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Santa Sangre (1989): Jodorowsky’s El Topo has been described as an acid western, wellm Santa Sangre could be classified as a peyote horror film. Fenix (played at different ages by Jodorowsky’s sons Adan and Axel) become a murderer-by-proxy for his mutilated mother. He was traumatised by witnessing his father cutting his mother's arms off and then committing suicide. After years in an institution he escapes and becomes his mother's arms in her stage act. Whenever he becomes close to other women, his mother (Bianca Guerra) forces him to kill them. That's the bare bones of the plot.

But there is a lot more going on, Fenix was a boy magician in a circus, his assistant was the deaf-mute Alma whose cruel stepmother, the Tattooed Lady (Thelma Tixou) seduces his father, the Ringmaster (Guy Stockwell) and the violence results. We have colorful circus parades, a solemn circus parade for an elephants funeral. The tusker's corpse is subsequently devoured by shanty-town dwellers. Cultist's revere a girl who lost her arms in an attempt to fight off her attackers. They battle with police who want to enforce the demolition of their church. Clutches of clowns are everywhere as is Fenix's faithful dwarf companion. Some great scenes of Fenix's nightmares where he wrestles with a boa-constrictor and his victims rise zombie like from their graves.

How reliable a narrator Fenix really is comes into question as the film unfolds. All of the above meshes into a coherent narrative as the tale moves towards it's explosive finale. Directed and co-written by Alejandro Jodorowsky’. 9/10.
 
Deadcon: Don't go by the IMDb score, while not a classic Deadcon is a watchable horror film. A tale of two Cons, in 1984 TechCon and in 2019 ViewCon (both held at the same Hotel). At TechCon a developer tries to set up a primitive Social Media site, it fails but then something inside the software offers a deal... ViewCon is for Influencers, Youtube/Instagram Stars and their fans. a horror was unleashed in 1984 and it's still active. It manifests as an invisible entity using poltergeist effects and as a young boy. There's a haunted suite, blood appearing on the walls, influencers being possessed. Also has a good take on the effect of being in the public eye 24/7 can have on the Influencers. A few scares and a sense of dread with some good film homage gags e.g. a girl called Megan levitating, see if you can spot the Life of Brian reference. Directed by Caryn Waechter (The Sisterhood of Night) with the screenplay by Scotty Landes (Ma). 6/10
 
It's had a chequered history, but Grizzly II might at last be released:

Just 37 years late, but it does star George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern, which must count for something.
 
I'm seriously looking forward to the new Creepshow TV series .. 12 tales of terror

 
How the hell did you know that?
Just a hunch, you hardly ever mention Evil Dead, my favorite horror would be John Capenters The Thing, followed by Evil Dead 2 but am also a big fan of The Haunting .
 
"my favorite horror would be John Capenters The Thing,"

One of the very, VERY few remakes that improved on the original.
 
"my favorite horror would be John Capenters The Thing,"

One of the very, VERY few remakes that improved on the original.
My third favourite horror .. and Rob Bottin should have won an Oscar for his work on that, he booked himself into hospital with exhaustion after the film wrapped. He'd been living and sleeping on the set and surviving from vending machines. :badge:
 
I'd say the first two versions of The Thing are legit classics, in different ways, of course. The third version? Eh, it was fine (but mucked about with).
 
BABA YAGA: TERROR OF THE DARK FOREST was a long time in coming, but has finally hit the cinemas in Moscow. This represents the fourth horror outing from Svyatoslav Podgaevsky - who also produced Queen of Spades:the Dark Rite, The Bride (which got the Hollywood remake treatment) and Rusalka: The Lake of the Dead.

That last film and this one are slices of beefy in yer face Folk Horror. Podgaevsky is being quietly innovative in that he is taking old Eastern European folk stories and dusting them down and incorporating them into contemporary supernatural thrillers.. (After all, that is how vampires and werewolves got started - but it's a while since someone has done this).

The monster here is Baba Yagar - a fairytale villainess in the form of an old woman who lives in the forest in a hut with chickens legs for stilts and who flies about in a tub looking for babies to snatch. Using this figure for a serious horror flick (albeit adapted a bit) was a gamble: she is as well known to Russians as, say, Little Red Riding Hood is known to Europeans. But it kind of works, if you apply a bit of suspension of disbelief.

We are in one of the new ` sleeping dorms` that are springing up outside Moscow and which house made-it middle class families. This one is surrounded by a forest....

A youngish couple have a 14 year old kid and a newly acquired baby girl. The parents are careerist and a bit absenteeish. Unusually , for this genre, the hero is the fourteen year old boy. The boy's life consists of walking to his nearby school, fending off hodlums, getting to know his first sweetheart and looking after the baby girl.

That's until he susses out that something is after the baby.... Naturally none of the adults will believe him and so he teams up with the girl and one his ex-bullies and they go out into the forest to team up with a vagabond who lives there - and to take on what turns out to be Baba Yagar.....

It begins as a ghost story then the director puts his foot down on the accelerator...and we are in a dark fantasy romp. The jump scares are lined up like billiard balls until you get a bit numb to them. The film is tense, humourless but often sentimental. The kids-against-corrupt-elders angle lends it an American feel. (In fact it could have functioned as a kid's movie if only they had toned down parts of it).

There's plenty here to chew on for those into folklore and Jungian psychology. I am still processing it all but I feel, wehther consciously or not, this is somehow about the promise of modern Russians under threat from ancient forces. The film certainly sets up-to-the-minute suburban Russia on a collision course with very very old folk demons.

I feel that Podgaevsky is certain to become an internationally known director before long - even if only to horror aficiocandos. Yaga 1.jpg
Dubbed trailer:

More detailed review pending in my blog.
 
Girl On The Third Floor: Don Koch (C.M. Punk) has started renovating a semi-derelict Victorian house, he's a philanderer and a struck off lawyer. This is his chance for redemption, to rebuild his relationship with his pregnant wife Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn). He doesn't heed the omens, his dog senses something wrong with the house. A bartender warns him about the house (it was a brothel a century ago, murders occurred there) as does the local pastor. Oily liquid oozes fro the walls, marbles appear from nowhere, a ceiling collapses, exposing a gallery. Don cheats on his wife with a local young woman, Sarah (Sarah Brooks), he regrets it but she's a bunny boiler.

A true tale of horror which unfolds with a rising sense of dread and tension. The house itself seems to be a threat, an organism that acts against those within. Some shocking scenes of violence and gore. Parts of this film are really disturbing but the effects and make up are pretty good. Directed and co-written by Travis Stevens. 7/10. On Netflix.
 
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Girl On The Third Floor: Don Koch (C.M. Punk) has started renovating a semi-derelict Victorian house, he's a philanderer and a struck off lawyer. This is his chance for redemption, to rebuild his relationship with his pregnant wife Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn). He doesn't heed the omens, his dog senses something wrong with the house. A bartender warns him about the house (it was a brothel a century ago, murders occurred there) as does the local pastor. Oily liquid oozes fro the walls, marbles appear from nowhere, a ceiling collapses, exposing a gallery. Don cheats on his wife with a local young woman, Sarah (Sarah Brooks), he regrets it but she's a bunny boiler.

A true tale of horror which unfolds with a rising sense of dread and tension. The house itself seems to be a threat, an organism that acts against those within. Some shocking scenes of violence and gore. Parts of this film are really disturbing but the effects and make up are pretty good. Directed and co-written by Travis Stevens. 7/10. On Netflix.

I quite enjoyed it too. Like a nightmarish fever-dream in places, but also a few humorous moments to savour.
 
Just a hunch, you hardly ever mention Evil Dead, my favorite horror would be John Capenters The Thing, followed by Evil Dead 2 but am also a big fan of The Haunting .
Talking of Evil Dead (something I rarely do), WWE fans are calling for ex wrestler C M Punk to play the next Ash (Bruce has already said there isn't going to be a next Ash) .. because this guy was good in this NETFLIX horror, The Girl on the Third Floor apparently. The trailer doesn't look too bad to be honest ..


NETFLIX seem to be churning out horror at the rate of Hammer in their glory days at the moment.
 
It's had a chequered history, but Grizzly II might at last be released:

Just 37 years late, but it does star George Clooney, Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern, which must count for something.

Grizzly....yeah.

I had no idea that this film was held in any particular affection by anyone apart from myself. But if the likes of Clooney and Sheen are putting their names to a sequel then it surely must have some traction!

So as a twelve year old kid I slavishly devoured - via flick and paperback - the horde of creature-feature-eco-thriller yarns, headed by Jaws that were all the rage in the mid to late seventies. Grizzly, Alligator, The Pack, Squirm and Herbet;s The Rats and Smith's The Crabs and even, I suppose, King Kong.

They gave us kids a legal horror hit, were passively disapproved of by our elders and contained SHOCKING new language - I believe my first exposure to the term `bulls**t` came via one of these films!

So, as if getting in some early training to be a lost generation, I used to pass round the novelisations of these to a few like-minded classmates at school - as though they were contraband. And, yes, one of them was Grizzly. I remember one geeky kid borrowing my copy, biking it home for his lunchbreak and returning an houtr and a half later having speedread the whole thing.

`I wish I'd seen that`, he said jealously. I could only smirk with pride.I had seen it.

You see Grizzly had a special place in my affections. This seems odd because it's really just a short clunky B-movie containg hammy acting. Its ` `special effects` consisted of filming a real bear and then trying to make it look bigger than it is through perspective and so on. (Judging by the above trailer, the sequel is in keeping with this minimalism).

I suppose this was partly because it was less mainstream and I had found it myself. And it was proper Fortean - the bear was a cryptid. It was some sort of relict of a giant grizzly that was thought to be extinct. Or something.

But, looking back, the other reasons were wholly tangenital. For one thing the film's on-location setting - a vast forest park (often viewed from above)-was quite striking at that time (indeed seems so today, really). For another it features a rousing and romantic score, like something out of an old style Western.

So, as much as I hate nostalgia - I'm sold. I just hope this sequel isn't `ironic` though.

Here's that score:

 
Brahms: The Boy II: The doll is back and this time it has supernatural powers! A family traumatised by a home invasion move to the Heelshire estate. The son Jude finds the Boy doll buried and soon becomes attached to it. But the Boy can move and influence Jude, it also has poltergeist powers. Some good shock/jump scenes as well as sequences of genuine horror which are really disturbing. The parents should have heeded the dog who snarled at the doll. A bit unevenly paced in the middle section. Directed by William Brent Bell from a screenplay by Stacey Menear. 6/10.
 
Grizzly....yeah.

I had no idea that this film was held in any particular affection by anyone apart from myself. But if the likes of Clooney and Sheen are putting their names to a sequel then it surely must have some traction!

So as a twelve year old kid I slavishly devoured - via flick and paperback - the horde of creature-feature-eco-thriller yarns, headed by Jaws that were all the rage in the mid to late seventies. Grizzly, Alligator, The Pack, Squirm and Herbet;s The Rats and Smith's The Crabs and even, I suppose, King Kong.

They gave us kids a legal horror hit, were passively disapproved of by our elders and contained SHOCKING new language - I believe my first exposure to the term `bulls**t` came via one of these films!

So, as if getting in some early training to be a lost generation, I used to pass round the novelisations of these to a few like-minded classmates at school - as though they were contraband. And, yes, one of them was Grizzly. I remember one geeky kid borrowing my copy, biking it home for his lunchbreak and returning an houtr and a half later having speedread the whole thing.

`I wish I'd seen that`, he said jealously. I could only smirk with pride.I had seen it.

You see Grizzly had a special place in my affections. This seems odd because it's really just a short clunky B-movie containg hammy acting. Its ` `special effects` consisted of filming a real bear and then trying to make it look bigger than it is through perspective and so on. (Judging by the above trailer, the sequel is in keeping with this minimalism).

I suppose this was partly because it was less mainstream and I had found it myself. And it was proper Fortean - the bear was a cryptid. It was some sort of relict of a giant grizzly that was thought to be extinct. Or something.

But, looking back, the other reasons were wholly tangenital. For one thing the film's on-location setting - a vast forest park (often viewed from above)-was quite striking at that time (indeed seems so today, really). For another it features a rousing and romantic score, like something out of an old style Western.

So, as much as I hate nostalgia - I'm sold. I just hope this sequel isn't `ironic` though.

Here's that score:


Grizzly 2 won't be ironic because that was a 90s thing, and this is from the 80s!
 
Little Joe: Jessica Hausner directs and co-writes this feature which possesses a touch of old style SF/Horror films. You can see the influences of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Day of the Triffids with even a smidgin of The Midwich Cuckoos but in a much more restrained manner. Alice (Emily Beecham) is a plant breeder who is genetically engineering a new strain of flowers which will produce a scent to make it's owners feel happy. She has taken some short cuts and the (sterile) plant aggressively pollinates, killing other flowers. Another lab worker Bella (Kerry Fox) is suspicious of the flower especially after her dog turns aggressive. But Bella has suffered from her nerves in the past and no one takes her seriously. Alice has brought one of the flowers home to her son Joe (Kit Connor). Soon his behaviour starts to change as does that of her co-workers.

A sense of paranoia and threat builds up from when we first see the flowers, aided by Teiji Ito's music and cinematography by Martin Gschlacht. Pastel colours both bright and subdued predominate. Ordinary objects like a cupboard exude an aura of menace as you fear what will be found within. There is little violence and the horror is mostly psychological as the enormity of what is transpiring dawns on the viewer and some of the characters. An interesting film which will hold your interest long after the final credits roll. It would have benefited from a ten minute cut in the running time though. 8/10.
 
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Grizzly 2 won't be ironic because that was a 90s thing, and this is from the 80s!

I'm a numbskull. I somehow got the idea that Grizzly 2 was a brand new product (hence my surprise at Clooney's and Sheen's involvement) but I now gather that it was made in the Eighties - which figures - and has only just been made avaialable. So it won't be in the cinemas anytime soon then....duuuh.

On the issue of irony. One of the few pleasures of living in the twenty teens has been witnessing the slow death of post-modern irony. Glad to see the back of all that `not-really-meaning-it` palaver. (Guess I'm just a simple guy at heart).

Brahms: The Boy II: The doll is back and this time it has supernatural powers! A family traumatised by a home invasion move to the Heelshire estate. The son Jude finds the Boy doll buried and soon becomes attached to it. But the Boy can move and influence Jude, it also has poltergeist powers. Some good shock/jump scenes as well as sequences of genuine horror which are really disturbing. The parents should have heeded the dog who snarled at the doll. A bit unevenly paced in the middle section. Directed by William Brent Bell from a screenplay by Stacey Menear. 6/10.

Oh, dear. I don't like the sound of this. I would count the original film - The Boy - as among my favourite horror/psychological thriller films. It has a slow pace, an original premise and a gorgeous location and is altogether executed well. But what really made it stand out was the fact that - spoiler alert! - there is a cunning mundane explanation for the supernatural aspects of the story (and in that way was reviving a long submerged part of the Gothic tradition). If The Boy 2 is going to be just another haunted devil-doll caper (a la Annabel and co) then, as far as I'm concerned, that will besmirch the first film rather than develop a meaningful franchise.
 
Yeah, The Boy (original) was really entertaining, wasn't it? Simple idea neatly executed.

But don't worry about the 80s thing, @Zeke Newbold , though as far as I can tell they might be aiming for a cinema release for Grizzly 2. It certainly has a high profile cast (!).
 
5ive Girls: You've seen it before: delinquent girls sent to a boot camp style school, turns out they all have psychic powers. In this film Ron Perlman is a priest who has turned to drink after a pupil was taken by a demon back in the days when the boot camp was an exclusive school. The new headmistress rehires him, little does he know that she intends to use the five new girls in a demonic ritual. Some good jump scares and scenes of horror, impalement by crucifix, stabbings, telekinetic displays, possession. Watchable B Movie Horror. Written and directed by Warren P. Sonoda. 5.5/10.
 
Oh, dear. I don't like the sound of this. I would count the original film - The Boy - as among my favourite horror/psychological thriller films. It has a slow pace, an original premise and a gorgeous location and is altogether executed well. But what really made it stand out was the fact that - spoiler alert! - there is a cunning mundane explanation for the supernatural aspects of the story (and in that way was reviving a long submerged part of the Gothic tradition). If The Boy 2 is going to be just another haunted devil-doll caper (a la Annabel and co) then, as far as I'm concerned, that will besmirch the first film rather than develop a meaningful franchise.

Sadly it does turn the Boy into another Devil Doll complete with a back history. Over the years many families who lived at the house have suffered from predation by the doll. This leaves room for all sort of prequels. The Boy: Creation, no doubt.
 
The Invisible Man: Great thriller even though we know the Invisible Man exists. From the opening scenes the tension builds up as Elizabeth Moss escapes from her violent controlling partner. He fakes his death and then begins to gaslight Moss, he's a scientist so a special suit is no problem for him. To onlookers it appears that she is going insane, imagining things, then she seems to attack people. Great SF/Horror drama directed and written by Leigh Whannel. 8/10.
 
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Fantasy Island has been Blumhoused...


Fantasy Island: Not at all as bad as some of the reviews suggest. Bit like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. It's a far darker take on FI though, once your fantasy is set in motion it has to play out to it's end - only The Island knows what that end is. Wanting revenge on a school bully seems like a good idea until you realise an actual person is being tortured, shades of Saw and Hostel start to appear. Another fantasy involves enlisting in the army but the bullets turn out to be real. Things turn really whacky as the fantasies begin to coalesce. You get Zombies, evil doppelgangers, time travel and even water snakes. Perhaps one or two twists too many in the plot but Director/Co-Writer Jeff Wadlow delivers a watchable film and it has been a hit in spite of naysayers and COVID-19, made for €7 million, as of 12 March it has grossed €45.6 million. 6/10.
 
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