|
M_Sinistrari posted:
I totally forgot about the challenge starting again this year - gonna have to watch this one this time. Thanks for pointing it out!
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2018 14:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:42 |
|
|
1) Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser Part 1 I kicked off the challenge last year by watching Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, so I thought it would be cute to watch this to kick off this year. Leviathan is, simply, a documentary about the making of Hellraiser (I watched this on Shudder, which I guess doesn't have part 2 up). They get the majority of the cast, crew and production staff to talk about it (minus Clive Barker and the actress who played Kristy, which sticks out like a sore thumb). It's a fairly pleasant watch; there's lots of behind the scenes photos, in-depth discussion of the effects and designs, and everyone involved with the first one sounded like they enjoyed working on it and had good memories. It was interesting, but I have to imagine if you're a Hellraiser superfan, you probably already know all this stuff. 2) Caltiki, The Immortal Monster For a low-budget late '50s giant blob movie, this one's pretty good. Scientists discover an ancient blob monster in Mexico than ran off the Mayans hundreds of years ago, and now it's been reactivated by an approaching radioactive comet; hijinks ensue. 1) The cinematography by Mario Bava is really effective. The first part of the film looks the best, it takes place in the jungle and Caltiki's lair, and it's great stuff. 2) Oh god the little girl's dubbed voice is terrifying. 3) As M_Sinistrari alluded to earlier, it has a a few fleeting scenes of some truly gruesome effects that look great even though the film's in black and white. I mean, it's not quite The Blob '88 level of detail, but it had to have been an inspiration - I'm sure the reveal of the first victim gave a bunch of kids nightmares back in the day. 4)  at the drama/romance subplot between the scientists and their women.5) I swear to god Dean Koontz ripped off this film when he wrote Phantoms. I couldn't put the book down but was really disappointed by the movie. I guess I should rewatch that for Franchescanado's first challenge...
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2018 04:50
|
|
|
3) Blood Feast Herschell Gordon Lewis' pioneering gore/splatter film from 1963. An Egyptian caterer is slaughtering and dismembering young women as part of a ritual to resurrect his beloved goddess Ishtar. It's loving terrible, and I loved every minute of it. If it weren't for the gore and the sleazier aspects of the film (more below), this would straight up be a perfect MST3K film to riff on. The gore is ok overall (that tongue scene) if a little tame by today's standards; a lot of the film is in these BRIGHT COLORS, including the blood, and it gives everything a cartoony feel. The script is terrible, the actors are terrible, the editing and staging is terrible, and it's all so perfectly bad. I will admit that while this is an exploitation film and it should be a "duh" sentiment, the inherent goofiness of the film's production makes it even more unsettling when the movie sleazily (and literally!) treats women as meat - the scene where the camera pans across the half-naked, blood-covered corpse of a woman for nearly a minute started feeling a little uncomfortable about 10 seconds in. Then again, this is the sort of movie where in the end, the killer is crushed in the back of a garbage truck, and the police chief delivers a Bond one-liner about how he died "a fitting death, like the garbage he was."
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2018 13:35
|
|
|
4) Demon of Paradise Scream Factory DVD trailer above - NSFW for boobs, but if you watch it, you've seen all the most exciting parts of the movie and don't have to watch it! Standard '80s low-budget guy-in-a-suit monster movie. Shady dynamite-wielding fisherman somewhere in Hawaii awaken AKUA, the legendary local lizardman monster. It's got everything you'd expect from one of these flicks, stop me if you've heard this before - the natives who are aware of the beast (and the one native who scoffs at its existence dies to it five minutes later), the shady newspaper reporter and resort proprietor who scheme to turn the monster's existence into a tourist attraction, the fish-out-of-water (GET IT?!) disgraced former big city sheriff who got sent to the boonies and is disrespected by the locals and has to deal with a string of unexplained murders, and the local female herpetologist who wants them to preserve the lizardman FOR SCIENCE! For an R-rated film, it's tame as poo poo (barely any blood, some boobs and F-words are the main offenders I guess) and too boring to make up for the cheese factor. The one hilarious scene where Akua takes down a helicopter (which somehow STILL isn't the most exciting scene in the movie!) isn't worth it. Avoid.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2018 21:37
|
|
|
TheBizzness posted:Nice! I remember seeing it in a weird movie theatre/Pizza parlor back in the day with my parents but all I remember from the movie is Hulk Hogan. More evidence of Gremlins 2 supremacy is that the home video and novelization versions both have their own customized fourth wall-breaking moments for that scene.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2018 01:54
|
|
|
M_Sinistrari posted:
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this is one of my favorite episodes of the entire show.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2018 17:37
|
|
|
Updating here with where I watched stuff: 1) Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser Part 1 - Shudder 2) Caltiki, The Immortal Monster - Youtube 3) Blood Feast - Shudder (also on Tubi) 4) Demon of Paradise - Tubi And a new one: 5) Hungerford - Netflix I went into this one blind. Meh. It's a found-footage movie about four student flatmates in a small town in England who have to deal with the town being invaded by alien insects that turn their neighbors into screeching rage zombies. The first 20 minutes are boring as hell, the last 20 minutes take place almost entirely in the dark, I didn't really find the characters to be likeable, internal inconsistencies abound (removing the parasites kills you, but one of the heroes gets infected, gets his bug removed and survives just so he can deliver a few lines of exposition about what the threat is), etc. Once it gets going, it's...just okay? It has a few funny things about it - besides firearms, aerosol deodorant(!) is the main weapon, as it repels the xenobugs and forces them out of their human hosts - but it's otherwise pretty forgettable. Apparently the guy playing the main character is also the writer and director, and he was 19 when this was made, so...it could have been way, way worse?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2018 03:23
|
|
|
SMP posted:This any good? I googled it and it seems like there's an 11 hour version of this documentary that covers Hellraiser I and II. My review from earlier in the thread: quote:I kicked off the challenge last year by watching Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, so I thought it would be cute to watch this to kick off this year. Leviathan is, simply, a documentary about the making of Hellraiser (I watched this on Shudder, which I guess doesn't have part 2 up). They get the majority of the cast, crew and production staff to talk about it (minus Clive Barker and the actress who played Kristy, which sticks out like a sore thumb). It's a fairly pleasant watch; there's lots of behind the scenes photos, in-depth discussion of the effects and designs, and everyone involved with the first one sounded like they enjoyed working on it and had good memories. It was interesting, but I have to imagine if you're a Hellraiser superfan, you probably already know all this stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2018 12:21
|
|
|
6) Cropsey FRAN CHALLENGE #1: Love Something You Hate Seen on: Tubi For as much as I enjoy horror and the supernatural, the one subgenre I typically avoid is true crime/psychological horror - i.e., horror movies that do not have supernatural or fantastic elements and focus solely on real events. Maybe it's hypocritical, but I generally don't enjoy watching the suffering of real people (or the adaptations of the suffering of real people), as compared to actors playing fictional characters. With this in mind, I decided to give Cropsey a watch, as this was on a to-view list I had for last year's challenge but I considered it an absolute last pick if I went through every other movie on my list. I probably wouldn't have watched it this time either had it not been for the challenge. Cropsey is not a horror film per se, although it's listed under the genre at the site I watched it at, plus a lot of the hits I found on Google place it in the genre (if you guys consider it not to be, I'll watch something else for the challenge). It's a documentary that starts out with discussion of the urban legend of the boogeyman "Cropsey," the typical hook-for-a-hand madman that parents used to threaten their kids with to keep them out of places they shouldn't be in. The filmmakers reminisce about Cropsey on Staten Island, where they grew up, and then dovetailing that into "but he was real," focusing on the case of convicted child kidnapper Andre Rand and the disappearences of five children on Staten Island during the '70s and '80s; Rand was convicted of kidnapping and murdering two and suspected of taking the other three. As far as documentaries go, it's competently made, but it felt contrived in a lot of parts. There is, of course, question of whether Rand actually did the things he was convicted of; he claimed to be innocent and at one point tells the filmmakers he'll speak with them but later changes his mind. Going into the last third of the film, they start tossing around a lot of accusations against Rand (including devil worship) that just feels kind of over the top. There's even a visit to a spooky dark abandoned place in the third act that ends with a jump scare, just to set up "today's kids are doing the same things we are." News footage of Geraldo Rivera doing an ambush visit in the '70s at the mental institution where Rand worked and children were held is legitimately heartbreaking. There are families interviewed in the film that never had their children found, and they've had to live with the pain of that for decades; the film feels like catharsis for some of these folks. I can't say I found this entertaining to watch, although I understand the fascination behind films like this that ask "why do people do terrible things?"
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2018 17:34
|
|
|
Sorry for the big post - trying to catch up on writing out what I've seen. 7) Resolution Seen on: Shudder So this was on my list for last year but I didn't get to it. Fast-forward to earlier this year, and I see the trailer for the director duo's most recent film, The Endless which looked awesome...and then reviews come out saying you should watch this one first (you don't have to though), so that's what I did for the challenge. A man tries to forcefully help his junkie friend kick his drug habit in an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere. Slowly, strange things begin to happen to the pair and it becomes clear that the detox is the least of their worries. The thing I'm most impressed by in "Resolution" is that it's 90% a character drama and 10% a horror movie, and yet it still manages to do both really well. The strength of the movie is the writing and acting for the two main characters, yuppie Mike and druggie Chris. Both are charismatic and funny and have great chemistry together. They're supposed to be old friends, with old wounds to reopen and good memories to recall, and they really feel like it. The horror elements of the film are subtle. Like, really subtle, and I can understand why there are reviews I've seen of this that essentially say "I don't understand, this was pitched as a scary movie, but I didn't understand it." The horror elements are there from the start and they slowly begin to increase as things progress to an abrupt ending, so it's a definite slow burn. I originally wrote another paragraph here that was my take on the "meta" theme of the film, and then I watched The Endless, and...uh, well, it's kinda spelled out directly in that one what was going on here, so it was kind of moot. I've seen some comparisons here to Cabin in the Woods, as both films touch on the concept of the audience (or some outside force acting as an audience) and expectations in horror films. Here, it's way more underplayed but still effective. 8) The Endless Seen on: Netflix Two men (directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead) left a "UFO death cult" a decade ago; the older, more controlling brother doesn't regret it, but the younger, more submissive one has only pleasant memories of the experience. When the latter receives a videotape from the camp showing that the cult is still around - after the older brother was certain they experienced "The Ascension," when he believed they were going to kill themselves Heaven's Gate-style - he convinces his brother to come back to the cult for closure. When they get there, they find things are still peaceful and idyllic...and the reason why it's still that way is some pretty existentially terrifying poo poo. The Ascension already happened, and it's starting again. So, The Endless is the movie I was hoping Resolution would be - the weird/horror elements start earlier and permeate the entire film. Here, you still get excellent, well-written performances from everyone, including the directors (who pull off the brother dynamic very well). This one also ramps up the dread and creepy poo poo nicely, with some beautiful cinematography and scenes and vistas that are still in my head a few nights after watching it - the shot of the countryside and the domes everywhere is a fantastic reveal. The nature of what's going on is really neat. Also, in relation to Resolution all of the callbacks to that film are great, and that whole bit with the characters from the previous film works even if you haven't seen it; if you have, it's a real bittersweet  moment that lends more impact to the events of this film.9) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon Seen on: Shudder Mockumentary/straight-up slasher flick/dark comedy hybrid movie (can't believe I just typed all that) set in a world where Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and other cinematic slashers are "real." The film follows a group of young grad students who are making a documentary on the eponymous Leslie Vernon, an affable, geekily giddy kind of guy who is also an aspiring slasher icon-in-training. Over the course of the movie, Leslie divulges the tricks of the slasher trade that make them appear superhuman, which includes physical conditioning, magic tricks, observing targets for weeks (including selecting the "survivor girl") and lots of Batman/MacGyver-style preparation. I gotta say, I didn't know if this was going to work early on - at first it seems a little too jokey, and "oh, ho! the killer guy is actually goofy and sweet and someone you could like" - but once it gets moving, it's a hoot. The guy playing Leslie is excellent and does the role with more nuance than I expected - you end up pulling for him, a great feat considering he is a psycho killer. There's also a great turn by Scott Wilson (probably best known the last few years as Herschel in The Walking Dead) as Leslie's fatherly slasher mentor and brief roles by genre vets Robert Englund (as the Dr. Loomis stand-in pursuing Leslie) and Zelda Rubenstein. I love all the detailed in-universe explanations for standard slasher abilities, and they even try to give them a bit of a code of ethics (they offer themselves up as monsters so that good people in the world will counterbalance them and inspire others) which I thought was interesting, but they don't go much further into that. The first two thirds of the movie are documentary/found-footage style, but they occasionally revert to standard horror film for the hunting/slashing parts, as is the last 20 minutes when Leslie goes on his rampage. I'm not much for slasher flicks, but I would love to see a sequel to this - although it appears they tried to get one going but it's languished in Kickstarter/development hell. 10) The Definitive Document of the Dead Seen on: Shudder This was originally a behind-the-scenes documentary about the filming of Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" but later updated with more material from his later projects (Two Evil Eyes, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, etc.). The "Dawn" stuff is interesting, but the back half consisting of the later-added footage is a loving mess - inconsistent narration, a whole bunch of crap (yes, let's devote 10 minutes to a party with the Jerky Boys, Joe Pilato creeping on Judith O'Dea, a porn parody of NotLD, etc.). Stop watching after the Dawn of the Dead material, continue only if you're a Romero diehard, and even then it's iffy. -- So that's about a third of the way through. The biggest problem I'm having is choosing what to watch next! Summary of what I've watched so far and where I watched it: (all new to me) 1) Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser Part 1 - Shudder 2) Caltiki, The Immortal Monster - Youtube 3) Blood Feast - Shudder/Tubi 4) Demon of Paradise - Tubi 5) Hungerford - Netflix 6) Cropsey FRAN CHALLENGE #1: Love Something You Hate - Tubi7) Resolution - Shudder 8) The Endless - Netflix 9) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - Shudder 10) The Definitive Document of the Dead - Shudder
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2018 02:28
|
|
|
Alright, caught up on the Fran challenges! 11) Nosferatu (1922) FRAN CHALLENGE #2: Queer HorrorSeen on: Shudder When I went looking through one of the posted lists to see a possible film I hadn't seen before that would apply for the challenge, I picked this, mainly because I've always wanted to see it (for all I've heard of the movie and F.W. Murnau, I had no idea he was gay - it was interesting digging a little further and reading about his life.) Just from looking at Google, this appears to be one of the main restoration versions from the mid 2000s, including restored title cards, proper film speed (I guess old B&W version were sped up from what I read), and colored tinting to deliniate scenes filmed in daylight/nighttime/indoors. For something filmed so long ago, a lot of this still looks great. Orlok's design is iconic for a reason and Max Schreck really brings him to (un?) life; I loved the bits where he first introduces Hutter (ie Harker, since Nosferatu is essentially Dracula with the serial numbers filed off) to his castle. The guy manages to do creepy and comical pretty well, but when he goes full vamp, it's effective. I was also surprised by the bittersweet ending, given how nearly every version of the story ends. 12) Toxic Zombies FRAN CHALLENGE #3: Hometown HorrorSeen on: Tubi I live in western Pennsylvania; everything I could find on this film says it was made in Pennsylvania but doesn't specify where. If I had to bet on it, it was probably in my neck of the woods - the presence of Romero regular and Pittsburgh-based actor John Amplas is a giveaway. This is one of those movies written and directed by one guy (who also plays the male lead). He plays a government worker whose family gets caught up in the mayhem caused when his corrupt bosses use a deadly chemical to spray a bunch of nasty marijuana farmers and their crops. It seems the spray turns anyone its exposed to into a bloodthirsty cannibal, and soon everyone in the woods is running for their lives. This movie was originally released as Bloodeaters and Forest of Fear, and either one of those is a better name because the spray's victims aren't actually undead, just turned into mindless murderers. There's actually not a whole lot of flesh-eating either; most of the attackers use weapons against their prey. As a result, it's really talky and boring, slow-moving, the gore sucks, people die in really dumb ways and nobody really tries hard to fight against the non-undead zombies. The picture quality (at least on the service I watched) is also poo poo - I had to squint to read the title text! Bleah. 13) Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers FRAN CHALLENGE #4: Worst of the Best / Best of the WorstSeen on: Youtube I didn't even consider looking for a "worst of the best" here, I knew there had to be gold going through some other B- or Z-movie director's work to find their "best." After looking over a couple of lists of directors, I realized I've somehow never seen a Fred Olen Ray movie before, and after doing some cursory research, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers appeared at the top of these and seemed like a no-brainer. Dear lord. This is how it starts:  In a nutshell: a cult of Egyptian chainsaw(?!) worshipping hookers - led by Leatherface himself, the late Gunnar Hansen, who is barely acting and barely threatening - are luring johns to their doom and carving them up with chainsaws. A film-noir style detective who's searching for a missing girl (Linnea Quigley!!) and who is rarely seen not smoking a cigarette, narrates the whole thing and gets drawn into the cult's plan. I think it was somewhere in that first scene where scream queen Michelle Bauer puts plastic up over her Elvis painting, puts on a shower cap (and takes everything else off), and is carving a guy up with a chainsaw and it looks he's copping a feel on her boob, then she just chuckles and pulls his hand away, showing it's dismembered from his body - that's when I knew I was in for something special. This is a horror comedy, with the emphasis on the comedy. It's like a bootlegged, bloodier, sleazier version of a Naked Gun movie with terrible actors, endless double entendres and groaner puns (references to cuts, pieces, etc.), some dismembered body parts, naked women, and a lot of incredibly fake blood sprayed all over the naked women. They throw a ton of jokes and visual gags at you, and like in Naked Gun/ZAZ style, not all of it hits, but I was surprised how much of it did, even if it is incredibly corny. The detective's narration is actually kind of funny and grew on me. Linnea Quigley does the virgin dance of the double chainsaws! I don't think it beats her Return of the Living Dead dance scene, but it's still funny. I don't know if I'll watch another Fred Olen Ray movie, but I'm glad I watched Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. 14) God Told Me To FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Birth of HorrorSeen on: Shudder So here's one made/taking place in 1976, a great period for religious horror movies (I watched the, uh, unique vision that was The Visitor for last year's challenge). It's by the legendary Larry Cohen - I'd seen and loved Q: The Winged Serpent and The Stuff when I was a kid in the late '80s but wasn't aware of this one until much later. And true to form, this one is excellent as well. The film has a great, simple hook. It involves a repressed Catholic NYPD cop who investigates a series of horrific, random mass murders committed by seemingly normal people in New York. When asked, the murderers (one of them is a pre-Taxi Andy Kaufman!) all give the same reason for why they did it: "God told me to." As he investigates further, he risks setting off a religious crisis, uncovers a conspiracy involving something not-of-this-earth, and discovers more about himself than he ever wanted to know. Filmed guerrila style, there's a lot here that is still terrifying today, particularly about how cold and brutal the violence is in the film. The opening scene of a sniper in downtown New York randomly shooting and killing pedestrians - men, women and children - is chilling, especially given the mass shootings we deal with today. There's also a scene where the cop confronts a man who describes, perfectly calm and with a smile, how he murdered his wife and children, and it's hosed up. And then poo poo gets REAL WEIRD (btw don't google this movie if you want to watch it, the little summary google gives you spoils this aspect of the film in the following spoiler - if you think you want to see this, go in blind! Also if you need a movie to watch for Fran's Queer Horror challenge, this might fit the bill) man, what is it with the late '70s and films mixing religion and sci-fi? The Visitor with Space Satan and Jesus last year, and now this. We discover that the being mind-controlling the murderers in the film is a powerful psychic hermaphroditic half-man/half-extraterrestrial (played by Richard Lynch) who is shown bathed in sickly yellow light and has a fantastic Cronenberg vagina on his chest. It's supremely bizarre and creepy, as are the scenes where we see women pulled up naked into spaceships and impregnated with alien children (this is all done pretty vaguely for the most part, but the spaceship we see one woman pulled into is clearly a Space 1999 Eagle!) Bruteman fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Oct 5, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2018 02:42
|
|
|
15) Murder Party Seen on: Scream Stream A lonely, meek NYPD ticket meter guy finds an invitation on the street to a "murder party" on Halloween. When he gets there, he's waylaid by a group of murderous art school students who plan to creatively kill him and record the result for their "art" (or should I say Art?) and to impress a mysterious sinister guy who promises them a large amount of grant money to the work he deems the best. However, the art students prove to be hilariously self-absorbed and incompetent, and things begin to go awry for everyone very, very quickly. This is a pretty short, intense and very funny (and violent) horror comedy shot on a super low budget. The makeup effects are pretty gnarly though and the writing is really clever, and a lot of the fun is watching the events of the evening accelerate into insanity as our hero watches everything helplessly around him. Also features a really great dog and cat, so bonus points there too.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2018 15:03
|
|
|
graventy posted:There's a lot of potentially interesting lore here that is probably explored to death in The Video Dead 2, but I wish it did a little better job of establishing a story. I have so many questions! Why is Jeff the main character, when literally anyone else could have handled it better? Is the talking "hot" woman a zombie or something else? Who is the garbage man? Why do zombies come out of a haunted television? I don't think anyone can answer these questions, but eventually someone should IRON it out :dodges thrown fruit:
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2018 21:55
|
|
|
16) Contamination FRAN CHALLENGE #6: Video Nasties Seen on: Tubi A public health official, a cop and a former astronaut Compared to a lot of other Italian horror from the same period (late 70s/early 80s) that I've seen, this film by "Lewis Coates" (ie Luigi Cozzi) is positively restrained. I'm amazed that the lead lady didn't have a nude scene - she does have a shower scene but again, absolutely restrained compared to what I've seen (of course the lead men treat her character like poo poo because of her no-nonsense nature, so I guess that is keeping with the times). Of course the reason Contamination made the Video Nasties list is the violence, which is pretty much the only good trick the film has; the explosions are done in slow motion and while the blood and guts are clearly fake, it's still pretty effective. I haven't read anything official but I wonder if James Cameron saw this before making Aliens because the effect at the end of the movie (hilariously given away by crediting the designer in the opening credits!) is a super primative version of what got into his film six years later. Outside of the egg and alien stuff, this is a pretty standard, slow-moving potboiler/conspiracy thriller with an ok Goblin soundtrack. Compared to what had come out in the years before, it's laughable this was on the Video Nasties list. 17) Crystal Lake Memories - the Complete History of Friday the 13th Seen on: YouTube I had two slow work days this week, and I passed the time by watching this five-hour-plus (!) documentary covering the series. My exposure to Friday the 13th as always been limited - I've only ever completely seen 2 (good), 7 (loved the makeup and telekinetic stuff), 8 (woof) and the in-name-only TV series that amazed me as a preteen in the late 80s by the amount of gore it had (along with War of the Worlds - that was a strange time for TV syndication). Length aside, those five hours went by quick - this is a really charming, enthusiastic look back on the movies, the reboot and even the TV series! Aside from a few obvious absentees (Kevin Bacon and Crispin Glover), they get back the directors, writers, makeeup artists/production staff and actors to go over each film (each one gets about 30-40 minutes). I was also amazed at how much production info they give - there are tons of outtakes, storyboards, production photos and documentary video taken at the time the movies were filmed. They show a lot of unedited scenes that were axed by the MPAA and discuss how each movie fit into the culture at the time and the audience response to each one. I'm not even a fan of the series, and I'd recommend watching this if you haven't already seen it or are interested at all in the evolution of the franchise.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2018 15:59
|
|
|
18) Train to BusanFRAN CHALLENGE #7: The World Is A Scary Place Seen on: Netflix A divorced Korean businessman is escorting his daughter via bullet train from Seoul to Busan to visit his estranged wife. Just before they leave, the zombie apocalypse happens, and an infected straggler quickly turns a large number of the train's passengers into rabid attackers. It's up to the survivors to figure out how to survive the trip, as well as each other. I put off watching this movie until now because of general zombie media fatigue, and I kind of regret it. While Train to Busan doesn't do anything new for a zombie movie, I gotta say, what it does, it does drat well. The action setpieces are great, and I love the whole light/dark line of sight stuff they did with the zombies for those sequences. The actors are also really good, even if many of them are the usual archetypes for this sort of story, and you really give a poo poo about them, which raises the stakes and makes the peril they're in feel more harrowing. And man, that ending...uh, this room is really dusty, I'm not tearing up, I'M NOT. Easily one my favorite of the movies I've watched so far in this challenge, thrilling from beginning to end. 19) Zombi Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.) Seen on: Shudder  Mods plz rename me to "Snuff Maximus" A strange cult of cannibals is devouring parts of corpses in hospitals in NYC. When a group of doctors and others heads to a remote Asian isle to find the source of the Kito cult, they run across gut-munching cannibals, oatmeal-faced growling zombies and a sinister doctor. This movie is really weird. It felt like I was watching Fulci's Zombie/Zombi 2 again, and a little research after the fact shows that this isn't coincidental - apparently it shares sets, a star (Ian McCulloch) and the same producers (I think). What's even weirder is the version on Shudder is the U.S. cut with the "Doctor Butcher M.D." title - they cut a bunch of plot scenes from the original (where the picture above comes from) and added a totally unconnected bit at the start with different zombies that was part of another movie, filmed by Roy Frumkes (who also made the Document of the Dead documentary on George Romero I watched earlier in the challenge). Not that any of that helps the movie or makes a difference. You get a bunch of cannibals who are the source of most of the gore by hunting people down and trapping them (some of it is pretty well done, and there's some scalping near the end that is pretty nasty), zombies that don't do jack poo poo (one goes out in a great way with an outboard motor), and a whole lotta gratuitous nudity from the film's leading lady. The soundtrack is also really messed up, with lots of weird synths. Unfortunately this isn't a classic or a "so-bad-it's-good" movie, it's mostly just sort of dull, and aside from the fact I wrote in my notepad file that I keep for all this, I forgot I had watched it several days later.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2018 21:12
|
|
|
Hitting the final stretch here! 20) Castle Freak Seen on: Scream Stream A family being torn apart by personal demons inherits a castle in Italy haunted by unspeakable family secrets and inhabited by a deformed freak. I want to say this is the third Lovecraft-inspired film co-starring both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton and directed by Stuart Gordon (the previous two were Re-Animator and From Beyond). Unlike those two, which were filled with gore and nudity offset by plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor and a lighter B-movie vibe, this one is played much more as a gothic drama, and is much darker and nastier. Combs and Crampton (who gets to keep her clothes on this time!) are great together as the tormented parents, with Combs delivering his usual over the top performance. The titular monster starts out pretty sympathetic but once he gets a taste of blood and sex (haha  ) in a very uncomfortable scene involving a prostitute, things stay unpleasant until the end.21) Project: Metalbeast Seen on: Scream Stream A secret government project involving the creation of werewolf soldiers goes awry when a cryogenically frozen test subject is revived and implanted with near-indestructible skin grafts. Ok that sounds awesome, right? And the first 15 minutes or so live up to the promise of B-movie cheese, with a hilariously buff werewolf suit, plenty of overacting (Barry Bostwick!) and terrible dialogue, right up until it gets to the modern day sequences, and then it draaaags like a motherfucker. There is so, so much talking and so little metalbeast in this film. The creature effects are kinda good (the final form of the werewolf is extremely metalbeast) but they don't show a lot of it. The end part where they eschew silver bullets because of its impervious skin and instead make silver RPG missiles is something the 10-year-old in me appreciated. Also a pretty progessive '90s horror flick for letting more than one woman survive until the end. Watchable with a group making fun of it, but I'd avoid this if you're watching solo. ---- Ok, just 10 movies to go! Here's a recap of what I've seen and where I saw it - my personal goal again this year was to watch movies that were new to me: 1) Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser Part 1 - Shudder 2) Caltiki, The Immortal Monster - Youtube 3) Blood Feast - Shudder/Tubi 4) Demon of Paradise - Tubi 5) Hungerford - Netflix 6) Cropsey FRAN CHALLENGE #1: Love Something You Hate - Tubi 7) Resolution - Shudder 8) The Endless - Netflix 9) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - Shudder 10) The Definitive Document of the Dead - Shudder 11) Nosferatu (1922) FRAN CHALLENGE #2: Queer Horror - Shudder 12) Toxic Zombies FRAN CHALLENGE #3: Hometown Horror - Tubi 13) Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers FRAN CHALLENGE #4: Worst of the Best / Best of the Worst - Youtube 14) God Told Me To FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Birth of Horror - Shudder 15) Murder Party - Scream Stream 16) Contamination FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Video Nasties - Tubi 17) Crystal Lake Memories - the Complete History of Friday the 13th - YouTube 18) Train to Busan FRAN CHALLENGE #7: The World Is A Scary Place - Netflix 19) Zombi Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.) - Shudder 20) Castle Freak - Scream Stream 21) Project: Metalbeast - Scream Stream
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2018 15:19
|
|
|
22) Death Bed: The Bed That EatsFRAN CHALLENGE #8: Once in a Lifetime Seen on: Shudder A demon-spawned bed devours human souls every 10 years; however, the bed's latest group of potential victims may hold the key to its defeat. Wikipedia and IMDB indicate that this was the only feature film directed by one George Barry, and man, is it ever one for the ages. It's very surreal, very weird, and tries to be very artistic, and while I think some people might tune out after the first 20 minutes, if you're a weirdo like me who's fascinated by terrible weird content, you'll stay just to see what the hell comes next. The movie's concept is actually pretty good - it's sort of a typical haunted house movie, only here you're seeing it from the POV of the house/evil power that inhabits it. But the way it's produced, well... The acting is paint-peeling-off-the-wall terrible. The music is terrible and barely there. It probably runs neck-and-neck with David Lynch's Dune for most internal monologue voiceovers ever heard in a movie (one of the bed's old victims is trapped as a ghost in the bedroom with the bed, and he narrates much of the film, tells us what the bed is thinking and feeling, etc.). The bed itself breathes heavily, burps, chews, snores and laughs! It also apparently has a sick sense of humor. We're treated to endless montages of anything being put on or near the bed (food, flowers) being devoured - it even drinks Pepto-Bismol! One of my favorite sequences in the film is the bedroom ghost going over a long flashback of some of the bed's past victims, and some of these are actually pretty funny (like a group of sex/wellness cultists that the bed devours as they have an orgy), so you know that they're not being totally serious here. There are a couple of neat other touches I liked, like the skeletons of the bed's victims being transported elsewhere in the grounds outside the house. This movie is weird as hell and I'm glad I saw it.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2018 17:31
|
|
|
23) Nightbeast Seen on: Tubi A pissed-off alien crashes his spaceship outside of a small town and starts slaughtering everyone it can get its hands (claws?) on. The local oily folk try to survive. I was initially impressed with this one - for a low-budget film, the start is action-packed with some great amateur FX and camerawork that you wouldn't expect to see in something like this. In the first 20 minutes alone, the beast (who packs a nifty little laser pistol) disembowels and vaporizes what feels like half the town - including kids, no one is safe! - and there's two big shoot-outs between the beast and the townsfolk. The monster looks suitably impressive in the shadows and fog at night. And then they bring it out into the light and pfahahahahah. After a good start, we're then dealt a "Jaws" subplot (the police want to evacuate the town, but the governor is visiting or something like that), some really ugly violence against women in the form of a murderous douchebag loner who appears to be around just to have a human antagonist, and one of the most awkward sex scenes ever put to film. The monster shows up, snarls its weird toothy ape-like head off, and then is briefly driven off/escaped from for another 10 minutes. And so on. Overall the FX lift this one up a bit but it's still a super-low-budget flick that feels like it has sleaze sort of crowbarred in. Speaking of which... 24) Blood, Boobs & Beast Seen on: Tubi This is a 2007 documentary on low-budget Baltimore filmmaker Don Dohler, the guy who created the aforementioned Nightbeast. I'd seen Dohler's first film, The Alien Factor, on Rifftrax and watched Nightbeast as part of the challenge here, but I was unfamiliar with the rest of his work. Dohler was apparently a talented guy - an accomplished comic artist and self-made SFX guy. I had no idea he published CineMagic, a magazine on detailed amateur FX that my dad used to collect when I was a kid! They even get Tom Savini and JJ Abrams to briefly talk about Dohler - they were both devotees of CineMagic, and Abrams actually made music and and sound FX for Nightbeast. The whole documetary is kind of depressing. After a mid-life crisis, Dohler decided to jump into filmmaking sci-fi and horror, but the way this is set up, it seems like while his intentions were pure, he was sort of railroaded into adding more (way more) sex and violence into his films than he was comfortable with (by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma, no less, who also briefly appears in the film) so they'd be picked up by distributors. After getting screwed over by his own inexperience and shady dealings on the part of distributors in the mid-80s, he went on a long hiatus before making direct-to-DVD stuff in the early '00s that was way more salacious than his previous work. A lot of this seems spearheaded by his business partner who ended up directing most of these films. This is worth a watch if you're into B-movies and the people who make them. 25) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Seen on: Shudder Well, here's another one of those horror titans I never saw that everyone else has - I watched the sequel several times in the late '80s but never the original. This was way better than I thought it would be. The atmosphere is perfect, and I loved the cinematography, the distant establishing shots and the low tracking shots especially. That opening pullback in the graveyard with the radio in the background was striking. I also loved that the soundtrack is just noise that sets you on edge. The set design inside the house is brilliant. I'd heard of this over the years, but it's amazing how little gore there is the film - the violence is quick, brutal and raw. I admit that last 20 minutes or so of Marilyn Burns being tormented was almost too much (the hammer scene with the grandfather especially). Kicking myself for not having watched this sooner. 26) The House by the Cemetary FRAN CHALLENGE #9: Stranger Danger Seen on: Shudder A young couple from New York (including their hilariously dubbed son Bob - never change, little kids in Italian horror films) moves to a quaint house in a Boston suburb that has someone, or something, lurking in the basement. My wife's BFF's husband is way more of a horror nut than I could ever hope to be; when I told him I was doing this challenge and showed him "my list" on my Shudder account, he was amazed I hadn't seen this one yet, so he bid me to watch it. I enjoy how weird Fulci's stuff can be, and this one doesn't disappoint. I love the introduction of the babysitter, one of the biggest red herrings I've ever seen in a film lol at all the eerie eye closeups and her loving taking the boards off the basement door...only to get killed anyway later The spooky kid ghost is a neat touch, and hahaha, that ending! Some great gore and makeup, and the main villain is actually kind of creepy, if totally inconsistent in presentation and behavior the eyes in the darkness are spooky, but when we see him he's blind/eyeless. Why was he crying like a little boy?. The scene with the dad trying to axe his way into the basement while his son is held headfirst against the door on the other side is also a highlight. Listen, when a little ghost girl tells you to stay out of the house, you stay out of the loving house!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2018 15:36
|
|
|
Wall of text incoming - haven't written up anything in a week. 27) Sometimes They Come Back Seen on: Scream Stream A teacher traumatized by the death of his brother at the hands of a gang of greasers (who also died in the same incident) in his youth starts questioning his sanity when the greasers - unaged and alive - come back to finish what they started. This movie answers the burning question "What would a Stephen King story adapted into a movie by the Lifetime Channel look like?" It's very slow, very silly and very boring. There are one or two moments that are hysterical (cue the gif of the guy's body parts being thrown out of the car) but overall it's real dumb and hokey. 28) Night of the Demons 2 Seen on: Scream Stream A group of horny teens accidentally release the demonic ANGELA (from the first Night of the Demons, and who the filmmakers clearly wanted to be another Freddy) onto the students at a nearby Catholic prep school. But Angela didn't count on having to fight Sister loving Gloria, the super rear end-kicking, wise-cracking nun! Ok this was way, way better than I thought it was going to be. Great makeup and gore (my favorite gag was the one that was clearly inspired by the shock paddle scene in Carpenter's The Thing, only with boobs), 30-year-old teens that you suprisingly grew to like, and Sister Gloria! I think it's real easy in a horror flick to have a sterotypical nun character who is super strict, an old fuddy-duddy and who doesn't fully grasp what's going on, but Sister Gloria clearly 1) gives a poo poo about her students, 2) doesn't take no guff from horny teens or demons, and 3) fights with a yardstick, nunchaku rosary beads and holy water balloons like a loving pro. It's the perfect amount of humor and camp to leaven the sleazier poo poo that goes down in the film. Definitely one of the highlights of the challenge. I've never seen the FIRST Night of the Demons, so I watched that the next night. 29) Night of the Demons Seen on: Tubi A group of horny teens party at an abandoned haunted funeral home and release a bunch of demons. Evil Dead-inspired possession shenanigans ensue. Just gonna say that I actually enjoyed the sequel more, but this one has its moments. This is one of those low-budget films that feels like it has a little heart behind it - I realy liked the opening music and animated credits. The makeup FX (as in the sequel) is excellent. There's a moment in a scene here with a topless Linnea Quigley and a tube of lipstick that elicted a genuine "what the gently caress?!" from me when it happened, so much so that I actually backed up to the start of the scene to figure out how they did it (it's a simple extended shot with no cutaways and some great prosthetic work, extremely effective stuff.) Some of the "teens" are pretty funny and have arcs/twists in their characters that were a nice surprise (although I use "teens" because haha at Linnea Quigley as a "teen" here), but I found the ubiquitous final girl to be maybe the weakest actress in the entire movie, so that kind of hurt it overall. The movie also just kind of abruptly ends, and what on earth was going on with that old couple? 30) Apostle FRAN CHALLENGE #10: Fear and NowSeen on: Netflix A man infiltrates a weird religious cult on a secluded island to rescue his kidnapped sister. Well, I thought this one looked nice, the actors were fine and it has some suitably creepy gore and design elements, but really it feels like it could have been trimmed a bit and it would have been more effective. It's not that it's bad, it just feels like it overstays its welcome. The whole thing behind why the island is the way it is also feels heavy-handed (man literally perverting mother nature, GET IT?). The 31st movie to complete my challenge! 31) Madman FRAN CHALLENGE #11: Dead & BuriedSeen on: Tubi The local boogeyman legend at a camp for gifted children, Madman Marz, is summoned and starts offing the counselors. Sounds familiar... According to IMDB, director (and writer and producer) Joe Giannone died in 2006, making this eligible for the challenge. This is one of those early '80s low-budget slashers riding the first wave after Friday the 13th; apparently it was directly based on the whole "Cropsey" legend, but per IMDB when they heard "The Burning" was in production using the same legend, they rewrote the script. It's got it own unique feel though, with lots of weird poo poo throughout - completely original music (dear god, the love song in the hot tub love scene. And the killer has his own theme song at the end credits!), the guy playing the killer also made the titles, the producer made the music, etc. Gaylen Ross of Dawn of the Dead fame is the heroine here, which was a surprise. There are some good kills in this (the one with the truck hood is great), but the killer is weird - he walks around in his bare feet and makes mumbling noises that sound like the Suburban Sasquatch Aw poo poo there's still Fran challenges to do!  LIGHTNING BONUS ROUND32) Tales of Halloween FRAN CHALLENGE #12: (Self-Described) Masters of Horror Seen on: Netflix Tales of Halloween was on my watchlist from the start of the challenge; when this one came up, I saw The Kingslayer had picked it. Here's what he says on page one: quote:Tales of Halloween picked by TheKingslayer: "This one is a whole lot of fun and perfect to throw on during a party or get together and just let run. Plus it's an anthology and this own." Well, listen here, buddy! I thought this was...wildly uneven and just okay. Which is why after writing this all out, I came back to write this sentence and wow, why did I write so much about this one? Because it frustrated me. I saw Trick 'r Treat a few years ago and thought that was a good Halloween-themed anthology - it sets a tone and sticks with it throughout (horror with some very dark comedy thrown in). The 10(!) short films that make up Tales of Halloween are extremely hit-or-miss and wildly vary in tone, even within each story. On the one hand, if there's one you don't like, it'll end soon and another will start. But there are a few that feel like they're not given enough time to breathe, or that I would have like to have seen more of, and it suffers for that too. Stuff of note - I was surprised by all the cameos in this. Adrienne Barbeau basically pays homage to her role from "The Fog" as the DJ who narrates and ties together the segments of the film. Joe Dante and John Landis have small roles, and there's one party scene that has Stuart Gordon, Barbara Crampton, Mick Garris and Lisa Marie. There were two segments I thought were standouts. The third one, "Trick," where two couples handing out candy are beset by neighborhood children with murderous intent. The twist here is neat and I like how it's telegraphed why are they so hesitant to call 911? The ninth one, "The Ransom of Rusty Rex," is essentially an EC Comics/horror retelling of O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief." This is one of the shorts in the film that tries to be both funny AND scary and manages to make it work; Sam Witmer and Jose Cantillo are great in this one. The rest - eh. There's one segment where Barry loving Bostwick Project:Metalbeasts it up as the Devil, and this one should be funny, and is played as funny, complete with cartoon sound effects, but it feels a little too mean-spirited in a way that isn't consistent or earned. There's another one that lampoons Friday the 13th, and when the twist happens, it's just so completely goofy and non-sequitur in nature that it took me right out of it. The rest are all fairly predictable or bizarre, or I wish had been expanded on (the one with the husband and wife/Hansel and Gretel witch thing) but get strangled by the short runtime. The complete list of what I've watched this year - all of it new to me. 1) Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser Part 1 - Shudder 2) Caltiki, The Immortal Monster - Youtube 3) Blood Feast - Shudder/Tubi 4) Demon of Paradise - Tubi 5) Hungerford - Netflix 6) Cropsey FRAN CHALLENGE #1: Love Something You Hate - Tubi 7) Resolution - Shudder 8) The Endless - Netflix 9) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - Shudder 10) The Definitive Document of the Dead - Shudder 11) Nosferatu (1922) FRAN CHALLENGE #2: Queer Horror - Shudder 12) Toxic Zombies FRAN CHALLENGE #3: Hometown Horror - Tubi 13) Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers FRAN CHALLENGE #4: Worst of the Best / Best of the Worst - Youtube 14) God Told Me To FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Birth of Horror - Shudder 15) Murder Party - Scream Stream 16) Contamination FRAN CHALLENGE #6: Video Nasties - Tubi 17) Crystal Lake Memories - the Complete History of Friday the 13th - YouTube 18) Train to Busan FRAN CHALLENGE #7: The World Is A Scary Place - Netflix 19) Zombi Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.) - Shudder 20) Castle Freak - Scream Stream 21) Project: Metalbeast - Scream Stream 22) Death Bed: The Bed That Eats FRAN CHALLENGE #8: Once in a Lifetime - Shudder 23) Nightbeast - Tubi 24) Blood Boobs and Beast - Tubi 25) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - Shudder 26) The House by the Cemetary FRAN CHALLENGE #9: Stranger Danger - Shudder 27) Sometimes They Come Back - Scream Stream 28) Night of the Demons 2 - Scream Stream 29) Night of the Demons - Tubi 30) Apostle FRAN CHALLENGE #10: Fear and Now - Netflix 31) Madman FRAN CHALLENGE #11: Dead & Buried - Tubi LIGHTNING BONUS ROUND 32) Tales of Halloween FRAN CHALLENGE #12: (Self-Described) Masters of Horror - Netflix
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2018 03:16
|
|
|
This is wrapping up the challenge for me - I saw more than 31 movies, but I had one more Fran Challenge to wrap up and my schedule between now and the 31st is filled with work OT and family time, so I'm not going to really get a chance to see anything else. 33) Minutes Past Midnight Seen on: Scream Stream A horror anthology comprised of nine short films. Like most anthologies, the quality varies quite a bit. The worst offender was "Roid Rage," a terrible amateur grindhouse/Troma/Chillerama wannabe about a guy with a demonic anus. Filled with terrible dialogue, effects and acting, it probably would have sat better if it wasn't so drat long. Fortunately, I'd say about almost half of the shorts were good, including: "The Mill at Calder's End," a Gothic horror story told in a neat visual style (with marionettes); "Crazy For You," about a serial killer who considers changing his ways when he falls in love; "Timothy," a short but effective story about a children's TV mascot come to terrifying life; and "Horrific," a VERY short and obviously Evil Dead-inspired story about a trailer trash guy fighting a "goddamn Chupacabra." And the final movie of the challenge for me: 34) The Barn FRAN CHALLENGE #13: What We've All Been Waiting For Seen on: Tubi On Halloween night in1989, two best friends - one of whom is obsessed with the holiday - and their peers run afoul of three legendary demonic killers in a rural barn. So this is one of those recent indie love-letter flicks to '80s horror that have become real popular in the last decade or so, including film grain and fake cigarette burns in the corner, a synth and heavy metal soundtrack, and buckets of gore - this stuff may delight you or leave you cold. Overall, I found it to be better than the sum of its parts and pretty appropriate Halloween viewing. Let's get the weak stuff out of the way first - the acting ranges from barely-there wallpaper to just okay (some of it clearly intentional, but after a while it gets hard to tell); most of the dialogue sounds like it was ADR'ed; the movie is mostly slow as hell and could be paced better; and a little of the cheapo '80s aesthetic goes a long, long way. The good stuff? The gore and FX are plentiful and pretty great, including an extended sequence set at a Halloween dance when the marauding demon trio slaughters just about everyone there (full disclosure: I watched this partially because a friend of mine from high school started his own makeup FX company, and he developed the masks for two of the three featured monsters, the jack o'lantern and scarecrow ones). For as clumsy as the acting and dialogue are, the two main protagonists have pretty good chemistry with each other. The movie also tries some unique stuff here, like how the monsters are bound by Halloween rules (mostly introduced by the main character, who has a whole list of Halloween etiquette that he abides by, kinda like the Jamie Kennedy character in Scream with his movie rules). The monsters ignore you if you're wearing a costume mask, because humans wear costumes on Halloween to fit in with the demons that walk the earth that night; they're vulnerable to attack because summoning the monsters requires saying "trick or treat" and they don't hold up their end of the bargain, etc. They also try to give each of the monsters a backstory and abilities, some of which are better than others - I liked the pumpkin guy, who can use any jack o'lantern nearby to see what's going on, or to summon his whole body into any nearby pumpkin, Matrix style, if you destroy his current body. The movie also benefits by just being really into the Halloween spirit, and I think it was a great fit for this challenge. -- So that's it for my 2018 horror challenge! Everything I watched was new to me: 1) Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser Part 1 - Shudder 2) Caltiki, The Immortal Monster - Youtube 3) Blood Feast - Tubi 4) Demon of Paradise - Tubi 5) Hungerford - Netflix 6) Cropsey FRAN CHALLENGE #1: Love Something You Hate - Tubi 7) Resolution - Shudder 8) The Endless - Netflix 9) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - Shudder 10) The Definitive Document of the Dead - Shudder 11) Nosferatu (1922) FRAN CHALLENGE #2: Queer Horror - Shudder 12) Toxic Zombies FRAN CHALLENGE #3: Hometown Horror - Tubi 13) Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers FRAN CHALLENGE #4: Worst of the Best / Best of the Worst - Youtube 14) God Told Me To FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Birth of Horror - Shudder 15) Murder Party - Scream Stream 16) Contamination - FRAN CHALLENGE #5: Video Nasties - Tubi 17) Crystal Lake Memories - the Complete History of Friday the 13th - YouTube 18) Train to Busan FRAN CHALLENGE #7: The World Is A Scary Place - Netflix 19) Zombi Holocaust (aka Doctor Butcher M.D.) - Shudder 20) Castle Freak - Scream Stream 21) Project: Metalbeast - Scream Stream 22) Death Bed: The Bed That Eats FRAN CHALLENGE #8: Once in a Lifetime - Shudder 23) Nightbeast - Tubi 24) Blood Boobs and Beast - Tubi 25) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - Shudder 26) The House by the Cemetary FRAN CHALLENGE #9: Stranger Danger - Shudder 27) Sometimes They Come Back - Scream Stream 28) Night of the Demons 2 - Scream Stream 29) Night of the Demons - Tubi 30) Apostle FRAN CHALLENGE #10: Fear and Now - Netflix 31) Madman FRAN CHALLENGE #11: Dead & Buried - Tubi LIGHTNING BONUS ROUND - extra movies! 32) Tales of Halloween FRAN CHALLENGE #12: (Self-Described) Masters of Horror - Netflix 33) Minutes Past Midnight - Scream Stream 34) The Barn FRAN CHALLENGE #13: What We've All Been Waiting For - Tubi
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2018 19:35
|
|
|
feedmyleg posted:Very curious to see what anyone thinks on my take on this. I've looked around and haven't seen many folks identifying the same themes in the same way I have, most people just talk about how nutso it is rather than trying to offer any real critical examination. I can totally get behind all of this and I enjoyed it, it's just that on a first watch, it's all just so bombastic and weird for what is essentially a Bad Seed/Omen movie. Like, I love everything about that first part of the film where they set up all the background cosmic story (this is one of the best musical sting/reaction shots ever put to film btw). I think for some people though, like me, the story may have been a bit too circuitous. I just wanted to see more happening. Like all those shots of Huston on top of the building with all of the...well, whatever he had going on up there. It's just there and its weird and takes forever and I just wanted to see a payoff sooner than what we got. I guess that's really my complaint about it. After watching it for the challenge last year, I actually went back and watched it again earlier this year with a friend who hadn't seen it, and they liked it too, but their main complaint was "man this thing really takes its sweet time to get moving."
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2018 22:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:42 |
|
|
Franchescanado posted:
 ...was not expecting that. Thank you!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2018 19:14
|
|
