Yeah, I was 11 when I read the book and saw the film, so both made a lasting impression on me at such a young age

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSXTK6NyD78

Another good hammer Dracula, this time the dear Count is resurrected by a ritual using his blood, when his servant that resurrected him is killed by a group of businessmen the count seeks revenge. 7.5/10

Next up only god forgives, which is my first viewing.

A Walk Among The Tombstones. Liam Neeson is a private eye hired to track down two men who kidnapped and murdered the wife of a drug dealer, only to realise he's on the track of a pair of vicious serial killers for whom the ransom is just a fun extra. Solid and entertaining modern thriller.:nod:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ziAWl9AEA

Not what I was expecting, I was expecting atypical revenge movie which it is in a way. What we get is a slow burning thriller in which Julian (Ryan Gosling) older brother murders a under age sex worker and is killed by her farther. A police detective becomes involved and Julian's mother arrives seeking revenge. None of the characters are very likable, especially the mother who doesn't appear to love her surving son and is hinted at she had a very strange relationship with the dead one. The film for me had a very hypnotic and dream like quality. Not for everyone and I would say a bit of a marmite film but doesn't deserve a lot of the poor reviews it got. 8.5/10

I meant to watch and review Body Double last night, but instead got stuck into Pandorum on the horror channel. I must admit that i thought i'd seen it before and spent the first 20 minutes thinking 'i don't remember this bit'. It became obvious i hadn't seen it before. I was thinking of Event Horizon, which apparently was made by the same people. Well, their earlier effort is easily the better of the two films. There are way too many holes in the plot of this film for me to get too engaged in it. Sixty thousand passengers on a hundred year trip to an earth-like planet, some of them are awoken way too early and devolve into flesh-eating mutants (of course, that doesn't happen in that time frame, so gives a clue as to what the characters find out later - they've been asleep for a lot longer than they should have been). The logistics in the film just don't add up unless the evolved mutants shrink in size over the time-frame of the journey - there's just not enough food (other passengers) on board for them to remain human size.

Not great, but passed an hour or two. Certainly wouldn't watch again.

There's no other way to say this except, Pandorum is absolute garbage. :lol:

Quite possibly the worst sci-fi film i've ever seen and i include films from all decades and all countries in that.

I've seen lots of worse films than this one. No way i'd watch it again, but your propensity towards hyperbole strikes again!

Yes, i've swallowed a dictionary. ;)

Don't worry Dem's you can get a cream for hyperbole's.

No. I genuinely think it would be the bottom of the pile if i were to do a list of every sci-fi film i've seen. I've seen it twice and totally hated it both times.

It has no redeeming features whatsoever and zero entertainment value.

Name some of the worse films, Deadite, i'm intrigued to see what you come up with.

That will be a strange conversation. Me naming films i think are worse on a film you consider the worst sci-fi you've ever seen. Where's it going to get us other than in an argument?

Defining the parameters of what you consider sci-fi might be a start. Is The Wasp Woman sci-fi for you? Virus? Congo? The 10th Victim? (not suggesting they are worse btw, just wondering where the line is drawn). It can be a very large genre under certain standards or quite niche if you only count spaceships 'n' lazers as sci-fi. Our definitions might differ and then the conversation is totally different.

Doesn't matter.

I'm guessing no one else has seen it, or at least can't be arsed to comment either way.

Doesn't matter Dem's would just say Al Adamson,what ever he was arguing about.

Not really. I mean, Plan 9 is a far better watch than Pandorum in my opinion. I know it's Wood, but you get my point.

This i can agree with. Plan 9 is so bad it's good. Pandorum is so meh, it's not worth watching again.

http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/8c...52e02261db.jpg
SUICIDE BATTALION (1958)

A handful of American soldiers fighting in the Pacific volunteer to take on a dangerous mission to blow up a Japanese base of operations...

American International Pictures more known to us for 1950's sci fi movies made quite a few war films.
When the names Arkoff and Nicholson appear on the opening credits you know that this will be low budget. It is....very.
Most of any action sequences are archive newsreel footage and the rest is studio based. The film does get off the ground okay for the first reel but then the group are given 72 hours r&r before the mission and the movie takes a dive in to soap opera land of love triangle and getting a GI married.
After dragging a woman reporter through the jungle, the film picks up a bit for the last reel but it is too late to save the movie. This is real B movie stuff and I went in expecting that but the film drags bad and is nothing like their sci fi gems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27E4Qfj7iEY


Mop boy Melvin who lives in Tromaville, toxic waste dumping capital of the world is bullied by the patrons of the gym in which he works a bout of bullying goes horrible wrong and Melvin falls into some toxic waste. Horribly burned and disfigured he mutates and becomes new jerseys first superhero and sets up cleaning up his town from its corrupted Mayor and those that wronged him, along the way he finds love with a blind woman. A lot more gory than I remember. A better superhero movie than BvsS 7.5/10

Tonights viewings.

Drive
Satantic Blood aka Devils Rain

Nope, not seen it.

Incidentally the worst sci-fi film I've ever seen is Al Adamson's Blood of Ghastly Horror, closely followed by Jerry Warren's Frankenstein Island - both of which are featured in Nightmare USA I may add.

I quite liked Pandorum. Never been overly concerned with watching it again though.

How about supernova or Robocop 3? Both those are far worse than Pandorum.
I thought it was okay-ish but like others here I've yet to feel the urge to watch it again.


Rings

Since the Vue started charging £4.99 admission I've been going to see a lot more films. It works out only a little dearer than some online rental I've seen and its literally £1.50 more than I used to pay back in the halcyon days of the local fleapit back in the 90's..
I have to say though even cheap this film is a f***** chore. It starts with a stupid plane crash scene that feels like some kind of jumbled mess before moving on to a professor buying a video recorder at a flea market. It seems in the decade or so since people began abandoning the format its already considered like some mysterious ancient technology (I feel old.)
It turns out that it has the samara tape on it and the curse begins again. We then move to some chick saying goodbye to her boyfriend who is off to college. Shes staying behind for reasons briefly explained and never referred to again. Something about a sick mother or something.... well it cant be that important/ :rolleyes:
Things are going swimmingly until some inexplicable drunken skype rant from a chick that miss whateverhername suspects her boyfriend is cheating with. Leaving in the middle of the night she heads to college and struggles to locate her BF. The college professor is a bit cagey so she follows him into a lift. Fortunately she nicked a key from her boy toys dorm because the film seems to have the logic of a point and click adventure game and it seem it gains access to the lift and the mysterious seventh floor. It seems prof has tenure or something as he's annexed an entire floor of the college and turned it into a hipster bar / lab to study the effect of the video. This idea is bonkers enough that it threatens to make the film interesting so its abandoned quickly. Instead she follows some chick to her house where shes killed by samara then runs into her BF who must have been wandering round campus and ignoring her calls for.... reasons. Then after actual evidence the story behind the tape is genuine the silly cow watches it. Fortunately shes not just thick but special and a new tape is discovered buried in the old one just for her. This allows her to retread the same plot devices as the previous films and learn more about samara. The whole special thing is contradicted directly in the film later on for no actual reason but the film gradually becomes more of a mess the further it goes on.
Rings is not scary. Anyone who thinks films like insidious are snooze fests will consider them to be classic horror after watching this turd. Seriously, a couple of cheap jump scares aside its just not scary at all or even remotely interesting. At one point it openly becomes a cheap rip off of don't breath. The plot is ludicrous and illogical and some of the acting is terrible. I would highly recommend missing this one TBH.

Real Steel (2011)

Take elements of Rocky, Robot Wars, A.W.O.L.: Absent Without Leave, Robot Jox, throw in Hugh Jackman, and allow to simmer for two hours and you have Real Steel.

Mindless, escapist fun with wow factor and a heart. I loved it.

I've never seen Robocop 3. I've had the box set since it first came out on dvd but to this day i've only seen the first film.

Supernova isn't great i agree but at least it has Robin Tunney. One of those like the two Mars films that came out at the time - watchable but not one to own.

I highly recommend RoboCop 2 Dem. The third one is handy for a drinks coaster.

Supernova is a total mess. You can tell it had multiple directors work on it.

Yeah, i really enjoyed it too. Would make a great t.v series if they could afford the effects money.

The Magnificent Seven (2016)
 

The Magnificent Seven (2016)


Since were talking a remake of a remake,its pretty hard to criticize on that score at least,and since this remake has very little to do with the film that starred Yul Brynner, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn etc,then its more in the way of what kids call a re-imagining,which is I suppose the same as what John Sturges did with the Seven Samurai.The difference being that I cannot see this new version being repeated in forty years time and become all time classic,that the Sturges film became.The real main difference being is that the 1960 version had a pretty amazing cast of actors that portrayed a rather great bunch of anti heroes. Unfortunately although there is a fairly good cast of actors in Antoine Fuqua's film,including Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke none of them can hold a candle to the likes of Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn and the great Steve McQueen. In the new film the story now takes place in the mining town of Rose Creek ,where Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and his bunch of gun totting henchmen,want to take over the town and the surrounding area for its lucrative mining. After a massacre at the church which left Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) husband killed and half the towns folk slaughtered,she takes a bag full of money and rides out to hire some help.There is obviously some major plot changes here between this and the 1960 version,and I have to say not for the better. WAS it because they did not want to stereotype the Mexican community or did they just run out of those funny looking Mexican cowboy hats.Also they really push the ethnically diversity amongst the bunch,its almost like they had to fill a quota. In its favor the film does look good and is well directed by Antoine Fuqua,but the main problem definitely lies with the story and script,you really do not feel any sympathy at all for the towns folk, and even less for the seven,even if they are out numbered and out gunned. Casting wise while Denzel Washington who plays Sam Chisolm is ok,the only other character which had any real personality was Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez. At best the film is average at worst it has no real passion or spark,and certainly not as good as some recent modern westerns like 3:10 to Yuma (2007).

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

**** out of *****


Doctor Strange (2016)

***1/2 out of *****

House at the End of the Street (2012)

Jennifer Lawrence stars in this story about a teen who falls in love with the boy next door. A boy who lives in a house where both his parents were killed by his little sister.

Lawrence is fine, as is Elizabeth Shue as her mother even if she's a tad under used, and Max Thieriot does a dry run for the damaged teen he perfected in Bates Motel.

House at the End of the Street is a watchable horror thriller which covers no new ground but is perfectly entertaining whilst you are sat there. There's certainly tension that escalates, however the more you question events the more you realise how absurd it all is.

I've seen this, and until I read your post I'd forgotten Jennifer Lawrence was in it!
I do remember it being pretty unforgettable though :nod:

Pretty forgettable i'd say. An okay watch but nothing special.

That's what I meant :doh:

Watched the Madness film Take It Or Leave It (1981, Dave Robinson) on VHS. An odd wee film, what with the band Madness essentially playing themselves. Very "fly-on-the-wall" in nature, I half expected Attenborough to pop out and start pontificating about the natural habitat of the Londoner....

Watched this in conjunction with the Kevin Turvey "film" The Man Behind The Green Door in which our intrepid reporter shows us around Redditch and sings "Downtown". ahem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTS8i31SBhw

When Mark Preston (william shatner) goes missing after the murder of his father and mother by Satanist Johnathan Corbis ( Ernest Borgnine) who is looking for a satantic book that the family have hidden away for 200 hundred years, his brother Tom ( Tom skerrit) and his wife Julie go to confront Corbis, queue spooky going on's,creepy eyeless faces and melting body's. Not particularly scary but has a creepy atmosphere. Lots of familiar faces and watch out for a young john travolta in his first film roll. Never going to be considered a classic but enjoyable and didn't deserve the poor reviews it got. Mind i dont understand why its an 18. 7/10

Tonights viewings

Dolls
Absurd

VAMPYRES – From J Larraz, who had a bit of a posthumous comeback last year with the restoration of the brilliant 'Symptoms'. 'Symptoms', a mildewed shroud of a film, is a mood piece par excellence. 'Vampyres' on the other hand sees Larraz moving into grittier territory, with two vampires doing a siren routine and luring men from country lanes back to their pad for booze, sex games and blood letting. Coarser stuff in some ways, but Larraz's signature is still visible. There's a similar looking setting, rural south UK with derelict mansion, as witnessed through a gothic haze, although 'Vampyres' has slightly less of a claustrophobic feel to it. The inclusion of a couple on a caravan holiday puts us straight into the seventies and marks 'Vampyres' as British beyond redemption (in a good way). The world of 'Vampyres' may in part derive from Hammer and Euro-goth, but it's also from the same place Peter Walker and Norman J Warren were coming from, filmmakers who took the tat and tawdriness of grey post-war England and made it glow with something sinister and unwholesome. Doesn't really measure up to 'Symptoms', which is a truly great flick up there with the likes of 'Repulsion', but 'Vampyres' is still highly recommended.

VENUS FLY TRAP – Grungy shot on video flick from the late eighties which basically retreads 'House on the Edge of the Park', except that this time it's yuppies versus punks rather than yuppies versus sociopathic car mechanics. 'Venus Fly Trap' is, among other things, more likeable and less sleazy than its inspiration, and less boring too for that matter (or maybe just thirty minutes shorter). It doesn't have that crazy moment at the end where D Hess goes slow motion, but has a lot more 'eightiesness' about it (whatever that means). It's always nice to see stuff like this, a true indie labour of love which hasn't quite been forgotten.

HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE – Paul Naschy stars in this Spanish flick about a hunchback with a dead girlfriend problem. It's a bit of a stretch to call said hunchback a loveable loser, but he's certainly not a winner, and just about everyone around him is a total shit so he kind of lucks out by comparison. Well, Naschy the hunchback falls in with a crazy scientist who offers to bring his gf back from the dead, and it all turns into something to do with a pile of guts in a tank and a foul and feculent slime monster who unfortunately we don't see enough of. That last bit sums up 'HOTM's basic failing – it's got good stuff in it, bits of gore here and there, a good creature, some weird aspects – but it's sprinkled across a less than lively terrain of overlong, incredibly dull conversations and a really cloying, over sentimental musical score. There's also a bit of live rat burning, so points off there too.

SATAN'S SLAVE – Norman J Warren's first foray into grimy Brit horror. I prefer his other flicks in this domain – 'Prey', 'The Terror', even 'Inseminoid'. Actually, come to think of it, 'Bloody New Year', too. They're a weird bunch to varying degrees, particularly that last one, whereas 'Satan's Slave' is relatively 'normal' in that it's a straightforward cash-in on the ultimate seventies British horror trope, that whole witchcraft-occult-satanism-thing-presented-as-entertainment-for-the-masses, and just goes ahead and delivers a tale of a woman being held captive for ritual purposes in Michael Gough's gloomy mansion. This was made at a time when UK horror was shifting gears from stately gothic and heading towards a more exploitative realm, so there's some blood and some nudity and some classic moments like Michael Craze getting mashed after he falls from the top of a bleak looking tower block. Cool stuff goes down, like the incredibly sinister Baphomet guy at the beginning. Recommended viewing.

Why does this never happen to me? :confused:


Nice to see some Warren love. Unlike yourself i think Satan's Slave is his best film. It looks at the Occult films from earlier years and says '**** you! This is what an Occult ritual should be like - blood, sex and death and if you don't like it we'll stab you in the eye'.

Well, nothing beats death by canned laughter.

That's a reference to 'Bloody New Year', not necessarily the notion of you being shagged to ribbons on mud paths by a pair of death-sirens, Dem...

Never seen Bloody New Year. Is it any good?

Doesn't seem like i'm ever likely to either.

Still i'm sure Arrow can release the same Argento films over and over again instead.

Not sure about 'any good'... it's certainly very odd. A few months ago there was talk of a new release on Blu-ray, but nothing has transpired.
I can't imagine Arrow would see much market value in it.

Hatred for Friday the 13th franchise and people violating each other with cacti nice to see its business as usual around these parts.

The Awakening. Thought i'd seen this before. Turns out i've only ever seen the first hour - weird. Anyway, the delectable Rebecca Hall plays a debunker of mystics, mediums and fake bumpers in the night who is called to a boys boarding school by the rather curt Dominic West to investigate 'ghostly' goings on after the death of a student. Once she gets there, we meet the third wheel that keeps the movie going, the always dependable Imelda Staunton as Maude the matron of the school. Well, there's bebunking (hey, a boarding school joke. I'm here all night folks), followed by an 'Awakening' if you like and it's then that the picture really gets going. There are some nice chilly set-pieces involving a dolls-house that seems to move around the school depicting what is going on, went on, or what might have been going on, and a satisfactorily unsatisfactory ending that can certainly be taken in more than one way.

The three central performances are all excellent, but this is Hall's film for me. Mind you, i'd watch her reading the phone directory as the slightly altered saying goes.