What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

The Devonsville Terror. 1983.

A doctor looks into the history of a small town that has a curse over it since three women were sentenced for being witches.

This one kind of jumped out at me while scrolling through at what to watch, it is not captivating and appealing with the plot as it sounds like something that has been done before, when the names Donald Pleasance and Ulli Lommel popped up this sounded like a good combination. Parts of it seems very amatuerish with the cinematography and the low budget but surprisingly it does actually work IMO. Suzanne Love takes the lead as the new teacher who seems to be possessed of a deceased witch with a feisty attitude. May not be for everyone but one I will return to at some point.

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[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I actually saw Total Recall at the cinema. Saw it in a sadly long gone old style hall cinema called The Grand in Nelson, Lancs.

The Ritz Cinema in Gosport

Once the pride of the South coast, now the location is split between the Job Centre and the Iceland frozen food shop!

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I actually saw Total Recall at the cinema. Saw it in a sadly long gone old style hall cinema called The Grand in Nelson, Lancs.

I saw TR at the pictures, the Capitol in Aberdeen, which was also old school (and mainly used as a live venue by that point). Me and two other folk.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Dr. No (1962)

A landmark film in cinematic history. The first James Bond film and the tone for what was to come is set early doors with the insanely cool introduction of Sean Connery as Bond...James Bond.

Whilst the film itself isn't the greatest example of a Bond film, there's not an awful lot of action for a start and it lacks colourful villains, it does feature the most iconic scene in the series sixty year history - That of a bikini clad Ursula Andress emerging from the sea - and went on to form the backbone of the British film industry and does so to this day.

[gag]

With the recent talk about nasties I thought I’d watch one or two.

Zombie flesh eaters, what more needs to be said that already hasn’t, up there as one of the best zombie films there is and the music score it helps it along .

Fight for your life, never seen this before watched uncut on YouTube, was expecting to be completely garbage turns out it wasn’t so bad, still one of the nasties not available or been released yet, only problem I think this would have is the colourful racist language, and fact they don’t like cruelty to kids as much as animals so the little lad getting his head caved in with a brick, otherwise there nothing in there thats any worse than films like last house on left or I spit on your grave, after all the 70s was full of these styles of films.

NIADB can see why this went on the list it’s a real nasty of gem, very gory and sleazy highly recommended, probably wouldn’t have been as controversial if released today and not early 80s.

[MrBarlow]

The Reckoning. 2020.

A widow is falsely accused of being a witch and endures five days of torture at the hands of the sadistic Witchfinder.

From Director Neil Marshall this was a bit tamer than his previous horror movies, was he told to tone down a lot or is he going soft on us? I'm always expecting a lot of films like these to be something like Mark Of The Devil but nothing seems to come close to it.

Charlotte Kirk plays the female lead Grace who is accused of being in league with Satan while Sean Pertwee does make a convincing Witchfinder and a son of God. There is some amount of torture in it and is mild and some shown from a distant or off screen and a nice homage to some of Boris Vallejo's paintings added in. This is one I would return to for a re-watch.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Dunkirk (2017)

I wasn't all that taken with Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk when i first saw it on dvd.

It felt like something was lacking, maybe it was the three separate stories that unusually weren't running concurrently, i'm not sure, however watching it for the first time in HD tonight was a bit of a revelation.

It was obvious from the start that this was no typical blockbuster with it's huge cast of extras and deployment of genuine boats of the era and actual use of practical effects, as was Nolan filming in natural light, making the whole thing look so realistic in todays CGI bloated world of movie making. Nolan's cinematography is breathtaking. Shooting the film in IMAX allowed for such a wide scope making the film gorgeous to look at.

The sound is also terrific, especially the aerial sequences with the Spitfires, whilst the sounds of the Messerschmitt's approaching the beach to attack were genuinely unnerving as were the sound of German bombs dropping, their pitch increasing the nearer their target they got. The aural thrills were enhanced by Hans Zimmer's terrific score, not his usual classical type but often sounding like just a couple of notes increasing in volume and urgency depending on events on screen.

Perhaps knowing how the story played out or should i say how Nolan played the story certainly didn't hinder things either and despite the vast scope of Nolan's vision it all felt quite intimate in it's story telling.

On second viewing, in high definition, Dunkirk is now approaching the level of masterpiece.

[MrBarlow]

Relic. 2020.

When Edna, a elderly lady with signs of dementia goes missing, her daughter Kay and granddaughter Sam go to stay at her house and search for her. Edna turns up out of the blue, Edna slowly believes there is something in the house that is tormenting her.

This one I went into in a blind viewing, this was a bit of a slow burner that can be a bit unsettling with the tone of the film with Edna which may upset some, this is either a horror turned to a drama, or a drama slowly becoming a horror. The three main actresses do try to keep things going but it seems to go at a snails pace but does come to a pretty decent stylish twist.

The psychology side of it is played out well and had me thinking of is this what part of the tone is like for people who suffer the disease and what they say and do and have no control over what is real and what isn't. i'm not going to say yeah watch this but i am going to say is give it a glance.

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[Frankie Teardrop]

HELLRIDERS – Eighties biker movie is bad, but what kind of bad? Psychotically bad in some places, but mostly just all-out bad. It’s by James Bryan, so that should give you some idea why. As usual, VS have done a nice job. Recommended for total freaks.

THE UNSEEN – A lengthy set up laced with drama but not that much actual horror can’t detract from the blistering performance delivered by ‘The Unseen’ himself, a cellar-dwelling creep who dominates the final reels with a tornado of spasmodic gurning. It’s quite something to behold, if a little ‘iffy’. Otherwise, ‘The Unseen’ is an atmospheric enough old dark house-type slasher, diverting, not quite engrossing, but of a certain quality.

SPELLCASTER – Starring Charlie Band’s big Italian castle. It looks very atmospheric in there, but I guess they didn’t have to try very hard. Silly rubber monster action ensues whilst annoying MTV-esque prize hunters fumble around in darkened corridors. Needed more of that rubber monster action, but there’s Adam Ant at the end by way of consolation.

BLOOD DINER – Stupid eighties gross-out has a surfeit of blood and guts but not a great deal of common f*cking sense. That’s alright, I usually don’t care about even basic levels of coherence when it comes to things like, but I didn’t really dig ‘Blood Diner’… the comedy was just too broad, and I felt that H G Lewis deserved a less light-hearted ‘homage’. Anyway, those of a nostalgic bent who have fond memories of Troma’s lamest off-cuts may find it delightful.

C.H.U.D – I’m surprised that it’s taken me all these years to get around to CHUD, one of those eighties staples that you’d think would be well under my belt by now. Nice to see sleazy NYC in full derelict bloom (aesthetically speaking, apologies to anyone who got shot in the Bronx or something irl), but CHUD really is far too talky and needed a bit more monster to augment its finer qualities, which admittedly include nice performances and a suspenseful final couple of reels. Everyone who’s in it seems to take it seriously at least, so that’s a plus.

SATURN 3 – Harvey Keitel is in fine form as a total dickhead who goes to a space station to terrorise Kirk Douglas and Farah Fawcett. There’s a slight air of pretension wafting around, but that was probably always written into Martin Amis’s script complete with its own stage directions and can’t quite disguise that most of ‘Saturn 3’ is about people being chased by a deep space predator (in this case, a humanly-contrived robot with designs on a menage-a-trois). It’s basically like a more upmarket version of those early eighties Roger Corman space flicks, same heady pose concealing a reliance on sex and violence (less so here) by way of ‘Alien’-as-urtext. I happen to quite like it. I have a strange little quirk when it comes to ‘Saturn 3’ in that I always believe Klaus Kinski’s in it until I watch it again and realise that he’s not. Not very interesting as anecdotes go, but I thought I’d tell you that anyway.

[nosferatu42]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

I have a strange little quirk when it comes to ‘Saturn 3’ in that I always believe Klaus Kinski’s in it until I watch it again and realise that he’s not.

Sounds like you may be getting it confused with Android (1982) which has a similar set up, a film that was on TV a few times when i was growing up that i quite like.

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