What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

Fight For Your Life.

Three escape convicts take a preacher and his family hostage and then they turn on their captors.

I thought Love Thy Neighbour went the distance with the racial slur on both sides but this film goes that further up the notch with the racism. By today's standards this film would never be made or re-made with the same content or why would anyone want to make this film back in the 70s. It does start off like a home invasion then goes onto being like The Last House On The Left, even the pet dog gets involved. It was shocking back then and have seen this once or twice that was badly edited but thanks to Mr Demdike I managed to see a better version that is still shocking.

Fight_For_Your_Life.jpg

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

if only i knew what SOV was?

"Shot On Video"!

[MrBarlow]

The Pit And The Pendulum. 1991.

A woman is accused of witchcraft and is slowly tortured while her husband attempts to free her.

Based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, Stuart Gordon's version is a bit darker than the 1960s Vincent Price version. Set in 1492 and during the witch hunt, Lance Henriksen plays the Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada who holds nothing back in order to get a confession but also changes how he dies in the film to how he really died.

Jefferey Combs, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon have small minor roles in the film but do bring their great acting skills to the screen. Stephen Lee and Mark Margolis play the henchmen to Torquemada and Francis Bay plays the imprisoned accused Witch and able to bring some sarcastic comments to her jailers. This was a direct to video movie but does have good production values and even Oliver Reed is able to pull off being a Cardinal in the film. This may not be as bad as Mark Of The Devil but does have it's cringe worthy moments.

p13281_d_v8_aa.jpg

[Demoncrat]

Bloody Movie (1987, Nick Marino)

Another fun flick from the year I'm very fond of
A silent movie star's disappearance leads to various sorts descending on his crumbling estate in order to gawk and stuff.
Cameron Mitchell turns up as do a few other familiar faces. Maybe if it hadn't been saddled with more-generic-than-thou alternate title of Terror Night, I might have watched a few times over the years tbh. Slightly gruesome, but a tad stiff in parts (no biker chick has hair that clean )
Ahem.

[MrBarlow]

Cutterhead. 2018.

Rie a journalist is working on a story and the workers of a new metro system in Copenhagen when a accident occurs and she is put into a airlock.

This was not what i'd thought it would be or why Shudder would have this on there as it's not even a horror until the film went on and the horror emerges itself on being trapped in a tight space. I'm sure we will all hate to be in a tight space with very little air, disorientation and madness setting in. The acting is decent and makes things look realistic and some tense moments but the pace goes from slow to fast and then to slow.

MV5BMzYwZmZlODItNGFhZS00MzFjLWEwOTctN2U2MTJhYjM4YmNhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTg2NjYzOA@@._V1_.jpg

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

Bloody Movie (1987, Nick Marino)

Another fun flick from the year I'm very fond of
A silent movie star's disappearance leads to various sorts descending on his crumbling estate in order to gawk and stuff.
Cameron Mitchell turns up as do a few other familiar faces. Maybe if it hadn't been saddled with more-generic-than-thou alternate title of Terror Night, I might have watched a few times over the years tbh. Slightly gruesome, but a tad stiff in parts (no biker chick has hair that clean )
Ahem.

I like this one. Got it on dvd from Retromedia - the very same cover you posted. Surprisingly good cast for a film such as this - John Ireland, Alan Hale Jr, Aldo Rey, Dan Haggerty.

Scream Queen Michelle Bauer is said biker chick if i recall.

[MrBarlow]

Devil Times Five. 1974.

After surviving a bus crash, five children seek refuge at a lodge and start killing off the occupiers.

Set some point during winter time or the area has snow all the time, surviving a crash could be traumatic but basically from the start these kids ain't no angels, one basically robs the driver of his contents. The adults are certainly no angels themselves, we see two women having a cat fight in bathrobes (yes we do get a upper body expose). As well as being little homicidal maniacs, the kids do have creative ways of killing people, this does go on and off the rails a bit but enjoyable.

MV5BMTg3NDU0MTA3NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDUwNzczMQ@@._V1_.jpg

[MrBarlow]

Lake Of Death. 2019.

Lillian and some of her friends travel to a lake cabin where her brother died a year earlier and feels that something is going on that they can't explain.

After 10 minutes this film jump straight to the main characters and builds up quickly and slowly a lot starts to happen and given a back story to a man who killed his family after he was drawn to the lake and mysterious things begin to happen. based on the original film Lake of The Damned band both released from Norway this I thought had potential but completely falls flat towards the end as it seemed predictable.

i0ZEIl3OwwE3QrSzaB6g067Y2U9.jpg

[Frankie Teardrop]

THREE ON A MEATHOOK – Back with the whole Oedipus-gone-mad thing of the post-‘Psycho’ era. I found it unexpectedly powerful in places, full of an eerie melancholy captured best when its Norman slumps around in a bar, looking sad to a soundtrack of tuneless wah-wah rock. Although it seems to promise gore (there’s a little bit), TOAM is more about egregious gaslighting and the end of the sixties. Some of it anticipates both TCM and ‘Frightmare’.

BEWARE: CHILDREN AT PLAY – On the one hand, static shots and lots of talk with a bunch of stiffs; on the other, maggoty wounds, THAT ending and the delirium only an unapologetically bad film can deliver. There’s an inordinate number of references to ‘Beowulf’ for a film this trashy. I liked it; would make an appropriate and only slightly less weird playmate for the likes of 1980’s ‘The Children’.

EYES OF FIRE – My second favourite of the year so far (current number one is ‘The American Scream’). A family, lorded over by bad preacher dad, hangs out in the woods of colonial America, where the supernatural manifests in trippy flourishes of eighties effects and optics. A genuinely hallucinogenic spook-out and very highly recommended.

NOTHING UNDERNEATH – Was maybe expecting / hoping for something a little trashier given its eighties Italo provenance and the presence of Pleasance, but ‘Nothing Underneath’ is a creditable stab at a sort-of De Palma-esque thriller and succeeds well enough through a combination of giallo trimmings and bad era-specific fashion moves.

EFFECTS – End-of-the-seventies oddity drifts along with the kind of woozy flow I associate with seventies art house flicks made by stoned film students. In both the snuff theme and the “hey, what’s reality anyway?” undercurrent, I would go so far as to say that it pre-dates ‘Videodrome’, although its roots are in Pittsburgh soil rather than Cronenbergian nightmare territory. Tom Savini is around, playing a bit of a joker; in fact, there’s quite a strong turn out of Romero regulars here. Interesting if not entirely satisfying.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO – Good one, this; fashion student hits the smoke to find out what her dreams are made of (in her case, something unpleasant involving Terrance Stamp). I’m not massively into the director, although the quality of his work so far seems obvious; LNIS had me with its rampant stylisation, which just gets riper throughout. Not keen on those grey sixties spectres, but overall it worked.

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO – Good one, this; fashion student hits the smoke to find out what her dreams are made of (in her case, something unpleasant involving Terrance Stamp). I’m not massively into the director, although the quality of his work so far seems obvious; LNIS had me with its rampant stylisation, which just gets riper throughout. Not keen on those grey sixties spectres, but overall it worked.

I also enjoyed this one, those swinging 60s nightclub scenes were great even if Matt Smith was being Matt Smith. I just found the end revelation a bit meh but that's not to say bad! Cool soundtrack too.