What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Fanatic (1965)



Hammer's 1965 horror thriller about a religious fanatic. Tallulah Bankhead, star of Hitchcock's 1944 classic Lifeboat is an excellent choice as the damaged Mrs Trefoile. An aging woman who lives in a secluded Gothic house with her two servants (Yootha Joyce and Peter Vaughan). Clearly insane following the death of her son several years earlier, the madness comes to the fore when her sons former fiance (Stephanie Powers) visits to pay her respects prior to marrying another man.



Italian director Silvio Narizzano moves the film at a fair rate of knots and the story adapted by Richard Matheson kept me glued to the screen as a web of murder, betrayal, rape, repression,abduction and fanaticism unfolds.



It's exploitative for it's era and certainly suspense filled and the film boasts one or two memorable set pieces, but it's the performance of Bankhead (allegedly drunk on set every day) that makes the film for me. The way she spits out the immortal line "Die! Die! My darling" is terrifically venomous and immortalises her along with fellow American Bette Davis in that same years Hammer production, The Nanny, as a queen of British Grand Guignol.

It's a sad state of affairs when i have to actually check if I own something. I do indeed have this one from Indicator. Not got around to watching it yet though.

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[J Harker]

Narrow Margin. Peter Hyams. 1990.

I haven't seen this one for many years but I've retained a memory of really enjoying it. Think it was an ITV Premiere or whatever back in the dark ages when we had 4 or 5 channels and one would scoure the TV Times planning out the weeks viewing. Or was that just me
Anyway, the strange but sad passing of the late great Gene Hackman saw me picking up a copy of this 1990 thriller, a remake I believe of an early RKO movie.
Carol Hunnicut, an unwitting witness to a mob killing manages to miraculously avoid detection completely and legs it a remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Tracked down by the tenacious Deputy District Attorney Robert Caulfield who wants to take her back to LA to testify, the pair find themselves trapped on a train racing through the wilds to Vancouver while being hunted by mob hitmen.
Hackman is as watchable as ever and is ably supported by Anne Archer as well as a decent cast of character actors like M.Emmet Walsh and James Sikking (a face you'll know even if it's a name you don't)
I love the contrast of the claustrophobic train cars and the wilderness around it. There's nowhere to run, few places to hide. It all comes down to staying alive long enough.

[Dave Boy]

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THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

Watched as tribute to Gene.

Gene is on fine form as 'Popeye' Doyle. Doyle is obsessed with busting a drug ring, which leads to one of cinemas great car chases as Doyle speeds through the streets, along side and under the elevated subway tracks in pursuit of a sniper. Gritty, hard hitting thriller.

RIP Gene.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Ruins (2008)

A pair of holidaying couples visit an ancient Mayan ruin in a remote region of Mexico. When they arrive they are treated as hostile by locals who refuse to let them off the temple once they have touched the vines growing all round it and will kill anyone who attempts to leave.

I think this is a genuinely original horror film. The location is excellent even if it was shot in Australia rather than Mexico or South America. The concept that the vines are carnivorous could have been laughable but The Ruins is anything but laughable in fact the second half isn't exactly what you'd call fun either..

What begins as quirky, avoid the plant life stuff, quickly gives way to genuine dread and creepy as f*ck psychological horror. It may not be the goriest film you'll come across but the gore when applied is genuinely shocking, especially an amputation sequence. The vines not only eat flesh, their spores also burrow beneath the skin when touched and the vines slowly begin to grow inside a persons body. It's proper skin crawling stuff, in fact my head is itching like mad merely typing these words. The second half of the movie ratchets up the tension no end culminating in what is a pretty bleak and horribly grim final twenty minutes of body horror Cronenberg would be proud of.

I've seen this a few times since it was released on dvd back in 2008 and over time it's become one of my favourite horror films of the first quarter of the 21st century.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The Ruins (2008)

A pair of holidaying couples visit an ancient Mayan ruin in a remote region of Mexico. When they arrive they are treated as hostile by locals who refuse to let them off the temple once they have touched the vines growing all round it and will kill anyone who attempts to leave.

I think this is a genuinely original horror film. The location is excellent even if it was shot in Australia rather than Mexico or South America. The concept that the vines are carnivorous could have been laughable but The Ruins is anything but laughable in fact the second half isn't exactly what you'd call fun either..

What begins as quirky, avoid the plant life stuff, quickly gives way to genuine dread and creepy as f*ck psychological horror. It may not be the goriest film you'll come across but the gore when applied is genuinely shocking, especially an amputation sequence. The vines not only eat flesh, their spores also burrow beneath the skin when touched and the vines slowly begin to grow inside a persons body. It's proper skin crawling stuff, in fact my head is itching like mad merely typing these words. The second half of the movie ratchets up the tension no end culminating in what is a pretty bleak and horribly grim final twenty minutes of body horror Cronenberg would be proud of.

I've seen this a few times since it was released on dvd back in 2008 and over time it's become one of my favourite horror films of the first quarter of the 21st century.

Only seen this the once, quite some years ago. Can't remember much at all other than vaguely enjoying it.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Pig (2021)

I was extremely disappointed by this the first time i saw it but revisiting last night and kind of knowing the overall vibe of the film brought a whole new liking of it for me.

An extremely subdued Nicolas Cage plays a truffle-hunter who lives alone in the Oregon wilderness but must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped.

There's nothing in the way of action so to speak - a reason it didn't connect with me on first viewing as i was expecting some sort of John Wick style 'They took my pig' revenge flick -with Cage showing none of his manic tendencies in this quiet almost contemplative film. He's backed up by Alex Wolfe who initially plays Cage's truffle supply line go-to but quickly becomes his driver round Portland. Wolfe was the best thing about the disappointing (for me) Hereditary and he's equally good here as is Adam Arkin (Love him in Halloween H20) although he's only in one lengthy scene towards the end.

I'd guess the film is as much about grieving over loss than anything else. At one point Cage admits he doesn't need the pig to find truffles as the trees tell him where to look. He simply wants the pig back because he loves it, just as we would our dog or cat or any other animal companion and it ends up defying expectations as a beautiful piece of touching cinema with the magnificent haunted Cage at it's center

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Borderlands (2024)

Eli Roth had an ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershon, Kevin Hart, and the vocal talents of Jack Black to bring this adaptation of the video game of the same name to the big screen.

With such a cast in front of the camera and all the VFX wizardry that modern studios can finance, it's an impressive achievement to make a film so boring and thoroughly forgettable. I'm glad I didn't waste time and money to see it at the cinema.

This is definitely more Super Mario Bros. than Silent Hill and is definitely a contender for the (dis)honour of being the worst video game film adaptation ever made.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Eli Roth had an ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershon, Kevin Hart, and the vocal talents of Jack Black to bring this adaptation of the video game of the same name to the big screen.



With such a cast in front of the camera and all the VFX wizardry that modern studios can finance, it's an impressive achievement to make a film so boring and thoroughly forgettable. I'm glad I didn't waste time and money to see it at the cinema.



This is definitely more Super Mario Bros. than Silent Hill and is definitely a contender for the (dis)honour of being the worst video game film adaptation ever made.

I'm guessing this is Borderlands Nos?

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by J Harker

I'm guessing this is Borderlands Nos?

Nos put the film title in the post title box rather than as part of the actual post ^

[Justin101]

For those who might not know because they don?t use the mobile app to access the forum, but post titles don?t show up, you can only see the body of the text. That only works on a web browser.