Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

2019 HORROR MOVIE THREAD


Dolfan in NYC

Recommended Posts

5 minutes ago, J.T. said:

I hope that Raimi as Producer can do for this second attempt at a Ju-On do over that Gore Vidal as director did with Ring, but I think this movie is going to be horrible.

I would have loved to have seen a Gore Vidal horror movie.

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I would have loved to have seen a Gore Vidal horror movie.

Ugh.  Gore Verbinski.  I went stream of Alzheimer's consciousness and typed Vidal.

The thing about the Grudge reboot that is encouraging is that Sam got good people to work on the fucking thing.

The director is Nicholas Pierce (The Eyes of My Mother, Piercing) and the writer is Jeff Buhler (Midnight Meat Train, Pet Sematary 2019).

If Raimi gives these guys enough leeway to take the basic premise of Ju-On and infuse it with American cultural sensibilities like Verbinski did with Ring, I feel it might work.

If they just make a shot for shot remake of The Grudge that's set in the states, it will probably suck.

I didn't think that the US version of The Grudge was entirely horrible, but I do believe that Takashi Shimizu got stuffed into a director's chair with a mandate to do what he did before only with Americans in the cast and he just played by the numbers.

Edited by J.T.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

HEY. I paid $40 for that DVD and it was worth every penny. 

I'm not joking, that was one of the best bad movies I've ever seen. Really should watch it again. I mean I spent 40 fucking bones on it, what was I thinking?

EDIT: If you read about it, Gore might've made it even crazier than it ended up; they were mad at him for all the non-faked gay sex he wanted in the movie. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't explain why, but every time I revisit the director's cut of the 2009 Halloween II, I fall a little more in love with it. It's crazy, wildly ambitious, falls flat on its face in places, examines PTSD in a bold manner, never tries to make the violence cool, and has at least three legit gut punch level emotional moments.

The white horse/shared delusion stuff still doesn't make any sense, but I guess I just don't care anymore. I love this movie.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

I can't explain why, but every time I revisit the director's cut of the 2009 Halloween II, I fall a little more in love with it. It's crazy, wildly ambitious, falls flat on its face in places, examines PTSD in a bold manner, never tries to make the violence cool, and has at least three legit gut punch level emotional moments.

The white horse/shared delusion stuff still doesn't make any sense, but I guess I just don't care anymore. I love this movie.

Yeah, I hate both of those movies for the same reasons I hate the Star Wars prequels.  

The beauty of Halloween and Halloween II was that we barely knew anything about the Shape.  What was he thinking?  Where in the fuck did he learn to drive?  That was all pretty wild shit.

I appreciate Zombie wanting to make it more of a character study, but he fills these movies with the same overindulgence and pretentiousness that invades most of his films.  Lifting the mask on Michael Myers was a bad idea.

The one thing that I do admire about Zombie's Halloween movies is that it paints a somewhat more realistic portrait of Michael's mental illness.  It is seen as a tragic symptom of his dysfunctional home life and not as the gateway to superhuman powers.

As much as I love Carpenter's Halloween, it really did start the horrible horror movie trope that insanity makes you an invulnerable or at least impervious to pain and I believe that stereotype has bled into the modern disconnect we have today as a society about mental illness.

Edited by J.T.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm a volunteer at a charity shop and I've made friends with one. She's just getting into horror and recently seen Halloween (1978), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Dawn of the Dead (2004).

I said she needed to watch the original George A Romero Dead Trilogy especially Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). Day of the Dead (1985) was technically my first catching the back end of it in the early hours of the morning, not sure how old I'd been, 16-18 perhaps.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

I can't explain why, but every time I revisit the director's cut of the 2009 Halloween II, I fall a little more in love with it. It's crazy, wildly ambitious, falls flat on its face in places, examines PTSD in a bold manner, never tries to make the violence cool, and has at least three legit gut punch level emotional moments.

The white horse/shared delusion stuff still doesn't make any sense, but I guess I just don't care anymore. I love this movie.

I recently revisited the Rob Zombie Halloween saga courtesy of the Blu-Ray set that came out a few years back.

My entire purpose in viewing these films was to show my wife the "origin" of Michaels Myers. She loves the psychological examination of serial killers and this was as close as it was going to get.

My theory is too much backstory can backfire easily.

Originally I saw these two flicks on DVD shortly after the release of each. I'm not a fan of the original film, but the sequel has the white horse stuff that tickles me.

The original Halloween 2 was a favorite of mine for many years and that may have been due to repeated viewings on old UHF stations.

Zombie's part 2 pays slight homage to the original in the early sequence and then goes on to PTSD/WTF-land. I do love Zombie's penchant for getting genre veterans work, so I can't bad-mouth the stuff with actors like Ken Foree.

I once heard/read that Rob Zombie writes white-trash like no one else, in this point I am inclined to agree. In the original John Carpenter's Halloween there's nothing to indicate that the Myers' household was anything more than mundane suburbia.

But Zombie has to throw in all the skull-fucking dialog he can. 

The Zombie Halloween's are one case in which I think the Theatrical versions are superior, in that they are much tighter with the story and rein in some of Zombie's over-the-top indulgence.

The ending to RZH2 is a great example of this with the removal of Hobo Michael's "Die!" line, Laurie going stabby, and her subsequent putdown.

The YouTube channel Dead Meat has a good comparison videos between the Theatrical and Director's Cut of each film. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

October 1st   -  7th 

Humanoids From The Deep (1980) Only in a movie involving sexual predator mutant fishmen is Vic Morrow firebombing a Native American activist’s cabin a subplot. Also Vic threatens to kick Johnny Eagle’s “drunk ass out of here” even though he’s never seen with a beer in his hand through the whole movie.

Unmasked Part 25 (1988) - Great British forerunner to Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. The hockey-mask wearing killer, Jackson basically has the same origin story as Jason. The key difference is that Jackson and his mother actually fled London to get away from his abusive, alcoholic, murderous father. Somehow Jackson ended up back in London living in his childhood home where his drunk father still lives.  Jackson meets a blind girl and apparently ends his whole schtick as a mute killer (at least when he's around her) humorously explaining that nobody's ever tried talking to him before.....they just start screaming. As Jackson is trying to retire from the game to start a relationship with this blind girl, his father reminds him that he comes from a long line of psychopathic killers. The movie opens up with some awesome kills that are equally ridiculous and ingenious. It ends with another series of kills that are still good if not quite as impressive as the opening killing spree. In between is a parody of a slasher that falls somewhere between the aforementioned Behind The Mask, An American Werewolf in London, and even Spinal Tap.

Terror (1978) - This starts off with a witch named Mad Dolly cursing an entire family as she’s being burned at the stake. Like Superstition, the havoc is wreaked in a variety of ways, mostly involving POV murders done by the hand of an unknown killer although flying inanimate objects do their fair share of damage too. Being made by the same guy that made Prey, there is obviously going to be some sleaze. Several scenes take place in a strip club and on the set of a softcore porn shoot. These scenes do lead to the grisly demise of a few characters.

Vice Squad (1982) - This is the story of a misunderstood psycho cowboy pimp named Ramrod.

The Hidden (1987) - The closest thing you get to a monster in this is an alien parasite that looks like a giant fishing lure. It doesn’t matter because the reason for the season is mindless fun. My favorite throwaway line in the movie is a reply to the doctor after he tells the cops that nobody deserves to die like that. The first guy (that the alien took over as its vessel) is on life support after being shot dozens of times and then being burnt up from his car exploding. The other cop is listing off all the nefarious shit he’s done to deserve to die a horrible death and he mentions stealing luxury sports cars in the same breath as pointing out the guy murdered a couple of children.  Priorities, people.

Waxwork (1988) – Considering that this only had a $3.5 million dollar budget to $12 million for The Monster Squad, even though this had more recognizable actors in it, it’s no wonder every monster wasn’t up to the level of a Stan Winston creation. Also there were a lot more monsters in this when you take the battle royal finale into consideration.  Regardless, I’ll never quit envisioning a Waxwork with Monster Squad’s Wolfman and Gillman murdering a bunch of assholes during the big battle royal finale. Did David Warner ever play Dracula? He would’ve been a better Dracula than Ator the Fighting Eagle.

Edited by FluffSnackwell
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

In an interview with Empire, writer-director Edgar Wright has revealed the first details on his upcoming horror film Last Night in Soho, giving us a much better idea on what to expect for the film’s plot. He also confirmed that the movie will be set in the 1960s’ London with Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy set as leads.

“There’s something I have in common with the lead character in that I’m afflicted with nostalgia for a decade I didn’t live in,” Wright said in his interview with the outlet. “You think about ‘60s London – what would that be like? Imagine if you knew everything you knew now, and went back. I’m taking a premise whereby you have a character who, in a sort of abstract way, gets to travel in time. And the reality of the decade is maybe not what she imagines. It has an element of ‘be careful what you wish for’.”

From Focus Features and Working Title Films, Last Night in Soho will star Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace) as Eloise, Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Glass), and Emmy Award-nominated actor Matt Smith (The Crown, Doctor Who).

Plot details are light on the movie, but Wright calls it a psychological horror-thriller in the vein of Don’t Look Now and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. Wright co-wrote the script for the film with Krysty Wilson-Cairns (Penny Dreadful). The film will take place in London’s Soho district.

“I realised I had never made a film about central London – specifically Soho, somewhere I’ve spent a huge amount of time in the last 25 years,” Wright told Empire about the movie. “With Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead, you make movies about places you’ve lived in. This movie is about the London I’ve existed in.”

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/29/2019 at 8:14 PM, FluffSnackwell said:

The Hidden (1987) - The closest thing you get to a monster in this is an alien parasite that looks like a giant fishing lure. It doesn’t matter because the reason for the season is mindless fun. My favorite throwaway line in the movie is a reply to the doctor after he tells the cops that nobody deserves to die like that. The first guy (that the alien took over as its vessel) is on life support after being shot dozens of times and then being burnt up from his car exploding. The other cop is listing off all the nefarious shit he’s done to deserve to die a horrible death and he mentions stealing luxury sports cars in the same breath as pointing out the guy murdered a couple of children.  Priorities, people.

I love this movie.  

I cannot watch an episode of Babylon 5 with Claudia Christian in it without thinking about:

I really think the writers of The Hidden should sue the writers of Under The Skin since it has a scene in it that just feels the I HAVE GIRL PARTS~? scene from The Hidden only far more graphic in a not so good kinda way.

It's interesting to note in this movie and Under The Skin about how oblivious the aliens inhabiting fleshy bodies are to concepts like gender and how fascinated they become with human sexuality.

Only The Hidden does an effective job of conveying this in about twenty minutes with a sensual and mostly clothed character that has a near non existent speaking part, while Under The Skin needs a nearly two hour runtime and showcases an alien that spends a lot of screen time in the nude, is more creepy than alluring, and has plenty of dialogue.

I think both movies are great and love them for far different reasons.

Edited by J.T.
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For whatever reason, probably because of who directed it, Near Dark is on the Criterion Channel, so I watched that.  "Transfusions save you" has to be the single stupidest plot point in the history of vampire movies.  And I've seen a greater-than-one number of the Twilight films.  But man, Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen could do no wrong with this sort of material.  I feel like Cameron probably lifted the tanker truck scene for something in T2, because it looked awfully familiar and that seems like the sort of bullshit he'd have pulled.  I also feel like Charmaine Harris probably ripped off everything else about it for the stuff that eventually became True Blood (or the people who adapted it did the ripping-off).  I was disappointed Adrian Pasdar didn't eviscerate and eat Troy Evans, until it became evident that was going to be a running theme.  Not a bad movie, but, well, if it hadn't popped up where it did, I likely wouldn't have bothered, and I'd skip ever getting it if Criterion made it a release.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started looking through the On Demand features on Dish and landed on the free horror movies so right now I'm watching Dr. Giggles. Yes, Dr. Giggles. I couldn't resist. 

Horror-related/adjacent, I also found that Showtime has free On Demand of all seasons of Dexter and, awesomely, the first season of Twin Peaks. 

I never watched Twin Peaks when I was a kid, beyond the opening credits. 

This is gonna rule. 

EDIT: Fuck was Dr. Giggles a waste of time. I love Larry Drake, just from Darkman alone which was my main movie as a kid, but this was really slumming it. The puns were so painful and the only real seriously crazy part was Dr. Gigglescito busting out of his own mother's cadaver. No wonder it was the only part of the movie I remembered from bootleg HBO. The only other good part was the gag about "time to do what doctors do best" as he picks up a golf club. Everything else was just the pits. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Invisible Man

"Modern Remake" starring Elisabeth Moss.

Directed by Leigh Whannell (Upgrade, Insidious 3)

Reminder that there is no longer a shared Universal Monster Universe and that the Invisible Man is no longer Johnny Depp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...