/horror/ general megathread - Let's talk about movies and shit.

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While I was thinking about H.G. Lewis, I remembered the 1966 children's film "Jimmy the Boy Wonder" he directed, one of two children's films he did outside of films like Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs. A boy wishes time would just stop, tired of the drudgery of his daily routine and unfortunately he made a wish at the wrong time. He and the daughter of a mystical astronomer must work to undo his screw-up, while dealing with the evil wizard Mr. Fig, who wants to take this opportunity to take over the world. As far as weird, kind of off-putting low-rent "children's movies" that were cranked out just to fill a bill at theaters go, it certainly is that. "Yeah, just film a bunch of crap, whatever, these little retards will watch anything."

 
I watched the uncut version of Dead Alive recently due to various kind souls who have uploaded this version on YouTube.
Honestly, none of the cut scenes are necessary but there are a few fun ones involving the head greaser and the priest/nurse relationship. If you haven't seen this version, however, you aren't missing out on something major.

Currently, I have 90% convinced my friend to play this film for her spooky movie night so I am pleased. I always try to get people to watch this film because it's funny as hell and has extremely creative special effects.

I have seen other good horror-comedies like the Evil Dead 2, Shaun of the Dead, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Night of the Creeps, but Dead Alive is my favorite.
 
I've seen several other horror films this month. Most are re-watches but I saw a few new ones.

Weapons is good on a first view even though it gets a bit silly near the end. If you see it more than once, however, a lot of its tension is lost because you know the mystery. I'd say it's one of the better new horror films but that's a very low bar to pass.

I watched a couple of Eggers films in a row - The Witch, The Lighthouse and Nosferatu - and I want to like his work but I find most of his films boring. The Witch is my favorite in the group. He does period pieces which makes me happy but I feel like that's the only interesting thing about them. I still would like him to do a take on Frankenstein since I love the book and have seen at least 4 different versions on film. Also, he has pretty eyes.

Lovecraft is notoriously hard to film but I'm still a fan of Stuart Gordon and Bryan Yuzna's interpretations. I saw Dagon again and I forgot how gory it was. The CGI tentacles are terrible but there are a lot of good parts that allowed me to forget the bad SFX. From Beyond is still great especially if you like Barbara Crampton's tits and Jeffrey Combs' acting (I like him more than Bruce Campbell). I haven't seen Re-Animator recently but I recommend that one too.

I also saw The Thing last night and it's still a masterpiece. It's baffling that critics hated it at the time but considering how retarded game journalists are I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I still like to ask questions about this film such as how Blair got infected and what The Thing really wanted to do since it was building a spaceship.
 
The ending of The Long Walk was so bad it retroactively made me wish I had gone to Little Havana, found some guy named Luis with a pencil mustache and greased hair, and paid him to poz my neg hole instead of watching that piece of shit SuBvErT expectations multiculti AIDS fest.
 
Internet War Criminal said:
The ending of The Long Walk was so bad it retroactively made me wish I had gone to Little Havana, found some guy named Luis with a pencil mustache and greased hair, and paid him to poz my neg hole instead of watching that piece of shit SuBvErT expectations multiculti AIDS fest.
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My only real issue with the movie's ending is that the shooting is a little indulgent towards the audience. (Though I argue it's pretty clear Peter dies afterward.)

Otherwise, the new ending is well within the themes of the original story, not a subversion of them. I don't think you can really say the racial diversity of the characters is artificial because they're all randomly chosen American volunteers. This might be a case of a director working within the limitations of Current Year Hollywood, but I think he does it well.

PS1gamenwatch said:
The sequels were sillier
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At least Ray Wise was great in the second one.
 
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It’s a subversion because the main character is also the main character in the book, and in the book he survives. Everything, up to this point, is telling you this guy is going to survive. Then he decides out of nowhere to change his mind and kill himself. And the other guy, out of nowhere, changes his mind and decides to murder someone. They both acted entirely out of character, and became exactly what their characters hated.

Pure trash.
 
I've read that the next Evil Dead movie finished filming, so I watched Evil Dead Rise. I thought it was really good. I think it was a pretty convenient that there was apparently some wood cutter guys that lived in the apartment building, leaving a woodchipper and chainsaw just out and about. The pay off for that was great though. I've read some comments somewhere that they wonder about what happened to the deadites left on the top floor, but I think its pretty obvious they just merged into the final being.

I could see the Evil Dead franchise turning into an anthology series. Give the movie to different directors and see what they do with it. Just make sure they follow certain beats: have a creative way some one finds the Necronomicon, have a creative way they read or recite the passages from it to summon the deadites, really exploit the setting, have the deadites do crazy shit based on the setting, occasionally have some throw backs or references to the previous movies.

Imagine Evil Dead Drown that takes place on a cargo ship, Evil Dead Freeze on some arctic base, you could even change time periods and have some historical shit thrown in. Since it would just be an anthology series you could even bring back some of the more comedic stuff from Evil Dead 2. Evil Dead Office about the deadites breaking out in the middle of working hours in an cubicle farm somewhere lmao.
 
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Internet War Criminal said:
It’s a subversion because the main character is also the main character in the book, and in the book he survives. Everything, up to this point, is telling you this guy is going to survive. Then he decides out of nowhere to change his mind and kill himself. And the other guy, out of nowhere, changes his mind and decides to murder someone. They both acted entirely out of character, and became exactly what their characters hated.

Pure trash.
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Right. I am aware it's a literal plot subversion.

But no, they don't behave out of character. Garraty is never positioned in the film as someone who only cares about himself. Yes, he has a personal mission that compels him to compete in the first place and requires him to win. But he finally decides, after witnessing all the death along the way, that he would rather choose to die himself than watch his friend, who he clearly feels is a better man than he is, die. (And he had just stopped Peter from doing the same thing, so he knows Peter will try again soon. They are both exhausted and close to collapse.) The entire film shows most of the competitors, paradoxically, drawing together as a group rather than competing with each other. Garraty's choice is an extension of that theme of selflessness.

As for McVries, his pacifism (which he has come to late in his short life) is in conflict with his sense of loyalty and duty towards his friend. He ultimately chooses loyalty, and almost certainly death himself, over that, and that means he cares more about his duty towards his friend (and avenging his other friends) than he does himself and his own values. Just like Garraty.

We know Peter has darkness in him because of his troubled past. Doesn't the internal conflict just build tension in the final minutes of the film? I thought that was the point.

Though, as I said in another post, I wouldn't have gone with Peter actually firing. I would rather have seen him conflicted and subdued, an emotional wreck, by the soldiers as the Major congratulates him and the crowd cheers. Because Peter, pacifist or not, can't really hope to change anything about the nightmarish country they live in. In truth, even Garraty shooting the Major wouldn't have changed anything. It's a dictatorship that has likely already gone through a few leaders. (A military dictatorship run by a lowely major?)

But still, the movie's ending works. And if they had gone with the book's ending, it would have been a lot less emotional and meaningful to the audience, but it still would have ended up with the winner (arguably) dead. And how do you film the book's ending in a way that makes sense to the audience? I'm not sure you could.

It's one thing to have a new ending that misses the point of the source material. It's another to have a new ending that surprises but also fits with the source material's themes. I don't know, I'm just not outraged by it.
 
Taki Supremacy said:
I've read that the next Evil Dead movie finished filming, so I watched Evil Dead Rise. I thought it was really good. I think it was a pretty convenient that there was apparently some wood cutter guys that lived in the apartment building, leaving a woodchipper and chainsaw just out and about. The pay off for that was great though. I've read some comments somewhere that they wonder about what happened to the deadites left on the top floor, but I think its pretty obvious they just merged into the final being.

I could see the Evil Dead franchise turning into an anthology series. Give the movie to different directors and see what they do with it. Just make sure they follow certain beats: have a creative way some one finds the Necronomicon, have a creative way they read or recite the passages from it to summon the deadites, really exploit the setting, have the deadites do crazy shit based on the setting, occasionally have some throw backs or references to the previous movies.

Imagine Evil Dead Drown that takes place on a cargo ship, Evil Dead Freeze on some arctic base, you could even change time periods and have some historical shit thrown in. Since it would just be an anthology series you could even bring back some of the more comedic stuff from Evil Dead 2. Evil Dead Office about the deadites breaking out in the middle of working hours in an cubicle farm somewhere lmao.
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You have more faith in random directors than I do. Someone would fuck that anthology idea up almost immediately.

But I didn't even like the Evil Dead remake. Outside of the opening scene, I thought it kind of sucked.
 
Went to several Halloween parties with my friend recently, and we dressed up as The Shining twins. It's sad how many people came up to us and had no clue who we were dressed as.
 
Started reading Gerald's Game. Stephen King spends a lot of time describing the shape, color, and size of Gerald's erection in the first chapter. I know it's meant to highlight Gerald's ridiculousness and Jessie's disgust and exasperation but come on man.
 
Gerald's Game was from that period in his oeuvre when he was writing his "Ladies, as a male feminist sympathizer I am sensitive to you and your special lady problems" books.
 
Commander X said:
Gerald's Game was from that period in his oeuvre when he was writing his "Ladies, as a male feminist sympathizer I am sensitive to you and your special lady problems" books.
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Wasn't aware he went through such a phase. TBF when I sit and think on it, I've read less Stephen King than I feel like I have. The Dark Tower series felt like 12 books.
 
Quijibo69 said:
Ghost Stories 2017 has to be one of the worst horror movies ever made by man kind. It shat itself and did nothing, really boring!
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You know I liked the part where the kid lived in the haunted house with faceless ghosts and the dark, quiet atmosphere it had. Nothing else in the movie was that good and the final reveal was really dumb :(
 
I did end up seeing those two the other night; Giant Spider had more fun in the effects, while Harvest at least had Tiny Tim giving the semblance of an effort! Unfortunately, neither were very fun, since there were approximately 4 other (possibly dead) people in the theater and they were just the straight movies.
 
Jerri's Kid said:
Weapons is good on a first view even though it gets a bit silly near the end. If you see it more than once, however, a lot of its tension is lost because you know the mystery. I'd say it's one of the better new horror films but that's a very low bar to pass.
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That's pretty much what I thought about it. The acting is good. The plot keeps you interested. It's shot well. But after all the hype, it's kinda just another 2025 movie. I wouldn't say it's "woke" exactly but you can really feel the stuff they weren't allowed to do, and the stuff they had to do. Anyway, I'd rather watch Zombie Holocaust again.

Jerri's Kid said:
Lovecraft is notoriously hard to film but I'm still a fan of Stuart Gordon and Bryan Yuzna's interpretations. I saw Dagon again and I forgot how gory it was. The CGI tentacles are terrible but there are a lot of good parts that allowed me to forget the bad SFX. From Beyond is still great especially if you like Barbara Crampton's tits and Jeffrey Combs' acting (I like him more than Bruce Campbell). I haven't seen Re-Animator recently but I recommend that one too.
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Reanimator/From Beyond fans might check out the short film The Evil Clergyman. It's also a Lovecraft adaptation that has Barbara Crampton's tits and Jeffrey Combs' acting (and David Gale, and also David Warner). It was filmed in 1987 for an anthology that was never finished. I didn't know it existed until recently but it's not too hard to find.
 
Jerri's Kid said:
I still like to ask questions about this film such as how Blair got infected
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Its extremely likely that Palmer or Norris paid him a visit when the power got out, maybe one or both went out to get Fuchs and then Blair (the former burned himself before they could assimilate him and Blair really was cornered with nowhere to run).

The next time we see him, he def. had been assimilated already.
Jerri's Kid said:
what The Thing really wanted to do since it was building a spaceship.
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You could argue it wanted to flee Earth but its far more likely it was its way to escape the Antartic quickly instead of waiting for rescue to arrive and MAYBE it having a chance to spread through them. The Thing wasnt putting all its eggs in one basket.

After the ship is destroyed, The Thing destroys the generator and tried to let the cold freeze itself dormant while killing the humans. It only fought when MacReady decides to have his "Cheating Bitch" move against it, going full kamikazi Scorched Earth on the camp
Calandrino said:
That's pretty much what I thought about it. The acting is good. The plot keeps you interested. It's shot well. But after all the hype, it's kinda just another 2025 movie.
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Thats a good way of putting it, even the "good" movies of modern times really just dont make you wish to re-experience them, which something even bad movies from 20-40 years ago could pull it off.

There is just something that keeps you from getting engaged enough for a second ride. Maybe its the plots, maybe its the acting, maybe the cinematography, maybe because social media just removed a lot of glamour of film making?

Could be a mixture of all of the above and much more. And its not even applicable to just horror movies, modern comedies legit make me miss those shitty early 2000's comedies.

And the classic gaslit cope is "You're getting old" but I believe we're smart enough to tell it aint that.
Cnut said:
Ending: When devil-man flies off with the brother you think that's when sister invades the evil chapel and movie has a strong conclusion. However, you are wrong, the movie's over. The brother dies gruesomely and that's it. Movie totally sucks. No story arc.
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If it makes you feel any better

"Spoilers I guess"

The Creep does get defeated at the end of the sequel and the father character that finishes him off is easily the best one in the "series".

Yeah, there is a third one and apparently more? I legit cant tell, the series ended just fine with the sequel and nothing further was necessary
 
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