THE EYES OF MY MOTHER – Claustrophobic monochrome nightmare that plays with genre tropes before taking them somewhere else and smothering them, slowly... It's about a disturbed young woman who grows up on a farm and finds that, in the end, she only has her 'pets' for company. Although there are shades of genre mainstays spanning rural backwater horror through to 'torture porn', TEOMM takes a chilly, arthouse approach to its dissection of twisted development. Some of it could be described as a hard watch, but, like TCM, the brutality is largely 'emotional' rather than graphic / literal, and this is tempered with a relentless melancholy that sits at odds with the way this kind of thing is usually executed. The atmosphere of isolation and desperation is really strong, aided and abetted by the stark cinematography... long shots of figures struggling in the hills conjure an air of lingering dread. It's been compared with 'Audition' in some quarters, and that's the closest parallel I can draw without leaving the genre or coming up with something faintly ridiculous like “Bergman does Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”. Highly recommended, and, although it'll probably fall victim to hype somewhere along the line, possibly the best thing I've seen in the last couple of years.

THE SAMURAI – Dark, dreamy number about a small town cop and his nemesis, an enigmatic sword wielding transvestite. 'Samurai' is really good, and I'm surprised at myself for not checking it out before now. Like the above, it stays within the horror genre to a degree, but the real meat is its drifty excursion into freeform nightmare impressionism. Atmospheric to the max, its vision of suburbs rent asunder by forces from the flip-side of consciousness is hugely evocative, and the central figure in his white dress made me think somehow of Franco / Rollinesque imagery. A bit of a lazy comparison, because 'The Samurai' is pretty unique and, yes, you should definitely see it.

THE HOUSE ON PINE STREET – Fed up with all those sub-multiplex DTV jump scare horrors with their indentikit DVD covers? Me too, but I tuned into THOPS on the basis that I was promised more than just a few sudden edits accompanied by loud noise cues. Was I short changed? No, THOPS is pretty excellent, and for once builds its haunted house schtick slowly from the ground up, layering atmosphere on atmosphere. This really works, and delivers a palpable sense of unease tipping into dread as we follow a resentfully pregnant city slicker dislocated and adrift in a suburban house full of bad vibes. To say that's it's quite long, you don't feel it, which is impressive in itself considering the tired format. But that's the key to THOPS – the familiarity of the material grounds the ominous feeling. There are only a couple of fumbles along the way, usually when it drops the subtlety and goes overt, once or twice in the form of ill advised CGI. Mostly really strong though, and very much recommended.

Halloween 1978

15 years after killing his sister Michael Myers escapes the asylum returns to Haddonfield for more killing. On his trail is Doctor Loomis to put a stop to it.

This is the one that started off the horror slasher, John Carpenter worked with a low budget and created this masterpiece. Donald Pleasance portrayal as loomis who was treating Myers begins to act like him in order to catch him. Jamie Lee Curtis performance is great as the quiet shy babysitter who is in for a hell of a night of survival. The Boogeyman does exist in this film. 10+

Rumpelstiltskin

An evil midget gets turned to a rock, years later he gets found by a widow in a shop and is awakened, now he wants the widows baby so that he can live.

I wanted to watch schlock and that's what I got. The premise is fine, the acting is stiff and honestly I would only watch it again if I was running drunk.

4/10

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[QUOTE=bleakshaun;556164]Rumpelstiltskin

An evil midget gets turned to a rock, years later he gets found by a widow in a shop and is awakened, now he wants the widows baby so that he can live.

I wanted to watch schlock and that's what I got. The premise is fine, the acting is stiff and honestly I would only watch it again if I was running drunk.

4/10

Did you watch this right to the end? I tried to watch it but ended up switching it off halfway through the film

[QUOTE=MrBarlow;556170]I did, regretfully

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[QUOTE=bleakshaun;556172]Jeez Bleak you must have been really bored, thats about 90 mins of your life lost

[QUOTE=MrBarlow;556175]Ach I was fine
This gif sums it up
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...424d1be3cd.gif

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Night of the demons 1988

Teen kids Angela and Suzanned ecides to hold a Halloween part at the old Hill House that was once a funeral parlour. During the party the hold a seance and unleash the demons inside the possessed house.

This movie has it all, booze, naked chicks violence and demons, and also some great one liners all thanks to the 80s.

Its not a big budget film but certainly entertains from the horror side and the special F/X from Steve Johnson who worked on alot of horror movies. If you havent seen this film, its well worth the watch.

The Witches 1990

Small child Luke and is grandma travel to England after the death of his parents, his grandma tells him stories of witches and the signs to look out for. At the hotel where they are on holiday, a grand high witch plans to turn all the kids in England to mice.

Based on the novel byh Roald Dahl, the film was toned down from the source novel as it was intended to be a children's movie, but the is a hint of black comedy. Anjellica Houston gives us the best scary performance as the high witch. It does give meaning to kids "don't talk to strangers".

Rowan Atkinson does his at supporting cast as the snooty hotel manager and Mai Zetterling as the kind warm nurturing Grandma.

If you are looking for a classic, fun adventure for all ages, check this film out. 10+

Psycho?
Black Christmas?

I love most of the film, but hate the ending which is so different from the beautiful way Roald Dahl finished his novel.

I thought Psycho was more psychological than a slasher/horror, Black Christmas is more based in a house, but Halloween is more suburban and Murders happening in different areas of the street rather than one place.

Your point. I guess Psycho and Black Christmas set the template for single location slasher films, but Halloween was, along with A Bay of Blood, something which created the template or the 'stalk 'n slash' films which would follow with films like Friday the 13th, The Burning, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Prom Night in the 1980s.

That's what I was thinking, just also with peeping tom

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:nod:

Satan's little helper.

Attachment 198361

I think Dem's banged on about this a few times so i thought i'd give it a shot, even though the cover didn't seem particularly enticing.
We follow a young kid who is obsessed with a handheld game called 'Satan's little helper'.
On Halloween his sister comes home from uni with a new boyfriend much to the kids dismay, storming off in a huff he decided to go and find Satan and become his helper.
Luckily he happens upon a killer in a mask that looks like the devil who is arranging his victims on their porches, thinking it's all a game the kid asks the killer to help and they go on a killing spree across town on Halloween night.:pumpkin:

I really enjoyed this and think it will become a regular watch around Halloween.
Obviously quite low budget, at first the fact that Satan is in an obvious mask is a bit underwhelming but as the film goes on this becomes an asset, we know it's just a killer in a mask but the kid is oblivious and when he invites him into his home it get's quite tense.
There are a lot of fun scenes as well as the kid spouts "50 points" for a fresh kill ,and when 'Satan' takes him to the supermarket and gets weapons and candy ,then runs out without paying and proceeds to run into people with the shopping trolley while the kid rides inside cheering.:megachainsaw:

The kid plays the innocent psycho well and Satan (although mute throughout) is effectively creepy especially when he starts wearing a Jesus costume, leading to the great line, "Satan is Jesus".
The sister is hot although her English wench voice is appalling, and the mum is played by Amanda Plummer who gives a game and entertaining performance, there is also a couple of nice twists near the end.:brainfood:

Really enjoyed this so thoroughly recommended.:coffin:
8/10 :ghostclap:

I can't comment on Prom Night because I haven't seen it but with The Burning it show what joy a pair of garden shears can bring to a person

You aren't missing much to be honest. :skull:

If you have trouble sleeping , prom night is a perfect cure, the second is well worth watching .

I used to have the Network set of all the films and thought they were all quite poor.

Is the remake any better or worse?

The remake is probably the worst of all the remakes that came out in the 00's if i remember rightly.

I got rid of the dvd straight after watching it.

Prom Night =Carrie meets Saturday Night Fever!!

Teen slasher mixed with dancing and try "staying alive" cheers SS.

Jigsaw

Pretty much more of the same. Nasty looking death traps? Check. Playing with the films chronology in order to deliver a twist? Check. A who is Jigsaws apprentice mystery? Check..
It all feels quite samey. That said if your into the saw films more than I was its probably worth a go.

Trying to watch a few "classics" I haven't seen before, and just watched Carnival of Souls! Totally lives up to it's classic moniker, the tale of a woman who survives a drag race accident, and ks then drawn to a strange pavillion & keeps seeing visions of "the man".
It's a hard film to describe, but the atmosphere (and particularly the organ score) are amazingly haunting, moreso than (ironically) The Haunting or The Innocents (both of which i have revisited and enjoyed recently).

Going through the extrason the criterion disc, I would urge anyone who is a fan to get this edition, the print is flawless and the extras substantial.

The Postman (1997)

As the closing credits rolled to this Kevin Costner film all i could think of was James Cameron's Avatar. Both films from Oscar winning directors, both created new sci-fi worlds, (This albeit in the USA) both films are bum numbingly long and both films are sort of good and awful in equal measure.

The Postman was almost universally derided when it first appeared and it's easy to see why. Following a decent opening forty minutes where Costner escapes slavery in the post-apocalyptic conflict strewn future of 2013, the film directed by Costner, begins properly as he finds an old postman's uniform and bag full of letters of which he decides to deliver in a bid to bring hope to the world.

It's all a bit twee and sickly sentimental and also daft for the next hour until the postman's original captors reappear and war flares up again as the film turns into a classic 'man the barricades' cavalry like western siege.

The Postman is beautifully filmed and the action scenes are well staged and at times tense, the overall feeling is one of wondering why Costner bothered as The Postman really doesn't deliver unlike his other epics Dances With Wolves and the severely underrated Waterworld.

Demon wind

On the basis of some 'visions' a bloke takes a bunch of his pals to the old family farm, long since burned down. The dire warnings of the folk at the local diner, al la castle dracula should have given pause for thought but nope. The hapless group continue up to the farm and naturally when they get there discover its cursed as f***. Pretty soon they're being attacked by gloopy demons (including a brief appearance by Lou Diamond Phillips) and steadily more and more of them get possessed.
Demon wind is a cheap and cheerful production. As daft as it is however its an awful lot of fun. Think Filmirage quality along the lines of House of lost souls, Witchery ect and your in the right ballpark. I like these films so I dug this quite a bit. Its been on DVD in the uk for ages and honestly shouldn't be too dear to pick up. Vinegar syndrome have stuck it out on Blu-ray in a spiffy new transfer so its worth considering.

Watched The Funhouse (tobe hooper), and I have to say it has really grown on me, a solid "crazy family" movie set at a carnival that actually sits alongside TexasChainsaw 1&2 as a kind of companion piece (check out the lead "monster" doing his Leatherface impression while being berated by his bullying family) in looking like a "circus madhouse" kind of movie! Solid characterisation & very atmospheric, a new high point for me amongst Hooper's work.

Conversly watching House on Sorority Row from 88, very slow & awkward (influenced by Diabolique & influencing I Know What You Did Last Summer), it's picking up around 45 mins in but is nothing special sadly.

Finally, re watched Psycho for the umpteenth time & is still in my top 3 movies of all time (along with NOTLD & The Invisible Man). Endlessly watchable and compelling, I recommend The Psycho Legacy alongside all the other supplementary material available!

My "to watch" pile is actually going down (just ending a week off so actually watched a lot).:coffin:

Wish I could say that my to watch pile getting bigger , i'm buying more than I'm actually watching . watching about 1 a week and buying up to 5\6 owt and nowt a week .
At this rate I'll have at least 6 month worth of watching :skull:

Go ahead, and don't let anyone stop you. :skull:

Hollywood Flies (2005)

A fun and fast paced kidnap / heist / road movie, this Italian production set in the Arizona desert and Los Angeles (Some excellent LA cinematography to be seen here) is one of those films where the plot twists and turns and keeps you both gripped and guessing as the action plays out. Two of the films leads - Antonio Cupo and Bianca Guaccero who play siblings i know only from this but both play engaging roles as does former model Caprice Bourett as a sexy stripper on the run from a hitman whose life intertwines with the Italian pair.

Vinnie Jones is too good as one of the kidnappers. His snarling, cockney rabble rouser role irritates at times and you are desperate for him to get his comeuppance. Caspar Van Dien, character actor Conrad Coates and the tragically short lived Brad Renfro fill out the rest of the cast.

This gets a pitiful score of just 4.6 on IMDB. This is the third time i've watched it over the years and have always enjoyed it.

It might interest some on here to know that Hollywood Flies was written by Aldo Lado (Night Train Murders, Who Saw Her Die? and more)

Slightly Scarlet (1956)

An intriguing little Noir from the final days of RKO. Unusual in that Noir from the time was primarily black and white but this was shot in glorious Technicolor.

The film works on two levels. One is top level crime and corruption in the city, the second about a petty thief (Arlene Dahl) released on parole into her sister's (Rhonda Fleming) care and somewhere down the line these two plot strands become entwined.

Although unusual the colour photography really works especially when it comes to Fleming and Dahl, two stunning femme fatale red heads and clearly the slightly scarlet of the title. The colours used are imaginative and the use of light and shadow is at times Lewton esq. (I might not have used that description had it not been an RKO production)

All in all Slightly Scarlet is a decent if not top level example of the genre.

Bloodbeat

Its to Vinegar Syndromes credit that they manage to unearth some of the weirdest nonsense that ever graced a video shelf and give it five star treatment. Bloodbeat is one of their most 'out there' scores, with inexplicably psychic characters, possessed Samurai armour and plenty of bow hunting. Shot by a French director who headed west in search of his Horatio Alger moment and finding himself in snowy Wisconsin. After apparently getting into the local acid/pot scene he began writing then borrowed some money to make this. By his own admission he was inexperienced and was expecting at least a portion of the film to be improvisational. The end result is a mess. Its an interesting one though. Like runaway nightmare its a film that's somehow better than the sum of its parts based on the fact that its so damned weird it was difficult to tell exactly where it was going.

No way! Is this really getting a proper release at last? It's one of my favourite no-fi indie freak-out schlockers. Maybe it'll lose some of its charm on HD, but I hope not. VS have been doing amazing things of late.

FRANCESCA – Marmite giallo homage from Luciano Onetti . It's become quite hip in recent years to play with tropes from this particular epoch of genre filmmaking, what with 'Amer', 'The Strange Colour of your Body's Tears' etc, but also in some ways 'Berberian Sound Studio'. They all share a preoccupation with giallo stylistics above plot. That's alright with me, I really like the pop-psychedelic visuals of gialli, but often can't stand the plodding murder mystery elements. 'Francesca' differs a little from 'neo-gialli' in that it tilts more towards narrative, but it's still more into fried images of illuminated mannequins and gouged-out eyeballs sitting next to toys than cops standing around discussing things. There is a plot involving police detectives and a backstory about a nasty little girl who offs her kid brother by stabbing him in the eye, but the emphasis is on textures and atmospheres rather than complex story arcs and dramatic catharsis. 'Francesca' really nails one aspect of the giallo, and that's its fetishistic nature, in the broad (rather than specifically sexual) sense of objects being invested with great, almost ineffable power. So we get lots of close ups of salient things, not only killer's leather gloves but dolls and piano keys, which creates a certain atmosphere. The decision to go for a retro look seems a bit half-baked, but it works visually. There is something very detached and dream-like about 'Francesca', and, although I didn't find it very immersive, I did feel that it was a striking piece of cinema - interesting and intriguing and it's stayed with me since I watched it. Recommended, although evidently not everyone's into it.

CULT OF CHUCKY – Serviceable 'Child's Play' sequel, with F Douriff in psych ward being understandably freaked out at the prospect of Chuck coming to get get her. Enjoyable, but a bit disposable... a film I didn't particularly think about afterwards. Still, I'm always up for homicidal dolls and Fiona does another good turn. Quite fun.

ANGEL OF DEATH – Strange indie about a college student who seems to come back from the dead after being raped and murdered, The supernatural rape revenge schtick has been done before and better, but AOD manages to be slightly alluring in a way I can't quite put my finger on... I guess there's an arbitrariness to things, the way the heroine wanders from encounter with awful rapey college brats to falling foul of demonic serial killer man to being in a ghostly room which is apparently in her own head... confusing, but interesting. The textures veer from pedestrian to intangible / dreamy. There's something slightly cumbersome about it, but it's worth checking out.

MONSTER MAN – I remember watching this a few years ago and thinking it was rubbish. Strange how my standards have changed (dropped?) in just ten years. It's a frat boy road trip with designs on the kind of comedy that would've been popular in 2003, crossed with TCM style rural horror. It's pretty funny in places, or, maybe not really, but likeable and watchable. There's something nicely monstrous about the bad guy who does all the killing, although in a way I was hoping for a bit more gore. Still, pretty good.

Naked Massacre (1976)

An American Vietnam veteran attempting to get home ends up in conflict torn Belfast. Clearly disturbed, he forces his way into a house shared by eight nurses and proceeds to terrorize and murder them.

Based on the true story of Richard Speck, what a grubby little film this is. Disturbing and sleazy yet not overly gory there's a lot of physical and emotional abuse on offer here especially in the last half hour where the nurses are subjected to sexual abuse then murdered. It's not an easy viewing, often feeling very obtrusive and voyeuristic and sits nicely with grim little ditties such as The Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave

Watch it in a double bill with 86's Combat Shock and enjoy!

It wasn't expensive when I picked it up on WOWHD. Less than £12 with free postage. It's got some interesting extras.

Seen few people mention wowhd what site is it ?
Don't know it by its proper name