Horror Films

The Saloon
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I knew I was never going to manage a film every day. October is my busiest month of he year at work plus there’s the baseball post season to keep up with.(MLB.TV has been my best investment since football became so painful) Anyway, these are the one’s I’ve managed so far. I’m pretty much concentrating on British from the 60s and 70s for no other reason than that I have a soft spot for such things.

  1. The Mummy’s Shroud (Gilling / 1967)
    One of Hammer’s weaker horrors and certainly the weakest of their 3 Mummy films but fine for a Sunday afternoon watch.

  2. The Beast in the Cellar (Kelly / 1970)
    Soldiers are being ripped to pieces in a quiet country setting by someone or something unknown and Beryl Reid and Dame Flora Robson are a couple of old sisters with something to hide in their cellar. Obviously the two are connected but how? Quite a nice little story well played by the old girls and I enjoyed it for what it was. Robson was a surprise in such a low budget flick as this.

  3. Dementia 13 (Coppola / 1963)
    Not British but made in Ireland and features Patrick Magee so good enough for me. Plus, it was an early Francis Ford Coppola film which I hadn’t seen. Still can’t say I’ve seen all of it. Fell asleep about two thirds through as bored shitless. Not one I’d recommend.

  4. Beware My Brethren (Hartford-Davis / 1972)
    Patrick Magee again. This time as the preacher of a nutter christian cult sect which spawns a murderous sexually repressed member who knocks off any poor young woman silly enough to get their tits out.

  5. Tales From the Crypt (Francis / 1972)
    An old favourite. I love these old Amicus portmanteau films. 5 great little stories with the brightest, least convincing blood in the history of cinema.

  6. The Vault of Horror (Ward-Baker / 1973)
    Another Amicus portmanteau and possibly my favourite. I love the blend of the macabre and comedy in these stories. Very glad I bought the BluRay double bill.

  7. The Hand (Cass / 1960)
    Mistakenly categorised as horror by Talking Pictures TV (my new favourite station here in the UK) it turned out to be just a crime film really based around the nasty premise of men having their hands chopped off by the Japanese during the war and this being linked to some killings and another amputation in modern day East London. I include this because I thought it was a horror when I sat down to watch it.

Off sick from work today so will probably watch a couple more before the day is out as I am not moving far from the couch.

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GET OUT (2016, Jordan Peele)

A much hyped movie, and it’s easy to see why people like it, but I don’t share their enthusiasm

1 Like
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Yes, I liked Get Out and I really liked the performance of lead Daniel Kaluuya, but I wasn’t blown away by it in the way many seem to have been by any means whatsoever. It appears to be a bit of a dead cert for many enthusiasts’ top ten lists of 2017 but it won’t make mine.

I liked it though, it was okay.

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Having a fang-tastic day today: Creature-feature earlier was The Loves of Count Iorga, Vampire aka Count Yorga, Vampire (Kelljan, 1970), a movie so poor - and not even in any gloriously so-bad-it’s-good way, either - I think I might just toss it (and its sequel, since it’s a double-bill blu-ray presentation) in the bin. I’ll be giving The Return of Count Yorga a run out tomorrow and I’ll decide then. Right now, I’m into the final twenty minutes of the wonderful 80’s staple Fright Night (Holland, 1985) and I shall be following that up with the underrated vampire comic book adaptation 30 Days of Night (Slade, 2007), one of my favourite vampire movies and one which returns the legendary creature to its monstrous roots at a time when vampires in film and TV had almost entirely been watered down into sparkly emo teenage crush fantasies. Even the f*ckawful Fifty Shades of Grey began life as a piece of Twilight fan-fiction.

https://imgur.com/Xqlebhl.jpg

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The British Horror marathon continued with:

  1. Burke and Hare (Sewell / 1972)
    A strange blend of bawdy romp and murder which doesn’t really work on any level. A bit like one of those Spaghettis that has a massacre, a rape and some bloke catching fire interspersed with a slapstick bar room brawl, a gun in the shape of a vacuum cleaner and a tattoo on some bird’s arse leading to the confederate gold.

  2. Virgin Witch (Austin / 1972)
    Two sisters get embroiled in a coven of witches set up mainly for the orgies it would seem but one turns out to be born for it and uses her natural esp powers, newly discovered spell book and breasts to take over the crowd for her own purposes. Entertaining enough nonsense from the “tits out for the lads” school of cinematic philosophy. You know the sort, first the girls do on arriving at the country house is have a chat while one of them showers.

  3. Horror Hospital (Balch / 1973)
    Camp classic starring cheeky chappy Robin Askwith and Brit Horror stalwart of the “If I can get there I’ll do it” school of thespians Michael Gough. Apparently made on a budget of 22 grand all in. Which may well have bought you a couple of decent houses in 1973 but clearly wasn’t enough to cover any decent prosthetics or a second camera. Very enjoyable for all that though and another in the let’s chat while you have a shower script types.

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The Monster (Sasdy / 1975) (aka I Don’t Want to be Born)
Joan Collins rejects the advances of her dwarf erotic dance partner and pays the price of his curse on her future child who is as big as the dwarf is small and resents being born. Think low budget The Omen with a dwarf possessed baby rather than a devil possessed child and you get the general idea. Not sure why Ralph Bates has to play an italian but apart from that it is quite an enjoyable bit of schlock with the added benefits of Donald Pleasance, Caroline Monroe and John Steiner.

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13th - The Objective (Myrick, 2008) (this was a late substitution for The Return of Count Yorga. I just couldn’t face any more bloody Yorga), and then my late-night double-bill was Friday the 13th part VI: Jason Lives (Mclaughlin, 1986) and Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009), what with it being the appropriate day and all. My favourites from the Friday the 13th franchise are The Final Chapter (Zito, 1984), A New Beginning (Steinmann, 1985) and the delightfully daft Jason X (Isaac, 2001) but part VI and the 2009 reboot were the pair I felt were most in need of a re-watch.

14th - The outstandingly crap/magnificent (crapnificent?) Robot Monster (Tucker, 1953), plus a double-bill of The Last Exorcism (Stamm, 2010) and The Last Exorcism part II (Gass-Donnelly, 2013).

15th - My creature-feature was one of the greats: The original King Kong (Cooper/Schoedsack, 1933), followed up that night with The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Derrickson, 2005) and horror grand-daddy The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973). Why so many exorcism movies over 24 hours? The power of Christ compelled me!

16th - I missed my creature-feature for Monday (it was supposed to be Haruyasu Noguchi’s 1967 kaiju pic Monster From a Prehistoric Planet aka Gappa: The Triphibian Monster) but I still caught my double-bill, It Follows (Mitchell, 2014) and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour, 2014), neither of which I loved quite as much as I did the last time I saw them. Hm. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for them.

Yesterday - My creature-feature was the dismal Creature From the Haunted Sea (Corman, 1961) and my double-bill was The Cabin in the Woods (Goddard, 2011) and The Midnight Meat Train (Kitamura, 2008), both of which I enjoyed quite a bit more than I did the last time I saw them. Hm. Maybe I was properly in the mood for them.

Today, I’ve just finished the f*ckawful but amiable enough The Killer Shrews (Kellogg, 1959), and tonight I shall be tucking into a pair of Stephen King pics from 2007: The Mist (Darabont) and 1408 (Håfström). We’ve only just beguuuuuuuuun…

https://imgur.com/pzfMKSh.jpg

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Missed my creature-feature (It Came From Outer Space, Arnold, 1953) AND the second half of my intended double-bill (James Wan’s 2013 powerhouse The Conjuring) yesterday, so my October horror was limited to just the one picture: Scott Derrickson’s Sinister (2012). If I’d known I was only going to manage to stay awake for one, I’d have watched The Conjuring instead; it’s just a stronger picture all round imo, although the scuzzy “home movie” sequences in Sinister are still deliciously unnerving.

https://imgur.com/hjWqqJS.jpg

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20th - Didn’t do a creature-feature, but had a paranormal double-bill with Paranormal Activity 3 (Joost/Schulman, 2011) and Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (Landon, 2014), my personal favourites from that franchise.

21st - Watched Creature From the Black Lagoon (Arnold, 1954) for my creature-feature but I haven’t watched a creature-feature since. I think I’ve abandoned that facet of my October/Halloween experience; it’s just not working for me over a whole month. Still, the double-bills are working and on Saturday I had me some anthology action in the form of the fantastic V/H/S/2 (Barrett/Wingard/Sánchez/Hale/Tjahjanto/Huw Evans/Eisener, 2013) and the uneven but still quite fun Southbound (Radio Silence/Benjamin/Bruckner/Horvath, 2016).

22nd - Not strictly part of my October/Halloween challenge but still pretty f*cking horrific in its way, I watched Irréversible (Noé, 2002). For me, it’s kind-of like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (either version) in that it’s undoubtedly interesting and well made but I can’t see myself watching it again anytime soon, if ever. I’m never going to be hopping through the TV channels looking for some entertainment and suddenly exclaim to myself: "Hey! I fancy getting into some Irréversible right now! Yeah, bwooooy!" You know?

Anyway, my double-bill for the evening had a hotel vibe going on: The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) and The Innkeepers (West, 2011).

23rd - Looked east on Monday, as I tucked into Ju-on: The Grudge (Shimizu, 2002) and Ju-on: White Ghost and Ju-on: Black Ghost (Miyake/Asoto, 2009). Now, I know many find the Ju-on pics to be played-out, derivative nonsense. I get that. Nevertheless, as a concept it still hits ALL my buttons. Brr! (that said, Black Ghost isn’t very good. Might even be the weakest entry in the entire franchise)

24th - Went for some found-footage shenanigans with the decent As Above, So Below (Dowdle, 2014) and the underrated Grave Encounters (Minihan/Ortiz, 2011). I LOVE that picture (the sequel was crap, though).

Yesterday - my LE Arrow blu-ray of The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) arrived so I had to give that a look (as well as the new extra features) even though I’d already watched The Thing this month. Still, fck it. Any excuse to watch The Thing again is a good excuse in my book. My double-bill was the almost Lovecraftian Brit-horror The Borderlands (Goldner, 2013) and the simply fcking weird (in the good way) YellowBrickRoad (Holland/Mitton, 2010), although thanks to the evening’s addition of The Thing and its sundry features, my double-bill ran bloody late and I fell asleep barely twenty minutes into the latter of the two pictures. Bugger.

Tonight - “What went we into this wilderness to find?” I’ve just finished watching arguably my favourite double-bill of the entire month: The Witch (Eggers, 2016) and The Blackcoat’s Daughter (Perkins, 2017). Without a doubt, these movies are where my “horror” head is at right now, and they complement one another fantastically, I think. “Hail Satan.”

https://imgur.com/SB0TwDO.jpg

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I can that.

I did not like it much either after watching it the first time, but then it stuck in my head, and I had to re-watch it soon, and since then it gets more fascinating with every re-watch. The ending is one of the most beautiful endings in film history, and very touching.

Actually I say meanwhile Irreversible is great entertainment. Isn’t it? :wink:

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The Loreley’s Grasp (1973)

"The legendary Loreley has been living for centuries in a grotto beneath the river Rhein in Germany. Every night when the moon is full, she turns into a reptile-like creature craving for human blood."

Great cheesy 70s horror flick with a good Tony Kendall (who plays a hired hunter), Helga Line ( gorgeous as ever as Loreley) and Hot Spanish bunnies in Germany. It’s well paced with a decent plot and I liked the creature in this and the way the killings was done, at times quite graphic. For me this was a fun and worthy watch.

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I disagree, sir. The second half of the film becomes increasingly calm, happy, serene etc. but the more it does so, the more awful it becomes, underpinned as it is with our knowledge of what is to come for these people.

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That’s why it is now touching for me.

But even without having that emotional impact it is one of the most beautiful film endings. Beginning with that camera movement over the 2001 poster (and the last time I watched 2001 I had tears in my eyes by that ending shot, so it makes double sense) and intensified by this Beethoven tune (his best too) it is overwhelming. Things like that I’m searching for in films.

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Forgot to update my Halloween challenge viewing in October but, in the interest of having logged every film I’ve seen so far in 2017 on here:

27th: The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012), Lovely Molly (Sánchez, 2012)
28th: The Blair Witch Project (Myrick/Sánchez, 1999), Blair Witch (Wingard, 2016)
29th: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982), Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
30th: Halloween (Zombie, 2007), Halloween 2 (Zombie, 2009)
31st: Trick 'r Treat (Dougherty, 2007), Tales of Halloween (Various, 2015)

Really glad I watched a couple of horrors every day in October. It was fun, but I think it was fun mostly because I didn’t do it the year previous so I really felt into it this year. So I think I might keep it a biennial challenge.

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BluRay release calendar

https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/BluRay_Release_Calendar

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Every now and then I get to finally finish overdue reviews for the GCDB :slight_smile:

Fulci’s House by the Cemetery
https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/The_House_by_the_Cemetery_BluRay_review

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Terrific review, Seb. That review was imho WAY better than the movie! :slightly_smiling_face: Way better than the movie deserves, too. I had Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy (the Arrow blu-rays), and within a few months of acquiring them I’d taken them all down the charity shop. Overrated crap, the lot of them. I’d been particularly disappointed with The Beyond which has a cracking reputation but, for me personally, none of them worked at all (I suppose I should say that I found The House by the Cemetery to be the best of that particular bunch, not that that means too much).

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I don’t like the GoH trilogy either, I do however love Fulcis westerns and giallos. To me, It’s like he lost his interest and just tried to come up with the sickest shit possible…

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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: What Are You Listening to at the Moment?

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Check out the GCDb’s first episode of the 42nd street podcast