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knives wrote:Can a documentary be a horror film rather than just horrifying and what boxset were you referring to with Haze?

Neither Apaches nor The Finishing Line are documentaries. (Or if they are, the filmmakers should leave the country immediately, since the statute of limitations won't apply.)

I started a thread for the Jeonju box set (nine years of digital shorts from the Jeonju festival) in the International DVD subforum. Link.

knives wrote:Can a documentary be a horror film rather than just horrifying and what boxset were you referring to with Haze?

Sure it can. Though 'documentary' does not really apply to something like Apaches, which is a fiction film using shock tactics to scare rural kids into not playing on farmyard machinery or eating handfuls of fertiliser (considering the rather horrible nature of most of the deaths of the children in that film, which tip over into unintentional grand guignol black humour in their po-faced absurdity, the worst part of Apaches for me is the shot of the farmhouse at night where we hear the pained, dying screams of the poisoned girl. She gets a less gory death than anyone ese, but the most haunting one. Which perhaps illustrates well the effectiveness of not showing everything!)

But I do think that you can have documentaries which deal with horrific material, and indeed may be able to get away with showing such material due to their 'real life' basis. One stock-in-trade of horror is to resemble documentary 'you are there, stuck in the middle of this situation that is happening now' intensity and this also works the other way round, hence the Mondo films veering in bipolar fashion between asinine and horrific sequences, or something like the Faces of Death series, films blending the staged and the 'real' together for maximum impact. Even the Jackass films could perhaps be classed as horrific, if you felt any sympathy for the people within the film who were doing horrible things to themselves.

Perhaps a film like Wisconsin Death Trip makes the best case for a horror-dramatised documentary.

zedz, while I'm a big Tsukamoto fan I have not gotten to Haze yet. It sounds very interesting though!

Lighthouse wrote:

knives wrote:Just a heads up, but found out by accident that the Optimum release of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (there's no US release) despite artwork is R0.

Which is a beautiful film btw

Yes, it certainly is that if nothing else, and it's too bad Levine's subsequent films have been so dreadful, a streak which this upcoming zombie-Twilight-apocalypse thing doesn't seemed primed to break.

I thought The Wackness was very good actually. I haven't seen his latest though.

TRANCE Michael Almereyda, 1998
If Happy Here and Now was Almereyda’s 7th Victim, this is his I Walked with a Zombie, a horror film of lasting and intangible mystery marooned in a land both obscure and strangely familiar, its characters’ navigation through a pervasive atmosphere of violence, guilt, and familial discord proving perfect fodder for Almereyda’s kaleidoscopic aesthetic. I’ve always been struck by his deep fascination with paradox, how he almost gleefully wills his films to be everything at once and how when he succeeds, he’s capable of masterpieces on the level of the aforementioned Happy Here and Now (my favourite film of the 2000s). There’s no getting around the fact that Trance is both a mess and a compromised work (studio troubles, unceremoniously dumped DTV, etc.), but there are passages of exquisite beauty -- the opening sequence is a stunner –- and baffling weirdness to rival anything else Almereyda has done, and his ability to balance the hilarious with the devastatingly sad sees its peak in Jared Harris’s drunk roustabout justifying his and his wife’s alcoholism to their eight year-old son by reassuring the boy that “much in the same way a spider is not an insect but an animal, a pint of Guinness is not strictly speaking alcohol. It’s food.” It’s the perfect movie for anyone who thought all Dubliners needed was a story about an ancient mummy druid-witch (fun fact: the central couple’s names are James and Nora!), or for anyone looking for another reason why Michael Almereyda is the greatest American filmmaker of the last twenty years. Absurd direct-to-DVD title: The Eternal: Kiss of the Mummy.

Spain, Spanish language, Spanish-related

No (excellent horror-related films but they can hardly be pigeonholed as real horror films)
Dos monjes (1934, Juan Bustillo Oro) -fantasy-
Cada loco con su tema (1939, Juan Bustillo Oro) -comedy-
La torre de los siete jorobados (1944, Edgar Neville) -fantasy-
Si muero antes de despertar (1952, Carlos Hugo Christensen) -thriller-
¡Vampiros en La Habana! (1985, Juan Padrón) -animation-
El Laberinto del Fauno (2006, Guillermo del Toro) -fantasy-

TV
Historias para no dormir (1965-1969) -series-
La cabina (1972, Antonio Mercero) -short-

Movies
Drácula (1931, George Melford)
El vampiro / The Vampire (1957, Fernando Méndez)*
Obras maestras del terror (1960, Enrique Carreras)
Gritos en la noche / The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962, Jesús Franco) & Paroxismus (1969, Jesus Franco)**
Hasta el viento tiene miedo (1968, Carlos Enrique Taboada)
El jorobado de la Morgue (1973, Hunchback of the Morgue)
¿Quién puede matar a un niño? / Would You Kill a Child? (1976, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador)
Tras el cristal / In a Glass Cage (1987, Agustí Villaronga)
Cronos (1992, Guillermo del Toro) & El espinazo del diablo / The Devil's Backbone (2001, Guillermo del Toro)
El día de la bestia / The Day of the Beast (1995, Álex de la Iglesia)
Tesis / Thesis (1996, Alejandro Amenábar) & Los otros / The Others (2001, Alejandro Amenábar)
El orfanato / The Orphanage (2007, Juan Antonio Bayona)
[Rec] (2007, Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)

* The Vampire (1957, Fernando Méndez) -Domino, here's my first spotlight-
Not to be confused with other films with the same title! This is the Mexican one.
Beautiful Martha (Adriadna Welter), arrives at her ancestral home, accompanied by a man she just met named Enrique (Abel Salazar), who is actually a doctor incognito. When Martha steps into the doors of the decrepit chateau of the Sycamores, she learns that one of her aunts had just died (or did she?), while her other aunt, Eloisa (Carmen Montejo) looks too youthful to be true. It just so happens that radiant Eloisa is in cahoots with a mysterious neighbor named Duval (Robles), who in actuality is the age-old vampire Count Karol de Lavud, and he was the one who put the bite on her. Count Lavud invades the room of young Martha with sights on her jugular as well, but not if the heroic Enrique can save her in the nick of time.
Inspired by Universal's monster movies of the 30s and Bram Stoker's Dracula, director Fernando Méndez handles things quite nicely with a lot of stunning shadowy photography, cobweb-ridden sets, and blankets of fog lingering almost constantly. Welter is a graceful heroine and Robles an aristocratic dark villain, only Salazar is a bit misplaced playing his role with a slight wide-eyed comic tinge.

** I guess that Jess Franco will be discussed in detail later. For me these two are his most interesting films but I don't know their popularity around here.

I'm trying to compile all the horror films that are only available in the UK (Blu-ray or DVD) for easy reference when ordering from Amazon.co.uk &c-- please post other titles below or PM me and I'll just edit this post and link to it in the first post of the thread

BLU
A Bay of Blood (R1 DVD only)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (All seven original films) (Only first three films released on Blu in R1)
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
the Beyond (R1 DVD only)
Candyman (R1 DVD only)
Don't Look Now (R1 DVD only)
the Fog (R1 DVD only)
the Funhouse (R1 DVD only)
the Innocents (R1 DVD only)
Let the Right One In (R1 release has inferior subtitles-- unconfirmed)
Martyrs (R1 DVD only)
Obsession (R1 MOD DVD only)
Paranoiac (R1 DVD only)
Peeping Tom (R1 DVD only)
Phenomena (R1 DVD only)
Pontypool
Quartermass and the Pit (R1 DVD only)
Spirits of the Dead (R1 OOP DVD only)
Tenebrae (R1 DVD only)
Ugetsu (R1 DVD only)
Witchfinder General (R1 DVD only)

DVD
Apaches (on Stop! Look! Listen!)
Blood on Satan's Claw
Buried Alive (Darabont)
Deadly Blessing
the Finishing Line (on the Age of the Train)
Freezer
Gothic (R1 incorrect aspect ratio)
Irezumi (Tattoo)
Jack's Back
Katalin Varga
Kwaidan (R1 incomplete)
Lake Placid (R1 non-anamorphic)
Paperhouse
the Shout
Silent Night, Deadly Night (R1 OOP)
Straight on 'til Morning
To Sleep With Anger (OOP tho)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (R1 Facets-- enough said)

Compiled by: Cash Flagg, colin0380, domino harvey, swo17, zedz

AFAIK, Let the Right One In's UK release is the only one with the original and superior theatrical subtitles.

Another quick FYI: Pontypool is streaming in HD on Netflix.

I don't own it, but I thought the subtitles had been fixed on the R1 Let the Right One In after people complained.

They eventually fixed it but it was impossible to tell if you had a fixed copy unless you were holding it in your hands, and odds were it wasn't (so no guarantees ordering online). I haven't really looked into the situation though since I imported the UK Blu a year or two ago.

swo17 wrote:They eventually fixed it but it was impossible to tell if you had a fixed copy unless you were holding it in your hands, and odds were it wasn't (so no guarantees ordering online). I haven't really looked into the situation though since I imported the UK Blu a year or two ago.

At least in Canada, a version was released with different packaging (gate fold) and cover that definitely had both subtitles, eliminating the confusion. I'm not sure if it was also released in America.

Some more UK-specific releases:

MoC's Kwaidan includes the entire film; Criterion skips an episode.

The US Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is OOP, eye-wateringly expensive, and terrible quality; Second Run's is vastly superior.

Straight on Til Morning is available in the UK but (apparently) OOP in the US.

To Sleep with Anger is UK-only.

The Innocents Blu is UK-only, as is Don't Look Now (but it's a Bad Blu!) Peeping Tom is out on Blu in the UK, but I don't know if it's good or bad.

Ugetsu Blu is forthcoming from MoC.

And my aforementioned Apaches and The Finishing Line are available on the BFI collections Stop! Look! Listen! (COI) and Points and Aspects (British Transport Films) respectively.

The commentary on the BFI The Innocents is fantastic, too, that edition is worth tracking down if only for that

One tiny thing, but A Bay of Blood does have a R1 release from Anchor Bay. No blu of course, but you seem to be mentioning DVDs too.

zedz wrote:The US Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is OOP, eye-wateringly expensive, and terrible quality; Second Run's is vastly superior.

Valerie is forthcoming from Criterion, but possibly not before the deadline.

Also, isn't To Sleep with Anger long OOP?

swo17 wrote:Also, isn't To Sleep with Anger long OOP?

And expensive, it's going for 30 pounds of Amazon from a 3rd party.

As far as contentious horror films go, as much as I love it, after some consideration I just can't picture To Sleep With Anger getting my vote as a horror film-- but on the other hand I am swayed to include other recent questionable titles like AntiChrist, demonlover, and the Skin I Live In, so I'm not hardlining

Correction: The Finishing Line is on The Age of the Train, not Points and Aspects.

I'm trying to think of a few UK DVDs and Blus to add to domino's list. Some of these may be borderline horror but I've done a quick check of Amazon.com to see if they are available and they do not seem to have come up:

Julia's Eyes (blu) - Out on DVD in US but not Blu.
Heartless (Blu) - Philip Ridley's first film since The Passion of Darkly Noon fourteen years before. Out on DVD in the US but not Blu.
Vinyan (Blu) - Fabrice Du Welz's follow up to Calvaire is a problematic film (and is perhaps too much like Don't Look Now to make my list!), but strangely compelling all the same with some absolutely stunning images. The opening sequence is perhaps unrepresentative of the rest of the film, but still stunning. Out on DVD but not Blu in US.

DVDs:

The Shout
Irezumi (Tattoo)
Freezer

Don't buy Peeping Tom on Blu: the advances in colour and contrast over the DVD are all undone by the heavy DNR. I sold my copy and double-dipped on the DVD.

edit: what does everyone else think of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator? I thought it was really good up until the finale in the morgue where the film lost me. Up to that point though, I was very pleasantly surprised as a Lovecraft fan. The lead was excellent casting.

PPS.: Damn, I had no idea The Shout was already out on DVD. I was hoping the BFI would eventually get to that one.

I slightly prefer From Beyond to Re-Animator but that also has a couple of problems, mostly with the sequences in the hospital late on which feel like a digression from the real business at hand.

The Shout DVD also has a commentary by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones, which makes the disc even more essential!

I think Peeping Tom looks great on Blu - very vivid and crisp.

I've always been a fan of Re-animator (From Beyond, too, even if for all its trying it never manages to be quite as outrageous as its predecessor, Barbara Crampton torturing Jeffery Combs while in a dominatrix's outfit notwithstanding). I appreciate its sense of humour and cheerful disregard for taste. Although my favourite moments are the small ones, like West's solution to the problem of how to keep Hill's decapitated head upright.

mfunk9786 wrote:I think Peeping Tom looks great on Blu - very vivid and crisp.

You're right. Don't listen to Finch, I bought his Blu from him.