The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[therewillbeblus]

Revisited the Scream series over the past week to catch up with the latest entry (except for the third movie, because life is short), and I was surprised to find that I loved Scre4m the most by far, surpassing the second film as the best of the series. What it has to say about the stimulation of digital fandom transcends some cheap shot at dopamine hits, and likens this ubiquitous and tragically-warping psychosocial evolution vis segregating media broadly toward a fear of fatalistic antisocial tendencies growing from this unstoppable, developing beast. That the film manages to pull this off without condescending to Gen Z or youth in particular, and takes care to engage with the zeitgeist's wavelength on the allure of influencers and their low-effort/high-reward outcomes, is an admirable strength. The movie pushes the first film's ideas about fame further and deeper into relevant spaces than that film did because instead of commenting on a fear-mongering idea of media's influence on consumers, it prays on the relatable experience of everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for two decades.

The newest film, unfortunately, is saying nothing- posturing at ideas about comparing 'elevated horror' of A24 and other indie studios to classics but never following through on its promises, because it doesn't know how. Nor do I, as it's a pretty empty concept if you look past the relevance of horror's arthouse appeal, as everyone making this movie should have done after its pitch. The film basically tries to do what the fourth movie does in establishing motives of inherent societal thwarted belongingness prompting a murderous drive to be a 'part of' non-social ideas - though it's also trying to ape the second's merits of self-parody too, only sloppily, unnecessarily, and worse of all, sincerely without creative wit. The fourth movie already accomplished this right out of the gate in its incredible Russian Doll opening -especially the gag with two terrific blonde actress cameos. That was economical and imaginative, but the fifth film attempts to engage in similar basic meta-fare with a tired and overstated explanation by the killers in its final act that makes no sense and is no fun. Just go watch Scream 4 twice. Also, how dare you waste Kyle Gallner's talents like that

[therewillbeblus]

The Funhouse (Tobe Hooper, 1981)
It’s tempting to see this as a transition point for Hooper between the grating, raw nerve style of his more exploitation-esque 70s films and the slicker, more traditional, more straightforwardly comical horror work of the 80s. So there’s a share of grime and shrieking, but also traditional jump scares and well-orchestrated suspense and stalking sequences. But of course Salem’s Lot was pretty traditional, so, dunno. The carnival feels authentic; there are no hackneyed attempts to make it creepy or unsettling in a filmic way. The low rent, broken down atmosphere of a real backwoods carnival is allowed to stand on its own. As slasher films go, this is a mostly restrained effort, emphasizing atmosphere, build up, and suspense over violence and gore. I’m not overly impressed with Hooper’s post-Texas Chainsaw work, but this particular movie is to his credit.

At first this felt like Hooper playing it safe with an extremely loose narrative approach and decisive dive into ambiance via isolated set pieces, which risked disengagement from lack of direction or surrogate investment. However, it's a quietly ambitious skeletal strategy, for by the time the film was well into its last half-hour, it had cast a spell on me in revealing itself to be something I didn't expect: less an involving slasher than a fill-tilt exercise in voyeurism. While a film like Rear Window constantly interrupts our spectating opportunities for deviating attention to gravitate us back to a multidimensional and relatable protagonist in an economic, predictable flow, Hooper will just plant his canvas characters in a position to observe and then leave us there for an irregular length of time, prompting some disorienting whiplash when we return to the vague and trivial focal point of these vapid principals. Now, this is no Hitch, and his masterpiece has more to say and ignites deeper reflection with its fine-tuned methodology of editing and overall thematic construction. Still, I found myself impressed with how far Hooper pushed his structural conceit and how, through elisions, it slyly has a lot to say about how we got lost in depersonalization from objectively active voyeurism reflecting a subjectively passive approach of engagement with our surroundings.

The "characters" disappear for extended stretches of time and when we finally get a glimpse of the masked killer and then cut back to the group, I forgot we were even supposed to be watching the scene from their perspectives, let alone that the film was supposed to be a slasher! The film is reflexively ungrounded in narrative form like a funhouse, and has an unhealthy distance from its characters, which aids its structuralist refutation of holds that we require to secure us to a linear, predictable path. Hooper isn’t implementing technique in particularly novel ways like Hitchcock’s film, but instead is breaking introductory rules of cinema to unexpectedly heightened effect, which in turn showcases how much we rely upon them during rote voyeuristic practice. The most glaring example is that, had Hooper used simple continuity to glance back at his group of kids while they watch what they watch, any commentary or higher Art reading would be muted, but because he refuses to provide such a basic service to his audience, the narrative breaks are hypnotic and transitions back are jarring.

There’s an arrhythmic tempo that's unnerving as window dressing attractions feel securely-placed but are always threatening to become plot devices that intrude in on a hazy hangout movie (and eventually do in the final act!), but that rollercoastering course itself is part of the amusement. The film establishes itself as a slasher from the deliberate Halloween/Psycho homage in its opening, then tricks us into losing ourselves with confusion first ('Is this going to be a slasher?') and then surrendering into whatever this 'is', passively disengaging from the main group and accepting whatever is gracing us across the screen. Then, just when we're comfortably relaxed in a voyeuristic routine of observing portmanteau arcs with detachment from self, Hooper reminds us that, wait, his film is going to be a slasher after all, and abruptly casts its group members into those slasher roles at the last minute for some acute action to expedite the necessary killings. It's also cheeky how the kids watch the masked killer emasculate himself sexually, which subverts the dehumanizing monstrous nature of the role's intimidating presence with an opportunity to carefully survey and mock from afar, only for the killer to come back and violate these kids in the exact ways they, like we the audience, assumed they were safely shielded from when statically perched in an aloof dimension of attention for... basically a whole hour with minimal activity?!

The final moments meditate on how traumatized the final girl is, mirroring our own delayed cognizance to what the F just took place, but even when she's in the thick of it, the tone is especially perturbing for a slasher film due to a polarized rationale compared to typical intragenre fare. We've had no exposure to aligning with this woman, and she's taken a backseat to become one with the passive audience instead of the other way around.. so when she's thrust into an actual narrative of threat, screaming and confused, it's as if Hooper is coercing the audience into a position they didn't sign up for- despite signing up for that very experience at the beginning, pre-desensitization to a new rhythm; a coaster switching tracks on its patrons.

I can see how and why this film would fall completely flat for some audiences, but I think it's far more intelligent than what it flaunts at us on its shallow surface, redistributing vacuous vehicles into place on a ride that gives them dense subjective meaning for the viewer vis horrific sensations that range from physiological to psychological to existential. I wonder how it’ll play on revisits now that I’m aware of the central anti-slasher gimmick, if you can call it that, for part of the fun is in acclimation to what’s happening here. Though perhaps like Rear Window, knowing how things end will allow me to allocate more attention to the richness of Hooper’s grammatical detail and process, cultivating a deeper appreciation. Okay, now I’m ready for the board to throw tomatoes at me for comparing a forgotten Tobe Hooper B-movie to one of Hitchcock’s greatest.

[colinr0380]

I really liked this: every Gemini Home Entertainment video (at the time: there have been two more videos since) played simultaneously. Aside from the general tone starting normal and then darkening there were some fun to note sync ups of imagery, text and content are quite striking when viewed in this manner.

[domino harvey]

This is quite a nifty 'liminal horror' short: The Backrooms.

This seemed more indebted to the kind of indie horror video games Markiplier has made a good career out of playing online (no idea why these started showing up in my algorithm either), in that we’re in a weird 3D render of a quasi-liminal space, punctuated by jump scares and hidden details that constitute “lore” (plus a dash of the finale to Cube at the end). As such, I don’t really recognize this as a short film at all, just a demo for a game you can’t even play!

These “Backrooms” videos and their imitators have been consistently popping up in my algorithm since watching the above linked and morbid curiosity/boredom leads me to watching some, which leads to more appearing and so on. That said, I actually really enjoyed this one, which contains no stupid monsters or artificial spookiness and arrives at something weirdly unsettling nonetheless, like navigating a space created for humans by someone who doesn’t quite understand their subject or how we use spaces/places like this

[swo17]

Apparently this is all "animated"? It looks very real!

[colinr0380]

The recent Wendigoon video is a good run-through of the major Backrooms-related series created by Kane Parsons (which seems to have been a specific off shoot of a more general internet-based liminal space-meets-SCP mythos (EDIT: here's a recent Super Eyepatch Wolf video on that general trend), seemingly similar to the way that Marble Hornets developed as its own standalone project out of the wider open source Slender Man mythology), since it features an interview with that creator (I think the environments are apparently all done with Blender animation tools, which is what makes the "Report" video using live action locations and actors feel a bit uncharacteristic and jarring). If you run through the videos, make sure to check out the description boxes for the occasional links to unlisted tie-in videos!

It has been fascinating to follow the Kane Pixels series in particular, with trying to make sense of where each of its videos are fitting into its convoluted timeline, and the idea that this was either an attempt to create extra-dimensional space to solve Earth's pressing real estate problem that had unforeseen consequences (did the experiment create all of the unreal and uncanny seeming environments? Or did they pre-exist and we just happened upon them? Or is the uncanniness created by human attempts to co-opt and make the strangely constructed environments somewhat 'livable' and habitable?), or ended up creating a bridge to a different universe with beings that are now aware of us. Or are the monsters people who have been fallen into the area and been trapped and mutated over time? And since the 'universes' merged (or this add-on universe was created) seemingly more and more people have been disappearing, 'no-clipping' out of our world through gaps in reality into this new dimension. And there seem to be pockets of time slippage as well. Is it a Gantz-style purgatory, or is there a more prosaic explanation? Can we have a mix of both?

Who knows if this series will stick the landing, or even if there is a landing to be stuck to. For now, I'm just enjoying the chance to speculate! (And it also got me to return to House of Leaves a few times over the last couple of months, just to try and capture a similar feeling!)

These “Backrooms” videos and their imitators have been consistently popping up in my algorithm since watching the above linked and morbid curiosity/boredom leads me to watching some, which leads to more appearing and so on. That said, I actually really enjoyed this one, which contains no stupid monsters or artificial spookiness and arrives at something weirdly unsettling nonetheless, like navigating a space created for humans by someone who doesn’t quite understand their subject or how we use spaces/places like this

Those Matt Studios videos are great too! I'm with you there in the sense that its the strangeness of the environments themselves that are the draw rather than any monsters (is architectural planning the only real acceptable face of A.I. algorithm-generated art?), even if in many cases as with many a found footage film I can understand that they inevitably have to be there so as to provide 'closure' for the 'narrative'. (The otherwise unrelated to all of this more recent Backrooms material House of Leaves novel, for example, also has to have a nebulously defined threatening monster prowling at the heart of its labyrinth, though in that case it is updating the Theseus and the Minotaur legend into urban home spelunking!)

[domino harvey]

I dutifully watched a few more from a couple different channels but there is really only so many variations on this theme I need, and for the most part, the more “lore” these creators try to shoehorn in, the more amateurish they appear.

However, I enjoyed the channel Return to Render’s ambitious entries, as they have a dark sense of humor (“Who’s this guy?”) that acts as an effective corrective of the self-seriousness of many of these kind of videos, and the adventures are played for grim laughs rather than jump scares. This is a particularly creative one

[colinr0380]

One of the more comic takes was the Vlogger satire one! ("Do it for me, I'm MatPat")

[Mr Sausage]

Halloween Viewings



Halloween Ends (David Gordon Green, 2022)

How has Green gotten worse at this? I don’t remember this many cheap and hacky jump scares in the first film of this trilogy. The first ten minutes are nothing but loud bumps and shock noises. Anyway, the film takes the mythologizing aspects of Halloween Kills and expands them while dropping much of the slasher horror stuff (Michael doesn’t even show up until 40 minutes in, and has only brief appearances from then on). More than anything, this is an adaptation of Christine, with a put-upon kid having a run-in with Michael and increasingly taking on his evil as a response to the bullying. It even has a climax of sorts between the kid and his bullies in an auto shop. Also, the kid leads people back to Michael in his lair so Michael can kill them and regain energy, like this is Hellraiser, before stealing the mask and taking over the job himself. It’s the dumbest thing ever. Did no one learn from Friday the 13th part V and IX? All I can think is that no one here really wanted to make another Halloween movie. Who wrote lines like this: “You’ve got to rip off your top and show grief your fucking tits!”. No one in the movie talks like an adult, especially the adults. They talk like bad movie adolescents. The movie is top-to-bottom awful. Nothing works. Not the writing, direction, performances, music—nothing. I need to stop making it a yearly tradition to watch bad Halloween sequels.

The Frighteners (Peter Jackson, 1996)

I like Jackson’s pre-LOTR work. I was even one of those movie nerds who was vocally confused that the maker of Dead/Alive and Meet the Feebles was doing Tolkien. This is the only one I hadn’t seen yet, so here we are. I trusted Jackson to inject some life and energy into things after the dregs of the last movie I watched. Jackson’s a much better director than Green. A paranormal conman who enlists ghosts to haunt people so he can ‘exorcise’ them finds himself having to battle a truly malevolent spirit. A good idea filmed with great energy and aplomb and, sadly, a taste for unfunny jokes and characters. Along with Jackson’s usual voice is a portion of producer Zemeckis as well as a lot of Tim Burton, and not just because Danny Elfman is the composer. The film was fun, but it pitches itself to such consistent loudness that it quickly becomes exhausting rather than charming. Jackson should’ve calmed down a little.

Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972)

One of those films I felt I ought to see, as a horror fan, but had never felt any strong desire to. The grubby, low-rent production values and guerilla shooting style contributes to the effectiveness of the violence and despair. Fifty years and countless copycat exploitation films haven’t dimmed the ugly power of the movie. It’s a tough watch. The film even survives the bad acting, inappropriate score, and tedious comic relief interludes. I didn’t enjoy it; I think Craven improved on the themes and the style of filmmaking with the superior The Hills Have Eyes; but I kind of admired it. It works.

I Spit On Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978)

When people defend the movie as feminist, they imply that feminist means moral or ethical. But they’re confused. Feminist just means the movie shares a specific ideological and philosophical position. It’s like saying a movie is moral for being Marxist, or ethical for being logical positivist. Arguing the film is feminist is not a defense, just a description. Only uncritical dogmatists would confuse the two. An example: it may be feminist to argue that because men have oppressed women throughout history, they ought to be oppressed in turn, but it’s not moral or ethical. You can take all sorts of positions on the ethical scale and still be feminist in your thinking. So the question isn’t whether it’s ethical to make a film about how men victimize women, but whether it’s ethical to film the longest ever rape scene in order to attract an audience. The idea that the rape scene necessary in order to justify the subsequent murders is A. saying the movie’s point is to justify murder, and B. patently untrue given that, for instance, Last House on the Left was able to justify its revenge conclusion with a lot less. No, I’d say the revenge murders are there to justify the rape scenes rather than the other way around. Without them, the movie would just be one long assault as an end in itself (which it still mostly is). And if the rape scenes are not the movie’s reasons for being, why is the woman not a character? She’s given no personality, no interiority, nothing. She’s empty. Plus she’s set up in such an oddly critical way, this superior big city woman stepping over the locals, and who takes her revenge in classic black widow fashion, mixing plenty of sex and sexual allure with her predation. The film is exploitation through and through, using the extremity of its ugly content to attract audiences and sell tickets. Its filmmakers even manage to exploit feminism in their own defense. I thought the movie was junk. It isn’t well made, it isn’t well written, it isn’t well acted. There’s only the violence and gore. I mean, I only watched it because it was notoriously violent. Straw Dogs, which hasn’t invited the same feminist reclamations, nevertheless took its time to take you inside the consciousness of its female character with a masterful depiction of the subjective experience of PTSD, showing exactly how the trauma makes Amy unable to feel safe even in harmless environments, how her experience of even innocent actions becomes fragmented, jarring, and hopelessly jumbled, past and present moments colliding with equal vividness. No such thing here. The character in Zarchi’s film is an object of brutality for the camera, and that’s it; she’s not a subject. The movie sucks and continues to be seen only for its sheer extremity. I don’t feel like making any moral condemnations (tons of films have the same aims), but I don’t have much patience for these so-called feminist defenses. It’s just another bad movie trying with all its might to shock. Whether the film is feminist makes no difference.

Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022)

I loved the set up. Terrific first act. The film is creepy and disturbing up until it reveals what’s behind everything it’s suggesting. Not that the reveal isn’t horrific, but it’s horrific in a familiar, even predictable manner, and up until that point you’re free to imagine things far more inexplicable. There’s a lot to like here, but the movie never quite had the imagination to fulfill its premise. Its decision to structure itself almost as a series of interlocked short films was novel, but had the unintended effect of deflating tension rather than delaying release. I admired the craft tremendously, tho'. I want more horror films like this.

[knives]

Nadja (Almereyda, 1994). The over-the-top artsy-fartsy pretentiousness of this is great fun. Not to suggest this is camp or parody -- not exactly. The beauty is real, however tongue in cheek the artiness. Witty script, good story, great soundtrack.

Now screening on lecinemaclub.com

I fell in love.

[Finch]

I agree that DGG and his Halloween films get progressively worse though on balance I probably hated Kills more than Ends. It makes me even sadder and kind of annoyed at Jason Blum for continuing to plunder old franchises with Gordon Green next with The Exorcist instead of letting Christopher Landon do another horror comedy or asking him to direct a straight up horror. Landon is much more suited to the genre than Green ever was.

Speaking of The Exorcist, this was the film I decided to rewatch last night and I have to say the magic is fading for me to the point that I definitely prefer Legion even with the studio impositions. Friedkin's film has unforgettable imagery but I feel like, outside of the Northern Iraq opening, anything that doesn't involve Karras and especially the early scenes with his mother, is just noise surrounding the best scenes in the whole thing. The movie treats everything with utmost seriousness and that's both a strength and a weakness. It has a matter of fact feeling to it, almost as if it were a documentary, but it's also trying too hard. The "offensive" sexually aggressive insults are involuntarily funny and they break the spell. I recently read some comments by Larry Fassenden where he was pretty critical (unfairly, I think) of the original Halloween but compared particularly to Friedkin's thing, it's a model of restraint. This film is super blunt and it works in the moment to be fair but I am now finding that I prefer the creepier mood in Legion and other films altogether (also, I realise this is a personal thing but I much prefer George C Scott's Kinderman to Lee J Cobb who is the only major actor in the 1973 cast that I find jarring). The only thing that haunts me in this film is Karras and his mother and how their relationship results in his crisis of faith.

I kinda wish Guillermo Del Toro had been asked to direct Dominion from the Schrader script. That could have been something.

[therewillbeblus]

This will probably sound hyperbolic, but seeing Green's first Halloween entry is the worst theatre-going experience I've had (that I can think of offhand), not because it's abominably bad, but because it's just so safe and lame and unoriginal and boring that I was wrestling around in my seat for the entire runtime. I'm incredibly anal about movie theatre-behavior, but I've never had such an urge to break my own rules and talk at the screen, and I admittedly muttered and groaned while tossing and turning. Take a risk, man. You've proven you know how to do that.

Anyways, I didn't bother with either follow-up. Life's too short.

[Mr Sausage]

Halloween 2018 = Halloween 2 (competent but uninspired retread)

Halloween Kills = Halloween H20 (fails to capitalize on its potential)

Halloween Ends = Halloween 5 (total fucking mess)

[therewillbeblus]

Everyone has their own triggers at the movies, but for me the uninspired safe pic can often be more offensive than the most abrasive filth, because at least those films take risks and try to show me something new. But I doubt Green attempts anything close to a vulnerable moment that ends in complete failure with these sequels. If I'm wrong about that, I'll happily watch them to find out

[Mr Sausage]

The sequels' failures all come precisely from their unwillingness to fully commit to a given idea. Hell, the last one can't even commit to being a Halloween movie. Banging soundtrack on Kills, tho'.

[knives]

The two I’ve seen are so bad they have me convinced DGG is the most incompetently lame filmmaker I’ve ever seen.

[therewillbeblus]

It's hard to think of a filmmaker with a more disappointing series of patterned regressions across genre exercises. His first two films were wonderful dramas, and then he 'lost' whatever raw magic he implemented there for the next two failures. Then he tried his hat at comedy and succeeded, before failing miserably again with the next two. Joe was a promising return to his roots, but, nope. I want to give him points for being adventurous, but the Halloween he built up as something special for years turned out to be the most cautious product possible. Maybe he struggles to trust his instincts now that he's slipped in every body of water he's excelled at, but if you're so full of fear, just go back to what worked! Really looking forward to his Exorcist movie...

[colinr0380]

In case anyone missed it, Local58 uploaded again over Halloween. The video disappeared but here's its unlisted link. :-$

(I like that it mixes up the most modern kind of internet-based digital horror with Georges Méliès!)

[Murdoch]

Halloween Viewings
Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022)

I loved the set up. Terrific first act. The film is creepy and disturbing up until it reveals what’s behind everything it’s suggesting. Not that the reveal isn’t horrific, but it’s horrific in a familiar, even predictable manner, and up until that point you’re free to imagine things far more inexplicable. There’s a lot to like here, but the movie never quite had the imagination to fulfill its premise. Its decision to structure itself almost as a series of interlocked short films was novel, but had the unintended effect of deflating tension rather than delaying release. I admired the craft tremendously, tho'. I want more horror films like this.

Agreed. On first watch I was ready to declare it the best horror movie since the pandemic struck, but it significantly diminished on rewatch as it devolved into a rather dumb monster movie..

That said, the first act and the one shot entirely through a fish eye lens still held up, particularly the latter. I feel like you could just cut Long's segment out and have two great, disconnected films that don't really need anything tying them together

[therewillbeblus]

For a while, Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper’s episode of anthology series Masters of Horror) appears to be a Rob Zombie-ish sensationalized version of The Lost Boys. It’s a bit programmatic in setting up the character dynamics, and irritating in its raw digital editing style- not my thing. But then, the long final act in the nightclub enhances the technical bombast to levels that become riveting experimental art (a callback to his psychedelic visuals in Eggshells more than anything since), and effectively reflect the heightened sensitivities of the drug and trauma-addled youth, as well as the more universal experiential modes of anxiety one endures in finding their way into new romances and social circles that carry with them senses of danger and excitement. The dystopian ideas of this Richard Matheson adaptation are strong, but I particularly admired how the film feels like it’s about a new kid entering a gang of vampires (like the previously identified influence) only no otherworldly creature is substituted for addicts, they just are addicts, emphasized to disturbingly alien form. Then way this concept is implicitly introduced and sustained is really interesting and admirable for de-romanticizing addiction to repulsive depths.

The denouement is incredibly twisted, if not exactly earned across a mere hour, but this is exactly the kind of cumulative stylistic rhythm Hooper excels at- it’s made of the material that postures at nothing until it slowly occupies a sense of power that required a repelling build to achieve. Not enough to overcome its flaws, but I always relish the rare viewing experience of slowly feeling alienated and giving up hope on a work, only to be magnetically coerced back into the game with smart directorial choices and a confident follow through on actualizing a chosen path of risks in narrative and visual design. For those on the fence, the last half is basically a narrative arc centered around the Sheena is a Parasite music video’s aesthetic, which is enough of a reason to give it an hour of your time.

[colinr0380]

Here's another great find from the Night Mind channel - Nick Nocturne has highlighted an ongoing and (seemingly) unrelated series of creepy stories from Japan in the form of the 'Q' channel.

And here's a link to the playlist of the videos. These stories seem to hit on a smorgasbord of a lot of different tropes, from Blair Witch-style woods to ghostly house hauntings of The Grudge, the Koji Shiraishi fake-documentary films like Occult or Record of Sweet Murder, seemingly a sprinkling of Junji Ito (the brief shot of the lady intently reading the Ozamu Dazai novel in No Fiction - Dazai's semi-autobiographical novel No Longer Human about murder/suicide pacts and being haunted by the ghosts of past 'victims' having been adapted into manga form by Ito - is probably the key to understanding that short piece; the suicide pact getting diverted in Plan C is quite similar to the opening of Black Paradox), the found footage exorcism trend, analogue horror, the fear of elderly people, dopplegangers, strange cults, scary lifts (which other comments below that video have noted seems eerily similar at the opening to the real life case of Elisa Lam), stalkers and so on. I particularly love the detached voice of the narrator just matter of factly reporting on events from some future point of safe distance - if that feeling of safety ever gets broken at some point, that could be extremely powerful.

[Mr Sausage]

Relic (Natalie Erika James, 2020)

An effective, quiet, moody haunting story that works as an allegory for our fears not just of aging, but the aged themselves, the changes they go through, the bodies they bear, as well as the slow horror of watching a loved one change from the ravages of dementia. A mother and daughter (Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcoate) return to their elderly (grand)mother's house after the neighbours report not seeing her for a few days. The house is full of rotting fruit, covered in post-its reminding one to do daily activities, and has a full dog bowl despite the dog having died long ago. After some days of searching, the (grand)mother simply returns, and the pair have to deal with her increasingly erratic behaviour and a house that comes to seem alien. The haunting atmospherics are familiar if you've seen any ghost movies from the past ten years, but exceptionally executed nonetheless, never terminating in cheap jump scares, but building on each other to create a tightening sense of dread. But it's the emotional content that really works, including some dreadful and heartbreaking moments of family members confronting the exaggerated sense of mortality that something like dementia brings out. The house they are in is rotting from the inside, much like the pair's (grand)mother, who is herself being eaten from the inside out by a disease none of them are prepared to deal with. It's a heartbreaking emotional confrontation that's made physical through an appropriate ghostly metaphor: an infected, moldering house whose contours never seem quite right and which begins to shift, narrow, and entrap. The movie never overplays these elements, either. It knows when not to push things, when to be quiet and suggestive. The quiet moodiness does climax in a scene of full force terror as you might expect, but the final moments of the film are just perfect. The movie finds such a grotesque and beautiful note to end on, one that contains a gesture of humanity that's moving, and a final image that's a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of decay and death.

I've seen a number of recent horror films over the last few days, some very good indeed; but this was the best of them. It reminded me somewhat of movies like The Night House and Resurrection, not just for the technical control, but the way it uses horror tropes and explicit metaphors to explore fraught emotional material head on. A very, very good ghost story.

[therewillbeblus]

Innocent Blood (John Landis 1992) Landis returns to the horror comedy well with this unusual vampire versus the mob pic. It's telling that the word "vampire" is never uttered in the film, because Landis has some cheeky fun arbitrarily following and dismissing existing vampire lore (In: Bright light and garlic aversion; Out: Fangs and aversion to Mirrors and crucifixes). The movie is light and long, but I enjoyed its wandering narrative, peppered with creative bits of gore. The central premise is quite clever: a female vampire only targets victims who have it coming to them, so she decides to target some high profile mobsters, only to accidentally turn the Don (perfectly played by Robert Loggia) into a vampire himself. Loggia gets the joke central to his performance and embraces it wholly and fearlessly, and it's a great treat to just watch him chew scenery (and necks). I wouldn't say the film is a laff riot but there are two or three fantastic laugh out loud moments, including the best homage to Some Like It Hot's infamous final exchange I've ever seen. I also thought it was funny to see the negative NY Times review of this claim that the one place this film was guaranteed to not get a good reaction was in France (where the lead starred in La Femme Nikita), and then it turned up on the Cahiers du Cinema Top 10! Highly recommended (the R1 DVD is full-screen, but it's 100% just open matte, so it's safe to watch-- plus, if you viewed it in widescreen, you'd miss Landis' trademark "See you next Wednesday")

I loved this too, but unfortunately my WA blu fresh from DD was scratched and skipped a bit (and wouldn't fix after a disc-cleaning) so I think I missed the Wilder gag you're referring to... however, I thought the unprepared hospital staff's hysteria to Rickles' symptoms was one of the funniest orchestrations of absurdist comedy from this era, and perhaps Landis' crowning achievement for sight gags in a career partially built upon them

[Rayon Vert]

I don't know if this is the proper thread for this question.

I've kind of ignored or not kept track of the several box set releases over the last several years of B-(or C-)movie grindhouse/drive-in auteurs' collected works and am trying to work out right now a list of what those were/are. So far I've taken note of the Andy Mulligan, the William Grefe, the HG Lewis, the Bill Rebane, and the Ormond Family, in addition to the less ambitious set release(s) of Paul Naschy. What am I missing? (Not counting here Mexico Macabro, which I've pre-ordered of course).

[colinr0380]

I don't know if this is the proper thread for this question.

I've kind of ignored or not kept track of the several box set releases over the last several years of B-(or C-)movie grindhouse/drive-in auteurs' collected works and am trying to work out right now a list of what those were/are. So far I've taken note of the Andy Mulligan, the William Grefe, the HG Lewis, the Bill Rebane, and the Ormond Family, in addition to the less ambitious set release(s) of Paul Naschy. What am I missing? (Not counting here Mexico Macabro, which I've pre-ordered of course).

Ray Dennis Steckler and Al Adamson are the other big Severin releases. For UK B-movie directors there is Indicator's "Bloody Terror" set devoted to Norman J. Warren, and the upcoming 88 Films release of Pete Walker's films.