|
Franchescanado posted:
 11.) Cat People Paul Schrader |1982 | Criterion Channel After watching the original 1942 version last night, how could I not watch the remake? It’s fun and horny, and kind of a mess. I don’t think it’s as effective as the original in cultivating a creepy atmosphere (even though they adapt some scenes from the original). I think the transformation scenes were extremely dope, and the soundtrack absolutely slaps. I also appreciated the tragic aspects such as the ending where Irena begs to be with her own kind, only to end up trapped in her own pen in the zoo. Overall not quite as good as the original, but still pretty dece in its own right. Rating:  Total: 11/13 New: 9 Rewatches: 2 My Letterboxd list (in progress) Bingo card:  Greekonomics fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Oct 12, 2022 |
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 08:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 09:55 |
|
|
#8: Good Madam (2021) Struggling South African single mother Tsidi stays with her mother, who keeps house on a very old property with a very unwell resident. At the grounded, moody end of the spectrum. For a while at least, the main frightning thing is the prospect of Tsidi being made homeless. I'm reluctant to put together a grand theoretical explanation of a country I don't know much about, but it seems to me that the movie reflects the modern state of SA; Tsidi and her family have rights but not much money, and the social structures of apartheid have declined but not died, and her mother Sisi has this job of looking after an old white lady on her family's estate. And it's this fascinating situation where the owner - named Grace, but credited as Good Madam, so let's go with that - really ought to be in a Home, but that would throw Sisi into poverty. But Sisi isn't any younger than Madam, and isn't much healthier, and it's hard to figure out who this whole situation is hurting the most. Well, it's hard for Tsidi; the movie, I think, settles on a pretty definitive idea of who's getting exploited. Anyway, it's a bit slow, but there's a real sense of bite to the movie, a No-I'm-NOT-being-unreasonable vibe. Loved the scene with the gravestones. I watched this for Horror Noire. You could also watch it for Femme Fatale, Goodnight Mommy, or maybe A Perfect Getaway if you haven't seen a South African movie before. It's on Shudder (in Aus at least). Connective tissue with #7 Savageland: the ineradicable past. #9: Ghostwatch (1992)  It's a live-broadcast of a TV-news investigation into a haunted house - and the ghosts love the attention. So this was a mockumentary, broadcast on British TV on Halloween night, famously without (much) indication it was a work of fiction, causing a minor national sensation. It really nails the feeling of one of those types of shows; the hosts genuinely feel like they're improvising or bullshitting to fill time. Of course this isn't great for the pacing, but the mood's good, it's very agreeable just to amble along and see where this thing goes. The appearances of the ghost were very well-done; I caught the reflection in the glass door and a couple of the more obvious ones, and then looked them up afterwards and realised I'd missed most of them. The missability is what makes it good; there are no musical stingers to tell you Oh something cool's goin on!, either you see it or you don't. Which of course leads you to doubt yourself, and scan every frame for clues, and get pulled in. Ghostwatch is on the Internet Archive I watched this for Terror-Vision, given that it is made-for-TV and implies that the TV itself is somehow supercharging the ghosts with the nation's concentrated psychic energy. You could also watch it for Hausu, or The Devil Made Me Do It. Or V/H/S, but it's not the best example. Connective tissue with Good Madam: an ominous bedroom at the top of the stairs. Spooky Bingo: 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 08:31
|
|
|
11. Ginger Snaps Spooky Bingo: Femme Fatales Two sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), 15 and 16 respectively, are both very late bloomers who sulk around together avoiding the other folks at school, in a small suburb where something has been eating the local dogs. One night Ginger suddenly starts getting her first period and is immediately attacked by a giant wolflike thing. Soon she's not only dressing nicer and hanging out with boys, she's growing weird tufts of body hair, dealing with a small tail, and starts getting wickedly aggressive and violent. Brigitte feels both alienated from and concerned for her sister, but the only person she can turn to who has even the slightest chance of helping is the local pot dealer (Kris Lemche). This is a film that doesn't hide its subtext; Ginger's lycanthropy goes hand in hand with her "becoming a woman", and the film bluntly portrays a lot of the pressures girls face, from boys, from each other, from their parents, from creepy older guys, etc. The real tension is the increasing gulf between Brigitte and Ginger, who are inseparable at the start. Both lead actors are very good, as is Mimi Rogers as the girls' mother, who responds to the escalating crisis in increasingly more unhinged ways. The dialogue's really sharp and the film captures a very Y2K goth-punk aesthetic without leaning too hard into stylization. The blood and gore are not spared, and from experience I do not recommend watching this while eating Italian. What really propelled this above and beyond for me was the careful balance it strikes in terms of tone; it's often funny and satirical, but gets more intense as time goes on, becoming genuinely suspenseful and dramatic in the final act. I didn't know what would happen next or how it would all turn out, and I didn't expect it to be quite as harrowing as it was. I knew this had a good reputation going in but I'm still very surprised just how engaging it was. Possibly the best werewolf movie? 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 08:48
|
|
|
Watched a lot of stuff recently, have to break it down into multiple posts. #11 - Bodies Bodies Bodies  Rich kids get together, drugs and resentment create a tense atmosphere and then people start getting killed. Very enjoyable ride. Everyone despised each other, had an axe to grind or was hiding something, creating a perfect storm. Liars, assholes and other awful people ending up dead as the chaos ensued in a very satisfying way. Counted for "Yuppie Nightmare" #12 - Dummie the Mummy and the Golden Scarabee  Lightning hits a truck transporting a child mummy to a museum, empowering a magical amulet and reviving him. The mummy escapes, ends up befriending a local boy and living on his farm, eventually learning Dutch and attending the local school. An adaptation of a children's book this is cute, safe and friendly, it just happens to feature a mummy. There is some sombre stuff when they dwell om Dummie's death, but aside from showing his face to the class bully to scare her fear and horror are not a part of this. It was perfect to watch with my 4-year old, who really wanted to join watching "scary" movies and spent the whole day making spooky candles we could light during the movie. The movie itself is bland, safe and uninteresting, no reason to watch it unless kids join in. Counted for "Children of the Damned" #13 - Zombie Honeymoon  "In sickness and in health" and "till death do us part" become two very important vows when a man gets bitten by a zombie during his honeymoon and his wife supports him through it all. I really dug this. It is very low-budget, but sincere, has a lot of heart and even though the last bit feels a bit rushed the movie covers a lot of ground. There is an excitement to the newlyweds that feels real and it sells what happens during the rest of the movie. Counted for "Zombie Honeymoon" 
BioTech fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Oct 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 10:25
|
|
|
12. Director's Cut (2016) A delusional crowdfunder believes his contribution entitles him to a lot more creative control than he receives during the filming of a movie. Director's Cut is okay. Its somewhat funny, but the idea gets pretty stale by the end. It wastes more time on the fake movie than the actual movie, as a way to show the authors descent to madness but I'm not sure it was worth it; ending payoff wasn't that great. A possibly fun gimmick if done correctly. Slightly not recommended. Choosing dead and buried for this cause Gilbert Gottfried totally is in this because his name is in the credits which means hes a big part of it. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 10:28
|
|
|
WeaponX posted:10. Exorcist III I just watched this for the first time a few years ago and hard agree on all this, the movie owns. Dourif's monologue about not spilling the blood was my favorite bit.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 12:10
|
|
|
The "fish in the bathtub" scene is guaranteed to make me laugh every single time, George C Scott is a treasure.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 12:30
|
|
|
BioTech posted:#13 - Zombie Honeymoon This movie makes me want to play pinball.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 12:58
|
|
|
Movie 8: Treehouse of Horror XXXI, The Wolf of Wharf Street, Peternormal Activity (Halloween is Special) For this one I went to Disney+'s Halloween section and picked three Halloween specials to watch. Treehouse of Horror because I used to love these when The Simpsons was actually good and I wanted to see if the show has actually managed to improve since I gave up on it nine years ago. My INITIAL plan was to watch three recent Treehouse of Horrors episodes, but for reasons that will soon become apparent I stopped at one. Instead I watched a Bob's Burgers Halloween special because I watched the first few seasons back in the day and really enjoyed them. And finally Peternormal Activity from Family Guy, because it too was good back in the day, then it super wasn't. Could it be again? Let's find out! Treehouse of Horror XXXI OK this was the first episode of The Simpsons I've seen since Lisa Goes Gaga in season 23. It was absolutely awful, and I'm disappointed but not surprised to see things haven't improved much. First impression? Jesus loving christ Julie Kavner sounds awful. The episode doesn't even have any kind of framing device, instead we're treated to a two minute skit about Homer falling asleep in a hammock and forgetting to vote, leading to a second Trump term and a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then it's on to the parodies. The first one is a very timely Toy Story parody named Toy Gory. Bart keeps breaking his toys in violent ways but because they're secretly alive, they want to get revenge on Bart. There's a couple of semi-decent jokes in there, but the show has to underline them several times and ruins them. Example? After Radioactive Man is blown up in a microwave, the toys hold him a funeral and Krusty says "his accessories will go to his widow" and hands them to one of those toy monkeys that bangs cymbals. That would've been a decent joke, but then, just to make sure everyone understands the joke, he says "his wife was a monkey? Eh, love is love!" Jesus loving christ. Next up, Into the Homer-Verse. Homer has eaten all the Halloween candy and tries to get more from a vending machine that's actually a dimensional portal or something. OK, Into the Spider-Verse worked (among other reasons) because it was a loving tribute to all the weird and wonderful Spider-Man poo poo that's been done over the years. There's none of that here. Instead Homer meets "Homer-Barbera", a Yogi-Bear-Homer-mixup, a "Disney Princess Homer" who's a generic Simpsons woman in a princess costume and with Homer's voice and so on. It's just insanely lovely surface level "parodies" like hey Disney princesses sure sing a lot, what if we had one that sings a lot but in Homer's voice hahahahahaha awesome. Finally, Be Nine, Rewind. So this is actually a Russian Doll parody, because Lisa is turning nine and keeps dying over and over, then reliving the same day again with Nelson (who is also dying repeatedly) until... they kill Gil? And the lesson is "no day is perfect so just enjoy the day you have". What? What the gently caress does that have to do with anything? Lisa didn't set out wanting a perfect ninth birthday, she was anxious about growing up and wasn't sure she was ready to give up childish things. Complete poo poo. These used to be so awesome, but this was just ... awful. The actors sound like bad impressions of themselves, the writing is dogshit, and any half decent jokes they have the immediately ruin by not letting them stand. The parodies were awful and were just in that awkward middle territory of not being good specific parodies, but also not being broad general parodies of a genre. How the hell does anyone watch modern day Simpsons? / 5The Wolf of Wharf Street Hey this was great! It's Halloween, and there's allegedly a murderous wolf roaming the streets allegedly killing people and lowering property values. Linda and the kids still go out trick or treating, while Bob (who has hosed up his leg) stays at home with Teddy who might have been bitten by a werewolf. Bob is high on painkillers and getting paranoid, while Linda and the kids are being stalked by something. This was really good, because it absolutely nailed the broad genre parody stuff. The writing is sharp, the jokes are good and both stories end up wrapping back together again. Not a lot to specifically say about this. It was just a really well done and funny episode of a cartoon show. I guess it's time to watch all of Bob's Burgers! / 5Peternormal Activity After seeing a disappointing horror movie Peter and the guys decide they could write a better movie themselves. Meanwhile Brian has new glasses and has become just the WORST, which is a bit worrisome for me because I'm gonna get glasses soon  Peter and the guys go to the haunted Quahog Asylum for Lunatics and Menstruators and tell each other spooky movie idea stories, which are then shown as short cartoon vignettes before we transition to a I Know What You Did Last Summer parody. The spoofs themselves aren't AMAZING but they're decent, and also character-based. For instance Cleveland, a very boring man, has a zombie story where he's in an abandoned and bloody hospital, but then spends the entire time talking through himself changing a busted light tube only to discover it was actually a wiring issue. There's also a bunch of fun meta stuff. Quagmire suggests a movie where something that isn't normally evil becomes evil. Peter suggests a bar of soap, which Joe says is a terrible idea. "TOO LATE!" Peter yells, as we're already cutting to a vignette of said terrible idea. Not amazing, but not terrible either. Had a few good laughs, some moderate chuckles, the 25 minutes went by fast. / 5 My October 2022 Movies: 1. Nope, 2. Night at the Eagle Inn, 3. Day of the Mummy, 4. Freaky, 5. Choose or Die, 6. Shopping Tour, 7. Dog Soldiers, 8. Halloween Specials 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 14:15
|
|
|
Bruteman posted:I just watched this for the first time a few years ago and hard agree on all this, the movie owns. “Now I call that SHOWMANSHIP!” Gyro Zeppeli posted:The "fish in the bathtub" scene is guaranteed to make me laugh every single time, George C Scott is a treasure. It’s so good. I was reading a review of the film that complained about that scene and that it didn’t make sense because it had nothing to do with the plot and I wanted to reach through my screen and shake whoever wrote that review.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 14:20
|
|
|
Note: All my posts will have spoilers, I don't think they matter, and it's why you can watch good films more than once. Massacre at Central High (1976) "That transition at 40 mins from the dead electrocuted hang glider to the sex scene directly following is really… something" - Youtube comment Maybe an influence on Heathers (1988)?** I am watching a pretty dogshit copy of this movie off Youtube. "The Italian version of this film, called Sexy Jeans, was edited with pornographic inserts" - Wikipedia New kid David moves to a new school, its run by a gang of bullies, and after seeing them attack other students and try and rape students he intervenes to help. The bullies cripple David by kicking out the jack of the car he is under and repairing. He then seeks total revenge. The school students also side with David and take some revenge of their own. The culmination is the bombing of the school dance where David dies and his friends blame it on students who died earlier. The bullies are over the top brutal, but the revenge is just loving insane. The biggest similarities between this and Heathers is the bombing of the school dance (a pep rally in Heathers), and the crazed ego of David at times (maybe similar Slaters character at moments) . This is not comedic at all and not cynical like Heathers. Its acted well enough, shot well, an is not a B-grade film. Worth it for the over the top revenge sequences. 2.5/5.  ** https://dangerousminds.net/comments/massacre_at_central_high_did_this_film_concerning_teen-on-teen_violence_inf So Far: 11: Massacre at Central High (1976) 2.5 10: Who can Kill a Child (1976) 2 09: Lair of the White Worm (1988) 3 08: Houseboat Horror (1989) 1 07: Men (2022) 3 06: Anatomia Extinction (1995) 2 05: Hellraiser (2022) 1.5 04: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) 4 03: Hider in the House (1989) 1.5 02: Malignant (2021) 3.5 01: HauntedWeen (1991) 2 Demilich Vocals fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Oct 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 14:34
|
|
|
#14: Unmasked Part 25 (aka The Hand of Death, aka The Hand of Death Part 25: Jackson's Back) (1988)Zombie Honeymoon The depressed villain from a long series of slasher movies falls in love and wonders if there could be more to life than death. Jackson is a lonely, melancholy young man who is fond of quoting Byron. He's also a hockey mask-wearing, necrophiliac horror movie monster with a body count in the dozens. But when he meets a sweet blind woman with a penchant for S&M, he starts to think he might be able to change his ways. This low-budget British slasher-slash-slasher-parody is an odd duck, to be sure. It spends a lot of time getting into the relationship between Jackson and his girlfriend, as well as the one he has with his drunken, psychopathic father. It's not really funny enough to be a comedy, which only serves to detract from the horror elements. There are a few really stand-out gore moments, however. Mostly, though, the joke is that Jackson hates his job but can't find a way out of it. An oddity that slasher fans should check out at least once.  .5 out of 51. Dracula (Spanish)(1931) 2. Trick r Treat (2007) 3. Ghost Ship (2002) H20 4. The Devil Within Her (1975) Goodnight, Mommy 5. Ghost Story (1981) Paperbacks From Hell 6. Nomads (1986) Punk Vacation 7. Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) Thrilla in Manila 8. Skeleton Man (2004) Osteology 9. Muppets Haunted Mansion/Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXI Halloween is Special 10. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) 11. Werewolf of London (1935) 12. Cat People (1942) Golden Years 13. Mortuary (1983) 14. Unmasked Part 25 (1988) Zombie Honeymoon 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 14:38
|
|
|
10. The Phantom of the Opera 1925 | dirs. Rupert Julian, Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle, Edward Sedgwick Paramount Plus SPOOKY BINGO: Golden Years I have never fully seen the original(ish) The Phantom of the Opera. It's a landmark film that created a horror icon, that eventually created an icon of the stage that has eclipsed every other version. I've seen all the other Universal Monster films, and many of their sequels, yet I procrastinated so long on this film. Did you know the original novel The Phantom of the Opera by journalist and mystery writer Gaston Leroux, was published in 1910? (Before that it was published as a serial in 1909.) That means when this film was released, it was only 15 years old. Did you know there is another film adaptation from 1916, called Das Phantom der Oper, that is now a lost film? Did you know that Rupert Julian is one of four directors this film had, because they just could not figure out how to get it to work, and Julian walked after having such difficulty with the cast and crew. This film had multiple premiers, each for a new edit, that audiences hated. Instead of scrapping it entirely, they went back and filmed new footage and edited it again.  Lon Chaney looks fantastic, and his mannerisms and expressions come off as truly manic and his eyes seem filled with madness. He is otherworldly, and it's a performance that has stood the test of time for good reason. Besides that, the fascination here was more the idea of The Phantom rather than this film. There's charm, here. The set design for the Phantom's underground layer is cool. It's interesting to see how filmmakers made a story around an opera and singing performances without sound. The iconic moments known from the premise--like the mask removal, the chandelier dropping--are exciting. It's interesting seeing genuine ballet from the 1920's. But as a cinematic experience, I was not wowed, or enveloped into the story. I just kept being fascinated by the snowball effect this story has had on pop culture, from it's meager origins as a pulp mystery thriller that mixed audiences as soon as it was revealed the Phantom was a human person instead of a supernatural entity.  It's a good movie, for sure, and I'm glad to say I finally watched it, so for that I'll Recommend it, even if it's more for it's cultural importance and film history instead of cinematic bliss. Re-Watches: An American Werewolf In London | City of the Living Dead New To Me: Practical Magic | Pacific Heights | The Lift | The Others | The Keep | Sleeping With The Enemy | Cat People | The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Total: 10 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 14:46
|
|
|
29: Swimfan This is almost adorably early 00s, it'd come off heavy-handed and obvious if you made it as a period piece today, tonally unfitting needledrops and all. It's pretty by-the-numbers stalker movie, with the sad added downside that the main stalkee is probably the weakest performance in the movie. The script is also very first film school project, everyone just feels like they're dying to launch into some big metaphors in the middle of regular conversations. For the upsides, Erika Christensen can do that dead-behind-the-eyes look perfectly and the movie really picks up whenever it stops focusing on the lead and more on her. It also gets away with a very surprising amount of stuff for a PG-13 rating. 2 out of 5! 29/31, watched: Scary Movie, Final Destination 4, Happy Death Day, Final Destination, No One Gets Out Alive, Smile, Freaky, Body Bags, Alien Psychosis, The Invisible Man, The Last Exorcism, Final Destination 2, Werewolves of the Third Reich, Unfriended, Final Destination 3, Hellraiser (2022), Deadstream, Final Destination 5, Village of the Damned, Piranha 3D, The Awakening, The Ruins, Sissy, Happy Death Day 2 U, Crush The Skull, Hell Fest, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat, Swimfan 
Gyro Zeppeli fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 14:54
|
|
|
#20: The Sacrament The Devil Made Me Do It  The premise is very obviously "what if Vice went to Jonestown". As a fake documentary, it's quite good. The characters are strong enough, the guy who plays not Jim Jones is great, the cult compound is very believable as a real place. The amount and quality of footage they're able get towards the end does stretch credibility a bit, but not enough to totally knock me out of the movie. It does get a bit too action movie-ish, more concerned with the survival of our leads than with the people who in-universe were actual human beings who died. But luckily that's diegetically totally explained by it being a Vice production Also, big props for not going supernatural. I kept waiting to see a scary rune or something but they never do it, which is a nice change of pace. My problem with the movie is that it's based on Jonestown, but the real Jonestown was so much more interesting and horrifying. The real Jim Jones had significant ties to establishment California politics that protected him. In The Sacrament the mass suicide announcement comes as a big surprise to most of the people, but in real life Jones had been forcing them to do test runs for weeks beforehand, ordering everyone to drink what he told them was poison just to make them prove that they would and get them used to doing it. The Sacrament is well made, but a bit of a let down considering what it's based on. Soft recommendation for fake documentary fans. 
Gripweed fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Oct 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 15:05
|
|
|
Russian Guyovitch posted:I’m in for 31 new-to-me films. As is my annual tradition, I've gotten way behind on my reviews already. But today's my day off, so it's time to start catching up. I'll try to break them up so I'm not putting up massive walls of text. 1. The Empty Man (Watched on HBO Max) – A former police officer investigates the disappearance of his neighbor's teenage daughter, and in so doing uncovers a much larger conspiracy is afoot. He fears that the girl may have become involved with a cult that worships an entity known as “The Empty Man,” a being that comes when summoned, but will kill the summoner on the third day after summoning. For the most part, this is a very solid film. It has a great claustrophobic feel to it, as our protagonist begins to realize that he's in over his head and the cult is starting to surround him. Where it stumbles is its conclusion, with the revelation of that he's not a real person, but rather a tulpa created by the cult to serve as the new host for the Empty Man. It's meant to serve as a dramatic twist, but it mostly just left me looking back on the film and scratching my head as to how that worked with what we'd already seen. For instance, it's when he calls the neighbor and she doesn't know who he is that he learns he's only existed for three days and all the memories that he has of their relationship are false. But during the those three days, we see him interact with her and call her a number of times, outside of flashbacks. For me, that sort of reveal loses its impact if it doesn't remain consistent with what we the audience have already been shown. All in all, a decent movie that didn't quite stick the landing. 2.5 Anachronistic Beatniks out of 5 2.Glorious (Watched on Shudder) – A disheveled and distraught man stops at a rest stop on a rural highway and finds himself trapped in a public restroom with a mysterious stranger locked in the stall next to him. If he ever hopes to escape from the confines of the bathroom, he'll have to take the stranger up on his unusual proposal. This is a fun little bottle movie with a great premise. J.K. Simmons gives an excellent performance as the voice of a god tasked with the destruction of all creation who is desperate to avoid fulfilling his destiny. It would have been a home run, save for one plot twist that didn't quite work for me. 4 Talking Teddy Bears out of 5 3. Intruder (Watched on Shudder) – The staff of a grocery store is working the overnight shift when one of the cashier's ex-boyfriend shows up to threaten her for leaving him. After he's chased off, a hidden figure starts picking off the staff one by one. This was pretty light in terms of plot, but this isn't the sort of film that you're watching for a complex story. This one is all about some over-the-top slasher kills with some fun practical effects. Plus, you get two Raimis and a Bruce Campbell cameo, so what more could you ask for from an '80s slasher? 4 Wildly Unsafe Cardboard Balers out of 5 And now on to the movies I watched after the Spooky card got posted. 4. Saloum (Watched on Shudder) SPOOKY BINGO: A PERFECT GETAWAY – A team of mercenaries is hired to extract a drug trafficker from the wartorn Guinea-Bissau during a coup d'etat. Damage to their plane forces them to land short of their intended destination of Dakar and go into hiding at a camp in the Saloum region of Senegal. There's more to the camp then meets the eye, however. Stylish and action packed, the story gets a little muddled when things turn towards the supernatural. Despite that, the film is buoyed by strong performances from all of the primary cast, in particular the actor who plays Chaka. 3.5 BB Gun Snipings out of 5 5. Howl (Watched on Shudder) SPOOKY BINGO: FULL MOON – Passengers on a late night train traveling through the English countryside find themselves besieged by a malevolent force when the train breaks down in the woods. This was fine, I guess. A perfectly serviceable werewolf movie, let down somewhat by what I felt was a pretty lackluster werewolf design. If you're going to bill your monster as a werewolf, at least have some distinctly lupine features to your creature design. 2.5 Dodgy Kebabs out of 5 6. Eyes of Fire (Watched on Shudder) SPOOKY BINGO: PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK – In the pre-revolutionary American colonies, a vainglorious preacher mysteriously survives an attempted lynching by the local townsfolk due to his ongoing affair with a woman married to a local trapper. He then proceeds to rob the town of its food stores and river ferry, leading the handful of faithful who will follow him into the wilderness in pursuit of the promised land. A stylish, slightly surreal folk horror tale, this definitely worked for me. The clashing of Christian ideology, native religious beliefs and Celtic folklore is a great mix. Highly recommended. 4.5 Foreboding Tree Faces out of 5 7. Cat People (Watched on HBO Max) SPOOKY BINGO: GOLDEN YEARS – A newlywed Serbian immigrant fears that should she ever kiss her new husband, she'll be transformed into a ravenous beast that will tear him apart, due to an ancient curse on her village. Both an excellent film and also an excellent lesson on the importance of not rushing into major life decisions. It's visually stunning with some excellent lighting work throughout to enhance the tension as Irena stalks Alice throughout New York as her jealousy continues to grow. This is a classic for a reason. 5 Dead Canaries in a Box out of 5 8. Exorcist II: The Heretic (Watched on HBO Max) SPOOKY BINGO: DEAD & BURIED – The Vatican tasks a priest with investigating the validity Father Merrick's exorcism of Regan from the first film. The more he learns, the more he begins to realize that the demon Pazuzu wasn't defeated so easily. RIP Louise Fletcher. Not a particularly well crafted film, I'd say it's primarily worth watching for the laughable ideas as to what psychiatry is like. Regan's psychiatrist basically has her hooked up to the machine from Inception. A big step down from the classic that it followed, and not nearly as good as the sequel that would follow it. 2 Oversized Locust Demons out of 5 9. The Dark and the Wicked (Watched on Shudder) SPOOKY BINGO: HAUSU – A brother and sister return to the farm on which they grew up to be with their parents as their elderly father succumbs to illness. Once they arrive, however, things begin to take a turn for the worse, and it seems that there's a more sinister cause of their father's impending demise. This one is probably the first of the month that I'd describe as a an actual “scary” movie. It has a pervasive atmosphere of dread that had me on the edge of my seat throughout. There was never any scene where I felt that the protagonists weren't just seconds away from danger. Also, it had one of the most viscerally upsetting scenes I've seen in quite a while very early in the movie. 4.5 Chopped Up Carrots out of 5 10. The Pool (Watched on Shudder) SPOOKY BINGO: THRILLA IN MANILA – The two dumbest people in all of Thailand (potentially the world) manage to get themselves trapped in a drained diving pool with no means of escape. Things go from bad to worse when an escaped crocodile from a nearby zoo manages to fall in with them. When I heard the premise of this movie when it first dropped on Shudder, I assumed it was a “guy falls asleep in pool and no one tells him that they're draining it” situation. But no, he falls asleep, but when the drain is opened, he's woken up and told, gets off his float and swims to the edge to check his phone, has a lengthy conversation, and THEN falls back asleep on his float. He has every opportunity to get out before he's stuck and doesn't. Then, when his girlfriend shows up and sees his predicament, decides that this is her opportunity to jump in and surprise him. I can't ever remember a movie where I've rooted against the protagonists so hard. Also, the whole thing is just a long-winded anti-abortion screed with sub-soap opera levels of acting. 1 Trent Richardson Cleveland Browns Jersey In The Middle Of Rural Thailand out of 5 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 15:15
|
|
|
 Child's Play I've been rewatching some 80's and 90's slasher icons this week and I'm not gonna log every single one of them but these first two Child's Play movies were anticipated because of the new 4k transfers that are out. Child's Play is an inherently softer looking film than the sequel, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Some films(Gremlins is another one) are shot with like a hazy look to them and I think it gives it a fairy tale quality that can actually add a lot of atmosphere. For this rewatch I found myself appreciating the mix of ways that Chucky himself was handled. I may be wrong but I don't think any of the sequels use real people the way this one does in certain scenes. There's something very unsettling about seeing a little person with the Chucky outfit on and the doll mask, even if it can be jarring because of how noticeably different it is. This is also the only time that Child's Play ever really plays Chucky as mysterious and somewhat undefined for a good chunk of the movie. We know what Ray did, but we don't exactly how that's gonna work exactly and we don't know what the doll is actually capable of for at least the first third of the film. When he finally does start talking and cursing up a storm, it's a big moment. If you make me choose a favorite, I prefer Childs Play 2 but the original still holds up extremely well and retroactively feels kinda unique because of how wild things got in the later sequels.     Child's Play 2 This is the one I was looking forward to and the new UHD is excellent as expected because Child's Play 2 is a film that has a lot of visual style to it. Production design is top notch, the color palette is very strong and all of the various settings are stylized and visually interesting. They've also clearly improved on the animatronic Chucky effects and manage to top themselves with how much punishment he takes as the movie progresses. The big finale in the Good Guy factory is always the most talked about sequence, and for good reason. The body horror and overall level of grossness they achieved in a killer doll movie is impressive, there are several moments(Chucky pulling is own arm off, the knife in the stump, the explosion at the end) that definitely traumatized me as a kid when this movie would often run on cable. A bit of a bummer that we don't get Chris Sarandon or Catherine Hicks returning, but the movie isn't really short on fun characters so it's not a huge deal. Child's Play 2 is my personal favorite of the series.    Current List: 1. The Munsters 2. The Addams Family 3. Alligator 4. Mosquito(Fran Challenge: Wild Beasts) 5. The Gorgon 6. Evil Dead 2 7. Army of Darkness 8. Amityville II: The Possession(Fran Challenge: The Devil Made Me Do It) 9. Black Sunday 10. Comedy of Terrors(Fran Challenge: Picnic at Hanging Rock) 11. Equinox(Fran Challenge: Highbrow Horror) 12. Hocus Pocus 13. Hocus Pocus 2(Fran Challenge: Children of the Damned) 14. Child's Play 15. Child's Play 2
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 15:36
|
|
|
Franchescanado posted:
 #16. The Bone Snatcher (The Roku Channel) After a group of South African diamond miners disappear, a group of scientists and soldiers battle a monster that kills people, strips them of their flesh and uses their bones to puppet itself around. "Waste" is the watch-word of the day: this movie is a waste of a good location, a waste of a cool monster idea/design, and a waste of your precious time on Earth. There's a nugget of a good idea in there, tied to that cool monster design - a living hive mind of vicious, flesh-eating ants that swarm you to death, strip your carcass and then congeal around your skeleton and use that to move around. Sort of like those army ants that form living bridges, but man-shaped and running around upright. What benefit that gives them over being a living carpet that can flow around anything and not be affected by gun fire, I don't know; why getting shot causes the whole shambling monster to fall apart, considering that it's made up of a billion semi-sentient insects all massed together, I don't care, since the effect is neat. Alas, the parts that aren't just pointing the camera at that cool monster loping around are worthless. The characters are paper thin, the actors are planks of wood, there's terrible CGI garbled "monster vision" (somehow? remember, it's a billion little insects swarmed together - how does the hive mind see anything like that?) and awful digital slow motion and terrible effects and terrible music and terrible shot compositions and it's all so terrible. I was expecting it to not be much better than okay, but the premise and desert locations and monster can only take you so far; when everything else sucks, the good elements get buried. Which is what should have happened to this piece of poo poo - like the monsters in the beginning, bury in the desert and erect warning signs all around it, to ward away anyone foolish enough to try to find it again. /5 Watched so far: The Empty Man, Hocus Pocus 2, Smile (2022), It Came From Outer Space, Watcher, The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, Bats, Choose or Die, The Curse of the Werewolf, "Werewolf By Night"/various Halloween episodes, The Thing From Another World, Hellraiser (2022), Knife + Heart, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5, The Innocents (1961), The Bone Snatcher Basebf555 posted:The body horror and overall level of grossness they achieved in a killer doll movie is impressive, there are several moments(Chucky pulling is own arm off, the knife in the stump, the explosion at the end) that definitely traumatized me as a kid when this movie would often run on cable. Funnily enough, I was traumatized by Chucky, in general, because I had a My Buddy when I was little and my child brain couldn't really make the distinction between the Good Guy doll design and My Buddy's. "Since Chucky is up and running around and evil, My Buddy must surely be next!" my stupid kid brain rationalized. However, the constant presence of Child's Play 2 and 3 on cable TV in the early 90s was what was able to get me over that fear - exposure therapy, essentially, since USA tended to run them during the afternoons, and Chucky was a lot less scary in broad daylight. I picked up some UHD discs from Scream Factory during their recent half-off sale (that haven't gotten here yet) but the Chucky discs weren't part of the sale. Are they worth picking up at some point? Class3KillStorm fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Oct 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 15:49
|
|
|
27. The Evil Dead (w/ Commentary by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, 1998) USA, 1981. Dir. Sam Raimi Whispers in the Dark I'll begin by saying that I originally started listening to the commentary track with Bruce Campbell joining Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert that was recorded in 2009, and I got maybe 10 minutes in before I had to restart with the 1998 commentary with just Raimi and Tapert. The 2009 commentary was dreadfully boring, just pointless minutiae about film distribution networks of the 1980's, the various professors in college that helped Raimi write his first scripts, that sort of thing. Couldn't handle it. The 1998 commentary, on the other hand, was fascinating. Neat little details, like how since there wasn't a basement in the cabin they had to cut a hole in the floor, dig a hole 6 feet down, and rig up a little ladder that looked like it led somewhere. It was apparently freezing cold down there under that cabin too. That's another thing, talking about how unsafe they were while filming. They were too cheap to buy tempered glass for the scenes when they shattered windows, so they just told people to step back and shut their eyes, or how there wasn't a single stunt person used during filming and everyone did their own stunts. Also a lot of little bits where they point out little mistakes, like where some gaffer tape was accidentally in a shot, or how someone was caught looking at their mark, that sort of thing. All in all I don't think the track really elevated the movie at all, an impossible task, but it was neat hearing them talk about all the little behind-the-scenes things that went into making this masterpiece. God, what a classic. 10/10 for movie, 7/10 for commentary. Stray thoughts: I love just how hard they lay into Bruce Campbell, albeit playfully. Pointing out in a scene where he wasn't acting and actually cowered in fear, how he thought the movie should've been about sweeter romantic stuff, and that they found him in a backroom one day crying about how he didn't want to have to fight the monsters. They joked that the reason he was on a separately recorded commentary track was just so that he could complain.  
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 17:37
|
|
|
Class3KillStorm posted:I picked up some UHD discs from Scream Factory during their recent half-off sale (that haven't gotten here yet) but the Chucky discs weren't part of the sale. Are they worth picking up at some point? They're both worthwhile upgrades but Child's Play 2 is the real standout. It's just a more dynamic film in terms of lighting and production design and all that stuff, the punchiness of HDR/Dolby Vision benefits it more than the first one.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 17:39
|
|
|
12. Creature from Black Lake (1976) - 3/5 Long on the cringy antics of the fish-out-of-water protagonists, short on creature action. (I actually had to pause the film at one point out of vicarious embarrassment.) But the short sequence where they finally head out to the woods to encounter the creature is suspenseful and manages to make a man in an ape suit seem menacing. And in the meantime they’re likable enough to carry the film, especially the rougher-looking of the two who provides most of the comic relief. I was expecting something much duller, so this was a welcome surprise.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 18:04
|
|
|
 Paperbacks From Hell -Watch a film adaptation of a novel or short story #55.) Flowers in the Attic (1987; Tubi) After the death of their yuppie father, four blonde kids are stashed in a room at their grandparents' house. Unfortunately, it turns out their dad was their mom's uncle, and their grandmother is really into corporal punishment and discipline, and likes to take out her frustration on the kids. So they spend a bunch of time in the attic. When I was a kid, my sister lived in a room on the second floor of our house. She told me a condensed version of this story to keep me from coming upstairs and bugging her. It wasn't much more than 'kids were locked in this room, and had to eat flowers to survive,' but it was enough, along with a couple other ghost stories, to keep me downstairs most of the time, until the TV got moved upstairs. I can't speak to the novel(s), but my sister managed to come up with something more unnerving than the film, in retrospect. Not that there isn't a good foundation here, but the acting doesn't do it any favors. Louise Fletcher as the cruel grandmother stands head and shoulders above the other performances, while Kristy Swanson's histrionics in the role of the older sister may very well sink her beneath the lisping of the children. And so much of the potential material that could have been dug into (e.g., finding family history going back generations in the attic, the mental dissolution of the kids in the attic, etc.) either goes untouched or barely used. Is the movie creepy? Yeah, just nowhere near the level it could have been. “She should have told us, somebody should have told us, that fathers die too!” Rating: 6/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 18:44
|
|
|
Movie 9: The Visit (V/H/S) You have to laugh to keep the deep darkies in a cave. I drat near turned the film off after about 20 seconds when I saw "An M. Night Shyamalan Film" pop up on the screen. In retrospect that probably would have been the right call. Two annoying teens go visit their grandparents... with spooky consequences. And when I say annoying, I mean ANNOYING: one of our two main "heroes" is an aspiring filmmaker who is planning on winning an award for her pretentious-rear end home movie about meeting their grandparents for the first time, and the other is a 12 year old white kid who raps under the "nom de plume" T-Diamond Stylus and talks about "having a Tyler, the Creator kinda sound". Then weird stuff starts happening. Grandpa assaults a guy on the street for "following him". Grandma walks around naked scratching the walls. There's a bin of bloody diapers in the barn. What could be going on? Hell, "two powerless kids trapped in the same house as potentially violent, unpredictable people with untreated mental illnesses" could've been a cool premise, if done tastefully of course. But, you know... M. Night Shyamalan and tasteful aren't even on speaking terms. And of course there's the mandatory twist which I won't spoil but will roll my eyes at. The Visit isn't the worst M. Night Shyamalan movie, which just means it isn't wretchedly terrible like The Happening or Avatar. It is still quite a bad movie though. The grandparents acting creepy is unsettling, and the actors do a good job of sliding between perfectly normal loving grandparents and creepy possessed zombies. In the hands of a more competent filmmaker it could've been a very effective and unique horror movie but here we are. (I'm gonna count this as V/H/S because about 95% of the movie is found footage, but if that's a problem, I can also uncount it) / 5My October 2022 Movies: 1. Nope, 2. Night at the Eagle Inn, 3. Day of the Mummy, 4. Freaky, 5. Choose or Die, 6. Killer Klowns From Outer Space, 7. Shopping Trip, 8. Three Shorts, 9. The Visit 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 19:06
|
|
|
30. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) I admire a movie that gets to the point then gets out before it overstays its welcome, and this does both perfectly. Zero filler, you get given exactly what you expect from that title, and even a bunch of comedy, both intentional and unintentional, that totally lands. It's like someone took the concept of the slasher movie and took off all the pieces that aren't strictly necessary. Just silly in a really affable, likeable way. 4 out of 5! 30/31, watched: Scary Movie, Final Destination 4, Happy Death Day, Final Destination, No One Gets Out Alive, Smile, Freaky, Body Bags, Alien Psychosis, The Invisible Man, The Last Exorcism, Final Destination 2, Werewolves of the Third Reich, Unfriended, Final Destination 3, Hellraiser (2022), Deadstream, Final Destination 5, Village of the Damned, Piranha 3D, The Awakening, The Ruins, Sissy, Happy Death Day 2 U, Crush The Skull, Hell Fest, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat, Swimfan, Slumber Party Massacre (1982) 
Gyro Zeppeli fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Oct 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 19:21
|
|
|
6. Halloween 2 (2019) I wanted to give this a second try because I know its a thread favorite and the first time I watched it, I was in school and kind of half watching while doing school work. I still don't think its the best Halloween movie ever made like some claim but its probably in the top 3 for people who don't love Halloween 4 as much as I do. Starting the film with a 20 minute dream sequence is certainly an interesting choice. I get that its paying homage to the original Halloween 2 but still, 20 minutes?! The cast is exceptional for a horror junkie and I do enjoy the change of Loomis being a self serving piece of poo poo (I'm sure this is true of Zombie's first halloween as well). The film is really made in the last act though. The entire sequence when they get into the run down shack is wonderful film making. I also think its a cool concept that the entire Myers family has some sort of curse and Michael was not just a consequence of his lovely abusive upbringing. 7. Purge: Election Year I liked Election Year so much better than Anarchy. I did have a ton of moments where I questioned if Frank Grillo was really going to fight off an entire militia with just his pistol despite icing many bad guys holding automatic weapons. Sure seems like it would have been helpful to collect a few of those and hand them out to your allies rather than making the person you're supposed to be protecting running around unarmed while you take out the entire city with a single Glock. Despite this silliness the rest of the movie is a tightly paced fun romp that doesn't take itself seriously at all. While still gun centric it doesn't have the action movie feel of Anarchy and I'm really excited to watch The First Purge. 8. Hellraiser (2022) The fourth best Hellraiser after the original, sequel and Inferno  . I would still like to see a remake of the original if only because I don't think most people who haven't seen it have any clue what is actually about and that is a drat shame. The reboot stands strongly on its own though. I enjoy the reading that the cenobites full of poo poo and can't actually offer you anything you would want "I've seen your gifts, I want nothing". I appreciate the modernness of the cenobite designs especially The Priest who I thought really stole the entire show. I'd like to get an 80 minute film of The Priest just chillin out in hell bossing the other lesser cenobites around. 9. The Black Phone The Black Phone was much better than I thought it was going to be. Sort of a lesser The Sixth Sense combined with The Lovely Bones. Ethan Hawke is sufficiently creepy as hell ESPECIALLY when he's just sitting in the chair shirtless with his mask on waiting to whoop rear end with his belt. Our protagonists sister is probably the best character in the whole film and as such does not get nearly enough screen time. We need a buddy flick with her and Mimi from Psycho Goreman where two bad rear end little girls go around kicking monster rear end. 10. Super Dark Times A mediocre rear end coming of age tale that is quite aptly named. The last act is intense as hell but doesn't really feel earned? I would have like to have seen more of the story from Josh's side and how exactly his mental descent accelerated. His motivation is tough to understand especially since he didn't really do anything wrong in the first place. The kid he kills was an accident, and frankly kind of had it coming. I don't really understand how that pushes him into becoming a serial killer but I sure would like to see how rather than a teenage love story. Not a whole lot else to say about this as the plot is pretty thin, but I did think all the child actors did a pretty believable job which was nice.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 19:35
|
|
|
 After Dark -watch an After Dark HorrorFest film (or After Dark Original) #56.) Crazy Eights (2006; Tubi) A group of childhood friends reunite at the funeral of one of their group, finding a map and instructions in the deceased's will to follow it. What they find opens up old memories and awakens a dark force. With a cast that includes Dina Meyer, Traci Lords, Gabrielle Anwar, and Frank Whaley, this small-scale psychological horror takes place in an abandoned medical research facility. Shades of Session 9, but with more yelling and less nuance. They can't find the entrance/exit, so I guess there's some Grave Encounters in there, too, or whatever other haunted asylum movie you'd like to pick. And some The Haunting, arguably, since it's a group of characters called to a spooky destination on some pretense. As a haunting story, it's pretty disappointing. Nothing to be learned, just malevolence. Some entertaining shots of the actors freaking out and throwing stuff around rooms, though. There's a thread about teaching the meaning of guilt, but it's so underdeveloped and detached from the main run of the story that it doesn't get to grow into anything substantial. And since that's the most meaningful thing the movie has going for it, that's a real shame. “Hey, I'm at a point in my career where I do not need skeletons in my closet, and this is one literal freakin' skeleton, and I'm going.” Rating: 5/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 20:28
|
|
|
 22) The Watcher in the Woods (1980) Trailer Seen on: Youtube Children of the Damned -watch a film that is family-friendly I swear to you this is family friendly, nevermind this message tacked on to the end of the trailer linked above:   An American family moves to a house in the English countryside. The two daughters in the family soon after become the focus of strange phenomena in and around the house and surrounding woods that appears to involve the disappearance of a young girl 30 years before, which still haunts the girl's mother (Bette Davis) and the adult friends of the young girl. Will the girls be able to figure out who - or what - is trying to contact them? I vaguely remember catching the end of this somewhere as a child and promptly forgetting about it for years, only to find it again with the advent of the Internet and blogs discussing cult or B-movies. This one has a really interesting history - it was given a limited release in 1980, pulled from theaters a few weeks after, and then the ending was retooled and it was re-released over a year later in October 1981. While the story went that Disney pulled the movie because the ending was too scary, it was because it actually wasn't finished - the studio wanted it pushed out to celebrate 50 years of Bette Davis acting in films. I watched a version of this on Youtube that edits together parts of the original ending with the re-tooled theatrical one (since released on DVDs and blu-rays), showing what was really intended to happen. There's lots of materials and interviews out there on the web if you're interested in checking it out. So, what made this so controversial? The truth is it would be seen as quaint today (for Christ's sake, Hocus Pocus is revered now and kids actually die in it) - there's nary a drop of blood, no one dies and the central mystery is resolved in a happy (if slightly bittersweet) way. But it's a legit horror film - directed by John Hough, who also did other childhood favorites of mine like The Legend of Hell House and the Witch Mountain movies - and having the Disney name attached really hosed with its perception, because it was too much for the brand. All the tropes are here: there's stalkery POVs that wouldn't be out of place in Halloween or Friday the 13th; suspicious townspeople that know more than they let on; strange lights and sounds in the wood; animals are spooked by invisible presences and near-fatal accidents keep happening; plenty of jump scares (including the cat variety). You even get the classics like "people think the protagonist is crazy" and "old people are scary!" It definitely gets an atmosphere of dread and mystery down pat, and the acting is pretty good too - Davis is good in her small role, but lead actress Lynn-Holly Johnson is great and immensely appealing as the oldest daughter who takes it upon herself to solve the mystery of what happened to Davis' missing daughter. And as for that ending - well, the re-tooled one makes it seem more supernatural, with lights and voices and so on and so forth, but I really dig the original one, because I love genre shift/surprises in stuff like this: the titular watcher is revealed to be a terrifying-looking interdimensional alien bug/demon(!) that is actually benevolent; it accidentally traded places in our dimension with the little lost girl 30 years ago during an eclipse, and it spent the movie trying to warn the protagonists that time was running out to recreate the ritual that stranded it here so that it could return her and it to their respective worlds. I can see why Disney yanked the movie, people were either laughing too hard at this (the effects REALLY aren't that great looking, it's too ambitious for what they could actually pull off) or kind of freaked out (I lean more to the latter, it's a neat little shock to see what's actually going on). It's cool to see a "family" horror movie like this that really does amp up the dread and atmosphere, but isn't too scary or violent, just...creepy.  23) Daughters of Darkness (1971) Trailer Seen on: Tubi In retrospect (and if anyone needs some hints for challenges), this could have been slotted in several different challenges, including Scream, Queen!, Zombie Honeymoon and Femme Fatale, but I'm using it for: A Perfect Getaway -watch a film from a country you've never seen a film from. -watch a film about a vacation gone wrong Originally I was doing it just because it was filmed in Belgium (I checked Wikipedia and IMDB for "belgium horror movies" and didn't recognize anything shown that I had seen before), but the "vacation gone wrong" thing also absolutely qualifies it here and I didn't even know that going in, talk about serendipitous. The movie is about a newlywed young couple (who met only briefly before they got married) honeymooning in Europe, where they meet a darkly intoxicating woman known as the Countess Elizabeth Bathory. A string of murders of young women have followed her there, and over the course of a few days, everyone gets to know each other a little too well - three guesses where this is going and the first two don't count. Ok, I'm selling it a bit short, the film is more complicated than that and not as straight up a "vampire" movie as that would have you believe. It's stylishly shot and the soundtrack is great, it sounds exactly like something Portishead would be sampling in their music. Delphine Seyrig steals the show as the seductive countess, who ingratiates herself to the new couple over a matter of days. The movie deals with relationships in some brutal ways - Valerie, the wife, didn't know that her husband, Stephan, is a bisexual, controlling sadomasochist, and in the first half of the film there's a huge buildup to him calling his mother and letting her know he's gotten married, something he thinks will upset her. The identity of the mother, when revealed, seems to push this film a little bit in the direction of saying that gay/bisexual people are just plain hosed up - "mother" is actually the eccentric man that Stephan has an undisclosed arrangement or relationship with, but the implication is not good - but maybe I'm reading to much into that. The countess keeps a beautiful young woman in thrall to her as her assistant, and she clearly doesn't want to be in the relationship. There's also a lot of question as to the nature of the countess - she doesn't have fangs and even though she fears daylight, we never actually see anything that shows that it's going to kill her, but two of the older men in town remember her from 40 years ago, so she's certainly got something going on. This definitely wasn't what I expected going in, but only slightly less bizarre than what I thought it would be. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 20:50
|
|
|
You're also gonna go for at least one diagonal across the middle before completing one of those two corner cases, right?
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 21:00
|
|
|
Franchescanado posted:
 53) One Missed Call - 2003 - TubiTv I checked out fairly early on the big J-Horror phase in the late 90s-early 00s. Mostly because of how obnoxious people were with going on like it was end all-be all of horror. It didn't help that too many films pretty much figured 'slap a long haired ghost in a white dress somewhere and we good' instead of really exploring the various potential there. I think I originally passed this one over as 'cursed phone calls- meh'. Understandable with the premise being people dying after recieving a future phone call from themselves. Having sat through it, it's still a 'meh' with me, though not through it being the film is bad or is lacking somewhere, but more my tastes have changed over time. Overall, the film is fine if the particular subset's your thing. It's definitely something different from Miike. The film does feel a bit overconvoluted at times, but that could be a me thing. Doubt I'll sit through it again just because I've got too much other stuff to sit through.  54) One Missed Call 2 - 2005 - TubiTV This one's a case of 'Second Verse, same as the first.' In this case it just expands on the original curse source and spreads from there. Overall, it was okay enough. There were some good bits, but not enough to make me just count this as a 'meh'.  55) One Missed Call 3 - 2006 - TubiTV At this point, in for a penny, in for a pound. After the last two, really not sure why they ended up making this. Now it's more of a cell phone curse getting spread around. It really wasn't working for me and it even put my movie buddy cat asleep. This is definitely a skipper. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 21:14
|
|
|
 23. Puppet Master III (1991) A sequel that is a prequel is always a coin flip, but this may be the best of the first three in the series, helped by Guy Rolfe taking over the role of Andre Toulon. Puppet Master III side steps all of the third act insanity from Puppet Master II and instead takes us back to WWII Berlin, where Toulon gets in trouble with the Nazis for his rude puppet shows that involve Six Shooter (a six armed cowboy puppet) beating up Hitler. It's a pretty major change, since we're now cheering the puppets on as they drill and shoot and barf leeches on Nazis. There is more Toulon lore, the Nazis want to steal his puppet animation secrets (injections of magical goo that made me think of Re-Animator), and while this is stupid and still has a bad ratio of puppet fun to mediocre acting, I liked this more than the first two. I laughed when it ended on a card that says "COMING SOON: PUPPET MASTER 4, WHEN BAD PUPPETS TURN GOOD". I hope the movies start to turn good. 3/5 -- Bingo Square: Scream, Queen! (Director David DeCoteau is gay)Total Watched: 23 // First Time: 20
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 21:24
|
|
|
December movie challenge should be watching all the DeCoteau Lifetime Christmas movies starring Vivica A. Fox
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 21:59
|
|
|
Class3KillStorm posted:You're also gonna go for at least one diagonal across the middle before completing one of those two corner cases, right? No, I've planned for something more symmetric.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:04
|
|
|
28. Saloum Senegal, 2021. Dir. Jean Luc Herbulot A Perfect Getaway (a film from a country I've never seen a film from) A mercenary company fleeing a conflict zone with a drug lord and a case of gold bars must make a hasty landing in Senegal when their plane breaks down. They seek shelter at a commune-resort(?) in the remote Sine-Saloum region, and... stuff happens. I thought this movie had a great, very suspenseful first half, and a kinda confusing and disappointing second half. Plot-aside, I was also very mixed on the cinematography. The first half was mostly beautifully shot, with these wonderful, sweeping aerial landscape shots and tense, almost claustrophobic interpersonal scenes. This was, however, interspersed with shakey, stuttery handheld cam segments that I really didn't care for even if I understood the purpose they served. The second half had it's own problems, with everything looking way too washed out and over-contrasted. At least I can say that the soundtrack was absolutely incredible, and I'm definitely gonna try tracking down some of the artists. All in all a very mixed bag, and a light recommend. 6/10. Stray thoughts: I was looking forward to the inevitable shift into supernatural horror, and I kinda wish instead that the whole movie was just a more fleshed out version of everything leading to that first twist, and ending with Chaka's confrontation with Omar. That twist was amazing, and I didn't see it coming, but if it had happened at the end instead of the middle, and they'd cut out all the supernatural stuff, the movie would've been better for it. Maybe my dislike of the second half had to do with my complete lack of understanding in regard to whatever the hell was going on with those cinder-smoke spirit monster things. There were a whole bunch of words thrown out very quickly for what was going on, and without an explanation for what they all meant I felt like I was missing a lot. I simply did not understand the mythology in play, and I am unwilling to read a blog post or watch a Youtube explanation video to find out. That's on me. Also, yes, the monster effects were pretty good for what they were, but I've grown very tired over the last decade or two of particle swarm cinder effects. Personal prejudice, but there it is. I will say, I always love it when a movie makes sign language an integral part of the plot. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:07
|
|
|
Halloween Is Special rewatch safe -Watch 60+ minutes of Halloween specials. These can be made-for-TV specials (e.g. Scary Godmother,), these can be Halloween or horror-adjacent episodes of sitcoms (e.g., "Stevil" from Family Matters, "Arnold's Halloween" from Hey Arnold, "And There Was Shawn" of Boy Meets World). You will have to write about every episode or special you watch.  #57.) The Fat Albert Halloween Special (23 minutes; 1977; Youtube) It's Halloween in Fat Albert's neighborhood, and in their homemade costumes, the gang roam around in hopes of candy. But one of their friends is dedicated to scaring people on Halloween! He's terrible at it, and none of the targets actually get scared, but that's still the main conflict. Fat Albert delivers lessons about how it's not cool to scare people on Halloween, about how you shouldn't get excitable in a horror movie at the theater, and how today's kids are pampered with pre-wrapped candy. The jokes are corny (it's Fat Albert, so of course they are), the animation is stiff (it's Fat Albert, so of course it is), and the moralizing is heavy-handed. Still kind of charming, in that retro cartooning way. “That's the trouble. All old people are weird.” Rating: 5/10 #58.) Casper's Halloween Special (25 minutes; 1979; Youtube) Casper is hoping to have a good Halloween, by blending in with the costumed kids, but a trio of supernatural trouble-makers throw his plans into disarray. Everyone could tell from his hovering that he's not a living boy, anyway. The special is loaded with songs that forsake attention to detail in favor of rhymes; for instance, the villains sing about being the scariest ghosts... even though one of them isn't a ghost. No solo verse for the witch, sadly. And their big evil plan is to ruin trick-or-treating for a group of orphans. Mean, for sure, but hardly scary, and definitely small-time spookiness. And then the turn-around comes from nothing more than pointing out what the ghosts are doing to one of them. A shocking lack of narrative punch from this Hanna-Barbera seasonal special. “I just think there's more to life than going around scaring people.” Rating: 4/10 #59.) The Smurfs Halloween Special (1983; Youtube) The Smurfs are preparing for Jokey Smurf's birthday, which happens to be on Halloween. When Lazy Smurf is sent out to gather stuff for the party, he falls asleep, and gets turned red by an inattentive Mother Nature. It's also evil wizard Gargamel's birthday, and he's pissy about getting older. A lazy and boring story, but with enough weirdness mixed in to make it a little fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way. Mother Nature bribes Father Time with a bunch of jam, for instance. The most this special has with Halloween is saying maybe Lazy Smurf won't need a costume as a result of his color change. They sing a birthday song to the tune of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” which lasts longer than the Halloween reference. Truly a damning indictment of the state of television cartoons in the early '80s. “I should have known he'd smurf me.” Rating: 4/10 SPOOKY Bingo complete!
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:11
|
|
|
11. Satan's Slave (1980) (first viewing) In this Indonesian film, a woman's death leaves the rest of her family reeling. The father buries himself in business, the daughter is a party girl, and the son is increasingly withdrawn. Not long after the funeral, the son sees a ghostly vision of his mother, and the arrival of a mysterious new housekeeper is accompanied by further strange apparitions. What's the cause of these ghostly incidents? Well, as the family is repeatedly told by friends, family, servants, fortune tellers, shamen, religious experts, and passers-by, their secular nature is their downfall--by failing to adhere to the tenets of Islam, they are basically leaving the door wide open for the devil. Yes, this is film is so overtly religious that it ends in the evil forces being defeated by the power of prayer. While there's definitely some novelty for a Western audience in seeing a horror movie from a Muslim perspective, the actual movie is pretty sloppy. The characterization is all over the map, with personalities and motivations coming and going. This is most egregious with the father, who spends most of hte movie steadfastly ignoring the warning signs and writing off any possibility of supernatural shenanigans. Eventually, he hires a shaman just to appease the kids. About 30 seconds after this religious intervention starts, there's a wind storm inside the home, windows are violently shattering, and the shaman is impaled by a chandelier. But the very next day, the father is once again treating his kids like they've crazy for talking about ghosts. This kind of inconsistency and illogic plagues the film, and you can't write all of it off as a "dream-like atmosphere" or whatever. Filmmaking wise, there's some neat atmosphere, and I do like the score, but there is a supercut in the making here for the obsessive use of zooms. Something as simple as going from a close-up to a medium shot is instead accomplished by a harsh zoom out. There's at least one sequence where we see something shocking, snap zoom in, then a cut to the person reacting and a snap zoom in on HER. It could definitely be one of those drinking games guaranteed to cause acute alcohol poisoning. I know there was a remake a few years ago that was a big hit and well-received--maybe that one's better? Inshallah. SPOOKY Bingo: This one checks off "Thrilla in Manila." 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:17
|
|
|
Darthemed posted:
Whew, now he can start filling up empty spaces on my card.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:29
|
|
|
11. Short Cuts Creep Box by Patrick Biesemans (9 minutes) "Doctor of what, exactly?" "Psychology and parapsychology." A session with a man speaking with a digital recreation of his dead wife's consciousness brings revelations about the man - and about the session's practitioner. You're not gonna find a better short with a worse title. Excellent, chilling sound design combined with great performances (especially from the doctor, who I spent my entire first watch trying to figure out whether it was Pierce Brosnan (it's not)) and a sharp script that leaves a lasting impression, though a couple sentences seemed excessively froofy and could have been done without. Rich with themes of control and regret. Wouldn't be out of place alongside some of the top Black Mirror episodes. 8.5/10 15/05/11 - ABANDONED GRAIN ELEVATOR (55min) "I'm shooting all this, it's gonna look badass, I bet." And it does! Most of the runtime is dedicated to cool footage of an actual abandoned grain elevator, but there are additional elements that stick in my mind and elevate this to a position above the forum meme movie I assumed this to be. The longest post I can find about it this one, but while the post is complaining about it, it touches on the things that I think make it meaningful. quote:"In Abandoned Grain Elevator, we have two disparate segments, one says 'kids dick around and explore' the other says 'your creepy looking friend will kill you'." But our characters do not hear these distortions, and they are incurious about the past and too boring to consider leaving their own mark in any meaningful way. The only history they discuss is the time their friend fell through a hole in the floor - and he only fell one floor down, and was fine. It's not even a good story. In the end this incuriosity is their undoing, as they unquestioningly seek out their "friend" and things follow to their conclusion. Characters being punished for their character flaws is bog-standard in horror and other genres as well, meaning that in the end, after all of the lingering and meditative shots, the exploration of place and time, this is just a regular horror movie with some interesting shots and ideas. The greatest crime of all. 7.5/10
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:32
|
|
|
20. Deadstream Where to watch? It's exclusive to Shudder  A disgraced internet influencer decides to stream live from a haunted house is a great loving premise. I'll be the first to say I am not a fan of found footage at all. However if its good found footage it works. This film definitely works. It hits all the right notes and its excellent. The acting is pretty good and you at times root for the guy but also hate his guts so that was a good job. The special effects are pretty effective if a little low budget and there are good number of decent jump scares. Its also hilariously funny film as you watch this poor guy just totally loving lose it on camera. Its really effective. Anyway its a great movie and a fun time, check it out!
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 22:49
|
|
|
Got more movies from the library to continue filling out my card. 7. Cat's Eye (1985) An anthology movie with three stories, one involving a guy trying to quit smoking, another with a guy having to walk a narrow ledge around a building, and one in which the titular cat, having weaved his way into and out of the previous stories, saves a small girl from a monster hiding in her bedroom walls. It's pretty light fare overall befitting the PG-13 rating; the final segment by itself is pretty solidly in PG territory. YMMV with this one; all three stories lean pretty heavily on comic elements, and Stephen King's particular odd brand of comedy isn't going to work for everybody. Only the second story is properly tense, but you can probably tell going into it how things are going to shake out. At any rate, there's some laughs, an excellent catte, and some cameos by several other Stephen King characters and/or works. Terrible, repetitive soundtrack, though, as has been noted. Worth giving a shot if you haven't seen it. 3/5 It's an anthology, so it kinda, sorta fills in the Tales Of Terror square. They're not really that terrifying, though.  8. Critters (1986) Eight hungry, vicious aliens with too many teeth escape imprisonment on an asteroid and escape to a farm outside a small Kansas town where they terrorize the family who live there. Interstellar, shapeshifting bounty hunters follow after them and do quite possibly more damage overall than their quarry. My mind immediately compared this to the later Tremors, though that is a better movie. It does capture some of the boredom of rural life, with bowling, drinking, going to church at all hours and making homemade explosives being the sort of entertainments available to local residents. It's got some good humor going for it, plus Billy Zane with a mullet and Broadway heavyweight Terrence Mann as one of the bounty hunters. I understand the sequel is considerably better, and the best in the series. This one is just adequate. 2.5/5 Both the critters and the bounty hunters chasing them qualify as Spaced Invaders for our Spooky Bingo Card.  9. Rosemary's Baby(1968) Really drat good movie about, let's just say, a troubled pregnancy. It's a slow burn and Mia Farrow is great at conveying Rosemary's ever-increasing sense of unease with everything going on around her. Annoyance with her new neighbors gives way to distrust, suspicion, and finally paranoia that something terrible has happened to her and that nearly everyone around her is in on it. And of course in the end it turns out she was right. It all pays off in the last scene, which somehow manages to be both climactic and anti-climactic at the same time. Probably the best movie I've seen this month. 5/5 This one's spot on the Bingo Card should be pretty obvious, and we'll bid Mrs. Woodhouse a fond Goodnight, Mommy. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 23:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 09:55 |
|
|
12. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) (in what may be extremely poor taste I am counting this for Children of the Damned)  "He's a floppy little boy, isn't he? But there's nothing wrong with him." A great and haunting movie with a couple missteps. They clearly did their research on school shooters as each scene with Kevin checks off another box of something to be concerned about. The film plays with time to create some effective contrasts, but mostly avoids overly-clever groanworthiness by remaining grounded in the mother's perspective and presenting the time jumps as her memory and reflections. Some of the needle drops had me cringing, though. An upbeat song playing while she's sad! "In My Room" as she's going through his room! Wow. 1:52 is quite a long runtime and the premise oft threatens to wear out its welcome given that it becomes pretty clear early on where things are heading, but there are generally enough turns to keep things fresh. This is a movie very much carried by its performances, and there isn't one weak point in the cast. Tilda Swinton holds it all together, Ezra Miller is suspiciously good as overly-self-aware teen Kevin, but Jasper Newell is the standout as young Kevin, just a mean and manipulative little boy. I expected more from John C. Reilly, but the writing does him a disservice as he's shunted to the side, and his position as the guy who ignores all the warning signs and just tries to paper everything over leaves him typecast as just his usual comedic self with a mild dramatic tinge. A shame also given that so much of the movie focuses on exploring where blame could be assigned, explores the similarities between the mother and Kevin, but generally cuts away from the father instead of diving into how he was Kevin's primary enabler. I know this demonstrates how effective a manipulator Kevin is, but still. Hell, it never even shows them talking about Kevin! Maybe that's the point. I'm disproportionately complaining about what really is quite a good movie, so let me highlight the most interesting part of the film: this opening sequence of the parents at a tomato festival overseas.  In one of the film's least on-the-nose uses of imagery, we cut away from the mother's blissful crowdsurfing and bathing in tomatoes to her waking up on the couch next to an abandoned extremely basic meal of microwaved food, eggs, and ketchup. But the festival itself is a simulation of mass violence - in just a few seconds we see not only tomato slurry being thrown, but a flip-flop and some kind of garment. As it zooms in the chaotic nature of the event is undercut by neon glasses, goggles, and headbands that stand out and make it clear and everything is in good fun. There's kissing and laughter, but there's pushing and falling as well; the noise of the crowd is a constant roar in which laughter and screaming are indistinguishable. And while we eventually focus on the mother's enjoyment of the experience, tying into Kevin blaming her and her blaming herself for his nature, the scene makes it clear that the drive towards chaos and violence is not a singular one, but one that may found within all of us. 8/10 
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2022 23:52
|
|