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The Relic, like Deep Rising, is top-tier cgi trashfun.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:18
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I repeatedly commented during The Relic that it felt like Roland Emerich trying to direct a horror film.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:19
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32Conquest I mean it's on shudder, so I guess it counts, and I'm in extra innings anyway. I love weird 80s conan knock off fantasy things, and this is a pretty great one. And it's directed by Fulci to boot!  .5/5
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Oct 30, 2016 18:33
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30. The Boy (2016): this one kind of came and went from the theatres earlier this year, and I didn't hear much about it. I rented it on a whim, and was pleasantly surprised. It's about a young woman who has been hired by an elderly couple to watchtower their son. The problem is, their son is a doll. Strange things begin to happen in the house, and it appears the doll is the culprit. This movie does a good job subverting our expectations for a scary doll movie. It's much more of a psychological thriller than I expected, as I was questioning whether or not the doll was actually haunted, and I can honestly say I didn't figure out the ending in advance. This is a good. Ivor, and I'd recommend checking it out. 31. I was a Teenage Werewolf: i'll finish things off with an AIP creature flick from the 50s. It has Michael Landon, as a young man with anger problems. He is of course, the titular Werewolf. I thought this was okay, and it was good to catch one of the more iconic 50s horror movies. The creature design is great in this. And that's it for (mostly) new movie watching. It's only rewatches of classics from here on out. My 2016 awards: Scariest: the Descent (I'm claustrophobic) Most fun: Chud 2 - Bud the Chud Best: Black Sabbath Worst: the Unholy Most Underrated: Cujo Watched (31): The Walking Dead, Most Likely to Die, Trick or Treats, Black Sabbath, The Pack, Emelie, Halloween H20, The Taking of Debra Logan, Ghoulies 3, CHUD 2, Waxwork, Bone Tomahawk, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, The Zodiac Killer, Horror Express, 976-Evil 2, cabin Fever, The Others, The Unholy, Halloween 2, The Descent, class of 1984, Hush, Clownhouse, Freakshow, Cujo, It, How to Make A Monster, The Boy, I Was a Teenage Werewolf
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Oct 30, 2016 18:53
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K. Waste posted:Day 24 Day 25 Snagged a re-watch of Man Bites Dog just in a knick of time. Still great. Day 26 I'm surprised that I ended up enjoying the ol' '50s space exploration film Satellite in the Sky than I did Logan's Run. Day 27 Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell has some great trailers, but it doesn't really have the effortless arc of, say, 42nd Street Forever or Sci-Fi Monsters. Day 28 I liked '32 Mummy pretty consistently, but it's hard to mistake how much of a retread of Dracula it is, right down to the casting of David Manners and Edward Van Sloan. Interestingly, Karl Freund did some un-credited directing work on that film, and, of course, they share the same economically-minded producer. Let's face it - Laemmle was no Val Lewton, and while Freund actually also takes over cinematographic duties here, I'm afraid for all his eye for the exotic and psychosexual can't really contend with either Browning's eye or his ear for well-placed, dreadful silence - and that's coming from a guy who just flat doesn't care for Dracula. Day 29 Blood and Black Lace was good. Day 30 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.
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Oct 30, 2016 18:56
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Thirsty Girl posted:The Relic, like Deep Rising, is top-tier cgi trashfun. The end of The Relic did get pretty fun, but it took such an awfully long time getting there, and even then the monster and humans were constantly doing stupid things.
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Oct 30, 2016 19:21
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What I saw last night while getting wasted. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, 1986 Nothing beats the first movie. It's with out a doubt one of my all time favorite movies. That beings said, I've see this one more times by now. It's just a great ride. Tobe Hooper knew he could never top the grotesque beauty and atmosphere of the first, so he went for a fun movie with the sequel, and it worked. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 Got to see this every year. Not just in these marathons, but I sometimes just put in on when I'm really wasted and not sure what to do with my self. Anyway, here is Day 30: Babycall, 2011 Another movie from my country. A lot better psychological thriller than that crappy brown 70s movie I watched. It's like this movie is the opposite of that one. Yes, this too is a very slow movie, but it's never boring and you give a poo poo about the characters and what happens. A very paranoid mom gets one of those baby monitors so she can make sure her son is in the next room at night. It picks up sounds from another baby monitor in the building and they aren't very pleasant sounds. It's pretty clear from the start that she is not mentally stable and that she sees and hears stuff that others don't. She is extremely clingy and overprotective on top of being paranoid, so she ends up really going crazy everything involving her and her son. I liked this movie. I can think of two other good horror movies to compare it too, but I feel that it might spoil this movie.
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Oct 30, 2016 19:25
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15. Halloween Not much to say that hasn't been said a thousand times before. I hadn't seen for years and never on anything better than VHS so seeing it on a big screen was really nice. There were some people in the audience who seemingly thought literally everything in the film was hilarious and would giggle at basically everything which was a bit annoying. My memory of the film was a bit vague but it stands up pretty well. I imagine it was a lot more effective when it originally came out and hadn't been imitated millions of times but I still think it has aged pretty well. A stone cold classic and a great way to end the challenge even though I didn't even come close to completing it. Next year I plan to be less busy and/or sick in October and watch at least 31 movies.
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Oct 30, 2016 23:20
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Day 30 - About two thirds of the way through Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 I realized something: this is a small film. Oh, it's more slickly produced than the original and a lot more effort went into it, but the cast is the exact same size as the original. There's just not enough people for there to be a massacre here. In the wake of the events of the first film, the police couldn't find the farmhouse or the family of cannibals that lived there. That family went underground, moving around the state and a family member of some of the people killed in the original has been on their trail since. Opportunity for him comes when the cannibals kill some people who are on the phone with a radio DJ and he uses the DJ as bait to lure them out of hiding. I feel like the key word in the title of the first film was "massacre" while the key word here is "Texas". If this movie was any more Texan then the stars at night would be big and bright in it. That aspect pushes the comedy side of the film really hard. Tobe Hooper is a better director in 2 than he was in the original in a technical sense. I don't think he nailed the mood, though. The film isn't really funny enough to land the horror-comedy right and he never really was going for dread like the first film. On the other hand, he definitely piled on all the zany things that you'd want to see in a sequel about a guy who dismembers people with chainsaws. There's an awful lot of things being thrown against the wall and even if only half of them stick it's still pretty good. I didn't really need the redo of the dinner scene. That must be the most memorable scene in the original, but just putting in almost the exact same sequence didn't work. It comes across as just "Hey, remember this really good bit in the other movie?"
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Oct 31, 2016 01:16
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27.1: I appreciate Lake Mungo for being perhaps the saddest thing I've seen this month, and a ghost story where the human aspect is what is most bleak. There's a real air of authenticity to it, possibly because all of the dialogue was adlibbed, but also because all of the human issues are entirely relatable and all of the supernatural aspects directly relate to things that make us human. Similarly, it's interesting that for a tale primarily propelled forward by technology/film evidence, there is almost always a human element at play at the same time, like the brother's reasoning for editing the tapes being entirely mundane and naively noble, the neighbor being caught on tape revealing not only his presence, but his motivation, or even the unsettling focus on the graininess of the tapes reflecting the opaqueness of Alice's life. It's always funny to read people acting mad about the "cheap jump scare", when it feels more like they don't want to admit how deeply they were sucked into the unsettling situation, especially considering the omen itself walked sloooowly up and presented itself to the camera, and a real cheap jump scare wouldn't have cut away/used narration to make the scary moment even more effective as the film did. It's the opposite of cheap. Would make a very bad pairing with 10 Cloverfield Lane in that whichever you'd watch first, you'd be tipped off that answering one of "Is something really happening?" and "Is someone being deceitful?" does not answer the other. 9.5/10 28.1: There's lots of little things I love about [REC], like how things go to hell almost immediately but it still takes over half the runtime for it to reveal any sort of reanimation/conversion, and how the apparent cause of everything keeps shifting and never really makes sense, and how even the exposition-dump room at the end just raises more questions and mainly only succeeds in alerting the main characters that something's there with them, which promptly kills/abducts them anyway. There's also a great "why are they filming right now?" moment where a kid turns on the camera with it happening to catch a decent shot of the foyer, where you expect something significant to happen because this is a movie...but all you get is some indistinct conversation that doesn't even get subtitled, before the cameraman picks up the camera and notices somebody touched it...and nothing ever comes of it. Really contributes to the naturalism. It's also a nice touch that the main character is an obsessive, fussy wreck when reporting/interviewing during calm moments but consistently becomes eloquent and assertive as a journalist during tense moments. 8.5/10 e: v Butch [REC] is on Shudder now! Decently subtitled as well. VROOM VROOM fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 02:46
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Got a link to a copy of [Rec] that'll play on a 'Murkin bluray or DVD player and not have a lovely English dub? 54, 55, 56, 57. Evil Dead: the all of them: Quick notes. 1. The weakest but charming for its rough nature. My second favorite. 2. Better than the original and an awesomely fun movie. My least favorite of the four, however. 3. My favorite. Army of Darkness was my introduction to the franchise. It is my son's favorite, as well. He's also enamored of the Three Stooges so the references greatly amuse him. 4. Kind of ties with the original as my second favorite. But I give the original the nod so will call this as #3 for me. It's my daughter's favorite. The previews reminded me that I had wanted to see Magic Magic. Was that any good?
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Oct 31, 2016 03:53
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28. The Seventh Curse 75 minutes of insanity from the director of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, about two doctors (one played by Chow Yun-Fat) fighting the occult. Features a Hong Kong style gun fight, martial arts, unnecessary nudity, rocket launchers, the power of Buddha, a fight against a skeleton puppet, a villain that carries a monster baby under his cape, and an alien ripoff monster. I don't need to formally review this film, I think the previous sentences can tell you if you need to see this or not (yes.) Somehow, it has an even more insane looking sequel, The Cat 1992, but I can't track it down with subtitles in time for tomorrow, sadly.  /5
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Oct 31, 2016 07:24
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 The ListThe Big Four 16. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) 17. Halloween (1978) 18. Friday the 13th (1980) 19. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) 20. Halloween 2 (1981) 21. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) 22. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982) 23. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) 24. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) 26. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) 27. Friday the 13th Part VI Jason Lives (1986) 28. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 29. Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987) 30. Friday the 13th part 7: The New Blood (1988) 31. Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) 32. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) 33. Friday the 13th part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) 34. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) 35. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) 36. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 (1990) 37. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) 38. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993) 39. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) 40. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) 41. Scream (1996) 42. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1997) 43. Scream 2 (1997) 44. Halloween H20 (1998) 45. Scream 3 (2000) 46. Jason X (2001)  So, this might be the worst looking Friday film by far. Not to say they ever looked good, but they never had their reached for what was outside their grasp. This is literally a Sci-Fi (or SyFy, if you must) movie with only more gore. And while I will applaud New Line's complete willingness to completely commit to whatever crazy idea for their horror movies have, this is perhaps the one where it hurt rather than helps. It's a weird film to watch, and not in a way that makes it worthwhile. For example, wouldn't even call it a slasher film, more like a disaster film set in space. Jason seems so incidental to the whole thing, like he could've been a space tornado and for the most part the same film would result. Though the fact that it's such a high concept film pretty much gave them carte blanche to go crazy with the kills, namely being the liquid nitrogen and sleeping bags kills. And speaking of the latter, the film seems to have a weird self-consciousness about itself. It's hard to pinpoint, either that they're embarrassed that they didn't make a 'real' Friday film, or that they felt obligated to make a Friday film for a post Scream and Buffy generation. So the film has some odd elements, like the dorky nerdy guy whose supposed to be likable, the badass sexbot battle with Jason, the super wink-y virtual Camp Crystal Lake (which personally I really liked), etc. But the connective tissue is some really uninspired Aliens rip-off, featuring off-brand Colonial Marines being picked off in some not great Jason kills, the female protagonist getting some bad-rear end Ripley-ification for no reason and to no end, and some 20-somethings codified as the 'teens' of the film, freaking out in annoying ways and sometimes killing themselves. Speaking of, this must of been the film giving Tucker and Dale some justification for existing. In anycase, it's basically a bunch of idiots sabotaging chances of escape, becoming their own worst enemies (despite Jason's best efforts), until they didn't. And it just isn't fun to watch idiots be idiots while godly forces the film to keep going, despite ending like four times. Getting back to the fact that this film looks pretty bad, it looks really bad. The CGI I cannot imagine looked good even back then. And the green screen composition is only a step above of what you could get at the county fair. Just flatly lit and shot completely stationary. And it's weird to come to a conclusion that 90's sci-fi has pretty much become as much of a dated style as 50's or 70's sci-fi. Though the worst of it is in Jason, whose original look just doesn't read as the same Jason that came from 6 through 9, namely because he has hair versus the weird necrotic, tumorous scalp. And the Cyber Jason that hunts the latter half just looks real doofy. I imagine Kane Hodder is doing his best with his material, but it's hard to take Jason seriously when he looks like an Action Figure of a Spawn villain. Like I said, it's a weird film. But any weirdness is undercut by cheap film making done with bad creative choices in mind. Next up: Halloween: Ressurection
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Oct 31, 2016 08:21
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There's a comic book sequel to Jason X where a piece of Jason gore stuck to the ceiling gets regenerated into a full Jason by the onboard genetics lab, leading to a fight between Jason Classic and Cyber Jason X.
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Oct 31, 2016 08:30
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28.1: I enjoyed 28 Days Later much more than the first time I watched it a long time ago, maybe because I 28.2: Meanwhile, Dawn of the Dead (2004) managed to seem pretty long, possibly because it feels like a denser, more dialogue-packed version of 28DL. There's definitely a lot of parallels, though this one dwells less on the meaning of life directly and focuses more on people trying to keep hold of/regain normalcy. I'll go ahead and do like I've done for a couple others here and just focus on what I didn't like, which is mainly that there are a few cases of sloppy editing decisions like the opening in the house starting dead-quiet, but as soon as she gets outside everything is already chaos and explosions - which would be a great effect if the inside/outside distinction was maintained instead of having an extended sequence of violence inside, and characters being pointlessly illogical to move the plot along/get themselves killed though I'd love to read a defense of trying to use a chainsaw in a violently swerving van to knock one drat zombie off. If anything this felt a little weighed down by having a large cast and giving full arcs to half of them while neglecting the rest. 7.5/10
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Oct 31, 2016 08:37
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The List The Big Four 16. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) 17. Halloween (1978) 18. Friday the 13th (1980) 19. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) 20. Halloween 2 (1981) 21. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) 22. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982) 23. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) 24. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) 26. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) 27. Friday the 13th Part VI Jason Lives (1986) 28. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 29. Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987) 30. Friday the 13th part 7: The New Blood (1988) 31. Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) 32. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) 33. Friday the 13th part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) 34. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) 35. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) 36. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 (1990) 37. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) 38. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993) 39. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) 40. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) 41. Scream (1996) 42. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1997) 43. Scream 2 (1997) 44. Halloween H20 (1998) 45. Scream 3 (2000) 46. Jason X (2001) 47. Halloween Ressurection (2002)  So, even though it was released in '02, this film was shot before, and nearly released just after, 9/11. And as is, the film is in that nebulous period where a lot of things are still fairly 90's-ish, with the general look of the decade and trappings of 'self-aware' media, with some of the growing culture of the early 2000's, like the ubiquity of rap stars and black media, unusual proclivities to reality shows, and a faith in the internet's ability to do anything (despite the tech's actual capabilities). Once again, there's two films here, the opening and the rest of the film.Once again we have an opening that escaped into culture as this film's reputation. In this case, it's for killing Jamie Lee Curtis after she killed it in the last film (and implausibly explaining how Michael survived the last film, which is a staple of the genre now). And the rest of the film doesn't necessarily have a bad premise, but it doesn't really execute it in the best way. I do like the concept of a group of kids exploring the Myers house, but doing so in the concept of an internet reality show, I can't buy it. And having them do so in a relatively directionless manner strains credulity, and having the producers 'faking' it doesn't help it. And there's the characters who are all flat and all dicks. Plus, the fact that all the characters are all Gen X'ers who are all too smart to fall for the horror bullshit is starting to get real tiring. I actually ended up liking the party scenes more, as a bunch of teenagers all crowding around a screen just feels a lot more real to me. Plus, people hanging out and having a good time is a lot more fun to watch than dicks being dicks. And while the references to the original Halloween are cute, in the realm of a sequel for the most part detached from the film it comes off as kinda lazy. As for Michael, this may just be my opinion, but this is probably the best he's been. They got the mask right, the actor is super imposing, and he feels like a real dude whose super adept at killing. And as much as I felt the story didn't sell the concept, I felt like the filmmakers tried better. Getting really lovely cameras to take really lovely shots sold the reality of the situation. And when they aren't using those shots, it looks halfway decent unlike Jason X And the scene where the final girl is avoiding Michael using tips from the internet was actually super tense. And for that scene I almost would call it good. Though Busta Rhymes taking out Michael with a roundhouse kick was dumb in a really entertaining way. I don't think it should've made it into the film, but I'm still kinda glad it's there if only because it's makes a great YouTube video. It kinda reminds me of the rumored clause in Vin Diesel's contract that he can never loose a fight in the Fast and the Furious films. In this case, he could never be chumped by Michael Myers. As is, it's certainly a better film than I was expecting, and kinda sits in the middle of all the Halloween sequels in terms of quality. Next up: Freddy vs. Jason
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Oct 31, 2016 10:07
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58. V/H/S: I will never sit through this again. The editing is poo poo, over the top rough film look is a schtick that wears thin quickly, and it's too drat long. But the shorts are surprisingly good. This is definitely bac kground noise I would put on at a party with no children to be seen. It's worth a watch and the effects are actually really well done with surprisingly solid acting. Though I doubt I'll ever bother to care about the sequels. 59. Dog Soldiers: A classic and first rate werewolf movie as far as I'm concerned. "FUCKIN' COWWW!" "If we do happen to make contact, I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of ya. Because we're firing blanks doesn't mean we have to be thinking nice thoughts." Butch Cassidy fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 13:53
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#1. Eyes without a Face (1960). My first time watching this one.I watched a remake of this last year, which was good, but not nearly as good as this. It was beautiful, dark, and haunting. I've heard people rave about this, and i now know why. I plan to watch this again this week to soak more of it up. #2. Phantasm (1979). Watching this again I noticed the juxtaposition of the music and the visuals felt reminiscent of City of the Living Dead, which came out a year later. I'm not sure what else to say about this film that hasn't been said already. It takes that hard late 70's vibe and adds so many layers of strangeness on top of it without being too indulgent.
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Oct 31, 2016 18:58
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Butch Cassidy posted:58. V/H/S: I will never sit through this again. The editing is poo poo, over the top rough film look is a schtick that wears thin quickly, and it's too drat long. But the shorts are surprisingly good. This is definitely bac kground noise I would put on at a party with no children to be seen. It's worth a watch and the effects are actually really well done with surprisingly solid acting. Though I doubt I'll ever bother to care about the sequels. You would find VHS2 has many of the same flaws, but the shorts are of a higher quality. Skip VHS Viral though.
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Oct 31, 2016 19:02
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Butch Cassidy posted:58. V/H/S: I will never sit through this again. The editing is poo poo, over the top rough film look is a schtick that wears thin quickly, and it's too drat long. But the shorts are surprisingly good. This is definitely bac kground noise I would put on at a party with no children to be seen. It's worth a watch and the effects are actually really well done with surprisingly solid acting. Though I doubt I'll ever bother to care about the sequels. It sounds like you just don't like found footage.
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Oct 31, 2016 19:40
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28. The Other Side of The Door (2016) After losing their son in a car accident, a family's mother pursues an Indian legend that you can speak to the spirits of your dead loved ones through an ancient door, provided you just don't open the door. Spoiler: She totally opens it. It was eerie and I liked it quite a bit. I've never seen a horror film that draws on the culture/mythology of India and ended up spending time reading about the Aghori tribe after the movie was over. Nothing like spooks and education. /529. The Darkness (2016) Kevin Bacon has an autistic son who, on a family trip, pilfers Native American magical rocks that...do...things. And there's demons. I was bored to death here, give me a break. It wasn't particularly awful, it was just bog standard and dull. /5
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Oct 31, 2016 19:47
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#3. Nekromantik (1987). A street cleaner brings home a corpse. He and his girlfriend start loving it, things go down from there. I've heard this was a gross out film, and it really is. It's corpse loving then a descent into psychopathic behavior. Not much plot to speak of really.
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Oct 31, 2016 19:50
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The List Proto-Slasher 1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) 2. Fritz Lang's M (1931) 3. The Old Dark House (1932) 4. And Then There Were None (1945) 5. House of Wax (1953) 6. Night of the Hunter (1955) 7. Eyes Without a Face (1960) 8. Psycho (1960) 9. The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971) 10. Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) 11. Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971) 12. Torso (1973) 13. Profondo Rosso (1975) 14. Black Christmas (1974) 15. The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976) The Big Four 16. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) 17. Halloween (1978) 18. Friday the 13th (1980) 19. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) 20. Halloween 2 (1981) 21. Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) 22. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982) 23. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) 24. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) 25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) 26. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) 27. Friday the 13th Part VI Jason Lives (1986) 28. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 29. Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987) 30. Friday the 13th part 7: The New Blood (1988) 31. Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) 32. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) 33. Friday the 13th part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) 34. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) 35. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) 36. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 (1990) 37. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) 38. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993) 39. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) 40. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) 41. Scream (1996) 42. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1997) 43. Scream 2 (1997) 44. Halloween H20 (1998) 45. Scream 3 (2000) 46. Jason X (2001) 47. Halloween Ressurection (2002) Plus bonus film Shin-Godzilla (2016) And finally... 48. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)  So, it's all been leading to this. Which is kinda a dumb thing to say, as pretty much every film is a product of every film that came before it. But point being, this is a film whose a product of the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream films. And those films were were informed by Halloween and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that were informed by each other and numerous other films. And as for the actual film... eh. It's not terrible, but it's overstuffed and it takes too long to get to the promise of it's premise. Jason is looking good, back to the undead hulk look that became iconic to the character. Though Freddy is given some weird hillbilly teeth, that undercuts his everyman-perverted-by-demons look. Plus, under certain circumstances his skin just looks off. Though in terms of character, at least this film doesn't do anything wrong by the characters. Both are treated properly and with respect that both deserve, without any egregious changes to them. Aside from that one scene where Freddy makes a 'Dark Meat' joke about the black chick, which is kinda a lovely thing to put in, only for her to call him a human being and mean it, which is two wrongs not making a right type situation. But aside from that, this film gives you pretty much what you expect, and it's all played pretty safe. The only parts that I would call bad is the seemingly needless plot of the psychiatric hospital and the one girl's dad, the dated rave scene (which was fun but needlessly), and the butt rocky soundtrack. I will say that the promise of Jason and Freddy working together wasn't used to as much use as was promised, and is something I do think could've made for a stronger first and second act. There's not really that much to say about the film. It's as respectful to the audience as it needed to be, though not really breaking new ground. It kinda just picks and chooses moments from each series to smash their action figures into, with some kids that I don't give a crap about. Except for Dipper, whose weird to actually see in a film and not voicing a cartoon character. It's CGI is pretty mediocre, as films around that time tended to throw in. But it's kinda saved by some really neat shots and visual effects, especially as the dreams become more and more unreal as they went along. It's kinda one that I wouldn't recommend or sway people away from. It's one of those films that you know whether or not you want to watch it, and your level of disappointment is pretty much inverse to your levels of enthusiasm. And going into this not really knowing what to expect, I kinda came out of it neutral but entertained enough. It's not good, but it will entertain. --- In any case, as I mentioned back in the end of September, I kinda wanted to cap this off with a good metaphorical end of the season. As is, my October was spent in anticipation for today, and it was filled with the genre that defined over decades in horror, constantly reiterating and giving new spins on themes and formulas. And this film was the swan song of that era, of the killer as a singular character with presence on camera. One whose saga would span several years, unending. And this film was the last of those original ideas being the driving force of these films. After this film, there were no more sequels or spin offs for the big four, Friday, Nightmare, Halloween, and Texas Chainsaw. Try as they did, none of them would get off the ground. Instead, new movies took their place, featuring killers as everymen, far away in a room someplace else, or spirits whose presence or existence weren't truly knowable. But to a certain extent, the genre of horror kinda floundered outside of a few films and series. And so as this film caps an end of an era of endless sequels, it too will cap a month long, trying experiment, and an entire month of expectation and preparation. And as tomorrow comes, and I shall start to long for the celebration, I would like to keep things going and start a new era, one that began only two months after the release of this film. So if this thread will permit, I'd like to start off a disappointing day with a disappointing new age of horror, the one of endless remakes.So, I'd like to say that Next up: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003).
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Oct 31, 2016 22:46
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Butch Cassidy posted:58. V/H/S: I will never sit through this again. The editing is poo poo, over the top rough film look is a schtick that wears thin quickly, and it's too drat long. But the shorts are surprisingly good. This is definitely bac kground noise I would put on at a party with no children to be seen. It's worth a watch and the effects are actually really well done with surprisingly solid acting. Though I doubt I'll ever bother to care about the sequels. You should really check out 2. There's a short in it, Safe Haven, that's basically Doom by way of the guy who directed The Raid.
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Oct 31, 2016 22:54
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My main problem with Freddy vs Jason is that it's a Freddy movie that happens to have Jason in it. Not only is the plot centered way more around Freddy, it's obvious the film-makers think he's a more interesting character (perhaps rightfully so). So it ends up feeling pretty uneven once they actually start to fight, since Freddy inexplicably has tons of sick ninja moves in the real world after having a major advantage in the dream world, which doesn't really jibe with previous films in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. All Jason really has going for him in that fight is that he doesn't die no matter what. This may sound like (and actually be) a very fanboyish kind of complaint, but in a movie about the two most popular horror icons (of their time) clashing, it's kinda lame to favor one over the other.
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Oct 31, 2016 23:24
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I mean, there's just more you can do with Freddy, full stop. Jason is more of a force of nature than a character.
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Oct 31, 2016 23:25
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Definitely. I won't pretend like Jason doesn't have his moments in the film, either. It just feels very uneven once you get to the final act.
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Oct 31, 2016 23:32
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#4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). The first remake of many, and probably the best. Pod people are taking over San Francisco and there doesn't seem to be a way to stop them. Blending horror, sci-fi, and good 'ol fashion paranoia seamlessly, Invasion doesn't let up one it starts. It captures the feeling of hopelessness in a world being consumed around the characters. #5. Night of the Creeps (1986). An Alien parasite is ejected from a spacecraft and lands on Earth. It infests humans (living or dead) causing zombification while the parasite lays eggs in the host. I love Night of the Creeps. It's always been a fun flick to watch. Tom Atkins steals the show with zinger after zinger. We're also treated to lots of fun effects. Heads exploring, leach like monsters, and zombies.
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Oct 31, 2016 23:57
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I am super indecisive about what to put on now that it's actually halloween.
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Nov 1, 2016 00:03
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Ambitious Spider posted:I am super indecisive about what to put on now that it's actually halloween. What do you have access to?
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Nov 1, 2016 00:05
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Watrick posted:What do you have access to? shudder, hulu, netflix So I have options, I'm just kind of torn between something new or an old favorite. fake edit: I'm going with La Casa 4-Witchery!
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Nov 1, 2016 00:08
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Ambitious Spider posted:shudder, hulu, netflix The Hasselholf one?
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Nov 1, 2016 00:20
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#6: Tales of Halloween (2015). 10 shorts all taking place on Halloween. A mixed-bag of Halloween shorts lightly connected with characters and Adrienne Barbeau as a radio show host. Some were really good, some were mediocre. None were bad. Had a good deal of practical effects with a smidgen of bad CGI.
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Nov 1, 2016 01:03
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Day 31 - Congratulations to everyone who made it a full 31! I've got some thoughts, but let me save it until after the film. I decided to scan for recent major horror releases that I hadn't seen and that's how I decided on The Conjuring for my 31st. A dreamhome becomes a nightmare for a family when evil things haunt them. But fortunately for them a husband and wife pair of ghost hunters are there to help them out. I've got a weird problem with this movie since I don't like the fact that it's essentially promoting two notorious con arts as heroes. If this had been about Steve Q. and Susan X. Ghostbuster who engaged in 1970's style spiritualism I wouldn't have cared. You accept all sorts of things as the premise of a film. But because these are real people who scam money out of people by offering their "services" which this movie promotes, it makes me uncomfortable. OTOH, it made the scene in the middle of the film where they're telling the family that they desperately need to buy the deluxe exorcism package or they're doomed kind of amusing. Still, the movie is really well made. Yeah, it's got a heavily cliched premise, but it's well done. They don't skimp on the spookiness and keep piling on event after event; it's like with every scene the filmmakers were asking themselves, "Why are we not trying to scare the audience right this second?" It reminds me a lot of horror films of the 70's in terms of style and not just because it's set then. But besides The Conjuring, I decided to end the month where it all began and watched the original House of the Devil, Georges Méliès's film that is considered the first horror movie from 1896. Of course, that film mainly exists for Méliès to show off his trick photography and if you're going to watch that then you might as well watch A Trip to the Moon. And I'm done. I started out this trip by deciding to really aggressively pursue my backlog of films and I think I did a pretty good job of that. There's still a few that eluded my grasp, but out of the films I watched this month almost all of them were things that I had been wanting to watch for a while. That meant that I watched a lot of films that were pretty good this month. The downside is I don't know what I'm doing next year. There's only so many fantastic horror films to go around.
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Nov 1, 2016 01:39
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Watrick posted:The Hasselholf one? Yup 33la casa 4-witchery Which I liked but founda little less entertaining and crazy than Ghosthouse  /5so not counting a couple of rewatches (final destination 3 and, uh Hocus Pocus) it's 1)Don't Breathe 2Blair Witch 3Bigfoot:the lost coast tapes 4The Invitation 5-Them 6-The Last Slumber Party] 7Vampyr 8 Jigoku 9 Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan 10Interview with a Vampire 11Stoker 12incident at loch ness 13Poltergeist II 14The Exorcist Director’s cut 15Cat People 16demons 17juon:the curse 18juon:the curse part 2 19:WNUF Halloween Special 20Toad Road 21Mockingbird 22Shin Godzilla 23Witchfinder General 24the manitou 25The Shiver of the Vampires 26The Witch Who Came From the Sea 27Ginger Snaps 2 28Don’t Look Now 29I Drink Your Blood 30La Casa 3-Ghosthouse 31child’s play 32Conquest 33la casa 4-witchery That's 33 new to me horror movies in 2 months. I wasn't very thematic, But they were mostly pretty good. Some were kind of disappointing, or just ok, but the only one I outright hated was Lost Coast Tapes. Oh, and mocking bird, that was real bad too. Ambitious Spider fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 02:28
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60. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: Yeah, it's a staid television special. Suck it. I live for my sister's annual trick or treat after-party during which she can only screen Peanuts. It was 34° outside where my brother-in-law had his pony keg. And then came the Glenlivet. And then I caught poo poo for winding up their new dog. Then my sister's hot mulled cider and bitchin' dip for tortilla chips. The Peanuts Halloween special always makes me think of growing up with an awesome older sister. That it's a solid cartoon is just icing. Now to go start some glühwein as a friend is coming over to cap October with one last movie. And make a note to check out V/H/S 2, drat you all.
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Nov 1, 2016 02:32
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#7. Dust Devil (1992). A killer hitchhiker is picked up by a woman who is fleeing her abusive husband. I was pleasantly surprised to have found the directors cut of this, as I love Hardware and missed that Richard Stanley had directed this between that and Island of Dr. Moreau. Not really knowing what to expect, this ended up being a slightly-surreal slasher (which is the most basic way to describe it). It's beautifully shot, lots of muted colors with the sandy landscapes make for a visual feast. The plot was good, although it doesn't hand hold. Repeat watches are on board for sure.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:01
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Watrick posted:#7. Dust Devil (1992). A killer hitchhiker is picked up by a woman who is fleeing her abusive husband. If you have the collector's DVD, be sure to check out the 30 minute making of doc to hear about such production problems as finding a dead body on location and sets burning down.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:23
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I totally fell off the posting wagon, but managed to stay on track with viewing. Mostly. A couple of missed days, but I made up the quantity on weekends and everything was a first viewing so I'm going to call this a success overall. My challenge next year, obviously, will be to keep up with the posting. Here's a giant wall of all the stuff I watched since my last post, keeping it to brief thoughts on each. 1. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Halloween 3. Halloween 2 4. We Are Still Here 5. The Church Posting failure somewhere around here. 6. Stagefright - Still love everything I've seen from Soavi. Why aren't there more horror movies set in theatres? They got to do so much cool stuff with it, and still left a ton of unexplored territory. 7. Phantasm: Ravager - The second-most disappointing thing I watched. It had some good ideas, but the execution just failed all over the place. 8. Whistle and I'll Come to You - The most disappointing thing I watched. Some cool shots and a solid performance from the lead, but I am completely at a loss as to how it apparently scares so many people. 9. The Abandoned - The more distance I have from this, the more I appreciate it. It has a few little things I found incredibly irritating (Яussia faux-Russian bullshit all over the opening credits, some really unfortunate voiceover at a couple key points), but it was a constant pleasure to look at and consistently went in just a slightly different direction from what I was expecting. 10. I Saw the Devil - This didn't really feel like horror, but it was a perfectly entertaining entry in the South Korean "revenge ruins everything for everyone" genre. 11. Santa Sangre - Fifteen minutes in I was seriously skeptical about this thing being tagged as horror. An hour and a half later...well, it's Jodorowsky and horror is as good a genre tag for it as anything else. Loved it. 12. Messiah of Evil - I'd really like a better quality copy of this, that first night in the father's house is super cool visually. 13. The Broken - The most boring doppelganger mirror world movie I've ever seen. 14. Bad Biology - I feel like I was sold Nekromantik and got The Item. Easily the worst thing I watched. 15. Noroi - I didn't love it, but I liked it. Did not feel at all like a typical found footage movie, which I appreciated. 16. The Witch Who Came from the Sea - One of those movies I watched because it came up in the horror thread, but by the time I got around to it I had completely forgotten what we were talking about when it came up. Everything about this movie feels at least vaguely repulsive, but it's surprisingly smart given that. I have no idea who I'd recommend it to but I'm glad I watched it. 17. Stir of Echoes - It's a ghost movie, I guess. Everything about this was competent and there were some solid performances, but not really anything for me to care about. 18. The Visitor - I'm not sure a movie has ever had me rooting for Satin this hard before. That little girl's performance is great. Apparently there's a cut of this that's even stranger and more disjointed than what I watched, which is kind of hard to imagine. 19. Calvaire - There's a cool dance party and the last 15-20 minutes have some really killer shots and scenery, but there aren't really any interesting ideas present. 20. The Host - This was much darker than I expected. It was also really really good. Definitely one of the highlights. 21. The Hallow/The Woods - A pleasure to look at, and I feel sort of silly whining about the presence of a baby in a context where changelings are obviously going to come up, but babies are interest-repellent for me. They show up, I tune out. 22. Don't Breathe - I was with this for about the first hour, until the blind guy managed to stab the wrong body immediately after punching the right one in the face a bunch. Like, he was not sold to us as a guy with poor spatial memory and the guy he was beating up obviously did not pull a rapid and super quiet position swap. It felt super lazy and sucked me right out. 23. Deep Dark - This was a strange one - several layers of failed artists selling each others' work and a thing that lives in/is the wall of a run down apartment. Kind of fun. 24. Pet Sematary - I don't think I actually knew anything about this other than "ancient Indian burial ground", and I'd always just assumed zombie pets were going to be the focus. I was, obviously, extremely pleasantly surprised by what I actually got. 25. The Resurrected - It's not Re-Animator and it's not Dagon, but taken on its own merits I think this is one of Lovecraft's stronger stories and this was a better adaptation of it than I ever expected to see. 26. The Sentinel - The church turns a suicidal model into a nun tasked with keeping all the ugly people in hell. A murderer throws a birthday party for his cat. Traumatic father cake orgy. This is a strange movie and I'm still not sure I can say I actually liked it, but at least it wasn't boring. 27. The Lair of the White Worm - One of those movies for which I've seen the VHS cover a billion times growing up, but never actually rented it. Two decades later...this rules. Lady Sylvia is an incredibly fun character, and Hugh Grant's role was absolutely perfect for him. 28. Martin - This was a definite highlight. It's hard to imagine what the cut that runs more than two hours would be like, though. 29. German Angst - Two boring segments, but the last one has some mystery in it and does a decent job of subverting expectations within a relatively simple story. 30. Dark Waters - Good job at being wet; a little disjointed sometimes but I like it. Made me want to watch more movies with a focus on falling water, but it's been difficult coming up with other examples. 31. Horror Express - Execution was lacking in a lot of ways, but the ideas carried it - impossible not to enjoy. 32. Blood Rage - Low expectations after the first 20 minutes or so, ended up being fun. 33. Pulse/Kairo - Another great disappointment, especially frustrating because there's a bunch of stuff in it that almost worked well. This is a movie with a lot of ideas that doesn't really know how to articulate any of them. Constantly undermines itself with an incredibly goofy soundtrack. Could have been something really special with a (much) tighter script and maybe a few more scenes in public spaces early on. 34. Halloween III - I wish I'd gone into this knowing absolutely nothing about it, but it was still a lot of fun and a great way to wrap things up. Only two complaints: one, it could have used a stronger lead character and two, I now desperately want to watch the prequel about an Irish witch/toymaker and his army of robots stealing stonehenge. I bet that would be an even better movie. I think I might watch Pumpkinhead now to finish things off for real, but it's obviously going to run past midnight at this point so I'm not counting it in the list.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:58
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#8. Hausu (1977). A bunch of girls go to a haunted house that wants to eat them. This is raw hallucinogenic spastic horror. I've seen this numerous times and it never gets old. What I've found fascinating about it is that it's eccentric presentation doesn't hinder what it's trying to accomplish. Instead of being gimmicky, it adds to the horror of what's transpiring. The acid-soaked deaths are also a sight to behold. It's also drat fun to show to people who haven't seen it.
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Nov 1, 2016 04:20
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