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15th November 2015, 09:28 PM
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SPOILER: bizarre_eye@Cult Labs and Demdike@Cult Labs like this.
__________________ "We're outgunned, and undermanned. But, you know somethin'? We're gonna win. You know why? Superior attitude. Superior state of mind."   |
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15th November 2015, 09:31 PM
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15th November 2015, 09:46 PM
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If I ever have kids, they're watching RoboCop before they ever see The Hunger Games, so that they know that violence is always nasty.
__________________ "We're outgunned, and undermanned. But, you know somethin'? We're gonna win. You know why? Superior attitude. Superior state of mind." |
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15th November 2015, 10:05 PM
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15th November 2015, 10:17 PM
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__________________ "We're outgunned, and undermanned. But, you know somethin'? We're gonna win. You know why? Superior attitude. Superior state of mind." |
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15th November 2015, 11:40 PM
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| Thieves' Highway. (1949) Until last Sunday i'd never seen a film directed by Jules Dassin. Rififi was excellent but i think i preferred this. Starring Richard Conte as an American GI home at the end of WW2 vowing revenge on the unscrupulous San Francisco traders and truckers who crippled and robbed his father. Thieves' Highway is a film that grabs you in the first few minutes and hurtles straight into it's hard bitten plot. There's no filler here, no let up for breath in this at times mean spirited noir. It's violent, people get properly beaten up, someone is burned alive, a man gets his hand crushed to a bloody pulp, i can imagine audiences being shocked at some of the scenes back when it hit cinemas. Naturally the direction is flawless from Dassin as is the acting. Conte and femme fatale Valentina Cortese have a great smoldering chemistry and Lee J Cobb sneers as only he knows how. Highly recommended. Originally posted here - https://www.cult-labs.com/forums/cri...tml#post468248 - a thread you should all visit. |
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15th November 2015, 11:52 PM
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Bela double bill....   BLACK DRAGONS (MONOGRAM 1942) THE CORPSE VANISHES (MONOGRAM 1942) More low budget thrills... In Black Dragons, it's WWII and some Japanese have had face transplants and take on the roles of the Americans they have replaced in order to disrupt the war effort. Enter Bela and soon the Japanese are being killed off... Bela is really enjoyable in this role and the motive of why the Japanese are being killed off is saved right until the end. A chance to see the Lone Ranger without his mask as Clayton Moore plays the hero before he said " Hi Ho Silver..away"! In The Corpse Vanishes, Bela steals the bodies of young brides who 'die' at their wedding in order to take fluid from them to resore his wife.. Some good scenes here as the woman reporter takes to the passageways of Bela's house, and descends to the secret lab.  |
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16th November 2015, 12:25 AM
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| Hellraiser In 1987 Clive Barker decided to dip his toe into the world of cinema with this little gem. There had been previous attempts to bring his visions to the screen, the incredibly weird (and not in a good way) mobsters vs Monsters Underworld that apparently began life as some kind of musical and Rawhead Rex, from Barkers own short story, about a giant phallus fertility god that on screen was frankly idiotic to the point of hilarity and making the film something to check out for all the wrong reasons. So going on the notion that when you want something done right you do it yourself he teamed up with producer Chris Figg and decided to adapt his novella The Hellbound heart. Being Britain, finding finance for the project was difficult, the film being a gloomy suburban tale of infidelity in the suburbs should have been gold to the unimaginative financiers of British Cinema who helped ensure we only ever produce gloomy social realism that the French seem to enjoy and tacky, horrid formulaic comedies in the four weddings mould (a habit we haven't entirely kicked) however the inclusion of sadean demons, a skinned lover and a gallon of Kensington gore in a country that had just come through one of the nastiest witch hunts against popular culture in living memory and the prospect of financing the film seemed less appealing so it would ultimately fall to American financing to get the film made. Essentially a domestic drama about woman named Julia who is in a doomed marriage with a man she has no connection to, either emotionally or physically, Larry is a nice guy just a bit of a wimp with a bottled up resentment and rage over his more sexually successful wayward brother Frank. Unbeknownst to poor old Larry Frank, has screwed Julia's brains out right before the wedding and now she's become obsessed with him. Moving to England for work, they move into the brothers old family home and discover Frank has been staying there recently. Obsessed with the idea of reconnecting to Frank Julia quickly warms up to the idea of moving in in the hopes of meeting Frank again. Little does she know, Frank is still there, after locating a mysterious puzzle box, the lament configuration, Frank has opened the box and has been ritually torn apart by Cenobites, Demons from another realm who promise to provide the ultimate experience of both pleasure and pain. After Larry tears his hand on a nail and bleeds in the rat infested loft, Frank partially resurrects in one of the films stand-out scenes, starting life as a collection of tissue and forming into the beginnings of a man. Discovering him in this state Julia is at first repulsed, but upon learning that the thing in the attic is Frank she agrees to begin luring men back to the house in order to kill them and allow Frank to feed enough to become complete in order for them to leave together. Meanwhile Larry's daughter from his first wife, Kirsty, is in town looking to be near her pa. She doesn't like Julia one bit, and in fairness Julia seems to play the wicked step mother role very well. Frank on the other hand is a bit of a pervert and relative be damned he seems interested in Kirsty as well. After discovering the skinless frank, in a scene where she faces the very real possibility of being raped by her skinless uncle, Kirsty legs it and wakes up in a psychiatric hospital. The doctor leaves her with the puzzle box which she quickly solves summoning the cenobite who are also quite keen to have a go with Kirsty however she manages to persuade them to hold off so she can lead them to the escaped Frank. Heading home she discovers Frank has killed her dad and is wearing his skin, so now she faces the prospect of being raped and killed (and not necessarily in that order) by her Uncle who is wearing her fathers skin, fortunately he's so keen that he hasn't realised Kirsty has summoned the Cenobites until things are too late... There are a lot of reasons to love Hellraiser. It's a little rough around the edges due to the nature of the production but it's ultimately a unique little film. It manages to take some of the most horrifying imagery imaginable and make it actually quite beautiful. In a way its reminiscent of Eyes without a face in that respect, sharing with that film a bizarre almost fairy tail atmosphere at points and a way of moving the horrific into the realms of the surreal. The waltz-like score from Christopher young is also reminiscent in places of the score used for eyes but also moves into some powerful and interesting areas, especially in the scenes between Frank and Julia. The original idea was to have industrial band Coil provide an experimental avant-garde score more reminiscent of Texas chainsaw massacre, while I would like to see an alternate cut with that score to see how it works, personally I'm a big fan of the score the film used. I would also compare Hellraiser to the films of Pete walker and to a lesser extent Norman J Warren in so much as it successfully brings the elements of Gothic Horror into the almost mundane backdrop of modern suburban Britain. I know in interviews I read some years back Barker acknowledged the inspiration of Frightmare and House of whipcord on the film. It certainly manages to successfully distance itself from the period trappings of Hammer as successfully as walker did through the 70's. Sadly, to cater to a perceived Xenophobia from the prospective American audiences a lot of re-dubbing tried and failed to relocate the film to America. It ends up being the one irritating aspect to the film as all the exterior scenes clearly place it in Britain. The American influence is not unwelcome however, from New Worlds decision to pump more money in to finish the film, which really helped things immensely, to the inclusion of the gorgeous Ashley Lawrence there is a lot of things to be thankful for. Non more so than Andrew Robinson as Larry who delivers a meek, slightly geeky innocent idiot and then transforming impressively into Frank for the final act. Robinson is an amazing actor who really delivers and manages to really sell the fact he's playing another person living in his skin. Also Kudos to Claire Higgins as Julia, a theatre actress who manages to become one of the best villains in horror as she gradually accepts the role of murderess and embraces it wholeheartedly. Naturally Hellraiser can't be discussed without mention of 'pinhead' a name given by fans as his role is merely 'lead cenobite' in the credits, nor of his cenobite cohorts who deliver the supernatural terror of the piece admirably. What I love most about the cenobites is the fact that they have to be sought out. No one wants to be killed by Freddy, Jason or Michael myers, they exist as an external threat that can strike unexpectedly. you actually have to want to find the cenobites and there is an argument that they are merely delivering what their victims secretly want. They are used sparingly in the film and lurk in the attic, as if they represent the darker impulses and desires of the protagonists, it could even be argued that the films heroine Kirsty most likely harbours these impulses some place deep and repressed given how quickly she manages to solve the box. Overall, Hellraiser is still a film that impresses me. Probably more so than any of the slasher counterparts its compared to, even perhaps the originals of Texas chainsaw, Halloween and nightmare. Its a genuinely visually interesting and complex film that could be discussed for hours, given the length of the Leviathan documentary there is a lot to be said. Arrow's blu-ray has received some criticism about the level of grain, but the trade off in detail is worth it as the U.S blu-ray doesn't hold a candle to it in terms of the level of detail present in each scene. Certainly this alone was worth me buying the set. More about the sequels once I've had some kip however |
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16th November 2015, 03:36 AM
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SPECTRE. It was alright. The last half hour is pretty exciting, and Lea Sedoux is the sexiest Bond girl in a very long time, quite possibly since Licence to Kill, but it's far too long and has lots of stretches where you're going "Get on with it!". The plot is also eerily similar to the most recent Mission Impossible, which I thought was a much better film.
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16th November 2015, 07:58 AM
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| Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 The difficulty with following a film like Hellraiser is that by the end of the first film it's clear that the story has been told, the puzzle box has been returned to its source so some other seeker can open it. Since the first film made a ton of cash however it was inevitable that a sequel was going to be made. Clive Barker jumped ship in order to make the ill-fated Nightbreed so it fell to American producer Tony Randell, who had been directly involved with the first film to take the directors chair, and Pete Atkins, one time member of Barker's Dog company theatre group to deliver the screenplay. The film takes place directly after the first film, Kirsty has been taken to a local psychiatric hospital for assessment as the police (In full American uniform) to clear up the mess left by Larry & Julia. Say what you want about the Cenobites but they clear up after themselves. The director of the institution, Dr Chanard vows to help kirsty however his assistant Dr Kyle MacRae overhears him negotiating for the bloody mattress Julia died on to be delivered to his house. For some reason never really developed in the script Kyle breaks into Chanard's house and witnesses him handing a straight razor to a patient in one of the films most grotesque scenes. As the patient begins slicing himself up to rid himself of the bugs he believes are crawling over his flesh the blood resurrects a skinless Julia. While Dr Kyle and Kirsty get ready to head over to Dr Chanard's place, rather than say contact the police, Chanard takes no time at all smuggling multiple inmates out the secure wing in order to feed to Julia. By the time Kirsty and Kyle actually arrive at the f****g house Chanard has brought Tiffany, a young inmate with a gift for solving puzzles in order to solve one of the three boxes Chanard has in his possession. It seems odd that Chanard, who seems to have a powerful obsession with the occult, would at no point feel the desire to try and open the boxes himself but there you go. The Cenobites turn up, decide it was not hands but desire that summoned them and sod off back to hell as quickly as they arrived leaving the bloody doors open for anyone to wander in at their leisure. Kirsty, who has been receiving messages from her dead father that he is trapped in hell spies her opportunity and wanders in. At no point does she wonder about Kyle who has been devoured by Julia, but then he's served his function of driving the weak narrative forward to get everyone in hell. Chanard and Julia head straight to the centre of the labyrinth where the good doctor is transformed into a Japanese Hentai tentacle Cenobite while Kirsty wanders round some and encounters a horny uncle Frank who it turns out had been leaving the messages in order to lure his niece into hell for a spot of incest. The cenobites turn up a few more times, Kirsty reveals to Pinhead that he had once been an English Army Captain in world war 1, Elliot spencer. All the cenobites, realising they had been human are weakened and killed by chanard, leading to the audience to realise that the only purpose of the cenobites in this film was to reveal that they had once been human, other than that they might not have been in the film at all. Instead the film goes all slasher as Chanard rampages through the hospital, which for some f****g reason has a portal to hell in it, in spite of the box being opened at Chanard's house. All the inmates have boxes so clearly at some point Chanard prior to heading into hell must have been handing out the boxes to his patients....right?.... right? At any rate at this point its best to stop thinking and go with it as Kirsty and Tiffany head back into hell to destroy Chanard. It may sound like I dislike Hellbound but I really don't. Its better than the Chuck Norris one. It's just a complete structural mess. We get an explanation of events from the first film TWICE bogging the beginning down completely and giving the impression no one involved knew how to begin the film. Once that turgid mess of an opening is done however the film is reasonably well paced. Tony Randel and Pete Atkins manage to retain some of the originals atmosphere and the scenes in hell are for the most part great. Chanard is an excellent villain courtesy of the awesome Kenneth Cranham who really has a lot of fun with the character. His arc, about sciences pursuit to know the un-knowable is great and while his cenobite looks a little silly in places its nowhere near as bad as some of the Cenobite designs in later films. The main problem with Hellbound is that the plot simply does not work when scrutinised on any level. Character motivations seem to be there to service the forward momentum of the plot rather than say anything about the characters themselves. It's still a miles better sequel than most films get, the script could have used a few more drafts. the biggest annoyance is the cenobites who really serve no purpose here. They Have to be there because the fans want them there but that's the only reason I can fathom beyond universe building for future sequels. Julia is also great here, Claire Higgins seems to be having even more fun with the character however she vanishes pretty quickly and stupidly once she's served her part in the plot. |
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