Yeah, I haven't watched it in a few years and to be honest, it looks shit upscaled on my Blu Ray player, it's definitely in need of a polish. Doesn't stop it being one of the best zombie films ever made!

What did you think to "Hellapoppin'"? Mrs MTDS does the Lindy Hop dancing that is showcased in it, in fact she's out doing it now while I've come home to relieve the babysitter!

By 'relieve the babysitter', I assume you meant 'let her go home' and not anything else?!

As for Hellzapoppin', some of the more anarchic moments worked very well, but I didn't feel it had dated as well as the Marx brothers comedies from around the same time and is almost on a par with the Abbot and Costello films.

ah, Hellzapoppin', some great effects if i remember....
aaanyway im currently catsitting for mates, and have use of their lovefilm account as "payment" watched Blood & Black Lace last night, grrrreat film, lousy print, any recommendations for best quality dvd of this CLASSIC folks??

Hatchet for the Honeymoon next methinks!!;);)

Blood & Black Lace best and affordable version:
Anolis small hardbox (hidden English audio)

ta, nice cover etc....hidden? i likes a challenge me....;)

Yep,you need to know it's there to find it... ;)
I don't know where you usually shop for German/Austrian imports...
OMG had loads some time ago but seem to have sold out.
Maybe they can still order it?

Blood and Black Lace - Hardbox Series -

info duly noted...il have a looksee about, with this mac im not tethered by the libraries usual restrictions etc.....;)

Last night I watched Calvaire (The Ordeal). It's dark, funny, scary and I liked it very much. Loved the dance scene of the villagers. Brigitte Lahaie has a small role also.

The Baby sitter was Mrs MTDS' dad! Cheers for your views on "Hellzapoppin'", I've not seen it for years and wondered if it had dated along with myself.;)


Watched "Delinquent Schoolgirls" earlier. Jez, a pro rape loons escape from the the mad house and rape their way through a girls' school comedy caper! A mess from start to finish and not in a good way. However if you like women dressed as school girls with impossibly large breasts jumping up and down in slow motion you may just like it.

This gets seedier by the minute. :tsk:

It's mentioned in the Arthouse Atrocities thread, but I'd highly recommend Du Welz's follow up Vinyan.

The Lost World (1925). A fantastic silent movie. Good acting, quite a few humorous scenes, and top-notch stop-motion animation*! :love:

*Willis H. O'Brien was responsible for the great Dinosaurs - he was also the man in charge for King Kong (1933)! :nod:

Greetings

Miracle Mile - thanks a million to Slippery Jack for providing me with this piece of outright 80s awesomeness.
Aptly described by him as Punch-Drunk Love meets After Hours (and I'd add) with a dash of Armageddon. And the enormous bonus of a Tangerine Dream OST - this is definitely one of the best films I've seen recently and yet another hit from my favourite decade of film.

Rewatched City Of The Living Dead - this used to be the weakest in the Gates of hell trilogy for me, but something just clicked last night (as it has done so often in the past when I rewatch Fulci's films) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. What I deemed as slow paced previously actually felt measured and the dread was palpable throughout; punctuated perfectly with some of the best gore scenes that Fulci's ever committed to celluloid. There's also some really great Bavaesque lighting and pretty impressive deep focus photography in places (;) @ Slippery Jack).
And of course the whole thing is highlighted perfectly with Fabio Frizzi's magnificent score.
Looking forward to reading what Thrower has to say about it in Beyond Terror.

Don’t Torture a Duckling
The first Fulci film I’ve seen that I really enjoyed! There was a definite turning point during the churchyard chain-whipping scene, where I went from liking it to loving it – what a sequence! Gruelling and emotionally shattering, didn’t know Lucio had it in him! I’d dismissed his Gates of Hell films for the preference of torturously extended schlock over things like style and atmosphere, so it was a surprise to find this film had both in spades! Think the rural setting had a lot to do with it, with some gorgeous location photography – this, Torso, House with Laughing Windows – loving the rural Italian horror! Technically the film is very impressive, feels very much like a director impassioned with the possibilities of filmmaking, something I never felt with his other stuff – deep focus, clever cross-cutting, performances straight to camera for dramatic impact, lots to admire here. Performance-wise it was all about Florinda Balkan for me. An immense screen presence – seeing her wondering the woods, almost feral-like, put me in mind (unfortunately) of Lucky McKee’s The Woman, Balkan effortlessly putting that film to shame with her steely gaze!

Bad Boy Bubby
A mega-recommendation (and top birthday gift!) by Phurious, who’s been banging on about it for ages... With Dogtooth being one of my favourite films of the past ten (ish?) years, don’t think there was any way I was not going to like this film – and I did of course! It probably makes me sound a WEIRDO, but it was the opening 35 minutes that completely blew me away – by turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and confrontational (tough watching as a cat lover!). Off the top of my head I can’t think of a more striking first act. Nicholas Hope is frankly stunning in the lead, with a head-spinning level of detail to his performance – I particularly liked how Bubby studies the mouth of the person who is speaking to him – just like a cat (well, my cat at least)! The second act I enjoyed for the baton-passing storytelling style, as Bubby pinball’s from one encounter to the next (I reckon this film must’ve influenced Todd Solondz, especially with Palindromes). I knew going in about the 35 (!!!) credited cinematographers and ‘binaural’ sound design, but I didn’t really notice either that much over the course of the film – it was a lot less overtly experimental than I was expecting, which isn’t really a criticism... I would LOVE to rewatch this with headphones to study the sound design in detail. Think it was only the third act, or final 15 minutes or so, that I wasn’t so keen on. The story resolution felt a little too ‘neat’ and easy to a pessimist like me! I’m not even gonna touch on the religious themes – loads to discuss here! But yeah, great film. :clap:

Boogeyman (2005) - underdeveloped and botched rendering of a promising idea. Very disappointing, but not as awful as it could have been I suppose.

Taken (2008) - also disappointing for me. Liam Neeson was dreadful, as usual, and the film was rather distasteful and not at all my kind of thing. Quite a nasty and gruelling experience, but not in a rewarding way - more 8mm than Martyrs. Impeccably made, but the technique was not enough to distract from the negative points of the film.

Eyes Without A Face (1960) - after the horrible experience of Taken, I had to remind myself that France has produced some wonderful films over the years, so rewatched one of the best. A bona fide masterpiece. Felt better about things after this!

Thank you, it's already on my wishlist!

Great to hear you've at last found a Fulci you like (it's undoubtedly one of his best for me too), but even more chuffed to hear you enjoyed Bad Boy Bubby.
As for the last 15 mins and the resolution, you can hear De Heer's alternative on the interview with him, which I'm sure you would have favoured.
However I really like the 'neatness' and optimism of the ending as it really is the other end of the spectrum from the beginning and Bubby is such an extraordinary character who has been through just about everything you can imagine, so I think he deserves some wholesomeness in his life.

Cool. Make sure it's the R1 with the brilliant making of documentary on it.

[SPOILERS FOR 'BAD BOY BUBBY']

Think I was expecting some kind of Kaspar Hauser shit to go down :lol: I was taken by surprise by the almost hyper-real happiness of the ending. Naturally, I read the whole third act as a delusion of Bubby's fractured psyche :eek:...

Have you seen any of Lodge Kerrigan's stuff ? Nothing like Bubby, but Clean, Shaven and Keane both offer fascinating and devestating portraits of mental collapse - no happiness to be found here :rain: . . .

Okay, thanks for that. I was just about to order de BD on Play. Guess I'll have to check if it has the documentary also.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon. can i just say this is my new favourite Bava film!!!! Styilized to within an inch of its life, the compositions, soundtrack, dialogue...everything. all bow down before the master.....:)

Massacre Time next methinks....!!

8/10 for MT, if only for the final sequence;);)

now for The Big Racket.....

watched 20 minutes of Enzio G.'s scumfest....and promptly ordered the BU dvd.
just finished watching Franco's Jack The Ripper.....well thats another one ive seen :lol:

Rewatched Bo Widerberg's Mannen på Taket (The Man on the Roof) from 1976. By far and away the best Swedish police thriller ever produced. Highly recommended!
And yes, there's an English friendly dvd release around

Watched Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore (2010) and I'd say it's a great docu but you really need to watch the deleted scenes as well as there's lots more info in there. :nod:
Don't expect too much from the rare Lewis short (included as an extra) though... ;)

There's some very exciting news in there about the "lost" An Eye for an Eye,which SWV is working on and 2 early non-Lewis gore films (Love Goddesses of Blood Island (1963) looks great!).
I can only hope these are released soon.

Tromeo and Juliet - loved it. Been on a bit of a Troma binge of late and this is one of the best I have seen. The 'twist' at the end was painfully obvious although I suspect that was the point.


Friday the 13th (original) - as good as ever. Lovely-looking bluray too.


About to pop on Halloween Resurrection (I know, I know) and order a pizza. I'm home alone tonight and even the stupidest of slashers is enough to get me unnevered when I'm in on my own. Pathetic I lnow :)

I watched that earlier this year and I enjoyed it too. Nice to see some non Euro Eurocrime, if you see what I mean :confused:

Just seen Simon Rumley's The Living And The Dead.

I saw his latest, Red White And Blue at Frightfest last year and it's been stuck in my mind ever since (it's getting a DVD release tomorrow actually), and TLATD is certainly cut from the same cloth.
Superbly acted, brilliantly lit and shot and deeply depressing and grim, whilst brimming with human emotions.
Heady and heavy stuff, but highly recommended.

John Carpenter's Vampires. I had seen this movie about five years ago, and quite a few scenes remained present in my head. After a rewatch of this flick this evening, I can confirm: this is a very strong Carpenter. Extremely stylish, badass vampires and vampire killers, top-notch gore (one of the masters himself: Nicotero!), great soundtrack, and really cool performances of Woods and Baldwin. Carpenter plays with nearly all the rules of a Vampire movie, and succeeds. Highly recommended! :thumb:

Besides: the French Blu-ray (M6 Video) is excellent; both picture and sound are of highest quality! :nod:

Greetings!

Just seen the kick ass western The Professionals again.

Marvin, Lancaster, Ryan, Strode, Palance and Cardinale - classic stuff.

Never seen this, added to the ever growing 'to watch list' :nod:

Julia's Eyes. if it had been filmed from her POV it would have been a better film. Either it was the mood i was in or it just doesnt hang together, il give it another go, but not for a while....6/10.

What films have you seen recently?
 

saw the excellent MESRINE 1 & 2 blu ray
Vincent Cassel was brilliant as the real life criminal

I watched Two-Lane Blacktop yesterday - a superb road trip movie with excellent AV quality and a whole array of extra features on this Criterion Collection DVD which I haven't yet seen, plus the screenplay which I'll read at some point.

How absolutely amazing is Warren Oates in that film? One of the best 'road' movies I've ever seen, and that car :eek:

Warren Oates is rarely anything less than brilliant and both the cars are great for different reasons, with the Pontiac GTO as a thing of beauty.

Just watched leon the American uncut release. Its around 22 23 mins longer than the normal british release....never it before always kept meaning to watch it, all i can say WOW what a great film...

Went to see The Wicker Tree at the Grimmfest in Manchester last night with a post-screening q+a from Robin Hardy. I went in with low expectations but I really enjoyed it. Admittedly it can't touch the original but it's a lot of fun and some of the humour works quite well in my opinion. I can appreciate why some people won't be keen and the ending is particularly lightweight compared to the bleak and shocking original but for what it is, it's alright and I'll be investing in the blu ray when it comes out :nod:.

Robin Hardy was an interesting interviewee too and signed my Wicker Man dvd (which was already signed by Ingrid Pitt :rockon:)

1) Bad Day At Black Rock.Really good suspence movie with Spencer Tracy 2)Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde 1941.Great cast but I prefer the 40's version 3)Downfall.What can I say about Bruno Ganz ,a great perfomance!