October Horror Movie Marathon

[Demoncrat]

The Untold Story 2

Yah a sequel to one of the sickest flicks out there, woooooooooooh
A couple find things changing when the wife's demure mainland cousin comes-a visiting ...

Wong is in this one, playing a cop this time.
It's just as unpleasant as the first one, yes. Lots of sweating under duress etc.



Debbie Does Demons

From the man whom brought us Shark Exorcist.
Whilst not quite as bad as that, this is pretty terrible.
A bunch of idiots summon a witch. She kills them all. At least this felt more "like" a movie, though this is hard to quantify
To make up for this, I'm going to do something I really shouldn't ....

[Nordicdusk]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

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.

It's really hard not to root for them they are such great characters. For me I love to root for the bad guy I think it's more to do with living by your own rules and not giving a f**k what anyone says or thinks about you rather than the acts they actually carry out it a sense of freedom I guess.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

You ain't seen nothing yet.

Excellent!

[Nordicdusk]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Excellent!

I second what Dem said the second film ramps everything up to a thousand it's pretty crazy and pretty messed up it's fantastic.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Nordicdusk

I second what Dem said the second film ramps everything up to a thousand it's pretty crazy and pretty messed up it's fantastic.

That's good to know – at least I'm not going to be surprised by any gratuitously nasty and bloody violence!

[Demoncrat]

The Exorcist: Believer


Was Lin Shaye busy?
Well, I watched it.
David Gordon Green is the ENEMY

Just at the point that I was willing to let it be its own thing, they shit the bed.
Repossessed was bettererer.

[MrBarlow]

Trauma. 1993.

Not the best Dario film but changed his usual setting from Rome to America, Asia takes the lead as the anorexic girl avoiding a serial killer and thinks she is on the hit list. Tom Savini adds in his technical work for the special effects while the late Piper Laurie is the mother and victim of the killer...or so we are lead to believe. But as usual there is always as snappy Dario twist ending. Give credit though to the maestro he did try something new on different ground and could have had plenty other ideas to try in America, sometimes ideas work and sometimes they don't.

p14819_p_v8_aa.jpg

[Mojo]

WINGS OF DEATH ( 1982 )
A young, dying heroin addict books in to a grotty hotel inhabited by grotesque characters in this stand out entry in the latest Short Sharp Shocks collection.
Given its grim premise, it is very colourful, inventive and compelling viewing.
I love the eclectic mix of films in these collections ( although I can’t understand why a film like MAZE was included here ).
Let’s have more proper shockers like this in Volume 4 please!

NIGHT OF THE DEVILS ( 1972 )
A man recalls his horrifying experiences after crashing his car in the woods near a rundown dwelling housing a grisly secret, in this excellent Eurohorror.
It’s a bit more of a slow burner than expected, but it is very creepy and atmospheric. It’s also interspersed with various shock sequences, courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi’s gleefully gruesome effects.
Great first Raro release from Radiance Films.

[Frankie Teardrop]

THE BOOGEYMAN – Directed by Rob Savage and based on a short story by Stephen King, ‘The Boogeyman’ is a slick rendition of currently hip supernatural horror tropes that feels a million miles away from its shonky, but in my opinion amazing, early eighties Ulli Lommel namesake (with which it shares no other connection whatsoever). Not that it has much to do with the SK source material either, used here as little more than a narrative springboard. Here goes; life in the Harper household has hit something of a low ever since Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer lost their mum, and dad Will his wife. To make matters worse, therapist Will takes in a client one day who relates a disturbing tale of how his kids were killed one by one by an entity he calls The Boogeyman – before storming off into the recesses of the house to hang himself. The film goes on to concentrate on the Harper children, particularly Sadie, and how they deal with the newfound monster in their closet. ‘The Boogeyman’ doesn’t break any new ground and shares a very tried and tested approach to supernatural horror with many other recent US genre films. They all seem to be coming from the same place – take a dash of the ‘classics’ like ‘Poltergeist’, feed in a bit of the American mainstream’s absorption of the J-horror influence, take what you can from the ‘Insidious’ era boom, then wrap it up with nice photography and some spiel about trauma. ‘The Babadook’, ‘Hereditary’ and ‘The Boogeyman’ are very different films, but they all seem part of the same landscape. It’s not necessarily stale, but when anything becomes a template you either have to perfect it or mess with it. ‘The Boogeyman’ is going for ‘dressage’. It’s obvious that Savage is working a terrain he has a real feel for. He plays the film’s murky vibes for all they’re worth, and if the lighting, the photography and the palette each ring a little familiar, together they carry an accent and tone as relentlessly morbid as the weird mould that smothers the Harpers’ walls. It’s not simply technical orchestration though, Savage definitely knows how to spin a scene – there’s a masterful bit early on when, with a tiny narrative switch, a child’s therapy session transforms into a nightmare of pulsating red neon, and almost throwaway little moments that spice it up and are just so well done, like when an arm dangles over a toilet cubicle wall and we instantly feel a pending jump scare coming on – it never arrives, but then we realise how expertly we’ve been played. What drags it back a little are the typically hackneyed moves that are almost built into the format, and I wasn’t convinced by this idea of the boogeyman as a symbol of unprocessed grief, if that’s what the film was going for at all (if you’re going to deal with those kinds of themes then it helps to be less vague if there’s a monster included). Also, I have to admit that in idle moments I caught myself reminiscing about the 1980 ‘The Boogeyman’, and what a silly, brilliant f*cked up film THAT one is, one of my all-time faves and, come to think of it, proof you can do a cliché ridden exercise in the supernatural and STILL have it derail into something weird enough to endlessly fascinate. But none of that gets in the way of the fact that ‘The Boogeyman’ (2023) is a more than solid addition to the genre tendency that marries heavy feeling with jump scares, slick visuals and spooks.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Halloween II (2009)

Rob Zombie's Halloween II is a sadistic and brutal film as well as being almost as dark and degrading as The Devil's Rejects (2005) . Helped by the fact Tyler Mane as Michael Myers is a genuinely frightening character, huge in build, incredibly powerful and shit scaring to look at, so much so that he makes other filmic Myers look like someone playing dress up in a cheap Captain Kirk mask. Busta Rhymes would not call him "Mikey" and practice karate on him, he'd run a f*cking mile like we all would.

The film goes in depth as to how the events of two years previous affected the survivors. From Malcolm McDowell's Loomis attempting to make money from his experiences trying to flog his book based on the first film's story to Laurie attempting to get her life back together and then her complex psychological connection to Michael.

Whilst Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) - I love what Zombie has done with the character - rather than being seemingly as unkillable as Myers as Jamie Lee Curtis version seemed to become. Taylor-Compton does what the majority of us would do were Michael to start brandishing that bloody great kitchen knife, and hide under a desk until he'd gone.

Funniest bit - Loomis is on a tv chat show promoting his book and fellow guest Weird Al Yankovic chips in asking "I'm a little confused. Are we talking about the "Austin Powers" Mike Myers or is this someone else?

The Black Pit of Dr. M (1959)

I quickly realised i wasn't in the mood for this Mexican black and white Gothic potboiler where all the guys wore identical suits, sported identical taches and even had identical white quiff's in their hair, so turned it off after about half an hour of nothingness.