Horror

Started by TenseAndSober, April 22, 2003, 05:01:56 PM

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Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

A few nights ago I saw a Hammer Films double-feature at FilmLinc of The Horror of Dracula & Curse of the Werewolf.  Horror of Dracula was the first time Christopher Lee played Dracula at the end of the 50's so I thought it would be interesting to fast forward to near the end of his many times playing the character with this film. In it, Dracula is transported to modern day London after he is resurrected in a black magic ceremony by hippies looking for thrills.  Lee's part is a near cameo because Dracula only appears in a few scenes but the film manages to draw you in with Hammers trademarks: great sets, a good script, above average actors, hot chicks, paint red blood and the teaming of Lee & Peter Cushing.  I had expected the film to be campier and cheaper than the earlier films but despite some concessions to "the kids" the film manages to maintain its integrity.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

modage





Inside (2007)

Ewwwww.  :yabbse-undecided:  It's really difficult for a horror film to actually disturb me, but this film did.  The film opens with a pregnant woman and her husband in the aftermath of a car accident.  The husband is killed and the woman and her baby survive.  Cut to 4 months later, it's Christmas Eve and the woman is due to deliver her baby any day when a crazed woman shows up at her home intent on taking her unborn baby.  From there the film is relentlessly brutal.  In American horror there is always the safety net of knowing they wont really go too far but there are no such guarantees here and the film isn't concerned with heroes, happy endings or even scares.  The film feels dangerous, it's bleak, and the violence doesn't register with the same "I know this isn't real" of a Friday The 13th.  You will feel dirty watching this.  This is not a recommendation.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Stefen

haha, well, it made me want to watch it.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

matt35mm

It made me want to watch Stefan watching it.

MacGuffin

Apologies for not continuing my 31 Days of Horror. Was gearing up and shooting my next short film. So glad mod has continued where I left off, though.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

I was wondering if mod wasn't planning on doing it this year, but five reviews in two days says otherwise.

And, as always, great rundowns of each.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

modage

Thanks!  I was really busy last year and watched a few for Best Horror but never found time to review them.  I've been really busy this year too but my dad is visiting this weekend for the sole purpose of watching as many horror films as we can in 3 days. We're about to watch our 14th and final, Trick R' Treat.





Phantasm II (1988)

Such a weird movie.  Not as good as the original (when is it ever?) this expands the scope of the original but doesn't attempt to flesh out the backstory for The Tall Man or other world.  It's sort of like Star Wars in a way where you just have to go with it, this crazy universe exists and you can't really question it. 
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ



I had never seen this growing up, part because my parents were morally opposed to me seeing any movies with "Hell" in the title, but also because it didn't necessarily appeal to me.  I had always known about it, but had no real inclination to go out of my way to see it.  I watched it last night, and Jesus Christ was I missing out. 

The special effects are extraordinary, the story isn't necessarily new, but the take on it is outstanding.  I'm sure some of you have seen this already, but has anyone seen any of the sequels and if so, are they anywhere near as good?  I ask because the only reason I elected to watch Hellraiser was that I saw Hellraiser: Hellworld on TV, mostly out of train wreck syndrome.  Suffice to say, it was godawful but in looking it up I noticed there are a ton of sequels (sort of not surprisingly that most were fan scripts and/or unrelated to Hellraiser, but were adapted to the Hellraiser mythos so that they'd have a fanbase).  This made me want to at least know what the diehard fans are so rabid about.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

polkablues

I like Hellraiser 2 a lot, but it's all diminishing returns after that.
My house, my rules, my coffee

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Trick 'R Treat (2009)

The problem with most anthologies is that they are always so uneven, certain stories are great and some aren't.  Trick 'R Treat manages to avoid this by weaving all the stories together with a Pulp Fiction-style chronology that jumps backwards and forwards in time during the course of one Halloween night.  The film is actually great fun, a smart fun horror film actually set at Halloween (which is rarer than you would think).  I can see why a film like this didn't get a theatrical release, nobody knew how to market it.  At times it feels more like a great TV special than what most audiences have come to expect out of a horror film, but it's worth seeking out and one of my favorite discoveries this year.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Gamblour.



This movie fucking ruled. I haven't seen much of Polanski's work (I even remember not liking Chinatown, but I should probably revisit it), but I was amazed at how tight and compelling this film was. For being over two hours, I never felt like it was slow. It constantly propelled forward, even at the risk of cutting scenes short (dear M. Night, this is how you get out early).

It was kind of fascinating too, because you've got Cassavettes from one school of acting and Farrow in the other, but it never clashes. It totally works for her being so willing to go along with things. The dream sequences/hallucinations were really cool, an example of simple, stark visual imagery being more compelling than cheap tricks.

In terms of horror, it was pretty great. Not too scary, just very unsettling with great tension. The film was almost post-Hitchcock in terms of how it was filmed and how it generated suspense. There were moments when I thought there would be a big jump, but that's just the contemporary audience in me. The film was just right, I loved it.
WWPTAD?

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Friday the 13th (2009)

Since the Friday the 13th films were never any good to begin with, I thought this was a chance to finally make a good film with the Jason Voorhees character.  Unfortunately this is not a good film.  Not a remake by any means the film can pretty much be looked at as Friday the 13th Part 11.  The film retains the group of teens and Jason Voorhees and makes up the rest.  Something about a guy looking for his sister who Jason is holding kidnapped.  All the teens are obnoxious, maybe that's part of the charm but the film drags (it spends 23 minutes pre-title sequence dispatching the first group of teens), and I'm not sure the film even mentions "Friday the 13th" or it's significance.  I'm surprised this was written by the same guys who did Freddy vs. Jason, which seemed a lot more fun than this.  Not terrible, but a bit boring and a real missed opportunity.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Gamblour.



Watching this film, I was surprised by how many ideas come from it, and how it's basically just ensconced in how we view things, like 666. It was a bit weird watching it, knowing from the start the being born on June 6th at 6:00am means 666 and that shit is no good. But I guess audiences were unaware until this film came out? And THE SCORE! Oh my god, the music in this film, it's bigger than the film is. What a stroke of genius.

It's the earliest film I can think of that uses the idea of kills or kill scenes as spectacle. We're used to it with Friday the 13th and especially Final Destination (which owes so much to this movie). I mean, that decapitation scene is shot from 10 different angles for a good reason. The first death, the hanging, was probably the most disturbing to me, though. I didn't expect her to break the window, and it just added all of this literal gravity and real-world physics to it, it caught me off guard and made it more real.

The kid on the tricycle. I was really surprised at how much this reminded me of The Shining, and it's the first time I've ever thought, "Kubrick referenced something???" And I think what I mean is, Kubrick's films are so robust with originality that to see something remotely similar prior to his own film, it was sort of shocking. Granted, I don't know if Danny being on a big-wheel is in the book or not, it was just the visual parallel I was struck by, even if he wasn't referencing this film.

Along with Rosemary's baby, I was impressed by how fresh and well-paced this was (except the graveyard scene). I guess maybe I'm getting older, maybe I'm just a better viewer of films, but the pacing of older films used to bother me, but not so much anymore.

Overall I liked it, but not as much as Rosemary's Baby, which was brilliant. This was very entertaining.
WWPTAD?

MacGuffin

Watch this movie and win $10,000?

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A Bollywood filmmaker has issued a lucrative challenge to horror movie fans: a $10,000 reward for anyone who can watch his latest supernatural thriller, alone, in a cinema until the closing credits.

Ram Gopal Varma's "Phoonk 2," a sequel to his 2008 film of the same name, is about an evil spirit that traumatizes a family. "Anyone who says the movie cannot scare him is going to be put in a theater by himself," Varma told reporters in Mumbai at an event to promote the movie.

Varma said the film fan who steps up to the challenge will be wired up to a heart monitoring machine as well as a camera that ensures they keep their eyes open during the whole movie.

Readings from the machines will be shown live on a screen outside the cinema, Varma said, and if the contestant succeeds, they will win 500,000 rupees (approximately $10,850).

Varma issued a similar challenge ahead of the release of the original "Phoonk" but the promotional contest was withdrawn after allegations the selection process was rigged.

Varma said the contest winner ran out 30 minutes after the film started, but newspaper reports said a film fan in the southern Indian city of Bangalore booked an entire cinema to prove the director wrong and watched the film alone with a doctor on call and security personnel stationed outside.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

RegularKarate

TCM is BARELY based on real events.  It's based on Ed Gein, but really it's completely fictional.  They used that crap at the beginning to pull more people in... now they do it all the time in horror movies.