J.T. Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 So is Annabelle the first time in history a prop got its own spin off film? I would laugh at that if there weren't an actual Annabelle. Wan officially maintains that the reason that he didn't use a Raggedy Ann doll as a replica for Annabelle in either movie was because he did not want to pay royalties to the estate of Johnny Gruelle or Hasbro, wished to avoid the backlash from associating one of the world's most beloved toys with absolute evil, and wanted an image of his own to trademark... ....but I don't believe that was the real reason.... ..a very wise man for listening to his gut.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgundy LaRue Posted October 3, 2014 Author Share Posted October 3, 2014 Didn't someone laugh about the doll, then was killed in a motorcycle accident? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Didn't someone laugh about the doll, then was killed in a motorcycle accident? Not quite. Taken from The True Story of Annabelle: The Haunted Doll from The Conjuring., an article posted at The Badass Digest blog. Ed (Warren) left the doll next to his desk; it began levitating. That happened a couple of times and then it seemed to just quit, finally laying quiet. But in a couple of weeks Annabelle was back to her old tricks; she started appearing in different rooms in the Warren home. Sensing that the doll was ramping back up the Warrens called in a Catholic priest to exorcise Annabelle. The priest didn't take it seriously, telling Annabelle "You're just a doll. You can't hurt anyone!" Big mistake: on his way home the priest's brakes failed, and his car was totaled in a horrible accident. He survived. Don't mess with things you don't understand has always been my policy whether it be post 2000 computerized auto engines or haunted toys. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 The Warrens are a dubious pair, aren't they? They were on the Amityville Horror bandwagon too, even though the family's original story is widely regarded as a massive hoax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 The Warrens are a dubious pair, aren't they? They were on the Amityville Horror bandwagon too, even though the family's original story is widely regarded as a massive hoax. George Lutz still maintains that strange events happened in the house but never elaborated on specifics nor has he provided any proof other than the alleged lie detector tests he took... which are rumored to have been faked. One of the Lutz's children, Christopher, has been very vocal about calling bullshit on Jay Anson novel and George Lutz. So much so that he wants to produce a documentary debunking the novel and the stories once and for all. Another son of Kathy and George, Danny, supports his father's accounting, even to the point of stating that he was occasionally placed under the influence of a demonic entity during the time the Lutzs lived in the house. No one knows what really happened but the family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Yeah. but the fact that people have been living in the house ever since and been adamant nothing went on sorta confirms the 'It's BS" theory to me. What did the ghosts and evil spirits just get bored after the Lutz's left and kept quiet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranesi Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Wait, you mean the house didn't explode after that Robert Joy and Meg Ryan got pulled into the bubbling well by the Heavy Metal demon monster? I call Iron Sheik on that whole thing then: Fuckin' BULLSHIT!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Yeah. but the fact that people have been living in the house ever since and been adamant nothing went on sorta confirms the 'It's BS" theory to me. What did the ghosts and evil spirits just get bored after the Lutz's left and kept quiet? Well, if you have much belief in the supernatural you've read that while most supernatural entities are tied to geographical locations, activity is also triggered by the proximity of certain people or in the case of Annabelle, certain objects." If the Amityville Horror is to be believed, the entity was attracted most to the the youngest child, Melissa. When the family moved, the disturbances stopped, presumably because the entity was tied to the house itself. The problem with stuff like that is that you can make up the rules as you go along. I am also very skeptical about the events as described in the novel. At the time of the release of the book, horror fiction was, and is, huge business and The Amityville Horror landed in book stores at the perfect time, when Hollywood studios were looking for the next big thing to do for them what The Exorcist did for Warner Brothers.. I think that was opportunity knocking at the Lutz's front door and not a demonic pig spirit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranesi Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 GHOSTBUSTERS 1 & 2 Blu-Ray $18 today on Amazon. For those who want 1 but don't want to pay $30 for one great movie, this could be pretty sweet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Yeah. but the fact that people have been living in the house ever since and been adamant nothing went on sorta confirms the 'It's BS" theory to me. What did the ghosts and evil spirits just get bored after the Lutz's left and kept quiet? Well, if you have much belief in the supernatural you've read that while most supernatural entities are tied to geographical locations, activity is also triggered by the proximity of certain people or in the case of Annabelle, certain objects." If the Amityville Horror is to be believed, the entity was attracted most to the the youngest child, Melissa. When the family moved, the disturbances stopped, presumably because the entity was tied to the house itself. The problem with stuff like that is that you can make up the rules as you go along. I am also very skeptical about the events as described in the novel. At the time of the release of the book, horror fiction was, and is, huge business and The Amityville Horror landed in book stores at the perfect time, when Hollywood studios were looking for the next big thing to do for them what The Exorcist did for Warner Brothers.. I think that was opportunity knocking at the Lutz's front door and not a demonic pig spirit. It's interesting you bring up The Exorcist because when people started investigating the Lutz's claims they noticed the striking resemblance between their claims and The Exorcist movie/novel which had been released a little earlier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nate Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 I enjoy getting tips on movies to watch and on different takes on established classics. However, I'm particularly captivated by the "scary stories" also being submitted. More of that, and postings of Halloween displays and memorabilia (more than the popular go-to shit that's in my Facebook feed), and I'm good... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 It's interesting you bring up The Exorcist because when people started investigating the Lutz's claims they noticed the striking resemblance between their claims and The Exorcist movie/novel which had been released a little earlier. That's the thing. If you look closely at the events as described by Anson and related by the Lutz family and you are hip to horror, The Amityville Horror feels more like something Lovecraft would write, albeit less cluttered by Lovecraft's intellectual claptrap. It doesn't really share much in common with Blatty's novel or the film version of The Exorcist. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear that The Amityville Horror was the dumbed down pastiche of The Dunwich Horror and The Colour Out Of Space with odd bits taken from other work. However, to paraphrase the wisdom of Mayor Vaughn from Jaws, Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July. thanks to widespread belief in Judeo-Christian traditions, it is far easier to market the Devil as the antagonist (to put it mildly) to an wide audience than it is to market C'thulu. Perhaps this is what C'thulu wants? FOR THE CATTLE TO BE CONTENT, DOCILE, AND UNAFRAID UNTIL IT IS TIME FOR THE SLAUGHTER~! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 There's a great twilight zone episode that's a nice twist on all the haunted house hoaxes that went on in the 70s... Basically a family move into a home where the previous owners were murdered. Nothing happens but the mom and dad decide it would be a great money-making opportunity to "fake" a haunting. Only they don't tell the kids, one of them goes crazy because of it, and turns into a psycho killer and murders the parents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Global warming isn't the fault of emissions, it's really the Awakening of the One Who Slumbers. R'leyh is actually under the Arctic Circle. Putin is a worshipper trying to bring back the Old Ones by drilling and human sacrifice. The funniest thing about Amityville Horror to me was Stephen King's interest in it in his book Danse Macabre as an economic horror story. He said the part where the dad loses the money and comes up with just the rubber band was scarier to him than the bleeding walls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Oh man the stuff I just pulled out of two cassette boxes: Xtro The Grim Reaper AKA Anthropophagus Blood and Black Lace Street Trash This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse (Coffin Joe mafuckas!) and also Romper Stomper, because I haven't seen it in ages and I want to watch dozens of Vietnamese teenagers chase boneheads and beat the shit out of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nate Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Oh man the stuff I just pulled out of two cassette boxes: Xtro The Grim Reaper AKA Anthropophagus Blood and Black Lace Street Trash This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse (Coffin Joe mafuckas!) and also Romper Stomper, because I haven't seen it in ages and I want to watch dozens of Vietnamese teenagers chase boneheads and beat the shit out of them. This will be my first dvd filmfest that I hold in my apartment when I move. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgundy LaRue Posted October 4, 2014 Author Share Posted October 4, 2014 I'm going finish the Karnstein Trilogy this weekend. Lust for a Vampire is on YouTube, and I'm sure Twins of Evil is floating around, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I like Anthropophagus but it is sooooooooooo slooooooooooow. I mean, next to nothing happens until the last 20 minutes. It opens with a good murder sequence (pause for 30 minutes exposition) the killer appears and there is another murder (pause for 30 minutes people wandering) then there is a pretty cool, nasty end that actually generates a bit of suspense. Joe D'Amato was a pornographer and a hack but at least his film Beyond the Darkness could keep my attention, unlike this one (and was considerably more disgusting). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nate Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 My god, Beyond the Darkness; what a cray-cray in the motherfucking heyhey film. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranesi Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 We jumped onto our yearly viewing of HALLOWEEN a little early since we now have a whole box set to get through.We went with the extended cut with the added "for t.v." footage spliced back in. Overall this is the best version I've ever seen. The color is beautiful. So much richer than whichever dvd transfer I had before. Shadows really stand out in those scenes inside the houses. The color schemes are kind of shockingly bold given that what most people remember as a movie dominated but that one blue light effect.With the added scenes this effect is enhanced. They are also really stark with strong patterns: And brightly lit sets When you add that in to what was already there, the blue vs. yellow (death vs. safe) ligth scenes, the crazy bright and contrasting colors the three girls wear, it's a movie that is surprisingly colorful. The first time I ever saw any of HALLOWEEN was that night when it was first broadcast on NBC and literally the only thing I remember was carving a pumpkin while it was on, and my dad being worried about letting me see any of it and only really seeing that one scene...that wasn't even really part of the original movie...I also remember thinking it was the scariest thing ever...just because they were talking about this crazy guy and thinking about how unstoppable he must be for all these old dudes to be holding meetings about him. Here's the promo for it that night, Friday, October 30, 1981: caution, this video is really loud for some reason: I wrote a long post about that awesome NBC FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES opening sequence: http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/58-the-awesomeannoying-tv-commercial-thread/?p=11569 It's fun as hell to see Pleasence in his scenes strutting around, since they were filmed well after the success of the movie itself, and at which point he was already coming to feel a sense of ownership over the character and franchise. He's great. And also fun to see Curtis, Soles, and Kyes. They are so much more comfortable and confidant. Pretty weird to be called onto a set to film one scene for a movie you already made a year and a half before. But this time you're pretty famous and probably collecting a really nice check for a couple days work. And there were a few nice fanservice bits thrown into them:- Loomis literally saying the words he would later tell us he said- Laurie singing that little song that Michael first heard her sing, which if you think about it and abandon all the stupid "lost sister" stuff from the sequel, is probably the trigger that caused him to begin stalking her.Fun stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 I love/hate the extended cut. Getting more Loomis and more of the girls is so great, but it has that damn tease of the stupid reveal from Part II. But if you take the extended tv cut of it and were to splice it and Halloween II together, I think it would be kind of amazing to watch "The complete night he came home" as one film. With the exception of the tv footage, that's the same transfer that's on the 35th anniversary disc (disc 1 in the boxset) which was approved by Dean Cundey. I have been told that it's still not truly accurate to the original color of the theatrical release (where scenes shot in the day were ultra-realistic in their color, while the scenes at night were pushed to absurd extremes with the blue light) but it's easily the best the movie has ever looked on home video (far outpacing the 2007 blu-ray release, which is disc 2 in the set.) I also watched the extended cut when I first got the set, but that won't stop me from watching the OG version again on Halloween night. Because that's what I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piranesi Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 I love/hate the extended cut. Getting more Loomis and more of the girls is so great, but it has that damn tease of the stupid reveal from Part II. But if you take the extended tv cut of it and were to splice it and Halloween II together, I think it would be kind of amazing to watch "The complete night he came home" as one film. I think there's room to not see it that way, though. The "sister" could just be referring to his obsession with Judith that led him back to her grave and to her house. And then he randomly sees Laurie 1) walk up to her house 2) at the same age as Judith was 3) with a boy the same age he was and 4) singing like Judith was that night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 That's a fair point. (Also, I think Soles was the only returning actor specifically brought in for the tv stuff. I believe Nancy Loomis filmed her end of the telephone conversation the same day she played Annie's dead body for Halloween II, and, obviously, Pleasence and Curtis were around a good deal while filming that movie.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 Watched Poltergeist at the theater last night with some friends... honestly, after watching it again, I hate that movie. Spielberg's greasy fingerprints are all over it and I walked out in the middle to get some fresh air just because it was irritating me. Everything is so nice and pat and you know nobody's gonna get hurt. There's no real sense of threat, just Spielberg's patent "sense of wonder" that makes me want to vomit. Yuck. On the other hand, we went back and watched The Wedding Singer (which I actually like ten times more), and after the loving couple crashed I dug around in the Netflix and pulled out Hardware. I've wanted to watch the film for years and really, despite it being dated in its '80s cyberpunk nature, it was as good as I had always expected. I came in completely cold not even remembering what it was supposed to be about, just that the same dude did Dust Devil and it was a movie I wanted to watch when I was a kid, and didn't even read the description, just turned it on. So halfway through I was completely confused with this weird dystopian, post-apocalyptic narrative with an ex-Marine with a robotic hand and a gorgeous artist/recluse, fell asleep, woke up and turned it on again halfway through (and read the description)... and it went REALLY over the top. There's a sense of doom hanging over it and you don't know who's gonna fall, and they keep changing who will and who won't. Really good twisting the narrative like that, as well as putting some good spins on the "you can't kill the monster" trope. Wild film that only benefits from having Lemmy as a cab driver playing "Ace of Spades" on his radio and Iggy Pop as an obnoxious radio host. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted October 5, 2014 Share Posted October 5, 2014 Also: Manhunter still freaks me out. And is ten times better than Red Dragon and always will be. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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