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16. The Asphyx (1972) A Victorian Gothic Horror produced by Cinema Epoch , and not really starring anyone of major note . That being said this is a excellent science fiction gothic horror. If you really like scientist experimenting and solving mysteries of life and finding the horror around that then this i definitely for you its one of the unseen gems of that horror genre. I really recommend it and its just really great with excellent acting , cinematography, and a plot that' interesting through out. It may come off a little dry and the horror element is more HP Lovecraft than what people expect, but if you like that then you'll really love this movie Highly Recommended. 16/31 Hollismason fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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Oct 2, 2020 21:44
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2. Bride of Re-Animator Starting the movie in a "bloody civil war" was an interesting choice since the only purpose of that opening seemed to be introducing another love interest that forgives Dan for committing crimes against nature. Again, the effects were fantastic - especially during the repeated "everything goes to poo poo" portion of the last 15-20 minutes. The titular Bride looked especially gross and undead. While I think overall the movie was weaker than the first, I still really enjoyed it. I wasn't expecting Chekhov's bat wings at all. I recommend checking both this and the first movie out if you somehow have missed watching it like I have. 7/10.
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Oct 2, 2020 21:57
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 Altered States (1980) "Our atoms are six billion years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our minds." Watching for the Horror Director Bracketology finals. This is an extremely cool movie about a scientist (William Hurt, A+) who gets too deep into his research, the hypothesis being that altering your consciousness can create a new one that is just as real as your 'awake' state. He starts hanging out in a sensory deprivation tank and taking trippy drugs (the trips play out on screen in exciting, aggressive, 2001: A Space Odyssey-type of ways). I have spent some time in a sensory deprivation tank and let me tell you, it usually just gives you salt water in your butt crack, it doesn't temporarily turn you into a caveman. I would like to watch this again sometime, but on drugs. Also I think goons will be mad at me but I'm probably voting for this over Miike, I guess that's a conversation for the other thread, though... oh! and Bob Balaban! I love Bob Balaban.  4.5/5SA October Horror Challenge Count: 12/40
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Oct 2, 2020 22:02
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 #30) Boogeyman II (1983) Lacey, the haunted woman from the first Boogeyman, has moved to Hollywood, and brought not just her trauma, but also a piece of the possessed mirror. The start of the movie busies itself with recap footage lifted from the first film for the first twenty minutes or so of this seventy-five-minute film, then it's on into some slipshod supernatural murders once she decides to show someone the mirror shard for no real reason. And a character poo poo-talks de Palma's Blow Out somewhere in there, amidst a telephone game idea of Hollywood socializing. The weird, amateurish charm of the first one's delirious story and expression is lost with this one, as is the weird inventiveness of the violence (for example, in this one, one of the demonic murders is just... making someone's car explode). And then it just abruptly ends. Not worth the time spent to watch it, but it does have the line “In America, exploitation is a genre.” Rating: 4/10Watched on Youtube, an upload of a Betamax rip.
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Oct 2, 2020 22:02
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 52) The Midnight Hour - 1985 - Youtube This TV movie's so 80s my hair boofed and my nightshirt spontaneously popped shoulderpads. Storyline's the traditional curse gets activated on Halloween and needs to get broken before it becomes permanent. I liked the soundtrack on this and overall the makeup wasn't too shabby. I found it overall fairly fun. I'll definitely be adding this to my seasonal viewing. Franchescanado posted:Fran Challenge #1: Horror Noire  53) Vampires vs The Bronx - 2020 - Netflix Vampires and Gentrification. This combo goes so well together I'm surprised we haven't seen it sooner. While this one is PG-13, it completely works. The horror comes from multiple angles. Where to begin on this one...right from the start there's ample references and callbacks to all things vampire connected. I liked the little touches like the influencer's message chat mentioned things like people disappearing and what local businesses were now gone. I liked the varying approach to depicting gentrification being damaging to the neighborhood. Even the most oblivious out there knows about how the apartment rents go up, but seeing the local businesses go and get replaced with stores like a buttery (Who the hell goes to a store just for flavored butter? You can make that stuff at home.) or stores carrying more pricey goods instead of reasonably priced goods. I also liked how it presented the varying local attitudes ranging from 'I'm outta here' to trying to keep the neighborhood together. The cast did a wonderful job and I can honestly say I never expected to see Method Man as a priest. I enjoyed this very much and would put it in a double feature with Monster Squad.
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Oct 2, 2020 22:31
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6)Papi Ramirez vs Giant Scorpions-salem horrorfest 2020. maybe also vimeo?FRan Challenge #1 Horror Noire First off this movie is charming as hell, and Leslie Rivera needs to be given a budget. It's a no budget, more or less one man, filmed pretty much completely in a rental storage unit with a greenscreen and miniatures affair. It's not like Birdemic, which is you know terrible. This is good. It's got "adult swim, but sincere" vibes. So yea it's a cool film made and starring an incredibly talented dude. It's a short film, and followed by a little making of doc.  It's a tribute to 50's B-movies and deals with parenthood and toxic masculinity. Which you don't see a ton of in horror, at least from an afro latino perspective. I can't recommend it enough. /56/31 haunt, bridge curse, #alive, the strings, amber's descent, papi ramirez vs giant scorpions
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Oct 2, 2020 23:06
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Looks very fun, but not up on Vimeo yet 
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Oct 2, 2020 23:10
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George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (Unrated Edition) I love, love, LOVE this film. One of my favorite zombie movies. It might not be the classic that Night and Dawn are, but it's great. I love the script, I love the characters, I love the zombies, I love the kills, I love Dead Reckoning, and I love the message it has. Eat the rich indeed. Five out of Five Sky Flowers. Watched the Unrated Edition SE DVD
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Oct 2, 2020 23:16
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 #31) Don't Go Near the Park (1979) Something something, some folks are cursed to eternal life but also accelerated aging, something something “And Introducing Linnea Quigley”, something something, they can rejuvenate themselves through cannibalism. Features what may be the most explosion-prone van in cinematic history. Initially, I thought this was one of those Italian films where it's hard to tell whether it's the dubbing, editing, or scripting making it difficult to follow along, particularly since it's one of the Video Nasties. But no, it was an American film, just a real patchy script. At one point, I worried the movie had glitched back to the first scene. There's some magic in the mix, some sexual assault to take the fun out of things (including some done by an eight-year-old, whose given excuse is “I didn't know you were alive,”), and some nicely grotesque practical effects. But in the end, as much nutty stuff gets thrown in along the way, I felt like I was too far adrift from what was going on to fully hook into it. Rating 5/10Watched on digital copy. Darthemed fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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Oct 2, 2020 23:58
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 1. The Lighthouse (new) - This was amazing. Beautiful cinemetography, and some of the best acting I've seen in any horror movie. The monologues were great, and the way the characters grew with each other and interacted was perfect. I love all the questions it leaves you with. Did the same thing happen 3 times (Coworker died in each of their pasts and between also during the movie)? Was Thomas just gaslighting Ephraim and everything was just in Ephraim's head? Probably right up in my top 10 horror movies now. Definite 5/5  2. The Abominable Dr. Phibes (rewatch) - Has some of the most original (and cutest) deaths in any horror movie. I like how nonthreatening the bats and rats were, they were just hanging out the whole time. It moves a bit fast to really get a connection to any of the victims save the last, but I guess you have to move fast to get that many planned kills in. Feels a little light after coming from the Lighthouse immediately before, but it's a nice little campy themed killer movie. 3/5 New: 1. The Lighthouse Rewatches: 1. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
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Oct 3, 2020 00:08
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17. X-The Man with the X Ray Eyes (1963) Directed and Produced by Roger Corman. This is just really great mad scientist horror. I will say that the film is closer in horror tone to a episode of The Twilight Zone. Ray Milland stars as a scientist whose goal is to further the ability of man's sight so that man can see the full spectrum of sight. He succeeds. Things go badly. Don Wrinkles is in this as well because why not . This is probably one of Corman's better films he was really on fire during this period of time with regard to the quality and quantity of product produced. Don't go in expecting a super gross horror film , but the last few minutes of the film leave a strong impression. Overall really loved it. 17/31
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Oct 3, 2020 00:08
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2. The House at the End of Time (2013) An old woman is released from prison into house arrest in the home where he family died... with spooky results. This one is a slowwww burn. For the first 70 minutes I was thinking all I'd have to say about it is "This movie is loving boring". But when it does shift, it turns out it's a very well crafted, thought out and interesting movie. The pace picks way up and it turns out that the title isn't just a bad translation. Somehow I picked two movies in a row by random that are about motherhood. 3.5/5 Skrillmub fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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Oct 3, 2020 00:54
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 #32) The Monster of Camp Sunshine or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nature (1964) Black and white nudist flick, but the twist is it's not directed by Doris Wishman. Two roommates, one a model, the other a nurse, spend time together at a nudist camp to get away from the pressures of their careers. Unfortunately, one of the doctors the nurse works with discovered a chemical combination which drives animals into a violent, frenzied state (read: someone throws a rat at the actress from off-camera). To safely dispose of this dangerous compound, they chuck it into a river, which is fished out (explicitly upstream), driven to another place, and accidentally tipped into the waters of the nudist camp, where the mentally impaired gardener drinks some right up. This movie manages to balance the long, dull scenes of nudists (always framed or prop-aided to avoid showing anything more than breasts or butts) with goofily earnest-seeming testimonials as to how relaxed or happy being a nudist makes someone feel. The acting is amateurish at best, but endearingly so, and the monster mutation amounts to some facial wound appliques and a few chains to wear. poo poo goes extremely off the rails in the third act, when the monster's one successful attack on a camper leads to the sudden arrival of military men with mortars, cavalry, anti-aircraft artillery, and dynamite, while the doctor tries to deliver a curative serum. The movie has enough of a sense of humor about itself to charm me, and while I don't imagine I'll revisit this anytime soon, I'm sure I'll smile every time it comes to mind. Rating: 5/10Watched on Tubi.
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Oct 3, 2020 01:13
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Yay I'm out of the 30s! I've made it to the swingin' 40s. I'm one step closer to seeing movies in color again. #11: 1940 The Mummy's Hand  Finally, a mummy. A proper movie monster mummy. Covered in bandages, lumbering around, dusty. A mummy. The Mummy series is like Friday the 13th; the monster associated with it doesn't actually show up until the second one. The entire first half of the movie is about the two guys trying to get financing for an expedition. One of them is from Brooklyn and he's always cracking wise, as they do. Eventually they find the mummy, who is in thrall of an evil Egyptian priest. He lumbers around, kills a couple extremely minor characters, carries a lady around, and eventually gets set on fire. I'm pretty sure this is the first movie I've seen in this challenge featuring the classic "monster carrying the lady" pose, so that's nice. It's basically a slasher movie. All the characters get set up, they go someplace secluded, and then a bad guy shows up to wreak havoc Overall, it's fine. I didn't hate it. Nothing is particularly great. It passed the time. 11 Movies Watched: Dracula, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, King Kong, Son of Kong, The Bride of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Hand
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Oct 3, 2020 01:20
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Hollismason posted:16. The Asphyx (1972) Robert Powell was definitely of major note, at least in the UK. He was in The Italian Job, starred in the original Doomwatch, and later became world famous for playing the title part in Jesus of Nazareth.
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Oct 3, 2020 01:33
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 6. The Human Monster (1939) - Tubi As The Dark Eyes of London, the first British film to receive the "H" rating ("Horrific for Public Exhibition"), released in America under the above title. I'm a bit confused as to how, as I know the Hays Office hated strangulation with a passion and I can't see how forcibly drowning people is any better. Also, the antagonist escapes lawful punishment by dying instead, another no-no. A Poverty Row role for Lugosi, he plays an insurance salesman who, unbeknownst to them, signs his "customers" up for policies and then has his henchman drown them and dump the corpse in the Thames. The film focuses largely on the police investigation of all these mysterious drownings, but Lugosi does a great job playing the helpful salesman (and benefactor of a home for the blind) and then turning the horrific evil up to 11 at the close of the film. 4/5  7. Midnight Shadow (1939) - Tubi quote:Fran Challenge #1: Horror Noire The only part I'm not sure about is if it's horror, but it's fundamentally not that different than The Human Monster in that it's dealing with an unknown murderer and focuses largely on the police investigation and Bleeding Skull says it is. There is a suggestion (by an idiot) that the killer could be a werewolf. A "race film" with an all black cast with a first time black director, this opens with "(in predominately black communities in the South), these people of darker hue have demonstrated their abilities in self-government by the orderly processes of law of which they are capable when unhampered by outside influences." Which I believe is 1939ese for "gently caress you, racists." And the movie is completely free of stereotypes, mostly. We open with Prince Alihabad courting Margaret in small town Oklahoma, and in the opening scene, he and her father quite happily agree that God and Allah are the same thing and it's no big deal. Happy with his daughter's suitor, her father shows Alihabad the map of his oil fields, goes to bed, and is promptly murdered, with the map going missing. Margaret's spurned suitor Buster goes on a (relatively mild, given your uncle's Facebook posts) anti-Muslim rant about this, and is shut down hard by the police sergeant with a straight up "so you did it, and thought you'd get away with blaming the foreigner." Two bumbling private detectives, modelling themselves after Holmes and Watson - and there is a bit of the "goofy black guy" stereotype that movies from the 30's are rife with, but there's also a lot of Laurel & Hardy in there, especially in the physical comedy - end up cracking the case before the police, following the map to Shreveport, and capturing the murderer. Then Alihabad is revealed as a fraud, Buster throws the worst stage punch I've ever seen, and mostly everyone lives happily ever after. As a film, it was nothing remarkable in and of itself, and some of the (almost all first- and only-time) actors drop character and lines every once in a while, but it's an interesting look at African American filmmaking in the very early days. 3/5 As it is on Tubi, there are a couple of issues. First, there's a hiss throughout. While it's not bad enough to detract from the dialogue, it is annoying. Second, the murder scene is quite drawn out, and the murderer's face is visible... but the visual fidelity is too bad to make it out. He's too tall to be Alihabad, but it could be Buster (it's not). I wonder if contemporary audiences could make out the killer's face well enough to know that it's not Buster, or if that was still up in the air until the reveal.
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Oct 3, 2020 01:45
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5) Christine (1983) Keith Gordon in a much better film, which I haven't seen since I watched it on a fuzzy portable TV in the late 90s. It manages to be better than I remember it being; definitely one of the best King adaptations, and a solid movie in its own right. The effects in particular have aged very, very well. 6) Nothing (2002) Did you know that Vincenzo Natali was black? No? Well he isn't, so this is not my Fran Challenge movie. Apart from Cypher this may well be Natali's least known movie, which is a shame because it's one of his best. It has a simple premise: two losers (played by Cube alumni David Hewlett and Andrew Miller), finding themselves put upon by the world, somehow abolish the entirety of creation outside their house. The rest is a psychodramatic comedy examining Sartre's assertion that hell is eternity in a room with your friends.
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Oct 3, 2020 01:48
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Double Feature: Punk Horror. Watched these October 1, but didn't get to the write-up until today. New #1: The Return of the Living Dead (1985) Had intended to watch this for years based on all the praise, which it turns out is well-deserved. Perhaps one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. It's a pseudo-sequel to Night of the Living Dead due to some weirds rights stuff, treating the original movie as a fictionalized retelling of actual events that covered up the culpability of the US military and Dow Chemicals (or whoever). Pittsburgh managed to put down the zombie uprising, but Louisville proves less resilient and in a cascading series of failures involving a blowhard manager, greedy small business owner, unethical mortician, the police, and the US military, a zombie uprising is put down but the system nevertheless destroys itself. It's got comedy, gore, nudity, with this anarchic energy and clockwork construction. Every character, every monster stands out. I wish we got a little more with Linnea Quigley's post-transformation monster, but the ending being this interruption of the uprising, followed immediately by its expansion through the same system that created it in the first place, is so perfect that I wouldn't change anything. An absolute treasure. http://i.imgur.com/LZOJ6oF.gifv Rewatch #2: Green Room (2015) A punk band plays a show at a neo-Nazi hangout, end up seeing something they shouldn't, and end up in a standoff with the skinheads. Another beautifully put-together movie. There's a lot you notice on a rewatch on this, the way all the revelations in the second half are set up in the first. And a movie with a great sense of place, both in the venue and the people. Contrasted with Return of the Living Dead, the band members are much more subdued as archetypes, but are all wonderfully rendered, with Anton Yelchin in particular bringing a heartbreaking vulnerability to his character. http://i.imgur.com/QniGcFe.gifv Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 3, 2020 02:05
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 Day of the Animals, 1977 The ozone layer is dying, causing chemical imbalance in the brains of animals at higher altitudes or something. They mention a mutated virus at the end. It doesn't really matter. This is about animals attacking people and that's cool enough regardless of what excuse the movie give. A group of hikers are helicoptered up at the mountains in California for a camping trip before all this goes down. Stuff gets weird with animals acting strangely and we got vicious birds, wolf, cougar, bear and dog attacks that are pretty well filmed. Leslie Nielsen is in it as an complete rear end in a top hat. Sort of funny seeing him in a serious role as he pretty much only did comedies after Airplane and the Naked Gun movies, but it easy to forget he was a serious actor before those movies. Over all, this is a pretty rad movie. I was bit worried in the start that this would be one of those movies where nothing happens for ages while they tease it might get exciting at some point, but Day of the Animal keeps the action well parsed while letting us get to know the characters before they get killed off. Over all a pretty good movie that delivers the goods it promises.
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Oct 3, 2020 02:12
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4) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Watched on Amazon Prime  Filling in yet another embarrassing gap in my horror CV. Some fantastic performances from Dennis Hopper and Bill Moseley combined with an overall grimy and eclectic aesthetic made for a first viewing that I really enjoyed for the most part. I see why it’s a classic, but I have no desire to revisit it unless I fast-forward through the dinner table scene with Stretch screaming nonstop and the family egging on grandpa to smash her head in. Maybe my ears are more sensitive than most and while I’m sure the movie had its intended effect on me with the cacophony, no thanks. Lessons learned: A. Leatherface’s chainsaw-over-the-head wiggle is reminiscent of an NES boss limited by 8-bit animation. B. Stretch’s screams and shouts of “go away” early in the film are eerily similar to Kurt Cobain’s on "Scentless Apprentice." C. I see what you did there Rob Zombie.
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Oct 3, 2020 02:40
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Lumbermouth posted:The best part about Five Dolls For An August Moon is the soundtrack by Piero Umiliani, the dude who wrote Mahna Mahna. It sounds like he's getting paid extra for every instrument he adds to the score. For sure. I meant to mention that as one of the reasons I was just enjoying my watch so much. Beyond kind of shallow, confusing characters and a pretty thin story and a mystery I'm not even sure I understand the whole thing was just 80 minutes of bopping music on a gorgeous beach with gorgeous people feeling so unconcerned. I was just grooving. Its a big part of why I wasn't really sure this was horror until that whole "anti-giallo" thing clicked for me.
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Oct 3, 2020 02:56
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Loving the reviews everyone. Pretty sure I already have a full watch list for next year just from the recs in this thread. 
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Oct 3, 2020 02:56
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18. The Haunted Palace 1963 Directed and Produced by Roger Corman , this is the apocryphal part of the Poe Cycle , because it just has the title and marketed as a story from Poe but is actually a HP Lovecraft story. In fact this is I believe one of the very first adaptations of HP Lovecraft on film. It stars Vincent Price and Lon Chaney Jr. The story is rather loosely based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. This is just some great Gothic Horror. Its gotta really tight story clocking in at like 87 minutes and the film doesn't waste any of its time. Really check it out if you love Lovecraftian horror because its probably one of the better adaptations of Lovecrafts work. 18/31
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Oct 3, 2020 03:20
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#5 House of 1,000 Corpses (rewatch) Rob Zombie, 2003 Netflix  The only other time I've seen this was back when it was new, nearly 18 years ago. I remember coming away with a general negative opinion. It was messy, unfocused and tonally confused. It IS those things, but what I failed to appreciate back then was how incredibly pure it is. This is the work of a hungry director spilling his passion for horror on the screen, and absolutely going for loving broke. It's unpretentious and unapologetic. Zombie has his influences, sure, but this is a ROB ZOMBIE movie through and through. The kinetic aesthetic on display here is uniquely his. And as much as he may be paying homage to his favorite horror, the film is utterly unpredictable. Every moment is one of "what the gently caress?" In a broad sense it follows a formula, but the moments that comprise the scenes are so utterly bizarre that it's hard to tell where he's headed next. For instance, I knew Rainn Wilson would likely die, but did I know he'd be mutilated to the sounds of "Brick House" and then presented as a morbid fish-themed dinner tableaux? Nope. Huh uh. I did not. When you think it's going to zig, it zags. And when you think it's going to zag, it cuts to a grainy shot of Sheri Moon's rear end cheeks. So does it actually succeed as a horror film? Yes, I'd say it does. Don't tell me Dr. Satan isn't scary as poo poo. 4/5
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Oct 3, 2020 03:41
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Franchescanado posted:Fran Challenge #1: Horror Noire 3. Ganja and Hess - Shudder  Being a movie from 1973 with a $350,000 budget means some things are a bit rough... The combination of at times very sketchy picture and audio quality with some rough editing can make it a bit hard to follow. (Mild spoilers) The opening text crawl confused me and I it wasn't until I read a plot summary afterwards that I realized when Hess becomes a vampire; I thought he was one when the movie started. The fact that bagged blood didn't work for him also escaped me. Turning Ganja into a vampire also seemed like it happened pretty quickly and with very sketchy consent. It did have some very striking cinematography at times, though. I didn't really understand the point of the two vulgar initial stories that Meda and Ganja told. Ganja goes a lot deeper with her second story so I suppose it was showing how there's more to her than it initially seemed? Pretty interesting overall; probably would never have watched it without seeing Horror Noire and this challenge. Spike Lee apparently made a remake in 2014. It got pretty mediocre reviews, but I'm curious to watch that one now. 4. The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) - Shudder  I wanted to watch some classic spook-a-doodles - not just old films, but ones with spooky skeletons and people dressing in 5 layers. This one certainly qualifies! I really haven't watched too many Vincent Price movies and I should probably change that. david_a fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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Oct 3, 2020 03:57
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 (11) Frankenweenie (2012) Dir. Tim Burton A young boy’s dog dies and he uses the regular lightning storm to bring him back to life. With plans to enter him in the science fair, his classmates demand to know how he did it so they can resurrect their own pets and win the science fair instead of him. Another charming Tim Burton stop motion film. This one is based on a short he did ages ago. Not as charming as Corpse Bride but still good, much more of a kids movie than his other work.  Fran Challenge #1 Horror Noire (12) Blacula (1972) Dir. William Crain Dracula is entertaining an African prince when he gets tired of tired of the prince’s requests to fight slavery and decides to turn him into a vampire instead. To add insult to injury, he renames the prince Blacula. In the present day he is revived and starts building an army of followers while a local doctor is trying to piece together what could be causing all these people to show up with no blood and strange bite marks on their neck. A fun movie that’s still serious at the same time. Well worth watching.  (13) BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2010) Dir. Uwe Boll Rayne is back and fighting Nazis this time. In the opening fight she accidentally bleeds on one which gives her super-vampire powers to him. Clint Howard is a Nazi scientist researching vampires. The Nazi vampire and him team up to start creating more Nazi vampires. Meanwhile Rayne has teamed up with the local resistance who are dismayed she has accidentally given a Nazi super-vampire powers. Eventually they all fight in a big ol’ battle. A visual improvement from the previous movie, but it’s still Uwe Boll so it's still a lazy movie. The trim run time and an extra long bordello scene filled with nudity cuts down on the amount of time available for action anyways. Totals: (1) Tombs of the Blind Dead (Spanish) (1972) (2) Child’s Play 3 (1991) (3) The City of the Dead (1960) (4) Count Dracula’s Great Love (Spanish) (1973) (5) The Phantom Carriage (Swedish/Silent) (1921) (6) Dracula 2000 (2000) (7) BloodRayne: Deliverance (2007) (8) Slugs (1988) (9) Red Riding Hood (2011) (10) Thir13en Ghosts (2001) (11) Frankenweenie (2012) (12) Blacula (1972) (13) BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2010) Death: 1, Ghosts: 1, Monsters: 2, Serial Killers: 1, Vampires: 5, Werewolves: 1, Witches: 1, Zombies: 1
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Oct 3, 2020 03:58
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 Come and See (first time watch, DVD) Went with a more unconventional movie, this one about the horrors of war and I think harrowing has never been put to better use. Through a young boy's eyes (sometimes literal POV shots) you watch the random and deliberate cruelties of war in an unblinking, clear-eyed view. It's basically watching Jacob's Ladder but hell is actual war. Klimov shows some beautiful moments of beauty, including a surreal dance among rainbows, that make the eventual death and destruction all the more terrible. The wide shots, the involvement of the viewer, the close-ups and the black humour all combine to leave your stomach churning and horrified in an all-too realistic way. One of the most powerful movies I've seen. 5/5 2/31 1. Eyes Without a Face
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Oct 3, 2020 03:59
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 3. Near Dark Near Dark is a genre-bending vampire movie that's just a little bit country with a little bit of romance in its soul. It works a lot better than you'd think. Most vampire movies tend to depict them as glamorous and aristocratic or mindless hungry monsters, so it was novel to see a gang of rowdy southern vampires (yee yee) for a change. It had a lot of fun moments, most of which were provided by Bill Paxton, who is just so fun in this. For the bad, since I'm not really the romantic type, and I particularly hate the true-love-at-first-sight trope (especially since the dude refused to bring her home if she didn't give him a kiss), I didn't find the romance to be compelling at all. All in a while, I feel like I'm left wanting. I'm not sure if I'd like more background on the characters (that might ruin the mystique) or if I wanted to follow the gang around a little more or if I just wanted more Bill Paxton gallivanting with his little spurred boots (it's probably this). Nonetheless, this was a fun movie. -------  Fran Challenge #1: Horror Noire 4. Horror Noire I really appreciated this documentary. I kept meaning to watch this, but something else always drew my attention. I'm really glad I finally got the push to do so. As a horror-loving black person, I've always regretted the dearth of black people in horror movies that weren't metaphorical stand-ins, sacrificial lambs or cannon fodder. It was really interesting to have a lot of my feelings about horror reflected here. The historical contextualization was really interesting. I loved all the little behind the scenes tidbits from all the actors, too.
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Oct 3, 2020 04:07
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 2. The Invisible Man (1933) dir. James Whale (Rewatch) Bride of Frankenstein gets a lot of inventing camp, but this is the more definitively campy movie. Bride is a bit too tragic to be pure camp whereas The Invisible Man is Whale having fun. It's truly silly and just a plain old hoot. Bride has a lot of humor to it, but The Invisible Man feels much more modern in its sensibilities. It's also mad gay. The Invisible Man is almost identical in its setup as Frankenstein. A young dashing scientist has been taken by unnatural interests that distract him from a normal life with a woman. In Frankenstein, the queer figures of the Doctor and monster are sympathetic, but Jack is a straight up rear end in a top hat. But the film never stops to remind you this dude is naked. His first truly invisible scene has him still wearing his shirt which sort of emphasizes the implication that his dick is flopping about. There is also something somewhat kinky about Kemp's treatment, essentially becoming Jack's slave. The Invisible Man starts with this guy trying to quietly live in the closet, gets harassed, and then terrorizes people in various states of undress. It's not as clean its metaphors as the Frankensteins, but I take Whale at his word that he never intended queerness in his films. But it is a movie where people are often threatened with the danger of male nudity. /5 3. The Invisible Man (2020) dir. Leigh Whannell Attempts at reviving old Universal Monsters always feels wonky to me because the new products don't really FEEL like old Universal Movies. That to some degree is inevitable. Stuff like the original The Invisible Man was creating tropes we'd see for decades. Part of it is that old Universal Horror films really explored tropes that transcended horror. Dracula and The Invisible Man are more proto-supervillains that anything else. When Universal tried to spin the Universal Monsters into quasi-Superheroes, you can see the logic in it. Still, you end up with a product that spiritually doesn't feel like its predecessors. Part of it is that the monsters aren't unique to Universal. There are other Dracula adaptions and tons of Invisible Man poo poo. Just making a Frankenstein movie doesn't necessarily feel like a Universal Frankenstein movie. But Whannell's The Invisible Man feels like its at least in conversation with the original. Whale's films is a campy comedy whereas Whannell's is straight horror/thriller. And it's legitimately scary. I always found Hollow Man to not be scary and its rapist main character to be cheap. Whannell's film very directly deals with rape, but chooses to never show it. The sexual abuse of our main character is only discussed, but is irrelevant. We see the effects of it and that's what the story is about. As mentioned, Whale didn't set out to make The Invisible Man gay, and the reading is contradicted because Jack is a patriarchal character. He dreams of murdering, robbing, and raping without consequence. He wants people groveling at his feet. Whannell's Invisible Man exists in stark contrast. He too is a mad scientist, but the film never really implies that he's particularly famous. San Fransisco is played as dark and foreboding like Transylvania might be in an older Universal picture. I think the film plays with the idea that the Bay Area is filled with a bunch of millionaire tech bros doing god knows what, just quietly becoming rich and reshaping the world. I think this is one of the main things that makes it FEEL like a Universal Horror Movie. The villain does not feel mundane. His world is cold and scary and not ours, even if he's an exaggeration of what already exists. More importantly though Whannell's Invisible Man is defined by just how petty he is. Despite the fact that his invention could make him the most important person who ever lived, he can't get over that this one lady left him. So, he puts all of his effort into that. Whannell's film is smart because it portrays the patriarchy as not defined by actual kings, but mini-dictators. Men who control others in such small ways that they seem to not matter to anyone else besides them and their victims. Beyond just being in conversation with the original, their are nice visual connections. Kemp gets a counterpart with a different name and context, but same role and similar appearance. I had mixed feelings about the supersuit as I do thing the idea of the Invisible Man's dick flopping around is important, but it does a good job of invoking the silhouette of the classic bandage look. It's a bit long, over two hours. But I think it feels like a gothic thriller more than a pure horror movie. Good stuff. /5
Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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Oct 3, 2020 04:13
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#1 Possessor 2020 Brandon Cronenberg  The opportunity to see Possessor in theater came up and, having not gone to a movie in six months or so, I decided I would take the chance if I felt that I would be able to do so in a way that was reasonably safe. I checked the seating of the movie a couple hours before it was set to begin and saw only 3 other people had reserved seats in the room, all of whom would be in excess of ten feet from me. It was enough, spoilers below. The main idea of Possessor isn't difficult to pick up on, the drive home took about a half hour and that was plenty of time to figure it out. The true horror of possessor is not having your identity or body hijacked or even losing your identity and sense of self. While these are teased by the opening of the film, by the end it is made clear that the main character Tasya was always herself, which is the real horror. The first hint comes in the opening assassination scene, where Tasya murders her target with repeated stabs of a knife, before trying to kill her host via suicide, only to find that she cannot shoot herself in the head. Thankfully an eager cop shows up who, after immobilizing her Black female host, executes the helpless woman with a close-up shot to the head. Both Tasya's inability to fire and the cops eagerness to are key. Tasya goes to spend time with her estranged husband and son, it is clear she is nervous about appearing normal and okay, as she suspects there has been some bleed of her last host's personality onto her. Her relationship with her child and husband is shown as awkward and cold, she calls her boss and asks to return to work right away, then lies to her spouse about being called off on a work trip. The mission which is at the heart of the film has Tasya tasked with possessing a former drug-dealer who is engaged to the daughter of a tech billionaire who's company deals in data harvesting. He has been given a demeaning job by his condescending father-in-law to-be, using people's smart devices to figure out what drapes and curtains would best be advertised to them. It is equivalent to solving captcha test's for a living. She is tasked with killing the billionaire and his daughter, under the pretext that the host has become bitter and enraged at this treatment. When the time comes she kills the billionaire, not with the provided gun but a fireplace poker, which gives us a satisfyingly awful bit of body horror involving popping out teeth and an eyeball. The daughter walks in and Tasya grabs the gun, wounding her. She then follows the host's fiance and executes her with a shot to the head. She attempts to "log out" by executing her host, but once again cannot shoot herself in the head. The host, Colin, wrestle back some amount of control and stabs himself in the head, damaging the implant which is used to hijack his body. Scared and confused, he flees the mansion and arrives at the apartment of the woman he is cheating on his fiance with. He stumbles for an explanation of why he is bleeding and what happened, briefly claiming that he "did it for her" so that they could "be together" before getting his story straight and simply saying that there'd been a fight and he needed to stay with her for a couple days. She allows it and goes to take a shower, during which time Tasya apparently regains control and shoots Colin's girlfriend. Colin's friend Eddie shows up and it turns out he's a mole in the company working for Tasya's employer. He knocks out Colin and attempts to repair the implant, but Colin's mind fights back and Eddie is shot while Colin and Tasya fight for control. Colin awakens t find that his friend has been killed by Tasya just like his girlfriend and fiance. But he has been inside Tasya's head and knows where her family lives. He goes there, places a gun against her husband's head and threatens to shoot him. She responds, coldly, by stating that he'd be doing her a favor. Because she wants to kill her husband. That's the idea of the whole film, the biggest horror is facing ourselves honestly and recognizing that we do awful things because we want to. It wasn't just shooting herself that Tasya was unable to do, she was unable to shoot a gun at all. Scenes of her hand shaking, seizing up, hint that she has some problem with fine finger control both in and out of host. Colin wanted to kill his fiance, he wanted to kill his girlfriend, he wanted to kill his friend and HE was the one who did those things. Tasya being in his head was an excuse that liberated him to do all those terrible things. The first host, the Black woman (who was a hostess, wink-wink), being a threat was the excuse for the cop to shoot her. But once she'd been immobilized and was no longer a threat he still executed her. Why? Because the simple truth is he wanted to kill her. Maybe it was her gender, maybe it was her race, maybe he just wanted to kill someone. Regardless, he did it because he wanted to, just like Colin shot his wife, girlfriend and friend because he wanted to, just like Tasya stabbed her husband to death with a knife because she wanted to. So here's the kicker, the bit that stuck in me. Even with my mask on the whole time and distance from the very few people at the movie, I still took a risk that could endanger myself and the people I come in contact with. Family members, work colleagues, etc... I might claim I did it because I hadn't seen a movie in theater for so long, or because I had been looking forward to it for a long time, but the naked truth is I did it because I wanted to. It's not as horrifying as having murdered someone with endless hacking via a butcher knife, but it still feels lovely to admit to myself. So thanks Brandon Cronenberg, for making me feel like an rear end. Five stars. out of 5
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Oct 3, 2020 04:31
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#2: Alice, Sweet Alice Another one I've seen on Prime's listings for a bit and watched for the first time. The film revolves around the murder of a young girl at church, and suspicion immediately falls upon the titular Alice, her disturbed older sister. In fact it's one of those situations where she's so blatantly suspicious that it can't possibly be her, but the film has some effective misdirection before actually unveiling the killer some time before the end. This is a very stylish thriller, almost like an American giallo, with a colorful cast of characters/suspects and a lot of focus on the Italian-American Catholic experience. It's long for a mystery but kinda earns it- overall it's quite compelling and effective, a minor classic that needs revisiting (and a restoration, the print Prime has is terrible.)
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Oct 3, 2020 04:32
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 54) Color Out of Space - 2019 - Shudder My Mom's biggest gripe about Lovecraft adaptations was that they always fell flat when it came to showing eldritch horrors. Only film she felt came close was the Horror in Rock n Rule which convinced her that animation was the way to go. I think this movie would've changed her mind. I thought the mutations were handled well, though I did get Carpenter's The Thing vibes from the alpacas in the barn mutation. Cast was hit or miss with me. I didn't like Lavinia, but Ward Phillips was done exceptionally well. If they do end up having this be a sort of launch point for new Lovecraft adaptations, as long as the actor for Ward's the same, I'm very interested in seeing where it goes. Overall, I liked this and recommend it.  55) Color Out of Space - 2010 - Prime This is my favorite adaptation of the story. It does have a side lead in story that works pretty well with the main story showing off the layers of the Color's corruption, and I really liked the choice of filming in black & white and saving the color for the Color. Combined I feel it comes closer to the flavor of the original story. Another highly recommend from me.
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Oct 3, 2020 05:05
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 #33) Scare Me (2020) Two writers, one professional, one very much not, hang out in a cabin during a power outage, telling (and acting out) scary stories to each other. The movie depends almost entirely on the performances by Aya Cash and Josh Ruben [whom I initially thought was Adam Scott]), and they do a good job of carrying an entire movie on their shoulders. However, the movie seems to be unwilling to fully engage with the horror side of its horror/comedy cocktail, always quickly undercutting any developing tension, usually either with criticism from the one not telling the story, or with some snarky joke. The film just does not let up on trying to making the characters quirky and clever, and it gets (and stays) grating before much time goes by. It takes several swings at interpersonal dynamics amp-ups, but does so too hamfistedly for it to play as subtext, and ends up making the very attempts at commentary seem hokey. Eh, there's fun moments, but when put together, it felt like it ran longer than the ideas could effectively carry it, and then there's a big leap to the “GET IT?” allegory of the epilogue. Yes, capitalism is theft, got it. Rating: 6/10Watched on Shudder.  #34) Idle Hands (1999) I love this movie. I've been watching it for years, and all the jokes still land spot-on for me. The homophobia is obnoxious, but only happens three or so times, I think, which is certainly in the low end for the era. And the singer from the Offspring gets his scalp ripped off, which no giallos have served up to me so far. And Christopher Hart (Thing from The Addams Family) got a paycheck out of it, so that's extra frosting. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of fun responses from people who were seeing this for the first time in the Scream Stream tonight, and I've written about this in previous challenge threads, so I'll just leave off by saying 'Thank you, Rodman Flender.' I still need to get the new Blu-ray for this, the one where they put back the DVD commentary they omitted from the original Blu-ray release, the cheap bastards. Rating: 8/10Watched on the Scream Stream.
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Oct 3, 2020 05:14
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 12. Leprechaun 5: In The Hood - Dir: Rob Spera - 2000 - HBOMax So Leprechaun 5: In The Hood... well it wasn’t as bad as the worst Leprechaun but it wasn’t as good as the best one. It was playing a weird line between sorta being cognizant that you can’t just put these paper thing black characters on the screen, they gotta have some substance or pathos. It sorta worked for the most part. Kinda didn’t care for the trans character they had goin on here. It was not the worst example I’ve seen, on a scale from respectful to ace Ventura pet detective it was somewhere in the middle. I don’t recall Ice-T being in this but I’m kinda glad he was. I have an inkling he was pretty vocal on set about some level of authenticity or at least calling bullshit on something if he saw something untoward happening on a shoot day. Warwick was great, per usual. All that said, I leave you with this. Lep in the Hood. Come to do no good. https://youtu.be/XzWlhLSitJ8 Ranking: 3>4>5>1>2
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Oct 3, 2020 05:16
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Two more for the night. (Well,three, but Lucky Ghosts isn't remotely horror. Although it does have more ghosts than Cat People has cat people.) 8. The Devil Bat (1940) - Tubi, colorized Bela Lugosi assists the police in investigating murders committed by Bela Lugosi... waitaminute... Despite that common thread, this plays much differently than The Human Monster. The audience knows Lugosi is the villain from the first moment here, and he's more sedate and tactical. Whereas the female lead drives the action in Human Monster, with advice from the policeman love interest, here it's almost all on the male reporter (who makes Jimbo and Ned look like responsible gun owners), with the love interest mostly set dressing. Very well paced, and solidly plotted as the evidence mounts against Lugosi. 5/5  9. Master Minds (1949) - Tubi Unplanned, but Tubi autoplayed it and it was wonderful. Horror-comedy from the Bowery Boys where a mad scientist kidnaps a carnival psychic, planning to zap his brain into a brute (Glenn Strange, with makeup resembling the early stages of a wolfman transformation). Fun throughout, it really picks up when the transfer is done and then wears off, and then done again, etc., as the two bodies flip personalities back and forth. Strange is incredible as he gets to really ham it up with some flamboyant mannerisms that you won't see from him anywhere else. 5/5
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Oct 3, 2020 05:38
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#3: Stay Alive (2006) Another rewatch streamed for friends as part of the month-long horror marathon I'm hosting. As part of that I have a custom discord stream overlay going that lets everyone watching trigger effects like dripping blood, spiders, and emoji reactions inside of little spooky ghosts. This is one of those movies that's so much more fun to watch with a group, and so despite the fact that none of us can get together in person right now, I'm really glad I could share it in a way that takes advantage of that energy. After the main character's friend dies mysteriously, a group of gamers come together to play an unreleased copy of the game he was testing before he died, Stay Alive. Unfortunately, the game's name is more literally sinister than any of them imagined, and they soon discover that when you die in the game... you die in real life. Stay Alive is not a good movie, but as someone who makes games, it's uniquely bad in a way that's so perfectly suited to what I find funny and entertaining. Everyone's running around in gamer-branded clothing, awkwardly using gaming lingo, and carting around hulking setups everywhere they go. They all have names like Swink, Hutch, or October. There's an event right at the end that's so unbelievably good when it happens that I do actually consider mentioning it here a spoiler. The movie features a dramatic flashback of an SNES controller surrounded by flames. There are exactly two sound effects and they absolutely get their money's worth out of them. Cliffy B is prominently listed as a video game consultant. All this said, I unironically think the way the in-fiction game starts off by having the players literally read an invocation out loud is excellent. The next time I watch this I want to seek out the director's cut, which adds 15 minutes and apparently features an entirely new character. 1. #Alive (2020), 2. Misery (1990), 3. Stay Alive (2006)
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Oct 3, 2020 06:26
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 2. Threads (1984) Shudder This BBC docudrama about nuclear war holds up well in some ways and not so well in others, but it’s hard to imagine what a shock it must have been for mid-80s TV audiences. At the start, it mostly centers around a couple planning a future together after an unexpected pregnancy. Their story plays out over a backdrop of rising political tension that we notice through TV reports, newspaper headlines, and the efforts of a local preparedness team who have no realistic way to really prepare for what’s coming. Then there’s a nuclear attack. Those scenes are pretty raw, and then the aftermath gets even tougher to watch. Some elements of the story are left a little vague. Others are right up in our faces though. It’s hard to look away as the characters get more and more used to their changed world. The biggest weakness of Threads is that long introduction. It makes sense to establish a more personal hook before getting to the carnage, but a good bit of it drags. I don’t think that’s just a matter of me wanting a more modern, fast-paced movie because I tend to like those slow, dense 70s thrillers that don’t rush the action. Maybe I just wasn’t that into the characters? The narrator that contextualizes the story can also be a bit jarring. I may have been more impressed by Threads if I hadn’t spent a chunk of last year’s challenge on other apocalyptic docudramas. It’s a good, impactful movie that’ll definitely stick with me, but it stands out from the rest of that pack based on its harshness rather than its story or style.  3. The Changeling (1980) Shudder I haven’t seen this one in years, so I forgot how much of a gut punch that opening scene is. I also forgot how mean the ghost is. A lot of haunted house movies leave the impression that the ghosts are sad, confused, or maybe acting out some kind of loop that they really can’t control. And while the ghost in The Changeling is clearly tragic and stuck, he’s also a nasty little poo poo. He uses George C. Scott’s family tragedy to get him hooked on this mystery, and then the big reveal is that since the murderer is long dead, the ghost wants to punish the next best thing: the orphan that his dad replaced him with after killing him. Senator Changeling seems genuinely surprised by this whole story, but the ghost still kills him for the crime of having suppressed memories after being adopted by an rear end in a top hat. George C. Scott is really good in this. I love that unlike a lot of haunted house movies, there’s nothing really tying him to the place. He’s a renter, so it’s not like one of those situations where running from the house will lead to financial ruin. His motivation is way more personal. The ghost pushes him to keep digging (sometimes literally), and it isn’t until that big scene in the senator’s house where he realizes that his commitment to Team Dead Kid may have compromised his judgement. My biggest real criticism of this is that the female lead seems kind of pointless, which is disappointing given how interesting Scott’s character is. 1. Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
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Oct 3, 2020 06:44
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7: Southbound Meh. Anthologies are always a mixed bag, but nothing really stood out in this one. The effects in the first bit are cool, and I liked the car accident one and the hopeless intensity it evoked, but overall it felt a bit flat. I did like how the stories were all connected, however loosely, and found that more interesting than a framing story. Also Dana Gould is in this and that was a pleasant surprise.
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Oct 3, 2020 06:51
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3. The Ruins First time watch “Dumb entitled white American tourists experiencing horror on vacation” is a gigantic subgenre, this is one of them. It was pretty mediocre. I did love when one guy was like “Four American tourists just can’t disappear!” There’s only so much scary stuff you can do with carnivorous vines so instead it leant heavily on gore, which I’m not super into. I’m also bored by movies where they all stop trusting each other and the script puts supernatural stuff on the backburner for multiple scenes of dumb bickering There’s a very hard to stomach leg amputation scene  The scenery was nice.Thought: the Mayans salt the soil around the temple to stop the plant from spreading, but could they also try burning it all? Scariest part: Vines getting in and moving around under the skin and the one girl being compelled to cut them out of herself aaaa
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Oct 3, 2020 07:06
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PSA for anyone checking out Arrow's new streaming service for blind watches: Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is pretty much every genre other than horror so that was a half-lost evening. On the other hand, if you're into weird trash even when it's not horror you should definitely watch it anyway.
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Oct 3, 2020 08:05
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