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

I watched the new 4K print of Prince of Darkness. I enjoyed myself but it didn't quite cohere for me. I loved elements of it (the dream sequences proper creeped me out; the final scene with the mirror) but the goofy elements were a bit duff. My favourite Carpenter is the nihilistic, fully committed Carpenter; I did laugh out loud in places but the humour took me out of the film in this case. Alice Cooper looked like he'd wandered off the set of Thriller.

Also watched both In Search of Darkness docs. Kinda gruelling across 8 hours but superbly researched and put together.

i know this might sound ridiculous but prince of darkness is a grower not an immediate mindblower

the first time i watched it i saw it after the thing and before in the mouth of madness and i was like "this is kinda cool but hmm idk"

second time i watched it the oppressive apocalyptic vibe was just so deeply intoxicating

i mean, like, when that guy just disintegrates into bugs... man

what a movie

when they keep looking in on kelly and her face is just like fucking eroding?????

ok i actually came here to talk about the first four films of my halloween marathon, all of which belong to this thread

1. eaten alive!: there's a letterboxd review of this that says, i'm paraphrasing, "the murder of a sex worker stains the sky blood red," which is better than anything i can come up with. tobe hooper follows up tcm with an even deeper fever dream located in an extremely distorted-yet-real version of the american south where a nazi flag is draped over an armchair next to an american flag hanging on the wall. watching it actually feels like wading through murk. fucking awesome. (available for free with very brief ads on vudu)

2. dark waters: there's no dialogue, only brief dollops of narration, in the first 20 minutes of this, and it's otherwise the most cursed music (made by synths? organs? an orchestra? a choir? idk, it bends between each without revealing itself as any bc it's fucking cursed) accompanying images of nuns carrying burning crosses and church windows filled with rain. when the narrative does kick in it's so meager it's surreal, and the movie keeps sinking into hallucinations that might as well be real as reality constitutes an occult order of nuns living on an island trying to resurrect a demon through the human child she gave birth to. totally unreal. (available for free with ads on tubi)

3. the witch who came from the sea: almost not even a horror movie, just a tragedy divided up by the main character's rolling blackouts. my heart ached for molly. i don't have much to say about it otherwise, but one of the best movies i've ever seen, and one of the most vivid and gruesome and true-feeling depictions of trauma and its long-reaching aftershocks i've ever seen. (available for free with ads on tubi)

4. blood rage: you can tell a horror movie is good when it has two other titles (slasher and nightmare at shadow woods). but this movie genuinely surprised me: it's legit funny and louise lasser's performance as the deeply traumatized and grief-stricken mother feels flown in from a cassavetes film—thus, in this context, achieving High Camp. (available for free with ads on tubi)

Dan Drambles is the second youtuber I've seen to recommend the wonderful queerness of Nightmare 2, should I be revisiting?

it's a delightful film

is that the Japanese original or US remake of Dark Water or something different? I vaguely remember watching both of them at some point.

Ok imma try it, 53 minutes from now, I never enjoyed any of the sequels back in the day, but I sat through this youtube review saying out loud at every clip "oh that's cool... that's cool... that's really cool..."

xp the 90s nun thing, I did not enjoy it particularly but of course it's BradNelsoncore

I'll come back to Prince of Darkness for sure. I felt Pleasence and Victor Wong's apocalyptic vibe; Jameson Parker's moustache less so (and as for Dennis Dun...).

Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is fantastic. The segment on it in the In Search of Darkness doc is great too (I forget which volume. It all blurs into one).

Oh I meant to say Prince Of Darkness creeped me The Fuck Out, but somehow the 90s kids mooching round here (whose 80s taste I started to trust more than my own, like if Revenge Of The Living Dead is your favourite film you are basically in charge of my living room tv from now on) were sniffy about it? like they appreciate MoM more than this? Nah children...

*Return not Revenge obv

I really like Dark Waters, a real shame it vanished for a long time but at least it's getting a bigger push now. Never been able to find much of Baino's short films. It is like carrying the flame after Argento a bit. The last really good italian directed supernatural film I can think of.

The part in Prince Of Darkness that really terrified me is the guy trapped in with that terrifying woman who has her stomach pumped up or something

I haven't watched Prince Of Darkness since the toploader VHS days, at the time my impression was: not as good as Reanimator, Return of the Living Dead etc... and definitely not as good as The Thing. But back then I even thought The Fog and Christine was top level Carpenter so what did I know!

The Fog is awesome though!

I probably need to watch that one again, for old times sake if anything!

NOES 2 has one of the finest horror scores of all time

Christine and The Fog are top 3 Carpenter, alongside Assault on Precinct 13.

I've watched Eaten Alive so many times (I've written of my fascination with this crazy film elsewhere) but never noticed the Nazi flag. Somewhere in Neville Brand's mutterings is the insinuation that he's a war vet.

Really like that film too. Glad it gets more love these days.

Watched Lam Ngai Kai's Erotic Ghost story. It's a tad dull for most of the duration but most of the good stuff happens in the last quarter, taking quite a lot from Witches Of Eastwick and special effects like Evil Dead and Ghostbusters. A three headed monster guy at the end.
It has two commentaries that I'm saving for another time but I watched the bonus episode of Hong Kong's Celebrity Chat Show, three hosts (including Ni Kuang) interviewing three of the actresses, it's quite fun and lasts 45 minutes, smoking and drinking on sofas as they talk about milk, homosexuality and foot binding.
Good sleeve notes about Category III films.

I'd really appreciate if Lam Ngai Kai's Seventh Curse, Peacock King and Saga Of The Phoenix get a UK release, please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhQBsRgtNNE

but never noticed the Nazi flag

it's like... a little obscured, so there's a chance it could not be a nazi flag. he def says he's a war vet

Just watched the features to Snake Girl & Silver Haired Witch and they changed the villain from the mother in the Umezu source material to other women and a connection was made that Grimm Brothers only had their works sold to some countries because they were willing to change evil mothers to evil step-mothers. So evil step-mothers comes from that compromise.

The Australian film, Next Of Kin (1982), is on Amazon Prime now and very enjoyable.

one of my favorite movies of all time

i just saw cure! wow! wow wow wow wow!

huh i loved leatherface: texas chainsaw massacre 3. thrash metal horror! creepy viggo! really great atmosphere full of skulls and dead bodies and blue light!

Stop enticing me with more things to watch! I'm already overloaded!

Has the disturbing movie iceberg been mentioned on ilx yet?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IcebergCharts/comments/lavwrj/horror_cinema/

Lowest one I've seen is Tetsuo and I'm fine with that.

fans of "electrocuting an elephant" should look up the story behind of "emocoes..." on the youtube video.

I remember hating Chainsaw 3 when it was released, although the opening scene with Leatherface sewing a mask has stuck with me. Don't know if I care to revisit.

Re: iceberg chart. I've seen some people say the order of dubiousness is not consistent and that some of the lower ones are just kind of silly. The lowest one I have seen is Viva La Muerte by Arrabal (who was from the same Panic movement as Jodorowsky and Topor). The horribleness is pretty much all in the slaughterhouse footage and if I remember correctly, one actor gets inside a cows corpse but the thing that struck me most was the sight of a dead cow's face being demolished with power tools. I haven't seen Guinea Pig or Nekromantik but as far as I know, there is nothing equivalent, everything is fake in them.

I thought Viva La Muerte was okay but some people really love it, it's quite psychedelic and gloomy.

I'm not sure what that chart is showing. Movies and then titles of grindcore songs?

The point of the chart is, once you reach a stratum filled with titles you don't recognize, it's probably best to forget the existence of that stratum and all those below it.

I'm a horror fanatic and the vast majority of that chart below like the third level is shit that I never need to fuck with. I watched the relatively mild Evil Dead Trap the other day and some of the gore effects in that were at just about the outer limit of what I can handle.

It's quite a stylish film, wouldn't mind seeing the sequels; I remember it being quite tense but I really don't remember any particular violent scenes.
I think Guts Of A Virgin is on my list because it's supposed to be actually pretty good (?). Naked Blood is just so dreamy that the violence doesn't hit hard.

The positioning of Tetsuo on that list doesn't make any sense.

Last night I saw Bob Clark’s deathdream, not as good as black Christmas but some creepy scenes. & he was v good at eerie, suggestively ominous final shots based on this & bc

I've never seen scifi film Enemy Mine but I just learned that a producer insisted it have mines that miners work in it because he thought audiences would be confused if it didn't have them. Imagine working in hollywood

Don't really understand that iceberg myself. I had to watch "Mondo Cane" for a class back in the day, as an ur-example of exploitation in film

I just revisited Cronenberg's The Brood last night for Halloween. I saw it at a drive-in when it was new, and I remember the teenage stoner in the next car providing a pithy review: "This fucking movie fucking sucks!" He's not entirely wrong imo, but it does have some bizarrely great scenes.

The Brood is a good idea, but on second viewing (and any viewing after) it's less scary than depressing. Cronenberg was going through a divorce when he made it and that information basically seeps through every fucking frame of it.

I was just reading about that on wiki, yeah.

looked up a few of the lower titles on that graphic and yeah, no thanks. Although compared to its company, Orozco the Enbalmer looks like a worthwhile film that I will absolutely never watch.

there's also some stuff there that is really questionable politically: Buried in the Sand is a vile and racist propaganda film, pretty explicitly so, and that's just one example. of course there's a tinge of awful politics to a lot of horror films, but horror films made for explicitly propagandistic purposes are a little "no thanks" from me.

watched Event Horizon (1997) last night. hmmm. i'll call it Stupid Solaris.

that's why it's good!

word