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You should watch the other two Fear Streets.
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May 2, 2022 21:47
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STAC Goat posted:However will I do this? Franchescanado posted:Watch the new Firestarter, maybe? I actually thought of that when I added that one - if the new Firestarter doesn’t work (not gonna force anyone to go to the theater or subscribe to a specific streaming service) and you’ve seen every other King adaptation that’s available to you, I can expand that challenge a bit to include another author or two I have in mind.
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May 2, 2022 21:49
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Franchescanado posted:Watch the new Firestarter, maybe?  3 (4). Benny Loves You (2019) Written and directed by Karl Holt Watched on Showtime Anytime Return of the Fallen: 1/13 Team: The Magical Muppet Wizardry of Jim Henson and Friends To say this was a disappointment for me would be an understatement. I kind of hated it. Some of that is just false expectations. I was looking for a puppet film and this wasn’t that. I mean maybe they used puppets? I dunno. I’m not good at identifying how CGI works. Its all magic to me. And honestly the effects in this are pretty solid. I mean Benny looks a little goofy but that’s kind of when the film works the most. And while the big CGI fight finale isn’t exactly what I would have expected and I thought went on a bit too long it still all looked pretty good. Like not great but perfectly good for the B horror film I was watching about a killer doll that totally isn’t Elmo. I just hated everything in between that. The whole thing is built on this mean and nasty sense of humor that felt undeserved and distasteful. No characters are built or anything. They only just exist to be mean to. The opening sequence that doesn’t have a ton to do with the film but just kind of exists so they could do a punchline of a terrible mom slapping the hell out of her kid very nearly made me give up on the movie right off the bat. It does set the tone though. If slapping kids is what you consider super funny then the movie is gonna be a lot of fun for you. If you just want a movie that hates all its characters and just wants to kick them, except for the one perfect woman inexplicably attracted to the terrible writer/director/star character of course, then this might be your thing. I’m probably being a bit too harsh. Once Benny showed up I did start to enjoy it more and the killer doll being mean is a lot more fun and goofy than just dumb jokes about man children or whatever. I could have seen a lot of people having a lot of fun with this and its probably much better as a group watch. But i watched it alone as an end to my fun Puppet Week and it just was a miserable, bummer of a time for me.  4 (5). Strait-Jacket (1964) Directed by William Castle; Written by Robert Bloch Joan Crawford is amazing and William Castle knows how to make a schlocky b horror film. Crawford is like 3/3 in blowing me away with this, The Unknown, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? so I really should seek out more of her films. Well, there was Trog too but I don’t wanna talk about Trog. That’s just sad. But Crawford is dynamic and you can clearly see why she’s such an icon and has been for nearly 100 years. She’s an incredible actor whether she’s playing the deranged killer or the scared old lady. Her ability to go back and forth helps make this film that was probably a Psycho knockoff in many regards really work and come together. I also think Castle just does a good job juggling the twist/mystery of things. I mean you won’t be surprised but I wasn’t exactly sure how everything was going to play out. It felt like there were a few ways this could all play out. Joan being deranged. Her daughter being deranged. Her daughter making mom deranged. The film does a good job balancing that ambiguity and along with Crawford’s tremendous performance the whole thing kept me intrigued to the end. I’m not 100% sure how i feel about the ending. Again, it wasn’t a surprise and I’m ok with that because I think it did a good job getting us there. But i dunno. I think the problem is it doesn’t feel like it makes a ton of sense. I mean its a B Castle horror. I don’t need this to be a carefully crafted mystery. But as much as I don’t really care about whodunits I think they kind of have to have you going “yeah, that makes sense” in the end for them to fully land. And I don’t think this necessarily made sense or felt connected like that. I dunno. But that didn’t kill things for me or anything. I didn’t dislike the ending, it just didn’t land fully for me. But it was another fun Castle ride and another great Crawford performance. And I can’t be too mad about a simple good time that makes me want to see more of the players.  5 (6). Werewolves Within (2021) Directed by Josh Ruben; Written by Mishna Wolff; Based on Werewolves Within by Red Storm Entertainment Watched on Showtime Anytime That was fun I guess but I dunno. I felt like the tone never fully landed for me. Its like part quirky Twin Peaks town, part quirky Stephen King, part whodunit, part slapstick. Its not that the tones clash. You could probably draw a line between Twin Peaks and King fairly easily but it never felt fully settled to me. I’ve never seen Ruben’s other horror (although now that I see it stars Aya Cash I’m gonna have to) but I did see Death to 2021 and I just found that humor kind of grating. I wouldn’t go that far here. I actually mostly enjoyed this collection of vaguely familiar comedians just being all quirky and weird together stuck in a werewolf whodunit. But it never really felt like it got going for me or really started to click. Its also the second whodunit I watched in a row that just didn’t feel very well constructed as one. And I’m not generally a fan of those. I don’t want to guess the killer of a story, I want to just be engaged the whole way. And I don’t really mind of a film doesn’t focus on the mystery stuff or make it possible for you to guess the killer if its focus is somewhere else. And that’s definitely the case here. This is a comedy first and foremost and the murder mystery is really just setting it finds itself in. So its entirely fine that I can’t guess the killer. But I do think things have to have a kind of “oh, yeah that makes sense” feel in the end and I don’t know that this actually made any sense. It doesn’t really have to. Its just a lot of whacked out characters being wacky for laughs and a little gore. And that’s fine. I liked Sam Richardson and Milana Vayntrub and really the whole cast does a solid job. Ultimately comedy clicks for you or it doesn’t and this just never quite did. It didn’t put me off or lose me. I mostly enjoyed the whole film. I guess technically its the best video game movie adaption even if the adaption aspect of it seems tenuous and the video game premise is just like… a whodunit. But I dunno. A fine enough time if you want a horror comedy but nothing that really stood out to me.
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May 2, 2022 21:53
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STAC Goat posted:That or any of the other two dozen King movies I had planned I guess. Totally not sarcasm for the guy doing a King Spring. I thought you had run out because of your previous King binges. I didn't realize you were doing that for this challenge. Time is wonky. Thanks for those recs, friends. Gonna check a few of these out. I've seen a couple (Host, Wolf of Snow Hollow) but most of these are new to me.
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May 2, 2022 22:10
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1. Night of the Living Dead - dir. Tom Savini (1990) Decent enough update with Savini's great effects. Tony Todd and Patricia Tallman are great leads, and it's fun seeing Bill Moseley. I'm not a fan of the changes to Ben's end, but Tom tries to make up for it with how Barbara handles Harry and with his portrayl of the group killing zombies and their base of operations just being a rowdy side show. 3.5/5 2. National Theatre Live: Frankenstein - dir. Danny Boyle and Tim Van Someren (2011) Cumberbatch plays an excellent creature. Didn't expect Naomie Harris to show up and that was a welcome surprise she was a scene stealer during her n Frankensteins scenes. I liked the minimal sets, made for a neat presentation 4/5 3. Werewolves Within - dir. Josh Ruben (2021) A funny werewolf mystery flick with a solid cast and tons of silly turns. One of the better video game adaptation films lol The snowy setting is a great backdrop and the axe throwing place is a cool set. Wasn't expecting the Ace of Base usage but I appreciated it. My only complaint is as we get near the end it gets a little more predictable, there's a few unexpected gags however I don't think it was enough for it to quite stick the landing. Still a good time and the 90 minutes flew by. 3.5/5
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May 2, 2022 22:14
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Franchescanado posted:I thought you had run out because of your previous King binges. I didn't realize you were doing that for this challenge. Time is wonky. Even if I somehow manage to watch everything and run out before another ones comes out it turns out there a whole bunch of Bollywood King films to get to some day.
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May 2, 2022 22:16
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 2. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) (dir. John Boorman) Amazon rental Four years after the events of the first film, Regan is living in the city being taken care of by Sharon while Ellen Burstyn is out of town avoiding having to star in an Exorcist sequel. Regan seems to remember nothing of her possession and is surprisingly well-adjusted, but is in therapy for recurring nightmares she is having. Her psychiatrist decides to use a weird bullshit device called a “synchronizer” that hypnotizes two people at once and brings their subconscious minds together so that Regan call pull the doctor down into her dreams. Or something, it’s real dumb. Meanwhile, a Catholic priest named Lamont is tasked with discrediting Father Merrin’s work because it embarrasses the church, and he uses the machine to enter Regan’s memories and learn about Merrin’s death. There’s a lot more to this but I’m sick of writing about the plot of this stupid movie. This has a very bad reputation, and I’ve heard it called one of the worst films of all time. I was hoping I’d find something to like about it anyway, but it really is genuinely terrible and misguided. Besides the batshit plot (I didn’t even get into the psychic projections to Africa or the fact that Regan is now a magical healer who can cure autistic people just by talking to them), it also retroactively undoes the ending of The Exorcist. It completely misses the mark on everything that made the original great. I guess I can appreciate that director John Boorman went in an original direction when he could’ve easily just rehashed the plot of the first film, but it was decidedly the wrong direction. The best thing about this film is that William Peter Blatty hated it so much that he was compelled to write his own sequel, the novel Legion that he later adapted into the excellent The Exorcist III. This is a bafflingly stupid movie that also manages to be really boring despite all the weird poo poo happening. 1 locust out of 5 Total: 2 Watched: The Exorcist | Exorcist II: The Heretic gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 03:23 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 23:15
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6/13 - Cry Blue Sky (Eyes of Fire Director’s Cut) (1983) 1. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched Cry Blue Sky (the director's cut of the 1983 film Eyes of Fire) is a real cool folk horror movie hamstrung by a terrible first 35 minutes. I absolutely appreciate that a vital part of the folk horror movie experience is the building of atmosphere, but the big problem here is that the movie starts by being both obtuse and meandering. Instead of building tension based on the idea of man vs. the hostile land (which The VVitch does really well early on), we get a lot of gorgeous pastoral shots of the woods with slow monologues about who knows who and who is friends with who and what they're doing right then. It absolutely fails to build any narrative momentum until a third of the way through, at which point the movie goes absolutely buck-wild and becomes awesome, but I think you'd be hard pressed to convince someone who isn't dedicated to the genre to watch long enough to get to it. Once it does get going, there's some absolutely killer early 80s special effects, plenty of random nudity, and some real good witchy vibes. One interesting note is that the movie ends with the literal 'scary eyes' jumpscare from the Michael Jackson Thriller music video, which is kinda funny because this movie came out roughly one month before the Thriller video did. Synchronous thinking? Did John Landis once again do a gently caress-up? Is director Avery Crounse just REALLY on the pulse of iconic horror moments? Who knows. If the movie had a better opening act, this would be an easy three. As it is, it's only getting two ghosts because the opening is a real hard sell for anyone but the devoted.  
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May 2, 2022 23:27
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1) Viy (1967) Challenge: Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched I had been looking for an opportunity to watch this, and it's come to Shudder since the last challenge so I thought "why not". Well, despite the short run time I was definitely feeling very bored by the hour mark and was wondering why goons had been raving about it. But then i figured out that while prima facie it's a typical dour Russian movie about the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya, it's actually about the last fifteen minutes. I can't say I was particularly surprised by the revelation as everything had been escalating towards it, but it was at least pleasant to see some ingenuity on display. I'd still rather read the original Gogol story, though; the movie feels like it would be better as a tale told at the fire. Overall I'd give it 3/5.
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May 3, 2022 00:23
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Franchescanado posted:Can I get some run-downs on some of the best horror movies released in the past, say, two years (2020 to now)? Just looking for stuff I've missed. We're All Going to The World's Fair - Good found footage/film making combo with a quarantine vibe The Power - Spooky haunted hospital period piece with trauma ghosts The Feast - Welsh folk horror that's wonderfully anti rich Bloodthirsty - A gothy horror musical about indie pop ladies in love and werewolves, but surprisingly restrained Come True - The soundtrack is my favorite recent film soundtrack Relic - Horror about getting old always gets me Detention (John Hsu version) - Apparently based on a video game that I hadn't heard of, a solid horror drama about an especially horrible part of Taiwan's history with some iffy monster effects
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May 3, 2022 00:49
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A True Jar Jar Fan posted:The Feast - Welsh folk horror that's wonderfully anti rich This is a combination of words that I like, I'm gonna find this immediately.
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May 3, 2022 01:00
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 1. What Have You Done To Solange? (1972) A perverse and disturbing giallo murder mystery. What it lacks in splashy strange colors and bizarre footage like you might find in an Argento movie it makes up for with the brutality of the murders and a genuinely gripping story. A young woman making time with her married prof witnesses a murder, the first of several, that lead the professor, his wife and the lead detective on a journey through misplaced suspicion (and well-founded suspicion of infidelity!) down a rabbit hole ending in a very dark place. Challenge Fulfilled! #6 The King In Yellow - Watch a giallo or giallo-influenced movie 1/13 Movies: What Have You Done To Solange? 1/13 Challenges: #6 The King In Yellow
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May 3, 2022 01:52
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Werewolves Within was kind of cute, but it ultimately left me with a bad taste in my mouth because it cheats on the whodunit aspect. As I recall, there's a scene when the person who is revealed to be the werewolf does something that only makes sense if they are hiding their true nature and deceiving the other characters. Except the person is not being observed at the time, so this behavior only makes sense as a way to fool the audience, not to fool another character.
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May 3, 2022 02:10
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for 4. Music of the Night may I as usual recommend Anna and the Apocalypse or comedy option The Perfection (it's fine)Class3KillStorm posted:You should watch the other two Fear Streets.  and I'm about to turn this thread into the 4th of poo poo by trying to fit the trilogy into 3 challenges
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May 3, 2022 02:19
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3/13+ The Brainiac (El barón del terror) 1962 Directed by Santiago Eduardo Urueta Watched on Tubi  This is goofy as heck though it's all played completely straight. In 1661, Baron Vitelius is executed for committing all sorts of crimes against the church, but attaches his mind to a passing comet so he can get his revenge on the descendants of his accusers when the comet returns. It's really short and it never really drags, so it definitely has a few things going for it. 💀💀1/2 My main challenge is now apparently watching at least 13 non-American movies from the 1960s that are new to me. Watched: Matango, Mill of the Stone Women, The Brainiac twernt fucked around with this message at 13:38 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 02:53
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 3. We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) (dir. Jane Schoenbrun) Amazon rental This film begins with a teenage girl named Casey recording a "World's Fair Challenge" video, in which she watches a cursed video and repeats the phrase "I want to go to the World's Fair", which will supposedly cause some kind of unspecified evil changes in her. We learn that this is all part of Alternate Reality Game (think Marble Hornets/Slenderman), but as her behavior becomes increasingly strange and disturbed, it's unclear if Casey is simply acting for her videos, having serious psychological issues, or if the "World's Fair" is real and is slowly drawing her in... Most of the film is presented as a series of web videos, with a few Skype calls thrown in as well as a handful of traditionally shot scenes. It has strong quarantine vibes (there are only two characters and they never interact in person) but its themes of isolation in the internet age extend well beyond COVID times. There is a general feeling loneliness and sadness to the whole film, but also an underlying current of anxiety and even dread. It's creepy on several levels - sometimes the videos Casey makes are scary on their own, but the more disturbing part is the implications of what draws someone to this sort of hobby and the people who engage with it. I loved this, but I don't doubt that reactions will vary greatly (a glance at Letterboxd reviews by people I follow shows ratings anywhere from 0.5 to 5.0 stars). It's very deliberately paced and has the vibe of something like She Dies Tomorrow - there are some scenes that are little more than flashing colors set to music (by indie/folk artist Alex G). I eat that poo poo up, but I could see people getting bored with it. I thought it was extremely effective and the creepiest new film I've seen in a while. 4.5 views out of 5 Total: 3 Watched: The Exorcist | Exorcist II: The Heretic | We're All Going to the World's Fair gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 03:25 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 03:02
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#4 - Challenge 1: Watch a folk horror film Yokai Monsters / 100 Monsters Dozens, but sadly not 100, of creatures from Japanese folklore emerge to torment wealthy land developers who threaten to tear down a shrine and evict local tenants. A story that should be told in every culture. The costumes and puppets are a lot of fun. Some of them are legit creepy, some are just lovable goofs. The amount of theremin in this movie is phenomenal and the lady with the stretchy neck is crazy spooky. There's plenty of real emotion to the human side of the story, so I never felt bored waiting for the next monster appearance. A film that unambiguously comes down on the "ghosts good, landlords bad" side of things.
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May 3, 2022 03:18
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3- Lords of Salem Hidden Gems Time to dig deep into my lists here. I really dug this one, definitely a more subdued Zombie and I think it really worked. Cool imagery and music of course, and not nearly as grindhousey as his other stuff
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May 3, 2022 04:13
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 Starting off with cutting down random... stuff off of my Prime watchlist over the weekend, including: 1. Behind the Sightings (2021) - Found footage movie based on the viral clown thing a couple of years ago. Decent chemistry between the two leads, and also decent work as they set about interviewing random people about the phenomenon, but a garbled mess about creepy clowns vs. evil clowns, and no payoff to it. 2.5/5 2. The Widow (2020) - The Blyat Witch Project. Rescue workers in training end up being called up to action early for a nearby emergency, which is a witch in a shack in the woods. 2/5 3. The Kingsbury Run (2018) - This is quite the decent little indie thriller at just over an hour long. A private investigator looking into the disappearance of her friend, which seems to be tied into a copycat of a decades ago serial killer, brings in a retired police detective turned true crime writer who covered the original case. Quirky narration by the private investigator brings some interest to scenes that would otherwise be "wandering around, looking at stuff" and it handles a plethora of investigation, false leads, and more investigation deftly before bringing everything to a satisfying conclusion. The problem is that the movie is more than two hours long. We then get the celebratory dinner party, which is fine, I love a good epilogue. Said dinner party is repeatedly interrupted by clowns (normal clowns; well, as normal as they can be) looking for the party across the street. Then the "real" killer shows up, despite the first part of this wrapping things up pretty conclusively, seemingly determined to take the retired detective on some sort of bizarre vision quest. And it all goes to poo poo. 2.5/5 4. Dark Light (2019) - Aliens, basically. (They're technically underground lizard people.) Another one that starts strong, with the protagonist's daughter disappearing and her ex-husband, somewhat justifiably, putting the suspicion on her. She seeks out a conspiracy theorist who is basically right about everything, the nicest cops in the world show up every once in a while to ask her about the whole murdering her daughter thing, and then the not-aliens show up and blow up my soundbar. 2/5 5. Day the World Ended (1955) - In the aftermath of nuclear war, a ragtag group of survivors end up at a survivalist's remote house that was built to survive nuclear winter. This has a decent "humans are the real monsters" feel to it, as the chief problem is the gangster who's constantly threatening to take over. (The actual chief problem is that two of the other characters have guns and he doesn't, and no one has the good sense to just shoot him now and get it over with.) The radioactive mutants are mostly an afterthought, and when one finally does show up, he looks like Fat Satan. After a whopping two weeks of nuclear winter, everything is fine again. The characters give credit for this to God; I'm not quite sure if the film is saying that God will swoop in and fix everything if humans nuke themselves into oblivion, but it's there. 3/5 And then onto my ever expanding Letterboxd watchlist today: 6. Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021) - Great tale of obsession focused around one of life's great unsolved mysteries (the Max Headroom incident). Heavy nostalgia and a gripping plot, although the ending feels a bit flat. 3/5 7. Vampyr (1932) -  9. Hidden Gems - Has been on my HBO watchlist for a while, and I thought it was a silent film. It's not, albeit it's close - most of the plot is handled through title cards, and explained through book pages, with spoken dialogue relatively sparse. Beautifully shot film, with some great effects of people-less shadows moving about. A bit slow moving at first, but it picks up once they're sure that the audience has read enough to understand the lore. 3/58. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1914) -  13. Sins of the Past - Watch a film released before 1950 - No, the other one. The other one. The German one. No, the silent German one. The other silent German one.The downside first: While this movie has a hound (who is a good doggy who frolics in the daytime with no trace of phosphorescent paint), some Baskervilles, and even Sherlock Holmes in it (and Watson for about 15 seconds), it is absolutely not the Hound of the Baskervilles. While Stapleton is responsible for some sort of dog-related heart attack of the uncle, his attacks on Lord Henry are far more blunt, and by blunt I mean "the CIA watched this movie for ideas on getting rid of Castro." Stapleton has disguised himself as Holmes to attempt to deflect blame onto the butler Barrymore, which (eventually) draws Holmes, working undercover, to the estate to figure out who's using his name. Since the dog is too busy frolicking with the horses, Stapleton takes more direct action, including hanging a bomb, about the size of a baseball, from a chandelier to blow up the entire castle and poisoned wine. Holmes solves all these problems with gunfire. Yes, he shoots the wick off of the bomb and the wine glass out of Henry's hand. Figuring turnabout is fair play, he disguises himself as Stapleton, which sets Stapleton off and forces him to reveal himself. This is beautifully shot and tinted, with some great use of silhouette. And likely one I'll need to sleep on, as it's a really good movie if Stapleton's murder attempts weren't so absurd and if it didn't almost completely ignore the source text. 3/5
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May 3, 2022 04:46
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As a kid I passed over the copy of Phantasm on the shelf at blockbuster many times and never really felt inspired to pick it up. I mean, just what the gently caress is a Phantasm? Is it the old dude in the suit? Is it the ball?? Now that I have officially watched ALL the Phantasm films I can safely say... I still don't loving know. 1 - Phantasm (1979) Mikes a kid that likes to hang around the cemetery and one day he sees the creepy dude that works at the mortuary doing some creepy dude poo poo so naturally he starts stalking the guy and finds out the dude bleeds mustard and his body parts turn into bugs. He also hangs out with not-jawas and has a ball that flys around his mortuary that indiscriminately drills into peoples heads and creates a big mess. The ending sequence is really the only part that makes Phantasm stand out when the main characters discover the Tall Mans secret room and the total meltdown afterwards culminating in a "It was all a dream... OR WAS IT??" 2 - Phantasm II (1988) So turns out the previous film was done with absolutely no budget to the point where the directors mother was doing hair, makeup and costumes and that guy went on to do modern epic of our time The Beastmaster which had a huge (comparatively) budget which leads us full circle to this movie that had the backing of universal and a much bigger budget and they just went loving HOG WILD. Now we have adult Mike and 3 - Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994) Otherwise known as Phantasm: The Reunion cuz we have not only the ORIGINAL Mike making his acting re-debut here but the ORIGINAL Jody as well! Because everyone knows that the real hero of Phantasm is not shiny balls or mortuary science its really all about 4 - Phantasm OblIVion (1998) From the get go Reggie and Mike and separated and were treated to Reggies most uncomfortable and rapey storyline when he spends most of the movie getting a girl he meets on the highway to a motel just so we can get a gag about her boobs being death-balls. On the other side we have Mike in the desert trying to discover the ultimate secret of THE TALL MAN that he's actually a really nice guy that offers him lemonade BUT then becomes.... THE TALL MAN, and I'm not even joking there's a voice over that says the same thing, he walks into a gate then walks out but he's evil now, the end. Then they kill him for the third loving time and act completely surprised when he shows up again not-dead. Also of note, a lot of this film is just deleted scenes from the first movie. 5 - Phantasm: RaVager (2016) After OblIVion you can only expect things to get worse and by god I was not looking forward to this one. It's been 37 years from the first movie, we have the whole cast back, and everyone's old as gently caress. Angus Scrimm the incredible THE TALL MAN is 89 years old and will die not long after seeing the completed movie. This is also the only Phantasm that was not directed by Coscarelli, also it's now co-written by the new director David Hartman and it was definitely smart to get some new hands on the franchise because this movie as actually pretty good. Reggie takes center stage as we weave through multiple realities, or do we? Because at the same time Reggie is in a mental asylum being told everything he has experienced is false. We swap from reality to reality into vignettes, reggie and the tall man on his death bed, reggie and the tall man in the white room, then in the dark alone. For a change Angus Scrimm is not wasted on an eyebrow raise a menacing look and a crappy one liner, though there are many of those, but here he actually gets to speak a bit and has dialogue so we can enjoy his amazing voice and eloquence. We also get to see depictions of the Phantasm apocalypse that keeps getting alluded to in the previous films but barely seen. Giant silver balls float oppressively over the landscape, dwarves and gravers stalk blood-red tinted ruined city streets. Granted the effects there look absolutely terrible but you get the idea. As the movie progresses they bring back some of the familiar faces from the franchise, The 'Cuda, Jody in a dumb hat, the Lady in Lavender, and finally Rocky, the sentimentality is a sweet send off to the franchise that would probably bring a long time fan to tears. I give the Phantasm franchise five continuous torrents of blood out of five. 
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May 3, 2022 08:45
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Franchescanado posted:Can I get some run-downs on some of the best horror movies released in the past, say, two years (2020 to now)? Just looking for stuff I've missed. Stuff I haven't seen mentioned that I loved Agnes (Hulu) Slumber Party Massacre 2021 If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power: an hour-long Halsey music video (HBO Max) Mosquito State (Shudder) The Medium (Shudder) Violation (Shudder) Home with a View of the Monster (Shudder) The Retreat (Showtime) Seance (Shudder) Skull: The Mask (Shudder) A Classic Horror Story (Netflix) A True Jar Jar Fan posted:Ones I really liked that weren't on your list: nthing all of these specifically
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May 3, 2022 12:43
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gey muckle mowser posted:
 2) Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched - 2021 - Shudder This one can be summed up as "Oof..", and I mean that in a good way. It's something like 3+ hours long and goes into drat near everything in the folk horror genre. It's definitely not a casual watch for someone looking for a basic overview, but more aimed at the longtime horror movie watcher. Hopefully that doesn't discourage others from seeing this, but more prepares them in advance that it might help to just watch segments with taking a moment or two to mentally digest it all before moving on. Perhaps covering this as a miniseries would've worked better for a deep dive this deep. Overall, I consider this one a 'Must Watch' like I do with Horror Noire in that it will give you a good foundation for the respective genre knowledge. However both do share that aspect of while making incredibly good points for the most part, there are bits that do come across as 'you're stretching there'. Explain for as long as you want, even going into using words of one syllable and it's just not going to make me see something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Wild Bunch as folk horror or folk horror adjacent. This probably stems from my perspective for folk horror is that involves connections/traditions that are often old to the degree there is no explanation for them beyond they simply 'are' and they will always exist no matter how much the modern era obfuscates or forgets. Blame how many history courses and legends/mythology classes I've taken for my definition of old. Of course going by my definition does mean just because witches are involved, it doesn't make it folk horror. My definition is what it is and part of the delightful debate and discussion we thrive on when talking movies. In short, highly recommend this documentary. As it is, it added more film to my ever growing watchlists.
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May 3, 2022 14:09
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My main problem with Woodland Dark and Days Bewitched is that it felt like it went over the same themes and ideas a bunch of times. That would have been fine in a 90 minute doc but it felt like I was binging episodes of a series that kept recapping what we went over last week. Ultimately it’s very deep and if you’re interested it’s got a lot to give. But it’s also very academic feeling. I’m also currently debating if I can sell Children of the Corn as folk horror and realizing King might actually have written a lot of folk horror? I guess I always assumed folk had to be European or something. But he’s always writing about ancient poo poo who want you to worship them or die or something. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 14:17 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 14:14
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The way I understand folk horror, Children of the Corn would definitely count. You've got rural "others" as the antagonists. They have their own insular belief system that requires them to commit violent and transgressive acts. The kids draw power from nature. Conflict with the outside world drives the plot.
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May 3, 2022 15:08
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2. The Fall of the House of Usher 1960 | dir. Roger Corman Shout blu-ray  10. The Price is Right I did a double feature where I read the original Edgar Allen Poe short story and then watched this film, which is the last film for me to see from the Vincent Price Collection vol. 1 from Shout.  The Story If you've never read this story, you should probably take a half hour break and give it a read. In my edition, it's 15 pages, which takes about 30 minutes to read. Or, if you'd like, you can have Christopher Lee read (an abridged version) to you. The unnamed narrator visits his friend, Roderick Usher, after receiving a letter detailing a sickness that is devastating Roderick. Roderick looks like a living corpse. The mansion he lives in is decrepit, beyond repair, and falling apart. Roderick lives with a sister, Madeline, who the narrator glimpses only once in the story. She appears and vanishes like a phantom, and although she looks healthier than her sibling, Roderick says she is also deathly sick and is cataleptic. The Fall of the House of Usher remains timeless because it's imagery carries themes that still represents the sins of Western Civilization. The mansion, once a beautiful symbol of affluence, is falling apart. It is almost inhabitable, covered in fungus and filth, shuddering under it's own weight. It's air is poisoned, the soil is rotten. It's inhabitants have aged into almost inhuman creatures. Their wealth has not preserved them; according to Roderick, it has sped up their decay. The simple pleasures of life, easily afforded by wealth, are now painful. Music feels like daggers, there isn't joy in food, they do not engage with nature, the only literature discussed is painful or bizarre. The only thing Roderick seemingly enjoys is painting. The legacy of the Ushers, once a prominent family, has ended with two living corpses who are implied to be infertile as well as incestuous (and from a lineage of incest). Roderick also suffers from severe opioid addiction, and the descriptions paint an image of an addict. He projects his illness onto his sister as well as the house they live in, and is convinced it is all one giant living tomb. Of course, there is the emphasis on Poe's regular themes of madness, paranoia, and the idea of being buried alive. The story has enough ambiguity where the reader can project their own ideas on what the house represents--America, aristocratic families, the decline of the body and mind under the influence of addiction, the atrocities that we (and our families) commit delivering a Judgement upon us, etc. It's a pretty good story, folks!  The Film It's a bit of a shame that Vincent Price was given an opportunity to play Roderick Usher only for the film to subvert the original story in favor of a far more mundane, traditional narrative. The unnamed narrator (now named Phillip) is now engaged to Madeline Usher, and comes to their mansion/castle to visit her after a prolonged visit due to an illness. There he meets Roderick Usher for the first time (he seemingly didn't know Madeline had a sibling?), who is protective of his sister, claims she is near death, and refuses to let Phillip see her. Phillip stays anyway. He is suspicious of Madeline's disease, and wants to help her get healthy in a logical and reasonable way. Still, he pals around with the bizarre Roderick, who is unhinged and creepy and manipulative. Is the House really falling apart? Is Roderick speeding up the decay of the house, ostensibly making parts of it booby-traps, so as to off Philip? Can Madeline be saved? The decay is mostly with the house and not the characters. Roderick is insane, but not a shambling corpse. While he's obsessed with an idea of a curse, and the house being alive with spirits, it is not an ambiguous haunting. The film trades in the robust imagery of the story for dynamic technicolor treats, with a huge emphasis on reds, blues and sometimes purple. It is a very pretty movie. And Vincent Price is delivering what the audience wants from him. I'm just ultimately disappointed that the film took a "commercial" approach and changed the dynamics of the relationships to be 1) a love story, and 2) to make Roderick more of a direct antagonist instead of a tragic fallen-from-grace "this used to be my old friend and now look at him, he's all hosed up and crazy" characterization, which I would love to have seen from Price. This is a pretty important film for Roger Corman's career and his production company. It mostly holds up. The first half is a bit lethargic, but then the film finally picks up the pace and decides to lean into delicious visuals and have fun with the sets. Not my favorite of the Corman/Price/Poe stories, but it's still a charming one. Recommended Total 2 New To Me: Nightmare Weekend, House of Usher (1960) Challenges: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 15:18 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 15:12
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gey muckle mowser posted:
 #3. The Company of Wolves (Kanopy) Told as a series of tall tales and dreams-within-dreams, Neil Jordan reconfigures "Little Red Riding Hood" as the story of Rosaleen, an upper class English girl having a dream of being a poor medieval peasant living in the woods and being haunted by wolves... and by men. I dunno about this one. On the one hand, it's a minor triumph of set design, costuming and effects all coming together - a lush, forbidding forest built entirely on a sound stage and host to not one, but two of the all-time greatest werewolf transformations on film. (I don't think either beats out the top contenders of An American Werewolf in London or The Howling, but I think the first one might still end up on the podium anyway.) On the other hand, I don't think that all of that meticulous design ends up contributing to a story worth telling. I partially picked this one last night because it had stalwarts like David Warner and Angela Lansbury in the cast, but neither of them are given anything to do in the script; same could be said for pretty much everyone else, to that point. That, and the script itself seems muddled: it's framed as a dream story, where everything we're seeing is being dreamed up by some girl lying in bed in a country estate, but then there's full-on tall tale imagination sequences and digressions, and it gets harder and harder to stay engaged. I know that director Neil Jordan has referred to this as "Chinese puzzle box" storytelling, but I don't think it adds much of anything here. I get what they were going for with the framing story - Rosaleen, in the present, is shown as a probably overly imaginative young girl playing at emotional/sexual maturity (as seen in the bright red lipstick she fell asleep wearing... while reading what looks to be a "Babysitters Club" knockoff). Thing is, that's pretty much all covered in the story proper, between the obvious "Red Riding Hood" allegory and a scene where she climbs a tree to find a hidden stash of olde timey lip color (and later gets chastised by her mother for it). So I kept waiting for the story to move past the digressions and return to the framing device, which made the ending proper fall flat. In the end, this is a very pretty looking film to look at, but an empty feeling one to experience. It's like an ornate, well-decorated and gorgeous dollhouse, but one where the very act of puppetting around any of the pieces ultimately feels hollow. I think I'd trade a beautiful empty box for a handsome but full one any day.  /5Watched so far: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Escape Room (2019), The Company of Wolves (GMM Challenge 9) STAC Goat posted:My main problem with Woodland Dark and Days Bewitched is that it felt like it went over the same themes and ideas a bunch of times. That would have been fine in a 90 minute doc but it felt like I was binging episodes of a series that kept recapping what we went over last week. If you have Shudder, they have a whole "folk horror" subgenre page up right now and the original Children of the Corn is listed among the titles there. I'd say if it counts for Shudder's algorithm, then it should count for us. Class3KillStorm fucked around with this message at 16:32 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 16:29
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CHALLENGE TIME
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STAC Goat posted:I’m also currently debating if I can sell Children of the Corn as folk horror and realizing King might actually have written a lot of folk horror? I guess I always assumed folk had to be European or something. But he’s always writing about ancient poo poo who want you to worship them or die or something. I dunno if King wrote a lot of folk horror (goes into what we define as "a lot" and then where we wanna draw the lines of definition; some certainly count), but Children of the Corn is definitely folk horror. It's specifically a religious zealot trying to sacrifice lives to give power/life to an unseen god of Harvest, personified by cornfields. Doesn't get more folk horror than that.
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May 3, 2022 16:36
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So we’ve established that Green Knight counts for the thread, would it count as folk horror? Been on my list for a long time now and I really need an excuse to watch it
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May 3, 2022 16:42
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I'd say folk horror applies, depending on your thoughts on the difference between folktales, legends, and mythology.
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May 3, 2022 16:52
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Opopanax posted:So we’ve established that Green Knight counts for the thread, would it count as folk horror? Been on my list for a long time now and I really need an excuse to watch it yes I'd say it counts
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May 3, 2022 16:59
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Opopanax posted:So we’ve established that Green Knight counts for the thread, would it count as folk horror? Been on my list for a long time now and I really need an excuse to watch it Now this is an interesting question, because it kinda asks "Is the Green Knight a fairy tale or a folk tale?" It's based on a 14th century romance poem and is an Arthurian legend. It could be considered a fairy tale, cuz it deals with magic and mythic scenarios. But it doesn't have a definite author, and it's pretty specific to Welsh culture, which are points for it being folk-lore. Now, if you google "The Green Knight Folk Horror" there are plenty of posts saying that it is considered folk-horror. But people get definitions wrong all the time. So maybe we need a concrete definition to compare/contrast with. I like this one from Folk Horror Revival quote:In an interesting paper written for the ‘Fiend in the Furrows’ conference on Folk Horror held at Queen’s University Belfast in September 2014, Adam Scovell, writer, filmmaker and creator of the Celluloid Wicker Man blog, put forward an intriguing chain of elements that comprise a Folk Horror film: So it's weird, but by these definitions, I'd say that yes, The Green Knight is pretty justifiable. I have not watched the documentary that is listed with the challenge, so maybe someone can summarize what that work defines the characteristics of Folk Horror, which may strengthen or contradict the definitions I'm working with. Hopefully this post helps anyone else looking for a movie for that challenge. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 17:06 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 17:03
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Bracketology kind of inspired a new challenge I’m adding as there’s 3 Frankenstein movies there and 3 prequels I “have” to watch and then 3 sequels I’ve wanted to watch so I’m crazy so why not watch 13 Frankenstein movies? - (7). The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) Directed by Terence Fisher; Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster; Based on Frankenstein 1818 novel by Mary Shelley 13 Frankensteins: 1/13 A fun if low key time. The Hammer Frankensteins are the best of the Hammer films to me in part because Cushing is just so great in the role but also because the role feels like it fixes the “problem” with Hammer for me. Hammer always has amazing costuming and sets and ambience but it also tends to have a lot of talking and slow play to a very quick and unsatisfying ending. I just spend the whole movie wanting to see Van Helsing confront Dracula and then when it happens its over before I can really appreciate it. But Frankenstein works around that because he’s the protagonist AND the monster. There’s a guy and a girl and another girl but they’re all there to help us know the Doctor and what kind of guy he is. Not outwardly a monster but a man who really is selfish to his core and completely unburned by pesky things like morals or guilt or honor. The more you get to know him the more its obvious that regardless of how charming he is or if women want him or men look up to him he’s bad news and won’t actually stop for anyone or anything. Story wise, you know, its the usual thing slow played. That’s Hammer for you. But Cushing’s so charming and good you don’t really mind if its just 90 minutes with him. Or at least I don’t. Again, I think the key here is that the Creature isn’t really the monster. He’s a monster but he’s just a consequence of the real monster’s actions. So even in the final confrontation its Frankenstein who kills someone, not the Creature. Accidental perhaps but Frankenstein doesn’t care. He’s shown us that. The accidental consequences of his science are meaningless. He’s a full on narcissist and not in a cartoony or over the top way the way many mad scientists are. He’s not mad. He’s just utterly amoral. And that’s scarier and more interesting 9 out of 10 times.  - (8). Children of the Corn (1984) Directed by Fritz Kiersch; Screenplay by George Goldsmith; Based on "Children of the Corn" by Stephen King Watched on Amazon Prime King Spring II: 1/13 I know many hate it but I dunno, I like it. Sure it drags a little in the middle and the decision to move away from King’s focus on the characters and to a more actiony thing and more of a traditional hollywood ending probably hurt things a bit. Its not a great film by any means. But psycho religious kids in the middle of nowhere is more than enough spooky for me. Taking the traditional folk horror theme of an isolated religious community going all crazy cult when things get rough and doing it with kids… well I guess Blood on Satan’s Claw did that first but its still pretty uncommon. And really, as weird and silly and almost assuredly bad as the sequels are it takes a great idea and something very interesting to spawn 11 films. There’s no accounting for the bad films that are made with low budgets and bad talent (and of course one recognizable future star to regret the film) but it has to start from somewhere interesting. And for the most part I do think this is interesting. Its great to see Linda Hamilton and funny to think she did this right before Terminator. What a time. In some alternate universe James Cameron directs Children of the Corn and the iconic sequel and then instead of making a long run of bad sequels for the next 30 years… well… I guess the same thing would have happened. The Terminator sequels ain’t great either. But they did cost a lot of money. Big budget Children of the Corn 6 universe is the one I think about. And the setting and cult are all great. Isaac always felt a bit second fiddle to me. He does talk too much. Malachi freaked me out. Hell, Malachi freaked his own parents out. Like the actor’s parents were scared of him. And can you blame him? Apparently in his audition he took one of the crew members hostage with a prop scythe or something. That kid could have gotten arrested or casted and I’m glad it worked out this way. He Who Walks Among Us might disagree but gently caress that guy. He picked Isaac. The ending of the movie is a little too silly. I’m talking specifically of the weird corny epilogue after the cheesy big finale. I don’t really mind the early 80s CGI and animation special effects. That stuff is charming. Maybe I would have liked some kind of puppet He Who Walks but hey, there’s time. 10 sequels through 4 decades I’m really looking forward to the evolution of bad special effects in this series. Even more than I am looking forward to the usual Before They Were Famous cameos you can always count on in horror sequels. You gotta enjoy yourself or else its a chore. That’s the trick to a bad horror franchise binge. And make no mistake I’m planning to watch all the Children of the Corn movies this month. I enjoyed this first one so starting off well. We’ll see how long that holds up. Wish me luck.  - (9). The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) Directed by Terence Fisher; Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster 13 Frankensteins: 2/13 The most interesting thing about this one is really the way it kind of starts off with Frankenstein as the kind sympathetic guy. He’s a doctor everyone likes who is working on poor people. There’s this group of smug doctors who turn their noses up at his patients and want him to join their group just because he’s stealing patients from them after their previously tried to sabotage him. Some young rear end in a top hat is blackmailing him to work with him. There’s that funny scene of him having to put up with the pushy mom trying to throw her young daughter at him. If this is all you knew you’d think Frankenstein wasn’t such a bad guy. But that’s the beauty of Cushing’s Frankenstein because all of that is just a charming mask and a means to an end. He’s only working with the poor because people don’t ask questions. He’s still doing his crazy experiments, things those snooty doctors would never approve of if they had any idea. And you might still be with him and think he’s a nice enough guy while he’s feeding his bunnies and chimps but its all in what he says. That resolute lack of concern for any of the warning signs. The lack of a sense of responsibility for science or moral oath of a doctor. Frankenstein just pushes past all of that unaffected to do his experiments. The ending is maybe a bit anticlimactic as there is no true final conflict here, but it also feels really appropriate. Its Frankenstein’s hubris and disregard that takes him down in the end. He’s unconcerned about the law or the other doctors. And in the end none of them get him, its the poor victims he was experimenting on who lash out against the predator they now realize was preying on them. Something Frankenstein never considered because they were never people to him, just test subjects. No different than the bunnies or chimps. But because he is such a relentless genius he still gets the last laugh. No real laugh though. Frankenstein is unconcerned with such petty things. He just moves on to do more of his experiments, unfettered by law, moral, or death. A great little ending.
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May 3, 2022 18:15
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I don't really like Children of the Corn because it's aesthetically kinda cheap and ugly looking. I would love to watch the 4k UHD Arrow put out to see if the new transfer makes it look more cohesive---because there are good shots in there, but they look like a completely different film stock or camera set up---but I won't pay $30+ for it and all the supplements I don't want.
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May 3, 2022 18:28
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#2: Land of the Minotaur Challenge #8: 8. A Perfect Getaway. According to Wikipedia, it's Greek  Archaeologists go to Greece to dig on land owned by a British aristocrat, turns out there's a minotaur cult. It's not very good. Pleasance vs Cushing should've been a real treat, but the script is so wooden and uninteresting they don't have enough to work with. And don't let the poster fool you, the minotaur is just a statue. There's really nothing terrible about it, and there's nothing very good about it. It's just dull. The Greek scenery is nice and there's a chick in the shortest shorts allowable by law at the time, so I imagine on bluray it's not bad to look at. But I watched it on Youtube. 1) One Cut of the Dead, 2) Land of the MinotaurCH8
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May 3, 2022 18:54
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 Spookies This is a horror thread favorite and it's easy to see why, warts and all. It's overly ambitious to a fault, but that's the sort of thing we celebrate because every year there are countless bland, safe, boring horror movies that may be technically competent but in the end they're snoozers. Does a movie like this need to have like 8 different wacky creatures? I guess not but that's why it works. There is no restraint, Spookies throws a hundred things against the wall and doesn't care that not everything will stick. So I don't think anyone would ever argue that it's a masterpiece or anything close to a perfect film, but there's more than enough love and creativity in it to make up for the usual flaws you tend to get in low budget 80's horror. There's also a surprising amount of genuinely spooky(  ) atmosphere that I always look for in a potential October staple, so this is one that will be going into my October hopper as an option for future Halloweens.    1. Intruder 2. Spookies Franchescanado posted:I don't really like Children of the Corn because it's aesthetically kinda cheap and ugly looking. I would love to watch the 4k UHD Arrow put out to see if the new transfer makes it look more cohesive---because there are good shots in there, but they look like a completely different film stock or camera set up---but I won't pay $30+ for it and all the supplements I don't want. That's one thing about UHD actually, sometimes the disparity between scenes where different set-ups were used or there's optical elements or whatever can become even more glaring. Because the stuff that looks good looks better than it ever had before, when you have a softer shot or a shot that doesn't look as good for technical reasons, it's a lot more noticeable. For instance, I have The Sting UHD, and that's a film that I think has more opticals used for transitions than anything I've ever seen. It's almost literally every scene has a goofy optical effect for the transition, and it's distracting because every single time a scene is about to end you see the resolution drop dramatically like a second or two before the transition. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 19:10 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 19:05
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I've been mainlining post-Scream knock-offs the past few weeks with titles like Dead Man's Curve (Matthew Lillard in a post-Scream knock off that came out right after Scream), Nine Lives (Paris Hilton is pretty lame in this), I've Been Waiting For You (made for tv movie with Sarah Chalke and Ben Foster), Little Witches (I guess this is more of a knock off of the Craft than Scream), Killing Mr. Griffin (made for tv movie clearly meant to cash in on the release of Teaching Mrs. Tingle), and the Urban Legends and I Know What You Did Last Summer trilogies, but kinda veered into the femme fatale thriller territory with the Cruel Intentions trilogy and the Wild Things quadrilogy. I can't recommend any of these movies in good conscious, but I was surprised by the decent production quality and the casts are usually filled with young actors who go on to bigger things.
ruddiger fucked around with this message at 19:39 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 19:29
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 2.) Mothra Ishirō Honda | 1961 | Blu-ray A fun little film. I’m not super knowledgeable about the Godzilla franchise, having only seen a smattering so I’m not certain what Godzilla was like at the time of Mothra’s release, so I don’t know how it stacks against it (the closest I’ve seen is the US version of King Kong vs Godzilla two years later, which probably isn’t the best comparison). Overall, I liked it! Like some reviews have pointed out, it does feel more like King Kong than Godzilla, except it posits what “What if they stole Ann Darrow from Skull Island?” and recognizes Carl Denham as the real villain. I thought it was neat how the natives were given some agency in summoning Mothra to save the fairies. I should also point out Mothra is a pretty cool monster, especially with the “Oh, poo poo” moment of her metamorphosis. One other thing I found interesting was the metaphor of I watched the Mill Creek blu-ray and I’m not certain how great the release is. They refer to Mothra, who is canonically female, with male pronouns and certain things are left untranslated such as Mothra’s Song, which is weird because it’s not in some fake language. Rating: ½ Total: 2/13 New: 2 Rewatches: 0 My Letterboxd list (in progress) Greekonomics fucked around with this message at 21:39 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 19:38
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ruddiger posted:I've been mainlining post-Scream knock-offs the past few weeks with titles like Dead Man's Curve (Matthew Lillard in a post-Scream knock off that came out right after Scream),
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May 3, 2022 19:41
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4/13+ Kill, Baby… Kill! (Operazione paura) 1966 Directed by Mario Bava Watched on Shudder  It looks great. It's very spooky. There's a creepy ghost child haunting a village somewhere in Europe and everyone is seriously freaked out. Kill, Baby… Kill! is like a Hammer gothic horror flick, but there's no castle and Hammer Films wasn't involved at all. It's a classic science vs. superstition tale and it's a lot of moody fun. 💀💀💀💀 Watched: Matango, Mill of the Stone Women, The Brainiac, Kill, Baby… Kill!
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May 3, 2022 21:09
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1. Penda's Fen (1974) Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched "Be secret, child; be strange, dark, true, impure, and dissonant. Cherish our flame." Stephen Franklin is a 17 year old parson's son living in the rural village of Pinvin. Stephen is bit of an eccentric but he love his parents, his country, and is a massive fan of neo-classical composer Edward Elgar. When he begins having strange dreams and visions of angels and demons his outlook and life are forever changed. Stephen himself starts off as a bit of a dweeb that is seemingly even more conservative than his parents to the point of actual cruelty but as the film goes on and his worldview opens up he becomes a much nicer person. He for one starts to discover his own emerging homosexuality though outside of dreams this is mostly confined to a harmless one sided crush on the milkman. Penda's Fen isn't really much of a horror film. There's a few nightmare scenes which are quite disturbing and there's one (1) proper scare. A lot of the horror isn't actually derived from the primeval forces of demons and angels or the pagan past but from modernity. There's a subplot about military testing in the nearby hills hideously disfiguring a teenager (something that the press blows off as an accident involving a weather balloon a probable nod to the Roswell incident) and there are a few monologues from the Stephen's writer neighbor which are essentially anarchist screeds about the general population of not only England but the world being little more than expandable numbers on paper to the military-industrial complex and technocrats that actually rule the country and of the ever expanding world of modern technology slowly swallowing the entire world, flattening it, and making it dull and uniform. The title card of a barbed wire fence superimposed on a wide-shot of the village encapsulates this theme well. As the film progresses we find out the sleepy village of Pinvin is the titular Penda's Fen. The place where Penda the last pagan king in England lived and died more than a thousand years ago. The name has become garbled and the history obscured but still under the very hills are layers upon layers of history where conquest and conversion build on each other to make something that is not what came before it but not entirely something else either. There seems to be some distant memory of these origins in the village as shown in a scene where Stephen scolds an old man working for the village for writing "PINFIN" on a road closure sign, the sign is fixed to fit the correct modern spelling but later Stephen spies the old man peeling of the correction. Probably the old man had some knowledge of the roots of the name and thought that although not strictly correct the F hews closer to the original spelling and thus the ancient roots of Penda's Fen. If you knew nothing about the film other than that it's a subversive 70s film about a gay teenager whose father is a clergyman you'd expect that there'd be a lot dramatic daddy issue type scenes but if anything the exact opposite is true. Stephen's parents get a bit annoyed when he starts to rebel a bit at school by dropping out of the weirdo child soldier training program they seem to have but despite him being a man of the cloth Reverend Franklin is a very reasonable and open minded man and there's even lengthy scenes of him discussing theology with his son where he seems to take the view that a lot of organized religion serves no other purpose than to perpetuate its own institutions and that paganism wasn't inherently evil but only painted as such by the early church for propaganda purposes pointing out that the root for the word "pagan" is essentially "villager" meaning it was a class distinction as much as it was a religious one. They also seem to be somewhat aware of Stephen being gay as they comment on his obvious crush on the milkman in one of the very first scenes of the film but don't seem very phased by it. Penda's Fen is a strange film, it's slow paced, wordy in parts, eerily silent in others, and it's worldview is quite esoteric, most people aren't going to like it but those who manage to connect to it will love it. I think I need to watch it again, and again, to fully grasp it and maybe read up a bit more on Brittonic Paganism, early church theology, and the works of Edward Elgar to fully grasp it.
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May 3, 2022 21:46
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