HALLOWEEN HORROR BINGE ROUNDUP #6

Hey Dem, thanks for those tips, plenty to ponder there.

Meanwhile...

15/10/21

CAT PEOPLE – This might even have been one of my seven-year-old self’s first VHS horror experiences, although the version I had in my mind had been spliced in with another early viewing, Argento’s ‘Inferno’. I have to say that my imaginary mind-movie Brundlefly would beat ‘Cat People’ hands down, at least this P Schrader remake. It’s not that I’m against a big budget bad taste studio horror rehash of that sacred ethereal noir – it’s just that it didn’t quite deliver on its seeming promise of schlock, perversity and gaudy eroticism. Undeniably well made with great aesthetics, but it needed to ramp it up. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh.

SHALLOW GRAVE – Bad cop gets nasty backwoods. Reassuringly grainy in a way that only VS can deliver, this is a low budget obscurity from 1987 that aims for suspense rather than kills. It doesn’t have the chops to pull off the kind of dark atmosphere it seems to grasp for, and makes an uneasy transition over from a familiar sort of slasher style set-up to its grimmer, more serious second act. In its favour, the roiling atmosphere of the small town is convincingly rendered, as is its twinning of authority and inevitable brutality. Years of sexily done neo-noirs from surer hands have maybe raised the bar on this kind of thing, but it remains an interesting curio.

16/10/21

NAIL GUN MASSACRE – Cheap ooze from the bottom of the pile, ‘Nail Gun Massacre’ is DIY all the way. It’s the most threadbare, yet silliest, power tool horror I can think of, at least out of the ones shot on celluloid. ‘Shot’ in this case means finding the most static angle, the flattest composition, pressing record and letting style be damned, although the near-verité approach sometimes yields a strange otherworldliness in combination with the main maniac’s cackhanded one-liners (mostly inaudible) and the blurts of echoey laughter on the electronic soundtrack. There’s occasional ugly sex and rubber nails sticking out of treacly torsos. Pretty ace if you dig awfulness.

DEATH SHIP – Passengers escaping a sinking vessel end up aboard a passing battlecruiser – “whew” in a way, but then it turns out that this apparently deserted hulk has a Nazi surprise waiting in store etc etc etc. ‘Death Ship’ is another odd one. It seems to ‘work’ as a combination of very well rendered atmosphere – the ship is convincingly spooky, and the cinematography really brings this out – and quite badly mismanaged ‘horror bits’, most of which have the hokiness of a shit Halloween fun park ride (showers of blood, whispering corpse faces, eating gobstoppers will make you die of radiation etc). It’s quite a heady concoction, veering from quiet menace to bladder-testing stupidity in the sieg of an heil. George Kennedy glowers as the possessed captain whilst at one point a light bulb appears to double as the manifestation of Nazi supreme supernatural menace.

:hail::hail::hail::hail:

The Dark Eyes of London (1939)

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Bela Lugosi in one of his British films plays an insurance man whose clients all seem to be dying, suspicious no? Throw in a bizarre looking brute for no real reason and a beautiful love interest for one of the detectives investigating the cases and you have all the ingredients for an entertaining police mystery that sets out to find out what's up. Enjoyable!

Dolls (1987)

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Stuart Gordon's creepy movie about toys that come to life when no-one is looking. A first time watch for me and I have to say I really enjoyed this one but bloody hell, how weird is it haha. Is it supposed to be set in England? I mean it's clearly not filmed there but you have those 2 "punk" girls who look more like 80's Madonna that Siouxsie Sioux and the cars have right-hand steering wheels and then all of the other cast are American. I loved all the creepy scenes with the dolls, vicious little buggers :D

The Invisible Man (2020)

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Not at all what I was expecting. Elizabeth Moss plays the wife of a controlling tech inventor, and one night while he sleeps she escapes his grasp and goes into hiding. It's reported that he has killed himself but she is convinced that he has faked his death and is stalking her, since no-one can see him they all think that's she's losing her mind. It's all very un-nerving and it had me on edge, especially when the camera pans to an empty space and my eyes are darting all over to try and see something, but nothing is there! This tension and unease builds and builds but then is almost undone when it transpires that the husband had invented this 'optical suit' that can make the wearer invisible. So while there are some brilliant set pieces in the final act it stopped being scary. Still enjoyable but could have been a little better!

Dark Eyes of London is a lovely set isn't it, Justin. For the price it's definitely the best all round package released this year. Did you see what i menat when i said there was a huge spoiler on one of the studio portraits on those lovely double sided art cards.

I loved Dolls the one and only time i saw it on dvd a few years ago. The last couple of 101 sales i've thought of buying it on Bd but the fact that they never mention that it's from a 2K (Or higher) source makes me think it may not look that much better than the dvd.

Companies can't resist bragging of a movies source so the fact 101 don't kinda fills me with trepidation.

Yes, the card (which I didn't look at until afterwards) certainly gave things away, but about half way through I started having my suspicions much the same as our heroine Diana Stewart did. I really enjoyed the 30 min 'sit down in the pub' conversation between Kim and Stephen too, they're so knowledgeable about so many different genres of film it's baffling!

Dolls looks good on BD, but the disc is just the film and a trailer, I think it has a comm track too, but it's very bare bones, I used a CEX voucher on it. If you have the DVD it's not worth going out of your way for it.

Also, Detective Holt barking "send tea" before slamming the phone down, oh to be a 1930's copper :lol:

What made me uncertain was the character's voice. If suspicions were correct then it clearly wasn't that person speaking.

Dolls is exactly the same as the dvd then.

October 16th
 

The Ghosts of Borley Rectory (2021)

The film recounts one of the most famous cases of alleged supernatural activity at Borley Rectory, Essex, allegedly the most haunted house in England.

A very low budget film which is surprisingly high on 'star power' (Julian Sands, Toyah, Colin Baker, Chris Ellison) parts of this are pretty good. Unfortunately the main thing Baker and Sands do is have a lot of discussion round a table with other characters, luckily said discussion is well written so isn't as tedious as it could be but it has to be said that The Ghosts of Borley Rectory is a very talky film.

It's a production that's certainly influenced by the recent spate of supernatural films especially The Nun but this is no bad thing as the ghostly nun's appearances are nicely constructed and at times quite eerie. The nun herself is pretty awesome. All sunken hollowed out eyes and a putrefying complexion, she's very effective and nicely creepy and appears throughout the film. The less said about the Halloween masked horned demon that appears at the finale the better though.

There's a lot of well used tropes to be found here. From seances that go wrong to superstitious locals (Not enough budget for flame wielding villagers i'm afraid) to things that go bump in the night. Happily the majority of the jump scares work especially the ones where you aren't sure what you might have just seen from the corner of your eye, but the film lacks a bit in the atmosphere department - I'm blaming Raine McCormack for using the entire countries dry ice supplies for 2019's The Village in the Woods.

Once you get into the second half of the film The Ghosts of Borley Rectory is a reasonable film and certainly entertained me with it's sheer cheapness and balls to get some star names involved.

The Old Dark House (1932)

Following Frankenstein (1931) director James Whale turned to JB Priestley's novel Benighted for this er' old dark house terror satire which is as much a (black) comedy of manners as it is horror film.

The plot is slight. During an atrocious storm a three people are forced to call at an old Welsh mansion inhabited by stranger than strange butler Boris Karloff, an 102 year old lunatic, a fire loving brother and a God-fearing sister who all suffer from at least one type of 'chosis and neurosis. Then when things can't get any odder Charles Laughton turns up with his hooker mistress.

The whole thing is bathed in an atmosphere of musky decay and the less than pristine picture quality i've always been used to added to the general all round weirdness of proceedings but is now missing from the newly restored Blu-ray release, however now we can at least see all that is going on with the beautifully restored print.

I've always loved this film from the first time i saw it and it simply improves with each viewing. Classic stuff!

Vampires: Los Muertos. 2002.

Another vampire hunter Derek Bliss is tasked to recruit a team and head to Mexico and kill a vampire princess before she can get the Black Cross of Berseires.

Tommy Lee Wallace helmed this sequel from John Carpenter, now we got rock singer Jon Bon Jovi being a vampire hunter with a team of amateurs and a hunter from Memphis who packs a shotgun. With Bon Jovi this should have been great but this seems to fall flat, there is some good visual effects but lack the punch from the predecessor.

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I thought this was okay. Pleased that JBJ wasn't simply some ultra cool kick ass vampire hunter like James Woods was in the original. He needed bailing out of the shit most of the times. Thought it made him more human.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNd8aL41c5I

No plot what so ever, basically a plane lands at an airport and a bunch of radioactive mutants that have a taste for blood and can only be killed by destroying the brain , go on a mass killing spree and that's about it as we follow a reporter and his wife trying to escape and at the end it turns into groundhog day.

The kills many and bloody and the mutants look like someone who has dipped there face in a bucket of shit. But I do find it enjoyable .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4zOUxHxhXM

A young boy invents a imaginary but when his friend tells him too poison his mother and nearly kills her , he vanishes the friend too his subconscious.

Years later the friend returns and the man begins to lose his mind and doing unspeakable things, but as the movie goes on we begin to wonder is he mentally unstable or is Daniel actually real and something truly evil with a plan.

a lot better than I was expecting with good body horror parts and acting from the two leads. Part horror and part a study of mental illness. Daniel is played by Patrick Schwarzenegger son of Arnold who i.didn't even know had a son until this film.

Now watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwVd-VcK2uA

STIGLITZ!!!


Ahem.


EverymanHYBRID

Web series.
Yes yes, I will eventually watch Zoombies :rolleyes::lol:
A trio of friends decide to start a "health tips" YT channel. To go from this innocent beginning to the transdimensional mayhem of the ending ... it's some ride. A lot of these things can fall flat after drrrrrrrrrrragging things out (Marble Hornets cough), but this one kept me guessing. A trickster demon named Habit invades more than their personal space in order to play "his game". He plays for keeps ahem. No sappy Hypocritewood washouts here folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C2I3hvqnQ

Reggie sets out too find Mike who is going after the end things once and for all and finds out how the Tall man came too be, the tall man wants Mike who is developing powers like his and wants too make him like himself.

My thoughts are that the sphere has always been in Mike and the tall man is frightened that he could become more powerful than he. We have a lot of flashbacks that must of been cut from the first.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Ru1UChaUU

Another film with no plot that's still a lot of fun with some fantastic gore and deaths. The scene of the demons with there eyes glowing coming up the stairs after the gang is brillant. a great 80s gorefest!

Alligator. 1980.

A baby Alligator is flushed to the sewers and feeds on rats that were injected with growth hormones and soon the Alligator grows and escapes to the street.

Robert Forster plays the detective who everyone seems to think he is crazy and trying to prove people wrong, Henry Silva plays the gator expert trying to charm a newscaster with the sounds of a gators call...what is there to hate, apart from Dean Jagger escaping and leaving everyone to be on the menu. This wasn't too bad, a Jaws rip off on land, it entertained me even though the effects are a bit of a laugh.

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Plus a crime against fashion

Wearing an xmas jumper out of season EWWWWWWWW

:lol:

And Now The Screaming Starts. 1973.

A young woman marries into a wealthy family and moves into the family home and believes she is being haunted by her new groom's ancestor.

One of the eerie films from Amicus that even I just about shit myself at when I first watched this, Stephanie Beacham and Ian Ogilvy star as the happy couple now hoping to live in the family home then sees a portrait of Henry Fengriffen and that's when things go pair shaped. We do see in a flash back how Henry played by Herbert Lom was a right B@stard. Peter Cushing also stars as the doctor who only appears in the last half hour and does a brilliant job.

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Stagefright. 1987.

An escaped psychopath finds his way to a theatre and a group of actors rehearsing for a show become his intended victims.

After a slow character build up which makes us care about the stage actors this film goes to non stop terror, Michele Soavi is able to build up quite a lot of suspense and claustrophobia being in a small place and nowhere to run to or hide without being found. This is one those films for me that gets better and better with every viewing.

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The Church. 1989.

A old cathedral built over a mass grave and evil is released trapping those inside.

All hell breaking out in a church...who knew that would be possible well Dario thought it be possible and Michele Soavi made it happen will great results, listed as another Demons movie, think this was number 4...I could be wrong and purely the demons are the demonic spirits and not the snarling ones. This has it all, back story to why the church was built, a priest trying to save everyone, a bickering old couple and plenty of deaths and a nice background score. Has Giovanni Lombardo Ridice ever made it through a horror movie without being shot or killed? Still a great movie though.

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Have a good Monday all, be good

Halloween Kills

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EVIL DIES TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

Based on what a couple of folk said here I went to see this yesterday with very low expectations of it being good. I found the funniest film of the year. A terrible Halloween film. Some really good set pieces and great kills. But it is really bad, I still had fun though.

:mob: EVIL DIES TONIGHT

:mob: EVIL DIES TONIGHT

:mob: EVIL DIES TONIGHT

:behindsofa:

Mark Kermode's review for BBC Radio was basically 5 minutes of him saying "Why?" haha

Week 2 has been good again

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The Fog

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Still right up there as one of my favourite John Carpenter films.

Same here. Just so atmospheric.

Sent from my SM-G780G using Tapatalk

So what have I managed to watch. Few bits.
The Masque of the Red Death. 1964.

This has gone from my least favourite of Cormans Poe series to somewhere towards the top. It still doesn't win out over Usher or Tales of Terror but it is nonetheless a terrific film.
Despite the gorgeous sets and costumes and dreamlike sequences it has taken this second viewing to appreciate what is essentially an exploitation flick, as befits Cormans heritage I suppose. Vincent Price plays a truly evil man and yet at times he manages to almost convince he has the moral high ground with his delicious dialogue corrupting Jane Ashers sense of right and wrong. Fantastic and quite nasty in places, StudioCanals blu looks superb too.

The Dark Eyes of London. 1939.

Early British horror with Bela Lugosi playing Bela Lugosi as some sort of odd insurance broker/doctor hybrid. For me Lugosi as much as he is an iconic figure in the horror genre just doesn't have much range. Almost always just playing himself, (there are a few exceptions) here he's no different. That's said this is still a great little movie with some genuinely tense moments and some of the kills are particularly dark for the time. Plenty of fun is to be had between the two detectives on the trail of a serial killer drowning people in the Thames.

The Werewolf. 1956.

The first movie I've watched from Arrows Sam Katzman set. The tale of a man who turns up in a small town in Anywheresville USA. He can't remember who he is or how he got there but not long after his appearance people start dying and a monster of some kind is clearly responsible. I'm trying to avoid spoilers but the title of the film clearly let's us know what's going on here. Its the how and why that is interesting and well put together. Basically a Frankenstein story in disguise. This actually has the feel of an extended twilight zone episode with its sets and acting. Of particular note is our helpless man/creature played by Kim Charney. Not an actor I'm familiar with but one that gives this role far more than such a film probably deserves. I really felt for this guy and his plight is what drives this movie forward. Excellent and thoroughly recommended if you like old b-movies.

Not a movie but I'm also really enjoying Midnight Mass on Netflix. Took an episode or two to get going and it is quite slow burn but it's a great show.

HALLOWEEN HORROR BINGE ROUNDUP #7

17/10/21

THE MOON IN SCORPIO – A boat, some people, some corpses. Although all available reviews basically equate it to a barrel of shite rolling endlessly downhill towards utter nothingness, in some bizarre way ‘The Moon In Scorpio’ had me hooked. I’m kind of only saying that so I can slip in a crap pun about the killer’s weapon of choice (yep, a hook – well OK, it’s a harpoon – but then again, is it a knife? One of this film’s endless ambiguities / continuity errors). I thought that ‘The Moon In Scorpio’ was baffling, disjointed, tonally nonsensical, badly paced, a bit boring, couldn’t even really work out what was going on half the time despite it being the simplest of set-ups… and yeah, somehow I came out thinking I’d had quite an enjoyable experience. But I’m funny like that. Yep, I guess it did have me hooked after all.

THE VIDEO DEAD – This “EC meets Videodrome” comedy horror features a television set that spawns the living dead, who step straight from an onscreen NOTLD-esque monochrome graveyard into the kind of house where bad things always happen in straight-to-video eighties horror flicks. No-one involved was taking this seriously, not that I hold that against it; its incompetence is a bit mesmerising, scattershot pacing and random turns of event increasing the sense of unreality (it’s the kind of film where zombies can massacre an entire suburban street in the middle of the day and no-one seems that bothered). When the central character, a stoner kid, goes into the woods with a fatherly ‘zombie hunter’ type, a strange, almost fairy-tale quality sets in. Other than that, there’s some tasty gore, nice period zombie makeup, a couple of surprisingly mean-spirited moments (considering the tone is fairly light), and just that grainy, cheap eighties film look that always gets me.

TVD was always on somewhere in someone's house back in the day. Or certainly seemed like it. Must revisit methinks!!

The Sect

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I didn't really enjoy this one. It's fine but I was struggling to get into this one.

Fairly dull isn't it.

Yes it is!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkBSEWy8WfY

Always enjoyed this one, it's creepy mix of religion, quantum physics and the metaphysical , it doesn't seem to get the same recognition as some other Carpenter films, hey it has Donald Pleasence and Alice Cooper as a psychotic / possessed hobo, what more do you want!

The 4k release is a improvement on the old blu ray with bright and good colours and levels of detail on objects and fabric not seen before.


Also watched the first episode of Chucky , really enjoyed it and the spirit of the early movies, great to see Dourif back as Chucky. Seems they will be exploring the back story of Charles Lee Ray too see how he turned out the way he did.

The Guardian hated this so for me that's always a good sign.

I was just telling Demdike how much I enjoy the Sect in a private Message :lol:

It's the only one of the Studio Canal discs I upgraded to 4k, love this film and I agree it looks great, especially any scenes in the basement with the particle spinning around all green light!

The new 4k print on dvd was a hell of an improvement on the earlier dvd so i'm expecting the Blu-ray of the 4K restoration to look great.

:lol:i'm talking about Prince of Darkness.

House Of Lost Souls. 1989.

A group of people stay at a run down hotel that is shrouded in mystery and horror.

Another Umberto Lenzi TV flick of the Doomed House series, this time it's a hotel and a creepy proprietor/caretaker...maybe influenced by The Shining and the ghosts of people who died there. The acting is certainly not academy award even the boy in the basement crying, did someone cut a onion near him and told him to fake cry. Another actor looks about 30 years old and sound like he is 50, great dubbing people, the deaths scenes aren't too bad and the Demons soundtrack was re-used for this. This does not get any better second or third time watching it.

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October 17th
 

Satan's Little Helper (2004)

Jeff Liebermann's film is becoming a Halloween tradition for me. What begins as a darkly comic study of video game violence on young minds morphs in it's second half into a nasty and cruel prime example of exploitation.

The question really needs asking. Just how dumb is the kid in this?

Brilliant stuff.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993)

First unrelated sequel to the 80's classic Pumpkinhead. In all honesty it's not a patch on the Winston film. Although Andrew Robinson does his best as a cop battling against both Pumpkinhead and the abysmal script this is a fairly lame affair.

Certainly the Pumpkinhead creature looks terrific here but why does it seem to go around with it's own electrical storm in tow? It's an epileptic's worst nightmare.

30 days of unseen horror

Film 12

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Dr Louis Creed takes his wife and two young kids away from the hustle and bustle of Boston to the quieter slower paced life in Maine. After the family cat his killed by a truck the Creeds neighbour tells Louis to Bury the cat in the pet cemetery in the woods behind their house. That night they head into the woods to bury the cat in secret so the kids don't know their pet has died but Jud takes Louis further into the woods to a special hidden place that brings anything buried there back to life but they dont always return the same as when they left.

This wasn't as bad as i was expecting it to be but that doesn't mean that it was that good either. It has a decent cast especially John Lithgow who is always great to watch and it is well acted. Visually it's a mixed bag with some scenes looking good but others look so fake and cgi it always takes you out of it. The make ip effects again is a mixed bag with some of it looking great but others looked terrible like the scene when the dad is washing the kid she looked like she had no features and her skin was melting off it was pretty odd looking. My main problem with this was a complete lack of atmosphere there is actually no atmosphere at all i got no creepy feeling or tension things just happened and that was it the next thing happened even deaths just seemed to pass without any emotion. This didn't need to be made.

To sum it up it left me with a feeling of nothing.

4/10

20 minutes I lasted, so kudos for sitting through it. :nod:

I have a free copy of the studio canal blu ray going if you want it.

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Exactly the same, I gave up very early in when I tried to watch it.