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david_a
Apr 24, 2010




Megamarm

Jedit posted:

I watched an episode and a half of Cursed Movies on Shudder, and Jesus loving Christ it's terrible. Five or ten minutes of regurgitating the most famous facts about the movie, followed by 15 minutes of some "real life" twat bigging himself up.

I thought it was pretty good :shrug:

Some episodes do a better job than others of tearing down the myths though

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Pope Corky the IX
Dec 18, 2006


🎵 I'm blue
Yeah I'm a blue Shrek, guy
Step a foot in my swamp
And you're gonna die 🎵
Here's a loaded question...can anyone explain the appeal of Fulci?

I mean, it may be a moot point because I don't enjoy Italian horror in general, but I've found the few movies of his I've seen to be cringingly amateurish and charmless.

And for the record, this is not me saying "Lucio Fulci sucks" but me saying "Can someone explain why I should enjoy him when I personally don't like what I've seen of his work?"

married but discreet
May 7, 2005


Taco Defender
Fulci has done a whole lot of different types of movies, and the janky eye destruction type is just one of them. My favourite of his is The Black Cat, which features a murdering kitty cat, and which is just ridiculously charming. Don't Torture A Duckling is also one of the most thematically interesting giallos ever made, and has a lot to say about ~~~society (Italian society).

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

Pope Corky the IX posted:

Here's a loaded question...can anyone explain the appeal of Fulci?

I mean, it may be a moot point because I don't enjoy Italian horror in general, but I've found the few movies of his I've seen to be cringingly amateurish and charmless.

And for the record, this is not me saying "Lucio Fulci sucks" but me saying "Can someone explain why I should enjoy him when I personally don't like what I've seen of his work?"

I'm not sure I'd argue with you too much about the amateurish part. I probably wouldn't call Fulci amateurish but he's definitely not as laser focused on aesthetics the way other Italian directors like Bava and Argento were.

I think most people would take issue with charmless though, because that's really where Fulci's appeal is. His stuff is just so completely bonkers and ridiculous that I can't help but be charmed by it. It's one of the more unique careers in movie history, that's for sure. At his best(City of the Living Dead, The Beyond), he's got the rare combination of excellent spooky atmosphere with the over the top craziness that I look for in horror.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Pope Corky the IX posted:

Here's a loaded question...can anyone explain the appeal of Fulci?

I mean, it may be a moot point because I don't enjoy Italian horror in general, but I've found the few movies of his I've seen to be cringingly amateurish and charmless.

And for the record, this is not me saying "Lucio Fulci sucks" but me saying "Can someone explain why I should enjoy him when I personally don't like what I've seen of his work?"

I fuckin' love Fulci but I'm on gonna lie, Goblin and the lighting does a lot of the heavy lifting. The main quality I like about Fulci his how we get "cool" gore scenes while still maintaining like a slow burn apocalyptic/hopeless atmosphere. While even They Beyond has a moment or two that goes on a little too long, I do think he pulls genuine atmosphere and that deamlike feel out of what would just be padding under a lesser director.

For those reasons though, if you "don't enjoy Italian horror in general" then it's definitely understandable that his stuff wouldn't appeal to you.

Personally to me Zombie/Zombi 2 and The Beyond are his best movies, if you didn't like those I think it's safe to say you just don't like Fulci, which is fine.


If you still feel like giving him a chance, he directed three westerns too! Massacre Time, Four of the Apocalypse, and Silver Saddle. They're spaghetti westerns and all that entails but each sort of stands out as Fulci in its own way. The Four of the Apocalypse would probably have some appeal to fans of Devil's Rejects or Three from Hell. Silver Saddle is like, so bog standard and typical, but it's just a damned solid production. Like Fulci's crew is great here, he has a few that feel very kinetic and have a great sense of where everyone is/etc. Makes me wish he would have tried his hand at directing a couple of straight action flicks in the 80s to see how far he could take that. Silver Saddle is sort of the last spaghetti western in a way, you think of the 60s and 70s with that genre but this was made in 1978, a late entry for sure. Massacre Time is the least relevant but still it does star Franco Nero and couple of other regulars you'll recognize.


Basebf555 posted:

It's one of the more unique careers in movie history, that's for sure.

I credit the odd mix of somber and batshit charm of his horror movies to his earlier background as a comedy director, some of those are also work looking into like Eroticist. IIRC part of why he was doing low budget horror stuff was because he was sort of unofficially blacklisted from some resources an up and coming director may have had access too because a lot of his comedies got him hot water for having some characters that were a bit too on the nose corrupt politicians he wanted to make fun of. And probably more than that, I can't find an article on this in English but a very early movie of his about Beatrice Cenci (I believe it was called The Conspiracy of Torture in the US) got him in trouble with the church because it's based on a true event from 1599 where a woman conspired to murder her abusive father and, due to the father's sort of connection to the church where he was giving the pope tons of cash as like a penance thing on the surface word gets to him that his daughter hates him and wants to straight up leave and her fiance to become a nun, so the father basically enslaves her in a cage so he can torture/assault her as he pleases, and there's folks in the church who are fully aware he is doing this but hey gotta keep the money coming.

It's a pretty gnarly flick and the timeline jumps back and forth from before and after her surviving this, but even here you can see the black humor/cynicism (with the church in this case) mixed with some :wtc: for the time torture moments that would make Fulci stand out. It was relatively controversial in Italy when it dropped and was the beginning of him getting pigeonholed into doing mostly horror stuff later on. And to an extent I do think some meanness in his movies at times is just part of his style, but also part of his growing bitterness about that.

Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:03 on May 17, 2020

Sarchasm
Apr 14, 2002

So that explains why he did not answer. He had no mouth to answer with. There is nothing left of him but his ears.

david_a posted:

I thought it was pretty good :shrug:

Some episodes do a better job than others of tearing down the myths though

Yeah, I thought Cursed Films was pretty good, but the first episode is probably the weakest. The Poltergeist episode and the Twilight Zone episode in particular hit me really hard.

Pope Corky the IX
Dec 18, 2006


🎵 I'm blue
Yeah I'm a blue Shrek, guy
Step a foot in my swamp
And you're gonna die 🎵
Thank you for the informed responses without vitriol. I'll give his spaghetti westerns a shot, and if anyone can recommend a horror film that's not like the one I'm about to describe that I cannot remember the name of...

There is a scene where the main character invites an "ugly" woman to come back to his home to try and kill her. She vomits up the poisoned drink he gave her, so then he hits her with a branch(?) and which takes her eye out, then tackles her in the kitchen, then puts her head in the oven, and she keeps coming back. Finally, he kills her somehow, and then has to chop off her legs to get her to fit in the trunk of the car.

Some of that sounds like it could actually be funny, and I enjoy horror comedy like Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, etc. But I remember this being loving dire.

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

It’s a western, but Fulci’s Four of the Apocalypse is really drat good.

The Senator Giroux
Jul 9, 2006
Dead Ringer

david_a posted:

I thought it was pretty good :shrug:

Some episodes do a better job than others of tearing down the myths though

Sarchasm posted:

Yeah, I thought Cursed Films was pretty good, but the first episode is probably the weakest. The Poltergeist episode and the Twilight Zone episode in particular hit me really hard.

Someone ITT said they swapped the first and second episode to correspond with something Shudder was showing, and I think that’s a mistake because the Exorcist episode, when they introduce the “real” exorcist, felt too History Channel and it wasn’t until the end when you realize they’re basically saying “this dude is a fake and a lovely person” does it make more sense, and it didn’t feel earned as a first episode.

It also felt like it was missing the thesis of “these are real people who really died, and it’s lovely to talk about it as a curse” and I think a rearranged order would have made the moment where Linda Blair refused to talk about part of her life more poignant.


Still loved it though.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
So, uh. Blood Diner is very very bad. Why has this been recommended to me so many times?

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

feedmyleg posted:

So, uh. Blood Diner is very very bad. Why has this been recommended to me so many times?

It's much like in real life when a bunch of friends hype up a place to eat at and you finally go and it's like, what?

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

Franchescanado posted:

Oh, investigations and historical records of real exorcisms are incredibly depressing and horrific.


STAC Goat posted:

I was also raised Roman Catholic and have my share of exorcism stories I heard second hand from priests who claimed to take part in them and even had a few conversations with Blatty. I'm unfortunately familiar with both the mundane "pray over" aspects of "exorcisms" but also the more tragic "abuse of a kid who is mentally ill or just like going through puberty or multi-racial or something" thing.

Its just a really terrible door to open. When I was a teenager it was fun and exciting to ask questions like that but the more I heard the less I asked questions.

A little over a year ago my wife's old friend came to stay with us for a week. She told us a story about how she was watching her infant nephew for a few days and wanted to get him exorcised because his mother is Mormon. The only reason why she didn't take him was because the "exorcism priest" lived 2 hours away from her house. So not only was she willing to have a weird religious ceremony performed on a baby without its parents knowledge (much less consent), but was paradoxically fine with letting the mormon demons chill in the baby forever (in her mind) because she couldn't be bothered to make the drive. It's one of the most insane things I've heard someone just casually drop into conversation. She has a lot of other "quirks" that stem from her catholicism but I don't really need to get into them here. She wanted to come back this year but my wife thankfully ignored her texts.


feedmyleg posted:

So, uh. Blood Diner is very very bad. Why has this been recommended to me so many times?

Because a lady gets her head stuck into a fryer and when it comes out it's a giant hushpuppy.

Drunkboxer fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 17, 2020

AKZ
Nov 5, 2009

Rewatched Maniac Cop 3 and it still rips. I also got to find out that Refn is doing a remake of 1. gently caress yea.

Kvlt!
May 19, 2012



AKZ posted:

Rewatched Maniac Cop 3 and it still rips. I also got to find out that Refn is doing a remake of 1. gently caress yea.

don't get your hopes up that info has been around forever and nothing ever came of it

Kvlt!
May 19, 2012



cool corn as soon as i have $$$ i'm buying myself that new av you made me <3

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004

Drunkboxer posted:

Because a lady gets her head stuck into a fryer and when it comes out it's a giant hushpuppy.

It's like they were trying for a Troma vibe but completely misunderstood the appeal. There are a few moments of value here and there, mostly effects like the hushpuppy, but yeeeeesh.

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Drunkboxer posted:

giant hushpuppy.
?????????¿?????????

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

FreudianSlippers posted:

?????????¿?????????


Better movie maybe. A puppy murderer vs that fancy cat. A real snobs vs slobs situation.

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord

Kvlt! posted:

cool corn as soon as i have $$$ i'm buying myself that new av you made me <3

Lol which one, the rob zombie witchfinder general or you looking out a window saying yes yes

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:
When witches are being found people look in the mirror, when witches aren't being found they look out the window.

Kvlt!
May 19, 2012



COOL CORN posted:

Lol which one, the rob zombie witchfinder general or you looking out a window saying yes yes

im going to put them both into mspaint and then resize it to 80x80

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

feedmyleg posted:

It's like they were trying for a Troma vibe but completely misunderstood the appeal. There are a few moments of value here and there, mostly effects like the hushpuppy, but yeeeeesh.
I kind of struggle with what is the difference. Blood Diner grosses me out in a way even something like Blood Sucking Freaks doesn't.

Midnight Pooptrain
Oct 13, 2012

2001's Father of the Year
stucco was a cool little thing. Are Alter's other shorts worth checking out?

AKZ
Nov 5, 2009

Kvlt! posted:

don't get your hopes up that info has been around forever and nothing ever came of it

Gotta have something to wait on. Speaking of I'll be waiting for The Collected too.

RenegadeStyle1
Jun 7, 2005

Baby Come Back
Just watching through the original Twilight Zone and I know this is kind of a passe opinion at this point but its really a very progressive and landmark of a show especially for its time. It feels like it was way ahead of its time.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

RenegadeStyle1 posted:

Just watching through the original Twilight Zone and I know this is kind of a passe opinion at this point but its really a very progressive and landmark of a show especially for its time. It feels like it was way ahead of its time.

Welcome to the club, we've been here for years. A lot of it is just great sci-fi as well, but it never stops at just sci-fi. That's something I think other shows forget. Season 4 is much, much rougher and is forced into a format everyone making the shows hated, but that even has some gems. Including one episode that could only have been made in that format, that fits it perfectly and hits every note. Tomorrow, We Leave For Home

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

RenegadeStyle1 posted:

Just watching through the original Twilight Zone and I know this is kind of a passe opinion at this point but its really a very progressive and landmark of a show especially for its time. It feels like it was way ahead of its time.

I watched the shelter episode and laughed my goddamn rear end off.

That episode explains why we’ll never ever go back to what things were.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

CelticPredator posted:

I watched the shelter episode and laughed my goddamn rear end off.

That episode explains why we’ll never ever go back to what things were.

There's a lot of just basic universal truths about human nature across all of Twilight Zone.

Sci-Fi used to be amazing for predicting this kind of stuff.

Darko
Dec 23, 2004

Burkion posted:

There's a lot of just basic universal truths about human nature across all of Twilight Zone.

Sci-Fi used to be amazing for predicting this kind of stuff.

Eh, Black Mirror and Pandemic (just as sci fi as Andromedia Strain really) and other things have gotten a ton right currently, just off the top of my head.

Darko fucked around with this message at 22:47 on May 17, 2020

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Darko posted:

Eh, Black Mirror and Pandemic (just as sci fi as Andromedia Strain really) and other things have gotten a ton right currently, just off the top of my head.

So do I go for an easy Trump pig fucker joke or

alf_pogs
Feb 15, 2012


Origami Dali posted:

Nope, it's good. Be sure to watch the director's cut.

thankyou! that's on the menu for this week then.

while i'm asking the thread questions, i wanted to expand my bluray horror collection a bit with films i know i enjoy watching repeatedly.

are there definitive version of the Alien series and Stuart Gordon's stuff that i should look at before other versions? specifically, i'd love to get From Beyond and Castle Freak.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004

Timeless Appeal posted:

I kind of struggle with what is the difference. Blood Diner grosses me out in a way even something like Blood Sucking Freaks doesn't.

Yeah, I want to say something about meanspiritedness or punching down, but that's not really it. Blood Diner kinda seems like it hates horror movies, or horror audiences, or people in general. I think I'll probably end up saying that Blood Diner has a nihilism to it compared to Troma's love of the genre?

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

feedmyleg posted:

Yeah, I want to say something about meanspiritedness or punching down, but that's not really it. Blood Diner kinda seems like it hates horror movies, or horror audiences, or people in general. I think I'll probably end up saying that Blood Diner has a nihilism to it compared to Troma's love of the genre?

Well they’re cribbing more off Herschell Gordon Lewis than Troma, and I guess those are two subtly different flavors of schlock.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

Drunkboxer posted:

Well they’re cribbing more off Herschell Gordon Lewis than Troma, and I guess those are two subtly different flavors of schlock.
Is she really cribbing from Gordon Lewis? I mean it's technically supposed to be a sequel to Blood Feast, but it's really easy to forget that.

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

RenegadeStyle1 posted:

Just watching through the original Twilight Zone and I know this is kind of a passe opinion at this point but its really a very progressive and landmark of a show especially for its time. It feels like it was way ahead of its time.

There’s one that takes place in the old west where an old Mexican man is trying to save his son from a lynching and while it’s played light because the focus is on a white grifter who’s trying to sell magic to the desperate father, the story itself is pretty harrowing and the ending is really fantastic.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

alf_pogs posted:

are there definitive version of the Alien series and Stuart Gordon's stuff that i should look at before other versions? specifically, i'd love to get From Beyond and Castle Freak.

Shout Factory has a From Beyond blu ray that is very good. Not sure about Castle Freak.

With Alien it depends on if you are into UHD, because the Alien UHD is pretty great. Aside from that though the Alien Anthology blu ray is the go-to and it's usually fairly cheap. I don't think there's a full set with Prometheus and Covenant included yet.

https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Anthol...89758073&sr=8-1

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

There is but it’s not worth it since it doesn’t come with the special features for the alien films.

Get the anthology, Prometheus 3D 4 disc version with the 3 hour making of, and any editon of Covenant

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



feedmyleg posted:

So, uh. Blood Diner is very very bad. Why has this been recommended to me so many times?

I just loved the spectacle. It's like if the Zucker brothers were gore obsessed punks who wanted to make a film about cannibalism, death cults, wrestling, and ancient vagina dentata deities. It's definitely mean spirited, and it almost lost me at several points, but its so dumb and goofy I really couldn't stay mad at it for more than a few seconds.

anime tupac
Oct 25, 2010

stick your chest out, keep your head up, and handle it

Pope Corky the IX posted:

Here's a loaded question...can anyone explain the appeal of Fulci?

I mean, it may be a moot point because I don't enjoy Italian horror in general, but I've found the few movies of his I've seen to be cringingly amateurish and charmless.

And for the record, this is not me saying "Lucio Fulci sucks" but me saying "Can someone explain why I should enjoy him when I personally don't like what I've seen of his work?"

I don't actually like Italian gorehound stuff at all myself, but it's all about genres. I'm kind of a boy scout when it comes to horror; like, I love horror but not cruelty, so I don't like any New French Extremity stuff (except for Inside, which I think is brilliant because of how pared-down and basic it is; it could be a stage play with how well-written it is). But if you like horror at all, try to see it from all perspectives, which is my take on it. It's why I took a class about Wes Craven and realized how he was doing weird stuff ahead of his time and—in your words—why someone's movies might be important even if you don't like them or see why they're important. Fulci kinda made Carpenter who kinda made the slasher genre in America (and yes I know I'm extremely simplifying this) but films influence other films and that's not a forgettable thing

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Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

anime tupac posted:

Fulci kinda made Carpenter who kinda made the slasher genre in America (and yes I know I'm extremely simplifying this) but films influence other films and that's not a forgettable thing

Speaking of this, Prince of Darkness and The Church make a great double feature, as Prince of Darkness was Carpenter's biggest attempt to make a Fulci-esque Euro-horror dream logic but still in the real world+violent kinda flick, and then The Church was definitely influenced by it in turn. And then on top of that, The Church rules because it plays around with what people expect to see from the hallucinations caused by the water vs. what people in the modern day expect from "horror" which IIRC is why a few quite a bit of the violence in it intentionally homages certain other horror movies since that's the stuff through which people in the current day would interpret demons/unholy stuff happening which is why a lot of those moments look and are shot the way they are like when the giant demon hands pop out of the sack like then hands coming out of the book in The Evil Dead, or the vain woman reenacting the face ripping sceen from Poltergeist, etc.

But that's also why I love both of those movies so much as a double feature, Prince of Darkness as modernly qualified people working to figure this stuff out, The Church has a lot of not as qualified people swept into this poo poo, it says a lot that the results are pretty similar given the paranoia and fear that causes a lot stuff to go down in both.

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