Two classics that have inspired hundreds of remakes, spoofs, rip-offs and homages. My favorite part about George Romero’s zombies is how they act as a metaphor for some social statement, whether the topic be the civil rights movement (as in “Night”) or the advent of American over-consumption (as in “Dawn”). Of course, if social relevancy doesn’t interest you, you can just dig on the gore, suspense, and dark comedy. The ending of “Night of the Living Dead” catches me off guard every time and I can’t help but draw similarities between the plot of that film and our current political climate.
Every time I mention any of the F13 movies to anyone with any kind of “integrity” they say “Man those movies were really lame.” I can’t believe its even necessary to say it. The entire franchise is as exploitive as exploitation film can get. Some of the installments bordered on softcore porno with involved snuff film “money shots” awkwardly placed in between. The goofy parfait of gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence made the slasher genre into kind of an anabolic Eight Ball– and just as much fun. Friday The 13th started out as a rip-off of that genre and now its one of the biggest franchises to be included in it.
Being Jason’s first legitimate appearance, Friday The 13th Part 2 seems a far cry from the Jason we’ve come to grow used to after 17 years. I like this movie because Jason is more of a crazy hillbilly with a pillowcase on his head than the slow and silent stalker we’re accustomed to. He’s fast, wily and appears the most human than he would in the entire series. I could go on, but there are experts on the matter.
I think I caught part of Hellraiser 3 at my parents house while I was doing laundry and I just couldn’t believe how awful it was compared to how I remembered it being when I was a teenager. I’d seen Hellraiser 2 somewhat recently and remember it being ok, but kind of goofy towards the end. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the original Clive Barker film in a really long time. As stupid as the series has become, the mythology is kind of interesting, and even if you aren’t totally into it, you are likely to find yourself researching fan sites and what not after viewing.
This is another franchise that started out using horror elements to make a statement that totally dissolved as the series progressed. The commentary featured in Hellraiser about morality and moral ambiguity, kind of makes it into an other-worldly S&M film. Kim and I found ourselves watching this movie totally not remembering half of the scene. I totally missed the obvious references to “alternative lifestyles” that are thinly veiled in this film.
As much of a standard refrain it is to say “the first one was the best” when it comes to movie franchies with oodles of sequels, it really, honestly is the case with this one. Hellraiser is to its franchise what Dirty Harry was to it’s series: an exceptional film with a lot of bad sequels.
Much the case with Hellraiser, it occurred to me that I’d never really seen the original Psycho as an adult. I think I only half paid attention to it as a child (the beginning is kind of slow for a kid to get into) and never thought about it again.
Since Kim and I moved into the new apartment we’ve been renting a lot of Hitchcock films from Naro Expanded Video and have come to appreciate the man on my own terms. He was really an honest to God genius filmmaker. Especially when it came to creating tension amongst the audience members (RE: the ending sequence of “The Man Who Knew Too Little”). Psycho is kind of like the great grandpappy of Silence of The Lambs. Sure, it’s 1960 and you just aren’t going to see the same level of violence that you see commited by Hannibal Lechter, but you find that same likable quality in Norman Bates sinister and charming personality.
Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates is a sweet, charming, boyish fellow whom you simply cannot help liking. Even though I know the plot of Psycho backwards and forward I couldn’t help myself from hoping that Bates is innocent or the victim of some strange manipulation.. he seems like such a sweet kid.
The shower scene really is every bit as good as your gramdparents have been saying it is for the last 40+ years. I don’t think I’d ever really watched the whole thing before, but after it was done I just turned to Kim and said “Wow.” Also, Psycho has some one of the best scores ever in the history of film music. I know this all seems so obvious to a lot of people but I want to encourage you jaded old farts to go rent this movie and appreciate it. It’s the Wizard of Oz of psychological thrillers and it deserves your respect.
I haven’t watched a lot of silent films (I do love Fritz Lang’s M, however) but was just something I thought we should watch this year. I recently read that Nosferatu is in the Public Domain and that might why the version I had looked kind of shitty but its a film worth watching if you have any interest in the origins of vampire movies.
Essentially, Nosferatu was a plagiarized re-working of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula with character name changes and removed portions of the story. It is surprisingly accurate to the original story based on what it does include. Francis Ford Coppola took far more liberties with his licensed version of the story than F. W. Murnau did with Nosferatu.
I think some of the scenes of Count Orlock are genuinely terrifying by modern standards, and it still stands up today as an excellent horror film.
This flick was 100 times better than I ever remembered it being. What the hell happened to John Carpenter? It seemed like right after Big Trouble In Little China he just drove himself into a ditch and never made it out. This is such an amazing movie I won’t even say anymore about it. Go rent it now.
A woman who was raised in an orphanage for disabled children returns with her husband and adopted HIV positive son to reopen the doors. Her son has tendency to talk to his imaginary friends which leads to his complete disappearance and questions of Laura’s involvement with the history of the orphanage or her complete mental breakdown.
Not only was this film produced by Guillermo Del Toro, the writer and director of Pan’s Labyrinth, but there are some elements in The Orphanage that reminded me of Pan’s Labyrinth. The two biggies are the puzzle games that Laura plays to find her son, which greatly resembles the tasks set by the Faun for Ofelio to save her mother’s life. The second is the ending: I won’t spoil it for you, but the ending of Pan’s Labyrinth made me want to eat a gun, but the ending of The Orphanage– as similar as it is– seems to me so much more uplifting. This is a subject of contention between Kim and I.
The bottom line is that this one of our new favorite movies.
I guess some Americans are remaking it in English. I don’t think this is necessary.
The premise is far from cliche: seperated siamese twins going on a New York City killing spree to enact revenge against the doctors that seperated them. The thing is that one of the twins is a perfectly normal, gullible kid and the other is a ghastly beast that barely resembles a human being. His brother keeps him in a padlocked basket (hence the title) and communicates with him psychicly.
Yes, really.
I rented this on the merit of a ridiculous youtube clip i stumbled across. I like goofy bad horror movies– I even own a few. This movie is so bad I couldn’t even justify staying up to finish it, but rest assured, it’s the best possible kind of bad movie…
Bonus: They made two sequels.
- Grindstone Road (2008)
This is the worst kind of bad movie. I seriously got a headache from the meandering meaningless plot. At one point I even fell asleep, woke up and I had missed nothing. Nothing happens in this movie.. Fairuza Balk looks like she got hit in the face with a bag of hot quarters. There’s ghosts, there’s crazy old Christians, there’s a young couple caught in between them. There’s so many god damn surprise plot twists that it just isn’t surprising.. it just one groan after another. This is a horrible movie.. but it has a great photo on the box, and thats why we rented it. By the way, this movie is so bad it doesn’t have a wikipedia article. Take note.
Interesting note: there are some plot devices in common with El Orfanato, which is ironic because they are at totally opposite ends of the spectrum.
Another in the “I haven’t seen this since I was a kid” category. Kim had never seen this OR The Thing and she loved them both. The best horror is believable, and the premise of The Hills Have Eyes is totally believable and terrifying. Shit, whenever Kim drives through Chesapeake, VA she makes sure there’s a full tank of gas. You never know what kind of melon-fucking inbreds are out there waiting for you to get a flat tire.
The remake is every bit as good as the original, by the way. If you are familiar with one version but not the other, you won’t be disappointed.
I confess that I bought this because it was like 5 dollars and the cover was absurd looking. Apparently its from a series that was on the Encore channel. It amounts to something Tales From The Crypt would have put out if they had a little bit better production values. There’s a clown giving kids ice cream that kills their parents when they eat it.. thats all there is to it.
It’s taken us forever to get around to seeing just ONE of the Saw movies. Honestly I don’t know why they made five of these. It was alright, the idea is clever. Cary Elwes is probably the worst part. He is atrocious as a dramatic actor, simply terrible. The worst part for us was how the filmmakers constantly seem to be trying to blow your mind with how brilliant they think they are but we found Saw (and, Saw 2) to be very, very predictable. I think the only thing I didn’t see coming was that Jigsaw was the “corpse” laying the middle of the floor.
