The Thing

Village of the Damned is similar to The Fog (sleepy village horror) but I think is a notch better.

Cigarette Burns is totally over-the-top creepy and gruesome.

I think that I quite liked Ghosts of Mars -- on the nothing-Nastassia-does-is-non-excellent principle -- but I actually can't remember much about it: I saw it on TV and probably skipped over to CSI in the middle.

Natasha not Nastassia. My typing is gone to shot today.

his vampires movie with James Woods was AWFUL. there's a few of his I still haven't seen (Ghosts of Mars - which reads like a retread of Assault on Precinct 13, and Mouth of Madness which was on TV the other day and looked pretty terrible). but the vampire movie... ugh

bah i am going to have start 'refining' my 'all horror movies w sam neil in them are grate' theory eg possession, in the mouth of madness, dead calm, the omen 3 (hang on...)

you watched the Omen 3

I mean, that's REAL dedication

dedication to ART

vampires is awful, yes -- hadn't even twigged that was him

haha the only halloween i have seen is "III: Season of the Witch" <-- it is p silly but quite watchable

that's the non-Mike Meyers one right? v odd entry.

WATCH HALLOWEEN MARK S

yeah the first one is unfuckwithable

Yes, Halloween is wonderful.

Vampires is probably the worst movie I have ever seen at a theater.

Halloween 3 was originally written by Nigel Kneale, who take his name off the credits once Carpenter and his producers started tinkering with the script. It still has its moments.

Vampires is probably the worst movie I have ever seen at a theater.

ugh I saw this in the theater too. was actively angry/irritated when it was over

I remember feeling aggravated when it was done as well. It was just so aggressively dumb and terrible.

Vampires and Ghost of Mars were both total shit, and each time they underperformed and got terrible reviews, Carpenter started whoa is me-ing. Oh, my budget was too small, oh they were mismarketed, oh we didn't get the cut we wanted, oh, you should have seen the original script. Romero pulls the same shit, too. And then they inevitably make a come-back low-budget return to roots movie that sucks, too. At least Carpenter doesn't pretend to be anything other than totally burnt out.

Carpenter slagging off Cronenberg as being too high-falutin for his own good these days is lolzy

Also, Carpenter in particular seems very happy to accept checks after people remake his films. Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Precinct 13. Even an Escape from New York remake has been in the works for a while.

xpost To be fair, Cronenberg is totally in I Want an Oscar mode these days.

well whatever, Cronenberg has also continued to make decent movies, unlike Carpenter.

No contest! Cronenberg in Oscar mode has been great!

But unlike Carpenter, he totally bristles at being pegged a horror director. Which Carpenter reads as an implicit slight.

yeah, Carpenter gives him shit for considering himself an "artiste"

first viewing of mouth of madness left me flat, but i recall i was all 'ooh a new carpenter film it will be great'. then of course second viewing was more of a neutral position and i actually enjoyed it.

can't say the same for mars and vampire, they are awful.

The whole spooky recorded sections in Prince of Darkness still crop up in my mind as one of the creepiest things i've seen in movies ever.

Ghosts Of Mars isn't *bad* per se - it's just a rewrite of Precinct 13 with a little bit of Outland thrown in. Vampires is still the bottom point.

but there was no ice cream van scene!

In Darwinian terms: How would a Thing even evolve? Would it evolve intelligence? Would it need to?

Interesting exploration of this by excellent biologist and sci-fi author Peter Watts in his story 'The THings', which won all sorts of awards/nominations last year. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

vampires has some cool gore effects and a fun james woods performance going for it, but the second half is awful. ghosts of mars doesnt have a single creative or interesting moment in it, and to me signals the moment where he was no longer capable of making energetic movies on low budgets. then again, i thought his masters of horror ep was pretty good. memoirs is pretty bad all the way through. christine isnt very good by the standards of his early stuff. havent seen The Ward yet but i havent heard anything good.

bah i am going to have start 'refining' my 'all horror movies w sam neil in them are grate' theory eg possession, in the mouth of madness, dead calm, the omen 3 (hang on...)

― Ward Fowler, Friday, August 26, 2011 11:54 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

EVENT HORIZON explodes that theory :(

the omen 3 does rule though

Cronenberg always watchably entertaining and interesting, even when he's committing an "honorable failure" (filming unfilmable novels! the clue is in the word "unfilmable"!)*, but -- big caveat: existenZ was the last i saw -- he's NEVER made a film as flawless as The Thing.

*Even as failures, Crash and Naked Lunch aren't remotely down in a league with Vampires: I'm glad they were made, and both have excellent individual scenes, they just don't really gel, in themselves or as translations of the source material. With NL this is as much as anything an allergy on my part to the RoboCop guy, actually.

Cronenberg's films always too studiedly "illustrational" for my tastes: he's making a politico-philosophical DO-YOU-SEE point, albeit often quite an unusual one, at least the the time, before the point became a much-borrowed cliche. So yes, he's grossing people out, but with a (Perverse) Moral Nostrum embedded; he too often fails to goose-cum-creep those who are already onside with his idea, maybe. He's not as bad as Clive Barker in this regard.

Ugh/LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qhqQ6F0l1o

lol'ing right off the bat at use of Friday the 13th trademark sound effect

da thing

this movie does not look very good.

you can use that for the pull quote

http://www.revelinnewyork.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_main/recommendations/photos/thething.jpg

really couldn't care less about the cgi but this looks so tragically BRIGHT and high-key and bland

no one knows how to shoot movies anymore

tell it to Christian Nyby

fuck off, Carpenter version's better than the Hawks movie.

^^^realness

nothing i've seen so far here is a deal-breaker; i mean yes i complained upthread about the look - it is all gleaming and contrasty and teal and orange and people's hair looks great - but that's just what movies look like these days. i mean regardless i am going to see the fuck out of this.

The final scene in the Carpenter version totally makes the movie for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8faq5amdK30

a+

amazing! i thought it was a real Sinatra song for a good 30 seconds.