Director Robert Eggars, of the upcoming Nosferatu remake, laid out his ideal Halloween film festival for AV Club, and it's worth looking at.  Some pretty good movies, largely avoiding the obvious, and spanning a solid 24 hours.

The Innocents (1961)
The Queen of Spades (1949)
Svengali (1931)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)
Uncle Silas (1947)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
The Black Room (1935)
Jane Eyre (1943)
Bedlam (1946)
Dragonwyke (1946)
The Face at the Window (1939)
Corridor of Mirrors (1948)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)
The Catman of Paris (1946)
Demons of the Mind (1972)
Crucible of Horror (1971)

There's several here that I haven't seen - Uncle Silas, Dragonwyke, Face at the Window, Corridor of Mirrors, Sweeney Todd, Catman of Paris, Crucible of Horror - and at least one I don't really like (Demons of the Mind, which I just reviewed this year with a middling 6/10).  Also, even though Eggars included the film on his list, he points out that Rue Morgue is "not a good movie", which, for me, strong disagree.  But thanks for including it, so you'll have to judge for yourself.  All in all though, it's a pretty damn good set for viewing, especially focused on more gothic fare from the '30s-'40s.

You can read Eggars' thoughts on each film here.
 

Rock wrote:

Everything I watched for the season: https://boxd.it/yX3wu

Can't believe you just got to Serpent and the Rainbow.  It's been Pullman's season.

I need to make one of these lists.

I remember the sexy video box as being pretty ubiquitous on the shelves in the late '80s, under its English title Nothing Underneath, and I didn't really have any idea that it was an Italian production.  I've said before that Italian giallo took a marked dip in quality in the '80s, blame it on the coke and disco maybe.  In fact I must have said something similar over an earlier film from director Carlo Vancina, Dagger Eyes.  Vancina appears to be more commonly a comedy filmmaker, which might explain a few things.  Briefly, this script was being developed as an Antonioni project, which is quite a tantalizing prospect, as he had never attempted a horror/thriller.  Wisely, perhaps, he ducked out pretty early on.

Vancina is a bargain bin De Palma.  The film, taking place amidst the fashion scene in Milan, is plenty stacked with beautiful, sexy actresses - Nicola Perring, Anna Galiena, Renee Simonsen, Catherine Noyes - all in various states of equally sexy danger, but despite this, Vancina has a weak hand for the sensual or erotic, and even less feel for suspense and inventive camerawork.  The refried De Palma-isms date the film as clearly on the heels of Body Double, with Perring wearing an identical platinum blonde crewcut as Melanie Griffith and a climatic revision of the drill scene (with a gender role twist).  These kinds of De Palma rip-offs might even be their own recognized genre now, with a dedicated fanbase, but outside of that camp, this is mostly empty calorie entertainment.

6.5/10





Director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) sure has fallen on hard times.  He's now resorting to making this, Compulsion in English, a more 21st century version of De Palma-humping, but in some low-budget Balkan tax haven, shooting on cheap digital, and ending up with something less De Palma than one of those Skinamax filcks with the likes of Joan Severance or Julie Strain.  We still get plenty of lesbian seduction, with a side of BDSM and an incoherent slasher mystery, but also a terrible script and amateurish acting and insisting that his mostly European cast speak English when they clearly have no idea how to speak English.  (Anna-Maria Sieklucka is fine, an exception to all of this, but is wasted here.)  Marshall's wife, Charlotte Kirk, in particular is limited to allegedly physical talents.  She does speak perfect English however, giving her even less of an excuse.

4/10