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K. Waste posted:The Invisible Man is one of my favorite horror movies and favorite movies period. I think it's funny that you mention that the subject has since become a hokey joke, since the original film really is a pitch black comedy as much as anything else. This goes part and parcel with the film's pre-Code violence: it very much makes light of Rains' ability to evade capture by the incompetent police and to basically how being driven mad with power allows him to be a kind of absurd hero. There's also something that a lot of films with similar subjects neglect, which is the concept of an invisible foe representing our fears in the most abstract ways because you literally don't know if he's there but simply knowing that he exists allows you to feel his power and terror even when you're just imagining his presence. Oh, I totally see where you're coming from with the black humor--that's kind of Whale's forte. However, I also would say that by cutting out almost any and all non-incidental music in the film, it undercuts the viewer's urge to find this humor actually funny, and instead relate the practical jokes towards his sick madness all the more. How terrifying would it be to be standing in silence and just have some thing come and honk your nose that you can't tell is there? I'm sure it would seem absolutely hilarious to whomever is doing the honking, meanwhile. And I would argue that the only "heroic" thing he does is when he robs the bank and gives the money out to people on the street. Consider that immediately afterwards he derails a train, killing hundreds just for shits and giggles. He really is an absolute psychotic mess of a man now. My comment about how the archetype has become is more in reference to the fact that Hollow Man is probably the only movie to include the psychological damage being invisible does to someone past the original Universal series, which iirc eventually loses that slant itself even. The Invisible Man or Woman Character becomes a hero, often with wacky hijinks and pranks along the lines of like, Zapped! or something, or else he becomes a bottom stringer in a Monster Mash, usually at least in 4th place if not further down the pecking order, resigned to being the character in kids' movies that no one remembers.
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Oct 21, 2014 05:03
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Choco1980 posted:Oh, I totally see where you're coming from with the black humor--that's kind of Whale's forte. However, I also would say that by cutting out almost any and all non-incidental music in the film, it undercuts the viewer's urge to find this humor actually funny, and instead relate the practical jokes towards his sick madness all the more. How terrifying would it be to be standing in silence and just have some thing come and honk your nose that you can't tell is there? I'm sure it would seem absolutely hilarious to whomever is doing the honking, meanwhile. And I would argue that the only "heroic" thing he does is when he robs the bank and gives the money out to people on the street. Consider that immediately afterwards he derails a train, killing hundreds just for shits and giggles. He really is an absolute psychotic mess of a man now. It's notable that what you mention, practical jokes and gags being played with all non-incidental music eliminated, was basically how classic comedies were staged, and it has a similar effect. Like, in a Marx Brothers comedy, the gags and skits are just as much about the sick madness of Groucho and his brothers, but we know to identify with them merely because the relationship between the fool/trickster and the straight/comedic foil, while often resulting in ruinous consequences for the latter, is so ingrained in our understanding of comedic subversion that we accept that somebody has to 'lose,' even if they technically don't deserve it.* Moreover, the madness of the comedic anti-hero leaves them free to act out against social restrictions and pretensions (even though the Bros. victimized working class people just as often as elites). What makes The Invisible Man so disquieting is that Whale is bringing this sympathetic portrait of a quite mad, sociopathic character to its extreme conclusion, where, yes, he actually kills people. I feel like I should clarify that when I say a character is an "absurd hero," I'm not talking about their moral character. I'm thinking of a more classical, pre-modern conception of the hero where he/she didn't actually need to be a paragon of virtues and was, indeed, admired simply because of their continued defiance of the natural order, even though this came at the expense of many people and the hero himself is completely doomed. *EDIT: This is part of the reasons that Looney Tunes usually suck when they're reanimated now. There's this pretense that we're only ever supposed to sympathize with Bugs Bunny when he's fighting against a clearly marked villain, when in the classic cartoons he was the villain. K. Waste fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 05:27
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K. Waste posted:What makes The Invisible Man so disquieting is that Whale is bringing this sympathetic portrait of a quite mad, sociopathic character to its extreme conclusion, where, yes, he actually kills people. I feel like I should clarify that when I say a character is an "absurd hero," I'm not talking about their moral character. I'm thinking of a more classical, pre-modern conception of the hero where he/she didn't actually need to be a paragon of virtues and was, indeed, admired simply because of their continued defiance of the natural order, even though this came at the expense of many people and the hero himself is completely doomed. I'd call him an invisible Mr. Punch but his methodology is too logical.
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Oct 21, 2014 05:47
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Also, he's got the trademark of the greatest movie villain just because he takes so much God drat pleasure in what he does. In the H. G. Wells novel the transition from noble scientist to mad sociopath is gradual in tragic. In Whale's film, you get the impression that the guy was always like this, and that he's so loving happy that he finally has the excuse to be who he really is, and just gently caress up the world. Am I saying that The Invisible Man's flamboyant destruction of society is a metaphor for homosexuality? Nope.
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Oct 21, 2014 06:05
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cthulusnewzulubbq posted:I'd call him an invisible Mr. Punch but his methodology is too logical. Actually, I think this made me "get" what you guys were talking about more. I was reading the "hero" comment as more the modern definition of the word. He most certainly is the protagonist of course. Another detail I liked is how the other two doctors didn't seem any more honest or "good" than Griffith did, they just were more adjusted to the social mores they resided within. Both of them lie several times throughout the film for nobody's benefit but their own. I get the impression that Griffith fit in perfectly with their moral compasses before becoming homicidal.
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Oct 21, 2014 06:14
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Speaking of "pitch black humor"... 22) You're Next (2011)  Well, what to say about this? Right off the bat, I've mentioned that I'm not really a slasher fan. In fact, I've mentioned that the focus on slash and gore that followed the success of movies like Saw and Hostel a decade or so ago turned me off to the genre for awhile. So I'm watching this and I'm feeling like its a very generic slasher/home invasion film that I'm not really a fan of and kind of stopped watching horror for awhile because I was tired of and a little grossed out by. A competently done one, mind you, but nothing original or unique or special about it except maybe for the odd way it played up the annoying WASP family drama stuff even once the slashing began. I mean, if you're watching a teen slasher this month and think "those stupid kids, why are they doing that?" its nothing compared to the stupid poo poo these WASPs do or worry about when the poo poo hits the fan. And the twists are generic and any longtime fan of horror should see them coming a mile away. I had a bad feeling about professor boyfriend all along but as soon as he left the story early I knew he was coming back as the brains behind this and Felix was just a red herring. Then something happened. I'm not really sure what or when but I think the first moment I started really noticing this movie was with this exchange: "You never want to do anything interesting." "I don't think that's really a fair criticism." "Well then have sex with me next to your dead mother." That perked my attention. But I think what really made me sit up and take notice was when I realized they had given Erin her very own killing soundtrack. And then I realized it was basically Michael Myers' soundtrack. I mean... the young, unassuming woman fights back is nothing new. Its been done at least as far back as Jamie Lee Curtis' seminole role as Laurie. But then it hit me. Erin wasn't Laurie. She was Michael! Ok, movie. You have my undivided attention. I know exactly where you're going but I'll sit back and watch how you get there. And while I may not be a fan of slasher fans and collecting unique kills I have to give it up for the blender to the brain. I did not see that coming. And that final speech? Dear God. I could quote the entire thing as lines that had me rolling. Its not easy for me to laugh at gruesome death and carnage. I'm not that kind of horror fan. But holy poo poo, the dry wit on display towards the end of this piece got me. The final gag even almost felt like overkill to me because I was already set to come on here and admit that this thing broke through my bias against slashers. Its not a movie I think I'll be watching again (except maybe for that final conversation) but I think Erin might have just made my list of notable horror movie characters. I think the only other characters that have made that list this month have been Mandy Lane and the thing from Sinister. Thank God for nutty survivalist fathers. The unsung saviors of would be horror film victims. Side Note, RE: Weird WASP/Yuppie reactions to poo poo hitting the fan. The other day I watched Goodbye World (2013). I'm not including it on this list because it wasn't horror at all, despite the fact that its ostensibly a post apocalyptic survival film. Only, its the weirdest take I ever imagined on it. Its a bunch of yuppies whose immediate reaction to the world going to hell is to get high on their mountains cabin and rehash old college love triangles. Its SO weird. Around the time creepy "national guard" members showed up and threatened to rape the guy's wife and child if they weren't given food and quarter I and the person I was watching with looked at each other and realized this was a make or break moment for the film. Then the yuppies decided to answer back by quoting their Constitutional rites and preparing the "soldiers" a care package and we started to roll on the floor with laughter. I wouldn't recommend it if you're looking for a good movie. I also wouldn't recommend it as a bad horror because its not horror at all. The apocalypse isn't brought on by zombies or anything, its just internet terrorism or some poo poo. But man, if you want to see the single most unsympathetic, unrelatable characters in a survival film reacting to crazy situations in the most ridiculous and head slapping way imaginable? Check out this movie. You'll never judge the morons in a horror film quite as harshly again. 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) /12) Dead Before Dawn (2012) / 13) ParaNorman (2012) / 14) Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) Week 3: Oct 15th to 21st 15) The Hole (2009) / 16) The Den (2013) / 17) Ravenous (1999) / 18) All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) / 19) John Carpenter's The Ward (2011) / 20) The Devil's Pass (2013) / 21) Blood Glacier (2013) / 22) You're Next (2011) STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 06:58
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 18) Spookies (1986)- Spookies is a hilarious disaster made watchable by some interesting set pieces. This abortion is actually an incomplete movie that was scrapped and re-released with a bunch of inept, nonsensical filler. It could have been decent because apparently the original was full of random monsters that are now never explained so what we are left with is the equivalent of a broken ride at Knott's Berry Farm. It has to be seen to be believed. Or maybe it shouldn't.  /5BONUS I swear to god this is the unedited and completely inexplicable "farting basement monster " scene. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ASNIHFZootQ cthulusnewzulubbq fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 07:21
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9. The first time I saw Rosemary's Baby, I was a teenager staying up til the wee hours of the morning to catch it on probably AMC or one of those, since it was a legendary horror movie and, you know, a weekend in Halloween. It seemed really uneventful and not in the least scary, and I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. It seemed like a really boring flick. A few months later I came across a copy of the original novel by Ira Levin in a Goodwill, and let me tell you, if you like the movies based on his books, you'll dig his books, too- they're outstanding short little thrillers. So based on that I went and rented the VHS, and it turned out that Rosemary's Baby is amazingly tense; the paranoia and claustrophobia and outright fear that Rosemary comes to live with on a daily basis is nervewracking, and expertly depicted. Why was the TV version so bad? Besides cutting out literally the entirety of the rape scene, going directly from Rosemary falling asleep to waking up the next morning without even the hallucinations or the evidence that she's been in the Castavets' apartment, rendering the later callbacks to it meaningless, breaking up a film that relies so powerfully on suspense and mounting tension with commercials is absolutely murder. Television! Meh! Something I've noticed watching it as an adult, and it's a similar pattern as occurs in The Stepford Wives, is that nobody believes Rosemary or is on her side, with the exception of the swifly-dispatched Hutch. And that's not even something that requires conspiracy- from the very start, Guy is inconsiderate and dismissive of her, and Dr. Hill, who has no stake in either side, betrays her because he does not believe her. Nobody is on her side. /5
Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 08:04
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10. The Town That Dreaded Sundown isn't sure whether it's a documentary, a horror movie, a thriller, or a comedy, and it's really odd in that regard because I haven't seen tone whiplash like this since 2012's Dark Shadows. There's no blending, really- at any given moment, it's one or the other sorts of movies. I'm sure there's some cinema history explanation for it, but I don't have the knowledge to untangle it. /5\ 11. Does anybody still make movies like The Frighteners anymore? It's a lovely bit of horror comedy that's spooky but family-friendly aside from the bit with the Judge getting it on mostly offscreen with a mummy. It'd make a good double feature with Tremors, or alternately you could do a scifi/horror thing with Back to the Future followed by this. /5
Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 10:14
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Man I'm so behind, I need to play catch up this weekend. 15. Ghostwatch (1992) Not a movie but a BBC1 Special that was presented as real and live on Halloween Night in 1992. It followed a group of BBC reporters investigating a haunted house, split up with ghost stories and calls from watchers all over the UK. Apparently people believed this was legit at the time, and caused enough controversy and issues that BBC never aired it again. This is such a great mockumentary. It truly does feel very "real". I love watching it every single Halloween and it always manages to creep me the hell out. It doesn't have many overt scares, and sort of goes off the deep end in the last 10 or so minutes, but the random sightings of the ghost (Pipes) is so, so well done. It really feels, to me anyway, what seeing a ghost might really be like. He's only seen in flashes or when the camera pans, in dark corners or behind the crew. He's never seen in full, you only catch glimpses, which makes it very effective to me at least. And despite being made in 1992 I think it has aged considerably well. I wish someone would do something like this again. Pipes is freaky as gently caress, he continues to run through my thoughts all year round when I enter a dark room or when I think I see something in the corner of my eye. Just standing there, watching me.
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Oct 21, 2014 14:23
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Coming down to the last 10 days now, here's the list so far: Anthologies: Creepshow, Creepshow 2, Chillerama, Necronomicon, Body Bags, Trick r Treat. Dracula: Horror of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972, Dracula(1931), Nosferatu: The Vampyre, Bram Stoker's Dracula. First Time Viewing: Inferno, The Conjuring, Oculus, Night of the Creeps, The Town that Dreaded Sundown. Ultimate Halloween Movies Evil Dead 2, The Howling... Night of the Living Dead: Well most of the stuff from here on out will be all-time classics, so I don't know what I can add that hasn't already been said a thousand times. It has one of the most likeable protagonists in horror movie history, and the zombies a scarier in this than anything else that would come later. I think the black and white has something to do with it; the zombies feel older and more decrepit, yet still at the same time more alive than you'd expect compared to some other famous zombie stories. The guy who plays the first zombie in the graveyard is probably the best film zombie of all-time. I've heard some people say that the famous scene with the little girl and her mother in the basement is overrated, but I don't agree, it creeps me out every time. Tonight I'm going to try to do a double feature of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.
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Oct 21, 2014 14:39
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Movies 7-21, since I'm terrible at updating. 7. The Town That Dreaded Sundown. 8. Black Sunday 9. Hellraiser 10. The Stone Tape 11. We Are What We Are 12. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 12.5 The Innkeepers 13. Eraserhead 14. The Serpent and the Rainbow 15. The Legend of Hell House 16. Ravenous 17. The ABCs of Death 18. Re-Animator 19. Night of the Creeps 20. Fright Night (1985) And for 21, I'm about to watch Ghostwatch, which I can't remember if I've seen or not. My goal for the month is to watch movies that I've either never seen before or never seen all the way through/only seen edited (like Hellraiser). I think I've been lucky so far; I haven't outright hated any of the ones I've watched. My attention wandered during ABCs of Death and The Town That Dreaded Sundown but other than that it's been a pretty good month for me.
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Oct 21, 2014 20:51
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Day 21 - Dead Within Starting this week with the new infection theme, I wanted to watch something to start that wasn’t entirely focused on the infected since I assume most of the crap I’ll be seeing for the rest of this theme is basically going to be zombies/infected galore. Dead Within takes the spotlight away from the threat from without (the infected) and refocuses on the threat within (our own minds). It deals more with concepts like desperation, depression, and the sense of being trapped both physically and mentally. Full review behind link. I kind of feel like I should have rated this higher if for nothing else than it is actually a fairly novel, unique approach to the whole zombie genre.
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Oct 22, 2014 00:01
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Day 21 - At the beginning of this month I watched the remake of Carrie, a movie that begged the question, "Do we really need a remake of a classic?" For similar reasons, I had never gotten around to watching the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original is fantastic, why do we need an update? Well, as it turns out, the 1978 version is pretty good. It's John Carpenter's The Thing to the Howard Hawks's The Thing. Want to know the plot? It's the title. Okay, moving on. Alright a tiny amount more since I want to give anyone unfamiliar with these movies a general idea of what they're about; one morning people wake up and someone they know has changed. They no longer act quite the same. And then this effect starts spreading. The biggest change I noticed is the difference in context for the movies. In 1958 people were afraid of the communists but by 1978 that threat was buried. Instead it's about the breakdown of relationships and families. Yet another movie I've watched this month from the late 70's where that was a major theme. The atmosphere in this version is a lot more bleak than the original. In the original movie, things are bad but it's a small town and the changes are happening slowly. It feels like things can be contained. It's clear very quickly in this one that the problem is growing exponentially and humanity's lifespan can be measured in days. Any victory is obviously going to be short lived. Between the two movies, I think I prefer the original slightly because the second half of the movie is a bit stronger, but the remake is better shot, has a fantastic cast, and the build up is much better. Once everything is out in the open, a lot of the tension is drained away, though there are some great moments ("We'll be right there, Mr. Bennell.").
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Oct 22, 2014 01:45
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You want bleak movies about the breakdowns of family in the 70s? I've got you covered with movie #24 for my list. And boy is it a doozy. The Baby (1973) The Wadsworth's are a crazy family. And when I say crazy, I mean that they each are crazy in their own way. There's Germaine, the oldest sibling, who reeks of desperate seduction and unhinged vulnerability, always looking like a cornered animal. Then there's her younger sister Alba, who's that unique sort of wild crazy girl that seems to only exist in movies in the 70's--think Sherri Moon Zombie in House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects. There's the matriarch of the family, a gruff-voiced, hard nosed woman that is deceptively smart, yet threatening with every word out of her mouth, the sort that used to be a party girl until life caught up to her. And finally there's Baby. The youngest of the Wadsworths was born a boy, but also born incredibly developmentally challenged. Despite having no real clear physical ailments, he still is mentally an infant, and is treated thusly. He sleeps in a crib, eats pureed food, and still wears diapers. He can't talk or even stand. Their new social worker, Ann, meanwhile suspects that all is not as it seems in this household, especially after their last worker up and disappeared one day. She sets out to investigate and do something about the Wadsworths, even though she might have some secrets in her own closet... I'm going to be honest, this was another movie I had gotten about 20 minutes through some time ago and stopped. The words "psychological horror" get thrown around a lot, and usually refer to things like hyper-intelligent serial killers playing cat and mouse with detectives, or other "fun" romps like that. That's not what that phrase means to me anymore. This film was horrifying to me on a psychological level. It's a film about abuse of the mentally handicapped--in all flavors of the word. It's a film about insanity in all its repulsiveness. It's a film about how broken the system is. It's actively hard to watch, and the reason I stopped so long ago 20 minutes in is because it was too hard to watch. Coming from me, that is a strong statement. Somehow also, casting a perfectly healthy adult man, and overdubbing him with real infant coos and cries, makes it one of the most immensely uncomfortable films I've ever sat through. At the same time, the entire film feels like it was made for TV from that period. That doesn't seem like an accident, as pretty much all the major cast and the director all were mostly known for their TV work at the time. But even details like the score and furniture just ring "Made-for-tv". But make no mistakes, the subject matter and it's tone are anything but a "very special" episode of anything. I honestly feel dirty after watching this. and a half out of Five.
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Oct 22, 2014 02:45
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Choco1980 posted:You want bleak movies about the breakdowns of family in the 70s? I've got you covered with movie #24 for my list. And boy is it a doozy. I highly recommend this movie as well. One of the great 70s TV exploitation movies.
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Oct 22, 2014 02:52
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Due to other things going on, I haven't been able to keep up with one a day, but I noticed that Hulu just put up a horror shitfest including Hobgoblins, Trancers and a few others. Also, there is a Hulu exclusive 13 Nights of Elvira with some other craptastic movies if you like bad horror movies.
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Oct 22, 2014 02:58
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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) 11) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Week 3 12) Carrie (2013) 13) Shivers (1975) / Class of Nuke ‘em High 2: Subhumanoid Meltown (1991) 14) House on Haunted Hill (1959) 15) The Legend of Hell House (1973) 16) Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve (1933) / Begotten (1990) 17) Monkey Shines (1988) 18) Witching and Bitching (2013) Week 4 19) Big rear end Spider! (2013) / The Deadly Mantis (1957) / Mothra (1961) 20) Monster on the Campus (1958) / Attack of the Puppet People (1958) I haven't watched Monster on the Campus in a while, and while I had fonder memories of it, and it's still not a very good movie, it's still one of the better Universal-International creatures features. (For comparison, my favorites are The Leech Woman, The Mole People, and The Incredible Shrinking Man.) I decided it would be fun to do a double feature with another film of the same year, and decided on Attack of the Puppet People made by UI's rivals over at AIP. It's basically a cash-in on The Incredible Shrinking Man that seems to borrow heavily from Dr. Cyclops. It's a better film than Dr. Cyclops, but it's still not very good. There is one kinda cool scene where the characters go to a drive-in to see The Amazing Colossal Man, but beyond this kinda innuendo it's basically a slog of boring characters and poor acting. 21) Mine Games a.k.a. The Evil Within (2012) Everywhere I look this movie is called Mine Games, but it's streaming on Netflix as The Evil Within. At any rate it's a dumb stinker with a contrived, convoluted plot that serves solely to distract from how boring and cliche the characters and events actually are.
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Oct 22, 2014 04:06
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K. Waste posted:
To make things even more confusing, this is listed as Mine Games on Netflix.ca. Movie 22: Scream 4 I enjoyed this one when I saw it in the theater, but it did not hold up very well on second viewing. The plot is fairly easy to figure out, and the characters motivations are stupid. There's a few clever scenes, but this one was pretty weak overall. This one tries to make commentary on remakes, but really doesn't have too much to say and doesn't really effectively communicate how, or even if, remakes alter the rules of the genre. There's also references to subgenres of horror such as torture porn and found footage that became popular since the first Scream movies, but the movie doesn't have much to say about this aside from the fact that pointing out that these exist.
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Oct 22, 2014 04:49
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Anybody want a free copy of Slime City? I found my old one in storage while grabbing Halloween decorations.
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Oct 22, 2014 04:53
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^dibs? Haven't seen this one quite as many times as the second one, but since Sam Raimi never really went back to straight-faced horror, it's neat having this one as a touch-stone for what he was capable of making. Lots of references to other horror films (this was the first time I'd noticed the TCM sound as the cabin door is opened), some really vicious violence, and creativity with the visual stuff. All of the making-of stories make it sound like they had a blast in the process, as long as you weren't at Sam's mercy. I would have more to say, but then I watched The Woman for the first time.
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Oct 22, 2014 05:54
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Darthemed posted:^dibs? Sure, pm me the address!
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Oct 22, 2014 06:00
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^^^ Aww fooey. Regardless, Cthulhusnewzulubbq, you're alright. Based on what you've been picking this month, I can safely say I'd have a blast watching movies with you--we have similar tastes it seems.CopywrightMMXI posted:To make things even more confusing, this is listed as Mine Games on Netflix.ca. So what you're saying is it spent no more time on trying to do anything clever with the self-awareness than the first movie?
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Oct 22, 2014 06:04
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Choco1980 posted:^^^ Aww fooey. Regardless, Cthulhusnewzulubbq, you're alright. Based on what you've been picking this month, I can safely say I'd have a blast watching movies with you--we have similar tastes it seems. virtual high five, buddy
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Oct 22, 2014 06:32
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Had a double feature tonight but no theme. I wanted to do another "Modern Scream Queen" night but I wasted Katharine Isabelle and Sherri Moon Zombie movies earlier in the month and couldn't find two films with an actress I recognized that I really wanted to watch. The Danielle Harris choices were really crummy. So I just trashed the idea and watched a random movie I came across on Netflix. 23) The Coed and The Zombie Stoner (2014)  What is there to say about this film? Nothing. Everything you need to know is right there on the poster, except maybe that its also an Asylum film. What can I say? I hadn't watched a real piece of trash yet this month so why not? Ok, that was just the random thing I watched as a warm up. Since we're in the end run here I'm going to try and watch a GOOD movie every night, or at least one with the potential to be good. I've got enough, I think, to have one "main feature" every night but I'm probably going to watch more trash and favorite repeats as Halloween approaches and I watch more and more horror. So onto tonight's "Feature Attraction." 24) Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)  Ok, lets get the complaining out of the way. As I said when I watched PA2 I think it was a mistake to make the series all about Katie and Kristi and not only add more details and backstory that kind of demystifies the scary horror of the original but also gets really clunky since the whole story is being told backwards so its weird that this poo poo didn't come up or cause greater concern to the girls. Like, I get that the mystical nature of poo poo is leading to memory loss but still, mom died/disappeared when you were kids along with her boyfriend who you loved and it just never came up? I don't know, maybe I'm not remembering little details of the first two films. It just doesn't feel like this story meshes up very well with the little character details that were brought up in the first two. Katie was pretty clear in the first one that she had a figure watch over her at night but never Kristi, although Kristi saw it. Then the second movie played that back a little by saying that Kristi doesn't remember what happened and Katie didn't want to talk about it/or didn't believe it.[spoiler] Now not only does 3 backtrack on the details presented in the first film and add way more poo poo but it also seems to swap the kids around with [spoiler]Kristi getting the bulk of the interaction with "Toby" and Katie being pretty clueless and terrified by it until she gets possessed at Grandmas/ It just seems like the backwards storytelling along with the obvious case of this story not being planned all along is leading to some really clunky continuity and story logic. The curse of horror franchise sequels. The longer they go on the less they make sense. Ok, that's out of the way. I actually really enjoyed the film. It scared the loving poo poo out of me. I haven't been scared by a movie since the first Paranormal Activity back two whole weeks ago at movie #8. That's 15 whole movies without that shiver up your spine or that nervous feeling or those moments that your heart jumps out of your chest and you let out a noise that makes you glad no one was around to hear it or see you. I'm loving spooked. Like, I really want to look over my shoulder right now because I feel like something's there, spooked. PA3 learns from the mistake of PA2 and kicks up the action quicker. The slow pacing of the first just can't work with these sequels since we already know so much and have so many expectations. But PA3 doesn't mess around too much and gets scary early on, even if it cheats a little, but its an effective and understandable cheat. PA2 suffered because they couldn't escalate poo poo for the family without giving them reason to freak and run. PA3 gets around that by freaking out other people who run leaving the family behind and still kind of clueless. And then it threw a curveball by making running being the very worst thing the family could do and exactly what "Toby" wanted. And that whole grandma is in a witch's coven was a ballsy move that I probably wouldn't have liked if I had been spoiled on it, nor did I like it that much when it was teased in PA2. But you know what? It worked for me. It was kept kind of lowkey and it served as a really good swerve that I didn't see coming. And like a good twist/swerve I immediately started thinking back to small things in the movie like grandma encouraging Julie to have another kid, a son and Kristi pushing for Julie to take them to grandma's after she agreed to do what Toby wanted her to do. That stuff all clicked into place even though it wasn't something I thought much about while watching. It was a scary film. It had my undivided attention. It made a lot of sense on its own even if it doesn't make a ton of sense with the first two. And it did keep up the franchise pattern of the women of this family being hosed over by the dudes who come in and make some bad decisions, although Dennis is way less of an rear end in a top hat or guilty of this stuff as Micah and Dan were. And of course now we learn that its really grandma who hosed them over. A really nice rebound from the disappointment of PA2. I wasn't very excited about watching this one and was really just doing it to finish out the series, but now I'm genuinely back into the series and at least a little curious to watch PA4 before the month is through. Of course I've glanced at the reviews and see its got negative ones so I'm sure things will fall apart as they always do in these "everything comes together" horror sequels. But at least I've enjoyed most of the road to this point so I kind of care. 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) /12) Dead Before Dawn (2012) / 13) ParaNorman (2012) / 14) Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) Week 3: Oct 15th to 21st 15) The Hole (2009) / 16) The Den (2013) / 17) Ravenous (1999) / 18) All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) / 19) John Carpenter's The Ward (2011) / 20) The Devil's Pass (2013) / 21) Blood Glacier (2013) / 22) You're Next (2011) / 23) The Coed and The Zombie Stoner (2014) / 24) Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 07:48
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Late to the party but want to share a few quickies. The Cat From the director of The Story of Riki-Oh one of the most gore infused fight movies ever made comes a supernatrual horror about some aliens posing as people and one is a cat on earth trying to escape an alien monster as they assemble a spaceship or something. Look it might not be as well paced as Riki Oh or as quoteable but by golly it has fight scene that frankly you should only see ahead of time if the words Riki Oh didn't sell you on it already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpEzE2m_RAs here is that fight. Its got a monster that is a giant toadstool alien thats all sorts of goopy and for some reason one guy has a house is floor to ceiling books, everywhere. Its horror gone comedy and doesn't even know. 5/5 GOOD LUCK FINDING A COPY Invasion of the Body Snatchers Sutherland edition, nothing I can add here would be better then what was already said. Its paced well, the stakes are establised without being overwrought and the audio clicks. 5/5 Invasion is utter horseshit. Its a cheap one shot of a infectious alien disease that is entirely one cops dash cam contentious. The dialog is bad, the post dub dialog is worse. Overacted and filled with dead scenes of driving through nothing are only matched by some of the worst computer fx of a flash of spooked up faces or whole screen flashes of white signifying meteors or something. Don't waste your time you wont make it past the 20 min mark awake. 0/5 I got more but I have to get some time and check my watched list.
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Oct 22, 2014 08:10
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 "Daddy would have gotten us Uzis." 19) Night Of The Comet (1984)- Friday, November 16th 1984: I was spat out into the world and it was good pickings for genre fans that weekend at the theater. A Nightmare On Elm Street and Silent Night, Deadly Night were only entering their second weeks. The Terminator and Amadeus were still fresh options. But that Friday was opening night for Night Of The Comet and I confess that it took close to thirty years for my first viewing even though I knew we shared birthdays. My adventure with Night Of The Comet takes me from the El Rey Theater, to the 'burbs, to a secret super-science military base. Omega Man with a bunch of feathered hair and bangs. The film plays around with the valley girl figure like Clueless would do years later but without being pointed or snide. It's effective horror-comedy in that it finds it's own dark tone and it's own subtle humor (a clan of liberated, murderous stock boys who live in the shrine of a dead capitalist world; the remnants of a government which now preserves it's own existence by sucking blood). It's camp but canny, and a movie that obviously is borne out of a love of other movies. I'm proud to say I was born on the Night of the Comet. /5
cthulusnewzulubbq fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 08:35
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Junkie Disease posted:Late to the party but want to share a few quickies. How did you find this?
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Oct 22, 2014 09:06
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Yeah that's a glorious clip. I'll need to see that for sure.
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Oct 22, 2014 09:18
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Holy crap Netflix Dvd has it again! I uh forgot I had a copy I rented from them years ago and paid for it. It is insane. Guns, cats, space powers, action, fighting dogs, fungus, screaming, and Garfield shaped holes left in windows it has it all. Also 2 copys on Amazon but that is a steep price.
Upsidads fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 09:23
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CopywrightMMXI posted:To make things even more confusing, this is listed as Mine Games on Netflix.ca Yeah, I shoulda been more specific that that's how it's listed, like, everywhere, but the film itself is still called something completely different. Frankly the whole thing smacks of a lazy cover-up. On Netflix it's release date is listed as 2013, but it was actually premiered in 2012, which tells me it probably had zero distribution before streaming. This makes sense because besides a boring story and bad acting it's also shot poorly, with one egregious instant where a shot/reverse shot are in two different color temperatures. The wikipedia page is great because it has the right combination of useless production info and typos that you know the filmmakers themselves probably made it.
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Oct 22, 2014 12:34
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Choco1980 posted:^^^ Aww fooey. Regardless, Cthulhusnewzulubbq, you're alright. Based on what you've been picking this month, I can safely say I'd have a blast watching movies with you--we have similar tastes it seems. The first Scream at least seemed a bit more original at the time. It at least played with the tropes of virginity and the final girl as well. I would also say that the story is better as well. Another thing to consider is that the first one actually seems cool and relevant to the time period it was released. It had a huge and immediate influence on the horror genre. Scream 4 seems as cool as people in their mid 20s hanging out at high school parties.
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Oct 22, 2014 13:53
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I was a teenager in the 90's, I was the prime demographic for the film, and you're right, it was cool, relevant, and and had a huge influence on the genre, of which slashers had all but disappeared at the time. But at the time, the reason everyone went out of their minds over it was the way in pointed out sub-genre tropes, and everyone treated it like it was busting them all. It doesn't. At all. It actively follows the same hallmarks it cheekily tells you about again and again, as if that doesn't make them even worse and staler. No, everything that makes the first Scream film good has to do with the tight pacing, well constructed plot, and actively tense scare scenes. The meta-material all falls completely flat, but that's the part in the beginning of the hype people were excited for.
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Oct 22, 2014 14:21
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It seems like Scream has been getting some poo poo around here lately, but its definitely an excellent slasher movie regardless of anything else. With that said, I will talk a little poo poo about it as well. One of the things it got credit for on release and in the years since is how shocking it was that Drew Barrymore was killed in the first scene. When you hear people talk about it today its as if Scream broke new ground with that idea. "Scariest Movie" countdowns always mention that in their entry about Scream as if it wasn't already an established trope just like everything else in the movie. There are countless slasher films that use that structure starting obviously with Psycho, but then you have Suspiria, Friday the 13th and a lot of others that have done something very similar. I can only assume it was a direct homage by Craven to Janet Leigh in Psycho, he must have been surprised that nobody seemed to notice.
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Oct 22, 2014 16:03
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Concluded Zombie Week last night with Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead. This is the first time I've seen where a sort-of-ironic silly over the top film had a sequel that actually managed to outdo itself. Christ what a fun movie. No spoilers for this one, just go watch it, its seriously been one of the most fun films I've seen all month. Fantastic. The design of Zombie Week was to watch a bunch of non-standard zombie flicks, which kinda worked out, and kinda didn't. We watched Versus the night before, which is still a favourite of mine. Not really a horror movie, I admit, but it has zombies so it counts. A true edgemaster, complete with leather trenchcoat and kicking rad boots in the middle of the woods fights hordes of kinda ineffective zombies, and slightly more effective wacko gang members, all the while kinda sorta trying to stop a resurrected super-wizard from opening a gate to ???. A kinda overlooked gem of post-Matrix fight scenes and over the top nonsense. Tonight begins FOUND FOOTAGE or POV week! I think we'll kick off with an old favourite, possibly the last movie to ever really scare me, The Blair Witch Project.
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Oct 22, 2014 17:16
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Psycho is wholly different it's the first act almost second when she dies, and it was to establish how different a criminal mind was from an insane one. Scream had a Drew Barrymore cameo that's all it is.
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Oct 22, 2014 20:17
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Junkie Disease posted:Psycho is wholly different it's the first act almost second when she dies, and it was to establish how different a criminal mind was from an insane one. Scream had a Drew Barrymore cameo that's all it is. I mean I see how they aren't exactly the same but I wouldn't say they are "wholly different". Leigh was cast specifically so that the audience would think she'd be a featured character for the whole movie, which is exactly why Barrymore was cast.
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Oct 22, 2014 20:27
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Psycho had the best movie trailer.
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Oct 22, 2014 20:32
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 My expectations were too high for this one. The premise is that there's someone scaring people! Scaring them to death! After that's been set up, one guy wanders around a ghost town for an hour or so, getting into and out of traps intended to scare him. This includes being in a room with a handful of spiders, and having a basement door closed behind him. That's kind of it until the end, which happens without any significant pay-off. The premise has potential (I was sort of thinking it would run along the lines of Clive Barker's story "Dread"), but the execution drains out virtually all of the tension that there might have been, so that it's just a weak drama in the end.
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Oct 22, 2014 20:57
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Day 22 - The take away lesson of Japanese horror films is that ghosts are assholes. They're less like the vengeance seeking ghosts of western media where they're usually after someone and a bunch of unfortunate people get caught up in the wake, and more like petulant Greek gods who once they notice you will gently caress with you until they're bored and kill you. Ju-On 2 is a pretty standard Japanese horror film from the early 2000's. It hits all the notes that you expect, does them well enough, and doesn't really bring anything new to the table. After the events of the first movie, the haunted house is still there. And because Japanese ghosts are assholes, they just hang out around the house waiting for someone like a television show crew to stick their head in the door and then go around tormenting and killing all of them. Also because Japanese ghosts are assholes with no sense of time or proportion, they do this pre-emptively to some of the people that the crew know who don't even go to the house. It's not a strike against the film, but I always have to wonder about the consequences of living in a world like the one in the movie. It is, essentially, the world that the ghost hunter television shows think they are living in, only cranked up to eleven. Even without the massive amounts of evidence, the fact that anyone who even delivers a paper to that house winds murdered in improbable ways would make the most jaded skeptic go, "Huh, I wonder if there's something to that ghost thing." And there doesn't seem to be a time limit on these toxic ghost spills; the Japanese equivalent of the ghost EPA would have to cordon off the house for centuries. And what about all the other people who die miserably? There must be hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in this world where the medical examiner had to list the cause of death as "haunting". Does the life insurance still pay out in those cases even if you accidentally caused someone's death and then they ghosts you to death? And can you sue the person who caused the haunting that killed your loved ones before the rear end in a top hat ghost haunts you to death too? Back to the actual movie instead of the movie I created in my head. They don't do anything interesting with the film crew concept; they mainly seem to be there to provide a fresh batch of victims. The movie is suitably creepy, lots of freaky things happen, and the way it's framed into smaller vignettes means that the weakness of the overall plot doesn't hurt the movie that much. It's even watchable if you've never seen the original one, thought I wouldn't watch them back to back since they hit all the same notes. Shockingly, I might have a new winner for my weirdest ending of the month. At the end the ghost makes a woman pregnant, sends her into labor, crawls out of her vagina in the delivery room scaring all the doctors and nurses in the room to death, turns into an infant, then waits five years to shove the woman down a flight of steps. Japanese ghosts are real assholes. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 23, 2014 |
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Oct 23, 2014 00:04
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