Assuming you liked The Great Dictator and The Gold Rush, there are some great films in store if you want to catch up on Chaplin's filmography – my favourite is City Lights.

I some Triangle at the cinema and thought it was great, so bought the BD and have seen it plenty of times since (including Christopher Smith's commentary) and it never disappoints.

As a 'stand-alone' comment, that would get a 'like'!

Yeah - and check out 'The Circus'. Slapstick at it's best!

AND...it has a monkey on a tightrope!

I haven't, but it sounds as though it may be interesting.

I'll definitely be looking to check out more of Chaplin's films in tht near future.

Back to my recent viewings, I'd HIGHLY recommended Noisy Requiem for anyone looking for something a bit different and more on the surreal side. A real treat to watch, despite it's long run time.

not many films viewed in the past two weeks as i've been working my way through 100s of episodes of The Simpsons. But here's what i've watched...

BODY SNATCHERS (1993) ***
Good solid B studio picture from an unlikely director. Abel Ferrarer's take on Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is good paranoid fun. The cast do their best and even if he is woefully under-used, Forest Whitaker's paranoid major is a good character. Worth watching in a double feature with PuppetMasters.

PUPPETMASTERS (1994) ***
loosely based on Robert Heinlein's book, this is again a good solid B picture about a covert alien invasion. Has shades of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and a good sinister role for Donald Sutherland. The film had a lot of trouble during production and at times you can see it, but on the whole a good 90 minute film in the style of the X-Files.

BEAST IN THE CELLAR (1975) ****
I watched this while suffering from a nasty stomach virus and even though i was throwing my guts up, i still found this quite atmospheric and at times chilling. Good performances from Beryl Reid and Flora Robson and some nice production design. A Good Tigon horror. Damn us brits knew how to make horror films.

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (2007) **
I think the more i watch this film, the more i realise how tough it was to write. Some of the jokes are simpson's funny but most of the time the gags seem forced and barely raise a chuckle. Now only if they'd done a feature length tree house of horror style portmanteau film. The animation however is great.

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT (2012) ***
Overlong but sporadically funny rom-com with a likeable lead in Jason Segal who seems to be the best comedy writer coming out of hollywood at the moment. But the film does suffer from it's 124minute runtime and could have been cut down to 90 minutes. The Elmo and Cookie Monster scene is very funny though.

DRIVE (2011) *****
This film is just incredible, from the cast, the direction and cinematography to the brilliant 80s electro-synth soundtrack, violent without being gratuitous and dreamlike in it's vision. Outstanding film.

THE SWEENEY (2012) ****
Good gritty british crime thriller that echos Heat at points but ends with a disappointing car chase through a caravan park. Ray Winston is good as Regan but he's not John Thaw and Ben Drew is watchable as Carter but he's not Dennis Waterman. If they changed the names of the characters and the title of the film then it wouldn't divide critics so much as there's not really anything resembling the classic TV show here. Still one of the better British crime thrillers of recent years and probably Nick Love's best film.

What films have you seen recently?
 

What films have you seen recently?

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I know its been said a million time about the animal cruelty in cannibal films so ill keep it to a minimum i didnt like it.

Moving on..... apart from the obvious after hearing so many bad things said about this i actually really like it. Some of the gore effects were done well even tho the hooks through the breasts make me a little weak in the stomach( a past incident i had with my pierced nipple :( ) Not as grim as Cannibal Holocaust but still a really good film.

THE THING.(prequel). It's almost impossible to watch this without constantly cross referencing to Carpenter's film in your head as the action unfolds in this new film. There's little that can be done to bring anything new to the proceedings as the film has to dovetail into JC's film at the end of the day, so basically you end up with a replay of the Carpenter film with slight variations to plot and action scenes. That said, it starts fairly swiftly with no real attempt to build anything more than rudimentary characterisation of the cast and rightly so, we all know they are going to die in the end, so why bother. Instead it concentrates on action at the beginning and the end of the film, with a middle section that fails to create the paranoia of Carpenter's film but gives it a go.

An okay time waster at best with some incredibly impressive stunt work involving fire.

TOMMYKNOCKERS.

Not seen this since the 90's (and the mid nineties at that) after I picked it up from the video store after school. I remember not liking it at the time, I'd just read the book and remember the film feeling like a letdown...well I found the us dvd release in a local market so I thought I'd give it a go.

Returning to it after all these years.. Well I liked it. Its far from the best stephen king adaptation, but its also far from the worse. It's certainly aged a bit better than Golden years! Jimmy Smits from NYPD blue is great and it passed the time well enough in spite of the 3 hour running time, and I liked the way it tried to draw parralels with the tommyknockers and man's relationship to nuclear power.

The movie that coined the phrase 'Phrying the Coke'?
That shit's nasty...
Nostalgia Critic : Explaining Frying the Coke - YouTube

Yeah, that bit was great! Poor John Ashton..

I'd totally forgotten Traci lords was in it as the post mistress! She's bloody good in it as well! Also Joanna Cassidy from Blade runner, Robert Carradine, Cliff de young (who gets to make out with traci lords a lot the lucky swine) and of course E.G. Marshall..

Paranoiac (1963) 8/10 Just BRILLIANT!
Shock Waves (1977) 7/10
Scream of Fear (1961) 8/10
Crawlspace (1986) 7/10

'The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms' (1953) Giant lizard squishes New York!
'It Came From Beneath The Sea' (1955) Giant Octopus Squishes San Francisco
'20 Million Miles To Earth' (1957) Giant Venusian Squishes Rome
'Melancholia' (2011) Giant planet quishes everywhere!
'Mysterious Island' (1961) Giant Crab/Chicken/Bees and Octopus don't squish anything!
:popcorn:

I love the funhouse chase at the start. That monkey/tightrope scene is also hilarious.

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again

This film contains one of my all-time favourite quotes.

Two scantily clad young ladies are being held captive in a pit. The trap door opens, and a chunk of meat is thrown down to them. One of the starving young lovelies rushes over to it, when the others one exclaims:

'Don't eat it - it might be Rudy'!

They don't write 'em like that any more!!!

Terrifier - Nasty little 20 minute short film about a woman on the road being stalked a killer clown with a thing for dismemberment. Has that whole, fake grindhouse thing going, with the retro title card, fake print damage and faded colours. Gore effects are pretty good too. Nasty ending twist.

If you have a spare 20 minutes, check it out on YouTube.

I watched this recently too.

For a 20 minute short, it was pretty well made with some interesting ideas.

Valhalla Rising. (Nicolas Winding Refn). Have never seen this country (Scotland;)) look so bleakly beautiful. The story was there ocassionaly, but this only got in the way of the scenery for me:laugh:
May watch it again tonight.

Yeah, I thought it was an excellent film, although the director's commentary track explains a lot of the film away in pretty lame terms - comparing the warrior to the monolith in 2001 (?) The film is best left mysterious I think...

Yes, his bits in the "making of" were quite pofaced. When he mentioned Tarkovsky etc. Thought the DA was quite cute though:laugh:

Maniac (1980) - Amazing, absolutely amazing. Sleazey as hell, even more than New York Ripper IMO, but I personally don't look at it as a horror or a slasher. Spinell's amazing performance makes it like a compelling psychological drama or thriller. It leaves so much to mystery, with conclusions needing to be pieced together from Dialouge, like the fact that Franks mother was an abusive prostitute. Attention to detail was quite impressive too, as one only needs to looks at the things in a Franks apartment, like art and other items, including a piece of art on his door consisting of women's faces, with the eyes and mouths cut out. The BU blu ray has been on my want list for a while, but now its rocketed to the top.

Also the soundtrack was great, as was Savini's inventive demise.

This simply didn't work for me! Kept on seeing the cover everywhere and them finally took the plunge! But 10-15 minutes of Mikleson staring silently upwards into the rain whilst some kid looks on forced me to put into the sell on pile!

Demoncrat, have you seen The Pusher Trilogy ? Incredible series of films that got better as they went along... I was lukewarm on Bronson but I'll see it again...

Yes, I can see how people would be thrown off by the (UK) cover, which does make it look like Bravefart or something....:rolleyes:;)

Pusher is one of my favourites. Would make a great double bill with After Hours (Scorcese) I feel. ;)

Was due to watch Brandon Cronenberg's 'Antiviral' at the Leeds fest yesterday but, despite the cinema being almost exactly one street away from where I live, ended up too drunk to leave the house. What a dick. Anyway, by way of compensation, I offer -

BEYOND THE DARKNESS - I've lost count of the number of times I've seen this over the years, and I'm always pleasantly surprised to find its sleazy essence undiminished by the passing of time. Although not massively explicit by today's standards, it wallows in a really foetid atmosphere and contains some moments which still bring me to the verge of gipping after repeat exposure (the post body disposal broth, but also moments of borderline oedipal surrogate mother love between lead character and his witchy housekeeper... how many films even get close to the scene where she jerks him off whilst he stares adoringly at the corpse of his former girlfriend?) I'm always also quite interested in (and baffled by) the undeveloped supernatural subplot. It's a film I return to when I need to remind myself of how downright icky cinema can be. Wonderful stuff and totally recommended if you haven't seen it (I know 95% of the people on here will be familiar with it). Certainly Joe D'Amato's best flick IMO.

EBOLA SYNDROME - Another film for which the adjective 'rancid' was seemingly invented, 'Ebola Syndrome' follows Anthony Wong as he indulges his preferences for rape and murder in the service of spreading disease. There's a lot of over the top HK violence (the gore being slightly trimmed in most available versions, although the sleaze appears intact) along wth a general ridiculousness. It feels great watching a film which is so enthusiastically and unapologetically offensive. Weirdly enough, although this is maybe the fourth time I've seen it, I've never noticed all the references to racism up till now. Were the filmmakers making a comment, or being ill advisedly flippant, or just simply being racist? I guess a film like 'Ebola Syndrome' won't reveal its profound truths just like that. This issue aside, 'Edola Syndrome' is Cat 3 101 for those looking for the twisted and the hilarious.

I love Jay Chattaway's score and the overall sleaziness of the film. I'm waiting for the BU BD to arrive as well.

I also rate it higher than most slasher's mainly due to Spinnells performance, the subway scene is really well done, with the tension ratcheted to the max but I think the ending left a lot to be desired, one of the only downsides.

Sent from my Galaxy S 2 using Tapatalk 2

Can wholeheartedly agree with both reviews. Haven't watched Buio Omega this year, sorry metaphysical vikings, tis the love that death cannot defeat for me later, dear cthulhu I'm fickle:laugh:

In the dark days before I got Paypal, I had to get other folk to "get me things". Asked a female friend to get me TES, and she was fine with that (Coil fan etc), but the chap whom she got it from kept emailing her after as "she was the first female customer he'd ever had...."

Kai San flees to South Africa which had a long history of racism I guess. ;)

The subway scene, and the nurses acting in it were really good, the kind of thing you expect in a modern horror movie or an A Grade thriller.

While the ending left me a bit confused, I quite liked the mystery of it.

Well, I was kind of thinking that, but it all seems too laboured to be a simple comment about apartheid, and yet apparently irrelevant to the plot of a movie about someone who goes around murdering and raping people in order to infect them with disease. Unless 'Ebola Syndrome' is way, way more sophisticated than I originally thought. Maybe a case of hidden depths lost in translation (yeah right).

Yep, I love Maniac - it gives hope to losers everywhere that a guy like Frank could get with a girl like Caroline Munroe :crazy:

I must go back and revisit this film after your fine appraisal Frankie, I was cold on the film myself when I first saw it...

Oh, for me it's definitely up there in any Italo-horror top ten. There are slight stretches of drag, but I think it really works atmospherically. It's just so... slimy.

And made with real corpses so the legend goes. I always loved the alternative and enigmatic title Blue Holocaust...

I was reading a review that called the relationship "not completely unbelievable".
Yet the whole time i was thinking, "Why is she just deciding to go out with the fat creepy guy in the park who followed here home!"

Say anyone here got the blu-ray of this? I think its a Shriek Show.

Also, i think this ones still banned in Australia. I think its because of Necrophilia.

Yes, I've heard that particular legend. Looks like Joe had a trip to his local butcher's before he shot the human taxidermy scene - apart from this standard moment of HG Lewis real offal, can't find much evidence of any clandestine morgue visitations.
Yeah, I prefer 'Blue Holocaust', but I guess it remains a title in search of a film...

I haven't posted for a while and have mainly forgotten what I have watched apart from two things yesterday, stuff I've had from Lovefilm and the one DVD I remember sticking on.

The Handmaid's Tale (1990) - because I couldn't be bothered to read the book, a nice film if you haven't read the book but I suspect the book is better.

Love On The Dole (1941) - great film, think pre kitchen sink realism, kitchen sink realism.

Repulsion (1965) - Great film but not my favourite Polanski. If I was considering the "Apartment Trilogy" The Tenant would be number 1 for me with this second.

The Killer Inside Me (2010) I wasn't sure what to expect but this was a fantastic film, certainly worth seeing.

Rivals (2000) - Made for TV true movie about a teenage girl getting caught up in a volatile relationship. Interesting story, acting is fine (although I usually prefer badly acted made for TV movies), on reflection it was really good.

Creepshow (1982) - I've seen it a million times but couldn't resist recording it as it was on a HD channel.

Beetlejuice (1988) - see above. I love Tim Burton but not really after Sleepy Hollow. I did like Sweeney Todd - A woman started discussing the film in Smiths as I was talking to my Grandad about it, she said there was more music in it than she expected, I said it was adapted from the Sondheim musical, she said there was still too much music. Anyway, I do also want to see Dark Shadows, has anyone seen it? if so, how did you like it? and have you ever watched the TV show?

The Night Child (1975) - I'm sure a lot of members will have watched this recently, fantastic film, I already want to watch it again.