Author Topic: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz  (Read 4799 times)

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As has become common, my 31 days of Halloween shit has started earlier and earlier. So far:

1. Malignant (2021, HBO Max): Rad. I don't think it's as crazy as people have talked it up, I do think it's shocking after the past decade of super slow burn demon movies and shit spurred on by James Wan, ironically. It's just a fun B-movie with a studio budget that hasn't been made probably since Drag Me To Hell.

2. The Evil Dead (1981, HBO Max): Rad. It's been so long since I've seen this and it's so overshadowed by 2 and AOD that I really forgot 1. How fucking grimy and gross it is and 2. How Ash isn't even the main character until the last like...20 minutes?

3. Evil Dead II (1987, HBO Max): Rad. I had also forgotten about the first 10 minutes or so being a remake that completely cuts out all the extra characters. The increase in production and film making skill is so apparent right from the jump and while I really dislike the redneck characters, this is a real treat. I find this to be much wilder and crazier than Malignant, tbh.

4. Army of Darkness (1992, HBO Max): Personally my favorite just in terms of enjoyment, although I do think ED2 is prob better over all. This is really peak Bruce Campbell as a handsome, charismatic lead and it's really weird he was pretty much contained to TV or bit parts in B movies the rest of his career.

5. Poltergeist (1982, HBO Max): Rad. I hadn't seen this since I was a kid and man it's awesome. Might be the best Spielberg associated production, imo.

6.  Return of the Living Dead (1985, HBO Max): Rad. First time viewing and it was delightful. Clu Gulager da gawd.

7. Night of the Living Dead (1990, AMC On Demand): Okay. Expected more out of the gore and effects being Savini helmed, but the acting is pretty good. It's just...so similar to the original that it feels so simple and dated even by 1990.

8. The Brood (1979, HBO Max): Really neat. First time viewing. Very cozy.

9. Child's Play (1987, Peacock): Pretty good. Really holds up quite well, imo. When Chucky finally comes alive and flips out on Andy's mom :dead Surprisingly feels like it has a pretty high budget for such a concept and being a new property and idea. I'd say it feels like it has much higher production values than Seed of Chucky and the two DTV sequels with Fiona Dourif. Some real strong animatronic work at times (some dodgy stuff, too, of course), couple of real solid explosions and shit. The kid playing Andy is real uneven, but when he's good, he's maybe a little too good like the director really fucked with him to get the reactions he wanted.

10. Evil Dead: Regeneration (2005, PS2): Mostly fun but definitely very repetitive and pretty ugly even for a PS2 game in 2021. At the start it really does seem to capture the feel of ED 2 and AOD but as it goes on it gets away from the spirit in favor of getting real video gamey. It's the kind of game that my brain turns to mush and my eyes glaze over any longer than a 45 minute session, but I do have a soft spot for licensed games.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2021, 11:02:32 AM by Joe Molotov »

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2021, 09:07:26 PM »



I wasn't scared at all watching this, but I'm also not a racist  :trumps
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Potato

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2021, 01:46:22 AM »
(Image removed from quote.)


I wasn't scared at all watching this, but I'm also not a racist  :trumps
You know I've never played Resident Evil 5...oh, that's not Resident Evil  :hmm
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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2021, 09:25:28 AM »
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I wasn't scared at all watching this, but I'm also not a racist  :trumps

filler is the least racist person you’ll ever meet. Believe me folks  :trumps
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Pissy F Benny

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2021, 09:49:29 AM »
i clicked this thread thinking it was about the world championship wrestling pay per view extravaganzas, not some ghey ass horror shit :gurl
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Propagandhim

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2021, 09:50:19 AM »
Youtube did some thing a few years back where they made all these shitty B indie horror movies free to watch.  I must have watched a dozen of them shits.  Was a good time.  Hope they do it again.

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2021, 10:39:45 AM »
Shout out to my physical media homies. I bought a big stack of (mostly) horror blu-rays a few weeks ago on sale for Halloween, and I've watched almost all them already.

Kill Count:
6x Shout Factory
3x Vestron Video
2x Arrow Video
1x Hen's Tooth Video
1x Synapse
1x Vinegar Syndrome

I watched Firestarter last night, first time watch. I can't decide if this is low budget X-Men or a big budget Scanners. It definately doesn't have an antagonist as strong as Michael Ironside from Scanners. Villain duties are split between Martin Sheen as the evil bureaucrat and George C. Scott as a psychotic pedo, but neither of them are sufficiently menacing or have enough of an arc to give the movie much oomph. In the end, you just feel kinda bad for all the random Shop employees getting btfo when Drew Barrymore turns on godmode and starts torching everyone.
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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2021, 12:52:08 PM »
Halloween is the one time of the year that I really abuse my Cinemageddon account.

Having said that, the recommendations on this thread are shit-tier terrible so far.
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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2021, 02:59:15 PM »
BTW, I was watching Argento's Cat O'Nine Tails a few days ago, and it has a scene were a reporter is trying to get some information out of his cop friend but the cop won't tell him and he's like "You're a bastard" and the cop says "All cops are bastards." I know that slogan's been around forever, but it still made me chuckle seeing it in an Italian movie from the 70's.
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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2021, 12:47:03 AM »
 :bow :bow :bow :bow :bow2 :bow2 :bow2 :bow2
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Pissy F Benny

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2021, 10:30:51 AM »
the only childs play thing i've ever seen :snob

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Propagandhim

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2021, 01:42:14 PM »
The Childs Play that takes place in a mental hospital is quite good.

Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #12 on: September 27, 2021, 10:07:36 AM »
The Cell - Dir. Tarsem Singh, 2000 (Blu-Ray) * 1/2
I mean, the plot is complete nonsense, but that bisected horse tho. Also Jennifer Lopez wearing leather battle armor and ripping off a demon Vincent D'Onofrio's nipples.

Silent Hill: Revelations - Dir. M. J. Bassett, 2012 (Blu-Ray) **
This movie is pretty bad obviously, but about half-way through it I came to the realization that this could have been the best DTV Hellraiser movie ever made by literally only changing the title. At the end of the movie Carrie-Anne Moss (who, yes, is in this movie for some reason) turns into a literal Cenobite when all of her skin flies off and these buzzsaws stick into her skull while she's sword fighting Pyramid Head (don't ask). She could have been Pinhead, they could have called it Hellraiser: Revelations and I would have pogged out of my mind.  Fun Fact: M. J. Bassett is the third director to come out as trans after directing a movie with Carrie-Anne Moss in it.  8)

Shock - Dir. Mario Bava, 1977 (Prime Video) **
Mario Bava's last film before his death in 1980. It's not one of his best. The story is about a nervous woman and her son moving back into their old home with her new husband, seven years after the suicide of her first husband. The husband is gone a lot because of his work and the son begins acting strange and violent, leading the mom to think that he's being possessed by the spirit of her late husband. The acting is terrible, at least in the English dub. I though the son was autistic for the first half of the movie before I realized he was just really badly written and acted, and the adults barely fair better. The plot is complete nonsense as well, but all and in all it's an entertainingly bad movie with an ending stupid enough to work.

Slither - Dir. James Gunn, 2006 (Blu-Ray) ** 1/2
James Gunn's tribute to slithery, oozy 80's creature features hasn't aged as well as I thought it would. It's still a fun movie but I'd rather just watch Night of the Creeps tbh. Tom Atkins >> Nathan Fillion

Bride of Re-Animator - Dir. Brian Yuzna, 1989 (Blu-Ray) ***
Like Society, BoR is really just an excuse for Yuzna and Screaming Mad George to put some ridiculous practical effects on screen than it is a fully fleshed out movie. Apparently it had a pretty rushed production. But the effects are really cool though, and Jeffrey Combs is as unhinged as ever.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2021, 10:13:25 AM by Joe Molotov »
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HardcoreRetro

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #13 on: September 27, 2021, 10:14:09 AM »
Silent Hill: Revelations Dir. M. J. Bassett, 2012 (Blu-Ray) **
This movie is pretty bad obviously, but about half-way through it I came to the realization that this could have been the best DTV Hellraiser movie ever made by literally only changing the title. At the end of the movie Carrie-Anne Moss (who, yes, is in this movie for some reason) turns into a literal Cenobite when all of her skin flies off and these buzzsaws stick into her skull while she's sword fighting Pyramid Head (don't ask). She could have been Pinhead, they could have called it Hellraiser: Revelations and I would have pogged out of my mind.  Fun Fact: M. J. Bassett is the third director to come out as trans after directing a movie with Carrie-Anne Moss in it.  8)

Having a pop-tart jumpscare at the start of the movie elevates it to a masterpiece in my eyes. Having Pyramid Head operating the merry-go-round for the kids. Also Pyramid Head being the hero of the movie. Jon Snow's acting chops.

It's such fucking trash. I love it.

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #14 on: September 27, 2021, 10:59:18 AM »
It had an amazing cast of actors that are in it for like two seconds. Sean Bean, Radha Mitchell, and Deborah Kara Unger all returned from the first movie probably just to fulfill contractual obligations because even though Sean Bean was in it for a few minutes (about as much as he was in the first movie) the other two were in both in it for literally 5 seconds each to deliver one line. Then they added Malcom McDowell to be in one scene and Carrie-Anne Moss to be in movie for about two minutes. And then Pyramid Head shows up occasionally and he's a good guy now.
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Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #15 on: September 28, 2021, 09:48:50 AM »
Horror of Dracula - Dir. Terence Fisher, 1958 (Blu-Ray) ****
Hammers first stab at Dracula after the success of The Curse of Frankenstein. It's got Christopher Lee, it's got Peter Cushing, it's got glorious gothic set design, and it's got an 80 minute runtime; what more could you ask for? Plot wise, it sticks pretty close to the original story, with one major change being that instead of just an innocent bystander, Johnathan Harker is already a vampire hunter before the movie begins and he enters Castle Dracula under false pretext in order to kill Dracula. He kills Dracula's bride but fails to kill Dracula himself and that's what sends Dracula after Harker's fiancée Lucy in order to take her as a replacement.
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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #16 on: September 28, 2021, 07:11:55 PM »
16. Final Destination 2 (HBO Max): I'm struggling to think of a horror sequel that so perfectly understands the formula set for it and executes it with such precision. The absolute dumbest fucking movie imaginable and it is great.

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Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #17 on: September 29, 2021, 09:14:16 AM »
Midnight Mass - Dir. Mike Flanagan, 2021 (Netflix) ***
The perfect spooky show for the season, it reminds me of the Stephen King miniseries from the 90's. The Stand, The Tommyknockers, Storm of the Century, even The Langoliers, they always felt kinda special to me as a kid and this feels the same way. Is it perfect? No. Did it really need to be 7 hours long and have more soliloquys than Hamlet? Maybe not. But I really enjoyed it. Special shoutout to Samantha Sloyan who plays the evil self-righteous bitch Bev all the way to the hilt.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2021, 09:34:04 AM by Joe Molotov »
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Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #18 on: September 29, 2021, 03:04:24 PM »
John Goes To Hell: The Final Wick
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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #19 on: September 29, 2021, 05:53:30 PM »
I appreciate you listing the place to stream it from
:O

Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #20 on: September 30, 2021, 09:33:20 AM »
No One Gets Out Alive - Dir. Santiago Menghini, 2021 (Netflix) ** 1/2
You: "The real horror of this movie is the real-life horror that illegal immigrants in US face every day; the fear of being exploited by employers and negligent landlords, forced to work substandard jobs and live in substandard housing, being exploited financially, exploited sexually, having no one to turn to for legal protection because of their status."

Me, an intellectual: "Wow, cool monster!"

spoiler (click to show/hide)
Real talk, as a fan of monster lore, there's a lot of monster lore here that's just barely hinted at in the movie (it's based on a book, so maybe it's spelled out more there). Apparently the monster feeds on minds, both literally and figuratively. First it shows you comforting visions to relax you, and then it bites your head off. But if you can repel the monster in your mind palace, you also repel it in real life. And then after the monster feeds, it exudes some kind of healing aura, which is why Red & Becker were feeding it, to cure Becker's illness. And apparently everyone that it kills comes back as an angry ghost that haunts the area? And there are lots of moths, for some reason. None of this really seems to connect to the "illegal immigrant" theme, other than the fact that the monster was discovered in some kind of underground temple in Mexico, but it doesn't seem to be based on any kind of actual Mexican folklore.
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Midnight Mass - Dir. Mike Flanagan, 2021 (Netflix) ***
The perfect spooky show for the season, it reminds me of the Stephen King miniseries from the 90's. The Stand, The Tommyknockers, Storm of the Century, even The Langoliers, they always felt kinda special to me as a kid and this feels the same way. Is it perfect? No. Did it really need to be 7 hours long and have more soliloquys than Hamlet? Maybe not. But I really enjoyed it. Special shoutout to Samantha Sloyan who plays the evil self-righteous bitch Bev all the way to the hilt.
Please stop erasing atheists with your non-horror series in this horror thread :wag
Why I felt betrayed by Netflix’s Midnight Mass
Horror is a natural refuge for atheists and sinners. But Netflix’s Midnight Mass made me feel erased.

...

Even though Midnight Mass does still contain plenty of overt horror elements, I think the series actually pushes Flanagan quite far outside the horror genre. If anything, I felt baited by this story, which plays within the modern horror sandbox while undercutting much of the ethos of modern horror via its embrace of Christianity as a source of hope and nourishment for lost souls facing an incomprehensible crisis. Many critics have found that to be a good thing, praising the series’ emphasis on the less sordid aspects of horror. Yet while Flanagan has every right to keep writing relentlessly hopeful stories, for horror fans like me, the effect of his optimism is frustration over feeling shunned as a non-believer — by the very genre that usually protects non-believers from feeling shunned.

This story is so religious it’s almost insulting
As a queer, genderqueer atheist who was raised as an evangelical, I’m drawn to horror in part because horror stories fundamentally offer a counter-narrative to mainstream Christianity’s most toxic ideas. Through tropes that tend to celebrate villainy, sinfulness, deviance, queerness, and defiance, horror embraces and empowers all that conservative religion rejects as immoral and unholy. Think, for example, of the many queer horror icons that have helped shape queer identity into a reclamation of villainy. Or of The Witch’s Black Phillip famously inviting Anya Taylor-Joy’s colonial Final Girl to “live deliciously.”

Horror at its best teaches us how to live within, and how to find ourselves within, society’s morally gray areas. In a post-9/11 world, horror as a genre has grown blacker, bleaker, sharper, but also perhaps more comforting in its bleakness. Horror validates our fears of climate crisis, social meltdown, existential collapse. It reminds us we’re not alone in being afraid — and crucially, it doesn’t bother with false comfort. This is why the combination of horror and religion has so often made for such terrifically powerful drama throughout the history of cinema, from Haxan to The Exorcist to The Witch: Religion is all about offering people comfort, and horror is all about stripping it away.

...

As I watched Midnight Madness, I was frequently reminded of Mississippi governor Tate Reeves, who recently defended his leadership of the state with the worst pandemic death toll in the US by claiming that people who believe in the afterlife “don’t have to be so scared of things.” Even relatively mainstream Christian voices have questioned whether the pandemic is God’s judgment.

Flanagan uses the plot of Midnight Mass as an allegorical stand-in for a broad range of extreme conservative reactions to the pandemic. On that theme, the series’ scathing reproach of Christianity’s enablement of hysteria, apocalypse mania, and survivalist extremism couldn’t be clearer. But if Flanagan wanted to condemn religious zeal more generally, he failed.

Midnight Mass makes several attempts to critique organized religion, yet the impression it leaves is that faith in God, and explicitly Christian faith in particular, is the ultimate pandemic comfort. The series almost entirely erases atheists, agnostics, and people of other religions by emphasizing its Christian worldview. “I choose God,” Hassan’s rebellious teen son, Ali, declares when he joins Paul and Bev’s new cult, as if Allah, the god he grew up worshiping, was never real.

...

Is all this really horror? Midnight Mass was certainly marketed as horror. And Flanagan loves to slowly weave tonal qualities like atmospheric dread into a soft cocoon of meditations on life, love, and the human experience. He typically seems more concerned with the latter than the former, however, and his work nearly always rejects the fundamental core of most modern horror: the paradoxically comforting assertion that all hope is lost.

...

But the best horror should ideally confront its audience. Midnight Mass instead offers up a convenient villain while sidestepping most of the difficult questions about the consequences of religion unchecked by rationality, or the way organized religion can become a system of abuse or a tool of control.

Horror is the genre that many look to when they want to see society stripped of its false narratives. The myth that technology is only benevolent. The myth that civilization can protect us. The myth that any long-term earthly consequences for humanity’s short-term greed don’t matter because God has a mysterious plan and will reward us in the afterlife.

Flanagan does express skepticism over the human-created idea of “God’s plan” early on in Midnight Mass. If he’d leaned harder into that skepticism, perhaps the series’ premise would have more heft. But it seems he would rather pay less attention to what scares and disillusions us (even though in 2021 there’s so much to scare and disillusion us) and spend more time on what connects and unites us.

Joe Molotov

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Sir, this is a Christian Forum.
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Joe Molotov

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#1 Messiah of Evil - Dir. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, 1973 (Shudder) ****
From the husband and wife team that brought you Howard the Duck, this psychedelic horror flick that has more in common with HP Lovecraft than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The story opens with Arletty, confined to an asylum and recounting the events that led to this. She went in search of her missing father, last seen living at an artist colony in Point Dume, California. She meets up with a yuppie Thom and his two girlfriends while interviewing a local drunk about the "Red Moon" and a "Dark Stranger" that passed through the town exactly 100 ago. It seems the town is once again in the grips of the Dark Stranger, later revealed to be a minister that survived the Donner Party disaster by eating human flesh and praying to Old Gods. The return of the Red Moon has heralded his imminent return, slowly turning the town's citizens into an army of cannibalistic cultists. A good movie.

#2 Two Evil Eyes - Dir. George Romero & Dario Argento, 1990 (4K UHD) ** 1/2
A two-part horror anthology in the vein of Creepshow. The first part "The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar" was directed by George Romero, and is pretty standard horror anthology fare. Adrienne Barbeau plays the unfaithful younger wife to a rich but dying old man, and with the help of her hypnotist boyfriend, she begins liquidating his assets to ensure that she gets the bulk his money after he dies. When he dies before the checks clear, they have to keep his body under wraps so that everyone will think he's still alive. Worse for them however, is that since he died under hypnosis, his spirit is trapped between the world of the living and dead, and his body becomes a gateway for more malevolent spirits to pass through.

The second part, "The Black Cat" by Dario Argento is pretty fucking weird. Harvey Keitel plays a crime scene photographer with anger issues. He hates his girlfriend's new black cat and ends up photographing himself strangling it and publishing the pictures in a photography book along with all his crime scene corpses. When his girlfriend sees the book, she gets freaked out and tries to leave him but he kills her and seals her up behind a wall in his apartment. He has a vision that he's in medieval times and a witch is condemning him as a fellow witch, and he's drawn and quartered by an angry mob. He tries to convince his neighbors that his girlfriend left town on a concert tour, but no one believes him and he's confronted by the same police that he photographs crime scenes with. They discover the fake wall and his dead girlfriend along with the howling black cat, now a skinless zombie cat. He kills both of the cops and then inadvertently hangs himself while trying to climb out his apartment window to escape.

Neither part is especially great and they don't really fit together thematically either. They're just two so-so hour long horror movies packaged together. They lack the dark humor that made Creepshow great.

#3. Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives - Dir. Tom McLoughlin, 1986 (Blu-ray) *** 1/2
"Fucking-A, I knew it! Hit the noise and the cherries!"
~Sheriff Mike Garris

#4. Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood - Dir. John Carl Buechler, 1988 (Blu-ray) * 1/2
"I'm going to take a cold shower. I got a date with soap-on-rope!"
~Eddie

Some friends came over and we watched Friday Part VI and then they wanted to watch VII too. Jason Lives is my favorite F13 movie, but The New Blood is fucking terrible.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2021, 08:29:23 PM by Joe Molotov »
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#5. Village of the Damned - Dir. John Carpenter, 1995 (Blu-ray) *
Bit of a stinker, innit? This is the first time I've seen this movie and I have no knowledge of the original film or the story it's based on, but there was no reason for this movie to be that bad. I thought it started off interestingly enough, with the mass blackout followed by mass pregnancies, but then the movie just jumps ahead until they're all several years old and everyone just accepts that a group of creepy kids lives in town. And Kirstie Alley just gets to run her weirdo science experiment on them with no oversight or security? It's stupid and since there's not much character development to speak of, I don't really care what happens to any of these people once they start dying. Eventually the kids fuck off to go live in a barn and the adults are like "Noooooooooo, you can't just live in a barn!" and the kids kill them for telling them not to live in a barn and then Superman is like "Fuck them kids" and kills them all, except one so there can be a sequel (j/k). What a turd.

#6. Return of the Living Dead, Part II - Dir. Ken Wiederhorn, 1988 (Blu-ray) **
They kill the zombies by electrocuting them. I repeat, they kill the zombies BY ELECTROCUTING THEM. Did they even seen the first movie? Or any movie?? Well, apparently it did start out as an unrelated script. And even though it features returning actors James Karen and Thom Matthews (who also played Tommy Jarvis in Jason Lives, wooo!) they're not playing the same characters. It's not a terrible movie, but it's a far cry from the first one or the third.

#7. Wax Mask - Dir. Sergio Stivaletti, 1997 (Shudder) ***
Originally produced by Dario Argento to be directed by Lucio Fulci, Fulci died before production began and Argento handed it off to one of the SFX guys from his previous movies. Stivaletti rewrote the script to play to his strengths, special effects, and the results is a stylish and gory, effects-laden remake of House of Wax. The mystery at the center of the movie is not much a mystery, we know that the proprietor of the wax museum is killing people and turning them into wax sculptures, despite some giallo nods, depicting him a cloaked, faceless killer. Even so, it was fun and really cool looking movie.
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Joe Molotov

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Your movie, your choice.
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Joe Molotov

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#8. Dementia 13 - Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1963 (Blu-ray) **
Dreary gothic horror flick that Coppola made for Roger Corman for a few thousand bucks to try and cash-in on Psycho, reusing sets and actors from The Young Racers. An interesting historical footnote, but not a great movie.

#9. Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II - Dir. Lee Harry, 1987 (Amazon Prime) ** 1/2
If the rest of the movie was as good as the "Garbage Day!" scene, it'd be 5 stars easy, but too bad most of it is just recycled footage from Part 1 (which was a ridiculous movie in it's own right). The original content is pretty hilarious though.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2021, 09:43:25 AM by Joe Molotov »
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1) No One Gets Out Alive (or something like that)
2) Event Horizon
3) Till Death
4) His House
5) Annabelle Comes Home

So far Annabelle Comes Home is the winner for things I haven’t seen. Even Horizon is a classic and the other 3 were meh at best.

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#10. Hell Fest - Dir. Gregory Plotkin, 2018 (Netflix) **
A completely unpretentious throwback slasher that came out in 2018, but could have easily been timewarped in from 1982. It's lack of imagination is almost refreshing; there's no meta elements, no twists, just some crazy masked man killing twenty-somethings at a spooky theme park. The characters are all basic archetypes: there's the timid girl, the spunky girl, the bitchy girl, the shy guy, the horny guy, the guy-ass guy. There's the masked killer, why is he is killing, who knows? He just likes killing. But....if you're gonna make a 80's style slasher, you gotta give me some decent kills or some titties or something, man. You have to sleaze it up a bit. This is the 1980's but with all the grunginess of the 1980's sanded off. I doesn't work.
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Great Rumbler

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The Brood doesn't have Michael Ironside as the villain, though.
dog

chronovore

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#5. Village of the Damned - Dir. John Carpenter, 1995 (Blu-ray) *
Bit of a stinker, innit? This is the first time I've seen this movie and I have no knowledge of the original film or the story it's based on, but there was no reason for this movie to be that bad. I thought it started off interestingly enough, with the mass blackout followed by mass pregnancies, but then the movie just jumps ahead until they're all several years old and everyone just accepts that a group of creepy kids lives in town. And Kirstie Alley just gets to run her weirdo science experiment on them with no oversight or security? It's stupid and since there's not much character development to speak of, I don't really care what happens to any of these people once they start dying. Eventually the kids fuck off to go live in a barn and the adults are like "Noooooooooo, you can't just live in a barn!" and the kids kill them for telling them not to live in a barn and then Superman is like "Fuck them kids" and kills them all, except one so there can be a sequel (j/k). What a turd.

#6. Return of the Living Dead, Part II - Dir. Ken Wiederhorn, 1988 (Blu-ray) **
They kill the zombies by electrocuting them. I repeat, they kill the zombies BY ELECTROCUTING THEM. Did they even seen the first movie? Or any movie?? Well, apparently it did start out as an unrelated script. And even though it features returning actors James Karen and Thom Matthews (who also played Tommy Jarvis in Jason Lives, wooo!) they're not playing the same characters. It's not a terrible movie, but it's a far cry from the first one or the third.

#7. Wax Mask - Dir. Sergio Stivaletti, 1997 (Shudder) ***
Originally produced by Dario Argento to be directed by Lucio Fulci, Fulci died before production began and Argento handed it off to one of the SFX guys from his previous movies. Stivaletti rewrote the script to play to his strengths, special effects, and the results is a stylish and gory, effects-laden remake of House of Wax. The mystery at the center of the movie is not much a mystery, we know that the proprietor of the wax museum is killing people and turning them into wax sculptures, despite some giallo nods, depicting him a cloaked, faceless killer. Even so, it was fun and really cool looking movie.

I really enjoyed the 3rd entry. Romeo and Juliet as a zombie movie, and Juliet is a hot goth zombie with pierced nipples. Boo yah.

Great Rumbler

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21. Halloween (1978, 4k cut): The GOAT for a reason. It's about as close to perfect as can be.  :popcorn

Donald Pleasance the GOAT :rejoice
dog

team filler

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don p talking about the shape  :lawd
*****

team filler

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watched stigmata, it's barely even a horror movie. director was highly influenced by noes series, it's everywhere in the movie. he even cast patricia arquette.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2021, 05:31:20 PM by team filler »
*****

Joe Molotov

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#11. Slumber Party Massacre - Dir. Amy Holden Jones, 1982 (Blu-ray) **
Written by a lesbian feminist writer and directed by a women, but still male gazey af. Apparently the story is that it was written as a parody of slashers, but it was the director's first shot at helming a movie and she decided to play it safe. It was a Roger Corman joint after all, if it didn't have a certain level of blood and titties, he probably wasn't going to release it. Pretty bog standard as far as early 80's slashers go, the only hint of feminism left from the script is when the Final Girl emasculates the killer by cutting his giant phallic drill off with a machete.

#12. Return to House on Haunted Hill - Dir. Víctor García, 2007 (Blu-ray) * 1/2
A really cheap and ugly DTV sequel to the 1999 remake of HOHH. The primary selling point was that it introduced some "choose-your-own-adventure" elements via branching paths on the Blu-Ray. The story is idiotic and pointlessly retcons the first movie by making the source of the house's evil being an ancient Baphomet statue, that possessed Dr. Vanncutt and turned him bad. Speaking of the doctor, Jeffery Combs returns to the role to film a few extra scenes, but the rest of the cast is all new. The plot is really just excuse to go back to the house, with some mercenaries kidnapping the sister of the Final Girl from the HOHH and forcing her and few other randos to help them find the statue for a $5 Million pay day. The house locks down, ghosts start killing people, you know the drill. The first movie had some great character actors, some nice effects, and beautiful set design. The sequel has terrible actors, cheap effects, and boring sets.

But what about choosing your own adventure, does that actually do anything? Well....sort of. There's about 8 choices you get to make throughout the movie, and I didn't check every permutation but it seems like you can get 4 different endings, plus one "post-credits" stinger (actually before the credits, but it has big post credits energy). There's one "bad" ending that results in every character getting killed roughly 3/4ths of the way through the movie, there's a "good" ending where both the main girl and her love interest survive, and then there are two "normal" endings were either the main girl or her love interest survives alone. Then there's an optional ending stinger, where the hot mercenary girl also survives and finds the Baphomet statue after killing two people banging on the beach. What's the condition to activate this scene, you wonder? You have to choose to engage in a lesbian ghost threeway. If you decline the lesbian ghost threeway, she runs away and gets killed. If you choose to have the lesbian ghost threeway, she takes off her top and makes out with them for a bit before they tell her to leave the house, after which she's gone from the movie until the final scene. This should be a 0 star movie, but okay, I admit, that's worth the 1 and half stars. Also one actor looks vaguely like Rand Paul and he gets choked to death by a ghost. Actually, maybe this movie is great.

#13. Haxan - Dir. Benjamin Christensen, 1922 (Blu-ray) ****
Part documentary, part exploitation film, Haxan may be the first bit of "educational" sleaze, although it certainly wouldn't be the last, with movies like Reefer Madness popping up in the 30's and then in the 60's with movies like Mondo Cane. The main thesis of the movie is that superstitions and witchcraft from the middle ages can be easily explained today as mental illnesses or just plain physical deformities, but that even though people of the time consider themselves more enlightened, these types of people are still mistreated by society; sent away to nursing homes and asylums so we don't have to look at them. An admirable message, but about 75% of the movie is recreations of supposed satanic events, witches, and the people being tortured by the Inquisition. It has some really striking visuals and a sense of humor about it that make it interesting watch, coming up on it's 100th anniversary.
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Joe Molotov

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#14. V/H/S 94 - Dir. Jennifer Reeder, Chloe Okuno, Simon Barrett, Timo Tjahjanto, Ryan Prows, 2021 (Shudder) *** 1/2
I love horror anthology because, and this seems silly, but it feels like they can be more dangerous than a feature film. In a 90 minute film, you've got some build up, some foreshadowing, maybe a light moment to break the tension. In a short format, they've got ~20 minutes to hit you with their best stuff. They have the ability to completely throw any narrative structure out the window and just punch you right in the gut with something you're not prepared for. That's not always what happens.....but it could happen, and that uncertainness is what makes them interesting.

Anyway, VHS 94 is a pretty solid anthology. IMO, it's got two great segments, and two segments that aren't great but they're still decent. My favorite was Timo Tjahjanto's Tetsuo-inspired body horror segment "The Subject" about a mad scientist building human-machine hybrids in a grimy old warehouse. In spite of some dodgy CGI, it was really creepy and stylish. I also really liked Chloe Okuno's "Storm Drain" about a reporter and cameraman doing a fluff piece about local urban legend, the Rat Man. Rounding out the anthology is "The Empty Wake" about a funeral home worker staying over night with a corpse, and "Terror" about a right-wing terror group planning an OKC-style bombing attack, but using some unconventional weapons. The wrap-around segment "Holy Hell" just kinda...exists. It has a cool opening, a SWAT team raiding a warehouse, looking for drugs but finding the corpses of a bizarre VHS cult but then there's not much else to it until the end. As a package though, I thought it was really good. There's hits and misses, but overall it's a hit.
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Joe Molotov

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The Man in Black blowing up the police station and all the Curse of Thorn stuff is pretty hilarious when you realize they had no exit strategy for any of that. It feels like a movie that should have been filmed back-to-back with H6 to continue all the loose threads, but instead it took 6 years and about a million rejected script ideas and rewrites to finally squeeze out a follow-up.
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porkbun

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Halloween 1 (Rob Zombie version) was better than I remember, mostly due to the lack of Rob Zombie-ness.  It seems like he had a better cinematographer and editor to work with.  Though the whole "origin" of Michael Myers is still iffy.  Like because his sister didn't take him tick or treating he becomes a murdering psychopath?

Halloween 2... eh.  Standard generic slasher movie with the weird for weird's sake Zombie shit (mom with the white horse) thrown in.

Evil Dead.  Still really effectively creepy at points.

Army of Darkness.  I don't really consider this a horror movie per se but I love it.  Watched it with friends and beers and had a great time.

Jason X.  Sooooo bad but Lexa Doig and the sleeping bag kill make it worth it.

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Joe Molotov

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#15. Mortuary Dir. Howard Avedis, 1983 (Shudder) ** 1/2
A slow moving chiller with one of the goofier twists I’ve seen in a while. A girl believes that her father’s death that was ruled an accident was actually a murder after having a dream of him being attacked. Her mother tells her that it’s just a bad dream, but then we see her mom holding a seance with a creepy coven of witches at the local mortuary. Later, the girl get stalked by some ghostly figure. The movie plays up a possible supernatural angle for most of the movie with the mom being responsible, before finally the mom casually drops this bombshell: “Oh btw, that goofy guy that’s been hanging around the periphery of the movie? He’s a total psychopath that your psychiatrist father was treating right before he died. He was totally obsessed with you and said he was going to marry you and kill anyone that got in his way. I wonder if he’s the spooky stalker.” Spoiler: He was. Oh yeah and the crazy guy was Bill Paxton in an early role.
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Joe Molotov

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The guy at the party watching Twitch was ahead of his time.
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Joe Molotov

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#16. Mausoleum - Dir. Michael Dugan, 1983 (Shudder) ***
An extremely silly but fun demon possession movie, Mausoleum is about the Nomed family (that's Demon spelled backwards, oh my goooooooooooooddddddddd!) that's cursed to have each first-born daughter be possessed by a demon. The demon makes Susan get naked a lot and kill the handymen, until her husband and psychiatrist team up to put a stop to it. The only thing that can stop the demon is a crown of thorns from Nomed family mausoleum apparently, and this sets up a final confrontation between the psychiatrist and a guy in big flompy rubber demon costume. It's pretty dumb, but it doesn't take itself too seriously.

#17. New Year's Evil - Dir. Emmett Alston, 1980 (Prime Video) *
It's a slasher where almost all the kills happen off-screen. If the plot was good, you could get away with that, but it's pretty dismal all around. The only thing of note in this movie is some performances by rando 80's never-ran LA punk bands like "Made in Japan" and "Shadow". The title track kinda slaps too.



#18. The Fourth Victim - Dir.  Eugenio Martín, 1971 (Blu-ray) ***
A Spanish-made "giallo" (according to online sources) although it lacks most of the genre trademarks and plays more like a conventional mystery. It was also a mostly bloodless affair with only one actual murder (stabbing) but it actually had a pretty interesting plot. Arthur Anderson's wife just died, his third wife to die under questionable circumstances. The owner of his life insurance policy demands that the police open an investigation, but they're unable to prove anything. Arthur tells the police chief he won't get married again, but then promptly runs into a strange woman that's moved into his neighborhood and marries her after just a few days. When she disappears for a day, he does some digging and finds out that she was recently released from an asylum that she was committed to after murdering her husband. Despite not having many of the giallo hallmarks, the movie does kick up the genre's "crazy twist ending" knob to 11 for the final act. It's worth a watch.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2021, 01:04:45 AM by Joe Molotov »
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Nuitangg

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Halloween Kills might be worst of the bunch including the Zombie ones. 

chronovore

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CREEP - didn't work for me. Found footage is hit-or-miss, and this was an oddly-paced, self-indulgent "miss." The lead was creepy. The ending worked well enough.

Train to Busan - fucking great. A couple of neat variations on the zombie behavior, believable human drama, and kegel-inducing suspense from start to finish. Great stuff.

Train to Busan: Peninsula - started it, but Netflix Japan only has Japanese and Korean audio, and Japanese subtitles (no English) - I don't like zombie movies to feel like homework, so I bought it on iTunes and will finish it soon.

Zombieland: Double Tap - Mostly fun, but gets caught in trying to be bigger than what the original was, rather than an extension.

Cargo - Martin Freeman in the extended remix of a very successful short film. This wasn't bad, it just felt… like an extended remix.  The original is probably still up on youtube, just watch that.

#ALIVE - #annoying

Joe Molotov

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#19. The Crucible of Horror - Dir. Viktors Ritelis, 1971 (Epix) **
A women and her daughter plot to murder her abusive husband, but fail to finish the job, proving once again the real horror is the patriarchy. And British people.

#20. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday - Dir. Adam Marcus, 1993 (Vudu) ***
I think I'm starting to come around on this movie, it's aggressive dumbness is charming. All the Jason DEEP LORE, the Daggers of Meggido and shit, Creighton Duke, even the "ingrown toenail" mask is kinda cool. Too bad we only see it at the beginning and the end in lieu of the Jason Worm.

#21. Razorback - Dir. Russell Mulcahy, 1984 (Shudder) ****
An ozploitation Jaws, with the animatronic shark replaced with an animatronic hog. This movie is loopy. Some of the visuals and editing are downright hallucinatory, two of the characters are straight out of The Road Warrior, contains pure nightmare-logic scenes. It is ridiculous and I loved it. The opening scene has a giant hog smashing through a whole-ass house and causing the house to explode, and that sets the tone for the rest of the movie. 
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porkbun

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#20. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday - Dir. Adam Marcus, 1993 (Vudu) ***
I think I'm starting to come around on this movie, it's aggressive dumbness is charming. All the Jason DEEP LORE, the Daggers of Meggido and shit, Creighton Duke, even the "ingrown toenail" mask is kinda cool. Too bad we only see it at the beginning and the end in lieu of the Jason Worm.

I agree about the movie being dumb, but I dig it.  The kill on the girl having sex in the tent is one of my favorite in the series.

Joe Molotov

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The scene where the cop melts after coughing up the Jason Worm was kinda crazy, you never see that kind of death in a Friday movie.
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team filler

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the guy who wants to break fingers in exchange for information  :doge like why not just tell or charge money?  :lol I gotta snap all your fingers one by one, or you don't get to know how to kill the evil demon monster  :nintex
*****

Joe Molotov

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#22. Inferno - Dir. Dario Argento, 1980 (Blu-ray) ****
Underrated follow-up to Suspiria. If you like crazy 70/80's euro horror, this is the good stuff.
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Transhuman

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1# Paranorman. Still funny

nudemacusers

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Shout out to my physical media homies. I bought a big stack of (mostly) horror blu-rays a few weeks ago on sale for Halloween, and I've watched almost all them already.

Kill Count:
6x Shout Factory
3x Vestron Video
2x Arrow Video
1x Hen's Tooth Video
1x Synapse
1x Vinegar Syndrome

I watched Firestarter last night, first time watch. I can't decide if this is low budget X-Men or a big budget Scanners. It definately doesn't have an antagonist as strong as Michael Ironside from Scanners. Villain duties are split between Martin Sheen as the evil bureaucrat and George C. Scott as a psychotic pedo, but neither of them are sufficiently menacing or have enough of an arc to give the movie much oomph. In the end, you just feel kinda bad for all the random Shop employees getting btfo when Drew Barrymore turns on godmode and starts torching everyone.
watched this too, just way too hokey execution for the subject matter. couldn't decide if it wanted to be horror or a soap opera.

but a young heather locklear and a pure, unadulterated 80s tangerine dream soundtrack make up for it. but just a bit.
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Joe Molotov

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#23. The Church - Dir. Michele Soavi, 1989 (Tubi) * 1/2
Eh, didn't really care for this movie when I saw it a few years ago, but I thought I'd give it another shot and I still don't like it. The pacing is a mess and it's basically just a worse version of Prince of Darkness.

#24. The Torture Chamber of Doctor Sadism - Dir. Harald Reinl, 1967 (Prime Video) **
A West German production, with a hilariously over the top title added for overseas markets (although there is a torture chamber, no one in the movie is called Dr. Sadism). It's got some decent Ye Olde Gothic Castle sets, and Christopher Lee menacing a girl with snakes and scorpions for some reason.

#25. Edge of the Axe - Dir. José Ramón Larraz, 1989 (Prime Video) ** 1/2
Decent Spanish-American slasher from the late end of the 80's slasher era. Not bad but not great either.
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Risible

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#22. Inferno - Dir. Dario Argento, 1980 (Blu-ray) ****
Underrated follow-up to Suspiria. If you like crazy 70/80's euro horror, this is the good stuff.

Suspiria is more coherent, but Inferno does that Argento dream-logic so much better, the movie has crazy-good atmosphere.

Joe Molotov

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#26. Halloween Kills - Dir. David Gordon Green, 2021 (Peacock) *** 1/2
LOL this movie was so bad that I actually kinda loved it. It was the 9/11 of unnecessary horror sequels, it was the Hiroshima of cringe, but just like Michael getting stronger every time he kills, every time there was a stupid line or a pointless callback, it only got funnier. "This is for Dr. Loomis!! *click*" :lol It was so self-important and serious that I couldn't stop laughing. When the herd of people started chasing the random crazy dude through the hospital and chanting "EVIL DIES TONIGHT!" and he falls out of the window and dies and then there was a moment that was like "I guess we're the real monsters!" I was well and truly dead. :lol Why did they make this and why is this a trilogy?? :lol :lol
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Joe Molotov

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All it needed was for Busta Rhymes to show up and start kung fu kicking Michael. :rejoice
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Joe Molotov

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#27. Bloody Pit of Horror - Dir. Domenico Massimo Pupillo , 1965 (Prime Video) *
Terrible movie, but I watched the Rifftrax version. It starred Mariska Hargitay's dad as a crazy guy that owned a castle and liked to flex in mirrors and murder women so they couldn't take his precious bodily fluids.
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Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #56 on: November 01, 2021, 10:14:35 AM »
#28. The Night House - Dir. David Bruckner, 2021 (Blu-ray) **** 1/2
Fantastic slow-burn cosmic horror. I watched it theaters and then bought the Blu-ray Day 1; I think that's the first time I've done that in like 10 years.

#29. Tales of Halloween - Dir. Axelle Carolyn, et al, 2015 (Shudder) ***
Cute Halloween themed horror/comedy anthology. It was hit or miss but some of the shorts were pretty good. I especially got a chuckle out of "The Night Billy Raised Hell".

#30. A Comedy of Terrors - Dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1963 (Prime Video) ***
Worth watching for Vincent Price yucking it up.

#31. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - Dir. Bill Melendez, 1966 (Vudu) *** 1/2
Annual viewing.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2021, 10:19:34 AM by Joe Molotov »
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Joe Molotov

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Re: Halloween Havoc 2021: 31 Days of Spoopy, Ghouls, Blood, Gutz, and Deez Nutz
« Reply #57 on: November 01, 2021, 10:23:05 AM »
Top 3 First Watch Movies
1. Inferno
2. Messiah of Evil
3. Razorback

Bottom 3 First Watch Movies
1. New Year's Evil
2. Village of the Damned (1996)
3. Return to House on Haunted Hill
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