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 #84) Premonition (1972; digital) (Available on Youtube) Hippie horror hallucinations! A mysterious red-petaled cultivar causes a rock band to see disturbing visions, leading to distrust and fear within the group. I've gotta be honest, I was hoping to find a surprise wellspring of inspiration for the game Deadly Premonition, but aside from the red petals, there's not much linking the two. That said, I did like the atmosphere the film built, even though more of the film is spent on characters describing how disturbed they've become by what they've experienced than on the experiences themselves. The characters felt authentic, the flashback and freakout sequences are handled in a fun way, and enough clues are laid out about what's happening to keep the ending from being too far out of left field. Big ups to the part of the score that sounded exactly like the turntable scratching from Herbie Hancock's “Rockit”. The in-film music played by the band is pretty great, too, some heavy psych rock in the neighborhood of the 13th Floor Elevators. It'd be cool if some boutique soundtrack label were to unearth the tracks from this and put them out with quality treatment. I'm sure this film will bore a lot of people (it's not too inaccurate to describe it as hippies hanging out in a cabin for most of the film), but it hit enough of the right notes with me to make for a comfortable and enjoyable watch. “Questions and answers are almost the same in the end.” Rating: 7/10
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Oct 29, 2021 05:41
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Sono posted:Can I get a judgement call on High Tension for Scream, Queen? I went into it blind, and while it fits "themes that deal heavily with LGBQT+ themes," I kind of feel bad just for watching it. It absolutely counts. I don't like the movie either, but I don't think it's at all ambiguous on that front. e: 15. The Medium Look, I enjoy a good baby eating as much as the next guy, but it can't carry a two hour movie. If you are a person who actually likes possession stuff this is probably a pretty good time. I was bored out of my mind by the time it finally ended. There are some genuinely good ideas in here and it explores a little territory you don't usually see covered in this kind of movie, some of this could have been really entertaining in different hands, but it does way too much that's entirely conventional as well. Including, like, a solid 20 minutes of "possessed person crawls around in vaguely menacing fashion" type padding. I was promised a wild finale, and I guess it sort of was in comparison to the utter tedium of everything leading up to it, but even the wild part is full of boring filler. Competent, not at all my thing. Irony.or.Death fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 05:52
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24: Crawl Challenge: wild Beasts Pretty entertaining, the leads have good chemistry. The gators are obviously CGI but still look pretty good.
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Oct 29, 2021 06:06
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#37. Hack-O-Lantern Was going to use this for the Punk Vacation space but turns out both punks in it are very minor roles. When Tommy (Gregory Scott Cummins) was a little boy, he saw his father killed by a satanic cult led by his grandfather (Hy Pyke.) Now that he's coming of age, the cult is planning for his "ascension" this Halloween night. Meanwhile a guy in a devil mask starts killing people seemingly at random, and everyone in town is going to some big Halloween party. That's pretty much the plot. As simple as this movie is in premise, boy does it lose the plot. There's no sense of tension whatsoever, partly because none of the characters are well established even in a "slasher movie victim" kinda way- Tommy's sister Vera (credited to a Carla B. and you know you're dealing with quality cinema when people start using obvious aliases) is sort of a protagonist but they don't really focus on her by the end. More could have been done with the cult angle but in practice it's an excuse to occasionally have scenes where people in robes stand in a circle. Despite a few gory kills and plenty of gratuitous nudity this film feels really tame somehow, partly because it's trying to be a comedy so everyone's just broad and wacky. It's one of those community-theater indie films, one where the action stops for a while so a guy at a party can do his stand-up routine and later there's a woman dancing with a snake for a few minutes because I guess she knew the filmmakers and they were like "Well, that's something we can have in the movie!" They even have a music video for a song that is, for all intents and purposes, the same as Mötley Crüe's "Shout at the Devil". Really the only thing separating it from films like Sledge Hammer or Hauntedween is it was shot on film, and honestly I don't think it compares favorably to either of those. It's just a mess. But it's not the worst film I've seen in this challenge so far. No, that's the next one. #38. Grotesque Spooky Bingo Challenge: Punk Vacation. (I don't know why this was the hardest challenge for me but it was.) Orville Kruger (Guy Stockwell) is a makeup artist for Hollywood, and after a big project he heads to his cabin in the mountains. At the same time, his daughter Lisa (Linda Blair) and her friend Kathy (Donna Wilkes) arrive for a visit. Unfortunately, a gang of punk criminals know that Kruger lives in that cabin and that he's hiding something "big", probably money or drugs. So they break in and kill everyone, except Lisa who runs into the woods. But while they don't find any money, the punks soon learn that Orville was, in fact, hiding something. Something that starts to kill them. So it sounds like a movie with this premise could be kinda cool or tense or at least enjoyable in a sleazy, nasty kinda way. But everything described above happens so fast that they soon run out of things to happen; it feels like this was going to be a chapter in an anthology that they ended up having to expand to feature length. The torment of the family is cut mercifully short, at least, but then you're left with the problem that the only characters left are unsympathetic psycho murderers and the thing killing them. This, again, could be handled well, but the filmmakers don't find any nuance or interesting things in the punk gang, and Lisa, who you'd expect to be a major player, is sidelined. The movie's monster is also not that interesting, and then the film kills him off, and spends the last twenty minutes or so as a crime procedural before turning into a really boring, labored revenge story, AND THEN IT WAS ALL JUST A MOVIE and Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man were in the projection room and they pop out and scare the audience out of the theater! I have no idea what the hell happened here, IMDB gives me no clues as to why this film is what it is or why it changes genres multiple times or why it ends like that. There's a real Monster-A-Go-Go feel to this, like it's the remains of something that was supposed to be very different and they tried to retool it but had no resources left to actually do anything substantial. It's a complete waste of time, except for the enigma that it represents. Who would make a movie like this? Who would agree to finance it? Who would release it? Am I wasting precious minutes of my life thinking about these questions rather than doing anything else? That's the Grotesque experience, people.  From here on out I don't expect to fill many more squares but I'll update if I see anything new that fits these.
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Oct 29, 2021 06:10
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Welp, I have been informed by a helpful poster that you are NOT meant to count rewatches towards the bingo, and have gone back and rejiggered some of my earlier posts. Anyway, 28. Death Machine (1994) Spooky Bingo: Starring Brad Dourif, But Not Chucky  A would-be corporate reformer and a couple of eco-saboteurs are trapped in a highrise with a mad scientist and his machine, of death. This is an early-onset nostalgia flick, made in the early '90s but slavishly devoted to the definitive movies of Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, and Ted Raimi, to the extent that it names characters after them. In spite of that, it's also well-done; it has enough of that first-draft roughness that's missing from later nostalgia pieces that I felt like I was watching a movie, instead of a tribute. The action sequences felt original. Even the elements that were clear ripoffs, like when Raimi put on the power loader - sorry, the hard-suit - had a unique tone to them; instead of this triumphant fight, it's a moment of uncertainty as Raimi is replaced by a dumb automaton. The building has a great look to it, darkness and coloured light and smoke, and the Death Machine had this fantastic impractical nastiness to it. It's just so fast - I like it when they make the robots fast as well as strong. Dourif was enjoying himself. It's probably the clammiest I've seen him, even more than The Lord of the Rings. His character wavered between genuine menace, and annoying Leto-Jokeresque mugging, which grew tedious to watch. There wasn't that much of it, I guess.  I hated the sound. Like, all of it. Constant Doom sound-effects everywhere; Elfman-esque plink plonk music all the time; it just took me out of the movie. And I didn't think much of the protagonist's tragic backstory. I know it's meant to be absurd, but the whole thing just seemed in bad taste to me. Anyway, a solid sci-fi action-horror. Man, even the nostalgia was better back in the day. 
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Oct 29, 2021 06:16
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31) Antlers [Based On The Novel, "The Quiet Boy" by Nick Antosca] Not real spoilers if you've seen the trailer idk. It's not good! The real unresolved trauma is me sitting through yet another movie where I'm forced to watch the protagonist slowly realize they're in a creature feature. Half baked mediation on trauma meets half baked monster movie. Honestly the monster movie isn't bad and the kills are sufficiently brutal and emotional. I'd be happy if I wasn't constantly ahead of the characters and bored out of my mind watching this story lurch forward.  32) Bones [Dead & Buried, Deezer D January 7, 2021] It's a blaxploitation Nightmare on Elm Street and I love it. There are tons of good practical effects and the occasional dodgy CGI. I love the intense lighting and general look of 2001. The flashback scenes are somewhere between 70s B-movies and the skits at the start of 90s music videos. Snoop can't really act but his line reads are perfect. There are lots of little gags and a killer dog that turns to soul smoke maybe. 33) Piranha II [Wild Beasts] Hard to imagine this is the worst part two, but it's still not very good. The opening suggests a much more exciting film and there's so much walking and talking for ostensibly aquatic horror. All the scenes on or in the water are fine and I can imagine the shorter VHS-exclusive Cameron Cut might work better. I love anything with humans losing fights to puppets but the flying piranhas make me wish I was watching Death Spa. Lance Henriksen: Boat Cop is a pitch for a superior movie. 
UltimoDragonQuest fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 07:23
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#28. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid Wild Beasts -Watch a film that features killer animals.  I really enjoyed the original Anaconda, but this was nothing more than passable, just as I expected from a sequel. The shot with everyone wading through the march and the snake half-visible in the water was very nice, the rest was competent, but by-the-numbers and not very engaging. #29. The Toxic Avenger Origin of Evil-Watch a film from your birth year.  Now this was an absolute blast. It is zany, wacky and completely embraces the chaos that it delivers. Not everything works, but the jokes just keep on coming and more then enough of them land. Gore, nudity and nonsense, just lovely. I particularly enjoyed how every bad guy wasn't just mean, but absolutely maniacally evil. Bozo doesn't just pick on wimps, but he does drunk hit-and-runs on kids for fun, the truck driver isn't just careless, he does lines of coke while transporting chemical waste, etc. Wow, 1984, what a year. #30. Contamination Spaced Invaders-Watch a film about extraterrestrial life.  It's Italian Alien, kind of, but on earth and without the actual xenomorph, because of reasons. So there are eggs, but they don't hatch, they immediately cause chests to burst open. I enjoyed that part, but it becomes this almost James Bond-like adventure where spies travel to an exotic location, to infiltrate and find out what is going on. I didn't care too much for that, but the finale did bring me back on board. What a lovely creature design, yes there is a Queen, and despite the limitations of what I assume was a puppet it really left an impression. Super Metroid's Phantoon, but with a body on a throne like King Conan and a trunk, I'm sold. And with that I have a double Bingo! 
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Oct 29, 2021 09:08
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19. Rogue (2007) Watched on Amazon Fran Challenge 2021: Wild Beasts  "Do you have many attacks on people?" "Tourists, occasionally." An American travel writer goes to Australia to take a crocodile tour, which is swiftly interrupted by a gigantic man-eating croc. You know the plot already, so the real question is whether everything else is polished enough to be interesting in spite of the predictability. The answer is...maybe? The pacing is solid, the tension builds at a nice clip, and the kills are done well, but the characters are all pretty one-note and most of them, including the character that we spend the most time with, are annoying assholes. I feel like cheering for the creature in these movies can be the result of deliberate choices by the director, but this ones genuinely seems to want you to care a bit about these people, and that just doesn't work. There are a couple moments where I thought the movie was making a bold choice that deviates from the typical formula, only for it to be a fakeout, yet it still ends up being a cut above most of the competition. Of course the biggest problem with these kinds of movies is that they inevitably crib from better movies (usually Jaws), which just ends up reminding you that you could be watching those instead. Final Score: 6 / 10 --- 20. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) Watched on Shudder Fran Challenge 2021: Behind the Screams  "I'll tell you: never hang out with a virgin. You got a virgin in your crew, either get somebody in her pants or get the hell away from her." A pretty charming making-of movie that follows the exploits of a man who wants to be the next slasher movie icon. This movie spends a decent amount of time deconstructing genre tropes (even if it never really interacts with them beyond a surface level), and the bits where it actually explores how much prep work goes into setting up a perfectly orchestrated series of murders are pretty fun. The most interesting part was probably when it wrestles with the purpose that these killings are meant to serve, but it never really gets into the meat of it in a way that's really satisfying. The "twist" works well even if the movie is weirdly insistent on overplaying its hand in the leadup to it, and seeing all of the pieces fall into place was enjoyable. This was obviously made by people with a deep affection for the classics of the genre, and it's hard not to grin at Leslie's giddiness over getting pursued by Robert Englund because it adds more drama to his backstory. Kinda bummed that the post-credit scene ends on another slasher cliche without taking the time to deconstruct it afterward, but that's a minor complaint. It's a fun movie that I think most horror fans will get a kick out of, even if it's all a bit superficial. Final Score: 7 / 10 --- 21. The Pale Door (2020) Watched on Shudder Fran Challenge 2021: Something Wicked This Way Comes  "I'm just...out of place here. Couldn't even pull the trigger." I am constantly disappointed by the dearth of good Western horror - aside from Ravenous, I'm not sure that I can name one that actually rises above decent. The description for this sounded intriguing, but after an extended sequence artlessly lifted almost entirely from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I realized this probably wasn't going to go well. It's ostensibly about a gang of outlaws who find themselves at the mercy of a coven of witches following a botched train robbery, but an enormous amount of screen time is devoted to bland family drama (there's a "reveal" about halfway through about the protagonist's family history that is so obvious I thought I missed something). This movie just kinda trudges through all of the tired Western staples, checking them off the list before moving to the next one, but there's no life in it. Not only that, it seems confused about what kind of vibe it's going for - for the most part it takes itself painfully seriously despite the wooden acting and shallow plot, and the next it feels like its trying to clumsily pay homage to From Dusk Til Dawn. There are a few interesting ideas buried in the rubble, but they're not enough to save this movie from itself. A shame that a setting / period of history with so much potential for interesting horror stories almost always just falls into generic cliche. Final Score: 5 / 10 Total Watched: 21 - 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) / Sputnik (2020) / Sea Fever (2019) / Spider Baby (1967) / Rogue (2007) / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) / The Pale Door (2020) Countries Visitied: 10 - United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, United States, Chile, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Russia, Ireland Spooky Bingo Card 
Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 10:19
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32: Ghost Stories (2017) Tales of Terror A paranormal debunker meets his idol, who challenges him to investigate three supernatural events. The start is directly lifted from James Randi's debunking of faith healer Peter Popoff, where our protagonist exposes a predatory "psychic" exploiting desperate people. Then he meets a famous debunker from the 70s who chews him out for being close minded, which was a jarring turn, but ok it's setting up the shorts as something that turned a former sceptic into a believer. Short 1 is Paul Whitehouse as a nightwatchman who sees something spooky. It was nice to see PW flex his acting chops a bit by playing this unpleasant low-key racist character, but otherwise it's underwhelming. Short 2 is a young guy who lied about passing his driving test, drives at night and saw something spooky. Short 3 is Martin Freeman as a rich douchebag who says he saw something spooky. Three guys claim they saw something supernatural and that's the old man's reason for becoming a Believer? That's weak. OK, often in anthology movies the wraparound is just a framing device and not very important, but here it's the meat of the movie with no hard cuts between it and the shorts. Our protagonist then heads back to the old man who pulls his face away to reveal Martin Freeman, there's a flashback to our protagonist's childhood and then it turns out none of this was real it was all a coma-dream and the three guys from the shorts are hospital staff. Groan. It was a frustrating movie. I disliked the twist. I don't know what it's trying to say regarding belief vs scepticism. The shorts have an ok atmosphere but not much substance. Cast are all good and it looks nice. Total: 32 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; Rabid; Jennifer's Body; Ghost Stories Spooky Bingo #3 
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Oct 29, 2021 11:31
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Well I left it way too long and now I have 21+ reviews to write. I also haven't kept up with the thread for about 20 pages. It's been easy to watch the films (especially because I've been favouring a lot of lighter stuff) but it's been otherwise kinda emotionally taxing for me to get into the spirit of this thread. I said why in my last post, but TL;DR: I've had an awful October, as far as family stuff has gone  I'm going to be brief for most of these reviews, and post them over a few posts. ----- 22. Coraline (2009) - rewatch Fantastic stop motion animated movie, maybe Henry Selick's best and a brilliant first feature for Laika. The dual world, and both versions of all the characters, are delightful. The tone gets really dark for a children's story - it's frightening and unsettling in places. But it's also hilarious, like in the musical number sung by the other versions of the two elderly sisters. And Keith David is always a treat - he's good as the cat. God this movie is great. 23. The Shining (1980) - rewatch Not much to say about this one, everyone knows how good it is. It's one of my favourite horror movies ever, if not my number one. I'm looking forward to following it up with the director's cut of Doctor Sleep at the end of the month. 24. The House on Haunted Hill (1959) - rewatch Such a schlocky, ridiculous movie. Everything about it is just silly - the acid, the skeleton, the "twists". It's a fun watch but it's basically drivel. 25. The House on Haunted Hill (1999) - rewatch Also basically drivel, but not nearly as fun. What the gently caress is Geoffrey Rush trying to do with his accent? The house is made up of a cool bunch of sets, but nothing that takes place in the house is coherent in any way. This is the second least coherent movie I've watched for this challenge, after Blair Witch 2. I must admit, the evil black mass at the end is a pretty cool effect, but it's so low-resolution and muddy now. It's a shame it couldn't be up-rezzed for the HD release. 26. The Gate (1987) - first time A pretty solid PG-vibes 80s B-movie with some alright creepy critters. Actually quite decent effects (puppetry? stop motion?) on them. The finale was kind of impressive for such a low budget movie. I appreciated the happy ending, even the dog came back  27. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) - rewatch Kind of dreary with only a few memorable songs. Helena Bonham Carter was absolutely the wrong choice for this. She just can't sing. This is my least favourite Sondheim musical, I think. 28. Pandorum (2009) - rewatch Generation ship gone wrong. I thought I liked this the first time I saw it, which is why I own the blu-ray. But this time around I wasn't so enamoured. The journey around the ship is passable horror entertainment but all the psychological stuff with Dennis Quaid's character is interminable. 29. The Addams Family (1991) - rewatch I hadn't seen this since the 90s and couldn't remember much about it. What a delightful time! Everyone's pouring their hearts into their roles. It's kind of hilarious that Christopher Lloyd is this movie's straight-man, at least compared to this bizarre family, even though he's bizarre as gently caress himself. 30. Shutter Island (2010) - rewatch A good little Marty S. mystery/thriller. Not much scary about it, although the atmosphere is oppressive. Real downer of an ending reveal. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 13:06
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 53) Hack-O-Lantern (1988) Honest to God couldn't find a trailer so enjoy this quality musical scene from the film Seen on: Shudder Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Holiday Massacre -Watch a film set on a holiday It's Halloween, and in a small farming community, a devil-worshipping grandpa is getting ready to induct his adult grandson, Tommy (actually likely son but we're getting ahead of ourselves here), into his devil worshipping cult. As the town prepares for its stripper-ific Halloween party, people close to the family start getting offed by a devil-masked killer. Will Tommy fulfill his destiny and join his overacting grandpa? I...I can't tell if this was a parody or just a case of late '80s direct-to-video earnestness. First off, the acting is, uh...you have Hy Pike as the satanic grandpa, a one-note eeeeevil character that is unable to read the room or change gears at all and is thus utterly hysterical to watch. His daughter (who it's implied he rapes on her wedding day and produces Tommy) is played by Katina Garner (a lot of DTV and grindhouse/exploitation credits on iMDB), who is doing her best Meryl Streep impression and believes she's in a serious drama. The adult siblings in the film are also pretty amateurish. And the padding! There's the aforementioned random full-on music video that is amusing as hell. We focus way too long on an unfunny comedian doing stand-up outside of the Halloween party. Inside the party there's a stripper who's just getting down with everyone in one of those weird situations where normally you'd think someone would protest but everyone just smiles and laughs. It really feels like whoever produced this just threw in every local entertainer they knew trying to break into showbiz. There's a handful of decent kills (shovel through the head is pretty good) and a lot of casual T&A if that's your thing, but none of it really elevates this beyond its pure oddity value. I should probably go back and watch the RLM review of this.  54) The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) Trailer Seen on: Tubi Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Tales of the Grotesque -Watch an film adapted from an Edgar Allen Poe story or poem. It's 1492 in Toledo, Spain, and the Spanish Inquisition is in full swing. An innocent wife of a baker protests the public whipping of a noble boy and draws the attention of Torquemada (motherfucking Lance Henriksen), who falls for her beauty and has her arrested under false pretenses. While he attempts to torture and break her for his own desires, her husband (the guy who played the Castle Freak!) tries to rescue her. The Wikipedia entry for Poe's original "Pit and the Pendulum" story says that the author made "no attempt to describe accurately the operations of the Spanish Inquisition," so I think it's pretty fitting that this Stuart Gordon adaptation uses the story as a VERY loose framework to drape a horror drama over it. First off, the cast in this thing is insane - Henriksen is awesomely intense and devours the scenery as the mad monk; Gordon favorite Jeffrey Combs is here, as are Mark Margolis (Oz, Breaking Bad) as Henriksen's right-hand man and Frances Bay (who's been in a thousand things but will always be Happy Gilmore's grandma to me) as a real witch who helps Rona de Ricci's innocent Maria cope with the horror. This movie provides extra value on the Poe adaptation front, as you also get one-scene wonder Oliver Reed(!) as a papal envoy who gets the Cask of Amontillado treatment by Torquemada when he arrives to tell him to quit torturing people (they do the whole "for the love of God" bit)! There's plenty of gnarly FX here as well as a ton of nudity and attempted sexual assault (it's a Stuart Gordon film after all), and Bay takes out several of her captors in one of the best deaths I've seen in a movie this challenge, a scene which will have your brain screaming "that's not how that works!" but it owns anyway because it's so awesome she ingests a ton of gunpowder right before she's burned at the stake; she explodes and people die from the shrapnel of her bones, I don't know how much more loving hardcore you can get.  55) Grave Encounters (2011) Trailer Seen on: Shudder Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Asylum -Watch a film that takes place or heavily features an insane asylum This found-footage film purports to show the last hours of a ghost-hunting TV team, who locked themselves inside the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital for a night to find evidence of ghosts. Filming starts off well, but a few hours into the event, strange things begin to happen, and when the crew try to leave, the building won't let them. Hope you like CGI-distorted face ghosts! Grave Encounters isn't going to win any awards for originality, and the cast plays the characters maybe a smidge too broad/realistic (all the archetypes are here - confident blowhard leader, screaming hysterical girl, etc) so it's hard to feel too bad for them. I'm pretty sure this movie and Dead Birds that I watched earlier in the challenge are the source of about 95 percent of the "spookiest picture/gif" threads found online, what with all the face-distorting spooks that show up in the last third of the movie. While that conceit is pretty standard, I appreciated that the the first two thirds wisely go the more subtle route, as the building fucks with the TV crew - entrances and exits disappear, hallways go on forever, and they begin to lose all sense of space and time. That concept is really frightening, and the ending also managed to give me goosebumps, with the suggestions of the occult and mad science that have put the building and its former inhabitants in their current hellish state - it's all stuff I wish they had explored more, because the majority of the film is the usual "boo" shakycam running and screaming, and I don't think those are the film's strengths.  56) V/H/S 94 (2021) Trailer Seen on: Shudder Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO [REC] -Watch a found footage film. A police SWAT team breaks into what they think is a drug compound and instead discover a video-centered cult. We see videos of four stories play out on the screens there - a TV reporting team searches for an urban legend; a funeral home worker attends to a seemingly uneventful wake; a mad scientist's compound is raided by a police team searching for missing girl; and a militia group mishandles a strange bioweapon they intend to use for a bombing. This is honestly the first full V/H/S film I've watched, as I've just picked through a few segments of earlier entries. Overall this is pretty good with one or two weak segments that don't work, but that's always the nature of these anthologies. The wraparound segment is not great, mainly because everyone's in riot gear, it's hard to tell people apart or to care why they're doing or saying what they're doing and it's clumsily tied in to the last video. Storm Drain is really great as it hits on a lot of primal fears for me (CHUD traumatized me as a kid, thanks for asking) - being trapped underground and watching people die horribly by being burned by acid always freaks me out. Great creature design (by Keith Thompson, which explains a hell of a lot) and a shocker of an ending. The second story, The Empty Wake, has a nice buildup and the creature FX and setting are very effective and spooky, but the ending is a little too abrupt and maybe a little too ambiguous. The Subject - I loved Safe Haven from the same director in V/H/S 2 but this one's not as good. It goes on a little too long, and while the mad scientist's experiments look neat, it especially verges into video game territory near the end. Terror - this was probably my second favorite after Storm Drain. I like the repetition of the militia's daily ritual and how they really hold off on revealing what is going on, and any sort of mystery you can add to a short story like this in a small amount of time is impressive.  57) Inferno (1980) Trailer Seen on: Shudder Fran Horror Challenge 2021: SPOOKY BINGO Masters of Horror -Pick an objective Master of Horror. Watch a film of theirs you've never seen. I'm going all-out this month on Argento, it's the third film of his I've watched this challenge. A man investigates the murders of his sister and friend after both women had begun searching for the lore of The Three Mothers, witches said to control the world's dark forces. Ah, so this is the start of the Three Mothers Cinematic Universe! Ok not really, but after researching this movie after watching it, Argento apparently wanted to expand on the witches group introducesdin Suspiria - it's also kind of like how they tried to expand the Cenobite lore in Hellraiser 2. But does it work? Well, I think the movie looks good (hope u like red and blue) and there are some memorable setpieces here, like the exploration of a flooded ballroom. Overall though I didn't care for it, for several reasons. One, Argento tried to do a different soundtrack feel and didn't bring back Goblin (Keith Emerson of prog rock group Emerson Lake & Palmer does it here) and aside from one or two songs, nothing really stuck in my head afterwards. The characters are very dry, too - the lead guy is really boring, and I felt like Suspiria did it better because we learn more about Jessica Harper's character in that film. All the other characters show up to basically be murdered 20 minutes later (what a waste of Daria Nicolodi). There's also some cat abuse here that I didn't care for at all, although the perpetrator gets eaten by rats, which doesn't make up for it but it's a start. The film just sort of lurches along as the lead meets a new character, gets a new clue, that person dies, etc. until the abrupt ending (the reaper at the end is neat). 
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Oct 29, 2021 13:16
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24. 3 From Hell I originally saw this in the theatre and didn't care for it much. Unfortunately by the time I bought tickets we were sitting in the front row and having to crane my neck definitely enhanced the bad time I was having so I promised I would rewatch. I liked it much more this time. My main issue with it the last time around was the making of the 3 heroes and them receiving no comeuppance for their terrible actions. This time, maybe it was knowing the beats or whatever, it didn't concern me at all. I was really able to enjoy some of the grimy hectic shots and understood a lot of the people they killed deserved it. I still think its somewhat redundant to and not nearly as good as, Devils Rejects, but it does stand on its own and I could see rewatching it again. 25. Sputnik For whatever reason, Hulu thinks this movie needs audio descriptions on and theres absolutely nothing you can do about it. Between that, and my expectation that much more of this movie would take place in space, I don't really have any complaints. The alien design is super cool and looks great every time its shown. The plot itself and resolution are both strong. The film is well paced and there really aren't any slow moments. It I had to nit-pick one thing, it would have been nice to see the actual alien attack thats hinted at on the movie poster. 26. House (1986) A movie that I'm sure every one of us stared at the cover art for at Blockbuster many times. Sadly, the movie does not live up to the poster. There are some really great Raimi-esque monster designs and puppets that I wish had been recycled and used in a better movie. I don't believe we ever get an explanation as to WHY the house is haunted and the plot is mostly a muddled mess. I guess this is supposed to be a comedy of some sort but the jokes must have gone over my head or under my butt because other than a line or two I found nothing humorous about House. But Boy oh boy those creatures! Anytime they are on screen the quality of what you're watching improves 100 fold. I can not express enough how good, cool, and perfectly 80s they are. 27. Sweet 16 (1983) This will be one of those rare reviews where I don't have a ton good to say about this movie and yet I still liked it? A pretty blatant attempt to ape Friday the 13th but with even worse acting and a less interesting story. I still liked it more than The Burning which is probably not a popular opinion. Almost everyone in the movie is likable and those who aren't bite it. The pacing leaves never a dull moment for phone checking. The mystery is not easily solved although I might argue thats because the solution is silly and kind of out of nowhere. There's even some recognition of white people being lovely towards Native Americans and some sympathy towards their situation which seems somewhat progressive for 1983.
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Oct 29, 2021 14:45
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 #37: The Snarling Bingo square: Full Moon It turns out this is a horror comedy. With a very narrow concept of comedy "He was bitten in a zoo by Wales" "How he get bit by whales?" That's it, that's the joke structure they've got, and they think that's enough to carry the entire film because the actors, story, cinematography, gore, horror, etc, in none of those areas does The Snarling excel. To put it politely. There's no buildup of anything, no character relationships, no tension, just that level of joke told endlessly by people I quickly began to hate. I would not recommend The Snarling  
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Oct 29, 2021 15:01
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Bruteman posted:Bay takes out several of her captors in one of the best deaths I've seen in a movie this challenge, a scene which will have your brain screaming "that's not how that works!" but it owns anyway because it's so awesome *snip* I don't know how much more loving hardcore you can get. Well, you could write your own death scene instead of stealing one from Good Omens. That would be much more hardcore.
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Oct 29, 2021 15:03
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5. The Prowler (1981) A bunch of kids at a graduation dance get picked off one at a time by a killer dressed in an army uniform. More moody and slow than I expected. The kills are nasty and brutal - and pretty convincing, too, courtesy of Tom Savini - even if they don't have the goofy variety that I feel is the hallmark of later slashers. The problem here is that the story doesn't come together satisfyingly, like how the heroes spend the entire movie on 'seperate tracks' from the killings, to the detriment of the tension. 6. My Bloody Valentine (1981) A small town is terrorized by a pickaxe-wielding maniac with a hatred of Valentine's Day. This movie is just absolutely absurd and fun from the very first scene until the last. I don't know what I like more between the outrageously blunt flashback that explains the premise and the conceit of the victims being a bunch of horny, party-hardy miners. The kills are grisly and ridiculous (and accompanied by a noticable drop in image quality in the version of the movie I saw), and the abandoned mine shaft is a cool setting for the finale. Heartily recommended.
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Oct 29, 2021 15:15
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 I was not prepared for Liquid Sky. (1982)  I googled a list of punk/horror films and the cover to this one instantly drew me. Its premise is wild, the characters are androgynous, and it's about drugs and sex and aliens. The premise is, invisible aliens arrive in New York City looking for drugs, but instead find that orgasms are even better. They follow an androgynous fashion model who has absolutely no direction in her life. Trigger warning for rape, and moreso for the way no one has sympathy for our heroine. Yes, it's a rape-revenge as well? I question mark this because that's not the point of the film, the point of the film is - I don't know! I don't know! I hit the end credits and was surprised to find that the lead actor was both leads, Margaret and her rival Jimmy, they're both androgynous fashion models. I'm sorry, this is a terrible review. I cannot convey to you in words the atmosphere of the film, the intoxicating direction that makes it something you cannot pull your eyes away from. The music is synth, the acting electric, the special effects work scarily well. This fits in the punk category because it's about punks, people living inside/outside society, doing drugs, rejecting the normal, being something else. But it's not violent, it's not violent like I tend to think of punks? The violence comes from society itself, society and its expectations and predators and what it wants you to be. Our heroine's monologue while she puts her makeup on is a corrosive slam against what society expects out of women. What is sex? What is gender? What are orgasms? What are drugs? Why did that woman in the apartment order so much jumbo shrimp from a Chinese place, there were only two of them there? The staring, awkward confusion shot after Jimmy came was one of the greatest moments in the film. Pitch-perfect reaction to the intensity of the build up and climax. I'm not talking about sex. 5/5. Liquid Sky is a unique movie. You should watch it. Do not do drugs before watching it. Don't have sex, either.
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Oct 29, 2021 15:25
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 34. Demons 2 (1986) Spooky Bingo: The Devil Made Me Do It I love the original Demons, so the devil/demons bingo square seemed like a good excuse to tackle the second, which is a similar type of story except in a big apartment building instead of a theater. Unfortunately I think the setting made a difference. With the theater setup, the smaller space means that you get a big chunk of the “oh poo poo, demons!” reactions out of the way and can carry on with the carnage. But in Demons 2, the characters are spread out so much (and so many of them barely interact) that things feel more disconnected. I did like that this one carried on the tradition of having some punks randomly driving around outside the bounds of the rest of the movie though. I liked the party/tv scene, some of the health club stuff, and the extended fight with the little demon. But even the best bits of this sequel don’t come close to the high points of Geretta Giancarlo (someone I wish had been in way more movies) putting on the mask or that whole helicopter thing. The high rise idea was an interesting one, and I think a different director may have used it more effectively. There’s a chance I’ll like this more on a rewatch though if I go in with the idea that it’s a set of lightly connected stories that happen in the same place instead of comparing it so heavily to the original.  35. Brainscan (1994) Spooky Bingo: Video Games Cause Violence Edward Furlong plays a creepy teen who spies on his neighbor but then chooses a horror video game over her party. He loves the intensity of the game until it gets a little too real. This one was fine? I guess? I wouldn’t have watched it if I wasn’t digging around for something other than a big franchise sequel for the video game slot, but once it got going I thought the idea was pretty fun. A lot of the smaller details held it back though. Me and the protagonist got off to a rough start thanks to his peeping tom habit (and no, finding out later that it was reciprocated didn’t help). I also didn’t much get the point of his heavily emphasized backstory given how little it connected to anything else. The ending bugged me not because of the choice they made, but because it didn’t line up with Frank Langella’s solo scenes. Also, Furlong’s final decision was a weird, mean-spirited dig that felt at odds with what his character went through. ”Hey, I just learned that it feels lovely to be responsible for a death even if I didn’t mean it, so I’ll trick this old guy into playing a game that can give someone an aneurysm because he won’t let me show gory movies at school.” I liked the trickster concept, just not enough to get past how messy some of the other aspects of the movie were. And that’s a third bingo! I may squeeze in another movie before the end of the month to keep my last spooky season movie from being Brainscan, but I’m not sure I’ll have time for another write-up. But considering how ridiculous my schedule has been for the last two weeks, I’m feeling pretty accomplished. I hit my goal of 31 movies and squeezed in 3 bingo rows.  1. Elvira, Mistress of the Dead (1988) 2. The Dead Pit (1989) 3. Blacula (1972) 4. When a Stranger Calls (1979) 5. When a Stranger Calls Back (1993) 6. The Beyond (1981) 7. Slaxx (2020) 8. House of Wax (1995) 9. When a Stranger Calls (2006) 10. Till Death (2021) 11. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) 12. Peeping Tom (1960) 13. Intruder (1989) 14. Lifeforce (1985) 15. The Keep (1983) 16. Halloween (2018) 17. Night of the Living Dead (1990) 18. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) 19. Halloween Kills (2021) 20. The Children (2008) 21. Alone In the Dark (1982) 22. Censor (2021) 23. Shock (1977) 24. Class of 1999 (1990) 25. Vampire Resurrection (2001) 26. Slumber Party Massacre (2021) 27. Valentine (2001) 28. Housebound (2014) 29. Slugs (1988) 30. Baffled! (1972) 31. Killing Birds (1988) 32. Uninvited (1987) 33. The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)
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Oct 29, 2021 15:27
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Franchescanado posted:Based On The Novel  #34. Bram Stoker's Dracula (iTunes) After battling the Turks and coming home to find his beloved wife dead by suicide, a powerful Romanian general swears vengeance and is reborn as an immortal vampire. Centuries later, he pursues a woman in England who he believes to be the reincarnation of his lover. Adaptations of "Dracula" end up in a weird position - they either end up aping Bela Lugosi's version of the cold yet exotic outsider, or they imitate Christopher Lee's more animalistic take, or they end up going the Frank Langella route and emphasizing the romantic/Romantic take. (Most don't end up in the Klaus Kinski Nosferatu-inspired position.) Francis Ford Coppola's handsomely mounted production ends up falling more in the Langella spectrum, emphasizing the loneliness and the tragedy of a romance that would not allow itself to perish. It's a visual spectacle, allowing for a lot of interesting compositions and old-school cross dissolves and iris fade-ins and fade-outs. If you're a fan of older, silent-era, pre-Hayes Code filmmaking, there's a lot of throwback elements that got resurrected here, but with far more sumptuous costume and make up design. It's also one of the most complete adaptations of the original "Dracula" novel out there, outright refusing to cut or consolidate characters as most of the films do - how many times does Hollywood seem to remember that Quincy Morris is an important character to the novel? This lends a lot of depth to the storytelling, as it doesn't feel rushed despite covering a fairly broad amount of content. The only issue is that some of the important cast members feel woefully out of place; Keanu Reeves is transparently not suited to the material, and Winona Ryder doesn't fare much better. It helps that Gary Oldman might be one of the best, most underrated Dracula performers around, though he does also have the best script and character focus of pretty much any film adaptation out there. I also liked Anthony Hopkins' wild, slightly deranged social misfit take on Van Helsing, and a lot of the supporting cast (including Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes and Tom Waits as a shockingly good Renfield) is solid. This was a surprisingly good adaptation; I don't know how I'd slept on it for so long. If you can look past some of the poor casting decisions, you'll see how well the film can hearken back to old school filmmaking while making its own unique thing. Strongly recommended.  /5 And that's a third SPOOKY for me, all "O" lines. I think at this point I'm going to be done with Challenge chasing; I've got some family here now, and will be traveling this weekend, so not sure how many more scary movies I'm going to have time to watch and review between now and the 1st. But with 3 lines done and my original goal of 31 films surpassed, if I don't get any more reviews in under the wire I think I'll feel okay about it. Watched so far: The Hunt, The Fog (1980), The Howling, Venom 2, Curse of the Demon, The Mummy's Tomb, The Stepfather (1987), Maniac Cop, The City of the Dead, Halloween (2018), Killer Klowns From Outer Space, DeepStar Six, Dracula's Daughter, Tremors, Friday the 13th Part 8, The Voices, Werewolves Within, It!, Ghost in the Machine, Halloween Kills, Near Dark, Actress Wanted, Def by Temptation, Razorback, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, various shorts, Dawn of the Beast, Graveyard Shift, The Funhouse, House, Slumber Party Massacre (2021), My Soul to Take, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Bram Stoker's Dracula
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Oct 29, 2021 15:36
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 - (123). Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015) Directed by Gregory Plotkin; Written by Jason Harry Pagan, Andrew Deutschman, Adam Robitel, Gavin Heffernan, and Brantley Aufill Watched on Paramount+ I respect a horror franchise that just keeps ramping up. Like the first few sequels suffer from diminishing returns. Trying to do the same thing repeatedly without any real new ideas. A lot of horror franchises have that issue. And like the proper response to that is probably to just not make more movies if you don’t have ideas, but its business. So I enjoy it when the alternative is “lets just get weird and go for it.” Sometimes its good changes, a lot of the times its some stupid poo poo. And make no mistake, this is some batshit crazy stupid poo poo. But it is different and it is making an effort and I think that’s a lot more fun than just the same ole same ole. Like there’s another version of this film where they never find some magic camera and spot crazy poo poo, so instead they just notice their kid acting funny and some stuff being knocked over and then too late. And that probably would have been an earlier sequel. But this on definitely tries something. Paranormal Activity’s lore is somehow simultaneously a crazy mess and a vague under explained thing. I mean over the last few movies we’ve definitely gotten the rough idea. There’s some kind of witch coven, they are into stealing kids and matching them up with demons. Or a demon? Its not clear. Toby’s around but maybe that’s like “Legion”? Maybe its just a pseudonym demons give impressionable kids in chat rooms. What was the deal with the grown rear end possessed dudes in Marked Ones? How do they fit not this? I dunno. And them time travel… somehow. For some reason. Its not super clear. Nothing is ever super clear, and honestly that’s kind of keeping to the spirit of these movies. Like these aren’t movies where an expert comes in, explains everything, and then cleans the house. No, this is a series of people who get caught up in something evil they don’t know and then all hell breaks loose. Also they happen to record it. And there’s some confusing conspiracy they get a whiff of right before everything goes sideways. So like… nothing really makes sense. Video camera is magic because has extra tubes or something. It got here by time travel or something so they can time travel back so they can… honestly, I have no idea. I actually watched this TWICE tonight. I was a tad distracted the first time and I felt like maybe if I paid more attention I’d pick up on the nuances a bit more. But no. poo poo’s just dumb and crazy and wild. But its kind of fun. I mean it is if you like found footage and jump scares and cgi ghost faces. And I do. They’re fun, harmless, easy horror. And sometimes that’s just what I want. Is this a good film? No… no its not. Is there some standout performance? Olivia Taylor Dudley is a very, very beautiful woman but that’s about it. I respect that they keep using the same actors. Like would anyone notice of Grandma Louis or kid Katie were recast? That stuff is dumb fun. I’m a little sad grown Katie didn’t make it into this one. I would have liked to see her stab Micah again. And hey, I guess we met Toby. Not too many horror movies show you the bad guy’s face 6 films in. Can’t take that away. Its stupid, but I think its fun stupid. I probably wouldn’t if it had just kept doing the same thing. I was dragging around the 4th film. But it got crazy and weird and if you do that fast paced and with a few jump scares and under 90 minutes? I’m easy. I’m just looking to have a good time. It turns out I hated this when I watched it a few years ago. I guess I’ve mellowed? Honestly it being the second time and me knowing the whole thing just gets silly probably just changed the way I watched. I didn’t go in expecting a great scare, just looking for a dumb silly time. And I got it.  78 (124). In Dreams (1999) Directed by Neil Jordan; Screenplay by Bruce Robinson and Neil Jordan; Based on Doll's Eyes by Bari Wood Watched on Amazon Prime HalloweeNIT 26/31 I do like Roy Orbison. This feels very, very of the time. Its kind of all over the place. In some ways feels like its trying to be another Silence of the Lambs or Se7en. Those dark quasi horror thrillers were all the rave at the time. Its also hot a supernatural, borderline Nightmare on Elm Street element but its all really confusing and vague and surreal almost like the movie’s trying to avoid just leaning into the horror label and be something “better.” Jordan seems like that kind of guy even though he’s done a bunch of horrors. They all have a vague air of pretentiousness, but really that was just the thriller feel of the time. And what was with the 90s and trans serial killers? Robert Downey Jr just feels silly and over the top in this role. I could never quite tell if Vivian is was just playing a role or what. But it feels like a trope they went to the well with a lot for the likes of Buffalo Bill that really wouldn’t fly today. And its a weird thing to go back and see because I’m not exactly sure what this film is trying to say and one easy interpretation isn’t a good thing. But maybe its not trying to say that? I dunno. Film wasn’t super clear and I don’t get the sense Jordan likes making things clear. Annette Benning does work her rear end off. I think the role and story are just too crazy and poor to ever really salvage it but a lesser actor definitely would have made this film a lot harder to watch and sillier. The film never really fully devolves into silly. It flirts with that territory and I’m not sure the emotional beats survive all the madness, especially since they all kind of come real early into things so don’t feel like they get time to stick before things go off the rails. And that may be the problem. I mean there’s a lot of problems but I don’t think it helps how quickly this jumps to th tragedy and crazy everything and not giving anything enough time to breath or make an impact. But I’m not sure it would have worked if you had given it time, and given us time to really think about it. Ultimately fans of surreal, psychological stuff like Jordan does probably would enjoy this more than me. I can enjoy most anything when done well. This as some good visuals and cinematography, although it has some bad effects that aged poorly and look silly and break the tone. But it didn’t do much for me. But I did hang around for the credits song.  79 (125). The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) Directed by Piers Haggard; Written by Robert Wynne-Simmons and Piers Haggard Watched on TubiTV Hooptober Ocho 38/39: 2/2 folk horror My. That’s a rather long child gang rape scene… I dunno, I think it started to come together more for me as it went on but I also just think this kind of movie isn’t for me. I was actually kind excited for this one. I like cult and witchy stuff and a lot of folk horror. But I’m not a big fan of style over substance or real loose storytelling. And this feels loose. The story comes into focus for the most part and its not super hard to follow. Someone dug up something evil and now the devil has a cult. But like there’s not only no exact protagonists or something to hook into but it doesn’t even feel like it gives us a chance to know characters before they all killing each other and growing fur and stuff. So I don’t care about any of these people and none of this has any real impact. And I guess that’s a good thing because it means I’m not in here ranting about that rape scene. But I not because I didn’t care o feel it was real. It was uncomfortable and gross but it felt too much like that’s all it was. Just a series of uncomfortable, bad things happening to make you uncomfortable because the devil’s here. And that’s not enough for me. I need something meatier, something to really sink into and feel like it all matters and is happening to people. It doesn’t help that 50 year old horror stuff isn’t gonna be especially scary on a purely visual level. It doesn’t look bad or anything but there’s nothing that especially stands out or that I remember. So it just rolls along and then by the time I do start to recognize some characters and understand the story I just don’t really care about any of this and am ready for it to be over. And again, I guess that’s good because then I don’t care that the ending is just some kind of lame scene of some random religious people easily killing the evil. That’s it? I get why people like this but it just did very little for me. It feels like it could have been more my thing. A more focused narrative, some more attention to characters, a more linear build of the story. But then I guess it wouldn’t be what it is that people like and have it remembered for. So oh well. Not everything has to be for everyone.  80 (126). Alive aka ‘アライヴ’ (2002) Written and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura; co-written by Yūdai Yamaguchi and Isao Kiriyama; Based on Alive by Tsutomu Takahashi Watched on Youtube HalloweeNIT 27/31 Hooptober Ocho 39/39: 3/3 Asian horror films Oh boy, a manga adaption. This is basically what I - someone who has never read a manga - imagines when I read “manga adaption”. Its a nonsensical mess of cliches and tropes that make 13-year-olds say “bad rear end”. The monster is like 5 different things and every 20 minutes they’re like “woah, its actually a X!” And there’s wacky chapter and fight graphics. And the plot keeps twisting but also kind of has nothing to it. The protagonist is an edgy and morally ambiguous killer who murdered the men who gang raped his girlfriend but also murdered his girlfriend for some reason? But maybe he didn’t, maybe she just killed herself because he murdered those guys? Its not super clear because he’s very stoic and quiet and such a bad rear end. Also apparently in the source material he wears an orange prison jumpsuit (on account of being a prisoner) the whole time but Kitamura changed that because he felt it was "tacky and improbable" so instead he dressed him in head to bottom black leather. I’m working on a theory that Kitamura may actually be a trio of 12 year old buys standing on each other's shoulders wearing a trenchcoat. This was just a chore to watch. It doesn’t even have the kinetic energy the other Kitamura films I’ve seen had. Obviously “nonsensically comic book violence and juvenile bad assess” is his brand but this is kind of slow and methodical about it. And ugly looking and drab. It would be tedious and pointless to list all the silly, dumb stuff in this film. And I’ve already wasted more time and energy on this than I’d like since for the second Kitamura film in a row I fell asleep in the middle and had to back up and finish it the next day. I am just incredibly bored by Kitamura’s whole thing. Like if you like it then maybe you’ll like this too. I think its probably worse and slower than the other two films I watched this month - Versus and No One Lives - but it also feels very similar to a lot of anime or manga inspired stuff I’ve seen. So if that’s your deal maybe you’ll get more from this silly mashup of ideas without a real plot or characters that exist as anything more than one sentence explanation. But I think I’m done with this stuff. But hey, that’s Hooptober! At least I finished one challenge with some time to spare. Now for the rest of them. 🎃Halloween 2021: Hooptober Ocho and Spook-a-Doodle HalloweeNIT ’21🎃 Hooptober Ocho: 39/39; HalloweeNIT: 27/31; Svengoolie: 13/26; Fran’s SPOOKY BINGO: 33/36;
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Oct 29, 2021 15:42
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 Nosferatu The Vampyre Now having seen this movie three or four times, I like to put it on as a mood setter. And Herzog doesn't waste any time in doing that, because the opening credits are perfectly off-putting a creepy and eerily beautiful in that way that only Herzog can do. From there I enjoy just being immersed in the setting and the atmosphere of mud and fog and creaky old buildings and fancy dresses and the whole package is just such an amazing tribute to Murnau's original film. Kinski's performance of maybe the most physical of any Dracula ever. Sure, Christopher Lee has that raw animalistic quality, but there's a subtlety and consistency to Kinski's Dracula that makes him so completely convincing that I could see being scared to even be around the guy when they were shooting this(and he was scary under normal circumstances anyway!). He's completely transformed, and not just physically, he really does not read as human in any way. It's an iconic performance that probably doesn't get the recognition it deserves today compared to some other Draculas. Like many Dracula adaptations, the story does lose some steam in the second half, but at only about 1 hr 40 mins, I wouldn't say that it overstays it's welcome at all. As a Herzog fan, I just love that we even get to experience this, I love the fact that it exists. Herzog isn't someone who I'd necessarily expect to jump at the chance to do Dracula but he did and it's predictably amazing.     Night Teeth Always nice to throw something new into the mix and Netflix has been good about releasing some spooky stuff every October. Night Teeth is entertaining enough, although there's not a whole lot of actual horror in it. It's more like Collateral with vampires, but without good action. That's not to say that it's bad, I'd call it fair to middling. The cast is actually pretty strong, and the lead performance by Jorge Lendeborg was good enough to keep me engaged, I definitely found myself rooting for him to somehow make it out of the situation. There's also some pretty cool world building and the way everything is set up it wouldn't shock me to see a sequel. So not a strong recommend, but still it's a decent choice if you're looking for a recent release to watch this weekend that isn't very scary.    1. Phantasm 2. Malignant 3. The Thing 4. The Mummy(1999) 5. The Curse of Frankenstein 6. Child's Play 7. The Fog 8. Hellraiser 9. Beetlejuice 10. Elvira Mistress of The Dark 11. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein 12. Dead Heat 13. Halloween 14. Halloween 2 15. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers 16. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers 17. Halloween: H20 18. VHS 94(TALES OF TERROR)19. Count Dracula(PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK) 20. It Came From Outer Space(SPACED INVADERS) 21. Rats: Night of Terror(ORIGIN OF EVIL) 22. Halloween(2018) 23. Halloween Kills 24. Scream 25. Scream 2 26. Little Evil(THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT) 27. Raw Meat(TO SERVE MAN) 28. Edge of the Ax 29. I Know What You Did Last Summer 30. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer 31. City of the Dead 32. Nosferatu The Vampyre 33. Night Teeth
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Oct 29, 2021 15:47
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63. Venom (1981) (first viewing) In this film, a maid, a chauffeur, and an international terrorist (Klaus Kinski!) devise a plan to kidnap the son of a wealthy hotel chain owner. The son is a collector of animals, and, through a series of mistakes, he comes into possession of a black mamba--a speedy, aggressive, and highly venomous snake. A police officer is alerted to the presence of the snake and comes to the house, where he is shot by the chauffeur. This draws tons of police squads, which quickly surround the house and trap the kidnappers inside with the snake, which has gotten loose in the house. I primarily picked this one for the Klaus Kinski factor. However, he is rather restrained here, not drawing upon the bug-eyed intensity he often displays in his films with Werner Herzog. Tobe Hooper was initially slated to direct, but dropped out and was replaced by Piers Haggard. The film is certainly competent, but fairly predictable in the way it plays out, so not really a whole lot to say here. SPOOKY Bingo: This one checks off "Wild Beasts." Next up: Down to the final SPOOKY Bingo square--"They Always Come Back." I will be doing a double bill of the original Carnival of Souls and the 1998 remake. 
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Oct 29, 2021 16:58
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 Going from Liquid Sky to The Thing From Another World (1951) was one hell of a bad move in retrospect. One's a queer punk fever dream that excels at what it does, and one's the most strait-laced white straight military thing that does okay, I guess. A bunch of military dudes unearth a UFO in the arctic, and promptly blow it up to hide it from the public. But then they find a plant monster haunting their base, and there's discussion over whether they should destroy it or communicate it - and wouldn't you know it, the guys arguing for talking to the alien wind up dying because the alien's hostile. Yep. It ends with a broadcast warning the world about how aliens are evil and dangerous. I know what the horror is trying to go for, here. I'm a fan of enjoying the easy fun of "the aliens are unequivocally evil and we need to destroy them" ala X-COM and (some) Warhammer 40k. And the unknown is scary! But this just was a yawner and the twist that it's a plant didn't really work. Oh yeah, it's a plant, it's related to plants, this is my bingo pick for Don't Feed the Plants. Lots of very serious straight talking men try to study the plant and what it's doing and discuss how to destroy it and I couldn't get invested in any of them. There's exactly one woman in the film and she spends her time hitting on and being hit on by the dudes. I'm going to quote wikipedia here: quote:The film took full advantage of the national feelings in America at the time in order to help enhance the horror elements of the film's storyline. The film reflected a post-Hiroshima skepticism about science and prevailing negative views of scientists who meddle with things better left alone. In the end it is American servicemen and several sensible scientists who win the day over the alien invader.[3] This is the most boring and banal bullshit in the entire world and I'm glad we left the 50s behind. Like - yes, nuclear power is terrifying and the nukes were one hell of a bad idea, but sticking your head in the sand and ignoring science is just... ugh. This is the most anti-punk movie possible and I wish I'd picked something else. It may have exactly 2 stars for the good dogs who were so happy to be in the movie. The sled dogs were all "yay! I am pulling a sled and being around people!" and I love them dearly. (ps I'm so happy John Carpenter remade this movie and tweaked the concept into something really killer, because that's a 5/5 movie)
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Oct 29, 2021 17:01
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 24. The Mummy's Curse (1944) Everything I hate about Mummy sequels, but with an extra helping of racism. I didn’t like this at all! Very glad to be done with these, except for Abbott and Costello, which I'm looking forward to.  25. House of Dracula (1945) Spooky Bingo: fear dot com I thought I had seen this before but I don’t think that was the case. Anyway, this is just a retread of House of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Not really much of note here. Bleh. Interestingly for Spooky Bingo though, as a Frankenstein movie I hadn't seen before, it does deal with advanced technology, namely medical technology, being used for nefarious ends.  26. She-Wolf of London (1946) I actually kind of like the premise of this, turning the werewolf movie into a psychological thriller. But this movie felt stretched even at an hour. This would probably work better as a Twilight Zone episode. Also, I've been checking cast lists of some of these movies to see if they qualify for the Dead and Buried challenge and June Lockhart is apparently still alive and well at 96, so that was interesting.  27. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) Spooky Bingo: Don't Torture a Duckling What a breath of fresh air this was after a seemingly endless parade of crappy Mummy sequels. It was really nice to see Bela Lugosi as Dracula again. I just wish they’d been able to get Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. The humor isn’t anything you haven’t seen before but it’s well executed. Just a good fun movie. 
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Oct 29, 2021 17:20
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59. The Virgin Spring (1960, Criterion, Picnic at Hanging Rock) - The worst thing about this movie is that every shot is so precisely and beautifully framed that I was too distracted to look at the subtitles several times. It's also a bit slow. Set in medieval times and based on a 13th century ballad (and in turn, had The Last House on the Left based on it), it's a revenge tale following the rape and murder of the titular virgin, with the murderers stopping at the parents' farm and revealing themselves through her possessions. It is very slow moving, with the plot driven through a couple of key scenes 4.5/5 60. High Tension (2003, Plex, Scream, Queen!) - This is recommended by several LGBTQ sites. They apparently haven't watched it. What I thought I was getting was a movie about a woman saving her girlfriend from a group of kidnappers, but apparently I conflated a couple of the French New Extreme movies. (This is the first I've seen.)What I got instead was a decent enough slasher, where "The Killer" shows up, murders the friend's (not girlfriend's) family, kidnaps the friend, and the protagonist's attempt to rescue her. This part, which is the vast majority of the movie, is quite tense, with the protagonist and the Killer flipping back and forth on the predator/prey roles several times. And then they completely gently caress up the ending with a swerve for the sake of a swerve that makes absolutely no sense. The protagonist is the killer. Even if you buy that it's foreshadowed by Alex showing fear of Marie, you would need (1) the truck to materialize out of nowhere, (2) the gun to materialize out of nowhere, (3) Marie to be able to be in the front and the back of the truck at the same time, (4) Marie to have a car chase with herself, god knows what else. 3.5/5 Also, Plex sucks and showed me the same recruitment ad for Mercedes mechanics to move to Southern California a dozen times, including 3 out of 3 ads on one of the ad breaks. And then there was one... 
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Oct 29, 2021 17:41
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HalloweeNIT #31 Asylum - 3/5 Portmanteau film with a contrived set-up: a psychiatrist is interviewing patients to find out which one of them is secretly the former head of the asylum, who has gone mad and been imprisoned. The first segment set me up to have expectations that all of the segments would have an EC Comics style twist ending, but that didn’t prove to be true exactly. Usually the EC style was moralistic with bad people getting an ironic comeuppance. Here that’s only true of the first; the other segment’s protagonists are more innocent than not. For that reason, the first segment was my favorite, despite the fact that the second and third segments feature the best actors: Peter Cushing in the second, Charlotte Rampling and Britt Eklund in the third. The fourth segment is the strangest, featuring a Puppet Master-style murderous doll with terrible animation if you can call it that. We see way too much of it walking when it’s clearly just a wind-up doll. The ending is hackneyed and more or less what I predicted it would be from the start, despite it making nonsense of the premise of the film. The inmates are secretly running the asylum? You don’t say.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:42
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18. Nocturnal Animals An artist receives a book manuscript from her long divorced ex-husband. As she reads it, imagining herself in the book, long forgotten unresolved trauma comes to the surface as the book turns out to have some uncomfortable subtext. An extremely intense mélange of No Country for Old Men, Neon Demon and David Lynch, I was absolutely gripped by everything. I don’t want to say any more than that about the movie, don’t go in with any preconceptions and don’t read the director’s opinion on the message of his movie – he is a dumbass. 19. The Creature from the Black Lagoon A good creature suit, really neat underwater action, a distractingly beautiful Julie Adams, science, environmentalism, what more do you want? Sadly, an unforgiveable mistake mars the entire movie: They did not gently caress the fishman! In fact, they spend the entire movie trying to keep it from loving. Just let him gently caress! 20. (The) Maus Leaving (The) in parenthesis because it was probably added for the American audiences to not mix it up with the comic book. Sounds so stupid though… A Bosnian survivor of the Srebrenica massacre, her hapless German boyfriend and their dog get stranded in a Bosnian forest, where they run afoul of mines, people, trauma and perhaps something else? This movie is almost really good, and I’ll elaborate on the almost later. Lots of great things about it. The movie has a very distinct look to it: It’s shot in a way that almost always only puts the actors in focus and the background is a blur (think for example Arrival), which ends up working very well for some scares and for symbolism too. The times when the focus changes and you can see the surroundings in detail, and when it goes back into a blur, very neat. Also, distinct elements of Guillermo del Toro style magical realism, something that very rarely works for me, so major points here. Now here’s the potential problem: It’s a story about cycles of victimization and trauma, trust and reconciliation, especially in context of the genocides in the late 90s Balkans. Definitely not a setting often used for horror, and a topic ripe for exploration. It’s also entirely written, directed and produced by Spanish people. Now I don’t think artists should only be able to make art about their own experiences, but they touch upon some subjects that get quite uncomfortable, and perhaps downright racist in their hands. If this was a film made by locals, the hate and prejudices and such would come from a personal place. From a comfy Western European filmmaker, it comes off more as repeating tired old stereotypes about the Balkans. Here, the Bosnian protagonists hates Serbs because of her past experience, and believes them all to be rapist and murderers. But she is suffering from heavy PTSD., so her fears are understandable? But later in fact it turns out the Serbs are rapists and murderers. Okay then Spanish dude, thanks for the nuance. This movie really surprised me, and I suggest that people give it a look. Shame it can’t count for the Bingo because it’s a Spanish movie through and through… 21. The Block Island Sound Set on a generic island off the East Coast, a somnambulist father falls off his boat and drowns, leaving his adult children to figure out what happened . Soon, his son also begins sleepwalking and seeing things that might not be there. Takes its time to build up characters and litter the story with all too obvious cues for the audience, then becomes quite spooky before ending with a very patronizing voiceover replaying a previous monologue by a character that was really only missing flashing lights and airhorns indicating THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER. Have some faith in your audience please! The actor playing the dad is an absolute jackpot of creepiness though, and the filmmakers use him to his full extent. Dear lord, that poor man. Watched: 1. Titane, 2. In the Earth, 3. Goke Body Snatcher from Hell, 4. Baby of Macon, 5. Paganini Horror, 6. Hearts in Atlantis, 7. Witches of Eastwick, 8. Gerald's Game, 9. Spook Warfare, 10. The Pyjama Girl Case, 11. New York Ripper, 12. Censor, 13. CarousHELL, 14. Killer Nun, 15. Critters, 16. Ghoulies, 17. Jigoku, 18. Nocturnal Animals, 19. Creature from the Black Lagoon, 20. The Maus, 21. Block Island Sound married but discreet fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 17:57
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Block Island is an actual island off the coast of Rhode Island. Its a popular summer destination for day trips. Take a 30 minute ferry there in morning and back on evening. Rhode Island has a surprising amount of horror films (like the Conjuring) for such a small location. But is one of America's old colonial regions too.
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Oct 29, 2021 18:05
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MOVIE 15: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) "One, two, Freddy's coming for you, three, four, better lock your door..." Well, a while ago I was kind of cautiously positive about the Friday the 13th remake. Turns out the same people also made a Nightmare on Elm Street remake and holy crap it sucks on toast. Whereas the Friday the 13th remake kind of took elements from multiple movies, the Nightmare remake is just largely a rethread of the original Elm Street movie, except worse in every way. Let's start with the biggest problem: the Freddy sucks. I am hesitant to blame Jackie Earle Haley, because he's definitely a good actor, but rather maybe the intentional decision to move away from the "corny" humour the series developed as a trademark. They wanted a dark, disturbing Freddy, but instead they ended up with a lovely Freddy that looks like rear end and has zero personality. The second problem is that the movie is boring as gently caress and looks ugly as hell. The original movie did amazing things with practical effects and played wonderfully with the concept of Freddy killing people in their dreams, using dream-like (lack of) logic. Here he just slices people with his finger blades. I also want to give big props to the team for ripping off cool ideas and visuals from the original movie, like Freddy's face and arms pushing through Nancy's bedroom wall, and making them look like a loving PlayStation 2 game. That's a problem with the movie in general. I don't know if it's the 16:9 aspect ratio or just the flat, boring cinematography, but Elm Street looks like a god drat CW TV show, and not one of the good ones. The movie is also dumb, but not in a good way. The film changes Freddy from a child murderer to a child molester (apparently this was Wes Craven's original idea in the screenplay), which raises a question. In the original movie Freddy killed children with his trademark finger blades so it makes sense that his ghost would also have them. But OK, in this one he also had finger blades, because in flashbacks we're shown children with familiar scars on their living bodies. But, uhh... why? If he wasn't killing them and was molesting them, why would he do that? I mean obviously so Freddy can have his trademark finger blades but for gently caress's sake guys, it's like that Friday the 13th remake all over again: you're not as clever as you think you are, movie. On that note, for a long time it looked like this might complete the Don't Torture a Duckling square because the movie was strongly hinting at Freddy being innocent and the kids just accusing him for some bizarre reason but then at the last moment it's flipped around. He was a paedo all along and starts taunting Nancy about what he did to those kids back in the day, which was loving gross as poo poo. So ultimately we're left with a movie that looks bad, feels like a worse clone of the original movie and lacks all personality, style and sense of fun that the original had to boot. Bravo, guys. Bra-vo. SCORE: 1/5 My October 2021 Movies: 1. Fear Street 1994, 2. His House, 3. Willy's Wonderland, 4. Halloween III, 5. Demons, 6. Werewolves Within, 7. No One Makes It Out Alive, 8. Shaun of the Dead, 9. Call of Cthulhu (Based on the Novel), 10. Friday the 13th 2009 (They Always Come Back), 11. Suspiria 1977 (Video Nasty), 12. Birdemic (Wild Beasts), 13. Urban Legend (Starring Brad Dourif), 14. Def by Temptation (Horror Noire), 15. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) 
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Oct 29, 2021 18:44
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 #85) Nightmare on the 13th Floor (1990; digital) A travel writer witnesses a murder on the thirteenth floor of a hotel she's staying at, but when she escapes and tries to get help, she's told there ain't no thirteenth floor! Then she explains that she meant the thirteenth floor labeled as floor fourteen, and everything is straightened out. No, actually she keeps getting gaslit, and has to figure things out on her own. Meanwhile, attacks on guests keep happening. For a TV movie, this builds up an enjoyably sinister atmosphere, helped along by the lack of trust on all sides. Louise Fletcher, Alan Fudge, and James Brolin provide supporting performances, and give things a big boost (Fletcher in particular, as she gets to sass things up). This may be the best conspiracy-involving movie I've watched this month, actually. About halfway through, we get a ghost story laced into the events, and while it's not a smooth fit, it does give things a fun angle. We don't get much exploration of the thirteenth floor until near the end, but the creepy early-20th century décor is done well, especially with the contrasting modern (for the time) design of the rest of the hotel. Things take a ridiculous turn towards the end, but I still had fun with this, overall. “This is supposed to be a horse? Looks more like Lassie.” Rating: 6/10
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Oct 29, 2021 18:47
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🎃 Spaced Invaders 🎃 Pandorum (2009) Directed by Christian Alvart Watched on Tubi  A desperate attempt to save humanity by sending 60,000 people to a far away planet goes wrong somehow.  Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster battle space madness and space Falmer aboard a space ship, in outer space. The outer spaceness cannot be overemphasized here. There's scattered gnarly violence, some really impressive sets, and the overreach of science dooming us all after we're already doomed. It should be much more entertaining than it actually is. 💀💀1/2 Spooky Bingo 32/36 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. Various Shorts, 14. Sword of God (2018), 15. Thale (2012), 16. Stranger in Our House (1978), 17. The Ruins (2008), 18. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), 19. Uncle Peckerhead (2020), 20. Werewolves Within (2021), 21. Blood of the Vampire (1958), 22. Winchester (2018), 23. The Perfection (2018), 24. The Spell (2019), 25. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974), 26. Jennifer’s Body (2009), 27. The Housemaid (2016), 28. Children of the Corn (1984), 29. The Funhouse (1981), 30. Dog Soldiers (2002), 31. The Hands of Orlac (1924), 32. Pandorum (2009)  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 29, 2021 19:18
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 We Are What We Are (2013) is apparently the American remake of a Mexican film...and honestly, this is going to come across a little rude, but I prefer the American flavor to the story. I haven't seen the original. The reason I say this is because America has a strong tradition of going hardcore nutso with religion, and that's what this film is about. The concept is, a reclusive family has lived in a small town for generations, and once a year they kill and eat someone according to their faith. It opens with the mother dying, and it's left to the father and his two eldest daughters to keep it together for the ritual this year. There are two halves to the movie: the slower, family-focused drama as the daughters try to decide what to do, as the father tries to protect the family and the tradition and cope with the death of his wife - and the concerned police investigation into a missing woman, and the coroner slowly figuring something crucial out. There's not much more I can say without spoilers, not that it's the plot that carries it - this is a moody, wet piece about strange people. The rain ties it all together. I liked it. I didn't love it, but then, you're not supposed to. I'll give it a 4/5. And, as you can probably guess, this is the cannibalism square filled out. I'm down to one last movie: found footage.
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Oct 29, 2021 19:26
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3 days to watch 13 movies and get a full card? I can probably manage that if I don't get anything else accomplished this weekend. (46) The Asphyx (1973) dir. Peter Newbrook Picnic At Hanging Rock A Victorian scientist has been able to photograph the spirit of death leaving the body with his special camera. He escalates to using a special light to freeze the spirit. He then gets the bright idea that if he can store his own spirit, he will become immortal. He tests it first on a guinea pig and the guinea pig gets its revenge by killing his daughter. An alright movie that wanted every death to be different so kept getting weirder.  (47) Dante’s Inferno (1911) dir. Giuseppe de Liguoro, Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan Salomé A version of Dante’s Inferno. Various shots of sinners in thongs being tortured in various ways. Nothing too crazy.  (48) Morgue (2019) Prime dir. Hugo Cardozo A Perfect Getaway - Paraguay A security guard down on his luck hits and kills a guy with his car while trying to sext with his girlfriend. He changes his mind and goes home instead after making sure no one saw him. He’s woken up by a phone call from his boss telling him tonight he has to fill in as a guard at a hospital. While getting the tour, he’s told he has to regularly double check the morgue to make sure no cats got in. Also to ignore the body in the morgue, it’s from a hit and run and they don’t know who did it. The man is haunted by the murder he did, or the ghosts in the hospital, one of the two is bothering him. This was a pretty good, low budget horror from South America. Total: (1) Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) (2) The Addams Family 2 (2021) (3) Addams Family Reunion (1998) (4) Scooby-Doo! and the Goblin King (2008) (5) Titane (2021) (6) The Raven (1935) (7) Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009) (8) The Black Cat (1934) (9) Doctor X (1932) (10) Island of Lost Souls (1932) (11) The Lost Boys (1987) (12) The Ape Man (1943) (13) Night of the Living Dead (1968) (14) The Ape (1940) (15) Howard Lovecraft & the Frozen Kingdom (2016) (16) Student Bodies (1981) (17) Varan (1958) (18) The War of the Gargantuas (1966) (19) Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo (2010) (20) Terror Train (1980) (21) Scary Movie (2000) (22) The New Mutants (2020) (23) Deep Rising (1998) (24) The Creeping Flesh (1973) (25) Count Dracula (1970) (26) Demons (1985) (27) The Beast Must Die (1974) (28) Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins (2009) (29) The Exorcist III (1990) (30) Halloween Kills (2021) (31) Stay Alive (2006) (32) Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare (2010) (33) Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019) (34) The Coed and the Zombie Stoner (2014) (35) House of Usher (1960) (36) Possession (1981) (37) The Killer Shrews (1959) (38) Christmas Evil (1980) (39) The Howling (1981) (40) The Stone Tape (1972) (41) Dagon (2001) (42) Psycho Goreman (2020) (43) Poltergeist (1982) (44) Hocus Pocus (1993) (45) Matango (1963) (46) The Asphyx (1973) (47) Dante’s Inferno (1911) (48) Morgue (2019) 
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Oct 29, 2021 21:09
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43) House III: The Horror Show Ticking the box for Hausu. This is only nominally a House movie; the opening credits list it only as "The Horror Show". But it's got a house in it and a ghost menaces people in it, and I think that's enough to count. Lance Henriksen is a cop being harassed by Brion James's executed serial killer who has come back from the dead for vengeance, and that's pretty much all you need to know. James devours scenery with relish, Henriksen is Henriksen, and at least it matches the other House movies in the balance of gore and creep. There are also apparently other cast members, but who cares about them? One bad thing about it, though, is that it pulls the "it was all a dream" stunt at the end. Nobody who dies in the house really died, not even the cat. That was disappointing, as it removed all the stakes from the film.
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Oct 29, 2021 21:28
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STAC Goat posted:I’m working on a theory that Kitamura may actually be a trio of 12 year old buys standing on each other's shoulders wearing a trenchcoat. I'd say the top Kitamura movies are Godzilla: Final Wars, Azumi, and Aragami. I've got a lot of nostalgia for Versus too. Final Wars is must see for everyone on Earth I'd say, quality Godzilla mayhem. On manga adaptations, Oldboy is a great movie. Though I gather it changes a lot a la The Shining.
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Oct 29, 2021 21:39
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 Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) is a found footage that marks my final bingo square!  Before I celebrate a full card, let me tell you about this movie: it's Korean, and it's like Grave Encounters in that it's a film crew checking out a haunted asylum at night, like geniuses. It starts out fun as they're having a good time hosting the show, then the supernatural stuff starts happening, and oh no! It's a cliche, but drat if I don't enjoy it. I love idiots trying to make a documentary while things go really wrong. What I liked about this one compared to Grave Encounters: the fact that we get to see the "finished product", so to speak, as they're filming this "live". They put together a cool documentary of the background of the asylum, and play all the setup before launching into the live stream itself. I liked the chance to get to see the characters being doofuses as well - eating together, being tourists before they head into the asylum. What I didn't like: the "live" aspect. The cuts to the stream getting views. The reveal halfway through that the earlier scares were faked to provoke the girls, like, c'mon? Not into that. It felt like the tempo of the film wasn't very good, either. There wasn't a slow build and escalation like GE, just - asylum! But now everything is bad! I also felt that the asylum wasn't as realized as a real place, either? I missed the same hallways over and over making the building itself into a real horror. BUT none of this matters, because here's the single most important thing about this horror film: it scared the living poo poo out of me. Jesus loving christ. I had to actually turn on another youtube video as some of the scares were happening so I wouldn't panic myself, and I'm STILL twitchy and jumping. I can nitpick all I want about the plot or the building or some of the completely overworked/boring scares when it delivered the loving one-two punch of the black-eyed ghost followed by the naked man. If you've seen this movie you know what I'm talking about and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I don't know what it is about Asian horror but they always nail that pitch-perfect tension and horror and fear. I would like to never watch this movie again, and I hope I can sleep tonight. (the longest, deepest breath) Okay the bingo! I did it! Went from guessing I'd watch like five movies for this challenge to doing an entire bingo card. I'd like to thank the following factors: 1) my new ADHD medication that I started a few months ago. This is the big winner here, because I couldn't watch a twenty minute anime episode without being distracted, and now I can do an entire movie - multiple movies! 2) my partner having to actually drive out to places to work this week instead of working from home. No interruptions to join him for lunch. 3) The ongoing joy of going "huh I need a movie for this prompt, and I don't know any movies about [x]. I'm going to go look 'em up!" I absolutely love to go "shopping" so to speak, and in some cases I enjoy shopping more than I do consuming the media. This made it really exciting to go look for good movies to watch! So that was a really fun experience that kind of got tense at the end as I realized I was out of time - I've got weekend plans. Which means I'm a little burnt out on movies now, but I'd like to get back to watching a few next week, and spreading them out more. Liquid Sky deserved for savoring, for example - but also, I fully acknowledge that I never would have watched it without this challenge. And thanks to MANY reviews in this thread my to-watch list is full. It's fantastic. I'm so happy I decided to post about the Bay in the horror thread so I could be pointed here. An absolutely amazing experience. e: Bonus best/worst from what I saw for the bingo: The Best of the Best, in no order: - As Above, So Below - Grave Encounters - Knives and Skin - VVitch - Exorcist - Nightmare on Elm Street - Liquid Sky The Worst of the Worst, in no order: - Dead Snow - Mikadroid - Vlad - The Thing from Another World ee: The above list is extremely subjective and doesn't mean that Nosferatu isn't great or that Alone in the Dark isn't bad. This is an impulse "yeah I adored these more than the others" list. StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 21:49
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New #21: The Day After (1983) [YouTube] Spooky Square #12: As Seen On TV http://i.imgur.com/WdGry90.gifv A grounded depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear war, set in the area of Kansas City and focusing on the lives of ordinary people. Impressively bleak for something that aired on network TV, appropriately so given the subject matter. Apparently some of the more disturbing material was cut, but what's left is still quite grim and it's no surprise it produces such a strong public reaction. The multiple plotlines are handled deftly and it's filled with strong performances. I wouldn't call it a fun watch necessarily, but I'm glad to have seen it. New #22: Sequence Break (2017) [Shudder] Spooky Square #13: Video Games Cause Violence A dude who repairs arcade video games receives an evil circuit board and bad things happen as a result, mostly to me, the person who sat through this movie. Part cosmic horror, part romance, neither of which are any good. There was clearly some time put into this—I respect the practical effects work—but smothering the leads in goop doesn't cover up their stilted performances, baffling relationship, or the uninspired attempts at horror. Only good thing about this movie is that it got me my first spooky bingo. 
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Oct 29, 2021 22:12
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Catching up with more brief reviews ----- 31. The Invisible Man (1933) - first time So silly! Hard to take any of this seriously, every actor is so goddamn hammy, but it's a fun time. I was actually surprised at how good some of the invisibility effects were for the 1930s. 32. The Invisible Man (2020) - rewatch Goddamn this movie is scary. It creates an absolutely oppressive nightmare for its heroine, which makes it all the more satisfying to watch her win in the end. A "happy" ending, even though some people die along the way  My favourite scare is still the paint scene. But the movie is just packed full of ever-escalating horror from such a simple premise. Even the small things like when she's accused of hitting the daughter of her friend. So painful, so effective.33. Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) - first time Dumb. One or two fantastic moments (the wardrobe mirrors bending by themselves for instance) with so much boring filler. I don't give a crap about Paranormal Activity lore so I didn't even realise it's meant to be connected to the first movie until right near the end. To be fair, the casts of these movies are always just the most generic bougie white families. Could be any McMansion in America. 34. Shadow in the Cloud (2020) - first time Talk about flying the unfriendly skies. I really dug this, especially the first two thirds where it was just her and the turret, with the voices of the crew in her ear. It had such a good radio play vibe. Kinda got silly after she crawls out to rescue... well, spoilers. The movie had such a great atmosphere, with the storm and glimpses of enemy planes and the other spooky stuff. I really got a kick out of it, even though it got wacky towards the end. I will probably get the blu-ray at some point. 35. The Hole (2009) - first time Really disappointing for Joe Dante. Put frankly, the scares sucked and were boring. The only mildly interesting part was when they jump into the scary world of the hoile at the end, but then it's like one rejected set from Dante's Twilight Zone:The Movie segment, and a fight with daddy. There could have been so much more to, you know, a dimension of fear that can shape shift into anything. Where's the creativity? :\ 36. Howl (2015) - first time Werewolves on a broken down night train in England. The forest setting was nice and atmospheric, but they didn't do enough with the train compared to a movie like Train to Busan which used the train element so well. It was a decent enough werewolf pic, let down slightly by the werewolves looking so goofy and way too man-like.
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Oct 29, 2021 23:39
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32) The Bad Batch 2/5 Cannibal Action Spooky Card: To Serve Man It's a FRESH APPLE.  A Girl Hobbles In the Desert Alone At Night. What a strange misfire this is after the effortlessly cool vampire story from Ana Lily Amirpour. It has massive actors involved, big sets and trippy visuals - it just didn't click with me at all. The cannibal recipes looked pretty tasty though, gotta say when the environment collapses I feel like I'm a step ahead after having seen it. There's not too much I can say about this other than it was poor and I was disappointed. 33) Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde 2/5 Hammer Horror / Sci-Fi Spooky Card: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Victorian Period Piece) It's a FRESH APPLE.  Dr. Jekyll, Jack the Ripper, Burke and Hare. Victorian era madness with a gender-swapping potion thrown in. This ticks along at a pretty labored pace or else it would have probably been one of my favourites of the month, the more I think on it the more I'm a little disappointed. It feels a little like Hammer and Roy Ward Baker came up with the Sister Hyde part and kinda rested on their laurels afterwards, depending instead on a lot of ripper and Burke & Hare moments. The transformation didn't make much sense - the psychology of the original story is torn out of whack and nothing new is ever conjourned up to replace that. Pretty cool idea but little follow through. 34) Willard /5Psychological Horror Spooky Card: Wild Beasts (Killer Rats) It's a FRESH APPLE.  A pretty basic revenge film about a guy who trains rats to follow his commands and then uses them to bully Ernest Borgnine. Seen it a million times! Seriously though this film does pretty well and making a sympathetic character and all of Ernest's scenes are great as he chews the scenery up with great abandon. My one issue is we should have had more scenes with the rats loving poo poo up - they don't get too many moments to shine, sadly. 35) Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural /5Supernatural Spooky Card: Don’t Torture a Duckling (Killer Child!) It's a FRESH APPLE.  This is just a little too dark to really love - and I mean that literally, there's a lot of scenes I couldn't quite tell what was going on. A remastered version would be amazing, I really liked the gothic weirdness as a young Christian girl tries to find her gangster father and happens upon a crazed battle between creatures of the night. I was expecting something a bit fairy tale like - for some reason I expected an American rip-off of Viy but this film is darkly American with a lot of action and very well created moody characters who pop up every now and then. Lemora is a brilliant character I'd love to have seen more of. 36) Prey /5Alien Invasion Spooky Card: Dead and Buried (Director Norman J. Warren RIP, March 11th 2021) It's a FRESH APPLE.  Prey was one of the biggest surprises for me - I loved it! An alien lands in rural England and begins to assess just how viable the food sources are - including humans! The alien comes in two flavours: a terrifying cat face bastard or a lovable big dopey guy with fluffy hair. Nearby a lesbian couple live in relative peace in a big countryside manor and take him in to live under their roof. Everything seems fine until the chickens start being slaughtered by a suspected fox... TOTALLY WEIRD. A hidden gem of British horror I wish everybody had a chance to see. The tone of the film moves very swiftly from light-hearted English romp to manic blood and terror. Also known as ALIEN PREY, if you can find a copy I hope you enjoy even half as much as I did. 37) The Lure /5Drama / Myth Horror Card: It’s Only a Myth It's a FRESH APPLE.  This film is a sensation, a musical horror about mermaids who work in a strip bar and it's not directed by Lloyd Kaufman. It's in fact a weird European art-house piece with sex, drugs and disco turned up to 11. The seedy underbelly of Poland never looked so insane. It's darkly comic and has some outstanding creature and special effects. I had it in my mind this was much more depressing than it actually is, I think because of the poster making me think the mermaids were imprisoned in a bathtub - a presumption that couldn't be further from the truth. The second song in this has them out buying clothes in the town centre and singing their hearts out as they do. It's great! I didn't want it to FINish. 38) Good Manners /5Drama / Werewolf Horror Card: Full Moon It's a FRESH APPLE.  I didn't know much about this film except that it was a Brazilian take on the werewolf myth and it was LGBTQ+ friendly. Wow am I glad I went into this without knowing too much about it - such a pleasant surprise. A film that develops a unique tone and rides the wave between drama, comedy and bloody horror. I hesitate to say much other than this is a recommendation from me for people who like fairy tales and strange new takes on legends. 39) I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House /5Drama / Ghosts Horror Card: Hausu (Haunted House) It's a FRESH APPLE.  So I admit I wouldn't have watched this one if it wasn't for desperately trying to get my spooky bingo with a haunted house movie, but I'm glad I did. It's atmospheric, has very good sound design and imagery. One thing I regret is not having 4K Netflix as there's a lot of darkness here with moments of movement I believe I didn't quite fully catch due to the mid quality resolution stream. A lot of it was squinting my eyes at an open doorway. Nice length and simple take on a haunted house that draws you in, feels like curling up with a novella on a spooky night. Oz Perkin's previous was much harder to watch (The Blackcoat's Daughter) but lingered afterwards - something that is pretty hard for a film to do, I invite this one to come live inside my head a little while too. This gave me one of the best scares of the month. THAT'S A SPOOKY BINGO!!!
THAT'S A SPOOKY BINGO!!!
THAT'S A SPOOKY BINGO!!!
 31 Horror List +Random Films 1) Four Flies on Grey Velvet 2) Knife+Heart 3) Wrong Turn 4) The Reflecting Skin 5) Scary Movie 3 6) Scary Movie 2 7) Scary Movie 8) Haunters: The Art of the Scare 9) House of Frankenstein 10) VHS 94 11) Boys in the Woods 12) The Dark Tapes 13) Edge of the Axe 14) The Empty Man 15) There's Someone Inside Your House 16) Spirits of the Dead 17) Daughters of Darkness 18) Killed the Family and Went to the Movies 19) The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad 20) The House That Screamed 21) Penda's Fen 22) Torso 23) Halloween Kills 24) Venom: Let There Be Carnage 25) Singapore Sling 26) In a Glass Cage 27) Hack-O-Lantern 28) Feral 29) Salome 30) The Mangler Reborn 31) What Keeps You Alive 32) The Bad Batch 33) Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde 34) Willard 35) Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural 36) Prey 37) The Lure 38) Good Manners 39) I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House The Hausu Usher fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 23:51
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37. The Bloodhound Some guy moves into his childhood friend's house... with spooky results. This movie wants to be a tense slow burn but doesn't pull it off. Mostly it's the actors' fault. Most of the run time is just the two leads talking to each-other and neither one is good enough to carry that. The weird rich guy manages to be weird, but never seems like he could actually be menacing. The other guy has no personality. I called him "some guy" up there because I know nothing at all about him. This kind of movie lives on the sense that there may or may not be a threat. The Bloodhound tell you there is one in the opening shots, and then meanders around with nothing for a while, and then ends with nothing. It's apparently a modern retelling of Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. I read a synopsis of the story after watching the movie and it sounds a lot better. 1.5/5 
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Oct 29, 2021 23:58
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44) Black Sheep Ticking the box for Wild Beasts. Mad science gone wrong as genetically modified sheep turn carnivorous on a New Zealand farm. It's a lot like Tremors except with many, many more jokes about shagging sheep. There's a suitable amount of gore and some straightforward creature design from Weta. Other than that, there isn't much more to say.
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Oct 30, 2021 00:36
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