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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2014 20:28:17 GMT -5
www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=14235I know people aren't so keen on the Halloween collection, but here's what it'll look like. There will be a 10-disc regular edition and a 15-disc special edition. The SE will contain the network TV versions of Halloween 1 and 2, along with the Curse of Michael Myers Producer's Cut and the Zombieween unrated editions. Sucks that when I saw the art for the SE, I thought we were getting a replica statue of the Halloween pumpkin from the opening credits of the first two movies. Turns out, it's just artwork. But awesome news... www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=14240A trailer for the Texas Chain Saw Massacre 4K restoration re-release.
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Post by Kash Flagg on Jun 13, 2014 21:03:51 GMT -5
Cheap plug, I reviewed the awful 1994 Dirk Benedict film Demon Keeper on my blog. Click the Z'dar to read it.
Right now watching Argento's Sleepless from 2001. Never seen someone killed with a musical instrument before tonight.
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Post by DSR on Jun 13, 2014 23:59:26 GMT -5
So this is the first time since the board developed the "100 pages to a thread" rule. We still gonna wait 'til this one closes for some Horror Hall of Fame inductions, or just do them on pages 30, 60, 90 (provided we get to those numbers before...y'know, all of society collapses or whatever)?
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jun 17, 2014 9:36:04 GMT -5
So this is the first time since the board developed the "100 pages to a thread" rule. We still gonna wait 'til this one closes for some Horror Hall of Fame inductions, or just do them on pages 30, 60, 90 (provided we get to those numbers before...y'know, all of society collapses or whatever)? I kind of just planned on writing them sometime later in the thread...maybe around page 50-ish? We'll see when we get there. In the meantime, I've got a new blog review. 1981 Joseph Zito Starring Vicky Dawson, Farley Granger, Lawrence Tierney and Christopher Goutman We're going back to the future with this one. Nowadays, horror movies are about any and everything but what this movie represents - gritty, non-stylish, non-polished and decidedly non-professional pure slasher. One of the many, many, many films to come out of the early '80s slasher boom, The Prowler is a movie that is considered a cult classic by some and a forgotten entry in the period by others. My opinion falls somewhere in the middle. I certainly didn't hate it, but at the same time, I've always been a little perplexed how there are a lot of people out there who hold this up as some kind of minor slasher classic. To be sure, if you look up "slasher" in the dictionary, this movie would be a pretty good example. You've got the past evil, the teaser reel murder scene, increasingly gory stuff thrown throughout the proceedings, a few hot chicks to gawk at, a masked killer. That should about cover it. Where this movie goes a slightly different route is going with a genuine whodunnit ending, something that slasher predecessors Halloween (where we knew that Michael Myers was the big bad going into the rounds of mayhem) and Friday the 13th (come on, how much of a mystery was this movie? We didn't even MEET Mrs. Voorhees until the third act) didn't have. More on that later. Anyway, let's start with the past evil. The movie starts off at the conclusion of World War II with a young woman named Rosemary writing a letter to her soldier beau and stating that she can't wait for him anymore. And I think you know where this is going. Rosemary and her new boyfriend are summarily murdered at the town's Graduation Dance, and thus concludes the introduction. Flash forward 35 years, where the same town is holding its first Graduation Dance (capitalized because the movie's signs do the same thing) since the tragedy. The movie's main characters are introduced at this point. Your central protagonist is college newspaper writer Pam MacDonald. Pam is played by Vicky Dawson, who does a decent enough job in the Jamie Lee Curtis role. There is an ever-so-slight romantic subplot as Pam goes the through the minefield of emotions (/tomatoes for bad metaphor) with Deputy Mark London (Christopher Goutman), a decent-enough guy who happens to have the misfortune of being pulled away to dance by the movie's requisite slut character. This is somewhere in the top 20 things that horror characters should not indulge in. In between, we meet a few other folks connected to the dance, most of them consisting of Pam's various college acquaintances. This is about time where the murdering begins, and it's this section of the movie that shines the most brightly. The makeup in this flick was done by Tom Savini who I've already yacked about endlessly, and not to beat a redundant horse, but he always does a fantastic job. Savini himself that the makeup FX on this film were his personal favorite batch, and while I disagree, it's very good, sick, visceral stuff. The highlight is undoubtedly the dude who gets a bayonet directly through the top of his head, the camera lingering and lingering and lingering until his eyes roll back up inside his head, blood dripping out of the bottom of his jaw all the while. Since the flick's opening murders weren't graphic at all, this really catches the viewer off guard and works well. The mystery aspect of the movie is handled in a lukewarm fashion by director Jospeh Zito, the guy who also helmed Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (a.k.a. the greatest slasher movie ever made). There's an obvious red herring in the form of Major Chatham (Laurence Tierney of Reservoir Dogs and approximately 9,000 other "gruff old bastard" roles), who is revealed to have a pretty substantial connection to the murders of 1945. Suffice to say, it's a pretty safe bet that this dude is not, in fact, the man in the Army fatigues being the impetus behind all the creative murdering. Thanks to one scene in this movie (and I'll leave it up to you, loyal reader, to discern just what the scene is), the murderer in this movie is telegraphed from a mile away, giving this movie a Roy Burns-style laugh factor that it probably didn't intend to have. Thus it is with The Prowler. It's not original in the slightest, but I'm a big proponent of the idea that movies at large and horror movies in particular don't have to break 89 levels of new ground in order to be resonant and effective as long as they are done well. This movie works on visceral and gross-out level, and has some intermittent sections where the character of Pam MacDonald manages to catch your eye and grab some emotion. Unfortunately, there are LONG sections that drag in this movie. Like, worse than Al Pacino's scenes in Gigli level of dragging. Couple that with the fact that aside from the murders there just ain't a whole lot of memorable stuff that happens in this movie and the flick is middling at best. Love the ending, however. ** out of ****. Get it on the cheap if you're a big slasher fan, pass otherwise.
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Post by DSR on Jun 17, 2014 14:34:27 GMT -5
Nice! Always wanted to check out The Prowler, just haven't gotten around to it yet.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jun 24, 2014 8:52:09 GMT -5
Accidentally deleted the Notepad file that I usually paste the reviews from, so just click the link in my sig if you're interested. This week, it's The Dead Zone (the 1983 film, not the TV show), which for my money is one of the best Stephen King adaptations of arguably his best book.
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Post by DSR on Jun 24, 2014 19:21:09 GMT -5
Yeah, The Dead Zone is really good. One of Walken's best.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 30, 2014 18:59:01 GMT -5
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jun 30, 2014 19:37:09 GMT -5
No joke, that series is what caused me to pretty much vanish from this thread AND stop writing my blog for the better part of six months. Individual film to individual film, they're not the WORST things I've ever seen, but running the gauntlet of the whole series in a short amount of time is an experience that I don't wish on anyone. New blog review is UP. 1982 Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace Starring Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin and Dan O'Herlihy We're still four months away from October, but for reasons known entirely only to the universe, I've been on a real Halloween kick lately. I've written a little fanfic treatment for a 1998/99-area remake, I've introduced the first two flicks to a good work buddy and I've gotten in a few online scrums with perhaps the most amazing phenomenon that I've ever come across - people who defend Rob Zombie's abominomical (?) bastardizations. It's safe to say that Carpenter's Shape of Evil plays a pretty big role in my life, and while I hold Jason Voorhees much closer to the heart and am nothing short of a teenage wasteland-esque fanboy for Kayako Saeki, nothing likely ever will hold a candle to the original two Halloween films when it comes to pure atmosphere, suspense, and awesome storytelling in the inner recesses of my mind (/Damien Demento). Which brings me to the movie in question today (/segue). I reviewed Halloween III: Season of the Witch many, many moons ago, but that was back when my reviews sucked, as opposed to the pinnachle of mediocrity that I've managed to achieve now. I'm ready to aim my 50/50 pistol at the most controversial entry in the series now. Time for some incredibly basic background info: Much like Friday the 13th Part V, this is a film that people either love or hate. To say it marked a radical departure for the series is the understatement of the century, because at least the aforementioned Friday flick had a guy who LOOKED like Jason. This film, on the other hand, is concerned about decidedly everything but Michael Myers, as John Carpenter's plan for the series at this point on was to do a different Halloween-themed story each year and leave the Myers arc closed. Having seen all of the films that come after this one, I can't help but think that I wished this particular film would have been more of a success. It's achieved a very loyal cult fandom in the years since, but at the time, the reaction against this movie was pretty vitriolic. As for me, I can pretty much take or leave this movie, so let's look at the reasons why and test my memory of the flick's plot. The movie opens with a toy shop owner being pursued by mysterious figures wearing business suits. After being placed in the care of Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins), the owner is summarily killed, and Challis takes it upon himself to investigate the man's mysterious death. It isn't soon after that he comes across Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin), the daughter of the shop owner and who also serves as the love interest and the recipient of my all-time favorite mid-love-making line of all time courtesy of Atkins (which would be "who cares?"). The two are able to trace the quickly developing mayhem to the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory and its oh-so-evil head Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy). Ruh-roh, Shaggy, looks like we've got the makings for a groovy mystery. Caution: spoilers ahead. As the movie's second act develops, Challis and Ellie are able to uncover a terrifying plot by Conal that has ties to Samhain itself. Yes, folks, it's not just a word that Michael Myers wrote on a blackboard. It seems that Conal and his men have managed to smuggle a fragment of Stonehenge across the Atlantic ocean and have implanted them into its large collection of Halloween masks that it has managed to unload on kids across the country. When the commercial airs on Halloween night, the chip will activate, killing the poor, unfortunate sap wearing the mask and turning their heads into a kind of snake-filled goo that spells bad news for anyone who just so happens to be around. OK, first of all: Ha. Now, I've seen Halloween III four-ish times in my life, and maybe I'm missing something, but the exact motive for such a thing isn't spelled out very well. To say nothing of some of the logical misgivings about this most complicated of plots, including sneaking a pretty hefty piece of Stonehenge out of its source and the whole time zone question when it comes to the mask activation. Then again, I'm also a huge fan of the previous two films in this franchise which proudly features a guy wearing a white mask who is inexplicably impervious to knives and bullets for no discernible reason, so my bitching may just be null and void. HOWEVER...it is worth noting that the third act of this film gets even more preposterous, with all sorts of twists being introduced about humans being replaced with robots and much more outward witchcraft connotations, so consider that more ammunition. Now for some criticism. Yay. First things first, this movie has an AMAZING score. The Myers films are noted for their iconic piano music, but this score is the stuff of legend. Gritty, memorable, and atmospheric. Sometimes I throw on the score just for some ambience in those 3-4 hours I spend surfing the web before work every night, it's that good. It's also got some major points in the acting department, as Tom Atkins is always aces in pretty much everything I've seen him in, including the horror classics The Fog, Creepshow and Night of the Creeps. You've got to admire any guy who once said that he would love to make a career out of being in just horror films. Nelkin is also very engaging as Ellie, and O'Herlihy, despite the subject matter of his character, is appropriately menacing as Conal. What I can't get into, though, is this movie's story. Unfortunately, that's kind of a big deal when it comes to a 90+ minute feature film. Everyone's milage varies, I know, but once the big evil plot of this movie becomes known roughly halfway through, I just think it gets eye-rollingly bad. There's more than a few laugh-out-loud moments for all the wrong reasons, many of them involving Cochran's army of android soldiers who patrol and guard his mask-making factory (the coup de grace in this theme coming in Challis' car during the movie's twist ending to end all twist endings). By that token, I'm well aware that there are plenty of people out there who really dig this story for commentary and consumerism and stuff, but all that nonsense is just boring as all get out to me, so I'll leave that particular conversation to the nine million other reviewers out there who enjoy spouting off about the economic implications of horror films from the 1980s. ** out of ****. There is some good stuff to be had in this film, but you have to wade through a lot of crap to get it.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jul 8, 2014 9:37:33 GMT -5
New blog review. For one of my childhood favorites, no less. 1988 Directed by Jon Hess Starring Corey Haim, Michael Ironside, Barbara Williams and Lala Sloatman Folks, it's time to take a trip back to 1993 for some boring life and times of Jon Lickness. One of my brother's friends borrowed us a tape containing the the John Candy-Dan Aykroyd flick The Great Outdoors...a favorite of mine from my very, very early childhood. Little did I know that I would wind up watching the movie that was recorded BEFORE it a whole lot more. Over the course of three months, I probably watched...um... Watchers a good 15 times. Something about it just really connected with the fourth grade version of me. I think what it was then was Corey Haim. I hadn't seen that many horror flicks before this one, but, kiddie version of Haim's License to Drive costar Corey Feldman in Gremlins notwithstanding, this was the only one I'd seen where the main hero was (a) a dude, and (b) a pretty damn cool dude who shot guns and had a hot girlfriend. Hell, I wanted to BE Corey Haim in this movie. I'm fairly certian that I'm the only person in the history of the world who has ever uttered that sentence. The flick starts in a top-secret government facility, where an explosion and fire sets two experimental animals free. One is a cute golden retriever, the other is a large, beastly biped that we only see in shadows during these early segments who seems to be tracking the dog. The dog is eventually able to outrun its pursuer and hide in a barn, where Travis Cornell (Haim) is busy attempting to mack it with his girlfriend Tracey (Lala Sloatman, who had gained a slight amount of traction at the time as a pop star and was dating Haim in real life). One beast attack later and the dog is in Travis' possession, and this is where the flick gets far more interesting. Travis discovers that the dog is extremely intelligent, able to understand English, communicate via typing (don't ask), and solve complex problems. It seems that the dog (which Travis creatively names "Furface") is a kind of government weapon. Meanwhile, an NSO Agent named Johnson (Michael Ironside, definitely one of the all-time greatest movie scumbags) has been assigned to track down the dog and keep the project under wraps. It isn't long before some deaths start piling up. The animals were designed with a kind of internal tracking device, meaning that the beast (called an "OXCOM" in the film, standing for Outside Experimental Combat Mammal) is able to psychically follow the dog, and since the much smaller, much cuter animal received far more adulation and attention in their government home, the OXCOM decidedly hates the dog and pretty much anyone and anyplace that it has come into contact with. This idea really is the story's ace, as the dog serves as a death sentence for anyone it comes across. There are some admittedly suspenseful moments that take place as the game of cat-and-mouse goes underway, as three of Travis' buddies bite the dust (somewhat humorously, when it comes to the requisite "nonathletic" character's attempts to get away on his Huffy) in the woods and the fate of police officers and staff members at Travis' high school. This stuff scared me as a kid, but for whatever reason, I just kept watching. The Watcher. [/tomatoes] The B story in this film heavily involves Ironside, and his various shady dealings including keeping a sedated Tracey prisoner and outright murdering people who have seen too much. I don't think that's too much of a spoiler; one look at this guy's face is pretty much all you need to know that he's EEEEVIL anyway. It's here where the movie loses a little bit of steam. Whenever the OXCOM and the dog aren't the main focus, we're privy to a bunch of characters who aren't particularly interesting. Call it a necessary evil. It might not have been the most logical thing in the world to have this movie be 90+ minutes of nonstop gigantic baboon murdering. All of it builds to a big showdown at a cabin owned by Travis' late father where he gets to utilize a rifle and all sorts of Home Alone-style traps in an admittedly suspenseful finale where both the OXCOM and Ironside are present. Anyway...this movie is based on a novel by Dean Koontz. A novel, it should be said, that I took the plunge in reading many years after my 11-year-old binge-watching sessions. And it...is...awesome. It ranks right up there with anything that I've read by Stephen King, and in some respects might be even better, because I can't remember any King book (with the possible exception of Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone) that had lead characters as likable. A lot of the criticism of this film seems to stem from the idea that it takes the concept of the book and essentially changes everything else, changing Travis from a 30-ish sympathetic widower to a cool teen and his love interest from an emotionally abused, attractive adult to Lala Sloatman. Yeah, this movie is NOT as good as the novel. And yeah, a critic who knows their movies will tell you that this flick is pretty bad, but I don't care. Call it nostalgia glasses or just being a moron. In my eyes, this concept really is something that is hard to screw up too badly. Well, if sticking with the VERY rough outline of the novel, anyway, because one of the sequels of this film essentially rips off Predator and might be one of the suckiest suckfests that ever did suck. This movie, though, has a cool hero, some solid kills, and a main villain in the OXCOM that freaked the holy hell out of me as a kid and still makes me occasionally think about it when I leave my house around 11:45 to go to work. No joke. *** out of ****. Highly recommended if you can find it on the cheap, which is a tall task these days.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jul 15, 2014 8:42:45 GMT -5
New blog post is UP. One of my middle-school favorites, for a multitude of reasons. 1997 Directed by Jim Gillespie Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe I've been on a big '90s kick lately, and there is definitely no movie that represents the late-'90s horror boom for me than I Know What You Did Last Summer. Sure, Scream came a few months before it, and horror scholars write all kinds of...uh...scholarly (read: long-winded and boring) essays about it, but this flick was mine, baby. Not in the least bit because of Jennifer Love Hewitt and the amazing clothes that the flick's wardrobe people managed to stuff her in for the vast duration of the running time, I probably watched this movie a good 25 times during its initial run on HBO, and I can still go back and revisit it every so often. Like Scream, the movie was scripted by Kevin Williamson, and was massively successful. Even better, it's based on a novel...one that I sought out back when this movie was new, and one that I found infinitely less interesting than what I got in the movie. If I remember correctly, the body count in the book is criminally low, and might have even been zero. Suffice to say, I've never felt compelled to go back and check. I've read more than a few comments from people online who napalm Kevin Williamson, and a lot of the points are justified, but his updating of an admittedly dated suspense novel from 1973 is a textbook example of how to take source material and make it better. Insert derogatory Rob Zombie comment here. Since the film has been parodied and referenced numerous times, I don't know if I have to get into the plot, but hell, here goes anyway. We're introduced to four perfectly happy and perfectly hot high school seniors - Julie (Hewitt, who radiates likability and girl-next-door charm in the role), her best friend Helen (Sarah Michelle Geller, in a performance that actually predated Buffy by a few months), Julie's boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and Helen's jocky boyfriend Barry (Ryan Phillippe). Sex is had, alcoholic beverages are shared, and within short order Ray accidentally hits and kills a pedestrian on a middle-of-nowhere road. After the obligatory close calls where they are almost found out, the four friends dispose of the body in the lake to avoid the incident mucking up their idyllic lives. Flash forward a year. Now a college freshmen, Julie returns home. The incident has stuck with her and, again, Hewitt really does do a fantastic job in these scenes that establish her character's moral compass. I've said this in passing a few times, but it really is a shame that she didn't do more horror flicks besides this and the amazingly craptacular sequel. Just imagine if, say, there was no Halloween H20, and we got a non-Rob Zombie and non-suck reboot at THAT time when horror was white-hot. With Love as Laurie Strode. Cue fireworks and confetti. Anyway, Julie's three friends are still in town - Helen, in the final week or so of her reign as the town's beauty queen, is still with Barry, while Ray works at the docks. Cue the random, unmarked note in her mailbox that reads "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and take your best guess as to where we're going from here. Unlike a lot of horror movies, I remember this flick for how much I genuinely enjoyed the characters, then and now. The scenes where they're doing things other than getting killed actually manage to hold my interest, and that's more than I can say for some films in the big three franchises. Gellar and Phillippe are the movie's beefcake couple, and it's Phillippe in particular who really dives into his role and turns Barry into one of the more memorable douches in horror. Secondly...I don't know why, but I've always been a sucker for horror movies that have a romantic subplot that is more than just window dressing, and the whole "Ray trying to get back with Julie" plot in this movie is done really well. It's one of those things that could have been suicidal if the acting was subpar, but both Hewitt and Prinze do their damndest to give the story emotional resonance. Quick aside - I've always been a HUGE mark for Freddie Prinze Jr., even back then when I was in junior high/high school and he did that string of crappy movies aimed at the teenybopper crowd after this flick became a huge hit. I've always been mystified that he never made the major leagues despite being both talented and handsome enough to do so. I always felt like he was just one good role away from hitting that big time. Then again, this movie is where he met his future wife whom he gets to bang to this day, so it's not like the guy failed at life. Where was I? Oh right, the escalating body count. While Julie and Helen go about piecing together the mystery of both the person they accidentally killed (on this newfangled thing called the internet) and the potential killer (in the backwood swamps), the mysterious, cloaked, hook-wielding killer is busy going about his business, and this movie does indeed have its share of money scenes. Admittedly, it does tread into Dark Knight territory at times with the villain's ability to predict exactly how people will act in given situations, but it's a minor complaint this time. The flick's two "main character" deaths don't disappoint in the slightest. You know, for a guy who wrote a slasher flick that seemed to sneer at other slasher flicks, Kevin Williamson certainly wasn't shy when it came to scripting the red stuff flying himself. Since I'm guessing the vast majority of people reading this have either seen this film or the numerous movies that make fun of it (the original Scary Movie being the most prevalent), my guess is that you've got your mind made up whether or not this is a good flick. Good is a relative term. I've got plenty of nostalgic love for I Know What You Did Last Summer...to say nothing of the sequel, which makes the story fifty times more unrealistic, turns the characters (including the ones left over from this film) into a bunch of unlikable doofs, and slathers on the manufactured hipness to the nth degree. You know, the annoying one. But enough about that. Of all the things that work in this movie, it's the performers that I like the best, and it does indeed make me a little sad that this time period featured such a good, talented, charismatic crop of young actors while today's stable of cardboard cutouts have left me so numb that I seriously don't even go to movies anymore. Oh, and it had an awesome soundtrack with a rocking version of Deep Purple's "Hush" by Kula Shaker. Youtube it. *** 1/2 out of ****. That's probably a higher rating than just about anyone else would give it, but f**k it. Joe Bob says check this one out.
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Post by DSR on Jul 15, 2014 10:13:05 GMT -5
I can think of 2 reasons, and they're both inside Jennifer Love Hewitt's shirt. Yes, I know I'm gross.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2014 11:28:59 GMT -5
I can think of 2 reasons, and they're both inside Jennifer Love Hewitt's shirt. Yes, I know I'm gross. I...I second you there. I'm sorry.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jul 22, 2014 9:39:21 GMT -5
Here's this week's new blog review. Does anyone in these threads ever watch Night Gallery or Thriller, btw? Those two series qualify as old-school creepy at its finest. 1969 Directed by Boris Sagal, Steven Spielberg (really), and Barry Shear Starring Roddy McDowall, Ossie Davis, Joan Crawford, Barry Sullivan, Tom Bosley, Richard Kiley and Sam Jaffe First things first - I've done plenty of lazy things here on the blog. One thing that I HAVEN'T slept through, though, is some kind of Twilight Zone retrospective/top 10 list. Maybe it's because it's been so ingrained into the pop culture, maybe it's because they replay all of the best episodes every July 4th and New Year's Eve on the SyFy channel, but, really, any kind of top 10 list for TZ is redundancy for redundancy's sake. All of the episodes that I would list are pretty much the exact same episodes that anyone else would, so it's pointless. Kind of like my "Top 10 horror villains" list from a few Halloweens back. Which brings me to Night Gallery. Rod Serling's sophomore series, and while everyone's milage varies, I love the hell out of the thing. As opposed to Twilight Zone, this series - while dealing with much of the same when it came to presenting thought-provoking morality tales - was much more horror and suspense-oriented. To say nothing of the style. I don't know this for a fact, but it wouldn't surprise me in the last bit if Serling instructed his directors to smoke, inhale, inject and absorb rectally every foreign substance on the planet before filming, because there are times when this can be one damn trippy show. In the good way. There's this bizarre, surreal, dreamlike quality to the show, the kind that can make some of the twists and final freeze-frames crop up in your mind at some inopportune moments. Verbal orgasm over. No, folks, we're not doing a top 10 list, although I WILL be doing some kind of retrospective on the series sometime in the future. What we're looking at today is the 1969 TV movie that pre-dated the series by a little over a year. I'm not sure if the original plan was for the TV movie to turn into a series, but it certainly set a good precedent. It begins with a great title sequence, followed by Serling introducing viewers to three different paintings representing three different stories (all written by Serling himself), making this officially an anthology film. This was the motif of the series, by the way, as these bizarre, abstract paintings served as the intro image before the story would start. It kicks off with a vengeance in Story #1 - "The Cemetery." Roddy McDowall is Jeremy Evans, black sheep of a wealthy family who needs only for his old man uncle to croak off before he inherits a fortune. Well, wouldn't you know it, soon enough the uncle turns up dead, and Jeremy is left in the creepy country house along with family servant Osmond Portifoy (Ossie Davis). Folks, McDowall just owns in this segment. Everything about his performance, from the overly flamboyant gestures to the vocal inflection just screams Douchebag with a capital D, and by the time the climax of this segment rolls around, you REALLY want this dude to get what he has coming to him. See, there's a painting of the house and the surrounding grounds on the main staircase. And as the days tick by, Jeremy notices that the painting seems to be changing. First, his uncle's tombstone is added to the family graveyard (and I always love family graveyards in these types of stories). Then, it opens. Then, a specter emerges. And I think you know where we're going from here. It's also a got a slam-bang double-twist at the end that surprised the holy f*** out of me, so three cheers on that front. Story #2 - "Eyes," where we get the directorial debut of one Steven Spielberg. It starts Joan Crawford as a woman who has been blind her entire life and has what is truly one of the more insidious schemes that I've seen in any movie of this type. For the mere price of $9,000, she is going to steal the vision of some sad-sack gambler, bamboozling and blackmailing her doctor in the process as well. The catch? She will only have vision for 12 hours, but she doesn't care. In her own words, she will be taking enough pictures with her eyes to last a lifetime. Reportedly, Crawford - an old-school actress all the way - wanted a more experienced director and was very wary of Spielberg, but Universal backed their guy, and it shows in just how well-handled this segment is. Despite how unlikable Crawford is here, fate plays truly one of the most cruel pranks that I've seen in any movie, and the way this handled from a visual perspective is disorienting and invigorating at the same time. Oh, and if anyone wants the ending to the Crawford-Spielberg dilemma, they got along famously on the set to the point that they actually stayed in contact for the remainder of Crawford's life. Story #3 - "The Escape Route." This one takes us to South America, where former Nazi war criminal Joseph Strobe (Richard Kiley) has been hiding out since high-tailing it from Germany in 1945. A chance meeting with a Holocaust survivor (Sam Joffe) is the lynchpin event that sets the plot in motion as all kinds of bad memories begin cropping up for Strobe, and the dialogue clues us in on just how much this guy enjoyed some of the atrocities that he had a hand in at Auschwitz. As opposed to the later TV series, the actual paintings that Serling introduces actually play a part in the stories themselves, and this one is no different as Strobe escapes from his reality by visiting a local art museum. This leads to an appropriately wicked ending twist that, while maybe a little predictable, is very good poetic justice and gives us one of the better ending-shot stills that the series would become famous for. And it's got a really funkadelic sequence where Joffe runs away from pursuers utilizing some pretty unintentionally hilarious freeze frames. I think it's pretty apparent, but I was a huge fan of this flick on the whole. I've seen the vast majority of the Night Gallery episodes in syndication, but these stories never crop up on the rotation, and seeing them for the first time in pristine quality was a real treat. The three stories compliment each other very well; you've got your eerie ghost story stuff, your wicked human evil and your internal mindf*** horror all rolled out in a convenient row. The stories themselves might be a little individually lacking in certain areas, but as a collective, they're awesome. If you've got eighteen bucks to spare, the first-season DVD of Night Gallery is worth picking up just for this movie alone. **** out of ****. For the record, that's the first perfect rating that Dave Meltzer has awarded since Punk-Cena at Money in the Bank!
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Post by DSR on Jul 22, 2014 17:34:00 GMT -5
I always see Thriller on the local retro station, but I'd be catching in the middle of an episode, so I flip to something else...then forget by the time the next episode starts.
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Post by greenlantern2814 on Jul 23, 2014 3:39:46 GMT -5
I had the first season of Night Gallery on DVD but I let a friend borrow it...and never saw it again.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2014 3:59:37 GMT -5
So I just watched this horror movie called SEED 2: NewBreed.
Quite possibly the worst modern horror movie I have ever seen...and I say quite possibly because I need to watch House of 1000 corpses just for comparison sake.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jul 23, 2014 11:57:43 GMT -5
So I just watched this horror movie called SEED 2: NewBreed. Quite possibly the worst modern horror movie I have ever seen...and I say quite possibly because I need to watch House of 1000 corpses just for comparison sake. I didn't even know there was a Seed 1. I'm considering myself lucky.
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Post by DSR on Jul 23, 2014 22:46:54 GMT -5
If you guys aren't watching it right now, I suggest you catch the replay of tonight's episode of Conan. Roger Corman is a guest (he directed Conan himself in the upcoming Sharktopus vs. Pterocuda), and he's just fantastic. I could listen to him tell on-the-set stories all day.
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Lick Ness Monster
Dennis Stamp
From the eerie, eerie depths of Lake Okabena
Posts: 4,874
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Post by Lick Ness Monster on Jul 29, 2014 8:24:33 GMT -5
New blog review is up. This is it - one of my favorite bad horror movies of all time. 1986 Directed by Lance Lindsay Starring C. Juston Campbell, Faye Bolt, John W. Smith, Taylor Kingsley and Marcia Linn Here's a review that I've been saving up for a long time. I've mentioned Star Crystal a few times in passing as one of my favorite bad movies of all time, and if you're looking for a flick that is bad in pretty much every way that a movie can be yet still be watchable just for the pure train wreck eye-bleeding quality of it all...look no further. The sheer level of stupidity on display in this flick is really something to behold, not the least of which is the fact that it pulls one of the most truly bizarre, unnecessary 180s in any horror movie that I've ever seen. If you can't tell, this is some movie. Released in 1986, I'm not entirely sure whether or not it had a theatrical release. There ain't a whole lot of information to be had about this movie on the interwebz, and since I really don't feel like spending thirty minutes scouring the globe for this precious information that my scores of loyal followers are clamoring for, I'm just going to stick with the mysterious approach. I like to think that this movie just appeared one day at some producers' doorstep, deposited like an unwanted child as the sound of the director's sad weeping was heard as he ran away, to be unleashed on video store shelves across the great fruited plain. The real story was probably 76% less dramatic. Anyway, the movie. Essentially, we've got an Alien ripoff that ends like a kind of spacified version of "Why Can't We Be Friends?" between the villain and his human would-be victims. Given that information, it's still waaaay weirder than you would ever expect. We spend the first 15 minutes with a group of astronauts (in the year 2032, no less) on an expedition to Mars who find a strange egg and bring it aboard their ship. Note to astronauts in science fiction films: this is never a good idea. The egg soon hatches, the baby alien scampering away and hiding somewhere on the ship, only for the astronauts to run out of oxygen and all die. So ends the introduction. And boy, was it fun. After this lovely little diversion, we meet the real group of main characters - ANOTHER group of astronauts on a rescue operation for the first group. We've got Roger (C. Juston Campbell, who is nowhere near as cool as C. Thomas Howell) and Adrian (Faye Bolt), the two lunkheads in charge who are the only people in the group who don't immediately stand out as future alien fodder. There's also Cal (John W. Smith), the resident ladies' man, and his two would-be conquests, Sherrie (Taylor Kingsley) and Billy (Marcia Linn). Fortunately, we don't spend much time with any of these characters with the exception of Roger and Adrian, but that's both a blessing and a curse. At least the other three are such ridiculous characters that they're laughable; Roger and Adrian are like even more boring love children of Randy Orton and The Miz. It isn't long before the alien starts to off the three disposable characters, covering them in a translucent slime (which is shown in all of its slimy glory) and skeletonizing them. We don't see much of the alien in these sections of the film, as the take the "less is more" Jaws style approach to building the suspense. Either that or the $10 creature budget couldn't bear showing the creature in these stages. Considering that we're about to see a LOT more of him, who knows. At any rate, sooner or later, it's down to Roger, Adrian, and the alien... Whose name is Gar, and dig this, he's not really the villain. It turns out that Gar (who has taught himself to speak English after reading about human evolution and the Bible - no joke) is a really nice creature, and only killed the other astronauts in a Three's Company-esque misunderstanding. The rest of the film consists of Gar attempting to help Roger and Adrian repair their ship and make it back home safely, leading to a truly Titanic-style tearjerker of an ending. If you can't tell, this is some bad movie. The switch that this movie pulls off is one of the more hilarious things I've seen in any movie, horror or otherwise. The voice that Gar speaks with is something that is annoying at first, yet somehow becomes a little more endearing once you've heard him talk for what seems like 15 minutes straight. Not to mention his appearance. Gar LOOKS unlike any kind of alien I've seen in any "space horror" film, and his bizarre appearance is the fact that he is always - and I mean ALWAYS - accompanied by about seventeen layers of slime. The characters are absolutely terrible, and the fact that we're left with two of the most boring characters around played by a couple truly terrible actors, is just icing on the cake. Strangely enough, I actually DO recommend this movie. Star Crystal is worth watching just for the sheer weirdness; I can't fault Lance Lindsay (who also directed the movie) for phoning it in when it came to penning this screenplay, because we've got a lot of head-scratching moments here that have nothing to do with questionable production values. More than anything though, it's just loads of fun to watch in a crowd setting, which I have done on a few occasions to a very good, MST3K-style result. The only bad part about having a viewing party for this flick is that it's pretty hard to find, as the DVD is out of print and thus fairly expensive. However, those of you who aren't stubborn assholes like me and actually subscribe to Netflix (which is probably about 95% of you) could probably have a lot easier time. * out of ****. A truly bad film, but f*** me if it isn't fun to watch. For those of you who don't want to spend $25 minimum on the DVD (and aren't clinically insane like me), here's the full movie on Youtube. This...is just something you have to experience.
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