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Lifeforce is definitely up there edit - re: ridiculous, but not 'so bad it's good' horror movies
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May 25, 2016 01:11
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Street Trash.
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May 25, 2016 01:14
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Terrorvision might not be horror-y enough to qualify and I'm not sure I actually love it as much as Hausu or Lifeforce, but I definitely love it enough that I have to give it a mention.
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May 25, 2016 01:20
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Liberal Idiot posted:I always hear people say that Zombie's Halloween ruins Michael Myers by showing he was just a hosed-up kid with a hosed-up home life, but to me that's what makes it a good companion piece to the original. Zombie wants you to see how mundane Michael's transformation is. There's nothing all that unusual about Michael Myers, and that's what makes it scary. Zombie's movie says there could be thousands of potential Michaels out there, all just kind of teetering on the edge of finally crossing the line. It's frightening for a different reason than the original's Michael because the evil doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from everywhere. It's actually a much stronger argument for the sort of `it could be anywhere' thing you're suggesting Zombie is after.
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May 25, 2016 01:40
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SubG posted:The original doesn't suggest that The Shape comes from nowhere, any more than, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or Poltergeist (1982) imply that their antagonists come out of nowhere. All three suggest, more or less explicitly, that whitebread suburbs produce poo poo like that because that's just the way they work. In the '80s genre film the suburbs are more or less a machine that churns out alienation and concentrates it into faceless stabby things. But the difference is in the focus. Carpenter's Michael could be anywhere, just like Zombie's Michael, but in Carpenter's film, that's decidedly not the point; Michael's origins don't matter as much as his presence in the here and now. Even if Michael doesn't exist in a vacuum, he might as well; for all Laurie and the kids are aware, he did spring up from thin air. Zombie's film is much more interested in his origins.
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May 25, 2016 01:55
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:But the difference is in the focus. Carpenter's Michael could be anywhere, just like Zombie's Michael, but in Carpenter's film, that's decidedly not the point; Michael's origins don't matter as much as his presence in the here and now. Even if Michael doesn't exist in a vacuum, he might as well; for all Laurie and the kids are aware, he did spring up from thin air. Zombie's film is much more interested in his origins.
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May 25, 2016 02:01
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Basebf555 posted:What's like the most ridiculous horror movie ever, the one that tries the wackiest poo poo but actually pulls it off? I don't mean "so bad its good" like a Troll 2, I'm talking about a movie that's whacked out and crazy but actually works and is entertaining. I've never seen anything that tops Hausu, but Braindead/Dead Alive and Tetsuo: The Iron Man are up there.
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May 25, 2016 02:05
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As hard as Rob tries, I just do not find white trash hillbillies in any way threatening and the beginning of Zombie's remake felt embarrassing in how hard it was trying to present Michael's wife beating dad as menacing instead of just a bullying fat rear end in a top hat. It's like when middle America talks about fantasy scenarios where someone tries to take away their guns. In their mind they may look cool, and when they say these things they think they sound bad rear end, but the reality is far removed.
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May 25, 2016 02:06
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Yea just like in the original, the characters don't know who Michael is in the remake. For all they know he comes out of nowhere. The original makes a more effective comment about suburbs because absent any real backstory on Michael we're left to assume that, as SubG said, the suburbs naturally create this kind of monster. Zombie's remake is more of a specific character study. I can understand why some people might find that less interesting because its just a smaller story.
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May 25, 2016 02:08
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Basebf555 posted:The original makes a more effective comment about suburbs because absent any real backstory on Michael we're left to assume that, as SubG said, the suburbs naturally create this kind of monster. Seriously, people were freaked the gently caress out about violent crime in the '70s and '80s. Take a look at all of the Very Special Episodes of family sitcoms involving serial killers, rapists, kidnappers, and so on. I mean don't, they're pretty much uniformly terrible. But it's very much part of the same cultural current that films like Carpenter's Halloween are aligned with. There really isn't anything comparable going on with Zombie's film, apart from the modern mania for psychological realism.
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May 25, 2016 02:46
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K. Waste posted:Lifeforce is definitely up there I saw Lifeforce when I was waaaaaay too young. That movie is weird.
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May 25, 2016 03:27
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SubG posted:The original doesn't suggest that The Shape comes from nowhere, any more than, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or Poltergeist (1982) imply that their antagonists come out of nowhere. All three suggest, more or less explicitly, that whitebread suburbs produce poo poo like that because that's just the way they work. In the '80s genre film the suburbs are more or less a machine that churns out alienation and concentrates it into faceless stabby things. I don't disagree with any of that, but what I was trying to say was that a lot of people dislike Zombie's version because they see it as trying to over-explain Michael by way of delving into his upbringing, and I think what he's actually saying is much closer to Carpenter's intent than those people see. By saying Michael comes out of "nowhere," I didn't mean to say that there aren't specific forces motivating him, just that those forces are - to the characters and the audience - unknowable. Both Carpenter and Zombie believe in the boogeyman, is another way to say it. Zombie's movie is a product of a world where we already know monsters live in the suburbs, but we want trace those monsters back to something mundane that could have been removed from the equation, like the rush to blame video games after Columbine. Also, as far as left-field wacko horror movies go, I'm partial to Howling III: The Marsupials.
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May 25, 2016 03:55
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SubG posted:The Shape represented something that contemporary audiences were already worried about, in the same way in the original Dirty Harry (1971) it matters that Harry is a cop (and not a random vigilante, member of the military, or something like that) and The One That Got Away is a serial killer. Make Harry a returning Vietnam vet who decides to become a vigilante and the whole social context of the film, for someone in 1971, would shift and the whole audience surrogate/power trip schtick wouldn't work the same way at all. It's interesting too that in that era of macho musclemen with big guns, the beginnings of two of the bigger franchises to emerge from the time (Terminator and Predator) arguably began as horror before moving onto more action-oriented sequels.
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May 25, 2016 10:11
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Coffee And Pie posted:Am I the only one who reads the thread title to the tune of CRJ's Gimme Love? Not anymore! I would love to hear her perform that version.
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May 25, 2016 11:45
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Basebf555 posted:What's like the most ridiculous horror movie ever, the one that tries the wackiest poo poo but actually pulls it off? Phantasm has become so much a part of the canon that we take it for granted that an immortal old man from another dimension kills people with flying metal spheres so his deformed dwarf henchmen can carry them to another dimension (or something like that). If you approach it on paper without having heard of it, it's at least as ridiculous as naked vampires from outer space. If you include Evil Dead II in the category, you're allowing for movies that just intentionally try to be ridiculous and then you'd have to consider Dead Alive. Probably Society too.  And of course because I take every opportunity possible to recommend it, Pieces does a bunch of things within the slasher formula that are definitely wacky, like random karate attacks, but now we're veering toward "so bad it's good" I think. InfiniteZero fucked around with this message at 14:22 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 14:20
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InfiniteZero posted:Phantasm has become so much a part of the canon that we take it for granted that an immortal old man from another dimension kills people with flying metal spheres so his deformed dwarf henchmen can carry them to another dimension (or something like that). If you approach it on paper without having heard of it, it's at least as ridiculous as naked vampires from outer space. You're right on both counts, Phantasm is definitely a perfect example of what I'm talking about, and Evil Dead II is probably a little to purposely comedic to fit the criteria.
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May 25, 2016 14:26
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Liberal Idiot posted:I don't disagree with any of that, but what I was trying to say was that a lot of people dislike Zombie's version because they see it as trying to over-explain Michael by way of delving into his upbringing, and I think what he's actually saying is much closer to Carpenter's intent than those people see. By saying Michael comes out of "nowhere," I didn't mean to say that there aren't specific forces motivating him, just that those forces are - to the characters and the audience - unknowable. Both Carpenter and Zombie believe in the boogeyman, is another way to say it. Zombie's movie is a product of a world where we already know monsters live in the suburbs, but we want trace those monsters back to something mundane that could have been removed from the equation, like the rush to blame video games after Columbine. I mean I don't think that's what Rob Zombie was thinking to himself when he was working on the project, but that's what's going on under the hood. It's one of the weird side-effects of the movement of (part of) genre filmmaking, and specifically horror filmmaking, into the mainstream. There's much broader acceptance of horror and exploitation film than there was in e.g. the '70s, but at the same time there's been a corresponding ossification or formalisation of sensibilities about the genre(s). It's okay to talk about what films have the `best kills' or whatever but most films which are legitimately transgressive get identified as `mean spirited' or whatever. I mean, you know, whatever. Film changes, audiences change. The point I'm making is when we take a faceless killer with a hand tool and start spending a lot of time investigating his troubled childhood and why he decided to become a faceless killer with a hand tool, this isn't at all the same approach to the material or the same relationship with the material that Carpenter has in the original Halloween, which is legitimately both transgressive and engaged in a way that's probably not as apparent to viewers today as it was in 1978.
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May 25, 2016 21:31
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As far as successful wacked-out horror goes, my choice for wackiest is probably Hausu, but I have to give The Manitou an honorable mention. It starts weird, chills for a bit, then goes loving berserk.
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May 25, 2016 23:41
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Basebf555 posted:What's like the most ridiculous horror movie ever, the one that tries the wackiest poo poo but actually pulls it off? I don't mean "so bad its good" like a Troll 2, I'm talking about a movie that's whacked out and crazy but actually works and is entertaining. Vampire's Kiss. I don't think that one gets recommended here enough. Peak Nic Cage.
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May 26, 2016 00:01
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It's been a while and I am several pages behind on the thread, but what has people's feelings been, if any, in regards to horror movie streaming service, Shudder? I've been giving it a try and I've enjoyed it so far as it's allowed me to catch films I otherwise haven't had a chance to see, such as Society and The Dead Next Door. I feel like I've gotten my bang for my buck so far. It was also because of it that I got a chance to go back and watch S@Man again for the first time in a few years. I remembered really enjoying the movie the first time I saw it but this second time I couldn't get into it as much. I still think it was an enjoyable film for what it was and in taking a look at some of the seedier parts of the horror fandom, but on second viewing I almost wish it had been a flat out real documentary without the 'actual killer' angle and that he focused more on Vogel, Zebub and others since their stories and mannerisms come off as more unhinged and bizarre than his killer's ever does - especially Zebub's - due to the sincerity behind those moments. Like I get that removes the whole commentary of whether or not actual snuff could hide within these low-budget small time horror films, but the killer himself is the least interesting to watch a lot of the time.
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May 26, 2016 00:47
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Basebf555 posted:What's like the most ridiculous horror movie ever, the one that tries the wackiest poo poo but actually pulls it off? I don't mean "so bad its good" like a Troll 2, I'm talking about a movie that's whacked out and crazy but actually works and is entertaining.
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May 26, 2016 02:27
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TidyHole posted:It was also because of it that I got a chance to go back and watch S@Man again for the first time in a few years. I remembered really enjoying the movie the first time I saw it but this second time I couldn't get into it as much. I still think it was an enjoyable film for what it was and in taking a look at some of the seedier parts of the horror fandom, but on second viewing I almost wish it had been a flat out real documentary without the 'actual killer' angle and that he focused more on Vogel, Zebub and others since their stories and mannerisms come off as more unhinged and bizarre than his killer's ever does - especially Zebub's - due to the sincerity behind those moments. Like I get that removes the whole commentary of whether or not actual snuff could hide within these low-budget small time horror films, but the killer himself is the least interesting to watch a lot of the time. I think the part you spoiler though is a big part of the film. He's not supposed to be interesting. It goes about it in a different way, but I think it's a lot like Henry. Also I hope Shudder keeps adding movies. It's been good so far but I could easily see it losing value since their selection is relatively small, compared to the other streaming services.
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May 26, 2016 05:50
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A little bit back, some of y'all were talking about The Darkness. It's less so-bad-it's-good and more so-generic-it's-interesting. Toss the past ten years of average american horror into a blender and you'll get this slurry of a movie. It's cool that it tries to dive into psychodrama. Hell, Kevin Bacon and Paul Reiser do a good job with what they're given as well. But the movie is so by-the-numbers it's maddening. It feels like the schematic for american horror movies, like some secret Google supercomputer analyzed family haunted-house horror and spat out this formula. But despite all the negative and lazy aspects of the work, it is interesting for how it portrays a family with a child with autism, Kevin. There's some strange mystification going on within the family to try to cope with (what seem to be) dangerous or creepy elements of Kevin's psyche. One of the big info-dump internet searches made by the mother explains that supernatural ability is linked to autism. Another "explains" the finer points of the "anasazi apocalypse" scenario. Even if they are correct diegetically, these expositional rationalizations play to the audience as ignorance and ineffability. The family can't understand their problems because they don't understand their son. These intrapersonal problems (internal psychic tension) get displaced/created/staged interpersonally (husband/wife, wife/daughter, etc.), but also environmentally in the form of supernatural activity. So of course, the phantasms are ruining their home and preparing to take their son away. Their lack of understanding is already doing that. What's interesting as well is that it wouldn't have stood out at all if the movie weren't as generic. I'm sure a finer analysis could be made, but I'm tired and out of touch with my critical theory. SMG or K. Waste or SubG could probably knock it out of the park though. Worth seeing if only to bide time until Don't Breathe or The Woods comes out.
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May 26, 2016 09:05
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Sun Choke looks pretty disturbing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nUTB8VS3lY
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May 26, 2016 10:20
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sticklefifer posted:Sun Choke looks pretty disturbing. This looks really good, but how does she look exactly the same as she does in Freaks and Geeks?
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May 26, 2016 11:53
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Coffee And Pie posted:This looks really good, but how does she look exactly the same as she does in Freaks and Geeks? I think she had a mohawk for a while in the aughts, so I'm approaching this film as the story of what happened to Millie after the show.
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May 26, 2016 13:46
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Hell yea Barbara Crampton come back is in full swing.
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May 26, 2016 14:16
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sticklefifer posted:Sun Choke looks pretty disturbing. Hell yeah, this looks right up my alley. I'd read good things about The Other Side Of The Door but something about it doesn't work at all for me. I was enjoying it up to about the halfway point as it had some decent character work and atmosphere, but it kind of went off the rails in the second half in a way I wasn't fond of. I think it'd probably be fine for the kind of horror you put on with friends to watch and you never really think about it much after it ends, but not much more than that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1HjOEubv2Y
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May 26, 2016 14:46
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Basebf555 posted:Hell yea Barbara Crampton come back is in full swing. It's a great thing.
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May 26, 2016 15:52
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a friend is working with Crampton on this movie, Replace. Currently shooting here in Toronto. http://bloody-disgusting.com/images/3391078/first-look-barbara-crampton-replace/ quote:directed by first-time filmmaker Norbert Keil, a horror-thriller starring Rebecca Forsythe (We Are Your Friends) as a young woman who is afflicted with a strange disease. When she starts to age rapidly, she discovers that she can replace her own skin with the flesh of others to maintain her beauty.
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May 26, 2016 16:04
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X-Ray Pecs posted:As far as successful wacked-out horror goes, my choice for wackiest is probably Hausu, but I have to give The Manitou an honorable mention. It starts weird, chills for a bit, then goes loving berserk. I gotta get around to reading the book
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May 26, 2016 16:10
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:It's a great thing. She's been steadily doing horror again for the last five years. If her career continues to follow the same pattern, she will soon do a soap opera for a few years and then return to horror again. I wonder if her soap opera stretches don't line up with pool installations/upgrades or something. Fingers crossed for at least one more Stuart Gordon film for her. I'm willing to write the Re-Animator Re-Animated script if they'd like.
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May 26, 2016 16:15
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flashy_mcflash posted:a friend is working with Crampton on this movie, Replace. Currently shooting here in Toronto. This looks really interesting, I wonder if Crampton is playing the older version of the main character. The article also drew my attention to another indie horror movie that Crampton is appearing in, Beyond the Gates: http://bloody-disgusting.com/indie/3392349/roll-dice-beyond-gates-trailer/ Hard to tell how big a role she has, she's also producing so maybe its going to be a more limited one. Movie looks likes a horror version of Jumanji.
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May 26, 2016 16:16
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Basebf555 posted:This looks really interesting, I wonder if Crampton is playing the older version of the main character. Yeah BTG looks fascinating just based on the eclectic group they have on board. Bruckner, Scarlata, etc don't seem like they'd work together but the concept seems great. My same friend is supposed to be going to the LAFF so I'll see if he has anything to say about it after the premiere.
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May 26, 2016 16:51
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SubG posted:Yeah, but psychological realism in genre fiction is virtually never---and isn't here---something used to establish that `it could happen anywhere' or that there could be `thousands of potential Michaels out there', which are both forms of engagement with the material and specifically the genre-specific content of the material. It's a distancing mechanism, and specifically the kind which is symptomatic of the new sincerity in genre film, which embraces all of the trappings of historical genre filmmaking by making them more `realistic'---something which simultaneously venerates genre film and reveals an underlying embarrassment about it: if this is what a `serious' approach to the material looks like, then this carries the implication that the `traditional' approach isn't as serious. It's not the same approach to the material, no, but I don't think attempting to frame Michael through psychological realism necessarily distances the audience from the material. If Carpenter is using the idyllic suburban setting in 1978 to say "This won't keep you safe," Zombie is doing the same thing with psychology. Despite pulling back the curtain on Michael's childhood, the implication is that knowing these things about him still doesn't answer the central question of why. Whether it's picket fences or pop psychology, both movies say that no matter what you cloak yourself in, evil will still find you and you won't see it coming until it's too late. I mean, I don't want to die on the hill of Rob Zombie's Halloween of all things, but many people see the inclusion of Michael's childhood as a misstep and I've never felt that way. In every way, it's an inferior movie to the original, but I think it's more engaged and thoughtful about the material than any other slasher remake from the same time period, and moreso than a lot of people give it credit for.
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May 26, 2016 18:48
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I gotta get around to reading the book I just ordered it off amazon, looking forward to starting it as soon as I'm done with my current reading project
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May 26, 2016 18:55
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I think Zombie's Halloween does give you enough of a logical progression that we can say we understand, for the most part, why Michael is doing what he's doing. He grew up in a situation where he desperately wanted to not be himself, to disappear into something else that wasn't his own identity, which he was conditioned to hate. So he created the masks as a way to have some tiny bit of self-confidence, and once he gained that confidence the anger inside him was unleashed and he murders a few people. In the mental hospital he's allowed to fully indulge the mask thing for the most part, and he only lashes out when his mask privileges are threatened. That's why he murders the nurse, because he wants to do something so horrible that his mother will stop coming to see him. He doesn't want any more reminders of who he used to be, he thinks of himself as the masks now. Then when he escapes and goes on a rampage its precipitated by another incident where his masks are belittled by the staff. Once he's out he decides, hey I'm big and strong now and nobody is ever going to take my true face(mask) away again, so he heads back home to finish what he started.
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May 26, 2016 19:12
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Liberal Idiot posted:It's not the same approach to the material, no, but I don't think attempting to frame Michael through psychological realism necessarily distances the audience from the material. If Carpenter is using the idyllic suburban setting in 1978 to say "This won't keep you safe," Zombie is doing the same thing with psychology. Despite pulling back the curtain on Michael's childhood, the implication is that knowing these things about him still doesn't answer the central question of why. Whether it's picket fences or pop psychology, both movies say that no matter what you cloak yourself in, evil will still find you and you won't see it coming until it's too late. The thing is that the film isn't particularly realistic. Consider the point where, after Michael kills his family, you get the frozen crime-scene tableau where he looks directly into the camera. This reaches a point in the sequel where half the film is a dream sequence, Myers survives being shot in the head, and he's getting messages from bad-effects Halloween spirits. Things are much weirder in these films than anyone can account for.
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May 26, 2016 19:47
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Liberal Idiot posted:It's not the same approach to the material, no, but I don't think attempting to frame Michael through psychological realism necessarily distances the audience from the material. If Carpenter is using the idyllic suburban setting in 1978 to say "This won't keep you safe," Zombie is doing the same thing with psychology. Despite pulling back the curtain on Michael's childhood, the implication is that knowing these things about him still doesn't answer the central question of why. Whether it's picket fences or pop psychology, both movies say that no matter what you cloak yourself in, evil will still find you and you won't see it coming until it's too late. As much as I kind of want to get behind you on this, I just can't. There's just not enough material in the movie that refutes Myers' upbringing as the cause of his 'evil'. When you have half a movie showing a kids' lovely upbringing, then a short middle section in the psych ward, and then a second half with the kid having turned into a serial killer, the logical through-line is just too evident: Myers' environment was a major influence on him. It just appears that he was too far gone for psychotherapy to help him. For the movie to deconstruct people's sense of security in psychology, and our general understanding about what makes people who they are, it probably would've had to shorten the screentime given to Myers' childhood home life quite a bit in favor of focusing much more on his time being institutionalized, and watching his case defy Loomis and the mental health community's most basic assumptions of human behavior and motivation.
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May 26, 2016 20:34
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If I remember correctly, the sessions with Loomis did actually seem to be having a positive effect on Michael, but when he kills/disfigures that nurse Loomis gives up on him. The sequel makes it clear that Loomis is a selfish dick, so you could interpret his character as more of a comment on PhD academic types in general as opposed to psychology/psychiatry specifically.
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May 26, 2016 20:44
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