SECRET SATAN 2022

[Curt McGirt]

5 hours ago, J.T. said:

Jesper Kyd co-composed the movie soundtrack with famed Indian music composition duo, Ajay–Atul.  Most people remember Jesper from his video game soundtracks, notably games from the Hitman and Borderlands franchises as well as Freedom Fighter.

That's something I completely forgot to mention: It has great music. And not a single bit of it is showtunes.

[RIPPA]

BONUS REVIEW: A QUIET PLACE (John Krasinski, 2018)

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

REVIEWED BY RIPPA

Because I am a dick, I toyed with the idea of selecting A Quiet Place, rigging the movie assignments so that @Curt McGirt would have to review it. This would be funny only to me. Still, while I am a dick, I am not cruel so I didn’t. Funnily… spoiler alert.. Curt ended up getting my actual movie selection.

Still since it was on my brain, I decided to vomit out some thoughts since no one else is giving me any bonus reviews, you lazy bastards. (Things are getting spoiled if you care about that.)

A Quiet Place is a perfectly acceptable mainstream Horror film. A film that people who don’t watch horror movies will cite as an example when asked the question “Do you watch Horror movies?”. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Mainstream Horror films are good for the genre. It is good for movies in general. (Normally, I would cite BOX OFFICE SUCCESS~! but Horror movies are predisposed to do well as long as they aren’t hot garbage or directed by Uwe Boll.)

Horror - like all other “fandoms” *waves arms* - will have its share of gatekeeping because good forbid a normie likes something like A Quiet Place. They have been here since before Bela Lugosi was born and will still be here after Hellraiser 78 comes out. This isn’t to say that A Quiet Place (or any mainstream horror) is open to many valid criticisms. However - we need to continue to push back against the idea that because something is popular it is bad… except The Blair Witch Project. Fuck that noise.

A Quiet Place checks a lot of boxes that makes it easy consumption for the masses

1. Quirky gimmick
2. Known Low Tier A list Celebrities
3. Child endangerment
4. Hero’s Sacrifice
5. Tidy runtime
6. Being too “woke” for part of populace

1 - The problem with the “quiet” gimmick is that the LONG periods of silence make it come across a programming Best Buy would throw on their display TVs with an occasional appearance of a low grade Cloverfield monster knockoff.

2 - It is funny. For me, I have no problems dissociating Emily Blunt from her previous roles but John Krasinski is always gonna be from The Office (and feel that way barely having watched the show). I guess it is the difference between coming up in movies vs. TV. But yeah, I watch this and think “Boy, Jim from The Office makes a lot of questionable choices as a Dad.”

3 - Quiet Place actually takes it a step further by going with child death which you would think would turn off the rubes. Funnily, this might be my biggest issue with the whole movie. (It is either this or everything with the aliens) The youngest child gets rubbed out early in the movie due to stupidity and then less than a year later they are already pregnant with a replacement kid.  You already had an example of why children are not a good idea in this world. If the aliens are still here, stop trying to repopulate the Earth. Keep it in your pants Jim.

4 - Krasinski already showing off his keen Hollywood sense by not making it out of the first movie but still being around for the sequel. Dollar dollar bills y’all.

5 - All movies should be 90 minutes. I am old. I got shit to do. Mainly dying but it is still shit to do.

6 - Hoo boy. How dare a movie focus on a deaf girl and strong female lead. And OF COURSE the strong white male lead dies. CANCEL CULTURE! THE ALIENS WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE THAT IF HE WAS BLACK! LET’S GO BRANDON!!!

This is probably coming across as I didn’t like the movie. I have no regrets seeing it and there were good parts. Millicent Simmonds is phenomenal. There is a little bit of a sad irony in Simmonds' work being overlooked due to the success of CODA… not to mention folks ignoring the quality of acting in Horror movies.

And it might be cheap but the scene of Blunt’s Evelyn character trying to stay quiet while being pursued  by an alien while in labor is terrifying. (I acknowledge this might hit harder for those who are parents.) This also brings it back to the issue that in this world, children are more problems than they are worth.

We are wrestling fans so we accept A LOT of “magic” if you will. We will pay no attention to the man behind that curtain. So with that in mind, man you have to accept a lot regarding the aliens. Especially around the usual “the solution to defeating them seems kinda obvious” troupe. This is not the first movie to have this problem nor it will be the last. I guess a lot is being hand waved away with THEY KILLED EVERYONE RIGHT AWAY!!! Okay... sure... but then that opens up a lot more questions. I haven’t seen the sequel but I watched some clips and read up on it and that made things worse since it introduced way more plot holes around the “alien lore”. Apparently Krasinski created a whole backstory that he has talked about on podcasts and interviews. That ain’t ANYWHERE to be found in the movies. Even then, it leans a little to heavily on what feels like "shit happens". And don’t get me started on how they got everywhere. At least in Independence Day, they were flying spaceships. So of course a lot of places ran with NOT KNOWING MAKES IT SCARIER!!! Oh fuck off. Nevermind - fuck this movie.
 

[Curt McGirt]

4 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Because I am a dick, I toyed with the idea of selecting A Quiet Place, rigging the movie assignments so that @Curt McGirt would have to review it. This would be funny only to me.

 

4 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Nevermind - fuck this movie.

[odessasteps]

I have a bonus review pod link coming tonight, as I wait for Phil to post my review.

[Curt McGirt]

Nosferatu got set back to tomorrow night because the organist couldn't make it. Since I plan on seeing that then Halloween Ends on Sunday I can review both. 

[AxB]

On 10/9/2022 at 8:40 PM, J.T. said:

That and:

  Hide contents

I don't think you get stuff like Behind the Mask:  The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer, or Netflix's Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story without films like Last Broadcast or Man Bites Dog.  People are grimly fascinated by stories told from the murderer's perspective.  Last Broadcast is a pretty important film, IMO.

 

Spoiler

The Last Broadcast (1998) was influential in the creation of Henry POFASK (1986)?

 

[odessasteps]

7 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I have a bonus review pod link coming tonight, as I wait for Phil to post my review.

 

[J.T.]

5 hours ago, AxB said:

  Reveal hidden contents

The Last Broadcast (1998) was influential in the creation of Henry POFASK (1986)?

Spoiler

Directly?  Not really, but you started to see more and more horror stories being told from the killer's perspective after the release of Man Bites Dog and The Last Broadcast.  I believe these movies helped to spearhead the public's interest in films with that sort of content.   Just an observation / opinion of mine.

 

[J.T.]

If Rippa does a Bonus Review of the new 101 Scariest Moments docuseries on Shudder, I will suffer with him and review the Blumhouse's Compendium of Horror docuseries on Starz Network.  I may get the better end of the deal since Robert Englund is the narrator for the Blumhouse thing.

[odessasteps]

Did anyone ever review Mark Gatiss' History of Horror BBC docs? 

[J.T.]

I don't think so.  I think the follow up documentary film, Horror Europa, also went unreviewed.  You can tackle those if Rippa does 101.

All of that stuff is on the YouTubes.

Edited October 17, 2022 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

Maybe. I've got at least one more horror pod to do for Karl, although this will heavy on "comedy" and/or Saturday Morning TV. #Kong

[RIPPA]

TERROR TRAIN (Roger Spottiswoode, 1980)

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

AVAILABILITY VIA JUSTWATCH

SELECTED BY RIPPA

Felt it was appropriate to have this get reviewed while the Halloween franchise was ending... at least for the next few months. (Also see my the editor's notes)

REVIEWED BY @(BP)

“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”                                                                    
                                        - Agatha Christie

“Come on ride the train, hey ride it.”
                                        - Quad City DJ’s

There has been decades of commentary about the place of sex and drug use in slasher films, but these movies also seem diametrically opposed to practical joking. This is epitomized in Friday the 13th Part 3 by the worst human being in any movie, Sheldon Finkelstein, and the satisfaction of Jason Voorhees pranking him out of existence. Terror Train is a film about a luxury locomotive full of Sheldons getting what they have coming.

As the film is among the earliest batch of horror films directly influenced by Carpenter’s Halloween, the visual and narrative shorthand for what would become a traditional slasher hadn’t been established. Here the result of playing around in a fledgling subgenre is a lean and mean slasher whodunit with the airs of a 70s suspense thriller. 

The movie’s cold open has two of my favorite tropes: absurdly cruel and complex pranks gone wrong and med school corpse desecration. By the merciless opening credits I’m all in. It’s goofy but it’s also executed so effectively that it drags you kicking and screaming to meet it on its terms. 

The plot is essentially all nightmare logic. Several years after the prank gone awry the social circle of premeds responsible, dominated by lead joker Hart Bochner, are going on a New Years Costume Ball Train Excursion Or Something. If things like this were real at one time I apologize, but I have a feeling concepts like this were cooked up so movies and shows could do contemporary Murder on the Orient Express knockoffs.

At any rate, Bochner, Jamie Lee Curtis’s character (who played an integral part in the practical joke) and the rest of the Greek life sickos get picked off one by one by a master of disguise stalking the impossible geography of the train. The killer is presumed to be Kenny, the criminally disturbed victim of the prank, or perhaps it’s special guest star David Copperfield! Meanwhile Curtis and the kindly  Conductor begin to put the pieces together.

It’s bizarre, beautiful, silly, and remarkably well-paced. 

Roger Spottiswoode has had some career. One of those journeymen who’s done it all without having a defining career moment. Does he have a point of view? No. Does he have a distinct visual style? No. But if you need someone to show up on time and come in on schedule and budget he’ll do a professional job. That may sound dismissive, but in an industry full of tyrants and flakes sometimes steady and reliable is attractive. Here, on his first film, he’s absolutely up to the task. His style is similar to Brian DePalma or his European cohorts in the cult of Hitchcock but with considerably more restraint.

I’ve actually watched little of the Jamie Lee Curtis scream queen run besides Halloween. I’ve definitely seen parts of Prom Night and Road Games but I should revisit. She is so essential to these movies working because she has the ability to anchor absurd material and add pathos to parts with limited opportunities to be dimensional.  

Ben Johnson’s the established veteran who provides the Loomis gravitas for the proceedings. I like the weird specific stuff like his conductor being a struggling Winnebago dealer and how he gets hyped up about close-up magic. Johnson never appears like he’s anything but totally into what he’s doing. It’s a thankless part, but in the hands of a lesser actor the train crew scenes would weigh the movie down.  

It’s such a great looking picture that I figured it had to be one of those movies that randomly had an incredibly overqualified director of photography, but I was not prepared for it to be John Alcott. He had just shot The Shining! A couple of years before this he lit the most beautiful movie ever made, Barry Lyndon, by candlelight! What is going on? He must’ve been waiting around for Kubrick to make another movie (Alcott died around the time of Full Metal Jacket) but I don’t know how he ended up working on this and Beastmaster. 

I was already aware of the killer reveal unfortunately, but it’s well-executed. All I can really add is that while it’s clearly riffing on a well-known Hitchock twist, the film is more socially responsible about its approach to it than its contemporaries (I’m looking at you, DePalma.)

I’m so glad Secret Satan motivated me to watch this finally. Just a suggestion, but I think for a double feature this would pair up well with 1990’s Popcorn starring Jill Schoelen. It’s stylistically different but it has a lot of interesting parallels. 

EDITOR'S NOTES

When I was originally kicking around ideas for tweaking the Halloween Havoc gimmick, I debated doing a version where I just selected all the movies and distributed them out (mainly to streamline the process). I didn't do this for reasons (most of them revolving around being lazy), however, due to circumstances I did end up assigning a couple extra movies this go around.

For those unaware - Tubi is doing a remake that is coming out on Friday. Trailer for that is HERE

[RIPPA]

Just now, RIPPA said:

I’m so glad Secret Satan motivated me to watch this finally. Just a suggestion, but I think for a double feature this would pair up well with 1990’s Popcorn starring Jill Schoelen. It’s stylistically different but it has a lot of interesting parallels. 

Or it could that both Jamie Lee Curtis and Jill Schoelen make me feel tingly

[RIPPA]

BONUS REVIEW : NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (Murnau, 1922)

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

REVIEWED BY @Curt McGirt

Well this was a big one. It's played in Champaign probably every year I've been living here, so going on 20, and despite being the biggest horror fan ever I've never went to it. Roger Ebert was born here and has a bronze statue of him outside the Virginia Theatre sitting on a park bench, so even though my beloved Art was closed down we still get revival showings and, let's say, preferential treatment as far as movies go around here. Despite my going to that place for years and years I'd never been to the Virginia, and it was a trip. Anything you've ever thought about a capital M, capital H Movie House? This is that. Giant red velvet curtain covering a stage and screen. Stained glass and gold everywhere. Seats that squeeze your ass like a vice. It's absurdly classy, and the organist in his introduction says something to the extent of "this is not just a national treasure, this place is a worldwide treasure" and you believe him because he says he just came over from Bulgaria so, he'd probably know. But just like all those foggy nights at the Art Theater, this was once again a bunch of stoned college kids and old folks laughing at a horror movie. I saw Nosferatu years ago and it creeped me out, but the humor of it definitely came out with a crowd. I suppose it was the silent movie facial expressions and makeup, but there was a lot more laughter than I expected or appreciated, though I joined in sometimes myself. As far as a Dracula ripoff goes it harkens pretty close to the story with few changes. The vampire women are gone, everyone has different names, and neither Lucy nor Van Helsing have a big part in the story, but everything else is there. Count Orlok to me is still the creepiest looking vampire ever besides Reggie Nalder in Salem's Lot. Thankfully the big moments like him emerging from the hold of the ship or walking through the door and filling the entire passageway with his unexpected height were met with an awed silence. Speaking of the age of the Virginia, Mr. Organist was playing through an organ that had no speakers and was wired INTO THE WALLS in some elaborate fashion and he came up with all kinds of bizarre noises, including drums for the part when a drummer walks down the street announcing that nobody is to leave their homes due to plague... which also hit everyone harder than it would have before Covid, obviously. If you haven't seen the movie yet don't skip on it, I know it's one of those classics that everyone has to see at least the once, but it is really worth it. Smoke some pot, put on some Paul Chain and press play. 

EDITOR'S NOTE

Obviously, Curt got to see it in the Theater but you can easily find the full movie on Youtube

[Curt McGirt]

I should note that the version we saw was a composite print with the best elements they could possibly find. After the Stoker lawsuit they burned almost every print of the movie so what we have now is the best it's gonna get. The Youtube versions might not be as good as the current one, since it's been in the public domain forever. 

Also, if you haven't seen the remake by Werner Herzog be prepared for an extremely dark and depressing experience. An alternate take is the incredibly droll Shadow of the Vampire. "Produced by Nicolas Cage" should tell you all you need to know with that one.

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Curt McGirt

[RIPPA]

BONUS REVIEW: BARBARIAN (Zach Creggar, 2022)

 

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

REVIEWED BY @J.T.

Cast:

• Georgina Campbell as Tess Marshall
• Bill Skarsgård as Keith Toshko
• Justin Long as AJ Gilbride

In the infamous Shower Scene in the movie, Psycho (1960), how many times do you see Norman Bates stab Marion Crane.  I mean out and out Jason Vorhees plunge the knife into her body?  

The answer is zero times.  

Horror is at its best when it leaves the details up to the audience.  Whatever you come up with in your imagination is far worse than what happens on the screen.

This is the brilliance of the marketing campaign for the recently released, Barbarian.  An exquisite and subversive horror movie from the mind of Zach Cregger (formerly of the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U’ Know).  

Barbarian starts off simple enough. Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb in the outskirts of Detroit, where she discovers it’s been double-booked and that a man named Keith is already staying there. Stuck in a storm with no other options readily available and an important job interview in the morning, Tess makes the risky decision to stay the night.

Keith is played by Bill Skarsgård.  You know.  The guy that played Pennywise in IT~!  Chapters 1&2.  

Keith, to his credit, is aware of how all this looks. He’s savvy enough to know that Tess has no reason to trust him, and Tess (and the audience) has every reason to expect the worst.  And expect the worst we do because it's Bill fucking Skarsgård at the front door.  This is a master class in casting.   We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it does......   it is totally NOT what we expect to happen.

Tess is such a great horror movie protagonist for the modern age.  Her tropishly bad horror movie decisions stem from her concern for her fellow man.   Tess is not dumb; she is caring.  Unfortunately, in films like these, there is no good deed that goes unpunished.

After a harrowing experience best left unspoiled, the action cuts to California two full weeks later and we are introduced by AJ Gilbride, an actor in a successful sitcom who is in the middle of some serious damage control due to allegations of inappropriate behavior between himself and another actress (allegations which most likely are totally fucking true). 

AJ happens to own the Airbnb where Tess and Keith are staying.  After being told by his management team that his acting career may be over if he does not get ahead of this shitstorm, AJ decides to go back to Detroit and liquidate his holdings there in preparation for a lengthy legal battle.

You can see where this is going.

Barbarian is a wild ride that works best when it is toying with your loyalties.   It really tests just how much you care about these characters despite the revelations that appear along the way.   Perhaps the strangest quality about this movie is that it is so obviously trope filled that it should not work as well as it does.  There are imperceptible shadows and the ridiculously typical setting of a rundown Detroit suburb that just scream HORROR MOVIE at the audience, but those things do not betray the wonderfully twisted script.  There are moments of cringe, but not so cringy that you turn away in disgust.  They only add to the mounting tension and repeatedly bash you over the head.   It's best to go into this movie completely cold as the reveals are far more enjoyable when you are unprepared for them.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Normally I wouldn't post a review the same day I get it but due to the newness of the movie and how I have found discussion of it in like 3 different threads, I might as well get it out there.

Re: the marketing campaign. I posted this in the Horror thread but this trailer was brilliant

[RIPPA]

Dr. Butcher M.D. AKA Zombi Holocaust (Marino Girolami, 1980)

 

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

SELECTED BY @Curt McGirt

This is a fun one. Basically think of all the tropes of a tropical zombie picture and a cannibal picture, smash them together and you get this. Thankfully there aren't any live animals killed in this one (I think) but aside from that they got it all. I would actually avoid watching the trailer first because it has all the good gags in it (very NSFW btw).

REVIEWED BY @Execproducer

Right off the bat, cannibal films aren't my cup of tea. Like not even a little bit. No offense intended to anyone into that, because we all have our sordid little preferences when it comes to genre cinema, but I really don't get the appeal of multiple scenes of characters looking on in shock as their stomachs are ripped open with pigs intestines or fake blood filled condoms or whatever it is they use spilling out and a half a dozen "natives" going to town like it's all you can eat night at the local Sizzler. I am way past too jaded for such scenes to actually make me physically ill but they are still not in the least bit entertaining in any way, shape, or form.  Sure, sure there are certain films that have cannibalism as a theme that I have enjoyed so before you are all "Well what about Bone Tomahawk??!!" or "No true horror fan would disparage The Silence of the Lambs!!", know that I am referring specifically to that subset of Italian horror films that evolved from mondo cinema. I don't care how many books, articles, or academic papers are written about these films and how they relate to imperialism or humankind's primal nature or any other word salad bullshit, these films were strictly a cash grab catering to the gore-for-gore's-sake crowd. Again, if you are a part of that demographic then more power to you.  

 

So with all that in mind, let me tell you how much I hated Zombie Holocaust.

 

It doesn't help that the film begins with a static shot of a pre-dawn cityscape and a music score that I'm sure is what my garbage disposal would sound like if I was half in the bag coming off a three day bender on Four Roses bourbon, bottles of which are ubiquitous in the film. As a side note, Italian films are famous for their J&B whiskey product placement spots but I definitely notice Four Roses more often. Product placement films could be a whole genre.

 

Anyway, the film begins with a mysterious figure creeping into a morgue. Said mystery figure begins sawing off a cadaver's hand. I'm not familiar with all of the cannibal film tropes so my mind immediately goes to mad scientist stuff like, films like The Awful Dr. Orloff , Les yeux sans visage or Frankenstein. And indeed, a mad scientist factors into the film so this is really a mash-up of the two styles. This morgue is located in an NYC teaching hospital so when it's time to start dissecting folks, things like missing parts get noticed. Among the hospital staff is the Head Doctor's assistant Lori (Alexandra Delli Colli) who also just happens to have a background in anthropology, having spent part of her childhood in the Moluccas Islands region with her anthropologist father. A trap is set that snares a hospital orderly who also happens to be from the Moluccas. He is caught about to chomp on a human heart and throws himself out of a window. I guess there was only enough money in the budget for one stunt dummy because when it hits the pavement one of its arms gets launched about a block away and they kept the shot lol. As it transpires, there has been a rash of cannibalistic incidents involving immigrants from that part of the world and Dr. Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch) decides it would be a really good idea to mount an expedition to a remote island in this already remote area to, I don't know, maybe have a conversation about table manners? The specific goal of this trip isn't really clarified, but this is clearly a cannibal film trope so I guess it doesn't need to be. He recruits Lori along with his assistant George (Peter O'Neal) and George's girlfriend Susan (Sherry Buchanan), a reporter who has already interacted with Lori. Lori herself isn't super enthused about going "home" to Indonesia. At this point her apartment has already been ransacked and a ceremonial knife that was mounted on her wall was stolen. The film sorta wants you to think that Lori herself might be a part of the shenanigans by dropping little clues like giant beef hearts in her refrigerator. So when we get to the point late in the film where Lori is calmly allowing her body to get painted up by the natives, like Ursula Andress in The Mountain of the Cannibal God, it looks like a possible plot twist. But not so much. If you want to pick out the bad guys in this film just watch two characters have a conversation then look for a third to shoot them shifty glances while the two that are talking are completely oblivious. Bad guy! 

 

In the Moluccas, they liase with Doctor Obrero (Donald O'Brien) who gives them information about their target island and loans them the use of a boat, a guide Molotto (Dakar), and four bearers. Needless to say, the bearers may as well be wearing red shirts. When the boat has some mechanical issues en route to the island, George, who also apparently has boat mechanic skills, suggests that they make camp on a nearby island. As they soon learn, this is actually their intended destination. The bearers start dropping like flies and the rest of the group is eventually captured and about to be chopped up for lunch when the zombies of the title show up and the cannibals go running, taking Susan with them. Over the radio Dr. Obrero suggests they head to an abandoned church deeper into the jungle where he'll bring reinforcements to rescue them. And yadda yadda yadda, lots of red karol syrup and dismembered body parts, more ineffectual zombies and determined cannibals, and a mad scientist doing twisted stuff and the end.

 

Yeah this movie sucks. Which is OK I guess because I'm a veteran of bad Halloween Havoc draws and I can see somebody hating my pick. It is what it is. It certainly didn't open me up to the world of cannibal films, which at the end of the day, mad scientists and zombies notwithstanding, is the draw here. It's the kind of film where the protagonists make ridiculous declarative statements and engage in endlessly bad decision making.  The acting is probably horrible. I say probably because I watched an uncut English dub. I usually prefer to watch in the original language with subs but Italian films of this era weren't shot in sync sound anyway so even the Italian actors are just as likely as not to be dubbed over by voice actors instead of doing their own. Also, judging from the multiple reasons they find to film Alexandra Delli Colli in various states of undress, she wasn't hired for her acting chops. Ian McCulloch and Dakar had both appeared in Lucio Fulci's Zombie from the previous year. Of special interest to this board, the Peruvian Dakar was a pro wrestler in Argentina before taking up acting. He is likely best known for his role as the High Priest of the Spider in Joe D'Amato's Ator, The Fighting Eagle, a film I would have much preferred to watch. Sherry Buchanan is an American actress who found her way into the world of Italian cinema appearing in such films as Last House on the Beach and Emanuelle and Joanna, two more films I would have much preferred to watch. Of the main cast, Donald O'Brien had the most prolific career appearing in a lot of other stuff that is actually worth watching.

 

Director Marino Girolami also had a prolific career working in other genres like Peplum, Spaghetti Westerns, and Poliziotteschi films including two of actor Maurizio Merli's Commissario Betti trilogy. He was also the father of Italian director Enzo G. Castellari. As Zombie Holocaust was one of his last films, I can only assume he was on a creative slide that he never recovered from. I can't even tell you if this delivers the goods as a cannibal flick because I surely will never know though, judging by the five miles of intestines that get pulled from stomachs, I guess it probably has some merit in that regard. It is certainly weak cheese for the zombie part and the mad scientist's motivation is goofy though he is suitably creepy. So, uh, enjoy I guess?

 

EDITOR'S NOTE

The movie is available for rent on a bunch of the normal places (Youtube, Apple, etc...). However, Exec said he found an uncut version so if you want to see it, ask him.

[odessasteps]

https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/joe-bob-briggs-midnight-movie-history

Joe Bob

[Execproducer]

Quoting myself from 2016:

Quote

I was definitely disappointed to get Angel Heart as my pick. I had hoped to get something outside of my wheelhouse that would push me to examine my tastes as a film lover and ,specifically, deal with some of the many dark corners of the Horror genre that I have never had any interest in investigating. Oh well, maybe next year.

Obviously I'm a hypocrite.

[(BP)]

The sentiment at the center of Barbarian to me was that barbarism begins with entitlement. 
 

Spoiler

AJ can’t recognize the parallels that he shares with Frank because of the differences in extremity of behavior between them and his own delusion. He hasn’t actually examined his actions, and despite feeling superficially guilty he still hasn’t found a shred of selflessness by the time he pays the price for being such a shit. 

Big props for the credits having the needle drop I’d been hoping for by the second half of the film.

[Curt McGirt]

3 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Of special interest to this board, the Peruvian Dakar was a pro wrestler in Argentina before taking up acting. He is likely best known for his role as the High Priest of the Spider in Joe D'Amato's Ator, The Fighting Eagle, a film I would have much preferred to watch

An Ator film. You would rather watch that. 

Damn. 

This is an honest question: Would you like me to give you something for a bonus review that you really like? It could be something at random or something you really like, I don't care. You're the biggest booster of this whole deal and for me to give you something that offends you so much doesn't seem fair. 

(Also, if any of you have never seen Dakar play flamenco guitar and sing on his Zombi 2 DVD bonus part [the Anchor Bay white one with the Italian poster], you are missing out on one of the most beautiful and touching pieces of music ever)

Edited October 20, 2022 by Curt McGirt

[Execproducer]

8 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

This is an honest question: Would you like me to give you something for a bonus review that you really like? It could be something at random or something you really like, I don't care. You're the biggest booster of this whole deal and for me to give you something that offends you so much doesn't seem fair.

I already have a couple of bonuses and an extra that I picked up that I am working on now. I tried to make it clear that I viewed it as luck of the draw, so I'm not in any way offended. Frankly, I was pretty sure it was your pick and you're OK in my book.   I just am not into cannibal films or any films that strike me as gore for gore's sake. And like I posted a few minutes ago, I'm a hypocrite.

Having said all that, I'll take any film you got. Just won't promise you a positive review.

[odessasteps]

I’m happy I got a film I liked and that my film was liked. Doesnt always happen.

[Travis Sheldon]

The main thing I learned from Dr Butcher is the easiest way to keep someone from screaming is removing their vocal cords.

Donald O'Brien really hams it up here.