31 Days of Horror 2022 edition can't think of a catchy subtitle

[Gary Banks Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Gary Banks]

My only problem with Sundown is the allegedly comedic deputy, who also happens to be the director. Saw this first run and really like it.

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood ****
002-In Search Of Dracula **
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) ****
004-Carnival Of Sinners *
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2
006-Panic In Year Zero! **
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2
008-Ladron De Cadaveres **
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack!
011-Whoever Slew Auntie Roo *1/2
012-Curse Of Frankenstein (1:37:1)****
013-Tales Of Frankenstein **1/2
014-War Of The Planets**
015-I Drink Your Blood **
016-Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things ****
017-Tales From The Crypt Season One *1/2
018-Deathmaster **1/2

[f.ramses Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close f.ramses]

10/12
Halloween: Resurrection
Halloween II (2009, unrated)

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

Day 13

Cody covers Nosferatu in Venice
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...licks.html?m=1

Forgot that I helped him remember this shit ball film exists.

And I covered

31 Days of Horror 2022 Day 13 Duck! The Carbine High Massacre





TITLE-Duck! The Carbine High Massacre



SOURCE-Saturns Core Blu Ray

Yep gonna go into a bit of 90s SOV filmage this time,for those that don't know SOV=Shot on Video.




Back not long after the Columbine shootings,William Hellfire and Joey Smack made this movie. They figured if they didn't do it Lifetime would make "A crappy made for TV movie"




Not long after the film came out it was getting lots of press.Mostly people shocked that someone would make a film out of this tragedy,forgetting that films based on real life events was a common thing for decades. Then someone alerted the police that a few of the scenes,that were actually filmed on school property,had William and Joey walking around with legit guns. This got the two directors/writers/stars arrested. But the press caused sales of this film to shoot through the roof. And that money was used to bail them out.




So the film? It is a very over the top parody of the real events. Outside of our two leads everybody else in the film is boiled down to their core essence. Like Erin Brown,aka Misty Mundae,who plays Bible Girl. Or the various actors that play generic jocks.




Back when this came out I heard about it,mostly cause I was reading Alternative Cinema. Was tempted to order a copy. But it was a VHS only release and with shipping would have been 30 bucks. By this time I was use to VHS being sold cheap,mostly cause this was the early days of DVD in the States.




Skip ahead 4 or so years and thanks to Brian Torrens,AKA Bit Torrent,I got a rip of that VHS. Put it on a drive and never watched it.




Then last years thanks to a review on the RockShockPop site I saw this was hitting blu ray. Wondering how a shot on VHS film would look on Blu ray I ordered a copy.




I was very surprised at how good the movie looks. Sure it is low budget. But the lighting and sound are pretty good. Plus the Blu Ray is loaded with extras. All kinds of news reports from when the film came out. All kinds of BTS and bonus footage. Plus a really informative commentary with William Hellfire,Joey Smack had passed before this commentary was recorded.




Now back in the late 80s/early 90s I hated SOV horror. More than a few times I would rent a movie,get home and realize it was SOV and usually wouldn't bother watching it. But in the past 20 years I have developed a taste for SOV horror. And this is one of the best SOV Horror I have seen.




Of course if you are easily offended,and if you are boy are you at the wrong blog,avoid this movie. But if you can agree that anything can be mined for comedy,this movie is worth seeing.




Duck! The Carbine High Massacre gets a B-.


Also since I couldn't sleep last night and our internet is too slow to stream a movie and upload to YT,I put on the Alien series Blu Ray I got the other day.

Alien-Loved this movie since it first aired on broadcast tv in what 81? But for me it is a bit more of a Sci Fi movie than a horror movie. Still great film. And this time I watched it while following along in the old Alien Graphic Novel.

Aliens-Saw this opening weekend and liked it. The more I see it the more I grow to strongly dislike it. Either version of the film just doesn;t work that well for me. Now instead of a 80%/20% sci fi/horror movie we get a 75% reagan era action flick 20% sci fi 5% horror.

Alien3-Saw this opening weekend and was kind of meh on it. But had heard in Starlog I think that William Gibson was suppose to write the script. The asssembly cut is a better film. And I know I am one of the few that rather watch this than Aliens.

Alien Resurrection-Somehow I missed this movie for a long time. When it hit theaters I was going every weekend to see sometime,the advantages of having a buddy that managed a movie theater. When it hit home video I was renting movies often. But didn't see this until 2010 or so. While I don't hate it. I kind of wish Ripley's story arch had ended with Alien3. Still I rather watch this than Aliens.

Then cause I wasn;t going to watch Prometheus or Covenant,went digging thru the Echo Bridge horror film multi dvd packs.

Went with Zipperface. 90s late era slasher. Dude in leather gimp outfit orders hookers and doing kinky BSDM stuff with them. Then kills them with knifes and sharpe objects. Seems this was a minor cult hit on VHS. And there is two releases, R and unrated. With Unrated being 4 or so minutes longer(Which means more boobs,butts and bonking). This Echo Bridge 10 Horror Films release of Zipperface,which crams 5 movies onto one side of a DVD,is the unrated cut. If you can find this set cheap and want to see a totall forgotten but not bad Slasher grab this for ZIpperface

And just finished a Dracula 2000. By the time this came out I knew if Wes Craven Presents was above the film title to avoid it. So it was a movie I saw cause a buddy rrented it and we had a night full of rental horror movies,cheap beer and cheap pizza at his crash pad.

Thought it was below average. And now thanks to Miramax licensing their Dmiension catalog for years to Echo Bridge I own Dracula 2000 nine times! I never planned on watching it again. Then years back a good friend died at way to young an age. And this guy,known in the online horror movie community as "TheFuckerFromHell",loved the Dimension horror films. Dracula 2000 was not only in his top 5 horror films. In his head he had connected Dracula 2000 to not only The Passion of the Christ,which I can see,but also the Evil Dead trilogy.

So that year in October I watched Dracula 2000 again. Saw it is average at best. But tonight I was thinking again about how it has been close to a decade since Brandon,yep Fucker's shoot name was Brandon Lee,passed mysteriously,and I wanted to spend some time fighting insomnia and watch one of Brandon Fucker Lee's favorite movies.


And now to flush my pallette got on Clerks 2 so we are ready for Clerks 3 this upcoming weekend.

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

#15
Venom
(Peter Sykes, 1971)

aka, The Legend of Spider Forest

This odd Anglo-German co-production (presented by CUPID FILM and ACTION PLUS PRODUCTIONS!) was the horror debut of Peter Sykes, who went on to work for Hammer on 'Demons of the Mind' and 'To The Devil a Daughter'.

Shot in the forests of Bavaria, it initially has a strong Eastern European fairytale kind of vibe, as holidaying English landscape painter Simon Brent encounters a forest-dwelling, red-headed temptress with a spider tattoo on her left shoulder (Serbian actress Neda Arneric), and subsequently experiences all kinds of shady interactions with the suspicious and very much all-in-cahoots locals.

It's all very artfully directed and beautifully shot, allowing a vague sense of menace to percolate nicely behind the bucolic, moss-covered visuals, and Arneric is a very striking presence, but the film hits the rocks once the Brits on the production presumably decide they can't keep this bloody fairytale shit up for 90 minutes, and try to impose a 'proper' story on the thing instead.

Christopher Wicking is credited with "additional dialogue" here (on a script primarily by Derek & Donald Ford, no less), but I wonder if his input could actually have been more substantial, because the attempts to turn this one into a thriller bear all the hallmarks of the bamboozling, incomprehensible plotting he brought to so many early '70s British horrors.

Cobbling together a peculiar yarn involving stolen masterpieces by Hieronymus Bosch, covert nerve gas laboratories, uncomfortable echoes of WWII and some crazy bloke running around in drag, the second half of 'Venom' offers plentiful scenes of Brent roaring around in his yellow Citroen 2CV being pursued by gun-toting Bavarians, and, I'm afraid, equally plentiful opportunities for me to fall asleep.

Did all this nonsense get properly explained during those crucial moments when I was snoozing? I should probably go back and check, but I have my doubts.

Still, it all looks lovely.

B-

[Gary Banks Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Gary Banks]

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood ****
002-In Search Of Dracula **
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) ****
004-Carnival Of Sinners *
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2
006-Panic In Year Zero! **
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2
008-Ladron De Cadaveres **
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack!
011-Whoever Slew Auntie Roo *1/2
012-Curse Of Frankenstein (1:37:1)****
013-Tales Of Frankenstein **1/2
014-War Of The Planets**
015-I Drink Your Blood **
016-Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things ****
017-Tales From The Crypt Season One *1/2
018-Deathmaster **1/2
019-Planet Of The Vampires ***
020-Night of the Demon (UK 1957) ****

Night of the Demon is actually the UK Theatrical cut which also clocks in at 82 minutes. My only gripe with this cut is that we lose the confrontation with the Hebron family. Still, it is a classic and while people piss and moan about its inclusion, I love the monster!

[Darcy Parker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Darcy Parker]

Yesterday/today (Watched half of each yesterday and finished today)

Identikit - Very interesting oddity, really liked it.

Lux Aeterna - Even more odd, pretty cool

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

The Bloody Exorcism Of Coffin Joe: I hadn't seen this one before. I'm not the biggest Coffin Joe fan though the series has grown on me over the years. I wonder if this was an inspiration for New Nightmare? Definitely could of been.

I liked it more than most of the series. The way people in the house keep getting possessed, try to kill each other and then life just goes back to normal is hallucinogenic. You probably have to be quite drunk to get the most out of it. Fortunately I had that covered.

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

#16
Faceless
(Jess Franco, 1987)

aka, Les Prédateurs de la Nuit

I think the last time I watched this one was long, long ago, on some dodgy low-res download, so Severin's blu-ray provided a massive upgrade.

And, what a fucking masterpiece of sleaze this is!

I enjoyed it tremendously.

As a long-term Franco fan, it's interesting to see bits and pieces of his established style being mixed with (and eventually subsumed by) a different sensibility entirely - presumably that of producer René Chateau.

This is all to the good however, as I get the feeling that, if Franco had been left to his own devices here, the film could easily have degenerated into one of those bumbling, inconsequential light-hearted thrillers he insisted on making throughout his career (indeed, some of the scenes with Chris Mitchum are a bit like that). Instead though, it's as if Chateau (or someone) was sitting on his shoulder making sure he kept the energy up, kept things exciting, kept the style contemporary.... and of course made time for all those spectacular (and very uncharacteristic) gore set-pieces.

As Stephen Thrower discusses at length in his piece on the blu ray, Anton Diffring's performance as the unrepentant nazi surgeon (together with Howard Vernon's cameo as a very different Dr Orloff from the one we've encountered in earlier outings) lends a surprising amount of depth to what is otherwise an incredibly crass, ultra-trashy movie, and as for those 'Les Yeux Sans Visage'-inspired surgery scenes... boy, they really pulled out all the stops on those. Great work from all concerned.

On the other hand of course, 'Faceless' totally lacks the kind of eccentricity and experimentation we'd usually expect of a good Franco film, but if we view it as part of a seperate canon of 'work for hire' stuff he did over the years for strong-willed producers who didn't let him muck about too much (cf: his work for Towers or Deitrich), it's pretty much the strongest thing he ever achieved in that vein, and a pretty great vindication of his continued ability to made the grade as a straight up, commercial filmmaker, long after the rest of the industry had given up on him.

Paired with a can of particularly sour / bitter 'experimental' IPA and the last of my long-cherished bottle of Nikka whisky, which proved a perfect match.

A-

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

Friday, October 14, 2022

31 Days of Horror 2022 Day 14 Mail Order Murder the Story of WAVE Productions




TITLE-Mail Order Murder The Story of WAVE Productions



SOURCE-Saturns Core Blu Ray

Back in the late 90s I discovered all the great genre mags. Stuff like Cult Movies,Video Watchdog,Videoscope and Alternative Cinema. In AC I started seeing 1 and 2 page ads for WAVE Studios. This was a small low budget production company. Most of their films were custom order stuff. Like you would mail in your idea for a film. And WAVE would tell you how much it would cost to make. And once the film was made you got a copy and WAVE had the rights to sell the film.




Which this lead to lots of oddball fetish films being made. Lots of movies of women being strangled. Or women drowning in quicksand.




I would look at these ads and see 1 or 2 films that sounded worth seeing,I clearly remember there being 2 or 3 films WAVE made that starred 2 super heroines vs cannibals. But it was 25 bucks plus shipping for what was at most a 70 minute movie. Nah ain't gonna drop that kind of cash on a low budget SOV horror/fetish film.




After most of the genre mags I mentioned died off in the early 2000s I forgot about WAVE. Then one day I saw a press release for Mail Order Murder and rushed to order a copy.




The Blu Ray includes the documentary,that goes indepth on WAVE,their cast of regulars and all kinds of great back stories. Plus you get a WAVE anthology film. And my favorite feature on the Blu ray is the commentary. So much info is in this commentary.




Ever since I was about 10 and learned about a group of pre-teen a few towns over filming their own recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark I have had a interest in low budget cinema. And this documentary helped me understand just what all goes into making a film,even if that film has a budget of 1k.




Mail Order Murder The Story of WAVE Productions gets a A.


Cody covers Zommmmmbi

http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-1979.html?m=1

[Darcy Parker Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Darcy Parker]

Today I watched The Company of Wolves for the first time. Somehow I had never seen it over the years, in spite of loving werewolf movies, mainly due to my brothers telling me it sucked when we were younger. They never were much for surreal or unconventional movies.

I enjoyed it, and I can see where it has the reputation and following it has, but it definitely is something weirder than one might expect.

[Gary Banks Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Gary Banks]

OCTOBER 2022

001-Castle Of Blood **** Sinister Cinema dvd-r
002-In Search Of Dracula ** Kino bd
003-Dawn Of The Dead(78) **** bd
004-Carnival Of Sinners * TCM recording
005-The Whip and The Body ***1/2 Midnight Choir dvd-r
006-Panic In Year Zero! ** bd
007-Doctor Blood's Coffin *1/2 MGM dvd-r
008-Ladron De Cadaveres ** bd
009-Castle Of Evil **1/2 dvd-r of vhs
010-From Dusk To Dawn Season One ack! dvd
011-Whoever Slew Auntie Roo *1/2 bd
012-Curse Of Frankenstein (1:37:1)**** bd
013-Tales Of Frankenstein **1/2 bd
014-War Of The Planets** TCM recording
015-I Drink Your Blood ** BD
016-Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things **** bd
017-Tales From The Crypt Season One *1/2 dvd
018-Deathmaster **1/2 dvd
019-Planet Of The Vampires *** Old Kino bd
020-Night of the Demon (UK 1957) **** bd
021-Black Sabbath **** bd
022-I,Vampiri ***1/2 bd

Black Sabbath is the US cut which features Karloff as a host and his own voice in his segment. I like this one better than the Italian version, which is great as well.But not having Karloff's voice is bordering on blasphemy.

I,Vampiri is the main reason I bought the region B blu of Black Sunday.

[George Barry Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close George Barry]

OCTOBER 2022


Black Sabbath is the US cut which features Karloff as a host and his own voice in his segment. I like this one better than the Italian version, which is great as well.But not having Karloff's voice is bordering on blasphemy.

Gary, I've seen both versions too and feel pretty much the same. Let me ask you however, if a person who has not seen either, plans to watch both, which version would you recommend they watch first?

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

#17
Vampire Moth ['Kyûketsu-ga']
(Nobuo Nakagawa, 1956)

I'm a big fan of the black & white horror programmers Nobuo Nakagawa directed for Shintoho in '58-'59, so was pretty stoked to have recently, uh, acquired a fansubbed version of this slightly earlier entry in his filmography, made when he was still working for yer actual Toho.

So first the bad news: there's no vampire moth. Not even a hint of one. Nada.

The good news however is that we can instead enjoy a sordid tale of models employed by a 'Blood & Black Lace' style fashion house being menaced and murdered by a guy whom the dialogue refers to as a 'wolf man', on account of his deformed jaw and chiseled, pointed teeth (he basically looks like an orc).

The 'wolf man' seems to be in cahoots with an obnoxious lepidopterist and former fashion designer who lives in a spooky stone mansion filled with thousands of rare moths in display cases.... which begs the question, if the fashionistas know who's committing the crimes, and they know where he lives, why don't they just tell the cops to go over there and arrest him?

But, nothing is ever quite that simple is it - certainly not in this film, where somehow this seemingly cut-and-dried case becomes so intractably complicated that it takes the intervention of popular Japanese series detective Kôsuke Kindaichi (stoically played on this occasion by Ryô Ikebe) to sort things out... and despite his best efforts, I still reached the end of the movie with no idea what the hell was actually going on.

But, who cares - the main thing to note is that this is still a hugely enjoyable, horror-tinged mystery/noir, with superb black & white photography, some amazing sets/locations, a great, pulpy atmosphere and a number of splendidly spooky sequences. Nakagawa's camera is always mobile, gliding around eerily to great effect, and we also get to enjoy one of those creepy, kaidan-type musical scores, with the woozy central melody played on what sounds like a singing saw.

Interestingly, 'Vampire Moth' also functions as a kind of accidental prototype giallo, combining the idea of fashion models being picked off by a gloved, trenchcoat-clad killer with ridiculously convoluted plotting, stylish production design and scenes in which the bodies of naked girls are discovered with butterflies placed on their breasts (pretty risque stuff for 1956).

Indeed, some sets and plot details are so reminiscent of 'Blood & Black Lace', you'd be tempted to suspect Mario Bava must have seen this film... were that possibility not so incredibly unlikely, given that (as far as I know) 'Vampire Moth' was never distributed outsde of Japan in any form.

B+

[BW Haggar Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BW Haggar]

#18
Dark Glasses
(Dario Argento, 2022)

I hope my opinion isn't skewed too much by confirmation bias, but in all honesty - I really enjoyed this one.

I'm sure not everyone will agree, but on its own modest terms, I think this is probably my favourite Argento movie since... I dunno, 'Trauma'? [Sorry, not a fan of 'Stendhal..', although maybe I should give it another shot.]

At the very least, it's an absolute joy to see Dario returning after such a long run of (let's be honest) baffling rubbish with a film that feels slick, confident and commercially viable.

Opening with an ersatz Goblin theme, a bloody throat-slitting murder and the leading lady getting her tits out, the opening five minutes have a calculated "ok, the maestro's back in business" kind of vibe to them, but thereafter, I was quite surprised by how far things diverge from the standard expectations of an Argento movie.

First off - and I realise this is a pretty goofy thing to say at this point - this struck me as one of the most, uh, 'human' and character-driven films he's ever made.

Much as I love his classic works, characters who are actually likeable and engaging are pretty few and far between, but this time around, I was actually quite caught up in the unconventional family dynamic which develops between the recently blinded call-girl, the orphaned Chinese boy and the worringly aggressive guide-dog. I mean, how is she going to make enough money to feed everyone? Being a blind whore is a pretty tough gig, and getting custody/adoption rights for the kid seems likely to be a challenge, to put it mildly.

To be honest, I could probably have quite enjoyed watching this story play out even without the horror / serial killer plotline.... which, it must be said, is probably the film's weakest element.

Indeed, probably the most surprising thing about 'Dark Glasses' within Argento's filmography is how totally, unrelentingly linear the plotting is. There are no baroque explanations for the killer's motives or identity, no bizarre and unnecessary digressions, no knotty convolutions - just a totally generic, utilitarian bad guy in a white van, who goes around murdering prostitutes, because he's a dick. That's it.

In a way, such simplicity is refreshing, but... it's also kind of boring? I mean, even the plotholes here are pretty banal / obvious ones. Outrageous nonsense has always been one of the things I enjoy most in Dario's movies, but there's only one real WTF moment in the whole run time here (that being: water snakes?!).

Most likely, this scaling back of ambition is simply a sensible response to working on a lower budget... but that is quite possibly the first time I've ever used the word "sensible" in any context when discussing Argento, which perhaps says a lot about the more down-to-earth place this film is coming from.

Nonethtless though - it's solid, well made, and has good acting, interesting characters and some moderately exciting horror set-pieces. I enjoyed it. In fact, if this had been the debut film of a new director, I'd probably have thought, "wow, this person has talent - definitely one to watch", which is perhaps the ultimate compliment which could be paid to a legend like Dario at this point in his career; god bless 'im.

B+

[Gary Banks Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Gary Banks]

Gary, I've seen both versions too and feel pretty much the same. Let me ask you however, if a person who has not seen either, plans to watch both, which version would you recommend they watch first?

George, that is a tough question. But I would go with the American version first, especially if the viewer was a Karloff fan. (I do need to watch the Italian version soon).

For me the perfect version would be a combo of both. Open with the US version of The Telephone as I like the ghost angle more than the Italian murder version, then the Karloff version (US obviously) and end with the Italian version of Drop Of Water with its ending fixed on the corpse.