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Happy Halloween, horror movie challenge thread. Playing catch up with what I watched in the last few days of this month: 36) Knock Knock - I don't know what I expected this thriller film to be; I'm not sure it really knew, either. It feels like a bit of a throwback to 90s era erotic thrillers, a la Wild Things, but there isn't really a lot of bite to it. The psychological thriller parts are kind of repetitive, and I'm not sure that I really like the whole "it's a game where we try to force a guy to have sex with us so hard, and if he does we have to ruin his life" motivation of the two female leads. That said, since the whole thing is a 90-minute setup to a joke where Keanu Reeves accidentally likes a Facebook status of him having extramarital sex, I don't know if I can totally hate it. 2.5 out of 5. 37) Fright Night (1985) - Definitely a throwback to a bygone-era (30 years is bygone now? Jesus), when television dictated what you saw, low-budget access television was a more prevalent thing, and people still hosted television shows dictated to playing old horror movies. I was a child in this era, so I'll always be a bit nostalgic for the world this is showing. That said, while some of the actors are on top of their game for this movie, namely Chris Sarandon and Roddy MacDowell, most of the leads are pretty weak. It's maybe a bit too long in the middle, and I wish there was more focus on the "Evil" Ed character, so that his eventual turn to evil didn't feel so under-written. Still, a pretty original film for its time, and an enjoyable one to boot. 3 out of 5. 38) Husk - Evil scarecrows, which are actually evil possessed zombie scarecrows... with giant gently caress-off nails in their fingers, so they can be dime store Freddy Kruegers. That's about all you need to know. The characters are stock and act stupid the whole time; the script is serviceable at best and the direction so-so. You're basically here for a mob of semi-indistinguishable fast zombies running up and turning teens into a mess of chum. It's perfectly fine if that's what you want, but there isn't much more than that. 2 out of 5. 39) Bride of Chucky - I have a confession: I was terrified of Chucky as a kid. Terrified. So much so that my formerly-beloved My Buddy was banished to the basement forever, for the crime of looking too much like Chucky. So much so that I still have weird dreams when I watch any of the original three. But, I'm not scared of stitch-face Chucky, or this movie. Maybe because he no longer resembles something from my childhood? Maybe because this movie isn't as dependent on Chucky jump-scare-ing out from behind stuff and screaming? I dunno, but I appreciate that there is one film in this franchise that I can watch without apparent psychological trauma. The movie has a lot of bad acting, mediocre dialogue, and a terrible stock "token gay best friend" character. But the animatronics are probably the best in this series, and Jennifer Tilly slots in as Tiffany so well that you kinda forget that she was never a part of anything beforehand. It's fun, this one, and director Ronny Yu made it work a lot better than I would expect the fourth "Child's Play" movie to be. 3.5 out of 5. 40) Freddy vs. Jason - Speaking of movies that Ronny Yu made a lot better than they needed to be... This one actually ends up being my favorite "Nightmare on Elm Street" AND my favorite "Friday the 13th" movie. There's a great sense of history and respect for those two franchises here, even if a lot of things end up feeling like Die Another Day-style callbacks than they do organic components of the story. I can appreciate an eye for the finer details; I'm a tad disappointed that they didn't have as good an eye for the casting department, though. I'm also not as enamored of Yu's use of slow motion throughout, or the whole way things get washed in colors throughout - it feels like a lot of fine details are getting lost due to all the overbearing uses of reds and blues. Still, minor quibbles when the end result is this fun. It's the best possible version of this scenario. 4 out of 5. Final tally for October: 1) The Witch 2) Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers 3) Return of the Living Dead II 4) We Are Still Here 5) Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare 6) The Thing (1982) 7) Pumpkinhead 8) Candyman 3: Day of the Dead 9) Critters 2: The Main Course 10) Goodnight Mommy 11) Dr. Giggles 12) Maniac Cop 2 13) Prince of Darkness 14) The People Under the Stairs 15) Killer Klowns from Outer Space 16) The Mummy (1959) 17) Hush 18) Friday the 13th, Part 2 19) Tremors 2: Aftershocks 20) The Blob (1988) 21) Late Phases 22) A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 5: The Dream Child 23) 10 Cloverfield Lane 24) Splinter 25) Creep 26) Bubba Ho-Tep 27) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers 28) The Fly (1958) 29) AVP: Alien vs. Predator 30) A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) 31) Let Us Prey 32) The Frighteners 33) Silver Bullet 34) Halloween III: Season of the Witch 35) Poltergeist II: The Other Side 36) Knock Knock 37) Fright Night (1985) 38) Husk 39) Bride of Chucky 40) Freddy vs. Jason
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Nov 1, 2016 04:39
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Put on two more short anime films earlier today:  29. Digital Devil Monogatari Megami Tensei: Yes, like the video game series. But not based on it. In fact, it turns out the Shin Megami and Digital Devil Story games come from a series of novels that are very different from the games. There's a high school setting, there are demons, but this is more outright hosed up until the final 10 minutes, when it turns into an epic battle to save Japan/the world. The plot is basically Evilspeak (bullied kid summons a demon using a computer), but it's considerably more nightmarish due to being disjointed and told out-of-order in parts (with some dreams included as bonus) to fit the short 50 minute runtime. As you can tell by the two screenshots above, the art is very moody and stylish the entire time (I couldn't find shots of my favorite scene, when the protagonist wakes up and his room is blue except for blinding solid white light from the outside, with blue bars from the slats crossing the room like a film noir shot) and the presentation saves what could have been a silly premise. There is also some Akira-esque "absorbing horror", which I guess was popular at the time.  .5/5 30. Hell Target: As the cover art proclaims, this is "SF Psycho Horror Animation". The lousy cover pulled my interest, but the movie matches it: incoherent, this one is a feature film's worth of content shoved into 42 minutes that batter you senseless. Kill after kill happens, and none of it matters. I have no idea who any of the people in this are. I can appreciate the wild kills and hallucinogenic visuals on their own - a lot of detail here - but it doesn't add up to much of a movie. Essentially, in this one an expedition lands on a red planet. They're killed, and send out a distress signal. A crew comes to rescue them, but they get killed expect for one person. A third crew comes to retrieve some data with the help of the survivor, then they all get killed and it turns out the planet might actually be hell and they wanted to find Earth's location (???) (I don't know, this all came from like two lines of dialogue at the end). .5/5And now I'm off to start #31, just two hours before Halloween ends.
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Nov 1, 2016 04:43
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K. Waste posted:Day 25 Day 31 Checking off the year with Halloween in a theater, preceded unintentionally by the 1952 Donald Duck short Trick or Treat.
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Nov 1, 2016 05:25
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Evil Vin posted:1. Trauma (1993) - 3/5 29. Thing (1982) Some scientist in Anartica have to deal with a shapeshifting alien. I have start by saying I loved the special effects in this. But storywise I was ruined by all the homages I had seen over the years. Still had fun though.  /530. Death Spa (1988) People are dying mysteriously at a computer controlled gym. I don't know if it was because I was watching this with a bunch of people and just joking the whole time but I enjoyed this stupid piece of junk. It's super stupid, and really makes no sense but the murders are cool. /531. Swamp Thing (1982) A scientist is turned into a monster while in the swamp. There's a cool concept in this movie, and a cool costume, but it kind of goes nowhere. It looks really good for a film from '82 other than the final bad guy (which is insanely goofy) /5BONUS: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) Probably going to finish off the extra movies on the list I didn't watch in next few days (Basketcase, Brain Damage, and Purge Election Year), and maybe some more rewatches (What We Do in the Shadows, and the Dawn of the Dead remake). Evil Vin fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 05:53
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31. Madman: Has the decency to end with a song referencing the title and events of the film and nothing else. I've heard this referenced alongside The Prowler and The Burning as decent-to-good slasher boom films spurned by Friday the 13th, but this was incredibly boring. Some of the kills are theoretically good, but they have none of Savini's art to them and the direction in the lead up seems to be to eat up as much minutes of film as possible per kill for "suspense"; every slasher film has that one kill where the build up lasts for minutes while someone wanders around and shouts, the music mounting, but every single kill is like that. It wrecks the pacing of the film entirely. Also, let's talk about this killer: he doesn't shut up. Is there any wonder he didn't catch on? See, this guy's deal is that he's dead, so he grunts and goes "Brrrrr!!" to everything. It's unintentionally hilarious. Unlike Jason, Michael, the Prowler, etc. Madman Marz has a face, but he looks like a cartoon old prospector that took a gash across the cheek. By the end, I was at least hoping for a good slasher chase finale, but they robbed me even of that. The Madman comes out of the dark, gets the final girl, imitates Leatherface by throwing her on a hook, she stabs him knocking over a candle which starts a fire in the corner of a room, ????? cue the the end theme. Thanks. I could have watched The Wailing instead of this, and now I just feel like I wasted my time. /5
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Nov 1, 2016 06:02
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Been a busy weekend, but I managed to pull one more in under the wire, beating last year's record. #61. The Great Hypnotist (2014) Xu Ruining is the current hottest psychologist in China, with an incredibly effective use of hypnotherapy. He gets referred a strange new case, a young woman named Ren Xiaoyan who claims she can see dead people, and has been through a score of therapists. What ensues is an intense game of cat and mouse between the two of them, but who is the cat, and who is the mouse? And what dark secrets will come to light? I liked this movie quite a bit. It's the sort of movie where every shot feels deliberate and careful. That hypnotism is a STRONG part of the narrative makes you almost feel like the film tries to hypnotize you. On top of that, there's a compelling narrative with many twists and turns by the end. It's a good little flick sitting on Netflix currently. I give The Great Hypnotist  out of Five
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Nov 1, 2016 06:12
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(A tad behind as something came up this month, but I plan on finishing out my list in the next couple days, after skipping ahead to my Halloween choices tonight! 57 completed in the month proper, and by dawn it'll be a nice prime 59, like 13, or 31.) 29.1: Recent news in South Korea made a certain few seconds in Train to Busan really funny to see what with the zombies being dropped out of helicopters implying the government can't be trusted. I enoyed this a lot more than I was expecting to just knowing that it was about zombies+a train in SK. It delivers a direct but surprisingly thorough exploration of the theme of selflessness while serving up abundant, blended measures of comedy/cheesiness, creepiness, drama, and balls-out action. It puts together a bunch of cool setpieces and while it's not quite as impressively consistent in its use of direction on the train or trains, as it were as Snowpiercer (speaking of which, I can't help but wonder if the tunnel sequence was a shoutout), it does way more with geography and also has some nice uses of vertical space. Definitely worth checking out, there's something for everyone and something just feels so fun about it. 8.5/10 29.2: I got a lot more out of Shaun of the Dead now that I've watched it straight through from the beginning and paid attention, not to mention that I've seen the rest of the trilogy now. Definitely a strong start to it, it feels like it has its own identity while being the Watchmen of zombie movies, both in its commentary and its, uh, fractal structure. 9/10 VROOM VROOM fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 06:31
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61. Let the Right One In: Capped off the Halloween horror-fest with this Swedish pile of human misery. The English dub isn't good, except for whoever voiced Eli doing well, but was worth turning on. The cinematography is so deliberate and the scene staging so considered that subtitles are a detriment in the distraction they provide. This could rather easily be made into a silent film and still be great for the relatively little dialog, by the way.
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Nov 1, 2016 06:45
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1. The Last Exorcism 2. Quarantime 3. Afflicted 4. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) 5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) 6. The Ring (remake) 7. Scanners 8. The Brood 9. The Babadook 10. Splinter 11. Vampyr 12. Cloverfield 13. Jennifer's Body 14. Pet Sematary 15. Day of the Dead (original) 16. Dawn of the Dead (remake) 17. Zombieland 18. Shaun of the Dead 19. Frankenstein's Army 20. Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead 21. The Thing (1982) 22. The Thing (2011) 23. The Amityville Horror (2005) 24. Dark Skies 25. The Descent 26. Jacob's Ladder 27. Silent Hill 28. Silent Hill: Revelation 29. Friday the 13th (2009 remake) 30. Carriers 31. Manos: The Hands of Fate ~*~EXTRA CREDIT~*~ 32. Infini 33. Lily C.A.T - I dug it for the most part, although it felt a little unfocused in the face of its sub-90-minute runtime. Like it's got this spooky conspiracy where someone or something is controlling the ship independent of the crew, but once you find out what it is, it's just like "Oh, okay" and it goes nowhere. Likewise, the whole "there are two unauthorized people on the ship!!!" mystery subplot kinda goes nowhere once it's revealed who the intruders are; it's another case of "oh, okay". The monster design was neat and very reminiscent of the Thing without being an outright copy, although I wish it had had more screen time and more to do (again, a byproduct of the short runtime). The 'Alien' influences in the interior designs of the ship were mega-obvious, too, and it looked great. 34. The Mist - I hadn't seen this one in a while, and I didn't realize it's almost 10 years old. On a re-watch, I still like it but the CGI really hasn't held up. I get why people don't like the sucker punch ending, but I think it works well with the movie's theme that humanity is scarier than any monsters ever could be. Aaaaaaaaand that's a wrap for this year.
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Nov 1, 2016 08:36
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Halloween Special Bonus Film It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown  Hell, I join in with everyone else. It's been years since I've watched it in it's entirety, perhaps it hasn't been since I was a kid. Young enough that I hadn't had any real idea of religion, WWI, or France's airspace being used as a front during the war. And as such, I remember having a very knee-jerk reaction first watching it; to the 'boring' scenes of airplane noises and snoopy doing nothing except wandering from right to left, being upset by the tragedy that Charlie Brown being given rocks, and confused by the reactions about the Great Pumpkin. I barely had any concept of stories introducing aspects of their worlds that weren't real. Linus believed he was real, and everyone talked about it, so of course he will show up at the end and vindicate Linus. And having grown up with it, I've come to have a great respect for it. Those boring scenes were a creatively told reflection of a period in history. The treatment of Chuck as a contemplation on the ability of childhood's ability to disappoint. And the reaction to the Great Pumpkin as criticism of blind faith, and to an extent of cult-like trust of 'authorities' and those we love. As well, it's nice to see the Peanuts characters in such an early, crude yet refined manner. It's kind of a reflection on the early specials ability to affect without being sterilized to be completely inoffensive. This is made all the more evident by having this one, the third special produced, followed by It's Magic, Charlie Brown, the 21st special, on the official Blu-ray release. In anycase, I'd certainly love to once again make it a yearly tradition it used to be for me. Edit: An addition. A Nightmare Before Christmas  I was curious to revisit this one, as once again it's been quite a few years since I saw it. It was one I was kinda scared to come back to, considering the reputation it's held in the last 15 years. To put it bluntly, I was one of those kids who was on their way to spending way too much money at the local Hot Topic, saved by the fact that there wasn't a local Hot Topic. And as I grew older, I turned on the film as a way to distance myself from my youth and 'socially unacceptable' weirdos. And even well after I've grown beyond these feelings, I've been reluctant to go back to it. Mainly I've thought back to people's horror stories of finding out how bad the original Transformers series was. But, recent discussion inspired me to give it a shot, and it's still fairly alright. Though what I thought was the real highlight this time around was all the tertiary, unnamed characters, crafted with the same level of quality and character as the named ones. And while the Halloween and Christmas locals have a lot of spacial quirks and characterization, the real artistic settings are perhaps the 'real world' houses. All of them constructed with right or 45-degree angles to give them a real flat, almost Rockwellian, look to them. They're practically sparse 2D drawings constructed out of three dimensional items. Though the story is pretty uninspired, almost foreshadowing Laika Studio's recent complaints, and the music's fine though a little one note. It is nice to kinda end this season with a film whose visual style was influenced by the one my string of films started with, The Cabinet of Calligari. All in all, I can at least reflect on that the film is still decent, though I wasn't as in love with it as I was as a kid. I'm glad I watched it, but I don't really feel like I'll need to see it for a while now. But right now, it was a great way to transition the end of this season into the next one up here in Canada, the endless march to Christmas as we all feel our toes slowly falling off. SomeJazzyRat fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 09:03
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29. The Neon Demon Loved loved loved this. Gorgeous, great soundtrack, it was like a better Starry Eyes with some Beyond the Black Rainbow and Suspiria thrown in. I get why it is so divisive, but it worked for me. 30. Jacob's Ladder Disappointed by this. It wasn't bad, but I was expecting more than just a decent flick. Nothing jumped out, but maybe I just had high expectations after so many recommendations. 31. Witchfinder General This was okay, mostly worth the watch for Vincent Price. It does keep you engaged till the end, so that was nice. Woohoo, I made it!
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Nov 1, 2016 09:19
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.1: It was amazing to watch Halloween (1978) for the first time as one of the last films this month, after seeing everything that would not have existed without it (but especially Behind the Mask). It's the piece that makes the whole puzzle apparent, especially as I managed to be a massive Carpenter fan without this. I somehow made it this far in life without knowing that Carpenter had a character watch The Thing From Another World in 1978. I don't even feel the need to go into any more detail, except to point out that it managed to do what it does without having to artificially isolate the characters or make up a lame reason to have phones not work. 10 .2: Trick 'r Treat was great fun. I'm glad I saw Southbound before this, so I got to enjoy it before finding out it is apparently a grimdark ripoff of this. This one integrates its segments more effectively and in a more meaningful way, and even manages to pull off telling the story cyclically without having to (Southbound) invoke a time loop/purgatory. Definitely going to be a Halloween tradition. 9/10
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Nov 1, 2016 10:19
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Not that anyone cares, but I completed the challenge with 32 movies watched.code:My biggest SURPRISE this month was Child's Play. I thought it really held up as a fun spooky slasher. It wasn't good-bad, it was genuine fun. The Friday the 13th 2009 remake was also a big surprise. I thought it was actually a really worthy reboot and a genuine pleasure. My biggest disappointment was Candyman. I loved it as a kid but as an adult it didn't hold up for me. That Dang Dad fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 16:15
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1. Plan 9 from Outer Space 2. Mosquito 3. The Mist 4. Young Frankenstein 5. It Follows 6. Blood Moon 7. Tales from the Darkside: The Movie 8. Open Grave 9. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 10. Jeepers Creepers 2 11. From Dusk Till Dawn 12. The Frostbiter: Curse of the Wendigo 13. Them! 14. War of the Worlds (1952) 15. War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise) 16. The Thing (2011) 17. The Descent 18. 2001: A Space Odyssey 19. Forbidden Planet 20. Monsters Vs. Aliens 21. The Revenant 22. Etraordinary Tales 23. Killer Klowns from Outer Space 24. The Happening 25. Häxan 26. Shaun of the Dead 27. Fido 28. Zombieland 29. Frankenstein (1931) 30. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil 31. Wolfen 32. Unearthed 33. Black Scorpion 34. Viy (Original) 35. Tales of Terror 36. The Fly (1958) 37. The Thing from Another World 38. Maggie 39. Hansel & Gretel With Hunters 40. Grizzly (1976) 41. Le Lac des Morts Vivants 42. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) 43. Willow Creek 44. The Neon Dead 45. The Wicker Man (1973) 46. Twice Told Tales 47. Witchfinder General 48. Phantom of the Opera (1925) 49. Godzilla vs. Mothra (English dub) 50. Mindwarp 51. My Name is Bruce 52. Theatre of Blood 53. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit 54. Evil Dead (Original) 55. Evil Dead II 56. Army of Darkness 57. Evil Dead (2012) 58. V/H/S 59. Dog Soldiers 60. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 61. Let the Right One In Family Favorites*: Wife - Fido Daughter - Evil Dead (2013) Son - Army of Darkness * They didn't view everything I did and also watched some things I didn't such as The Mummy (1932). My Favorites: Emotional Ride: Let the Right One In Surprise: Willow Creek. Liked it a whole lot and expected it to suck. Best of the Classics: Tie between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Phantom of the Opera Badgood: Le Lac des Morts Vivants. A surprisingly tender subplot in a truly terrible bit of exploitation trash. Went Batshit: The Thing from Another World. The kerosene bit    Ones that just sucked rear end: Unearthed
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Nov 1, 2016 17:06
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Day 31: Hellraiser, 1987 Don't think this needs to be talked about. One of those movies any horror fan knows. The Beast with Five Fingers, 1946 Now this one is for slightly more seasoned horror fans. Horror from the 40s are kind of ignored because of the war and stuff. Peter Lorre is in it, and he is just as much an icon of horror as he was for crime and film noir. He's loving great in this movie. A crippled old pianist that only got strength in one hand lives a secluded life life in some old mansion (I have pointed out before my boner for that setting) and makes a new will that gives the house and money to his nurse. Two greedy relatives and a lawyer tries to get that will canceled in favor of the old will after the old pianist dies. The piano starts playing in the middle of the night and the lawyer is found dead, strangled by a single hand. The pianist's good hand is missing from his body down in the mausoleum. There is a haunted killer hand on the loose. It's a pretty drat great movie for any fan of old school horror. Martyrs, 2008 A pretty famous French movie I've seen a few times before. Still a dark and gloomy movie. We use the word martyr to describe someone that dies for their faith or cause today, but originally it means to be a witness. It's about being a witness to extreme suffering. To be pushed to the thresholds of pain and misery with no hope of it ending before you die. It's a pretty brutal film and not for people looking for a fun movie. Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory, 1961 Or Lycanthropus in the original Italian tittle. A pretty poo poo movie. Lame and boring. Dragged on despite not being long, but I got no regrets wasting time on it. It had some charm like most crappy horror movies from the early 60s. It's not a movie worth tracking down, but if you want poo poo to just play while you zone out, you can do a lot worse. The Return of the Living Dead, 1985 What a great finish to my marathon. One of the greatest horror comedies ever. So entertaining. Tits, zombies, blood and punk rock. What else would you ever want from a movie? I think this might be the movie that created the idea that zombies eats brains. Got to be true since it's based on a true story. Well that it from me. Here is the list for the zero people that care over what I watched from start to end: Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, 1995 The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1988 The Changeling, 1980 Kill List, 2011 The Eye, 2002 Diabolique, 1955 Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, 1975 Wishing Stairs, 2003 The Invisible Man, 1933 April Fool's Day, 1986 The Oblong Box, 1969 King Kong, 1933 Blue Velvet, 1986 Inland Empire, 2006 StageFright, 1987 Black Christmas, 1974 The Devil's Backbone, 2001 The Host, 2006 Faces of Death, 1978 Naked Massacre, 1976 Frankenstein, 1931 The Last Man on Earth, 1964 Bride of Frankenstein, 1935 Son of Frankenstein, 1939 Young Frankenstein, 1974 House of Usher, 1960 Rise: Blood Hunter, 2007 Dawn of the Dead, 1978 Cemetery Man, 1994 Braindead, 1992 Fritt vilt, 2006 Fritt vilt II, 2008 Haunts, 1977 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, 1986 The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 Babycall, 2011 Hellraiser, 1987 The Beast with Five Fingers, 1946 Martyrs, 2008 Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory, 1961 The Return of the Living Dead, 1985
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Nov 1, 2016 17:17
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#9. The Witch (2015). A family moves from their village to their own plot of land in the woods. Bad things happen. I've always been a fan of horror films set in times before the 1800's. The primitive environment allows for a different kind of horror. With The Witch, It reminded me of Eyes of Fire at points, even though they take place over 100 years apart in time. All in all, this was a fantastic movie. #10. The Hunger (1983). A vampire keeps lovers for an amount of time before casting them aside when bored with them. This leads the vampire to scientist who she chooses as her next lover. This is a strange vampire movie. It's cold 80's aesthetic feels like a comedown off pure Colombian cocaine. It maintains a visual and narrative that's consistent throughout. You'll be treated to jarring transitions between scenes that are sonically and visually overwhelming with scenes that capture a subtle beauty of large city. David Bowie and Susan Sarandon are fantastic in this as well. They both give amazing performances that shouldn't go unnoticed.
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Nov 1, 2016 17:40
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Finished my last two horror flicks last night, bringing me up to 31! First time I've done this that I actually made it to 31, so I'm pretty pleased.  30. Possession (1981) A man's wife starts exhibiting strange behavior. All signs point to infidelity, but maybe it's more than that. This was a surreal and horrifying movie that dealt with obsession in a truly unnerving way. I really enjoyed it, but i definitely need time to digest it and then give it a re-watch later on. /531. Late Phases (2014) A blind Vietnam veteran moves into a retirement community to find that pets and people are dying to "animal attacks." Probably the best werewolf movie I've seen since Dog Soldiers or Brotherhood of the Wolf. Watched it blind and was tremendously impressed, I loved it. /5
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Nov 1, 2016 22:28
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So yeah, breaking the spirit of the thread here, but I watched another film today: The ListThe Remakes 49. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)  I think there's a fine, yet distinct distinction between Grim, Grit, and Grunge. Due to the nature of the media, especially circa 1970, a lot of cheap films have a gritty quality. And the original TCM, shooting in real dilapidated houses and using real animal bones and caracasses gave it a grimy quality. Meanwhile, this film is a product of a decade of grunge informing a cultural aesthetic. This is the film birthed out of a thousand music videos by NIN and their ripoffs. The ones shot in faux distressed apartments with doll heads and unwound string and dust and all sorts of bullshit. It's imagery used to affect an aesthetic, created through artificial means. That's what 'grunge' means to me. Where the original was, this film tries to recreate it in false means. In the grand scheme of horror, it's far from the worst, but I really can't bring myself to care for this film. It tires to make things so grand and horrific in ways the original wasn't. The first was a very simple film, giving a very believable atmosphere to the events that occurred. It was a very simple, almost disjointed series of events that tied together in the end. In this one, the events just flow together in such a clean manner, it's almost to the film's detriment. The kids are uninspired, and once the film gets in to gear they're all pretty much written in the same, stressed out and high strung manner. The only thing this film out does the original on is the nihilistic fatalism, with the suicide and the mercy killing being the highlights. But where the original giving an impression, this one just leaves me depressed. It's not that fun to watch, and I pretty much came to this genre to watch some fun movies. A lot of the film is pretty much described as high budget and more 'hollywood', but it all creates an artificiality that I don't think creates a film that stands up to the original. And considering how closely it sticks to the original (more so than any of it's sequels), that's a huge detriment. I'd rather watch the shorter and much more interestingly crafted original. Next up: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
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Nov 1, 2016 23:37
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With the Scream Stream finally over, it's time to tally up the new watches. 1 - Interview with the vampire I'd technically seen about half of this on TV before, but it was my first time watching the whole thing. This movie doesn't hold up at all. Despite the lavish production values and copious amounts of gore, it's a really dull movie that's up its own rear end and horribly dated in its ideas of what's cool or edgy. 2/5 2 - The Howling Corny and fun, with a lot of Joe Dante's typical satirical bite. Not the best werewolf transformations you'll ever see, but definitely not the worst. This movie feels so powerfully 70s.3/5 3 - The Last Man On Earth Other than a few scenes with the army, this movie really has nothing going for it other than having Price as the lead. I'm ashamed to say I like the Will Smith movie better overall.2.5/5 4 - Lifeforce The craziest poo poo you'll ever see this side of Possession. What a rack. 4/5 5 - Extraordinary Tales Fun series of shorts with weird and interesting visuals, based on some of Poe's best works. The animation is kinda weak in places, but overall very charming. Lee and Lugosi were born to narrate. My biggest complaint is the last short's decision to let the visuals speak for themselves. As good as they are, Poe was a true wordsmith, and losing his prose weakens the story. 3.5/5 6 - Carnosaur Thumbs up! Terrific! I liked this movie! - Gene Siskel 3.5/5 7 - Candyman Haunting, marvelously slow-paced, and bursting with metaphors and messages in almost every scene. Tony Todd can chew up scenery like few others. 4/5 8 - John Dies at the End Really creative and funny, and very creepy at times, with varying quality of special effects from scene to scene. Rushes to a really abrupt conclusion after what feels like the halfway point of the story, but stays fun throughout. 3.5/5 9 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers Probably the best cinematography in a horror film this side of The Exorcist. Everyone's great in this, especially sexy young Jeff Goldblum. The special effects, while a small part of the film's running time, are top notch and truly haunting. Hobodog is one of the top horror movie images I've ever seen. 4/5 10 - Horror of Dracula Wow! I really wish I liked this film more, but it's one of those times where Hammer's low budget is just too obvious for its own good. Some great scenes and performances combined with some terrible effects and really bad lighting. Cushing and Lee are a delight, of course. 3/5 11 - Witchfinder General Really intense performance from Price, and really methodical in its brutality. Got distracted by real life stuff while streaming so can't give an accurate score. ?/5 12 - The Manitou Crazy, stupid, cheap, intriguing, grotesque, sometimes frightening, slightly racist. A good time, in other words. 3/5 13 - The Haunting(1963) Really compelling for its strong characters and the intense performances some of them give. While low on scares, the ones it has are pretty drat well executed. Really neat camera-based effects and cinematography in general. Would date Theo. 4/5 14 - Pontypool Really interesting twist on the old "zombie outbreak" formula. Strong central cast, great use of the movie's almost only location. The 'rules' of the outbreak really didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I suppose that's fine since the characters have no idea what the gently caress's going on for most of the running time. Stephen McHattie's definitely got a voice for radio. Mort aux Anglais! 3.5/5 15 -Don't Look Now Haunting and surreal movie about grief and relationships. Lots of weird and not so weird sexuality. Do not watch while sleepy. 3/5 16 - Jekyll and Hyde, Together Again Or maybe this is the craziest poo poo you'll ever see? A pure farce in the style of Mel Brooks or the Zucker brothers, this goofy sex and drug comedy was the surprise hit of the Scream Stream. While some of its jokes land flat, it never lets up and goes all out with both its concept and its gags. Even the complete lack of a third act doesn't slow it down. If only it didn't have some unfortunately homophobic and racist 80s gags, it'd probably be a 5 for me. 4/5 17 - The Sentinel Satanic and catholic conspiracies combined with the horror and disgust inherent in the elderly. A trippy movie full of memorable scenes and horrifying visuals. Whoever did the makeup effects in this one deserves some kind of award. 3/5 18 - Angel Heart Another one I'd seen partway through before. While the film was perfectly well made and acted, it didn't particularly grab me. Some really disturbing and bloody scenes. Reminiscent of films like Devil's Advocate and Seven, for obvious reasons. 2.5/5 19 - Rope A perfectly executed one-room drama. Nearly done in one continuous shot, this film has some really strong performances and dramatic use of the free flowing camera. Hitchcock was a master, plain and simple. 4.5/5 20 - The Legend of Hell House Creepy, scary, perverted, shocking, puzzling. This movie has tons of great horror moments, but sometimes feels like it's meandering, as characters don't react with the appropriate urgency after some of the manifestations, and some of the escalation of the supernatural threat feels very start 'n stoppy. Pamela Franklin kills it in every scene she's in.3.5/5 21 - The Relic Jesus Christ, gently caress off with this poo poo. It's like if Roland Emmerich tried to direct an EC comics adaptation. The only redeeming quality was that the creature design was kinda neat, in a Turok the Dinosaur Hunter kind of way.  /522 - The Mangler Dumb fun, full of cheese and ham. JJJ Pictureman was too good for this world. 3/5 23 - Rosemary's Baby Ugh. This movie is about drug-induced rape, and is directed by Roman Polanski. While the feeling of social alienation and abuse Rosemary experiences throughout the film is incredibly authentic and heartbreaking, and the use of the score and the cinematography in general is striking, haunting and effective, it's impossible for me to divorce the film from its creator, especially since the movie reads like a goddamn how-to for his crime. If you're the sort of viewer who doesn't let that sort of thing bother them, it's like a way way way way way way way better version of Lords of Salem.  /524 - Hellraiser Yet another partly-watched. Not much to say other than that it's a stone cold classic. Hellraiser 1 and 2 are some of the goriest films you'll ever see, and this film uses its gore to be genuinely disturbing and horrifying, rather than to be silly like Dead Alive or Evil Dead 2. Top of the shelf kink-shaming. It's hard to believe Pinhead became such a ridiculous character over time. 4/5 25 - Are You Afraid of the Dark - The Tale of the Silver Sight This barely counts as a movie, but this 3-parter was apparently shown as a tv movie at least once, and sold as such on home video. Being from the 1999 relaunch seasons, it's well below the quality of the average AYAOTD episode, and since we're already talking low budget children's entertainment, that's dire. Bad acting, no sets, obviously shot on video, lots of filler material. What a waste of the long-awaited premise of the Midnight Society being involved a real-life scary story. 1.5/5 Rewatches: Christine - 5/5 Coraline - 4.5/5 The Exorcist - 5/5 Stir of Echoes - 2/5 Frankenstein(1931) - 3.5/5 Creepshow - 4.5/5 Creepshow 2 - 3.5/5 Chopping Mall - 4/5 WNUF Halloween Special - Special/5 For those who can't do math, that's 25 new films and 34 total. Pretty good, considering how busy I was. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Nov 11, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 00:26
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I didn't get to participate in this thread really, but here is my completed month: * - Rewatches Chopping Mall - I ended up watching this one twice. Fun, fun movie. Super campy and goofy. Interview With The Vampire - My most shameful first-time watch of the month, but I don't feel bad for not having seen it earlier The Howling The Last Man On Earth Lifeforce- Maybe the best (first time) movie I watched this month. Fantastic. Also 80s af and bonkers The Hole- Horrible early 00's junk. Shiver of The Vampire - My first Rollin. Psychedelic softcore with good music. I need to give some of his other films a chance Taste The Blood Of Dracula Extraordinary Tales - Different... I really liked the animation and Bela's narration in Tale Tell Heart Christine - Actually this is a close contender for 'most shameful first watch' The Black Cat High Lane Deathdream - Disturbing  (aka, The Witch, The Demon) (1963) - WOW, one of two sleepers this month. I literally typed "free horror movies" into YT and picked this at random from a playlist of 200 others. It influence on The Exorcist is evident.Scars of Dracula Prom Night - Forgettable. The VHS is going for $200 on ebay though The Mummy (Hammer) - The mummy is still the least scary Universal monster, but I loved the shot of him rising out of the water Pontypool I really liked this. An interesting, original story. Creepy. The few parts of absurd humor came from nowhere, during the tensest parts, making them funnier than they would have otherwise been. The Haunting (original) - I can respect it.. but I didn't like it. Blood For Dracula - I have avoided this for the last couple years but glad I finally got to this. Funny, but very pervy and uncomfortable Flesh For Frankenstein - I didn't like this one near as much. Quite a bit gorier and just as pervy. "To know life, Otto, you must gently caress death.....in the gallbladder" The Masque of the Red Death - Really drat cool Plan 9 From Outer Space* The Sentinel - I didn't get to pay close enough attention to this and need to rewatch it Frankenstein (31) * Jekyll and Hyde Together Again - Man, that was great. So stupid Dr. Terror's House of Horrors - In fact, no house at all and entirely takes place on a train. One of the few anthologies that has a satisfying, effective ending X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes - Entertaining! I wish they had put (or left in) the rumored sentence at the very end : after tearing his own eyes out...... "I CAN STILL SEE" Nightmares Dracula AD 1972 - boobs Blue Sunshine - meh. Satan's Little Helper is Lieberman's best Blood and Black Lace * Dog Soldiers - My second sleeper film of the month. This was also on YT, surprisingly. I had low expectations, but I was engaged for the duration. Mega props for using practical effects when CGI was all the rage at the time. Especially when they were operating with a small budget to start with Grim Praire Tales - maybe the shortest anthology segments I've seen outside ABC's of Death. Not very good either Carnival Of Souls* - this movie kind of drags, but I still love it. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein - Yearly watch with the kid. I love this movie, love everything about it. Creepshow 1 &2 *Scream Stream Hall of Famers WNUF Halloween Special* - I stay up too late watching this each year and am dragging rear end all day on the 1st. Oh well, Halloween is over anyway  .
Dr.Caligari fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 00:54
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I watched 21 movies. Here are the two that I liked the best: Them: Home invasion thriller from France. Tense and scary with a lot of restraint in the soundtrack and good use of light/shadow. Under the Shadow: Iranian film set in Tehran during the Iran/Iraq war. The backdrop of the war and the cultural revolution gives the film a very real threat to go along with all the supernatural happenings. I liked a bunch out of the 21, but these are the only two that I would give full marks.
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Nov 2, 2016 01:08
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Finished my 13th new movie right on time. (grand total was 16 or so, but only counting new movies) 1. Nightmare on Elm Street 2. You're Next 3. The Descent 4. The Borderlands 5. 10 Cloverfield Lane 6. Under the Skin 7. Terror Of Dracula - Can't really say anything bad about it, it's just the Dracula with all the legends. 8. Phantasm 2 - This was pretty fun. Not really the strongest plot but the balls did their thing and that's what matters. 9. Bubba Ho-Tep - This was....kinda more depressing than funny or scary. Great acting, but not as ridiculous/campy as I expected. 10. Poltergeist - Didn't realize it was Spielberg! Pretty fun, though the whole thing kinda just made me want to rewatch Stranger Things more than anythnig else. The flashing during the TV scenes was pretty bad. 11. The Abominable Dr. Phibes - This was awesome, Like a comical 70s se7en. The last two were kinda meant to be follow up on heavier scary movies but I ran out of time. 12. Little shop of horrors - Pretty fun, would be a good followup to something heavy. 13. Gremlins - Alright and kinda fun, but lots of bad choices by protagonists and some scenes (e.g. the long bar scene) just kinda dragged on. Lhet fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 06:07
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Wrapping up the regularly scheduled programming, and tomorrow I'll finish with my wildcards Audition and Tucker & Dale. (25.1:) Caught up on Bone Tomahawk and, it was alright. Any complaints about the film itself being racist seem way off base in light of the line "Men like you would not distinguish them from Indians" and other anti-xenophobic aspects to it. If anything "we're not so different, and you must learn to understand those you perceive as different" is the main/only message the film pushes. Still, it didn't seem to justify its runtime or make that great a use of its cast. It might grow on me after I put it all together but for now it gets a 7/10. 30.1: I enjoyed 30 Days of Night, but mainly up to the point where everything goes to hell, lots of cool shots of things sneaking around. Was fine after that, maybe a little disjointed in its depiction of time passing and I don't know how satisfyingly things were wrapped up, but it was a good time. 7/10 30.2: What We Do in the Shadows is fantastic as always. 9.5/10 VROOM VROOM fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 07:17
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My tally for the year, only the stuff that was new-to-me: 1. The Wicker Tree (2011) 4/5 2. Mexico Barbaro (2014) (Score N/A) 3. I Can See You (2008) 1/5 4. Demonic Toys 2 (2010) 2/5 5. The Grudge 2 (2006) 3.5/5 6. Laserblast (1978) 4/5 7. Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2004) .5/5 8. Deathrow Gameshow (1987) 2/5 9. The Grudge 3 (2009) 1/5 10. The Black Cat aka Demons 6 Aka de Profundis(1989)4/5 11. Timecrimes (2007) 5/5 12&13. Ju-On White Ghost/Black Ghost (2008) 3/5 14. Cat in the Brain (1990) 3/5 15. Killjoy (2000) 2/5 16. Behind The Mask (2006) 5/5 17. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) 5/5 18. 28 Weeks Later 2/5 19. Extraordinary Tales 4/5 20. Phantasm Ravager 4/5 21. You can't Kill Stephen King 3/5 22. John Dies at the End 4/5 23. The Dentist 2 (1998) 4/5 24. Raw Force (1982) 3/5 25. Mutant Hunt (1987) 2/5 26. Shin Godzilla (2016) 5/5 27. Frankenstein (2015) 4/5 28. Eyeball (1975) 3/5 29. Whistle and I'll come to you (1968) 2/5 30. Ju-On: The Beginning of the End (2014) 4/5 31. stage fright (1987) 3/5 32. Holidays (2016) n/a 33. the collector (2009) 4/5 34. The Hole (2009) 3/5 35. The Invitation (2015) 3/5 36. Patrick (1978) 4/5 37. Killjoy 2 (2002) 3/5 38. Forbidden Siren 1/5 39. Corpse Party 4/5 40. Parasite Eve 2/5 41. Devil's Rock 4/5 42. The Alchemist's Cookbook 4/5 43. Hellgate 3/5 44. Lost Time 1/5 45. Cannibal Ferox 3/5 46. Killjoy's Revenge! 3/5 47. Jekyll and Hyde...Together again 4/5 48. Ju-On the final Curse 2/5 49. Killjoy Goes To Hell 3/5 50. The Dreaming 2/5 51. Mindwarp 3/5 52. Cthulhu Mansion 2/5 53. The Mangler 2/5 54. Last Shift 4/5 55. Hands of the Ripper 2/5 56. Curse of the Crimson Cult 5/5 57. Djinn 4/5 58. Monster Brawl 3/5 59. Rope 5/5 60. White Dog 4/5 61. The Great Hypnotist 4/5
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Nov 3, 2016 02:16
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Choco1980 posted:29. Whistle and I'll come to you (1968) Woh, really. This might be my favorite short horror. It's also part of the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas series which I highly recommend
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Nov 3, 2016 03:17
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Dr.Caligari posted:Woh, really. This might be my favorite short horror. It's also part of the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas series which I highly recommend Yes, really. Everyone around here's talked and talked about how great it is, so I was excited to watch it...and was super let down when I gave it a go. Yes, it had a good atmosphere, but there's very little of the running time spent on anything even intended to be scary. The whole movie is an autistic professor avoiding human contact as much as possible, and then getting scared by a literal moving bedsheet to the point of paralysis. Scooby Doo cartoons are spookier than this was.
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Nov 3, 2016 04:01
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Coming in with slightly faded memories for this last batch, due to computer troubles, and splitting the post for the sake of spinning pumpkins. #26.) Creepshow (1982)  Got to watch this one with someone who had never seen it before, which made it special all over again. The only things I told them going into it was that it was a horror anthology, that Stephen King had an acting role, and that she might be surprised by some of the other actors. This time through, I was really taken with the visuals, with the use of frames, deep lighting, the make-up/SFX, and of course the comic book to live actor transitions. I also enjoyed how virtually every character was given something to make them a little more human, like the janitor's fixation on getting his last quarter back, or Ed Harris' dancing, or Mr. White's mockery of Mr. Pratt. Still my favorite horror anthology by far, and I was very happy to introduce someone to it and see how much they enjoyed it.  / 5#27.) X the Unknown (1956)  Went with this one on a recommendation from K. Waste, and while it was decent enough, I can't say it really did much for me. The acting felt a little too stiff, and while the story did a good job of justifying keeping the monster off-screen for the majority of the movie, I kind of wish that they'd found some way of keeping it that way entirely, since the blob at the end was pretty underwhelming, despite being a good special effect with all the bubbling. No major faults keeping me from enjoying it, just a few too many small ones. / 5#28.) You'll Find Out (1940)  This was one of about six horror movies with titles beginning with the letter Y that were listed in Wikipedia's horror movie lists covering the 1910s to 2010s, and since I made the mistake of watching the spoiler-filled trailer for You'll Die at Midnight that someone had cut together and uploaded to Youtube, that one was out and this one was a go. I'm kind of glad that it worked out that way, since I got to see the only movie with Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre all together.  This was really kind of a vehicle movie, starring band-leader/radio host Kay Kyser (and his orchestra, including Ish Kabibble) and their misadventures at a haunted mansion loaded with secret passages. It played sort of like one of the Abbott & Costello meet-a-monster movies, but with seances and evil plans taking the place of the Universal attractors, and even cornier jokes filling the scenes. A little bit of old-timey racism and misogyny, but really not that much of either (aside from Lugosi's entire turbaned performer character). And I did crack a pretty hard laugh at a scene with Kyser coming back into a room to retrieve something, and getting a completely stone-faced reaction from Karloff and Lorre in response to his "Hope I didn't bother you!". Also a cute wrap-up scene, with Kyser assuring the audience that Karloff, Lorre, and Lugosi are not real murderers. A lot better than I was expecting from a '40s musical comedy horror.  / 5#29.) Zombie (1979)  Started off watching five minutes of Zombeavers and chuckling a little before going 'Wait, I could be watching Zombie for the first time instead.' It wasn't too far off from what I expected, and very much in the vein of the relatively few late-'70s/early-'80s non-giallo Italian horror I've seen so far, from the slapdash dubbing to the great practical effects. Not much of a story or characters, but those special effects really did carry it, and the final scene of the zombies shambling over the bridge (and the worm-filled sockets of the poster zombie) are iconic for a reason. Some cool ideas for scenes (like the emergence of the buried dead from beneath like six inches of earth, or lifting Dracula's infectious boat ride to America and swapping him for a zombie), but overall, not much to help this one stick in my memory a month or more from now, aside from wondering about the extent of its influence every time I play a Resident Evil game.  / 5
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Nov 3, 2016 06:10
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#30.) The Gate (1987) I was kind of at a loss about what to watch after wrapping up the alphabet, but a friend stopped by with a few options, and we settled on this one. First impression: lil' Stephen Dorff so cute! Second impression: This was a hell of a lot better than I, Madman, the other movie I've seen by director Tibor Takács. Fairly basic premise, but one elevated by the sense of life the main characters got (though the supporting characters were pretty flat, unfortunately). I also loved the little conceit of getting basically a total explanation of what was going on in the lone album of an ill-fated metal band. The stop-motion creatures had their own sense of character, and were used in a much better fashion than those of I, Madman. The people who were half-watching the movie with me felt that everyone else should have stayed dead at the end, but I liked how what did happen reinforced the sense of the main characters all growing closer and putting aside petty disagreements. Might revisit this one next October, but for now, I'm just glad that I saw it, and that little details from it will be popping up in my head for a while.  / 5#31.) The Hole (2009)  This one, not so much. A lot of premise similarity to The Gate, but too formulaic for its own good. Kind of felt like an episode of Monsters, Tales from the Darkside, or a similar show stretched out to feature length, and even with Bruce Dern playing a character whose name was prefaced with 'Creepy', it just didn't do enough to rise above the basics. I felt like the little brother and girl next door defeating their personal fears had essentially no impact on the situation, with it all coming down to the big brother's actions, and the whole situation felt watered-down because of that. I also couldn't imagine those characters staying as calm as they did in response to some of the stuff they saw. The make-up on the back on the cop's head looked down-right cheap, but the practical effects of the shattering light-bulbs scene was a nice balancer in that regard. And I feel like the movie would have been much better off without the last fifteen seconds or so of dialogue, but... eh. Decent, but way below the level that Joe Dante should be averaging, even with the uncredited Dick Miller cameo. / 5Batch estimation of the month's viewings to come tomorrow.
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Nov 3, 2016 06:35
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Bringing it all home. It's been real real. A warning for my reviews today: I am no longer capable of thinking of horror movies except in reference to other ones, like a Tamarian. I'll probably do more like 13 next year.  Day 1, the Cloverfields: Cloverfield: 8.5; 10 Cloverfield Lane: 9.5 Day 2, the Not As They Seem: The Thing: 10; They Live: 8.5 Day 3, the Rest of the Trilogy: Prince of Darkness: 7.5; In the Mouth of Madness: 8 Day 4, the Big Planners: From Beyond: 9; The Lords of Salem: 6 Day 5, the Obvious: Hellraiser: 9; Hellraiser II: Hellbound: 7 Day 6, the Not Quite Human: Beyond the Black Rainbow: 9.5; Under the Skin: 10 Day 7, the Hotels of Horror: The Shining (extended cut): 10; 140:8 Day 8, the Hauntings: Noroi: 8; Housebound: 9.5 Day 9, the Reruns: Triangle: 9; White: 4.5 Day 10, Humanoids in Space: Alien (Director's Cut): 9; Pandorum: 7.5 Day 11, Humanoids on Earth: The Descent: 9; Splice: 5.5 Day 12, From the Shallow: Shin Godzilla: 8.5; The Bay: 7.5 Day 13, Campfire Stories: Friday the 13th: 9; Sleepaway Camp: 8.5 Day 14, Sleep Tight: A Nightmare on Elm Street: 9.5; A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: 6.5 Day 15, Slashers of a Sort: Predator: 8; Scream: 9 Day 16, Wingard Day: You're Next: 9.5; The Guest: 10 Day 17, Up Close and Personal: Maniac (2012): 8; Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon: 7.5 Day 18, Choose Your Own: Resolution: 10; Hush: 8.5 Day 19, From Their Perspective: Chronicle: 8.5; Nightcrawler: 9.5 Day 20, The System: Punishment Park: 9; The Purge: Election Year: 7.5 Day 21, Reprieve: Hausu: 8; Day of the Beast: 7.5 Day 22, Locked Up: Martyrs: 9.5*; Thir13en Ghosts: 7.5 Day 23, Getting Out: The Grey: 8; Tremors: 8.5 Day 24, [Operation/Home to Roost]: Excision: 8; Southbound: 8 Day 25, The Faminous Frontier: Ravenous: 8.5; Bone Tomahawk: 7 Day 26, The VVimps: The VVitch: 8; The VVailing: 9 Day 27, Night Vision: Lake Mungo: 9.5; [REC]: 8.5 Day 28, Change: 28 Days Later: 8.5; Dawn of the Dead (2004): 7.5 Day 29, Growing Up (With Zombies): Train to Busan: 8.5; Shaun of the Dead: 9 Day 30, Obligatory Vampire Day: 30 Days of Night: 7; What We Do in the Shadows: 9.5 : Halloween (1978): 10; Trick 'r Treat: 9*.1: I thought I had at least a general idea of what to expect from Audition, but... there was more. What I thought was a big twist was just the premise. I was expecting a You're Next located somewhere between Scream and Sleepaway Camp, but I got The Guest with a tinge of, like, 1408 (see spoiled image for a nice early hint of that). Recommended for the highly non-squeamish, and note that there's a lot of dialogue but this is best experienced by setting the volume to where in the film doors slamming and phones ringing are slightly uncomfortably loud. Jun Kunimura's finest performance. 9???/10 Not a spoiler out of context, but a really cool "???" moment in context:  *.2: Tucker & Dale Versus Evil continues to own. In tone it's Scream plus Cabin in the Woods and better than at least one of them. I think it even has a quick shout-out to The Thing with the 3 college kids trapped in the back of the truck, like the 3 guys tied to the couch. I've read complaints about the third act but it grows on me every time. The time-honored exposition room at the end is a necessity, especially when there was already a fake one earlier. But at the very least the first half of the film is flawless. It takes the combined hilarity of all of the callback humor in Shaun of the Dead and condenses it into about three big jokes, including one particular incredible extended sequence - "It's been a doozy of a day". Good pairing with Resolution for (big spoilers) characters thinking/knowing they're in a horror movie. 9.5/10
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Nov 3, 2016 09:34
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K. Waste posted:Finally, early this morning on the turnaround from the 29th to the 30th, I caught a double feature of Larry Cohen's It's Alive and one of TCM's best broadcast rareties, Tim Carey's The World's Greatest Sinner. Larry Cohen continues to prove himself one of the most underrated independent filmmakers in American history, but I was not prepared for the sheer awesomeness that was The World's Greatest Sinner. It was a great morning. It's Alive! Is the best school shooting movie ever and it predates the hysteria over the phenomenon by quite a bit. I guess you could say it's more of a general parents of a criminal movie, but it's almost effortless to imagine it without the pulpy mutant baby and with Dylan Klebold on the run instead.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:31
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How are the sequels? You guys just made me order a set.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:54
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Butch Cassidy posted:How are the sequels? You guys just made me order a set. I haven't seen 'em but Larry Cohen rules by default.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:16
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Looking back at my picks for the month, there really wasn't much in the way of stand-out (new) stuff, but I guess I lucked out by only running into a small number of real stinkers. Biggest surprises were how great Rigor Mortis was, and how garbage Kristy was. Seeing The Shining in a theater was wonderful, introducing someone to Creepshow was a blast, and the cross-section of horror films from the last five years was something of a let-down. Think I'll skew more towards older stuff next year. Tier #19.) Rigor Mortis (2013) #23.) The Shining (1980) #26.) Creepshow (1982) Tier#2.) The ABCs of Death 2 (2014) #4.) Creep (2014) #7.) The Fly (1958) #13.) Late Phases (2014) #14.) Mr. Jones (2013) #15.) Neverlake (2013) #22.) The Unwanted (2014) #30.) The Gate (1987) Tier#1.) #Horror (2015) #3.) El Barón Del Terror (1962), a.k.a., The Brainiac #5.) Djinn (2013) #6.) Extraordinary Tales (2013) #8.) A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) #9.) Hellions (2015) #11.) Jennifer's Body (2009) #16.) Odd Thomas (2013) #17.) Playback (2012) #20.) Stung (2015) #21.) Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015) #24.) Visions (2015) #25.) Wolfcop (2014) #27.) X the Unknown (1956) #28.) You'll Find Out (1940) #29.) Zombie (1979) #31.) The Hole (2009) Tier#10.) Indestructible Man (1956) #12.) Kristy (2014) #18.) Queen of the Damned (2002)
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Nov 4, 2016 01:23
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Choco1980 posted:Yes, really. Everyone around here's talked and talked about how great it is, so I was excited to watch it...and was super let down when I gave it a go. Yes, it had a good atmosphere, but there's very little of the running time spent on anything even intended to be scary. The whole movie is an autistic professor avoiding human contact as much as possible, and then getting scared by a literal moving bedsheet to the point of paralysis. Scooby Doo cartoons are spookier than this was. For me , it wasn't so much the sheet , as the sound that accompanied it, but paired together I thought they were drat effective. To each there own though.. have you seen The Signalman?
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Nov 4, 2016 01:57
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I didn't participate in the challenge, but we did watch a bunch of horror movies this October, so here's my brief recap, sorted chronologically. Loosely, our themes this year were Vincent Price, Hammer Dracula and Haunted Houses. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) Cute Ray Harryhausen stop-motion feature. I've seen very few fifties creature features, and I've been meaning to find out if any of them hold up next to Them! This one's nice enough, but it doesn't. House on Haunted Hill (1959) I saw the remake in cinema, so all the time I expected real ghosts to show up in the third act or so. Even with that misconception, this was nice to see for Vincent Price. The Brides of Dracula (1960) I've watched the Horror of Dracula twice, but it's left me cold both times. This sequel, despite not having Dracula at all, really benefits from not having a book to follow. We really liked the lengthy opening for its atmosphere, since you're not sure if the girl will end up dead or not. The Haunting (1963) Much more focused on Eleanor's psychology than the house that I expected, but it was easy to see why this one is considered a classic. The Last Man on Earth (1964) Vincent Price again. It has some good shots and probably follows the book most closely from all the adaptions, but I think the Charlton Heston one is most effective in presenting the hard-bitten lone survivor. Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) Lee's back, but he doesn't say a single word here. His sinister servant Klove is great, as is Dracula's resurrection scene. But all together, I liked Brides more. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) Veronica Carlsen comes closest to Stoker's Mina (or at least Coppola's Mina) in the Hammer Dracula films we've seen so far. Decent, but I prefer the previous one. Witchfinder General (1968) A classic, but we didn't like it all that much. Price plays a very convincing real psychopath here, as opposed to hamming it up. The Stone Tape (1972) Love Nigel Kneale, and the idea of figuring out a haunted house with cutting edge (70s) tech is great. Absolutely recommended. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) Fantastic atmosphere at the beginning with the abandoned medieval village and music, and the scenes with the titular dead are great. The middle parts of the movie not so much. The Legend of Hell House (1973) A more classic haunted house, with some similarities to the Stone Tape in atmosphere. The final act is a bit weak. The Night Strangler (1973) We've been meaning to watch the old Kolchak TV show sometime, and we've seen the first movie already. This one's nice, but a bit more of the same. The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) We saw that one out of order before starting over with the other Hammer films. It's pretty weak. My Bloody Valentine (1981) A post-Friday slasher. The all blue-collar mining town setting was novel. Fright Night (1985) A classic 80s horror film we had never seen. It took us near the end of the movie to figure out that the completely familiar girl was Marcy D'Arcy. Scream (1996) A rewatch, as our last film on Halloween itself. Hard to believe it's been 20 years already. 1408 (2007) Polished unremarkable Steven King adaption. Let the Right One In (2008) Nice, but somewhat ponderous. The Borderlands (2013) I'm not a fan of found footage, and the film probably would have worked just as well without that gimmick, but the payoff at the end is great. It Follows (2014) A rewatch for me. Still great, but not the kind of film I'd rewatch multiple times. Green Room (2015) This one fell a bit flat for us. Both of the times the gun got handed of felt like they made no sense for the characters, as well as leaving the door completely unguarded pretty much all of the time, and leaving before the job was finished. Maybe we didn't understand some of the dialogue, but I have no idea what the ultimate plan of the bad guys for staging the bodies was. Why were there gunshots at the end? I much preferred Blue Ruin. The Witch (2015) Atmospheric, but thin on plot. For what story there is, this could have been a lot shorter.
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Nov 4, 2016 15:57
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Hannibal Rex posted:Green Room (2015) The band had gas siphoning equipment in their van, so the idea was that they'd set up the bodies as if they had been trying to steal gas and were attacked and killed by the guard dogs. It would be an unfortunate tragedy but not the full-on murder investigation that gunshot wounds would almost certainly bring down on them. Of course that plan gradually goes to poo poo as they lose control of the situation, but it had a logic to it at the beginning.
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Nov 4, 2016 16:24
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The climax in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is awesome, though. That miniature job was great. It's not as good as THEM! but good and definitely a hell of a lot of fun.
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Nov 4, 2016 17:59
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Basebf555 posted:The band had gas siphoning equipment in their van, so the idea was that they'd set up the bodies as if they had been trying to steal gas and were attacked and killed by the guard dogs. It would be an unfortunate tragedy but not the full-on murder investigation that gunshot wounds would almost certainly bring down on them. Of course that plan gradually goes to poo poo as they lose control of the situation, but it had a logic to it at the beginning. I got that part, but I think the Nazis were also shooting guns off in the distance for some reason when they were in the forest sneaking up on them?
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Nov 5, 2016 02:32
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Halloween H2O H20 retroactively erases the contributions that movies 4 and 5 and 6 made to the series, and that's great. The original stalkee returns, and Myers stalks her and others around a private school in California. Pretty good return to form, though, also, pretty 90s. 3/5 Halloween Resurrection Well, then. A continuation of h20, with an opening vignette that shows how he survived the last film and is *ridiculous*. Of course the rest of the film is also pretty ridiculous. Enjoyably dumb. If you're looking for Busta Rhymes attempting to martial arts Michael Myers, well, you've come to the right place. 3/5 Train to Busan A zombie outbreak occurs on a train, and a dad has to learn how to protect his daughter. My only criticism is that it moved a little too slow, but it does a great job creating menacing zombies and naturally, bad humans. 4.5/5 Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon I thought it was interesting but it didn't really grab me. In a world where Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, and Freddy Kreuger actually happened, a documentary crew follows a killer as he plans his (first?) massacre. I thought it worked pretty well until the massacre begins, and then it all sorta fell apart. 2/5 Chopping Mall Ah, the 80s, good for enjoyable schlock. A mall invests in killer robots and impenetrable doors, for..safety reasons I guess. A gang of kids stay in the mall overnight partying, and a lightning storm unleashes the robots upon them. Hearkens back to a time when you could buy a gun at a mall. Simpler times. 3.5/5 And then #50, on November 1st because somehow I skipped this dumb thing: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers So imminently skippable that I completely missed it while watching the entire series. There's a cult now, and that's why Myers is an immune killing machine? I dunno this was really dumb. 1/5 It was a fun month and I saw some pretty neat movies. Thanks to the Scream Stream for expanding my options in a lot of interesting directions.
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Nov 5, 2016 22:25
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