What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

Dark Star. 1974.

Everyone starts at the bottom of their career and John Carpenter definitely tried his best with this and teaming up with Dan O'Bannon who went on to write Alien. This was a very low budget Science-fiction oddball comedy on board a space ship, like 2001: A Space Odyssey it does depict long space travelling, encountering a alien, inspiration for Mr O'Bannon to create another film with a bigger budget. I have seen better space films and seen worse and this fits right in the middle. Not great but not terrible either.

51SVcVT6+ZL._AC_SY445_.jpg

[Demoncrat]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022, Daniel Blue Garcia)

Sue me, I liked it. Whilst I may change my overall opinion on remakes not a jot, this made me laugh whilst wincing and it had a happy ending so ... not the worst thing I've seen this week. Like most of these rebrands, does it dilute the sheer majesty of the parent? Does it FECK. And that's the most important thing. Next!!!

[iank]

The Wraith. A bunch of (poorly acted) hoodlums that run rampant over a town come a cropper at the hands of a masked rider who may be the ghost of a former victim. This mid 80s flick was pretty mediocre, with even Charlie Sheen phoning it in and Sherilyn Fenn coming across as drippily bland, perhaps made worse by me expecting a horror movie. This is not a horror movie. It's a more a sort of weird action revenge fantasy flick, but despite some genre tropes it's not scary, and doesn't really seem like it's even trying to be.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE – How many remakes, sequels, prequels are there now? I lose count of these things. I think I preferred the one from 2003, I seem to recall it had quite a sickly atmosphere; as for the one that came out maybe ten or so years ago, the only thing I remember about it is that I got rid of the DVD straight after I watched it. This 2022 Netflix reboot is a bit shambolic really, although it didn’t go in for the kind of crude post-Trump commentary I thought it might. It strains for relevance in mapping out a derelict, ‘left behind’ South full of ghost towns and Leatherface memorabilia, but falters after it takes too much on – there are interesting nods to ideas about how traumatised people connect, glimpses of a high school shooting in the background, and the return of the Marilyn Burns character from the original (here doing a hard-bitten avenger turn a la Laurie Strode), but these end up seeming half-baked and disconnected. Things drag on a dramatic level, its aesthetic is just very ‘Netflix’, but the thing it gets wrong most of all is The Horror. It lays on a ton of graphic violence, but none of it is involving. When a film is very gory but makes gore boring, I just end up thinking “F*ck it”. Which is what I did here. So possibly worth a watch if you have no better offers, but don’t even think about comparisons to the original (and several sequels, prequels and remakes for that matter).

THE BOAT – One man on a boat against the elements – nothing new in that, but ‘The Boat’ gives the ‘solo at sea, trying not to drown’ thing a supernatural twist. I think so anyway… one of the beguiling things about ‘The Boat’ is that nothing is truly revealed beyond what’s evident; a lone guy struggling with maritime mishaps that pile up into something that looms a little too spookily to be accidental. Does this film concern a malevolent schooner or is it basically about a guy who’s shit at sailing? The question might matter more if ‘The Boat’ didn’t inject its minimal set-up with real tension, but if a filmmaker can make thirty minutes of a guy trying to escape a toilet somehow nail-biting, then they’ve already convinced me. May appear slight in the eyes of some, but I really rate ‘The Boat’ and recommend it to anyone desperately seeking something on Prime.

DEATH RANCH – Escaped con and co vs the KKK – cue some heavy splatter. The Klan are revealed to be cannibals, so it’s nice to see one of them being forced to eat their own (quite shitty-looking) entrails. A good film, recommended to those in search of some socially righteous brutality, if that works as a concept; as far as aesthetics go it’s a little bit too obviously hi-def cheap to convincingly imitate the seventies feel it seems to be trying for, but it definitely succeeds as nasty, minimalist modern day exploitation, and if you can get with that then you’ll enjoy hearing its one note over and over.

HER NAME WAS CHRISTA – From the acorn of unlikely romance cut off by sudden death grows the mighty oak of necrophilia. Lonely office guy is persuaded to invest in hookers by his caddish new chum and ends up falling for etc etc. We get to spend over an hour with two awkward souls as they ‘get to know each other’, and because we’re in the domain of microbudget horror, where all the non-horror stuff is let’s face it dealt with quite perfunctorily, I can’t say that this kissy build-up is the stuff of hugely resonant human drama. But if you fancy a crazy split-screen finale of yucky corpse-shagging, this might just be your Saturday night in.

FLESH CITY – Edgy types lose it in a Berlin nightclub and end up mutating after a run-in with a glowing man; a Max Headroom wannabe introduces some bands. Safe to say the director has seen lots of old Japanese cyberpunk, not to mention their share of vintage MTV. This sprawling mess is a bit herky-jerky for my tastes, but the adventurous and the patient should get a kick from sporadic good bits such as the transformation of the brutalist metropolis into a rhizomatic organosphere with lots of gristly, eye-gouging tentacles; if not, there’s always that psychotic Bradley Walsh lookalike who goes around beating the crap out of people – he should’ve been in it more.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

DEATH RANCH – Escaped con and co vs the KKK – cue some heavy splatter. The Klan are revealed to be cannibals, so it’s nice to see one of them being forced to eat their own (quite shitty-looking) entrails. A good film, recommended to those in search of some socially righteous brutality, if that works as a concept; as far as aesthetics go it’s a little bit too obviously hi-def cheap to convincingly imitate the seventies feel it seems to be trying for, but it definitely succeeds as nasty, minimalist modern day exploitation, and if you can get with that then you’ll enjoy hearing its one note over and over.

Seen this one in Asda last year. Thanks for the recommendation. Shall be picking it up this week sometime.

Just noticed it's a Charlie Steeds film. SOLD!

You ever seen Steeds' A Werewolf in England, Frankie? Brilliantly funny, gory Gothic cheapness. Right up your street.

[Frankie Teardrop]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Seen this one in Asda last year. Thanks for the recommendation. Shall be picking it up this week sometime.

Just noticed it's a Charlie Steeds film. SOLD!

You ever seen Steeds' A Werewolf in England, Frankie? Brilliantly funny, gory Gothic cheapness. Right up your street.

'Death Ranch' is definitely a good, blood soaked laugh. Yeah I was wondering where I'd heard of Charlie Steeds before... I can remember you being quite enthusiastic about 'Werewolf In England', so I'll give it a go if I see it going streaming anywhere.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Night of the Demon (1980)

A gore soaked Bigfoot epic and in all truth one of the best around. Despite some odd moments of hamfistedness in the acting departments Night of the Demon is an all round triumph from the campfire tales with their crazy well realised kill sequences to the all out cabin siege finale. There's death by, well, basically anything old Bigfoot can get his hands on, even the odd penis that's sticking out.

Wildly entertaining, with a decent looking Bigfoot to boot, and a film that delivers the grue in spades. One of the few films genuinely worthy of the term 'video nasty'.

The new 88 Films Blu-ray looks so much better than the old Code Red dvd i own and i've even grown to like the sleeve reverse art so much so that it's now replaced the one below as my cover art.

Just a question. What's with cover art inside the slip case? Does it open out or something? Thanks to a sharp knife my case is still shrinkwrapped.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

'Death Ranch' is definitely a good, blood soaked laugh. Yeah I was wondering where I'd heard of Charlie Steeds before... I can remember you being quite enthusiastic about 'Werewolf In England', so I'll give it a go if I see it going streaming anywhere.

I'm all in for a blood soaked laugh. Cheers.

[Demoncrat]

Halloween 2 (2009, Rob Zombie)

Texas Chainsaw (2013, John Luessenhop)


Going for broke, I watched this pair. The Zombie film, I can only say that it shows proof that love is blind as wifie is tewwibly terrible in this. The sound design gets thumbs up as every impact sounded spectacular ahem. The funny thing being that both of them held similar traits, dealing with family and the past and that, so onto yes, the 3D flick (you'll never notice honest officer), and that turned out to be slightly less annoying than that Nispel drivel whilst being nothing but mush really, though the idea of sequels featuring ... that duo might have been fun tbh .... I look forward to the comm that has Hansen, Burns, Moseley etc for some reason ...

[Justin101]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Night of the Demon (1980)

Just a question. What's with cover art inside the slip case? Does it open out or something? Thanks to a sharp knife my case is still shrinkwrapped.

I think it’s just the Blu-ray equivalent to messages etched into the run-out of a record, just a bit of fun to see a bit of text about the film as you take the box out of the case.