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I'm going to the Odeon 'Screen Unseen' film tonight though. For those who don't know it's a mystery film (for a fiver) that they show up to 2 weeks before it's regular release date, obviously as a device to generate buzz. They give clues the week before though and it seems that tonights film is Arrival which I'm already dying to see!
__________________ Triumphant sight on a northern sky |
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The Houses of Halloween (2014) Utterly dreadful shaky cam non-horror about a group of friends searching for the ultimate Halloween horror experience. From the opening moments it's plainly obvious how the film is going to end and getting there is such a chore. The film is bloated and overlong with endless shots of dreary driving and wandering round Halloween theme park houses where there are no scares as we know it's all basically an extreme fun house, at least until the end which as mentioned already was so, so predictable. The dvd case proudly boasts 'From the producers of Insidious and Paranormal Activity' - well they sucked as well. The Houses of Halloween is the worst film i've watched in quite a while. Avoid like the plague. |
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Yeah, i've never got the popularity of the Paranormal Activity series. 75% boredom, 25% of which is down to the annoying 'found footage' to save money in production, 15% bad acting, 10% slight spookiness. I can't recall a single found footage film i've thought is any good - oh, wait, i did enjoy Cloverfield. I was looking forward to watching Frankenstein's Army on telly the other day, then it started and it was found footage bollocks. Knackered the film IMO. |
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I watched The Culture High (2014, Brett Harvey) An American doc about "mary jane" and personal freedoms. Didn't really learn anything new, so I decided to redress that balance by watching the sterling Go Ask Alice (1973, John Korty) As it is a searing look at "drugs" and kids", neither of which feature in the film, though that may have been the terrible print haha. Read the "novel" years ago, and was quite taken with its blatant propaganda. This TVM is the same confused garbage. See! people stare at a birthday cake. Watch! As Shatner takes another paycheck whilst sleepwalking. Recoil! from some of the most hysterical nonsense since Refeer Madness. Highly recommended, if you like having your brain turned to porridge.
__________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] [B] "... the days ahead will be filled with struggle ... and coated in marzipan ... "[/B] |
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CARNIVAL OF SOULS I originally caught this by chance on the BBC years ago and absolutely loved it. Through various ok dvd releases through the years, we now have the ultimate Blu ray edition from Criterion. I've often thought black and white movies benefit especially from the BD treatment and this print looks stunning ( no seriously - ask the experts! ). The film itself has a quality and atmosphere all of its own - there really isn't anything else quite like it. THE HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK Robert Flemying stars as the nefarious Doc, whose kinky experiments lead to the death of his wife, only to marry Barbara Steele years later - but his past starts to catch up with him. Apparently, this Blu ray from Olive Films contains the shorter US edit, but until someone comes up with a longer print, this comes highly recommended for all fans of Italian gothic. |
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SYMPTOMS – Jose Larraz had an interesting career. Before he made slightly porny films about satanism a la 'Black Candles', he directed this exquisite gem which has to be the ultimate seventies horror sleeper. In it, moon faced Angela Pleasance gets a bit weird in an isolated mansion and Peter Vaughan hangs around being sinister. There's not much to it plot wise, and in fact not a great deal happens until the slightly overwrought climax, but 'Symptoms' is resplendently heavy on atmosphere. Visually, and just in terms of 'feeling', 'Symptoms' practically redefines 'Autumnal', being a film where every nuance and every pause is surrounded by a far-off but somehow menacing haze. I've seen it before on Youtube and I think I reviewed it at the time, but I didn't go mad for it until now, which I think is probably down to BFI doing such a great job on it. In the wrong frame of mind it could be boring, but I can only say that I watched it twice in a row (something I almost never do) and was transfixed each time. Surely up there with the best of seventies cinema full stop, 'Symptoms' is simply a must-see. IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS – Was nice to catch up with this bit of classic Carpenter once again. For the uninitiated, Sam Neil plays a private investigator tracking an elusive horror novelist whose fiction appears to be altering reality in a worryingly Lovecraftian manner. Yep, it's pretty ludicrous, but if there's room for Ken Loach then there should be room for garish, over heated pulp like this. There may not be much of a dramatic catharsis for the characters in this film, but the shortfall is more than made up for by some satisfyingly tentacular action and Carpenter's usual visual panache (though I thought there were a couple of nods to D Lynch here and there, but then I always say that). Nineties horror was a pretty shoddy affair, but here Carpenter, shining for the last time, showed them all how to do it. INFERNO – Can't go wrong with 'Inferno', possibly Argento's greatest (yeah, sue me) and a head spinning journey into the possibilities of horror set free from narrative concern. Well, there is a story of course, but its sole purpose is to give some validity to this 'Three Mothers' hokum and to hold together a bunch of sequences and vignettes which are more about visuals, lighting and camera work than plot development. That's not to say that 'Inferno' is shallow, just that its depths are cryptic and associative rather than based around psychology, character etc. It's a spiderweb of ambiguous symbols and references that hints at something genuinely nightmarish lurking beyond the wooden acting and throwaway dialogue. Witness that killer montage of black gloved hands decapitating a row of paper figures, an unidentified woman hanging herself and a lizard eating a moth... what's going on there? Still so enigmatic after all these years, and it amazes me that a major studio put this out. These days, it wouldn't even get made. |
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