What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[ArgentoFan1987]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

You can pick up the dvd from Amazon marketplace for under £2.

Wonder why I couldn't find it before?

Thanks for that, btw

[SShaw]

Another trip to the Kino to see This is the End. I am not sure this will age well, but tonight it was good, if forgettable fun.

[Frankie Teardrop]

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH - I always forget how much I love this film. It's surely up there with 'Messiah Of Evil' in the low-key but atmospherically threatening seventies low budget stakes. Like MOE it has a really insidious, faintly trippy quality and in places oozes a kind of doom laden malevolence in telling its tale of a post-psyche ward lady and her beatnik friends starting over in a desolate town, only to face mental collapse or supernatural onslaught (you be the judge, interpretations are open). For me, it has almost everything I ever look for in a movie - dreamlike detachment, weird electronic score, that strange semi abstract but intimate feel of seventies cinema. The performances are sometimes quite striking, too - the hippy runaway chick who inveigles her way into the crew's new house and who's maybe also a vampiric ghost (? or something, LSCJTD doesn't particularly pander to expectations of clarity or even sense really) totally gives me the creeps. There's just something about her leering face and the look in her eyes which is subtly wrong. I think maybe I've reviewed this before, but what the hell - LSJTD is fully deserving of your attention and I can't recommend it enough.

MACABRE - I feel pretty positively about 'Macabre'. I can understand how many might find it a bit 'meh', because, outside of a few 'highlights', almost nothing happens for most of its run time. Actually that's not true at all, what 'happens' is a simmering non-romance running one way between a blind tuba restorer and another traumatised post-psyche ward lady. That could be rubbish, or really (?good?) in a different kind of film, but it's neither because 'Macabre' is just such an odd flick. I don't know why, but it made me think of a hack-job Polanski - maybe the claustrophobic atmosphere of paranoia and isolation which pervades the over-decorated apartment where said tuba guy and psyche lady hang out. There's something suffocating about the whole scene here. The slick cocktail sax funk soundtrack, which was surely originally intended to score 'tasteful' softcore, only adds to the air of stifling sickness. On top of this we have a complete absolute arsehole of a nasty little girl, who, in a scene of epic bad taste, drowns her kid brother between shots of her mother moonlighting in shag mode with lover-on-the-side and who will go on to play vicious mind games with post-sanatorium mom. And then the necrophilious aspect, ear lobes in soup, the totally ridiculous last shot. Yeah, maybe not quite to everyone's taste, but overall quite a 'heady' concoction...

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH - I always forget how much I love this film. It's surely up there with 'Messiah Of Evil' in the low-key but atmospherically threatening seventies low budget stakes. Like MOE it has a really insidious, faintly trippy quality and in places oozes a kind of doom laden malevolence in telling its tale of a post-psyche ward lady and her beatnik friends starting over in a desolate town, only to face mental collapse or supernatural onslaught (you be the judge, interpretations are open). For me, it has almost everything I ever look for in a movie - dreamlike detachment, weird electronic score, that strange semi abstract but intimate feel of seventies cinema. The performances are sometimes quite striking, too - the hippy runaway chick who inveigles her way into the crew's new house and who's maybe also a vampiric ghost (? or something, LSCJTD doesn't particularly pander to expectations of clarity or even sense really) totally gives me the creeps. There's just something about her leering face and the look in her eyes which is subtly wrong. I think maybe I've reviewed this before, but what the hell - LSJTD is fully deserving of your attention and I can't recommend it enough.

MACABRE - I feel pretty positively about 'Macabre'. I can understand how many might find it a bit 'meh', because, outside of a few 'highlights', almost nothing happens for most of its run time. Actually that's not true at all, what 'happens' is a simmering non-romance running one way between a blind tuba restorer and another traumatised post-psyche ward lady. That could be rubbish, or really (?good?) in a different kind of film, but it's neither because 'Macabre' is just such an odd flick. I don't know why, but it made me think of a hack-job Polanski - maybe the claustrophobic atmosphere of paranoia and isolation which pervades the over-decorated apartment where said tuba guy and psyche lady hang out. There's something suffocating about the whole scene here. The slick cocktail sax funk soundtrack, which was surely originally intended to score 'tasteful' softcore, only adds to the air of stifling sickness. On top of this we have a complete absolute arsehole of a nasty little girl, who, in a scene of epic bad taste, drowns her kid brother between shots of her mother moonlighting in shag mode with lover-on-the-side and who will go on to play vicious mind games with post-sanatorium mom. And then the necrophilious aspect, ear lobes in soup, the totally ridiculous last shot. Yeah, maybe not quite to everyone's taste, but overall quite a 'heady' concoction...

Totally agree about lets scare jessica to death. Checked it out after reading a glowing review from Kim Newman and glad I did.

[gag]

Latest franchise of the Texas chainsaw massacre , tbh I found it dull and boring and couldn't REALY get into it. Also don't know if this makes any sense but feel its been given to much of the Hollywood big blockbuster treatment, and sometimes I think that ruins a film I like my horrors to be grim dull dark gritty etc etc , especially if the originals are like that. And feel this is to bright and colourful for a horror.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

MACABRE - I feel pretty positively about 'Macabre'. I can understand how many might find it a bit 'meh', because, outside of a few 'highlights', almost nothing happens for most of its run time. Actually that's not true at all, what 'happens' is a simmering non-romance running one way between a blind tuba restorer and another traumatised post-psyche ward lady. That could be rubbish, or really (?good?) in a different kind of film, but it's neither because 'Macabre' is just such an odd flick. I don't know why, but it made me think of a hack-job Polanski - maybe the claustrophobic atmosphere of paranoia and isolation which pervades the over-decorated apartment where said tuba guy and psyche lady hang out. There's something suffocating about the whole scene here. The slick cocktail sax funk soundtrack, which was surely originally intended to score 'tasteful' softcore, only adds to the air of stifling sickness. On top of this we have a complete absolute arsehole of a nasty little girl, who, in a scene of epic bad taste, drowns her kid brother between shots of her mother moonlighting in shag mode with lover-on-the-side and who will go on to play vicious mind games with post-sanatorium mom. And then the necrophilious aspect, ear lobes in soup, the totally ridiculous last shot. Yeah, maybe not quite to everyone's taste, but overall quite a 'heady' concoction...

I haven't seen Macabre for ages and your excellent write up makes we want to revisit it.

[gag]

Originally Posted by gag

Latest franchise of the Texas chainsaw massacre , tbh I found it dull and boring and couldn't REALY get into it. Also don't know if this makes any sense but feel its been given to much of the Hollywood big blockbuster treatment, and sometimes I think that ruins a film I like my horrors to be grim dull dark gritty etc etc , especially if the originals are like that. And feel this is to bright and colourful for a horror.

Apparently just read there is another Tcm to be made Tcm 4 truthfully I thought leather face in this film was pretty rubbish and badly acted and played.. Extremely poor in my opinion they can cash in films as much as they like as long as the films are decent and don't go off the rails and stick to outline of the original, but when they are cashing in on films just for the sake of it and not sticking to the franchise properly is when I have a problem.

Texas Chainsaw 4 - IMDb. Won't hold my breath for it to be any good

[PaulD]

I don't see how this will be TCM4 since the previous one was a reboot albeit in 3D. It has nothing to do with the previous remake and in fact serves as a (lousy) sequel to Hoopers original.

[troggi]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH

MACABRE -

Excellent reviews Mr. Teardrop, you've certainly piqued my interest in these two beauties.

Could not sleep last night but too tired to do anything but let a film take me for a ride. So, from about 0300hrs-0500hrs I laid back and watched an "earlier-this-week-recording" of "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it! 12/10 for better than average teenage fare (and not soppy emo stuff)!

[Rik]

Watched Mark of the Devil last night via a popular video site that rhymes with New Boob. Despite being an obvious cash in on the success of Witchfinder General (Reeves was actually pencilled in to direct, before his untimely death), I really enjoyed it, especially seeing Reggie Nalder without his 'salem's Lot make up as the sadistic Albino character. Herbert Lom and Udo Keir were both really good as always and I can safely say that I will be picking up the Arrow release next year, maybe even getting the BU DVD, the print I watched was absolutely terrible, understandable considering where I watched it.
Followed it with a documentary on Ed Gein. Nothing I didn't already know about the guy from the multitude of books and other docs I have on him, still enjoyable enough and really putting me in the mood for the Arrow Blu of Deranged out soon