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In for 13+
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Apr 30, 2022 15:52
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13 is my minimum 31 the upper goal.
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Apr 30, 2022 16:17
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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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Some Icelandic titles Húsið (1983) The House A young woman experiences strange phenomena after moving into an old house with her boyfriend. Draugasaga (1985) Ghosts Story The new nightwatchman in the Icelandic public radio/television building encounters a red headed specter. Tilbury (1987) A simple country lad moves to the city during the British occupation of WW2 and runs into a childhood friend, the reverend's daughter, who is now in a scandalous relationship with a mysterious British officer. Reykjavík Whale Watching Massacre (2009) A group of whale watching tourists are stranded at sea when their boat breaks down. Help arrives in the form of a whaling ship but the whalers are less than friendly. Boðberi (2010) Messenger Following the 2008 financial collapse one man fights back against the system by shooting the people responsible with a shotgun loaded with human feces. Frost (2012) (guess) Found footage. Two scientists try to uncover why their colleagues abandoned a research base. Grafir og bein (2014) Graves and Bones After his brother comitts suicide a failing businessman must take care of of his niece who is traumatized after having been left alone with her parent's corpses for several days. A somehow totally unrelated haunting ensues. Ég man þig (2017) I remember you A doctor assisting in the investigation of a series of eerie murders finds out they're connected to the disappearance of his son several years before. Þorsti (2019) Thirst Cut away from her family and society at large after being accused of murdering her brother Hulda drifts around the mean streets of Reykjavík where she forms an unlikely friendship with Hjörtur, a homeless 1000 year old vampire who roams the night looking for blood and anonymous gay sex.
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May 5, 2022 09:03
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2. Of Unknown Origin (1983) Businessman Bart Hughes (Peter Weller) is moving up in the world. He lives with his beautiful wife (Shannon Tweed) in a beautiful house that he has painstakingly renovated himself. When his wife and kid go on a short trip to visit her father Bart decides to use the time to focus on an important work project that could secure a long wanted promotion. The only problem is that he isn't as alone in the house as he thinks. A rat (Ratus Norvegicus) has invaded his pristine home and is gnawing at the very foundations of his life, seemingly in a deliberate sabotage of everything Barts holds dear. What starts out with minor annoyances soon escalates into an all out inter species war from which neither man nor rat can emerge unscathed. Peter Weller is fantastic. He starts out as a fairly typical 80s businessman who is a bit too busy but is trying to be a good dad and husband but as the film goes on his appearance and demeanor change until he is completely disheveled and unhinged dressed like an extra from a Mad Max ripoff dedicating his entire being to killing one (1) rat. A great scene before he goes all in on his wackiness has him completely kill the mood during an Important Business Dinner with his boss and colleagues by going on a long rant about the damage caused by rats to food supplies, infrastructure, and how many people the Black Plague killed as well as how different cultures treat and view rats totally oblivious that everyone is losing their appetite fast. The rat is also great. We never really get that good of a look at it, we see a lot of extreme close-ups of gnawing teeth or tiny feet moving along edges, for a lot of the film we don't even get that but a only POV shots of it moving through ducts, pipes, and other dark and forgotten places within the walls of the house. But the best thing about the rat is how seemingly deliberately cruel it is. At first it just gnaws through some wires and causes various other damage to the house but as the film progresses it seems to be targeting Bart directly ripping apart important paperwork, sabotaging his personal belongings, and at one point seemingly murdering and posing the body of a stray cat Bart brings in from the street. Putting the corpse right on top of the fridge as to intimidate Bart in a scene that has to be inspired by the horsehead scene from The Godfather The climax of the film revolves around Bart taking his son's baseball bat and rigging it with spikes and serrated teeth from a rat trap and just going absolutely nuts destroying everything around chasing a rat around the house until he manages to corner it in a scale model of the house in the basement and smashes the model to bits to get at the rat just as he's destroyed his own actual house A great film.
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May 5, 2022 18:01
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Curve is amazing and makes a great double feature (double short?) With The Black Tower (1987) another architectural horror film that's basically stylistically and structurally the exact opposite to Curve. For example while Curve has no dialogue and the main character is in frame almost the entire short The Black Tower is told almost exclusively through voiceover and we never actually see the narrator on screen. Could work as a yingyang sort of thing.
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May 6, 2022 21:04
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3. Censor (2021)  Hidden Gems challengeEnid is a censor working for the British censorship board during the Video Nasty hysteria of the 1980s. When she receives a film that seems to echo traumatic events form her own past she attempts to track down the director to find out how he could've known about events that no one else survived. The Video Nasty era is a great foundation for a horror film. For those who don't know in the 1980s the British government essentially banned a lot of films due to a public outrage that these, mostly foreign, splatter films were corrupting the youth and directly causing violence was (essentially the exact same thing that happened 30 years earlier with horror comics and 20 years later with video games). A list of banned films was compiled and police raids were carried out on video stores suspected of selling banned tapes. Some films were allowed to pass, with extensive cuts to violence, and the protagonist Censor is a pretty good film. It kept me engaged and I wanted to find out more about the central mystery, the disappearance of Enid's sister, but something about it didn't quite click and kept it from greatness. I do like that we don't actually get a concrete answer for what exactly happened to her sister and how much of the events is actually real and how much is in her head but we get just enough to be able to sorta make up our own minds. One think that irked me a little is that they didn't really capture the look and feel of the Video Nasty films in the little snippets we see from fictional films. They look a bit too clean and modern especially compared to the actual real snippets of Video Nasties we see during the opening credits. Which is strange because obviously a lot of time and work went into making everything else as authentic as possible. That's one thing I think keeps this film from being great is that it's not quite grimy and gritty enough. Something Knife+Heart a film with a somewhat similar subject matter set around the same time though riffing off giallo more than later splatter films. I really liked the last 10 or 15 minutes of the film where it allows itself to go properly gonzo but it didn't feel quite earned a lot of that craziness earlier in the film could've made a huge difference. But I'm not sure that was what the film was going for. I think it was trying to be more of a psychological thriller using Video Nasty hysteria as a base rather than a film about Video Nasties as such or a Video Nasty in it's own right. Still a well made, solid, and pretty film. I like how it plays with aspect ratios a lot and I'm pretty sure it was actually shot on film rather than shot on digital and then turned into a facsimile of the "film look" in post. 4.  Short Cuts challengeBEASTS: Baby  51 minutes 11 seconds Trying to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city young newlyweds Jo and Peter Gilks move to an old country cottage. Peter intends to ply his trade as a veterinarian and Jo is extremly pregnant and bound to give birth at any moment. However when breaking down a wall to make room for some modern appliances they discover a large clay jar containing the nearly mummified remains of a strange creature that even the highly educated Peter can't identify. Part of Nigel Kneale's series of horror TV plays in which animals play a large part. In this case we have crows, cats, and whatever that thing in the jar is. Not to mention all the off-screen animals the vet husband treats. This is fairly typical folk horror. Some city folk move to a rural place and encounter something old and mystical that they, as outsiders and modern people, can't understand. There's even a scene where one of the two old workmen that are doing up the house for them makes some cryptic and heavily accented remarks about how things were done in olden tymes. But of course folk horror wasn't really a conscious concept back then, most of the "holy trinity" of folk horror had been made but there wasn't any recognition of it being a specific sub-genre until the mid 2000s. It also uses the well worn trope of the animal being the first one to know what is wrong with a cat that jumps out of his basket moments after entering the house and isn't seen again. It's fairly obvious from early on what is going to happen (in broad terms) because it's foreshadowed from the very first scene but knowing what is coming serves to better build dread and suspense than if it came totally out of nowhere. I don't wanna give too much away. It is also elevated by having well written and interesting like the slightly overbearing jolly old country vet the husband works with or the two workmen Arthur and Stan one of whom tries and fails to stop the other from scaring the cityfolk with all of this superstitious talk. The husband is a complete rear end in a top hat constantly throwing tantrums and screaming at his wife over the slightest things a temper which is seemingly what landed them in the country in the first place as implied by a few lines late in the film about how they just need to move one more time and that time he surely won't be surrounded by idiots like every other time they've done so. There Comes a Knocking  (2019) 9 minutes 21 seconds Grieving widow Emma installs a ludicrously ornate and expensive Victorian door, the last thing her husband bought, on her tool storage room but accidentally locks it while installing. During the night she hears knocking coming from inside the locked empty room. By Ryan Connolly the Film Riot guy. Obviously very influenced by James Wan's works on finely tuned jumpscare machines like The Conjuring, Insidious, et al. Especially one shot at the very end of the short where we briefly see the demon/ghost/creature standing directly behind the main character so only half of its body is visible. Which is very similar to a shot in Insidious where the Lipstick Demon is briefly visible behind The Dad snarling at the camera in an iconic jumpscare This is basically a concept video to use as to pitch a feature and it does that job pretty well it gives us all the info we need to know exactly who Emma is and what her deal is and then moves straight on to the haunting. I would like to see a longer more fleshed out version of this even though I´m getting sort of tired of Ghosts-as-Metaphors-for-Grief-sploitation I still enjoy a good haunted house film and this seems to have some potential. I especially like the idea of haunted objects and the short seems to imply that whatever the force is that is haunting her is coming from the door and not part of the house itself and is seemingly using the image of her husband to get her to invite it in. . I imagine that if this makes it to a feature there will be some reveal that the door was made from a hanging oak or was in a house where something horrible happened.
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May 8, 2022 18:26
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Servoret posted:13. The Golden Glove (2019) Basically my thoughts when I saw it when it was new. Personally I would've liked it more if the titular bar and its skeezy regulars was entirely the focus
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May 11, 2022 22:05
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5. One Dark Night (1982)  Rated PG challengeHigh schooler Julie desperately wants to fit in. When she gets a chance to join the clique known as The Sisters she is willing to do whatever it takes. What she doesn't realize that Carol, the leader of the group, has a grudge against her for dating her ex-boyfriend. Carol decides to get one over on Julie by making her spend a night in a mausoleum making her think she's alone but then sneaking and spooking her. What neither Julie nor The Sisters know is that eccentric psychic Karl Raymar was recently entombed there and his powers go on beyond death. A pretty slow burn. Very little explicitly supernatural actually happens until the last 20 minutes but from there on it's a rollercoaster ride as the corpses in the mausoleum burst out of their coffins and terrorize the teens. The fact that they aren't zombies as such but more puppets controlled by Reymar's psychic powers makes them pretty unique and is a take on the undead I don't think I've seen before. They don't really walk they just sort of float around, their toes brushing against the floor slightly, and bump against their victims until the victims fall over and are buried under a mountain of dead bodies suffocating them to death. Which is just as, if not more creepy, than flesh eating ghouls. I really like that each corpse puppet has it's own unique look. They could've made them all non-descript skeletons or just people in gray make-up but they come in all sizes, shapes, and stages of decomposition which shows that a lot of care went into this film. It is possible that if they had all been uniform it would've underlined the fact that they aren't actual beings and aren't really being reanimated as such but just being piloted through telekinesis but I think it was a better move to make them all distinct. How this is PG (according to Wikipedia at least) I don't understand because although there isn't a lot of blood there's plenty of gross bodily destruction in the finale. A lot of great imagery that would probably be iconic if this hadn't flown entirely under the radar on its release and a great building of tension that ratchets and ratchets up until it explodes gloriously in the climax. A true hidden gem of the genre that will hopefully get one of those fancy blu-ray restorations from Arrow or Severin one of these days.
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May 16, 2022 00:15
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6. Doctor Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) Scream, Queen! challenge Young dr.Jekyll is worried that he won't have time to complete his research into curing literally every single disease in the world and will die of old age before doing so. So instead he sets out to create an elixir that prolongs the natural lifespan however in doing so he also transforms himself into the bodacious babe "Sister Hyde". Also he's Jack the Ripper I don't think this was purposely made as any sort of queer and/or trans allegory but the elements are nonetheless there. Stripped down to the bare essentials this is a movie about someone who takes female hormones to (temporarily) reassign their own gender. Aside from the main plot there are also a few slight nods at Jekyll being seen as a bit "queer" like a comment from the upstairs neighbor about Jekyll not being "impervious to women" and Jekyll's friend and colleague Professor Robertson is constantly complaining that Jekyll needs to stop working so much and try to find a woman to get laid which Jekyll dismisses as a waste of time. There is also scene later where Jekyll, coming out of a women's lingerie shop, gently strokes the neighbors face (presumably while being influenced by Hyde). Like in most versions of the story Jekyll is a fairly meek and nervous man and Hyde is brash, bold, and headstrong. But interestingly in this version Hyde isn't really any more evil than Jekyll even though Jekyll pretends she is. The good doctor is killing people before he even turns into Hyde in the first place and does most of the killings as himself at first only changing into Hyde to fool the authorities. He justifies it by the extremely egotistical claim that he needs to live forever so he can cure all those diseases (which he will surely do because he is so much of a genius). Even before he starts killing on his own he is sourcing bodies through some very dodgy methods. First from a implied necrophilic coroner and later from famous Resurrection Men turned serial killers Burke and Hare until they get caught and he needs to do the dirty work himself as Jack the Ripper. The fact that Burke and Hare died 60 years before the Ripper killings and operated in Edinburgh is beside the point because the film is more of a All Stars of 19th century spookiness combining one of the most famous works of weird ficiton of that era with Jack the Ripper and the most famous graverobbers (that never actually robbed a grave) as well. The film is obviously filmed on sets but they almost always obscured in the famous London peasoup fog* which not only provides heaps of atmospheric eeriness and also makes the sets feel a bit more convincing in their cramped tininess. It also provides explanation for why on numerous occasions Jekyll/Hyde gets away with murdering someone a spitting distance away from witnesses without them seeing anything. This is probably one of the foggiest movies I've ever seen alongside The Fog, The Mist, and City of the Dead. More horror movies should use fog it's a great tool both for obscuring the special effects to make them more convincing and for adding atmosphere to any scene. Needless to say it's a very horny movie and all the male characters, aside from Jekyll, are drooling horndogs constantly oggling and even groping the female characters (most of whom are sex workers aside from Jekyll's love interest Susan who seems to be madly in love with him even after only glimpsing him through a window a couple of times.). But despite the somewhat dodgy sexual politics it's a very fun romp if the Hammer brand of tits and gore appeals to you in anyway. *Which was famously mostly coal dust and smog and engulfed London on most calm rainless days until the 1950s when a partiularly bad case combined with extremely calm and cold weather conditions killed at least 4000 people and made a hundred thousand more very ill in one week in a disaster known as the Great Smog of 1952. After that pollution laws were put in place to prevent the same from happening again. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 18:09 on May 16, 2022 |
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May 16, 2022 16:10
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That's a very unfortunate typo. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 18:09 on May 16, 2022 |
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May 16, 2022 17:51
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:
A few that come to mind: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)* The Haunting (1963) Multiple Maniacs (1970)* Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) Penda's Fen (1974) Cruising (1980) Gothic (1986) Hellraiser (1987)* Nightbreed (1990)* The Haunting (1999) Thirst (2019) Fear Street 1994/1974/1666 (2021) *LGBQT+ director
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May 16, 2022 21:14
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gey muckle mowser posted:LGBTQ: Knife+Heart, Bit, Dracula’s Daughter, Jennifer’s Body, The Haunting (1963), The Perfection, Seed of Chucky Seconding this. Don't know how I could forget Knife+Heart from my list. or Jennifer's Body for that matter. Both are fantastic but very very dissimilar films.
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May 17, 2022 01:20
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Does the Northman qualify? I remember The Green Knight being given a pass in previous challenges and that one didn't have half the grevious bodily harm of the Northman. If course both films have ghosts. The Green Knight one being the more traditional medieval type of ghost which just needs help so it can rest and the Northman having a proper Mound Dweller.
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May 17, 2022 14:21
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Watch Strangler vs Strangler (1984) the Yugoslavian horror comedy about the (fictional) first serial killer in Belgrade and a rock star that becomes obsessed with him.
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May 18, 2022 15:05
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It's on https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/ Along with many other films that might qualify
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May 18, 2022 15:37
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7. The Nortman (2022) Aurvandill stríðshrafn konungur Hrafnseyjar er myrtur af bróðir sínum Fjölni bróðurlausa. Amlóði prins sonur Aurvandils flýr heimkynni sín og heldur í víking austur í Garðaríki. Þar berst honum sú fregn að Fjölnir frændi hans sé ekki lengur konungur Hranfseyjar heldur hafi Haraldur hárfagri rekið hann í útlegð til Íslands. Amlóði dulbýr því sem þræl og heldur á bæ frænda síns þar sem hann hyggst höggva mann og annan og ríða húsum líkt og draugur til að að ná hefndum. Loosely based on the story of Amleth from the Gesta Danorum though structurally this version is more similar to an Icelandic . There are some theories that the version found in the Gesta Danorum might be based on an older Icelandic epic poem but no manuscripts of it survive and the Icelandic manuscripts of the story are younger than the Danish version and probably based on it. A British play called Hamlet is based on the same story. Is this a horror movie? Not really but I think it counts about as much as The Green Knight which was deemed acceptable in previous challenges. Possibly even more since there's a lot more brutal violence in this one and a lot of it is obviously intended to be horrific. There is also the draugur/haugbúi/mound dweller that Amlóði fights to get the Nightsword Draugr. Which is presented more in a fantasy context and tone but with a tinge of horror, at least more than the very different ghost that appears in The Green Knight * There's also the sorcerer with the anachronistic 17th century magical sigil on his hat and the severed head who is a very spooky guy. So I'm counting it. The Northman is a good barbarian flick with some of Egger's signature weirdness sprinkled over it. Which is I think why I don't quite like it as much as say the Lighthouse. It feels a bit like he wasn't allowed to go fully hog wild on the strange pagan rituals and various visions. It goes pretty hard nontheless and I think that without all these fantastical and strange elements, like the many scenes of various pagan rituals and feasts, the film would be a bit too much of a standard revenge film. The film's depiction of vikings is not very flattering. It very deliberately paints them as mass murderers, rapists, and slavers. Even in the first scene when the king comes home after we see them ride into town with their spoils the camera pulls back to reveal the droves of chained slaves that are part of those spoils. The pivotal role of slavery in their society is very front and center in the plot itself. It's even revealed that Amleth's mother was herself a slave kidnapped from her native Brittany and forcibly taken as a concubine by his father There is also an early scene when Amleth is vikinging in Russia and the camera pans around as the Northmen commit atrocity after atrocity culminating in them herding dozens of Russian peasants into a house and setting on fire in what I'm pretty sure is a direct reference to a very similar scene in Come and See the Soviet war film about the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. This film, surprisingly, hasn't been very well received in Iceland, which normally goes nuts for anything remotely Iceland related and especially any foreign film involving Icelanders in any way. I think a part of that might be how the Vikings in the film are not glorified and every character seems to think Iceland itself is a complete shithole. Things that could hurt the fragile national mythology about being descendants of brave and strong and cool Vikings. I hope Eggers next film is some back to the basics thing because I think he works best in low- to mid- budget films where the stakes aren't so high that he needs to temper his urge to insert farts and dicks. There was, I think, not a single non-obscured cock in this film and only one (1) fart. Though a well timed one. Despite this lack of dick and flatulence it is a very well made period film, and about as accurate as is possible, and the violence is all very appropriately visceral and brutal. *I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent about medieval ghosts. is it a spoiler that there's a ghost in what is essentially Hamlet? Well anyway: Generally speaking medieval ghosts were a lot more corporeal than later ghosts. They had a tangible body and were often even the actual dead body rather than the spirit but had some shapeshifting powers which is why you get a lot of ghosts appearing as objects or animals but they were still actual physical beings you could touch and that couldn't really get through a locked door let alone a wall. This is especially true in the Nordic countries and persisted there longer than in in the rest of the continent where ghosts got more and more ethereal and less tangible as time went on. In Iceland this type of ghost, called a draugur, persisted well into the 19th century until the introduction of the then trendy Spiritualism started to change the perception of the nature of the undead from lumbering corpses riding roofs and pulling people into their graves to voices from the beyond herd at seances. The older type of draugr before this 19th century spiritualization can be roughly divided into two categories: Tilberadraugar and Guardians, the former type is a lot like a vampire. It goes around terrorizing the living at night and its curse is contagious in that all that die by its hand also become draugar, they basically exist as a sort of supernatural parasite with no purpose other than to haunt. The Guardians on the other hand are mound dwellers that stay in their graves guarding the treasures within from thieves and are functionally a lot like dragons. The Mounddweller in the film is a guardian but one interesting little detail is that after Amlóði decapites him he places the head inbetween the legs which is, if the tales are true, the only way to permanently kill a draugur. Though people usually burned the corpse and or drove stakes into it just to be sure.
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May 18, 2022 23:28
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Def by Temptation is a a masterpiece that could've been a disaster. But the stars aligned and it came out perfect
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May 19, 2022 20:28
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Have you seen -Fangs (1981) the Egyptian Dracula musical horror comedy? -Strangler vs Strangler (1984) the Yugoslavian serial killer horror comedy? -Ludo (2014) the Faroese psychological drama/thriller? -The Eagle' Nest (1974) the Turkish version of Straw Dogs? Tilbury (1987) the Icelandic WW2 period piece horror comedy?
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May 23, 2022 19:28
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8. Dead Heat (1988)   The Price is Right challengeA strange series of robberies where the robbers seem to be immune to any sort of physical damage rocks Los Angeles. Detectives Roger Mortis (get it?) and Doug Bigelow are on the case. One of them is a no nonsense old fashioned cop the other a wisecracking goofball; they're loose canons but they get results. While investigating Dante Laboratories Roger is killed but his buddy puts him in a machine that can resurrect the dead. Now the two have only 24 hours to solve the case before Roger's necrotic undead flesh decays totally. Simultaneously a paint by numbers Buddy Cop action comedy and a balls to the walls zombie effects fest. The highpoint of the film, aside from the very entertaining final shootout where a very battle scarred zombie cop takes on zombie henchmen and they just stand there and empty hundreds of bullets into each other with no effect, is when the heroes visit a butcher shop in Chinatown and all the carcasses come alive. Everything from organs to frozen slabs of meat to chicken heads attacking them in unison. There are some fantastic make-up and special effects on display and a lot of it is very creative. Like one of the first zombies we see is a big bulky biker guy but for some reason the undead hulk has three faces crudely merged together. No one comments on this and it is never explained. Most of the other zombies are just dudes in varying states of decay but for some reason one of them is a proper hideous monstrosity. The main weakness of the film is that it's very stupid. Joe Piscopo is also at best annoying as the loudmouth comic relief partner. Vincent Price is in it but he's only in it for a moment and doesn't really share screentime with any of the main characters we only see him on a video tape lying in bed and dying and then he does show up at the end to give a proper Vincent Price villain performance but I don't think he's ever in the same shot as any of the other main cast aside from the evil coroner . There's a few elements of the story that don't really make sense but it doesn't really matter because there's a lot of squibs and explosions and gore. 9. Mausoleum (1983)  When she was young Susan lost her family and stumbled into an old decrepit mausoleum where, drawn in by an eerie green glow, she encountered the sinister supernatural force of Nomed (get it?). Now she's 30, happily married and lives in a giant mansion. However demons from her past are literally coming back to haunt her. Susan, now possessed by the demon, begins to take out her anger against anyone who slights her. Starting by burning a drunken sexpest from a nightclub alive in his car but soon moving on to people closer to her. Sometimes she does this through psychic powers levitating people off the ground and throwing people about or tearing them apart while her eyes play green and a ray gun sound plays but other times she's content to murdering them with gardening tools like when she sleeps with her sleazy unkempt gardener Ben and murders him right afterwards (but first we endure a very strange and drawn out montage of the gardener working, driving a riding mover around, taking a coffee break, sharpening his axe, and taking a nap). The gardener is oddly prominent for a minor character so much so that the actor playing him gets credited in the opening credits as "Maurice Sherbanee as The Gardener" when no one else does*. At the end of the film after Susan has defeated her inner demon her psychiatrist walks up to a cloaked figure and orders the figure to keep the mausoleum sealed as his forefathers have done for generations. Then the camera pans around and this mysterious Crypt Keeper who was in on it the entire time turns out to be Ben the Gardener who looks straight into the camera and laughs. What this means I have no idea. I think he's supposed to be the cloaked shadow we see explode a dude's head in the opening scene but that might be someone else also. Susan also steals a very kitschy and cheap looking painting from a mall art gallery. A painting so kitsch that her husband becomes mad at her for having the painting in the house. During these various murders she gets naked a lot, her boobs almost being characters in their own right, especially in her final monster form where the breasts become two snarling fanged monster faces. Which is interesting from a psychosexual standpoint. I feel like I should mention Elsie the stereotypical Black maid who flees the house in terror as soon as she witnesses something creepy, complete with comedy music, in a scene that feels almost like it could be from a 1940s Mantan Moreland film. Well technically she sees something spooky runs to notify her boss but since he's already gone she downs some strong booze while spouting dialogue like "Great googly moogly!", "No more grievin' I'm leavin'!"and "Lord have mercy! I ain't been this nervous since I been Black" then she runs out of the house never to be be seen again. It's what modern man would call "Problematic". In short: Barely coherent schlock but with some very impressive and creative effects. I get the feeling the rest of the film was only put together to serve as filler between effects and boobs. *The actress playing young susan gets and "Introducing:" credit but that's a lot more justified than the dude who plays the creepy gardener being so prominently credited.
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May 26, 2022 18:52
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10. Dead of Night (1945)  Sins of the PastWalter Craig arrives at a quaint British country cottage for work but to his confusion and terror he realizes that the house and all the people in it, though previously total strangers to him, have been the subject of a reoccurring nightmare he's had for years. The sceptic of the group, one doctor Van Straaten, thinks this is impossible but the others try to convince him by telling stories about their own eerie or paranormal experiences. One of the first horror anthology films ever. It's interesting how fully formed the format seems to be for so early in it's history. The stories are of varying quality but none of them is actively bad and the framing story is one of the best I've seen in an anthology and is just as intriguing as any of the stories. The first story is told by race car driver Hugh Grainger and revolves around a near death experience followed by a premonition of death. A dark omen that allows him to escape a much worse accident. It's very short and has a very Twilight Zone vibe, despite predating that show by years. A good start to the film. The second story is told by teenager Sally O'hara and is about a Christmas game of hide and seek that ends when she has a surprise encounter with the ghost of a murdered child. When this first started I was expecting it to be an adaptation of A.M. Burrage's Smee, a classic and very creepy ghost story about people encountering a ghost while playing hide and seek at a Christmas Party but I was surprised when this went in a very different direction. In Smee the ghost is never actually seen directly but felt and heard. In this story the ghost is a adorable mopey child. Not very scary for a ghost story and probably the weakest story of the bunch. The third story is told by Joan Courtland and revolves around a haunted mirror she gave her husband when they first got engaged. There are no literal ghosts but the mirror shows an entirely different room than it is present in, a room in a much older and grander style, and seems to have a big affect on her fiancés mood and personality making him much more agitated and jealous. It's a interesting concept for a story and well executed and I'm a big sucker for haunted/cursed objects. The fourth story is told by the host of the gathering and owner of the cottage: Elliot Foley. This story is a bit unusual in that it's very overtly a comedy and the supernatural elements are a lot less subtle. It concerns two golfers who are competing for the affections of the same girl, they decide to have a game of golf to decide who gets her but one of them cheats and the loser drowns himself. But soon after he returns from the grave to haunt his rival, mostly through annoying him at golf by moving the ball around. It's very silly and goofy and probably funnier to 1940s audience's than to modern tastes but it got a few sensible chuckles out of me. The fifth and final story is the best and a foundational work in the subgenre of creepy ventriloquist dummy. It is told by the skeptical atheist doctor about a case in which he assisted where a ventriloquist tried to murder a colleague because he thought his rival was trying to steal the dummy. The story makes sure to keep it very unclear whether the dummy is actually alive and orchestrating all this or if it's just the imagination of the ventriloquist. Very spooky story with some great acting and fantastic evil dummy action. Having such a strong framing story makes the film feel a lot more cohesive than a lot of later horror anthology films. Even the silly golfing ghost bit works in the fiction of the film because the character telling it is obviously trying to lighten the mood and make his new guest feel less freaked out by all of this. I highly recommend all of you watch this if you haven't already. I've already watched film 11 and will probably tackle 12 and 13 on the morrow.
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May 29, 2022 19:51
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11. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970)  The King in YellowAmerican writer Sam Dalmas is just finishing up his stay in Rome when he witnesses an attempted murder, seemingly one of several murders targeting women recently carried out in the city. Alongside the police Sam begins to investigate the murder spree but it isn't long until he realizes that he's in too deep as increasingly brazen attempts are made to murder him and stop the investigation. Much to the chagrin of his English supermodel girlfriend Julia just wants him to stay home and have sex with her. Dario Aregento's directorial debut and it's one hell of a debut. Easily one of his best films though it doesn't quite reach the dizzying heights of Suspiria or Deep Red it's still amazingly confident, stylish, and solidly constructed for his first time on the job. One of the most interesting aspects of the film is how it plays with the imperfect nature of perception and memory as Sam spends most of the film trying to figure out some nagging detail that he can't quite put his finger on about what he saw which of course turns out to be incredibly important and something he doesn't realize until it's far too late. A well constructed mystery that keeps you guessing the entire time. I especially liked how they mention early on that the killer smokes expensive cigars and then make sure to show Sam's friend smoke cigars in every scene to make observant viewers think they're being clever when they're just walking right into a red herring The way the police operate with their proto CSI computer lab that can analyze anything from microscopic fibers to soundwaves (comparing sounds to a library of seemingly every single sound there is. On tape of course) feels almost sci-fi and the cops in general are unusually competent for a giallo, though of course just inept enough to require some American dude they just met do the bulk of the investigative work for them and frequently failing to protect him from the constant attempts on his life. I also liked Sam's relationship with his girlfriend Julia who rightfully points out that he doesn't need to get involved in this at all and they can just leave but he keeps going deeper and deeper at the expense of his home life. Feels almost like a metaphor for addiction where it's always just one more fix except the fix is investigating serial murder.
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May 30, 2022 21:03
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Witch double feature: 12. Witchhammer (1970)   . A Perfect GetawayIt is the 1670s in northern Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic, an old woman steals a communion wafer intending to use it restore the health of a cow that has stopped milking. This sparks a series of witch trials that ends up engulfing the entire village. Priest Krystof Lautner attempts to intervene only to find himself the target of the cruel and self serving inquisitor Boblig von Edelstad I was surprised to find that I had never actually seen a film from Czechia or Slovakia or even Czechoslovakia, atl east according to a few lists of Czech and/or Slovak films I found on Letterboxd. I've actually seen some Jan Svankmajer shorts but nothing feature length. One of the central thesis of this film is the role of sexual repression in the witch hunts. One of the very first scenes is of naked women bathing, eating, and laughing in a bathhouse intercut with a gnarly monk with abysmal dental hygiene talking about how women's innate Satanic horniness is the root of all evil (this monk appears throughout the film always in cutaway closeup talking about various increasingly wacky witch myths). There's also a long scene round the mid point of the film where the evil inquisitor Boblig plots with his lackey and talks about how he wants to see Zuzana, Lautner's maid, naked and how accusing her of witchcraft would allow that. While this conversation is ongoing the henchman is eagerly massaging various parts of Boblgi's body. Even more representative of this is one scene where, after burning some people alive, the toffs have a feast and Boblig regales them with a bawdy story about a penis stealing witch to roaring laughter from the grody 17th century clerics and noblemen. Aside from all the sexual repression and misogyny the film also features a pretty heavy class struggle angle. In one of the first scenes of the film we see a group of old and disabled people in rags begging outside the church which contrasts heavily with the number of opulent aristocratic feasts featured throughout the film. One interesting thing is that when we first see inquisitor Boblig he's a shabbily dressed innkeeper serving another character wine but as the film progresses he becomes increasingly foppish and well dressed constantly chugging wine and living in complete luxury with all the money he's confiscated from rich suspects. He also drinks his wine with added hot water, I'm not sure if that's some sort of indication that he's an uncultured boor because I'm not much of a wine guy but I suspect so. Boblig seems to have a deep seeded hatred for anyone who thinks they are better than him like Lautner with his book learning or the rich townsmen who surely obtained those riches through witchcraft. Lautner, who is the main character of the film, feels at times almost too noble and modern in his mission to stand against Boblig's burning crusade of course near the end we learn that his reasons or harboring his maid Zuzana despite the fact that clergymen are not supposed to have young female servant is not entirely out of the goodness of his heart but because she was at one time is mistress and sometimes Boblgi feels a bit too petty and cruel and transparently only doing all of this for his own personal gain. Which feels a bit arch but a brief google tells me all of this is rooted in actual history. We don't see as much gruesome torture and mutilation as I was expecting, don't me wrong there's plenty of it but most often it focuses largely on the reaction of the victim than the actual implements of torment. The most horrifying thing is the testimonies of the accused after torture where they robotically recite whatever accusations and stories of blasphemous debaucher that their captors have told them to. All with the exact same broken 1000 yard stare. The film ends, as many films based on true stories do, with a title card telling us what happened next. In this case it's particularly grim and cynical as it informs us that inquisitor Boblig not only got away with all of his evil deeds without any sort of punishment but he lived happily to a ripe old age in great wealth, privilege and power. 13.The Coming (1981) AKA Burned at the Stake  During a school trip to a Witchcraft Museum in Salem young Loreen somehow becomes possessed with the spirit of Ann Putnam, the girl who falsely accused many others during the famous witch trials. However things are complicated further when a wax statue of a relative one of the alleged witches, and victim's of Ann's lies, comes to life and seeks revenge on Loreen/Ann. The period parts of this feel like one of those educational videos you'd see when the history teacher is too hungover to teach so he rolls in one of these bad boys  The modern parts lean a bit more into straight to VHS schlock. At times it feels like an off-brand witch themed The Exorcist with a touch of The Omen. I don't understand how anyone could think The Coming was a good title for a film. Yes no witches were actually burned at Salem (burning witches was a continental thing and the Puritans being good Brits just hung them) but Burned at the Stake is a thousand times better title than the vague The Coming. They screwed the pooch with the opening scene where old man Giles Corey is being tortured by stones being piled on him. In the film his torturer keeps saying "more weight" until Giles confesses and then more weight is added causing Giles to be crushed to a somewhat bloody pulp. In actuality, from what I have heard, the real Giles Corey did not only not confess even during this torture but he was the one saying "more weight" until he died so he could make sure his family could receive an inheritance after him because confessing would've meant all his property would be confiscated. So they took a genuinely 'badass' moment from history and turned into a fairly generic dude being tortured scene. I don't have nearly as much to say about this as Witchhammer simply because there isn't as much there. It's technically speaking a more complicated film from a plot standpoint but somehow feels a lot simpler. It's also a shorter film but feels quite a bit longer. It's still has some good eerie moments if you can get over the schlock.
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Jun 1, 2022 00:44
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Only watched a small fraction of my intended crop but still managed to hit 13 (just barely) 1. Penda's Fen (1974) 2. Of Unknown Origin (1983) 3. Censor (2021) 4. Short Cuts BEASTS: Baby & There Comes a Knocking 5. One Dark Night (1982) 6. Doctor Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) 7. The Northman (2022) 8. Dead Heat (1988) 9. Mausoleum (1983) 10. Dead of Night (1945) 11. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) 12. Witchhammer (1970) 13. The Coming (1981) AKA Burned at the Stake Challenges Completed: 1. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched 2. Hidden Gems 3. Short Cuts 4. Rated PG 5.  Scream Queen!6. The Price is Right7. Sins of the Past8. The King in Yellow9. . A Perfect Getaway Rated PG challengeBest films: Penda's Fen Dead of Night Bird with the Crystal Plumage Northman Of Unknown Origin Middleground: Witchhammer BEASTS: Baby Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde Censor One Dark Night Lowpoints: Dead Heat The Coming Mausoleum There Come's a Knocking (that being said I enjoyed every single film in some way)
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Jun 1, 2022 01:07
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 08:08 |
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Congrats to Vroom Vroom . Pleasantly surprised how many people made it, mostly surprised I made it. Looking forward to Halloween.
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Jun 8, 2022 22:42
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