What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[iank]

The 2014 Town that Dreaded Sundown. Sadly... didn't like it at all, I'm afraid. Found it very dull and generic, and not a patch on the original, which I only blind bought in August and loved. I should probably know better by now than to blind buy modern movies, but hope springs eternal...

[iank]

Saw the original 80s My Bloody Valentine last night. Never seen it before, but picked it up cheap based on good reputation. I... wasn't overly keen, to be honest. It wasn't terrible or anything, but I thought it was fairly mediocre and didn't really do anything to distinguish itself from the 80s slasher movie pack. Even as "lesser" 80s slasher pics go, I liked Terror Train much more than this. Much scarier, better ending and much better cast (Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson). This was fairly forgettable to me.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Rocking Horse Winner. (1949)

What a beautiful little gem of a film this is. Based on a tale by DH Lawrence. The story of a quiet boy who receives a rocking horse one Christmas and is taught how to ride it properly by the families handyman. In doing so he finds he can predict the winners of horse races thus making lots of money.

Although the story line sounds slight the film is a haunting, cautionary tale of the effects of greed, exploitation and spending money you don't have.

The rocking horse in question, every bit as memorable as the ventriloquist's dummy in 1945's Dead of Night, although a child's nursery piece, comes across as a sinister object. The stark black and white photography and crawling camera work giving it an air of malevolence and arguably the supernatural. The final scenes of the boy riding the horse desperate to conjure up the name of one last winner have a frantic terror to them and struck me as more frenzied horror than normally seen in cinema from this period.

Highly recommended.

[Buboven]

Day of Anger (1967)

7/10

The Martian (2015)

8/10

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

8/10

War of the Worlds (1953)

5/10

[Mojo]

FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED
Arguably the best Hammer Frankenstein since CURSE, this one has Peter Cushing at the top of his game and his Baron at his most sadistic. Maybe this one should have been called EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN? Superb blu ray from Warner.

TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA
Originally not going to feature the Count, here we have a satanic ritual go horribly wrong and revive the titular Count in the form of the late great Christopher Lee. Although he doesn't have a great deal to do, Lee is still a forceful prescence, while the story itself is a clever look at the hypocrisy of the wealthy and powerful of the day. This is another stunning blu ray from Warner, which features all the gore and topless brothel scenes exised from some prints. Highly recommended.

* One word of caution - this blu ray boxset is a pretty shoddy affair. Although the case itself housing the discs is perfectly fine, it has a kind of half wraparound back cover which is held on by a blob of glue! Needless to say, mine has come apart already. I hope the second volume is better made than this, otherwise I may go for the individual discs instead.

[SShaw]

Finally got around to picking up the original (ish) Starwars trilogy on blu-ray and have been enjoying Starwars and The Empire Strikes Back this weekend. I am off out out to see The Martian later, hopefully it lives up to the mostly good reviews I have read in the media.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE BEAST WITHIN – Early eighties transformation movie with Lovecraftian aspirations. It starts and ends with sleazy monster rape, and fills the in between with a ham fisted mix of melodrama and doom laden bizarreness. We follow the descent of a good natured college kid as he weirds out and turns into a throat biting freako. Meanwhile, mom and pop desperately try to figure out the small town mystery lurking behind it all. 'The Beast Within' is captivating in places, but not successful enough to qualify as lost treasure. There is much that is good – that kid looks proper nasty when he gets evil, there are some flesh bucklin' primo bladder fx which ugghhh I kind of FELT, the atmosphere is murky and tense and is backed up by a nice visual style. There are also some slightly crazy moments which I really dug – the first kill, with its emphasis on mince as a potential source of body décor during brutal murder – would anyone care to explain? - then the mangy mutt who decides to drop a severed hand from its jaws into the face of Beast Boy's hot date as she writhes on the forest floor. Nods back in time to 'Yojimbo', maybe, but also forward to Cronenberg's 'The Fly', with its emphasis on insectoid mutation and general tragedy leading to shotgun-to-head. For all this intrigue, it's too clumsy to swing that much of a punch. There's too much meander, the B-movie mechanics feel a bit staid, there are pet hates of mine such as music occasionally too shrill or obvious (though there are some nice period synth bits as well). And the explanation behind the back story – some guy got locked in a cellar, was forced into cannibalism by his captor, and now, long dead, has the power to reincarnate self via his son's pituitary gland issues – and this all has something to do with cicadas? I actually admire such dedication to nonsense (hey, just read my reviews and you'll see why). Anyway, “an odd flick”, as I'm prone to say. Director Phillipe Mora has had a chequered career, being the erstwhile groovy sixties artist who ended up making a slew of wacky explotationers. Bet 'The Howling 2' wasn't looming in his third eye when he was hanging with Lennon, Ginsberg et al.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

Bet 'The Howling 2' wasn't looming in his third eye when he was hanging with Lennon, Ginsberg et al.

It probably germinated from those days as it did with Mary Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva.

[MacBlayne]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

It probably germinated from those days as it did with Mary Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Just goes to show, the company you keep is important.

[keirarts]

Crimson Peak

Guillermo Del Toro delivers a film that can be summed up as The Devils Backbone filtered through a combination of the Bronte sisters and Roman Polanski, in a Beautiful looking Gothic Melodrama. Mia Wasikowska plays
Edith Cushing, surly a nod to the late great Peter, the film does owe a certain debt to Hammer Horror in its influences, especially the end. Edith is a wannabe writer whose father is a rich American industrialist and played by the awesome Jim Beaver (if you have seen Supernatural or Harpers Island you should know the guy) He's being pursued for cash by Thomas Sharpe an English lord fallen on hard times and looking for capitol to build a machine that will help rejuvenate his family's clay mines in Cumbria (Allerdale to be precise which is north Cumbria and near-ish to Carlisle.) Edith falls for Tom, played to slimy perfection by Tom Hiddleston, and his creepy but hot sister played by Jessica Chastain, who is bloody marvellous by the way. Edith, who has a history of seeing dead folk is soon beset by dead things at the family estate and begins to search the run down mansion for clues to the mystery.
Crimson Peak is clearly a Guillermo del Toro film, we have bugs, darkly coloured scenes with one source of bright colour, mechanisms, the ghost effects look torn from Devils Backbone and the film nods towards more literary influences in-between the classical horror trappings. More so the film is probably the best looking, visually stunning film that the director has yet produced. The plot twists are unfortunately easy to guess, and the ghosts can be a little too CG in places for me but overall I really like this one a lot and its nice to say Del Toro has not lost his mojo.

Now back to the Halloween films!