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Ringu

In a similar bloody vein "Ichi the Killer" is a great Japanese extreme gore fest.
 
Battle Royale is without doubt one of the best films made in the last ten years, I cannot reccomend it enough to anyone. If you buy it then get the special edition dvd in the tin, you'll never get bored of watching it.
 
River_Styx said:
Battle Royale is without doubt one of the best films made in the last ten years, I cannot reccomend it enough to anyone. If you buy it then get the special edition dvd in the tin, you'll never get bored of watching it.
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And if you have cable or satelite, I think its currently running on the SCIFI channel
 
Jimv said:
BTW. Can anyone recommend some good Chinese ghost story movies?
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A Chinese Ghost Story
A Chinese Ghost Story Part II
A Chinese Ghost Story Part III

Not scary but very entertaining! :D
 
siriuss said:
A Chinese Ghost Story
A Chinese Ghost Story Part II
A Chinese Ghost Story Part III

Not scary but very entertaining! :D
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Also:

Close encounters of the Spooky kind I
Close encounters of the Spooky kind II

Which are in the same vein, with Samo Hung starring
 
And anything out of Hollywood which stars Jackie Chan scares me shitless. (technically not chinese but you get the idea)
 
Thanks for all those movie tips.
I agree that Audition is one to watch but with Gross-out Blinkers.

While we're on a movie subject does anyone think that Sapphire and Steel is worth a TV redo for the noughties? I haven't seen the DVD sets but it fair gave me the creeps when I was a nipper.

Oh. And if you're feeling that way inclined you may want to add your nomination for new Doctor Who.
Personally, I'd like to see Brian Sewell in the role. He'd give it gravitas with the right amount of campness no problem.
(sarcasm mode _ off)

Sorry abroad. This is a bit Anglo.
 
Jimv said:
...Oh. And if you're feeling that way inclined you may want to add your nomination for new Doctor Who.
Personally, I'd like to see Brian Sewell in the role. He'd give it gravitas with the right amount of campness no problem.
(sarcasm mode _ off)

Sorry abroad. This is a bit Anglo.
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I heard a rumour that Edie Izzard has been approached for the new Dr Who role, can anybody shed some light on this?

As for Ring (Japanese version), I tried to watch it, but find it very difficult to read subtitles at the same time as watching a film.:(
 
Filcee said:
As for Ring (Japanese version), I tried to watch it, but find it very difficult to read subtitles at the same time as watching a film.:(
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I'll tell what's even more difficult.....going to see an English language film in a Spanish speaking country, as I did recently, and selecting a screening that's in the original English with Spanish subtitles, only to find that half of it's in French. So I spent half of the movie oblivious to what was going on as people gabbled away in French, and a Spanish translation was susbtitled at the bottom.

The film was Femme Fatal btw.
 
Filcee said:
As for Ring (Japanese version), I tried to watch it, but find it very difficult to read subtitles at the same time as watching a film.:(
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you just need practice, once you've watched a few japanese or other forign language films like this you read it automaticly and it's as if the people on the screen were doing the talking :)
 
I wouldn't watch Ring 2 on Sci-Fi channel then. The subtitles are white and totally vanish whenever the background gets too bright and seeing as there are a lot of hospitals and doctors in the first half it happens quite a lot.
 
Ring 2 is IMO good but not brilliant, whereas Ring 0 is pure bollocks.

I could live with a repeat of Saphire & Steel, it fair scared me witless when I was a nipper too.
 
I have just found this on playusa.com
A movie called Stacy, it's japanese and was made in 2001 here's the sysnopsis...

In the early 21st century, teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 17 begin dying all over the world. Shortly before they die, the girls succumb to NDH (Near Death Happiness), a “pre-death” state of absolute bliss and joy. Once dead, girls come back as a flesh-eating zombie nicknamed “Stacy”. The world is in chaos. Countries suffer from famine, war, and zero-population growth because of this teenage death epidemic. To keep the zombies from returning and eating innocent people, families are urged to kill their daughters before they are allowed to die by this mysterious disease (chopping them up and leaving them in garbage bags for government-sanctioned pick-up).


Based on the popular Japanese novel by Kenji Otsuki, Stacy is a bloodbath of extreme gore effects and comedy with elements of Resident Evil and George A. Romer’s classic Day of the Dead.
 
River_Styx said:
And anything out of Hollywood which stars Jackie Chan scares me shitless. (technically not chinese but you get the idea)
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Samo Hung

Jet Li

Jackie Chan

All got to Hollywood way too old, and have been given absolutely appalling vehicles, that can't show their current talents, never mind the skills that they had in the past
 
I've been studiously avoiding all reference to The Ring so as not to spoil anything (after having the Sixth Sense twist revealed to me before watching the film!) and finally saw the film on sunday night.... and thought it was a load of rubbish! I couldn't understand why a lot of the things happened and didn't find it scary at all (and I'm an easily scared person), but I knew I'd find some answers here, specifically why did the husband keep saying of Samaras mother 'she should never have had children'? Reading this it's obvious they missed a whole chunk of info from the Japanese original (ie, mother's psychic, daughter more so, how the tape was originally made). I found it very disappointing after all the hype (mind you - that should have been a warning, film's often don't live up to their hype). Does anyone know if the books been translated yet? I think I'll have a search on Amazon.
 
Can someone explain why Samara and her mother were wearing Victorian style clothes? I thought the mother's may have been something to do with horse riding, dressage oe something, but Samara's was quite Victorian as well.

And why did everyone accept the death of the girl at the start as just her heart stopping, despite the fact her face was terror stricken and her best friend went mad?

The more I think about it, the more the film annoys me!
 
Can anyone recommend some good Chinese ghost story movies?
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I don't know much about Chinese ghost stories. However, if Asian horror in general is your thing, try:

Phone (Korean)
Ju-On aka The Grudge (Japanese, I think it's on general release here shortly)
Bangkok Haunted (Thai)
Junk (Japanese)
Versus (Japanese)
Wild Zero (Japanese)
Ring 0 (the best of the three IMO, Japanese)
The Eye (Hong Kong/Korea)

and Dark Water, which was mentioned before.

Phone is a great film.
 
asian scare

You might also have a look at:
Kwaidan - beautiful omnibus film based on Lafcadio Hearn tales IIRC.
The Mystery of Rampo - a rubber reality mystery
Throne of Blood - Kurpsawa's very spooky b&w version of Macbeth
 
and how many of us recieved a phone call.............................:D
 
Ah the grudge...

I decided to get over my horror film quirk by going to see Ju on: the grudge. For those of you interested (and who could possible fail to be!) I like horror films. I do, a lot, I just can't watch them. I don't do films that make you jump and I can spot a jumpy set up a mile off. The music, the build up,the 'double bluff' of a cat/bird/just the wind etc etc before nameless creeping horror jumps out of the wardrobe - can spot them about 95% of the time. Once a 'jump' begins to build up I can't watch it - mainly because I am a wuss. I can however get round this, by doing the old Dr Who standby of watching said film from behind a cushion with the sound off. I mentioned wuss before, those suggesting wimp would not be talking crazy talk.

So I decided on monday that I would cure myself by going to see Ju On - seemed like a good idea at the time. Well I say 'see', but actually managed to watch about 15 mins or so of film - spent the rest of it hiding under my coat. Sounded fairly gruesome though.

I think things may have gone downhill slightly when I got the willies from the trailer (the TRAILER!??!?!) for 'A tale of two sisters'. If the trailers are freaky, it doesn't bode well for the main feature...

:eek!!!!:

Can't really say it was the best £3.75 I've ever spent...

Sigh... might limit myself to kiddie films from now on.
 
Have just watched The Eye (Jiam gui)....absolutely brilliant!!!

I have noticed that in these far east films a common theme is that the faces of the ghosts/spectres/whatever are often hidden. The young girl in Ihe Ring is the most famous example and the face of the man standing by the well is covered with a cloth. In Dark Water the young girl has her face hidden and in The Eye the old guy in the lift has his face turned away from us during most of the scene is this a common motif in Asiatic folk lore or just good cinema???
 
The Eye the old guy in the lift has his face turned away from us during most of the scene is this a common motif in Asiatic folk lore or just good cinema???
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It could just be good cinema, and working on the premise that what you can imagine is worse than what they can actually show, there might also be something in there about the oriental concept of 'losing face'.

A friend told me about a Jap horror movie she saw in the 70s, that was a series of short stories, one concerned some people who literally had no faces, then at the end, one of the characters puts his hands over his face, and when he takes them away his face is gone too.

She mentioned another of the shorts in this film has a story about a man who accidentally absorbs another man's soul by drinking water that his reflection has been cast in, which loosely ties in with the ghosts/water theme on another thread.

I can't remember the title of the film right now, have to ask next time I speak to her.
 
Origins of the ring

Ok we all saw and *&%$ our pants to the Us version, we know that it was a remake of the Japanes version, which was a dramatisation from a book; where does the original idea come from, was it it stroke of Genious by the author or was there an UL tied to it?


Answers on a post card please :D
 
Re: Origins of the ring

PintQuaff said:
where does the original idea come from
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The original novel is supposedly influenced by the M. R. James short story 'Casting the runes' (published 1911). I don't know if the author has admitted this, or if it's just speculation.

The James piece is available to read here:
http://www.encompass.net/~ctyson/CASTING.htm
 
That movie was good, except I didn't really get the ending. Why wasn't she supposed to help the girl?

The kid was a little irritating, too...but the creepy factor of the movie outweighed this.
 
Well it made going to bed more interessting anyway, Ill have to read the books to help fill in the missing info, but id still like to know where the original idea came from.




-RING RING RING RING RING-
 
For me the US version could have been so much better, but was never on a par with the original. Why is it that in every Hollywood horror film that now stars a kid it has to be a case of "I seeeeee deeeeead ppppeeeeooopppllleeeee!!!!!" Come on, her son in the remake was such a pain and spoiled my enjoyment. Sadako was miles better than 'Samara' as well. Creepier and not so whiny.

Sorry that this is slightly off topic, but seeing as others mentioned the film I thought I'd be a pain and stick my thoughts down.

There is a similarly veined film that was recently released as well, can't remember what it was called though. I think it was about four friends who each receive a phone call to hear someone else's death happen, then a few days later it actually happens. Now that I want to see...!
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I
A friend told me about a Jap horror movie she saw in the 70s, that was a series of short stories, one concerned some people who literally had no faces, then at the end, one of the characters puts his hands over his face, and when he takes them away his face is gone too.
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I think it's Kwaidan, done in mid 60's -- still haven't seen it but it's fresh out on DVD in the states so I'm gonna have to rent it when I've got time. It's supposed to be one of the classics of Japanese Horror, so why I've not seen it, in my most complete of j-horror nerdyness, is beyond me.
 
Ju-On: The Grudge was excellent. Problem being I'm not entirely sure which one it was I watched. As there are 4 movies which are all named frustratingly similar. A TV version and it's sequal, and a theatrical remake and it's sequal. Which all bear the name of Ju-On.

Dark Water was also creepy but was alot slower paced. Suicide Club, Battle Royale and Uzumaki (Spiral) are great too.

The thing with the face being hidden actually is common in the folklore. I research alot of Japanese youkai & yurei and there seems to be many of them that have something to do with the face being distorted, or hidden, or not there at all. Faceless women, woman with a slit mouth, face with a black toothed smile. etc, etc. It's really great stuff.

Also - Here's a good page about some of Ring's connections to Japanese folklore

http://www.geof.net/blog/2004/07/31/Ring_and_Myth.html
 
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