A couple of shorts to start the season off right.









 

Last edited by Rock (10/05/2023 9:14 pm)

The Unseen is shit.

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

The Unseen is shit.

I could have used this information yesterday.

I watched twice, just to be sure.

My instincts are proper. Equally bad both times.
 

Can I just say dumb and boring? Is that a bad thing in a giallo? It is in this one.



Ah, now this is what I'm looking for. Something that makes me legitimately uncomfortable. Puts me in a dark room with cold, sweaty hands touching me. And I start to like it.
 

crumbsroom wrote:

Can I just say dumb and boring? Is that a bad thing in a giallo? It is in this one.



Ah, now this is what I'm looking for. Something that makes me legitimately uncomfortable. Puts me in a dark room with cold, sweaty hands touching me. And I start to like it.
 

Is this the 1969 Japanese film?

Jinnistan wrote:

This film isn't that bad, for the record, as an interesting '70s curio that plays like a post-Manson Family omen on the sexual revolution.  Seymour Cassel, home alone while his wife is away, takes in two young rain-drenched ladies who reward his kindness by seducing him and then proceeding to torture him and destroy his house.  A cautionary, claustrophic tale of random unwarranted horror.

Noted pop culture professional and idiot John Kenneth Muir instead sees this film as some kind of feminist commentary, and that somehow Mr. Cassel represents some abusive patriarchy (despite showing no overt characteristics of either abuse or chauvinism), and that his so-called "crime" of infidelity somehow justifies this kind of sadistic justice, evidently completely ignoring the aggressiveness of his seduction, and also ignoring the outright murder of a completely innocent bystander (a deliveryman) who couldn't even be blamed with an equally petty offence.  Serves him right for being a good host, it seems.  Noted sociopathic idiot, Eli Roth, remade this film in 2015 as Knock Knock where he made this feminist reading more explicit, even though he remained faithful to the original's maliciousness and thereby making an even more idiotic film with a poorly conceived over-moralizing message.  Many of the out-of-work participants of the original then latched onto this new-found success by saying that this was the original intent all along.  In 2018, in the #metoo fever, I had to endure explaining these very obvious moral contradictions to a number of idiots who were led to believe that, yes, it's perfectly acceptable to torture a man for impulsive adultery and, sure, kill anyone who happens to peek by along the way.  During #metoo, infidelity was clearly worse than murder.  Ask Aziz Ansari about it.

But I don't judge the original film on that basis.  Like I said, it's an interesting cultural artifact, and effectively frustrating bit of terror.  And I think, despite what the filmmakers may say now, that these antogonists are pretty clearly portrayed as the malicious sociopaths they are, and Cassel as the undeserving victim he is, and that maybe anyone who thinks otherwise is a fellow potential menace to society.

7.5/10
 

I watched this recently and liked it a lot.

But other fans of it are dumb as shit.

I think some dummies get mixed up because the female characters (ie. the murderous sociopaths) are at some points interesting and likeable characters. There are points in the film where you don't think they will do the bad things you think they are threatening to do because they seemed so normal for a little while. So....maybe this fucks up the hardware of some critics brains. Because they don't know how people or movies work.

Yes, metoo is a part of it. But so is the monumental stupidity of all these people with supposed eyes and ears and brains.

And isn't Cassel's character even shown to be hesitant to cheat on his wife? It's not like the film is making him some awful cunt. You aren't supposed to root for his death.


 

I couldn't get a ticket for Italy so let's go to Mexico....


Carlos Enrique Taboada



This is one that's been on my list for awhile.  About a little bitch...I mean, witch, but basically a lying manipulative little cunt who snuggles up to the new girl in school to try to get over.  The young actresses are quite good, showing the frightful allure of the occult at that impressionable age, and the film makes the smart choice of never showing any adult faces except for a couple of key scenes in order to illustrate the girls' isolated perspective.  A true gem.

8.5/10





Either Darker Than The Night or Blacker Than The Night, depending on translation (although More Black Than The Night is accurate), this stays close to the giallo template, with four young women moving into a big old house, recently vacated by a lonely old woman's death, and leaving behind a stealthy black cat and an even more sinister housemaid. 

7.5/10



Juan Lopez Moctezuma



AKA Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon.  The comparisons with Bunuel and Fellini are clearly idiotic, and those with Russell and Jodorowsky are insulting to everyone involved.  I think the general sentiment here is that this film is both psychedelically strange and, given the crudeness of its production values, surprisingly engaging.  But we should also carefully curb these enthusiasms.  This is no masterful work of art.  As I said, it's still very crude, with terrible foley work and dubbing, and they didn't even bother to tint the day-for-night scenes.  But it is quite bizarre and fitfully intriguing, and generally much more interesting than the kind of late-night exploitation film it seems on its surface.  Definitely worth a watch, but don't let the fact that it's from the same producer as El Topo fool you.  It's surreal but not sensual.

7/10





This has greatly improved production values, not nearly as psychedelic or exotic but simply in standards for competently looking like a professional movie.  Moctezuma is simply not the kind of director capable of a signature vision.  This is a fairly routine mid-70s slasher, about a sympathetic vampire/artist who has to keep her relationships to a certain distance due to her regular need to feed.  Meanwhile she's being tracked by a mysterious man, also a vampire, while the police are investigating the murders of both.  The film's primary interest is in actress Cristina Ferrare, not simply because of her beauty, but for her balanced performance that juggles her warmth and coldness convincingly, infusing the film with emotional complexity that isn't always evident in the script.

7.5/10



And finally, a later horror from 1985.



We want the best for these kinds of movies.  Sure, this is as dumb as a doornail.  Straight up stupid, in fact.  Dumb police, dumb teens, dumb kids.  All waiting to be rescued by some dumb dude from Mike and the Mechanics.  (OK, it's Hugo Stiglitz, but still.)  All I can do is laugh at it.  It's the nicest way out.  There's a particularly hilarious bit near the end involving a cross which reminded me of the old Richard Pryor joke: "The Devil's allergic to bullshit".

5/10
 

Mexican horror is a blind spot for me, but I had fun with Doctor of Doom and it’s pseudo-remake Night of the Bloody Apes. (Be warned however that neither delivers on the ape rampage you’d hope.)

And Even the Wind is Afraid is worth a look. Nice atmosphere, although I had trouble telling some of the cast apart. Might be a me problem.

I watched the first two this week, plan to see at least the third as well. I thought the first was pretty good, tbh. The second has a great opening scare but becomes pretty by the numbers right away.