That was the one. Decent transfer, I was just happy to see it in HD after spending so long wondering why I'd always ignored it. What a splendidly trashy film!

I'll have to give 'Southbound' another go at some point. For some reason I'd kind of filed it away under 'pretty good, but...' I seem to remember I was a little disappointed by something when I first saw it... maybe time to give it a second spin minus expectations.

December 18th
 

Patrick Still Lives (1980)

Now this is how you do exploitation.

Take a moderately successful Aussie horror, Patrick, come up with a similar title, totally unauthorised and bugger all to do with said film except have someone in a coma who kills using psychic powers. Grab a bunch of good looking actors, throw in loads of sex and nudity (And i mean loads), gallons of J&B whisky and some gory violence and away we go.

I absolutely loved this. It's way over the top especially in it's most infamous death scene as a woman is violated in graphic bloody detail by what can only be described as a flying poker which goes in between her thighs and out via her mouth. Seriously! You don't get shit like this in Blumhouse crap.

Everybody in the film bar the doctor (Sacha Pitoëff) is nude at some point, in fact i don't think one woman knew what clothes were, and it's just wonderfully sleazy politically incorrect, questionable brilliance that only an Italian genius like Mario Landi (Giallo a Venezia (1979)) could create.

Film of the month so far.

:xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts: / 5

Rome Armed to the Teeth (1976)

For me one of the three great Poliziotteschi films (Violent Naples and The Cop in Blue Jeans being my other faves) this classic crime thriller sees Maurizio Merli's Dirty Harry esq Inspector Tanzi on the trail of Tomas Milian's hunchback.

As with Dirty Harry the film has a lot to say about crime, violence, police brutality and the criminal justice system and the charismatic Tanzi whose hard nosed methods come under a lot of scrutiny from those above even though the viewer or at least this viewer is completely on his side.

As well as brutal violence, awesome car chases (You'd never want to come back as a roadside cardboard box in an Italian city in the 70's) and classic rooftop thrills the film has an awesome support cast including Arthur Kennedy, Ivan Rassimov and great support actor Giampiero Albertini. Director Umberto Lenzi paces the film superbly - breakneck all the way - and it's simply so much fun.

88 Films recent Blu-ray, titled The Tough Ones, looks superb.

:xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts: / 5

Superman II. 1980.

3 Kryptonian Villains arrive on earth causing mayhem while Clark Kent/Superman declares his feelings for Lois Lane.

Usually over Christmas there is a Superman movie on and tends to be III, but this year there isn't so went for this viewing, More Terrence Stamp in this and shows how good a actor he is and playing the role of General Zod along side Sarah Douglas and Jack Halloran. Christopher Reeve excels as the bumbling reporter and Superman, along with Margot Kidder who tries to expose that the two men are one. Great visual effects, brilliant cinematography and background score that was adjusted and played by Ken Thorne who vamped up John Williams theme.

Attachment 238170

First 2 Superman films are genuine classics and great entertainment.

December 19th
 

Cecilia (1983)

After loving Shining Sex i opted for another Jess Franco film. However this quickly became boring. In comparison to Shining Sex and the Severin dvd this was tame and probably cut but i can't be sure.

The sex scenes were tedious, long and unimaginative with little story to hold them together. I fast forwarded one or two.

I ended up watching Love Actually (2003) instead. A sugary Christmas set rom com that was actually (Ahem) very enjoyable.

KILLER PARTY – Eighties set sorority / frat-house horror always makes me feel a bit gooey inside, but I have to say that ‘Killer Party’ left me cold. I don’t know what it was, exactly… just the sense of an interminable and ponderous build with too many false scares and too much dithering over who gets their ass whacked with the gamma beta phi-carved paddle (or something, you get the picture). In the last few minutes it goes from disposable froth to a big kill with an overly intense possession-victim at the centre, a tonal glitch that I wouldn’t mind had the rest of the film not tried so hard to persuade me of how boring it was. A shame, for ‘Killer Party’ ticks many worthy boxes pour moi, as evinced by the presence of a stupid number of false starts, all the garish eightiesness, actually likeable characters and a theme tune that sounds like it was done by Bananarama on Mogadon. Ah well, can’t have it all.

PHANTOM OF THE MALL – I remember seeing an ad for it on the back of an issue of ‘The Dark Side’ (or was it ‘Fear’? Maybe it was ‘Fear’) and thinking “I bet that’s shit.” Fast forward to the distant future, where time travelling Frankie is shocked to find his forty something self not only still watching this kind of gunk (he was thinking it might have all gone Fellini and ‘Starlight Express’ way before now), but actually pleased and slightly grateful to have had the chance to see, for the first time in HD, ‘The Phantom Of The Mall’. Young Frankie to Old Frankie, was it worth the thirty year wait? Well, I like the gimmick, which transplants the lineaments of the G Leroux ‘classic’ into a slasher scenario set in a rubbish eighties mall – I think I like the slightly crass bravado at play there, though they missed a trick in not actually turning it into a musical. Apart from that, it’s the season for nostalgia. I enjoyed it more than the little guy would, put it that way. But as is sometimes the case with these boutique labels (and I’m not knocking them or their efforts), I kind of wish I could be satisfied with the scratched-up DVD I might once have found going for a quid on the sticky shelves of CEX.

I rewatched the dvd of this recently. The best thing i can say is that it has a cool poster art.

I know, I was so disappointed. I was really looking forward to watching it for some reason. Always seems to happen that way, and vice versa.

Candyman. 2021

Finally got round to seeing this and wasn't what I expected it to be, yeah it is a sequel to the original with two characters returning and a mentioning of Helen Lyle. With Candyman supposedly based on the urban legend of Cabrini Green, seems like someone else's back story maybe a urban legend.

What this lacks is the suspense as the film goes on and tension that the first one had and very little jump scares. We do see Candyman but just seems to be from a distant and in shadow form but one up close scene, blink and miss it. There is a decent build up to the main characters but seems to go on and off the rails a bit, no harm in another re-watch.

Attachment 238176

I can relate to what you said regarding boutique labels releasing for want of a better word rubbish in great packages. I've already seen two or three slashers released by Arrow this Christmas that aren't fit for purpose but look absolutely lovely in HD. Trapped Alive, Doom Asylum and The Prey spring to mind.

Yep, more and more I find myself thinking "I just can't justify spending twenty odd quid on something that looks ravishing, but which I'll watch once or twice at the most." On the other hand... what the likes of Arrow and VS do is so worthy of support, if only from an archival standpoint. I mean obviously they're businesses, but so many of these little films wouldn't be on anyone's radar were it not for the kind of efforts that result in eg 'Phantom of the Mall'.
But it's all horses for courses anyway. As much as I loathed 'Doom Asylum', I loved 'The Prey'!

I watched The Prey pretty late one night and i can't remember a thing about it so never reviewed it.

What i do know is a 70cl bottle of Jack was almost half empty the next morning so i'll have to revisit it before making any radical decisions on it's quality. :jollysanta: The film, not the bottle i mean.

I think perhaps some anaesthesia whilst watching that one couldn't hurt. But it is a pretty crazy flick - half slasher, half wildlife documentary, weird electronic sounds.

I might give it another go tonight. Just looked at Google images and saw one of an inanely grinning park ranger or something similar and i kind of remember him.

Thought i'd also give Chill Factor a whirl. Is that terrible?

I quite liked 'The Chill Factor', but it's another very divisive slasher I'm afraid. "'Boring' or 'mesmerising'... you be the judge" kind of thing. There's definitely something a bit 'off' and slightly weird about it, and I seem to recall I gave it a good write-up on here.

December 20th
 

The Chill Factor (1993)

Also known as Demon Possessed, The Chill Factor centers on a group of snowmobilers who end up trapped at an abandoned summer camp where occult goings on took place. Upon finding an awesome looking ouija board called the Devils' Eye things start to go a bit awry as one by one they come to gory demises.

This was certainly different. Parts of the film are narrated which brought a new dimension to a by now cliched genre as did the whole atmosphere of the film, brought on by a constant soundscape of what can only be described as hypnotic elevator muzak. I felt transfixed by the music watching the on screen action through a surreal trance like state. I wasn't sure if the shadowy figures half glimpsed were in the film or my imagination.

The murders when they happen are fun, especially the icicle through the eye, and the fact they all play out to the unearthly muzak back drop which is unflinching in it's constant drone gave them an especially eerie dream like nature as did the cabin which itself was very Evil Dead like.

Of course anyone who isn't captured and swept away by the atmosphere may find parts of this a bit dull but i loved it and it goes straight into the top division of backwoods horror for me.

:xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts::xmasnuts: / 5

TRANSFORMATIONS – An old Empire flick set in a penal colony, where a guy has crash-landed after a calamitous deep-space shag with an interstellar succubus. Stuff happens, then more stuff, and it all builds to an extremely dull escape attempt made by a trio of utterly nondescript thugs. What about the good bits? Can’t really remember, there’s more shagging, some people milling about in futuristic corridors, a stab at romance, and some monstery transformation bits which blossom into the form of a scaley space gargoyle (or similar). If there had been more of the latter then I might have better memories of ‘Transformations’, which however still manages to appeal in that ‘typical end of the shelf video flotsam of the eighties’ kind of way. You could file it next to the slightly wilder and more rancid ‘Breeders’ and I wouldn’t mind.

THE AFTERMATH – Well this is quite a strange film really, and I get the impression that it was perhaps one of those ‘one-man-labours-of-love’, which automatically makes me think of the most notorious example of those in (my) recent memory, ‘Champagne and Bullets’. ‘The Aftermath’ isn’t anywhere near as joltingly deranged as that cinematic shitstorm, but in some ways it might be scaling towards (or maybe even sliding down) the same filmic ladder. ‘The Aftermath’ was written and directed by its ‘star’ – a stocky, moustachioed guy who looks like he’d be more at home on a construction site than the world’s stage after an apocalypse. He guides us through his oddly macho vision of The End, in which he fancies himself as an upholder of basic family truths / avenger of violations of same; this feels somehow slightly personal and heartfelt, but it might all be just a set-up so that bad guy gang leader Sid Haig can rape women and shoot kids with gusto. Apart from tangles with gangs, there are random zombie attacks (nice looking undead, by the way) and an unusual sequence set in a dinosaur museum(!) seemingly slipped in to convince us that we’d all nodded off and started to dream. The only truly cinematic presence in it of course belongs to Sid Haig – the rest is disjointed, silly pap, but the kind that manages to keep the likes of yours truly glued to their sets.

Last Night In Soho (2021, Edgar Wright)

I was so looking forward to this one.
What I got was .... a bit overdone and undercooked at the same time.
I have no problem with films that make no sense afterwards (Devil Fetus/ Blood Beat recently) but come on ffs.
I will be rewatching this just to make sure, but wasn't taken at all, sorry.
A young girl moves to that London to make her mark. London leaves its mark on her certainly. Some reasonable flair technically does not make up for the shortcomings narratively IMHO.
Harumph.

The Scarlet Claw. 1944.

Holmes and Watson are drawn to a case where the locals believe a monster is at large after a woman is found dead, but the duo believe it to be no more than a human murderer.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Watson return as the crime fighting duo with their on theories, the plot is brilliantly written and has a good atmospheric background score that blends in well. This one does tend to go in the way of the Dark Gothic tone and makes it feel like it may be supernatural creature but does make it feel like you want to be on the edge of your seat a lot.

Attachment 238205

AN ANGEL FOR SATAN (1966)
A sculptor is brought to restore an allegedly cursed statue of a woman in this Italian gothic.
Said statue resembles the character as played by Barbara Steele, who enjoys one of her best ( and certainly sexiest ) roles in this black and white gem, steeped in loads of atmosphere, ghostly castles and thunderstorms.
The Blu Ray from Severin looks absolutely stunning.

BEYOND TERROR. (1980)
A group of young thugs rob a bank, terrorise an old lady in her own home, then end up in a haunted church inhabited by the undead in this bizarre Spanish oddity.
It’s a pity the undead section only features in the last third, as it is quite effective ( even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense).
Not the greatest film you’ll ever see by any stretch of the imagination, but entertaining in its own ( sometimes unintentionally ) funny way.

December 21st
 

Paganini Horror (1989)

Paganini Horror concerns a struggling female rock band who buy a piece of sheet music from Donald Pleasence who claims the music was written by the great composer / violinist Paganini but never released. Believing they have a hit on their hands the band hire a famous music video producer and head out to a secluded country estate to produce a video. However it seems Paganini is not so dead and returns from the grave in his best Phantom of the Opera get up and all hell breaks loose.

When i say hell i mean strange lights, cheap eighties video effects, comtinuity chaos and low budget gore. Directed by Luigi Cozzi this is a sheet film about sheet music. The acting and dialogue is horrendous - i would blame the English dubbing but the Italian sound track is probably worse - what Pleasence and Daria Nicolodi are doing in this i'll never know - Cozzi sadly brings them down to his level rather than them elevating this above the wretched. It doesn't help that the music the band play every so often (at length) sounded dated back in the 80's never mind 2021.

The script is badly written too, i'm sure Cozzi was hoping Paganini Horror would be his Suspiria but all he seemed to get right was some pretty cool red lighting... the thing is... i sort of enjoyed it. There's something about the sheer brass balls of Italian movie making, even when it's utter dross, that captures my imagination. It's as if Cozzi and co knew what they were making stunk but did it anyway because they knew thirty years down the line an idiot like me would buy it on Blu-ray.

Just to cap it all. Paganini Horror is the worst Blu-ray i've ever seen quality wise. The image is soft and the speech has that hiss to it usually heard on old black and white films that haven't been restored. 88 Films have given this celluloid cesspit the release it deserves.

:xmasnuts::xmasnuts: ½ / 5

I’ve been meaning to pick that one up, let’s just say that your review hasn’t put me off hah…

Good. It wasn't meant to put folk off.

Might go with Fragasso's Beyond Darkness tonight for that real cocktail of Italian quality.

I see 'Paganini' as quite a good companion to Cozzi's 'Black Cat', which you seemed to enjoy the other day. Maybe it's not quite as weird, but it has the same idiot-value, and of course Donald Pleasance looking flustered and perplexed.
I really like 'Beyond Darkness', but it's not very good at all. I'm just addicted to the look and feel of that period of Italo horror, when it was all fizzling out. The 88 Blu looks at least as soft as 'Paganini Horror' btw. I think they're all like that, I'm not aware of Severin's transfer being any kind of improvement really.

PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND – N Cage seems to gravitate towards strange, over-the-top films latterly. ‘Mandy’, ‘The Color Out of Space’ etc etc, they’re all a bit bananas and quite visually striking. Sion Sono is at the directorial helm, so already you have an inkling of the kind of territory we might be heading for. Well, it’s a freaky film for sure and again the visual opulence is what strikes you first. POTG’s bustling sets seem to belong to a western replanted in a time-clash multiverse full of doll people and crowds that are always on the brink of bursting into song, one long stampede of weirdness with Cage leading the dance. At one point I was reminded of that old Rod Hull and Emu skit in the Pink Windmill, where he’s followed around by all those people chanting ‘There’s somebody at the door… there’s somebody at the door…” Don’t know what I’m on about? Well f*ck off and watch this instead then, but I can’t guarantee what kind of time you’ll have – ‘Prisoners Of the Ghostland’ is an impressive and operatic display, but for all its vivid presence and intensity it lacks Sono’s hallmark ‘offness’ (there in spades in, say, ‘Love Exposure’ or ‘Exte’).

Attachment 238212
"WHAT'S UP, DOC?" (1972)

A mix up of four identical cases causes mayhem in this excellent 'screwball' comedy. This movie never lets up. Every moment there is a verbal or visual gag on screen. It actually gets exhausting it is so relentless.
This is certainly the best of the 70s 'screwball' revival movies.

I rewatched Candyman Farewell To The Flesh the other day. That had quite a few jump scares. Unfortunately none of them worked, they all fell flat. :)

I actually think the Pierce Brosnan Bond era is the one that has aged the worst. Having said that, Tomorrow Never Dies is very enjoyable and for me, the best of the Brosnan films. btw Perhaps I might rate Goldeneye higher if it didn't have an awful soundtrack?

Sorry for being MIA for over a month. Some life changes over here. Hope to come back when things settle.

Just popping in to wish everybody a Merry Christmas, and a happy Die Hard viewing.

:xmastreedance:

Merry Christmas, Mac.

:xmastreedance:

December 22nd
 

The Doll of Satan (1969)

More Italian madness from 88 Films but at least this one looks glorious in HD.

A film with well worn plot points - a Tara Reid look-a-like returns to her ancestral castle for the reading of a will where she'll get the castle for herself which naturally annoys her other relatives who tell her the castle is haunted and get her to put it on the market at a ridiculously low price which she doesn't want to do...then things turn creepy.

La Bambola di Satana is a confused and confusing film. Shot at the arse end of the Gothic horror period as the giallo trend was really taking off, The Doll of Satan tries to combine the two and it works. In a fashion.

To me this was reminiscent of the British chiller Haunted House of Horror from the same year in that we see modern dress and styles playing out in a Gothic setting, although the various scenes set in a bar with dancing, sixties style, totally remove any possible tension build up in the creepy castle and it feels more clunky than swinging sixties chic.

Atmosphere wise, director Ferruccio Casapinta seems like he's trying to ape Bava but with little success as there is barely any atmosphere until Tara has a couple of erotic dream like encounters with a ghostly figure and we also have a black gloved menace lurking around together with a torture chamber finale.

If it sounds good prepare to be disappointed as The Doll of Satan is overall a bit of a mess with several mainly unfocused ideas that fail to gel although there are some fun scenes. However it is perfectly watchable for the discerning Italian horror connoisseur even if you are hardly likely to be on the edge of your seat.

The Matrix: Resurrections (Lana Wachowski)

Liked the bit on the train. The rest outdoes that Ferrell sketch for sheer hilarity. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????????????? ?
Avoid.

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SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME

By far the best of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies.
This is great stuff all round. I managed to avoid most of the spoilers so the whole movie was a most enjoyable time.
It's certainly put the MCU back on top now and shows they can still do it if they try.

Most reviews I’ve read so far haven’t been that good .
Critics and general public.

Bah! Humbug!!

There is only one film that I can watch that enables me to live with all the hypocrisy and fake bonhomie that pervades most people at this time of year

Snapshot

Australian Film in which a struggling Hairdresser becomes a Model but ends up being stalked. It's not bad but not essential viewing.

Phantom Of The Mall

Phantom Of The Opera based Film but set in a Shopping Mall where a Teen who was presumed dead after a fire watches over his ex-girlfriend. As someone likes 80's/90's Slasher Movies, I found this to be rather entertaining (Even though I feel that the makers may have had illusions of grander) TBH, I don't recall seeing it in my Video Shops back in the day as I'm pretty sure that I would have picked up on it and I don't recall the cover (Keep on thinking off the Robert England Phantom Of The Opera cover)

The Wraith

Crazy premise which sees a mysterious Driver (From Outer Space) challenge a gang of youths who force people to race them. Charlie Sheen stars in what I think is a futuristic setting with some crazy characters. It's one of those Films that shouldn't work but boy it does. Certainly gives early Fast And Furious vibes (Yes I know that this was out 15 years before)

Showdown In Little Tokyo

One of my faves which sees mismatched Cops Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee team up to take down The Yakuza lead by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who excels with his facial expressions and portrayal of nastiness. It's also action packed and fast paced (Clocking in at 76 minutes)

Malignant. A young woman finds herself somehow psychically linked to the crazed killer that murdered her abusive boyfriend and is now targeting others - but is the killer closer than she thinks? This 2021 horror from James Wan has been somewhat divisive, with some hating the nutso twist and descent into full-on 80s movie comedy horror zaniness, and others loving it. I enjoyed it, though I would argue it could have been a little campier in the first half, and the cast are a little nondescript (oh modern cinema), lacking the kind of relish an actual 80s movie cast would have delivered in a film like this. :xmastongue:

Spoilers alert!!!
 

No Time To Die (2021)

Surprisingly i really enjoyed this on first viewing, a lot more than i did my respective first watches of the previous four Daniel Craig Bond outings.

I had heard that Rani Malek's villain Safin was a weak link so my expectations were low but i thought he was okay and actually better than Blofeld in this series. Meanwhile the action sequences were lengthy, superbly crafted and exciting.

Yes, it's a little too long and as with Spectre the pace lags a bit following the half way point until the final forty minutes but on the whole i thought this a well made and very enjoyable way to bring an end to Craig's tenure.

Daniel Craig isn't my favourite Bond and i've taken my time to warm to him but the run of four Bond films watched in the run up to this finale has made me appreciate him more even if i don't particularly agree with the direction the series took nor his emotional baggage that has become even more apparent as the series progressed.

Finally even though i am 100% of the opinion that James Bond should never die it seemed right for Craig's incarnation and was thankful that it only showed M (Ralph Fiennes) toast Bond's whisky glass at the finale because to see Moneypenny, Tanner and Q also do it might have brought a tear to my eye which would have been bloody annoying.

Glad you liked it Dem. I thought it was an excellent addition to the franchise.

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Thanks. I look at it as a five film take on Bond based on and inspired by one Fleming novel. I would like them to bring a bit of fun back to the franchise with the next Bond though.

Not saying i want to see Blofeld in his wheelchair being dropped down a chimney from a helicopter but yeah, a little more like old school Bond.

It was an enjoyable way to see out Boxing Day all the same.