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

I am psyched to see Messiah of Evil at some point but I don't have Shudder so someone needs to put the blu-ray back in print.

Fun fact: it's written and directed by the folks that brought us Howard the Duck! I won't hold that against it, though.

Abel Ferrara watching The Driller Killer, the good stuff. pic.twitter.com/QHVcyuAMhH

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) October 20, 2020

Messiah of Evil is gd fun - in parts it's the most proto-Lynchian film I can think of - but it does have one of the all-time lame endings (they ran out of money before they could shoot a proper finale).

I missed the recent Eureka release of Viy with the bonus limited edition extra film called Sveto Mesto/A Holy Place. Luckily it is on youtube in a probably scratchier but very watchable form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwYk7h_wJAk
It's one of the most substantially different versions of Viy I've seen (let's forget about the recent one). More sex, ballbusting, an angry cat and the witch seduces women too. Doesn't have the full-on phantasmagoria of the other ones, but takes interesting directions, definitely worthwhile.

that ferrara commentary is hilarious

Yeah, next time I pick up any of his films I'll check for commentary. Kind of great to hear him just laughing at the really nasty bits.

Just got the Daimajin boxed set (the trilogy all came out within 7 or 8 months in 1966!) and reading an essay in the booklet about the cultural impact. A ton of famous writers and directors were going to do reboots. Katsuhiro Otomo scripted a film that was going to feature Steven Seagal and Golden Harvest was going to co-produce one featuring Kevin Costner. There's a very expensive fan film that was well liked but copyright prevents it getting a proper release

Seems that Kim Newman stuffed his recent Anno Dracula books with an extensive list of japanese monsters including Daimajin and even Kato from Teito Monogatari (the character that M Bison/Vega from Street Fighter was based on)

Daimajin and (at last) Criterion Godzilla set on their way to me, psyched for big-time kaiju filmfest

fear dot com!!!!!

i watched william malone's 1999 remake of house on haunted hill the other week and i loved it so much i needed to see the other movie he made that people actually watched, and fear dot com is maybe the most visually inventive horror movie of its era. if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie. also forecasted the coming decade of torture porn two years in advance of saw

if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie. if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie. if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie. if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie. if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie. if you like shitty macromedia flash websites that are also evil and full of gnarled gothic industrial designs that keep peeling back to reveal FURTHER gnarled gothic industrial designs and also detective procedurals that make little to no sense and also naked ghosts vomiting up blood, this is your (and my) movie.

this is my favorite sentence ever, thank you Brad :)

Amazing boxed set, I've heard the third film isn't very good but this should be fun. I'm a fan of Great Yokai War despite some notable flaws.
https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/yokai-monsters-collection-limited-edition/FCD2205

Stuart Gordon's Dagon - This is actually an adaptation of "Shadow Over Innsmouth", I didn't detect anything from "Dagon". I liked this better than Reanimator and From Beyond, aside from some iffy special effects it's pretty good. I'm half convinced the team behind Resident Evil 4 seen this, the resemblance seems quite strong to me. All the Barbara Steele comparisons for Macarena Gomez make sense, she looks like a total goth queen in this, wish I'd seen her in more stuff but she's never stopped working.

I love Dragon, the thickness of Fransisco Rabal's dialect and unsubbed Spanish increases hugely the otherness imo.

Macarena Gómez is great, the last thing I saw her in was Hex Studios' The Black Gloves.

Shrew's Nest seems to be one of her best known films, looks alright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuLVPWNcCqs

She's so genuinely eerie in this scene
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MANS9q9o6ec/TwuR3ZkniMI/AAAAAAAANuw/6ULB1n45_DA/s1600/Dagon%2B2.jpg

Slight Curse Of The Crimson Altar vibes here?
https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/8224825/1024full-macarena-g%C3%B3mez.jpg

The scene with the huge well might have been a lift from Corman's Haunted Palace?

I watched the Changeling and had quite a flat reaction to it - though it has grown in my imagination since. I like a slow burn but found the pacing a bit off and as much as I'm happy with ambiguity, I don't think the writing quite managed the job of tieing up the two strands (griefwork vs uncovering of a horrible plot to bury the murder of a child). George C. Scott is fantastic though, no doubt.

I think you could invent a drinking game where you drink every time he puts on/takes off his coat. You'd be arseholed within a half hour.

Difficult to explain why I like it so much. Scott is so likable in it

A three hour documentary on folk horror? Count me in.

https://gizmodo.com/woodlands-dark-and-days-bewitched-is-the-only-folk-horr-1847599210

It's included in the massive Severin folk horror box set that just opened up for preorders.

(But the doc can also be preordered on its own from Severin.)

(But why preorder just the doc when you can drop almost $200 and also get a ton of movies that are featured in the doc.)

watched the doc already! they mention lots of stuff i've never seen, the box looks like a solid deal to me!!

a full winter's worth of horrifying folky entertainment, what else could a person ask for

I recommended it above recently but here's the new trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhfW_5dUqco

i showed sleepaway camp to someone who knew nothing about it the other night and it was the best, especially to see her register the ending

Lol I haven't had that pleasure in such a long time

Finished the Daimajin boxed set. They aren't great films but I liked the setting and the monster. They follow a very strict formula, the second film has a more artful style but not a whole lot more depth or excitement. It's not surprising there hasn't been many more revivals because it seems like hardly anyone knows what to do with Daimajin. The commentaries and sleeve notes are really good, especially the Jonathan Clements commentary of the third film, hope he does many more commentaries.

I've only watched the first Daimajin so far, but I loved the presentation - the blu ray looks absolutely lush. The period setting was a nice change of pace from Godzilla's modern day dress, and I thought the visual effects held up pretty well. Daimajin's eyes - wow!

Yeah, the parting water effect (like in Ten Commandments) in the second film is very good, part of what makes it the best film for me. The usual urban skyscrapers setting is part of why I can't get into kaiju films.

There's a bunch of behind the scenes stories about the eyes. Jasper Sharp and Tom Mes talk a lot about a film called Buddha and it seems like a mostly overlooked but important part of film history.

Seems like most of us only scratch the surface of japanese film history but the television history is talked about a lot, as if the people making it overlap maybe more than hollywood would have overlapped with american television (?). Maybe same with Hong Kong television. Wonder how much of their old tv shows are worth seeking out?

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