What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Frankie Teardrop]

From the last couple of weeks:

SLAUGHTER HOTEL – Seventies Giallo with Klaus Molesterer as a brooding Euro-shrink at an exclusive mental health farm. Perhaps I should grow my hair, purse my lips inscrutably and buy a velvet smoking jacket, because the gig here looks much plusher than the bleak NHS PFI misfire where I work. Anyway, could Klaus be the dude who's going round murdering lush chicks between long stretches of fairly dull talk and occasional snatches of sleaze? You'll have to stay around to the end to find out. I remember trying to watch this in its badly truncated, horribly mis-framed UK version many years ago... think I lasted about ten minutes. The more recent version from Raro is certainly a revelation in AV, and a worthwhile watch overall really. However, like me, you might need to over-invest slightly in the moments of style, wackiness and gore to make up for the plod factor, and it may well be that I'm simply out of the habit of watching seventies Euro schtick recently, but 'Slaughter Hotel' did milk my dullness gland a bit. Credit where credit's due though – the craziness of the climax, when the mace-wielding killer ices an entire roomful of nurses crammed in a corner, takes some beating.

HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK – A revisit. Dunno why, but I can never really seem to get into HOTEOTP. Great set up and 'moments' – D Hess's slo-mo sccrreeeaaammmm at the end, the general doom-laden ambience, the class war undercurrent etc all do it for me, plus the inspired sense of it being a semi-roughie version of 'Abigail's Party' – if only M Leigh had stuck with his original vision. But something about it wears on me after all these years, and I find my mind wandering whenever I stick it on, which isn't all that often.

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS – Was my opening Cult Labs salvo from early 2012, for those wondering when it was that I first began bashing the Frankie bible. Every now and again, I feel a need to dig this number out just to check that it's the masterpiece of madness I think it is – on this viewing, yep, still total f*cking idiocy. It's about a Father christmas killer in an eighties London populated only by UK porn regulars and 'Brushstrokes' extras. Really, there are too many instances of inspired lunacy to recount here, but you really should check it out if you feel your frontal lobes need to be wiped by some utter tripe that only makes sense in an off-limits part of the brain where some guy from 'The Bill' tries to take a topless photo of you dressed as Santa (then dies).

THE BABADOOK – Single mum struggles with her unlikeable son in the long aftermath of her husband's fatal accident. Things start to get weird around the kid, a sinister (or maybe just 'a bad') book appears, and mum starts to lose it. This is a very good film which draws much of its power from the two central performances, both of which involve a deftly handled transformative element. The problem for me was pretty much the whole supernatural aspect. It just didn't gel, and, unless I've misinterpreted and been a bit too literal, the way 'The Babodook' ends up laying its cards re issues of objectivity etc seems weak... I would've preferred more ambiguity, (and less attempts to visualise, for that matter). In short, maybe sticking with the dark psychodrama rather than contaminating with cheap genre cop outs might've been the way to go in my ideal world, but make no mistake 'The Babadook' is only a couple of steps short of excellence and I do recommend it.

[Buboven]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

From the last couple of weeks:

SLAUGHTER HOTEL – Seventies Giallo with Klaus Molesterer as a brooding Euro-shrink at an exclusive mental health farm. Perhaps I should grow my hair, purse my lips inscrutably and buy a velvet smoking jacket, because the gig here looks much plusher than the bleak NHS PFI misfire where I work. Anyway, could Klaus be the dude who's going round murdering lush chicks between long stretches of fairly dull talk and occasional snatches of sleaze? You'll have to stay around to the end to find out. I remember trying to watch this in its badly truncated, horribly mis-framed UK version many years ago... think I lasted about ten minutes. The more recent version from Raro is certainly a revelation in AV, and a worthwhile watch overall really. However, like me, you might need to over-invest slightly in the moments of style, wackiness and gore to make up for the plod factor, and it may well be that I'm simply out of the habit of watching seventies Euro schtick recently, but 'Slaughter Hotel' did milk my dullness gland a bit. Credit where credit's due though – the craziness of the climax, when the mace-wielding killer ices an entire roomful of nurses crammed in a corner, takes some beating.

HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK – A revisit. Dunno why, but I can never really seem to get into HOTEOTP. Great set up and 'moments' – D Hess's slo-mo sccrreeeaaammmm at the end, the general doom-laden ambience, the class war undercurrent etc all do it for me, plus the inspired sense of it being a semi-roughie version of 'Abigail's Party' – if only M Leigh had stuck with his original vision. But something about it wears on me after all these years, and I find my mind wandering whenever I stick it on, which isn't all that often.

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS – Was my opening Cult Labs salvo from early 2012, for those wondering when it was that I first began bashing the Frankie bible. Every now and again, I feel a need to dig this number out just to check that it's the masterpiece of madness I think it is – on this viewing, yep, still total f*cking idiocy. It's about a Father christmas killer in an eighties London populated only by UK porn regulars and 'Brushstrokes' extras. Really, there are too many instances of inspired lunacy to recount here, but you really should check it out if you feel your frontal lobes need to be wiped by some utter tripe that only makes sense in an off-limits part of the brain where some guy from 'The Bill' tries to take a topless photo of you dressed as Santa (then dies).

THE BABADOOK – Single mum struggles with her unlikeable son in the long aftermath of her husband's fatal accident. Things start to get weird around the kid, a sinister (or maybe just 'a bad') book appears, and mum starts to lose it. This is a very good film which draws much of its power from the two central performances, both of which involve a deftly handled transformative element. The problem for me was pretty much the whole supernatural aspect. It just didn't gel, and, unless I've misinterpreted and been a bit too literal, the way 'The Babodook' ends up laying its cards re issues of objectivity etc seems weak... I would've preferred more ambiguity, (and less attempts to visualise, for that matter). In short, maybe sticking with the dark psychodrama rather than contaminating with cheap genre cop outs might've been the way to go in my ideal world, but make no mistake 'The Babadook' is only a couple of steps short of excellence and I do recommend it.

To put it simply The Babadook is an excellent cinematic metaphor for Mental illness. It also does that, actually very rare thing for horror films these days, its actually genuinely very scary; I hadn't been so terrified by a film since The Descent. I give it a 10/10 myself.

The ending as I read it, is that the mother has finally managed to overcome her mental health problems by managing it, hence why the monster stays downstairs.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Buboven

To put it simply The Babadook is an excellent cinematic metaphor for Mental illness. It also does that, actually very rare thing for horror films these days, its actually genuinely very scary; I hadn't been so terrified by a film since The Descent. I give it a 10/10 myself.

The ending as I read it, is that the mother has finally managed to overcome her mental health problems by managing it, hence why the monster stays downstairs.

My understanding of the end scenario is that The Babadook is a monster which is dormant, and one day will go away, but is under control at the moment, so the metaphor for stress/anxiety/depression works extremely well.

Like you, I don't think I'd been as scared in cinemas since Neil Marshall made me wish the lights would come on!

[Buboven]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

My understanding of the end scenario is that The Babadook is a monster which is dormant, and one day will go away, but is under control at the moment, so the metaphor for stress/anxiety/depression works extremely well.

Like you, I don't think I'd been as scared in cinemas since Neil Marshall made me wish the lights would come on!

Indeed, as someone who has suffered and still to a degree still does suffer social anxiety, It talked to me in quite a personal way, to a certain extent, though for say woman who suffer from pre-natal depression it would I imagine be more relevant.

I think this film would make an excellent companion piece to We Need To Talk About Kevin for exploring such issues, another film I personally think is also very impressive, who else agrees?

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Buboven

Indeed, as someone who has suffered and still to a degree still does suffer social anxiety, It talked to me in quite a personal way, to a certain extent, though for say woman who suffer from pre-natal depression it would I imagine be more relevant.

I think this film would make an excellent companion piece to We Need To Talk About Kevin for exploring such issues, another film I personally think is also very impressive, who else agrees?

We Need to Talk about Kevin is definitely one of its cinematic precursors, as I think I said earlier in this thread, as is Dark Water and The Shining.

This is part of an article from the Guardian:

While there are plenty of jumps and scares in The Babadook, where the film really excels is in its detailing of the slow psychological shattering of its central character. The demons are not in the child, it turns out, but in the parent. And as we watch Amelia’s inexorable decline, it brings to mind another psychological horror: The Shining. Kent’s film doesn’t share all the qualities of Stanley Kubrick’s classic. There are no frame-gobbling images, no torrents of blood flowing down the streets of suburban Australia. But, as with Jack Nicholson’s stymied writer, you both want to sympathise with and cower from the increasingly crazed Amelia.

“I feel very honoured,” says Kent when I bring up the comparison (it’s clear I’m not the first). “But it’s funny because after Sundance I read The Shining and I feel that The Babadook is actually closer to the book than the Kubrick film. I guess that with the book Stephen King goes into the psychology of the character and you feel for him even when he’s going right on a downward spiral.”

That the downward spiral is undertaken by a woman is another thing that marks The Babadook as being different. In most mainstream horror, women are either blonde fodder for rampant serial killers or the petrified victims of supernatural creatures. They might also get to swing an axe or two (in a halter-neck top), but rarely are viewers invited inside their minds. Amelia is a woman unable to move beyond the grief of losing her husband. She is also struggling with her relationship with her only child. She tries to be tender towards him but ends up shocked, even intimidated. In picking at the maternal bond, Kent is dealing with one of society’s last taboos.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

This is the article I quoted: The Babadook: 'I wanted to talk about the need to face darkness in ourselves' | Film | The Guardian

[Buboven]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

We Need to Talk about Kevin is definitely one of its cinematic precursors, as I think I said earlier in this thread, as is Dark Water and The Shining.

This is part of an article from the Guardian:

While there are plenty of jumps and scares in The Babadook, where the film really excels is in its detailing of the slow psychological shattering of its central character. The demons are not in the child, it turns out, but in the parent. And as we watch Amelia’s inexorable decline, it brings to mind another psychological horror: The Shining. Kent’s film doesn’t share all the qualities of Stanley Kubrick’s classic. There are no frame-gobbling images, no torrents of blood flowing down the streets of suburban Australia. But, as with Jack Nicholson’s stymied writer, you both want to sympathise with and cower from the increasingly crazed Amelia.

“I feel very honoured,” says Kent when I bring up the comparison (it’s clear I’m not the first). “But it’s funny because after Sundance I read The Shining and I feel that The Babadook is actually closer to the book than the Kubrick film. I guess that with the book Stephen King goes into the psychology of the character and you feel for him even when he’s going right on a downward spiral.”

That the downward spiral is undertaken by a woman is another thing that marks The Babadook as being different. In most mainstream horror, women are either blonde fodder for rampant serial killers or the petrified victims of supernatural creatures. They might also get to swing an axe or two (in a halter-neck top), but rarely are viewers invited inside their minds. Amelia is a woman unable to move beyond the grief of losing her husband. She is also struggling with her relationship with her only child. She tries to be tender towards him but ends up shocked, even intimidated. In picking at the maternal bond, Kent is dealing with one of society’s last taboos.

Dark Water is one aswell, never thought about that before, DW is one of very faves aswell.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Terrornauts (1967)

A radio telescope project on the verge of getting scrapped through budgetary and lack of results at a British observatory. The telescopic radio waves are hoping to pick up signs of life from outer space but there have been no positive results. Suddenly a faint sound is heard on the instruments. Project leader Joe Burke (Simon Oates,best known from the BBC's Doomwatch) takes it upon himself to respond...with out of this world results.

The Terrornauts is typically creaky, cheap, British sci-fi from Amicus. Once you get your head round this fact the sooner you'll come to love the film. The early character introducing scenes at the observatory are nicely played, building up a deal of tension and making the characters believable. Even comic (ish) turns from Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes can't derail things. The whole closure of the project story line giving you a great deal of empathy with everyone.

Once the signal is intercepted things take a turn for the mad, as in barmy. The observatory is transported by an alien craft to another world and dumped on the surface. Here we meet a dodgy looking robot that makes even the wonkiest looking Dalek seem like a million dollar creation, a bizarre tribe of green skinned folk seemingly desperate to sacrifice gorgeous scientist Zena Marshall to some elder God and the most ludicrous looking creature you're likely to come across in British sci-fi.

These aren't criticisms. The films limitations definitely add to it's overall charm and together they all make for an excellently entertaining, certainly quirky,fast paced movie.

Recommended.

The dvd from Network, which i've had hanging around for nigh on a year, looks very good. Despite some problems with the film (witness the green lines) the restoration on the original cinema release is good. I watched this version rather than the re-release version which has an even better transfer without damage because it runs 14 minutes longer.

[Buboven]

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

9/10.

[JoshuaKaitlyn]

From 1963 part 2:

Tom Jones - Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, BAFTA Best Picture and BAFTA Best Film from any source / Foreign Language. A comedy period piece that occasionally breaks the fourth wall. A Classic...but not for me!

Tarzan's Three Challenges - Jock Mahoney's second and final Tarzan outing. This time he travels to an oriental country to escort an new spiritual leader to his coronation ceromony. Mahoney suffered during this picture with various ailments including dysentery.

55 Days at Peking - Chuck Heston takes on the Boxer Rebellion in another Samuel Bronston epic, although it suffers from the age old Hollywood ploy of making white actors look like other races, in this case Chinese it isnt a bad movie.

The Raven - Have to admit this is the first time I've seen this, what a great picture, loads of fun "oooo you dirty old man!" had me laughing away!

Cleopatra - Massive historical epic, a bit talky but I like it. The film that almost destroyed a studio! Great performance from Rex Harrison.

Carry on Cabby - Seventh in the franchise and Jim Dales first appearance and Esma Cannon's final one.

The Great Escape - Great movie and a classic! Problem is its DVD presentation is just bloody awful! Even the menu system is bad! From what I've read the Bluray is equally as bad!

Carry on Jack - Number 8. Only regulars Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey make an appearance along with Jim Dale in a small role.

The Leopard - Visconti's classic, lovely to look at and Cardinale is stunning but ultimatly the picture did nothing for me.

From Russia With Love - For me this is better than Dr No.