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Horror Films

FrKadash said:
Just discovered, this good looking film that I haven't seen mentioned around the forums before. Lord of Tears, here's a quote from wiki,
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Was the 'Owlman' that you see briefly at about 1:18 used in one of those prank videos on youtube? He looks familiar.
 
Ouija: Origin of Evil: Interesting twist as mother is using her 2 daughters to help run fake seances. But then the younger daughter really contacts spirits through an Ouija Board things turn nasty. Some good shocks, some good effects but didn't all fit together. The whole was less than the sum of its parts. 6/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4361050/
 
skinny said:
Watched Shyamalan's The Visit last night. Not very good. Slow. Hackneyed plot device. 1/5
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I watched this tonight and I thought it was pretty damn good. A few scares and a twist.
 
Yes, they could easily not put that in.

Good performances by the two youngsters all the same.
 
just watched the conjuring 2 , starts really good but the longer it goes on and the more exaggerated things get the more i started losing interest, only thing it gets right about enfield is the family, lyon playfair isnt seen, maurice doesnt have an E type jag and it all gets silly at the end, but it did have some very effective scares and the start of the haunting is very well done. 7/10
 
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Horror films in the IFI, Dublin today.

Sadly I'm in Cork.
 
I gave Tales of Halloween a go because it's that time of year. The idea was sound, but Trick 'r Treat did it a lot better, mostly this was "that trick is death - aah!" punchlines over and over. Pity, because the directors were pretty decent. Neil Marshall's effort was the typical best saved for last (killer pumpkin!), but the rest? Pfft.
 
Binge viewed Hammer Horror over the Hallowe'en weekend, quite enjoyed The Devil Rides Out!
 
Me too! Found Kiss of the Vampire and Vampire Lovers on youtube. Both very enjoyable.
 
My Halloween choice was The Queen of Spades from 1949, which I knew by reputation but had never seen.

Not strictly a horror film, more an old-fashioned ghost story. The evocation of Pushkin's Russia done entirely on UK studio sets was wonderfully atmospheric; the costumes and mise-en-scène belied the small budget. Anton Walbrook is feverishly intense as the Captain of Engineers who hopes to improve his lowly status by learning the secret of the cards from an ancient Countess. She is a massive, crumbling ruin of a creature, held together by layers of voluminous clothing and an army of servants. Somewhere inside this towering wig and wig-wam lies Edith Evans in her first major film rôle. The director was Thorold Dickinson, regarded as something of the doomed man of British Cinema himself.

My only disappointment was a patch near the end, when my ill-gotten download failed to play a couple of minutes. It must have been ripped from a faulty DVD. :cry:
 
Love Queen of Spades, I remember watching the bit where the ghosts arrive with a whoosh on TV late one night and it was really creepy. Walbrook still has a cult following for some of his British films, but you couldn't go wrong with any of his performances. An ex-clown, don't you know (recovering?).
 
Q-The Winged Serpent
Mexican dragon god preyed back into existence by a cult in 1980's New York. It builds a nest on the Chrysler Building and devours construction workers and people in rooftop swimming pools.
 
Horror Express- Peter Cushing and Cristopher Lee fight a resurrected ape-man possessed by an ethereal brain draining alien on the Trans-Siberian express. Runs like a classic 70's Dr Who story.
 
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Island of Terror-Peter Cushing again in another story with a Dr Who-ish feel. Lab engineered blobs that dissolve and drink bone matter over-run an Irish Island.
 
Night of the Big Heat aka Island of the Burning Dammed -Dear old Pete and Chris on another monster plagued island. This time its alien blobs that look like giant fried eggs and generate intense heat.
 
You spot a film on some silly list you once made and realise you have no memory of it. This creates the bizarre idea that watching it again might recapture something you missed the first time? Just me then?

It is an urge mainly to be resisted! I saw La Chiesa back in 1994, when this derivative 1989 Italian horror was in the local rental outlet and I must have been at a very loose end.

It is mad from the off with a Pythonesque massacre of witches by bucket-headed knights; one even manages to look like Terry Gilliam! Then we get an odd-couple romance between the most unlikely church picture-restorer and librarian you ever did see. It's all a bit Don't-Look-Now-Rosemary's-Baby-Is-In-the-Lime-Pit-With-The-Devils-And-The-Name-Of-The-Rose. Did Feodor Chaliapin Junior ever get out of a clerical hood?

The first hour is hokum but we are given to expect some rivalry over the librarian - between the sacristan's sexually precocious daughter and the lush picture-restorer - to drive matters. They actually disappear from view in the second half, when a black priest, "Father Gus" takes central stage. A number of annoying tourists invade the eponymous church, just in time to be trapped by a fiendish ("alchemical"?) device built into the structure. They all must perish, in order to save the rest of the world from the buried witches. Lurking behind it may be the ghost of Buñuel's Exterminating Angel but I missed the sheep - apart from the ones that wrote the script!

It is tempting to feel that the fiendish device which collapses the structure may be some clever reflexive thinking about the nature of cinema devouring itself. Visually it isn't badly done, though the only really imaginative moments allow the sounds of spectral horses to play on our nerves invisibly, connecting it - briefly - to the world of The Queen of Spades! :)
 
lordmongrove said:
Night of the Big Heat aka Island of the Burning Dammed
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I love that one! I picked it up a while back on DVD so it is due for a revisit some time in the next few years.

I seem to recall that there was a subtext of simmering lust which may have triggered the unnatural season on the island. So they all resort to the pub to cool off . . . :)
 
The Witchfinder General and The Curse of Frankenstein are both on iPlayer till early this Sunday.

Also Let Me In, which I've never seen. Is it worth a watch?
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I saw La Chiesa back in 1994, when this derivative 1989 Italian horror was in the local rental outlet and I must have been at a very loose end.
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If you're a fan of Italian horror like I am, The Church is something of a late mini-classic (the Italian classic period being 70's and early 80's) written by Dario Argento, and directed by Michele Soavi, it's UK Blu-Ray debut is out this month!

It is mad from the off with a Pythonesque massacre of witches by bucket-headed knights; one even manages to look like Terry Gilliam!
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Soavi was Gilliam's 2nd Unit Director on The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) so it's believed it possibly IS Gilliam!
 
We watched the Dyatlov Pass Incident a few days ago which wasn't bad. It is one of those found footage films with annoying American students in it. They are retracing the steps of the original group but spooky things happen. It was diverting enough although it is unclear to me why there needs to be a naked woman on the poster pictured at the top of the IMDB entry.
 
min_bannister said:
We watched the Dyatlov Pass Incident a few days ago which wasn't bad. It is one of those found footage films with annoying American students in it. They are retracing the steps of the original group but spooky things happen.
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Yep, and they manage to throw in another old Fortean story...

The Philadelphia Experiment

...when the they run out of Dyatlov material!
 
graylien said:
Also Let Me In, which I've never seen. Is it worth a watch?
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If you want a blander version of an art film horror from Scandinavia, then give it a go. They both have a small legion of fans (which I don't belong to).
 
Love watching Horror Express! They only had one train carriage as their set, so all of the dining car scenes were filmed at once, then it was redressed as the sleeping carriage, redressed as the cargo carriage, etc!

Good to see Cushing and Lee together again!
 
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