Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Oct 10, 2024 9:45:32 GMT -5
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Oct 10, 2024 9:50:00 GMT -5
Day Ten: Child's Play (1988)
Y'know, for as inherently silly as the concept of a killer doll is...I've gotta give it up to Child's Play a little, because this movie is reasonably more well-made than I was expecting. There's still a certain amount of schlock to be found here at times, don't get me wrong, but on the whole, director Tom Holland doesn't really treat it as such. Instead, he surprisingly takes the time to build up a bit to Chucky himself and the movie generally has a solid sense of pacing to it. The script frames some of it as a cop-on-the-hunt-for-a-killer type of story and also takes the time to establish the central kid and his mom as characters at least worth getting invested in, which is something you probably wouldn't find in a lesser version of this same concept. Does all of Holland's effort translate into a completely successful movie, though? Well, this is still a pretty silly movie at the end of the day and for all of the attempts to sort of legitimize this thing and build tension, the horror of having a possessed doll as a slasher movie villain just doesn't work as well as the filmmakers maybe hoped. Then again, in terms of just Chucky as a character, that's where the movie finds a lot of its fun, thanks in no small part to Brad Dourif, who actually brings some personality to Chucky that manages to make him memorable, if not exactly all that terrifying. Child's Play definitely deserves credit for how much effort it seems to have behind it than something like a typical Friday the 13th installment and there's more entertainment value here, to be sure, but it still comes across as more silly than scary most of the time. Even so...this could've been a lot worse.
**1/2 /****
 Child’s Play was the first horror film I saw, so since next month is the 25th anniversary, I decided to reserve a spot for our favorite possessed doll. The movie begins with Brad Dourif being chased by Chris Sarandon in the streets of Chicago. He gets shot and then runs into a toy store. There, he grabs a Chucky doll and uses voodoo magic to transfer his soul into the toy. Then a few days later, we meet a single mom played by Catherine Hicks of Star Trek IV and 7th Heaven fame. She wants to give her 6-year-old son a Chucky doll for his birthday but they’re ridiculously expensive. They cost $100 in 1988 money. So she finds a hobo who sells it to her for $30. And although she saved a few bucks, it definitely wasn’t worth it because it comes to life and goes on a killing spree. Director Tom Holland (Fright Night) makes a good effort to make this concept work but it usually comes across as very stupid. What rescues the film is Brad Dourif’s vocal performance as Chucky. He makes Chucky the most multi-dimensional villain in contemporary horror movies. Even though the character is pure evil, you can still imagine yourself going to a bar with him and having ordinary conversations. And when the sequels came along, Chucky got strangely more normal with each one. The first sequel was released in 1990 and follows the aftermath of the original. Since a possessed killer doll is hard to believe, Catherine Hicks is put in a mental institute while her son is sent to a foster home. Then Chucky returns and we get a rehash of the original film. It’s underwhelming to say the least but we do get an excellent climax at the toy factory where the Chucky dolls are built. The third sequel, released in 1991, is directed by Jack Bender of Lost fame. This one takes place in the future where the son is now a teenage boy played by Justin Whalin, who you may remember as Jimmy Olsen on the Lois and Clark TV series. The setting for this sequel is a military school, which is a nice change of pace, but once again, we get a rehash of the original. Audiences, myself included, got bored of it and the movie flopped at the box office. So another Chucky, or “Child’s Play”, installment wasn’t released till 1998 which was the 10th anniversary. That’s when we got Bride of Chucky which is the second most successful film in the series. This one was directed by Ronny Yu (Freddy vs Jason) and focuses on the twisted love story between Chucky and his girlfriend Tiffany, who is played by Jennifer Tilly. Most people think it’s hilarious but I don’t think it’s very funny. I’m actually one of the very few people that prefers 2004's Seed of Chucky which is directed by Don Mancini, the sole screenwriter of every sequel. The reason this one works is because it fully embraces being a B-movie. Bride of Chucky is too mainstream while this one has John Waters, references to Ed Wood, and lots of Hollywood satire. Plus, I love how Chucky is now a husband and father. He went from a children’s toy that murders people to an evil spirit trying to become human so he can provide a better future for his family. That’s great dark comedy and it’s tempting me to say that Seed of Chucky is actually the best in the series. Anyway, while you wrap your mind around that statement, a new sequel has been released for the 25th anniversary. It’s titled Curse of Chucky and was made available directly to DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital platforms. I haven’t seen it yet so I can’t comment on it. So maybe next year. Is it 2017 already? Curse of Chucky (2013) / Cult of Chucky (2017) Chucky arrived late into the slasher genre’s heyday of the 1980’s and has limped along ever since. The fact they’re still making these damn movies without rebooting the series or making large compromises is astonishing. Chucky is like the X-Men of slasher films. In 2013 he returned from a 9 year hiatus in Curse of Chucky. It’s billed as going back to basics, but that’s a tad misleading. Most of the running time is spent on a dysfunctional family slowing being killed by Chucky in their home but by the ending it segways into camp. That leads into Cult of Chucky, released this year, which is not quite Bride of Chucky/Seed of Chucky level of camp but it's close enough and there’s no doubt any sequel will continue the trend of slowly returning to where the franchise was in 2004. On a technical level, Curse is better. The characters are more fun to watch and the story is simple enough that anyone can watch it without having to dive back into the series. Cult, on the other hand, is pure mythology. They bring back characters from previous installments, evolve Chucky and continue to expand on the saga. People have jokingly said that Chucky has the best continuity of any horror series... that isn’t too far from the truth. It’s impressive how much mileage they’ve given to a stupid movie to 1988. It’s intriguing and worth anticipating what comes next. Till then... HAPPY HALLOWEEN |
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Oct 10, 2024 10:09:14 GMT -5
SnoBorderZeroJames Whale’s Invisible Man is legitimately great. It plays out more like a comedy than a true horror film, but that’s what is great about it. The special effects team also didn’t fuck around. This is wall to wall effects. The Invisible Man is fully realized. That said, I’m not sure the script went through the same scrutiny. At 70 minutes, it feels like the whole first reel is missing. We get dropped into the middle of Invisible Man shenanigans and it never feels like a complete story was told. But does it matter? No. Not really. I’m just pointing that out in case someone here is crazy enough to say this is better than Frankenstein. You’re wrong. Dead wrong. But Invisible Man is certainly a super fun character and the film works. Unless I've gone senile, I believe this might be my first exposure to a young Vincent Price. I'm not sure how I feel about it. No stache? It doesn't even sound like him. I wanna believe Vincent Price was born middle aged with a distinct accent. Here, he plays a man accused of murder. He seeks out the help of the brother of the O.G. Invisible Man. Price turns invisible, does his shenanigans and then proves his innocence. I love that the Invisible Man is a jackass, and the Vincent Price version is no different. Comedically speaking, everything that was great about the original is great here too, but the script is okay. The original is better, it has a better story, but the sequel is fun too. Yes, that’s you doing a double take at Shemp from the Three Stooges. That came after you almost broke your neck at the Wicked Witch of the West. Who the heck cast this movie? The third in Universal’s Invisible Man series gender swaps. They were truly ahead of their time. First Cinematic Universe. First to provoke the incels. Did they also do a multiverse?? So, this wacky scientist makes an invisibility machine and uses a young lady as his test subject. As is tradition in this series, she uses her newfound abilities for shenanigans. This gets interrupted when a group of gangsters try to steal the machine and she has to fight back. This is all inconsequential because the focus of the movie is to point out that our heroine is technically “naked” throughout most of the film. Bear in mind, the two previous Invisible Men spent a good amount of time with their dick out. But let’s not think about that. Let’s titillate on this instead. This is an incredibly silly movie… and I’m okay with that. If I see Shemp, I expect silly, and the film delivered.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 10, 2024 10:35:05 GMT -5
Day Nine: Orphan: First KillC I'm pretty much the opposite on these Orphan movies. I found the first one kind of dull, overlong and surprisingly average in execution. Whereas First Kill, not a movie I'd call exactly "good", has that midpoint shift that made that movie at least a lot more fun to watch. |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Oct 10, 2024 13:01:20 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Ghost with the most is back! Michael Keaton returns as the titular Beetlejuice and Tim Burton, the director of the first Beetlejuice, is back at the helm of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features many returning cast members along with some new faces who all interact when hijinx ensue thanks to Beetlejuice. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice, you'll enjoy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Oct 10, 2024 13:03:10 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Ghost with the most is back! Michael Keaton returns as the titular Beetlejuice and Tim Burton, the director of the first Beetlejuice, is back at the helm of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features many returning cast members along with some new faces who all interact when hijinx ensue thanks to Beetlejuice. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice, you'll enjoy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Trying out ChatGPT? |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 10, 2024 13:03:47 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Ghost with the most is back! Michael Keaton returns as the titular Beetlejuice and Tim Burton, the director of the first Beetlejuice, is back at the helm of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features many returning cast members along with some new faces who all interact when hijinx ensue thanks to Beetlejuice. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice, you'll enjoy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Thanks, WB Press Department. |
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Post by Doomsday on Oct 10, 2024 13:04:15 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Ghost with the most is back! Michael Keaton returns as the titular Beetlejuice and Tim Burton, the director of the first Beetlejuice, is back at the helm of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features many returning cast members along with some new faces who all interact when hijinx ensue thanks to Beetlejuice. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice, you'll enjoy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Trying out ChatGPT? Neverending kept asking for a Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review. Maybe I'll add more once I see it. |
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Oct 10, 2024 13:09:41 GMT -5
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Ghost with the most is back! Michael Keaton returns as the titular Beetlejuice and Tim Burton, the director of the first Beetlejuice, is back at the helm of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice features many returning cast members along with some new faces who all interact when hijinx ensue thanks to Beetlejuice. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice, you'll enjoy Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Trying out ChatGPT? Thought it was Christopher Nolan. |
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Oct 10, 2024 13:17:51 GMT -5
Day Nine: Orphan: First KillC I'm pretty much the opposite on these Orphan movies. I found the first one kind of dull, overlong and surprisingly average in execution. Whereas First Kill, not a movie I'd call exactly "good", has that midpoint shift that made that movie at least a lot more fun to watch. For me First Kill was a little too try hard. Since Malignant we've had all these horror movies that try to flaunt how "cRaZy" they are but none have really landed for me, except Malignant since it presented itself well and also had the guts to actually go somewhere crazy. And while I'm responding to peers here... Day Ten: My Bloody Valentine(s)My Bloody Valentine (1981) I first watched My Bloody Valentine while sharing drinks with friends and only half-paying attention. I enjoyed myself but I can't say the movie was the primary source of that fun. So on this rewatch, I was somewhat shocked to see that My Bloody Valentine is genuinely pretty good, especially as far as slasher movies go. The film generally follows the formula with a masked mad man killing people with a sharp object, but an old miner's uniform and pickaxe is a pretty sweet slasher villain aesthetic. There are also some small but meaningful deviations from the formula, namely that the victims aren't teenagers but the young men (and their girlfriends) who work in the mine of this rural mining town. On some level they basically act like teenagers, but the slightly older cast does add a bit of a sadder tone, the characters not youths at the cusp of starting their lives but young adults already settled into a job they'll likely spend the next several decades doing. Or at least they would if it weren't for Harry Warden seeking revenge. The small mining town also contextualizes desire to party as less an expression of young hedonism than as the only release in a dead end town with nothing to do. These points aren't overly emphasized but they're certainly there and they add a lot. The movie also delivers as a slasher movie with some really great kills (unrated cut rules), a strong sense of escalation, and rewarding mystery. The film also rides the line of entertaining murder set-pieces while still making you care about the characters. There's a payoff involving a box of chocolates that genuinely made me pretty sad. That said there are some lesser side characters who are just there to get slashed down and the movie never quite excels to the upper-tier of its genre, but it executes strongly on the fundamentals all the same. Cool song at the end too. BMy Bloody Valentine 3D A film that bravely asks what if My Bloody Valentine was loud, shallow, and stupid. This 2009 remake lacks any subtlety or build-up, immediately blowing its load with blood-soaked corpses captured in vivid detail, to the point where the film has nowhere else to go gore wise after five minutes. Any sense of authenticity of a small mining town is abandoned with the primary cast full of generic handsome actor people and the utterly bland setting. The one memorable aspect of this film is that it was shot in 3D and indulged in pickaxes and bits of gore flying directly at the camera. I can imagine that being trashy fun in the right context. Of course, I watched the film on streaming in 2D so that effect was lost but I was somewhat charmed by the shameless stupidity of it. Honestly, "somewhat charmed" is probably still overstating things. This movie is terrible, a completely artless interpretation of something special. D- |
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Oct 10, 2024 13:22:21 GMT -5
MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981) My Bloody Valentine is a Canadian slasher film about a mining town in Nova Scotia with a killer on the loose. What's different here is that the characters are adults. Typically you'd get teenage characters as victims. Here, it's grown men working the mines and they just want to relax, have fun and spend valentines with their partners. Valentines taking place on Saturday the 14th, day after Friday the 13th. Clever. Paramount, actually, distributed the movie in hopes of cashing in on Friday the 13th. They hadn't released any of the sequels yet. Shame it didn't work out because My Bloody Valentine is really good and offers a different perspective. As I said, the characters are adults and also the killer is very much human and the victims can fight back a bit. Instead of having a "final girl", they have a "final guy" and he does a bit of ass kicking. There's a bit of Ash from Evil Dead in his character. It's a nice counterpoint to Friday the 13th and most of the other slashers. MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D (2009) PhantomKnight, let’s take a trip down memory lane to 2009 when Jensen Ackles was in My Bloody Valentine 3D and Jared Padalecki starred in the Michael Bay produced remake of Friday the 13th. Hilariously, not only were these movies released a month apart but Friday the 13th had the audacity to take the Valentines Day weekend release date. Also, your girl Megan Boone, from the Blacklist, is in My Bloody Valentine 3D. And let’s just say her cameltoe deserved an Academy Award nomination. I actually enjoy the Friday the 13th remake. My Bloody Valentine 3D? Not so much. It’s funny watching this movie and getting weirdly nostalgic for all the shitty movies that got released in late 2008 and early 2009. The Spirit. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Dragonball: Evolution. X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I can see why SnoBorderZero has a fondness for this time period. The movies weren’t just bad. They were, how do I put this, unapologetically bad. In the 1980’s and 90’s you had campy movies. There were cheap movies that turned out unintentionally hilarious. By the 2000’s, technology had reached the point that if you put a million dollars into a movie, it’ll look okay. It’s passable. So it comes down to how much a filmmaker gives a shit, and astonishingly, a lot of them didn’t. There isn’t much to My Bloody Valentine 3D. It’s just gore, tits and Megan Boone’s cameltoe. There’s no plot. There’s no characters. It’s just people getting murdered for 90 minutes — in 3D!!!! Can you imagine this getting made today? It wouldn’t happen. At least not theatrically. It could get dumped on VOD or Netflix and get lost in the shuffle. But it wouldn’t be a studio film getting a wide theatrical release. There’s like a 5 or 10 minute scene in which actress Betsy Rue is running around completely naked (head to toe) at a cheap motel while the Miner (the villain in the story) chases her around and eventually kills. Twitter would lose its mind if that was put in a movie today. Critics and entertainment journalists would write reviews and articles on the gratuitous violence and nudity. But in 2009, literally, no one gave a shit. lol. Also, keep in mind, this is a movie for teenagers. Yeah, it’s R-rated, but it was made for high school and college kids. Who else you think paid to watch this movie in theatres? Besides 1godzillafan. It’s mindless violence for kids. At least in the 80’s slashers it had to pretend to be a movie. Here, nah, it’s just a guy killing people. In 3D! It’s a crappy movie, but I admire that it had one objective and stuck to it. 2000’s cinema really was wonderful. lol. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Oct 10, 2024 16:10:13 GMT -5
Film Ten: Revenge (2017)  Revenge is a movie that was saddled with a fairly generic title and its basic high concept isn’t exactly that original on paper either. The film is a rape/revenge film in which a woman visits a remote vacation home in a desert in an unnamed country owned by the man she’s having an affair with, is sexually assaulted by one of his hunting buddies, and is then pushed off a cliff to keep her from going to the police and leave her for dead. She actually didn’t die though and managed to survive despite being impaled by a branch and from there it’s a fight for survival with her trying to take these guys down. This was the first film from Coralie Fargeat, who followed this up with this year’s much buzzed about The Substance, and her debut is in some ways even more violent and transgressive than the follow-up. The movie was one of the first movies to be distributed by the Shudder streaming service and is usually looked at as a horror movie because it’s dark and violent but truth be told it kind of plays more like an adventure/survival thriller along the lines of something like Deliverance or something. Fargeat’s films clearly have something of a feminist undercurrent, but one that’s probably a little out of sync with current feminist sensibilities and debates, for lack of a better term she’s, uh, not very concerned with “triggering” people. The points she’s making about the female experience are not exactly original (“rapists are pigs” and “beauty standard can be damaging” are not ideas that exactly break new ground) but she does stand out for the extremes she goes to and also for just how stylish and good looking her movies are. This one is actually really slick looking despite the gnarly subject matter, which is a bit of a departure from the old rape/revenge norm of leaning into grittiness and using cheap film stock. It’s a cool stripped to the bare essentials thriller if you’re done for all the blood and looking for that but it certainly won’t be for everyone. ***1/2 out of Five
Bonus Film: Speak No Evil (2022)  I think I saw the trailer for the recent horror movie Speak No Evil in front of more movies than I didn’t over the last couple of months and it looked mildly interesting but as its release approached I started to learn that the movie was actually a remake of a Danish movie that had just come out a couple years earlier and reportedly the remake heavily softened the grim ending of the original. Not wanting to be some kind of chump who sees remakes first I opted to skip seeing the remake in theaters and instead check out the original. The film is about a Danish couple who meets a Dutch couple while vacationing in Italy and strike up a rapport with them and decide to visit the Dutch family at their home during the next vacation time. Once they get there though they find themselves hit by microaggression after microaggression and while little of it seems actively dangerous it sure feels like there’s something completely off about this other family and it starts to become apparent that something is amiss here. I almost hesitate to even call this a horror movie as it’s in some ways more of an extremely dark social satire. Imagine Get Out and its focus on how awkward and subtly hostile social situations can be but without the racial/political dimension and instead just a raw study on how much weird shit people are willing to put up with to be polite. It also doesn’t have the audience pleasing catharsis of an ending like that movie does, in fact it in a lot of ways I feel like the ending we’re given takes the premise a little too far with the main couple’s sense of propriety leading to a degree of passiveness that I didn’t really buy. The movie is more interesting and disturbing than it is scary and on some level I maybe like the premise more than execution but that premise sure is ballsy.
*** out of Five
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Oct 10, 2024 20:29:21 GMT -5
So far this franchise is certainly holding up the best out of the main 3, and by quite a margin. Halloween has the better individual films, but it is unanimously considered the worst of the 3. Just wait till you get to 5. lol. Freddy Jason Michael That’s the accepted ranking. Although 1godzillafan will make a strong case for Chucky. Chucky is definitely my favorite slasher franchise. Nightmare is a solid second, but that's mostly because I have an undying love for how unabashedly Looney Tunes Freddy's Dead is. Halloween has a handful of good movies, while most are boring, and Friday is an endless series of bad movies where some are more entertaining than others. Then there is Texas Chainsaw, an entire series of franchise starters for movie series that never happened. But mostly when I think of Halloween 4, I think of NOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOO! |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 11, 2024 17:00:57 GMT -5
Day Eleven: Escape Room (2019)
Y'know, I'd forgotten that Escape Room was a January release, but seeing the final product, it makes so much sense. And it's actually kind of disappointing in this case, because the basic bones are here for what could be a thrilling movie -- then again, there IS the movie Cube, which I'm willing to bet is the more realized potential of this premise -- but pretty much any and all potential is squandered by this particular filmmaking team. Do I really need to go into a lot of detail here? It all starts with a lackluster script that contains weakly-realized and fairly uninteresting escape rooms in and of themselves, then you throw in a cast of uninteresting characters whom you don't care if any make it out alive or not, add a dash of bad acting from said cast and top it all off with a helping of neutered PG-13 kills, and you have the perfect recipe for an incredibly lame horror movie. Although, CAN you really call this a horror movie...? It has overtones of something like Saw, but this completely lacks in scares, tension, dread...and most other things that would make this good. Escape Room sucks.
*/****
Bonus Film: Tarot (2024)
The end result of Tarot being the latest in the line of lame PG-13 teen-centric studio horror movies isn't exactly surprising, but hey, it was on Netflix and I was bored. Not that this movie helped in regards to the latter. I'll give it this, though: the premise is actually kind of fun and has potential for a fun horror experience. But that would require a script that's not this thin and a cast of characters who are not only just kill fodder, but who also have engaging personalities worthy of investment. However, maybe that's asking too much of this. I'll also give this movie credit for some admittedly solid direction when it comes to some of the horror sequences, and some decent kills that I wish weren't kneecapped by the rating, but of course it also falls back on empty jump scares and other various tired-out horror tropes, and generally lacks any true sense of inventiveness in any regard that's required to truly make this something at least halfway entertaining. I remember being surprised that this movie even existed when I first saw the trailer in front of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire earlier this year, and I'm sure this will ultimately fade from my memory just as quickly.
*/****
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Oct 11, 2024 17:05:33 GMT -5
Day Eleven: Escape Room (2019)
Y'know, I'd forgotten that Escape Room was a January release, but seeing the final product, it makes so much sense. And it's actually kind of disappointing in this case, because the basic bones are here for what could be a thrilling movie -- then again, there IS the movie Cube, which I'm willing to bet is the more realized potential of this premise -- but pretty much any and all potential is squandered by this particular filmmaking team. Do I really need to go into a lot of detail here? It all starts with a lackluster script that contains weakly-realized and fairly uninteresting escape rooms in and of themselves, then you throw in a cast of uninteresting characters whom you don't care if any make it out alive or not, add a dash of bad acting from said cast and top it all off with a helping of neutered PG-13 kills, and you have the perfect recipe for an incredibly lame horror movie. Although, CAN you really call this a horror movie...? It has overtones of something like Saw, but this completely lacks in scares, tension, dread...and most other things that would make this good. Escape Room sucks. */****
Bonus Film: Tarot (2024)
The end result of Tarot being the latest in the line of lame PG-13 teen-centric studio horror movies isn't exactly surprising, but hey, it was on Netflix and I was bored. Not that this movie helped in regards to the latter. I'll give it this, though: the premise is actually kind of fun and has potential for a fun horror experience. But that would require a script that's not this thin and a cast of characters who are not only just kill fodder, but who also have engaging personalities worthy of investment. However, maybe that's asking too much of this. I'll also give this movie credit for some admittedly solid direction when it comes to some of the horror sequences, and some decent kills that I wish weren't kneecapped by the rating, but of course it also falls back on empty jump scares and other various tired-out horror tropes, and generally lacks any true sense of inventiveness in any regard that's required to truly make this something at least halfway entertaining. I remember being surprised that this movie even existed when I first saw the trailer in front of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire earlier this year, and I'm sure this will ultimately fade from my memory just as quickly.
*/****
Lmao I saw both of these pieces of shit in theaters. |
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Oct 11, 2024 17:34:08 GMT -5
Let’s play six degrees of separation between ComingSoon! and the Universal monster films. SnoBorderZero worked with Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy worked with Ralph Bellamy. Ralph Bellamy was in the Wolfman. Yay! We did it. PG Cooper can put this on his Wikipedia page. The Wolf Man (1941) Lon Chaney Jr stars as the titular Wolfman. He’s a happy-go-lucky fellow. A bit of a creep. But mostly a swell fellow. One day, Bela Lugosi turns him into a werewolf. Don’t ya hate it when that happens? The town turns against him. He can’t control his murderous impulses when in werewolf mode. Chaney Jr really sells it in the role of a tortured soul. There’s also something about the movie itself, maybe because it was released in 1941 when the studio was a well-oiled machine (technically speaking), that makes this feel like a quintessential Universal monster film. All you’re really missing is a haunted castle. Other than that, you get everything you want from these movies. |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 11, 2024 17:58:30 GMT -5
Lmao I saw both of these pieces of shit in theaters. My sympathies. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Oct 11, 2024 18:19:26 GMT -5
Film Eleven: Curse of Chucky (2013)  After the batshit insane Seed of Chucky in 2004 came out to what was at best indifference with the public at large the whole Child’s Play franchise went on hiatus for almost ten years and when it came back it was at a much smaller scale in the form of a movie that went direct to DVD and VOD called Curse of Chucky. The movie in a lot of ways seems like an attempt to strip things down and bring the series back to its horror movie roots, setting the action mostly in a single large house and returning to the formula of the Chucky doll showing up in the lives of unsuspecting people who come to have suspicions about whether or not it’s alive. It’s not a remake though, the continuity of those earlier films is still intact and the franchise is still in the hands of Don Mancini, who’s been the brains behind the franchise pretty much from the beginning. A stripped down approach probably isn’t the worst instinct as things were getting pretty silly and convoluted before, but if you’re going to make things simple again you need to make sure that you have some really strong filmmaking on hand to really impress with the scares and kills and the movie just doesn’t have that. This absolutely looks “direct to video” to its core, with some astoundingly bland digital cinematography and a completely second-rate cast. It also starts to get convoluted again towards the end when the film tries to explain why Chucky is terrorizing this particular family and also set up the next sequel (including a post-credits scene that doesn’t really seem to connect with what came before). I think super-fans of the franchise actually like this thing, personally I couldn’t really get past how cheap the whole thing is. * out of Five
Bonus Film: Cult of Chucky (2017)  The second direct-to-DVD/VOD Chucky movie and to date the last feature length Chucky movie (aside from the remake) and it takes in some ways the opposite approach of the relatively stripped down Curse of Chucky. This one isn’t quite as absurdist as Seed of Chuck but it’s still pretty much acting as an unleashed romp rather than a particularly serious minded horror film. The movie features the wheelchair bound protagonist from the first movie (played by Brad Dourif’s daughter), who’s been blamed for the murders from the first film and sent to a mental institute, as she’s tormented once again by Chucky. Meanwhile we get a separate parallel story featuring the return of Andy, the kid from the first three movies, who has obtained the severed but still alive head of Chucky and has been locking it up and torturing it. Given that Chucky seems to be in two places at once one can intuit pretty quickly that something fishy is going on. From there the movie goes all in on some nutty plot twists and its own internal lore. It’s not really trying to be remotely scary, but none of these movies really have been. The kills are a bit more graphic here than they were in “Curse” but I wouldn’t say they’re particularly notable in the grand scheme of slasher movies and while the production values are slightly better than in “Curse” if only because it has a slightly more interesting setting, it’s still very digital and very direct to video. This one might service the fans a bit more than the last one but it’s still very much a cheap non-movie and I’d say the franchise has fallen quite far.
*1/2 out of Five
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Oct 11, 2024 21:14:38 GMT -5
Oct 10 The Devonsville Terror 1983
The movie starts off with three horrific witch executions, then jumps to present day where the town is still plagued with the same prejudices. It becomes more of a slow burn after such a dramatic opening, but I was okay with that. The story flows a school teacher who is new to Devonsville and stirs things up with the townsfolk and their religious beliefs. This is an anti-misogynist revenge flick that worked well for what it was.
6/10
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Oct 11, 2024 22:24:36 GMT -5
Day Eleven: What's The Matter with Helen? The title implies this is a Baby Jane-inspired hagsploitation film with two older actresses in a ghoulish tale of violent psychosis and self-delusion. And that's technically true but What's the Matter with Helen takes an odd route to get there. We open with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters as mothers whose sons have just been convicted with murder. Pariahs in their town and harassed by a stranger, the two decide to move out to Hollywood and start a tap dancing academy for young girls. Amidst many scenes of tap dancing children, Reynolds starts dating a local rich dude but Winters is still haunted by past traumas and suspects their stalker has followed them West. It's a strange film but not an uninteresting one. Winters' performance is familiar from the actress but effective and Reynolds is also good and the shifting dynamics between the two are compelling. On the downside, the film looks very cheap and feels about a decade behind the times stylistically. The film also takes way too long to really commit to a hagsploitation/horror film. We do eventually get there, however, and at least when we do the payoff is pretty satisfying. C+
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Oct 12, 2024 8:57:55 GMT -5
Oct 11 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter 1984
They really buy into the formula with this one. Horny teenagers alone in the woods get killed off one by one, until a final showdown. That being said, I didn't mind it. I guess I played along with the formula this time around. But its nothing special, to be sure. They tease a vendetta one character has against Jason, but then it never really goes anywhere. The kills are nothing special. And the ending is dragged out far too much. But otherwise it was cheap entertainment on an October Friday night while laid up sick.
5/10
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Oct 12, 2024 13:14:52 GMT -5
Film Twelve: Isle of the Dead (1945)  Isle of the Dead was the second movie Val Lewton produced during his 1940s second run of making horror movies and was his second from last horror film overall. Like a lot of Lewton’s horror films it seemed to start with a pulpy title and instead of leaning into what you’d expect for such a thing it instead built something rather unexpected around it. This movie focuses on Greek soldiers during the Balkan Wars of 1912, a conflict you do not see many movies about, and specifically a general played by Boris Karloff. The “dead” in question are not zombies and instead the film focuses on something called a “vorvolaka,” which in this movie is almost like a vengeful sprit that possesses people. So you’ve got an interesting setting and a unique concept and the film has a lot of that atmosphere and restraint that you’ve come to expect from Lewton produced horror. In fact this one might even be a little too restrained and I might have liked it to turn up the overt horror a bit more at least towards the end. All in all, this fits in pretty well with the rest of the Lewton filmography, and it would seem he and his collaborators did not miss too many steps in the couple years when Lewton tried doing other things. *** out of Five
Bonus Film: Tower of London (1939)  This film was made by Universal studios in the late 1930s, it features Boris Karloff in makeup, and in certain home video lines it was featured in the “Universal Monsters” canon. That said, calling this either a monster movie or any other kind of horror movie is pretty dubious. The film is actually a historical drama, albeit a very dark one. The film retells the familiar story of Richard III as made famous by Shakespeare but this is its own version rather than an adaptation of that play. As usual we get Richard murdering his way through the line of succession and he’s helped along the way by an executioner/torturer/assassin named Mord who’s bald and has a club-foot and is the one played by Karloff. That character is almost certainly the reason this has gotten the “Universal Monsters” tag, though he’s kind of a henchman more than a villain. The film also features a very young Vincent Price in a supporting role, and that bit of notability may also have given it some noteworthiness in the horror world, though his role here is basically comedic. All that said, this is certainly a dark story of royal murder with an interest in torture devices and the like and in some ways it kind of seems to be using the fact that it’s a historical story to get away with making a movie about stuff the production code would normally frown on, so on some level it kind of does make some sense to lump it in with more overtly horror themed movies. That said, the story sure is abbreviated here to fit a 90 minute frame and this leads to odd structural quirks. Like it does “go there” with the murder of the princes in the tower in a way that verges on the disturbing but then the movie really just cuts straight to the final battle, which isn’t very satisfactory or noteworthy in its execution. All in all, it’s an interesting little watch but certainly not a classic despite some interesting elements. *** out of Five
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Oct 12, 2024 14:05:54 GMT -5
Karloff really was typecast, hey?
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Oct 12, 2024 15:10:57 GMT -5
Tarot is so awful. The ending actively infuriated me
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Post by IanTheCool on Oct 12, 2024 16:00:51 GMT -5
Oct 12 Orca 1977 Its hard not to talk about Orca in relation to Jaws, seeing as its a very obvious imitator. But if they are going to rip-off one of the all-time greats like that, they are openly inviting the comparison. Last year I watched Grizzly, which was the bear version of Jaws and was awful in almost every way. Orca, as it runs out, is a much stronger effort. Obviously its not Jaws, but it still ended up being enjoyable in its own way. Orca leans a lot more heavily into the Moby Dick aspects of a story like this, and it mostly works. Having Richard Harris as the lead helps; he's able to center the story as a man with a lot of guilt finally confronting his victim, so to speak. The Orca footage here looks great, and while the things this whale is able to do are ridiculous, its also quite exciting. I also liked how far into the arctic they went, giving us some scenery change for the climax of the film. Now lets be clear; this movie is no masterpiece. The third act drags on too long, the protagonist's past trauma is dealt with too plainly, and it can get over the top. But its still a captivating film that turned out to be much better than I was expecting it to be. 7/10 |
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