Got my 31 movies picked out.
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31 Days of Horror 2022 edition can't think of a catchy subtitle
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Day 01
TITLE-We Summon the Darkness
SOURCE-Netflix
So back in 2019 this horror film came out. I heard nothing about it till last year. Was late one night and I wanted something new to watch. Read the synopsis and thought this sounded decent. It is the late 80s and 3 teen girls have went to a metal band concert. Turns out someone has been killing people in a Satanic way.
At the concert the girls meet three 80s era Metalheads with a van. Spend most of the concert with the guys. Then when it is over they invite the guys to come back to their place.
Of course they want us the audience to assume these guys are gonna be evil and do something horrible to the young women. But nope. The girls spike the guys drinks. Then over the course of the film try to kill them.
One of the girl's dad's is a TV preacher. And a group the girls belong to has been doing these Satanic killings to boost the donations coming into the church. And that TV Preacher father is played by Johnny Knoxville. Who isn't in the film that much but stands out when he is on screen.
The only other member of the cast I knew was Alexandra Daddido. Seen her in TCM 3d and a few other movies. She really isn't given much to work with here sadly.
The FX work is decent. The script and acting is ok. But nothing about the movie makes it rise above the flood of horror you will find on Netflix.
We Summon the Darkness gets a C+.
And like the past few years buddy CodyLL is doing a theme,foreign horror
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...golem.html?m=0
THe 1920 Golem is the start of his month.Last edited by Newt Cox; 10-01-2022, 08:42 AM.
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After a tough year, I am so in for dedicating my newly reclaimed spare time to watching horror movies through October - will hope to post some notes on 'em all here if at all possible.
Blatant plug: I've already kicked things off on my newly resurrected blog with a review of oddball French horror-porn flick 'Draguse', and am aiming to publish something new every couple of days in the lead up to Halloween. Content initially won't cross over much with whatever I post here, so please do have a look if you're thus inclined: https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/
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01 - THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM - 8/10
Criminally overlooked gem from West Germany that owes a ton to Bava and Corman's Poe cycle, with strong elements of house of traps films and a dungeon crawler tabletop game.
This was my first serious sit down and watch of this film. The transfer on Amazon Prime is really good, making the lush colors and amazing sets really pop.
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#1
Evil Dead Trap
(Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988)
My first time watching this.
The first half is an extremely effective, visceral horror movie with a minimal / knowingly dumb set-up soon giving way to relentless 'Evil Dead'-style mayhem. It has a scuzzy and unsettling atmosphere, as the tone veers uneasily between a fun, Friday night horror flick (nods to Argento, Fulci and Raimi, and a delightfully lo-fi Goblin-derived score) and hints at something more extreme and unpleasant just around the corner (eg, sweaty and extended scenes of torture and sexual assault). This helps create a genuine "anything could happen next" kind of vibe, which, combined with wildy imaginative visuals and solid supense filmmaking, proves pretty exhilarating.
Unfortunately, the second half, during which the pacing slackens off, the threat diminishes and the random, insane manifestations of evil are streamlined into a semi-conventional plotline, proves far less engaging and drags on for considerably longer than it really needs to.
Nonetheless, a unique effort, well worth a watch.
B+
#2
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
(John Hough, 1988)
John Hough's run of horror films from the early '70s through to the early '80s was remarkably consistent, with just about everything he turned his hand to in the genre landing somewhere between "absolute classic" and "pretty decent / interesting". So, on that basis, I thought I'd give this much maligned Howling sequel a go, just in the hope that it might actually be better than critical consensus would tend to suggest.
You can imagine my consternation when the ominous credit "produced by Harry Alan Towers" popped up, but, atrocities against god and man though the assorted horror films Towers produced during the late '80s may be, they're rarely boring, so I was still happy to proceed.
More fool me it turns out, because long story short, this is fucking terrible.
The acting by a cast of complete unknowns (to me, at least) is totally flat, the dialogue is clunky and witless (but not sufficiently so to be funny), the story is a half-arsed, entirely predictable assemblage of cliches, nothing remotely exciting happens through 90% of the run-time, there are basically no werewolves... even the title is shit.
On the plus side, there is one pretty great, extremely gloopy werewolf transformation during the last five minutes.
Aside from that though - a total bust.
John, Harry... what happened?
D-Last edited by BW Haggar; 10-02-2022, 06:48 AM.
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Got in the Amusement Park Blu,saturday,so watched that for the 4th time. Got on Sundays movie. Which is the best of the glut of modern low budget horror clogging up store shelves. Well the best out of the 30 or so I have seen over the past few years.
Rewatched Night of the Demons,modern remake,earlierr just cause a buddy was an extra and he keeps saying he is on screen apile and I never see him for more than a second.
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MOVIE 2
TITLE-Chinese Speaking Vampires
SOURCE-Echo Bridge DVD
Back last year in late September I was given this dvd. "Saw this and thought you might want to review it for you little Halloween horror movie reviews thing." I looked at the cover and title. Saw it was a fairly recent film and released by Echo Bridge and figured it would suck and stacked it into the "I might watch this one day pile".
Skip aheaad to today,there was nothing on DISH or the DVR. And I was uploading a video to one of my Youtube channels so I couldn't stream. Figured what the hell and threw in Chinese Speaking Vampires.
Davy Williams is our lead. He is a food delivery guy who is also a struggling actor. He goes to an audition but learns to get the role he needs to speak fluent Manderian. Knowing this movie might be his last chance to become a working actor he joins a local school to learn Manderian.
This school is ran by Sean Eden Yi,who you will remember from piles of movies and tv shows. Yi also helped plan the stunts in this movie. Yi teaches Manderian at a night class. After signing up for these classes Davy goes out to have a few drinks with 2 buddies. At this club they meet up with 2 ladies that are also in the Manderian class Davy is in.
Out of nowhere a bunch of CHINESE SPEAKING VAMPIRES invade the club. But thankfully a group of very Proud vampire killers,who are all mostly Boys enter the club.
Seems a Preacher knows that there is an invasion of Chinese Vampires and is trying to use his charisma to gather an army of vamprie hunters.
Over the next 30 minutes of the film Sean Eden Yi starts turning more and more of his students into Vampires. And one of the side effects of getting bitten by Yi is you can now speak fluent Manderian but also forget what ever langauge is your native tongue.
So your basic plot Yi's students vs the very PROUD and BOYish Vampire hunters.
Now the FX work goes from crappy CGI junk,like anytime a Vampire is stabbed with a wooden stake they become a PS1 era looking cloud of dust. But then there is a fight scene where our lead Davy punches one of the PROUD vampire hunters through the stomach and we get a legit well done practical FX work.
Acting wise the film is a mixed bag. Davy Williams is good as the lead,and he also produced and wrote the screen play. Daniella Brown on the other hand is wooden. She is Davy's romantic interest and is just bad. Sean Eden Yi is great as the teacher/leader of the Chinese Speaking Vampires. He has a odd sense of humor that just cracks me up. The surprise in the cast is June Lee. That is her on the cover in the plaid skirt. She manages to blend comedy and dram well. Appears to be having so much fun making the movie. Richard Gavigan is really great as Davy's buddy and the love interest of June Lee.
This DVD is bare bones. No extras at all. No subtitles no trailer no nothing but the film.
Chinese Speaking Vampires gets a C-
ANd Cody has Nosferatu
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...licks.html?m=1
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#3
The Curse of Frankenstein
(Terence Fisher, 1956)
So, amongst other things planned for this month, I thought it would be fun to revisit Hammer's Frankenstein series (or, the Fisher/Cushing installments, at least) in chronological order, given that I now have reasonable copies of them all, and my wife has never seen any of them.
I'm sure there's not much I can say about this one that hasn't been said before, but suffice to say, I'd forgotten what a great film it is; far less dated than I remembered, but still with some tremendous gothic visuals. Sangster's script is so sharp too, with a fantastic vein of black humour running through it - probably the best writing he ever did, and Cushing's performance really takes it to another level; his every gesture and facial expression here is just perfect.
Much as I love the 'Re-animator' series, everything in those films takes its cue from the relationship between Cushing and Robert Urquhart here (not least Frankenstein's hilarious "it's all YOUR fault" routine).
Our viewing on this occasion was paired with a couple of pints of milk stout, which seems like an appropriate choice. A great Sunday evening, all in all.
Turning to some A/V talk meanwhile, I recall being satisfied with the Icon/Lionsgate blu-ray when I bought it back in 2012, but then, I was probably still pretty dazzled by the idea of anything that looked remotely HD emerging from my TV at that point in time.
Revisiting it ten years later, the critics definitely had a point - it looks bloody awful to be honest. The decision to present the film in open matte 4:3 ratio seems totally inexplicable (there's way too much headroom in nearly every shot), and the colours are over-saturated whilst the detail is totally washed out, as if a restoration had been carried out on a badly faded theatrical print rather than original elements or whatever.
I'm assuming we'll be getting a new restoration sooner or later via Network, following the agreement they signed with Hammer earlier this year, so... bring it on please. I haven't checked out the Shout Factory disc, but on the basis of this viewing, I'm totally in for an upgrade.
ALast edited by BW Haggar; 10-02-2022, 07:53 PM.
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02 - THE WOLFMAN 2010 unrated version.
A rewatch on a whim, my first since the theatrical release. Kind of fell in love with it, to be honest. Lighting, sets, the clench fisted seriousness...all worked for me big time this round.
03 - FROM BEYOND.
Straight up comfort food, absolutely delicious and satisfying.
04 - CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF Showed this to my younger film nut pal today, he loved every minutet of course.
05 - THE NIGHT STALKER
Ditto. First time view for my friend, who again, loved it.
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