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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 23, 2024 5:00:38 GMT -5
New Castle After Dark, here I come! 1. Viy (1967), directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, adapted from a short story by Nicolai Gogol. It's supposed to be Russia's first horror film, but it's one I would have shown to my kids without had any qualm; it's really a folk tale with a witch and a few supernatural critters in it. But what fun I had! The practical effects are amazingly impressive in their ingenuity, and so superior to the CGI cr#p so prevalent these days. The final scene, in which the witch calls forth all manners of demons, is a joy to behold. Such creativity, even if the final monster (the Viy, whose gaze is lethal) looks a bit like like a giant muppet. The story is about a 20-ish philosophy student who has to spend three nights alone in a church praying over the body of a rich man's daughter. However, the girl, who's a witch, isn't really dead! Each night turns into a very unsettling experience for the lad, and it's a lot of fun to see him unsuccessfully try to escape the rich man's domain when each morning comes (on foot or thanks to copious amounts of alcohol). It's available for free on Youtube.
2. Black Sunday (La maschera del demonio), also known as The Mask of Satan) (1960), directed by Mario Bava. A funny coincidence is that I picked the film simply because it's the first one Tubi recommended in its Horor section yesterday, and it turned out to also be inspired by Nicolai Gogol's "The Viy"!
"Inspired" is actually a massive exaggeration. The only common point I could find between it and Gogol's story is that there's a witch in a tomb at some point. Black Sunday is about an ancient witch coming back to life every century by possessing the body of a distant relative. The plot drags a little after the initial set-up and before the climax, but the film compensates with a beautiful cinematography and great directing. The black & white images are sharply contrasted, helping set up the mood and allowing characters to suddenly appear out of nowhere without requiring special effects (you just have to turn a spotlight on). The gothic sets look great, and I love scenes shot in actual castles.
Two scenes made me take real notice. The first is kind of silly, almost out of a parody (although we'll forgive it, because it's shot in earnest). Our protagonists accidentally find the tomb of an ancient witch whose terrible legend they know about. Said tomb is a heavy stone thing, but with a window allowing us to see the witch's face -or rather, the iron mask that was nailed to her face. Over the little window is a stone cross, and the idea is that should she somehow come back to life, the sight of the cross would prevent her from leaving the tomb. All well and nice, right? But then a big bat attacks one of the protagonists, who flails around with his cane to defend himself. He manages to break the cross, break the tomb's glass window and slightly cut his hand before putting the beast down. Then, curious about the witch's mask, he takes it off... and even obligingly bleeds on her body. Because none of that could lead to bad consequences, right?
The second scene has a young girl from an inn fearfully crossing a benighted wood to go milk her cow, just as a dead wizard crawls out of his tomb and starts coming closer, looking all zombie-like. I was sure that the girl was toast, but no! It was a red herring! Well played, Mr. Bava; you had me going for a moment, there!
Overall I enjoyed it, and recommend it for the beauty of the cinematography. The story is however pretty standard, here given a much better cinematographic treatment than it would have warranted. 3. Maggie (2015), directed by Henry Hobson. 4. The McPherson Tape (1989) 5. The First Omen (2024) 6. Die Farbe (2010), an excellent adaptation of Lovecraft's The Color Out Of Space that I didn't know existed until thwhtguardian mentioned it, for which he has my sincere gratitude! 7. The Whisperer in Darkness 8. The Ninth Gate (1999)
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Post by berkley on Sept 23, 2024 22:46:09 GMT -5
I've lately upgraded a bunch of my movies to 4K UHD discs but haven't actually gotten around to watching them, and several fall under horror (Dario Argento's Deep Red, Suspiria, and Phenomena) or modern monster movies ( Alien, Aliens, Tremors, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Dog Soldiers). This would be a good excuse to pull them out and justify the purchases. I also recently learned that Lars von Trier's supernatural TV show The Kingdom unexpectedly got a third and concluding series in 2022 (the first two series aired in 1994 and 1997, but the deaths of two major cast members soon afterward seemed to end hopes for a continuation) and a complete release on Blu-Ray, which I bought immediately. I'll enjoy watching that finally as well. I might try to get to the completion of The Kingdom too, or at least make a start by re-watching the original.
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Post by Calidore on Sept 24, 2024 9:24:39 GMT -5
I've lately upgraded a bunch of my movies to 4K UHD discs but haven't actually gotten around to watching them, and several fall under horror (Dario Argento's Deep Red, Suspiria, and Phenomena) or modern monster movies ( Alien, Aliens, Tremors, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Dog Soldiers). This would be a good excuse to pull them out and justify the purchases. I also recently learned that Lars von Trier's supernatural TV show The Kingdom unexpectedly got a third and concluding series in 2022 (the first two series aired in 1994 and 1997, but the deaths of two major cast members soon afterward seemed to end hopes for a continuation) and a complete release on Blu-Ray, which I bought immediately. I'll enjoy watching that finally as well. I might try to get to the completion of The Kingdom too, or at least make a start by re-watching the original. I'll definitely need to restart from the beginning.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Sept 24, 2024 9:33:56 GMT -5
For those without extensive DVD collections still looking to join in there are plenty of options on regular old TV to keep you in the game: On Freeform you have this line up with some real gems: And the SYFY Channel( Ug...still hate that rebranding)apparently has horror movies 24/7 starting October 1st. And of course TCM is always my go to when I don't know what to watch this time of year and they don't disappoint. They have Creepy Cinema with Mario Cantone which has some really amazing films lined up( although sometimes his commentary while the film is going can be distracting) but the real kicker is this: None other than Bella Lugosi has been named TCM's star of the month which means every Wednesday night they show off some of his greatest hits all month! And if 80's Slashers are more your jam AMC's fear fest has you covered with airings of pretty much every entry from just about ever slasher franchise out there. Any way you slice it there's a surprisingly good amount of material out there this year.
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Post by berkley on Sept 24, 2024 22:33:53 GMT -5
New Castle After Dark, here I come! What is that?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 25, 2024 5:36:45 GMT -5
New Castle After Dark, here I come! What is that? It's a neat Youtube channel. Its two hosts operate on a shoestring budget, but are quite amusing in their assumed love fir genre films. They present mostly B-list and C-list scary movies, and their selection is often surprisingly good. The films are cut in two, so that the hosts can make a few comments in the middle (and so pretend that this is a review channel... something of a blatant copyright-circumventing tactic!) A recent showing of The Picture of Dorian Grey, made for television in the UK, was quite enjoyable. That's not something I would have found on my own. I'll start October with Viy, said to be the first Russian horror film. (As it's adapted from a Gogol story, I don't expect it to be schlocky!)
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Post by driver1980 on Sept 25, 2024 5:42:35 GMT -5
Roquefort Raider wrote this: Not passing any judgement, but solely out of curiosity, I’m wondering how that would stand up in court if a copyright-holder got it into a courtroom. It is funny what people do. I found an old wrestling match on YouTube once - but it was upside down. Deliberately, I think. Apparently, that was circumventing copyright, and it did mean you’d have to stand on your head (or adjust your device) to see it properly. It would be amusing - as a psychological exercise - to see how much of a defence that would be in court. I did once read about a megachurch that had tried to get a pastor (a rival one who spends almost all of his time attacking other ministries) to take down footage he’d shared of one of their services, but I think he argued “fair use”. Seems a minefield at times. Anyway, with regards to this topic, we had a Horror Channel in the UK, although airing the likes of Star Trek and The Six Million Dollar Man was stretching the definition of horror a tad. Anyway, that channel rebranded as Legend, and now airs horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. I did discover some cult horror films on there recently.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 25, 2024 13:18:47 GMT -5
Roquefort Raider wrote this: Not passing any judgement, but solely out of curiosity, I’m wondering how that would stand up in court if a copyright-holder got it into a courtroom. It is funny what people do. I found an old wrestling match on YouTube once - but it was upside down. Deliberately, I think. Apparently, that was circumventing copyright, and it did mean you’d have to stand on your head (or adjust your device) to see it properly. It would be amusing - as a psychological exercise - to see how much of a defence that would be in court. I did once read about a megachurch that had tried to get a pastor (a rival one who spends almost all of his time attacking other ministries) to take down footage he’d shared of one of their services, but I think he argued “fair use”. Seems a minefield at times. Anyway, with regards to this topic, we had a Horror Channel in the UK, although airing the likes of Star Trek and The Six Million Dollar Man was stretching the definition of horror a tad. Anyway, that channel rebranded as Legend, and now airs horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. I did discover some cult horror films on there recently. It wouldn't. It's more about getting past the search algorithms on Youtube, that identify copyright violations. That is why you will see things shot from a tv screen, reversed, cropped inside an image of a theater stage, sped up and similar. They are still providing public viewing without consent, and with far too much of the original to satisfy fair use. The disclaimers are laughable. Just because you claim you do not own the material and are showing it without profit does not necessarily indemnify you if the copyright owner brings suit. I've seen some clips of altered things, where it is like trying to watch the 60s Batman series, with the Dutch angles, and everyone sounds like they have been ingesting helium. Fair use is not a complete broadcast; it is minor segments, for review purposes. Back before we made people start selecting acknowledgements that they bear sole responsibility for the legal rights of anything they had us print, we had to constantly explain to people that they couldn't stick Spider-Man in little Billy's birthday party invitations, because it was his favorite hero, or Mickey Mouse ears, unless their surname was Disney. They had to buy officially licensed cards or be more creative. Now, with people blindly signing a waiver, we print all kinds of violations, especially idiots doing Tik-Tok stupidity with images pulled from the internet, spread over a wall, in their room. A month or so ago we had an on-line order for over 40 individuals images......not combined into one file, buy individual files, for printing. Hey, it's your future you are sacrificing for 15 seconds of internet notariety. You don't even get 15 minutes, anymore.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 25, 2024 13:21:38 GMT -5
I made out a list of 31 films I want to try to watch; some I have seen, some I haven't. Since horror isn't really my thing, there is more than a little spoof in there. Bela Lugosi is fine, but George Hamilton was a bit more fun.
Hard to play a convincing vampire, with that tan.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 25, 2024 15:39:20 GMT -5
I made out a list of 31 films I want to try to watch; some I have seen, some I haven't. Since horror isn't really my thing, there is more than a little spoof in there. Bela Lugosi is fine, but George Hamilton was a bit more fun. Hard to play a convincing vampire, with that tan. He was bronzer when bronzer wasn’t cool.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 25, 2024 16:59:37 GMT -5
I made out a list of 31 films I want to try to watch; some I have seen, some I haven't. Since horror isn't really my thing, there is more than a little spoof in there. Bela Lugosi is fine, but George Hamilton was a bit more fun. Hard to play a convincing vampire, with that tan. He was bronzer when bronzer wasn’t cool. He was also the world's most unbelievable Evel Knievel.....
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 25, 2024 17:09:33 GMT -5
Roquefort Raider wrote this: Not passing any judgement, but solely out of curiosity, I’m wondering how that would stand up in court if a copyright-holder got it into a courtroom. It is funny what people do. I found an old wrestling match on YouTube once - but it was upside down. Deliberately, I think. Apparently, that was circumventing copyright, and it did mean you’d have to stand on your head (or adjust your device) to see it properly. It would be amusing - as a psychological exercise - to see how much of a defence that would be in court. I did once read about a megachurch that had tried to get a pastor (a rival one who spends almost all of his time attacking other ministries) to take down footage he’d shared of one of their services, but I think he argued “fair use”. Seems a minefield at times. Anyway, with regards to this topic, we had a Horror Channel in the UK, although airing the likes of Star Trek and The Six Million Dollar Man was stretching the definition of horror a tad. Anyway, that channel rebranded as Legend, and now airs horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. I did discover some cult horror films on there recently. It wouldn't. It's more about getting past the search algorithms on Youtube, that identify copyright violations. Yes, that's pretty much what I thought. Before getting into the Cease-and-Desist stuff, there's the Youtube algorithm!
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 27, 2024 1:37:33 GMT -5
I kind of got a jump on things, tonight, with Godzilla Minus One. Tremendous film; and, for my money, the best Godzilla film ever. The story is really built around the people, making them more real than previous films, even the original. The setting and legacy of the war, with survivor's guilt, humiliation of defeat, the propaganda revealed as false, and the destruction of the firebombing of Tokyo all add to the suffering of the characters, as they grapple with living, after so much death. The scope is truly epic, while keeping things on an intimate level, through the focus characters of Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who feigned technical problems on his sortie, to escape death, only to find himself in the path of Godzilla, where he again freezes in the face of the monster, failing to fire his aircraft cannon. This leads to the deaths of all of the ground crew, except the lead mechanic, Sosaku Tachibana, who curses Koichi and shoves a packet of photos, from the dead ground crew into his hand, when the sail back to Japan, after the surrender. Koichi finds his family dead, his neighbor curses him for failing in his duty and the deaths of her children, from the firebombing. He encounters a woman, with a baby, stealing to survive and she stays with him in the ruins of his family home. he eventually gets a gob as a gunner, on a minesweeper, as they work to clear the sea lanes of wartime mines. This leads to a new encounter with Godzilla, who comes ashore and attacks the Ginza district, where the woman, Noriko, is working. A plan is hatched to try to ensnare Godzilla in cables, attached to freon cylinders, to then sink Godzilla to the sea bottom, over a deep trench, letting pressure destroy him, with a back up of CO2-inflated airbags to float him back up and let decompression do the rest. An alternate plan, to equip a Kyushu J7W Shinden experimental fighter as a kamikaze plane, is formulated, with Koichi enlisting the help of Tachibana, to refit the derelict aircraft.
Everything is as good as it can be...better. The filming is mostly kept at an intimate level, so that the money spent on effects work can be used to the fullest and give it the most impact. Godzilla has the familiar silhouette, but with more detail, more aggressive. The Godzilla theme is used for the proper emotional impact and there are homages to parts of the original, like Noriko riding a train, when Godzilla attacks it, and the freon trap reminding one of the oxygen destroyer, in the original.
The film also acts as a commentary on the failure of government to deal with the COVID pandemic, through inaction in the face of Godzilla, not to mention commentary about propaganda and withholding information from the public, both in the war and in things like the Fukushima disaster and COVID. It also shows post traumatic stress, in the survivors of the war, especially soldiers and sailors, conditioned to fight to the death, but finding themselves alive in the aftermath.
It does have some minor translation problems, in the subtitled version I watched, as it keeps referring to the Shinden as a "jet fighter," when it is a prop aircraft. Provisions were made to eventually equip them with jet engines, once they became available, but parts were rare and held up Japanese development of such things. Also, the Shinden was conducting test flights on the days of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, which brought an end to the idea of using them to defend the home islands from an invasion. This makes it an appropriate platform for the heroic defense against Godzilla. Even with the monster destruction and spectacle, it is still about these people and the struggle to go on living, in the face of death and disaster, something lost as the Godzilla films descended into kaiju pro wrestling and totally absent from American attempts. It blows away the Legendary Pictures film series, both in story and visuals, and a value for the budget.
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Post by berkley on Sept 27, 2024 3:11:06 GMT -5
It's a neat Youtube channel. Its two hosts operate on a shoestring budget, but are quite amusing in their assumed love fir genre films. They present mostly B-list and C-list scary movies, and their selection is often surprisingly good. The films are cut in two, so that the hosts can make a few comments in the middle (and so pretend that this is a review channel... something of a blatant copyright-circumventing tactic!) A recent showing of The Picture of Dorian Grey, made for television in the UK, was quite enjoyable. That's not something I would have found on my own. I'll start October with Viy, said to be the first Russian horror film. (As it's adapted from a Gogol story, I don't expect it to be schlocky!) Sounds interesting, I'll give it a look. I've read the Gogol story but have never seen a film version. Looking it up, there appear to be at least three - is it the 1967 one you'll be watching?
I know the book I'm starting off with in October - William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land - but I'm still undecided exactly which movie I'll try first. But roughly speaking I'll be starting with some silents and early 1930s things, then jumping ahead to the 1950s, then the late-70s and 1980s, and finally ending with some post-2000 stuff, including at least one 2024 film that I really wanted to catch at the movie theatre but couldn't get to when it played here locally a few months ago.
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Post by berkley on Sept 27, 2024 3:14:50 GMT -5
I kind of got a jump on things, tonight, with Godzilla Minus One. Tremendous film; and, for my money, the best Godzilla film ever. The story is really built around the people, making them more real than previous films, even the original. The setting and legacy of the war, with survivor's guilt, humiliation of defeat, the propaganda revealed as false, and the destruction of the firebombing of Tokyo all add to the suffering of the characters, as they grapple with living, after so much death. The scope is truly epic, while keeping things on an intimate level, through the focus characters of Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who feigned technical problems on his sortie, to escape death, only to find himself in the path of Godzilla, where he again freezes in the face of the monster, failing to fire his aircraft cannon. This leads to the deaths of all of the ground crew, except the lead mechanic, Sosaku Tachibana, who curses Koichi and shoves a packet of photos, from the dead ground crew into his hand, when the sail back to Japan, after the surrender. Koichi finds his family dead, his neighbor curses him for failing in his duty and the deaths of her children, from the firebombing. He encounters a woman, with a baby, stealing to survive and she stays with him in the ruins of his family home. he eventually gets a gob as a gunner, on a minesweeper, as they work to clear the sea lanes of wartime mines. This leads to a new encounter with Godzilla, who comes ashore and attacks the Ginza district, where the woman, Noriko, is working. A plan is hatched to try to ensnare Godzilla in cables, attached to freon cylinders, to then sink Godzilla to the sea bottom, over a deep trench, letting pressure destroy him, with a back up of CO2-inflated airbags to float him back up and let decompression do the rest. An alternate plan, to equip a Kyushu J7W Shinden experimental fighter as a kamikaze plane, is formulated, with Koichi enlisting the help of Tachibana, to refit the derelict aircraft. Everything is as good as it can be...better. The filming is mostly kept at an intimate level, so that the money spent on effects work can be used to the fullest and give it the most impact. Godzilla has the familiar silhouette, but with more detail, more aggressive. The Godzilla theme is used for the proper emotional impact and there are homages to parts of the original, like Noriko riding a train, when Godzilla attacks it, and the freon trap reminding one of the oxygen destroyer, in the original. The film also acts as a commentary on the failure of government to deal with the COVID pandemic, through inaction in the face of Godzilla, not to mention commentary about propaganda and withholding information from the public, both in the war and in things like the Fukushima disaster and COVID. It also shows post traumatic stress, in the survivors of the war, especially soldiers and sailors, conditioned to fight to the death, but finding themselves alive in the aftermath. It does have some minor translation problems, in the subtitled version I watched, as it keeps referring to the Shinden as a "jet fighter," when it is a prop aircraft. Provisions were made to eventually equip them with jet engines, once they became available, but parts were rare and held up Japanese development of such things. Also, the Shinden was conducting test flights on the days of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, which brought an end to the idea of using them to defend the home islands from an invasion. This makes it an appropriate platform for the heroic defense against Godzilla. Even with the monster destruction and spectacle, it is still about these people and the struggle to go on living, in the face of death and disaster, something lost as the Godzilla films descended into kaiju pro wrestling and totally absent from American attempts. It blows away the Legendary Pictures film series, both in story and visuals, and a value for the budget. I'm way behind on all the recent monster movies of the last few years. I still haven't seen Skull Island, which I thought looked good in previews at the time. I'll keep that and Godzilla Minus One in mind for when I get up to relatively recent movies, which I'm planning to do towards the end of the month.
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