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Basebf555 posted:
Revenge is the best movie in Hammer's Frankenstein series, but considering how quickly the diminishing returns set in after this, I don’t know if I could go for 15 more no matter how great Cushing is in the role...
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Oct 4, 2023 18:52
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6. Village of the Damned After a mysterious phenomenon causes an entire town to pass out in unison, ten women wake up to find themselves pregnant. All but one are born healthy, but the mothers soon find out that that their new babies are magic psychic babies with a vague disinterest with humankind. Kirstie Alley is also a scientist and Superman is a doctor. That's about it. John Carpenter is always a solid choice for horror, and even though this is by far the worst of what I've seen from him, it's still pretty much okay. I really like the concept, but the whole thing is pretty goofy. Like, I get that the kids are all magic, but I'm still pretty sure I could just take care of them with an aluminum bat. I can't really recommend this one because there's not much going on with it. Even still, it's Carpenter, so at the very least it's not bad. 3/5 7. Tales From the Hood   Bite-Sized HorrorHIFE POCThree small time criminals show up at a funeral home to pick up a cache of lost drugs, but instead are met by the eccentric funeral home director who tells them of four stories: A political activist is murdered by the police, but one of the officers, crippled with grief, begins to receive orders from the murder victim. A small child changes schools and befriends his teacher who soon becomes concerned with the child's tale of a monster who abuses him at night. A racist politician moves into a former plantation that was the scene of a brutal massacre and soon finds out that the murdered souls may still be around. A violent criminal is sent to jail for murder but is offered a chance to join a bizarre rehabilitation program which may be more trouble than it's worth. I don't know why, but I always thought this movie was a comedy. All the stories are pretty good, and as far as morality tales go, these are all superb. They really captured that EC Comics feel. The only weak element besides some dodgy looking special effects at the end was the final story. It's the most shocking of the four, but it feels a bit rushed and I feel like the third story was a more natural end point. Other than that, I really liked everything. 4/5 challenges: Freddy Vs. Jason Horror Adjancent Birth of Horror Box Art Exorcist at 50 Bite Sized Horror New-to-You 6/6 History Lesson 4/5 (1970's, 1980's, 1990's, 2020's) HIFE: Women HIFE: POC
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Oct 4, 2023 19:18
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Gyro Zeppeli posted:He can be in any other number of movies, he will forever be Frank from Return of the Living Dead. After watching ROTLD (and ROTLD 2) so much, it was weird as hell seeing him as a general in Invaders from Mars.
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Oct 4, 2023 19:56
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#11: Assignment: Terror (1970) (rewatch) Aliens try to create an army of spook-a-doodles to rule mankind and you'll never guess what happens next. Aliens from the planet Ummo want our planet but they want us to go away. So they decide to scare us to death by making an army of Draculas, Frankensteins, Mummies, and Wolf Men. (The Golem is name-checked but must have had a better agent than the others.) So it's basically an intergalactic version of a Scooby-Doo plot. The wolfman they choose to experiment on ends up being Waldemar Daninsky, Paul Naschy's star-crossed lycanthrope and star of like a dozen Eurosleaze monster flicks. This movie is a lot of fun, a monster mash with a veneer of swinging 60s spy stuff. It's obvious that a lot of stuff that should have been filmed wasn't, but the dreamy vibe that was common in Italian/Spanish horror flicks of this vintage helps smooth out the narrative rough spots. It's about style, not substance. /5October Challenge Tally 1. Trick 'r Treat (2007) 2. Motel Hell (1980) 3. TerrorVision (1986) 4. Halloween Kills (2021) 5. Nightmare City (1980) 6. Spookies (1986) 7. Dawn of the Mummy (1981) 8. Halloween Ends (2022) 9. Demons (1985) 10. Demons 2 (1986) 11. Assignment: Terror (1970)
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Oct 4, 2023 20:09
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 #23.) The Spell (2019; digital; dir. Amit Dubey) A young married couple moves into the husband's empty family home, but strange occurrences spoil the idyllic setting. Kind of a stock haunting film, aside from the emphasis on water as the manifestation medium, but at the same time, there's no major fumbles in the telling. The cause for the haunting can be guessed fairly early on (and the poster doesn't exactly hold its cards close), but the sense of atmosphere is decent, as is the acting, and the film gets a lot of use out of its one setting. Things start to drag well before the resolution, but it's still cool to see room for this sort of film in the Cambodia movie industry. “What are you doing in the pool at this hour?” Rating: 6/10
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Oct 4, 2023 20:12
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Greekonomics posted:After watching ROTLD (and ROTLD 2) so much, it was weird as hell seeing him as a general in Invaders from Mars. He showed up in an episode of Seinfeld my girlfriend was watching and she didn't understand why I was so pumped. I definitely feel like we should expand the "that guy" category next year though. Off the top of my head you could add Tom Atkins, John Saxon, James Karen, and Cameron Mitchell.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:17
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Biff Rockgroin posted:He showed up in an episode of Seinfeld my girlfriend was watching and she didn't understand why I was so pumped. The idea with That Guy was that each year(assuming I keep doing this or whoever does it wants to continue using That Guy) would feature two new people. Or maybe three, if we feel like two is too limiting. But I didn't want to throw out a whole list of people, I wanted Dick Miller and Keith David to have the spotlight this year and then in future years we move on to others. Obviously I thought about actresses as well, but I had a hard time coming up with actresses who were in a bunch of horror movies but who also weren't legitimate Scream Queen icons. Like, Jamie Lee Curtis and Barbara Crampton and Linnea Quigley aren't under the radar character actors in the same way that a Dick Miller is. With a little more time to think it over I'm sure we could come up with some actress options though.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:26
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3. Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) "I am going to give you immortality!" The opening of a new wax museum in the States coincides with a rash of disappearances from the morgue. A female gumshoe reporter works to discover the connection between the two locales, as the troubled, maimed proprietor of the museum obsesses over her roomie– who resembles his greatest work which was destroyed in a London fire years before. Michael Curtiz was really amazing. I love this movie. Mystery of the Wax Museum has the same saturated green look as Curtiz's 1932 Doctor X, albeit with a larger budget, multiple angles (scores of great reaction shots in this one), wonderful dolly work, and angular art direction (more great work from Anton Grot) that today looks a lot like the Tim Burton aesthetic. The fist fights and editing are also top notch. Like Doctor X, this one also stars Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray in legendary form.  nice stairs, dude   
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Oct 4, 2023 20:28
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Biff Rockgroin posted:He showed up in an episode of Seinfeld my girlfriend was watching and she didn't understand why I was so pumped. I believe the idea is for "That Guy" to feature different actors each challenge. Dick Miller and Keith David are just the inaugural choices. I think I even had Saxon on my shortlist of additional choices when Basebf555 wanted to expand the field from just Dick Miller (my initial pitch). EDIT: See the above response from the man himself.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:28
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Cameron Mitchell is a good one though, I wouldn't have thought of him.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:33
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Basebf555 posted:Obviously I thought about actresses as well, but I had a hard time coming up with actresses who were in a bunch of horror movies but who also weren't legitimate Scream Queen icons. Like, Jamie Lee Curtis and Barbara Crampton and Linnea Quigley aren't under the radar character actors in the same way that a Dick Miller is. With a little more time to think it over I'm sure we could come up with some actress options though. Maybe Karen Black or Mary Woronov? I'm always happy whenever Woronov shows up in something I'm watching.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:40
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4. Them! (1954) You’re gonna think I’m bragging but I swear I’m not: these ants are actually really small to me. It’s funny to watch a SF movie from the 1950s, an era where it was possible to be a hot woman named “Pat”, which I’m not sure I’ve ever done before; prior to seeing this one namedropped in this thread I think the closest I’d come was the various trailers at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater in Disney World. I like how much of this is lowkey detective work, until such time as we’ve recruited the experts and got the troops in on it. It’s not scary obviously—giant monster movies are not slashers or whatever, they’re fun silly spectacles—but there’s a ton to like here if your brain hasn’t been ruined by the intervening 70 years. *~*~*~*~*~*~
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Oct 4, 2023 20:46
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Basebf555 posted:Cameron Mitchell is a good one though, I wouldn't have thought of him. Oh yeah he'd be perfect for this.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:52
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1. NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU (2023) Underwhelming and dull. Although the aliens contort themselves like circus acrobats and extend their limbs, the aliens are stuck within the confines of the generic ‘grey’ design that has been exhausted from overuse. "Uh oh..." was my reaction when I saw the not-so-great CGI reveal early in the film. And let’s say the aliens had cool original designs – well, that’s doesn’t rescue the movie from its redundancy. How many times are these incompetent ETs going to let a 16-year-old girl kick them in the face? A generous analysis can include the theme of trauma, but this is unearned and superficial. I liked the dance number at the end. Not a poorly made film, it just needed some meat on its bones. Mostly it came across as a special effects demo reel before a guy makes a real movie. SCORE: 5.9 / 10 *** 2. SE7EN (1995)  Hadn’t seen this for at least a decade. I was surprised by my reaction - the tricks and shortcuts of the screenwriting become apparent upon a rewatch. The characters are like logical machines reaching their designated fates. “We can’t land because of those wires!” exclaims a police helicopter pilot hovering over the grand conclusion, unable to intervene. Brad Pitt is extraordinarily dumb throughout, which serves its final purpose to the glee of the villain, who has orchestrated everything so perfectly. This was 1995. Earlier that year before Se7en’s release date, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma white supremacist terrorist who killed over one hundred people, also attempted to “change the world”. A fascination with Lone Wolf masterminds was big at that time. That’s not to say Se7en isn’t impeccably made. The grim cinematography and Fincher’s style elevate what could be a Law & Order episode – an opinion I also have about Dennis Villeneuve’s Prisoners (2013). And this is arguably Morgan Freeman’s best performance – usually he is a supporting actor, but here does a lot of load-bearing. It is, of course, gross - even by today's standards if you ask me – here are the blueprints to the Saw franchise. Intellectual, not so much. There’s a quote about Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, on how the book hit people’s stomachs but not their heads (or was it hearts?). The same can be said of Se7en. Besides, we all know that Zodiac is Fincher’s masterpiece.  SCORE: 7. 4 / 10 Mokelumne Trekka fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 20:53
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Biff Rockgroin posted:He showed up in an episode of Seinfeld my girlfriend was watching and she didn't understand why I was so pumped. Clu Gulager, Michael Gough, Franco Nero, Michael Ironside, Sid Haig I thought Zelda Rubenstein would have been a good choice for the actress side but turns out she's only really been in the Poltergeist series and Teen Witch in terms of spooky flicks.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:55
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Russian Guyovitch posted:It’s finally the most wonderful time of year. I’m in for 31 new viewings and I grabbed lucky 13 for a bingo card. https://mfbc.us/m/rsgk447/13 Okay, time to get started on the reviews before I start falling behind. I'm starting off with bingo card number 13.  1. Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein – FREDDY VS. JASON 20TH ANNIVERSARY – (Watched on Prime) Bud Abbot and Lou Costello star as shipping agents Chick and Wilbur. One day, Wilbur receives a call from noted werewolf Larry Talbot warning him against making a delivery to the local house of horrors, but Chick and the attraction's owner are insistent upon delivery. It turns out that the two crates in question contain Count Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, and as soon as Wilbur and Chick get them unboxed, hijinks ensue. Your level of enjoyment on this is going to be entirely dependent on your tolerance for 1940's slapstick comedy. For me, that's pretty high, so I had a blast with this. It's got everything: a spooky castle full of secret doors, a bunch of spooky occurrences happening to Wilbur right after Chick leaves the room, and a record setting number of full moons in the course of one week. On top of all of that, it ends with a special treat: an uncredited voice cameo from Vincent Price as the Invisible Man! If this is the sort of thing you can go for, it's a fun, dumb way to kill eighty minutes. Meta Challenges – New-to-You 1/6; History Lesson (1940's) 1/5; Around the World (North America) 1/4 2. Mosquito – WHEN ANIMALS OF UNUSUAL SIZE ATTACK – (Watched on Shudder) An alien space craft crashes into a swamp near a campground in a remote state park, where the local mosquito population begins to feed on the remains of the sole occupant. Shortly thereafter, mosquitoes the size of large dogs begin to terrorize the campground and everyone else in the surrounding area. This movie is exactly the sort of thing I would have expected to see on USA Up All Night back when I was a kid. It's cheap looking, has terrible writing, and the actors are all abysmal. I kept expecting to Gilbert Godfried pop in to make fun of it as we returned from a commercial break. Still, it knows it's trash and is pretty unapologetic about it, and wastes no time getting down to business. While you can do a lot better, it at least has some level of charm to it. Meta Challenges – New-to-You 2/6; History Lesson (1990's) 2/5 3. Kill List – CineD HORROR THREAD POLL – (Watched on Shudder) A quasi-retired hitman gets pulled back to work when money starts drying up at home, causing tension between himself and his wife. He's given a list of three targets, and sets about to work, but as he works his way through the list, he finds himself drawn into a disturbing underworld network connected to society's elites. Pulled from the “I've got to return these videotapes” list of the best of horror for the current century, I expected a little bit of a slow burn when I saw it was a Ben Wheatley film. Once it got going, however, it moved along at a fairly quick pace. It feels like the intersection of a more modern, action-oriented crime thriller with the old school, slow-burn folk horror. It's an overall good and unsettling time. Meta Challenges – New-to-You 3/6; History Lesson (2010's) 3/5; Around the World (Europe) 2/4 4. The Mutilator -BACK OF THE VIDEO STORE – (Watched on Shudder) As a young boy, Ed is cleaning his father's many hunting rifles as a surprise for his father's birthday. One goes off, however, killing his mother. Cut to years later, when Ed is at college and receives a call that his father needs him to go close up his beachfront condo for the winter. He and his friends decide to make a long weekend of it for their fall break, and six of them pack into Ed's old convertible to go party for the weekend. Unknown to them, however, is the fact that Ed's father is lying in wait, having had an alcohol-induced psychotic break. When I saw this challenge, I knew exactly which movie I would pick. The box art for this one always jumped out to me as a kid, and it's stayed seared in my brain for over three decades now. I mean, just look at it:  That box art and the box art for The Corpse Grinders always freaked me out when I was little. Now it's finally time to watch one of them. This gets the mood set right away by having *checks notes*... the most upbeat song possible play over the opening credits, a song custom written for this film. It's as though the song writer only saw the original title (“Fall Break”) and just assumed this was a comedy about a bunch of teens on vacation. That the producers kept it in the film is quite the choice. As for the rest of it, it's a fairly by the numbers early slasher with a no-name cast that can't quite carry the sub-par script. There is some fun practical effects work done on some of the kills, but there's not much that separates this one from the pack. Meta Challenges – New-to-You 4/6; History Lesson (1980's) 4/5 5. Piranha – THAT GUY DICK MILLER – (Watched on Peacock) A skip-tracer looking for a pair of missing hikers in rural Texas enlists the help of a local to guide her. He takes her to an abandoned military research facility that turns out to have been experimenting on piranha to allow them to adapt to colder waterways. When the skip-tracer drains a pool at the facility looking for the bodies of the missing hikers, she unknowingly releases the killer fish into the nearby river. It's now a race against time to save the lives of everyone downstream. This is a schlocky creature feature that has a fair amount of talent behind it, including effects work from a young James Cameron and a performance from “that guy” Dick Miller as the greedy owner of a river-based aquatic resort. This is definitely trying to evoke Jaws at points, particularly during the attack on the resort. So much so that it actually winds up feeling more like the novel Jaws, given the extraneous corrupt investor subplot to explain why the resort doesn't heed the warning they receive. All in all, Piranha isn't what I'd call a good movie, but it is fun. Meta Challenges – New-to-You 5/6; History Lesson (1970's) 5/5 6. The Pope's Exorcist – THE EXORCIST 50TH ANNIVERSARY – (Watched on Netflix) The official exorcist of the Vatican, Father Gabriele Amorth, is sent to the ruins of an ancient abbey in Sevile, Spain, where the young son of the owner has begun exhibiting signs of possession. To save the boy's soul, and his own, Father Amorth will have to get to the bottom of a mystery the Vatican has covered up for centuries. Come for Russell Crowe riding a Vespa around Rome, stay for a fun little possession movie. I could have done without some of the whitewashing of the Spanish Inquisition, but otherwise it's got a good buddy cop vibe to it that I enjoyed. Definitely worth a watch. Meta Challenge – New-to-You 6/6 Six movies in and I've completed 6 individual challenges, 2 meta challenges and have 1 bingo.  Now I need to pick up the pace to catch up with some folks that are already up in the twenties and thirties.
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Oct 4, 2023 21:08
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) Did you think remakes was some kind of modern studio gimmick to milk money off a known property? Nope! This one is a remake of the 1931 version, using star power to draw you in. The result, a damned fine romantic drama. I would compare this one to the 2018 remake of 1977:s Suspiria. You take the same script and mold it to the times, creating a new story in the process. By this time the Hays code was in full effect, so much of the shenanigans Jekyll/Hyde was able to get away with in 1931 no longer could be used in film. The morality of debauchery in the 1920:s version and the religious commentary in the 1930:s one has given way to a more neutral stance on the science of good and evil. Where Jekyll's drive in 1920 was to allow his emotional life to flourish, in 1930 to suppress it to fit in, in this version his motivation is a purely scientific one. To separate evil from good, in order to heal people. Spencer Tracy plays Dr. Jekyll perfectly, romantic in human emotions yet healthily sceptical of the ethics and religious signification of research into the nature of good and evil. Ingrid Bergman plays the victim of Hyde's savage behaviour, but a lot more attention is given to her relationship with Dr. Jekyll than in the previous version. Tracy plays Mr. Hyde as a prankster, someone you would ignore and hope they would go away. His aggressiveness is rather subtle, and creeps up on you. The special effects and makeup has bees scaled down, in favor of letting the cast shine in their performance. Beautifully shot with some rather raunchy expressionistic imagery during Jekyll/Hyde transformation scenes. At 110 minutes, it's 22 minutes too long for the perfect running time a horror movie, but as a violent romantic drama, it's perfect.  HISTORY LESSON 3/5
Lamanda fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 21:56
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8. Psychic Vision Jaganrei Really dug this. Definitely an early stage found footage but you see a lot of the stuff that goes to be staples of the subgenre (a figure in the background repeatedly, and one of my favs reshowing the spooky background stuff with a freeze frame). It's fairly low key, spending almost all of its time on the journalist stuff before smacking hard with the ghost stuff. Felt bad for the idol. She didn't deserve it! 3.5/5
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Oct 4, 2023 21:59
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 6.The Long Weekend dir. Colin Eggelston (1978)  A heartwarming tale of animals getting revenge. It's kind of comical just how much littering and environmental damage Peter and Marcia (mostly Peter, really) do throughout this at basically every opportunity, it would be over the top if I didn't know from experience some people are just Like That. In another life Peter is the kid chopped down the sycammore gap tree. The copy Kanopy had is pretty low res but I still enjoyed the photography, some nice sun drenched horror visuals. Neither the bitter relationship drama or scares were too amazing but the setting and subject matter give it a unique vibe that I enjoyed. I give it /5, and a trash bag to clean up after yourself when you go camping. No unique challenges for this one, I already have the lists challenge done (this is in the bracketology) and the animals are regular sized, but for meta I have another continent for Around the World and another new to me.  Challenges Completed (4/13): CineD Horror thread poll GOAT Goats (Tapes list), Horror Adjacent, That Guy (Keith David), Exorcist 50th anniversary  Meta Challenges (12/18): New to Me (4/6), Around the World (3/4, Europe/Asia/Australia) History Lesson (5/5, 2000s/1950s/2010s/1980s/1990s) Horror's For Everyone (0/3) Bingo card 22  gey muckle mowser posted:Exorcist III is one of my favorite movies (I chose it as the CineD movie of the month a few years ago), glad to see you liked it too. The theatrical cut is definitely the one to watch first - the “Director’s cut” is interesting as a curiosity but isn’t really a finished film. Any scenes not in the theatrical are taken from workprints and look/sound like poo poo, it’s super jarring especially because the everything else looks really nice. It has some good and interesting stuff in it (more Brad Dourif, the original ending that isn’t a tacked-on exorcism) but even if it were finished I think I’d still prefer the theatrical. Switching between Dourif and Jason Miller is just super cool IMO and I actually like the exorcism stuff even though it feels like it’s taken from a different movie. That's good to hear, glad that I didn't rob myself of a good experience but still have something interesting to check out later.
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Oct 4, 2023 22:02
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2. Pearl (2022) I watched X as part of last year's challenge, and was fairly whelmed by it. Well-made, but a fairly standard slasher flick with the gimmick that the villain is personally similar to the Final Girl and is played by the same actor to boot. I decided to hold off on the sequel for this year's challenge; I had it on good authority from horror thread regulars that it was the better of the two. They were right. I loved this one. Everything about it is incongruous, deliberately and in the best way. The soaring, epic score and the vibrant colors of the world are a good match for the delusional fantasies Pearl imagines for herself in the midst of the horrible, oppressive social situation of 1918 brought on by WWI and the Influenza pandemic. Stress brought on by isolation, poverty, a strict mother, an ill father, an absent husband and anti-German sentiment due to the war he went off to gradually drives her deeper into her fantasies until it becomes murderous insanity. The opening sequence shows she's well along the way already, and her extended monologue near the end eloquently expresses how she got to the point she was at and points to a great deal of self-awareness, which makes it all the more tragic. The incongruous nature of the film also helps lighten the mood a bit. The opening scene's resolution, the (excellent, by the way) dance sequence, and the Police Squad-esque final shot of the movie all gave me a good chuckle, only to immediately come back to how horrible it all actually is. It's great stuff, and riveting in a way X wasn't. It's also very on point as a Pandemic movie. While ostensibly about the last major one, the movie wears on its sleeve the fact that it's really about the current pandemic and the effects it has had on people at both individual and societal levels. I can't do justice to how effective it gets the point across, you'll have to see it for yourself and I recommend you do so. It's really good. I was initially not going to rate it this high, but after thinking it over more, I'm giving this one 5/5. Fulfills CineD HORROR THREAD POLL CHALLENGE ("I have to return some videotapes" list) 
Meaty Ore fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 22:03
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Basebf555 posted:Obviously I thought about actresses as well, but I had a hard time coming up with actresses who were in a bunch of horror movies but who also weren't legitimate Scream Queen icons. Like, Jamie Lee Curtis and Barbara Crampton and Linnea Quigley aren't under the radar character actors in the same way that a Dick Miller is. With a little more time to think it over I'm sure we could come up with some actress options though. maybe Lin Shaye?
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Oct 4, 2023 22:12
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gey muckle mowser posted:maybe Lin Shaye? Dee Wallace crops up in a lot of horror movies without necessarily being there as a scream queen. These days it seems PJ Soles does a lot of “_____’s Mom” roles.
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Oct 4, 2023 22:19
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Danielle Harris. 
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Oct 4, 2023 22:48
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5) Honeydew (2020) A vegan couple who hate each other and are out camping wind up having to stay at the home of an old woman who seems not entirely there. Is there something in the grain that could be driving folks a little loopy? This is one of those movies that would absolutely call itself elevated horror. The percussive soundtrack is incredibly overbearing, and jumps in constantly to tell you how to feel about what you’re seeing. It gets really distracting by about 5 minutes in, but then you have 115 to go. Overlong, overwrought, and about as welcome as the Lena Dunham cameo in 2020. 1.5 “oh we’re removed from slasher trash”s out of 5 6) Legend of the Lizard Man (2023) A young man and his family suffer an attack by the lizard man. 30 years later, a group of friends come to town to investigate the lizard man for themselves. This is just a bizarrely bad movie. It feels like it was written by a child, or like a Nickelodeon movie that has curse words. The acting and dialogue are incredibly bad. Apparently some of the actors were locals to the town which actually had the original lizard man sighting. This movie is very boring throughout. I guess it also feels like a perfect movie for the MST3K treatment. 2 “based on a true story”s out of 5
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Oct 4, 2023 22:56
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 32) Repulsion - 1965 - Tubi I first saw this decades back on cable when I was in my teens. Either American Movie Classics or Turner Classic Movies, and they were making a big deal about it being the first time being aired on TV/Cable. I'd never heard of it so I gave it a go. I was incredibly bored and ended up flipping through the TV guide for anything else to sit through. Revisiting it again, now that I'm older and more life experience under the belt I was at least able to finish watching the film, but it was just okay, I guess. It's a well made film, but it just didn't click with me. On some posters, there's the text about "The nightmare world of a Virgin's dreams becomes the screen's shocking reality!!", which I do take issue with since Carol's definitely got issues exacerbated by solitude and men whether from misandry or untreated PTSD from abuse. Mentioning virgin status is a misleading thing setting the image of older virgins having something mentally wrong going on. Choosing to remain a virgin for whatever reason still falls under Her Body-Her Choice. I don't really see recommending this to most aside from those who really get into the psychological themes.  33) Videodrome - 1983 - Peacock I really don't know of anyone other than Cronenberg who could've pulled this one off. He's the master of body horror that makes you think, and Videodrome does make you think. The questions Videodrome brings up are still relevant to the point of they could remake this swapping out cable channels with internet channels. The plot follows the head of a extreme cable channel coming across a program called Videodrome and starts investigating when it's apparently showing real snuff type videos. Things go off the rails and get really weird after that. It does bring to question the interest in watching sex and violence. Thing is, our species has always had an interest in watching that whether it takes the form of gladiator arenas, public executions, or even rubbernecking with accidents on the road. Introduction of publicly available Internet hasn't changed a thing. I remember the early internet days with Rotten.com, Ogrish, and SteakandCheese. As far as the snuff angle goes, I do believe they exist, but they're in the hands of the extremely rich and/or dangerous who've got them secured. They wouldn't be turning up on a cable channel or even the deep web. Claiming they're an urban legend or myth just helps some sleep at night. So, that brings us to the question of how much is too much? On one end of the spectrum, you've got me who's sat through a ton of horror films, watched a load of true crime stuff, and saw plenty of medical grossness when I was studying to go into the medical field to the point I've rewired my fear response to where my friends and co-workers regularly say when something crazy's going on to look at me since we'll be fine unless I'm actually panicking. On the other end of the spectrum, we have things like a study that was done when Power Rangers was getting big that claimed the show was so dangerous that just one episode made children violent because the kids were yelling and imitating the characters. It wasn't until the study went up for peer review that it came out the children selected for the study were all from homes where the parents refused to have a TV, and when the kids did watch something on TV, it was limited to educational PBS shows. It was probably the mental equivalent of someone only knowing bland boiled food all their life suddenly introduced to seasoning and flavor. Back to the question, I'd say it depends on the individual and even then, there's a ton of variables at play. What's too much for one person, might not be for another. All that said, Videodrome's worth a watch. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
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Oct 4, 2023 23:30
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My favorite review of Videodrome was from my friend Brooks, who said "very yucky! makes my brain feel like it's moving while I watch it. a good movie". My personal favorite part of it is how just-outside-of-reality it is. The food bank sponsored by a church of cathode rays. Such a strange nightmare setting.
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Oct 4, 2023 23:38
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 Bonus Challenge #3: Freddy vs. JasonMeta Challenge #1: History Lessons (3 / 5)4. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)  Watched On: Crave (Canada) This was a big deal for me when it came out in the summer of 2003. I got into horror movies HARD in high school and spent my senior year bingeing Jason and Freddy movies. Knowing that a crossover between Freddy and Jason was finally happening was unreal after years of hopes and wishes. You see, when New Line Cinema acquired Friday the 13th from Paramount in the early 90s this was a possibility. It even got teased at the end of Jason Goes to Hell when a bladed hand reaches out of the ground and pulls Jason’s mask in while you hear a ghastly laugh. This all happened when I was a kid but participating in horror movie discussion online in high school brought me up to speed. So much online speculation over who would win or if it would just end in a stalemate the movie ends up leaving it ambiguous instead which I felt was the right move. My God was it a treat seeing this one and it still holds up. It has a LOT of wink-wink nods to the cheesiness of 80s slashers knowing it’s now 2003 and all the tropes are known. Yeah, Jason murders counsellors who are busy shagging while kids are drowning, etc. The film made the VERY controversial decision of re-casting Jason because they wanted a more sympathetic Jason and less of a brutal one that Kane Hodder brought. I mean, I get it because the story required Jason to be manipulated by Freddy posing as his mother so they needed that “kid inside” to come out via his eyes. Didn’t make sense to me as a teenager but I see their angle now. It attaches itself mostly to the Friday the 13th continuity of Freddy being dead since The Final Nightmare. Jason existed in the same universe just doing his thing (though clearly before he went into space) and Freddy seeing opportunity begins the manipulation. You see, if he makes people believe that he’s back via vicious murders he will regain his strength. Which makes me believe this was a split timeline thing but maybe I’m overthinking this. The adults since then have been attempting to prevent Freddy again (there is a lot of post-9/11 themes in works from the 00s and this one is no exception) by institutionalising kids who have “nightmares” and suppressing their dreams. There-in begins the ethical debate of how far you’d go to prevent something but not ever truly “knowing” if it would happen again. Things spiral out of control once Jason gets his bloodlust on and Freddy gets jealous losing control. Overall, yeah this is a cheesy film but it knows what it is. It has the slasher teenager tropes (even a stoner character who just shows up without a purpose) and bad acting and head-shaking melodrama. But you don’t watch something like this for that you watch it for big match-up which it delivers. /4Total: 1. The Samhain Challenge, 2. The Toxic Avenger (1984), 3. Se7en (1995), 4. Freddy vs. Jason (2003) Spooky Bingo Card  Bonus Challenge The Samhain Challenge: The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III (1992), The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VI (1995). The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VIII (1997) Horror Adjacent: Se7en (1995) Freddy vs. Jason: Freddy vs. Jason (2003) Meta Challenge History Lesson (3 / 5): (1980s - Toxic Avenger, 1990s - Se7en, 2000s - Freddy vs. Jason) ---------------- Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Oct 4, 2023 |
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Oct 4, 2023 23:50
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Splint Chesthair posted:Clu Gulager, Michael Gough, Franco Nero, Michael Ironside, Sid Haig
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Oct 4, 2023 23:51
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 5)Freddy's Dead:The Final Nightmare ChallengesPicnic in Space NEW-TO-YOU 4/6HISTORY LESSON 90sFirst, picnic in space because it's set in the indeterminate future of ten years later, so approximately late nineties/early aughts. Crime ridden cities full of delinquents straight out of the Double Dragon movie. A future wherein Freddy has won-killed all the kids on elm street, and the remaining adults are all mad. He wants more children, and sends an amnesiac to a group home because...well the added lore doesn't make a whole lot of sense,(the timeline doesn't really add up) and it really doesn't take much advantage of its future timelineAnd while there's some very dark implications in the set up and the film in general, Freddy is at his most cartoonish. Englund is having a blast, probably because this was set to be the last of these. There's very much a disconnect between the setup and the complete cartoon Freddy's become doesn't really work especially when it comes to one of the kid's sexual abuse. That said I enjoyed it more than part 5. It's dumb, but pretty entertaining, if just for Englund, even if it's mostly wastes it's premises' opportunity. It's also filmed in 3D and gets pretty egregious in parts. And if anyone really objects, I won't use picnic in space. Just found it funny that it goes out of it's way to be in a near future hellscape, but decides not do anything with it. /51)My Little eye 2)Terrifier 2 3)A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:The Dream Master 4)A Nightmare on Elm Street 5-The dream child 5)Freddy’s Dead The Final Nightmare 
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Oct 4, 2023 23:55
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I'm in again this year for 31 and as many challenges as I can knock out along the way! Thank you Basebf555 for organizing. 1. Prince of Darkness (1987) A bunch of unwitting grad students are brought to a semi-abandoned church to do scientific research on some devil poo poo, only to start getting possessed and picked off one by one. Prince of Darkness is a fun little satanic slasher. There are early ruminations by characters on how the universe's operating principles harbor unnerving violations of the common sense we expect from reality, which don't pan out to very much by the end. It's just a way for the script to wedge a sliver of creepiness into scientific rationalism before we get sinister green goop and swarms of insects. That opening wedge gets worked upon by the real muscle of the film: John Carpenter's synth score! It is tuned so perfectly for the sense of a steadily building rhythm beneath the early phases of the cast puttering around setting up computers and instruments in an evil place. Then spacier, unearthly elements start to take over as things start getting nuts. It binds what could have been messy or silly into an effective, pulsing machine.   .5 / 5Challenges: Horror Thread Poll Challenge, History Lesson: 1980s, New-to-Me #1  2. Dracula Untold (2014) The origin of Dracula imagined as a mash-up of Game of Thrones and superpowers. Luke Evans is Vlad the Impaler, the ruler of Transylvania in the 1400s, but his country's independence is shaky. As a boy he was given as a hostage to the Ottoman Empire and treated cruelly, now as a grown man he must respond to the Turks who are throwing their military might around and demanding that Vlad give up his own son in the same way. Negotiations break down, Vlad seeks out a legendary vampire living within a mountaintop for the power to defend his family, and after striking a devil's bargain, soon he's transforming into bat swarms and facing down thousand-man armies on the battlefield singlehandedly. Dracula Untold has a reputation as a real turkey and so I was surprised to find myself drawn in and rooting for it! The scene where Evans confronts Charles Dance desiring the strength of a monster is electric, Dance's performance has such an austere brutality that he deserves a starring role in a more classical Dracula film of his own. There's some fine visual touches, too, like the way the vampire's blood on Evans' sword smolders and flakes off the metal once held in the light of the sun. The problems start after Evans is transformed into a creature of the night. He gets a scene that is unmistakably cribbed from every other screenplay with a "superhero discovers their powers" beat. In the first battle where we're expecting Gothic darkness to be unleashed, it is instead the kind of shaky-cam yelling brawl that has not a glimmer of visual splendor. Just rote action, rote camerawork, not even a 300's worth of kinetic creativity. And painfully, Dracula Untold mostly stays in that mode, bland fighting and Evans playing agitated. But this flick does rip 300's tone of orientalist fearmongering with its depiction of sneering, brutalizing Turks who are somehow played off as worse than the vampire impaling people by the thousands, which is depicted in some closing narration as a kind of heroic "tough men making choices" type decision to keep the eeeevil orientals out of the cities of Christendom. Ugh! But still, somehow, there's a good film in here crying to be let out! Dance turning Evans into a vampire with the Mephistophelian promise that he will become human again in 3 days, if he can stop himself from drinking human blood, is totally delicious. A little sizzle of CGI to make the veins in Vlad's wife's neck visible through her skin during an intimate moment is a great pairing of sex and dread, that good vampire poo poo! If the film had been constructed around those moments instead of dreams of "Dark Universe" franchise-building to rival Marvel, there could have been a real picture here. Alas.  / 5Challenges: Horror Adjacent (Horror/Action), History Lesson: 2010s, New-to-Me #2 
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Oct 4, 2023 23:57
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Ambitious Spider posted:
That’s a great poster
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Oct 5, 2023 00:09
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11. The Boxer's Omen (1983) If you liked The Seventh Curse and have been craving more nutso Hong Kong horror, have I got the movie for you! This movie starts as a fun boxing movie with the rival boxer to the main character being played by my boy Bolo from Enter the Dragon! Hi Bolo! And then the main character has sex with a beautiful woman, sees a mysterious omen, goes to a Buddhist temple, and then the movie goes absolutely batshit crazy. We're talking skeleton bats! We're talking goop galore! Evil curses! Giant skeletal hands! Blood and poison! Snake charming! Full frontal nudity! It's utterly wild! There's a really cool exploration of Buddhism and Buddhist teachings that I only sort of understand from my time studying nonwestern belief systems in college, but basically the boxer becomes a monk to help defeat the evil sorcerer that killed the old Abbott with spirituality and belief of his own. The movie then twists further with a wild boxing scene featuring a table bump, zombie reanimation, a disgusting bugs-in-the-eyes scene, and the movie grinding to a halt for a tour of Nepal. It rules. I can't pretend to understand a lot of this movie, culturally, but I felt like I was watching something profound and also absolutely wild and fun that I couldn't look away from. And the climax was ridiculous. Absolutely kickass. It's also a great movie for people who like Little Guys. There's bats, monkeys, lizards, alligators, snakes and more! Now some of them don't make it out alive but as someone who likes seeing them exist I was very happy. Rating: 4.5 Iron Talismans Out Of 5
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Oct 5, 2023 00:18
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Erin M. Fiasco posted:11. The Boxer's Omen (1983) I watched this during the May challenge, it rules for all the reasons you said but the scenes where the black magic guys shove a bunch of gross food in their mouths, sloppily chew it up, regurgitate it onto a plate, and then pass it to the next person to do the same thing made me physically ill. 
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Oct 5, 2023 00:57
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7. Here Comes Hell (2019) Watched On: Tubi Challenge: THE EXORCIST 50TH ANNIVERSERY CHALLENGEIt is one of the hardest things in the world to do a genre homage and this movie tries so little that they shouldn't have even bothered. The efforts towards emulating old Hollywood horror end at post-production black and white and a matte painting for occasional exteriors. It'ss shot like a modern DTV horror movie, the props and costumes look fresh off the rack, it's basically just Evil Dead with a 30s veneer and a dollop of Kung Fury-style "wouldn't it be badass if" on top of it. I was rooting for this one and ended up incredibly disappointed. CHALLENGES: 6/13 NEW-TO-YOU: 5/6 HISTORY LESSON: 4/5 (60s, 80s, 90s, 10s) AROUND THE WORLD: 1/4 (Europe) HORROR IS FOR EVERYONE: 0/3
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Oct 5, 2023 01:02
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3. In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994) I accidentally stole a setpiece from this movie for an OC tournament comic once. There's a lot about this movie that's extremely My poo poo, and also some truly creepy stuff, but it is also so incredibly funny at all times. Sam Neill cannot hold back his accent to save his life for some reason. CineD HORROR THREAD POLL CHALLENGE COMPLETE NEW-TO-YOU 3/6
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Oct 5, 2023 01:05
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5. Hell House, LLC (2015) Hey, this is actually pretty good!! I may not care for the majority of the characters, sure, but there were a lot of things I like here: comparatively subtle scares with weird things on the edge of the frame, a recontextualization of stuff we saw earlier, a New York setting (filmed in Pennsylvania though). The lore is stupid but you can’t win ‘em all. I’d rec it! *~*~*~*~*~*~
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Oct 5, 2023 01:28
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5. The Gate (Shudder) - part of the 80s kiddie horror wave. If I had seen this when I was little I think it would have traumatized me. It’s OK. There’s some goop, a little blood (surprisingly!), and some fairly intense moments for a movie targeting kids. It goes really special effects heavy at the end and honestly it’s fairly impressive how well they pull it off given what they’re going for.  /5New to me 3/6
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Oct 5, 2023 01:57
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1. Evil Dead Rise Finally watched this for spooky season, and really solid last hour with some creepy demon kids, brutal kills with fun taunts, lots of blood, and chainsaws. But first 30 minutes are a lot of setup that doesn’t really matter much. Like the kid is a Dj so they can show why he has a turntable to play the old record. But no one really would have cared if the turntable was jus there. We didn’t need to know he was a Dj. Or the one girl likes to go to protest, but this adds nothing as she just loves her family. It seems a lot of modern horror films want to add lots of characterization like this, but we want to get to the scary stuff as viewers.
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Oct 5, 2023 02:18
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FlashFearless posted:3/31 Is that a 500-point scale?
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Oct 5, 2023 02:21
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 The Prowler, 1981 Nothing like a super basic early 80s slasher once in a while. Bunch of people getting stabbed and not much else going on. The killings take place during a college graduation dance in a small town. There was a double murder near the dancehall right after world war 2 and they are holding a dance again at that place 35 years later. There is a prowler dressed up in military gear killing people in the dorms and places around the dancehall. There's some mystery on how it is linked to that old double murder from way back. None of that matters too much, I'm just enjoying the basic stabbings and people dying. The effects are done by Tom Savini, so the killing looks great. There is really not that much that needs to be said about The Prowler. It is all the stuff that makes slashers enjoyable.
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Oct 5, 2023 02:38
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