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Raxivace
Sep 9, 2014

4. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, Jean Epstein)

The story follows Roderick Usher, a man worried that his wife Madeline (His sister in the original Edgar Allen Poe story) will die. She eventually does and is buried. Roderick summons a friend to their mansion in his grief for the sake of company, though the friend soon learns that all is not what it seems...

I had never read the original Poe short story before, so I gave that a look this morning and enjoyed it quite a bit- wonderfully strange and gothic story. Epstein's film adaptation (Co-written by Luis Bunuel) is quite good in its own right, with a lot of off-kilter shots that bring a wonderful sense of unease with this world- a visual way of doing what Poe did through his descriptive writing. The long, open and lonely hallways and the like of the mansion even remind me of the set design of Xanadu in Citizen Kane[/i ] too- I wonder if this was an inspiration on it. Also, I swear the monster-cam tracking shot from [i]Evil Dead originated here, though with some scary wind instead of whatever the hell was chasing Ash Williams.

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Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
4. Demonic Toys 2 (2010)

Okay, bear with me here. The opening credits show someone fixing the remains of Jack Attack and Baby Whoopsie (among the Demonic Toys destroyed when the evil warehouse was blown up at the end of Dollman vs Demonic Toys). Next we see them in the hands of the greedy and ultra rich collector of oddities, Dr. Lorca (Last seen in Hideous! and bearing scars from that encounter), being brought with him as he goes to acquire a new piece from a supposedly haunted Italian castle. Along with him is his golddigging fiance, her adult step-son from her previous marriage, their dumb cowboy assistant, and Dr. Lorca's personal psychic. They're met at the castle by the beautiful young representative of the seller of the piece, and a toy appraiser (played with bitchy delight by Leslie Jordan) The piece is an ancient mechanical doll in the shape of a devil called Demolitta. Naturally it's secretly alive, and it brings back to life the Demonic Toys, who then all run amuck (I'm told in the credits that Jane Weidlin voices Baby Whoopsie!), and the three of them run amok. The gold digger and cowboy are conspiring to steal the valuable doll. And finally, the evil ghost of the castle owner possesses the psychic. If you've seen many Full Moon films, we're pretty much paint by numbers at this point.

For the record, I LOVE Full Moon with a passion. That said, I've never liked the Demonic Toys. They're just obnoxious and not really on the same level as many of the other oddities of the company. So I had pretty low expectations coming into this. On the other hand, Hideous! might be one of their best weird films, so eh. Dr. Lorca is such a weird character, in that he's not so much evil as he is what you'd call Chaotic Neutral. He just wants his stuff and doesn't care about anything else. Which puts him head and shoulders above the average Full Moon paper doll characters of the innocent and attractive young good guy and girl, greedy philanderers, just plain scenery chewing villains that tend to make up the lions share of their humans in their films. I hope to see more of him in the future. Unfortunately, this one was not one of Full Moon's greats. It takes around 2/3rds of the running time to start getting interesting, and is otherwise the all too common trope in their filmography of unlikeable people faffing around in a big empty castle. Blah.

I give Demonic Toys 2 :drac::drac:/five

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



Choco1980 posted:

I'd call it completely subjective to the viewer what is and isn't a horror to you.

Setting aside the fact that no one is going to horror check you ("I'm sorry, that film is actually suspense rather than horror. You are hereby disqualified from the Horror Movie Challenge.") horror as a genre is a really broad tent. The boundaries are fuzzy as it blends into other genres easily.


Day 2 - Yesterday when I was deciding what to watch first, I was thinking, "I should watch Audition, but I've got two Phantasm movies to watch. I'll put one of those first and then watch Audition tomorrow." And then while listening to the Flop House podcast yesterday they spoil Audition. Okay, it wasn't much of a spoiler; it's the kind of thing I could figure out from the fact that Audition is a horror movie and not a romantic comedy. Still, it's just my luck that the day before I'm planning to see a movie I run into spoilers.

The less spoilery concept than what I got is that a widowed television producer is convinced to use some fake auditions for a movie to audition a new wife. He finds his dream woman, they date, and as he's on the verge of proposing things go wrong.

I feel like Audition would have worked a bit better if the game wasn't given away quite so early in the film. There's one ten second shot in the first half that changes the tone of the film and I think it would be better if the film got to the midpoint before changing things up.

A lot of Audition has to do with Japanese sexual politics and I feel like that message may have been muddled in translation. It plays out to me like a story where the problems with relationships are all on the woman. If Yamazaki was the kind and obedient woman that she presented herself as, then the "faultless" Aoyama would have been fine. There doesn't seem to be a moral condemnation of tricking a woman into a relationship; he may have deceived her but her deception was much worse. I feel like I'm getting contradictory messages from the film and that may just be do to the cultural context.

Overall, though, Audition was really good. It got nicely creepy and built to the horrifying climax I anticipated but did not want to see.

Tomorrow I'm planning on watching Cemetery Man so nobody spoil that for me.

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

I was feeling off last night and started the month down a day, but in the lead up in September I managed to get through the first half of the Friday the 13th series. Part IV is probably the best so far what with Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman adding some weird starpower to the mix and Jason Lives is fun as well. A New Beginning is also probably a lot better than its reputation because it's got energy and brought that self-referential humor to the series.

I'm waiting for my library loans of parts VII through X to come in so I can keep going and I sent away for the Elm Street sequels too. I might mix it up with something random tonight when I get home from work.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Random Stranger posted:

Setting aside the fact that no one is going to horror check you ("I'm sorry, that film is actually suspense rather than horror. You are hereby disqualified from the Horror Movie Challenge.") horror as a genre is a really broad tent. The boundaries are fuzzy as it blends into other genres easily.

Yeah. The thing I like to say is that I personally consider Alien a horror film and Aliens an action film. They're both obviously sci-fi and I've had a lot of sci-fi fans argue some purity in that regard, but my argument is that while its an alien and space Alien is pretty much a very classic monster/haunted house film in its tone and pacing. On the other hand I wouldn't call Aliens a horror because it abandons a lot of those elements and replaces them with more action movie approaches.

But no one's going to get mad if you feel Seven is a horror movie and someone else thinks its a crime movie or film noir.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Random Stranger posted:

It plays out to me like a story where the problems with relationships are all on the woman. If Yamazaki was the kind and obedient woman that she presented herself as, then the "faultless" Aoyama would have been fine. There doesn't seem to be a moral condemnation of tricking a woman into a relationship; he may have deceived her but her deception was much worse. I feel like I'm getting contradictory messages from the film and that may just be do to the cultural context.

Nah, the movie's just trying to gently caress with your expectations. It tries to make you think Aoyama is the villain and Yamazaki is the heroine early on, and then does a total 180 on this by revealing Yamazaki's true colors.

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Regarding Funny Games, I remember an interview with Haneke where he said that he had more respect for anyone who turned off the film than for those who watched it all the way to the end. Whether that makes it better or worse, I don't know.

Random Stranger posted:

That said, Evil Dead 2 makes this movie pointless. The sequel is so amazingly good and covers the same ground so heavily that there's no reason to watch the original unless you want to see how Raimi did the same story with even less money.

For all the shared plot elements, The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 are very different in terms of atmosphere. The original is a tense and fairly low-key horror film, while the sequel is much more overtly comedic.

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
#5 The Grudge 2 (2006)

In the last installment of the series (actually the fifth installment, but the first US film in the epic series) Karen, an American born social worker living in Japan came across the whole mess of Kayako and Toshio being killed by her husband and causing ghostly terror and death to spread like a virus from person to person. She tried to stop things by burning down the house that acts as a sort of "patient zero" for the curse. Didn't work. Nearly killed herself in the process too. Now her younger sister Aubrey travels to the country to find out what happened to her. There she meets up with Chinese reporter Eason, and together they try to solve the mystery of Kyako and her curse. Meanwhile, there are two other stories being shown as well. Allison is a girl trying to fit in at a Tokyo school for foreign exchange students. Two girls, Miyuki and Vanessa, convince her to go with them to the house as a sort of popularity hazing ritual, leading to all three being terrorized, naturally. Finally, we also move to Chicago, where a family is adjusting to life with a new step-mother/wife in the household. The youngest, Jake, starts seeing and hearing weird things, seemingly centering on the apartment next door.

The Grudge/Ju-On is such a strange and unique film series, especially with how much it's lumped in with other J-Horror long haired ghost stuff, without actually being a thing like them. It's a series that bends time and space at all costs to the expectations of both the characters and the audience. It has a cruel sense of humor with its creative effects. It has a running story that almost seems to not be there unless you're paying close attention, even with events seemingly just re-used from film to film Honestly, Kyako's origin with her stalking the handsome teacher of Toshio is the only thing I really accept as "re-made" rather than "repeated" across the series. You'll find connections if you're watching closely, and also there's the house itself which has been pretty much the same (with some slight exterior remodeling) from film to film. That Takashi Shimizu directs more than half of the films thus far (and even the pretty blah Wii game) and has after stepping down still stayed in pretty heavy creative control makes this very much an auteur series.
And this installment in particular has a lot going on under the surface. The previous US film felt very much like it was just another Japanese film that in this case just happened to have a lot of American characters in it. This time, he swaps the balance and tries to really have the US and Japanese differences in ghost stories butt heads. See, in the US, we often put things so that there's a reason behind hauntings, and that there's a way to set things right and end it. In Japan, the more common style to folklore is that haunting and curses are more like viruses, where they just spread, and no, there's nothing you can do to inoculate yourself. Much of the plot of this film has Americans trying to figure out how to stop the curse, and figure out why burning up the house didn't slow things down, when the harsh truth laid out by the end is that no, there's nothing you can do. You're just up doo doo creek by no fault of your own. Sorry. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a factor in why the film series started losing steam in the states so quickly. There was a third straight to video US film, but mostly the series has just continued to thrive in its home country, with the most recent film (a cross over with Ringu) coming out just this past Summer. I'll get to it, but my chronological OCD means I have to watch the series in strict release order. The only exception I've made to this has been the Wii game, which doesn't have a whole lot of story really, it's just different members of a family that end up having the curse hit each of them after one member goes to the house. Otherwise I'm literally at this point only half way thru the series, with 6 more films to watch.

I give The Grudge 2: :rip::rip::rip: and a half out of five

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.
Heads up to any U.S. goons with cable that Turner Classic Movies is doing Universal's Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein tonight, starting at 8:00 p.m. east. Would be a real snazzy way to knock out some entries.

I know I'll certainly be exploiting it, despite y'all's assurances about Roar.

CopywrightMMXI
Jun 1, 2011

One time a guy stole some downhill skis out of my jeep and I was so mad I punched a mailbox. I'm against crime, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

K. Waste posted:

Heads up to any U.S. goons with cable that Turner Classic Movies is doing Universal's Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein tonight, starting at 8:00 p.m. east. Would be a real snazzy way to knock out some entries.

I know I'll certainly be exploiting it, despite y'all's assurances about Roar.

Pretty much all the Universal Frankenstein movies are worth watching. They get sillier as they go on, but they're all enjoyable. I watched a bunch last for last years thread.

Movie 2: most Likely to Die (2016): I saw this on Netflix, and I must admit I was a little intrigued. The plot synopsis is that at a killer is stalking his high school tormentors at a 10 year reunion. This is hardly an original concept, as it was used frequently in the 70s and 80s. But I thought I'd give it a shot to see a modern take on the story, and to see if they add any new elements to the concept. Sadly, this movie doesn't do anything new with the concept. Or ends up being quite dull, and has poor acting to boot. They spend a lot of time discussing poker as well, which is as exciting as it sounds. To the movies credit, it has some decent gore. It also has Perez Hilton as a paparazzi-type in it, so for those of you who like stunt-casting, there you go. Avoid this movie and watch Return to Horror High instead.

3. Trick or Treats: (1981) I found this on YouTube, and went in blind. I should have read a synopsis. It was a pretty blatant Halloween rip off. A psychotic killer is on the loose, and he's targeting a babysitter on Haloween night. I couldn't get into this at all, and it may hue been due to the shoddy video quality of streaming YouTube through my tv. It looked really lovely. The movie does go for a bit of comedy, but it comes off more annoying and mean-spirited than funny. Avoid this one.

4. Black Sabbath(1963): now this one was good. It's a Bava directed anthology film. The three segments involve a nurse who steals from the dead, a mysterious phone caller, and a vampire story.

This movie makes awesome use of color, particularly in the opening tale (the version I saw had "A Drop of Water" as the opener). It uses light and color to create an impressive atmosphere, where everything seems surreal and it adds to the paranoia of the tale. The staging of the shots is also impressive. Every frame really does look like a painting in this movie.

The special effects are also impressive. Despite the limitations of the time, everything looks really creepy and unique.

This one is definitely recommended and is a must watch for horror fans.

Watched: The walking Dead, Most Likely to die, Trick or Treats, black Sabbath

Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


No list or anything for me, but I'm going to try to get through one a day through the end of the month that I have not seen before. I'm plugging a few major holes along the way, starting with...

October 1st:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - One of my friends told me we watched this a long time ago but I had no memories of it. Which is funny given how much other films I've seen took from it, of course, so it ended up feeling familiar at many points anyway. Still, it did a few interesting things I haven't seen anywhere else. Did I think they were the most interesting parts because they were all that seemed novel, or is everyone just stealing the wrong stuff? Anyway, the major standout is the pacing of the violence at both macro- and micro-scales. I went back to check time stamps after my viewing because it had struck me so much, and the time from the first kill to the last kill (Franklin, I'm not counting the semi hit at the end) is about 17 minutes. The chainsaw chase that begins at that point is seven minutes. Individual bouts of violence were also mostly very brief - the first kill in particular worked very well, and I can't think of another movie that takes this approach. I loved the final shot as well, I would have expected a typical movie to follow the truck speeding away but what we got was much more effective. On the other hand, the first third of the movie felt like it wasted a lot of time despite a few effective scenes. I spent half an hour with these kids and learned almost nothing interesting about any of them. I swear one of them just completely vanished partway through the movie. She was around when they got to the childhood house, then I just never saw her again. The dinner scene was a strange combination of ideas I liked (I'm a sucker for closeups of eyes, I think) and stuff that started to feel like padding. I wanted to respect the way the camerawork handled scenes that were emotionally intense for a character, but I was too bored for it to really work. I can see why this movie was so influential, but I respect it more than I actually liked watching it.

Halloween - This ended up being an interesting pairing since it's almost the exact opposite of TCM in terms of overall pacing. Things happen really fast for the first five-ten minutes, then there's some buildup I really enjoyed including one or two really cool long shots, but then it sort of settles into a holding pattern and I get a lot more babysitting action than I actually wanted. It picks back up near the end for a pretty strong finish. The score was great, of course. I'm struggling for anything else to say about it. I think I enjoyed it more than TCM overall, but I'm not eager to see it again. I think I am going to watch Halloween II tonight, though, since I've been told it's a second-half-of-the-movie sort of situation. I'm definitely taking a break from slashers after that.

long-ass nips Diane
Dec 13, 2010

Breathe.

1. Maniac Cop (1988)

Total gem. The social commentary is probably more relevant today than the day it was filmed, and Robert Z'Dar is incredibly menacing as the titular Maniac Cop. Bruce Campbell kinda sucks in it but he wasn't really given much comedy to work with outside of throwing himself into things. I'm a big fan of the action setpieces near the end, more horror movies need car chases.

4 :spooky: / 5 :spooky:

2. Train to Busan (2016)

If you want a rote and moralistic zombie movie with a really novel setting and fantastic setpieces, Train to Busan is here for you. It's filmed really well and has a great color palette for a zombie movie, so it's worth checking out on that level, but don't get your hopes up going in.

2 :spooky: / 5 :spooky:

long-ass nips Diane fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Oct 3, 2016

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
My random selections continue unabated:

1. The Wicker Tree (2011)
2. Mexico Barbaro (2014)
3. I Can See You (2008)
4. Demonic Toys 2 (2010)
5. The Grudge 2 (2006)
6. Laserblast (1978)


Billy is a bit of a loner as a teenager. He gets picked on by bullies (including Eddie Deezen?! What world is this?!) he gets harassed by his local cops regularly, his mom is never home, his girlfriend's grandfather hates him, etc etc. One day, while farting around in the desert he finds a necklace and strange gun that are alien in nature. He decides to take them, not knowing that when he sleeps at night the necklace turns him into a sort of ghoul, with pale skin and eyes and jagged teeth, and has him start using the laser cannon against people that wrong him. As he starts turning more and more into a monster, the aliens who created the gun (that are like the halfway point between ET and big ol dinosaurs) and a strange government agent are both hot on his trail.

I have no idea why it's taken me so long to see this film. It reeks of 70s culture, while still having a total whackadoo plot. The cast surprises me too, with people like Keenan Wynn and Roddy McDowell popping up out of nowhere. I appreciate that Billy seems to get less and less human in his mannerisms the more he uses the gun, until by the end he seems like some primitive caveman, shooting things at random to assert his dominance. If you like 70s cheese, I strongly recommend this flick.

I give Laserblast: :awesomelon::awesomelon::awesomelon::awesomelon:/5

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


long-rear end nips Diane posted:

1. Maniac Cop (1988)

Total gem. The social commentary is probably more relevant today than the day it was filmed, and Robert Z'Dar is incredibly menacing as the titular Maniac Cop. Bruce Campbell kinda sucks in it but he wasn't really given much comedy to work with outside of throwing himself into things. I'm a big fan of the action setpieces near the end, more horror movies need car chases.

4 :spooky: / 5 :spooky:

Do yourself a favor and check out the sequel, which is one of the best low budget action movies out there (yet still has enough horror elements to count towards the challenge).

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty

Lurdiak posted:

Do yourself a favor and check out the sequel, which is one of the best low budget action movies out there (yet still has enough horror elements to count towards the challenge).

I think you showed it the very first scream stream I came to. How's part 3 by the way?

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



Samuel Clemens posted:

For all the shared plot elements, The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 are very different in terms of atmosphere. The original is a tense and fairly low-key horror film, while the sequel is much more overtly comedic.

It's not just about plot elements. I feel Evil Dead 2 did both horror and comedy better. Anything the original did, Evil Dead 2 did better.

Well, except tree rape.

Choco1980 posted:

I give Laserblast: :awesomelon::awesomelon::awesomelon::awesomelon:/5

Leonard Maltin account spotted!

alansmithee
Jan 25, 2007

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!


Gonna shoot for 31 different new movies this month (roughly one a day). Not sure if I'll make it but it's worth a shot.

1. Body Melt
Basically, a corporation sends out an experimental new health supplement for testing to a sub-division, only there's some side effects still that have yet to be worked out. In the horror thread someone compared it to The Stuff, and I think that's a fair comparison. Although Body Melt feels a bit more fun/goofy vs. the cynicism in The Stuff. Also got kinda a Society vibe from it. Movie was fun throughout though, the effects were fairly well done and it never really drags.

:spooky::spooky::spooky:/5

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Choco1980 posted:

I think you showed it the very first scream stream I came to. How's part 3 by the way?

Yeah, it was included in the Sequel Stream of 2014. I've not seen part 3 but I've never heard a single good thing about it from fans of the first two, or anyone else in general.

long-ass nips Diane
Dec 13, 2010

Breathe.

Lurdiak posted:

Yeah, it was included in the Sequel Stream of 2014. I've not seen part 3 but I've never heard a single good thing about it from fans of the first two, or anyone else in general.

Two is on the list.

I'm pretty sure that William Lustig totally disowned the third one for being terrible and made-by-committee, so I'm gonna skip it.

Several Goblins
Jul 30, 2006

"What the hell do they mean? Beefcake?"


Kicked off October with two double-feature nights. Trying to watch only movies that are new to me this year. I opened up with some good old fashioned 80s B-movie goodness.

1. Night of the Demons (1988)
I went into this blind and loved it. It was the perfect combination of 80s cheese and horror that I was looking to start my month off with. Teen stereotypes head to an abandoned mortuary to party and end up summoning demons with a seance. Some of the teens get possessed and the rest are trapped inside, on the run from their monstrous ex-friends. Gave me a lot of Evil Dead vibes.

Eat a bowl of gently caress. I am here to party!
:spooky::spooky::spooky::spooky:/5

2. Chopping Mall (1986)
I picked this up after seeing the praise for the recent blu-ray release and don't regret it at all. More teen stereotypes party inside a mall after hours and end up having to deal with the new security system - three murderous robots with lasers. It was dumb, hilarious and I loved it.

Thank you. Have a nice day.
:spooky::spooky::spooky::spooky:/5

3. Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)
This is definitely the worst thing I've watched so far, but I still kind of loved it. A detective looks for a missing girl and ends up finding a cult of chainsaw-wielding hookers. It was fun to see Gunnar Hansen, and he had some hilarious dialogue. Also, watching Linnea Quigley struggle to wave around a couple of chainsaws was hilarious. The first bit of the movie drags a little and feels more like softcore porn than the rest of the movie, but it picks up and gets hilarious. It's a quick watch and Private Eye Jack Chandler deserves his own movie.

I had to wonder if we'd let our religious freedom go too far in this country, or maybe our immigration laws were just too lax.
:spooky::spooky::spooky:/5

4. Class of Nuke'em High (1986)
I've seen a ton of Troma films but I've somehow always overlooked this one. A nuclear power plant (and atomic :420:) cause a bunch of crazy poo poo in a local high school. It's Troma and it's a blast. And I'm still impressed with how well Troma did gross-out practical effects.

(insert catchy theme song here)
:spooky::spooky::spooky::spooky:/5

Several Goblins fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Oct 5, 2016

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Random Stranger posted:

It's not just about plot elements. I feel Evil Dead 2 did both horror and comedy better. Anything the original did, Evil Dead 2 did better.

Right, but what I'm trying to get at is that the first film didn't really do comedy at all. I agree that Evil Dead 2 is better overall, but it never quite recaptures the feeling of dread that permeates The Evil Dead because it's clearly having too much fun.

long-ass nips Diane
Dec 13, 2010

Breathe.

Wreath of Barbs posted:

4. Class of Nuke'em High (1986)
I've seen a ton of Troma films but I've somehow always overlooked this one. A nuclear power plant (and atomic :420:) cause a bunch of crazy poo poo in a local high school. It's Troma and it's a blast. And I'm still impressed with how well Troma did gross-out practical effects.
:spooky::spooky::spooky::spooky:/5

I find myself humming the theme song to this an awful lot.

Several Goblins
Jul 30, 2006

"What the hell do they mean? Beefcake?"


long-rear end nips Diane posted:

I find myself humming the theme song to this an awful lot.

The entire time I was watching I couldn't get over how drat catchy the soundtrack was.

Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


3 - Halloween 2. As I was told, this really felt like the second half of the movie and obviously wouldn't have worked as well on its own. Consequently I feel a little unfair saying it's also a much better movie, but it's really a much better movie. The pacing is absolutely perfect, they managed to keep a hospital setting visually varied, the music is still great, and while I miss the long shots from the first one overall the time spent with Michael was more rewarding. It would have been really easy to portray him as a simple Terminator sort of character, but while he's got the inhuman patience thing going on he also obviously has preferences and tastes. We got a little tiny bit of this with him fixing his mask at the end of the first one, but there's so much more of it here and it's all great - manages to avoid getting into overbearing origin story nonsense. Jimmy finding the nurse who'd bled out was also the funniest scene I've watched in ages. Easily one of the best slashers I've ever seen.

Asiina
Apr 26, 2011

No going back
Grimey Drawer

Samuel Clemens posted:

Regarding Funny Games, I remember an interview with Haneke where he said that he had more respect for anyone who turned off the film than for those who watched it all the way to the end. Whether that makes it better or worse, I don't know.

I think it makes it worse, since if I did turn it off (which if I had just randomly happened upon it, I might have) it wouldn't be out of disgust for the subject matter but boredom. If you're going to make a torture porn movie (twice) to prove a point, then you might as well go all out.

Anyway, watched two more movies today.

Marnie - This was an interesting one because I didn't know anything about this particular movie, but I knew that Alfred Hitchcock was terrible to his actors in general and awful to Tippi Hedren in particular, even if I didn't know in what context. Then I watch this movie which is basically Mansplaining: The Movie (featuring rape) and it's all just kind of gross. I'd be interested to find old reviews of this movie from when it came out to see if others were as disgusted with Sean Connery's character as I was. I'm not sure what you are supposed to think about him. You have three three strong (if flawed) women and then the one male lead just walks all over all of them with his insane :biotruths:. I will say I enjoyed the movie and it has that Hitchcock feeling where the plot just clips along at a breakneck pace and things that could be entire movies are covered in 30 minutes or less so you never really know where it's going. That's always fun, but the subject matter itself and the treatment of the characters can't help leave me feeling pretty uncomfortable. Add in the knowledge that it was all basically paralleled in real life at the same time is disturbing as well. For the movie itself though I give it :spooky::spooky::spooky:

1408 - A fairly traditional spooky movie. Moreso than any of the others I've watched so far. Dude checks into an evil hotel room, spookiness ensues. A little cheesy in places and compared to Marnie where I didn't know what was going to happen, you could map out the plot points of 1408 in the first 20 minutes. I did like how once it got started it never really let up, and it was constantly trying new ways to freak the character out. It also had a good counter for every reasonable attempt to escape the room. Not really overly scary or disturbing. It played it pretty safe, but it was okay. Out of 5 I'd give it :spooky::spooky::spooky:

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

Samuel Clemens posted:

Regarding Funny Games, I remember an interview with Haneke where he said that he had more respect for anyone who turned off the film than for those who watched it all the way to the end. Whether that makes it better or worse, I don't know.

gently caress that. First of all he's overrating how gruesome his movie is but also why does this mean you're morally superior? He's an artist who has made a career of focusing on people's misery and their most painful and pathetic moments and this is the movie where he decides the audience are pigs? What's the difference between someone who turns the movie off out of some higher moral obligation and a prude? I hate this kind of attitude because it A) Is condescending to the audience and B) Severely misses the intellect and layers involved in horror filmmaking and why audiences respond to the genre.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



Next up is Intruder directed by Scott Spiegel in 1989. Spiegel is like the second banana among his peers. He starred in Within the Woods, the prototype for Evil Dead, and later co-wrote Evil Dead 2. He introduced Tarantino to Lawrence Bender who would go on to produce the bulk of Tarantino's work. And later he would help found Raw Nerve with Eli Roth, producing the Hostel series and getting bottom billing in a long list of superstar names including Tarantino. Intruder was his directorial debut and feels 10 years outdated from the start.

Intruder has to be the most by-the-numbers approach to a slasher film. A group of 20-somethings are locked in an enclosed place. A plot point threatens to shatter their comfort. A douchebag with a shady past shows up to stir trouble. A nice guy pleads to the audience to take sympathy on his plight. Fake out scares with animals and quick cuts make you roll your eyes. Then the bodies hit the floor until the female lead is the last alive and a surprise twist reveals the killer isn't who you thought it was (except it actually is because these conventions were old by 1989).

You can see Raimi's influence on Spiegel. Lingering shots, frequent POV, dutch angles, and the camera placed on moving objects zooming across the set compose most of the scenes. In a few enclosed scenes the actors visibly jerk out of the way while the camera glides across the scene. The location was a closed grocery store, the shelves filled with recalled food. This results is sets that look realistic and well worn. Everything looks like it would in some dingy family owned corner market in a small suburban town.

Nothing else is worth discussion. Every actor is terrible save the villain who really hams it up in the end. Sam and Ted Raimi play bit parts and Bruce Campbell shows up in the final two minutes. The kills are bloody if unimaginative with the highlight being a band saw decapitation with some genuinely great prop design. The villain arranges the body parts in humorous ways and demonstrates some insane teleportation abilities to move around the way they did.


The best fake-out scare I've seen in a movie: a cut to a German music magazine. Spooky!

Worth a look after the 30 minute mark. Keep the subtitles on so you can know every time the CRUNCHING ORCHESTRAL

al-azad fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Oct 3, 2016

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

al-azad posted:

The kills are bloody if unimaginative with the highlight being a band saw decapitation with some genuinely great prop design.

Wait, that was the highlight for you? Not the dude getting his head smashed in the hydraulic press?

e: like, I do well with gore but that head-smash made me cringe like hell.

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

Um, actually Intruder is dope.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747
Also, yeah, Intruder is one of those movies where it's kind of generic, but it does the generic thing it's going for so well that I love it anyways. It's the John Wick of horror.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



LORD OF BOOTY posted:

Wait, that was the highlight for you? Not the dude getting his head smashed in the hydraulic press?

That one's good but goes by too quickly and Toxic Avenger had better head crushing kills. I really appreciate the detail in the saw scene. You can almost see the fake teeth pop out.

e: I must stress how satisfied I am with the kills. Going through the big slashers at the time with Halloween, Nightmare, and Friday in their twilight years they got pretty tame. All the low budget movies were unflinching in their gore.

al-azad fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Oct 3, 2016

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

Also, yeah, Intruder is one of those movies where it's kind of generic, but it does the generic thing it's going for so well that I love it anyways. It's the John Wick of horror.

This is a good analogy.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Asiina posted:

1408 - A fairly traditional spooky movie. Moreso than any of the others I've watched so far. Dude checks into an evil hotel room, spookiness ensues. A little cheesy in places and compared to Marnie where I didn't know what was going to happen, you could map out the plot points of 1408 in the first 20 minutes. I did like how once it got started it never really let up, and it was constantly trying new ways to freak the character out. It also had a good counter for every reasonable attempt to escape the room. Not really overly scary or disturbing. It played it pretty safe, but it was okay. Out of 5 I'd give it :spooky::spooky::spooky:

Which cut of the film did you watch? I think the theatrical cut is a lot better, personally.

Yoshifan823
Feb 19, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
What better way to start off a horror month than Frankenstein (1) and Bride of Frankenstein (2)? I'm coming into most of the classics without having seen them before, and I'm glad I started with these two, they're really fantastic (which should go without saying). I do think I like the original a bit better, despite the second clearly having a bigger budget (some things in Hollywood never change).

The original has much better pacing and a better Elizabeth, and there's no obnoxious loud maid. Both have amazing atmosphere and setting, but I think the biggest difference is the use of sound in the original. The scenes set in the village have this constant cacophony of voices and music and happiness, which contrast really well with the scenes of the monster all being comparatively silent, especially the scene with the little girl. And when the mood turns from celebratory to a hunting party, the cacophony follows the angry men hunting the monster. It really served to highlight Karloff's performance. He does so much with just animalistic sounds and and his face and physicality. Boy howdy is that a magnificent performance.

I feel like there's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said, but even though this isn't the origin of horror, I feel like there's really no better place to start, maybe save Dracula (which doesn't air on TCM until the end of the month so that's when I'll be watching it).

Asiina
Apr 26, 2011

No going back
Grimey Drawer

Lurdiak posted:

Which cut of the film did you watch? I think the theatrical cut is a lot better, personally.

I'm not sure. Maybe a different cut would have changed things but honestly it felt like a pretty cookie cutter horror movie.

Raxivace
Sep 9, 2014

5. Son of Kong (1933)

Baby Kong died this is some loving bullshit. Good movie, though it was more of an adventure movie than a horror movie or even a typical monster movie. Really makes me want to watch the original King Kong again, as I haven't seen it in like 10 years. Interesting how they don't actually get back to Skull Island until like 40 minutes into this 70 minute film too- most of it is just the characters dealing with the fallout of first film, some time later.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

Raxivace posted:

5. Son of Kong (1933)

Baby Kong died this is some loving bullshit. Good movie, though it was more of an adventure movie than a horror movie or even a typical monster movie. Really makes me want to watch the original King Kong again, as I haven't seen it in like 10 years. Interesting how they don't actually get back to Skull Island until like 40 minutes into this 70 minute film too- most of it is just the characters dealing with the fallout of first film, some time later.

King Kong is WAY better, but Mighty Joe Young is better than both.

Class3KillStorm
Feb 17, 2011



1) The Witch

Next up is Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. Hoo boy, this was terrible. I threw it on because I was strapped for time tonight, and it had a short runtime (it sure doesn't feel like a breezy 80 minutes, though). I doubted I was gonna get anything like the weird Friday the 13th/giallo stylings of the original, and knew it couldn't have anything approaching the (in)famous final shot from Sleepaway Camp I.

Too bad this film had nothing going for it in its own right. None of the kill scenes were any good (and quantity did not make up for quality); none of Angela's terrible joke throwaway lines landed; hell, Pamela Springsteen was just straight up awful in this. So was everyone else, come to think of it. A total waste of your time. If you're gonna watch a crappy slasher piece of junk this season, you can do way way better.

1 out of 5.

K. Waste
Feb 27, 2014

MORAL:
To the vector belong the spoils.

K. Waste posted:

Day 1

The Fury (1981)

Was bizarre and good. De Palma rules.

Day 2

Early-morning semi-starter with Roar (1981): Noel Marshall basically made the anti-Cannibal Holocaust with this one, and I dig it. There hasn't been an activist documentary since that was as authentic and compassionate in its depiction of animals while simultaneously being as earnest in its criticism of their displacement by homo sapiens.

Real deal with that TCM triple feature of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein. The first two are classics, the second one has good production design, but lacks the kind of whimsical camp and directness of the Whale pictures. I had never seen Bride before, and was seriously skeptical of the chain of thought that said it would be better than the original, but I have to say, it is a masterpiece. So many perfect scenes.

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Darthemed
Oct 28, 2007

"A data unit?
For me?
"




College Slice
Going mostly for films I've not previously seen in this year's batch, though a friend mentioned being interested in seeing Creepshow for the first time, so that'll probably get squeezed in at some point. Initial plan is to go alphabetically, giving each one at least a day to marinate in memory before putting together the review.

#1.) #Horror (2015)



Well, this was better than I was expecting, but I wouldn't call it great. I was anticipating something like meme-based horror, maybe an updated version of Satsujin Douga Site, and instead got a slasher with a(n iffy) focus on societal pressures, dysfunctional parent-offspring dynamics, and bullying. It put me in mind of Detention (due to the flashy inserted graphics and pop-up text messages), +1 (young people going to someone's house and a party getting out of hand while semi-indie music gets played prominently), Scream Queens (girls being super-bitchy to each other while people get killed, and some odd dance numbers), and '80s slashers with sloppy final reveal twists.

Nice (but uneven) use of the snowy landscape in the outdoors scenes, though the art installations filling the house where most of the action took place stole the show. Seemed like that part of the set design might have gotten a bit out of hand, going by the string of visual artists listed in the opening credits. The motivation given in the last minute didn't feel like it fit with the rest of the movie, a few character progressions seemed to just drop away, and the gimmick of the hashtag stuff felt really off-tone. Imagine if the media flashes from Hackers had been jammed into Let the Right One In for an approximation.

Still, I didn't feel like it was a waste of watching time or movie-making effort. I'd be curious to see it again knowing the twist, and to keep a sharper eye on the very short amounts of screen-time that Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny get. The young actresses did a fairly good job with the material, moreso with the scenes playing up tension while trying to dominate each other in conversations than the ones in which everybody's screaming and freaking out at the murders. Not as good as it could have been if the script had been tightened up and given a better finale, but much better than it might have been with worse acting.

:spooky: :spooky: :spooky: / 5

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