|
After a week and a half of prevarication and indecision I had a Eureka moment this morning and added Dog Soldiers (2002) to the list. A platoon of British Army soldiers on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands get ambushed by werewolves, a very fun film with good performances from Kevin McKidd, Liam Cunningham, and Sean Pertwee, and a good mix of scares, action, and humor. Streaming on Hulu, Shudder, and Tubi and available for rental on all the usual rental services. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq4fS3V6cig
Punished Chuck fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Oct 11, 2023 |
#
¿
Oct 11, 2023 20:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 10:56 |
|
|
I started my exscreamvaganza yesterday with Phantasm, because I've always kind of wanted to see it, it's on a service I already had, and I needed something that seemed easy enough to follow on the clock. I liked it overall, I really dug the first half when things were a lot more surreal and dreamlike, and was disappointed when that mostly (but not entirely) kind of went away in the second half. I really love when something channels that bizarre dream logic and this was one of the better ones I've seen, most of the time when something tries to be "dreamlike" it just throws in a bunch of weird stuff and calls it a day but this really nailed the sort of "logic" of a dream in a way I find hard to explain. Angus Scrimm was born to play the Tall Man role. Just a very striking and original film overall, I saw a review of it that called it "incoherent but effective" and I think that's probably the best descriptor.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2023 04:31
|
|
|
Horror Express: I was looking forward to this one, I'd never heard of it before it was put on the list but I have been meaning to watch more Cushing/Lee horror movies since I loved The Horror of Dracula, and I know Bonaventure has good taste in weirdo older horror films. I enjoyed it a lot, every actor in it is a delight, Lee's never turned in a bad performance, Cushing was more roguish and funny than I'm used to seeing him, the actor who played the monk gave a fantastically hammy performance (I looked him up and he's been in a ton of Spanish-language stuff but nothing I recognized), and Telly Savalas is clearly having the time of his life. The idea behind the monster was cool and not quite like anything I'd seen before, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it's a bunch of familiar ideas mixed together in a unique new way. I also really liked the mystery aspect and seeing Cushing and Lee piecing together exactly how the monster's abilities work and how to counter them was really interesting, especially in the way it made things you've already seen retroactively make sense like the monster picking the lock and then locking the cage back up after killing the thief. Definite recommend.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2023 03:51
|
|
|
And The House of the Devil. I know Ti West is mostly known for horror but this is the first horror movie of his I've seen, though I really loved his Western In a Valley of Violence. Really loved how well he nailed the stylistic throwbacks like using 16mm film and the opening and closing credits with the yellow text and freeze frames, etc. Very, very slow burn, which won't be to everyone's tastes but I liked it a lot, it reminded me of the first section of Barbarian where things are slow and tense and uncomfortable and you don't know when the shoe is going to drop or what it's going to look like when it does. I especially liked Tom Noonan's scenes earlier in the movie, where he's really weird and off-putting but not in an openly sinister way, just odd in the uncomfortable way that people are sometimes, he really sells it and it comes across as like, if you knew someone like that in real life you'd think he's just a harmless weirdo but since you know you're watching a horror movie you know there's got to be more than that. And then when the plot finally does explode it's just heart-pounding to the end. Great visuals too, I loved a lot of the effects like the pulsing flashes of the moon after she gets drugged by the pizza, or the road sequence as they're driving to the mansion that reminded me a lot of Lynch's Lost Highway. It's a hard recommend, because I know a lot of people won't like the pacing, but it gets by on an extremely well-executed atmosphere so if you're into that it's definitely worth a watch.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2023 06:39
|
|
|
Bram Stoker's Dracula. A masterpiece. Can't believe I've never seen it before. Great special effects, fantastic performances from everyone involved (aside from Keanu's attempt at a British accent that sometimes made me have to stifle laughter but accent aside I think he still did pretty good), I really liked how many actors, particularly Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins, kind of danced right up to the line of hammy overacting but never crossed it so it's fun but still has gravity and can be taken seriously. Lots of incredible visuals, a handful of favorites being the silhouette battle and the renunciation of God at the beginning, the scene transition fading from the protective ring of fire to the sun, absolutely everything about the confrontation with Vampire Lucy. I also appreciated how closely it stuck to the novel, obviously no adaptation ever perfectly matches the source material and the movie added its own spin to the story, but I love the book and it was cool to see it adapted so faithfully now that Dracula's kind of a stock character that's transcended the original novel.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2023 04:29
|
|
|
Also I guess it goes with my comment about its faithfulness to the book but I love that it included Quincey, who's generally been forgotten since he didn't make it into the Bela Lugosi movie
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2023 04:34
|
|
|
Spent most of the day on a marathon of a bunch of movies on the list before Halloween ends, with The Blair Witch Project ending right at the stroke of midnight to ring Halloween out: The Visit - Pretty solid movie, not Shyamalan at his best but miles above Shyamalan at his worst. Its structure reminds me of House of the Devil, with most of the movie being a slower creepy thing where normality has just enough going wrong to weird you out, building up to a final 20 minutes or so of more traditional horror. Both of the old folks gave great performances that did a lot to sell the movie. Phantom of the Paradise - this was a much different movie than I was expecting, and for the better. The movie I had in mind, some weird grim musical, wasn't my thing at all but I gave it a shot because I trust Roth's taste in 20th century films, and it's actually a fun campy film. Neat mashup of Phantom of the Opera, Faust, and even a bit of Portrait of Dorian Gray and Count of Monte Cristo. Beef rules. Under the Shadow - I'd been meaning to watch this one for years now and never got around to it, thanks Jenny for the motivation to finally do it. I liked this one a lot, it's another slow burn and I really liked the way it upped the tension from a period family drama at the beginning until it finally reached the Poltergeist-style crescendo at the climax. I've always enjoyed reading personal stories of people who believe that they encountered a ghost or their house is haunted or whatever, and I always love haunted house movies when they're sticking to the more subtle stuff that real people report--stuff moving by themselves, figures that disappear before you get a good look at them, kids having weird conversations with imaginary friends, etc--but then start checking out when they need the big Hollywood ending with everyone screaming and shouting Bible verses and whatnot; I think this movie made a very smart decision in that when it got to that point it just got weird with it, replacing the tedious ending most of these have with a bit of surrealism and cool visuals. I also found the beginning before the djinn ever showed up really interesting, I should check out more Persian cinema. I had a period in college where I got really into Persian culture and history but that never translated to watching their movies. The Blair Witch Project - Decent film, probably would have hit a lot harder if I saw it around its release when the found footage thing was fairly novel, but I see why it kicked off a craze that's still going today and I think it does it a lot better than most if not all of its imitators. It feels more genuine than most later found footage movies which usually just feel like a gimmick but they're fully committed to the bit here and the actors have a real spontaneity to their performances, it feels like they probably improvised a lot of it to keep it real. Before poo poo really goes down Heather was really good at channeling the energy of the most annoying girl you still hung out with for some reason in high school lol. It would have been wild to watch this when it first came out with the whole marketing campaign and rumor mills presenting it as actual footage, I was too young for real horror movies at the time but I could see myself really buying into the hype and believing it if it had come out when I was like 12 or 13 instead.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2023 06:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 10:56 |
|
|
That was a fun event, thanks for the picks, everyone. I deliberately didn't rewatch anything I'd already seen because I only really got into horror movies in the last two or three years so anything I'd already seen was a bit too recent for a rewatch, which means I didn't get to a lot of really good picks like Candyman or The Thing, etc., but I did watch most of the ones that were new to me, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Under the Shadow being particular favorites. The ones I hadn't seen before and didn't get to this month were Arachnophobia, Videodrome, Suspiria 77, and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which I'll probably still watch on my own over the next few days even without the event, I'm still in the mood for scary movies and probably will be for a while. Thanks for the picks everyone, I'm already looking forward to next year's.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2023 16:33
|
|