What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

Co-production no?? Hmmmm, thought so myself.......
Spanish/German I thought.......


Ninja Terminator (Godfrey Ho, 1985, Boulevard Ent UK dvd)

Woooh, I'm sold. Regardless that the dvd seemed to have been authored improperly, (nae menu screen, went staright into 2 trailers at the end, then cut out ahem!!). It is madness cubed, what with constant kickings and about 3 bad guys to defeat. Must dig out my 5 Pattern Dragon Claws methinks!!

Hell Up In Harlem (Larry Cohen, 1973)

Black Caesar sequel is easily the most brutal film I've seen this week. Non stop violence permeates this movie like a stick of rock. RECOMMENDED!!!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

According to Ten Years of Terror, Horror Express is a British / Spanish co production and filmed in Madrid.

[trebor8273]

Curse of the devil

My first Paul Naschy film which I enjoyed a lot, will have to watch some more of his films. A fantastic gothic horror with a interesting story and some decent acting. As I said Can't wait to see more Naschy films, can't believe it was not that long ago that I found out about him and his films 8.5/10

The Crawling Eye aka the trollenburg terror

Fantastic British 50s B movie. Really enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would and would go so far as to call it a classic. To my surprise it was not till after the film had finished I found that the scientist was play by none other than Warren Mitchell ( Alf Garnet) 9/10

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Wax Mask (1997)

Written by Dario Argento with a screen play by Lucio Fulci and directed by effects genius Sergio Stivaletti. The Wax Mask is a fine film almost let down by it's godawful tv movie style dubbing during the first twenty minutes.

Once this settles down or you get used to it, The Wax Mask is a very good slab of Euro horror filled with disturbing ideas and wild inventiveness accompanied by gruesome effects to match. At it's heart the film is a rather tasty atmospheric horror which veers off during the final fifteen minutes into some warped Gothic Terminator pastiche. This sounds crazy and it is, but even more ludicrous, it actually works, taking the film out of it's comfort zone and dumbfounding first time viewers as well

Highly recommended, and desperate for a Shameless make over

[SShaw]

I am in Amsterdam for the weekend and in between the visits to cafes and hookers I will catch a few films at the Imagine film festival. Yesterday I saw:

Escape from tomorrow an unsettling and disturbing look at the nightmare behind the dream as one young families holiday in Florida's Disney World resort takes a turn for the strange. Odd, funny and disturbing.

Thou wast mild and lovely 2014 seems to be the year for Joe Swinbourne. In this film he plays a man with a troubled marriage who takes seasonal work on an isolated farm. As he becomes involved wight he farmers daughter the film builds a tense unsettling atmosphere which is released with drastic consequences when his wife arrives for a visit. An experimental film which is recommended viewing.

Zero Theorem I think this may already have been and gone in U.K. cinemas but i can't help but feel a little disappointed with Terry Gilliam's latest film. Set in a world which looks and feels like some strange amalgam of Brazil and Blade Runner it is an interesting if flawed love story as Christopher Weiss' character looks for the proof of an improvable theorem and finds himself. Its slow to start but worth persevering with for the flashes of Gilliam genius which suggest this could (perhaps should) have been a great film. Perhaps he put the bar too high with Brazil and Twelve Monkeys?

Magic, Magic A young American girl journey's to the rural south of Chile for a holiday with her cousin and her Chilean friends. Clever use o a disjointed script and jarring music combine to create a sense of unrelenting disturbing unease. This is on limited release in the U.K. over Easter.

A brilliant start to my visit and whether by fluke or design there is a developing theme of unease.

I plan another 7 films before I head for home tomorrow night.

[Make Them Die Slowly]

FRIGHT WORLD. A satanic serial killer comes back to life and slaughters kids in an abandoned theme park. Murky is the best way to describe this one, the film looks like it was shot through a used tea bag and the sound is awful but luckily that doesn't really matter as the whole thing is drenched in wall to sub Marilyn Mason style music as people wonder around a lot. However there are some moments of cinematic greatness to be had: the title sequence is a mix of necro thrills and warped looking demon masks; the killer is resurrected from a puddle of blood caused by a ruptured hymen as the only victim to ever escape him decides to have her cherry popped in a room full of stuffed animals and my favourite scene...a drunk woman having a piss on the floor, toppling over in to the piss and then sitting there in her own wee wanking about clowns!

[trebor8273]

Black Belly of the Tarantula

Fantastic giallo, which is low on gore but has tonnes of atmosphere , great acting, direction, great pace and fantastic score. We have the story of a killer who goes around murdering young women, but injects them with a person so they can't move but are conscious while they are being killed.

We have Giancarlo Giannini as the inspector on the case who is very good and unlike a lot of police inspectors in these movies his character is very well written and has depth. The lovely Barbra Bach also stars amongst others. 10/10

Bloody pit of horror
The complete opposite of the last film, had no redeeming qualities what so ever, could only manage about 40 minutes before I had to turn it off. 2/10

[SShaw]

So day 2 at Imagine was a more relaxed affair. I had planned to attend the Night of Horrors (the event the festival outgrew) but after the cancellation of Zombeavers and the announcement of Occulus at Dead by Dawn I cancelled my ticket having seen or having the opportunity to see 3 from the 4 films. I will also most likely catch up with the Quiet Ones whilst at home in Edinburgh over Easter.

So only three films Deadly Virtues: Love.Honour.Obey., L’étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps and The Desert and the latter two were a catch up of films I missed on the circuit last year.

First up was the excellent Deadly Virtues. I guess this probably, despite its Dutch director, counts as a British film. It is a blend of the home invasion/torture porn genres in which Aaron breaks into the home of a young couple whilst they are having sex in an upstairs bedroom. Aaron gags and binds the husband and tells his wife that they will live if she submits willingly to his sexual advances. Over the course of the weekend cracks in the couples marriage become evident and it becomes increasingly difficult to identify who is the real monster. The director described his film as "no budget" rather than low budget but as usual a tight script and convincing performances (except for Aaron's problem with his accent) more than make up for lack of money - and the lack of money is never evident on screen. THis is a film that deserves an audience.

Next up from the production team behind Amer was L’étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps another attempt to reinvent the Giallo genre nearly 30 years on. This film is clearly experimental and masterfully uses the techniques of film making (in particular a quite brilliant use of match cuts) to unbalance and disorient the audience. Trying to follow the narrative is probably quite useless, instead this is film as sensory experience. One should just relax and let the images flow over oneself. A film that really needs to be seen on a big screen and will lose a lot in the home (particularly as there are a number of scenes the BBFC will undoubtedly be troubled by). If you have the chance to see this on the big screen grab it with both hands and both feet. Recommended for the adventurous.

Finally The Desert, which i believe played Fright Fest last summer. This Argentinian film uses the zombie apocalypse to explore the relationship between three strangers who are brought together by the Zombie armageddon. Despite establishing clear rules, trust between the two male and one female protagonist breakdown when the privacy of big brother style video diaries is violated. Yet another in the Zombie film with nearly no Zombies genre. Recommended.

Tomorrow is an early start to squeeze in my final four films before I head for the airport for tea and my flight home.

[trebor8273]

Now watching the blood splattered bride lets hope it's better than the bloody pit.

[Make Them Die Slowly]

THE DEAD DON'T SLEEP. A gang of kids head to the lake for Spring Break in some old dog dick of a town. Here amongst the topless bathing and flesh flashes they are one by one kidnapped and taken to what looks like an industrial laundry to be processed... Yet more low budget high jinks with the normal quota of flesh and blood. People run up and down corridors in bikinis, so much so that at any moment I expected Frankie and Annette to appear. On the plus side this has the finest anti acting I have seen in an age, making me believe I was witnessing some art prank as the lack of acting looks stylized...no one could be that bad. There is a whiff of 2000 Maniacs about this but I would be buggered if I could tell you why. Contains a grossly overweight child eating pretzels throughout and twin goth Dominatrix who have the most pathetic slow motion fight with one of the heroes you are likely to ever see. As with a lot of these no budget gems, it goes on for ages and is in need of being pruned back to make a better film, well for some anyway, I love how these low budget film makers refuse to worry about pacing and the viewers boredom thresholds and just film and release every second of their scripts and visions.