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]

I watched this double feature today. Yellow is a Filipino metaphysical horror movie and Blue is an Edgar Wallace krimi/horror thriller. First saw this combo back in 1977 or 1978 at the drive in.

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
023-Mark Of The Vampire *** bd
024-Dracula Vs Frankenstein (71) **bd
025-Mill Of The Stone Women ****bd
026-Beast of The Yellow Night ***1/2 bd
027-Creature With The Blue Hand *** dvd

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

#23
Carnival of Blood
(Leonard Kirtman, 1970)

This may be a dead loss as a horror film, but as a quasi-documentary about the skuzzy underworld of the Coney Island amusement park cira 1970, it's actually pretty compelling.

In terms of the fictional story, some of the cast do surprisingly good work (not least Burt Young, delivering a truly heart-rending turn in his screen debut as Gimpy the Hunchback), but the whole thing has a strong Andy Milligan kind of vibe to it too -- that sense of every relationship turning sour, of every character being just a hairs-breadth away from letting loose with some vengeful, neurotic ranting.

It's one of those low budget movies in which everyone looks exhausted and filthy - not as a artistic decision on the part of the filmmakers, but just because they were.

Even the Assistant DA is a sleazy guy in a polyester shirt and kipper tie who shares a one room apartment with fishing nets hung above the bed with a hippie/artist chick. What a world.

And those horrible, cheap-ass teddy bears the guy gives away at his carnival stall - god, they're more disgusting than any of the (fairly minimal and unimpressive) gore effects.

Purely as a textural experience / cultural artifact though, it's really got something unique going on.

I also enjoyed the music (strung-out coffee house folk and some acid rock jamming during the final reel), and the few seconds of accidental porn spliced into the mangled print AGFA scanned for their release.

B

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

31 Days of Horror 2022 Day 19 Wrong Turn 4 Bloody Beginnings




TITLE-Wrong Turn 4 Bloody Beginnings



SOURCE-20th Century Fox DVD

Well I try my best to watch at least once every horror film I get a copy of. Which has lead to me watching some total crap. I also have every year since 2000 reviewed 31 horror films in the month of October. Never repeating a film and for years avoiding the big slasher franchises.




These two things tend to work against each other. For example 2012ish I bought a Echo Bridge 10 pack of horror movies. Was 5 bucks and I wanted Howling 4 on DVD.I had seen it back when it first hit cable decades ago and remember enjoying it. This multipack was a cheap way for me to get a copy of it. And well if any of the other 9 films turn out to be decent that is a bonus. My rule of trying to at least once watch every horror film I end up with a copy of and this pack is how I discovered Vampeggedon. A film I both love and hate.




All of this is trying to explain why I decided to watch and review Wrong Turn 4 Bloody Beginnings. I know I saw this a long ass time ago when it aired on Syfy. Back 10 or so years ago most Halloweens I would goto my cousins. And she would end up DVRing any horror films airing on AMC or SYFY to show her kids. We watched Wrong Turn 4 and I remember it having like 2 good kills and the rest just sucking.




The DVD,which is part of that pack of the first 6 films on dvd,is loaded with extras. Got a commentary with the director. A Music video for some song from the movie. Deleted scenes and other extras. The film looks and sounds decent. And by part 4 of this oddly long lived modern horror franchise the films were going DTV. But this looks and feels like a smaller budget theater released film.




Set in a asylum this movie gives us a kind of origin for the Hillickers. The 3 crazy inbred hillbillies from West Virginia. I enjoyed the first 3 films.




At the start we meet the three brothers,Three Finger,One Eye and Sawtooth. Malformed thanks to inbreeding they are locked up in a pretty brutal looking mental hospital. Guessing this is the 70s.




Thanks to a bobbie pin the three brothers get loose from their cell. They first attack an orderly and the slaughter continues for pretty much about an hour and a half.

After this flashback to the 70s the film skips ahead to 2003. And a bunch of college age kids are lost on their snowmobiles. It is night and a blizzard is hitting.So they go seek refuge in the old abandoned nut house. But the Hillickers are there so we get plenty of hillbilly hellish hijinx.

Film in Bulgaria. This was the start of a planned trilogy of prequels to the original Wrong Turn. Early on during the commentary with the director it is revealed why this 4th film in the series was the start of a 3 film set of prequels. I had forgotten this but Three Finger got killed off in Part 3. So the only way to have the three brothers in a film is a prequel. And learning their history could be a great premise for a film. This film isn't that film.




I did like that this was a slasher set in winter where there is snow. Surprised more films don't go for the winter/snow setting.Sure it is a pain in the ass to deal with. But it adds something to what is otherwise a run of the mill prequel/sequel in a franchise most fans forgot about 2 entries ago.




Worth seeing if you can find the pack of the first 6 films for 10 bucks or less. Appears each of the discs in this set is the old dvd releases. So you get all the extras on the original stand alone film releases.




Wrong Turn 4 Bloody Beginnings gets a C+



And Cody covers The RIng
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-1998.html?m=1

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

Today was Night Watch, streamed from Disney+. Sadly, Disney+ just uses generic subtitles for it, even though other services had the stylized custom subs in the past. Still a great movie, though!

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

10/18
The Flesh Eaters
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
The Gorgon

10/19
Countess Dracula
Hands of the Ripper
Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde
The Revenge of Frankenstein

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

The Ghost of The Hunchback (1965). A Japanese riff on Hollywood haunted house spectaculars. They'd definitely seen The Haunting. All shadows and creaking doors and people creeping round. Good stuff if your into that sort of thing. There's a very acceptable subtitled version on YouTube

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

#24
Hammer House of Horror:
Charlie Boy
(Robert Young, TV, 1980)

Episode # 6! This one was very enjoyable.

Although the "I inherited a voodoo doll" plotline is old as the hills, and the script involves some extraordinary leaps of logic on the part of the protagonists, the execution is great, with strong direction, likeable/unusual characters and some satisfyingly bloody violence.

The highlight is probably the vaguely 'Performance'-esque sequence in which the murder of a scarfaced East End villian, stabbed to death in a nightclub basement, is crudely intercut with footage of the lead couple making love, reflected in the eyes of the episode's legitmately scary-looking African fetish doll.

One of the best HHoH episodes I've watched thus far, I think.

B+

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

So far today, it has been the original Buffy: The Vampire Slayer movie and most of season 3 of What We Do in the Shadows.

[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
023-Mark Of The Vampire *** bd
024-Dracula Vs Frankenstein (71) **bd
025-Mill Of The Stone Women ****bd
026-Beast of The Yellow Night ***1/2 bd
027-Creature With The Blue Hand *** dvd
028-Brain Of Blood ** BD
029-Star Crash * bd
030-The Poughkeepsie Tapes *** dvd
031-Dracula (58) **** UKbd

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

31 Days of Horror 2022 Day 20 Wrong Turn 5 Bloodlines




TITLE-Wrong Turn 5 Bloodlines



SOURCE-2oth Century Fox DVD

Got a set over a year ago with the first 6 Wrong Turn films. Sure I already owned part 1,but figured for 10 bucks I was getting a deal.

Before this I had seen 1,2 and 3 of the series. It was late one night and I wanted a movie to watch. Settled on Bloodlines,which is part 5,and was shocked how much I enjoyed it.

This film is set before the first 4. Giving us a bit of a origin/backstory for the crazy inbred hillbillies.

Seems a long time ago Dougla Bradley was a serial killer. And he became a father figure for our 3 killer West Virginia inbreds.Also notice how this film get the subtitle Bloodlines and Bradley was in Hellraiser 4 which was subtitled Bloodline.

Now after 4 films in the series you know going in what you are getting. Plenty of gore and manic hillbillies. Plenty of women in skimy clothing. And gorgeous scenery. Filmed in Bulgaria this passed for rural backwoods West Virginia. Which makes sense IIRC the Jesco White movie White Lightning also used Bulgaria to stand in for Boone County WV.

Our three killers are smart. They take out the phone lines and cell tower. Then kill the power for the entire town. Love it cause this gets around the modern horror trope of some checkign their cell and saying "I aint getting any signal"

Also with Wrong Turn you go in wanting gory kills and part 5 does disappoint. Piles and piles of gore. With the final kill being really well done.

I was expecting a by the numbers long in the tooth sequel and instead got a well made pretty fun prequel.

Wrong Turn 5 gets a solid C.

COdy covers Ring 2 Rasen
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-1998.html?m=1

[James Reed Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close James Reed]

I finally got around to watching The Evil Clergyman on Tubi. This was originally part of Pulsepounders, the anthology film from Empire Pictures that never got released. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton star, it was based on a H.P. Lovecraft story and Charles Band produced and directed. A very strange short horror film, with David Gale as a rat monster! There's a mild sex scene and brief nudity, so I'm wondering if this film really was aiming at a PG-13 rating. Can you see a sex scene in a PG-13 movie? I liked it, but I'm also an Empire / Full Moon fan, so maybe I liked it more than some will.

So far, this is the only horror film I've watched this month. I'm glad I found the time to watch at least this. Thankfully the 29 minute running time played into me actually having time around 4 a.m. to watch something that wouldn't take long. I'll give it 2.5 stars!

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

10/20
Carnage (1984)

Also checked out a bit of the Secret Halloween 2022 disc from Thunderbean. I haven't seen one of these Halloween discs top the first one I got years back, Halloween Rarities, but they've all been pretty fun regardless and look nice + it's cool checking out these random, old horror-themed cartoons; hopefully he keeps doing these!

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

31 Days of Horror 2022 Day 21 Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors




TITLE-Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors



SOURCE-New Line Cinema DVD

With 8 or 9 entries in the franchise,depending on if you considered Freddy vs Jason as an entry,the Elm Street series of horror films is one I have enjoyed since I saw the first movie close almost 40 years ago. And while I do love that first film,it has always been the 3rd film that is my favorite of the run.




Set in a mental hospital we get Nancy coming back,now grown. And teaming up with what is left of the Elm Street teens to fight off Freddy.

This was the film in the series that established that in the dream world some people will have super powers. Like the Dream Warriors mentioned in the subtitle of this film. Like Kincaid in this film is super strong in the dream world or the one guy who in the real world is stuck in a wheelchair but in the dream world is a powerful wizard. This aspect of the series is something that was kept around from this film forward.

Look at the cast of this film. So many people in it that at the time were not big stars yet. Like Patricia Arquette. Honestly this is the first thing I saw her in. She is our lead and shows in this film why she has had a long long career in the film/tv field. Then you have Laurence Fishburne as one of the orderlies. Sure he had done stuff before this like Death Wish II. But this was for me the first big break out role for this really good actor.

For a long time this was also the Elm Street film I had seen the most. All because while I grew up in an area with out cable I had an Aunt that would record films off HBO for me. We would go see this Aunt,who was my dad's oldest sister,usually every few weeks. And I would go through her HBO guide and circle all the movies I wanted to see. Next trip to Aunt Dot's place she would have 4 or 5 tapes full of movies for me. So late 1987 or might have been early 1988 I got a tape from her that had Munchies,Morons from Outer Space and Elm Street 3. And I know the first week I had that tape I watched Elm Street 3 at least 4 times. Not that many years ago I was going through a box full of old "blank" VHS and found the tape I had Elm Street 3 on it. For shits and giggles I tossed that tape into my trusty VCR and was shocked that the tape was still in ok shape. Sure it looked a bit grainy and fuzzy but it was over 30 years old. Sadly right before the film was over my VCR ate the tape. I managed to get the tape out of the player and back into it's case. But it was badly damaged.

For me this film is the perfect blending of the horror and the comedy of Freddy Kruger. Unlike the later films Freddy isn't totally a stand up comedian yet. But he still managed to crack a few good jokes.

And the kills.... So many good ones in this film. The puppet kill is one I have always loved. One of the teens at the hospital makes puppets. So Freddy uses this kids veins as strings and puppet masters this kid to his death. Another stand out death is when one of the teens can't sleep. So she is staying up late watching a late night talk show. Freddy appears on the TV and this girl walks over to the TV. This TV has Freddy's head coming out the top and arms on the side. And Freddy grabs the girl and slams her head first into the TV.

Also I love how you can watch this movie without seeing any of the previous ones and not be lost. Fairly quickly early on in the film we are told who Freddy is and what he has done.

Now I might have my timeline wrong,not sure on this and too lazy to look it up,but it feels like this film was the start of Freddy being marketed some to kids. IIRC it was after this film that the Freddy action figure was released along with Freddy themed kids PJs. Not sure how many people born after 2000 know this but before then most movie theaters rarely checked or asked for ID when buying a movie ticket. So way before I was 16 I was buying tickets to R rated films like Elm Street 3. There was piles of 80s era films that were R rated and still marketed to kids. Like how Robocop was this film so violent they had to cut stuff out to avoid getting the dreadded X rating. But you had Robocop action figures and comic books. Speaking of comics I thhink it was around the time Elm Street 3 came out that Marvel Comics published 2 issues of the magazine sized B/W Nightmare on Elm Street comic.

So if you haven't seen Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors go see it. It is the best of the Elm Street films to be released in the 80s.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3 gets a A.


Cody covers the real Ring 2
http://codysfilmandtvblog.blogspot.c...-1999.html?m=1

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

I took Friday night off from movies to go and see Acid Mothers Temple & DMBQ play - the first properly busy music event I've deliberately bought tickets for and attended post-pandemic. No horrors involved, thankfully.

Thursday's feature presentation however was...

#25
The Horrible Sexy Vampire ['El Vampiro de la Autopista']
(José Luis Madrid, 1971)

Well, I've got to hand it to 'em - his behaviour is horrible, he's sexier than yr average movie monster (insofar as these things go), and he is, indisputably, a vampire - and an invisible man to boot!

Leaving aside its modest success in living up to its English language title however, it saddens me to report that this film is unimaginative, amateurish and astoundingly dull, padded out with extended, desk-based dialogue scenes which must have driven the dubbing team crazy as they tried to come up with enough mindless banter to fill all the dead air.

Even the frequent scenes of female nudity, which must have been quite risque for some markets at the time of release, now seem laughably quaint, all being based around the inherently comic notion that the very first thing most women do upon returning home is take off all their clothes and look at their boobs in the mirror (just to check they're still there, I suppose)... thus making best possible use of those few valuable seconds before the horrible, sexy invisible-vampire-man barges in and throttles them.

Even though this is not a film which could honestly be recommended to anyone on any conventional basis however, there were a few eccentricties which kept me hooked - not least the extraordinary presence of Waldemar Wohlfahrt (aka Wal Davis) in both the title role and also that of the vampire's ennui-ridden British great grandson, Count Oblensky.

A lanky weirdo with a shock of almost albino-like white hair, Wahlfahrt plays the latter character as a kind of glum, aimless aristocrat who wants nothing more out of life than to be left alone to spend his evenings indulging his passion for taxidermy and getting absolutely hammered on hard liquor, drunk straight from the bottle.

This characterisation becomes even stranger when one learns - via Ismeal Fredandez's liner notes to Mondo Macabro's blu-ray - that this film was essentially conceived as a kind of vanity project for Wahlfahrt, designed to capitalise on the notoriety he'd gained through being falsely accused of a series of serial murders which took place in Germany during the 1960s. (Tastefully, the film is shot in Stuttgart, near where the murders took place, and is packed with references to the crimes and the circumstances surrounding Wahlfahrt's arrest.)

But, that's another story - and a far more interesting one than anything which takes place in 'The Horrible Sexy Vampire', it must be said.

Meanwhile, I also liked Count Oblensky's weird insistence that, having inherited his family's castle, he must act in strict accordance with the strange rules imposed in the will of his ancestor, who died in 1886 (I mean, who the hell does he think is going to take him to court to enforce them?), and the film's English dubbing is also enjoyably goofy, sharing the same vibe of dead-pan absurdity as classics like 'The Devil's Nightmare', not least re: the script's unfortunate decision to name the vampire "Baron Winninger", invariably pronounced by the voice actors as "Baron Vinegar".

And finally, I really dug the score, by Ángel Arteaga, which contains several memorable cues, most notably the absolutely delightful and very catchy piece for acoustic guitar, vibraphone and shrill female vocals which plays incessently during the second half of the film. ("Love theme from The Horrible Sexy Vampire", anyone?) I'd love to have a copy of that one on 7" or something.

C+

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

Went to a fleapit theater to see TERRIFIER 2. It was the perfect venue for this outrageously brutal and mean slasher flick. It's needlessly long (138 minutes) and horribly paced, but it has some of the craziest kills I've ever seen (it gets close to AUGUST UNDERGROUND territory at times). The first 15 minutes are extraordinary and surreal, but then there's a weird 10-minute dream sequence that throws the whole movie off-balance and the pacing never really recovers. This turns out to be the film's major flaw: a good sequence is often followed up with a long, boring one. Not sure what the obnoxious run time is all about, actually; the original was a perfectly-paced, plotless nightmare and it worked beautifully. The bloated length here just exposes the lack of any depth to the story - it gets really tedious at times.