ok lets all shit our pants to something old: pre-2006 horror film thread

I know there are loads of old horror film threads but I wanted a more obvious one for regular discussion of whatever you have seen recently and for recent reissues of older films.

I'll talk again about some of the older films that I mentioned in the other thread. So I'm going to repeat myself a bit.

NIGHT OF THE DEVILS came out on DVD about a year ago and its by the director of Mill Of Stone Women. Early 70s, somewhere between old Bava and more modern gorey stuff. It's about a mostly abandoned forest town with wurdalak style vampires haunting it. I don't think it's a classic but it clearly deserves to emerge out of neglect/obscurity because before it got reissued it seems there was rarely any mention of it and I think it's a lot better than many other 70s Italian horror films. It has some really great images but on the downside it has two vampires dying a screaming death in a laughably unlikely fashion.

Last summer I watched on YouTube two of the 50s versions of GHOST OF YOTSUYA. The late 50s colour version was easily the better version and probably the most glaringly absent film of all the western DVD releases of classic Japanese horror films (such as Kwaidan, Onibaba, Kuroneko, Blind Beast, 60s version of Jigoku, Horrors Of Malformed Men, Lake Of Dracula, Matango, Hausu and Ugetsu). I'd say this was better than most of them actually. Great soundtrack, great ending scenes.
This really needs a proper release, I've heard that Miike's upcoming Over Your Dead Body is a variation on this story that has been filmed roughly ten times. Maybe that'll help this version come out but I wouldn't bet on it. Do you think emailing DVD labels would be worthwhile?

BOXER'S OMEN was another impressive recent viewing mostly for the sheer weirdness and colourful grotesque elements.

MORGIANA is kind of a basic murder mystery plot but it's made worthwhile by the visual styling, great dresses of the mostly female cast and good setting. I'd like to see more of Juraj Herz's horror films but there seems to be nothing available aside from Cremator.

MUMSY NANNY SONNY AND GIRLY was really funny in a way that might annoy a lot of people; it's kind of unique. I love how in America they called it GIRLY and advertised it like a sexploitation film.

Other things I saw not long ago was SISTERS and NIGHTMARE ALLEY, both very good but probably don't need as much introduction.

Saw BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW on tv last night and I'm glad I didn't buy it, I find most British horror films of that era immensely overrated even though I love those gothic and rural visual styles more than anything. Redeeming features are the settings, the odd soundtrack and the lovely dancing naked girl at the end. I think this is a textbook example of conservative horror.

I sort of felt the same way about Witchfinder General, but eventually warmed up to the thing.

Isn't Witchfinder General more anti-conservative? I've never seen the whole thing.

I think IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS deserves way more chat than it gets. It has some really major flaws but I think it's a lot more ambitious, effective and special in places than it ever gets credit for; probably same for Prince Of Darkness but to a lesser extent. Something that strikes me is how Carpenter has always been very pro-showthemonster but you only get a brief glimpse at what was clearly a bunch of monsters that had loads of work put into them. I've never been able to find out about the DVD extras of the film but I remember as a terrified child seeing on tv the special effects studio proudly showing off the monsters and I wonder if that clip is lost forever.

Not about the conservative angle, just the Britishness of it.

Which Sisters are you talking about? It's not obviously bringing anything to mind right now.

Morgiana/Mumsy Nanny/Nightmare Alley all top films. The latter I love a possibly inordinate amount. The former, yeah, it's all about the styling, I see it as high gothic meets Mucha meets late '60s/early '70s surrealism. But then I may be talking crap. I actually went to a costume party as Viktorie recently, though I'm not sure how well I pulled it off (or indeed if anyone knew who I was supposed to be).

Looked up Boxer's Omen - that has gone straight on my 'to watch' list.

I think this is a textbook example of conservative horror.

Not entirely sure what you mean - horror kind of revolves around attraction/repulsion towards what's on screen, but I don't think Brit rural folk horror is noticeably more repulsed by its pagan practices than it is attracted...

DePalma's Sisters. A much better film than Scarface or Carrie I'd say.

I think the whole "conservative" horror and fantasy thing is not as easy to decide as some might say but it has been used repeatedly as a critique. Like Tolkien's orcs; pagans and vampires in films being defeated by puritans. Kim Newman talks about this a lot in his book NIGHTMARE MOVIES.

I think the conservative depiction of vampires accusation is harder to justify because it seems sensible to kill vampires who are destroying your families and are killing lots of people in the process. A vampires bloodlust overpowering their their empathy is a good enough explanation for me. The actions of those in Blood On Satan's Claw make sense inside the film, but there is a feeling among lots of critics that this comes from a unfair worldview, particularly when old Christian dudes are getting the violent victory at the end (but in BOSC the guy who kills the demon seems secular).

The depictions of pagans in particular. Like when Moorcock said that you can't really trust Tolkien to tell you that all orcs are pure evil.
I like Christopher Lee but I recall him in a recent interview talking about pagans as if they were a real threat in the modern world.

Ever since Clive Barkers era I think it's been frowned upon in some circles to depict humanoid monsters as unquestionably evil. Some people have accused Machen's "Great God Pan" being misogynist but I don't see that myself.

hey just fyi this exists too:

sometimes I like to shit my pants oldschool: 1990-1999 horror film thread

Yeah, but the pagans in The Wicker Man are unquestionably the bad guys, but you still side with them over Edward Woodward every time. They're obviously bad, but they're much much cooler and more interesting. So does that make it a conservative film or not?

xp

I'll never forget how as a child, having "good guys" win against monsters made no sense to me, I was horrified when I saw Dracula clumsily falling through cracking ice into freezing water. I think that was Dracula Prince Of Darkness.
Many years later even though my expectations were lower, I was still horrified by a Dracula who was supposed to be "powerful beyond your wildest imaginings" even more clumsily kills himself by getting tricked into walking into too many thorny bushes. That might have been Dracula AD1972.

I've never been huge on Wicker Man, Woodward doesn't deserve his fate but he is annoying enough that his downfall is funny and satisfying rather than difficult to swallow.

In the Mouth of Madness is really really great. Miles better than Prince of Darkness.

Sisters was one of Herrmann's last great film scores and it drives me crazy that it is only available on CD in a shitty sounding noise-reduced edition. Someday I'll buy the LP and make a rip of it.

I managed to download Michael (Witchfinder General) Reeves' The Sorcerers off the internet this weekend and am v v psyched to watch it.

Disappearing doorways department: I bookmarked a bunch of 70s british ITV horror items on Youtube a few weeks ago (particularly the Beasts series of short films) but when I went back to watch them the dude's account had been shut down.

looooool @ the new DVD of "The Visitor" what an entertainingly bad movie

Damn I maybe should have called this thread "pre-2005" because "post-2005" probably includes everything in 2005? I'm sure it doesn't matter too much which thread includes 2005 films.

I'm a huge fan of Nosferatu and the very beautiful Faust (aside from the prolonged romantic comedy section) but I've never tried another Murnau film despite years of opportunity and more complete versions of his other films which has risen their critical standing.
Any recommendations for Phantom or Haunted Castle?

COFFIN JOE COLLECTION is a bargain even if most of the 9 films are very poor...

AT MIDNIGHT I WILL TAKE YOUR SOUL is okay, it has mainly short bursts of gusto and a freshness of approach about it.

The sequel THIS NIGHT I WILL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE is the only one I'd actually recommend and if you bought the collection for only this, it would be a fair price. There is some overly long boring scenes but it is totally unique and has lots of energy; a few good hysterical scenes with strange imagery, really crazy intro credits too. Sadly the film still has censored dialogue at the end to make it appear as if Coffin Joe repented for his sins.

These first two films also have a strange philosophy that adds a lot to their appeal; but sometimes I wonder if Marins has it all figured out or if he just makes it up to be whatever sounds cool at any given moment. Coffin Joe is supposed to be crazily sexist but the way his female victims fall in love with him so easily make the film's look sexist as a whole. The director and his character are a fascinating phenomenon sometimes (worth reading about how he was regarded in Brazil) but I don't know why the later films have such an imaginative decline.

Aside from the documentary all the other films are really challeningly dull slogs with brief moments of interest and oddity.
Awakening Of The Beast has funny little four legged monster with a tree sprouting from its back, some weird hallucinatory scenes similar to the second film and people with faces painted on their shaking buttocks. A later film has a man discreetly fingering a woman to help her look like she is crying at a funeral.
After sitting through them all, I understand why so few people bothered writing about the later films.

I'm curious about his newer film Embodiment Of Evil. Marins has a reputation for making risky scenes of women being terrorized by creepy crawlies and some people have said the women in this film look genuinely hysterical in a deeply worrying way. He had to take his wife to the hospital to get an insect out her ear as she was screaming that she thought it was inside her brain.

There needs to be a proper Corman box set of his horror films. I'm reluctant to get a lot of them because a lot of them are underwhelming but they often have just enough going for them for me to crave more and I think they are better than the similar British films of that era.

THE UNDEAD (not seen it but the trailer has a stunning beauty in it)
FALL OF THE HOUSE IF USHER (okay)
MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (should offend dwarves)
PIT AND THE PENDULUM (easily the best of the ones I've seen, good visuals and Barbara Steele)
TOMB OF LIGEIA (a bit dull)
THE TERROR (Karloff and Jack Nicholson, okay)
PREMATURE BURIAL (not seen it)
TALES OF TERROR (not seen it)
THE RAVEN (not seen it)
TOWER OF LONDON (really dull, not to be confused with Karloff film of same name)
HAUNTED PALACE (Lovecraft attempt with some nice visuals and gorgeous lady)

Not sure about comedies like A Bucket Of Blood and Little Shop Of Horrors. I always thought Oblong Box was by Corman but it isn't. Horror Hotel feels like one of them and I'm quite fond of that.

I'm amazed that Corman is still regularly producing films with titles just like he did in the 50s-60s. Anyone seen his newer films?

Don't get people who are rooting against Sgt Howie in TWM. He may be a bit of a prude but how can you not feel for him? Even on a basic level of empathy for a guy who's clearly trying to do good while all around plot against him.

I guess I could feel sorry for him but my excuse is that I saw that clip "Oh God!Oh Jesus Christ!" repeatedly (people link to it regularly on forums and blogs for comic effect) on tv horror film documentaries that had obnoxious spoilers. It is very funny in isolation.
I think those shows spoiled a lot of films and I hope future viewers can experience a lot of these films more freshly than I did. Luckily when I watched Spoorloos/Vanishing, I didn't realise I had previously seen the ending on a clip show until the film finished. That would have ruined it.
Those clip show bastards showed the endings to Suspiria, Nosferatu, Exorcist and Don't Look Now.

It is sad that books aren't more widely discussed but the big benefit is you can read most of the classics without knowing what happens in them.

Tears of Kali (2004, Andreas Marschall)
German flick about a fictional cult whose meditation methods unleash demons, sounds pretty great. Not great by any means, but intriguing and promising. Unusual ideas, ambitious storytelling and an omnibus structure that keeps things moving. Undercut by distinctly lacklustre cinema. A trial run for something better?

Naked Blood (1996, Hisayasu Sato)
Repeat viewing. An alienated young man invents a serum that causes people to experience pain as pleasure, tragedy ensuses. This film seems known only to hardcore gore & transgression buffs, but I think it's an amazing work of art. A justly notorious (though relatively brief) midfilm auto-cannibalism setpiece drastically limits its potential audience, but I strongly recommend Naked Blood to anyone who thinks they might be able to stomach the gore. Surreal, quietly anguished and strangely haunting. A longtime personal favorite that holds up remarkably well.

Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2001, Naoyuki Tomomatsu)
Repeat viewing. A mysterious disease causes young women between the ages of 15 and 17 to die and then return to life as mindless, bloodthirsty zombies. This cheerfully schlocky, superficially comical splatter movie uses its basic situation to tell a number of related (and in most cases overlapping) stories, with varying tone & emphasis. Beneath the goofy surface, however, lies a cryptic and rather disturbing commentary on Japanese schoolgirl fetishism. Sui generis and strangely heartfelt.

I've seen a fair amount of talk about Naked Blood On this forum. I'm intrigued, I don't think I've even heard the name before.

damn you aren't kidding that tears of kali SOUNDS great! I have to see that despite yr mixed rev.

tears of kali is definitely worth a watch, and yeah, the concept had me sold from the get-go. the director's follow-up, masks, is much more assured & satisfying, if a good deal less original.

re naked blood: i genuinely love the move, but it's very hard to recommend. the worst moments (of which there are few) are REALLY nasty, like "some things you can't unsee" level unpleasantness. my sense is that the yuk factor unbalances and overshadows the rest of the film, to the point where even i have to admit that a threshold has been crossed. with that substantial caveat in mind, an amazing piece of work.

I never go out of my way to seek or avoid violent sickie films; but I've heard a lot of complaints recently about such things and I rarely hear a coherent argument for what is "too far" or what constitutes a unethical way of depicting a reprehensible act.
There are some things I don't like seeing but I can't think of anything that I thought shouldn't have been shown.

i don't mean that naked blood becomes reprehensible as a result of its gore (well it does, but that doesn't bother me in itself). i mean that the nastier moments alter the film's overall tone substantially, perhaps to its artistic detriment. certainly limits the potential audience, which seems a shame.

... I rarely hear a coherent argument for what is "too far" or what constitutes a unethical way of depicting a reprehensible act.

feel you, but i'm not sure that kind of thing should or even can be broken down all logical-like. we all have our limits, and gut-level emotional responses (DO NOT WANT!) are just as valid as more seemingly-coherent intellectual analyses.

I just went to amazon and bought it there. 20pounds, a little bit too expensive but I'm very intrigued. I'll have to watch this when everyone else is asleep.

A few more things I saw in recent times...

SCHOCK/SHOCK
In the music section of this forum I've praised the soundtrack a lot (Libra includes a few Goblin members). When I watched the trailer for this film I decided to not bother with the film because the soundtrack by itself seemed so much more exciting.
But a few years later I got the chance to see it and it was way better than expected. This might even be one of Bava's very best films. A lot of his classic films stand on the strength of their visuals but this is better than most of them as a whole work. This is Bava adjusting to a new era of Italian horror film and he doesn't look remotely out of touch here.
The story is about a dead father who haunts his wife by possessing the body of his son.
Some really strange moments in this film, but really the soundtrack is still my favourite thing about it.

NOROI
Some people rate this as one of the greatest Japanese horror films ever but it barely made much impression on me. It's made in the form of a documentary, with tv show clips and investigative journalism.

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
Aside from the appealingly smokey dark visuals and settings, this is yet another incredibly dull Bela Lugosi film with all the willingness and poor comic relief you'd expect.

MASK OF FU MANCHU
Sluggish boredom and the expected racism. The lightning massacre at the end was kind of good but I could never recommend the film.

NAKED BLOOD
It is weirdly sedate for a gore film, reminds me in some places of Death Powder. I can see how you might think the goriest parts spoil the sleepily surreal parts. The violence is important to the story, so the gore doesn't feel entirely misplaced; perhaps after being warned it didn't seem too bad to me. The naïve quality of the film was interesting.
Looking at the director's filmography there is so many films that got renamed (the director had a different intended title for them all) to sound like taboo pushing rape fantasies, I wonder if they are all porn films or anything like Naked Blood?
There was an advert on the dvd for a film called Sexy Soccer, which looks like the laziest sexploitation film I've ever seen.

DEATH POWDER
This film makes little attempt at being coherent but it has some good stuff in there. Steamy cyberpunk locations, hallucinatory scenes, a humorous music video, groups of scarred people. The version I saw was only partially subtitled.

CURSE OF KAZUO UMEZU
This is really stiffly animated but it works well enough, the background art has some nice dreamy darkness about it. The first story is pleasingly monstrous, surprisingly scary with a pretty cool twist.
Umezu got a lot of his comics made into live action tv/film but I've never bothered with them apart from this.

LABYRINTH OF DREAMS
This is from Sogo Ishii's quiet phase after his early punk films. An elegant soft black and white ghost story that is only borderline horror, really nice stuff. Ishii's frequent actor Tadanobu Asano stars.

From the animation thread, but I properly linked this video because this thread isn't in threat of being overloaded with videos...

Nina Shorina's "Room Of Laughter" here. One of the best films I saw last year. A prime example of what animation can do for horror. If you have ten minutes to spare...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgZZY9K-WIc

Looking at the director's filmography there is so many films that got renamed (the director had a different intended title for them all) to sound like taboo pushing rape fantasies, I wonder if they are all porn films or anything like Naked Blood?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:41 AM (Yesterday)

nearly all of hisayasu sato's other films are softcore sex pictures (though he did direct a memorable segment in 2005's rampo noir horror omnibus). i've downloaded a few of his pinku based on the recommendation of others, but have yet to watch any: survey map of a paradise lost, an aria on gazes and love - 0 = infinity. tbh, i don't know whether the somewhat artful titles here are original or replacements intended to help sell the films to more sensitive western audiences, and i don't really trust imdb on this. he's said to be a well respected director within his micro-genre, an experimental punk artist working at the furthest fringes of commercial cinema. i wouldn't know, and i'm not sure i want to further explore a filmography full of titles like lolita vibrator torture and horse woman dog. he did make a gay pink film called muscle, which sounds intriguing, but i haven't found a torrent.

personally, i see naked blood as an interesting and convincingly anguised peice of outsider art. the fact that the director apparently spent the bulk of his career making sleazy, violent, low budget pornography only adds to the nihilist resonance.

and wow, death powder sounds great! thanks for the tip, will watch.

Anyone been seeing these recent BFI disc releases? Stuff like M R James/Ghost Story For Christmas collection, Robin Redbreast, Gaslight, Sleepwalker, Dead Of Night, Supernatural and Schalcken The Painter?

Most of this appears to be old British tv shows, I'm sceptical but I've seen some extremely positive reviews for them. I've seen one or two of the M R James episodes and they were fine. I read Le Fanu's Schalcken The Painter recently and I am curious how they'd pull it off for screen.

A word of warning: the complete Karloff's Thriller is packaged and blurbed like a pure horror show but really only something like 10 episodes of the 67 are horror; it was really a noir/crime/mystery show. Quite a few people said it was better than Twilight Zone and Outer Limits but I never saw much of them.
It was decent but I never sustained enough interest to watch the whole thing. A lot of the acting is a bit sloppy. The highlights for me were a haunted house story with Rip Torn; a Bloch story about a mirror or glasses that let you see monstrous "true" forms of people; best was a Derleth story with Karloff as a weird pale lethargic scientist covered in cobwebs. But none of this was really enough to justify getting the boxed set.

I super dug the three episodes I watched before it was taken off Netflix. Also: tons of fuckin money ass goldsmith scores on those.

The theme tune was great.

100 bloody acres now streaming on us at least netflix

The Watson/Webber version of Fall Of House Of Usher. I'd say it was among the best silent horror films. Only 12 minutes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPYjrOST-VQ

Any opinions on the 1974 version of Dracula? I guess it's about to be reissued, and Varese Sarabande just issued the soundtrack by Bob Cobert-- I listened to it on spotify today and it's great stuff in the hammer romantic-menace vein (but better recorded than most of the hammer music).

Who was playing that Dracula, it doesn't sound familiar.

Anyone saw Mimic directors cut? Del Toro said he was pleased because he didn't have to disown the film anymore. But I'm still kind of reluctant because unlike Barker's Nighbreed, I never got the sense that it could have been something special if left alone (admittedly based on the opinions of people who saw it before it was butchered). I guess The Keep is another film that people are still hoping for a directors cut.

Just watched my new copy of IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (not a good copy, I think it's Korean, it has way too small a screen size), I hadn't seen it in maybe more than 10 years and it holds up less well than I had imagined.
The light metal music in the intro/outro doesn't set the tone very well. I remembered the film being cheesy with the appearance of the evil writer and the clichéd scary children but I didn't remember the goofy humour at all, with all those wisecracks.
I used to be freaked out by Sam Neill laughing in the cinema but I guess there was nothing wrong with that part, I'm just older. I kept thinking Neill didn't care that much about his performance or maybe he thought this was going to be closer to a horror comedy than it really was. It's unbelievable and funny how he makes a map from the book covers.

What is still quite effective is the disordered reality scenes almost like Jacob's Ladder, a lot of the driving scenes with the tunnels, dark roads and the cyclist; I liked the creatures (especially the main tunnel scene that is very similar to Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness") and the church interior too.

2 taglines: "Lived any good books lately?" and "Reality isn't what it used to be".

I have really strong memories of being very young and even terrified of this films existence, trying to avoid looking at pictures of it. As a young teen finding it pretty scary too.

It isn't great but I don't know why it rarely gets mentioned for quite a long time.

One of my favourite sites heavily recommended an obscurity called Atrapados that sounded really great...
http://www.fright.com/edge/Atrapados.htm

Now he linked to vimeo where the director has uploaded the film...
http://vimeo.com/92413499
I hope I can watch it soon if my internet speed gets fixed.

I'd watch a Keep director's cut out of curiosity, but the film is perfect as is

I think the reason it has never had a DVD release is possibly the difficulty of finally putting together the directors cut. Not sure what is stopping Nightbreed.

THEY LIVE

I got an unexpected amount of pleasure seeing a musclebound hero who is also a convincing, likable everyman (for lack of a better word). Not a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don't mind Stallone but I could do with more big muscle guys who seem approachable in films. Don't think I've seen a film with The Rock in it but he seems nice.

I'm very familiar with the majority of Carpenter's films but for some reason I had never heard of They Live until a few years ago.

Great funny long fight scene. The thing I liked least is the very forced sounding wise cracks and cheesy lines.

Been looking around for Jean Rollin DVDs and some are prominently labelled for being uncut but I don't think any of his films have been censored for decades have they? He seems way too tame to be censored into the DVD age.

Are the Dr Phibes films worthwhile?

I had passed on The Hunger and Paul Schrader's version of Cat People many times because I never bought the hype, they didn't sound interesting to me. I lump them together as very 80s sexy horror films that were very modern and cool for their time, I guess Near Dark might even fit in there. But I finally watched both this weekend and I'm glad I did.

Cat People feels like a radical new interpretation possibly more based on the source short story than the original film (?), I have to agree with the camp that prefers this to the Lewton film (I think there were better Lewton films), there were so many aspects I don't recall in the older film. Kinski was really sweet in this.

The Hunger was a real surprise. I don't have much experience with Tony Scott but I was never remotely attracted to most of his output that I know of (I have heard he has done lesser known great stuff); so I was amazed that this is one of the most visually impressive and stylish films I've ever seen; really beautiful at times. A lot of old makeup jobs look terrible but the makeup for aging Bowie was very impressive. This is the type of surprise that makes me think that sometimes I should listen to hype when I'm reluctant.

first doctor phibes is fun, not great, but a nice period piece, great production design. second is a wash.

dig both the hunger and shrader's cat people remake, moreso the former. other than that and true romance, though, i've never had much use for tony scott.

This might be kind of silly but Angel Witch's Dr Phibes tune made me think "wow, maybe if that film inspired such great music maybe the film is great too".

Corman's version of The Raven. I had no idea it was a full on comedy about rival magicians, it's probably one of the better Price/Corman/Poe films but I could imagine it horrifying some serious Poe fans and I guess using a classic poem like that as nothing but a framing device for a goofy comedy is pretty lousy. One of the funnier parts has Lorre calling Karloff a "dirty old man" for turning his magic wand floppy.

Wake In Fright. Liked it a lot but I'm surprised that this has uncontroversially been treated as a horror film by everybody. Peoples ideas of genre must be a lot more inclusive these days.

One thing I found odd about the film is that it's difficult to really gauge what was getting to him the most. He wasn't totally uptight about hunting or drunken antics; you're not really supposed to totally sympathise with his knee-jerk feelings about the other characters sex lives either.
I guess the kangaroo fighting and the idea of becoming a stranded alcoholic around those same people was the worst.

The director seems to be yet another guy who unfortunately spent most of his days doing less than ideal material.
Gary Bond has such an impressive face and voice, I'd like to see him in more.

popular definition of horror seems to have changed massively in the last decade & a half. now includes basically anything that could reasonably be described as "horrifying" (or even just "disturbing"). there's an admirable clarity and simplicity to this, but i'm not comfortable with it.

I'm conflicted too about horror being basically only required to be unpleasant/disturbing. But if it pleases some fans and creators then I'm for it.

I did recently see someone complaining that Jean Rollin films shouldn't be called horror. I may have never discovered The Shout if it wasn't lumped in the genre, so I'm grateful for that (fantasy films have such a poor tradition that stuff like Hourglass Sanatorium and Dean Spanley is more likely to be discussed in horror magazines).
I also think that if Bride Of Frankenstein qualifies then so does Nightmare Before Christmas.

I think it's a bigger issue in prose than anywhere else. I've seen so many reviewers disgusted that they read someone like Robert Aickman rather than something more traditional. I support diversity but I have to admit that I'm disappointed when I read a horror anthology with too much mundane realism for my taste(stuff like losing a child or terminal cancer), but I shouldn't be able to(nor anyone else) get to decide what never goes in a horror anthology.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (50s version)
It's fine but it didn't do anything special for me. Not really required viewing.

SECONDS
Good. Has some really fine moments (especially when the images are distorted), I might need to see it again because I didn't pick up on everything. I actually think it's one of the bleakest harshest pre-70s horror films I've ever seen.

Both incredible films imo

Seen someone talking about the House series and I just realised I have saw the first three at different times. I remember some seriously heated expectations when I was young as if they were the ultimate haunted house films but they really aren't.

It's mostly a horror comedy series. I think more than one film has the houses with gateways into different locations, like jungles.

The first one has some okay monstery stuff but it's mostly memorable for one of the most hideous creatures I've ever seen in a film (a miserable looking corpse of a large lady with sharp teeth), I remember seeing its face on a Fangoria cover and being incredibly disturbed, thinking the film must be totally harrowing. I don't remember if any of it was funny though, probably not.

I thought the second was quite entertaining in a goofy way, with buddy comedy, these weird jungle adventures, a charming old cowboy corpse and some impressive monster creations at the end. But I still wouldn't go as far to recommend it.

The third one was just renamed to fit into this series, so the reason it feels nothing like the others is that it wasn't supposed to be part of the series.
I don't think it's supposed to be funny, although there is a really out of place scene in which the villain makes cat noises before he forces himself on the wife of the main character. That scene is really upsetting because (1)the cat noises and the cartoonish behaviour of the villain make it seem like it was supposed to be the only funny thing in the film (2) as silly as the villain is played, he comes across a genuinely horrible, hostile and malicious rapist, the wife seems totally helpless and the hero kind of hopeless too. At the time it felt uncomfortably cruel but I saw it quite some time ago.

always hated the house movies, though they seem beloved of many. seconds is spectacular tho.

house 4 sucks but it does have this classic scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDZoPxi7r64

Abominable Dr Phibes. This is actually just like Theatre Of Blood in that it's a horror/comedy Vincent Price vehicle in which he kills off people in inventive ways with the help of a pretty young female assistant, people who he believes wronged him in the past. Very specific similarities.

It's way more stylish than Theatre Of Blood, his character is more cool too. Quite enjoyable in places but I wouldn't recommend it strongly.

The House That Screamed (1969). Spanish production. Girls are disappearing from an isolated boarding school. I highly recommend this, it's reminiscent of Bava - especially Blood and Black Lace - but with a heavy layer of sexual repression and some of the perversion that goes with that. Boasting a spectacular female cast led by Lilli Palmer, plus the young actor who would appear the next year with Jane Asher in Deep End.

Don't get people who are rooting against Sgt Howie in TWM. He may be a bit of a prude but how can you not feel for him? Even on a basic level of empathy for a guy who's clearly trying to do good while all around plot against him.

I never root against Howie! He's certainly not someone I'd want to hang out with in real life, but he's a damn good cop, has a philosophy and sticks to it, and does nearly everything right... though it ultimately does him no good. Love Howie!

COFFIN JOE COLLECTION is a bargain even if most of the 9 films are very poor

I'm shocked by how many people still haven't seen these. There are kind of mind-blowing. There is nothing else like them. That dude had some obsessions and he never let them go, and the movies, if memory recalls, just get trippier and trippier. If only that 9-disc set weren't Region 2!

house 4 sucks but it does have this classic scene:

this is amazing btw

I wouldn't say they were progressively trippier, some of the later ones are very stale, even with the (completely real) eyeball operation scene. They are all interesting for some reason or other. The anthology film had real potential to be a good film but didn't make it.

Some have compared him to Jodorowsky and in terms of his obsessions, there is something to that. The idea of a horror icon who is obsessed with finding the ultimate woman to make the ultimate son to carry on his bloodline is very fresh and fascinating.

Coffin Joe lamented that there are fewer horror icons now (or less good ones) and I agree that is unfortunate. After the various Chaney, Schreck, Barrymore, Veidt, Lugosi, Karloff, Christopher Lee, Cushing and Price characters, what are we left with? I like Englund a bit, Bruce Campbell can be good if not spread too thickly but I can't see much else. Maybe there should be conscious effort to make new exciting characters who are somewhat cartoony.

MESSIAH OF EVIL

I was wondering for quite a while which DVD version I should get and how much I was willing to pay. Code Red version is supposed to be the only one worth getting, it has the originally intended widescreen and the director pulled out the theme song he didn't approve of.

The few Code Red copies left were very expensive so I went for the public domain version on YouTube.

I actually like the theme song, it's as evocative as anything in the film. Since I didn't see it widescreen, I guess I can't completely judge the visuals but it didn't look quite as stylish as I had heard it did. It has nice touches here and there but I couldn't recommend it on that basis.

I generally don't flinch when I see lousy fashions of 60s-70s-80s films but I think a lot of horror films are damaged by fashions that were contemporary for the time. It's an annoyance in loads of 70s films when you see people who look ready to go to the disco, or wealthy people at parties surrounded by bland leisure music, it's a bit garish yucky and it makes a lot of sexploitation films quite unpleasant. The men's haircuts are often quite bad too.

It's quite goofy and badly acted generally but there are some decent foreboding moments and night wandering scenes. It's okay, I'm glad I didn't pay some silly price for it.

I'm thinking I should start limiting the amount I pay for films more, only pay above 13 pounds for less risky seeming films. Even though I buy a fair amount of films, I generally don't find it rewarding enough. It's very rare that I find something I love. With all these film streaming services around, maybe I should wait until more becomes available. The UK Netflix selection is still lousy.

Also, the film is said to have stopped shooting before they could finish properly. It seems like a full film to me.

You shouldn't judge Messiah of Evil based on PD prints. It's a strange and special film which loses a lot when watched in P&S and in anything other than OAR. The CR DVD was pricey but properly restored. The good news is that a Blu-ray is coming soon. Probably late July. Along with a BD upgrade of another CR classic, Scavolini's Nightmare(s) (In a Damaged Brain), uncut.

Do you think the bluray will get a uk release?

http://www.toufaan.com/products/possession-limited-edition-2000-numbered-copies

POSSESSION, 1981
Limited Edition
Custom Blue Velvet Boxset
(2000 Numbered Units)

Runtime Runtime: 2 Hrs. 4 Mins.
Language
1. Original English Mono [dts-HD Master Audio]
2. Audio Commentary
3. Unauthorized Alternate Audio*
Subtitles English, French, and Spanish Subtitles
(optional, in White or Yellow)
Video 1.66:1
Discs Dual Layer BD-50 + CD

Catalog#: MVLE005 UPC: 091037398666

* This audio track features alternative music. It is not the director's approved version, and is included for completeness. Most notable is the addition of the piano theme during the subway miscarriage scene, and the removal of music during a pivotal scene. A handful of releases, including POSSESSION's first U.S. DVD release (ironically billed as the "Director's Cut") were issued only with this audio track. This additional music although composed by Andrzej Korzyñski was never used by the director in the final cut of the film. It is strongly recommended to watch the film with the original director's approved audio.

BLU-RAY DISC CONTENTS:
MONDO VISION presents the first ever North American Blu-ray release of Andrzej Zulawski's POSSESSION (1981) in an all new 2K digital transfer supervised and approved by the director. UNCUT & Fully Uncensored, this edition also marks the first ever release of the film in North America in its original Director's Cut.* The film is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 along with an uncompressed mono audio soundtrack. This Dual Layer disc has been transferred and encoded using a high-frequency process which preserves as much of the detail and texture from the original film as is possible on the Blu-ray format.

* See notes above regarding audio track.

DISC 1: THE FEATURE FILM

Digitally Restored 1080p HD Transfer Approved by Director Andrzej Zulawski [124min]

EXTRAS: [4 Hr. 8 Mins.]
[All extras except commentary come with Optional English Subtitles in White or Yellow]

The Other Side of The Wall: The Making of POSSESSION [52min]
Audio Commentary with Director Andrzej Zulawski [124min]
Video Interview with Director Andrzej Zulawski [36min]
Video Interview with Translator Eric Veaux [22min]
Theatrical Trailer [3min]
More from Mondo Vision [11min] [collection of 4 trailers from Andrzej Zulawski films]
La Femme Publique
L'important C'est Da'imer
La'mour Braque
Szamanka

Note Regarding Omitted Extra Feature:
During 1980s, the North American distributors removed 40 minutes from the film, and re-scored, re-arranged and visually altered the remaining 80, apparently to satisfy a commercial objective. The result stands as a textbook example of the power of re-editing in distorting a filmmaker's vision. Sadly, this was the version seen by audiences during POSSESSION's North American debut. MONDO VISION transferred and restored this 80min version from a 35mm release print in order to give audiences a rare chance to examine the damage done by a reckless pair of scissors. However, to avoid conflict with those responsible, a last minute decision was made not to include this version as part of the extras. For anyone interested to witness this travesty, we are considering to make it available online free of charge. Stay tuned for more details.

Disc 2: SOUNDTRACK CD [Digitally Remastered]
This complete 32 track CD consists of all the music composed for the film, plus additional outtakes that did not make the final cut. Track 32 is a Bonus Track and exclusive to this MONDO VISION edition.

PLUS:

84pg Commemorative Booklet - Content rich including 4 Exclusive Essays + Rare and Insightful Archival Essays & Interviews (retranslated and published for the first time ever in English) + Rare Photos and Artwork.

Exclusive
POSSESSION: A Brief Review By Tom Huddleston, TIME OUT (2012)
God Figured as a Public Whore Gone Crazy: Notes on Andrzej Zulawski's POSSESSION (1981), An Essay By Daniel Bird (2009)
POSSESSION: An Essay By Jeremiah Kipp (2011)
Pink Socks and Monsters: Excess in Andrzej Zulawski's POSSESSION: An Essay By Todd Garbarini (2010)

Archival
"Cinema Superactivity": Extracts From An Interview With Andrzej Zulawski -- By Daniel Bird & Stephen Thrower (Spring 1998)
Double Apocalypse in Berlin: POSSESSION: By Max Tessier (1981)
Doubles Working in Concert (POSSESSION): By Hubert Niogret (1981)
POSSESSION by Andrzej Zulawski: By Max Tessier (1981)
POSSESSION, Andrzej Zulawski: By Carine Varène (1981)
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: By Stephen Thrower (1998)

8 [ 5x7 ] U.S. Lobby Card Reproductions Inside Custom Envelope
5 [ 4x6 ] Exclusive Art Cards [ Original Paintings Courtesy of French Artist Jean-Philippe Guigou ]
1 Japanese Movie Flyer Reproduction
Individually Numbered Certificate Of Authenticity With Unique Serial # [ Only 2000 Individually Numbered Sets Produced ]

PACKAGING:
This edition of POSSESSION features a fully illustrated matte laminated Hardcover Box with magnetic enclosure + a separate Hardcover Slipcase with die-cut window. The slipcase is fully wrapped with import European blue velvet. The die-cut window reveals the original poster art from the magnetic box once the slipcase is on. Silver hot stamping is used throughout the packaging to highlight the title and the credits. Inside of the magnetic box features a foldout matte laminated 6-panel digipak, shiny black trays to hold the Discs + a Hardcover magnetic pocket to store the 84pg booklet and the remaining contents. The silver hot stamping theme is carried throughout the inside. This is our biggest Limited Edition yet, with a shipping weight of 2.5 pounds (1.13kg) and the following dimensions:

In Inches: 7.9" (H) x 6.1" (W) x 1.67" (D)
In Millimeters: 201 (H) x 155 (W) x 42 (D)

H= Height W= Width D=Depth

A PERSONAL NOTE:
I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who supported MONDO VISION in the past few years. Without your support this release would have never been possible. Every dollar earned from our previous releases was put back into licensing, production and manufacturing of POSSESSION. In many ways this is a very personal release. The first time I saw POSSESSION, it had a profound effect on me. As a film buff and a collector, I knew then that I had to re-present and re-market this film in a completely different manner. The film that I experienced was far different from the descriptions that I read about the film. I never saw it as a horror film nor an attempt to make a cheap monster flick. In fact I couldn't even explain what I just saw; I just knew that I LOVED it. It was so different than anything else that I had ever seen. What fascinated me was the level of intensity and the ability of one director to push his actors to the height of madness. Zulawski's direction although it upsets and angers many was a revelation to me; it renewed my faith in cinema and the power of this medium to go deep into human psyche. Even though POSSESSION has been released more than any other Zulawski title out there, I feel that our version (particularly the Limited Edition) is the one and only release you will ever need to own. We had the opportunity to release the film as early as 2010 on a sub-par DVD using outdated materials, but a personal decision was made to push back the release until a new HD master was available. It took us 3 years to convince the rightsholders but persistence finally paid off. However, the problems did not stop there. We then encountered an unfortunate situation with our production which delayed the release for another 2 years. All this time we fought the urge not to give in to pressure. We decided to delay the release as long as it required until our vision was realized. Here we are 5 years after our first DVD release and that dream is about to come true. We even joke and laugh about this as being the longest Blu-ray production in history. So there you have it, this release has been more than 5 years in the making but I feel and I hope that you will enjoy the finished product just like the rest of us. Here I would like to thank two people in particular who played big part in making this and previous MONDO VISION projects happen. First, David Mackenzie. I met David online when he was 19 years old. Right then I knew he had the talent and understanding to author and encode outstanding Discs. He clearly achieved that purpose on previous MONDO VISION titles and POSSESSION is no different. David is now authoring numerous Discs for various reputable companies and his success is truly deserved. Next person I would like to thank is Tim Gengler, the person responsible for the visual side of things. Tim has put up with 5 years of my pickiness about every single detail of the design and packaging and I can't be happier with the results. POSSESSION was one of our most challenging projects due to the packaging design and it took us months and several hundred revisions to finally get it right. So Tim and David thank you for being part of this. Lastly, I understand that not everyone is interested in owning an expensive version of the Film which is why we always offer our standard release priced according to the market for these type of niche films. To serious Zulawski fans and those of you who contacted us asking for the Limited Edition, I can say that everything within our means was done to make this release happen. This is by far our most expensive production; the main intention was not to cut corners or go cheap. The Limited Edition of POSSESSION was meant to be on par if not better (we think it is) than what you get from big Hollywood studios with one important exception, the number of copies. When big studios make limited editions, their production run is in hundreds of thousands (and usually not even numbered), their intention is to lower the price point and sell as many copies as possible which is why many Limited Editions don't keep their value in the long-run. And let's not forget the number of times the same studios release and re-release their titles. Our goal was to get it right the first time and move on to the next project. So when it comes to a film like POSSESSION it makes absolutely no sense to do a high production run. Although we improved every aspect of the packaging and opted for Blu-ray instead of DVD, a final decision was made to keep the production at 2000 units while keeping our price point fair and justified for what is being offered. We have an exclusive deal with our good friends at TOUFAAN. They will distribute POSSSESSION independently and will start taking pre-orders on their website few weeks prior to the release date. Please keep in mind that like us the guys at TOUFFAN are doing this not just to make money but in order to do something worthwhile on the side. So please be patient and give them a chance to handle the distribution part. With your support we hope to release the remaining Zulawski catalogue.

It's really nice to see Possession finally get more fans and respect but I can't shell out for that. Hope the bonus track music isn't too good.

I've seen most of the main horror classics but I've still never seen a Jess Franco film, but somehow the news of Stephen Thrower's upcoming book about him from Flesh And Blood Press made me more interested. I'm hoping I don't get too into him because the guy has more feature films than any director I've heard of.

Thinking of getting quite a few more Rollin films. I quite enjoyed the two I saw.

Watched Atrapados (Trapped) last night, linked many posts above to Vimeo.

It's about a middle class woman and a handyman who get stuck inside her house which seems to be victim to an earthquake, they try to survive inside the rubble. It must have been filmed over quite a while because the handyman loses weight and gains hair over the course of the film. Mostly dark and gloomy looking with memories and hallucinations popping in. It is a bit of a stretch to call it a horror film but the situation is pretty miserable.

The worst things were that the characters mostly seemed like pawns in an argument. The length of their survival seems unconvincing to me but I really don't know about these things. I didn't know what to make of the evolution of their relationship, its difficult sometimes to guess how long they have been there at certain points and I guess it might be easier to forgive horrible actions if you are stuck in the same room with someone for months.

It is unique and I lightly recommend it.

wow, possession blu looks amazing, but yeah, fuck paying seventy bucks for a movie, restored music cues or no.

tbh, i've never seen a franco or a rollin film i really loved. liked, sure, when in the right mood, but i don't think either had a real feel for cinema. philistine, i know...

Mondovision is doing a cheaper edition of Possession with all the film stuff intact--the limited edition exclusive stuff is mainly the soundtrack CD, booklet/cards, and the packaging.

o nice! i wondered about that, but did no research. the regular verison's gonna be abt $40, which isn't cheap, but at least compares to yr criterion & what not.

looks like they're doing a whole zulawski series of which this is the fifth release, with a bunch more to come. dang. want.

The possession OST is available as a download from emusic, iTunes etc if you aren't wedded to compact disc.

(Maybe there's more music on the mondo version though, idk)

I'm a big fan of both Rollin and Franco. Most of Franco's films are unavailable, and arguably most of the ones that are available aren't great, but there are still plenty of excellent ones if the vibe suits you. Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed In Ecstasy might be good starting points.

The cd version of Possession soundtrack came out a year or two ago. That was probably the happiest I've ever been on finding a cd in a physical shop that I never thought would ever come out. That's why I was hoping this bonus track exclusive to the bluray package wasn't too spectacular.

I've been researching Franco a bit recently and apparently he didn't care about his films as whole finished pieces, it seems he wanted more than anything to create individual moments and loved the filmmaking process.

Which of the better Franco films are unavailable? I've got a list of 7 or 8 fan favourites I want and I'm sure they're all on dvd.

As for Rollin, I've saw Fascination and Shiver Of The Vampires. They weren't amazing but they had just enough to keep me interested and I felt quite comfy with them.
I liked Shiver mainly because it introduced me to the utterly adorable Sandra Julien. After that I got her two sexploitation films she did with Max Pecas, neither very good but she is super cute. She seems to have been primarily a model but she had a pop music career in japan (the only tune I can find on youtube is her sexually moaning along with Miki Sugimoto).

ETERNAL EVIL OF ASIA

Second hand dvd copies are going for crazy prices so I youtubed this one.

Mid-90s Hong Kong sex horror comedy. For such a bad taste film, it's so fancily and prettily shot, competing with Tsui Hark level extravagance. A group of guys from HK go to Thailand for some sex tourism, they get in a bad situation and a wizard follows them back home and puts voodoo style curses on them.

Some of it is funny; a guy gets his head transformed into a dick with his face on it, his head pisses when he is frightened; a witch traps a guy in deadly placenta.
What might go down less well is the scene at the end, the most extravagant rape scene I've ever seen on film, shot like a big supernatural battle, a proper set piece.

PANNA A NETVOR/ BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

After seeing Morgiana I wanted more Juraj Herz films in a similar style (a few of his newer films look very different), there aren’t many of his films on English dvd but I found that there was a dvd with no English title on the box but did have English subtitles in the disc: Panna A Netvor (in this disc’s subtitles for the film this is translated as “Virgin And The Beast”, not “Beauty”).

This is a really beautiful film, the actress is very cute but most of the pleasure is from the amazing scenery. The surreal paintings that start the film, a short scene of the woods of bare falling trees but mostly the amazing home of The Beast which is just a messy ruins of a mansion. The lovely gothic mess becomes like a maze in some places and it made me wonder if this was a real derelict place or if it was meticulously designed for the film. There are quite a few nice features in the house which are definitely designed by the filmmakers.
Like Morgiana there is pipe organ music but far more of it here, taking up most of the soundtrack; I can never get enough pipe organ in my life.

My complaints are that the costume is a tad goofy looking (but it isn’t a lion faced beast this time, which is interesting) but the expressive eyes of the beast compensate for that a little. The choices and evolution of the characters’ feelings are not very convincing.
There is a scene in which the beast while riding a horse chases a baby deer and repeatedly nearly tramples it, the deer keeps falling and it looks like this wouldn’t have happened that way with today’s animal protection helpers (but I have been surprised before by films that were completely approved by the animals’ protectors, I can’t judge what is too harsh on the animals).

The soundtrack repeats the main theme far too often.

I’ve seen clips of other Juraj Herz films with a similar sense of design but I need to find out what they are and if I can get them.

I’m excited by the idea of there being more hidden gems to find of eastern European fantasy and fairy tale films.

Nightbreed will be released in October in the way it was intended. Very curious about this. I actually haven't seen the whole of the existing version but the reputation of the directors cut is quite interesting.

http://rue-morgue.com/2014/07/nightbreed-the-directors-cut-release-date-and-features/

Wow, that's one of those cuts I didn't think would ever happen at this point.

what remains of thirteen year old me is mightily intrigued

for a second I thought "What Remains of 13-Year Old Me" was the title of a movie and I kept thinking what an awesome title that would be for a slasher

in many ways it was very much a horror show

Naked Blood (1996, Hisayasu Sato)
Repeat viewing. An alienated young man invents a serum that causes people to experience pain as pleasure, tragedy ensuses. This film seems known only to hardcore gore & transgression buffs, but I think it's an amazing work of art. A justly notorious (though relatively brief) midfilm auto-cannibalism setpiece drastically limits its potential audience, but I strongly recommend Naked Blood to anyone who thinks they might be able to stomach the gore. Surreal, quietly anguished and strangely haunting. A longtime personal favorite that holds up remarkably well.

wow, thank you for the recommendation. LOVED this one. the tone and subject matter both gave off some kinda of detached and weird cronenberg/early miike midpoint vibe. and the gore, while pretty extreme, was more gross out than sadistic, so it didn't overtake the (sleazily) heartfelt nature of the film as a whole. strange and great movie.

PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK

Watched on the endorsement of Telephone Thing.

Pretty good, very nice soundtrack, Mimsy Farmer is really lovely (seen her before in Four Flies On Grey Velvet).
I was conflicted over the end (which is way more lurid than the rest of the film so felt slightly jarring for me), but when the camera pulled back way down the corridor, it somehow seemed more right, fitted it into the paranoid nightmare better.

Raro Video seems like a good label, they put out Night Of The Devils (see top of the thread), mostly Italian films.
The DVD interview with the director had quite a few images that weren't in the film, they looked like photographs but I think they were highly realistic paintings by the director. One image was obviously a surreal painting.

I'm starting to notice how many families there are in the Italian film business, and the art world in general.

Macchie Solari is another good one with Mimsy Farmer.

Thanks, I'll take note. I see the western titles are Autopsy/Magician. Sounds good.

Here is her art site...
http://www.mimsyfarmer.com/
...she does painting and sculpture for theatre and film now.

Considered buying a Fulci box (Black Cat, New York Ripper, Manhattan Baby) this week. Now that I know Mimsy is in Black Cat, that's an extra incentive.
I'm a bit hesitant with Fulci, I think The Beyond is strongly overrated and Zombi 2/Zombie Flesh Eaters is a real bore for the most part. I think City Of The Living Dead and House By The Cemetery are made worthwhile by enough striking moments.
If Fulci was a writer or artist I'd probably like his stuff more, so much of the films were plagued by bad special effects and slow pace.

I read a funny story about him that he was once so frustrated by the poor performance of an actress that he dropped onto the grass ground and started clawing and biting into it, tearing grass chunks out in fury.

I'm a sucker for cat attacks and I've seen funny clips from the film. New York Ripper is STILL slightly censored (uncut anywhere?) but I think I can tolerate it this time.

I didn't see myself going back to old Euro horror much, it's kind of a minefield (as well as some Fulci, I didn't think much of Short Night Of Glass Dolls) but it turns out there is still a number of things I might like. Loads on DVD these days.

LISA AND THE DEVIL

Rewatched this because I didn't remember much about it.

Nice mansion setting with lots of decor, stuff about past/alternate lives, corpses that occasionally turn into mannequins, some oddly painted mannequins, a corpse getting its legs broken so it can fit in a coffin, a funny scene of an unpleasant guy getting repeatedly run over and a fairly decent climax... so why is this such a chore to watch?

The drama is so incredibly dull and flaccid, some of the characters are such annoyances that the whole thing just becomes difficult to watch. The colour is a bit too harsh for the visual style, particularly the clothes.

I rewatched Kill Baby Kill not long ago and even though it is a favourite of mine, the characters and drama scenes are pretty flat most of the time.
I've been thinking that Shock needs to be boosted up higher in the consensus of Bava's career. I think it's probably his second best film after Black Sabbath.

Hatchet For The Honeymoon. Decent but a tad dull. Some nice effects and music. Some bad dialogue and unintentionally comical dubbing.
I've never kept track of which Italian films are supposed to be in subtitles or English dubs, because sometimes the latter types are treated as the true version.

I missed the start of Klute (Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda) and it felt a lot like a giallo film. A very solid one too.

just watched this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Darkside:_The_Movie

which I don't recall ever having heard of before. Pretty self-consciously wacky both in casting and execution but fun in an EC comics/campy creepshow way

Re: Tales from the Darkside -- this many years later, I still can't believe that part with the cat and the mouth was real.

xpost Tales From The Darkside was basically Creepshow: The Series (I think they may have even intended to call it that at one point?), so Tales From The Darkside: The Movie was kind of a semi-official Creepshow 3. Hence the vibe.

(Countdown to someone ITT correcting my half-remembered facts.)

I still can't believe that part with the cat and the mouth was real.

lol yeah that part is totally batshit. the cat crawls in and then just crawls out...? what was the point of that?

I'm kind of interested because Michael McDowell (horror novelist and co-writer on Beetlejuice and Nightmare Before Christmas) written some of it.

I've only seen the first Creepshow, I don't like it much as a horror film but it has quite a few laughs with King trying to act like a Jack Davis drawing, Adrienne Barbeau threatening her husband and Ed Harris dancing.

This might be a good moment to mention the actual Creepshow 3. Has anyone else seen it? It's a horrid piece of work and has a segment that is one of the most misogynistic things I've ever seen. One of the worst horror movie watching experiences ever.

All I know is that Savini hated it and asked people to avoid it. So I doubt I'll ever see it.

It's right up there with Crash among the worst movies I have ever seen.

The most damning indictment a film can receive.

Not sure if I should ask which Crash or just assume you are talking the Oscar-bait one.

Dark Night Of The Scarecrow.
After seeing some weak acting and cheesiness I expected a slog but it actually moves along not bad, quite decent in places. I'm glad I saw it on tv rather than buying it, so I wouldn't recommend it. Not quite enough scarecrow stuff for me.
I like scarecrows and I think there are two other horror films about them, I'll have to look for trailers.

DARK WATERS (directed by Mariano Baino)

An English girl investigating a family mystery travels to an ancient nun's convent on a foreign island prone to flooding. Dark caverns full of paintings and candles, cult conspiracy, blind oracles, a really cute nun girl and a bit of monstery stuff. A nice synthy soundtrack too.

Some of the acting is a tad rough, a bit cheesy at times but I liked this and most Argento fans should too. It was one of the few 90s euro-horror style films that I've ever heard strong recommendation for.

No Shame released the definitive edition, there is a two disc version but unfortunately I didn't get that one. Even the single disc version has quite a lot of extras; the documentary talks about the difficulties of filming in Ukraine while there was attempted military revolution and a crew constantly drunk on vodka.

It seems the reason this wasn't a bigger film is that they didn't have the budget to make enough copies to show around to more interested companies. I'm fairly sure this could have been more of a 90s standard for the core horror film audience.

Baino has done mostly short films (which I haven't seen) and I hope he makes another feature length one again.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltz4ir6vXd1qg39ewo1_500.gif
http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltyb3rQO7I1qg39ewo1_500.gif

such a great practical effect.

Wau

holy cats

I saw that one in the theaters! Even more totally forgotten was "Tales from the Hood."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZMN2C_GyJJw/UHndXruUBgI/AAAAAAAABdk/HDXjZJEJ2-M/s1600/tales-from-the-hood-1995-1024x568.jpg

Nah I remember that one

What is that cat gif from? I just watched Fulci's Black Cat and I expected to see this, but no. Also expected to see a cat ripping a woman's eyes out (seen it on YouTube attributed to Fulci) but that wasn't in it either.

THE BLACK CAT (Fulci)

I liked this better than House By The Cemetery, The Beyond, Zombie Flesh Eaters and City Of The Living Dead. But that might be because I saw a few of those younger when I had more outlandish expectations. I might need to freshen my memory of one or two of them. But this seems better to me.

I find cats and dogs hilarious regardless of what they are doing, so it is kinda funny.

I liked the opening scenes following the cat. Good cat sounds. Some good scenery. Lots of closeups of eyes. Pretty good music. The wandering scenes were good.
Enjoyable for Mimsy Farmer and the old guy from A Clockwork Orange.
I really liked the ideas about the links between the cat and the old man, as if they have some tortured, hateful but mutually beneficial relationship.

This isn't really a Poe adaptation for the most part but it ends up using too much of Poe to the detriment of the film. I would have liked it to go more in its own direction.
There is a very brief scene of the shadow of the cat being hung on a noose, it looks very convincing and I wonder if the managed it within the general standards expected on the animal rights regulations. I can imagine Italy being more lax back then.

A lousy looking burning model in a scene of a person on fire. A really badly edited part of a drunk man throwing a rock that lands in two different places. Some bad dubbing but not too bad compared to a lot of similar films. A sober driver unconvincingly speeds right into a man walking very slowly. A guy loses his facial scars far too quickly.

All in all, pretty good.

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD

This film still has some of the most striking gore scenes I've ever seen. I'd never call myself a gorehound but the scene with girl in the car under hypnotic influence is weirdly beautiful, the way her face looks. The drill scene still amazes me, wondering how on earth they achieved that.
There are quite a few more scenes like this but these two and the coffin scene are what the film will always be remembered for. Some of the less violent hauntings and underground scenes with corpses have good imagery too.

Some of the sound effects were really cool.
I wouldn't say it was great but the part with the sex doll suddenly inflating is very odd.

Even with quite a number of really strong scenes but I really don't think the whole thing holds together very well.
Several times characters act in a way that that makes no sense. The man who helps the woman out of the coffin picks a ridiculous way to get her out and it seems like the set-piece was prioritised above all else, just wish they found a more logical way to do it. Near the end jungle animal sounds are used but it just sounds completely out of place. The music in the underground scenes isn't a great fit either.

Cat gif is from tales from the darkside as discussed upthread

Thank you!

Might have to revisit The Beyond too. House By The Cemetery is fresher in my memory and I doubt I can be bothered with Zombie Flesh Eaters again.

My expectations and anticipation of watching these in my mid-teens is more rich than any other part of the experience. Back then I had no idea what the probable limits of filmmaking or the imaginations of the creators were going to be.
I kept thinking that maybe all the previous things I'd seen were just light weight and that some of these nasty films might be the real harrowing shrieking deal. But that's seemingly still yet to exist.
But remembering all those feelings are vital to my own work.

When I first put on City Of The Living Dead, the DVD intro and title screen with all the moaning, screaming and distressed faces scared me too much and I couldn't watch it that night because I didn't feel ready. I needn't have worried.

What is your work, Robert?

City of the Living Dead has a great soundtrack!!

The music in City Of The Living Dead is good but in that catacombs scene, it's too jarring even by Italian standards.

I listened to a third of the commentary with Catriona MacColl, she was refreshingly honest about the film. She said the script was poor and the film is too much like a series of special effects scenes without enough holding them together. I enjoyed hearing about her entry into the world of Italian film. It seems that she did these films partly because she was impressed by Fulci as a person.

Jon- My drawings are linked from my profile. Despite having an abundance of time I've shamefully procrastinated the past decade away for the most part.

THE BEYOND

This seems like the most promising Fulci film (it probably is the fan favourite) but it's my second least favourite of the 5 I've seen.
I love large haunted buildings, especially ones that hold all sorts of horrors and reality-bending possibilities. I like the idea that anything can happen.

There are several mysterious, evocative scenes and elements, it feels like more of a focused whole than City Of The Living Dead and creates a better sense of something larger happening but ultimately I don't think any of this really adds up to enough. It's all the more disappointing because it seems like it could have been great with more resources and care. Not enough happens.

Notable flaws: when a woman finds the dead body of the plumber, her reaction is completely blank, she somehow only gets worried when she sees a less familiar corpse.
Some of the make-up is pleasingly mucky but the majority of the make-up and special effects look poor, the spider scene looks downright abysmal.
Bad voice dubbing spoils a lot of scenes that should have been more dramatic.

David Warbeck reminds me of the young Jack Nicholson a lot.

So from best to worst for me...

The Black Cat
House By The Cemetery
City Of The Living Dead
The Beyond
Zombie Flesh Eaters

I've still got New York Ripper and Manhattan Baby waiting. If I want more I'll go for Lizard In A Woman's Skin, Don't Torture A Duckling and Conquest (said to be a nutty fantasy film).

My opinion of House By The Cemetery from memory: this is the only one that was actually quite scary the first time I saw it. The sense of menace created by what's in the basement is stronger than anything in the other films. The sound of infants crying is used in a way that is quite effective. There is a bat attack that is quite funny but also quite good despite the fakeness of the bat. In most respects it is the most solid and consistent of the 5 films.
The major problem is the young boy has some of the most atrocious dubbing I've ever heard, making the poor boy look like a total idiot, threatening to turn this into a comedy film.

Are there Italian language versions of these films? I'd assume the English dubs are more widely seen because the English speaking actors dubbed themselves in some of them, so in that way seems more important?

NUDE FOR SATAN

A man and woman find a castle in which time and reality are distorted.

Bad: generally sloppy, the dreaminess works well enough if you're feeling undemanding but the psychedelic touches are never very impressive. Terrible lazy english dubbing. A large spider attacking a woman caught in a large web looks as bad as the worst 50s b-movies, I'm pretty sure I saw this part on tv shown for laughs.

Good: excellent soundtrack by Alberto Baldan Bembo which I will be seeking out and if I find it I'll enjoy a lot more than the film. Dark stormy nights. A castle with a nice big garden. A pretty girl who is naked sometimes.

The DVD intro and the trailers were jumpy but I'm relieved the actual film wasn't affected by that.

A pretty bad film with a few redeeming things but it wasn't painful or hard to get through.

Lizard In A Woman's Skin is up there with the best of Fulci's work. Don't Torture A Duckling is also very good. I actually like them more than any of his other films, though i am a huge fan of Zombie Flesh Eaters so we may diverge on this.

I'm really curious about how much more Italian horror there is that I'd like. I've got quite a few more on the list, there is way more on dvd and lots of intriguing fan responses to them.

Here's Alberto Baldan Bembo's Nude For Satan soundtrack, clearly taken from the actual film as no album is available. I think one piece is left out but maybe it had too much dialogue in it. I really love the thunder but I don't know if it's part of the music or part of the film. I'd miss thunder if it wasn't there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phmi2c6rgH8

is it just music & fx or is there dialogue too?

I can sometimes make a go of listening to music+fx rips if the score is strong enough (e.g. the goldsmith stuff from the Thriller tv series)

In the video above there is only a woman shouting for a bit, a car door slamming and some footstep sounds but it works just fine as music. Really lovely stuff. Would love Finders Keepers to put this out.

So many wonderful unreleased horror scores out there.

The Manitou
Reincarnation of Peter Proud
The Sentinel
Thriller series

and then god knows how many hidden away in italo horror!

The Hammer stuff got pretty well released at least, though I guess we can give up on the OG James Bernard Dracula tapes.

Stephen Thrower made a big list of soundtracks on his blog but I'm sure he deleted his blog. A similar list article should still be on the Guardian.

The horror soundtracks thread really opened me up to how many good soundtracks there to films I don't particularly like; also amazed that so many of them ever got released, but I guess when there are so many soundtracks that are basically crappy mix-tapes of already popular songs that get released so widely (people really buy these?), it does balance things out a bit.
I've found that most sound way better by themselves and create a more compelling world that way.

Oh yeah once you cut that tie of needing to GAF about the movie a score was written for, then you open up a whole world of film music of all genres.

Yeah, I especially feel that way about RPG videogame soundtracks. The fantasy world they offer is always better than the game.

RAG style:

I've intended for some time to revisit Cemetery Man, the last film of four Italian horror films directed by onetime Argeno protégé Michele Soavi. It's one of my fondest cinematic memories of the 1990s, though I'm bit worried it won't hold up two decades down the line. In preparation and to forestall the moment of truth, I decided to watch his prior films, none of which I remembered seeing. I wasn't able to locate a decent copy of the first, Deleria, so I moved on to its successor, the much more widely seen La Chiesa (released in the US as The Church). Turns out I had seen it before, though it left few lasting impressions. I blame the drugs. Well, and also the movie. It's a mixed bag at best.

While often quite visually striking, The Church is so incoherently structured that even now, with the film fresh in my mind, it's hard for me to explain most of what transpires onscreen. "Haunted cathedral takes Satanic revenge" puts things in a reasonable nutshell, but the narrative simply uses that premise as justification for a disconnected series of ghoulish set-peices. Which might not sound like such a bad thing. Where supernatural horror is concerned, inscrutability isn't necessarily a fault, especially not when paired with bizarre imagery and rich atmosphere. Soavi's film is packed with the former and at least occasionally delivers the latter.

The middle-ages-set opening sequence and a climactic consummation lifted straight from Rosemary's Baby are particularly memorable. Fans of Argento and Bava looking for a serving of stylish Italian eye candy could do a hell of a lot worse, and maybe I'm faulting the film too much for what it isn't. There are many brilliant moments here, but unfortunately they're just that: moments. The Church picks up and abandons both characters and plot threads so casually that I wound up more frustrated than impressed.

^ the churchwas apparently intended as (and to some extent released?) as the third installment in the popular demons series. strange, as there are no demons in the film, at least not of the sort featured in demons and demons 2. nor is it built around the possession-by-infection mechanics of the previous installments. one fleeting moment, a little over halfway through, does establish a hint of continuity, but it doesn't last.

The Church was a big disappointment for me but once again, some of the soundtrack is incredible. The Philip Glass/Martin Goldray version of "Floe" is one of the most incredible pieces of music I've ever heard.
I think it's a bit like The Beyond and City Of The Living Dead in that you expect way more cool stuff to happen.

Cemetery Man is a fun mess. Tonally all over the place, so the serious parts at the end fall quite flat but the rest is enjoyable. I thought the romance with the severed head was funny.

Have you seen Dark Waters? Because Baino is a similar director, Italian too I'm sure but a lot of the cast and crew were English and it was shot in Ukraine. I think it's pretty good.

The Philip Glass/Martin Goldray version of "Floe" is one of the most incredible pieces of music I've ever heard.

Yes. When I watched the movie again, I realized that a significant portion of what I was responding to the first time around was b/c of that performance.

Search: individual episodes of horror/mystery/SF tv shows?

Like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Tales From The Crypt, Tales From The Darkside, Hammer House Of Horror, Tales Of The Unexpected, Hitchcock Presents/Half Hour, Thriller (American and British versions), Masters Of Horror, Fear Itself (last two go beyond 2005 but we'll break the rule for this instance).

I discussed Karloff's Thriller above.

I'd love to see more of these shows on tv because I'm reluctant to splash out on box sets after Thriller. I haven't seen many of these on tv and when I do they are usually horrendously dull, so I probably wouldn't tune in regularly.

There is an Outer Limits episode with Mark Hamill called "Mind Over Matter" which totally devastated me when I was a kid. He goes into virtual reality programme that isn't safe and things go terribly wrong. I'd love to see it again and I hope it holds up.

Miike's "Imprint" for Masters Of Horror has some rough acting but some very striking imagery. Well worth seeing just for that.

The idea of a show like one of these being consistently good with original stories seems like an unlikely dream. According to most people Twilight Zone and Thriller was as good as it got but I found some episodes of those really lacking.

I agree that Thriller is often incredibly antiseptic and meh.

Tales from the Crypt is sometimes a little too Dream On-era HBO, but there's a solid roster of classic or close-enough episodes if you're into boob-spiked EC adaptations. The first few seasons had some really strong eps -- I have good memories of "Collection Completed"; "And All Through the House" (Zemeckis being loony); "Top Billing"; "Cutting Cards"; "Dead Right"; so on.

Rarely but sometimes the show summoned up a truly nasty piece of work. "Three's a Crowd" is some ugly domestic violence, and so is "Split Second" (tho that one's more cartoony and at least offers equal-opportunity ogling).

Tales from the Darkside was done waaaaay on the cheap in comparison to Crypt, but I've always gotten the impression it had a higher hit-to-miss ratio.

I've owned pretty much all the EC horror comics but never seen any of the show (I did see the so-so 70s films and the two terrible 90s films that have nothing to do with the comics or their storytelling style). It's really weird that it turned into a cartoon (I saw some of that) and a game show.
I looked up the cast/crew for the tv show a few years ago and was astonished at all the actors, directors and musicians who worked on the show, it all seemed so unlikely. Apparently there are only two original stories in the series.
I have a hard time imagining the show ever coming vaguely close to the visuals of Graham Ingels and co.

I could never work out if it was a drama or anthology show but Poltergeist: The Legacy had a few things that terrified me as a wee boy (probably wouldn't today), including a succumbs-like woman with glowing eyes who led a horny man to bed in a gloomy house then turned all scary. Also a Japanese flying woman ghost with razor sharp nails.

I'm sure it wasn't related to the Poltergeist films.

I'm not sure why people are so fond of the first Poltergeist film. Apart from the amazing ghosts, I think the film is really poor and contains the things I dislike so much about Insidious and The Conjuring.

the so-so 70s films

See, we're diverging from the get-go here. F'n love the Amicus flicks.

Oh man, the Crypt-Keeper cartoon was a big letdown. I think it came out when I was in 7th grade and technically starting to get too old for Sat AM cartoons, but I still wasn't ready for how watered down everything was going to be.

I'm not sure why people are so fond of the first Poltergeist film. Apart from the amazing ghosts, I think the film is really poor and contains the things I dislike so much about Insidious and The Conjuring.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, August 14, 2014 8:39 PM (2 hours ago)

incredibly well-constructed and entertaining explains most of it, imo. sharp writing, good gags, suspenseful & scary as hell when it wants to be, but it also manages one of the best depictions of suburban american domesticity/complacency afforded by its era. vivid & likeable characters, fantastic cinematography, a boxfull of truly iconic horror moments (rising TV static in a darkened living room, maggot meat, face peel, clown under the bed, "carolanne! go into the light!", pool full of corpses, etc), intruiging subtext, i could go on and on. the haunted house tropes mashed into dull nothing by movies like paranormal activity exist in the popular imagination because poltergeist gave them three-dimensional life.

Also a fan of Amicus, particularly Asylum. Bit of discussion here: Best Amicus Productions Film

I love those Amicus EC movies, too, especially the final story in Tales from the Crypt - Patrick Magee at his intense best, and an ending that really captures the moralistic savagery at the heart of so many EC stories. Good lord, *choke*

I'd agree with that Patrick McGee segment, that was good. But surely everyone laughs at that part where the guy sees himself rotten in the mirror, I know at least two other people who thought that was hilarious (not to say that unintentional hilarity makes a thing bad).

Cushing did look great as a zombie too.

I might need to see a few more of these. I haven't seen Asylum, Dr Terror, Torture Garden or The Skull.

Beyond The Grave was also a bit mediocre to me. I thought maybe R Chetwynd Hayes wasn't very good but I later read his "Jumpity Jim" and that was fantastic, a very original monster story.

I've always felt there was something too restrained about Hammer and Amicus, not restrained as in subtle or disciplined, more as in I often feel that the cast and crew rarely seemed like they wanted to give the material the same dedication as Bava, Corman, Reeves, Marins or Nakagawa, Michio Yamamoto (on their better films) at that period.
There are a few great actors in these films but I think most were of that "let's get this thing done then we'll all have a cup of tea" school.

"succumbs-like woman"

I ment Succubus of course.

i looked at the images from the ilx horror poll the other day, just for fun, and they are still so great
i'm glad they're all there for me to look at whenever i please

There are a few great actors in these films but I think most were of that "let's get this thing done then we'll all have a cup of tea" school.

I don't agree with him, but in his biographical dictionary David Thomson describes Hammer films as the work of "decent men who tended the garden at weekends".

http://obscurehollow.blogspot.co.uk/

This is a really great site for scenery and screenshots. Often better than the full films.

I should probably take more screenshots, I taken some of Shuji Terayama's part in Private Collections, years ago.
http://eatenbyducks.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/rags-film-report-part-2-shuji-terayama.html

No point in reading what I was writing back then. I was just fumbling about. But that time was notable for when I watched 45 films in one week.

There are a few great actors in these films but I think most were of that "let's get this thing done then we'll all have a cup of tea" school.

Right, and maybe it's just my comparably stiff Midwestern upbringing, but nothing screams Halloween more than that sort of clipped, obligatory, autumnal-cozy style of horror. (The rest of the year, sure, give me French extremity or whatever else has replaced it, et al.)

It's annoying because the aesthetic of that era of gothic horror films is what I tend to prefer in horror but I'm just not that into most of the films. I like autumnal for sure.
It pretty much all blends together with the paperbacks and comics of the time. Some of the music too.

I'm very supportive of the idea of gothic Hammer revivalism but Sleepy Hollow and Company Of Wolves are the only decent films that spring to mind. It's odd that there should be so few because it gets quite a few modern attempts.
The Bride and Woman In Black weren't that great. Any suggestions are very welcome.

There are some aspects of the classic horror style that get really tired though: the polite old moralistic antiquarian investigators and the emphasis on their mannerisms.
I read ghost stories quite a bit and curious old intellectuals meeting up, with their polite manners fetishized gets old very quick.

That's why I like Castlevania games, but there you have to put up with a bit of Japanese soap melodrama. Ghouls N' Ghosts kindly does away with the story.

Right, and maybe it's just my comparably stiff Midwestern upbringing, but nothing screams Halloween more than that sort of clipped, obligatory, autumnal-cozy style of horror. (The rest of the year, sure, give me French extremity or whatever else has replaced it, et al.)

Otm (btw I'm in mpls stpl for the next week and a half-- any horra screenings I should know about?)

RAG I am super psyched abt that obscure hollow blog, thanking u

I'm in mpls stpl for the next week and a half-- any horra screenings I should know about?

Try people watching at the State Fair.

It's amazing to read contemporary reviews of Hammer films, and even moreso about the constant battles that the company had with the British film censors (Wayne Kinsey's two-volume production history of Hammer is esp gd on this.) We might think of these films as staid, decorous, cosy, but at the time they were utterly abhorred for their violence and sexual heat. Some of that does still survive, I think - in the sudden snarling aggression of Lee's Dracula, the icy ruthlessness of Cushing's Frankenstein, the heaving desire of Dracula's female victims - and when you combine that with the films' frequently gorgeous colours and decor, that's more than enough to get you through the duller, stagier scenes, imho. The recent Blu Ray editions of the first Hammer Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy are ,and make the films sparkle anew.

This week I saw a luscious new digital print of Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief. Again, the colours, camera movements and costuming in the final costume ball sequence made obvious, as if it wasn't already, the huge debt that things like Hammer, Corman's Poe films and Bava's Blood and Black Lace owed to the non-naturalistic lighting of Hitchcock's great 50s films. To Catch A Thief is full of candy-bright colours, sexual signifiers and a prowling villain dressed all in black that just screams Giallo (literally - the very first narrative image in TCAT is of a woman victim screaming in horror).

I'm fairly fond of Curse Of Frankenstein (Lee looks fantastic and the story is better than average Hammer) and The Gorgon (when you see her reflection in the water, it's genuinely spooky, but the full reveal with the crappy medusa snakes is disappointment).

I like Twins Of Evil, Vampire Circus and a few others because of the beautiful girls but that's not a great recommendation for the films as wholes.

My favourite moment of Brides Of Dracula is when the vampire girls are smiling while watching Cushing being attacked from a distance. There's something very strange about it. Nice looking film in general.
Oddly, Weirdfictionreview did a piece about it, which I think was too generous but interesting anyway
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2014/06/i-can-hardly-believe-it-happened-terence-fishers-the-brides-of-dracula/

I've always loved the red eyed Christopher Lee Dracula. Less fond of him dying from walking into too many thorny bushes or falling through ice after being told he will be powerful beyond our wildest dreams.

Another screenshot blog with an even more fantastic name, Chilling Scenes Of Dreadful Villainy!
http://chillingscenesofdreadfulvillainy.blogspot.co.uk/

this reminds me - for the longest time I have been unable to determine the name/nature of a film I saw as a child courtesy of Elvira; had the whole Hammer vibe and its central conceit was a creepy mansion with an iron maiden, possibly involving the ghost of a woman who had been impaled in one. Does this ring a bell with anybody?

I keep having to fight the urge to fill in the missing gaps of Hammer and Amicus films I haven't seen because there is more people to talk about them with.
I should be pressing on with all my piles of JS Le Fanu, EF Benson, WH Hodgson, CA Smith, MR James, JH Riddell, RE Howard, EA Poe, HP Lovecraft, Vernon Lee, Arthur Machen, Tanith Lee, Fritz Lieber, Wilum Pugmire, Lord Dunsany, Bram Stoker, Ligotti, Charles Birkin, KE Wagner, Ramsey Campbell, TED Klein, Charles Beaumont, Richard Blackburn, Bradbury, William Sloane, William Sansom, Robert Bloch, F Marion Crawford, Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance, Abraham Merritt, Edogawa Rampo, Oliver Onions, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Aickman, Hugh B Cave, Edith Nesbit, Ray Russell, DK Broster and many others.

I thought I would have finished all those books years ago!
These will surely be more satisfying than most of the horror films I haven't seen.

Tried to watch Gothic, a movie I know mostly by the box cover and a vague knowledge of Ken Russell. Obviously, the movie is batshit, but it's also boring and stupid and inept and about 90 minutes too long. But hey, it's Russell, which often means many of the aforementioned adjectives. I prefer Lair of the White Worm.

Yeah, Gothic is sadly quite bad in too many areas to be an enjoyable mess. I really wish it was much better.
That weird thing riding the horse was quite cool though.

Lair Of The White Worm is a lot of fun, underrated actually.

I saw Ms 45 recently. I saw someone else lump it in with horror, so I'll do it here. It's a bit straightforward but Zoe Lund really makes the film, she looks incredible. The idea of a mute person suffering like that is quite interesting/horrible.

It has an adorable cutie little doggie too.

The idea of a mute person suffering like that is quite interesting/horrible.

This movie was sooooo much better than this poster art.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTQwMjczODAyOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDA5NjQyMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR1,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/dc/Mute_Witness_DVD_Cover.jpg/330px-Mute_Witness_DVD_Cover.jpg

The first half of it was.

I'd love to see more of these shows on tv because I'm reluctant to splash out on box sets after Thriller. I haven't seen many of these on tv and when I do they are usually horrendously dull, so I probably wouldn't tune in regularly.

You're generally right, but go Netflix the episode "The Weird Tailor" right now and thank me later.

No need for Netflix, I still have my Thriller box set. I don't use Netflix because the UK selection is very poor and probably wouldn't have Thriller.
I'll report back after I watch it.

I just watched it. Pretty good. I see that Asylum also has a version of that story.
But I don't get why the blind woman let the father meet the car dealer when she disagreed with what they were doing, only trying to prevent it later on.

I'm going to be short on money for quite a while and horror films are going to be lower priority. So I'll probably be on the animation snob thread more talking about stuff from youtube. But I'm still quite eager to buy House Of Laughing Windows.

But I'm still quite eager to buy House Of Laughing Windows.

^^ you totally should. way up there as one of my favourite giallo-ish movies on par with 'footprints on the moon' and 'a quiet place in the country'

Cool, thanks for the further titles I'd never heard of.

Footprints... is very very good indeed. I'd rank it higher than House With Laughing Windows, but still recommend both. Don't know A Quiet Place... but the imdb entry looks very promising.

Anyone seen the Japanese film Môjû (aka Blind Beast)? A friend was watching it recently, it sounds awesome: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140384/reference

It is really good. I haven't read the Rampo book yet but it has a whole second half that the film version doesn't.

blind beast is awesome, though the pervy creep factor is v high

that "though" might actually = "because"

Footprints... is very very good indeed. I'd rank it higher than House With Laughing Windows, but still recommend both. Don't know A Quiet Place... but the imdb entry looks very promising.

^^ 'footprints...' is prob my fav of those three. and if you're into this fractured mind/paranoia sort of giallo you might also try 'the perfume of the lady in black', if you haven't already. i'm sure there must be better examples along those lines and i wouldn't rank it very high, but it's still worth.

I dunno if it counts as horror - I guess it's more of a sci-fi action flick? - but man The Hidden is great

MANHATTAN BABY

Not much to recommend this film for. It takes bits from Excorcist and Indiana Jones (probably at studio insistence) but isn't really close to ripping them off.
A stuffed bird attack that doesn't really hide the strings. An easy going saxophone piece played at totally inappropriate times. Quite a bit of bad dubbing but once again that young boy from House By The Cemetery gets it really bad.

Does Frizzi re-use music from earlier films because I keep thinking the music sounds very familiar in each Fulci film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters_(TV_series)

Anyone ever saw this followup show after Tales From The Darkside? Completely new to me. Just saw the box set (72 episodes) for sale. I'd assume it is at the same level of the previous show.

Was trying to be frugal as possible and not bother with stuff like Rollin and Franco but saw piles of Rollin in Fopp for 3pounds each. I got 5 films for 15pounds: Living Dead Girl, Nude Vampire, Lips Of Blood, Grapes Of Death, Iron Rose.
Some other less celebrated ones were there, I would have got Rape Of The Vampire if it was there.
Hope I don't regret this but they were cheap as fuck.

Anyone ever saw this followup show after Tales From The Darkside? Completely new to me. Just saw the box set (72 episodes) for sale. I'd assume it is at the same level of the previous show.

I watched it when it was originally on. My memory is that it was slightly goofier than Darkside and that's why I gave it up. And I was their target audience. That said, there must be a few gems in there.

A few. A LOT of crap.

Those Rollin films are great. May see if I can get over to Fopp tomorrow.

Night Of The Hunted was there too. Quite a lot of Redemption/Salvation label films were there but I have no idea what kind of quality they are.
They had Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders on the label but Second Run put out a better DVD version.

NUDE VAMPIRE

Experiments on a vampire girl, a slightly science fictionish approach. Colourful fashions. Some mansions. Ritualistic cult parties for the rich. A son discovering his father is corrupt.

Good: a disordered messy soundtrack. Some decent images. The approach seems quite fresh compared against horror films of the time.

Bad: lots of scenes are quite clumsy and weak, especially the one with the twin girls being knocked downstairs. The visuals aren't as stylistically consistent as you'd expect from Rollin. One of the main male characters dresses laughably when he probably should have looked more powerful. Quite a few of the costumes look poor, there are some interesting fashions but few are pulled off very well.

I'm sure this was among the top recommended Rollin films but I found it mostly weak.

I was looking at my DVD collection to remind myself which Rollin films I had seen. I still have Shiver Of The Vampires but I must have got rid of Fascination. I keep having the feeling I've saw another one but maybe not.
I wonder why I got rid of Fascination but kept quite a few weaker films.

Nude Vampire DVD had quite a long interview with Rollin, mostly going over the basics, nothing too surprising.
Very little of his prose fiction has been translated but apparently some of it was quite weird. I often wonder how different directors would be when they have the freedom of words.

THE IRON ROSE

A boy and a girl meet at a party, go to the train station and run around massive old trains, then get lost in a graveyard at night. They can't find their way out, getting quite scared but then the girl finds her inner goth and doesn't want to leave, starts dancing, making poems and having visions.

The pleasure of the film is the stunning sexy cuteness of Francoise Pascal and the graveyard wandering that dominates the film. There's surprisingly little nudity (most nudity taking place in a beach vision), perhaps they were wary of getting into trouble but that doesn't explain what looks like proper graveyard vandalism in some scenes.
I quite liked it but I think it needed something more. Wish there was less of the douchey guy and more of the girl's visions. She mostly describes things and seems to imagine herself on a beach but I think there needed to be more ways to convey the other world she is talking about.

I've heard this divides fans but quite a few claim it is his best film (I think Kim Newman was of that opinion). It was even more of a passion project to Rollin than his usual films and he prepared himself for a flop but I think the response was worse than he expected.

For reasons I cannot fathom, I am the hugest fan of The Iron Rose. Its vibe is just perfect.

i made a rollin poll a few yrs back - un poll de jean rollin

I'm so tempted to buy that Monsters set now that it's available, even knowing that it's perhaps a little on the subpar side.

Universal has recently released a box set of what appears to be all of their OG monster movies (I think it's basically a repackaging of their old Legacy Collections). Any thoughts on what the hit/miss ratio is on these? I'm sure the sequels all pale in comparison to the originals but I'm curious nonetheless.

It pains me to say that I think the photo/stills books dedicated to Universal Monsters are better than the films for the most part, because just like Hammer, I totally adore the style. I presume we are talking about the sound era from 30s-40s-50s? I like the silent Phantom Of The Opera with Chaney Sr, even if it is way too long.

I'd warn any newbies buying these in bulk to not get their hopes too high. Despite being a huge studio with some solid contributors, all these films (even the best ones) feel slapped together to some extent. You can tell that a lot of the cast and crew really don't care. It really shows that they were churning these out.
However great some scenes look (and all of the ones I've seen do have something nice to look at), there is rarely a feeling of concentrated effort across a whole film. Many feature comic relief scenes that don't sit very well with the rest of the film.

From what I can remember...

DRACULA
Some cool sets, Lugosi and Frye are enjoyable but otherwise there isn't much going on. The Spanish version is widely considered better but I've yet to see that.

FRANKENSTEIN
More than anything Karloff looks incredible. Good sets. Fairly enjoyable but even as short as it is, it would benefit from a shorter length. Karloff looks better in this film but I actually like the two sequels better.

MUMMY
It's pretty questionable that Dracula is considered a classic but this is honestly the worst famous horror classic I know of. The closeup image of Karloff's hypnotic eyes and him in the mummy costume look amazing but all that only lasts for a mere minute. Two screencaptures of this film is all you need. Avoid!

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
An impressive smokey dark aesthetic but not much else.

OLD DARK HOUSE
Pretty good. This actually has some creepy moments and atmosphere. Karloff is really cool in this.

INVISIBLE MAN
It's okay.

BLACK CAT and THE RAVEN
I get these two mixed up. They were the start of a series of films that teamed up Karloff and Lugosi, usually as enemies. Also the start of many films that taken a Poe title but had little or nothing to do with the writer. Neither film made much of an impression.
I can't remember which but one of these films has an impressive image of a dead woman preserved beautifully with her long hair dreamily standing up.

WEREWOLF OF LONDON
This is often considered better than the Chaney Jr film but I wasn't much into it. It's fine.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
The crowning jewel of this bunch. It feels more like a fairy tale comedy with horror imagery than a normal horror film. Great character designs. Some great looking scenes. Two stunningly good looking actresses. The bit with the blind hermit genuinely made me cry. There are minor weaknesses but this film has a beating heart that the others don't.
Very much recommended.

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER
Really poor. Don't believe people who claim this is neglected. Prime example of actors not caring: some characters start with attempts at Scottish accents but clearly aren't trying very hard, only to drop the accents completely later on.

INVISIBLE RAY
One of the dullest ones. I actually bought this to see Frances Drake but she's barely in it. It starts out fairly gothic but just slides into this boring science fiction in a hot country.

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN
I love Karloff's costume in this with the bear skin top. Lugosi's Igor is very amusing. Good set designs. It feels pretty creaky and far too long but the positives I mentioned made a good enough impression to make it worthwhile for me.

WOLF MAN
Fairly watchable.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943)
A rosy cheeked colourful musical. Barely anything horror about it. I don't remember anything good about it.

SON OF DRACULA
Some good looking bayou scenes and it seems genuinely interested in having a plot but I still found it very boring.

HOUSE OF DRACULA
Cartoony mish-mash, corny b-movie approach. This is the point where I feel it was very much aimed at children. Getting Close to the Abbott and Costello stuff. Okay-ish.
I have seen one Abott and Costello monster film a very long time ago but I don't remember it well enough to review.

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
Awesome costume, cool swimming scenes but otherwise very dull.

So at the end of this list Bride Of Frankenstein is sadly the only one I'd call a good solid film.

Check out the lists under each decade, there's way more than you'd think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Monsters
I'm amazed how many I've never heard of let alone seen screenshots of. I'd imagine they are mostly pretty bad but I'd hope all the ones with good images have been extensively screencaptured (hope I'll see all these images someday, probably a tumblr somewhere).
I'd still like to see Black Castle and Tower Of London someday in the unlikely event I exhaust all other priorities. If there is ever a huge boxed set beyond the core films for super cheap I'd probably go for it.

Here is a bunch of notables that are pretty much same as the Universal films...

FREAKS
Whether this is sincere and heartfelt or grossly exploitative has been debated a lot. I think it's a mixture of both things. It's unique and enjoyable, worth seeing.

MAD LOVE
Peter Lorre is really good in this. This is where I discovered the aforementioned beautiful Frances Drake. Pretty decent.

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE
Very slapped together but for classic horror imagery it's good. Some cool looking characters. The trailer has part of a scene not included in the film that suggests the story was being written as they went along.

WHITE ZOMBIE
Mostly dull but has some good moments. The stiff paralysed looking voodoo zombies are quite memorable.

I see the the boxed set is 30 films. Mostly prioritising the most monstery films. I really wouldn't call that complete when so many important ones are left out.

"A collection of all 30 Universal Classic Monster films from 1931 – 1956 with a 48-Page collectible Book and hours of bonus features including Behind the Scenes Documentaries, the 1931 Spanish Version of Dracula, Featurettes of Boris Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr. and Jack Pierce, 13 Expert Feature Commentaries, Archival Footage, Production Photographs, Theatrical Trailers and much more!
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Mummy (1932)
The Invisible Man (1933)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Werewolf of London (1935)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Son of Frankenstein (1939)
The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
The Invisible Woman (1940)
The Mummy's Hand (1940)
The Wolf Man (1941)
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
The Mummy's Ghost (1942)
The Mummy's Tomb (1942)
Invisible Agent (1942)
Phantom of the Opera (1943)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
Son of Dracula (1943)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
The Mummy's Curse (1944)
The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)
House of Dracula (1945)
She-Wolf of London (1946)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)"

Wow, thanks for the much more comprehensive answer than I expected! My interest in seeing these movies has been steeping since the Legacy Series (which, for those who don't know, were themed collections of, for instance, all of the Universal Frankenstein movies) went OOP and became inaccessibly high priced. I'm sure there's waaaay more chaff than wheat in that set, but it's enticing.

virtually all that stuff is available streaming somewhere

virtually all that stuff is available streaming somewhere isn't it?

urk, shitty internet connection.

Old Dark House is probably the best thing that isn't in the boxed set.

Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco by Stephen Thrower. 336 pages. Strange Attractor Press (November 20, 2014)

Tempted to get this. I don't think I want his Fulci book anymore because I've seen most of the Fulci I want but since Franco's filmography is so enormous and Thrower is covering them all exhaustively, it's pretty enticing.

Also..
Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956-1984. By Cathal Tohill & Pete Tombs. 272 pages. St. Martin's Griffin (September 15, 1995).
"European cinema has always excelled when it comes to "bad" movies. When continental moviemakers combined horror with sex, they unleashed a tidal wave of celluloid strangeness that lasted nearly thirty years. From sexy thrillers to pulp surrealism, from decadent erotica to blood-soaked vampire epics, nothing could go too far. Immoral Tales tells the fascinating story of this unique period, peeking into the kaleidoscope of visceral horror, maverick directors, and erotic invention."

Surprised more people weren't compelled to say what they think of the Universal horror films.

LIPS OF BLOOD

A man is nostalgic for a night 20 years ago when he was a boy briefly meeting a mysterious young woman who offered him a place to sleep. He feels unfulfilled and clings to the hope of someday meeting her again. The girl starts appearing to him in visions that guide him to her. Some people are trying to stop him but there are also vampire girls trying to help him.

I quite enjoyed this but I think it deserved to be a much better film. It has a good core, I really love the idea of a vague but treasured memory coming back to someone and finding their desires through dreamily supernatural ways.
If there is a Rollin written prose version of this, it seems more enticing than The Iron Rose text, because the film doesn't manage to get across the feelings and ideas properly.

As is often in 70s-80s vampire films, the sight of the vampires baring their teeth looks a bit ridiculous. Quite a lot of scenes are awkward and clumsy and it really needed to be consistently poetic and ethereal.
There's a scene with a severed head and although it makes sense later, they shouldn't have clearly shown how fake it was, they easily could have shown the back of the head.

Along with the quest of dreamy nostalgic yearning and the solid soundtrack, there is enough nocturnal wanderings among good locations (mostly ruins) with silent vampire girls in billowing drapes to make this one of the better Rollin films.

If this was much better looking and far more confidently made it would be one of my favourite films.

Lips Of Blood is a fantastic title. I look forward to seeing Faces Of Skin and Torsos Of Viscera.

Yeah, Rollin's titles often seem interchangeable and too non-specific and I'm sure people get the titles mixed up often.

GRAPES OF DEATH

Aside from the voodoo zombie films this has to be the most atypical zombie film I've seen (I'm sure there are plenty more offbeat ones though). The disease does decay people's flesh but the only other symptom seems to be unpredictable effects on their sanity.

What makes this film worthwhile is the impressive country landscapes and crumbling village in the grassy rocky hills. The weird and striking cruelty one unlucky person suffers is quite memorable. The woman with the dogs looks quite impressive too.

The makeup is slightly iffy in places but otherwise there isn't much wrong with it.

Rollin said in an interview that he didn't like gore but this is pretty gory.

Surprised more people weren't compelled to say what they think of the Universal horror films

The 1930s ones are all great; the 1940s ones are not so great. Except for The Wolf Man.

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a return to form.

I have a feeling I'll be looking out for Rape Of The Vampire, Requiem For A Vampire, Demoniacs, Night Of The Hunted, I know Fopp had at least two of those. Maybe if I want more, The Escapees and Lost In New York but I probably shouldn't.
I've heard other people say this and I feel the same, that Rollin's films aren't great but always intriguing, fresh and enjoyable enough that you can't help but be curious about more of them.

This has been more satisfying than the string of Fulci films I saw.

Watched DVD extra Rollin short film Les Pays Loins/The Distant Lands. Reading the Fascination blog dedicated to the director, the blogger notes how unlike the rest of French cinema in the mid60s this was but it appears to me as if he was still living in that world, not fully departed into his own world yet.
His good looking women, derelict buildings and more elegant scenery are all there but little else seems familiar to me. It seems to be about racism and unsteady societal change. The black and white looks better than some of his early colour films.
It's very short and I didn't really try to understand what was going on.

There was a trailer for City Of The Dead/Horror Hotel, an early 60s witch cult film featuring Christopher Lee. I think it's probably a bit neglected; it has some of the best foggy dark visuals from that era of gothic film and is fairly atmospheric. I really like films that never show daylight scenes (from memory I think that is how the film went), makes it seem like the village in the film never experiences daytime.

LIVING DEAD GIRL

I think this suffers from too little stylisation, there just isn't enough fancy imagery. Too much standard 80s fashion. Some brief flawed gore effects and awkward editing.
The American couple are kind of amusingly goofy (not sure if this is intentional) but the saving grace of the film is the girl who plays the beautiful and deeply troubled Catherine.

This tends to be in the top 3 of Rollin fans but I think it's one of the weaker ones of his fan favourite period.

So far from best to least..

Shiver Of The Vampires
Grapes Of Death
The Iron Rose
Lips Of Blood
Fascination
Living Dead Girl
Nude Vampire

I was looking up more about Marina Pierro (who I said above was the highlight of Living Dead Girl) and she was in Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Miss Osbourne/Docteur Jekyll Et Les Femmes. Also stars Udo kier and Patrick McGee. Directed by Borowczyk.
I've heard this is a real hidden gem but I really didn't think much of Beast. Anyone seen this?

I'm sure some of y'all owned a copy of Stephen King's Nightshift collection of dollar babies back in the day. On one of the VHS tapes, there was a trailer for some weird low-budget film. It was in black and white and featured a guy crawling through the desert, then this giant mantis or something flies by and drops a skyscraper on his head. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

no but i wanna subscription

bumping since it looks like the horror crew is active atm.

Unwisely watched the majority of The Gate on tv. Aside from a cool living corpse and some interesting special effects it's a typical trashy 80s kid film.

oh man "Crimson Rivers", you looked so cool, you had vincent cassel which is almost always a good sign, but oh how you actually ended up sucking so furiously

Wake In Fright expires off Netflix Instant Watch tomorrow. It's not technically a horror movie, but it is a movie for people in this thread IMO. Schoolteacher in small town in the Outback goes on holiday break, encounters the worst people on earth. Early 70s. Warning there is irl kangaroo harm in this movie that surpasses The Snowtown Murders. Warning, Donald Pleasance being absolutely insane.

Is The Gate the one about the trapdoor to hell or whatever they open in the backyard? By, iirc, playing a metal LP backwards?

That's right.

I loved wake in fright

http://thedissolve.com/features/oral-history/788-the-strange-saga-of-spookies/

I have a soft spot for The Gate but it is very stupid and not scary at all.

Me too. I feel like it's one of the last YA horrors to have those kind of stop motion creature effects.

Or last horror/fantasy films full stop

If I'm remembering right, WINTERBEAST has some pretty good stop-motion effects and it came a few years later. Worth checking out despite movie's lack of winter.

but plenty of beast.

When I read Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies, I don't know why I hadn't noticed before the comedy and early teen trend of the 80s to early 90s, even though I'd seen most of them. He mostly complained about it. When I watched Dark Waters features, Mariano Baino seen his own work as partly a rebellion against goofy horror.

I think Evil Dead series and Braindead/Dead Alive have nothing to apologize for because they are great. Probably Society too. Mixed feelings on Stuart Gordon's Reanimator, From Beyond.
But when you add up The Gate, Spookies, Fright Night series, House series, Ghoulies, The Burbs, Monster Club, Return Of The Living Dead, probably many more, it does add up and I can see why it would annoy some.

Boston Strangler was really great. Don't know why I don't hear about it more often. One of the best serial killer films I've ever seen but it takes the subject way more seriously than most serial killer films. I thought that maybe since its based on real events that would be natural, but that isn't always the case.

Oddly I had a brief bad dream about the film in which I was describing it to someone and I had a horrible flash of memory which I couldn't figure out afterwards, like the ones in the film.

I pretty rarely have bad dreams about horror films and it is odder because it didn't unnerved me when I watched it last night.

The ending to that film is surprisingly sad.

Correction to above post: hadn't unnerved me.

I was really pretty impressed with that film too. The multiple simultaneous panels thing was cool.

Yeah, I wonder if Ang Lee was inspired by that for Hulk (in which I thought the panel effect achieved very little).

Another odd thing, I saw this on the Movies4Men channel which mostly shows action and military trash.

the film i saw after that which used the multiple panel thing was greenaway's Pillow Book. It's probably been used all over the place but I'm not a very good cineaste.

Evil Dead series and Braindead/Dead Alive have nothing to apologize for because they are great. Probably Society too. Mixed feelings on Stuart Gordon's Reanimator, From Beyond.

love all these movies unreservedly, personally

The Gate, Spookies, Fright Night series, House series, Ghoulies, The Burbs, Monster Club, Return Of The Living Dead

these uh, yeah less so. Return of the Living Dead is good fun, probably the best out of all these.

My rewatch of Night of the Creeps was only so-so.

Society would be one of the all-time greats if it had a decent ending.

Society is really odd tonally. It's so weird how the peeping tom who knows the truth is treated so lightly by everyone for most of the film. All the dynamics between characters are so odd and I don't know how intentional it is.

Can anyone comment on Yuzna's output? Apparently that Mena Suvari film he did was good.

Society would be one of the all-time greats if it had a decent ending

wtf the ending is the best thing about it

or are you referring to something else besides the SHUNT

I'm sure everyone loves when the boy says "fuck you butthead" to his dad.

If I had a physical copy of SOCIETY I'd shunt it, that's how much I love it.

I've always wanted to see Parents. Saw 15mins of it and it seemed similar to Society.

Parents is a strange movie - it doesn't have the marxist undercurrent, it isn't funny, and it's closer to a disturbing Freudian family drama in tone. iirc it was marketed as something of a comedy but the tone of it is all wrong.

holy shit looking at the credits I had no idea that was a Bob Balaban movie, what a weird thing for him to do

it's closer to Lynch than Yuzna

FYI, Balaban wrote/directed a few epidsodes of Tales From The Darkside/Monsters and was initially supposed to direct Creepshow 2. Dunno how much of a horror pedigree that gives him, but it's not totally outside his wheelhouse.

huh I had no idea

just read some career retrospective interview with him, what a random career that guy has had. I had no idea he directed some episodes of Strangers with Candy, or was responsible for Gosford Park, for ex.

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (Coppola)

Haven't seen this in 15 years and it's way better than I remembered. I'm certain this film is generally considered a letdown, but aside from Keanu's infamous performance and being too long (especially the end), I don't think there's a whole lot wrong with it. I think it's actually a favourite of mine now, which I never expected.
I wish there were way more horror films as beautiful and detailed as this, there's just so much to see. I never realised it taken bits from the Murnau Nosferatu and Caspar David Friedrich paintings. Totally forgotten Jim Steranko did concept art for this.

Unfortunately I heard that Universal is planning to ape the Marvel universe movies and have loads of interconnected films that join together in a new Van Helsing. So I think they'll all probably be dumbed down more than they'd usually be.

I revisited the Coppola Dracula not long ago myself, and also found it way better than I'd remembered.

Along those lines, you know what I've been meaning to revisit for 20 years? "Nadja."

Actually one thing that seems a bit hard to believe is How Keanu fully trusts Winona in the situation at the end, even after everything that happened.

Actually it was Stuart Gordon who directed Stuck with Mena Suvari, not Yuzna.
I had no clue that Gordon and Yuzna did the story to Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. I get their films mixed up because they collaborated often and made similar films.

I'm saying "actually" too much.

Anyone seen the original "Elm Street" any time recently? Worth re-watching? The Fresh Prince's "Nightmare on My Street" just popped up and I thought, huh, maybe I should give it a fresh viewing.

I watched it a couple years ago, its okay/entertaining in a trashy way. II is better.

re: Coppola's Dracula - totally fun film, albeit one I do not take at all seriously. Looks great and full of strange stylistic choices, hammy acting and Winona's heaving bosom.

original elm street is always worth watching

II is better/

Definitely weirder/gayer! It and "Jeepers Creeper 2" pretty much corner the homoerotic horror sequel market.

all part of that 80s tradition of sequels being better than the original - Superman II, Wrath of Khan, Empire, Friday the 13th Pt II, I'm sure there's others

Interesting, I actually prefer the second Elm Street too but most people seem to think it's redundant, and even though I prefer it to the first, maybe it is still redundant.
I never saw the third one. For some reason Now TV is loaded up with all the big slasher series except Nightmare On Elm Street and Halloween.

Friday the 13th Part 2 is terrible. The first several minutes or so are just clips from the first movie, then barely anything happens after. I tried watching a few years back and it was a snooooooooooze.

Nightmare films are p good up through IV iirc. The Freddy vs. Jason movie is really stupid (predictably) but I recall enjoying it in the theater. The Friday the 13th series is kind of unbearable after part IV.

Part VI is great fun. On purpose.

Totally read this when I was younger:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51p55wzphNL._SL500_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Unfortunately I have seen Freddy vs Jason. You could teach that in a class of how not to make horror films. I think it had a silly nu-metal soundtrack too.

Man, Jason Takes Manhattan is like a class in how not to make a movie, period.

almost all of them are terribly made, just really sloppy. IV is easily the best due to having a coherent plot/central character and decent casting plus this http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ani2.gif

Not to mention Corey Feldman in a surprise role as Billy Corgan.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/568726/thumbs/o-COREY-FELDMAN-FRIDAY-THE-13TH-570.jpg?4

I think all the Nightmares, except Freddy's Dead, are worth a look. Part 2 is actually the least redundant--it goes in a different direction than the other movies, becoming a pretty straight-up possession movie (a la Amityville 2). (Actually, wasn't Amityville 2 another gay-ish sequel to put next to Nightmare 2 and Jeepers 2?)

As I mentioned in the Halloween shit yer pants thread, I just rewatched Nightmares 2-7 weekend before last. My past opinions were confirmed: 1-4 are varying levels of good (I still think 4 is my favorite, certainly the most entertaining), 5-7 are varying levels of bad (although Freddy's Dead is the only outright piece of shit in the bunch). People still rep for New Nightmare but I feel like that's gotta be more because of the concept than the execution.

3 and 4 are the most Hollywood. Competent directors, good FX.

new nightmare is fucking garbage

Totally. I'd take even the worst of the first six movies over New Nightmare.

That's so meta.

New Nightmare is the limpest wet noodle of a supernatural slasher movie that just happens to also feature actors playing themselves. And it's soooooo interminable. Aside from the meta element, it's easily the least creative entry in the franchise.

What if it was all a dream and it was never actually made, like the reboot?

Skipped through Nightmare 2, since it is the only one on Netflix, and it was stupid and dull and about as scary as "Zapped!" As a metaphor for repressed homosexuality, sure, it works OK, because otherwise this dude had no demons beyond Freddy. He had a girlfriend, even the bully was his buddy and called him "bro." He dressed OK, got invited to parties, had a car. Though of course when the door was closed he dressed up and danced to Fonda Rae and mimed masturbation with a pop gun.

You take that back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjfAy917gHg

vs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_f0ELRcgCo

Been wanting to talk Tobe Hooper for a while. Poltergeist discussed above.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
One of the few films that's really worth the hype. I really love it.

EATEN ALIVE/DEATH TRAP
I often see reviews saying this is one of the worst horror films ever made but I think it's very far from that. There's a lot to admire but I have to keep in mind that Hooper did not finish this film by himself, or so I've heard.
I like that it sticks to one night and never strays far from the one location. It's a misty, creaky old hotel with a crocodile in the waters next to it.
Many films are said to be inspired by 50s horror comics but this film has that same dark and lurid colored aura more than any other film I've seen, though the similarity may be accidental. It has a real atmosphere.
The portrayal of the deranged hotel owner fascinates me, especially the quiet whispering scenes. The crazy dad makes it more interesting too.
By the end it gets too straightforward and a bit dull, which is a shame. But I still recommend it as a nice little mood piece.

SALEM'S LOT
I like this mainly because it has several fantastic scary bits, a few of which traumatized my younger self. The vampires looked great.
I can't remember how well the whole thing strings together, partly because there are edited down versions that cut out some important scenes altogether, who knows why? My main complaint is the scenes that freeze still at the end, it just didn't look right.
I feel that this film (really a televised two parter) is important for its striking images and I don't like when it gets left out lists.

THE FUNHOUSE
Another film which is too straightforward in some ways but has some odd aspects and an overall dark, sad and dirty mood I really enjoy. Elizabeth Berridge (from Amadeus) is gorgeous in a really unusual way.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2
The idea of the director of the original film returning in a radically different style appealed to me. The early scene on the road is amazing and the mad Dennis Hopper intent on revenge seemed so promising. But it turns into a slog that suffers partly for the increasing similarities to the original. If you didn't know Hooper was the director you'd think it was a fan doing a clumsy homage for an ending. Huge disappointment.

THE MANGLER
Some people had recommended this strongly and said it was very underrated. It was on tv and annoyingly I kept falling asleep (which I only seem to do when watching films I care about) but it was indeed very strange in places but I'm not sure I'd buy it to give it another shot.

A lot has been said about Hooper's decline but I haven't seen enough to comment (worried I'll just agree with most fans) and some people say that he is still a great director but has had extraordinarily bad luck. His book was quite well recieved. I really hope he makes some good stuff again.
I've heard Kiyoshi Kurosawa wrote an in-depth study of Hooper's filmography and I've saw Tsukamoto photographed with him. Perhaps Hooper is considered more of an important director in Japan?

no love for Lifeforce? it's not great but it has its moments

Never seen it. Colin Wilson hated it and made a semi-famous joke about it and I only ever see it recommended for Mathilda May.

I saw it awhile ago, it's not great but it's not terrible.

but now I'm curious about Invaders from Mars

I just remembered I've also seen his Toolbox Murders remake. It's odd that it feels a lot like the nastier slasher films of that era. There were some things that nearly worked but could have been way scarier. But I don't think it's as poor as people say.

haha our tastes definitely differ, TCM2 is imo pretty non stop awesome, and the toolbox murders remake was one of the worst things ive seen in years, finding out about tobes involvement was like learning that your favorite elementary teachers sponsors a dog fighting ring

It's not a good film but it doesn't seem to be much worse than the films around it in his filmography and the slashers of the day.

The lair at the end of the film and Savini's creations in TCM2 are pretty good though.

Aw, I think those 400 Blows freeze frame zooms in Salem's Lot are really effective, or at least the one with Danny jumping from the coffin is.

Savini is another reason why Friday the 13th IV is relatively strong.

I know it's a rehash, but especially since you just rewatched all of that, I totally buy the conspiracy theory take on Hooper vis a vis Poltergeist and Spielberg. TCM aside, that movie is so far and away better made, better written, scarier and better directed than pretty much anything else by Hooper, and it's also so eerily in Spielberg's wheelhouse that it's hard to believe he didn't have some major sway over the final product.

I didn't rewatch anything, I haven't seen most of these in years.

I still prefer Salem's Lot, Funhouse and Eaten Alive to Poltergeist.

Wow. I love Poltergeist. I think it's scary as hell. I like Funhouse a lot, too, for a generic slasher. Eaten Alive I think is terrible, Salem's Lot betrays its TV-movie roots.

TCM > Poltergeist > The Funhouse > Salem's Lot > TCM2 > Eaten Alive > Invaders from Mars

Haven't watched Lifeforce anywhere near recently enough to judge.

huh guess I should see Funhouse eh

currently have Let's Scare Jessica to Death waiting at home

Anyone who doesn't think Poltergeist is at least 51 percent Spielberg is nuts.

xp I should watch that one again; I feel I missed something

I think the debate has always been how much more than 51%, since the movie scans at least 90% Spielberg and, based on everything else by Hooper, at best 10% Tobe.

I think the big Spielberg influence is likely why I don't much care for it. I'm not anti-Spielberg but it has some things I don't like about his approach, the sort of things he shares with Stephen King.

I'm pro-Spielberg and pro-Hooper so it works out nicely.

In this case, Spielberg's the steak and Hooper's the char.

NYC fest pairs films by grindhouse directors with the industrial shorts they made! Click on individual titles for the shorts info.

http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/43330

Thanks, I don't think I've heard of the latter 4 on that line-up.

I never knew the special edition of Carnival Of Souls included a hours worth of industrial shorts. But I doubt it's worth getting on that basis.

I really wish Herk Harvey (Carnival Of Souls) and Richard Blackburn (Lemora) directed many more horror films but I guess there are lots of directors who only did one or two good ones.
I keep thinking John D Hancock (Lets Scare Jessica To Death) did only one film but he actually has lots in various genres and is still going. From reading the imdb reviews it seems he hasn't fallen into a rut.

There is a Blackburn episode of Tales From The Darkside and Hanock done several Twilight Zone episodes.

Some of those industrial shorts are really creepy iirc.

Really?! For a second you have excited me past realistic expectations. Please tell me more and lower them.

Creepy in a "this movie's old and terribly lit and 16mm" sense. Corporate films that look like snuff.

Right. For a second I was imagining educational films with completely inappropriate and indulgent gothic fantasy.

Right. And no gory workplace accidents either, if memory serves.

I watched a bit of the drinking/driving educational film by the Carnival of Souls director. I love grade-Z black and white schlock, but it's pretty wretched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh30DWaOuzk

Has anyone else seen Forklift Driver Klaus?

It was a super gory German comedy short film in the style of a health and safety video. It was on tv when I was in high school and in retrospect in was unusually popular for a foreign short film, maybe it got several repeats because quite a few people seemed to know about it.

Well worth searching for, it was hilarious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forklift_Driver_Klaus_-_The_First_Day_on_the_Job
http://www.staplerfahrerklaus.de/

Watch it on the English section.

Will do, thanks! Way off topic for this thread, but if you like that sort of thing, this is a spot-on audio parody. If the crunching celluloid, wobbly music and wooden acting don't hook you in the first :30 seconds...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNa9WdayY-M

should i go see Nosferatu in a 1929 movie palace with a pipe organ tomw night, or The Exorcist for the first time?

http://www.loewsjersey.org/films/92-nosferatu

http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2014/10/24/detail/the-exorcist

love Let's Scare Jessica to Death btw. does a lot with a little, great atmosphere maintained throughout, almost Polanski-esque in places, predictable but awesome "twist" ending etc. thx for the rec folks

xp I don't The Exorcist will appeal much to you based on your dislike of most horror, but even then it is worth it for the Lee J. Cobb/Jason Miller interaction and performances if nothing else. But AFAIC it's a must-see for horror fans but won't leave much of a gap if you never see it.

Exorcist was on TV last night and even with all my reservations about posession movies expressed on that other thread, it really is great. I don't see how a nice catholic boy like Morbz could resist

also when the devil is yelling "fuck him in the ass" at von sydow... I see that line a bit differently in light of the church's paedo proclivities

Right, great performances on the whole and a genuinely ugly worldview (never did read the last five minutes the way I'm sure Catholics generally do).

b-b-but pipe organ

Nosferatu with pipe organs for sure. I'd love that personally.

Oh, I wasn't saying that you should choose Exorcist *this* weekend. There'll be many other chances.

I am a huge Exorcist fan but Orlok with pipe organ is kinda hard to pass up.

Do murnau every time

Okay, The Innocents was great. Gorgeous and effectively spooky and it doesn't feel dated at all. All of the actors were fantastic, but I think the little boy in particular might've given one of the best child actor performances I've ever seen.

Saw this again on the big screen last year I think, where it's particularly effective in 'scope. Kerr never better.

The boy (Martin Stephens) is also the lead child-demon in Village of the Damned, a TV constant in the '70s.

Bought Stuart Gordon's Dolls and Rollin's Requiem For A Vampire and Night Of The Hunted. There was quite a few unfamiliar horror and noir films at the shop. Some Hammer films I kinda want to see but all the best ones were only there on bluray.

Totally forgot Patricia Arquette was the star of "Nightmare 3," and that Larry Fishburne is in this, too. And that Angelo Badalamenti did the score!

Actually, the lol full credit:

Music by Angelo Badalamenti, Dokken

Hahaha that dokken song is so bad.

shouldve used fresh prince amirite

The Dokken song is terrible but it's also ridiculously catchy (he says as he continues to periodically sing it weeks after the fact).

3 was also co-written by Frank Darabont. Who I'll no longer be quite as flip about after finally seeing The Mist recently.

Oh, I forgot that I also watched Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders this weekend. Really unsure how I felt about that one. I liked a lot of the constituent parts but... There's generally a through line of sorts (however elusive or disjointed) that allows me to enjoy those dreamlike/nightmarish movies that I count among my all-time faves (e.g. The Tenant, Possession, a number of Lynch's films), and I think that's what was missing from Valerie. It was like watching a kaleidoscope of beautiful and haunting images but it really didn't leave much of an impression once it was over. Maybe further viewing will help.

I'm a fan of it. Always wanted to read the book.

I quite like The Innocents but the ending is great, those sounds when the hand moves are amazing.

can i take a minute to recommend ALUCARDA?!

1) nuns who sweat blood 2) lots of screaming 3) exceptional costuming 4) cast 90% women

very memorable

Alucarda is an all time great!

It really is. Top notch. Glad we finally watched it!

DANIELA!
JUSTINE!

Yeah Alucarda is the business. Never have I been less irritated by so much screaming.

Yeah I love Alucarda. The opening music is goooooorgeous and the main character is easily one of the most charming I've ever seen. I just wanted to go with her into a fantasy land and never come back.

Oh shite! Copies of Mansion Of Madness (same director as Alucarda) are way up in price. Hope youtube isn't going to keep acting funny. The Dr Tarr version is supposed to be inferior so I'm not going that way.

JUSTINE!

DANIELA!

Watched Nightmare 3. Kinda sucked. Some OK acting mixed with some terrible acting, some OK FX mixed with some terrible FX. Still too much sitcom lighting. But then started Nightmare 4, and it really feels like the first time the budget, acting, FX and stuff are finally up to snuff (discounting the scrappy, scary first movie). I mean, it's no good, but it's solid enough product. Good '80s MTV-synergy soundtrack, too. Sinead over the end-credits is like the anti-Dokken.

Speaking of which, there are some good points made by Tasha here, but there are is some convenient shoehorning that ignores all the exceptions to her thesis.

http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/803-horror-sequels-are-the-exact-opposite-of-horror/

Got the Blu-Ray of Wake In Fright in the mail this morning; watching it now. Not exactly horror, but holy fuck, "toxic masculinity" has never been so perfectly captured on film.

I know it isn't important but I just love the part when Plesence introduces himself and does that funny smile.

The blu ray of wake in fright doesn't happen to have an isolated score bonus feature does it? Awesome music by john scott and it's never had a soundtrack release.

Nah, there are a lot of documentaries and interviews, but very few audio options - commentary on or off, that's it. And no subtitles, annoyingly enough.

Looked at all the options for Mansion Of Madness on YouTube and I couldn't find one with good enough picture or assurance that they were uncut. I really should have bought that DVD years ago when it was cheap, right after I saw Alucarda. I'll need to wait for a reissue which probably won't come any time soon.

I only learned recently that Moctezuma had worked with Jodorowsky, Arrabal and Cordiki; and that the great Leonora Carrington designed parts of this film.

Weird how much some people hate this film but most people I trust love it.

Sadly I've heard his Mary Mary Bloody Mary isn't as distinguished as Alucarda or Mansion Of Madness. It seems yet another horror director who only had one or two gems.

This is probably old news to the Brits, but I watched "Ghostwatch" last night -- finally, a complete copy has been uploaded to YouTube -- and loved it. For those unfamliar, it's a 1992 BBC production of a faux-live-TV event following a newscaster's night in a haunted house. It precedes so much of what happened years later with found-footage films and goes to some great, unexpected places. Watch and love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHVqzRyaByM&feature=youtu.be

I keep meaning to watch it again, but am afraid it will have lost some of its magic (I saw it at the time of broadcast, when I was a kid).

I was so glad I waited to watch a good-resolution video on a nice TV -- there are subtle moments that I never would've noticed on a tiny computer screen. I think you'll find that it holds up very well.

I really dig Ghostwatch but, yeah, I wish I could've seen its initial airing. I can imagine it would've been similar to my first viewing of The Blair Witch Project (free passes to a preview screening of a movie no one in the audience knew anything about, up to and including whether it was fictional).

Wow, finished Nightmare 4, and weirdly it plays like a particularly gruesome Buffy season finale.

Also, forgot the Fat Boys song in the credits!

Re: Ghostwatch. Maybe this is unfair but having tv personalities mixed with a horror show always put me off. Maybe I'll give it a shot.

Couldn't resist and went in for more today. Saw so many things and had to keep reminding myself I'm not wealthy and I probably won't enjoy most of my purchases that much, but the excitement wouldn't fade so easily. Nice to see lots of films coming into official UK release that I had to import over a decade ago (Black Sabbath, one of my favourites).

My purchases..

Curse Of The Werewolf
The Reptile
Kiss Of The Vampire

I heard next to nothing about Kiss Of The Vampire, it rarely gets mentioned alongside other Hammer films, it doesn't have the Hammer DVD line art design; perhaps because it's a Universal/Hammer co-production?

The Reptile is dual format. Why is the feature running time of the bluray 4 minutes longer than the DVD? Is it like how different region dvds have slightly different running times on the same cut of a film? Never understood this technical stuff.

That's the beauty of it. Sarah Greene and Mike Smith make it much more chilling than it would be as a straight horror film. It's an evening of light entertainment gone horribly off the rails. Also, at least a few people seem to have thought it was real at the time. Xp

To answer my own question, but still don't really understand the tech stuff
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=110455

Curse of the Werewolf got a beautiful release on Blu-ray in Germany. 1080p restoration. a slew of supplemental materials. I picked up the mediabook, as it is one of my favorite Hammer films, but I believe there is a budget version. Anolis is a company to watch. they're serious about their Hammer Horror; the next title in this line is Hands of the Ripper. the only caveat is that their releases are often limited and not always English-friendly.

Kiss of the Vampire is no more or less of a 'coproduction' than any other Hammer film of the period. Hammer secured American distribution/financing for all their horror movies in the 50s and 60s, with a variety of different studios (which is why their back catalogue is now spread amongst so many different companies.)

KOTV is, along with Brides of Dracula, an attempt by Hammer to make a vampire movie without Christopher Lee, who at the time was reluctant to play Count Dracula again. KOTV was not a hit, and the following year Hammer bit the bullet and offered Lee a substantial pay increase to appear in Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which was a very big hit for the company, thereby accelerating production on Lee/Dracula flicks.

KOTV has its moments - the direction by Don Sharp isn't quitely so stately as Terence Fisher's work, so it feels a bit more modern/fast-paced - but I wouldn't put it amongst the top tier Hammers (unlike Brides).

The recentish UK Region 2 Blu-Rays of the first Hammer Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy movies all look beautiful, and are packed with lots of good extras (including terrific commentary tracks by Hammer experts Jonathan Rigby and Marcus Hearn).

yes, but i don't know what they were thinking with the CGI-enhanced lightning FX on The Devil Rides Out. blasphemy!

Yeah, that's Optimum/Studio Canal, who have the rights to a lot of the 60s Hammer movies. Their Blu Ray editions are inferior in every way to the Lionsgate ones I mentioned. AFAIK, Devil Rides Out is the only one so far that they've 'improved' in this way, and while the effects in the climatic scene ARE pretty poor, I agree they shouldn't be fucking with any of the films like this.

My copy of The Reptile is Studio Canal and Curse Of The Werewolf and Kiss Of The Vampire are Final Cut.

Sorry for the wording, the latter two are Final Cut.

The best Studio Canal Blu, imho, is their Quatermass and the Pit edition, which includes a Nigel Kneale commentary track and a very good supporting documentary.

Curse of the Werewolf is another Universal-backed production; I've got this Region 1 DVD set, which collects them all together (on double-side discs, unfortunately):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hammer-Horror-Series-Region-Import/dp/B0009X770O

The Region 2 DVD/Blu rights to these movies seems to be scattered across different companies/territories (I'm guessing, RAG, that you picked up these titles from Fopp's current Halloween promotion - I too have feasted on their selection.)

The Amazon page contains this helpful note:

The little Hammer studio very often had to look for partners overseas to produce their amazing pictures. While other big Film studios like Warner and MGM released “their” Hammer films some time ago on DVD it seems that these eight (European!) movies rested for ages in the vaults of the Universal studios in LA.

The Brides of Dracula starring Peter Cushing
The Curse of the Werewolf starring Oliver Reed
Phantom of the Opera starring Herbert Lom
Paranoiac starring Oliver Reed
The Kiss of the Vampire starring Clifford Evans
Nightmare starring Jennie Linden
Night creatures starring Peter Cushing
The evil of Frankenstein starring (of course) Peter Cushing
No extras like trailers or audio commentary (which is a bit of a shame)

Eureka (the ppl who own the Masters of Cinema imprint) have got the Region 2 blu ray rights to Paranoiac, which is my favourite of Jimmy Sangster's Diaboliques/Psycho knock-offs. Haven't seen the Blu, but Eureka generally do a dece job on their discs.

Yeah it was Fopp. There was lots of interesting looking noir films but I really don't know which ones to go for. Killers or Touch Of Evil wasn't there, kinda tempted on Orphee (not a noir) but it wasn't there the next time I visited. Kinda wanted Stoker to see the deleted scenes. But I got Ken Russell's Music Lovers(not horror or noir either) and Scarlett Empress (which had lovely horrory screenshots on Obscure Hollow that I linked a few months ago above).

It would be nice if there was more comprehensive Hammer box sets. The region 2 sets never seemed very good. I'm more reluctant to try the singles of films like this, especially at regular DVD prices.

There's always this:
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Hammer-Horror-The-Blu-ray-Collection-Blu-ray/91045/

Or Optimum UK's massive Ultimate Hammer Collection DVD box.

What are you guys top Hammer films?

As I said above I quite liked Curse Of Frankenstein, The Gorgon, Brides Of Dracula; got some fondness for Twins Of Evil.

Less fond of Horror Of Dracula, Dracula Prince Of Darkness, Plague Of The Zombies, Countess Dracula, Vampire Lovers, Lust For A Vampire, Vampire Circus, Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde. Some of these did have elements I liked. I might have seen one of the cavegirl ones.

Plain disliked Dracula AD 1972.

I've saw lots of bits of various other ones that didn't make me want to watch the rest. Not long ago I started Scars Of Dracula and it just seemed very poor and I switched off.

I'm drawn to the gothic ones but maybe they aren't always the best ones.

http://www.fright.com/edge/KenRussellDracula.htm

Review of Ken Russell's Dracula screenplay

No Hammer search and destroys? Oh well.

THE REPTILE

Okay, leaning towards decent. The mysterious circumstances stay secret for most of the film, so I was kept guessing for a while.
When the main character gets a venomous bite that puts him in mortal danger, his wife seems absurdly calm about it.
I wonder why so many horror films of this era end with a house on fire?

More than anything, I like the design for the Reptile. I think it's one of the coolest looking film monsters (even though the makeup isn't very convincing), certainly one of the best Hammer monsters. Reminds me of Orlok from Nosferatu.

DOLLS

An old mansion of an old dollmaker and his wife, both eccentrics. Unlucky visitors come and get terrorized by the dolls.

Rusty acting and comedy that pretty much never works. Which is a shame because I thought this had potential. Most of the scenes with the dolls coming to life were well done though.

http://www.monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2014/10/ghana-film-posters-1-of-5.html

Check out these 5 pages of Ghana film posters. If you haven't seen any of these before, you might be astonished, especially the posters for the modern western films.

KISS OF THE VAMPIRE

Very bland film, it's not surprising I never knew anything about it. There are brief moments of interest though, best of which being the opening burial scene when the shovel is thrown into the coffin.

CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF

Possibly the best Hammer film I've seen, the acting and story momentum is certainly above most of the others.
I've heard that the source material, Guy Endore's Werewolf Of Paris is a particularly cruel book and this film certainly has some of that nastiness at the beginning. The story is set over several decades and it takes a lot of time before Oliver Reed appears. There are even more folkloric supernatural rules to this film than in most werewolf stories.

This is maybe my favourite werewolf design for films. I wonder why Legend Of The Werewolf (1975, Freddie Francis) copied the design so closely? That is a film I have seen many screenshots for but relatively few people seem to have seen it; it did have Hammer regulars but it wasn't one of their films.
Unfortunately there is some really fake looking hairy hands but overall this has some strong visuals.
Yvonne Romain and Catherine Feller are very beautiful.

John Bolton did a really brilliantly drawn comic adaptation of this for a Hammer magazine and its worth seeking out.

I really need to see that. Aside from being a Hammer and Oliver Reed fan, I'm an admirer of its elaborately atonal score, by british classical composer Benjamin Frankel, which was rerecorded very well on a Naxos CD conducted by Carl Davis.

Which issue of the Hammer mag has the bolton comic? I need to see if I can download that.

http://www.comics.org/issue/990030/

I owned it in the original issue above.

http://www.comics.org/issue/263308/

I've heard but cannot confirm this reprints it. But it seems fairly certain from all the details. Someone told me this series (2 issues) reprints all his Hammer art. I think it's also a tie-in for Monster Club (for which he did a great illustrated sequence in the actual film).

Here's a sample
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/459507968202896858/

John Bolton in Monster Club
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhqZlAAB5UI

I've never been a great fan of Mummy films but after seeing a clip of Christopher Lee Mummy carrying a woman through a murky swamp, I'm sold.

The Mummy is a bit of a snooze, I'm afraid - it was Michael Carreras' first attempt to push Hammer in a slightly more 'respectable' direction, so the film has some of the same tone and style (but not budget) of a big technicolor biblical epic. The swamp section is far and away the best part.

Curse of the Werewolf was probably the Hammer film most heavy snipped by the British censors, who unsurprisingly were especially troubled by the rape scene. Richard Wordsworth is scarily intense as the beggar (he's also amazing in the first Quatermass film - Hammer should've used him more often).

Legend of the Werewolf is knocking around as a bootleg, and used to be shown on UK TV fairly frequently. It's one of the small handful of horror films produced by Tyburn, run by Kevin 'son of Freddie' Francis - I'm guessing that their back catalogue is now caught up in some kind of copyright limbo. The screenplay is by Anthony Hinds, the former Hammer executive who also wrote Curse, hence the make-up similarity. Curse is the much better film.

Thanks for advice about The Mummy.

Yes, Richard Wordsworth was quite memorable I have never seen Quatermass but I recognised his face from images of it. His cv says he was in Revenge Of Frankenstein and Camp On Blood Island.

I also remember Yvonne Romain in Corridors Of Blood, a Boris Karloff vehicle that also features Christopher Lee. The strange thing about that film is that it's a film about an ambitious idealistic medical doctor but it's (perhaps inappropriately) filmed like a horror film. Really lovely black and white.

REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE

Two runaway girls roam the countryside, find a castle and are taken in against their will by a vampire family.
Even by Rollin standards this is a quiet film, I don't think anyone speaks until 40mins in. Quite a few nice images and settings. As with many Rollin films, it has an interesting soundtrack but not quite standout.
Some of the vampires look a bit daft (a recurring vampire film problem) and the film needed something more, even if it was more of what it already has. But I can understand why this is seen as an introductory film to Rollin's world.

How about Blood And Roses (1960) by Roger Vadim?

NIGHT OF THE HUNTED

A mystery story of people with severe memory loss kept in a home run by corrupt people.

This one is set in modern day, full of skyscrapers. There's several sex and rape scenes and I don't think most of the Rollin horror films had as much as this. There's deleted scenes that mostly consist of various sex positions.
I think it's too long and there wasn't a whole lot for me to enjoy, even though it's more professional than most Rollin and almost feels like early Cronenberg in places.
Mainly for Brigitte Lahaie fans I guess.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n203/iamragmar/rollin_zpsa2d8b52e.jpg

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n203/iamragmar/rollin2_zpsfbddef63.png

I don't think I can sustain the interest to buy Demoniacs and Rape Of The Vampire. I checked out the trailer and found some cool screenshots of the latter film.

Checked out both trailers I mean.

HOUSE OF LAUGHING WINDOWS

Good: Really nasty grim film. Quite a few strong atmospheric looking and sounding scenes. The shabby old houses. Very little of the hiccups or sloppiness you find in most giallo films.

Bad: To be honest, I was bored for most of the film. The ending will be unintentionally funny for some people.

I'm sure some of y'all owned a copy of Stephen King's Nightshift collection of dollar babies back in the day. On one of the VHS tapes, there was a trailer for some weird low-budget film. It was in black and white and featured a guy crawling through the desert, then this giant mantis or something flies by and drops a skyscraper on his head. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

― how's life, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:53 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Found some info on this

http://serialkillercalendar.com/serialkillercalendar/VHSWASTELAND/VHS-WASTELAND-April-26.html

The best thing on the tape is actually the lone coming attraction before the two shorts. It's for something called Slightly Astounding Stories (I can't find anything about it online) and it features a giant insect-like craft flying over a crowded city, landing on a high-rise building, clutching it, tearing it out of the ground, flying it far out of the city, and eventually dropping it on an old man who's crawling through the desert. It's totally bizarre and hilarious, and the cheap special effects are surprisingly well-done. I hope that some day I stumble across some more info about that movie, but somehow I doubt it. I'll keep my fingers crossed though.

Rewatched Dead Of Night for the first time in a decade. I didn't realise it was mostly based on old short stories.

There are some good moments and scenery scattered across the film and the freakout at the end is well done but I don't think it's a very good film overall. Like I've said about a lot of the films on this thread, it seems quite half-hearted to me.
A lot of people consider the golf comedy segment to be the main weakness of the film but I think it has quite a few funny ideas(which like everything else, could have been executed better), especially the guy walking to his watery grave.

The teenage girl excitedly saying "do you fall madly in love with her?" is quite funny. Bizarre seeing her sing a younger boy to sleep. Sometimes old British films seem more alien than old American ones even if you're from Britain.

Somebody posted this link on Ligotti forum.
https://archive.org/details/LeptiricatheShe-butterflyyugoslaviaHorrorFilmEnglishSubtitles1973

Sounds interesting.

Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell.
It moves along better and is more interestingly written than most similar films but I don't particularly recommend it. Probably the goriest Hammer film I've seen.

Just in case anyone is interested. I don't know if this is only region 2. There has been a couple of recent box sets with some of these films, but this must be the most comprehensive yet.

VINCENT PRICE IN SIX GOTHIC TALES (BLU-RAY)

From the Merchant of Menace, Vincent Price, and the King of the Bs, Roger Corman, come six Gothic tales inspired by the pen of Edgar Allan Poe.

In The Fall of the House of Usher, a young man learns of a family curse that threatens his happiness with his bride-to-be. In The Pit and the Pendulum, a brother investigates the untimely death of sister, played by Barbara Steele. Tales of Terror adapts three Poe classics, Morella, The Black Cat and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, each starring a horror icon. The Raven is a comic take on the famous poem concerning three rival magicians. In The Haunted Palace, a newcomer in a New England town is suspected of being a warlock. And in The Tomb of Ligeia, filmed in Norfolk and at Stonehenge, a widower s upcoming marriage plans are thwarted by his dead first wife.

The six films boast a remarkable cast list: not just Price and Steele, but also Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr, Basil and a very young Jack Nicholson. Adapted for the screen by Richard Matheson and Robert Towne, these Six Gothic Tales now rank as classic examples of sixties horror cinema.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

High Definition Blu-ray presentation of all six features
Original uncompressed mono PCM Audio for all films
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for all films
Trailers for each film
Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork for all films

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

Audio commentary with director and producer Roger Corman
An interview with director Joe Dante
Interview with author Jonathan Rigby
Video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns examining Corman s film in relation to Poe s story
Archival interview with Vincent Price

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

Audio commentary with director and producer Roger Corman
Audio commentary by critic Tim Lucas
A new making of documentary featuring Roger Corman, star Barbara Steele, Victoria Price and more!
Shot in 1968 to pad out the film for the longer TV time slot, this scene features star Luana Anders
Price reads a selection of Poe s classic stories before a live audience

TALES OF TERROR

An hour-long documentary on Roger Corman featuring contributions from James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard
Critic and novelist Anne Billson discusses the contributions of our feline friends to genre cinema
The Black Cat, a 1993 short film adaptation of Poe s classic tale directed by Rob Green (The Bunker)

THE RAVEN

Peter Lorre: The Double Face, Harun Farocki s 1984 documentary, subtitled in English for the first time
An interview with the legendary novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson
An interview with Roger Corman about making The Raven
The Trick, a short film about rival magicians by Rob Green (The Bunker)
Promotional Record
Stills and Poster Gallery

THE HAUNTED PALACE

Audio commentary by Vincent Price s biographer David Del Valle and Ron Chaney, grandson of Lon Chaney, Jr
Kim Newman on H.P. Lovecraft
An interview with Roger Corman
Stills and Poster Gallery

THE TOMB OF LIGEIA

Audio commentary by director and producer Roger Corman
Audio commentary by star Elizabeth Shepherd
All-new interviews with cast and crew
200-PAGE BOOK LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE

Collector s book containing new writing the films, an interview with Roger Corman, extracts from Vincent Price s autobiography and full reproductions of tie-in comic books for Tales of Terror, The Raven and The Tomb of Ligeia
LIMITED TO 2000 COPIES

Masque Of The Red Death isn't there, it would have made more sense than Haunted Palace, even though I vastly prefer Haunted Palace.

Borowczyk's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne coming out from Arrow. Pleasantly surprised, I've seen it strongly recommend and I didn't think I'd have the opportunity this soon.
I thought Beast was deadly dull but I hope this is good.

Potent and poetic, mischievous and macabre, Borowczyk s film shows how many imaginative worlds the horror movie can open up when the right artist holds the keys (Nigel Andrews, Financial Times)

It s the engagement party for brilliant young Dr Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier) and his fiancée, the beautiful Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro), attended by various pillars of Victorian society, including the astonishing Patrick Magee in one of his final roles. But when people are found raped and murdered outside and ultimately inside the house, it becomes clear that a madman has broken in to disrupt the festivities but who is he? And why does Dr Jekyll keep sneaking off to his laboratory?

We know the answer, of course, but Walerian Borowczyk s visually stunning adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson s much-filmed tale is crammed with wildly imaginative and outrageously perverse touches characteristic of the man who scandalised audiences with Immoral Tales and The Beast, not least the explicitly sexualised nature of Mr Hyde s primal urges.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

Brand new 2K restoration, scanned from the original camera negative and supervised by cinematographer Noël Véry
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the film, released on both formats for the first time anywhere in the world
English and French soundtracks in LPCM 1.0
Optional English and English SDH subtitles
Introduction by critic and long-term Borowczyk fan Michael Brooke
Audio commentary featuring archival interviews with Walerian Borowczyk, Udo Kier, Marina Pierro and producer Robert Kuperberg, and new interviews with cinematographer Noël Véry, editor Khadicha Bariha, assistant Michael Levy and filmmaker Noël Simsolo, moderated by Daniel Bird
Interview with Marina Pierro
Himorogi (2012), a short film by Marina and Alessio Pierro, made in homage to Borowczyk
Interview with artist and filmmaker Alessio Pierro
Video essay by Adrian Martin and Cristina Alvarez Lopez
Eyes That Listen, a featurette on Borowczyk s collaborations with electro-acoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani
Jouet Jouyeux (1979), a short film by Borowczyk based on Charles-Émile Reynaud s praxinoscope
Introduction to Jouet Joyeux by production assistant Sarah Mallinson
Returning to Méliès: Borowczyk and Early Cinema, a featurette by Daniel Bird
Reversible sleeve with artwork based on Borowczyk s own poster design
Booklet with new writing on the film by Daniel Bird and archive materials, illustrated with rare stills
More to be announced!

Since this is a year with two Friday the 13ths in a row, I've just watched the first 2.5 movies of that franchise on Netflix. Lost heart and gave up, but my assistant at work tells me today that I have to make it through 4. Anyway 1 is an engaging enough artifact which becomes magnificently deranged in the final yards, 2 is kind of dispiritingly shit, 3 was making me depressed except for the great fun of in your face 3D moments defanged by non 3D presentation.

I never made it as far as 3, 2 was so bad. I kinda love Jason Goes To Hell, though. It's not really a good movie by any metric but it at least has the courage to be completely batshit.

I could never even make it far into the first one. 6th film is atrocious but in an occasionally funny way, you wonder what they were thinking.

Jason X is pretty (intentionally) funny in places.

Yes, the Arrow Poe/Corman/Price set is Region 2 only - irrc, Kino/Lorber are producing similar discs for Region 1 (the Corman commentary tracks were recorded some years ago for Region 1 DVDs). Masque of the Red Death is available as a Region 2 bare bones disc from StudioCanal/Optimum; Masque is easily the most visually ravishing of all this series - Nic Roeg cinematography - and cries out for a fully restored Blu-Ray set.

Friday the 13th IV - aka Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter - is directed by versatile genre hack Joseph Zito, who made one of my favourite slashers, The Prowler. IV is probably the 'best' after 1 - it opens with a useful flashback recap of ALL the previous murders. Agree that 2 is very boring, but it was the most heavily censored, fwiw.

Dunno why Arrow has done a lot of lesser Bava films but not Kill Baby Kill yet. It's my second favourite Bava.

Scream Factory included most of the Corman pics in their two Vincent Price BD boxes.
Arrow Films just launched an Arrow US, with crowd-funded assistance. so that should help negate region coding.
Rumor has it that Arrow's OOP Stray Cat Rock box will be coming back in some form. fingers crossed that the same is true for the Boro box.

KBK is a rights nightmare. i'm impressed that Arrow was able to sort out (and restore) Blood and Black Lace.

best friday the 13th is def "jason lives"

in 'jason lives' jason looks too slight and he walks wrong imo. but it has probably the most iconic shot of jason besides the ending of the first one:
http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-m/f136/f136_shot8l.jpg

i also like those movies the most when they're grimy gory serious horror like the first one or total schlock like jason x. 'jason lives' is too torn between the two for me.

"Friday IV" has the best Savini FX, for sure. "Jason Lives" is pretty by the numbers except for all the hilarious one-liners (which I'm sure I've quoted before). But just in case:

Camper one to camper two: "So, what were you going to be when you grew up?'

Also, I read the novelization when I was younger!

4 > 2 > 1 > 3 > pretty much anything that followed except the one with the telekinetic girl b/c it seems to piss off fans so much

And 4 wins almost by default because of Crispin's crazy dancing and shaved boy Feldman.

Has anyone seen Nosferatu with the original score? Is it particularly good?

This Shinoda version of Demon Pond sounds brilliant.
http://www.fright.com/edge/DemonPond79.htm

Tried to watch Kaidan Yukijoro (a female snow ghost film) on youtube but it disappeared.

Should probably get my hands on Illusion Of Blood because it's one of the few DVD period Japanese horrors I haven't seen.

Actually there's Portrait Of Hell too.

Very weird to see Eaten Alive get a release with such extensive features.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
Brand new 2K transfer from the original camera negative
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Audio commentary with co-writer and producer Mardi Rustam, make-up artist Craig Reardon and stars Roberta Collins, William Finley and Kyle Richards
New introduction to the film by director Tobe Hooper
Brand new interview with Hooper
My Name is Buck: Star Robert Englund discusses his acting career
The Butcher of Elmendorf: The Legend of Joe Ball – The story of the South Texas bar owner on whom Eaten Alive is loosely based
5ive Minutes with Marilyn Burns – The star of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre talks about working on Eaten Alive
The Gator Creator: archival interview with Hooper
Original theatrical trailers for the film under its various titles Eaten Alive, Death Trap, Starlight Slaughter and Horror Hotel
US TV and Radio Spots
Alternate credits sequence
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin
Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film, illustrated with original archive stills and posters
More to be announced!

DR JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE

I was first interested in this because I had heard it was a particularly good looking film. Some of it definitely is but I wouldn't say it was overall ravishing. The opening with Hyde chasing the small girl indeed looks great, the scene of Miss Osbourne watching Jekyll in the bath and the ending scenes are pretty good too, all aided by an ominous soundtrack.

I thought it was a mistake to only have Udo Kier play Jekyll and have a stony faced guy with terrible hair play Hyde. Kier looks so much more impressive with the burning eyes and the way he expresses his passions. The story would have to had played out quite differently if Kier also played Hyde though.
Quite a number of scenes could have been cut shorter too.

Not bad, not really satisfying but quite a few of the images and sounds linger pleasantly.

The restoration is very impressive and the Arrow edition bonus features extensive and obviously had a lot of care put in.
Not sure if I want to see more Borowczyk. It is nice that he's having this revival of interest because it seems so unlikely someone as odd as him should be getting all these great reissues but I fear I'd be bored by most. The Beast is one of the dullest films I've seen, despite the striking (if not good) horse and beast sex scenes.

Another complaint, there's an incredibly unconvincing scene of Hyde stamping on someone and it looks more like he's jokingly pretending to stamp on someone. Don't know why they kept that in.

THE CROW

Didn't realise David J Schow and John Shirley written this.

A bit odd how quickly the villains figure out that the weakness of Eric is hurting the crow bird.

The clock tower climbing scene looks a lot like the one in the first Burton Batman film, I'm sure the main villain even says "I like him already" like Joker does.

I don't generally pay close attention to these things but it seems like an unusually ethnically diverse cast.

Perhaps this is due to Brandon Lee dying during the making but some of the action scenes look a tad awkward as if they weren't finished or maybe just weren't edited as well as they could be.

It's even way cheesier than I remembered but it's pretty good looking and I can't help but like it a bit.
Even though I think of myself as a 90s kid and I remember all these styles, films like this and Gregg Araki's make the time seem more foreign and strange to me than anything in the rest of the previous century.

MONSTER SQUAD

Trashy 80s kids film; but how is this a kids film with the violence and all the curse words bringing it up to an older age rating? The bullies say "fa**ot" a few times and I'm sure the heroes complain about "homos".

Kim Newman warmly recommended this in Nightmare Movies but I think it's got next to nothing going for it apart from fairly good looking monsters. Really don't see the charm everyone talked about.

You're a curious one, Mr. RAG.

If so I'd hope it was for something more interesting than thinking Monster Squad was a waste of time.

IZO

Afterlife of a sinner travelling back and forth in time and killing people, but the travelling for the most part seems more random than any sort of deliberate journey.
Mostly sword fights, some of them pretty good. Lots of prolonged stabbing scenes. The main character looks increasingly demonic and starts wearing a superhero mask. A large cast, including Bob Sapp. Songs on acoustic guitar. Becomes a comedy film occasionally. Undead soldiers and two vampires. Incest with thick legged mother. Experimental looking bits thrown in.

This isn't quite as fun as it sounds, it's pretty slow and spends most of the time being philosophical but I'm really not sure how invested Miike was in making it deep in that way. Cheap looking special effects become a hindrance. It's okay.

Since Mad Men reminded me of Carnival Of Souls in one of the last episodes, it just made me realise that I haven't seen it in the shops for ages. If you haven't seen it, you really should. I think it should be one of the basics.

find me another family friendly horror film with as genuine a sense of affection for the Universal monsters. or one containing even a single scene as poignantly played as Leonardo Cimino's reveal of his concentration-camp tattoo while confessing to "some experience with monsters." Dekker's film is anything but a waste of time.

If I had to pick out moments I liked, it would be when Dracula is sent into the portal and excited Van Helsing gives the boys a thumbs up. The dog and the little girl were cute. But I thought the dialogue was very weak and everything about the boys was so rote.

GANJA & HESS

Vampirism, sex and Christianity; gospel music in church scenes almost like documentary footage; weird idyllic scenes like dreams or memories. Early on it's a little confusing but things gradually make a bit more sense but nothing is ever completely clear. It's a really eclectic soundtrack, with recurring music and a heavy buzzing sound representing the torment of the bloodlust.
Most unusual vampire film I've ever seen.

I don't frequent this thread much, so this is the first I'm hearing of the Eaten Alive re-release. That is indeed rather surprising. I have a fascination with that film that I'm sure exceeds its actual merits, so I'll probably check that out.

I kind of want to see Ganja & Hess for the William Gaddis cameo alone.

e.g.:
http://williamgaddis.org/imagesother/filmganja3a.jpg

Eaten Alive felt post-apocalyptic to me the one time I saw it. Like the featured cast were among the last humans alive and they were all just fucking crazy because the world was basically over. I feel like there was a weird lighting/color scheme that backed up my particular reading of the film, but I may have just been watching a shitty, washed-out VHS copy of the thing.

I'm sure I've related this elsewhere, but I first saw Eaten Alive the way I think it's best experienced: third on a drive-in bill in 1978. In the pre-VHS/internet era, I went to several other drive-ins just to see it again over the next few years, and read what few reviews I could find at the library. The lighting in it is indeed key to the whole crazy atmosphere, and Neville Brand's muttering performance is one of my alltime favorites.

Glad to see more people like it.

DON'T LOOK NOW

I had seen this a few times on television without ever giving it my full attention, so I decided to buy it. It is very good. Seems like House Of Laughing Windows must have been inspired by it.

JACOB'S LADDER

First saw this just over a decade ago and the military/drugs part really spoiled it for me, but it really is central to the film and it is a very good film. Lots of good images, atmospheric moments and Elizabeth Pena looks amazing.
I mostly bought this to see the deleted scenes, which were so highly recommend that I've been meaning to see them for years. There really is a large chunk of story in those scenes and its kind of baffling that they cut out so much good stuff. But I'm not really sure whether it's a weaker film without those scenes. Maybe they could have worked some of them in elegantly but I don't know.

One of the areas of horror films I've seen least of is 50s science fiction b-movies. I wasn't that into Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Day The Earth Stood Still or Thing From Another World so I never went much further. I seen Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman when I was very young but my memory of it is quite hazy.

I recently seen strong recommendations of Them! and Forbidden Planet, is there any other essentials? Preferably with more horror.

The Fly (1958)

The Leech Woman (1960) is a good low budget one with an almost unheard of feminist slant (ignore its dismal imdb rating which is due to the Mystery Science Theater effect), but if you didn't care for the first three movies you mentioned which are probably the cream of the '50s crop, I hesitate to recommend anything else.

Tarantula (1955) and the original Godzilla (1954) you might like.

This Island Earth (1955) also

Thanks. I know I seen some Godzilla films in my earliest years but they all blur together, so it'd be good to see some again. It's possible I've never seen the original.
Same for the Harryhausen films, they all blur together in memory. It still amazes me that Clash Of The Titans and the Sinbad films aren't from 50s-60s.

I've also seen Mesa Of Lost Women, which wasn't great but it was still enjoyably different and quite odd. The narration probably had a lot to do with that.

This happened to be on the streaming service I use.

THE FLY (1958)

Very good. The ending was so strange. But it's too hard to accept even such a desperate person would think they could still find a fly that has went outdoors. And everybody seems so calmly accepting of the killing at the start. But yes, I liked it.

TCM is doing an insect monster marathon on June 18 with The Fly, Mothra, Them, The Wasp Woman, The Swarm and The Cosmic Monster
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1096952%7C1096953/Bugging-Out.html

One of my childhood favorites, Fiend Without a Face, is surprisingly gory for 1958, with an unforgettable finale. I haven't seen it in ages though, so not sure how the whole film holds up.

Doesn't seem to be a proper disc version of Whip And The Body (which I've never seen). Reviews of the Odeon and Kino versions are pretty scathing.
Some say there's a good German DVD and that Arrow couldn't get the rights to this film.

Also some people hated the Kino version of Black Sunday but were pleased by the Arrow version.

Watched a little of Kaidan Yukijoro online but the picture quality was incredibly blurry and I stopped but it seemed cool.

http://www.fright.com/edge/DuchessOfAvila.htm

A French tv obscure oddity.

Personally I've never been able to make it through the Saragossa Manuscript film.

Not exactly a horror, but chilling and interesting to horror fans all the same - The Nightmare - Rodney Ascher's documentary about sleep paralysis and night terrors. Started watching it late at night, in bed of all places, and kind of had to switch it off. Not the scariest thing, but IRL dream phenomenon tends to freak me out. Also, people coming in your room at night brrrr!

That sounds interesting but I think you meant that for the thread for newer horror films.

oh

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wIzQ2sC1hr4

A short documentary on Mexican horror films. I'm not familiar with Curse Of The Crying Woman. A lot of these films are on youtube now.

Just watched Stephen King's It. Was ok.

I watched Dead Of Night last night, you will never see a finer horror anthology movie.

I've seen at least four or five finer horror anthology movies.

I have an attachment to this one, the puppet section scared the shit out me when I was a kid. What be your faves then ?

Admittedly, most of my favorites are also attached to strong childhood memories.

Creepshow
Tales from the Crypt + Vault of Horror (Amicus)
Kwaidan
Black Sabbath

I'll happily entertain solicitations for more quality anthology films. I'm aware of the Amicus films but still haven't seen any of them. I wish I could remember if Nightmares was at all worthwhile (beyond the hilarity of Emilio Estevez vs. the Bishop of Battle).

Asylum!

Did a poll of Amicus films a while back: Best Amicus Productions Film

Everything I've seen by Amicus has been pretty consistent, but the EC Comics duo had the benefit of EC Comics plots.

Kwaidan and Black Sabbath for sure. Maybe Amer doesn't count because it's at different stages of one character's life. Spirits Of The Dead isn't that great as a whole but the Fellini segment is great.

I'm lukewarm on the Amicus ones like From Beyond The Grave, Vault Of Horror, Tales From The Crypt and House That Dripped Blood.
Haven't seen Asylum, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors or Torture Garden.

There's apparently been a bit of a resurgence in anthology horror films but I can't think of anything apart from the ABCs Of Death series(which has far more bad than good segments) and Theatre Bizarre.

Three...Extremes also springs to mind. And I guess Grindhouse technically counts.

and V/H/S

From a Whisper to a Scream is an anthology film that doesn't get enough love.

And of course Trick 'r' Treat.

Not familiar with either.

How did we forget Trilogy Of Terror? People only really like it for the third segment though.

Two Evil Eyes is only two segments. The Romero half is really dull but the Argento/Harvey Keitel half is pretty watchable and a little nuts.

Trick 'r Treat is one of the better shoulda-been-mainstream (its theatrical release was horribly fumbled) horror movies of the past decade.

I've always had a soft spot for Tales from the Darkside: the Movie.

Ken Russell's segment of Trapped Ashes ("The Girl with the Golden Breasts") is very enjoyable bonkers.

DEMONIACS

I had my Jean Rollin phase a little while ago but I still wanted to see this one.

A bad bunch of sailors rape and kill two shipwrecked girls who are later reborn. There's lots of rocky beaches, seaweed, prostitutes, bastards and an abandoned church.
It's very boring, the action scenes are incredibly sloppy (especially that guy going to untie the girl then just falling in the water (Did I miss something? Was he wounded or something?). It's just not very good. One of the weaker early Rollin films.

Another Redemption/Salvation DVD that jitters in the intro before the selection screen. Some of the subtitles later on in the film come a few minutes early, good thing the film isn't dialogue heavy.

I watched a few short Jess Franco documentaries this week and they're not inspiring confidence. Someday I'll see a few of his films because he's one of the biggest horror directors (in the area I care about) I've seen nothing by.

I'm happy with my region 1 Synapse remaster of Lemora but with so much being reissued right now I really wish there was a UK dvd of it. There's a few Spanish region 2 dvds with the English audio intact but I don't know if they are the remaster (which looks brilliant).

I think it's a really special film and I wish Blackburn had directed another 30 films like this. Probably repeating myself now.

Still no region 2 of Lets Scare Jessica To Death and Alucarda either but seemingly plenty of barrel scraping going on.

There's a bunch of fancy reissues for things I know very little about or plain never heard of. Anyone seen The Skull (Eureka dvd), Dr Terror's House Of Horrors, Anthropophagous, The Bloodstained Shadow, A Blade In The Dark, Dead Of Winter, What Have You Done To Solange, Nightmare City, Spasmo, Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, Island Of Death, Madman, Candle For The Devil, Burial Ground, Horror Hospital, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Slaughterhouse, Tower Of Evil, A Study In Terror?
I doubt I'd like most of them but maybe there's a gem in there?

Tenderness Of Wolves is supposed to be really good.

^^ i've seen a few of those.

'burial ground' has a special place in my heart mostly because of the synth-driven soundtrack - sleazy italian zombie flick, lacking the atmosphere. same goes for 'nightmare city' iirc - i know some people who rate it highly tho. 'tower of evil' is an interesting 70's uk slasher, but it's not great by any means. 'antropophagus' is quite atmospheric even if it becomes some nasty piece of work. might need a rewatch tho.

i've never been a fan of 'the town that dreaded sundown'. maybe 'madman' isn't as bad as i recall. 'what have you donw to solange' is far from my fav giallo, but it's quite good, and i can't remember if i've seen 'the bloodstained shadow'.

re: anthologies - 'grim prairie tales' is one of the few times the - filled with so much potential - horror/western crossover worked. and yeah, 'asylum' is my fav amicus.

I've seen most of them.

The Skull and Dr Terror's House of Horror are ok Amicus productions iirc. Anthropophagus is a ropey Joe D'Amato effort with little of the entertainment value of other, ropier Joe D'Amato efforts. The Bloodstained Shadow / Solamente Nero is a fairly minor but watchable Antonio Bido giallo with a score by Goblin.

What Have They Done To Solange is a genuinely good giallo. Spasmo (giallo) and Nightmare City (zombies) are both by Umberto Lenzi - the former is better but neither is great. I can''t remember much about most of the others, which is probably indicative of something.

Island Of Death is a low-budget Mastorakis shocker but is quite good - or at least very memorable, imo.