What are you watching?

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The Climax: I'd seen this before as well. It's a follow-up to the 1943 remake of The Phantom of the Opera (it started out as a sequel), starring Boris Karloff as a physician for an opera house who becomes obsessed with a new singer because her voice reminds him of his old love, whom he murdered out of jealousy. Not one of the best Universal horror flicks from this era, but Karloff, as always, is great, the other characters are well acted, and you can tell that the film was a lavish production, as it was shot in Technicolor, on amazing sets.

House of Horrors: One of the Universal horror movies starring Rondo Hatton as the Creeper, this features that character becoming friends with a struggling artist and murdering all of his enemies. Not a classic by any means, but it's short and sweet, and Hatton definitely had a unique film presence.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The Black Castle: Getting into Volume 6 of the Universal Horror Collection, this is a movie that I'm sure I'd seen before, but I couldn't remember anything about it whatsoever. Re-watching it, it's a fair enough Gothic horror flick, with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. in supporting roles (the latter has no dialogue), some good art direction, and was the directorial debut for Nathan Juran, who went on to do movies like The Deadly Mantis, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, and The Brain from Planet Arous, among others.

Cult of the Cobra: Now I did remember seeing this one, which is about a woman who can turn into a cobra coming to the United States to kill a group of Air Force officers who infiltrated a snake-worshiping cult while in Asia. It's okay, but very standard, especially with its actors, and some very archaic special effects, even for the time.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The Thing That Couldn't Die: This is a pretty ridiculous flick about an executed sorcerer from the 15th Century or so whose severed head is dug up from where it was buried and it gains control of people to do his well, intending to find and be reunited with his body. However, it's not nearly as fun as that ludicrous plot would make you think, and the ending is the definition of anti-climactic.

The Shadow of the Cat: Speaking of ridiculous, this is actually a Hammer film that Universal distributed in the U.S. along with The Curse of the Werewolf (an infinitely better movie). The story is about a house-cat that witnesses the murder of her owner, a wealthy elderly woman, and the rest of the movie centers around the murderers actually trying to hunt down and kill the cat, as if she could actually tell what happened. Funnily enough, the cat herself becomes bent on revenge and starts knocking the murderers off in various ways. It's bonkers, and the editing and overbearing music score often make it feel like a crazy fever dream.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The Strange Door: Another movie I'd seen before, this one is similar to The Black Castle in that it's a period piece where Boris Karloff has a supporting role as one of the main villain's servants who is actually trying to help the victims. However, I would say this is the better of the two, as Charles Laughton makes for a much more memorable and entertaining villain.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

FeardotCom. This is one of a good number of DVDs I got from a cousin of mine who lives in South Carolina a couple of years ago (Newt can tell you that I literally got big garbage bags of stuff that they said I could do whatever with). Figured I'd give it a watch, as I'd heard of it but never seen it before... and I didn't think much of it. It's an idea that has a lot of potential: a website that causes you to die of intense fear a couple of days after you visit it, but the story gets overly convoluted and hard to follow the longer it goes on. The acting is all fine (Jeffrey Combs has a supporting role, and Udo Kier appears at the very beginning), and the movie has a distinctive dark visual style, but it ultimately fell flat with me.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Now theyre making seperate films are we getting an insight into what the individual Coens brought to the table? Joel making a capital A art film of Macbeth while Ethan makes the kind of film where the transitions have Bugs Bunny style sound effects and the plot centers on a pair of lesbians driving round with a suitcase full of dicks.

I think I'm more of an Ethan guy.... has Ethan been dragging Joel down? If so bless him for it.

This is is the wackiest movie with the Coen name attached since Crimewave. You ever seen Crimewave? Yeah, you don't need to see Crimewave. Got to hand it to Ethan though, it's bizarre for an elderly straight Jewish guy to make a movie that's essentially wall to wall lesbian jokes. Maybe he feels he's made enough films, and its time to get himself cancelled.

Well no dice Ethan. If you want to get yourself cancelled first you have to make a film that people are going to actually fucking see. Jesus this movie disappeared. It was on my To Watch list since preproduction and then I only wound up remembering to watch it due to an extremely deep random scroll on Netflix. They buried this thing deep...

Never mind that though, I thought it was funny, and Qualley was a goddamn pleasure.

It's also 85 minutes long with credits! In 2024 a major motion picture director made a film under an hour and a half! Guys a fucking hero...

[Matt H. Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Matt H.]

I really can't believe a Coen was responsible for one of the worst movies I've seen this year. I didn't laugh once and it actually gets worse as it goes along.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. I've never seen the TV show but I found the Scream Factory Blu-Ray of this for cheap recently and decided to take a chance. I have to say, I quite enjoyed this. I thought all of the stories were well done (my favorite was the last one, with James Remar and the gargoyle), and the special effects work was absolutely amazing. Definitely a fun one to watch around Halloween.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The Human Monster (The Dark Eyes of London): I'd never heard of this film before, but picked it up at G-Fest back in July because it had Bela Lugosi. Also, this Blu-Ray release by VCI leaves a lot to be desired in terms of video and audio quality, but I guess they didn't have the best elements to work with. In any case, it didn't turn out to be one of my favorite Lugosi movies, as it's mostly a crime/detective movie, with Lugosi playing a mad doctor who murders people for insurance money and has a hideously deformed, brutish blind servant who does his dirty work. It's only 76 minutes long but even then, it's rather slow, and none of the other characters are that engaging.

[Newt Cox Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Newt Cox]

Frogman

Modern Found footage movie about a fairly unknown cryptid. If you like found footage this is worth a watch. But it has all the flaws most found footage films have. Shaky cam,too dark,all that.

One were I wish I hadn't bought it blind.

[Vincent Dawn Jr Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Vincent Dawn Jr]

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. I've never seen the TV show but I found the Scream Factory Blu-Ray of this for cheap recently and decided to take a chance. I have to say, I quite enjoyed this. I thought all of the stories were well done (my favorite was the last one, with James Remar and the gargoyle), and the special effects work was absolutely amazing. Definitely a fun one to watch around Halloween.

The TV series is one of my favorites, but admittedly a bit hit or miss. I'd say 1/3 of the episodes are excellent, 1/3 are passable, & 1/3 are not so good. Usually when they went for comedy, they fell way short.

In terms of the film, that last story that you enjoyed is actually a re-imaging of a vignette from an old Japanese horror anthology called Kwaidan (1964). The segment titled "The Woman of the Snow" is basically the same story.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The TV series is one of my favorites, but admittedly a bit hit or miss. I'd say 1/3 of the episodes are excellent, 1/3 are passable, & 1/3 are not so good. Usually when they went for comedy, they fell way short.

In terms of the film, that last story that you enjoyed is actually a re-imaging of a vignette from an old Japanese horror anthology called Kwaidan (1964). The segment titled "The Woman of the Snow" is basically the same story.

They talked about that in the special features. And I actually have seen Kwaidan, but it was a while ago now.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

Monster from Green Hell: 1957 sci-fi flick about giant, mutated wasps wreaking havoc in Africa. The monsters themselves are actually kind of impressive, brought to life with big props and animation, but during the middle, the story diverts from them and becomes more like a low-rent jungle adventure movie, with a lot of stock footage to make it look bigger in scope than it really is. And the ending, which randomly switches from black-and-white to color, is very anti-climactic, as the monsters are killed off by a sudden volcanic eruption.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

Invisible Invaders: Flick from 1959 about invisible aliens who come down to Earth, possess the bodies of the dead, and wreak havoc across the world, while a small group try to figure out a way to stop them. Another movie that's clearly much more low budget and small in scale than it's actually trying to be, with lots of stock footage used to do so. It has John Agar, who plays a soldier rather than a scientist, for once, and ends up being the best character, while John Carradine is only onscreen at the very beginning, and is only heard through his voice afterward. Also, when the aliens are driven from the corpses they're inhabiting and are briefly visible, they clearly used the costume for the monster in It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

[Cody Layne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Cody Layne]

The Monster Squad Kino Lorber 4K/Blu-Ray: I didn't see this movie for the first time until I was 23, when I picked up the Lionsgate DVD. While I do enjoy it, I really wish I'd known about it as a kid, because I would've eaten up, given how much I loved the classic Universal monsters. In any case, this edition is really good, as it not only has all of the special features from that DVD (I listened to one of the two audio commentaries with Fred Dekker), but also the Wolfman's Got Nards documentary that came out in 2018, which I just watched and thought was really awesome.