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

Pumpkinhead (Winston, 1988) pic.twitter.com/k88jWGRpwS

— K I N O D A S E I N (@cinexistenz) October 16, 2019

Been watching Schlocktober videos, wish he did more of that instead of the big current films. Recent one has brief clip of unauthorized Mortal Kombat film.

Akira Kurosawa script
https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/the-mask-of-the-black-death/

Saw the Wicker Man on the big screen at the weekend and it was such a bad print, a very obvious jump cut during Willow's Song and the scene with Willow washing the table outside of the pub was nigh unwatchable. I watched the same cut a couple of months ago on bluray and it was fine, so I don't know why this one was so bad.

it's part of the fun of seeing film projections - you don't know if it'll be complete, or it'll be washed out pink, or a foreign print. i've learned to "enjoy" the gamble

i am watching new nightmare right now and YOU'RE ALL WRONG IT'S GREAT

I have this thing where I like to leave 'treats' for myself, films I figure I'm likely to enjoy but hold off on seeing so that I always have classics I can visit for the first time. So last night, I finally took on The Howling! And it was pretty much everything I could have possibly wanted from a werewolf movie directed by Joe Dante. It's rare that a movie so perfectly meets my expectations and still manages to surprise me. Did Dante and Landis consult with one another while making their respective were-films? It's weird that two such innovative films of the genre were released pretty much in parallel.

And what was up with werewolves in 1981, anyway? No fewer than five lycanthrocentric films were released that year (Howling, American Werewolf, Wolfen, and Full Moon High, as well as Naschy's Night of the Werewolf original release in Spain).

it is odd that we go through cycles of key horror things. Vampires, werewolves, zombies... i guess at the moment the key creepy in the theaters is, um, society?

they're all different ways of talking about the same horror -- US!!!

On the same site as that Kurosawa screenplay review is new reviews of similar dream project screenplays by Shane Carruth and Coppola.

Attack Of The Super Monsters looks hilarious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md2_zNrN8NE

Ah ffs, I just reviewed 11 80s and one 90s horror films for yis and somehow the post got lost. I ain't typing it all again but btw they were all GREAT.

Except Chopping Mall. Chopping Mall was just fine.

CAT'S EYE
WOLFEN
SOLE SURVIVOR
OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN
HABIT
FADE TO BLACK
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS
THE NEW KIDS (not horror I know, this was addressed in original post, it involves a multitude of text and Tom Atkins)
BAD CHANNELS
TWO EVIL EYES
THE HOWLING

ALL GREAT (I addressed my issues with THE HOWLING at length in OG post basically ffs no one gave me a trigger warning for parts of it, but HEY DICK MILLER, I guess it's GREAT)

Sorry, should be 10-2 80s-90s not 11-1, I forgot Bad Channels is 90s cos it's so quintessentially 80s

oh yeah, I forgot my main point:

And what was up with werewolves in 1981, anyway? No fewer than five lycanthrocentric films were released that year (Howling, American Werewolf, Wolfen, and Full Moon High, as well as Naschy's Night of the Werewolf original release in Spain)

WOLFEN IS NOT A WEREWOLF FILM!

Actually you said "lycanthrocentric"... hmmm... NO, STILL NOT ACCEPTING THIS

Been wondering whether to take a chance on some things I've always passed up because the trailers weren't interesting enough. Like The Beast Within, Boogeyman and Madhouse (the version with the dog). Or a lot of other things that Arrow released that might only be as good as The Slayer (not that great).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEMfH7c8XSs

Monsters look cool but I'm not sure Orochi: Eight Headed Dragon will be worth tracking down. Anyone here seen it?

Demoness From Thousand Years - Joey Wong starring time travel fantasy with bits of romantic comedy, not enough sword fighting, punching or kicking to be considered a martial arts film.
I was hoping this would be more along the lines of Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain but only the few fight scenes in a cave 1000 years ago are like that (and they do look quite good), the rest is mostly fish out of water and cop/gangsters comedy set in the 90s, occasionally a bit funny from what I could make out.
There's only a couple of hong kong disc versions with slightly murky letterbox picture and the subtitles are poor. I wondered why this was obscure and now I know why this is unlikely to be remastered any time soon. Disappointing.

Mister Designer - I sometimes saw this on Russian horror film lists, favorably reviewed too. It's good, based on an Alexander Grin story, definitely worth seeing, (appropriately) well designed, Sergei Kuryokhin soundtrack is really good (I might try to find this on CD, or something else by him, he seems famous in Russian avant garde music); not a masterpiece (though surely a hidden gem), there's some rough edges...BUT, I've never seen another film so deeply into the whole decadent/symbolist/gothic milieu (it's set in 1914 and a lot of the expected artwork is shown onscreen, Odilon Redon in particular) and if you like that sort of thing, you'll probably enjoy this. Above all, it is beautifully designed.
If there is justice, pretentious aesthetes everywhere will titter at their friends who haven't seen or heard of it.
Check out the screens.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157713/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1

cause you're a COOOOOOOOL DUDE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vMkJ0Imn1Y

(from the 1987 slasher pic Berzerker)

I bet Parker & Stone have seen every film like that.

i really like that video and have found myself mumbling ur a cooooooool dude got your bs in social psy today

tales from the crypt: demon knight is an AWESOME movie

Eve Of Ivan Kupalo - Based on a Gogol fairy tale. I could only see this in a crappy version on youtube subtitled in French but it is still quite striking at times with the sense of design, rapid cuts that shift characters across the screen in different positions, that weird crowing laugh of the old man played several times, characters tilting on the ground and it may be partly the poor quality of the version I seen, but I was wondering how on earth they achieved the scene of the woman darting around the forest.

Anyone know about Church Of Film? It moves around a few locations in Portland, and from the youtube

Agggh, I hadn't finished!

Muriel Lucas's youtube channel has such an incredible array of obscurities that I'd love to see. As much as I like all sorts of cult films, I've never considered myself much of a cineaste or cinema goer, but I'd feel very lucky to be near enough to regular showings like this and I'm sure I would actually go to see them. Any of you been to them?

http://churchoffilm.org/index.html

This trailer proves there is a superior print of the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeSyPHfBFko

Check out the selection of trailers on the channel, it's incredible.

Here's a trailer for Mister Designer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2-BWVmi6Ps

I got the Lost Soul documentary bluray for the extra interviews and it was worth it. Comes across even more how incessant Stanley is when he talks and how much he had thought about absolutely everything; seems to regret not taking a chance on Judge Dredd though there were was already serious script problems to deal with. Barbara Steele (in audio only) says she was at a disturbing dinner party with Frankenheimer but stops there.

Have you seen The Otherworld? Peak Stanley.

Stoked there's talk of it being a Lovecraft trilogy after the reception Colour out of Space has got.

Last week I passed up the chance to meet Luigi Cozzi because his wife was really vague about when he was coming into the shop other than "5, maybe half past" and it wasn't 3 yet. (And I didn't think making my wife hang about for hours to watch me shake the hand of a guy she'd barely heard of would win me many brownie points.)

I've got The Otherworld and White Darkness on my wishlist.

Barbara Steele (in audio only) says she was at a disturbing dinner party with Frankenheimer but stops there.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, November 17, 2019 2:20 PM

I should add that she had more to say about him and there was no implication that he was the disturbing part of that dinner.

"A Woman Sobbing" episode of Dead Of Night -
I'm fairly sure this is a riff on Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper"; Gaslight is referenced a few times. Intelligent script and very 70s.

george romero's season of the witch aka hungry wives is on shudder and is nearly as brilliant as martin imo, check it out

Uh...how the hell is Romero's Season of the Witch not more of a thing?!? I always thought it looked/sounded intersting but I'm shocked to discover that this obscure thing is one of his very best films. Certainly one of the best acted. Only caveat wrt this particular thread is that it's barely horror, but big thumbs up.

― Dethloaf LLC (Old Lunch), Tuesday, April 17, 2018 5:29 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

omg i LOVE that one
my favorite non-Dead old Romero!!

Nighbreed (director's cut) - So strange to see Cronenberg as a proper main character in a film but I like him in this role. Noting the LGBT theme, I wonder if this was a sort of callback to Michael Caine Dressed To Kill?
I liked it okay but it runs into that problem of lots of science fiction tv shows and creature filled b-movies do: there's often an unimpressive lumpy face look to piled on prosthetics; still preferable to cgi.

The Inferno / Hell / Jigoku (1979) - Another bizarrely underseen old Japanese horror film; and Kumashiro is one of the most important Japanese directors of his time who somehow hasn't travelled abroad like his peers.
This is far better than the 1960 Nakagawa version (which has some great scenes but a bit boring overall) and the 1999 Teruo Ishii version (declining director on shoestring budget), by quite some distance. Far more ambitious, more stages to it and more serious.
This time it's about a girl reliving her mother's life, possibly possessed by her. Nearly everyone in the film goes to hell. Much more sex than the other films.

I particularly liked it when the daughter looks down into hell at her mother. Lots of nice mountain scenery. Uses similar effects to the Nakagawa film in the hell scenes, but bigger demons.
But how does Shima die in the basement? She was left there for a short time.
Hako Yamasaki contributes some songs which make the film seem several years older than it is.

Didn’t know extended nightbreed had happened

I actually hadn't seen the theatrical version. Also new to me was that Barker intended this to be the first part of a franchise, but since he never wrote any prose sequels I'm guessing it would have been just like his comics lines and Hellraiser film sequels: probably for extra income and to give his buddies work.
The cop rubbing his lips against a choking wire was funny.

Still cant wrap my head around why so many good Japanese horror films from 50s-80s don't get English releases. A very strange blind spot for horror film fans, of all places. The Inferno is growing on me in the days after seeing it.

I loved Nightbreed when I was a kid - I had the game for the spectrum! And the later, flawed Amiga game.

http://www.hammerfilms.com/10-unmade-hammer-films/
Kali project is news to me, could have been interesting, probably a bit awful.

I want to see all these, best channel!

Feather Fairy, Millennial Bee and Snow Queen (1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxzNHxA0t-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg8IYfF-VpU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acfI4ryt6kM

getting midsommar vibes off the snow queen there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=VYNrIVKuaio

Sorry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYNrIVKuaio

"Iconic" is a very overrated quality but I really don't think the 80s beats the 30s for that.

Muriel Lucas's channel has been deleted for repeated nudity/sex violations. This is extremely shit and a bit suspicious, I don't recall anything that could have got her banned and youtube tends to be more tolerant of nudity/sex in the context of old films.

A Criterion box set called When Horror Came To Shochiku

X From Outer Space - a space exploration film that turns into a kaiju film halfway through. I think it is considered a joke among kaiju fans and I say it's for completists only. Really boring.

Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell - Some seem to really love this. Outside the bizarre images of slime going in or coming out people's foreheads, I think it's just a serviceable paranoid survival story.

Living Skeleton - Quite stylish black and white and I'm always happy to see Ko Nishimura but I didn't get much out of it sadly.

Genocide - More consistently interesting than the others, but I still wouldn't recommend it much. But the only film I've seen with a femme fatale mad scientist holocaust survivor.

I warn you about this set. I'm aware Criterion probably knew they weren't great but it is quite annoying when there are so many other more deserving japanese horror films of this era. Why did it need to be 4 discs, surely it could have all fit on one or two discs?

====

Along Unknown Paths - Based on popular children's books by Eduard Uspenskiy. Who knows why Russian Cinema Council put this on their label of classics? Aside from some fun things like a house that moves like a train, it's awful. Some familiar characters like Baba Yaga and Vasilisa, so I dont know how much of the good things are established fairy tales, how much is Uspenskiy and how much is original to the film. I'd get rid of this if it didn't have Aksyuta being so adorable.

====
Catherine Breillat directed.

Bluebeard - I'm interested in how Breillat seems to deliberately avoid any suspense, see how it cuts when Bluebeard chases his young bride up the stairs?
I have no idea why the mother at the end doesn't respond at all to her daughter's fall.

Sleeping Beauty - The made for tv style taken a bit of getting used to. Parts of Snow Queen are equally important.
Thanks to Zaharoff for this one, I wasn't previously aware of it.

Also saw her film The Last Mistress (period film without any overt horror or fairy stuff; overt horror debatable though), which was probably the best of them.

Lumikuningatar / The Snow Queen (1986) - A Finnish version of the story that makes the Snow Queen and the witch pedophiles. There's a song an hour in that seems like it was from a musical version that never happened, it feels out of place with the whole aesthetic.
The visuals alternate between looking gorgeous and well designed and looking cheap and under budget. I could never decide if I actually liked the Snow Queen's hair or thought it was too ridiculous.
The story feels a bit lifeless and poorly paced, which is a shame because the quality of the images and the brilliant main theme music deserved better.
Ultimately I'd recommend it, it's not hard to find on dvd, there's a few editions with english subtitles.

I was annoyed because the used disc I had looked like it had been on the floor of a chicken and dog fighting arena for years, but it played fine.

The Living Corpse - This is a 1967 black and white Dracula adaptation from Pakistan. Atypical elements including the vampire as a scientist looking for eternal life and inadvertently creating the vampire race; a car chase and of course songs and dances (some of it even sounded like surf music).
It's just okay, most of the enjoyment for me was seeing the fashions and dances of the actresses.

This was a Mondo Macabro dvd, they released a bunch of other south asian horror films (why has nobody else bothered?); there's a short Making Of documentary and another documentary about south asian horror films and violent action films (some interesting talk of the tragic bad girl and big action mother tropes), it's not much over 20 mintues but I wish it had been longer.
Might watch the commentary.

I really like the Living Corpse, the dance sequences are probably the best part though I agree.