I thought Warren's Prey was absolutely awful and Bloody New Year was just as bad. I liked Satan's Slave & Terror but that's about it for me.

Walker made more films that I enjoyed. Especially Frightmare, Cool It Carol and Home Before Midnight. House Of Whipcord wasn't bad either (when it was visible).

I thought PREY was a masterclass of low budget genius!

Although I have to agree Vince,Walker was the master when it came to raw Brit shockers.:nod:

"The Mummy’s Ghost" (1944)

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


This third sequel to the original “The Mummy” (or the 2nd sequel to the later re-boot) once again ups the pace, ups the mummy action and darkens the mood in comparison to “The Mummy’s Hand” but it’s not quite as dark, well paced or generally as good as the previous “The Mummy’s Tomb”.

It’s certainly very nice to see that ‘Universal’ have used the ongoing story of Kharis in an interesting way with some pretty good continuity that truly turns these four films into an epic tale when combined.

As far as the screenplay goes, the film does stop dead now and again though for lethargically staged exposition scenes and
the mixture of general rampage plot and the re-incarnation idea also means the film is weighed down with more plotting and exposition in its main portion than either “Hand” or “Tomb”.

The romance sub-plot is cliché and saccharine but at least this romance angle serves a purpose where the previous drippy love clichés become the bedrock of the darker elements to come.
Without the sweetness the bitter would not register as well.

Aside from a suitably cadaverous and menacing John Carradine, and even Lon Chaney, none of the acting here is very good though.

Chaney’s Kharis is played slightly different, here the mummy seems to have more human traits in how he acts which are obviously put there to make the ‘ageless love’ aspect of the tale carry weight as we now see Kharis’ human side show through the monster he now is.
That’s not to say he’s not still a full-on throttling machine though and the numerous stalk ‘n’ strangle scenes are effective enough.

The film is also just as delightfully cold-blooded as “Tomb” in the way it treats returning characters, but “Ghost” is also ruthless (and again damn brave for the time) towards it’s new characters, resulting in a wonderfully surprising (if muddled in the details a bit) finale that goes against all you would expect from a film of this style and era.

Overall then “The Mummy’s Ghost” is better than “The Mummy’s Hand” as far as action, pacing and plot goes, but not as good as “The Mummy’s Tomb” as far as action, pacing and plot goes.
And that’s a wrap.

My interest in these has been resurrected (along with Kharis) and I'm going to revisit Tomb, Ghost and Curse over the next few days, via the old Universal/CIC videos.

Hand can remain in the crypt for the time being. :nod:

:cool:
:thumb:

The 2 double bill DVD's are very good actually if you ever fancy upgrading.

Watched a couple of Franco's recently
Eugenie..The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion
Eugenie De Sade
Really liked both of these..decent picture,sleazy as hell,Soledad Miranda,Maria Rohm...Ive bought and sold alot of jess Franco stuff,just can't seem to get along with some of it,really enjoy Bloody Moon,and Ive just picked up Devil Hunter....I do like the Jess Franco interviews tho'..really entertaining..he know's he ain't the best but he's passionate..suprised he's still alive actually the amount he smokes......

What films have you seen recently?
 

I like XTRO and I think it's a very underrated low budget Brit sci-fi horror.
One of my fave Brit horrors, since I saw it on video back in the 80's.
I have the R1 Image dvd.
Better than the overrated 2001.

I enjoyed Xtro too. Good fun. Knocks Inseminoid into fits.

A Blade In The Dark

Great atmosphere and tension in the horror scenes, pretty good violence (bathroom scene is nasty). Story line is kind of average. The film's let down a little by the poor dubbing into English from Italian. Good movie overall.

Ghoul School

****ing terrible. Lower grade film making than Troma's but with no humour or character of it's own and an even lower budget in comparison. Just made me want to watch Troma's Class Of Nuke Em High instead (which is awesome). Even the editing and sound recording were pants. Just painfully bad. Only redeeming feature is it's honest to itslef. They must have known it was a disaster while making it, which adds a certain charm.

Im currently going through the MR VAMPIRE series(and rip offs):dance:

"Warlock"

Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn star in Edward Dmytryk's epic, multi-layered, multi-plot strand Western that boasts some superbly crafted, three dimensional, characters all expertly played.

The action is sparse but effective and the clever, ever twisting, plot keeps you intrigued and guessing at exactly what will happen and just as importantly...how it will happen.

A streak of 50's melodrama (and some crappy sweeping strings on the soundtrack during the occasional - most dated aspect of the film - romantic interludes) goes against the astute, dark and intelligent screenplay now and again but overall this is stunning stuff.

And it features a truly fascinating portrayal of a driven, noble but ruthless gunslinger, now at a loss at what to do with his life as he and The West ages, by Fonda.
You can certainly see aspects here of his majestic, steely-eyed, complex performance as Frank in "Once Upon a Time in the West" as his Marshall character here could well be the noble flipside of Frank.

There's also a really unusual male bonding aspect between Quinn and Fonda too, that truly is a platonic love story about two men who literally need each other to stay alive.

An intelligent, astute, layered and superbly played Western classic.



"Ministry of Fear"

Fritz Lang's Nazi spy ring thriller starring Ray Milland is something Lang himself never liked due to his disapproval at the screenplay adaptation of Graham Greene's novel (which he liked).

It's certainly a bit all over the place in tone, going from dark and serious thriller/drama to frothy comedy thriller at the flip of a scene.
But it often looks impressive (of course, it's Lang) and has bags of atmosphere and some nice plotting.
The final scene gives us a rather abrupt, overly comic, ending to the film but overall this is pretty good stuff that benefits from Fritz Lang's artistic eye.



"The Human Jungle"

One of those gritty 50's Noirish cop thrillers that falls between two stools as far as a modern audience's perceptions go.

It hints at prostitution, it contains murder, features crime syndicates, petty hoods, street bums and brutal women killers.
And it goes out and films all this on the actual mean streets and drapes all the seedy alleyways in deep shadow.

And yet...because of the obvious censor constraints of 50's cinema (despite the slowly changing aspects that this film does highlight) and general mores of 50's society all this grit and darkness still plays out like a cozy, retro, viewing experience as all the shadows are just that bit lighter than they should be and all the dirt a little to shiny.
This is gritty urban crime drama with no sex, no nudity, no blood, no real on-screen violence no swearing.
As such it's a strange , though still highly enjoyable, creation and it would really take the 70's to fully catapult gritty crime cinema right into that dirt and grime and absolute darkness that "The Human Jungle" exists in, uses, but is never truly honest about.

A good cast features a young Chuck Connors as a slimy murderer and a still up and coming Claude Akins as a Mob heavy but the real acting honours here go to Gary Merrill as one of the most driven, uncompromising, tough as ****ing nails Police Captains ever put on screen.
So good stuff, nice retro viewing for lovers of 50's thrillers...but it never truly gets under the concrete skin of that urban jungle it takes its name from.

How did you see Little Big Soldier?

The Black Cat

No - not that one! This is the 1934 Universal flick with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Good atmosphere and some bizarre imagery, combined with great performances from the two stars - particularly Karloff, who is pretty much excellent in everything he's in.

The Sadist With Red Teeth

Where do you start with this one? More bizarreness from Jean - Louis Van Belle, concerning a guy who, following a car crash, believes he is turning into a vampire. Completely bonkers. There's also a featurette and interview with the director on this Mondo Macabro release. Suffice to say it's easy to see why the film itself is so crazy! :biggrin:

Thought this was great fun and better than The Raven. Clever twist to have Lugosi as the hero and Karloff as the villain.

"Valley of the Gwangi"

Meh....Time lies to you about what you thought was once good.

The film is half over before the dino even appears, as such we have to sit through 45 minutes of needlessly complex plot shenanigans to eventually get the cowboys into the dino valley in the first place.

Mixed in with all those said shenanigans is a tedious love triangle sub-plot (to say my 5 year old daughter was asking where the dinosaurs are should come as no surprise) that bogs the swamp down until 1 point on the triangle is suddenly eaten, with hardly a reaction to the loss, as the film carries on as if the guy we have just spent 45 tedious minutes with had never existed.

The dino action is pretty good, but either the mostly dodgy (though certainly not always) matte work has dyed Gwangi blueish grey or Harryhausen and co choose a weird ass colour scheme for him.
Not that the block blue colour is stable anyway as it flips from grey to brownish and back to blue with wild abandon. Again, crappy matte or bad colour timing?

The eventual finale sees Gwangi at last doing something more interesting as it munches on elephants, chases cowboys and scares lots of Mexicans in their floppy hats.
Sadly though scaring the Mexicans is about all Gwangi does, as only one unfortunate is actually killed, the rest just look over their shoulders in fear as Gwangi ignores them. *sigh*

It all ends in a farcical fire that sees one tiny little pot of thrown burning embers (that Gwango decides not to simply walk away from) set an entire cathedral on fire in 20 seconds flat.

A nice idea poorly executed I'm afraid.
Harryhausen's pretty solid stop motion work deserved a better script, better execution and more damn screentime.

Saw Daybreakers last night and quite enjoyed it. Thought it was a different take on the vampire film but it cant touch let the right one in. Thought Ethan Hawke was good in it.

Tonight saw three extremes 2. Overall not as good as first part. The first story was from director of tale of 2 sisters and was in the same vien as that. Kinda supernatural drama about a husband trying to figure out what happened between him and his wife before she left . Was pretty good although kinda slow even for a 40 or so min film. Second one was rubbish IMO, was about some cursed puppets. Good atmosphere but did not keep me entertained or into the story much. Third was the best, was a very haunting and atmopsheric tale about this guy and his son who move into these shoddy flats and the boy sees this girl who lives next door. Then he goes missing when he goes and plays with the gal and the father goes next door flat to ask if he there and then it all goes wrong. Not your typical j horror ghost story and thought it was very good. Worth the £4 price I paid for the DVD ha ha

What films have you seen recently?
 

VAMPYRES
Iremember seeing this excelllent film on a heavily cut Rank video, back in the 80's.
I bought the Blue Underground dvd, a long time ago and last night, I saw the best British erotic vampire film again.
Nice, gory and sexy.

Ghost ballroom

watched films
 

watched my old vhs of race with the devil and badlands 1973 what a great actor was warren oates and two lane blacktop.and the wild bunch.looking for the cockfighter.

Watched 3 films lately:

The Big Bird Cage - a hell of a lot of fun this one! Highly recommended.

Rock N Roll Nightmare

Black Roses

The last two were pretty damn bad, but still enjoyable! Especially the last 10 minutes or so of RNRN - easily the funniest so-bad-it's-good moment of cinema!

The bad and the brilliant
 

Iwas in town yesterday with the vipster and i saw a dvd called the seventh gate [cool cover all demonic and ghostly+on tartan so] then i noticed a little sentance that put me of FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT not so bad but didnt that director also direct THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT 2:horse: THAT PUT ME RIGHT OF also bought a film called ZOMBEAK zombie chickens that infect humans [what an amazing mind came up with zombie chickens] BRILL IDEA:thumb:

I am tempted to get The Raven, but most reviewers tend to prefer The Black Cat. Is it worth a watch, vince? I can't say I'm a fan of Lugosi, but Karloff is always well worth watching.

Were they on VHS or DVD?

'The Abyss'. Been years since I saw it, forgotten how good it was.

'Alone with her' - really good verite movie, shame its not well known. Very well done.

'Nightmare Detective'. Alas, a naff English language Dub version spoiled a movie by my fave Japanese Director. Great visuals though. Need to get the subtitled version.

Personally I prefer The Black Cat but The Raven is also good fun. Worth getting for the excellent Karloff performance and pendulum finale. :nod:

The Body Snatcher is another splendid Karloff/Lugosi film.

Centipede Horror

Not as much fun as it sounds.

Both on DVD, Gigantor - Synapse DVD - both pretty good DVDs too!

I was also dissapointed when I saw that movie for the first time.

just watched Villain with Richard Burton, very good film it was too with another intense Burton Performance...

Hush and Rogue again, but from Blu Ray. I also finally saw Todd Solondz' Storytelling, which was extremely funny but not up to the overall quality of Happiness or Welcome To The Dollhouse.

I have tried three times to watch Massacre At Central High and each time have fallen asleep. I wonder if I am jinxed never to see it through?!

What films have you seen recently?
 

I have the R1 dvd from Anchor Bay of RACE WITH THE DEVIL.
It's one of ny fave 70's films.
The UK dvd is crap, full screen, no extras and heavily cut.
Stupid really, considering the film was uncut at the cinemas when released.
That's the ever so dumb BBFC for you.

The 1987 F&V video was also uncut.

Let The Right One In
 

Just watched Let The Right One In, a wonderful and incredibly touching little gem of a film, anyone agree / disagree?

I just watched Rod Hardy's Thirst which I think was very good. Unfortunately I kept drifting off to sleep every now and then and rendered it quite confusing, so I will have to watch it again before I review it.

It looks superb though, lots of splendid style to the film.

Oh yeah love Thirst!

Watched Manhattan Baby yesterday.
More than 10 years ago I watched it and didn't like it then.
However I liked it now (having watched a lot more Fulci and knowing what to expect helped).
Given it's budget was reduced from one million Dollars to 300,000 I think it's a decent film.
Would have been a masterpiece with an extra 700,000 I suspect! :)

Totally agree, loved every minute of it. A beautiful film.

Over the weekend I saw:

Rogue - Loads of fun with beautiful scenic shots of Australia

Long Weekend (original) - Great film, creepy and unique. Look forward to seeing the remake now

How The West was Won BD - Great epic Western. Thoroughly enjoyed it and looks stunning on BD. Surprisingly violent in some parts too. Problem was I watched it with a nasty hangover so the length of the film and the CinemaScope made me feel rather sick on many occasions. I had to stop and start it several times during the afternoon

Chanbara Beauty - Zombie Film based on the video game 'OneChanbara' which I assume was only popular in Japan. It's a Manga presentation. The picture quality was terrible and the SFX were awful in places but it wasn't that bad a film. Could have been great with the right budget I guess.

Avatar BD - One word for this..... Stunning (need I say more)

Shivers - First time I've seen this Cronenberg classic and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was violent and impressively gory in places. I can see why it's become a classic.
Resident Evil: Degeneration - Now I've heard mixed reviews of this but I'm leaning over to the positive side of the fence with this. I thought it was great. It had lovely animation it was superbly directed and I've never said that about animation before but this really was well put together. Had some great action pieces, lots of blood and some of the "camera" angles and shots were fantastic.

The Good The Bad The Weird - Oh my god, this was F ing awesome. It's been a while since I've had so much fun watching a film. Genius fight and gun fight choreography and some wonderful quirky mix of humour and violence. Just brilliant.

Rock and Rule - Boring 80's cartoon that I just couldn't get into. It felt too rushed and just lacked....something. Throughout the film I couldn't help but just feel uncomfortable and I didn't know why until half way through when I found out. You know when you're trying to have a conversation in the car and the music's playing too loud and you can't hear what people are saying and you get frustrated and have to turn the damn stereo off for a minute just to hear yourself think? Well that's how I felt watching this. Throughout the whole film there was music playing too loud in the background that didn't match the scene so that when the characters were talking I found myself shouting at the TV to turn the damn music down so I could hear what they were saying. Grrrrrr!! Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

EDIT: Sorry I also watched The Lost Boys on BD. Wow, I never thought my childhood favourite could look this good. Impressed indeed. Classic!

Great film with one of my all time favourite western scores. Great cast too (everyone from James Stewart to Harry Dean Stanton). :cool: