You mean Barlow from Salem's Lot? ;)

I was thinking more of a Coppola film ahem. :nod:

October 20th
 

The Wolfman (2010)

Despite it's critical mauling at it's time of release i always enjoy this 17 minute longer directors cut. To think the wonderful railway carriage meeting between Benicio del Toro's Lawrence Talbot and Max von Sydow's elderly stranger who gifts Lawrence his silver wolfs head cane wasn't in the original cinema release is ridiculous, it's, at least for myself, both pivotal to the story and utterly charming too.

Aside from a lack of suspense there's not an awful lot wrong with this reworking of Curt Siodmak's original story of The Wolf Man. It looks gorgeously Gothic and it's Wolfman effects courtesy of Rick Baker are excellent. Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins are almost a match for Lon Chaney Jr. and Anthony Hopkins as the Talbots and i like the addition of Inspector Aberline of Scotland Yard as portrayed by Hugo Weaving, whom Hopkins gently mocks for failing to catch the Ripper. Meanwhile Danny Elfman's score is wonderfully epic although i did often hear echoes of Wojciech Kilar's classic music from Bram Stoker's Dracula in there.

But despite there being a fair old dollop of blood and guts there is that aforementioned lack of suspense which is a bit of a killer when it comes to horror films and certainly wrecks it's prospects, no matter how good it is technically and visually, of being on most horror fans list of favourites.

As an aside i do love the updating of the thirties Universal logo at the beginning of the film. Extremely eye catching.

So not Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror then? From which this creature and Barlow are copied.

He didn't fly about the place though .... ;)

Day Of The Dead. 1985.

A team of civilian scientists and a loose army unit clash with each other's motives after they have taken shelter at an underground military base from the hordes of living dead that storm the surface above. The civilian scientists aren't seeking to eradicate the zombies like the soldiers are hell-bent on doing, but are instead trying to get to the bottom of what is causing them to be what they are.

Granted that this movie is from 1985, so the special effects and zombie make-up is a bit outdated by today's standards. But it still works fine though, and the effects are still believable. But in the Romero movies it is not the special effects that drive the movie, it is the story and the characters, the special effects just help to progress the story and add a visual imagery to the dying world.

There is evidence of the dead developing conscious rather than instinctive will in the character of the zombie named Bub. The film's central location, a large underground mine, is plenty claustrophobic and serves as another storyline decision. NIGHT had a strong black character, DAWN had a strong black and a strong female character; this outing has a fiercely independent white woman who isn't obsessed with the plays for dominance the male characters engage in. This is one film in the Romero Zombie films that I couldn't take to but it has really grown on me.

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I still remember when I first got to see Day, with a mate who was by his own admission a "film snob" who complained bitterly about the "poor script".
I merely watched agape at the gore on show, which was verboten under Ferman's grip on our viewing pleasures at the time. Sigh.

The Crow. 1994.

Based on the comic book created by James O'Barr. The Crow stars Brandon Lee as rock star Eric Draven, who, precisely one year after his murder, returns from the grave to take revenge on the vicious criminals responsible for the rape and death of his fiancée and his own death.

It's an incredibly simple tale of revenge, but the gothic look and soundtrack that reflects the time of its creation drive this movie beyond its simple origins. There is some light humour from Ernie Hudson as the former detective busted down to patrol/beat cop who calls the hero a mime from hell. Michael Wincott as the Top Dollar who runs the city and creates fear and panic with his subordinates along with Tony Todd as the loyal henchman. Nearly 30 years on and this is still a classic film.

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CARNIVAL OF SOULS – I suppose everyone’s got one of those all-time horror top tens that often shifts around but somehow stays the same – ‘Carnival Of Souls’ is always near the top of mine. It’s such a classic, but also a total outlier, a true indie from a time when that kind of thing had a very marginal presence in horror. It tells the story of Mary, a church organist who we first meet when she’s about to be run off the road during a car race with the wrong hicks in the wrong backwater. She surprises her rescuers when she emerges from a lake after her car takes a plunge, and then she quits her place with a shrug and a bit of cold shoulder – she’s not the sentimental type, it seems. But when she hits the next town, even she starts to shudder after a spectre appears and follows her around… ‘Carnival Of Souls’ is a film that nails a very definite kind of mood, one that follows from its theme of gradually retreating reality, and its adoption of a noirish, expressionistic tone. Its nearest precursors must have been things like Jacques Tournier and Val Lewton, maybe also that tenebrous piece of American surrealism, ‘Daughter Of Horror’; I think director Herk Harvey said he was into Bergman and Cocteau. The shadowy photography is backed by a creepy, fogged over organ score that is similarly evocative, poised midway between the church yard and the end of the pier. But the main power within ‘Carnival Of Souls’ belongs to Candace Hilligoss. Her face, anguished but frosty, permeates the whole film and is partly the cause of its relentless claustrophobia. There’s no sultry noirishness going on with her performance, it has an eerie magnetism that feels very singular, the embodiment of someone not really there. Harvey keeps things anchored by introducing characters such as a sleazy lech played by Sidney Berger, and an oblivious landlady Mrs Thomas, but, as per JPS, hell is other people, and Harvey cleverly uses them to build the sense of a real world that is at least as oppressive as the spectral domain that seems to beckon Mary away. The scenes of her wondering the abandoned carnival or drifting through the streets of a world she seems no longer part of are enough to set my hair on end. Although apparently obscure for decades, I can’t imagine that a good many genre and arthouse practitioners never saw it, for there are echoes there from ‘Messiah Of Evil’ to David Lynch. These days, COS is venerated and regarded as pretty much the pinnacle of vintage atmospheric horror. It’s as vivid to me now as it was when I watched it on Alex Cox’s ‘Moviedrome’ all those years ago.

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

You've done it again sir.
All I ask from a piece of fiction is to take me to another place entirely, and this stretches, for me anyhow, from Bagpuss waking up to the unbridled nightmare of Calvaire .
Carnival is one such film.

I have such an emotional attachment to this film it came out just as I got my teens as we all know that's a strange time a time when your discovering who you are and this film was so important during that time sometimes I even find it difficult to watch because of this but I love it dearly.

30 Days of Unseen Horror

Day 22

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A crazed scientist is determined to prove he can mix the genes from a wolf and a man with the idea to replace soldiers with wolfmen but no one wants any part of this madness. Dr Lorenzo Cameron is using his simple minded gardener to create the first killing machine.

The Mad Monster is a fairly sad film the gardener Petro and the abuse he gets from the doctor is quite heartbreaking he is a simple minded man who doesn't have a clue that at night he is a murderous beast terrorising the swamps but it's when he is in human form your heart really goes out to him getting ordered around sometimes beaten by the doctor.

The scenes where the wolfman is walking around the swaps are amazingly atmospheric the sounds of the swamp mixed with the thick fog manages to put you right there. The wolfman himself looks just ok could of really done without the cheap looking Halloween costume fangs. There is one extremely creepy scene where the wolfman is peeping in the bedroom window of a small child who is playing before bed and the wolfman snatches him away. Talking of kids my god how annoying are 1940s kids :lol:

October 20th (2)
 

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 comedy of manners as it is horror film.

The plot is slight. During an atrocious storm 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, not to mention Ernest "Care for a potato" Thesiger, 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 with the assortment of decidedly odd characters who reside in the house only adding to the foreboding creepiness of the film. With Karloff's scarred and mute brute of a butler ogling and lusting for Gloria Stuart in her underwear only part of it. Yet there's a definite streak of comic fun in there as well with Lilian Bond's showgirl and Laughton's wealthy businessman as her 'friend' at the heart of it.

Whilst making this genuine horror classic Whale also managed to spawn a genre - Old dark house films - as well as being an influence on countless other films including Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses.

October 21st
 

House of 1000 Corpses (2001)

The very first thing you see on screen is Karloff's scarred, mute brute of a butler answering the door in The Old Dark House (1932). In fact the whole movie makes numerous references to the films of past decades which quite obviously writer / director Rob Zombie simply adores. As well as other clips from Whale's film we witness scenes from Universal classics such as The Wolf Man (1941) and House of Frankenstein (1944) all thrust into the insanity of the Firefly family's chamber of horrors.

Horrors themselves which are a grizzled but loving homage to the bygone era of Grindhouse cinema, referencing the likes of Tobe Hooper classics The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and 81's The Funhouse. However it's not all referential.

What Zombie brings to the Halloween party is a hallucinatory mindf*ck of weird images, colours, varying film stocks and sounds in a relentless assault on the senses. Zombie also creates some very memorable new characters in Captain Spaulding, Otis and Baby with outstanding and extremely sinister performances from Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon, so much so that it was inevitable we'd see them all again in sequel The Devil's Rejects (2005)

October 21st (2)
 

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

More of a run of the mill slasher with a loony if left field finale than the haunting menace originally created by John Carpenter. However one or two of the kills are good fun and we have Donald Pleasence's Loomis who by now appears to be more deranged than Michael Myers.

Attachment 248480 Attachment 248481

Latest addition to the pumpkin family :lol:

CENTIPEDE HORROR – When animals attack, it’s always the ones further down the evolutionary scale that creep me out the most. You’d think it’d be the other way around given the species at the top of the ladder, but even though humans are undoubtably the most obnoxious lifeform nature has seen fit to throw at us so far, the likes of dogs, cats, monkeys, even sharks, never really do it for me. But worms, maggots, slugs… they make me f*cking puke. Anything capable of squirming and secreting itself within an Aldi prepack sandwich is automatically foul. Centipedes might even have the edge. They seem quite predatory, they have that darting, many-legged purposiveness about them. ‘Centipede Horror’ isn’t an ‘animals attack’ film as such, but I think I can say that centipedes are its raison d’etre. It’s an early eighties HK black magic film about the cursed aftermath of a razed village, an amulet that feeds off the wearer’s tendency to good or evil, and centipedes. In it, Pak travels from Hong Kong to investigate the fate of his sister, who died in a Chinese hospital from a horrendous disease that causes centipedes to burst from festering wounds; he uncovers a scandalous family secret and gets slowly dragged into an internecine world of warring sorcerers. ‘Centipede Horror’ is a pretty good example of its niche. It bypasses some of the things I always find a little bit off-putting about this phase of Hong Kong horror in that it skirts egregious mammal slaughter (there are chickens in it and one of them dies at some point, but most of them appear to be weird special effect ghost chickens!) It also reins in the goofy laughs that often seem to mar these films from our righteous ‘nowadays’ vantage, and I know that kooky slapstick can have its charms, but it was nice to see CH play it pretty straight and take its time to build an air of eeriness to go with its spurts of squirmy grot. It all builds gradually to that classic and patented HK black magic horror movie closer, the epic ritualistic battle magic blow-out. The one here follows the established format well enough; it ratchets up the special effects into Bava-lit overdrive and unleashes a maelstrom of lasers, stressed out sorcerers, things that fly around, mad zooms, and centipede barfing. It’s impressive, I always like that kind of thing, I mean it’s not as far out as anything in ‘The Boxer’s Omen’ for example, but it upholds the tradition well for sure. For me though, what stays in the mind about CH are the numerous scenes where centipedes are allowed to be themselves and just go for it. We watch them piling on, slipping under doors to swarm across carpets and household coverings, dominating every surface until it disappears beneath a squirming mass of segments, legs and feelers. These shots of wild centipede action are used ad infinitum as filler more than anything, but there’s just a real sense of icky dread about them. Well anyway, enough centipede talk. I’m supposed to hate the f*ckers. But ‘Centipede Horror’ is a solid example of its genre, and I enjoyed this Halloween rewatch.

30 Days of Unseen Horror

Day 23


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Three female reporters head out on an assignment to cover a Danish emigrants parade but when they get there their room was double booked and in a small town with such a big attraction there isnt a hope in hell they will find another room even in the neighbouring county. Enter the owner of a local museum Ernest who offers to help the three pretty ladies by letting them stay in his massive house with his wife but there is always a catch because something lurks I. The basement.

The Unseen is a decent suspenseful little horror it has a slow pace but Ernest helps move it along nicely at first you think he is just an overly friendly oaf but soon you see a darker side to him especially with the way he treats his poor wife who you can tell has suffered years of abuse from him she is broken and worn down. One by one terrible things start to happen to the girls but the big reveal is not as horrific as I thought it would be it was pretty sad actually which honestly killed my buzz for the film it just gives the whole thing a totally different feeling the ending is a real downer very meloncolic.

A decent watch but that ending is a bit too sad for me.

Contracted: Phase I. 2013.

Samantha, a 20s something lesbian has a encounter with a guy at a party...more like a back seat bunk up...anyway...she thinks she has a STD but turns out to be something else. The warnings of having unprotected sex with a stranger this film should be a somewhat PSA advertisement. Clearly at the start we see how the person became infected and become wanted by the police, but that clearly does not need to be shared. Set over a period of 3 days, and even though at 80 odd minutes and some amateurish camera work the make-up effects are decent. Aside from Caroline Williams appearing this has actors in it that I have never heard of and manage to keep the pace going and not become a dull boring film.

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October 22nd
 

Terrifier 2 (2022)

My first revisit to Terrifier 2 and it's still absolutely superb. Good characters and ones to root for too thanks to strong performances which makes the brutality carried out on them all the more powerful.

And what brutality. It's so well done and gory as hell. I maintain this is far more violent and in your face gory than any of the classic Italian films of the 70's and 80's and is quite likely the goriest film to ever play cinemas.

Art the Clown as well as being nasty as f*ck is beautifully funny with it and there's a definite art to Art's nastiness.

If it has a fault it's that at two hours 12 minutes it's probably too long yet i'm not sure what i'd cut out to bring it in under the two hour mark.

The best horror film in years.

October 22nd (2)
 

To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

Christopher Lee plays a defrocked, devil-worshiping Catholic priest who convinces a man (Denholm Elliott) to sign over his daughter Catherine (Nastassja Kinski) so she will become the devils' representative on earth on her 18th birthday. How will Occult expert Richard Widmark prevent this apocalypse?

As with Hammer's previous Dennis Wheatley thriller The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter has strong Occult themes, but this films modern day setting removes it's fantasy elements placing it firmly in the era of The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976)

To tie in nicely with watching it in October, the film is set during the run up to All Hallows Eve when the final satanic ritual will take place. The climactic showdown between Lee and Widmark is unfortunately a bit of a let down and it passes by in a blur of wildly coloured film stock, however there's plenty of occult nastiness before hand to make up for it including a naked Lee (probably a stand in) taking the virginal Catherine on the altar and a frankly disgusting sequence with a demonic baby literally giving her head. These sequences are genuinely grim and should have inspired Hammer's direction into the 80's but alas it was not to be.

The final horror film from the studio that dripped blood. To The Devil a Daughter is one of Hammer's unsung great films.

Contracted: Phase II. 2015.

Riley who had contact with Samantha and suffers the same fate tries to find a cure and also search for patient zero before time runs out and the spread of the disease goes global. This one starts where the previous one finishes and wastes no time in getting to the point of the story and focus of a character who has now consumed with the disease and the determination to find what exactly is wrong before time runs out. Like the previous film this is set over 3 days with a bit more blood and gore involved. The acting was decent and better camera work.

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(Extra scene during end credits)

Return Of The Evil Dead (1973)

How a demon loves a film.

A town has a festival, celebrating a historical event.
Little do they know, some rather special guests are coming ... :nod:
This one. :rolleyes: The first Templar flick that I ever did see. On severely truncated vhs harumph (67 min!!!!). Even then ...
This BD looks wildly clear to my crusty old peepers. And intact :dance:
I miiiight just go and watch it again. :loveeyes:

Thanks to your review, I've ordered The Bloody Duo set with both films, currently £11.69 at Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Terrifier-B...dp/B0B8PCYJYB/

I hope you aren't disappointed, Nos. Have you seen either previously?

The second film is a huge step up from the first.

If you weren't aware the character of Art the Clown was first seen in an anthology film called All Hallows Eve which is very low budget but fun and has a great central performance from an unknown actress called Katie Maguire as a babysitter.

HELL NIGHT – There haven’t been that many slashers in my Halloween run down so far, so here is one. It’s ‘Hell Night’, a bona fide entry in the first wave of the slasher cycle, though not exactly top tier. Despite its shortcomings, it’s grown on me over the years. The set-up is as generic as they come – a fraternity / sorority hazing takes place overnight in an abandoned mansion with a backstory – textbook stuff. What sets ‘Hell Night’ apart is that it merges slasher tropes with the Hammer look. The pretext of the college kids’ fancy-dress night is an excuse for the filmmakers to doll everyone up in gothic garb in a set flickering with candleflame, and it’s a lovely incongruity that gives ‘Hell Night’ a leg up when all the usual shenanigans start to unfold. It’s also a good decision on the part of the makers, because ‘Hell Night’ doesn’t deliver all that much slasher action at all, really – there are four main protagonists plus a couple of sub-plot facilitating pranksters in the background, making for a fairly meagre body count that isn’t dispatched with much graphic chutzpah. If that leaves ‘Hell Night’ with only the ‘goth atmosphere’ card to fall back on, it’s a card well played. The feel is strongly Autumnal, and even though the season isn’t referenced specifically you get all these evocative images of fallen leaves and windswept avenues. Then of course there’s the house itself, a maze of tunnels and dim corridors festooned with cobwebs, where Linda Blair wanders like a forlorn countess with a candelabra. Admittedly, a problem connected with the lack of emphasis on kills is the unwieldy runtime; you can only stare at nice looking shadows and sinister staircases so long before you start to twitch. But as much as you could make a case for ‘Hell Night’ being a bit of a yawn, there’s too much I like about it for me to feel that way. Even when it hits slight doldrums there are quirks that come to the rescue, such as the cops who don’t give a shit that a desperate guy’s just reported a murder, and little bits where we’re left wondering whether we’ve seen a ghost or another one of those unfunny student pranks. There’s also a really weird set-up where it’s hammered home that part of Linda Blair’s backstory is that she used to be a mechanic, just so that near the end she can fix the archetypal ‘car that doesn’t start’ and escape – a clever nod that falls flat because the rest of the movie isn’t particularly meta. In the end though, there’s something heartwarming about ‘Hell Night’s combination of lame slashing, vague Scooby Doo-ism and misty October vibes.

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break. 2009.

Set just after the Cabin In The Woods scenario outbreak, this time the outbreak of the flesh eating virus is kicked up a notch at a school with senior prom party. After the movie begins with a school bus hitting an infected human, setting the loony deputy from the first film into an actual investigation, it thrusts you into an animated opening credit scene. Plenty of gore, black humour and a infected janitor answering a call of nature in a punch bowl and a whacky soundtrack does add in a homage to a bad 80s film.

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Round Up Post
 

I've just come back from a long weekend in Edinburgh visiting friends, but that didn't stop me from continuing my spooktastic horror marathon :lol:

Wed 18th Oct
Trauma (1993)

Yes, I like this one, but I will be first to admit it's not actually very good. However, while you have Asia Argento struggling to speak English in one scene you have Piper Laurie chewing the scenery in the next. "You did it, you did it, you did it"

Thu 19th Oct
Children of the Damned (1964)

This time the children go multicultural! And a dog! “He didn’t get his brain from mother.”

Fri 20th Oct
Pearl (2022)

Wow, I didn't expect to like this one as much as I did. I liked X when it came out, but didn't love it, but Pearl is much better in every way. Mia Goth stealing the show. It's a slow build toward a spectacular and bloody ending. Brilliant.

Sat 21st Oct
House on Haunted Hill (1959)

I introduced my friend to classic Vincent Price and he loved it. Camp and Spooky and glamorous. "If I were gonna haunt somebody, this would certainly be the house I'd do it in."

Sun 22nd Oct
Talk to Me (2022)

A bunch of bogans connect with the dead via an embalmed hand. Let me tell you now, this one was BRUTAL and I didn't expect it. All the way through I was thinking this is what the recent Evil Dead Rise should have been like. Really good, and recommended. "I woke up and Mia was, I don't know, sucking my feet."

Mon 23rd Oct
Renfield (2023)

I was a bit dubious about Nic Cage as The Count, but do you know what, he's actually really good and clearly enjoying himself. In this movie, Renfield realises that after many decades of looking after Dracula's every whim and desire that perhaps his relationship is a bit unhealthy and he looks for a way to leave. Only things go terribly wrong when he accidentally gets involved with a crime family and the police officer trying to take them down. Some hilarious set pieces, I really enjoyed it. "I wish to spend a season in Hell, where all the amusing people are. Hail Satan!"

October 23rd
 

Halloween: H20 (1998)

A good cast, some nice in joke easter eggs - the scene between Laurie and Norma is just gorgeous - and some well done set pieces make Halloween: H20 one of the classier offerings in the series.

A sequel to Halloween II, this feels like the real deal, even if it owes a little too much to writer Kevin Williamson's Scream, but with Michael Myers in good form it's easy to ignore those details and just enjoy H20 for what it is - a fine entry in the Halloween series and also quite probably the most fun entry. An easy film to simply sit back and enjoy.

I first saw this at the cinema and it was such a joy to see horror icons on the big screen. Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, not to mention Janet Leigh, and hearing John Carpenter's iconic theme. It still thrills me just thinking about it.

Watching that finale where Strode lops off Myers head with an axe always makes me think is that really the best thing they could come up with to bring Michael back for Halloween Resurrection? He put his mask on a paramedic...what about his blue boiler suit? And the fact the eyes are exactly the same as we've been watching for the past 75 minutes.

October 23rd (2+3)
 

A double bill of wonderful black and white horror films from the thirties and forties that run just over an hour each.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton's masterpiece. A poetic mix of Jane Eyre and Caribbean voodoo, beautifully photographed - the use of light and shadow has never been bettered with innovative camera work that belies the films low budget with an atmospheric soundtrack to match.

I Walked with a Zombie is truly a special film for me.

The Black Cat (1934)

Horror doesn't get much better than The Black Cat. This landmark achievement was the first to double bill Karloff and Lugosi and it's debatable whether either have ever bettered themselves. Lugosi is so sympathetic, never resorting to the hammy style that would blight his later work. Boris Karloff on the other hand has never portrayed evil so magnificently. His performance as the satanist Poelzig is perhaps more Crowley than Poe but it's a performance of pure menace.

From an aesthetic point of view the film is a triumph. From the superb direction of Edgar G Ulmer, to the stunning classical score to the extraordinary Art Deco set design and all topped off by some of the most notorious censor baiting potency of the 30's - torture, drugs, necrophilia, and the final, almost poetic, skinning sequence.

The Black Cat is an eerie, nightmarish masterpiece and my favourite of the classic Universal horrors.

Eureka's Blu-ray looks lovely. Now if only Warners would release I Walked with a Zombie on Blu over here.

Blood (1973, Andy Milligan)

Strap in.
Hammer time! :rolleyes::lol:
A medical sort returns home after a time away. Finding that things haven't been properly managed, he makes the best of it as other matters press for his attention. Henry James or what? ;):laugh:
AM does it again, throwing the kitchen sink in as the cherry on top, and if it tweren't for the intermittent print and sound damage, this one would have more fans ... with the niche that is the Andyverse harumph.
As you were.

The eagle eyed among you may notice my last two reviews are a mere three minutes apart. I'm not that quick. I'd composed the black and white ones first then decided i should post my viewing as i actually watched them so copied it to a word document and came up with a few lines on H20 first.

Nah, just kidding. I'm a speed typist who can compose reviews 'just like that' as Tommy Cooper would say.

I wish. :lol:

30 Days of Unseen Horror

Day 24

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After a championship game a small collage is holding an all night scavenger hunt where the collage radio station will be dropping hints randomly of where to go next. During the hunt a group of friends are stalked through the night by a killers dressed in the school mascots costume sporting a brand new pair of homemade claws. The only prize at the end of this scavenger hunt is staying alive.

I was keeping this since I bought it for this month but I had low expectations after not hearing much good things about it but I was pleasantly surprised. The characters are so loud and annoying at times but it's an innocent annoying not jocks and sluts the usual just slasher characters it's just people having a good time but loudly :lol:. I have to say there is a lot of homoeroticism in this film not sure if that was intentional but the male friends were a little too close even with the girlfriends standing there in front of them but then again everyone is trying to crack into everyone in this film so I'm not surprised :lol:

I actually really enjoyed Girls Nite Out it's just a fun film but unfortunately alot of the kills are in the dark so it can be hard to see but the make up is great and there is a ton of blood to satisfy the gore crowd. I really liked that for an 80s slasher it didn't go down the route of the usual characters nerd slut jock and bad boy just normal collage folk drinking and f**king.

I'll be coming back to this one for sure just not for the homoeroticism :lol:

Didn't you ask yourself at all "Why is this called Girls Nite Out?" There's barely any girls in it and they certainly don't go on a night out.

It's a fairly misleading title alright no bleeding ankles and women walking around in their bare feet holding their high heels In their hands drowning their sorrows in a kebab at 3am and crying that they look fat and their new dress is covered in lettuce and chilli sauce.

Still a good film tho :lol:

Dolls

A group of people go to this isolated house in the middle of nowhere during a rainstorm but the elderly occupiers have a secret regarding the Dolls in their collection.

Released in 1986, before I watched the 101 Films Blu-Ray years ago, I feared that it wouldn't hold up in todays standards but I was wrong and remains at least a yearly watch. It's creepy, the FX is pretty decent and those Dolls certainly look the part.

Probably one of the more underrated Horror Movies out there.

From Beyond

Jeffrey Combs is an Assistant to a Mad Scientist who his locked in a Mental Hospital after he's accused of murdering him. A Psychologist played by Barbara Crampton wants to re-create the experiment that they were working on but it doesn't go the way, she'd hoped.

Again a Film that still holds up, very good FX and looks good on Blu-Ray. Ken Foree co-stars and Crampton looks hot.

THE CALL – I sometimes wonder whether the eighties are so popular as a genre throwback option just because you can do a movie without mobile phones in it. A friend once observed that mobiles ruin almost everything in horror, and it’s sort of true – since the late nineties, when mobiles turned everyone into their own personal distress beacon, there has to be a reason why this or that person trapped in this cellar or that attic wouldn’t just pick up and alert the authorities. ‘The Call’, not to be confused with the very good Korean film of the same name and year of release, not only relies on the absence of mobiles, but the presence of landlines. There’ve been a few ‘landline’ horror movies recently, including the aforementioned other ‘The Call’, and they make for a strange little subgenre that for all I know might be a natural follow-on from the never-ending eighties fixation, but anyway. ‘The Call’ is set in that solidly eighties year 1987 and tells of a quartet of small-town teens who rile a local witch to the point of suicide, then reap the resulting whirlwind when they enter into a pact to ring her spirit from a spooky phone (her coffin has been installed with a landline. I’m not kidding). It’s an awkward movie. It reminds me of a film I reviewed near the start of this Halloween countdown, ‘The Asylum’, in that it looks well-made but is poorly structured. There’s something about the rhythm that’s off, the unfolding isn’t smooth enough and feels a bit jarring, too long spent here, too little there, notes fall flat and sometimes grate. Narratively, there are some poorly thought-through moves, with many instances of major plot points set up as mysteries that are either left open or wrapped up in scenes that are so throwaway as to verge on ludicrous. Despite all the slack, several things about it really work. Most of the film takes place in a strangely lensed, weirdly lit phantasmagorical dream world (which I think later turns out to be hell, wasn’t quite sure) where the four teens are forced to confront the darkness that lurks in their respective pasts, and some of that stuff’s surprisingly meanspirited for a film that initially looked no less lightweight than the early noughties fluff it seems to want to emulate. This mixture of nastiness and over the top eye candy warmed me to ‘The Call’, which also boasts a couple of nice turns from genre regulars Tobin Bell and Lin Shaye, the latter in particular giving a performance that at times seems out of keeping with the surrounding material in its intensity – she definitely wasn’t phoning that one in. Overall, ‘The Call’ is not what I’d call a good film, but it offers enough off-key schlock and moments of strange connection to pique my interest at least, and I guess I can say that its failures frustrate rather than bore.

I have seen the first one and have it on DVD. I was surprised at the brutality of the attack sequences with some really gruesome gore effects.

I haven't seen All Hallows Eve, so will keep it in mind to buy a copy in time for next year's Halloween viewing.

You ain't seen nothing yet. :lol:

October 24th
 

Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

A major Hollywood studio in Paramount, a major Hollywood star in Glenn Ford and a name Hollywood director in J Lee Thompson and the result is this well made but average at best slasher film.

The plot revolves around teens at a high school who are murdered one by one, albeit in several clever and bloody ways, and it seems obvious who the killer is... or does it?

An absurdly bewildering plot revelation of a finale turns the whole thing on it's head in the craziest Giallo-esq way which doesn't really satisfy following a near two hour slog to get to it.

I also watched The Devil's Rejects (2005). A film i've seen and reviewed on here many times so won't do so again other than to say it's a piece of celluloid that's populated by hateful characters who do despicable things yet somehow by the final third you really root for them and care. At least i do anyway.