Recently watched movies!

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

House (1977)

You know, having watched this film several times now I appreciate it more and more. The most outrageous bits are what jump out at you the first time you watch it, like the animated or partially animated scenes and all the ways the girls are killed by the house, but now that I'm used to the more attention grabbing weirdness I'm drawn in more and more to the more subtle, intimate weirdness that permeates even the smallest moments of the film. The moody and dreamlike parts. The casual (improvised?) bits of dialog between all the girls. The flashback as silent movie with the girls talking over and reacting to it as though they were watching a movie. The pop ballads. The ending. Pondering what it all means...

[Dr Kain]

Good god, I can not believe you guys are praising that god awful piece of crap Tarzan movie. I'm not sure what was worse with it, the acting that was more wooden than the forest, the terrible looking CGI, or just how boring Christolph Waltz was. Jackson was like the only actor in the movie that actually gave a "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!". Oh sure, it wasn't the worst movie of 2016, but that's like saying a punch in the balls is more enjoyable than a punch in the eye.

[jellydonut25]

Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead
The Crazies
Land of the Dead
Season of the Witch
Monkey Shines
Martin
Two Evil Eyes
Bruiser
Diary of the Dead
Survival of the Dead
Monster Squad
The Final Girls
The H-Man
The Human Vapor
Secret of the Telegian
Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters
Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare
Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Night of the Living Dead 1990
The Great Yokai War
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Circle (2015)
Cult of Chucky
Gerald's Game
Frankenstein (1931)
Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
The Babysitter
1922

Residue - I don't even know how to describe this movie. With the poster the way it is and a brief preview, I kinda thought it would be a thing I could put on while I did some cooking and cleaning and just have it be a fun monster romp....but it's actually weird and meta and as convoluted as like, John Dies at the End so I have no real idea what the hell happened at all, and I may need to revisit it some day.

Little Monsters - I liked this movie as a kid and as an adult, I can see why. "Ha! He put pee in the apple juice! He put cat food in the sandwich! AMAZING!"

So, yeah, it's completely juvenile, but there's also enough style here and a whimsical, interesting, oddly melancholic feeling that makes it work a little more often than not and the whole thing is basically pretty palatable. 3/5

A Christmas Horror Story - This was just on my Netflix list, so I figured..."It's horror, and it's October, why not?" The answer turned out to be "Because...if you watch it, it's not good." It's not TERRIBLE, but I think it actually undercuts itself by not just being a traditional anthology with each story standing on its own. Trying to intercut them makes it hard to get into any one of them because they've all got a little bit different tone. One is pretty serious and dark and deals with teenage sex and abortion and cultist murders also ghosts and such, another is at least mildly humorous with Santa fighting elves who are turned into ravenous flesh eaters, another is just a monster mash with Krampus, and another is...well, it's the one that isn't as good and kinda drags the whole thing down, in my opinion. And of course, whenever one gets really interesting, we cut away from it to a different one. I might like to see a repackaging, with the stories just on their own instead of intercut. I also think more mileage would be gotten from people if watching around the CHRISTMAS season, but it's always fun to experiment with stuff like this to see if it only works around then, or if it's any good unto itself. 2.5/5.

[Dr Kain]

Personally, I thought A Christmas Horror Story is what Krampus should have been. So much superior with a good twist and it was exactly like Trick r Treat.

[klen7]

Blair Witch (2016) - I'm not sure what they were thinking with this. Storywise, it's pretty much a remake despite being a sequel. Tonally it feels very different, and not really in a good way. In fact tonally it may have more in common with Book of Shadows (despite pretending that entry doesn't exist).

The original Blair Witch Project is such a moment in time, before the internet made every detail available months before a film, before the glut of found footage films, it's easy to look back and look down on it now, but it was a phenomenon when it came out. A true independent film success story and I have a lot of respect for it.This entry had too many camera "tricks" and "enhancements" to feel grounded in reality. In fact it even seemed to lose the whole "lost in the woods" element and instead have them "trapped in the woods". On a more personal level, I actually take my kid hiking at one of the areas where the original was filmed fairly often, so I was disappointed that this one was clearly not shot in MD.

[Dr Kain]

I never understood the big deal with Blair Witch. My brother rented it the week it came out on video and it was so boring and stupid. The Scooby Doo stuff Cartoon Network did during the marketing blitz of this movie were far more creative and scary than the actual movie.

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

I loved the twist, especially since Santa was played by the dude who voiced Beast in X-Men, but I will agree that the Changeling story was pretty weak.

As for Krampus, meh, while I did think it was better the second time, I still found it to be severely half assed. It should have gone all out.

[jellydonut25]

I feel like every negative review I read of Krampus focuses on (1) “I wish it had been an anthology” because Dougherty and Trick r Treat and (2) it wasn’t R...despite the director himself saying he never had any intention of making it a hard R movie. It’s a horror movie for kids.

[Dr Kain]

See, I feel like the movie was hindered by being PG13. He might have intended the movie to be able to be enjoyed by everyone, but that doesn't necessarily make it good. It felt like there were scenes that were cut out as if it were a TV cut. Like the daughter underneath the truck. I feel like there was supposed to be more to that scene.

[Dr Kain]

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad - Uh yeah... I expected a lot more from this. In fact, I didn't even know it wasn't a Disney-ised version of the Sleep Hollow story with animal characters in it. What I got was... all right. The Mr Toad story started out kind of boring but got better as it went along. As for the Sleepy Hollow segment, the last minute and a half ultimately saved the movie. I was expecting more from the Headless Horseman, but I guess I shouldn't have given that it was made for kids. Probably one of the worst Disney movies I have ever seen. 6/10.

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

Which I feel diminishes the purpose of making them all worthless pieces of garbage.

[lhb412]

^I disagree strongly with that. Our first impressions of the characters are all negative, as they have to be: they have to be 'naughty' to incur the wrath of the Krampus, but once wrath is on its way we get to see more likable sides of their personalities, making us invested in their plight. I'm not sure there's any other way to do a Krampus film, considering the rules of the Krampus.

[jellydonut25]

They’re punished with a fate worse than death. I think it’s kinda more awesome than some blood and gore which I can get anywhere else...or at least equally awesome.


Patchwork - The lack of information I'm able to find on this movie is kind of astounding...I only heard of it from a friend, and probably only saw it because it is readily available on Netflix (though it's not really promoted or anything, if you watch horror movies it might come up as a suggested title for your viewing).

The basic story is that three young women are the basis for a horrifying experiment: they are stitched together into one body - and they then have to work together to figure out who did it to them. Yes, work together...because all three of them are now conscious inside this one body.

This premise alone is enough to merit a watch for horror enthusiasts, but the execution really puts it over the top. The girls are kind of clichés, but never so much so that it becomes farsical or unbelievable or too much of a stereotype. One just cares a lot about work, one just is a ditz, and the other is insecure. These stereotypes and tropes are subverted just often enough to let us know that it's out of the interest of watching three differing people actually come together and work as a cohesive unit than laziness that these tropes were chosen. The innovative ways the three of them are shown working together are great too. Sometimes we see all three girls in a room together, sometimes just the body, sometimes they're arguing with each other, sometimes we just see the body arguing with itself, it's fun and funny and really delightful to watch.

The acting is great, the homages to both Frankenstein and Re-Animator definitely present but never distracting, and the direction is really unique and engaging. At times the way the story is told (in eight chapters) almost interrupts the flow of the story, and any die-hard Frankenstein fan will get a feel for the end-game and final moments before too long, but the latter just comes with the territory of working in a realm that's been adapted and spoofed and riffed on dozens of times and the former provides for a couple of good reveals, so they can mostly be forgiven.

Definitely an easy one to recommend, so long as the notion of a Franken-babe losing body parts during coitus is one you find amusing rather than vomit-inducing.

[lhb412]

Hellraiser

Huh, wasn't expecting that Pinhead and his crew are the extra spice to a movie otherwise about a ghoul in the attic who needs human victims to build his body back up. It's a nice balance though, as the cenobites show up just when you need to make the movie a bit more interesting. Love the chubby one with the dark glasses. Why couldn't he have been the mascot of the franchise instead? Give him a chance; he's doing his best!

[klen7]

^ that was my take on the cenobites as well. Funny how it all became about pinhead.


I watched 'Black Butterfly' last night - i enjoy a movie with a twist i don't see coming... this movie had one of those... but it didn't seem to make sense with the way the characters acted or their apparent motivations up to that point... it tries to fix that by flashing back to all the stuff you didn't see, but it still doesn't seem to line up for me with the stuff it did show. The rating on imdb was higher than i expected, so I guess it worked for a lot of people

Violent Prosecutor - Korean flick about a wrongfully imprisoned prosecutor working from the inside to prove his innocence on the outside.

[eabaker]

Hellraiser is definitely a movie that has grown on me with time, and as I've moved farther from the expectations I went into it with the first time.

Despite growing up a horror junkie, I didn't really pay much attention to the Hellraiser movies as a kid/teen. I saw the boxes on video store shelves, I read a couple of articles about them in Fangoria, but I never really sought them out. The first time I saw any of them was when I was 17, and my mother and I had flown back east to check out a college. I flipped on the TV in the motel room and caught maybe 15 minutes of Hellraiser, then had to turn it off when we went to get dinner. I came back, turned the TV back on, and watched what I assumed was the last twenty minutes of Hellraiser. Then, over a year later, I went out and rented Hellraiser, and was surprised to find the role of the Cenobites so limited; it turned out that I'd actually seen part of Hellraiser, but then come back from dinner to see the ending of Hellbound: Hellraiser II! I was, frankly, really disappointed not to see all of the Cenobite action I'd been expecting.

(Side note: I had a friend in college who had pretty much the same experience with Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2.)

I rented Hellbound shortly afterward, and liked it a lot more than the first movie, primarily I think because it conformed to my expectations better.

Several years later, I watched both movies again, this time with a clearer idea of what to expect, and found that I liked them more or less equally, but in different ways.

Then, I read The Hellbound Heart.

By the third time I watch Hellraiser - with several years having again elapsed - I found myself way more into it this time. Maybe by now I had a clearer sense of what Barker was going for, or maybe my tastes had just changed as I grew older. Upon re-watching Hellbound, I still enjoyed it, but found it less engrossing and more contrived by comparison. Yes, the Cenobites are cool, but they're more unsettling when their roles are smaller and there is less explanation for them.

These days, I'd probably call Hellraiser one of the best and most deeply unsettling horror movies of its era, while I wouldn't say the same about Hellbound.

[jellydonut25]

I enjoy the first 2 Hellraiser films without much reservation. It gets dicey after that, but I’m kinda sorta okay with 3 and 4.

Pretty much everything after that is dreck though. Hellraiser is infamous as a series where Pinhead was just slapped into a spec script about a ghost or possession or something that was never intended to be a Hellraiser film.

[lhb412]

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

^ I feel that 2 and 3 are fun, but the first one is a no-budget masterpiece. I think it's more of a surreal, boys adventure coming of age thing than it is a horror movie.

[eabaker]

^Overall I think Don Coscarelli is a filmmaker who resists playing into strict genre classifications.

[Dr Kain]

Creepshow - I have some mixed feelings on this one. I thought the first two stories were pretty dumb and boring, especially the Father's Day one. Thankfully, the one with Leslie Nelson was great, but the stand out was easily the monster box one. Hal Holbrook may be an "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" in real life, but he did a good job here. As for the last story, something bugs me about it. :-p It wasn't terrible, but it didn't live up to the two stories before it. The hardest part though is was I supposed to care about any of these characters at all? None of them had enough screen time to make me feel sad for their fates. Well scratch that, again, you could feel for Holbrook's character due to his worthless "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" ****bag of a wife! Other than that though, I didn't give a damn with what happened with any of them. I'm torn between a 6 or 7 out of 10.

Island of Lost Souls - It's kind of sad that 85 years later and there has still yet to be a proper adaptation of the original novel. Still, this movie is quite good despite turning Moreau into a villainous character. There is a lot of atmosphere to be had, but sadly the movie suffers from being made before soundtracks existed as it could have really used some music to amp up the tension. Additionally, the Panther woman doesn't really look like a panther. In fact, none of the experiments really look like animals, but rather men that were given animal features even though it is supposed to be the reverse. Nevertheless, it is well acted and well executed for what they could do at the time, so I do have to give it a nice 8/10.