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I've been trying to watch a horror flick a day (or something like that) for October, and I wasn't really following this thread, but to Hell with it. Goal-wise I'm going for at least 31. I am behind pace but expect some double features/marathons down the line. So may as well just get started. #1. The Brain Eaters An extremely cheap 50s sci-fi movie primarily notable for the following: the filmmakers were sued by Robert Heinlein over similarities to his book "The Puppet Masters" (settled out of court), Leonard Nimoy has a small role and is credited as "Leonard Nemoy", and finally, the female lead was also one of the aliens in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Strange fuzzy creatures burrow up from the ground and latch on to people's backs, taking control of their minds. It's obviously aiming for that Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe, though Heinlein was also probably totally right to sue. Held back by its cheapness and some weird story issues, this barely hobbles to feature length, but comes close to being effective a few times. #2. The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Ah, Lon Chaney at his finest. The makeup of the Phantom is still wonderfully disturbing, and his performance is top notch. The movie itself is a little varied- superb set design (particularly for the Phantom's ludicrously elaborate secret lair), some engaging sequences, including a dazzling color masquerade, but gets held back a bit by the conventions of melodrama; most notably, the ending completely dumps any concept of Erik accepting he can't make Christine love him and dying alone, in favor of him being chased down by a mob. (This was apparently ordered by the studio and Chaney hated it.) Falls short of greatness but is solid entertainment. #3- and Fran Challenge #6: Video Nasties- Toxic Zombies First things first, even understanding how silly the Nasties controversy was, I have NO idea how this ended up on the list of 72. There's none of the obvious things the BBFC would be upset by- no sexual violence, no violence against animals, some children are threatened but not actually hurt, etc. I don't even recall the gore very much. A bunch of hippies growing marijuana out in the forest get sprayed with an experimental herbicide by the feds, which turns them into flesh eating monsters. This is a very cheap, sloppy production- the story has some nice subversive ideas, with the government trying to cover up their mistake, but it ends up just plodding along with a lot of people talking in offices, and the monsters never come across as convincingly threatening. #4- The Sadist Surprised this one isn't better known because it's actually really good. Arch Hall, Jr.- of Eegah! fame- plays a psycho spree killer who traps three schoolteachers at an abandoned gas station. Pretty much the entire film is him and his crazy girlfriend holding a gun on three people trying to figure out how to escape, kinda prefiguring the modern wave of "people trapped in a single location by something deadly" movies, and it's brutally effective at times, with no clear sign how things are going to turn out. Hall is actually pretty well cast here, he maybe goes over the top but it's so hard to tell what's too over the top with this kind of character in this kind of movie. #5- Deep Red This is one of Dario Argento's better known giallos, and it's... solid, I think. A killer is on the loose and a composer witnesses the first murder from the street, and tries to put together clues from there. It's a very small cast for a whodunnit, but the plot does manage some nice misdirections, even if the final revelation ends up a little underwhelming. But yeah some good visuals and good tunes, plods a bit but works. Particularly notable is Daria Nicolodi as an enterprising reporter. #6- Devil Girl From Mars Another 50s sci-fi chiller, this one from old Blighty. A group of people end up at a remote Scottish inn just as a flying saucer lands, and a woman in black leather informs everyone that she's here to take Earth's men. A better idea than most these days. This actually started life as a stage play, and it shows- it's very static and talky, and as the Martian invader, Patricia Laffan has a great look but has to cope with some very unwieldy dialogue. It is, however, very atmospheric, set on a foggy, chilly night, and I kind of admire the attempt to make things seriously dramatic. I dunno about this one. Slow, but has a certain charm. #7- The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue I'd heard this referred to as the best looking zombie movie, and it's definitely well photographed. Despite being set in the UK it was mostly a Spanish and Italian joint, albeit with extensive location work. Basically a hippie and a girl he bums a ride from end up stuck in the countryside where an experimental pest control machine is making things with primitive nervous systems act really violent- and this means corpses, unfortunately. This one has a bit of a pacing problem, bound up with the main plot there's this thing about the cops being suspicious of all these drat longhairs and some attempted social commentary, but the zombies themselves are especially eerie and there's a good unsettling vibe. Also the protagonist is really not very likable at all but this becomes less of a problem as the mayhem increases. It could be better, but I can definitely see why it's got a cult following.
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Oct 9, 2018 09:32
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#8- FleshEater: Revenge of the Living Zombies (or something like that, the title's been changed a couple of times.) Ever wonder what the most generic low-budget zombie movie ever would look like? Well wonder no more! Bill Hinzman, who played the graveyard zombie in the original Night of the Living Dead, became the auteur here, producing, directing, and co-writing this picture as well as starring as a ghoul who bursts out of an unmarked grave and starts turning folks into zombies. This movie features some of the worst sound editing I've ever heard- everything just defaults to "top of the mix", from the opening long shot where all the characters in the distance are loud and clear, to a LOT of shuffling leaves and grass noises whenever people walk anywhere, to a DJ over the radio sounding like he's in the room right next to the camera. Everything in this movie pretty much happens exactly like you'd expect, and with no central driving narrative (there are two teens who are sort of the protagonists, maybe) it just runs through all the motions. They even steal the ending of the original Night of the Living Dead, only with way less impact, and the movie doesn't even end for like another 10 minutes. I will say that Hinzman did manage a few nice shots, and the autumn setting is always good for horror antics. There's the occasional good gore effect too, and at some point they burned down an actual barn, but the word that best sums up this film is "nondescript."
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Oct 10, 2018 05:58
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#9: Shivers Man, David Cronenberg. The guy knew he what he was doing early on- his first full length feature, and it's about a parasite that turns people into sex maniacs. Nobody else could pull off this premise and get the tone right, with its detached blend of horror, eroticism, and black comedy. He does a good job sketching some of the characters who live in Starliner Towers, even as the carnage gets underway, and the film's profound ambivalence about what's happening is still meaningful. You could write a lot about how this ties into the era, when the Sexual Revolution was giving way to a sort of bored, bourgeois decadence. Is it an echo of that time, or a contrast? It's ambiguous without being indecisive. It's not Cronenberg's best looking movie, and the score's all stock, but it's a good, unsettling time.
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Oct 11, 2018 06:24
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#10: Invasion of the Saucer Men This popped up on Amazon Prime recently, and I was happy to see it again because it's never been on DVD, and I understood it to be one of the AIP movies owned by James H. Nicholson's widow, who was asking a lot for the rights. Not sure what changed things, but here's the movie. And it's an odd duck. It's a sort of comedy, complete with whimsical title music, where a flying saucer lands near Lover's Lane and bug-eyed aliens start messing with the locals. They inject people with alcohol through their fingertips, and when one of their number gets hit by a car, they manage to frame the teens in it for hitting a pedestrian (this was the thrust of the short story it was based on, "The Cosmic Frame". ) It's never fully explained what the aliens are up to, but it feels like they're riffing more on the mythology of little green men showing up, spooking people, and disappearing without a trace. One surprising bit is the humor is pretty risqué for 1957, with references to underage drinking and guys trying to get to first base and so on. (At least I assume the drinking is underage, I don't know what the laws were back then.) It's just a little over an hour long and while it's never really *funny*, it has a certain charm. Frank Gorshin is in it, as the one character the saucer men actually kill. Paul Blaisdell designed the aliens, perhaps the most iconic Bug Eyed Monsters, and honestly we don't see enough of them. (Though there's a fairly clever scene with the disembodied hand of one of them crawling around.) A very slight film by design, but good to finally have available again.
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Oct 12, 2018 07:29
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#11- The Evil I more or less randomly selected this one after a long period of indecisiveness. It's a crude but atmospheric haunted house movie, starring Richard Crenna as a psychologist whose group of friends show up to help renovate his newly bought house, only for something to be awakened in the basement trapping them all inside. You've got the standards, cobwebs everywhere, a big storm outside, etc. but it works to set the mood and some of the scares are quite effective. The ending is a little on the goofy side, though. On the whole a decent little chiller.
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Oct 13, 2018 19:49
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#12- Venom Yeah, this is absolutely a monster movie. From the opening echoes of the Quatermass Xperiment, to elements of Cronenbergian body horror and werewolf movies, to the occasional touch of Little Shop of Horrors, it's a monster flick, and a darkly funny one too. Tom Hardy is legitimately great at comedy, managing to make Eddie Brock a crusading reporter and also a hopeless schlub, with echoes of Charlie from It's Always Sunny in there. The plot bounces along, never getting too bogged down in explanations of things, and the film subtly builds in goofiness to the point that we're just willing to accept it after a while. It kinda reminds me of Ang Lee's Hulk only this time the world is ready for it. Also the end main titles are done to one of those rap songs where the lyrics really explicitly follow the film's plot and we haven't had enough of those lately.
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Oct 14, 2018 03:52
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#13- Zombie Holocaust, aka Doctor Butcher, M.D. Bruteman's post wasn't exactly a recommendation but it was enough to get me interested. In some ways this is the stereotypical grindhouse movie- a hastily dropped-in title card, some extraneous scenes added at the start for no real reason, unnecessarily detailed gore scenes, some nudity, cannibals, and zombies. It is kinda like Fulci's Zombie but not nearly as stylish or atmospheric. Oh, and the music is TERRIBLE. It's the worst "someone randomly fiddling with a Casio" poo poo you can imagine. The film takes so long to get going that they have to throw in some more eviscerations just to thin out the cast, and while I admire the attempt to have a plot, it doesn't quite get there. It's caught between something as moody as the Fulci film, and the geekshow antics of the various cannibal films of the period, and doesn't have their "should I even be seeing this" feel either. (No animals are killed which I guess is a plus?) It has its moments, but not many.
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Oct 14, 2018 07:04
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#14- The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy Hooooo boy. I saw the MST3K episode of this but that was a long time ago, and man this movie is rough. It was the third in a trilogy of movies featuring La Momia Azteca, centering on him defending Aztec treasure from an evil scientist calling himself The Bat, and roughly half the screentime is given to summarizing and showing clips from the first two movies, framed by a bunch of people sitting in a drawing room. I had trouble staying awake. This time around the Bat designs a "Roboto Humano", a robot with a dead body inside, and the goal is to use the robot to kill the mummy. But by the time this happens the movie's close to done, and there's only time for a brief scrap between the two. Some cool scenes in a lab and that's it.
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Oct 15, 2018 05:32
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#15- Creepshow (Should I be marking rewatches? Because if so, this, Shivers, Invasion of the Saucer Men, and Phantom I'd all seen previously.) After the awfulness of Robot vs. Aztec Mummy I figured I should go for a guaranteed classic. What a fun movie! What a joy to see Romero and King both in such good form! The first story drags a little, but after that it's good times aplenty, from goofball surrealism to legit shocks and scares, and that perverted EC Comics sense of poetic justice. Gorgeously photographed in bright comic book colors, with original music by John Harrison, and an insanely deep bench of a cast. Leslie Nielsen has to win any contests, though, as the gloriously amiable murdering psychopath with a video obsession in "Something to Tide You Over", which is also the best segment. (Coincidentally, perhaps, it's the one Romero edited himself.) Pretty much delivers on its promise of "The Most Fun You'll Ever Have Being Scared", which of course makes it perfect seasonal viewing.
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Oct 16, 2018 07:06
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#16- Halloween Another classic rewatch. It's a very simple story executed with razor sharp precision by filmmakers who already really Had This poo poo Figured Out. There are a lot of subtle touches despite its elemental quality- there's a clear strong dynamic between Laurie and her friends, Michael Meyers is hammered home as this impersonal force with allusions to everything from classical literature to The Thing and Forbidden Planet, there's a lot going on. Jamie Lee Curtis couldn't have made a better debut either. Got to see this on a big screen for once.
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Oct 17, 2018 06:35
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#17- Fran Challenge #5: Birth of Horror- Ghostkeeper A Canadian effort from 1981- I'd seen the trailer for this on one of those grindhouse streaming channels and so sought it out on Prime. It's got a great setup, three people snowmobiling through the Rockies take shelter from a snowstorm in a big abandoned hotel, where it turns out an old woman is looking after... something in the basement. Opening text specifically calls out the legend of the "Windigo", and I always liked the concept, but the film never quite meets its potential. After a slow buildup, the story seems to start to get going, and then- it just kinda collapses, with a number of scenes that don't really go anywhere, and a final twist that, while it's foreshadowed, doesn't have much impact. At times atmospheric (it was shot in Alberta in December, which makes me think this was a beneficiary of the same tax shelter law Cronenberg used to make Scanners and Videodrome), but never really scary, and it also seems like at the last minute they decided to cut some gore, so it feels restrained less in a spooky way and more in a "this editing is awkward" way. (There is no rating information- Canadian or otherwise- on IMDb.) Coulda been more than it was. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Oct 18, 2018 |
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Oct 18, 2018 06:38
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Fran Challenge #7: The World Is A Scary Place #18- Ugetsu Well, it's sort of a horror film. It's absolutely a ghost story, but the primary emphasis is on a group of peasants trying to hide from soldiers while wars rage across Japan. One of them, a potter, is selling his wares in town when a mysterious noble woman puts in an order for pretty much all of his stock, payment to be made on delivery to her manor. Needless to say, something is not right. There's definitely a supernatural atmosphere, and some spooky moments, but it's most explicitly a movie about the scars and trauma of war. (Incidentally this was made in Japan in 1953. Worth mentioning.) People get greedy and ruthless and neglect their home- it's quite gendered for the most part, the men go off on a tear and the women suffer for it. Quite solemn and effective, particularly in its coda. While I'm only 80% sure this even fits the October Challenge, it was nice to take a break from the traditional mayhem for something more contemplative.
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Oct 19, 2018 08:50
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Back from a horror movie 'thon so I'm ahead of the curve. #19- Splatter University. An unseen man escapes from an institute for the criminally insane, and kills a college professor- soon after, her replacement shows up, and the killings start again. It's obviously trying to be a kind of horror/comedy hybrid but really doesn't do either well, it's the kind of movie where they don't even attempt jokes very often, and instead just have everyone be kinda broad and nutty. There is some intense gore, which feels really out of place when it happens despite the title. Just very crudely made in general, with a lot of weird little editing choices and the like. Basically a drag. #20- Creepers, aka Phenomena. This was an old 35mm print of the American cut (with the silly title), which I'm given to understand omits material from the original cut, and on top of that the print was old enough that there were probably entire seconds of frames dropped. I still had a blast- it's a Dario Argento movie so I already assumed the plot was gonna be loopy, and it is. Jennifer Connelly, pre-Labyrinth, plays the daughter of a famous actor, going to school in Switzerland, where it turns out a lot of murders are taking place. She has a weird psychic link with insects and is prone to sleepwalking, which leads her to a professor (Donald Pleasance) who hopes to maybe get a lead on the killer via her ability to work with bugs. Yeah, look, this poo poo is bananas, and I loving loved it- it's got tons of atmosphere, and the plot, while zany and coincidence laden, holds to its own logic just enough that I was willing to accept its stupider moments. (Of which there are a lot.) Connelly gets really put through her paces here, apart from the role being weird she's in almost every scene and there are at least two that REALLY had to be no fun to shoot. (Checking up on IMDB, she was apparently bitten by a chimp too.) And she pulls it off! There's some good tension at the end, and also Iron Maiden and Motorhead have songs on the soundtrack. So yeah good stuff. Will have to watch the original cut eventually. #21- Re-Animator. I'd seen this before, but it's fun to revisit. An obscure story H.P. Lovecraft wrote entirely out of hunger gets turned into the madcap, very gross adventures of a medical student who has figured out how to revive the dead, only they won't stop screaming and bleeding all over the place. Manages to be outrageous and distasteful without feeling completely cynical or mean- I suspect a big reason is, it's as much an homage to 50s B-movies as it is a contemporary splatterfest. Also helps that Jeffrey Combs is as superb as he is- the rest of the cast is good (David Gale in particular), but he just nails the nerdy sociopath who gives no consideration to anything besides proving himself right. Fran Challenge #2: Queer Horror #22- The Lost Boys. Qualifies because of Joel Schumacher, though any actual LBGT+ themes in the film itself are pretty subdued. Anyway, this is an odd movie that seems to be made up of two parts. One is a very heady, stylish modern Gothic story about a teen falling in with a coven of young vampires hanging around in Santa Barbara, which has a beach, a carnival, and that's basically it- it's such a dirtbag place that everyone's already kinda inured to the frequent disappearances, and you can see how desperation would breed monsters. Then there's the story of the teen's kid brother, who meets a couple of other kids who have figured out that vampires exist and offer to help him out, and this part resembles nothing so much as something like The Monster Squad or Gremlins. There's a lot of goofy comedy in this part, the height being a farcical dinner scene where the kids think mom's date is the head vampire so they try pouring garlic on his spaghetti and shoving a mirror in his face. The implication that the two Frog Brothers are in such bad straits that they've had to set up their own defenses against the undead based on what they've read in comic books is never delved into, they just remain comic types. (There's an interesting detail with Corey Feldman's character always talking in this very affected Rambo voice, which again kinda makes sense, but it's never developed beyond a comic bit.) It still mostly works, the atmosphere is top notch and Schumacher deserves credit for capturing this crazy goth aesthetic a few years before other filmmakers cottoned on, but it lapses back into comedy by the end. Basically I'm not sure what came first, the genuinely scary and intense vampire movie or the wacky kid adventures, and you can tell this script has been through some changes. I dunno, it was okay.
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Oct 21, 2018 06:06
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#23- Scared to Death Scared, bored, same thing right? A strange monster lurks in the sewers beneath Los Angeles, occasionally venturing forth to attack people. Man, the pacing on this one. The first half of the movie focuses on a writer who used to work for the police department, and he's a really annoying protagonist who engages in a deeply uninteresting romance with a woman whose car he runs into. The monster has racked up like 12 victims by this point and we're dicking around with this guy. Like you know how Jaws is laser-focused on the fact that there's a giant shark eating people and every scene in some way relates to that? This is the opposite. Eventually the guy starts working with his cop friend on the case, and the girl gets attacked by the monster, but she survives because the creature is now leaving its victims in comas. But she's out of the movie for the most part, and instead this other woman barges in to deliver a shitload of exposition, about how it's a thing called a Syngenor that some scientist developed in a lab but then he died of a heart attack and it escaped. Later she even just reads from a file describing a bunch of scenes they were too cheap to shoot. We do get to see some of the monster and it's an okay costume, but the designer had obviously just seen Alien. This movie's kinda baffling really. It feels like it was shot in chronological order and the production was falling apart along the way, hence changing the female lead halfway through and the monster no longer gorily slaying its victims but instead doing the Alien thing with its tongue to suck up their spinal fluid(?) and giving them epileptic fits(??). Then the new girl reasons that it's trying to breed. It just keeps making less and less sense. Too dull to hold my attention- I'd blame the horrorthon yesterday, but no, really, this was just awful.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:57
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#24- The Shining For years I'd wanted to see this film on the big screen but I kept missing the opportunity. I'm glad I did eventually, though, because this is meant to be an overwhelming, enveloping experience. A sort of haunted house movie (some argue that it's really psychological, but the same is basically true of all haunted house movies), this eschews most of the traditional trappings in favor of brightly lit, clean, elegant spaces where bad things are clearly going to happen, or have always happened. It almost loses something once Jack picks up the axe and actually starts rampaging, but there's still plenty of weirdness left. Honestly, I think arguing how much of the film's ghosts and demons are internal or external- whether it's all in Torrance the whole time- misses the point, sorta, since they're one and the same. That's how genre movies work as metaphor, they embody concepts that you can't embody in a realistic milieu, and the results, in their ambiguity, touch on a lot of things- alcoholism, abusive relationships, the corruption of wealth and power, and those stories you read about where someone seemingly normal suddenly does something horrifying. Horrors like this can never be fully understood, and so the movie itself refuses full explication.
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Oct 23, 2018 08:05
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#25- The Howling Joe Dante's werewolf extravaganza is a little ropier than I remembered- not bad at all, but not quite as tight as it could be. It's an engaging story, to be sure, with Dee Wallace as an anchorperson whose encounter with a serial killer sends her to a therapeutic retreat, whose inhabitants seem to have a peculiar culture all their own. Patrick Macnee is the new-age psychologist who's all about getting people back in touch with their natural instincts, Dick Miller runs an occult bookstore, and Robert goddamn Picardo is the killer, who is shot dead by police but doesn't let that keep him down for long. Oh yeah, the werewolves are awesome, with some glorious transformation sequences. It feels like Dante was still learning a few things, but overall a fun time.
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Oct 24, 2018 06:41
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Fran Challenge #11- Dead and Buried #26- Isle of the Dead Set in Greece during the Balkan Wars, the film stars Boris Karloff as a strict general who, with an American journalist in tow, travels to an island to visit his wife's grave, only to find it was cleaned out years ago by peasants. They stay at a hotel where one of the guests dies of a plague that's been ravaging the country, and so they're all put under quarantine. A very somber low-key drama for much of its running time, as people question whether science, superstition, or anything at all can keep death at bay, and slowly the general and a housekeeper start thinking on the Greek legend of the vrykolakas, which is basically a kind of vampire. A beautiful young woman (Ellen Drew) falls under suspicion as she's the most healthy of the group, and things start to get very spooky and very savage near the end. It's a slow burn but the climax is as moody and shadowy as you could hope for, and Karloff is in top form- this may be his best performance, though honestly he gave so many great ones. Also of note, Jason Robards' father- who also went by Jason Robards- plays a doctor. Great stuff from Val Lewton.
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Oct 25, 2018 08:05
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#27- WNUF Halloween Special Heard a lot about this last year, so I decided to give it a go. A found footage thing, with a 1987 local news broadcast leading into a special investigation of a supposedly haunted house. A lot of work went into trying to make this authentic, with a believable VHS aesthetic, local ads, etc. The ads are part of the problem. There are realistic ad breaks throughout, and whoever's playing the video sometimes fast forwards through stuff, but not always, and also in true TV special investigation fashion they make sure to take their sweet time actually going into the murder house. Which would be okay if there were a good payoff, but... well, just no. Without going into specifics, it just fails to deliver. By the time anything happens, there's not enough time left to do anything interesting. Too much time spent on the buildup and on the ads, and the humorous 80s cheese, while not overdone or unrealistic, still gets in the way of it being actually scary, which- I think it's trying to do. Found footage movies require you to strike a balance between leaving a mystery within what the camera doesn't capture, and still having enough happen on screen that it's a satisfying narrative, and this just fails to get there. The reporter guy gives a good performance, though, he's exactly the kind of sleaze you find chasing a lurid story while not really taking it seriously.
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Oct 26, 2018 03:56
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#28- The Devil Rides Out aka The Devil's Bride Since the horrifying news that Filmstruck will be discontinued in late November dropped today, it was inevitable that I drifted there to find something. This is a neat little Hammer picture in which Christopher Lee gets to play a good guy for once. He and a friend discover that a relation of theirs has gotten into devil worship, and seek to rescue him and his intended "bride" from the cult leader, the sinister Mocata (Charles Gray, of "has no loving neck" fame). Car chases and punch-ups with occultists build up to a full-blown supernatural assault, and it actually gets tense at times, but even when it's not the occult weirdness makes up for it. The ending is kinda handwavey in a way that made me think they maybe changed something at studio insistence, but there's no evidence of that. Quite a fun little time. Catch it while you can.
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Oct 27, 2018 07:19
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#29- The Bride of Frankenstein Hadn't watched this in a while. I had previously pegged it as a horror-comedy and it's sort of like that, but it's really just kind of nuts- James Whale and co. decided to go all out and make one of the weirdest movies to come out of Golden Age Hollywood. You almost can't believe they're getting away with this stuff, it's a crazy rambling tale with a mix of the macabre, the sentimental, outright self-parody, and just strange visual art. There is an entire scene where a mad scientist shows off jars of miniature people he's dressed up like kings and popes for no particular reason other than he thought it was funny, and I'm not even sure that's the oddest scene in the film. It wouldn't work if it weren't so lavishly and lovingly made, full of beautiful expressionistic sets, weird camera angles, arch yet dedicated performances, and an amazing music score that ended up being recycled in several serials. If there's a flaw it's that the ending is super abrupt (a common theme in Universal's monster movies, like as soon as the script hit 70 pages they had to wrap it up.) Also it's impossible to watch the scenes with the hermit without thinking of Gene Hackman in Young Frankenstein. Still, a blast.
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Oct 28, 2018 08:31
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#30- Strait-Jacket Joan Crawford stars as a woman who chopped up her husband and his mistress with an axe, was found legally insane, and locked away in an asylum. Twenty years later, she's released and goes to live on a small farm with her now-grown daughter, but she's dogged by nightmares and memories, and well, eventually the axe starts falling again. William Castle directs from a script by Robert Bloch, and of the wave of films that came soon after Psycho, this holds up pretty well- there's legitimate drama, good visuals, and of course Crawford gets to act her heart out. This is a subgenre that bears closer inspection, I think.
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Oct 29, 2018 06:53
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The main deal with Bloodline is it was hacked to pieces in editing. I have no idea if the original would have turned out good, but what’s left is a total mess.
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Oct 30, 2018 02:39
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 #31 - Night of the Living DeadA rewatch. Finally got to watch the new Criterion of this. I held off for a bit because it's one of the grimmer movies and a bit topical considering everything. But in the end, a great horror film is a great horror film. Atmospheric and intense, with a sense of wrongness pervading everything- the ghouls are suitably ghoulish, even if they're sort of a background for the real human conflicts. The gradual reveal of the problem, from one strange man wandering in a cemetery to reports of nationwide panic (reminiscent of the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds), is masterful. Judith O'Dea's histrionics are a bit much at times, but at others she's fairly entertaining. Duane Jones is perfect. Still the scariest zombie movie ever made, with an oppressive power that hasn't been equalled. One detail I somehow never noticed, at the end Ben is placed on the pyre right next to the first ghoul we saw in the film. So that brings me to my initial goal of at least 31, but I'm not completely sick of horror yet so let's keep this going to the end. Got at least two to see.
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Oct 30, 2018 05:43
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FRAN CHALLENGE #13: What We've All Been Waiting For #32- Halloween (2018) Not quite the definitive capper on the franchise that it's trying to be, but good nonetheless. I feel like all attempts to do a sequel to Halloween- apart from III which was its own thing and my relationship with that is complicated- run into the issue that there really isn't anything more you can say or reveal about Michael Meyers since his entire point is he's an incomprehensible, nigh-supernatural avatar of pointless violence. This film does some cool stuff with Laurie Strode as a character, and overall the fast forward to a new timeframe is well handled. OTOH the "dead teenager" portion of the film feels perfunctory, being done out of obligation, and there's a whole plot twist of sorts that goes nowhere and feels like a cul-de-sac. Also it features Michael just stomping someone's head into jelly which I feel is more a Jason Voorhees move? Michael's strong but not pulverize-you-without-trying strong. Slasher experts, back me up on this? But it eventually gets round to a pretty good climax, Jamie Lee Curtis is great of course, and Judy Greer gets to kick some rear end which feels way overdue. The finale is strong enough that I'm willing to forgive the flaws in the middle portion.
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Oct 31, 2018 03:59
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#33- Hell of the Living Dead Another bad Euro Zombie flick, in which a chemical facility of some kind accidentally (?) releases a toxic gas that turns people into ravenous monsters and contaminates the island of New Guinea. You can tell you're in for quality when the film recycles Goblin's Dawn of the Dead score and, for its second scene, has blue-suited SWAT Team guys laying siege to a compound- however the movie drops the Romero ripoff (in part) to focus on another jungle excursion. There's plenty of vaguely skeezy footage of natives preparing corpses and eating maggots, and while it doesn't go as far into bad taste as the dedicated cannibal films of the time, it plays with the line. There's some story involving the soldiers, and a female reporter (who strips and paints herself to blend in with the natives at one point), and there's like a couple with a kid who are trapped there too but they die within a few minutes, and the plot REALLY doesn't cohere at all. The filmmakers are making some statement about exploitation of the third world but it's hampered by bad storytelling and lots of sequences that are just excuses for zombies to lumber around and occasionally take a bite out of people. I will say the zombie makeup is sometimes pretty good, and the gore effects are also intense. Also a few nice shots of the chemical plant exterior. Look, I have to take what I can. It's mostly crap.
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Oct 31, 2018 07:11
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#34- Scream and Scream Again Ugh, what a mess. This film has an okay premise, but presents it in the most obtuse and disjointed way. Lots of scenes go by with no apparent connection to the main plot or even a clear indication of what the main plot is- like there are a bunch of scenes in a totalitarian eastern bloc country which eventually has something to do with the plot but only like an hour in. Mostly it's about the hunt for a serial killer who assaults women. There's a scene where a policewoman goes undercover to lure him out at a dance club, which it turns out is taking place in the middle of a gorgeous sunny day, the better that it can eventually transition into a seemingly endless chase sequence. It takes forever for any kind of protagonist to emerge, the soundtrack is this bouncy light jazz affair, and the whole thing has this very arch late-60s/early-70s ironic hipness that becomes grating after a time. Gordon Hessler has made some good movies, so I don't know what went wrong here.
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Nov 1, 2018 01:36
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FRAN CHALLENGE #10- Fear and Now #35- Suspiria (2018) Heavy stuff. Argento's original was as pure a mood piece as you can make, so the remake actually has a lot of room to explore the premise. Set in the mid-70s in West Germany- while the Red Army Faction were running about, and that's actually part of the story- the tale of a new student at an avant-garde ballet school run by witches brings in revolutionary politics, the agony of making art and subsuming oneself to someone else's design, women's liberation, all sorts of topics, and it's presented with the kind of brutal surrealism that characterized much German art at the time. There's a lot going on, and at times it risks a certain coldness, being a Very Serious Horror Film indeed, but it manages a unique intensity and atmosphere that justifies the solemnity. Tilda goddamn Swinton being who she is helps a lot, and it's a strong cast in general, including one face I was glad to see again. I can't imagine busting this one out every Halloween, but like I said, good heavy stuff. #36- House on Haunted Hill (1959) And so I decide to end the evening, and the marathon, on a familiar classic. This movie really is Halloween to me, spooky fun in a murky old house full of cobwebs and severed heads and spooky scary skeletons. Vincent Price is a millionaire who promises 10K to his guests if they spend a night in a haunted house (hey, that was a lot of money back then), and his gorgeous wife who hates him is also in attendance. It's Elisha Cook Jr. who nearly steals the film, though, as the caretaker who's utterly convinced the house is full of murderous ghosts, and who also gets increasingly wasted as the night goes on. The handsome macho hero guy is instantly revealed as totally useless, and so it's up to little Nora (Carolyn Craig, who screams a LOT) to survive the attentions of various sinister forces. William Castle gives the picture just the right atmosphere, a little cheesy and a little campy but not at the expense of genuine tension. It's the kind of movie that starts with a scream in the dark, ends on ghoulish laughter, and in between makes sure to hold your attention. This IS a movie I can watch every Halloween. And with that, I'm done. It's been great, honestly, I've always been meaning to watch more movies and this was a great excuse. Didn't get to as many of the Fran Challenges as I could, but let's hand out some Awards: Best New-to-me Movie: Ugetsu. A moving Japanese tale of desperation and social decay in the midst of war. Worst Movie: Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy. Look I know the Mexican film industry wasn't exactly large or even really "fully in existence" in the late 50s, but there's no loving way even the most poverty row production can justify half its running time being summing up the previous movies in the series. Most Pleasant Surprise: The Sadist. Seriously check this out, it's actually really tense and I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before. Runner-up goes to Phenomena / Creepers, which I had heard some things about but not enough to prepare me for the reality. Biggest Disappointment: WNUF Halloween Special, probably. I kinda get what they're going for, but it goes on too long for too little payoff. Best Overall Film: Night of the Living Dead. George, you were something special. Full List: Brain Eaters The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Deep Red Toxic Zombies The Sadist Devil Girl From Mars The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue FleshEater Shivers Invasion of the Saucer Men The Evil Venom Doctor Butcher, M.D. Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy Creepshow Halloween (1978) Ghostkeeper Ugetsu Splatter University Phenomena/Creepers Re-Animator The Lost Boys Scared to Death The Shining The Howling Isle of the Dead WNUF Halloween Special The Devil Rides Out / The Devil's Bride The Bride of Frankenstein Strait-Jacket Night of the Living Dead (1968) Halloween (2018) Hell of the Living Dead Scream and Scream Again Suspiria (2018) House on Haunted Hill (1959) Fran Challenges Completed: 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13. Eh, not bad. Good night, and Happy Halloween! Next Year in Transylvania!
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Nov 1, 2018 08:38
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Dr.Caligari posted:Is this the 2015 Sadist and one that came out in 1963? The 60s one, sorry.
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Nov 1, 2018 19:03
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 05:25 |
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Yeah come October there are some movies I wanna rewatch just to make sure I'll be in the right mood. Especially when I'd watched something that was new and disappointing I'd go for something I knew I would enjoy.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:38
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