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6. Halloween 4: Return of Michael Myers This is a terrible loving movie. I'm not sure why I even watched this, but there it is. I'm counting it though! The mask in this is really loving awful , they could have gotten a better mask it just looks cheap like something you'd get a discount bin in a Halloween store. This film is pretty gorey though so it has that going for it. Donald Pleasance does his loving best with what he's given. There's no explanation on how Michael survived part 2 he's just back with eyes!
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Oct 24, 2021 23:43
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 111) Blood Rage - 1979 - Youtube This I learned, there are two films with the title Blood Rage. As far as this one goes, it's the expected sleazy gringy slasher in New York entry. Unlike a Henlotter which is set in a similar setting, at least Henlotter does have a variety of characters which makes the movie have some degree of entertaining. This was just nihilistic and dismal. I really didn't like the dog death that happened. The ending as it stands is rather abrupt. I'd say skip this one. We're surrounded by enough dismal, we don't need to add to it by watching dismal movies.  112) Sketches of a Strangler - 1978 - Dailymotion This was an okay enough crime thriller. Here an art student living with his sister is also out strangling prostitutes and dancers. There's not much gore, or nudity for that matter, but the film makes it up in tension and atmosphere.
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Oct 24, 2021 23:48
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112 movies? Come on pick up the pace!
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Oct 24, 2021 23:58
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33. The Pit And The Pendulum (1961) There's a whole lotta nonsense before the titular pit and pendulum show up, but much of that nonsense is coming out of the mouth of Vincent Price, so, you know, it rules. Atmospheric, not entirely scary, a little hammy, it's everything you want out of a Roger Corman Poe cycle movie. Spooky Card: Tales Of The Grotesque, natch SPOOKY BINGO CARD:  33/31: The Lure, Candyman, Wyrmwood, Malevolent, Vivarium, Three Extremes, Def By Temptation, Fanatic, Kuso, The Pit, VHS94, Blackwood, Shadow Of The Hawk, The Queen Of Black Magic (1981), Monstrous (2020), American Psycho 2, The Nesting, Halloween Kills, Mimic, The Mutilator, The Field Guide To Evil, The Editor, Godzilla Raide Again, Grizzly, The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, The Funhouse, Hell Night, Bullets Of Justice, Dr. Black Mr Hyde, The Thing From Another World, Gonjiam Haunted Asylum, Trick Or Treat, Ginger Snaps Back, The Pit And The Pendulum (1961) Spooky Card: Hausu: The Nesting, Holiday Massacre: Halloween Kills, Something Wicked This Way comes: The Funhouse, It's Only A Myth: Monstrous, Tales Of The Grotesque: The Pit And The Pendulum, Don't Torture A Duckling: Godzilla Raids Again, Asylum: Gonjiam, Horror Noire: Dr Black Mr Hyde, Wild Beasts: Grizzly, They Always Come Back: The Queen Of Black Magic, A Perfect Getaway: Bullets For Justice, Don't Feed The Plants: Thing From Another World, Behind The Screams: The Editor, Tales Of Terror: The Field Guide To Evil, Picnic At Hanging Rock: Ginger Snaps Back
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Oct 25, 2021 00:00
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32. Burning Bright A lovely stepdad buys a tiger... with spooky results. Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright, That's the film I watched tonight; Nothing in it pleases the eye, So why not a shot of the lead's symmetry? Tiger home invasion could be interesting, With the right musical sting; But the mix is so silent, Even when things get violent! For some reason there's an autisic kid, So it's harder to stay hid? Was this written by Stephen King? First draft, some psychic thing? I wrote this poem while the movie played, You can see how my attention swayed; None of the events felt like they mattered, No one even got tiger battered! Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright, The beast wasn't on set that night; The whole thing looks weird to the eye, When a computer makes its symmetry. 1/5  
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Oct 25, 2021 00:08
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WeaponX posted:112 movies? Come on pick up the pace! Yeah seriously what are you even doing.
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Oct 25, 2021 00:12
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October 24 Death Machine I hadn't heard of this one until Greekonomics posted about it and since I've seen too many Brad Dourif movies, it seemed like a good time to fill it in. Greekonomics posted:
In the cyberpunk future, an evil weapons manufacturer is manufacturing evil weapons. It's new CEO, however, wants to pivot the corporation away from evil and that includes firing the the chief evil weapon designer. He's a creep, though, and doesn't take his firing well. Meanwhile, a trio of You know, that Dourif fellow seems a bit creepy. I wonder if anyone has noticed. This is pretty much a platonic ideal of the low budget, direct-to-video SF movie. It's a generic plot, though writer/director Stephen Norrington spends way too much time referencing other things he likes. It doesn't make a whole lot sense if you think about it, the story exists mainly as an excuse to get to the next action scene. And other than the one big name they paid for (Dourif), the rest of the acting is drab. But the killer robot looks cool with it's chomping death jaw and the film does a decent job with its action. Speaking of Dourif, he's really good as the lovely, creepy weapon designer. A deranged, sexually harassing rear end in a top hat. So basically, a Dourif role.  There isn't a lot to say about Death Machine since it is so generic. It's there, it's fine, it's not so badly done that I can be annoyed by it and not so good that I can say it's worth checking out. Naturally, this is my Dourif square on SPOOKY. 
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Oct 25, 2021 00:15
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 Spooky Bingo #6: The Devil Made Me Do It18. Drag Me to Hell (2009)  Sam Raimi needs no introduction. He’s a horror icon and Drag Me to Hell was his big return to the genre after taking a break to make the Spider-Man films (and now he is directing the sequel to Doctor Strange for Marvel). In a way I found this movie to kinda be therapy for him after the debacle that was Spider-Man 3 in 2007. Kind of his way of returning and re-discovering why he loved filmmaking after the soul-crushing experience that was the third Spider-Man film. It was great to see him back and I actually never got around to watching this one even though I really should have at some point. The film is about a sales representative, Christine, who is unhappy in life. She is not taken seriously in her work life and has many doubts about herself as a person. She is about to be overlooked for a promotion, she finds out her boyfriend’s mother disapproves of her and is at a point where she is about to burst from all the anxiety. One day, a gypsy woman visits the office looking for financial help otherwise she’s going to lose her home. Christine, desperate for a promotion to assistant manager and facing competition, denies her in an effort to show an aggressive sales style her boss demands. She is then promptly cursed by the woman in the parkade after the appointment and what follows is the classic tale of a “gypsy curse”. Christine sees images of demons, hauntings and is seen to be crazy to everyone she tries to tell. Raimi leans in hard with this with elements of black comedy (like when Christine sees a demon with a “Hang in there Baby” cat poster in the same shot) that has come to define his horror style. Then the actual demons show up and its like this film is a spiritual successor to Evil Dead and I just love it. I might have to watch Evil Dead 2 very soon because now I have that Raimi horror itch.  /4Spooky Bingo #7: Punk Vacation19. Repo Man (1984)  This film features punks, lots of punks, hence my viewing for this challenge. Emelio Estevez plays Otto, a punk who just got fired from his supermarket job and is enticed into a job as a repo man. Taking place in 80s LA with a punk aesthetic (lots of urban decay and an intro track by Iggy Pop) he learns the trade while meeting all kinds of interesting characters. I have to say I was really impressed by this film. It has no shame, feels real while at the same time has a total punk feeling of just being what it is with no pretension. It is what it is and rejects any force telling it to be otherwise. This is a very unique film almost shot like a series of setpieces featuring CIA agents, Mexican car thieves, burned-out hippies and all shot in 80s LA with a punk soundtrack all playing in the background. I didn’t even mention the glowing extraterrestrials glowing in a car trunk that drives the entire plot. It’s worth a watch for that “I don’t give a gently caress” factor. .5/420. Final Destination 5 (2011)  I’m not going to bother explaining the premise of the series at this point because I’ve said it however many times. The fifth film is no different following it to the very layout I’ve mentioned before. There really isn’t much else they can do with the series which is probably why we haven’t had another film in a decade now. That being said, this series doesn’t have a lot to offer other than bad acting and the return of Tony Todd. Usually horror films get away with bad acting and one-dimensional characters by having some nice kills. Final Destination 5 does have a few but when the premise towards them is so tired by this point it’s difficult to be distracted. /4Spooky Bingo #8: Holiday Massacre21. Halloween Kills (2021)  This one picks up immediately after the events of Halloween 2018 where Michael Myers continues his rampage all over Haddonfield. This film also spends some time expanding the lore of this timeline (Halloween has like 4 different timelines, it’s nuts) by introducing characters from the 1978 version “all grown up” looking to avenge the events of 1978 and protect their town. On top of that we have Laurie Strode and her family trying to make sense of everything. I honestly really liked this film for one reason: Michael Myers became more and more brutal as the movie went on. Normally in a horror film I tend to pop for the first few kills (come on, we’re horror fans) but as the kills got more and more frequent and brutal I kinda of just stared at the screen in actual horror. It’s rare a horror film does that so effectively let alone a series like this. The film just does a very good job showing the aftermath of Halloween 2018 where you realize nobody really knew what was going on at the time and we see a bunch of minor characters return in larger roles (for example, the doctor and nurse costume couple seen leaving their home during one Michael killing spree) Some fun little surprises were 1978 Donald Pleasance returning as Dr. Loomis via the magic of CGI. I don’t know what to think of this other than I know they got the permission of his family. Another was the Halloween 3 reference where 3 of Michael’s victims were wearing Silver Shamrock Halloween masks (my group didn’t pick up on this one but I did) Great film, watch it for new horror this Halloween. /4Total: 1. Blade (1998), 2. Final Destination (2000), 3. Final Destination 2 (2003), 4. Venom: Let There be Carnage (2021), 5. Braindead (1992), 6. V/H/S (2012), 7. V/H/S/2, 8. V/H/S Viral (2014), 9. The Descent (2005), 10. Final Destination 3 (2006). 11. Halloween (2018), 12. Corpse Bride (2005), 13. Thirteen Ghosts (2001), 14. Jennifer’s Body (2009), 15. The Final Destination (2009), 16. V/H/S/94 (2021), 17. Freaks (1932), 18. Drag Me to Hell (2009), 19. Repo Man (1984), 20. Final Destination 5 (2011), 21. Halloween Kills (2021) Spooky Bingo Card  Don’t Torture a Ducking: Corpse Bridge (2005) They Always Come Back: Thirteen Ghosts (2001) Femme Fatale: Jennifer’s Body (2009) Tales of Terror: V/H/S/94 (2021) Something Wicked this Way Comes: Freaks (1932) The Devil Made Me Do It: Drag Me to Hell (2009) Punk Vacation: Repo Man (1984) Holiday Massacre: Halloween Kills (2021) Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Oct 25, 2021 |
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Oct 25, 2021 00:16
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13. Possessor (2020) Watched on Hulu Fran Challenge 2021: fear dot com  "It's gotta make you wonder, whether you're really married to her... or married to the worm." Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral had a compelling concept at the core of a movie that never quite hit its stride, but it was interesting enough to get me to check out Possessor. While I think this still suffers from some of the same problems - Brandon feels like more of an "ideas guy," and there's an almost clinical detachment that keeps the viewer at arm's length from the characters, which is likely intentional but ultimately feels like it undercuts any message that could be taken from it - it's much more successful as a film. When you're dealing with the idea of corporate espionage / assassination that relies on hijacking someone else's mind, the comparisons to Inception are going to be inevitable, though this feels much more like how that sort of technology would be used, and I think using it to explore the idea of identity and self is more interesting. The film keeps its cards close to its chest in terms of who is in control at any given moment, which is both the source of some of the most interesting scenes and ultimately a bit frustrating. The practical effects work is beautiful - there are a few shots that are hard to believe were done in-camera. In the end I think Brandon Cronenberg is still finding his voice, though he seems to have settled into a visual language. There's just a sterility to his work that I can't quite get past, which is strange given how humanistic his dad's work could be. Final Score: 7.5 / 10 --- 14. Dead and Buried (1981) Watched on Tubi Fran Challenge 2021: Dead and Buried "That sort of thing scares off business. Just kills the tourist trade." This was a fun ride all the way from the surprisingly brutal opening scene to the final sequence right out of an old pulp horror comic. It feels like it's following the "killer townies" formula of something like Two Thousand Maniacs! and then totally veers into another direction that works surprisingly well. The violence here is genuinely disturbing, in large part thanks to how the film juxtaposes it with shots of everyone going on about their regular lives in between. Stan Winston's effects work really takes it to another level, especially since the rest of the film has that sort of dreamy, low-budget look that you'd typically associate with a made for TV project. The casting is solid all-around - everyone understood the assignment, you get a small Robert Englund cameo, and casting the guy that most viewers will know as the grandpa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a bold move that really pays dividends. The plot becomes pretty silly by the end but it still works in the same way a lot of classic 50s / 60s era horror works. Just a fun movie that I probably would have missed out on if not for this challenge! Final Score: 7.5 / 10 --- 15. House of the Long Shadows (1983) Watched on DailyMotion Fran Challenge 2021: Based on the Novel "You could lose your life!" "Even worse - I could lose twenty thousand dollars!" On paper, this seems like a slam dunk: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine all in one movie, adapted from the novel Seven Keys to Baldpate, which also spawned a very successful stage play. Unfortunately, this movie takes a solid premise and possibly the most stacked cast of horror movie legends ever assembled, and commits the ultimate sin: being boring. A horror comedy that is neither frightening nor funny, this film follows an author who makes a bet with his publisher that he can write an entire gothic novel in 24 hours, as long as he's got a place with some peace and quiet to write. His publisher knows just the place: an abandoned manor house in Wales. As you can imagine, our author barely gets a foot in the door before his plans are interrupted. The biggest problem is that the actor playing the author (who mostly seems to have gotten into acting by virtue of being Lucille Ball's son) just sucks, and he's the character we spend the most time with. Well, ok, he's not terrible, but when he's standing beside a bunch of all-time greats he certainly can't hold his own. And considering how much work and money must have gone into assembling the rest of the cast, none of them ever get the chance to stretch their legs, which is a complete shame. The ending is silly, though it probably works better on stage - if I'm counting correctly, there are no less than four "twists" that all occur within a 10 minute span. Worth seeing if you want to check out probably the biggest waste of potential in horror movie history. Other than that, you *do* get to hear Vincent Price call Christopher Lee a bitch. Final Score: 5.5 / 10 Total Watched: 15 - Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (1988) / Luz: The Flower of Evil (2019) / Alucarda (1977) / In the Earth (2021) / The Wolf House (2020) / Phantom of the Paradise (1974) / November (2017) / His House (2020) / Shrew's Nest (2014) / Night Tide (1961) / Malignant (2021) / Opera (1987) / Possessor (2020) / Dead and Buried (1981) / House of the Long Shadows (1983) Countries Visitied: 8 - United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, United States, Chile, Estonia, Spain, Italy Spooky Bingo Card
Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Oct 25, 2021 |
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Oct 25, 2021 00:18
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Justin Godscock posted:
Halloween Kills That wasn't CGI for Loomis it was makeup effects on something who looked a lot like him
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Oct 25, 2021 00:22
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Hollismason posted:Yeah seriously what are you even doing. I've already been informed by a few that I've been slacking. I'm sorry.
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Oct 25, 2021 00:34
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Hollismason posted:Halloween Kills That wasn't CGI for Loomis it was makeup effects on something who looked a lot like him I blame Disney/Marvel for using CGI to recreate deceased/younger actors for the confusion because I thought it was the same technology at work. Props to the make-up crew for achieving such a great effect
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Oct 25, 2021 00:34
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The Fog A very interesting if unsuccessful horror. There are some great elements including the visual effects of the glowing, creeping fog and Carpenter really outdoes himself with an eerie, haunting and extremely memorable score. But the movie feels so low stakes once you realize the body count of the ghosts is so low. There's no real suspense with the town gathering for the party since they only need one more kill. The movie promptly forgets about them too. The climax is fun, and see Jamie Lee Curtis and her mom in the same movie is great. But the whole thing sort of feels like a made-for-tv kids' movie, low budget and not overly gory or scary. 2.5/5 Raw (rewatch)  Rewatch with my gf since she watched Titane but hadn't seen this. Just as a direct comparison it's incredible how much more gorgeous and high-concept Titane looks to this movie's more indie, grungey aspect. Ruben Impens has really enjoyed his budget upgrade. But it has a rawness that works well selling the griminess of college life. This also has a more cohesive narrative than Titane and a more approachable, sympathetic protagonist. It feels a lot tighter and is a great metaphor for coming of age and discovering various hungers. I love the sibling dynamic, the complex depiction of sexuality and the sheer energy of the movie. It holds really well. A double back-to-back with Jordan Peele's Get Out and Us which have a similar more ambitious, high-budget, and messier sequels to greats originals would be cool. Ducournau rules 4/5
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Oct 25, 2021 00:36
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 56. Sisters (1972) "I saw a murder, and I'm going to prove it!" de Palma just waving his Hitchcock all over the place with this one. I love a story where a plucky protagonist has to solve a crime the police are too dumb or lazy to handle. The mystery was pretty predictable, though perhaps that is not a fair criticism of a close to 50 year old movie, and it doesn't really matter anyway because the path to get there is full of great twists and turns and solid performances throughout. Would have been funnier if Jennifer Salt did a Jimmy Stewart voice the whole time though. 4/5 57. Vampire's Kiss (1988) "Hah! And you call yourself a psychiatrist?" I avoided this for a long time because of memes, but it's actually fantastic. Nicolas Cage plays Peter Loew, an office rear end in a top hat manager type who has a run-in with a bat in his apartment, then slowly starts to unravel as he believes he is slowly being turned into a vampire. Cage is unhinged as hell, but it's actually a really solid performance if you buy that this is what happens to the mental state of someone being used as a frequent meal for a vampire - or someone having a mental health episode of some sort. Lots of questions about how much of what we see is real and how much is a result of whatever is happening in Peter's mind, but I was glued to this one and would like to watch it again. 4.5/5 58. Hollow (2014) "She needs to see the shaman, now!" I essentially chose this for the bingo square because it was easy to find on YouTube, I know I've seen at least one or two others watch it as well. A young girl drowns but miraculous comes back to life... with spooky results. This was okay. We know very quickly that we're dealing with a possession, which means a lot of dark eye make-up on children doing jump scares at you, at least early on. One thing that was interesting coming from a North American perspective is how there's no pushback about it - it's just "oh poo poo, she's possessed, call the shaman and let's get to it" which I appreciated. The story has some pretty wild twists and turns and gets a lot darker in subject matter than I expected, but I think it got a little confusing toward the end and the effects are pretty rough. 2.5/5 -- Spooky Bingo: Rùng RợnTotal Watched: 58 // 'New to Me' Total: 49/40 Years Remaining: 2000
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Oct 25, 2021 00:49
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36) Poltergay Ticking the box for Scream, Queen!, as if that weren't already obvious. Construction worker Marc moves into a house with his wife Emma, only to learn that it is haunted by the ghosts of five clubbers who died in 1979 in a freak accident at the gay bar in the cellar. Hijinks ensue. I have seen a few horror-comedies in my time, but until now I didn't know that there was such a thing as a horror-farce. And it won't come as any surprise to those of you who are familiar with French farce that Poltergay has a huge amount of homophobic stereotyping going on. Not out of cruelty - the movie actually ends up being very positive on balance - but because crude, crass humour comes with the territory. When the gags aren't about gay sexuality they land well, and there's several subplots played straight to great effect. And I was amazed by the depth of talent in this movie. This isn't a shoddy B-movie with a cast of nobodies like it would be in the States; Gerard Depardieu's daughter Julie plays Emma, Marc is played by Clovis Cornillac (who would later co-star with Depardieu Sr as Asterix the Gaul in a live-action movie), and all the ghosts and half the secondary characters are solid actors with dozens of credits in major productions. I enjoyed about two thirds of this movie. If you can get past Gibert's racism in the Taxi movies you can probably get past the other third, but I can't in good faith recommend that you try.
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Oct 25, 2021 01:07
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18.  SPOOKY BINGO: A Perfect Getaway Strangler vs Strangler (1984) Yugoslavia  Mild mannered flower salesman and mama's boy Pera Milic only hates one thing: women who don't like his carnations. So much so that it drives him into a wild homicidal rage causing a string of murders via strangulation. Meanwhile shy rich kid musician Spiro forms a "psychic connection" to Pera and writes a hit song about strangling women to death. A very dark comedy about murder, misogyny, and the morbid fascinations with death as it appears in tabloids, true crime documentaries, and in this case pop songs. Spiro claims to have a psychic connection to the killer that compels him to write a song glorifying serial murder and even start to have a compulsion to strangle women but there isn't really anything in the film that supports this connection. If anything the claim is undercut at every opportunity making it clear that Spiro is just a morbid rear end in a top hat. Especially considering he ends up becoming a strangler himself and even gets away with it because of his social status and ends up as a famous composer respected for his part in catching Pera. The song he writes is pretty catchy though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIQUxqoz5gg if you're into 80s New Wave/Post-Punk stuff. Reminds me a bit of Memories of Murder in that the police are just comically incompetent and make the wrong move at every turn. They come very close to catching the strangler several times but he always slips away either out of luck or because of some screw up on their end. One interesting thing about the film is that it is narrated by an omniscient female narrator who, in the opening scene, states that Belgrade is not yet a proper metropolis because it has never had a real serial killer and that serial killers make a metropolis what it is far more than millions of inhabitants, high rise buildings, and subway systems. It's a very cynical and dark film where all authority figures are clueless morons and society as a whole is corrupt and vapid but it's tongue in cheek enough not to feel too miserable or mean spirited. Pera is more of a pitiful tragic figure than a monster in a way that reminds me a lot of Fritz Lang's M with the difference being that the killer in M kills children out of pure compulsion but Pera kills women because their tastes offend him so much that he just can't control his rage and remembers nothing afterwards. There is some pretty obvious Psycho influence in that he has an overbearing abusive mother and at one point he even imagines one of his victims as his mother scolding and beating him. After he kills his mother he even dresses up like her before going out for one last murder and to retrieve his severed ear, which was bitten of by the last woman he attacked. At the end of the film her rotting corpse, locked in the cistern with a TV, looks a lot like Ms. Bates does in Psycho. One nice touch I liked was the little silent film style intercards that pop up between chapters and also at one point act as subitles when Georg, the police inspectors pet cat, convinces his owner not to commit suicide after a particularly bad bungle in the investigation where a undercover cop is killed by the strangler 
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Oct 25, 2021 01:08
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7 . Halloween 5 : Revenge of Michael Myers This was awful. Just awful. Michael cries. Wtf.
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Oct 25, 2021 01:18
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Skrillmub posted:
love this
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Oct 25, 2021 01:34
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 #28: Lucifer's Women Bingo square: The Devil Made Me Do It When this movie started I assumed it would be one of those movies that justifies it's entire runtime and advertising around a few seconds of tits. Boy was I wrong. That poster is surprisingly tame compared to the content of the movie. There is a lot of nudity in this movie and multiple sex scenes. The heroine, Trilby, is explicitly confirmed to be bi. And by explicitly, I mean there's a scene where she's explicitly hosed by another chick. Which I didn't think happened in 70s movies, I'd thought that 2 girls kissing was the cutting edge of cinematic 70s lesbian technology. It's even depicted rather positively, until it's revealed that the other woman was just setting up the Trilby to be her third. I rather liked how the movie depicted the world the character's move in. This muddled nighttime realm of cabaret performers, magicians, sex workers, and actual satanists. Trilby is a dancer, but she could easily one day take up her roommate's boyfriend's offer and start hooking for him. She could get addicted to coke. Or she could be killed by satanists. Those are the dangers a woman faces in this world. The pimp and the satanist are competing over who gets to use Trilby, and those are almost equally bad fates. There is a line of dialogue which just flat out says what the threat is, "A man who has power over women". There's one scene featuring a cop who is established as one of the most despicable characters in the whole thing. It's not like, super gritty or anything, the movie doesn't want to go too far and make you feel bad about leering over Trilby like the villains do. But there's stuff going on here. I don't know if it's out and out feminist, there is still a ton of male gaze and maybe the lesbian stuff could fall under the predatory lesbian trope, I dunno, I'd want to see what some ladies have to say about the movie. But it's certainly more interesting than I was expecting. The acting is pretty good. I looked up the main chick to see what other movies she had done, but this is her only credited role. Which is a shame, I would've loved to see her in more stuff. So yeah, surprisingly strong recommendation for Lucifer's Women.  The corners are called The Anchors of Control in serious bingo circles, and now all four of them are mine. I have made the entire board my plaything.
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Oct 25, 2021 01:42
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22. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, Youtube) Claiming Salomé I watched this version on youtube since the other one that had different music and french text with subtitles was uploaded in 240p and I couldn’t see poo poo. I don’t think silent horror is for me. I’ve tried watching Haxan a few times and it didn’t stick, and this, despite only being an hour long, took me a few sittings to get through. I just really had trouble sitting and absorbing it. I think part of it is that I’m not familiar with the original story, so I’d often be lost as to what exactly was going on, or a character would show up and there wouldn’t be a card referencing them for a bit so I wouldn’t know who they were supposed to be, so it could get confusing. That said, taken on its own merits, it’s very well made and has some very affecting sequences, most notably for me the parts where it would cut in a bunch of abstract imagery, like when Roderick plays the guitar or when they bury Madeline in the crypt and it cuts to toads. I also really liked the bit where it looks like he murdered his wife with the painting, as she collapses and the camera goes all wonky (for the time). I think if you’re into silent horror, this will extremely be your poo poo. It’s obviously very well made. It’s just not really MY thing. 3/5 
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Oct 25, 2021 02:13
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 37. Crawl (2019)  .5/5Listen, it takes more than alligators than to make a good film. A lot more! You also need people to get eaten by those alligators. And you have to make a good reason why people are stuck with the alligators. You gotta make the alligators look good, you need a reason why the alligator problem is getting worse over time to raise tension, and to seal the deal, the actors have gotta look really scared of alligators!! That's what a good movie looks like, friends! Crawl nails all of that. It's lean, focused, and I'm gobsmacked at how much scary-looking poo poo they did with water filming on a tight budget. Kaya Scodelario plays a perfect horror thriller heroine, tough and driven to do what it takes to survive, even while she's rightly scared out of her gourd. I'm also impressed by the screenplay, not because the dialogue is any good but because it's so cleverly constructed as an engine of tension. A hurricane is a terrible scenario to be trapped in, a crouching-height crawl space is a cunning way to put the mobility of humans and hunting alligators on even footing, and by flooding that crawl space the protagonists are in a nightmare where things are only going to get worse with every passing second. A hurricane rescue patrol and some opportunistic looters bring some useful tools into the mix and provide some gator chow as half-time entertainment. Normally I love this kind of genre film that squeezes all the juice out of its premise. And I do really like Crawl! I just don't love it, for some reason. Maybe it's a little too grounded and naturalistic with its alligators? Crawl is kind of matter-of-fact about its big threat, instead of playing coy and building mood like Jaws so famously did, it just dumps an alligator right on top of you and gets to it. Or maybe I just shouldn't have watched this one solo, it feels like it'd be a lot more fun with someone else shouting "Oh poo poo!!" every time a gator clamps down on some fool! Spooky Bingo: Wild Beasts. Not just alligators, all the gators! 
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Oct 25, 2021 02:28
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 Killer Klowns from Outer Space, 1988 This horror comedy didn't click with me that much the first time I watched it. At least that's how I remember it. Think I liked a bit more this time around. Guess none of the jokes really land for me, but this an undeniable amusing and fun movie. You got clowns from outer space that kill people. Of course that's fun. So it may not be laugh out loud funny, it is still fun in the goofy dumb horror comedy way. The clowns land in a small town and turn people to cotton candy with their ray guns for food. They also kill people for sport and sadistic pleasure. And they are very much a case of "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." as Arthur C. Clarke once said. They seem to be able to do physically impossible cartoon stuff and just clown around with their victims. They are very much evil and love toying with their prey. They are going to do horrid stuff if there's a punchline or gag in it. And the design of the clowns and their weird tech are kind of cool in a dumb b-movie way. So yeah, I like this one better on this viewing than my first. Very much a worthwhile watch if you like dumb horror comedies.
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Oct 25, 2021 02:37
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8. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers What a terrible send off for Donald Pleasance, however it has a very young and dreamy Paul Rudd so who can say if good or bad. Its bad folks. Its really loving terrible. There are druids, some sort of weird magic, a curse . The one thing it has going for it is it has some pretty gruesome kills. Its also Donald Pleasance last performance. I think I might be done with the Halloween series for a bit , this was pretty terrible. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Oct 25, 2021 |
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Oct 25, 2021 02:50
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🎃 Dead & Buried 🎃 Blood of the Vampire (1958) Directed by Henry Cass Watched on Tubi  Blood of the Vampire features Barbara Shelley, who passed away in January. This is not a Hammer production, but it has the same lurid feel. Everything about it is really subpar though. The fact that the protagonist, John Pierre, doesn’t even change clothes when he's sent to prison says a lot. He’s such a dull character that he needs to dress differently than the other prisoners for the audience to tell him apart.  Except for Carl, the rest of the characters are just as forgettable — Doctor Callistratus, Wetzler, the whole crew. There are some pretty impressive sideburns going on here and the subplot about the discovery of blood types had potential, but it’s all such a letdown. 💀💀 Spooky Bingo 20/? 1. The Crazies (2010), 2. The Ritual (2017), 3. Blacula (1972), 4. Malignant (2013), 5. Black Sheep (2006), 6. [REC]2 (2009), 7. Demons 2 (1986), 8. Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (2013), 9. The Masque of the Red Death (1964), 10. Night of the Demons (1988), 11. The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976), 12. Opera (1987), 13. Sword of God (2018), 14. Thale (2012), 15. Stranger in Our House (1978), 16. The Ruins (2008), 17. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), 18. Uncle Peckerhead (2020), 19. Werewolves Within (2021), 20. Blood of the Vampire (1958)  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 25, 2021 03:09
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 The VVitch is fantastic. Obviously it fills the Something Wicked This Way Comes square, because witches! Except... witches? Witches barely show up in this movie. They're there, filling the film with ominous dread (and freeing ecstasy) but so much of this movie is fixated directly on the purestrain emotional suffering of a puritan family alone in the wilderness. Dude decides that gently caress civilization, for some never-stated reason he will not put up with New England, and he takes his wife and family of five(!) children off into the wilderness to build a cabin and not have to deal with anyone. Great idea, except that he's a godawful farmer, can't hunt worth a drat, and winter is coming. You'd expect this to turn into a survival film, then, but no: that's just one of the threats looming over the family. In the first few scenes a witch steals the baby. In the next few scenes you find out that no, they can't hunt for food as he sucks at it, and he sold their only valuable for these hunting supplies. These pressures are applied artfully, as the rest of the film is the pressure increasing...and increasing and not relenting until the very end. Our heroine, Thomasin, is the target. She's a young woman who is blamed for the missing baby, she can't control the younger children as they're the rudest brats in cinema, her family is probably going to send her away to be a servant, and everything gets increasingly worse for her. Or, what is a witch? A witch is a sinner, who has turned her back on Jesus and who has sold her soul to the Devil. A witch is an adult woman who is free to embrace her sexuality and power. A witch is the very enemy of this family and all it represents. A witch is what Thomasin becomes when she has nothing else. Which leads us around in a merry chase: if her father hadn't doomed them all to exile, would she have remained a good Christian woman? What does it take to stay faithful? The movie doesn't ask these questions, but at the same time at the end in a key shot she was ready to walk out - she was beginning to walk out - if the goat hadn't answered her. I believe that she would have abandoned that path if it hadn't been there, and returned to civilization (as it's within walking distance) and survived. The eerie atmosphere in the film of course builds on this: as wonderful as the ending is, it's so obviously been orchestrated. Every twitch, every turn, it was all crafted to drive her to sign her name. The Devil picked her, and by God he got her. Which begs the question: is a witch free if she was stripped of choices to begin with? I'm overthinking this, as you can tell. But the movie presents the traditional witch and pulls no punches and the ending is powerful. Fantastic movie. 5/5, love the attention to historical detail, even if it forced me to turn on subtitles so I could understand what they were saying.
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Oct 25, 2021 03:11
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53. Invaders From Mars (1986) (first viewing) A remake of a '50s film, this Tobe Hooper effort tell the story of a young boy who sees an alien spacecraft landing just behind the hills beyond his house one night. His dad goes out to investigate, and becomes the first victim of a plot for the aliens to assimilate everyone in the town. (Evidently the original Invaders From Mars predates Invasion of the Body Snatchers by a few years, so I'm not sure when this kind of plot first became popular.) This is a PG-rated, family-friendly affair with a pretty light tone throughout. The movie definitely follows little-kid logic, with our hero enlisting the school nurse to help him, and the two getting through to the commanding general of the local military base with relative ease. Things are pretty low-stakes, and there aren't really many clever developments--the marines basically just shoot at the Martians. Features some nice-enough visual effects work from heavyweights Stan Winston and John Dykstra. Pretty pedestrian overall. SPOOKY Bingo: This one checks off "Don't Torture a Duckling." 54. Brainscan (1994) (first viewing) Our hero is Michael (Edward Furlong), a teenage misfit into horror movies and video games. He learns about "Brainscan," a new ultra-realistic, interactive CD-ROM game that promises a terrifying experience unlike any other. His copy of Brainscan puts him into a state of hypnosis so the style of the game can be determined directly from his own subconscious. Michael goes into a first-person slasher movie scenario where he is the killer, but upon coming out of the game he is shocked to see an account of the "virtual" killing on the local news. Michael is then taunted by "Trickster," an evil personification of the game, as the line between the game and reality continues to blur. Powerful '90s energy in this one, from the glorious technology to the Furlong Factor. The movie peters out in the end, unfortunately, as they hit the reset button pretty hard and reveal that the events of the entire movie took place entirely in Michael's head over a few hours during the first session with the game. Mildly interesting as a mid-'90s time capsule, though. SPOOKY Bingo: This one checks off "Video Games Cause Violence." 55. The Lure (2015) (first viewing) It's The Little Mermaid, but it's also a Polish horror film with musical numbers. And a fantasy. And a romance. This one is definitely genre-bending. Two mermaid sisters, Golden and Silver, fall in with a night club band and work their way up from back-up singers to the star attraction. Society seems to take the existence of mermaids in stride. To be fair, when the sisters dry out, they grow normal legs (well, without genitals, which becomes a plot point), but can restore their mermaid form with as little as a glass of water. Oh, sometimes the mermaids grow monster teeth and eat people. (I am not really up to snuff on my mermaid lore, so I am not sure how many liberties are being taken here.) Not so much about horror beats as it is a dark reworking of a fairy tale/coming-of-age story. But it's a unique film, very stylish, and with great music throughout. SPOOKY Bingo: This one checks off "It's Only a Myth." Next up: Just nine SPOOKY Bingo squares left, so I'm going for the clean sweep! 
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Oct 25, 2021 03:22
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SPOOKY Challenge: Don't Torture a Duckling #75) The Child (1977; Tubi) After moving back to the countryside to work as a housekeeper, a young woman discovers that a young girl in the area is causing all sorts of trouble with her supernatural powers and zombie pals. Although it's an American production, filmed entirely in California, the combination of being shot on short ends of film, all the dialogue being dubbed in during post-production, and some choppy editing gives things a strong Euro horror vibe. The limited scope and settings, along with the narrative focus on dead family members, unsatisfied romance, and isolation, lends the film something of a southern gothic vibe. And a fabulously bonkers synth score keeps things feeling perpetually unhinged. It's a good thing all of those impressions are bouncing around, because for a lot of the film, there's nothing happening but arguments. Once things do get going on the zombie attack front, it's really not worth the wait. The zombie costumes look underwhelming (though appreciably dirty), the peril is minor, and our heroine shifts into Barbara from NotLD mode. Everything that happens from that point on is incredibly and frustratingly dragged out, and the resolution is practically non-existent. Easy to see why this was the director's only film. “Hope you're not a nervous woman. Can't stand nervous women.” Rating: 5/10 
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Oct 25, 2021 03:23
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 20. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), dir. Wes Craven and a Centuries Old Demon (Rewatch) New Nightmare is kind of the opposite of something like Halloween III. It was pretty well regarded upon release, but upon second looks, I think a lot of people rightfully find stuff wrong with this movie. It's very long and meanders a bit. It's not that scary. It deals with a pretty heavy tragedy early on that probably could have been scaled down to a coma. People call it the Proto-Scream, but it doesn't have the depth that Scream has. But good news, I still love this movie! It's rare that movies have a good trilogy. I didn't really grow up with Freddy. I didn't watch his movies till high school. I ended up loving I and III, but I don't have the nostalgia to gently caress with IV-VI besides appreciating some of the visuals. While II has grown on me over the years, I love the little Nancy Trilogy that exists nestled in the nine Freddy films. Just three genuinely good movies! This is probably the weakest, but I think there is a nice closure with having Nancy/Heather as a mother. And now being a parent, a lot of the movie hit a bit harder than it has in the past. Heather's fear of being mentally ill or having infected her child in particular resonated. I do feel like a lot of the elements of the film really could lend themselves to a straight film like Freddy going after a younger child and the redesign. /5
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Oct 25, 2021 03:40
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 #29 Dead and Buried Bing square: Dead and Buried I knew absolutely nothing about Dead and Buried except the poster and the fact that it gets recommended every October challenge. Which certainly made that first scene a trip. It was pretty good. It drags a bit in the middle. It goes on a while with the cop trying to solve the mystery after showing the audience enough for us to figure it out, and the cop isn't an interesting or fun to watch enough character to really hold that up by his own. But the head reconstruction scene was great. And everything from when he finally finds out who the bad guy is onwards is really good. Real freaky weird stuff. Soft recommendation for Dead and Buried. Good old Twilight Zone horror, but I think would've been better at Twilight Zone episode length. 
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Oct 25, 2021 03:41
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23. Suspiria (1977) (challenge: Video Nasty)   "We don't teach you to dance here. Our students already know how. This academy is dedicated to specializing." Hell yes. Yes!!! What a wonderful assault on the senses, including a dark ethereal score that sounds like it was made by a band named Goblin (because it was) and that tells you what the movie's about via creepy acapella voice. The plot is fairly straightforward once you put it into words, but that's not the point, and the main character doesn't get much characterization besides "curious protagonist", but I'm not convinced that adding more to that would make a better movie. After all, how much of a character were you in your last nightmare? 9/10 24. Dead 7 (2016) (challenge: Asylum) 𝅘𝅥𝅮 In the end, don't wanna see you fall apart Don't wanna hear your broken heart Don't look back, nothing's gonna save us in the end 𝅘𝅥𝅮 Decided to go all-out for my first Asylum flick ever, so I found this, which is just Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven with added jokes and zombies, written by and starring Nick Carter, with nearly every male role filled by other 2000s-era boy-banders and other musicians, produced by The Asylum, aired on SyFy. It's...kinda watchable and even fun at times? They mostly forget to be funny in the second half but there are some proper gags, like when a zombie bar fight breaks out and The Sniper insists on properly loading his rifle and settting it up on its tripod in a cramped booth. Everybody that tries to play a normal character botches it (including Nick Carter) while the people with ridiculous characters live it up, including A.J. McLean of the Backstreet Boys who is genuinely unnerving at times as a Satanic clown guy who gleefully leads zombies into battle while casually headshotting survivors with a handgun from close range as they run away. madTV's Debra Wilson is the main antagonist as an over-the-top zombie whisperer character that never quite clicks. The final sequence would be a failure of a tryhard serious ending if they hadn't set it to an entire song that they made just for the movie, which causes a sort of buffer overflow of ridiculousness that loops it back around to kinda working? At the very least there's a basic underlying competence holding the thing together that I wasn't expecting from an Asylum flick. I can't really recommend it but can't recommend against watching it either, so I guess that makes it a 6/10. Unless you were a big fan of all those boy bands, in which case this is a must-watch. And that's a bingo. 
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Oct 25, 2021 04:03
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ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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Oct 25, 2021 04:17
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Hollismason posted:7 . Halloween 5 : Revenge of Michael Myers Hahaha he also drops off a victim to pick up cigs, and in one scene just paces around behind some trees rather than hiding.
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Oct 25, 2021 04:56
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20. Halloween (2018) (rewatch) Spooky Bingo: none, rewatch  Michael Myers breaks out of the asylum and does his thing again; Laurie Strode responds. Breaking my long string of first-watches since, big shock, I'm planning on watching the sequel at the end of the month. Anyway, I thought this was decent the first time I saw it, and moved it up to Great this time around. This movie ignores all the other sequels and casts itself as a direct sequel to the 1978 film only. It's concerned with the impact Michael's actions have had on Laurie and others, which is an odd choice when you consider it cuts out like 90% of the things Michael has done in these movies, but it's a choice that ultimately works well. Early on, a character questions if Michael is really such a big deal; is five people 40 years ago really that scary? The movie makes the case that it is.  The movie is also interested in what Michael is. He's not driven by hatred for specific people; he's an opportunist. He kills one kid, and then conspicuously leaves two others alone. He clearly takes joy in killing people, and often poses their bodies just so for whoever finds them. The mask is only half the icon; there's something about the way he moves, the steady gracelessness of it. Yet the movie also seems to find something repellent or unseemly about being interested in Michael. Early on we follow a pair of podcasters who are fixated on the notion there must be more to him. These characters ask a lot of questions that the fans have asked - and also, they suck, and all the other characters hate them. Their voyeurism, visiting the site of Michael's sister's grave, leads to Michael getting his mask back. Dr. Sartain, the new Loomis - Laurie's words, not mine - can't get away from the idea that there must be something more to Michael: "I would suspect that the notion of being a predator... keeps Michael alive". Yet the doc is ultimately revealed as a wannabe slasher, who views it as a path to infamy. He's basically pinning his own motivations onto Michael. Despite his wishes, the doc is peripheral to the whole thing; it all comes down to Michael and Laurie. The takeaway, I guess, is that it doesn't matter why the slasher villain exists. The fact is that he does.  Let's talk about Laurie. The movie casts her as a grizzled survivor, obsessed with surviving Michael's inevitable return, to the detriment of her relationship with her daughter Karen and other family. She has ordered her whole life around this; she literally turned her home into a bomb, which is a hell of a metaphor. There are a couple of shots that recreate images from the original movie, with her in Michael's place: lurking outside the classroom, or conspicuously absent after falling out of a window. A lot of slashers have no restraint in their violence; every death is a protracted struggle. Michael in this movie is incredibly efficient, and most of his victims don't know what's happening til it's already over, and so when he finally runs into Laurie, her ability to stay alive and keep on going feels impressive in a way that is often lacking in other movies, without any superhuman feats on her part. I've heard mixed things about Halloween Kills, but it sounds like it focuses on a lot of the things I found engaging here, so I'm cautiously optimistic. 5/5
Kazzah fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 25, 2021 05:01
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19) One Cut of the Dead Bingo: Behind the Screams Things go badly for a hack director and film crew shooting a low budget zombie film in an abandoned WWII Japanese facility when they are attacked by real zombies. I loved this film but I'm not comfortable saying much more than outside of spoilers so I cut/pasted the description. It was a very satisfying film, and a welcomed over-delivery on its premise. 5/5
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Oct 25, 2021 05:02
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October 24.2 The Pit and the Pendulum I never got around to this entry in the Roger Corman Poe movies, so this was a good opportunity. smitster posted:33. The Pit And The Pendulum (1961) Bernard's sister has died under mysterious circumstances and he heads to Spain to confront her husband, Don Nicholas. Nicholas lives in a ancient mansion with his sister and has become reclusive since his wife died. She was scared to death. Or perhaps she wasn't dead. There's some creepy things happening at the mansion. Could it be her ghost? What a mess of a film. The original short story doesn't lend itself to films since there's very action to it, and this film addresses it by bolting the torture device onto the end of the movie in a sequence that doesn't actually matter. It feels like this was a script for a different gothic horror film and then they tried to make the title fit. The structure of the movie has problems, too. There's some long sequences where it's people providing narration over scenes instead of letting the scene play out on its own. Vincent Price is great as Nicholas but everyone else delivers their lines like they're being asked to drag it out as much as possible. My rankings of Corman Poe movies: Masque of the Red Death > Fall of the House of Usher > The Raven > The Pit and the Pendulum. On my SPOOKY, this is going down as Tales Of The Grotesque
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Oct 25, 2021 05:19
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SPOOKY Challenge: Behind the Screams #76) How to Make a Monster (1958; Tubi) In this American International picture, American International Pictures gets bought out, unseating a master makeup artist with the studio's new focus on feel-good pictures. To fight back, he uses his monsters, with some special ingredients for the makeup keeping the actors from knowing. There's an amazing amount to dig into with this script. Commentary on itself, the Hollywood ecology, horror audiences, actor attitudes, and probably a few inside baseball things that I missed abounds, and really makes it feel like the script-writer was investing some of himself in the work. The comparison of the special makeup to being a frontal lobotomy on the actors to whom it's applied can be taken any number of ways, as can the use of classic film monsters to resist the new regime (not to mention setting actors against executives). Robert H. Harris does a great job in the role of the mentally fracturing makeup artist, showing the building pressure on his character in numerous small behavioral changes, and revealing more of the man he was all along. It all leads up to a bold conclusion, satisfying despite its quickness, and while there's definitely some goofiness at times, it doesn't break the fun or flow. Certainly looking forward to revisiting this one. “Why, a creation is almost a sacred thing, all creations.” Rating: 8/10 
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Oct 25, 2021 06:06
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#30. The Amityville Horror (2005) Spooky Bingo Challenge: They Always Come Back Of all the remakes and reboots and reimaginings of classic horror properties I chose this for one very simple reason: I thought the original sucked. It's possibly the worst horror film to have ever been a big hit, just a long disjointed collection of vaguely supernatural things happening, apparently being very faithful to the accounts of the Lutzes who were badly improvising reasons to get out of their mortgage. (Or something like that, look I'm not doing any research on the story and you can't make me.) So hey, there's lots of room for improvement, right? Maybe now that the initial sensation of the Lutz story has passed, the filmmakers can take more liberties and construct an actual narrative out of this fractured garbage, right? But of course this was 2005, so get ready for lots of flashing lights, incredibly fast cuts, and weird editing tricks done to make people look like they're moving funny! So, the story's mostly the same at first. The Lutzes, played now by Melissa George and Ryan Reynolds (again 2005) manage to get a good deal on a house, because one night a few years ago in that same house, young Ronald DeFeo (Brendan Donaldson) killed his entire family with a shotgun, claiming to be possessed. (This is the part that actually happened which always makes the story a little skeevy.) Soon enough weird things start happening, the youngest child (Chloë Grace Moretz) gets a new imaginary friend who has the same name as one of the victims, and dad Reynolds starts hearing voices, feeling cold, and getting visions. Is it better than the original? Marginally. There's some attempt to give the story a bit more focus on George Lutz (Reynolds' part) slowly getting possessed and murdery, though it manifests as him becoming more of a complete dick to everyone, which is increasingly hilarious. Like it's supposed to be terrifying but I'm not buying it for a second. There's some stylish photography and more attempts at genuine scares, but few of them work; there's no actual mystery to what happened in the house, the Defeo murders are the first scene of the movie, so unlike the Shining where you kinda wonder where all these ghosts came from, here they're just, you know, the people we saw die earlier. Some of the visions and scare scenes are still a little random, George sees himself on a slab with his back split open, and there's this completely weird tangent where the parents hire a sexy babysitter (Rachel Nichols) who tells the kids the story of the murders before getting trapped in a closet and having a panic attack. The bit with the priest being chased out by insects happens too, only this time it's Philip Baker Hall. There's some tweet that I can't dig up about how some actors just don't work in period pieces and that somehow applies to everyone in this movie- it's the mid-to-late 70s and it actually took me a few scenes to realize, and that may be more realistic than the Stranger Things "signifiers everywhere" approach but even little things about the hair and wardrobe seem wrong. Reynolds appears shirtless several times to show off his chiseled physique and there is no way a contractor in the 70s went to the gym that often. Near the end the film swings a little harder and gets into the origins of the house- turns out it's where a preacher named Ketcham killed a whole bunch of Native people in sadistic ways. The climax is overall pretty different too, and there are even bits where I felt the filmmakers were trying to set up a new franchise. But all of this is just sorta Screenplay 101 bullshit tacked on to what's still a very thin story, and director Andrew Douglas isn't good enough to pull us by on style alone. So, I give it a few extra points for trying, but there may be no salvaging this franchise. Some series are born bad. 
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Oct 25, 2021 08:01
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 - (99). Paranormal Activity (2007) Written and Directed by Oren Peli Watched on Starz ”i want a good horror movie.” - Mama Goat I revisited this one last Halloween eve and was pleased to discover that it still held up. So when I wanted to find a guaranteed good film and I saw this in my library I jumped in and it did not disappoint. Obviously a very simple story and premise but that works in its favor, especially compared to its sequel. There’s something spooky going on to Katie, Micah’s being a dick about it, and we really don’t know much more. The only real hints of lore are the vague mention of spooky stuff in Katie’s past and the burned photo. They do help add some plausible support to the future lore being at least somewhat worked out ahead of time but more importantly they do a good job establishing that this i happening to Katie specifically and Micah’s just the rear end in a top hat along for the ride. One of my favorite parts of this has always been the steady drive that Micah’s making this situation worse because he’s a selfish rear end in a top hat who thinks this is fun. It gives us a good simple characterization between victim and… well not quite villain but definitely an enabler. Even in moments when Micah actually seems to be a decent human trying to care for his girlfriend during a trying time he can’t put down that drat camera. And I think this characterization works not only to help define the characters and push the narrative of the film but it serves as a really easy excuse for the found footage format. That’s always an iffy part of these films, where you need an excuse to have a camera rolling when important poo poo is being said or done. Some films get clumsy with exposition dumps and mysteriously perfectly edited films and some just punt the issue and do whatever they want. But PA largely pulls it off in a way that feels organic. Micah has a camera on and he’s editing the footage because he clearly thinks he’s making a fun movie, not chronically his girlfriend’s trauma. And that not only serves as an excuse for the camera but it basically makes it natural and part of his character that he’s always doing the least helpful thing at every important moment and running the camera. Really, a perfect smarmy rear end in a top hat. You know the type. “I didn’t buy a Ouija board, I borrowed one.” I do think Katie sometimes disappears behind Micah in this. I think Katie Featherstone does a good job and her gradual breakdown from a happy young woman bemused by her boyfriend’s obsession with her annoying thing to someone genuinely scared out of her mind and exhausted by not only the horrible, impossible, unexplained thing happening to her but the complete lack of decent support from the person she loves. I guess. I mean you’d have to love him to put up with that poo poo. Its a simple film so there’s not a ton to say, and you gotta enjoy found footage and jump scares to really like it. But I do and I really like it. Its a good moody film that pulls you in, gives you some good jumps, just enough bits of story and exposition to make it all work, and then gets out of there in under 90 minutes. Can you ask much more than that? Its enough for me.  - (100). Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) Directed by Tod Williams; Screenplay by Michael R. Perry, Christopher Landon, and Tom Pabst Watched on Starz Apparently Brian De Palma nearly directed this? That’s odd. I don’t hate this at all, but I don’t know if I like it. I’ve seen the original a number of times and I’m inclined to call it a modern… classic? That might be a bit much, but I think its an excellent, accessible, old school horror in a fresh package. And the second film is… a typical horror sequel to something kind of fresh. Its doing a lot of the same stuff that worked the same time, even to the point of just making the target this time the first victim’s sister, and it mostly works but there’s definitely some diminishing returns. And like a lot of horror sequels it goes really out of its way to justify its existence with a lot of lore and connective tissue kind of clumsily played out. Like they have a magical latinx maid mainly so she can show up in the last act to give them a supernatural ritual that advances the plot back to the first film. That’s awkward. And the found footage justification is kind of awkward too. It works fine early on with a goofy dad playing with his camera and even a touch of Micah back to be his annoying self with it. And security cameras are a plausible enough excuse for the rest of the footage and a way for the family to catch up with the happenings when its convenient and be clueless when its not. But even putting aside the old “so who edited this?” question that I guess can be answered with a simple “some blood sucking movie guy” handwave there’s a bunch of moments where like they’re just flat out dumping exposition and story turns into scenes that exist only for that purpose. And why exactly was a video camera that most useful thing when the power went out? Dad doesn’t have any flashlights? No one has a cell phone camera? Its not a dealbreaker or anything but its definitely pretty clumsy and forced. And that’s much of my feel of things. The lore, the format, the whole repeating situation that actually came first, the detour into the original film. None of it feels bad but all of it together feels forced. Still, its still fairly effective at the scares and while everything is ramped up it doesn’t feel out of control. I’m honestly not sure if my knowledge of where this franchise goes after helps or hurts a repeat viewing. I seem to recall liking this a bit more the first time, but that was years ago. But I certainly didn’t hate this and don’t mind keeping going. Even if this is just one more distraction from my challenges I seem to be trying to fail.
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Oct 25, 2021 08:47
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#17. AnthropophagusTo Serve Man -Watch a film that predominately features cannibalism  I originally got my hands on this because Fran posted a Video Nasty challenge every year, but I have another one of those lined up and nothing regarding cannibalism, so using it for that one. So, I get why this is a Video Nasty. However, aside from that scene, it really doesn't have that much going for it. It is a very bland, by-the-numbers story with some uninspired kills where nothing really stands out. Yeah, there is some shock value in its most notorious scene, but even this was surprisingly restrained, relying more on the idea of it than actual gore. The reason I picked it is because of an article, probably posted here, about how this and a few similar movies were quite popular in Japan and heavily influenced the design of the mansion in the original Resident Evil game. It had the same staircase, paintings covered in sheets and even the reveal of the first zombie was identical to the reveal of the killer in this movie. I remember side-by-side comparisons and would love to read it again now that I've seen this movie. Sadly, I can't find the original link and "Resident Evil Anthropophagus" on Google gets me nothing. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please post it. #18. Game Over डरावनी-Watch an Indian horror film.  I intended this to be my Video Games Cause Violence challenge, but it barely features video games and nothing about them is evil, so I'll use it for डरावनी instead. This movie feels weirdly schizophrenic, jumping from one idea to the next without ever fully developing them or trying to merge this all in a satisfactory way. It is a frustrating experience, because there is plenty in here that could work, if only it was given a little bit more love and attention. I'll try to summarize what I mean. Spoilers ahead. Swapna suffers from PTSD after being raped during a home invasion after getting a tattoo and is deadly afraid of the dark. The tattoo starts to hurt and when she tries to have it removed she suffers from hellish pains. The tattoo shop confesses someone's ashes were mixed in by accident. Sounds like a possessed tattoo kinda deal, right? Wrong, after Swapna tries to kill herself the movie turns into an almost Hallmark-level bad story about hope and love, because the ashes belonged to a three-time cancer survivor later killed by a murderer and her mother is so proud part of her daughter is now with Swapna. So it was the rapist who murdered the girl? Nope, completely unrelated. Oh yeah, now the serial killer is after her. After he kills her, part of the tattoo fades away and she gets to experience the night again, Groudhog Day-style. Her fear of the dark and VR therapy sessions to deal with it all just disappear when the tattoo is introduced. The haunted tattoo stuff gets dropped because now it is actually a good thing. And then we get video game lives during a slasher finale. None of it is bad, but it doesn't mesh or support what else is going on leaving this an unfocused, messy experience. #19. No One Gets Out Alive Based On The Novel-Watch a film adaptation of a novel or short story  Much like The Ritual, also based on an Adam Nevill book, this was decent-to-good, with a fantastic monster design pushing it firmly into "good" territory for me. I would've loved to have a bit more clarity on why Ambar was seeing the things she saw, if the other girls did too, etc., but it doesn't take away from a very enjoyable ride. 
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Oct 25, 2021 09:53
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28: IT Chapter 2 (2019) Spaced Invaders: IT came from outer space I enjoyed the first chapter back in the day but never got around to chapter two until now. Partly because it got more mixed reviews, partly because I remember the second part of the TV movie being bad and this uses the same separation of kids/adults timeline, and partly because it's three hours of spooky clown nonsense There's no reason for this to be 3 hours long. It's so flabby and repetitive. In fairness, it doesn't drag as bad as it might, I think because it's so action packed. Not great action, mind. The CG monsters all look cartoony and crap. It's not very scary, there a couple of creepy scenes but mostly it's monsters going Boo. It's the horror version of an Avengers movie. Stephen King cameo was fun. Cast were fine. Would not particularly recommend. 29: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)  Picnic at Hanging Rock: set in the 60s I knew this was based on horror short stories for kids so I expected an anthology film, but it's not, it's all one continuity with each original story a subplot. It makes for a rather meandering plot. It's kind of a YA movie, but I think teens who are into horror would find it a bit dull, and it's too much for pre-teens. Maybe it's aimed more at people who are nostalgic for the original stories, but I never read those. It's OK. Some effective creepy moments. The monsters look better than anything in IT Chapter 2. I didn't care for the ending. Total: 29 Q the Winged Serpent; Zombieland Double Tap; Saint Maud; A Chinese Ghost Story; Halloween 4; Halloween 5; Gamera VS Viras; Saw 3; Boar; Crash (1996); Vampyr; The Wailing; The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism; Enemy; The Beasterbunny; Bride of Chucky; V/H/S 2; Evilspeak; The Ward; Prince of Darkness; Terror in the Aisles; Sleepaway Camp; The Addams Family (2019); The Wolfman (2010); Green Room; Titane; When a Stranger Calls; IT Chapter 2; Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 
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Oct 25, 2021 11:32
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