Horror

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

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RegularKarate



This is a great example of unmet potential.
I love films that are outrageous (as long as they work) and this one is VERY outrageous.  It's based on a story called "The Space Vampires"... how can you go wrong with something as cool as space vampires?  Unfortunately, the bland dialogue, terrible acting, and about 30 minutes too many run time pretty much ruin the film.

It's almost still worth watching it, if for no other reason than to witness a (poorly executed) cool story with some pretty decent special effects for it's time.

hedwig

Haha, the poster's cool, though.

polkablues

Quote from: HedwigHaha, the poster's cool, though.

It successfully highlights the movie's main reasons for being, which are Mathilda May's breasts.
My house, my rules, my coffee

modage

Quote from: RegularKarateThis is a great example of unmet potential.

funny you mention that.  this isnt a horror movie, but i remember thinking the same thing about unmet potential when i watched this movie Time After Time http://imdb.com/title/tt0080025/.  it was an okay movie, but a letdown after such a great premise:  "Imagine! A scientific genius named H.G. Wells stalks a criminal genius named Jack the Ripper across time itself, in the most ingenious thriller of our time... "  sounds cool, right?
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

RegularKarate

I remember Time After Time... felt like a made-for-television... I kind of thought it was, actually.



While this is nowhere the genius piece of horror that the first is, it's still pretty cool.  There's not a TON of gore, but the gore in it's pretty damn good.  Dennis Hopper's character is pretty cool, the underground maniac hideout is really neat, and there's a chainsaw to chainsaw battle towards the end.

As I was watching it this time, I realized that the chainsaw store Hopper buys chainsaws from has been turned into a bar here I go to a lot.

RegularKarate



I plan on watching a few different versions of Dracula this year.  I just started with this one because it's one I hadn't seen yet.

This is the much ignored 1979 version starring the future Perry White (Superman returns) as Dracula and non other than Laurence Olivier as Van Helsing.

John Williams scores it, which really helps get you through the slow parts, but doesn't really help the cheese factor (when Dracula turns into a bat, the movie turns into a comedy and I don't think it's intentional).

There are some slick shots that make it fun and it's overall pretty entertaining, but it doesn't do the title much justice.

This was directed by John Badham after he did Saturday Night Fever and right before he jumped into the eighties and made some of the most memorably mediocre eighties films (Short Circuit, Stake Out, Blue Thunder, War Games, Bird on a Wire) and it kind of shows in this movie.  It's like you can see the eighties creeping up.

modage

Quote from: modage
Dracula (1979) had been dismissed by my dad as not very good (hence not worth watching) but since it just came out on dvd and i'm interested to see this story as many times as possible i decided to watch it anyways.  for the first 15 minutes of the movie, i was really enjoying it.  john williams score!  great sets and costumes, seemed like a different approach starting the movie not in transylvania, but on the boat over to england.  and then, frank langella finally showed up as dracula and all the anticipation/fear disappated immediately and the movie just sunk.  i guess i would have to compare it to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which seems like its almost great but is brought down (for me anyways) by one factor: robert deniro as the monster.  it just doesnt work, and thats not to say that i dont like robert deniro or think he can act, but just that he was fatally miscast and the movie never had a chance.  same story here.  langella was all wrong for the part (in my mind although apparently he was successful on stage doing it which won him the role), but is too romantic and cheezeball.  his hair was too feathered, his costume did not look very good, and he just didnt work.  so, despite some cool roles given to donald pleasance and lawrence olivier the movie just didnt work.  it was cool to note some of the shots/scenes picked out by coppola in his version of dracula a decade or so later (climbing down the building, lighting the cross on fire), making that just a great amalgam of all the draculas/nosferatus of the previous filmed versions.  (i love that film).  also, a lot of the movie seemed to deviate from most versions, like was jonathan with mina or lucy?  who went to transylania?  which one does drac bite first?  anyways....
yeah i saw that one last year for the first time and felt the same.  but since i'd heard it was so bad, i was like REALLY loving the whole beginning because it was clearly a big-budget deal.  and then dracula shows up...  :(
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

modage



watched The Hitcher last night.  i can't remember if i had seen it before like 10-15 years ago or not.  it seemed somewhat familiar though i didn't recall much of what happened.  it was pretty good actually though probably more of a suspense and not horror.  if you can forgive the preposterousness of the lengths that rutger hauer goes to torment c. thomas howell it's a good film.  almost like duel but with a guy instead of a truck.  relentless torture.  hauer is great, i only wished that their time in the car together were longer.  could've gone atleast like 30 min with that tension and maybe let it be at ease for a few more minutes before you realize he's psycho.  yeaaah, so this is getting remade too i think.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

modage



for some reason i had a vague notion this might've been an okay/good sequel but that rumor was dispelled tonight.  this was a lame pretty horrible sequel.  really makes me appreciate the original even more.  you know it's bad when the sequel is far more dated than the original film.  to make things worse, the dvd copy looks like it was taken from a vhs rental and transferred.  it's pretty bad (and fullscreen).  :yabbse-thumbdown:  stay away, i felt bad for the cast that returned.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

RegularKarate

Yeah, Brewster was not "so cool" in that one.  

Funny that it was by the same director as Halloween III: Season of the Witch



And we come to the worst movie I've seen this halloween season.
See Mod's Fog review... it's pretty much how I feel about this one.
There are some moments that could have been scary had they not been surrounded by the million other horrible scenes.  Bad Acting, Bad Screenplay, Bad Story, Bad Everything.

I'm going to need to see at least three good horror movies to make up for this one.

modage

haha!  i totally agree.  PoD was TERRIBLE!  i think we watched that one 3 years ago in philadelphia and were just like 'you have got to be kidding me!'  it was AWful.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

RegularKarate



This was fun.  

I was a little disapointed because I remember Lee being a bad-ass Dracula, but he hardly has any lines at all and when he DOES speak, he speaks way too quickly and casually... like a coked-up business man.  He looks cool coming at you with bloody fangs though... and I guess that's the kind of Dracula they were going for.

The key to this was that it was short and old-school.  Enjoyable... made me want to see some of the sequels.

w/o horse

I once worked in a second run theater, the dollar movie sort.  My manager was a film buff.  Now and again he'd screen movies after the theater closed, just him and his buddy who also collected prints.

One time he invited me to join them.  The movie was Horror of Dracula.  I don't know what the print was, but it was me, my manager, and his friend in the theater, it was my first Hammer horror film, and it was my first time smoking in a theater.

It's got a special place in my heart.  Is what I'm saying.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

bonanzataz

Quote from: modage
it's almost amazing how inconsistent John Carpenter is as a director.  how some of his films can be so great and some so bad is baffling to me.  there is almost no middle ground.  nothing is like 3/4's good.  it either IS great, or SUCKS HARD.  so, where does the Fog fall?  to take Adrienne Barbeau's line from the film "Stay away from the fog."

i like the fog. they're creepy monsters with hooks that come out of the fog! come on! that's scary!
The corpses all hang headless and limp bodies with no surprises and the blood drains down like devil's rain we'll bathe tonight I want your skulls I need your skulls I want your skulls I need your skulls Demon I am and face I peel to see your skin turned inside out, 'cause gotta have you on my wall gotta have you on my wall, 'cause I want your skulls I need your skulls I want your skulls I need your skulls collect the heads of little girls and put 'em on my wall hack the heads off little girls and put 'em on my wall I want your skulls I need your skulls I want your skulls I need your skulls

modage



watched The Bad Seed last night, probably because it came out on dvd recently and i've been brushing up on that 'evil kids' subgenre.  the film was okay but kind of more of a melodrama than a horror film, village/children of the damned did a better job with that kind of thing.  there are some really over-the-top performances in this too which make it pretty watchable and the ending is great.  pretty much the only problem with it is that its 2 hours and 9 minutes long!  ouch, it probably could've/should've been like 85 minutes and you could've really gotten the same thing across.  there is a lot of padding and it stretches to an almost unbearable length considering what it is.  but if anyone watches it stay tuned after the film for hilarious credits sequence where all the actors come back out and smile just to let you know "its only a movie!"
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.