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

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.