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Yeah , I'd say the definitive slasher as probably F13 part 2
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May 13, 2017 23:49
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As an example of the genre as a whole, yeah F13 Part 2. But best slasher, as example, as bare bones "this is a slasher", the king will always be Halloween in my heart.
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May 14, 2017 00:07
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Yeah I'd say Halloween is a better movie, but just as the perfect example to point to immediately and say " That is a slasher that follows all of the main stereotypes of the genre" it'd be F13 part 2. It's the stereotypical slasher.
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May 14, 2017 00:17
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For me it'd be Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, but 2 is a great choice as well. Just for me 4 is the best one with that formula. A Nightmare on Elm Street might also be the definitive slasher movie, but it's doing it's own thing as well.
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May 14, 2017 01:22
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Oh yeah, Pt 2 or 4 for sure. They're the best Fridays. I never double feature them, but I might for this years Friday the 13th. 2, 4 and 5 are the ones I rewatch the most.
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May 14, 2017 02:24
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I'll fight someone over whether Jason X isn't one of the best slashers ever made.
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May 14, 2017 03:08
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10. Honeymoon (2014) - A young couple go to a cabin for their honeymoon and forget how to make coffee. This, obviously, dooms the relationship. Seriously though there are like three possible movies you're going to get with people in a cabin and this one doesn't keep you guessing very long (it's aliens). It's all vaguely competent I guess but doesn't do much to make you care about the characters before they fall apart and I was bored of the entire affair before it was half over. Way better than The Canal, at least.
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May 14, 2017 05:57
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Hollismason posted:I'll fight someone over whether Jason X isn't one of the best slashers ever made. You're going down, you wrong-rear end philistine.
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May 14, 2017 07:04
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11. Jeruzalem (2015) - Apparently some sort of extended anti-advertisement for Google Glass. It's possible the movie might have had a decent idea or two buried somewhere but it's impossible to tell past their discovery of the one way to make found footage even worse. Still better than The Canal.
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May 14, 2017 08:21
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3. Maniac (1980) I'd been sort of putting off seeing this, it didn't look very interesting or entertaining to me. Anyway, it was well made, had some atmosphere and good performances that kept me watching. This Frank Zito guy feels a bit like a lackluster mix of Norman Bates and Travis Bickle, and not really captivating like Henry. I just kind of felt like "welp, there he goes, doing his thing". Ah he's mumbling to himself again. Classic Zito. All in all, didn't really like it, but I can see why people would dig it. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 11:21 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 11:19
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Graveyard Shift - This was a movie I felt I should have liked more. A dingy dirty setting, some questionable acting, a great human villain, and a well made oversized gooey wet creature from below. Brad Dourif was a treat even though it was too short to fully enjoy. A decent story, but for some reason this didn't click with me as much as I had hoped. It just feels like something is missing from this flick that could really punch it up. As it is, I found myself bored through large chunks of it. It wasn't awful and I did mark it as "liked" on letterboxd but only gave it a 2.5/5   Previous Watches: 1. Black Sabbath, 2. The Asphyx, 3. Street Trash, 4. Serial Mom, 5. Graveyard Shift
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May 14, 2017 16:41
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12. Hex - Kuei Chih-Hung, 1980 Another entertaining Shaw Brothers horror film. It's more subdued in regard to supernatural wackiness than Black Magic or Seeding of a Ghost, but the ghost/horror elements are certainly present. They just don't kick in until the last act. Also around that point the story cohesion takes a nose dive. The plot in the first two thirds is pretty tight, full of interesting twists and developments. The last third goes a little haywire, including a nude dance sequence that comes out of nowhere and goes on for a hilariously long time. But crazy poo poo out of nowhere is sort of what appeals to me about these movies. There's a wild charm to these Shaw films. Even when they lack logic or consistency they're a blast, and refreshingly different from the horror I'm more familiar with.   / 5
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May 14, 2017 20:06
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Lurdiak posted:You're going down, you wrong-rear end philistine. 
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May 15, 2017 03:16
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You only had one wrong-thinker post so I would have gone with the tree-beating portion instead, save that one for when two people claim it's not a beautiful movie.
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May 15, 2017 03:19
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Hatchet 2 is my fun later Hodder-piece of choice! But Jason X is pretty funny. I love Freddy vs Jason also, actually I also love Jason Goes to Hell. Zany stuff.
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May 15, 2017 03:24
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The only thing bad about Jason X is that they did not make a sequel.
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May 15, 2017 03:24
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I haven't seen Jason X in probably a decade. I may rewatch it if I can find it soon enough and with ease.
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May 15, 2017 04:11
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Franchescanado posted:I haven't seen Jason X in probably a decade. I may rewatch it if I can find it soon enough and with ease. It's on Amazon Prime I think.
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May 15, 2017 04:16
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Hollismason posted:It's on Amazon Prime I think. Naw, I just checked and it cost a few dollars. If I'm going to pay for it, it's going to be to own it. even if it's on DVD. It's one of three F13s I don't own.
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May 15, 2017 04:20
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Franchescanado posted:Naw, I just checked and it cost a few dollars. If I'm going to pay for it, it's going to be to own it. even if it's on DVD. It's one of three F13s I don't own. Odd, I thought all the Friday the 13th films were on there.
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May 15, 2017 04:39
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Hollismason posted:Odd, I thought all the Friday the 13th films were on there. All of Paramount's are available with a STARZ subscription. Goes To Hell, X, FVJ and Reboot are all paid rentals.
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May 15, 2017 04:48
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12. Shivers (1975) - I did not know there was a Cronenberg zombie movie, but there is and it works about like you'd expect - more straightforward than his best work, but still way more interesting than pretty much anything else in the genre. I think the oddest thing about this one is the structure. You are told exactly what's going on and how it all works almost immediately, then things just play out according to that setup. No mysteries or twists or dramatic reversals. It's the sort of thing you sometimes see work well in character-driven dramas, but it feels strange in a horror film. The second strangest thing is that there just isn't any particularly striking imagery in it which seems completely out of character, but this is pretty early in his career so maybe he just hadn't hit his stride yet. Still well worth the watch.
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May 15, 2017 05:51
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A pathetic less interesting remix of a scene from a better film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyzJStkVC0U
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May 15, 2017 12:40
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Lurdiak posted:A pathetic less interesting remix of a scene from a better film. this is the best Jason X kill anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPMGmCcuMzg
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May 15, 2017 13:58
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I've been meaning to do this for months, glad to have a Challenge to motivate me to finally watch all 4 Blind Dead films. Marathoned them all in about 24 hours, so I'm gonna write each one up as I get a few minutes free throughout the day. 15. Tombs of the Blind Dead Of the four films this is the only rewatch, but I'm glad I did because it clicked a lot better with me this time. The simplicity of the story is something I really appreciate, a young woman is separated from her friends and ends up spending the night in the Wrong castle, everything else stems from the investigation into what happened to her. The big draw here is the interesting setting, a crumbling seaside castle, and the Templars, who are a unique twist on zombies/vampires that stand apart from anything else I've seen in the genre. They almost feel like enemies in a Dark Souls game, which I guess could be taken as an insult but anyone who's played those games knows how intimidating the enemies can be. Their look and the way they act make for extremely stylish monsters, and overall the Blind Dead series is one of the foggiest ever made, so there's tons of great atmosphere in this film. At no point did I ever feel like the Templars were just guys in masks, they really come off like walking corpse husks. They're portrayed very consistently as shambling, rotting vampires who don't really have any humanity left, and that makes for some scary monsters. After watching all 4 films this one naturally came away as the winner just because of how original and different it felt. Ossorio doesn't get away from this template enough in a few of the sequels, and although I enjoyed them they felt like slightly inferior remakes(with one exception). 16. Return of the Evil/Blind Dead Every Blind Dead film feels like a soft reboot, in the sense that there's never any mention of the previous times that the Templars rose from the grave and massacred a bunch of people. I kinda like that actually. This one is an attempt to go bigger, to show what the events of the first film would have been like if the Templars descended on an actual populated village. The first third of the movie definitely is a retread, but then it opens up and is much more of a siege movie in the later parts. There's a larger cast of characters, but they don't all get the time they'd need to be memorable, and towards the end its hard to keep track of who's getting killed. But the atmosphere is still there, we still get that creepy castle and the foggy graveyard. I love that Ossorio directed all of these, because it means we don't get a Hellraiser situation where some director gets their hands on it and completely changes the titular monster. With this series, you get the Blind Dead every time and you know exactly what that means. Gotta appreciate that, but I also loved the next entry in the series for going outside the box a little bit. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 16:39 on May 15, 2017 |
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May 15, 2017 14:41
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Nice! The Blind Dead films are some of my favorites. Even when things get repetitive in the sequels like you mention, the templars themselves are endlessly watchable. It's downright exciting whenever they emerge.
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May 15, 2017 15:25
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Dracula A.D. 1972 - Oh man did this movie kick rear end. The opening is one of the best openings I've seen in these movies so far. Lee and Cushing have been such a great duo to watch this year, and I almost feel lucky to have waited so long to see these movies for the first time. Christopher Neame was no slouch in his role as Johnny Alucard (and lol that scene with Cushing writing the names out is fantastic). The music was incredible and elevated some scenes with the funky jazz tracks. It was a bummer reading that it was met more negatively than previous installments. I had a lot of fun watching this and there are some amazing shots. I wanted to make or find a gif of the scene with Alucard bringing Dracula back from the dead because I really like the way it was shot with Dracula appearing above Alucard even though his grave was clearly below Alucard in the previous shot. It was a cool way to play with perspective and make Dracula the larger than life.  "It was my will" 4/5 Previous Watches: 1. Black Sabbath, 2. The Asphyx, 3. Street Trash, 4. Serial Mom, 5. Graveyard Shift
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May 15, 2017 16:32
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I've been slacking a bit but just means I'll get to marathon some stuff later! I did get in one movie over the weekend though 2) Ghostwatch This has been getting talked up a lot recently in the horror thread since it was added to Shudder. And with good reason, it's a very good movie. Basic premise is that the BBC is filming a haunted house special on Halloween, and are sending in a team to investigate a particularly haunted house. However, unlike a "pure" found-footage movie, it's handled more like a news broadcast-with on-scene reporters and a separate studio anchor. It works well building tension until everything goes off the rails at the end. Everyone seems to play their part well throughout, helping give it a very "real" feel (it's unsurprising that some people were initially fooled into thinking it was real). Really well done, lots of modern movies could take some notes from this how to do found footage style stuff.
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May 15, 2017 16:40
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When Lee said that line I had to pause the movie because I couldn't believe how absolutely perfect it was. That may be my favorite one liner in movie history. Obviously the hand extended so that Alucard may kiss the ring just adds to it.
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May 15, 2017 16:41
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Basebf555 posted:When Lee said that line I had to pause the movie because I couldn't believe how absolutely perfect it was. That may be my favorite one liner in movie history. Obviously the hand extended so that Alucard may kiss the ring just adds to it. Alucard's reaction to the ring being on Dracula's hand is priceless. I also liked how he almost instantly becomes a sniveling whiny brat demanding powers from Dracula while almost intentionally never bringing Dracula the right woman.
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May 15, 2017 16:49
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11. Street Trash   I have to get this out of the way: The main character looks like Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate. A society of homeless people who live in a junkyard have their lives threatened by several sources: police investigating strange murders, the homeless "leader" who's shell-shocked Vietnam vet with blood lust, and a mysterious cheap liquor that melts anyone who drinks it. As if being homeless weren't hard enough! The filmmakers work with what they've got, utilizing Brooklyn and Hoboken, NJ's structure, street art and natural griminess to give the movie a unique look and feel:  The deaths and gore in this movie are wonderfully colorful. I love how they incorporated purples and blues and yellows into the gore. (The yellows are especially gross.) The puppetwork and effects are insanely good and the newly remastered version. The camera work is highly energetic. I joked in the horror thread that it's basically "Raimi-Shot: The Movie", but it also has a lot in common with Raising Arizona, which came out the same year. Lots of steadi-cam (the director has basically made a career out of his use of steadi-cam), lots of movement, some great long-shots that go back and forth between characters. The movie front-loads itself with the best shots, the best action, and the best effects in the whole film. The iconic death which marks the beautiful cover (the poster is seriously great, I want a framed copy on my wall right now) happens in the first 10 minutes. Luckily the movie maintains the pace and energy throughout, but nothing really tops the first 20 minutes or so (besides the end-death). The actors deserve very special mention. Many of the actors playing homeless people really get into being weirdos and some of them add really special ticks to their roles (the homeless man that wears the suit he was married in's rant in the liquor store and his death, there's a fat homeless man who can heave his chest naturally weird before he explodes). Street Trash has some weird dark comedy tonal things going on, like an attempted rape and the discovery of the body of a dead woman who was killed during a sexual assault being set to "Fat Man walking tuba music". The problem is, they scenes aren't funny at all, so why have that music play? Were they trying to make sinister tuba music and just failed because the scenes involve a fat guy? I don't have the answers, guys. That said, it's trying so hard to be over-the-top offensive, but maintains it's charm and energy throughout.  The end credits sequence was also wonderful, dark and funny karmic justice. I wish I had a deeper catalog of films to watch from the director James Muro. He's done a lot of steadicam work (including Maniac Cop!), he was DP on Crash (2004) (you'd think that alone would have given him more work) and more than 50 other movies and shows, but his directing work is limited to TV shows I have no interest in watching. Hopefully he'll get a chance at another film someday, because this one was wicked. I love 80's-as-gently caress horror movies. This goes on my list of "Why didn't I watch this sooner?". This would make an interesting double feature with The Stuff, because even though they're working on different themes and ideas, they're certainly aesthetically related, though Street Trash is much more mean-spirited (in a Troma way). /5
Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 16:54 on May 15, 2017 |
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May 15, 2017 16:51
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17. The Ghost Galleon To continue my Blind Dead marathon, this sequel was refreshing because it throws out the castle in favor of a nice and creepy ghost ship. Still plenty of fog, mind you, which is very important. Just like Return of the Blind Dead, the cast of characters here isn't quite as good as it was in the original, and with a few exceptions they all kinda blend together. Still, I just loved watching scenes on that ship, I couldn't get enough of those. The ship works as a mini house of horrors, people are dragged off into its depths never to be seen again, and dismemberments are happening below as eccentric researchers are doing their "scholarly" research on deck. So you get the sense that the ship is very big; big enough for people to get lost in and disappear very easily. In other words, it stands in for the castle that's featured in the other three films, but that was fine with me. I imagine at this point Ossorio wanted a change of pace, because who wants to make the same movie three times in a row? 18. Night of the Seagulls The strength of this movie is the characters, the cast is probably the strongest in the series other than the original. Right off the bat we're introduced to a youngish couple who are new to the village, and they're strong characters that keep the movie a little more focused than either of the two previous sequels. There's also a really interesting town fool character and overall the dynamic between the couple and the villagers is great, it was very Innsmouth. This time the Templars seem to prefer beachside rituals, and some of those scenes are really nice looking. In the end though its Ossorio going back to that same template, and so it was wearing a bit thin because of how closely I'd watched them together. Also, for the first time I thought I detected a downgrade in quality for the makeup used on the Templar Knights, which was disappointing. Maybe it was my imagination?
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May 15, 2017 20:30
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13. Hounds of Love (2016) - Wildcard pick based on someone in the horror thread gushing about it within the past couple of days. Serial killer/rapist couple, etc. Not really my thing. It is effective at making Perth look like an utterly miserable place to live and I like the soundtrack, but I think that's about all I can say for it.
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May 16, 2017 06:22
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3. In Memorium After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, a guy and his horribly bitchy girlfriend move into a new home where he plans to make a documentary of his remaining days. Being a found footage horror movie, they are, of course, not alone. He grows more and more obsessed with solving the mystery while his girlfriend pouts, throws fits, and begs him to just do chemo already because watching him die is hard. This had so much potential and absolutely blew it. The acting is terrible, the script is horrendous, and the "twist" is one of the most stupid ones I have ever come across. Worst of all, it was boring. As bad as the movie is, the worst part is undoubtedly the very end, where what tiny amount of potential it still had unraveled completely. My immediate reaction was, "Oh. Okay." The casting was astonishingly bad, especially the main character's stoner (?) kid brother, and the landlady. Dear god. That landlady. Complete waste of time. 1/5 4. The Sighting (2015) Convinced that her mother was abducted by aliens, Mia drags her psychology major boyfriend on quest to discover what really happened. He thinks she is trying to find closure, while she is certain that she will find proof of an alien abduction. Is Mia telling the truth, or is she slowly succumbing to late onset paranoid schizophrenia? Casting was decent, and acting varied from mediocre to hilarious (a couple of "crazy" characters chewed the hell out of the scenery and obviously enjoyed their roles). Mia's boyfriend was supportive while also being condescending, and his asides to the camera, with all his psych 101 vocabulary regurgitations, show him gradually breaking down in the face of what he believes to be Mia's psychotic break from reality. An incredibly awkward visit to her father - whom everyone believes killed her mother - doesn't exactly paint her as mentally sound, and you can tell her boyfriend is struggling against his desire to commit her to a psych ward. The mystery was interesting but, as seems common with these movies, they completely fumbled the ball with the ending. As in Mark Sanchez buttfumble levels of stupid. Not only did it make no sense, but it offered absolutely no closure, leaving it as, in my opinion, a complete non ending. Disappointing, since bits here and there were intriguing and borderline creepy. The only saving grace was the alien obsessed weirdo they found on the internet and met up with at his run down van/home, seeking his sage advice about aliens and government conspiracies. 2.5/5
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May 16, 2017 21:46
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I guess I'm just going to keep going even though I was only in for 13. I mean, why would you stop watching horror movies, really? 14. The Evil Within (2017) - Someone mentioned this just hit Amazon and I have literally no self control, so here we go. This thing is a beautiful mess. It made a bad first impression with some cringe-inducing narration in the intro. It kind of looks like one of the less-beloved Full Moon productions; soft focus all over and an inescapable feeling of incredibly cheap sets. It doesn't take too long to hit its weird lurching stride, though, and it's at least visually engaging from the very start. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun looking at stop-motion work. It's obviously not the result of a large budget or a great deal of experience, but it's equally obvious that a great deal of passion went into it. Highly recommended if you're willing to overlook the rough edges. There are like a billion cool moments I could turn into gifs but I'd hate to show too much so just have this clip of a newscaster extolling the virtues of sleep. 
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May 17, 2017 06:09
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Irony.or.Death posted:I guess I'm just going to keep going even though I was only in for 13. I mean, why would you stop watching horror movies, really? You can't post about The Evil Within without the completely insane back story of how it was the passion project of a meth addicted millionaire. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/14/the-evil-within-horror-movie-andrew-getty-millionaire-meth It's loving crazy.
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May 17, 2017 06:39
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19. House of Frankenstein I suppose its pretty shameful that I'd never seen this, but I really enjoyed it a lot. Karloff is really in his prime here, its great fun to see him get to ham it up as a mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein analogue. I should have guessed that the Monster wouldn't really have a large role, it not being played by Karloff and all, but that was still a bit of a downer, plus the makeup job on the Monster was kinda weak, like they were trying too hard to reproduce the Karloff Monster's facial features. Chaney Jr. takes up the slack though, he really does an impressive job of injecting some actual depth to the Talbot character, I actually liked him a lot more here than I even did in The Wolfman. I'm considering rewatching The Wolfman just to maybe re-evaluate Chaney's performance, which has never been one of my favorites. This is also just a great looking film all around and it's dripping with that great Universal Horror atmosphere. Highly recommended on blu ray, because the black and white cinematography has never looked better. The lighting, shadows, fog, etc. are all extremely crisp and would totally stand up to any picky modern viewers who might not typically like older movies. If you didn't know better it wouldn't be easy to tell that this was filmed three quarters of a century ago.
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May 17, 2017 14:40
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Hollismason posted:You can't post about The Evil Within without the completely insane back story of how it was the passion project of a meth addicted millionaire. That explains quite a bit, actually. Thanks for the link. edit: That Guardian write-up is pretty bad, though. It reads like they looked at the Hollywood Reporter piece they link at the start and decided to buy all the way into the story around the movie without actually watching the movie. Irony.or.Death fucked around with this message at 15:30 on May 17, 2017 |
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May 17, 2017 14:50
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Way behind, this has been a crazy month for me. 3. Yoga Hosers (2016) - "Horror/comedy" is a bit of stretch here, since it is neither scary nor funny, but it does have horror elements so I'm counting it. I actually liked Kevin Smith's Tusk, so I was willing to give this one a shot too. That was a mistake, as this movie is pretty much worthless. Two Canadian teens who are in an awful band fight satanists and an army of tiny sausage nazis (bratzis... ugh) with the power of yoga. If that isn't dumb enough for you, Johnny Depp repeats his role from Tusk as a goofy French Canadian detective who helps the girls fight evil. Most of the jokes fall pretty flat, and often are just people saying "aboot" or other variations on "they're in Canada, get it?". The special effects on the little monsters are pretty bad, although there is a giant monster suit near the end that admittedly looks pretty neat. I also liked the kid who played the lead satanist. I can't think of anything else positive to say. Stay away from this one.
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May 17, 2017 15:09
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| # ? May 8, 2024 23:33 |
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Wow this month's flying by and I still have tons to get to.
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May 17, 2017 15:41
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