I liked It Follows a lot.

It was at least different enough to stand out. But yeah within 1/2 an hour I hated that kid.

You know, I actually think the kid was in some way a part of the film's "horror" presence. I mean, that little fucker was AWFUL. My girlfriend and I actually high fived each other at one point for having successfully managed to not have kids despite the weird pressures that are are heaped on us by our friends who are married and parents.

If I recall correctly, that film turned out to be kind of a "sympathetic" horror film. I use the term loosely, but what I mean by that is that the antagonist either is or is somehow related to something the protagonists have to sort of grow to accept (kind of like those Japanese ghost flicks that involve a spirit that needs the help of the main character to "move on"... y'know?)

Anyway, I think the mother in Babadook is just as terrified of and frustrated by her child as we are. And I think the kid is part of the terror. The subliminal knowledge that the mom would love to be rid of that little shit.

But then the kid (somewhat inexplicably if I recall) kind of does a 180, and becomes more parental just as the mother starts to go really bonkers.

I don't know. I was trying to figure out why William Friedkin put so much energy into suppprting and talking up the movie. I think it must be partly due to the fact that much like in the exorcist, the horrors bit very close to home and are compounded by the characters' relationships.

It was a good horror flick. Scary imagery, for sure. Very well conceived. But it also may have been a great horror flick because the mere act of watching it elicits such a negative and honestly kind of upsetting response from viewers, who all hate the child and are uncomfortable as hell with that. I think the best horror breaks down borders of what "horror" is supposed to be, and gives us a deeply disquieting feeling even when the supernatural shit isn't happening. Babadook does that. But I'd have to watch it again before I make any decisive statements about its greatness. After one viewing, about a year ago, I think of it as a high-average horror movie. Like maybe a 6-7/10. With 10 being Suspiria and Let the Right One In and the like, and 0 being, like, I know what you did last summer or whatever.

Have you ever seen Serenity? Or the ill-fated, barely 1 season long television show that it concluded (Firefly)? It takes a little getting used to early on, but it gets pretty motherfucking great. The last episode is pure genius. And with the movie they kicked it into high gear. Just a really excellent TV to cinema transition. Forget Buffy or whatever... Firefly/Serenity is peak Whedon.

OF COURSE. seen the series a bunch of times and a few episodes with the commentary on. also the movie was the last time i went to a movie house in the nearby town-- fuckers left the lights on. so now i have to drive hours to a "city" if i must have the megaplex experience. but yeah, serenity was desperately needed to close that loop.

oh, much ado about nothing was a nice little whedon reunion. i enjoyed it.

btw taking the other day about dc cab you realize the main actor in dc cab is jayne, yes? wait, it wasn't with you. but yeah that's a young jayne as the great white savior.

the one whedon project i ceased to like was agents of S.H.I.T. which had a promising 1st season (another chosen one). but i think he put his little brother + the brother's girlfriend in charge or something. anyway not my problem.

i also liked dollhouse! i thought it was great fun tv though it was also rushed to end.

oh, and dr. horrible, of course.

cabin in the woods somehow flew past my radar. i must have been in some sort of life crisis when it happened.

I've only seen it once and still don't really know what I think of it. I probably respect it more than like it but it does stand out as something different. Although I get the feeling it's a horror film more popular with people who aren't necessarily big horror film fans.

i love this flick

I quite like Agents of SHIELD, especially seasons 1 (the second half, mostly)
and season 3.

It's better than I expected it to be by leaps and bounds. But Season 2 suffered wth the stupid force-fed Inhumans backstory plot. Season 3 was much of the same, but pulled it off in a much better way. It brought the occult-Nazi side of Hydra to the forefront, and I have a thing for occult WWII related alternate histories.

Speaking of occult WWII alt. histories, I miss Hellboy! I liked the first film, but I think it could have been more stylized and reminiscent of the comics. That's one comic hero that could use a real full-throttle reboot. The films never did the gothic Lovecraftian horror of the comics justice.

Hellboy is great.

im watching the debate and my mouth is dry with adrenaline and it's a real horror movie

this is like some goddamn torture porn... and the audience is the one being tortured

holy fuck that fucking dipshit with the fucking fake hair

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

I can do without the first bit - which feels a bit like a parody of a Lynch movie - but once it gets into the main story I think it's one of his best. The girl who plays Laura Palmer gives an incredible performance, one of the best I've seen in any Lynch film.

^^^ i have good memories of that movie. thats the one with the great creepy ending no?

oh, so netflix decided to throttle me. FUCKERS.

so i only have lined up for this weekend the following netflix discs:
-chan wook park's THIRST (promises to be great)
-THE EVIL DEAD in glorious blu-ray. i wont watch any bullshit "enhanced" version though, but the original 4x3
also got from libraries:
-MULHOLLAND DRIVE (speaking of lynch)
-POULTRYGEIST. a funny troma movie, i saw it released ages ago and met looyd kaufman briefly

additionally i have access to AMAZON SCREAM (is that the name? prime+horror) for the month, but i have to watch my bandwidth (yes i have limited internet like in 1945). they have NEKROMANTIK so that might fit the midnight program. also a bunch of other stuff to fit the weekend mood.

I'm a big fan of Buttgereit. If you can, try and see Der Todesking. It doesn't have the same taboo appeal as the Nekromantik films so tends to get less coverage, but it's probably my favourite film by him. Nekromantik 1 & 2 are excellent though. (Schramm is also very good).

i couldn't find the TV thread but holy fuck did woody allen's amazon tv show just come out??? it's right fucking there!!!

i gotta play an episode RIGHT. NOW.

Spent last night with Lucio Fulci's 'Gates of Hell' trilogy: City of the Living Dead; The Beyond; House by the Cemetery.

Fans of Lovecraftian horror who can handle outrageous amounts of gore and bad dubbing will be in their element with these. As stand-alone films they're all great but The Beyond is an absolute classic.

HEY! I FOUND DER TODESKING ON AMAZON!!! THANKS!!

it's part of their "shudder" subscription and i added it to my watchlist for an imminent screening but *right now* i'm gearing up for INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. which freaked me out when i was a little kid (it was on tv and i saw a few minutes of it) and have never actually seen complete.

also watched last night THE EVIL DEAD. it was great!! i made a ton of notes of it ha ha ha but that's for another day.

started watching THIRST and it looks amazing but it was late and we were too exhausted by then and fell asleep during a quiet moment. will resume this evening (daytime i get more internet, so it's amazon).

oh watched the first episode of the woody allen series, it's called CRISIS, and it was hilarious and great! he's in it, some of his old regulars are there plus some new faces, his eternal themes are there of course, lots of funny lines, great fun so far i'll be pacing it so i can better savor. plus it's not "horror"-- but i can't wait till my horror season is over ha ha ha.

I spent a bunch of time this weekend once again watching The Hunger Games Trilogy. I call the last 2 movies one movie. Deal with it.

finally saw invasion of the body snatchers, and it was good (if you remove the obvious "red scare" pitch which is like aghhhh), but that's not the movie that freaked me out as a kid--i'm still looking for that.

also finally saw THE HILLS HAVE EYES. which started kinda meh but ended up really good and a lot of fun. wasn't "scary", ended up being more a kind of action film for me. funny thing that you see a torn poster of jaws inside the trailer of the hills have eyes, and then in the basement of the evil dead there's a torn poster of the hills have eyes, ha ha ha. i'm starting to think that the movie horror business is a kind of mutual appreciation society.

Excellent! Really interested to know what you think. Hope you like it.


Was it the remake or the original? I don't mind the remake but i didn't like how it seemed to try and make the cannibal family seem almost like victims. Wes Craven's original is fantastic. Less violent but far more brutal because it doesn't make too much effort to contextualise anything. I really don't like the current trend of emphasising the social forces behind the creation of iconic monsters. It feels too safe to me. Rob Zombie's Halloween films being among the worst offenders. I'm adult enough to know that 'evil' doesn't exist in a vacuum without having to be constantly reminded of it.

And yeah, there is that mutual appreciation thing in a lot of horror. I like it. It's a bit like bands wearing t shirts of other bands on stage. There'a sense of community in horror that, for whatever reason, I don't see as much in other genres.

the original of course. i'm slightly obsessive about chronologies. i watched the hills have eyes because the evil dead pointed at it.

still trying to find the original piranha which is buried due to licensing issues (not sure what). funny thing it's joe dante who did gremlins.

anyway, i have lined up for some time soon:
1- bela lugosi's "dracula"
followed by
2 - the zucker brothers' "dracula, dead and loving it" (w/ leslie nielsen).
gotta have the original before the parody

now i'm looking for the 1978 invasion of the body snatchers but i think it's another case of nowhere to be found.

ah ha ha politically correct horror films. i'm all for redress and social change but those fuckers were cannibals. sure sure, radiation, mutation, sun ra are all around them but the point of the movie is the stupids vs. the wild.

that dog was awesome btw.

http://www.myduckisdead.org/2014/09/...78-philip.html

That's just weird. Both of them are really easy to get here, and very cheap. Not sure what's going on in the US. As you say, must be some sort of licensing issue.
Also, if you get the chance, try and see Abel Ferarra's version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Really underrated.
I love that film. The scene where they set the dad on fire and the smoke comes out of his mouth is genuinely shocking.

I do think the family are deliberately made to be quite unsympathetic but not to the extent that we ever really consider siding with the cannibals. But then I don't think the film's really about the cannibals at all, as much as how 'civilised' society can descend into violence of its own when provoked. That seemed to be Wes Cravens big thing back then. It's all over Last House on the Left and sort of there in Nightmare on Elm Street (the parents killing Freddie). He had a social point; he just didn't beat you over the head with it the way the remake does.

Another Fulci last night ...



Zombie Flesheaters aka Zombi 2

Shameless attempt to cash in on Dawn of the Dead but it involves a zombie actually wrestling with a real (albeit apparently drugged) shark. One of the most ludicrously brilliant scenes I've ever seen in any film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VADharbFwkk

Also, Fulci's zombies looked much better than Romero's

Fulci:



Romero:



Lucio Fulci. Fuck the rest.

wow-- thanks!


netflix dvd doesn't carry it (it's in my queue with "availability--unknown") and amazon stream doesn't have it either-- they sell the disc but don't stream it (and i don't buy discs). amazon has the '56 version which is what i saw. i do have the abel ferrara saved to my watchlist, but waiting for 78' first cuz cuz cuz... it was first! or something. yeah im crazy.

funny thing i didn't find hills have eyes scary at all (i already said that) but the evil dead made me scream a few times. i even spilled whiskey on myself haaa haaa haaa. even if you know shit's coming and you expect it, somehow the surprise still works and it's like "AAAAAA" and then i'm laughing

i don't know much about wes craven but here in 'merica violence is not much of a "descent". i mean, it's everywhere. the dad is a cop and got a "howitzer" as a parting gift. the dog itself killed a poodle and they had to pay vet bills for a dead dog remember? i don't think they mean to be "civlized" like a bunch of elois. how can i put it-- to me, it's not straw dogs. ha ha, straw dogs. now there dustin hoffmann finally "descends". but the gringo travelers here were already descended i think.

i should check out fulci! holy shit what a backlog. i'm gonna have to carry my horror festival into november.

By 'descent' I just meant revealing something under the surface, but if you remember, their two dogs are called Beauty and Beast, so maybe 'duality' is a better description. I remember reading somewhere that Craven's only request for the remake was that it retain the two dogs and not change their names as he felt they were key to understanding the nature of the family.

Given what we've been talking about, you should see the remake. It has its problems but isn't a bad film by any means, and its only real problem is the way it makes so explicit what the original deals with implicitly. Not that the original is exactly subtle.

yes i remember noticing the dog names and SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER beauty dies and of course beast not just survives but saves them. "beauty died hours ago" lololol. END SPOILERS

i might not wanna see it for a while though. crowded season. maybe next year! cuz fulci and der todesking and nekromantic and the various cat people editions and all kinds of stuff.

also TV shows like
true dick 2
penny dreadful 3
the strain 2
walking dead 33 1/3

need more tv time! ha ha ha.

Have you seen Zombie Flesh Eaters 2? I love that film.

Last thing I saw was Under the Shadow, creepiest horror film I've seen in YEARS.

THIRST was great

at times a little slow or hard to follow but that's chan-wook park. beautiful beautiful shots and always something unexpected are kind of his signature. i just love his visual language.

No, I haven't seen the sequel. I keep meaning to but it's pretty expensive so I keep getting other things.

I hadn't heard of Under the Shadow. Just looked it up. Will definitely check it out. Thanks!

Zombie flesh eaters 2 is more like a comedic so-bad-it's-good type. If you like this i'd recommend Nightmare City. It has one of the most ludicrous endings of any movie in the history of cinema.

Something more akin to Fulcis original would be The Living Dead or The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue as it's sometimes known as. Nails the Fulci atmosphere. Actually, looking at release dates this predates any Fulci zombi..

Flesh Eaters 2 is 1 pund 50 at cex

I didn't know about CEX but just had a look, Thanks!

Nightmare City and Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue are both great.

I will watch this now. Based on this still alone. Wowza!
Thank you sir

I love the look of Fulci's zombies. Actually scary.

Horror definitely has that sense of community, and feeling of filmmakers are fans of other filmmakers work. In Nightmare on Elm Street '84 there's the scene where "Evil Dead" is on the television, then on Evil Dead 2 there is the appearance of the Freddy glove.

I think this is also present in science fiction films, though it's perhaps not quite as intimate. More like references to Star Trek on LOST, or cinemographic odes to iconic films and directors... simple scenes framed or vistas framed in a decidedly "Kubrick" fashion, or what have you.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to LifeDistortion again.

I have plans to watch Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness before Halloween. You mention the Freddie glove and all I want to do is watch some Evil Dead.

I think it's because with Romero the whole point is that the humans are ultimately always far scarier than the zombies. Fulci wasn't interested in that kind of social point so was free to make his zombies as scary as his imagination (and budget) would allow. Not to say there isn't large doses of silliness in films like Zombie Flesheaters but its never intentional or ironic.

Did anyone else think the 2014 Evil Dead "remake" was actually... not half bad?
Certainly it lacked a lot of the lovable absurdity of the original films, but I think it kind of pulled it off anyway.

I wont fox with on principle.