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

FTR, RAG, it's not patience but rather mental illness that propels me through these odysseys.

I'm actually dipping in and out of a similar obsessive journey through early horror (or, given the porousness of the genre at the time, let's say 'fantastical') films. I think I've probably seen like 2/3 of the horror/thriller/sci-fi/fantasy movies of the '30s at this point and I got started on the '50s late last year (the '40s being a relatively fallow period beyond Lewton's work, although I think I'll ultimately go deeper into noir just to get a better sense of the darker side of cinema from that era).

Why haven't you written more about all the stuff you've been watching?

http://www.japanesesamuraidvd.com/.sc/ms/cat/Kaidan%2C%20Ghost%20and%20Horror
Great bootleg store. Will buy more as this is the only place to get a lot of these films with English subtitles.

This is the best string of films in seen in years probably. It was a good weekend. I must thank that youtuber Asian Movie Enthusiast because he recommended all of these, although I already had my eyes on Ghost Story Of The Snow Witch.

GHOST STORY OF THE SNOW WITCH/THE SNOW WOMAN/KAIDAN YUKIJORO

I've always found the Japanese snow woman to be one of the most compelling legends, not really for the romance story but just the images of her gliding around snowscapes. This film has some really satisfyingly beautiful and eerie scenes, good visual effects, sound effects, music and it gets surprisingly emotional. There's a clumsy scene in which the husband stands by and watches an old woman beat his wife for a minute before he does anything but this is a real gem.
The bootleg I bought was advertised as remastered but it doesn't look it. I'm tempted to get this from a Japanese site even if it doesn't have subtitles, to see if there's a better looking version. Still, well worth getting as is.

SECRET CHRONICLES OF THE GHOST CAT/HAUNTED CASTLE/HIROKU KAIBYO-DEN

This is really awesome. Another ghost cat film but with a ton more energy. It seems ahead of its time because the ghost cat woman has a ferocity in 1969 that wasn't really normal in monster films until after The Excorcist, Suspiria, Evil Dead and Demons. Earlier ghost cat women were often a tad silly looking but this one is quite scary. I felt quite sad when she stopped rampaging because I wanted her to keep killing. Most of these kaidan films have an avenging ghost but they really taken the rage seriously this time. The part when the sky is flashing is really great.
Not only am I saying this is better than Ghost Cat Of Otama Pond, Kuroneko and all the other Japanese historical horror films I've seen, I'm hailing this as one of the very best horror films of the 60s. Please watch it.

Tanaka Tokuzo also did Demon Of Mount Oe and Ghost Story Of The Snow Witch so I might go for his other films like his Zatoichi and Sleepy Eyes Of Death series and Betrayal.

SNAKE GIRL AND THE SILVER HAIRED WITCH

The first screen adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's comics (he appears in this as a taxi driver). It's a typical Umezu story with a good little girl finding her original parents and a mysterious disfigured sister.
This is from 1968 but it seems almost retro, maybe they were keenly aware of the weak special effects and decided to make it look like an older b-movie. But there's some shoddiness like dubbed voices (in the original Japanese, not dubs for a different language) over characters not even moving their mouths.
It seems like it might have been aimed at children but it's quite violent considering that, just like Umezu's comics. It's quite fun and despite the low quality of the special effects it's quite good looking too.

UNDER THE BLOSSOMING CHERRY TREES

A Masahiro Shinoda film about a man in the mountain forests who kills travellers and steals their women to keep in his house; he steals a woman who doesn't seem to mind that he killed her husband and she quickly starts to boss him around and shame him into doing things for her, demands which get crazier and sicker.
According to the film, people used to have a superstitious dread of cherry trees, saying that the blossoms drove people mad; the main character wants to overcome this fear.
Very good film, a bit more macabre than the title would suggest, great shots of the mountain forests and a Toru Takemitsu score.

Really want to see Shinoda's Demon Pond someday but I might have to get one without subtitles.

GHOST CAT OF THE CURSED POND/BAKENEKO: A VENGEFUL SPIRIT (interrupted, unfinished viewing)

This is directed by Yoshihiro Ishikawa, he written Nakagawa's Yotsuya and Black Cat Mansion films and directed Ghost Cat Of Otama Pond. This is pretty much a black and white remake of the latter and it seemed pretty good but my disc kept jittering and jumping towards the end, making the last three chapters unwatchable, so I'll need another way to finish the film. There was some impressive scenes but I don't think I'd like this as much as the Otama Pond version.
Isao Tomita was mentioned in the credits but IMDB doesn't have that soundtrack listing for him.

The route of exploring European fairy tale films is very tantalizing for me right now. I'm a bit daunted by it though, most of this will probably be done on youtube and I've bought Enchanted Screen by Jack Zipes to help me, it's a big book with a good chapter on old European fairy tale films. The film list at the back is enormous.

RUSALOCHKA/THE LITTLE MERMAID (1976)

This time the mermaid trades her hair colour. Some pretty good songs, some of it even sounds a bit like Magma. I thought the witch was going to be a villain but she's just kind of a crude comedic character. I don't understand why they used rubbish special effects to make the mermaid look like she's in the water in some scenes when she's actually in the water in other scenes. It's a nice film, but I mostly enjoyed the incredible cuteness of the mermaid (the only film role of Viktoriya Novikova?) and the gorgeous princess.

MALA MORSKA VILA/THE LITTLE MERMAID (1976)

Beautifully designed film, the caves with mirrors and statues, all the mer-people (who don't have fish tails but regular human bodies) have slightly silly yet amazing hair entangled with decorations. It must be one of the more elegant screen versions of the story and the soundtrack by Zdenek Liska can be quite powerful (the beats in the cave scenes are quite strange), the soundtrack is easier to get on disc than the film. I recommend it.

oh i watched all the phantasm movies last week. i love all of them except 5 (which i guess i should prob write about in the other horror thread) which is full of good ideas but looks like digital horseshit

You can get lost in the European fairy tale stuff on youtube. I seen a bit of a 90s tv movie which had incredibly shitty pantomime humour but really beautifully captured countryside.

Amazon's horror channel, Shudder, is now streaming the uncut version of Ken Russell's The Devils

Chatter on Facebook amongst some serious genre experts tells me that's bullshit - that in fact the version Shudder are screening isn't even the slightly more complete UK X Certificate version released by the BFI on a Region 2 DVD a few years back, but the even more censored American cut.

Yeah, I'm to understand this version is at least a dozen minutes short of the full monty.

BLACK MAGIC

Shaw Brothers. It isn't one of their supernatural martial arts mixes, this is just supernatural horror that revolves around people using magic to have sex with or kill each other. It makes no sense in a few places, has awful special effects, has a scene of a guy wrestling a dog that looks quite irresponsible for the filmmakers to do, but the film is fairly entertaining. There is a brief vision of a woman surrounded by a few hopping women in a forest and I wish it had more imagery like that.

HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK

If this isn't the first necrophilia horror film it has to be one of the earliest. It fares quite well next to the gothic Bava and Corman films, nice moody colours and cool soundtrack. Some of the acting is a bit lousy but the doctor comes across pretty creepy at times.

Been meaning to get into more Shaw Brothers horror (big fan of Human Lanterns), I should catch those Black Magic movies
And I always love seeing Barbara Steele

Have you seen Boxer's Omen?

I've been meaning to get the new release of Seeding Of A Ghost but couldn't see it in shops recently and amazon is putting it up to a really high price for some reason.

Yup, actually saw a screening a few years ago, it's craaaazy!

RUSLAN AND LUDMILA

Although it's an epic it suffers from the same cheap made for television look that a lot of Soviet fairy tale films suffer from. It's shoddy and bad in quite a few ways but the whole film is so artificial that it's hard to be too bothered. There's still a fair amount of good things to recommend it.
The guy who plays Ruslan is a really impressive looking man. The gnarled forests are the visual highlight of the film. There's a desert with a giant's sleeping head and cave interiors with giants holding them up. There's a scene that looks amazingly like a platformer videogame a good number of years before they happened.
It gets surprisingly violent towards the end, with Ruslan impaling men on a spear and cutting heads off while riding his horse. One man gets cut in half by a cheerful jester. But there's hardly any blood and I think this is a family film.
For me, the crowning glory of the film is the main theme music by Tikhon Khrennikov. It's gorgeous and the version when the musician sings it at the wedding is amazing too.

Possible animal cruelty: a bull gets shot with arrows but it just flinches a bit. Maybe not real arrows?

Here's a video that repeats the main theme music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTlVdDpyjnQ

VIVA LA MUERTE

Fernando Arrabal's semi-autobiographical surrealist film about his father being imprisoned as a traitor in the Spanish civil war and his sexualized resentment toward his mother and aunt.
Have to say I didn't like it much, it's quite interesting sometimes but it relies too heavily on shock value. He's considered part of a trio with Roland Topor and Jodorowsky, this is his classic film, so I probably won't watch the others but won't rule out his writing.

If you're sensitive about animal cruelty, avoid this like the plague. The lizard or amphibian getting its head bitten off could be fake but the beetle being cut in half then it's upper body still crawling around and the bulls and sheep being slaughtered and their remains being played with looks very real.

On the disc there's an interview with Arrabal in which he talks nonsense while playing with a chair and admires the smell of his own feet.

Re ruslan, I wonder if khrennikov uses any thematic material from the extremely influential (in Russia) opera by Glinka

I was wondering that too but as far as I know it's all Khrennikov.

I was reading a bit about him, apparently he praised Stalin til the end but

The controversial Shostakovich memoir "Testimony" claims that Khrennikov was so intimidated at a meeting with Stalin that the composer soiled his pants and suffered a nervous breakdown.

HEX

If it weren't for some weak acting, unconvincing twists, poorly integrated humour and some bad special effects, this could have been really great because it's a very well shot film (way ahead of Black Magic in that respect) and the setting is really nice. The dancing scene near the end is kind of cool too but it changes the film into sexploitation, maybe a tad jarring and perhaps that doesn't matter. The drowning scene was the highlight for me. Would have been a really good ghost story had they reined in the tone.

The 88 Films disc version includes two very good features with Bey Logan explaining the Shaw Brothers studio and some aspects of Hong Kong cinema. He clears up a lot of misconceptions.

88 Films tend to focus on particularly trashy films so I hadn't been that interested until their Asian film line came out. I think it's been exclusively Shaw Brothers so far and I don't know if they'll expand. But I've been really impressed with them, they compare quite well with Arrow Films. Hoping they'll bring out Bloody Parrot and Black Magic 2 next. Throw in Boxer's Omen and I might even buy it again.

TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE

I liked this better than Creepshow. It's trashy in a fairly entertaining way. Was surprised how many famous people were in it. Arthur Conan Doyle and Stephen King stories for the first two segments, the third story is a lot like Yuki-Onna but I'm not sure if it's similar enough to the Hearn version to justify a credit (there's no adaptation credit for this one).

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (Disney)

Animated musical short film with the voice of Bing Crosby. It's decent, the horror bits are nicely done. I really like that type of spookiness, wish there was more of it.

AUTOPSY/THE VICTIM/MAGICIAN

Giallo with Mimsy Farmer. It's pretty good, very twisty plot, the museum of death has some striking pieces, but I don't think I've got that much patience for giallo outside the most stylish ones with the bolder colours.

Possible animal cruelty: there's a scene of a dog get belted a bit.

SEEDING OF A GHOST

For a few weeks or months it was really hard to find the recent 88 Films release of this but they made more. It's funny to imagine this being unexpectedly popular but they probably just made fewer of these than the others in their Shaw Brothers series.

It's like the other dark magic Hong Kong films but with some 80s rubbery monster gore. It's not as crazy as Boxer's Omen but it must be a runner up in the HK horror section. Some people have been exaggerating these qualities so don't expect lots of monsters (there's a grotesque corpse, some slight human transformations and an actual monster at the end) or constant insanity (it's mostly kept to the end and the magic rituals are definitely the strangest thing). It's pretty nasty too, the rape is quite bad, most of the characters are lousy people and there's none of the humour you might expect from a film like this. Worth seeing but I don't think it lives up to the hype.

It came out the same year as Devil Fetus but the ending is so similar I'm convinced one is ripping off the other (but I've never seen Devil Fetus in full).

THREE WISHES FOR CINDERELLA

Just a very sweet and nice film with lots of snowy countryside, dogs, horses and an owl. Popelku/Cinderella is stunningly beautiful and even her ugly sister is really cute. The sensibility is a bit too crowdpleasing and like a lot of adaptations it struggles a bit with the fairy tale logic (making characters seem stupid) but I really like this film. Apparently it's a popular film shown every Christmas in a few countries, I don't know if they're lucky or if it's better to keep it less frequent but I'd take it over The Great Escape.
The background information talk on the Second Run disc is excellent.

EVIL DEAD TRAP

In the 90s I always used to see vhs copies of this next to Evil Ed and the Evil Dead series, I thought they were all related.

This is an offbeat Japanese slasher with a small drop of rubber monster stuff. It's set in a military base, there's nasty rape and violence in there, which sounds like the type of thing I'd normally avoid but it's pretty stylish and has a cool soundtrack. Some might even call it a giallo.

I've heard that the sequels don't have much to do with each other and they didn't sound as good.

Saw a 35mm screening of EYES OF FIRE. Not bad, some cool visuals. Kind of a weird precursor to last year's The Witch, made in 1983.

Heard about it recently, don't remember where.

YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY

Really only bought this because I couldn't find a copy of the very beautiful Bruno Nicolai soundtrack and I've not seen many Edwige Fenech films. It's an okay/decent film, I'm sure a lot of you would like it a lot more than me.
The Arrow disc has a good documentary about Fenech and another one about the director (I've been hearing a lot more Scottish accents in dvd features recently).

Rewatched Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 for the first time in ages. What a weird movie, sometimes half-assed, sometimes funny. Once they get to the underground lair I was all, huh, how much time is left? 45 minutes !?!? Definitely seems to be ground zero for Rob Zombieville.

THE SCARLET FLOWER

A Russian 1970s Beauty And The Beast variation with a leafy tree spirit as the beast. The most impressive thing is the interiors of the palace, where all colours are muted except for reds. In the rural scenes there's a style of folk singing I've never heard before. The father looks a lot like Tom Hardy might in a few decades. It's a nice film but I wish there was a bit more going on, admittedly I wasn't paying close attention to all the relationships.
In the bonus features interview with the director, it seems like she had much bigger ambitions for the film than she was able to execute but she's still quite pleased with it.

THE BLOOD DRINKERS/BLOOD IS THE COLOR OF NIGHT

60s Filipino vampire film which is pretty lousy in most ways but manages to create some impressive images with lots of fog and its unusual use of colour. It alternates between full colour and black & white with red or blue tints.

THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER

Ken Russell's last full length film. It's as awful as they say, unfortunately. I only got half way through then fast-forwarded the rest. It's done on a shoestring budget, Russell puts on a terrible German accent, the music is Nick Cave wannabe stuff, most of the costumes and props look like they're from cheap Halloween and novelty item stores. It's silly and vulgar in a way that isn't fun.
If he had a huge budget and all the resources he wanted at this point, I wonder if it would be as puerile? Maybe he knew he could never make a great film on this budget and so didn't take the whole thing too seriously.
I feel bad writing all this because Russell is one of my favourites.

It's silly and vulgar in a way that isn't fun.

I disagree. It's silly and vulgar and puerile and generally terrible, but watching it drunk with your mates is a laugh-riot. Also the main actors are the singer from Gallon Drunk and one of the Mediaeval Baebes!

Maybe he knew he could never make a great film on this budget and so didn't take the whole thing too seriously.

I do think this is pretty spot on, though. I mean, it's basically filmed in his back garden with crap he picked up from, as you say, "cheap Halloween and novelty item stores". I don't think anyone involved thought they were making a work of art.

Didn't know about the Mediaeval Baebes member in this. I'm not familiar with Gallon Drunk.

If you're in the US (Arrow seems to be handling this better in the UK) and have any thoughts of procuring the new complete Phantasm blu-ray set, get on it ASAP. The thing was just released last week to a limited number of retailers and it's already totally sold out and going for inflated prices everywhere but Best Buy.

Wow @ Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. I knew it had to be super low budget (which it definitely is) but had no idea it was some weird art/exploitation film hybrid. The Bed's nemesis is Aubrey Beardsley (whose ghost is trapped in a painting in the same room as the Bed). The bed actually seriously drinks Pepto Bismol at one point. I think I love this movie.

death bed freakin rocks

I think it's officially joined Robot Monster in my pantheon of movies that popular opinion has written off as super shitty but that are actually kind of transcendent and amazing.

I think I'm gonna watch The Witch Who Came From the Sea next. Cool to see a couple of y'all discussing Arrow's American Horror Project set upthread!

Malatesta's Carnival Of Blood was the best of those easily. Real unearthed treasure.

The Witch Who Came From the Sea is fuuuuuuucked. Millie Perkins in the lead role is like a lite version of Isabel Adjani in Possession. It feels like the kind of role that takes a bite out of your psyche if you throw yourself into it so completely. Kinda not exactly horror, I guess, but I don't know what else to call it. Recommended.

(I keep a sort of mental file of indelible moments from horror films, and the flashback to her character's distorted utterances of 'Papa? Papa?' as a child is now burned into my brain.)

saw a print of Witch last year, loved it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-40089750

There's a part in one of the Wishmaster films with the monster asking someone about love in his cookie monster voice. Someone needs to clip that for youtube then put it in a song intro.

Arrow finally got their own edition of Bava's Kill Baby Kill

Arrow and Scream Factory have been like a couple of mafia goons lately, shaking me down for unreasonable percentages of my paycheck.

arrow, scream, and synapse are ruining me financially

If only we had a choice. If only.

I realized recently that I own >500 horror/sci-fi/thriller movies, and probably at least that number of episodes of various horror/sci-fi/thriller anthology series. This constitutes most of what I watch, and most of it was released prior to 2006 (and mostly quite a bit prior). I should probably post itt more, huh.

Although the last three I watched were The Giant Gila Monster, Invasion of the Animal People, and The Toxic Avenger 3, so it could be that my taste and any potential commentary I might contribute are highly questionable.

Conrad Poohs and his dancing teeth!
https://www.movieposter.com/poster/MPW-42028/Dungeonmaster.html

Watched Bad Taste recently and it's not a great film but it has a charm to it. I liked all the brain stuffing. Feels like a snapshot of a specific era of male geekery, like a bunch of friends who might have made a table top rpg or PC FPS. Hope Peter Jackson starts bringing the goods again someday.

VIDEO NASTIES THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE 2

Not an old film but a documentary about old films. I seen the first one when it came out but waited for this a while longer.

The main documentary of both guides are very good but my favourite thing about them is the extras in which the critics/journalists like Kim Newman, Stephen Thrower, Alan Jones and others review all the films and try to guess why the British censors and police considered them dangerous. It's many hours worth of viewing and I could easily watch a lot more in this format.

In the first guide, Axe was the only film I hadn't seen which they persuaded me I might want to see. But from this one: The Child, Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein and Pigs caught my interest.

Pigs sounded mostly interesting for who made it. Crime film regular Marc Lawrence written and directed it as a showcase for his daughter Toni. Toni plays a traumatized killer and Marc is an oddball farmer who protects her.

Even if you're not particularly fond of most video nasty style horror films*, I'd highly recommend both these guides, I think they're a lot of fun.

*Never cared about cannibal/foreign tribe horror films. It's not just concerns about real animal violence, nasty faked human violence and racism. They just look completely tedious to me.

i had a good time with DOCTOR BUTCHER, MD recently. but yeah it's not a particularly great genre

i watched some ridiculous movie called BLUE SUNSHINE the other night? it is about LSD that makes people go bald and kill people. yea.....

Starring Zalman King, who went on to enjoy a career as soft porn auteur.

Lieberman's Just Before Dawn and Squirm are also good fun.

heh i definitely want to see BLUE SUNSHINE