Man, I slacked off. A real truncated list of what I knocked out last month (sans the stuff already posted):
Suspiria (2018)Posted thoughts in that thread. I admire it; I don't know if I like it.
Rabid (1977)Early Cronenberg always has this hazy, dreamy quality to it. People talk in this odd, perfunctory way and register the horror differently. This is p much reworking Shivers, but predicting skin grafts and not just isolated to one location. It's good. Chambers fighting the urge to do it to her friend was p rough.
Dead Ringers (1988)Best Cronenberg? Definitely a shift toward the second half of his career, where the body horror isn't the focus, but a looming specter over the film. A mannered transference movie that kinda gave me a Persona vibe (in theme only). Also, In the Company of Men. Grabbing cake in a drugged out stupor with your hands is the grossest thing.
House on the Edge of the Park (1980)I dunno if I care for Deodato. Cannibal Holocaust isn't particularly good (and I don't have a predilection for that kind of horror). He mentioned on the yellow fever giallo doc that horror was most effective when it felt real and earthy, and that's definitely a thing in that movie and this one. P much just extended rape/torture fantasy with dumb, ham-fisted class critique thrown in and a stupid twist. David Hess is just Krug in this. It's a bad Last House on the Left imitation. It's cheap and ugly.
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)It's fun but not at all in the spirit of o.g. TCM. It's just a slasher. Ken Foree gets to be a badass and have a fight with Leatherface in a swamp. Iunno. Perfectly fine.
The Slayer (1982)A good looking b-movie that plays it like a slow-moving slasher until the end, where it wraps around on itself. The house and the island look good. It's shot well. But it's kinda boring. It's from the director of Sniper 3!!!
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)Arty softcore porn horror. Udo Kier plays a real tightly wound Jekyll. People get knocked off in a house in Clue fashion but we know who it is all along. Adds gender to the theme of primitive urge vs. propriety/civilization.
The end is almost romantic? Watching Hyde make his mom play piano and stepping on her bad ankle was real brutal. Prolly the best looking thing in this cluster of movies - the shot of her watching jekyl get in chemical tub with her face bisected by the changing thing and the reflection cast on the side is all-timeToggle Spoiler. The house they're in is gorgeous and fully exploited by the camera.
Behind the Mask: Rise of Leslie Vernon (2007)Just fine. It gets hyped here and among horror people but I didn't really connect with it. The cute faux-doc working through the tropes thing was okay. The turn was telegraphed, but horror and particularly slashers are narratively rigid by necessity so that's not a knock. They really go for that man bites dog thing of almost making the killer charming, affable and consequently sympathetic but without the really strong audience implication. The thing succeeds by being a competant, watchable riff on better movies (man bites dog, scream, etc.).
Summer of '84 (2018)I've never seen Turbo Kid but the blu was only $12. An hour 45 was too long for this. I like 80s horror because I was a kid in the '90s who rented dollar '80s slashers, but I don't have a connection to Being a White, Middle Class, Straight Teen in the 1980s so the friendships and their bullshit obnoxiousness didn't resonate. It's p much stranger things in that it just replicates an aesthetic. Just a rear window/goonies/stand by me 80s boy fantasy that's too long and not suspensful.
One of the rich sidekicks from Wet Hot netflix show is the villain, which was weird. Him killing the chubby kid was the only shock/surprise and felt incongruously mean-spirited for what as such glassy-eyed nostalgia flickToggle Spoiler. Kinda sucked. Good ost tho.