Spotted Let The Corpses Tan on Amazon Prime, and to my surprise I really enjoyed it. Never been a fan of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's work, I found Amer completely incomprehensible pretentious nonsense, and while I appreciated The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears, I found it hard going. But Corpses is completely coherent, an engaging ode to the Italian crime movie, that only briefly descends into the typical shtick of Cattet & Forzani. Definitely worth a watch if you have Prime. Although you'll have to manually turn the subtitles on (you can remove the semi-transparent black background to the subs too).

Decemberdike
 

December 27th

Cold Skin (2017)

An interesting and in it's way unique film from Xavier Gens - Frontier(s) (2007) - about a young man (David Oakes) who takes a job as a meteorologist on a remote South Atlantic island. The only other person there is the lighthouse keeper (Ray Stevenson), however as night falls it soon becomes apparent to the young man that the lighthouse keeper isn't the only one on the island.

The film has strong production values, beautiful photography and an icy atmosphere, it's well acted and the background story of isolation works well among the striking visuals of the night time creature attacks. It is a creature feature but in the mould of Assault on Precinct 13 yet it also has parallels with Alex Garland's Ex Machina in it's exploration of two males with, not in this case a female robot, but a female amphibian.

I enjoyed Cold Skin, it may not be for all, but it's Lovecraftian atmosphere and Gothic trappings should find fans on here.

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December 28th

Sweet Sixteen (1983)

A slasher film unoriginal in plot yet somehow seemingly quite fresh and very enjoyable.

It may be the usual teens getting murdered by a mysterious killer, who may or may not be the pretty fifteen year old new girl in town (Aleisa Shirley, 20 at the time of filming and looks it) who is fast approaching her 16th birthday storyline, but an unusually strong cast featuring Bo Hopkins, Patrick Macnee and Susan Strasberg, and underlying themes of small town bigotry make Sweet Sixteen stand out from the crowd.

The sub Barry Manilow theme song has to be heard to be appreciated and the final shot is a slasher classic.

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December 29th

The Psychopath (1966)

Following a sluggish beginning this Amicus thriller really kicks on in it's second half. It has a very giallo-esq plot - Police inspector Holloway (Patrick Wymark) investigates a string of murders where the victims have dolls attached to their bodies. The trail soon leads to a disabled German woman named Mrs. Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston), who knows a set of dark secrets that may hold the key to the murders.

In fact giallo is the best word to describe The Psychopath. It's stylishly directed by Freddie Francis and Patrick Wymark gives a quintessential performance as the investigating policeman. There are red herrings galore and the doll plotline with Margaret Johnston (Night of the Eagle (1962)) is creepy as f*ck. Add this to a shocker of an ending and you have an excellent film.

Had this been Italian made instead of British it would have been up there with Bava's Blood and Black Lace from the previous year as a bench mark film in the giallo genre.

Sweet Sixteen is a fairly fun slasher and I really rate The Psychopath, so good to read you enjoyed it too, Dem.

Cold Skin sounds interesting, although I really didn't like Frontier(s) at all when I watched it. This one sounds like a completely different animal though.

Yes, it's nothing like Frontier(s) or The Divide, thankfully. It's definitely worth a watch.

Gutted as have been wanting to watch this but cancelled my prime membership yesterday as find Netflix better. One movie i did find a few days ago on prime was the Indian horror Tumbbad which i missed at this years London film festival and is highly recommended.

Showed Mandy & Malatesta's Carnival Of Blood on Boxing Day. Decent reception for both. Happy Demon :xmasbanana:



A Gun For George

This being Matthew Holness' short ... slightly more in keeping with Darkplace as tis another 'period' piece. The attention to detail is impressive. The story is very silly ... until ....
Recommrnded. I found it on YT. Release this Warp!!!

Kingsmen: The Golden Circle. 2017.

After their headquarters is attacked Eggsy, now known as Galahad and Merlin travel to Kentucky and join forces to take down an enemy of the Kingsmen and stop a deadly drug.

Taron Egerton, Mark Strong return with Chaning Tatum, Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges, but really didn't quite help the movie go aswell as the first. Julienne Moore does do well as Poppy the enemy, it does start off well then does go a bit south then back to interesting, only Mark Strong knows how to go with a bang, even Elton John can show people how to run in platform shoes. 5 out of 10.

Never heard of Tumbbad, but I'll stick it on the watchlist. I was toying with cancelling Prime next year, as I primarily used it for the next day delivery, and mostly use HMV for pre-orders, but that's looking uncertain now. I find with Prime they have a decent range of stuff, but they do a poor job of displaying what they have, and the quality is really variable.

In a Lonely Place

As I explore more Bogart, I just keep finding better & better films!
Bogart plays a fading screenwriter Dixon Steele, a man with a temper who is accused of murder, falling for his neighbor in the process. A complex character piece, frankly amazing for 1950. The Criterion disc has one of the best film scholar commentaries I've heard, plus loads of extras I haven't yet explored!

10/10

A brilliant film. Glad you loved it, Nostalgic