
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #13: Maniac  Watch your “guilty pleasure” horror film. #38: Dr. Giggles (1992)  "And now, ladies and gentlemen, you are about to experience the cutting edge in medicine."  I love this movie. Nobody else does, or at least nobody else ever talks about it. It's fun, it's clever, and it features an awesome black cop who especially after this rewatch makes me realize that this movie was ahead of its time. The fact that he dies off screen but in a seriously heroic way is epic, but I wish that moment could have been something more. But it was 1992, and in the context of this movie, it was still way ahead of its time. gently caress yeah Keith Diamond. The movie is about the psychotic son of a doctor who has become somewhat of an urban legend. Back in the 50's Dr. Even Rendell lost his wife, so he started tearing out his patient's hearts to try and bring her back. His son Even Jr. becomes Dr. Giggles (because of a weird tick where he laughs involuntarily so gently caress you Joaquin Phoenix this movie did it first) and the meat of of the movie takes place in the early 90's. Dr Giggles escapes from an asylum and starts to make "house calls" where he terrorizes and murders people in morbidly hilarious ways. I have an extreme fondness for this movie, because if "Killer Klowns from Outter Space" was the first horror movie I ever watched (and it was, I was 4 years old and believe me you don't forget that kind of thing) this movie was the second horror movie I was exposed to a few years later. Before I ever knew who Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees was, I knew Dr. Giggles. And he scared the absolute gently caress out of me. The scene where he pumps the girl's stomach for eating ice cream and the bowl starts filling with blood was one of the first visceral horror images I can consciously remember, and it will always stick with me. So I've asked myself over the years, is this movie actually any good or do I just have a sentimental fondness for it? After watching it for the first time in probably twenty years tonight, I can honestly say that yeah, this is worth checking out. Especially from a 2019 perspective, because one of the most competent characters is a black cop who makes all the other cops look like idiots. Unfortunately he doesn't get his due in the end, but I don't think any pre-"Scream" 90's horror movies were doing things like this so I'm trying to take it in perspective. I don't want to give this a rating because it's too fundamental to my introduction to horror, and my sentiments I think cloud my opinion. It's not a classic by any means, not by anyone else's metric, but it was one of my very firsts, so it's very special to me. Also I just want to point out, after murdering everyone else in the house, Dr. Giggles comes up behind the completely oblivious kid playing an Atari game and declares, "Hmm. Terminal." Then just... leaves. It's like he could see the future. 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); Hereditary; The First Purge (Challenge #3); Killer Condom; Road Games; Next of Kin; Zombie aka Zombi 2; Suspiria (1977) (Challenge #4); Phantom of the Paradise; In Her Skin; Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon; Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead; Troll Hunter aka Trollhunter (Challenge #5); The Tunnel; Profondo Rossa aka Deep Red; Body Melt; Suspiria (2018) (Challenge #6); Sadako vs. Kayako (Challenge #7); Black Christmas (Challenge #8); Unfriended (Challenge #9); Unfriended: Dark Web; Triangle; The Wailing (Challenge #10); Gerald's Game (Challenge #11); The Lighthouse; Body Bags (Challenge #12); Dr. Giggles (Challenge #13) Total: 38 T3hRen3gade fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 08:55
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#27. Godzilla vs Hedorah SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #7: Monster Mash-up  Aside from the Emmerich in as a teenager, I didn't watch any Godzilla films till the 2014 one, which I loved. Shin Godzilla was fantastic as well, so I figured I'd dive into some of the older movies. I was a bit confused by all the eras and how nearly every movie is VS SOMETHING and I just picked up a few at random. Destroy All Monsters was supposed to have a ton of monsters, so I chose that one. It was campy, hamfisted and really hadn't aged that well. Probably me not being able to to see past the big rubber suits, but it just feels amateurish and clunky. Godzilla Final Wars also had all monsters, and Matrix fights, and Don Frye, and Sum41! It was bonkers, terrible, but entertaining and fun. Sadly, Godzilla vs Hedorah was not something I enjoyed. It all just feels so small-scale, looks cheap most of the time and it just isn't entertaining. I did like the sludge coming down the stairs and I liked the vertical Hedorah eyes, but everything else just reminded me of a bad Power Rangers episode. A flying tadpole is not scary, even if it releases chlorine gas. Two grown men duking it out in rubber dino suits while toys get smashed was the best we could do 50 years ago, but nowadays it is just laughable. I guess old Godzilla movies just aren't for me. #28. Tone Deaf  I will watch anything with Robert Patrick in it. RP plays a widowed babyboomer, who is satisfied with his live but wants to kill someone just to see what it feels like. What better victim than an annoying millennial? He rents out his house to a recently-single, recently-fired girl who just needed to get out of the city. Perfect. Both him and the girl are unlikable caricatures, saying and doing terrible things and exemplifying the worst of their stereotypes. About five minutes in RP looks into the camera and tells the viewer they should drink bleach if they want to solve overpopulation. Not much later he dreams about getting strangled by three women, painted blue, with platinum-blonde Cleopatra haircuts. I didn't know what to expect, but this was great. From RP running around in longjohns with an axe to really weird parental issues all over the movie, I loved it. It isn't perfect, but man what a ride. #29. Maximum Overdrive SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #11: All Hail The King I think I may have read this short story as a kid. Deffo remember something about an endless line of trucks and being forced to refuel them. So, this was a bit too long, a bit too bland, but it never sucks and has a few standout moments. Honestly the scenes of things going haywire were more fun than the main story, but I did like the road full of trucks, all waiting, filling up the roads. It worked well in selling how this could go on forever. Surprised to see it having such a low rating, it wasn't a bad way to waste 90 minutes. #30. Hard to Die SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #10: Navel Gazing  Sometimes you just want to see trash. Someone watched this early in the month and five lingerie models trapped with a serial killer sounded like just the cheap movie you occasionally need. What I didn't expect was to laugh this much. This movie was awful, but fully embraced it. Arms dealers stocking guns in a sky scraper, endless shootouts with everyone missing from 10 feet away, weak excuses to get undressed and take showers, illogical decisions, that poor, lovable janitor. Bonus laughs for the Joe Bob Briggs quote on the poster. "It's the female version of Die Hard" One more movie to go for my oath, but I am planning to tackle the challenges. I just need to do Challenge #9, #12 and #13, but I have a question. Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness I assume Three Extremes counts for this? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420251/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt There is no wraparound, but they are three short movies released as one.
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Oct 28, 2019 09:32
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 Lady Frankenstein, 1971 While I spend most of the marathon watching movie I like or know I will like, I got to squeeze in some b-movie poo poo in so I get something to complain about. There's always some poo poo in that b-movie DVD boxset I got. Almost disappointingly, this wasn't as bad as I hoped for. It was bad, but not so much that I hated it. It's the classic Frankenstein story. Frankenstein tries to create life from dead matter, it turns out to be a monster and you know the rest. And that's why I couldn't hate this. It's the good old school poo poo with the castle, the lab full of buzzing machines, science equipment and flasks with bubbling stuff. You just got love that. And the monster looks cool enough. Like what you want a Frankenstein monster to look, but not a compete ripoff off the iconic Boris Karloff look. Wgat make this different from yet another retelling of Frankenstein is the titular main character played by Italian b-movie icon Rosalba Neri. She is great in role of Frankenstein's daughter coming home from medical studies. Her father's experiment is an success, only he hosed up by using a damaged brain, so he is killed by his own creation. The monster roams around the countryside, killing people while our lady takes over, wishing to make her own creation. I make this movie sound very awesome to any horror fans, but trust me, it's kind of poo poo. The scenes with the monster killing is corny and stupid because people run into the monster for no reason, and the script isn't all that good at times. It don't help this wasn't very well mixed sound wise, so you got dialog almost drowned out by the music. It's not very good, but it got all the charm I talked about earlier, so it's very much worth watching to get your b-movie fix.
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Oct 28, 2019 09:48
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Did I save this film all month? Or did I constantly go back and forth on whether I really wanted to watch a nearly 2 hour silent documentary or cheat a little and count Nosferatu as a new watch even though I’m like 75% sure I’ve seen it? I’ll never tell.  54 (68). Haxan (1922) Watched on Kanopy, also available on Criterion and Youtube (public domain). A silent Scandanavian film that explores the topics of witches in part through scholarly documentation aided with art and props and in part through fictional narratives about the sort of things “witches” were accused of or dealt with as women were interrogated, tortured, and killed for many reasons. In truth I was always intending to watch this. I nearly borrowed it from Kanopy the last day of September until I saw it would be airing on TCM. I started up the copy recorded from TCM weeks ago but it just looked very rough and dry and I couldn’t get into it. I tried a couple of times with no luck so I deleted it and decided I’d watch Phantom. Then I watched a bunch of other German Expressionism and soured on it so I went back to Haxan. I came up with this gimmick night of watching it with Suspiria in one of many gimmick nights I wanted to do. But as the month went on I had to ditch most of those ideas so it went back to Haxan alone. As we got to the home stretch I decided to just make it Nosferatu for ’22 because I really don’t remember much of it, but more and more that felt like cheating to me so I’m sitting there late one night not able to sleep and not feeling like starting up any of the movies I have left on my challenges list and I decide, why not? I mostly found it pretty dry. The chapter format at least allowed me to pause and take a breath every now and then. I was just never a very good student when it came to lectures or visuals. My attention ain’t that great. I get why its celebrated. The movement between styles and fiction and non fiction is weird and probably really revolutionary for the time. As, I imagine, were some of the ideas about the treatment of women including to that day. And the devil was pretty baller. I mean, you don’t start a documentary with a slide show and expect it to eventually have the devil knocking a nun loopy with a cartoon club. I can see the appeal. But for me I found a lot of it just very hard to engage with. I’m glad I watched. Some of those scenes were definitely a lot of fun and worth seeing. And if I hadn’t I probably would have been annoyed with myself and kept wondering about it. It certainly was at least unique. And it looked really good. I don’t know what the difference between the Kanopy and TCM versions is but it definitely looked better than I remember the TCM version looking. Then again maybe I was just being moody and remembering it badly. Also I will never come to terms with all these films ending with “Slut.” Especially since I keep seem to be watching movies about women being abused and mistreated. It’s really bad luck. edit: And for the first time my board final looks doable. As long as I get two of my more put off films in tomorrow it should be smooth sailing to the 31st with a free day on the 30th. 
STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 10:54
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Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness 37) V/H/S 2012 A gang breaks into an old man's house and find him dead in front of TVs and VCRs. They watch the tapes which are all found footage horror. It's a neat idea for a framing device, undermined by having only one of the shorts take place in the VHS era. It's not a big deal, but it was funny to imagine how a videocall on a macbook ended up on a VHS tape in this guy's house. The shorts themselves are all OK. None really jumped out at me. I'm not the biggest found footage fan so the lack of variety and two hour running time made this drag a little. If you are into found footage I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this. Total 1) Brain Damage 1988; 2) Onibaba 1964; 3) Slugs 1988; 4) The Tingler 1959; 5) Pieces 1982; 6) Canibal Ferox 1981; 7) Eyes without a Face 1960; 8) Train to Busan 2016; 9) Creepshow 2 1987; 10) Anaconda 1997; 11) Samhain#1 Son of Frankenstein 1939; 12) Happy Death Day 2017; 13) Species 1995; 14) Insidious 2010; 15) Chopping Mall 1986; 16) One Cut of the Dead 2017; 17) Samhain#2 House of 1000 Corpses 2003; 18) Samhain#3 Horror Noire 2019; 19) Shivers 1975; 20) Lair of the White Worm 1988; 21) Black Sunday 1960; 22) Monster House 2006; 23) Inseminoid 1981; 24) It Comes at Night 2017; 25) Samhain#4 The Fog 1980; 26) Jason X 2001; 27) Samhain#5 Troll Hunter 2010; 28) Samhain#6 Phantasm 3 1994; 29) Phantasm 4 1998; 30) Phantasm 5 2016; 31)The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 1970; 32) Samhain#7 Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein 1948; 33) Samhain#8 Krampus 2015; 34) Samhain#9 The Lawnmower Man 1992; 35) Samhain#10 Parents 1989; 36) Samhain#11 The Pit and the Pendulum 1961; 37) Samhain#12 V/H/S 2012
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Oct 28, 2019 11:00
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 113) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers - 1988 - Shudder You gotta love the title moniker making a point of Michael Myers returning. Storywise, it's been ten years since the events of Halloween II. Laurie died in a car accident, but she had a daughter, Jamie. Michael's been in a coma since the hospital explosion. He comes to when it's mentioned about Laurie and her daughter and it's off to Haddonfield with Loomis in hot pursuit. Overall, this one was okay-ish. I liked the introduction of Jamie, but I felt the connecting to younger Michael being a bit heavy handed.  114) Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers - 1989 - Shudder Takes place a year after the last one. Michael goes into a coma after the last film, wakes on Halloween and now has a telepathic link. Overall, it's pretty average, though I'm not a fan of the introduction of the mysterious man in black at the ending.
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Oct 28, 2019 13:01
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #11: All Hail The King 29)Dark Half hulu  spoiler-it is not king and romero at their terrifying best. It's a very of the time king adaptation. It's pretty bland and inoffensive. I did dig the final sequence evil timothy hutton eaten alive by sparrows And it seems to be the only part Romero was actually super into. That and the sort of early 90s aesthetic really elevate for me more than it should /5SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #12:Cavalcade of Creepiness 30)Body Bags shudder  Movie rules. First segment is Carpenter doing his thing (at a haddonfield gas station!) The other two sections are less good, but feature stacy keach and mark hamil living it up and having a blast. By far the best part is John Carpenter in the wrap around segments as a wacky coroner. Whole thing is very fun, and again that early 80s/90s aesthetic I'm a complete sucker for. /5SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #13: Maniac 31)Last slumber party youtube  I love this movie. Sort of proto-murder drone, and hypnotic in its low budgetness. It's not as effective as the early straight to vhs ju-on movies, but similar idea-the low quality almost makes it look like you're watching something real and elicit. Which of course you're not because it's super dumb and nonsensical. Also pretty drat homophobic. despite all it's flaws it's super engrossing. Way more so than similar /5and with that 31 and all samhain challeneges complete! -pre-challenge watches- 1)Midsommar Director’s cut 2)slumber party massacre 3) Friday the 13th 4) slumber party massacre 2 5) Deep RED 6)Hellhouse llc 3 7) dude bro party massacre 3 8) one cut of the dead challenge! 01) Exorcist III 02)paranormal activity 4 03)paranormal activity the marked ones 04) poltergeist III 05)VIY* 06)Phoenix Forgotten 07)apollo 18 08)mantango 09)Q 10) Alucarda 11)In the tall grass 12)Lords of Salem* 13)southbound 14) horror noire* 15)Freaks 16) haunted palace 17)first summoning 18)Attack of the crab monsters* 19) Slumber party massacre 3 20) malevolent 21) sinister circle* 22)tigers are not afraid 23)devil’s rejects* 24)godzilla tokyo sos* 25) elves* 26) friend request * 27)PIN* 28)the lighthouse 29)dark half* 30)body bags* 31)SLUMBER party massacre* *samhain challenge. did them all in order
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Oct 28, 2019 13:21
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Untrustable posted:Fran, I'm going to see Evil Dead The Musical on Halloween. Do horror comedy musical stage plays count? I bought tickets for the Splatter Zone™ so that my body can be bathed in fake blood. I'm excited. Apologies for the late response, but yes, you can count the Evil Dead musical as a thing. I think at least one person logs it every year. BioTech posted:I assume Three Extremes counts for this? Yes, absolutely. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 13:27
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STAC Goat posted:Dreamcatcher really is just the pinnacle of King weirdness. I even thing there's a ton of really overt references to his other work in it. It makes complete sense that it was done when he was drugged out of his mind. For that alone I think it's almost worth a viewing, even if it's not a good movie or coherent story. That toilet scene at least is something that would definitely be a cult favorite if more people had seen the film. There are 5 distinct King periods: Early King: Salem's Lot, The Shining, Carrie, The Dead Zone, Cujo Cocaine King: IT, Misery, The Tommyknockers, The Dark Half The thoughtful 90's recovering addict King: Needful Things, Rose Madder, Insomnia, The Green Mile Post-getting-hit-by-a-van King: Dreamcatcher, everything until 2011 Current old man King: 11/22/63, Doctor Sleep, Mr. Mercedes In conclusion: King getting hit by a van hosed up his writing for like 11 years. I love every movie based on his books though.
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Oct 28, 2019 13:43
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Untrustable posted:There are 5 distinct King periods: my least favorite king is desperation/regulators, but I read them while sick in bed with a fever, and especially regulators (I think that's the neighborhood one) the book and my fever dreams all kind of blended together and I'm still not sure what was in the book and what I imagined.
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Oct 28, 2019 14:01
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Speaking of Misery, has anyone been watching Season 2 of Castle Rock?
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Oct 28, 2019 14:13
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26. The Little Vampire 2000 | dir. Uli Edel rewatch Even though this movie came out while I was growing up, I have zero nostalgia for this flick. I watched this with some friends that loved it growing up. I'm counting this as a rewatch, but I actually don't remember any of this film.  It's a bad movie. I am completely unfamiliar with the source material, a kids novel, by the way, so maybe the issues with this film are from that. The story takes a simple premise of a lonely boy becoming friends with a vampire, and doesn't really know where to go from there. It tries to spend time with the boys getting into hijinks, like absolutely terrorizing some bullies (a whole sequence which sucks), but it doesn't have confidence in trying to make a whole film about kids being friends. It has a second plot about a vampire hunter (Jim Carter) trying to kill the vampires of Scotland. Carter is excellent in the role, but the end result is actually rather disturbing for a kids film. Everything about his presence in the film makes it feel like the film was originally aiming at an older teen audience. A third plot, the thing to tie this all together, is about an amulet or something that the vampire family wants because it will finally give them peace. This plot is just a muddled excuse for a good set piece for the finale and to give us an out for a happy ending. I couldn't actually follow how it added up. As you can see, the story of this film is just a huge mess. This is exacerbated by tonal whiplash. The vampire hunter plot-line, as mentioned, is a little too intense for a family-friendly kids movie. The vampire parents seduce the human parents at one point, and it feels like they're about to swap spouses. But then you have a goofy sub-plot about vampire cows, a boring sub-plot about the human dad's job, the goofy wish-fulfillment plot of bullies getting their come-uppance...They really went for everything. There are good things about this movie, though! This movie looks great. While there are some awkward camera choices, like useless blocking and framing at inopportune moments, I'd say overall Bernd Heinl's cinematography is a solid example of how family movies looked at this time. A major saving grace is Peter R. Adams's editing, which does a great job a making a cohesive experience out of a lovely plot and some goofs in the camera work. The absolute stand-out of this film is the costume design by James Acheson (Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Raimi's Spider-man trilogy, Man of Steel). It's downright infuriating that his vampire designs weren't used for an actual vampire film. His designs are dense with textures and details. It's wonderful. (Heinl's cinematography does a lot to sell this, as well.) And then there's the art direction by Nick Palmer, which is excellent, and Jille Azis's work on the set decoration is also great. This movie looks great, and these people did excellent work. Not Recommended unless you need some mindless entertainment for the kids, or if you're a big fan of great costumes and set designs. 27. The House That Screamed 1969 | dir. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador Edgar Wright's 100 Favorite Horror Films #30 Franchescanado posted:SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #4: Inktober  A suspenseful, spooky and disturbing tale about a private school for troubled girls ran by a sadistic headmistress, Mme. Fourneau, and her introverted son Luis. This story could easily go into lecherous and exploitative areas. While there is a lot of insinuations and disturbing implications between many of the characters, this film never fully goes into titillation. Instead, it feels more like The Innocents, as well as some proto-slashers like Alice Sweet Alice, with a foreboding sense of doom mixed with the horrors of human cruelty. The more disturbing moments of this film don't come from a knife-wielding killer or ghosts haunting the halls of the school. It's more like the beginning of Carrie, in that we see young girls embrace tribalism and use their elite standing to torment each other. Mme. Fourneau is more an overt cruel and evil figure than Nurse Ratched, but she is assisted by the beautiful but cold and terrifying Irene (Mary Maude), her selfish and sadistic protege, who spends her free time trying to mentally break her peers. There's a lot I'm leaving unsaid with this film. It does a lot to make the viewer second guess what's happening, and the central mystery has a gleefully macabre twist ending. Fans of period pieces, check this out. The sets and costumes evoke a dusty 19th century France, and it's awesome. Highly Recommended. Honestly, one of my favorites from this challenge Movies Watched: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom | Annihilation | Evil Bong 2 | Overlord | Dead of Night | The Ruins | Under Wraps | Attack The Block | Don't Go In The Woods | Body Snatchers | Island of Lost Souls | Village of the Damned (1960) | Wrinkles the Clown | The Dead Zone | The Fog | One Cut of the Dead | Ma | The Devil Rides Out | Halloweentown | 3 From Hell | The Neon Slime Mixtape | Frenzy | Bride of Frankenstein | Halloween | The Skin I Live In | The Little Vampire | The House That Screamed | Hell Night | Hocus Pocus | The Lighthouse Rewatches: 9 Total: 30 Edgar Wright's 100 Favorite Horror: 7/20 Super Samhain Challenge: 1 I have three other movies to review, as my numbers reflect.
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Oct 28, 2019 15:09
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Knocked out some challenges over the weekend, gonna finish up the rest today and tomorrow... SAMHAIN CHALLENGE: HACKERS   The Lawnmower Man Glad to have finally tracked this one down. For whatever reason I never saw this as a kid, but Virtuosity came out a few years later and so this combination of over the top sci-fi concepts with Rated-R violence was something I sought out whenver I could. Being at least inspired by Stephen King(you can barely call this an adaptation), The Lawnmower Man definitely leans more into the horror than the action, although watching it today the ridiculousness of the premise does take away some of the punch it had when I used to walk by it at the video store. Kudos to Dean Norris for playing a villain in such an over the top style, because it might not have on-set with other actors but because the character only appears on a t.v. screen, the stylized performance becomes an asset to an otherwise fairly boring cast. Fahey is fine, he gets a lot of praise for the dual performance but I didn't think he was all that great. The fun is in the premise itself and watching the various ways they played around with it and just gave the middle finger to anything resembling normal logic. SAMHAIN CHALLENGE: NAVEL GAZING  The Mutilator(recommended by MacheteZombie) At first glance this appeared to be a pretty generic slasher, which is why I'd never set aside the time to watch it before now. Actually though, The Mutilator is one of the more bizarre 80's slashers I've seen. The original title of the movie is "Fall Break", and sure enough, the version on Amazon has "Fall Break" as the title in the credits. You might ask why it matters that a slasher had an alternate title, surely that happens all the time? Well, this one goes a bit farther than that because there's a sitcom-esque main title song that was recorded for the movie(I think?) and combined with the weird artificial acting it really creates this feeling that you're watching a hyper violent and gory Perfect Strangers or something like that. And the movie is gory as hell. Everything about the production is amateurish, except for the gore. It's really a gore showcase in that way, you can tell that like 90% of the budget was used there. Throw in a doozy of an ending and yea, I can see why someone would want to throw this out as a wildcard suggestion. SAMHAIN CHALLENGE: TOURIST TRAP  Pizza I've seen a bunch of Tamil films, but never anything in the horror genre. Pizza turned out to be a lot more clever than I initially expected it would be. The first half is fairly predictable and by the numbers, and at that point I was thinking it was a pretty derivative film without a lot of creativity. But by the end my criticisms had been addressed and looking back on the movie I can say that those early criticisms were exactly what they were going for. So the set-up was perfect for the reveal that they wanted to deliver later on. Well played. If you're looking for a horror movie that actually features pizza heavily though, this isn't it. The main character delivers pizza but that's where the connection to pizza begins and ends. Watched: 1. Child's Play(1988) 2. Child's Play(2019) 3. VHS: Viral 4. Tales From the Crypt 5. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #1)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 16. Midsommar 17. Candyman 18. Hellraiser 19. An American Werewolf in London 20. Bad Moon 21. Prince of Darkness 22. The Fog 23. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #2)House of 1000 Corpses 24. The Devil's Rejects 25. 3 From Hell 26. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #4)Crawl 27. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE# 3) Ganja & Hess 28. Aenigma 29. City of the Living Dead 30. Halloween 31. Halloween II 32. Halloween III 33. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers 34. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers 35. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #6)Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers(Producer's Cut) 36. Halloween: H2O 37. Halloween: Resurrection 38. Halloween(2007) 39. Halloween II(2009) 40. SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #8 Santa's Slay 41. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #9)The Lawnmower Man 42. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #10)The Mutilator 43. (SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #5) Pizza
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Oct 28, 2019 15:18
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I have 10(!) movies from this weekend, so I'm breaking the writeups up by day. This was for my Friday Night Frights #4 with friends. 36. Phantom Of The Paradise (1974) - New To Me #18  This was awesome. A mashup of Phantom Of The Opera and Faust in a bonkers 70s hard rock extravaganza. This is easily the most unusual and fun new movie to me this year. Everything has that slight cheese patina that musicals and rock operas thrive on. The story is engaging, the sets are great, the characters on point. 37. The Ritual (2017) - Rewatch #11  A rewatch, I love the pacing of this movie, the increasing dread, the encounter with the cultists, all leading up to that creature design reveal. Such an awesome design. NA. One Cut Of The Dead (2017) Had already seen this earlier this month, can’t count it! A friend in/adjacent to the industry in this film hadn’t seen this yet, so that needed to be rectified. Still good, 4 watches in. 38. As Above So Below (2014) - Rewatch #12  Another rewatch, this holds up. This was *late* so I didn’t pay as close attention as I would have liked to, but it still holds that panicked dungeon delve feel on a second viewing, so aces!
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Oct 28, 2019 16:22
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13. Midsommar What can I say about this? It was two and a half hours, but was terrifying the whole way through. It's always disturbing when horror movies have "realistic" gory deaths. They make even the regular gore-fest movies look sanitized by comparison, but they're never just for show - they're used to great effect. 14. Haunt Six teens go into a haunted house and find out the dangers are real. Just an average movie with some jump scares and frightening moments. The variety of workers was kind of neat in that they were different levels of messed up, from the one ghost guy who seemed hesitant and played with their minds, to the guy who realized he was in way over his head, to the devil man, etc. but mostly they were just insane maniacs. 15. Trilogy of Terror I can't believe I've never seen this before, but everyone is familiar with the third segment because it's been parodied so many times.
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Oct 28, 2019 16:40
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24. Hausu A wonderful film well worth a re-watch, especially with the scream stream.  25. Train to Busan  A well shot zombie movie with a good story, likeable and logical characters and a whole lotta heart. Glad I chose to tune into the stream for this one, even though I've already seen it previously. 26. Lake of the Dead  An interesting movie, conceptually, that was probably a lot scarier in the 1950s. Bunch of folks in a cabin trying to figure out who or what is killing people, turns out it is psychic incest brain waves being put off by a crazy man who wants his hot sister. Which is certainly not what I was expecting. 27. Black and Blue  Not a horror movie, but a thriller. Black and Blue tells the story of a rookie police officer who has just returned home to New Orleans when her bodycam catches a narcotics detective murdering young kids to cover up his own criminal activities. What follows is a tense hour and fifty minutes of her being hunted by the local cops and learning the hard way that the honorary "whiteness" that comes with a badge can be revoked for stepping out of line. Sadly the movie stops short of saying that all cops are bad and instead puts forth the argument that there are good cops and the system can be reformed. This muddies the message of the film, the first hour is about the corruption of the whole system, the last 15 argues that some or most cops are good and then Sound of da Police plays over the credits. Makes me wonder if there was some (or a lot) of meddling because the studio was afraid of criticism from blue-line-punisher-skull-bumper-sticker psychopaths. Go ahead and watch the movie, it's in theaters right now, but once the black male lead (Tyrese Gibson) takes the bodycam and heads for the police station you might as well leave, because the rest is the film wanting to have it both ways. quote:1. The Shining [5/5 Spooks]
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Oct 28, 2019 17:13
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 40 Ernest Scared Stupid (1991) [Missouri] This was the perfect Sunday morning horror movie, light and goofy but not without bite.  41 Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan (2013) [Minnesota] Four first-offender teens go on a bootcamp in the woods where they incite the wrath of a giant lumberjack. The plot is very by-the-numbers and the acting is mediocre at best but the giant monster action is pretty decent with a couple of good kills. To its credit, the movie doesn´t hold back on actually showing Paul Bunyan and the effects are a mix of costume/makeup which looks ok, and CGI which looks godawful. All in all, it was better than I expected for a movie that doesn´t even have a Wikipedia page.  42 Silent Hill (2006) Super Samhain Challenge #9 Hackers [West Viginia] I’ve never played any of the games but I figure it’s a pretty faithful adaptation since this feels like one of the most videogame-y movies there is, mainly being a succession of set pieces and different monsters. I did like how it focused on creating a creepy atmosphere rather than relying on jumpscares. and there is some really cool, unique and disturbing imagery. However, in the second half the movie gets bogged down with overcomplicated background flashbacks and a focus on a human antagonist, when I was hoping for more crazy hell world action.  43 The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) Super Samhain Challenge #1 The Best Month [Virginia] This was great, the slow buildup of strange findings during the autopsy in the first half really set the tone. After the poo poo hits the fan it gets legit creepy while keeping you guessing what is actually going on along with the characters, and the finale round everything up in a very satisfying way. Shame Emile Hirsch is such an rear end in a top hat, because he and Brian Cox are great here as father and son.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:15
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Allright, heading into challenge cleanup mode... 32) Mystics in Bali (1981) - watched on YouTube Trailer SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #5: Tourist Trap - Watch a horror film you've never seen before that was made by / filmed in a country you've never watched a movie from.A young American girl with a penchant for the occult travels to Indonesia to learn the black magic of Leák from a master witch. The witch has other plans and wants the girl to do her bidding, and turns her into a...well, just check out the picture above, it's one of the most, uh, unique monsters you'll ever see in a movie. The American's local boyfriend and his priest father mobilize and to try and save her from the witch, whose black magic power is growing. I regretted missing this on the Scream Stream earlier this month so I wanted to catch it. This is some delightfully wild low-budget stuff based on Indonesian folklore of the leyak (or penanggalan, I guess, depending on where you're from). For all of the ridiculous stuff happening, it's kind of charming how earnest the whole thing is. The dub is overwrought and filled with lots of expository info with plenty of emphasis on the lore, spells, rituals and mantras involved in Leák and fighting against it. The low-budget effects are also not bad (some neat transformation FX), the worst offender is the chromakeyed flying head and guts. There's a great cheesy battle with animated spells at the end. There's also a ton of laughter! The evil witch loves to laugh! Hahahaha! Everytime she talks all I can hear is the MST3K crew making jokes. This was a real treat to watch.  32) Assignment Terror (1970) - watched on Youtube Trailer SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #7: Monster Mash-up - Watch a horror film that you haven't seen that features two different monstersCheck out this high-concept plot premise: aliens from a dying world who seek to forcibly colonize Earth resurrect two dead scientists (the main one is Michael Rennie, in his last film role) who, in turn, resurrect barely-avoiding-copyright versions (they have different names, it's totally legit) of classic Universal movie monsters so the aliens can exploit the "superstitions prevalent among the Earth creatures." The aliens are going to figure out how the monsters tick and mass-produce them to take over the world! They're also going to brainwash beautiful women to seduce men in power! But a plucky local dectective is onto the whole plan, and of all the monsters, the wolfman (here named Count Waldemar Daninsky) falls in love with one of the aliens' brainwashed assistants and has a change of heart... If any of that sounds interesting, do yourself a favor and check out the Wikipedia article on this flick. It's a Spanish-German-Italian horror film (released with no less than four titles!) that is the third in a series of **12** movies about the werewolf character, who's also played by the director! It's ambitious as hell and they had nowhere near the budget to pull it off, plus the copy of it I watched on YouTube was probably not the best - a lot of this movie is so, so dark and it's hard to see what's going on much of the time. So what do you find in a film like this? A jazz soundtrack! Go-go dancers! Open heart surgery on the werewolf to remove a silver bullet! Late '60s female agency! - all the women, including the alien one, are attacked/killed/hypnotized by/fall in love with the various monsters, and that when they're not seducing the other men in the cast or being tortured by Michael Rennie. Oh, and Rennie is a peeping tom, watching the women under his control romancing the other men and monsters! The monsters are barely in this, and their makeup is just okay. The mummy is controlled by a mirror and Rennie uses the Frankenstein's monster analog as a hitman. It's a terrible mess, but if you're like me and will watch terrible poo poo just to see what they actually do with it, it might be worth it for the curious.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:47
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Basebf555 posted:The original title of the movie is "Fall Break", and sure enough, the version on Amazon has "Fall Break" as the title in the credits. You might ask why it matters that a slasher had an alternate title, surely that happens all the time? Well, this one goes a bit farther than that because there's a sitcom-esque main title song that was recorded for the movie(I think?) and combined with the weird artificial acting it really creates this feeling that you're watching a hyper violent and gory Perfect Strangers or something like that. The song was definitely written for the movie. I live fairly close to where The Mutilator was filmed, and one of the theaters did a screening that included a Q&A with the director and several actors. In addition to the regular 8 x 10 photos for the signing part, they were selling 7" Fall Break records.
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Oct 28, 2019 18:04
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