October Horror Movie Marathon

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The Hazing aka Dead Scared (2004)

with Tiffany Shepis

Just found out she's in Tales of Halloween.

Consider it bought!

[trebor8273]

The Frighteners. 9/10




Now watching.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)



AKA: Three American Douchebags in Paris

I hadn't seen this one since my late teens so thought it was worth a spin again, mainly as a friend had mentioned it in passing therefore forcing it to become stuck in a frontal recess of my brain, gnawing at me to revisit it.

As it began, I started to realise why I hadn't watched it again as none of its namesake predecessor's wit and charm were present, instead being replaced by shenanigans and cinderella-esque stalking. The effects are also very cheap looking and bear little resemblance to Landis' legendary transformation scenes of sixteen years prior.

Damn though if it didn't grow on me. Mocking eye-brow raising disdain gradually turned into grins and glee as it started to transform into a surprisingly likeable, fun romp, playing more for comedy than horror but still maintaining an air of the macabre at times throughout. It also flirts with some interesting (although not always successful ideas) including underground werewolf nightclubs that lure in unwitting tourists to be massacred, an experimental 'cure' for the lycanthropic state as well as a serum that brings upon the wolfish form irrelevant of whether the moon is full. There are also some adrenaline-fuelled wolfy action-set pieces, albeit marred by the aforementioned cheap looking effects.

Whilst 'Paris' is certainly no 'London', it's not without charm and if you can overcome the shaky start and set-aside what has come before (not always easy, I know) then this one can be a fairly fun ride if you let it.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

I hadn't seen this one since my late teens so thought it was worth a spin again, mainly as a friend had mentioned it in passing therefore forcing it to become stuck in a frontal recess of my brain, gnawing at me to revisit it.

As it began, I started to realise why I hadn't watched it again as none of its namesake predecessor's wit and charm were present, instead being replaced by shenanigans and cinderella-esque stalking. The effects are also very cheap looking and bear little resemblance to Landis' legendary transformation scenes of sixteen years prior.

Damn though if it didn't grow on me. Mocking eye-brow raising disdain gradually turned into grins and glee as it started to transform into a surprisingly likeable, fun romp, playing more for comedy than horror but still maintaining an air of the macabre at times throughout. It also flirts with some interesting (although not always successful ideas) including underground werewolf nightclubs that lure in unwitting tourists to be massacred, an experimental 'cure' for the lycanthropic state as well as a serum that brings upon the wolfish form irrelevant of whether the moon is full. There are also some adrenaline-fuelled wolfy action-set pieces, albeit marred by the aforementioned cheap looking effects.

Whilst 'Paris' is certainly no 'London', it's not without charm and if you can overcome the shaky start and set-aside what has come before (not always easy, I know) then this one can be a fairly fun ride if you let it.

I think you sum it up quite well, Bizarre_Eye. I remember enjoying it at the cinema as a decent and enjoyable werewolf film and would have worked better with another title perhaps so as to discard any links with Landis' classic.

I think i only watched the vhs and dvd releases i bought the one time. Definitely time for a revisit.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by bizarre_eye@Cult Labs

An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

As I haven't seen it in about a decade, it's now up to High priority on my Lovefilm rental queue. If I enjoy it half as much as you did, I'll probably splash out on the Australian or Italian DVD release instead of the inferior UK one.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

As I haven't seen it in about a decade, it's now up to High priority on my Lovefilm rental queue. If I enjoy it half as much as you did, I'll probably splash out on the Australian or Italian DVD release instead of the inferior UK one.

What makes the UK one inferior, Nos?

[platostotal]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

What makes the UK one inferior, Nos?

The film itself?

I have this somewhere, as this forum normally is a good guide I'll have to reappraise it, but doesn't it feature a really badly done CGI werewolf? last watched it in 2004 or so and remember not really liking it much, but what the heh.

[MuckyFunster]

Film #7

Halloween



I went to see Halloween at the cinema last Friday. I hadn't seen the film in years, long enough to have forgotten enough about it to really get into it on the night. Plus it was a real treat to see it on the big screen. "Totally!"

Film #8

Clown



I taped this one off the Horror Channel last week. On Monday night I watched up till the first advert break and the next day I was telling my friends about it based on the 20 minutes or so that I saw (which I really enjoyed). I was laughing and saying that although it was playing out like a straight up horror film, it was obv a bit tongue in check in that the fella is stuck in a clown outfit complete with a rainbow wig and red nose and has been left looking a bit ridiculous. Then on Tuesday night when I sat down to unwind and enjoy the rest of this horror romp I was really surprised at how much the film changes in tone, with the demonic clown monster transformation and then all the cannibal stuff. It just went off the wall! After watching it I Googled the film to see if the thing about the Cloyne legend was based on any historical legend (it's not) and I read on Wikipedia that one film reviewer said that the film was - "a harrowing story of a family man's losing struggle with his own paedophiliac impulses". What?!?! It was a guy being taken over by a clown demon!


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[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Playing with Dolls (2015)



Low budget slasher that uses a reality TV premise of 4 people in an isolated cabin outfitted with cameras, who are all trying to win a competition to star in their own slasher flick. The last one standing who hasn’t been picked off by the killer is the winner. Unsurprisingly it’s all a set up and the killer is in fact real and not an actor who has been purposefully let loose in the wilderness by some mysterious rich voyeur who sits in a darkened room supping fine claret whilst watching the killings unfold on screen. The ludicrous TV show set-up isn’t enough for our carnage happy pervert though, as he subsidises the body count with some other random women that he’s managed to lure to his lair.

There’s no suspense here. At all. Everything is set-up for you before the annoying contestants reach their cabin. Plus, although the killer looks the business, he seems rather restrained in some respects and a far cry from the ‘insane released mental patient’ caricature as stipulated and you come to expect from these z-grade gore-fests. Maybe he knows he’s got a good deal going on here though… all the flesh he can dissect provided to him on a silver platter. Almost robotic-like he enters the cabin on a few occasions only to lurk at windows, in doorways or in the back of the shot where our quartet of cookie-cutter cardboard thin stereotypes are none the wiser… just to eat up some of the screen time – after all, the killer’s look is pretty much the only thing the film has going for it so why not exploit that fact as much as you can. The attacks/kills are lazy with a lot of them occurring off-screen and which are also very poorly set-up. Instead you are treated to extreme close-ups of blood filled latex limb lopping post-attack, which although look fairly gooey are pretty much the main pivot for the whole film, such as it is, to balance on. We have the classic ‘let’s make a cool killer mutilate people’ trope, but everything else is secondary to that and is therefore disposable making this already flawed mess even more so.

For what is essentially a fairly short film, I was expecting something a little tauter and less drawn out, unfortunately this all becomes clear at the end as the film-makers literally leave you hanging as the killer, survivors, and Mr. Voyeur are out on open ground in some kind of suspense-less face-off when the film just ends… a way of trying to force you to watch the sequel, but I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep wondering what happens to any of these poor attempts at people.

[iank]

Originally Posted by MuckyFunster

Film #7


Clown
I read on Wikipedia that one film reviewer said that the film was - "a harrowing story of a family man's losing struggle with his own paedophiliac impulses". What?!?! It was a guy being taken over by a clown demon!

Well he starts wanting to eat kids, which is clearly a metaphor for -


I'll get my coat.