What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

TORSO – I’m not massively big on gialli, but I’ve always liked ‘Torso’. It’s a very moody film – balaclava’d figures looming in the mist and eyeless dolls probably represent it more than the sunny Etruscan squares and rococo décor. The shadowy vibe is augmented by bits of gore and sleaze; forget the lame reveal and the dubious backstory, ‘Torso’ remains a pungent trawl through swampy menace, and is really quite suspenseful in places. From Sergio Martino, with Suzy Kendall.

SEIZURE – Oliver Stone’s first feature. Lovers of ‘Wall Street’ etc etc will possibly end up scratching their heads, but I really enjoyed it. It that kind of Euro-nuanced cryptic post-Hippie vibe to it, all woozy fish-eye visuals and oblique connections, something you got a lot of in films from around the time that were essentially quite grindhouse but had one foot in the ‘art’ camp. It’s about an author whose weekend gathering is gatecrashed by a trio of creeps, including Herve Villechaize. All of the assembled are required to participate in games leading to inevitable death. Mary Woronov plays another of her sassy characters, but Martine Beswick rules as The Queen of Evil. Excellent stuff, really.

THE RENTAL – A good film, but it’s really an attempt to do a ‘grown up’ slasher. Two couples rent an isolated house for bit of weekend r&r – but who’s that watching them? A nice, subtle build up, full of foreboding and the sense of relationships derailing, gives way to a slightly flat post-‘Saw’ era type resolution. But enjoyable and quite absorbing for the most part, definitely worth a watch.

DON’T PANIC – From the maker of ‘Cemetery of Terror’. It’s not as satisfyingly grotesque as that film, being a more overt kind of ‘Nightmare on Elms Street’ cash in, but it’s certainly very charming. After a birthday Ouija board session, a college stude has nightmarish visions… some ghastly person from the other side is going about doing some murders. It rolls along in its predictable way, sprinkling just enough horror stuff to keep the audience from getting too impatient with ‘the relationships angle’ (which actually here is done in an entertainingly convoluted manner by way of a long-running metaphor involving three balloons sailing into the sky and a wilting rose). Then you get the whole eighties dubbed horror aesthetic, which is probably the main draw for people like me these days. Say what you will of it, but in the end I don’t believe it’s possible to dislike a film whose title song is an electro-synth ditty composed and sung by the lead performer.

BLOOD HOOK – My heart sinks a little whenever I see the ‘Troma’ banner – I have to remind myself that, in with all the dross they’ve put out, are some inspired oddities and a few stone-cold classics. No-one would call ‘Blood Hook’ a stone-cold classic, but for my money it’s certainly an inspired oddity. A bunch of eighties college kids come to a backwater town after an inheritance; during a fishing tournament, some slashings go down. That could be all there is to it, but ‘Blood Hook’ boasts a plethora of quirky characters and weird events. The killer’s mode of execution, death by fishing tackle, is strange enough, but then there’s the incredibly contrived explanation for their murderous frenzy, which, of all things under the sun, takes in the chirruping of cicadas and the devil’s tritone. That sets the (off-) beat to the whole film, which walks a queasy tightrope between snarky humour and eeriness. It could so easily be written off as another misfiring eighties horror-comedy, but it’s so much interesting, and better. Some of the gags fall flat, but some of them really work. It helps that much of the acting that isn’t deliberately weird is quite good, not that this film is intended to be a hugely resonant character study. It’s at its best in moments which feel absurd but strangely atmospheric, enough to stop the laughter in your throat. And ultimately, does it not take a certain genius to set a slasher movie in the world of angling?

Solid AF as always F!

[MrBarlow]

The Emerald Forest. 1985.

American engineer Bill, relocates his family to Brazil to build a dam that reaches to the Amazon Jungle. One day he takes his family out and his son is taken by a tribe, over ten years of constructing the dam, Bill has also searched for his son.

Back in the 80s there was no CGI effects so you can appreciate what John Boorman did for this film to captivate the Amazon at almost every angle of cinematography possible for him to use. Based on a news clipping from the late 70s Rospo Pallenberg was able to create a story of every parent's worst nightmare and a child being raised by a tribe and accepting his new life. Powers Boothe gives out a great performance as Bill who never gave up finding his son. This is one of those captivating films that draws you in with the basis of the back story, good acting and seeing how tribes of the jungle actually live and survive.

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[Demoncrat]

The Bell Witch Haunting (2013, Glen Millar)

FF.
Hilarious time was had with this one. During a boithday pawdy tis revealed that their lovely new house was built over a "100 year old" (ancient omg!! ) house that burnt down, the Average family (2 parents, 2 kids) find that all is not well in paradise ... some really stupid decisions and some unintentionally funny dialogue later, we get a little back story that suggests the elder daughter is the one for the chop.
Some do need that suspension of disbelief certainly. But this stretched that severely, so I just started laughing at it. TF.

NEXT!!!

[MrBarlow]

Frantic. 1988.

While in Paris Dr. Richard Walker's wife disappears from his hotel room, on a hunt to find her he is caught up in murder, drugs, gangsters and his only Allie is a girl called Michelle.

First time seeing this since early 90s and vaguely remembered very little about it, Harrison Ford plays the lead and seems well out of his league while scaling roof tops but doesn't stop him having a heart and some humour. Emmanuelle Seigner plays the young courier Michelle who just wants her money but ends up helping Ford.

Roman Polanski and Gerard Brach basically created a story that doesn't go on forever and starts 10 minutes into the film and then like the title one man goes Frantic in a way any other man would and with decent careful direction by Polanski, this was a good tense thriller, mixed in with some mind games played about.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Norman Jewison's lavish crime drama with it's split screen photography is one of the epitome movies of sixties cool.

It's film making of almost clockwork like precision with Steve McQueen, if not at his coolest then his most chicness, who along with co-star Faye Dunaway produce one hundred minutes of gorgeous style, sexiness and utter watchability. The story itself, well, you can take it or leave it.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

It's been so long since i last saw this that i'd forgotten 95% of it.

Peter Weir's classic piece of cinema is a mesmeric slice of Outback Folk Horror ambiguity. Weir gives absolutely nothing away regarding how events unfold and leaves clues hanging in the air for all to grasp at. Personally i haven't the foggiest what happened or if it even did happen. The joy of Picnic at Hanging Rock is getting lost in the heady atmosphere, metaphorical sexuality, sumptuous photography and ultimately unsettling mood.

[iank]

Blind bought from JB:

[gag]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Norman Jewison's lavish crime drama with it's split screen photography is one of the epitome movies of sixties cool.

It's film making of almost clockwork like precision with Steve McQueen, if not at his coolest then his most chicness, who along with co-star Faye Dunaway produce one hundred minutes of gorgeous style, sexiness and utter watchability. The story itself, well, you can take it or leave it.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

It's been so long since i last saw this that i'd forgotten 95% of it.

Peter Weir's classic piece of cinema is a mesmeric slice of Outback Folk Horror ambiguity. Weir gives absolutely nothing away regarding how events unfold and leaves clues hanging in the air for all to grasp at. Personally i haven't the foggiest what happened or if it even did happen. The joy of Picnic at Hanging Rock is getting lost in the heady atmosphere, metaphorical sexuality, sumptuous photography and ultimately unsettling mood.

Picnic at hanging rock is fictional its fully explained here .

https://decider.com/2018/05/24/picni...ck-true-story/

SPOILER:

Is ‘Picnic At Hanging Rock’ Based On A True Story?

Amazon’s Picnic At Hanging Rock is a super-stylized, hypnotic retelling of one of Australia’s most gripping stories. Joan Lindsay’s 1967 best-selling novel Picnic At Hanging Rock told the haunting story of the mysterious disappearance of three school girls and their teacher on a St. Valentine’s Day picnic at Hanging Rock. Only one girl returned, Irma, and the book captivated audiences with its feverish tale of female repression. In 1975, Peter Weir directed a hazy film version of the story that left audiences unsettled and future auteurs inspired.

The new Amazon miniseries stars Game of Thrones alum Natalie Dormer as the mysterious Mrs. Hester Appleyard, the headmistress of the private school the missing girls’ attended. The new Aussie adaptation of the tale plays up the horror of the story, opening with a gothic scene of “Widow Appleyard” stalking her newly bought mansion in all black. The series is theatrical, colorful, and obsessed with the pageantry of female sexuality.


Picnic At Hanging Rock is a story that feeds off mystery. Where did the girls go? Why did they vanish? What’s the deal with Mrs. Appleyard? While the new Amazon series does its best to fill in backstory, it doesn’t tackle the biggest mystery of all: Is Picnic At Hanging Rock based on a true story?

There is evidence for and against this theory, and much of it centers on the mythos of author Joan Lindsay herself.

Is Picnic At Hanging Rock Based on a True Story? What Does The Book Say?

Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel Picnic At Hanging Rock is written as though it’s based on a true story. Many of the places listed are real places she knew as a child, and Lindsay herself liked to play coy on the matter of the story’s veracity.

Lindsay even wrote a haunting foreward that teased the story’s truthfulness:

“Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.”

Lindsay’s editors maintained that the story was purely fictional. As the years went on, Lindsay herself finally said it was based on a dream she had and that it’s intended to be a mystery.

Nevertheless, there are clues that make people believe Picnic At Hanging Rock really happened.

Why Do People Still Think Picnic At Hanging Rock Was Based on a True Story?

Though the official story is that Lindsay made everything up — writing the hazy, hallucinatory novel in two weeks based on dreams she had — there’s a lot of hearsay, gossip, and stone cold evidence that the tale might be based in some truth.

Author and historian Janelle McCulloch recently wrote a book about Joan Lindsay and the rumors swirling around Picnic At Hanging Rock called Beyond the Rock: The Life of Joan Lindsay and the Mystery of Picnic At Hanging Rock. In the course of her research, McCulloch found literary and historical evidence that Lindsay may have gotten her inspiration for the tale from real life events.


The final two lines of Lindsay’s original foreward read, “For the author, who knew Mount Macedon and the Hanging Rock very well, as a child, the story is entirely true.” It was cut from the final manuscript, along with a supernatural explanation for the girls’ disappearance, but was Lindsay covering her tracks or merely holding back from employing a dramatic framing device to trick the reader into thinking it was a true story?

McCulloch’s historical research uncovered a local police gazette that told of two girls who had disappeared in the same area as Hanging Rock in the late 1800s. The girls’ descriptions match those of the missing young ladies in the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock. McCulloch says further evidence leads her to believe that “two girls were abducted” and “the girls were possibly hidden in one of the bottomless crevices of the rock.”

However, the abductions occurred before Joan Lindsay was born. In fact, Lindsay first visiting Hanging Rock as a four-year-old in 1900, the same year the book is set. And she reportedly had an experience on Hanging Rock that “profoundly affected her.”

So What Does That Mean? Did Picnic At Hanging Rock Really Happen?

As Lindsay describes it — and the Peter Weir film and Amazon television series portray it? No. However, it seems very likely that Lindsay drew on local stories and personal experiences to graft together the story. It’s probably loosely based on a tragic true story that’s been bent for dramatic effect.

McCullough also tracked down an elderly woman who went to the school the fictional Appleyard College was based on and she confirmed that back in the day, it was common knowledge that two girls had disappeared close to Hanging Rock. McCullough believes that Lindsay must have heard about these events from family members.

[Demoncrat]

Wow. Seriously? Of course, every one on here has seen the film I HOPE , so spoilers aren't a factor .... but thanks for the effort. NOT.

SMH.

[MrBarlow]

It's a film I haven't seem all the way through so will get the book and re read it

[Justin101]

I haven't seen the film, but it is on my 'would like to watch' list so I'm not reading gag's post