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 10. Angel Heart: A- Mickey Rourke is a private detective set to find a missing man who skipped out on his deal with the devil. His investigation leads him down to New Orleans where he gets wrapped up in a whole lot of dark and atmospheric voodoo murders. This was a real treat. Incredibly well directed, terrific production design, fantastic acting, and a very compelling sweaty fever dream of a third act. It gets bumped down a peg for some pacing issues and a real lack of spookiness in the first half. Rourke is magnetic, the atmosphere and tone are perfect, the cinematography is ideal. Very surprised to find that this came out the year before Serpent and the Rainbow, though I'm sure all of it voodoo stuff in this was influenced by the book. It makes Serpent and the Rainbow look even jankier and more cartoonish in retrospect. A great way to spend a couple hours if you dig neo noir. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 18:38
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29. 13 Ghosts  A young boy uses his birthday wish to get the family some furniture... with spooky results. I never watch movies this old, so this was an interesting historical curiosity. It has this gimmick where the screen turns blue when the ghosts turn up and you're supposed to look through a viewer to see them. You chose red to see the ghosts or blue if you were too scared. I had a pair of old red/blue 3D glasses and they worked just fine. The ghost effects... I bet this was cool in 1960. Today they're just the kind of spooks you get at a terrible carnival ride. There's literally a plastic skeleton. The movie itself is pretty dull. The plot doesn't make sense. The acting is fine, except for the scared acting which for some reason is either at 0 or 200%. I'm not going to score this one, because I don't have the background in old movies to put it into context. I don't feel like it's fair to judge it based on today.  
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Oct 23, 2021 18:40
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Bingo edging
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Oct 23, 2021 18:55
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 #26: Witchcraft 666 aka Witchcraft VI: The Devil's Mistress Bingo square: Something Wicked This Way Comes Alright, I found this one by searching for "Witch movies" on Amazon prime. I didn't even know it was part of the Witchcrafts Series when I started it. I'd never seen a Witchcraft movie before, so I was excited to get into another classic horror franchise. So how'd I like my first Witchcraft movie? I didn't! First off, Witchcraft 666 is an extremely cheap movie, and it knows it. No one's ambition outreached their grasp here. This is an extremely shot on TV sets movie. The acting is across the board bad, but I will say, it usually bends towards too much rather than too little, and a ton of the movie is in closeup on the actor's faces. So I was actually kinda entertained by all these actors giving 25 to 50% too much on terrible dialogue. It's like, hell yeah dude, use those eyebrows. The movie desperately wants to be horny, bit it's absolutely terrible at it. I've never seen a movie fail at being horny this bad. There's nude scenes but they were clearly edited so they could be effortlessly cut for TV airing. The camera doing closeups on the actresses faces as they try and fail to deliver the poorly written seductive banter robs the sexy scenes of any eroticism. I wouldn't call Witchcraft 666 so bad it's good. It's more just so bad. But I did kinda end up rooting for the movie. Like, hell yeah, you made it to feature length, good for you. I hope all the actresses are happy and successful dental hygienists now. Probably would be a better fit for The Devil Made Me Do It but gently caress it it's got Witchcraft in the title and I've got another devil movie lined up I want to watch. 
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Oct 23, 2021 19:00
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StrixNebulosa posted:
I saw this movie a couple years ago at a screening where the director did a Q&A after, she was obviously really interested in intersectional feminism and talked about that a whole lot. Unfortunately I kind of hated the movie itself though, on paper it is 100% my poo poo both in content and thematically but the execution felt disjointed to me in an inept way instead of dreamy. I appreciate what she was going for but it didn't work for me at all. I'm glad you dug it though!
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Oct 23, 2021 19:36
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 103) Slaughter Studios - 2002 - TubiTV This one was an okay that had potential of being good. Story follows a film student determined to film at the about to be demolished Slaughter Studios which has been shut down after an accident killed an actor on set. However as the filming's going on, people are dying. In a touch of meta, this one was filmed at Corman's studios as it was being demolished. Overall, I did like this one, particularly the ending. With a bit more of a budget and some tweaking, this could've been a solidly good movie.  104) Ghoul School - 1990 - TubiTV This is exactly the sort of thing younger me would've rented or turned the channel to when late night channel surfing. Toxic chemicals get spilled into the school's pool turning the swim team into monsters leaving the school's misfits to fight the outbreak. Pretty much this is cheesetastic fun. It's low budget but ambitious, and a recommend from me.
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Oct 23, 2021 19:36
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 21. Titane (2021) (dir. Julia Decournau) Amazon  SPOOKY bingo: "Femme Fatale" Whoa. A strikingly original and transgressive film that I'm having a hard time totally wrapping my head around. It's dense with themes of gender identity and expression, sexuality, love, and family, among others. At times it contains some of the most brutally effective body horror I've ever seen, and at others it's surprisingly tender and sweet. And funny! I won't go into plot details because I think it's best to go in totally blind. It's not what I expected but it's everything I had hoped it would be. In case Raw left any doubt that director Julia Decournau was an incredible talent, this cements it. I will definitely need to rewatch this again after I digest it for a bit, but right now I can safely call it one of the best films of the year and the most exciting thing I've seen so far this month. 5 nipple rings out of 5 Total: 21 Watched: Hellraiser | Hellbound: Hellraiser II | Jennifer's Body | The Lords of Salem | The Bride of Frankenstein | Motel Hell | V/H/S/94 | Scream of Fear | Evil Dead Trap | The Masque of the Red Death | The Lure | The House that Screamed | Trouble Every Day | No One Gets Out Alive | Halloween (2018) | Halloween Kills | Class of 1999 | The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) | The Wicker Man | "Short Cuts" | Titane (updated bingo card coming in next post!)
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Oct 23, 2021 19:41
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October 23 Rats: Night of Terror I like "animal go crazy" films even though they're rarely very good. So seeing Rats come up a few times in the thread, I wanted to give it a shot. Bruteman posted:
In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the year 2265, biker punks roam the wasteland looking for 250 year old bags of flour. This gang stumbles into a research center where people from an underground vault of some kind are attempting to regrow plants. But they have also brought with them intelligent killer rats who are determined to devour them all. So there's three primary techniques people use in animal attack movies. First, use animatronics or CGI to fake the animal. This is the safest option and generally gives the best results since you don't have to deal with things like the "killer" dog wagging his tail. Second, "Look over there at that stock footage! The wolves have found us!" Third, you get some real animals on set and have their handlers arrange things so they look frightening. Rats uses a lot of real rats, but it seems like they got a bunch of pet store rats and left them sitting around the set while the actors recited the lines in the script that told us how dangerous they were behaving. Best example is an insert shot of a bunch of rats just sniffing around probably because the handler tossed some seeds down for them and an actress goes, "Look at you fighting, killing each other!" There's also a lot of obviously stuffed animals being tossed at people's heads. It all looks hilariously bad and dependent on the equally awful acting to sell us on how dangerous these really chill looking rodents are. The script doesn't do the film any favors, either. This should be about as straightforward of plot as you can get: group of people under siege by monsters. This seems to jump around a lot, deliver weird exposition in a long scene of people watching a speaker that's playing back a recording, and never really makes much sense. There's also a twist ending that will make you howl with laughter instead of scream in horror like they were going for. All that said, Rats is not dull. It's fascinating how off the entire film is. Even with the dead scenes, there's still plenty of "action" happening. And by "action" I mean people screaming at insert shots of rats not doing anything. It's not even especially threatening as an animal attacks movie. Since my punks slot is full, I guess this one goes down on my SPOOKY card for Wild Beasts:  Bruteman posted:the gang being spooked by half-eaten corpses That might be some of the weirdest stuff in the movie as they keep getting spooked by corpses when they've been through constant rat attacks and stumbling over corpses that rats have gnawed on.
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Oct 23, 2021 19:52
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 29)Bit 2020 tubi Quite enjoyed this one. I do agree that it felt a bit like a pilot for a cw show, though a cw show I'd definitely watch. Trans girl moves to LA, falls in with a group of vampire ladies who feed on rapists and nazis. Mostly. "We try, but it's 80/20." Does some interesting things with vampires, and while it does have some serious themes, it's not as didactic as the most recent black christmas (which I mostly liked), and way more fun. /5
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Oct 23, 2021 20:03
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Random Stranger posted:In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the year 2265, biker punks roam the wasteland looking for 250 year old bags of flour. I didn't go into detail with it in my summary but that whole scene where they find the food and play with it was when I knew I was watching something truly bizarre. Between it going on for far too long like some non-sequitur comedy sketch troupe, the bad dubbing and the bad acting (Geretta Geretta geting doused with the flour and frolicking about shouting "I'M WHITER THAN YOU GUYS LOL"), it was some real  poo poo
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Oct 23, 2021 20:16
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 27. Bullets Of Justice (2019) Pig-Human hybrid super soldiers have taken over the world and it's up to our hero to find out where their mother is, to get our world back. This is a grimy, gross and gory action/horror/apocalypse spoof, with a hell of a lot going on. There are the obvious man/pig hybrids (notably called Muzzles) and bounty hunters and jetpacks and violence and gore. The dialogue is all in English but it's obviously not anyone's first language. I think a lot of it was spoken phonetically by the actors. The plot is difficult to follow with the way it is written, and new elements keep being introduced. And it's all on purpose, I think, to help spoof action movies that just throw things against a wall and see what sticks. Time travel shows up at one point, and there's very little dialogue to let you know what's going on. Most of the movie has our hero, Rob Justice, speaking in an action cliche tone, making love to his sister/assistant who sports a rad mustache, and occasionally thinking about another man's perfect award-winning rear end. The climactic battle with another bounty hunter is told through an intimate ballet. There's a twist at the end, the entire story takes place in the imagination of the main character in the real, current, world as he's preparing to go out to a leather fashion show with his friends. I don't know if I have a complete handle on this very bizarre movie since there was so much going on in so many different confusing directions, but I did enjoy watching it! Spooky Card: A Perfect Getaway (Bulgaria/Kazakhstan!)  28. Dr. Black, Mr Hyde (1976) A blaxsploitation version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. An affluent black doctor, accused of being out of touch with the poorer black community, invents a serum to help repair liver damage, but it turns you into a violent white person. At least, that's what the characters see, to me it looked more like a ruddy zombie look. It was a fun watch! Spooky Card: Horror Noire  29. The Thing From Another World (1951) I had never seen this and it turned out to be pretty fun. An alien ship crashlands in the Arctic and the military stationed there accidentally release an alien being who wants to take over the world. The alien itself only shows up in a few scenes, with most of the movie being arguments from the scientist who wants to study it and the military who are looking at security concerns. It has some corny 50s dialogue and that particular military patter, but it was fun to hear. Spooky Card: Don't Feed The Plants (the alien is specifically called out as a plant-form of life by the scientist, and I figure this is the harder category to hit  ) 30. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) An internet ghost hunter show goes to Korea's most haunted location, with predictable results. I can't help but compare this to Grave Encounters since it shares a lot in common with that, and I think if you liked that you'd like this. The scares were good, things were very spooky, the setting worked well. The characters weren't very deeply drawn, but with a larger cast and this kind of movie, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. There wasn't really anything that stood out as wildly different than the sorts of things we already see with these kinds of movies. Spooky Card: Asylum  31. Trick Or Treat (1986) This was awesome! Deathgasm, another favorite of mine, owes a lot of its DNA to this movie. A heavy metal nerd is bullied in school, and learns his favorite metal idol died. A local DJ gives him a copy of an unreleased new record though, and through playing that backwards (duh) he learns the rocker is coming back to have his vengeance on the whole town, and it's up to our hero to stop him! This hits all the 80s notes, has a rocking soundtrack, and has cameos from both Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, as a radio DJ and a preacher, respectively. There are high school shenanigans and wild action, and it's no slouch in the body count department either as the evil metal rocker keeps popping out of radios and killing people. It was a lot of fun! Spooky Card: None!  32. Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) A rough retelling of the original Ginger Snaps, but set in 19th century Canada on the wild frontier. It isn't an exact retelling, but you have two sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, seeking refuge in a fort full of mistrust and racism, beset by werewolves. Not as strong as the original, but this is closer in tone to the first Ginger Snaps than Ginger Snaps 2 was. It had everything you could want - wolf attacks, dickheads getting their comeuppance, and feral children. Spooky Card: Picnic At Hanging Rock SPOOKY BINGO:  32/31: The Lure, Candyman, Wyrmwood, Malevolent, Vivarium, Three Extremes, Def By Temptation, Fanatic, Kuso, The Pit, VHS94, Blackwood, Shadow Of The Hawk, The Queen Of Black Magic (1981), Monstrous (2020), American Psycho 2, The Nesting, Halloween Kills, Mimic, The Mutilator, The Field Guide To Evil, The Editor, Godzilla Raide Again, Grizzly, The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, The Funhouse, Hell Night, Bullets Of Justice, Dr. Black Mr Hyde, The Thing From Another World, Gonjiam Haunted Asylum, Trick Or Treat, Ginger Snaps Back Spooky Card: Hausu: The Nesting, Holiday Massacre: Halloween Kills, Something Wicked This Way comes: The Funhouse, It's Only A Myth: Monstrous, Don't Torture A Duckling: Godzilla Raids Again, Asylum: Gonjiam, Horror Noire: Dr Black Mr Hyde, Wild Beasts: Grizzly, They Always Come Back: The Queen Of Black Magic, A Perfect Getaway: Bullets For Justice, Don't Feed The Plants: Thing From Another World, Behind The Screams: The Editor, Tales Of Terror: The Field Guide To Evil, Picnic At Hanging Rock: Ginger Snaps Back
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Oct 23, 2021 20:28
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Franchescanado posted:Short Cuts Wall o' text incoming #26A. Necromancy Tutorial: How to Raise a Dragur (04:57) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARSAtHSgNe4) One of the horror thread regulars - forgive me, I forget which one - posted this short video that they made a little while ago, and I set it aside, in case another shorts challenge appeared this month. I just have to say, I loved this. It was a great, pitch-perfect send up of the obnoxious YouTuber aesthetic and attitude, and the costuming and design work was top-notch. I hope that a series of these kinds of shorts can be made, I think they'd be a huge hit. 5/5 #26B. Don't Peek (06:47) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51jIrunYuY) This was an okay set up and pay off, with a decent sense of pacing. I think the problem is that it's too obviously about a spooky ghost monster coming into reality via a haunted copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is just silly on its face and which I don't think the film recognizes. It's also pretty transparently AC:NH, running on a Nintendo Switch, and I'm sure Nintendo neither sponsored nor was aware of this fact. If the notoriously litigious company ever finds out about this little film, that may be the scariest thing of all for them. 3/5 #26C. Other Side of the Box (15:23) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrOYvVf6tIM) A neat idea, held back by some of the effects work and the color crushing effect of YouTube encoding - the impossibly black interior of the titular box, running into some kind of parallel universe, becomes far too noticeable when watched back on a decently sized monitor (or TV, in this case). It makes all of the effects stand out as being far too transparently fake, which undercuts their effectiveness. Since nothing is established, either, beyond "the monster wants you to keep looking at it," it can't help but make the ending feel like something stolen from a Steven Moffat episode of "Doctor Who," but without his (sometimes) deft touch at characterization and scenario. 3/5 #26D. Odd Girl (12:37) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVSXA2t3F0U) Eh. Didn't end up feeling this one. The acting was okay, even if there was some obvious "30 year olds playing teenagers" energy going on with some of the casting choices. The bigger issue is that the mechanics of the spooky scenario don't feel very well explained - I assume that Mom is actually a witch who resurrected her daughter after she killed herself of something? But it seems to be going for some kind of Dead & Buried-style twist at the end, which doesn't land at all because it's never really explained what's been going on or how anything works. Disappointing. 2/5 #26E. Anniversary (04:32) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9rKtTARnyE) Garbage. Bad acting, a terrible script, flat direction, poor editing, no real setup and no real payoff. A dull, witless, pointless waste of time. The only positive is that it's short. 1/5 #26F. The Penny Man (06:03) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCEqCxcSm4c) Another Steven Moffa-style bizarre happenstance monster scenario, where a little girl has to pay off a nightmare monster with pennies to make it go away. Presumably something bad will happen if she doesn't, but when she doesn't do so, nothing much seems to happen. There's some creaky sound effects and a giant monster hand but nothing seems to come out of it. And the ending stinger doesn't really make any impact. Another disappointment. 2/5 #26G. Goodnight Darling (06:00) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSCGgVy29as) Another scenario where something happens but nothing is alluded to, so the ending stinger just feels like it comes out of nowhere. What is this shambling old woman straight out of The Shining's Room 237 that pops up in the ending, and what does it have to do with anything that came before it? I don't know, nothing is really mentioned or alluded to that could have been an explanation, so it seems to just be a demon that pops up for no reason. If it's meant to be some kind of cultural allusion or something it went right over my head. The most disappointing thing is that it somehow managed to waste AnnaSophia Robb, aka "Violet Beauregarde" from the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; I don't know how you can manage that, but this one did. 2/5 #26H. The Relic (14:15) (YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urEimH2VIpk) I wish I could say I liked this more - for once, a scenario that gets no explanation in one of these shorts is kind of a strength. There's a monster that is suitably goopy and gnarly; some transformation effects that are neat, even if they look a little too much like balloons getting inflated at one point; and it all seems to be trying to ape the hysteria and tension of The Thing, which is never a bad thing to do. In the end, though, while I know that the opening credit references Nyarlathotep, it just seems like the imagery at the end is a mix of various symbols that may or may not have anything to do with anything (a key, a mask, a comet); I suppose if these are actual allusions to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then it might have more weight for a fan. For me, I can't tell if any of it is supposed to be a true reference or not; it all went over my head, so the ending just fell flat. Fine enough as it is, but I hope it works better for the fans of this stuff. 3/5 Total runtime of all of the shorts - 70:35  Watched so far: The Hunt, The Fog (1980), The Howling, Venom 2, Curse of the Demon, The Mummy's Tomb, The Stepfather (1987), Maniac Cop, The City of the Dead, Halloween (2018), Killer Klowns From Outer Space, DeepStar Six, Dracula's Daughter, Tremors, Friday the 13th Part 8, The Voices, Werewolves Within, It!, Ghost in the Machine, Halloween Kills, Near Dark, Actress Wanted, Def by Temptation, Razorback, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, various shorts
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Oct 23, 2021 20:31
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 22. Interview with the Vampire (1994) (dir. Neil Jordan) Amazon SPOOKY bingo: "Picnic at Hanging Rock" Brad Pitt plays Louis, a 200 year old vampire who recounts the story of his life (or more accurately, his undeath) to an interviewer. As a plantation owner in the deep South in the late 18th century, he is turned by a charismatic but dangerous vampire named Lestat (Tom Cruise), and their complicated relationship unfolds over the following decades. This is basically a story about the melancholy of being immortal, and also a romance about a gay couple who adopt a daughter. I liked this more than I thought I would, but it does have issues. I love the Southern Gothic vibe of the first half of the film, and Tom Cruise's performance as Lestat is really fun. There are also some scenes later on in a French theater run by vampires that I liked a lot too. I was pleasantly surprised to see Stan Winston's name in the opening credits, and thanks to him there are some pretty decent effects. My main complaint is that it often sort of glosses over character development in favor of skipping ahead to the next set piece, which hurts the pacing and also lessens the impact of certain scenes. Louis suffers because he doesn't want to kill humans, but we're told this without the film ever really exploring the why of it. His characterization basically begins and ends at "angsty". It doesn't help that Brad Pitt is mostly really bad in this - he's wooden and seems disinterested pretty much all the time. I know he's supposed to be emotionally flat at times, especially during the modern day interview scenes, but his performance is dull as dirt in general. I'm glad I watched this and enjoyed it, but despite some strong elements (mostly Tom Cruise and spooky atmosphere) it's only an OK film overall. 3.5 glasses of rat blood out of 5  23. Angst (1983) (dir. Gerald Kargl) Shudder SPOOKY bingo: "Origin of Evil" A psychopathic killer gets out of jail after serving a 10 year sentence for murder, and immediately seeks out more victims. Nearly all of this film is the main character torturing and killing a family whose house he invades, accompanied by voiceover as he talks about his childhood, his compulsions, and what's going through his mind as he performs these heinous acts. It's both fascinating and deeply disturbing. It's hard for me to give this a star rating - it's both undeniably effective and intensely unpleasant, much in the same vein as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Man Bites Dog. I'll call it 4 stars because it's extremely good at what it's going for, but it also made me feel bad and uncomfortable and it's not something I would really recommend. 4 home invasions out of 5 Total: 23 Watched: Hellraiser | Hellbound: Hellraiser II | Jennifer's Body | The Lords of Salem | The Bride of Frankenstein | Motel Hell | V/H/S/94 | Scream of Fear | Evil Dead Trap | The Masque of the Red Death | The Lure | The House that Screamed | Trouble Every Day | No One Gets Out Alive | Halloween (2018) | Halloween Kills | Class of 1999 | The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) | The Wicker Man | "Short Cuts" | Titane | Interview with the Vampire | Angst 
gey muckle mowser fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 20:35
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Class3KillStorm posted:Wall o' text incoming That would be me. Thanks for the kind words. It means a lot. I had to watch so much bad YouTube to nail down the aesthetic and tone.
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Oct 23, 2021 20:44
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gey muckle mowser posted:I saw this movie a couple years ago at a screening where the director did a Q&A after, she was obviously really interested in intersectional feminism and talked about that a whole lot. Unfortunately I kind of hated the movie itself though, on paper it is 100% my poo poo both in content and thematically but the execution felt disjointed to me in an inept way instead of dreamy. I appreciate what she was going for but it didn't work for me at all. I'm glad you dug it though! I can absolutely see this. Knives and Skin has almost no thread holding it together and it's just weird. Weird in a way I dig, but yeah. I'm 10000% watching whatever she does next (and apparently I have to pick up that VHS 94 thing now) as it's my jam.
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Oct 23, 2021 20:44
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Anyone have good recommendations for Horror Noire ? I was going to watch the new Candyman, but a friend wants to watch it with me and it looks like we can't agree on a time before the challenge ends. I've seen Get Out and Us, but would for instance The People Under the Stairs count? I haven't seen it, and know very little, but Jordan Peele remaking it at least feels like a context clue. I don't want to have to watch Antebellum or something but I will if I can't find anything good. E: Hmm, Night of the Living Dead might be a good shout. After all having a black leading actor in a 1968 movie is probably culturally pretty important. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 20:49
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Ganja and Hess, any of the Blacula movies (one is even the movie of the month), the documentary called Horror Noire would all be good picks. The first Tales from the Hood rules. There's also an anthology coming out on the 28th on Shudder called Horror Noire that will feature several Black directors in an anthology too, that's what I'll be using once it comes out.
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Oct 23, 2021 21:00
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Anyone have good recommendations for Def by Temptation doesn't have a single white person in it aside from a plastic sculpt of Ronald Reagan. It's also a masterpiece of pure cinema and also a weirdo outsider art Christian film. Watch it. You'll either adore it or think it's a mess judging by this thread.
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Oct 23, 2021 21:02
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Hell yeah, let's go for broke. Def by Temptation and Tales from the Hood it is.
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Oct 23, 2021 21:08
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The Head Hunterquote:Long on tone, short on dialog, and with an incredibly clever conceit that hides budget restrictions (just show the aftermath of a monster fight) while doing a very fun bit of world building.  1) One Cut of the Dead 2,3)Freddy's Return, Never Fall Asleep 4,5,6) Fear Street(s) 7) Debug 8) Astro Loco 09,10)Flesh, TX & Black Christmas (2019) 11) GOG 12) It Came from the Desert!13, 14) Happy Death Day 2 U & The Perfection 15) Train 16) 15/05/11 17) The Brain 18) EAP's Requiem for the Damned 19, 20) Rogue & Spawn 21) Horror Effects 22, 23, 24) Slumber Party Massacre II, Elvira- Mistress of the Dark, Color Out of Space 25) Sequence Break 26) Cannibal Holocaust 27) Prom Night II 28, 29) Death Machine, Rodan 30) The Head Hunter Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 21:12
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Oh poo poo. This is gonna be a loving wild ride.
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Oct 23, 2021 21:16
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twernt posted:🎃 Punk Vacation 🎃 I don’t know if the actual music from Uncle Peckerhead got released on streaming, but the guy who plays Max wrote all the songs for them and is in a bunch of other bands in the Philly area. https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2020/08/19/demonic-roadies-killer-riffs-how-punk-rock-horror-comedy-uncle-peckerhead-got-its-jams/
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Oct 23, 2021 21:39
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someone recommend a movie for me to finish out my personal challenge (31 new-to-me horrors) and finish two rows for Fran's challenge. I need It's only a Myth Convince me not to watch The Tall Man with Jessica Biel e: oh poo poo the Tall Man is from the Martyrs guy? Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 22:05
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 56 (91). Alligator (1980) Directed by Lewis Teague; Screenplay by John Sayles; Story by John Sayles and Frank Ray Perilli Watched on Youtube Hooptober Ocho 31/39: 2/2 films from your birth year Fran’s SPOOKY BINGO: Origin of Evil I might have to add Alligator to my I♥️NY list just on its strong "exact level of competence of the NYPD/NYC government" energy. That was pretty good. The gator is understandably kept to some limited time but he looks pretty good when he’s there and there’s enough of him that it doesn’t feel like they’re hiding. Robert Forster and Robin Riker are both solid leads with solid chemistry to fill the time. This reminded me a lot of a Larry Cohen film. Cohen is second to none at representing 80s NYC and making it feel real and gritty, especially writing characters and dialogue. It all feels very organic and natural and makes it so much easier to fall into the film and believe in the characters. Teague does a great job with that and I think he does a much better job with the story and narrative than Cohen does. Its a simple story but it works, and points for the whole thing coming together with the gator chowing down on the mayor and the rich rear end in a top hat who started this whole mess. If you could have gotten the lady’s dad in there too. Its actually pretty coolly subtle about story stuff like that. Its never really brought up that the gator is Ramon. There’s just some small little mentions to tip off that the little girl is the same as scientist and it trusts you to follow that. Same with the whole evil villain getting his comeuppance. No one ever really investigates it or calls him out or draws a ton of attention to it. Its just done and let for the audience to put together and laugh at the karmic justice. I don’t think its a top tier monster movie or anything. Like I said the gator’s kind of hidden a little and some of the scenes are really dark. And it definitely spends a lot of time being more of a romcom or cop movie than a horror. But its a good blend of them all and I really did like the two leads and their relationship. I enjoyed the whole thing really and had a good time with it. Solid gator movie. Those things really are in the sewers!  57 (92). Evil Eye (2020) Directed by Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani; Screenplay by Madhuri Shekar; Based on Evil Eye by Madhuri Shekar Watched on Amazon Prime A solid film, although definitely way more of a thriller than a horror. The story’s basic structure doesn’t feel that much unlike your average Lifetime plot line but there’s a definite Indian cultural spin on it and flavor, as well as a generally much stronger production and performances. To my surprise Sarita Choudhury is much more of the lead than Sunita Mani but the two combine to tell the story of competing tensions. From mother Usha’s perspective it feels like it could be about dealing with trauma from an abusive relationship from your past you never fully resolved and letting it turn into an obsession that damages the most important relationship in your life now. And from Pallavi’s perspective its the slow giving up of independence and concern that this new relationship may be moving too fast and becoming too much of your life so that you become dependent and at the mercy of this new person in your life. That tension of which of these things is true drives the film and worked very well for me. Both actresses do a great job with the ambiguity and concern of it from both perspectives and show out how their problems are rooted deeply in communication problems. The scene where mother tells her daughter her dark past is powerful and while the side-by-side camera tricked used was maybe a LITTLE too gimmicky it did a good job really speaking to the distance between this very close pair living across the globe from each other during this important time. Bernard White is also very good as the more background man who loves both of them and is trying to bridge the communication gaps between them and mutual stubbornness knowing full well they’re both too strong willed to allow him to do more than just push. And its really sweet how both women respond to him in those moments where he confesses his feelings about his place in this family behind these two strong women. He’s not asking for pity, he’s just trying to help them, but you can tell they’re hurt that he may not know how much they love and respect him. So yeah, this might have been a family drama as much as anything but it does have a clear tense thriller element and possible supernatural angle to it. And while I was a little worried the film might not have the meat to get past the big emotional turn of the family all opening up to each other the last act really delivers on the ramped up danger and tension. I’ve been saying it all month now but I really enjoy these Welcome to the Blumhouse films. I’m a broken record but while none of them have been really great stand out films to me they’re all been enjoyable and interesting in a lot of ways and very nice seeing unique POC and women voices behind and in front of the camera. If Amazon/Blumhouse are just gonna give young filmmakers and actors opportunities they don’t often get than I don’t care if the results are just solid, its a worthwhile thing I hope continues.
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Oct 23, 2021 22:22
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19. Nightmare Cinema The VHS films could take notes on how do to a solid Wrap Around from Nightmare Cinema. Its not fantastic or anything but at least it doesn't make my eyes roll out of my skull and fall on to the floor. The shorts themselves can be fantastic at times though! The first is a slasher send-up that ends up more alien invasion (reminds me of Tales from Halloween kinda) and it is most hilarious with a cool finale. The second is a story of sinister plastic surgery and truth be told I can't even remember the resolution but I do remember they hosed that poor girl up proper! Even gave her the Total Recall treatment. The third is probably my favorite while also slightly disappointing. Its about a demon who possesses a catholic school and the demon looks loving rad and is way underused. Just throw that demon in every scene of every short if you ask me. However, the most hilarious scene in the whole move occurs in this story where a priest slices up a whole class of school girls with a sword, body parts flying everywhere. Where the third is mostly hilarious and cool. The fourth story is the ultimate tail of gas lighting and is mostly meh except some cool visuals. Where the third story is hilarious and fun, the last story is brutal and depressing. It STARTS with a teenager witnessing his dad being shot in the head and his mom shot multiple times to death. Then he gets shot through the chest! The rest of the short is spent showing his time in the hospital where he is stalked and attacked by his would be killer. I found it to be pretty depressing. Overall though Nightmare Cinema is a pretty good anthology. 20. Late Phases: Night of the lone Wolf I really, really liked this. A blind, retired bad-rear end Vietnam vet moves into a retirement community with a secret (werewolves!). Our hero wastes no time solving the mystery and rather than this movie being about figuring out whats going on, almost its entire length is dedicated to his preparing to be attacked. The thing I really liked about Late Phases is that it has this strange undercurrent sense of humor that it never outright addresses. It knows its not serious, and it knows you know, but behaves like it is deathly serious the whole time. Its not campy but its camp adjacent I would say. I'm sure theres a German word for this. The transition scene was mediocre but considering the rest of the film I was kind of surprised we got one at all. The werewolves themselves were more Wolfman which is what I prefer (to actual wolves) and all varied in look depending on who was in wolf form. My research shows there aren't a lot of highly thought of werewolf movies you probably haven't seen already, so if you need one for the spooky board and haven't seen this, I highly endorse it. At worst, I'd be surprised if you were bored.
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Oct 23, 2021 22:24
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 35. Poltergeist (1982)  .5/5I somehow never got around to watching Poltergeist, so instead absorbed all its spectacle and ideas through the osmosis of cultural references. That meant I came in with the film disarmed of its surprises. There's ups and downs to this - there's a shiver of anticipation when I see the beginnings of a known scene about to play out ("Why am I anxious about him washing his face, OH NO"), but there's also a contempt for the catch phrases whose very intonation has been an insipid punchline for decades, the mawkish manipulation of a child lost to danger. Maybe I just don't like kids on film. Poltergeist takes a few satiric jabs at its own nuclear family chumminess. The consumerist suburban lifestyle with all those Star Wars toys is built atop rotten foundations, after all. But its emotional throughline is dependent on you feeling a warm affection for these people and sympathy for their supernatural troubles, not picking at the paterfamilias' culpability in recruiting more customers to feed the neighborhood's expansion. The pseudo-sitcom patter has to sustain the film well beyond the introduction and through a weird doldrums period where paranormal investigators gape at the weird VFX gags, until Zelda Rubinstein finally shows up to handle poo poo. After some more tedious exposition about souls and the light and stuff, anyway. All these petty gripes of mine don't change the fact that when things pop off, they go hard. Poltergeist is a landmark of roller coaster horror, the kind that thrills more than it chills. The PG rating (already inexplicable with that face-washing scene) doesn't take any of the oomph off moments like a beastly face filling an entire doorframe, or coffins exploding out of the ground like land mines. People can debate to death whether Tobe Hooper or Steven Spielberg is more responsible for the tone of the piece, I want to know who's responsible for that house implosion looking hella rad. Spooky Bingo: As Seen on TV. Poltergeist is famous for evil TVs sucking kids in. Technically it's ghosts, but it's clearly not a coincidence that a totem of American consumer culture is the gateway to oblivion. 
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Oct 23, 2021 22:25
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Vanilla Bison posted:I want to know who's responsible for that house implosion looking hella rad. It was some good ol' Industrial Light and Magic practical effects - IIRC the way they did that was pretty neat. They built a scale model of the house, rigged it with a vacuum behind it and with steel cables to pull it apart. They put a high-speed camera above it, started filming and then shot it with shotguns and pulled the house apart with the cables and the debris was sucked down a funnel into the vacuum. When you run the footage at normal speed and add some spooky opticals and stuff, you get movie magic 
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Oct 23, 2021 23:01
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32) XTRO Ticking the box for Don't Torture A Duckling. I watched this intending to use it for Video Nasty, but it has a killer kid in it and I'm more likely to watch another nasty than another killer kid movie. Based on the box I expected XTRO to be your typical "alien monster comes to Earth, kills a number of people in an extremely messy way" movie. And to be fair, that isn't very far off. What I wasn't expecting was for the movie to have so much imagination. It takes a sharp swerve in the middle and a lot of really interesting things start happening. Unfortunately the movie does have bad points: the director had a young Maryam d'Abo on a contract with a nudity clause and apparently felt obliged to make the most of it whether it was gratuitous or not, and the movie is definitely pretty rapey in places. There's also a couple of scenes where the budget didn't measure up to the vision, which at one point led to me expecting a character who screams "Don't look at me!" to add "I'm covered in fingerpaints!" Overall, though, I was quite pleasantly surprised by this one. I don't think I ever need to watch it again, but I'm not upset that I did. E: Frank, for the box A Perfect Getaway, is it permissible to watch the actual movie A Perfect Getaway? Jedit fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 23, 2021 |
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Oct 23, 2021 23:09
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30. 13 Ghosts (2001) / Thirthirteenen Ghosts A family inherits a perfectly ordinary house with no red flags to it whatsoever... with spooky results. The only reason to watch this movies is for the special effects. The plot doesn't make sense. The acting is not good. The humour is not good. It's very much a product of its time. The effects are very good though. All of the ghosts are unique and look very spooky. The house they built is awesome. There's all these moving pieces and clockwork nonsense. It's really great to look at. I do not understand why they chose to remake this movie in this way. It's so entirely different, but they kept the tiniest most pointless things. The inheritance of a ghost house, and the structure of the family is pretty much it. The ghost glasses are back, but for no reason. There's at least half a dozen pairs of them and there's no reason why you should have to put them on to see the ghosts. There's no gimmick this time. 2/5 
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Oct 23, 2021 23:42
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Bruteman posted:It was some good ol' Industrial Light and Magic practical effects - IIRC the way they did that was pretty neat. They built a scale model of the house, rigged it with a vacuum behind it and with steel cables to pull it apart. They put a high-speed camera above it, started filming and then shot it with shotguns and pulled the house apart with the cables and the debris was sucked down a funnel into the vacuum. When you run the footage at normal speed and add some spooky opticals and stuff, you get movie magic  That is cool as hell. On a fundamental level it makes sense, if you want to practically film something being sucked into a point, you gotta actually vacuum it up into a point. This article says that afterwards, they also collected the fragments from the model and shoved them into a plexiglass cube, and gave it to Spielberg to keep on a piano. 
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Oct 23, 2021 23:48
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Lumbermouth posted:I don’t know if the actual music from Uncle Peckerhead got released on streaming, but the guy who plays Max wrote all the songs for them and is in a bunch of other bands in the Philly area. Thank you! This is great.
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Oct 23, 2021 23:53
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Vanilla Bison posted:
Yep, there was a picture of it in a big ILM book I got a long time ago. It's here too: https://images.app.goo.gl/DALk5PsqUc2uGQTJ8
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Oct 23, 2021 23:55
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 105) Killer’s Delight - 1978 - Youtube If not the first, definitely one of the early rips on Ted Bundy. This is very much a product of its time and even then, this one's fairly 'meh'. It's not worth sitting through unless you're really into serial killer films.  106) Mr. Jones - 2013 - Prime Here we have a couple with relationship problems in a creative slump go off to a cabin in the woods to hopefully revitalize things. Once they find the unusual scarecrows placed around, things go weird. It turns out that the couple's neighbor is Mr. Jones, a mysterious artist like Banksy where everyone knows the name and art, but that's it. Turns out he's secretive for a reason. I guess this one's okay. I liked the first 2/3 of it, but that last 1/3 kinda drops the ball. Those first 2/3s are fairly traditional found footage, but the last 1/3 abandons that for going too trippy and artsy. I get what the director was going for, but instead of using a few dashes, they used a few glugs. The stand out here are the scarecrows, but then I absolutely adore Pumpkinrot's art and he's the one who designed the scarecrows for this one. I think with a little tweaking, this could've been really good. As it is, I don't regret watching it and it's okay enough.  107) Navy vs the Night Monsters - 1966 - Dailymotion A plane carrying specimens unearthed in Antarctica crashes near the naval base it was heading to for refueling. The crew is missing save for a catatonic pilot and the specimens, some which are more than they seem. For a mid '60s film, this really feels like something out of the '50s. It is based on the novel The Monster from Earth's End which I'm going to have to track down. Apparently the film was 78 minutes but the producers added more footage to be able to sell it to TV and threw off the pacing and tone. I'm very curious to see that 78 min version. The film was supposed to have a different title as well, but the producers changed it to the one it has which the director felt sounded ridiculous. The director also wanted to take a different approach to the monsters, have them more subtle, but the producers decided otherwise for more blatant and cheap. Other than that, the romance subplot feels like it was slapped on as an afterthought as if they felt they needed it since it was the trend. Overall, this looks like it would've been a pretty decent movie if it hadn't been for the producer meddling. I'm not sure if the dog died since it came across more as they forgot they had a dog in the movie as it went on.
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Oct 24, 2021 00:22
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Skrillmub posted:30. 13 Ghosts (2001) / Thirthirteenen Ghosts Skrillmub posted:(2001)
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Oct 24, 2021 00:23
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33) The Hills Have Eyes (1977) Ticking the box To Serve Man. One of the more famous movies I never got around to. It's cheap and a bit shoddy, and there's a few things that make no sense, but a lot more thought went into it than you'd at first think. Jupiter's family are more than just corrupt degenerates, although I wish that had been leaned into more. On the other side of the divide the protagonists are pretty much non-characters by comparison; it's more important that they are dragged down to Jupiter's level, surviving not through any benefit of civilisation but by low cunning that often reflects their tormentor's actions. Some people have tried to draw a Vietnam allegory into it, but then it was made between 1975 and 1980 and pretty much every movie in that period got that as America tried to understand how it could have lost a war. Personally I think it's a joke - the nuclear family on vacation pitted against a rather different kind of nuclear family in the hills.
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Oct 24, 2021 01:25
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Horror Shorts Special I'm watching the same group of shorts that Class3KillStorm did for this, though not in the same order, for a SPOOKY Short Cut. Here's the reference link to their post before I get started: Class3KillStorm posted:Wall o' text incoming The Relic - A bunch of people at a cabin have something and someone and something is other there and then a monster arrives. This was like coming in on a scene at the end of act two of a horror film. The creators obviously had ideas, but it felt like they didn't know how to turn them into a movie. So we get the film student idea of "if nothing is explained then it's up to the viewer's imagination!" playing out. The problem with that is they tend to confuse the idea of not explaining everything with not explaining anything. So I've got this scene where I don't give a drat about any of the characters, don't know what's happening, and it makes me feel like nothing in it matters. They did have some good, goopy monster effects at the end of it, at least. The Penny Man - A girl's bedtime ritual is paying pennies through a door, but this time she doesn't have enough. Now as a counterpoint to The Relic, this is a film where not explaining things is fine. Why is any of this happening? Doesn't matter, it's a set up for a spook sequence and you get everything you need to know for that. Unfortunately, this one is lacking a proper conclusion, just cutting off at a moment when tension should be building. Necromancy Tutorial: How to Raise a Dragur - Yet another YouTube life hack video. I'm pretty sure this one got mixed in by mistake. Yeah, this one was a lot of fun. To me this felt like one of those third tier YouTube channels that's trying to imitate more popular channels. FreudianSlippers, I don't know if they was your intention but it worked for me. Other Side of the Box - A couple gets a box with nothing in it from her ex-boyfriend. Complaining about getting pieces of broccoli shorter than two inches? Two inches is huge for pieces broccoli and tough to eat if it's in a dish! And if the box of evil has something inside it that has to be watched, how did the guy drive it over to their house? Whoever wrote this must really like Doctor Who is it borrows a lot of the more iconic things from the show. I think it would have been better without the "don't look away" stuff and been a story about box with a hole in it. It's also a very contradictory story where its own internal rules are broken constantly for the sake of twisting the story. Anniversary - Woman has a man over on the anniversary of her husband's death. Wow, that is some terrible acting. Also, whoever did the foley work was going nuts: a "shing" as she fiddles with a carving knife, wet splotches as she picks up her turkey (it's chicken). The ending doesn't make sense, either, since the whole point is this was the anniversary but it makes it seem like it's a daily occurrence. Don't Peek - Woman's copy of Animal Crossing starts affecting the real world. And Tom Nook wants his money. You know, when I find out that my game system has supernatural abilities, it just makes me want to go right to bed as well. There's no dialog in this short which is fine once it gets going, but it's a seven minute short so it shouldn't have to "get going". It either needed more room for the magical Switch to do things or it needed to go strait into Mr. Resetti's wild ride. As it stands, our nameless main character's reaction to discovering magic is real is mild amusement and then time for bed and then after that is when the creepy starts. Class3KillStorm posted:It's also pretty transparently AC:NH, running on a Nintendo Switch, and I'm sure Nintendo neither sponsored nor was aware of this fact. If the notoriously litigious company ever finds out about this little film, that may be the scariest thing of all for them. True. The real monster is Nintendo's legal team. Goodnight Darling - A girl's mother is behaving strangely. This was a bit of nothing where nothing really happens. They're creeped out a bit by their mother. Then jump scare. Also, how did get get a glass out of the cupboard without noticing the dead dog at eye level when she opened it? Odd Girl - A girl at a high school is a bit awkward and needs a friend. Also, there's some creepy things happening at her house. Uh... what? Okay, I don't follow the plot of this one at all. There's a lot happening here and none of it connects. There's a pair of scenes that are rapidly cut back and forth between them that only after the film was over I realized weren't related. It feels like this had a third of the scenes cut out and they were the ones that tied things together. 
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Oct 24, 2021 01:34
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🎃 Video Games Cause Violence 🎃 Werewolves Within (2021) Directed by Josh Ruben Watched on Amazon  Werewolves Within is based on the VR game of the same name released in 2016. It’s a horror comedy, but way more on the comedy end of that spectrum. The comedy is also mostly the “sensible chuckle” type.  It is a fun mystery though, in a small town full of quirky characters where pretty much anyone could be the murderer. It's as charming as a movie can be, when the plot involves an unscrupulous pipeline developer pitting townsfolk against each other and there may be a werewolf on the loose. There were way more twists and reveals than I expected and the cast is great. 💀💀💀1/2 Spooky Bingo 19/? 1. The Crazies (2010), 2. The Ritual (2017), 3. Blacula (1972), 4. Malignant (2013), 5. Black Sheep (2006), 6. [REC]2 (2009), 7. Demons 2 (1986), 8. Birdemic 2: The Resurrection (2013), 9. The Masque of the Red Death (1964), 10. Night of the Demons (1988), 11. The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976), 12. Opera (1987), 13. Sword of God (2018), 14. Thale (2012), 15. Stranger in Our House (1978), 16. The Ruins (2008), 17. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), 18. Uncle Peckerhead (2020), 19. Werewolves Within (2021)  Spooky Travelogue 31/31 1. At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul 🇧🇷, 2. Pontypool 🇨🇦, 3. Inferno 🇮🇹, 4. The Queen of Black Magic 🇮🇩, 5. The Forest of Lost Souls 🇵🇹, 6. Tumbbad 🇮🇳, 7. The Silent House 🇺🇾, 8. The Phantom Carriage 🇸🇪, 9. Housebound 🇳🇿, 10. I Saw the Devil 🇰🇷, 11. Witchfinder General 🇬🇧, 12. Kuroneko 🇯🇵, 13. The Untold Story 🇭🇰, 14. Brotherhood of the Wolf 🇫🇷, 15. Şeytan 🇹🇷, 16. Rift 🇮🇸, 17. Alison’s Birthday 🇦🇺, 18. The House at the End of Time 🇻🇪, 19. Daughters of Darkness 🇧🇪, 20. 122 🇪🇬, 21. Us 🇺🇸, 22. 2012: Curse of the Xtabai 🇧🇿, 23. Faust 🇩🇪, 24. Rigor Mortis 🇨🇳, 25. Penumbra 🇦🇷, 26. November 🇪🇪, 27. Killbillies 🇸🇮, 28. Alucarda 🇲🇽, 29. Sputnik 🇷🇺, 30. Djinn 🇦🇪, 31. Cold Prey 🇳🇴 twernt fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 01:36
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31. Gingerclown Some people go to an amusement park at night... with spooky results. This movie has Brad Dourif as Wormcreature and it's terrible. 0/5 
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Oct 24, 2021 01:58
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Time to tackle some short films. I'll probably post again later, but I'll separate this one out because of all the content. I definitely want to flag that I found an interesting resource for this one, a YouTube channel called Famous First Films (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOb-xABgTt19pM4hez1bTrw) that has lots of early efforts from well-known directors. The view counts are shockingly low given the treasure trove of stuff here. Worth poking around! 50. (various short films) (all first viewings) Captain Voyeur by John Carpenter (7:00) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDFbBXiv1CE) The adventures of a prowling pervert in a mask and cape, who seem to have remarkable luck finding open bedroom windows during his voyeuristic adventures. Not much to this one, although it is a precursor to some of the style and themes later to be seen in Halloween and Someone's Watching Me! The Strange Thing About the Johnsons by Ari Aster (29:06) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zZYkwK16H4) According to Wiki, the filmmakers arrived at the topic for this family drama/horror while discussing "taboos that weren't even taboos because they were so unfathomable." The opening scene goes from awkward to funny to horrific in short order, and pushes it from there. Solid enough (and definitely daring) performances for a thesis film. Certainly an uncomfortable watch, something Aster seems to have been shooting for since the beginning. 1000 Year Sleep by Adam Wingard (6:33) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iICVumv15KA A "what if?" kind of story, this short drops in on four young teenage girls who will soon be the victims of serial killer and talks about what their lives might have been had they lived. There is some kind of overwrought-yet-bland pretentious narration about the meaninglessness of life atop it. Junior by Julia Ducournau (21:17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmZ8XEW7bfM This features the acting debut of Garance Marillier, who would go on to star in Raw (both characters are even named Justine). Here, she's a pimply tomboy with braces coming up against puberty which, in Ducournau's world, must involve at least a little body horror. A nice little coming-of-age piece. You can draw a straight line from this to Raw and Titane. Evil Demon Golf Ball From Hell by Rian Johnson (8:09) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwAqgkBehxg During a burglary, a young crook encounters a strange golf ball that never stops bouncing. It follows him home from the scene of the crime and begins to torment him, no matter how many different ways he tries to hide from or contain it. Sort of a goofy little monster movie with a few fun gags. Monster by Jennifer Kent (10:43) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIWdxjU-qlY A dry run for The Babadook, with some similar images and broad-strokes plot points but without the back story and characterization that made that movie so impactful. It's kind of been made obsolete, although it still makes for an interesting comparison to see how a short can be expanded into a feature. Elevated by Vincenzo Natali (19:26) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3SkMRTCov8 A pair of strangers are leaving an office skyscraper when a frenzied, blood-drenched security guard bursts into the elevator and claims there is some kind on creature on the loose in the building. The three start disagreeing about how to handle the situation--if any exists--and tensions quickly mount in the confined space. I'm a sucker for movies with a clear scenario that the characters have to handle--see also Cube from the same director--so I definitely got a kick out of this one. (untitled) by David Lowery (2:03) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duJy4b_PuKw I don't spook easily, but this one got to me. Short but disturbing. SPOOKY Bingo: This one checks off "Short Cuts," of course. Next up: Just 14 SPOOKY Bingo squares left!
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Oct 24, 2021 02:27
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 Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, 2006 Man, I forgot how many songs the first half had. This is basically a musical. It is Troma. It is by Lloyd Kaufman. It is a billion jokes a second like those Naked Guns movies, only as low brow, offensive and stupid as humanly possible. This is Troma after all. A fried chicken KFC type of restaurant is built on an Indian burial ground and the chicken gets haunted. There's plenty of dumb fun gory and gross poo poo in the first hour of the film, but the real gore and body horror starts at the hour mark. That's when then the movie gets real fun. So even if none of the jokes landed the first hour, the gore effects will keep you going when the real fun starts. That's how lot of the stuff directed by Lloyd Kaufman goes. You wonder why the gently caress you are watching this cringe attempts at being offensive and "funny", only to end up loving it by the end. The amounts of beer you down helps a lot too. You got to love this gory mess. Very few can pull off this bad on purpose stuff, but Lloyd Kaufman sure as gently caress can. There's too much fun with the gore effects to hate this even if you don't like the jokes.
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Oct 24, 2021 02:38
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