What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

Crocodile Island (2020)

Essentially a Chinese Asylum flick. Some hilarity at the start from the occidental characters speech patterns, but this quickly devolves into disparate group learn to work together in order to survive schlock. The epitome of undemanding.

[MrBarlow]

Nowhere To Run.

Sam, a escaped convict hiding out by a nearby farm helps a widowed mother and her two children fend off property developer and his goons.

Jean-Claude Van Damme at his best alongside Rosanna Arquette make a good team fending off Josh Ackland, Ted Levine in this action packed film, there is good acting and decent character building in this. I wouldn't say this was all action packed for Van Damme to take on as it blends in with some drama mixed in, still entertaining.

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[Demoncrat]

Profile (2018, Timur Bekmambetov)

A journalist plays a dangerous game trying to "honeytrap" a jihadist online. FF.
From the director of Nightwatch comes something slightly different ahem.
Belil seems like a personable young man ... at first. Sadly they tip their hand after a reasonable start. Plus it's 20 minutes too long for this genre.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Viy (1967)

I'd been looking forward to seeing this since i was given the Severin Blu-ray by a friend who for reasons unknown had ordered it both on Blu-ray and dvd. I thought by watching it first i wouldn't be jaded and raring to go with my month on new to me horror films.

Oh boy! This has one hell of a reputation but i was so disappointed by it. Is it 'good' because it's obscure and Russian? That's all i can think of. For three quarters of the 78 minutes run time my patience was severely tested due to some pretty wretched acting from star Leonid Kuravlyov who constantly seemed on the verge of either rabid hysteria or perhaps total inebriation.

The film never felt like a horror film at all, it lacked atmosphere and had nothing in the way of scares.

Then with ten minutes to go all hell breaks loose. Literally.

There are weird and wonderful creatures and demons oozing out of the walls of a chapel (Yes, oozing is the correct term) - ghostly skeletons, vampires, grasping ghostly hands and many other hideous monstrosities including the demon Viy. It's a full on assault of nightmarish visions and is utterly wonderful.

However that's just ten minutes of of 78. For a film that lives in it's own fairytale world of folk horror i really wasn't invested in it. As a reference point it sits somewhere alongside The Singing Ringing Tree, The Tinder Box and Valerie and her Week of Wonders but ten minutes aside fails to live up to the brilliance of those films.

This was based on the story by Nikolai Gogol and was also filmed by Mario Bava as Black Sunday in 1960.

/ 5

[nosferatu42]

Dagnabbit Dem, i love Viy.
Maybe you was expecting too much, for me it was a weird random youtube watch that was a total unexpected delight.
There's not much i could compare it to, especially from the time it was made.
It's unique, which gets plus points from me.
I admit it has a slow build up, but as soon as he's doing the vigil around the corpse I absolutely love it.
All of that stuff has the feel of Evil dead 2, obviously minus the gore 20 years prior, to me anyway.
Have to admit i like the early witch scene as well...

[MrBarlow]

Tiger Claws. 1991.

A killer targeting martial artists using the Tiger Claw fighting style, two detectives team up to find the individual killer.

With this I don't know whether i'm watching a Cynthia Rothrock, Jalal Mehri or a Bolo Yeung movie as their fighting techniques are really good in this but the plot line or bad writing seems a bit wasted for the three stars even though Jalal Mehri invested some good money in this, decent enough to help time go by.

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[Demoncrat]

Wait til you see the sequel ahem .... enjoy!!!

[MrBarlow]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

Wait til you see the sequel ahem .... enjoy!!!

They are on my watch list

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Trapped Alive (1988)

Three convicts hold up a couple of young women on their way to a Christmas party and end up stuck down an old mine shaft with no apparent way of escape.

So far so good, twenty minutes gone and we are in creepy slasher territory...then another half hour goes by and we are still in creepy slasher territory minus any actual slashings and stuck down a mine shaft with no apparent way of escape.

Then a policeman turns up and a troll like character with shades of Madman(1981) appears and the murders begin, often utilising elaborate pulleys and lifting devices, with about twenty minutes to go.

What's weird is the mine shaft is rather nicely lit, in fact it's never dark and despite the fact nobody can escape said mine, characters randomly turn up, including a woman in a sexy party dress who desperately needs acting lessons appears with five minutes to go for a twist ending you won't have seen coming nor will you actually care about.

Trapped Alive has a low budget ambiance all of it's own, mainly stoked by shit acting, crap dialogue and whiffs of boredom that creep in every quarter of an hour or so. There's little in the way of gore and even less of 'star' Cameron Mitchell who features in a couple of house party scenes. Still. If you've got a name actor you may as well get your money's worth.

Arrow's Blu-ray looks fantastic. Far better than the film probably deserves. I bet Frankie Teardrop friggin' loves this film.

½ / 5

Two days and two films down and not the most auspicious of starts to my December horror marathon.

[Demoncrat]

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