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7. V/H/S 94 Spooky spot: Tales of Terror It's fine, I guess? As long as we're grading on the found footage curve. The wrap-around is the worst they've had so far, the first segment is pretty good but falters a little on execution of its extremely fun premise. It would be an excellent way to start if we were following the idealized anthology rules of "start strong, then escalate immediately" but we're not, none of the rest of it is up to this level. Segments 2 and 3 both have something going for them but run about five times as long as the ideas support - 3 in particular is an effects showcase that I feel bad ragging on but it's just so loving boring by the time it's over. The final segment is cute and does a better job with pacing, but the way it wraps up didn't work for me at all. Then of course we have to duck back out to the dogshit wrap-around to make sure we end on a bad note. That this is still probably one of the five best anthology films I've seen is, I think, a pretty clear explanation of why I don't like anthology films. 
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Oct 15, 2021 20:26
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 In Savageland, the horror isn't in the zombies (although that's certainly fun), but instead in how goddamn racist and vicious Americans are, especially those in Arizona. Full disclosure: I'm white, I'm American, and even though we moved when I was like two or something and don't remember it, I've lived in Arizona. The plot: zombie outbreak in a small Arizonan town near the border. The sole survivor is an illegal immigrant. He's immediately arrested and put on trial for being a serial killer. However, he's also a photographer and a roll of photos he took that night are found and developed, and they back up his zombie attack story. It's presented in the style of a documentary, so I guess it counts as found footage? There are interviews with reporters, photographers, Arizonan natives, cops, etc. One of the primary interviewees/presenters is a black man who takes a hard-line stance in that he A) believes the survivor and B) absolutely condemns what the state does to him. The documentary takes the angle of trying to present both sides, as you get clips from local (white) people and from his sister, but ultimately comes down in favor of believing him - because it knows in its heart that the zombies are real, and that the state is hosed. This is nailed in by the final clip of the film: found footage of a zombie attack in a campground miles north of the town. It's quite good! Instead of scaring me, it made me intensely angry what with those bigots spouting anti-immigration rhetoric, talking about wanting a wall, and using that racism to condemn a man. The inclusion of political cartoons was great, too. The one thing that pissed me off the most was some guy on the radio calling in to complain that the sole survivor was buried in American soil. "Even in death he was avoiding being deported," or something like that. Jesus. gently caress. Okay, breathe, bring it in. The horror. This was a horror flick, there were zombies, they were neat. Presenting all of them in black and white blurry photographs taken by a terrified man trying to save anyone was great. The sequence of photos near the end where he tried to save a little girl was both terrifying to look at and got me in the heart. But then, that's Savageland: it uses the zombies specifically as a storytelling device to highlight how awful America is. It's not about them, it's about us. Savageland isn't the nickname of that little town, it's a description of this country. I don't know how to rate this. Probably 4/5, as it was all very well done, but I don't ever want to watch it again.
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Oct 15, 2021 20:27
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 13. Trouble Every Day (2001) (dir. Claire Denis) Hoopla  SPOOKY bingo: "To Serve Man" Two American newlyweds, Shane and June, are on their honeymoon in Paris, but Shane (Vincent Gallo) seems sick and unhappy and has an ulterior motive for the trip - he is looking for a former colleague who is familiar with the strange disease he has contracted. Meanwhile, this same colleague is forced to lock up his sick wife in their home, because if she escapes she will find and seduce men - and then kill them in extremely bloody ways. At least that’s roughly the premise - this film has very little dialogue and zero exposition, and basic things like what’s happening, who the characters are, and their relationships to each other aren’t clear at first. Even by the end I was struggling to fully understand everything that happened, and I’m sure I’m still missing some things. It’s the kind of film that would probably benefit from repeated viewings - even thinking about it as I write this, I’m putting some more pieces together and maybe appreciating it more. This isn’t a bad film - in fact I think it’s very close to being a great one - but the story is told in such an unfocused and meandering way that it left me feeling kind of cold. Add to that a handful of uncomfortable scenes that blur the line between sex, rape, and murder, and I can’t say I had a very good time watching this. But I also can’t get it out of my head - I might revisit some day to give it another chance. For now, I’ll stick with Raw for go-to arty French cannibal movie. 3 Vincent Gallo cumshots out of 5 Total: 13 Watched: Hellraiser | Hellbound: Hellraiser II | Jennifer's Body | The Lords of Salem | The Bride of Frankenstein | Motel Hell | V/H/S/94 | Scream of Fear | Evil Dead Trap | The Masque of the Red Death | The Lure | The House that Screamed | Trouble Every Day 
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Oct 15, 2021 20:33
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13) Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) - Absolutely awful but hilarious. So late '90's/early 2000's it hurts. Gets rid of the found footage format mostly. Really hammy acting. I understand this was greenlit before a script was even written, which makes sense. 14) Spring (2014) - Directed by the same guys who made Resolution and The Endless (both of which I really enjoyed), Spring is...not like those at all. It's not even really a horror movie; it's more of a romance. A guy loses his mom to cancer, gets into a fight at a bar and then flees to Italy for a bit to get away from the cops. There, he meets and falls in love with an older woman who has a few personal issues. It was OK. 15) Ginger Snaps (2000) - gently caress yeah. This poo poo was great. Great cast. Great Canadian feel. Good gore and monster makeup. Great snark from the leads. I would totally have been friends with them in high school. 16) Theatre of Blood (1973) - I know a bunch of you love this movie, but I found it really, really dull. I actually fell asleep a couple of times and missed 1 or 2 murders. Eh. 17) V/H/S/94 (2021) - This was so loving awful. The wraparound story was stupid as poo poo. The ratman story was stupid as poo poo (except for the face melting at the end). The funeral home story was stupid as poo poo (except for the actual monster which was hilarious). The FPS story was stupid as poo poo. The religious patriot story was the best of them all, but was stupid as poo poo. Garbage. This series needs to go away.
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Oct 15, 2021 21:06
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11. NosferatuSpooky Bingo: Salomé  In 99 years none of the remakes or homages to this movie have managed be as freaky as Max Schreck as Orlok. The way he's shot and Schreck's physical performance make him look truly otherworldly.Orlok is directly associated with rats and disease, spreading death by his mere presence and you 100% buy it when you look at him. The pacing is also very snappy, with Orlok's appearances spread throughout the film to keep things engaging. The parts on the ship are really good and I'm surprised more Dracula adaptations don't feature this part of the novel in more depth. Don't let the fact that this is a silent movie scare you away, this is a great film.
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Oct 15, 2021 21:08
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 Apparently Suspiria was on the Video Nasties list, albeit not entirely banned. So that counts for Video Nasty , right?
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Oct 15, 2021 21:32
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 - (59). Child's Play 3 (1991) Directed by Jack Bender; Written by Don Mancini Watched on Peacock You gotta kind of appreciate that this movie just goes “Why are we still making killer dolls? Money.” I’ve seen this a lot. It feels like it was the Chucky movie constantly playing on TV when I was a kid. Maybe it just stood out more because of the military school setting and grown up Andy. It always stood out to me as the stale point of the franchise. Mancini’s constantly changing Chucky up through the franchise but here its just more of what we saw before with nothing special to add. Its the most redundant and unnecessary sequel in the series. But even beyond that I feel like there’s a surprisingly lack of Chucky in the movie. I mean he’s there d he’s rocking up kills but it feels like a lot of this is just military school stuff. And I guess there’s always been a lot of character stuff and I usually love that stuff and think it adds to a film, but there doesn’t feel like there’s any depth here at all. Even Andy feels completely disconnected. New actor, dramatically aged up, And instead of dealing with trauma or character pathos he’s just doing military school stuff and dealing with fascist bullies and girls while chasing down Chucky. I do like the idea that after all he’s been through Andy’s drawn to a woman who can kick his rear end and handle a rifle. I did realize the other day for as many times as I remember watching all the kind of dull military school stuff I had no memory at all of how the film ended. I wonder if some of it was tone down for tv broadcasts or if I just checked out every time i watched it. It isn’t a bad ending. It isn’t a terrible movie. Its just… very there. This whole thing was made in 9 months since the last one and this rush to get out a sequel really sums it all up. Its interesting because Mancini himself doesn’t like it and says he’s out of ideas. But reading about the ideas that were shelved for budget or time reasons he’s got at least three or four ideas in there that he used in future movies. So it seems a lot less like creative bankruptcy and more like getting burnt out on studio need to churn out another sequel as quickly and cheaply as possible. Its not really a big deal considering how much success Mancini had with the series after. At the time I can’t imagine that he’d think that 30 years later he’d have made 4 more films and was debuting a tv series. This definitely could have stalled out his franchise and career and it did for nearly a decade. But things bounced back and the rest is history. I often tell people they can skip 3 because its just got nothing in it important to the overall franchise. But it sort of serves as this odd harbinger of what happens to a lot of horror franchises and what could have happened to this one. If this had done better then they might have kept running out uninspired sequels that reduced the franchise to nothing and took it out of Mancini’s hands before he could get all weird with it. But it might have in some way been the saving grace for things. Maybe its failure bought Mancini the time and opportunity to take some time away, recharge, and work up or finalize some wild ideas.  - (60). Bride of Chucky (1998) Directed by Ronny Yu; Written by Don Mancini Watched on Peacock I do wonder how Ronny Yu got picked to try and revitalize every 80s horror monster at once. You know, this is a better film than I remembered. Its a smarter film than I remembered. I should have given Mancini the benefit of the doubt on that. I always kind of had this written off as a bad horror of a bad era that was too silly for its own good. In years past I grew a big appreciation for Jennifer Tilly and her addition to the franchise. I think she deserves a TON of credit and is arguably as important to it as Brad or Fiona Douriff. She’s so game for everything and just goes all out. Maybe not the first person you’d think of for comedy but commitment to something goes a long way. Her human stuff actually reminded me bit of watching actors with Muppets. Some of them play along but some just really do go all in, and it felt the same here. Chucky’s been good but I’m not sure I’ve ever really felt an actor engaging with him the way Tilly does. Of course that’s a small bit of it and mostly its doll Tiffany. Till’s still great there but the comedy can be hit and miss. Like stuff about them bickering like an old couple or Martha Stewart references all kind of fall flat. But the Bonnie and Clyde doll killing spree is pretty fun. But I think the part that really sold me was that whole Bride of Frankenstein thing. I’m not sure I’ve ever really clued into that, probably because I hadn’t seen Bride until a few years ago. And even once I had its not any kind of direct homage or remake kind of thing. Instead its a very interesting and clever spin on it when Tiffany echoing Frankenstein’s classic decision and line but for very different reasons. Tiffany finally deciding that Chucky is too much of a monster and she is with him for them to go on is really cute and clever. Heigl and whatshisface are pretty bland leads and that drags things down. Like the idea of them thinking the other was the killer is cute on paper but doesn’t really come together. Bland leads, flopped jokes. The film has its problems for sure. But its also super ambitious and clever in a lot of ways. And Tilly is the MVP and one of the many unexpected little parts of this franchise that helped make it as great as its been. 7 years earlier when Mancini was cranking out a subpar Child’s Play 3 by the whims of studio capitalism you couldn’t predict things would get revitalized by Jennifer Tilly and ideas as whacked as Bride and Seed. But here we are and the journey is really interesting, and solidly entertaining. I do wonder, do you think Mancini was writing the movie and then said “Hey, doll sex scene” or do you think it went the other way?  - (61). Seed of Chucky (2004) Written and directed by Don Mancini Watched on Peacock You can’t imagine Don Mancini was thinking “I’m gonna make a potential icon for gender issues twenty years from now” when he made this film, right? Honestly, this is not my favorite Chucky film. It arguably is my least favorite. 3 isn’t good but its more my thing than this but… its really hard to hate this or anything. Its Mancini’s first time with total control and in the director’s chair and its completely and totally insane. And honestly a bit of a mess whacked out concepts, unexpectedly progressive ideas, super meta stuff, horror references up the wazoo, Redman, and maybe strangest of all actual character growth for Chucky. I honestly have no idea how Mancini managed to include all this and keep it even sorta on the rails and coherent. Its a testament to his writing skills for sure. Many people can write insane ideas or pop culture references. People do it online all the time. But to somehow weave that together into an actual plot and movie script that kind of makes sense? As someone inclined to take on challenges that seem too silly to manage I gotta respect the sheer ambition and audacity of this film and objective success of just putting together into a watchable film. I’m still not sure I’d say I liked it. I don’t really know. Part of me wants to dismiss it as too much of a collection of dumb jokes but it really does hold together in a way that I can’t ignore and makes me able to watch and enjoy more than a lot of other films or shows of that nature. At the same time it was still a bit too much of an all over the map mess for me to really like just sit down and watch and enjoy. It made for very effective background entertainment, just constantly drawing my full attention of shock but not needing my undivided attention. But that’s even kind of odd because from a pure meta world building sense this film is like the most critical moment in Chucky history. Not only are Glen/Glenda in play and Jennifer Tilly’s entered the picture but Chucky finally comes to terms with being a killer doll and decides its what he wants. How weird is that? Despite all the madness and weird poo poo in this movie the most striking thing to me is Chucky deciding its better to be an iconic immortal monster doll than some lame, falling apart, gushy human. Bet Andy would have liked it if he had figured that out 15 or 20 year earlier. I don’t know. Like I said, one of my least favorite of the Chucky films but what’s so remarkable about the franchise is that its worst stuff is either a totally competent horror sequel or a completely insane ambition of something unlike anyone has ever seen before. Chucky as a franchise is just constantly moving and Mancini is always throwing new ideas out there. Seed is definitely the wildest collection of ideas. Maybe a more experience director would have reigned it in? Maybe Mancini making an earlier film would have just gotten this crazy earlier on if he could? I don’t know but going back through the franchise on this Road To Chucky it really feels like every step along the way is an important one in getting us where we are now. The craziest thing is I think he’s still maintaining continuity. I mean I don’t know what happened to Glen and Glenda but I bet Redman’s still dead. RIP Doc. I’m gonna listen to Blackout today in your honor.
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Oct 15, 2021 21:56
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No bingo for this one, but Final Destination 2 lost me early on and only really existed as a weird death delivery service. None of the characters worked (except for the 1 smart girl who checked herself into an asylum to keep death from getting her) and I was bored a lot. Some of the deaths were fun/awful, I guess? And the tension in the dentist's office was really, really awful. That's the only reason I'm going to give this film any nods. I... just don't have much to say here! It's Final Destination, but the characters know about FD1 and do anything they can to avoid death, to the point of chasing a pregnant woman to be around life, but that's no guarantee. However the protagonists are getting their visions, it's not a good thing! You can argue that the visions are genuinely evil, as while the characters get to live for a little while longer, their deaths tend to be cruel or drawn out (elevators) and their lives are full of terror. Which I guess leads us around to question: if life is full of pain and suffering, is it worth living? But that's a little too nihilistic for me, and I definitely don't get the sense that this movie wants you to think beyond "hurr hurr death design, that death was gory and awesome". Which is a cruel thing to write but it literally ended with a bloody limb landing on a woman's dinner plate.
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Oct 15, 2021 21:59
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8. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) 🇰🇷 A group of YouTube paranormal investigators go to one of South Korea’s most haunted buildings to film a live special and of course, things go real bad. It’s a somewhat spiritual successor to Grave Encounters- a found footage film about mostly phony ghost hunters encountering real ghosts. Gonjiam updates this idea with vloggers outfitted with Go-Pros discussing ad revenue on their stream.  I really like this film, although I already like found footage so it’s on a bit of a curve. It takes a good amount of time to introduce us to our characters, their dynamic, and the varying degrees of who is more in on the grift. The livestream that must reach 1 million views is a fun ticking time clock and answers the question, “why don’t they just leave?!” And when it’s time for poo poo for to hit the fan, there is some real great creepy moments. A lot is accomplished with a low budget- I thought the hands appearing and quickly disappearing behind people’s heads as well as the “upside down” water room were some great visuals. Also good luck getting this image  out of your head! It’s on Shudder and if you liked Grace Encounters I’d definitely check this out. It wasn’t perfect- even for 90 minutes there’s a fair amount of fluff and you need a pretty high tolerance for people playing annoying YouTubers but it’s all in service of a fun little spookshow. 3.5/5 Also this marks my first SPOOKY Bingo spot. I’ll choose Asylum since I’m sure I’ll watch more found footage this month  Film list (ranked) 1. Demons* (4.5/5) 2. Demons 2* (4/5) 3. V/H/S 94 (4/5) 4. The Slumber Party Massacre (3.5/5) 5. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (3.5/5) 6. City of the Living Dead (3/5) 7. Skull: The Mask (3/5) 8. The Mortuary Collection (3/5) *=rewatch
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Oct 15, 2021 22:36
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 7. Necronomicon: A- A real under-discussed gem of an anthology film. Lots of great puppets and monsters and goo and kills, with some solid storytelling based around Lovecraft stories. Wraparound: A- Author HP Lovecraft (an actual person who died in 1937) hears about a copy of the Necronomicon in a monastery and sneaks his way in to transcribe the stories, presumably to sell to early 20th century pulp magazines. Inside this ancient tome he finds stories written by and/or about people in the 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s, some of which also contain their own story-within-a-story. As much as the logic doesn't work, the movie does. It ends with some rad effects when one of the monk's faces is pulled off and then his head eaten by an otherwordly monster as Lovecraft gets away with the book. Lovecraft is played by Jeffrey Combs with a Bruce Campbell-lookalike chin prosthetic and it's rad. Segment 1: The Drowned: B+ A widower with a tragic past inherits a home with a tragic past. He finds the Necronomicon and uses it to bring his wife back from the dead, only to realize that it isn't his wife and is actually a giant tentacle monster living in the caves beneath the home. There isn't much to this one beyond that, but as soon as the melodrama ends and the good stuff begins, it's a fun ride with some great visuals. Segment 2: The Cold: B+ A young woman runs away from home to play the flute in Boston, only to get wrapped up in David Warner's scheme to use spinal cord fluid to stay alive forever by killing neighborhood people and preserving himself with air conditioning. There isn't much to this one beyond that, but as soon as the melodrama ends and the good stuff begins, it's a fun ride with some great visuals. It does have an all-timer scene of Warner ripping all of his flesh off until he's just a skeleton, which is loving rad. Segment 3: Whispers: A+ A pregnant cop who wants an abortion gets sucked into a strange underground world beneath the streets of Philadelphia, only to get wrapped up in a weirdo couple's scheme to use her and her babydaddy's bodies to incubate aliens. This has a ton going on and it's all very cool, from a rad Silent Hill vibe to awesome mesoamerican ancient tunnels. It also has an all-timer scene of the cop dealing with her babydaddy's shambling brainless corpse, only to get warned by his brain in a jar that the aliens need their bodies to breed, then being dismembered by the weirdo couple. The abortion stuff was a bit clumsy, but at least they tried. Overall, a fun goofy flick with lots to love. Supplemental Material: None of this counts  Creepshow — Stranger Sings: F The stupidest poo poo that Creepshow has thrown at us yet. A recent divorcee gynecologist man meets a single woman at a coffee shop and they flirt. He walks her home but declines to go inside for wine. He reconsiders when he hears an alluring song coming from her home. Inside, there is a siren who has lured him in and forces him to perform surgery to switch her voicebox with the single woman's, who wants to become a siren to get any man she wants because she's been told to lose a few pounds by single men. He refuses because he's not a surgeon and because that's not remotely possible even in a world where sirens exist, but eventually gives in and turns the woman into a siren and the siren into a woman (neither with any scars or repercussions from the surgery, of course). The newly-human woman kills the formerly-human woman and she and the gynecologist fall for each other and live happily ever after despite all the murder??? Nothing in this makes a goddamn lick of sense, and its premise is so unfeasible that the protagonist calls it out as stupid multiple times. This is pure dumb sexist trash with glaringly stupid logic holes, godawful dialogue, and terrible cinematography. I've called out the cartoon logic of this show in the past, but this goes way beyond fun dumb into total nonsense. At least it had a decent puppet for the few seconds it was on screen. Creepshow - Meter Reader: D+ A rote, unoriginal post-apocalyptic story about a plague exorcist and his family dealing with quarantine after a job gone wrong, in a clumsy, boring, and borderline-insulting pandemic allegory. It almost feels unfair to review this one at all, because it looks and feels more like a student film than something that should ever be on a streaming service (much like a couple of the season 1 episodes I watched that turned me off of the show for a couple years). I tend to agree with Garth Marenghi that subtext is for cowards and tend to like my metaphors obvious and on the nose, but not when they're this dumb and poorly handled. I can't imagine a lazier, more slipshod take on a covid-inspired horror story than this. Visually it's cheap as hell and the effects are terrible. When I can make a better apocalypse in After Effects than they can, it's hard to forgive them with a "at least their heart was in the right place." Just chock full of every cliche in the book.  Goosebumps — The Werewolf of Fever Swamp: C- This episode is lucky that I watched it after Creepshow, otherwise I probably would've rated it lower. By comparison, this was just bland and boring. The other Goosebumps werewolf two-parter I watched is vastly better than this nothing of a story. A kid, his sister, and their scientist parents move to the swamp where he befriends the neighbor boy and gets freaked out by the old hermit in the swamp. Then nothing happens until finally in the last 10 minutes there's a full moon and we see a bunch of brief shaky-cam shots of a bad werewolf costume. There's a mystery about the werewolf's identity in this that's fairly well-drawn, but the surrounding story and characters are so dull that it doesn't save it. The scientist parents are a drag and barely factor into the story at all (unlike the fun mad-scientist relatives in the other Goosebumps episodes I've watched). The neighbor kid's actor was good, there is a great shaggy dog, and the hermit occasionally looks like Kelsey Grammar which is good for a laugh. But otherwise this is eminently skippable. Last night really wasn't my night with this supplemental material. Huge letdown after a solid movie. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 23:17
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12. Graveyard Shift Watched On: AMC+ Fran Challenge: Starring Brad Dourif (not Chucky) Picked this one because the short story it’s based on is one of my favorite Stephen King works. I love the vibe of a summer job rapidly descending into a nightmare, which this adaptation sadly doesn’t do a great job with. There’s too much extraneous Hollywood bullshit bolted onto the lean King short story (comic relief, love interests, etc.) that doesn’t add anything. Thankfully Dourif is loving great in it, because no one else puts in a memorable performance except maybe the Fred Ward-looking dude putting on the worst Maine accent I’ve ever heard. All in all a big let down, even in 80-some minutes. 1. Prince of Darkness 2. Possessor 3. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh 4. Death Walks On High Heels 5. Death Wish Club 6. There’s Someone Inside Your House 7. The Devils Rain 8. The Stuff 9. Dead Heat 10. Attack of the Crab Monsters 11. The Wasp Woman 12. Graveyard Shift
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Oct 16, 2021 00:23
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They added a bunch of the Halloween films to Netflix so as I haven't seen most of them I've been going through them for the challenge: I did watch the original Halloween as well but since I've already seen it I won't count it for the challenge! Still great though. 10) Halloween II (1981) Rick Rosenthal SPOOKY BINGO: Holiday Massacre I do like a sequel that pick up right where the last one ended. I think it was probably a good idea to set this film on the exact same Halloween as the first one - you don't have to explain what Michael does for a year, for one. The first section that keeps the action in the suburbs is still pretty good! It loses it's steam a lot when it moves to the hospital, though. One of the things that made Michael so creepy in the first film was the fact that he was often in very normal, mundane places. He's just out there, on the street, in daylight, watching you. That could have carried over to a hospital setting... if the hospital didn't seem to consist of about 3 staff and one patient. It's very obvious they just had an empty hospital to film in, and it makes the film lose any atmosphere it could have had. Despite getting joint top billing, Jamie Lee Curtis spends most of this film either A) asleep, or B) screaming and running away. Looking at this series from a modern context, where Laurie is basically the main character of the series now it's really striking just how little she actually does in this film. The reveal that Michael is her brother is... bad? It's bad, right? Do people think it's bad? In the first film it was pretty obvious that his general targets were teenagers in general, rather than Laurie specifically, so making him her long lost brother just adds nothing. This film is okay. It looks pretty good. It's not completely boring. It's just not a very good follow-up to Halloween. But at least Jason and Loomis are both dead forever now! 6/10 11) Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) Tommy Lee Wallace I get that this was when they were trying to make the Halloween series more of anthology rather than just about Michael Myers, so I went into it at least knowing that it would have nothing to do with anything from the previous two films. And with that in mind, hey this film's pretty good! It's good a really good premise at it's core: witches(??) using TECHNOLOGY and COMPUTERS to essentially cast a spell across the whole nation using Halloween masks. Dr. Daniel Challis has basically no reason to follow this as far as he does but that just makes it better?? It was great to see Dan O’Herlihy essentially auditioning for his role in RoboCop. The scene where you see the spell actually working is legitimately hosed up in a way I wasn't expecting. Some elements of it have dated - although it's not the technological stuff but rather the romance in the film which is just unnecessary and actually kind of creepy (Tom Atkins was over 20 years older than Stacey Nelkin!). So yeah! It's a bit dated but pretty fun! Also I found it interesting how much Netflix tries to hide this film after you've watched Halloween II. It will recommend basically any other Halloween film to you, but I had to go specifically searching for this one to find it. I guess they really don't want people to get mad that Michael's not in it. 7/10 12) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Dwight H. Little I wish they'd kept it as anthology series?? I don't know, I don't really have much to say about this one. It just kind of bored me. It's interesting, though, to compare the teens in this film with the original. In the original Halloween Laurie and her friends actually seemed like real people but here they're just all so two-dimensional. Michael, too, has lost a lot of his edge. Gone is the creepy stalker vibe, and now he's just a magic unkillable man who walks towards you slowly. The surprise, though, was actual good child acting from Danielle Harris! She's arguably one of the best parts of the film, even though why you'd want to keep Laurie Strode's daughter in the same town where all of her insane uncle was from and where all of her mother's friends were brutally murdered, I don't know. Loomis is just here to yell at everyone about how hard it is to kill Michael (very hard). THAT SAID, that's a great ending. Legitimately did not see that coming, very good, best thing the film does. 4/10 13) Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) Dominique Othenin-Girard I'm a bit mad they walked back the ending of the last film somewhat. The way it ended, you could see Jamie becoming the next Michael - you could even bring back Laurie to face her daughter being a killer now. I'd watch that! The series keeps rebooting itself - make that film! Instead we now have Jamie being psychically linked with Michael instead, which isn't as interesting. It is nice to have some extra element to spice things up, though. Danielle Harris is still good and still probably the best actor in the film. But I like Michael more in this one! He's a creepy stalker again! Someone actually understood what made him work in the first film, even if they don't quite pull it off - it's something! Unfortunately that's about it, though. The film keeps killing of the more interesting characters until we're just left with Loomis, Jamie and the worst police force in the world. Loomis spends the entire film yelling at children. ALSO THERE'S A COWBOY???? Halloween 6 isn't on Netflix but do I need to watch it to know who the cowboy is????? This ones still not very good, but I'd put it slightly above the previous one though. Honestly the best thing about these last two films is how much better Season of the Witch looks in comparison! 5/10 And my first spot on the Spooky Bingo! 
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Oct 16, 2021 00:25
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Even though I've already watched my 13, I decided to do the spooky bingo. Last night I watched Claimed for Hausu: His House - 2020 watched on Netflix This movie is about a couple of refugees from Sudan, that made their way to the UK. During their journey, they lose their daughter, and when they get placed in a house, it turns out said house is haunted. This, according to the wife, is due to her husband making a deal with a witch so they could get out of Sudan. It's a very haunting (no pun intended) movie, although I got bored toward the end because I feel like it was a little bit too long. Still, it's a good movie, more about the grieving process than anything else, and how to learn to live with your ghosts. Rating: 4/5 Claimed for Salome: Nosferatu - 1922 watched on Tubi Yeah, I've never seen this. Of course I've read Dracula a few times, so I'm familiar with the story, but have never watched this movie from beginning to end. Being a silent movie, it was a little more funny than scary, but some of that is because of the technology that they had back then. (Watching Count Dracula carry his empty coffin solo from the ship to his new home had me chuckling.) I can appreciate it for the groundbreaking cinematography that it was nearly 100 years ago, and I can appreciate the fact that without this movie, we wouldn't have any of the amazing movies that came afterward. Rating: 5/5 
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Oct 16, 2021 00:30
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19. The VVitch A family moves to a new farm by a forest... with spooky results. This really didn't do much for me. I'm not a fan of the time period and I found the whole family really unlikable. It really didn't matter to me when spooky things started to happen to them. The olde tyme way they spoke just made it hard to understand them. And the constant religion was tiring. Some of the images towards the end are good. Not really worth sitting through and hour of a family yelling at each-other. At least it marks a space on the spooky bingo card. 2/5 
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Oct 16, 2021 00:34
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 31. The Wolfman (2010) "It is said there is no sin in killing a beast, only in killing a man. But where does one begin and the other end?" Bit of a mixed bag, this one. Hugo Weaving is having a great time, and they really swung for the fences in terms of the violence and gore - this really suckered me in at the beginning. But beyond that, there's not much here worth seeking out. It's a great cast, but del Toro's performance is super flat (it's all brooding, all the time) and Emily Blunt barely gets to do anything. Worst of all is that this thing is packed to the brim with bad CGI, so while there's lots of gore and violence and werewolf transformation, it all looks like dog(wolf?)poo poo. 2.5/5 -- Spooky Bingo: Full Moon 32. Grave Encounters (2011) "For Grave Encounters, I'm Lance Preston." A crew making a Ghost Hunters-esque show get locked in an abandoned asylum for the night... with spooky results! This was really promising, I liked how the crew were not at all taking it seriously when they weren't actively shooting footage for the show and how pissed they were that nothing exciting was happening. When scares eventually start, there are some great atmospheric ones - subtle movements, things in photos that we see but the crew doesn't, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, it eventually falls into the trap of extremely cheap, silly jump scares where a face gets distorted or something runs at the camera, and I just find that stuff really annoying. Too bad, if they did more stuff like the hospital ID bracelets I'd have really liked this. 2.5/5 -- Spooky Bingo: [REC]Total Watched: 32 // 'New to Me' Total: 24/40 Years Complete: 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2021
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Oct 16, 2021 00:53
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Skrillmub posted:19. The VVitch This you? 
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Oct 16, 2021 01:31
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22) Halloween (1978) 23) Halloween (2018) Gearing up to watch Halloween Kills either tomorrow or Monday. Carpenter's movie never changes. I watch it every year, and while each time I see something interesting in it I don't see much sense in dissecting it like a specimen. It follows the standard Carpenter pattern of a creepy opening, 40 minutes of buildup and an unrelenting final half hour. It's more than the sum of its parts, though, which is why it remains watchable in a way that no other slasher movie does. The "rebootquel" of forty years later tries to tread the same ground, with many scenes being recreated or flipped. It's moved with the times, making the kills much more brutal, and that's something I don't like about it. Part of Michael's unique character is the minimalist nature of his killing - a strangling or a clean stab, not a lengthy bludgeoning. But there is a great deal to like in the movie. The early scene where Aaron Corey shows Michael the mask and while Michael doesn't respond, all the other asylum inmates do, is very well conceived. The spins and flips are almost all well gauged and it takes a bit more time to handle the material. It's nothing without the original, of course, but if it doesn't reach the same heights it's only because that bar is set so high.
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Oct 16, 2021 01:55
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FreudianSlippers posted:This you? Man, I wish. I don't think I've written that many words in my whole life.
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Oct 16, 2021 02:14
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8. V/H/S/94 (2021) SPOOKY Bingo: Tales of Terror (Shudder) I've watched all the V/H/S movies, and while the quality of the segments is usually pretty mixed, I do like anthology horror and so I felt compelled to watch this one. My thoughts on each segment: Holy Hell - The wraparound is once again the weakest part of this anthology, not unlike past entries, but it makes more sense than some of them. Storm Drain - Out of any of them, this segment could have easily been a full-length movie and probably would have been better for it. This has plenty of creepy imagery though, and of course the ending Raatma is very exciting. The Empty Wake - Could have been shorter; this seemed to drag on and wasn't that exciting. Other than the wraparound my least favorite segment. I will say the disembodied slice of head seeing the girl and the corpse running at her was a fun idea. The Subject - My second favorite of the collection. I tend to like body horror movies because it's one of the few subjects to still creep me out, and this one had plenty of that to go around. It gets a little goofy and video-game-like towards the end but some of the images from this segment have stuck with me. Terror - This segment seemed to fit the best with the found footage conceit and was my favorite of this collection. I think what I appreciated the most was that it was able to hide that it was a vampire story almost until the end, and the vampire had a fairly unique look. The Veggie Masher - Although the shortest segment, this was unsettling in a good way and I was hoping for more of these. 2.5/5 9. The Happening (2008) SPOOKY Bingo: Don't Feed the Plants! (DVR - Showtime)  I made it 13 (spooky) years without watching The Happening, but I suppose now is as good a time to get it over with. I had sworn off Shyamalan after the terrible Lady in the Water, but in the years since I have watched (and mostly liked) The Visit and Split. In The Happening Mother Nature has apparently had enough of us pesky humans and releases a toxin into the air that causes those affected to commit suicide. It's not a terrible idea, but the execution isn't the best. While Mark Wahlberg seems to act normally, there are some bizarre performances and line deliveries in this movie from almost every other actor. This seems to be a hallmark of this period of Shyamalan that ran from Lady in the Water through After Earth. There are a couple okay ideas/scenes: the zoo video and the guy running himself over with the lawnmower but that isn't enough to salvage this movie. 2/5 
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Oct 16, 2021 02:32
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 Ready or Not, 2019 Now this movie was real fun. Some girl gets married to a rich guy, only to find out his rich family, like all rich families, are a bunch of assholes. They got this tradition that any anyone married into the family got to play a game at their wedding night. She has to draw a card on what game to play and she draws hide and seek. Too bad for her that hide and seek means she will be hunted down and sacrificed. In a sense, this is a reverse slasher in that there's a bunch of killers and one victim, and the killers gets picked off one by one. Not because our main girl is some kind of rear end kicking heroine, but because these rich pampered dipshits aren't all that competent at the whole killing thing. To be fair, it is rare that anyone pulls the hide and seek card, so they don't have that much practice. Ready or Not is a prime example on why I prefer horror comedy over so called "real" comedy. Most comedy films are not funny, but horror comedies like these tend not only to be funny, but even if a joke don't land, it's still going to be entertaining to watch. And the serious horror aspect is done well too. I strongly recommend it just for the old mansion setting alone, which is my favorite setting in horror.
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Oct 16, 2021 02:47
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Tomtrek posted:13) Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) But I'm crazy so I'll tell you that there two versions of 6, they both take the cowboy off in different directions, the most readily available theaterical one is terrible, the Producer's Cut is better but still a bit of a mess, and you gotta seek it out and like rent it from Amazon. But don't. Its not worth it if you're not already too far gone like me.
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Oct 16, 2021 02:53
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("Strix have you done anything except watch movies today" yes, I have, but every spare moment has been movies because my monomania is in full swing. Bingo cards are my weakness.) God I hate jump scares! As Above, So Below features at least one and I hate them! They always make me jump and I know they're cheap but they get me anyways. Feh. At least the rest of the movie was pretty good! It's found footage following a lady as she quests for the Philosopher's Stone. You'll notice that the found footage square isn't filled in: that's because I'm instead using the It's Only A Myth square instead, as this movie used a surprising amount of neat weird lore about Nicolas Flamel, the Philosopher's Stone, the Paris Catacombs, and finally Hell itself (thanks, Dante's Inferno). They even had to solve a puzzle involving how many planets were in the solar system - "wait wait wait, was this before or after Copernicus?" The first half of the movie is the crew assembling - our intrepid leader, her cameraman, her love interest, and then the three illegal guides to the Paris Catacombs - and they go down into the catacombs looking for treasure (and the stone.) There are a few horror elements, but it's mostly the horror of going into deep caves that are occasionally filled with human bones. Which is awful enough, honestly. I did not have a good time as they crawled over human bones and had a cave-in at one point. I especially didn't like the underwater passage they just swam through without any gear. The second half of the movie is when they go directly into Hell. This is when the horror kicks off into full swing, the location stops making sense, monsters start hunting them, and there's a.... burning car just sitting in one of the chambers still with a burning passenger inside. It's so jarring it'd be funny except that it's just really loving not and I loved that sequence. The monsters were also pretty great too! The "moral" theme of the movie doesn't really show up until the very very end when they realize they need to accept their sins to really get out, but it's so shoehorned in that I just shrugged a lot. Overall I'd call this a firm 3/5 movie that has some great claustrophobic horror (and jump-scares) with a neat premise, but I'm detracting two stars for the kind of ehhh writing (I did not care about the characters) and the ham-handed moral that barely had time to breathe before they figured it out and were gone. You can't fake psychological depth, movie. Sorry. ... actually the more I think about it, it had a weird feeling of being a video game? Like I'm playing some Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones thing but with a horror setting. I honestly, genuinely wish this concept had been given better writers, as the whole bit of "group of people get trapped in the Paris Catacombs and wind up in Hell" deserves so much more than it got.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:As Above, So Below
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Oct 16, 2021 03:15
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STAC Goat posted:I think the theme rewards more on a rewatch when you can frame all the spooky and non spooky stuff that happens by that moral. Like some of it is pretty straight forward but then theres stuff like realizing Scarlet had her first hell vision in an entirely different country and Benny seems to be getting stalked by that spooky woman the whole film. And I think the guide to Papillon was the fellow from the burning car. I'll give it credit for those neat touches, but I don't think they were enough to save that aspect for me. At least the claustrophobia of the environment and other horror was absolutely great.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:18
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The resolution of the film is definitely something a lot of people have a problem with. Its a little neat and easy for many horror fans, I'm sure, and even for someone who loves the film I can concede its something you just kind of have to go with. Its one of the places the film really does seem to take more from Indiana Jones/Lara Croft/The Mummy adventure films than horror. But I do think its a cleverly little scripted film througout even if ties together a bit too neatly/quickly in the end.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:23
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🎃 Wild Beasts 🎃 Black Sheep (2006) Directed by Jonathan King Watched on Tubi  Ovinaphobia is the fear of sheep. Black Sheep is a decent enough horror comedy from New Zealand. It features scientists and eco activists doing what they normally do in horror movies — creating something horrific and accidentally releasing it, respectively.  There’s plenty of juvenile humor, blood, and guts. The effects were done by Wētā Workshop, so they’re actually really nice. Black Sheep also features what is easily the best sheep acting I’ve ever seen and a Raiders of the Lost Ark homage that I did not expect. 💀💀💀 Spooky Bingo 5/? 1. The Crazies (2010), 2. The Ritual (2017), 3. Blacula (1972), 4. Malignant (2013), 5. Black Sheep (2006)  Spooky Travelogue 31/31 1. At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul 🇧🇷, 2. Pontypool 🇨🇦, 3. Inferno 🇮🇹, 4. The Queen of Black Magic 🇮🇩, 5. The Forest of Lost Souls 🇵🇹, 6. Tumbbad 🇮🇳, 7. The Silent House 🇺🇾, 8. The Phantom Carriage 🇸🇪, 9. Housebound 🇳🇿, 10. I Saw the Devil 🇰🇷, 11. Witchfinder General 🇬🇧, 12. Kuroneko 🇯🇵, 13. The Untold Story 🇭🇰, 14. Brotherhood of the Wolf 🇫🇷, 15. Şeytan 🇹🇷, 16. Rift 🇮🇸, 17. Alison’s Birthday 🇦🇺, 18. The House at the End of Time 🇻🇪, 19. Daughters of Darkness 🇧🇪, 20. 122 🇪🇬, 21. Us 🇺🇸, 22. 2012: Curse of the Xtabai 🇧🇿, 23. Faust 🇩🇪, 24. Rigor Mortis 🇨🇳, 25. Penumbra 🇦🇷, 26. November 🇪🇪, 27. Killbillies 🇸🇮, 28. Alucarda 🇲🇽, 29. Sputnik 🇷🇺, 30. Djinn 🇦🇪, 31. Cold Prey 🇳🇴
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Oct 16, 2021 03:31
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STAC Goat posted:The resolution of the film is definitely something a lot of people have a problem with. Its a little neat and easy for many horror fans, I'm sure, and even for someone who loves the film I can concede its something you just kind of have to go with. Its one of the places the film really does seem to take more from Indiana Jones/Lara Croft/The Mummy adventure films than horror. But I do think its a cleverly little scripted film througout even if ties together a bit too neatly/quickly in the end. While it is way too neat/quick (it felt like they ran out of time and/or ideas), I am genuinely happy it ended with the survivors escaping. That felt earned, and I also like horror movies with happy(?) endings. Part of why I'm mad at Final Destination 1 for swapping endings because test groups were bloodthirsty.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:37
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feedmyleg posted:
Necrimomicon sounds awesome, is it streaming anywhere?
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Oct 16, 2021 04:28
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October 15 Crimson Peak Halfway through the challenges, I'm sure nothing bad can possibly happen now! Until I saw these posts, I had completely forgotten that Crimson Peak exists so this was a perfect opportunity to catch up. Here's the posts that set this off. The Berzerker posted:
Russian Guyovitch posted:12. Crimson Peak – Watched on Netflix. Edith is a young woman from America who is looking to be a writer and keeps seeing ghosts warning her away from Crimson Peak. She's swept off her feet by a baronets who came to her banker father for a loan. Her father objects to their relationship, but his sudden death removes all impediments to their love and her inherited wealth. The newlyweds return to the baronet's crumbling ancestral home where he lives with his very close sister. And there, Edith sees more ghosts and must unravel the sinister clues surrounding the house and its occupants. HEY! THERE'S A METAPHOR HERE! DID YOU NOTICE THIS METAPHOR! CHECK OUT THIS METAPHOR! I'm only slightly exaggerating with that. The movie really piles on and draws attention to its metaphors and themes. "The house breathes", "They eat butterflies", and then there's the constant red clay. It feels off. On the other hand, that leans into the gothic storytelling of the film. And it is gothic even though it's set in a Victorian period when gothic fiction was out of vogue. But virtually everything short of the machinery is straight out of an early-19th century novel. Since it's a del Toro movie, of course it looks amazing. The obvious comparison is The Devil's Backbone and the appearance of some of the ghosts and their use in the story is very similar. The atmosphere is laid on thick with this and it works for the style of film. Unfortunately, I think Mia Wasikowska as Edith is not a very strong performance. She looks awkward all the time in the giant hairpiece she's wearing and her line delivery often falls flat. OTOH, Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleson as the nasty siblings are fantastic. They're really carrying the film. I think Crimson Peak is the third weakest del Toro movie, but it's still good. It's just I feel that it's let down by its lead performer and could have used a script that was willing to trust that viewers could get the connections between the creepy events without spelling everything out. I think del Toro counts as a Master of Horror. He's generally sticks to horror or horror adjacent and he keeps making exceptional movies. So this is my SPOOKY Master of Horror.  Russian Guyovitch posted:Between the focus on the central romance and the crumbling English manor house setting, this film is a classic Gothic ghost story that feels like equal parts Charlotte Bronte and Shirley Jackson put together ( and later with some Flowers in the Attic for good measure). A solid, if not wildly original, story, the real draw here is the visuals. The set and ghost design are a treat, and take what might be a pretty standard ghost story and elevate into something more. As soon as the sister said that they spent most of their time in the attic I went "Oh, they are incestuous siblings, not secretly husband and wife."
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Oct 16, 2021 04:30
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Are you a bot who goes around rewriting peoples reviews better than they did? Frankly, I don’t appreciate it. 
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Oct 16, 2021 04:35
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Conrad_Birdie posted:Necrimomicon sounds awesome, is it streaming anywhere? Not on any streaming or rental sites I could find.
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Oct 16, 2021 04:35
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feedmyleg posted:Not on any streaming or rental sites I could find. Aw shoot! Well, putting it on the mental list for next year, hopefully!!!
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Oct 16, 2021 04:45
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18. Halloween (2018) Watched On: Blu-ray Aw yeah, more of the Michael good stuff. It was a long time coming but someone finally did something that lives up to the original movie and if I'm being honest H2018 brought my love for horror movies back from the dead a lot like the franchise. The score is on point, the people writing the script understand what makes Michael compelling, scary, and tense as a slasher villain. It's also nice to see Jaimie Lee Curtis getting some justice done for her character after the later Halloween sequels. It's nice to be back in Haddonfield. 19. Halloween Kills (2021)  Watched On: Peacock I'll admit I was a bit worried when the trailers first started dropping. I thought the return of supernatural thorn cult Michael was a certainty. Now though all that worry was for nothing. Bell to bell I was loving Halloween Kills. This was like the perfect melding of Halloween 2 and Halloween 4 for me but didn't make the mistakes of either. No one is safe, Michael is pissed, and anyone he gets his hands on is going to die an extremely voilent death. HK has a few stumbles in dialogue, maybe some fan service moments that didn't really land for me, but that's alright these movies are a kind of apology to the fans for bad entries and bad remakes and that stuff has a place. While I do think Halloween (2018) is the better of the two movies Halloween Kills isn't far off and in some ways I liked it more, H2018 just feels like a more contained and complete film once the credits roll. If you liked H2018 then get out there and see this as soon as you can. 20. Sleepaway Camp (1983)  Watched On: DVD The second movie in the double feature my friend played with Halloween Kills. Seen this one a whole lot. What a weird and fun slasher. The characters are so bonkers, the kills are pretty creative and gruesome. The most thematic movie for the season? Nah. But if you have friends that don't know the twist it's worth busting out during an October get together just for the reactions.
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Oct 16, 2021 04:58
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Not doing the challenge as Horror has limited appeal to me. But I did watch The Lost Boys tonight. 3/5 - https://youtu.be/Al9ae3_uOsQ
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Oct 16, 2021 05:11
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 5. Final Destination (2000)  .5/5Death is in town and he's pissed at the youths, so watch out when you hear John Denver on the radio, kids, because that's his theme song!! It seems like films at the end of a decade have a special power to concentrate the essence of the years that preceded them, which is to say that Final Destination is among the most '90s flicks you're ever gonna see. And that's the decade I grew up in, so this is peak nostalgia! Impossible to rate this one objectively, gave me a goofy grin when I heard Nine Inch Nails blasting on the soundtrack, or every time Seann William Scott acts like a dumbass about anything. The mechanics of "Death's design" are definitely shaky and Devon Sawa's morose agitation wears thin by the end. Yet the idea that the world around us is a deathtrap and we're only one wacky chain reaction away from a horrible end is fantastic. There's always a meta satisfaction in reading what's coming in a film, which makes Final Destination delightful: you get to see all the little pieces and know someone's going to get mangled on them in the next minute!  6. Malignant (2021)  .5/5Once someone points out to you that this movie basically starts like an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode with a tangent in the laboratory of Dr. Weird, you can't unsee it. Malignant is camp, a horror film with the same ludicrous bent as Batman & Robin. Preposterous line reads, hysterical plot escalations, a jail scene ripped from a 1970s New York exploitation flick, a Matrix-ready fight scene of the antagonist destroying an entire precinct worth of cops - James Wan finds his groove right at the hypnotherapy scene and everything is a bonkers good time from there. The path getting there is soooo boring, though! A chance interruption stopped my partner and I right at the scene before and we both were very reluctant to continue because it sucked so hard. Just repetitious slasher movie beats and Annabelle Wallis shrieking. I'd heard the final act was zany and so pushed on through to get there, but I'm a completionist and it was still a close thing. Using my scientific calculations, I average out the 1-star sucky parts and the 4-star roller coaster parts across the runtime, and come out with 2.5! I would have gone higher for a film that left me cackling, but a confused pro-life (I think?) digression at the end left a sour taste in my mouth.  20. Vampyr (1932)  /5An intriguing historical artifact. Totally a mood piece; Vampyr is the grandpappy of highly aestheticized horror flicks, with its dreamy ambiguous plotting, long panning shots, and frequently beautiful (though menacing!) shot compositions. You also couldn't pick a better film as an example of the transition out of the silent period. This was director Carl Theodor Dreyer's first talkie, coming after his silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc, and the stylistic teething process shows: minimal dialogue, a near total absence of diagetic sound, title cards that advance the plot, even multiple pages of a book we're supposed to read! Some of this may have been technological (the voices and sound effects are all overdubbed and the release was planned in three languages), but Dreyer clearly wasn't done playing with the conventions of the silent film and the strange, potent universality of watching wordless figures navigate space. There are some incredible highlights here. The main character's dream sequence where he sees his own body be sealed into a coffin is terrific, and the uncanny dolly-like effect when we see upwards as he's carried to the grave, god daaang that's still eerie 90 years later! The fate of the doctor, being buried alive in flour, is so vivid and well-filmed that it could easily go into a contemporary film. Even just Sybille Schmitz making a creepy smile and rotating her head is striking. If the whole movie was like those moments, it would be one for the ages. But it's a ponderous, pokey journey to get to them, with lots of people just kind of shuffling about, and some shadow effects that are more nifty than creepy. The slow burn doesn't come to a climax but just kind of levels off until the "ENDE" card shows. So even though the highs are high, this is probably of more interest to cinema history enthusiasts than contemporary viewers. Finally, a note of credit to Nicolas de Gunzburg. He wasn't a professional actor, but his "yo what the gently caress" face is magnificent. Spooky bingo: Based on a Novel. Vampyr is based on the novella Carmilla, and also incorporates some other beats from author Sheridan Le Fanu's collection In a Glass Darkly. 
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Oct 16, 2021 05:18
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 33) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Trailer Seen on: Shudder Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Spaced Invaders -Watch a film about extraterrestrial life. Alien spores arrive on Earth, take root as unusual flowers and slowly begin to turn the populace of San Francisco into a hivemind of emotionless drones. Five individuals come together to fight against the ever-growing conspiracy for as long as they can, but how do you know who's human and who's been duplicated? Who can you trust? The pods replace you while you sleep, and you can only stay awake for so long... Throw another one on the pile of "how had I not seen this before?!" This was excellent and way better than I thought it would be, and it's one of the best paranoia- and dread-inducing movies I've seen outside of Carpenter's The Thing. The cinematography (by Michael Chapman, who had done Taxi Driver before this and Raging Bull after) is disorienting - lots of dutch angles, lots of hand-held shots in crowd scenes. Remember the intro to Dawn of the Dead 2004, when Sarah Polley finishes talking to the neighbor girl, and the camera hangs on her riding off on her bike a little too long, sowing unease because you know something is going to happen and never does? That's done here as well and it's just as creepy. The cast is awesome - Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams are great and charming as hell as the leads; you get Jeff Goldblum doing Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright doing her hysterical fear routine (a year before Alien even!), and Leonard Nimoy as a pop psychologist is fun to watch. I love that you get to see the spores arrive on Earth (the pod people effects are suitably gooey as well). I love movies that do the whole first act thing of the main characters living their lives while we see background events showing that something is clearly wrong - random people running around in panic, sirens constantly in the distance, the ever-present garbage trucks that all seem to be filled with ashen material. The pulsing, discordant electronic/jazz soundtrack just adds to everything. And that ending. I'd never seen this movie before and I knew what the iconic ending scene was, as it's been referenced and parodied numerous times in other media. The biggest compliment I can pay to this movie is that, watching that ending in context - even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, it still sent a chill down my spine (and the credits are dead silent - no music, nothing, it's awesome). Definitely going to be a rewatch in years to come.  34) Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) Trailer Seen on: Tubi Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Tales of Terror -Watch an anthology film. Five men (including Christopher Lee and Donald Sutherland, again) get on a commuter train and are joined at the last minute by a strange man with a deck of tarot cards, Dr. Schreck (Peter Cushing). As the men travel, the good doctor gives each of the men a tarot card reading, predicting for each a supernatural event that will prove deadly to them in the future. This is the first of the Amicus Productions anthologies (I've also seen The House That Dripped Blood and Vault of Horror in previous challenges), and I thought it was just okay. The good thing is all of the stories move pretty briskly, so even if I didn't really care for a story, they don't last too long, which is nice after watching a bunch of movies for the challenge this year that contains scenes of people just wandering around and moving slowly to pad out the time. There's a nice variety of stories as well, including: an architect who discovers an evil werewolf is buried in his ancestral home and is coming back to life; a sentient creeping vine starts covering a home and attacking people; a musician steals music from a voodoo ritual and gets more than he bargained for; the rivalry between a art critic and an artist (and his dismembered hand) becomes deadly; and an American doctor discovers his new French wife is a vampire. For my money, the creeping vine and art critic stories are the best; Christopher Lee and Michael Gough are both really great in the latter. There is, as you'd expect, a twist at the end of the wraparound story, and all in all, it's a fun watch.  35) The Addams Family 2 (2021) Trailer Seen at: the local drive-in! Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Don't Torture A Duckling -Watch a film that is family-friendly Gomez Addams feels that daughter Wednesday is keeping him emotionally at bay, so the family goes on a cross-country vacation to reconnect. Also Wednesday starts mutating Uncle Fester into an octopus, and the main plot posits that Wednesday is not actually Gomez and Morticia's biological child. Hilarity ensues (I mean, not really, but my kid enjoyed it). I feel the same way about this movie that I did about the first animated Addams Family flick that came out a few years ago - I like the voice cast a lot, particularly Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron and Chloe Grace Moretz as Gomez, Morticia and Wednesday, respectively, but the content is all just in one ear and out the other. I can't remember a drat thing about the original and I won't remember anything about this one, either. Wallace Shawn shows up and does a good job, but the movie is filled with what you'd expect in family animated comedies - lots of old tunes that punctuate the action on a surface level only (Jump Around? Ace of Spades? why?!), potty humor, old school gangster rappers doing voice work (Snoop Dogg IS Cousin It!!). There's plenty of macabre stuff here that is kind of amusing and fits the tone of the franchise, but given the target audience, none of it has any real bite. 
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Oct 16, 2021 05:34
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SPOOKY Challenge: Origin of Evil #41) The Banker (1989; digital) High-paid banker kills and dismembers prostitutes by night. No, it's not a documentary. You see, he does it with a laser-aimed crossbow while wearing imitation war paint. So it's fiction. Definitely fiction. Robert Forster plays Dan, a leather-jacket-wearing cop who's living in a treehouse. He's on the rocks with an ambitious reporter, and between the two of them, they're on the trail of the killer. The movie has a real Spandex, cocaine, and French-cut panties vibe, even though it doesn't get much sleazier than criminal activity allusions and lingering lingerie shots. The villain has a wall of CRT monitors displaying video collages designed to get his blood hot, he drives a slick red sports car (the garage for which is full of swirling blue mist whether he's arriving or departing), and his knowledge of masculine ritualism comes out of a coffee table book. Leif Garrett also shows up, playing a scuzzball in cowboy boots (between this, Party Line, and Cheerleader Camp, '88-'89 was a busy horror stretch for him). Structurally, the movie doesn't do too bad. Each of our three main characters (cop, killer, and reporter) has their own threads of development going on alongside the main plot, even if the cop's feel the most bare. The minimization the reporter faces at work makes for a neat echo of the killer's driving misogyny, and the social atmosphere makes things feel like a genuinely of-the-time American Psycho on occasion. The cinematography isn't that hot, though there are some nice shots, in particular, a night cityscape and silhouettes at dusk. For what it is (a toned-down erotic thriller with a people-hunting angle), it's... decent. The sort of thing that might have played at 11 p.m. on a cable channel's week-night. It has a lot of opportunities for societal commentary, but shows no real interest in them. Instead, it's just a cop busting a rich weirdo, with women stuck as victims between them. “You shouldn't have given me this knife! I know how to use it!” Rating: 6/10 
Darthemed fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 05:44
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I was saving this for my 31st new film of the year, which frighteningly comes on the 15th of the month. The real scary part is that I’ve had exactly 31 rewatches. That’s insane. I really don’t tend to rewatch that much during October, besides little kicks i get on or towards the end of the month when I really want some reliable favorites. But I gotta chalk this up to all the time I’m spending with and caring for my mom. I’m getting to share a ton of classic favorites with her and she keeps pushing me to watch even when I’m not really in the mood. I honestly probably would have burnt out and taken a few days off there this week but she was there asking for more movies and sad on a day when I could only really get myself up for one film. I guess I’m saying I love October and I love my mommy. 31 (62). Halloween Kills (2021) Directed by David Gordon Green; Written by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green; Based on Characters by John Carpenter and Debra Hill Watched on Peacock Fran’s SPOOKY BINGO 2/36: They Always Come Back Holy loving poo poo. I loved that. I don't think there's anything explicitly spoilery in this but to be safe... To me the thing that’s always made Halloween special and why I like the sequels when I can’t be bothered to watch some other slashers is the characters and Haddonfield. Halloween has (almost) always focused on its characters instead of its monster. Freddy, Jason, Chucky. They’re the stars of their movies. Sometimes the have a strong protagonist, sometimes they don’t, but they rarely if ever have characters that just exist as one dimensional cliches to be slaughtered by the monster. You know that thing. The point is to enjoy the kill, not feel bad about the person killed. But Halloween puts in an effort to make you care about the person. And to me Haddonfield has always been a character onto itself. A lot of that is setting and atmosphere but a lot of it is the impact Michael’s rampages have on a small community. I can see why some would be disappointed by the backseat the film gives Jamie Lee Curtis. I love JLC and I love Laurie Strode. But I think it really worked to tell the story that she’s not the center of the world. Its a movie so its easy to think everything should revolve around the main character. That’s how protagonists work. But Halloween ’18 raised a fair question that Kills extends. Did this actually have anything to do with Laurie? She’s not Michael’s brother… I don’t know where you got that idea… so why is Michael after her? Just a random target? Or maybe she was just in his path. All through ’18 Laurie insists that Michael will come back to finish her. She’s spent 40 year obsessed with it and preparing herself. But ultimately it was someone else’s obsession that brought Michael back to Laurie. He didn’t go to her daughter’s home. He just happened across her granddaughter’s friend. So maybe he’s not the one who is obsessed. And Kills takes that one step farther. Tommy Doyle, the survivors of Michael Myers, Allyson, the town of Haddonfield. They all become obsessed with the idea that Michael is coming for them so they have to go for him. And the result of that is disaster. Laurie’s obsession tortured her and her families lives for 40 years. Haddonfield’s obsession creates a mob and riots. It puts Allyson directly in Michael’s path. It leads the survivors of Michael to look for him to the park where he’s been creepily stalking some kids until they went and gave him juicier targets. And it gets an innocent man killed. And I love the way the movie set that up. I actually cried for this random guy who was in a criminal hospital for some reason I don’t know. But the sheer chaos and terror of the lynch mob chasing him down felt so palpable to me I could barely breathe. Some of its clumsy for sure. The “reflection” metaphor is a bit on the nose and Laurie’s end monologue revelations are a bit all over the place. But in fairness to her, she’s on a lot of pain meds. Tommy Doyle is also kind of goofy. Old Huckleberry, Lonnie whatshisface… they’re all kind of dorks. But I think that’s all intentional. These aren’t bad asses, they’re just small town dorks who have been harboring this fear for 40 years. And it consumes them. And just because you think you’re a bad rear end doesn’t mean you are one. I can see a lot of people laughing at the failed attempts of townsfolk to take down Michael but I suspect that’s how it would usually go when a “good guy with a gun” actually gets to live his scared fantasies. And none of it is funny to me because the characters all feel real to me. The movie spends time with them and shows us them living, shows us that this is their home, and that Michael has disrupted it. And as much as much as Haddonfield is eating itself its not as if Michael isn’t what they fear he is. ’18 really ramped up the brutality and body count and Kills keeps it up. Michael may not have a goal or target but he’s still bringing death and horror to anyone unlucky enough (or foolish enough) to cross his path. And the fear and anger he creates consumes them and dooms way too many people. Also half way through the film I realized that they tried to get Paul Rudd to play Tommy again and I couldn’t stop thinking about that the rest of the film. Honestly, I don’t know if I have my thoughts together about this film. I loved a lot about it. The themes of societal fear and anger and generational pain. The elevation of Haddonfield to a full character that overshadowed Laurie and her family. The backseat Michael takes where he’s motivating everything that’s happening but on the opposite side of town of half the action. I liked the fanservicey things they did like the references to II, III, and IV. They felt subtle enough that if you didn’t know the films you wouldn’t notice them. And honestly, it would be fair to say that these are fanservicey movies, but I’m ok with that. These are films made by fans of the series trying to do right by it. And as a lifelong fan I’m loving it. And yes, Michael is more than mortal. He always has been. He got shot a dozen times in the chest and walked away.  🎃Halloween 2021: Hooptober Ocho and Spook-a-Doodle HalloweeNIT ’21🎃 Hooptober Ocho: 21/39; HalloweeNIT: 10/31; Svengoolie: 5/26; Fran’s Spooky Bingo: 2/36; Watched - New (Total) 1. The Funhouse (1981); 2. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988); 3. Eden Lake (2008); - (4). Halloween (1978); - (5). The Purge (2013); 4 (6). The Company of Wolves (1984); 5 (7). Kiss of the Damned (2012); - (8). Halloween II (1981); 6 (9). Malignant (2021); 7 (10). The Vatican Tapes (2015); 8 (11). Hard Labor aka Trabalhar Cansa (2011); 9 (12). Alice aka Něco z Alenky (1988); - (13). Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982); - (14). Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988); - (15). Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989); 10 (16). Room 237 (2012); 11 (17). Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Producer’s Cut) (1995); - (18). Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998); - (19). Halloween: Resurrection (2002); 12 (20). From Hell It Came (1957); 13 (21). Fiend Without a Face (1958); - (22). Hostel (2005); 14 (23). Sea Fever (2019); 15 (24). Tales from the Crypt (1972); - (25). The Shining (1980); - (26). V/H/S (2012); - (27). The Mummy (1999); - (28). 30 Days of Night (2007); 16 (29). Blood Moon (2021); - (30). V/H/S/2 (2013); 16 (31). Jakob’s Wife (2021); 17 (32). Terror Train (1980); - Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021); 18 (33). King Kong Escapes (1967); - (34). V/H/S: Viral (2014); 19 (35). Horror Express aka Pánico en el Transiberiano (1972); - (36). 28 Days Later (2002); - (37). Arachnophobia (1990); 20 (38). Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021); - (39). It Stains the Sands Red (2016); 21 (40). V/H/S/94 (2021); - (41). The Mist (2007); 22 (42). Humanoids from the Deep (1980); 23 (43). Hell Night (1981); 24 (44). Head (2015); 25 (45). Black as Night (2021); 26 (46). Madres (2021); 27 (47). The Manor (2021); - (48). 28 Weeks Later (2007); 28 (49). The Frozen Ghost (1945); 29 (50). Cult of the Cobra (1955); - (51). Friday the 13th Part III (1982); - (52). Child’s Play (1988); (53). Village of the Damned (1995); - (54). The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988); - (55). Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007); - (56). Halloween (2018); - (57). Child's Play 2 (1990); 30 (58). The Wolfman (2010); - (59). Child's Play 3 (1991); - (60). Bride of Chucky (1998); - (61). Seed of Chucky (2004); 31 (62). Halloween Kills (2021); STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 06:14
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 59) Scarehouse - 2014 - TubiTV Hausu This was a very pleasant surprise. A Woman gets Revenge film that doesn't involve rape. That alone earns points from me as I do feel rape is overused in the subgenre and gradually dulls its horrific impact. The story here is a group of sorority girls receive an invite to a haunted house attraction that turns into something darker. Despite it's flaws, I liked this one. That the whole thing is a set up arranged by two former pledges of the sorority who ended up doing jail time for a hazing prank gone wrong and are now gunning for revenge. Even though I guessed the ending, there was still a little flair I hadn't expected. While a haunted house attraction as setting for a slasher/killer film isn't new, I particularly liked that while the killings are happening in one section, the rest is still a regular haunted house with paying visitors. I counted this as Hausu for the SPOOKY since it didn't specify paranormal haunted house or haunted house attraction. If the thread thinks this shouldn't count, I'll find another movie.  60) Raw - 2016 - Netflix Femme Fatale This popped on my recommendations ages ago. Once I saw it was French Extremity, I put watching it on the backburner because that subgenre is very hit or miss with me. Case in point, I liked Haute Tension, but couldn't stand Martyrs. I can now say I do regret holding off on this one for so long. As far as cannibal films go, this was pretty refreshing. The cannibals weren't some backwoods near ferals or some quasi-isolated oddballs, they were pretty normal people asides from the people eating. I did not like what they did to Quirky. Dog didn't deserve that. I did think the ending was sweet in a warped way with the father's reveal that the cannibalism is inherited. Even knowing what their mother was, he still chose to be with her. Definitely a recommend.  61) Queen of Black Magic - 1981 - Shudder Something Wicked This Way Comes Until the October Challenge, I've found I've been sitting through more Indonesian Horror. Partly because it's becoming more available, and also because the blend of story/acting/effects are right up my alley. Here, we have Murni whose lover decides to marry someone else. When that woman starts hallucinating, Murni is blamed and chucked off a cliff where she's rescued by a dark mage who teaches her black magic to get revenge. This was pretty good. I was totally cheering Murni on as she was getting revenge, and I felt for her when she learned the negatives of wielding the black magic and hoped she found a way to deal with that. This is apparently a sequel to the Shaw Brothers Black Magic films so there's something I've got to track down. Overall, this is a recommend.  62) Queen of Black Magic - 2019 - Shudder They Always Come Back As far as remakes go, about the only things in common with the '81 original is some character names and black magic being used. Here we have the headmaster of an orphanage on his deathbed and some of his former charges come to visit with their families. Once there, well, there's some dark secrets ready to ooze up. While I did like this one, it was lacking in the charm of the original though that probably comes from the differing film styles from the 80s to modern. It does take a bit to get the ball rolling, but once it does...whooooo. I do recommend this but Keeeerist there's a lot of bugs in this one. Didn't help when one of the house spiders decided to crawl up the wall behind the TV while I was watching this and made me jump. I will remember this, Biggie.  63) Psycho Goreman - 2021 - Shudder Spaced Invaders I was too old for Power Rangers when it came out. For me it was Ultraman, Johnny Sokko, Spectreman, Inframan, and that one with Goldar and Silvar. Later on was the Dynaman spoof. So from that angle, I did enjoy Psycho Goreman. About the only thing I didn't like was Mimi. I absolutely couldn't stand her which shows the talent Nita-Josee Hanna has to get this reaction out of me. I also didn't like Greg. I know this is a parody/spoof of the tokusatsu genre, but Mimi and Greg were turnoffs for me. Thankfully the rest of the film's good enough that I would watch this again and tough through the characters I don't like. The effects were great, I loved the various designs of the aliens. The gore was quite good. The storyline was good. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel or a series based on this. Definitely a recommend. 
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Oct 16, 2021 06:17
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6: Lamb Challenge:perfect getaway (I checked Wikipedia and I'm reasonably confident I haven't seen anything from Iceland) What a gorgeous movie. It had me ready to leave it all behind go move to a farm in Iceland. What really stood out to me is the audio; there's hardly any dialogue and barely any music either. It really helps with the isolated feel of everything, but it's a sort of good isolation feeling, not oppressive or anything. Definitely one where you want to go in as blind as you can, and one where I want to sit with it a bit and think of it more in a few days. Lots of metaphor going on under the surface, and with the limited dialogue you actually have to think about it instead of having everyone exposition dump on you. I liked that there was no real discussion or hand wringing, things just happened and people went along with it. Until Petur shows up you can almost believe that this is a normal occurrence in this world, and even then when he tries to question it he's immediately shut down, and he very quickly gives in and accepts Ada as well.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:43
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