Last films of the 2024
Spotting some spaghetti western faces (Dan van husen, hunt powers, Jack Betts) and Almeria Locations in the Bardot-Ventuta adventure “The Rum Runners”
Re-Locations … the silent movie scenes in black and white are filmed at the same location as ‘The Big Gundown’ final duel sequence.
Makes sense. Familiar rocks 
Spotting a few more familiar faces as I keep watching (José Manuel Martín etc)
This week:
Oddity (McCarthy, 2024) - A woman is brutally murdered in her Irish rural fixer-upper while her doctor husband is working nights. A year later, her blind twin sister - a psychic who runs an old curiosity shop, no less - arrives to visit with the doc and his new squeeze. She brings with her a thinly-veiled scepticism about the circumstances of her sister’s passing, and a hideous life-size wooden mannequin. What’s she up to here? What’s anybody up to here? And did that mannequin just move?
Caveat (McCarthy, 2018) - The first movie by Oddity writer/director Damian McCarthy finds us following an amnesiac who’s been asked by his landlord to babysit the landlord’s niece. The niece is an adult but she lives alone at a remote location, she’s prone to catatonic seizures, and she needs watching, just until the landlord has the time to do it himself. And he’ll pay our man £200 per day. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, there are conditions. Caveats, if you will. The remote location of this property is a small, dank island on a foreboding lake. When not catatonic, the niece wanders the property holding a loaded crossbow in one hand and a hideous toy rabbit in the other, which she uses as a psychic divining rod given that it begins drumming furiously on its little drum any time it comes close to spirits or secrets or hidden things (and there are plenty of each, here). Oh, and because the niece is anxious about a stranger in the house, our man has to wear a padlocked leather jerkin attached to a heavy metal chain which restricts his movements to only a few rooms in the house. Still, £200 a day, eh? How bad can it be?
These tales by Damian McCarthy are unconnected narratively but they share many things. Neither are hugely concerned with plots which make a whole lot of sense from a motivational standpoint, but both are very keen on mood, tension, gloomy aesthetic. They’re both quite a bit like feature-length episodes of Inside No.9, with all the creep but none of the black humour. If you can look past the narrative leaps of logic and stay with the mood, these come highly recommended (and the rabbit from Caveat makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Oddity, so maybe the tales aren’t entirely unconnected after all).
Hell House LLC (Cognetti, 2015) - A small group of young friends convert the creepy Abbadon Hotel into a haunted house Halloween attraction. On its opening night, something happens in the basement level of the tour, there’s a wild scramble for the exits and fifteen people - including most of the staff - are killed. What happened? A documentary crew talk to the last surviving staff member in order to get to the bottom of it all.
This was my third go at this movie. It has a stellar reputation as one of the finest horrors of the last decade and one of the finest “Found Footage” horrors of all time and, tbh, I’ve never quite got that from it, so I thought I’d try again. I took to it a lot better this time - maybe I hadn’t been in the right mood previously - but I’m still not convinced that it’s an essential piece of 2010s horror. Oh well. It suffers from the usual found footage problems - overly shaky cameras, taking an age for the horror elements to begin in earnest, a cast of characters with whom it’s difficult to empathise - but it does have some genuinely creepy set pieces once the horror begins, with a decent(ish) twist at the finish. Worth a look, at least. Or even three.
The Dark and the Wicked (Bertino, 2020) - A pair of siblings return to the old family farmhouse in rural Texas where their ailing father lies on his deathbed. Their mother seems distracted, defeated. She tells them they shouldn’t have come. Then she chops her fingers off and hangs herself in the goat barn. WTF? Why did she do that? What’s happening here? How did that elderly lady hang herself ten feet in the air with no adjacent ladders or steps or anything like that? The siblings find mums diary, in which she implies that malignant supernatural forces are at work here. Had she gone insane? Or was she onto something?
This is a dark, moody picture, full of misery and gloom. But it’s a well made piece, with ratcheting tension and a decent helping of cerebral frights and plain old grue. Not too much, but enough. Recommended.
Aterrados (aka Terrified (Rugna, 2017) - An Argentinian movie in which a trio of houses in an otherwise anonymous Buenos Aires suburban street are being subjected to sinister, otherworldly goings-on. Juan watches helplessly as his wife Clara is held aloft by invisible forces and thrown violently from one wall to another until she dies. Juan is subsequently incarcerated for Clara’s murder. His neighbour Walter is being terrorized by a creature in his house until he eventually goes missing. Across the road, Alicia buries her son who was run over just outside the house. A few days later, the dead son comes home and sits down at the dining table, sending Alicia into a fugue state. Alicia’s ex-boyfriend Jano, a police commissioner, enlists the help of a paranormal investigator to find out what’s happening here. The investigator brings in a couple of colleagues who, between them, decide to stay in the three houses overnight to determine the nature of these occurrences. And they get everything they were looking for.
If you don’t mind subtitles, this is a cracking film. It’s not especially gory or even all that frightening, but it’s expertly crafted and never less than intriguing from start to finish. And the dead kid at the dining table is definitely unsettling. From this clutch of horrors I’ve watched this week (I bought Oddity on Blu-ray as a blind purchase, and it inspired me to nab a free 7-day trial of Shudder), Terrified is probably my favourite so far.
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (Jung, 2018) - South Korea’s first ever “found footage” horror, apparently (can that be true? It took until 2018 for S. Korea, a hotbed for horror cinema, to take a stab at some found footage? Surely not!), in which a clutch of teens who broadcast a paranormal investigation channel on YouTube decide to look into the spooky shenanigans which are supposed to exist in an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Gwangju (this is a real place btw, named by CNN in 2013 as one of the “7 Freakiest Places on the Planet”). The host and his two most trusted lieutenants stage a few initial scares, to ensure a healthy viewer count. Then, things begin happening which they did not set up in advance. At all. It’s time to get out of there, but that’s easier said than done.
Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum suffers, just as Hell House LLC did - and as most movies of this nature do - from not enough happening for far too long. Nothing of real interest happens for maybe as much as the first half of the picture, which takes its sweet time establishing who everybody is and what they’re all doing, along with an overage of hackneyed “happy” scenes intended to make us bond with the characters. Yawn.
That said, anyone with the patience to sit through the rather dull first half of Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum will be rewarded with a cracking second half which elevates the movie into the rarified ranks of the best the sub-genre has to offer. With some imagery which, if not gory, remains all sorts of creepy, Gonjiam brings a similar vibe as the criminally underrated Grave Encounters (Minihan/Ortiz, 2011). If you liked that one - and I thought it was excellent - then you should find plenty to enjoy here, too.
“Five Fingers of Death” (1972)
I finally watched this on a rough looking bargain bin DVD but even that could not take away how rad this was!
100 percent deserving of its cult film status and fame, also might be the one Shaw Brothers film that a ten year-old Tatum O’Neal and a modern day Quentin Tarantino could both enjoy, and I find that wonderful!
Replying a month later but I agree. It’s still not on the same level as the first 2 Batman Arkham games, which imo are the best depictions of batman by far but this is definitely a massive step in the right direction. Gotham feels like Gotham and Batman feels like batman. Christopher Nolan’s slop has done irreparable harm to how people view batman, TDK’s city feels just like any other American city and the villain is a weak imitation of Brandon Lee’s performance in The Crow. Nolan doesn’t fundamentally understand Batman, instead turning the franchise into a c grade spy thriller. I went into “The Batman” expecting similar mass market slop influenced by his films, but it was nothing like his films and I ended up loving the film. A massive surprise for me. I can’t wait for the sequel.
(50th film I’ve watched this year!)
NGL I can see why a 16 year old Quentin Tarantino would prefer this to “the dirty dozen” and why it blew his mind enough to want to pay homage to it in 2009!
As far as Italian made “dirty dozen” rip-offs/men on a mission war films go this just might be the “Citizen Kane” of said sub-genre of Italian exploitation film! Utterly bonkers and wildly entertaining from start to finish, the original “The Inglorious Bastards” is just a great time for fans of batshit crazy action films from this part of the world!
P.S
Any movie with an alternative title “G.I Bro” is a good movie in my book lol!
Note that GI Bro isn’t just an alt title but a recut alt version. In it’s original uncut version IB is a fantastic film I think
Some British films from 1949.
The Rocking Horse Winner (Pelissier / 8/10)
The Passionate Friends (Lean / 5/10)
The Boys in Brown (Tully / 6/10)
Once a Jolly Swagman (Lee / 6/10)
Boys in Brown and Jolly Swagman are both enjoyable drama from Rank and both feature a young Dirk Bogarde showing how versatile he was as an actor. The Passionate Friends was a David Lean film I’d never heard of and it really isn’t one of his best though interesting in places. The pick of the bunch was Rocking Horse Winner which on the surface is a domestic drama with a supernatural twist but which becomes something far darker. Very enjoyable.
Last night I watched Director, John Sturges, 1963 tribute to ‘The Fifty’…
Hollywood’s take on a true tale of tragedy, heroism, and sacrifice…ageless, forever poignant, and eternally inspirational for the human spirit.
My favourite film of all time - joint first with 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
For the occasion, I watched the recent beautiful ‘Arrow’ BD release, complete with a brand new audio commentary by two fans of this monumental film - nothing new to add, but their enthusiasm for this ever-green was grand to hear.
I have mentioned before, that I think it’s vitally important to read up on the real ‘Stalag Luft 111’ escape in 1944, if only to further honour and appreciate the super-human efforts of everyday family men, who simply wanted to escape captivity and return to their loved ones.
No amount of films, documentaries, or reading on page the real-life exploits of the POW’s, can adequately describe or portray how terrifying it must have been to be so intent on escape, that unbearable hardships and the risk of discovery were endured.
All in all, and despite Hollywood embellishments and additional flim-flam, ‘The Great Escape’ does, I believe, do a fine job of honouring the real event, and the fifty who never saw home.
‘For the fifty’…the present day monument at Sagan (Zagan).
Roger Bushell (Big X), the prime escape organiser, is named on the far left stone.
Below: The ‘Harry’. tunnel, present day.
First 10 of 2025:
Just watched The Popes Exorcist - a more modern version of the original Exorcist. Good to see Franco Nero in a recent movie.
Not sure what rode me but I just suffered through It’s a mad mad mad world… and oh boy what a bunch of horse shit… but good lookin 70mm epic horseshit… overproduced pile of crap
I must admit I’ve always liked it.
Me too, it’s just one of those hangover movies, like Tarantino once described them; he was by the way talking about RIO BRAVO, of course a way superior movie. Bit this movie gives me the same feeling: it’s simply nice to hang around with these guys.
Rewatched this landmark movie for the first time in quite a while. It’s not a real masterpiece, but it’s easy to see why it made such an enormous impression. it inspired an entire generation of bewildered young people who felt deeply dissatisfied with society and the life their conformist parents had planned for them. Some elements are dated, and Dean’s acting is marked by mannerisms (most of them copied from Brando), but he became a true icon in his role of the rebellious and angry young man.
The film was shot in the recently introduced ultra-wide (2,55:1) Cinerama format and director Nicholas Ray and his cinematographer Ernest Haller use the widescreen to perfection, both during the indoor and outdoor scenes. The movie brought Dean eternal fame, but no luck: he crashed his Porsche only days before the movie’s premiere. Wood and Mineo did not fare any better: Wood (she was 17 when the film was made) died under mysterious circumstances during the making of another movie and Sal Mineo (only 16 at the time) was stabbed to death by a street thug who didn’t know who he was.
***½ out of 5
