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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2011 0:49:51 GMT 1
Any good horror films I should watch? Well it's funny you should ask, Mr Glow. Because it's time to start my fifth annual Halloween Horror Movie Education Programme (yes that's what I call it)! Look how excited she is. This is a tradition where I spend my free time in October watching classic horror movies that I've never seen before. The story goes that I was a very nervous kid and so I was always too afraid to watch horror films. Then one October I watched some classics - Night of the Living Dead, Blair Witch, the Exorcist, Frankenstein, and I couldn't believe what I'd been missing all those years. The next year I watched the first four Nightmare on Elm Streets, and it grew from there. Now, every October I catch up on the great horror / monster movies I was either too scared or too young to watch. And I always end up watching way more movies than I watched last year. This time is no exception - I've already seen quite a few films over September, and I've ordered in another stack for this month. So here's the first part! I'm not sure why I post these really, but I would love to hear your opinions on the films, any discoveries of your own, and even better - suggestions for the future. --- I started off with some older movies this year. I'm saving the newer, more frightening ones (including 'Ring', which I hear is a good one). 1. Frankenstein (1910)I mentioned this on the other thread. It must be one of the earliest, if not the first, horror movie. It's silent, it's about 13 minutes long, and it rushes through Shelley's story like it's late for something. But it's definitely eerie, unsettling (I can imagine the scene where the monster is born must have been pretty spooky one hundred years ago) and captures the whole story. Interesting. Three skeletons out of five.2. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)I loved this one. It stars the silent movie hero Lon Chaney (senior, not to be confused with his son, the Wolf Man) who also designed his own fantastically monsterous make-up. It's a fairly loose adaptation of the French novel, in which Parisian opera star Christine Daae must choose between the tortured, ingeneous and hideous 'opera ghost' and her strangley-not-French-sounding admirer Raoul. The inevitable rejection (he is very ugly) turns the Phantom mad and he abducts Christine, at which point Raoul gathers a Simpsons-style pitchfork mob, who beat the hell out of the guy and throw him in the river. The end. I think we've all learned a valuable moral lesson there. Seriously, a great film - largely because Chaney is so damned creepy and talened. What a performance. Three and a half masks out of five.Here it is on YouTube... www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgiPXFVY0T83. The Phantom of the Opera (1943)This one really was a surprise to me, in that it's a) not a horror film and b) has basically nothing to do with The Phantom of the Opera, despite being filmed on the same set as the original and starring horror icon Claude Rains. It's a romantic comedy in which three characters with very little relationship to the original story work out a funny love triangle, and at the same time middle-aged violinist Erique goes through the Batman Villain Process (a series of crushing setbacks and then acid is thrown at his face) to kind-of become the Phantom in the second half. Kind of. But it's good in its own right. Three one-bad-days out of five.4. The Mummy (1932)This is the one major Universal monster movie classic I'd never gotten around to. I was hoping for Boris Karloff covered in bandages, shambling around with his arms outstretched. Sadly this doesn't happen! In fact, the movie is basically identical to Dracula, right down to the music and the hypnotic seduction. Still - Karloff is brilliant in it. Shame about the lack of bandages. I even watched both the Brendan Fraser 'Mummy' movies, in the hope of seeing some god-damned bandages. NOT ONE. Where the hell does this stereotype come from anyway? Three Tommy-Cooper-looking villains out of five.5. The Mummy's Hand (1940) I did some research and found out that THIS is where the traditional 'shambling and covered in bandages' Mummy first appeared - and hunted it down. The Mummy's Hand is a sort-of-sequel to 'The Mummy' even though it's a different mummy, an entirely different cast, and an unrelated plot. And... I hate to say it but I liked it a whole lot better than the original. It's funny, it's got lots of light-hearted adventuring, it has a proper mummy (although he's only in it for about fifteen bloody minutes) and even some magic! What more do you want? Four tana leaves out of five.This one was also on YouTube - and is also great: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jekITlovUYkMany, many, many more mini-reviews to come this month.
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Post by Cali on Oct 2, 2011 2:13:22 GMT 1
Be sure to check out "Ben Drowned", an alternate reality game which revolves around a Legend of Zelda Majora's mask cartridge that holds the spirit of a deceased boy. I made a thread about it somewhere on the board. It's very well done.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2011 2:20:47 GMT 1
You know I remember you mentioned it and I was very curious..... all right, I will check it out.
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Post by Cali on Oct 2, 2011 2:35:49 GMT 1
Now that I remember I never finished the guide.
Private Message me if you have any questions. It can be a little tricky to follow at time.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Oct 5, 2011 19:14:06 GMT 1
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Post by Cali on Oct 5, 2011 21:09:33 GMT 1
Glow, you're obsessed.
That aside, I'm really curious as to who the "Hyde" guy was. Though the question will probably never be answered.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 5, 2011 22:43:24 GMT 1
Jesus, Glow! How many times am I going to click things from you, only to get Chris-Chan-Rolled?
Incidentally I am curious about the James Nesbitt show (I like him) but may not have time - this is already a busy month for me.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 5, 2011 23:08:57 GMT 1
Speaking of which (not really) it may be time for some more Halloween Horror Education! Yes, sir.
This time I take on werewolves, on account of the fact that I've never really seen a werewolf movie in my life, except for 'The Wolfman' itself.
6. The Howling (1981)
I once saw The Howling 4: The Freaks and it was awful and barely had any werewolves in it (oh wait, I guess I've seen two). This original was... better, but I got pretty bored, even despite the frequent werewolves, twists, full on werewolf sex scene and the appearance of both Steed from The Avengers AND 'the Doctor' from ST:Voyager as werewolves. Yeah, it was pretty boring, but not bad. There were some good chase sequences and a clever ending. Just... eh. I thought this would finally be the one to actually scare me for the first time this season.
Oh! Also there were, like, a million 'wolf' puns in the background and dialogue. It was ridiculous, and that's coming from a guy who likes puns. Two and a half appallingly-constructed hamburgers out of five.
7. Dog Soldiers (2002)
A recent, gritty, British movie about soldiers fleeing from werewolves in the countryside? This one ought to be scary, right? At least, there ought not to be any silly puns! Except... except the title. Wrong and wrong. "It's that time of the month!" Jesus Christ. "There is no Spoon" was hilarious though.
But! This one was brilliant. It's basically a 'trapped by zombies in a house' movie except with enormous wolves, but the acting is good, the characters are all interesting, and seeing real people you can actually relate to in that situation makes the whole thing a lot more fun. The soldiers are a neat twist on a familiar story. Also points for using prop werewolves instead of CG. Four stupid, stupid puns out of five.
8. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
I had kind-of seen this one before (as a kid) so I knew it was a comedy and came in expecting puns. What I was not expecting was a soundtrack composed of 'Blue Moon', 'Blue Moon' (the other one), 'Bad Moon Rising', 'Moon Dance' and bloody 'Blue Moon' again. But I'm just being silly - I liked those gags, and the upbeat songs were used cleverly to offset the wolfman antics.
This movie is hard to define. It has frightening sequences, jump scares, surrealist gags, a slow and dramatic introduction, elements of drama... it's a mish-mash. But those elements are handled nicely. I have no idea why it's set in England (surely there are more dangerous woods in the US than Yorkshire?), but somehow the werewolf being a foreigner helps it along, makes his 'transformation' into a clever theme.
I loved this. The werewolf itself is the best damn werewolf I've ever seen (it stands on four legs and has a purely-wolf head on a creepy, elongated body) and the Oscar-winning transformation sequence is by far the best one I've ever seen in a movie. Look at this work of art!
And one more thing - if he was bitten by a wolf in the Yorkshire dales, why the hell did he wake up in hospital... in London?! Does John Landis think London is the only English city which has a hospital? Yorkshire may not be civilised, but you don't have to drive two-hundred miles to reach the nearest hospital!
Also Rik Mayall is in this, and his only line is 'Remember the Alamo!'
Four and a half insane, shrieking zombie-Nazi gunmen out of five.
Oh wait! I also technically saw
9. Werewolf (1996)
"Mike, the title came up and it said 'Werewolf' and Servo said 'I don't know, you had him last' and I... I think that was a really stupid joke?"
Bad movie, but I kind of liked the idea behind it. Notable for featuring the 'least successful werewolf of all time' who accomplishes precisely nothing before being killed easily five minutes after leaving the hospital. And yeah, I watched the MST3K version. Very funny. ;D One driving werewolf out of five.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Oct 6, 2011 3:42:19 GMT 1
Jesus, Glow! How many times am I going to click things from you, only to get Chris-Chan-Rolled? I couldn't resist. I at least could have posted one of his creepier videos (but a guy winking at you in a nappy isn't generally associated with Halloween. To most people at least.) It is very good! It can be a bit cheesy at times (it is written by the guy who makes Doctor Who), but Nesbitt generally picks up the slack with both his roles (he really does make the two identities seem like two different people.) One thing that bothered me was that they kept trying to go the "Evil is Sexy" route with Mr. Hyde, despite him, you know, still being James Nesbitt. I mean, according to multiple characters, this guy: Is "a world-class hottie". What?
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 13, 2011 21:34:01 GMT 1
James Nesbitt is..... cute, in his way, but... no. --- Attention: I have watched some more horror movies and wish to tell you about them. 10. Haunted Majora's Mask ARG / Ben Drowned (2010)Start here, if you'd like to follow this: z15.invisionfree.com/Within_Hubris/index.php?showtopic=494On Cali's (twice) recommendation, I sought this one out, despite not really understanding what alternate reality games are and having never played 'Majora's Mask' beyond the first few hours (I found it very creepy, coincidentally enough). So this is a blog / Youtube account / clever bit at the end through which an internet user weaves a story about a posessed/haunted/intelligent copy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask which he bought cheap and which is either broken or trying to frighten him. Its twisted, ultra-creepy version of the game (recorded on the Youtube bits, complete with excellent jump-scares) becomes more and more spooky and makes it more and more clear that it's trying to tell him something. Eventually whatever is messing with our man infects his blog and even Cleverbot (I went on cleverbot afterwards, asked it about Ben and got properly creeped out). I enjoyed this a lot - and so far it is the scariest entry in my Halloween programme this year. The videos creeped me out (but the blog seemed a little too cliche and obvious - trying too hard to be scary, you know?) and the clever twist at the end really amused me. Mostly I just think you have to admire whoever wrote this for going to such effort to create all those scenes in Majora's Mask, as well as so cleverly involving his Youtube comments, cleverbot, a scene from a completely unrelated videogame and even file-sharing sites as part of the 'game'. The only other experience I have with this new and interesting medium is 'Marble Hornets' which is scary as hell, but much less complex and impressive in its execution than this (and much harder to follow, but I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing). I had a great evening catching up with the haunted N64 game (I'm sure it would have been tons better at the time) and I can now proudly announce that I am frightened of the Happy Mask Man. That is an impressive feat. Four ruined childhood memories out of five.11. Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)This is a movie I'd always wanted to see, because everyone knows it as the worst movie ever made, right? It's the Edward D Wood ('Ed Wood') Jr movie where Bela Lugosi died during filming and had to be replaced by a guy who looked nothing like him - and which had famously horrible special effects. Also just watch this introdocutory speech, my friend: Now - as it happens, that intro aside, this movie isn't nearly as bad as people say! I... kinda liked it! As 50's / 60's alien invasion flicks go, this one probably isn't even one of the worst! Granted there are plot holes and yes, Bela Lugosi's replacement looks ridiculous, and... Tor Johnson may be the worst film actor in history... but I'll tell you what. I quite liked this. I was entertained. And it has TV's Vampira in it! And Manos: The Hands of Fate is way, way worse. Two and a half of my friends in the future out of five.12. Godzilla (1954)Maybe not a horror movie (most of todays entries are kind of pushing it) but a monster movie anyway? Right? And I've always wanted to see it. Turns out the original Godzilla (actually pronounced more like Gohjirra) is creepy, interesting, dramatic, shows very little of the monster but the deaths it causes are shown and felt... and is largely a political statement about the dangers of the atomic age. It's a morality tale about a sea monster awakened by US nuclear tests, made by survivors of the Japanese bombings, shortly after occupying forces left. In this respect, certain scenes (even the daft ones where a scientist develops a very silly new superweapon) are pretty damn chilling. The movie comes across as apologetic and frightened more than angry - a warning. Really interesting movie. I liked it. And the Godzilla creature looks way scarier in black and white. (n.b. the version I saw was the original Japanese, not the US edit with Perry Mason inserted into it.) Four eyepatches out of five.13. The Birds (1963)This is another one that's not exactly horror - call it a thriller I guess- but I'd always fancied. I remember a conversation with my girlfriend at the time (who loved Hitchcock movies) where she attempted to convince me that his movie about killer flocks of birds was genuinely frightening, and I laughed a lot. She was........ almost right. I'm not afraid of birds now, BUT I jumped, I chewed my nails, and the next day when I saw a flock of pigeons on a phone wire ahead of me, I eyed them suspiciously. It's astonishing that Hitchcock made being pecked by birds as fast-paced, unsettling and, above all, tense as he did here. There is a surprising amount of blood on show, which brings it home, but what really makes the effect work (I think) is the human hysteria that comes through the characters and eventually destroys every plot beyond 'running from the birds' - even the (interesting, built-up) plot is finally killed by these things, and we leave the main character, now mute, to an unknown fate at the end. There is a serious, expert sense of rising dread as soon as the birds start to get nasty. First class. If it had been anything other than birds, this would be the scariest damned film... Five horribly-dated bird props out of five.And finally today... 14. Trees (2001)This one is not only not a horror film, but not any kind of classic. But! One of my hobbies is watching awful horror movies and this is what led me, a few years ago, to renting a copy of Trees 2: The Root of all Evil, which was hysterical. I highly recommend it. It's about killer pine trees chasing people around at Christmas. And they have scary eyes and teeth and stuff. So I'd always wanted to watch the original. The first Trees movie is..... not as good. Rather than an all-out absurdist horror spoof / nonsense, it is a careful scene-by-scene reproduction of Jaws (right down to hiring a Roy Schnieder lookalike for the star), only with a tree instead of a shark. This is funny at first, but the references get old very fast. A bit disappointing. Trees 2 is freaking brilliant though. If you ever see a copy of it around (they're very rare now) GRAB IT. One and a half Jaws references out of five.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 14, 2011 23:23:00 GMT 1
15. Friday the 13th (1980)I've never really got into 'slasher movies' at all - I loved John Carpenter's Halloween but wasn't all that bothered about the sequels I saw. Can you count Psycho as a slasher? If so, that's two that I like. This one is... all right. I guess it was one of the very first (and actually invents a lot of tropes that would later define the genre - all those attractive young people killed in all those horror movies, all because those two counsellors were having sex instead of watching Jason...) and interestingly it bothers heavily from Psycho AND Halloween. It's like a mixture of the two, but with Kevin Bacon's clammy, hairless torso grabbing someone's breasts in the middle. So - this is a movie in which a lot of twenty-year-olds hang around being very dull but wearing skimpy underwear, and then are systematically killed by an unseen figure in kinda-funny, kinda-gory ways... and then once the big twist (I already knew it - thanks a lot, 'special features' menu screen!) comes, it gets very silly. The ending, however, is phenomenal. Worth seeing just for that, and the historical significance of the movie. Three pairs of panties out of five.16. Wishmaster (1997)This one isn't exactly a classic but I remember our local videoshop had a copy when I was a kid, and it always intrigued me. It's also really stupid - it's about a killer genie with a hilarious 'evil guy' voice who kills you by making you wish for something and then corrupting your wish by twisting your words. He basically kills you by offering you a 'hertz donut'. At one point he turns a guy into a snake-man. In another scene he has an animated statue of a samurai cave-in a guy's head with a hammer. He is covered in two kilos of ridiculous makeup... his central premise (you have to WISH for something or he can't hurt you in any way) is beyond ridiculous (and the increasingly hysterical ways he cons people into wishing for things are laughable)... And I loved it. This movie knows it has no chance of succeeding as a genuine horror, and so it goes for an Evil Dead 2-esque semi-spoof style. The villain is brilliantly charismatic in his silliness, the hero plays it perfectly straight, the special effects are actually sensational, and there are cameos from such horror stars as the Candyman, Sam Raimi's brother, the Tall Man and even Freddy himself, Robert Englund! This is just the funniest damn film. I'm keeping my copy. It's like - "Do you wish not to see this?" / "Uh-huh?" / *pulls out his eyes*. And that's one of the most sensible, logical deaths in the movie. Four and a half snake-men out of five. Wassssss a mannnnnnn!
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Post by Knightfall on Oct 14, 2011 23:59:19 GMT 1
You should check out Leprechaun if you haven't already. Kinda in the same vein as Wishmaster, but the villain is ridiculously funny/f**ked up. xD
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 15, 2011 1:45:52 GMT 1
I've never seen Leprechaun, although I did once see Leprechaun 6: Back to tha Hood. xD
Luckily YouTube has a new thing where you pay to watch movies, so...
17. Leprechaun (1993)
is one of the stupidest films I ever saw, and this is coming from someone who rented Leprechaun 6: Back to tha Hood. The heroes are a young (and gorgeous) Jennifer Anniston, a guy with great hair and his two comic relief brothers. The villain is Warwick Davies, who has the powers of teleportation, voice mimicry and somehow running faster than people of average height. He is utterly dedicated to his three objectives, those being a) retrieving his pot of gold, which he believes Anniston has stolen, b) shining shoes for some reason and c) eradicating without trace any shred of dignity he or dwarves in general may ever have held in the public eye. Also, for the life of him he cannot do an Irish accent.
I did enjoy this - thanks for the recommendation! But I think I was laughing at it rather than with it. To the movie's credit though - the makeup was fantastic, the intentional comedy was pretty funny and the tension was very well done!
So I guess... two and a half Randy Newman songs out of five.
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Post by Knightfall on Oct 15, 2011 6:30:42 GMT 1
lol! I don't know why I liked that movie so much. Not because it was good, but because it was genuinely bad. The I think I saw one other one and it was pretty much the same premise. But who couldn't love a villain like that? Especially one played by a former Ewok.
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Post by Battlechantress on Oct 16, 2011 5:07:36 GMT 1
If you want to see ol' Nick Cage be cast in a movie that he's totally wrong for, there's "Season of the Witch". There aren't any moments that cause unintentional hilarity like "THE BEES!" but it's still a bad movie that... isn't all that scary. I'm still surprised that it hasn't aired on Sci Fi yet. Hmm. I can't recommend "Cloverfield" because that movie has nothing to redeem it whatsoever. Let's face it: if you're shouting at the screen for the characters to fucking die already and it's not even halfway over, you're watching a downright terrible film. It was two hours of my life that I would sue to get back if it weren't for the fact that I didn't have to pay to see it in the first place. "Manos: the Hands of Fate". Might have already seen that one, but it ranks up there with "Plan 9" if you haven't. Now for some real oldies that I have a fondness for. Sure, the effects are terrible, but this was the kind of stuff I could sit and watch with my grandmother on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid. If you want high concept stuff, well... this list probably isn't it. "The Crime of Dr. Crespi" is a 1930s piece where a mad doctor wants to bury a rival alive. Why? Does it really matter? "Alias John Preston" is from... the 1950s, I think. It's a "Jekyll and Hyde" type of story, but it doesn't start off that way. I *think* the next one is called "The Uninvited". I remember reading on the case that it came out in 1929, but IMDB says it came out in 1944 (or at least the only other movie by that name that shows up did- not including the crappy Emily Browning flick from two years ago). My mom gave me a VHS copy of the film years ago and said it was one of her personal favorites. It's not quite "horror", just a ghost story, but the effects hold up quite well considering the movie's age. If you want bad 70s horror film badness, there's always "Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman". Oh, hello hallucinations. I should stop typing now.
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