What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Justin101

I don't sorry and it'll be tomorrow when I get it out of my boxes. Does it maybe turn off the menu noises? Early blu-ray discs were stupid like that, especially the Sony ones.

Could have been, yes. I have seen 'menu sound on / off' buttons on other discs.

[MrBarlow]

Salpel. 1977.

A deranged surgeon restore's a beaten girl's face that almost resembles his deceased daughter.

This seemed to start off well and slowly becomes more psychological than a full blown horror film with the doctor having a split personality disorder, almost Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with some Dr Frankenstein persona.

The film's pace seems to go steady then fast with Robert Lansing being the mad doctor who has been cut out of a will and uses go go dancer Judith Chapman as a guinea pig for his plan. This is like a slow decent into being a good doctor then flick a switch to total paranoia. At times the acting can go over the top and some scenes lasting longer than what they should be but a nice little twist at the end.

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[Demoncrat]

Wild In The Streets (1968, Robert Thom)

I always wanted to see this one after reading the novelisation years ago.
A pop singer becomes POTUS on a ticket of "youth power". Hilariously of its time and then some. Shelley Winters the storm
Richard Pryor turns up playing a drummer (maan) and there is a line that would have them all cancelled nowadays .
Here's a nice song to end on .....

[MrBarlow]

Paranormal Activity: Next Of Kin.

Sarah who was abandoned by her mother when she was a baby, travels to a remote Amish community with two colleagues and document the answers they find, only to find something evil.

I don't mind the previous Paranormal Activity movies, they aren't great but aren't terrible either, for me with this, it seemed a cash in on the name even though it was made by Paramount. The demon's name is mentioned slightly in the first film but that's it, it has no connection to the previous films. I thought this was to be a found footage but seems to jump from POV to normal, and has a slight rip-off from the film [REC]. Surely now this has to be the last one.

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[Demoncrat]

Mind Killer (1987, Michael Kruger)

A nebbish thinks he's found the answer to his lack of a love life when he discovers an old manuscript.
The lead has one of those faces that screams WHO? Not a good start.
He develops a weird ability to "control" his prey, which is alternately hilarious and badly staged
The FX at the end was fun for all that.
Next!!!

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE LOST BOYS – Even though I know I must have seen them at some point, there are some movies I can never recall ever having watched. Strangely enough for such an ‘eighties watershed’, TLB is one of those. I can only think that I first laid eyes on it back when I’d only feel positive about really extreme or obscure stuff, then pegged it as a sixth form vamp fantasy for part-time goths before throwing it in with the rest of my mental garbage. These days, after so many years, I can finally see the good in it. Although maybe that’s a bit like visiting a murderous uncle at the end of their life sentence. Anyway, I like the bits that I like – the eighties stylistics, the misfiring comedy with Corey Feldman, the clunky generation clash “stand up to yer dad, Oedipus” kinda thing, and f@ck it, even the ‘sixth form vamp fantasy for part-time goths’ angle – think I don’t have a couple of Poppy Z Brite paperbacks still lying around? There are worse ways of doing nostalgia than to revisit this.

EVIL LAUGH – As ever with these movies (by which I mean, these bad, bad movies), one person’s irredeemable dreck is another’s triumph of incompetence. ‘Evil Laugh’ is even more complicated because I’m not entirely sure whether or not it’s intended as a spoof. Parts of it are. Then there are… the other parts. It’s a slasher movie – the slasher’s gimmick is that they have an evil laugh – geddit? I think that’s genius. It’s not even that much of an evil laugh (although one guy, tied to a chair awaiting a drilling, thinks so. “You have an evil laugh,” he says as the drill inches towards his cranium. Again, genius.) I don’t have time, space or the patience to list every one of the the very many missteps made by ‘Evil Laugh’, but just about my favourite is an extended musical interlude which shows the team of slasher fodder doing house work and DIY to a catchy new wave synth tune. That might not sound like much, but in the context of a slasher flick, it’s like “wha…?” Then again, I could just as easily mention the death-by-microwave scene, or just the generally quite weird filming style, which tends to use static shots based on conspicuously posed tableaus where everyone’s been bluntly positioned to fit in the camara field so it doesn’t have to move… odd, man, odd. Again, is it the result of some arcane vision or just total bollocks? I don’t have any answers, I never do, but I can’t deny that ‘Evil Laugh’ entertains with this incessant flow of low-level strangeness. Because of the comedy angle and the fact that there are a few mentions of Friday the 13th and Fangoria magazine, many fans and commenters seem to see fit to tag it as an example of pre-‘Scream’ self-referentiality and thus some kind of suave but unheralded slice of sophisticated genre deconstruction avant la letter. I don’t think so, it’s just a (partial, probable, possible) spoof. Even back in the eighties that kind of approach to things was fairly common. I take it as I find it – merely a really odd movie that doesn’t make sense. I would love to see this done up on blu ray, in fact there must be a reason why it hasn’t happened. It’d make a nice double with that other cruddy horror comedy baffler, ‘Iced’ – there, how’s that for faint praise?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

I have Evil Laugh on dvd, Frankie. From a US company that may well be called Lucky 13 (Got a couple of their releases actually).

You sum it up rather well i think. It's just odd. I've probably seen it four times over the years.

I've seen The Lost Boys once.

[Justin101]

Don’t be coming for me with my love of The Lost Boys “death by stereo” and my Poppy Z Brite paperbacks lol… pretty sure I have Exquisite Corpse somewhere.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Justin101

Don’t be coming for me with my love of The Lost Boys “death by stereo” and my Poppy Z Brite paperbacks lol… pretty sure I have Exquisite Corpse somewhere.

Didn't every horror and fantasy reader of the mid 90's buy or at least read this edition?

I know i did.

[Frankie Teardrop]

Originally Posted by Justin101

Don’t be coming for me with my love of The Lost Boys “death by stereo” and my Poppy Z Brite paperbacks lol… pretty sure I have Exquisite Corpse somewhere.

Ha ha, that 'death by stereo' is such a top eighties moment! Poppy should've switched the Dahmer fetish for a few of those, but yes, I can see 'Swamp Fetus' from where I'm sitting.