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 Train to Busan, 2016 This is just straight up one of the best zombie movies I seen in ages. I prefer the slow undead kind over the fast rabies infected kind, but this movie pulled the later off great, and slow zombies would probably not work in this one. A divorced father bogged down with work decide to take his daughter to her mother on her birthday. They travel by train, and just as they go, a virus outbreak turns people into rabid, mindless monsters. poo poo hit the fan as they say as one of them get on board the train and start infecting people. Like most zombie movies, it is really about the survivors, not the zombies. The characters are pretty good in this one and I actually cared about them. While you always got to have selfish people ruin things for everyone in these kind of movies, there were plenty selfless people just doing their best to help others. Train to Busan just felt far less cynical and pessimistic than what I'm used to with these kind of movies. That made me care more when people died and hate the selfish people more. While violent enough, it didn't rely on gore, and while entertaining and had little moments of comedy, it wasn't yucking it up and trying to show how self aware it was like too many modern American zombie does. It was just a great self contained story about people trying to survive on a train as the country crumbles under a zombie/rabies infection. One of the to picks so far in this marathon.
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Oct 10, 2022 02:00
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And ending the night with two "oh, not horror" movies. - (38 - St. Vincent and the Grenadines) Voodoo Man - Also, under the 60 minute mark, but hey. "A young fella tries to win the girl he previously met in a bar by visiting a Voodoo magician." Problem with this being a horror movie: the Voodoo magician is a scammer; this is clear from the start of the film. It's otherwise a fine little short. 3/5 - (39 - Papua New Guinea) Cannibal Tours - An ethnographic study of one of the nastiest peoples to ever walk the face of the Earth - tourists. I knew that going in, expected tourists obsessed with cannibalism, and was going to try to justify it. Instead, the tourists are obsessed with haggling the natives down to nothing for their crafts, despite the massive wealth disparity. Assholes. Great movie though. 5/5
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Oct 10, 2022 02:04
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October 9α - The Haunted Strangler Another pick solely for the entry on the card. For my movies that count for the challenge, I'm not card chasing, but for anything extra I might as well go for it.  In 1860 London, a surgeon is executed for strangling and slashing five women that he found in seedy clubs. Twenty years later, a novelist has become convinced that the man was innocent and seeks proof of that. But as soon as he finds the evidence he was searching for, the killings begin again. There's some obvious Jack the Ripper parallels here, but the movie doesn't really lean into them. Okay, there's only so much that a film made under the Hayes code can do in that regard, but it feels like they wanted to do some kind of Ripper film and then drifted to something else when that couldn't get approval. The cast in this movie is basically Boris Karloff >>>>>>> everyone else. Karloff gives a great performance here, kind of surprising for so late in his career when he was having to take some really dire stuff to keep acting. But nobody else is even up to half his level. Well, except making the groundskeeper at the prison cemetery but he only gets a couple of minutes. The real problem here is the plot. The first half of the movie is pretty good. Karloff's investigating and figuring out there's more to that old series of murders than people realize. Then the twist happens and the next act of the film is downright goofy. Big twist: Karloff is the killer he's been hunting for. His wife was his nurse at the asylum and helped him escape, then set him up as a novelist while maintaining his sanity. He doesn't remember his past so that's part of it. When he recovers his knife, he falls into old habits and starts killing again. Weirdly convoluted but fine. Then the drive for the next series of scenes is that Karloff is trying to convince people that he's an insane killer who needs to be locked up while other people think he's insane for saying he's an insane killer and should be locked up and somehow this is a conflict. He's getting what he wants, why is he obsessed with proving to people that he's crazy when they think he's crazy? If people were going, "You just need some bed rest, let's have your maid give you a hand," and weren't trying to lock him away, the conflict would make a lot more sense. The ending isn't bad, but that middle portion of the film just undermined the whole thing for me. The only reason to watch this one is for Karloff. This is from the Criterion Collection so into Highbrow Horror it goes!  twernt posted:Oh nice! Are any of the others worth seeking out? This one had been on my radar for a little while but I don't remember it being available anywhere until recently. My second favorite version is known in English as Illusion of Blood, which is a much meaner take on the story. The thing is, Nakagawa is an amazing director, so everyone else is a step down. The version you watched is the one that people generally agree is the best by a huge margin. If you want more Nakagawa, his best known film is Jigoku and that one is quite a ride.
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Oct 10, 2022 03:21
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Random Stranger posted:My second favorite version is known in English as Illusion of Blood, which is a much meaner take on the story. The thing is, Nakagawa is an amazing director, so everyone else is a step down. The version you watched is the one that people generally agree is the best by a huge margin. If you want more Nakagawa, his best known film is Jigoku and that one is quite a ride. Thanks! I watched Jigoku during a previous challenge, but I'll definitely need to check out more Nakagawa and see if I can track down Illusion of Blood.
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Oct 10, 2022 03:25
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13. Carnival of Sinners (1943) La Main du Diable Directed by Maurice Tourneur 🎃 Highbrow Horror 🎃 "Do you know what infinity is? I've been there. It's very pretty."  I mostly watched this because I thought it was directed by Jacques Tourneur and didn't realize my mistake until I had watched enough that I felt committed. It's a decent enough story about trading your soul for temporary success and happiness. There's a twist of course. There's always a twist. It's nothing really groundbreaking but it's decently entertaining. 👻👻👻/5 October Challenge 4/31 1. Blood Feast (1963), 2. Sunshine (2007), 3. Relic (2020), 4. Mortuary (2005) Spooky Bingo 9/36 1. Rodan (1956), 2. Carrie (2013), 3. Gargoyles (1972), 4. Ticks (1993), 5. Penda’s Fen (1974), 6. Crimson Peak (2015), 7. A Field in England (2013), 8. The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), 9. Carnival of Sinners (1943)  Total 13/?
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Oct 10, 2022 03:28
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#16: Midsommar A Perfect Getaway  I'm gonna be honest, I didn't love Hereditary as it seems like most people did. I liked all the stuff at the end, of course. But the bulk of the movie where it's all loud music and slow zooms into dark rooms, I think they were going for "oppressive" but I found it "annoying". Midsommar opens with loud music and slow zooms into dark rooms. But then it very quickly switches to the perpetual daylight of rural Sweden. We get very well put together shots of this picturesque Swedish village. And I hope that's your bag because that's what you're getting for the next two and a half hours. They basically never leave that village and it's very small so you get to see the same buildings lovingly shot over and over again. Our leads are terrible. Intentionally so, they're the absolute last people you'd want to be on vacation with which heightens the dread since you know they're are going to be completely incapable of working together or accomplishing anything. Doesn't make it very fun to watch though. I did not enjoy spending two and a half hours with these two. The guy looks a bit like Chris Pratt and I kept thinking that the movie would be improved if he actually was played by Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt playing a Chris Pratt character but you're supposed to not like him would be great. The scares are very well done(with one exception*) but they are pretty similar to what we got in Hereditary. But, imo, not to the same funny, gross out gory level Hereditary got to. Basically, if you watched Hereditary and were like, yeah I want two and a half more hours of that, you'll be thrilled. But I found Hereditary a bit ehh, and basically the same thing but in Sweden wasn't my cup of tea. *Lungs don't work like that. They aren't like plastic bags that swell and then go flat, they have a complex structure that expands and contracts to maximize surface area. And they don't work by themselves, they need the diaphragm. That scene where the guy has his lungs pulled out, it's like if there was a scene where a guy had his heart pulled out and it was just a literal cartoon heart. 
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Oct 10, 2022 03:38
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12. Piggy Sara is a Spanish teenager relentlessly bullied for the crime of being fat. After a particularly cruel prank, Sara sees her tormentors getting kidnapped and decides not to do anything about it. The trailers made this seem like a more psychological movie than it actually is. Really, Piggy is just deeply empathetic. The film's perspective is locked in on Sara's point of view, so the movie's core problem is how much abuse and stress Sara can take. For much of the film, the main antagonist isn't the kidnapper but Sara's mother, who has all the staples of a Bad Hispanic Mom. (I'm Latino, so I can say that.) She puts her daughter down constantly and holds expectations that are impossible to meet. When she hears that Sara has been bullied for being fat, she responds by denying her daughter food. (This is part of the only really psychological exploration of the film. Sara is driven to sneak food because her mother shames her for overeating, but her father shows his affection by buying her food, associating food and good feeling for Sara, keeping her in a very unhealthy cycle.) On the other hand, Sara's mother also defends her daughter from the townspeople inquiring whether Sara witnessed anything about the kidnapping. Ironically, the kidnapper is the only one who accepts Sara for who she is. Much of the film's drama comes from the frankly dumb decisions both Sara and the kidnapper make. The kidnapper constantly hangs around town and tries to talk to Sara, giving her gifts of snack cakes. For her part, Sara makes some bad decisions covering up her connection to the crime. Really, though, this foolishness among all the principal characters is just meant to establish the nonsensicality of aggressive behavior in general. There's no sense in bullying someone for something as insignificant as being fat; we all need each other. 13. The Untold Story (Origin of Evil)  In contrast, The Untold Story has a complete lack of empathy. It's an extreme horror movie about a crew of dipshit cops trying to capture some kind of super criminal who chops up people and puts them into baos to sell in his restaurant. Once the crook is captured, he's beaten for a solid 45 minutes until he tells the incredibly disturbing story of how he acquired the restaurant (I think this is the eponymous Untold Story, but I can't be sure). The Untold Story is fully cynical. Everyone is either an idiot, a monster, or a poor sap that gets in the way of the idiots and the monsters. The film's politics are essentially that the cops are bad, but the criminals are even worse. It's unclear how sincerely we should hold this belief, or whether this is only the way of the rarefied world of super killers. What makes the film worth watching instead a nihilistic jerk fest is the extreme nature of the violence. Anthony Wong fully commits to his role as the killer, as enthusiastic in chopping up people as he is in taking hits and drinking someone's piss for its supposed curative properties. At the same time, this content is so extreme that it never becomes "fun". It strikes a strong, substantive balance. 
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Oct 10, 2022 03:57
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twernt posted:Thanks! I watched Jigoku during a previous challenge, but I'll definitely need to check out more Nakagawa and see if I can track down Illusion of Blood. Very little Nakagawa has been translated, but you can find his Black Cat Mansion on youtube and I liked it a lot. He's at his best in his use of color and the flashback sequence in the idle is a great example of that.
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Oct 10, 2022 04:10
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4. 28 Weeks Later (2007) In case the relentless optimism of the first movie bugged you, well, here's Danny Boyle again to make amends. The plague from the first movie is over and rebuilding is underway under US military supervision, but an immune carrier of the virus inadvertently causes a second outbreak, and are troops utterly fail to contain it despite their best efforts, among which are incendiary weapons, nerve gas, and outright shooting uninfected civilians wholesale alongside the infected. I don't want to spoil things, but the movie seems to suggest that this was the right call and should have been made sooner, which strikes me as incredibly perverse. In the meantime, the shaky cam and quick cuts during action scenes returns from the first movie, only instead of heightening the tension, it serves to confuse what's going on--a big problem since once the action starts about 40 minutes into this movie, it is relentless. There's one fun scene where a helicopter pilot mows down an entire field of infected with his chopper blades, but apart from that its an incredibly grim affair. Because things move at such a breathless pace, characters have no space to develop properly as they did in 28 Days Later, and we have no reason to care about any of them. It's not terrible, but IMO it's decidedly inferior to its predecessor. 3/5 The film focuses on the family of the immune carrier, with the father being a sort of patient zero for the new outbreak, and he shadows/follows his kids throughout. The relationships among the family members, particularly the two children, is the focus of the movie, and they all get to go on a great big Zombie Honeymoon together.  5. Sisters (1973) A fairly early Brian DePalma movie (just prior to Phantom of the Paradise), featuring Margot Kidder as once-conjoined French Canadian twins, one of whom is an actress/model, and the other a psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est). It's more a Hitchcock-style thriller than an outright horror movie, but the murder that takes place is pretty grisly and much more shocking and wince-inducing than any of the ostensibly gorier movies I watched in this batch. After that, the film meanders for a bit until the last act, which is some of the most  stuff I've ever seen. Lurid, uncomfortable and completely bonkers in classic DePalma fashion. Has a terrific Bernard Hermann score and good use of split-screen techniques. Definitely recommended. 4.5/5The edition I watched was a Criterion release, which of course elevates it above the usual schlock into the realms of Highbrow Horror.  6. Tales From the Crypt Presents Demon Knight Sorry, but this wasn't my favorite. If Sisters was Highbrow Horror, this is The Usual Schlock. On the other hand this is also a movie that knows that fact and runs with it. William Saddler brings some intense energy to his role as a sketchy holy man, similar to Michael Biehn in The Terminator, and Billy Zane is clearly loving every second he gets to be on screen as the demon trying to get hold of Saddler's MacGuffin. The plot is standard fare, with Billy Zane preying on the personal weaknesses of the characters to bring him closer to his goal, one person at a time. Can they hold out until dawn? Who will survive? You probably know the answer already. If this isn't enough to get you to watch this movie, well, it also surrounds Dick Miller with a sizeable number of topless women, so it has that going for it. Like I said, this is a movie that knows what it is and runs with it. 2/5 There's probably a case to be made that it fills in the square for The Devil Made Me Do It as it does have some religious themes and possessions, but I'm not counting it because a)the religious element isn't a major focus and b)the possessions are short-lived and only serve as a way to eliminate characters. Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 04:30
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 #46.) The Fear Footage 2: Curse of the Tape (2020; digital) After seeing a copy of the first Fear Footage movie, a man is freaked out because someone with his name and appearance was in one of the film's segments. After trying to reach out to other people whose doubles may have appeared in the film, only one of whom is cooperative, they travel to the area where the first film's events took place, trying to figure out what's going on. While the first film was something in the vein of V/H/S, an anthology of found footage stories in a found footage framing device, this is more in line with The Blair Witch Project. It's one guy and his increasingly irritable companion hunting for any sort of clues, trying interviews with locals, having inexplicable events both them in the night, and pulling closer to a destructive force. The companion even ends up unresponsive and standing with his back to the camera a few times, just to really make the homage click. I preferred the format of the first Fear Footage, since it wasn't putting all the movie's eggs in one basket, but I have to respect how much they were able to pull off with a clearly limited budget in this one. The story's trajectory is easy to predict if you've seen anything like this before, and the build-up goes on maybe too long in light of that, but there's evident effort put into the film's crafting, and earnest work put into escalating the tension before things get bonkers. Once they do, it's back into impossible architecture, which I'm a big sucker for, but there's new twists to the house this time around, which is another indicator of the film-maker trying to give this as much life as he could. Very respectable work, and I look forward to seeing more from this director. “What house, Daddy?”  Rating: 6/10
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Oct 10, 2022 04:36
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 20. Cat People (1942) Gorgeous black and white with such sumptuous shadows, and thank god for the visual interest because this is a slo-o-ow burn of romance being soured by unresolved psychological damage, slash ancient Eastern European curse. Simone Simon is a Serb who believes she's inherited the burden of her ancestors' crimes against Christian decency. Which means she's going to turn into a panther and kill people if she makes out with them, obviously! Or if she's just unhappy in general. Which makes her jealousy of her new husband's lady friend at the office a bit more dangerous than your average lover's quarrel! Not to mention when Tom Conway as the most unprofessional psychologist in the world starts macking on her!? Cat People is really into this battle between clean, earnest American psychology versus the superstitious baggage of the old world. Simon has an introverted, repressed energy where her own fear of herself is a curse as much as anything supernatural going on - you can see all the joy drain out of her at her own engagement party just from a mere word reminding her of her ancestry. But it just takes sooo looong to get to the good stuff where Simon starts prowling behind Jane Randolph through nighttime streets and around the edge of a swimming pool. Let the panther out of the cage!!  / 5  21. Last Night in Soho (2021) Edgar Wright throws an energetic maximalist approach at giallo ideas and comes up with a pretty mess. Last Night in Soho does a twisted Midnight in Paris routine and has Thomas McKenzie supernaturally journey into the 1960s London scene she idolizes only to get a nasty reality check about glamorizing the past. The colorful light shows and dance routines are delicious, I admire the visualization of male abuse as a composite form with the features from multiple men overlaying until they form a hideous distorted blur, and that's just getting started on the list of slick aesthetic tricks. But this one extremely suffered from my having viewed Carnival of Souls in the same day, being an actual artwork from the 1960s about a woman seeing visions and having her life interfered with by male presence, but which was much stronger and confident enough to leave some things to the imagination. In comparison Last Night in Soho feels like it simultaneously belabors the point and convolutes things with an over-stuffed last act. Very funny seeing the mean girls squad dress up like The Craft for a Halloween party, though. And credit to Michael Ajao in a small but meaningful "not all men" part, he really radiates a sweetness and willingness to listen.  / 5 For Spooky Bingo, Cat People was released in 1942 and so scratches off Golden Years. Last Night in Soho is like 50% a period film and is heavily about its period elements so I'm gonna round up and count it for Picnic at Hanging Rock. 
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Oct 10, 2022 06:09
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For anyone who has yet to do Dead and Buried on their Spooky Bingo card, IMDB has a sortable search that can be filtered by date of death which I find more helpful than searching through lists of recently passed celebrities from multiple fields. Here are some notables and some of the horror films they've worked on: Louise Fletcher: Firestarter (1984), Exorcist II: The Heretic, Invaders from Mars (1986) Coolio: Leprechaun in the Hood, The Convent, Dracula 3000 Ray Liotta: Hubie Halloween, Hannibal, Identity Dean Stockwell: The Dunwich Horror (1970) Anne Heche: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Psycho (1998) William Hurt: Altered States Venetia Stevenson: The City of the Dead (and nothing else) Fred Ward: Tremors, Tremors 2: Aftershocks, Cast A Deadly Spell Meat Loaf: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Stage Fright James Caan: Misery (unlisted for horror on Letterboxd), The Good Neighbor, Santa's Slay, Lady in a Cage Betty White: Lake Placid (and nothing else) Henry Silva: Alligator, Virus David Warner: Scream 2, In the Mouth of Madness, The Omen, Body Bags, The Company of Wolves, Black Death, Waxwork, The Man with Two Brains, Ice Cream Man, Cast A Deadly Spell, and over a dozen more, what a legend. Philip Baker Hall: The Amityville Horror (2005), Psycho (1998), Coma Marsha Hunt: Two obscure mid-century horror titles, Fear No Evil (1969), Back From the Dead (1957) Tony Sirico: Innocent Blood Sally Kellerman: The Boston Strangler, Doppelganger Irene Papas: Don't Torture A Duckling Paul Sorvino: The Stuff, Repo! The Genetic Opera Gaspard Ulliel: Brotherhood of the Wolf Yvette Mimieux: The Black Hole (unlisted for horror by Letterboxd), Snowbeast Gilbert Gottfried: Highway to Hell L.Q. Jones: The Beast Within, The Brotherhood of Satan Clu Gulager: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, The Return of the Living Dead, The Hidden Joe Turkel: The Shining Nehemiah Persoff: Psychic Killer (and nothing else) Veronica Carlson: Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Horror of Frankenstein, Vampira, The Ghoul Anne Rice: writer of Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned Dennis Waterman: Scars of Dracula Kenneth Welsh: The Void, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Psycho Goreman Stephen Sondheim: composer of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Vanilla Bison fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Oct 19, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 06:46
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BONUS: Deadstream (2022), Shudder This movie was a hoot, absolutely worth a watch. It was legit funny and had satisfying payoffs for every gag and idea it teed up, it was pretty refreshing. Lead character was entertaining enough to carry the show solo, the practical effects were solid for the most part, it used the found footage angle in interesting ways, the way it parodied Twitch and youtube streamer tropes was funny, and it had some genuine spooks to boot. Definite highlight of the spooky season so far. Crazy moment highlights included: - beef cam - getting abruptly waterboarded by piss - putting a GoPro on a ghost - the livestream chatter - "demonetizing" a ghost 8. Cat's Eye (1985), Tubi  This movie bounced off me a little bit - I think it's because it just wasn't that spooky; only one of the three stories even had anything supernatural in it, and the other two felt like watered-down made-for-TV "thriller" fare. I get that the movie was PG-13, but it just didn't feel like Stephen King at the top of his game (or really Stephen King at all). Despite containing nothing spooky, the second story was the one I enjoyed the most - it felt like there was real tension as the protagonist was on the ledge. The cat was an exceptionally good kitty though, definite highlight of the movie and he absolutely carried the third story. I can't believe Alan Silvestri did the soundtrack, it was awful - especially considering he did the Back to the Future soundtrack the same year. 9. The Monster Club (1981), Tubi  While it's always a treat to see Vincent Price, and it's pretty clear he was having fun while making the movie, overall I think it was merely okay - most of that was the frame narrative dragging things down with its interspersed music videos and forced monster genealogy lore. I think the vampire story worked the best because it was the most straightforward and was fairly light-hearted, but the first story was also interesting even if it was the most tragic. The third story was definitely the weakest - not very much happened and it all kind of looped around to an unsatisfying payoff. 1. 'Tales from the Crypt' (1972) 2. 'Trilogy of Terror' (1975) 3. 'Southbound' (2015) 4. 'The Vault of Horror' (1973) BONUS: 'Smile' (2022) 5. 'Creepshow' (1982) 6. 'The House That Dripped Blood' (1971) 7. 'All Hallow's Eve' (2013) BONUS: 'Deadstream' (2022) 8. 'Cat's Eye' (1985) 9. ' The Monster Club' (1981)
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Oct 10, 2022 06:54
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OK time to get my butt in gear 1. Hellraiser (1987) Since everyone in the thread is watching the new movie, I thought I would watch the og since I have never seen it. I like it when in a story, there is a woman, and she is terrible. In other words, I love Julia. She would be perfect if she just didn't had lovely taste in men. It's her literal fatal flaw. Ultimately Julia's greatest misfortune is not being sent to hell to spend eternity in pleasure torture, but that she came to us long before the modern era, where the #GirlBoss reigns.  Highlight of the movie is when the cenobite with the sunglasses gets taken out. Dude goes down by some falling debris and Kirsty doesn't even use the puzzle box on him, haha get owned.  2. Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) This is like watching Labyrinth but instead of uncomfortable sexual energy emanating from David Bowie's crotch, its, well you know, the cenobites. Less moody than the first and more of a fantasy adventure movie. I dig it though. Fun little tableau.  Also more Julia. I love you Julia. This marks out two for bingo. Paperbacks from Hell is covered by Hellraiser, and Hellbound will take Goodnight, Mommy since Julia is both an evil step-mom, and a mummy briefly  
Snooze Cruise fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 07:28
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9. Nightbeast Spooky Bingo: Spaced Invaders An alien ship hits a meteorite and crashes on Earth near a small town somewhere in America. The occupant quickly sets about murdering as many humans as they can for no apparent reason, sometimes blasting them with a ray gun and other times tearing them limb from limb. The Sheriff (Tom Griffith) and his posse quickly mobilize, but the creature shrugs off gunfire and seemingly all other forms of attack. This is a sequel of sorts to Don Dohler's previous alien invasion movie The Alien Factor, with only one alien this time but also with R-rated levels of gore and gratuitous nudity (including a sex scene that is unlikely to stir the interest of anyone anywhere.) I'll give the film credit, it gets moving right away- no time wasted, the ship crashes, the alien pops out and starts murdering people. There isn't even much time before the Sheriff and company not only discover the monster but are in a straight up gunfight. Unfortunately this leaves Dohler with a problem, namely how to fill the rest of the time. There's one subplot involving a scumbag biker who beats up and eventually kills his girlfriend, and this doesn't really go anywhere interesting or have much to do with the alien at all, it just exists in the same space. There's also an arc lifted from Jaws, where the Sheriff wants to evacuate the town but the Mayor says no because the governor is coming over for a pool party, only in this case they evacuate anyway (completely off screen mind you, we never even SEE the town) and not much changes. The alien never gets to do anything but stomp around and murder people either, it's implied he's eating them but that's about all the detail we ever get. Apparently even the sex scene and some of the violence was added just to get this to feature length, which should have perhaps been taken as a sign. (Honestly they'd have been better off cutting to get this to short length.) So while at first the low budget clunkiness is charming, it just couldn't hold my attention. There's just so little happening and so much padding that I can't even recommend it as a bad movie. There's a documentary on the making of this which is apparently more interesting, and the film also has the trivial distinction of being J. J. Abrams' first credit (he worked on the music and sound, and I think did okay.) Even the alien is just sort of blah, it's a nice sculpt but the face never changes so it's just a snarling grin throughout. Just a nothing film in the end. 
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Oct 10, 2022 09:03
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10. My Best Friends Exorcism (2022) In the 80s a teen girl is possessed by a demon. Her best friend notices the changes in her personality but can she save her before it's too late. I couldn't get into My Best Friends Exorcism, every character seemed to be abrasive and awful. It's supposed to be a horror comedy, but it's pretty light on both. Not recommended. Available on Prime Based on a book so let's say it's paperback from hell 
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Oct 10, 2022 10:35
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10. White Zombie I don't understand how people talk about movies this old. It's objectively terrible. Bad acting, bad editing, paper-thin characters and story, sexist, racist, ugly, boring, slow. Bela Lugosi was a legendary actor because he stared at the camera? What are people seeing here? 
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Oct 10, 2022 13:04
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14: Halloween Specials Halloween is Special Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 15 This is the oldest one I hadn't seen before 1) Flanders has premonitions of people's deaths. I actually cracked a smile once or twice at this one, but it wouldn't last. 2) Sherlock Holmes. Everyone puts on their worst Dick van Dyke cockney accent. It's very annoying. 3) Fantastic Voyage. This made wish I was watching Parasites Lost from Futurama instead. Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 31 Most recent one available. 1) Toy Story, but Bart is punished by his toys. I like that they did this in CG. Looks quite good I guess, but isn't funny just mean. 2) Spiderverse but Homers. Nothing happens except homers appear and have to be returned. 3) I thought this was Happy Death Day but wikipedia says it's a show called Russian Dolls which I haven't seen but sounds like the same thing. Must have taken all of ten minutes to write this one. I don't have a lot to say about any of these sketches. They're not very funny and lazy as hell. Put Simpsons characters in a pre-existing story or concept and instead of writing a joke, kill someone in a cruel, edgy way. Special shout-out to the pre-title skit of #31, which was about the last US election. Yeesh that was some unfunny poo poo. Lesson learned, stay clear of new Simpsons. To round off the hour and cleanse my palate, I watched Trick or Treat (1952) Huey, Dewey and Louis visit Donald at Halloween and he's a huge dick and won't give up his treats. A passing Witch feels sorry for the boys and tries to help, and things escalate from there. Animated shorts from this period are really beautiful to look at and Donald's such a well defined character. You know he's going to be an obstinate jackass and never back down and I'm here for it. 15: The Cremator (1969)  A Perfect Getaway Never seen a Czech film before. In 1930s Prague, as the Nazis are consolidating power, we follow a cremator name Karel as he muses on souls, reincarnation and the nature of cremation. This is a heavy one. The themes and content get progressively darker as our protagonist becomes more detached from reality. Most of the film is Karel monologuing and it's a great performance that really sells the characters development from mild eccentric to Nazi monster This is one I'll be thinking of for a while. It's a must see. 16: Hack-O-Lantern (1998)  A 40 year old teenager is under the sinister influence of his grampa. Nudity, incest, murder and satanism follow. It's sleazy and dumb but it's entertaining and well made for what it is. Satanic Grampa is such an absurd villain and this musical number rocks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqw6crO3rW0 Total: 16 Scream 4; Scream 5; Burke & Hare; Pet Semetary (1989); Lake Mungo; Season of the Witch; Childsplay 3; Boris Karloff: the Man Behind the Monster; Piranha (2010); Dead and Buried; Black Sabbath; The Curse of the Cat People; The Company of Wolves; Halloween Specials; The Cremator; Hack-O-Lantern 
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Oct 10, 2022 13:26
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23. Sissy Oh god, it's a social anxiety nightmare. This is absolutely what my Dante's Inferno-style personalized hell is like. It's a great movie, including some fantastic (reaaaaal loving goopy) kills and some of the most deserving dickheads for it to happen to, but I think I was on the verge of rupturing my retinas while my blood pressure lifts into the PSI range like a truck tire. It has cult hit all over it though, especially for how good Aisha Dee's performance through the whole thing is, and her whole descent into madness. Between this and Deadstream, Shudder have been on a roll with Influencer Horror recently. 4 out of 5! 23/31, watched: Scary Movie, Final Destination 4, Happy Death Day, Final Destination, No One Gets Out Alive, Smile, Freaky, Body Bags, Alien Psychosis, The Invisible Man, The Last Exorcism, Final Destination 2, Werewolves of the Third Reich, Unfriended, Final Destination 3, Hellraiser (2022), Deadstream, Final Destination 5, Village of the Damned, Piranha 3D, The Awakening, The Ruins, Sissy Gyro Zeppeli fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 13:42
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17. Bruiser 2000 Incelligent design  We are going full 'death of the author' here so buckle up. If you filed the serial numbers off and released this movie today, it would be picked up by the Daily Wire's production company and it'd be hailed as some masterpiece of the 'not PC' far right. This is our main character, Henry. Henry has virtually no personality or positive features, other than that he's nice to the rich married lady he wants to gently caress. He also fantasizes about violently murdering the people around him any time he feels personally disrespected. After being pushed around a lot by his wife and coworkers, he wakes up one morning and all of a sudden he's the NPC meme:  He takes this as a sign that he doesn't have any personal agency in his life, so he decides to 'man up'. This is good timing for Henry, because a stereotype wanders into his house, the 'thieving Mexican maid' who promptly steals a bunch of his stuff and thumbs through his wallet to steal some cash. When he confronts her about it by suddenly speaking Spanish (oh, the thieving Mexican maid was also poo poo-talking him in Spanish, the true fear of all white men), she argues with it, and he bludgeons her to death. The deaths start rolling in here. Henry kills his sexually promiscuous wife, and is witnessed by another guy, but they're both trodden-upon white dudes so the other guy promises to keep his secret. Then Henry realizes that a lot of the problems in his life are because of his banker, who is coincidentally embezzling from him to buy a fancy foreign car, so he kills his banker. Finally, he works up the courage to kill his boss: a sleazy, Eastern European sex addict who hosed his wife and used to be a communist back in the day. He does this at a big, sexually depraved party with a bunch of rainbow-hair people and punks who are all gross, debauched monsters, which we know because they scare a wholesome regular middle class family who sees them. Having done this, he walks away scot-free after being saved by the rich lady he wanted to gently caress, and now his NPC face is gone! He's a real man again now that he murdered all the stereotypes of things an upper-middle-class white dude would be terrified of! Of course, this was made in 2000, and Romero didn't intend some of this (like the NPC face meme). But the movie itself is weird anyway. Described ostensibly as a satire, it's not actually a satire of anything... it just does the thing it's supposedly making fun of. We follow Henry and his journey, and there are multiple attempts to humanize and empathize with him despite that he's obviously the villain. But every time they come close to clarifying that he's the villain, Romero chickens out and softens him up. Oh no he's gonna kill the dog, just kidding the dog is fine. Oh no he's gonna kill the guy who was nice to him at work for squealing on him, just kidding he's not. The movie wants to condemn poor incel Henry, but instead ends up saying 'oh man, poor Henry, he's doing mean things but can you believe they're making him do it?!' The cinematography is good. The performances are fine. The mask is really cool. But the movie fails at being anything it sets out to be, other than an hour and a half of a mediocre white guy murdering stereotypes of people who have made his life bad. Rating: 3.4/10 Plastic Blank Faced Masks
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Oct 10, 2022 14:34
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 Comedy of Terrors(Fran Challenge: Picnic at Hanging Rock) This was an odd one because I really thought I'd seen it before? I was browsing around looking for some stuff for a Vincent Price night and I must've had this mixed up with another Price/Lorre team-up. Anyway it worked out perfectly because I was able to use it for the period piece challenge. It's directed by Jacques Tourneur, written by Richard Matheson. 90% of the movie is Vincent Price and Peter Lorre bouncing off each other. Karloff and Rathbone make memorable appearances. Need I say more? The names involved here are iconic. That said, you definitely need to be a connoisseur of Price and Lorre comedy to fully enjoy this. It's a farce from start to finish, so the entertainment comes from the classic facial expressions line deliveries of the two stars. Price is perfect at playing a loser scumbag who is also somehow extremely smug and entitled, and Lorre is the perfect lapdog. It's a specific flavor but if you're into it then you'll have a great time.  Equinox(Fran Challenge: Highbrow Horror) Released on the Criterion Collection in the 2000s, Equinox surprised me by how much creativity it had and how many ideas were packed into it. I expected a fairly simple scenario, but actually the story went much further and really pushed the limit of what the filmmakers(interesting that Dennis Muren is listed as an uncredited co-director) could do with the resources they had. Given the tiny budget and the amount of creature effects and overall imagination, I can totally understand why Criterion chose it for the collection. I assume this is a common comment on Equinox but it seems like Sam Raimi must've seen it at some point. The book, the demon, the Harryhausen monsters, the Lovecraftian story-within-a-story narration, all ingredients that Raimi would use himself 10+ years later. So Equinox feels like a movie that is pretty important and influential despite the fact that it's fairly obscure.  Current List: 1. The Munsters 2. The Addams Family 3. Alligator 4. Mosquito(Fran Challenge: Wild Beasts) 5. The Gorgon 6. Evil Dead 2 7. Army of Darkness 8. Amityville II: The Possession(Fran Challenge: The Devil Made Me Do It) 9. Black Sunday 10. Comedy of Terrors(Fran Challenge: Picnic at Hanging Rock) 11. Equinox(Fran Challenge: Highbrow Horror)
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Oct 10, 2022 15:21
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Evil Vin posted:Based on a book so let's say it's paperback from hell Funnily enough the guy who wrote the book—which is great and which I recommend, even though the movie is apparently crap—also wrote the Stoker Award-winning Paperbacks From Hell, for which that bingo category is named! If you’re into lovely (and not lovely) old 70s-90s horror novels you should 100% purchase the physical version of PfH, as the reproductions of cover paintings alone are worth the price of admission. Valancourt Books also teamed with Hendrix and Will Errickson of the Too Much Horror Fiction blog to republish a number of the titles mentioned in the book (I think they’re up to 15ish?) and I own basically all of them. Good stuff!
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Oct 10, 2022 15:32
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5. City of the Living Dead 1980 | dir. Lucio Fulci rewatch | blu-ray  I had some friends over for a weekly movie night. We often go for movies with practical effects, and they wanted to watch something gruesome. They were warned. This movie works in a couple of different situations. It mostly coasts on it's vibes, it's effects, and a lot of room to surprise you, since the gates of hell opening are distoring reality. If you want to sit and soak in the film and atmosphere alone, it works. If you're with a group that likes to talk during movies and then zone into it when it's getting good, it works. The soundtrack, the setting, and the special effects and gore keep up the momentum. It's a strange movie, narratively, because plots weave in and out. We check in on characters throughout the movie, but there are also characters for single scenes. It can be a little alienating for an audience that likes to cling to a singular hero or a duo, since there isn't really one here. Cigar-chomping Christopher George comes pretty close. I really don't know much about Fulci (I may watch F For Fulci for Behind The Screams). Some of his films are great, some of them do not grab me at all. On this viewing, I was surprised how much this feels like Robert Altman directed a splatter flick. Like a Nashville or Short Cuts, but with hellmouths opening up and people vomiting out their intestines. The imagery is so striking, and the premise gives everything a fever dream tone, that it's an incredibly memorable film even thought I can't tell you a single character's name or what the gently caress they're trying to do. It's a vibe movie. The special effects are sensational, and all the actors and actresses are troopers. There's absolutely no way I could wear a rig that makes my eyes bleed while I spit out real intestines from a butcher. Recommended 6. The Others 2001 | dir. Alejandro Amenábar SPOOKY BINGO: Picnic At Hanging Rock  A riff on Turning of the Screw set in Jersey the aftermath of WW2. An eccentric, strict mother, Grace, of two children, Anne and Nicholas, with extreme photosensitivity has new housekeepers arrive to maintain their large estate. The paterfamilias has been MIA since he went to the front, and everyone but Grace assumes he has been killed. Grace is severe towards her children, and has their education based around an arduous religious curriculum. Anne, the older rebellious child, starts telling stories of seeing people in the house. Grace goes from extreme denial to suspecting supernatural forces have invaded their house. There are insinuations that Grace has suffered mental breakdowns in the past. The lines between real/supernatural blur as Grace tries to figure out the truth behind the haunting. A film that was ubiquitous in its release which has had it's popularity ebb and flow. There's an infamous scene that's been referenced to hell and back, and it was nice to finally see it in context. I don't have many complaints about the film. I think the writing sticks the landing. I think the costuming, the set, and the casting is all fantastic. I love a foggy spooky house movie, and this delivers in spades. My only gripe was trying to gel with Nicole Kidman's performance. Her character is so unlikeable, and she has this posh rigidity that bothered me until I realized that her character is putting on errs to hide that she is on the verge of another nervous breakdown, and she is clinging to any control she can grip. Recommended. 7. The Keep 1983 | dir. Michael Mann Criterion Channel SPOOKY BINGO: High Brow Horror  Another dreamy movie that works despite itself. It's an outlier in Michael Mann's career, and it lacks the tight, methodical, cause-and-effect and story mechanic precision. It's also a strange blend of war film (WW2; I did not know this was a period piece), horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and kind of an advenure film? It's all over the place. You can also feel the film's missing pieces. Sometimes it's a weird jump in time, and some scenes make zero sense in considering a character's motivation. It is, however, a visually striking film. It's confusing, but it's always interesting. Nazis get melted. The Tangerine Dream score fucks. Recommended Re-Watches: An American Werewolf In London | City of the Living Dead New To Me: Practical Magic | Pacific Heights | The Lift | The Others | The Keep Total: 7 
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Oct 10, 2022 15:34
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#9: Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)/Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXI (2020)Halloween is Special Gonzo and Pepe the Prawn are presented with a chilling challenge — to find the way out of Disneyland's signature spooky spot. Seeing Muppets using smartphones was jarring, and Kermit's new voice strays even farther from Jim Henson than before. Otherwise this was fun, especially if you're familiar with the Haunted Mansion ride. The jokes are all stupid, but in an endearing way, in classic Muppet fashion.  out of 5Meanwhile, elsewhere on Disney+, Bart's toys plot revenge for a lifetime of mistreatment, an army of Homers from the multiverse invade Springfield, and Lisa and Nelson get stuck in a time loop. HD Simpsons is a bummer for so many reasons. I regretted my decision as soon as I saw Marge wearing a facemask and nagging Homer about "the most important presidential election of our lives." Like, I agree in principle but yeesh. The backgrounds are all so detailed and the characters are always aggressively on-model now, but the writing goes for the laziest joke 99 percent of the time. out of 5#10: Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) The brother and co-worker of Dee Wallace's character from the original are drawn into a battle between Christopher Lee and the queen of the werewolves. This movie barely holds itself together, like someone who's high as hell but trying extremely hard to seem normal. Lots of the action happens in close-up and shots are recycled frequently. It looks like a music video much of the time, with lots of cut-aways and insert shots. Sybil Danning doesn't act well but definitely seems to be having fun. Most of the movie takes place in Transylvania, which is great. An objectively terrible movie but definitely not boring. out of 5#11: Werewolf of London (1935) A respected botanist succumbs to the curse of lycanthropy after being attacked by a werewolf in Tibet. The first time I saw this, I remember liking it more than The Wolf Man. I'm not sure I still do, but there's a lot to like about it regardless. As the first-ever werewolf movie (depending on who you ask), it follows the Jekyll and Hyde formula very closely, right down to the werewolf stalking the streets in a hat and overcoat. Although the makeup by Jack Pierce isn't as technically impressive as what he would do for Lon Chaney Jr. a few years later, it does a better job of looking like a "wolf man" than Chaney's full-on furball look. The Wolf Man does do a better job of creating atmosphere, as Werewolf of London falls into the same trap as Dracula and The Mummy where a lot of the picture is guys in tuxedos talking. Still worth a watch, probably the most underrated of the Universal monster cycle. out of 51. Dracula (Spanish)(1931) 2. Trick r Treat (2007) 3. Ghost Ship (2002) H20 4. The Devil Within Her (1975) Goodnight, Mommy 5. Ghost Story (1981) Paperbacks From Hell 6. Nomads (1986) Punk Vacation 7. Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) Thrilla in Manila 8. Skeleton Man (2004) Osteology 9. Muppets Haunted Mansion/Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXI Halloween is Special 10. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) 11. Werewolf of London (1935) 
Splint Chesthair fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 15:45
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I'll participate since I just came from Smile I posted a small review in the horror thread but I will expand a little more here. 1. Smile Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedewick) plays Rose a therapist in New Jersey. During her routine at the hospital an emergency call comes in about a young woman who is in hysterics. The young lady is brought to an exam room with Rose. The woman tries to explain she is being chased by * something * that looks like random people or people she knows with the most horrible smile and then freaks out on the ground where she calms down puts on a creepy rictus grin and brutally kills herself in front of Rose. Rose is shocked by this brutal suicide and tries to figure out what happens, finding out the woman she treated also viewed a brutal suicide days earlier. During her investigation she starts seeing the same horrible smiling thing everywhere she goes. she tries to explain this to her friends and family as more and more weird and creepy things happen around her. Eventually she finds out that there is a string of traumatic suicides (the movies central theme is trauma) and whatever has caused this to happen has come to her. Without spoiling this too much the movie comes across as a mash of It Follows, the Ring, and Nightmare on Elm Street (with some New Nightmare thrown in) and while that sets up a potential for bashing a lot of genres and hoping they fit, the movie actually works. I will say the director Parker Finn does a mostly decent job and intentionally disorients you through out the movie with direction and fake outs. If you are a fan of horror he knows you are constantly looking for where the next scare will come and uses it against you and the sound direction in this movie also is meant to make you a bit paranoid and disoriented. Where I will take off a few points is the ending Rose tries to confront the trauma demon and looks to of when, we then find out the demon was loving with her, posses Rose forcing her to commit suicide in front of her ex-boyfriend forcing the cycle over again. Ultimately, the trauma demon, which is SUPER CREEPY can't be beat which I think is the wrong message to send around trauma. I am not saying the movie needed a HAPPY ending but I am not sure I liked the message at the end. The movie also doesn't also feel smooth scene to scene and for nearly two hour run time can make it feel clunky. The movie is not suppose to be a breeze though and I think comes together anyways. My last thing about this movie is that if you are recently expiercing a major trauma or have unresolved issues around trauma, this movie maybe trigger. Be forewarned on that. Rating: 7.5/10 - Good, a little a clunky but works. Maybe not top movie of all time but enough there to be talked about for a long time. ALSO, does watching horror movies on TV count for this challenge?
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Oct 10, 2022 15:54
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A weekend of watching the same new releases as everyone else? You bet! 7. Hellraiser (2022) **** Obviously, any other new Hellraiser release would've had zero expectation and been brushed under the carpet but Hulu definitely wanted us to know this one was going back to the roots of the series... and I think they got it right for the most part. It did have a bit of 'violence aplenty, but sexual stuff is held back' which is definitely a shame given the central themes of the original movies, but there was so much to like that I could get over it. Given a lot of recent movies I've seen have had characters with the depth of a TwitchCon foam pit, I didn't dislike the lead as much as others and her progression made total sense. It's everything I would want in a modern reboot, with the production just oozing the late 80s early 90s feel with little in the way of technology being used or a stack of modern references thrown at us. No Pinhead walking around a Walmart, thank god. Plenty of cool scenes, some twists on expectations, I want more. (Note: try watch it in 4K on Hulu if you can because the 1080p stream *SUCKS*) Extra: Werewolf by Night *** I'm not so huge about the classic monster movies unfortunately, and this swung from a sincere love note to them (which worked) to remembering it was a Marvel movie at heart and needing to intersperse the sincerity with badly choreographed fightscenes that didn't suit it one bit. A shame, and it definitely loses points for using selective color like the cinematographer just bought a camera for the first time. No excuse for that. 8. Deadstream **** A highly recommended horror/comedy from Shudder that had me worried I would be the one that just didn't get it, as often is the case, but no! This was just a great ride from start to end. The pacing was point perfect, the balance between horror and comedy worked incredibly well, and I was just constantly impressed with how well the editing was - the entire scenario is completely believable and makes you think it was legitimately filmed as a live stream in one go. It's a shame the budget didn't stretch to making the (practical, so yay!) effects look a bit more realistic, but you can file those as comedic elements so it doesn't matter. I would've preferred a 'less is more' approach to them I think, but it's a minor complaint that would've been amplified if not for the major strengths it has. Definitely on the 'I want to see what this crew do next' list for sure, a perfect Sunday night watch. EL BROMANCE fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 15:55
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:Funnily enough the guy who wrote the book—which is great and which I recommend, even though the movie is apparently crap—also wrote the Stoker Award-winning Paperbacks From Hell, for which that bingo category is named! The book is way better. I don’t hate the movie but it certainly drops the ball. He didn’t write the script, though he did wrote the script for Mohawk which rules and is good watch for picnic at hanging rock, especially on indigenous peoples day.
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Oct 10, 2022 16:40
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Franchescanado posted:
 #13. Knife + Heart (Shudder) As she tries to win back her ex-girlfriend, a porn producer weaves reality into her films when her actors start getting killed. This modernized French take on the giallo is interesting - it has its moments of lurid technicolor dreaminess, but it tends to regulate that stuff off to sequences set in clubs or on film sets, so the stylization is not consistent throughout. When it's not in the world of film or gay nightclubs, it tends to take on a sort of drearier realism, highlighting the schism in the main characters' life between what she imagines herself to be and what she really is. It's an interesting approach, one that seems to be ready to pay off dramatic and thematic dividends. What ends up letting the film down, and keeps it from true greatness, is that central mystery driving the story. Unless I missed some key piece of information, it seems like the whole thing comes off as coincidental happenstance - the story of villain Guy is played as a revelation or shock for main character Anne when she visits that magical realism forest, so the idea that she somehow managed to accidentally perfectly replicate that tragedy for one of her earlier porn films seems a little farfetched. It's not outside of the realm of possibility - we know that she's selfish and amoral enough to milk someone else's tragedy for her own benefit, after all - but the way it gets played this is not confirmation of something she already knew. So the idea that Guy would a) survive his burns, b) come to Paris and watch a c) magically unrelated-but-still-super-coincidental gay porn film about his life but with a ridiculous happy ending and d) then go on a killing spree aimed at all of the stars and one e) magical lookalike of the main character of that film... it becomes too ridiculous to consider. It's too many coincidences piling up on top of each other in order to make the story work. And it's not like having Anne be more complicit in the creation of that earlier work - and her own eventual downfall later - would be outside of the realm of dramatic irony; the film goes so far as to play Anne as a rapist in a moment of weakness, so it knows that she is not the hero in this story. Because wounded monster Guy is so tangentially unrelated to the film for so much of its runtime, it's hard to care as much about the mystery angle of the story. And that further makes Anne's weird posterized dream sequences stand out as even more unnecessary, since we come to find out that they are really flashbacks to an event that she had nothing to do with and couldn't possibly have borne witness to. So how and why we need to retread this so much, since it all has to be saved for a data dump late in the film anyway to provide it with any context, is beyond me. I think that there's a lot to admire here, when the film isn't trying to go down the actual mystery route. I like the characters and their interactions in- and outside of work, I like the dramatic angles with Anne and ex-girlfriend Lois and how the film shows Anne using (and abusing) the people around her as a dramatic character piece. But when it breaks into trying to be a lurid giallo mystery, I don't think it's well thought out enough to allow the film to properly come together, in the end. /5And with that, I got my first SPOOKY of the month! Let's celebrate by watching something random and not related to the game at all.  #14. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 5: The Dream Child (Vudu) Alice, the Dream Master survivor from the last film, finds out that she is pregnant... and that Freddy is using her baby's dreams to return again and attack her new friends. Over on the website Dinosaur Dracula, webmaster Matt challenged the readers to watch a Nightmare on Elm Street film over the weekend, just as something Halloween-ish to do. I was bored last night and "hey... watch a Freddy movie" is enough of a prompt to get me to do so. So, I went and grabbed one of the films that I had seen the least from that series and threw it on last night while I was getting ready for bed. In the end, it mostly just reminded me why I have watched Part 5 the least over the years. I'm generally going against thread orthodoxy when it comes to Freddy movies, but my personal favorite non-Freddy vs. Jason ANoES movie is actually Part 4, for its ridiculous cheese and playing into the possibilities of Freddy's reality bending powers far more than the other films. It's schlock, but the high fantasy elements - and winking tone - work for it. In contrast, Part 5 apes a lot of those elements but without the fun tone to keep things moving along. It also has probably the worst cast of main characters of any of the films in the series, which ends up being one of the things that ends up helping or hurting these films far more than most other horror series. (Since Freddy puts so much more time and effort into all of his kills, he tends to have a lower batting average than a Jason or a Michael movie, so the film tends to have smaller, more insular casts. If they don't end up working well together, or you have a few bad performances - and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 has both of these problems - then it will stand out like a sore thumb and tank the whole thing.) What keeps the whole thing from being absolute bottom-of-the-barrel trash are those dream sequence kills; even though this is probably the worst of the series in that regard, they still manage to work with their weird grotesqueness. (I noticed that as a common theme in the big finale; when all of Freddy's victims tear their way out of him again in a Part 4 retread death, all three of his victims had been ruined and reduced to human grotesquery. It's like the film saw the roach motel death from the last movie and decided to make that its guiding principal for how the kill scenes had to be approached.) But, make no mistake, Part 5 is the absolute nadir of the series* - I have my issues with New Nightmare, but at least it's trying; the remake is fascinating for all of the stuff it does wrong, and how Haley's performance is utterly undermined by the film; and the older I get, the more I find myself enjoying the camp of Freddy's Dead**. What does The Dream Child have going for it? Not too much, as far as I can tell. * - What is it with long-running horror movie series and completely falling down when they get to the fifth installment? ** - I mean, Freddy's Dead is still an absolute garbage movie, don't get me wrong, but the ridiculous campy elements at least let it stand out and be goofy fun. /5 Watched so far: The Empty Man, Hocus Pocus 2, Smile (2022), It Came From Outer Space, Watcher, The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, Bats, Choose or Die, The Curse of the Werewolf, "Werewolf By Night"/various Halloween episodes, The Thing From Another World, Hellraiser (2022), Knife + Heart, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5
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Oct 10, 2022 16:50
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Ambitious Spider posted:The book is way better. I don’t hate the movie but it certainly drops the ball. He didn’t write the script, though he did wrote the script for Mohawk which rules and is good watch for picnic at hanging rock, especially on indigenous peoples day. Is that any good? I was hovering over it the other day but wound up going with something else.
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Oct 10, 2022 16:53
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7.) Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015) A college slasher movie parody, created with a budget of silly string and love by the people at 5-Second Films. The best bits of this are definitely the kills and one-liners, alongside the amped up homoeroticism. Some jokes are too stupid to work (bag of oranges) but there’s more than enough hits. Easy recommend. 3.5/5 8.) Mosquito (1995)  Any horror movie that begins with a shot of a random spaceship is good, and this is no exception. Despite being tongue-in-cheek, the movie’s giant mosquito monsters are actually surprisingly scary, especially when they’re sucking people dry. It’s pretty much nonstop action once the ball gets rolling, which is good because it gives the cast less opportunity to act. The effects range from near perfect to laughably bad, often in the same scene. Recommended if you like 10 minute-long RV chases, Gunnar Hansen with a chainsaw, and endless shoddy barricading of windows. 2.5/5
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Oct 10, 2022 17:40
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Movie 2 of 13: Blade II This movie rules. I'd only seen the first and third in the series, had a fun viewing of this one last night. Way too fun in the 2002 style, a missing link between MI2 and Matrix Reloaded. Everyone is kung fu fighting in leather jackets with shades, techno music, outrageous coolness. And somehow it backs it up with just pretty quality filmmaking too, Guillermo is good. Fun stuff. Honorable mention: Shin Ultraman, this movie rocks. Just wall to wall toku kaiju good times.
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Oct 10, 2022 17:45
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15: Hocus Pocus 2 Something Wicked It's fine. It's very much a modern day Disney movie, for better or worse. I didn't actually see the first one until a year or two ago so I don't have much of an attachment to these. Bette is good, but the story doesn't really seem to know what it wants to do and the musical numbers are pretty cringy.
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Oct 10, 2022 17:48
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Ambitious Spider posted:The book is way better. I don’t hate the movie but it certainly drops the ball. He didn’t write the script, though he did wrote the script for Mohawk which rules and is good watch for picnic at hanging rock, especially on indigenous peoples day. Oh poo poo, starring Kaniehtiio Horn! Ok I’m watching this today
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Oct 10, 2022 18:20
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10) The Boneyard (1991) 3 gurneys out of 5 Occult / Trash Spooky Card: Osteology  A washed up police detective has to convince a psychic lady to come in from the cold in order to help catch a serial killer, but a visit to the morgue shows that the killings are a lot more than they first appeared to be. This is dark, cheap and wonderful. Pretty sure most of the budget went into the insane special effects (from the guy who did the House movies), a goopy and fun horror that is hard not to like. 11) The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) 2 brain operations out of 5 Universal Monster Spooky Card: Golden Years  I may have seen the best that Universal Monsters has to offer at this point, it was kind of sad seeing Chaney/Lugosi in the same roles they absolutely owned in House of Frankenstein now in such a lower stature and minor film of the series. They deserved so much more. A needless addition, kinda boring but still nice seeing some of the sets/costumes/makeup at least. 12) Document of the Dead (1981) 3 movie reels out of 5 Documentary Spooky Card: Behind the Screams  This is the kind of film a first year film student should watch, it's pretty interesting seeing the stages that Dawn of the Dead went through, an insight into the departments and kinds of characters involved. George A. Romero stands out as a gentle, brilliant director who had cultivated such a creative crew and made one of the most important films of the era. For a film made as a class project this holds up and is very interesting, I liked the walk and talks to get a little insight and seeing some noticeable faces give their views during the actual shooting of the film. 13) Cursed (2005) 2 werewolf middle fingers out of 5 Werewolf Spooky Card: Full Moon  This was a Wes Craven I hadn't gotten around to seeing and I guess it wasn't offensively bad, just very directionless. I read a little more about it and it seems this is one that the studios had their grubby mitts all over - to the point even where Skeet Ulrich was cut from the final film (there's a YouTube clip of a morning news show that features an interview with him as he's shooting). I didn't hate the werewolf costumes but there was certainly a lot of loving around with CGI that made a lot look very dated. Also there's a homophobic bully plot line that has a beat that seemed to be plucked out of a hat - but made the movie better and if they had guts back then it would have been gay as gently caress for the last half of the film and ruled. A very minor Craven, sad he got messed around so much. 14) Hellraiser (2022) 2 chains with hooks on them out of 5 Occult / Slasher Spooky Card: They Always Come Back  I really, really wanted to love this. It has the plot of a Hellraiser 11 including a secluded billionaire with a spooky mansion and young hot addicts, it feels very second draft - especially compared to the filth and fury of the bad romance of the original. This is very much a slasher monster film over some of the more psychological and sexual thrills Hellraiser should be about - in saying that I really liked the direction, the cast (esp. Pinhead) and production design was cool. 15) Short Horrors (estimated 108 minutes in total) I watched these at a film festival and some of them don't have their runtimes available so I made some guesses but still, it lasted well over an hour so should be very safe for the challenge. Spooky Card: Short Cuts She's Fine (20m) This had really great production value and art style, the story is about someone who finds a new place to stay with an overly attached artist room-mate and her dog, BITCH. How to Cope with Serial Killing (estimated 15m) This psychological short could have done with being cut down a good bit but it had nice art style and a good lead performance. USB (12m) A taxi driver finds that the creepiest customer he had just left a USB device in his car, wonder what's on it? Really good cinematography and a snappy short that's well made. Prank (estimated 10m) When a body turns up at a freshers flat party the surviving party goers have to figure out what to do, especially when one of them is convinced he'd go to jail for already having drawn a cock on the bodies face, thinking he was just asleep. Very good sting at the end. Hold Me Till the End (estimated 15m) A film about guilt and suicide, really well made but could have done with trimming a good bit. Had one of the scenes where the whole audience flinched. Who Goes There? (estimated 5m) A simple concept we've seen before a lot but just done really, really, really, really loving well. Great production value, really inventive shots and the type of film you'd expect to launch the director into features. Tea With the Reaper (12m) An English comedy about the paranormal - mockumentary about an exorcist, his assistant and the local priest. Had a pile of laughs and was a crowd favourite, some really killer jokes. The Bottom (9m) Quite a mysterious psychological film that grabs your attention (well, the naked guy standing in a freezing lake does, anyway) and holds it. A nice concept, well shot.  My 31 Horror LetterboxdList +Challenge Films 1) Coherence 2) Daddy's Deadly Darling 3) Dark Age 4) Anthropophagous 5)TV Halloween Specials (Horrible Histories, Bottom and Inside No. 9) 6) Fido 7) Carrie TV Adaptation 8) The Gravedancers 9) Blood Theatre 10) The Boneyard 11) The Ghost of Frankenstein 12) Document of the Dead 13) Cursed 14) Hellraiser 2022 15) Some Short Horror Films The Hausu Usher fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Oct 10, 2022 |
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Oct 10, 2022 18:23
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Heavy Metal posted:Movie 2 of 13: Shin ultraman streaming anywhere? Or do I have to check local theatres?
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Oct 10, 2022 18:46
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23. Meat Grinder Thailand, 2009. Dir. Tiwa Moeithaisong Thrilla in Manila A single mother, deep in debt, runs a noodle shop with human flesh on the menu. I'll start by saying I really enjoyed this. At first I thought the camerawork was very amateurish, but as it went on it proved to have an almost art-house aesthetic to it. Plenty of moody black-and-white flashbacks, sometimes augmented with vibrant pink-red blood, and an effect I can only describe as "overdeveloped film". The story seemed fairly aimless at first, but once the first twist this film had my full and rapt attention. The main character, Buss, has a surprising depth to her, and the actress who plays her, Mai Charoenpura, really knocked it out of the park. Sinister atmosphere, nice brutal kills, and very grisly gore effects. This movie does play with some distressing themes of violence toward women and children, so beware of that going in. Highly recommend! 7/10. Stray thoughts: The twist, that Bua was dead the whole time and Buss had been talking to the doll and punishing herself. Wow. Did NOT see that one coming. Really brought into sharp focus how isolated she's been this whole time. The part where Aoi's boyfriend gets his fingers individually nailed into the floor, and tries to pull them up to escape. Yikes. I wonder why, of all things, I have such an aversion to finger torture? "All these problems are rooted from family violence. Women and children are always victimized. If society's still indifferent to the problems, unimaginable disaster will arise." 
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Oct 10, 2022 19:13
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24. Happy Death Day 2 U I watched the original earlier in the month and it's still one of my highlights, so thought I'd give the sequel a try. It's still a very well put-together movie, the script is solid and still really funny (the repeated and completely nonchalant suicides was a great running gag), and the concept-with-a-twist totally works. But it just felt less focused than the original, maybe because there's more attention paid to the pretty one-dimensional side characters this time. Still a decent time, but the original is much better. 3 out of 5! 24/31, watched: Scary Movie, Final Destination 4, Happy Death Day, Final Destination, No One Gets Out Alive, Smile, Freaky, Body Bags, Alien Psychosis, The Invisible Man, The Last Exorcism, Final Destination 2, Werewolves of the Third Reich, Unfriended, Final Destination 3, Hellraiser (2022), Deadstream, Final Destination 5, Village of the Damned, Piranha 3D, The Awakening, The Ruins, Sissy, Happy Death Day 2 U
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Oct 10, 2022 19:38
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 Hocus Pocus I'd seen this a bunch of times as a kid but I didn't remember much so I wanted to revisit it before checking out the sequel. Like others have mentioned, it suffers from the fact that it attempts to have storylines and characters that aren't the three sisters. Any time the main three aren't on-screen it's a snoozer, but when they are the movie breaks through into that spooky season favorite category and it's not hard at all to see why so many people remember it fondly.  Hocus Pocus 2(Fran Challenge: Children of the Damned) This was a mixed bag, not unlike the original in that way so not too surprising. It was pretty amazing to see how all three of the main actresses still have it, especially Midler. You could've told me they filmed this 10 years after the original and I would've believed you, they all still have the same energy they had 30 years ago. The movie looks pretty good, it doesn't feel like a cheap cash-in thrown together at the last minute. Other than the three sisters, the main actors are probably better than what we had in the original, but they're still fairly boring characters that you sit through out of necessity. One gag I particularly enjoyed was the sister's reaction to a modern pharmacy.  Current List: 1. The Munsters 2. The Addams Family 3. Alligator 4. Mosquito(Fran Challenge: Wild Beasts) 5. The Gorgon 6. Evil Dead 2 7. Army of Darkness 8. Amityville II: The Possession(Fran Challenge: The Devil Made Me Do It) 9. Black Sunday 10. Comedy of Terrors(Fran Challenge: Picnic at Hanging Rock) 11. Equinox(Fran Challenge: Highbrow Horror) 12. Hocus Pocus 13. Hocus Pocus 2(Fran Challenge: Children of the Damned)
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Oct 10, 2022 19:39
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 Scream, Queen! -Watch a horror film by a LGBQT+ director #47.) Snow White: A Deadly Summer (dir. David DeCoteau; 2012; Tubi) A weird little retelling of the Snow White story, placing it in modern day and casting Snow White as a rebellious teen with a mean step-mom. Snow is abducted in the middle of the night and taken to a scared-straight boot camp, as replacement for the woods, where there's a killer on the loose! Eric Roberts plays Snow's father, a role which mostly sees him staring out of windows while looking somber. Maureen McCormick has the role of the step-mother, with scenes of her talking to herself in the mirror (get it?). I guess the approximately seven other campers are standing in for the remaining characters you'd expect in a Snow White story. The lead, Shanley Caswell, is better than the average 21st-century DeCoteau lead, but I was sad to see that this was where she ended up a year after playing Riley in Detention. The film is thin on plot, padded out with boot camp discipline scenes, scenes of running around in the woods, or bickering between the campers. It feels like about half the movie is shot day-for-night, too. And it all ends with a totally unnecessary, invalidating twist. Still better than Beastly Boyz, though. “Dude! That's nasty, man. What are you, a sadist?” Rating: 4/10
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Oct 10, 2022 19:39
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 #13: Children of the Corn (1984) Spooky Bingo: Children of the Damned Children take over the town in service of a child prophet who claims to speak for a harvest god. Had not realized that the god would turn out to be real. That was a neat twist. But otherwise, while I didn't expect this to be particularly good, I was hoping for something a bit more consistently fun. The cult being made up of kids doesn't end up feeling that creepy and is hampered by being dependent on, obviously, a bunch of child actors.  #14: Deadstream (2022) Spooky Bingo: V/H/S A disgraced streamer visits a haunted house as part of his comeback attempt. Really enjoyed this. You spend basically the entire movie with the main character, and they do a nice job of making him comically obnoxious without being grating to spend time with. Nails the tone it's going for and escalates nicely over the course of the movie, with a good mix of comedy and goofy horror.  #15: Candyman (2021) Spooky Bingo: Horror Noire A visual artist becomes obsessed with the legend of Candyman, resurrecting him for a new generation. Not particularly scary or thrilling, still enjoyed this for how it wove its characters into the gentrifying Calibri Green, the horror trappings being a way to show a black artist being radicalized.  #16: Backcountry (2014) Spooky Bingo: Wild Beasts A couple get in over their heads on a camping trip when they encounter a black bear. A fairly unpleasant watch. The couple fights most of the time to the time up to encountering the bear, at which point the violence gets unnerving, not just in what we're shown, but the way it portrays the couple's terror. Can't say I really enjoyed it, but I also don't fault it for that. A good advertisement for not being attacked by a bear.  #17: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) Some young adults once again have to navigate their way through deadly trapped rooms. Doubles down on the peril of the challenges thereby obscuring the puzzle-solving, which was the interesting thing about the premise. Also the movie is way too concerned with the metaplot of this whole thing, both in the exploration of the corporation that runs all this, and in how this movie is just a setup to get the lead character into the airplane that they tease at the end of the previous movie. Didn't much care for this. Hope they don't make anymore. 
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Oct 10, 2022 19:59
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