What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[nicholasrope]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

Apparently it was a Cat III release

List of Hong Kong Category III films / Wikipedia

TBH, I can see why 88 Films didn't mention that this was a CAT III Movie on the cover. It's nothing like Ebola and Untold.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Mini's First Time (2005)

Nikki Reed plays Mini, a spoiled Californian rich brat with a deep loathing for her gold digging drug using actress mother (Carrie Ann-Moss). Mini meanwhile loves doing exciting things - her 'firsts' - and decides to become a Hollywood call girl. Things ramp up when she discovers her second client is her stepfather (Alec Baldwin) and the two quickly fall in lust and love. After a while Mini decides their life together would be much simpler if her mother was no longer around...

Very much a black comedy with a filthy neo-noir streak running through it, especially when it comes to Mini and her stepfather attempting to evade investigating detective Luke Wilson. The whole thing is genuinely unpredictable and ever so slightly twisted. The cast are all very good - and there's even an elongated cameo for Jeff Goldblum as a sleazy neighbour - and the script is a hoot which sucks you in from the first scenes.

Mini's first Time is one of those refreshing kind of films that doesn't really play by the conventional rules. If like me you enjoy movies like Wild Things (1998) then this comes highly recommended even after a second watch.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN – A Jason King lookalike photographer ventures off on an assignment after breaking up with his other half. Wanting to prove his medallion-man charms are not to be slighted, he heads for the beach and zooms in on a sunbathing writer; the two stop over at a derelict inn, whose stooped proprietor is full of vague warnings and probably holds a lantern up to his face in darkness at some point. They hit the trail again the next day, only for their car to be nabbed by an apparent ghost, forcing them to shack up with the elder of an abandoned village. It’s then that they discover that the hills are alive with… well, find out for yourselves, but even in the end it’s never very clear. ‘The Witches Mountain’ is enigmatic to the core, and you might find yourselves wondering at times whether the haze of disconnection that creeps in from the baffling prologue onwards is deliberate or the result of a few sly fumbles. It’s hard to be certain when the film is so strong in places, not least in the way that its cinematography captures the brewing menace of a trip deep into the wilds. There are also a couple of really eerie passages of dreamlike ritual imagery, the kind of thing that reminds you why you watch occult horror from nineteen seventies Europe (Spain, in this case). The downside is an element of what some might consider to be drag, for ‘The Witches Mountain’ requires maybe a bit of patience for its spell to work.

PLAY DEAD – I enjoyed this little potboiler about Yvonne DeCarlo’s possessed dog. The teeth and claws belong to DeCarlo; she’s that fatal mix of occult practitioner and someone’s embittered Aunt, an unfortunate combo to have lurking in the family tree when there’s an inheritance in the offing. After an afternoon of pentagrams and burning things in shallow bowls, she decides that her vessel of extraction will be her pet pooch Greta. A lot of the fun comes from watching said mutt go about its filthy business in the least expected way – the canny hound swaps stealth tactics for the usual chomping and flesh ripping, leading to scenes of doggie poisoning and a ridiculously contrived electrocution-by-hairdryer! More perplexing is Greta’s sexwatching tendency, but who said anything about dogging? The atmosphere is authentically uneven, wavering between TV style flatness and bits that manage a lush kind of eeriness. A small morsel, but this early eighties cheapie is more nourishing than many of the doggie biscuits out there.

[Frankie Teardrop]

LAST GASP – This tale of a possessed construction site owner plays with Native American mysticism to the usual B-movie ends – cue sinister facial tattoos and slick dreamy bits. It’s all a bit thoughtless. You decide whether egregious pan pipe music, that certain nineties sheen, and a couple of cringe candlelit sex moments are worth it; simple nostalgia value aside, to me it feels like a dud.

DEADLY CAMP – It didn’t take them long to think up – college kids stuck somewhere with a mysterious killer. But this hails from Hong Kong at the end of the nineties, and its attitudes and manners are screwy enough to liven up the expected kill-by-numbers with a welter of head-scratch, even if much of it is in abysmal taste. The murderer has bad zits. Someone wears a baby feed bottle with a goldfish in it around their neck at all times. Anyway, maybe you’d be scared if the condom seller you were sharing your remote island with turned out to be Anthony Wong.

TRAGIC CEREMONY – Camilla Keaton hangs out with some hippie dudes, gets pulled into strange stuff in an occult aristocrat’s horror mansion, and so then the eponymous ceremony – with all that blood flying around, I’d agree that it was fairly tragic. Works in some lovely drifty Euro horror dream vibes during its gothic midsection and even makes room for a couple of splashes of relatively brutal gore. If you’re ever at all confused, the kind psychiatrist at the end will explain everything to you in detail. Lots of nice atmosphere and silliness from Ricardo Freda.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Blood and Diamonds (1978)

Wow this was boring! Not helped by Claudio Cassinelli being a charisma free zone and Olga Karlatos lasting all of two minutes. It's all good your hero silently brooding taking everything in but Cassinelli just stands there in his green coat looking really bored.

There's nothing that makes this a classic poliziottesco but then again it was released at the arse end of the genre's popularity and made by a director in Fernando Di Leo who had used all his best ideas in earlier films. Other than a shoot out involving a bus in the opening ten minutes and a well staged fist fight at the finale there really is nothing to see here, no car chases and definitely no crazy action sequences.

At one point the story moves to Rome's famed Spanish Steps and i was longing for some spectacular action like Highway Racer from the same year. But no, as with everything else in this 100 minutes of tedium it was simply a backdrop for a conversation.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

TRAGIC CEREMONY – Camilla Keaton hangs out with some hippie dudes, gets pulled into strange stuff in an occult aristocrat’s horror mansion, and so then the eponymous ceremony – with all that blood flying around, I’d agree that it was fairly tragic. Works in some lovely drifty Euro horror dream vibes during its gothic midsection and even makes room for a couple of splashes of relatively brutal gore. If you’re ever at all confused, the kind psychiatrist at the end will explain everything to you in detail. Lots of nice atmosphere and silliness from Ricardo Freda.

Definitely a fan of this. I've seen the Dark Sky US dvd loads of times over the years.

[Frankie Teardrop]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Definitely a fan of this. I've seen the Dark Sky US dvd loads of times over the years.

It's quite a nice presentation, the Dark Sky edition. I did pick up the Camille Keaton boxset when it was going cheap in a VS sale earlier in the year, but if I hadn't been able to buy it vastly reduced I think I would've stuck with the DVD.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

It's quite a nice presentation, the Dark Sky edition. I did pick up the Camille Keaton boxset when it was going cheap in a VS sale earlier in the year, but if I hadn't been able to buy it vastly reduced I think I would've stuck with the DVD.

What else is in the box set, Frankie?

[Frankie Teardrop]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

What else is in the box set, Frankie?

'Madeleine - Anatomy Of A Nightmare' and 'Sex Of The Witch'. I only really got it for 'Tragic Ceremony' and haven't seen the other two yet, although 'Madeleine' sounds interesting. It's all early seventies Italian horror stuff, nothing related to what she did later with Meir Zarchi and ISOYG.

[Demoncrat]

SOTW I remember liking certainly ....