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

I like it okay but I always remember Ormsby talking in the commentry about making his son cry for one scene and he felt horrible about it. Ormsby also did commentry for Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, another Bob Clark film that he intended to remake before he died.

Jess Nevins again. Largely the same material but the patreon one is more detailed and uses some different images.

Who wants to hear about some obscure Japanese horror movies from 1898-1949?

Trust me, you won’t be getting what you expect.

(Warning for those who don’t like long threads: this is a big one. Mute me for a little while if you don’t want me in your TL too much. Thanks!)

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— Jess Nevins (@jessnevins) October 16, 2020

A lot of his research comes from this book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43873891-carnal-curses-disfigured-dreams

Love this cover by Jessica Seamans
http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/store/wp-content/uploads/LostGirls-FINAL-web.jpg
https://www.instagram.com/_jseamans/

anyone seen either of these? planning to check em out as contenders for the Halloween marathon

https://letterboxd.com/film/the-burning-1981/
https://letterboxd.com/film/viy/

Second film is amazing but mostly for the last scenes.

The Burning has good gore, a good first half hour but it loses a lot of steam fast. But Jason Alexander and Fisher Stevens!

Yeah Burning is light fun. Pre-Friday the 13th, right?

Just after. It was Savini's next gig, I believe.

I just watched Viy for the first time last week! Common wisdom claims that it's all about the ending (which tbf is amazing) but I was hooked on the whole slow, pastoral Russian folktale vibe throughout.

ALSO, while I have appreciated the Lewton films I'd seen previously, I saw I Walked With a Zombie the other day and...it's kind of perfect? Barely a horror film in any conventional sense beyond just the sustained eerie mood, but I truly loved it. All of the performances are so muted and soporific (aside from the drunken brother who sorta raised his voice a couple of times), it was like I was walking with a whole cast of zombies. In the best way possible.

The Burning was the first ever Miramax film, btw

All of the Lewtons (especially the ones directed by Tourneur) are excellent. Cat People is in the queue of horror or horror-adjacent films I'm watching with my daughter (I think Diabolique is next; there are so many great movies!)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5DXUaqlgHn/
Here's another Jessica Seamans piece but of Viy. You can get a print for 50 dollars
http://landland.bigcartel.com/products?page=3

Part of the thing with Viy is that the effects in the film are so good I wonder why nobody else ever done that, it's frustrating! I totally dig the pastoral russian thing which is why I love those russian, czech etc fairy tale films but I think it drags in places. Vasilisa The Beautiful is an older russian fairy tale film that drags a bit but the horror stuff is great in it.
I've been listening to the Mala Morska Vila soundtrack and it is the most beautiful thing. I really like the film but the soundtrack is magic.
The 3d remake or reimagining of Viy is not good but there's something quite odd about it.

I reviewed those Lewton horror films upthread somewhere. Whoever argued with me about Seventh Victim was right in retrospect but I still think Leopard Man just isn't very good except a scene or two. Curse Of The Cat People is by far the best in my view.

Never seen The Burning but I may get the Rick Wakeman soundtrack someday.

Isle Of The Dead is a bit underrated, it's a shame those Lewton films have been sluggishly coming out as singles in the bluray era, they really should be in boxed sets.

if anyone wants to join I'll be screening Eyes Without a Face, Viy, The Innocents and Pulse (in that order, probably) online in high def starting at 7pm ET this Friday for all the quarantining would-be trick or treaters, if there's interest I'll share the URL on here

i would love to drop in for the innocents

hell yeah, I'm stoked for that, I've not revisited in years but it became an instant POX horror movie candidate for me

Got the first volume of Voluptuous Terrors (italian posters) and Banzai!: Japanese Cult Movie Posters. Both of them have a lot of international films(probably too many in the latter book). Former book is a bit of a disappointment but the paintings are nice enough, I was completely unaware that japanese film posters were usually photo collages instead of paintings. There's a few unfamiliar films that look promising (but you how that usually goes) and one film I'm glad to finally have the name of.

Is there many kaiju films where the monsters are just doing their own thing? I always prefer when they're just out in the wilderness or in ancient japan, because as I say upthread, all the military/government/city stuff just ruins it for me.
I always liked the look of comics where Godzilla goes to hell or space. Is Godzilla In Hell a good read? I'm encouraged by the fact that it's mostly wordless.
Fingers crossed for anthologies like Mammoth Book Of Kaiju, Kaiju Rising, Daikaiju, etc.

quick poke/reminder for tonight's streaming party, here's the schedule (EST):

EYES WITHOUT A FACE aka LES YEUX SANS VISAGE (1960, 90mins. France/Italy) - 7pm
VIY (1967, 77mins, Russia) - 8:45pm
THE INNOCENTS (1961, 99mins, UK/US) - 10:15pm
PULSE aka KAIROS (2001, 119mins, Japan) - midnight

at twoseven.xyz/quarantinecinema - if you've never used twoseven before you might have to install a browser extension but it's quick and unobtrusive. there is a group chat function but you can hide it if you prefer.

rewatched "let's scare jessica to death" the other night. one of my favorites, it's so dreamy, and the print/sound on the criterion channel are great.

Currently watching In Search of Darkness which is a kinda fun 4 hour doc on Shudder about 80s horror. Larry Cohen pops up as a talking head from time to time and he’s hilarious.

― circa1916,

Bringing this over from the Larry Cohen thread bc many of you will enjoy this doc as I am currently (seen the first 2hrs so far). They go methodically through the '80s one year at a time showing all the choicest clips (usu the goriest ones) from all the significant films. It'll help you sort out which '80s films you need to see or rewatch. Also you can see what a bunch of the actors whom you may only know from their '80s work look like today.

Coincidentally, I watched Pulse last night and it didn't quite land for me. I liked some of the technique - the way Kurosawa made it often difficult to judge how much time had elapsed between many of the cuts in particular - and some of the video footage was pretty eerie (the plastic bag head figure) but the lack of explanation or coherence felt like a bit of a cop-out ultimately. Some terrible CGI right at the end too. In some ways the film's main value now is not as a scary movie but as a historic document about computer/internet/phone culture at the turn of the century.

I think Cure is Kurosawa's masterpiece

Possessor on deck; I think this is best watched tonight as the madness kicks into high gear

the sound design in Pulse is pretty special iirc. shame about the ott ending and appalling cgi.

recently watched Possession (1981). it's like... david cronenberg directing a james bond film written by rainer rilke? lmao. seriously chilling sexual horror. spellbinding lead from isabelle adjani.

"The role was emotionally exhausting for Adjani. In one of the interviews, she stated that it took her several years to recover from, which J. Hoberman called "a veritable aria of hysteria".[8] It was rumored that she attempted suicide after filming completed,[18] which was confirmed by Żuławski.[19] Time Out magazine compared the behavior of her character to the actions of "a dervish of unrestrained emotion and pure sexual terror".[20]"

I'm not that big on Pulse (agreed that Cure is great) but I love that scene with the weirdly moving woman.

I don't need it but I would like a good bluray edition of Let's Scare Jessica To Death.

I'm a little baffled that Lemora still isn't getting much love, I thought it's reputation would grow.

In the last few years, there have been whispers that Carpenter got the basic idea for Halloween not from Yablans but from the Canadian filmmaker Bob Clark, who died last year in a car crash. Clark’s 1974 sorority-house thriller, Black Christmas, introduced several elements that would become famous in later movies. There is a crank-caller that prefigured the one in 1979’s When a Stranger Calls (which Wes Craven later satirized in his 1996 hit, Scream) as well as extensive use of the killer’s-point-of-view shot that famously opens Halloween. The killer in Black Christmas is even more mysterious than Michael Myers. We know literally nothing about him.

Carpenter and Clark had worked together for a time on a horror film called Prey, which eventually fell through. According to several old interviews with Clark, including one on the DVD of Black Christmas, Carpenter asked Clark what he would do if he ever made a sequel to his holiday-themed hit. Clark said the serial killer would be caught, sent to a mental hospital, escape the next fall, and start killing girls. The title: Halloween. (Clark never made a sequel to Black Christmas, but he did go on to direct Porky’s and, oddly enough, the holiday perennial A Christmas Story.)

Carpenter denies getting the idea from Clark, and even denies admiring the man’s work. “I remember coming out of Black Christmas thinking, I don’t know about that,” he says.

Is Carpenter kind of a dick or is that just my impression? I mean, I have issues with Black Christmas too, mostly about the ending, but is this guy ever gracious? He hates Val Lewton films too, that's kind of a tell.

Well, he is notoriously cranky, but I don't know if he's a dick. Clark himself didn't consider the idea stolen.

I think it might be a case of hating Val Lewton fans who use Lewton as an exemplar against violent horror and that they did overrate him quite a bit. The annoying "why did we need to see that?" crowd.

OK. I'm sure he didn't steal from Clark, I was just thinking of the way he talks about other directors in interviews. Seems arrogant. I like Halloween and The Fog, so not slagging him.

xpost but Carpenter takes the opposite extreme - "why aren't you showing us anything?"

I think Carpenter (who I've interviewed a couple of times) is kind of jaded and cynical, which informs his films but also his personality.

Josefa - yes and there is a bit illustrating that in Horror Cafe and he follows it with a very funny story about an audience member hating ambiguity (ambiguity is important to him).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TosdCShzD4g

As I said upthread, it's probably very subjective and I like all approaches to some extent but my favorite thing is seeing a face that you just can't fully process and it terrifies you.
Not all of these are good examples but a lot are.
http://horrordigest.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Scary%20Face%20Club

Junji Ito said that the thing that scares him most is a face in an extreme situation, you can see lots of scary faces in his work.

Even though most of the audience may want to see something scary I think a lot of people underrate it because it's so rare and difficult to create, so almost forget how well it can be done. And some people confuse the seen with the unknown, but seeing something you can't understand or process can be as intense as anything.

Good link, RAG. Many of my candidates are there. Tar Man from ROTLD hits that button for me (the near cartoonishness of his skull face makes him that much more horrible, somehow). See also: the vagrant behind Winkie's in Mulholland Drive, mid-transformation Martin Short in Innerspace, the dead kid from Stand By Me. I'm sure I'll think of more.

For the longest time, I couldn't even bear to glance at the subliminal Exorcist face featured so prominently on that blog but now I have an empty can of Pazuzu Ale perched on my desk and I think it's fair to say that casually soaking in every horrific contour for hours every weekday has inured me a bit.

I always found the Creep from Creepshow's face especially creepy and didn't discover until fairly recently that Savini used AN ACTUAL HUMAN SKULL which I guess explains that.

Carpenter can be effusive about other directors - he's never disguised his debt to Hawks (even recording a commentary track for the original Thing From Another World), and has often mentioned Argento's Suspiria as an influence on Halloween (you could, I'm sure, make some interesting shot comparisons between the two, especially in relation to theIr shared colour palettes). Against that, I know he and (the equally cranky) Dan O'Bannon had a spectacular falling out over Dark Star, with Carpenter distancing himself from the finished film ("not my favourite").

I'm pretty certain you have to be at least a bit of a jerk to get any feature film made.

that appears to be the case based on most (all?) of the filmmakers I've ever met

lucky mckee was super nice when I talked to him at least

yeah... and I guess there's nothing wrong with a director having strong opinions; I probably just overacted to seeing Carpenter put down a couple of people, and then hearing this Bob Clark thing

Dan O'Bannon has a cameo in "The Fog," so he and Carpenter must have somewhat buried the hatchet.

We're taling very mild jerkness here, as far as I can tell.

some people confuse the seen with the unknown, but seeing something you can't understand or process can be as intense as anything.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, November 8, 2020 4:58 AM

I meant to say that people equate the seen with the known, which is not at all the same thing. I hope my meaning was clear enough.

Here's another link to much of the same stuff but for some reason my first link didn't show Mulholland Drive but one of the links on this page does
http://horrordigest.blogspot.com/p/stuff-you-need-to-know.html

I know I said it's subjective but I have to admit I'm still skeptical of people who say that The Haunting (which is do think is very scary), The Innocents and Val Lewton is intense as the nightmare power of the scary faces in Salem's Lot, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire and Watership Down.

I've had several nightmares about seeing a face that I can't turn away from soon enough and wanting to run for miles. And it does feel really conflicting to want to see it later on once I've woken up. That's the fun of horror though.
I remember roughly 15 years ago I was camping in woods with friends and walking into the darkness and loving the feeling of being scared but unable to go past a certain distance. Now Lyme disease worries me too much to be in the woods much but I wonder what I could do to feel like that again and how much pleasurably intense fear I've got left because it dissipates when you chase it but not chasing it isn't a good alternative.

RAG I find your take on the aesthetics of horror quite fascinating on here and think you're otm re scary faces. You really don't spend much time in woods because of lyme disease?

Thanks.

I live nearby a lot of woods and farms and it is something I hear about often enough. A local farmer got lyme disease and I've just heard so much about what it can do to people (last year a woman called into the radio about it, she was crying and near-screaming for the whole call) so I don't go into woods as often as I would like and even wary about tall grass.

I've had Lyme, it infected my knee when I was 13 and I had to have surgery. Not fun, but really not worth avoiding the pleasures of the woods or fields. Just do a tick check every. Time.

Fields I'm mostly fine with, especially with boots but in the woods there is more heights for ticks to climb on.

Yeah, I mean I've lived in the woods for years at a time, to each their own.

Anyone seen Mindwarp? I think I'll go for this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzQUtbmb6fE

how is there a Bruce Campbell movie out there I've never heard of