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Movie #7: Suburban Sasquatch (2004) 2. Tales From the Cryptids "Rawwraraawwrararaw! Rawwraraawwrararaw! Rawwraraawwrararaw!" gently caress it, I watched Suburban Sasquatch and I regret NOTHING. I had previously seen the Red Letter Media video on the movie years ago, but of course they only cover parts of it, and left out dozens of minutes of equally amazing stuff. After my viewing, I was convinced Dave Wascavage had made the movie this bad on purpose, because it seemed impossible that he tried his best and this was the result, so I tracked down interviews of his. And yeah, they intended to have jokes and comedy in the movie, but the movie itself was not intended to be a joke. He truly wanted to make a sasquatch movie that had stuff to say about man's relationship with nature, but he wanted to make it on a barebones budget ($550) because he doesn't want to go into debt to make his movies. He's aware of the film's reputation and says he gets to this day emails from people who watched it and had a great time, and he appreciates that it's special and cool that his insanely awful movie has that kind of legacy and effect on people. That sealed the deal for me: I love Suburban Sasquatch. The movie is just incredible. The acting, the sasquatch costume with huge tiddies and a massive swinging dick (which disappears after a while, because apparently it made walking in the costume too difficult), the literal MS Paint special effects, the one "Rawrwaaraawrawraw!" sasquatch sound effect they have and loop repeatedly, the plot that makes absolutely no loving sense and has nothing coming close to a rational point, it just never ends. I watched the movie alone and perfectly sober, and I still laughed so much I cried. If you are one of the people who love movies that are so bad they're good, you can't do much better than Suburban Sasquatch.  / 5If you're not / 5Now I'm gonna go watch the Red Letter Media episode again because now I can probably appreciate it more. The Best Part: The scene where Suburban Sasquatch kills the two fishermen by digging out one guy's guts and feeding them to him, ripping off his arm and then throwing it at the other guy so hard he floats unconscious in a river for several hours. No but seriously, unlike many cheap and awful horror movies, Suburban Sasquatch isn't hateful. There aren't slurs, there's no awful racist comedy. It's genuinely a movie you could show to almost anyone and they could have a good time. My May 2023 Movies: 1. Black Friday!, 2. Hood of the Living Dead, 3. Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron, 4. Psycho (1960), 5. Mandy, 6. Knock at the Cabin, 7. Suburban Sasquatch Challenges Completed: 1. Horror High (Mandy) 2. Tales from the Cryptids (Suburban Sasquatch) 4. Fresh Hell (Knock at the Cabin) 5. Shooting Zombies (Psycho) 6. Drawn and Quartered (Hellboy Animated) 9. Challenge of the Dead (Hood of the Living Dead) Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 18:28
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Oh my god the RLM video has behind the scenes interviews, where the costume designer says she "always wanted to work on a Dave Wascavage film". Is this all just a big performance bit? I need to track down a DVD copy to watch this BTS material 
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May 7, 2023 18:42
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You son of a bitch, you may have sold me on Suburban Sasquatch.
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May 7, 2023 18:58
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Crescent Wrench posted:You son of a bitch, you may have sold me on Suburban Sasquatch. Rawrrarrrawrrawwwwr!
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May 7, 2023 19:08
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 6. Ringu (1998) (dir. Hideo Nakata) Shudder  #8 - Second Chance Geography Lesson: Asia (Japan) History Lesson: 1990sI last saw this around 20 years ago, not long after the American version came out. I remember thinking it was kind of slow and dull and inferior to the remake, but at the time I had seen very little (if any) Japanese horror and was really only casually into horror in general, so I didn’t really have a frame of reference. I’ve seen the remake several times over the years, but haven’t taken the time to revisit this one until now. I definitely appreciate this more now. I didn’t find it slow at all - if anything, it moves along at a quicker pace than many other j-horror films from the era. It’s still more about mood than action, but it maintains an appropriate level of dread and suspense throughout and it never drags. However, I do still think that the remake improves on this in basically every way. There are some differences in the story details, but otherwise it hits all the same plot beats and does so in a much more stylish and atmospheric way. The famous delayed jump scare near the start of the film is executed better in the American version, the cursed video is creepier, and I think the whole film is just generally better made and scarier. Not by as much as I used to, though - this is very good and I really enjoyed it, and I could see how some people may prefer it. 4 fingernails out of 5 Total: 6 Watched: Lokis, a Manuscript of Professor Wittembach | The Manitou (Challenge #3) | Spoonful of Sugar (Challenge #1) | Faust (Challenge #5) | The Medium | Ringu (Challenge #8) Challenges: History Lesson: 4/5 - 1920s, 1970s, 1990s, 2020s Geography Lesson: 4/5 - Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, Asia
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May 7, 2023 19:27
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I think I'm gonna give either The Ring or Ringu another day in court for the rewatch part of the challenge. Does anyone have a good argument for watching one over the other? ("good argument" here read as "reason besides personal preference")
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May 7, 2023 23:11
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think I'm gonna give either The Ring or Ringu another day in court for the rewatch part of the challenge. Does anyone have a good argument for watching one over the other? ("good argument" here read as "reason besides personal preference") My good argument for watching the remake is that I agree with everything gmm said 
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May 7, 2023 23:22
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This is why this thread is so much fun. I wholeheartedly cast my vote for the original instead of the remake. The remake looks like someone applied baby's first horror movie puke-green filter over the whole thing. The direction and screenplay are hacky--when pros like Naomi Watts and Brian Cox can't overcome the script, what hope is there for the male lead, who has the look and feel of someone who walked straight off the pages from a Sears catalog? I even disagree with gmm's specific point about the tape itself. The tape in Ringu is cryptic, eerie, and has subtle clues about its origins. The tape in The Ring has generic spooky images that are about as scary as a flaming skull gif on a Geocities page. FAKE EDIT: But, snarky review aside, I think Ringu is a more interesting watch because it's kind of ground zero for the wave of American remakes of Japanese horror films. If you can't do a side-by-side, I'd personally like to hear about how the original feels on a rewatch and considering what it was compared to American horror at the time. Why was it so fresh? Why was it such a shot in the arm? Crescent Wrench fucked around with this message at 00:08 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 23:57
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Crescent Wrench posted:The tape in Ringu is cryptic, eerie, and has subtle clues about its origins. The tape in The Ring has generic spooky images that are about as scary as a flaming skull gif on a Geocities page. The Ring tape is all references too  Just thinking back there's images of a ladder/chair, stuff with horses and the ocean, a few clips of her mother and of course the titular ring. I will back you up that Noah is largely a blank slate as a character and the kid is all but a direct HJO 6th Sense reference (though they both have much less screentime than Naomi). I must not mind the color filter because the look/atmosphere of the remake is what I remember much more than any of the cast. Driving around foggy old New England-y places is always creepy to me. Stuff like the lighthouse shining in through the farmhouse or the red tree on the hill really sticks with me.
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May 8, 2023 00:07
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2) The Menu Challenge: Holy Terror A movie about an evening of fine dining and entertainment at the exclusive island restaurant of the legendary chef Slowik. It's difficult for me to rate this. I'm pretty much the antithesis of a foodie; I eat things that I like the taste of, but honestly if eating weren't a biological necessity I'd happily get along without it. As such I was disconnected from the plot when to be disturbed by it would require me feeling involved. As was the most disturbing and amusing thing about it was that I watched it on Disney+. It was all well put together, though, albeit somewhat contrived at times. Justifying the challenge: this is a religious movie, and the religion is haute cuisine. Slowik has turned his profession into an obsession and his restaurant into a cult, and Tyler is his willing acolyte. This is even made explicit during the final course where Slowik describes them all as martyrs.
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May 8, 2023 00:22
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think I'm gonna give either The Ring or Ringu another day in court for the rewatch part of the challenge. Does anyone have a good argument for watching one over the other? ("good argument" here read as "reason besides personal preference") I say either watch the one that you haven't seen as recently or the one you liked the least. Crescent Wrench posted:This is why this thread is so much fun. I wholeheartedly cast my vote for the original instead of the remake. The remake looks like someone applied baby's first horror movie puke-green filter over the whole thing. The direction and screenplay are hacky--when pros like Naomi Watts and Brian Cox can't overcome the script, what hope is there for the male lead, who has the look and feel of someone who walked straight off the pages from a Sears catalog? I even disagree with gmm's specific point about the tape itself. The tape in Ringu is cryptic, eerie, and has subtle clues about its origins. The tape in The Ring has generic spooky images that are about as scary as a flaming skull gif on a Geocities page. Ok but Ring '98 looks like an overcast episode of Baywatch and so does the acting. And deep into the second half the male lead casually mentions that he just happens to have had psychic powers this whole time. The best argument I've heard for Ring '98 is that it's aiming for more of a surreal Lynchian vibe more than it is an out-and-out horror movie (the book it's based off of is a sci-fi novel), while The Ring (02) could just take for granted that it's a full-on horror flick from the start. Crescent Wrench posted:FAKE EDIT: But, snarky review aside, I think Ringu is a more interesting watch because it's kind of ground zero for the wave of American remakes of Japanese horror films. If you can't do a side-by-side, I'd personally like to hear about how the original feels on a rewatch and considering what it was compared to American horror at the time. Why was it so fresh? Why was it such a shot in the arm? ...I'm not sure why we'd compare Ring (98) to American horror movies? How could it be a "shot in the arm" when nobody in America saw it?
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May 8, 2023 00:42
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:I say either watch the one that you haven't seen as recently or the one you liked the least. You aren't sure why we'd compare the Ring, the Japanese movie that inspired a wildly successful and popular American remake AND kick-started the years-long trend of further Japanese remakes, to American horror of the time to see the impact it had?
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May 8, 2023 00:56
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Crescent Wrench posted:You aren't sure why we'd compare the Ring, the Japanese movie that inspired a wildly successful and popular American remake AND kick-started the years-long trend of further Japanese remakes, to American horror of the time to see the impact it had? Presuming we're talking about America, we know exactly what Ring (98)'s impact was: it inspired the popular American remake The Ring (02), which was the wildly successful and popular American movie (that I'd wager most Americans still don't know is a remake, and the extent to which they understand it has some sort of Japanese origins is mostly because they've gotten it mixed up with The Grudge (04)) that kickstarted the trend in America of American remakes of Japanese horror movies in America. Like, I wouldn't bother trying to compare Seven Samurai to 50s Westerns to measure its impact on the Western genre, I'd just go straight to Magnificent Seven (I admit I'm being a bit pedantic and obnoxious, but I'd be more accommodating if we weren't immediately following an argument that both sides made it seem like there are significant enough differences between the two films that they wouldn't be interchangeable.)
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May 8, 2023 01:26
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I'm just gonna keep letting the Ring-heads fight it out for now. Right now I watched :  An astoundingly uninformative poster. In retrospect, I could've spent more effort finding an Ogopogo movie. But instead I went with the first chupacabra movie that happened to come out in the 2010's. It's fine. Serviceable. There were a bunch of blandly attractive people of indeterminate age, they went to a secret jungle in Panama, they got goat sucked. If anyone reading this ever needs to give a lecture on the use of darkness in cinema, you could use this and The Descent as kind of a goofus and gallant. They both try to do a bat monster in a cave ooky spooky darkness thing, but Indigenous (shockingly) isn't as good as one of the best horror movies ever made. 8 and counting Tales from the Cryptids History Lesson (2010's)
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May 8, 2023 01:35
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:Like, I wouldn't bother trying to compare Seven Samurai to 50s Westerns to measure its impact on the Western genre, I'd just go straight to Magnificent Seven I think this gets to the heart of the difference between the approaches for sure. I guess the question is, using that example, if you think Seven Samurai only influenced Westerns through the funnel of the Magnificent Seven, or if, more broadly, it's just a high-profile example (is it the first?) of Western directors looking to samurai films. I think you could look at it from both angles and they're both interesting. Maybe I'm weighing my preferred approach a little more heavily because of my preference for Ringu, who knows.
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May 8, 2023 02:08
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13. The Pope’s Exorcist - 2023 Directed by Julius Avery 🎃 Fresh Hell 🎃  It's not great cinema and the ending is the best kind of absurd baloney, but I would definitely watch a series in which Russell Crowe travels the world with his Spanish sidekick battling demons with various magical Catholic tchotchkes. 💀💀💀/5 Spooky May Spring Cleaning 7/13 1. Basket Case 2; 2. Basket Case 3: The Progeny; 3. 3 from Hell; 4. Attack of the Blind Dead; 5. The Ghost Galleon; 6. Night of the Seagulls, 7. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning GMM Challenges 4/13 1. Horror High - Bliss 2. Tales from the Cryptids - Mongolian Death Worm 3. Holy Terror - Incantation 4. Fresh Hell - The Pope’s Exorcist 5. Shooting Zombies 6. Drawn and Quartered 7. Woke in Fright 8. Second Chance 9. Challenge of the Dead 10. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things 11. It's-a Me! 12. History lesson - Evil Ed; Do You Like Hitchcock? 13. Geography Lesson Completed Collections * The Basket Case Trilogy 🧺🧺🧺/🧺🧺🧺 * The Firefly Collection 🤡🤡🤡/🤡🤡🤡 * The Blind Dead Collection ⛪⛪⛪⛪/⛪⛪⛪⛪ * The Ginger Snaps Collection 🐺🐺🐺/🐺🐺🐺
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May 8, 2023 03:23
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 6. Creature from Black Lake (1976) So far laid back that it's reclined and snoozing. Creature from Black Lake is obviously derivative of The Legend of Boggy Creek. It's competently made (which somehow puts it in the upper echelon of Bigfoot films) but extremely dull, the tale of two buddy University of Chicago students who go poking around Oil City, Louisiana in search of the Fouke Monster, which comes off less as a research project they care about and more like a scam they pulled to get school money to go camping and try to score with cute southern girls. Their investigation is simply these two dim bulbs bumbling around and being bad guests for two thirds of the movie until they finally meet local coot Jack Elam, who makes crazy eyes and acts comically drunk for a bit, then points them to the right patch of woods to go get mauled by Bigfoot. Once the buds are finally in a spooky situation things get reasonably good - the creature rolling their van is pretty sweet! It's just a whole lot of nothing to get there, and not the Blair Witch Project creepy atmospheric kind of nothing, but a really underbaked attempt at folksy southern charm.  .5 / 5Checks off Tales from the Cryptids and History Lesson: 1970s.
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May 8, 2023 03:44
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Crescent Wrench posted:Maybe I'm weighing my preferred approach a little more heavily because of my preference for Ringu, who knows. Maybe a little; at the same time I was teasing a bit since you went so hard on The Ring, haha! It's all good. In slight defense of The Ring's heavy teal filter, that's just kind of how the PNW looks in certain times of the year 
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May 8, 2023 03:47
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#8: Scream 4 Something of a return to form after the disappointing Scream 3. Somebody gets gutted and you see the guts, and the retcon from 3 is never mentioned. And it's got Sookie Stackhouse in it! It's not as good as the first two. The major problem being that the new crew is not integrated at all into the old cast. Which makes sense, they all fuckin die, but it does leave the movie feel a bit disjointed. We spend so much screen time with these new teens, but it's still extremely Sidney's story. But as this is the fourth movie, we have reached the point in the series where it's possible for "a good Scream" to exist, and Scream 4 certainly qualifies. It's got the blood, it's got the jokes, it will satisfy in a Scream manner. But you won't go back to it as often as you will the first two. It's ironic, Scream 4 came out in 2011 and comments on the spate of horror reboots that preceded it, but as a sequel that introduces a new cast which are all overshadowed by the old cast, it actually predicted the flood of soft seboots that would come after it. Jurassic World, The Force Awakens, JJbrams Trek, you were all pre called out! Challenges in progress 12. History lesson: 1990s (The Relic) 2000s (The Mothman Prophecies) 2010s (Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 05: Preface True Story Of The Ghost Of Yotsuya) 13. Geography Lesson: North America (The Relic) Asia (Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 05: Preface True Story Of The Ghost Of Yotsuya) Challenges complete 2: Tales from the Cryptids: Mothman Prophecies (because of mothman) 3. Holy Terror: Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 05: Preface True Story Of The Ghost Of Yotsuya (because of Shinto)
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May 8, 2023 04:33
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gey muckle mowser posted:
 15 (24)Children of the Corn (2020) Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer; Based on "Children of the Corn" by Stephen King Last May I watched all the Children of the Corn movies... it was rough. But I couldn't watch this one yet because it hadn't been distributed yet. And for some reason that made me sad? I love Stephen King and I love completing things. What can I say? So I've been waiting a year to watch this and... well.. its a Children of the Corn movie. Probably on the positive end of the movies for sure. Its pretty competently made. Elena Kampouris is pretty solid as the lead protagonist and Kate Moyer is pretty fun as the deranged kid villain lead. The dynamic between the two is obviously the core of the movie and its pretty solid. The problem is everything else is kind of not. There's not one other character in the film remotely fleshed out well or given any real weight. And the story is kind of dumb. I don't mind them going back to the start of the story and showing the kids doing the deed against the town. Its a different take and there's at least 3 other versions of King's story with the dysfunctional couple that wander into it. So sure, do this other different but very simple path. But the story is doofy. Basically everything relies on everyone acting absolutely batshit insane. Which like... ok. That's kind of the premise right? Like even with the adults? The idea in the story is that corn fungus loving with everyone's heads and getting to the youngest kids the quickest. So yeah ok. But there's just weird and bizarre poo poo going on. Ok, kids torturing one another in a disturbing way? Sure. Adults being belligerent and impatient? Sure. But like adults just randomly losing their poo poo on the kids? Just weird poo poo. And the killer for me is the really bizarre plot our heroine attempts to play out. I dunno if we're supposed to assume she's affected as well just less so but like her decision to kidnap her parents in the middle of the night to put them in a mock trial for a reporter is not rational. And why would the reporter do it? That's hosed. And I'm just gonna say it. Maybe this is all her fault for putting so much trust and responsibility in the hands of the deranged 10 year old. First step to avoiding this. Don't empower the psychotic child. This should be easy. I dunno. Its just all kind of silly. But its also mostly watcheable. But that's kind of where it peaks. The solid leads, basic production competency, and doofy plotting kind of carry you through. And there's He Who Walks. He shows up. That's something. On paper this feels like it should be enough but then you just have doofiness like our main girl's brother murdering their mom and a couple of dozen others in front of her and then like them exchanging a nodding gesture later like its all cool. It just don't make sense. And its ok for a horror movie to kind of not make sense as long as its fun or scary or something. But I dunno. This one just doesn't ever do it right. But it is after all a Children of the Corn movie. And at least I'm done with them. For now.  16 (25). The Signal (2014) Written and directed by William Eubank; co-written by Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio Kind of a drab sci fi thing over all. I dunno, that's not my thing generally. To be honest all the white outfits and walls and poo poo was giving me a headache. I wasn't ever really thrown off besides that. The first act does a solid job establishing our main characters and their relationships and giving us reason to care about their fates. The second act puts them in a harrowing and uncertain environment where you're interested and concerned about what's happening with them. But I just don't think it nails the landing at all. I've read the comments from the writers that the idea is to explore the idea of rational decision making vs doing what your emotions drive you. Or something like that. And loosely you can see that but it really doesn't feel like it comes together in any kind of coherent or meaningful way. And its all building to the big reveal at the end which doesn't feel all that shocking or original and kind of doesn't feel like it allows for any of that metaphor stuff to have any meaning. You know? I dunno. I'm not generally a fan of sci fi and at the risk of sounding snobbish I tend to find their philosophical debates in these movies to be pretty shallow and unsophisticated. And it does feel like the emphasis tends to shift away from any kind of humanist approach to these questions and into the fascination with alien or futuristic or robot stuff. I don't get the whole robot/cybernetics/whatever thing. Never did. I dunno. Its decently enough made and has a good cast and I'm sure all this sci fi philosophy and shocker would resonate more with its intended audience. But I dunno. Just didn't work for me.  17 (26). The Mole People (1956) Directed by Virgil Vogel; Written by László Görög Watched on Svengoolie The focus seems to be on that college professor intro as the symbol of the boringness but I actually kind of liked that? Its hokey and dry but so am I. It was like a built in Ben Mankiewicz intro or something. I dunno. It amused me. The rest of the film? Not so much. I have built up a certain tolerance to these 50s movies being somewhere between 20% to 90% dudes talking about stuff but holy poo poo this was dull. Its not even dudes talking, its dudes walking. They just keep hiking here and climbing there and walking over there. Holy gently caress its a slog. And then when they finally get to the mole people its a bunch of OTHER dudes talking about underground weirdo Incan politics or something. Its all so drat dull. But the movie was so short that Svengoolie aired a very amusing interview with Lance Henriksen to fill the air time. That was fun. Just put more Mole People stuff in your Mole People movie, guys. Its not so hard. But like 30% of this film is footage from other films or stock or long lingering shots of matte paintings. So I guess they just didn't have a lot of inspiration to fill the 40 minutes or so. You almost get the impression that they just got rejected for an episode of the Twilight Zone or something.
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May 8, 2023 07:16
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14. The Fall of the House of Usher - 1928 La Chute de la maison Usher Directed by Jean Epstein 🎃 Shooting Zombies 🎃  120 on the They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They list. Great creepy experimental silent horror that I wish I could have watched somewhere other than YouTube. 💀💀💀💀/5 Spooky May Spring Cleaning 7/13 1. Basket Case 2; 2. Basket Case 3: The Progeny; 3. 3 from Hell; 4. Attack of the Blind Dead; 5. The Ghost Galleon; 6. Night of the Seagulls, 7. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning GMM Challenges 5/13 1. Horror High - Bliss 2. Tales from the Cryptids - Mongolian Death Worm 3. Holy Terror - Incantation 4. Fresh Hell - The Pope’s Exorcist 5. Shooting Zombies - The Fall of the House of Usher 6. Drawn and Quartered 7. Woke in Fright 8. Second Chance 9. Challenge of the Dead 10. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things 11. It's-a Me! 12. History lesson - Evil Ed; Do You Like Hitchcock? 13. Geography Lesson Completed Collections * The Basket Case Trilogy 🧺🧺🧺/🧺🧺🧺 * The Firefly Collection 🤡🤡🤡/🤡🤡🤡 * The Blind Dead Collection ⛪⛪⛪⛪/⛪⛪⛪⛪ * The Ginger Snaps Collection 🐺🐺🐺/🐺🐺🐺
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May 8, 2023 14:57
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5. Nightmares (1980) A pretty neat but basic aussie spin on giallos. Was fun seeing a black gloved killer when I wasn't expecting one. Hits the sleaze right to lol. The downside was the movie only offers one suspect and sure enough sticks to it. 2.5/5 6. Curse of the Blue Lights (1988) A regional horror that takes a "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to throwing goofy horror elements at you. Almost none of them work, but hey there's a lot of charm in their effort. The acting is hilariously bad, but again, it adds to the charm. Seen a few people compare it to Spookies, and that's pretty apt. I dug the look of the monsters and the love of practical effects is on display so I can't hate this movie. 3/5 7. Clearcut (1991) Fantastic, Graham Greene is phenomenal. A great story and script to match his performance. This one is a bit light on the horror, its an abduction movie except you're rooting for the abductor the whole time because he kidnaps a piece of poo poo logging industrialist. As usual I'm a total sucker for forest shots and this thing takes place in some gorgeous wilderness (really driving home how lovely the expansionist logging operation is). If you've never seen this you really should seek it out. 4.5/5
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May 8, 2023 16:06
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11. There's Something Wrong with the Children (2023) A family vacation turns bad when the kids find a big hole in an abandoned building in the woods and return different. The word I'd use for this movie is "competent". It's a totally fine movie, but every choice it makes is Route One, obvious stuff. If you asked a screenwriter who had never watched much horror to write a movie with that rough outline, you'd get this movie. A store-brand horror movie, it does the job and nothing else. Doing a needledrop in your opening scene of Sister of Mercy's "More" earns some bonus points, though, as does a big ol' Evil Dead Shot, and a solid showing for Chekov's Machete. Counts for challenge #4: Fresh Hell Watched so far: The Borderlands, Nosferatu (Shooting Zombies), Shed of the Dead (Challenge of the Dead), Djinn (Holy Terror), Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (Tales from the Cryptids), Dolly Dearest (Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things), A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (It's-a Me!), The Addams Family (Drawn and Quartered), White Dog (Woke in Fright), Scream 3 (Second Chance), There's Something Wrong with the Children (Fresh Hell) Total: 11/13 Gyro Zeppeli fucked around with this message at 16:11 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 16:08
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Movie #8: Bay of Blood (1971) 11. It's-a-Me! "Inheriting isn't always so easy." Mario Bava's movies are not terribly familiar to me in that I haven't seen a single one ever, so I had plenty to pick from for the challenge. I opted for Bay of Blood, because people said it basically invented the "horny teens get slaughtered at a summer camp" genre. With that in mind I was more than a little surprised when the movie opens with Italian Walt Disney murdering a wheelchair-bound lady with an elaborate hanging machine, and then getting stabbed to death with a pocket knife. And sure enough, the movie isn't ultimately a literal "horny teens at a summer camp" movie, even though there are horny teens. Stylistically I can definitely see the throughline, though. After the wheelchair-bound lady gets murdered, a bunch of relatives eager for her inheritance, as well as our horny teens, descend on her summer house / mansion, and start getting murdered one by one in incredibly bloody ways. The bodycount rises quickly, and the focus is clearly on making the kills very gory. There are also very literal connections, or at least they feel like it, because some of the kills from the movie felt extremely similar to a some in the first couple of Friday the 13th movies down to the shots themselves (for instance a couple having sex on a bed are speared into it), so either the F13 guys were paying homage to A Bay of Blood or ripping it off. Either way, it was cool to see a movie that did ultimately play an apparent role in developing the genre. The big difference is that A Bay of Blood is intensely Italian. There's mystical fortune tellers, countless sleazy middle-aged guys in turtlenecks, slow pacing, a soundtrack featuring lounge music and sweeping piano pieces, and acting performances that are closer to The Bold and the Beautiful than Friday the 13th. And I guess that's what it comes down to. There certainly was a lot of blood and a bunch of kills, but I don't want internal family politics and real estate deals from my horror movies, and while I'm certainly not against murderous illegitimate sons, I would prefer for said sons to be wearing hockey masks or be mutants. The Best Part: Like I said, the kills are plentiful and incredibly bloody and brutal compared to the stuff I've seen in the few giallo movies I've watched previously. My favourite would probably have to be the fortune teller getting her head chopped clean off with a small hatchet, in a kill that would have been perfectly at home in a horror comedy. .5 / 5My May 2023 Movies: 1. Black Friday!, 2. Hood of the Living Dead, 3. Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron, 4. Psycho (1960), 5. Mandy, 6. Knock at the Cabin, 7. Suburban Sasquatch, 8. Bay of Blood Challenges Completed: 1. Horror High (Mandy) 2. Tales from the Cryptids (Suburban Sasquatch) 4. Fresh Hell (Knock at the Cabin) 5. Shooting Zombies (Psycho) 6. Drawn and Quartered (Hellboy Animated) 9. Challenge of the Dead (Hood of the Living Dead) 11. It's-a-Me! (Bay of Blood) History Lesson (Complete): Psycho (1960), Bay of Blood (1971), Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007), Mandy (2018), Knock at the Cabin (2023) Geography Lesson: (2/5): North America (Psycho), Europe (Bay of Blood) Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 17:05 on May 8, 2023 |
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May 8, 2023 16:34
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Weekend catch-up time.gey muckle mowser posted:
 #7. Dolly Dearest (1992) (YouTube) After purchasing an abandoned dollmaking plant in Mexico, an American family comes under attack from an ancient Mayan demon that has taken up residence in the doll that their daughter brought home. I think I've mentioned this in the past, either in the Horror Movie thread proper or in one of these challenge threads, but I used to hate the original Child's Play movie because Chucky looked too much like my beloved My Buddy. Yet I was fascinated by it all the same, especially with the fair ubiquity of the original VHS tape at any store or location that rented out movies like that. I remember always enjoying the dread of creeping around the corner from new releases to the horror section when I went with my parents to the local Welcome supermarket in the 80s and early 90s (sort of a down South version of Kroger before that took over), since I knew that tape - and Chucky's visage - would be there. And for the longest time, the film that existed in my mind was far worse than what actually existed. The same thing could be said of Dolly Dearest: the creepy doll on the back of the box was even uglier than Chucky was on the front of the Child's Play box (or the back of the sequel), therefore Dolly's movie had to be even worse. Alas, with time and age comes wisdom; knowing that Dolly Dearest was a smaller budget and never got a sequel, I should have known that it would end up being more like the cheap Charles Band knock-off of a Chucky film, rather than anything scary or worthwhile on its own merit. (Actually, considering that its about a living inanimate object and smaller than human stature, I'm shocked Mr. Band didn't actually produce the drat thing.) And when I say it looks like a Full Moon picture, I mean it: cheap effects, bad acting, rushed script, lack of filming locations, gore effects that aim higher than they can reach, shoddy music, the whole nine yards. This wasn't the film that lived in my head for the past few decades; I don't know if that one would be any good, either, but it would have had to have been better than the reality. /5Also counts towards History Lesson (1990s). gey muckle mowser posted:11. It's-a Me!  #8. Black Sabbath (1963) (Kanopy) A trio of horror short stories based on the works of famous literary authors (Anton Chekov, F.G. Snyder and Aleksey Tolstoy). Watching on Kanopy, we are presented with the original Italian audio and story structure for this seminal Bava film. Normally, I'd be all for something like that - I feel all films should be seen in their original audio/aspect ratio/etc. at least once, to get the full experience as originally intended. However, on the flip side, that also means that we don't get the original Boris Karloff audio in this version either, which becomes its own detriment to the film; if you're going to hire Boris Karloff and not let him speak, then what's the point? (I'm fine with losing the audio for pretty much all of the other non-Italian performers, for whatever that's worth.) Since this is an anthology film, it's probably best to rate each of the shorts individually:
All in all, the last short is really carrying the whole thing on its back, considering how tepid the first one is and how overlong the second one is. A shame that this film managed to waste Boris Karloff, but at least it managed to put its best face forward right at the end. It helps the whole affair, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just watch it independently instead. /5Watched so far: The Seed, Witchboard, The Visitor, Mad God, Eyes Without a Face, A Field in England, Dolly Dearest, Black Sabbath
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May 8, 2023 16:51
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 M3GAN There was a lot to like here. Overall I agree with a lot of the comments/buzz surrounding the film, i.e. that it's pretty straightforward and also fairly restrained. It gives you exactly what you'd expect from the premise, but it does it very well. It gets in and gets out, never in danger of wearing out it's welcome, and learns hard into the natural(or more accurately, unnatural) creepiness that comes with M3GAN's appearance and movements. There's also some decent comedy within the company and the various employees and executives that are trying to develop and market M3GAN. All in all a solidly entertaining little movie, but I'm definitely happy to hear that it's getting a sequel. I feel like there's a great base that was established here for like a Child's Play style escalation where they could really get weird and wild with it in the sequels. Hopefully with the confidence from this success they feel like they can get even more creative and not just give us more of the same. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 8, 2023 17:22
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#9: Still Screaming: The Ultimate Scary Movie Retrospective The bluray set I got with the first three Screams also came with two feature length documentaries, Still Screaming and Scream: The Inside Story. I turned The Inside Story off in the first five minutes. It was just all the standard pre-release media tour interviews, but edited together into a feature length thing with a voiceover. Not watching that. Still Screaming, on the other hand, was a proper retrospective. Clearly purpose-made interviews, interviews with not just the leads but also some of the side actors, a movie reviewer, and a quick bit with a memorabilia collector showing off the hero Ghostface suit from 3. Lots of fun tidbits, and very willing to admit when missteps were made. People, especially Jamie Kennedy, talk about how killing off Randy was a mistake, and there's a lot about the mess that was Scream 3. Not only did Columbine gently caress everything up, they couldn't get the writer of the first two Screams back because he had gotten so big off Scream that he was working on literally every American horror movie that came out between 1998 and 2002. And Neve Campbell was working on a TV show and shooting another movie at the same time, so there was super limited time she was available which is why Gale and Dewey have to hold up the first half of the movie. I especially enjoyed Scott Foley saying he didn't think the twist made sense and then it cutting to Wes Craven laughing and saying that, hey, it's not technically impossible. Not bad stuff to have on in the background as you do chores if your a fan of Scream or behind the scenes stuff.
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May 8, 2023 18:04
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15. Violence Voyager - 2018 バイオレンス・ボイジャー Directed by Ujicha 🎃 Drawn and Quartered 🎃  It's a battle between robot boy and mutant boy to determine whose childhood was more thoroughly destroyed in this goopy paper doll adventure. I have seen some strange movies and Violence Voyager is defintiely one of them. It's kind of a relief that it's (mostly) all drawings of body horror and it would be a real challenge to achieve any of this in three dimensions. 💀💀💀.5/5 Spooky May Spring Cleaning 7/13 1. Basket Case 2; 2. Basket Case 3: The Progeny; 3. 3 from Hell; 4. Attack of the Blind Dead; 5. The Ghost Galleon; 6. Night of the Seagulls, 7. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning GMM Challenges 6/13 1. Horror High - Bliss 2. Tales from the Cryptids - Mongolian Death Worm 3. Holy Terror - Incantation 4. Fresh Hell - The Pope’s Exorcist 5. Shooting Zombies - The Fall of the House of Usher 6. Drawn and Quartered - Violence Voyager 7. Woke in Fright 8. Second Chance 9. Challenge of the Dead 10. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things 11. It's-a Me! 12. History lesson - Evil Ed; Do You Like Hitchcock? 13. Geography Lesson Completed Collections * The Basket Case Trilogy 🧺🧺🧺/🧺🧺🧺 * The Firefly Collection 🤡🤡🤡/🤡🤡🤡 * The Blind Dead Collection ⛪⛪⛪⛪/⛪⛪⛪⛪ * The Ginger Snaps Collection 🐺🐺🐺/🐺🐺🐺
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May 8, 2023 20:33
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4. Event Horizon (1997) This kicked rear end. I really like the Hellraiser-rear end engine room, the goofy-but-threatening villain, the way most of my faves survived. There are also a couple different pop culture references I missed earlier in my life that I now understand, mostly regarding eyes and derelict spaceships—the Glykon Volatus exotic mission from Destiny 2 is just Event Horizon but with Darkness plants instead of…all that. I think I really only like scifi if it’s got a strong horror or fantasy or cowboy bend to it, and well: two out of three here!
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May 8, 2023 22:08
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#9: Scream 12. History lesson 2020sThis movie is called Scream, but it's also the fifth movie in the Scream series, and it's the second movie called Scream. So it would be correct to call it Scream, Scream 5, or Scream 2. Any of those are fine. It's quite good! The new cast is good and doesn't get completely overshadowed like in Scream 4. There is also a ton of gore. I don't know if this has the most stabbing of any Scream, but if it doesn't it's drat close. It does put Scream 4 in an awkward place, because Scream 4 was a way better Scream 3 than Scream 3 was, but it came after Scream 3 so it was also part of the way towards being what Scream 5 is. And since Scream 3 was so self-referential about being the end of a trilogy, and Scream 5 is clearly the start of a new trilogy, we're gonna have a franchise that's two trilogies and also Scream 4. Very strong Scream. A good refresh for the franchise, I'm excited to see Scream 6. But the term is soft seboot, not requel. Requel is a terrible word. Challenges in progress 12. History lesson: 1990s (The Relic) 2000s (The Mothman Prophecies) 2010s (Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 05: Preface True Story Of The Ghost Of Yotsuya) 2020s (Scream) 13. Geography Lesson: North America (The Relic) Asia (Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 05: Preface True Story Of The Ghost Of Yotsuya) Challenges complete 2: Tales from the Cryptids: Mothman Prophecies (because of mothman) 3. Holy Terror: Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi File 05: Preface True Story Of The Ghost Of Yotsuya (because of Shinto)
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May 8, 2023 23:07
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Suddenly in the Dark - 1981, Korea - Challenge #10 - Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (Could also count for #7) This was the best older, new to me movie I've watched in a long time! Mi-ok, a mysterious young girl with a spooky doll, is taken in to be a live-in maid for the family of a wealthy butterfly researcher. We follow Seon-hee, a lonely woman in a large house worrying about her husband's potential for infidelity while trying to set aside her own attraction to/fear of Mi-ok. Sexual shame, inescapable guilt, and constant anxiety: Seon-hee is on the verge of a breakdown and refuses help, spiraling deeper into paranoia and further isolating herself from her husband and daughter. Her obsession with Mi-ok eventually shifts to an obsession with her weird doll. Is it haunted? What does haunted even mean? There's some fun use of color lighting and weird cameras that, along with the score and witchiness, gave me Suspiria vibes. This movie is all Seon-hee's perspective, and when she gets disoriented, so do we. When she leers and then feels awful about taking a peek, that comes back on the audience too. One of those psychological horrors that's going to feel very different from person to person, but if you're like me and every moment is driven by guilt and anxiety this one will get under your skin! Bonus points for a good grocery store scene, always appreciate grocery moments in horror movies.
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May 9, 2023 04:57
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FYI anyone looking for a Drawn and Quartered contender, When the Wind Blows is on Youtube againcode:Takes No Damage fucked around with this message at 06:05 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 05:44
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The Night Eats the World (2018) -- Now you are just like me. I can't see someone namecheck multiple Gilliverse properties and not check out what they're selling, and in this case I definitely see where the comparisons come from. Hell yeah, playing out the zombie apocalypse like a survival horror roguelike 1. Manage your resources 2. Organize your inventory 3. Expand your territory Was pretty surprised when they didn't go full dark and have him kill the only other survivor he meets and then lol get unreliable narrator'd son  Actually more zombie action than I was expecting, something like this could have worked with almost no on-screen threats, but this was fine too. A good slow burn zombie apocalypse flick. ⚞💀Progress Tracker💀⚟ 01. Idle Hands 🎃History Lesson 1990s🎃 🎃Horror High🎃 02. Maniac Cop 🎃History Lesson 1980s🎃 03. Skinamarink 🎃History Lesson 2020s🎃 🎃Fresh Hell (released in North America in January)🎃 04. Ginger Snaps 🎃History Lesson 2000s🎃 05. The Night Eats the World 🎃History Lesson 2010s🎃
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May 9, 2023 08:13
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gey muckle mowser posted:
 #9. The Boxer's Omen (1983) (YouTube) A Hong Kong gangster gets swept up in the world of Buddhism and evil black magic when traveling to Thailand to avenger his brother, who was crippled in a boxing match. This was a wild, wild ride; it was also something of a jumbled mess, as the film kept changing its mind about what kind of movie it wanted to be every 20 minutes or so. We go from a Hong Kong martial arts pic to a revenge drama to an extended Buddhist-flavored mysticism movie to a weird horror fantasy battle back to a martial arts revenge pic back to the Buddhist mysticism and then finally into a big finale that basically jumbles together at least half of those elements into one protracted scene of man and Buddha vs. lady mummy and her army of evil critters. And I'm not even getting into the stuff that seemed to just happen for no reason - like, I still don't know why the evil magician sent out a bat in human form and then tried to summon its skeleton back, or why he got spider powers this one time, or why he tore off his own head and used his spinal column to try and strangle our hero, or how he managed to resurrect himself as a lady out of a mummy that got packed into a crocodile corpse. I spoiled all of that so that you can be caught by surprise if you've never seen this movie, but in all sincerity, I don't know I'm explaining even half of it correctly, or that it even matters. You're here for the experience, not the plot, and goddamn is this movie an experience. /5This also completes... gey muckle mowser posted:12. History lesson ...as I have watched films from the 1960s (Eyes Without a Face), 1980s (The Boxer's Omen), the 1990s (Dolly Dearest), the 2010s (A Field in England) and the 2020s (Mad God). Watched so far: The Seed, Witchboard, The Visitor, Mad God, Eyes Without a Face, A Field in England, Dolly Dearest, Black Sabbath, The Boxer's Omen
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May 9, 2023 15:19
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Class3KillStorm posted:
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May 9, 2023 15:27
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12. Bliss (2019) An aspiring artist struggles with creative block, and turns to super-powerful research chemicals as she spirals into hallucinogenic sex and violence as she starts craving blood. I really didn't enjoy this at all! It's slow, it's repetitive, every single character is incredibly loving annoying in a very true-to-life "the way someone on coke talks AT you" way, the movie itself is even hard to look at since every single scene is lit with neon light gels and nothing else while the camera whips around at weird angles and shots cut faster than any given Hollywood action movie seemingly to obscure you actually seeing anything. It wants so badly to be deep and insightful, but instead it feels like a particularly edgy student film in a bad way. At least it's goopy as gently caress. Counts for challenge #1: Horror High Watched so far: The Borderlands, Nosferatu (Shooting Zombies), Shed of the Dead (Challenge of the Dead), Djinn (Holy Terror), Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (Tales from the Cryptids), Dolly Dearest (Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things), A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (It's-a Me!), The Addams Family (Drawn and Quartered), White Dog (Woke in Fright), Scream 3 (Second Chance), There's Something Wrong with the Children (Fresh Hell), Bliss (Horror High) Total: 12/13
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May 9, 2023 15:38
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Movie #9: Saloum (2021) 3. Holy Terror "Revenge is like a river" Saloum is an extremely cool and unique blend of gangster stories, action and horror. Following a military coup, three mercenaries flee for Dakar escorting a Mexican drug lord. Their plane is forced to land in the Saloum delta of Senegal. One of the three is familiar with the place and suggests they seek shelter at a nearby encampment, where they can get food and the resources needed to fix their plane... and spooky consequences. African folklore and religion are definitely a topic that isn't tackled very often in horror movies, so it's very nice to see, especially when the movie is largely -- or maybe entirely -- made by people from the continent. The film is written and directed a Congolese and Senegalese and stars people who are either entirely, or part African. If it was a bunch of European or American people making a movie dealing heavily with issues like child soldiers and West-African religion, the result might feel ... I don't know, touristy? Exploitative? I'm not sure what the word I'm looking for here is, but when it's a bunch of people actually from the region making the movie, the result feels natural and authentic. Again, I'm kind of grasping to put into words a vague feeling in my head. Beyond this, Saloum is a very well made movie. The plot moves along at a break neck speed, but doesn't feel like it takes any shortcuts. Sure, as someone who isn't terribly familiar with Senegalese folk religion, some of the finer concepts and terms flew over my head, but the effect was crystal clear. When they show that one of the mercenaries is a shaman, we don't need to know any finer details to assume he has certain kinds of powers. And equally the finer points of Senegalese spirits and folkore aren't needed to understand that something happened here to release a bunch of evil spirits that were being held back previously, and now everyone's going to die horribly. And this kind of ties back to my previous point. This isn't a movie where some guy randomly picked Senegalese folk religion to make a movie out of and therefore wants to painstakingly explain to my cracker rear end what these wacky and exotic concepts mean, this is a movie by people who know these things just as if someone in the west made a movie about Satan. The acting is also really good across the board. Yann Gael is fantastic as the leader of the mercenaries, and Evelyne Ily Juhen does aw real good job as a deaf and mute woman who communicates only through sign and body language -- which our mercenaries also happen to be fluent in, and therefore significant portions of the movie take place entirely in sign language. In fact just about the only thing that I wasn't crazy about are the visual effects, and more specifically the spirits themselves. I really wish they'd given them the Jaws treatment and only shown us glimpses of them, instead of plastering them all over the movie for the second half, because they don't look amazing. But overall Saloum was an extremely pleasant surprise. I wanted to watch an African horror movie for the Geography Lesson meta challenge, and this was easily available (Americans can watch it on Shudder), so it won by default, and I'm glad it did. Definitely worth watching! The Best Part: I want to shout out the cinematography, which is very inventive and gives the movie a ton of style. We've got very long range top down drone shots showing off the Saloum delta, the action scenes are shot in a very kinetic style, and a bunch of shots that are just very beautiful. / 5My May 2023 Movies: 1. Black Friday!, 2. Hood of the Living Dead, 3. Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron, 4. Psycho (1960), 5. Mandy, 6. Knock at the Cabin, 7. Suburban Sasquatch, 8. Bay of Blood, 9. Saloum Challenges Completed: 1. Horror High (Mandy) 2. Tales from the Cryptids (Suburban Sasquatch) 3. Holy Terror (Saloum) 4. Fresh Hell (Knock at the Cabin) 5. Shooting Zombies (Psycho) 6. Drawn and Quartered (Hellboy Animated) 9. Challenge of the Dead (Hood of the Living Dead) 11. It's-a-Me! (Bay of Blood) History Lesson (Complete): Psycho (1960), Bay of Blood (1971), Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007), Mandy (2018), Knock at the Cabin (2023) Geography Lesson: (3/5): North America (Psycho), Europe (Bay of Blood), Africa (Saloum) Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 20:18 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 16:40
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O hey we used the same random image for Saloum.
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May 9, 2023 17:11
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Xiahou Dun posted:O hey we used the same random image for Saloum. Hah, small world! Also seconding what you said: the soundtrack is excellent and brings a ton of atmosphere, especially to the sweeping high altitude drone shots. And definitely keeping an eye on the director's future movies.
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May 9, 2023 17:22
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 10:46 |
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Hah, small world! I really want to see them do more of an action-dark comedy thing at some point. Like if instead of evil spirits it went all Three Kings.
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May 9, 2023 17:26
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