What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

Rise Of The Footsoldier: Vengeance. 2023.

After a botched robbery, Pat Tate and loyal friend Kenny part ways, when Kenny is killed, Tate swears revenge and ventures out from Essex to London's Soho scene. Craig Fairbrass returns as the 'ardman Pat Tate in this...what is it now 6th instalment of the franchise and holds nothing back for revenge. I went into this on a blind watch and had no idea what to expect, take out the characters Pat and Kenny and this is basically just a normal British revenge flick with plenty of brutality violence we all know and love. TBH the previous films were based on fact but this seems to be based on fiction. I would say go into this on a open mind.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Prey (2010)

A family hunting trip to the forest goes awry when the father is gored by a large wild boar which it turns out is slowly mutating due to chemicals leaked into the forest water supply by the nearby factory owned by the family.

Known as La Traque in it's native France this nature run wild horror film starts off okay but due to errant photography and editing we never really get to see the killer boar and it becomes ever so tedious.

This was sat on my shelf and i couldn't remember a thing about my previous viewing. In fact all the way through it seemed like i was watching something i'd never seen before. Now i know why. It's utterly forgettable.

Think the 80's eco-horror Prophecy but with a mutated boar rather than a bear and nowhere near as good.

[MrBarlow]

The Hunt. 2020.

12 people wake up in the middle of nowhere and realise they are being hunted for sport.

After the first five minutes, we meet the strangers and have no idea on who they are then it becomes a survival of the strong with some dark humour. Towards the middle it tends to die down a bit with some mild and not so much laugh out loud moments then heads back on track. Betty Gilpin plays the head strong survivor while Hilary Swank is the posh wannabe head of a business corporation and organiser of the hunt. These two are brilliant and tend to have a girl.on girl fight with everything and anything in the kitchen. Why thr characters are picked for the hunt is explained and sometimes its better to choose the right person.

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[MrBarlow]

Conan The Barbarian. 1982.

The film follows Conan played by Arnie, from childhood when his parents are killed and follows him through his early years as a slave to adulthood when he becomes a fighter and a thief. What drives Conan is pure bloodthirsty revenge on the man who killed his parents played brilliantly by James Earl Jones. Mako is the mind boggling wizard and narrator of the Conan story. Sandahl Bergman is the smooth female thief and love interest and Gerry Lopez as the little sidekick.

Conan the Barbarian is one of those films that just shouldn't work on paper, but somehow ends up not only working, but becoming a classic. Everything is right here thanks to Milius unashamed bigger than life direction with cinematography, great set pieces and a great background score by Basil Poledouris.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Messengers 2: The Scarecrow ( 2009)

Norman Reedus plays a farmer whose corn crop is failing until he discovers a mysterious scarecrow in his barn and places it in the middle of his farm. Leading to a series of horrific events which actually benefit the farmer and his crop.

A direct to dvd prequel to The Messengers from a couple of years previous. It's watchable enough, mainly thanks to Reedus, but there's not really anything new here in this Shining style supernatural horror.

Fun seeing the German born but Manchester brought up Matthew McNulty, who i know mainly from period dramas Lark Rise to Candleford, Cranford, The Paradise and The Terror, playing a middle America sheriff in the film.

[MrBarlow]

Conan The Destroyer. 1984.

Arnie is back as the big warrior, this time teaming with Tracy Walters as his loyal theiving sidekick who are given a task by Sarah Douglas to accompany her niece Olivia D'Abo and henchman Wilt Chamberlain to find a sacred relic and then joined by Mako and Grace Jones. Bit of a cheesy follow up to Conan The Barbarian, the fight with Pat Roach in the room of mirrors is staged well and enjoyable along with Arnie and Wilt didn't exactly hit the home run point that the audience expected. There is a few laughs along the way with Olivia having a girl talk with Grace about how to take a man or grab a man's attention. Basil Poledouris returns with a great epic score as always.

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[Frankie Teardrop]

BAD THINGS – The niche sub-sub genre of horror films set in abandoned hotels is unfairly dominated by ‘The Shining’. I prefer the likes of Jess Franco’s ‘Mansion Of The Living Dead’; the hotel in that one got chance to breath a bit and display its eerily detached inhospitality, a quality that it shares with the building at the heart of ‘Bad Things’. A woman and her gfs check in for a weekend break at the family Travel Lodge, deserted whilst ownership transfers. There’s too much space for anyone to get cabin fever, but through a combination of screechy arguments, catty mind games, probable apparitions and weird instances of pursuit involving chainsaws, most of those present manage it. I really liked this film’s odd lack of fixity and direction. It’s cryptic, messy, but you can trance out to nicely photographed corridors and a sense of big emptiness, then douse yourself in the bad dream relationship meltdown theatrics that seem to define pretty much all interactions from the word go. Some of it might even intend to amuse. It’s enjoyed decidedly mixed press, but who cares? ‘Bad Things’ is vacant in more ways than one, but at least it looks good and feels weird.

VHS 85 – I’ve mostly found the VHS films hit and miss, and ’85 is no exception. One thing the makers nail quite well is the sense of watching an ancient, skronky video tape full of cut-outs and tape-overs of dead media that now feels quite alien; aerobics video snippets and news items about monster trucks seem to have crossed the threshold separating ‘mildly cheesy because dated’ from ‘strange now because lost and sad’. In this case, the lo-fi feel is pushed home further by a camcorder approach that seems designed to make you wonder whether you’ve stumbled on a collection of the decade’s most forbidden home movies, although it’s done way more artfully here (and in the series as a whole) than in your average found footage flick. Two or three of the segments really stood out – the nicely intertwined magic lake / family secret tales, plus the recurring science lab scenario that eventually blossoms into full scale ‘The Thing’ style gloop. Good, worth a dab.

WHEN EVIL LURKS – This has won quite a few plaudits from people who like their ‘real horror’. To its credit, ‘When Evil Lurks’ doesn’t hold back on grotesqueries that are sometimes vivid and striking – the ghostly classroom full of murderous kids near the end for example, or, taking it closer to the bottom line, the several instances of pus-flecked brutality and gore. It’s about two brothers in a desolate part of Argentina who go on a road trip to try to save their family from the demons who infest their world, and run into bother from the usual suspects (ie aforementioned demons). One thing I liked about it was this fantasy-realist sense that you start out in a realm which is already odd, where it’s accepted that the supernatural is part of the way of things and helps shape the path of your life. This world-building lends ‘When Evil Lurks’ a lot of flavour, seasoned further by its enthusiasm for tasty graphics; for me, it falls down in its attempts to sustain atmosphere and tension, they too frequently lapse into a talky ponderousness that fails to capture the strange vibes of some of the films that may have influenced the director. I remember thinking something similar about his film from 2017, ‘Terrified’. Still, worth checking out.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Pulse (1988)

It's taken me three Christmas of new to me horror to get round to this Blu-ray from Eureka. I think i was so put out by the lacklustre Mindwarp i bought at the same time that i decided Pulse was more of the same.

Damn! How wrong i was.

I absolutely loved this eighties video gem. A science gone wrong tech thriller with pleasingly effective close-up shots of household appliance wiring systems remolding themselves on circuit boards as a highly aggressive and intelligent pulse of electricity terrorizes the occupants of a suburban house in California.

The family - Cliff De Young, Roxanne Hart and young Joey Lawrence - are uniformly excellent and make us truly believe in these strange paranormal events. There are some genuinely chilling moments such as Hart's shower sequence that get under the skin, but writer / director Paul Golding never over exploits things giving the film a level of authenticity that keeps the film grounded in reality despite some crazy but fantastic light special effects that you only ever see in movies from the eighties.

I enjoyed this so much that it's going to be a definite contender for film of the month.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Pulse (1988)



It's taken me three Christmas of new to me horror to get round to this Blu-ray from Eureka. I think i was so put out by the lacklustre Mindwarp i bought at the same time that i decided Pulse was more of the same.



Damn! How wrong i was.



I absolutely loved this eighties video gem. A science gone wrong tech thriller with pleasingly effective close-up shots of household appliance wiring systems remolding themselves on circuit boards as a highly aggressive and intelligent pulse of electricity terrorizes the occupants of a suburban house in California.



The family - Cliff De Young, Roxanne Hart and young Joey Lawrence - are uniformly excellent and make us truly believe in these strange paranormal events. There are some genuinely chilling moments such as Hart's shower sequence that get under the skin, but writer / director Paul Golding never over exploits things giving the film a level of authenticity that keeps the film grounded in reality despite some crazy but fantastic light special effects that you only ever see in movies from the eighties.



I enjoyed this so much that it's going to be a definite contender for film of the month.

Crikey I haven't seen this one in 30 years. Remember it being very meh.

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[Demoncrat]

After rewatching the fluid economy of The Andromeda Strain for about the 100th time , I dove back into second tier territory with ...

Through The Fire (1988, G.D. Marcum)


The things I watch.
Imagine if you will, a place where cultists can relax and play darts in their lair, whilst a dipsomaniac ex beauty queen pleads with a police officer to "work for her in your spare time". This. is. not. porn.
You know when you try and blend two genres and it just ... separates on you? Strap in then. Now revisiting Premutos as a palate cleanser.