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Author Topic: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019  (Read 27271 times)

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #80 on: October 05, 2019, 04:51:35 PM »
Warszawa 1956 (1956 Jerzy Bossak and Jaroslaw Brzozowski)

This 8 minute short is a documentary and not really a horror film, but it did give me a feeling of dread, so I am putting this little review here in the Shocktober thread. It shows people 11 years after the war still living in bombed out multi-storey buildings. The dread came from the watching a toddler wandering around.

I have linked to the film in the title.

Rating: Excellent

- Safe for Sandy

Death Bed: The Bed that Eats (1977 George Barry)

With a title like that you do not expect much, and that's what you get. A dreary voice-over, questionable acting, and a fairly lame plot. I will give the movie some credit, the bed is very good at cleaning up after itself so it is believable it could get away with what it was doing.

Rating: 45 / 100

- Safe for Sandy

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #81 on: October 05, 2019, 10:12:44 PM »
Death Bed: The Bed that Eats (1977 George Barry)

With a title like that you do not expect much, and that's what you get. A dreary voice-over, questionable acting, and a fairly lame plot. I will give the movie some credit, the bed is very good at cleaning up after itself so it is believable it could get away with what it was doing.

Rating: 45 / 100

I assume this is because of Patton Oswalt. If not, you should look up his stand up on this because it's some of my favorite from him.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #82 on: October 06, 2019, 01:07:01 AM »
Death Bed: The Bed that Eats (1977 George Barry)

With a title like that you do not expect much, and that's what you get. A dreary voice-over, questionable acting, and a fairly lame plot. I will give the movie some credit, the bed is very good at cleaning up after itself so it is believable it could get away with what it was doing.

Rating: 45 / 100

I assume this is because of Patton Oswalt. If not, you should look up his stand up on this because it's some of my favorite from him.

I will look it up, but no it is because of the podcast Outside the Cinema, then I spotted it on Amazon Prime

1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #83 on: October 06, 2019, 09:39:31 AM »

Helter Skelter (2012)
"Is that why she fascinates?
Because everyone knows she'll wither?"


Japanese model Lilico is in a hell of her own creation. She is seen by millions of fans as the pinnacle of beauty, with a face and body that is desired by men who want to sleep with her and women who want to look like her. However, her empire is built on a lie because Lilico has gone through extensive plastic surgery to achieve this. The legend is further enhanced by lies like interviews with her make up artist who talk like they're just dusting up a natural goddess and not adding considerable extra layers, and strict control over everything she does because she cannot be seen at the gym or eating in public.


Based on a Japanese Manga, Helter Skelter is written and directed by women, who create a film that avoids male gaze even though the camera rarely looks away from star Erika Sawajiri, who is always dressed in a skimpy outfit. The film does an excellent job of showing Lilico's life out-of-control as she's unable to live up to her own persona. It's turned her into a horrible spoiled child... and those surgeries are beginning to have an effect on her skin. (That may sound like body horror, but it never goes beyond bruising.)

I've read the film compared to The Neon Demon and Black Swan, but it reminded me of Anna Biller's The Love Witch. Both female driven films are Art Directed and Costume Designed to the max, and both repeat their story points for a full two hours. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is something more accurate to the presentation of Erika Sawajiri as perfection that surpasses Elle Fanning in Neon Demon or Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast. (Ive seen images of Sawajiri in a more normal mode, so it is a look designed for the film.) I wish they didn't make Lilico such a terror. This might've resonated with me more if she was more sympathetic, like that documentary on Amy Winehouse.
Rating: ★ ★ ½

- Slightly Scary

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #84 on: October 06, 2019, 12:40:20 PM »
Mrs. 1SO Not-So-Scary


Clue
(1985)
She says: ★ ★ ★ - Very Good
I says: ★ ★ ½
A favorite of Mrs. 1SO that I was newly interested in because of The Next Picture Show Podcast. (Too bad Ready or Not isn't available to stream yet.) It's been over 30 years since I last didn't enjoy it, and it was certainly a better experience this time because I was more familiar with the comic rhythms of the cast. Of course, Tim Curry is rightly acclaimed for the speed and precision of his work and Lesley Ann Warren matches him in their brief exchanges, but I was most impressed by Madeline Kahn, whose comic timing is unlike any other. The "flames" speech isn't even the highlight, but like that, it's not what she says but the strange way she uses vocal pitch like Christopher Walken uses pauses.

I laughed more than five times. I also groaned at a couple of especially lame jokes. Between Warren and Colleen Camp, this has to be the most cleavage-y PG film ever made. As a fan of murder-mysteries, this holds more logic than many similar locked-room mysteries I've watched, even supporting all three possible endings individually. On that count, I'd put it above the similar-toned Murder By Death and on my mental list of wife nostalgia horror comedies, I'd place this well above Hocus Pocus.

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #85 on: October 06, 2019, 06:25:41 PM »
Child's Play (not the 2019 one)

Well, I guess this was exactly what I thought it would be, and also not. Growing up I was aware of Chucky, and had seen bits and pieces of I think one of the later ones with his bride on occasion from HBO or some shit in what I think was my grandparents stealing premium cable, but idk. Either way, young FLY was not allowed to watch things like that, so I guess I always sort of thought it was super bad. And maybe it gets there, but this sucker was relatively tame for the most part. Which I appreciated, I think? It was fun, nothing special, but I sort of understand why Chucky took off and became recognizable, easily juxtaposing the innocent with the terror to intermingle and upend our expectations of these real world toys. Silly, as I guess it should be, especially with the whole body swap thing, but maybe that eventually goes in fun directions too.

On the Goosebumps scale, one assumes this is where we bring in Slappy, but that doesn't feel like it actually fits, especially with how little Slappy is actually involved in that first book. This is probably more Monster Blood.

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #86 on: October 06, 2019, 07:03:55 PM »
The Taking of Deborah Logan

This was a prior Shocktober discovery for me and I had been itching to revisit it these past few years. Luckily it showed up on Shudder last week and I was able to give it another go. I think I liked it even more this time around. There's a lot of scary stuff here, and the central performance by Jill Larson is pretty impressive. I'm not sure I needed the whole backstory that becomes a driving factor in the final third, but the scares in that part are pretty good anyways. I'd probably put this in my top 10 found footage/faux doc horror films list, especially as it effectively mixes the documentary elements in with the scares.

B+


Creepshow S01E02

I had high hopes for the first short, a WWII-set werewolf story with Jeffrey Combs as a Nazi commander. But outside some fun colorful lighting this just feels too janky to be anything really fun. The characters all feel slightly off, and the eventual werewolves rely too heavily on obvious cutting away from the violence to have any real impact. Bleh.

The second story is better, seeing some kind of vengeful little monster become both a pet and a pest to a snarky loser played by DJ Qualls. I don't know that I needed to see anything here, but the monster (named Bob) is primarily shown in puppet form and that makes for a nice sense of tactility that the original films really thrived upon. The story material is good enough to keep me watching, but nothing spectacular. A meh episode overall.

C


Zodiac

You all know I like my horror films to have some supernatural verve to them, but I still count Zodiac among one of the all-time great horror films for the spectacular first hour. Fincher, working with what he's got in terms of survivor testimony and the killer's letters, depicts the killer as more of a force than a human being. A human shaped shadow, even in broad daylight, the killer appears to terrorize all kinds of people then disappears as if he were a ghost. Even the scene that features no violence, the woman with her baby in her car, still feels creepy as hell, partially because of her screams in the middle of a long, mostly empty highway.

Then the investigation takes over, first by the police then the amateur Graysmith. Is this Jake Gyllenhaal's best performance? Casting the wide-eyed, attentive actor is half the work, but he brings to the role a real sense of depth and humanity. And as his time on screen wraps up in the form of two meetings with possible suspects, the film regains some of that horror vibe it had in the early goings. The basement scene is stunningly good in its slow revelations and perfect lighting. We peer into the shadows, trying to see if we recognize the man hidden in them as one of the human shadows we saw hours and years ago. Maybe? And then we revisit Arthur Leigh Allen and the stare he returns to Jake G is bone-chilling. Could be him, too.

It's a great movie, one of the all-timers in its genre. Maybe not your typical gorefest or spooktacular, but it's got all the right moves to freak you the CINECAST! out on a chilly October night.

A+


Son of Dr. Jekyll

This sequel to the Universal version of RLS's classic tale of science gone wrong has a lot of the science but little of the wrong. The titular character transforms exactly once and passes out immediately. So the scares are gone and what remains is a semi-interesting but also convoluted story about reputations and family legacies. Not a terrible movie in any way, but it's not a horror film.

B-


In the Tall Grass

A Stephen King story that starts with a young man and woman driving down a midwest road with a dilapidated church and a bunch of plants, now where have I seen this before. Despite its initial similarity to Children of the Corn, In the Tall Grass immediately reveals itself to be much trippier. When the young people inevitably enter that tall grass, they soon realize that time and space don't quite work the same in the neverending greenery. For all the trippiness, however, there isn't much of a coherent story. In many ways this feels a lot like the movie that got its writer/director on the map: Cube. People in a strange location must find their way out, if they can survive the traps and each other. But In the Tall Grass doesn't have a strong enough sense of the rules of the Grass nor the characters that populate it. When half the dialogue is just one character yelling another character's name, especially in the first third of the film, we certainly remember who they are, but not anything beyond putting a face to a name. They don't have real characteristics, and that's the film's greatest flaw. As it gets more and more invested in its half-baked mythology, the movie loses any hope of coming to a satisfying conclusion. But hey (hay), at least it looks pretty and Patrick Wilson gives an underwritten role some juice.

C-
« Last Edit: October 06, 2019, 08:22:09 PM by 1SO »
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1SO

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #87 on: October 06, 2019, 08:26:22 PM »
Would've guessed I've seen Son of Dr. Jekyll, but nope.

The more I read about In the Tall Grass the more I'm aiming to skip it.

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #88 on: October 06, 2019, 08:59:31 PM »

Matinee (1993)
"There's gonna be room in their heads for only one thought: "Don't let it get me!"
They know we can't hurt 'em, but they're still gonna be scared half to death."


Disagreeing with a wave of positive reviews (as I often do with director Joe Dante) I didn't like Matinee when I first saw it in 1993. I watched it again because I figured the problem was that I didn't get the references. Matinee aims to be an affectionate tribute to 50s and 60s schlock horror in general and filmmaker William Castle in particular. John Goodman is in peak form as Lawrence Woolsey, the master of theatrical gimmicks to put butts in the seats. His scenes are brief marvels, written with great affection for the art of cinema and the art of horror films. They're love letters that get to my soul.

Then comes the screening of Woolsey's latest creation, Mant. (Half Man! Half Ant! All Terror!) The writing of the movie within the movie is a disaster. You see, the great secret of William Castle is that many of his films are quite good, sometimes clever and often genuinely entertaining. Mant comes off like a SNL version of an Ed Wood film. I can hear Joe Dante or others of his type saying, "They're terrible. I love them.", which carries more ironic disdain than genuine affection. Matinee is one of the reasons why I avoided William Castle films for so many years, and that burns me up.
Rating: ★ ★ ½

- Safe for Sandy
« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 12:14:04 AM by 1SO »

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Re: Shocktober Group Marathon 2019
« Reply #89 on: October 07, 2019, 12:31:41 AM »

Ghost Stories (2017)
"We have to be very careful what we choose to believe."

Whenever I go on a Horror binge I always wonder what will be the first film to put me at risk for nightmares. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our winner. It's a jump scare and it comes late in the film, but this film had been wearing me down getting to that climax. A similar structure to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, except the acting here is much better and the stories themselves are not so clear in purpose. A couple of familiar faces, like Martin Freeman, give this UK chiller class and there are some clever transitions towards the end. Sloppier than the next film I watched, but this one got me to that point where I start to fear the empty frame.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ - Okay

- Really Scary



The Ritual (2017)

First solo feature from David Bruckner, who directed the terrifying "Amateur Night" segment from the beginning of V/H/S. Results here are like a less interesting, 2nd rate Midsommar. There's good camaraderie among the male ensemble and I'm starting to get happy every time I come upon a story about witches in the woods, but if this film makes any lasting impression, it's the jaw-dropping creature design from the climax of the film, a creature that rivals the bear/man from Annihilation. If you have no plans to watch this, you should at least do yourself a favor and google image this marvelous piece of work.
Rating: ★ ★ ½

- Scary

 

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