What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[iank]

I went to buy that from JB as part of the 2 for $20 the other day, and they'd sold out!

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Murder On the Orient Express (1974)

I'd certainly recommend it to you. But maybe not for a few years as you probably know how it ends.

It's something I'd like to watch, but the cheapest I can find the StudioCanal Blu-ray release is £13.30, which is a little much for a blind buy, so I'll wait until it's an offer.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

It's something I'd like to watch, but the cheapest I can find the StudioCanal Blu-ray release is £13.30, which is a little much for a blind buy, so I'll wait until it's an offer.

The dvd was £3 in Fopp when you bought any other product.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The dvd was £3 in Fopp when you bought any other product.

It's a shame their stores are nowhere near me.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

It's a shame their stores are nowhere near me.

I'm planning to go again in the first week of December. If you'd like me to get you a copy and post it to you i will.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I'm planning to go again in the first week of December. If you'd like me to get you a copy and post it to you i will.

That's very generous. I see it's in the 2 for £25 offer at HMV, so I may buy it from there.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

That's very generous. I see it's in the 2 for £25 offer at HMV, so I may buy it from there.

I'll ask you before i go. It will be a couple of weeks away yet.

[keirarts]

I've been a bit lazy recently in posting reviews. I don't know why as I used to love writing. It just seems like I spend too much time wandering through Youtube. But anyway, here goes. I've been watching a lot of John Carpenter recently.....

Dark star

Carpenters first film is one of the all time great student films. Snatched by Carpenter and his collaborator Dan O'Bannon from the University of southern California who owned all student projects and released by Jack H Harris. It failed to set the box office alight on release but has steadily become a cult classic through home video releases.
In terms of plot its fairly aimless. Just a bunch of slobs in space blowing up unstable planets with sentient bombs and inbetween missions generally dicking around through sheer boredom from the tedium of space travel. O'Bannon plays Pinback, who isn't pinback, just some blue collar guy who ended up on the mission by mistake. A lot of O'Bannons sense of humour comes through in the film. Especially in his interactions with the beach ball alien that somehow works, partially because of how ridiculous it looks.
If your going to pick it up the UK blu-ray is fairly solid. It has two cuts of the fim, the original 90 minute theatrical cut and a shorter 78 minute cut done later by Carpenter that actually works a lot better. Theres also a fascinating documentary that runs at almost two hours!

Assault on Precinct 13

After Dark Star failed to propel him into the stratosphere, Carpenter made this ultra low budget urban horror western. Stylistically coming from the exploitation market with nods to Blaxploitation, Urban action cinema and Horror, Carpenter liberally borrows from his favourite films, most noticeably Rio Bravo where he lifts whole sequences to the point where if he changed his name to Quentin Tarantino a lot of people online would be calling him a hack.
Nevertheless Assault is a blistering, action packed slice of entertainment that holds up all these years later. Austin Stoker plays Ethan Bishop, sounding very much like a character name reserved for John Wayne, who plays a cop left to babysit a closed down police station in a bad neighbourhood. Darwin Joston plays Napoleon Wilson, a convicted death row killer with an almost perverse heart of gold who threatens to steal all of his scenes. Laurie Zimmer is also great playing the tough as nails lady who holds her own in a crisis.

[keirarts]

Halloween

While Assault was not an immediate success. It would take a hugely successful run in Britain for people to start paying attention. Carpenter was offered the opportunity to direct a film based on the idea of someone killing off babysitters. At this point, the slasher film sort of existed in the form of Black Christmas but it wasn't a style of picture that was being heavily copied. Carpenters film would change this. Shot on a micro budget with a cast of up and coming actors including an as then unknown Jamie lee Curtis, Halloween is a tightly constructed horror movie that delivers on suspense and slow burning menace rather than the overt gore fests the slasher would ultimately become. Part of the reason the film works so well is Carpenters score. Carpenter is clearly a gifted musician but often he would score his own films through budgetary necessity. It worked out for the best though as he's possibly better than any outside composers he might have hired. Even Morricone ended up delivering something that Carpenter himself might have written.

Someone's watching me

Following on from Halloween Carpenter embarked on his first foray into televison work with this Hitchcockian thriller about Leigh Michaels played by Lauren Hutton who plays a young professional woman who is stalked by a mysterious stranger who is watching her from a distant apartment and playing cruel mind games with her. Adrienne Barbeau who would work with carpenter again several times and end up his ex-wife, plays Sophie, Leigh's gay BFF who tries to help her as shes terrorised by the sick creep.
Made in 1978 the film comes from the golden era of TV movies when often, in spite of lower budgets, they were delivering content almost as good as the majors. Think films like Trilogy of terror, satans school for girls, Duel, Kolchack and Dark night of the scarecrow as examples. Someone's watching me is a solid example of this. The film wears its Hitchcock influences on its sleeve from its Saul bass inspired titles to the clear homages to Rear window. Its often negelected when people discuss Carpenter, which is a shame as its terrific.

[keirarts]

Elvis

Continuing in TV, Carpenter would work with frequent collaborator and apparent BFF Kurt Russell for the first time. Russell gives a stellar performance in this almost 3 hour TV special as the King of Rock & Roll as the film takes us from Elvis early years to his Vegas comeback. Its a little flat compared to some of his other works, including someones watching me, but its still a solid entry into his filmography thanks to some of the great performances on show.

The Fog

Carpenter Returns to theatres with his take on the campfire ghost story as a crew of leprosy sufferers who were deliberately sunk by a local townsfolk and robbed of their money return to seek vengeance of the town that has benefited from their deaths. Still Relatively low budget, Carpenter worked with Avco Embassy, he managed to score a great cast here. Jamie Lee Curtis returns, Tom Atkins, Adrienne Barbeau, Charles Cyphers and George Buck flowers, all regulars also return. We also get the always great Hal Holbrook as the local priest and Jamie Lee's mother Janet Leigh appears as well.
The film is a masterclass as generating mood and suspense. Carpenter delivers one of his best scores that really helps create the atmosphere Carpenter works wonders with mist and prosthetic zombie ghosts and delivers scenes far more effectively than the bigger budgeted remake could with a hefty amount of CG. Carpenter did need to reshoot some stuff as the original cut apparently didn't work so well. Apparently it was mainly some of the gore, but this doesn't see, to have negatively impacted things. As of writing scream factory's Blu-ray is the one to go for.