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

I'm glad y'all enjoy it. Keep in mind that I'm that one dude who thinks Halloween is super overrated, so who even knows what my opinion is worth.

First two have a real shot on film for theatres look, misty and atmospheric. Third and beyond look mostly like shit, brightly lit, like a sitcom, ready for cable and VHS.

So...Suspiria.

Is it just the production design and the music that people respond to? I watched the recent upgrade last night and I'll give major props on those elements, and while it's certainly been elevated in my esteem from the muddy VHS copy I watched twenty years ago, that and Jessica Harper are pretty much all the movie has going for it. There are long stretches which, if Goblin weren't going ham on the soundtrack, wouldn't be out of place in some '80s direct-to-video schlockfest.

I dunno, it was gorgeous and mildly unnerving but mostly just fine. I think it might just suffer from overhype as one of the greatest horror films ever when I can't even say for sure that it cracks my top five for 1977.

Is it just the production design and the music that people respond to?

Ha, like that's not enough in this case! In fact, that's really all there is. I don't remember much about the plot or acting or anything. It's just an almost oppressively lurid mood piece.

yeah for me suspiria (and most giallo, i guess) primarily succeeds re: the balance of overwrought set design and dreaminess with overt shlockiness and incompetence

FTR, I have a very high tolerance for schlock and incompetence. On a similar front, I was primed for this somewhat by watching Cozzi's Starcrash last weekend, which is basically a Star Wars porn film with all of the porn cut out but which has similarly gorgeous production design and lighting, and Suspiria def delivered on that front. I'm very keen on seeing anything with a similar visual style right now (also watched Flash Gordon recently for I guess the first time ever, surprisingly, and it's so dumb but I'm just in love with all the color).

I think Suspriria has quite a lot of good scenes and the pin eyed girl and the invisible witch used to really scare me. Maybe it was just too much hype for you, but I really do think it's one of the best.

Cozzi did the special effects for Phenomena so that might have to be my next Argento. I know they worked together in other capacities but a visual collaboration between the two seems like it could really be something.

I don't recall that one being visually that impressive. That's Jennifer Connelly controlling bugs with her brain right?

Phenomena is amazing!!
I just saw it (see above) and LOVED the insects, the monkey, JC, everything
she is a modern girl who can communicate with insects, sign me up please
wish i had seen it when i was a kid

Donald Pleasance said the script was so daft he had to go for the role.

y'all there's a post-2006 thread isn't there? i really need to like say something about a recent movie

Post-2005. Scroll down a little in SNA. It's been updated today.

RIGHT thank you :)

Anyone seen De dødes tjern/Lake Of The Dead (1958)? Once voted the 4th best Norwegian film. Used to be a subtitled dvd but it's hard to find now.

Yes! It's quite good (although revealed to be more psychological thriller than the supernatural horror it appeared to be). I discovered this and a pair of 1952 Finnish horror films (The White Reindeer and The Witch/Noita palaa elämään) around the same time. Dunno why '50s Nordic horror is so sparse but it turned out some good stuff. Arrow should put out a box of these three.

Lake of the Dead is on YouTube, btw.

I think it's only Spanish subtitles and a fraud version. I found Witch though.

Luckily White Reindeer has good disc options. There's a restored bluray.

One of Abel Ferrara's best movies, The Addiction, is coming to Blu-Ray via Arrow Video on 6/26.

New restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative by Arrow Films, approved by director Abel Ferrara and director of photography Ken Kelsch
High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
Restored 5.1 audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Audio commentary by Abel Ferrara, moderated by critic and biographer Brad Stevens
Talking with the Vampires (2018) A new documentary about the film made by Ferrara especially for this release, featuring actors Christopher Walken and Lili Taylor, composer Joe Delia, Ken Kelsch, and Ferrara himself
New interview with Abel Ferrara
New interview with Brad Stevens
Abel Ferrara Edits The Addiction, an archival piece from the time of production
Original trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet containing new writing on the film by critic Michael Ewins

Six Japanese films.

Ghost Of Oiwa (1961) - It doesn't really stand out among the Oiwa & Lemon/Yotsuya films, apart from Oiwa's sister playing a bigger part and even taking up a sword. I had heard this is a bad version but it isn't, it just doesn't have enough to stand out.

Peony Lantern/The Bride Of Hades (1968) - This actually might be based on the same story as Hong Kong's The Ghost Lovers (if I remember correctly, a lot of these films blur together in my head). It certainly has a lot of the same elements. It's not bad, the sentimentality gets a little annoying but I liked Ko Nishimura in it. Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura is in it too.

Cruel Ghost Legend (1968) - Like a lot of the other samurai ghost films but cruder, more sex and violence, everyone is horrible. So it stands out in the genre and it's a bit more fun. Two of the women look like bbw models.

Village Of Eight Gravestones (1977) - A quiet mountain village murder mystery. Beautiful landscape shots. Samurai warriors from centuries ago cast a curse on a large family, there's a spooky demon woman and a memorable chase scene in the caves under the mountains.
This was a huge hit when it came out and I'm surprised it isn't better known because I think it could have a much larger following. Based on a popular novel and remade in the 90s.

I watched parts of the 1981 and 2003 versions of Makai Tensho (there are many more). Supposed to be a historical epic with resurrections and demonically powered Christians (later anti-Christians?) but neither looked like they had a big enough budget and I just couldn't be bothered. The earlier version is a bit more noteworthy for the set design, Sonny Chiba, the Lone Wolf & Cub guy and the fight in the burning building looks pretty dangerous to film.

Village Of Eight Gravestones has cool posters too.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204745/?ref_=nv_sr_1

As I probably wont find Shinoda's Demon Pond, Kumashiro's Jigoku and Living Skeleton any time soon, I think I'm pretty much done for now with 50s-80s Japanese horror films until more emerge. Snake Woman's Curse is supposed to be a bit weak so I think I'm okay with avoiding it. Goke and Matango are supposed to be good but I was never interested enough (even with the latter being a William Hope Hodgson adaptation).

Here's my top 15 from 50s-80s from best to least best (I love Tetsuo but I'm going to avoid it here)

Haunted Castle/Secret Chronicles Of The Ghost Cat
Curse Of The Snow Witch
Under The Blossoming Cherry Trees
House
Ghost Of Yotsuya (Nakagawa)
Kwaidan
Kuroneko
Onibaba
Ghost Cat Of Otama Pond
Portrait Of Hell
Lake Of Dracula
Village Of Eight Gravestones
Snake Girl & The Silver Haired Witch
Mansion Of The Ghost Cat/Black Cat Mansion
The Woman Vampire

The sixties version of Jigoku has some cool scenes but I'm reluctant to include it.

Hard to find decent trailers of many of these sadly. I hope Arrow listens to my pleas to release some of these because the upper ones deserve to be standard viewing.

Haunted Palace - Just watched features and the commentary, I didn't expect David Del Valle to be as knowledgeable about horror books as he was (although I'm sure he mixes up Saki and Sarban at one point) and he talks about meeting August Derleth.

Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy - I wasn't previously aware of Soledad Miranda but I'm glad I know her now, have to say I enjoyed the documentary about her (really just an interview with her biographer with lots of glorious clips and photos) more than these two films.
Vampyros Lesbos has a good soundtrack, some of the more surreal parts are good and She Killed In Ecstasy has some scenes of Soledad killing men that look quite cathartic for her and it's a more expressive performance than in Lesbos. But without her I wouldn't have got much out of either film.
Enjoyed the interviews with Franco in which he talks about not being that excited by awards and acclaim, he doesn't think highly of his own films and he says Yoda's face was based on his because he knew the Stuart Freeborn (based on some quick searching he's also claimed Borgnine, Einstein and himself for inspiration).

Got a Blu-Ray of Witchfinder General in the mail the other day.

oh i watched vampyros lesbos yesterday! i looooooooooved it. hypnotic, amateurish, beautiful shot composition, unbelievable soundtrack

i really love that one too. i gotta see Ecstasy

Seen 4 Francos recently (Virgin Among Living Dead, Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein, Vampyros Lesbos and She Kills In Ecstasy), only ones I still particularly want to see is Succubus (which strangely hasn't had a fancy new edition) and Female Vampire (which I think I may have found in Fopp if the current Screenbound version wasn't called Bare Breasted Countess, of all the daft names).

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey - This is sometimes called Vincent Ward's best film but it's really miles beneath his amazing earlier film The Vigil (which looks wonderful in the recent bluray release). I generally don't mind inaccurate accents too much, but here they're a constant problem. There is a few striking images (especially the distanced view of the travelers tunneling early on) but I think this just isn't that great a film overall.

Spider (Vasili Mass, 1991, Latvia) - Evil painter repeatedly sexually assaults his new model, sometimes in the form of a giant spider. Looks quite lush at times but other times like a glum television soap. Uneven special effects but the giant spider looks pretty great for a relatively low budget film.

It gets disappointingly conventional towards the end but this is well worth seeing for the stronger images and the quite unique feeling of the film. Awesome large painting of hell featured, I wish I could find the name of the painter.

This is an all region Mondo Macabro bluray (great cover art too). Director says in featured interview that Spider was a straight faced parody of American horror films but he didn't seem to mind whether audiences taken it as a parody or as a straight horror film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2GsYGuyyLU

Oh Italy, you so crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Casa_(film_series)

Films in the series
1.La Casa (a.k.a. The Evil Dead)
2.La Casa 2 (a.k.a. Evil Dead II)
3.La Casa 3 (a.k.a. Ghosthouse)
4.La Casa 4 (a.k.a. Witchery)
5.La Casa 5 (a.k.a. Beyond Darkness)
6.La Casa 6 (a.k.a. House II: The Second Story)
7.La Casa 7 (a.k.a. The Horror Show, a.k.a. House III)

...but no Army of Darkness or House 1 or 4.

Although I prefer Haunted Castle/Secret Chronicles Of The Ghost Cat and Curse Of The Snow Witch to Under The Blossoming Cherry Trees, I think the latter is probably the best film of them all. It works on more levels and while it isn't as supernaturally focused as the others, the spooky bits are quite memorable.

The lightning scene in Haunted Castle reminded me a little bit of the lightning moment in Emperor's "I Am The Black Wizards". I'm wanting to rewatch it to see if it was really that impressive.

Rewatched Black Sabbath and I think it's probably Bava's best by quite some distance. Maybe the best film of its kind (depends how specific we're being).

Now I think Shock might be in his top 5, despite not looking as lovely and the soundtrack by Libra doing a lot of the work. I often think of the strange slow motion closeup of Daria Nicolodi, maybe one of my favorite horror scenes ever.

Spookies - Wanted to see this because I knew there was a lot of monsters in it. Wondered why it wasn't on bluray and after seeing it I can see why even the lower quality labels wouldn't want to put it out.
I seldom complain about acting but there's a few actors who are terrible here, like the man pretending to be an old german and the incredibly unfunny comedic character. But all the comedy is unfunny here.
I wouldn't recommend this but whoever was doing the creature effects was pretty good and with a bigger budget they might have been able to have done great things.
I actually quite liked the idea of this creepy old guy preserving his unwilling wife by having his small monster army (including two of his children) kill people, but the delivery is mostly dud.

Ammoru - Been meaning to see this after some Adam Groves recommendations and now it's easy to see on youtube. But after seeing half of it I couldn't finish it, I just watched highlight clips. There's a scene near the start I quite liked with the goddess breathing heavily and fire blowing behind her but the end fight is the best part (that I've seen), take a look...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9lD6kfX01k

Dario Argento: Cars & rain!

Tenebrae (1982)
Suspiria (1977)
Inferno (1980)
Opera (1987)@NicolodiDaria #cars pic.twitter.com/aHmupWMumD

— GIALLO_GIALLO (@GIALLO_GIALLO) September 7, 2017

hey we all got our fetishes

Secret Chronicles Of The Ghost Cat/Haunted Castle/Hiroku Kaibyo-Den

My second viewing (first was over a year ago) and I'm pleased to say that it's still spooky and quite thrilling when it gets going. It takes a good 20 minutes to get interesting and I still had trouble gleaning exactly what was going on in that portion, the music is foreboding and even when not much is happening, there's still a mood. I'd be surprised if there exists a better ghost cat woman or a more ferocious film monster prior to this (1969).

I may have missed something but why didn't the cat spirit keep possessing other women? The biggest disappointment is that her rampage is over too soon. Her screaming lightning resurrection is great and I wish she just kept doing that until she killed everyone. One of the best monster films ever and I might try pestering everyone until it gets a long overdue release.

I want to give a shout out to Dark Night Of The Scarecrow (1981), one of the best of all the made-for-TV horror movies. I'd really put that near the top of the list of recommendations for those looking for rural horrors upthread. There's several good hi-def posts of it online.

Just caught a screening of the The Bloodthirsty Trilogy - fun early '70s Japanese b-movie horror influenced by Bava and Hammer.

What did you think of them individually? I think the first is decent-ish, the second is the best by far and the third is pretty bad apart from the face removal scene.

He's a cool vampire.

Ha, totally different reaction. Loved the first, the third was almost as good, the second bored me to tears with that woman lead.

He's definitely a great Dracula! So nuts

Also appreciated how much sleazier they got in succession

Maybe one of us saw them in a different order? Lake Of Dracula is what I meant by second. Evil Of Dracula just seemed like typical 70s low end horror, don't remember any good sleaze in it. Lake Of Dracula is way prettier and used the golden eyes to good effect.

Evil of Dracula had all the topless schoolgirls getting tit-munched, didn't it?

Don't remember that somehow!

Probably the single most ridiculously misogynistic dialogue in cinema history.

Probably. pic.twitter.com/Jnf8bNkeJp

— Sad Squiggly Ghost Strangled Nicely on a Sunny Day (@MsHappyDieHappy) October 12, 2018

The Abominable Snowman - one of the early black and white Hammer films. Nigel Kneale script and Peter Cushing. It's quite good, being more interested in the science fiction concept of the story than trying to be scary.

Distinguished by a Humphrey Searle score as well (see also The Haunting)

What Dreams May Come - One of those extremely sentimental Robin Williams films that everyone hates. Based on a Richard Matheson novel. Very beautifully shot, special effects mostly hold up very well, lots of panoramas of heaven and hell based on classic paintings (all credited at the end too). Herzog makes a brief amusing appearance in hell . Quite a few characters swap skin colour in heaven.
It doesn't modulate the sentimentality quite the right way to totally work for me but I think this is really underrated. The ending is very cute (there is an alternate ending with a questionable concept of atoning for suicide, which I gather is from the novel) and this is a better Vincent Ward film than Navigator.

Mystics In Bali - Indonesian film which is sort of an underground classic now; the best known flying headed witch film. Special effects are creaky, actors are of an extremely uneven ability (one of the supporting actors is an old pro and the lead actress was just an ordinary German tourist who had no acting experience) but it works well enough because it's got an unreal, oddly sedate tone to it (nobody seems overly impressed by all the crazy shit happening) and everyone is dubbed with cartoonish voice actors. The old witch is fun and there's little novelties like the fireball fight.

I love Mystics In Bali, yes the effects are almost Bollywood standard at times but it rattles along splendidly and everyone's performance is at least enjoyable.

KURONEKO was damn good. Gorgeous.