October Horror Movie Marathon

[MrBarlow]

Spookies. 1986.

For me this is a classic, how a group of people get together somehow and be kicked out of a party find themselves in the middle of nowhere to a mansion for a party I got no idea and then all hell breaks loose. I just go with the flow but my viewing partner seems to think this is dumber than Witchery and Troll 2. Fartimg zombies, a woman turning into a spider, little goblins...what is there to hate.

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Up next Nightmare City.

[SymbioticFunction]

Originally Posted by Justin101

Sat 28th Oct
Psycho III (1986)

I anticipated this one to be a bit crappy, but it's very entertaining indeed, "watch the guitar!". It's way more lurid and sleazy than Psycho II and has a proper mid 80's horror film vibe. I'll be watching this one again. Poor Norman.

I only saw Psycho III for the first time around five years ago. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to it. After watching it on youtube, I picked up a blu-ray copy because I had enjoyed it so much.

Booked week off work for Halloween. Today my wife and I will be watching Neil Marshall's The Descent which we haven't seen for a decade! Recall it being a masterpiece. Later in week, will watch Cobweb, Haunting In Venice and Tobe Hooper's Funhouse (picked up a bd for a tenner in Arrow's current sale).

[Nordicdusk]

Originally Posted by MrBarlow

To be honest there has been times where I nearly dozed off but kept going.

That's the spirit suffering for the love of it. Your watching some great films .

[MrBarlow]

Originally Posted by Nordicdusk

That's the spirit suffering for the love of it. Your watching some great films .

Thank you very much, I'm just randomly picking films got Dead Silence on my list for tonight when it gets dark.

[MrBarlow]

Nightmare City. 1980.

A plane exposed to radiation lands at a airport and turns its passengers into crazed zombies. Umberto Lenzi gave us a cannibal film and them kicked it up a notch with a fast crazed zombie flick that is somewhat entertaining. A top scientist is supposed to be landing with vital research info and everyone has turned and infecting everyone. The plot does seem to be a bit daft and shouldn't work but it actually does. Plenty of blood and gore, dialogue that is delivered in the cheesiest way and some decent acting.

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Up next Beyond The Darkness.

[MrBarlow]

Beyond The Darkness. 1979.

Nothing new from Joe D'Amato, strange setting, a young taxidermist with a very close relationship with his housekeeper, a near to almost necrophilia tone, plenty of blood and gore and something to question the mind. Joe D'Amato never was world's most brilliant director. That's okay, since he never claimed to be and he always clearly mentioned his influences with other film directors but this one I can watch over plenty of times than his other work. The acting is good, the plot is simple and basic and has a great soundtrack by Goblin.

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Up next Nightmare Beach but need to nip out for shopping so review will pop up at some point.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

I'd normally write a review of this classic werewolf film but i'm way too busy reading "The naked truth about naughty Nina" in the News of the World for all that.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Thought i'd change my avatar for tonight to the scary pumpkin i carved on Sunday.

[Nordicdusk]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Thought i'd change my avatar for tonight to the scary pumpkin i carved on Sunday.

Looks great I'm only home from work and my girlfriend had tore down all the decorations in pure sadness she got a half day from work to give out sweets to the kids and only one child came to the house she is devastated I feel so bad for her.

[Frankie Teardrop]

The final bloody leg;

TALK TO ME – Forget drugs, the latest party craze is seances that end in possession. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not young anymore. ‘Talk To Me’ is another genre movie that makes central the entanglement of supernatural horror with the emotional pain of its characters, setting the stage for a reckoning with grief and trauma. It’s an intuitively attractive angle, but I think a lot of the films that try to tackle it really stumble because pulling it off relies on getting the drama right. ‘Talk To Me’ understands this core problem and spends a lot of time establishing the reasons why we might care. It works; Sophie Wild gives an excellent performance as haunted Mia, and there is something fraught and uncertain about the people and relationships with which she surrounds herself that convinces you of the fragility of her world. This emotional precarity is backed up by horror that is brutal when it needs to be – directors Danny and Michael Philippou push all the buttons. I thought it was excellent.

NIGHT OF THE DEVILS – This seventies Euro horror offering is based on the same Tolstoy short story that begat Mario Bava’s ‘The Wurdulak’, part of his ‘Black Sabbath’ anthology. In it, a travelling salesman falls foul of a cursed family in the depths of a forest – we witness his tortured recollections as he lies in a sanitorium. Like a woodland predator, ‘Night Of The Devils’ moves slowly but always feels poised to strike. The film’s reserves of atmosphere and tension transport it to an unexpectedly violent conclusion, which is also very creeped-out, with all those pale, giggling undeads – in its final stages, the film summons a nightmarishness that feels like a natural flowering of the shadows that have been gathering throughout. It’s a movie I’ve only seen twice, once years ago. I wasn’t very impressed with it back then for some reason, but I definitely enjoyed it more this time.

NIGHT OF THE DEMON – James C Wasson’s masterpiece of confusion still baffles like no other. A backwoods trek to uncover the mystery of Bigfoot is the tattered fig leaf that utterly fails to obscure NOTD’s crazed pile-up of non-sequiturs, wonky edits, atrocious compositions, and Zen-like dialogue. You couldn’t even dream some of the scenes here; dick ripping be damned, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and it pales next to the bit where Sasquatch forces two knife-wielding girl guides to stab each other to death by pounding them together like rocks in some Neanderthal’s cave(!) All this ripe badness is countered by the more genuine eeriness coming from the desolate rural locations, whilst the fairly dismal backstory depresses more than it titillates. As if you didn’t know it by now, there simply aren’t many films like ‘Night Of The Demon’.

THE DEMON’S BABY – It’s Wong again, and this time he’s a slightly incompetent priest / sorcerer type who also seems a bit sarky – but I suppose anyone’s entitled to a little bit of belligerence when they’re up against a battalion of snaggle toothed uteruses in the habit of degloving people’s heads. ‘The Demon’s Baby’ does take a little getting into, with a first half dominated by period drama and stuff to do with someone’s vast array of pregnant wives. Anyone snoozing off might wake to find themselves in a different movie when all the skronky special effects hit around the midpoint, after which ‘The Demon’s Baby’ mutates into a wild cavalcade of grotty ‘The Thing’ cast-offs. Although it’s let down by too much talk and goofy HK ‘humour’, how could I not tip my hat to a film that sees fit to include a game of football played with a flying amniotic sac? There’s a strange kind of genius at work in all that.

Right, I'm off to lie down for a while. Happy Halloween, what's left of it.