October Horror Movie Marathon

[Nordicdusk]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

Nordy's is a good reminder for me to watch Halloween III: Season of the Witch later this month!

It's a nailed on selection every Halloween night for me one of the few selections that never changes.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Nordicdusk

Thanks over the years i have grown to love Halloween III more and more and to me it just is the perfect Halloween time film.

The same with me. My first viewing left me nonplussed but repeated viewings have made me like it more and more so, despite the absurd plot, it is a film I try to watch every few years.

[Nordicdusk]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu@Cult Labs

The same with me. My first viewing left me nonplussed but repeated viewings have made me like it more and more so, despite the absurd plot, it is a film I try to watch every few years.

It also has one of my favourite soundtracks one of my most played vinyls in my collection.

[Frankie Teardrop]

NECRONOS: TOWER OF DOOM – German underground gore, what can you say? It’s like extreme metal, one of life’s passions that’s quite niche but has its adherents. ‘Necronos’, by Marc Rohnstock, is very GUG, just by looking at the roll call alone. If I were a dedicated archivist of the films of Andreas Schnaas et al I might venture to call this an exemplar of the genre – I can’t see how it could be anything else in a way, because ‘Necronos’ is basically two solid hours of unremitting gore of the grottiest kind. It starts in high fantasy mode, with a parchment-relayed epic backstory that tells of… uh, sorcerers and a warlock and the like. Between glimpses of scroll you see a few medieval throat slashings and eye removals and scary faces, not to mention some chained up nudes. Then we’re in the present day, where some dude who looks like an emergency plumber with a really messed up face goes around butchering people at a camp site.‘Back at the castle’, he confers with his demonic sorcerous master over matters relating to the forthcoming end of humanity and accompanying zombie takeover – and that, apart from a few shreds of storyline about virgin witches, is pretty much all that happens for two f*cking hours. I thought I would be bored, but I wasn’t at all. ‘Necronos’ just slides from one vom-inducing tableau to the next, and its commitment to revolting prosthetic gross-out is undeniably impressive. These films are strange experiences in a way, one part utterly hollow, one part morbidly fascinating, one part somehow hilarious until the last part rears up to remind you that it’s all quite nasty. There’s quite a lot of sleaze to confirm the latter, but also just the sheer wall of brutality. The other thing is, unless the film makers play their cards right, incessant gore can get numbing very quickly, but that’s not the case here. Maybe it’s the random stuff they throw in, like that whacky offal grinding machine that gets a couple of airings, that ‘enlivens’ things a bit. Also, ‘Necronos’ is not totally without humour, as evinced by the bit where some gore-victim’s head-turn is mimicked by his pet pooch. OK, you had to be unblinkingly there at the time, otherwise you’d miss that tiny islet of humanity in the endless ocean of blood that is ‘Necronos: Tower of Doom’.

[MrBarlow]

Shock. 1977. (AKA Beyond The Door II).

Dora along with her new partner Bruno and son Marco, move to a house that Dora once lived in with her late husband and soon begins to think her son is different and the house has a evil force in it.

Mario Bava along with Lamberto (uncredited) directed this little piece of haunted house story With Daria Nicolodi as Dora, recovering from the trauma of loosing her husband in a accident and moving back to her old house. This doesn't have much blood an guts gore fest etc, the film plays on the psychology of is the son possessed and is Dora loosing her mind again, or is the house haunted, it can have a creepy and at times annoying background score but it does have a really good twist and turn ending.

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Up next Cat Girl

[Edgeworth]

Rabid, 2019 soska sisters remake

After a woman has a traffic accident she undergoes an experimental stem cell skin graft for her injuries. Everything goes better than expected, rebuilding her shattered face and even repairing old injuries. Improving her work and social life after the surgery but something is wrong! Fiendish dreams of killing and devouring flesh and blood with a rapidly mutating body... Or are they dreams?

Quite enjoyed this one. The body horror is quite different from the Cronenberg classic but interesting and the same underlying plot. Also a great cameo by CM Punk in an awful leather vest!

Checked out Slaughterhouse Rock and I don't think I have anything to add.

[MrBarlow]

Cat Girl. 1957.

A young woman Leonora returns to her family home and is told she will inherit money as well as the family curse.

This may be a somewhat remake of the 1940s film Cat People, but this was absolutely brilliant, Barbara Shelley takes the lead role and basically owns it, Robert Ayres plays the psychiatrist who doesn't believe in curses only medicines, tries to prove Leonora is loosing her sanity. From the start, this was highly entertaining as well as being very atmospheric to the end that kind of gave out a chill down the spine.

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[bleakshaun]

Evilspeak

A military student discovers a hidden room in the church of a school when cleaning the basement and attempts to perform a satanic ritual.
God how old those computers are , so far one of the highlights of this years marathon for me, even though it did at points feel slow. I will say they were all arseholes.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Dark August (1976) ★★★½

Set in a small town in rural Vermont, Dark August follows Sal, an artist who is relatively new to the area and is struggling with the memories of a tragic accident when a young girl ran in front of his car.

The girl's grandfather holds him responsible and has been following him around town, but things get even worse for Sal when he suspects the old man has (literally) cursed him.

Written by and starring husband-and-wife team J.J. Barry and Carole Shelyne, playing Sal and his wife Jackie, respectively, with Oscar-winning actress Kim Hunter as Adrianna, a local medium who informs Sal about the shadowy figure keeps seeing and what to do about it.

Directed by Martin Goldman, whose daughter plays the girl in the flashback scenes, this is a slow burning horror with some really unusual and disquieting music, excellent photography from Richard E. Brooks, and surprisingly good performances from the cast, none of whom seem overshadowed by Kim Hunter, a much more accomplished and acclaimed actor than the other cast members.

It's another film from the American Horror Project: Volume Two box set which I hadn't previously heard of, let alone seen, so I'm grateful to Stephen Thrower and Arrow Video for this release.

Martin Goldman provides a commentary, where he is joined by Brandon Daniel and Joe Luke, who say they'll be moderating. Sadly, they don't do much to keep Goldman talking and giving specific information about the film which would be interesting to first time viewers and others who aren't overly familiar with the film.

It's a bit weird to listen to because Goldman sounds like the older Don Corleone in The Godfather and I could imagine him saying "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" or "Look what they did to my boy'!

I learned much more about this film and other films associated with Vermont from the other extra features on the disc – this commentary is not what I wanted because I thought it was too dull and technical.

[Frankie Teardrop]

ALIEN VS NINJA – Remember those mega-splattery Japanese movies from the mid-to-late noughties? ‘Alien v Ninja’ is one of those, albeit watered down slightly. It isn’t the gore apocalypse of ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ and the like, but all the hallmarks are there, including an atmosphere of throwaway silliness. A comet crashes in a forest, aliens ravage a village and some ninjas get roped in to sort it all out. It all boils down to endless fight scenes, one of which involves the foxy female ninja and for a brief moment looks weirdly sexualised to the point where it almost seems to threaten to go a bit hentai. It doesn’t of course; I bought this from Asda ten years ago, back when that superstore didn’t specialise in niche erotica, and mostly ‘Alien v Ninja’ is about people getting punched and visual gags such as the bit where rubbery space foetuses pop out of one of the sorta dolphin-headed aliens’ ‘breathing holes’. It’s all over quickly so it doesn’t bore, in fact ‘Alien v Ninja’ is quite a lot of fun really.