What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

You'll Like My Mother (1972)

Following the death of her husband in the Vietnam war a heavily pregnant mother (Patty Duke) takes the bus to snowbound rural Minnesota to meet her mother in law (Rosemary Murphy) for the first time.

Trapped at the house by a snowstorm Duke ends up giving birth and is drugged by Murphy when she comes to she's told the baby is dead and has been buried. This scenario sets the scene for the second half which drips with tension and genuinely unnerving suspense. Duke excels at vulnerability as much as Murphy does at menace. Meanwhile Sian Barbara Allen almost steals the show as the silent and mentally challenged sister of Duke's deceased husband.

From the snowy exteriors to the old dark house that the majority of the film is shot in, together with a disturbing secret in the cellar, although set in the 1970's this is a film very much steeped in the traditions of the classic Gothic chiller.

You'll Like My Mother is an excellent exercise in celluloid terror. Highly recommended.

[Demoncrat]

Noted D.

[iank]

Deadly Games. On Christmas Eve, a tech savvy and resourceful but naive 10 year old boy is forced to defend himself and his ailing, near-blind grandfather when their home is invaded by a psychotic killer dressed as Santa Claus. This late 80s French horror flick has become something of a cult classic, only available in the West relatively recently, and is often said to be the horror Home Alone, albeit made first! Saw this on Shudder last night and was blown away by how great it is. Beautifully shot, great Xmas atmosphere, great 80s atmosphere, with some terrific suspense and tension. Loved it!

[Demoncrat]

It's an odd one certainly. Need more love.

[davcol]

Originally Posted by gag

Despite it being on every year, how good how classic etc it is, it's one of those film I've only ever watched twice and last time was over 20yrs ago.

Sometimes thats the way it goes with films. I myself have only seen classics such as Speed, Reservoir Dogs and Into the Wild once yet have seen Stalker by Tarkovsky twice.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by iank

Deadly Games. On Christmas Eve, a tech savvy and resourceful but naive 10 year old boy is forced to defend himself and his ailing, near-blind grandfather when their home is invaded by a psychotic killer dressed as Santa Claus. This late 80s French horror flick has become something of a cult classic, only available in the West relatively recently, and is often said to be the horror Home Alone, albeit made first! Saw this on Shudder last night and was blown away by how great it is. Beautifully shot, great Xmas atmosphere, great 80s atmosphere, with some terrific suspense and tension. Loved it!

This is a different Deadly Games to the one Arrow released?

[iank]

Yeah I think that one's from 1982 this is 89. Also sometimes known as Dial Code Santa Claus.

[Frankie Teardrop]

VIOLENT NIGHT – Jaded Santa rediscovers the meaning of Christmas when he’s forced to rescue a little girl and some awful rich people from an army of robbers. I love it when films pile sentimentality on top of gore, and it’s amusing to watch Santa kicking the shit out of a bunch of c*nts. This fantasy splatter comedy actioner skewers every festive movie cliché going with gleeful abandon and is a lot of fun.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE – Wrong holiday, but I always find this old slasher chestnut faintly warming in a mulled-wine-and-candlelight sort of way, so on it went. A bleak mining town celebrates an anniversary it would rather forget, and before long people are making gruesome discoveries in boxes of candy and whispering about old Harry Warden and his reign of terror. From back when you didn’t have to do much more than get a bunch of teens to scream and die at the hands of someone in a mask, but there’s still plenty of nice stuff here to do with shadowy mines and that elusive quality I guess we can call ‘Canadian’. Additional points for having its own specific folk-tinged theme song.

RABID GRANNIES – Yet more awful rich people gather at their elders’ stately home and do all the usual double dealing and backstabbing until someone opens a magic box and it all goes a bit ‘Evil Dead’. This Belgian splatter comedy has a really leaden sense of humour, but somehow I enjoyed its mishmash of gore, bad dubbing, nice gothic looks and endless running around in shadowy corridors. It fails to orchestrate in any convincing way but nonetheless manages to charm through its incessant silliness.

RATMAN – There’s something quite magnetic about David Warbeck’s face, and here it is in ‘Ratman’, with its deep furrows and slight overanimation. ‘Ratman’ is an iffy late eighties exploiter that also stars the world’s smallest man (last phrase should probably be in quotes). Instead of giving him something interesting to work with, they put claws and sharp teeth on him and, there you go dude, you’re a rat-man! Callous or what, but we’re at the fag-end of the Italian trash boom so I don’t know why I’m surprised. ‘Ratman’ is ninety percent horror padding involving shitty looking rooms and probably only a negligible percentage of gore / nudity / actual ratman, but it offers plenty of what I look for in films of its ilk, namely exactly that end-of-eighties Italo aesthetic – mesmerising synths and an unreal feel that privileges nonsense over narrative. Tune in for that, otherwise you’ll be in for slim pickings.

[iank]

My Xmas night movie was Happiest Season, the 2020 rom-com/family xmas flick. McKenzie Davis is the chick who takes girlfriend Kristen Stewart home to meet her family and then forces her to pretend to just be her roommate as she's not actually told them she's gay. Shenanigans ensue. Just as fun second time.

[Nordicdusk]

Tensions are boiling outside a store awaiting the start of the Black Friday sale and when the daughter of the store owner sneaks her friends in the back door the crowd go wild when they start taunting them through the window and an all out riot starts. Almost a years later to the day and the friends are all targeted and people who were involved in the riot start to get picked off one by one knowing they are the main target of the psycho they must stick together but can they really trust.

As soon as this started I was thinking oh Christ when the teens get together for the first time and they were all whipping out their phones and the usual these days carry on but it surprises me that I actually didn't hate these characters they were not too in your face or over the top so it settled for me pretty fast. The acting is pretty solid from everyone there is no real superhero type carry on obviously there is a bit of macho jock talk but thats just normal testosterone driven young men around girls talk.

The gore is great mostly there are one of two scenes are are CGI but mostly it's proper practical gore and as the film goes on it get more and more over the top to the point where I'm laughing my ass off out loud .

I'm not the biggest fan of Eli Roth but I do love his knowledge of film and his love of horror I'm just always sceptical watching any of his films but I have to say this is my favourite of his films I have seen I had such a fun time with Thanksgiving the killers mask is great the acting the gore the set ups the over the top nature of things that happen the whole thing is just a blast I loved it.

This could easily become a yearly regular.Thanksgiving_poster_2023j.jpg

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