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 #18) Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) Hell yeah, that's some classic '70s horror vibes. A séance, some unnecessary flirting, wonderfully of-the-time fashion, powerful stares, sex in a van, wood paneling, etc. Anyway, Count Yorga is a vampire, doing vampire things. Like hypnotizing women and making frogs be very loud. He's grooving around in the late '60s, casting his influence over people and rocking a cape in casual-wear, living in a sweet mansion (with a huge spiral staircase), and watching his vampire women thralls do make-outs while he sits in a throne. There's no ambiguity or hedging over Yorga being a vampire, he's just straight-forward vampin'. He might be my favorite movie vampire (sorry, Prince Mamuwalde), he just goes right for it and relishes his role. And the regular guys trying to stand against him are generic '70s chumps, totally unskilled in their attempts at Van Helsing-ing the verbal fencing, making it even easier to pull for Yorga. Gore is infrequent, but well-handled when it does appear, and the finale is satisfying, even if it doesn't pull out any big effects.  Rating: 7/10Watched on gey muckle mowser Blu-ray. Bonus picture of Yorga exuding cool. 
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Sep 30, 2020 05:17
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Darthemed posted:
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Sep 30, 2020 05:27
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 29) Creature of Destruction - 1967 - Youtube I really don't know what to make of this one. Premise is a hypnotist who believes we all carry a primitive ancestor within us uses his assistant to prove his theories. Of course something goes wrong and she manifests a sea creature so woeful looking the Creature of the Black Lagoon and the Monster of Piedras Blancas would be embarrassed by proximity. I've seen homemade costumes that look better than the monster in this one. I'd consider this skippable. There's better out there to watch.  30) Brides of Blood - 1968 - DVD Since I'm missing the first of the Blood Island series (yeah, I know I'm slacking.), I'll start with the second film. Standard drive-in fare of travelers to Blood Island find more than they bargain for. We have a scientist here to study the after effects of the atomic bomb tests, his neglected wife, and a guy from the Peace Corps. They meet the locals who are on edge but won't say why. It comes out the locals were moved here from their original home and the jungle here's mutated from radiation. They're essentially being held hostage by a mutated beast that demands women or everyone dies, and things roll on from there. There was a plan to have a gimmick to give female patrons the chance to become a Bride of Blood. It would've involved giving out a packet with two cheapo wedding look rings and a fake marriage license. It ended up getting vetoed for fear of possible lawsuits involving minors. As far as the Blood Island films go, this one's pretty standalone. It just establishes the mutated jungle and it can be skipped compared to the next two films.  31) The Mad Doctor of Blood Island - 1969 - DVD This one's a standard Mad Doctor entry with Dr. Lorca experimenting on humans with chlorophyll and ending up with plant hybrid monsters. It had a gimmick of taking the Oath of Green Blood and drinking a packet of green gel/liquid that would make the viewer safe from turning into one of the people-plant monsters. The oath's been posted on Youtube, but I've not found anything so far about what the green goo was or how it tasted beyond a production consultant drank one and felt sick. I usually pair this one up with the next one in the series as a double feature.  32) Beast of Blood - 1971 - DVD I remember seeing this for the first time on Son of Svengoolie and he did give a warning about the surgery scene being more intense than what he usually had on the show. This had me really excited for the movie, and also prompted my grandma who was babysitting me to call my Mom at work over "Oh my God what are you allowing the baby to sit through?!?!" One yelling match later, I'm watching my movie and my grandma's in another room saying one of the many full rosarys she'd end up saying for me over the years. This one picks up right after the last one. The survivors of the last film, after recovering go back to Blood Island where it turns out the monster and Dr. Lorca have survived. This film had the gimmick of printing fake $10 bills that when unfolded was an ad flier for the movie. Pretty much if you liked the other films in the series, you'll like this one. And yes, the surgery scene was wonderfully gruesome and gory.
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Sep 30, 2020 06:31
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4: Se7en My partner hadn’t seen this so we put it in, and in retrospect I haven’t technically either. Sitting down to watch it made me realize it was one of those movies I’ve seen bits and pieces of here and there but never watched front to back, and after doing so I like it much better. I remember it being a lot darker and more mean spirited, and while it’s certainly dark (and rainy) it’s not quite as dreary as I remembered. Probably helps that I have more of an appreciation for Fincher nowadays. Also I’m still at a point where it’s weird to see Kevin Spacey but at least they’re not trying to make you sympathize with him. Opopanax fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 06:55
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13. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Watched On: Shudder There isn't a whole lot I can add to the conversation about this movie but I can talk about one of the things I appreciate a lot, the way the kills play out. No musical sting, no tense music leading up, Leatherface appears and people die quickly and violently. It's far more shocking than any typical jump scare could ever hope to be.
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Sep 30, 2020 08:25
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Hi. 1. Scary Movie  Oooh boy, this is rough. And frustrating. This is the disappointing step child of Airplane. It has a very anything goes, throw it at the wall and see what sticks attitude to comedy. A lot of wild swings to the fences. Sometimes it ends up with something pretty dumb but funny, like the ghostface parody getting high and prank calling with some buds. Sometimes, you get a gym teacher "Ms. Mann" rubbing their testicles across the heroine's face to her shocked disgust. I hate that I laughed at this movie, and I hate how hateful this movie is. Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, any -ist or -ics, you can find an example for in this movie. Two decades on and it is impossible to say anything positive about this movie without feeling like you're promoting the vilest tendencies our society had to offer. And it's so goddamn frustrating because there is some good, well written, high effort comedy in this movie. Like a guy is trying to convince a group of teens that they hadn't actually murdered him and walks away. Except it comes after a girl is sexually assaulted by being forced to blow a guy due to wacky Mr. Magoo-esq circumstances. As absolutely furious as I am about that, I can't help but chuckle about the guy walking away from those kids yelling "I'm fine, it's okay". And when you look at the set dressing and the prop work, there's a lot of really dumb and fun background jokes that are simpson-esq, like the police signs all saying 'Protect. Serve. Shoot to Kill'. This wasn't a necessarily slap-dash cheap work, this was people trying their damndest to do right by their work and by comedy. But the end-of-history, 'PC running rampant' style of hateful comedy just makes this a cringy, anger inducing chore. And none of it feels necessary. I can easily see a rewritten version of this script still working today, without any of the best jokes, the style, tone, or characters being ruined. If you want to see a better version of what this film aims to do, Wet Hot American Summer. But now, Scary Movie is something that deserves to remain forgotten.
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Sep 30, 2020 09:07
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5) The Monster Club (1981) It's a horror anthology hosted by Vincent Price so I had high hopes for this and I'm sad to say I was disappointed. The three sketches were passable. The whistling vampire one was probably the best. They're all short; the whole thing's only 90 minutes and the Monster Club scenes take up quite a bit of that. In fact the club scenes felt like padding, especially the pop songs that just aren't good. The monsters mill around in their cheap halloween masks and it's not very funny Watchlist: Tenebrae; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Body Melt; In Search of Darkness; The Monster Club (total: 5)
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Sep 30, 2020 11:24
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 4) Black Mountain Side (2014) Trailer Seen on: free on Tubi; also available on Amazon Prime A group of archaeologists and researchers in the far north of Canada discover something in the ground that shouldn't be there. After a senior professor arrives from the outside world to assess the discovery, strange things begin to happen. The crew's cat is mauled; the native workers flee in the middle of the night to the north, where they will surely die of exposure. And then the researchers begin to break down as something begins to seep into their consciousness... After watching this, I read an interview with the director, Nick Szostakiwskyj, who said his biggest influences here were the paranoia and isolation of The Thing and The Shining and one more that I'm leaving out because, if you're familiar with it at all, it basically spoils part of the plot that I didn't see coming that I thought was clever. His influences are in strong effect here. The film is shot starkly and looks great, the cast have a real camaraderie and nice, natural dialogue with each other that lets them grow on you, the story hook is great (the group has unearthed what appears to be the top of a Central American temple dating back to the time of the Aztecs with markings that none of them recognize) and the sense of dread builds nicely. The violence, when it happens, is pretty matter-of-fact and brutal. There's one thing about the movie that bugs me though considering how much it gets right, and it's that I feel like they dropped the ball explaining and visualizing the threat. Granted, this movie firmly has its foot planted firmly in cosmic horror so there are going to be unexplained things, but it didn't feel satisfying. There are two prongs to it, and it's not made clear if they are of the same source or opposed to each other. but in one case I feel they really should have shown us more instead of just talking about it, and the other should have stayed invisible because the aural component of it was really creepy and well done but the visuals were...probably not giving the effect the filmmakers were hoping for. I'd talk about this more in spoilers but if any of what I talked about earlier sounds interesting, you should just watch it - it's a solid little thriller.
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Sep 30, 2020 11:37
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Movie: American Guinea Pig: The Song of Solomon Watched on: Unearthed Films Vimeo This is probably the best movie that Unearthed Films has released so far. The FX work (by Marcus Koch and Jerami Cruise) is stellar. There's some incredibly gross practical FX, original FX ideas, top notch execution. It is absolutely gnarly in the best way. It also manages to be completely gore-soaked and over the top without coming off as campy or cheap; despite being a small indie gore flick it feels very polished and professional (relatively speaking, don't expect hollywood but if you go in with an open mind I think you'll be impressed). I also appreciate the work that the director did into Catholicism and exorcism, obviously it's a horror movie but the director did some real research into exorcism and it's history and it shows. It's by no means a perfect movie. Some of the acting is choppy, and it definitely drags and drags in certain places. It could have definitely benefited from some more dialogue, as sometimes it feels a little too "get to the gore". I feel whoever wrote it could have stepped up the dialogue a little bit. I think if you go in expecting a normal horror movie, you'll be disappointed, but if you go in taking it for what it is then it's a great low budget gorefest (and pretty drat scary). It's certainly one of the more menacing horror movies I've seen recently. Even if you didn't like the other AGP movies (which, I'll be honest, they aren't great), this one is definitely worth checking out. Rating: 7/10 Movies watched so far: 1
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Sep 30, 2020 11:57
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Kvlt! has posted, so as I said in the main thread, time to see how close I get to my 200 count. 33) Gorgo - 1961 - TubiTV I love this one, it's the UK's kaiju. After a volcano eruption salvagers and marine life start turning up dead. Not long after a giant monster rises from the sea, attacks an island off the coast of Ireland and is driven off. It's eventually captured and put on display at Battersea Park only for it to be revealed from what studies have been done that the 65' tall monster is just a baby. Mom soon arrives in her full 200' glory and she's pissed. The ending to this one always gets me sniffly. Originally the film was potentially going to be set in Japan as an homage to Godzilla, but then France was considered an option before Australia came up. Apparently Australia was rejected with the reason 'no one'll care if a monster attacks Australia' (WTH?) before settling on Ireland and London. There's a novelization that I need to track down and a comic run that's been reprinted here and there. I recommend this one because one can never have enough kaiju.  34) #Alive - 2020 - Netflix I really hadn't planned on going back to Netflix. I cancelled years ago when they ramped up their original content that I wasn't interested in while cutting back noticeably on their catalog. Only reason I'm on the thirty day trial is my fiance wanted to watch Cobra Kai and he made a good argument about my catching up on Sabrina and Kingdom. After the reviews dorium and Ambitious Spider made on this one, I figured I'll give it a watch. Not long into it, my thoughts went in this order: Ooh, they're diving right on in...fuckernuts, I'm going to have to do another update for technology on the zombie thing I've been writing. This was really good. In some ways it reminded me of The Night eats the World, but not so grindingly depressing. I really liked that they didn't have the obligatory rear end in a top hat villain that you usually see in these films like the wannabe warlord, or apocalyptic religious fanatic. It's just the focus on the survivors, the situation, and the zombies which really makes for a solid, compelling story. I highly recommend this one, it's just that drat good.
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Sep 30, 2020 12:16
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7. Cure 1997 dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa   I was trained to never show emotion A detective and a psychologist investigate a spate of murders in Tokyo, with the same characteristics but a different perpetrator each time. I’m not using the poster for this one, because those two perfectly blocked shots encapsulate the thematic core of this film perfectly. Inside the familiar package of a detective hunting a serial killer, this film explores themes of memory, consciousness, free will, and the dark thoughts people harbour but never speak aloud. This is only my second Kurosawa film, having seen Pulse in the early 2000s boom of j-horror coming to the west. As with Pulse, Kurosawa puts a lot of trust in the viewer to pay 100% attention and take everything in. There are several hugely important scenes where key action is taking place on opposite sides of the frame, and I found this to be very effective at building tension. The pacing is exceptional. Each new revelation about the mystery is significant enough to make you re-evaluate everything you’ve already seen, turning previously innocuous scenes into scary portents. The real trick is the Kurosawa achieves this while also making the scenes in between major revelations gripping enough that the steady drip-feed never becomes frustrating. This is a film that absolutely plays to my preferences in terms of both plot and theme, and it’s my favourite of the challenge so far. 8. Freaks 1932 dir. Tod Browning  She don’t know us but she’ll find out Love triangles and murderous intent among the performers at a travelling circus. Some members of the circus have what must have been pretty progressive attitudes in 1932, and push back against those who call the disabled performers “monsters”. They are in the minority, however, and the rest of the able-bodied performers are hateful. Browning lets their ignorance speak for itself, but also avoids the trap of portraying the disabled characters as blandly virtuous. We follow their off-stage lives with all the petty squabbles and rivalries that come with living in such close proximity. Societal attitudes toward people with the disabilities portrayed in this film might have improved somewhat in 90 years, but a story about a marginalised community pulling together against outside attack by those only concerned with personal enrichment is, sadly, still relevant today. The film has a couple of significant issues that knocked my rating down. Many of the cast aren’t actors and it shows. Two main characters are incomprehensible in some scenes, not helped by the fact that their lines switch to German for certain words. A weird fade back to the wraparound story really hurts the end of the climactic scene. The coda is pointless and sickly sweet compared to the tone of the rest of the film. It’s a real shame that no copy of the director’s original longer cut exists. 9. Repulsion 1965 dir. Roman Polanski  I want to be with you all the time Carole, a beautiful young manicurist, struggles to cope with the unwanted attentions of the men in her life. Isolating herself in her home, her grip on reality starts to unravel. Good grief, this film put me through the wringer. Watching a woman struggling with her mental health while being infantilised, condescended to, ignored, overridden, and… no spoilers here but also much worse was a brutal experience. Carole is clearly in a deep depression from the outset, and all her family, boss, co-workers, and ostensible boyfriend can manage to do is project their own insecurities onto her. The tension this film builds, as a result, is incredible, and the viewer’s perspective is completely immersed in Carole’s disintegration. This is portrayed brilliantly by Catherine Deneuve with a deceptively blank performance, punctuated with moments of outright chaos. Her mental state is reflected in the expressionistic (thanks Jedit!) depiction of the apartment she shares with her sister. The walls crack, spatial relationships shift, and… much worse. Considering this film’s reputation, I can’t imagine there’s many in this thread who haven’t seen it. If you’re one of them, do yourself a favour. 9. Goodnight Mommy 2014 dir. Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz  What's Lukas doing? I absolutely loved The Lodge, 2019’s (or 2020’s here in the UK) film by the same directorial pairing. I have a particular affection for films that question, probe, and undermine the assumptions of the family unit, and it seems Fiala and Franz are on the same wavelength. I’m actually glad I saw these films out of order, as Goodnight Mommy is far less opaque about what’s going on while sharing similarities with The Lodge. The atmosphere created absolutely made my skin crawl from start to finish. This is a deeply uncomfortable film to watch. The fact that it’s not all that difficult to work out what’s really going on does nothing to put you at ease. Lots of brutal scenes that had me gritting my teeth, especially one particularly nasty shot involving a trip wire. Movies Watched: Don’t Look Now | Frankenstein | Nosferatu | The Changeling | The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari | The Haunting | Cure | Freaks | Repulsion | Goodnight Mommy Rewatches: 0 Total: 10 They Shoot Zombies Don't They: 30%
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Sep 30, 2020 12:31
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4. The Curse After a mysterious meteor lands on their farm, a teenage boy sees his family slowly descend into madness and slime as they're affected by the meteor's strange effect. Hey, Wil(l) Wheaton's in this! He plays our teenage boy protagonist Zack, and really, while the film is supposed to be an adaptation of HP Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space, it's really more of a "teenage boy deals with abusive stepfather and stepbrother" movie, with some added body horror into the mix. His stepfather's something of a religious fanatic who doesn't hesitate to give Zack a whack (heh) if he blasphemes, or says something he doesn't like; stepbrother Cyrus is a dumb jock and we see way too much of his rear end crack throughout the movie; and Zack's mother Frances is nice but very unfulfilled in her marriage, which is why she likes to visit the farmhand's shack in the middle of the night for some plausible deniability sexy times (also, the farmhand completely disappears from the movie after that). It has lots of maggots, worms, beetles and pus exploding out of cabbages, apples and cows, but not really much on the blood front. Also, one of the associate producers was one "Louis Fulci", and yes, there are shots of characters' wide staring eyes, in case you were wondering. But overall, kind of a dull film. 2 out of 5. 5. Curse II: The Bite  To quote the synopsis from where I saw this: "After a young man is bitten on the hand by a radioactive snake, his hand changes into a lethal snake head, which attacks everyone he comes into contact with. Also, his body becomes filled with snakes." ...that synopsis makes this film seem a whole lot cooler than it actually is. It's a SINO to The Curse. because this time the cause of all the trouble is a radioactive snake, who bites our unlucky protagonist on the hand. He doesn't gain the proportionate strength and powers of a snake and go off to fight crime, however; his hand mutates into a snake and he gets broody and angry, smacking his girlfriend around and delivering fatal mandible claws to people. Because, oh yeah - because his hand is wrapped in gauze and bandages for most of the film, and because its mode of attack is to go for the jaw, what we have is effectively an evil Mr Socko. The whole "his body becomes filled with snakes" part doesn't even come into play until the final ten minutes, by which point we're long past caring. The movie also contains an aggressively Jewish man, truckers (including "Big Flo"), and is sponsored by 7-Up. 1.5 out of 5 6. Curse III: Blood Sacrifice  Africa, 1950. A young American woman pays the price after accidentally disrupting a witchdoctor's ritual and he summons an evil creature from the sea to get his revenge. Christopher Lee is in this! And considering he famously apologised to Joe Dante after appearing in Howling 2: Your Sister Is A Werewolf, I imagine he must have considered burning himself in a wicker man to atone for this one. His role in the film is twofold; he's the statesmanly local doctor, and he provides exposition and a red herring when the plot demands it. The actual monster is something that looks like a komodo dragon and the Creature From the Black Lagoon had a baby, but it's slow and lumbering and sounds like it has a wicked case of asthma. We didn't even get to the halfway point of the film before I had gotten bored enough to start alt-tabbing and just returning to the film whenever it sounded like something interesting was happening, and usually it wasn't. There's a good 5-10 minutes of our white heroine running through sugar cane fields at night, for maximum lack of visibility, and this is cut with scenes of a twee child informing her grandmother of all the different ways monsters can get you, as if this is supposed to be some sort of juxtaposition or something. Another SINO as well, in case you couldn't guess. 1 out of 5. And this morning I discovered that there's (technically) a Curse IV! Letterboxd Totals: 6 5 new (The Abominable Dr Phibes; Session 9; the Curse; Curse II: The Bite; Curse III: Blood Sacrifice) 1 rewatch (The Grapes of Death)
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Sep 30, 2020 12:33
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Welp time to start off this year’s challenge with... 1. Verotika (2019) Oh. Oh no. Oh no this is very bad. Each segment of this is absolutely pointless. Every shot is held way too long. Half this movie is topless pornstars and it’s still boring as hell. This is sub-Skinemax filmmaking. Glenn Danzig shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a movie set ever again. He should make the song “Mother” again instead. That was a cool song. 0.5/5
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Sep 30, 2020 13:24
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3/31 (30th September) Hell House 2: Abbadon Hotel - Guessed by gey muckle mowser I liked the original enough, the sequel was more of the same and is pretty passable. I wonder if anyone can really do anything original and cool with the found footage genre anymore - this production obviously had access to a pretty sweet set here and made a trilogy around it. The spooks and spills are very same-y and I wouldn't go out of my way for a rewatch but I very well might watch the third in the series when I can. You can check out any time ya like but ya can nevah leaaave is in my head despite it not being on the soundtrack. The Hausu Usher fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 14:01
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 4. The Tenant (1976) Hulu This is the third film in Roman Polanski's unofficial "Apartment Trilogy", the first two being Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. Like those films, it deals with the horror of apartment living and the psychological effects that go along with the lack of privacy and, paradoxically, the sense of isolation. In this film, a man named Trelkovsky (played by Polanski himself) moves into an apartment previously occupied by a woman who committed suicide. He soon finds himself dealing with strange and sometimes hostile neighbors and gets caught up in a Kafkaesque* nightmare of unfounded accusations, gaslighting, and psychological manipulation. In my opinion The Tenant is the weakest of the three films in the trilogy, but mostly because the other two are such stone-cold classics - this is still excellent. It has an oppressive sense of anxiety that I think anyone who has ever lived in an apartment can identify with at least a little. Polanski also adds a bit of dark humor to this film in the absurdity of Trelkovsky's situation. The cinematography by the legendary Sven Nykvist is of course excellent, and there are some really cool shots where he uses forced perspective and sets with bizarre proportions to give the visuals a surreal and nightmarish look. This is often cited as one of the best horror films of all time - it's number 36 in Slant Magazine's top 100 horror films, and it's high on the They Shoot Zombies, Don't They? list as well. Honestly I don't think I'd rank it quite that high, but it is definitely very good and well worth watching. Also, "No one does it to you like Roman Polanski" is a REALLY unfortunate tagline - this was released a few years before the assault/rape charges against him came to light. Yikes. *I don't care if it sounds pretentious, I will never not use the word "Kafkaesque" when the opportunity arises. 4.5 lovely neighbors out of 5 Total: 4 Watched: Peeping Tom | Cry of the Banshee | The Loved Ones | The Tenant SIDE QUESTS: Edgar Wright's Top 100 Horror: 88/100 Slant Top 100 Horror: 88/100 TSZDT Top 100: 97/100 gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 14:23
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All y'all watching Verotika are just gonna make Verotika 2 happen.
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Sep 30, 2020 14:36
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All the reviews for it make me really glad I didn't sign up for Shudder this time so I won't be tempted to see what all the fuss is about.
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Sep 30, 2020 14:39
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2. The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets (1990) I watched this on youtube, which is the only the way I'm aware of to see this with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/rzyjf9oGBBU This is a collaboration between Tom Waits, William S Burroughs, and avant garde theater director Robert Wilson to create a musical stage adaptation of am old German folktale, Der Freischütz. A German production, the dialogue is mostly German while Waits' songs are all sung in English. The story is very straightforward: a file clerk, Wilhelm, makes a deal with the devil for magic bullets that will always hit their mark. In exchange, one bullet will only obey the devil, and go where he wants it to. This works out for Wilhelm about as well as you would expect. I really enjoyed this. The set and makeup design is in the style of German expressionism and gives the entire play a very eerie feel. If you like the music of Tom Waits then you'll like what he's done here and his style of songwriting is a great fit for an avant garde folk horror. For anyone interested in watching this, fair warning that it is at times some very capital T Theater. Everyone is doing weird stuff in this play all of the time, but I think it gives a very unique atmosphere that can bounce between being comedic and unsettling very quickly. It's a cliche to say at this point but there were a few times it really reminded me of some of Lynch's stuff. If you are ok with that then I think this is a very interesting watch with some great visuals. Flying Zamboni fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 14:51
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Verotika is totally worth the watch for an outsider art perspective on horror, but I hope y'all not sleeping on The Evil Within (2017) for a much more interesting egocentric rich person's pet horror project.
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Sep 30, 2020 14:57
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I forget who asked, but The Adventures of Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad counts as an entry. It's basically edited to be a 2 piece anthology, it's 68 minutes, and the Sleepy Hollow segment is important enough to Halloween aesthetics to qualify.
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Sep 30, 2020 15:30
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Yeah, I did Adventures of Ichabod last year and nobody complained. Though sadly my takeaway was less than favorable. Also, god I love this thread. I've already added half a dozen things to my watchlist based on y'all's reviews. Gonna be a drat tough decision on what I cross off the list tonight. M_Sinistrari posted:Only reason I'm on the thirty day trial is my fiance wanted to watch Cobra Kai and he made a good argument about my catching up on Sabrina and Kingdom. To what degree does he participate in your deluge of Challenge movies?
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Sep 30, 2020 16:19
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 #19) Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996) Kids in a small Nebraskan town are getting sick, claiming to be different people, then turning homicidal. Naomi Watts is there to visit her mother (played by a near-unrecognizable Karen Black), and takes up her old job helping the local doctor while she's there. Those are the main thrusts of this story, and aside from the occasional drawn-out lead-up to someone being killed, it's as exciting as it sounds. The film was better than I remembered it being, due mostly to some earnest performances by people who didn't seem to care about the cheesiness of the movie's premise. They're balanced out by the terrible kid actors, but still, it's weird seeing genuine effort put into one of these DTV sequels. It's not enough to make the film interesting for more than sporadic bits, and the hodge-podge of threats (there's sorta-possession, physical assaults by creepy kids, and spirit telekinesis) keeps things too scattershot to build up much of an edge. Rating: 5/10
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Sep 30, 2020 16:22
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Franchescanado posted:I forget who asked, but The Adventures of Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad counts as an entry. It's basically edited to be a 2 piece anthology, it's 68 minutes, and the Sleepy Hollow segment is important enough to Halloween aesthetics to qualify. That was me, ok I'll adjust
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Sep 30, 2020 16:51
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feedmyleg posted:
He'll watch some stuff and definitely watch the Scream Stream, I won't insist he sit through something I know isn't his sort of thing. He sat through Haunters with me and I think the McKamey segments bothered him more since he's a former EMT and he couldn't believe they didn't have paramedics on scene by default. We each have a tablet so there's never an issue over who wants to watch what when. Since my sleep schedule's been shot to hell with lockdown, he knows I'll get up during the night and end up watching something until I get tired again. Since he's on WFH currently, I'll watch on my PC or tablet with the headset on so it doesn't bleed through his work headset.
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Sep 30, 2020 16:53
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#7) Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) Somehow, embarrassingly, I always mixed this movie up with "Shadow of the Vampire". I didn't know that this was its own genuine take on the Nosferatu story. Having seen it now, I can safely say without hyperbole that this... is a perfect film. It checks every box. It never drags. It never drifts into cheesy. Everything in it is so earnest, even when you're dealing with pointy teeth and fake-looking-ears. Klaus Kinski is putting on an absolute master class of body acting here. Every look, every movement tells you that Dracula is someone who is desperately trying to "act" human, and Kinski puts a pathos into it that verges on heartbreaking. Isabelle Adjani is, of course, a delight as always. And the actor who plays Renfield just knocks it out of the park. Moving on to the cinematography, this is practically the textbook definition of "every frame a painting". I had to pause multiple times just to soak in certain shots, they're all so gorgeous. And the MUSIC. Oh my god, the music. If the original Nosferatu is the nice upscale local restaurant you go to on your birthday, Herzog's Nosferatu is a 3-Michelin-star dining experience. I cannot say anything bad about this movie. 5 / 5 Total: 7 1. Don't Look Under the Bed (1999) / 2. Mom and Dad (2017) / 3. Daughters of Darkness (1971) / 4. Snuff (1975) / 5. Southbound (2015) / 6. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) / 7. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
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Sep 30, 2020 17:09
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NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN posted:#7) Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) Out of the 30+ different Dracula movies I've seen, this is my favorite. The scene with the plague rats swarming around while Wagner's prelude to Das Rheingold plays is just 
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Sep 30, 2020 17:19
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 #3. Rabid (1977) (Kanopy) A young woman is involved in a motorcycle accident, and given an experimental treatment at a nearby clinic. Afterwards, she awakes with a strange needle-like protrusion in her armpit... and an insatiable thirst for blood. The people she drinks from end up turning into crazed zombies with rabies-like symptoms, attacking others at random and threatening to overrun Montreal. Another watch for the Director Bracketology thread, and for a big chunk of the beginning all I could think was... "wait, have I seen this before?" It reminds me a lot of Shivers, another early days Cronenberg work, with the same kind of dispassionate remove, thin characterization and lack of plotting. The whole thing feels more like a series of repetitive vignettes, with the first half all about people coming onto Marilyn Chambers, getting snagged by her armpit vagina needle, and then her just kind of hugging on them until they die. The back half is all about those same people coming back with gray pancake makeup and orange juice tears, running around and snarling and biting at people. Then the whole gets wrapped up with the same faceless mask-and-gown government stooge villains from Romero's The Crazies gunning down rabies zombies and tossing our heroine(?) into a garbage truck over the end credits. I wish I could say something more cogent about this film and Cronenberg's themes or career, but I found it too sloppy and repetitive to really care about anything going on. Chambers isn't interesting enough to carry the film, which ends up splitting its focus between her exploits finding victims, and then those same zombie victims getting loose and causing havoc. But I ended up not caring about either half, so it ends up feeling like two separate bad movies only tenuously connected together, an emaciated, threadbare series of connective tissue barely hanging on a shambling skeleton. Maybe that kind of imagery appeals to Cronenberg's clinical temperament; I just call it a bad movie.  /5 #4. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (Vudu) Freddy Krueger is resurrected again, and this time manages to kill the remaining survivors from the previous film. However, while Freddy turns his sight on a new group of teenage victims, daydreamer Alice, and her ability to absorb the talents of her friends, may prove to be the key to stopping Freddy once and for all. I needed a lighter, funner option after trying to sit through the first Presidential debate last night, and Freddy does know how to scratch that particular itch. I know I'm going against general thread consensus on this opinion, but I prefer the later sequels, glossier budget, ironic punishment Freddy over the earlier, grungier, "let's all hang out on this one set" Freddy from the original. And man, Nightmare 4 knows how to deliver on slick, glossy, ironic deaths like gangbusters. It's hardly a good film outside of those elements, but if you're looking just to see Freddy show up and execute some ridiculous over-the-top grossout or gore sequence, then you're not gonna do better than the fluff that Renny Harlin knows how to serve up. /5Watched so far: The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Rabid (1977), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4
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Sep 30, 2020 17:25
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There's a wide shot during the dinner scene in Nosferatu where he's watching Harker eat and I swear I thought it was a freeze-frame or something because Kinski is supernaturally still. It's hard to describe but it's just not natural, Kinski was able to basically hollow himself out of any sort of normal humanity. I've never seen another performance quite like it, it felt like in ancient monster wearing a human suit, but in a deeper way than any other actor has managed to pull off in a Dracula/vampire role.
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Sep 30, 2020 17:28
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Jedit posted:3) Dressed to Kill (1980) This is why I love De Palma. He makes no effort to hide his Hitchcockian influence. He lays bare the eroticism and violence that runs deep in Hitchcock's films, as he is no longer restricted by the Hays Code. Body Double is probably the most obvious example of this. Also, for what it's worth, some people didn't like Dressed to Kill at the time, either. The film was nominated for a few Golden Raspberries, and people were attacking him for being a misogynist (although, I am unsure if it was this specific film, or just the label he had applied to him). Mind you, I also just watched Snake Eyes last week and also really enjoyed that, so I fully admit I may be out-of-step with what's considered good.
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Sep 30, 2020 17:49
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Ok, I broke. Quick rundown of my goals. 1) 31 new films. Same as always. 2) Hooptober Se7en. A Letterboxd scavenger hunt of 38 challenges to fill. I’m gonna make it difficult and make them 38 different and new films, but I’m not gonna be crazy so they can be the same as those 31 previous. So basically if I finish 2 I’ll have already finish 1. I guess that makes 1 redundant, but whatever. 3) Match my previous best. Last October I topped out at 59 new films and 77 total. So I guess I’m actually gunning for 60 new films. That seems big but should be doable with #4. I actually did 100 new and 119 total in April but that’s crazy so we’ll ignore it. 4) I’m gonna try and do them in Double Features. Why? Partly because that’s how I watched them all summer in the Director’s Tourney so I’ve found I really enjoy that two movie format. Partly because I’m just a dork and it seems fun. And mostly so I could make these silly images and spend all month tinkering with them. I hope they are more enjoyable than annoying.  You know we’ve all been playing the Best Director’s Tourney all summer and as fun as its been it definitely hasn’t been the best directors. The true Masters of Horror. At least not all of them. There’s been a lot of unceremonial short ends to some pretty amazing careers. So a foundation of this October was always going to be me going through those movies from those legends we missed. And there’s no snub more than good ole’ Wes Craven. And if I’m doing Hooptober then it only makes sense to start this off with another guy who went too early in the legendary and eclectic Tobe Hooper. 1. Eaten Alive (1976) Directed by Tobe Hooper, written by Kim Henkel, Alvin L. Fast and Mardi Rustam. Watched on Prime, also available on Tubi. Hooptober Se7en: 1 Tobe Hooper Film (There must ALWAYS be a Hooper film) The thing I’ve really come to appreciate and discover about Tobe Hooper these last few years is how eclectic he was. I always tended to think of him as the guy who directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre and associate him with that (and everything that came from that). But really, even his sequel to that classic is very different in tone and approach. It seems like every film of Hooper’s I see feels so very different from the past one. There’s definitely themes and elements that you can see follow through. Our villain of this film Judd could easily be one of Leatherface’s lost brother uncles. But while the two films feel like they exist in the same world they also feel like they have a very different approach. I think of TCM being more about the horror and tension of what has happened or what will happen. Its not nearly as graphic as many of the films that followed it and it works because it really holds back and builds. Eaten Alive really doesn’t hold back. It wallows in the depravity and rape and nazism from the word go and just spends its whole film time there. In fact I’m not even sure there’s a story here, not really. There’s a bunch of characters with their own stories and stuff going on but this film is really about Judd, this one deranged deplorable bastard who seems like he might have finally snapped. Or maybe he’s been doing this for awhile? Who knows? It seems like no one in this town really would have noticed if Judd was losing his poo poo for years on every random traveler who passed through and feeding him to his gator. Or crocodile. But unlike TCM we’re not really given any indication of anything deeper like that. Its entirely possible this is just the day “that crazy old coot” just snapped. And I think the film works in that kind of spur of the moment, organic feel to it. Judd doesn’t seem to know what’s happening or what he’s gonna do next any more than we do. Everything’s just spiraling out of control for him. Still I think that lack of story also holds it back some. The whole thing feels too loose. That works for what it is and you just hold on for the ride of deranged characters and escalating over feeding of a pet. But even though the movie flows well I don’t feel like it ever really build stakes or gravitas. And the result is kind of that the ending just sort of happens. All the little threads come together and its a satisfying enough ending, but instead of it feeling like we built a big final act it was just Judd’s really bad day continuing to get out of hand until it finally caught up. And hey, check out young stud Robert England over here. That was a surprise. And very creepy. I don’t think I’d call this a great film or anything, and definitely not one of my favorite Hooper films. But its another interesting taste of what he could do. It certainly feels similar in ways to his other work but it also feels like its own thing in others. And Hooper does a good job of going to that exploitation place without ever making it feel as sketchy and sleazy as much of that stuff does. Some directors are great at one or two things, but Hooper truly seems like a guy who could have played director improv and done just but any kind of movie you asked him to and made it work. 2. The Hills Have Eyes (1977) Written and directed by Wes Craven. Watched on Hoopla, also available on Kanopy, Tubi, and Shudder. Hooptober Se7en: 1/6 decades (The 70s) Man, when you grow up watching films that include in the credits “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” you might not really process that, but it sometimes like this film was the reason for it. I won’t lie, its a little sketchy. But then again that’s what this movie is, isn’t it? Sketchy? I love Wes Craven but I’m not a fan of that 70s exploitation stuff he started his career with. I’m not sure exactly what that stuff was saying. A distrust of strangers and people unlike yourself? A harsh rebuke of the nuclear family and values of the 50s or coming 80s? A scared set of consequences for the freedoms and experimentation of the 60s? I really don’t know. But it doesn’t work for me. If its saying something I’m too far removed from it to get it and I just don’t enjoy that kind of discomfort or brutality. Still, The Hills Have Eyes doesn’t bother me the way The Last House on the Left is. Some of that I think is probably maturity as a director/writer for Wes. He has dark comedy in this one but I think it works a lot better than the really off-putting goofiness in Last House. He also seems more reserved and holds some back. There’s a story that he wanted to go further with some things and the cast refused to do it so maybe he was forced into it, but it feels at least somewhat like him starting to grow out of his edge lord phase and into the director he’s more known for. From what I remember Alexandra Aja’s remake is SO much farther and brutal and while I know that stuff appeals to some it doesn’t for me. And I go back to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how I think it really is “tame” compared to a lot of the films born from it. And maybe some of the difference between Last House and The Hills comes from TCM and Wes learning a bit from Hooper’s use of the tension of imagination and what you know COULD happen rather than the need to actually follow through on it every time and wallow in its brutality. Craven kind of reshaped horror for a decade or so twice with Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream and while I think it would be hard to credit him for doing it a 3rd time with Hills given TCM’s seniority and influence, I do think the impact of this film can be felt. While there’s obviously similar themes with Leatherface’s family and Juniper’s family I do think this twisted “nuclear” version helped shape a lot going further. And if nothing else the film probably launched the careers of two horror icons in Dee Wallace and Michael Berryman. TCM deserves the credit for sure, but I think Hills probably gets an assist. And holy crap, check out this story I’ve never heard before. Its awesome. quote:While watching The Hills Have Eyes, director Sam Raimi noticed a ripped poster for Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) in a scene of the film. He "took it to mean that Wes Craven...was saying 'Jaws was just pop horror. What I have here is real horror.'" This inspired Raimi to include a ripped The Hills Have Eyes poster in his film The Evil Dead (1981), as a humorous way of telling Craven "No, this is the real horror, pal." Craven reacted to this by having Nancy Thompson fall asleep while watching The Evil Dead in his film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Raimi responded to that by including Freddy Krueger's glove in a scene of Evil Dead II (1987). Later, Craven would have characters in his film Scream (1996) choose to watch a VHS of Halloween (1978) instead of the VHS of The Evil Dead (1981) that they had. Then, in a first-season episode of Raimi's television show Ash vs Evil Dead, Krueger's glove can be glimpsed, while a poster for The Hills Have Eyes can be seen outside a movie theater in an episode of the show's second season. So I don’t love this film, but I didn’t hate it either. Its a solid and digestible watch. That’s a huge change from The Last House which I actively reviled and refuse to watch a second time. The Hills wasn’t great and not super my thing. And I could have gone without the animal cruelty and going 2/2 on movies that casually drop the n word. But I got through it, I could see myself watching it again, I really did enjoy parts of it, and I can see myself watching the sequel. And if nothing else the only real hero in the story is a good dog. October Tally - New (Total) 1. Eaten Alive (1976); 2. The Hills Have Eyes (1977); Letterboxd List STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 17:50
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 #20) Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) Starts off with a big-eared kid being possessed by a fire in a corn field, then heading over to a farmer's house to lightning-zap him over ownership of the field. Then some college-aged high school students on a road trip to scatter their friend's ashes (that classic rite of passage) stumble into the corn kids' territory, with predictable results. This is more in line with the quality expected of the CotC DTV sequels, as things are consistently dull (including the high-schoolers' stiff romance drama), and the cause behind the corn kids' corruption is severely underdeveloped. It does bring back He Who Walks Behind The Rows as a spiritual binder for the cornies, but His continuity with previous entries is patchy at best. There's a lot of dead stretches, just not much of anything going on, the blips of violence are insubstantial, and the final shot is Witchcraft levels of stupid. Rating: 4/10Watched on VHS.
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Sep 30, 2020 17:54
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That's awesome! I should have press-ganged you into making all of my stream interstitials
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Sep 30, 2020 18:07
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I almost volunteered at one point but I was kind of hoarding the gimmick for this. I have ideas.
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Sep 30, 2020 18:14
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9. Masque of the Red Death (1964 ) This is one of 8 of Corman's Poe adaptations. Several which start Vincent Price. Overall I really liked this , Price plays a rear end in a top hat prince who visits capricious and dastardly deeds upon the populace until he gets his come uppance. It's actually quite surreal film. It's most through out just a showing of all the depravity that the prince does. What I liked about this is that it is absolutely gorgeous to look at with vibrant colors through out. I will say its a bit slow going at first but once it hits the mid point it really starts ramping up. This is worth checking out if any one wants to just really get a feel for what Corman is capable of its well directed , action, and the set pieces are gorgeous. It's really just a gorgeous film. 9/31
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Sep 30, 2020 18:18
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#5: 1933 King Kong This is where my scheme to watch all the movies in order has really paid off. Watching Dracula, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy put me in the right headspace to understand how much King Kong must've blown people's tiny minds. Imagine, you're some dummy in the year 1933, you expect 50% of the runtime of a "monster movie" to be three well dressed men in a drawing room discussing whether or not the monster is real. And then you see King Kong. The first 25, 30 minutes are pretty standard. A man needs a woman to make a movie. Just one pretty girl, and a boatful of tough dudes. He finds a cute homeless girl and says he'll make her a star if she comes with him to a second location without telling anyone. She's wary, but then finds out that he's a bigshot in Hollywood, so clearly his offer to make her a star is legit and he has no ill intentions towards her. Then they're on a boat where she meets man who tells her every time he sees her that he hates women, women only cause problems, she shouldn't be here, she'll ruin everything. He is the love interest. Also there's a Chinese man with a humorously poor grasp of English. Then we meet the natives. And goddamn, this movie has easily the second most racist depiction of "natives" I've ever seen in a movie called King Kong. And then we meet Kong. And it is loving on. From the moment King Kong appears on screen, this movie goes into hyperdrive. There's a giant monkey, and then a dinosaur, and then a thrilling sequence of men falling to their deaths, and then another dinosaur, and then a t-rex fights Kong, and people are throwing bombs, and then Kong fucks up a village, and he steps on a guy, and then he eats a guy, and then he steps on another guy. It's just nonstop action. It slows down a bit after they bomb Kong to sleep, but then he gets loose and now he's running around New York! There's a giant monkey pulling ladies out of windows and derailing a subway and then he climbs the Empire State Building and gets attacked by planes! They released this in 1933, a time when a scary moment from a monster movie was Bela Lugosi mumbling under his breath in a museum. I swear to god as I was watching King Kong I kept thinking, this is the 1930s equivalent of Crank. 5 Movies Watched: Dracula, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, King Kong
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Sep 30, 2020 18:53
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4) L'Inferno (1911) Thanks to whoever it was that clued me into this existing on YouTube. It's fascinating to see how the narrative of cinema evolved in its early years, and when you compare this to a film like Caligari that came less than ten years later also somewhat amazing in its speed. L'Inferno is not a great piece, but it has a lot of things that I was surprised to see - a moving camera shot, composite frames, and even some wirework where the wires weren't visible. Sadly I didn't see a version with the original score, which for a silent movie is pretty much a requisite to get the experience, but the 2016 score is pretty good even if it sounds anachronistic.
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Sep 30, 2020 19:17
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I'm quite proud of this Pictionary, no guesses!?
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Sep 30, 2020 20:06
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2. Get Duked! (2019) Three delinquents and one good kid undertake the Duke of Edinburgh Challenge, a wilderness trek where they must work as a team to survive on their own. Only it seems that someone might be hunting these kids for sport. Alas. It’s horror comedy that leans pretty heavily towards the comedy. The movie does a pretty good job of skirting the line between these delinquents being annoying and charming. There is at least one too many “high on drugs” scenes, which, much like drunk scenes, are not as fun to watch as directors think. The effects during those drug scenes were pretty novel, at least. The film relies on some pretty absurd coincidences that you kind of forgive, because it’s mostly just about being young and dumb and trying to not get killed by Eddie Izzard. 3.5/5 3. His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009)  A mediocre, and slight, skim through the first ten Jason movies. It’s just kind of boring and bland, and almost bad enough to make me regret purchasing the Blu-Ray set. The first ~20 minutes is just a vague rehashing of the plots of the movies, told by some of the people who were involved or some horror fans. So that was an enjoyable “and then Jason fought a psychic!” level of analysis. Then we have very brief segments on the music, the kills, the critical response, and we end with a ~15 or so minute ad for the new better Jason coming soon to a theater near you! The only thing it really offers fans is some behind-the-scenes explanations of how they did several of the kill effects, which was kind of neat. Unfortunately those were surrounded by all that other fluff, and lots of either bland "it was fun!" commentary from participants, or mostly infantile "boobs are great gotta have boobs" commentary from fans. I don’t really need to watch the director of Hatchet tell me “oh yeah she had the best tits!”. Great! Super insightful stuff. 1/5
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Sep 30, 2020 20:14
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STAC Goat posted:Ok, I broke.  Dead and Buried (1981) "Welcome to Potter's Bluff!" This was cool! I learned of it recently from somebody here, it's on Shudder - a former "video nasty" slasher from the writers behind Alien and Total Recall. We follow a small-town New England Sheriff as he tries to solve murders, but in the meantime, the murder victims start showing up around town. Voodoo zombies! You've got cool effects from Stan Winston, a pre-Freddy Robert Englund, and Charlie Bucket's Grandpa Joe as the town mortician. Big Stephen King vibes, some cool twists, and a slick ending. 4/5SA October Horror Challenge Count: 6/40 The Berzerker fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 20:27
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#8) Last House on the Left (1972) In a vacuum, I don't think this movie is very impressive. But when you look at it in the context of everything that came after it, it becomes really fascinating. You can see the seeds of things like the revenge slasher, and a TON of stuff that Rob Zombie ripped off for his sort of oeuvre. It's even interesting to compare and contrast with the remake which, honestly, I thought was a better film. But you can see how 30 years of cinematically iterating on the horror genre fed back into the LHotL formula and made a better movie. Historically, an important film, but not one that stands very well on its own merits. 3 / 5 Total: 8 1. Don't Look Under the Bed (1999) / 2. Mom and Dad (2017) / 3. Daughters of Darkness (1971) / 4. Snuff (1975) / 5. Southbound (2015) / 6. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) / 7. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) / 8. Last House on the Left (1972)
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Sep 30, 2020 20:36
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