What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Linbro

'True Detective'. Outstanding 8 part HBO series, which only took me a week or so to watch. McConaughey and Harrelson are excellent, but it's the quality performances of the actors playing the lesser roles that really stand out.
Absolutely dripping with a weird/menacing atmosphere, in a setting that is perfect for this kind of show.
Police procedural meets weird cults/human sacrifice - how could it miss?!

Highly recommended, but I should point out - if you require all questions to be answered, and all threads tied up, this probably isn't for you.

Like 'American Horror Story', each series will be a self contained story, with new characters. Unlike AHS, this show is actually good.

Brilliant series Linbro. I was sceptical at first with the first two or three episodes being quite slow but it worked brilliantly at developing the characters so that by the time the plot got going I was completely absorbed.

[Sobral]

[trebor8273]

The blood splattered bride

Atmospheric with some surreal and haunting imagery. Slow burning but enjoyable but found it could of been better with a slightly shorter running time as it dragged in places 7.5/10

Dogora

Not your typically Japanese monster movie, as most of the film is about trying to stop a group of diamond thieves. But it does have one of tohos most unique monsters, the creature effects stand up well even to this day. 8/10

dr goldfoot and the bikini machine

Found this to be a very funny, daft and camp comedy with a fantastic performance from Vincent price. Can't help but think this had some influence on Austin powers. 8/10

Tower of London

Really was not what I was expecting, thought it was going to be a horror but we get a not very historic telling of Richards iii bloody rise to power. Great costumes and sets add to the atmosphere and with great acting from Karloff, a very young Vincent price and especially Basil Rathbone as Richard. 8.5/10

[Frankie Teardrop]

WAKE IN FRIGHT - Much talked about, presumed missing in action, this flick has returned over the last couple of years and now settles down on Blu-ray / DVD. It's great, a sinister, dark drama about the undoing of an uptight, narcissistic teacher whose stopover in an outback town finds him tangling with a frazzled Donald Pleasance, here a kind of demented prince-in-exile surrounded by an entourage of macho throwbacks. It's the kind of film which seems heavy with a meaning which never quite crystallises, but the homoerotic undercurrents and feeling of existential crisis are pretty obvious. Everyone goes on about the kangaroo cull scene and, yes, it is upsetting. Dank, sweaty and morbid and looms like a stormcloud. Donald Pleasance is brilliant, in this and everything else. See it!

DEAD END - Wow, very impressed. Hadn't seen or heard of before I trundled across a copy whilst blowing the cobwebs from a stack of unwatched from previous decade. Christ, I should get out more. Anyway, this probable sleeper is very good and features Ray Wise (a haunted man who always looks like he has the soul of a desiccated fish no matter what he's in) as a guy trying to keep it together when he takes his family down the wrong road during a festive vacation. Strange things happen, one by one - the film is a kind of road trip populated by sinister encounters and somehow manages to be simultaneously dark, breezy and dream-like. I could see where it was all heading, ending-wise - but that doesn't matter. I'm glad I watched it, and you will be too.

GRAVE VENGEANCE - By Jeff Leroy. A camping trip goes horribly wrong and ends in rape and retribution. This shot-on-video quickie from the early noughties is mildly diverting, but it's no 'Ms 45' or 'I Spit On Your Grave'. Leroy is capable of churning out tasty trash like 'Hell's Highway' - for me he hit top form with sleazy oddity 'Werewolf in a Woman's Prison' - but here he's sort of in second gear. There's some splattery violence, but equally there's quite a lot of wandering around in a forest. Still, I liked it, a bit.

SYNGENOR - One to bring back memories of nineties VHS in full bloom. Memories are always conveniently a little out of reach and often obscure the shitty reality they're derived from. Hence 'Syngenor', which hitherto floated amidst the flotsam of my mind as a frothy image-scum of coolish monsters and lasers is here revealed for the most part as a bunch of people chatting and walking up and down corridors in the headquarters of a sinister corporation. Maybe that was enough back in the day. Actually I'm being a bit hard on 'Syngenor', which is a proficient B-movie rip off, has the kind of synthetic late eighties / early nineties feel I often click with, does its job OK and even manages to reach beyond its limited grasp with some pleasing eccentricities (David Gale channeling Frank Booth, sort of?) Just could've done with more monsters, lasers and people being horribly mutilated with a load of tits in the background. I hope I'm still thinking like this when I'm forty.

[keirarts]

The look of love.

Michael Winterbottom chronicles the life of porn baron Paul Raymond as he moved from kinky review bars to smutty mags and built himself a property empire in the process. It's both a tribute to London's Soho district and an examination of Raymond's relationship with the three main women in his life His wife, his lover and his daughter.

Similar in pacing to 24 hour party people, like that film it goes from genuinely funny to incredibly dark within the space of a few scenes. It feels a little more rushed than that film as well because its trying to cram even more modern history into one film. Still worth checking out however.


Ms.45

Decided to check out the (region locked) Alamo Drafthouse Blu-Ray of this little classic. It looks phenomenal and is the best the film has ever looked. Its nice to see a film that takes a different approach to the rape/revenge film. Here it's not a cathartic release as it is in death wish, though Thana and Paul Kersey seem to share similar tactics when looking for victims, its more a primal scream of rage and an act of self destruction as Thanas mind becomes more unbalanced.

[Demoncrat]

Slaughter's Big Ripoff (Gordon Douglas, 1973, MGM US dvd)
Wooh! Even more Brown for your pound! If you imagined that JB was rather restrained in the first film, then fill your (platform) boots with this doozy! Guns! Girls! Gratuitous violence! SOLD!!!

Though not as mad-as-bats as HUIH sadly.....

Bedazzled (1967, Stanley Donen) (Second Sight dvd)
Pete & Dud, Barry Humphries and Eleanor Bron. Better cast list than Liz Hurley etc......

[trebor8273]

Bloody pit of horror

Well gave it another chance and enjoyed it this time. Is it supposed to be so camp and funny, or is that just me? 7.5/10


Hercules and the haunted world

Another great film from the master mario bava, amazing what the man could accomplish on small budgets. Stunning looking and masterfully shot movie and reg park makes a fantastic Hercules and looks like what the character should look like unlike some who have played him. With its mixture of camp comedy, thrilling action it must of influenced Hercules the legendary journeys. 9/10

[bdc]

Bloody Pit is not really a "serious film",even in the Italian dub it's more fun (and sexy) than scary.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Tapes (2011)

The Tapes is a British shaky cam film about Satanic swingers. What more can you ask for? Unfortunately you can ask for a better film than this. It should have come with a health warning advising you not to drive or operate machinery after watching, it was so boring.

The film about three friends who decide to make an audition tape for aspiring Big Brother wannabe Gemma, and whilst doing so hear of a remote farm where swingers parties are held. Deciding this would make a better movie than Gemma's audition reels they set off to find the out of the way dwellings. Once there, they discover that the farm is home to a coven of Satanists, and they might just become the next sacrificial lambs.

The film isn't badly acted at all. Natasha Sparkes playing Gemma does a credible job but the film just collapses around her once they make the horrific discovery. Nothing at all happens of interest throughout. The Satanists don't appear until the last twenty minutes and when they do, any action or horror is off camera making the whole thing redundant and a pointless viewing experience.

[Susan Foreman]

Is it just me, or do the later Russ Meyer films ('Vixen', 'SuperVixens', 'Up' and 'Beneath The Valley Of The UltraVixens') have absolutely no plots whatsoever?

They seem to exist wholly-and-souly as a reason to show the actors in various sexual encounters!