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

I rewatched Tsukamoto's Gemini and it's still a contender for the best looking color film I've seen. Why does a film like this happen then the film industry mostly doesn't learn anything from it? It's a shame Ryo hasn't had more major roles that I can see, most of her work seems to be on television. I didn't know that writer Yasutaka Tsutsui was playing the father first time but then I probably didn't know who he was back then. Wonderful film.

Rewatched Beauty And The Beast (Virgin And The Monster) by Juraj Herz. Commentary points out how much Beast resembles Phantom Of Paradise and that was well spotted, I wonder if it was an actual influence? Herz made it at the same time as Ninth Heart and I hope to see that someday. The film studio accused him of tricking them because they asked for fairy tales and got horror films.

I thought Black Death with Eddie Redmayne and Sean Bean was really good. There's a couple of ambiguities that make it richer than it might have been. I thought the director's earlier film Creep was just okay but I might keep an eye on him now.

I love that movie, quality carice van houten performance too. Great vibe, great score. I saw triangle and liked it but haven’t kept up with later things by this director.

I mostly know Tim McInnerny from Blackadder and 101 Dalmatians, so this was different! And second thing I've seen Kimberley Nixon in after Fresh Meat.

I forgot how much Scream dialogue crossed over into Dawson’s Creek.

Seen the full version of Salem's Lot for the first time in ages, knowing who more of the actors are changes the experience quite a lot.
I still think those shock zoom shots are a mistake and some of the vampires look like they're wincing with discomfort in the make-up. The vampire who repeatedly says "look at me" seems as if he wants the old man to shag him.
The old house in the last 6th of the film looks very good. Soundtrack might be worth seeking out?
Does anyone know if the Hooper commentary track is worth a listen because he was a notoriously quiet man and 3 hours might be difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfs9x0Yxyw0
Been wanting to see Singapore Sling for a very long time and discovered recently there is a channel with the bulk of Nikos Nikolaidis's filmography in HD (I've heard his son uploaded it all). It's a contender for the strangest film I've ever seen, like a deranged soft porn film set in a neo-noir world. I don't think it's his best known film in Greece but it's the one that got him international attention and it was banned in britain. I maybe admire it more than enjoyed it but it always looks wonderful.
See You In Hell My Darling whooshed over my head even more, it has a lot of similarities to Singapore Sling but I found it harder to get a foothold. What were the multiple scenes of that woman falling in the water all about? I'm having trouble imagining what his more mainstream films might be like.

I was a bit underwhelmed by Ebola Syndrome but they really do go for the grossout and loathsome characters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC3rqbT_VD8
Really enjoyed this Mark Hartley video, I bought 2 films because of it.

I don't understand why he's so enthusiastic about The Survivor. It's quite stylish at times but I thought it was ultimately just okay.

He was totally right that Torture Chamber Of Dr Sadism is alarmingly like a Mario Bava film. I got a german bluray rather than the Severin Christopher Lee box set. How did this film escape me so long? Within the limitations of this kind of film I found it really delightful. A must-see if you like colorful gothic horror films of the 60s. Harald Reinl has done Nibelungen/Siegfired, Mabuse, many Edgar Wallace crime adaptations and westerns but I don't think he has anything else like this, what a shame! This film and a chunk of his others have Karin Dor (who I somehow didn't notice in James Bond) who he was married to for a while. I really love this film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzLLUt_lCiA

Don't know if this is streaming right now but I love this one
https://www.criterionchannel.com/under-the-blossoming-cherry-trees

I Drink Your Blood - hated it. just no hook. the build-up could have been really entertaining, a family living in a ghost town created by a nearby dam, terrorized by local Satanic cult. but the whole thing was so bungled.

when the grandpa shows up to get revenge for the rape of his granddaughter, instead of him being killed which would have made sense, they inexplicably let him and his grandson go, even though they could call police (ghost town or not, you can still get law enforcement to visit) or take another stab at revenge later. then they go to the bakery of the very people they terrorized and willingly eat something prepared by the child who is staring at you with daggers because of what you did with his grandpa the night before. by the time the violence finally starts, I was already so fucking bored.

normally love exploitation horror, but this one kept inching up to something entertaining then scuttling away for the first 70 minutes or so.

aight fess up, who else has seen Lamberto Bava's Macabre

cos LOL

xp still incredible for it's amazingly wrong treatment of "rabies"

that, I was ok with, in that I expect horror movies to take real ideas to absurd, nonsensical heights.

is that the one Stephen king talks about in Danse Macabre like the holy grail of what they wanted to see as kids, calls it "macbare"?

(ha, first ddg hit for "Stephen king macbare" is me in another ilx thread)

Holy shit, Der Fan (1982). Just saw a screening. A lot of unpack on that one, but man pretty affecting, even just as a incredibly slow burn (coming-of-age) thriller to the climax, let alone all the pop music idolatry metaphor for Nazism. Don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it, even by indirectly comparing to a certain iconic modern horror it's probably influenced, but yeah... catch it if you get a chance.

All Region bluray of Laurin coming
https://secondrundvd.com/comingsoon.html

Nice that two of my favourite Italian films are getting blurays: Horrible Dr Hichcock and Night Of The Devils. Not sure I need to buy these films again but the former might benefit an upgrade. Undecided.

Laurin is pretty good. Grim little Christmas film I didn't understand was a bonus feature.

If you haven't heard of it, here's a trailer of the recent remaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qRUc0PHGo

Just watched The Exorcist, which I'd never seen before (it's on Max). It's technically accomplished, but only moderately frightening. More interesting for its depressing early 70s vibe. NYC in 1972: scarier than demonic possession!

Watched Event Horizon for the first time - first two-thirds I was confused how it got bad reviews on release, it looked great and was creepy as hell.

The back third horror action could have been all right but it's the rare time I wish a movie had been longer - more build up to Sam Neill going insane or something. As it was it dropped from a couple of rungs below Alien to a couple of rungs below Hellraiser.

I still haven't seen it I full but it terrorized me from the bits I saw in high school

As Sam Neill horror movies go, it's Possession > Event Horizon > In the Mouth of Madness > The Omen III.

Night of the Demon is likely my favorite horror film ever. Jacques Tourneur is one of the great Hollywood directors and Demon is certainly one of his masterpieces in my book.

A great concept - most horror films deal with fear of the unknown, and this one develops that idea to its furthest extent. You have characters with a comfortable understanding of the world that is based on some rock solid logic - it would be very hard to take that away and convince them that the foundation for everything they believe is fallacious. To do so would be traumatizing. And what happens when they do accept that they can no longer rationalize the world around them? Suddenly anything can happen, and that leaves them very vulnerable. It's terrifying - reality becomes very alien and very hostile. Yes, Dana Andrews generally keeps his cool, but that isn't the case with Professor Harrington or with the audience.

And regardless of whether Tourneur wanted to film those demon shots, he was right to be unhappy because they break from the ambiguity inherent in the challenges to the characters' perceptions. Aside from the emerging smoke, they should have been cut out. If the rest of the film hadn't been so strong, they would have spun the entire movie on a far less powerful trajectory.

I watched DEATH SPA (1988) over the weekend. Totally recommend it if you love ludicrous 80s horror. There's some hilarious and campy 80s design/acting/fashion throughout but it actually goes hard with the gore too. I was thinking of the Patton Oswalt bit about the movie Death Bed (The Bed That Eats People)....this is the GYM THAT KILLS PEOPLE. Great ending too as well.

Death Spa is great but it absolutely must be paired with a side of Killer Workout (aka Aerobicide).

I'll have to return to Event Horizon one of these days. I saw it at the time and basically hated it

BFI: "Only 5 of the mere 17 great British horror movies ever made were from before Y2K"

https://letterboxd.com/bfi/list/great-british-horror-films/

Pretty embarrassing. You'd think that list was made by an American (who'd only just started getting into horror movies like three years ago).

it's a list of their facilities coordinator's favorite British horror films, so?

Greatest American Horror Films of All Time:

Night of the Living Dead
The Shining
Halloween
uhh...Nightmares on Elm Street? I think is what it's called?
It Part 1
It Part 2
Megan
Totally Killer
Saw X
The Exorcist: Believer

Host wasn't THAT good, geez

Yeah, this just seems like a little list of favourites from a BFI staff member, rather than anything more institutional.

A more comprehensive list went up on the BFI website this time last year:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/great-horror-film-from-every-year-from-1922-now

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s everywhere.

THEY FOLLOW.
The long-awaited sequel to the modern horror classic IT FOLLOWS from David Robert Mitchell.
Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/V1IiS7PpzU

— NEON (@neonrated) October 30, 2023

Really enjoyed It Follows

Just watched CUJO for the first time. It's streaming on Max. Wow, that movie hits hard. It's basically a late 70s/early 80s kitchen sink drama for the first 45 minutes — there's an unhappily married couple (she's cheating on him) with an only slightly annoying kid. Then the mom's car breaks down and she drives it to the mechanic's house/shop only to discover that a) he's out of town, as is her husband and b) the mechanic's St. Bernard is rabid. From there it's 45 minutes of siege movie, tense as hell but with zero cheating. It really earns every bit of tension, and the ending is barely happy. Highly recommended — it's instantly moved to the top of my list of Stephen King movies, right up there with The Dead Zone and Salem's Lot and The Shining.

If the movie had only stayed faithful to the book’s original ending, it would be the last great movie of the Uber-downer ‘70s

Yeah, but even the ending you do get is dark as fuck. The main couple's marriage was disintegrating before all this, and now they've got a probably permanently traumatized kid, Mom's gotta get rabies shots, pan out just a little bit and life is basically over for them.

Naw, everything worked out ok.

https://www.joblo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/deecujo1-1.jpg

I really love the behind-the-scenes detail about the filming of Cujo and the lengths that the director had to go to make the incredibly friendly dog actors appear even a little bit ferocious.

that is an incredible photo

Black Roses.

heeelarious. my favorite bit is how the band actually learns an extremely lame pop/rock ballad to fool all the parents in town before launching into their real setlist. like what if the olds had stuck around for a bit, did they have more sub-Foreigner songs at their disposal?

lol yes i loved that so much

grow, my flowers of evil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9tu1stPxZw
Litan (by Jean-Pierre Mocky)

I originally passed on this because I thought it looked kind of cool but some of the images left something to be desired. But then I was researching the writer Scott Baker and discovered he had a hand in writing this film and I couldn't turn it down anymore.
Seems unusual to see an action horror film with a leading middle aged couple running for the majority of the film, across really wonderful locations with very uneven grounds. I'd like to see what those places look like today. It was a long time before I grasped what was going on and the video essay on the Radiance bluray filled in a lot for me, it's quite a cool story. Music reminiscent of the rock music in italian horror films. I still wish it looked just a bit better, with a few pushes in the right direction this could have been a favorite, but it's definitely worthwhile.
In the bonus interviews Mocky keeps talking about it as the first french Fantastique film, and I'm not sure how he's defining that, how strict french people are about the definition or if it has changed. I sometimes see it defined as horror and fantasy, or encompassing all speculative fiction or as something having a specific supernatural tension. The film resembles Jean Rollin's Grapes Of Death more than anything, so I wonder if he's ignoring Rollin and the small body of french horror and fantasy films or what? Mocky previously made a film (The Big Scare) based on a Jean Ray novel (City Of Unspeakable Fear) but played it as a comedy.

prompted by discussion of Le Vourdalak (2023) on the post 2005 horror film thread:

After seeing the US version of Bava's Black Sabbath many times, I finally saw the original Italian version, I tre volti della paura, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ic5ZzYWUCo

The three stories of the anthology are in a different order, starting with "Il telefono," a much better giallo than in the butchered/rewritten US version; "I Wurdulak" and "La goccia d'acqua" both look and flow better; and there's a short comic outro with Karloff in his Wurdulak make-up that really ought to have been kept. It appears the running time of the US version is about three minutes longer, but the Italian version feels more complete and coherent and seems to include quite a few beautiful shots I don't recall from Black Sabbath.

Born Of Fire was pretty good but not the easiest to fully understand. The director said people come up with loads of surprising interpretations and I'm not sure he had it all mapped out out either. What did the woman represent? Sometimes she's protecting and other times she's like a demon. Bonus features were good.

Night Tide - I was surprised that I didn't notice the amount of similarities to Cat People until the director mentioned the obvious debt in a bonus interview, it's halfway to being a remake. I liked it but how have I never heard of Curtis Harrington before? Much of his films are low key horror, would anyone here recommend more?