What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Zann]

Eaten Alive

The Tobe Hooper nasty.....BD looks great and it's got quite an unpleasant atmosphere in parts but jeesus it's boring.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Frankenstein (2015)

I've always found Bernard Rose to be an interesting director. Not all his work is successful indeed much is quite flawed but his films i've seen - Candyman, Paperhouse, Chicago Joe and the Showgirl, and Snuff-Movie have always been worth watching and slightly different to the norm.

His version of Frankenstein is no different. Told solely from the 'monsters' point of view, Mary Shelley's classic Gothic horror story is thrust kicking and screaming into 21st century Los Angeles. The contemporary setting makes no difference to proceedings as Rose utilizes the main story points just as faithfully as any of the classic interpretations.

Viktor Frankenstein (Danny Huston) and his wife, Marie (Carrie-Anne Moss), are scientists who bring to life Adam - a fully-grown young man (Xavier Samuel) with the mind of an infant. Adam's cells fail to replicate correctly and he soon develops deformities on his face and body. Frankenstein decides to end his experiment by ending Adam's life but he is abnormally strong and escapes into the countryside. From that point onwards Rose adapts the stories classic scenes such as meeting the little girl, striking up a relationship with a blind drifter (a beautiful performance by Tony Todd) and several run ins with local torch wielding mobs before the final showdown with his 'mum and dad'.

I have to admit i really enjoyed Frankenstein. Largely because it was something different and yet so very familiar. Many of the problems the monster had whilst on the run in the original 1818 story are still relevant some two centuries later, mainly the human hatred of anything different to what we see as the norm.

Whilst at times touching and quite sad, the film also has some strong violence. The scene where the 'monster' escapes and part lobotomizes one of Viktor's colleagues is stomach churning in it's gruesomeness for example.

Bernard Rose certainly took a risk making this film and in my opinion it pays off handsomely and is a unique take on a classic story.

[trebor8273]

Its a TV movie for a failed TV series , a lot of liberties are taking Strange is not a surgeon but a psychiatrists. The ancient one is Merlin (john Mills) and main villain is Morgana Le Fay. Most of the film envoles Merlin trying to protect strange and Le Fey trying to kill Merlin. Actually quite dark and atmospheric in places and the whole opening sequence and titles leads you that it would be a atmospheric and chilling 70s horror,sadly that's not so but still fun to be had and would of been interesting to see what the show would of turned out like. We also have one very trippy and psychedelic scene when strange enters the dream world.6.8/10




A lot better than I was expecting, very tense and claustrophobic with a few twists and turns. Not going into the story to much apart from the basic plot which involves a group of youths that decide to rob and old blind mans house, tables are soon turned as they fight for there survival and dark secrets are revealed. I could muster up little sympathy for our victims(apart from one point) even though I think we are supposed to feel more for them. 9/10

[sjconstable]

Split (2017) - 7.5/10

It doesn't go where you'd expect it to, and the ending has a massive surprise that makes me really impressed they managed to keep it secret! The trailer didn't spoil the film at all, which is a rarity these days.

[J Harker]

Creep. Christopher Smith. 2004.

I really like Christopher Smiths films but like another of my favourite British directors (Neil Marshall) the bugger just doesn't seem to make enough of them.
Socialite type Kate falls asleep in the tube station and wakes up to find the place deserted and she's locked in. Before long she's being stalked by a... something. Simple plot but done well. The London underground is scary before you even begin with a 'then' (or that might just be me) but being locked in down there with some sort of predatory presence... well as a plot that just works for me. The fact that Smith manages to keep the entire thing closed in and claustrophobic, never ever during the whole film even in the run up to events do we see the outside world, kind of gives the film a surreal feel. That the heroine feels very human helps, she's not particularly likeable but is real enough to care for. I would have thought Smiths inspiration must have been the brilliant Raw Meat/Death Line but according to imdb he'd never seen it before he made this (not sure I'm convinced), apparently this film grew out of his being affected by the subway scene in John Landis' awesome An American Werewolf In London.
Regardless of such trivialities Creep is an excellent film and I highly recommend watching this with a decent surround system.

[nosferatu42]

The horrible Dr Hitchcock

dr hitchcock.jpeg

First time watching for this, although being a Barbara Steele fan i've wanted to for quite a while.

What we have here is a creepy doctor/surgeon type bloke who has a thing about dead bodies, so much so that he likes nothing more than drugging women then interfering with them when they are out cold.
He does this with his wife and she seems quite happy to comply until one day she reacts badly to the drug and dies, heartbroken he leaves his home and doesn't come back until many years later with his new wife Barbara Steele.

The idea's in the film are quite unsavoury for the time, but because it is more implied it managed to get away with it, there is a nice gothic atmosphere to this and Steele's performance really holds the film together.
Barbara must have been one of the doctors patients as she is said to have suffered from delusions and a breakdown in the past, and you feel for her as she struggles with her sanity as strange things go down in the old dark house.

Theres also an old housekeeper with a secret and the first wife's ghost and cat still roaming about to complicate things.

I quite enjoyed this, it had a nice atmosphere about it as Barbara roams the grounds and corridors and the highlight has to be the scene where she wakes up in a coffin.

I picked up the recent U.S Olive blu which is a pretty decent print but has sod all in the way of extras, (region A only). Still good to finally catch up with this film.

Recommended if you like gothic stuff, but don't expect any gore. 7/10

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by sjconstable

Split (2017) - 7.5/10

It doesn't go where you'd expect it to, and the ending has a massive surprise that makes me really impressed they managed to keep it secret! The trailer didn't spoil the film at all, which is a rarity these days.

Well that's interesting SJ. I really like M.Night Shumbalumbas early films, even The Village which doesn't seem popular round these parts but his career of late has been well shonky. The Happening was beyond shit and The Visit wasn't much better. I've not seen his Airbender adaptation but the Mermaid film was pants too.

[nosferatu42]

House that dripped blood

house-that-dripped-blood-dvd-cover1.jpg

Another of those 70's portmanteau films from Amicus and although this is not one of my very favourites there is still much to enjoy.
Some stories work better than others with my personal favourites being the one with Christopher Lee and the voodoo doll, and the Jon Pertwee vampire section.

Peter Cushing, Denholm Elliot, Ingrid Pitt and Geoffrey Bayldon also pop up in the the short tales with the linking device being they all happened to owners of the same house in the past.

house-1 (1).jpg

An enjoyable watch. 7/10

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. (1996)

One of those films that's such a retread of the first you have to ask why bother. The only difference is that whilst Escape from New York was a gripping action film, here Carpenter lurches from one over indulgence and absurdity to the next and come the final half hour i just wanted it to finish. At times Kurt Russell seems to be playing a parody of Snake Plisken even if he doesn't seem to know it and the effects work is so amateurish at times it borders on the cartoon like.

You know, for half an hour Escape from L.A. is actually pretty damn enjoyable and that's the real shame of it all.

[dis]

hi guys,saturday night after work {got in at midnight},I had a few hrs on the ps2,i then decided to watch a film.
"THE WARRIORS" jumped out at me and I re watched this classic.
hard to believe this film is over 30 yrs old!
I believe that this will be re made at some point?