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Post by tartanphantom on Oct 8, 2023 20:42:15 GMT -5
I recently watched The Keep for the first time in about 20 years. I remember being one of the few who actually enjoyed it when it was first released in 1983. However, I saw the film before I read the novel. When I finally read the novel a couple of years later, I realized just how far the film deviated from the original storyline. It also didn't help that the film was trimmed from over 200 minutes to 96 minutes for the actual theater release, so they left a LOT of unused footage on the cutting room floor. I imagine that this unused footage could have indeed fleshed out the plot a bit more, since the final version was quite cryptic and full of plot holes that were never resolved or answered. Also, as much as I like Scott Glenn's work, his performance was pretty wooden in this one. But If you like ambient synth music, the Tangerine Dream soundtrack is pretty darn good. Apparently, the creator, F. Paul Wilson held the movie in very high disdain, likely due to Director Michael Mann's reworking of it into some sort of ersatz horror monster flick, instead of the historical mystery/suspense novel that it was based upon.
I can't honestly recommend it as a "good" film, because if you've never read the book you will end up with more questions than answers at the end of the movie. Nevertheless, I did feel a mild pang of early 1980's nostalgia when I watched it this time around, but that's about it. Still, the Tangerine Dream soundtrack is totally worth searching out if you're into that sort of thing; which I was at the time the movie came out.
I have no idea why the MPAA-approved trailer is "age-restricted" on Youtube... yes, the film itself was rated "R" in the US, but the trailer is pretty boring and mundane.
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Post by berkley on Oct 8, 2023 21:48:00 GMT -5
Another one I wasn't sure whether to read the book or see the movie first, but after Tartanphantom's post I'm leaning more towards the book.
OTOH, I have found that if I see the movie first, it doesn't usually ruin my enjoyment of the book, apart from knowing what happens as far as the plot goes (or some of it, depending on how close they kept to the original); but reading the book first often does lessen my interest in seeing a movie version at all because it feels obvious they'll never be able to fit everything from the book into the film, or capture the atmosphere, characters, etc - -assuming they even want to, which they often don't.
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Post by berkley on Oct 8, 2023 21:54:12 GMT -5
Just watched the awesome 1986 film Armour of God last night... (Unlike the trailer from the dubbed version, I watched the version with the original dialogue in Cantonese) What a blast! I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd last watched one of Jackie Chan's classic action films. This is one I'd never seen before, and I only recently found out that parts of it were filmed on location in Zagreb (basically the excellent car chase in the middle) as well as a few scenes in Motovun (a hilltop town near the northern Croatian coast) and also Slovenia (the rather impressively picturesque Predjama Castle). It was really a trip seeing those guys tearing around parts of the city I'm so familiar with (also found it amusing that in a few quick scenes you can see a banner which says "Respect for Tito" in Croatian - because otherwise in the movie there's no mention of where they're supposed to be, just somewhere in Europe). Here's a clip of the car chase scene, by the way: However, I recommend watching the whole thing; it's just wonderfully silly, action-packed fun all the way through. Chan also injured his head pretty seriously when shooting a scene and footage of the accident and Chan getting put on a stretcher and into an ambulance are shown during the end credits.
I just recently saw the Chow Yun Fat movie God of Gamblers again for the first time in many years and then Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild, which I had never seen before, and they've rekindled my interest in HK movies. I'm going to try to see some that I've missed up to now but I can already foresee that I won't be able to resist re-watching a few old favorites like Armour of God and other Jackie Chan classics.
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Post by berkley on Oct 12, 2023 20:18:47 GMT -5
Forgot to mention that a few months back I finally got around to watching a classic HK movie I've been meaning to see for years, Sammo Hung's Pedicab Driver. And last night, in the spirit of Hallowe'en, I watched A Chinese Ghost Story, another HK classic. That one i'd seen before, but not since probably the mid-1990s. I have a couple other HK supernatural movies lined up, among other things in that line.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 12, 2023 23:36:38 GMT -5
Tonight I’m watching Carnival of Souls (1962). I really love this movie but I haven’t seen it for a while. I got the Criterion Collection edition from the library. I’m watching the director’s cut. Five added minutes!
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Post by berkley on Oct 12, 2023 23:56:43 GMT -5
Tonight I’m watching Carnival of Souls (1962). I really love this movie but I haven’t seen it for a while. I got the Criterion Collection edition from the library. I’m watching the director’s cut. Five added minutes!
I've seen it only once, and many years ago, but I rate it as one of the best horror movies of all time. I'm trying to hold off re-watching it until I get into other things from the early 1960s, which hopefully shouldn't be too long.
Tonight I watched for the first time Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991). It was a lot of fun. I think King Ghidorah is my favourite of all the giant monsters of Japanese film, mainly because I find he has the best visual design - the three heads weaving around, the golden scale-armour skin, the wings, etc. They seem to have made some changes to the origins of both monsters in this one, particularly Ghidorah, and I don't think they were improvements, but I'm assuming this was a one-off variation and didn't become "canon" (as we funny-book fans call it).
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Post by Batflunkie on Oct 13, 2023 8:51:34 GMT -5
Watched "Panic In Year Zero" (1962)
Basic gist is that this family is going camping and during their outing, a nuclear bomb drops and leading to mass hysteria amongst everyone in the state. It focuses mostly on the family's fight for survival in what the newscaster dubs "year zero". Thought the ending was a little bit too sugar coated given what happened, but otherwise, pretty decent little movie
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 13, 2023 12:35:08 GMT -5
Watched "Panic In Year Zero" (1962) Basic gist is that this family is going camping and during their outing, a nuclear bomb drops and leading to mass hysteria amongst everyone in the state. It focuses mostly on the family's fight for survival in what the newscaster dubs "year zero". Thought the ending was a little bit too sugar coated given what happened, but otherwise, pretty decent little movie I saw this just a few years ago and I really liked it. Ray Milland has several genre films from the ’60s and ’70s that I like a lot, and I tend to watch at least one of them on Halloween while I’m waiting for the trick-or-treaters. X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes The Thing with Two Heads Frogs They are all highly entertaining. I call it Ray Milland’s Terrible Trilogy. I’ve been thinking about adding Panic in Year Zero into the mix. But I don’t really think it competes very well with the other films as a Halloween movie. I mean, I’ve been thinking about watching Frogs this year. Panic in Year Zero is just not the same thing. I might fit it in sometime in October.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 16, 2023 12:50:52 GMT -5
Last night, I watched The Unknown (1927). With Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford. I’ve seen this one over and over again. This time, I got it from the library, so I was able to watch it with the historian’s commentary by Michael Blake. Even though I’ve seen it so many times, this is not one of those movies that I’ve read articles about and studied or thought very much about how it was made. So the commentary was informative and fascinating. And I watched the movie again a few hours later, this time without the commentary.
That scene where he comes back to the circus after having both his arms amputated, to find out that Nanon (Joan Crawford) is no longer afraid of arms and she’s going to marry the strong man and she says “Isn’t it wonderful!” And Alonzo’s face as he makes that sick grin and hisses “yeah ... that’s ... great” ...
It’s one of the best scenes in Chaney’s filmography.
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Post by commond on Oct 22, 2023 6:12:42 GMT -5
Kicked off Halloween by watching Suspiria. So very, very good. The soundtrack by Goblin is so cool. Argento's masterpiece? I think so. I know a lot of critics like Deep Red, but Suspiria is scarier as far as I'm concerned.
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Post by Calidore on Oct 22, 2023 10:28:53 GMT -5
Kicked off Halloween by watching Suspiria. So very, very good. The soundtrack by Goblin is so cool. Argento's masterpiece? I think so. I know a lot of critics like Deep Red, but Suspiria is scarier as far as I'm concerned. Argento was on quite the roll during this time, wasn't he? For straight-up visual artistry, he was reliably amazing. I've got the 4K discs of Deep Red, Suspiria, and Phenomena, which are all great fun. I think comparing Deep Red and Suspiria is apples and oranges, though, as one's a murder mystery and the other is straight-up horror.
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Post by berkley on Oct 22, 2023 13:05:43 GMT -5
Kicked off Halloween by watching Suspiria. So very, very good. The soundtrack by Goblin is so cool. Argento's masterpiece? I think so. I know a lot of critics like Deep Red, but Suspiria is scarier as far as I'm concerned. Argento was on quite the roll during this time, wasn't he? For straight-up visual artistry, he was reliably amazing. I've got the 4K discs of Deep Red, Suspiria, and Phenomena, which are all great fun. I think comparing Deep Red and Suspiria is apples and oranges, though, as one's a murder mystery and the other is straight-up horror.
I saw Suspiria a few weeks ago - with Goblin (the current version) playing the soundtrack live. I'd seen it on video years ago, back in the 1990s, but this was a much better experience, although having the live band doing the music took a bit of getting used to at first - they cranked the volume of the movie dialogue soundtrack so it would be heard through the volume of the band. I've been lucky to see several of Argento's '70s films at the theatre the last couple years, including Deep Red, which I agree is a contender for his best, of the 4 or 5 I've seen.
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Post by commond on Oct 26, 2023 17:28:56 GMT -5
I watched two more Argento films for my Halloween week viewing -- Tenebrae and Phenomena. They were very good films, but closer to thrillers than true horror films. Phenomena was the scarier of the two. The ending was over-the-top but gory. Donald Pleasence somehow managed to be creepier than the kid at the end.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Oct 29, 2023 13:06:02 GMT -5
Was feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, so I ended up relaxing and spending a bit more time than usual watching TV, so I finally got around to watching William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977): It's pretty friggin' intense as the heart of the story involves four guys in two rickety trucks carrying some highly unstable nitroglycerin through the jungles of Columbia. Despite some minor criticisms I could make about a few plot/story points, it's a pretty damn good film and well worth watching. Edited to add: In case you're wondering, the movie's title comes from the name of one of the trucks - there's no magic or anything supernatural here. It's a very harshly gritty real-world type of story. Otherwise, anyone interested in watching should know that the entire movie is posted on YouTube - by two different users in fact.
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Post by berkley on Oct 29, 2023 16:33:08 GMT -5
Was feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, so I ended up relaxing and spending a bit more time than usual watching TV, so I finally got around to watching William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977): It's pretty friggin' intense as the heart of the story involves four guys in two rickety trucks carrying some highly unstable nitroglycerin through the jungles of Columbia. Despite some minor criticisms I could make about a few plot/story points, it's a pretty damn good film and well worth watching. Edited to add: In case you're wondering, the movie's title comes from the name of one of the trucks - there's no magic or anything supernatural here. It's a very harshly gritty real-world type of story. Otherwise, anyone interested in watching should know that the entire movie is posted on YouTube - by two different users in fact.
I saw this at the local movie theatre just a few weeks ago. I think it might be Friedkin's best, of the ones I've seen. I had the Tangerine Dream soundtrack on vinyl back in the late '70s or early '80s but had never seen the film itself until now. Great photography. The basic story concept of the dangerous truck-drive with explosives is the same as in The Wages of Fear but the four characters are all different, with almost no correspondence to the four in the earlier film.
I also saw Cruising for the first time. For me, that one was more an interesting failure. Definitely worth a look though, if only as a period piece.
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