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Post by Captain Spencer on Jun 24, 2023 12:43:26 GMT
Scarecrow County (2019)Seemingly accidental deaths in a small community are actually murders committed by a scarecrow which may or may not be possessed by the spirit of a gay teen who committed suicide years ago. Yet another case of the plot description and poster art being much better than the movie itself. Some good ideas are not fully realized in the short running time of 75 minutes. When the script should have focused more on plot development, it gets bogged down in too much boring chit chat. And director John Oak Dalton didn't really seem interested in presenting all-out horror; much of the gruesome mayhem occurs offscreen. It's all so generic and tame. 2/10
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Post by theravenking on Jun 27, 2023 12:48:41 GMT
Death Walks On High Heels (1971; Luciano Ercoli) - Fun, stylish, self-ironical giallo with plenty of twists and a plot which for the most part makes a surprising amount of sense. It's not very gory, there's only one explicit murder, so it falls more into the mystery/whodunnit category. There's one curious thing regarding the audio track: While one online reviewer claims, that you should absolutely watch this with the English dubbing, since there are two British detectives in the second half, whose banter is much more convincing in English. Giallo expert Tim Lucas gives the exact opposite advice in his audio commentary, claiming that the English audio track is terrible. (I wouldn't know, cause I watched the movie with the Italian audio like I usually do, so I can pretend, that I'm doing something useful, brushing up on my Italian.) Great score by Stelvio Cipriani with vocals by Nora Orlandi who has the kind of voice I could listen to all day. 7.5/10
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Post by Captain Spencer on Jul 2, 2023 22:30:38 GMT
Cathy's Curse (1977)A young girl becomes possessed by spirit of her aunt, causing death and all sorts of mayhem. This Canadian-French co-production is not scary or chilling in the least. It's completely laughable. Confusing script, cheesy effects, and terrible acting. A very poor man's Exorcist. 2/10
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Post by Teleadm on Jul 5, 2023 5:55:40 GMT
Suspiria 1977 directed by Dario Argento
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Post by theravenking on Jul 5, 2023 11:44:38 GMT
American Nightmare (2002; Jon Keeyes)If there's one thing I learned in recent years, it's that one should avoid obscure slasher flicks from the early 2000s. Ripper (2001); The Pool (2001); Horror 101 (2001) were all lousy. American Nightmare, not to be confused with the 1983 movie of the same name, is an incredibly lame horror thriller, cheaply made, featuring mostly weak performances and very few scares.
The plot summary might sound promising, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Visually it's unappealing, with the picture being all blurry and out-of-focus, the acting is acceptable at best, with the exception of cult actress Debbie Rochon as the female maniac who clearly gives it some effort, but is betrayed by the unimaginative direction and the utter triviality of the entire thing. The low budget didn't even seem to stretch to buying some fake blood, since you get to see next to nothing in the murder scenes. If it weren't for some nudity, this could've easily been PG-13. I like the idea of a radio host teasing people to reveal their deepest fears. It might've made for an interesting stage production or in better hands even a decent contained thriller. But in this case the good concept ends up being entirely wasted. Director Jon Keeyes would go on to co-produce the home invasion thriller Becky with Kevin James and direct what seems to be the lowest-rated Antonio Banderas film ever, the action movie Code Name Banshee. After watching Nightmare I'm not sure why bankable stars would be willing to work with this hack, but I guess we all make mistakes. 2.5/10
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Post by Teleadm on Jul 6, 2023 5:23:26 GMT
Don't Look Now 1973 directed by Nicolas Roeg. Hadn't seen this since the early 1980's on a rather lousy VHS and back then I thought it was slow and boring. Seeing it again, it is rather slow, but this time I was prepared and liked it much better. Beware of red raincoats!
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Post by yggdrasil on Jul 9, 2023 11:37:15 GMT
The Blackening.
One word review. Shite.
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Post by theravenking on Jul 9, 2023 14:37:49 GMT
The Ritual (2017; David Bruckner) This was the last film I watched for the 2022 horror challenge and since I was in a bit of a hurry back then, I felt I didn't give it the proper attention it would've deserved. Sadly having watched it again, I realise, the flaw was most likely not with me but the movie, since its numerous problems became even more pronounced this time around. The Ritual follows a group of British thirtysomethings on a hiking-trip in Norway. However the movie actually begins in England where one of them played by Rafe Spall is shown committing an act of cowardice leading to the death of one of his friends something that will be haunting him throughout the movie. Making your hero a coward who has to overcome his fatal flaw is as good a plot device as any other. Sadly The Ritual has barely anything else of substance to tell its audience. Spall's character is the only one given something of a distinctive personality while his mates are complete cardboad cut-outs. While other movies at least give you certain simple archetypes to help you telling the people apart, like the joker, the intellectual, the jock, there's zero information here provided about any of them. Things are not helped by the characters constantly bickering, behaving more like a bunch of obnoxious first graders than grown-up men. Fancy an example: "- We should've gone to Vegas. - Yeah, you would've found something in Vegas to fall over too. - Yeah, a massive pile of tits."
Let's just say, that dialogue is not really the area The Ritual excels in. It's the kind of film where you can't wait for the characters to shut up and start screaming. Unlike Aussie horror Long Weekend where nature itself turns out to be the foe, The Ritual gives us something corporeal to be scared of, but it's sadly also here where the movie drops the ball big time. There's a fantastic shot towards the end of something so otherworldy and bizarre, that it's doubtful you would've seen anything like this before. Like a hellish image glimpsed in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, this nightmarish ghoul is a truly original creation, that might've even resulted in one of horror cinema's classic villains, had The Ritual known how to use this asset more cleverly. Instead it's nothing but a short tease of horrors that never come. The movie ends abruptly without any proper explanation. Although I could find no information about this, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of scenes had ended up on the cutting room floor. There seem to be significant chunks of the narrative missing suggesting that the movie was ruined by bad editing. Either that or the filmmakers choose to keep everything deliberately ambiguous. There's even the possible interpretation of the whole thing taking place in the protagonist's head with Spall's character hallucinating the events having been driven mad by guilt which might explain the narrative's disjointed, illogical nature, but plenty of other films have done this stuff a lot more effectively. The Christian Bale thriller The Machinist for example is a far more satisfying film about the very same subject. As it is The Ritual is one of those infuriating films that carelessly squander their own potential ending up as a bit of a mess in the process. 5/10
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sog
Elliot Carver
Posts: 467
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Post by sog on Jul 10, 2023 15:29:15 GMT
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (Tom McLoughlin, 1986) Continuing working my way through the Friday the 13th series we come to the 6th film... and shockingly I think this one is my favorite thus far. It finds the right balance of horror, comedy, gruesome deaths and self-awareness. The fully supernatural un-dead Jason feels right to the series and the scene in which he encounters two camp counselors lost and driving through the woods is arguably the best scene in the series (“I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly.”) 7/10
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Post by Captain Spencer on Jul 11, 2023 2:44:24 GMT
The Curse (1987)A meteorite lands in a farmer's field and ends up contaminating the water system. Even in 1987 the whole meterorite invasion motif was an old standard and this movie doesn't offer any improvements. Actor David Keith (An Officer And A Gentleman) makes his directorial debut here, and his direction is very pedestrian; he doesn't seem to know what makes for good horror. A rather odd directing choice for a first movie. Irritating characters that will make you cringe include Davidson the realtor and the farmer's half-wit son Cyrus. It was a pleasure watching the late veteran actor Claude Akins, as he portrays a sort of male version of Carrie White's mother. I'd say he's the only bright spot in the entire movie. Overall, this sci-fi-horror outing is tiresome, dull, and with a script that is full of loose ends. 4/10
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Post by cryptoflovecraft on Jul 11, 2023 15:29:30 GMT
Fright (1971) - Starring Susan George, Honor Blackman, Ian Bannen and Dennis Waterman. Tense little thriller about a babysitter (George) who's forced to fight off an escaped mental patient (Bannen) in a gloomy Gothic mansion in the English countryside. A forerunner to babysitter horror films like When A Stranger Calls. I always thought Susan George was a crappy actress but she's actually really good in this film. My rating: 6/10
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Post by Captain Spencer on Jul 12, 2023 2:55:13 GMT
Curse II: The Bite (1988)A young couple travelling through New Mexico encounter radioactive snakes that came from a nuclear testing ground. The boyfriend ends up getting bitten by one of them and his arm mutates into a snake monster. As ridiculous as it sounds. There is, however, some fun to be had with some of the cool practical effects, plus the lovely Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather) is nice eye candy and isn't too bad of a singer either. But that's really about all there is to recommend for this. The story is inane and falls short on pertinent details that should have been expanded on. It just lumbers on and on up to a disappointing finale. Totally unrelated to The Curse (1987), and since that movie was a flop I don't know they would tack on the curse name to this one. But apparently the idea proved somewhat marketable, because there were two more unrelated Curse movies after The Bite. 4.5/10
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Post by theravenking on Jul 13, 2023 14:33:51 GMT
Two Males For Alexa (1971; Juan Logar) When a young woman enters an extramarital affair, her older husband - the father of her university friend - exacts revenge by committing suicide and trapping her and her lover in his mansion with no means of escape. Two Males For Alexa might give the impression of being a giallo, but it's actually a slow melodrama with German star Curd Jürgens having to shoulder the majority of the acting as the vengeful husband while Juan Luis Galiardo and Rosalba Neri seem to have been cast for their looks, mostly appearing without clothes for a large part of the movie. There is very little tension as the actual trapping of the couple inside the house only happens at the very end. The director probably had more of a tragic romance in mind. I picked this up at a local flea market for a few bucks without expecting anything special, but I wasn't prepared to be bored either, which sadly turned out to be the case with the movie being largely uneventful and dull. At least it's available in great visual quality and the German blu-ray has an interesting audio commentary which provides some worthwile trivia such as the fact, that the various language versions all differ from each other, the Spanish has no nudity, while the French has a modified title sequence and the order of some scenes was changed compared to the German edit. There seems to have been no English version. 4.5/10
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Post by Captain Spencer on Jul 14, 2023 3:04:41 GMT
The Boogeyman (1980)After a man is stabbed to death by the young son of his lover, his spirit gets trapped in the mirror that captured the image of the murder. When the mirror gets smashed many years later, the spirit is released and seeks revenge. A supernatural slasher that borrows elements from The Exorcist, Halloween, and The The Amityville Horror. Might have been better if it didn't fall too much in the conventionality of the slasher genre and concentrated more on the supernatural aspect. Some gaps in the story should have been filled in, too. Still, this is a stylish and creepy horror movie that's worth discovering. Director Ulli Lommel sure loves doing those long camera pans. Currently streaming on Shudder. 7/10
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Post by Captain Spencer on Jul 19, 2023 2:16:10 GMT
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)Young folks on a road trip in rural Texas encounter a crazed family of cannibals. One of the most iconic and influential horror movies of all time. In the hands of another director this might have ended up being just another cheesy low budget 70s horror movie, but thanks to Tobe Hooper it was made incredibly intense, disturbing, and terrifying. Hooper really pushed it to the limits (and beyond!) to get what he needed from all the actors. And that dinner table scene was sheer insanity. The seemingly realistic violence made one reviewer remark that this is the closest thing to a snuff movie you'll ever see, and I believe that to be an accurate statement. After seeing this again, I think I have to declare Marilyn Burns the Queen of the Scream Queens. Nobody can scream quite like her. 8/10
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