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

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.