Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) - Amicus just ain't for me. good cast in this one. decent stories. but i was pretty bored outside of the "day of the triffids" story (which it turns out ended up being directed by the director of this anthology. maybe i'll check it out)
The Black Scorpion (1957) - loved the Mexican desert setting of this, and loved the scorpion effects considering it was more stop motion rather than overlaid footage. didn't like the what savior complex but hey, it was the 50s?
Bloody Murder (2000) - not sure why i've seen bloody murder 2 but not this one (i think i thrifted 2 on vhs way back when?) can't remember much about the second, but the first is some fine turn-of-the-millenium crystal lake slasher material. "trevor moorehouse" terrorizing teen campers in a hockey mask. it was fine, not as juvenile as other teen slashers from the time, actually well made.... how low have my standards fallen?
Us (2019) - thought this was great. only complaints are that it runs a little long, and i'm also a little sick of overrun abandoned post-apocalyptic scenarios, a la the purge/walking dead etcToggle Spoiler. will probably write more about this in the thread
Twisted Nightmare (1987) - so compared to Bloody Murder, here's a whole other style of Friday the 13th worship, including reused sets, but i dug it. nice score, kinda comforting.
I guess Oh Susanna isn't going to be in the movie otherwise that image would have made it in the trailer. That's the one that scared me the most as a kid.
I just finished watching House (1985) and it was not at all like I had expected. For years I had planned to watch this film, and for some reason thought it was going to be really dark and gritty. I didn't realize it starred William Kat. It has a lot of elements from other horror movies at the time - Poltergeist with the kid being sucked into this ethereal dimension for a long period of time and returning as well as that monster that jumps out of the closet seems like a few of the monsters in Poltergeist.Toggle SpoilerThe tone, however, feels like a Peter Jackson horror comedy, as do the monster costumes and puppets. The movie though that I feel it is most kindred to though in the narrative is Jacob's Ladder! A Vietnam vet struggles with his post-traumatic stress from the war, as well as the loss of a young son, and the guilt of these experiences take the form of literal demons he must face off against in order to forgive himself.Toggle Spoiler Really a weird movie, better than I had anticipated.
Combarieu declares that the songs of birds are not "musical" either, because they are "very difficult to take down in notation." See his Music-Its Laws and Evolution, 155. Will some divine power please create a "Musical" bird to sing the Air for G String in exact Equal Temperament for M. Combarieu?
I'm attempting to average one horror film a day this year, and while I've had to wade through some truly terrible movies, I've come across some very pleasant surprises. A few standouts...
If anybody has some more good recs to check out, I'd be very thankful! I can also upload what I've seen if anybody else wants them.
Celiac Cruz wrote:This one has no real explanation: Image
devil times five is an absolute classic and one of the best psycho kids movies. iirc the kids kill a guy and then turn him into a snowman, one of the kids dresses up in womens clothes and puts on makeup and acts like he's gonna seduce an old man? woman gets eaten by pirhanas in the bath i think?...turns out the kids are all from a mental asylum and just kill fuckin everyone, very coolToggle Spoiler
Combarieu declares that the songs of birds are not "musical" either, because they are "very difficult to take down in notation." See his Music-Its Laws and Evolution, 155. Will some divine power please create a "Musical" bird to sing the Air for G String in exact Equal Temperament for M. Combarieu?
Demons 2 - probably more fun than the first Demons. Lot of pieces of business that get dropped inexplicably, like asia argento's fate. It dares to not only endanger a cute child, but straight up turn him into a nasty ass demon. The zombie coming out of the t.v. bit was great, and this was the same year as the video dead. kinda had a shivers vibe to the contagion that's contained within a very modern high rise complex (if lacking all the psychosexual repression/body horror). Sick soundtrack. The only bummer is that it never has a scene that looks like the one in the women's bathroom from demons 1, where there's this pale, industrial gold lighting pouring in from some unknown location.
Lords of Chaos - not really horror, but it keeps getting praise in horror circles. it's not good and is tonally inconsistent and scattered. you think it's going to be a mock, self-aware biopic, but oscillates between that tone and trying to play it straight. And then it hits you with bursts of violence replete with horror sound drops and makes you sit with protracted scenes of stabbing (two different scenes). it gets real disturbing, but immediately undercuts that with a jarring jump to bad humor. also, kinda obnoxious that it scrubs all the race/nationalist shit from that scene. it's a movie that just doesn't want to deal with it, but it's like, then why do this story? sky ferrera is a cipher who exists just to humanize the fuck main character and make his fate sad.
The Perfection - i just didn't like this. like, it's an exploitation flick that wants to trade on subversive signifiers - a biracial lesbian romance, the survival of trauma - but really just uses it as set dressing for a dumb/ugly movie that feels like an American adaptation of one of the shittier french extremity movies from 14 years ago. i mean, rape revenge is a viable exploitation genre and amazing writers like Kier-La Janisse and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas have written very thoughtful things on the potency and power of i spit on your grave, ms. 45, etc. but, like, this thing doesn't carry that weight. it doesn't have a look to it. it doesn't feel ugly and grainy or have a point of view (visual or otherwise). it doesn't have anything to say. the different acts being different genres (protege obsession, early 90s erotic thriller, pandemic horror, torture porn) is a gimmick rather than saying something about them and just feels scattershot. I read a real dumb review about shepard trying to pull a haneke with the rewind stuff, but that's such a vacuous thing to say. haneke's use of rewind is to deliberately take away the plot's catharsis and make the viewer confront/sit with the fact that ugly violence is the mechanism through which they feel satisfaction. this movie doesn't have anything to say, and once again, the rewinding is just a gimmick. it doesn't even unspool and undo the events. it just does this as a stylized way to get to a flashback. even the final shot, which everyone talks about, is like just subpar hannibal tv show shit. watch boxing helena or audition if you want that shit to look good. oh, and we're supposed to buy marnie emancipating dear white people by orchestrating a dumb series of events that leads to her chopping off her own hand. i get that plot isn't really important in these things if style, mood and tension are, but there's none of that. it's straight up netflix algorithm genre smash-up without a voice or interest in look. it's like, black swan, hannibal season 2, high tension, the piano teacher and inside thrown in a shit blender.Toggle Spoiler
starry eyes - second watch. i mean, it's a straight-up ifc midnight version of mulholland drive with some really ugly shit in it. it's fine.