October Horror Movie Marathon - Page 581

Demdike@Cult Labs · #**5801** 3rd October 2024, 12:41 PM

The Uninvited (1944)

Ray Milland and his sister, Ruth Hussey, purchase an old house on the Cornish coast and find it to be haunted.

Made as just a filler or B-production, The Uninvited quickly became much more than that with all it's elements coming together to produce a genre classic.

The cinematography is terrific utilising the windswept Cornish cliff tops brilliantly but it's the sound design that truly stands out. We see and practically feel every breeze, and every ghostly noise - especially the sobbing - seems to be in the room with us. The hauntings are brilliantly conceived throughout culminating in a hugely impressive final manifestation at the top of some stairs. There's also a bit of dark humour as Milland in attempting to justify what is happening to sis is really trying to hold back his own terror and convince himself nothing is to be feared at all.

A final mention to the score by Victor Young, whose main theme Stella By Starlight was covered by Miles Davis on his jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue and when Young wrote lyrics to it was recorded by Frank Sinatra among others.

Superb from beginning to end.

Frankie Teardrop · #**5802** 3rd October 2024, 02:14 PM

NEW YEARS EVIL - You'll have to forgive me, sometimes I hit on the wrong seasonal holiday. 'New Years Evil' is a film I've seen maybe once before and thought was no more than OK - thank goodness for second chances, had a total blast with it this time. To be fair, it delivers less as a slasher movie (light on violence and threat atmospherics) and way more as a Cannon movie (heavy on rampant silliness and unlikely incident). It's about an LA 'New Wave' TV show host who, on new year's eve, is stalked over the phone by a killer who promises one death per US time zone at the stroke of midnight; any one of the male creeps in her life could be a suspect (including her own son, who worries us when he pulls a red stocking over his head and ends up looking more like a dick than a menace). I like any movie that features live band performances from the early eighties, but the almost certainly middle-aged makers and / or backers were a bit tone deaf about punk - most of the line-ups sound like mildly revved hard-rock, so don't get into it expecting to see any Black Flag or whatever. This obtuseness extends to the overall tone, which works if you enjoy yo-yoing between hilarity and intensity; for every ugly-minded kill, there's some arcane ludicrousness involving a piece of playground equipment and a corpse. I can think of films that are more 'Cannon' than 'New Year's Evil', but its barrelling pace and breezy use of nonsense make it a safe bet for ninety mins of cheap thrills.

MrBarlow · #**5803** 4th October 2024, 10:57 AM

The House On Sorority Row. 1983.

After graduating a group of sorority sisters decide to prank their house mother which results in her death, they hide the body and throw a party until they start being killed by someone .

The first part of the film gives us the old battle axe who wants her house closed and the girls basically being little bitches so we have no sympathy for them being bumped off. The second part is the killer in the shadows hunting them down one at a time and leaves us wondering who the killer is. The kills are done decently and old school. The acting is what you expect it to be for a early 80s film, one or two people try to over act and basically begging for that one to be killed off first which never happens, still a entertaining slasher.

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Saint Maud. 2019.

A young nurse is determined to save the soul of the woman she is caring for while battling her trauma from a bad experience that happened in her previous job.

This isn't a full blown horror but more psychological horror that deals with mental health and religion combined. The film does have the element of isolation, grief and loneliness, we have seen film with demons in them, here it's more demons of the mind that are never seen in a person from the outside. The acting is great from Morfydd Clark who plays the young nurse and Jennifer Ehle who plays the cancer ridden patient and able to make the character one we all want to hate.

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Frankie Teardrop · #**5804** 4th October 2024, 01:44 PM

UNDERWORLD - Shunned films are ignored but tend to stick in the memory. When I first turned to horror, 'Underworld' was roundly disliked, a fledgling Clive Barker project sidelined in the wake of Hellraiser's later success and all but forgotten by the time I got to hear about it. The Barker involvement alone made me want to dip my toes, but the right moment never came - "maybe someday, when they've invented 4K blu ray restorations that make it all look dead swish." So here we are. 'Underworld' feels a bit like a cheap dummy run of 'Nightbreed' (it wouldn't be long before Barker started on 'Cabal'), centring on a fringe community of potentially heroic mutant outcasts at loggerheads with a drug baron and his skeevy scientist sidekick. They are beholden to a substance that induces monstrosity and 'strange dreams' (or something), and hope to emancipate themselves by kidnapping an ethereal woman from Ingrid Pitt's brothel; an ex-mob enforcer arrives to throw knuckles and play Orpheus. 'Underworld' is split clean between strength and weakness. It looks lovely, all blue neon and mist, and it's weird how, here in the 21st century, we seem to have developed this twisted idea that everything from the eighties looked like it was part of a Cocteau Twins video directed by Michael Mann - the reality might've been closer to 'Howard's Way', but this kind of services the fantasy. Seeing the likes of Stephen Berkhoff, Miranda Richardson and Denholm Elliot in the company of cockney mutants does something for me, although the leads are flat and not very engaging. Offsetting and perhaps neutralising all the more interesting stuff is 'Underworld's draggy pace and strangely, considering the Barker script, its slightly conventional narrative. I imagine this was as much of a chore to sit through on VHS as everyone said back then, but for what it's worth, the high def era at least allows 'Underworld's visual virtues to stand and be counted. Directed by Georges Pavlou (I think I prefer the wonky charms of his other Barker adaption, 'Rawhead Rex'.)

Demdike@Cult Labs · #**5805** 4th October 2024, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

UNDERWORLD - Shunned films are ignored but tend to stick in the memory. When I first turned to horror, 'Underworld' was roundly disliked, a fledgling Clive Barker project sidelined in the wake of Hellraiser's later success and all but forgotten by the time I got to hear about it. The Barker involvement alone made me want to dip my toes, but the right moment never came - "maybe someday, when they've invented 4K blu ray restorations that make it all look dead swish." So here we are. 'Underworld' feels a bit like a cheap dummy run of 'Nightbreed' (it wouldn't be long before Barker started on 'Cabal'), centring on a fringe community of potentially heroic mutant outcasts at loggerheads with a drug baron and his skeevy scientist sidekick. They are beholden to a substance that induces monstrosity and 'strange dreams' (or something), and hope to emancipate themselves by kidnapping an ethereal woman from Ingrid Pitt's brothel; an ex-mob enforcer arrives to throw knuckles and play Orpheus. 'Underworld' is split clean between strength and weakness. It looks lovely, all blue neon and mist, and it's weird how, here in the 21st century, we seem to have developed this twisted idea that everything from the eighties looked like it was part of a Cocteau Twins video directed by Michael Mann - the reality might've been closer to 'Howard's Way', but this kind of services the fantasy. Seeing the likes of Stephen Berkhoff, Miranda Richardson and Denholm Elliot in the company of cockney mutants does something for me, although the leads are flat and not very engaging. Offsetting and perhaps neutralising all the more interesting stuff is 'Underworld's draggy pace and strangely, considering the Barker script, its slightly conventional narrative. I imagine this was as much of a chore to sit through on VHS as everyone said back then, but for what it's worth, the high def era at least allows 'Underworld's visual virtues to stand and be counted. Directed by Georges Pavlou (I think I prefer the wonky charms of his other Barker adaption, 'Rawhead Rex'.)

This was a chore to sit through on dvd for me. So disappointing. One of those films i bought twice. Once in the early days of the medium and then got rid of it and then a few years ago to check i hadn't dismissed it unfairly. I hadn't.

As for Howard's Way i watched the dvd box set of that series a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it once again after seeing it on it's initial transmission. It is pretty much the definition of British drama in the 80's much like Dallas was of US drama in the same period.

Demdike@Cult Labs · #**5806** 4th October 2024, 04:07 PM

A double bill in name only.

Night of the Demon (1980)

A professor and a group of students go deep into the woods to investigate rumours of Bigfoot.

Its difficult to know where to start when saying a few words about Night of the Demon. In no way is it a good film, the acting is on the whole, not great, the script is perfunctory at best and the Bigfoot creature looks like it could do with a bit of work from the costume department. The whole production is amateurish at best, however despite these obvious flaws, and in some cases because of them, the film is very entertaining.

Night of the Demon is best summed up as a gore movie and its here where the film excels itself. The effects are of a high standard and fare well in relation to most other gore films from the same era. Whilst not as impressive as the SFX in Lucio Fulci's films (what are?) they still manage to produce some lovely gooey moments such as the films famed penis removal. As in all the best gore films the camera almost lovingly caresses each death shot allowing the viewer the full effect. Other bloody violent deaths of note include pitchforks, disembowelment's, broken glass and axe, as well as Bigfoot swinging an unlucky camper through the air in a sleeping bag before crashing them into a tree - a scene borrowed by the Friday the 13th series and used in two separate films it was so popular.

One of the UK's famed "video nasties" of the 1980's, Night of the Demon is one of the few films to actually live up to that label.

Night of the Demon (1957)

Night of the Demon is based on the classic chilling tale Casting the Runes by acclaimed British author M.R.James, one of the masters of supernatural horror fiction. The film tells the story of an American psychic investigator played by Dana Andrews who travels to England to find out why his colleague was found dead, amidst claims of the supernatural and ancient cults. Helped by his dead friend's daughter (Peggy Cummins), the pair find themselves in great danger from forces beyond their imagination.

The film is a brilliant piece of cinema. I haven't gone into much story detail as its best to allow the story to unfold around you, much like it does to Andrews and Cummins characters. The acting is excellent, especially Niall MacGinnis as the sinister Karswell, and the stark black and white photography a revelation, reminiscent of Tourneur's work for producer Val Lewton in the 1940's. The film wouldn't be half as creepy if it were in colour. In particular the scenes of the demon stalking its prey in the woods, swirling mists everywhere with claustrophobia and outright paranoia setting in.

Apologies for the tiny image below from the splatter classic. I'd never created VLC images for it unlike Tourneur's film.