Splatter University (1984)

A deranged mental patient escapes his hospital, leaving bodies in his wake he ends up at a college campus and the killings begin again.

This was one hell of an odd film. Taken on one level it's poorly made rubbish and i could easily have reviewed it as such, however something about doing that would have grated with me and niggled the rest of the day for me as there's something else about Splatter University i just can't put my finger on.

The performances especially by the faculty students are dreadful however the leading lady, Forbes Riley, is absolutely terrific, holding a basic script together and playing it straight whereas many are hamming it up for all their worth, spouting inane dialogue as if nothing had ever happened on campus.

Taken as a stalk and slash film, Splatter University also fails miserably. There are no terrifying set ups or suspense akin to what we see in Halloween (1978) or the Friday the 13th series. We never stalk the victims like the best slasher films do, no Splatter University kind of dispatches it's victims almost matter of factly even if the killings are very much on the gruesome side which helps flesh the film out somewhat and maintain interest.

And yet there's something about the film that grabbed me, possibly it was Riley's believable performance floating atop the swill of scum and deadwood washed up by the waves, i just don't know, it's all sort of wonky, maybe i need to watch it drunk, however Splatter University definitely warrants a second or possibly third viewing to find out.

Solid review there Dem!!

Ahem.
Excalibur (1981, John Boorman)
Even if she resembles Anita Dobson in that wig, Cherie Lunghi still gives me the horn. Whilst the sight of coconut shells would not have gone amiss here, tis still a rollicking "retelling" :laugh: of the Arthurian legend. Not as full blooded as I remembered, but just as funny.

Monkey Shines (!988, George A Romero)
And to think I was put off watching Bruiser for years because of this.....
Not quite the ham fisted reimagining of Phenomena I had drunkenly written off, but still not the finest hour from the George. Sickly TVM sheen detracted also, and don't get me started on the Disneyesque ending. Though twas interesting to see that someone handicapped couldn't possibly lead a normal life back in the 80s.....:rolleyes:

What does everyone else think of Splatter University?

I'm intrigued.

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Although it is disjointed, almost devoid of suspense, and obvious that some scenes were made as 'filler' to bulk up the running time, it's the film I enjoy more than I probably should. However, whether that is because of its shortcomings or despite them is something I will probably never know.

The scene towards the end where the body is found by the teacher and students in the school locker is a hoot. Forbes Riley is great and delivers shock but the students don't do a thing. They don't stagger back in revolt, scream or anything they just stand there as if the locker is empty.

It really is rather odd.

Brian is my favourite,so many classic scenes and the added enjoyment of winding up devout christians.;)
Meaning of life comes next because its so off the wall, love the fishes and the surreal moments, also the grim reaper part is brilliant, the penis song, the liver/ universe song, wafer thin mint etc..., i love it more because it's subversive and more like a great episode of flying circus.
Holy grail has great scenes but it just doesn't do it for me, the ending doesn't help either, just seems they couldn't be arsed to finish it properly.:pop2:

I actually really like Monkey Shines, theres something about hemmed in tight, play style situations i dig. Basic structure and the main protagonist is just getting more freaked out and has to deal with it themselves.
Kind of like Wait until Dark. that kind of thing.

Also like Twilight zone episodes where a simple thing drives the story, like the gremlin on the wing story.

Watched Devil the other night with the people stuck in the elevator, likewise a simple story that was intriuging and interesting, although that was slightly spoiled by being a bit too convoluted and sincere.

Same with stuff like Targets, Taxi driver, Black swan,Repulsion, the Tenant, Rosemarys baby, Martin, Lets scare jessica to Death, The Shining, Cujo, Ms.45.
Films that have a small cast list,simple situations, but crank up the tension and pick situations apart psychologically.:pop2:

What do you think of Bruiser by the way D.C ?

Monty Python and The Holy Grail is easily my favourite and, I think, the best of the Python's films. It has the tightest script, most issued direction, and probably best performances from the comedy ensemble, which is remarkable given how badly Graham Chapman was struggling with his alcohol addiction at the time. In terms of the ending and cutting between the adventures of King Arthur and his knights and the 'historian', it's probably the first 'film within a film', with the historical elements as fantasy – deliberately so – when contrasted with the present-day setting of the historian, his wife, and the police.

Monty Python's Life of Brian is the next best to do a brilliantly satirical take on petty party politics (the many references to anti-Roman factions) and surprisingly well judged commentary on the life of Jews and resistance movements opposed to the Roman Empire. It is clever enough to know that isn't sufficient for a film to have longevity, so both sides of the argument need to be told, hence why the 'what have the Romans ever done for us?' scene is so relevant when applied to more contemporary things, such as the European Convention on Human Rights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfmAY6M6aA

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is one of my favourite musicals, a smart and silly film which is at its best when songs by Eric idle are coupled with superbly directed song and dance routines, or pointing out the stupidity of war for blindly following religious dogma to the detriment of your family, or sending up British institutions like public school and the army.

And Now for Something Completely Different is an extension of the TV show, a greatest hits compilation extended to a feature length film, something always worth watching, but without the careful construction of the two films which followed, or enjoying the almost limitless creative freedom of their last film.

Also, and I don't know if Blue Crush is as good, but I love Chalet Girl – Blue Crush sounds like a similar type of film.

Neon Demon

Attachment 182565

All joking aside, the film falls somewhere between the commercial entertainment of Drive and the arty aethetic of only god forgives. As a result it'll leave some of its audience walking away and scratching their heads. the rest will probably dig it. Essenntially its Refn's f*** you to hollywood, with a plot that uses the fashion industry to skewer a system where true originality is literally devoured by the fake, sycophantic wannabees who desperately aspire to be the same. It looks amazing, has some weird animal symbology, cougars, stuffed leopards and wolves as well as Keanu reeves playing the nastiest bastard of his carrer. Watch it but I can't guarantee you'll like it.

Lego movie.

wish I'd caught this earlier, probably far smarter and better written than a film about lego should be this one has a genuinely terrific script and some dead on voice acting.

Dracula untold

The last thing the unviersal horror franchise needed was an 'extended universe'. It works for superheros as one would normally be able to pick up a book and see captain america and spider man team forces and it always felt a little sad when hero films were stand alone. Here the creative team not only manage to mangle Unvisersals Dracula series and mutate it into a live action Dynasty warrior clone where vampires that happily die from a bowie knife through the chest can rend there way through entire armies while fighting to retain their identity. I dont regret spending £2 on it and its probably worth streaming just go in with expectations lowered.


Need for speed

Given the beyond-terrible reviews and the career immolation of Aaron Paul this is another one I picked up cheap and went into with the lowest of expectations....aaaaand I actually quite liked it.
Its not a neglected classic by any means, the plot is by the numbers and the characterisations are uniformly cookie cutter from other, better films but the focus here is shit-hot car chases and on this front it delivered enough to entertain me.

I'm not sure if I'm just making this up but I'm sure i recall reading somewhere that in the run up to making Life of Brian the whole Python team decided to try and read the bible, and came away with the idea that the film should be more targeted towards organised religion rather than the biblical story itself.

Great stuff. This was filmed not far from me Dem. I go there often. The inside of the pub has changed but not so much as a nut like me can place where things were. The bar is in the same place. ;)

Here are a couple of pictures....

http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/fe...22f46fe6a7.JPG

http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/c3...c4f9f6f9e5.JPG

As I understand it, they wanted to lampoon organised religion, something of which they were all equally distrustful, but couldn't decide how to do it. They all had various ideas, including a sketch where Jesus's cross comes apart because of poor carpentry, and all did read various biblical literature including the New Testament, all deciding Jesus was basically a 'good guy' and the target of the satire (as Arthurian legend had been in The Holy Grail) should be the Romans, the way in which the original religious material has been interpreted by factions which vehemently disagree with one another and, as a backdrop, the New Testament era, such as that portrayed in Ben-Hur, in general.

Yeah Chalet Girl is a bit of a gem.

Have you just seen it, Nos?

Just wondered why you replied to your own post that's all.

Thought i post this here,

http://io9.gizmodo.com/you-may-never...e=io9_facebook

Even tho its still impressive i still didnt rate the film.
Felt it was more like a traveling circus that wanted that WOW factor, bigger better louder to amaze their audience, instead of concentrating on a film well just being a film.
This is prime eg of films of just wanting to outdo each other to get themselves noticed,
Sorry :behindsofa:

Don't Breathe

Blimey this is good! From the team that made the evil dead remake this urban thriller gradualy mutates into a full blown horror thriller as a group of young break in artists end up trapped in the house of an old blind man who is no where near as helpless as he first seems and has some dark secrets lurking in the bowels of his house. The sense of space in the house is perfect and a boatload of suspense is drawn out of the burglars trying to remain quiet and outwit the blind guy. Stephen Lang is perfect as the veteran who manages to feel very human even after some shocking revalations in the final act. Its one well worth heading to the multiplex for. :pop2::pop2::pop2::pop2::pop2:

I'll be going to see this at the end of the week, I'm looking forward to it.

One i'd earmarked as a dvd preorder. Your thoughts just make me certain.

I haven't seen Blue Crush, no. The only reason I replied to my own post is to give the other one some context.

I wasn't referring to Blue Crush, Chalet Girl actually.

You should give Blue Crush a go. It's an enjoyable outdoors feel good film.

I also really like Coyote Ugly. Perhaps we should leave it there. :lol:

I also like Coyote Ugly, although it has been years since I have seen it; I'll see if Blue Crush is available to rent from Lovefilm or on Netflix and report back. :nod:

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

***1/2 out of *****


The Neon Demon (2016)

**** out of *****

SOLD!!! :laugh:

That's more generous about it than I felt, I teetered between 2 and 2.5 stars. For at least an hour of the running time I was bored in the cinema and that hardly happens!

This was my second viewing and I enjoyed it a bit more this time around. After my first viewing I would’ve given it *** out of *****. It’s flawed but it’s gripping stuff overall with some truly great scenes and set-pieces. It’s not as good as the first two in this trilogy or as good as ‘X-Men 2’. I rank it somewhere in the middle of the franchise up there with the first film and ‘The Wolverine’.

The Neighbour (2016)

*** out of *****

X The Unknown (1956)

Often thought to be a Quatermass film as it came out in between The Quatermass Experiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957). X The Unknown isn't connected but it's easy to see how it could be lumped in with those two.

American actor Dean Jagger plays a sympathetic scientist similar to Bernard Quatermass and the story is very much of the type but it's really a film that is a being all to itself. Jimmy Sangster's first script for Hammer is a bit of a gem. In it a sludge monster (That probably glows green were it not filmed in black and white) rises from Scottish bog land during a military exercise in an attempt to find radio active materials on which to feed upon culminating in an almost siege like story centred on the local hospital as the deadly slime descends on it.

Despite hitting cinemas prior to the world beating triumvirate of Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, X The Unknown probably trumps them all in terms of pure visceral horror thanks to some great effects work as we shriek in fear as faces melt in gory glory and we witness the full effects of radiation burns on a poor child. In fact i'd hazard to say this is one of the goriest Hammer films full stop.

Director Leslie Norman (Barry's father) keeps things rolling along aided by Jagger's impressive acting turn and a typically bombastic early James Bernard score ensure we never really think this is sci-fi on a tight budget but guarantees we'll always go back for more.

An absolute classic!

I loved this when I saw it last year for the first time! It's like a 1950s Doctor Who story! :nod:

Ha,ha yes definitely. I can just picture a young Lethbridge-Stewart in those early military scenes.

Apparently the title was chosen to highlight the fact that it was a 'X' rated horror film. The same goes for the first Quatermass film, which is actually called 'The Quatermass Xperiment' - It's only the various television versions that are spelt '...Experiment'!

NIGHTMARE CITY – Not many these days would make movies as unabashedly dumb as some of those Italian zombie flicks. The Fulci films swim with atmosphere and strange vibes, but the rabid dementia is to be found in 'Zombie Holocaust', 'Burial Ground' and this, Umberto Lenzi's 'Nightmare City'. Even after countless rewatches, it still seems that there's too much bad craziness going on in 'Nightmare City' to fully recount. It's no wonder they roped in Hugo Stiglitz as the lead, because his glowering mono-expression and ultrawooden ways are a perfect foil for the cadaverous carnival of silliness erupting around him. Here, he's a journalist wanting to get to the bottom of just why a military jet full of kick-ass undead has landed in his city – The Truth, dammit, that's what the public needs to hear. He always looks mega-serious so no one can doubt his dedication to the cause, but this sobriety is somewhat undermined by Lenzi's constant lurches into high end stupidity. Witness the disco era dance troupe, see a scalpel throwing surgeon, be privy to an intimate conversation about how a sculpture gives Francisco Rabal a “feeling of death”. Moments like these are the lifeblood of 'Nightmare City', whose perfunctory plot is really only there to be gotten over. The film moves quickly from set piece to set piece – zombies attack film studio, zombies attack hospital etc etc. Most of these stagings are really quite impressive, and allow Hugo to clench his fists and scowl but mostly keep the focus on the zombie action, which in this case is a lot more 'action' than in most other films of its ilk. 'Nightmare City' is of course partially notorious for introducing the fast moving, as opposed to lumbering, undead into cinema, and I've always really dug the zombies on show here. It's not so much that they're quick, it's that they appear to be reasonably well organised, use weapons, are just needlessly sadistic and seem more like a gang of really fuc*ed up criminals than anything that's just stepped out of a grave. The gore, although not extreme, is gleefully nasty and slightly sleazy – there are numerous breast fixated moments for example. And to top it all... it's all a dream! Yep, the ending really doesn't work, but it's just another out-of-place element in a film which has been throwing incongruity at the viewer, smiling and shrugging for ninety minutes anyway. 'Nightmare City' is always good to turn to in moments of slight jadedness as it's one of those movies that does actually feel like it delivers on some base but unfathomable level. Note to purists – yeah, I know they're not really 'zombies' in the narrow sense, but I prefer that shorthand to 'inexplicably mutated radioactive humans with singed looking faces and a fixation on drinking the blood of others'.

If you have the Arrow release, and you watch the interview with Lenzi, he spends all his time stating that 'they are NOT Zombies...I hate that term...They are humans who have been infected by radiation'

BUT...during the interview, he constantly refers to them as Zombies!

Seems like I was channeling a bit of Lenzi myself at the end there. I quite like him in interviews, he always seems quite snarky and bitter.

It's strange that's how he comes across in interviews because that's not the impression I got from him when I (briefly) met him and he happily signed some things for me, albeit in return for money!

Me Me Lai says he was a real tyrant onset, repeatedly screaming at people. His attitude towards her, and public body shaming of her (saying her breasts were too small) led to her getting breast implants (which she regretted and, I believe, had removed later on in life), hence why her breasts look bigger in films following Eaten Alive!.

Those are the key words, one feels.

They could be, but I didn't get the impression over the day he was there that Lenzi is the kind of man who will put on airs and graces for money – that was just an accepted fee.

Compare that with how Rik described Tom Savini, who was apparently rude even after being paid, and it's the difference between someone who meets fans because they feel appreciated and someone who does it because they feel obligated and it's easy money.

True.

I remember meeting Amber Benson and she was just a joy to speak to, didn't need the money as she was still working on Buffy, but loved to meet people.

From all accounts Savini's a miserable so and so and i wouldn't give him my money.

I started to watch films which met my birth year challenge criteria as suggested by Gag earlier in the week, I was born in 1977 so I started with Hitch-Hike as I own it and had never seen it, I followed that up with Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a 1978 follow up.

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Unfortunately I wasn't really taken with either. Franco Nero was a mess in Hitch-Hike, I don't know if it was an acting/directing choice or he was actually pissed on set, plus him doing his own dubbing was distracting as you couldn't really understand what he was saying for most of the film. Hess, however was fantastic and perhaps this says a lot about me but quite sexy :lol: I don't recall much about the film other than those 2 things.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a disappointment due to my expectations going in to it. The 50's version is often cited as one of the best Sci-Fi films ever, I wasn't really a fan, and the remake is well received too and quite honestly, apart from some really stand-out moments it bored the pants off me. Donald Sutherland is not even remotely as sexy as David Hess either... I liked a few scenes though, Elizabeth tailing her husband after she becomes suspicious was one, Matthew falling asleep the pods giving birth to the 4 clones, and that famous scream at the very end of the film.

1979 tonight, and I'm either going to watch something clever (Stalker), classy (Vengeance is Mine), or Phantasm...