Horror

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

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polkablues

Quote from: 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!"

Apparently when they did "The Bad Seed" as a stage show (with all the same actors), they would end the performance with a bit where the little girl would get spanked by the actress who played the mom.  Nowadays you'd have to go to a very bad part of town to see that on stage.
My house, my rules, my coffee

modage

yeah thats the last thing in the credits.  they're laughing and mom's giving her a good spanking.  ha, i guess thats the release the audience needs after seeing that vicious brat reign free for over 2 hours.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

Quote from: polkabluesApparently when they did "The Bad Seed" as a stage show (with all the same actors), they would end the performance with a bit where the little girl would get spanked by the actress who played the mom.  Nowadays you'd have to go to a very bad part of town to see that on stage.

Or just hang out with ono.
"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

modage



now i cant remember who because the thread is gone and maybe somebody can help me out with this but a few years ago i started a Halloween Horror Survey thread and one of the questions was Best Werewolf Film.  somebody, unhappy with my choices which i believe included (American Werewolf In London, The Howling, Wolf Man among others) instead wrote in that Wolfen was the best werewolf film they had seen.  so i remembered this and tried to get around to checking it out which i finally did today.  i would like to smack that person in the face.  it wasnt a bad film, it was actually really well made and the only things that threatened to date the film is the inverse colored film from the wolf's pov.  however, its not really a werewolf film.  

to me, you're either a wolf man or a werewolf and this neither.  it was about indians who can shapechange into wolves (but not werewolves).  maybe you dont see a distinction there but i do.  like i mentioned, it was actually kinda good and i was enjoying it for most for being different and well done but by the time the end rolled around i realized it was missing the most crucial centerpiece of any werewolf film: the transformation sequence.  this had none, so i feel a bit gyped by that.  so it was okay (C-) overall, but to hold this above any of those other films is ludicrous.  and again, not technically a werewolf movie.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

killafilm

Wolfen is a Classic!

I like the description from netflix:

A brash Manhattan industrialist, his coke-bingeing wife and a slum wino have something grisly in common: They're the latest victims in a series of seemingly motiveless murders. Albert Finney headlines this shivery tale about brutal New York City murders pointing to a heretofore secret breed of wolflike creatures. Michael Wadleigh (Woodstock) directs this innovatively shot modern classic full of mood and menace.

modage

Quote from: Find Your Magali 2 years agoBlack Sunday (aka The Mask of Satan)


thanks Magali.  again, only took me about 2 years to get around to it but this was kinda good.  it starts out amazingly as a couple of suspected witches are tied up and a mask with nails is brutally hammered onto their faces!  amazing.  then we flash forward to much later and the witches are attempting to rise again where the film loses some steam.  i can definitely see the influence on Tim Burton.  (edit: imdb says Tim Burton names this as his favorite horror film.)  this was only my 2nd bava film after Black Sabbath and it was pretty cool.  i'd be interested to see more.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Figure 8

I watched Candyman and Event Horizon this weekend because of all the good things I heard about them here.  I really liked both of them.  Event Horizon was kind of like a really fucked up version of Solaris.

RegularKarate

Funny that you watched Wolfen because I had that as my film to watch yesterday, unfortunately this was the first broken disc I've received from Netflix (giant crack down the middle).

Instead, I watched:



Okay, it's not really a horror movie, it's a documentary, and not even one that  BASED in horror, but the opening scene and the detail of the actual murder are so disturbing that I'm putting it here.

I sat down to watch it while I ate dinner... that was a mistake... I had to turn it off in order to finish eating without vomiting.  Then I watched the rest of the film and felt hatred and fear run through my veins.

-----------
I also watched Bram Stroker's Dracula again just because Mod has been praising the film so much lately and I hadn't seen it since it was in the theater.

This wasn't that great at all.  It had some cool scenes and some "fun" parts, but it just tried too hard in parts and the acting for the most part is just plain horrible.  Still way better than the '79 Dracula, but has NOTHING on Bella.

MacGuffin

Impaling Most Common Horror Film Death

Sharp objects are more terrifying than bullets: A new horror movie survey says that impaling is the most common way for celluloid evildoers to do away with their victims.

The new Web site FamilyMediaGuide.com surveyed 100 of the most popular horror movies produced since 1975. It found more than 1,700 violent acts, with nearly a quarter of those involved victims being impaled.

The most violent film was 2003's "Freddy vs. Jason," with 167 violent acts, according to the site. Steven Spielberg's 1975 film "Jaws" came in a surprising second, largely because of the number of times the great white shark chomped into its victims.

Honorable mention went to Tim Burton's 1999 film "Sleepy Hollow," which featured 27 beheadings.

Oddly enough, the "Halloween" films didn't receive a mention.
"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

Gamblour.

Wait, how many could Jaws possibly have?

Tonight, I have a marathon of Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and 28 Days Later. Maybe I will trade in American Werewolf in London or Texas Chainsaw  Massacre (original).
WWPTAD?

RegularKarate

I know Halloween's over and everything, but because of some problems I had  I wasn't able to watch The Innocents until tonight.

FANTASTIC!!!!  One of my new favorites, I shall think.

Quote from: modageSPOILERS MAJOR whether the kids were murdering everyone, or whether the 'ghosts' were dead or not, or whether the housekeepers had a conspiracy or whether she was going insane END SPOILERS

SPOILERS MAJOR I think it's quite possible that the ghost aspect was completely imagined, that the kids were psychologically scarred from the previous caretakers' exploits and Kerr's character was a little nuts and she was projecting the situation to explain why a child would act in such a way.END SPOILERS

MacGuffin

Horror Movies Return to Grisly Roots

Today's horror movies are more likely to be dripping with blood than irony, with films like "Wolf Creek," the "Saw" series and this week's "Hostel" representing a return to their grisly, low-budget '70s roots.

While the "Scream" trilogy grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in the late 1990s with characters who winked at the camera in playful mockery of the genre's conventions, horror flicks like "Hostel," Eli Roth's follow-up to his gory 2003 debut "Cabin Fever," will show you a character whose eye is dangling from its socket after a long afternoon of torture.

"Self-referential, ironic humor ran its course," said Roth, a 33-year-old writer-director who grew up loving the graphic slasher movies of the 1970s and '80s and also cites Asian cinema as an influence.

"Kevin Williamson did it brilliantly," he said, referring to the writer of the original "Scream." "At the same time `Scream' was huge, `Dawson's Creek' was the most popular show. ... People got tired of that. That was the gimmick. Even Kevin Williamson got tired of that.

"I think scary movies are back," Roth added. "People clearly don't want to see a horror movie to laugh."

Lions Gate Films apparently thinks so, too, having released several of the really grisly horror movies that have come out in the past few years: Rob Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses" and its sequel, "The Devil's Rejects," about a family of redneck serial killers; "Saw" and "Saw II," about a kidnapper who torments his victims with elaborate mind games; the French "High Tension," about two young women who are terrorized in the woods; and now "Hostel," which follows a trio of twentysomething guys on a European vacation that begins as an orgy of sex and drugs and descends into brutal, bloody sadism.

Lions Gate President Tom Ortenberg says this particular kind of horror movie is alluring because "it's got touches of realism that audiences today can relate to.

"We're never going to outspend the competition in the marketing or production of a movie. Were not going to blow people away with the latest million-dollar special effects. We're never going to do that better than the studios," Ortenberg said. "What we can do as well or better than the studios, perhaps in retro fashion, is a realistic, gut-level, visceral horror movie that doesn't rely on special effects, and audiences are responding to that."

While they're not exactly critical favorites the first "Saw" received only 45 percent positive reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes Web site, with "Saw II" earning just 35 percent positive reviews these movies can be enormously profitable. "Saw" had a $1 million budget and grossed $55 million-plus; the sequel cost $4 million and grossed nearly $87 million.

"Our economic model is much different than the studios," Ortenberg said. "When a Rob Zombie movie like `The Devil's Rejects' grosses $17 million, or Eli Roth's first movie grosses $20 million, that's very successful for us."

Meanwhile, the Weinstein Co. is in theaters with the low-budget "Wolf Creek," about a madman who targets tourists in the Australian outback. Harvey and Bob Weinstein released the star-studded "Scream" trilogy and several other horror movies under the Dimension Films branch of their former company, Miramax.

Bob Weinstein, who ran Dimension, bought "Wolf Creek" for $3.5 million a month before it screened at last year's Sundance Film Festival because "it was very hard-edge, very real," he said. The company released it on Christmas Day amid the family films and Oscar contenders.

"There were a lot of comedies out in the marketplace, a lot of prestige movies for older audiences. We thought this was for younger audiences," Weinstein said. "We felt there would be an opening in the marketplace that wanted to see something like this at this particular time."

Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, believes this kind of graphic fare is making a comeback because "when people want to be scared, they really want to be scared." "With video games and all the entertainment options, it really takes a lot to impress audiences today," Dergarabedian said. "The level of violence and gore cannot be too intense for a lot of people. Horror fans in particular are very keen on seeing the most intense, violent images they can.

"Some might say it's a reflection on society, how desensitized we've become to violence," he added. "I still believe people know the difference. It's a vicarious thrill. I look at it more as entertainment: You can have that fear but in a safe environment."

The trend toward old-school terror has spread to television with Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series, in which veteran directors including Tobe Hooper, John Landis, Dario Argento and Takashi Miike have created one-hour original programs.

Joe Dante's contribution, titled "Homecoming," takes traditional zombie movie imagery and turns it into an indictment of the war in Iraq: Soldiers return from the dead not to eat people's brains but to vote the president out of office who sent them into battle.

Dante, a Roger Corman protege whose films include "The Howling" and a segment of "Twilight Zone: The Movie," pointed out that zombie films have always had underlying social statements, from 1950s West Indian movies about race and class to George A. Romero's 1968 classic "Night of the Living Dead," with its subtext about the Vietnam War.

"It didn't seem to me like much of a stretch to use that template for a political story," he said. "The great thing about the `Masters of Horror' series is that it was an opportunity that already existed in lieu of money or time I was given creative freedom, so I was able to sneak in a political story into this series that I probably never would have gotten made."

As for the renaissance of grisly horror, Dante said: "Everything goes in cycles."

"After about 15 years, there's a whole new group of people who haven't seen this kind of material. In the world we live in, we like to push the envelope, so today's gory horror movies are gorier than the last generation's gory horror movies. There is a limit to what you can do to horror, and frankly I thought we reached it in the mid-'80s, but apparently not."

And more are on the horizon specifically, remakes of the classic movies that provided the inspiration for this new wave in the first place. "When a Stranger Calls" is scheduled for release in February, with "The Hills Have Eyes" (from "High Tension" writer-director Alexandre Aja) following in March.

In October, expect a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" prequel there's already been a remake of the iconic film, which grossed $80 million in 2003 as well as "Saw 3." Autumn also brings "Grind House" from Weinstein, in which horror aficionados Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino join forces to co-direct. John Jarratt, the serial killer from "Wolf Creek," is the star.

"Everyone has a fascination with death," said Roth. "Violence is cinematic. It looks great on film. It's a great release watching the bad guy get it seeing someone get brutally maimed in a movie, your worst nightmare, you see it and scream about it and it feels great."
"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

MacGuffin

A Dracula Sequel that Might Not Suck

Back in December, we totally failed to pick up the news that someone had written a screenplay for a sequel to Dracula. Whatever, right? Hollywood has sequel-itis, and a whole lot of the results suck. It turns out, though, that the film, entitled Un Dead, is the first Dracula movie to win the approval of author Bram Stoker's family since Tod Browning's 1931 masterpiece. Not only that, but it was written by a gentleman named Ian Holt who, according to the always-reliable internets, is a Dracula scholar, and actually traveled around Europe, scouting locations while he wrote. Plus, it's NOT a sequel to Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, but rather to Stoker's original story.

Variety is just reporting the story today, which probably means that all the dotted lines are finally signed, and that the project might actually be getting off the ground. Action king Jan de Bont (he's busy right now directing Meg -- fear his power) will produce the film, which picks up 25 years after the end of Dracula and brings all the surviving characters together, along with an Inspector Cotford, who appeared in Stoker's original draft of Dracula, but was cut prior to the story's publication.
"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

MacGuffin

Yuzna Announces New Re-Animator Trilogy

Longtime Stuart Gordon collaborator and bona-fide horror geek of the most colorful variety, Brian Yuzna has some big plans. He recently closed up shop on his Fantastic Factory shingle (a Spanish production company that yielded Faust, Dagon, Rottweiler, and Beyond Re-Animator) and kick-started an outfit called Halcyon, and guess what Mr. Yuzna will be doing there. That's right: making splattery horror flicks.

According to Fango, the company has a few titles in the can already (with titles like Doomed, Battlespace, and Darkworld ... cool), but their big plan is to reunite the original Re-Animator / Bride of Re-Animator gang (producer Yuzna, director Stuart Gordon, screenwriter Dennis Paoli, and actors Bruce Abbott & Jeffrey Combs) for a White House-based sequel entitled House of Re-Animator (the gang hopes this will be chapter one in an all-new Re-Animator trilogy). Yuzna also hopes to get William H. Macy to play the president, and it might not be all that difficult; Macy recently starred in the David Mamet adaptation Edmond -- which was directed by Stuart Gordon.

Also in Yuzna's blood-soaked pipeline: Sprawl: Grizzly, which is about a whole PACK of ravenous man-eating bears, and Everdark, a "based on actual events" ghost story ... like we really need another one of those.
"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

modage

Quote from: MacGuffin on May 11, 2006, 12:57:35 AM
Yuzna Announces New Re-Animator Trilogy
According to Fango, the company has a few titles in the can already (with titles like Doomed, Battlespace, and Darkworld ... cool), but their big plan is to reunite the original Re-Animator / Bride of Re-Animator gang (producer Yuzna, director Stuart Gordon, screenwriter Dennis Paoli, and actors Bruce Abbott & Jeffrey Combs) for a White House-based sequel entitled House of Re-Animator (the gang hopes this will be chapter one in an all-new Re-Animator trilogy). Yuzna also hopes to get William H. Macy to play the president, and it might not be all that difficult; Macy recently starred in the David Mamet adaptation Edmond -- which was directed by Stuart Gordon.
so a 2nd trilogy?  like 4,5,6?  as long as they're morel like the first two and less like the ODIOUS Beyond... then thats cool.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.