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El Graplurado
Mar 24, 2004
I do backflips when you're not looking.
Mark of the Devil (Michael Armstrong, 1970)

Is this even horror? The horrors of history I guess, though that's clearly a front just to serve base bloodthirst and morbid curiosity. And how! It’s like the horror engine became sentient, started learning, saw Witchfinder General and said “more torture, more bodies, pare the rest”. Smooth flesh contrasted with broken, beaten, burned flesh. The one scene of violence done for desperate good is punctuated by psychedelic paint splashes. The rest is bare prolonged torture that even now seems over the line. Unsparing, ugly, truly shameless.

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gey muckle mowser
Aug 5, 2003

Do you know anything about...
witches?



Buglord
The best thing about Mark of the Devil was the marketing:

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Mark of the Devil's original title is Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält, which literally translates to 'Witches are tortured until they bleed'. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about the film.

The Macaroni
Dec 20, 2002
...it does nothing.

Dr.Caligari posted:

Possession

Not sure where to watch it , but it may even be on You Tube
Found it on YouTube, will watch! Thanks.

Samuel Clemens posted:

Mark of the Devil's original title is Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält, which literally translates to 'Witches are tortured until they bleed'. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about the film.
:stare:

The Macaroni fucked around with this message at 17:25 on May 7, 2018

gey muckle mowser
Aug 5, 2003

Do you know anything about...
witches?



Buglord
Witchfinder General is the superior witch-hunt movie in every way.

deedee megadoodoo
Sep 28, 2000
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one to Flavortown, and that has made all the difference.


I just typed up my first two reviews and then accidentally closed my browser before submitting, so here's two abbreviated posts because I don't feel like typing everything up again.

1) A Dark Song - Great pacing, though some people might find it a bit slow. The dude leading the ritual is loving perfect in every way. He's just the right amount of scummy without being over the top. This movie is extremely my poo poo. I give it 4.5 out of 5 salt circles.

2) They're Watching - This showed up on Netflix as a recommended movie. It's budget horror that's painfully predictable. The story is pretty weak and definitely drags, but I think the payoff is pretty good. The crappy CGI was really bad but the excellent practical effects more than made up for it. I give it 2 out of 5 eastern European villagers.

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
It's very exciting to see how far everyone is a little over a week in the challenge.

I see some horror thread regulars have set goals but haven't even reviewed a single movie yet. Will they fail? Or is it too soon to tell?

So far, my top 3 movies have been Magic, Baskin and Day of the Dead. If you're looking for recommendations and haven't seen those, give them a shot, especially if there are any Hopkins fans that haven't seen Magic.

Queued up on my To Watch list:

Peeping Tom & Them! (thanks to Samuel Clemens who isn't participating in a horror challenge yet again)
Fright Night (rewatch for me thanks to leavemywife)
Phantasm remaster (thanks to Basebf555 who has picked pretty much half of my month's line-up)

I'm having a lot of fun after taking a hiatus from movies for a little while. My reviews feel...lovely so far. Haven't had any great insights on anything, though. Oh well.

I hope everyone else is having fun and getting good picks!

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Franchescanado posted:

Peeping Tom & Them! (thanks to Samuel Clemens who isn't participating in a horror challenge yet again)

I'm currently going through Twin Peaks for the first time. That counts as horror, right? :shobon:

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Samuel Clemens posted:

I'm currently going through Twin Peaks for the first time. That counts as horror, right? :shobon:

Almost! Fire Walk With Me and Season 3 certainly count. But good on you for finally getting around to the show.

You always give me good rec's so I like giving you hard time, especially since you never once participate in my challenges. :(

gey muckle mowser
Aug 5, 2003

Do you know anything about...
witches?



Buglord

Samuel Clemens posted:

I'm currently going through Twin Peaks for the first time. That counts as horror, right? :shobon:

Sure! I was actually going to watch Fire Walk With Me as one of my movies, as the blu-ray has been sitting in my "to-watch" pile since it came out.

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Franchescanado posted:

You always give me good rec's so I like giving you hard time, especially since you never once participate in my challenges. :(

Aw, thanks. Don't take my non-participation as an insult. You make good challenge threads. And drat fine coffee too.

Almost Blue
Apr 18, 2018
5. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

I’d heard everything past the second one was pretty bad, but I enjoyed this even if it’s a bit of a regression for the series. It’s been a while since I last saw the first two Hellraisers but I think this contradicts the rules they set up? I don’t remember Pinhead being able to kill people for no reason. Or turning random dudes into cenobites. Or being called Pinhead in the movie.

Definitely has a goofier feel than the first two.

Also, North Carolina doubles for New York and that’s pretty funny.

6. The Guest

This was great. Very funny too, which I hadn’t heard before seeing it. Didn’t click with me until the bar scene, so I’m looking forward to re-watches.

My takeaway is it’s about the militarism of America. All of the characters are OK with David’s aggression and violence until it negatively affects them.

I could’ve done without the ending with the hall of mirrors. It’s a little overplayed and nothing interesting is done with them.

7. Two Evil Eyes

Not really sure where the title comes from. This is an anthology movie featuring two (loose) adaptations of Poe stories, one directed by Romero and the other by Argento. Neither is amongst their best work, although both have fun stylistic quirks. It's kind of a modern (circa 1990) update of the Corman Poe movies.

Romero's is a straight-forward story about greed featuring elements from The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Adrienne Barbeau exploits her terminally ill husband out of money and she's secretly seeing her husband's doctor. It isn't particularly engaging and you know exactly how everything's going to go in the first few minutes. Argento’s is slightly more intriguing as it has some elements of autobiography with the intersection between an artist’s aggression and their art. Harvey Kietel is kind of boring in the lead role though.

Both segments feel weak because they’re premised on the idea that something interesting could happen rather than it actually happening. They also both stretch their stories past their limit at about an hour for each.

Alfred P. Pseudonym
May 29, 2006

And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

Finally got started over the weekend.

1. Raw (2016): I know a bunch of veterinarians irl and I wanna make all of them watch this. This movie was pretty good. I liked the parallels between Justine's culinary and sexual cravings. The gore scenes are pretty good and gross too. Also the scene where she vomits up a bunch of hair holy gently caress made me wanna throw up so there's that.

2. Creep (2014): This one was pretty fun. The discomfort of Josef making Aaron watch him take a bath made me lol. Of course it gets grim in parts, but this is a great role for Duplass's comedic style and it works pretty well.

3. Creep 2 (2017): I prefer this one to the first Creep. I had a hard time buying that Sara's web-series was failing instead of being picked up by Viceland though. I liked that Duplass's character had to interact with someone who was as depraved as he was at times, or at least was willing to pretend to be.

Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


9. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) - ?/5. You kind of have to bring your own fun to this one, because it's really loving stupid even by franchise standards, but it gives you plenty of stuff to anchor that fun on. They decided to re-cast child Jason for the purpose of having a bunch of extremely bad scenes, so he had hair now, I guess. Jason's adult look is also a big step down from The New Blood, and this round under the lake has actually repaired his clothes. He's now also really gooey, which I guess is okay.

The most striking thing, though, is that he comes across as old and washed up. Electrified back to animacy one too many times, I guess. He moves slower than ever, he often seems to lose track of where he is mid-murdering so he takes an extra ten seconds or so to actually get around to stabbing someone, and he is frequently so confused that he straight up does not even attempt to kill the closest available human. Hell, at one point he's confronted by a group of rowdy teenagers just begging to be murdered and he intentionally scares them off instead. It's really sad watching this kind of mental and physical decline in someone you've spent so much time with.

Julius is good though.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Irony.or.Death posted:

7. Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) - 2/5. Wow, this sucks. I had high hopes at the start - if they were set on resurrecting Jason this was the best possible way to do it. After that, though...the whole thing just feels all bland and Hollywood-ish. The good humor has been mostly replaced by bad jokes, quiet weirdo Tommy has been replaced generic hero Tommy, we get a head crush kill with no eyeball popping out even though Jason is (in some scenes, sometimes) much stronger than when he was alive. The ensemble cast barely gets lip service this time, it's all about Tommy and Girl. And nobody would believe for a second that this movie has the balls to kill a kid so filling the camp with them was dumb and pointless.

One point for lightning, one point for the Alice Cooper song.

I'm glad someone else gets it.

Irony.or.Death posted:

8. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) - 3/5. They...changed the name back to Crystal Lake? Everyone felt better about the memories that come with the old name now that Jason is chained to the bottom of the lake, and not merely supposedly cremated? I mean this franchise has never been great about continuity despite these dumb recaps, but still. Movie is pretty okay. It follows the sad recent trend of not being nearly as funny as the older installments, but there are a few good moments. The potted plant headbutt was a definite favorite. We also hit a couple of impressive new lows on the terrible psychiatrist front.

The corpse hiding is a mixed bag; there are a couple shots where Jason was clearly just hanging out peeking around the corner waiting for someone to notice and appreciate his decorating, while in past movies it's seemed more like a set-and-forget approach. He also reuses the same body a few times, so you might start to worry that he's phoning it in, but then he just stuffs every body in the movie into a single tree and it's pretty great.

I think what really makes this one stand out is the zombie Jason design - he looks orders of magnitude better than he did in Part VI. Well, that and the whole psychic powers thing. That was a good idea that doesn't deliver on all it promises, but once Tina starts really getting into it with Jason it's pretty entertaining. I am, however, deeply saddened that Jason doesn't throw any corpses through the window this time. Most of the murdering is kind of rote, but on the other hand:



edited for more thoughts

Part 7 was butchered by the MPAA so a lot of the kills would probably have been more memorable if we'd actually gotten to see them.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007


Get ready for Price Time, Bitch



5. No One Lives This movie is not nice. It's directed by Ryuhei Kitamura who did Versus and Midnight Meat Train. Overall the best thing about the film is Luke Evans . It's also weirdly produced by WWE. So it makes it one of two good movies made by them ( Oculus is the other). It's a gore field mean spirited ride. It's got the excellent Lee Tergenson who is vastly underused in this film. If you want some mean spirited gore filled horror or if you are in love with Luke Evans this is the film for you.


:spooky: :spooky: :spooky: / 5


6. The Cottage I was really surprised by how good this film was. Stars Andy Serkis who's always way better than the movie is in most of the time. Directed by the same guy who did Cherry Tree Lane. The darkest of dark comedies. I can't realy say anything to much about it other than to say it's super gorey and super funny. It most certainly is not going in the direction you think and in fact it delays that for a good while. I don't wanna spoil it but trust me when i say this takes a hard turn into what the gently caress crazy town. Probably the best new to me horror I've seen in a while.

Stick around there's a post credit teaser.


:spooky: :spooky: :spooky: :spooky: :spooky: / 5

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 03:51 on May 8, 2018

married but discreet
May 7, 2005


Taco Defender
7. Happy Death Day
A steroeotypical college cheerleader is murdered every day groundhog day style until she turns into a Good Person. Preface: Watched on a plane with bad headphones, so probably the worst way to see a movie.
Nothing interesting about this movie at all, except for the vague feeling of disappointment that an interesting premise was wasted. I'm sure everyone can think of some fun scenarios of what would happen if you had to forever relive a day that ends in your murder at the hand of a masked killer. Unfortunately the writers of this one couldn't, so we're stuck with a protagonist who is neither a real person nor a Mean Girls style caricature getting murdered in very generic, bloodless ways until she doesn't. Everyone can safely skip this one.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
I highly recommend The Void

Found it on Netflix when I was bored. It seemed like your typical small, cheap B movie but then went full Lovecraft. It's great.

Reminded me a lot of From Beyond

Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


Lurdiak posted:

Part 7 was butchered by the MPAA so a lot of the kills would probably have been more memorable if we'd actually gotten to see them.

This is very sad because I think it's my second favorite of the main series even in butchered form. Is this one of those cases where the footage still exists but only in grainy VHS form, or one of those cases where it's lost forever?

Unrelated:

10. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) - 1/5. It's more of everything that sucked about part VI plus a bunch of brand new original sucking, but at least they're allowed to kill people again. They do that pretty well a couple of times. The rest, though... Was this a Hellraiser-style completely unrelated script doctored up to have some loose connection to the franchise or were there just a lot of strokes involved in the production? There are some fun effects hampered by the film looking like poo poo at all times. It has that awful 90s TV-movie lighting that ruins everything it touches.

Mostly it's just puzzling. What was this supposed to accomplish? The franchise already had like four perfectly serviceable final entries, and they were all more convincingly final than this by virtue of not completely ignoring every other movie in the series.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Irony.or.Death posted:

This is very sad because I think it's my second favorite of the main series even in butchered form. Is this one of those cases where the footage still exists but only in grainy VHS form, or one of those cases where it's lost forever?

There's no word of god on it, but by all appearances it's been lost. I have to imagine if it existed in any form it would've surfaced by now.

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

I thought it existed in some ridiculously obscure form like a Japanese laserdisc or something. Maybe I'm thinking of another one of the movies.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

4. The Bell Witch Haunting (2013)
Asylum doing what it does by cheaply telling the story of a family haunted by a malevolent spirit that takes heavily from Paranormal Activity, An American Haunting, Exorcist, and a bunch of other stuff. Its Asylum. Its a lot of derivative stuff slapped together poorly.


I obviously I didn’t have high expectations going in. It was just a random horror that Prime recommended to me and I had no real other movie in mind so I figured why not give it a try? The poster looked good (nothing like that happens in the movie) and the trailer showed some crazy poo poo that made me figure even if it was cheap and bad it might be nutso to hold my interest. Well that was sort of true. I mean, it never went full on crazy, at least not to till the end, and when it did the effects couldn’t pull off what the movie wanted to in the slightest (nor could the actors). But it moved at a brisk enough pace and since it never really tried to do anything like establish plot, characters, or tension there wasn’t really time to get bored.

It wasn’t without some charm. For starters, the Bell Witch wracks up one hell of a body count. Seriously, people are dropping left and right. It started to get to a point where I was really concerned that the local cops weren’t more interested in this family that keeps having weirdo behavior and trouble and also like half a dozen dead people connected to them. Like, the cops are there a couple of nights in a row to deal with some freaky rear end poo poo and they don’t seem to care in the slightest. One of the highlights for me was that half way through a new character shows up out of absolutely nowhere just to get taken down by the Witch in hilarious fashion. Like… I have no idea who he was and apparently no one noticed him missing, but the Witch just had to get more kills in, I guess. Might as well since the cops don’t seem to care too much. So much for being affluent white people getting help.

The mom gets points for winning my “When Do You Get The gently caress Out?” game. I mean, she hangs on a little while but she seems freaked out at about the right time. There was even a kind of cool couple of nods to you hearing off camera the parents whispering that made it clear that mom was worried pretty early in and it just wasn’t getting recorded. And really, I wanna say she would have got there sooner if the kids had shown any of the freaky poo poo popping up on camera. I mean, what the hell, kids? If witches show up on your youtube makeup videos and poo poo is flying through the air then you should do something about that, not just keep vlogging. Millenials, man.

Hilariously dad pulled the “We can’t leave, we’re in debt for the house!” card which made me crack up. So kudos there. Of course at that point the Witch was possessing him and his daughter was eating roadkill so I stand by my “When Do You Get The gently caress Out?” game.

I’ve written more words about this thing than I imagine were put into its creation. Please don’t mistake this for praise. This was a bad film. Cheap, bad, lazy. But I was expecting that going in and just looking for something doofy after the intensity of The Eyes of My Mother. So sometimes you skip dinner and eat twinkles or something.


5. Burying the Ex (2014)
Joe Dante (or as I like to call him, Baby’s First Horror Director) brings us the tale of Anton Yenchin (RIP) who promises his not so bad but kinda intense girlfriend to always be with her (in front of a Satan Genie Totem) and then decides to break up with her. Which gets more complicated when she dies and comes back as a way more intense zombie.


This one was kind of a disappointment. I mean there was no hype coming in or anything but its Joe Dante and a premise that seems right up his alley. And I know its been awhile since the magic but I liked The Hole and his Masters of Horror episodes were alright and its Joe Dante. So I wanted to be optimistic.

And don’t get me wrong, it was cute. I never got bored or turned it off or anything. It was kind of sad seeing Yeltchin. I don’t think this was the first film of his I’ve seen since his death, but I was sucked deep enough into the Green Room that I didn’t think about it. This one was more about his charm and chemistry with his leading ladies so it just kind of struck me. And there was enough charm and chemistry there. Ashley Greene and Alexandra Daddario aren’t exactly thespians but they’re alright. Enough jokes land and enough gore happens. Watching Greene gradually go more zombie was fun as Yeltchin’s dilemma was and other side characters in the film finding his and Daddario’s romance dorky as gently caress.

I think it probably could have been a lot better if we got into the zombie antics quicker. It took a long time to get out of the first act and then Greene wastes time clubbing instead of doing zombie stuff. If we had just got there a little quicker and cut out some of the fluff for some more fun I think we would have had a winner here. Alas. Its a mostly forgettable, but cute enough little comedy. I'm gonna watch Gremlins tomorrow or something.


I’ll have to find something good for tomorrow instead of just picking random stuff. I don’t want to kill the enthusiasm.

May Tally - New (Total)
1. Blair Witch (2016) / 2. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) / 3. The Eyes of My Mother (2016) / 4. The Bell Witch Haunting (2013) / 5. Burying the Ex (2014)

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
Okay, my May convention is over and I have time to devote to hitting at least lucky 13 this month.

So let's play a game:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Choco1980 posted:

Okay, my May convention is over and I have time to devote to hitting at least lucky 13 this month.

So let's play a game:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

A Page of Madness (1926)

deedee megadoodoo
Sep 28, 2000
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one to Flavortown, and that has made all the difference.


Yesterday was fun.

3) Welcome to Willits - I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It starts off in typical campy (no pun intended) fashion before switching things up. I thought this was gonna end up being some weird comedy or 80s inspired monster movie and what we ended up with was even better. I give this movie 3.5 out of 5 Culkins.

4) Tag (Riaru Onigokko) - What the gently caress did I just watch? Seriously. I figured it would be weird because Japanese, but this is just... beyond. It starts off extremely cool and then just goes off the rails into meandering art house bullshit. There are a bunch of cool scenes but that’s about it. I kinda understand what they were going for, but this is just a really bad version of it. I give it 1 out of 5 gratuitous upskirts.

gey muckle mowser
Aug 5, 2003

Do you know anything about...
witches?



Buglord

Choco1980 posted:

Okay, my May convention is over and I have time to devote to hitting at least lucky 13 this month.

So let's play a game:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Choco1980 posted:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

Did you ever get a chance to watch Frankenstein: The True Story?

Mover
Jun 30, 2008


Choco1980 posted:

Okay, my May convention is over and I have time to devote to hitting at least lucky 13 this month.

So let's play a game:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

Masahiro Shinoda’s Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975)

Leave
Feb 7, 2012

Taking the term "Koopaling" to a whole new level since 2016.

Choco1980 posted:

Okay, my May convention is over and I have time to devote to hitting at least lucky 13 this month.

So let's play a game:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

You should watch Shakma.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

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

Fun Shoe

Puppetmaster II

Really was not expecting to enjoy this series as much as I have so far. Obviously these are not "good" movies, you don't need me to tell you that. But the mix of goofiness with the honest and obvious love for the genre that the filmmakers have is just too charming that it wins me over.

This first sequel is a great mash-up of different elements. Plenty of time spent on the puppets from the first film, but then also some Frankenstein and Invisible Man thrown in as well. Steve Welles is fantastic as Toulon, I was sad to see that he doesn't get a chance to reprise the role but I hope the new guy can carry the torch. Toulon gets a ton of Claude Rains moments in the movie, he's constantly up to no good and barely trying to hide it.


After two films each puppet has so much character, it's great. Pinhead is my favorite but Blade really came into his own in Puppetmaster II. Plus it seems like each sequel is going to introduce a new puppet to the gang. I love that there's a canon being established here, I understand that Puppetmaster III is a prequel where we get to see Toulon in his prime. I'm legit looking forward to watching that, never imagined I'd have that feeling about a Puppetmaster sequel.

Completed: 1. The Raven 2. The Last Man on Earth 3. The Mad Magician 4. A Dark Song 5. Dark Waters 6. Tremors 7. Tremors 2: Aftershocks, 8. Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, 9. Tremors 4: The Legend Begins 10. Tremors 5: Bloodlines 11. Tremors 6: A Cold Day In Hell 12. Ghoulies 13. Puppetmaster 14. Puppetmaster II

El Graplurado
Mar 24, 2004
I do backflips when you're not looking.
Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck, 1973)
Oh man. Dreamy, disorienting mind breakdown horror in league with and as good as things like Carnival of Souls, Dementia or Footprints on the Moon. An empty world but for creeping, unstoppable terror. Stylish, despairing. Really was quite blown away by this. Something I wasn't expecting from the people behind Howard the Duck. A





Choco1980 posted:

Okay, my May convention is over and I have time to devote to hitting at least lucky 13 this month.

So let's play a game:

Those of you who know me know I have a broad range of tastes, and a pretty eclectic track record of what I've seen and haven't. Suggest me a movie title. if I haven't seen it, I will go out of my way to fix that post haste. You get one shot per person, and I'm giving zero hints beforehand. Let's get me to the quota!

Suffer Little Children (1983)

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty

Basebf555 posted:


Puppetmaster II

Really was not expecting to enjoy this series as much as I have so far. Obviously these are not "good" movies, you don't need me to tell you that. But the mix of goofiness with the honest and obvious love for the genre that the filmmakers have is just too charming that it wins me over.

This first sequel is a great mash-up of different elements. Plenty of time spent on the puppets from the first film, but then also some Frankenstein and Invisible Man thrown in as well. Steve Welles is fantastic as Toulon, I was sad to see that he doesn't get a chance to reprise the role but I hope the new guy can carry the torch. Toulon gets a ton of Claude Rains moments in the movie, he's constantly up to no good and barely trying to hide it.


After two films each puppet has so much character, it's great. Pinhead is my favorite but Blade really came into his own in Puppetmaster II. Plus it seems like each sequel is going to introduce a new puppet to the gang. I love that there's a canon being established here, I understand that Puppetmaster III is a prequel where we get to see Toulon in his prime. I'm legit looking forward to watching that, never imagined I'd have that feeling about a Puppetmaster sequel.

Completed: 1. The Raven 2. The Last Man on Earth 3. The Mad Magician 4. A Dark Song 5. Dark Waters 6. Tremors 7. Tremors 2: Aftershocks, 8. Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, 9. Tremors 4: The Legend Begins 10. Tremors 5: Bloodlines 11. Tremors 6: A Cold Day In Hell 12. Ghoulies 13. Puppetmaster 14. Puppetmaster II

PM3 is the best one of the series unquestionably. Guy Rolfe (of Mr. Sardonicus fame) carries the franchise for quite some time as Toulon.



Unrelated, I'm impressed with the films so far commanded of me. Shakma is the only one I've already seen (I only have myself to blame for Living Dead Girl and Frankenstein: The True Story, those have been on my list for some time).

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
I always get The Living Dead Girl (which I haven't seen) confused with The Nude Vampire (which I have seen and hold as my least favorite Rollin film).

gey muckle mowser
Aug 5, 2003

Do you know anything about...
witches?



Buglord
The Living Dead Girl is gorier than the other Rollin films I've seen, and not as surreal, but it still has that sort of bizarre poetic quality to it that no other horror director I'm aware of can pull off. The ending is horrifying and heartbreaking at the same time. This might be apocryphal, but supposedly the lead actress' performance in that scene was so believable that the crew almost stopped filming out of fear for her mental health.

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007
I'm glad people in this thread have been liking A Dark Song.I really enjoyed it but I have to imagine a lot of people would find it frustrating.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

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

Fun Shoe

Drunkboxer posted:

I'm glad people in this thread have been liking A Dark Song.I really enjoyed it but I have to imagine a lot of people would find it frustrating.

I dunno, it has a payoff. It's not like it's one of those movies where it builds and builds for no real payoff(The Innkeepers, The Alchemist's Cookbook).

I think my favorite moment was when Solomon freaks out over Sophia trying to leave the house and he says You don't understand. If you try to leave now we'll be stuck here forever!. I love how it hints at the seriousness of what they've opened up and that he's not totally confident he can navigate his way home again, but still leaves plenty of open questions about what exactly they're doing.

Sono
Apr 9, 2008




Sono posted:

9. Sparrow - It was fine. This time the teenagers are British.

I'm switching sub-genres.

I recommend everyone see my new horror film, Trapped in the Bowels of Prime (VOD 2018). If you all agree, it might get more views than some of the things I've been watching.

9.5 WWE Backlash (2018) - From the makers of See No Evil and the worst Leprechaun movie. There's a fine line between horror cinema and torture porn, and this film crosses it with vigor. Some of the most brutal testicular mangling ever recorded on film, and the ending will crush your faith in humanity. Do not recommend.

10. The Dawn (2006) - This is better than IMDB gives it credit for. IMDB gives it a 2.2/10. A college professor teaching a class on pagan human sacrifice invites his class up to the woods for extra credit by saying "Come to the woods for extra credit in pagan human sacrifice. By which I mean I'm going to brutally murder all of you." They all say "okay" and smoke some pot.

This is clearly a "friends and family" cast, but it mostly works by keeping the conversations organic. Which is most of the movie, because all the kills happen off-camera. Once they start discovering corpses, the acting goes to... pot. The camera work and editing are pretty mediocre too. Satisfactory / Lowered Expectations.

I have a complete Val Lewton collection around here somewhere...

Sono fucked around with this message at 21:55 on May 8, 2018

Wet Tie Affair
May 8, 2008

P-I-Z-Z-A

I'll be joining in, looking to get to 13 movies at least. I've never been able to get through an October challenge but this seems much more doable!

01. Mikey (1992)



A movie about a homicidal 9-year-old who kills his adoptive families. Overall it was decent but nothing to write home about. Brian Bonsall did a pretty good job in the lead role at alternating between playing sweet and innocent and then crazed and rage-filled.

A lot of the kills and things Mikey does are fairly unbelievable, especially the climax. It seems the adults forget that they are much bigger than and should be able to overpower a child.

I'm not quite sure what point the film was going for; there were some lines that hinted there was going to be a backstory of physical or sexual abuse to account for Mikey's behavior but that was dropped halfway through.

As a side note, I'm ashamed it took me the whole movie to realize I knew Ashley Laurence as Kristy from Hellraiser...

Rating 2.5/5

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
On Franschescanado's demand, I watched A Page of Madness today.

It's...an experience to say the least. A man works as a janitor at an asylum, where unknown to the staff, his wife is a patient. After his daughter announces to him that she's to be wed into an upper class family, he begins to have fantasies, both good and bad about his situation.

Wow, what a film. Thought lost for 50 years, the film employs a massive amount of tricks for it's very early time, such as montage editing ala Eisenstein, triple, or even quadruple exposure to create eerie dream visions, psychedelic camera and mirror tricks, and even borrows lighting and angle tricks from German Expression. This movie needs to be shown in film school, even though extremely few prints exist. The copy I saw is on youtube, taped off of a Turner Classics airing, with the sound muted. Apparently there's a good half hour of melodrama that's been lost to the ages, and I think that's fine because the real meat of the film is what we get. Even though this is a non-English film, and there are no dialog cards, it says a lot that the plot is mostly coherent without knowing what people say when they speak. I wouldn't call the film "scary", but it is definitely unsettling in many differing ways, and I highly recommend the film.

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Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007


Get ready for Price Time, Bitch



Lips of Blood to me is the Jean Rollins film that I recommend to people over The Living Dead Girl because the former explains perfectly what Jean Rollins films are about which is this weird nostalgic vampire film that never really existed except in a young Jean Rollins mind.


Like The Living Dead Girl is pretty interesting though from a queer perspective.



Basically if you like Lips of Blood and Living Dead Girl move on to Fascination and if by then you really like Jean Rollins films , watch Requiem for a Vampire

Then just watch everything else.

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 04:10 on May 9, 2018

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