What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

The Blackwell Ghost 2

Well. This is what we get now it seems. Horror films that don't play fair. And not in that cheeky Haneke way either . Slightly more in the way of "shocks" this time (some reminiscent of another housebound FFer cough). Wishy washy nonsensical shite. Neeext!!!
PS adding this as the flick had a coda also .... 'recovered' footage (ooooooh! ) ... one shot of which was decent enough. Pass.



Sharkansas Womens Prison Massacre

Traci Lords vs Sharks I thought ... ka ching! Well ... while the premise is a tad overcooked, I enjoyed this feast of tat. Adrian Lyne's Lolita also features as a feisty redhead. I did sit wondering what Jess would have done here tbh ...

[Frankie Teardrop]

OPERA – I guess this is Argento’s last gasp of greatness in the eyes of many, a final spurt of elephantine baroque before his dip in the nineties and beyond. It feels a bit like he’s parodying his own stuff in a way… though perhaps I only say this because the gaudy stylistics are laid on tornado style and, well, I watched it two weeks ago when I was drunk, and frankly that’s the kind of thing you find in a pisshead’s notepad next to the badly rendered scrawl of Cthulhu having a shag on a moped (or something). Well, it doesn’t take a particularly enhanced brain cell count to recall such plushly rendered sadism as the needles-under-the-eye routine and the various splashy deaths at the hands of black leather gloves in elegante surrounds. Elsewhere, gonzo visuals intrigue, such as the ‘throbbing brain on TV’ thing that keeps cropping up, and I loved the end, a zen-like joyous baffle. Cincin, Dario.

SONG OF SOLOMON – Anyone up for a Toni Morrison adaption will have to deal instead with the prospect of Jim Van Bebber doing an exorcism (before ripping his own eyes out) in this new installment of the reworked Guinea Pig ‘franchise’. Stephen Biro is certainly still flying the flag for gore with his Unearthed releases and ventures into hard horror such as the flick in question, and ‘Song of Solomon’ probably won’t disappoint those looking for a load of splattery latex. Its possessed-Linda Blair proxy-writhing-on-bed-in-room scenario is a thin excuse to showcase offal avalanches like the drawn out deconstructed Fulci gut barf sequence, although to be honest SOS belongs in the territory of ‘actual film with narrative’ rather than with the video abattoirs more typical of the GP series… that being the case, there are longueurs when the goings on between the gore can’t quite excite, and the graphic horror itself will not seem all that much to those well versed in this kind of thing. Worth watching though, and on the plus side SOS also adds a light touch in the form of lots of hard boiled banter between various representatives of the clandestine priesthood, just don’t expect Father Ted…

UNINVITED – I refer not to the various other flicks bearing the same or similar title, but specifically to the one about the mutant cat on the ship with the mobsters and a load of eighties people. Yeah, that one. Even though I do have a thing about obscurities from the VHS era, can’t say I’ve crossed paths with ‘Uninvited’ (1988) before now. Maybe I just have better taste than I credit myself with. Or did. Whatever, ‘Uninvited’ is pretty much the top of its game in its very niche specialism, though in truth there aren’t many other mutant cat-on-a-boat type flicks to compare it to. Set against the wider landscape of horror cinema, or even narrowing that down to funky lo-fi schlock starring George Kennedy on a boat, it kind of loses out. There are definite pluses – the weirdly arbitrary monster (a cat within a cat?), the fact that, after all, it’s about a mutant cat stalking people on a boat, some of your old school effects, George Kennedy, bad acting by a bunch of stiffs etc etc. The problem is, as always, the presence of too much f*cking about. In a way that’s quite an achievement, because with this set up you don’t really have access to a load of dimly lit corridors for people to constantly wander down. What you do have is a couple of rooms and plenty of time for people to party and sit around talking. So that’s that. The ‘sheer boredom to high weirdness’ ratio is not weighted in its favour. But hey, I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It will appeal to nostalgics and lovers of badly made, underappreciated oddness like myself, but you have to forgive dullness and be able to scrape a sliver of enjoyment out of bad haircuts and shite fashion when it comes to stuff like this. Vinegar Syndrome have of course done a bad movie proud.

CRONOS – Del Toro’s first feature, and one that I hadn’t seen for a while – long enough for me to forget the specifics, anyway. I’m never very sure whereabouts I stand on the director’s work, for although I can see the obvious quality I very rarely get excited about it. Then again, I really dug that one he did about giant cockroaches, or I think I did. With ‘Cronos’, you get an obviously prototypical package, one that predates but doesn’t necessarily portend the dizzy heights of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ et al. I like the perverse melding of cinematic realities – one that could quite easily be left as a nineties continental art house flick about the charming relationship between an eccentric old antiques dealer and his silent granddaughter, the other corresponding more or less to a B-flick with rent-a-face Ron Perlman as a heavy in the service of a vampiric mob-guy. What unites the two is the weird conception at the heart of the movie, a fountain of eternal youth in the form of a clockwork device housing a blood-sucking, lifeforce expanding louse. This kind of hi-concept stuff, together with Del Toro’s undeniable visual elegance, really elevated the film at a time when the genre was bedraggled, and its quality stands up today.

[Paul Zombie]

Mountain of the cannibal God.

susan(Ursula Andress) and her brother team up with an anthropologist(Stacey keach) to find her husband who has disappeared in the jungle.

Another highly entertaining film from the ever versatile sergio Martino. and is more like a Indiana jones adventure type film but with a bit of cannabilism thrown in and sex and nudity.
Always enjoy a good romp in the jungle. and although not up there with the likes of Umberto lenzi, this is still a top notch watch.
and ursula Andress was still looking as sexy as ever too even if she was in her 40's here, when being tied up naked to a stake.
Also the film does have a couple of WTF moments as well, including a bizarre scene with a native getting it on with a pig. must have been Sergio taking inspiration from Joe damato

Great score though, and well shot and colourful with nice locations. Just a shame though that this also has the obligatory scenes of animal cruelty that turn up in all of these films. but still gets 78 out of 100.

[Frankie Teardrop]

HALLOWEEN – The (recent) remake. Well, you have to go into these things with an open mind or else lose out; that said, I found it quite hard to supress the memory of the visceral menace looming throughout Carpenter’s original, which this film does not replicate. ‘Halloween’ 2018 is a solid revision in many ways. The level of film-making is certainly more accomplished than anything that graced the various sequels and retreads that preceded this one, something that you could maybe put down to the fact that director was a well-regarded indie newcomer before he decided on slumming it in the mainstream. It’s also more thoughtful than those other sequels, and most dumb-ass horror movies, in that it tries to consider the impact and dynamics of male violence and its consequences. Jamie Lee Curtis is great as an old Laurie Strode, frazzled into paranoid seclusion by her encounter with Myers, now practically living in a bunker when she isn’t feuding with her semi-estranged daughter, but, despite interesting themes, characterisation and its attempts to toy with and invert the original a bit, I’d be lying if I were to say that I was more than moderately entertained.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Queen of Spades (1949)

As with Peeping Tom and recently Repulsion i came into this film with no real knowledge of how it would play out, just that it's considered a classic, in this case of supernatural cinema.

As with the afore mentioned pair i came out the other side of a first viewing totally underwhelmed. Yes the film looks splendid and is beautifully directed by Thorold Dickinson, leading man Anton Walbrook is terrific as a down on his luck army captain who sells his soul to the devil in order to always win at cards and there are one or two scenes that are fraught with tension but there are far too many scenes of toffs dancing at grand balls which are basically filler and for all the brooding unease of the last half hour the rest is just far too dull. It was after all adapted from a short story by Alexander Pushkin and would have suited a horror anthology akin to Bava's Black Sabbath (As with Tolstoy's The Wurdulak) rather than a 100 minute film.

However, now i know what to expect, as with Peeping Tom and Repulsion i shall revisit The Queen of Spades when my mood is right for a certain style of film.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

OPERA – I guess this is Argento’s last gasp of greatness in the eyes of many, a final spurt of elephantine baroque before his dip in the nineties and beyond. It feels a bit like he’s parodying his own stuff in a way… though perhaps I only say this because the gaudy stylistics are laid on tornado style and, well, I watched it two weeks ago when I was drunk, and frankly that’s the kind of thing you find in a pisshead’s notepad next to the badly rendered scrawl of Cthulhu having a shag on a moped (or something). Well, it doesn’t take a particularly enhanced brain cell count to recall such plushly rendered sadism as the needles-under-the-eye routine and the various splashy deaths at the hands of black leather gloves in elegante surrounds. Elsewhere, gonzo visuals intrigue, such as the ‘throbbing brain on TV’ thing that keeps cropping up, and I loved the end, a zen-like joyous baffle. Cincin, Dario.

SONG OF SOLOMON – Anyone up for a Toni Morrison adaption will have to deal instead with the prospect of Jim Van Bebber doing an exorcism (before ripping his own eyes out) in this new installment of the reworked Guinea Pig ‘franchise’. Stephen Biro is certainly still flying the flag for gore with his Unearthed releases and ventures into hard horror such as the flick in question, and ‘Song of Solomon’ probably won’t disappoint those looking for a load of splattery latex. Its possessed-Linda Blair proxy-writhing-on-bed-in-room scenario is a thin excuse to showcase offal avalanches like the drawn out deconstructed Fulci gut barf sequence, although to be honest SOS belongs in the territory of ‘actual film with narrative’ rather than with the video abattoirs more typical of the GP series… that being the case, there are longueurs when the goings on between the gore can’t quite excite, and the graphic horror itself will not seem all that much to those well versed in this kind of thing. Worth watching though, and on the plus side SOS also adds a light touch in the form of lots of hard boiled banter between various representatives of the clandestine priesthood, just don’t expect Father Ted…

UNINVITED – I refer not to the various other flicks bearing the same or similar title, but specifically to the one about the mutant cat on the ship with the mobsters and a load of eighties people. Yeah, that one. Even though I do have a thing about obscurities from the VHS era, can’t say I’ve crossed paths with ‘Uninvited’ (1988) before now. Maybe I just have better taste than I credit myself with. Or did. Whatever, ‘Uninvited’ is pretty much the top of its game in its very niche specialism, though in truth there aren’t many other mutant cat-on-a-boat type flicks to compare it to. Set against the wider landscape of horror cinema, or even narrowing that down to funky lo-fi schlock starring George Kennedy on a boat, it kind of loses out. There are definite pluses – the weirdly arbitrary monster (a cat within a cat?), the fact that, after all, it’s about a mutant cat stalking people on a boat, some of your old school effects, George Kennedy, bad acting by a bunch of stiffs etc etc. The problem is, as always, the presence of too much f*cking about. In a way that’s quite an achievement, because with this set up you don’t really have access to a load of dimly lit corridors for people to constantly wander down. What you do have is a couple of rooms and plenty of time for people to party and sit around talking. So that’s that. The ‘sheer boredom to high weirdness’ ratio is not weighted in its favour. But hey, I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It will appeal to nostalgics and lovers of badly made, underappreciated oddness like myself, but you have to forgive dullness and be able to scrape a sliver of enjoyment out of bad haircuts and shite fashion when it comes to stuff like this. Vinegar Syndrome have of course done a bad movie proud.

CRONOS – Del Toro’s first feature, and one that I hadn’t seen for a while – long enough for me to forget the specifics, anyway. I’m never very sure whereabouts I stand on the director’s work, for although I can see the obvious quality I very rarely get excited about it. Then again, I really dug that one he did about giant cockroaches, or I think I did. With ‘Cronos’, you get an obviously prototypical package, one that predates but doesn’t necessarily portend the dizzy heights of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ et al. I like the perverse melding of cinematic realities – one that could quite easily be left as a nineties continental art house flick about the charming relationship between an eccentric old antiques dealer and his silent granddaughter, the other corresponding more or less to a B-flick with rent-a-face Ron Perlman as a heavy in the service of a vampiric mob-guy. What unites the two is the weird conception at the heart of the movie, a fountain of eternal youth in the form of a clockwork device housing a blood-sucking, lifeforce expanding louse. This kind of hi-concept stuff, together with Del Toro’s undeniable visual elegance, really elevated the film at a time when the genre was bedraggled, and its quality stands up today.

Kudos as always ....

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (2016)

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss come up with a way utilising Sherlock's mind palace to finally get their Holmes and Watson to 1890's London in this delightfully spooky affair.

What should be noted is that the way Holmes is introduced is exactly as Conan Doyle introduced the character in his writing of first novel A Study in Scarlet and to my knowledge has never been done previously.

Cleverly written as always and perfectly played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, this, although not quite as good as the first two series, and nowhere near the stand alone adventure that was promised, is still a very enjoyable ninety minutes.

[Demoncrat]

House Of Long Shadows (1983, Pete Walker)

Revisiting this Cannon flick was fun. Spurred on by the Darkside article, I dug out my rather faaaded vhs .... so the BD is now high priority as some scenes near the end were more like Brakhage than narrative cinema . Ahem.
Writer bets publisher he can run off a best seller in 24 hours. Publisher suggests secluded outpost for efficiency .... cough. Cue shenanigans. Saddling Peter Cushing with a lisp was a crime then and now. Am glad that I finally got to peruse the Hammer Old Dark House before returning to this ancestral pile .... as elements are lifted wholesale indeed. If only that original intention had been feasible ( redoing TODH) as the rather Dallas style denoument shatters any build up it might have had. Ahem.

[Graveyard]

220px-TheCollectorPoster.jpg

The Collector aka Home alone meets Saw - not a great movie, some gore effects and nothing else memorable not sure what was the idea with all the slow motion parts..

[Paul Zombie]

Enter The Devil.

A US marshal is investigating the mysterious disappearence of a tourist in a small texas town, and later teams up with a female professor who is a specialist in the occult.

Another of those films made in the 70's about witches and satanism, but this is one of the more obscure ones, with a cast of unknowns.
Nothing really outstanding, and it does take a while to get going. but it does have it's moments with a few decent creepy scenes with robed cult members with burning torches. and sacrifices, including a young mexican girl being tied up with barb wire before being crucified and burnt to death.

The eerie desert locations also add to atmosphere and give a nice contrast to the black mass rituals in the spooky caves.

Overall i quite liked it. and pretty decent performances despite an unknown cast. 71 out of 100.