What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Mojo

THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI
Paul Naschy stars ( and beds most of the women - natch ) in another of his long line of werewolf tales, this one culminating in a stand off between his wolf persona and a ridiculous looking yeti. Incredible to think this made the 'nasties' list back in the day. Did they actually watch these films?
Not being a great fan of werewolf movies ( I prefer Naschy's other horrors ) this is, I guess, fairly enjoyable in a trashy Naschy kind of way!

It's another film you have to consider in the historical sense

The flaying scene, where the girl has the skin stripped from her back, is quite graphic, especially for when the film was made (1975) and the sex scenes (cave, two-on-one and suggestion of oral pleasuring) were probably the final straws as far as the BBFC were concerned!

[Demoncrat]

Hmmm. I wouldn't say any of the films on the blessed list were there 'for our protection' tbh. Kneejerk pandering to Middle England mostly. IMO.

[Cinematic Shocks]

Hellraiser (1987)

**** out of *****

[iank]

Parents. A quiet, withdrawn little boy seems paranoid and obsessed with the idea that his 1950s picture book perfect suburban parents are hiding dark secrets - secrets somehow connected to the endless supply of "leftovers" that end up on his plate at every mealtime. Randy Quaid stars in this seriously bizarre but rather wonderful late 80s darkly comic horror flick that is a true surreal cult gem. Incredibly strange but hypnotically compelling and even genuinely frightening at times. This was something of a favourite in the 90s but I hadn't seen it for at least 15 years, if not longer.

[Demoncrat]

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017, Matthew Vaughn)
I hate John Denver btw.
Reasonably enjoyable if overlong sequel. Nice doggy!!

[trebor8273]

First festive themed movie , a cracking horror / comedy and a classic , we all know the story of a bunch a gremlins that run amok causing havoc in the small town of Kingston Falls, most people probably already know that the town Square is the same one used in back to the future. 9/10

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

December 8th - The Cat and the Canary (1978)

Softcore porn deviant Radley Metzger's take on the classic tale of a group of people summoned to an old house to hear the reading of a will to find out who will end up wealthy and who won't. Meanwhile a killer is on the loose.

Originally a play then a silent film in 1927 and a vehicle for Bob Hope 12 years later, The Cat and the Canary is an Agatha Christie like murder mystery just not as good. An all star cast including Honor Blackman, Daniel Massey, Edward Fox and Carol Lynley, seem bored by Metzger's tepid direction. Pity he didn't revert to type as a bit of T&A would have livened up proceedings.

Things do improve in the second act as the occupants begin to get killed off but it's all a bit of a miss fire and not a patch on the Bob Hope version. Michael Winner would have made a better stab at proceedings one thinks.

[Frankie Teardrop]

SALEM'S LOT – Tobe Hooper's TV tour-de-force from '79. I remember watching this when I was a kid and being appropriately freaked out by jump scares such the sudden emergence of vampire Barlow's face from the shadows of a jail cell, but the image that has stayed with me (and, I imagine, many others) over the years has to be that of the undead Glick boy knocking on his pal's window through a shroud of mist. Maybe some of the intensity dissipates just as it should be picking up (I found part one atmospheric and full of foreboding, whereas part two seemed a bit flabby somehow, even as the horror action got going), but this is a reminder of how great Tobe Hooper was, even outside of his established classics, and is pretty much the acme of small town horror.

RED CHRISTMAS – Contemporary slasher with Dee Wallace as a matriarch who’s gathering her family for the festivities. She doesn’t count on the arrival of a hooded figure and the re-emergence of her back-story, with its abortion clinic tragedy. Pitched somewhere between conventional and quirky, ‘Red Christmas’ manages to deliver a few surprising moves in between routine killings (some nicely gory) and general running around in a house. The presence of a character with Downs and the whole termination angle make for a few strange mixed messages, and it was nice to see a monstrous and slightly sympathetic antagonist. Strange in outlook, hip in attitude, slightly wavering in delivery, ‘Red Christmas’ aint no turkey and may just appeal to the anti-natalist in you.

RITUALS – A trip out into the woods, where a bunch of medics bicker and moan about their ailing seventies practices. Their troubles start for real when they’re stalked by an unseen other who’s obviously seen ‘Deliverance’ a few times. On the whole, though, I prefer ‘Rituals’ to ‘Deliverance’ – it has a very different atmosphere, and kind of goes the bleak existential route in its latter half. It manages to prop itself up on dialogue alone at first – I can’t think of anything more boring than being on a camping trip with a bunch of hospital consultants, but here the dynamics are vivid and real. Gradually, there’s a sense of people being ground down into paste by the raw force of nature embodied by this stalker, and, by the film’s midway point, we’re in a haunted terrain where figures stumble through a desolate landscape, blind to their fate. Great stuff, definitely a recommend.

HIROKU THE GOBLIN – Shinya Tsukamoto’s next film after his debut, or something? It’s an early one of his, anyway. It’s probably the least of his works, but it’s still interesting and likeable. It’s set in an abandoned school, where a bumbling archaeology professor fumbles about trying to find the site of ancient temple where some dude wore a three-horned crown… don’t know, I kind of zoned out and took in its weird visuals and odd textures instead. It could read as a pastiche of western genre tropes, with bits of ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘The Thing’ here and there, but also maybe not really when you consider the role of culture and myth. It’s less stylised than many of his works from around the time, but come on, this is the guy who did ‘Tetsuo’, you’re not going to get away without being whacked by a few unhinged camera moves. Good. I liked it.

DEMON WIND – This one definitely is an ‘Evil Dead’ rip off of sorts, it has the whole ‘isolated cabin’ thing down pat. Although, tonally, it’s different. Whereas ‘Evil Dead’ very deliberately went for the jugular in a hugely contrived and stylised manner, it’s really not clear what the makers of DW are up to. The opening half hour is stilted and strange, with odd character interactions and random Shakespeare quotes, plus also the inclusion amongst a standard group of horror-fodder kids of a couple of travelling magicians who are of absolutely no consequence to the proceedings at all. At the same time, there are so many nice little details and flourishes, like a long shot of a convoy of cars down in a valley that pulls back to reveal an egg hatching maggots in the foreground. The film does get a bit bogged down with its zombie-demon apocalypse – it all gets a bit samey, although one funny thing is that acquaintances of the core group keep turning up, despite all the VHS level shite that’s hit the fan. Entertaining and wonky enough to be some kind of winner, I guess.

[keirarts]

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About to see this theatrically in vue's 4k season. One of the finest Xmas movies ever. Nuff said.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

SALEM'S LOT – Tobe Hooper's TV tour-de-force from '79. I remember watching this when I was a kid and being appropriately freaked out by jump scares such the sudden emergence of vampire Barlow's face from the shadows of a jail cell, but the image that has stayed with me (and, I imagine, many others) over the years has to be that of the undead Glick boy knocking on his pal's window through a shroud of mist. Maybe some of the intensity dissipates just as it should be picking up (I found part one atmospheric and full of foreboding, whereas part two seemed a bit flabby somehow, even as the horror action got going), but this is a reminder of how great Tobe Hooper was, even outside of his established classics, and is pretty much the acme of small town horror.

RED CHRISTMAS – Contemporary slasher with Dee Wallace as a matriarch who’s gathering her family for the festivities. She doesn’t count on the arrival of a hooded figure and the re-emergence of her back-story, with its abortion clinic tragedy. Pitched somewhere between conventional and quirky, ‘Red Christmas’ manages to deliver a few surprising moves in between routine killings (some nicely gory) and general running around in a house. The presence of a character with Downs and the whole termination angle make for a few strange mixed messages, and it was nice to see a monstrous and slightly sympathetic antagonist. Strange in outlook, hip in attitude, slightly wavering in delivery, ‘Red Christmas’ aint no turkey and may just appeal to the anti-natalist in you.

RITUALS – A trip out into the woods, where a bunch of medics bicker and moan about their ailing seventies practices. Their troubles start for real when they’re stalked by an unseen other who’s obviously seen ‘Deliverance’ a few times. On the whole, though, I prefer ‘Rituals’ to ‘Deliverance’ – it has a very different atmosphere, and kind of goes the bleak existential route in its latter half. It manages to prop itself up on dialogue alone at first – I can’t think of anything more boring than being on a camping trip with a bunch of hospital consultants, but here the dynamics are vivid and real. Gradually, there’s a sense of people being ground down into paste by the raw force of nature embodied by this stalker, and, by the film’s midway point, we’re in a haunted terrain where figures stumble through a desolate landscape, blind to their fate. Great stuff, definitely a recommend.

HIROKU THE GOBLIN – Shinya Tsukamoto’s next film after his debut, or something? It’s an early one of his, anyway. It’s probably the least of his works, but it’s still interesting and likeable. It’s set in an abandoned school, where a bumbling archaeology professor fumbles about trying to find the site of ancient temple where some dude wore a three-horned crown… don’t know, I kind of zoned out and took in its weird visuals and odd textures instead. It could read as a pastiche of western genre tropes, with bits of ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘The Thing’ here and there, but also maybe not really when you consider the role of culture and myth. It’s less stylised than many of his works from around the time, but come on, this is the guy who did ‘Tetsuo’, you’re not going to get away without being whacked by a few unhinged camera moves. Good. I liked it.

DEMON WIND – This one definitely is an ‘Evil Dead’ rip off of sorts, it has the whole ‘isolated cabin’ thing down pat. Although, tonally, it’s different. Whereas ‘Evil Dead’ very deliberately went for the jugular in a hugely contrived and stylised manner, it’s really not clear what the makers of DW are up to. The opening half hour is stilted and strange, with odd character interactions and random Shakespeare quotes, plus also the inclusion amongst a standard group of horror-fodder kids of a couple of travelling magicians who are of absolutely no consequence to the proceedings at all. At the same time, there are so many nice little details and flourishes, like a long shot of a convoy of cars down in a valley that pulls back to reveal an egg hatching maggots in the foreground. The film does get a bit bogged down with its zombie-demon apocalypse – it all gets a bit samey, although one funny thing is that acquaintances of the core group keep turning up, despite all the VHS level shite that’s hit the fan. Entertaining and wonky enough to be some kind of winner, I guess.

As always kudos. Hiroku ... must dig that out ... and you've made my mind up regarding DW. Cheers F!!!