fair point 42nd, really didn't think that post through. i actually enjoyed pretty much every film on your list with exceptions to Colin (not seen it) and Small Town Folk (utter cack but a good effort)

No no mate...You're right that we are not the force we were, but I think the UK has bounced back nicely in the 00's. And can join France for certain in delivering some fine horror product.

I actually think Dyer is very good and likeable in "Severance", but eevn if you donlt like him you have to admit that he's been part of a number of tough multi-genre pieces (even those that fail) the like of which we've not produced in this country since the early 80's...no costume dramas here.

Indeed we have seen a rise in tougher genre's full stop.
Whatever you think of "Lock Stock" (me I love it) it gave a real boost to violent, full-on, British thriller making...even if it rather got bogged down in gangsters.
Certainly we have not had a tough thriller output like this since the 80's (and that was almost solely down to 2 or 3 'Hand Made Films' and "Who Dares Wins" even then).

But "Rise of the Foot Soldier", "Rollin' with the Nine's", "London to Brighton", "The Crew", "Snatch", "Harry Brown", "The Bank Job", "Gangster no.1" and "Bronson" have all delivered well crafted, tough, stylish, gritty, brutal entertainment unlike anything seen since the 70's/80's.

Even stuff like "Green Zone" and "Kick-Ass" are UK co-productions utilising much UK talent both in front and behind the camera in high profile positions.

I'm actually really happy and quite proud with the way the UK has bounced back this decade as far as getting it's fingers in as many tasty cinematic pies as possible.

I watched Rob Zombie's

"Halloween 2" last night

All I can say is "oh dear!", after what I felt was a strong re-imagining of Halloween in Zombie's first outing.

Although H2 was violent and gritty it failed miserably to even feel like a Halloween movie. It was a stroke of genius for Zombie to include the original score in the first movie, but not to include it in the sequel was a mistake. I also felt Michael in H2 could just have been any other killer in any other oh hum slasher. Nowhere did I have any feelings towards Michael good or bad .... I was just bored ... everything seemed to be played by the numbers! And what the heck with the ghostly apparitions of him as a child and his mother?!

After a promising opening in the hospital, it all went very very quickly downhill. I did get the feeling that Zombie was trying to steer away from just another re-hash of the original Halloween 2 .. but didn't really have any idea where to take it! If so ... why bother!? Thankfully it tanked at the box office, so hopefully he will lay Michael to rest!

As for the UK release of the DVD, did anyone notice just how poor the sound was? I had to crank my amp up just to hear to centre channel and speech. Very poor.

@ 42nd: i totally agree with tougher 'gangster' films although i do find alot of them Guy Ritchi wannabes, Don't get me wrong i love me abit of gangster action but Essex boys did Rise Of the Footsoldier better and The Crew was trying to be Long Good Friday with a scouse accent, the only reedeming thing about The Crew was the appearance of Stephen Graham, He's the reason i carried on watching it.

Rollin' With the Nines was a fantastic film and featured some pretty good low budget action, but i found Julien Gibley tried to emulate that to Footsoldier and completely botched it...Good call on Snatch, love that film, constantly quoting it too.

I enjoyed Lock, Stock... on first viewing, hated it on second viewing! But if it did nothing other than allow the masterful Gangster No 1 to be made than its existence has been validated. I can't be bothered with British gangster films by and large, but I thought Gangster No 1 was spectacularly good.

I was so inspired by the above list that I searched BT Vision's Film On Demand section and managed to come up with The Children which I just watched and which I am about to review in my review thread thing.

Agreed.GANGSTER NO.1 is my fave of all the recent Brit Gangster films.:thumb:

What do you take me for, a c**t? Classic McDowall :lol:

It took a while but Gangster No 1 grew on me after repeated viewings. McDowell & Bettany were searingly good but David Thewlis was the whole film for me. A brilliant performance.

However the scene where Eddie Marsan blows nasal groobers is almost unwatchable. :ack: :ack: :ack:

Watched Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eye's part 2 last night for the first time and it was pretty bad! Surprising that the previous year he made his brilliant Nightmare on Elm Street film. Such a dip in quality!

This rates very highly for me on the Worst Sequels Ever Made list. :ack:

I not seen the original HHE2 but the remake of 2 was poor.
Aja didnt return sadly and that was the reason it was so poor, so much of the first remake was pure Aja and thats why I loved it so much. Once the action got started it didnt let up and was a sheer brutal tour de force of horror.

IMO it blows Halloween remake out of the water which made me fall alseep in the cinema :lol:
Im glad I dont remember much of it as after seeing it, it was pure garbage.

I thought the Hills Have Eyes 2 remake was every bit as bad as the original sequel. If not worse.

i watched John Carpenter's Christine last night and forgot how much of a fantastic film it was, and how did he manage to make a car seem evil. defo one of Carpenter's best and one of the Best Stephen King adapts

Great music too. George Thorogood's Bad To The Bone never sounded more menacing. :dance:

Wasn't the Hills Have Eyes 2 (Re-make) script the same one that was used for Johnanthan Craven's penned Mindripper/The Outpost? Which itself was originally going to be Hills Have Eyes 3? :confused:

very true vince. Carpenter was on top of his game in the 80s.

Watched Zombieland on DVD tonight. Just as good as I remember it in the cinema. This zombie film has BALLS!

Last couple of films I've seen have been good ones...

Almost Human (Lenzi) - another great Italian crime flick with a good performance from Tomas Milian and a bleak, downbeat feel. I bought the Thai DVD of this and the picture quality is pretty good but the sound is a bit tinny.

Christiane F - very grim but powerful and realistic. Not exactly enjoyable but definitely unforgettable

Such a classic.
I heard they remaking it :eek:

Watched Looking for Eric tonight,and I msut say,I thoroughly enjoyed it.
They don't make players like Cantona anymore.:ohwell:

I thought it was all right! Perfectly watchable and efficiently made if a big step down from Aja's remake. Craven's original Hills Have Eyes 2 is a massive turkey with no redeeming features other than the occasional unintentional laugh at its ineptitude. The modern HHE2 may not be a classic but it's vastly better made than Craven's lazy effort.

Did nothing for me either. :ack:

Craven's original Hills still towers over the sequels and cash-ins.

i really enjoyed the remake of hills but not so much the sequal, although i still own it.

This reminded me of another reason British Horror has to struggle...there are no longer any studios that make a huge series of horror films.
Today they are all really one off, indy, productions.



"The Mummy" (1959)

http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvmummy.php


A huge improvement over the original 'Universal' snooze-fest (remove the first - and only- Mummy scene and Karloff in general and you have empty air) 'Hammers' version of the tale actually owes more to Universal's sequels in the fact that you actually have a Mummy rampaging around, that he's called Kharis (not Im-ho-tep) and we have the inclusion of Princess Ananka.

But as the 3rd in the big 'classic monster' trilogy that got 'Hammer' truly off and running as Horror film makers, it's been doomed to stand in the shadows of the other two films.
"Curse of Frankenstein" got the spotlight for being the first, "Dracula" got to be the most iconic and so "The Mummy" was fated to be the one bringing up the rear, while the ball was now already rolling anyway.

Christopher Lee makes for perhaps the best looking and physically effective Mummy ever put on screen ('Hammers' underrated "The Mummy's Shroud" is a better film, but the Mummy is pretty goofy and tubby looking, and a lot of the 'Universal' sequel Mummy's were too bulky/short and had silly looking slicked down hair) and he is given a lot of rampaging to do...the way Lee's Karis smashes through doors and windows is groovy in the extreme.

Cushing has a bland role but adds his own charm to it as the lame son of the archeologist that caused the trouble in the first place by opening the tomb (a nice, initially wonderfully arrogant, turn by Felix Alymer) and he has a couple of impressive action/stunt scenes while fighting Lee, resulting in one of 'Hammers' most famous stills, that of Cushing ramming a metal arrow through the Mummy.

Talking of action in fact it was nice to actually see more (unlike Universal's films) than just a blank firing gun when people shot at the Mummy, as here we also had the bullet hits as big, dusty, holes were blown in Kharis as he powered on regardless towards his prey.

But the film is padded out with a too long flashback (nice vocal work though by pre-banged Lee) that films almost every step taken by every extra as they plod along to the tomb and that, when added to Cushing's overly dray narration, seems like a university lecture than anything else.
The ancient Egyptian props look pretty awful as well, in fact the entire flashback looks like a ridiculously well-funded school play.

The whole 'my wife just happens to look like the Princess' sub-plot was badly handled too.
It's an old Mummy plot device, but here it was shoe-horned into the plot purely to stop Kharis throttling Cushing's character (which is tediously repeated, as the exact same thing, in the exact same circumstances, in the exact same room happens twice) and the sheer, farcical, coincidence that the completely random person involved in opening the tomb just so happens to have randomly married a woman who looks like the Princess of whose tomb they found beggars belief.

Luckily we have some choice support characters though (a nice drunken poacher performance by good old Michael Ripper and a fun turn by Eddie "Island of Terror" Byrne as a Police Inspector for example) and the effective looking Mummy, the good solid action plus the nice cinematography and visuals (Kharis rising from the swamp is superb...the only reason he was dropped in the swamp in fact was so they could do this scene) help to compensate for the less than interesting (and sometimes sloppy) screenplay and the padding.
So overall we have a rather good Mummy film, but only an average Hammer film overall.

Agreed,saw it Friday and liked it,just back from the flicks an hour ago,took my son to see Kick Ass,wasnt expecting much but was surprised by the amount of language and violence,5 out of 10.

Watched Night Of The Comet last night, cheesy as hell but great fun. Very Very 80s indeed, then watched Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow on E4 this afternoon, great retro sci-fier.

Originally Posted by 42ndStreetFreak
"Dog Soldiers"
"The Descent"
"Shaun of the Dead"
"Doghouse"
"Deathwatch"
"Tony"
"28 Days Later"
"28 Weeks Later"
"Last Horror Fim"
"Mum and Dad"
"The Children"
"The Cottage"
"Colin"
"Small Town Folk"
"Hush"
"Creep"
"Wilderness"
"Severance"
"Triangle"

I liked most of these. I haven't seen Triangle yet but looking forward to it. I will pick at "The Cottage" though. It felt like a really cynical attempt at a horror film. I nearly walked out of the cinema after listening to that lass out of Brookside for the first 30 mins.

I recently watched 'Mutant' aka Night Shadows. Starring a man called Wings Hauser.

I can't remember the last time I saw Wings Hauser in a film.His son,Cole Hauser played Johns in Pitch Black and the villain in 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Hauser was superb as Ramrod in the brilliant Vice Squad. :cool:

This weekends films have included;

HARRY BROWN Excellent film.

GI JOE A steaming pile of shit.

FUNERAL IN BERLIN Another entertaining Harry Palmer yarn.

DELTA FORCE 2 Cheesy Chuck again.

3 Episodes of THE EQUALISER-Edward,you're sorely missed.

THE BEYOND Just gets better with each viewing.It looked great played in the Blu Ray player.

i actually hated Mutant because it was so badly made it was crap, Theres a bit where a zombie attacks a car and you can see his non zombie hand holding the zombie hand, utter drivle.

GI joe is an absolute masterpeice. how dare you call it a steaming pile of shit, i was like a 10 year old boy watching this, i was in awe of what was on the screen because i've waited nearly all my life for this to come to the big screen. I am completely insulted....:laugh::laugh:

I watched The Beyond on saturday.A couple of guys with great taste is what we are Reaps. :D

A very under-rated flick, I reckon. Wish there was a full ratio version of it around. I have an oft-watched 4:3 pan & scan on Boulevard I got for £1 from a charity shop. It's great fun even in such cropped form!

I've had a proper square-eyed day (I suppose nowadays that should be "16:9 rectangluar-eyed"!) I have sat through Hush, Deathwatch, Mum & Dad, Creature From The Haunted Sea and Last Woman On Earth. Reviews to follow, but probably tomorrow: I'm knackered now!

While I was on holiday in the Philippines I picked up a film called 2LDK, it had a picture of a Japanese girl weilding a chainsaw on the front and was cheap so it was a no brainer really.

Its about two girls who share a flat and are both up for the same role in a film. Bickering turns to violence and soon the girls are fighting each other with such things as samuria swords and bare electrical wiring.

It takes a little while to get going (but I didnt find the build up boring at all) and its not overly gory but its definatly great fun!

Annoyingly though the making of is subtitled in german only.

For me Billion Dollar Brain was the only Palmer film to get close to the original Ipcress File. Perhaps the brief appearance by Susan George helped though. :biggrin:

It's a shame that the Billion Dollar Brain dvd lost the scene featuring The Beatles Hard Days Night.It was just a lucky thing that that scene starts and finishes with Harry entering and exiting a room.If you didnt know the scene was there,you wouldn't even notice it's absence.

It was intact in the old video though it featured the slightly cut cinema print. Can't win them all I guess.