|
MrGreenShirt posted:while watching I kept getting more "The Birthday Boys" vibes. well, that sold me. Gonna watch this soon.
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 22:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 17:39 |
|
|
 #75.) Ju-On: Black Ghost (2009; digital) A curse/haunting spawned by a murder (or is it something older?) is spreading to assorted people, manifesting itself (sometimes) by thumping on their walls before attacking. The look of the ghost is a big selling point, it has an ashen, almost photo negative look when it's on-screen. As per usual with this series, the story is split up into segments which don't necessarily line up in chronological order, and it's up to the viewer to piece together the less obvious event connections and causal links. Each of the segments has something to offer, though just one or two really rise to memorable quality, and the cinematography put me in mind of something on the higher end of made-for-TV. There's only one non-practical special effect that I can think of, but it's a doozy. The shadowy form of the ghost makes scenes in the dark that much creepier, with any substantial pool of darkness serving as a potential emergence point. It does feel more like a bonus for dedicated fans of the series than something meant to stand on its own, but it's more successful in its storytelling than the companion White Ghost release, at least to my tastes. “I'm going to die soon.”  Rating: 6/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 22:26
|
|
|
 16)Terrifier Hit my goal with this one. Though clearly am going to watch more. Can't let it end on this one. It's mean spirited movie, that doesn't really do or say anything interesting. I wish it leaned into being sillier. Art on the bike, killing someone by stepping on them with his giant shoe, vibing to jazz music, the coroner's bad joke... wish it had kept a goofier tone throughout the movie. But it didn't, and I don't even get a bingo square out of this one (I've marked off everything I think it could fit). I guess the best thing I can say is it's better than All hallow's eve. /51)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 16)Terrifier
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 23:27
|
|
|
17. Relic (2020) Bingo Category: Femme Fatale (directed by Natalie Erika James) A spooky haunted-house movie about three generations of women: a seemingly deteriorating elder residing in the rural family home, her hard-working Melbourne-dwelling daughter, and her somewhat-aimless young adult granddaughter. I really liked this. It’s bloodless and slow, but both of those things worked in its favor for me. Kay (daughter) and Sam (granddaughter) come out to stay at Edna’s (grandmother) place when she disappears. They search for her and worry until eventually Edna reappears, just as suddenly and without warning. She can’t—or won’t—explain exactly where she’s been, and her erratic behavior puts distance between her and her family even when they’re physically closer than they’ve been in some time. The allegory is fairly clear, I think, and it’s pulled off tastefully by James, co-writer and first time feature director. “Pulled off” is a funny choice of words given the last ten or so minutes. I particularly liked the sequence late in the film where Sam and Kay find out in an indirect way exactly where Edna went; the alternate/parallel house is a really cool set piece and one of a handful of concepts that always drags me in. Also a good pick for “Goodnight Mommy” if you need that for a bingo.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 23:28
|
|
|
 #76.) It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958; digital) An astronaut in the 1970s come back from a crashed trip to Mars, ready to be put on trial for the deaths of his fellow astronauts. But was he truly responsible, or was it the giant alien that snuck on board? And is it that same creature that's now killing people on the rescue ship? Yes, it is. Very easy to see the influences this had on subsequent sci-fi horror. The paranoia, the cycling through one method after another as they try to find something to subdue the alien, the friendly crew breaking down into suspicions and recriminations... So much of the film feels as though Cahn nailed the pieces that would stick around for the next century. Sure, there's dated aspects, but also some forward-looking ones. It's admirable that they envisioned a mixed-gender astronaut crew for a setting just fifteen years after the time of the film's release. It would be more admirable if the women weren't there to serve coffee and serve as love triangle points, of course. And the eerie quiet when some of the astronauts have to space-walk is something that so few sci-fi films in following decades would do nearly as well. I genuinely liked the part where the crew was all standing around listening to their radio monitor for a booby-trapped room (because who could imagine sparing the expense for closed-circuit cameras on a spaceship?), as their initial smiles at hearing the trap go off fade into worry upon hearing the creature's continued grunting. It's a nice example of how there's thought to go along with the spectacle. Kudos also to this film for including more action than the standard sci-fi flicks of this time, without it feeling gratuitous or unearned. “I wore long underwear!” Rating: 6/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 00:07
|
|
|
37. They/Them USA, 2022. Dir. John Logan Scream, Queen! A slasher movie that takes place at a gay conversion camp. I... have mixed feelings about this movie. Well-shot, with great actors. Kevin Bacon feels like he's at the top of his game, although the same could be said for the lot of them. It was nicely suspenseful, some decent kills, and surprisingly heartfelt. The whole cast of campers were likeable, and the counselors were suitably monstrous. It was, dare I say, a great movie up until the end when all of a sudden it dropped the ball super hard. I can't remember the last time I was this mad at the end of a movie. A strong recommend, but I'm still mad about the ending. 7/10 movie, 1/10 ending Stray thoughts: The dog dies. An amazing title that probably deserves to be attached to a better movie. Kinda cringey affirmational musical part, but I get it. Appreciate that they balanced out the girl-on-girl action with something for the boys too. Ending spoilers: At first I was afraid they were going to "both sides" the message, based on how the movie began, but i was very pleasantly surprised until the last 5 minutes when our nonbinary focal point character, when given the choice to avenge all the children this monster has tortured over the years instead says "No, I'm strong enough NOT to do this." Booooooo. What is this middle-of-the-road, morally gutless 'we have to be better than them' garbage? "Where does it end?" Really? With no more dead kids, thanks. Sorry, just had to kvetch a little. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 00:09
|
|
|
I keep waffling on whether I should watch that just because I love Anna Lore but at this point I’m thinkin nah
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 00:22
|
|
|
12) Crash (1996) First watch It was weird watching Crash for the first time, as it does rather have a reputation. And it mostly lives up to it, although I almost expected it to be goopier? It's interesting watching this after already having seen films like eXistenZ and Crimes of the Future, you can see how Cronenberg is constantly investigating how the changing shape of technology, and it's effects on the world (video games, pollution, cars) affect the human body and how people have sex with it. Here Cronenberg makes makes the act of being in a car part of the perversion itself; it's essentially unnatural for us to be travelling at inhuman speeds surrounded by a cage of metal that it would invariably have an affect on the development of the human body - i.e., people get hosed up in car crashes and then get hosed in car crashes. I can totally see how this was extremely shocking in 1996 - and it is still shocking now, although I wonder if it's been dampened somewhat by it's own reputation and the fact that the internet gives people free access to stuff as messed up as this, should they wish to find it. 8/10 13) House (1985) First Watch SPOOKY BINGO: Hausu It's crazy how perfectly fine House is. Like, nothing about it is that bad, but nothing really excels either. It's a horror comedy where the horror is okay and the comedy is kind of funny sometimes. It's all shot like a comedy - boring direction and uninteresting lighting. It's weird to see Vietnam flashbacks shot like an episode of Cheers. I don't know, it's not terrible. Parts of it are pretty good. I just can't seem to conjure up any strong feelings about this one. 6/10 14) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) First Watch SPOOKY BINGO: Origin of Evil This one is growing on me the more I think about it. Specifically, Michael Rooker's performance is growing on me. It's such a chilling portrayal of psychopathy - there's no emotion behind what he does, and no real motive... he just does it. It's a really strong central performance that does basically carry the whole film - I don't think the other performances are quite as good. The film is shot in a very detached style which just makes everything you're seeing more chilling. Although for some reason this film feels like it was shot in the 70's. 7/10 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 00:39
|
|
|
A brief break from the world tour because I found out that there's a Cast a Deadly Spell sequel. 22. Witch Hunt Picnic at Hanging Rock - And drat, it is loving terrible. I'm pretty sure they got Dennis Hopper hosed up on valium and didn't let him see the script until immediately before shooting. 1/5Also, some new releases. 23. Barbarians Yuppie Nightmare - That's not the cover art I was expecting, and why is there an "S" on the end of the title? Oh because this is a Strangers ripoff from last year. It has some ideas, it just doesn't execute them well. 2/524. Bodies Bodies Bodies Scream, Queen - A nice thrill ride, but hard to discuss without spoilers. 3.5/525. Beast Wild Beasts DUH - Idris Elba fights a lion. And then they try to jam in a metaphor about defending your family. 3.5/526. Deadstream Glitches - I was getting quite put off early because of how annoying the protagonist is, but that becomes less of an issue later on, and I love the direction they went with the ghosts. 4/527. Halloween Ends - AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Corey. gently caress this movie. 1/5 28 (42 - Democratic Republic of the Congo). Viva Riva! - I'm not quite sure why we're allowed to count thrillers, but we are. Excellent and complex crime thriller chock full of factions and double-crosses, with a great ending. 4/5 And my first Bingo:  World map: 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 00:41
|
|
|
6) Season of the Witch (1973) Challenge: Masters of Horror Didn't have to dig too hard to find a Romero I hadn't seen, as I've mostly only seen the Dead movies. This piece of dinner party horror about a 40-something hausfrau who turns to witchcraft is not a Dead movie. It's lifeless, confused, tries to be decadent and coy at the same time, and was dated when it was made. I honestly can't think of a reason to recommend it now and don't want to spend more effort analysing it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 00:47
|
|
|
October 15α - Mid-After-Doom Scary Gore-ts - Fan Kill-ms Look, there aren't a lot of great puns to work with here, okay. For my Short Cuts, I thought this year I'd dip into the dangerous waters of fan films based on various franchises. Hellraiser: Punishment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFarLczkvCg First up, since I'm already deep in Clive Barker territory, I might as well continue. Hellraiser strikes me as a good pick for a short film since it has a basic structure that's easy to fit into a quick run time. A woman with an abusive boyfriend gets a puzzle box in the mail. Then you get everything So this feels like it was made by someone who knew at least the basics of filmmaking but had a budget of negative one thousand dollars and all of that went into getting the puzzle box prop. It's reasonably well shot which is more than I was expecting. The acting isn't great but they knew what they were doing. The chains look like what you'd use for craft jewelry and the hooks are ones you'd use for hanging curtains, but they did apparently go to Spirit Halloween when it was time to do pull people apart with hooks and that looks passible for a non-existent budget. The film did suffer from wanting to just throw out film references rather than dialog. I'll make this one down as good effort and if this crew decided to make an original horror short instead of a fan film it could be pretty good. Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMxHvSVLBT0 No, not that Return of Michael Myers. There's a lot of Halloween fan films out there and I get it since you put someone in a mask, have them loom, and you've got a movie. There's one that's on YouTube that's feature length and I might give it a try for something different later this month and a lot of them approach feature length, but I went with this because it was relatively short and let me feel comfortable making room for another short. This one is about a woman who's a distant relation to Michael and always gets nervous on Halloween. There's lots of people coming over to her house that night to keep her company, though. Now this is what I expect from a fan film. Shot on video with in camera audio and only the lighting in the environment (I'm sure all of these were shot digitally, but this looks like camcorder or phone work), totally amateur production values on every level. Okay, so how watchable is it on a "bunch of friends decided to make their own Halloween movie" level? Well, I'm not going to fault their ambition. Whoever was shooting it had a good sense of what would make a good shot with their limited resources, though they could have used some editing. There's a lot of sequences that go on about three times as long as they should; I don't need to see a woman walk all the way through her house to the car. I could have done without all of the needle drops; they use the original score, but also just toss in a ton of popular music at random parts. This is about as good as you're going to get from a "how about we put on a show!" production. Not something you need to watch, but I'd still say check it out because they clearly had a good time making it. Nightmare in Nowhere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPxX2dDFB0I A man is tormented by a voice in his dreams that knows him well. Now this is a bad fan film. Opening with what sounds like a twenty year old trying to do a "spooky" voice sets the tone for it. It's got the dumbest, most obvious "twist" you can imagine. It looks awful, too. It's the shortest of the fan films I watched which I was thankful for. Compared to the more amateurish Halloween movie which had its charm from trying so hard but not worrying when their reach exceed their grasp, this film has a marginally better camera and everything else is worse. Leather: A Texas Chainsaw Massacre Fan Film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4tw5txwggA A woman has an encounter with someone who has a leather face and a chainsaw. Later, her brother scours the lush, green farmlands of Texas looking for her. Now this one looks like it had some effort and money put into it. Well shot, properly lit, edited cleanly. It occasionally mimics Tobe Hooper, but not really relaying on that reference. My big problem with this movie is that it's told out of order and isn't great at presenting the information that a view needs in order to be engaged. It doesn't gain anything by telling its story out of order and it never explains why the brother thinks he can find his vanished sister by wandering onto random farms at night. Solid production quality for this one, but the story just lets it down. Telling a more straightforward survivor's tale would have worked better here. FWIW, I passed on doing a Friday the Thirteenth fan film because they were all feature length or close to it. If I saw one that was half an hour or less that looked like it had some effort behind it, I would have given it a try. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 01:29
|
|
|
 17)Isle of the Dead golden years A bunch of people indeterminately quarantined lose it and get paranoid on a plague ridden Greek island.Based on the painting of the same name  (screenshot from https://www.midnightonly.com/2016/05/14/isle-of-the-dead-1945/) It's a relevant paranoid thriller, about science vs superstition . A Val Lewton RKO joint, it's got some similarities to Cat People, with the young woman unsure if she's actually a monster. Karloff is great as the tough as nails general, man of science who cruelly goes by the book, until the doctor he relies on to fight the plague succumbs to it, and he succumbs to the superstition. It's Creepy, dripping with atmosphere, and well shot. Cat People gets all the attention, but don't overlook this one /5BINGO! 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 16)Terrifier 17)Isle of the Dead Ambitious Spider fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Oct 16, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 01:33
|
|
|
 #77.) The Undead (1957; Tubi) Two men of science decide to amaze the world by sending a sex worker's consciousness back through time. The woman's mind travels to one of her previous lives, and does what she can to improve her situation there. Bound to be inspired by a mix of Corman having some medieval sets and costumes, and an upswell of public interest in reincarnation, most of this plays as though it was an almost-finished film with the framing device slapped on at the last minute. If it had been more than one previous life that we visited, this might have been engaging, but as is, it's as though we've been dropped just as suddenly as the voyaging mind into a drama that happens to have witches. Most of the actors in the medieval setting are giving good performances, and the sets look good in black and white, but the dialogue is stiff and the plotting is lethargic. If you're in the mood for camp, this gives a good shot of it, but have your sights set any higher than that, and it's likely to let you down. “I don't think I wanna be hypnotized.” 5/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 01:36
|
|
|
17. Nope A horse trainer investigates some strange weather... with spooky results. I liked this movie but I have almost nothing to say about it. It's good. Jordan Peele makes really good movies. The villain is really cool and unique and not at all what anyone would expect from the trailers. The performances are really good. Somehow the movie makes endless desert looks like a place I'd like to visit. As far as I can tell there's no deeper meaning here. Maybe something about using animals for entertainment? There's some plot points that seem... unimportant. It kinda just feels like a big blockbuster monster movie and the plot isn't really important. 4/5 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 01:37
|
|
|
 28. This Is the End (2013) Still a very funny horror comedy, with actors playing selfish idiot versions of themselves as the left-behinds during an apocalyptic rapture. Even includes a very good The Exorcist parody scene to suit the spooky season. Rewatched with a commentary track featuring Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Not a necessary listen but pleasant to hang out with. Mostly consists of mildly funny behind-the-scenes banter, with a couple really good laughs* and some interesting insight into just how fluid scenes could be with a talented improv cast. Jay's "welcome back" smorgasboard being a same-day whip-up by the props team to meet an on-the-day rewrite is a fun detail. Not surprised Danny McBride is the guy getting other comedians to break on set. *"Franco was like, 'That's not how arms come off. I was in 127 Hours, I know how arms come off.'"  / 5  The commentary viewing checks off Whispers in the Dark. 
Vanilla Bison fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Oct 16, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 01:43
|
|
|
17. Old Man (2022) Digital (Vudu)  A hiker lost in the woods stumbles upon the cabin of an intentionally-isolated Old Man (Stephen Lang, of Don't Breathe infamy). Neither trust each other, for good reason. Another in the "the poster gives this one away" department, though the twist does help the second half when inevitably Lang isn't enough to keep it interesting for the full 95 minutes (he carries the first half almost entirely to make up for it) *** 18. The Accursed (2022) Digital (Vudu)  Elly (Sarah Grey) is assured by her friend she needs to relax and take a break from worrying about things; when her attempt at more missionary work is prevented, her backup plan is accepting a job caring for a seemingly-comatose elderly woman in a cabin in the woods. I in no way intended a double feature of horror films taking place in cabin in the woods, and if I had, I certainly wouldn't have picked only-average ones. Sidenotes: Grey's performance was my favorite, despite the film also having both Mena Suvari and Meg Foster, which was surprising. Less surprising to me was that this was the newest film from the director of Willy's Wonderland and it wasn't as entertaining or fun as that *** Watched so far: Missing (2022), Everyone Will Burn, Dark Glasses, Lynch/Oz, Give Me An A, Flowing, Mr. Harrigan's Phone, Deadstream, Hellraiser (2022), Werewolf by Night, Old People, Jeepers Creepers Reborn, Grimcutty, Smile (2022), Stalker (2022), Halloween Ends, Old Man (2022), The Accursed (2022)
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 02:01
|
|
|
Random Stranger posted:October 15α - Mid-After-Doom Scary Gore-ts - Fan Kill-ms
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 02:17
|
|
|
 Eden Lake, 2008 A couple go camping in the British country side and lovely sociopathic chave kids ruin their trip. That's pretty much it. Just the horror of being isolated from the rest of the world surrounded by people who want to kill you and make you suffer as you die. I've seen my share of this formula and this is one the most dark and grim feel bad versions I've ever seen. I won't go into details, just want to say while it is a great movie, it is not one that you watch for fun. This is one you watch to see humanity at its worst tormenting the innocent.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 02:34
|
|
|
 #18: Fear Street Part One: 1994 Woah! That was a pleasant surprise. Likable, well-written teenagers, great kinetic energy. I dug how they used the 90s period piece action and the blood of the target being the focus of the curse is used in some fun and creative ways. The power of educated use of recreational drugs saving the day was wonderful. Plenty of nostalgia appeal, but not a movie overly weighed down by the past despite its love of the genre and the time period. #19: Fear Street Part Two: 1978 I imagine some people will call this the best of the franchise, but it was my least favorite. The pluses: it's the tightest package, with no real missteps, a clear structure, and probably the best kills of the three. To me it's also the most by the numbers, going a bit too far into replicating a 70s slasher and losing the quirks, vitality, and yes, messiness that are present in the other films, and reducing it's characters to stock characters. Some odd stuff: when Ziggy and her sister are just getting fuckin whaled on by the killers it starts off impressively brutal but quickly turns to comedy as they still manage to have one last conversation after like 30 seconds of this while Cindy takes another half dozen axes blows to her lungs between words. #20: Fear Street Part Three: 1666 Stumbles a bit in its first half (some of those accents, woof) but does well enough with a change of pace to Puritan witch horror. The 2nd half goes back to the trilogy's wackier and more intriguingly optimistic strengths and offers a nice handful of more subversive elements. Getting their cop-killing Home Alone setup ready to the tune of The Offspring kicked rear end. ACAB.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 03:00
|
|
|
27. The Church Where to watch? Uh it use to be free to stream on Amazon but now its a rental  This film is directed by Michele Soavi who you might know as the director of Cemetary Man a really beloved horror film. Its also produced by Dario Argento, and its got music by Goblin. Its a blast of a film. It starts off weird and it just gets weirder. Its got some of the most surreal poo poo you'll see in a film and there is one scene in particular that will make you go "Holy poo poo , what the gently caress am I watching". It also use to be known as Demons 3. Its just a drat good unseen Italian horror film from a great Italian director. Don't spoil yourself on the movie details try to go in blind when you see the film. Its totally loving out there film delight.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 03:14
|
|
|
22. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Directed by Amy Holden Jones 🎃 Femme Fatale 🎃 "I don't know what it is, but something about this house give me the creeps."  So it was originally intended to be a slasher parody, but then it wasn't directed as one, but then it ended up as a kind of meta parody anyway? The Slumber Party Massacre itself is pretty decent. It tells you exactly what kind of movie it's going to be and then follows through. The best thing about watching it is probably learning that there's such a thing as the Massacre Cinematic Universe, with a handful of recurring characters. 👻👻👻/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 17/36 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), 17. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)  Total 22/?
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 03:55
|
|
|
29. Mother's Day 2010 Thrilla in Vanilla  Pretty bog-standard horror thriller. Like a lot of home invasion thrillers, this one is chock full of moments where you're screaming at the screen because everybody is a dipshit. Like many other movies of the same type, everyone seems to collaborate to make the worst possible decisions at any given time, and rather than enjoy a tense movie, you're too busy being upset because a room full of five people can't overpower one dude. I will give credit to Rebecca De Mornay, who is absolutely excellent as a demented psychopath mother, but even my secret favorite Frank Grillo can't save the movie from being terribly average. Rating: 5.9/10 Bludgeonings PKMN Trainer Red fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Oct 16, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 04:11
|
|
|
October 15β - Hotel Transylvania Count Dracula has set up a hotel as a refuge for monsters where they can be safe from humans. On his daughter's 118th birthday, he's pulled all of his friends together for an enormous party but a human backpacker has managed to stumble into the hotel. Can Dracula get rid of the human without disturbing his guests and before his daughter gets too close to the human? I know these were popular family films but they're definitely not my kind of thing so I didn't bother watching it. But I gave it a shot for the sake of the Spooky square. And yeah, it's a it's a bog standard modern animated family movie, following the exact same beats that every one of these movies has. Will act two end with the deception revealed causing all of their friends to abandon them? You bet it will! I can't say I found anything really funny here, either. A weird amount of schlocky "my wife is a nag!" kind of humor. Adam Sandler is behind the film so it's no wonder it's this unfunny. Not a whole lot to say here, this one is just too bland. I doubt I'll remember anything about it by this time next week. This one is as damned as the children on my Spooky card.  STAC Goat posted:Ohh thank you. I’ve been struggling to come up with a theme for this and I might just steal that one. Total fairness here, I stole the idea from BioTech who watched all Predator fan films for his shorts challenge.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 04:22
|
|
|
 Mmmm... Painted posters.... Tales for the Darkside : The Move -- (John Harrison ; 1990) Tales of Terror What is with me and the 90's. I'm not trying to do this, it just keeps happening that I pick a movie from the same patch of time. Gonna guess witches did it? Witches. Anyway, this is a cute little anthology based off of George Romero's TV show that was a pseudo-spin off of Creepshow. I only knew it as a thing my dad used to watch up until yesterday because I'm an idiot, and I'll be trying to check that out once the month is over and I can watch things not for this. First, pretty good wraparound story (official title : The Wraparound Story) about a witch (I'm guessing, not specified ; played by Debbie Harry) who's got a kid chained up and caged that she's going to cook and serve for a dinner party. The kid (played Matthew "Not the Famous One" Lawrence) has a book of spoopy tales and is trying to distract her. It's cute, the acting is pretty good on Harry's part and it does its job well without making me wish it would stop. It performs the two main purposes of a wraparound story admirably : it sets up the actual stories and it doesn't make me hate it. Then we've got a campus rivalry turned mummy murder based on an Arther Conan Doyle short for our second course, and it's presented with a pretty well stocked cast. In all their before-they-were-stars glory, we've got the lovely Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore popping back up, somehow I'm really having a weird streak here : Buscemi is a joy as always and you get to see him use being a nerd to summon and control a mummy, it loving owns ; Moore is good, but it's a smaller part and she's a bit underused/doesn't really have much to do so she's cruelly prevented from shining, her job is basically just to be the hot girl and then get mummy-murdered (which she does do well). Also Christian Slater is there. In terms of watchability, this was easily the best and I'd totally recommend it just as a short to anyone. The second is about a hit man who is hired by an old man to kill a cat. Despite that, it works better than you'd think : then you'll notice that George Romero wrote this.. Bill Hickey does a decent job as the old man, David Johansen (yeah, I don't know what casting was like but it works) is acceptable as the hit man Halston and the cat is a very cute American shorthair. This was my least favorite of the shorts but I still liked it a lot : it's got a charmingly camp shooting style and the story takes some twists that aren't exactly unpredictable but are still great to watch. Also it has one absolutely bonkers effect that doesn't 100% work but I don't give a single gently caress it owns bones lol. The last is, of all things, based on an old kaidan and is about a struggling artist (James MOTHERFUCKING REMAR!!!!) who encounters a demon and the love of his life in the same night and has to make a strange promise. It's a distinctly fairy tale kind of horror but that's what basing things off of a kaidan gets you. Remar, in a stunning twist, is great and it's really nice to see him play a more sensitive kind of character and get to be tender. This story's a bit harder to recommend to a stranger, but there's a lot of people who'd like this I think. And I like the themes, I'm a sucker for kaidan, sue me. 104 minutes, all good, absolutely sailed by and I enjoyed all of it. It's not great, it's not amazing, but if you see a copy and have nothing to do for an hour and a half you should totally watch the hell out of this. 8/10 +1 Steven Vincent Buscemi and James Remar's jawline 23 down, 8 to go 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 04:32
|
|
|
BONUS: Halloween Ends (2002), theatre The moment I started seeing reviews saying that the movie was wildly divisive, I basically put an embargo on myself and didn't read anything more (spoilers or otherwise) and decided to see the movie blind.I'm conflicted about this movie, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and I'm also going to put this review in spoilers because the movie just came out. I appreciate that it was trying to do something different, and it certainly did that. It had some interesting ideas - the mere idea of Michael Myers "infecting" the town of Haddonfield and basically spawning a copycat killer is pretty novel, although I'm not entirely sure it was executed that well; Corey's fall to darkness felt a little bit abrupt and sort of as clumsily handled as Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side in the Star Wars prequels. Sidelining Michael for the vast majority of the movie certainly was a choice, but I'm not sure it was the right one - I saw another review where they said the movie should have either had a lot more of Michael or should have cut him completely, and I think I'm on board with that. The kills were still pretty neat; blowtorch to the face is pretty metal, and the DJ's tongue and the skipping record was pretty memorable. I go back and forth on whether it was a misstep to have Corey only target people who he felt "deserved it" instead of Michael butchering innocent victims left and right. I mean I guess it's a way to differentiate Michael's "pure evil" from Corey's violent tendencies but I think it would have worked better if perhaps he wasn't shown as an accomplice to Michael that Michael actively spares (until he doesn't) and maybe had a eureka moment when he realized that he's nowhere near as evil as Michael. It's another idea that is novel on paper but not really well executed. All in all I liked it (and for the record, I liked Halloween Kills). It's different, and not what I expected, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It misses the mark sometimes, but overall I'm glad I watched it. And it most certainly is an End, the movie leaves no doubt about that. 15. Black Sabbath (1963), Shudder  This was a neat little horror movie. I think the first story (about the stalker on the telephone) was the weakest, and even though Rosy's friend literally spells out on a piece of paper why she was making threatening phone calls, I feel like it sailed right over my head and I was still a little hazy on what happened (and then she gets killed). I'm reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia as I write this and things make a lot more sense, I guess maybe I'm bad at paying attention. The second story was a highlight, and I got a lot of 'Pet Sematary' vibes from it for some reason - the way everything goes tragically wrong for everyone because they let emotions overwhelm their reasoning and don't deal with clearly dead and dangerous things the way they should, and it comes back to bite them (pun intended). It was a little long, and I thought things were meandering a bit when Vladimir and Sdenka run off and the plot follows them along (I genuinely thought they'd coincidentally dodged a bullet and had just... exited the story permanently, and the story was going to end with Maria killing her husband and getting murdered by Boris Karloff), but even though it started to feel like it was getting a little long in the tooth (pun intended again) it managed to wrap back around in a pretty satisfying way. The third story was a neat little ghost revenge story with some pretty creepy corpses and some pretty effective spooks, although it got undermined by, of all things, my love of cats - every time a cat showed up on screen or meowed off screen, I let out an involuntary "KITTY!" because I am a literal child. I guess I learned nothing from 'Pet Sematary'. Cool movie, well shot, manages to be effective without having a ton of gore or violence. 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) BONUS: 'Halloween Ends' (2022) 15. 'Black Sabbath' (1963) Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Oct 16, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 05:04
|
|
|
 #78.) Invasion from Inner Earth (1978; Blu-ray) A handful of people land at a rural airport, only to be trapped by an alien death ray. As the day goes on, they find out that the rest of Earth's human population has been wiped out. Slow and dull and soporific. Lots of scenes of the characters talking about what they need to do, and what they could do, and what they might do, but very few scenes of anything happening. Probably could have worked well as a piece of short fiction, or as an episode of The Outer Limits, but in feature-length film form, it's tedious and too drawn-out for any tension to survive. The opening theme is like a Casio remix of an Ennio Morricone track, which is fun, I guess. I like the sense of isolation the movie tries to tap into, but there's just not enough substance to pull it through. “I hate towns. You know that.” Rating: 4/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 05:06
|
|
|
 29. Planet of the Vampires (1965) Feels almost exactly like watching an episode of the original Star Trek, except somehow with less plot stretched over more runtime. The good of that is the production design - Planet of the Vampires makes wonderful use of colored lighting and fog to make a couple rubber rocks and sparse sets feel like an immersive alien world for our heroic leather-suited spacemen to traverse. The bad of it is the writing, total snoozeville where nothing exciting happens for scene after scene after scene of the dull, interchangeable characters either bumbling about or standing on guard duty. Later productions like Star Trek and Alien happily pillaged all of this film's cool ideas, so chuck this one on the skip pile.  / 5  Planet of the Vampires is based on Renato Pestriniero's Italian short story "One Night of 21 Hours," thus qualifying for Paperbacks from Hell. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 05:24
|
|
|
#15 Q (2022) This is a Japanese... TV show? Creepypasta series? It's really hard to find information on this thing, especially because of the name. However, there's no unifying framing device, no continuity, no structure beyond found-footage, seemingly no channel or hosting service that ever showed them, and the videos vary in length quite a lot, so I am tentatively treating these as short films. Maybe they shouldn't count, I dunno, I'm planning on getting more than one Bingo so whatever. Anyway, the series is on Youtube. I saw episodes 1 and 2 a couple months ago, so they don't count. 3: WHAT THE DECEASED LEFT BEHIND (length 8:17)  A photographer, Naoto, commits suicide in the woods; a year later, some friends of his meet up and happen upon his camera. A little bit Savageland. Nice short which creeps you out and offers no explanation. 4: EXORCISM (12:14) A psychic is hired to exorcise a woman. Nothing special. There's this dynamic where he's filming this for promotional purposes, and comes across as phony and focused on presentation, but that doesn't amount to much. A Shinto exorcism is pretty novel, at least. 5: HOUSE OF MIRRORS (9:21) A young man is hired to examine an abandoned house for ghosts that reside in mirrors. This one's quite fun, building tension out of a very mundane setting, with a neat little Lake Mungo twist. You get absorbed peering into all these lovely dusty mirrors. According to the comments (which are overwhelmingly in Japanese), many of the scenes in this short are themselves mirrored, which is difficult to notice if you don't read Japanese, and adds a fun wrinkle to the whole thing. Worth a watch. 6: BIVOUAC (10:12) A hiking-influencer, Kana, gets lost in the woods. Very Blair Witch; I hate to describe things by comparing them to other things, but it's really direct here. This one really leans into the paranoia; I still don't know if the dark figure standing in the river is just a normal person in weird light, or if the face in the tent is real or just noise. 7: OBSCURE (12:56)  Documentary chronicle of an abandoned blog of a graphic-design guy, "OrangeRobinson", and his repeated encounters with a very strange customer. This one RULES. It's the first one of these that has a sense of humour, as OR is bombarded with dozens and dozens of extremely similar, upsetting photoshop requests from a mysterious patron, and I laughed out loud at the reveal that the customer was sending in that same photo of that maimed face every time, instead of just asking them to reuse the image from last time. At a certain point you start to wonder if getting the same bizarre order again and again and again makes it less creepy, or more. Also has one of the most satisfying endings, while most of these shorts wind up on an uncertain note. Anyway, this is a clear standout, and is absolutely worth your time. 8: SANCTUARY (7:10)  Two men flee from terrible danger. This one has no intro, no explanation, just panic from frame 1. The FF conceit here is a dashcam, mounted on a car that's reversing up a narrow road. Just well-executed pure spooks. 9: FLOWER OFFERING (11:30) A man staying in a temporary flat keeps receiving unsettling bouquets of flowers at his doorstep. I liked it. It sorta preys on your suspicions as to whether this pleasant middleaged salaryman is, somehow, deserving of this, if he's hiding something, if there's any explanation at all. As usual, there's no answer, just enough to make you wonder. Another good one. 10: THE VISIT (10:48) A cult carries out a secret ritual to contact the underworld. A bit of a miss; there are a lot of intertitles laying out the principles of the ritual, and to be honest I had a tough time keeping everything straight. Still, it promised a creepy ritual and it gave me a creepy ritual. 11: THE PORTRAIT (18:49) (aka "What's he building out there?")  This one purports to be a domestic documentary, like that show about children running errands but with old folks instead. It follows Michiko and her early-Alzheimers husband Hideo, who has begun to draw portraits of unknown people. This one kind of gets in its own way, constantly laying on detail and explanation, but the core mystery is a good one. Overall, this is another highlight. 12: LAST COUNTDOWN (15:26) A bunch of tapes, sent in by the public, that could not be broadcast. A clip show, essentially. While the narration claims the clips were rejected for public safety, I suspect it was actually because they kind of suck. Not worth your time. 13: FILM INFERNO (37.19) A couple on holiday become lost in a cave. This one's nothing special; it's just very long and slow-paced. I've been caving, and it's not hard to make scary, with how narrow some of the passageways are, but this short doesn't lean into that at all; it's mostly set in what amount to hallways. There are some moments here and there, but they're spread very thinly. All in all, an unsatisfying note to end on. Anyway, this is my tentative entry for Short Cuts, with a combined time of 2:33:56 (or 2:58:47 if you include the first two shorts). If you just want the good stuff to mix in with some other shorts, I'd recommend 7, 8, 9, 3, 11, 5, and 1, roughly in that order. Connective tissue with #14 The Invisible Man: sinister human silhouettes Spooky Bingo status:  That's a bingo! Maybe!
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 05:41
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:
The MST3K episode of this is amazing, and the movie itself is hilarious as hell. The comedy grave digger who is doing the world's most passive aggressive crazy person act, the extremely camp satan / Robin Hood cosplayer, the sudden smash cut to the psychiatrist's skeleton just sitting in his chair dressed in his work clothes after he's become trapped in the past, there's just so much to love here. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 06:46
|
|
|
22: The Cell I swear to God we watched this for a challenge 2 or 3 years back but my wife insists she hasn't seen it in longer than that and really wanted to, so. I do like this movie a lot but it's absolutely style over substance. It is gorgeous, all the sets and costumes and props and everything are just top notch, but the story is pretty loose and it's really just cyberpunk Silence of the Lamb's. Acting wise, J Lo is alright, and I'm a fan of Dramatic Actor Vince Vaughan so it's always nice when he gets to do something like this. Frankly I find D'onofrio terrifying at the best of times so he definitely nails the Buffalo Bill role
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 07:15
|
|
|
I had a couple of old episodes of Svengoolie and Sventoonie on my DVR and had been saving them for some day, and after watching Halloween and waiting to finish it off this weekend I didn’t feel like watching whatever random things I had on my list. So I decided the best thing to pair with Halloween was a double sized Svengoolie weekend. Franchescanado posted:
 31 (41). The Killer Shrews (1959) Directed by Ray Kellogg; Written by Jay Simms Watched on Svengoolie I had been trying to make Halloween Ends my 31st new film of the month but I didn’t quite nail it and… well… I guess Killer Shrews is a fitting one? Its certainly interesting to finally watch one of those infamously bad films that has probably been on every big 50 Horror set I’ve ever owned or lampooned by every horror host or MST3K type act. The fact that I’ve never seen it really speaks to how much I don’t seek these kinds of films out, but its kind of funny that my 31st overall film was The Brain That Wouldn’t Die presented by Sventoonie and now my 31st new is Killer Shrews presented by Svengoolie. Its all very fitting. To the actual film… its bad. But its not like horribly bad or anything. Like a lot of these “worst movies” it all feels kind of arbitrary. Yes, this is a bad film. And yes, those shrews are hilariously cheap and bad. But there’s MUCH worse films than this. Hell I actually found those puppets and dog costumes kind of cute and charming. And in truth that’s probably why this film has become so popular for lampooning. In the end its just a very standard 50s science and nature horror film with some bad effects. Nothing special but also very easy to just get through and laugh about. Its barely an hour long and while nothing here is gonna stay in my memory very long its all very unoffensive and just lame. Most people don’t want to watch a REALLY bad movie. Those ones that are painful to get through and just do everything wrong. You want a nice safe bad film like this that you can just laugh at the puppets and mock the lazy script and characters and be done an hour later. Easy and fun. And as always these movies are fun to watch with Svengoolie because he does mock them but he has fun with it. That’s what I think the good hosts like Elvira and MST3K do. They’re enjoying themselves and enjoying the movies… even when the movie is bad. A lot of the more modern stuff… especially the Youtube stuff… doesn’t actually seem to be enjoying themselves. It feels much more mercenary and mean spirited. Its the gimmick to trash a bad movie and the nastier you get the more views you get and its just all about ripping a new one. And then you have everyone competing to do the biggest burn and have the biggest dunk. And that stuff is just no fun to me. I like this. Svengoolie just goofing around with something that’s dumb but harmless. And he had this little dog puppet that was really badly done up with shrew makeup and it was HILARIOUS. So yeah. Its a bad movie but I had a good time. Franchescanado posted:
 32 (42). The Werewolf of Washington (1973) Written and directed by Milton Moses Ginsberg Watched on Sventoonie, Freevee, and Elvira’s Movie Macabre This was what I thought was the only episode/movie of Sventoonie I hadn’t seen although while looking for the episode on Youtube I realized not only had I missed a bunch fo episodes but a couple of movies too. So now I’m tempted to rewatch the whole season and patch up the movie wholes too. Because I need more movies on my list. But this was my planned one. And oddly enough I couldn’t find a decent copy of it anywhere. Apparently that’s a thing as its got iffy commercial rights and has been bootlegged and sold in a bunch of crappy copies. But the best copy and only one I could make out I could find was actually an episode of Elvira’s Movie Macabre. So I actually ended up watching Sventoonie on Svengoolie with Elvira. So it was like corny horror host Inception. All of this and all the corny jokes from this all star teamup was a lot more fun than the movie. Its a weird parody of the Universal Wolf Man where Lon Chaney Jr is replaced by Dean Stockwell who is the White House press secretary. All so this can be a political satire too, I guess. And its obviously a comedy but its one of those comedies that you don’t entirely realize is one until like 20 minutes in because for a long time the jokes don’t register as jokes so much as just people yelling at each other and bad filmmaking. Eventually it gets pretty clear. The President is a moron who does slapstick. There’s a ton of literal toilet humor. People keep confusing “Pentagram” with “Pentagon”. There’s also what appears to be a send up of racist right wing politicians and cops who like try and setup the first black guy they see as the werewolf and are all always complaining about communists and protestors. Its all very dry and a real testament to the fact that comedy is about timing and delivery. Because this has no comedic timing or delivery. There’s some gags that could be funny. Stockwell deciding that he’s not a werewolf, but that he’s a Manchurian Candidate brainwashed by the commies of Budapest. Him in werewolf form randomly discovering a dwarf Dr. Frankenstein building a Creature in the basement of the White House and ending up just playing with the doc like a puppy. Or some people having a conversation in a bathroom only to see two people exit a stall in the background. There’s probably other gags that may or may not click for you but for the large part this thing just isn’t funny because its just not funny. Its someone telling jokes who you can’t convince to just stop because they’re not doing it right. Its also really weird. Like if you wanna see Dean Stockwell in werewolf gear lick and be licked by a short Frankenstein… this is your movie. Again, its not really weird enough to be good or interesting but it does steadily go off the rails and get sillier as it goes on. By the end it really makes no sense at all. Stockwell has everything turned to 11 and the plot is just jumping around scene to scene making no sense. A bunch of White House people chain him up because they believe he’s a werewolf and will kill someone, but they chain him up in the place he’s supposed to kill someone and then just leave. Then his girlfriend shows up and just starts making out with him while he’s chained up as he’s screaming or her to murder him because he’s such a threat. Then the president is like “get on Air Force One with me and the Prime Minister of China” and he just does even though he knows he’s gonna turn into a werewolf and was just saying you should kill him to protect others. So I guess maybe he was a Manchurian Candidate because he sure seemed to be ok with murdering the leaders of the US and China. Its all very bad and dry and just kind of difficult to see or watch. I imagine it wasn’t that bad originally and its just the victim of bad copies and such but I mean… this clearly wasn’t a high quality production to begin with. Even with Elvira and Sventoonie on the job this was a chore and while there’s a few moments that genuinely made me chuckle and its kind of fun seeing Stockwell act a fool. Its just not a good movie.  That’s it for this night of Svengoolie. But I got another one coming this weekend and more the rest of the month. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 07:20
|
|
|
 Spoooo0000oooopy The Night House (David Bruckner ; 2021) Hausu This is a pretty decent spook 'em up. It gives you enough to process that I don't know what to say about it at the moment, so I'll just do the high notes. Rebecca Hall still great, Sarah Goldberg hanging in there like a champ. It's very pretty and moody with the central conceit giving a lot of opportunities for upward spoops. No gore though. I know that some people think that's a deal breaker. Trust me, it's got some big ol' horror at the end, it's just not blood. 9/10 24 down, 7 to go 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 07:34
|
|
|
Franchescanado posted:
 12.) Hocus Pocus 2 Anne Fletcher | 2022 | Disney+ After seeing it in bits and pieces over the years, I finally watched the first Hocus Pocus last year, coincidentally around the time when the consensus kind of turned against it lol. The original was a pretty charming movie. Unfortunately, the sequel really doesn’t compare. I didn’t initially hate it, the original witches are still as fun as they were in the original and there are some fun performances from Sam Richardson, Tony Hale, and Hannah Waddingham (though she is wasted here). The new kids are mostly fine too, though the one friend is a little quippy. For me it falls apart at the end: I’ve seen others mention it, but the sisters didn’t really need a redemption story. If they wanted to go that route, they should’ve reveal the Maxima Magicae spell to be a trick from Waddingham’s character to revive her and have them team with the kids. Also, the stuff with the black cat was kinda lame. Depending on your love of the original, you might get more out of it. But I was left disappointed. Rating: Total: 12/13 New: 10 Rewatches: 2 My Letterboxd list (in progress) Bingo card: 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 09:27
|
|
|
 30. Berberian Sound Studio (2012) A permanent simmer. Sets up Toby Jones with workplace friction as the meek English sound engineer on a '70s Italian giallo production, presents a feast of noises and the visual stimulus of tapes and sliders and violently smashed vegetables in the foley room, seems to be teeing up a sonic descent into madness... and then just kind of gets stuck in third gear. Berberian Sound Studio ends up being a delicate, tightly restrained statement about soaking up and perpetuating the cruelty in your surrounding atmosphere. A very small and specific film. Which should be enough, every artwork is its own animal, but I confess I find it terribly disappointing when Berberian Sound Studio naturally positions itself against the huge, vibrant expressions of Italian horror. We're invited to picture appalling images in our mind because we don't see the implied footage of a hot poker being applied to someone's genitals, we only see Jones making the accompanying sizzling noises in a frying pan, but Jones keeps coming back to the same mild awkwardness and discomfort rather than widening it into a psychological breakdown. It feels almost like the peculiar petty anxieties that turn up in H.P. Lovecraft stories, in a bad way, that so much sturm und drang would be conjured around what ultimately seems to be the horror of becoming a rude Italian.  / 5.jpg) For Spooky Bingo, Berberian Sound Studio is a film featuring filmmaking for Behind the Screams. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 09:51
|
|
|
15. Prince of DarknessSpooky Bingo: Masters of Horror(John Carpenter) The death of a fellow priest leads Donald Pleasence to uncover a secret sect within the Catholic Church, seemingly dating back to the very beginning of Christianity, devoted to guarding a strange canister; inside is a glowing green ectoplasm representing a primordial evil or "anti-God" that the entire church was set up to prevent from being loosed on the world. But now cosmic events, including the light from a supernova reaching Earth, conspire to awaken the dormant entity, and a quantum physicist (Victor Wong) gathers some of his advanced students to a small urban church building where they can study the canister in seclusion, the growing ranks of strange-behaving homeless people (one of whom is Alice Cooper) notwithstanding. I love cosmic horror, and it's a genre that movies just plain don't attempt very often, successfully or otherwise. Carpenter (who wrote the film under the psuedonym "Martin Quatermass") takes more of a sci-fi approach than most, it's kind of Lovecraftian by way of Nigel Kneale but without the reactionary politics. Of course the challenge he runs into is, this is the kind of cosmic threat that's hard to actually represent in visual terms; a lot has to be conveyed via expository dialogue, and the characters are kinda flat too (though it is neat to see a couple of returning faces from Big Trouble in Little China.) This is so far the only Carpenter film I've found with real pacing problems, the middle drags as the entity very slowly takes over some of the students, a bit like The Thing but without the mystery and uncertainty. (I also suspect Carpenter was a bit hampered by a low budget; the visuals are good but you figure he was limited in what he could even try.) The score does a lot of heavy lifting, as Carpenter and long-time collaborator Alan Howarth keep up a pulsing beat throughout. The film does slowly pick up as more and more weird and genuinely unsettling things happen; people go crazy, the dead start being puppeted around either to menace people or send messages from the future, and everyone starts having the same dream of something emerging from the church. The atmosphere puts me in mind of Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead or The Beyond, themselves both kind of cosmic horror riffs. Reality goes on the blink. Pleasence also has a nice arc of his character's faith being almost completely obliterated by the revelation that Jesus was an alien and Satan is a canister of goo and all the morality stuff was just PR, and he plays it pretty well. I really like how it all comes together and the payoff is worth the dithering around. Carpenter would tackle this subgenre again, and with more success, in In The Mouth of Madness, but this one is pretty memorable too. Also a heck of a final shot. So yeah, John Carpenter was basically batting 1.000 in the 80s, but nobody thought so at the time. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 10:04
|
|
|
21: Alligator (1980) wild beasts A little girl buys a baby alligator at a fair. Her rear end in a top hat dad flushes it down the toilet and it ends in the sewers where it eats medical waste that makes it big. It eats people. I heard the urban myth of alligators surviving in the sewers but I'd never really thought about how unlikely it is that regular families bought baby alligators as aquarium pets. For what it is, it's rather good. There are big alligator props and a real alligator with small scale props. There's more blood and death than I'd expected for a 15-rated film. The actors are decent (it was bugging the hell out of me who the police chief was - Frank Pentangeli from the Godfather 2). If you're looking for a big killer animal movie, you can do worse than this. 22: The Wizard of Gore (1970)  A stage magician, Montag the Magnificent, invites women from the audience for a grand illusion where he appears to brutally murder them but they're fine at the end of the act. Some time after the show, they drop dead from the injuries they suffered onstage. The editing is really jarring, full of hard cuts, and the murder scenes are especially bad for this. Montag's about to start killing, cut to him killing, cut to him about to kill, cut to him wrist deep in chicken giblets and calves' livers, cut to the woman's fine and there's no blood anywhere. The pacing is plodding, especially early on. When the boyfriend groans, realising he's watching the same performance twice, I identified more with him than I think was intended. The acting's not good. Montag's actor is going for a Vincent Price-like, which I think is the right way to do it, but he's not good at it. The ending obviously telegraphs the old cliché of the monster going boo at the end, then it keeps going and gets stupid but whatever. It's not a very good film, but the premise is great. Looking up, I see there's a 2007 remake with Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs. Has anyone seen it? It's exactly the sort of thing that could be remade well. Total: 22 Scream 4; Scream 5; Burke & Hare; Pet Semetary (1989); Lake Mungo; Season of the Witch; Childsplay 3; Boris Karloff: the Man Behind the Monster; Piranha (2010); Dead and Buried; Black Sabbath; The Curse of the Cat People; The Company of Wolves; Halloween Specials; The Cremator; Hack-O-Lantern; Goosebumps; Strip Nude for your Killer; Vampire in Brooklyn; Mad God; Alligator; The Wizard of Gore 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 11:00
|
|
|
23. Perfect Blue (1997) パーフェクトブルー Directed by Satoshi Kon  Perfect Blue starts with a story about the pressures of fame, quickly builds on that to tackle the difficulty of maintaining separate public and private identities, then takes a hard detour into the way fiction can bleed into real life. It's like a standard thriller in a lot of ways, but pulls off some scenes I can't imagine working at all in a live action movie. The strangest thing is how conventional the big reveal really is, considering how surreal the everything was up to that point. 👻👻👻👻👻/5 Spooky October 6/? 1. Blood Feast (1963), 2. Sunshine (2007), 3. Relic (2020), 4. Mortuary (2005), 5. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), 6. Perfect Blue (1997) Spooky Bingo 17/36 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), 17. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Total 23/31
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 13:16
|
|
|
16. Ants (1977) - 2/5 I watched this out of nostalgia. The VHS cover is an eye-grabber and I remembered it vividly from my earliest days roaming the shelves of my neighborhood Blockbuster. I wasn’t expecting anyone’s boobs to actually be covered in ants since Ants is a TV movie, but it turns out Suzanne Somers does get attacked while naked in bed and they do the best approximation of sleaze they can get away with. The best part of this is the actual ant attacks; actors getting covered in clumps of ants, freaking out and collapsing. Unfortunately there are a lot of talky bits setting up characters and subplots in the beginning that I tuned out of, and it’s just not very cinematic at any point. The threat is ludicrously innocuous looking. Eventually there’s a dramatic stand-off where the remaining characters are trapped by ants and they do their best to make the ant swarms seem menacing, but it’s just a wall covered in ants at the end of the day. It’s such a low stakes threat that it’s kind of cute.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 13:40
|
|
|
37. Tiny Cinema It's an anthology if you let Tim Robinson make one. The pace does feek a little slow at times, and most of the punchlines you'll see coming from miles away, but there's no real weak segments ("Daddy's Home" is definitely the standout). The host segments add a great bit of really casual surrealism too. It definitely isn't for everyone, but for the people it does land for, it's decent. 3 out of 5! 37/31, 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, Tiny Cinema
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 14:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 17:39 |
|
|
bitterandtwisted posted:It's not a very good film, but the premise is great. Looking up, I see there's a 2007 remake with Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs. Has anyone seen it? It's exactly the sort of thing that could be remade well. I saw it earlier this year and, uhh, had a couple thoughts about it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 15:08
|
|