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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on May 31, 2020 20:31:16 GMT -5
Watched a couple flicks today of my own choosing. ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK (1988) features the buxom horror hostess (Cassandra Peterson, as always) quitting her job and travelling to a conservative little town in Massachusetts for the reading of her great aunt's will. She winds up stuck in town for several days, her car broken down, but at least she inherited her great aunt's house to live in. The straight-laced older folks in town don't approve of her attitude or her fashion sense, but Elvira quickly livens things up for the neighborhood's bored teenagers. Can she survive in this town long enough to sell the house, earning the money to start performing in Las Vegas? I mean, like, literally survive? The moral crusaders in town want her dead, and so does the great uncle who got shafted by the great aunt's will! Largely a comedy, with lots and lots of footage of Elvira's cleavage and legs, and plenty of her signature good/bad jokes! Things get less jokey in the third act, but this is still just a fun ride throughout. Directed by James Signorelli, most famous for his work on Saturday Night Live, the film also features Jeff Conaway (GREASE) and Edie McClurg (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF). Pretty cool! BLOOD LAKE (1987) is a shot-on-video slasher in which six kids go on a weekend vacation to ski, drink, and hopefully have sex! Unfortunately for them, a burly man in cowboy boots is skulking around with a hunting knife! According to the DVD backcover, this was made by a group of actual friends on vacation. And a lot of it feels like genuine home movie footage. There's plenty of water-skiing, plenty of drinking (there's a very long scene of the main cast playing quarters), and plenty of sleeping. Yeah, let's just watch people sleep for a few minutes. If you're looking for TENSION BUILDING, there's not a whole lot of that, but there's a certain charm to it. It's like you're just hanging out with some mulleted Oklahoma teenagers from 1987. There are kills (eventually) with rudimentary makeup effects, but they're shot at night and it gets kinda hard to see since they don't have any sort of lighting setups. This film won't win any prizes, but I found it hard to hate. 80s slasher films are like comfort food to me. I could watch a million of 'em. This one at least has Lil' Tony, a foul-mouthed 11-year-old who constantly talks about wanting to have sex with his equally 11-year-old girlfriend. He's kind of shitty, but enjoyably so. Come at this flick with low expectations, riff it with some friends if you must, and you'll have a decent time. I wish Elvira had more movies in the 1980s like Mistress of the Dark. I remember there was kind of/not really a sequel to it in 2001. I’m not sure if there are others. But they’d probably have been more fun if they had been made in the 1980s or at least early 1990s. At least Cassandra Peterson has aged incredibly well.
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Nr1Humanoid
Hank Scorpio
Is the #3 humanoid at best.
Posts: 5,510
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Post by Nr1Humanoid on Jun 3, 2020 17:10:54 GMT -5
Carnosaur 3. Primal Species. 1996.
I do not know what is better off extinct. Dinosaurs or these movies?
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Jun 3, 2020 23:46:06 GMT -5
Carnosaur 3. Primal Species. 1996. I do not know what is better off extinct. Dinosaurs or these movies? Lol damn man did you get a box set or something?
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Nr1Humanoid
Hank Scorpio
Is the #3 humanoid at best.
Posts: 5,510
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Post by Nr1Humanoid on Jun 4, 2020 2:18:28 GMT -5
Carnosaur 3. Primal Species. 1996. I do not know what is better off extinct. Dinosaurs or these movies? Lol damn man did you get a box set or something? YouTube has got them all.
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Nr1Humanoid
Hank Scorpio
Is the #3 humanoid at best.
Posts: 5,510
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Post by Nr1Humanoid on Jun 5, 2020 18:02:09 GMT -5
The Belko Experiment. 2016.
Gnarly action / horror hybrid. The suspence factor is high as some people you do not want to, die, while others you desperately want to. There is some great acting talents on display, giving everything from gentle to scary to hateable to vulnerable and a gamut off emotions, despite the characters not being developed that well. Note to filmmakers; never kill off Michael Rooker early. And if any movie could have used him as a villain it would be this one. I am sort of ashamed of myself at not recognising the voice of the intercom guy.
The gore is plentiful and several times wince inducing though the picture show them too briefly. Kind of loses the point of the gore if you constantly scale it back. And there were too many similar kills, but at least they were never off screen. I liked how the picture stayed unrelentingly bleak throughout, comedy pretty much being a no show.
If you want action and just want to kick back and have fun this is the right movie for you as you will certainly never be bored. Not much to enjoy if you hate plot holes, but I never been bothered with it so good for me. The main villain was willing to kill 30 colleagues to avoid 60 being killed, though it was clear he was only willing to do it to avoid being one of those 60, yet no one calls him out on it. We get sort of an explanation to the why behind it all but it is rather vague. The intercom guy saying he was not at liberty to the tell the survivors why was certainly from the writers not knowing either.
A happy and satisfying ending comes our way only for us to be left with a cliffhanger shortly after. It is not a perfect movie by any means, just perfect popcorn entertainment. And on my new 75 inch TV no less.
3 perverts, claiming not to be perverts, indicating they are perverts, out of 5.
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Post by DSR on Jun 6, 2020 0:36:32 GMT -5
THE NEON DEMON (2016) concerns a 16-year-old orphan (Elle Fanning, SUPER 8) whose innocence and natural beauty cause her to stand out in the modeling world, where girls look world-weary by their early 20s. She quickly signs a contract, lies about her age, and becomes a star. Unfortunately, she also becomes a target. Jealous models, spurned lovers, a creepy landlord (Keanu Reeves, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA), and even a mountain lion (for one scene) seek to prey upon this gorgeous ingenue...
Take any career that can be described as "cut-throat" or "dog-eat-dog" and make those metaphors literal and you have a perfect setup for a horror film. Modelling might be best suited to it since there's a heavy focus on emaciated young women who often are asked to look halfway dead for a photoshoot to begin with. These themes are not lost on director Nicolas Winding Refn (DRIVE), but it takes a good portion of the film's run-time to get there.
There's a Viktor Schlovsky quote that goes "Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important." I think this philosophy is central to the theme of the film and to the manner in which the film is made. What I mean is this: the film isn't exactly a horror film, and it isn't exactly a drama. There are numerous scenes within the film that don't seem to evoke fear (horror) or empathy (drama) but simply exist to experience their artfulness. The film is highly stylish, it looks interesting, but it's shallow. This is also Refn's point about beauty and the fashion world: his characters here are highly stylish, they look interesting, but their shallow.
I do want to take a few moments to discuss the horrific element to the film, though, since this is a Horror Thread. In that regard, this film can be described as a slow-burner. The film has a drastic color palette (Refn is colorblind, he requires bold color choices or they don't register to him) which can be disorienting. Beyond that, there are fleeting moments of horror here and there, a jealous look in the eye, a minor chord seeps into the minimalist synthwave score, stuff like that. It's only in the last half hour or 45 minutes that the film becomes weird in ways that are more actively unsettling, grotesque, and gory.
There was a bonus feature on the DVD that ran a minute or two long, seemed almost like a trailer but with interviews with Refn and Fanning interspersed. It made the film look like a hyper-stylized but overall straight-forward slasher movie. That's not what this is, not exactly. This is a bizarre experience. I don't know what else to call it. It's fascinating.
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Post by DSR on Jun 7, 2020 21:10:28 GMT -5
FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED (2000) is a gory superhero movie from director Brian Yuzna and makeup effects artist Screaming Mad George, the team that brought us the earlier GUYVER (and SOCIETY and BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR). It is based on the indie comic from Tim Vigil and David Quinn; Quinn cowrote the screenplay.
A beautiful psychiatrist (Isabel Brook, RAZOR BLADE SMILE) attempts to break through to a catatonic man, John Jaspers (Mark Frost, 2017's MAYHEM) who seemingly violently killed a number of people at an embassy. When she does, she finds out his tragic backstory: a gang killed John's girlfriend while he was helpless to stop them. In his grief, he contemplated suicide, when a mysterious man going by "M" (Andrew Divoff, WISHMASTER) grants him supernatural powers to enact his revenge. All he has to do in exchange is give M...his soul!
John agrees and gains powers, turning into a demonic looking figure with retractable metal claws on his wrists. This alter-ego is the titular Faust. He gets his revenge but afterwards, John realizes M is actually a bad guy (who could've guessed?) and refuses to work for him. It's somewhere around this point that he ended up in the catatonic state we found him at the beginning.
John and the psychiatrist are falling for each other, and M has plans to open the gates of hell and unleash a powerful monster dubbed The Homunculus. Can John/Faust save the girl and/or the world?!
I've never read the Faust comic books, but this just feels like a retread: Faust has claws like Wolverine, he sells his soul and regrets it like Spawn, and I didn't mention this before but he attempts to wax philosophically like Brandon Lee in THE CROW. You can borrow from a wide variety of influences, but you have to make it feel authentic in some way, and this story just doesn't.
As mentioned, Yuzna and George gave us GUYVER, which I absolutely adored. That film was a bizarre melange of adult body horror and family friendly superhero hijinks that somehow worked because it wasn't really supposed to. FAUST replaces that charming naivete with 90s comic book grimdark edginess. It's like they push so hard for the character to come off as "badass" that he feels lame. The occasional attempts at black humor (Faust occasionally gives a one-liner while disemboweling somebody with his claws) are just obnoxious. The film does a great job of portraying M as a vile character: Screaming Mad George brings back some SOCIETY-like special effects for M to use his powers to turn a female lackey into literally nothing more than tits and ass. But for as despicable as M is, they don't make Faust a cheer-worthy character to counterbalance. When John and the psychiatrist fall in love, it feels like the plot needed a hook more than the characters were anywhere close to believably being attracted to one another.
None of this is helped by Mark Frost's performance as John/Faust. His attempt at anguish is a cartoonish grimace that makes him look sorta like Trey Parker in BASEKETBALL as opposed to a man whose girlfriend just got murdered. And he makes the cartoonish grimace face almost the ENTIRE TIME he's on screen. He just looks too goofy, and when he actually talks it's over-the-top scenery-chewing the whole time.
I could almost enjoy this film on a so-bad-it's-good level, but then a late revelation of a main character being raped as a child and that continuing on as a major plot point for the rest of the film killed that. I spent the last half hour or so of the film just waiting for it to end. This was just...unsavory.
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,464
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Jun 8, 2020 16:50:07 GMT -5
Have you read the comic that Faust is based on? It is 10 times more grim and gory than the film.
Also where did ya see the film? I never saw it streaming on any service. And finding the dvd isn't easy.
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Post by prettynami on Jun 8, 2020 17:16:17 GMT -5
Yeah, i've wanted to see and torture my friends with Faust for some time!!! Wish I could find it too!
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Post by DSR on Jun 8, 2020 17:26:36 GMT -5
Have you read the comic that Faust is based on? It is 10 times more grim and gory than the film. Also where did ya see the film? I never saw it streaming on any service. And finding the dvd isn't easy. I have never read the comic. I bought the DVD from a guy in a Facebook group dedicated to cult films.
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,464
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Jun 8, 2020 19:34:18 GMT -5
Cool nice find on the DVD. I have ever issue of the comic but haven't read past like issue 6 or so.
Bought the Scream Factory Blu Ray of Candyman today. Was fairly cheap and I think I loaned out of my DVD of the film and never got it back.
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mystermystery
Dennis Stamp
Still in the White Hummer
Posts: 4,387
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Post by mystermystery on Jun 8, 2020 20:14:24 GMT -5
Remembered my Hoopla Digital account. It's based on having a library card and a participating library (Should I have switched that order of explanation?) and allows for 20 rentals of movies, tv shows, ebooks, audio books, music, or comics per month.
I remembered said account on May 31st so I made 20 quick random selections for the heck of it.
This is one of those selections.
SEA FEVER (2019)
A marine biologist student is a true introvert. She wants to work on her work and doesn't care that she doesn't know anyone in the department, even as a birthday party happens in the next room. Her professor obviously sees her talents but wants to crack her out of her shell, assigning her to work a week on a trawler taking pictures of sea life and studying for anomalies.
Meanwhile, said trawler is nearly broke. A married couple own it and the existential dread of losing the boat is apart of every conversation. They accepted this student because the payment for allowing her on board makes up about half of the pay they owe their two main workers along with a promise that the haul from this trip will make them all paid up in full.
Of course, when they agreed to have her on, they didn't know she was red headed, a major foreboding sign. There is a constant undertone of scientific fact vs. long standing superstitions.
And to avoid being too open about the happenings of this film, this crew finds itself in a bizarre situation dealing with a creature that definitely counts as an 'anomaly' but doesn't fall under your typical monster-under-the-sea tropes. What ensues is a collection of confusions and revelations where our student makes the logical steps needed while the trawlers coordinate the efforts to survive until emotions override reason.
If you've heard of this film, it has been most likely followed a reference to Covid-19 because of where the story goes and, as someone who knew this before watching the film, I can confirm that once things get going, you will flinch every time someone touches their face despite it never being said as a way of spreading things.
I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it if you're willing to let a little of the modern day dread help push the story along.
I gave it a 3/5 on Letterboxd and still feel this movie is the perfect film for horror-loving introverts to point at the screen and shout "SEE! SHE WAS RIGHT! SHE WAS PERFECTLY FINE IN THAT DAGGONE LAB!"
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Post by prettynami on Jun 11, 2020 21:10:25 GMT -5
WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS (1971) - A group of bikers run amok and eventually find themselves on the bad side of some sort of satanic cult, a mistake that costs some of them their humanity by turning them into werewolves! And others their lives by the hands (paws?) of said werewolves!
I saw this on prime and the cover art was amazing so I just had to watch it. Plot wise it's pretty straight forward - there are a few underlying tensions in the biker gang (Called the Devil's Advocates hahaha) that drives the stories narrative. Basically like 3 or 4 bikers get real characters while the rest are cannon fodder. One guy is a tarot reading Native American dude (I think), this guy is sorta an aloof dick who doesn't seem to really be enamored with the gang anymore and he predicts what is going to happen when he reads one of the lady bikers' fortunes. Then there is the head biker guy who is just kinda a jerk. Anyways, the annoy and beat up people driving around town and conduct a clothed sex orgy with the local gas pumper man. Somewhere along the way they camp below a satanic church thing and run into some (Guru) the mad monks - who offer them drugged food and wine. The monks hide the drugs, but honestly the biker guys probably would have eaten and drank the stuff anyways. The lady biker then gets taken up to an altar where she does a great nekid satanic strip tease to appease the devil after some magic or some such controls her mind. The bikers beat up the monks to get her back, but the monks get their revenge when she bites the head biker and they slowly start murdering their buds! The ending is a chaotic whirlwind of bikers with torches fighting wolf people in the middle of the desert with some amazing people getting lit on fire sequences.
The man/woman on fire part is probably the coolest special effect in the movie, its a really well done stunt. The rest of the movie is sorta "normal" in this department: the wolfmen look like Lon Cheney Jr. ones (and so seem kinda dated) and the blood is the viscous bright red hammer style. There isn't an incredible amount of gore, mostly flesh ripping with a single post damage eye popping (that looked like the terrible dead fisherman dummy from JAWS). Most disappointing of all is we never see the friggen cover, at least not clearly. It's sorta implied that is what is happening at the very end but its filmed with the bikers silhouetted against the sun! Lame!
There isn't nearly enough werewolf action - and the movie devolves into petty bickering in the middle portion through to the end - so there isn't enough biker action either. The one thing the movie does have going for it is the scenery. When they dwell on the nature that the movie is set in it's beautifully shot - the desert really springs to life and we get a good variety. This is contrasted by the people scenes which feel like they are shot on a hand cam and just aren't good - that is with the exception of the satanic strip which has a pretty neat set and makes good use of the lighting and hand cam for a sense of chaos.
Overall I would say this movie was disappointing. It wasn't terrible, just disappointing and sorta bland in most aspects. I would give it a 2 out of 5 - it's worth a look if you like werewolves I guess and it goes by pretty fast.
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Post by DSR on Jun 11, 2020 23:00:13 GMT -5
I watched WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS many years ago. I didn't care for it.
THE GALAXY INVADER (1985) is a no-budget straight-to-video sci-fi/monster film from Don Dohler (NIGHTBEAST). The film concerns a large green extraterrestrial who lands on Earth. The alien is discovered by a redneck named Joe (Richard Ruxton) while Joe was chasing his daughter through the woods with a shotgun. Joe manages to swipe a mysterious orb from the alien and quickly comes to the realization that he could make a fortune selling the orb. Later, Joe's shady friend Frank (Don Leifert) convinces Frank he'll make even MORE money if they can somehow capture the alien alive. The alien, naturally, doesn't want to be captured, and will resort to lethal force to prevent such treatment...
Dohler made this film with a very small budget (exact numbers unknown, but it's under $50,000) and hired a bunch of first-time actors/friends. He also couldn't do a whole lot with special effects. The monster looks pretty okay, and his initial (animated) arrival on Earth is fun, but there's hardly any bloodshed. Also a large portion of the film is spent with redneck Joe being unsavory as hell: he's constantly drunk, yelling at his family, hitting on other women when his wife's away. He's just an all-around shitty dude. The people he hangs out with are equally shitty. This makes the early portion of the film fun-bad, but it loses steam in the second half.
I've seen far worse films, but this is still a bit of a chore. Rifftrax commentary certainly helped it be less of one.
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Post by DSR on Jun 13, 2020 0:10:33 GMT -5
Tonight's viewing was BAD RONALD (1974), a made-for-TV horror film based on the novel of the same name. It stars Scott Jacoby (THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE) as the title character, a nerdy high school student who accidentally kills a girl who made fun of him and then proceeded to bury her. When he tells his divorced mother (Kim Hunter, PLANET OF THE APES) what happened, she quickly devises a plan: hide Ronald in a secret room in the house, convince the police that he ran away from home, then after a few months mother can sneak Ronald out of the house when they move away to start a new life somewhere else.
The plan goes well enough until mother dies of complications from gall bladder surgery, leaving Ronald all alone in the secret room. Ronald quickly turns inward, believing the fantasy story he's been writing and illustrating to be factual. As Ronald loses his grip on reality, a new family moves into the house: a man (Dabney Coleman, 9 TO 5), his wife, and their three teen-aged daughters. Ronald, spying on the family through holes he's drilled into the walls, quickly takes a liking to one of the girls. He believes she is the princess of that previously mentioned fantasy story. Eventually, Ronald can't help himself, and reveals his affection for the girl, but when she refuses his affections, Ronald turns violent again...
Being a made-for-TV movie, BAD RONALD can't rely on gore in any way to frighten. The death that sets the film's plot in motion is pretty jarring, but bloodless. Instead, the film focuses on the unsettling atmosphere of having a stranger live in your house without you knowing it. Unexplained phenomena around the house (food going missing, one girl's diary being tampered with) are often blamed by the family on a ghost. Of course, we in the audience know that ghost is very much alive, but that makes him more creepy, not less.
One might be inclined to call this film a "slow-burner" since it takes roughly half its run-time setting up Ronald's loss of sanity before bringing in the new family. But the film is only about 75 minutes long and that set-up manages to be tightly scripted. Plus, Jacoby and Hunter do such great jobs with their characters, it's not like you're waiting for the film to move on. The set-up is just as satisfying as the execution.
You probably won't jump out of your seat at any point during the film, but BAD RONALD is still an effective exercise in creepy atmospherics.
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mystermystery
Dennis Stamp
Still in the White Hummer
Posts: 4,387
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Post by mystermystery on Jun 13, 2020 8:46:06 GMT -5
Watched Joe Bob's Last Drive-In Show but haven't finished the second film (Hogzilla), yet. Here's my thoughts on the one I did watch though:
SCARE PACKAGE (2019) An anthology film that plays with the common tropes of the series for 7 or 8 (I don't know. Some stuff starts to mix and I don't know if it counts as one actual story or not) horror comedy segments.
We have a Cold Open story that follows a character who knows he's in a horror movie and is disappointed that his role is only to be part of the Cold Open so we watch as he tries to push himself in the main story and the consequences of this action.
There is a wrap around segment where a Video Store owner hires a new employee and is 'training" them on running the store while an angry customer who wanted the job tries to scare them off. Much of it's send-up is based on the trope of "Don't go into this creepy door."
There is a gore-tastic segment following a goo man and a killer in the woods. It's probably the most absurd and enjoyable.
Middle-Segment Lag is still a thing with a couple meh ones, such as the one where a man is killed and his spirit returns to possess a girl because he wants to watch the finale of a TV show he's been watching, but her inner self battles back because she's behind on episodes and doesn't want spoiled on the ending.
We get a parody of the unkillable killer trope, a take off of "don't steal the mystical item" plot point, and on, and on, and on.
In all, there is entertainment to be found but the wrap around wasn't that great and it converging into the final segment to allow for a full force of nonsensical approach was...just okay. I didn't care for the main wrap around dude so it kind of countered the "And now the expert is IN the film!" joke.
Dustin Rhodes plays the Jason-like killer in the final segment, the Devil's Lake Impaler and turns in a really daggone good monster role.
So, yeah.
I gave it a 3 out of 5 on Letterboxd.
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,464
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Jun 13, 2020 16:57:09 GMT -5
Tonight's viewing was BAD RONALD (1974), a made-for-TV horror film based on the novel of the same name. It stars Scott Jacoby (THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE) as the title character, a nerdy high school student who accidentally kills a girl who made fun of him and then proceeded to bury her. When he tells his divorced mother (Kim Hunter, PLANET OF THE APES) what happened, she quickly devises a plan: hide Ronald in a secret room in the house, convince the police that he ran away from home, then after a few months mother can sneak Ronald out of the house when they move away to start a new life somewhere else. The plan goes well enough until mother dies of complications from gall bladder surgery, leaving Ronald all alone in the secret room. Ronald quickly turns inward, believing the fantasy story he's been writing and illustrating to be factual. As Ronald loses his grip on reality, a new family moves into the house: a man (Dabney Coleman, 9 TO 5), his wife, and their three teen-aged daughters. Ronald, spying on the family through holes he's drilled into the walls, quickly takes a liking to one of the girls. He believes she is the princess of that previously mentioned fantasy story. Eventually, Ronald can't help himself, and reveals his affection for the girl, but when she refuses his affections, Ronald turns violent again... Being a made-for-TV movie, BAD RONALD can't rely on gore in any way to frighten. The death that sets the film's plot in motion is pretty jarring, but bloodless. Instead, the film focuses on the unsettling atmosphere of having a stranger live in your house without you knowing it. Unexplained phenomena around the house (food going missing, one girl's diary being tampered with) are often blamed by the family on a ghost. Of course, we in the audience know that ghost is very much alive, but that makes him more creepy, not less. One might be inclined to call this film a "slow-burner" since it takes roughly half its run-time setting up Ronald's loss of sanity before bringing in the new family. But the film is only about 75 minutes long and that set-up manages to be tightly scripted. Plus, Jacoby and Hunter do such great jobs with their characters, it's not like you're waiting for the film to move on. The set-up is just as satisfying as the execution. You probably won't jump out of your seat at any point during the film, but BAD RONALD is still an effective exercise in creepy atmospherics. I got the novel the film is based on. Found it the same day i got Phantasm on BEtamax.
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Post by prettynami on Jun 14, 2020 19:10:51 GMT -5
Caught CHILD'S PLAY (1988) on Pluto TV yesterday - somehow this is the first time I have seen it or any of the Chucky movies (outside of a few clips here and there - mostly so I could see Jennifer Tilly hahaha). So everyone knows this story of a serial killer's soul trapped in a doll.
I thought the premise was interesting - and how it was executed wasn't what I expected... Well I guess I should have - I think there was a stream of voodoo movies around this time.... But I always assumed he just ended up in the doll SOMEHOW. It wasn't nearly as corny as I expected either, the doll itself is pretty frightening (Although less so when it looks less like the lifeless doll and more like a plastic toddler). The build is nice too. Although I did roll my eyes after the 50th time someone tossed the doll away or had it under control only to immediately begin ignoring it. Haha.
Violence wise I was expecting it to be much more violent, yet somehow cheaper looking. I thought it looked great, and even though the execution of the doll's special effects varied greatly, it was a lot of fun trying to figure out the various techniques they used. I liked the look of the movie in general.
I'm interested to see how the doll comes back after the ending of this one, that is if I ever see the second one. I would give it a 3.5 out of 5 cause of the nice pacing,neat and entertaining effects, the hot mom, and I genuinely thought the doll (and the kid for that matter) was scary.
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Post by DSR on Jun 18, 2020 23:58:03 GMT -5
ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS (1966) is a low-budget made-for-TV sci-fi/monster movie from Larry Buchanan (MARS NEEDS WOMEN). The titular Zontar is a human-sized bird/insect/pile of boogers that has ingratiated itself to an American scientist, Dr. Keith Richie (Tony Huston). Keith believes that Zontar's superior intelligence will prove a benefit to the Earth, but Zontar's race is parasitic. Zontar creates foot-long creatures called "injectopods" which, like the name states, inject a stinger into the back of a person's neck; that person then becomes an emotionless vessel that will do anything that Zontar commands. Keith's wife and friends (including John Agar, THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS) see this not as a great salvation to humanity but rather as it's potential end. But can they convince Keith of this fact before it's too late...
The actual monster and the mind-control elements are pretty fun, but everything else about the flick is poor. John Agar is solid, as usual, and gets a few moments to shine, but nobody else measures up. There's several scenes of unfunny comic relief. Scenes always play out in the most static, boring way possible, with no dynamic camerawork. And there's so little action and way too much talking. The last two sentences of my first paragraph, where people try to talk sense into Dr. Keith Richie: that's the bulk of the movie! ZONTAR is only 80 minutes long, but it feels much longer. The movie is just flat.
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Post by DSR on Jun 20, 2020 23:29:06 GMT -5
BEAUTY QUEEN BUTCHER (1991) is an SOV horror film from 1991. Four pretty high school girls enter a beauty pageant and then decide to also enter an overweight unpopular classmate purely, Phyllis Loder (Rhona Brody) so they can treat her like shit the whole time. The shit-treating is encouraged by the pageant's snooty chairwoman, Betty Prunish (played to camp perfection by Jim Boggess). As if that weren't bad enough, sometime after the pageant is over, the popular girls sneak into Phyllis's house while she's out and microwave her cat. When Phyllis comes home, she vows to have her revenge on the people who've wronged her...
Imagine if Carrie White didn't have psychokinetic powers, was overweight, went to high school in the late 80s, and had her story told by first-and-only-time filmmakers, and said filmmakers didn't take their story all too seriously, and you'll get the vibe of this TWO HOUR LONG shot-on-video epic! While this certainly could have been edited down (the beauty pageant itself takes up the first hour) and the pay-off in the second half is far from a masterpiece of gore, this film still manages to be charming. You can tell the cast and crew had a lot of fun making it, and even though they aren't very experienced they give their all. The weird tangential jokes that spring up from time to time that don't really need to be there and aren't particularly funny take on an anti-comedy kind of humor just in how long they go. I don't know if I've ever called a slasher movie "cute" before, but this one seems to fit the bill.
FUN FACT: one of the pretty popular girls is played by Tammy Pescatelli, who would go on to a stand-up comedy career, becoming a finalist on NBC's Last Comic Standing reality competition show in the mid 00s.
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