The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[domino harvey]

So to clarify, animation project's starting with the new year now? Because I am 100% down with that

Yep, glad this works for everyone! \:D/

[Mr Sausage]

I should, but I already picked it up. I really should be getting to Ganja and Hess first though.

Which ones did you pick up?

I put myself through five for this project. Any selection where Demons is the best by an immense margin is a sorry one indeed.

[domino harvey]

I have those in the pile, and was thinking about picking up the Blue Underground threefer (though maybe not anymore!)

[knives]

I should, but I already picked it up. I really should be getting to Ganja and Hess first though.

Which ones did you pick up?

I put myself through five for this project. Any selection where Demons is the best by an immense margin is a sorry one indeed.

I have that threefer that Dom mentioned. I got it mostly for Shock (which is the only elder Bava horror I have not yet seen) though.

[Mr Sausage]

I have those in the pile, and was thinking about picking up the Blue Underground threefer (though maybe not anymore!)

Save your money. Seriously. Macabre and Blade in the Dark are just awful, boring movies. I think I wrote about them in this thread somewhere.

If you're going to watch the Demons series, at least make sure you don't skip the final, 'unofficial' one, The Church. Much better than the other two.

[mfunk9786]

Mfunk I watched one of your movies and liked it. I'm surprised you don't post in here more since you're such an aficionado of the newer horror titles

I feel like that was met with more than a little presumption masquerading as actual criticism of films that people hasn't even bothered to see yet. It was my first toe-dip into the waters of a List Project, and it was essentially bitten off by folks who hasn't seen the film(s) I'd posted about. No worries, though - and I'm glad you watched a spotlight of mine!

[YnEoS]

Very excited about the extension, maybe I'll find time to write my HK horror guide.

[Mr Sausage]

Very excited about the extension, maybe I'll find time to write my HK horror guide.

Please do. I've really enjoyed your and Cold Bishop's suggestions throughout this thread. And with the extension I hope to get to some more HK horror.

By the way, if any of you haven't yet seen The Boxer's Omen, The Seventh Curse, and Human Lanterns, you really need to.

[Cold Bishop]

@YnEoS: What's your opinion on Lost Souls and The Beasts? I'm going to have watch them eventually, if not here then for my 80s Hong Kong round-up - and I've definitely grown an appreciation for T.F. Mou outside his more controversial films - but I'm kind of dreading their seemingly exploitative unpleasantness.

I feel like that was met with more than a little presumption masquerading as actual criticism of films that people hasn't even bothered to see yet.

Yup. That sounds about right.

If it's any defense, I still plan on getting around to Martyrs, but... you know... see the above.

[swo17]

It was my first toe-dip into the waters of a List Project, and it was essentially bitten off by folks who hasn't seen the film(s) I'd posted about.

We're ever so hospitable over on the decades side of things.

[YnEoS]

@YnEoS: What's your opinion on Lost Souls and The Beasts? I'm going to have watch them eventually, if not here then for my 80s Hong Kong round-up - and I've definitely grown an appreciation for T.F. Mou outside his more controversial films - but I'm kind of dreading their seemingly exploitative unpleasantness.

Haven't seen them myself yet either. I'm not terribly deep into HK horror yet. I was just planning on using this project as an excuse to binge on HK horror films and then post my thoughts here. Gotta do a little prep first though, I've got 12 unsubtitled Malaysian horror VCDs sitting around produced by Shaw Brothers and Cathay between 1956 and 1974. Hoping if I sit through them all I can magically absorb some sense of context or maybe some familiarity with conventions.

[terabin]

I'd like to second one film that's already been recommended a while back: the Russian 1967 film Viy. As a seminarian who loves horror films, I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of the seminarians as buffoons, the protagonist being the foremost example. The balance between comedy and horror suits me perfectly, and the comedy is wonderfully supplemented by the often buoyant score. I love the presence of the iconography in the church where the protagonist goes through his trials, the images of the disciples, Jesus, and the Virgin and child. Yet, what the protagonist winds up focusing in on, of all the icons on the wall, are stern, ambiguous images, of a frowning God, of an angry John the Baptist who holds his own head on a platter. In the midst of his drunkenness, the seminarian feels a sense of guilt; he holds up an empty bottle as he looks at the frowning God icon and implores God to remember his humanness. The seminarian relies on rituals that emphasize a magical understanding of sacrality to combat the witch's evil magical acts. I appreciate the filmmakers' commentary on religion's tendency to come up with quick fixes and answers in response to the problem of evil. Religion gets in trouble when it pretends to have the only answers.

The other aspect of the film I want to highlight is the kinetic movement displayed in a couple of scenes. The witch riding on the seminarian's back as the duo slowly float off the ground as the seminarian runs through the night mist. The scene is slowed down in a tracking shot, yet the special FX remain grounded in the sense of space and movement. No CGI needed. The second scene is near the end when the gargoyles, vampires, and demonry are receding after the cock's crow. A number of the monsters jump from the church floor up to the balcony in a seamless, smooth motion. Beautiful, these images, and filled with energy.

[Mr Sausage]

Tombs of the Blind Dead (Amando de Ossorio, 1972): I never would've considered this movie a horror adaptation of L'avventura if Cold Bishop hadn't pointed it out, but once known it's impossible not to see it, it seems so obvious. I appreciated the obscure sexual dread permeating the first half of the film and the way it overflows into outright sexual violence that seems to raise the very dead. I don't know if the Antonioni-esque aimlessness in the movie works all that well in a horror film. I do like the fact that the movie delays its horrors until the end, but its delaying tactics make the film seem padded (the whole smuggler/girlfriend subplot was pretty head-scratching), and when the horrors are finally allowed free reign they seem over too quickly. More imagination should've been given to the skeleton/vampire thingies' blindness. It could've added some novel business to the stalking scenes, but it's just given a throw-away moment involving a racing heart. If the movie hadn't had the word "blind" in the title I don't think I would've known they were blind until fifteen minutes from the end. A lot more interesting than I expected it to be when it first came to my attention several years ago, but also less satisfying than I thought it would be.

[Cold Bishop]

Mr. Sausage's spotlight Night of the Eagle will be airing on TCM Saturday Nov. 10, under the title Burn Witch, Burn

[colinr0380]

Mr. Sausage's spotlight Night of the Eagle will be airing on TCM Saturday Nov. 10, under the title Burn Witch, Burn

Night of the Eagle is a great film, and makes a good contrast to Rosemary's Baby since instead of being about being betrayed by your other half, it is about not appreciating all the little things that they do for you until it is too late!

Halloween II (Rick Rosenthal, 1981)

I thought that given the day I should watch at least one Halloween film! While the original Halloween is almost the perfect slasher film which stands up entirely on its own merits Halloween II isn't that great but I still like watching it occasionally, and especially now with its Blu release I have finally gotten to see it in its original widescreen ratio!

I appreciate the effort made in the film to keep the events of Part II taking place on the same 1978 night as the original, and it is great to see a lot of the original cast back (including Nancy Chambers, who would even turn up in the opening sequence of H20), but there are lots of little 'off' moments that prevent the film from achieving the heights of the original, from the far too overdone score embellishing on the original theme, to the amusing shape of the body outlined in the grass at the beginning or the weird characters such as the boom boxing kid (and the Michael walk to the hospital being undermined by the mugging chap following on just behind!), through to the rather callous way that a fake Michael is despatched in a car crash.

The biggest problem though is that while the original film set up a group of friends and made you actually feel for them getting murderered Halloween II spends far too much time setting up an uninteresting group of new nurse and orderly characters in its hospital setting (including a non-entity love interest for Laurie Strode whose only defining characteristic appears to be sneaking into hospital rooms to bother the patients), characters who don't really register much until their death scenes. Death scenes which seem to be taking a lot more interest in different methods and novel staging compared to the more straightforward way that they were handled in the original (needles in the eye; death by scalpel or hammer etc), something which seems to miss the point of actually making characters that the audience cares about and doesn't want to see die, rather than just waits to see how they die. I also found that lack of connection to or interest in the characters also makes the drawn out sequences before the murders drag a lot more!

The hot tub murder is the biggest example of this crudening of events into an average set piece slasher film, with the nudity and silly moment of the girl sucking the killer's fingers thinking they are her boyfriends before she gets a scalded to death scene reminiscent of the one in Deep Red.

The film picks up in its final sections as the sidelined characters from the original get to have another confrontation with the killer, but even here there are problems since this is the film that first introduced the 'Michael's sister' subplot into the mythology to give a reason for why Michael Myers is targeting Laurie again. It just seems a lazy bit of justification, but then that fits in with the attitude on display in the rest of the film.

(Luckily H20 years later managed to actually make something of this element, but then of course Rick Rosenthal came back to direct the follow up film, Halloween: Resurrection, which wrecked the series all over again with another poor use of the Laurie Strode character

Spoiler

(i.e. killing her off in the early section of the film)

and introduction of yet another set of uninteresting, irrelevant characters to get killed off again to pad out the running time)

While I'm not a huge fan of the film, the latest Shout! Factory Blu is a really good edition - I don't think that the film really does much hugely interesting with its widescreen ratio but it is nice to see it that way after many years of only seeing it pan and scanned on TV broadcasts. Although this pristine version of the film means that it loses some of that grimy, grubby, run down quality that the poorly tracking fullscreen videotapes in a strange way enhanced!

And the hospital setting is a neat one, in some ways prefiguring that one sequence from Exorcist III in the way that you see the nurses wandering around corridors in long shot, never knowing where the killer might pop out from! While in the commentary the director talks about there being a criticism of the hospital being mainly empty, I thought that was one of the (very few) nice touches which still lends an eerie quality to the film on repeat viewings.

However the follow on criticism of that which I could agree with is the way that it is one of those films where every single character that is introduced in the hospital (apart from the babies in the nursery) is there just to be killed off. No one in the film is just there for non-plot related reasons, which is something that lends that kind of hermetically sealed quality and gives the film a claustrophobic feel, yet also suggests that the filmmakers have no time for anything else outside of their remit of showing gory murders. As well as a pointless feeling that the bulk of the exercise was really for nothing (which the Halloween II remake quite funnily plays with in its own hospital-set opening sequence!)

[domino harvey]

Burning Bright (Carlos Brooks 2010) Here is a premise so outlandish that the desire for the film to be good approaches righteousness: A conniving widower plots to rid himself of his bratty stepdaughter (Briana Evigan, the wet-blanket from Sorority Row) and autistic stepson by trapping them inside during a hurricane… and then releasing a tiger into the boarded-up family home. Yes, this is a real movie. And yes, it plays things Very Seriously, which works sometimes-- I loved the ridiculously entertaining scene early on where our heroine finds herself stuck in a laundry chute with the orange beastie poking its head and paw and whatever else up into the crevices after her-- but the animal quickly wears a path of destruction through the house that leaves few credible options for legitimate plot furtherance. There's a good hour-long programmer in here like they used to make 'em, but stretched out even to a relatively slight eighty-five minutes (and that includes the astonishing eight-minutes of closing credits), it's all thinner than it needed to be. It doesn't help matters that the autistic boy is obnoxious beyond belief-- he makes Max from Parenthood look like Cary Grant-- and even before he wallops his helpful sister in the head with a remote for daring to suggest that maybe TV Time shouldn't coincide with Tiger Time, I was ready for her to feed this burden to the beast and be done with it. Not the sentiment the film desires, I assure you. Still, the pic offers exactly what it's sold as: Anonymous college-something running around in a tank top, evading a killer tiger in her house by hiding under beds, behind kitchen islands, etc. And in that we can call the film a success, however minor.

Dracula's Widow (Christopher Coppola 1988) Nic Cage's brother directs this weird, tonally askance LA-set vampire flick. The filmmakers may very well have raided the backlot after Creepshow finished, with bright neon lights painting many a scene of mostly empty sets… it's Moullet by way of the Freed Unit. This isn't a movie that can be defended on plot, acting, construction, or effects. It just gets somewhere unexpectedly enjoyable (by virtue of / in spite of) its unlikely parts. Bonus points for the Charles Bickford-aping tec who at one point tours a bloody crime scene while absently munching from a bag of popcorn.

the Village (M Night Shyamalan 2004) Ever since the "twist" to this one was spoiled for me (sometime during opening weekend by a scorned viewer, I believe), I treated it as a big joke sight unseen. With all the career vilifying Shyamalan invites, especially of late, it seemed only right and natural, even long after I should have known better as a mature filmgoer to not be so overconfident of an unseen film's demerits. I can understand why mainstream audiences would turn so violently against the film's eventual reveal (which is more accurate a descriptor than twist)-- the film plays out very sincerely and asks the audience to meet it at this level of decorum, and when that sincerity is suddenly called into question, the effectiveness of all that came before can now be safely mocked by any viewer unwilling or incapable of placing these final jigsaw pieces within the framework of the puzzle offered-- which may not be the puzzle desired. This compulsion to make a film something it isn't and the subsequent punishment (be it jeering/booing, internet bitching, &c) makes sense in the same ways we saw last year with Drive and will no doubt see again. But why did art house crowds, who are perfectly capable of handing out rope to a self-serious film of aesthetic merit, shy away from defending this? Were the jokes to be had too easy and appealing? Was the much-spoiled turn the film takes really so indefensible that more adventurous moviegoers opted not to bother, mentally filing it away under "Auteur Theory Comma Failures," never to be considered again? I plead guilty to at least one of these, and were it not for the same latent curiosity that finds me sitting down for dreck like Friday the 13th Part VII under the nagging auspices of "Well, what if it's secretly good and I'd never know unless I watch?" I'd forever have laughed off the lofty placement afforded by Cahiers du Cinema to the film in their year-end list as just another instance of "Oh Cahiers."

I am ashamed of my own behavior, for the Village is above all a beautiful film. The score is haunting, the film sharply shot and edited with the sort of control and care that merits the high opinion its auteur has of himself. The actors, particularly Bryce Dallas Howard, are called upon to behave and function within rather cruel scenarios at time and yet bring such conviction to their work that it becomes infuriating to think of the giggling posse of the scorned taking out their frustrations on a reality that is, if one really thinks about it, more sensical than the path the film takes prior. Watching it from the vantage of someone who knew the gist of the big picture but not how the parts functioned, it's remarkable how Shyamalan only cheats once--

Spoiler

With the tombstone's dates for Gleeson's son a clear and dirty (and rather unnecessary) misdirect

--a herculean achievement once the totality of the film is understood. We feel foolish, perhaps, but why does the shame have to lie in the filmmaker for effectively guiding us around the elephant in the room until it's time for a proper introduction? There is something else at work here besides spooky horror thrills, with the political allegory perfectly on-point for the era in which it was produced, and yet the whole thing sounds like a bad O Henry story (redundant, I know) if one is relying on word of mouth alone. Of course any subject could be the basis of a good film. This happens to be a great one. But, as they used to say on Reading Rainbow, don't take my word for it…

[dustybooks]

Completely agree about The Village; it's a somber and beautiful film, and I don't know if it's just because I'm a sentimental sap but I find the central love story profoundly affecting, and the finale chilling. In regard to the scorned-viewer treatment, I always thought it was interesting that despite the film's reputation, everyone for whom I recommended or screened it liked or loved it (or were very good liars).

[Murdoch]

I think it's Shymalan's best film and it revealed to me that he was a rather gifted filmmaker who has succumbed to his worst tendencies. The forest scene with the monster remains chilling for me due to a beautiful yet eery merging of the quiet forest setting with the way the encounter plays out. I think the adverse reaction to the film is a common one for these films where

Spoiler

the monster is revealed not to be a monster, but a hoax and I'll admit after all the build-up I did find it disappointing to have the rug pulled away from under me.

Still, the infamous twist here works better than those in Shymalan's other films. I was surprised at the vitriol leveled at the movie given how well-acted and beautiful it is to look at. Hell, even Adrien Brody's mentally handicapped villager, which would be cringe-inducing for me in most films, feels natural. And Howard's haunting stare I still haven't forgotten.

[mfunk9786]

There are so many inconsistencies within the main film that the ending is very easily guessed, though. Tons of instances where period-specific detail is missed. The first time I saw the film, I smugly called the twist a half hour in (and I was in high school!), thinking "Oh God, it can't possibly be that stupid, so I'll just whisper it to my friend as a joke." Well, it was that stupid. And my friend was suddenly quite pissed. Not to say that I dislike all of M. Night's other work though, I think The Sixth Sense is quite masterful and Unbreakable and Signs have their charms (though they're nearly as flawed as The Village themselves).

[Mr Sausage]

I haven't seen The Village since highschool, either. I remember appreciating its chilly atmosphere and Shyamalan's sure grasp of suspense. I also remember growing very tired of the stilted, pseudo-period dialogue and, once the twist was revealed, had a hard time believing the choices made by many of the characters.

Spoiler

I am amused by fact that the movie is about a fascist 'utopia' built on lies and deception and controlled through fear, and that the life of this or that individual was not worth risking those lies for, to the point where sending a blind girl off into the woods became a good idea (still not sure I buy the motivations leading to that choice). But the essential naivety of the story, needed if it's to work at all, has the effect of implicitly approving of or at least accepting all of this, to the point where the evil in the story is shifted onto the Brody character, whose death purges the story of evil and returns the village and the narrative to unity in a typical 'fairy-tale' type structure. And as I said, the naivety needed to make the earlier fairy-tale type stuff work carries over into the structure as well, giving it the effect of firmly believing in the village as much as it believed in all the rest. There's something uneasy about the fact that the movie allows the village to survive without heavily indicating that this is where the evil lies in story. On the contrary, the village's continuance is a structural point in the return to unity and coincides with the purging of evil and the resolution of the narrative. To put it simply: it's not an unhappy ending.

[swo17]

Definitely agree with swo on Chris Cunningham, here is the previous discussion thread on him. While a lot of the earlier 'developing style' music video links still work a lot of the links to the more celebrated videos are dead so I'll add some new ones here:

The obvious one for the horror list project would be Aphex Twin's Come To Daddy, though the video for their Windowlicker twists rap video cliches into hideously disturbing forms (either that or it is the most sexual version of a Gene Kelly musical number that there could be!)

My favourites would be the unfortunate zombie in the video for Africa Shox, the melancholy creepiness of Only You and the brain swap antics of Come On My Selector. The DVD also has this same excerpt of the installation piece flex.

A couple that have been made since the Director Series DVD are another for Aphex Twin, the nightmarish Rubber Johnny and the Samantha Morton starring Lovecraftian video for The Horrors' Sheena Is A Parasite.

I finally got around to revisiting these videos, and as much as I would like to sneak some Richard James onto my list, I'm goint to have to put my full support behind that Sheena Is a Parasite video linked to above. (It's only a minute and a half, so watch it or I'll unleash the octopus.) In addition to being frenetically disturbing, this is a perfect example of using CGI subtly to hint at horrors that would be compromised if they were given greater prominence. It's also incredibly fun, and, as a bonus, doesn't leave you feeling like a terrible person afterward (like, say, Windowlicker does--though I mean that as a compliment!)

[swo17]

Can anyone recommend any experimental horror shorts in the vein of Tscherkassky's Outer Space?

[knives]

They're not entirely horror, but several of Bruce Conner's films are similar including the amazing Breakaway.

[colinr0380]

They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)

I just watched the new Shout Factory Blu of this last night (the slipcover comes with an amusing little black writing on white background "BUY" sticker!) and have been reminded about just how interesting this film is. In an era where mainstream films mostly don't have an opinion about anything important either way to not alienate the audience, it is amusing that this film...doesn't have a strong political view either way apart from a nebulous respect for the working man and a sense of annoyance at societal inequalities.

It is both painfully blunt and slightly strange blue collar against white collar and proleteriat against bourgeoisie social satire, but the way these details are sketched in are amusing - the satire of the media with the lady on television talking longingly about never growing old on television seems to anticipate reality television. That moment in the final sequence of the bickering alien Siskel and Ebert works both as a specific dig at particular critics but also the wider anti-critic one of the masses being literally told what to think by their television. It is like a hall of mirrors where even the ostensibly interchangable material used to keep the masses in check is being (pointlessly) separated into good and bad! When it is all performing the same function of keeping the population sedated! The film itself seems against television (in the way that all movies are suspicious of television stealing their audience), yet also, as in Prince of Darkness, pirated television transmissions are the only way of trying to wake people up. The medium is so powerful and all pervasive that the only way of putting your message across is by subverting from within another programme. People won't pay attention when you are preaching in the church across the street, but show up on television, even unauthorised, and you and your message will suddenly have a certain cache. Beyond the media though there is also the way that the revolutionary group are using the tape recorded gospel songs at the church to cover their activities - another way of sedating the masses that is used as a front

I suppose that keeps the illusion of choice alive though, and I like that this is one of the big themes of the film - Nada starts as a drifter but one with a kind of beatific naive certainty in the way that given the chance he will be able to prove himself and work his way up in the world, something he loses once he finds out the impossibility of that due to the alien cabal in cahoots with the ruling elite which spirals him into impotent anger and random shooting sprees (our hero being able to pick out particular people to kill depending on whether they are aliens in disguise, which worryingly suggests that other targets in shooting sprees may not be picked out randomly. After all, everyone has their reasons!). His eyes are opened but he is doomed from that point on - he is aware of the world, which immediately makes him more of an outsider than when he was a drifter, and an immediate threat. He drags, after the wrestling/boxing match, his friend into the conspiracy, dooming him too. Frank knows to keep his head down but doesn't get a choice, the illusion of choice again.

But the choice to collaborate seems to be there, as shown in the various scenes of aspiring bourgeois or business middle class humans trying and failing to get on in the world without an awareness that their colleagues aren't even the same species (a glass ceiling even further beyond race or gender!) I really like that the inevitable question of a biological act of 'collaboration' doesn't get brushed under the carpet either, instead being used for the final kicker!

I especially like the way that the absurd in length ten minute fight scene over wearing a pair of glasses works in all sorts of ways - from including a scene of Roddy Piper wrestling to satisfy his fans, to showing humans fighting each other over something so stupid instead of actually tackling the alien threat (which they never really get to do in any meaningful way), to the way that the film is morphing from social satire into the kind of straight ahead untroubling action film of good guy vs bad guy shootouts.

While the commentary track between Carpenter and Piper is great fun, I would highly recommend Jonathan Lethem's commentary in book form which among other things gets into the homoerotic relationship between the two blue collar men (sublimated in the fight scene and compounded by the duplicitous female love interest), the way that a blue collar chap entering a woman's middle class home at mid-day immediately has bad porn movie connotations of illicit sex, and the Hitchcock references such as the homage to the opening of Marnie in the introduction of Meg Foster's character and the same overhead angle of approach shot of Martin Balsam being stabbed on the staircase in Psycho for Piper getting beaten over the head and taking a dive out of Foster's window!

It might have just been rewatching Cronenberg's Crash the night before that did it, but those films work well together if you are looking for material where groups of likeminded people get their homespun, slightly grubby gatherings regularly interrupted by the organised forces of law and order looking to maintain some discipline!

Much like The Fog or Prince of Darkness I find the film flawed but lovable because of its bluntness. If it were ever remade the end result would be far slicker, I'm sure. But I wonder whether any possible remake would throw away those little moments which are a big part of what gives this film its unique character.

[Satori]

I especially like the way that the absurd in length ten minute fight scene over wearing a pair of glasses works in all sorts of ways - from including a scene of Roddy Piper wrestling to satisfy his fans, to showing humans fighting each other over something so stupid instead of actually tackling the alien threat (which they never really get to do in any meaningful way), to the way that the film is morphing from social satire into the kind of straight ahead untroubling action film of good guy vs bad guy shootouts.

This scene's unbelievable length kind of bewildered me the first time I saw the film, especially since the film up until this point is a fairly radical, although, as you say, painfully blunt, critique of the Reagan era in particular and even late capitalism in general. An incredibly boring (to me at least) scene of two guys beating the hell out of each other seemed out of place in what was prior to this scene essentially a film of ideas (albeit blunt, broadly depicted ones). Yet I do think its importance is probably related to its excess. In addition to your readings, I like to think that it is a kind of excessive parody of the 80s macho-action culture, which also seems related to the homoerotic reading which is very much present. I think there was always something quite queer in the 80s action hero/wrestling culture, which them film makes apparent (also the scenes of Piper doing construction work earlier are rather fetishistic). Slavoj Zizek also argues somewhere that the fight scene's absurd length reflects how difficult it is to convince people to think about ideology or to question the way the world appears to function. R. Piper literally has to beat the hell out of his friend before he will put on the glasses that will reveal the ideological apparatuses of late capitalism.

I also think that the extended sequence of Piper first putting on the glasses is probably one of the best ways of introducing the concept of Marxist ideological analysis to lower-level undergraduates!