What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[mr 420]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I think Zeta One is great, camp, fun. Whats not to like about it?

I'll second that. Not quite Fantastic Argoman, but still a refreshing break from the norm.

[monkeypedro]

This weekend i attended the London Korean film festival tour in Oxford and watched Hope, Boomerang Family and Fists of Legend.

All movies were good and certainly recommended if you are a fan of Asian cinema but the attendance was shocking especially today in Fist of Legend which was a great MMA fight movie only had 3 people in total including myself and deserved to be seen by a wider audience.

[Frankie Teardrop]

DISCO EXORCIST - I so much wanted to like this, with its mountains of sleaze and bloody violence, but I couldn't, really. Why didn't I dig it? Well, my only reservation about it is a crucial one - I couldn't get my head around the comedic, tongue in cheek tone. That's all. It's a shame, because the film makers obviously understand the strange intensity of seventies horror, what made it work, to the extent that the horror here DOES work when it's allowed to stand alone, but all too often it's undercut by the whole 'let's have a laugh at a bunch of knobheads at a disco and get yer tits out' approach. Why couldn't they have simply ramped up the exploitation aspects and ditched the 'humour'? That would've been amazing. 'Ave a banana.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 - I shelled out for the uncut US disc, and all I can say is, my dislike of the BBFC notwithstanding, domestic punters checking out the UK release are really not missing much. To be sure, the first half hour features a reasonable amount of cruelty, but nothing outside of the box. The 'revenge' side of the rape revenge equation as witnessed in the latter thirty minutes is a bit underwhelming although includes some nice vice induced bollock eruption and some suppurating wounds. As a film? Well made but everything is perfunctory, serving only to move exploitation elements that really aren't all that harsh. OK, but...

ZEDER - This is more like it. An exercise in paranoid foreboding which only slips in a few places. I was really impressed, there's a sense of abstract horror here which Italian movies of the period never really grasped. Don't get me wrong, all that Euro-goth laid the atmosphere on really thick and all, but the relatively dry style of 'Zeder' belies an underlying darkness which is difficult to articulate... maybe something like 'Footsteps' might be a good parallel in some ways. A sense of claustrophobia, something heavy moving in, suffocating, no escape, bollocks to zombies, here is dread... you should watch it.

THE RAMBLER - An amazing film, which has debuted to inexplicably hostile reviews. People don't seem to grasp that it's OK to 'just' be 'weird'. Having said this, the maker of 'The Rambler' understands Lynch too well and pays the ultimate penalty as his identity is subsumed to a certain extent... but hey, if Lynch made films like this one these days I'd be happy. And I'm happy with 'The Rambler' and its abstract-schlock picaresque, which left me feeling the way I did when I saw 'O Lucky Man' at the age of ten. For a movie full of empty, uninvolving characters, I was surprisingly um involved. An ex-con moves across the states and through various oddball encounters, mostly involving the appearance of a mutilated woman in various guises. Actually, for all those who seem determined to only see fragmentation and nonsense in 'The Rambler', I read it as a pretty straight take on 'Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'... there is an undefinable sadness at the heart of the film and those lights in the sky... maybe they're the last fluttering vision of a man dying in the chair, a man who never left the pen after all. Whatever, I recommend 'The Rambler' wholeheartedly.

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by nosferatu42

Didn't think any one else knew about Wacko, it's a favourite of mine from when i was young.

'Death to teenagers who f*ck'

Yeah, I love wacko! I have the DVD Wacko [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Joe Don Baker, Stella Stevens, George Kennedy, Julia Duffy, Scott McGinnis, Elizabeth Daily, Michele Tobin, Andrew Dice Clay, Anthony James, Sonny Carl Davis, David Drucker, Jeff Altman, Greydon Clark, Curtis Burch, Michael

51K7D6ST1PL.jpg


Worth a pick up if anyone here hasn't seen it.

[Dave Boy]

The Black Scorpion (1957)



GIANT Scorpions !!! What else to say. Excellent 50's monster movie.

[bdc]

Some interesting trivia on The Black Scorpion,besides them running out of money...

"The trapdoor spider that attacks Juanito in the scorpions' underground home is one of the original models left over from the famous deleted spider sequence in King Kong."

"That giant worm with the "octopus-like arms" seen in this film is a prop from the unused spider pit sequence from the original King Kong."

[demonknight]

I remember seeing Lifeforce at my local cinema many years ago and loving it,saw it again Saturday night on bluray from Arrow and I have to say that this time I didn't enjoy it as much. Hats off to Arrow for a features packed disc. I also watched a brilliant 54min interview with the great Peter Cushing recorded back in November 1983. This 'special extra' can be found on the also excellent 'Amicus House Of Horrors' documentary. A/V is atrocious but the interview itself is first class and that's probably down to the interviewee. A very humble and honest man

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Rum Diary. (2011)

There are reasons why once a film comes to my attention as a possible purchase i never read anything else about them. Expectation, hopes and inaccurate preconceptions can all spoil a film for me and The Rum Diary is one of those films where this was all too apparent. Based on a semi autobiographical novel by Hunter S Thompson and written and directed by Withnail and I's Bruce Robinson, i was expecting a funny, drug fueled film akin to an amalgamation of Withnail and I and Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, basically drug and alcohol abuse with added reptiles and some piss funny dialogue.

Johnny Depp plays Paul Kemp a struggling author who goes to work for a newspaper in Puerto Rico during the sixties. Kemp and the rest of the paper's staff seemingly attempt to empty Puerto Rico of rum whilst ending up at cock fights and getting into car chases whilst ending up in a sticky situation involving real estate. The film is less mad cap than Fear and Loathing although it does feature the obligatory acid trip, but on the whole the surrealism is toned down drastically. Depp is never less than watchable in any film and has a ball playing Kemp. He's backed up by a fine cast including Giovanni Ribisi, Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart and Richard Jenkins.

So whilst the film isn't quite what i was expecting it is a thoroughly entertaining ride through the drinking dens of 1960's Puerto Rico and i'm sure it is one i'll go back to many times in the future.

[sjconstable]

The Rum Diary is very funny, me and my mate were crying with laughter when we saw it at the cinema.

[Hawkmonger]

Deranged is a ****ed up little Canadian horror movie that depicts probably the most realistic interpretation of the life of Ed Gein. Not for the faint hearted but a riot fir anyone who likes there comedy black as coal. Great effects as well. It's not for the squeamish mind and is certainly very atmospheric with some set pieces being to grimy you can almost feel and smell it. Indeed, i was so impressed with it I'd rate it up with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead as horror classics and it really desserved more attention.