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I think the last time I felt that 'Hide under the table' feeling from a movie was watching Eden Lake, and that was mostly cause I'd been mugged the night before and it triggered a mild panic attack.
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Oct 9, 2014 18:54
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Gosh guys, now I feel like I oversold things (I totally didn't.) Also, I feel like I'm letting you all down by not keeping up on that level of films. See, I just watched movie #9: Flesh Eating Mothers (1988) Apparently due to some sleeping around in their community, an STD infects several different moms, turning them into ravenous, flesh-craving ghouls. And what's the quickest source of human flesh for a mother? Why their children, of course! This leads to a rag-tag group of teenagers on the run from their maternal units, hoping to find a way to end the bloodshed. At the same time, a cop wanted for killing his zombified wife, and the local coroner race to discover why this outbreak is happening, despite being set against the local police chief that supposedly lost both his arm and his wife in a hunting accident with a bear last winter... I totally just made this movie sound a lot better than it is. This is bargain-basement 80's schlock. We have teenagers that look about 10 years younger than their mid-40's moms, whose ghoul makeup is the only at all fun thing about this movie. Despite being set in Anytown, USA, the entire cast has thick New York accents. The sets appear to be inside the homes of the filmmakers. The credit sequences I'm 100% certain were created at the local college's A/V department. And the music is horrendous. However, we do get the excellent credit of "Featuring Grace Pettijohn as Booty". Yup, there's a character named Booty. Anyways, unless you're a connoisseur of crap like myself, avoid this film.  /Five
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Oct 9, 2014 19:59
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October 7th: Death Valley (1982) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083805/ A kid goes with his mom and her boyfriend on a trip to (where else?) Death Valley. But the boy snoops around where he shouldn't have, and takes a necklace he finds, which just happens to belong to the local serial killer. Having a child as the main character isn't something you see often in horror, but it works here, mainly because Peter Billingsley is one of the least annoying child actors of all time. Not a whole lot of blood or mystery here, but the killer can be quite creepy. It's nothing particularly special, but it's not bad either. October 8th: Bells (1982) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081203/ Someone has created a way of killing people by sending a signal over the phone, and it's up to our hero to put a stop to it. I don't know, I found this one pretty boring. I didn't care about any of the characters or finding out who the killer was. It starts out fairly strong, but my enthusiasm for it died off quickly. I guess the deaths scenes looked alright, though.
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Oct 9, 2014 22:01
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Day 9 - The Golem seems to mainly come up as the afterthought in silent picture lists. "There's Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and... uh... The Golem, I guess." That kind of thing. And as you'd expect from a perennial afterthought, it's not as interesting as the films that come to mind first. The Jews are all going to be kicked out of Prague, but a rabbi uses the magic powers that all rabbis have to animate a clay statue. Unfortunately, he didn't read the directions since after a while the statue becomes evil. As a horror movie, The Golem doesn't really kick in until the end when creation goes bad. Then there's one scene with real menace and that's it. Before that, the scariest the Golem gets is that he stands in front of a fire exit. There is one nicely atmospheric scene toward the beginning where the rabbi uses his Jewish powers to summon a demon for information. The copy I watched off of Amazon Prime had a real problem with the tinting. I'm familiar with the concept of tinting prints in the black and white era but in my experience tinting done in modern days to these black and white films is done very poorly. Here everything is supersaturated, overly bright, and overused. It's like they just cranked the color correction all the way to one side. So besides the modern butchery, the film looked great. The sets were all very textured like everything in the ghetto was made of baked clay and not just the golem. Tomorrow I think I'm going to watch Friday the Thirteenth Part VII.
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Oct 9, 2014 23:42
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Random Stranger posted:Tomorrow I think I'm going to watch Friday the Thirteenth Part VII. I think I know a place where you can watch it with friends. 
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Oct 10, 2014 00:20
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Movie 9: Curse of Chucky (2013) I can't really say I was too big a fan of this one. This DTV film serves as a sequel and tonal-reboot to the Child's Play franchise. It really tries to emphasize the horror, but doesn't really succeed in that regard. There's one decent kill, and nothing else really to right home about. There's a ton of exposition towards the end to ensure that the audience knows how this ties in to the other one. There is one interesting idea that this film had that was quickly abandoned. There is a priest who is not directly killed by Chucky. He excuses his self from a dinner with Chucky's adoptive family because he senses something wrong about the doll. He then dies in a car accident (this is the decent kill I referenced above). There is no way Chukcy could have directly caused his death. I thought this signified that Chucky was more of a demonic force or bad omen this time around. The film is called Curse of Chucky after all. Sadly, the rest of the movie is the same old poo poo that we've seen before . I would only recommend this one for completionists. Otherwise, avoid this one.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:30
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1. Mama 2. Goke: Body Snatcher from Hell 3. Dead and Buried 4. Satan's Princess 5. From Beyond 5.b) The Monster Squad 6. Night of the Creeps 6.b) The Black Cat (1934) 7. The Haunting (1963) 7.b) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 8. Deep Red Tonight was The Curse of Frankenstein. I quite enjoyed it, which surprised me. I knew I should watch at least one hammer film this month, but a few years ago I watched all of the hammer Draculas and I didn't find them particularly interesting. Cushing makes a way more compelling [strike]Dr.[/strike] Baron Frankenstein than he does a Van Helsing. His cool intensity makes for a solid performance, and the rest of the movie is very atmospheric and good fun. Edit: had the order mixed up. Pigbog fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 04:39
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Week 1 1) Re-Animator (1985) 2) Isle of the Dead (1945) 3) Full Moon High (1981) 4) The Innkeepers (2011) Week 2 5) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 6) Galaxy of Terror (1981) 7) Lair of the White Worm (1988) 8) Nosferatu (1922) / Shadow of the Vampire (2000) 9) The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) Wow, so this movie kinda blew. I guess I shoulda expected as much, but it basically amounts to a well-shot Herschell Gordon Lewis picture. But that's the thing. Blood Feast and Two-Thousand Maniacs at least have character. I don't know what The Town That Dreaded Sundown has, but it's not much.
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Oct 10, 2014 05:06
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My second fun themed double billing of the season and I get a kick out of it. Already planning a third and fourth. Double Billing #2: "This Ain't Harry Potter!"  #9) Trollhunter (2010) Never heard of this one before this thread so thanks for the review/recommendation. A very fun and different movie. When I read about it in here the premise seemed so interesting I had to go check out the trailer. Then the trailer impressed me well enough as far as the production of it so I dove in and I really enjoyed it. Considering how much I enjoyed it I feel bad that I don't have much to say, but I just don't have anything. It was just a fun and original idea executed very well. I supposed I could nitpick the effects a little but considering the budget and content I thought they were really pretty good and natural looking. The trolls had a certain fairy tale quality to them but then again they're trolls so what the hell is a "real" troll supposed to look like? And I kind of enjoyed the idea of the fairy tale like troll species names and the fact that they turn to stone in the sun or that one was hanging out under a bridge that basically said "yeah, these are real but they're still freaking trolls from fairy tales so that's our frame of reference." And Otto Jespersen (who I never heard of since I ain't Norwegian was really strong and the star of a movie in a way actors rarely are in found footage films. I want to be a Troll Hunter when I grow up. The more I think about it I really did love the way this was a modern day fairy tale with tons of subtle references to fairy tales, some of which I didn't even catch the first time around. I was just sitting here when I suddenly realized that Hans was wearing a suit of armor and carrying a lance. Stuff like that and the bridge and smelling Christian blood and everything else was just so well done and charming. I read that the cast were all Norwegian comedians and I guess its seen as "Norway humor." I didn't really find it all that "funny" but I did find it very charming and fun. #10) The Woman in Black (2012) This one was less satisfying. Not a terrible movie just a very mediocre and unoriginal ghost story. Maybe if I had watched it some random night in April it might have worked more on me but put up against scarier ghost stories and haunted house movies I've seen so far this October it just didn't deliver. Especially since I was on a bit of a roll the last few nights with a bunch of scary hits in Lords of Salem and Supernatural Activity. This one had a few effective jump scares and the the mood was well done in the middle of the film and it really started to put me on edge, but the story then broke the tension and never really got it back. Like I said, it wasn't bad it just wasn't very good and up against stiff competition this December if you stumble its just going to stand out more than it would another time of year. And honestly, the entire final act bothers me and felt lazy. The first two acts are good. First, introduce our sad mourning star who has no real choice but to go into the spooky, isolated house that everyone clearly wants him not to go to. Second, once he's there and isolated scare him when he has no where to go. Then the third part just kind of loses me. The plan to find the boy's body seemed kind of silly and contrived to me. Then I didn't feel much tension on them reuniting the boy with his mommy and it just felt like a lot of Harry playing with toys and waiting. And then the ending all comes because Harry doesn't seem to notice his kid let go of his hand and sneak off and then isn't even that upset that he and his son are dead since they get to be with mommy. Father of the year? The Tally Pre-October Warm Up V/H/S (2012) / V/H/S 2 (2013) / Sinister (2012) / Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011) / State Of Emergency (2011) / We Are What We Are (2013) Week 1: Oct 1st to 7th 1) Insidious (2010) / 2) Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) / 3) Enter Nowhere (2011) / 4) The Nurse (2013) / 5) American Mary (2012) / Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) / 6) Re-Animator (1985) / 7) The Lords of Salem (2013) Week 2: Oct 8th to present 8) Paranormal Activity (2007) / 9) Trollhunter (2010) / 10) The Woman in Black (2012) STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 07:18
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 Another bad one tonight. Wherever Manos goes on a 100-point scale, this was ~10 points above it, just by being slightly better on every front. Slightly. After some cut-and-paste romance to establish the hero couple, news of an inherited castle, and approximately eight minutes of footage of a man running by himself through a forest, things start to get moving. Even so, not much happens, though there are some genuinely creepy moments in a dungeon. Bringing things down are a near-powerless (though charming) Mr. and Mrs. Dracula (they're actually held off with a revolver in one scene), a brutish hench-man named Mango, and the absence of lines for two of the girls in the dungeon, who just stand there watching terrible things happen three feet away without uttering a peep. Also contributing to the scares are a butler of little note, two rats, one spider, and a general-purpose psycho. It's not shot that terribly, and the music is alright, but the film's conclusion just sort of flops into place, like the performances. Avoid it, unless you're dying to see Vicki Volante's film debut. Darthemed fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 07:19
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 NOW WITH IMPROVED SOUND Tune in here at 8:30 Eastern! Tonight's features are:  Friday the 13th part VII: The New Blood and...  Bride of Frankenstein And you'll also have a chance to win....  Be there! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scream-stream-part-2
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Oct 10, 2014 07:28
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Progress: PA Marked Ones (7/10)) / Children of the Corn (2/10) / The Town that Dreaded Sundown (5/10) / The Burning (7/10) / Murder Party (7/10) / Last Ride (4/10) / Body Parts (4/10) / Christine 7/10) / Crazies (6/10) 10/8: Shivers (6/10) Thought it wasn't bad, but I think Rabid and The Brood were much stronger efforts with a similarly small budget. It was enjoyable while it was happening, but I felt that it could have been better if Cronenberg committed to the concept more and made it much more graphic. I know the budget was probably next to nil but the film would have been much better if it bent more towards something like the end of Society. That being said, the movie is suitably grimy-feeling and it isn't terrible to watch. 10/9: Bad Taste (6/10) This is much like any well-liked schlock director's early works. It's extremely rough around the edges and you can tell that there was no budget, but there are definite flashes of brilliance. Everything here is a bit lovely, especially the characters, but you can tell that there was some real thought put into many of the scenes. Like in LOTR (debatably), the action plotting makes some definite sense as in you can tell where the action happens and the characters end up where you would expect them to after something happens. This isn't Dead Alive by a longshot, but I thought the gore and creature effects were relatively well done with a budget that as far as I can tell may been $2,000 at the most. It isn't great and the film isn't funny at all, but it wasn't a waste of my time. Next 8 days are going to be loving rough: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original, probably) / Deadly Spawn / Proteus / The Visitor (I started this one 4 days ago, saw the intro and physically slowly walked backwards out of my room and closed the door) / Zombie rear end / Evil Dead Trap / Wishmaster / Anaconda Jigoku fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 07:35
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I introduced someone to The Changeling last night. This is a regular October watch for me and I really just love everything about this movie. George C. Scott knocks it out of the park. When my daughter is old enough to have sleep overs, I think this movie will be the one I'll have them watch. A personal favorite: / 5Sorry for the thin review, I am rushing to get to work. I'll see you all for Friday the 13th tonight Watched so far: ('31) Spanish Dracula, Spider Baby, Castle of Blood, Onibaba, American Werewolf in Paris, Torso, Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, Kwaidan, The Changeling Dr.Caligari fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 14:44
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I watched The Curse of Frankenstein last night. I'm a big fan of the Hammer Horror of Dracula, but had never looked at the other series. I love Peter Cushing in this, and that the movie pretty much focuses entirely on him rather than on the Monster. I think I ultimately prefer the Dracula stories, but this one was also tons of fun.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:11
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Dr.Caligari posted:I introduced someone to The Changeling last night. This is a regular October watch for me and I really just love everything about this movie. George C. Scott knocks it out of the park. When my daughter is old enough to have sleep overs, I think this movie will be the one I'll have them watch. The Changeling is so good it's almost Kubrickian. I haven't seen Medak's other films, but it's interesting that it came out in the same year as The Shining. I think both films represent a fitting bookend to the 'New Hollywood' horror before the '80s was given over more to over-the-top spectacles and tongue-in-cheek movies. It's also just so God drat creepy. I've seen it twice, and the second time I liked it a lot more, but the first time it certainly was the first film in a long time that legitimately disturbed me.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:14
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Franco Potente posted:I watched The Curse of Frankenstein last night. I'm a big fan of the Hammer Horror of Dracula, but had never looked at the other series. I love Peter Cushing in this, and that the movie pretty much focuses entirely on him rather than on the Monster. I think I ultimately prefer the Dracula stories, but this one was also tons of fun. Keep going if you can, there are like 5 sequels and they are all really good, especially if you're a Cushing fan.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:26
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Alien: Great movie. Aliens: I hate when Newt falls down in the vent area, how can the characters be so stupid. What was a water wheel in the vent anyway. Great movie though. AvP1: Good movie. AvP2: Good movie, people in the movie are just there so there is actual talking in the movie and not predator growls and alien hissing. Love how it starts right after the first one. Evil Dead(new on): Ok movie, copies alot of original but once a deadite has you, you can't escape. Also they didn't really refer to them as deadites.
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Oct 10, 2014 18:41
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My 8th movie was supposed to be Incident at Loch Ness, which I came across randomly in the other horror movie thread, and I'd never heard or knew anything else about it. But after watching I'm not exactly sure it should count because it wasn't exactly horror. That said, WOW. It is fantastic. It's a documentary about Werner Herzog making a documentary about Loch Ness. It is very well done... like, seriously. I ended up looking at wikipedia 45 mins in to double check that it wasn't a real documentary. After about the hour mark it starts to become a teensy bit over the top in some ways, but its still pretty drat believable. And hilarious. After reading a few user reviews some suggest you need to be a fan, or at least know a lot about Werner Herzog in order to get a lot of the humor, so maybe if I was more familiar with him I would have found it even better. But even without knowing anything about him I still thought it was a superb film. All the characters play themselves and are all exactly who they say they are, and apparently it was mostly improvised with only a very basic script written. They pull off the whole thing really well, and the story wasn't at all boring. While it did deliver on some tense moments and potentially horror movie-like situations, I really felt the whole thing was more of a comedy. Sort of like a satire of horror mockumentaries. None the less, I really recommend it. Maybe I can count American Horror Story: Freakshow as my movie for yesterday instead. Anyone in here watching the new season or enjoy the series? I won't judge this season too much on the first episode considering it can go in any direction yet, but I enjoyed it. The clown was freaky as hell. I just want it to be better than last seasons total poo poo show. Amber Sweet fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 19:45
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Amber Sweet posted:Maybe I can count American Horror Story: Freakshow as my movie for yesterday instead. Anyone in here watching the new season or enjoy the series? I won't judge this season too much on the first episode considering it can go in any direction yet, but I enjoyed it. The clown was freaky as hell. I just want it to be better than last seasons total poo poo show. I'm counting that for mine -- it was 90 minutes so surely that counts as a movie...right? I'm intrigued with the characters but I'm skeptical after last season. I don't think it's in danger of unseating Asylum as the best season.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:43
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I tried to watch the premiere the other night and got through about 15 minutes with it completely boring me and doing nothing to capture my interest. I found some of the directorial choices really silly and everything seemed to be put on Jessica Lange vamping and random "creepy" atmosphere or events. Normally I wouldn't judge a show that quickly or harshly but the truth is I haven't enjoyed any season of the show and this just felt very redundant of my reactions to all the past season premieres (right down to the Lange/atmosphere criticism). I really only got sucked in by the creepy advertising and the vague promise of a new beginning each season. So I just deleted it off my DVR and decided I rather watch some other stuff. I have to figure American Horror Story is an acquired taste and by Season 4 I shouldn't be expecting any massive changes in tone or quality to "improve" it for me.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:50
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Amber Sweet posted:My 8th movie was supposed to be Incident at Loch Ness, which I came across randomly in the other horror movie thread, and I'd never heard or knew anything else about it. But after watching I'm not exactly sure it should count because it wasn't exactly horror. Herzog plays a great foil for the smarmy Zak Penn. It's a ton of fun.
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Oct 10, 2014 22:23
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Day 10 - I've never understood the popularity of Jason as a horror movie icon. Besides my general dislike of slashers in general, Jason is a personalityless shell. There's nothing to him beside the mask and dislike of teenagers. He's boring and the Friday the Thirteenth movies that I've seen are boring. But this month would feel incomplete without watching an entry from a major franchise like that and this is the Friday closest to a thirteenth. I was actually kind of hopeful at the beginning since it was about a girl with psychic powers going to a cabin at Crystal Lake (site of the biggest drop in property values in America). She has some kind of psychic tantrum which wakes Jason up and unfortunately it happens to be next to a house full of underaged drinking and teenaged sex. "Aha!" I thought, "Rather than the usual formula, she'll try to undo the damage by fighting Jason with her mind powers as the throughline for the film. Or maybe they'll change the formula by having everyone try to defend their vacation cabin against Jason." There isn't a plot to this movie. There's isolated scenes where Jason stumbles across the next pair of teenagers who have become isolated from the group. He kills them and moves on to the next pair. It might as well have been titled "Generic Slasher Movie" and it's boring as hell. Eventually it reaches the exact climax that you'd expect it to reach. The attempts to scare in this film are so bog standard that at one point a cat not seen before in the film or after that scene somehow got locked in a linen closet so they could jump out at the victim. That's the level of creativity on display here. Everything about the way the film is shot or acted or written is just lazy. As a bonus, I've been watching Never Sleep Again in small chunks before I go to sleep and there was a woman they interviewed who was wearing clown makeup and who had either her sex slave or pet woman kneeling in front of her the entire time. That was probably the freakiest thing I've seen in the horror movie challenge so far. The next film for me is The Coffin. I've never seen a Thai horror movie so I'm looking forward it.
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Oct 10, 2014 22:26
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Lurdiak posted:
Live in 25!
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Oct 11, 2014 01:05
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Week 1 1) Re-Animator (1985) 2) Isle of the Dead (1945) 3) Full Moon High (1981) 4) The Innkeepers (2011) Week 2 5) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 6) Galaxy of Terror (1981) 7) Lair of the White Worm (1988) 8) Nosferatu (1922) / Shadow of the Vampire (2000) 9) The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) 10) The Asphyx (1973) Gonna have to add this one to my repertoire of great, obscure old school horror movies. This is the stuff that late night marathons are made of.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:04
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 This was my second or third time watching Clownhouse, and after the AYAOTD? chat, I had a hard time not seeing it as a feature-length episode of that show. The film's shot well, with some imaginative camera direction, plus some appreciable attention to colors, saturation, and shadows. And the kids who play three brothers do a good job of seeming genuine, both in child-like reactions/logic and sibling relations. One of the down-sides (if you want to take it that way) is that the events in the movie seem very self-contained, in the sense that what these characters might be like afterwards isn't considered that relevant to the narrative. The kid who starts out afraid of clowns is going to have that problem worse than ever, and things just end on an extremely bleak note. While I'm not really opposed to that sort of ending, it caps off a lot of touches in the script that makes things feel a little clumsy when they're pushed into place to make the key scenes happen. While it could be read as the mystery of the circus giving the clowns supernatural abilities, it still feels lazier than the high-quality presentation deserves; it made the final scene feel like more of a 'the end, I guess' than a conclusion.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:08
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It's worth noting that the main kid in Clownhouse was raped by the director during filming.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:26
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SALT CURES HAM posted:It's worth noting that the main kid in Clownhouse was raped by the director during filming. Welp, now I can't watch it.
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Oct 11, 2014 04:47
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Is that serious or are you just being Lurdiak? I'm not trying to imply that nobody should watch it, I was pointing it out more because of the really hosed up subtext it adds to the movie.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:35
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SALT CURES HAM posted:It's worth noting that the main kid in Clownhouse was raped by the director during filming. So I had to look this up, and was shocked to find he only did one year in prison. Then directed Powder and Jeeper's Creepers. What the gently caress.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:50
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SALT CURES HAM posted:Is that serious or are you just being Lurdiak? I don't know what being Lurdiak means, but I'm serious. It would be really weird to watch the movie knowing that.
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Oct 11, 2014 06:21
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I always wondered what you'd notice about Clownhouse without immediately thinking of a fuckin kid getting raped.
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Oct 11, 2014 06:42
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The guy even looks like a the kind of fat child molester that would appear in a Frank Miller comic or something. I wonder if my high school religion teacher knew a convicted sex offender directed Peaceful Warrior.
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Oct 11, 2014 07:02
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Eww. I like Jeepers Creepers a lot and finding out that it was made by someone like that makes me feel dirty. Then again one of my favorite horror films of all time is Rosemary's Baby and I struggle with that every time I watch it. On to a movie that hopefully didn't involve any sexual predators. #11) 1408 (2007)  I've been sitting on this one for awhile since I'm a Stephen King fan, a John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson fan, and heard very good things about this one so I didn't want to just throw it on one day and half pay attention. Today was a good day and I made myself a nice steak dinner, popped some popcorn, and sat down with it good and proper after debating between a few options for what I hoped would be a "main feature" quality type viewing tonight. I ended up really liking it and I think Cusack was great as he was pretty much 90% of the film and did a very good job with it. Jackson was used way less than expected but was good in that role as the hotel manager who desperately wanted to keep cynic Cusack from staying in the room. It was a really good story and great performance so I enjoyed my night but I was never actually scared. I don't know if I've reached the point of my marathon where I become desensitized a bit or if it just wasn't as scary as a lot of people say. It just never really got me on the edge of my seat or jumping or anything. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed it and appreciate a film that goes for mood and tone over jump scares but it never even had the really tense sense of dread that Woman in Black gave me last night in the second act. I think there was maybe a little too much happening for that, which is kind of a King thing. It felt more like an adventure to me than a horror. Although that isn't to say it wasn't a horrifying adventure. Anything involving Mike's daughter was especially brutal and I appreciated how they let that play out slowly as part of the room's torture. It not only made the story more organic and gave Cusack more to act but also really showed just how loving evil that room is. Still, I again say I really enjoyed it and thought Cusack was great. I also watched two alternate endings online and I enjoyed them all but think I prefer the theatrical one where Mike survives and Lily is shocked/horrified to hear their daughter's voice on the tape confirming Mike's story. Weird thing is that even though there were FOUR endings filmed for this movie I think if I were the director I would have filmed a fifth where Mike dies and Lily accepts his belongings and hears their daughter on the tape discovering the truth. It strikes me as odd that they filmed two endings where Mike's agent and Olin discover Mike's stuff and the truth but they never tried it with his wife. But regardless, I did enjoy the ending the movie had and the only reason I even thought about my "ideal" ending is the weird fact that they filmed four of them. I think tomorrow I might turn to some old school black and white movies from one of those 50 movie collections I'm always getting as random gifts. Because you can never own too many copies of Night of the Living Dead. I think I have 7. The Tally Only first time films watched in October count to the challenge. Any repeat viewings are Ineligible (I). Pre-October Warm Up V/H/S (2012) / V/H/S 2 (2013) / Sinister (2012) / Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011) / State Of Emergency (2011) / We Are What We Are (2013) Week 1: Oct 1st to 7th 1) Insidious (2010) / 2) Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) / 3) Enter Nowhere (2011) / 4) The Nurse (2013) / 5) American Mary (2012) / (I) Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) / 6) Re-Animator (1985) / 7) The Lords of Salem (2013) Week 2: Oct 8th to 14th 8) Paranormal Activity (2007) / 9) Trollhunter (2010) / 10) The Woman in Black (2012) / 11) 1408 (2007) STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 08:09
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The Ring: still aged well, considering how old it is now. The Cell: I remember when killing girls to masturbate to while hanging from chains put me into a coma. Thir13en Ghosts: Holy poo poo give this guy worst uncle ever award.
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Oct 11, 2014 08:56
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Lurdiak posted:I don't know what being Lurdiak means, but I'm serious. It would be really weird to watch the movie knowing that. You're sometimes kinda snarky towards people you disagree with, and between that and the fact that I've been having a really lovely night, I interpreted what you said as being sarcastically dismissive of my point. Sorry for not assuming good faith on your part, I should really ease up.
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Oct 11, 2014 09:01
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Oct. 10: Hell of the Living Dead/Night of the Zombies/Virus (1980, dir. Bruno Mattei, d.p. John Cabrera/various?) What the hell did I just watch? No, seriously, what?  I'm still loving reeling from this movie. It's Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir. George A. Romero, d.p. Michael Gornick) by way of Magic Lizard (????, dir. Sompote Sands, d.p. unknown).The very first thing we see in the movie is a lab where... some unknown thing is happening causing all the various blinkenlights to go crazy. A couple of goons in what appear to be ill-fitting full-body condoms go down to check it out (meanwhile bullshitting about how they want to have sex with one of their co-workers), only to find that a rat chewed something up and died. One of them picks it up to dispose of it, but the rat immediately comes alive and burrows into the goon's hazmat suit and starts chewing him up while his buddy just kind of stands there slack-jawed. Yes, you read that right, a single rat gets the first kill of the movie. Not even a particularly huge one, it's about the size of your average pet rat. Stuff happens (this is not a very coherent movie), it becomes clear that this facility for whatever reason was harboring toxic zombie gas, and the head of the research team records a tape saying something along the lines of "we hosed up bad, bye bye world!" and... cut away. The next event in this movie is an action set-piece with a hostage situation that's clearly meant to be evocative of DotD's apartment block raid, where we meet a large chunk of our cast of characters. The first odd thing is, the supposed villains took hostages to try and get the facility from the first scene shut down. Y'know, the facility that just got torn the gently caress up and overrun by zombies because they were working on bioweapons. These are supposedly the bad guys. Meanwhile, a SWAT team chills outside and talks about how badly they want to kill terrorists and how much they like killing and how they're gonna go gently caress some native New Guinea girls when they're done. The SWAT people end up being the protagonists. This is overall pretty representative of the movie's politics: they make no goddamned sense whatsoever. Honestly, the entire movie is pretty incoherent; an entire set piece was just kind of added to the movie after it was done filming, and it doesn't even seem out of place, because the protagonists just keep going to new places, killing zombies in them, and then leaving and going to a different place to kill zombies in. There's no meaningful internal logic to what happens in the movie, it's just six people bumblefucking around New Guinea shooting things. The plotting is a god damned mess. That said, though, I guess I'm not entirely negative on this movie? It makes very little sense, the politics are like if a leftist got possessed by Frank Miller every few pages while writing a script and forgot to rewrite the relevant bits at the end, and it pretty much seems like an excuse to string together gore scenes, but I actually kinda had fun with it. The gore is very well-done, the dialogue is actually really (intentionally) hilarious a lot of the time, the actors play off each other nicely, and even though I didn't really catch any of their names, all the characters are fairly distinct and well-developed, and I kinda dig any movie where the apocalypse is caused by rich people trying to gently caress over poors for their own comfort. I guess there's just not really as much to say about those bits, though. Final Grade: B- Closing Thoughts: - Seriously, what the hell is this movie trying to say? It's seemingly leftist, but it portrays sociopathic miltarized cops as the good guys and it only seems to condemn the plot to make all the third-world people eat each other (I'm not kidding, that's why the lab was making zombie gas) because it failed and killed some whiteys. Did this movie have more than one script? - Fun fact: the screenwriter, Claudio Fragasso, is best known for directing and writing Troll 2. This has better dialogue, at least; there's a couple of really fun exchanges here and there. - I realize the grade I gave this seems completely at odds with what I had to say about it, but I really did enjoy this movie. It just makes my head hurt if I try to think about it for too long, and there's just really not that much to say about what I enjoyed comparatively. October Challenge Table of Contents Oct. 1: The Den (2013) (B) / Oct. 2: The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976) (C) / Oct. 3: The Last Days on Mars (2013) (C+)
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Oct 11, 2014 09:55
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10. Candyman (1992) Meh... that's actually kind of all I have to say about this movie. I didn't really like it. The first part was interesting (I have a folklore degree so it was interesting to actually see a movie that is actually factually correct when it comes to this stuff) but then I just kinda got bored and ended up riding out the rest of the movie. I mean it wasn't bad, it just didn't really capture me, you know? It was actually my second choice last night, I started The Pact but got bored with it 10 mins in. I think I'm watching too many ghost movies in a row, I need to start switching it up. STAC Goat posted:I tried to watch the premiere the other night and got through about 15 minutes with it completely boring me and doing nothing to capture my interest. I found some of the directorial choices really silly and everything seemed to be put on Jessica Lange vamping and random "creepy" atmosphere or events. Normally I wouldn't judge a show that quickly or harshly but the truth is I haven't enjoyed any season of the show and this just felt very redundant of my reactions to all the past season premieres (right down to the Lange/atmosphere criticism). I really only got sucked in by the creepy advertising and the vague promise of a new beginning each season. So I just deleted it off my DVR and decided I rather watch some other stuff. I have to figure American Horror Story is an acquired taste and by Season 4 I shouldn't be expecting any massive changes in tone or quality to "improve" it for me. I agree that everything seems a bit forced and put on from the first episode. That little singing number was... weird. I hope they don't keep trying to force the creepy so much throughout the whole season.. but if I know American Horror Story, it'll probably go off in some weird hosed up direction that I'd never see coming. I also definitely think that if you didn't enjoy the other seasons, you should probably give up on it. Every season is different but the the general writing stays the same, and if you don't like the whole over the top, campy ridiculousness of it you just won't enjoy this show. I absolutely fell in love with the first season, but it did take me until halfway through to realize I need to stop taking it the least bit seriously and just enjoy the ride. Having said that, last season loving sucked. I thought it was gonna be so awesome from the opening and the first few episodes, but man what a drat disappointment it turned out to be. So much wasted potential. I was really looking forward to some creepy, kick rear end witches. It's one theme in horror that I don't think is over done. So on that note... are there are good horror movies out there that feature actual creepy rear end witches? Not kid or teen witches or any of that crap, but some real, deep satanic poo poo like Coven started out as. The only one I think I've seen is Lords of Salem, which is sort of about witches and the theme I'm looking for (and is one of my favorite horror movies), and I want more! Amber Sweet fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 14:49
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I was travelling home for Thanksgiving last night ( ) so I only had time for a short one. I went with the 1931 Dracula, which I've seen a bunch of times but still enjoy. I know Bela Lugosi is the famous movie monster here, but for me the MVP goes to Dwight Frye's Renfield, who gets the two creepiest moments in the movie (the shot of him silently grinning up at people on the ship, and the shot of him crawling on his hands and knees to attack the maid). I also enjoyed the lack of a score, which made things feel more unsettling. That said, the ending is incredibly limp here, and a lot of the acting isn't amazing. Still, it's definitely one I don't mind revisiting.
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Oct 11, 2014 15:36
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I started watching Never Sleep Again with my roommate, and it's really messed up my watching pattern. For a guy that can play a videogame for 6 hours in a row, he can only watch about an hour of this documentary at a time. 1st: Nightmare Factory 2nd: The Town That Dreaded Sundown 3rd: Shivers 4th: ABC's of Death 5th: Re-Animator 6th: Creepshow 2 7th: Nosferatu (bonus movie: Virgin Witch) October 8th: The Stuff This movie was a goon favorite in the Netflix thread a while ago. I had started watching it, but barely remembered any of it, so it was a first watch. This movie is ridiculous. It's campy, it's goofy, and the subtext is barely hidden. That said, it's such a fun movie, similar to Night of the Creeps (but not as good). The characters were written like complete idiots. The effects are great. I get the feeling that Larry Cohen got the movie greenlit and took the opportunity to do everything that his budget made possible. Fun movie, but I can only see some of the effects scaring a child or someone dropping acid. /5 because of how fun it was.October 9th: A Nightmare on Elm Street My room mate wanted to watch some of the series after we got through a lot of the documentary. He really wants to watch Dream Warriors, but I don't own it and it isn't on streaming. I haven't seen the original in a while, and I figured it was time to revisit some classics. I saw this movie when I was 14 years old, and it scared the poo poo out of me. I didn't want to sleep. By that age, I had already seen some scary things, but it is so drat effective. There are some aspects that haven't aged as well. The music is hit and miss. The Elm Street theme is great and memorable. Some scenes with Freddy have really weird synth music, and it creates a weird mood. Other times, the sound design was really effective: the use of steam whistling through teapots, metal scraping metal, glass cracking, bells ringing, etc. The special effects and visuals are still great. Tina's death still can't be beaten. A lot of the visuals for the dreams are amazing (I love the muddy eels). I noticed the use of lighting more this time around, especially in Nancy's dream at school. It starts off with the same ambient daylight, but every shot includes more shadows until she's surrounded by shadows and Freddy's chasing her. Very cool. Nightmare has a whole atmosphere to it. It's a story only partially based in reality. Dreams are more than dreams, things can be brought in and out of them. Every character is ashamed of something: the kids all are scared of the same dreams, but they're afraid to say anything to each other about it (they're just dreams, you know?); the parents all have blood on their hands, and they don't handle it well (Tina's mom is a loose woman; Nancy's mom's an alcoholic, her dad's distant and angry; Rod's parents are nowhere to be seen; Glenn's parents seem to be removed from reality). Nancy is the only one that really tries to get everyone together, but no one really wants to see what's going on. The actions seems futile, and she's pretty much alone. I have a hard time picking Wes Craven's best movie. To be fair, I've only seen about half of his filmography. Still, I think Nightmare is his best, followed by Scream. It's a horror staple for a reason. /5October 10th: Never Sleep Again I have about an hour left of this, but I'm finishing it tonight. I've seen it all, but this movie is just a blast to watch, especially when the productions for the sequels becomes chaos (here's to you Part 4 and Part 5). Robert Englund is great. Half of the movie he is justifying and extrapolating on subtext that may or may not be there (some of it's on-point, others complete bullshit), and then we find out Robert Englund can't shut the hell up during make-up application. Amazing. There's so much information tin this documentary, and I could talk about it for hours. If you're a big fan, if you love horror movies in general, if you like 80's culture, or just have a passing interest in Elm Street, you you really need to watch this movie. There's so much love for this series and it's so drat infectious. /5 for being 4 hours long and not having a single dull moment.I'm really in the mood for classic horror movies. I want to watch a few of the Universal Monster movie sequels and some Hammer Horror. Anything from the 50's-70's. Any suggestions from one of the big streaming services, or any alternative sources to watch some?  EDIT: I UPDATED THE MOVIE LIST WITH TELEVISION MOVIE MARATHON SCHEDULES
Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 16:54
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Day 11 - When I dug through the streaming services looking for horror films that I hadn't seen and sounded interesting, I stumbled across The Coffin. The description got me really interested and I was looking forward to this one. The execution wound up letting it down in ways that I could have never predicted. In Thailand there is a good luck ritual performed where people sleep in a coffin and receive prayers for the dead. Some people with cancer go through this ritual. Their cancer is cured, but they've passed their karma along to others near them and brought the dead back with them. The movie hints that in a Poltergeist-esque movie, the people performing the ritual moved some bodies and kept the coffins. That sounds pretty freaky, right? It's a great set up for creepy horror movie hijinks. And there are some shots in the film that are pretty clever or evocative. There's one shot where a woman is drowning in blood, the camera whip-pans to her boyfriend running to help and as it pans back over there's nothing there. There's a woman with no mouth that stalks one of the survivors for a few scenes. What goes wrong is that the film is really disjointed. It's essentially two movies badly welded together and not really interacting a lot. Half of it is more interesting than the other half. The direction has some pretty big problems. There's a blue filter over the whole movie. Initially I thought that it was just really bad day-for-night photography but it quickly became apparent that they just decided to color the whole film blue. It actually ruins the mood for me because it is so distracting. The acting is also especially bad. The film is about 70% in English, probably due to having a bit of an international cast. The dialog isn't great to begin with but it's delivered so flatly and dispassionately that it has no chance of saving it. There are some good shots and good moments in the film, but it's not the hidden gem I was hoping for. Up tomorrow for me is Tenebrae.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:08
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