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J.T.

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The funny thing is, on that very same list is "Van Helsing," which represents their failed attempt to reboot their monster franchises once before.

Wanna talk about a shit burger film ...

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8 hours ago, nate said:

The funny thing is, on that very same list is "Van Helsing," which represents their failed attempt to reboot their monster franchises once before.

Wanna talk about a shit burger film ...

The opening scene was gorgeous.

The rest was so bad, it's still bad. 

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I... I enjoyed Van Helsing. It was stupid as hell, but it's mindless fun in a pseudo-Gothic setting. I won't defend its actual merits (because I can't think of any, for one), but it was just... pretty fun.

I finally got around to watching The Witch. I'll have to watch it a second time because what little I'd read about it was along the lines of, 'scariest movie in decades!' so I went in with the wrong expectations. It's a bit like The Babadook in that the knowledge I had going in gave me wrong expectations and I came out disappointed -- but upon second viewing with a proper mindset, I loved it. The atmosphere, the music and the gorgeous photography were amazing in The Witch, and I loved the dialogue too. Very subdued overall, but I prefer that over in-your-face graphic gorefests that just leave me bored.

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My Van Helsing story.

The year it came out, my best friend was working for Radio Shack (the past is a foreign country) and the little loop they had playing on the display TVs had the trailer for Van Helsing for months, to the point where he insisted we go see it one night, just to get it out of his head. I knew it was going to be awful, but he was paying, so we went.

It was, of course, awful. But there was this amazing trailer before it, during which Jon leaned over to me and said "we're going to see that" and I responded "damn right." That trailer was The Village.

In conclusion, FUCK YOU VAN HELSING

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I screwed up and missed "The Drop of Water" so had to go back and watch it on Dailymotion. You didn't miss out really cause they played the backwards AIP cut, not the OG Italian version. And god don't mention allergies; I've been hacking up the worst shit this morning...

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Having just watched Joseph Zito's The Prowler: good gawd almighty, this might win the Vince Russo Award for Most Loose Plot Threads To Get Dropped, Abandoned, And Forgotten Within A Single Film.  At least four or five different main characters literally just vanish right out of the picture after the first half, never to be seen or heard from again.  And even though we know exactly who the killer is, we're forced to try and guess WHY he's killing based on some thoroughly incomplete scraps of circumstantial-at-best evidence.  

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Most boring slasher film of the OG era ever besides the incredible effects. Goddamn did Savini try and save that movie's bacon, just without trying and being himself.

EDIT: No, Prom Night is even more boring, and even worse, don't have Savini

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58 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Most boring slasher film of the OG era ever besides the incredible effects. Goddamn did Savini try and save that movie's bacon, just without trying and being himself.

Eh, there's much worse out there, various forgotten flicks which didn't even have THIS much staying power.  Joseph Zito is at least mechanically competent at staging the violent scenes, and he's better at framing a shot than your average 80s horror hack.  

But FUCK YES SON those effects!  I didn't even notice Savini's name in the credits, and the first kill at the beginning is fairly generic (ripping off the same impale-the-lovers kill that F13p2 stole from Twitch of the Death Nerve) and not terribly bloody, so I wasn't expecting much from the rest of the film.  But then you get that truly disturbing kill where the guy has a seizure while he's being stabbed in the brain, and it just goes on and on and ON in a manner which can be called "nearly unwatchable" in the best meaning of that phrase, and then immediately afterwards you get the most unnervingly realistic-looking "person is impaled by a pitchfork" effect I've ever seen (and it's happening to a naked girl in the shower, the ONLY nudity in the movie, just to make things even creepier) and I sat right the fuck up and paid a hell of a lot more attention for the rest of the film.  Sadly it never quite recaptures the shocking brutality of that moment, although the assault in the pool and the shotgun climax are both at least attempting to do that.  

So, damn shame about that plot.  I guess we're supposed to infer that Killer Guy was the unnamed Dear-John-letter'd soldier from the beginning, but they never actually came out and told us that was the case; not helping one bit is how the actor they picked didn't even look like he was old enough to have fought in WWII.  (Also: like sadly far too many slashers and giallo flicks of this era, that character seemed way too sane to be a psycho killer until the final unmasking.)  And if they were trying to build towards some kind of conspiracy theory involving Laurence Tierney and his creepy obsession with his dead daughter, then I dunno what they were even TRYING to accomplish; especially since Tierney's character DISAPPEARS RIGHT OUTTA THE ENTIRE GODDAMN MOVIE after we see him peeping on the teens fucking in the basement, we never see him (or those teens!) again.  And it's not even a "they probably died" moment, it's just "where the fuck are those people?" once the movie is over.  

And the final scene: weak attempt to rip off the jump-scare-epilogue from Carrie, or WEAKEST EVER attempt to rip off the jump-scare-epilogue from Carrie?  

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I have no idea what The Neon Demon is about, but I will peep it to check out Abby Lee in leather dominatrix mode.

abbey-lee-is-a-leather-vixen-on-neon-dem

I think it is the braids that do it for me.

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Thank you, TCM for showing Les Yeux Sans Visage at three in the afternoon last Thursday while I was on vacation so I could actually watch it at a decent hour

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The first few times I saw The Prowler I was drunk enough to think it was the essence of pure un-distilled slasher; characters who aren't annoying because they're barely there in the first place except to get briefly acquainted with before they're dispatched of in the most masterfully depicted horrific ways. When you break it down like that the kills are the thing and the only thing that elevates The Prowler to its status. But that's fine because aren't the kills the more essential component to your prototypical slasher than something like The Burning where it's basically a summer camp screwball comedy for the first hour? Then I watched The Prowler sober and realized how silly it was that the killer is just sort of prowling around in the same space as the two protagonists for most of the last hour save for a late night swim. The Carrie rip-off ending is even more improbable than the dick squeeze of the dead from Pieces only not as ingenious.   

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On 5/24/2016 at 11:37 AM, J.T. said:

Thank you, TCM for showing Les Yeux Sans Visage at three in the afternoon last Thursday while I was on vacation so I could actually watch it at a decent hour

MOTHER FUCKER!!! No fair. No fair. 

I really should just buy the Criterion, but that would get me into ordering movies and my vinyl purchases are already a ridiculous drain. It's kind of nice that Best Buy sucks nowadays; my wallet thanks them.

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Twice a year, Criterion (via Barnes and Noble) runs a 1/2 price all Criterion releases sale.  It's freaking fan-fuckin-tastic.

Also, I think it may be on Hulu, still.

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