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  - (77). Shudder’s Cursed Films: Episode 5: Twilight Zone: The Movie (2020)/Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) Directed by John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller, written by Landis, George Clayton Johnson, Jerome Bixby, and Richard Matheson. Watched on Cinemax. Steven Spielberg and John Landis team up to adapt episodes of the classic Rod Sterling series to the big screen along with Joe Dante and George Miller. And a terrible tragedy brought about by reckless disregard on Landis’ set is examined in detail by Shudder. I saw this movie a loooooooong time ago but have spotty memories of it at best that are all mixed up with the series and other 80s anthologies. I had NO idea about the helicopter crash, something a poster gave me poo poo about when i said I didn’t know what the curse on this one was. I just never got tuned into this movie at all and its kind of shocking to hear the story completely clean. Shudder did a great job setting up how dangerous it was, bringing in a bunch of pros to hammer home how dangerous stunt work is and why you have to be responsible, and taking John Landis to task for being so reckless and unconcerned about the safety of the people in his charge. And holy loving poo poo, the footage. DO NOT WATCH THIS CURSED FILMS EPISODE UNPREPARED. Seeing that absolutely destroyed me. The Cursed Film series was a little up and down. The Omen and Exorcist episodes were fine but a little too sensationalist and made awkward choices giving “exorcists” and “witches” TV time. The Crow and Poltergeist episodes are much better examinations of the tragic deaths connected to the films, the mythology that has risen around them, and the sobering reality of how its not some fun conspiracy but just terrible human tragedy. But the Twilight Zone episodes is just a brilliant constructed examination and takedown of arrogance, recklessness, and disregard that cost human lives. It had me drat in tears by the end and left me having a hard time breathing. I had to take an extended break as there was no way I could watch this episode and then move into watching anything, let alone this film and the Landis/Morrow scene. I honestly debated abandoning watching it all together or delaying it to another day. I considered watching another film first but like… it all felt too much. I actually sought out cartoons, took a walk around the block, and made something to eat. Once I got ok with it and watched it all came rushing back to me. All the segments memorable for one way or another with the Landis/Morrow one being the least. I wonder if I ever saw any versions that cut that? Even if not for the death controversy, the racism and slurs and violence. It doesn’t seem like that would air on WPIX as I was growing up without a ton of cutting so I imagine I might have just never seen it or seen it in parts. Now watching it I was relieved to see the helicopter scene nowhere to be found and Morrow does a good job with the piece, but its obviously troubling given what happened and feels naturally unfinished. Now Dante’s god powered kid is a segment and episode I remember fondly. The original episode is of course a classic and one of the most popular episodes of the series, but Dante brings a really insane zaniness to it that really fits. The demonic bunny and bizarre goblin the kid conjures up feel exactly like the sort of cartoonish nightmares a kid with the powers of a god thrown a furious temper tantrum would dream up. Just completely batshit bonkers. I’m also a big fan of the Spielberg/Scatman Jones segment. It just has a lot of heart and is very sweet, although obviously very far away from horror. And then of course there’s the Lithgow/gremlin scene. I think I probably think of this version more than the Shatner one and I love the gremlin and Lithgow’s insane performance. Truthfully, I’ve never been a fan of Shatner. All in all an enjoyable anthology despite the tragedy and shadow over it. The other 3 segments are all just ones that are so ingrained in my childhood memory that I didn’t even remember where they came from. They were just always there.  60 (78). The Crow: City of Angels (1996) Directed by Tim Pope, Screenplay by David S. Goyer, Based on The Crow by James O'Barr. Watched on Cinemax, also available on hoopla. The Crow returns to Los Angeles when Ashe Corven is risen from the red to take revenge on the gag that murdered him and his son. This was certainly a David S. Goyer film. Its weird, even though he’s just the writer and I don’t think ever the director it seems like his films always have the same pulpy, over stylized vibe to them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t… this doesn’t. Maybe having a music video director at the helm doesn’t help as Goyer’s 50/50 record does seem to often be tied to who takes wheel when he’s done writing. But this movie feels weird. Like half video game, half comic book. And I mean… the original had a comic book vibe too but it worked and really kind of set the tone for similar pulpy movies for a decade or more to follow. This feels cheap and odd. I really wasn’t feeling Vincent Perez at all. I appreciate Lee’s performance more after watching Perez really stumble to mimic it and the flip between deranged killer and grief stricken victim. Mia Kirshner’s Sarah is weird too. Where does she get her wardrobe? And I don’t know how to process her being mega thirsty for the weird zombie doppelgänger of her surrogate dad/older brother. When she first shows up with the Crow mask and the wings on her back I was kind of hoping she’d end up as the Crow somehow. It seems like that was an idea originally tossed around and i think the movie would have been a lot better for it. Perez just feels way too much like a second rate knock off and whether or not a female Crow (Sarah or otherwise, Kirshner or whoever) would have worked it would have at least presumably been different. Pope and Goyer apparently “disavowed” the film because they wanted it to be different from the original and they say the studio re-edited it to make it look similar. But like… I’m not sure what they were making if they weren’t making a knockoff. Its not like they could re-edit a different performance for Perez or another silly stylized gang. Or like another blonde street kid that this Crow and Sarah actually seems vaguely creepy with because there’s no established family bond? Or another church climax where the villain tries to capture the crow to steal the Crow’s magic? I don’t know. I’d almost be curious to see a director’s cut just to see if there’s another film in there but I don’t see it. And honestly killing Sarah off so she can go rest with her weird zombie crush/pseudo older brother doppelgänger she’s known for like 2 days felt really lovely and lame. Like, I wasn’t really invested in this movie or character but I was invested enough in the original that that kind of annoyed me and felt very unearned. Thomas Jane was in this for the Before They Were Famous game, but to be honest I missed him entirely. He played some guy named “Nemo”? I guess that was one of the villains? I actually went back to check and like… I couldn’t find him. There’s that bounty hunter dude from Firefly, Iggy Pop, the Yellow Power Ranger, Mateo from Anaconda, and another guy so I guess he’s the other guy but I didn’t see. And honestly I couldn’t tell him and Mateo apart. I dunno. So yeah, not good. Sadly if I’m gonna get through these before my free week of Cinemax is up I’m gonna have to do one a day. But at least there’s only two more. Wait, was that the Deftones?
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Apr 20, 2020 22:14
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 21. The Hunt (2020)  The first third of this is really lousy. We meet a bunch of characters who immediately get killed off in gruesome ways that mostly involve bad CGI blood, and it's filled with dumb jokes that are meant to make fun of liberal/conservative stereotypes but just come across as super lame. It doesn't have anything interesting to say and it's politics basically boil down to "have you considered that maybe liberals and conservatives are BOTH bad!?". Once it finally settles on Betty Gilpin as the main character, it improves quite a bit. It still has the same bad sense of humor and milquetoast political commentary, but she is so fun to watch that those things bothered me less. She definitely seemed to be having fun with the role. Towards the end, there is an extended fight scene that I actually really liked, both because of Gilpin being a badass but also because it was just well done in general. I'm giving this 3 stars even though parts of it are awful, just because it does get pretty entertaining by the end and I think it's worth checking out for Gilpin's super hammy performance. The film constantly threatens to undermine itself with really bad political commentary, but if you can just kind of roll your eyes at that then there is some fun to be had here. also this would've been a lot better if Betty Gilpin was revealed to be a radical leftist instead of just apolitical and it ended with her guillotining everyone and then helping the flight attendant organize a union 3 grilled cheese sandwiches out of 5 Watched: 21 - Horse Girl | Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II | Resident Evil: Extinction | Resident Evil: Afterlife | Phantasm II | Swallow | Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead | The Stendhal Syndrome | Deathgasm | Saturday the 14th | Human Lanterns | The Wailing | Beyond the Darkness | Xtro | Tremors | The Invitation | Tremors 2: Aftershocks | The Seventh Curse | When Animals Dream | Stuck | The Hunt
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Apr 21, 2020 01:24
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gey muckle mowser posted:
I gotta say CGI blood in 2020 is a pretty hard pass, when your average just-above-scifi tier no-budget horror movie can manage good blood
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Apr 21, 2020 01:37
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 106) Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies - 2017 - TubiTV With that title, I had hopes for this one. It's fine on average, but it could've been so much better. Story's snowboarders are trapped in the Alps by zombies. The first half hour or so felt like it was taking longer to get things rolling. The effects were pretty good, and I did chuckle at the zombified deer. Parts that threw me off were the first zombie clearly looking not right, yet people at the bar are chatting him up and dancing with him like he's fine until he's gnawing on them. Another thing was some of the kills came across as kinda mean, like one of the heroes breaks into where some guy's hiding and leaves him to die. If I have to choose between watching this again or Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse again, I'm going with Scout's.  107) The Possession Diaries - 2019 - TubiTV The premise for this is intriguing. Person screws around with a ouija board, gets possessed, blogs about the how it's progressing, and the internet reacts as the internet would with this sort of thing. With how minimalist that sort of a concept is, one would think this would've been a good film bringing a new spin to the possession subgenre. It dropped the ball on that one with a lousy script. It's painfully obvious that the actors are hampered with what they've been given to work with. Pacing feels draggy. I'm fine with slow burn films, but at points the story's not even moving slow but just kinda standing there. If this was remade with someone with more skill rewriting the script, this could be pretty good. But as it stands now, skip this.  108) Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan - 2013 - TubiTV With a title like that, I went in expecting something nice and cheesy, and I was not disappointed. Premise is Paul Bunyan is real and desecrating the remains of Babe the Blue Ox will piss him off. Even accepting the cheesiness, there is some janky moments such as the usual flaw of inconsistency when depicting a giant. The practical effects are good, but the CGI is eyetwitchingly bad. Despite that, overall I enjoyed this one. Pretty much, if you enjoy cheesy horror, you'll want to give this one a watch. https://i.imgur.com/zfYxJNx.jpg (Linked for possible bare breasts) 109) Teenage Slumber Party Nightmare - 2014 - TubiTv This was definitely intended to be an homage to Slumber Party Massacre, it's just not particularly a good one. The director does a great job on getting the tone and feel right, but drops the ball on some of the dialog and pacing. With how long was spent on the teenagers chatting, I felt the urge to skip ahead to the good stuff like I haven't since I was much younger and had a twitchy finger on the fast forward button. So, while I can't particularly recommend this film, I'll be keeping an eye on what the director does next. The potential's there.  110) Axecalibur - 2017 - TubiTV The clash of title expectation and the movie proper was enough I started googling while watching. The original title is Legend of the Mad Axeman. This just didn't click with me. It felt draggy in the middle. I probably would've skipped this one in the first place if it had it's original title.
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Apr 21, 2020 02:34
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I gotta say CGI blood in 2020 is a pretty hard pass, when your average just-above-scifi tier no-budget horror movie can manage good blood to be fair there are some totally fine practical blood/gore effects in it too, but the times when it’s CGI really stand out.
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Apr 21, 2020 02:40
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82. Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018, Prime) - It's been on my watchlist for a while, and it surprised me when I saw it appear on Prime. Now I regret looking forward to it. The setup is brief and rote, and the "cursed film" itself is just dull. 1/5 83. Colour from the Dark (2008, Prime) - Based on Lovecraft's Colour out of Space. I didn't notice that this was a 2008 film and went into it with the belief that it was going to be an Asylum-tier ripoff of the Stanley film. Shot in Italy in English, they move the setting to Fascist Italy and it mostly works. There are some low-budget hiccups, but not nearly as many as would be expected. 3/5 84. Pet Graveyard (2019, Prime) - Then I watched this flagrant ripoff of... Flatliners? It's called "brinking" here, but the principle is the same - be dead for a bit until someone revives you. This is more supernaturally focused, with demons on the other side trying to keep people there. Somehow a unique ripoff movie, and decently put together. 4/5 85. Itsy Bitsy (2019, Prime) - A family is haunted by an evil spirit that takes the form of a moderately large spider and... they argue with each other a lot. The cinematography is great, but the film's just boring. 2/5 86. The Body Tree (2016, Prime) - The Thing as a murder mystery. There's some paranormal elements, but it would have worked better if they had played it straight. 3/5 87. The Happy House (2013, Prime) - Horror comedy that isn't either. A bunch of victims gather at a bed & breakfast in the mountains and a bunch of horror tropes happen. "What's the deal with airline food?" in horror movie form. 1/5
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Apr 21, 2020 03:45
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35. Creepshow 2 (1987) Absolutely not up to the same bar that Creepshow set, but there's still some fun to be had here. I'm a sucker for horror masking as morality play, and this anthology had it in spades. Don't steal the, erm, native american jewelry. Don't swim in the, erm, dirty lake. Don't, uh, run over people on the side of the road. Okay so I guess it's less "morality" and just "common sense". Either way, it's just rewarding to see jerks get their comeuppance. I had fun with this. I've definitely seen worse anthologies. Watched so far: 1. Zombie (1979) / 2. Frankenstein (1931) / 3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) / 4. Basket Case (1982) / 5. Carrie (1976) / 6. Audition (1999) / 7. Creepshow (1982) / 8. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) / 9. Daniel Isn't Real (2020) / 10. Popcorn (1991) / 11. Matango (1963) / 12. Raw (2016) / 13. Men Behind The Sun (1988) / 14. Freaks (1932) / 15. Island of Lost Souls (1932) / 16. Hagazussa (2017) / 17. Guinea Pig 4: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988) / 18. The Mummy (1932) / 19. The Old Dark House (1932) / 20. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) / 21. American Mary (2012) / 22. The Invisible Man (1933) / 23. The New York Ripper (1982) / 24. The Head Hunter (2018) / 25. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) / 26. The Wailing (2016) / 27. Dude Bro Party Massacre III / 28. The Hunt / 29. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) / 30. Friday the 13th (2009) / 31. Amer (2009) / 32. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) / 33. A Bucket of Blood (1959) / 34. Demons (1985) / 35. Creepshow 2 (1987)
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Apr 21, 2020 04:25
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11. Idi i Smotri (Come and See) (1985) 2020/04/20 happy birthday hitler  This is a movie about the apocalypse, which happens to be set in occupied Belarus in 1943. A boy, Fliora, attempts to join the local partisans, and the world ends. It's a sad, angry, haunting movie.The noise is relentless: distant engines, tinny Mozart, even the birdsong is made to feel overwhelming. Scenes, even single shots, just go on and on, as the characters struggle through mud, thick grass, tightly-packed crowds; the movie refuses to give you any relief from the moment. The characters are stuck, and so are you. When the mood isn't claustrophobic, it's the opposite, as the characters are pinned on open ground, running from gunfire (or just the thought of it) when the nearest trees are two hundred yards away. There are times when the characters are cheerful, laughing and clowning around, but the movie doesn't play along, doesn't take any joy in their fun, which makes them come off as a little deranged.   The Germans are absent for the first 90 minutes (of 140). You see a plane, stationary and ominous like a comet. A forest is torn apart by explosions, but you never see the bombs. Spectral figures stroll through the haze. Gunfire comes from a nearby hill. The partisans hide at the sound of engines; it passes, and you're never sure what direction it came from. Most of the film is taken up by Fliora and the other partisans scrounging for food. They try to raid a warehouse, but it's too well-defended, so they instead go rob a local collaborator, but the cow they take is killed on the journey back. After all these failures, Fliora winds up in a local village, and finally the Germans enter the film properly, rounding up and slaughtering the inhabitants. They leave Fliora alive, on a whim, and wander off on foot, drunk, carrying loot and torches like an ancient warband. It's the second massacre of the film, but the first one happens off-camera. This scene goes on forever. It's loud, chaotic, introducing new characters and discarding them constantly. It's viscerally unpleasant to watch.  The movie's characters are pretty thin. Fliora doesn't feel like a person; he feels like a stand-in for Innocence. I wouldn't call this a failure. Come and See doesn't want you to identify with any character. It wants you to pity them in the face of otherworldly horror. It works.
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Apr 21, 2020 04:51
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 61 (79). Predator 2 (1990) Directed by Stephen Hopkins, Written by Jim and John Thomas. Watched on DVD. A member of the Predator alien species is in Los Angeles - a cartoonish post apocalyptic facsimile of LA - just hunting people like his species does leading a trail of murder This is such a weird movie, but not in like normal horror weird way but in this bizarre city at war, cars burning in fire fights, voodoo witch doctor crime bosses, everyone on a subway care carrying a gun, the Predator getting struck by lightning just for the lols, Gary Busey having some sci-fi federal bunker, way. I can’t imagine why Arnold passed. I get why they’d want to do something different from the jungle, and I get why you’d pick an urban environment, and I guess I get why you’d feel the need to ampul the violence and insanity in an urban environment to somehow reach the same levels as a group of mercenary special troopers tearing up the jungle. But what you end up with is weird. And features Morton Downey, Jr. to a non insignificant degree. I gotta say, I think this predator is kind of a bully and wuss. Like the other one wasn’t exactly playing fair but at least he picked a squadron of special force dudes armed to the teeth in a rough terrain and made a sport of it. He even stripped his weaponry to give Arnold a fair fight. This guy’s just slashing up gangs when they’re in the middle of another fight and gets taken down by a middle aged cop with a shotgun. It seems kind of embarrassing, really. I don’t know predator social life and customs but this feels like some weak poo poo. Also why is the the prize for besting a predator an old timey rifle and not some cool space thingie? Do the predator species have some warped “prime directive” not to give anyone advanced tech after they slaughter dozens of their species? And if like they’re such a proud warrior species that they don’t kill unarmed non-threats and pass on killing fetuses and honor and reward other species who defeat them then why were they picking on such easy targets as dudes on horsebacks with single shot guns? And why didn’t Arnold get one? This is a really confusing society and custom norms to get a handle on. Its not the worst action film ever. It feels kind of barely like a horror if I squint a little. Its not all bad. Glover is Glover. Bill Paxton puts in one of his typically absurd performances. It was mildly fun to watch the predator patch himself up? Seeing a xenomorph skull probably would have been really cool 30 years ago before the franchises just straight up crossed over. But I can kind of understand why another sequel didn’t happen for 14-20 years.  62 (80). The Bay (2012) Directed by Barry Levinson and written by Michael Wallach. Watched on Cinemax, also available on Tribeca. A journalistic website pieces together a report about some kind of outbreak in the Chesapeake Bay 3 years earlier that took the lives of hundreds of people and which the government covered up the true explanation for. I wasn’t really a fan of this, although I didn’t hate it or anything. I feel like it was a fine idea with a lot of good elements but the narrative structure chosen fails it. It gets confused between “documentary” and “horror”. The in movie makers coe off heavy handed and amateurish, and sure “amateur” is always a bit of a staple of found footage but here its less in the filming of the footage as it is in the editing of it. The message of environmental danger and corporate pollution and political coverup or incompetence are all well and good messages I largely agree with but they’re less themes of a horror film as the driving forces with a horror film as a convenient excuse. The fact that Levinson started making a documentary and then shifted to a horror film that is “80% factual information” seems to just mirror that. I also think it makes the message very ineffective. Even if I buy that 80% the 20% is so not true that it undermines the message. Again, I agree about the issues in it but like I’m not taking it more seriously because you concocted a fake story of flesh eating bugs to prove your point. Its clumsy and far too heavy handed. Putting that aside I think the narrator character is just a really bad part. Again, its the intentional go for amateurish thing that is common in a lot of found footage but I don’t think she added anything at all to the movie and her awkward reactions and handling of everything just distracted me. I think there’s a good movie in here and if it had been structured more linearly, and more traditionally I think it could have worked. Like just following the reporter as she lives through this and discovers details of the bigger story would have kept the drama up and helped us connect more. But I never felt like I was watching a narrative, I was watching a clumsy news piece from a not very good source. Was this the finished product with the awkward narrations and aside comments? Why would they include that stuff? The story doesn’t totally hold up for me either. Like, shouldn’t people have been sick and dying before July 4th? I don’t feel like the movie every fully explained why the town went from 0 to 11 that day. Sure, the Crab Fest thing and holiday events would accelerate exposure and cause the poo poo to hit the fan but like, people probably should have been getting sick before then. They did kind of hand wave that with the marine biologists explaining things rolling in and I might be nitpicking it. But the specificity of the start and stop of this felt implausible to me. Like even if the bug just arrived in town that day shouldn’t other communities have been affected before or after? I don’t know, I’m not really a weather and tide savvy person, it just all felt very convenient for the story. I really didn’t dislike it as much as it seems like I did, I just didn’t really like it either and i think those narrative structure flaws and my inability to engage with the lack of any protagonists really just hampered the entire viewing process for me. The handwaveyness of “we acquired all the footage recorded by anyone by any means on this subject via Wikileaks” also kind of stretched my limitations. Ultimately there's a number of fine parts, I just could never get fully into the whole.
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Apr 21, 2020 09:55
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STAC Goat posted:
Predator 2 pretty well typifies the kind of movie Last Action Hero was making fun of. It's way down the list as far as the best of those movies goes and pretty late to the party. Escape from New York was 1981, Robocop and Lethal Weapon (the latter entirely the reason Danny Glover is in this movie) were 1987. The humor is this really dumb juvenile poo poo for 13-year olds, years after Commando made that "cool." You can pretty much hear the pitch meeting for this movie in your head. Predators is way, way better and one of only two non-dogshit predator movies.
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Apr 21, 2020 11:45
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The thing you have to remember about Predator 2 is that it's set in the future. It was made in 1990 but set in 1997. So it's hot because of global warming. And the 80s were at the peak of a big crime wave that went down in the 90s, but plenty of people didn't see that coming. So it's a world where the crime wave kept waving instead of going down, combined with global warming. The madness of the Reagan era just escalated. Sodomy Hussein posted:Predator 2 pretty well typifies the kind of movie Last Action Hero was making fun of. It's way down the list as far as the best of those movies goes and pretty late to the party. Escape from New York was 1981, Robocop and Lethal Weapon (the latter entirely the reason Danny Glover is in this movie) were 1987. The humor is this really dumb juvenile poo poo for 13-year olds, years after Commando made that "cool." You can pretty much hear the pitch meeting for this movie in your head. Predators was terrible. It was just predator, again, but without entertaining characters and performances and humor.
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Apr 21, 2020 11:56
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I liked Predators when I saw it. Granted I saw it without seeing the original and in hindsight recognize its basically the same movie with new characters. But having seen the alternative with Predator 2 I'm ok with that. Because maybe 1 good idea is all they had. We'll see when I rewatch it. But they gotta fight some xenomorphs first. "Humor" didn't really strike me as terribly present in the original either aside from Jesse Ventura dropping a slur for a joke. Which honestly distasted me enough to leave a mark and just be happy he died quick and I didn't have to root for him, especially when I saw it was like a hugely popular meme all over. It was much more satisfying to root for Bill Duke, which felt weird since I don't think I'd ever see him play someone who wasn't a total sleaze. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Apr 21, 2020 |
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Apr 21, 2020 12:33
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36. All the Colors of Giallo (2019) This was a fairly competent and well made documentary on Giallo films. It struct a decent balance between talking about the history of the genre itself, talking about important movies in the genre, and then hearing directors recount personal stories about each one. It's definitely a little dry, but still has a lot to hold the interest of someone who's already into Gialli. Probably not recommended for people who don't already know about it though. Watched so far: 1. Zombie (1979) / 2. Frankenstein (1931) / 3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) / 4. Basket Case (1982) / 5. Carrie (1976) / 6. Audition (1999) / 7. Creepshow (1982) / 8. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) / 9. Daniel Isn't Real (2020) / 10. Popcorn (1991) / 11. Matango (1963) / 12. Raw (2016) / 13. Men Behind The Sun (1988) / 14. Freaks (1932) / 15. Island of Lost Souls (1932) / 16. Hagazussa (2017) / 17. Guinea Pig 4: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988) / 18. The Mummy (1932) / 19. The Old Dark House (1932) / 20. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) / 21. American Mary (2012) / 22. The Invisible Man (1933) / 23. The New York Ripper (1982) / 24. The Head Hunter (2018) / 25. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) / 26. The Wailing (2016) / 27. Dude Bro Party Massacre III / 28. The Hunt / 29. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) / 30. Friday the 13th (2009) / 31. Amer (2009) / 32. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) / 33. A Bucket of Blood (1959) / 34. Demons (1985) / 35. Creepshow 2 (1987) / 36. All the Colors of Giallo (2019)
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Apr 21, 2020 15:48
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29. Long Weekend (1978) Dir: Colin Eggleston  Between this and watching Wake In Fright for the first time, it's been a good month for me and Australian movies that go hard on exploring abject misery. I don't think this is nearly as great as that film, but still a very solid watch. Be warned that you'll be watching two of the absolute worst people in a film argue with each other and gently caress up the wildlife (no actual animal death, thankfully), so fair warning if that's not your jam. Seeing nature fight back at them in increasingly insidious ways is pretty worth it.
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Apr 21, 2020 16:32
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 #12. Evil Bong (Tubi) A bunch of stoner college students buy a haunted bong that, when smoked, will trap you in an alternate Weed Dimension full of evil strippers. I watched this for  and now I hate myself. I don't care if Kvlt! calls me a poser, this is one of the worst things ever made, and my life is worse off for having watched it. Not funny, not scary, not interesting, not well put-together... but very very lovely. It's that in spades, man.0/5 Watched so far: April Fool's Day (1986), Howl (2015), The Mummy's Tomb, Demonic Toys, The Exorcist III, Victor Frankenstein, Varan the Unbelievable, Critters 2, Warlock, Hellboy: Blood and Iron, Doom: Annihilation, Evil Bong
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Apr 21, 2020 17:01
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Kvlt! isn't reading this thread so he'll never have to know.
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Apr 21, 2020 17:13
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I very nearly watched it yesterday thinking "how bad could it be?" Then someone was kind of enough to post that review video and I changed courses.
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Apr 21, 2020 17:19
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Lets be honest, Kvlt! calls everyone a poser
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Apr 21, 2020 17:31
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STAC Goat posted:I very nearly watched it yesterday thinking "how bad could it be?" Then someone was kind of enough to post that review video and I changed courses. You're welcome. Iron Crowned posted:Lets be honest, Kvlt! calls everyone a poser Not me 
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Apr 21, 2020 17:43
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I was given an official non-poser certificate by Kvlt! so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
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Apr 21, 2020 17:44
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I like Mike Flanagan. My bed is made and I have nothing left to lose.
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Apr 21, 2020 17:45
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I mod CineD and have to probate Kvlt! sometimes so I'm the biggest poser of them all
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Apr 21, 2020 18:00
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37. Human Lanterns (1982) For me, I think this movie suffered from all the hype I heard about it. I was under the impression it was one of the weirdest, most wild wuxia movies ever. It's not, but it is an all around good and fun movie. The "creature" (no spoilers) is a great design and stole the scene every time he was on screen, and the overall conceit of the film would go perfectly with some sort of Ed Gein or Silence of the Lambs viewing. 3/5 Watched so far: 1. Zombie (1979) / 2. Frankenstein (1931) / 3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) / 4. Basket Case (1982) / 5. Carrie (1976) / 6. Audition (1999) / 7. Creepshow (1982) / 8. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) / 9. Daniel Isn't Real (2020) / 10. Popcorn (1991) / 11. Matango (1963) / 12. Raw (2016) / 13. Men Behind The Sun (1988) / 14. Freaks (1932) / 15. Island of Lost Souls (1932) / 16. Hagazussa (2017) / 17. Guinea Pig 4: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988) / 18. The Mummy (1932) / 19. The Old Dark House (1932) / 20. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) / 21. American Mary (2012) / 22. The Invisible Man (1933) / 23. The New York Ripper (1982) / 24. The Head Hunter (2018) / 25. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) / 26. The Wailing (2016) / 27. Dude Bro Party Massacre III / 28. The Hunt / 29. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) / 30. Friday the 13th (2009) / 31. Amer (2009) / 32. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) / 33. A Bucket of Blood (1959) / 34. Demons (1985) / 35. Creepshow 2 (1987) / 36. All the Colors of Giallo (2019) / 37. Human Lanterns (1982)
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Apr 21, 2020 18:29
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 - (81). Alien vs. Predator (2004) Written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. Watched on DVD, available on Hulu’s HBO Add On… which is weirdly specific. A team discovers an underground pyramid of extraterrestrial origin and become trapped in the crossfire between one alien species’ right of passage hunting another. Nerd confession. I feel really weird watching this without rewatching all the Alien films, even though I’ve seen them all a bunch of times. It still feels like cheating somehow. I remember seeing this in the theaters and hating it, but I totally did not. I didn’t love it but I thought it was aight. I remember thinking it dragged, but it really didn’t. I thought it moved along kind of briskly. I remember thinking its as way more sci-fi than horror or action and I don’t think it was. Never having seen a Predator film to that point might have shifted my perception not to mention the super sci-finest of Prometheus. All in all I’m way more chill on this than I remember. I was drinking a lot back then. Come to think of it I think I disliked most of the movies I saw in theaters around then. Maybe the booze made me cranky. Or killed my attention span. Or made me had to pee. Who knows? Again, not a great film but a solid action flick with some horror monster elements. The xenomorphs may be aliens but they’re some of the scariest monsters IMO. I remember riding on the Universal Studios ride as a kid and during the Alien portion of it being scared shitless. I can still feel the cold rush of air from a xenomorph “breathing” in me. I think I was a little iffy on whether Predator was horror, especially second film. As I said with the original once I considered it i realized it was just the formula of any slasher/monster horror just tweaked. I guess I just see Predator more as a slasher/film and Alien more as a haunted house/monster film and I prefer the latter over slashers. To that end this feels like more of an Alien film than a Predator to me. Its driven by the face huggers and the xenomorphs and the desperate fight for survival over the more stalker nature of the predators. But it also get their stuff in especially with all the “proud warrior” stuff. Again we see their bizarre alien culture of “we will hunt you, kill you, eat you, and wear your skulls as trophies… but you’re kind of a badass so you’re cool.” But it felt earned for Sanaa Lathan and I just watched Horror: Noire note how unique it was for a black woman to get that role. It definitely feltt more earned than Glover’s lovely colonial rifle. A solid action horror that went down way easier than I expected. That’s a relief because I’m burning through these hard and I’ve been trying to avoid grouping together a franchise in bunches like this so I don’t burn out on them. Adding 3 franchises in the last 10 days probably wasn’t a great idea, but I’m half way through all of them now and Predator is probably doing the best of the bunch for holding my interest.  63 (82). The Crow: Salvation (2000) Directed by Bharat Nalluri, written by Chip Johannessen. Watched on Cinemax. Eric Mabius is unjustly executed for murdering his girlfriend, but he returns from the grave to find the true killers and take revenge. The Crow is an interesting idea for a franchise since by its very nature you gotta recast the character every movie. So you go one of tow ways, you either make The Crow a shared identity running the risk of everyone after the original coming off like a second rate knock off, or you have a whole new character with a new personality and risk losing what drew in your audience in the first place. The 2nd film does the knockoff thing and it sucks. This one does the other thing and it sucks too. But if nothing else this is very much different in every way. Different style, different kind of movie, different character. He even seems to actively reject even the vaguest link in style. No white makeup, no black leather. It can be tough and I respect trying to do something different. But I’m not sure a weird looking dude in a jumper is the answer. This actually has a surprising good supporting cast. Kirsten Dunst, Jody Lyn O’Keefe, William Atherton, Dale Midkiff, Tim Dekay, Walter Goggins, Fred Ward. It even has Miles from Murphy Brown. But the lead guy Eric Mabius is just… not great. Nothing is great, really. No one has a good performance, the movie looks cheap, this feels “DTV” all the way - although it was apparently actually intended for a wide theater release and after it was finished they changed their minds. Which is really sad but also the right call. And why does no one respect the dude just because of some makeup? Like, there’s a poo poo load of context clues, guys. He’s not hiding it. He keeps asking about the case. He’s wearing the clothes he was executed in. It was like 2 days ago. He’s just got some eye shadow and lipstick. This is a weird path to go with this. Its just not a good movie.  64 (83). Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) Written and directed by S. S. Wilson, co-written by Brent Maddock and Nancy Roberts. Watched on Netflix, also available on DirectTV and the Prime Starz channel. In 1889 Hiram Gummer comes to Rejection, Nevada and confronts the same creatures that his great grandson would one day make a living hunting. This is bad. The previous 2 Tremors sequels haven’t been good. Bad CGI, unnecessary rehashes, uninspired stories. But like they’ve managed to hold onto a certain charm by being continuations of each other with the same characters learning and adapting. So like… lets do a Wild West movie that resets everything and focuses entirely on the bad CGI and uninspired plot, and lets make the one carry over character a completely unlikable dick along the way. I’d nitpick the plan for everyone to just tell anyone about the monsters that live under their town for fear it would… you know… convince them to do the rational thing and go somewhere else. But at some point you just have to throw your hands up. I like that Maddock and Wilson are making all of these since it keeps a link and all. I’m even kind of amused that they just keep trading directorial credit. But this kind of feels like “for some reason they’re paying us to just keep making the same movie over and over so lets make a western?” Which I guess I gotta respect on some level. Also they must just really like Michael Gross. I mean, realistically this isn’t any worse technically from 3. Its a perfectly adequate mediocre B monster movie thing you’d watch on TV when you’re bored enough. But there’s absolutely nothing here unless you really like old west stuff. I like it a little but not enough to get anything from this.
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Apr 21, 2020 18:34
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Work got distracting for a while, so I fell off posting, but I haven't fallen off watching movies! 6. Whispering Corridors 5: A Blood Pledge A group of girls sign a blood pact to commit suicide, but only one of them follows through. Now the ghost haunts the school while we slowly learn their secrets. And that ghost haunts so very slowly. The movie seems to hold it as a twist that the fourth girl is in the pact, which is VERY confusing, as she is the ghost and must have been involved or none of the movie makes sense. Don’t worry; it doesn’t anyway. Thus far the Whispering Corridors series is becoming well established as a series with an incredibly slow and drawn out opening, and 20 minutes of haunting/explanation. This is no better. 1/5  7. Whispering Corridors A teacher, frantically pieces together some information, and calls a colleague to tell her: Jin-ju is back! The next morning she is found hanging from the school. What’s the deal with that? Who would have guessed that the first movie in a long series might be pretty good? For once, the slow pace of the series pays off! We follow a young teacher who tries to solve the mystery of the death of her colleague, while also confronting her own traumatic past at the school. Pretty good scares, and absurd but believable twist, and some believable commentary about the terribleness of the Korean school system. A remarkable breath of fresh air after the last three. 4/5  8. Whispering Corridors 2: Memento Mori A young girl gets entranced by reading the diary of two senior students. This whole series has had an undercurrent of “plus, secret lesbians”. Well Memento Mori does away with that whole ‘secret’ thing. This is as overt a lesbian haunt-em-up as there is, and it’s good! Like the first, it deals with issues of friendship, and growing up, and a dysfunctional school system. With the added issues around being gay, and being publicly gay, and comfortable being yourself. Best of the bunch, solid spooks. 4.5/5
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Apr 21, 2020 20:34
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 60. Velvet Buzzsaw A twee, depressing look at the capitalist side of the art world. All the characters here are unlikable, it's shot like some animated stills from an awful douchey lifestyle magazine, and the dialogue is all bougie white noise. Of course that's the point, it's supposed to dismantle these people, but it really isn't insightful enough to achieve that end. Instead we're stuck in a room with awful people, praying that they'll die quickly so we can leave. The horror angle is somewhere between Lovecraft and R.L. Stine. An up and coming art world corporate drone discovers a recently deceased artist's work. The works are all cursed portals to some unexplained dark power, and through them works of art come to life and kill those who profit from them. Some of the murders are kind of cool, but they lean more toward silly than horrific. The biggest sin is that John Malkovich is in this film and they gave him absolutely nothing interesting to do. He just smoulders a bit, hints toward a point in the movie, and is otherwise completely wasted. 3/5  61. Pola X  This film possibly has the coolest opening of any movie ever, as we're treated to shots of a cemetary being bombed from the air. The film follows Pierre, a young author who works under a pseudonym, and appears to have a perfect life. He is in a passionate relationship with a beautiful woman, lives in a palatial chateau, and has close living ties with his family. His dreams are haunted however by a vision of a woman cloaked in darkness, and soon this woman becomes his obsession. He then finds himself down a path where all polite doors close to him, family shuns him, and he discovers that there is an invisible side of society, full of poverty, desperate immigrants, revolutionaries, and unclaimed children.  The film itself is a good example of arthouse french cinema, with lots of big emotions, and epic descents into grim madness. There's also more than a few really cool shots, and strong performances. It's definitely a slow burn, and I didn't really start getting into it until the halfway point. If French arty emotional stuff is your bag, you'll probably enjoy it. 4/5
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Apr 22, 2020 00:08
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#29 Gehenna: Where Death Lives Lance Henriksen appears on screen for maybe thirty seconds. Five people scouting a secluded beach in Saipan as a potential resort location go into a WW2 era Japanese bunker and then spooky stuff happens I didn't know anything about the movie other than the poster, so I was assuming this was gonna be found footage. It turns out i's extremely not. There was a ton of thought put into shot construction, and as a result it's a pretty nice looking movie. But weirdly, it very easily could've been found footage. They're scouting out a location so they have a camera man tasked with filming everything. And he even has a drone. And imo it should've been found footage. That would've worked a lot better with the whole claustrophobic, trapped, starting to see stuff that may or may not be there type situation they get into. If you're gonna make a horror movie where the source of the horror is that the Imperial Japanese army desecrated a Chamorro graveyard, I kinda feel like you should take care to not make your movie racist towards the Chamorro. So Gehenna: Where Death Lives has two Chamorro characters. One is the standard wizened old man with hosed up teeth and blind eyes who wears a scary mask and warns the white people not to go into the scary place but in a scary way. The other is the fat comic relief character who almost instantly gets possessed and starts cutting symbols into himself and becomes a scary monster guy. The only characters who are normal humans through the bulk of the movie are four white people. It's not great, my dudes! The first scary thing that happens is they meet the guy on the poster. And it's good, it's spooky, and it seems to be pointing towards the idea that the thing going on is there was some kinda hosed up experimentation that Return of the Living Dead style keeps the dead alive. Which I was on board for! But then it all goes crazy, there's space loops and time loops and the zombie dude and magic dolls and an ancient curse and people going weird because of magic and people get attacked by ghosts of dead people they feel like they failed in some way, and if you're wondering how well those past traumas are set up the answer is they're not. There is a very long and completely unnecessary flashback sequence. And to make it worse it's based on the idea that a guy who speaks conversational Japanese would be able to read a military officer's diary. The characters are bad. There's the aforementioned fat funny guy who turns into a spooky ethnic monster early on, there's the designated rear end in a top hat, and three paper thin white people. The designated rear end in a top hat is so loving tiresome. He's just needlessly antagonistic and uncooperative early on, but not in away that actually creates new complications or affects the plot in any way. It's just to add some unpleasantness and make the movie less enjoyable to watch. Up until the end when he does start doing things but by that point it's like, they are adding complications when I'm extremely ready for this movie to be over. I do not want to see how these white lady will get out of this, I want to see the credits. And then the ending does show up and it's just like, yup. Yeah I get it. YES MOVIE I UNDERSTAND HOW CLEVER YOU THINK YOU ARE! A movie this bad doesn't get to be clever. Either end on something fun and gory, or the pretty white lady getting away. But after an hour and a half of this poo poo I don't want to see you congratulate yourself on how smart you are for like five goddamn minutes. The spooky zombie guy makeup is really good. But the characters suck, the spooky stuff is a random grabbag of spooky things unconnected to the actual origin and motives of the spookiness, and it's racist. Don't bother with Gehenna: Where Death Lives. It did have one line that's gonna be stuck in my brain and I'll probably remember at inopportune moments throughout the rest of my life; "These people believed it enough to paint it on the wall!"
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Apr 22, 2020 01:11
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30. Ichi The Killer (2001) Dir: Takashi Miike  Love all the weird body stuff, the PS1 game aesthetic, and the proto-Boredoms soundtrack. But the film's also pretty rapey in a way that just feels really juvenile, and not in the intentional way Miike was hoping for. Still glad I finally saw this, but as with most of his stuff, it's very hit-or-miss.
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Apr 22, 2020 01:22
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 111) Fleas - 2016 - TubiTV This one gave me the expectation of killer fleas, so I was curious. After all, there's been killer ticks so why not killer fleas. To start, I can forgive a lot when it's a low budget indie film. I can forgive a lot when it's first timers involved. I still expect something entertaining or intriguing. This film was neither. At times it seemed confused whether the fleas were real or not. Going either route would've been fine. After all, with Bug '06, while I had some disappointment there weren't killer bugs, that faded out with just how intense that film was. This film felt like the people behind it thought it'd be enough to just have camera and go. You're better off just watching the '06 Bug than sitting through this mess.  112) Main Street Meats - 2017 - TubiTV Considering the sheer volume of my watching and how many clunkers are going to happen, while most would just get more picky with viewing or dialing it back, I just can't. With the amount of honest drek I do sit through, it makes the hidden gems sparkle all the more. And my sifting through the drek, I'm able to point out what's worth giving a try and what's skippable. I liked this one. Yeah, the base story of struggling food business ends up having to resort to serving long pig's been done plenty before, but this one did a good job balancing horror and black comedy. The vintage feel was a nice touch too. I smiled at the H.G. Lewis voice cameo. Definitely worth a watch.
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Apr 22, 2020 01:27
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 65 (85). Texas Chainsaw 3D (2003) Directed by John Luessenhop, with a screenplay by Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan and Kirsten Elms. Watched on Prime, also available on Hulu, DirectTV, and Epix. Remember all those sequels that go “no sign of the family was found”? Well this reboot/sequel supposes that people could actually find the house plainly located in civilization and they did what any Texan would do and burned it down and the entire Hewitt family alive. 30 years or so later Heather discovers she’s the sole survivor of the family and inexplicably inherits a small mansion that comes with a surprisingly spry senior citizen Leatherface in the basement. Is it just me or is this premise a little shaky? Now, far be it from me to criticize a foreign culture like Texas but maybe if a mob slaughters an entire family that was about to surrender to you you could… I dunno… charge them with murder? I’m no lawyer or anything but it seems bad. Wait… there was a police report? And that guy was elected mayor? I kinda feel like Texas should sue the TCM franchise for defamation of character. Ok, so this is a reboot to the reboot that’s a sequel to the original that ignores the sequels to that. Clear? You know how like a basic tenant of these films is some relatively good natured folks picking up a hitch hiker and it turning out to be a real bad idea? Well in this one they not only pick up the hitch hiker but they invite him into their new home, and then leave him there with all their stuff while they go grocery shopping. Because our protagonists are intelligent likable people. Thats right, we’ve got another movie that exists for no reason except to torture and slaughter pretty people, and this one makes the fun decision some do of not even making those pretty people relatively likable folks but just a bunch of assholes who aren’t even good to each other. I mean, who hasn’t missed out on their friend screaming from help from the chainsaw wielding psycho because her boyfriend and best friend were busy loving in the barn? Charming. There’s this really weird shot where the main character is looking into a creepy photo of one of her ancestors and her reflection in the frame is superimposed by the creepy lady and it looks so weird and odd that I have to assume it was a weird 3D thing. Have I mentioned I hate 3D? I had no idea there were so many 3D films out there. Oh look, blood flighting at the screen. How original and fun and worth wearing goofy glasses for. For a moment I thought “hey, this one’s taking a turn and going somewhere different” but then it just got meaner and with bigger loving assholes that just make a fight with Leatherface one you want everyone to lose. Oh, but that’s not good enough because this movie actually wants to try and make Leatherface sympathetic? Are you serious? Earlier today I said I didn’t think I “hated” the non-Hooper TCMs. I’m re-evaluating that now. gently caress this movie. Seriously, gently caress this poo poo. gently caress.  66 (86). Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2016) Directed by Don Michael Paul, written by William Truesmith, M.A. Deuce, and John Whelpley. Watched on Netflix, also available on DirectTV and Prime’s Starz channel. 25 years in Burt has taken his rightful place as the host of a survivalist tv show when he and his new camera man (Jamie Kennedy) are hired to come to South Africa where they’ve had the first incidents of graboid deaths outside of the Americas and may have discovered the origins of the species. Every one of these marathons tends to have a moment where a movie just pisses me off and sours me on everything. TC3D was that moment. I needed a palette cleanser badly but couldn’t find anything on my lists that really worked or felt right or felt like something I could comfortably watch without making me angrier. So like… I still have a deadline and the worst the Tremors movies have been so far is harmlessly boring. So I took my shot and for the most part this was a perfectly adequate little b film. This is uncharted territory for the Tremors series. Not only is it over a decade since the last film but this is the first film without the original creators SS Wilson and Brent Maddock who wrote and directed the 4 previous films. Now I like it when these franchises keep a creative link and hold true to the original place, but lets be honest. They were spinning their wheels since the classic original. And CGI has come a long way in 11 years. Its not anything revolutionary but gone are the cartoony things from the last few films and there’s some pretty monstrous looking dudes now. Its, you knoww, DTV SyFy type monsters but seriously, the rear end Blasters looked really silly to this point so this is a marked improvement. The director also seems to basically recognize the value of shooting the monsters and their kills at angles and in pieces so you aren’t always staring directly at the flaws. Jamie Kennedy isn’t great or anything but he’s a totally unoffensive addition. I’m not sure how i grasp the science of “detachable tentacles” but then again I’m not about to start nitpicking the science of graboid biology. This is still a b monster movie and its obviously not anywhere near the original. But this is probably the best film since 2, and maybe better than that one. Its not nearly as funny and the scares, danger, and action really aren’t enough to compensate. But if 3 and 4 or bad Saturday afternoon monster flicks 5 is a decent one.
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Apr 22, 2020 01:47
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88. The Fear of Darkness (2015, Prime) - Paint-by-numbers mystery thriller with a twist ending that they telegraph a mile away. 1/5 89. Knocking on Death's Door (1999, Prime) - Straight-to-video thriller that feels like a TV movie. But not necessarily in a bad way; this walks a very fine line between creepy and cheesy. Two paranormal investigators walk into a house and you know the rest. Decent as a ghost story. The sub-plot with their boss is unnecessary. 3/5 90. The Culling (2015, Prime) - Pretty good once it gets going, it just takes far, far too long to get going. A bunch of college kids rescue a lost child, hang around with her parents for an eternity, and then the demonic shenanigans happen. 2/5 91. 13 Eerie (2013, Prime) - Perfectly little nice zombie flick where forensics students are sent out on a test to examine a fake crime scene. Where there are also dead bodies that are not part of the test, which turn into zombies. Fun, well laid out, decent acting, and nicely made-up zombies. 4/5 92. Deadly Instincts / Breeders (1997, Prime) - Species ripoff. A bad idea badly executed. The monster's pretty cool though. 1/5 93. Ghosts Don't Exist (2010, Prime) - A paranormal investigator on his last case. Not the standard song and dance: this focuses more on the mystery aspect of whether the title's true, not on the ghosts themselves. The pacing and acting are fine; the cinematography is bottom-dollar. It flows well until a self-contradicting ending. 3/5
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Apr 22, 2020 02:41
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19. Re-animator 1985 | Stuart Gordon | rewatch  Can you believe this was the first time the acidic filling in glow sticks was used on film? According to Arrow's release, it is so! Stuart Gordon's achievement for horror (and horror comedies) is monumental, given he had no experience with directing film. Thankfully he had the enthusiastic Brian Yuzna financially backing him (and Yuzna had wanted to make a horror film his whole life) and cinematographer Mac Ahlberg making sure neither of them hosed it up. To help fuel their cinematic nightmare, three no-name actors, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and (as many of them confidently say the glue to tie it all together) Bruce Abbot, who fell in love with Gordon's direction and sense of story. Together the six of them, a skeleton crew, and a handful of special effects artists reinvented the Frankenstein tale, with the help of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. "Re-animation, which is what the story of Frankenstein is about, is at it's core, a tale of male masturbation," says Stuart Gordon. "You have a man who's hubris is so strong, he wants to defy God by creating life without the help of a woman. What better way to tell that story than a love triangle between a mad scientist promising the ability to defy death, a beautiful woman promising a life of happiness, and the man between them, torn by his desire for both?" It's impressive that with this tale, there is an expression of how, at our core, humans are still animals. The re-animated aren't zombies, they aren't unfeeling things. They have had their ego and superego stripped away by death. They are all id. Which is why Dean Hasley is a cowering, blubbering mad-man when brought back to life, and why Dr. Hill's plan for scientific success is abandoned for carnal desires to rape. There is also, throughout the film, a satire of the murderous culture of academia. The story wouldn't exist if Dan Cain weren't reliant on scholarship to fulfill his desire to save lives; Herbert West first seduces him with cash; Dean Halsey's threats are based on losing his education and putting him in debt; Dr. Hill's entire plan is to steal Herbert West's discoveries and plagiarize him. That all of these ideas--and there are more than what I've mentioned here--is delivered with both plentiful gore, disgusting sound design, and deadpan sense of humor, is why Re-animator has such staying power in pop culture. It didn't re-invent horror, but it re-contextualized Lovecraft, an author who had largely been considered unsuited for adaptation, and those that had attempted anyway had delivered dry goods. Stuart Gordon and his crew created a minor masterpiece. 20. Re-Animator Resurrectus 2007 | Perry Martin | included in Arrow's release of Re-Animator This feature-length documentary chronicles through interviews, footage, notebooks, and pictures, the origin and creation of Re-animator, from Stuart Gordon's creating the Organic Theater in Chicago to Re-animator's release and it's staying power in pop culture. My favorite aspect, besides all of the wonderful stories and all the risks that were taken, is evident in the film itself. Every story is told with a smile. Every person interviewed, from Gordon to Yuzna to Combs to Crampton to Abbot etc. (the only person absent is David Gale, from being dead), warmly shares as much as they can. In every photo, the cast and crew are having fun. This was an entire production of love and joy, and it's wonderful to spend 70 minutes hearing and seeing all about it. I wish I could devote a write-up about the Arrow release as thorough as my Sleepaway Camp Shout Factory write-up, but there's seems to be more than double the amount of extras. It's an incredible set, and I only have the standard edition! 21. The Hunger 1983 | Tony Scott | currently on Criterion Channel (leaves April 30th)  It's a stylish vampire film with David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. The opening song is Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus. What else do you need? This film, frustratingly, comes with two minor caveats. First, this is less a vampire film and more a deconstruction of a vampire film to explore the concept of immortality. Consider it a less philosophically-driven version of Ferrara's The Addiction. This is the easy caveat, because it opens the film up to more fascinating areas of thought. Second caveat, and this is the crusher: You must ignore the final 30 seconds of the film. Or, possibly consider it an irony, like a Twilight Zone. It's such a cluster of imagery that it was unsurprising to find that the last few shots were mandated by studio execs, and that the stars and director disown those moments. And I think it's unfair to criticize 96 minutes of good film for 1 minute of confusing film. I am incredibly impressed to find this is Tony Scott's debut film. It is incredibly stylish, bold, confident and wonderfully alienating. At it's core, it's a simple story on whether or not the cost of immortality is worth the pleasures it gives. While this is certainly told with more style than substance, the substance is sensual and delicious. The sound design is foreboding, the music is cold and beautiful, the atmosphere is spooky. It holds a lot in common with a film I watched previously this month, Daughters of Darkness. If you want to watch Daughters of Darkness, but with more 80's goth vibes and cold blue urban melancholy, this is your jam.  Planet of the Vampires | The Brain That Wouldn't Die | Popcorn | Plan 9 From Outer Space | Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers | Rockula | Ringu | Four Flies on Grey Velvet | Seconds | Theater of Blood | Frailty | Daughters of Darkness | Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street | Train To Busan | Who Can Kill a Child? | Long Weekend | Raw Meat | Sleepaway Camp | Re-animator | Re-animator Resurrectus | The Hunger Total: 21 Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 02:56
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20: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Welcome to Primetime, Bitch. This is a huge step up from part 2. There's much greater focus on the dreams and they get creative and weird, as they should. The puppetmaster scene set a high bar and the movie kept ramping up further from there. Cool variety of effects on display including a little claymation Freddy and a stop-motion skeleton Freddy. I like the concept of teaming up and fighting Freddy in your dreams and I was rooting for these characters. All round a very entertaining fantasy horror. I might even prefer it to the original. Seen: 1) The Abominable Dr. Phibes; 2) Contagion; 3) The Devil's Rejects; 4) The Changling; 5) Frankenhooker; 6) Midsommar; 7) Village of the Damned (1960); 8) Wishmaster; 9) Der Golem; 10) City of the Living Dead; 11) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2; 12) Leprechaun; 13) Microwave Massacre; 14) Sisters; 15) Bride of Re-Animator; 16)The Crazies; 17) Maniac Cop; 18) Bay of Blood; 19) Outbreak; 20) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3
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Apr 22, 2020 11:17
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Time for me to fully embrace my “poser” ness as I’m still a little sour about the Texas Chainsaw stuff so instead I watched a James Wan produced mainstream ghost story with a gimmick. 69 (86). Lights Out (2016) Directed by David F. Sandberg, Screenplay by Eric Heisserer, based on a short film by the same name by Sandberg. Watched on Cinemax. Twenty something Rebecca is estranged from her mentally ill mother and much younger brother, but when she finds out he’s in trouble from something living in the shadows of their home its up to her to protect him. Lights Out started as a 2 minute and 42 second short film made with his wife for the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge film festival and racked up millions of views on Youtube and turned into a major studio directorial debut. That’s the dream, man. I’ve been screwing up the last few days. I’ve been so intent on finishing off these franchises before soft deadlines like when my Cinemax and Shudder trials end or when the Madness voting period ends that I’ve done what I’ve managed to avoid all month and burned myself out and made this feel like a chore. I like to mix it up and keep things different and I haven’t been doing that. I haven’t watched a simple supernatural horror in 5 days and 25 films (that’s right, I’ve watched 25 films in 5 days… what, you think I have a job or am leaving the house?). And my tastes vary from much of this board who lover their viscera spilling slashers and stuff or super out there Lovercraftian madness. I like myself a good ghost story that makes feel embarrassed to admit to myself how scared I am to turn off the lights. And lets be honest, no matter how brave you say you are and how you’re never scared by anything… you’re a little scared of the dark. Its instinctual. It goes back when we were infants. Its a survival instinct. You know there’s not a ghost in the shadows… but every once and awhile for just one second you hear a sound or think you see something in the shadows and the hair the back of your neck goes up. That’s what I love about horror. So I shut off all the lights, silenced anything making noise, and strapped in to get my heart racing. And by and large I thought this really delivered. The script is a little clunky. When they were explaining Diana in a big info dump I was thinking to myself “couldn’t she just be a ghost?” I do think the broader idea of it added some stuff. It was clunky and awkward at parts. But it added an element to the story that really hit. It also complicated stuff as obviously when you tie mental illness and depression with a ghost story and have a resolution like you have that’s gonna draw complicated reactions. I get that. It sounds like the whole process was complicated as Sandberg says he’s dealt with depression and the story initially started less as a ghost story and more as an examination of that. So it makes sense that the whole thing was a little mixed up between the two for better or worse. It definitely resonates in ways a simple ghost story might not have. And to that end I get why it upset some people and you should probably have a head’s up if you suffer from depression or anything like that that there’s some potential problematic elements there. But I think the building of tension and traditional ghost story format was just executed very well. Once you get past that stuff its a pretty straight forward “something in the shadows” story and all that stuff really worked for me. I think Teresa Palmer was born for horror. She’s got such big, deep, expressive eyes and this gasp and small scream rather than some big screaming teen. I’d love to see her in more stuff. I also think there were some really good turns on horror tropes, one being how maternal she is. Early on you can really see the cliche coming of her being the irresponsible runaway who has issues and fucks up, but she doesn’t. She just steps up when her brother needs her. And for a genre where so many women are tortured by threats and their men so often are total dickbags about it I loved that Brett was just cool with it way past the point where he had to be. I mean, its one thing to stick by your kind of withholding, distanced girlfriend who won’t even let you call her your girlfriend when she has to pick the brother she never told you she has up from school and drop him off with the mother who has mental issues you never told him about. But when your girlfriend’s family is like “yo, there’s this ghost girl in the house and its trying to gently caress us up but mom is friends with it so we’re kinda stuck dealing with it, wanna sleep on the couch?” and you’re just like “Yeah, I’m in” without any hesitation or complaint? Good for you, Brett. That’s not how horror boyfriends are supposed to act. I really, really liked that. This really is my thing. And yes, I have the lights on. Call me Poser-mael.  70 (87). Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) Directed by The Brothers Strause, written by Shane Salerno. Watched on DVD. A predator ship becomes overwhelms by xenomorphs and crashes to Earth, setting them loose on a rural Colorado town. When a predator hunter comes to clean up the mess the locals become trapped in the crossfire between two alien species who really don’t give two shits about slaughtering them. This movie was DARK. Not in tone, just dark as gently caress to see. I never mess with the video of this stuff because I like to see it as it was made but I just couldn’t see a drat thing without adjustments. I remain completely intrigued by the perplexing contradictions of the Predator species’ customs and cultures. One one hand they’re a responsible enough society that when they gently caress up and let a bunch of dangerous psychotic aliens loose on a planet they feel the ned to call someone to come clean up the mess rather than just let the backwater planet burn. And the clean up crew shows up to dispose of all the bodies and evidence. But he still has no qualms at all about murdering a bunch of the locals, skinning them up and stringing them from the trees, and just raising holy hell. What exactly is the mission statement here, guys? I wonder if there’s a Predator government oversight committee keeping tabs of this stuff and ripping its hunters a new one for their fuckups. This movie is… it is. Its Aliens and its Predator and its things blowing up and people dying and blood and shooting and noise and running and all that jazz you expect. And there’s like nothing else to it. Its got the barest trappings of a plot and characters and I didn’t not care about them. It does a good enough job so that when someone dies I kind of register the death, but not really feel bad about it. Its just really mostly mindless violence and action in its purest form and while I don’t hate that its kind of just exhausting and too much with too little else to stick or matter. And it was drat hard to see. Not just because of the lighting but because of everything happening so fast and crazy and mindlessly. Its just a spectacle for good or bad but I don’t feel like i have any feelings about it now that’s it over. I wanna say that X was mean or Y was fun or Z was sad… but I just don’t really care.  71 (88). A Little Bit Zombie (2012) Directed by Casey Walker, Written by Trevor Martin and Christopher Bond. Watched on Prime, also available on Vudu Free and TubiTV. Steve is on a vacation with his fiancé, best friend, and sister when he gets a liiiiiittle bit of a zombie infection (from a zombie mosquito) and has to problem solve the situation. I’m watching this solely because I’ve decided not to binge all my sequels in a row today and avoid burnout and misery, and Kristen Hager is very pretty and following her Wikipedia entry to figure out what I know her from (Being Human) led me here. Sometimes you just let the road lead you. A little slow to get going, once it does its pretty amusing. Nothing really hilarious or amazing but fine and amusing. Some juvenile and dated problematic lines but nothing too much or too bad. Just stuff like “retarded” tossed around or the like. Most of the assholes are intentional assholes but no one’s a total rear end in a top hat and its fine. Its fine. Stephen McHattie has one of his over the top performances as a psycho zombie hunter. The ending is kind of a hilarious mess. I respect them ending on such a weird rear end note including the credits. I wouldn’t tell you to go out of your way for this at all, but if you’re looking for a light and easy palette cleanser as I was it does the job. And now this is stuck in my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWH32Dt3fc4
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Apr 22, 2020 14:28
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 9. Suicide Club After 54 high school girls jump in front of a train and commit suicide, a detective investigates. I would like this movie a lot more if it felt coherent. It has some pretty memorable and violent moments, but ends up too vague and disjointed to be a full-fledged commentary on society. On the plus side, it does have some catchy J-pop. 2.5/5  10. Underwater Explosions in a deep sea drilling facility force staff to fight for their survival. But what caused the explosions? An entertaining thrill ride, with some pretty cool monsters and a fun reveal, making an already insane situation even crazier. Stewart is fantastic and shines throughout. TJ Miller is there and drags down every scene that he is a part of… but he dies at least. It wraps everything up nicely, which is unfortunate, because it would make for an interesting sequel. 4/5  11. The Handmaiden Two thieves work together to bamboozle an heiress. But when the handmaiden begins to fall for her charge, will she still go through with it? Only ~slightly~ horror, but I’ve seen it on a number of 'best horror' lists so I think it counts. Lovely movie, masterful storytelling, gorgeously shot. My only complaint is that the middle third of the film maybe drags on a bit too long. Oh, and there’s an unnecessary coda. 5/5 With Handmaiden I think I've probably worked my way through all Korean lesbian horror movies, so, that's something.
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Apr 22, 2020 15:43
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 MosquitoMan This was a 100% completely random selection that I made at like midnight after I'd had a few beers. In other words, the best possible way to discover schlocky low-budget monster flick. Obviously the movie isn't "good", but you can tell they put a lot of effort in. The creature itself is a bit stiff, but looks pretty drat good and has a decent amount of nice insect-like articulations. And they don't skimp on the creature stuff either, about 30 minutes in the MosquitoMan starts stomping around eating people and it really doesn't stop until the end. It also bears a striking similarity to the original Predator suit that Jean Claude Van Damme wore. Is it a coincidence that the tag line for the film is "A new breed of predator"?   Probably the big thing that elevates this from forgettable trash to entertaining trash is the gore. The movie is very gory and clearly a lot of the effort was put into that department because it all is pretty effective and believable. The characters are completely ridiculous cardboard cutouts but kinda in a funny way because of how straight faced it all is. So MosquitoMan isn't really a wholehearted recommendation but if you're in the right frame of mind, you can have a lot of fun with it. 1. Leprechaun 4: In Space 2. Leprechaun In The Hood 3. Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood 4. The Uncanny 5. Rockula 6. Come To Daddy 7. Cast A Deadly Spell 8. In The Tall Grass 9. Pet Sematary(2019) 10. Pet Sematary(1989) 11. The Wind 12. VFW 13. Piranha 14. Jaws 4: The Revenge 15. Deep Star Six 16. Underwater 17. Antrum 18. MosquitoMan
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Apr 22, 2020 17:47
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38. Bay of Blood (1971) Absolutely fantastic film. Sometimes movies that are considered seminal or influential only contain traces of what their ideas might eventually become, but I think that Bay of Blood hits levels of suspense and shock that don't quite get reached by its copycats. For example, I'd say Bay of Blood is a better film than Friday the 13th, even though the latter is such a direct copy many years later. For this viewing I watched it with the commentary track on, and that really made me appreciate it all the more. There are so many little nods and foreshadowings that you would never notice unless you were really looking for them. I love that. Mario Bava is a genius. 5/5 Watched so far: 1. Zombie (1979) / 2. Frankenstein (1931) / 3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) / 4. Basket Case (1982) / 5. Carrie (1976) / 6. Audition (1999) / 7. Creepshow (1982) / 8. Cannibal Holocaust (1980) / 9. Daniel Isn't Real (2020) / 10. Popcorn (1991) / 11. Matango (1963) / 12. Raw (2016) / 13. Men Behind The Sun (1988) / 14. Freaks (1932) / 15. Island of Lost Souls (1932) / 16. Hagazussa (2017) / 17. Guinea Pig 4: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988) / 18. The Mummy (1932) / 19. The Old Dark House (1932) / 20. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) / 21. American Mary (2012) / 22. The Invisible Man (1933) / 23. The New York Ripper (1982) / 24. The Head Hunter (2018) / 25. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) / 26. The Wailing (2016) / 27. Dude Bro Party Massacre III / 28. The Hunt / 29. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) / 30. Friday the 13th (2009) / 31. Amer (2009) / 32. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) / 33. A Bucket of Blood (1959) / 34. Demons (1985) / 35. Creepshow 2 (1987) / 36. All the Colors of Giallo (2019) / 37. Human Lanterns (1982) / 38. Bay of Blood (1971)
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Apr 22, 2020 18:03
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 62. The Kiss of the Vampire So I was supposed to watch The Vampire Lovers, and I watched all of this instead and throughout the whole thing wondered quietly to myself where Peter Cushing was. To be honest though, I'm not disappointed, it turns out that this is a wonderfully tense little Hammer horror. The plot is a little reminiscent of Rocky Horror. A young honeymooning couple lose their way, and end up being entertained by the strange people who live on the big house on top of the hill. Except that the strange people are more charming, refined, and hypnotically intense. They also want the bride as one of their own, to join their vampiric cult forever! There's really no gore, or sex, or nudity here. The horror is all in atmosphere, the acting, the emotions, and the dramatic stares. It's all pretty old school stuff, but it works perfectly. 3.5/5  63. The Vampire Lovers Okay, take two. The Vampire Lovers is your basic Carmilla story of an evil lesbian vampire temptress coming to seduce your perky boobed daughters. It's really a mixed bag. At once it's wonderfully gothic and atmospheric from the opening narration onwards, but also it has nothing interesting to say and really hammy acting. We have heaving bosoms and the rare decapitation, but it doesn't do much to build tension, or interest, or excitement. I also wonder if this was filmed in 3D, as every few minutes a character will stick their head right into the frame and begin screeching. 2.5/5
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Apr 22, 2020 18:14
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 72 (89). The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2005) Written and directed by Lance Mungia, co-written byJeff Most and Sean Hood, inspired by Norman Partridge's novel of the same title. Watched on Cinemax. John Connor steals E’s girlfriend but they get killed by the vampire Angel who is evil again and trying to conjure up Lucifer through the Hellmouth with party girl Tara Reid and his satanic cult led by the master Dennis Hopper. So John is resurrected by the Crow to dress up like KISS and lead the rebellion with his father-in-law Machete.. Or something like that. Can you blame me for mailing it in at this stage? The best thing going for this thing is its bizarre cast of B actors (and Dennis freaking Hopper) just trying to bring this really, really terrible script to life. I love me some satanic cult stuff but its almost always so lame and never lamer than here.. I mean, what self respecting wannabe antichrist severs of deviled eggs and devil’s food cake at his virgin sacrifice ritual? This movie has some amazingly bad writing. Like, remarkably bad. So bad that I think we might have finally flipped around to “so bad its good.” Ok, “good” is saying a lot but its the first sequel I didn’t have to struggle to watch. It was just so silly and bad, and it finally completely abandons most of the stylistic choices of the original so it just dies on its own merits. And it sure does die, but it does so while Tito Ortiz somehow delivers the strongest acting performance in his satanic gang. I mean, the Crow kills “Pestilence” with a bug zapper. In a vague sense this is what the Crow sequels should have been doing all along, and I guess they tried with 3 and alleged with 2 before the studio intervened. Just get away from that iconic style and imagery of the original and just tell different stories of the Crow resurrecting people for revenge. Of course the problem is the sequels are just sooooooooooo bad. And this, man? This one spent all its energy compiling its D list all star cast and then just… well you know what, someone tried really hard with this script. They’re just real bad at writing. “Hurry up and make me the loving antichrist!” “I now pronounce you Devil and his shortie.” “I love you, Lucifer.” If I quoted every terrible line in this movie I’d just be transcribing the script. I swear raising up an evil demigod to possess David Boreanaz was a plot line from Buffy. And wait… was Furlong’s Crow outfit actually a Crow halloween costume? Like, seriously? So the Crow franchise is terrible. It may well be the worst franchise in horror or at least the Franchise Bracket. At least of the ones that started with a good film. I’m sure there’s worse ones that just started from the bottom and never worked their way up but there’s just no reason in the world anyone should ever, ever, ever see a single Crow movie that doesn’t star Brandon Lee. If somehow you were inclined to be as dumb as me and do that. But if you do, this one’s just silly.  73 (90). Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) Directed by Don Michael Paul, written by John Whelpley, Watched on Netflix. Burt and his kid are called to Canada by the daughter of Val and Ronda because they found graboids in the snow. Except there’s no snow. This movie is a liar. I’m just asking nicely. If you can’t film somewhere with snow then don’t sell your movie as “graboids in snow.” Is that really that unreasonable, guys? Don’t blame global warming for your lies. “Val and Ronda’s daughter” sounds more fun on paper than in practice. Jamie-Lee Money does fine and even did a solid enough job trying to be a bit of both, but there wasn’t really a ton there and she was a pretty generic character. The OG creative team were always introducing obvious stand ins for the original characters who didn’t really work and were discarded the next movie. And the new creative team has largely stepped away from that but none of their characters are particularly colorful or anything. They’re just very pretty, competent, generic characters. Jamie Kennedy was a decent enough addition because he was a new character with a connection but he’s pretty whatever beyond that. And New Val is just another one of the new characters with a backstory that ties her to the series. She even kind of just disappears from the story for like 30 minutes and I barely noticed. Its a shame because I was kind of excited about her character. For the most part I just think the series has worn out its usage. Wilson/Maddock kind of burned out their thing with their sequels. 5 was interesting if just because the cgi advancements had come far enough to give the monsters a better look and they ventured to a new location. That was all good enough for a nostalgia bump and all. This one is just more of that, in the same location with colored lenses, the same cgi monsters, and some new characters who don’t stand out and the same basic story. The added element of Burt being sick with a graboid parasite is… well it could have been cute but this creative team really doesn’t play these movies for many laughs. And it didn’t have a ton of dramatic weight because like it seemed unlikely they were gonna kill off Burt or anything after all this time. What’s, Jamie Kennedy and New Val gonna take the franchise? Also I have a hard time believing that in 25+ years no one’s worked out a plan to capture a graboid. I mean they’re not THAT big. What happened to Perfection being a graboid preserve? Its another perfectly fine and serviceable B monster movie but its now a retread of the slight punchup 5 gave the retreads. That gets me all caught up on the franchise, although not finished since another is due out this year. Its pretty much all at worst mediocre but nothing ever captures the charm or combination of action and comedy that the original has. I joked about them killing off Burt and handing over the franchise to Jamie Kennedy and New Val but really, if there’s a future for the franchise I think its in new blood that sticks for more than movie. But they need to be able to write an interesting new character first. That or give Kevin Bacon some money. Come on, that guy’s in everything. There’s literally a game created on the idea that the guy doesn’t turn down many roles. Or at least gives us graboids in snow when you promise graboids in snow.
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Apr 22, 2020 18:35
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Jamie Kennedy is still allowed to make moves in 2018? Jesus.
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Apr 22, 2020 18:52
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