Horror

[Gamblour.]

Ravenous (1999)

What a fucked up movie. I've been wanting to see this for quite some time, probably since it came out. It's very interesting in terms of the horror genre. Many elements of horror are transferable -- vampirism, lycanthropy, zombieism -- but here's something not exactly usual to the realm, cannibalism. The movie had a really strong four-act structure, with the two halves of the film being very clearly divided. The second half is marked by a couple of great twists that I did not see coming. It's pretty gory, not very scary, and pretty funny. The music is just plain embarrassing at points, but it's an interesting soundtrack nonetheless. And Robert Carlyle gives a great performance.

[modage]

i never saw the other "i see dead people" movie from summer '99 until just now.  i had heard a pretty good word of mouth about it recently which made me decide to check it out after all these years. but after watching it i can see why it was swept under the rug.  its not a bad film but you are a bit ahead of the curve in terms of plot.  kevin bacon also goes a little overboard on the chicago accent and it actually is more of a thriller (of the supernatural variety) than a horror film.  it also doesn't really offer any explanation for why he or his son can see these dead people.  and the detour in the middle of the film where bacon's wife goes to see the black man who also see's dead people is just plain weird.  a decent film, but mostly succeeds in making me want to revisit The Sixth Sense for the first time in years. 

[RegularKarate]

Stir of Echoes

I'll never see this movie again because A: I know it's not that good, B: I read the book and that ruined the movie, and C: it will never hold up to the first time I saw it, which, because of the circumstances, was very scary.

When this came out, I was a projectionist and I was in charge of watching the print Thursday before it came out because no one else wanted to... so I watched it alone at about 1 in the morning.

One thing that they did in the theatrical release (again, haven't seen it since) was put distractions in the sound mix coming from the rear surround speakings to throw you off before the scares... at one point, someone starts whispering... I think the idea is that you're in your seat and think the people behind you are whispering and you turn around to look and then when you look back at the screen.. "GHOST FACE!!!  aaaahhhhh", but since I was alone, I just thought the theater was haunted.

[modage]

since i saw the Vincent Price version Last Man On Earth last year, i figured with I Am Legend coming out in a few months i should see Omega Man as well.  this film is not very good.  its incredibly dated, the worst offender being the score which is just awful and ever-present.  it drains the film of any mood other than "groovy".  somebody should strip it out for an alternate audio track and see if it could build up any tension without it.  without even looking it up on imdb (which i did later to confirm my suspicions) you can tell the director comes from TV.  and looking over his credits its A LOT of tv.  the acting, editing, scoring is that of just bad 70's TV.  but at the bones of it, despite their stupid updates (no vampires!  black power girlfriend) the story is still good and the film has a few memorable scenes (like the opening).  but i will assume this will be the worst of the 3 versions.

[RegularKarate]

Bad movie night =


The Watcher

HO - LY SHIT!

Wow... this was maybe the MOST formulaicly bad serial killer movie I've ever seen.  EVERYTHING could be quoted before it was even said.  There were at least three times througout the movie where someone I was watching it with would yell out the line and that exact same line would be said in the movie.

It's also shot like someone who got kicked out of filmschool made it.  Bad flash-frames, silly editing... OH, and the car chases... oh fuck, these are the most boring car chases ever.

Hilarious... We laughed almost non-stop during the second half of the movie.


Dreamscape

I saw this as a kid and remembered it being scary and cool... I must have been a dumb kid.

This was just boring.

The only thing redeemable about this DVD is that the menu options are:

Scene Selection
Special Features
Play Movie
Monster!

When you click on Monster!, it just shows the rubbery snake man from the movie.

[RegularKarate]

This one is here because Gamblour put his here:


1408 - Director's Cut

After hearing from a number of people that this was actually good, I got kind of excited about seeing something that wasn't terrible.

Kind of a let-down.

The movie starts out alright... super cheesy and cliched setup, but executed in a way that set a decent tone.  The first big scare is also really good...

it's all downhill from there though.  It's basically just a man in a room, getting scared over and over again with nothing ever being revealed that wasn't already obvious (the psychological aspect is so played out that it just got in the way).  At one point, the film turns into a bad episode of Freddie's Nightmares, the telivision series where we don't know or care if what's going on is really going on.

I'm curious how the theatrical version ended though, because the ending of this was cheesebag times nine.


Rosemary's Baby

I'm sure this has been reviewed and covered in this thread many times (maybe even by myself) so I won't put a lot here, but I really like this movie.  It's a great mix of cheesy and serious.

What would YOU do if you were raped by the devil?


The Fog (1980)

I hadn't seen this since I was pretty young.  It's another that doesn't really hold up, but it wasn't completely worthless.

The first twenty minutes are really pretty good and while it gets the wrong kind of ridiculous as it goes, it's fairly entertaining along the way... just not as entertaining as, say Halloween or The Thing.

I still always love it when some beefy ugly old guy hooks up with a really young attractive girl in an 80s movie... it cracks me up.

[modage]

this was indeed pretty awful and deserved to flop.  its also the first movie that can appropriately wear the label "torture porn".  if you see this, and i recommend that you do not, you will know why.  a few things that are dumb:

i have not been a huge eli roth fan or anything but i wasn't a hater either.  i think he's annoying but that Hostel was a pretty damn scary good original horror film and i had to give him credit for that.  this quickie cash-in effort is exactly the sort of crap that he had been criticized for making in the past, except now the criticisms are valid.  the twists are dumb, the movie is a xerox, and the fact that he calls it Part II cause like Porkys 2 it picks up moments after the first one ends only to kill off the original character (duh, thats not even a spoiler cause you know this is about 3 chicks), is totally worthless.  the flashes to the first movie are also extremely lazy.  the explanation of how the club operates is absurd and the more you learn about it the less scary it becomes (oh Michael Myers had a shitty childhood, thats why he's scary!)

Lauren German is quite watchable but don't watch this film.  i know you wont.

[Stefen]

The most frustrating thing about Eli Roth is that he has such excellent ideas but executes them (pun intended) terribly.

I watched a movie I used to like from my childhood the other night called Leviathan. It was awful, but Peter Weller has an awesome voice and he's really handsome.

[diggler]

i remember watching leviathon when i was much younger and it scaring the crap out of me. haven't seen it since but from what I remember i'm sure it doesn't hold up.

I don't think Hostel II was THAT bad, but scary it was not. He's got a sense of humor, but I wonder why he would make such a humorless film. 

[modage]

ridiculous plot, awful dubbing, over the top gore, a cockrock 80's soundtrack, in other words: perfect halloween viewing.  there is only enough story to fill a blurb on the back of a video box "A special screening of a horror movie takes possession of the viewers and transforms them into zombie demons who attack other theatergoers."  And once the shit hits the fan in the first 10 minutes or so its just 75 more minutes of gore and monsters.  my mistake was watching this alone on a saturday afternoon.  there should be a warning on the box that advises anyone viewing the film to do so with friends and alcohol.  this could have been really fun.

[bonanzataz]

my mistake was watching this alone on a saturday afternoon.  there should be a warning on the box that advises anyone viewing the film to do so with friends and alcohol.

nearly made the same mistake with this one. started it at around 8pm by myself last summer. i was getting really into it, but i hated that i was by myself. all of a sudden, people just start stopping by unannounced. it was bizarre. before i knew it, there were about five people getting drunk and cheering for demoni. was very nice. this is a great movie.

[modage]

originally i had no expectations of this because none of the actors or boyle returned.  but the buzz was pretty good so i decided to give it a shot.  and this isnt a bad movie, i think i'm just all zombie'd out.  its got a couple of cool sequences SPOILERS (helicopter death, mom n dad biting it early on) END SPOILERS but really i think this can be the end to the genres resurgence.  kicked off by 28 Days Later a mere 4 years ago it's already been run into the ground.  and not even by a series of bad zombie movies, but just by too many damn zombie movies. 

[Gamblour.]

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

This obviously belongs in the Best Horror thread, but I'm just doing a short write-up. It was very refreshing watching this film after many years. The beginning chase sequence, the news reports, the action all surprised me because I did not remember them at all. I imagined the movie as being a lot slower, when it's actually very intense and well orchestrated. The twists are very powerful (the truck explosion and the ending are all big fucking downers) and you know they really got it right the first time. No other zombie movie comes close.

2001 Maniacs (2005)

Fucking terrible.

The Forbidden Zone (1980)

Fucking brilliant. Danny Elfman is amazing (for Buffy fans, he really reminded me of Sweet from "Once More with Feeling"). And there's lots of nudity. It's very insane and playful and goes 100%, which makes it work.

[modage]

i was wondering where you were! 

RK, got any last minute additions?

[Gamblour.]

i was wondering where you were! 

Sorry, this month also features my birthday, which occupied a lot of my time. I've been watching horror movies, just not as many as I would have liked. Tonight or tomorrow, I will be watching the new Shining dvd, which seems appropriate.

This has been a lot of fun, working on reviewing films while watching horror movies I never would have considered.