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Last week's viewings: Loads of slasher-trash again, a long overdue re-watch of the entertaining The Relic, and the high-light of the week being last night's virgin viewing of the gothic fairy-tale Crimson Peak. Whilst a little clunky in places, I really enjoyed the story and the haunting atmosphere - a future purchase for sure. Graveyard Disturbance (Una notte al cimitero) (1987) 58/100 Night Screams (1987) 47/100 Hell High (1986) 57/100 Time Walker (1982) 55/100 Terror on Tour (1980) 46/100 Honeymoon Horror (1982) 43/100 Doom Asylum (1987) 55/100 Houseboat Horror (1989) 29/100 Silent Madness (1984) 47/100 Blood Tracks (1985) 42/100 Fatal Pulse (1988) 42/100 The Night Brings Charlie (1990) 47/100 Return of the Family Man (1989) 56/100 The Relic (1997) 64/100 Hollywood's New Blood (1988) 24/100 Crimson Peak (2015) 73/100 |
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BLOOD GNOME – The fetish community of downtown LA is being terrorised by an unseen killer. A nerdy phtographer with a tragic past is hot on the case. Invisible gremlin types who get off on blood sports, a tentacular slime beast that pushes out narcotic embryos and girls in bondage gear are all in evidence. 'Blood Gnome' is a microbudget horror film from around ten years ago, which was roughly when I last watched it. I remember thinking at the time, “an S/M flick with killer gnomes and a weird cthulhuvian monster – how can this not be the best film ever made?” Inevitably, my viewing experience went on to show that 'Blood Gnome' was not in fact the best film ever made, although it sounds undeniably impressive on paper. It's quite good fun, is in a way original and imaginative, but is too slight and meagre to do much with its quite 'heady' material, although what it actually does is to some extent cool. Erotica isn't the point here really and 'Blood Gnome' is distinctly in the DTV horror bracket rather than sub-porno... those looking for Andreas Bethmann type excesses had better go away, for 'Blood Gnome' is not particularly explicit in its expose of the BDSM scene, and the whole sex underground angle seems to have been pursued either for lip service novelty, or because the director just knew some dudes who were into that kind of stuff and wanted to let it all hang out on camera (a bit). Interestingly, although it's pretty tame, it does home in on blood letting fetishes (for narrative reasons more than anything else). S and M or no S and M, perhaps what it needed was a touch more of the madness suggested by the words 'invisible killer gnomes'. It's never less than watchable though, and ultimately 'Blood Gnome' is a winningly eccentric one of a kind that manages to stand out from the shitpile of no budget horror despite its shortcomings.
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I was delighted to add this to my Julie Strain collection...Then i watched it. Like yourself about 10 years ago. I was quite disappointed. It was bathed in that shot on video sunlight look where everything feels so artificial. I'd give it another go if i still owned it thanks to your enthusiasm but i don't so i won't. Still it's way better than The Imp. |
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Indeed. Pity I watched the film at all imo. Am sick of "avant" horror films. Some nice imagery though.
__________________ [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] [B] "... the days ahead will be filled with struggle ... and coated in marzipan ... "[/B] |
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This weekend's viewing has been what you could say is eclectic! I've already talked about Friday's viewing Suicide Squad - not good, and my opinion of it is going down every time I think about it! On Saturday I sat down for the 3 hour epic which is Andrei Rublev. It's a slow burn for sure, the polar opposite of Suicide Squad! In fact it was so slow to start with that I almost gave up after the 45 minute mark but it got better and better. It doesn't have a narrative arc but is split up into chapters which each concentrate on one aspect of Andrei's life. The final 3 chapters were the best, 'The Raid', 'The Silence' and finally 'The Bell'. In 'The Bell' we get the return of the young actor who played Ivan in Ivan's Childhood, and he was just as good in this segment as the son of a Bell-maker who's entire family has died of the plague, he lies to Andrei announcing that he alone knows the secret of making the perfect bell! A lot of scholarly people pronounce this as a masterpiece, while I thought it was very good it was a little too meandering at the beginning for me to think it was perfection. It was very good though. Sunday afternoon was the perfect time to crack open my cult-labs prize from last week Critters! It's been ages since I saw it and I totally got a kick out of how 80's it was. It's not a great film by any opinion but it's a load of fun. Billy Zane with his little rat's tail hair-do made me laugh I'm looking forward to part 2 - I'll probably take a look at that tomorrow evening! I rounded off the weekend with Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, a film which I've never seen and I have to say what a way to end the weekend's viewing! While it's not as sophisticated as his later works it's interesting to see how his artistry has developed. Straight away we're plunged into the story, not knowing what's going on but utterly intrigued to see how it all plays out! It turns out to be quite the caper and didn't really end how you would expect it. That final scene had me shouting No at the TV screen . You've probably all seen it already but it's highly recommended. Arrow's BD looks bloody fantastic!
__________________ Triumphant sight on a northern sky |
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