30 days of unseen horror

Film 21

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60 years ago a ship sank filled with diamonds and the whole unfortunate crew perished trying to save the loot. Word of the sunken treasure has spread far and wide and as a result numerous groups have showed up to dive for the diamonds but after many warnings none of these groups believe the tales that the treasure it guarded by the dead crew who lost their lives along with the diamonds.

I really loved the story it's sort of the same as the fog and i always have a soft spot for anything to do with the sea and ghosts of the sea. The acting is solid and i liked the pacing there was always something interesting happening but during any of the slower parts Grandmother Peters really keeps things held together warning the sailors of the danger and the legend of the treasure certainly my favourite character. There are some great scenes "under water" trying to get into the ship and the zombie attack was great the shots of faces in the deep sea diving suit were a bit stiff and wooden but it's easy overlook that. The zombies themselves have a great look the actors did a good job of looking dead especially those glazed over eyes staring through people not at them. Back on land there are some really effective scenes also which i won't spoil them here.

This was a great film.

7/10

Good, because i'm getting it for Christmas along with three other Katzman films. :woot:

Hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

Thanks. I have high hopes now. The Katzman box set was a total blind buy.

October 23rd
 

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Vincent Price, decadence, death and deceit, luscious visuals, Hazel Court and a deal with the devil, costume balls, virulent plague...

...The best in Roger Corman's Poe cycle. I really need to write a proper review for this.

The new StudioCanal Blu-ray looks exceptionally good.

The Witch (2015)

"Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?"

No plot points or spoilers of any kind of this 17th century set film that takes it's cue from New England folk tales.

I truly cannot rate this film highly enough. Superbly performed with brilliant and authentic use of olde-English language and terrific sound design and an often lingering camera technique all come together to create the most unnerving, bordering on frightening, horror film i can remember seeing.

This was my sixth viewing of The VVitch and it loses none of it's haunting power. Absolutely outstanding. Especially on Blu-ray.

FRANKIE'S BIG SPLASHY HALLOWEENERGASM#10

23/10/21

HIGH LIFE – The ultimate in sci-fi miserabilism, Claire Denis’ ‘High Life’ offers a glimpse into the nightmare future of reproduction after humanity takes to the stars. It follows a space crew made up of ex-cons whose final ‘rehabilitation’, as they all drift towards a black hole, is to serve in some awful experiment involving forced impregnation. A punishingly bleak atmosphere of sexual threat and the isolation of deep space gives way to something touching and bold as Robert Pattinson tries to overcome this squalor by bringing up the child that has resulted from the relocation of his medically purloined sperm… neither cheesily redemptive nor a turn of the screw, this is actually the movie’s most potent section (though maybe it simply wins out by comparison, once you’ve witnessed the grim machinations of ‘the fukc box’.) Visually gorgeous, with an atmosphere that I found utterly haunting, ‘High Life’ is easily the most affecting film I’ve seen all year and is highly recommended.

24/10/21

THE PIT – Sleazy whelp feeds anyone he doesn’t like (which is pretty much everyone) to a pit full of hairy trogs in ‘The Pit’, a film that doesn’t get any less odd as the years roll by. It’s a tonal mess of ‘light-hearted’ granny murdering, growly horror and frank creepiness, all served up in that deadeningly pedestrian seventies TV horror mode (aesthetically I mean, there’s no way this was made for TV). Sometimes it feels like someone started to make a fairly subtle and finely honed psychological portrait of a young deviant, ran out of time, then decided to fill it out with a rush of inexplicable garbage. Or maybe it was intended this way from the outset, someone’s idea of a Dada masterpiece, complete with sinister teddies and opportunistic ghost-placement. Doesn’t matter, it’s still the jewel in the crown of Bad Seed surrealism.

HARDWARE – Though I’ve never really rated Richard Stanley, in my eyes he was at his best with ‘Hardware’, a film that crams every nook and cranny of its non-plot with overblown visual stylisation. The effect is quite intoxicating, not to mention achingly late eighties / nineties, though an obviousness prevents it from attaining the otherworldliness it’s grasping for (unlike, say, a film such as ‘The Hunger’, another case of all style). There’s been a lot of shadowy water under the bridge since this first saw the light of day (another film with a Weinstain pedigree, doubly depressing here), but I have fond memories of ‘zone tripping’ along to it in a friend’s cellar, back in the VHS-compatible mid-nineties.

30 days of unseen horror

Film 22

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Forced to land their small plane on a secluded island to avoid a tropical storm an alcoholic actress her assistant and their pilot seek shelter with a German marine biologist carrying out research. This is not the sort of scientific research to understand marine life instead its a deadly research into flesh eating sea creatures.

We get off to a great start when a couple go for a swim and are quickly melted into the sea after that things are slow for the next 40 minutes with a lot of explaining and and trying to get off the island. Once things start happening there are some great deaths and effects but once again after reach such heights it starts to go back down hill a little again but then again it's hard to keep things going at a faster pace when there are only a small cast. The creature scenes and the kills were good but too much of it felt like a cartoon where the bad guy spends too long explaining what and how he is going to do things and how he is going to get away with it and how he can be stopped only to be surprised when he is stopped :lol:

While it did some things right it did a lot wrong.

5/10

Added to my Amazon basket. I'll order the Blu of this next month. Nice one, Frankie.

Not one to watch in a bad mood. But its aesthetics are great and atmospherically it's excellent. I can imagine some finding it a bit ponderous, but I really rated it.

I've not watched any of the others yet but The Werewolf was really fantastic.

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