31 days of horror part 5: the Final Frontier.

[Mark Tolch]

I LOVE Horror Hotel/City of the Dead!

[Gary Banks]

My viewing will come to a screeching halt for the weekend due to football. to make up for it:
HORROR HOTEL- found this on TCM last night just about 2 minutes before show time. Hadn't planned on viewing it this month, but hey, here it is. Great film.

CASTLE OF EVIL-A reading of the will on a rain swept island leads to dumb fun with a killer robot out to kill the heirs.

ET MOURIR DE PLAISIR-The French version of Blood And Roses with a slightly different take on the ending. The hospital scene seemed to last only about 30 seconds. Wonderful film that needs a top notch release.

1-Guru, The Mad Monk 2
2-House Of Evil 3
3-Starship Troopers 7.5
4-The Robot Vs The Aztec Mummy 4
5-Tarantula 7
6-Rodan 6.5
7-Horror Hotel 10
8-Castle Of Evil 7
9-et Mourir de Plaisir 8.5

[Ignatius]

Day 3: BACKCOUNTRY - A nice low-key 'lost in the woods' horror that demonstrates just how far good writing and character work can get you. The dedication to realistic plotting means there are fewer nail-biting sequences than you might hope for, but it absolutely achieves what it sets out to do. If you like your character drama served with a side dish of really upsetting animal attack sequences then BACKCOUNTRY is for you.

Day 4: ICED - The local release had one of the great eye-catching VHS covers. Turns out it's a pretty terrible film, but I found myself strangely charmed by it. The idea of a group of friends happily reuniting but scarred by a shared trauma is pushed a bit harder here than in similar slasher films, and though the writing and acting isn't good enough to pull it off I appreciated the intent. The script doesn't fall back onto the obvious slasher character archetypes either, which is a relief given that the action is largely confined to the final 20 minutes. Unfortunately it botches the ending - the killer's identity and motivation make no sense and the climax is really poorly shot. It's below-average, but at least it isn't obnoxious. I can see why some people really want a restored release; it was clearly shot on film but edited on video and the existing rips look smeary and awful.

[Alex K.]

It's an okay slasher with good atmosphere and a kickass theme.

This is why Joe Bob is the king.

[Newt Cox]

TITLE-Madman
SOURCE-The Last Drive on Shudder

In the early 80s there was 2 slasher films based on the Cropsy urban legend. One of these slashers has become a big cult favorite,mostly cause of the great FX work from Tom Savini. The other is the turd I am covering today...Madman!

I first heard of Madman in 1990. There was an exchange student from the UK at my high school. She was a huge horror fan. And after she discovered I was a big horror fan we would talk most days during lunch. I was telling her about The Burning and she asked if I had seen Madman. I decided I needed to see Madman. So the next Friday I went to 10 video stores. But none of them had the movie. The owner of Video Showboat said she could order me a copy. Sadly back then a copy was 60 bucks. I wasn't gonna spend that much for a film I had never seen.

Skip ahead to 2004. I was using bit torrent to download films. And found Madman on the Tracker 3 site. Since there was very few people seeding the file it took 5 days to download. I got home from a long day at work saw the download was done. Ran the file through a video converter and burnt the resulting file to a dvdr. The next day a few friends came over. We watched Madman...And it sucked. Crap acting ,crap FX And the film just wasn't good.

I had forgotten about Madman until 2010. I had discovered a horror podcast and one of the hosts is a huge Madman fan. Saw that Code Red was putting it out on DVD. Pre ordered it and the day it came in I rushed home from work to watch it. And again was disappointed . The previously mentioned podcast shit all over the Code Red release. It wasn't until years later that I learned why they shat all over this release. The podcast host considers himself a horror expert, when really his horror knowledge is limited to mostly mainstream horror films. And the host was made that Code Red didn't want to use the host on the dvd.

Madman is your standard summer camp slasher. If you have seen more than 2 summer camp slashers you know all the tropes. Really the only things about Madman that stands are the theme song,which is the best thing in this pile of shit. And Gaylon Ross,the female lead in the original Dawn of the Dead, appears in Madman. But she uses an alias. Ms Ross claims she did this because she was a SAG member and Madman wasn't a SAG film. I ,and many others think she used an alias cause she knew the movie was shit.

Honestly if Madman wasn't a part of The Last Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs I wouldn't have bothered watching it again. But Joe Bob can usually make even the worst films worth seeing. In the case of Madman he didn't make this shitstain of a film worth watching. Madman gets a F.

And Cody watched http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...doll-1936.html

[Gary Banks]

Tarantula-I like this movie better than Them. I think this moves very well and has a nice icky atmosphere. The bd didn't seem to be that much of a jump PQ wise over the dvd.

1-Guru, The Mad Monk 2
2-House Of Evil 3
3-Starship Troopers 7.5
4-The Robot Vs The Aztec Mummy 4
5-Tarantula 7

[Ian Jane]

Night 1 - the first Tennent episode of Doctor Who. It has alien monster things in it so I'm saying it counts.

Night 2 - Killer Crocodile.

[Alex K.]

Had a couple of false starts. Started with Red Room 2 which I found boring. Then I switched it up to Wrong Turn 5 which was so lazily made and obvious that the filmmakers didn't give a shit so why should I? Then, I watched Wrong Turn 4.

Wrong Turn is an interesting slasher franchise in that the first is utterly mediocre. Saved only by moments of great gore. All of the sequels, and all of which are direct to video, are better aside from the already mentioned part 5. Part 2 is a very fun slasher and required viewing for all fans of Henry Rollins. Part 6 I enjoyed quite a bit and 4 I would say is easily the 2nd best in the franchise. It changes the setting to a snowbound abandoned sanitarium and kind of sort of explains the origins of the killers of these movies but only kind of. Gory set pieces, self-awareness that's not so smug, directed with a sense of contagious joy. Recommended for slasher fans.

[Mark Tolch]

I guess I'll pitch in with the original GODZILLA. If I've seen it, I dont remember it. All of my Godzilla memories are in colour

[Gary Banks]

The carnage continues.
Starship Troopers- Realized that I have never sat down and watched this from start to finish. More satirical than I expected, yet a lot of fun with nasty big bug killers.

The Robot Vs The Aztec Mummy-Probably the best of the three. A painless way to get the gist of the entire trilogy in a little over an hour. The Bat chews up the scenery and a walking tin can takes on the Aztec Mummy. What's not to like?

[Jack J]

My Halloween horror "film" for today was this excellent documentary; "Hammer - the Studio That Dripped Blood" (BBC 1987). The YouTube version is what looks like a 3rd generation tv rip. Has this ever been released as an extra feature on dvd or bluray?

[Ignatius]

I quite like GURU, THE MAD MONK, but it does suffer from being shot on 35mm since Andy couldn't wildly swirl the camera around. It's certainly not up there with his best work.

Day 1: THE PSYCHIC - Not top-tier Fulci but still damn good. I managed to guess both the ending and the big mid-story reversal early on but the whole film is so well constructed I don't think it impeded my enjoyment too much. There are a few too many dramatic zooms into Jennifer O'Neil's eyes but otherwise Fulci does a good job slowly ratcheting up the tension.

Day 2: BONE TOMAHAWK - I had heard some good things about this one, but I quickly took a severe dislike to it. There's something strangely amateurish about the whole affair - from the script that traffics in affected Deadwood-style dialogue but lacks any particular character or humanity, to the flat digital photography that finds shockingly few evocative uses for its widescreen framing. Perhaps worst is the attempt to mimic the ponderous, contemplative tone of the best westerns; something that really doesn't work when neither the characters nor the film have anything to contemplate. There's absolutely no reason for a film as simplistic as this to be two hours long, and there's at least a half-hour of footage that could be easily trimmed out.

Man, even the worst Italian cannibal films tried to hint at some greater thematic ideas (who are the real savages? etc etc) but BONE TOMAHAWK stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the possibility of subtext. Everything is text. What you see is what you get. Which isn't a problem if a film is going to be fun and not waste my fucking time. BONE TOMAHAWK is just slow, unpleasant, and hollow. It can fuck right off.

[Newt Cox]

Day 02 The Burbs

Watched the Burbs for the first time in a bit off Shudder. Not a huge Tom Hanks fan but love this movie.

Day 2 of Codyll's thing Mark of the Vampire

[Gary Banks]

Decided to start this off with a little pain. Well, actually a lot of pain because it frickin' hurt to sit through these two movies.

1-GURU, THE MAD MONK-Andy's disdain for the Church and its authority figures is pretty obvious here. The usual Milligan touches are here: a hunchback who eventually gets crucified, knitting needles into the eyeballs and most of the actors emoting to passer byes walking down the street. The hero looks and almost sounds like Epstein the Sweathog from Welcome Back Kotter. It only runs a bit over 55 minutes, but you will be fighting the urge to bail out after 30.

2-HOUSE OF EVIL aka Dance Of Death aka Sonata Macabre-This is somewhat better than the above film. One of the four Karloff Mexican quickies filmed at the end of his life. Karloff is in this one for the first 25 minutes and the last ten. The film and you, the viewer, suffers during his absence. The old reading of the will while the old geezer still lives, whoops he's dead. Wait, no he isn't. Aw fuck it just let me out of this house. Of the four, this may be the worst. At least until I get around to watching Sinister Invasion......

[Alex K.]

The more I think about it the more Midsummar sticks with me. It could be a modern classic. I also realize just how similar it is in terms of plot with 2001 Maniacs which I assure was an accident on my part. A fine example of how a gifted filmmaker can attack the same idea in different ways.