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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #31 — Hubie Halloween (2020)

This actually would’ve been a genuinely good comedy/horror movie if Adam Sandler’s character wasn’t coded to be mentally disabled.

#hubie halloween #movie review #halloween #october #scary #spooky #scary movies #comedy #okay movies #movies that made me uncomfortable #why #cmon man #you're better than this #review #movies #film #adam sandler #netflix #i did it!

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #30 — Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

Vampires have been a cornerstone of pop culture for centuries now, especially when the Halloween season rolls around. From Twilight to Warm Bodies to Vampire: The Masquerade, there are vampire stories all around us. But for some reason no one wants to make a faithful retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the granddaddy of all vampire stories.

Maybe it’s because of Nosferatu, the 1922 film adaptation that was so unlicensed it required the German courts to rule that all copies of the movie should be burned. Thankfully, some copies survived since the silent film is as influential as the novel in its own right.

But filmmakers don’t have to worry about copyright anymore. Dracula was released in 1897 for goodness sake. Regardless, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre is more similar to Nosferatu than Dracula, for better or worse.

It’s beautifully shot, the score is nothing short of haunting and Klaus Klinski gives a supremely creepy performance as Count Dracula. But it’s also paced poorly and does a pretty bad job at making Dracula seem like anything more than a very unpleasant man to be around.

One of the best parts about Dracula is how powerful the titular vampire is. He’s immortal, super strong, extremely smart, rich, hypnotically charming, can shape shift into a bat or wolf, controls animals, clings to surfaces like a spider, can essentially teleport and of course is able to turn others into vampires.

The Count can only be defeated by stabbing him through the heart after the boxes of Transylvanian soil he’s hidden around London have been destroyed. (J. K. Rowling ripped this concept off when creating Voldemort and his horcruxes.) This process is made more difficult by the fact that Dracula is able to look through the eyes of the only person he wasn’t able to kill, only managing to leave a horrible scar on their forehead. (J. K. Rowling ripped this concept off when creating Harry Potter and his link to Voldemort)

But in Nosferatu the Vampyre — and Nosferatu before it — the Count is much less imposing. Rather than turning his victims into vampires, he simply drinks their blood and let the townsfolk assume they were undone by the plague rats that follow him everywhere. It’s also way easier to kill him. Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) comes up with the plot to defeat Dracula like 20 minutes before the movie ends and it works perfectly. There’s no sense of anyone trying and failing endlessly to vanquish the Count, losing hope at every turn. But we do get a very out-of-place funny scene tacked on toward the end for some reason.

#nosferatu the vampyre #movie review #nosferatu #vampires #review #movies #horror #scary #scary movies #horror films #werner herzog #dracula #jk rowling #harry potter #okay movies #film #remakes #supernatural #need a bad bitch to exsanguinate me

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #29 — Eyes Without A Face (1960)

The other horror films I watched this month made me feel scared, startled, repulsed, paranoid, frightened and nervous. But none of the other scary movies manages to elicit as much dread as Eyes Without A Face did.

Georges Franju’s French-language classic is a phenomenally-directed adaptation of Jean Redon’s tale of the macabre of the same name. The film wonderfully executes on its vision of exposing the anguish in all of our lives.

The plot is simple: Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) will stop at nothing to give his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), a new face after accidentally disfiguring her in a car crash. With the help of his assistant, Louise (Alida Valli), the doctor abducts young women who look similar to Christiane and graft their faces onto her.

And yet, even without any big twists, Eyes Without A Face is anything but predictable. It’s hard to see what’s coming next in the film, which has the effect of both keeping your eyes glued to the screen and your mind racing with possibilities of how far the doctor will go in his horrific pursuits.

Franju saves the reveal of Christiane’s faceless visage until well into the movie, giving you plenty of time to imagine how awful she looks. But even after all the teasing, the first time we see behind her mask — which is also supremely creepy to look at — is still a good scare.

The face grafting scenes are even worse. After not seeing the titular eyes without a face for so long, the surgery scene feels excruciatingly long. The way the skin sloughs off the victim’s face is stomach-churning and looks more realistic than it has any right to. You can see the Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre influence very strongly.

But there’s more than surface-level frights in Eyes Without A Face. Christiane’s plight is not simply a conduit for gross-out scenes. She struggles with existential dread — Why is she alive? Why did her father make her this way? Why can’t she die? Why is nobody helping her? How many people will have to suffer because of her?

In a scene that is largely irrelevant to the plot at large, the doctor performs a simple eye exam on a child at the clinic where he works. The child glances at his mother a few times during the procedure for reassurance, seemingly aware that he isn’t answering correctly. With just a few glances, Franju gives us a small glimpse into a much larger story of dread. A son, knowing that something is wrong but not sure what. A mother, knowing that her son is ill but unable to do anything about it.

The feeling that nothing can be done is what truly makes Eyes Without A Face the classic that it is. Just when we think that the police are going to save the day, they fall short, dashing the only hopes of saving one of the doctor’s victims. Just when we think Christiane’s graft was successful, we see how the necrosis spreads and destroys her new face, removing any hope she had of being normal again.

Just as Nightmare City was inspired by Italian politics of the time and Frankenstein was inspired by scientific developments of that era, Eyes Without A Face is no doubt a reflection of France in the mid-1900s. I would not be surprised if the thesis of the film — whether or not you can force someone to change who they truly are by forcing them to take on qualities of others — was inspired by France’s relationship with communism both at home and abroad.

If the West can’t force French Indochina to accept capitalist values, then what hope does the doctor have of forcing his daughter’s body to accept a face transplant? The former results in pro-communist riots in France. The latter results in the deaths of those who have their faces stolen.

Eyes Without A Face shares many similarities — both surface-level and much deeper — with Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was a major influence on Franju’s film. Through allegory, Bulgakov’s novella, written in 1925, criticizes the Soviet Union’s attempts to turn former capitalists into New Soviet Men who would adhere to communist ideals exactly. Instead of dealing with face transplants, it is about a dog who transforms into a man when a human pituitary gland is implanted in his brain — but he still has the “heart of a dog” and behaves as a dog would.

Both stories are about how we as humans cannot force people or societies to be something they are not. Bulgakov uses satire to get his point across. Franju uses existential dread and horrific anguish. Who’s to say one is more effective than the other? We’re not heeding either artist’s advice very well, if you ask me.

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #28 — Death Becomes Her (1992)

A comedy/horror film about a faustian bargain. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, fresh off the success of the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Starring early-1990s Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis in the leading roles. What could go wrong?

Thankfully, not much. But Death Becomes Her wasn’t the grand slam it could’ve been. It takes a long time to finally get into gear, and by the time the plot is really in motion, it becomes clear that everyone is kinda half-assing it.

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Death Becomes Her is in an awkward not-quite-horror-but-not-quite-comedy space. I wish Zemeckis had leaned harder into either genre because the balance was pretty off throughout. A lot of scenes were also neither funny nor scary.

Take a scene where Ernest (Bruce Willis) goes to the morgue to rescue Madeline (Meryl Streep). In a horror movie, we might’ve been treated to some of the claustrophobia Madeline was experiencing, or maybe given a hint as to how close she was to being cremated or embalmed. If this were a pure comedy, perhaps Ernest would’ve pulled the wrong corpse out a few times — apologizing profusely to the dead bodies as he zips the body bags back up — before finding his wife. There’s a lot of opportunity for both comedy and horror in this scene, but there’s none. Ernest goes down and finds his wife and they talk and then it’s the next scene.

Other jokes are really low-effort. Helen (Goldie Hawn) is fat. Women are arguing. Elvis isn’t really dead. Haha.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t laugh at all, though. There’s some great comedic physical acting and timing at work, such as the scenes where Helen describes the plot to kill Madeline and Ernest bumbles his way through an attempt to poison him.

It wasn’t too scary either. The special effects are Oscar-worthy and still hold up to this day, but they’re more uncomfortable than anything. An R-rated version or one that wasn’t trying to be a comedy certainly would’ve taken the body horror and gore further, but this is what we get.

I’m not mad. I’m not scared or laughing either. I’m just disappointed.

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #27 — Castle Freak (1995)

This review consists solely of the unedited rough notes I took while watching the film, presented below in their entirety.

bad movies love describing everything on screen to you and there’s no better way for that to happen than a blind character

The movie is set in italy and all the italians speak like the guy in the “you have no good car ideas” sketch from i think you should leave

things just happen and then we move on so fast

ooh she rolling after that trip

i think her contacts keep going in and out

baby’s day out sorta deal where she doesn’t know what’s going on in front of her which is pretty funny

whyyyyy was she so scared suddenly

WGY only eat the fur of the cat lmfao

wait he’s just walking around and no one has noticed him?

the FIRST thing he does is prey on a teenage girl

someone needs to sit stuart gordon down and give him a stern talking to

she’s jus tFLAILING

holy fuuck the scooby doo ghost trick WORKED on him

i’m so glad jeffery combs is giving it his all still

absolutely NO show don’t tell going on

lmfaooooo this movie rules

wait he aw man almost

wait is this just the shining but a lot worse

the bartender absolutely pushed the glass off the tablee there lol

need me a bad bitch with a smallpox scar and who doesn’t speak the sam language as me AT ALL

stuart gordon absolutely no woman on earth would do this

y’all are quiet during sex? i be in my girl’s ear like AAAAAAAAAAHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh she’s still alive

eric andre ass sound effects

hoooooooly fuck eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww

i thought sound was supposed to carry in this castle

what the fuck lol

oh there it is

nooooooo ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

john sucks lol wait what? why are they letting him do this lol huh

no impact to weight no meaning to eanything that goes on in this lol

wait they’re ACTUALLY praying lol

lmaoooooooooooo

she just got up????????

i thought that rain was applause lol

hsahahahaha

the part where he rips his penis off has to be coming up soon right?

no i guess that’s a different movie because it’s over now lol maybe i missed it

oh that never actually happened stuart wellington just made it up lmfao haha

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #26 — Carnival of Souls (1962)

I’m the least musically gifted person in a very non-musically gifted family. Neither of my parents can play an instrument and my father is absolutely tone deaf. Both my older sisters got piano lessons and both were awful at it, so by the time I came around my parents didn’t even bother trying to get me to learn piano.

Due to my lack of any sort of formal or informal musical training, I often barely remark on a film’s score or soundtrack unless it’s so bad to the point of being distracting. But Carnival of Souls had a phenomenal score, even I could tell that much. It absolutely made this movie what it is: a classic film in the psychological horror genre.

There’s no gore, no violence, no jump scares, no nothing. Just a lot of very subtly creepy goings-ons powered by some great directing and a bone-chilling musical score. It’s like the best episode of The Twilight Zone of all time — all the eerie paranoia and (almost) none of the cheesy melodrama.

Carnival of Souls starts out with a scene that makes it feel as if the last person to have watched the movie forgot to rewind the VHS tape. Before we even know her name, we see Mary (Candace Hilligoss) drive off a bridge into a river, seemingly to her peril. The authorities are unable to locate the car or any of the passengers in the river.

Several hours later, Mary emerges from the water. Confused, but alive.

Mary doesn’t let the accident delay her plans of moving to a city in Utah to be a church organist, though. The only problem is that she is being stalked by a ghoulish-looking man that nobody else can see. Oh, and sometimes she will randomly not be able to interact with anyone, as if nobody is aware of her existence. Not to mention she keeps getting hounded for sex by her lecherous new neighbor.

All these scenarios come across as incredibly creepy on screen. Carnival does a great job at making you feel like you’re in Mary’s shoes — it’s easy to recognize some of the paranoid habits of Mary in ourselves. At one point or another everyone has worried that people are talking about them behind their back. Everyone has had the feeling that they recognize someone who is in fact a complete stranger. You might even go through phases where it feels like no one is acknowledging your existence. Maybe you sometimes feel as if you’re in a trance, your body moving without you realizing it.

So it feels like everybody is out to get Mary even though nobody really does anything bad to her. It feels like she is the only sane person in an insane world even though the absurd only happens in her life. There are some scenes that consist of Mary just walking around a building and it really does feel tense, like something awful is brewing underneath the surface.

Carnival, like all good psychological horror, has a message behind the madness. Mary is someone who doesn’t want to fit in particularly well. She has no interest in dancing or drinking or even sleeping with men. She doesn’t even want to meet any of the churchgoers she’ll be playing organ for. She hardly talks to people who are very nice to her. Is it any wonder why such an isolated person is so distraught at the very idea of being followed by someone?

But the message here isn’t as simple as showing how you become soulless if you never let anyone into your life. Mary is very clear about her disinterest in the things the men in her life want her to do, but they pester her anyway. Only after being hunted by her phantom for many days does Mary give in and go out on a date with her alcoholic neighbor. He doesn’t want to be with her in her time of need once he realizes she is only interested in him for security.

“If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” -Tim Kreider

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Mary, who is just like the rest of us, goes insane, not wanting to ever be alone or be with anyone else either. Can you blame her?

#carnival of souls #movie review #scary movie #horror film #good movies #horror #suspense #psychological thriller #paranoia #tense #black and white #1963 #movie #film #review #blog #essay #criticism #the mortifying ordeal of being known

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #25 — From Beyond (1986)

I couldn’t tell what racist point this H. P. Lovecraft story was trying to convey, so I did a quick search. Unfortunately, this led me to read Roger Ebert’s review of From Beyond which rather disheartened me and made me feel like I’ll never be as good a critic as he was. So I’m keeping this review short and to the point.

It’s gross, it’s gloopy, it’s hard to look at. Classic Stuart Gordon stuff. But it’s weighed down so heavily by all the faux science discussion that doesn’t really mean anything. My interest was piqued during the leather S&M gear sex scene but I quickly stopped caring after that. You have to admire Gordon for his dedication to the craft. Who else is able to distinguish their filmography by the unparalleled quality of gloop?

#from beyond #movie review #hp lovecraft #scary movie #horror film #movie #film #review #blog #essay #crticism #my review of bride of re animator did well for my standards #apparently there are fan blogs for that movie series lol

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #24 — House of 1000 Corpses (2003)

This movie fucking rules. It’s achieved cult classic status, but it deserves regular old classic status in the realm of horror films.

You can tell that when Rob Zombie made House of 1000 Corpses, he was doing it out of love for the genre. He’s clearly a fan of scary movies and wanted to make one that people like him would enjoy watching. A movie that would be able to avoid some of the missteps the seminal films in the horror canon made.

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House of 1000 Corpses’s greatest strength is its fast pace, mostly due to the phenomenal editing. The action never stops or even slows down enough for you to get bored. Instead of lingering on the screams of victims for so long that you just want it to be over, we usually only ever see the very beginning or the aftermath of torture scenes. This forces you to fill in the blanks and come up with your own idea of what happened — a great example of “show don’t tell.”

Despite the breakneck speed, House is also incredibly tense at points. The audience knows the two couples at the center of this story are in over their heads, which makes the scenes when the horror is still bubbling under the surface excruciating. In fact, the general pace of the movie makes the few scenes when the camera lingers on a subject feel that much more impactful.

Zombie saves the best jump scares and the most gruesome violence for the end, so it never feels like the movie played all its cards early. There also aren’t any out-of-left-field twists that feel cheap or wholly unexpected. There’s not even a happy ending tacked on to the end to make test audiences happier. This is a film by and for horror fans.

There are shades of classic horror all throughout Houses without any of the baggage that comes along with it. Most obvious are the similarities to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which it almost felt like Zombie was directly responding to, saying, “Hey, here’s how you’d make a good movie about a family of psychopath cannibals.” The skin-wearing, the heavy-weapon-swinging, the cop-killing in mineshafts and of course the casting of Bill Moseley are done better in House than in TCM.

But I can see Halloween, Friday the 13th and even The Night of the Living Dead in this movie. First person POV shots of the killer slowly stalking a young girl, a bait-and-switch about the killer’s identity and what appears to be a rescue turning South are all present in Houses. But there’s none of the gratuitous sexual violence, random supernatural powers or ham-fisted racial commentary that dragged those films down for many audiences.

House of 1000 Corpses is a movie about a family of serial killers torturing two young couples to death and it fucking rules. It’s funny, gory and horrifying. What more can you ask for in a scary movie?

#house of 1000 corpses #movie review #rob zombie #movies #scary movies #horror films #scary #horror #gore #torture #review #blog #good movies #dwight from the office is in this #texas chainsaw massacre #halloween #friday the 13th #the night of the living dead

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Halloween Review #23 — The Secret Cinema (1968)

When I sit in the passenger seat of a car I sometimes imagine someone running alongside me, jumping over obstacles on the side of the road. I never told anyone I did this and no one ever told me that they did it either so I was under the impression that this habit was unique to me. It wasn’t until I read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road — in which the characters discuss this exact phenomenon — that I realized I wasn’t as special as I thought.

It was both comforting and horrifying for me to realize that my most secret, unexpressed thoughts are shared by almost everyone else on this planet. Comforting because it means I’m not really that alone in the world, but horrifying because it means I’m just like everyone else.

Paul Bartel’s “The Secret Cinema” had the same effect on me. It is both comforting and horrifying to know that other people have the same thoughts and live life the same way that I do.

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“The Secret Cinema” is a black-and-white short film about Jane (Amy Vane), a woman who starts to believe that she is being filmed and people are watching her life at the movies.

Jane’s paranoia is not unfounded, but that’s what you would think if you are truly paranoid — if you’re crazy, you don’t think you’re crazy. Jane worries that she is overreacting to being sexually assaulted by her boss, that her boyfriend never really loved her, that her mother is disappointed in her, that everyone is laughing at her behind her back, that her friends thinks she’s ugly, that everyone knows about her mistakes, that she is being watched, that her doctor doesn’t have her best interests at heart, that she is being recognized by people on the street who she doesn’t know, that her friends thinks she’s ugly, that nobody listens to her, that everyone is listening to her, that everyone is looking at her and more, all in under thirty minutes.

Without getting so specific that anyone who reads this would feel the need to do a wellness check on me, these are delusions that I have also believed at one point or another. What’s so impressive about “The Secret Cinema” is that it really feels like you’re watching someone who is vindicating these thoughts of yours.

When you see Jane catching people talk about her and laugh at her behind her back, it feels satisfying because it almost validates all the times that you thought someone was talking about you behind your back. But of course, real life is not the movies.

This is the meta-commentary that “The Secret Cinema” brings, and it’s more relevant now than ever. People like seeing Jane fuck up. They want to see her fail. They enjoy it. And yet, people still want to be Jane, even though they know how awful it is to be in front of the camera all the time. We only focus on the good and ignore everything going on behind the scenes that allows social media influencers to say and do what they do and we want to be like them. Even if we know that it can’t possibly be all that it seems, we still want to be rich and famous.

The last thing about “The Secret Cinema” that I really loved was the constant auditory sensory overload. People laughing and talking, birds chirping, cameras filming, music playing, background static — it’s hard to feel like Jane ever has a moment’s rest to herself. When she wakes up it’s often in different places than she fell asleep in.

On both a surface-level and meta-analysis level, “The Secret Cinema” is one of the best portrayals of what if feels like to know that people are plotting something behind your back. While not scary in the same way a slasher can be, it unsettled me much deeper down.

#the secret cinema #movie review #paul bartel #full movies on youtube #scary movie #psychological thriller #paranoia #on the road #jack kerouac #review #movies #blog #mental illness #black and white #short films #good movies

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #22 — The Addams Family (1991)

There are tens of thousands of people on twitter and tumblr whose entire personality is watching The Addams Family who can explain why this is a good movie much better than I can.

#the addams family #movie review #comedy #horror #scary #october #halloween #review #movies

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #21 — Mausoleum (1983)

The deaths in this movie are awesome. They’re way gorier than you’re expecting and will certainly get a reaction out of you.

Unfortunately, the only other interesting thing about this movie is the fucked up film transfer that accidentally produced some kinda cool-looking visual effects. The acting is bad, the plot is boring, the message is unclear, the visual effects are inconsistent. It’s a slog to get through, and the brief violence and nudity is not good enough to make it worth your while.

#mausoleum #movie review #scary movies #horror films #movie #film #review #blog #essay #criticism #boring movies #bad movies #1983 #i wanted to watch possession #but couldn't find it #so i watched this instead

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Halloween Review #20 — Nightmare City (1980)

Years ago, as part of my quest to watch every movie that contains the phrase ‘of the living dead’ in its title, I watched City of the Living Dead (1980). I remember almost nothing about it other than the ending was very confusing — apparently because coffee was spilled on the film during the final stages of editing. Only afterwards did I realize that the Italian zombie movie entitled City of the ... Dead that I had just watched was not the one I was looking for.

It turns out that in the same year that Lucio Fulci released City of the Living Dead, Umberto Lenzi released Nightmare City, which was known as City of the Walking Dead when it was released in the USA in 1983.

I do not regret watching Fulci’s zombie flick when I did, however, because finally watching the much better Lenzi movie today — several months into the coronavirus pandemic — made it that much more impactful.

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Nightmare City covers the whole gamut of what makes zombie movies so compelling. A zombie apocalypse is a good metaphor for almost anything if handled well, and this film handles it expertly.

The zombies in Nightmare City are the result of nuclear radiation. People contaminated with radiation develop superhuman strength and endurance. Anyone in contact with them might be contaminated with radiation themselves. And worst of all, those affected by radiation develop an insatiable craving for human flesh, as their mutated bodies require more blood in order to maintain their heightened abilities. The only way to stop them is to burn them alive or damage the head.

As far as explanations for a zombie apocalypse go, this one is pretty sound. And, just as the discovery of electricity led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, it’s clear that the development of nuclear power plants all over the world in the 1970s inspired this movie as well.

But Nightmare City isn’t just about the dangers of a world developing in potentially dangerous ways that we don’t fully understand yet. The 1970s in Italy were a time of unrest, with neo-fascist and Communist groups clashing violently for many years. Lenzi’s zombies — and survivors’ reactions to the zombies — can be seen as a critique of either one of these ideologies depending on how you look at it (but I think it’s clearly anti-fascist, given the explicit criticisms of people who only care about amassing money and power at any expense).

At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, many things can spread throughout the country as quickly as a deadly disease. Fascism, misinformation, panic, paranoia, consumerism and violence are just a few of the things that Lenzi likely saw as a disease spreading throughout Italy just as the zombies ravage the city in this film.

Nightmare City is also the first zombie flick to deviate from the “slow zombie” archetype that George Romero established in Night of the Living Dead. Lenzi’s zombies are fast and still retain some higher-level thinking. Normally, I’m not a fan of fast zombies because I think it goes against the horror inherent to a zombie apocalypse. But Lenzi’s zombies don’t reflect the fact that death is inevitable for all of us. They represent how quickly everything can go to shit if we don’t pay attention.

“In the long run, we are all dead.” -John Maynard Keynes

Lenzi manages to turn fast zombies from a cardinal sin of the genre to an interesting commentary. He performs the same feat to an even greater extent with the film’s ending.

In the final moments of the movie, the main character, Dean (Hugo Stiglitz), wakes up from a bad dream. Everything that we just saw on screen was just a nightmare. I audibly exclaimed. I couldn’t believe this was happening. A really great movie was ruined just like that.

But Nightmare City doesn’t end there. Our main character gets up and goes to work, just like he did at the film’s beginning. The exact same scenes play out in the exact same way. You keep waiting for Dean to do something. But he never does. He doesn’t warn anybody. He doesn’t do anything different this time around. Just as the zombies are about to arrive on screen for the first time (again), the movie ends. “The nightmare becomes reality...” appears on screen just before the end credits roll.

Just like people did nothing to stop a fascist revival from happening in Italy during the 1970s, Dean does nothing to prevent the zombie apocalypse from happening even though he knew what would happen.

Beyond subverting my expectations, this wowed me because it was chilling. Of course a pandemic movie would feel prescient during the age of covid. But it was downright eerie. The hospitals are hit first and hardest. The government declares lockdowns too late. Some people refuse to take measures because they just want to enjoy their weekends. Others think that they’ll be safe in places of worship because God will protect them. Theme parks stay open.

Nightmare City proves that we knew this would happen. Scientists knew just as well as Lenzi did that modern humanity is not prepared to properly tackle the threat a pandemic — or fascism — poses.

But Lenzi is not all doom and gloom. As Anna (Laura Trotter) says, we are still living in the age of advantage. Despite all the problems that modern society presents, our quality of life is higher than it ever has been. We have instant coffee, nuclear power and the ability to stream Nightmare City online for free.

We also have first responders — both in real life and in Nightmare City — who put themselves on the front lines in order to save people. We have people who will risk their jobs to do what’s right. We have scientists working overtime to develop vaccines. We have the power to make our lives better, we just can’t sit idly by as the world goes to hell around us.

#nightmare city #movie review #city of the walking dead #city of the living dead #umberto lenzi #lucio fulci #good movies #italian cinema #foreign language film #zombies #pandemic #the night of the living dead #coronavirus #covid #blog #review #criticism #social commentary

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #19 — Head of the Family (1996)

“That is without question the most fuckable young lady I’ve ever seen outside of a magazine. Hell, don’t bother me she’s a r----d.”

Gordon Noice delivers this line in a completely inscrutable Southern accent within the first five minutes of Head of the Family. Somehow, it is not the wildest line in the movie by a wide margin.

To say this is a totally stupid film is vastly underselling it. No one in this movie uses anything more than the reptile parts of their brains. Around half of the dialogue is delivered while the characters are actively having sex. It has the jauntiest score I’ve ever heard in a scary movie and perhaps ever.

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Lorretta (Jacqueline Lovell) is married to Howard (Gordon Noice) but fucking Lance (Blake Adams) on the side. Lance witnesses the members of the Stackpool family abducting a random townsperson, so he blackmails the head of the family, Myron (J. W. Perra), into killing Howard for him. Lance also wants $2,000 a week after. It’s honestly a pretty reasonable extortion request.

Of course, the head of the family (who is literally a giant head on a tiny body) gets revenge on Lance. He does this by using his genius intellect and telepathic powers to control his three siblings: the super strong Otis (Bob Schott), the ultra observant Wheeler (James Jones) and the very sexy Ernestina (Alexandria Quinn).

“Holy shit thems some big eyes, brother!” -Lance, to Wheeler, who has big eyes

Head of the Family is ostensibly a comedy/horror film, but I didn’t laugh at any of the parts that were intended to be funny. I did laugh, however, at almost every other part of the movie.

The sheer horniness that everyone in this movie displays is incredibly funny. Howard is riding his motorcycle when he sees Ernestina on the side of the road so he pulls over and immediately starts trying to fuck her. Loretta tries to seduce the grotesque head of the family in an uncomfortably long strip tease scene. Lance is constantly having sex with Lorretta in public places. It’s nothing short of inspiring.

“Ain’t no time to talk dirty now listen up!” -Lance, while railing Lorretta from behind

Even on the rare occasions when no one on screen is having sex, the movie is baffling enough to keep your attention for the entire hour and thirty minutes of run time.

“Every stupid word is a deposit in the pain bank. You just wait, pretty soon you’ll be making a withdrawal.” -Myron, to himself, thinking of Lance

The climax of the film occurs when Myron abducts Lance and Lorretta and tries to torture them into telling him the name of Lance’s second lawyer (he already found and killed the first lawyer). His torture of choice is to burn Lorretta at the stake in a production of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Who else is on stage? The lobotomized townsfolk that Myron abducted previously, who flatly deliver their lines in a very faithful adaptation of the movie.

“My momma’s dog is Elvis P. Resley.” -Lance, telling his first lawyer the name of his momma’s dog

Otis doesn’t like seeing Lorretta being burnt alive, so he takes her and runs away. Everyone else dies in the house fire. Lorretta marries Otis — who is mentally handicapped — since he is now the sole heir of the Stackpool fortune. Um, can you say girlboss? Then the movie ends.

Not a single person in this movie makes a decision that a normal person would make. It’s absolutely wonderful. A must-watch for all fans of stupid movies.

#head of the family #movie review #the flop house #stuart wellington #horror movies #scary movies #october #halloween #scary #horror #bad movies #so bad they're good #stupid movies #comedy #blog #review #good movies #film #cult classics

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #18 — Suspiria (1977)

I was in a rut. The past four horror movies I watched were stinkers — what good is a scary movie that doesn’t scare you at all? Watching them felt like a chore and I didn’t feel like my reviews were saying anything important either. So I took a short break and returned with Dario Argento’s Suspiria.

I had watched a handful of Argento’s other movies and I thought the 2018 remake of Suspiria was decent, so I felt confident this pick would get me out of my rut.

And I was right.

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All the dialogue is dubbed over in post. Goblins is on the soundtrack. The violence is way past gratuitous. I said “ew” out loud several times while watching. The lighting is as intense as you can get. Oh yeah. This is a Dario Argento film all right.

Suspiria does a really great job of grounding the extreme violence in reality, a difficult feat to accomplish for a movie about witches who throw a young lady into a pit of barbed wire. Argento manages this by knowing that normal people are afraid of a lot of things happening in their lives — their food going bad, a dog on the street biting them, their friends lying to them, a stranger standing outside their window — and showing the realized versions of those paranoias on screen pushed to their absolute limit.

My main problem with the movie was the incredibly anticlimactic ending. The main character escapes the witches. "You have been watching Suspiria” shows on screen. The end credits roll. It doesn’t get more abrupt than that — the movie is basically telling you to get out at that point. It almost felt like a longer ending was cut for time but at 92 minutes I can’t imagine that was the case.

Perhaps adding to the feeling of abruptness was the fact that a lot of the horror isn’t really experienced by the main character. We see scary things happening to the people around her but she doesn’t she doesn’t go through much until the very end. So when she finally escapes it feels a little... cheap? Usually young ladies in scary movies don’t get off so easily.

I was also slightly disappointed that Suspiria didn’t incorporate some of the aspects of the 2018 version that I had enjoyed and was looking forward to seeing again. Luca Guadagnino’s remake had some really good body horror — which I personally find more upsetting than the torture porn Argento is fond of — and didn’t feel so barebones in terms of world building. I dearly missed seeing the dancers’ bodies contorting against their own wills, but I can’t hold that against the 1977 film.

Suspiria was a good palate cleanser for me. Horrific over-the-top violence, ominous music and a simple plot that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Another win for Dario Argento.

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #17 — Poltergeist (1982)

Boring and not scary.

#poltergeist #movie review #bad movies #horror #scary #october #film #movie #review #ugh

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #16 — 10/31 (2017)

This movie had strong 24-hour-film-fest vibes. The sound mixing was awful and the acting was below subpar. The frights are few and far between. I don’t really feel the need to talk about any of the stories contained in this anthology. None of them were good.

It suffers a lot from “Goosebumps Syndrome,” which I believe was first described by Elliott Kalan from The Flop House podcast. Basically, this movie does nothing to make you, the audience, scared. But you recognize that if you were in the position the main characters were in, you’d be scared by all the supernatural things going on around you — just like in R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps stories.

If you want a good horror anthology, watch Southbound or All Hallow’s Eve instead.

#10/31 #movie review #horror anthology #movie #review #horror #scary #gore #slasher #supernatural #short film #halloween #all hallow's eve #southbound #the flop house #elliott kalan #goosebumps #rl stine #bad movies

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jmroscoe · 4 years

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Halloween Review #15 — The House of the Devil (2009)

This movie is almost completely soulless. It imitates what a 1970-80s slasher looks like but captures none of the feeling that comes with it.

The House of the Devil was filmed on 16mm and released on VHS as a promotional stunt. There are slow zooms of characters through windows. It’s filled with retro product placement. The girls wear high-waisted jeans. The title cards and opening credits look straight out of Halloween. It certainly looks like a classic slasher.

But this film is 95 minutes and there wasn’t a single scare for the first 80. I felt no creeping sense of dread. No sense that something was amiss. No gratuitous gore. Nothing that actually makes ‘80s slashers enjoyable. The last 10 or 15 minutes are pretty good but could almost stand alone as a short film.

What’s the point of watching this movie? Why not just watch Halloween or Friday the 13th or Texas Chainsaw Massacre? The House of the Devil does nothing new, offers nothing original, subverts no expectations. It’s a nothing movie.

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