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I'm gonna do my standard 31 plus a few more depending on what the challenges are.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:09
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 06:09 |
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Yeah, I usually only watch things I haven't seen before, but with some of the challenges it'd be really hard for the movie to be something I haven't seen already.
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Sep 29, 2023 21:06
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I'm gonna get into the new stuff at midnight tonight, but for now: Friday the 13th: Part 2  Freddy Vs. JasonIt's been a few years since I last watched this, but in a lot of ways I think it's the best F13 movie. The first one was okay, but having the killer be Jason's mother never sat right with me. I always felt like they didn't take enough time to establish her before revealing that she's the killer. The second movie builds off her death though, and makes it integral to the series, which I loved, but they largely abandoned. I also like that Jason is just a deformed dude in this. The whole thing is just a really basic but fun slasher. 4/5 Biff Rockgroin fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 01:21
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2. No One Will Save YouHorror Adjacent I'm not going to go deep into this one because it's still new and people seem to dig it. I didn't hate it, but man was it a bummer. That first encounter was making me feel like i was gonna have a heart attack, but by the end the movie couldn't help itself from patting itself on the back for being so "deep". I have to give them credit for having like, six words of dialogue in the whole movie. 2.5/5 challenges: Freddy Vs. Jason Horror Adjancent New-to-You 1/6 History Lesson 2/5 (1980's, 2020's)
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Oct 1, 2023 20:12
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3. Attack of the Beast Creatures Birth of HorrorWhen a ship that looks like the Titanic, but isn't for some reason, hits an iceberg and sinks in the North-Atlantic sea, a small group of survivors end up on a mysterious island. Food and water aren't their only issues as it turns out the island is home to a tribe of tiny red monsters who quickly make it clear that the aren't friendly. The group then has to find a way off the island while fending off the Chihuahua sized monsters. This movie is technically awful and is about 80% filler footage of people walking in the woods behind the director's house, but I can't help but love it. The puppet monsters are just so cheap and fun to look at. Every time they attack you get to see them swing on vines or scamper around doing that "knife hand" run. Your mileage may vary, but if you like no-budget monster movies this one is worth checking out. 2.5/5 4. Blood Sisters  Box ArtHIFE Women (Directed by Roberta Findlay)A group of sorority pledges spend a night in a haunted brothel as part of their initiation. Unbeknownst to them, the pledge mother's boyfriend and his friends have filled the house with pranks designed to scare the girls, but they may have gotten more than they bargained for when some of the girls start to go missing... The movie is a standard "boobs and blood" deal, and it's fairly forgettable, but there are little touches throughout that make it a bit more interesting than it should be. There's a pretty clever clue about who the killer is that you might not pick up on until the end, and I kind of liked that there was a setup for a subversion of expectations that instead goes "No, this is really happening, but also..." Blood Sisters is one of those movies that would've been incredible at a sleepover as a kid, so if you want that vibe it's a great choice. Otherwise it's a decent enough movie to throw on while you're doing something else. 2.5/5 5. The Sentinel  Exorcist at 50A beautiful model (played by the stunningly gorgeous Christina Raines) moves into an aging apartment building with only one other tenant: an elderly priest who spends all day staring out of his top floor window. Very soon the woman starts to meet several other odd tenants who no one else seems to know about. Things start going south when she starts to have frequent fainting spells and starts to see her recently deceased father. Her and her lawyer boyfriend quickly find out that things may not be as they seem in the old apartment building. I'm usually not one for Satan movies because so many of them either get too preachy or just aren't that interesting, but this one hits just right. The whole thing is super weird and the cast is absolutely stacked for no apparent reason. Off the top of my head I remember seeing Burgess Meredith, Eli Walach, Beverly D'Angelo, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Walken, and Tom Berringer. Pretty much everyone does a great job as well. The only thing I didn't love is that the movie uses disfigured and disabled people in a pretty insulting way for today's standards, but I understand the reasoning and as long as they all wanted to be involved and were all fairly compensated I can't really object too much. 4/5 challenges: Freddy Vs. Jason Horror Adjancent Birth of Horror Box Art Exorcist at 50 New-to-You 4/6 History Lesson 3/5 (1970's, 1980's, 2020's) HIFE: Women Biff Rockgroin fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 07:28
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6. Village of the Damned After a mysterious phenomenon causes an entire town to pass out in unison, ten women wake up to find themselves pregnant. All but one are born healthy, but the mothers soon find out that that their new babies are magic psychic babies with a vague disinterest with humankind. Kirstie Alley is also a scientist and Superman is a doctor. That's about it. John Carpenter is always a solid choice for horror, and even though this is by far the worst of what I've seen from him, it's still pretty much okay. I really like the concept, but the whole thing is pretty goofy. Like, I get that the kids are all magic, but I'm still pretty sure I could just take care of them with an aluminum bat. I can't really recommend this one because there's not much going on with it. Even still, it's Carpenter, so at the very least it's not bad. 3/5 7. Tales From the Hood  Bite-Sized HorrorHIFE POCThree small time criminals show up at a funeral home to pick up a cache of lost drugs, but instead are met by the eccentric funeral home director who tells them of four stories: A political activist is murdered by the police, but one of the officers, crippled with grief, begins to receive orders from the murder victim. A small child changes schools and befriends his teacher who soon becomes concerned with the child's tale of a monster who abuses him at night. A racist politician moves into a former plantation that was the scene of a brutal massacre and soon finds out that the murdered souls may still be around. A violent criminal is sent to jail for murder but is offered a chance to join a bizarre rehabilitation program which may be more trouble than it's worth. I don't know why, but I always thought this movie was a comedy. All the stories are pretty good, and as far as morality tales go, these are all superb. They really captured that EC Comics feel. The only weak element besides some dodgy looking special effects at the end was the final story. It's the most shocking of the four, but it feels a bit rushed and I feel like the third story was a more natural end point. Other than that, I really liked everything. 4/5 challenges: Freddy Vs. Jason Horror Adjancent Birth of Horror Box Art Exorcist at 50 Bite Sized Horror New-to-You 6/6 History Lesson 4/5 (1970's, 1980's, 1990's, 2020's) HIFE: Women HIFE: POC
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Oct 4, 2023 19:18
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Greekonomics posted:After watching ROTLD (and ROTLD 2) so much, it was weird as hell seeing him as a general in Invaders from Mars. He showed up in an episode of Seinfeld my girlfriend was watching and she didn't understand why I was so pumped. I definitely feel like we should expand the "that guy" category next year though. Off the top of my head you could add Tom Atkins, John Saxon, James Karen, and Cameron Mitchell.
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Oct 4, 2023 20:17
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8. The Oblong Box Picnic At Hanging Rock in spaceHistory Lesson (1960's)Around the World (Europe)Vincent Price's brother is horribly mutilated in Africa after a misunderstanding and is locked in a tower back in England. He comes up with a scheme to escape which goes wrong and ends up going on a murder spree. I have to say, I was ready for this one to be a slow burn because it's a Poe adaptation, but nothing could prepare me for how bland this was. I'm still not sure how you could put both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee in the same movie and do next to nothing with either of them. 2/5 9. Sole Survivor  Rob ZombieA woman cheats death after being the sole survivor of a plane crash. The problem is she LITERALLY cheated death, and now death wants her soul back and is willing the send his minions out to get it. I really liked the concept of this one. I also appreciated how straight everything was played. There were no tricks or loopholes or Rube Goldberg deaths, just "by the way, it's not natural to cheat death, this is gonna cause issues..." 4/5 10. The Dunwich Horror  A creepy dude asks a professor if he can borrow the Necronomicon. Needless to say, the professor says no, but the creepy guy isn't willing to take no for an answer and decides to open a portal to another dimension. Lovecraft adaptations are pretty hard to do, but this one was just a huge swing and miss. The whole movie felt like taking an Ambien. Even Dean Stockwell spent the whole time talking like he was on NPR. Even the big ending was like, "Right... Was that it then?" 1.5/5 11. Night of the Creeps  That Guy Dick (Dick Miller)When a goofy little alien shoots a jar of brain slugs at earth, a hapless dope comes across it and immediately gets infected. 30 years later, two nerds end up releasing the brain slugs and it's up to them and Tom Atkins to stop them. I'm sure everyone has already seen this one, so I'll keep it short. There's a ton of fun bits in this one, and any movie with Tom Atkins and Dick Miller as Walter Paisley is gonna be a banger. 4/5 12. Flesheater  SamhainA farmer pulls a stump out of the ground in the middle of the woods for some reason and uncovers the grave of Bill Hinzman. Bill bites some horny teens and it goes on like that until it ends. The main draw to this movie is that it's a vanity project for a dude who really wants to be a zombie. For the few of you who don't know, Bill Hinzman played the first zombie in Night of the Living Dead, and it seems like he really rode that poo poo as far as it could take him. He gets more screen time than any other zombie, he gets multiple close ups, and most embarrassing of all, every time a naked girl is on screen, which happens a lot, he's always there to awkwardly grope at them and "accidentally" feel their breasts. Other than that, it's a super generic zombie movie with no twists and next to no plot. Weirdly enough though, the gore and special effects are actually pretty solid. It's the kind of movie you put on when you're doing something else. 2.5/5 challenges: Freddy Vs. Jason Horror Adjancent Birth of Horror Box Art Exorcist at 50 Bite Sized Horror Picnic At Hanging Rock... in Space Rob Zombie That Guy Dick Samhain New-to-You 6/6 History Lesson 5/5 (60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2020's) Around the World (Europe) HIFE: Women HIFE: POC 
Biff Rockgroin fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 08:28
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13. The Exorcist Childhood TraumaEveryone knows what The Exorcist is, so I'll skip the synopsis. So the reason I'm using this for Childhood Trauma is the same reason I didn't get into horror until I was in my mid 20's. Like, thirty years ago when I was 8, my mom met what would become her current husband. The problem was, for whatever reason, the dude really wanted to impress my older brother and sister, so he'd constantly try to make fun of me and generally gently caress with me. One night, he thought it'd be fun to try to scar me by having us all sit down and watch The Exorcist, which he didn't mention to me was a horror movie. I was a timid kid, so I only got to the point where Linda Blair started getting sick and I bailed and went to my room to watch cartoons. It's hard to explain, but I wasn't scared of the demon stuff, but was deeply depressed by the concept that I could become sick one day and no one would be able to help me and I'd just die. Adding to that was the fact that the movie was super dreary and "boring" to 8 year old me, so for whatever reason, it was seared into my brain that horror movies were just these super adult and boring things that weren't for me, so horror just always had a negative feeling for me. Eventually around the age of 25, after getting deep into movies as an adult, I decided to give horror a fair shot and got deep into it, but I always avoided watching The Exorcist because I assumed it was just really boring. A few years ago however, I watched Sorcerer and loved it, so Friedkin and The Exorcist came back on my radar. The biggest surprise to me was that the demon stuff is the least scary stuff in the movie. All the medical procedures were really disturbing, and the whole feeling of both Father Karas and Chris MacNeil both losing their faith in their lives and getting beaten down by things they couldn't control definitely hit me in a specific spot. Jason Miller was the stand out for me and I really bought him as a guy who's at the end of his rope but still has to keep going. Ellen Burstyn also obviously did a great job, and Max Von Sydow is always excellent. 5/5 challenges: Freddy Vs. Jason Horror Adjancent Birth of Horror Box Art Exorcist at 50 Bite Sized Horror Picnic At Hanging Rock... in Space Rob Zombie That Guy Dick Samhain Childhood Trauma New-to-You 6/6 History Lesson 5/5 (60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2020's) Around the World (Europe) HIFE: Women HIFE: POC 
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Oct 11, 2023 17:29
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Erin M. Fiasco posted:The medical horror was what really hit me about The Exorcist myself when I first watched it, as well as the crisis of faith. It's amazing how little attention the first act gets when that entire throughline is the scariest stuff. The famous possession scenes are good and all but those shots and medical charts are what give me the shivers whenever I think about it. The mind blowing thing was that I looked it up afterwards, and everything in the movie is accurate, if not actually toned down a bit. Like, that machine that kept moving around also involves draining the cerebral fluid in the brain and pumping air in instead, but they thankfully didn't show that part of the procedure.
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Oct 11, 2023 18:15
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I finished all the challenges and now I'm just working on finishing up 31 new-to-me movies, but I haven't been keeping up in this thread. Is it cool if I link my letterbox reviews to catch up rather than writing 9 new reviews on here?
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Oct 18, 2023 19:00
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14. Hellbound: Hellraiser II Goat's GOATS (House)I knew that the Hellraiser sequels got bad pretty fast, but I didn't know it was THIS fast. For every cool or interesting thing in this movie, there are 3 embarrassing things. My biggest issue was giving Pinhead a backstory. Pinhead is an unknowable demon, why the hell would he be made better by letting everyone know that he used to be a jug-eared wormy dude? 2/5 15. Razorback  Big Mean AnimalsAround the World (Australia)This movie makes me think that every single Australian is a gibbering freak. Still, for a big animal movie, this one is pretty good. There's a shocking amount of quality cinematography and interesting visuals as well, which makes sense considering Russel Mulcahy was doing Duran Duran videos before this. The only thing that threw me off was the movie trying to make pigs looks scary. You see one of those little dudes skidaddle with their little hooves and you can't help but go, "awwww!" 4/5 16. Hiruko the Goblin  Around the World (Asia)Not quite what I was expecting from the director of Tetsuo: The Iron Man, but I still really enjoyed it. All the creature effects were fun, and I kind of dug the whole "Evil Dead meets Ghostbusters" vibe. 4/5 17. Deadly Games  This is one of those movies I want to write a lot about, but it's not worth the effort. I don't even know what to say. The plot makes no sense, all the women look alike, which makes it hard to tell what's going on, there's very few kills, and 90% of the movie is women chatting about the strength of their friend's relationships. One of these days we really need to talk about these "lost on tape" horror movies. So far, each one I've seen has been awful. 0.5/5 18. The Abomination  I mostly watched this because it had the same director as Repligator, so I thought it'd be as goofy. Turns out I was wrong, but that's okay. It's super low budget and awful for sure, but I was kind of impressed with how it used what limited budget it had. The creatures were shockingly decent too, and the plot wasn't as nonsensical as you'd imagine. 2/5 19. The Last Horror Film  I kind of love Joe Spinell. That dude can't not be sweaty and bedraggled. I can't say too much because I don't want to spoil anything, but this one was a super watchable slasher with an ending that'd probably piss some people off, but I personally loved. 4.5/5 20. The Company of Wolves  I honestly was expecting a lot more from this one. I like werewolf movies, but this just didn't scratch that itch for me. It wasn't bad, I just thought the "anthology inside a real movie" thing didn't work. That being said, I like the concept of "wolves are weird little guys, right?" and the set design and creature effects were really good. I just wish I could like this movie more. 3/5 21. Ginger Snaps  Goat's GOATS (Tapes)HIFE (LGBT)Ginger Snaps seems to be a favorite around here, so I won't be too mean about it. I really hate the 2000's aesthetic, and this movie is drenched in it. The main two girls do a good job, but that's about it. I've heard people like this movie for it's feminist and LGBT themes (I don't really get the LGBT themes, but I'm just some straight dude, so I'm probably just missing something obvious), so I like that it's got that going for it, but I never really got into it as much as I wanted. Also, as a side note, did anyone think they were setting the mom up to also be a werewolf but then decided not to go down that path? 2/5 22. The Tokoloshe  Around the World (Africa)This movie seems to be two different movies. What I mean by that is the first 70% sets up all these characters and ideas, and you get really into it and want to see what's going to happen, but then randomly, almost all that is abandoned and it becomes a completely boring by-the-numbers monster movie. It's a real shame too because the concept is pretty strong, I just wish they had done SOMETHING with it. 2/5 challenges: ALL CHALLENGES COMPLETE 
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Oct 19, 2023 18:08
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23. The Invisible Maniac A science dork creates an invisibility potion and immediately goes nuts and wants to kill students and look at breasts. This is an awful movie, but it wasn't ever going to be good. There's a few fun deaths and I'm in love with the dark haired girl with glasses. This is definitely one of those "tape movies" you'd rent from a video store when you were, like, 15 and it'd somehow stick with you for 20 years for no real reason. 3.5/5 24. The Dead Pit  An amnesiac is committed to a mental hospital, but all is not what it seems, and after an earthquake, a gate to hell opens up. I can't talk much about this because it was pretty non-descript. I really liked the use of neon, and it's an okay enough zombie movie. Could be worse, but it's not great. 2.5/5 25. Strays  Poindexter from Revenge of the Nerds moves his family to a house hidden in the middle of the woods. Their peace is soon shattered when they're attacked by feral kitty cats. I have no idea why this movie exists, but thank God it does. The idea of having cats be the villain in a horror movie is really funny. They aren't even mutant cats or anything, they're just normal, annoyed cats. 5/5 26. Panic Beats  A man brings his ailing wife to his country manor to help her relax, but little does she know, that her husband has ulterior motives... I can't really say anything about this movie because it's filled with a ton of twists and turns. It's probably too convoluted for its own good, but the story was interesting enough to keep me engaged. 3/5 27. Uninvited  Another kitty cat movie, only this time the cat is a mutant who's trapped on a boat with a few rich criminals and and some horny college kids. This is a deeply stupid movie, but it's pretty funny, and George Kennedy and Clu Gulager are always fun to watch in trash movies. 3/5 28. Targets  An aging horror star prepares for his retirement while an all-American young man carries out a mass shooting. This one was legitimately great. Karloff did a fantastic job, and although the effects are dated, the shootings are all incredibly disturbing. 4/5 29. V/H/S 85  Yet another one of these. I don't know why they keep making these, and I don't know how they stay so consistently bad. None of the stories grabbed my attention. The one that came closest was the first story, but even that ended up pretty aimless and bland. 1.5/5 30. Amityville 3-D  A group of skeptics expose a fraudulent psychic who's set up shop in the Amityville house. The lead skeptic happens to be divorced, so when the realtor offers him the house for dirt cheap, he jumps at the chance. Almost immediately, paranormal poo poo happens, and the skeptic is forced to re-examine what he thinks about the world of the paranormal. Amityville 3D is pretty dire, which is a shame because the concept of a Skeptic facing the unexplained could have been really interesting. Instead, the movie is one giant excuse to shove a bunch of 3D effects in your face. 1.5/5 31. Paganini Horror  A very unfortunate looking woman is stuck in a rut with her pop band, so when her drummer offers her a lost Paganini composition, she takes it. She heads to a derelict mansion to film a music video, but people soon start being murdered by a mysterious masked man. This is one of those weird rear end Italian movies that makes no sense. There's a whole thing about bending time and space and honestly, it was too boring to be funny. Also, why the hell is the Paganini song just Twilight by ELO? 2/5 32. Wicked City  A human and a demon need to team up to ensure a VIP makes it to a peace treaty signing. This is one of those anime that I'd always see on tape at Blockbuster, but was always too nervous to rent. As it turns out, I was right to be cautious. There's some great body horror, and the movie has an aesthetic that's really slick. The only issue is that the movie plays it pretty fast and loose when it comes to sexual assault, which isn't going to be fun for a lot of people. 4/5 33. Don't Open Till Christmas  A maniac is killing people dressed as Santa, which leads to Scotland Yard assigning two investigators to stop the killer before he can strike again. The gimmick of a killer who only targets Santas is pretty goofy, but the movie takes itself far too serious to be funny. That's ultimately the movie's biggest flaw. There's so much you could do with a Santa slasher, but instead it's a very dry police procedural. That being said, it's still a solid holiday slasher. 3/5 34. The Wolf Man  Everyone knows this movie, so I'll skip the synopsis. I was surprised at how sympathetic Lon Chaney plays the main character. By the end of the movie, you really feel awful for the guy. Other than that, the movie is a classic, 4/5 challenges: 34/31 movies ALL CHALLENGES COMPLETE
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Oct 29, 2023 07:55
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 06:09 |
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Splint Chesthair posted:Holy crap, you're totally right. It's a bit maddening because from what I've seen so far, no one knows how or why they used it for the movie.
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Oct 30, 2023 19:06
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