VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Hannibal Scorch]

You miserable sods. I really enjoyed Last Night In Soho. Great soundtrack as you’d expect, but thought it had some great casting, great use of the area, which will be way more impactful if you know Soho at all and the story kept me hooked. Also thought it was cleverly shot and edited. It’s biggest weakest? Whilst tense I didn’t think it was as scary as I’d expected. But I’ve loved or really enjoyed all his films but The Worlds End.

[Weezenal]

It went a bit Dr. Who in the middle. I liked it but didn't think it was great. Definitely could have done with being a bit scarier but ended up a bit silly.

[SuperBacon]

12 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Bo Burnham’s film Eighth Grade is on iPlayer at the moment. It’s bloody good. Being that age is hard enough by itself, but in a world of social media... the film puts over how difficult that must be really, really well.

The other thing I love about that film is how it nails the parent/child relationship at that age, from both perspectives. 

Genuinely fantastic stuff from all involved. 

[WeeAl]

Halloween Kills was one of the worst movies I've seen in quite a while. Turgid stuff compared to the last one. I enjoyed the popcorn and the peanut M&M's. Though I almost lost a mouthful of them laughing at one of the kills, which I'm not entirely sure was the desired response. That was the bright moment though, of an otherwise dismal affair. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by WeeAl

[Magnum Milano]

Didn't quite make it through all the Halloween films like I had planned, but gave it a good go.  There are a few spoilers in these notes so be forewarned.

Halloween (1978)

Michael Myers escapes from the Sanitarium where he is being held for the murder of his older sister and returns to his hometown, taking an interest in local girl Laurie Strode. With the kills not being as prolific as in later horrors, this builds tension perfectly and is backed with a chilling, eerie score that I don't think has been surpassed. The original and still one of the best.

Halloween II (1981)

Continuing from where the events of the first film finished, Laurie is taken to the hospital but it’s not long before an on-the-loose Michael is on her trail. A very good sequel, with Myers getting more prolific and varied with his kills. We also get the explanation over why he targeted Laurie.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Some nonsense about a factory owner who plans to cause mass genocide via microchips that have been inserted into Halloween masks. This is a completely separate story from the previous films and has nothing in common with them bar the name. As a stand alone film this probably would work (even though it's not the sort of horror that I'm into) but I didn’t like it at all and wasn't what I was after. Bring back Michael Myers!

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

With Laurie now dead, Michael returns to Haddonfield and turns his attention to his one remaining relative, his niece, and Laurie’s daughter, Jamie. I’m guessing the third film wasn’t well received so they moved away from whatever it was they were trying out and reverted back to the tried and tested. Drags a bit at the Sheriff’s house before one almighty twist at the end.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

An obsessed Dr Loomis continues his hunt for Michael Myers, now using a hospitalized Jamie, Michael’s prime target who has somehow developed telepathic tendencies, to help. Someone thought a mass murderer trying to kill and repeatedly stab a nine-year old girl to death was a good idea for a movie?

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

A cult, Michael fathering a child with Jamie, his 15 year old niece, members of the Strode family moving into the Myers old property. Who dreamt up this? Not as bad the previous movie but not sure why it was bought back after six years. Shame to see Donald Pleasence so old and frail here.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Turns out Laurie faked her death, moved towns and assumed a new identity. Michael hasn’t forgotten about her though and after stealing files from Loomis’ house is back on her trail. A vast improvement on recent offerings. Not sure how Michael can come back from being decapitated!

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

The explanation for why Michael is still alive is beyond a stretch! After the Michael and Laurie story is wrapped up, he returns to Haddonfield, not happy that a reality show is being held in his old home. Very 1990s and clearly influence by Scream and the Blair Witch Project. An unnecessary resurrection.

Halloween (2007)

Rob Zombie’s reinterpretation of the first film. I liked how we got a bit more of Michael’s backstory here, but that was one of few pluses. None of the characters are likeable, Laurie and her teen pals are annoying, while the dialogue with its reliance on profanity comes across as desperate.

Halloween II (2009)

While the first movie tried to stay true to the original, Rob Zombie goes off on his own acid fuelled direction for this. Just blood, gore, violence, nudity and the f-word. Laurie remains as unlikeable and obnoxious as before and nothing like Jamie Lee’s version, while Loomis is on a book tour and Myers lives in the woods. The worst movie of the lot.

Final rankings: 1, 2, 7 (H20), 4, 6, 5, 9, 8 (Resurrection), 3, 10

[Perry]

You should've kept going, Halloween (2018) is one of the better ones

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

Been ill with a chesty cough since Wednesday which forced me off work Friday so have spent the last 3 days in bed watching a shitload of horror movies through various means

Psycho Goreman - Campy fun movie about 2 kids ‘befriending’ a monster warrior after finding his power locket

IT Chapter 2 - been holding off seeing this for a long time as I wasn’t that big a fan of part one nor the original TV movie, this wasn’t much better imo but the ending was much more satisfying than the 1990 version 

Death Screams - dull early 80s slasher set around a carnival, a group of teens stalked by a machete wielding weirdo, one of whom was responsible for an accident involving the local sheriff’s son. The killer reveal is poor

The Prey - another 80s slasher, this was a little bit better, this time a group of campers in the Rockies are stalked by  a lone survivor from a fire in the late 40s at a gypsy camp

Reefer Madness - the infamous cult film that’s little more than a propaganda film against Marijuana use. Very odd and disjointed 

Phantom Of The Opera - the 1943 version made by Universal. In this take, the Phantom is a composer obsessed with an actress, who takes his revenge to help push her career when he is left disfigured after killing a rival for stealing his work. Claude Rains is magnificent as the titular Phantom

Rope - a Hitchcock thriller from the 40s about 2 students killing a fellow student and hosting a party with their victim’s family to cover it up until James Stewart’s reporter character suspects something is up

The Hitcher - Fantastic thriller from the 80s, the late Rutger Hauer is wonderfully sadistic in stalking and framing C Thomas Howell for a series of murders, all because Howell shoved him out his car for threatening to kill him

Bride of Chucky - the 4th film in the Child’s Play franchise, and the first in the ‘of Chucky’ quadrilogy. Memorable for Jennifer Tilly being smoking hot in a corset and fishnets, the doll sex scene and one of the best kills of the series in the dashboard nail gun sequence against the late John Ritter

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Finally got to watch Dune. I totally get why people wouldn't like it, but I loved it. I'm a huge fan of the book series anyway, and I even loved the Lynch film, but it just smashed my expectations. 

[Mr_Danger]

Halloween Kills. Evil dies tonight and so does my interest in this reboot. Fuck me I know horror has a low bar for audience satisfaction but give me at least one character I can relate to and root for. Some decent kills and a seed of a good idea for a Halloween film but unfortunately it’s lost in a messy film where old Mike gets the 2002 Triple H push. All made worse by the fact they did such a great job with the first one.

[BomberPat]

Phenomena

I first watched this one back when the Arrow Films DVD came out, and loved it. Brilliant soundtrack by Goblin, plus some incongruous Motorhead and Iron Maiden. Got in the mood to watch in again after watching the first two Halloweens, because it's got Donald Pleasance in it. 

It really doesn't hold up at all, and I'm struggling to see what I saw in it first time around - it's Dario Argento, so there's some gorgeously lit and framed shots, and some bonkers visuals, but the acting is atrocious, even accounting for the usual uncanniness of English-voiced Italian films where everyone sounds like they ADR in an aircraft hanger and have never spoken to a human being more. The version that's on Prime also has random bursts where the original Italian dialogue is still in place instead of the English - I'm assuming it's all the bits that were cut from the US release. The plot is just an insane convoluted mess - sort of expected from Argento, but there's just so many elements in play that don't really need to be there. Jennifer Connelly's character can telepathically communicate with insects, and you'd be surprised how infrequently that really comes up. There's a killer on the loose, an oppressive Swiss boarding school, a sharp left turn into "wait, what?" territory for the reveal of the killer's identity, and there's a chimp knocking about. 

[chokeout]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Phenomena

I first watched this one back when the Arrow Films DVD came out, and loved it. Brilliant soundtrack by Goblin, plus some incongruous Motorhead and Iron Maiden. Got in the mood to watch in again after watching the first two Halloweens, because it's got Donald Pleasance in it. 

It really doesn't hold up at all, and I'm struggling to see what I saw in it first time around - it's Dario Argento, so there's some gorgeously lit and framed shots, and some bonkers visuals, but the acting is atrocious, even accounting for the usual uncanniness of English-voiced Italian films where everyone sounds like they ADR in an aircraft hanger and have never spoken to a human being more. The version that's on Prime also has random bursts where the original Italian dialogue is still in place instead of the English - I'm assuming it's all the bits that were cut from the US release. The plot is just an insane convoluted mess - sort of expected from Argento, but there's just so many elements in play that don't really need to be there. Jennifer Connelly's character can telepathically communicate with insects, and you'd be surprised how infrequently that really comes up. There's a killer on the loose, an oppressive Swiss boarding school, a sharp left turn into "wait, what?" territory for the reveal of the killer's identity, and there's a chimp knocking about. 

I had pretty much the same experience with it. Loved it on first watch then came back to it years later and its a mess. Argento is held in such high regard but he's always been a Director who puts style and memorable visuals over anything resembling a coherent plot. You can always argue that it's lost in translation but its up there with Halloween 3 for a scattergun plot with elements that are only casually mentioned once and never actually explained.

Banging soundtrack though... 

[BomberPat]

Argento definitely has a creative peak through the late '70s and early '80s, and I think Phenomena is just beyond the crest of that wave.

I don't think prioritising style and memorable visuals over a coherent plot is necessarily a bad thing - my favourite bits of Twin Peaks series 3 and a lot of David Lynch's work largely fit that description - but I think Phenomena struggles to quite do well enough at either end. Probably its biggest weaknesses is how much it introduces really interesting ideas and then does very little with them - in terms of plot structure, the film would be barely any different if she wasn't able to psychically communicate with insects, and that's a bonkers criticism to have to make.

[SaitoRyo]

Argento's run of Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno and Tenebrae is outstanding (ignoring the outlier that is the long-forgotten drama The Five Days of Milan). 

They're not perfect, by any means, but they're all really very good in their own ways. 

Phenomena is where the decline really starts. It's a mad film. Donald Pleasance running around with a pet chimp. Something about insects with magical psychic powers. Boarding school lasses getting killed off for fun. As usual, there are some decent visuals and ideas, but the plot is a mess and the tone of the film jarring. 

His next one, Opera, was better but after that it's a sorry state of affairs. Argento's disciple Michele Soavi was making much better Italian horror films in this era, before the money dried up and Italian horror moved to television.  

[bAzTNM#1]

On 11/1/2021 at 7:00 PM, ReturnOfTheMack said:

Finally got to watch Dune. I totally get why people wouldn't like it, but I loved it. I'm a huge fan of the book series anyway, and I even loved the Lynch film, but it just smashed my expectations. 

I loved the Lynch 80s version. I can kind of see why people crap on it (TOTO doing the soundtrack?!?!) and the story arc, but I thought it was quite an acceptable 80s sci-fi film. I've seen far worse.

Onto Italian horrors past the cinema times, watch the original "Green Inferno" from about 1985. Was also released as "Cannibal Holocaust 2" over here. It's bloody hilarious. Somebody done a great 80s keyboardy soundtrack and his name escapes me. Whole thing is fun. It's like a music video. It even ends with a brass band walking through the streets - come on.

TRAILER:

 

Edited November 3, 2021 by bAzTNM#1

[DavidB6937]

4 hours ago, bAzTNM#1 said:

I loved the Lynch 80s version. I can kind of see why people crap on it (TOTO doing the soundtrack?!?!) and the story arc, but I thought it was quite an acceptable 80s sci-fi film. I've seen far worse.

Onto Italian horrors past the cinema times, watch the original "Green Inferno" from about 1985. Was also released as "Cannibal Holocaust 2" over here. It's bloody hilarious. Somebody done a great 80s keyboardy soundtrack and his name escapes me. Whole thing is fun. It's like a music video. It even ends with a brass band walking through the streets - come on.

That's incredible.

"Well we could amputate the leg but.." *FUNKY MONKEY MUSIC*