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.