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 Let the Right One In  2008, Tomas Alfredson, Hulu To make a vampire movie that is in the top five ever conversation, you have to beat out some strong competition. To do it when your movie is 95% child actors in scenes without adults, now that's something. It's a hopeful coming-of-age movie about a burgeoning serial killer meeting the best friend he could ever have, a morbid, depressing tragedy, and often outright funny between bouts of vampire body horror. Pretty much a must-see film.
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Oct 15, 2022 09:09
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14. Hideous! Spooky Bingo: Full Moon (As in a Full Moon Pictures release.) So I had this blu ray handed to me at a Tourist Trap screening back in 2020 before it all went wrong, and finally decided to give it a look. Dr. Lorca (Michael Citrinti) is a collector of biological oddities, malformed fetuses and such, and when an unscrupulous dealer (Tracy May) sells a promised weird specimen to a rival collector (Mel Johnson Jr.) out from under him, he has his sexy and largely unclothed assistant (Jacqueline Lovell) steal it away. This leads to the dealer, collector, a dumb secretary (Rhonda Griffin) and a slob detective (Jerry O' Donnell, NOT Jerry O' Connell) all arriving at his mansion for a big confrontation, only for him to find that his collection of weird embryos has disappeared- or, rather, escaped. It seems the newest arrival was some kind of superintelligent being that awoke all the others, and now they're prowling about the castle. Dr. Lorca, meanwhile, suspecting one of the attendees stole his darlings, locks down the castle and traps everyone in with the tiny monsters. Charles Band has long had an interest in miniature monsters, probably going back to the success of Puppet Master. This weird comic lark has the feel of one of those low budget movies that exists solely because they could slap it together in a short amount of time- they had some goopy puppets, some stock castle sets, try to make it work. And while this isn't a bad way to make movies (the original Little Shop of Horrors was a product of the same method), when it goes wrong you can really see the filmmakers desperate to hang something together. Full Moon's comedies have never rubbed me right (unless one counts the Re-Animator series.) Band just doesn't have good comic instincts, he goes for broad weirdness and people acting silly and when there are actual jokes the punchlines are always weak. All the characters here are too shrill to really care much about; the secretary whines endlessly, the dealer is greedy, Dr. Lorca and his rival keep sniping at each other, etc. The film looks kinda nice, the castle's all shadowy, but this presents a problem when the action finally picks up and the dim lighting makes everything hard to follow. Perhaps this was by design, as the monsters, while kinda neat lookin', aren't capable of convincingly attacking anyone. (There is one clever sequence where the characters imprisoned in a room by Dr. Lorca communicate via knocks with another group of prisoners, who are, of course, the critters.) Near the end you can sense the filmmakers rushing to bring this home with a lot of abrupt deaths and a climax that isn't much of one. Painless, but also quickly forgotten. 
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Oct 15, 2022 09:19
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14. Deadtime Stories (1986), Freevee This one was really uneven; two of the stories were based on childhood stories (Red Riding Hood, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears) and the third was a completely new story. Of the three, I think the new story was the most interesting, and also had hands down the best visual effects of the bunch - the crawling hand is really well done, and the reanimating body reminded me a lot of Frank's resurrection in 'Hellraiser' (in a good way). The other two stories had promise - retelling old children's stories in a modern setting is at least somewhat novel - but they kind of missed the mark. The Red Riding Hood story was pretty okay, and I genuinely didn't see the werewolf angle coming, but in retrospect it sort of felt like a werewolf story shoehorned into Red Riding Hood. The story also had a ton of sexual content which felt jarring compared to the first story which had none. The Goldilocks story was all over the place; Goldilocks is a serial killer for some reason? Also she has telekinetic powers? The tone was goofy and silly, which clashed pretty hard with the previous two stories. Definitely my least favorite out of the three. 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) 10. 'Body Bags' (1993) 11. 'The Field Guide to Evil' (2018) BONUS: 'Hellraiser' (2022) 12. 'The Dark Tapes' (2017) 13. 'Trick 'r Treat' (2007) 14. 'Deadtime Stories' (1986)
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Oct 15, 2022 12:47
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 14)Halloween ends mommy issuesHooboy. I have thoughts. It takes a big swing but misses. I liked Halloween 2018, did not like kills, and this one is bad in entirely different ways. It's too literal to be metaphorical, but not literal enough to make sense. It michael possessing corey, or just recognizing something in himself. Is it the corrupting influence of the town? Everyone is an rear end in a top hat and The solution is publicly grinding michael to dust. None of this is very clear! If michael was gone from the film, and it focused more on corey and developed its themes it'd be less of a mess. But michael and his sidekick's relationship isn't developed either, and to be frank, a lot of things in this film aren't developed. Oh and Corey's mom is not great! hence the bingo square TL:DR Thorn trilogy is better /5 15)The Rental Yuppie NightmareA techbro, his wife, his brother and his brother's girlfriend (and also the techbro's partner) go to an air b&b. Things do not go well, but Barbarian it's not. There's a lot of rich people drama. The techbro cheats on his wife with his partner. Then they find cameras throughout the house. Then it turns into a slasher. There are a lot of red herrings is it the racist landlord? An exgirlfriend? the dude the brother beat up and went to prison for? none of the above as it goes for a strangers styler this weirdo can.strike anywhere without consequence. The cast is good enough ( Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, Sheila Vand, Jeremy Allen White) that a lot of the pre-horror film drama works and the spiral as things slowly spin out of control and these people reveal who they really are, but that's not really allowed to resolve as it moves from thriller to slasher .5/5 1)The Munsters, 2)Color Out of Space 3)Living Dead Girl 4)Collingswood story5)Mr. Harrigan’s Phone 6)Werewolf by night/halloweenies 7)Hellraiser 8)My Best Friend’s Exorcism 9)Deadstream 10)Candyman 11)47 meters down uncaged 12)Watcher13)Dark Glasses14)Halloween Ends 15)The rental
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Oct 15, 2022 12:53
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12 Scanners (1981) A young man is pulled into a secret war between the telepath-illuminati and the company that made them. I found the plot to be shockingly direct and straightforward, after watching Crimes of the Future last month. Just kind of cliched. What I really loved, though, was the look of this movie. Everything's very crisp and modern, and all those wet-streets-at-night scenes looked incredible (esp. in the Criterion remaster). The movie is also one of the great special-effects pieces of its era, and there's some great goop and some well-done mind-battle scenes, which manage to make motionless frowning seem dramatic and compelling. A lot of Interesting Faces, too. This is my entry for Masters of Horror, being a David Cronenberg joint. Doesn't really fit anything else. Connective tissue with #11 In the Earth: the protagonist being caught between crude evil and clean evil. #13 Dawn of the Dead (2004) (rewatch)  Survivors hide in the mall to avoid the zombies. Without really planning to, I made it all the way to number thirteen before my first rewatch! I saw this movie at my lovely friend Alex's house right after it came out, when I was honestly way the gently caress too young to watch a movie like this, and it made a bit of an impression. We also watched Alien Resurrection, my first Alien movie, which did not make much of an impression. Anyway it's solid. Not as rich as the Romero movies, but real energetic, and the zombies are just so viscerally nasty, I can't think of any other version that gives me such an immediate Get the gently caress away from me-type response. I believe the whole zombie thing of the last 20 years rests of three pillars:
Connection to #12: extraordinary shotgun carnage. #14 The Invisible Man (1933)  An invisible madman terrorises the public, as well as his former associates, in a quest for world domination. A fun little action-horror. This is basically a 1930s special-effects extravaganza, and it's aged shockingly well. You can see the seams and transparencies, but only if you look for them. And it's ambitious, too; the scene where Griffin starts smoking is nuts. Even when he's fully covered up, there's an eerie stillness to the man, and his voice always seems to be at the top of the mix, coming from everywhere. Griffin himself is a lot of fun, lively and demanding and constantly undermined by his inability to stop being a prick. It's dated in some ways; everyone is terribly eager and can-do, and everyone seems to trust the government and the police totally; any failures come from small individual screw-ups. The subplot with the other scientists and Griffin's love-interest don't really amount to much, but it's still an enjoyable watch. Oh, one more thing I liked: at the end, when Griffin dies and seeps back into visibility, during the partly-visible stages you can see his bones and viscera and stuff! It always annoys me in movies when something is partly-transparent, and you just see a transparent version of their exterior, like a ghost. If they're partly see-through, you should see partly see-through muscles and bones and stuff beneath the partly see-through skin - and this movie nails it. I watched this for Golden Years. You could also watch it for Paperbacks from Hell, Masters of Horror, Glitches, or They Always Come Back. Connection to #13: big crowds of people trying to stop our characters from getting past. Spooky Bingo update: 
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Oct 15, 2022 13:46
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11. GloriousFemme Fatale Challenge A fun little cosmic horror film featuring of course, JK Simmons as an unimaginable space god communicating through a rest stop glory hole. Duh! It’s a fun concept and Simmons is an excellent voice actor. Could listen to him all day. I feel like Ryan Kwanten disappeared after True Blood but it seems like he’s been a working actor especially in the streaming realm. He does a solid job here in essentially a one-man show. Unfortunately I found this one fizzles out after a bit- even with a 79 minute running time. The cosmic horror-Cthulhu stuff is becoming a bit old-hat at this point, even if I usually find it really effective. I did] enjoy the one big gore set piece poor Gary, and anytime you got a glimpse of the creature it was wonderfully goopy and gross. The film does a lot with clearly very little. What I’m really not sure about was the reveal of Ryan Kwanten’s character as a serial killer. It seemed totally out of nowhere and I’m not sure why they went that direction. Wouldn’t it be more effective for our character who has to make a painful, terrifying sacrifice to be sympathetic? Was it just for Simmons to deny Kwanten’s status as the “hero” he hoped he had become? I’m not sure but I think the whole thing undermines and concept that certainly already had enough going for it. 3/5 5/5- Return of the Living Dead (1985)*, Exorcist III (1990) 4.5/5 - Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 4/5 - Tales from the Crypt (1972), Deadstream (2022) 3.5/5 - Evil Toons (1992), Waxwork (1989) 3/5 - Ghost Stories (2017), Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021), Glorious (2022) 2.5/5 - Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)
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Oct 15, 2022 14:32
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34. Ouija: Origin of Evil I've never seen the original Ouija, and was told pretty strictly to just skip it and go straight to the prequel which is apparently a lot better. I'm always a sucker for a "charlatan ends up having to deal with the real thing" plot hook, even when the script is as hokey and prosaic as this. Just like an actual Ouija board, I bet this movie would go down great at teenage sleepovers, lots of jumpscares and creepy (if fairly generic and overdone) imagery once it hits the home stretch. And you gotta appreciate any paranormal-based movie where the characters are given a pretty easy set of rules to follow, then just immediately ignore them, I'm surprised nobody started just splling drinks on the ouija board, or using it to prop a window open. 3 out of 5! 34/31, 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, Crush The Skull, Hell Fest, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat, Swimfan, Slumber Party Massacre (1982), The Ranger, Evil Dead (2013), Halloween Ends, Ouija: Origin of Evil I also forgot to add the Zombie Honeymoon square for Halloween Ends in my last post, so I'm adding it now. 
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Oct 15, 2022 14:43
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16) Wendigo (2001) 2 sled rides out of 5 Folk / Myth Spooky Card: A Perfect Getaway  When a family travels into the country to stay at a vacation home they have a run-in with a local who takes a sinister interest in them. This would have been one of those early 2000's weekend DVD rentals I regretted - because it's supposed to be about THE WENDIGO and is in fact a family/class conflict drama with a rather droll pace and some monster images tacked on at the end. Featuring a really impressive cast it's just a shame it feels like a story stretched out to be twice as long as it should have been. 17) Spookies (1986) 2 absolutely new weird scary monsters out of 5 Monster Spooky Card: Femme Fatale (co-directed by Genie Joseph)  It's a shame these really fun goopy Halloween monsters are hung around such a lame story as the amount of effort on creating new monsters is a crazy level. There's a couple of fun 80's bad characters you can root to live or die, it's silly and would be a decent b-side to something like Monster Squad for young teen spooky movie night. The more time that passes between actually watching it finds me growing to like it a bit more and more. 18) Hotel Transylvania (2012) 3 cute ghost flying tables out of 5 Family Friendly Spooky Card: Children of the Damned  I watched this animation on a knackered morning and it was what I needed. Cool designs and a decent story, it was fun. I liked the idea that a monster hotel would use ghost sheets as the spread on their dining tables and there's a whole scene around them. Voice acting was okay, it was nice to hear Steve Buscemi. Monster solidarity. 19) Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) 3.5 knife attacks out of 5 Slasher Spooky Card: The Devil Made Me Do it (heavily features religion/religious themes)  Originally called 'COMMUNION' - it's a slasher with some sweet twists and turns and an good killer. Pretty low budget but packs a great punch with themes of Catholicism very strong throughout - one of the first scenes is around a young girl's first holy communion, the family's relationship with their priest, good and evil, purity, dogmatism, etc. I liked the look and all the location shoots, the cast did a good job and the kills were quite scary. This film deserves so much more recognition as an influential slasher. 20) The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964) 2 old bandages out of 5 Monster / Hammer Horror Spooky Card: Goodnight, Mommy  This is very, very slow paced and plodding with characters it's very hard to get behind. One of the most disappointing Hammer Horrors I've watched, considering how much I was looking forward to it. The monster design is okay, I wish the scenes where it kills were scarier and I gave any sort of poo poo about it. I think one of the big mistakes was having a circus American promoter character (presumably to attract American box office) but they talked about the mummy entertaining fair route rather than show it as much as they should have - if this had some circus/fair coming to town energy it would have helped throw some energy into it. Alas, here we have a mummy slogging it around Victorian era London and we at least get a couple of nice shots. 21) beDevil (1993) 3.5 tales out of 5 Anthology / Women Director Spooky Card: Tales of Terror  Directed by Tracey Moffatt, an indigenous Australian artist, and is ghost story-telling coming from a different angle. It didn't have a big budget and uses a lot of non-professional actors but hell that makes it so much more interesting and really nails the outsider aspect of the film. I really like Australian genre cinema, they really were doing things down there that were ahead of their time and at a brilliant quality for a long, long time. This spooky tale anthology represents a modern take of the makeup of Australian people and feels so fresh today (in spite of the low video quality), I liked it a lot.  Celebrating my first SPOOKY BINGO LINE OF THE SEASON!  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 16) Wendigo 17) Spookies 18) Hotel Transylvania 19) Alice, Sweet Alice 20) The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb 21) beDevil The Hausu Usher fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 14:43
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 27. Halloween Ends (2022) No way I can say much about this without spoilers, but you can put me firmly on the side of "it sucks and is bad". Get ready to scream: terror has a new name, and it's... Corey. With his Bad Ronald lookin', Scrappy Doo version of Michael Myers rear end. This Friday the 13th: Part V rip-off is the worst sequel to Little Corey Gorey I've ever seen. Dennis Millering over here but I did enjoy the final showdown between Michael and Laurie. Me early in the movie seeing the junk yard: "Someone is gonna get killed in that grinder."  Me during the junk yard massacre scene: "Aw man, they didn't use the grinder."  Me during the ending:  1/5Total Watched: 27 // First Time: 21
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Oct 15, 2022 15:01
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Franchescanado posted:
 #19. We're Going to Eat You (YouTube) A special agent chases a notorious bandit to a remote island village, neither knowing it is full of cannibals. I have to be honest: cannibal films just aren't my thing. I don't get their appeal too much, either as spookadoodles or as thrill rides or whatever. So when MovieBob mentioned this movie on his show, I thought that would be a great way to knock this challenge out: rather than a straight jungle cannibal horror film, watch one that was also a 1980s Hong Kong martial arts comedy. (Honestly, how you react to the phrase "1980s Hong Kong martial arts jungle cannibal horror comedy" should tell you whether you're gonna want to seek this film out or not.) And when I saw some helpful soul had uploaded the entire thing to YouTube, that just cemented the decision for me. Another confession: I'm don't know enough of the director Tsui Hark's work, in general, being more familiar with his name via osmosis or producer credits. I also didn't know anybody from the cast, so while I can say that the martial arts stunt work is fine, it lacks that certain snap and pizazz that the luminaries like Jackie Chan or Jet Li or Sammo Hung could bring to these kinds of locked down fight scenes. It's all still satisfying, but I think what really makes it work is both the weirdo faceless henchmen - all running in wearing the same spooky green mask, essentially - and the times that they try to fake you out with gag bodily destruction for our hero. (There are several instances of him thinking he'd got his hand cut off; I don't know if that's a cultural thing in Hong Kong or not, so I was a little perplexed by it.) Oh, and the stolen music from Suspiria strangely kind of works in these scenes here too. A bit less satisfying is the comedy aspect, since a good portion of it relies on what I presume is a giant man in drag being voiced over by a lady, to weird effect. The fact that that character is played as the comedy rapist doesn't help. The tonal shifts between horror and comedy also end up weirdly affecting the central villain, who swings between sneering petty tyrant and a scene where he sits alone at night, crying over his copy of "Oedipus Rex" and then back. It's bizarre, is what I'm saying. I also think that the central cannibal metaphor doesn't really work too well these days. One, because I'm not familiar enough with the general historical dichotomy between Hong Kong and mainland China, which is a me issue; second because of the current status of Hong Kong and China today, so the pointed jabs about communism being ruinous for traditional villages no longer has the same bite (har har) it once might have. Along with the general weird tonal shifting and the terribly abrupt ending, it all ends up leading to a film experience that is very singular, but I don't know if I would call it totally satisfying. Still, I'd rather have my gonzo jungle cannibal film served up with a side of martial arts and comedy than served straight up, so I guess this is the one thing that would satiate me. /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, The Innocents (1961), The Bone Snatcher, The Blob (1958), Friday the 13th (2009), We're Going to Eat You And with that one, that's a 2 SPOOKY 4 me. Class3KillStorm fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 16:07
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How do we feel about the Tobe Hooper Salem’s Lot counting for the challenge? I didn’t realize it was originally a two-part miniseries until after I watched it, I thought it was just a long TV movie. Seems like I’ve seen other people use it (and the ‘90s IT which is the same deal) but I don’t want it to be disqualified if I use it for a bingo square 
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Oct 15, 2022 16:25
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gey muckle mowser posted:How do we feel about the Tobe Hooper Salem’s Lot counting for the challenge? I didn’t realize it was originally a two-part miniseries until after I watched it, I thought it was just a long TV movie. Seems like I’ve seen other people use it (and the ‘90s IT which is the same deal) but I don’t want it to be disqualified if I use it for a bingo square It was released on DVD and Bluray as one long movie. I say it counts.
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Oct 15, 2022 16:29
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28. Tiny Cinema 2022 Deepy entertaining, deeply demented  This has been a crazy month for defying my expectations. First Sissy ended up being surprisingly good, then Deadstream, and now Tiny Cinema. I'll admit to being partial towards anthology films, but I think even beyond that, this one was a lot of fun. A surprising amount of fun, actually. Like some sort of quasi-Twilight Zone fresh off a bender of huffing glue, the movie is bizarre, funny, and strangely beautiful. None of the stories take themselves particularly seriously, and the movie wisely knows enough to keep moving through them at a brisk pace and never sticks too long on one thing. The concepts in each short are almost all brand new ideas you've never heard of before, with the exception of one that's been done before but probably not as amusingly, and they've got a goofy nightmarish quality to them that's really endearing. I don't want to hype the movie too much, given that I'm confident there's a whole group of people who will absolutely hate this movie, but for me it was a really good time. Troma's Lloyd Kaufman is fond of saying that if you try and make something for everyone, all you get is baby food. Instead it's better to make something specifically weird enough for someone, because at least then you'll give someone a really good time. I feel like this movie was that for me. I can definitely see myself tossing this on around Halloween time each year and still getting a laugh out of it. Who knows, maybe you would too. I would argue that how you feel about You Should Leave With Tim Robinson is exactly how you would feel about this movie, in case that helps. Rating: 7/10 Detailed Drawings of Penises Framed and Hung on a Bathroom Wall PKMN Trainer Red fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 16:30
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26. Hellraiser 2: Hellbound Where to watch? It along with the first Hellraiser are available on Amazon Prime  The very goopy and very good follow up to Hellraiser. Again Kristie is back for dealing with the Cenobites. This time its Julia who escapes? Is let go? Its got all the 80s horror and it starts off kind of normal but quickly goes loving places. You see the actual dimension that the Cenobites inhabit more and you get more mythology related to the cenobites themselves. Along with some interesting revelations. Also this movie doesn't hesitate to make really bold moves. Its pretty excellently directed and the actress who plays Kristie is really great. Its got a fantastic villian in it and it has all the goopy blood you could want. Anyway its a great follow up to a great film.
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Oct 15, 2022 16:43
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15. My Friends Need Killing (1976) - 3.5/5 A Vietnam vet with PTSD snaps over his traumatic memories of a massacre he was forced to participate in, deciding that the other members of his former unit have to pay for their crimes with their lives. It’s clear that he’s doing this less out of a sense of justice than as an escape from the memories which he hopes will be erased if he extinguishes the source. He’s a slasher whose murder method is psychodrama. All of the killings in the film further morally complicate the picture somehow— in one case, he reenacts a rape he saw one of his squaddies commit using the man’s own wife; in another, his intended victim has become a bleeding heart liberal who performs in anti-war theater pieces. The ending is slightly mawkish yet bleak at the same time. The cycle of violence is broken, but there’s only one way to really put the past away for good.
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Oct 15, 2022 17:13
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PKMN Trainer Red posted:28. Tiny Cinema What a recommendation! Consider me sold!
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Oct 15, 2022 17:19
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gey muckle mowser posted:How do we feel about the Tobe Hooper Salem’s Lot counting for the challenge? I didn’t realize it was originally a two-part miniseries until after I watched it, I thought it was just a long TV movie. Seems like I’ve seen other people use it (and the ‘90s IT which is the same deal) but I don’t want it to be disqualified if I use it for a bingo square Pretty much since 'Salem's Lot, IT, and the like were originally miniseries, they did eventually get a re-edited into a movie release on VHS and DVD. As long as you go with the re-edit, it's generally fine. At least no one's said anything to me about it.
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Oct 15, 2022 17:42
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Hollismason posted:It was released on DVD and Bluray as one long movie. I say it counts. M_Sinistrari posted:Pretty much since 'Salem's Lot, IT, and the like were originally miniseries, they did eventually get a re-edited into a movie release on VHS and DVD. As long as you go with the re-edit, it's generally fine. At least no one's said anything to me about it. Thanks, the version on Shudder is indeed edited into a single film, and definitely still in the spirit of the challenge I think. gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 17:48
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 - (34). Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987) Written and directed by Chester Novell Turner Watched on TubiTV I can’t believe I watched this AGAIN. Just unwatchable in about every way. I hate the fact that I introduced this to my world myself and its haunted me ever since coming up again and again. That’s the true horror..  27 (35). Helter Skelter (2012) Directed by Mika Ninagawa; Written by Arisa Kaneko; Based on the manga by Kyoko Okazaki “Based on a manga” should have been my first warning scene. This movie just was a labor for me. It didn’t help that I started it late at night and wanted to go to bed by the end but that wasn’t all that was going on. Its a long movie for one. Two plus hours and you feel it. Its not that I hated everything going on here. There’s a very effective and solid story at the core here of a woman on a downward spiral for reasons within her control but also put upon her by a system and outside parties who were using her. There’s something here but I think moments of it are lost in shock and exploitation. Its hard to sympathize with the character after she rapes X number of people. And the film clearly wants us to sympathize with her to some extent, but it also doesn’t really set up a clear antagonist or protagonist for her. Its about her and she’s a bit of a mess of a caricature of a person. Again… this feels like a style choice from the source and there’s definitely visuals and probably approaches that fans will enjoy. But it just felt very artificial and shocking for the sake of shocking and I dunno. It never felt real to me. Not helping the pacing or tone is this cop subplot. Here we theoretically have our missing protagonist/antagonist? There’s the powerful people who use people and do dangerous surgeries and the cop trying to find some kind of justice. But this is a dry and disconnected and ultimately unresolved matter. It just kind of pads this film out and drags this down and serves as kind of a very dry moralization of the themes on hand. Maybe this plays better in comic form? It doesn’t work here at all and without it we’d probably have a tighter and more effective character study. I dunno. There’s something here and I’m not the audience for it. Even as much as this film was dragging me to its end and even gave me a headache I actually sort of liked the last shot of the film. I don’t know… maybe not “liked”. But appreciated? It really did leave me going from “I hate this and see nothing too redeeming” to “you know if this were 90 minutes and had 90% less rape scenes maybe I would have enjoyed it.” It wasn’t JUST the last scenes of the film but kind of how I was able to see the bigger picture when it was all said and done and feel like yeah… there’s something there. Franchescanado posted:
 28. (36). Studio 666 (2022) Directed by B. J. McDonnell; Screenplay by Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes; Story by Dave Grohl Watched on Starz This counts as a “punk film”, right? I mean Pat Smear is a punk right? Or was 40 years ago but like… I guess they’re kind of punks turned yuppies? But I mean a bunch of middle aged punk rockers trying to go all young and punk again for a new album and ending up in a haunted house and getting possessed by a demon is pretty punk, right? I was pretty hyped for this when it came out and then I think Taylor Hawkins’ death just kind of took the fun out of it for awhile. Enough time has passed that I guess I was ready to give it a go and like… its fun. Its basically exactly what you expect it to be. It would be silly for me complain about the Foo Fighters taking up too much time in the Foo Fighters horror movie or them not being the best actors. Like… its what we paid the ticket price for. And by and large they do a fine job. No one’s embarrassing on camera and they’re all willing to (a) poke fun at themselves and (b) just go do this horror thing full out. Like full out. There tons of gore and deaths in this thing and its just having a fun time. I’m not the biggest Foo Fighters fan so like I didn’t know all 37 members of the band or anything so I probably missed some funny jokes about themselves, but they all do a good job being notable enough that when they died I knew which of them was dead and who was left. Not all horror movies or casts accomplish that. I DO sort of feel like the movie doesn’t make enough use of its actual comedians and actors though. In particular you’ve got a reasonably funny lady in Whitney Cummings in this and she probably could have had more of a role than “mystic groupie.” Also you’ve got one of the rising young scream queens in Jenna Ortega here and all she does is show up in a couple of doses. It feels like they and others like Will Forte and Leslie Grossman probably could have just been worked in a bit better to make the movie a little more about the story and a little less about the Foo Fighters just kind of hanging around making a record… that’s haunted. Obviously that’s where the idea started but it does feel like we could have just done one more tweak of the script to fine tune it. Still, its largely a fun time. It maybe drags a little in the middle when its like clear where all of this is going and its just kind of still moving kind of slowly with nothing but Pat Smear’s acting to keep us engaged. But I knew what I was watching when I got into this and its not amateur or poorly done. Its all very solid, professional horror. They deliver gore and goop and deaths so no one is short changed in the horror department. The Fighters were game. The Devil’s big plot is apparently just to launch a middle aged rocker’s solo career. Weird. But solidly fun and a good time. 
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Oct 15, 2022 18:17
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35. Parents I'd never even heard of this movie until today and it's kinda brilliant. A weird little pastiche of 1950s nostalgia about a boy who suspects his parents are cannibals. The whole thing feels like a fever dream, especially with that score by Angelo Badalamenti, which just by the power of association, gives the whole thing a Lynch vibe. Everyone except the protagonist kid feels like pure evil, and it really doesn't let up on "what if everyone else is in on a horrible secret you aren't" paranoia. It also has some of the most disgusting looking food ever put to film, just a real queasy atmosphere through the whole thing, which is totally what you want from a cannibal movie. Enough to make you never want a rare steak again. 4 out of 5! 35/31, 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, Crush The Skull, Hell Fest, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat, Swimfan, Slumber Party Massacre (1982), The Ranger, Evil Dead (2013), Halloween Ends, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Parents  Another bingo!
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Oct 15, 2022 18:17
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 26. Tales of Terror (1962) Hokey in the most charming way. Guaranteed to please if you love stuffy 19th century manor sets, old-fashioned outfits, and the timbre of Vincent Price's voice. It also helps if you find it amusing when cheapo distortion effects are used to imply horror is occurring without doing much else to sell the moment. The first and third stories are both strong, simple Edgar Allan Poe concepts that flourish with the stagey presentation and the vibe of aristocracy sinking into decrepitude. The middle one is a bit stranger, being outright comedy despite its horror edge, but it still works fairly well despite going on a bit too long with the gags of Peter Lorre being drunk out of his mind. The plot is a mash-up of "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado," which is a pretty savvy combination, given that they both involve bricking people up in walls! Price plays a dandy wine connoisseur and his scandalized expression when Lorre challenges his wine cred is the best moment in the whole picture, pure live action cartooning, beating out even the very funny hallucinatory sequence of Price and Joyce Jameson playing catch with Lorre's severed head.  .5 / 5  For Spooky Bingo, this quite naturally crosses off Tales of Terror. 
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Oct 15, 2022 18:29
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34. Massacre in Dinosaur Valley Italy, 1985. Dir. Michele Massimo Tarantini  A motley group of people crash land into a supposedly cursed valley and get captures by a tribe of cannibals, and later a crew of illegal miners. Your typical Italian exploitation movie with plenty of nudity, but not nearly as much gratuitous violence as I expected. Also a lot of extended scenes of people walking through the jungle. Misleading title as well, not a single dinosaur in sight. A few twists and turns, but not enough to keep me entertained. While the tribe is assumed to practice cannibalism, there's really only one scene showing overt people eating, thus not nearly enough for me to justify using this for the To Serve Man spooky bingo slot, so all in all a complete waste of time. Would not recommend. 5/10. Stray thoughts: Checks all the classic jungle boxes: Skulls on spikes? Check. Quicksand? Check. Piranhas eating someone's leg to the bone? Check. --- --- --- 35. Cannibal Campout USA, 1988. Dir. Tom Fisher, Jon McBride To Serve Man A group of college kids go camping and run afoul of a trio of backwoods cannibals. One of those movies made by a group of friends over a couple weekends with zero budget and their dad's old video camera. If you've seen Feeders, then that's the kind of talent were working with. Both copies on youtube had their audio de-synced by a half-second, which really added to the bargain-basement quality. Story was nothing to write home about, but there were some nice low budget gore effects and it had some amusing moments. Obviously a passion project, and I appreciate that. Not really worth watching unless you're into straight to VHS trash, but it wasn't bad. Light recommend. 5.5/10. Stray thoughts: "What you are about to see is based upon true accounts and conjecture and is a delineation of actual events which transpired at an indeterminate time to persons of less than genuine equivocal authenticity." God, when was the last time I heard a dead baby joke? 
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Oct 15, 2022 18:38
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21. Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare (2017) Directed by Gary Doust 🎃 Behind the Screams 🎃 "I'm terrified that she's going to go 'What's this risky dink production?' and walk out and call her manager and sue me."  It's American Movie, but Australian and Craig Anderson (the subject of the movie) doesn't have a sidekick as charming as Mike Schank. Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare is funny in the uncomfortable, embarrassing way you would imagine. Then, suddenly, it's uncomfortable and not funny at all. 👻👻👻/5 October Challenge 5/31 1. Blood Feast (1963), 2. Sunshine (2007), 3. Relic (2020), 4. Mortuary (2005), 5. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) Spooky Bingo 16/36 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), 10. Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), 11. The Purge (2013), 12. Halloween with the Addams Family (1977), 13. Life After Beth (2014), 14. Puppet Master (1989), 15. Ice Cream Man (1995), 16. Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare (2017)  Total 21/? twernt fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 19:03
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#18: Fury of the Wolfman (1970 or 1974 or 1975, depending)Full Moon Look, out in the woods! It's a Spaniard! It's a Yeti! No, it's Wolfman! Paul Naschy made approximately 300 movies chronicling the adventures of werewolf Waldemar Daninski, and this is the first one I've ever seen. Probably won't be the last, though! It's clear the inspiration for this character is Lon Chaney's tragic Larry Talbot, but Fury of the Wolfman goes a step further by practically making its title character a superhero. In this case, he's set against the machinations of an evil scientist who wants to use mind control and genetic engineering to conquer the world. Rather than actively fighting the evil, however, Waldemar is just sort of pointed in its direction by contrivances of the script. Although inspired by the Universal Wolf Man movies, it takes some strange detours. For instance, Waldemar is bitten not by a werewolf, but by a Yeti, and the mark of his curse is a pentagon instead of a pentagram. The seemingly improvised structure of the story means it's unpredictable. Have you ever seen a movie in which a werewolf is killed by a downed power line? 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) 12. Cat People (1942) Golden Years 13. Mortuary (1983) 14. Unmasked Part 25 (1988) Zombie Honeymoon 15. The Alien Factor (1978) Spaced Invaders 16. Deadstream (2022) Glitches 17. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)Whispers in the Dark 18. Fury of the Wolfman (1975) Full Moon 
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Oct 15, 2022 19:06
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Franchescanado posted:
 65) Cannibals and Carpet Fitters - 2018 - TubiTV Suffice it to say, with this title, I did not have high hopes going in. I am also aware of how ridiculous that sounds considering some of the things I've sat through. Plotline involves a struggling carpet business that gets a call to head out for a job in the far out boonies, but the job isn't all it's supposed to be. I'll be honest, this was better than what I expected. It does feel like the directors were aiming for 'Shaun of the Dead, but cannibals.' for the most part. Not a bad thing, but sometimes they hit the mark and sometimes it doesn't. Overall, this was good cheesy fun.  66) #captured - 2017 - TubiTV With the tagline of 'Cleansing the Internet of all sin', I couldn't help but think 'Dude..Sisyphus'll get that boulder up the hill quicker.'. Plot here is a killer stalks a group of teens who stream their wild sex and drug parties. With a premise that basic, it's impressive they managed to make a film this crappy. Where to begin, well, while exposition can be dialog, all dialog isn't exposition. Remember Writing 101: Show, don't Tell. Everyone was unlikable to where I really didn't care who died. The killer's motivation is 'they're sinners'. While that's a motive, that's it. Nothing as to why they ended up on that path, was it a messed up upbringing, a tragic loss, hearing voices? The effects were awful. I seriously believe I could cobble together better with what I've got in my kitchen. Seriously, skip this, skip this, skip this.  67) The Trees Have Eyes - 2020 - TubiTV If the Hills Have Eyes, why not trees? Premise is a group of bounty hunters tracking a guy into the woods come across campers and zombies. One would think with that plot, they could come up with something decent. Yeah...nope. No one was likable, I seriously think they filmed a lot at night to try to hide flaws. I've seen better effects in lower budget films. Turns out this was released earlier in 2013 with the title Dead Bounty, which does explain some things. This just wasn't good by any stretch. Franchescanado posted:
 68) Choose or Die - 2022 - Netflix Sometimes, having knowledge of a thing is a detriment. In this case, my albeit now dated knowledge of computers, coding and such mostly had me watching this going 'That doesn't work like that'. In this film's case, cursed video game from the 80s causes havoc. We've seen cursed games in movies before. We've seen in real life where a game promised a prize for solving it. Here, they manage to take those two things and make a mess of a film. I will give a point to the Robert Englund voice over bit, but that's about it. Everything else is just a mess. It requires everyone to make the most ridiculous choices possible. The ending is just a nonsensical mess. Even with the premise of winning the game there's a $125,000 prize, that money's probably not around anymore after forty something years whether the disbursing company's gone or money went elsewhere after a point. This one's a total skippable mess.  69) The Block Island Sound - 2020 - Netflix This was pretty decent, but just not quite my thing. Plot follows strange things happening around Block Island. This film is a bit of a slow burn, but it does make some interesting points. What if there some other beings out there treating us like research studies like we do with our wildlife. Overall, this was okay, just not my kinda thing.  70) The Binding - 2020 - Netflix A woman and her daughter visiting her fiance's family ends up dealing with a curse and strange rituals. Sounds like the last family reunion I went to. This is a very Italian film. For those familiar with Italian culture going from what they've seen in The Sopranos and the like, yeah...it's not quite like that. We still have our elements of folk magic we still follow, prayers to spirits that at times are wrapped up in a Catholic packaging, still quietly look for the various omens and signs. Even the Americanized ones like me still keep with the traditions. With that said, this felt a bit closer to a family drama to me. Much of the creepy for everyone else just wasn't for me because of culture. I thought the film look exquisite, the actors did a great job. Overall I enjoyed it, though it did leave me thinking I'm overdue on doing touch base calls with family.  71) The Swarm - 2020 - Netflix Plot here centers on a woman struggling with her locusts for food farm ends up finding a disturbing solution. Pretty much for her farm to succeed as the locusts aren't breeding fast enough is to feed them flesh and blood. The mother's obsession with the locusts is probably more horrifying than the locusts. I wasn't crazy on the dog and cow death that happened. Not sure if it was intended, but the film had me thinking of how often we try something for the better, but turns out not so much. For example, organic farming eschews synthetic pesticides, but the organic rated pesticides either aren't as effective as the synthetics making for low crop yields and needing more land for crops, or are more toxic than the synthetics. Here we have high protein locusts that are less impactful than livestock farming, but considering these locusts eat flesh and blood , is it truly less impactful? Even the ending, the locusts disperse. Where are they going, will they breed with the regular locusts, are we now going to face something worse happening to the environment? Overall, this film was okay. Just not something I'll sit through again.  72) The Dead One - 1960 - Youtube This is a film that wastes no time. We see our zombie during the opening credits. Plot follows two cousins, one uses voodoo to try to kill her cousin's new wife in some bid to take over the family's property. Of note, this is one of the first zombie films shot in color. This also introduced me to the subgenre of 'regional horror', a film that was made outside of Hollywood, produced independantly, and cast was made up primarily from the state where the film was made. Often these didn't see a wide release, and something like The Dead One would likely have seen a release at drive-ins within the state or two. The Voodoo bits are as generic as can be, and parts could pretty much be 'here's what Bourbon Street looked like way back when'. Even by the standards of the day, this wasn't good by any stretch, though the zombie makeup's not bad all things considered. It's one of the interim looks for a zombie bridging the old pasty dark hollows eyes appearance to the 'yeah, that's rotting' appearance that is the modern zombie look. I did have to smirk at the police being all nonchalant about voodoo zombies as if this is a regular thing to see on a Friday night. For decades, this was considered a lost film. Original theatrical run time was 71 minutes, though the DVD releases are cut down to 55 minutes. The Youtube I watched is closer to the theatrical time. About the only reasons I could recommend this is as a glimpse into Bourbon Street in the early 60s, and or as here's one of the first zombies in color. 
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Oct 15, 2022 19:08
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 I took a short break from the challenges this week to avoid burnout and jump Into the Flanaverse on Netflix and binge The Midnight Club. Its a series so it doesn’t count here but it was a nice recharger. Like most Mike Flanagan stuff its much more character focused than plot. Its main story is a bit predictable and just kind of resolves as a means to an end to character growth and development. That’s what its about. A grief and trauma rich environment of teenagers with terminal illness this destroyed me in the exact way you can expect it to. But its also a lot of love and hope and family in it. If you’ve seen one of Flanagan’s series or even movies you more or less know what to expect here. Its more YA themed and the usual monologue style that some people might have disliked in something like Midnight Mass is kind of replaced here by a bit of an Are You Afraid of the Dark gimmick of the kids telling scary stories. The stories are very much means for the kids to share their feelings and work through stuff and monologue. But they’re not literal monologues, they’re spooky little stories. And while I wouldn’t suggest anyone come FOR that since this isn’t an anthology or anything I’d say they’re definitely a fun part with some real highs. And I was basically on board with the film as soon as one kid told a story that was nothing but jump scares and was called on it. That was funny. And fairly self aware as the kids also call out stories that are heavily emotionally manipulative or transparent metaphor. But they still happen and they still work the way Flanagan’s stuff works with me. If it doesn’t work with you don’t watch. If you like him or if you just wish he was less monologey then I’d definitely recommend checking it out. But fair warning, HUGE themes of depression, suicide, self harm, and completely unfair kid death.  29 (37). A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987) Written and directed by Larry Cohen; co-written by James Dixon; Based on Characters by Stephen King Watched on HBO Max I’m running out of Stephen King films I’ve never seen before and am basically down to the foreign films, amateur ones, and the handful of stray sequels that really have nothing to do with anything King wrote but serve as a lesson for why he’s so protective over the rights to his movie and why there’s so many King adaptions but so few sequels. Here is pretty clear the studio wanted something with the King brand on it and Cohen just wanted to make whatever so we got this weird film. Half a comedy but in that Cohen way. Half a satire of capitalism or America or immigration or something but very confused in that Cohen way. The idea of a vampire colony that emigrated from Europe to escape “persecution” and is trying to live “vampire vegan” is kind of cute but Cohen can’t really make it clever or biting. And everything just very low budget and poorly acted. Michael Moriarty is here of course and he’s fine but he’s also just his usual scumbag self. And putting aside the challenge of a movie that has to be carried by an rear end in a top hat and his rear end in a top hat kid as the protagonists there’s also this whole theme of him “becoming human” that just kind of falls flat. Like we’re introduced to him as this kind of exploitative anthropolagist rear end in a top hat who is willing to record human sacrifice with no moral quandary. He’s flat out said to be “not even human” by his colleagues. Then we see he’s a dick to his ex-wife and neglects his kid. So he’s a prick. Ok. And the ultimate lesson is that he passes up on opportunity to observe to document this once in a lifetime culture and just saves his kid. Or something. But like… its just clumsy. There’s no real temptation here for him. He doesn’t want to do it and its not really a promise of riches or fame or anything. He only really stuck around in the first place because they preserved his 17 year old crush for him to have sex with and impregnate now as a grown man. Which is real gross in a way I can’t quite process. But also like… he uproots his life and moves to a run down house in a backwater town in the first place to benefit his kid. All because its the place he was happiest with the lady who raised him. So he’s already sacrificing for his kid at the start of this story. Him wanting to save the kid from vampires wasn’t really a leap or character growth. There’s a lot of just clumsy writing like that. This just doesn’t feel very well crafted. There’s an interesting enough idea but none of the themes really pay of or work. That whole 17 year old love and vampire pregnancy thing goes nowhere. The idea of him being tempted as a cold documentarian is immediately discarded for the vampires just threatening him and his kid. There’s a whole “drone” thing that amounts to nothing. A nazi hunter shows up out of nowhere to jump start the finale. Which I appreciated but like.. we never even found the nazi or connected those dots. There’s all kinds of vague political and sociological satire in here like with most Cohen films but I never get the sense I have any idea what the hell Larry’s saying. Everyone’s political views are complicated and muddied to some extent but I feel like Cohen just threw ideas into his movies never expanding on them or even minding if they contradict each other. Its weird. This wasn’t a good film. Its not terribly long and its weird and occasionally overtly intentionally funny so its not a terrible watch and it might work for some. And maybe Moriarity being an rear end in a top hat won’t be a turn off to others as much as it is to me. Or stuff like the 17 year old crush won’t bother you. And Tara Reid shows up as a 10 year old vampire and at one point tries to resolve the movie with a shotgun wedding… which also goes nowhere. But it was weird. If quirky and weird is your deal maybe you’ll get a kick out of this but I just don’t think its terribly well done at any level. And once again proof that for as up and down a King adaption can be nothing good comes from making an unrelated sequel. Franchescanado posted:
 30 (38). Luz: The Flower of Evil (2019) Written and directed by Juan Diego Escobar Alzate Watched on Hoopla My first out of Colombia I general seem to enjoy the aesthetic and vibe of South and Latin American horrors more than some other regions and this mostly held true to that. I think the plot’s a tad too loose for me although it definitely comes together in the end. The story of a preacher patriarch who is towards the end of losing it due to all his false promises and visions not bearing out and him not being able to make hay out of tragedy. Its similar to Wicker Man a bit in that sense with the way Christopher Lee’s cult leader vibe seemed kind of desperate to get something going and either appease his gods or just keep his congregation on the hook a bit longer. Its not clear here if “The Lord” or “Senior” is entirely a true believer or a con man or what. His daughters have to take the brunt of his abuse like any patriarchal society as he keeps them ignorant and scared and isolated from all others as “angels”. This works out as well as any attempted by an rear end in a top hat dad to keep three teenage daughters pure and celibate works out, really, and its the crux of the drama of the film. Each daughter is rebelling in a small but real way that challenges their father’s control and sends everything further spiraling into hell. There’s a vaguest supernatural hint going on here. A goat walks around and Senior declares it must be the Devil. Which makes sense because goats only appear in horror films to either be sacrificed or be the Devil. Alzate seems to be playing on this folklore and trope deliberately. We’re never actually given a credible reason to think the Devil is involved in all of this. Everything is explained by people being assholes. But we’re also very deliberately never told its NOT the Devil manipulating poo poo for fun. That goat’s always around and all our characters are confused enough that they keep turning back to the comforting idea that you just pissed off or welcomed in the wrong guy and if you say the magic words this nightmare will be over. Its a gorgeously shot film. I mean, really beautiful. he whole cast does a solid job with very extreme and vague performances. Our three daughters basically have to spend the entire film either cowering in a corner, in a haze, or having a full on breakdown. Its wild and they’re asked to do a lot. And their dad is pretty convincingly disturbed but also never terribly clear even into the end if he’s being driven by sincere belief or just his desperate need to maintain control and power even in a congregation as small as a dozen people. Or just like any rear end in a top hat dad trying to control his daughters by any means necessary. Where it all builds is disturbing and shocking and while there’s not a clear plot line or story here its all really building to that. And I’m not sure the conclusion is deeply satisfying but it definitely felt true to the characters and situation. Its an interesting film for sure and one I definitely enjoyed more than if I had ventured out to other parts of the globe. 
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Oct 15, 2022 19:18
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3. Halloween Ends Really dug it! I'll spoiler the review since it's brand new. Kept going along the road Halloween Kills went down, which I also really liked. Before it came out I figured it'd go for a bit more of a crowd pleasing Michael vs Laurie movie more along the lines of the formula. And something like that done well would've been cool with me, and probably had a better reception. Most people I watched this with did not dig it, and also didn't dig Kills. But! I am delighted with this movie, it is what I'll call a thriller of errors. Half creative fun B-movie, half avant-garde slasher masterpiece. It's a little along the lines of the over-the-top horror movie dream logic fun we'd see in 80s classics, Argento movies, Wes Craven, just a good time. I enjoy hanging out in this crazy town gone wrong, with this very eccentric cast and not very typical story. And with some dark humor and violent good stuff. I wish they made more movies like this, just horror entertainment with that special off-kilter magic to it. And the music being more rockin' and cool than your usual horror OST is another thing that reminds me of Argento and 80s movies I love, Carpenter brings it. All I know is, this has something that makes it interesting and engaging, where many other horror movies don't. So I consider it one of the top 20 slashers ever made I'd say. Even if it makes me look crazy. 4. Congo Not half bad, a decent yarn. It has a certain kind of campiness that I like, it's a tone they don't quite do anymore. Now blockbusters are tongue in cheek in different ways. This unique tone just kind of delights, the earnestness paired with the kookiness of the dialogue and performances. Tim Curry absolutely slays. Ernie Hudson rules too. Laura Linney is pretty funny too, in general the movie is a gas. It does kind of lose a bit of it's luster along the way, and could be better, but then I gotta give extra points for the laser rampage. Michael Crichten does it again. 5. Blade I haven't seen this in 20+ years, and I thought it was hokey the first time. Had a good viewing of Blade II recently, really enjoyed, so gave this another go. I do like Blade more the second time around, movie has some appeal for sure. I'd say the first half or so is really solid, I love the coolness and fun cliches of that time. Bits from Terminator, Mortal Kombat, club dance music, leather and shades, respect for HK action cinema, etc. Also it is wild how much it has in common with The Matrix, with this coming out first. The scenes of people talking about a secret war, how everyone is oblivious while we see crowds walking in slow motion with cool music etc. And of course props to They Live for a lot of that. Pretty cool stuff. But, I'd say by the end of the two hours some of the cliches do feel a bit going through the motions. Like bits from GoldenEye and every other popular flick kinda thrown in there. The Mortal Kombat-esque prophecy and souls or whatever flying around and the chosen one etc, just kinda all felt shoe-horned in. And the execution could've been a little better by the end. But, points for of course one of the finest zany one-liners ever, delivered dead straight. It's the centerpiece of the film. "Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5pEx_MWwg Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 19:45
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Movie 12: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (To Serve Man) Well now look, you boys don't want to go messin' around some old house. You're liable to get hurt. When I first started watching horror films during the May 2021 movie marathon, a large reason was that I liked the game Dead by Daylight, and wanted to see the films the game's killers were from. So of course I would eventually have to check out The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and see Leatherface's origins. If I had to describe the movie in one word, it would be "grimy". Everything and everyone in the movie is just so god drat filthy. This gives the whole movie a very unpleasant look and contributes to the overall oppressive atmosphere of the whole thing. The movie also has a weirdly clinical style, which is probably helped by Tobe Hooper's decision to not put in much gore in an effort to get the movie a distribution deal. Whatever the reason, the end result is incredibly effective. The understated kills make the movie feel more real in some weird way, which is incredibly unsettling. I also have to give mad props to the set designers. Whoever designed the cannibals' house of horrors deserved a raise, because loving hell it was an awful place. The house is full of grotesque art pieces and even loving furniture made from human remains. Hell, the very opening of the movie where we get a very low key radio news broadcast over sounds of someone tinkering, and then cut to flashes of body parts, only to end up with a sudden smash cut to a loving corpse art installation was among the most hosed up poo poo I've seen in horror films. And I'd say this is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's biggest strength: the whole movie feels deeply upsetting. It might not make a lot of sense, but the movie feels evil in a way few movies do. If I was rating purely on how shaken a movie made me feel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would be an easy 5/5 experience. And maybe it should be, so gently caress it. No nitpicking, just gonna say "holy gently caress what an experience". / 5 My October 2011 Movies: 1. Nope, 2. Night at the Eagle Inn, 3. Day of the Mummy, 4. Freaky, 5. Killer Klowns from Outer Space, 6. Dog Soldiers, 7. Choose or Die, 8. Shopping Tour, 9. Halloween Specials, 10. The Visit, 11. Ghostwatch, 12. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 
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Oct 15, 2022 19:50
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Starting my yearly Halloween (as in Carpenter’s Halloween) binge this year with the arrival of Halloween Ends I happened to record a tv special called Halloween in Hollywood that had a Jamie Lee Curtis opening that I stopped and decided to save for this point. Finally watching it I sadly realized it had a lot less to do with Carpenter’s Halloween than it was kind of just an add for Blumhouse. Which like makes sense and all. There’s tons of documentaries about Carpenter and the original Halloween and we ARE finishing a modern trilogy for a new generation so it makes sense to focus on that. And I did learn I’ve been mispronouncing Blumhouse this entire time. It turns out its not “Bloom-house” but its… exactly the way its written. Who knew? But ultimately this wasn’t what I was here for so I kind of skipped past a lot of it. I didn’t need to rewatch clips from Halloween ’18 or sneak peaks of Halloween Ends right before I rewatched them. Or just hear adds for all the great movies like Black Phone and They/Them available on Peacock from Blumhouse! I’m not sure what channel I recorded this off of but I bet it was NBC. Still cynicism aside this did have Jamie Lee Curtis in in for a good chunk and she did give an emotional goodbye to her fans and to the Laurie Strode character she played for 45 years or so across 7 films. And that’s basically what I came for it and it delivered. The rest was basically what one could reasonably expect a glorified one hour commercial to be. But JLC got me choked up when she choked up.  - (39). Halloween (1978) Written and directed by John Carpenter; co-written by Debra Hill What can be said about Halloween? It is THE perfect slasher. It is THE Halloween movie. Its one of the single most influential films ever made. Its spawned over a dozen sequels and reboots (for better and worse) and countless other knockoffs and derivatives. Michael Myers is so fundamentally part of our cultural zeitgeist and holiday season that there’s two of him on lawns just with a two block radius of my house. Laurie Strode is THE Final Girl all other slasher protagonists are compared to and Jamie Lee Curtis an icon. Donald Pleasance should not be forgotten as he played one of the most interesting monster hunter characters in the history of film. That composition is so drat good that its not only the basis for a ton of throwback nostalgia hits like Stranger Things but its launched a whole second career for Carpenter. Halloween is just a great loving movie. I really do feel at a loss as to what to say. Anything I want to say is something I’ve said in the past and others have discussed. Its been nearly 50 years that Halloween has helped shape horror and I don’t know a fan who doesn’t have a firm opinion on it one way or another. Even the phliistines who think its too slow or doesn’t have enough gore or “fun kills”. Carpenter of course wasn’t making a Friday the 13th movie, however you feel about them. He was building tension and establishing mood. Building a world of tranquil suburban simplicity where danger lurks in the shadows and around corners. So much of the movie is told in broad daylight as we follow Michael stalking Laurie and build to him going for his prey. That perfect autumn Halloween setting and mood building to that one fateful night. Michael’s reign of terror here is almost small compared to other horror slashers. It all happens over the course of half an hour or so and is contained to one block in the suburbs. But that’s also what makes it so chilling and effective. Its so well contained and built to this horrific nightmare opening up where you’d least expect it. And I’d be remiss to not point out what I always point out and the pivotal moment where Laurie is running through the streets of her suburb screaming for help and not only does no one do a god damned thing but they turn the lights off! The suburbs are safe my rear end! The new Scream film is apparently going to revive the right wing myth that cities are cold places where no one will help you if you scream completely ignoring that the entire point of the movie that started this was saying the suburbs turn their drat porch lights off rather than open the door or call the cops. Some rear end in a top hat could have just let Laurie in and resolved this poo poo. But they didn’t. Its Halloween. Its one of my absolute favorites. I’ve watched it nearly every October of my life. I wasn’t even super feeling the Halloween spirit until I did watch it and suddenly I started to feel it. Put up some decorations I’ve been neglecting. Gotta go out and get some pumpkins. Gotta make some candy. Its Halloween, damnit! I gotta get on the ball!  - (40). Halloween (2018) Written and directed by David Gordon Green; Written by Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride; Based on Characters by John Carpenter and Debra Hill It feels weird to watch the OG Halloween and NOT follow it up with Halloween II. I had to actively resist the urge to do so. Its even weirder to just jump 40 years forward. The Zombie films and III are their own thing and H20/Resurrection are largely dead to me now that there’s a better timeline but I’ve rewatched the Thorn Trilogy so many times that something feels very wrong not doing so this year. I’ll have to watch a Danielle Harris film just to balance it. But I decided this year to simplify it and just watched the Blumhouse trilogy with the OG film. Its its own timeline and its really what we’re building to here so no need muddying that up with other timelines and sequels. And to that end I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen this movie but definitely the first time I’ve seen it not on the tail end of a longer marathon of sequels with… mixed quality. So I was curious how well it was gonna hold up as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s classic and the answer is “pretty well.” Part of what Green and company did so well with this film that many fo the sequels and reboots either failed at or aggressively rebelled against was recapturing the vibe and feel of Carpenter’s original. And look, I understand the idea of doing something different. I don’t mind it at all. But you’re making a Halloween film for a reason. If you don’t wanna make a Halloween film then you’re just using the brand and story. And then you might as well make the Scream or Firefly movie you want to make, no? I dunno. That’s me. But what I think got everyone so excited by ’18 is how much it just IS a Carpenter Halloween movie even if its not a Carpenter film. Even if he’s there in the score. Storywise I’m a fan. I like the idea of Laurie never really getting over the trauma of Michael and spending her whole life preparing for a rematch even as it destroyed her family. As much as I love the Thorn Trilogy and do kind of wish they had cast Danielle Harris as the daughter I absolutely appreciate just simplifying it all and getting back to basics. That whole thing about Michael being Laurie’s brother was just an urban legend. Its neat, its fitting, its funny. I like it. Judy Greer is good and Toby Huss is the poor dumbass dad caught in the middle of this. And Andi Matichak does a good job as the new generation Laurie. She’s not the same person. She’s not got the same story or path. This isn’t Michael stalking Laurie’s granddaughter. So that end Allyson will never feel as important as Laurie but that’s ok. I think the story of Laurie and the Strode girls fighting back really works. I could nit pick it a little for sure. I don’t love the new Loomis and the kind of contrived story usage of him. I get it. We had to find a reason for Michael to be pointed at Laurie after all this time that wasn’t overtly supernatural, weird cults, her long lost brother, ghost horses, or whatever else you got. But I dunno. The idea of a couple of rear end in a top hat true crime podcasters just waking Michael up by trying to exploit his story was enough for me. I was on board. The twist feels a bit unnecessary to me. I also feel like Allyson’s friend life is a little unnecessarily mean. Like it didn’t have to be a terrible night for her before the boogeyman who nearly killed her grandma returned to murder her family. That feels like enough. And the friend zoned kid just feels a little more Danny McBride humor than the rest of the film feels to me. I do absolutely love Vicky though. Virginia Gardner is great and in a lot of ways I do think that character is a great throwback to Carpenter’s original making victims who feel like real people who don’t deserve this to be happening to them. And keeps this from becoming one of those movies where the masked guy drives a shovel through someones face and the whole audience cheers. Halloween isn’t supposed to be that movie. Its supposed to be a horrible thing. Vicky is a horrible thing to a fun character. The other kid feels like its verging into the Jason zone. But largely I love this film. Not as much as the original but in the same exact vibe and wavelength. I don’t know what my annual Halloween tradition will be after this year. I don’t know if I’ll go back to watching the whole thing or mix and match or just watch the first film or just do what I feel like. So I don’t know when the next time I’ll watch ’18 is or how exactly it will fit. But I think its comfortably with the sequels as a movie I can pop on in any order and just enjoy. And its definitely the BEST of the Halloween sequels by a wide margin. And I say that as someone who likes the sequels. But ’18 clearly beats them all out and is the best 1-2 punch for Halloween. The fact that its the first part of a trilogy probably holds it back a little but the first part usually still stands on its own and I think that very much holds here.
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Oct 15, 2022 20:11
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 #74.) Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver (2011; Tubi) The titular murderous baked good goes back to the '70s, where waits a lazy muddle of Carrie, roller rink riffs, and a 'save the community center' plot. Virtually every shot of the Gingerdead Man is a puppet being wobbled back and forth while his mouth flaps. On the rare occasion that we need to see him moving across a room or climbing something, some abysmal CGI manifests. It's a real challenge in endurance, with no reason to care about anything that's happening. The costumers did their best Goodwill scavenging, and there's some decent funk instrumentals backing the roller scenes. Those are the good things I have to say about this. I wish I'd been high for this. “And none of this ever happened!” Rating: 3/10
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Oct 15, 2022 20:20
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Some shorts Ghost Dogs (11 min) https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2022/05/26/ghost-dogs/ Just a weird little animation about a newly rescued dog getting used to its new home. Cool to look at and no story at all. It's Nothing (16 min) https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2022/02/22/its-nothing/ A fairly well made metaphor about eating disorders. The lead is literally digging herself deeper into a hole because what she wants to be tells her to. Works well as a short, would have been just boring if it was any longer. Pantser / Shielded (21 min) https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2022/02/03/pantser-shielded/ Two girls in a pandemic shelter are running out of time when a man comes offering help. This is pretty good. A great spooky tone to the whole thing and tells you just enough about what's going on. Scary Car (14 min) https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2022/07/28/scary-car/ A group of stoned idiots aren't quite sure what's going on anymore. This one was really good. Perfectly captures the confusion that can happen when several people just can't understand the situation.  
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Oct 15, 2022 20:24
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 18. SPOOKY BINGO: Short Cuts Elevated (1996) (dir. Vincenzo Natali) 17 min YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3SkMRTCov8 Two people are taking an elevator to the bottom floor of their building when a security guard bursts in, covered in blood. He overrides the elevator car to go directly to the top floor, insisting it's the only way they will survive the unseen creatures that he claims are attacking the building. This is Vincenzo Natali's first film, made about a year before Cube, and you can see a lot of the seeds of that film here - a handful of characters who don't know each other trapped in a small space, with the tension mostly coming from paranoia and human conflicts rather than from the external threat. Simple and effectrive Lucifer Rising (1972) (dir. Kenneth Anger) 29 min YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o6HIM03ozw Egyptian gods summon Lucifer (you know it’s him because he has a long rainbow coat that says “LUCIFER” on it), and a bunch of cool looking stuff I didn’t understand happens. Very abstract and often surreal, with lots of gorgeous striking imagery. There is no dialogue, just a hypnotic prog-rock synth score. I think this is what they call “art”. Disposal (2022) (dir. Luka Wilson) 9 min Hulu An insecure man suspects his wife is cheating on him, and his paranoia ruins a family party that ends in a bloody accident. This is well made but not especially horrific, and feels like a premise that is too much to explore in just 9 minutes. Sleep Study (2022) (dir. Natalie Metzger) 10 min Hulu A new mother is plagued by night terrors. This one is good - very simple and well made and makes good use of the short runtime. It's creepy and builds to a disturbing ending.  19. Salem's Lot (1979) (dir. Tobe Hooper) Shudder SPOOKY BINGO: TerrorVision This one was a big blind spot for me. A vampire film based on Stephen King's novel and directed by Tobe Hooper, this has some serious horror pedigree and some iconic moments that have seeped into popular culture. It's also a made-for-TV film (originally a two-part miniseries) that's three hours long, which is probably why I've never actually sat down and watched it despite it being right up my alley in so many ways. I decided this was the year I'd finally cross it off my list. And it's pretty good! I felt the length, but not as much as I was expecting to. Some of the material definitely feels like filler though - subplots about jealous and abusive husbands/boyfriends are never remotely interesting to me, and there are two of them here. It also maybe spends a bit too much time on the romance between Ben and Susan, which again isn't all that interesting to me. You could pretty easily cut a full hour of material out of this and lose very little. When it's good though, it's great. The scenes with vampires floating outside the kids' bedroom windows are fantastic - they were filmed in reverse, making their movements feel extremely unnatural. The vampires in general look excellent, with glowing eyes and nasty teeth. Barlow, the "main" vampire, is heavily inspired by Nosferatu, but with pale blue skin, and he looks awesome. The inside of the Marsten house also looks fantastic, sort of a cross between Dracula's castle and the house from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Definitely glad to have finally checked this out. 4 full moons out of 5 Total: 19 Watched: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane | Extraordinary Tales | You Won't Be Alone | Eyes of Fire | The Munsters | The Snake Girl and the SIlver-Haired Witch | TV Specials | Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! File 01 - Operation Capture the Slit-Mouthed Woman | Deadstream | The Black Phone | Hellraiser (2022) | Smile | Mystery of the Wax Museum | Petey Wheatstraw | Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! File 02: Shivering Ghost | I Was a Teenage Zombie | Halloween Ends | Short Cuts | Salem's Lot 
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Oct 15, 2022 20:27
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Wall o' text incoming.Franchescanado posted:
#20A. The River (YouTube) - 14:51 A woman goes kayaking after a martial blowup, and ends up running afoul of a spooky mermaid(?). I don't know if the character of "Jenny Greenteeth" is some kind of reference for British audiences that is just going over my head or not, but this is one of those short horror films where nothing gets well defined, so you're left scratching your head more than anything. I can appreciate the simplicity of marital drama being presented by elided responses and cell phone conversations, but that also seems to have no bearing on the metaphorical monsters that end up showing up here. And I don't really get a) what the monster is supposed to be - I thought it was supposed to be either a kappa or a mermaid or something, but when it gets revealed in full it looks more like something out of a Roger Corman movie than anything else. And b)I assume that our lead Sarah is now some kind of a water zombie or a lure for the monster, but again, nothing is ever established lore-wise, so at the end of the movie I was more confused than anything else. I guess all of the component pieces are there, but they never come together in a satisfying way. /5#20B. My Little Goat (YouTube) - 10:13 A goat woman kidnaps a little boy in a sheep hood, to replace one of her dead children. The wolf comes searching for them again. I want to give some extra leeway here, being that this is a student film that got released to YouTube and all, but the mercurial approach to metaphor ends up hurting it. The film starts off gross, with the mother goat performing stealth stomach surgery on a sleeping wolf to rescue her children that had been eaten. Very fairy tale in description, it becomes so much more disgusting and haunting with the reveal that at least one child had died from this, and the rest were permanently scarred from stomach acid. From there, we move on to what feels like a very standard fairy tale setup of a kidnapped child among spirits in the spooky forest, though the spirits are the aforementioned scarred and deformed sheep children, who come across as piteous more than anything. When the "wolf" shows up again, the character ends up shifting around, appearing as both a monster wolf and the human boy's father. Which only serves to make the explicit sexual assault overtones far more gross than anything else had been. But that kind of slippery approach to metaphor ends up more confusing than anything else - are we meant to take the scene literally, that the boy had been abused by his father? Or figuratively, that the wolf is a stand-in for adult betrayal and appearing to the scared boy as if he were human? I'm inclined to take the first approach, but it makes it harder to buy the rest of the story, with the unrelated sheep children standing in as siblings and the goat mother taking the place of a real one. Where does the metaphor end, and when is it obfuscating its own point? It's a tricky question, and I feel like the filmmakers didn't have a clear picture either. This gets tethered to the stop motion animation, which is somewhat impressive for student work and the wooly puppet designs but ends up feeling limited by the soft and non-impactful action sequences. It feels like the short is more weightless than it wanted to be, especially for trying to indirectly tackle such thorny material. I wish I liked it more, but I think it will still stick with me for a while. /5#20C. How To Be Alone (YouTube) - 12:18 A woman spends time alone, fighting off metaphorical demons. Another set of radical metaphors than anything, this is saved from incoherence by a combination of Maika Monroe - flat fantastic - as the lead, and some decent visual design and camera work. I think the variety of metaphorical demons that Monroe faces are ultimately too jumbled and confused to paint a fully coherent picture, but what's there works well enough. It's got a decent sense of pace and of creeping dread, and I think that's ultimately all you want out of something this short. (The YouTube thumbnail is a bit of a cheat, though, since I was expecting a story about Joe Keery being a creepy nurse or something and he's barely in the beginning and ending. This is Monroe's show the whole way through, so the fact that she isn't presented up front is both surprising and a bit disappointing. I guess the algorithm know what it wants, but I think it was wrong here. /5#20D. Night Visit (YouTube) - 7:11 A police officer is sent to check on a woman who supposedly hasn't been seen for months. Spookiness ensues. I dunno - it felt like 3 different ideas crammed into a single short and the connective tissue wasn't really there to join them all together. There's the creep factor of an empty house, but I don't know if the mostly modern sparse feeling works for or against it. There's the voyeuristic scene, where the creepy factor is supposed to be amped up by being shown on artfully static-y VHS; that element ends up working against the film, though, when tied to the very modern house design, so the two elements don't really gel together. Then comes the weird possession bit, where the cop seems to be made to shoot his girlfriend? wife? against his will, because the creepy out-of-focus lady shows up with an old VHS camcorder. For some reason? This is another one of those unexplained short films, which assumes you're just gonna roll with it because the bit is short and it all looks creepy and that's supposed to be enough. But I dunno - sometimes knowing what the hell is supposed to be going on can make things creepier than assuming that spooky stuff happens just because. /5#20E. The Night Courier (YouTube) - 19:30 A woman kidnaps a man from his apartment, and takes him to a remote house in the woods. When he gets away, he is pursued by something far worse. See above. I can safely deduce that the unnamed woman kidnaps the man from his apartment to feed to a vampire at her secluded woods house, but I don't really know why. Why she chose her victim or why she keeps the vampire fed - I believe it's her brother, but the film is vague about all of that. And that vagueness ends up detracting from the setup, which is effective, and the payoff, which makes you want to believe something will come of this. But despite being the longest of the films I watched today, it still just kind of peters out at the end and then stops. And I can't say I was too busted up by that fact. /5Total runtime of all these shorts - 64:03 Total runtime of all the stuff I'd say you should actually watch - 12:18  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, The Innocents (1961), The Bone Snatcher, The Blob (1958), Friday the 13th (2009), We're Going to Eat You, various shorts
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Oct 15, 2022 20:41
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 #17: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark A very self serious adaptation that tries to marry the disparate, weird stories of the book series into a kid detectives on bikes aesthetic and a coherent plot, to mixed results. Extremely interested in filling up the space between each "story" with as much context/lore/cultural relevance as possible in a way that strips them of the original's wonderful starkness and dark humor. As this is aimed at a younger crowd there's no real gore, but the special effects can hit some nice body horror--a pimple exploding into an unending swarm of baby spiders is done very well. But many of the more iconic monsters are mediocre cgi and more cartoonish than frightening. Still, I'm ultimately not the intended audience and I think this would be a good Halloween night option for a mixed crowd.
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Oct 15, 2022 21:18
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36. Duel This is one of those movies I'm only aware of through the dozens of parodies and references in other things, so it's nice to finally see the original (that I didn't even know was made-for-TV originally!). Shock horror, 1970s Spielberg was a really loving good director. So much of this is so unbelievably tense. The POV shots especially remind me of any number of road rage freakout videos on youtube. There's so much of Jaws' DNA in this, it's so obviously Spielberg tinkering with the stuff he'd later hone in on to make it. It's just constant ratcheting tension, knowing that truck is always there, even when you don't know where. It's such a perfect minimalist concept, and there's just nothing you could take off to streamline it. And a real moment of recognition for the props department who really succeeded in 18-wheeler look pure loving evil. 5 out of 5! 36/31, 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, Crush The Skull, Hell Fest, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat, Swimfan, Slumber Party Massacre (1982), The Ranger, Evil Dead (2013), Halloween Ends, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Parents, Duel 
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Oct 15, 2022 21:30
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October 15 - Dread It feels like I'm doing all the Clive Barker movies I haven't seen this month. Considering how few he made, three based on his works so far this month (Hellraiser, Candyman, Dread) feels like a bit much. Unfortunately the remaining ones for me have a bad reputation, but now it feels like something to do this month.  A pair of college students decide to perform a study on human fear, surveying people on their fears. Eventually, one of them decides to take it further, torturing subjects of the study with their fears. Goddamn it, none of this poo poo is fears. It's disgust, discomfort, poor associations, trauma, but no one seems to actually be afraid of the things they talk about. And when the movie plot kicks in, it's not about acting on fears, it's about recreating traumas. That is a scary situation but not one that's building on phobias. This sounds like a nitpick but it's the central pillar of the film, the thing that the entire story hangs on, and they get it completely wrong. Their fear "study" also isn't a study, but that doesn't bother me. I hated the characters here a lot. The one that starts torturing people likes to make portentous sounding speeches that are really just idiotic. And since he's not exposing people to their fears, no matter how many times he says that he is, it undercuts the motivation of the character. Yeah, people under torture are going to be scared but it's not the same thing as exploiting their fears. And he's such a transparently violent psychopath, I have to seriously wonder why anyone would have ever been friends with him. This is really the kind of horror movie that turns me off and while Dread would be a little bit late for the trend, it does have the aesthetic of "torture porn". It's a movie that has nothing more to do than tell the audience "look at the hosed up poo poo this guy is doing!!" This was an After Dark movie so this goes under the 
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Oct 15, 2022 21:34
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 17. Halloween Ends This is new enough that I don't want to get into spoilers, so I just have some general thoughts. On one hand, I respect Halloween Ends for having a very clear point of view. It really wants to tell this story, and just goes for it in a way that I don't think Kills did at all. Where Kills is cartoonish and overwrought in its moralizing, Ends takes its time and establishes every bit of the point it wants to make. On the other hand, the story it wants to tell just doesn't really fit the franchise at all, and even if it did the execution is poor enough that I end up feeling like it's been done better in a dozen different standalone movies that I'd have a much better time watching instead. It's just less fun than either Kills or '18, and it doesn't have the creative chops to back that up, so it ends up being my least favorite of this modern trilogy. Even though I don't like it, I would still recommend watching it just because the vision it has might appeal to you more than it does me, and in that case you'll probably end up digging it. 2/5
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Oct 15, 2022 21:37
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36. Tiny Cinema USA, 2022. Dir. Tyler Cornack  Six short stories, completely unconnected except that they may all take place in the same town. A big thank you to PKMN Trainer Red for letting me know about this one. It was incredible, and absolutely unhinged. I haven't laughed this hard watching a movie since Deadstream, which to be fair wasn't all that long ago, but you know what I mean. Utterly bizarre sense of humor, that takes things way too far. Farther than I thought they would, but in a good way. Beautifully shot, good acting, great production design. No real scares to speak of, but funny as gently caress. Humorously suspenseful is about as far as it goes. My one real complaint is that this is only a movie, and not a full horror-themed sketch comedy series. Hard recommend. Rock hard recommend. 8/10. Stray thoughts: The "I Think You Should Leave" comparison is definitely apt, though while watching I kept getting more "The Birthday Boys" vibes. A family can be ten dads. That's it, just ten dads with no kids.
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Oct 15, 2022 21:54
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 27. Night of the Living Dead (1968) Variety magazine, 1968: quote:In a mere 90 minutes this horror film casts serious aspersions on the integrity and social responsibility of its Pittsburgh-based makers, distributor Walter Reade, the film industry as a whole and exhibitors who book the picture, as well as raising doubts about the future of the regional cinema movement and about the moral health of film goers who cheerfully opt for this unrelieved orgy of sadism... The surest sign that Night of the Living Dead is a classic is, for all that its gore and shock value now seem tame, no matter the comparison to all the dozens of great subsequent horror flicks that have absorbed its best ideas and iterated upon them, in spite of having to compete against the shadow of its own reputation for anyone coming to it with fresh eyes... this film still fuckin' rips. Great entertainment served through a grim tone that must have astonished audiences expecting a monster movie in the vein of atomic age camp. Duane Jones is such a badass of composure under fire. And that cold-as-ice ending holds up amazingly over the years. It's unsettling seeing the photographs flickering across the credits like the ghosts of old lynching photos.  .5 / 5  For Spooky Bingo, this was the first picture of George Romero, obviously one of the Masters of Horror. 
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Oct 15, 2022 22:02
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MrGreenShirt posted:36. Tiny Cinema I'm so stoked you dug it -- like I said, it was a VERY pleasant surprise. Also, I'd gently caress your mother.
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Oct 15, 2022 22:07
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