ok lets all shit our pants to something old: pre-2006 horror film thread

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-40089750

There's a part in one of the Wishmaster films with the monster asking someone about love in his cookie monster voice. Someone needs to clip that for youtube then put it in a song intro.

Arrow finally got their own edition of Bava's Kill Baby Kill

Arrow and Scream Factory have been like a couple of mafia goons lately, shaking me down for unreasonable percentages of my paycheck.

arrow, scream, and synapse are ruining me financially

If only we had a choice. If only.

I realized recently that I own >500 horror/sci-fi/thriller movies, and probably at least that number of episodes of various horror/sci-fi/thriller anthology series. This constitutes most of what I watch, and most of it was released prior to 2006 (and mostly quite a bit prior). I should probably post itt more, huh.

Although the last three I watched were The Giant Gila Monster, Invasion of the Animal People, and The Toxic Avenger 3, so it could be that my taste and any potential commentary I might contribute are highly questionable.

Conrad Poohs and his dancing teeth!
https://www.movieposter.com/poster/MPW-42028/Dungeonmaster.html

Watched Bad Taste recently and it's not a great film but it has a charm to it. I liked all the brain stuffing. Feels like a snapshot of a specific era of male geekery, like a bunch of friends who might have made a table top rpg or PC FPS. Hope Peter Jackson starts bringing the goods again someday.

VIDEO NASTIES THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE 2

Not an old film but a documentary about old films. I seen the first one when it came out but waited for this a while longer.

The main documentary of both guides are very good but my favourite thing about them is the extras in which the critics/journalists like Kim Newman, Stephen Thrower, Alan Jones and others review all the films and try to guess why the British censors and police considered them dangerous. It's many hours worth of viewing and I could easily watch a lot more in this format.

In the first guide, Axe was the only film I hadn't seen which they persuaded me I might want to see. But from this one: The Child, Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein and Pigs caught my interest.

Pigs sounded mostly interesting for who made it. Crime film regular Marc Lawrence written and directed it as a showcase for his daughter Toni. Toni plays a traumatized killer and Marc is an oddball farmer who protects her.

Even if you're not particularly fond of most video nasty style horror films*, I'd highly recommend both these guides, I think they're a lot of fun.

*Never cared about cannibal/foreign tribe horror films. It's not just concerns about real animal violence, nasty faked human violence and racism. They just look completely tedious to me.

i had a good time with DOCTOR BUTCHER, MD recently. but yeah it's not a particularly great genre

i watched some ridiculous movie called BLUE SUNSHINE the other night? it is about LSD that makes people go bald and kill people. yea.....

Starring Zalman King, who went on to enjoy a career as soft porn auteur.

Lieberman's Just Before Dawn and Squirm are also good fun.

heh i definitely want to see BLUE SUNSHINE

Phantom of the Paradise, hoooooooly shit. Just watched it for the first time and I want to rewatch it like now. With a group and some drinks.

i would like to write the same post as old lunch, but about DEATH SPA

I really like Phantom Of Paradise, don't know how if stayed relatively hidden for so long.

If I ever make a movie, I will negotiate away my right to final cut in exchange for a guarantee that Paul Williams can vamp over the end credits a la Phantom and The Muppet Movie. Having seen it done a second time now, I genuinely can't think of a type of film ending I enjoy more.

Paul Williams needs to be in twin peaks s3 imho

Wow, you are so right. He's almost too normal-looking now, though. He'd need to bring back his look from that era.

Phantom of the Paradise has a huge cult following in Canada, apparently. still on my list
I saw a (perhaps the only existing!) 35mm print of DEATH SPA last year. it was pretty entertaining!

I think it was pretty big in a few countries but I've only known about it for about 6 or 7 years or something like that.

oh man i loved blue sunshine. the scene where the lady is babysitting the kids and starts to wig will always be with me.

RING
RING 2
RING 0

Hadn't seen the first two since I was a teenager and a lot of my memories were mixed up so I got the Japanese trilogy box set. They aren't really the originals because there was an earlier television version and a non-Nakata sequel that didn't do well before he did his own sequel.

The first Nakata film is still great and quite scary. I totally forgot about all the psychic stuff.
2 complaints: the "thwak" sound when Sadako gets hit by her father is totally unnecessary and the end credits has dance music that feels a tad out of place (the other two have some odd choices too).

Ring 2 is pretty solid and has some spooky moments but I'm not sure how to feel about the direction the story goes in. Most people (including myself) probably approach the story as a more or less old fashioned ghost story but the Koji Suzuki books are supposed to go in a nutty science fiction direction and this film just slightly veers toward that. I find it kind of difficult to let go of the initial set-up of the first Nakata film.

Ring 0 was okay, but again I feel like it doesn't add much that I like to the story, sometimes it seems a bit fannish towards the end and there's a scene that I think was lifted from Audition.
But the scene with Sadako's mother at the mirror is really creepy, especially for a slight variation of a scene we've seen repeatedly before. That woman has a brilliant face.

Just this minute finished House/Hausu (1977)...OMG...this was one of the most astounding things I've ever seen. Endlessly inventive, unceasingly inspired. I've owned this thing for years and feel like an idiot for never watching it before now, but all things in their time, I suppose. Just...watch it, for the love of everything. My jaw dropped about ten minutes in and was slack for the remainder of the runtime.

After feeling as if I may have encountered two of my favorite movies ever (between this and Phantom of the Paradise) on two consecutive nights, the next film I watch is either going to disappoint me massively or blow my brains out the back of my skull.

RAG, if you haven't already seen this, add it to the top of your Japanese ghost story list.

hausu is the greatest movie ever made

I saw Bava's A Bay of Blood in 35mm last night. :/ Invented the worst genre ever, I guess (the slasher by the lake).

My chief impediment to 98% of non-Cronenberg horror is the idiotic plotting.

Plot is about as important to the horror film as it is to the musical.

yeah, but I (usually) prefer songs to skewerings.

I saw Hausu when it was first released on disc and I like it a lot.

I like Bava a lot too but never cared for Bay Of Blood.

I don't know if slasher, jumpy ghost films and Saw films put more asses in seats but I think plot heavy detective horror might be the most enduringly popular type. There are great detective horror stories but personally I'm really tired of it.

Another fantasy interlude.

Second Run are releasing Karel Zeman's The Fabulous Baron Munchausen on disc but it's also on iTunes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na1h7ozW9VQ

i had no idea the Gilliam movie had a precursor! looks cool

CITY OF THE DEAD/HORROR HOTEL

Black and white film about a witch cult. Christopher Lee is in it but he doesn't get anything exciting to do. It's a bit slight, not much happens but I've always liked this one because it looks really nice. A lot of fog and darkness in a quiet little village. I saw the slightly shorter Horror Hotel version originally but I really don't remember it being different aside from the intro.

In the extras Christopher Lee mostly rants about the decline of the British film industry and British newspapers.

Love this one. It's gorgeous to look at.

I'd like to stay in that hotel, beautiful textured wood.

LIFEFORCE

This isn't nearly as bad as I was led to believe. In fact its main crime is just being too long and a bit boring, like the way lots of blockbusters are. Some special effects look pretty goofy but some of them look great. Mathilda May doesn't only look glorious, she's kind of a cool villain. The part where the blood is being drained to form her body and then she disappears with a splatter is great.

That clip of Brion James flapping his arms in Blue Sunshine is hilarious and scary. He's been so unnerving in so many films.

I like LIFEFORCE! Yeah it is a bit long and slow but it's got lots of cool stuff in it

Lifeforce has such a terrific Mancini score, I actually go around humming his main title all the time

There will be no resuscitation of Lifeforce's reputation. Yeah, it's better than some have made it out to be, but it's really not a good movie. Good idea, maybe!

I'd take it over many many things. I gathered this garbage reputation it had from horror fans who love way worse films.

There's always the Colin Wilson novel which I haven't read. He hated the film adaptation and joked about it. I'm a little wary of the novel too because it's often said to be 70% philosophical meandering.

Re: that second Video Nasties documentary. Keep thinking of a hilarious clip from a British shoestring budget VHS gore film. Two guys, one says..

"Fuck you arsehole"
"No, fuck your arsehole"

..then that second guy shoves a chainsaw up the first guy's ass.

Recently saw the original Gojira/Godzilla and sorry to say it didn't do much for me. I love giant monsters but the problem is the characters who get involved in these films. Nothing kills my boner like government and military getting involved with monsters/supernatural threats.

Ha ha, you're talking about Godzilla! That's practically its bread and butter.

lol you'd HATE the new Shin Godzilla, which is basically a government satire

I've seen some Godzilla comics where he goes to other planets and wild islands full of monsters, which seems way cooler. Never been big on King Kong films either but I'm sure there's some giant monster films I'd like out there.

I always wonder what Shinya Tsukamoto would do. His company is called Kaiju Theatre but he does relatively low budget films exclusively.

Huh, never realized that Roger Ebert gave "The Hitcher" zero stars. Same year as his (in)famous "Blue Velvet" pan, maybe he was in a bit of moral panic?

heh probably. Ebert's a good critic overall but he's had a lot of misfires in his many decades