|
Parachute posted:I'm about to pull the trigger on buying "The Pit and the Pendulum" from Amazon for under $10 and noticed it's on BluRay for $18. Reviews on the quality vary, but is it worth more than a rental? I really need to finish watching Stuart Gordon's filmography. Coincidentally I was just watching the blu-ray a few hours after you posted this. Picture's as clean as you're going to get it, and the sound is clear on 5.1 I'm actually unfinished as we speak. I can say however it's both full of that dark humor Gordon does best, and it's got a nice amount of brutality on display. And yet, it's probably simultaneously the most graphic Full Moon film, at least of their original run, both sexually and violently, and possibly their highest valued production, at worst tied with Puppet Master III. I guess this is me finally after almost a year on SA deciding to come to this thread, despite having a college degree in film and pretty much sticking to horror with my watching habits. I really didn't do much horror watching in '13, and I aim to fix that, as a new years resolution if you will. My GF helped me jumpstart this by getting me a year's subscription to Full Moon's streaming site, which also came with 6 free blu-rays, of which I included the aforementioned Pit & The Pendulum. The other five were all Puppet Master films because I'm a big dork about them. At least the ones they had to offer were 5 of the 6 half-way decent ones (1,2,3,9,10) Wish that the Retro movie was available but oh well. Something I just caught on there that might interest the thread more is "The Evil Clergyman", part of the lost 80's Full Moon anthology, Pulsepounders. The half-hour piece is a lovecraft pastiche starring Jeff Combs, Barbara Crampton, David Warner, and David Gale! It's not bad for it's length, and hey, it's a long lost Combs Lovecraft film, so hey there you go. I personally still need to see the Sci-Fi Dunwich Horror of his to have seen all of them. Regarding the recent conversation bringing up the Return of the Living Dead series, I think that part two isn't all terrible, just mostly terrible. There's some real haunting bits in there, especially the bit with equating brain-eating with pressuring for sex. Also, the use of well lit suburbia for most of its setpieces brings a different sort of tone to the film than the dystopic punk setting of the first one had. And they're still better than the 4th and 5th films, which forgot altogether the main reason RotLD zombies are scary, (The movie lied?!) and makes them susceptible to brain injury--yet they still try to eat others' brains, which makes no sense from a spreading issue perspective. Choco1980 fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Jan 25, 2014 |
#
¿
Jan 25, 2014 09:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 08:25 |
|
|
temple posted:Thanks for the responses. I was trying to remember what was the monsters from the 90s because I read a discussion about zombies and I remember zombie movies not being popular during that period. Yeah, there's always trends you can mark out in the genre by time period, and zombies didn't become the big deal choice till the '00s. At first int the 90's we had run off of the rubber reality monsters, and human villains like the afformentioned Wilkes and Lecter, but Scream brought a resurgence of masked slashers, often with a sense of irony. It looks like lately the hot trends have been ghosts and demons and the like. Regarding Carpenter, I find what makes him interesting most is his uneveness. It's funny, when people give the man a high budget and prestige, he shits the bed. If, however, he's stuck with low budgets and left to his own devices, he creates works of genius.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2014 04:21
|
|
|
penismightier posted:100% agree. As do I. I think the big reason found footage films are so often just so bad has nothing to do with the inherent motion-sickness shakey-cam bit. Unless you're going to somehow introduce hollywood level tech, you're not going to have everyone capable of holding the camera still (but if you're using a plot device beyond amateur camera holders, make it look like it). No, I'd put the blame on the fact that almost none of them seem capable of using characters that are in the slightest bit likable. I mean yeah, in some of them they're trying to go for the "got what was coming to them" sort of plot resolution of Cannibal Holocaust, but more often it's like there's supposed to be some subtext that people who want to film stuff are all insufferable jackasses. Chronicle's the only film I've seen that even seems to make any effort to not go this direction. I've also been told Troll Hunter's not so bad, and I plan on finally watching that soon.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2014 21:06
|
|
|
Phylodox posted:You had me right up until the "eat his soul" part. Just staring would have been scarier. When it comes to horror, I've always preferred things that don't talk. Things you can't reason with. Hell, gently caress the demon or whatever even explaining itself at all, just have it do what it does for no obvious reason whatsoever. To my mind the best horror movie ever was The Thing, simply because you get the feeling that fucker was unknowable. Like, it was just so thoroughly alien that there's no common ground at all. Is it sentient? Is it intelligent? What does it want? Does it want anything, in the way we understand it? You never find out, and I think the movie is so much better for that. As much as I agree with you about monsters being inhuman and unreachable, the funny thing about the Thing is how you're not really correct about it. Rob Bottin's storyboarded pitch that got him the job on the movie was to talk Carpenter through the heart attack scene (complete with head crab) from the perspective of the Thing, with it's thoughts and motivations. Basically the Thing's sole motivation is to survive. It seems to also absorb all the thoughts and biology of its host. When Thing-Norris started having a heart attack, the main motivation was "Great! Now I can play dead, and everyone will leave me alone!". It's difficult to conceptualize however because as shown, with this creature even a single cell is autonomous from the rest, and upon separation has its own thought process.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2014 08:56
|
|
|
Harminoff posted:Grand Piano came out on itunes today. Any good? Am I seeing Wood's real hands moving in some of those shots? Today on Showtime I finally saw Phantoms(1998). It was pretty decent, especially for a late 90's horror. I wonder why nobody ever saw that, to the point of being a running gag in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Maybe because it was a monster movie and the trend had already skewed towards masked slashers? Maybe because no one seems willing to say it's a monster movie? It's a monster movie. I really enjoyed how the plot kept you guessing for some time. It ended rather abruptly, but that's alright. Also, I really dug the Nigel Neal style story once we had an idea of what was going on.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 01:27
|
|
|
The Phantasm movies are great. They're simultaneously strange and dreamlike and wacky cornball, while being one of the most original horror series I can think of. What creator Don Coscarelli does to end the fourth movie (and the series) is remarkably ballsy from an editing standpoint.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 05:03
|
|
|
temple posted:I watched the Phantasm movies over the summer.... The same thing it always has been. But not necessarily what you think it is. I could talk for length about it, but it'd be spoiler-filled. Short answer: Mike's having a series of nightmares as he deals with the grief of losing his brother so soon after his parents. The very end of part 4 where they show him back as a kid again is him waking up and moving on finally after such an elaborate fantasy world.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 06:15
|
|
|
You don't really need to see the sequels after the first one, but they're still lots of fun. The first movie on the other hand you can tell so much that it was written in a very short amount of time by a guy who didn't know what he was going to make, just that it was going to be scary. There's so many moments where Coscarelli is just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, whether it's the crazy shotgun shell lockbreaker just mentioned, or the big bug scene or what. The only part that really doesn't work at a painful level is "Myrt" the housekeeper's jump scare. She pops up way late in the movie just to scare you by walking around a corner, and she's not mentioned before or after at any point. For the record, this is also a great film for the commentary track, regardless of which version you have. The gang obviously had fun making the film, and they all still have a good time talking about it. Also, it taught me to play "Spot the XX" in the film. See, the Dos Equis company made a deal with them to front a big chunk of the budget, in return for product placement in the film, which was no problem for the cast and crew. They thought they'd get maybe like a few packs and like a sign to use or something, and instead, a whole truckload of the beer was sent to them. So you find bottles and boxes for the stuff everywhere in the film if you're looking close.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2014 23:46
|
|
|
I absolutely 100% disagree with you. There are plenty of great ideas, and even a few truly inspired moments, but there's so much chaff bogging down the wheat that there's no way the film is as good as it always believed it was. While I can appreciate the improvisational manner of the script, endless wandering filled with swearing because the actors didn't know what else to say does not make for entertainment. If they had replaced the filler with more creepy moments, it could be in my opinion a real classic instead of an interesting experiment that ultimately coasted on its own novelty.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2014 23:16
|
|
|
Daveski posted:Full Moon's streaming service has teamed up with Blue Underground, and added a bunch of their titles. There's some pretty good stuff in there - Tombs of the Blind Dead and it's sequels, Don't Torture a Duckling, Black Belly of the Tarantula, and some more giallos I haven't seen but have been meaning to check out. Full list here: http://www.fangoria.com/new/full-moon-streaming-teams-with-blue-underground/ Oh that's awesome. The investment of my GF getting me a year's subscription for xmas just keeps paying off. The quality of the streaming seems fine. It's not HD level, but it's as clear as it'll probably ever be without high-tech HD remastering processes. Also, they never get rid of movies, only add more with a couple added each week. If you think you'll get around to it later you won't miss out on anything. There's the regular Full Moon section, a small section for the New Moon family line they did in the 90's, and there's a "grindhouse" section for stuff that's not Full Moon but they were able to grab rights to, whether because it's cheap, or because Charles Band had a hand its creation. They keep hinting that the Empire catalogue will slowly be added in, with montage ads for the site showing stuff from say, Troll and From Beyond. Crash and Burn is already on the site. Also, they have a "Wizard Pictures" relaunch where people can submit their indie low budget features, and Full Moon will distribute them. This is basically them horning in on the market that Troma has been the leader in for the past nearly 40 years. (Seriously, that's like 85% of what Troma has EVER done). Also, they've been starting to debut new Full Moon flicks exclusively on the site. So far that's included "Gingerdead Man vs Killer Bong" and "Killjoy goes to Hell". Also, when I got my subscription, I got 6 free blu-rays. A 6 month subscription gets you 3. You could do worse for less than 70 bucks. Zwabu posted:Phantasm II is available via Cinemax on demand streaming. Will it screw anything up watching this if I haven't seen the original film? Well, if I recall correctly there IS a brief summary at the beginning, but you are really better off seeing the first (and best) one first. This is a series that uses continuity and assumes you've seen the previous entries. Kvlt! posted:Speaking of Ed Gein, the other day I met one of the psychiatrist's who treated him, it was actually really interesting. As others have said, the second is worth a watch, but is completely different from the first film. Basically Tobe Hooper is reacting to the very wrong and exaggerated criticisms of the first film and going ahead and making the film that all the outraged critics thought they saw. It's outlandish with plenty of gore and black humor. The third film is rather boring in my opinion. There are a few good ideas, like taking the idea of the cannibal family to its extreme and including a child, and Viggo Mortisen does as good a job as he does in anything else. Also, there's one great moment where Leatherface is playing with one of those old kids learning electronic toys that pretends its a computer and can't figure out why the picture of a person keeps telling him the answer of "FOOD" is wrong. And I think I'm the only person on the planet that honestly enjoys the fourth film. It has a lot of weird stuff going for it and tries for a totally different direction of explanation behind things that gets really weird. And Leatherface dressing up in full drag while he listens to Marlene Dietrich just makes me happy in the weird areas off my brain.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 07:46
|
|
|
Later this year (like, fall probably) the director's cut of Nightbreed comes out, so maybe you should wait for it?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 13:03
|
|
|
Cunted posted:
Since your definition of slasher plays fast and loose, ther was the one Leprechaun in space entry.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 17:29
|
|
|
Yellowbrickroad was decent, but yeah people are right here in saying the ending just falls apart. It's like it wanted to suddenly be a very different flavored film, like almost something Lynchian. I was impressed by the fact that the story was very much the sort you'd expect to find as a found footage film, yet it was not one at all. Also I dig settings where things like sound or other non palpable factors make people untrustable/monsters like this or Pontypool, or the Siren game series etc.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 16:45
|
|
|
Glamorama26 posted:Dawn might be the better film, but I find myself watching Day more and more as I get older. Romero could really write some compelling dialogue back in the day. I dunno, I kind of liked Bruiser. The funny thing about Romero is that his work ages exceptionally well, and I would argue it improves with age, almost like wine. Sure, he may be about the most heavy handed metaphor crafter in the biz, and his dialoguemay be stilted as hell, but pretty much every film he's made post NotLD has received scorn upon release and praise after the fact. Hell, I think Monkey Shines is one of his best works (I haven't seen his 3 non-horror films yet) despite it being a total flop.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 05:56
|
|
|
Lords of Salem's not bad but it kind of falls apart at the end. Also, Zombie's inability to figure out if his films take place in the present or the mid-seventies continues to infuriate me irrationally. Speaking of anthologies and Sthephen King, the other day I caught Cat's Eye for the first time in over 25 years. I'm surprised at how well it holds up still. It's by no means great or anything, but at the same time it's pretty innocuous, and there's nothing that jumps out and screams 80's or anything. The only problem I had was the unevenness of the segments. The first two are grounded firmly in reality and have a jet black meanness to them with low enough production values to feel like a pilot for some anthology show like Tales From The Darkside or something, while the third one instead comes across as a dark family fantasy film that was too short to be its own, complete with pretty high value special effects on the monster effects. The fact that things stay firmly in PG territory doesn't hurt this feeling.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2014 22:09
|
|
|
Speaking of Lords of Salem, is there a home video release with the movie-within-a-movie, The Witchhunter Versus Frankenstein's Monster, starring Udo Kier available?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2014 00:16
|
|
|
I have a pet theory that the creators of The Haunting (1999) got confused partway through and started remaking The Legend of Hell House instead.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2014 20:45
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Apparently when they remade The Haunting they weren't allowed to recreate any scenes from the original movie, so they had to go with a mostly original plot. It's a shame, because the house itself was perfect. But, but the original-- But, the book is-- That would mean-- 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2014 03:16
|
|
|
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:By remake, he means Evil Dead 2. Yeah guys, don't you all remember that famous tree-rape scene that didn't happen in the second film?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2014 17:12
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:I know a lot of people who really don't like any goofiness at all in their horror movies, and plenty others who only watch goofy comedies and the mummy element would be a turn off. Its a good movie though to break people out of those kind of ruts, all the elements really work. Bubba Ho-tep and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil are the best movies for that I think. Also Return of the Living Dead. Say what you will about John Landis, (really, feel free. He's an awful man.) But he really started this ball rolling with An American Werewolf in London.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
leokitty posted:Thank God for that he has made some horrible shlock watchable. Like the Howling 2. You're saying he's the only reason to watch the film? Even the montage during the end credits disagrees with you. The reason to watch is Sybil Danning's breasts
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2014 15:37
|
|
|
Also, the first film has a crap-ton of horror cameos in it. It's great for games of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2014 02:26
|
|
|
Uncle Boogeyman posted:Suspiria/Inferno, Might as well watch Mother of Tears and complete the trilogy. It's not very good though. Also, watch Night/Curse of the Demon and Burn, witch, burn!.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2014 17:59
|
|
|
Also, Jason spends a shitton of time with his mask off in that one and comes off as a super-creepy in-bred mentally handicapped dude. Come to think of it, when I was a kid there was a lot of misplaced mystique surrounding what Jason looks like under his mask, considering how many of the movies show his face in them. By my count, 2, 5, 7, 8, sort of in 4, and technically in 1, and if you really wanted to split hairs, 5 all have Jason's face in them. Kind of like how even its own series forgets that we very clearly see an unmasked Michael Myers in the first Halloween film. He just looks like a regular dude, which is half the point of the painted kirk mask to begin with.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2014 00:13
|
|
|
I can never keep track of like half the kills. Which one is the one with the all time best horror movie kill of the sleeping bag against the tree? (They later referenced it in X with him in the holodeck beating the one be-bagged girl against the other) And while we're on the subject of F13's, am I the only one who sees really no reason to consider the "remake" a remake at all? Sure, they recap the end of part one at the beginning, but even then there's still really not anything contradictory to the film from the rest of the series, unless you count him grabbing a new mask at one point. EDIT: VVVVV Holy poo poo, I thought I was the only one to notice that!! Choco1980 fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Feb 23, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2014 03:22
|
|
|
I know I'd be interested. I'm a fan of the series in spit of not having seen the elusively crappy part 7.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2014 16:49
|
|
|
Slasherfan posted:The first The Howling is good, the second is pretty awful but in an entertaining way, 3 and 4 are boring. 5 and 6 are both decent, 7 is horrendous and I've yet to watch 8. I disagree with many of these statements. The first one is of course the high-water mark and why there were so many sequels, and me telling you Joe Dante made it is all the reason you should need to see it. The second is pure trashy schlock starring Christopher Lee and Sybil Danning's breasts, and is good natured fun for it. The third is completely self-aware Ozploitation silliness and actually my favorite of the series-also the two movie-within-a-movie werewolf bits are pretty great on their own. Part 4 is a turd on a stick, that doesn't even try to have a compelling story. Part 5 is a dull as dirt remake of "The Beast Must Die!" basically-think 10 Little Indians with a werewolf. Part 6 is absoludicrous, with a makeup budgett straight out of the Goosebumps tv series, and worth a look if you're curious. I think part 7 is the one with the rednecks just hanging out in some bar for like 9/10ths of the movie, right? I've seen bits of it and there's reasons its u iversally panned.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2014 16:24
|
|
|
Craig Spradlin posted:Alternatively, Lords of Salem is Rob Zombie's Halloween 3. Looks like it's the season of the witch...
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2014 04:38
|
|
|
Like I said before, LoS is an interesting movie, but it falls apart in too many places. Like the ending or say, the scene with the Christian priest out of nowhere. Rob Zombie is to me, in a word, frustrating. In every one of his films you can see the potential for something truly amazing, but he just seems to hold back and fall short. He's clearly passionate and knowledgable about the genre, and you can tell he really wants to take things in new directions. I get the impression that his movies end up being much better in his head then on the screen.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2014 22:38
|
|
|
Well no, The Howling 5 doesn't. I imagine if you watched The Beast Must Die! Under it's alternate title Black Werewolf the whodunnit nature and the chance to guess the werewolf kinda get deflated.... because there's only one black guy in the film.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2014 06:53
|
|
|
Dr.Caligari posted:I didn't see it mentioned on the last few pages, so thought I would mention the Scream Factory release of Sleepaway Camp I want to say Scream Factory is the one releasing the director's cut of Nightbreed later this year too. They've suddenly came up and become the surprise outlet for remastering old horror.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2014 19:16
|
|
|
If I didn't know better, I'd think all this name dropping of supposedly awful films in the last few posts to compare to the lesser Scream films (which is saying a bit as the whole franchise is vastly overrated, and in my opinon fails at what it attempts far more than it succeeds) is an attempt to bait me into fighting you guys. But I'll be the bigger man and remain calm. (Seriously though, gently caress all y'all. Diary of the Dead and most of the Hellraiser and Texas Chainsaw sequels are great movies.)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
BLUNDERCATS! noooo posted:So I really loved Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (Wikipedia) and now I'm going to check out the other two in what Wikipedia is calling his Gates of Hell trilogy: Yeah if you liked City Of The Living Dead, you'll enjoy the other two, especially The Beyond. Also, people often overlook Manhatten Baby, but it has the same sort of feel and theme of logic and space and time breaking down.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2014 03:20
|
|
|
Alright, you guys are right, Diary of the Dead had nothing to say. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go upload a video of my day to youtube and link it on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr... (yes, I'm being facetious) You guys want me to go into full defense mode? Fine, it's been a while since I flexed the muscles I gained in film school anyways. George Romero is a tricky director. He himself admits he's heavy handed and just likes to throw zombies at whatever societal problem he sees. Also, as I've said earlier in the thread, his films rarely seem good at the outset and age like wine. Day of the dead was hated by critics and fans when it came out. Even I strongly disliked Land of the Dead at first, and people have been coming around to it in the last few years. Look at the outrage in Roger Ebert's infamous Reader's Digest review of Night of the Living Dead. Romero is someone whose work you have to look at from a distance to appreciate, and diary is no exception. First, I'd like to point to all of Romero's past themes pop up in small ways in Diary, including the breakdown of the familial unit of Night, Dawn's pointed stab at consumerism, Day and Land's untrustworthy corruption of the political and military industry, even the 90's Night's clinging to the past's values. That said, it is it's own animal, obviously. Also obvious is that the film is an indictment of the 21st century's internet reporting obsessed youtube generation wherein everything is documented. Seven years on, this vainglorious nature of documenting our own lives and attempting to report everything we see as news has only become more exasperated. Were the Kitty Genovese incident to happen today, instead of everyone simply watching from afar, they'd be all holding their cellphones, videotaping her brutalization. The mundaneness of people filming every move they make in today's culture has remarkably rendered the film as one of Romero's least heavy-handed films rather accidentally (aside from the needless coda at the end that shoves a "we're the REAL monsters!" schtick in your face.) A previous post complained that the characters have no reason to keep filming, yet says he believed other found footage films asking the same questions more reasonable in their excuse to keep holding the camera. A guy constantly annoying his girlfriend constantly while she angrily tells him to stop filming their personal moments seems more reasonable than a student film crew deciding to film a documentary for posterity with the guidance of their mentor/professor? If you say so. This crew and their excuses is in fact the secondary "mirror" that Romero is shining at modern culture. I would argue that he is quite clearly mocking the "Camcorder Coppola" movement that had started in the 80's with promise but had built to that point where the current generation of film kids all thought they could get an easy ticket to Hollywood with their backyard no-budget zombie movies, following in the lightning-in-a-bottle footsteps Romero himself made, forgetting that he and his crew had been working for years in the industry, making ads and industrial films before deciding to make a commercial low-budget film, and already had all the knowledge and tools under their belt. Hell, I was one of these kids thinking it was an easy path to fame at the time, but now I know that for the most part, nobody's ever going to care about your little crummy zombie movie you made with your friends, and even less are going to watch it. Even worse, just filming everything you see like you'll become the next big documentary superstar overlooks the entire nature of how documentaries are made, often with a "plot" figured out beforehand and even limited scripting, and most importantly and intensely large amount of editing to create the story you want. These kids in the film are just one more group of clueless film students thinking that making real movies is easy and they'll be on the path to fame and riches in no time. (As a sidebar, can I point out the cleverness in their no-budget horror subject? In a world where Night of the Living Dead never was a movie, people apparently go in their backyards with their friends to film mummy movies!) I really don't get the hate for the film, I would rank it the best of the three "Dead" films Romero has made in the 21st century at least, and maybe even above the Night remake in the ranks. 4th place out of 7 Dead films isn't too bad.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2014 16:10
|
|
|
axleblaze posted:You misunderstood me, it's not so much about the excuse as much as it is about drawing attention to the fact. "Why are the characters still filming" is something you want to try your best to avoid drawing attention to because the answer is always "because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie". DotD rather than trying to draw attention away from this question, makes it the center of the movie but the answer as to why the characters are filming in the end is still "because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie". I disagree. Unlike most found footage films, Diary seems to be actively seeking out its audience at the same time as it's filming. Most found footage films are simply that: found. Usually the filmmakers are like, using their cameras to catch a ghost or something dopey like that, and we have no connection to the film other than someone else found it and is showing us it, if that as some FF movies don't even bother explaining where the footage came from, which totally ruins immersion. These guys are uploading as soon as they film, they're trying to make a document of what's going on around them. At least 75% of found footage films I've seen at one point or another ask the person why they are filming or to put down the camera. This is one of very few I can think of where there's a good reason why they still are filming.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2014 16:49
|
|
|
Well, clearly my previous statement of "gently caress all y'all" still stands on this issue. *drops shades and moonwalks out the door*
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2014 19:52
|
|
|
While we have Fulci on our minds, I have a question that's plagued me for years. In the book Eaten Alive, there's a review for the film La Casa 5 wherein the reviewer describes the film as being as if they were attempting one of Fulci's seven Gates of Hell, except, the author says, all seven were already opened. This confused me as I didn't recall that many. Of course there's the three explicit Gates of Hell films (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond & House By the Cemetary) but what about the other four? As I said before, Manhatten Baby feels very much in line with the other films, so it might count. I've not seen Demonia but could it's plot be argued to contain one of the Gates? Also, Zombie2 has dialogue where some theorize that the dead are walking due to Hell opening up. Tenuous at best, I know, and even then we're still just sitting at 6. 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2014 01:58
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:Is there some reason Spontaneous Combustion never gets mentioned around here (aside from the title)? I went into it not expecting much, and while there was definitely some cheese, and plot threads left dangling by the 'ending', I really enjoyed it overall. Brad Dourif in a non-voice-acting lead role, some neat radiation sickness fear-building, and some ambitious effects-work. I thought it was one of the most functional Tobe Hooper flicks I've come across; not as good as TCM 1 or 2, but so much better than The Funhouse. I haven't seen Spontaneous Combustion but it's on my list (with the 8,000 others). Doesn't it during the climax have the main character have a flashback to before he was born? Meanwhile did you seriously just infer that [bThe Funhouse[/b] was a worse film than Silent Night, Bloody Night? I know I ruined my own reputation around here by fighting for Diary of the Dead, but you sir, are clearly insane.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2014 07:07
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:When I watched The Funhouse, it just seemed like a dull slog through a bunch of wasted opportunities (kind of like Hell Night). I'm totally willing to revisit and re-evaluate it, but that's how it came off on initial viewing. I dunno, I actually would accuse Silent Night, Bloody Night of being the more dull slog-worthy film myself. Also, while Masque of the Red Death may not be accurate to its own source, it does rather randomly have a pitch-perfect adaptation of Hop Frog in the middle of it for no apparent reason... BisonDollah posted:So I watched Brian Yuzna's Faust: Love of the Damned and it's equal parts freakin' hilarious and disturbing. There's a lot of cool Satanic worship stuff including a bit where a Satanist pushes his long creepy fingernails into a hot ladies belly-button and pulls out a god-drat giant live snake - while she's still alive I felt so creepy watching that movie with my family. Especially the part with the girl inflating to death made pretty much as a live-action version of the stuff you see over in the weird fan-art thread in PYF. Then again, what did I expect from an adaptation of a comic book that would have alternate covers that were just straight up porn with no bearing on the issue contents?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2014 03:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 08:25 |
|
|
Cubone posted:It made a different point, maybe not as well. I agree with you that the 90's NotLD is pretty good in its own merits. I'd argue that it even goes along with Romero's pattern of commentary on the time period it was made that all of his zombie films do. The original has it's rough statements regarding the civil rights movements and the Vietnam conflict (I subscribe to the side of the argument that they were dimly aware they were making a film with political import, but it wasn't their primary motivation. Pretty much every other film Romero's done besides maybe Two Evil Eyes has had a deeper message he was trying to get across) Dawn has it's fairly obvious indictment against the rampant building consumerism of the seventies (that never really went away, though its ebbed and flowed over time) In the early 80's, the state of the American Military complex was a deplorable mess of incompetence, in-fighting, and illegal activity from supposedly independently working individual (that assonance was not intended) and Day of the Dead captures that just fine. Land of the Dead lampooned the power-mad and clearly corrupted fear-mongering government, and showed early signs of the rise of the 99% movement. Diary, as I've stated earlier in the thread, shows a picture of the narcissistic self-documenting culture we've become. And Survival of the Dead is obviously about the way our government's obsessive partisanship has made it a farcical mockery of itself. So, the 90's remake's strongest commentary? I would argue that it paints a pretty big picture of how the late 80's through the 90's tended to be--a reflection-heavy culture, where much of the past, particularly the 50's and 60's (though not only those periods) were repeated with false reverence, either out of "irony" or out of an attempt to cherry-pick the best parts with the false idea that we had the hindsight to know better than to make similar mistakes. Consider how Barbara refuses to become the helpless catatonic in this version, or how the gas pump incident still happens despite a different logic route gets us there. Or how the movie feels the need to spell out its moral instead of letting us figure it out, despite it being the same as in the original. A repetition of past grounds under the guise of "Retro" that was such a major movement at the time is exactly the message trying to be told in this version of NotLD.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2014 21:26
|
|