Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,445
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Sept 30, 2019 20:30:32 GMT -5
I capped tonight off by watching Andy Milligan’s The Ghastly Ones. Appropriately titled. I love how in Miligan flicks he does these jarring transitions that are obviously just the cameraman haphazardly whirling the camera around. Apparently Stephen King once described this as, “The work of morons with cameras” which even I think is a bit harsh. Despite not being very good I’d still rate it above another Miligan gem I watched recently, The Body Beneath. The story of this one is a bit easier to follow and is less excessive in its use of unsexy sex. Also, the ending of The Ghastly Ones is much better than The Body Beneath with a genuine attempt made at a twist. Whereas The Body Beneath closes with a long speech that sees the movie stop like a car running out of gas. I mentioned this in my video review of The Ghastly Ones dvd,Milligan would include in the scripts the word "Swirl". Which meant anytime there was a bunch of violence happening Andy would spin the camera around! I am guessing you got the SWV dvd of Ghastly Ones, did you watch the other film on the DVD yet?
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Sept 30, 2019 21:05:30 GMT -5
I capped tonight off by watching Andy Milligan’s The Ghastly Ones. Appropriately titled. I love how in Miligan flicks he does these jarring transitions that are obviously just the cameraman haphazardly whirling the camera around. Apparently Stephen King once described this as, “The work of morons with cameras” which even I think is a bit harsh. Despite not being very good I’d still rate it above another Miligan gem I watched recently, The Body Beneath. The story of this one is a bit easier to follow and is less excessive in its use of unsexy sex. Also, the ending of The Ghastly Ones is much better than The Body Beneath with a genuine attempt made at a twist. Whereas The Body Beneath closes with a long speech that sees the movie stop like a car running out of gas. I mentioned this in my video review of The Ghastly Ones dvd,Milligan would include in the scripts the word "Swirl". Which meant anytime there was a bunch of violence happening Andy would spin the camera around! I am guessing you got the SWV dvd of Ghastly Ones, did you watch the other film on the DVD yet? Not yet, but I’m planning to tomorrow! I’ll probably hold off on the audio commentary and some bonus features until November so I can watch more Full horror movies in October
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,445
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Oct 1, 2019 1:32:11 GMT -5
31 Days of Horror Day 01 Maximum Overdrive TITLE-Maximum Overdrive SOURCE-Blu Ray R I first saw this film not long after it hit theaters. I was already a Stephen King fan. But hadn't read the short story this film is based on. After seeing the film I got a ride to the local library to get the collection of short stories Trucks,that's the title of the story,was published in. And the entire next week in study Hal I read that collection. Wow where do I start...this is the first film King directed. And IIRC the only film he had directed. Being a huge rock music fan King got ACDC to do the entire soundtrack to this movie. And it is a really good soundtrack. Well enough rambling what is this film all about? A comet passes close to Earth. Somehow,this is never explained, this causes most machines to become sentient. Our lead is Emilio Estevez. A guy on parole who works at a truck stop. And the story is all about a bunch of people now trapped at the truck stop. All because a fleet of 18 wheelers have surrounded the place.The main villain is a huge 18 wheeler with a giant Green Goblin face on the front grill. I have liked this film since I first saw it decades ago. And while it is nothing groundbreaking it is worth seeing. Maximum Overdrive gets a B-. For a longer version of this review Click here
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,445
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Oct 1, 2019 1:38:28 GMT -5
Also got a buddy that writes these great long reviews every day in October. Been trying to get him to join here and a few other forums,but after he had a really bad experience at a forum,Seth Drakin will know which forum,CodyLL has sworn off forums. The Ghoul 1933His stuff is so well done and I think he needs way more people reading them. But he doesn't do social media or forums so these reviews he spents lots of time on don't get as much attention as they should.
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Post by The 1Watcher Experience on Oct 1, 2019 16:10:52 GMT -5
Are you guys making a new thread for your October Halloween movies marathon or are you posting them in here? I remember there being a thread last year and I have a list of movies to watch so I’d contribute again this year if you’re going to post a thread for it.
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Oct 1, 2019 16:34:08 GMT -5
Are you guys making a new thread for your October Halloween movies marathon or are you posting them in here? I remember there being a thread last year and I have a list of movies to watch so I’d contribute again this year if you’re going to post a thread for it. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d definitely be down for a thread just for this
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,445
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Oct 1, 2019 17:20:10 GMT -5
Are you guys making a new thread for your October Halloween movies marathon or are you posting them in here? I remember there being a thread last year and I have a list of movies to watch so I’d contribute again this year if you’re going to post a thread for it. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d definitely be down for a thread just for this Works for me.
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Post by prettynami on Oct 1, 2019 19:23:03 GMT -5
Woo, time to get this show started.
1. "Bio-Zombie" (1998) - It's like a reverse Hong Kong version of Dawn of the Dead! People are trying to escape an infestation of zombies in a mall! It operates under the idea that it is a horror/comedy... A bit more on that later.
The basic plot is that some random guys (I guess we are to assume they are military guys since one of them is like in an airline pilot uniform lolol) are trying to import some sweet sweet bio-weapons from Iraq! They receive a bottle of soda laced with the potent bio-weapon, but a demonstration model breaks free killing two of the Hong Kong guys as the third guy flees in terror! Meanwhile, our protagonists, two "losers", named Invincible Woody and Crazy Bee, who work in a mall shop that sells VCDs (Oh man, does that bring back memories) are going about their day; illegally filming stuff in the theatre to copy (This is the movies intro, at first I thought the whole movie would be in this style and I groaned audibly), hassling their own customers and the various other shop owners, and trying to fix and deliver their shady boss's car. There is a lot of characters development around these two dudes, seemed like 50 percent of the movie was just them doing stuff before, and partially during, the zombie outbreak. We learn they are wannabe gangsters swimming in a sea of other wannabee gangsters and people miserable with their life. Luckily, they are comically inept at everything and are total morons.
Eventually, they accidentally run over the fleeing airline pilot guy, who stammers out "soda" while dying, so thinking they are fulfilling his dying wish they force feed him half the bottle of bio-weapon! They get the car back to the parking garage where they work and find that they dead guy they were keeping in the trunk has disappeared. They then continue to go about their day; including selling some of the dead guys property, mugging a love interest (what), then blackmailing the mugging victim and her friend (Her name is Rolls and her friends name is Jelly) into getting them dinner at a mall sushi place (Which employs a chef who is interested in her). The zombie wants his property back, so breaks into a store that buys illegal goods. Then the sushi chef flees to the bathroom thinking Woody is taking advantage of Rolls (he is) and is then attacked by zombie. Woody and Bee are then held up by security and police (After they get in a scuffle with the store owner they sold the stolen loot to) while the zombie outbreak takes full effect! Can they escape!?
Structure wise, this movie is a pretty slow burn. It takes awhile to get to the outbreak, and even when it does happen there aren't many zombies for 75 percent of it (Just a half dozen or so), then suddenly there is a horde of them! Bee and Woody are pretty entertaining and the character work is probably the best part of the movie. The plot synopsis makes them sound pretty slimy, but they more or less bungle into a series of misunderstandings. That's where the comedy comes in, I guess. It's not a laugh out loud funny type movie, more like a bemused chuckle kind of movie; includes stuff like split-screen gags, some video game parody gags (That sorta come out of nowhere), and a pretty funny exchange of dialogue about gang backup (The one shop keeper threatens Woody and Bee to pay him back for breaking into his store, if they don't he will send his gang after them. He calls the gang and then the gang calls their cheap help because the shopkeeper is so unimportant they don't want to be bothered - that cheap help is Woody and Bee). The horror is fairly weak through most of it, but there are a few parts that are set up in such a way that there is decent tension. The movie is a strange roller-coaster of comedy, horror, and like serious drama thrown in at the end... Which I guess it doesn't exactly hit any of them out of the park.
The colors, cinematography, and film quality make it look like an Asian horror movie from the 80s. Maybe the director was trying to give that feel, I don't know. The sets are pretty limited, like one mall hallway (That if you have like a local Asian market that has non-foodstall stores installed where you live it looks just like that, its disturbing), a security room, a parking garage, a few stores, and like an empty warehouse for the bio-weapon trade sequence. They do a pretty good job of maximizing the sets though, the mall feels pretty big but after awhile you certainly get a "Shakma" feeling that combines with an inability to figure out the layout of the place. I think the direction and shot selection are pretty good for this kind of Asian cinema, so that is a plus.
The special effects are pretty terrible. Most of the zombies are of the grey skin-tone with darkened eyes variety. The initial one must have looked super terrible, because they keep applying some strange doubling effect to it whenever it is shown (A vomit inducing doubling effect). There are a couple of good, voluminous, and meaty blood splatters; some okay drill work; and a few decapitations (None of which look spectacular, but some of them have an interesting context). Probably the most cringe inducing thing is when they pry open a zombie police officer's mouth to get his hand-cuff key out. There is a lot of "just of screen and not shown" deaths, that might drive some horror fans up a wall.
The ending though. It's in-line with most other zombie movies, but the sort of lightheartedness of most of this movie sorta makes it odd.
I'd give this one a 2.5 out of 5. It wasn't boring, the characters were fun and fairly memorable - but thoroughly average (or even bad) in many of its other aspects.
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Post by prettynami on Oct 1, 2019 19:27:05 GMT -5
31 Days of Horror Day 01 Maximum Overdrive TITLE-Maximum Overdrive SOURCE-Blu Ray R I first saw this film not long after it hit theaters. I was already a Stephen King fan. But hadn't read the short story this film is based on. After seeing the film I got a ride to the local library to get the collection of short stories Trucks,that's the title of the story,was published in. And the entire next week in study Hal I read that collection. Wow where do I start...this is the first film King directed. And IIRC the only film he had directed. Being a huge rock music fan King got ACDC to do the entire soundtrack to this movie. And it is a really good soundtrack. Well enough rambling what is this film all about? A comet passes close to Earth. Somehow,this is never explained, this causes most machines to become sentient. Our lead is Emilio Estevez. A guy on parole who works at a truck stop. And the story is all about a bunch of people now trapped at the truck stop. All because a fleet of 18 wheelers have surrounded the place.The main villain is a huge 18 wheeler with a giant Green Goblin face on the front grill. I have liked this film since I first saw it decades ago. And while it is nothing groundbreaking it is worth seeing. Maximum Overdrive gets a B-. For a longer version of this review Click hereThis is one of my mom's favorite movies... But she hates Steven King. Granted, I don't think she knows he had so much (or anything) to do with it... But it makes me laugh just thinking about it. She also loves the "Running Man" which is based on one of his books.
Such a fun premise for a movie! And the green goblin truck is so memorable.
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Post by Jumpin' Jesse Walsh on Oct 1, 2019 20:45:00 GMT -5
My review of The Killer Shrews (1959) (in my ongoing October focus on "creature features")
There’s no better way to sum up The Killer Shrews other than you get out what you put in. If you can soak up all of the campiness and unintentional hilarity (and the folks at MST3K certainly did), then you’ll love this. If you’re expecting a low-budget shit show no different than a billion other monster flicks of the era, then, well, you’re not wrong there, either.
Fortunately, I identify with the former. Also, compared to others of its type, it experienced far more commercial success than you’d think. Some international markets even wanted a piece of its dogs-as-rodents saga back in the day. That, and it’s lived forever on the cheapie horror DVD circuit, where you can probably find it on “50 Classic Chillers” in your local Walmart bargain bin. Props, I guess, for somehow enduring despite being made with a budget of precisely one nickel.
And, wow, that budget really shows. I feel like we’re supposed to get the impression the actual island is some sort of an exotic locale, which is hilarious because I’ve seen town beaches with more intrigue. The killer shrews are obviously just dogs in drag. Just imagine your own dog covered in bed sheets and you’ll get the overall effect here. The house is complete with the saddest mini bar you’ll ever see, though I must say it’s quite the late ‘50s touch for the characters to unwind for a cocktail during unfathomable peril.
The characters are hilariously awful. A highlight comes when Ingrid Goude expresses disbelief that James Best hasn’t questioned about her Swedish accent yet (um, what?). Speaking of Best, it feels like he’s in The Dukes of Hazzard long before it even aired, spotting out one hokey line after another until he sucks face with Goude in a particularly groan-inducing moment. The real gem is Ken Curtis as Jerry, a complete disaster of a person who is prone to drunken fits of paranoia and jealousy. Genuinely awful is the treatment of Mario and Griswold, a pair of token racial caricatures who only exist to be dispatched by our dog rat friends. I know I shouldn’t be surprised a film of this era would have that dynamic at play, but it’s still not a cute look.
So, yeah, that’s The Killer Shrews. It’s under 70 minutes so you can just swallow it and move on. It hurries along okay, and there’s at least some semblance of action by the end, so it’s not a painful watch or anything. The shrews may be killer, but the movie itself is far from fatal.
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Post by The 1Watcher Experience on Oct 1, 2019 21:53:33 GMT -5
So I went back through this thread and last year's 31 days of horror was done on here. I thought it was a separate thread but that must have been the year before. So I’ll be back throughout this month with some reviews of my 31 movies right here. I haven’t decided on a theme yet. Last year turned out to be a mix of Italian horror, recent movies I hadn’t seen and the Phantasm series. There's definitely going to be some more recent movies again so I’ll give some spoiler warnings when I get to those.
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Chainsaw
T
A very BAD man.
It is what it is
Posts: 90,480
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Post by Chainsaw on Oct 1, 2019 22:03:35 GMT -5
First movie watched for HorrorTober was The Ranger, a movie I've been wanting to watch for a while, but only now have gotten around to. A friend of mine helped produce it, and I love supporting her work. It's a pretty straightforward story about a group of punks that are carrying a ton of drugs who are on the run from the cops after their leader stabs an officer trying to bust them. They all go to the cabin of the uncle of Chelsea (Chloë Levine), our main protagonist. On the way there, they run into the titular Ranger (Jeremy Holm), a man who is not only disturbed but also has a history with Chelsea. As the group arrive at the cabin, Chelsea starts flashing back to a fateful event that involved her uncle and her, long buried memories come bubbling back to the surface, and how the Ranger is tied to her. As her friendship with the wild punks starts to fracture, The Ranger makes his presence known. The movie's pretty standard slasher fare, as the Ranger starts to cut a bloody swath through them, but there's some fun and stomach churning kills and setpieces. Nothing that really reinvents the wheel, but it definitely wears it's 80's horror love on it's sleeve. The really shining part is the performances, everyone is game, Chloë Levine in particular is wonderful as the moody Chelsea, and one of the cooler things is that two of the punks are gay and in an relationship with each other. You really care about the characters, despite their not really getting a lot of time to develop their characters. I just wish they had dove a little bit more into the punk subculture and relationships between the characters, we need more punk horror movies that hearken back to stuff like Return Of The Living Dead and Class Of Nune 'Em High.
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Post by The 1Watcher Experience on Oct 1, 2019 22:57:02 GMT -5
Knock Knock (2015) - I just found out about this movie so I decided to check it out. This movie is directed and produced by Eli Roth so I expected it to be a bit off the rails. Keanu Reeves is a family man that works from home. He has a wife that’s an artist that doesn’t seem too into him and he’s the father of two kids. They go away for the weekend and he stays home to get his work done. Later that night it’s raining and he hears knocking at the door, hence the title. There are two girls saying they’re lost and that they’re trying to find a party. One of those girls is played by Ana de Armas who I recognized from War Dogs and Blade Runner 2049. She’s also going to be in the next James Bond movie. She’s definitely got star quality between her looks and her acting. Expect to see a lot more of her. The other girl played the lead in a previous Eli Roth movie called The Green Inferno. Anyway, Keanu invites them in when they ask to use his computer to look up the address. Turns out they’re far away from where they wanted to be so he calls them an uber. They have 45 minutes until it arrives. In that time he’s answering questions about his family, getting them robes, putting their clothes in the dryer, making them tea, etc. They’re flirting with him along the way. The part that was odd to me was when the uber was five minutes away and he still hadn’t taken their clothes out of the dryer so they could get dressed and be ready to leave. He sees that the uber has arrived and goes to find the girls. They’re taking a shower together and he tells them they have to go. They seduce him and have a wild three way. The uber leaves. The next morning he wakes up alone but finds them making a mess in the kitchen. He gets angry and tells them to leave but they won’t. He finally convinces them to have him drive them home. Later that night they break into his home and knock him out. He wakes up tied to his bed and that’s when the real crazy stuff begins. Vandalism, threats, torture, games, visitors popping by and ultimately the reveal as to why all of this is happening. It’s a pretty solid pay off to a story that keeps you on your toes wondering what will happen next. It’s definitely worth a watch.
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Oct 1, 2019 23:07:52 GMT -5
So I went back through this thread and last year's 31 days of horror was done on here. I thought it was a separate thread but that must have been the year before. So I’ll be back throughout this month with some reviews of my 31 movies right here. I haven’t decided on a theme yet. Last year turned out to be a mix of Italian horror, recent movies I hadn’t seen and the Phantasm series. There's definitely going to be some more recent movies again so I’ll give some spoiler warnings when I get to those. As of now I’m focusing on Something Weird, Hammer Horror, and Full Moon stuff. I had a triple feature today comprised of Seeds of Sin, The Mummy (1959), and Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964). Probably going to finish up the Mummy quadrilogy tomorrow if I have time
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Post by The 1Watcher Experience on Oct 1, 2019 23:48:08 GMT -5
Crawl (2019) - This is a relatively new movie so spoilers ahead. Teresa from the Maze Runner trilogy is the daughter of Vince from the last two Maze Runner movies. Guess the casting agent really liked the Maze Runner movies. It starts off with a flashback. The daughter is a swimmer and her father is her coach. He’s telling her she’s an apex predator in a pep talk. You know that’s going to come into play later considering this is a movie about CGI alligators. There’s a category 5 hurricane on the way and the daughter is out looking for her father. She finally finds him injured in the crawl space on his old house. Cue the CGI alligators. They avoid the alligators, fight the alligators and eventually escape the house. She has to get to a boat and out swim the alligators but before she does she let’s the audience know, “I’m an apex predator!” because the CGI wasn’t cheesy enough. There’s a decent climax but it’s nothing must see. If you’re that interested in seeing an alligator movie with bad CGI effects, this one is for you.
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Post by prettynami on Oct 1, 2019 23:57:12 GMT -5
Knock Knock (2015) - I just found out about this movie so I decided to check it out. This movie is directed and produced by Eli Roth so I expected it to be a bit off the rails. Keanu Reeves is a family man that works from home. He has a wife that’s an artist that doesn’t seem too into him and he’s the father of two kids. They go away for the weekend and he stays home to get his work done. Later that night it’s raining and he hears knocking at the door, hence the title. There are two girls saying they’re lost and that they’re trying to find a party. One of those girls is played by Ana de Armas who I recognized from War Dogs and Blade Runner 2049. She’s also going to be in the next James Bond movie. She’s definitely got star quality between her looks and her acting. Expect to see a lot more of her. The other girl played the lead in a previous Eli Roth movie called The Green Inferno. Anyway, Keanu invites them in when they ask to use his computer to look up the address. Turns out they’re far away from where they wanted to be so he calls them an uber. They have 45 minutes until it arrives. In that time he’s answering questions about his family, getting them robes, putting their clothes in the dryer, making them tea, etc. They’re flirting with him along the way. The part that was odd to me was when the uber was five minutes away and he still hadn’t taken their clothes out of the dryer so they could get dressed and be ready to leave. He sees that the uber has arrived and goes to find the girls. They’re taking a shower together and he tells them they have to go. They seduce him and have a wild three way. The uber leaves. The next morning he wakes up alone but finds them making a mess in the kitchen. He gets angry and tells them to leave but they won’t. He finally convinces them to have him drive them home. Later that night they break into his home and knock him out. He wakes up tied to his bed and that’s when the real crazy stuff begins. Vandalism, threats, torture, games, visitors popping by and ultimately the reveal as to why all of this is happening. It’s a pretty solid pay off to a story that keeps you on your toes wondering what will happen next. It’s definitely worth a watch. I saw the trailer for this. The trailer made it look super cheese, but this review peeks my interest. I might see if I can get a copy to force one of my friends to watch, sounds like it might be right up his ally.
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Post by The 1Watcher Experience on Oct 2, 2019 0:00:18 GMT -5
Green Room (2015) - A punk band ends up getting shafted at a gig and the guy who set them up recommends another venue for them to play at. The place turns out to be a neo nazi bar. As they’re leaving from there they see the body of a girl who’s been stabbed on the floor. They’re held by the people running the bar in the green room, the room entertainers usually wait in before they go on stage, hence the name of the movie. They end up locking themselves in the room out of fear to being witnesses to a crime and what could happen to them next. Patrick Stewart shows up as the bar owner and the leader of the neo nazis to negotiate. They don’t seem too eager to cooperate so things go off the rails and Stewart orders them to be killed. That’s when things really pick up. I was hoping for a much more sinister performance by Stewart but he plays his role pretty straight. It takes about a half hour or so to hook you but it gets good once it does. It’s worth a watch.
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Post by prettynami on Oct 2, 2019 0:15:04 GMT -5
Made tonight a double feature so here goes:
2. "The Monster of Piedras Blancas" (1959). Usual 1950s creature feature.
The plot centers around a string of deaths at a seaside town that has a legend of a deadly monster. Well, it turns out there is a deadly monster! A monster, which has been kept alive by the the local lighthouse keeper, who I guess had a lot of spare time on his hands. At first he fed the creature fish in its little cave, but later it developed a taste for MEAT SCRAPS... And then when someone else takes his meat scrap shipment from the local grocer before he can pick it up, his pet monster goes insane with the THIRST FOR MEAT. Or something.
The movie takes awhile to pick up, but they do a pretty good job in the first half laying it on thick with the lighthouse keeper. The monster doesn't officially appear until over half way through the movie, mostly being kept in the shadows (or as a shadow) up until that point. Oh, but what a first appearance, strolling across the set with a loped off bloody head (Which was quite a shock, considering the year this was made)! The monster itself is apparently thrown together from various other suits, but it has some cool elements. The hands look cool, and the quality of the body isn't terrible for one of these types of movies... But the head, THE HEAD. The monster's face looks like a pig made love to a head of cabbage.
The characters are really weird. Like why does the lighthouse guy want to keep a monster? Why when he tells his daughter about the monster he keeps that has been going around killing people lately does she act like he just told her he had pancakes for breakfast? And then there just happens to be a bunch of scientist men about who can link its scales to an ancient amphibian!
Oh, and it has one of your Z grade 1950s monster movie endings; where after spending 75% of the movie wonder what it is, they spend 10 or so minute chasing it, 10 minutes cornering it. 30 seconds shooting it. Roll "THE END". Lolol. Most of the movie looks pretty drab, particularly the sets. The bar the daughter works at and the grocers store look like literal redresses of each other, and everyone seems to live in a shack. But there is a battle on and in a lighthouse that looks pretty cool.
Still, the movie doesn't drag as much as some B&W monster movies, probably mostly due to a nice crisp run-time. So if you want to watch a guy in a rubber suit slink around killing townsfolk for a little over an hour, this is the movie for you! I'd give it a 2 out of 5; not good, but certainly not terrible.
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Post by The 1Watcher Experience on Oct 2, 2019 0:23:59 GMT -5
The Babysitter (2017) - A 12 year old boy named Cole is being bullied by some kids until his dream girl babysitter named Bee shows up and scares them off. Bee is played by Samara Weaving. I’ve never heard of her before. She’s a solid actress and she’s very attractive. I was tempted to make a joke that she’d be the person they call when Margot Robbie is busy but I think she has more potential than that. Cole’s parents decide to stay at a hotel overnight so Bee is babysitting Cole. They have a lot of fun hanging out together but it’s getting late so Cole has to go to bed. He gets a text from a friend of his encouraging him to stay up and see if Bee has a boyfriend come over for some fun. Bee tries to give Cole some alcohol to knock him out but he kayfabes it and doesn’t drink it. Cole ends up hearing voices downstairs and sees Bee with some friends playing spin the bottle. To Cole’s horror, Bee kills one of them while playing the game. It turns out that they’re members of a cult and needed a sacrifice. Cole retreats to his room where he calls 911 and pretends to be asleep. They go to his room to take some of his blood and leave. Cole tries to escape out the window but Bee never actually left the room. Cole wakes up tied to a chair surrounded by the cult. The police arrive and things get real messy from there. It winds up being Cole against the cult for the rest of the movie. There are definitely some Home Alone elements at work here. I’d say it’s more of a comedic horror movie but it’s well done and fun to watch. Stick around for a midway end credits scene. If you’re in the mood for some evil hot babysitter action, this one is for you.
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Post by DSR on Oct 2, 2019 0:38:13 GMT -5
I started my month-long salute to 2010s horror with THE CONJURING (2013) the first in a series of films about supernatural entities. It was directed by James Wan, who also directed SAW and INSIDIOUS, which both also became multi-film franchises, so I think Mr. Wan counts as a modern-day Master of Horror.
A husband (Ron Livingston, OFFICE SPACE ) his wife (Lili Taylor, THE ADDICTION and the 1999 version of THE HAUNTING), and their five daughters have recently moved into a new home. Soon enough, said new home experiences all manner of weirdness: a rotting meat smell wanders through the house at night, clocks all stop at the same time, strange bruises appear on the wife's body when she wakes up in the morning. These instances slowly ratchet up, and when no logical explanation can be found, the family turns to Ed (Patrick Wilson, HARD CANDY and AQUAMAN) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga, THE DEPARTED and the 2019 GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS) Warren, a married couple of paranormal investigators.
The Warrens were real people and their investigations into the other-worldly have been the basis for films in the past, most notably THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979). Skeptics have sought to debunk the Warrens' claims IRL, but the movie version presents what they do as the genuine article. Our lead actors are all presented as likable people, so even though the film doesn't come out swinging with ghostly activity, you find yourself enjoying getting to know these families.
Not a particularly gory film, the supernatural action is on par with the original POLTERGEIST. Though now we have CGI! HOORAY! [/sarcasm] There are a couple of jumpscare-type moments, but I think Wan does a good job of building tension in those scenes so it's not just a ghost popping out at you from outta nowhere.
The film is enjoyable, but nowhere near a masterpiece. At the very least, I'm not dreading revisiting this cinematic universe (I've got several other films from it lined up already).
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