What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Gold6082]

Watched a lot since my last post some films some old tv shows,so let's trip arse over tit down memory lane.


Films

First up

Clown

Very good film,which I had looked forward to based on many reviews in magazines and online. It was indeed Very good & I did see the comparison with the fly. As a real estate agent puts on a clown suit which he cannot remove & gradually changes from both looking and acting normal into a deformed maniacal monster who can only exist by dining on kids. I won't say no more for those who haven't seen it but it's one you should see. 7/10


Nightcrawler

excellent film. A Lowlife with no money will steal or do anything for a quick buck,after a succession of small time thefts & stunts he accidentally falls into the world of night time journalism. Both his greed and psychosis escalate further and further throughout the film as his success at the job through vicious unscrupulous means brings him bigger cars & better contacts. A moving portrait of a narcissistic lowlifes decent from greedy bastard to stone cold psychopath. excecuted perfectly & disturbingly from start to finish without a dull moment 9/10


The Bogeyman (1980)

we've "Mostly" all seen this before but the 88 films Blu is shockingly sharp & amazing making it much easier to give the film a fairer viewing when not distorted by second rate prints that look like they've been used to wipe someones arse. not of course looking at you vipco or you vhs rip obsessives Video international! watching the film on the stunning 88 blu I appreciate it more as not a masterpiece but certainly an enjoyable yarn & one of the more worthy video nasties 6/10


Tomb Of Ligeia

Sadly for me this was probably the most boring pointless film starring the legendary Vincent Price I've ever made the mistake of watching. It's in fact the first film I've ever seen of his I disliked & I've seen nearly all of them now. It started off promising but soon demised into a cowering wreck in the corner of the room not knowing itself what the point was. 3/10


The Haunted Palace

Now this is more like it from one of the worst price films (IMO) to one of the best! This one was a treat and a half as I had never seen it like I hadn't seen Ligeia. Price as always plays his role or should I say two roles with sinister vigor. I imagine with the deformed villagers too for it's time this may have been scary. This has gone right up there into my top 5 Price films. That's quite a recommendation as anyone will tell you I'm hard to impress to the point of rating films above a maximum of 8 out of 10... 9/10


The Culling.

A film which synopsis paints it and very FALSELY as a sort of Omen come Case 39,it is about 600 miles behind either! a diabolical boring,pointless exercise that took 80% of the film to go anywhere then when it did go somewhere it was down a mineshaft head first. the acting except one actress was diabolical,the plot was well was there even one that made sense? did we even care? even at the short running time of just over an hour it managed to wear out it's welcome faster than that relative you avoid at christmas! 1/10 argg



TV SHOWS

As you may recall I picked up the "THRILLER" boxset in the network sale as it was broadcast on ITV before my time & I'd heard great things on here and elsewhere.

I'm glad I did some of the episodes were amazing & quite creepy. I imagine for their time when first broadcast many teenagers went to bed & had a sleepless of nightmare ridden night.

Although there are no "bad" episodes at all over all 43 some are much weaker & more predictable than others. whereas others especially the amazing "Coffin for the Bride" you were left gasping in shock as on a first viewing it's very unlikely you saw that coming.

Coffin for the bride sticks out for not only the eason above of being genuinely clever & with an amazing virtually unguessable twist but the fact on a second viewing even when you know what's comning it stands up & on that second viewing you can pick up all the subtle and fantastic digs at what was coming which on first viewing you would never pick up on in a million years.


The boxset as a Whole 9/10 although certain episodes deserve a full ten and some as low as 4. It is a must see for those who haven't one you'll certainly revisit many times.


I then felt nostalgic even at just 32 (LOL) So as you know with my soft fondness towards all things Australian I revisited 3 programs from my childhood.

Pugwall,Round the Twist & The Miraculous mellops (not sure i'll ever grow up)

most of you probably won't remember Miraculous Mellops it was shown on channel 4 in the early nineties at around 10.30am on school holidays. It's about a wacky family who have contacts with beings from another planet & have adventures with magic hoovers etc. their father & aunt run a nursery & they have an evil neighbour (played by aussie legend Max Phipps).

The series also boasts 1 off appearances from legends like Rowena Wallace who in a far cry from her role as evil Pat the Rat in Sons & Daughters plays a concerned martian newsreader also Maggie Kirkpatrick makes an appearance too!! luckily for the vulnerable kids not as The Freak!


Round The twist is very likely more familiar to most as a 4 series program shown over 12 years based on the writings of the fantastic Paul Jennings. This series boasted well known Aus faces too including Judith Mcgrath "colleen po face Powell" of prisoner as the equally spiteful & sarcastic Matron Gribble in the first season.

Pugwall also had big faces including Maurie Fields who is a legend of the Aus entertainment industry.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Awakening of the Beast. (1970)

Brazilian documentary in which the star of the Coffin Joe films José Mojica Marins, chairs a round table of doctors and psychiatrists in a discussion using case studies on the effects of drugs and their link with sex, repression and desires.

With 40 minutes remaining the film takes a turn for the surreal as it becomes apparent this isn't a docudrama but actually a Coffin Joe film...in colour. As Marins becomes Joe's alter ego Zé do Caixão and conducts his own experiments with LSD on four volunteer drug addicts. The film quickly becomes a halluciogenic study of sexual perversion in the surreal nightmarish world of Coffin Joe.

Definitely a film of two halves. Awakening of the Beast is mesmeric, pervy, disturbing viewing, even now 45 years later. Recommended.

[trebor8273]

Gave Faust love of the damned another go on NOs recommendation and ending it watching all this time. 7.5/10

[Vipp]

The Babadook -
Someone on the forum said this film was more of an allegory for mental health and how you begin to fight it better when you face it and accept that it is here for the long haul, i loved that idea so much and had already enjoyed the visual marketing of the movie that i gave it a go. Now i ran out of witty things to say that lets you know i thought the film was pants... It was like watching re runs of love-joy on a black and white TV whilst scratching pictures of rod hulls balls into the furniture? That does the job.

[Rik]

Originally Posted by Vipp

The Babadook -
Someone on the forum said this film was more of an allegory for mental health and how you begin to fight it better when you face it and accept that it is here for the long haul, i loved that idea so much and had already enjoyed the visual marketing of the movie that i gave it a go. Now i ran out of witty things to say that lets you know i thought the film was pants... It was like watching re runs of love-joy on a black and white TV whilst scratching pictures of rod hulls balls into the furniture? That does the job.

Finally, someone who shares my feelings towards this film, that Paul Calf here sums up pretty well!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

Gave Faust love of the damned another go on NOs recommendation and ending it watching all this time. 7.5/10

Glad you liked it Treb.

As i said earlier i like it. It's a film with a bit of everything in it.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Vipp

The Babadook -
Someone on the forum said this film was more of an allegory for mental health and how you begin to fight it better when you face it and accept that it is here for the long haul, i loved that idea so much and had already enjoyed the visual marketing of the movie that i gave it a go. Now i ran out of witty things to say that lets you know i thought the film was pants... It was like watching re runs of love-joy on a black and white TV whilst scratching pictures of rod hulls balls into the furniture? That does the job.

Don't get it. One of the best horrors I've ever seen.

[Frankie Teardrop]

ZOMBIES - THE BEGINNING: Ironically, Bruno Mattei's last film. That wasn't the only gag he had up his sleeve with this one. 'Zombie's - The Beginning' - well, it's a Bruno Mattei film. When I say it's not his best - does that have any real meaning at all? One thing that pleased me was the fact that a guy in his seventies or eighties got it together to make this when no-one was asking him to and the prospect of it making any impact on a £ level must have been pretty non-existent. I like to think that betrays a weirdly obsessive fannishness. Anyway, it's basically a direct rip of 'Aliens' with zombies instead of, well, aliens. It has a flat DTV look which is decidedly uncinematic to behold, but if you're interested in getting it you won't care. There are fights, chases and quite a few gory moments. What shines through is the Mattei madness - bad performances which feel like they have to be dubbed but possibly aren't, random bursts which play like incursions from other movies (one of the soldiers gets randomly ripped in two by some kind of yeti-thing for no reason), a crazy ending with an evil brain in a tank and saucer eyed kids in a zombie womb grotto-hell. I liked it, it was good. If you dig his other masterpieces of nonsense like 'The Other Hell' and 'Rats - Night of Terror', you might like it too.

BLOOD SOAKED - Micro budget indie about the day a college newbie and her girlfriend meet two Nazi sisters in a desert. It doesn't go very well. The sisters turn corpses (soon to include college girl's gf) into zombies with a secret Nazi chemical. Sounds like it could be a Troma-ish knock off, but it's not. It's just quite strange, and pretty intriguing. Given the subject matter, it can't help but be a bit tongue in cheek at points, but for the most part it's played pretty straight. Some of the sequences look really raw and nihilistic. For some reason it switches from colour to b&w after twenty minutes which seems a bit pointless, but aesthetically it gives some of the scenes an authentically grimy, bleak hopelessness, like stuff dredged up from a flea-pit in 1969. OK, you can't take something about Nazi sisters and their horde of zombies in a totally serious vein, but it did have more of an intensity about it than I was banking on. Yeah, I liked it, check it out if you want.

STARRY EYES - One which has been slowly built up a lot recently. I wasn't blown away, but I did think it was very good. It follows an actress in her bid to be taken seriously - unfortunately, she needs to get into some dark Hollywood shit involving cultic showbiz types before she can get anywhere. 'Get anywhere' seems to mean falling to pieces physically and mentally, murdering all her hipster / slacker mates, then being reincarnated as someone similar looking but with iridescent green eyes and more of a sense of evil elan. 'Starry Eyes' has a lot going for it, particularly the performance of the lead, who plays a spineless narcissistic drip who is completely unlikeable. Credit to the actress behind it all for keeping us in there. There's a slightly Polanski-esque flavour to it, and a Cronenbergian body makeover, and bits of it do feel a bit stitched together, but it kind of pulls it off in a coolly elegant way to the extent that even odd stylistic choices such as a lurch into vicious gore territory feel credible and not that jarring. Yep, I felt good about it overall - definitely worth checking out.

[Buboven]

Originally Posted by J Harker

Don't get it. One of the best horrors I've ever seen.

Here, here

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

ZOMBIES - THE BEGINNING: Ironically, Bruno Mattei's last film. That wasn't the only gag he had up his sleeve with this one. 'Zombie's - The Beginning' - well, it's a Bruno Mattei film. When I say it's not his best - does that have any real meaning at all? One thing that pleased me was the fact that a guy in his seventies or eighties got it together to make this when no-one was asking him to and the prospect of it making any impact on a £ level must have been pretty non-existent. I like to think that betrays a weirdly obsessive fannishness. Anyway, it's basically a direct rip of 'Aliens' with zombies instead of, well, aliens. It has a flat DTV look which is decidedly uncinematic to behold, but if you're interested in getting it you won't care. There are fights, chases and quite a few gory moments. What shines through is the Mattei madness - bad performances which feel like they have to be dubbed but possibly aren't, random bursts which play like incursions from other movies (one of the soldiers gets randomly ripped in two by some kind of yeti-thing for no reason), a crazy ending with an evil brain in a tank and saucer eyed kids in a zombie womb grotto-hell. I liked it, it was good. If you dig his other masterpieces of nonsense like 'The Other Hell' and 'Rats - Night of Terror', you might like it too.

Sold!

I was wondering about those two Intervision Mattei releases. What's the AV quality like Frankie?

I posted Keirarts a visitor message asking the same thing but he either never noticed it or couldn't be arsed replying.