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

Shudder seems like a great service, but I own like 700 horror movies so it's probably not necessary for me to use it.

hear ya on that
they do have a lot of cult classics though!

Yeah, you mention Blue Sunshine and it instantly makes me wonder what other stuff Shudder has that isn't readily available on a shiny plastic disc...

xpost I think the staginess of the acting hasn't really been a factor for us; kids like broad acting. But just how the movies were/are made ... lots of old movies, from Buster Keaton to Blade Runner or whatever, I have to constantly remind my daughter that they were all done without computers or CGI. Or, like, in Lawrence of Arabia, when you see 1000 camels and horses racing across the desert in one shot, the only way to do that was to do that. I think the artistry of filmmaking is totally lost on digital kids, for whom filmmaking (like photography) is less a craft and more just a process of perfection, to some degree. Take a million pictures, fiddle with the filters and effects. With stuff like iMovie a part of their lives from a young age up, I've been impressed how many tenets of filmmaking have been ingrained without them really even knowing what they're doing, from lighting and composition to blocking, just from watching youtube tutorials and emulating. My daughter, for example, figured out the need for ADR just to compensate for the quality of her phone microphone, not knowing that ADR is a common thing.

I might go for Shudder now, it's the only way for me to see Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl, which looks awesome.

xpost TBF, I often have to remind myself of some of the same things. Watching the Spanish version of the Universal Dracula a few weeks back, it took a minute to sink in that Dracula's castle was an actual massive set and not just something they took care of in post.

I'm going to post the reviews at the weekend but I recently saw some jawdropping stuff nobody would film today because it is too irresponsible.

Something which often scares people who aren't used to it is the jumpy frames of silent films. Not just Nosferatu (which still scares a lot of people) but seeing the mad scientist in Metropolis really freaked me out when I was in highschool.

If you listen to any of Wondery's podcasts on the making of horror movies, they often have first-month-free codes for Shudder!

Something which often scares people who aren't used to it is the jumpy frames of silent films. Not just Nosferatu (which still scares a lot of people) but seeing the mad scientist in Metropolis really freaked me out when I was in highschool.

That assumes that the silent film was poorly reproduced and/or played at the wrong fps. Unfortunately, it takes some effort to see properly played silents.

I just watched Nosferatu for the first time the other night! I thought Murnau made very subtly effective use of color tinting wrt every element of the film except for the intertitles when first Orlock and then those who fall under his sway speak, which are the only stark black and white elements of the entire film. But yes, it was creepy, and there was something even more creepily uncanny about seeing a film that's almost a century old when the picture has been sharpened and cleaned up for Blu-ray.

SHUDDER is incredible. $5/month. Please subscribe so it never goes away. Being curated by people who know their shit. A sampling to display its breadth:

Ms .45
Field in England
I Can See You
Coherence
Legend of Boggy Creek
The Baby
Stuck
Soft for Digging
Black Devil Doll (!!)
Deadgirl
Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh
Society (!!)
Ghostwatch (!!!)
Psychomania
God Told Me To
Angst
Necromantik 1 & 2
Blue Sunshine
Wake in Fright
Take Shelter

It just goes on and on, plus tons of interesting indie shit I've never heard of, forgotten 80s weirdos, etc.

Huh. Yeah, some of those are surprising to see. What's their retention like? I mean, is it like Netflix where stuff seems to appear and disappear pretty much at random?

I've only had it for a month, so I don't know. Nothing has disappeared so far. And truly, the list goes on and on, I had to stop myself.

Although it looks like Shudder would leave me in the same pickle as Filmstruck, inasmuch as I might only be able to watch it on my laptop. Which is...less than ideal.

https://www.shudder.com/apps

Thnig thanks for that starter list - think I'm sold

watched Kill Baby Kill cuz of this thread, not bad for an era of horror films I generally find p boring. A handful of shots/sequences (like the above-mentioned doppelganger chase) that were clearly borrowed by later filmmakers. Mostly felt like a film version of the Haunted Mansion ride from Disneyland, what with all the falling suits of armor, candles held by arms, screeching cats, ghost children, random moaning, sickly lighting etc.

I went to the KBK screening. Didn't love it, but certain elements, like you mentioned, were very iconic and re-adopted for years, particularly the girl. Wasn't down with most of the cliche gothic stuff, but certain shots and scenes were great (that ball!).

The Little girl was played by a boy who they just happened to see in their daily life. They said his miserable face caught their eye.

yeah the little blond girl was super-creepy

lol
xp

quick update :
against all the odds, mk2 actually enjoyed ALIEN.
the one big scarejump moment totally did for him.
(i mean really really did do the job on him. what a bad dad i am)
oh, and yeah that point re CGI that has been made, is exactly what i had to explain in regards the external spaceship/planet shots.

This is why I mentioned Zeder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUpwh6CJdT0&t=0s
I could buy an older copy. It seemed to be more expensive when I last looked several years ago but I might wait to see if a bluray comes out. The Code Red one has been promised but I hope a UK company picks it up.

I'll try again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUpwh6CJdT0&t

If it's not working search "Zeder Trailers From Hell".

hahah, i thought you were kidding RAG, but you weren't!

About the boy?

yup

I would have also accepted "a young time traveling Chloe Svegniy" as an answer

Svegniy = a misspelling which I fear will now become persistent for me

much like 'detrius'

haha sorry

a trio of Shaw Brothers.

BEWITCHED

Boxer's Omen is the sequel to this much weaker film. It's one of the most reactionary horror films I've seen and even explicitly states at the end that it's a warning against casual sex. It's about a Thai girl who places a curse on a Hong Kong man for not returning to her, the curse makes him kill his own child.
The Magic rituals are quite fun and more extensive than other similar films.

MIGHTY PEKING MAN

A ripoff of the 70s King Kong, but with more nudity (a German actress playing a jungle girl), funny looking special effects and alarming use of animals. It's huge for a Hong Kong film of the time but they really struggle to pull off most of the special effects. You could pick holes in it all day but it's become a classic of a sort. I don't like it much.

Here's a few things that keep it interesting, but usually not in a good way:
- An Indian guy wrestles with a real tiger.
- Some Hong Kong actors dress up as Indians, but they don't even go full blackface (brownface?), they just smear themselves in patches of brown.
- The part that leaves the worst taste in my mouth: at some points when the two main stars interact with them, the mouths of the leopard and tiger look stitched closed and you see them cringing. I'm guessing their claws might have been removed too because the German actress cuddles, swings and spins the leopard on her shoulders. You'd think it was heavily drugged but it walks around fine. These scenes of her spinning and swinging the leopard look hilarious until you dwell on the mouth stitching and whatever they may have did to assure the stars would not be clawed to death.
I was annoyed that the otherwise highly observant commentary and sleeve notes didn't seem to notice any of this.
- Elephants look like they're getting shot.

OILY MANIAC

The Malaysian Orang Minyak may be the most disturbing legend I've heard of because it's been said rapes are blamed on it and rapists might have even dressed as this creature.

Oily Maniac is a heroic version of the legend that kills rapists and other criminals. It's quite fun to see the ways in which the hero covers himself in oil to transform into the oil monster but I think this is a weak film. It uses a ripoff of the Jaws theme music whenever the oil monster travels in puddle form, it's used way too much.

It's probably my least favourite film in the recent Shaw Brothers remasters but the documentary and sleeve notes are very interesting. Notes take several quotes from Iain Robert Smith's The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema (which is very expensive).

Here's the blurb of that book.

Did you know that a Turkish remake of The Exorcist replaced the Catholicism with Islam? Or that James Bond and Batman team up together in the 1966 Filipino film James Batman? Or that a Bollywood remake of Memento has become one of the biggest box-office successes in India of all time?
The Hollywood Meme is the first comprehensive study of the transnational adaptations of Hollywood movies that have appeared throughout world cinema. With case studies from the film industries of Turkey, India and the Philippines, Iain Robert Smith shows how reworked versions of Hollywood blockbusters like E.T., The Godfather, Spider-man and Star Wars can complicate prevailing accounts of Hollywood’s global impact, and help provide a new model for interrogating transnational flows and exchanges.

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH

I thought I might have already seen this when I bought a bunch of 60s Italian Barbara Steele horror films years ago, they mostly blur together. I think it's new to me, but anyway, it is a lot like the others, quite dull but still got some basic enjoyment out of it.

THE SLAYER

A supernatural slasher on a beach. Nice setting but the characters get tiresome quickly, has some hackneyed dialogue like "this place gives me the creeps, I feel like I'm being watched". There's some fairly decent moments and the theme music is good (could have been from a lush rococo costume drama) but I didn't like it much.

Not a horror film but Mario Bava's Erik The Conqueror stands up well among his better films. I had mostly not bothered seeing his non-horror films but I might have to give more of them a chance.

Looking back I think Horrible Dr Hichcock is as good as any Bava except Black Sabbath. One of the few oldies which is still fucked up. I still think about the husband staring into space.

Glad I didn't bid more on ebay because Arrow's release of Black Sabbath is reprinted for December.

Also reprinted and released individually are the trio from the American Horror Project box set: Witch Who Came From The Sea, Malatesta's Carnival Of Blood and The Premonition.

Just saw the Criterion version of Carnival Of Souls in shops today (nice cover) and not willing to pay £18, anyone know what the deleted scenes are like?

I'm getting a little hesitant to buy things on bluray if I've already got them on dvd, because I'll feel like a chump if they're not that different. Also wondering which films might come out on bluray, to stay away from the current dvd version. Hoping Zeder will come soon.

I saw the Criterion Carnival of Souls years ago, and my memory of the deleted stuff is that there was a ton of it (like 30 minutes?) but it was just raw, unedited, mostly silent alt takes and alt shots. Just straight off the reel. Interesting in its own way, but not really even "scenes."

Yeah, the deleted stuff is purely ephemeral. The Criterion print is fairly gorgeous, though.

I watched the first half of Häxan last night, it aired on TCM & i had the foresight to DVR it

such a bizarre treasure of a movie.

Did it have the Burroughs narration? The original dialogue screens were a pain.

Intertitles I meant. They're just so persistent, that removing them and having Burroughs narrate made it a lot more enjoyable.

Do any of the streaming services, Shudder included, have much in the way of Hammer?

And by the way, had never seen "Black Sabbath" before, but it's on Filmstruck (with some other Bava) so watched most of it so far, and while The Telephone is dumb and seems like something bored kids would shoot in an afternoon, "The Wurdulak" is creepy as hell if equally obvious.

The last part is great too.

Three films and bunch of features. I'm not big into Amicus but after enjoying the commentary on Kung Fu Trailers Of Fury I'd kind of like to see the commentary on the Amicus trailer reel.

https://www.rue-morgue.com/severins-the-amicus-collection-brings-british-horror-classics-to-blu-ray/

Didn't realise those Universal Monsters legacy bluray box sets were in the UK now. Some of the films included are different from the dvd versions.

How so? Do you mean that the new sets are less comprehensive? Because the DVD sets include everything (to kind of a ridiculously comprehensive degree, as I believe the complete Universal Monsters DVD set includes three copies of House of Dracula and House of Frankenstein between the different Legacy sets in which it's included).

(in which they're included.)