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 Feb 28, 2009 0:42:20 GMT -5
The previous thread: officialfan.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=offtopic&action=display&thread=167799Yes, since no horror sequel would be complete without a fair degree of masturbation, here is the long-awaited (by me, anyway) inaugural class of WC horror community inductees. Believe it or not, I have been keeping score throughout the previous thread. The list of possible inductees was short, but I think that this original class will please all of the WC horror aficionados. All three are incredibly deserving, and have been praised by many members of the community for their work in the great genre of campfire scary stories put to film that we refer to as horror movies. INDUCTEE #1 "I enjoy playing my audience like a piano." ALFRED HITCHCOCK: The first inductee into the hall of fame is a virtual no brainer. Not only is Hitchcock the greatest horror/suspense director of all time, he is arguably the greatest film director to ever live, having created an absolutely amazing body of work over a period spanning six decades and comprising Hollywood’s silent age, the golden era, and modern cinema. Hitchcock began his film career in the early 1920s in his native Britain, and crafted his first thriller film in 1926 – The Lodger, which was a great commercial and critical success in the U.K. With this film, Hitchcock realized his true calling and natural talent for creating gut-wrenching suspense, building it up over the course of a movie’s story arc and waylaying the audience over the head with a startling plot twist when they least expect it. Upon moving to the United States in 1939, Hitchcock began creating ****+ classic upon ****+ classic, with the 1940s bringing Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious and Rope as bona fide masterpieces cementing Hitchcock’s newfound status as one of Hollywood’s most popular directors. Throughout the decade, Hitchcock also was instrumental in the medium’s gradual shift from the importance of the producer to the importance of the director, frequently taking steps to increase his own fame, and becoming the first film DIRECTOR (rather than an actor) to become a box office draw, and a name above a film’s title on a poster. The 1950s are looked at as Hitchcock’s glory period, with Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much and North By Northwest reigning supreme as stunning critical and commercial successes. However, in 1958, Hitchcock released what is considered by this writer to be his finest film – Vertigo, his final collaboration with actor Jimmy Stewart, a stunning portrait of obsession and a multi-layered tale of fear, mystery and intrigue. Vertigo stands today as one of the five greatest films ever made. Hitchcock concluded his career with two more decades of quality work, including Psycho, an immortal picture hailed by many as the grandfather of all slasher flicks, and one of the most mind blowing portraits of human evil and deviant psychology ever put to film. Frenzy and Family Plot were his final two films in the 1970s, and he died in 1980 with several more projects laying in wait. A truly remarkable director who was extremely innovative in his use of new camera techniques, high-profile marketing campaigns and top-notch special effects, he remains one of the most popular and influential filmmakers of all time.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 0:48:19 GMT -5
INDUCTEE #2 "To call Clive Barker a 'horror novelist' would be like calling the Beatles a 'garage band'... He is the great imaginer of our time. He knows not only our greatest fears, but also what delights us, what turns us on, and what is truly holy in the world. Haunting, bizarre, beautiful. These are words we can use to describe Clive Barker only until we invent new, more fitting adjectives." -Quentin Tarantino CLIVE BARKER: One of the most multi-faceted, talented and truly ingenious minds to grace the cultural landscape in the past thirty years, Clive Barker is a jack of all trades – short story author, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, artist, and film director. His works have been adapted into several outstanding feature films, and Barker received the distinction from legendary horror author Stephen King as “so good that I am literally tongue-tied…he makes the rest of us look like we’ve been asleep for the past ten years.” Another native of England, Barker rose to prominence in the mid 1980s with a string of extremely popular horror short stories collected in The Books of Blood Volumes 1-6. Various short stories throughout the series would later be adapted into the feature films , including 2008’s Midnight Meat Train and the 1992 masterpiece Candyman, based on the urban legend of a spectral boogeyman inhabiting mirrors. As marvelously played by actor Tony Todd, Candyman stands today as a riveting adaptation of Barker’s short story, and one of the best horror films of the ‘90s. Barker is also an accomplished novelist; notable works include Cabal (later adapted by Barker himself into the film Nightbreed), the soaring, triumphant 1991 novel Imajica, and the 2001 toy line and novelette Tortured Souls, also soon to be adapted into a motion picture. However, perhaps the most famous Clive Barker creation is the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart. The story of a man named Frank in search of the ultimate pleasure, his quest for a mysterious box known as the Lemarchand Configuration, and the cruel Cenobites strongly resonated with the public, and gave birth to one of the most famous franchises in all of horror – the Hellraiser series of motion pictures, with the first film in the series directed by Barker himself in his directorial debut. Today, Barker is in the midst of adapting Hellraiser for a new generation, and currently has several more novels and film projects on the shelf. He remains to this day an avid contributor to the horror genre, and one of the most aesthetically diverse, visionary writers in the world.
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Feb 28, 2009 0:54:39 GMT -5
Wholeheartedly agreed on the first two - can't wait to see the third.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 0:55:16 GMT -5
And…in a surprise nomination swayed by the TR controlled votes… INDUCTEE #3 "Disciples of the watch...DO YOU HEAR ME?" SAM NEILL: A native of New Zealand, Mr. Neill is noted for a number of high-profile roles including Reilly, Ace of Spies, Merlin, The Hunt for Red October, and The Piano…but that’s not the reason we’re here today. Today, Mr. Neill, we’re here to honor your stirring portrayals in several horror films, including one role that remains to this day (in this reporter’s book, anyway) a landmark performance. Neill began his film career with Sleeping Dogs and My Brilliant Career, and as 1981 rolled around, 20th Century Fox was actively looking for an actor to play the adult Damien Thorn character in the third film of their successful Omen trilogy of horror films. As the first two films had dealt with the character as a child and a teenager, Fox looked long and hard for a strong representative of the adult Thorn – now fully aware of his destiny for the first time and ready to wreak havoc on the world. While several big names including Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman were considered for the role, the studio decided that an unknown actor would be most frightening – and they scored with the selection of Neill. In a very demanding role, Neill proved to be dynamite, projecting just the right amount of menace under his reassuring politician’s smile, and tackling all of the challenging speech and solo scenes to perfection. His next major horror role would be 1989’s Dead Calm, another masterpiece also starring Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. In the film, Neill and Kidman play a married couple out on a typical boating venture, only for the voyage to be hijacked by a crazed Zane. Neill played on the opposite side of the virtue spectrum this time, playing the hero role and drawing us into the husband’s struggle very effectively. Perhaps his most recognizable role is that of Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III. Again, in a film made up of countless intricate special effects, a lesser actor would vanish into the background beneath all of the expensive glitz, but Neill is once again able to make us identify with and genuinely like a character, making the action and chaos on the screen all the more meaningful in the big screen adaptations of Michael Crichton’s mega bestsellers. He marked a return to his villainous ways in 1997’s Event Horizon, perhaps Paul W.S. Anderson’s finest film to date and a fairly original contribution to the sci-fi/horror genre. While the film itself is mediocre, Neill’s portrayal of Dr. Weir is the central arc that sets up the film’s thrilling final act – while the character appears to be virtuous on the surface, it is the insidious evil power of the ship that the crew in the film find themselves on that unleash the truly nasty side of the character, allowing Neill to break out of his shell and play upon his natural talent for playing someone extremely evil. Finally, Neill played the lead role in John Carpenter’s woefully underrated 1995 thriller In the Mouth of Madness, a movie that examines the complete mental breakdown of the private investigator played by Neill. A haunting, stirring, and kaleidoscopic vision of insanity, with much of the story told through flashback, the film stands today as an overlooked gem, with Neill’s John Trent character standing as the glue that holds the fabric of the story together. An actor who only chooses to take roles that he personally likes, Sam Neill stands as a true rarity – a truly great actor who conveys the fear, paranoia, and sometimes pure insanity that characters in horror films are sometimes brought to. His most recent role was an acclaimed performance as Cardinal Wolsey in the Showtime production The Tudors. Much congratulations to the first three inductees of the WC Horror Hall of Fame…even though only us select few horror nerds even know that this honor exists.
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Feb 28, 2009 0:56:36 GMT -5
Interesting swerve on the third one - I didn't see that coming - but deserved nonetheless.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 1:08:17 GMT -5
Interesting swerve on the third one - I didn't see that coming - but deserved nonetheless. Strangely enough, I'd never been a huge fan of Neill before the previous thread. Somehow or another, I just put all of those pieces together. "Hey, he was really good in The Final Conflict...you know what, come to think of it he was awesome in Dead Calm...and you know what else, Event Horizon was pretty cool...and man, In the Mouth of Madness?" It just seems that every time Neill lends his talent to a horror production, good things happen, and he's really an excellent actor. Which lead to the induction.
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Feb 28, 2009 1:10:36 GMT -5
Interesting swerve on the third one - I didn't see that coming - but deserved nonetheless. Strangely enough, I'd never been a huge fan of Neill before the previous thread. Somehow or another, I just put all of those pieces together. "Hey, he was really good in The Final Conflict...you know what, come to think of it he was awesome in Dead Calm...and you know what else, Event Horizon was pretty cool...and man, In the Mouth of Madness? Damn, this guy is MONEY!!" Which lead to the induction. So when can we expect more inductions? Is this just going to be done at random intervals, or at the beginning of each new thread?
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Post by Rorschach on Feb 28, 2009 1:13:25 GMT -5
I thought for SURE the third one was going to be Craven or Carpenter. Nicely done on the Sam Neill, though.
Just watched two horror films for the first time all the way through today (DAMNED OnDemand kept failing on me) those being WIND CHILL and MANHUNTER, and you can expect detailed recaps on those two tomorrow. Suffice to say I liked them both, though I did like MANHUNTER a bit more than WIND CHILL.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 1:13:31 GMT -5
Strangely enough, I'd never been a huge fan of Neill before the previous thread. Somehow or another, I just put all of those pieces together. "Hey, he was really good in The Final Conflict...you know what, come to think of it he was awesome in Dead Calm...and you know what else, Event Horizon was pretty cool...and man, In the Mouth of Madness? Damn, this guy is MONEY!!" Which lead to the induction. So when can we expect more inductions? Is this just going to be done at random intervals, or at the beginning of each new thread? Tentative plan - three inductions at the beginning of each thread. Still fiddling with the F13 DVD, btw - it's starting to get a little frustrating. At least tomorrow I got some more movies to play around with - the wacky New Line Jason movies, which I haven't seen in a while. I thought for SURE the third one was going to be Craven or Carpenter. Nicely done on the Sam Neill, though. Just watched two horror films for the first time all the way through today (DAMNED OnDemand kept failing on me) those being WIND CHILL and MANHUNTER, and you can expect detailed recaps on those two tomorrow. Suffice to say I liked them both, though I did like MANHUNTER a bit more than WIND CHILL. Somewhere back in the previous thread, I made a list of my ten best serial killer flicks, and Manhunter was on there. I really love the flick - Tom Noonan plays such a sick snork in the movie, and William Petersen even puts on a tour de force performance (so much so that he had to take a break from acting after filming the movie due to his role being so emotional). I also really love Michael Mann's handling of the source novel - it makes some changes, yes, but nothing too drastic. Some disagree, but I actually find it to be MORE faithful to the novel than Brett Ratner's Red Dragon. Really wasn't Ratner's fault - it's not his problem that Hannibal Lecter became a cultural hallmark in the periods between these two movies, thus DEMANDING that Hopkins be given an inordinate amount of screen time, but the original novel wasn't about Lecter - it was about the Tooth Fairy. Most importantly, Manhunter accomplished what the novel itself manages to accomplish - it makes you feel, just in the slightest, for its heinous villain right before he has the rug totally yanked out from underneath his feet yet again. Awesome flick.
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Feb 28, 2009 1:16:00 GMT -5
So when can we expect more inductions? Is this just going to be done at random intervals, or at the beginning of each new thread? Tentative plan - three inductions at the beginning of each thread. Still fiddling with the F13 DVD, btw - it's starting to get a little frustrating. At least tomorrow I got some more movies to play around with - the wacky New Line Jason movies, which I haven't seen in a while. It may be an issue with the glasses themselves, because I know that wearing the two pairs simultaneously has fixed the problem for everyone else I've talked to.
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Post by Rorschach on Feb 28, 2009 1:21:13 GMT -5
Wait....you have to wear two pairs of glasses at once? How many pairs does the damn thing come with? That sounds pretty crappy, if I do say so myself.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 1:25:32 GMT -5
Wait....you have to wear two pairs of glasses at once? How many pairs does the damn thing come with? That sounds pretty crappy, if I do say so myself. It comes with two. I've been having issues with the DVD all night - I'm now officially giving up.
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Post by GuyOfOwnage on Feb 28, 2009 1:27:15 GMT -5
Wait....you have to wear two pairs of glasses at once? How many pairs does the damn thing come with? That sounds pretty crappy, if I do say so myself. The DVD comes with 2 pairs total. You don't have to wear both, but I've heard from others that the glasses aren't the most well-made. I was basically told that wearing only one pair resulted in the red data bleeding over into the blue, and vice versa, pretty much hindering the 3D effect. For some unknown reason, wearing both pairs at the same time seems to fix the problem.
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Post by Rorschach on Feb 28, 2009 1:27:35 GMT -5
Wait....you have to wear two pairs of glasses at once? How many pairs does the damn thing come with? That sounds pretty crappy, if I do say so myself. It comes with two. I've been having issues with the DVD all night - I'm now officially giving up. I now wonder if the MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D DVD will have the same problems. Did you see my post about the DEEP BLUE SEA 3D movie in the last thread? What did you think about that idea? I myself think that it would be a cool experience theatrically, if nothing else.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 1:29:38 GMT -5
Did you see my post about the DEEP BLUE SEA 3D movie in the last thread? What did you think about that idea? I myself think that it would be a cool experience theatrically, if nothing else. Agreed. Might not be the best movie strictly quality-wise, but a shark frenzy attack movie in the theater - in 3D - would be loads of fun.
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Post by Rorschach on Feb 28, 2009 1:44:35 GMT -5
Speaking of sharky goodness (or badness, depending on your schlock tolerance) the Asylum has a surefire camp classic to be on the way..... www.theasylum.cc/product.php?id=155Yes, I am talking about MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS! Starring Lorenzo Lamas (!) and Deborah "Don't Call Me Debbie" Gibson! Street date: Wait for it.......wait for it............ MAY 19TH! Don't tell Kane.
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Post by Sir Woodrow on Feb 28, 2009 2:39:02 GMT -5
Speaking of sharky goodness (or badness, depending on your schlock tolerance) the Asylum has a surefire camp classic to be on the way..... www.theasylum.cc/product.php?id=155Yes, I am talking about MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS! Starring Lorenzo Lamas (!) and Deborah "Don't Call Me Debbie" Gibson! Street date: Wait for it.......wait for it............ MAY 19TH! Don't tell Kane. This is from Asylum? But there isn't any Giant Shark or Octopus Blockbuster out this summer, good on em for going for an original z grade idea then.
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Post by BoilerRoomBrawler on Feb 28, 2009 3:28:23 GMT -5
Here to join at the beginning of the thread to hopefully help it expand to another 30 pages.
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Post by Maidpool w/ Cleaning Action on Feb 28, 2009 3:35:30 GMT -5
Wait, what? I didn't know we were voting for stuff. TR you need to PM when you do stuff like that because with all the crap going on in my life it's hard for me to keep up sometimes.
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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 Feb 28, 2009 10:12:24 GMT -5
Speaking of sharky goodness (or badness, depending on your schlock tolerance) the Asylum has a surefire camp classic to be on the way..... www.theasylum.cc/product.php?id=155Yes, I am talking about MEGA SHARK VS. GIANT OCTOPUS! Starring Lorenzo Lamas (!) and Deborah "Don't Call Me Debbie" Gibson! Street date: Wait for it.......wait for it............ MAY 19TH! Don't tell Kane. Funny...when you said Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus I just figured you were summarizing the flick, but lo and behold, that's the ACTUAL WORKING TITLE OF THE MOVIE. Good stuff. Wait, what? I didn't know we were voting for stuff. TR you need to PM when you do stuff like that because with all the crap going on in my life it's hard for me to keep up sometimes. There really wasn't a vote - I just kind of kept track throughout the previous thread on who, by and large, the WC horror community agreed was 100% horror goodness. Except for Sam Neill - that one was mine and mine alone. I also do want to have one actor/oddball choice every time I do three inductions, just because it would get way too boring to just list horror filmmaker after horror filmmaker (and there have been plenty of great ones).
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