|
I'm in for a lucky 13. I'm also writing my dissertation this month, so mandatory breaks will probably be good for me. First viewings only and I'm not counting anything before May 1st, but I did watch Trash Fire last night. 0. Trash Fire (2016) This thing starts as a romantic comedy in which the male lead is attempting to be slightly less of a shithead. As part of the effort his girlfriend insists they try to reconnect with what's left of his family after a fire that killed his parents when he was a child. Kind of a mess, but between this and Spring I'm starting to feel like relationships in horror work, like, a billion times better when there are no children involved and can make for some really cool stories that are usually obliterated in favor of completely rote mother distressed by threat to child poo poo. So kudos to this for having a more interesting relationship between its leads, but now I'm mostly just thinking about how cool Spring was.
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 03:02
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:13 |
|
|
I've been meaning to watch it for a while and someone mentioned it in one of the horror threads today, so I decided to start with 1. Antiviral (2012) - High expectations going into this because I love Videodrome so much that I just naturally assume everyone who's ever even shaken hands with Cronenberg will be great. Mostly pleased. It's a little slow in places, but pretty enough to look at that I never particularly minded. Probably the most understated and restrained body horror I've ever seen, but more effective than most if you let yourself dwell on it a little. A good start to the month.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2017 06:53
|
|
|
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2017 04:58
|
|
|
Okay for real this time: 2.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2017 06:16
|
|
|
I'm way behind because I keep watching episodes of Jordskott instead. Jordskott is really good you guys.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2017 02:54
|
|
|
3. A Dark Song (2016) - This one popped up in the thread recently where it was described as 2/3rds of a good movie. I think I'd bump it up to like 5/6ths of a good movie but I'm definitely in agreement that it fumbled things a bit. A woman makes a deal with an occultist to perform a ritual that will get them both a wish. There's the mandatory bit where everything goes terribly wrong and you know bad things are coming. Then bad things come and it's maybe the most disappointing 5-10 minutes of movie I can recall. Then there's an ending I think I would have really liked if the movie hadn't just sabotaged itself so badly. I kind of want to endorse the movie as a whole anyway because it does a really great job with all of the buildup and has the best depiction of occult ritual I think I've ever seen, but ugh that finale. Also gets zero points for beautiful Irish countryside which I am always hoping for when I am sold Ireland.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2017 05:09
|
|
|
4. The Red Queen Kills 7 Times (1972) - This one has been on my list forever, but I've always been worried that it wouldn't live up to the title. It turned out to be...kind of exactly what you'd expect, I guess. A perfectly serviceable giallo that isn't going to be anyone's favorite. There's a suggestion of the supernatural, there's goofy intra-family plotting, everyone in the movie is either police, a drug dealer, or works in fashion. And is rich. You've basically seen this movie half a dozen times already but if you feel like seeing it again (and you probably do), this will do the job. Bonus points for the goofiest spooky crypt setting I have ever seen. Someone was really proud of this bat.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2017 05:01
|
|
|
5. What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) - I guess I'm on a giallo kick again now, I don't know how this keeps happening. There are just so many of them I haven't seen and I love them so much. This was a really nice change of pace within the genre. The last several I've watched started off at least moderately crazy and had a relatively heavy dose of the implied-supernatural, while this starts off as an apparently straightforward story. I was even sort of worried it was going to turn out to be a relatively dull slasher at a few points, but no, it's still definitely giallo and it builds pretty nicely throughout the full duration. I have a few minor objections - flashbacks are almost universally a bad call and this one is especially baffling since the movie does such a great job with subtle storytelling in so many other places. It doesn't really have any of the interesting and beautiful sets or costumes I expect from the genre. And of course I can never watch a schoolgirl-centric italian movie again without spending the entire time thinking about how much I love Phenomena, but I try not to hold that against lesser films. This gets a definite endorsement despite not being Phenomena.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2017 05:59
|
|
|
Heavy Metal posted:Agreed on the Phenomena love, Solange sounds like a good one. If I may, what are a few of your fav Giallo movies by the way? Especially non-Dario ones, since I've seen all his. (he rocks) Everything Bava. The guy was obviously extremely influential but I've still never seen anyone match his work with light. Blood and Black Lace gets mentioned a lot for good reason. Also, while it's starting to move more into slasher territory, Soavi's Stage Fright (the 1987 one) rules and you should definitely watch it.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2017 16:09
|
|
|
Absolutely agreed. Soavi is really good and I wish we had more horror from him.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2017 17:39
|
|
|
I'd say a majority of the giallos I've seen fall a little on the depressing side, Solange even more so than most. Stage Fright definitely sounds like a good fit for you though. I'm coming up short on suggestions beyond that if Blood and Black Lace didn't work for you, though - it's probably the least-depressing and most-stylish one I can think of outside of territory you've already covered. All the major directors I know of definitely have their own style, and Dario very much stands alone. I feel like he was sort of a transitional force, and by the time we hit late 70s/early 80s there isn't a whole lot of vaguely supernatural and baroquely plotted giallo action left - now we're into Fulci and Lamberto land. Which is a cool place to be, but very different feel. If you want more of that and haven't gotten into Fulci yet check out The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. Maybe also Mariano Baino's Dark Waters (1993) which I love a lot and is way underseen. Unfortunately I don't think he did any other full length theatrical work. edit: Based on your edit it sounds like maybe you haven't gotten into Fulci yet and he could definitely be up your alley as long as you have a high tolerance for what giallo fans seem to generously refer to as dream logic.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2017 22:19
|
|
|
6. The Canal (2014) - Random pick, another one from Ireland. A young couple buy a house, which is obviously a terrible idea. Some domestic poo poo happens. Husband finds out it's a murder house via watching old police footage at work. More domestic poo poo. If I had the self-control to abandon films unfinished I would stop here. "They saw a shadowy figure, a shadowy figure!" "It's just a coincidence." I hate everything about this boring garbage and everyone involved should feel deeply ashamed.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2017 05:42
|
|
|
7. Q (1982) - Larry Cohen and something about Quetzalcoatl eating people in New York, what could possibly go wrong? Well, okay, lots of things. Most obviously that it has an imagination twice as long as its running time and a hundred times the size of its budget. It's an absolute joy despite all of its problems, though. I mean just look at it: You have to love that. I was surprised by how similar it feels to God Told Me To. There's an early scene that is strongly reminiscent of that movie's intro, but we get blood instead of bullets falling on random New York pedestrians. We get a detective who's putting together clues and accepting the vaguely supernatural at a pace that feels totally out of synch with anything the audience actually gets to see. I'm also left with the same feeling of almost-brilliance - the film raises a lot of potentially interesting questions and could do well by leaving them largely unresolved, but totally undermines this by having someone just spell it all out in what feels like a throw-away line. It's like someone just didn't trust the audience to handle the story, which is a really weird perspective on giant monster eating people movie. This sort of makes sense because it is not actually a giant monster eating people movie, but if ancient Aztec god is a largely secondary background element then why is it so important to explain the mechanics of it to the audience? At least this one does it earlier in the film than God Told Me To, so you can sort of shrug at that element and focus on what the movie is actually about, which is Michael Moriarty's character. I don't think I have ever heard of him before, but he's great and gets sole song-writing credit too. Definitely recommended, but part of me is always going to wish I lived in that alternate reality where Larry Cohen had a lot more money and a better editor.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2017 22:43
|
|
|
I'll doublepost I don't even care you slackers 8. Sennentuntschi (2010) - The trailer for this thing tells you it's about some guys stuck in a remote mountain cabin who make a doll that turns into a girl for purposes of chores/sex/etc. They are inspired to do this by absinthe and an old story about three other guys who made a doll that prompted Satan to take pity on them and bring the doll to life. It later skins them and turns them into dolls in revenge, presumably because being brought to life solely to serve as a domestic/sex slave would kind of suck. In the story that inspired the characters, I mean. It still seems like a good idea because they are drunk in a cabin, I guess. Anyway, this experience of the trailer makes it a little bit jarring when the movie actually opens with a priest committing suicide and a mute girl wandering into the village for a setup that seems pretty far removed from the trailer, but by half an hour or so in you're feeling like it could have been a cool slow burn if only the trailer hadn't given so much away. And none of these impressions are wrong, exactly, but they're not really right either and the entire package is just weirder than you'd expect from the premise. Also more depressing. I can't really remember the last time I was watching a movie and just wanted all of the characters to stop. Just...stop. Doing what they're doing, being who they are. If that sounds appealing and you're feeling patient, I would definitely give it a watch. Make sure you're drinking.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 07:11
|
|
|
9. The Burning (1981) - I am not particularly excited about slashers as a rule, but I've enjoyed a handful of the classics and this one's attracted enough thread praise to catch my attention. In some ways it works really well - giving the characters some time to breath before you start killing them is pretty much always going to make for a stronger movie. Unfortunately The Burning doesn't commit to this as fully as it should, so we get a completely pointless random killing early on and a ton of completely ineffective attempts to maintain tension with quaint jump scares and harmless shadowy figures. It's like the movie is afraid you're going to forget its genre and fails to recognize that this isn't actually a bad thing. It's not a totally unfounded fear, though, because the actual slasher bits are almost entirely vestigial. You could replace like two scenes with someone losing a map and a bear attack and you'd have a movie that was just as strong. The finale almost changes this, and looks like it's going to be surprisingly effective and tie everything together really well. This holds up for about ten seconds before it grinds to an inexplicable halt, then restarts in much goofier fashion. I had to double check to make sure I wasn't watching some sort of bizarre bootleg re-cut, but no, this is the full thing. That's really how it went. Still, the horror content isn't completely terrible or anything, just not nearly as good as it could have been. And the goofball summer camp comedy it's bolted to is pretty good. Solid cast all around, lots of great performances. Behold, acting: 
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 22:45
|
|
|
It is true that that is an unusual feature, but it doesn't seem like the movie is really doing anything substantive or interesting because of it. Just one of several deviations from the standard formula that looks more dramatic in retrospect because nobody else ever bothered to do it. I think my favorite shift along those lines is that it found ways to winnow the cast down without just killing everyone, so there was some variety in how you get down to the final girl scenario. Which it's not sticking particularly closely to anyway.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 23:05
|
|
|
10. Honeymoon (2014) - A young couple go to a cabin for their honeymoon and forget how to make coffee. This, obviously, dooms the relationship. Seriously though there are like three possible movies you're going to get with people in a cabin and this one doesn't keep you guessing very long (it's aliens). It's all vaguely competent I guess but doesn't do much to make you care about the characters before they fall apart and I was bored of the entire affair before it was half over. Way better than The Canal, at least.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2017 05:57
|
|
|
11. Jeruzalem (2015) - Apparently some sort of extended anti-advertisement for Google Glass. It's possible the movie might have had a decent idea or two buried somewhere but it's impossible to tell past their discovery of the one way to make found footage even worse. Still better than The Canal.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2017 08:21
|
|
|
You only had one wrong-thinker post so I would have gone with the tree-beating portion instead, save that one for when two people claim it's not a beautiful movie.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2017 03:19
|
|
|
12. Shivers (1975) - I did not know there was a Cronenberg zombie movie, but there is and it works about like you'd expect - more straightforward than his best work, but still way more interesting than pretty much anything else in the genre. I think the oddest thing about this one is the structure. You are told exactly what's going on and how it all works almost immediately, then things just play out according to that setup. No mysteries or twists or dramatic reversals. It's the sort of thing you sometimes see work well in character-driven dramas, but it feels strange in a horror film. The second strangest thing is that there just isn't any particularly striking imagery in it which seems completely out of character, but this is pretty early in his career so maybe he just hadn't hit his stride yet. Still well worth the watch.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2017 05:51
|
|
|
13. Hounds of Love (2016) - Wildcard pick based on someone in the horror thread gushing about it within the past couple of days. Serial killer/rapist couple, etc. Not really my thing. It is effective at making Perth look like an utterly miserable place to live and I like the soundtrack, but I think that's about all I can say for it.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2017 06:22
|
|
|
I guess I'm just going to keep going even though I was only in for 13. I mean, why would you stop watching horror movies, really? 14. The Evil Within (2017) - Someone mentioned this just hit Amazon and I have literally no self control, so here we go. This thing is a beautiful mess. It made a bad first impression with some cringe-inducing narration in the intro. It kind of looks like one of the less-beloved Full Moon productions; soft focus all over and an inescapable feeling of incredibly cheap sets. It doesn't take too long to hit its weird lurching stride, though, and it's at least visually engaging from the very start. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun looking at stop-motion work. It's obviously not the result of a large budget or a great deal of experience, but it's equally obvious that a great deal of passion went into it. Highly recommended if you're willing to overlook the rough edges. There are like a billion cool moments I could turn into gifs but I'd hate to show too much so just have this clip of a newscaster extolling the virtues of sleep. 
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2017 06:09
|
|
|
Hollismason posted:You can't post about The Evil Within without the completely insane back story of how it was the passion project of a meth addicted millionaire. That explains quite a bit, actually. Thanks for the link. edit: That Guardian write-up is pretty bad, though. It reads like they looked at the Hollywood Reporter piece they link at the start and decided to buy all the way into the story around the movie without actually watching the movie. Irony.or.Death fucked around with this message at 15:30 on May 17, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 17, 2017 14:50
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:Any lesser known Lovecraftian horror I might be able to throw in there to make it a themed marathon? I've seen all the obvious stuff like Gordon's, In the Mouth of Madness, The Thing, Necronomicon etc. I'm like 90% sure you've already seen Messiah of Evil but if not definitely watch it. It's a little bit of a stretch but you might also give The Corridor (2010) or Yellowbrickroad a shot. Oh, and The Resurrected (1991)! That's one I hadn't heard of until I watched it for last October's challenge and it's probably my favorite non-Gordon straight adaptation.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2017 22:25
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:Maybe something that would be considered gothic horror? One of the classic Universal films or maybe something from Hammer? Thread reminder: Ken Russel directed a movie about Byron and the Shelleys doing drugs, loving, and trying to out-spook each other. It's even called Gothic. I'm not gonna tell you it totally lives up to that premise, but you owe it to yourselves to watch it anyway.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2017 20:27
|
|
|
15. Rabid (1977) - This is a weird one. It plays out like kind of a pseudo-sequel to Shivers. Or maybe an extended re-cut. Or something. It doesn't give you as complete an explanation of what's going on so it's not immediately obvious how things are going to play out, but the pandemic in this version spreads into the city more quickly so we see more of society dealing with it instead of watching it take individual characters apart and building up to an unstoppable force as in Shivers. It feels like a much more restrained disaster despite moving more quickly into a major population center. We're told the thing is highly infectious, but people also get one bite off before going into a coma and dying so there's no apocalyptic swell to the situation, and most of what we see in the movie is isolated individuals attacking. There's an explicit Typhoid Mary reference in a radio broadcast at some point which makes it feel like this is supposed to be a more personal sort of catastrophe, but that clashes strongly with the astonishingly bland characters. Most of the cast in Shivers had something interesting or memorable going on, and absolutely nobody in this does. It feels like Cronenberg hadn't quite worked out whatever pushed him to write Shivers, but didn't actually have any more ideas for it. Definitely the weakest film I've seen from him.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
16. The Brood (1979) - Well that was bleak. This feels like a major shift from Shivers and Rabid into the style that I've always associated with Cronenberg based on his later work. There's a lot of horror that works by taking metaphor and making it literal; he goes a step past that and makes it not just real but organic. Not something I would have appreciated when he first started working (only partially because I wasn't alive), but it's really striking in comparison to recent stuff like The Babadook or Lights Out and makes most other body horror feel kind of aimless. Obviously groundbreaking, but I still don't love it half as much as Videodrome. I probably should not have started my Cronenberg experience with Videodrome. Still, this easily joins Antichrist, Audition, and Possession on the list of first date ideas.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2017 05:18
|
|
|
17. Frightmare (1974) - Another entry in the "cannot possibly live up to the name" list. It does not live up to the name. It's not a bad movie, but I think the premise would have been better served by some trace of tension or mystery and they're totally absent. The result is a film where you know exactly what's going on in the first fifteen minutes or so and the characters aren't really interesting enough to carry it. It needed either a little more runtime or a lot more editing to flesh out a cast this size. This is too bad, because there are some good performances. Sheila Keith in particular is great so I would recommend giving it a watch if you're into murderous old ladies.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2017 17:44
|
|
|
18. Get Out (2017) - I wish I'd caught this in theaters because it's great, and has a few scenes I can imagine getting really solid audience reactions. Every performance is solid, but my standout favorite is definitely Allison Williams who I have never heard of before. Also, it is of course hilarious: 
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2017 03:01
|
|
|
19. The Rambler (2013) - A man gets out of prison and starts hitchhiking to reach his brother's place for the promise of a job and shelter. He makes some friends, meets a girl, and has lots of adventures along the way. Short on traditional niceties like linear storytelling and resolution, with a moderate dose of surrealism to replace them. It reminds me of Cemetery Man in some ways, but it's not quite as light-hearted and definitely not as good. But then, not many movies are. Lots of fun to look at with some solid practical effects. I have no idea who I would recommend this to, really, but if you like it we can be friends.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2017 06:59
|
|
|
Basebf555 posted:24. The Resurrected Glad you enjoyed it! I'm really kind of baffled that this one isn't more widely known; as you said, it's definitely my favorite non-Gordon Lovecraft movie.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
That's tough, looking back over my list. I enjoyed the vast majority and there were several that did some really cool unusual stuff. I think overall I had the must fun with The Rambler followed closely by The Evil Within. That feels really weird to type with multiple Cronenberg/Cohen entries on the list, but I I stand by it.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2017 16:44
|
|
|
Because I want to hurt you for your failure and because we never talk about category 3 stuff in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NevT4kH2luA
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2017 20:38
|
|
|
Everyone designs a gremlin?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2017 20:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:13 |
|
|
That's what links are for!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2017 05:48
|
|