What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[MrBarlow]

Dagon. 2001.

A couple become stranded on a Spanish island where the locals worshipped a ancient sea god.

Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna team up again to bring us another H.P. Lovecraft story to the screen. Set on a Spanish island that is engulfed with a storm coming over quickly that throws the sailing boat on to the rocks trapping a friend with her husband while another couple try and raise help from some strange bizarre locals with webbed fingers and gills.

Ezza Godden is the lead character who seems to have a dream of a strange woman while underwater, his acting is a bit wooden at the start but does slowly improve as the film goes on. We are given a back story halfway through that sets the tone of the film a bit darker. Isolation, atmospheric, and a nod to Cthulhu type creature. For a blind buy for me a few years back, this is still a enjoyable film even though the original story was only 6 pages long the makers did create a great film.

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[MrBarlow]

High Hopes. 1988.

Mike Leigh's take on the working class and middle/upper class, Phil Davies and Ruth Sheen are the working class Cyril and Shirley who get by in live with little yet still able to keep each other happy and smiling no matter how tough the times are. Phillip Jackson and Heather Tobias play Cyril's sister and brother in law who have the fancy house, cars, and not so perfect life that Valerie wants and in the middle is Edna Dore who is the old ageing mother who lives next door to the posh high sex drive couple Leslie Manville and David Bamber.

This is a bit of comedy and drama mixed in together that shows the concept of living in London that never really gives you the happy ending that you normally see except for the mother on the roof top garden thinking she is on top of the world. The daughter seems to be living in her own fantasy world where everything is perfect when it really isn't. This may not be for everyone but certainly take a gander at it.

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[Frankie Teardrop]

MY HEART CAN'T BEAT UNLESS YOU TELL IT TO - This latter-day indie takes a definite post-'Martin' approach to vampirism. A brother and sister lure locals back to their rundown house in the suburbs, where they kill to feed their sickly sib's blood addiction. Grotty and dowdy in a lovely-to-look-at sort of way, its academy ratio boxes us in and makes us feel the claustrophobia of a dysfunctional family in a dead-end town. I loved it, and what I loved most was the absence of melodrama; you can argue the toss either way about 'elevated horror', but for me there was something a little magical about its bleak Bloody Mary of meditative calm and muffled slaughter vibes.

HALLOWEEN 6 :THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS - Fed up with butchering babysitters, Mike tries his hand at fatherhood. Actually, there's a pretty good noughts / twenty tens gross-out comedy in there if they'd waited, but we're still in the nineties with contractual obligations to meet, so... Donald Pleasance looks old. Tommy Doyle is now a creepy guy with a telescope-and-curtains fixation, though proves himself a bit of a hero when he's left holding the baby, a stalker with a heart of gold if you like. A 180 degree turn away from the metaphysical horror of the original, but in a way so what? There's enough mid-nineties slickness with blue lightning flashes and candlelight to hook me in, plus a quantity of gore and no small amount of babble about druids.

INFESTED - I'm all for a bit more 'animals and insects attack' stuff these days. Maybe not the animals so much after all the shit shark films we've ended up with, but count me in for spiders. Even though I don't fear spiders, I could be persuaded after seeing 'Infested', they definitely get them right. It's all in the movement, the scuttle that ends in a vicious bite. 'Infested' happens in a French tower block, where the residents get by and get along or don't, and we know this because we spend quite a while with them as people rather than as spider bait. This slow burn may have human drama on its mind, but after a while we're back to the seventies with masses of swarming arachnids and screaming in the corridors. I liked it, maybe not as much as the many currently heaping praise online.

[nicholasrope]

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

Years after Caesar's passing, another Ape takes over and rules with a iron fist but after his henchman destroys a village, a Ape teams up with a human to take him down. It's long and it's boring, not much really happens. It felt like this was to set up and establish some new characters as the ending seems to indicate.

[MrBarlow]

Meantime. 1984.

Second of Mike Leigh film viewing this weekend, Tim Roth plays Colin, a mentally challenged man living with his parents and brother played by Phil Daniels and is good friends with local skinhead Gary Oldman. Colin is given a small cleaning job by his aunt and jealousy ensues between the brothers..

Leigh examines lives of a poor family claiming benefits trying to get by while the family is disorganised and constant arguing and fighting with each other. Roth's portrayal is amazing and you can feel the sympathy for his character. Pam Ferris is brilliant as the mother trying to hold things together and dealing with a lay about husband. Marion Bailey plays the rich aunt dealing with hubby Alfred Molina who thinks his wife is going through the change in life. The direction is perfect and never goes off the rails with this and keeps you entertained right from the start to finish. Certainly a good drama recommendation.

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[iank]

Tower Block. The remaining residents of a due-for-demolition tower block find themselves under attack from a sniper with a score to settle. Sheridan Smith and Jack O'Connell star in this 2012 British thriller. Been trying to watch this on Shudder for bloody ages but for some reason it was refusing to play. They seem to have finally fixed the issue though so I watched it last night. Not bad.

[MrBarlow]

Cross Of The Devil. 1975.

A British writer travels to Spain to visit his sister only to find out that she has been murdered and discovers a devil worshipping sect called The Devil's Cross.

Ramiro Oliveros plays the writer in this one directed by Brit director John Gilling that was made as a unofficial sequel to The Blind Dead movies that was made by Paul Naschy who got fired and Ramiro was brought in. There is mentioning of The Templar and then towards the end we see the zombies, but there is way too much talking in this and tends to drag on a bit too much, the story does shift about as to is it all real or just someone smoking a bit too much of the "Wacky Baccy". I went into this with a open mind and still unsure whether a second viewing of this will happen or not.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)

Six aspiring movie makers dig up a corpse named Orville then experiment with witchcraft and voodoo rituals in an attempt to bring him back to life... only to be surprised and shocked when they actually do awaken the rotting dead from their graves.

A very low budget film where the first hour is slow and it's also very talky and the aspiring movie makers seem to be led by Frankie Poulain from The Darkness. This first hour has a marvelously hedonistic feel to it, a vibe that still very much washes over from the previous decade and is helped by a constant stream of chatter that is both witty and audience friendly. The film is well cast and the script avoids many of the cliches that affect teen movies to this day, utilizing likable and (mainly) believable characters.Whilst this is always great the fact there isn't any zombie action until the final fifteen minutes means it can also become a test of patience.

On the plus side the beautifully disturbing avant-garde score is wonderful and really brings a macabre ambiance to the atmosphere that director Bob Clark oozes into proceedings

Clark doesn't really seem hampered by the low budget when it comes to the scares. The ghouls rising from their graves is superbly executed with a spooky atmosphere, well produced practical effects and clever photography.

The final half reels are grim in comparison to what's gone before. Characters sacrifice one another in a bid to escape the ghouls and all signs of friendliness quickly dissipate. In fact the scene as group leader Alan pushes a female friend down some steps into the zombie hordes in a bid to escape is as mean spirited as horror gets.

Although coming a full four years after Romero's groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead CSPWDT is the first movie to ride on it's coat tails. Having said that, this films final scene depicting the ghouls entering the city suggest that this, (together with the whole resurrecting the ghouls via voodoo idea which had been done before but not with flesh eating zombies) may have influenced Italian film makers - especially Lucio Fulci who basically steals this scene for his closing shot on Zombie Flesh Eaters- more so than the Romero classic.

I definitely need to research what the 101 Films Blu-ray is like because this dvd from Nucleus is wildly variable in it's image quality.

[Dave Boy]

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KING OF THE ROCKET MEN (1949)

Jeff King dons the Rocket Man suit to try to stop Dr Vulcan from using the sonic decimator and taking over the world..

My favourite movie serial from seeing it for the first time waaaay back.
The Rocket Man flying effect looks good. The same dummy effect on a wire used for The Adventures Of Captain Marvel serial in 1941.
The scenes of Rocket Man heading straight for the camera look very good.
Lots of punch ups and furniture smashing each episode.
Climatic scenes of New York being destroyed by a tidal wave were lifted from DELUGE (1931).
The Rocket Man suit was used in three later un-related serials.

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[MrBarlow]

Not Of This Earth. 1957.

A alien disguised as a human lands on Earth, hoping to extract blood from his victims in order to save his dying planet.

A nice little number from Roger Corman (R.I.P) taking in a small story, low budget and a handful of cast members and making what would appear to be a crap movie but makes it enjoyable. Paul Birch plays the stranger Mr Johnson who needs a transfusion of blood and uses his white pale eyes for his victims. Beverly Garland plays Nadine the nurse who by her doctor is staying with Johnson and uncovers a secret. Morgan Jones plays the young deputy sheriff and has mixed feelings on the new stranger, and we get a small cameo by Dick Miller playing a hoover salesman. For a film that runs 67 minutes this one certainly keeps you entertained and it does hold your attention on the acting and direction and does make you think how it will end.

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