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SECRET SATAN 2022


RIPPA

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I was mostly into Fangoria, Cinefantastique, and Filmfax. The local used bookstores had loads of Cinefantastique issues from the '80s so I have a bunch of them still. The Thing issue is KILLER. 

I regret only owning a single issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

EDIT: Reading those old Cinefantastiques was fun for their snobbishness, they were so mean about movies that would later be known as generational classics. Like the Carpenter Thing review from that was maybe a half-star worse than the Roger Ebert one. Not a soul thinks that shit anymore. It was also hilarious because the whole setup was like "Well, we have to cover every single detail of this particular movie, but we are still forced to trash it!"

Edited by Curt McGirt
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EVILSPEAK (Weston, 1981)

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

SELECTED BY @Ultimo Necro

My pick is Evilspeak (1981), I stumbled upon it on YouTube a month or so back and enjoyed it.  It has the perfect combination of a nerd discovering black magic and using it to get back at his bullies! ?

REVIEWED BY @driver

The first time I saw this movie was in early '84. Let's see if it still holds up.

The movie opens with Spanish Conquistadors exiling a priest and his flock on a beach. The priest is Bull from Night Court. A pentagram is drawn in the sand with a sword. A sacrifice is made and jump cut to current times (well 1981 anyways).

The hero/protagonist here is Clint Howard (aka the guy who pops up in every Ron Howard movie). This might've been one of his few leading roles. He's kind of a nerdy misfit that plays soccer as well as I did as a teenager (aka terribly). Howard is an orphan and a student at a military academy and seems to get bullied on the regular. He has to do an extra detail and goes to the school's chapel (which has a picture of Priest Bull hanging on the wall). 

The commandant looks like Freddie Kruger, if he weren't so burnt and disfigured and ran a military academy instead of running people's dreams. Commandant also likes to schmooze the wealthy donors

Clint goes wandering around in the chapel basement and find's a long forgotten room filled with cobwebs and all sorts of Satanicy looking books and other culty artifacts. The chapel basement is also home to the requisite early 80s creepy, drunken caretaker. From certain angles Clint looks like a shorter Val Kilmer. Clint's default expression seems to  gritting his teeth as if he's holding in a fart.

One of the funniest things early on is a classroom scene where the instructor with a very thick German accent reminds the students that they are being trained for a military career as they ignore him while picking their noses, making paper airplanes, looking at nudie mags or reading a cult book. Clint uses a computer to translate one of the books he found and later to communicate with Priest Bull. Very interesting. Turns out Priest BUll's real name is Esteban aka Satanic Steve. And people said the internet was evil. Heh.

Clint goes to the commandant's office for some corporal punishment. As he tells Clint to "assume the position boy" Clint gets an awkward look on his face and the commandant's expression is one of "I'm going to enjoy this" while in his outer office his early 80s smoke show of a secretary gets a very pleased look on her face as she listens in on the commandant discipling Clint.

Also pigs go crazy when the secretary tries prying a pentagram off of Clint's book that fell in the trash.

One of the bullies looks like a smug Bob Saget and another looks like the love child of Tom Hanks and Elliott Gould.

Clint sets up a computer down in the creepy chapel basement. Pretty sure every thing will turn out just fine.

We get a cameo from Luca Brasi himself, Lenny fuckin' Montana, as the school's head cook. He also gives Clint a puppy, which Clint takes to the creepy basement.

Creepy caretaker meets his demise in a somewhat creative way, just to see the look on Clint's face when it happens.

Tensions keep mounting leading up to the climax, and oh what a climax it is.

I like this movie even more know than I did in 1984.

EDITOR'S NOTE

I enjoy the description of Clint Howard as "guy in every Ron Howard movie" and not "Ron Howard's brother"

The Youtube version can be found HERE (it is also on Dailymotion)

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A note about the project

I have to go out of town for the rest of the week take care of some family business so everything will pause until Monday, Oct 31. So yes... we will extend into November.

I still have a couple more reviews to post. I am also missing at least one review (possibly more).

I will gladly continue to accept bonus reviews until I get back home to VA.

Also - if I am still missing reviews when I get back on Sunday, Oct 30 - I might reach out to folks about possibly taking on a 2nd review.

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Take care of your business, dude.  Let me know if I can do anything.

Evilspeak may be my favorite of the Satanic Panic horror joints of the 80's... or it might be the ridiculously cheesy Fear No Evil.

fear-no-evil-movie-poster.jpg?v=15552911

Clint Howard conducting a demonic ritual with the aid of a personal computer is so appropriate for the time and such a sneaky critique of the budding internet.  I love Evilspeak's mean spirit.  The obligatory boobs interlude is totally subverted by an army of marauding, flesh eating pigs and the final Lucifer powered moment of revenge is one of the best things ever captured on film.

This movie was so far ahead of its time.  You could do a reboot using the portable devices of today direct connecting to the Devil and it would still hold up.

Edited by J.T.
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Not only is Clint Howard in EvilSpeak, but pre-Night Court Richard Moll aka Bull plays Esteban.  Moll had made a career of playing the heavies in a lot of horror and sword / sorcery movies in the 80's and 90's.  The character of Bull is actually very much against type for him, and Moll's ability to carry horror and comedy really show his range.

We we're a What's Happening!! family, so those familar with the sitcom will notice that Haywood Nelson aka Dwayne "Hey Hey Hey" Nelson plays Stanley's friend, Kowalski.

Aya Nishitani's Digital Devil Story novels and the games they inspsired, the now famous Shin Megumi Tensai franchise, owe a great debt to the awesomeness of EvilSpeak.

EvilSpeak is also sooo sad and tragic.  Poor Stanley willingly damns his own soul and sacrifices his sanity all for the sake of revenge.   After the carnage, he bides his time committed to an asylum and waits for his reemergence, and he still has Hell to look forward to when he dies because the Devil always collects what he is due. 

On its face, Stanley is the winner, but is he really?  EvilSpeak's ending is the same ending as The VVitch.  Satan is the author of all lies.  When Tomasin flies off naked into the sky at the end of The VVitch, it is not freedom she is experiencing.  It is servitude.  She doesn't realize it yet, but she is a slave.  The irony of the Faustian bargain.  Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.

Edited by J.T.
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3 hours ago, J.T. said:

Moll had made a career of playing the heavies in a lot of horror and sword / sorcery movies in the 80's and 90's

The Dungeonmaster, which was an Empire (AKA Charlie Band) anthology, came on TV one time and I got a big kick out of seeing him as the big bad in it. 

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See the source image

He actually looks pretty cool, it's just seeing him with hair... and throwing lighting bolts...

I also forgot that Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P. made the poster somehow? Maybe he was in the movie? I don't remember.

EDIT: Yeah he was, the whole band had a scene in a faux rock club I think. It's a strange flick. 

See the source image

Edited by Curt McGirt
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BONUS REVIEW: TERRIFIER 2 (DAMIEN LEONE, 2022)

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

REVIEWED BY: @Curt McGirt

Ah, the hardcore splatter film. After Silence of the Lambs won the Oscar, after the MPAA had the Mafia-esque influence of Jack Valenti extinguished, and people just got hardened over the years from tons of action and horror films, it flourished for awhile. The trend of so-called "torture porn" led to over ten Saw films and a bunch of really gross shit (I still refuse to see Mordum and whatever these other pictures are) while pretty much any level of gore is allowable in either horror OR action picture. For example I caught about half of the new Mortal Kombat picture last night and it was completely Grand Guignol, which I guess is "morally" okay because it's basically a live-action cartoon. TV is the same way. 

Yet it's hard to find a splatter movie that is just flat-out fun anymore while still being incredibly disgusting. Everything is either too painful or too serious. 

This one ain't that. It's a LOT of fun. 

The first Terrifier was a small flick that got a big cult following for its gore and its creepy-ass villain Art the Clown. I saw it and don't remember much except a lot of nastiness and being kind of bummed out at the nastiness. Maybe the clown was just too creepy for me. I dunno, it's been too long. Anyway, this sequel eventually got crowd funded, including a $50,000 effects scene just as a starting price. They got away with 250K and the movie was made despite the pause due to COVID. By now it's made $8 mil which is probably why I got to see it with my best friends at the theater tonight (which was at the big downtown theater and is ashambles. Haven't been there in ages and there were shit-stained bathroom doors and no lighting in the parking lot. At a theater!). 

The film itself is 2 1/2 hours but as the old adage goes it doesn't feel like it, rushing from gag to gag, victim to victim. Ace the Clown apparently is able to regenerate himself from a head wound and a missing eye in the morgue at the beginning meaning he's a supernatural entity. After his escape he immediately heads down to an all-night laundromat to wash his stained costume, floppy shoes and little hat, mock reading the paper, and murder a sleeping citizen while he's at it. A little girl version of him appears and apparently will be a continuing character in this (of course) series and man she is creepy as shit. This segues into us watching a young woman listening to some '80s-style darkwave and making a cool costume for Halloween. It's revealed this young woman is Sienna, an 18-year old or so high school student who lives with her mom and her 12-year old brother. Something has happened to their dad and it appears to have traumatized them in different ways. The younger brother definitely has dark interests (his wall is absolutely covered in posters and stickers of metal bands and he even has copies of Slayer's Hell Awaits and Mercyful Fate's Time among others up there). They're a handful for poor Mom who is constantly having to deal with shitty people on the phone at her home job while burning the food and yelling at the kids for the crazy shit that they end up to. Said crazy shit is the responsibility of Art the Clown, who proceeds to tear through their lives, their bodies, and the bodies of anyone in his way including Sienna's friends who are all going to a big Halloween party. 

The effects in this are just nuts. Everything is filmed in bright fluorescents like you just walked into somebody's house; you see EV-ERY-THING. And it's mirthfully inventive. Just to give an example: some asshole 24-year-old with an 18-year old girlfriend thankfully gets stabbed in the crotch like a dozen times and has his dick ripped off which is then used to write on a windshield. That might be to make good on the serious male gaze this film has for its lead... whos character is also an 18-year old girl. What can I say, it's a slasher film. One of the kills has to be the craziest and bloodiest thing on camera in years and years. It just has to be seen. Apparently during Covid the effects guys said "well this gives us a chance to tweak it" and they turned it into the wildest shit ever. Beyond that though, the performances are great and the characters in the family and even the kids' friends really work well. This is taken just serious enough for you to feel for them with a one-parent household, kids of different ages pulling in different ways, mother going crazy, unresolved shit in the past... it's the reason the film is so long, but it's world building, so necessary. The most important thing though is the film has a glint in its eye. Though Art is so disgusting and fucked-up looking his visual mannerisms are spot on and hilarious. It's nice to have a slasher villain who doesn't HAVE to quip. He can do it via miming... and aren't mimes scarier than clowns anyway? And even though the violence does get sadistic at moments like the cat 'o nine tails bit, you see that the cat 'o nine tails has surgical scissors at its end and that takes some of the sting out. It's comic book, it's not snuff film. The rest of the violence is pure gonzo to its core and if you don't laugh at it, you definitely don't have the same sense of humor I do. If you share that then check it out. 

EDITOR'S NOTE

I will post again this afternoon but I wanted to get this up ASAP due to the timeliness and since Curt clearly risked life and limb seeing it according to the media.

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? Yeah, that was even on the radio at work about people puking and passing out in the theater. A pair of people left at one point and we were crossing our fingers for a walkout but sadly they came back with refreshments. 

Have to underline that the acting in this movie is really solid. Sarah Voigt clearly wants to be the cool mom but everything is driving her over the edge and she has to snap at these fucking kids so much, her frustration is palpable. It's a good role. Lauren LaVera might end up going places, she's only 28, been in some Marvel shit, and is a hell of an actress and a trooper for putting up with the rigors of a movie like this. At the very least she'll have horror con appearances for the rest of her life now. (And of course, they gave her a shower scene for a reason. My friend hilariously whispered to us "Side boob!" during it.)

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6 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I still refuse to see Mordum and whatever these other pictures are

 

I like that even Curt has a line he won't cross.

Goddamn this place, randomly deciding not to embed links.

 

Edited by RIPPA
I'M A HELPER~!
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Yeah, I am not a big fan of splatter horror.  More often than not, those movies end up being unintentionally hilarious rather than scary.  I think that Savini's work in The Prowler is the only gorehound materiel that has really freaked me out.

I have seen the Mordum films for the expressed purpose of being able to say that I have.  They were stupid.  I hate horror movies that are endured rather than enjoyed.

The truly scary thing about Terrifier 2 is that fucking two-and-a-half-hour runtime.  You are my hero for suffering through that for me, Curt.

Edited by J.T.
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CURE (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES

SELECTED BY @J.T.

I chose it because everyone talks about his 2001 movie, Pulse (Kairo), but I feel this is the movie that helped kick off the big J-Horror boom.

REVIEWED BY @Travis Sheldon

Cure is a 1997 psychological horror film by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

It deals with the investigation of a series of seemingly unrelated murders where all of the killers have been found, but they have little to no rational for the killings.

The suspects admit they did the killings, but they don't know why and neither do the police.

One of the aspects of each murder is that each of the victims have had an X carved into their torso.

Investigator Takabe is teamed with a psychiatrist, Sakuma, to help tie these killings together.

Takabe seems to believe that the killers are under an outside party's influence.

They discover their best lead when Mr Mamiya is taken in for questioning.

Mamiya seems to have short-term memory loss and is constantly answering the police's questions with his own questions.

Eventually Takabe discovers that Mamiya was a student of psychology and had keen interest in mesmerism and hypnosis.

In the beginning of the film Takabe is very calm and methodical, but as his interactions with Mamiya increase the viewer follows his radical changes.

The atmosphere in this film is palpable.

Most of the sounds in the film come from ambient sources.

The ending is ambiguous.

A very deep film with Lynchian tones.

I purposely didn't touch on Takabe's relationship with his wife and partner.

I watched this on the Criterion Channel, but there is a version on YouTube and you can change the setting to get a rough translation of the text.

Fans of psychological horrors like The Silence Of The Lambs should check it out.

EDITOR'S NOTE

I have no idea why Travis wrote this somewhat like a poem. I just go with the formatting reviews are sent to me. ?

Some places list the year wrong because the movie got a 4K digital restoration and because places are stupid

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On 10/17/2022 at 8:09 AM, RIPPA said:

TERROR TRAIN (Roger Spottiswoode, 1980)

SELECTED BY RIPPA

REVIEWED BY @(BP)

i watched this over the weekend. had never heard of it before this thread. it was fun, but the way the killer instinctively knew where each victim was, and how to reach them without being seen was a bridge too far for me. I think the setting is a neat idea, and throwing a train party would be ridiculously fun (and expensive, holy shit!) but what group of college frat boys hires a magician? 

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I love @J.T. saying "I don't like splatter films" and then pretty much "but I have seen all of them" ?

Of course watching Terrifier 2 came up at work and I had to explain it to everyone, and my manager says she is halfway through Barbarian and loved Tusk and The Green Inferno, at which point I had to explain Cannibal Holocaust. Nobody liked the turtle story. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
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10 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

I love @J.T. saying "I don't like splatter films" and then pretty much "but I have seen all of them" ?

I didn't want to be a hypocrite.  You can't critique something you haven't experienced for yourself. ?

I've seen them all so now I can honestly say that they all have no redeeming or endearing qualities. ?

Edited by J.T.
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Cure is one of my favorite movies.  It saddens me that it isn't talked up as much as Pulse or other J-Horror standard are.  IMO, it is one of the movies that really got the ball rolling for J-Horror popularity.  It is such a masterful piece of work and Kiyoshi Kurosawa is as close to a true auteur as you can get.

Spikima Movies channel has this wonderful breakdown of Cure, but I encourage everyone to watch the movie before checking out this deep dive.  This recap assumes you've seen the movie and totally spoils the ending.  Be warned.

The video is age restricted (Cure has themes of self-harm as well as murder), so you will have to sign in and watch it on YouTube.

Edited by J.T.
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10 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

"All" is a bit much. I'm sure you can easily come up with ten movies that fall under "splatter" that you love. 

There are certainly some splatter movies that I absolutely love for all of the wrong reasons.   Dead Alive and Pieces come to mind immediately.  They have their charm because they do not take themselves seriously..   

The Mordum films OTOH try too hard to be taken seriously.  They want you to believe that they are genuine snuff films and that sort of thing isn't appealing to me.

I think the Terrifier movies are shamelessly engineered attempts to make an icon out of Art the Clown and that just puts me off. 

Edited by J.T.
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All the Fulci movies, all the Argento movies, the Romero zombie films after NOTLD, new stuff that both of us end up watching like The Sickness... all of these are splatter movies, like it or not. 

I would recommend watching Terrifier 2 anyway. 

EDIT: Don't get me started on non-horror movies that are splatter movies too

Edited by Curt McGirt
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