It's funny (for me), my dislike of 'Castle Freak' borders on the irrational. I'm at a loss as to why, as it's not 'objectively' a particularly bad film. And Jeffrey Combs is in it, so I always thought I'd like it.

The Stud (1978)

Joan Collins plays a wealthy owner of a night club who hires Oliver Tobias to run it as long as he satisfies her nymphomaniac demands. All goes well until Tobias is introduced to Collins' wealthy step daughter.

This is so of it's period it hurts. The many night club scenes burst with classic disco anthems from the seventies - Hot Chocolate, Sweet, Smokie, KC and the Sunshine Band, Roxy Music, Heatwave - It's like a K-Tel album in movie form. However it is quite an influential movie. Reinvigorating Collins flagging career and proving an international box office hit giving some respectability to it's bastard cousins seventies British sex comedies.

It's not as lavish looking as you might expect. More often than not it's low lit, giving it a seedy feel rather than of the Collins sisters usual decadence (Jackie wrote the original novel and produced the film). There's a good support cast - Sue Lloyd, Walter Gotell and The Devil Rides Out' Sarah Lawson, who get to perform some choice Jackie Collins dialogue -
"There are two sorts of women in this world. The first sort pick you up and screw you, the second sort pick your brains and screw you up." - But it's most memorable scenes involve shagging. Whether it be in elevators or posh swimming pool orgies, it's not long before someone's getting laid.

Nowadays The Stud is highly entertaining camp schlock, a time capsule from a disco era of hedonism and free and easy sex.

The Wizard Of Oz. 1939.

Young Dorothy Gale is swept away in a tornado to the land of Oz, and embarks on a quest with her new friends to find the wizard and return home.

This is one of those feel good movies to return every so often with amazing acting from Judy Garland as the young Dorothy, Ray Bolger as The Scarecrow, Jack Haley as The Tin Man and Bert Lahr as The Cowardly Lion. Margaret Hamilton is memorable as The Wicked Witch of the West which probably terrified kids back then and young ones of our generation. Frank Morgan has some small roles but more noticeable as The Wizard who likes to throw insults at The Tin Man.

There was a few adaptations made before this film, a stage production in 1902, then in 1908 with Radio Plays, in 1910 there was a 15-20 silent play of it. In 1914 Frank Baum created his own studio and had a logo made of Princess Ozma which looked creepy, which produced short films which have gone missing over the years.There was a version made in 1922 and another in 1932 which also seems to be lost.

Growing up with this film and hearing all that gone on in the background, Judy Garland was given a strict diet to follow, the cast playing the Munchins got drunk and tried to hit on Judy, Margaret Hamilton was badly burned involving a trap door and pyrotechnics going off early, Buddy Ebsen was originally to play The Tin Man but due to the make up he suffered health problems.

What's amazing abou this film it starts off Black&white then goes full colour that the makers look like they are in a real land and not a studio with the Munchkin Land, The Wizard's and Witch's Castle with some good background score and good dance sequences, that never seems to make the film slow or boring just more entertaining.

Attachment 233618

100% a film that was way ahead of its time, classic film in every sense .

^^^

Hold on a minute, Buster!

When Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, they are at a crossroads, so there isn't "only one flipping road"!

KILLDOZER – From the pen of Theodore Sturgeon comes ‘Killdozer’, a bleak account of said mechanical digger’s victimisation of a bunch of men stuck on an island. In our world full of so much real-life horror, it may be difficult to frame a rampaging bulldozer, supposedly possessed by an alien entity, as a truly unnerving prospect. But the film has an odd atmosphere by virtue of it being played straight, whilst at the same time little touches like the psychedelic sound effects that blare whenever the dozer is about to get tasty cut in the other direction. I doubt it was ever a real influence on John Carpenter, but it’s partly about the fraternity of grim, slightly paranoid men who all seem damaged by the war in some way, in fact ‘Killdozer’ as a whole seems to work metaphorically to evoke the threat of systemised, mechanised brutality. Yesterday’s trash TV is today’s food for thought.

SYNCHRONIC – Being a fan of Benson / Moorhead, I was full of anticipation for ‘Synchronic’, which seemed as if it would perhaps be loose continuation of the shadowy themes of ‘Resolution’ and ‘The Endless’. That’s kind of true in that ‘Synchronic’ is about the effects of a trippy new designer drug that seems to translocate people back in time. I was a little disappointed, though – hard to say why exactly, there was just something a little too conventional about it, with its ‘relationships / human angle’ aspects taking precedence over the bizarrerie and diminishing the other worldly paranoia familiar from some of the directors’ other stuff. Slick, well made and decently entertaining though, so give it a shot.

COME TRUE – Hey, this is more like it. A heavily stylised descent into dream-horror, which I know is a bit of a hoary one, but I’m proud to proclaim myself a sucker for that stuff. And ‘Come True’ ticks all my boxes, from its manicured visuals of corridors full of shadowy figures to a Ballard / Cronenberg institutional aesthetic which has to be the final word in sterile chic. It having been made these days, the eighties are never very far away, though it’s maybe riffing on stuff like ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ more than ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’. In that sense it’s more in the vein of more recent films like ‘Beyond The Black Rainbow’, another eighties OD that privileges trippy visuals over narrative. Speaking of narrative, ‘Come True’ kind of derails a bit when it settles on a relationship angle as a way of wrapping up (admittedly one which unravels in a highly enigmatic way in the final act) and so loses a bit of momentum to convention, but overall I thought it was highly effective and far more vivid than the last few Netflixy horror/sci-fi clones I’ve seen. Great electro soundtrack, too.

QUEENS OF EVIL – Stupid hippy Ray Lovelock is waylaid by a trio of witchy sisters (are they sisters? I have to say I can’t remember, Frankie do some research to make it look like you’ve actually seen it) who beguile him with their charms until he’s ready to be a plaything of the evil bourgeoise who live in the big gothic castle next door. Decked out like a vaguely trippy fairy-tale, QOE is a seventies Euro-horror that feels like a parable of the coming-of-age of its epoch’s post-68 counterculture (maybe), and is closer to a shoddy version of the arthouse cinema of the time than many of its contemporaries in ‘the genre’. Quite liked it, but felt it needed to be a bit… don’t know. Just a bit more full-on, maybe. Anyway, good, and good for Mondo Macabro for turning out these neglected oddities.

CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT – All the strengths and weaknesses of the Giallo are summed up by ‘The Crimes Of The Black Cat’, a movie that’s at its best when mind bogglingly stupid and yet falters when it tries to be sensible. Some loosely connected people are being murdered by a cat with poisonous claws – innumerable subplots evolve to try and sort it out. Points on for the wacky conceit, a couple of typically pop-psychedelic visuals and even a bit of vicious gore – points off for just about everything else, but then again, I am learning to be a bit more patient with these films these days. One for people who are into gialli.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum.
Found footage, which I love. Not a guilty pleasure, I just love it. And, this Korean film is a great example of it, IMO. I mean, it's all been done before, but this does it very, very well. If you don't care for f/f, then you probably won't get much out of it, but if you do - highly recommended.
4 out of 5.

Friday the 13th (1980)

The one where it all began, the film that kick started the slasher genre, despite lacking the iconic killer - Jason Vorhees - of the other films in the series this isn't actually a bad little slasher in it's own right but it stumbles a bit in having a middle aged woman as the killer, in fact the most memorable lines of dialogue come just before a kill when the intended youth councilor victims all seem to say "Oh, it's you" as she approaches them. This may not actually be true but it seems like it.

Tom Savini's gore sequences still stand up today, especially the harpoon twisting it's way through Kevin Bacon's neck, and the final scene is still a shocker if you are that one person reading this who hasn't seen Friday the 13th..

Harry Manfredini's score remains memorable all these years later and it's famous "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" motif would become legendary.

The film itself, surprisingly, given the theory that all sequels get worse the further along they go, isn't the best in the series by any means, nor is it the worst.

The UK Blu-Ray version from the eight film set looks and sounds very good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ltBBtSFEn8

A very gory Brazilian supernatural slasher that uses mythology of the region.

After a strange mask is found it possesses people turning them into a unstoppable supernatural killer with the munchies for human hearts . Great use of practical effects with some trippy nightmare/dream scenes. Worth a watch.


After Frankies review decided to watch Castle Freak but have went for the last drive in version.

After that was thinking of watching the Dentist with that guy from L.A. Law , is it anygood?

Rewatched the Twilight Zone movie. This is one of my most prized blu-rays as it's long out of print and I love the film. Obviously contraversial due to children and actor deaths during filming which probably explains why it's not readily available now. But whilst distressing, that doesn't actually affect the viewing experience for me. You wouldn't have bet money on the Steven Spielberg quarter being by far the weakest but it doesn't hurt the film too badly (and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't touched when the old man asks the child to also take him). Love this 80's movie.