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I'll probably end up watching more than 13 because I'm insane. For those that have Shudder and may be watching a few Rob Zombie films, consider giving House of 1000 Corpses another shot even if you didn't like it years ago. I think its really aged well and I like it a little bit more each time I see it.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:07
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Drunkboxer posted:May 1st isn't until Monday, are you going to cheat?!? I'm definitely gonna cheat. I never have the will power to wait in October either, my marathons always end up starting the week before. One year I even did September AND October and I watched over 50 horror movies.
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Apr 28, 2017 14:29
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Spatulater bro! posted:Some essentials I feel embarrassed for having not seen: I'm extremely jealous that you get to watch these for the first time. I have a few like that on my list for this challenge as well: Rabid Fright Night The Devil's Backbone Cannibal Ferox Although I don't think any of these will be as fun as the lineup you've got going on. I'll probably watch Prince of Darkness again just for the hell of it.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:35
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The Devil Rides out is, from what I understand, excellent. But I haven't been able to find it anywhere and it's like $40 on blu ray. Is it available on youtube? For sure watch The Mummy and Horror Express though. Both feature Lee and Cushing and Horror Express in particular is one that I'm sure there will be a parade of people in here lobbying for. It rules.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:53
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Franchescanado posted:I'm amazed you guys haven't seen Fright Night, it's my go-to for Fun Vampire Movie The only excuse I can really think of is that I ended up seeing the remake first, which maybe took some of the appeal out of the original for me. Sometimes that happens, the fact that I already know the basic outline of the story makes the original less enticing.
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Apr 28, 2017 16:52
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Alright friends, I "officially" started last night even though we still have a few days before May 1st. Call it cheating if you want, but I'm gonna probably end up watching like 30 movies anyway so who cares. Decided on a Bava double feature, one old and one new. 1.Shock(Shudder) Written and co-directed by Lamberto, this was actually kind of a pleasant surprise. I wasn't really expecting to like it all that much, but then I realized Daria Nicolodi was the main character, which is nice. She's rarely had opportunities to carry a movie on her shoulders like she does here. The movie itself is a fairly straightforward ghost story, and the visual touches that Bava is known for aren't really on display much, but overall it still kept me interested and there were some pretty frightening moments. There's an incredibly effective and disturbing jump scare, where a possessed little boy comes running towards his mother, then morphs into the ghostly image of his dead father. Not a whole lot of gore, but the movie makes up for it with some very uncomfortable sexual situations. You know, the kind that can only be created in a movie where a little boy is being possessed by a man who wants to gently caress his mother.. Certainly not top-tier Bava, but if I had to guess I'd say this is more Lamberto's film than Mario's. I decided after finishing it that some iconic, classic Bava was in order. 2. Blood and Black Lace I'd say this is Bava's best, and probably the best giallo ever made, especially if you don't count Suspiria(I do but that's a discussion for another time). Every kill is incredibly stylish, in no small part because of the ridiculously good looking lighting that Bava is famous for. The costumes are great, the set design is great, there's really no element here that isn't top notch. In classic giallo fashion, almost every character in the movie is a major rear end in a top hat in one way or another. Personally I love the scene where an antiques dealer finds a dead body in his studio and his first move is to hurry over to his friend's place to establish a fake alibi. Or the woman who finds a body in her trunk and her first priority is to hide the body. These are people who really only care for themselves, and their immediate thoughts are always centered around covering their own rear end. The design of the killer is absolutely perfect and incredibly influential. It is I'm sure one of the films that taught Carpenter that simplicity can be terrifying. Blood and Black Lace can be tough to track down, and I eventually caved and bought the Arrow blu ray edition last year. I highly recommend it, because Bava's best work really explodes your eyeballs in 1080p. This was my third viewing of the film and it hasn't really started to lose its power yet, an unquestioned Mount Rushmore-level giallo that all horror fans should experience.
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Apr 29, 2017 17:08
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3.Q The Winged Serpent This turned out to be perfect for this challenge, because it takes place almost 100% in broad daylight on the streets of NYC. Larry Cohen is a crazy person, this much I've learned in the past week or so since I've watched God Told Me To, and now this. The elements he throws together are bizarre, unlike what any other director would do. I didn't think Michael Moriarty could play a more ridiculous character than he did in The Stuff, but I think this one tops it. The titular Q is almost secondary. Is there some "Larry Cohen Horror Trilogy" box set that I don't know about? Because I'd buy it immediately.
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Apr 30, 2017 17:44
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4. Fright Night Well, I definitely feel dumb for waiting this long to check out Fright Night. I wanted to discover at least one new horror film to slot into my annual October horror marathon, and I already did before the challenge officially starts! I guess I never really understood how much of a love letter to vampire flicks this was, and I also never realized that it was made by the director of Child's Play. Someone earlier in the thread said that Fright Night is their go-to "fun" vampire movie, and I can totally see why. Stuff like What We Do in the Shadows has its place, but I'll always enjoy that more earnest style of parody/homage a lot more, I guess Tom Holland was a master of it because Child's Play is another great example. Self-aware horror can often be the most fun, and Fright Night definitely belongs right alongside some of the greats like Monster Squad and Gremlins. Chris Sarandon is great in this, I love the scene where he does the typical vampire hello to the girlfriend, but then flips the switch and acts like he was just joking. And of course, there's Peter Vincent, my favorite bit of the movie. Everything involving this character was gold, and I want a sequel where he and the kids team up and hunt vampires.
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May 1, 2017 14:45
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I really wouldn't want to have to choose Hellraiser or Hellraiser II, I think of them as one continuous story. There's so much great stuff in Hellraiser but I also love how insane Hellraiser II gets towards the end, I consider them both essential.
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May 1, 2017 16:36
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I did another search on youtube for The Devil Rides Out and came up empty. Its not on Amazon streaming either, so you may be out of luck on that one. Assuming The Devil Rides out isn't an option, I'm going to throw in a vote for Dracula AD 1972, because its ridiculous and features the best line of Christopher Lee's career. Johnny: Master! I did it, I summoned you! Dracula: It was my will.*extends ring to be kissed*
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May 1, 2017 17:28
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Spatulater bro! posted:Countdown film #2 (I'll officially begin the challenge tonight): I see on Letterboxd that you did not enjoy Hellraiser III very much. Can't say I'm surprised! Oh poo poo you beat me to it.
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May 2, 2017 15:13
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Spatulater bro! posted:Next on my list is Hellraiser Bloodline, but I'm seriously considering cutting my losses with the franchise here and moving on to my next movie. Well, I won't claim that you'll definitely like Bloodline, but there's a lot more creativity to it than Hellraiser III. It's also the obligatory "in space" sequel, so may as well see it for that reason alone. I full endorse dropping the franchise after Bloodline though.
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May 2, 2017 15:22
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4. Ravenous Technically a rewatch, but it didn't feel like it because I hadn't seen this for about ten years. The thing that struck me the most about it that I never noticed ten years ago was how great the soundtrack is. It's what I'd call foot-tapping music at certain points, but almost inappropriately so considering what's happening on-screen. It's perfectly off-putting in a way that is a great fit for the tone Bird was going for. The gore is pretty brutal, its really not surprising that the movie had a tough time finding an audience in 1999. Its definitely a very dark comedy but probably more gruesome than any actual horror movies that were coming out around that time. The teenagers probably wouldn't have been interested in a black comedy-western, and older people wouldn't have been able to get into all the blood and guts. It's a film that is stuck in no mans land but that often does describe the most beloved cult classics, which Ravenous is turning into as we speak.
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May 2, 2017 15:37
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Franchescanado posted:
My go-to Shudder wildcard is Dead and Buried. Most people haven't ever heard of it, and neither had I until last year when it came up in the horror thread.
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May 2, 2017 16:00
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Feel free to request Wildcards from others. I fall in the habit of perusing lists for half an hour instead of watching things because I can never decide.
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I think I'm gonna leave anthology horror to the real Halloween season, just feels wrong to watch one now.
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May 2, 2017 16:40
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So many possibilities for Shudder wildcard picks. Shudder is awesome. Anyone still looking for a good wildcard choice might want to check out some Larry Cohen(God Told Me To, The Stuff, Q). I feel like Larry Cohen is like the embodiment of the wild card.
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May 2, 2017 18:52
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MacheteZombie posted:Oh man I watched the Stuff for the first time last month, what a cool flick. Would pair well with a They Live rewatch. You should watch Q The Winged Serpent too, because it stars Michael Moriarty, the guy who plays "Mo" in The Stuff aka the best part of the movie. He somehow plays an even more ridiculous character in Q.
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May 2, 2017 19:02
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Franchescanado posted:You guys made me thing Q The Winged Serpent was on Shudder. It is, at least it is on the Amazon Prime add-on. Its not showing as just a regular Prime movie either, specifically says its through my Shudder subscription.
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May 2, 2017 19:26
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Franchescanado posted:Really? I tried looking it up on my Amazon app on my phone and only got Blu-rays. I'll look when I'm back on my computer. It probably wasn't searching in Amazon Video somehow, I've had that happen to me before.
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May 2, 2017 19:33
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Drunkboxer posted:6. Baskin (2015) Netflix Ugh, I let it pass in the horror thread because we've argued over the definition of torture porn so many times, but that annoyed me. There's a lot more to Baskin than just torture porn.
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May 3, 2017 14:34
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Spatulater bro! posted:Well you can see I liked part 4 a lot more than 3, but yeah I think I'll call it a day here. The fact that a lot of the sequels after 4 are just miscellaneous horror movie scripts with Pinhead shoehorned in sounds quite unappealing. I'm happy that you decided to give Bloodline a shot but I think this is definitely the right place to stop. I don't think there's anything to be gained by continuing the series, its not like there's a New Nightmare-level sequel thrown in there that you can look forward to. It's kinda just a steep cliff and the series falls right off it.
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May 3, 2017 15:10
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Lurdiak posted:Someone should take the plunge and try to figure out if Halloween or Hellraiser has the worse sequels by marathoning both series one after the other. But I feel like anyone willing to actually do that couldn't be trusted to judge quality. The worst of both series are about equal, I'd put Resurrection on par with whatever would be deemed the worst Hellraiser sequel. Key thing would be if Halloween III counts or not. If it does, I think that clearly gives Halloween the edge. Hellraiser 2 is just as good as Halloween 2(better imo), but there's really no Hellraiser equivalent of Halloween H:20. So that, plus if you throw in Season of the Witch the choice seems pretty clear to me.
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May 3, 2017 17:08
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5. The Skull Directed by Freddie Francis and produced by Amicus, this is one of the very few Cushing/Lee team-ups I hadn't seen yet. Really its the Cushing show, with little bits of Lee sprinkled in at various points for extra flavor. I can see this film being a little bit of a slog if you don't enjoy Cushing or the standard Amicus/Hammer aesthetic, its fairly low-key and there isn't a whole lot of blood, and the main antagonist is an inanimate object. Still, if you're a Cushing fan this film is extremely enjoyable because he's the focal point of the whole thing. You get the more reserved, suave Cushing, the animalistic blood thirsty Cushing, and everything in between as he slowly is driven insane by a demon inhabiting the skull of Marquis de Sade. As always with Hammer and Amicus, detailed and colorful sets and costumes raise the whole thing to another level. A great film for just sitting back and letting the presence of Peter Cushing entertain the hell out of you.
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May 3, 2017 19:58
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6.Torso Ehhhhhh, this movie was not that great. I was hoping for more because Torso is a great name for a giallo and I've seen what Sergio Martino is capable of in Your Vice is a Locked Room... There's a decent build-up where some pretty heinous sexually related murders are happening, but once the group of girls travels to the isolated villa things kind of grind to a halt. Kinda just waiting for it to be over from that point, although there are some sexcapades that serve as a nice distraction I guess. For whatever reason the reveal of the killer did nothing for me in this one, it was just an "oh, it was that guy" moment and then the movie was over. Mountain of the Cannibal God is also on Shudder, should I give Martino another chance?
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May 4, 2017 14:39
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I had a hell of a slasher double feature last night. I'd been watching a lot of Italian stuff recently and I didn't realize how nice it would be to get back to the more familiar trappings of the American slasher. 7. The Burning Of loving course Jason Alexander doesn't play the rear end in a top hat jock character! I was sold a bill of goods on that one, he kinda fools you in screenshots by wearing a football uniform. He's more like the king of the nerds, the one nerd who is personable enough to actually interact with women. Costanza aside, The Burning is better than Friday the 13th in every way. I don't even think its a discussion. The thing that I think makes this movie work so well is that it has the balls to let the cast just be together in the day to day activities of the camp for like a solid 40 minutes before the poo poo really hits the fan. Its a risk, because if the cast wasn't so consistently entertaining and watchable then it could backfire, but in the case of The Burning its absolutely perfect. Even the (real)rear end in a top hat jock character is hilarious, and as a result I was not at all happy to see him get killed. That goes for all of the campers, they were all likeable in one way or another and they'd all been well established by the time of their death scenes. There was never a scene where I was saying to myself "who is this character again?" like with so many inferior slashers or giallos. It also occurred to me while watching this that Friday the 13th doesn't even attempt to show the camp when its actually up and running. Those scenes were some of my favorites in The Burning, and I realized that I could have watched a 90 minute comedy about these characters even if Cropsey never showed up. The Burning is also probably a better looking film than Friday the 13th, there are some really nice shots of the outdoor locations. The final showdown with Cropsey is another standout scene, and another way that it completely trumps Friday the 13th. I didn't really intend to reference Friday the 13th so much in this review. I think it was inevitable though because of how many similar elements there are here, and how so many of those elements are used to greater effect than they are in Friday the 13th. Sad that we didn't get to see what a sequel may have looked like for this franchise that should have been. 8. The Prowler This film was just mean as hell, its down and dirty in a way that The Burning definitely isn't. The kills felt more graphic(although Savini worked on both), and the characters seemed to be made to feel a lot more pain and anguish. So it is a disturbing film on that level, but also a very well made one. The little mini period piece opener is nice, and once things get going they don't really stop. This was made in the same year as the Burning, but Savini's work seems to be more realistic here for some reason, I wonder if that was a purposeful choice. And of course there's his trademark head explosion, always worth the price of admission. My one complaint would be that the reveal of the killer is kinda lame, but that's almost to be expected with most slashers, even the good ones. I prefer something like The Burning where there's no mystery at all as to who's responsible. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 15:27 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 15:23
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Spatulater bro! posted:I'd say he's a jock, he's just not an rear end in a top hat jock. I mean, he's handing out porno mags and encouraging the other nerds to jerk off while the real jock makes fun of them and tells them that they should try the real thing sometime. Then one time the jock actually starts messing with him physically and he instantly melts into a puddle and his voice goes up like 3 octaves.
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May 5, 2017 15:44
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Heavy Metal posted:1. Blood and Black Lace (1964) Its actually kinda nice to have a negative review sprinkled in once in a while, gets kinda boring when its a non-stop lovefest.
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May 6, 2017 16:07
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9. Wolf Creek 2 I watched this more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, I hate having a sequel hanging out there that I haven't seen. It has some entertaining moments but really starts to drag by the end. The original kept things moving a lot better, and I'm sorry but John Jarratt isn't Vincent Price, so please don't give me a 20 minute scene of nothing but John Jarratt sitting in a chair talking. Certainly don't put a scene like that right where the climax of the movie should be. Gore hounds may like the movie because its incredibly gruesome and mean. Obviously there's a very black sense of humor to the whole thing but then sometimes it wants you to watch a guy tearfully beg to see his kids one last time, so it doesn't seem to really know what it wants to be. I wasn't blown away by the original, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that I didn't love this either.
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May 7, 2017 16:55
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10. The Oblong Box I was itching for some Vincent Price after I mentioned him in my last entry, but I'm trying to focus as much as I can on first time viewings. The Oblong Box jumped right out at me because its been on my watchlist forever and it co-stars Christopher Lee. This film is not brought up very often when Price is discussed, and I can understand why. It's shot like made for t.v. movie, so although the costumes are nice the rest is pretty boring aesthetically. The story is not really all that interesting on its face, and the reveal of the masked man at the end is nowhere near as good as similar scenes in Price's other films(House of Wax comes to mind). Still, The Oblong Box is a great example of the power guys like Price and Lee had to just be flat-out entertaining regardless of the circumstances. Price makes the most of his scenes as always, his little gestures and looks adding depth to what would otherwise be rote, utilitarian dialogue. The sad thing is that according to Wikipedia, this film was supposed to be directed by Michael Reeves, only a year after working with Price on Witchfinder General. Tragically he died of an overdose before he could film The Oblong Box. I imagine we missed out on a lot of great horror beyond just this film, Reeves almost certainly had a long and successful career ahead of him. I think tonight I'm going to mix in a re-watch and do Witchfinder General in Reeves honor. Fits perfectly with a May Horror Challenge anyway, most of it (to disturbing effect)takes place in daylight. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 16:12 on May 8, 2017 |
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May 8, 2017 16:10
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11. Mountain of the Cannibal God I've decided that Sergio Martino is not that great a director. Your Vice is A Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is good, but doesn't seem to really be representative of his overall work. This film is of course schlocky trash, but for the most part its fun schlock. By far the most disturbing scenes of the movie are the graphic deaths of a monkey and a lizard, but if you can move past those then overall its an enjoyable jungle adventure with some ridiculous situations and over the top special effects. Ursula Andress actually looks kinda bizarre here, her hair is pulled all the way back and her face seems to always be way overlit to the point that she looks like an alien or something. It's as if Martino wanted her to look like an angel that descended into the jungle to live amongst the mere mortals. It was distracting. One reason to check out this movie is Stacy Keach. There's only so many lead roles in this guy's career and this is one of them,although maybe not technically a lead considering his death is extremely unceremonious. This is also a version of Stacy Keach that wants us to think he still has hair, so the movie also features his very entertaining hair piece. All in all I don't regret watching this, but you need to be in the right mood and be ready for some grossness and stupidity.
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May 9, 2017 15:48
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Irony.or.Death posted:Everything Bava. The guy was obviously extremely influential but I've still never seen anyone match his work with light. Blood and Black Lace gets mentioned a lot for good reason. Also, while it's starting to move more into slasher territory, Soavi's Stage Fright (the 1987 one) rules and you should definitely watch it. This is actually kinda relevant to my post on Martino, because I think Soavi's best trumps Martino easily. The trifecta of Stage Fright, The Church, and Cemetery Man blow Martino out of the water in my opinion, but for whatever reason Soavi isn't a name you hear brought up very often. I guess maybe because two of those three films I mentioned aren't really giallo, but still, his name should come up any time Italian horror is discussed beyond just Bava and Argento.
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May 9, 2017 16:15
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Heavy Metal posted:Stage Fright is on my to watch list, that Owl head guy looks cool. I actually wasn't big on Cemetery Man myself though. Any other recommendations? Also, is there any giallo stuff people recommend from the late 70s and 80s, other than the couple Lamberto Bava ones? Other than Mario and Dario. Just wondering if I'm missing any really cool ones I don't know of. I watched Blood and Black Lace earlier in the topic, wasn't my thing. Have you seen Soavi's The Church? Its not really giallo, but its extremely stylish, and if you like stuff with a supernatural bent like Hellraiser and Nightmare on Elm Street, you'd probably enjoy it. I'm the one that recommended Blood and Black Lace though so maybe our tastes just don't really match up.
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May 9, 2017 22:12
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12. The Hills Have Eyes 2 This challenge is really giving me the kick in the rear end I needed to clear some of this stuff out of my watchlist. Craven is probably my least favorite of the Mount Rushmore-level horror directors, but I really enjoyed The Hills Have Eyes when I watched it last year. This sequel has almost none of the atmosphere of the original, and seemingly tries to do the action movie sequel thing where Craven is opening things up and making the story bigger and louder, and more explosive. It doesn't really work in my opinion, the close knit family of the original was a much easier group to root for than these characters and the plot is even thinner this time around. Interesting that Jeepers Creepers 2 seems to be pretty heavily inspired by this, it seems like an odd horror sequel to emulate. The good news is the dog is back. The Hills Have Eyes is really a tale of dog revenge, so not having the dog in the sequel would have been a travesty. All in all I consider this a misstep for Craven, made only a year after Nightmare on Elm Street. I don't see him as a consistent director, in my opinion he's never had an extended period of time like a Carpenter or Cronenberg where everything he touched turned to gold. His pattern seemed to be to make one very good to great horror film every 5 or 6 years, with some mediocre and forgettable crap mixed in between. Obviously there will be those(probably in this thread) who disagree with me on that, but films like The Hills Have Eyes 2 support the argument.
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May 10, 2017 15:29
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I'm definitely gonna do a Rollin double feature at some point this month, just waiting for the proper mood to strike me. So far I've only seen Fascination but I liked it a lot.
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May 10, 2017 15:47
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13. Beyond the Gates Feels like I'm on a run of pretty negative reviews here, so add another one to the pile. I had heard whispers that this movie was not good, but the trailer and the presence of Barbara Crampton hooked me in. Unfortunately this is a film that sets up a really cool premise, basically that its going to be a horror version of Jumanji, and then completely fails to deliver on that premise in any way that would be considered novel or even entertaining on a basic level. Technically speaking its not bad, its actually shot fairly well, but it just comes nowhere close to doing justice to the movies from the 80's that it appears to want to be a love letter to. None of the over the top goopy effects of From Beyond, not even the more down and dirty(and cheaper) gore of Re-Animator. A whole lotta nothing really. Which is a little odd, because I was shocked to find out that the film had a budget of 3 million. Where did it all go? If you told me that this movie cost $100,000 I'd believe it. Even the board game itself is lazy and uninspired. On the plus side the acting is not terrible, and its always nice to see Crampton. I wouldn't call this a cameo, its a bit more than that and she does have a decent number of lines, not just one or two. If we weren't in a time where so many independent horror films are popping up that are shockingly good, I'd have had much more realistic expectations for Beyond the Gates, but in the era of It Follows, You're Next, and The Witch, you gotta do better than this.
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May 11, 2017 16:20
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14. Tourist Trap Now this is the good stuff. Movies like this are why I subscribe to Shudder and hang out in the horror thread. Released in 1979, one wonders whether or not Tourist Trap would have been made post-Friday the 13th just a year later. While there are some slasher elements here(young good looking people picked off one by one), it feels much more like an extended Twilight Zone episode, albeit a particularly dark and disturbing one. While the film definitely has a twisted sense of humor, I found myself incredibly uneasy and even at a few points legitimately terrified, which is pretty rare these days. Apparently, fear of mannequins and dolls is called pediophobia, so maybe I have that? I love westerns just as much as I do horror, so going in I didn't know what to make of Chuck Connors playing this role. He's not exactly my favorite western star, he always struck me as the guy from Hail Caesar! that can barely pull of the cowboy role and would be completely out of his depth in anything else. Turns out I was wrong, because I think he really knocks this one out of the park(fun fact: Connors is one of only a few people to play in both Major League Baseball and the NBA). His friendly, helpful, yet naïve rube character is perfect, you can tell he's tapping into his western roots and it feels totally natural. Of course, things develop from there and he's required to stretch himself quite a bit, but it never feels like too much. It's unfortunate that Tourist Trap is so unknown, this could easily be considered one of Connor's best performances. I was surprised and yet not surprised to find out that Robert Burns, who also worked on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, did the art and production design for Tourist Trap. So much of this movie is ridiculous and over the top on the surface, but Burns production design combines that with the lived in, broken down quality that he brought to Texas Chainsaw. It lends the entire film an atmosphere of death and decay that is so important to making it as ultra-creepy as it is. Anyone who is looking for an under the radar gem for this challenge should check out this film, its available on Shudder.
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May 12, 2017 16:25
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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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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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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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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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