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In for 13.
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Apr 28, 2019 17:12
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 21:03 |
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Here's my list: https://letterboxd.com/gnonn/list/mai/
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Apr 28, 2019 20:02
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I'm starting much later than I had planned but I am confident I can make it to thirteen if I just neglect anything else for a month. 1. Evil Eye AKA The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)  A film so old that the very first scene has people smoking on an airplane. A young American woman named Nora Drowson goes to Rome to visit her ageing aunt but when Nora ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time she witnesses a murder but everyone thinks she's crazy because there is no body and Nora is a huge fan of trashy crime novels. She of course begins investigating on her own with the help of a hunky young doctor who just wants to show her the city and also boink her. After some digging she finds out that the murder took place but it happened ten years ago. Apparently this is the American edit which puts a heavier emphasis on the romantic comedy aspects of the film. Which explains why it feels more like a fun little romp. There's even a montage where the young doctor shows her around the city and we're treated with a series of shots of him miming various bits of Italian history to her most notably gladiatorial combat and fascism. There are still a lot of scenes that push the plot forward and even a few very tense scenes but all the thrilling thriller stuff is interspersed with Nora being a complete dork and klutz and the doctor constantly hitting on her. Aside from the tone Evil Eye feels a bit like a proto-giallo. There is no J&B whiskey and the murders happens mostly off screen or are just barely glimpsed and Nora remains fully clothed for almost the entire film. but it is a film about a beautiful woman that has to become an amateur sleuth because the police won't believe her is the basic plot of at least a dozen gialli but the sleazy tone of latter films is mostly absent and this feels more like Bava doing his best Hitchcock impression. The crime pulps Nora reads throughout the film, complete with voiceover from her about whatever grisly deeds are being committed on the page, are the sort of literature that the giallo genre takes its name from. As most of you are probably aware "giallo" is Italian for yellow which was the colour crime novel covers tended to be. On the whole a very enjoyable picture. The twist isn't too surprising but Bava, who is of course also cinematographer, is nothing if not a visual master and like all of his films this film is gorgeous so it's at worth a watch even if it's far from Bava's best. I should probably try to get my hand on the more thriller oriented international cut to see how it compares. 2. Terrified (2017)  A haunted house movie there isn't just one haunted house but an entire haunted neighborhood starting in one house and then spreading like an infection. The film start with a flashback to the ever escalating paranormal events in some sleepy suburb in Argentina. A group of aged paranormal investigators then contact the survivors and get permission to spend a night gathering evidence. A middle aged cop with a bum ticker (two weeks away from retirement) who is personally involved with one of the victims and an old friend of one of the investigators tags along. I am a bit torn on this film. It does a lot of really cool things and many of the effects and creature designs are amazing but it doesn't quite stick the landing. I'm a huge sucker for all paranormal investigation nonsense and this really scratched that itch and I really love the concept that the creatures are not actually ghosts but microscopic being from a parallel dimension that are somehow possessing our flesh and using our dead bodies as vehicles to spread their and also drink human blood. In a way it's a bit like a very very loose adaptation of Lovecraft's From Beyond where a scientist discovers that we are actually constantly surrounded by terrifying monsters but they don't quite exist on the same spectrum of light as we so we can't see them and they can't see us. It's a bit like they ran out of money towards the end and couldn't shoot the final climax because it just sort of ends just as it's getting really crazy. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 01:44 on May 16, 2019 |
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May 16, 2019 01:41
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3. The Innkeepers (2011) The Yankee Peddler Inn is closing down after over a century is business. It's the very last weekend before everything is shut down and there are only two remaining employees: insecure and geeky Claire and edgelord rear end in a top hat Luke. Both of them are 20something college dropouts who don't know what to do with their lives. Since there are barely any guests in the hotel they plan to use their last couple of shifts to gather evidence about the ghost supposedly haunting the hotel. Also when Claire puts a lock on the outside of the basement hatch and we get a several second close-up of it I immediately knew she was going to get stuck down there and get killed when she couldn't open it from the inside if that foreshadowing had been just a wee bit more subtle that later moment might actually have surprised me. For some reason I thought this was going to be a period piece set in the early 20th century until the opening credits were over and it was the present day possibly because the only other Ti West film I had seen before this was House of the Devil (2009) which is set in the 70s or 80s. I feel the same about this film as I felt about House of the Devil I like it on the whole. It's well made and has a nice creepy atmosphere that keeps building and building dread until the climax however in both cases I felt the climax didn't go quite far enough. I can't quite put it into words how it could've been different but it just feels like both films didn't go quite crazy enough near the end though I feel like The Innkeepers gets closer to the sweet spot. I do like all the scenes of Claire and Luke being very awkward and her being totally clueless that he's very badly hitting on her.    4.  Witchfinder General (1968) It is the 17th century (the worst century or at least bottom 5) and a civil war rages in England. The parliamentarian Roundheads, lead by general and soon to be Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, are gaining the upper hand against the royalist Cavaliers but there is still much fighting to be done and chaos reigns throughout the country. In the midst of all this Matthew Hopkins, the titular witchfinder, is roaming from town to town rooting out accused witches with the help of his assistant the sadistic John Stearne. Soon they find themselves in the village of Brandeston where the priest is accused of being a secret Catholic, the priest's niece tries to save her uncle but her efforts don't go as planned. Soon after her fiance, a young soldier in Cromwell's army, returns home to find out what has happened and goes on a roaring rampage of revenge. I've seen this touted as a quintessential folk horror film it stands apart from other entries in the genre like The Wicker Man (1973) and Blood on Satan's Claw (1970) in that actual folklore or paganism play little or no part in it. Numerous accused witches are tortured and executed in Witchfinder General but there is no sign that the witchcraft is anything other then empty accusations. The other films are also more reactionary with the heros being authority figures (a cop and a judge) and good Christian men combating pagan (or neo-pagan) forces who are very sexually liberated and formed mostly of young people in what is probably an allusion to the hippy movement whose iamge had just turned considerably darker following the Manson murders. In Witchfinder General, as in life, the authorities are the enemy. Hopkins is sanctioned in his trade by parliament and every magistrate he works with is intensely corrupt. The hero is a soldier in the army of Cromwell, a zealous Puritan who outlawed dancing and Christmas once he actually took power, but he highly suspicious of the power structures and seemingly not that religious by 17th century standards. Witchfinder General is a great film. It's intense and exciting and so brutal that sometimes that it's even hard for someone as seasoned as me to watch in parts. It is also gorgeous and contains this amazing match cut where the the ocean turns into a witch burning as the sounds of the rushing waves fades into the roars of the fire    
FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 18:24 on May 22, 2019 |
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May 22, 2019 18:18
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Lurdiak posted:Ah, right. Still though, as bad as an angry physically abusive father is, I don't think most people would be glad to see their parent murdered via their psychic powers. Speak for yourself.
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May 25, 2019 02:15
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5. Murder Party (2007) A dorky down on his luck parking attendant comes across a invitation to a "Murder Party" on Halloween. At the last minute he decides to cancel his plan of watching schlock horror with his cat, the very fluffy Sir Lancelot, to attend the party. He bakes some pumpkin bread, throws together a cardboard knight costume and heads out. When he arrives to the party he soon finds out that the "Murder" part of "Murder Party" was meant quite literally and is held captive by a collective of squabbling artists that want to create art out of his death. This is Jeremy Saulnier's first feature film made years before he made a name for himself with Blue Ruin and Green Room. Murder Party is much more comedic than the other two, though Green Room had some funny moments, but its surprisingly similar in tone and look to his latter films with Saulnier's signature ugly and mean violence used here for comedic effect rather than horror or shock. It's a very cheap film but one that manages to pull it off by actually being set in a rundown warehouse instead of just being shot in one. Although it's a bit more "uneven" than Saulnier's latter work, as first features tend to be, its still a very solid horror comedy with good pacing that uses the budgetary limitations to its advantage.    6.  Beast From Haunted Cave (1959) A group of thieves pull of a heist and hide out in a isolated mountain cabin in South Dakota not knowing that their activities have actually awakened an ancient tentacled monster. To make things even more complicated the boss's girlfriend has grown tired of the life of crime and is falling in love with the hunky ski instructor that owns the cabin their hiding out in. This is a 1950s monster film and as such almost all of it is people standing around talking but it manages to change things up with the heist elements of the story and most of the cast being professional criminals and hardened killers. The monster is interesting in concept and the way it kills people by webbing them up in its cave and drinking their blood until they die. is drat creepy but this is undercut by the monster being very stiff and unconvincing and the fact that it runs away like a chump any time it meets even the slightest resistance. Beast From Haunted Cave is a very good concept pulled of adequately which is why I think it's a great candidate for a remake. Something along the lines of The Thing or The Fly where you take the basic concept of an old cheesy monster movie and modernize it to make something new. A film that starts out like a heist movie and then turns into a horror film halfway could really work.    7.  Savageland (2016) A tiny village near the Arizona/Mexico border is wiped out overnight. There is only one survivor, a meek photographer named Francisco Salazar who is immediately arrested for the massacre. Salazar is an illegal alien which leads to a huge public outcry against immigration, despite almost all of the victims being Mexican, and calls for his blood. His case is pushed through the courts in record time but soon after a roll of film shot by Salazar on the night of the massacre is found. The photos show that not only is Salazar innocent but the real killers are not human. All of this presented in a documentary format through talking heads, archival footage, police reports, fancy graphics, and of course the spooky photos themselves. One problem I can find with Savageland is that it's a bit contradictory with its message. On one hand it's a film about an illegal alien that gets railroaded by authorities for a crime he didn't commit due to a atmosphere of xenophobia but on the other hand it's also about a rampaging horde of cannibalistic monsters coming in from the south of the border and heading north into America bringing with them carnage wherever they go. Which I feel detracts a lot from the other aspect. . That being said I like how much energy and time the film spends on the tragedy of the massacre and how the deaths affected the families and loved ones of the villagers. Another problem is that it isn't very scary. I actually think it could've worked better in a blog format or as an article because some of the photos of the event are genuinely chilling but the presentation just doesn't do much for me. Maybe if it used a similar approach as Noroi: The Curse where the documentary filmmakers are actual characters in the film and come into close contact with the forces they're documenting it would've grabbed me.    I´ve only got five days to go and still need to watch six films. Will I make it or will I be cast into the deepest abyssal pits of hell for my failure?
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May 27, 2019 22:19
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8. The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) An experimental rocketship crashes in the English countryside. Three men went up with it but only one emerges alive the other two having seemingly disintegrated into nothing. The survivor is catatonic and obviously changed from his journey. Based on a cult television serial of (almost) the same name from '53. The original was broadcast live and was a huge television event that left the streets of even the busiest cities in Britain empty, but as far as I can gather most of it is now lost to time. This is obviously the more polished high-budget version of the story with some fantastic cinematography and amazing make-up and creature effects for it's time. Being a 1950s sci-fi/horror movie most of the runtime is people talking about SCIENCE! in laboratories until the monster pops up at the climax but it's all handled very well so it never really drags. Quatermass himself is a bit of a odd one. He is a complete rear end in a top hat that's rude to basically everyone he encounters and appears to have little or no care for how his experiments may affect other people. It's a bit like a distant ancestor of Dr.House or the cavalcade of socially awkward rear end in a top hat geniuses that now dominate the airwaves. It is notable that in the original he is British but in the film he's an American, probably so they could better sell the film across the Atlantic. The actual star of the show is Richard Wordsworth as Victor, the returned astronaut, who is slowly mutating and absorbing other lifeforms as some alien force has taken over his flesh. He is very reminiscent of Karloff from the Frankenstein film in that even as he becomes more monstrous he still retains some of his humanity. Most obvious in a scene in which he encounters a little girl playing by the canal. Instead of throwing her in the water as the creature does in Frankenstein he recoils and runs away to protect the child from himself. Highly recommended for any fans of 50's monster movies.    I'm heading to Denmark for a few days on the 30th so I probably need to wrap this up before then. Can I make it or am I doomed? Dooooooooooooooooooomed!
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May 28, 2019 23:27
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9. Shock Waves (1977) (fantastic title card) The cheapest and most run-down dingy of a cruise ship in the history of sailing is forced aground near a mysterious island and soon the crew and passengers are picked off by a troop of undead Nazi super-soldiers that've been laying dormant beneath the waves for 40 years waiting to strike. I went in expecting silly gore drenched schlock, which is not unreasonable seeing as it is a movie about aquatic Nazi zombies, however what I got was a a grim po-faced film that relies far more on eerie atmosphere than blood and guts. I think that even if you were to take every drop of blood spilled in the entire film you'd barely fill a decent sized cup. There's plenty of death but it's all surprisingly bloodless for a movie of it's time and genre. Shock Waves employs the classic low-budget trick of hiring only one or two well known but aged actors, in this case John Carradine and Peter Cushing, and only having them in a handful of scenes so their stuff can all be done in a few days of shooting which means they're pretty cheap and add a ton of production value and a chance to sell the film to a lot of markets that would otherwise not be interested. The soundtrack is fantastic and can best be described as sounding like an electric nightmare. It manages to make the dozens of shots of zombies emerging from the depths, which might otherwise be repetitive, pretty drat creepy.    10. El Santo vs Frankenstein's Daughter (1972)  The daughter of the famous Dr.Frankenstein discovers by chance that the blood of famous wrestler El Santo, the silver masked man, is a key ingredient to a youth elixir that could extend her already unnaturally long life. So of course she kidnaps Santos girlfriend forcing him to fight hordes of henchmen and two flavors of Frankenstein's monster: original taste and mutant gorilla (both presented as burly bare chested dudes with some make-up only on their faces) For those not in the know this is only one of 50 or so films starring legendary luchador El Santo. In these films Santo is playing a fictionalized version of himself that is not only a wrestler but a monster slayer, an inventor, a crime fighter, and superhero who fights everything from Dracula to aliens to a cyclops to the mafia to the phantom of the opera to Nazis and wolf-men and everything in between. Being a luchador Santo never once removes his mask in any of the films, even when he's supposed to be sitting at home reading a book or sunbathing on the beach, the real Santo was never seen publicly without his mask and was even buried in it. These films usually follow a very similar formula. Something sinister is afoot. Santo gets drawn in somehow and his girlfriend or some other loved one is threatened and/or captured. Santo shows up and defeats the baddies with his wrestling moves. Roll credits. Usually interspersed with a scene or two of Santo fighting a regular wrestling match in the ring. Though they sometimes mix things up a bit like that one time the opponent turns into a wolf-man mid match. This film in particular stick to the formula but is interesting enough if you enjoy this sort of thing. It's very silly and the budget isn't much but if you enjoy watching a man in a silver mask beat the crap out of monsters and goons then this won't disappoint. I didn't enjoy quite as much as I did El Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (1969) or The Mummies of Guanajuato (1970) both of which are just jampacked with monsters and over the top action and are my favorite of the tiny fraction of El Santo films that I've seen.   
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May 29, 2019 04:32
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It's on Amazon Prime.
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May 29, 2019 04:58
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11. The Plague of the Zombies(1966) Something is rotten in the kingdom of England. It is the 1860s and a mysterious plague is ravaging the countryside. However those who die from the sickness do not stay buried. A Hammer take on zombies and as such it's a period drama with rich colourful costumes and lavish sets for British people to be stern in serious in between the scenes of gruesome horror. Probably one of the last films to place such a heavy emphasis on the Carribbean roots of the zombie myth even in a film set in rural England. It's made just two years before Romero changed zombies forever with Night of the Living Dead but it somehow feels much older even though it is in full colour and Night is in black and white. One thing I greatly appreciate is that the zombies look genuinely rotten, not quite as putrid as Fulci's walking flowerpots but much crustier than most zombies that came before them. A must see for any fan of Hammer horror and/or zombie cinema.   
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May 30, 2019 06:32
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Just wrapped up my challenge with Possum and CHUD II: Bud The Chud. Will post about both shortly. Am in another country currently. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 22:24 on May 30, 2019 |
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May 30, 2019 22:18
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 21:03 |
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12 Possum (2018) A disgraced puppeteer returns to his derelict childhood home and tries repeatedly to destroy the spiderlike puppet called Possum but it always seems to come back. I was expecting something a lot more comedic from this film since it's directed by Martin Holness who created Garth Marenghi's Darkplace which is the greatest television show of all time and hilarious in every way. What I got was a relentlessly bleak and depressing film about a broken man dealing with childhood trauma and his own imperfections by struggling with a spooky spider puppet. In that way it reminds me a lot of The Babadook in that it uses the titular monster a sort of metaphor for grief and depression as something you can never truly get rid of but you can learn to live with. I'm still processing the film and I feel like I need to watch it again but it has quite a lot of very strong and evocative imagery and some fantastic imagery that's really builds up the constantly building sense of dread. sidenote: The main character reminds me a lot of a middle aged version of Ian Curtis from Joy Division, not just how he looks and dresses but the way he carries himself is very similar to Ian's eccentric and erratic stage performance which was heavily influenced by his struggle with epilepsy. 13  C.H.U.D. II: Bud the CHUD (1989) [rewatch] A pair of high school students accidentally resurrect Bud, a zombie who is the last remnant of a secret military experiment called the CHUD Project which aimed to create undead supersoldiers. Hijinks, and mass death, ensue. This is the only rewatch on my list. I've seen this movie at least a couple dozen times. When I was a kid me and my brother would usually spend New Years, Easter, and parts of each summer with my dad who lived in the Westman Islands, a small town on a small volcanic island a few hours sailing from the mainland of Iceland. He didn't have a lot of movies but during one visit we found a VHS of C.H.U.D. 2. We watched it, loved it, and every time we we're bored or if there was a slow and rainy day (which is a lot of days in Iceland) we'd put it on. This went on for years. I haven't seen it since I was a kid so this rewatch was a bit surreal, I did buy it on tape a couple of years ago and gave it to my brother for Christmas hoping we could do a rewatch but he doesn't have a player and mine was broken so we never gotten around to it. Watching this again was a bit of a surreal experience. Despite not having seen the film for drat near 20 years some of the images and scenes are burned into my brain and I could recall them perfectly. This might just be the massive nostalgia but I still feel this is a pretty solid little horror-comedy even if it's really stupid but I laughed, or at least chuckled, several times. Gerrit Graham (Beef from Phantom of the Paradise) REALLY hams it up as Bud and seems to be having the time of his life shambling around and getting into wacky slapstick hijinks while mugging at the camera. I should mention that this movie has literally nothing to do with the original C.H.U.D. Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, a film about toxic waste turning the homeless of New York into glowy eyed sewer goblins. Aside from a throwaway line about the C.H.U.D. test subjects having been kept underground near the beginning these new C.H.U.D.s are just your standard zombies and spend almost all their time above ground. I've heard that this was originally written as a sequel to Return of the Living Dead which makes a lot more sense both in regards to the actual story and the tone of the film. The zombies behave pretty similarly to the ones in Return in that they talk and eat brains (contrary to popular belief braineating is actually very rare in zombie cinema and mostly just confined to Return of the Living Dead and a handful of imitators) except the zombies say "meat!" instead of "brains!" and like the ones from Return just decapitating them only slows them down a little bit. The original, despite the silly premise, takes itself completely seriously while C.H.U.D. II has its putrid tongue firmly in what is left of its rotting cheek and is just as much of a comedy as it is a horror film. it also features this fantastic song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84QuDS4Rxr4    Full challenge: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12 13 For some reason IMGUR is refusing to work with me but just imagine both the above entries have three (3) stills from both films. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jun 5, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 18:40
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