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  #58611  
Old 1st July 2022, 10:22 PM
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Honest Thief (2020)

Liam Neeson plays a former bank robber who decides to turn himslef in when he finds happiness with a new love (Kate Walsh). However it's when he contacts the FBI that things take a turn for the worse.

I really enjoyed this action thriller. It's not over the top by any means and concentrates on characters rather than blowing shit up and pounding fist fights. Neeson actually gives a credible performance here with some nice quirks to it. Walsh is also excellent as is Jeffrey Donovan as a recently divorced Fed who ends up with his ex-wife's dog, whilst Jai Courtney is in great villain mode but even he reigns it in with subtlety the by-word here.

At 90 minutes it doesn't outstay it's welcome and director Mark Williams maintains a constant pace that never lags. Whilst the film is certainly no Taken it delivered the goods as far as i'm concerned.

Re-watches are guaranteed.
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  #58612  
Old 1st July 2022, 10:52 PM
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The Antichrist. 1974.

Ippolita who is a young paralyzed woman is offered a hypnosis session that may help her with her illness. While under hypnosis she believes that in a previous life she was a with and slowly becomes possessed.

Lucky me I found another Exorcist rip-off, made in 1974 and released between Beyond The Door and Turkish version Seytan, I got no idea how hypnosis can cure a person who is paralyzed so I can ignore that part but as the film goes on it does get better. Don't expect the Exorcist make-up to appear but the make-up in this is good and yep it does have hot pea soup projectiled and a small masturbation bit with out a cross. The acting isn't that bad even Mel Ferrer is pleasant to see in this and Carla Gravina is able to act possessed decently.

antichrist-205x300.jpg
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  #58613  
Old 1st July 2022, 10:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrBarlow View Post
The Antichrist. 1974.

Ippolita who is a young paralyzed woman is offered a hypnosis session that may help her with her illness. While under hypnosis she believes that in a previous life she was a with and slowly becomes possessed.

Lucky me I found another Exorcist rip-off, made in 1974 and released between Beyond The Door and Turkish version Seytan, I got no idea how hypnosis can cure a person who is paralyzed so I can ignore that part but as the film goes on it does get better. Don't expect the Exorcist make-up to appear but the make-up in this is good and yep it does have hot pea soup projectiled and a small masturbation bit with out a cross. The acting isn't that bad even Mel Ferrer is pleasant to see in this and Carla Gravina is able to act possessed decently.

Attachment 240900
Lucky you?

I own it via a StudioCanal dvd.
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  #58614  
Old 1st July 2022, 11:17 PM
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Lucky you?

I own it via a StudioCanal dvd.
In the last month think this is the third movie that's ripped off The Exorcist I have watched
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  #58615  
Old 2nd July 2022, 08:13 AM
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There's a few more .....
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  #58616  
Old 2nd July 2022, 09:32 AM
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Tangerine

The Florida Project

(2015, 2017, Sean Baker)


Watched these last night, as the gory thing I had chosen bored the arse off me.
The first film centres around two friends who go on a rather low rent odyssey after one drops a bombshell of sorts. Some fun to be had here, even if it does devolve into cliche at the end.
Onto his second flick, which revolves around life for some pre teens during the holidays. Yet again we are at the lower end of society, with folks just trying to get by ... by any means necessary ahem. Decent performances from the kids and a total lack of oversight again gets deflated by a plot twist that reminded me more of Loach than anything else tbh.
Will try and watch Red Rocket shortly, as the poster promises something ... different ahem. We'll see ....
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  #58617  
Old 2nd July 2022, 10:24 AM
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THE CARDS OF DEATH – Those mavens of macabre outsiderdom Bleeding Skull shone a torch on this SOV deep cut back in 2014 when they put it out on VHS (made in ‘86 but with scant exposure in its day). Stumbling into TCOD’s lurid underworld, it’s like ‘The Death Wish Club’ never happened. – Sadean New Romantics preside over an enigmatic but ultimately fatal card game in a warehouse where even the lighting, with its constant smears and flares, seems to teeter on the brink of nightmare. Or, if not nightmare, then at least the kind of bad dream where a man wears a hideous grandad mask, revs a chainsaw but then titters like a schoolgirl, which happens to also be the kind of bad dream where there’s a hilarious crushing machine just because it’s the sort of thing Sadean New Romantics might have lying around. Anyway, we’re pretty much breathing in this neon squalor for the duration – but hang on, there’s a ‘cops investigate’ subplot, the film’s half-hearted stab at genre normality, and it drags a little bit (even then it manages to amuse with a detective who’s just constantly “fock this fock that fockin fock argghhh… etc). But to point out the slack isn’t much of a quibble when it comes to ‘The Cards Of Death’. This little-known number has amazing vision and ambition considering its provenance, and even the more mundane aspects that I don’t usually care too much about like production values and acting have rare chops for this kind of fare. The reach of its strangeness goes pretty far, but beyond the mild bloodsports, the pound-shop gore and the wheezing industrial soundtrack there’s also my favourite seventies / eighties / nineties ‘thing’, namely the film-specific theme song – in this case a humorous wobbly synth number, so endearing.

AVENGING ANGEL – Sequels are usually mixed bags. We’re always harking back to the original and doing a costs / benefits analysis of the act of following on. Things pretty much balance out when it comes to ‘Avenging Angel’, namely - points off for not including a traumatic egg suckling moment, but points on for a long Bronski Beat themed montage which ends with some bad guys blasting the fock out of an apartment. Points off for not really having that same queasy mixture of sentimentality and curdled sleaze as the first one, but points on for a wealth of silliness involving gun-clicking, vase-dropping and baby-plummeting. I can’t say that the level of tonal breakdown is high because it seems obvious that ‘Avenging Angel’ is going for laughs, which is fair enough. Perhaps if this had been a Cannon film it might’ve gone the distaff Bronson route popular at the time, but AA is more interested in glittery buffoons playing low grade magic tricks and hospital breakout slapstick than in epic shoot-outs. I liked it, kind of. It didn’t wholly grab me and at times I caught myself wishing it’d go up a just a notch in the exploitation stakes, but AA is full of weird little swerves that make it worth watching.

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER – Dublin housing estate horror nails it when it comes to simmering dread. In it, a schoolgirl is struggling with the disappearance of her distressed mum. When mum re-appears, familiar questions arise – is it psychosis? Is it the supernatural? It’s not exactly a gimmick this approach, but it’s so well done, a great tonal mix of the dowdy and the eerie. Films that rely on a sense of mounting horror tend to let themselves down after doing all the hard work. They might succeed in sustaining a macabre atmosphere, not an easy thing at all, but then blow it when it comes to a ‘big horror pay off’, which is why I think that films that are more about ambience shouldn’t really go in for the revelatory stuff at the end. YANMM takes this route but just about pulls it off. The switch from atmosphere to action, from creeping uncertainty to something more visual and basic, works pretty well. Overall it’s a very good, solid movie, one which I recommend.
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  #58618  
Old 2nd July 2022, 01:55 PM
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Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs View Post
The Child (1977)



An interesting and utterly bizarre regional horror about a young woman hired as a housekeeper at an old house in the sticks. She soon finds out that the 11 year old girl who lives there has a horrific secret.



Highly atmospheric, this low budget production (perhaps a reason for the wild atmosphere) is like some weird nightmare especially as Halloween approaches and the jack o' lanterns come into play, and then there's the old mill...and the zombies.



At times it has the feel of an old horror from the thirties along the lines of White Zombie (1932) with it's dream like ambiance. The whole film feels like watching someone else's nightmare and it gains even more power when there's actually a dream sequence happening on screen.



This review probably makes no sense so in that respect it suits the film to a tee, just go watch it and see for your self. Where's Frankie Teardrop when you need him to explain this shit?



It's available in Arrow's American Horror Project Volume Two box set and it looks a hell of a lot better than the old dvd i used to own.
I have this one on the AHP set. Haven't actually watched it yet but I did give the disc a quick spin a few weeks back. The foggiest sets I think I've ever seen.

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  #58619  
Old 2nd July 2022, 03:19 PM
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Black Magic Rites (1973)

A coven of satanic monks resurrect a witch burned at the stake four hundred years earlier. Once resurrected Isabel needs the blood of virgins to stay alive. (Or something like that)

Aka The Reincarnation of Isabel it's director Renato Polselli's follow up film to the deliciously sleazy Delirium. Polselli takes the nightmarish dream like sequences from Delirium and expands them into a full length feature of violent sexual fantasies. The plot, what there is, doesn't stand up to any scrutiny its just an excuse for Polselli to horrify the viewer as much as possible with his many scenes of sexual orgies and women being stripped, tortured and mutilated then finally burned at the stake.

Polselli uses the same stars as Delirium in Mickey Hargitay and Rita Calderoni and plunges them into a technicolor world of depraved hedonism shrouded in a lurid texture of bright vibrant colours, red in particular is frequently used in the coven scenes.

Its difficult to say if Black Magic Rites is a good film, it probably isn't especially if you want coherency or an exciting story. Its one of those films where you either go with it and enjoy all the ensuing madness or you just think its drivel. Once you get past the many scenes of sadism there isn't a lot to talk about, however surely thats what exploitation films are all about?

The Screenbound Blu-ray print is licensed from US company Kino Lorber.
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  #58620  
Old 2nd July 2022, 06:04 PM
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Tale Of The Mummy. 1998.

In Egypt a prince was buried in his tomb under the sands, a archaeologist and a team finds the tomb and disappears. Years later the archaeologist's granddaughter and another team find the resting place and awaken the prince.

Anther take on The Mummy movie this time set in modern day time and London with Russell Mulcahy as co-story writer and director with a somewhat decent star cast with Sir Christopher Lee as the first team leader and doing a voice over at the start.

This did sort of resemble the team from 1923 dig with Lord Canarvon and his search for Tutankhamun's Tomb in The Valley Of The Kings. Sean Pertwee, Gerard Butler, Lysette Anthony, Louise Lombard and Michael Lerner play the present day tomb raiders while Jack Davenport and Jason Scott Lee play the detectives who think they are on a trail of a serial killer and Shelley Duvall as a medium.

The special effects were probably designed well in someone's head to be good but the early work of CGI can be a disappointment, the kills are done off screen so there is no gore just see the aftermath, there is two versions to this the original theatrical cut of 90 mins and extended 2 hour cut, in honesty the directors cut does not do the film any justice.

MV5BMTI3MjA3MTA3OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNDE2MDU5._V1_.jpg

(Also known as Talos The Mummy)
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