What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Dave Boy]

BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT (MONOGRAM 1942)

This time, Bela runs a soup kitchen by night and is a collage professor by day under different names. The soup kitchen is a cover for Bela to enlist criminals into his gang. Those of the gang he kills are buried in a basement room, but under the graves, his assistant has revived the dead.....
More low budget thrills. The only horror element in this one are the zombies in the lower basement. How or why the dead are back is never explained but there is enough Bela in this film to keep you watching for just over an hour.

[Demoncrat]

Watched Empire of The Ants (1977, Bert I Gordon)
The least of Joan Collins' genre output, though it has some fleeting redeeming features.

The Editor (Brooke/ Kennedy, 2014)
Whilst I had my own problems with this, I highly recommend this to all Pasta Paura fans, as tis cheeky in extremis with the references. Luckily this isn't as distracting, and you can still enjoy the film on it's own merits.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Scrooge (1951)

The definitive version of Charles Dickens classic Christmas tale of redemption featuring the definitive performance of Ebenezer Scrooge by the brilliant Alistair Sim.

The film is quite creepy, the striking black and white visuals and jarring music making the appearance of the ghosts quite frightening to begin with which in turn makes the film more faithful to Dickens original ghost story than the subsequent watered down versions that were to come over the next decades.

Sim's performance is so good you actually believe it as he slowly redeems himself and gets a second chance which it appears he can't quite believe he deserved. It's then that Sim's Scrooge goes from mean spirited old man to a delightful grandfather figure.

Highly recommended.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Scrooge (1951)

The definitive version of Charles Dickens classic Christmas tale

I think you may have overlooked this one Dem...

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs

I think you may have overlooked this one Dem...

No.

But that version is excellent.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

But that version is excellent.

That it is!

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

On the Beach (1959)



Post-apocalyptic nihilism co-exists to great effect alongside carefree melodrama in this sombre anti-war epic.



8/10

[keirarts]

Roar

A conservationist lives out in the wilds of Africa with what can only be described as a swarm of lions. While he's away his family turn up and are chased by the lions. After about 60 minutes or so of terror they learn to love the creatures..... and that's it really.
The plot is wafer thin, perhaps due to the chaotic nature of the shoot. The editing is choppy and clumsy at best but its well photographed. The real 'charm' of the film is watching actors like Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffiths running in very real terror from all the big cats running loose on set. I always thought Australian and Chinese stuntmen had balls but this really takes the cake, its almost a visual embodiment of reckless endangerment from beginning to end. If the thought of spending 90 minutes watching terrified, piss-stained actors legging it from lions, tigers, cheetahs and even a few enraged elephants sounds like a good time then pick this up.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Silent Night (2012)

A better than it has any right to be, loose remake of the 1984 slasher Silent Night Deadly Night.

The plot is straightforward. A sheriff and his deputy attempt to track down a murderous Santa Clause in their small town on Christmas Eve.

Fast paced, Silent Night is a decent example of a modern slasher film. Slightly tongue in cheek and very bloody. The killer Santa dispatches his victims with all manner of weapons from blades and flamethrowers to wood chippers, and straight out of the original movie - impalement on antlers.

Malcolm McDowell and Jamie King add a bit of weight to the film and some decent acting as the sheriff and his deputy, indeed McDowell is always worth a watch in my opinion.

Although there isn't anything new here as such, slasher fans should get a lot of enjoyment out of this new take on an old favourtie.

Recommended.

[Make Them Die Slowly]

Enemies Closer.

Messy action flick with a totally wigged out JCVD who appears to be possessed by Christopher Walken channelling a Pantomime Dame. It is a lot of fun and even tackles the coming cow fart apocalypse discussed here of late! Recommended.