shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,871
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Post by shaxper on Oct 16, 2024 21:23:42 GMT -5
Still in the middle of Bluebeard (1943), but I'm bored out of my mind. It's the most lavish production I've yet seen from poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, the acting and camera work are strong, and it's even starring John Carradine, but the script gives away all its secrets and twists in its first ten minutes and just becomes a boring, plodding Gothic romance between an innocent girl and a psychopathic murderer with a gentile facade after that.
With A better script, this film would have been extraordinary.
3/10
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 16, 2024 22:25:04 GMT -5
Watched The Wicker Man today. I don’t have a huge amount to add to what Cody had to say earlier. It’s probably been every bit of twenty years since I saw it last. I remember it used to play on HBO all the time when I was an undergrad. Great, understated horror film.
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Post by berkley on Oct 16, 2024 23:22:03 GMT -5
Watched The Wicker Man today. I don’t have a huge amount to add to what Cody had to say earlier. It’s probably been every bit of twenty years since I saw it last. I remember it used to play on HBO all the time when I was an undergrad. Great, understated horror film. It played at the local cinema here a year r two ago in a restored version with I think a few extra minutes of footage they had managed to find somewhere - apparently the original film with all the missing stuff has been long lost. I had seen it years ago on video but as usual I found it had a much bigger impact on the big screen. Great cast, great concept, and well executed. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 16, 2024 23:28:33 GMT -5
I watched a few movies over the last few days that I didn’t have time to say a whole lot about.
Freaks - I first saw it about 1990 and I watched it A LOT for a while. Probably an average of three or four times a month for the first year or so. And then once or twice a year for the next 20 years. Nowadays I only watch it once every three or four years, and I still love it so much.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks - I saw this as a kid when it first came out. I didn’t remember it very well, except for the music, because we liked it so much that my parents bought the soundtrack and we used to listen to it in the car a lot. The people I rent from have a big DVD collection, and this was one of the movies, so I’ve been meaning to watch it, and I finally got to it over the weekend. I liked it a lot. But it wasn’t until the next day that I realized what a great Halloween movie it is.
I’ve never seen Children of the Corn before a few days ago. But I remember the trailers, and I know an awful lot of people who have seen it who reference it pretty regularly. So there really wasn’t anything in the movie that surprised me. It’s set in Nebraska but it sure looks like Fayette County in Indiana, where my uncle and some of my cousins live. I could definitely see the people in Fayette County forming a weird little cult like this, but it would be a lot more likely to be built around hating people that want to build wind farms.
The Deadly Mantis - Except for King Kong, this is the first giant monster movie I ever saw. I must’ve been five years old, watching it on late night television, and it trips me out the movie was probably only about 12 years old at the time.
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Post by berkley on Oct 16, 2024 23:28:33 GMT -5
The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968) It wouldn't be Halloween without a little dose of Satanic worship. I'll say this much for the film, it doesn't beat around the bush. No slow burn where you slowly realize something is up with the neighbors. No siree, 10 minutes into this and it's already a full on battle between good and evil. This is considered one of Terence Fisher's best films, and Christopher Lee also spoke highly of it. I'm not the biggest fan of Hammer films. I don't have a particularly high opinion of Fisher's directing ability or the photography in Hammer films, but where Fisher does succeed is in producing an entertaining yarn. This is about as fun as a movie about devil worshippers can be. I particularly enjoyed Charles Gray's performance as the evil Mocata, as well as Lee playing the good guy for a change. The Ghost of Yotsuya (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1959) This film is based on the famous kabuki play, Yotsuya Kaidan, which is arguably the most famous Japanese ghost story of all-time. The story has been adapted for film over 30 times and was highly influential on those popular Japanese horror films from the turn of the century such as Ringu and Ju-On. This 1959 version is considered to be the best film adaptation of the story. It's a Japanese period film from the 50s, so it has a different rhythm to it than the horror films you're familiar with, but as soon as the ghost shows up it turns into a heck of a film. The ghost is legit scary. A remarkable feat of makeup and lightning, and in full color too. The yuki-onna in Kwaidan is a little scarier, but not by much. Hell have no fury like a Japanese ghost.
I missed this post form a few days ago - haven't seen The Devil Rides Out but I'm a big fan of the Dennis Wheatley novel so I'll have to give it a look sometime. I'm also curious about the film version of To the Devil a Daughter, another of Wheatley's supernatural horror thrillers that I enjoyed many years ago. The Ghost of Yotsuya is new to me, definitely adding that one to the list.
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Post by Jeddak on Oct 16, 2024 23:31:40 GMT -5
Strip Nude for Your Killer - 1975 - Gotta love these titles, eh?
Edwige Fenech is back, though she's playing a much less interesting character this time. Actually, all the characters are uninteresting. The killings are unimaginative. The plot - well, there are some killings, and some soap opera stuff in between. There's no mystery; we're given no clues to the killer's identity, and no reason to suspect who it is until the reveal and exposition dump in the movie's last 4 minutes. Disappointing.
The music was good, though.
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Post by berkley on Oct 17, 2024 0:38:17 GMT -5
Playing catch-up, I watched The Crone (2013), a Japanese movie that blends found footage/urban exploring/ghost hunting with body horror and curses. It follows a trio of would-be idols, a cute, backstabbing, modestly talented singing group called Jersey Girls, whose video exploration of a haunted abandoned hospital leads to disastrous consequences for them and their management team. There’s little fresh here, but the mélange of tropes results in a watchable enough little film. The coherence was a little off, so it was occasionally hard to follow, but it seemed to have a theme, muddled though it was among the trappings. I was mildly impressed by the actresses’ abilities to be more and more awkward and uncomfortable in their performances as the impact of the curse they’ve unleashed becomes evident. I followed with Cube 2: Hypercube, which pushes a lot of my buttons: my love for what I call WTFiction, where much is left inexplicable, my fascination with endless spaces (which long preceded the current Backrooms fascination), and my interest in higher-dimensional physics and math. Like its predecessor, Cube, the sequel follows a group of strangers who find themselves in a maze of cubes, many of which are equipped with death traps. This time, the cubes are in a 4-dimensional space, so taking a passage leading downward from one cube may lead to entering the connected tube not necessarily from its ceiling, but from its floor or one of its sides. It’s not a perfect way to convey the hypercube, but it gets to some of the more easily-grasped aspects of this mathematical construct. Catching up on some earlier posts I missed - I still haven't seen Cube, even though it's something that sounds right up my alley. I remember wanting to get to it when it played here but as often happens it was only here for a few days and my stupid work schedule prevented me. But I should get to it soon, once I go back to exploring the 90s. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 17, 2024 0:44:19 GMT -5
Tonight's feature was The Vampire Lovers, from Hammer. This 1970 film was the first in the Karnstein Trilogy, about a family of vampires, with more overt sexual overtones, though the end result is far tamer than made out to be, especially in retrospect. Yeah, there is some skin, a few kisses, some biting on the breast and a whole lot of implication and a lot less demonstration. None of that would really matter if it were remotely interesting and it is not. Everyone seems to sleepwalk through it and the plot is repetitive, as the vampire Marcilla/Carmilla/Mircalla, played by Ingrid Pitt, is contrived to end up in the homes of first General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing) then Englishman Roger Morton (George Cole. She kills the general's daughter, then disappears, and then is close to claiming Morton's daughter Emma, when Baron Von Hartog (Douglas Wilmer), who had slain the other Karnsteins, in revenge, aids Spielsdorf and Morton in destroying Mircalla/Carmilla, Marcilla.
Madeline Smith, as Emma, makes Twiggy look pudgy and also like she is perpetually goosed, with her eyes seeming to be ready to pop out of her head. She has all the personality of a houseplant and sounds like Haley Mills, on quaaludes, when delivering dialogue. Kate O'Mara is pretty much wasted as Emma's governess, who is bedded by Carmilla/Marcilla/Mircalla and falls under her sway, then is abandoned by her.
The whole thing is dull and not titillating enough to wake you back up. Hammer's best days were well behind it. About all you can say is Ingrid Pitt was well fit (as they say, in the UK).
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Post by berkley on Oct 17, 2024 1:13:31 GMT -5
My other feature tonight was 1972's ABC telemovie, The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin, as reporter Carl Kolchak. The film was written by Richard Matheson, based on an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, which was published after the broadcast. Dan Curtis, of Dark Shadows produced and John L Moxey (The Avengers, The Saint, The Baron, Mission: Impossible, Hawaii 5-0, Genesis II). Set in Las Vegas, where a casino cashier is found dead in an alley, with massive blood loss. Reporter Carl Kolchak is assigned to the story for the Daily News and learns of another dead woman, found in roadside waterway, in the middle of a sandy area, with no footprints, also with massive blood loss. Another victim turns up and it appears that Las Vegas has a serial killer, who is somehow draining his victims of blood. A pathology report indicates puncture wounds, consistent with bite marks caused by large canine teeth and human saliva in the wound. Kolchak works the story, first from the angle of a maniac who thinks he is a vampire, until he witnesses him shrug off multiple police, hits from nightsticks, and bullets at point blank range. Kolchak starts to consider that he may really be a vampire. A friend with the FBI turns up an ID on the man, Janos Skorzeny, Romanian, born in 1899 and a former British citizen, where he was wanted in connection with several murders and a set up was discovered with sumps and freezers, to drain and store blood. The suspect has also robbed hospitals of blood supplies and was in the process when he was discovered and fought the police. Kolchak studies vampire lore and advises the police on how to fight it and locates the vampires house, through a stoolie who showed his image to real estate agents. he goes to the address and faces the vampire. At the time, the movie was the highest rated telemovie in history and it led to a sequel, the Night Strangler, set in Seattle. A third movie, the Night Killers was planned but never produced. Instead, a tv series was commissioned, Kolchack, the Night Stalker. Despite a devoted fan base, the series was cancelled after 20 episodes. The film also factors into a previous entry, Trilogy of Terror, as the film that Karen Black and her date see in the segment, Julie, was footage from The Night Stalker, with the color removed, to look like an old black & white horror movie. The films and subsequent tv series were highly influential on The X-Files, as well as similar takes on horror and mystery stories. What really makes the film great, aside from Matheson's craft as a writer, was the use of a large cast of character actors. Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland (Baa Baa Black Sheep), Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo), Ralph Meeker (The Dirty Dozen), Elisha Cook Jr (The Maltese Falcon), Carol Lynley (tons of 70ss tv), Larry Linville (MASH), Kent Smith (The Fountainhead, tons of tv and movies) and Barry Atwater (Judd for the defense, Twilight Zone, Star Trek) as Janos Skorzeny. Carol Lynley is alluded to being a hooker, but never openly identified as such, due to standards and practices, on the network. She is called "an unsavory element" at the tail end of the film. In the original script, it was more explicit. The first victim is dressed rather like a street hooker, in leather hotpants and high heels, while narration says she was coming home from a shift as a cashier, at a casino. Two other victims are listed as a cocktail waitress and a showgirl and both are dressed in a similar manner. It was the 70s and Vegas; but, the attire, at first makes it look like the killer is focusing on prostitutes. A little later in the decade and that would be outright stated. McGavin narrates, as Kolchak investigates, with bookend sequences of him looking over a manuscript and listening to audio tapes, for a book about the killings. The early 70s were a big time for horror and ABC put a lot of money into producing telemovies and horror was highly featured with things like this and the sequel, Trilogy of Terror, Bad Ronald, Killdozer and the thriller Trapped, with James Brolin, as a mugging victim who is locked inside a department store, after closing, where aggressive guard dogs have been released. Several Movie of The Week features included horror themes and/or the supernatural, or mystery thrillers, like Steve Spielberg's Duel, starring Dennis Weaver. These early productions had large scale budgets and attracted top talent. some were pilots for tv series and that factor increased over time, with a decline in budget and quality killing things, by 1975.
I'm going to try to do this one too later on in the month. Right now I'm watching a few late 50s and 60s movies since the book I'm reading is an anthology that starts around then and extends through the 70s into the early 80s. Tonight I saw another Mexican horror movie, El Vampiro (1957), but I'll have to catch up in a few days on the descriptions of that and the last few I've seen.
I finally got to see Kolchak The Night Stalker tonight. Lots of fun seeing all those familiar faces of 1960s-70s tv and movies. I was impressed by Atwater as the vampire: with his height and facial structure he might have made an interesting Dracula. Another thing I liked, perhaps relatively trivial, was that the scenes where the vampire Skorzeny escapes from the police or others, throwing aside his assailants, etc, didn't feel over-done or cartoonish. We often like to make fun of action scenes from earlier eras of film and tv but I thought the action sequences here were quite convincing in the context of this tv-movie.
Overall, it almost felt more like an early-70s police or crime drama with a few supernatural elements added on: McGavin's Kolchak, as in many American shows and movie, is ridiculously antagonistic towards various people he would in real life be much more likely, or at least well-advised, to seek cooperation from, but I suppose this is a standard ploy of popular fiction to conjure up conflict and drama. And really, in the end, when you watch something like this, it shouldn't be to nit-pick.
I'm often suspicious of mixing genres but this combination of straightforward police/crime-tv drama and spooky vampire story worked pretty well. Just as a matter of personal taste, I probably would have preferred a little more weight on the spooky and supernatural elements. The climax, when Kolchak enters the vampire's dwelling (which doesn't really make sense in view of the advice he had give to the authorities in an earlier scene), was very suspenseful and I would have liked it if there had been a few more hints of that kind of atmosphere in the rest of the movie.
Very happy to have finally seen this - I can only assume it wasn't picked up by the two Canadian channels we had at the time because it's exactly the kind of thing I would have been keen to watch back then. I look forward to seeing the Night stalker, which is on the flip side of the dvd I have, and hopefully any episodes of the series that are still available.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 17, 2024 7:19:35 GMT -5
I went slightly off the beaten path with last night's choice: The Pale Blue Eye (2023) It's not a creature feature by any means and not particularly scary being more of a murder mystery but director Scott Cooper creates an amazingly eerie mood that is befitting of this sort of "origin story" of Edgar Allen Poe.The cast is stacked with Christian Bale & Henry Melling in the lead roles along with support from Timothy Spall,Robert Duvall,Simon McBurney,Toby Jones and Gillian Anderson who are all good in their roles. On top of that the score by Howard Shore( of Silence of he Lambs fame)is incredibly haunting which really gives the film a cold, forlorn feeling which beautifully matches the wintery exterior shots. It has some interesting supernatural twists that are ultimately red herrings but it's none the less a fun thriller. I didn't realize this had been filmed. It's based on a novel by Louis Bayard that was published in 2006. I've not gotten around to reading it yet, but I read his book Mr. Timothy, which had Tiny Tim all grown up and thrown in to a murder mystery at Christmas. I haven't read the book either but after enjoying the film it's definitely on my "To read" list. For my viewing last night I went with the 1962 Hammer Film Captain Clegg  I've long heard about this one before but never before seen it until now having gotten a hold of the Hammer Horror vol.6 box set for a song at a used book store. To start with I ask you this, how could you say no to Peter Cushing as a pirate captain? Cushing doesn't disappoint as either pirate or parson in disguise and the effects work of the "Phantoms" is both visually stunning and yet simple enough that it's believable that a group of villagers could actually pull it off in order to scare away people from finding out their smuggling operation. So although it lacks a real supernatural threat it has an eerie mood to it and some great action making it well worth watching. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,871
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Post by shaxper on Oct 17, 2024 7:27:08 GMT -5
I didn't realize this had been filmed. It's based on a novel by Louis Bayard that was published in 2006. I've not gotten around to reading it yet, but I read his book Mr. Timothy, which had Tiny Tim all grown up and thrown in to a murder mystery at Christmas. I haven't read the book either but after enjoying the film it's definitely on my "To read" list. For my viewing last night I went with the 1962 Hammer Film Captain Clegg I've long heard about this one before but never before seen it until now having gotten a hold of the Hammer Horror vol.6 box set for a song at a used book store. To start with I ask you this, how could you say no to Peter Cushing as a pirate captain? Cushing doesn't disappoint as either pirate or parson in disguise and the effects work of the "Phantoms" is both visually stunning and yet simple enough that it's believable that a group of villagers could actually pull it off in order to scare away people from finding out their smuggling operation. So although it lacks a real supernatural threat it has an eerie mood to it and some great action making it well worth watching. I LOVE Captain Clegg! One of Cushing's finest roles, and some great atmosphere and cinematography too. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 17, 2024 7:33:55 GMT -5
I haven't read the book either but after enjoying the film it's definitely on my "To read" list. For my viewing last night I went with the 1962 Hammer Film Captain Clegg I've long heard about this one before but never before seen it until now having gotten a hold of the Hammer Horror vol.6 box set for a song at a used book store. To start with I ask you this, how could you say no to Peter Cushing as a pirate captain? Cushing doesn't disappoint as either pirate or parson in disguise and the effects work of the "Phantoms" is both visually stunning and yet simple enough that it's believable that a group of villagers could actually pull it off in order to scare away people from finding out their smuggling operation. So although it lacks a real supernatural threat it has an eerie mood to it and some great action making it well worth watching. I LOVE Captain Clegg! One of Cushing's finest roles, and some great atmosphere and cinematography too. It really was a fantastic film, a great plot that felt like it was out of an old boys adventure novel (like Treasure Island) and some really solid character work especially from Cushing. You really did believe that he was trying to help the villagers and when he met his end it really hit for me. Definitely one of my new favorite Hammer films. The box set was a real boon as although I had previously seen the Hammer version of Phantom of the Opera that's included in it Captain Clegg, Nightmare and Shadow of the Cat are all new to me and I hope to get to them in the coming days. |
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Post by commond on Oct 17, 2024 9:00:47 GMT -5
The Living Skeleton (Hiroshi Matsuno, 1968)
This was like a stylish 60s noir mixed with a ghost story and bad tokusatsu effects. I wanted to like it more than I did. I kind of wish they'd ratcheted it up and gone full bore.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 17, 2024 11:03:21 GMT -5
I LOVE Captain Clegg! One of Cushing's finest roles, and some great atmosphere and cinematography too. It really was a fantastic film, a great plot that felt like it was out of an old boys adventure novel (like Treasure Island) and some really solid character work especially from Cushing. You really did believe that he was trying to help the villagers and when he met his end it really hit for me. Definitely one of my new favorite Hammer films. The box set was a real boon as although I had previously seen the Hammer version of Phantom of the Opera that's included in it Captain Clegg, Nightmare and Shadow of the Cat are all new to me and I hope to get to them in the coming days. It was, sort of, a boy's adventure novel series. You might know him better as The Reverand Christopher Syn, alias Captain Clegg, alias The Scarecrow. He was created by author Russell Thorndike and appeared in 7 novels, between 1915 and 1944. The first is the most famous, Doctor Syn: A Tale of Romney Marsh. It was most famously adapted by Disney, for The Wonderful World of Color, as The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, in 3 parts, in 1963, starring Patrick McGoohan as Dr Syn, George Cole as Mipps, and Geoffrey Keen (of the Bond films) as General Pugh, who leads a detachment of soldiers hunting the smugglers, including The Scarecrow. The episodes were edited into a feature film version, Dr Syn, Alias The Scarecrow, which was shown in the UK, in 1963 and 64, and the US, in the 70s, a couple of times. The Hammer version renamed the alias of Captain Clegg as Parson Blyss, to avoid rights issues with the Disney film. There was also a 1937 film adaptation, Doctor Syn, starring George Arliss, in his final role. Alan Moore made The Scarecrow a member of the earlier League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, along with Sir Percy and Lady Margueritte Blakeny (The Scarlet Pimpernel), Natty Bumpo (aka Hawkeye, from the Last of the Mohicans and the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales), Fanny Hill, and Lemuel Gulliver. He also appears in the Atlas portion of LOEG Vol2, when Moore takes us on a tour of Latin America, as he attends a pirate conference with several other piratical figures of literature and history. The sequel novels actually go back into Dr Syn's past, thanks to the ending of the original novel, and then progress chronologically, bringing you back to the time of the first novel. |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Oct 17, 2024 12:02:16 GMT -5
It really was a fantastic film, a great plot that felt like it was out of an old boys adventure novel (like Treasure Island) and some really solid character work especially from Cushing. You really did believe that he was trying to help the villagers and when he met his end it really hit for me. Definitely one of my new favorite Hammer films. The box set was a real boon as although I had previously seen the Hammer version of Phantom of the Opera that's included in it Captain Clegg, Nightmare and Shadow of the Cat are all new to me and I hope to get to them in the coming days. It was, sort of, a boy's adventure novel series. You might know him better as The Reverand Christopher Syn, alias Captain Clegg, alias The Scarecrow. He was created by author Russell Thorndike and appeared in 7 novels, between 1915 and 1944. The first is the most famous, Doctor Syn: A Tale of Romney Marsh. It was most famously adapted by Disney, for The Wonderful World of Color, as The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, in 3 parts, in 1963, starring Patrick McGoohan as Dr Syn, George Cole as Mipps, and Geoffrey Keen (of the Bond films) as General Pugh, who leads a detachment of soldiers hunting the smugglers, including The Scarecrow. The episodes were edited into a feature film version, Dr Syn, Alias The Scarecrow, which was shows in the UK, in 1963 and 64, and the US, in the 70s, a couple of times. The Hammer version renamed the alias of Captain Clegg as Parson Blyss, to avoid rights issues with the Disney film. There was also a 1937 film adaptation, Doctor Syne, starring George Arliss, in his final role. Alan Moore made The Scarecrow a member of the earlier League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, along with Sir Percy and Lady Margueritte Blakeny (The Scarlet Pimpernel), Natty Bumpo (aka Hawkeye, from the Last of the Mohicans and the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales), Fanny Hill, and Lemuel Gulliver. He also appears in the Atlas portion of LOEG Vol2, when Moore takes us on a tour of Latin America, as he attends a pirate conference with several other piratical figures of literature and history. The sequel novels actually go back into Dr Syn's past, thanks to the ending of the original novel, and then progress chronologically, bringing you back to the time of the first novel. I vaguely remember the Scarecrow from LoEG but if I ever knew his literary source I've definitely since forgotten. I might need to track these novels down though, so that's two new books to read due to this event. |
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