VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[FLips]

Saw Beetlejuice for the first time the other night and really enjoyed it. Got a lot of big laughs from me. Love the wonky aesthetics and colours of the sandworm planet. 

[SaitoRyo]

White Lightning

Hold on, what's this? Burt? And the boys?! Having a laugh?!? This I gotta see!

Reynolds plays Gator McCluskey, a con who was sent away for running moonshine and is now being allowed out to basically gather intel on other moonshine runners. There were a tonne of moonshine-oriented hicksploitation films from this era, but this has actual quality thanks to a decent director and cast. 

It's a very sweaty, swampy film that has all the requisite car chases, wise cracks and a little bit of titillation. I enjoyed it, as I tend to do with this sort of disposable fare, and will likely watch the sequel Gator at some point. 

[Devon Malcolm]

49 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

White Lightning

Hold on, what's this? Burt? And the boys?! Having a laugh?!? This I gotta see!

Reynolds plays Gator McCluskey, a con who was sent away for running moonshine and is now being allowed out to basically gather intel on other moonshine runners. There were a tonne of moonshine-oriented hicksploitation films from this era, but this has actual quality thanks to a decent director and cast. 

It's a very sweaty, swampy film that has all the requisite car chases, wise cracks and a little bit of titillation. I enjoyed it, as I tend to do with this sort of disposable fare, and will likely watch the sequel Gator at some point. 

Watched this a few months ago, it's really good. Still haven't seen Gator yet though.

[FLips]

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

As part of the FLips Gets Spooky season I watched another "proper" horror film for the very first time. Loved every second of it, it was just absolutely stupid from start to finish.

My favourite parts were in no particular order;

• Nancy's drunken mum pulling bottles of vodka from everywhere whenever she was on screen
• Nancy's drunken mum in general. She was both a weird actor and a bad actor and it made for fantastic viewing
• Despite all the kids dying in their sleep and telling everyone it's happening in their sleep, every adult responding "you need to calm down and get some sleep".
• The end credits song that had us both pissing ourselves "it's just a dreammmm NO IT'S A NIGHTMARE!"

• Freddy running. I would pay any amount of DLC money to have him run like this in Dead by Daylight

So yeah, thought it was great. Wasn't scary at all, and honestly I think this is one I built up in my head based on reputation because while some of the effects were really cool like Tina getting invisibly thrown around and Johnny Depp getting eviscerated, the jumps are easy to spot and the whole thing is buried under loud pop synth the entire time. I can see why Freddy became a horror icon though because despite it being really hammy and stupid, the whole concept is bags of fun. I heard people say this one isn't meant to be goofy compared to the others but you could have fooled me, it was verging on comedy at times.

The sequel is on Youtube so we're sticking that on next.

[LaGoosh]

The third one is fantastic fun.

[FLips]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

The third one is fantastic fun.

Well we just watched the second one and my wife is currently making us cups of tea while I load up the third one. 

[Onyx2]

2 hours ago, FLips said:

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

As part of the FLips Gets Spooky season I watched another "proper" horror film for the very first time. Loved every second of it, it was just absolutely stupid from start to finish.

My favourite parts were in no particular order;

• Nancy's drunken mum pulling bottles of vodka from everywhere whenever she was on screen
• Nancy's drunken mum in general. She was both a weird actor and a bad actor and it made for fantastic viewing
• Despite all the kids dying in their sleep and telling everyone it's happening in their sleep, every adult responding "you need to calm down and get some sleep".
• The end credits song that had us both pissing ourselves "it's just a dreammmm NO IT'S A NIGHTMARE!"

• Freddy running. I would pay any amount of DLC money to have him run like this in Dead by Daylight

So yeah, thought it was great. Wasn't scary at all, and honestly I think this is one I built up in my head based on reputation because while some of the effects were really cool like Tina getting invisibly thrown around and Johnny Depp getting eviscerated, the jumps are easy to spot and the whole thing is buried under loud pop synth the entire time. I can see why Freddy became a horror icon though because despite it being really hammy and stupid, the whole concept is bags of fun. I heard people say this one isn't meant to be goofy compared to the others but you could have fooled me, it was verging on comedy at times.

The sequel is on Youtube so we're sticking that on next.

Can't believe you didn't mention Pat Sharp being hoovered through the door. 

 

 

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

4 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

The third one is fantastic fun.

Always my go to if I want to watch an Elm Street film, helped by that killer Dokken theme

[SaitoRyo]

Always had time for the Nightmare on Elm Street series, particularly 1, 3 and New Nightmare. They were sleepover classics back in the day.

Anyway, last night's film was...

Eye of the Storm

A 1991 thriller about these two brothers whose parents are murdered in front of them, with the younger brother becoming blind during the incident. They decide to stay and live in the gas station/motel/café that their parents ran in the middle of the desert, when one day a bizarre married couple show up and all hell breaks loose. 

Dennis Hopper plays the drunken husband and he's the best thing in it, with Lara Flynn Boyle as his young, former call girl wife. With them two in it, coupled with the western iconography and general feel of the film, it reminded me a bit of Red Rock West. It's obviously nowhere near as good as that, but it's a decent enough way to kill 90 minutes (even if it does descend into total psycho horror silliness in the final 20 minutes). 

Someone recently uploaded it to YouTube, if you're partial. 

[Chris B]

10 hours ago, FLips said:

Well we just watched the second one and my wife is currently making us cups of tea while I load up the third one. 

I've become very fond of the second one, partly because of how the director said for years that anyone reading a queer subtext into it was weird, because it wasn't there. 

Then, years later, the writer admitted that the homoerotic aspect was entirely intentional, and so did the lead actor (who has made a documentary about it). The director watched it again years later and was like "I genuinely had no idea I was making such a clearly gay movie".

With the intention in mind, it's such a fun film. 

The third one is really good, but where the character became one-note. 

The seventh one is, unexpectedly, brilliant. 

[DavidB6937]

Nightmare used to scare the absolute shit out of me. I saw it quite young. The music and Freddy and just everything. I do find it quite funny now though, even if the music still sends a shiver down my spine.

Fun fact - Robert Englund aka Freddy was the reason I started going to conventions back in 2003. Saw an advert with him in in Empire and went to Milton Keynes.

Ended up working cons for a good 15 years or so. Including working with Robert directly a few times. Even got a photo with him in full makeup which was the most awesome thing.

Actually met my wife through doing conventions too. So weirdly in some respects I owe my whole life to that series.

[Devon Malcolm]

Yeah, the third one is my favourite and then Renny Harlin got hold of the fourth one and it was almost all downhill from that point.

[Merzbow]

Dream Warriors was genuinely my favorite film as a kid, yeah, as a kid..

I feel like they knew kids were watching the Freddy films anyway and while not making it for them they 100% had them in mind. (When I say kids I mean older than I was, I was far far too young to be watching it)

Edited October 11, 2024 by Merzbow

[BomberPat]

Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning

This one came up on our film watchalong night, and I was excited for it - when it first came out, I was writing for a music website, and also ended up as their go-to guy to review dodgy straight-to-DVD action movies; the guy who got me the gig was an old mate who knew I was into wrestling, so when a film called The Package came out starring Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren, he offered me a choice to interview old Stone Cold about it. Austin ended up pulling out of the interview, so I just got a review copy instead, and they found my review funny, so just kept sending similar stuff my way.

This one, though, took me by surprise. The plot is kind of interesting, it turns the concept of the original film on its head and does interesting things with it, and Van Damme is the villain rather than the hero, and is pretty chilling in that role. All good stuff, and I was looking forward to seeing it again.


I had misremembered a lot about this film, as it turns out. It's still good, but the big plot twist that I had remembered unfolding in one way actually happens completely differently. It is insanely violent and bleak, and is basically just a series of grim fight scenes taped together into a movie, with a completely bonkers plot tagged on top. Andrei Arlovski is in it, just fucking people up constantly. It's horrible. But still really good, and a genuinely interesting direction to take what had been a middling action franchise.

[Jesse]

Am I also misremembering or does that have a fantastic Tony Jaa fight in it?