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Post by silverbullet63 on Feb 4, 2020 13:35:28 GMT -5
Late Phases: Night of the Wolf (2014) Howl (2015) Watched these two again recently, I'll never get tired of them. Yes, two really good ones. Very different from each other, of course. But that is what makes the world go around.  So I watched Brides of Blood as you suggested. Saw that one coming too. Fun stuff though. The monster is dead! Let's have an orgy! The ending always cracks me up. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 4, 2020 22:10:27 GMT -5
The Unnamable (2018) Based on a Lovecraft story, this is not your usual 'teens getting killed in an old house' movie. Rather well done - spooky and scary with enough gore to satisfy but not so much as to get in the way of the story. Demon creature, born in the 18th century of a human woman, still prowls about the old house but is restrained from leaving by spells. I really like the creature, who is cool looking and nicely acted as well. (BTW it is a girl demon but I would have to have an extraordinary number of drinks before trying to pick her up in a singles bar.) The reveal is slow, but begins already in the 18th century prolog, and continues throughout, showing more and more of the demon until the climax when you get a good extended look at the whole thing. A decent number of jump scares. Only one of them is fake but it ties into a theme referred to throughout the movie, which sets up for a real jump scare near the end. Nice homage to Lovecraft as well featuring one of his recurring characters Jonathan Carter, Miskatonic University in Arkham and of course the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. (But not played for laughs as in Army of Darkness.) I would not call the dialog and acting great but they are entirely sufficient to the needs of the movie. The unusual sounding pronouncements by the oddball Carter character are fun. Production values are mostly cheap, but again sufficient to the story. At one point someone is trying to break down a door and the entire wall shakes. Immediate editing cut. I wonder if they had to fix the wall before continuing. Just go with the flow and don't ask too many questions. Although it is a bit of a mystery how this house supposedly abandoned since the 18th century got vinyl siding. Altogether a fun watch even if plot development is somewhat predictable along with who makes it out alive. And that good old horror movie meme is in full effect Sex = Death. BTW the sex scene is definitely R rated. Available on Prime, no extra charge for subscribers. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 6, 2020 16:12:43 GMT -5
Draug (2018) Swedish with English subtitles In Swedish folklore, a draug is sort of a cross between a ghost and a zombie. The dead body remains in the grave but the 'ghost' is corporeal, having a body of its own. They are malevolent especially toward those responsible for their deaths. And they can take over your mind and make you violently crazy. In actual folklore draugs are vampiric, although if that was in the movie, I missed it. The story is set a thousand years ago when Swedes were expanding north and bringing Christianity with them. Those who lived to the north would often resist them with violence. It is in this background that the story takes place. The draug part of the story is slow in coming but enough interesting things happen on the way to keep your attention. Some of these things set up the ending. When the draugs show up, it gets pretty creepy. The ending is quite satisfying, but you have to pay attention along the way to understand it. Remember the key. It is important to Nanna’s background, which is important to the ending. The storyline is a good one. Acting is quite good, with everyone putting lots of feeling into it. The ‘viking era’ setting helps with that, removing any hint of present day stereotypes. Characters are diverse and believable. Music is rather good. Dialog is fine, at least what the subtitles show. The plentiful outdoor scenery is very nice. Camera work is mostly good, although the points where it gets intentionally shaky or blurred are a little annoying. There is not much in the way of FX, except in some dream/vision sequences. There seem to be two kinds of draugs, some scary looking and others normal looking. No explanation. You do not see much of the scary ones except briefly and in the dark. There is very little in the way of gore in the movie despite some intense if brief fighting with swords, axes and arrows, which happens to serve the plot development. It is retreating from the superior ambushing force from the north that makes the main characters leave the trail, which they had been dramatically warned against. Horror 101 The film is remarkably good considering the clearly low budget and the amateur status of almost everyone involved, including actors and directors. I liked it. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 7, 2020 10:48:37 GMT -5
Sorceress (1982) Swords and Sorcery ham and cheese, dialog and acting to match, although not painfully so. Mostly cheap FX, but used fairly effectively. Twin baby girls, the first born of which is to be a sacrifice, are hidden away and raised as warriors. When they are grown (20 years old  ), a Viking skilled in fighting, a smart-aleck handsome prince, and a satyr (!) who does not speak but only bleats at pretty girls, are trusted with protecting them. Evil sorcerer (male), clumsily staged sword fights, oddball creatures, a nasty execution device (not used luckily) and of course large helpings of nudity. But no sorceress in sight. Humor here and there... when the girls, who are swimming naked of course, first see the satyr they wonder what kind of instrument is hanging between his legs - turns out to be pan pipes
when the ape creatures bombard the good guys with gas bombs, it is laughing gas
when the long dead warriors are summoned forth by the evil sorcerer, some of them carry off the sacrificial virgins instead of fighting, the Viking comments that some of them have been buried for a thousand years If you like this sort of thing, put your brain in Park, sit back and enjoy. Available on Prime no surcharge. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 7, 2020 18:19:40 GMT -5
Screamers (1981)
Original 1979 Italian version was L'isola degli uomini pesce (Island of the Fish Men) This is a significant revision of the Italian original with considerable removed and added footage.
The reviews labeled it as a mix of The Island Of Dr. Moreau and The Creature From the Black Lagoon, which turns out to be a good comparison. Shipwrecked sailors on an uncharted island discover there are some weird doings going on. A man (the always reliable Richard Johnson) and a young woman (Barbara Bach) and a bunch of Haitian (?) servants have secrets, including the (laughably ugly) fish men. The movie actually has a plot that is not too shabby with decent twists and turns. Johnson and Bach along with the always reliable Joseph Cotten and best known in Italy Claudio Cassinelli all do a decent job with their roles. Dialog is good. Camera work good. Music is decent. The prolog (which is added footage) is very gory but not much after that, although there is some unpleasantly squishy stuff.
The fish men are rather ludicrous in appearance, with heads that look a lot like fish heads. FX range from ‘so so’ to all too obvious models. There is also stock footage of volcanic eruptions and flowing lava that is all too visibly stock. Despite the title, the screams are almost all in the prolog. This movie is more about story than thrills. And disappointingly, Barbara Bach always remains almost entirely clothed.
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Post by ArcLight on Feb 7, 2020 18:30:39 GMT -5
You can have your 'epic fantasy' like The Lord of the Rings, I'll take the pulp sword & sorcery stuff like this and the Barbarian Queen movies and any number of other similar films any day. I'm almost positive we watched this in the little 'theater' we had where dad was stationed in Germany. I'll have to check it out and see if it's what I'm thinking of. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 7, 2020 18:59:39 GMT -5
You can have your 'epic fantasy' like The Lord of the Rings, I'll take the pulp sword & sorcery stuff like this and the Barbarian Queen movies and any number of other similar films any day. I like both kinds. I have been a fan of The Hobbit and LOTR ever since I discovered them in hardcover in the library before they ever hit paperback. OTOH I watched Red Sonja twice, mostly for laughs but also for Brigitte Nielsen. Screamers (1981) Original 1979 Italian version was L'isola degli uomini pesce (Island of the Fish Men) This is a significant revision of the Italian original with considerable removed and added footage. I'm almost positive we watched this in the little 'theater' we had where dad was stationed in Germany. I'll have to check it out and see if it's what I'm thinking of. There were three different variants of this movie, with substantially different chunks of footage in each. The third one, titled Screamers, is the one I watched and has the very gory prologue in the cave. |
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Post by silverbullet63 on Feb 8, 2020 23:00:19 GMT -5
The First Purge (2018)
Finally they confirmed what was hinted at in the previous films.
The true targets and purpose of The Purge.
Red Velvet (2008)
An odd little horror/slasher starring Henry Thomas.
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 9, 2020 22:08:36 GMT -5
The Black Sleep (1956)
B+W
I first saw this in the movies when I was a kid together with the very scary science fiction / horror movie The Creeping Unknown. I recently saw that The Black Sleep was on Prime and decided to revisit it. Although I can see its B movie status today, I was nonetheless able to recover some of my nine year old self creeped out feelings.
The movie is more in the vein of those of the 1930s and 1940s mad doctor type than those of more modern sensibilities. Basil Rathbone stars as the mad doctor who does weird surgeries on people’s brains. Rathbone’s performance is of the more restrained but authoritative type than the usual mad scientist (think his Sherlock Holmes character gone over to the dark side) which makes it all the more chilling when his purposes are revealed. The Black Sleep of the title is the powerful drug used to subdue his victims for shipment to him.
Herbert Rudley is the co-star, not known for horror movie work, but who delivers a decent performance as the surgeon Rathbone recruits to help him, revealing his true purposes to him only slowly. Akim Tamiroff does a delightfully hammy villain who procures the subjects.
There are big horror movie names in the cast but none of them are used to great advantage. Bela Lugosi is the mute servant who does not do much. Lugosi was recovering from a long-term morphine addiction and did not feel able to give a credible performance beyond that. This was his last performance, passing away from a heart attack not long after. Lon Chaney is also mute, a psycho who often tries to kill a certain young girl. He could have been given a much better role IMO. His work in Spider Baby more than a decade later showed that he still had ‘the juice’. Showing up late in the movie in the all stops out climax are Tor Johnson channeling his Plan 9 performance and John Carradine who gives new meaning to ‘over the top’.
All in all, for old style horror movie fans, The Black Sleep is a fairly fun ride that slowly builds from straight up drama through the several melodramatic reveals and on to that wild ending.
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 10, 2020 12:51:14 GMT -5
The Monster Walks (1932) Available on Prime with subscription. The story takes place in an old spooky house with secret passages. A rich man's will is be read. Everyone acts suspiciously except the sole heir, who did not live there, and her fiance. The paraplegic brother gets nothing except the right to live there and the loyal housekeeper and her son get a pittance. There is an ape locked up in the cellar, the deceased having been a scientist. (A real chimp BTW, not a guy in a fat hairy suit.) The ape hates the girl over jealousy issues. And the story evolves - attempted murder by a hairy hand coming out of the wall over the bed, a real murder, secrets revealed, all with a background of the world's longest thunderstorm. Stop me if you heard this one before. Fairly well done spooky mystery. Acting and dialog are not too bad. Sets are economy grade. Camera work is pedestrian, typical of early 1930s. Decent surprises and satisfying conclusion. (As too often found in an early 30s movie, the black driver is a ridiculous stereotype, presumably intended as comic relief. The closing scene is downright racist.) If expectations are kept within early 1930's low budget levels, the movie is not bad at all. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 10, 2020 21:16:12 GMT -5
Relic (1997) Years back, I tuned into this on cable about 20 minutes in and then I had to go do something else about half an hour before the end. I had mostly forgotten about the movie until I saw it on Prime. Glad I got to see the whole thing. Nicely entertaining killer monster movie with good gore. You can guess near the beginning where the monster comes from, not that it changes anything, and also who makes it to the end of the movie. Good action scenes. Nice monster by the legendary Stan Winston, who is sorely missed. In the tradition of Aliens and other movies, it is the woman who manages to finally do in the monster in the wild climax, in this instance by using her scientific know how plus really big 'balls'. |
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Post by ArcLight on Feb 11, 2020 0:30:20 GMT -5
That's a good one. I need to watch it again. Now that the only movie theater in town has closeed down, maybe I will... |
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Post by silverbullet63 on Feb 11, 2020 7:32:07 GMT -5
Relic (1997) Years back, I tuned into this on cable about 20 minutes in and then I had to go do something else about half an hour before the end. I had mostly forgotten about the movie until I saw it on Prime. Glad I got to see the whole thing. Nicely entertaining killer monster movie with good gore. You can guess near the beginning where the monster comes from, not that it changes anything, and also who makes it to the end of the movie. Good action scenes. Nice monster by the legendary Stan Winston, who is sorely missed. In the tradition of Aliens and other movies, it is the woman who manages to finally do in the monster in the wild climax, in this instance by using her scientific know how plus really big 'balls'. Saw this in theaters, back in 1997. Solid monster flick, Tom Siezmore and Penelope Ann Miller quite good as the leads. Might give another look, it's on Amazon prime. |
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 11, 2020 17:19:50 GMT -5
Clownado (2019)
OK, I made it through 40 minutes of this before giving up. It is just too weird without any redeeming qualities. Acting, dialog, plot, characters - they all suck. The gore is plentiful but it just comes across as fake and meaningless, seemingly merely a way of trying to shock the viewer. But it was when the clowns arrived in town courtesy of a tornado without any reasonable explanation that I quit. And I mean this small tornado comes along, lands in the middle of the street, and then vanishes leaving this pack of evil clowns standing there. None of the movie had made much sense prior to that but this was just ludicrous.
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Post by someoldguy on Feb 11, 2020 20:03:50 GMT -5
XX (2017)
An anthology. The stories are:
The Box
When I saw this was written by Jack Ketchum, I had high expectations. While it is an intriguing premise and definitely has its creepy moments, in the end it has really no place to go. Not that it is bad, it is simply that there is not enough meat to cover the bare bones of the story.
The Birthday Party
A very nice darkly humorous tale that makes the most of its brief length.
Don’t Fall
A good monster story in microcosm.
Her Only Living Son
I will not give away the plot and what it is based on. You will recognize the reference soon enough. Clever with an unexpected but good ending.
The stories are bracketed by rather unusual stop motion sequences that are strange and even a bit unsettling.
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Le Loup-Garou Qui Rit
), a Viking skilled in fighting, a smart-aleck handsome prince, and a satyr (!) who does not speak but only bleats at pretty girls, are trusted with protecting them. Evil sorcerer (male), clumsily staged sword fights, oddball creatures, a nasty execution device (not used luckily) and of course large helpings of nudity. But no sorceress in sight.
