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

Don't forget his appearance in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors!

De Palma doesn't have a visual style I'm into but the way he moves the camera and composes scenes really compels me

In terms of setting, clothes, hair etc. Same for Cronenberg and sometimes Lynch.

I wasn't sure how to put that. I tend to gravitate towards certain settings and approaches and De Palma is an exception for me.
The camera movement and composition is a separate style concern.

https://letterboxd.com/capkronos/lists/

This guy is nuts. In a good way of course.

Anyone else frequent Letterboxd? I'm really excited by all the lists for regions and genres, with all this poster art. I don't remember imdb or rateyourmusic ever having this many good film lists.

I've started a watchlist there (https://letterboxd.com/pollyprecoder/), but haven't yet felt the need to curate any lists.

It's been so helpful in finding crazy obscure fantasy films from across the world.

And mood lists like this.
https://letterboxd.com/scumbalina/list/pressed-flowers-and-amethyst-glass/

lol RAG I have never seen anyone actually praise Wasson's performance in Body Double. I love the movie but he is far and away the lamest thing in it.

Sad face...

I started doing letterboxd but haven't been on it for months and months, am here if people want to add: https://letterboxd.com/la_duffeldorf/

Oh no, not another one of these sites! I've already lost countless hours of cataloging on blu-ray.com and comicbookdb.

Please, emil.y, if you haven't seen it already, do yourself the favor of rounding out your Nuclear Winterval list with Testament. It's quietly horrifying enough to earn a mention itt (and I may have put it on my horror ballot back in the day).

Ah yeah, I tried to watch it on netflix recently but my internet kept going down.

I'm going to have to stop myself from joining for now. So many kaidan and wuxia films I could spend hours adding to my watch list.

Girl With A Broomstick - 70s Czech supernatural comedy. Since the soundtrack was released by Finders Keepers I was expecting something a little more interesting but it's somewhere along the lines of a Czech version of I Dream Jeannie or Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
But I can't say I regret seeing it because the witch girl Saxana looks so awesome with her hair and costume (people should cosplay as her), the main boy is cute too.
There was a sequel in 2011.

Long Live Ghosts - 70s Czech supernatural musical for kids. I bought this on a whim without knowing anything about it and I wish I hadn't. It features mostly children acting and singing and you might find it cute or annoying. I didn't watch it properly and ended up fast-forwarding through a lot of it. One thing that really impressed me is the green screen techniques (adult actors playing miniature people who work among the children), this is a low budget film and there are big American films in the 80s that didn't have green screen anywhere near this convincing. I was kind of stunned how seamless it was most of the time.

Portrait Of Hell - I postponed buying this for years because I wanted to read the Ryunosuke Akutagawa story first, but I've been shit at reading these years and I really wanted to see this. It's really good and unlike some of my other favourite Japanese period ghost films (which are often about the payoff scenes), it's good throughout.
It's about a morbid artist's struggle with a lord who dictates what he paints, the consequences of mistreating his daughter and Japanese-Korean racism.
I saw it on a slightly rough quality dvd so I'd love to see a remastered bluray of this, it would probably look very fine. Arrow, Criterion or Eureka should get on it.

Ginseng King/Three Headed Monster - fairly violent 80s children's action fantasy from Thailand. Features a warrior princess wearing a sort of jungle girl outfit, giant humanoids, a big ice sword, two ginseng creatures but oddest of all is a vampire fanged Nazi zombie who constantly salutes Hitler and is transfixed by a Buddhist swastika.
It uses/steals Mike Oldfield's Killing Fields soundtrack and I don't know if that's an obstacle to getting this a wider release today. The film is okay, more of an interesting little oddity than anything, should have been a bit shorter. Watch it on youtube but the Wu Tang Collection channel gives it a completely misleading preview image of a woman in a bikini.

Magic Of The Universe - Quite similar to Ginseng King but more drawn out and sleepy. Includes a swamp man, a rubbery bunny with a television screen stomach, a flamboyantly dancing demon and a progressively more grotesque evil queen with a large pulsating head and the most prolonged villainous laugh I've ever seen. It's a bit disappointing but if youre in the mood for a sleepy but quite cruel fantasy film for kids(?), you might give this a go.

The Signalman - A fine BBC adaptation of a Dickens story. It was one of the first ghost stories I read, so my memory is hazy but this version seems to add a lot.

House Of Terrors/Ghost Of The Hunchback/Kaidan Semushi Otoko - Has many similarities to The Haunting but outright steals the bending door scene. But also features a pervert father in law who is also a war criminal, a mysterious hunchback and a medium being possessed by an evil ghost. Fairly decent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of0guKkS-lc

A very detailed video essay on Mexican vampire films in several parts (you'll also learn a bit about Mexican wrestlers and comics). This essayist has also done videos on Mexican mummy films, examinations of world war 2 propaganda on comic covers and many other things.

I finally know where that German Robles face I've seen on so many cover and poster paintings comes from now.

To watch:
El Vampiro (1957)
Santo Vs Las Mujeres Vampiro
El Vampiro Y El Sexo
El Vampiro Sangriento/The Bloody Vampire
La Invasión De Los Vampiros/The Invasion Of The Vampires
Ángeles Y Querubines/Angels And Cherubs

GALAXY OF TERROR (1981) - a wonderfully dreadful Roger Corman production, worth a watch if you love B-flicks. Battlestar Galactica meets Alien set design by James Cameron and supporting roles from Robert Englund and Joanie from Happy Days. Definitely worth it for two unforgettably atrocious scenes in the first third and a bizarre, unearned mystical denouement. Lots of gore, wooden acting, inept direction, best $2 I’ve spent in a while.

saw that last year, good stuff. Robert England double fight was great lol

I think I've asked before but I really don't get what Corman's been doing since the sixties. He probably has it in him to make better films, so why has he been so dedicated to schlock?

i got the impression he was always a bottom-line profit producer, but willing to give total freedom with low budgets. wish there was another producer willing to do that now!

He's still going, he produced two films this year.

Black Magic 2 - this is one of the two or three Hong Kong films listed in the Marriott and Newman horror guide I had that was my main reference for a few years. It's odd that they chosen this when it doesn't improve on the original (which they didn't choose) and there's a lot of better films they could have included to represent Hong Kong. I was encouraged by the misleadingly beautiful cover art but the only thing I care to report is how odd it is to see Lo Lieh sucking on a lactating woman. It's just not a very interesting film in the HK black magic genre.

idk if this is even a horror movie but have any of y'all seen trance aka the fan? it is one of the wildest things i've ever seen

"lets all shit our pants to something old" / that was a hit before your mother was born...

Jump-scares and gore from a long, long time ago...

xp there are many horror movies named both "Trance" and "The Fan" so you gotta be more specific

http://imdb.com/title/tt0082361/

ah that one! i've heard interesting things. on my list

Had a fairly terrifying nightmare that was more or less about the Species creature, which when I actually look at it is never as scary as I remember. Haven't seen the film in a very long time but I remember there being one good shot in it which was genuinely creepy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L8pHKP-vv4
This video is on the official channel for the film. There's an interesting introduction by the director.

Black Angel - Short film but probably as good a mainstream 80s medieval fantasy film as you're going to get and a lot more poetic and beautifully shot than similar films. Roger Christian is remaking it longer but his track record is a little concerning, he made Battlefield Earth. Perhaps this short film is the best thing he's ever done?

Daughter Of Horror - Thanks to Old Lunch (?) for this one. I watched the one with the Psychic Teens soundtrack thinking it was the only available version and started to watch the official version but I think the Psychic Teens soundtrack probably improves the film. Very interesting surreal noir horror, I'd like to see more films like this that are essentially modern silent films (although this is from the 50s) with little or no captions.

One Dark Night - An okay teen horror film with above average special effects for the time. Meg Tilly stars so it's a keeper. Just like with Black Angel, the director wants to remake this early film of his. The interview with him on the bluray is pretty good.

Virgin Among The Living Dead - Cant believe it taken me this long to see a Franco film! I was bracing myself for what might be incredibly boring but I actually quite enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to a few more Francos, he really does have his own style. Cool macabre flower vase, two of the creepiest old rapists I've ever seen. Although my Screenbound dvd did have bonus feature hardcore sex scenes (not very explicit but I think they were real), the Rollin zombie scenes weren't included at all (put them on my youtube playlist).

Eyes Of Fire - direction seemed a bit straightforward so I wasn't expecting much, but the scenes with the forest spirits were quite impressive looking, those people embedded in trees. Watched it on youtube, would like to see a sharper disc version.
Check out this amazing poster.
http://view-from-the-paperhouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-devil-is-in-trees-eyes-of-fire-1983.html

Eyes of Fire is crazy! Like a campier, psychedelic low budget version of The Witch made decades before that came out. Those tree people...

want to see!!!

I am about halfway through Phenomenon and I don't want it to end
* the monkey
* the insects
* the music
* baby Jennifer Connelly and her smart serious super calm character

I love it!

Argento (and giallo in general, except for Zombi 2 which is mostly not good aside from the amazing zombie/shark fight) is pretty much a blind spot in my horror fandom but I more-or-less blind ordered the Suspiria remaster because the screenshots look amazing. I kinda half watched it on VHS a million years ago but the muddy thing I remember seeing bears no resemblance to the Technicolor nightmare it's apparently intended to be.

We recently watched Tenebre too and it was alright but nothing I have seen lately compares with Phenomenon
It's like a delicious snack

i thought i had a vague memory of seeing phenomena in the 90s but clearly i haven't. i'd remember the insects.

watch it! it is so good!!

if y'all are not paying the $5 for shudder you are missing out. it's worth the (very low) cost.

Sleepwalking Jennifer Connelly has a special communicative relationship with insects and also rides up a staircase on a lift with the monkey-assistant who saved her from a sleepwalking episode in a forest. I mean does it get better than that? Maybe the final act is an abusive bloodbath but the first half of this movie is so much to my liking that I want to crawl inside of it and hide for a while.

^^^your final sentence basically limns my feelings about most of my favorite horror movies

almost every piece of narrative art I really love is because of the beginning and middle tbh

What I particularly love about Phenomena is the scene of Connelly moving very slowly by the trees with the hyperactive Simonetti music. It's a hypnotic contrast and I wonder if Argento knew what he was doing or if it's just accidental brilliance.

Go for Inferno, Deep Red and Terror At The Opera.

Argento (and giallo in general, except for Zombi 2 which is mostly not good aside from the amazing zombie/shark fight) is pretty much a blind spot in my horror fandom but I more-or-less blind ordered the Suspiria remaster because the screenshots look amazing. I kinda half watched it on VHS a million years ago but the muddy thing I remember seeing bears no resemblance to the Technicolor nightmare it's apparently intended to be.

― Ape Wipes (Old Lunch), Monday, March 12, 2018 8:56 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg old lunch please report back

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

― Bernie Lugg (Ward Fowler), Thursday, July 13, 2017 4:29 AM (eight months ago)

...the first half of this movie is so much to my liking that I want to crawl inside of it and hide for a while.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, March 12, 2018 10:49 AM (one week ago)

What I particularly love about Phenomena is the scene of Connelly moving very slowly by the trees with the hyperactive Simonetti music. It's a hypnotic contrast and I wonder if Argento knew what he was doing or if it's just accidental brilliance.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, March 16, 2018 1:11 PM (six days ago)

Two Shaw Brothers ghost films released on bluray recently.

The Enchanting Ghost (1970) - Not to be confused with the similar and earlier Enchanting Shadow (1959). Takes a bunch of tropes from Japanese ghost films like the illusions, the rotting face and hair loss of Yotsuya films and the water reflections in Kwaidan. Female actress plays the male lead and there's no big plot reason for it. The film is okay, I found the sleeve notes about Chinese Pedant life more interesting.

The Ghost Lovers (1974) - Much better than the above film. Directed by the guy who was kidnapped by North Korea to make Pulgasari. Quite amusing/horrifying how two of the men challenged to spend the night with a recently deceased woman try to immediately have sex with her corpse in her family home.

damn that's some dark shit

It's not even treated in a particularly dark way, it's just "of course these scoundrels will try to have sex with her corpse as soon as they get the chance". It's a typical romantic ghost film in many ways.