What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Dave Boy]

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DOCTOR X(1932)

Great horror mystery. You just gotta try to overlook the stupid comedy reporter.
Shot in 2 strip Technicolor and Black and white versions.
I have the black and white version as well and it contains minor dialogue and scene variations.

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FREAKS (1932)

Pre-code 'horror' movie. Still powerful even now.
How do you even begin to write even a few words about this film?

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THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963)

Another good Roger Corman movie to add to his POE adaptations.
Full of atmosphere and great sets.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

As a film this first Tomb Raider movie is okay. It's a diverting watch and an enjoyable hour and a half but unlike say Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's instantly forgettable.

What it lacks is any real investment in the characters other than Croft herself, it's the fault of a troubled script writing process rather than anything to do with the actors in particular. In fact the support cast is pretty good. Daniel Craig gets to off show his abs in a shower scene, Iain Glen is a fun scenery chewing villain and Chris Barrie, Gordan Brittas himself, makes for an appealing butler to Lady Croft. The movie also sports one or two punchy action sequences, especially one that apes 1973's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad's Harryhausen creation Kali set piece.

What makes the film stand out and eminently watchable to me is Angelina Jolie. She is Lara Croft. From her hair and mouth to her big boo...boots, she looks the spitting image of Lara from the Core design video game, hell she even sounds exactly like her too. So it's credit to Jolie that we can get behind her Lara Croft (Pun intended) and simply go along for the ride.

For the record i much prefer all three Tomb Raider films to the Indy knock offs of the eighties such as the incredibly dated Romancing the Stone and it's sequel and the dreadful Allan Quartermain films with Richard Chamberlain.

[MrBarlow]

Dead Sleep. 1990.

A young nurse believes a doctor treating his patients is putting them into unnecessary comas which results in their deaths.

This films does show a way how doctors can advance in medicine and unorthodox ways to treat patients with mental health issues by electro shock while asleep. It is a bit of tongue in cheek thriller and interesting to watch but no real reason what the doctor's motives are really explained. Linda Blair plays the young nurse who is trying to expose the practice and gets nowhere with the board of directors or minister of health. I wouldn't say put it to the top of the watch pile but worth a view.

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[nicholasrope]

Goal Of The Dead

French Zombie Comedy/Horror n which a top Football team travel to a lower league side for a cup game but one of the players ends up being a Zombie and starts to affect others. It had a decent start but started to turn into a generic Zombie movie by the end. They had a novel approach to passing on the infection (Throwing up on the person) and I don't know if it was a 2 part series in France because halfway through, the opening credits were repeated or seeing it had a Football theme, it was a film of 2 halves.

The Negotiator

1998 film starring Samuel L. Jackson as a Police Negotiator who is accused of Murder and Corruption, before he's formally charged he takes hostages in a Police Station to prove his innocence. Kevin Spacey is the Negotiator, Jackson requests to help him. I knew I had seen this before but other than Spacey's opening scene, I could not tell you what happens so therefore it was like watching it for the 1st time and it is really enjoyable.

There's something about Warner Bros Action/Thriller movies in the 90's I liked,

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

I've only seen this once, many years ago, and have never seen the sequel so I ordered the Blu-ray set with both films and hope to watch both of them before finalising my top 10 Tuesdays list.

[Dave Boy]

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RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD (1973) (Spanish version)

The best of the Blind Dead sequels. It's just awesome to see the dead Templars in all of the films. The design is perfect and add the chanting music that accompanies them they are an awesome presence.

[Frankie Teardrop]

CHAINED FOR LIFE – The kind of flick that entrances by being just indefinably and subtly ‘off’, CFL is, I guess you could say, a ‘meta-movie’ that centres on a film shoot in an abandoned hospital where a horror maestro has gathered a bunch of actors with real-world disfigurements for an exploitation quickie. Its ambiguous tone ranges from bittersweet to vaguely creepy as Adam Pearson (who most will recognise from ‘Under The Skin’) and Jess Weixler (loads of stuff but notably ‘Teeth’) dance around their (dis)connection on set. Questions are raised about, erm, loads of issues probably. Definitely worth checking out as long as you’re not looking for the schlocky flick that they’re all trying to make in the film itself.

TRUTH OR DARE – I didn’t bother with this when it came out as I was put off by the reviews, most of which were decidedly underwhelmed. But it cropped up on Netflix, and, you know, what the hell, I’m not going be leaving my house any time soon obviously. I quite liked TOD in a way, it brought me back to those nineties post-Scream type flicks where the kids are all a bit sassy and the mood is deconstruction-lite (that’s not an actual mood unless you’re watching Jacques Derrida’s awful attempts at stand-up. Oh shut up Frankie). Anyway, that’s interesting for me as I couldn’t stand those films at the time but now go misty eyed at any old nostalgic shit that doesn’t make me feel too old, so… TOD, in the end, is in the ‘competent / entertaining enough’ ball park, though there was a bit that seemed to drag on for a while. PS it’s about a supernatural game of ‘truth or dare’ that gets nasty – the rest falls into place fairly predictably.

FASCINATION – I can’t quite work out where I stand on Jean Rollin these days. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of having a sudden relative surplus of downtime, the chance to get to grips with fundamentals like that. I hadn’t seen ‘Fascination’ for a good fifteen twenty years or so, and found it less intoxicating the other night than I did back then. Don’t get me wrong, Rollin’s auteurist universe here is evident and compelling, and, broadly, you can’t say there were or are many like him working in genre cinema. It’s just that the dreamy languor of it all just seems that bit too uh languorous. I think I just get a bit impatient with stuff these days, less prepared to put in the effort, but sadly also less smitten. I get that with a lot of the movies I used to rave over just because they were a bit odd in some way – now I wonder whether I could make it through some of them. Happily, there’s always something about the atmosphere of a Rollin film that keeps me going; if that doesn’t work for others, there’s always B Lahai parading around with a scythe.

THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE – It’s a point raised often enough to seem trite, but the work of H P Lovecraft is not really adaptable at all. Mainly that’s because its striking features are its literary style (ie shrill overuse of words like ‘squamous’ and sentences with way more commas than this one) and his constant, strangled attempts to evoke a sense of abstract horror at the edge of existence. Strip those page-bound things away and what’s left? A load of tentacles. Successes like ‘Reanimator’ and ‘From Beyond’ owe more to S Gordon and his appropriation of bits of Carpenter and Cronenberg than Lovecraft, and the same gloop-horror ethos is behind TCOOS, along with a layer of stylisation that chimes with a couple of latter-day films, ‘Mandy’ and ‘Annihilation’. I think that if TCOOS works at all, it does so more as part of that explicitly cinematic lineage rather than as a work that has any real connection with the story other than narrative bare bones. Beyond that, you could say that Richard Stanley does try to bring a trippy sensibility to it all that I suppose might share something with Lovecraft’s heightened sense of unreality, not that you could imagine yourself dropping a tab with the crusty old racist. All that aside - does it work? It’s alright. I didn’t feel myself getting into it very much, so I think I’ll have to try it again. On the other hand, Richard Stanley has somehow never quite been my cup of tea. I can see the quality of his work, but I’ve never really clicked with it. TCOOS brims with imposing visuals when it gets going, and there are other impressive aspects worth talking about – again, Stanley’s attempt to bring out the psychedelia inherent in Lovecraft’s geometrically challenged cosmos is laudable and a good idea, though here it doesn’t get much beyond the way things look. The film lacks a certain eeriness. Perhaps that’s the problem – whether you feel it lends itself to the screen or not, Lovecraft’s work could be genuinely dislocating, but TCOOS is too much like a standard horror sci-fi with nice visuals and Nick Cage. Take it for the latter and it’s good.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Dead Birds (2004)

A highly enjoyable American Civil War set horror film that charts a night of a group of bank robbers who hole up in an abandoned plantation house which has supernatural secrets all of it's own.

Despite being low budget this has a surprisingly good cast including Henry Thomas, Isiah Washington, Michael Shannon, Nicki Aycox, Patrick Fugit and Sons of Anarchy regular Mark Boone Junior, who all acquit themselves well.

Obviously houses with supernatural threats are ten a penny but this stands out from the usual glut of shite by actually doing something with the threat in creating an allegory with slavery and blending it in to the narrative. The film also boasts some superb creatures which are genuinely frightening when they appear, adding bona fide creepiness and scares to what is already a highly atmospheric Southern Gothic genre piece.

I'll stick my neck out here and say this was the best horror western until Bone Tomahawk came along.

[Nordicdusk]

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25 years after a priest murdered a group of frat guys and a local girl the same frat house unearth the story that no one in the collage or town has ever spoken about. They decide on hell night that it would be the perfect prank to one up the other frat houses to go to the asylum where the priest has been held since his horrible crimes and take some pictures of him in his cell. But it all goes wrong when he kills one of the new pledges and escapes returning to the frat house for more murder.

I found this a lot better than i expected my expectations were rock bottom but maybe that was the right way to go into this. Its far from perfect but i found it a bit of fun. There are plenty of blood and gore but sadly a lot of it is aftermath rather than the actual act. The priest has a great creepy look to him but is one liners get ridiculous pretty fast. It does drag a little around the middle and its hilarious when one of the frat guys is driving his sports bike flat out and it feels like an hour just to drive down the street

6/10

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Escape to Victory (1981)

My V.E. Day celebratory film.

Michael Caine, Max Von Sydow, Sylvester Stallone, Pele...seriously. What more can you ask for?

An absolutely brilliant piece of escapism (pardon my pun), guaranteed to make you cheer.