What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

One of the problems is that Grant isn't actually in His Girl Friday that much. There are interminably long stretches where Russell simply gabbles along with a group of reporters playing cards.

I like those scenes. From memory, I have boys been impressed by the writing and the quickfire dialogue which showcases the actors' verbal dexterity whilst developing the relationships between the reporters and furthering the plot.

[Demoncrat]

L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies: Return To Savage Beach (1998, Andy Sidaris)

Uuuhhhhhhh see this now FFS
Sequel to er, Savage Beach .
Everything is in place. The plot devices are all primed.
Very relelvant, as a group of women find empowerment and job satisfaction as a result of thinking outside the box. The box being reality as we understand it.
Quite simply the height of entertainment. In that I could not take my eyes off the screen
Highly
Recommended. Guaranteed no artyfartiness D!!!

[iank]

Scars of Dracula. A young man and his girlfriend go looking for his missing brother, and find he disappeared near a place known as Castle Dracula... Patrick Troughton and a young Dennis Waterman (complete with all la posh accent lol) co-star with Christopher Lee (of course) in this early 70s Hammer Horror that I absolutely loved. This is up there with Satanic Rites as my favourite of the Dracula sequels thus far, kicking off with a bang and just totally going for it as full-blooded Gothic fun. The bats are a bit unintentionally comical, mind*(though to be fair the scene where they basically bite the priest to death is actually quite effectively gruesome). I really enjoyed this one.

[Frankie Teardrop]

New Year, new Frankie! Only kidding, I'm still watching the same old shit I've been going on about for the last ten years. Speaking of which...

TRAPPED ALIVE – Early nineties (or late eighties, can’t remember) horror flick that’s set in a cave where a bunch of cons are holding someone’s kidnapped daughter. Sheer terror (not really) ensues when people start dying and a dark back story unravels. In some ways ho-hum, ‘Trapped Alive’ still hits the right buttons for me as it features a deformed semi-slasher / monster, inane performances and a little gore. There’s also something a bit herky-jerky about it that I can’t put my finger on, probably just not very well made.

THE BRAIN – More early nineties / late eighties dreck, this time from Canada, where ever-creepy David Gale is a nefarious TV psychiatrist up to a bit of mind control. Then there’s this, erm Brain that’s kind of behind everything. Good bad era-typical prosthetics and rubber monster stuff is here, though there’s possibly not quite enough of it for my liking. Again, it all has a quite stilted and non-smooth feeling to it, which is actually nice to behold from the vantage of these super-slick times.

SECTA SINIESTRA – Mmm, an odd Spanish flick from the early eighties which concerns itself with a satanic birth and the antics of a bunch of cultists who, you sense, might do better in a very weird sit-com than a supposed horror film. The main strength here is a kind of silliness. It’s played straight, but the horror is undermined by the constant tone of overblown melodrama, betraying the director’s background. The feeling of hysterical soap opera is quite interesting in combination with the genre tropes the makers chuck in - with a surfeit of Bava-lite lighting and rubber bat attacks so blatantly fake they’re on the brink of winky po-mo deconstruction, it’s a baffling affair to say the least. Entertaining, though.

PARASITE – Here’s another odd one. I used to see it around in video shops in the early eighties, when I was too young to ‘get it’, but impressionable enough to be intrigued. I never managed to see it through all the intervening years of my being into horror, so when the blu ray came out recently I waited on tenterhooks to find out what 35 years of wondering ‘what might have been’ amounted to. The short answer to that is – a slow moving flick with some people wandering around some garages, with a parasite, but not much of one. However... it has a certain cheap, bleak atmosphere that resonates a little, and a nice burst-face moment near the finish. I dunno, it's not very good but I was sort of absorbed in a way, though again it might just be nostalgia for eighties street looks amidst the rubble, nuke fear heavy in the background. Sometimes it feels like those times might be coming back. Anyway, a happy ending for Demi Moore at least, ‘St Elmo’s Fire’ was just around the corner.

SPOOKIES – Ha ha, what messed up schlock is this? Another one that passed me by till now, more because I avoided it for fear that it might be total rubbish. Well, it is in a way, but pretty joyous rubbish at that. It seems to be a strange splice of two flicks, one of which is about a guy in a castle waxing lyrical Poe-style about his long-dead true love (and trying to reanimate her), the other involving a small crowd of the usual types who get stranded in old houses in films like this and end up being offed by a bunch of freaks for entertainment purposes. There’s a bit of off-putting faffing about, but then there always is (“hey which passageway shall we explore next? Is that yet another room with nothing in it over there? If we walk towards it slowly, we can get a couple of minutes of non-suspense out of it”). The real draw is the steady onslaught of monster prosthetics, which in some cases are quite imaginative (the spider woman transformation, for example). Aside from that, there’s all the randomness and woodenness that you might want from a film that does not really care about dramatic catharsis, points well made or even basic narrative logic. A triumph of trash that would make a good companion piece to something like ‘Neon Maniacs’.

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ★★½

I will probably watch this again and I hope it improves with a second viewing,

Unfortunately a second viewing just highlights how bad this one is, my biggest cinema disappointment of 2018.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Waxwork (1988)

A fun take on the old Mystery of the Wax Museum story, Anthony Hickox's film places the exhibits of David Warner's otherworldly waxwork museum in alternate dimensions that only become apparent when an unwitting victim steps over the boundary cord and onto an exhibit.

Generally, to you and me, this wouldn't be a problem, but to a group of horror movie college kids this makes for a whole heap of trouble as one by one the idiots, er, students, headed by Gremlins fave Zach Galligan, find themselves in fights of survival against a werewolf, vampires, zombies and others.

Waxwork is what it is. A way to showcase students getting torn apart by legendary horror icons. It's fast paced, occasionally gory and the use of David Warner and Patrick Macnee in the cast inspired, especially Macnee who homages perhaps his most famous non-tv role.

To sum up, and paraphrasing my opening line. Waxwork is one hell of a lot of fun and so 80's in style it hurts.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

New Year, new Frankie! Only kidding, I'm still watching the same old shit I've been going on about for the last ten years. Speaking of which...

TRAPPED ALIVE – Early nineties (or late eighties, can’t remember) horror flick that’s set in a cave where a bunch of cons are holding someone’s kidnapped daughter. Sheer terror (not really) ensues when people start dying and a dark back story unravels. In some ways ho-hum, ‘Trapped Alive’ still hits the right buttons for me as it features a deformed semi-slasher / monster, inane performances and a little gore. There’s also something a bit herky-jerky about it that I can’t put my finger on, probably just not very well made.

THE BRAIN – More early nineties / late eighties dreck, this time from Canada, where ever-creepy David Gale is a nefarious TV psychiatrist up to a bit of mind control. Then there’s this, erm Brain that’s kind of behind everything. Good bad era-typical prosthetics and rubber monster stuff is here, though there’s possibly not quite enough of it for my liking. Again, it all has a quite stilted and non-smooth feeling to it, which is actually nice to behold from the vantage of these super-slick times.

SECTA SINIESTRA – Mmm, an odd Spanish flick from the early eighties which concerns itself with a satanic birth and the antics of a bunch of cultists who, you sense, might do better in a very weird sit-com than a supposed horror film. The main strength here is a kind of silliness. It’s played straight, but the horror is undermined by the constant tone of overblown melodrama, betraying the director’s background. The feeling of hysterical soap opera is quite interesting in combination with the genre tropes the makers chuck in - with a surfeit of Bava-lite lighting and rubber bat attacks so blatantly fake they’re on the brink of winky po-mo deconstruction, it’s a baffling affair to say the least. Entertaining, though.

PARASITE – Here’s another odd one. I used to see it around in video shops in the early eighties, when I was too young to ‘get it’, but impressionable enough to be intrigued. I never managed to see it through all the intervening years of my being into horror, so when the blu ray came out recently I waited on tenterhooks to find out what 35 years of wondering ‘what might have been’ amounted to. The short answer to that is – a slow moving flick with some people wandering around some garages, with a parasite, but not much of one. However... it has a certain cheap, bleak atmosphere that resonates a little, and a nice burst-face moment near the finish. I dunno, it's not very good but I was sort of absorbed in a way, though again it might just be nostalgia for eighties street looks amidst the rubble, nuke fear heavy in the background. Sometimes it feels like those times might be coming back. Anyway, a happy ending for Demi Moore at least, ‘St Elmo’s Fire’ was just around the corner.

SPOOKIES – Ha ha, what messed up schlock is this? Another one that passed me by till now, more because I avoided it for fear that it might be total rubbish. Well, it is in a way, but pretty joyous rubbish at that. It seems to be a strange splice of two flicks, one of which is about a guy in a castle waxing lyrical Poe-style about his long-dead true love (and trying to reanimate her), the other involving a small crowd of the usual types who get stranded in old houses in films like this and end up being offed by a bunch of freaks for entertainment purposes. There’s a bit of off-putting faffing about, but then there always is (“hey which passageway shall we explore next? Is that yet another room with nothing in it over there? If we walk towards it slowly, we can get a couple of minutes of non-suspense out of it”). The real draw is the steady onslaught of monster prosthetics, which in some cases are quite imaginative (the spider woman transformation, for example). Aside from that, there’s all the randomness and woodenness that you might want from a film that does not really care about dramatic catharsis, points well made or even basic narrative logic. A triumph of trash that would make a good companion piece to something like ‘Neon Maniacs’.

Hail as always sir!! Spookies haunted me from the VHS days, is it any brighter now, I kind of remember a very dark little thing??

[Demoncrat]

Always liked Waxwork D. Warner being the main draw of course. Guess what folks, I watched .....




The Color Out Of Space (2019, Richard Stanley)

Remember I watched The Curse a while back? Apparently so has RS
Without spoilering, it's just .... not a great film. Sorry. I understand that the parent tale is about as uncinematic as you can get, so tinkering is needed. But this much?? Next!!!




Hagazussa (2017, Lukas Fiegelfeld)

Which made it a sort of double bill of sorts. You will sadly have to watch both, oh, sod it, they both feature milking
Ahem.
This was a recommend. May have to be a rewatch as well, as I was either too tired to take it all in, or mate will be getting arse handed tae him, as it didn't seem to amount to much. But there's a swipe of The VVitch, and it's folkish alright. It will make some tear their hair out as a Michael Bay flick it isn't, but at least it is no reboot. Hmmmmmmmmm.

[Demoncrat]

Kill The Irishman (2011, Jonathan Hensleigh)

A decent film from The Saint helmer????
Fageddabowdit, as this is the "true" story of Danny Greene, an enforcer for the Cleveland mob in the 70s. Ray Stevenson is the titular mick. Kilmer and Walken pop up here and there. As violent as any other gangster flick.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Justin101

Unfortunately a second viewing just highlights how bad this one is, my biggest cinema disappointment of 2018.

That's both sad and a relief. Sad because it should be a film which stands up to – or improves – repeated viewings, and a relief because I know it wasn't just me who felt let down.