Until Death

Entertaining enough ( if confusing ) murder / suspense thriller with a hint of the supernatural, from Lamberto Bava.


Hunchback Of The Morgue

What a bloody strange film! Not the classic I was led to believe, but certainly one of the better Paul Naschy films. The title music sounds like something out of Laurel And Hardy :biggrin:

- Mallrats.
- Battle Royale.
- A Scene At The Sea.
- Chungking Express.

Yes KING BOXER is a mighty film Indeed


Recent views for me have been

TRILOGY OF LUST
BIOZOMBIE
WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU
THE SEVENTH CURSE

My favourite Kevin Smith movie. :thumb:

I've always wanted to see Trilogy Of Lust.But I could never find a dvd version anywhere.

I watched the film Alex. Sorry but I could see nothing sexual about the scene at all.

This quote from somebody on the IMDb forum sums up the scene perfectly.

"It's pretty obvious that what was happening was the Vinyan children were now completing her induction into their ranks by stripping off her last bond with the human world (her clothing) and decorating her with the same mud they wore"

Good film by the way.

Run! Bitch! Run!

Rape/revenge/ exploitation

Try as it may it is certainly no I Spit on Your Grave.

Just sat and watched this afternoon.

Sleepless - Quite Enjoyed this 3/5
Sleepaway Camp - Brilliant Film start to end 4.5/5
Sleepaway Camp 2 - Not as good as the first but still enjoyed 3/5
Sleepaway Camp 3 - Same again, Enjoyed the first SC better 3/5

Thats me done for today, now let's catch up here :ranger::rockon:

Just checked out Fight For Your Life.

Oh I luv The Sleepaway Camp films! All of them are great fun! The twist at the end of the first one is one of the best in any slasher film IMO. Sounds like a great sunday Ken!


Ah, what did you make of Fight For Your Life, Truck? Been meaning to see that. :)


I watched a classic Universal horror film earlier tonight; Creature From The Black Lagoon - a great film this - very much in the same vein as Universal's other classic horror films; a sympathetic monster in luv with the lead female. Those underwater scenes and the Creature's costume are still phonomenal even today, over 50 years olf!

lmao your not wrong there mate, Had a mint horror sunday. And yeah the ending of the 1st SC :eek: never expected that, and that facial expression at the end of the film. :scared: Top Acting from Felissa :nod:

'What films have you seen recently?'‏
 

I bought the R1 Sleepaway Camp boxed set from Anchor Bay, some years ago.
Waste of money as they were crap!

Movie Marathon yesterday;

ARMY OF CRIME-Well enough made film,but was rather slow at times.

DEAD MANS SHOES-BLU RAY-Tremendous film,Meadow's best IMO which looks even better in Hi-Def.Considine's performance never loses owt with each subsequent viewing.
Bummer is,Optimum done away with the extras that were on the DVD,bar the commentary....:confused:

THE FRENCH CONNECTION-BLU RAY-Still classic,although I see what other people mean with Fiedkin tampering with it-just need to get the right picture setting.:nod:

ZOMBI-(ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS) Blue Underground version-Best I've seen this classic look and sound.:thumb:

Whipcord is a classic!

Yeah I quite enjoyed Rogue as well.....:nod:

Indeed it is. And Sheila Keith is amazing!


"Grindhouse Trailer Classics 2" -

Damn fine set of exploitation trailers and a nice little bit by Stephen Thrower. Could have been longer (not quite 2 hours), but all these things could.
Some grimy, cheesy, nasty, campy, trashy gems on here from a time much missed.

Recently watched

Witchfinder General
Hit and Run
Santa's Slay

Vigilante: Bill Lustig's film starring Robert Forster and Fred Williamson. Okay, not really horror, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.

The Last Horror Film: Being a big fan of Maniac I've always wanted to see this. Big let down unfortunately. Total mess of a film. I'm not sorry I bought it though. There are some decent extras on the disk that I'll look forward to watching, including the promo footage for Maniac 2: Mr Robbie. Watched it last night. Nothing amazing, but from a completeists point of view I quite like owning it in its entirety.

Fight For Your Life in my opinion should be released in this country. After viewing the film, i feel the reputation let the film down. It has a notorious background being banned etc, but really this is just a little movie which is more like a stage play than a grindhouse flick. It has grindhouse elements, but too me i was not shocked by the violence, there is nothing groundbreaking in the gore. However the acting is top-notch. Both the criminals and the black family are well cast. It's a shame that the ending builds up to a scent of extreme emotions that you want the film to deliver the goods in violent vengeance, but sadly this is not forseen and is abandoned with a cliche ending. Even though the final gunshot is pretty nice.

It's an alright watch but i wouldnt go crazy about it

Yes I agree. The ending is more of an anticlimax after the tense build-up. William Sanderson and Robert Judd give excellent performances though, and the BBFC would have no problems with it today.

Bit harsh. It still has a goodly amount of gore (sadly the inserts of the extra gore are very dark...my old pre-cert VHS has a better picture), some GREAT Canne's footage, Munro looks yummy and Spinell's (real life) Mother is a total joy in every scene!
She's like a trash movie version of Scorsese's Mum.

"Cash on Demand"

A generally forgotten, outside of 'Hammer' devotes, thriller/drama from Britain's highest profile horror studio that sees Peter Cushing's cold, dour, stuffy and bitter Bank Manager having a very bad day indeed when a sly and icy cool Andre Morel arrives at his bank one morning and announces he's going to rob the place...with Cushing's help.

A slight tale this may be, but the (mostly set in two rooms) tight script, top class acting by Morel and Cushing (morel especially has great fun), some genuinely tense set-pieces and a couple of mostly very effective twists ensure this fast paced little film (about 70 minutes) always entertains

And if the ending is rather twee thanks to another late twist you have to remember that the film is set just before Christmas and you don't always need 'spirits' to make people see the error of their ways.
Dickens' would have approved.

Watched Tombs Of the Blind Dead last night and enjoyed it immensely.The alternate Revenge From Planet Ape prologue is THE single most bizzare attempt to connect two unrelated films I've evers seen.I know the BBFC still have a problem with sexual violence but honestly,I've seen them pass worse rape scenes than the one in Tombs.

Would people think too bad of me if I say that I actually preferred the shortened ending from the U.S. version?

The Mafu Cage

A wonderful film, I thought. Like Bergman via Corman with a great performance from Carol Kane. I got angry that the only available DVD of this splendid film seems to be the awful R2 Avenue release - pointlessly retitled "Don't Ring The Doorbell" (it has nothing to do with anything and isn't even the print title! The print says "The Mafu Cage" with the new title added as a subtitle at the bottom of the screen!), mastered from a dark, soft tape source and with video interference throughout (waving, rolling lines, herringboning etc). One of the best films I have ever bought in Poundland, but in a dreadful presentation! It needs a restored reissue.

"Chocolate"

Great stuff.
The lovely JeeJa Yanin, as a mentally handicapped martial arts genius, is a mini marvel to behold.
She may occasionally (purely because she's still relatively new to fighting and that she's a very slight young lady) lack the power and speed of Tony Jaa (who pops up on TV to help with her moves)...but let's not be mistaken here, this is still a truly amazing, if still blossoming, talent.

Numerous fight scenes (some slightly knockabout, though bruising, some far more violent and serious) entertain throughout the perfectly attuned plot that embraces full on melodrama, light comedy, tragedy and tough drama.
JeeJa Yanin handles all the stunt heavy (no doubles of course) but generally realistic looking action to perfection and leaps, ducks, dives, kicks, elbows, punches and smashes various hard objects over people's heads with a skill truly belying her age.
And you can't deny that an extra wow factor and an extra layer of balls-out fun comes into play simply because this is not a big muscled guy doing this stuff, but a slight, pretty young woman

The finale packs the high melodrama, multiple violent deaths and driven revenge action together with clinical precision and JeeJa Yanin's superb fight/stunt work during an extended chase/battle sequence up and down and back and forth between a bridge and the side of a sign strewn building is tiring and bruising just to watch.

Highly melodramatic, with a few little speed/power issues for JeeJa Yanin to train through, but overall "Chocolate" is a wildly entertaining slice of martial arts dramatics with a truly wonderful and genuinely impressive young fighter at the helm who should become as big as Tony Jaa and then some.

Just watched Trailer Park of Terror and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was only a fiver in HMV so thought I'd grab it as the cover looked pretty cool and it contained a little comic book. It's based on the comic series of the same name (obviously).
I expected it to be some stupid low budget tack that the americans so often produce and I was right but this time it was a good thing. It didn't take itself seriously and the gore was pretty cool too. A mix of CGI and prosthetics made things look quite real in places. The acting you'd expect to be a shamballs but it wasn't at all, everyone was actually quite good. Some annoying characters which come as standard in a film like this but overall, very impressed.
The soundtrack was all southern american rock and it played really well with the theme.
The camera work was good too, they weren't all static shots from different angles, it had movement and it worked well with the pace of the film.
Check it out, it's not that bad at all. I'd give it 3 stars.

Yeah..."Trailer Park" was fun 'n' nasty. Groovy soundtrack too.




"Flashpoint"

Donnie Yen vehicle that has highs and lows.
Lows are the lack of any action scene over a minute long until about 55 minutes (Yen's first real action scene!) in with 30 minutes to go. This seems to be a problem with many newer Hong Kong actioners.

HK used to make action films that had (perhaps melodramatic, but hey) solid and interesting plots but still managed to cram in numerous, memorable (even iconic) smaller set-pieces into the running time at strategic places.
They didn't used to leave almost everything until the last 20 minutes.

This seems to have changed recently, with straight action films seemingly 'below' HK film makers so much so that they feel the need to only make serious drama/thrillers for 60 minutes and only succumb to full on action film making until the finale because they have to.
Woo's "The Killer" had a layered, solid, melodramatic plot-line but contained numerous action scenes, that have gone one to be classic, even before the jaw dropping church finale.
It remained a pure action film throughout the entire running time...As did the likes of "Tiger Cage 2", "In the Line of Duty", "Full Contact", "Iron Angels" etc etc.
This skill at combining lots of action within a still solid plot seems to have been thrown away.

That being said, the action that there is is well done and nicely bruising and the finale features some top class Donnie Yen (looking and moving extremely well for his age) martial arts mayhem that looks bone crunching and thudding and grounded in more reality then normal.
Yen may never reach the heights of "Tiger Cage 2" again...but he's looks damn impressive here. and he has some nice support from all involved.
The finale is let down a bit by a lack of 'canon fodder' characters though and so we have only around 6 bad guys for the big showdown. Again...HK seems to have moved away from the glorious excess that made its very name.

What we have is entertaining, is superbly made and very impressive at times, but it is a shame the action is so sparse and the unashamed, wonderful, excess that made Hong Kong action cinema so unique has been toned down and forced to 'mature' and put a suit on. The fact is, for all the rough edges sometimes as far as budget and equipment went, the glory days of wildly entertaining excess and abandon were better days for the audience.

Pandorum

i recently sat down to watch this sci-fi horror film with next to no information about the film only the trailer and the back of the box to give me anyform of information. What i witnessed was essentially a cross between Ghost of Mars, Pitch Black and Titan A.E, and boy was it good. There has not been a sci-fi film this good since Sunshine. The twists are a little obvious but that's not the point, Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster and Cam Gigandet (twilight) give pretty good performance, The creatures look like the Descent monsters with weapons and the gore is pretty good, my only hang up with this film is it's strange lack of an explanation, sure the plot is easy to follow but some things are not exactly explained. All in all a terrific sci-fi horror well worth a rental....

Bats
fangs

Thats why it was delayed for so long from getting a decent Theatre release for so many years.Its a decent movie except for the ending.The ending is terrible it almost ruins the entire movie.

Sat through Blood Monkey last night. A truly awful, unlikeable film if ever there was one. Wasn't even a killer monkey in the end!

I can actually remember crisp brands called those. :pop2:

Part of the Horror Bags range which also included Bones, Claws and Ribs. Jolly delicious they were too.

watched Darkman last night for the first time in years, very cool movie, and Bruce Campbell's little cameo at the end was awesome.

"Cabin Fever 2" -
Not bad. Starts off slow but engaging. But then loses it's way during the Prom, until things pick up again.
Some nicely gross moments involving various body fluids, lost of blood but only some (though strong) gore.

Some of the FX are dubious (awful latex finger and chest piece) while some are very good (head smashing and drippy cock), but the end is weak and anti-climactic with a tagged on piece that's too long, though leads to an okay pay-off during the animated credits.

Nothing special, weak ending, but has enough gross moments and interesting characters (who are not as obnoxious as those in the first film) to make a good rental.



"Ride the High Country".
Early Peckinpah flick is well though of, but failed to impress me.
Nothing much happens for nearly an hour, no gun is fired until about 70 minutes in and the end seems to be the kind of forced cliche the basic set-up of the film (aged gunslingers trying to find a place in the changing West) was playing against.
Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (Scott especially does good work ) should have been given lots of fine dialogue moments about aging and change but their time together seems rushed so we have less great character moments between them than we should have as too much time is spent on their younger partner and a wayward young woman who joins them...to less than interesting effect.

Eventually some kind of plot kicks in and we have a great support cast (L.Q Jones, R.G Armstrong, Warren Oates) and a smattering of effective action (including a surprisingly shocking for the time zoom in on a dead face, complete with bullet hole in the head)...but the bad guys are not initially that bad and seem to be having a lark more than acting like hardcore killers and the finale is, as said, forced and unlikely.

If you want a look at the changing West and those old guys trying to live in it Peckinpah's masterful "The Wild Bunch" does this much better and if you want an aging Western star playing an aging gunslinger facing up to his fate watch the wonderful "The Shootist" with John Wayne.




"Werewolf of London"
Before 'Universal' gave us the now iconic Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jnr we had this Werewolf flick Starring Henry Hull.

For me the design of the Werewolf here is much better than the more famous later design.
Chaney kind of looked like a teddy with a silly black snout...But Hull looks far more feral with his bottom row fangs and pointed ears and although perhaps more human looking than Jack Pierce's later Wolfman make-up it looks far more savage.

The problems here are that in a 70 minute film the Werewolf takes too long to appear, Hull is amazingly stuffy and everyone else is so overly theatrical that much of the film looks like a stage play.
The film also makes a major mistake with the way the Werewolf acts.
Despite uncontrolled howling, Hull has presence of mind the dress up in a big coat, put on a cap and cover his face up as he skulks around (in one scene, despite the fact he leaps through a window after he changes, Hull puts on his hat before doing so!!) as such the film actually plays far more like a 'Jekyll and Hyde' film than a Werewolf film.
Hull never loses control or goes totally animal like Chaney did...he's basically a wolfy looking Mr Hyde and acts like a skulking serial killer rather than a feral beast.

BUT...The film is still fun, the Wolfman looks good, there is some nice atmosphere and there are two great support characters (two gin swigging old women who spend their time trying to put one over on each other) who provide comic relief and give the film much needed energy.
Strange mix of sci-fi in this too, including a way before its time CCTV/video phone set up that lets Hull see who is at his door, and a huge meat eating plant with tentacles!

If they had got the Werewolf in quicker and have it acting more like a feral wolf this would have been improved greatly, but it has enough successful moments to pull it through and make it worth a watch.

"Hush"
http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvhush.php

Low key but very effective, well made thriller/horror from Britain that has some excellent moments and a plot that manages to avoid most of the pitfalls such an idea (kidnapping by a mysterious lorry on a motorway) brings up (Cops, CCTV, other cars/people) better than the slightly similar "Shuttle" did.

Nothing groundbreaking, but very well crafted, acted and satisfying.

Long Weekend

The original, that is...I haven't seen it since I was a kid, and then BBC p&S prints.

Well, it is certainly as atmospheric as I remembered, in fact, I think it is actually creepier than I recalled. I was surprised at the strength of the two lead performances which had not stuck in my mind for some reason - Briony Behets and John Hargreaves are outstanding. I think this is a superb film, one of Australia's best chillers and the Optimum disk is pretty damned good - a beautiful crisp full 'scope presentation with just a few transfer artifacts from time to time (not often). Through my upsampler it looked amazing. A must!

Wake In Fright

I have been wanting to see this film for many, many years and finally there is a Region 4 release of the beautiful restoration. The picture quality is breath-taking (some of the restoration comparison clips on the extras are unbelievable!) and this is a very, very, very good film. I think it does deserve its reputation as a classic of Australian art. Certainly the best thing I have ever seen from Ted Kotcheff by a long way with utterly amazing acting from the entire cast. Just brilliant with the one flaw (?) being the ambiguity of a key flashback scene at the end. There is something this film is famous for that I am not entirely convinced occurs in the film! I suppose this might be success rather than flaw as it might be what Kotcheff was going for. WIthout going into spoilers it's hard to elucidate, I'm afraid! Anyway, this is a truly masterful films that should now, after the search and restoration, be watched and appreciated by many. The Kangaroo hunt sequence is very strong stuff for those who find it hard to watch scenes of animal death.