What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Border River (1954)

Decidedly average western set at the Mexican border as Joel McRea arrives in Mexico trying to buy guns for the confederacy.

McRea is a veteran of films like this and Yvonne De Carlo is pretty good as the 'love interest' but the lack of a creditable villainous co-star relegates the film to second tier as does the shouty Alfonso Bedoya who comes across more irritating than threatening.

Oddly i don't think i've ever seen quicksand used as much in a film as they do here. Although the location filming is quite nice it's also quite clearly shot in Utah and not the Mexican border.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Sssssss (1973)

I was quite unsure about this 'mad scientist creates a monster' film prior to viewing. Something about the whole premise somehow made me think it would be a damp squib of a film where pretty much nothing happens. However, Bizarre_eye recommended it so i gave it a go.

I have to admit it and say i loved it.

It could have been a cheap n' cheerful monster movie and in a way it was but the whole thing was so well done. The script was excellent, immediately making you care for the three main characters as played by Dirk Benedict, Strother Martin and Heather Menzies. Martin in particular as the 'mad' scientist out to turn a man into a snake was particularly well realized and despite the fact he was the villain of the piece he also had my sympathy too.

What really gave the film authenticity and a proper fear factor was the use of real snakes. From King Cobras to Black Mamba's all are featured and all are terrifying in that the cast really did handle them throughout.

A real surprise and a real treat. Recommended.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Glad you enjoyed it, Dem.

I have to say when you were asking whether it was going to be a half-snake half-man monsters on the rampage type affair I was a little concerned that you wouldn't like it.

[Paul Zombie]

The Girl in Room 2A.

After being recently released from prison, Margaret(Daniela Giordano)is sent by her parole office(the foxy Rosalba Neri) to stay at the guest house of the eccentric Mrs Grant and her oddball son. and soon discovers a sinister secret involving missing guests and a creepy chap in a red hood.

Not too bad at all. with a good opening involving a gruesome murder of a topless woman and is later thrown off a cliff.
Although it does drag a bit at times and the murders are few and far between despite the female nudity and sleaze. Still worth a watch though, and with a good twist at the end.

So a solid 70 out of a 100 for this giallo, although i would use the term 'giallo' rather loosely.

[troggi]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Sssssss (1973)

A real surprise and a real treat. Recommended.

I enjoyed this when I saw it in the early '90s or even the late '80s, not sure, but I remember watching and liking it too.

With a slightly contrived link...

"Venom" (oh, come on, it's not that groanworthy)! I'm a sucker for comicbooks and comicbook action films and this one really dragged me in. When The-Daughter-of-Darkness and I took it upon ourselves to see what it was like on the big screen I loved it and, I think, so did my ickle girl, Katherine, but I think that we might have missed a few things on first viewing. Yeah, there were a few gags in evidence but I can't remember as many as I saw when watching the bd, I'm going to have to view it again in "Venom Mode" to see what other "goodies" I've missed.
I'll give it an extremely solid 9/5 for entertainment value.

Dammit, when are DC going to take a leaf out of Marvel's book and make some good films and when are Marvel gonna see that DC's tv work is top notch and emulate them???

[Nordicdusk]

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We all know their music and just how special not just Freddie was but the four members together they wrote some off the greatest rock songs of all time. Bohemian Rapsodey explores the rise of Queen and some of the personal trails Freddie faced. I was worried that they would focus too much on his sexual exploits and just turn it into a seedy exploration of his private life and not show the human side. Everything is touched upon but they managed to balance everything just right between Freddie and the rest of the band.

The acting was top notch from everyone involved and Remi Malek had all Freddies on stage movements spot on. It also found it scary how much the guy playing Brian May really looked like it was actually him 😄😄

Some of the time line was a bit mixed up but overall it was a great film and as much as I heard people moaning about the Live Aid part I enjoyed every second of it. Im also very happy with how the they ended the film it was done very tastefully and with a lot of respect towards everyone involved with Queen.

I will admit I had a tear in my eye at the end I grew up with Queens music my mother is a die hard fan so they were always an ever present in my life so even when he died i was very young it still had a profound impact on me.

Freddie and Queen will live forever.

8/10

[Rik]

Our local football ground are showing it on an outdoor screen in May, so that’ll be the only time anything decent happens there, definitely going to get tickets to it, best film I saw last year!

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Final Score (2018)

It's easy to say this British actioner is a Die Hard rip off, which it is, but plot wise it's more or less the same as the Jean Claude Van Damme film Sudden Death (1995) as Dave Bautista comes across Russian terrorists in a London football stadium as a match is going on.

The plot is daft as a brush (but the most ludicrous thing about the film is West Ham playing in a European semi-final) and some dialogue is, quite frankly awful, but somehow it works, even if it does possess what i'd say is the most irritating character to grace a Die Hard rip off in Lara Peake's Eastenders reject, Danni, although she does improve as the going gets tough.

Whilst nowhere near the best example of a film of this ilk i thought it far superior to the mega budgeted Skyscraper (2018) although that film's star - Dwayne Johnson - has a bit more about him than Bautista in the charisma stakes. The addition of Ray Stevenson as the terrorist leader and Pierce Brosnan as Stevenson's brother gives the production a bit more gravitas than it might have.

There are some good action sequences (And even a few laughs) in what is a very violent movie, such as a motorbike chase across the roofs of the stadium and Bautista abseiling from the roof to the pitch using a football banner.

If you like this kind of film then you should get some enjoyment out of Final Score.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

An Eli Roth double bill began with his remake of the classic Charles Bronson film Death Wish (2018)

Bruce Willis takes over the role of architect Paul Kersey from the great Charles Bronson in this re-imagining of the mother of vigilante films.

Roth is more well known for his horror films so to take on a straight if slightly twisted revenge thriller was a bit of a departure from his usual gore soaked fayre and on the whole Death Wish is very good. Bruce Willis (a surgeon rather than architect) convinces with his acting although i don't recall Bronson crying that much in the original and Roth builds tension and suspense.

Naturally Death Wish is a violent film as was the original, but for the most part Roth the horror director is fairly restrained with only a single torture scene that could have come straight out of Hostel (2005). There's even social commentary in it's depiction of how easily an average American can acquire fire arms.

Rather than a seventies vigilante film i'd really compare this with the 2007 Kevin Bacon film Death Sentence with it's unrelenting pacy style being geared towards a 21st century audience.

I found Death Wish very enjoyable and it's certainly a film i'll go back to multiple times as it's great grizzly popcorn fun.

How do you follow a remake of a classic vigilante thriller?

With a spooky PG rated family film, that's how.

The House with the Clock in it's Walls (2018) is a proper departure for Roth. It's a fun spookfest about a ten year old boy who, following his parents death goes to live with his uncle in a big old Gothic house. A house which holds many secrets.

I really enjoyed The House with the Clock in it's Walls. It's a fun exercise in mild scares and spookiness with witches, warlocks and zombies not to mention killer Jack O' Lanterns. There's ideas and atmosphere in spades and the house itself is a gorgeously designed affair with a creepy yet equally wonderous aura with the constantly ticking clocks sounding great through a home surround sound system.

Owen Vaccaro plays the boy and he's very good for a child actor and not in the least bit irritating, Jack Black plays his uncle with the great Cate Blanchett as Black's best friend and neighbour. Blanchett is excellent and has good chemistry with Black but he falters slightly in that he's a bit too nice, a bit too Jack Black, and not quite creepy enough for this sort of thing, with Vincent Price in the same role this would have been almost perfect.

Style wise The House with the Clock in it's Walls is reminiscent of Tim Burton's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) in fact Roth displays a lot of the visual style that Burton excels at and should Burton leave this sort of film making behind Eli Roth would be an excellent choice to take over his mantle.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

This week's viewings:

Witchtrap (1989)

Whilst not quite as good as I remembered, I still enjoyed re-visiting this one as a group of para-psychologists are enlisted to visit a bed and breakfast that is haunted by the ghost of a witch. Directed by Kevin S. Tenney one year after he made Night of the Demons, whilst this is certainly not up there with the horror calibre of Demons (the fact that it was apparently filmed in three weeks could have something to do with this), it certainly has its moments and is worth a look.



54/100


Sole Survivor (1983)

I had been wanting to check this one out for years hearing that it was kind of a pre-cursor to the Final Destination films but more with a zombie vibe.

Denise Watson is a TV station worker who is the only survivor of a unexplained airplane crash in which she is completely unharmed. Denise becomes haunted by feelings of unworthiness and begins seeing strange people following her and hearing voices calling her name which no one but she can hear. Disregarding warnings from a psychic friend, Denise tries to get on with her life while it’s slowly revealed that she was supposed to die in the crash. Now the unseen spectre of death wants to collect Denise by sending its minions, people that have recently died, to kill her.

My wait luckily wasn't an anti-climax. This was a creepy little affair with some great suspenseful moments. The film plays more for a slow-burn approach with unease and dread oozing in rather than all-out death and gore and I think this worked in its favour.

Despite a slow start and it being quite talky for a horror film, I ended up really enjoying it.



72/100


Pick-Up (1975)

Trippy, Hippie love fest about a couple of young girls who hitch a ride with hippie Chuck, who has been tasked to deliver a mobile bus home across country. After a storm leaves them stranded somewhere in the Florida Everglades it is the perfect excuse for lots of spirituality, sex, and self-discovery.

This one is a real curio. Not your typical sexploitation flick at all, as it often borders on arthouse, with plenty of surrealism thrown in on top of the groovy and sexual vibrations. Its alternate title is Pazuzu, referencing the King of Demons of the Wind, made infamous of course by William Peter Blatty in his novel, The Exorcist. There are plenty of ritualistic allegories, such as astrology and tarot thrown in as well as flash-back sexual assaults on one of the girls by a priest.

As if the film wasn't already suffering a little bit of an identity crisis, it was marketed as Pick-Up, with a poster and tag-line reminiscent of a back-woods rapey affair akin to a Last House on the Left type scenario, which (spoilers aside) manifests itself as a brief but poignant scene of assault by a gang of rowdy rednecks near the film's conclusion. Aside from that vignette the overall tone of the film is far removed from the poster's depiction.

A bit of a mixed bag for sure, but one you've just got to sit back and ride with.



69/100


The Apartment (1960)

The perfect blend of romance and comedy, but one which is also spiked with drama (and thankfully not the melodramatic kind), as Jack Lemmon's apartment loaning to his superiors crosses into his personal life and his feelings for elevator operative Shirley MacLaine. For a film that handles so many themes, it deals with them all superbly to the extent that nothing feels out of place.

A true classic and one I never tire of watching.



92/100


The Honey Pot (1967)

Another I've been wanting to check out for a while, as the plot alone just made me feel that I would enjoy this one.

In Venice, the millionaire benefactor Cecil Fox (Rex Harrison) watches a Seventeenth Century play ‘Volpone’ and plots a practical joke to play on his three former greedy mistresses. He hires the unemployed actor William McFly (Cliff Robertson) to act as his butler and stage manager and sends letters telling the mistresses he is terminally ill. The prime intention of Rex is to see the reaction of the women after the reading of his will but things do not go as planned.

Being based on a stage-play this one of course does play out like one to a large extent and it's main core strength is in its script and in the performers, both elements of which I thought worked well overall. A tad overlong in places and the tone sometimes wavers but enjoyable enough.



68/100


There's Nothing Out There (1991)

On stats alone I probably would have happily dismissed a film such as this - a '90s Troma film about a monster attacking a group of teens on spring break, nothing really remarkable about that and a trope that had been done to death already in the '80s....

However, the darkly comic premise at play here completely sells the film as something a little different to the norm. Yes, seven teens head up to a cabin on the lake for spring break, but one of the teens is a horror video anorak, and recognizes the signs of foreshadowing of doom. The others dismiss his concerns as the workings of a person that watches too many videos, but there really is 'something out there', and that is a weird squidgy tentacled green alien thing, and the teens begin experiencing an attrition problem when they start stumbling into all the cliches found in a typical teen horror film.

There is plenty to fill the running time here too, as not only do you have the 'threat' element resulting in some gloopy kills and green laser-beam eye effects, but you have plenty of t&a as well as the back-and-forth between the horror nerd (who incidentally makes Randy in Scream look like a complete novice) and the others as his persistence that something is going on meets their growing annoyance at trying to ruin their vacation. Whilst often playing for laughs the threat always seems real and therefore creates a nice blend of comedy and horror running throughout all the various shenanigans. A pleasant surprise.



66/100