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Post by crazyoldhermit on Feb 8, 2015 7:24:31 GMT -5
Been in a bit of a funk lately so I've been watching a lot of Taxi Driver. The only movie I can think of that I wish was six hours long (or longer). I could spend hours and hours just cruising through the lowlifes of New York City watching Travis lose his mind.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 8, 2015 11:58:30 GMT -5
Most of the classic films I've watched lately have had Rifftrax added to them. I watched Maniac earlier in the weekend. Holy Crap! That film was an absolute mess. Ed Wood level bad.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 8, 2015 13:20:18 GMT -5
Most of the classic films I've watched lately have had Rifftrax added to them. I watched Maniac earlier in the weekend. Holy Crap! That film was an absolute mess. Ed Wood level bad. I love Maniac! This is the Dwain Esper movie from the 1930s, right? It is pretty WHACKED-OUT, yes, but it is very entertaining and only an hour long.
I have it on a DVD collection (10 discs, 50 movies for $30) that was full of wonderful nonsense (and also some public domain classics like Metropolis). I used to watch Maniac fairly regularly, but I haven't seen it for a while.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 8, 2015 13:36:55 GMT -5
Earlier this week I watch both The Corpse Vanishes (1942) and Bowery at Midnight (1942) with Bela Lugosi on TCM On Demand. They were decent efforts but honestly can't say I was too impressed with either film. I love both these movies, especially Bowery at Midnight. Lugosi is like a Dick Tracy or Batman villain, a mad sociologist whose calling card is the body of one of his accomplices left at every crime scene. (You would think that would hurt recruitment.)
I watched The Corpse Vanishes on TCM On Demand this week. I haven't seen it for a while. The female reporter is hilarious. And then there's Angelo Rositto, as Toby, Lugosi's dwarf assistant. It's great where he's waving his finger at the big brutish assistant and telling him he's going to get in trouble because he likes to sneak into the vault where the comatose girls are kept and he strokes their hair.
And Lugosi is so evil to Toby! Toby is shot by the cops while trying to escape and he says "Master, don't leave me!" and Lugosi kicks him to the street and abandons him! Was it really that hard to pick up a 30-pound dwarf and put him in the car?
A friend of mine saw The Corpse Vanishes in the 1940s when he was a kid, and he always felt bad for Toby. My friend said he wondered about poor little Toby for decades, it was kind of an obsession. And when he moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, he saw the actor who played Toby riding the bus, and my friend said he felt really good about that because it seemed to him that Toby had survived Lugosi's betrayal and had reformed and had a good life in L.A.
Angelo had a long film career. As late as 1985, he had a substantial role in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 8, 2015 13:42:02 GMT -5
Most of the classic films I've watched lately have had Rifftrax added to them. I watched Maniac earlier in the weekend. Holy Crap! That film was an absolute mess. Ed Wood level bad. I love Maniac! This is the Dwain Esper movie from the 1930s, right? It is pretty WHACKED-OUT, yes, but it is very entertaining and only an hour long.
I have it on a DVD collection (10 discs, 50 movies for $30) that was full of wonderful nonsense (and also some public domain classics like Metropolis). I used to watch Maniac fairly regularly, but I haven't seen it for a while.
Yep, that's the one. I honestly can't imagine watching it without the commentary. It doesn't have that unintentionally funny feel that a lot of bad films have. It's just bad. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 8, 2015 13:51:38 GMT -5
I love Maniac! This is the Dwain Esper movie from the 1930s, right? It is pretty WHACKED-OUT, yes, but it is very entertaining and only an hour long.
I have it on a DVD collection (10 discs, 50 movies for $30) that was full of wonderful nonsense (and also some public domain classics like Metropolis). I used to watch Maniac fairly regularly, but I haven't seen it for a while.
Yep, that's the one. I honestly can't imagine watching it without the commentary. It doesn't have that unintentionally funny feel that a lot of bad films have. It's just bad. I've never seen it with commentary. And I can't even call it a bad movie because it is hilarious! I bet I watched it 10 times over a three-year period back when I first got it.
(OK. I CAN call it a bad movie because it is pretty bad. But it is hilarious!)
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Post by Jesse on Feb 8, 2015 18:29:59 GMT -5
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)  While the premise is interesting I found the characters and story boring. Some of the gore was really good though like John Merchant being decapitated looked incredible. Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)  This was a really solid psychological detective noir that I felt brought the franchise back to it's dark, moody and disturbing roots. The designs of the Cenobites were really creepy especially the one without any legs. My only complaint is at times it doesn't really feel like it's part of the Hellraiser franchise and there are not nearly enough Pinhead scenes.
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Post by berkley on Feb 9, 2015 0:42:40 GMT -5
I thought the first Hellraiser was a bit of a modern horror classic, but the one sequel I watched (the first sequel, 2nd movie of the series) didn't do anything for me - it felt like the quintessential "franchise" instalment that drained away all the mystery and strangeness that made the Cenobites so weirdly effective in the first film by showing us too much of them. More like a rather ho-hum fantasy movie than anything else. So I'm curious about how fans of the series see it so differently - what do you like about it as a series?
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Post by Pharozonk on Feb 9, 2015 0:50:44 GMT -5
Nightbreed  Last night's viewing was Clive Barker's Nightbreed. I know this movie has a huge cult following, but it just never clicked with me. The tone is all over the place, jumping from dark fantasy a la Pan's Labyrinth to Frankenstein esque monster persecution. This disjoined elements come together into something intriguing and endearing, but don't resonate with me as other B-movies from the same era do. One interesting theme of homosexuality is present throughout the movie and is probably one of the few horror movies to ever tackle the subject in such an original way.
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Post by Dizzy D on Feb 9, 2015 4:24:58 GMT -5
Nightbreed is the same as most Clive Barker's novel: the interest is in the weird world he build that we only glimpse throughout the movie.
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Post by Jesse on Feb 9, 2015 7:25:30 GMT -5
I thought the first Hellraiser was a bit of a modern horror classic, but the one sequel I watched (the first sequel, 2nd movie of the series) didn't do anything for me - it felt like the quintessential "franchise" instalment that drained away all the mystery and strangeness that made the Cenobites so weirdly effective in the first film by showing us too much of them. More like a rather ho-hum fantasy movie than anything else. So I'm curious about how fans of the series see it so differently - what do you like about it as a series? I really enjoyed the first two films. I think Clive Barker definitely tried to top himself with Hellraiser II by giving us this beautifully surreal hellscape, some interesting world building and exposition of the Cenobites and Pinhead. Although I can see fans of the original film not liking it given how different they are. The rest of the sequels seem to be a bit all over the place and are basically unrelated horror stories with the puzzlebox, Pinhead and the Cenobites shoehorned in. The fourth film is a sci-fi movie, the fifth a detective noir, the eighth film resorts to the teenagers partying slasher movie cliché, etc. My favorite thing about the series is Doug Bradley who never fails to give a great performance as Pinhead. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 10, 2015 14:45:32 GMT -5
FXM showed a movie last night that I've been wanting to see for DECADES and I got it on the DVR.
It's called I Was an Adventuress, and it stars Peter Lorre and Erich von Stroheim. I don't even remember where I first heard of it, I just remember seeing a still in a book or a magazine. The image was Lorre and von Stroheim looking sneaky in the presence of a very pretty young lady (the adventuress, I presume) and the caption identified the film as I Was an Adventuress, directed by Gregory Ratoff. There was very little information otherwise. I don't think the film was identified in the text. (If it was, it was barely mentioned.)
That was about 25 years ago. And it sounds like an unbeatable combination to me! Peter Lorre, Erich von Stroheim and an adventuress!
It might be really terrible, but it's probably not much longer than an hour, so it's probably worth watching.
I think I have time for it this afternoon.
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 10, 2015 14:48:22 GMT -5
Here's the poster.  Lookit! Sig Rumann! I didn't know he was in it! |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2015 15:00:47 GMT -5
I'm about halfway through Giant with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean. I see this movie pretty much on an average of every 2-3 years and I have seen it about 15-20 times in my life and I never, ever grew tired of it Wesley and it's a great film about the oil industry and quite dramatic. It is sad to me that it was James Dean last film and I was sad to see that to unfold here. James Dean is one of my favorite actor in the grand ole days of Hollywood.  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Feb 10, 2015 17:52:11 GMT -5
I Was an Adventuress was great! It was slightly above average as a con artist/romance movie for an hour or so, but the last fifteen minutes had a lengthy Swan Lake interlude that I found mesmerizing.
The lead actress - Vera Zorina - was something rare among Hollywood personalities, a ballet dancer they tried to turn into a movie star. I Was an Adventuress is a lot of fun, helped a lot by Lorre and von Stroheim, but it is actually pretty whacky and I can see why this kind of thing didn't catch on.
I loved it. Vera Zorina is a striking woman, with a lot of personality, and not a bad actress at all.
I'm not much of a ballet fan, but I love Swan Lake. And the mini-production at the end of this movie was kinda awesome in several different ways. Graceful and beautiful at times, but with just enough goofy Hollywood touches to really sell it to people who like goofy 1930s Hollywood. Like me.
If you ever get a chance to see this
RUN, DON'T WALK!!!
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