The Horror Thread

[Toe]

I don't like the Art The Clown / Terrifier movies, but I am really glad they've been successful. 

[GhostMachine]

I'm more a fan of horror that relies on scares and terror than gore. While I love the Re-Animator, Evil Dead (Ash) and A Nightmare On Elm Street (with Robert Englund as Freddy) franchises, I'd much rather watch an old school Vincent Price horror movie (even the cheesy ones) any day.

And the last two Halloween movies were crap.

[TheGrandAvatar]

1 hour ago, GhostMachine said:

I'm more a fan of horror that relies on scares and terror than gore. While I love the Re-Animator, Evil Dead (Ash) and A Nightmare On Elm Street (with Robert Englund as Freddy) franchises, I'd much rather watch an old school Vincent Price horror movie (even the cheesy ones) any day.

And the last two Halloween movies were crap.

You can't beat the classic Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff classic horror movies. Even the cheesy Hammer Horror and their rival films from Amicus are still decent enough to watch these days. I also find them less taxing. 

Watched Midsommar recently and the opening has stuck with me more than the rest of the film did. It's unerving, filmed in a way to get you to feel how you do with it, a brutal kicker and one that I think probably unnerved me a lot more due to my own trauma. 

I will stick to classic horror, slasher and zombie films in future. . 

[Toe]

18 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

I'm more a fan of horror that relies on scares and terror than gore. While I love the Re-Animator, Evil Dead (Ash) and A Nightmare On Elm Street (with Robert Englund as Freddy) franchises, I'd much rather watch an old school Vincent Price horror movie (even the cheesy ones) any day.

And the last two Halloween movies were crap.

I didn't like Halloween Kills, so I waited to see Halloween Ends. Watched it by myself, headphones on, and I really enjoyed it. 

[GhostMachine]

2 hours ago, Toe said:

I didn't like Halloween Kills, so I waited to see Halloween Ends. Watched it by myself, headphones on, and I really enjoyed it. 

Kills had a shitty ending. ie, the townspeople teaming up and getting killed by Michael, mainly because they take turns instead of ganging up and the former Sheriff can't shoot straight. I especially hated Tommy getting killed off. Then they killed off Laurie's daughter. Ends sucked because Michael isn't even the killer.

A much more satisfying ending to the whole franchise would have been to do something like the end of Kills, but with the townspeople teaming up, actually fucking him up, and Laurie delivering the coup de grace. Then dumping his carcass in the shredder like they did do. Instead, we have Laurie basically executing Michael, who is too old and weak to be a massive threat.

Edited November 10, 2023 by GhostMachine

[Gabriel]

See, and I'm the opposite of you guys. I loved Kills, and it's up at the top of my list in terms of how much I enjoyed each movie in the franchise. Kills hit exactly what I was hoping it would, and then Ends just shat all over it.

For clarification though, I thought Ends was a bad Halloween film. But I quite enjoyed the premise and ideas present, and on its own merits, outside of the Halloween bubble, it's actually pretty good. As a franchise-ender, with the direction that it looked like Kills was going to take things, it's a failure... but still, a solid little movie, that I believe would have benefited greatly from being detached completely from Michael Myers and the Halloween franchise.

I enjoy me some gore, but I'm not what I would call a gore-hound. I still want lore and mythology, and a good mind-fuck trumps any amount of blood and guts that a movie can throw at me. I just love the genre, from one end of sanity to the other.

[King Ellis]

I saw Ends the other week for Halloween and I loved it. I know the term 'legacy sequel' gets banded around a lot nowadays but these felt like legacy sequels in every sense of the world, rather than just trot Michael Myers out to kill a whole bunch of people again we actually get a look at how the events of 40 years ago have affected not just Laurie but the entire town. In the first you have the idea that Laurie's PTSD and obsession with Michael ruined her relationship with her own family, then in Kills you've got the whole town whipped into a frenzy and this sense of panic that I feel isn't really captured in other movies. Like, slashers movies tend to be hyper focused on one victim and their group of friends so you don't get the wider sense of how the local area is reacting to this serial killer being on the loose. Then with Ends, you've got this interesting look at this origin of sorts and this idea of whether evil is born or created, is this one kid just this way by nature or has he been ostracized by the town to a point that he wants to become the monster everyone thinks he is?

I remember it being hated when it came out but the most vocal of the complaints seem to come down 'WHY ISN'T MICHAEL THE KILLER?' which, to me, has been done to death now. There's like 11 other movies in this franchise you can go back and watch if you want to see Michael Myers run around and stab a bunch of dudes. I'm happy they tried something fresh with these films.

[GhostMachine]

On 09/11/2023 at 18:10, TheGrandAvatar said:

You can't beat the classic Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff classic horror movies. Even the cheesy Hammer Horror and their rival films from Amicus are still decent enough to watch these days. I also find them less taxing. 

Watched Midsommar recently and the opening has stuck with me more than the rest of the film did. It's unerving, filmed in a way to get you to feel how you do with it, a brutal kicker and one that I think probably unnerved me a lot more due to my own trauma. 

I will stick to classic horror, slasher and zombie films in future. . 

I just realized something: Bauhaus and Deep Purple did songs about Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, Bobby Pickett imitated Karloff in all of his songs, and Lon Chaney is mentioned in Werewolves Of London. But....has anyone done any songs about Karloff or either of the Cheneys?

Posted that because its a cool song, AND the video is a pretty good tribute to Price. (Apparently the band members actually knew him.)

[Gabriel]

How much about them should the songs be? Because I could go digging through my horror punk collection and find you probably over 100 songs that are about classic horror icons, either directly or just heavily referenced.

Wednesday 13, The Other, Argyle Goolsby... in fact, Gools wrote a beautiful song about Theda Bara, silent actress and Hollywood's first vampire.

Dear Theda by Argyle Goolsby

[DFF]

Watched Totally Killer the other day. Slightly odd tone, played a bit seriously im places for whats otherwise a colourful, zany time travel slasher. Still, a fun popcorn movie. 

[Baddar]

Yeah, we enjoyed that too.

[Toe]

I really enjoyed Saw X. It's not my favourite franchise - I find the ones in the middle are just really messy and confusing - but this one somehow fits into the series yet remains it's own simple story.

[Gabriel]

On 15/12/2023 at 07:21, Toe said:

I really enjoyed Saw X. It's not my favourite franchise - I find the ones in the middle are just really messy and confusing - but this one somehow fits into the series yet remains it's own simple story.

Saw has some fantastic films in the franchise, but on the first watch of a lot of the middle ones, I just kind of didn't care.

Then, during the Covid Lockdown, we were loading up on cheap movies and found the entire (at the time) set on blu-ray for dirt cheap and grabbed it.

Watching them all in order, without a major delay between films, really helped my enjoyment of the ones that I originally didn't care for. Some of the shit they throw out at us is still pretty dumb, but being able to piece shit together better and see things I missed the first go-around helped a lot.

Saw X was a really good film, though. I've never looked at Jigsaw as a villain, really. He's always given his victims the opportunity to redeem themselves in a way that is poetic to their sins, and I find that incredibly interesting.

Spiral may be my favorite of the franchise, though. I wasn't sure about it before watching, and reviews weren't saying anything that made me want to watch it, but tossing it on one day when we were at a loss as to what to watch, we both found it to be either number one or two on our favorites' list for the franchise.

[GhostMachine]

The one thing I thought was brilliant about the Saw franchise?

Spoiler

When it was eventually revealed in Saw 3D that Doctor Gordon had been assisting Jigsaw behind the scenes, having survived after the first movie.

Haven't seen X yet, but Spiral was great. XI is coming out next year, but I wonder if "Jigsaw" is going to be the one from Jigsaw, the one from Spiral, John (another prequel like X), Gordon, or someone else?

[Your Mom]

I thought "We're all going to the World's Fair" was brilliant. Can't wait for this follow up

 

[Gabriel]

I caught Covid last week and went through a lot of random stuff on my watchlists from the various services, because I was basically useless for a full week and what else do you do?

I caught onto an absolute gem though on Prime Video.

The Invitation, which came out in 2022. I literally knew nothing about it, other than that there were some jump scares in the trailer I'd seen when I originally tossed it onto the list. I am so happy I didn't read into it at all, and just let the journey play out.

Thomas Doherty made me fall in love with him. I want to see that kid do big things in the horror genre. I had no idea how young he was. He plays his character with such conviction and gravitas that I would have expected him to be well into his 30's, but the guy would have been mid-20's when they filmed this.

Without spoiling anything, because I think the revelations are part of what really excited me about this one, it's a modern romantic gothic horror film. It isn't super heavy on the scares, but it's well-acted and gets quite tense.

Did I mention that Thomas Doherty was great? Man, was he great.

[GhostMachine]

5 hours ago, Gabriel said:

I caught Covid last week and went through a lot of random stuff on my watchlists from the various services, because I was basically useless for a full week and what else do you do?

I caught onto an absolute gem though on Prime Video.

The Invitation, which came out in 2022. I literally knew nothing about it, other than that there were some jump scares in the trailer I'd seen when I originally tossed it onto the list. I am so happy I didn't read into it at all, and just let the journey play out.

Thomas Doherty made me fall in love with him. I want to see that kid do big things in the horror genre. I had no idea how young he was. He plays his character with such conviction and gravitas that I would have expected him to be well into his 30's, but the guy would have been mid-20's when they filmed this.

Without spoiling anything, because I think the revelations are part of what really excited me about this one, it's a modern romantic gothic horror film. It isn't super heavy on the scares, but it's well-acted and gets quite tense.

Did I mention that Thomas Doherty was great? Man, was he great.

Prior to The Invitation (which is a great movie even if 

Spoiler

its a retelling of Dracula, sort of

), he was on Legacies for a season, and played a 

Spoiler

vampire 

on it. He also played Captain Hook's son in some of Disney's Descendents movies. I believe he popped up for the first time in the second one.

[Gabriel]

It's only a brief minute-long teaser, but they dropped the first trailer for Alien: Romulus yesterday.

I am beyond excited for this. It's not just a love of the Alien franchise, because I'll admit that I get excited for every new visit to the universe even when they're arguably disappointing... but I have such immense faith in Fede Alvarez as a writer and director, who has not only proven that he belongs at the top of the Best Of lists for each of those, but also has a deep personal love of the franchise.

What he did with the Evil Dead "remake" was, in my eyes, absolutely the perfect way to go. It still felt like Evil Dead, but with the aggression level and intensity just cranked to the max. It's a love letter to the franchise, by a guy who wanted to bring it into the modern era. The trailer for Romulus, and everything I've read thus far, would point to the same type of approach being taken with this.

His work with Don't Breathe is a really good look at how he handles quiet tension and a more claustrophobic atmosphere. Even just based on those two films alone (Evil Dead and Don't Breathe), it's really easy to see how he's just the perfect dude to try to breathe life back into this franchise.

And for any Ridley Scott lovers out there who might be upset, not only is Scott a producer on the film, but after years of saying the Xenomorph was done and not scary anymore... after completely altering the original (and better) scripts for Prometheus to remove most connections to said creatures... Scott not only enjoyed Romulus upon seeing it, but apparently told Alvarez that it was terrifying.

Fede Alvarez, upon seeing Scott's prior comments about the Xenomorph, had this to say: "Hold my beer".

[Your Mom]

"Late Night with The Devil" was fucking amazing. Just watch it as soon as you can. It's on Shudder

[Gabriel]

9 hours ago, Your Mom said:

"Late Night with The Devil" was fucking amazing. Just watch it as soon as you can. It's on Shudder

Agreed.

My advice to anyone is just to go in without reading too much about it, but make sure you pay attention. It's wonderfully done, the performances are amazing and they nailed the aesthetic.