Sangre, cuchillos, y tetas --- Horror Film Discussion

[Dukefrukem]

My October Halloween movie list with the GF

1. Hellraiser
2. Hellraiser
3. Hellraiser
4. Hellraiser
5. Hellraiser
6. Hellraiser
7. Hellraiser
8. Hellraiser
9. Hellraiser
10. A Ghost Story
11. The Void
12. Blair Witch
13. Martyrs (2016)
14. Nina Forever
15. Absentia
16. Lake Nowhere
17. The Woman
18. Sacrifice
19. The Minds Eye
20. Before I Wake
21. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
22. Horns
23. Late Phases
24. Life After Beth
25. Pound of Flesh
26. Scanners
27. Phantasm
28. Rupture
29. Southbound
30. The Green Inferno
31. Lost River

[Skitch]

Few things in cinema I hated more than The Woman.

[Peng]

Um, putting A Ghost Story in that kind of mind frame would have a high chance of you being very put off by it. Not a Halloween film at all.

[Irish]

1. Hellraiser
2. Hellraiser
3. Hellraiser
4. Hellraiser
5. Hellraiser
6. Hellraiser
7. Hellraiser
8. Hellraiser
9. Hellraiser

I take this to mean that you will watch the original film 9 times in a row---which seems like a better option than watching any of the sequels.

[Dukefrukem]

I take this to mean that you will watch the original film 9 times in a row---which seems like a better option than watching any of the sequels.

lol

Um, putting A Ghost Story in that kind of mind frame would have a high chance of you being very put off by it. Not a Halloween film at all.

I'm going in blind.

[megladon8]

Hellraiser: Inferno is pretty legit.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Hellraiser: Inferno is pretty legit.

The title always makes me think of a disco Hellraiser musical.

[megladon8]

That sounds brilliant.

"I will tear your groove apart!"

[D_Davis]

Watched this past weekend, while massively hungover:

Phantasm II - boy do I like the Phantasm movies. So weirdly made. It's almost as if Don Coscarelli doesn't know how all other movies are made. Unhinged, bizarrely paced, characters that never once act like any person would in any of the situations they are in...totally gonzo film making.

Hellraiser II: Hellbound - Still love this one. Great effects, and the low-budget nature adds a certain charm to the whole thing. I forgot how little screen time Pinhead and gang actually have in this one. I think they are featured more in the flashbacks to the first film than they are featured in any new footage.

Tales of Halloween - Really liked this anthology. Not as beautifully shot as Trick R Treat, but still pretty good. The little alien in the "Friday the 31st" segment was cute as a button, and the showdown between it and the deformed killer was bloody good. Lot's of fun in this one.

[D_Davis]

Hellraiser: Inferno is pretty legit.

It sure is. A few of the later straight to video Hellraiser films are good.

[D_Davis]

Definitely want to check this out. Some fans created a workprint version of Hellraiser IV, based on the original screenplay. This movie notoriously had 25 minutes cut, and all kinds of stuff re-shot. Ended up being a Alan Smithee film. I had always heard about how ambitious the film was supposed to be.

[Skitch]

What the hell? I don't remember that at all. Been too long. I do own the Bloodline score, and its good.

[megladon8]

Jen and I rewatch the whole series semi-regularly and that one always bums me out because, as D said, it feels like SOMETHING was there. They had something special but it just got all cocked up and kerfuzzled.

It has one of the most unintentionally hilarious lines I've heard, when Pinhead says about a room that is designed to kill all the Cenobytes, "this is not a room! This is a Holocaust waiting to wake itself!"

I always make Jen laugh because I follow that up with a revamped version of The Dude chastising Walter during Donny's ash scattering: "this has nothing to do with the Holocaust, Pinhead! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?"

[megladon8]

A few new viewings lately...

The Devil's Candy - pretty darn good. Went into it knowing pretty much nothing (something about an artist? Maybe a demon). Ethan Embry carries the movie very well, and is damn near unrecognizable. Pruitt Taylor Vince balances creepy and menacing very well. The violence has a punch, without being needlessly sadistic. Glad it pulled punches in a few instances - a few images it had the sense and taste to not show in detail.

Would make a great pairing with another metal-head Horror (though leaning more towards comedy than this one) - New Zealand's hilarious Deathgasm.


Don't Kill It - just...didn't work. It had a great concept that could have led to some bloody brilliat sequences. Seriously, a demon that possesses a person and causes them to kill anyone they're near, but if THEY are killed, they immediately possess the person who killed them? The movie has such a great, fun concept but the creators didn't seem to have the skill and ingenuity to push it as far as it could go.

Add to that a lacklustre script with very clunky dialogue, and this was a miss.


Okay so that's more like a "couple" than a "few". Whatever.

[D_Davis]

Deathgasm was pretty cool. Had fun watching that.

[D_Davis]

Hellraiser IV actually turned out like the last book, The Scarlet Gospels. I had heard about how epic both were supposed to be, but the final releases of each was a huge disappointment. The Scarlet Gospels was supposed to be an epic, thousands of pages long, spanning the reaches of time and space, and what Barker ultimately delivered was a 350 page action-horror blockbuster-like novel.

[D_Davis]

McG's The Babysitter. My god, what garbage.

[Dead & Messed Up]

BONES, the Ernest Dickerson flick from 2001 where Snoop Dogg is a vengeful blaxploitation ghost.

Crazily, I enjoyed the film most of the time. Dickerson offers a lot of creative haunted house effects - sometimes literal haunted house effects, like ghosts projected onto walls, which look so cheap they sorta lap themselves and become eerie for their antiquity. He throws in Raimi camera moves that swoop and shutter through the improbably Gothic brownstone that holds the spirit of Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg). A rain of maggots interrupts a label's opening night party - one plops in a woman's red cup, and you know she takes a satisfied sip. In the film's standout moment, a wall of oily-black corpses twitch and lurch out of a wall of limbs that looks like it was pulled from Gustave Dore's nightmares.

The first problem is watching the film rely on Snoop Dogg's (lack of) presence. He doesn't arrive, move, or speak with anywhere near the threatening regality of Tony Todd in "Candyman," clearly the movie that "Bones" most often evokes (and likes to imagine it is). It doesn't help matters that the back half turns into a less interesting slasher picture, with the spirit of Jimmy Bones resurrected in the name of revenge against the conspiracy that killed him. By then, the only creativity is in how the candle-wax blood spills onto the ground.

The second issue lies in how the film increasingly plays itself as a black comedy, complete with talkative decapitated heads, but that feels too little too late, an attempt to make amends for the lost sense of atmosphere and spookhouse pleasures, which become more and more chintzy as the story goes. The climax in particular overstuffs and dilutes itself in the process. But the imagination of the film, and its odd blend of of the ghetto and the Gothic (seriously, Jimmy's dilapidated brownstone looks like it was built for Roderick Usher) make it a better film than you'd expect. Not enough that the film can be called good (not by any stretch), but not without some real moments of wit and trashy fun.

Also, any film that brings Pam Grier into its neo-blaxploitation fold has its heart in the right place.

Rating: C+

[Skitch]

Has anyone seen Prophecy (1979)? Holy crap was this fun. Its Jaws pacing meets Leviathan crossed with ManBearPig.

[transmogrifier]

In the spirit of Halloween, if you get a chance, watch the Korean horror film Bedevilled (2010). It up in full on YouTube. (Avoid the trailer, it is too spoilery)

[Dukefrukem]

My Halloween viewings so far. Best Film: Martyrs. Worst Hellraiser: Bloodline Biggest Surprise Saw II. Great Direction Absentia

Saw IV (2007) ★★ Oct 20
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) ★ Oct 19
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) ★½ Oct 18
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) ★★ Oct 18
Nina Forever (2015) ★★★ Oct 16
Absentia (2011) ★★★★½ Oct 14
Late Phases (2014) ★★★ Oct 14
Saw III (2006) ★★ Oct 13
Saw II (2005) ★★★½ Oct 13
Saw (2004) ★★★ Oct 13
Exists (2014) ★★ Oct 12
Martyrs (2015) ★½ Oct 11
Martyrs (2008) ★★★★★ Oct 11
Blair Witch (2016) ★★ Oct 09
The Void (2016) ★★★★ Oct 08
A Ghost Story (2017) ★★★★½ Oct 08

[D_Davis]

The Void is pretty cool.

[Devlin]

My Halloween viewings so far. Best Film: Martyrs. Worst Hellraiser: Bloodline Biggest Surprise Saw II. Great Direction Absentia

Very nice recommendations.

Here are my viewings so far (been on a Hammer films kick lately)-

Horror of Dracula (1958) ***1/2
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) ***1/2
The Devil Rides Out (1968) ***
Ghostbusters (1984) ****
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) ***1/2
Dressed to Kill (1980) ***1/2
Christine (1983) ***
The Beguiled (1971) ***
Diabolique (1955) ***1/2
The Wicker Man (1973) ****

[D_Davis]

Going to watch TCM2 tonight. One of the all time great gonzo films.

[Irish]

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) ★ Oct 19
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) ★½ Oct 18
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) ★★ Oct 18

See!!! You shoulda followed my advice

Martyrs (2015) ★½ Oct 11
Martyrs (2008) ★★★★★ Oct 11

Now that's interesting