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Hi there! Last year I watched over 31 horror films, and I've decided to stick with 31 as my goal for the month. Will do my best! 1. Mutant (1984, not to be confused with "Forbidden World") A couple of city boys driving through the country wreck their car and end up in a small town where the locals have been getting sick or just plain disappearing in increasing numbers. Turns out chemical dumping is turning people into bloodthirsty zombie-like monsters. Good premise, and a good solid start with kind of a Salem's Lot feel, but it fails to build on it- the pace continues to drag and it's just not creepy enough. Director John "Bud" Cardos (of the much creepier Kingdom of the Spiders, and the misbegotten The Dark) manages to keep things looking slick, but not much more. You can also kinda tell when they're rushing exposition to explain plot points- there were rewrites and Cardos was replacing another director so I'm guessing things got a little confused. It's pretty bold when killing off cast members and does have its moments overall, but I can see how this got lost in the shuffle of stranger or more outrageous 80s horror flicks.
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Oct 2, 2019 05:49
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2. Chopping Mall This was a hoot and a half. Some teens spending the night in a shopping mall run afoul of security robots gone haywire. The movie doesn't spend long on the preliminaries, and once the robot rampage starts, it's pretty much mayhem from there to the end. It's as much a sci-fi action thriller as anything else, with lots of guns (courtesy a sporting goods store named Peckinpah) and explosions and laser beams and just total chaos. It's mostly goofy and dumb, but still just tense enough that you wanna see how it ends.
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Oct 3, 2019 07:49
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3. Return of the Living Dead A classic blend of horror and pitch-black comedy. It's got such a wonderfully bizarre structure- there are familiar horror movie elements everywhere but the movie just chops them up into a whirlwind of people running and screaming. After a time it abandons any real notion of plot progression, things are just getting more and more hosed up and nothing will stop any of it. Watching this again I noticed how they specifically set up scenes to establish the film's zombies as breaking established conventions- they're smart, they're fast, they're basically indestructible- even clarifying for the sake of horror fans that they don't eat people, they eat brains! The real star of this is the soundtrack, a brilliant mix of hard rock, punk, even surf music/rockabilly, all of which adds to the feel that this is just a ghoulish party, enjoy the death and destruction. (And the main orchestral/synth theme is also pretty drat good.) Both unbelievably dark and a fun romp. RIP James Karen. "It's not a bad question, Bert!"
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Oct 4, 2019 05:52
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4. Exorcist II: The Heretic After all the mayhem of the last two entries I decided to go with something a little more... poetic. John Boorman's sequel to William Friedkin's horror masterpiece is nowhere near as scary or as technically astute, but for all its clumsy moments there is something special here. The story of Reagan continuing to fight the demon within her becomes a strange art film about human frailty and the pervasiveness of evil, and the souls who resist it. Like a poem it's built out of patterns of imagery- flight and flying creatures, flashing light, a burning African sun, a church in the cliffs, howling winds- and while the literal action sometimes suffers, this is still one of the most conceptually dense and fascinating horror films ever. Linda Blair is legit charming, the Ennio Morricone score is a classic, and it's full of arresting images. You get the feeling Warner Bros. hired Boorman because they wanted the man who made Deliverance, but they got the man who made Zardoz instead.
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Oct 5, 2019 05:07
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5. Freaks Tod Browning ruined his career in order to bring us this story, and while it's way more melodrama than horror, it sure as hell shocked and disturbed audiences in the thirties (and this was arguably part of the point.) Viewed from a modern perspective, it's remarkably naturalistic- for so much of the running time Browning just lets the sideshow people be themselves. I particularly enjoyed the scenes revolving around the conjoined twin sisters' differing tastes in men- it's not even treated as a major problem, they just sorta work around it. The main drawback to the entire film is that Harry and Daisy Earles just are not strong actors- they really struggle with all the dialogue they've been given, not managing much in the way of intonation. (Granted I'm not sure how many little people you could find in those days with much screen training- though the Earlses were also pretty well known.) Between them and the femme fatale with a strong Russian accent, there are a few scenes where I'm not entirely sure what anyone said. Also, Johnny Eck really shoulda gotten more to do because he does have a strong screen presence. Maybe if they rewrote the story to be about a legless man. Anyway, the climax does kinda sensationalize the sideshow people a bit, but it's also some of Browning's stronger work in the sound era, all thunder and lightning and mud and rain. A shame he had so much trouble because of this. (It's also weird to me that MGM released this- it'd be like Disney now putting out a Cronenberg film.)
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Oct 6, 2019 21:17
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6. One Cut of the Dead Echoing everyone else, yes, this is really good, no, I can't really tell you why. Just... it's, in a word, delightful. It'll reward multiple viewings easy and I'm still not sure how all of it was done, but along with the technical aspects you've got fantastic acting and some great human moments.
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Oct 7, 2019 07:48
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Jack Arnold did amazing work in the 50s. The Incredible Shrinking Man is probably his masterpiece but Creature and It Came From Outer Space and Tarantula are all worth seeing.
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Oct 7, 2019 20:39
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7. Beast From Haunted Cave This is an odd little late-50s monster movie, if nothing else for the fact that it's the directorial debut of Monte Hellman (who would later make Two Lane Blacktop and China 9, Liberty 37, and would end up an Exec. Producer on Reservoir Dogs.) The script was by Charles B. Griffith (of Little Shop fame) and the producer was Gene Corman, and this shares music with his Night of the Blood Beast. The plot concerns a group of robbers who pull off a heist by setting off an explosion at a nearby mine, and in the process they draw the attention of a strange spider-like beast which pursues them to their hideout, a cabin on the snowy mountainside with an unsuspecting ski instructor in tow. Thing is, it's MOSTLY a crime drama- there's a goodly portion where the monster is kinda forgotten about, which is a problem since this thing's only 72 minutes long. The crime drama is not terrible but we're here for the beast. I get the feeling the filmmakers just weren't confident in their monster, which admittedly is kind of a weird raggedy lump of hair with long arms, but still the film drags. There are some legitimately ghastly images in the final scenes, and I do like the South Dakota locations; Hellman has a good eye and makes the proceedings, however slow, at least kind of visually pleasing. There's some comic relief which doesn't quite land, overall it's kinda patchy and doesn't work overall, but it has a few moments.
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Oct 8, 2019 06:37
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8. Circus of Horrors via MST3K Live! Okay, normally I don't count movies I see "riffed" as having seen them, and I do suspect there were some cuts here to make this fit into the show- or else it just moves really fast. But what the heck. A German plastic surgeon (Anton Diffring) happens upon a run-down circus and ends up partner after fixing the owner's daughter's facial scars. Said owner (a very underused Donald Pleasance) quickly perishes at the hands of a bear, and ten years later, the doctor is running the show, where beautiful star performers tend to end up dead in horrific accidents. Like I said it moves pretty fast and takes a while to start making sense, but I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy this without the live riffs- it's colorful and melodramatic and while the plot is frequently ridiculous it still basically works. 9. The Nights of Terror (aka Burial Ground) A fairly generic Italian zombie flick. A professor of some sort raises the dead near a house where some people are staying, siege ensues. This REALLY dispenses with the plot as quickly as possible to get into the carnage. The zombies themselves are probably the most interesting part- I like how Euro zombie flicks rarely held to the 'recent dead' rule and so we've got a bunch of moldy old half-skeletal shamblers, some with maggots and worms on their faces. A mostly electronic score adds to the weirdness. That said, after a while it gets tiring; I can respect not focusing too much on the plot or even characters, but you need to get really inventive or intense to make up for that. Here there are some good ideas scattered around but it mostly resolves into a lot of screaming and people tripping over each other while corpses slowly move towards them. The most interesting bit is the fact that one of the humans is a kid who's very obviously played by a very small adult, who has a weird Oedipal thing going on with his mom, a subplot which seems to exist entirely to set up one scene at the end. As for the end- "Everybody dies" is an acceptable way to end these things but here it really feels like they ran out of ideas. It's not a bad film but not really good either. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 07:00
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Super Samhain Challenge #3: Horror Noire 10. Ganja & Hess An artsy, fairly obscure 1973 Afro-horror film that has more in common with experimental cinema of the time than any of the "Blaxploitation" movies coming out in the same period. Duane Jones- of Night of the Living Dead- stars as a professor who, when studying an ancient African civilization, was stabbed three times by an ancient dagger and has developed an addiction to blood. (All of this, and some of the mythology underlying it, is explained in title cards and a song.) Over time he meets Ganja (Marlene Clark), the widow of one of his victims, and a romance develops. Director Bill Gunn doesn't treat this like a conventional vampire story, though- it's deliberately slow-moving, with long spoken asides, ambient chants and half-heard songs, and lots of intimate close ups, even as the characters are sometimes cold and distant. It can be off-putting, but over time it's weirdly absorbing. There are parts of it I still don't quite "get", and while there are a lot of symbols and metaphors, it's hard to puzzle out what it's all saying. Jones is terrific- his soft voice and imposing presence are both ideal for the kind of character he's playing. Overall it's a film I'm glad I saw, as hard as it can be to connect to.
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Oct 10, 2019 07:28
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Xenomrph posted:I have access to the following streaming services, please recommend me a giallo movie that isn’t Blood & Black Lace: The Red Queen Kills Seven Times was pretty solid.
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Oct 11, 2019 06:25
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11. The Blood Spattered Bride I'd apparently seen this before and forgotten about it, so even though I recognized each scene as it was playing I was still not quite sure how it all ended. Not the worst way to see this honestly. A young newlywed couple goes to stay at the husband's vast estate, where the young bride finds herself overwhelmed by her older husband's sexual aggressiveness. She's soon troubled by nightmares of a mysterious woman, compelling her to attack her husband. It's an intriguing and loaded setup, but I was actually just a little disappointed by the ultimate revelation of what's going on. Though the fact that this is based on Carmilla should have been a dead giveaway in retrospect. It does slow down a bit- and get a little corny- once we figure out what's going on, though the finale is appropriately brutal and disturbing. This movie's take on sexuality is hella hosed up as you might imagine. It's a flawed film, but still an unsettling one. (Also, be warned: there's a scene of a fox in a trap that seems a little too real, though I can't find any details on whether it was or not.)
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Oct 11, 2019 06:50
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12. Shriek of the Mutilated I had low expectations for this, and while not really good it's sort of engaging. A professor takes four students out into the woods in search of a yeti, seven years after he got a bunch of other students killed trying to do the same thing. The yeti is apparently an aggressive man-eater, and happily begins the slaughter anew. Now I'd actually had this one spoiled for me but the story does go in an interesting direction, and there are some nice macabre concepts here. Sadly it's let down by inept staging and blocking in a number of key scenes, and there's no getting around the fact that the Yeti looks like an English sheepdog. I wasn't bored, to be sure.
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Oct 12, 2019 08:29
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13. The Black Sleep Made in 1956, this feels like it was a deliberate callback to the horror films of the 40s. Basil Rathbone is a scientist who, having saved a fellow surgeon from the gallows by faking his death with the titular sleep drug, enlists his aid in mapping the brain, in hopes of finding a cure for his comatose wife. However, his experiments on various persons tend to leave them in very unpleasant states. This was Bela Lugosi's last full film (not counting Plan 9 which was pieced together using footage of him), and sadly he's pretty much wasted as a mute butler. Lon Chaney doesn't get a lot to do either, while John Carradine's role is... interesting. Tor Johnson's in this too as one of the doctor's rejects. It's kind of respectably reserved, but lacking in tension for a while. The finale's amusingly crazy though, and of course Rathbone is excellent throughout. A cute little flick on the balance.
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Oct 13, 2019 07:59
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Sir Kodiak posted:I haven't seen it. Seems like if you run with it in a totally different direction there's no reason to call it remake, considering it's legal to reuse such a basic premise as witches-at-a-dance-school, but I guess I won't get hung up on that and check it out. I, like all good people, do like Tilda Swinton. I mean apart from the publicity value of being able to advertise "Suspiria remake" instead of "movie with a similar concept", it's the sort of thing you don't want to chance- even if it's legal you might get threatened anyway and best to save the trouble.
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Oct 13, 2019 21:26
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:I'm in a similar boat. I watched it twice this October (never saw beforehand) and liked it even better the second time. It's good on a technical filmmaking level but I really, really adore it as a campy ride. It might rank up there with Creepshow as a horror flick that warms my heart. Phantom is my favorite DePalma movie and I'd honestly rank it up alongside the great movie musicals, up there with Singin' in the Rain and so on. It's so purely cinematic, and Paul Williams' songs add just the right amount of soul.
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Oct 13, 2019 23:59
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14. The Haunting (1963) I hadn't seen this one in a while, despite considering it one of the all time greatest horror films- and well, I stand by that. The definitive Haunted House story (and an early example of prestige horror), one in which there's no single inciting incident deep in the past, but rather a succession of horrors all marking the house itself as something wrong. Julie Harris is amazing as Eleanor, portraying a deeply relatable loneliness and desire for something greater, an innocence that can turn nasty, but- and this is the key thing- the film never is just about one person's psychological problems, the house isn't a metaphor, the house is something outside of that. Also worth noting that for a film made in 1963, it has one of the least subtle screen lesbians ever- Claire Bloom as Theodora is also a fascinating character, never fully falling into stereotype, she's sometimes mean to Eleanor but always caring, not really predatory, more protective. On top of this the photography is superb, the set design astoundingly detailed, and the ghosts, not being really human, don't manifest, but they make their presence known. No film I think does a better job of tapping into those night terrors when a pattern on a wall or an inexplicable noise are absolutely something terrible, but refusing to manifest. Not really a ghost story, but like all good ghost stories, fundamentally sad.
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Oct 14, 2019 05:24
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15. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things Samhain Challenge #4: Inktober- Because it's about theater people A hippy-dippy theater troupe traipses onto an island graveyard, because the leader (played by the co-writer) wants to do a ritual with a corpse, and so he does, and inevitably, the dead rise. I say inevitably because it takes an hour for it to happen, and the lead up is just the troupe leader being a tyrannical pretentious jerk, and also there's a lot of very snippy dialogue that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of, like, 2 Broke Girls. Thing is, once the zombies finally do get going, it's quite fun, even genuinely spooky at times. Bob Clark directed this, and you can tell he was still learning the ropes but he manages some cool shots. The zombie makeup is crude but effective, and since this was made only a few years after Night of the Living Dead, you can see the filmmakers trying to work with the conventions of a relatively fresh subgenre, putting a little spin on it here and there. The performances are enthusiastic and it actually does kinda capture the dynamic of a troupe where one rich rear end in a top hat is in charge because he's writing the checks. A weird, fun flick overall.
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Oct 15, 2019 08:12
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15. The Fog (1980) Man, you can smell the salt air with this one. I love that after Halloween, Carpenter decided to just do an old fashioned ghost story, and he sets the tone early with John Houseman literally telling a spooky story to kids over a campfire; a tale of the sea, of a mysterious fog bank, of treachery, murder, and robbery, and of long-dead sailors rising from the deep. There are a lot of little ways this film isn't quite as precisely put together as Carpenter's previous, so it's not quite as tense as it should be, but it's still richly entertaining in spite of a misstep here and there. He just goes for broke on the atmosphere, and also relies a lot on a stacked cast- Adrienne Barbeau is the highlight, but I also really like Nancy Loomis as the snarky assistant, and Tom Atkins and Jamie Lee Curtis have a legit cute dynamic. It's just a good time.
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Oct 16, 2019 05:56
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17. Under the Skin I'd been meaning to see this one for a long time. The story's simple enough- Scarlett Johansson is an alien who lures lonely men to their deaths- but it's mostly distinguished by its very minimalist, unsensational storytelling. It avoids being lurid, for the most part, or even particularly horrific; it's almost all from the protagonist's perspective, and she regards humanity with an odd curiosity. Something I really like about the film is that it makes it clear that while the main character is convincingly human when "on the hunt", outside of this context she's almost completely lost; Johansson's performance is excellent and she captures a lot of subtle things. My one issue with the film is that the very slow pacing is sometimes excessive; it's not always clear if the story is actually going anywhere, so it's easy for it to seem stalled. Still, it's an engaging experience.
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Oct 17, 2019 08:38
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18. Transylvania 6-5000 Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley, Jr. are reporters for a tabloid, sent to Transylvania to track down the Frankenstein monster. On paper it's sort of an homage to vintage comedies, Hope/Crosby etc., complete with a title that's a pun on an old song. (Though true to 1985, there's also a cheesy as gently caress pop theme.) Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary contains the term "Godot Movie", where a bunch of comic actors are put in a wacky situation and the audience waits for laughs that never come. That's pretty much this. I went into this with low expectations and was still kinda dumbfounded by how unfunny it was. Begley and Goldblum really don't have any chemistry, and the supporting cast (including Carol Kane and Michael Richards) try to make the most of a thin script by just being as wacky as all get-out. For every joke that lands (and to be fair I counted a few) there's a lot of business that I can't even describe as attempted jokes, just people lurching around and being nutty. Geena Davis does show up as a scantily clad horny vampire, which is the part anyone who saw this when they were younger remembers, but even she is not worth the trip. Look, I'm not that demanding, especially when it comes to a horror comedy around Halloween. It should be easy to throw Frankenstein and Dracula and the Wolfman in a spooky castle and make old jokes, the cornier the better, but drat this is bad.
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Oct 18, 2019 05:38
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19. The Witch Who Came From The Sea Weirder and artier than I expected. Molly (Millie Perkins, bearing some resemblance to Alison Brie) is a woman who idolizes her late father, despite flashbacks indicating he was sexually abusive, and she has developed some very strange, violent attitudes towards men, pursuing telegenic hunks and killing and castrating them when she gets the chance. The way this plays out is odd, the first murder we're shown looked to me like a fantasy until much later scenes confirm what happened. (We don't see much in detail, anyway- the film was actually rated X at first and several minutes were cut to secure an R rating, I'm guessing the version on Amazon is cut.) There's not a whole lot of story here, it's mainly a kind of strange character study, allowing Perkins to play up her character's psychosis, which she does pretty well. It's not a lot to hang a feature on, but it's weird and perplexing and engaging. Also George "Buck" Flower plays a detective in what may be the least-scruffy role of his career.
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Oct 19, 2019 07:51
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20. Centipede Horror A rare Hong Kong horror that's finally getting a release in the States. A woman travels to Malaysia (well, the subtitles keep calling it just "SE Asia") and is struck down by a strange illness, eventually dying horribly with centipedes crawling out of her. Her brother investigates and finds that the family is the target of a curse by a powerful sorcerer. There's some pretty crazy stuff- like many HK horror films it ends with a wizard fight- as well as at least one really blatant gross-out scene, but the overall effect is just loud and kind of obnoxious, not to mention dull for much of the running time. This didn't travel well. 21. Lifeforce A space shuttle investigating Halley's Comet finds an alien spacecraft and brings back a cargo of space vampires, one of whom starts sucking the titular life-force out of anyone she meets. This is a movie where the monster is a beautiful naked woman (Mathilda May, who is genuinely unearthly) and yet that may not be the most outrageous thing about it. It's loving nuts, a big budget, unabashedly horny Quatermass riff with amazing special effects where the stiff upper lip of the British characters just makes it clearer how camp everything keeps getting- Tobe Hooper doesn't even try to play this straight. Is it any good? Well, I was never bored. It's such a weird miracle that this film even exists. Somewhere there's an alternate universe where this was a hit and Sony is trying to line up a director for the second prequel movie. 22. Society A rich high school kid with family issues starts to suspect that all his paranoia about his relatives has something to do with a mysterious secret society. Hence the title, though director Brian Yuzna is also clearly aiming for social commentary, of the "the rich are inhuman monsters" genre. This particular take on the subject has a lot more body horror than most, foreshadowed a few times but only really unleashed in the climax. There are some good concepts here but the whole mystery/thriller portion of the film- which is most of it- is kinda frustrating, it moves in fits and starts and there's a lot of messy running around. And it must be said that the actual ending is abrupt and a bit unsatisfying (One wonders if Yuzna was forced to have a "happy" ending and this was the best he could manage.) Still, the climax of this film is uniquely hosed up and I'd say it's worth a look just for that. 23. The Thing (1982) Is there anything left to say about this one? It's a modern classic, John Carpenter at his sharpest and most relentless, and it's still baffling that neither critics nor audiences appreciated this at the time. There's a striking naturalism to how the paranoia spreads among the group, as well as the entire environment this film takes place in. There's enough detail that I'm left wanting to figure out the gaps in just how the Thing moves and operates and who did what when nobody was looking, etc. The effects are brilliant and I love the very 50s "cry" of the alien. If you have somehow not seen this yet, go do that. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 20, 2019 07:52
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24. Bride of the Monster For Bela Lugosi's birthday I decided to revisit this, his last speaking role, an Ed Wood epic. Lugosi plays Dr. Erik Vornoff, a mad scientist living in a house in a swamp, where he captures people and subjects them to atomic rays to try and turn them into supermen to conquer the world; he's made a giant octopus, and also has a hulking, mutated assistant, Lobo (Tor Johnson.) An intrepid female reporter heads to the swamp to investigate monster stories, instantly crashes her car, and Lobo takes her to Vornoff's house. Composed of at least one-third stock footage, this movie has a pleasant Poverty Row vibe, touched with Wood's unique dialogue and attempts at world building (Vornoff is somehow connected to the Loch Ness Monster). It maybe moves too fast for its own good, but that at least ensures it never wears out its welcome. Lugosi is great, despite the final scenes relying heavily on a stunt double- the famous "I have no home" speech is well done, but he also gets a supremely badass moment shortly thereafter when he casually gestures for Lobo to dispatch an intruder. Very light, but very fun. Wood could spin a nice yarn.
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Oct 21, 2019 07:46
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 Super Samhain Challenge #7: Monster Mash-Up 25. The Gate Two kids digging around in their yard accidentally stumble across a portal to Hell. Demonic forces start trying to find their way out of it, and soon you've got ghosts, zombies, a bunch of tiny homonculi, and more. Rated PG-13, this has sort of a "for older kids" vibe, still trying to be scary but with a certain Spielbergian tone as well- with just a touch of the 80s Satanic Panic going on too. For the most part the kids are believable, though it's weird that the older sister's high school friends go out of their way to tease an 8-year-old. I guess I don't remember teens like that. It takes a while to get going, but there are some genuinely remarkable effects, and the finale is appropriately intense. I also appreciate how it comes to rely on the bond between the lead kid and his older sister, it's pretty sweet.
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Oct 22, 2019 08:39
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Okay can I get a ruling on A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night for the Tourist Trap challenge? It's set in Iran, everyone speaks Persian/Farsi (IMDB says Persian but that sounds wrong?), but was shot in America and writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour is from the UK.
Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 05:50
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Ah, to heck with it. Freaking new global cinema. 26. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night I figured this'd be a cinch for Tourist Trap, I'd never seen a Middle Eastern horror film, but alas despite everyone speaking Farsi this was shot in the US of A. (Understandable, mind you.) But anyway it's set in Iran, and is about a vampire girl who naturally keeps to herself and wanders around the desolate streets of Bad City (which I thought was a translation error but I guess that's what it's called), feeding occasionally. She crosses paths with an aimless guy who does odd jobs and deals pills, and they start to fall for each other, bonding over a love of music. Beautifully shot in black and white, this is as much a weird romantic drama as it is a horror film, and like Under the Skin it's very slow and moody. Between that and the thin story it kinda has the feel of a short expanded to feature length, but it's ultimately a fine story. I liked it, didn't love it. Gets bonus points for a very good catte though. There's an odd pattern developing in this year's list, I've had four films with a "predatory woman" angle. Remains to be seen if this keeps up.
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Oct 24, 2019 07:44
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Random Stranger posted:I wrote up the movie last year (my memory is I appreciated that it was a labor of love but found it to be kind of sloppy; definitely delivered on the giant ant front, though). The game is terrible and a total slog to play whether it's the original Amiga or the Turbografx-CD version. The Amiga version is neat, really captures the feel of a 50s sci-fi film. The CD version, which bankrupted the company, is just garbage, full of horribly written "comedy" cutscenes and ultra-simplified minigames.
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Oct 24, 2019 18:40
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SUPER SAMHAIN CHALLENGE #6: SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK 27. Demons 2 Lamberto Bava's Demons involved people being possessed in a movie theater, so it kinda makes sense that the sequel is about the home viewing experience. A horror movie that seems to relate to the events of the original plays on TV one night, watched by several residents of a high tech apartment complex; one, a teenage girl, gets possessed by a creature that emerges from the TV (in an effect clearly borrowed from Videodrome), becomes a hideous ravening demon herself, and attacks everyone who came to her birthday party. Some of the blood spilled leaks down to the floors below, causing havoc, and eventually the party demons break out and lead a rampage. While the shift in premise kinda makes sense, I don't think the filmmakers really thought about it enough- while the original movie wasn't exactly tightly plotted, there was the idea that the theater lured everyone inside and trapped them, which was cool enough that it didn't need explanation. Here things just sorta start to go crazy for no reason, and the pacing is odd and disjointed as the movie jumps between various groups of survivors. Some parts of it are inventive- I do kinda like that one group is just a bunch of gym attendees still in their spandex (Bobby Rhodes, also in the first film, shows up as a trainer)- but it's all very badly put together, and you can tell they had trouble thinking of a good ending. Still, one thing worth noting- producer Dario Argento managed to land some pretty good music for the soundtrack, including The Smiths, The Cult, Art of Noise, Dead Can Dance, and Love and Rockets.
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Oct 25, 2019 05:35
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Super Samhain Challenge #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness 28. Screamtime An early 80s British anthology, but with linking segments filmed in New York. The framing device is pretty perfunctory, a couple of guys shoplift some horror videos, which comprise the three stories. The first is about an old man who runs a Punch and Judy show, and the family who nag him about it and want him to give it up. What happens next is perhaps inevitable, and this one can't quite get past the silliness of its core idea. The second segment is actually pretty spooky though, it's newlyweds moving into a house and the woman starts seeing things. The third story involves a man going to work as a gardener for two old ladies who love talking about the faeries in their garden- this one also ends up a bit silly but it's endearingly so, and overall, the charm offensive works. There are times when the whole thing is let down by amateurish production- shots of a man "stabbing" someone who's obviously just sort of brushing the knife against them- but I think this one honestly deserves a little more attention. It has a certain wry British charm.
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Oct 26, 2019 08:25
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29. Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster Okay, holy poo poo, guys, we have been sleeping on this one. This movie should be a "bad movie" classic on par with Plan 9 From Outer Space or Robot Monster, but I guess it just hasn't gotten the breaks. So, the movie starts with aliens getting ready to invade Earth, then moves to a NASA press conference where reporters interview Col. Frank Saunders, pilot for the new Mars mission, and he does the shy "aw shucks" thing until he actually freezes up and is ushered away. At which point we find out Frank is a robot. He goes up, the aliens shoot him down, he ends up a half-scarred monster as the aliens begin their invasion of Earth- and wouldn't you know it, they need our women to repopulate their planet. And they've got a freaky space monster in a holding cell, too. So we've got aliens, we've got a robot, we've got a monster, we've got 60s bikini girls, and a young James Karen as a scientist, the film is well over half stock footage of space launches and helicopter missions, and to top it all off multiple scenes are scored to very stereotypical 1965 rock by groups called The Poets and The Distant Cousins. It's loopy and insane and never starts to make sense and yeah I loving love this. I saw it on one of Roku's weird "free Grindhouse movies!" channels with a ton of commercials. It's relentlessly dumb in a very charming way.
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Oct 27, 2019 08:50
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30. The Lighthouse I was already pretty much sold with "Willem Dafoe as a salty sea dog" but this managed to surpass my expectations. Robert Pattinson is an apprentice lighthouse keeper spending two months with Dafoe as his boss, at a lighthouse on an island somewhere off the coast. The loneliness and isolation get worse when a storm prevents the recovery ship from showing up, and the relationship between the men- as well as their hold on sanity- deteriorates. This is bleak, brutal, and fun, like there's this undercurrent of humor to it alongside some absolute bugfuck weirdness. The photography (not only black and white but in a narrow 1.19:1 frame) is wonderfully cluttered with textures, everything's awash with bilgewater, and of course some of the best visuals are just lingering on the men's faces. But you mainly wanna see this to see Dafoe and Pattinson go ham, and it's an amazing acting showcase. Dafoe just makes every line a treat, and Pattinson gets to really show off his range, his character going from quiet and reserved to utterly unhinged. The plot- well it's really hard to tell what's actually happening after a while, and that's fine, that's what this movie's doing. Like there may be some allegory here, but it's hard to reduce it to just that because there's so much going on. Wildly entertaining.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:01
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31. The Neon Demon I guess it's a horror movie? Of sorts? Eventually? I dunno, if this doesn't count I'm not stopping here anyway. Elle Fanning plays an aspiring young model arriving in L.A., who instantly catches the industry's eye. Photographers, designers, all are taken by her beauty. Other models are a little bit jealous. Also the hotel owner she rents from is a weird creep (Keanu Reeves), and there's a wildcat in her room one night so that's a problem. I... did not really dig this movie. I think it's supposed to be a critique on beauty culture and how things like the modeling and fashion industries play on and exploit young women, which, true, but I don't think it cuts deep enough on that. The male photographers and designers are kinda pigs, but all the real violence and horror is situated elsewhere, and they're kind of complicit in the situations that lead to it, but eh. Fanning's character is never really given much interiority or motivation, it feels at times like she's this pure beauty icon who cannot help but drive men and women mad, which itself is part of that same beauty myth. I feel like there's a contradiction there? Not that I'd be roasting this movie for being slightly undercooked feminist commentary if I felt it were engaging as a story, or even as a mood piece. But the story isn't well presented, often feeling like it isn't actually going anywhere, until it very quickly does, then there's a weird protracted epilogue. As far as mood goes, well, that's the thing, Refn just doesn't build a lot of dread or unease, or a sense that things are wrong outside of people being bitchy. There are a lot of pretty images but there's no real emotional connection. In the end I was left thinking, "Well that was some horrible stuff we saw happen. Sucks to be those people." That's 31 for me, but yeah, I know I'm going further.
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Oct 29, 2019 05:22
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32. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Another stone cold classic- and outright punishing on a big screen. It really is a top-notch example of low budget filmmaking- there were plenty of grindhouse films in this period treating similar or just as-outrageous subject matter, but nowhere near as artfully. Here, Hooper manages some insanely good compositions (just a shot of someone looking through a screen door as the setting sun hits it takes on an amazing texture), while maintaining enough of a documentary feel that all the really hosed up stuff we see hits that much harder. Famously there's not a whole lot of actual gore here, but the general unpleasantness suggested by it makes your skin crawl nonetheless. And one thing I noticed this time around is all the astrological stuff, while perfunctory, does lend an air of cosmic unease, aided by the music, and certainly a vibe appropriate for the times.
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Oct 30, 2019 05:53
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Super Samhain Challenge #1: The Best Month 33. Viy The Soviet Union's first horror movie, apparently! Shudder's presentation of this is a bit odd, it's dubbed, but the credits are still untranslated, and there's one brief part where the dubbing drops out and you hear the main character speaking Russian. Weird. Anyway, this film is about a young seminarian who, while out in the country, encounters an old woman who is also a witch, he attacks her and she transforms into a young girl. Later he is summoned back to the girl's bedside as she is dying and wants him to read the last rites, but he dallies and drinks and arrives too late, so has to stay up with her corpse for three nights to perform the necessary ceremonies. But, being a witch, the girl has plans. This has a real fairy tale structure, it's all about the witch trying to scare the man and get past his faith, which is aided by his being a total coward and hypocrite. (A portrayal of the clergy the Soviet government no doubt approved of.) It has a strange semi-comic tone, and is aided by great visuals with some interesting techniques being deployed. I decided this was a good movie about the time the witch goes coffin-surfing through the air, but the finale is the best part, full of weird ghouls and monsters. It's an amusing tale, and I'm glad to have it brought to my attention. 34. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers Ten years after his rampage, a comatose Michael Meyers awakens during an ill-advised prisoner transfer and makes his way back to Haddonfield. Laurie Strode has died offscreen but she had a daughter (Danielle Harris) who's living with a foster family and she's his target now. I'll say this, they tried. This movie starts well enough and does some interesting things with the setting, trying to make Haddonfield look a bit more like an actual Midwestern town without completely losing the look and feel of the original film. In fact, as this was 10 years after the original's release, this has sort of an "anniversary" feel with lots of nods to the original in terms of style and shots. Sadly it kinda falls apart in the final act, it actually gets sloppier and less focused as the tension should be mounting. (The number of writers credited is a warning sign, apparently this was affected by the strike?) I do like the twist at the end, even if the next film kinda ruins it. Overall it just goes to show that it's hard to keep getting more from this story. And yet- I am tempted to press on.
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Oct 31, 2019 08:31
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Shankel Magnus posted:Shower thought: So was the Blob supposed to be the good guy? I mean it kills a date rapist, a guy talking in a movie theater, a corrupt government official, and a macho mustached cop. Never fully bought into the first, because Yeah it kills the date rapist and also the girl he was molesting.
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Nov 1, 2019 07:48
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Super Samhain Challenge #2: Dead & Buried 35. Spider Baby Hot drat this is fun. The opening credits alone make this a perfect kick-off to Halloween. Lon Chaney Jr. is the caretaker of a family cursed by genetics with a kind of brain regression, turning them into dangerous, violent children. The titular "Spider Baby" likes trapping people and stinging them with knives, and there are worse in the cellar. People show up wanting to resolve the family's estate, not knowing just how dangerous they are, and carnage ensues. A crazy, ahead-of-its-time mix of horror and black comedy. The late Sid Haig isn't the star but he makes a great impression as the childlike Ralph, a performance that's like a twisted parody of Harpo Marx. Chaney gives one of his better performances, very soulful and sincere. And this time around I was particularly amused by Quinn Redeker as the male lead, who is comically friendly and welcoming and unaware of just what he's in for until it's almost too late. 36. In The Mouth of Madness This is one I've been meaning to see for a while, and finally rented from Amazon. Glad I finally took the plunge because this is genuinely pretty horrific. Sam Neill is sent to find Sutter Cane, a famed horror author who's gone missing before delivering his latest book. Cane's work seems to be driving people mad, and he's got something genuinely apocalyptic cooked up now. This is easily the most surreal and hallucinatory of John Carpenter's films, reminiscent of Videodrome in a way, but the "media's influence on people" and drug narrative elements are mixed with healthy doses of Lovecraftian nihilism and a few nods to Stephen King. A couple of plot points are maybe underdeveloped, but the overall effect is brutal. While this has a stacked cast (Jurgen Prochnow! Bernie Casey! John Glover! David Freaking Warner!) it's really Sam Neill's show; he starts wonderfully glib and sarcastic, and his descent into madness is extremely well handled. This may be the best "cosmic horror" has ever been done on film. 37. The Evil Dead I gotta fit this in every year. While each film in the Raimi trilogy has its unique merits, this one stands out to me for a certain campfire story brutality, its commitment to the story of ancient demons possessing people's bodies to commit horrid acts. It's also got a good "student film" quality, Sam Raimi throwing in all sorts of stylistic touches just to increase the madness and, frankly, show off that he and his crew can do this. The title is so fitting- while your average zombie just wants a little nosh, the demons here take a horrific glee in tormenting their victims. Just a good spooky time. 38. The Thing From Another World The one drawback to people finally coming around on John Carpenter's The Thing is that the original kinda gets overshadowed- it's not as intense, not as faithful to the original story, etc. But it's honestly still pretty classic. Directed by Christian Nyby (but with Howard Hawks watching over his shoulder the whole time, from all accounts), this is the first true "hostile alien invader" movie and a well-executed one at that. It's very much a picture of its time- the parallels to the blooming Cold War are pretty clear, with the plantlike Thing being described as brilliant but unfeeling, the ultimate "Godless Commie" stereotype. The scientists in this besieged Arctic base are shown as giving the creature too much leeway in the name of discovery, but then, the military makes plenty of mistakes on its side, and perhaps the ultimate contrast is between a flawed, warm-blooded humanity and a cold, relentless predator. Margaret Sheridan is a very Hawksian female counterpart to the male lead, and there's plenty of overlapping dialogue and sharp banter (particularly from Scotty, the reporter who is arguably the film's real protagonist- he starts and ends the movie after all.) The monster himself- well, they couldn't afford to have it change shape or anything, so they cast the extremely tall James Arness, put some makeup on him, and just try not to show him clearly very often. It works better than you'd think (as with the remake, credit to whoever came up with the sound effects.) This movie actually shows up in Carpenter's Halloween and the monster was clearly an influence on many movie slashers. A sharp, sophisticated, and surprisingly nuanced thriller. And that's it, one movie for every year I've been alive, I'll write up the totals in another post.
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Nov 1, 2019 08:19
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Here is the Full List: 1. Mutant (1985) 2. Chopping Mall 3. Return of the Living Dead 4. Exorcist II: The Heretic 5. Freaks 6. One Cut of the Dead 7. The Beast From Haunted Cave 8. Circus of Horrors 9. Burial Ground (aka The Nights of Terror) 10. Ganja & Hess (Super Samhain Challenge #3: Horror Noire) 11. The Blood-Spattered Bride 12. Shriek of the Mutilated 13. The Black Sleep 14. The Haunting (1963) 15. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things 16. The Fog (1980) 17. Under the Skin 18. Transylvania 6-5000 19. The Witch Who Came From The Sea 20. Centipede Horror 21. Lifeforce 22. Society 23. The Thing (1982) 24. Bride of the Monster 25. The Gate (Super Samhain Challenge #7: Monster Mash-Up) 26. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night 27. Demons 2 (Super Samhain Challenge #6: Sometimes They Come Back) 28. Screamtime (Super Samhain Challenge #12: Cavalcade of Creepiness) 29. Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster 30. The Lighthouse 31. The Neon Demon 32. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 33. Viy (Super Samhain Challenge #1: The Best Month) 34. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers 35. Spider Baby (Super Samhain Challenge #2: Dead & Buried) 36. In The Mouth of Madness 37. The Evil Dead (1981) 38. The Thing From Another World (1951) Best Movie That Was New To Me: One Cut of the Dead Best Movie Overall: The Haunting Worst Movie: Transylvania 6-5000 Most Pleasant Surprises: One Cut of the Dead, Lifeforce Biggest Disappointment: The Neon Demon Scariest Movie: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Conclusion: I like them spooky movies! No seriously, I love this whole thing, not just an excuse to watch more movies than I do regularly, but to talk about them with you guys, without the contention that sometimes some new releases bring, and to know that people are sorta paying attention (someone watched Beast From Haunted Cave because of me!) It's fun to write about movies, it turns out! Something about the way this thread works just brings out good conversation and good reading. And I'm not sick of horror yet! Like I'll finally make some time for other stuff now, but as I said earlier I kinda want to explore the doldrums of the Halloween franchise and maybe a few other weird avenues of horror. (Though there are a few things I wanna save for next year.) I'm still comfortable with the "31 minimum", I've gotten further this year than last but who knows how busy I'll be in the future. Hope you all had a splendid Halloween! I'm ready to sleep for a little while.
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Nov 1, 2019 08:35
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