What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[SShaw]

Its been a couple of weeks since my posts from Grimmfest. I was in London last week (paid for by my company as I had business meetings in the U.K. either side of the weekend) so had the opportunity to dip briefly into the London Film Festival offerings. Just two films though Electric Boogaloo which is a documentary, from the team behind Machete Maidens Unleashed, about the rise and spectacular fall of Cannon films the company that perhaps defined exploitation films in the 80's and laid much of the groundwork for independent film making in the 90's and beyond. A fascinating and fun trawl through the Cannon back catalogue. Well worth a look.

In the west end I managed to get a ticket for It follows which, at least to my knowledge, may be the first entry in a new STH (sexually transmitted haunting) genre. Thats right, this teen horror is about a relentless (but slow) supernatural being whose sole purpose is to hunt you down (should that be haunt you down) and kill you. Your only chance to escape is by passing the haunting on to another person through sexual intercourse. Despite its rather silly premise it works quite well.

Back home I went to see the dumb but enormous fun The Equalizer a film which has almost nothing to do with the 1980's television series until the very final scene, except for the central characters name. In this film Denzel takes on and takes out the russian mafia as he seeks to protect those who cannot protect themselves. This clearly has franchise potential, it will be interesting to see whether it is pursued.

Finally I saw 20,000 Days on earth a faux-documentary following Nick Cave as he turns fifty. This is either an insightful portrait of the man or a self-indulgent obfuscation. In either case it provides a fantastic opportunity to showcase his music and for that I am grateful.

On home video formats I have been watching

Book Thief which I like a lot.
Stage Fright which I had almost completely forgotten.
Scream Queens interesting, but a little bit flat.
Shivers its Cronenberg, and its early Cronenberg does anymore need to be said?
Beyond Reanimator for £2.99 in FOPP I couldn't resist. I still like the end credits with the rat/penis fight.
Live, Die, Repeat straightforward entertainment. And for my money this, together with the first Resident Evil film, really captures on screen the feeling of playing a video game.

[Frankie Teardrop]

NITE OWL - Aficionados of the likes of 'Nadja' and 'The Addiction' may get into this NYC East Village art-vampire flick. Interestingly it predates those other two movies by a few years, although it broadly speaks the same stand-offish semi avant language and dallies with similar themes - alienation, addiction, big city disconnect - and features a similar lack of genre orientation. Fans of pre-refurbishment New York will dig its scumbag ambience, to which the swarming, grain heavy 16mm B&W photography is well suited. It follows Jake, a dispossessed young guy who hangs out in clubs until he can find someone to take home. The inevitable blood spilling happens until he meets performance artist Ann Guish, whose deadpan poetry recitals about being raped by snakes set his heart a-flutter. Unfortunately, the brother of one of his victims is out to exact revenge. 'Nite Owl' is not a great film, but it really worked for me. As mentioned above, it has none of the trappings of genre beyond a few off-hand vampire references, and plays more like a loose, experimental student film than a horror movie. This might put a few people off, but I for one was really taken by the scummy milieu (late eighties Manhattan) which feels simultaneously melancholy and apocalyptic, and somehow evokes the fade out and implosion of the city's infamously decadent underbelly culture. People live by night and dance to the early house music which dominates the soundtrack (and is often belted out live by the heavily featured 'Screamin' Rachael', who does a version of 'Voodoo Ray'), or sit around bemoaning aimlessly like only twentysomething slackers can. Every once in a while, there's a killing. A really interesting horror-indie, as opposed to indie-horror This one came out on Sub-Rosa a few years ago, and I think it's still hangs around looking pretty cheap in the various online market places.

[Frankie Teardrop]

Also watched this bunch over the last couple of days, which I won't review 'properly' as none of them inspired me all that much. Visiting my folks' with nothing to do apart from edit my awful so-called 'music' and avoid the local pub due to sinister liver bulge, so I'm in the middle of a DVD blitz...

DARK CITY - Very good noir sci-fi which is visually stunning and features ace Richard O'Brien in cadaverous good form. However, I didn't really get into it - I could see the quality, but not feel the width if that makes sense. Maybe I was a little distracted.

THE KISS OF A KILLER - Another poundland pick-up. Not really fussed. Something about the reincarnation of a Hungarian serial killer. People hang around in a hotel. Not bad, but too bland, goes in bin.

THE LAST SEVEN - Yet another £land purchase. Did I really expect it to be anything other than a ninety minute stretch of tedium? Actually, there are some good ideas in this ultimately Owl Creek-esque tale of a depopulated London and divine retribution, but even Danny Dyer as a celestial avenger couldn't make it work.

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA - I liked it, but my version looked crummy. Maybe it was my laptop. As the film is for the greater part about imagery and visuals, I found my mind resisted the overtures of the rubbish PQ, but left me a mental note to get a better version at some point. Also noticed acting largely rubbish for such esteemed company.

REC 2 - Good solid follow on from the first, which I don't have anything bad to say about. However, by the time I came round to it I was feeling a bit undernourished after forcing myself through the poundland duo I've already mentioned and was really in the mood for something of 'Runaway Nightmare' type proportions to ease the blight, so didn't enjoy it as much as I normally would've.

[fuzzymctiger]

Once again, exams upcoming and here I am. I've inspired myself to continue posting again and reading the watched and purchased threads rather than just continually ignoring the emails. Kind of missed them.

Scream - Forgot about this one last time around. Hadn't seen this since when I first got into horror movies about 2 or 3 years before the 4th one came out, so I must have been 12 or 13. Anyway, an honestly good film. For a hit and miss director like Craven, this doesn't feel like one of his films (I haven't seen any of his post 80's stuff). It's well made, it's fun, it's very 90's in a good way, and it's clever. It takes the whole poking fun at horror movies and makes it into a very good slasher in itself. The characters feel more honest and younger than I remembered, and having a copy that doesn't die during the ending really helped. Courtney Cox and David Arquette still annoy me, but the Neve Campbell and the guy who played Shaggy are still good. The ghost face mask, endlessly ripped off by $2 stores tripe (or ¥100 or £1 wherever you live), still feels fresh and cool here. From memory the 2nd one was good but a flat ending, and the 3rd was complete shit. 9/10

The Thin Blue Line - Wow. Wanted to see this for a while and certainly paid off. Even though I was very much out of it with a headache (sickness, too young for the fun stuff) when I started watching, and completley mixed up who was who and who did what (I thought the killer was a (nonexistent) brother of Adams, that Adams wasn't in prison, and that the kid copped the charge because he was with the brother. I was so out of it). But once I finally worked it all out, it still made great sense and was very very gripping. But labels would helped next time Morris. The Phillip Glass score was amazing, as was the design and cinematography, and very cleverly, without narration or obvious bias, presents a very convincing appeal of an innocent man. Highly reccomended 10/10

The Descent - Like Scream, a very young watch that scared the absolute pants off me the first time. Second time around? Not so much. Felt very underwhelmed with the second half of this for some reason, despite it being very very good. I kind of wished it just stayed a spelunkers thrilled without monsters, despite the monster half still being very creepy. Great cinematography and a very interesting plot. As for the ending, I'm still not sure whether I prefer the British or US. I would have preferred the US if the sequel was actually good, but I remember it being fairly shit. Despite my underwhelmed state, it still definitely deserves a high reccomendation for a first time viewer. 9/10

Have a nice long playlist on my local international channel's (SBS for Australians that can use it) On Demand app, as it's all free. That's where I watched these, and a nice chunk of my last post. Hopefully I'll be able to get through most of them.

[Buboven]

Last film I watched was Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder. Solid effort. 8/10

Really need to watch more of his stuff. I have only seen Psycho, The Birds and this one so far (I know, I deserve this )

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Fiend (1980)

Don Dohler's Fiend is a little step down in the effects department in comparison to his prior film The Alien Factor, which exhibited a veritable buffet of cheesy '80s visual treats and of which enhanced the enjoyment factor of the film considerably.

Fiend is more grounded in its effects, in as much as you get some glowing red aura cropping up here and there as well as some minor prosthetic make-up. The film instead is a more sinister, mysterious tale involving corpse re-animation by some kind of energy based entity which requires life force to survive. Now in its re-animated body, the entity takes up residence in a small town suburb teaching violin as its austere Orson Welles-esque host used to do whilst taking frequent breaks in order to drain the local town's people of their life essence by throttling them.

As a Dohler film, you pretty much know what you're going to get going into it, and as minimal budget '80s schlockfests go, you can certainly do a lot worse than this.

Originally posted here: Nightmare USA Films Discussion Thread

[anythinggoes78]

Originally Posted by PaulD

Cannibal! The Musical (1993)

Just couldn't get into this at all and really didn't find it anywhere near as funny as it should have been.

It does have an awesome snowman song though

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Buboven

Last film I watched was Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder. Solid effort. 8/10

Really need to watch more of his stuff. I have only seen Psycho, The Birds and this one so far (I know, I deserve this )

Blimey, you are sorely in need of an extended piece of cinematic education!

[PaulD]

Originally Posted by anythinggoes78

It does have an awesome snowman song though

Yeah that was definitely the funniest bit by a long shot

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Humans vs Zombies. (2011)

Once you get past the highly original title - I'm sure i once saw humans fighting zombies before...maybe not Humans vs Zombies is a pretty decent effort. Although low budget, a bit of time has been spent on the dialogue especially during the opening forty minutes which is actually a high school romp with barely any mention of our undead chums.

The characters are all well rounded although arguably a little cliched, fortunately they are all rather likable as well, meaning when the inevitable flesh ripping begins you care enough to root for them.

Interestingly some of these recent low budget horrors have tried new tricks and ideas to set themselves apart, whether it be the time lapse filming of Stitcher ,or in this case much use of satellite imagery to show each location before a scene begins. Happily it's not overused but i found it interesting the six or seven times it came into play.

If the film has one drawback it's the zombie's themselves. Not the slow shambling type, these guys go for the whole running, jumping, 28 Days Later caboodle which is wearing a little thin with me nowadays.

There are people who will no doubt dislike this film for the same reasons i enjoyed it, and that's fine. On the whole i was rather pleased with this Poundland purchase.