A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I think it works that Slate's a sleazier kind of Depp. Dude looks like a gutter cat. And why do smart girls fall for gutter cats? A time life mystery. Maybe smart girls also want to be cool without appearing cool.


Anyway, the film is anti-cool. I don't even remember it playing in theaters. It was like a shared secret for a couple of years amongst some very uncool, frustrated teenagers, ime.

Watched a couple of Japanese horror films last night with a friend. First up was Onibaba - really more of a drama with some horror overtones late in the film, was effective and well acted and while not scary per se the end had some pretty iconic looking shots and some grim ideas behind things, does end pretty abruptly though. If you like period Japanese horror definitely give it a go.

Next up was Sweet Home (1989) - this one feels like it's caught between 2 worlds, the characters are a bit quirky, not enough to be really memorable but enough to kind of undermine some of the creepy moments. There are a couple impressive gore scenes but it never really goes full gonzo and the characters reactions to some of the weird goings on is just baffling, . Don't regret watching it but it just missed the mark enough in several small ways that I can't really recommend it.

I think my constant Fulci/Italian-horror-related posting has finally invaded my dreams.


Had a dream last night that I was a student of some spooky academy (yes, I know this sounds like Suspiria, but the lighting was more Fulci-esque, bear with me). One of the instructors taught white magic on the side, but was still vaguely sinister and gave me the creeps. Isabelle Adjani shows up and she taught black magic and was way cooler and nicer and tried to recruit me, but I suspected something was off. Unfortunately she murders my friend and possesses her corpse, so to defeat them I had to poke their eyes out.


I was played by Cinzea Monreale. The white magic instructor I do not remember clearly, but she was not a warm presence, let's say it was Franca Stoppi. Isabelle Adjani has never been in an Italian horror movie to my knowledge but I watched Quartet last night so I guess she invaded my dreams as well.


Apologies if this is not entirely relevant to the thread, but I figured some here might find it amusing.

Nightbeast is to sci-fi horror what Don't Go in the Woods is to the slasher movie. A dirt cheap regional version of the genre, whose low budget gives it a good chunk of its personality. Nightbeast is probably closer to a "good" example of its genre than the other film, and for a regional production that no doubt had to pull together whoever the filmmakers knew to make up its cast, the acting is pretty decent on average, but there are moments when its cost cutting or need to pander to audience expectations gives it a weirdness you don't get in a more expensive movie. The plot can be described as "Predator in Maryland", with an alien getting stranded in the woods after its spacecraft gets downed by an asteroid and subsequently antagonizing the residents of a nearby small town.

This is not exactly Jaws and the movie does not shy away from showing the alien, who is seen wearing a tracksuit (a silver one, appropriate for space travel), yet the movie devotes a decent amount of its attention to the efforts of the local sheriff and his deputies to stop the alien's murderous rampage. (It is however like Jaws in that the dumbassed mayor, who cringes at being called "Bertie", downplays the threat and tries to keep the party going.) I find something innately enjoyable about watching a group of competent professionals work together to solve a problem, particularly in a genre context, and there's a love here for the genre and the tropes involved that makes this additionally pleasurable. The cheapo synth music, courtesy of a teenage J.J. Abrams, gives this all a pretty nice atmosphere.

The technical qualities are mixed but full of personality. There are times when a shot will end really abruptly that I suspect was due to the filmmakers wanting to save film to keep costs down, but I couldn't help but think how much better those moments would have landed if the image had been held for a few more seconds. At the same time, I do appreciate that the filmmakers were learning on the job; the cinematographer speaks of discarding the use of fog filters after a few initial shots didn't turn out as expected. Some of those shots are still in the finished film, and the stylistic incongruity gives the work a certain momentum.

Yet there are moments when the film's roughness accumulates into the sublime, like during a confusingly edited shootout with the alien where the garish optical effects and contempt for spatial coherence (there's a cavalier disregard for the 180-rule) give the proceedings a hallucinatory quality. I am not one to partake in psychedelics during a movie or otherwise (and quite frankly don't even drink all that much), but if you are, this sequence benefit from the enhancement offered by those substances. Yet there are images that are genuinely atmospheric, and the decision to frequently accompany the alien with darkness and fog (the fog machine here works overtime) pays off wonderfully. (It's a good indication of where my head's been at the past year and a half that during a tense scene where a character is about to be ambushed by the alien that my attention was held in part by the sweet collar roll on his shirt.)

Dohler wanted to make essentially a throwback to '50s alien pictures, but because films need to make money and such things were not automatically commercially viable at the time, he was encouraged to spice up his movie with more sex and violence. The added violence blends easily with the fabric of the movie, the disembowelings and gore scenes providing an unhinged counterpoint to the tacky optical effects of the alien's raygun. As far as the sex goes, it's limited to two scenes. One is a nude scene of a character whose fate is to be killed by her sadistic biker boyfriend, which I found a little too distasteful for this kind of movie (even if the biker might be played by the best actor in the movie) and this whole subplot is oddly divorced from the alien-related proceedings. The other however is a wonderfully awkward sex scene between the sheriff and one of his deputies, full of uncomfortable caressing and equal opportunity shots of their buttcracks. (It's nice to see something this progressive at a low budget.) Is it a "good" scene? No. Would the movie be better off without it? Hell no.

Now watch Winterbeast. Same kind of clunky and amusingly bland melodrama buried in a movie filled with a bunch of claymation monsters.

That would require me to go from watching movies with titles that are portmanteaus with the word "night" (Nightbeast, Nightbreed, Nightdreams) to movies with titles that are portmanteaus with the word "beast". Might be a challenge.


But yes, that one is in my watchlist. I heard that apparently is was shot over several years and pieced together after the fact to compelling, so definitely interested. Unfortunately my last VS haul got embarrassingly big so will wait for it to show up on Tubi or at least hold off until the Black Friday sale.

Winterbeast and Snowbeast is a double feature just waiting to happen. You're welcome.

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Poor Sylvia Sidney didn't age too gracefully.

I see no point in questioning why Ms A has invaded your dream. Just be happy she's there.

Felt pretty bad about poking her eyes out.

You were in an Italian horror movie, you had no choice. Like you're NOT gonna poke some eyes? That's crazy talk.

Appreciate the sound legal advice.

When Alejandro Jodorowsky called Nightbreed "the first truly gay horror fantasy epic", he was not off base. The hero's discovery of his powers plays like a metaphor for coming out, and his recruitment into the nightbreed of the title leans heavily into the idea of found families prevalent in such communities. Now to a certain extent, as a cisgender straight man I can only dissect clinically elements in this film that speak more directly to the lived experience of others, but the film's compassion in this respect did move me. There are queer themes present in Barker's previous directorial effort Hellraiser, but that movie is also cold and transgressive. This is in comparison a much warmer film, one I found quite affecting. It's also a sprawling, messy film, but one I can't help but admire for its ambition.

The story concerns a young man (Craig Sheffer) who has dreams of a supernatural promised land and is convinced by his psychiatrist (David Cronenberg) that he's responsible for some serial murders, causing him to flee. Of course, it turns out that the psychiatrist is the actual murderer and that the promised land is real, populated by a number of undead beings known as the nightbreed. The film's vision of horror is a blend of a few different flavours. The material with the psychiatrist is a blend of psychological thriller and slasher movie, which the studio tried to play up with the theatrical release. (I only watched Barker's director's cut from a few years ago, which I understand differs substantially and, by most accounts, for the better). Cronenberg is extremely effective in the role, channeling some of the coldness from his own movies (his affectless manner of speaking goes a long way), and the mask his character sports during the murders (made of a burlap sack and button eyes) is undeniably creepy. He brings to the movie a sense of real evil.

Like in Hellraiser, Barker maneuvers a shift in audience identification from the male lead to his girlfriend (Anne Bobby), a relative outsider. I think the shift works quite a better here as it isn't quite as extreme. The transition to the Ashley Laurence character in Hellraiser felt a little too drastic as she felt too removed from the goings on in the preceding sections of the film, and as a total innocent, felt out of step and not at all complicit in the film's overall transgressive qualities. Anne Bobby's character is also an innocent, but her arc echoes that of her boyfriend, who is thrust into this situation mostly against his will (having been framed by his psychiatrist). Her experience amplifies our understanding of what her boyfriend goes through, giving greater resonance to the dramatic thrust of the movie. (It also helps that she's quite a bit more charismatic than Sheffer.) Horror movies can often be cold and cruel. This one is empathetic to its core.

The monster movie elements vary in effectiveness, mostly due to wildly uneven creature design. Some of the nightbreed, like the shapeshifting woman who can turn into air, carry with them a convincingly supernatural aura, and it helps that the Catherine Chevalier, actress who plays that particular one, brings a certain poignancy to the role. (The movie also gets a pretty effective shock out of the man who can peel off his own face.) Others, like the one whose head resembles the crescent moon but with facial hair and a ponytail (I'm calling him Mac Tonight) look dopey more than anything. (The next most egregious example involves what I call monster dreadlocks.) There is a hideously '90s quality to some of the monster design, but Barker's insistence on fleshing them out as real characters and the attention he gives to depicting their dynamic as a group goes a long way in making them work.

Barker displays the most directorial verve when he shifts to the action elements, and the film plays in part as a rebuke to the sadism of macho action pictures from the era. The villain teams up with a local sheriff all too eager to exterminate the nightbreed, bringing to the confrontation manpower and firepower fit for a small army. Barker appreciates how ludicrous stock scenes of gun fetishism can be, turning a scene in a supply room into parody, and while a certain homophobic slur was an unfortunate mainstay of the genre in this era, its use here feels particularly pointed. Barker makes no room for any "good cops", and if the movie is ultimately an allegory about the LGBT experience, the action elements play like a commentary on police antagonism of the community. I can't say how the original cut played, but in this version, finds its own distinct, languorous rhythms and shapes its disparate horror elements into something quite moving.

I've only seen the original Nightbreed, maybe when I was 13 or 14, and I really hated it. This probably had a lot to do with the lame monster design, which I remember similarly putting me off of Basket Case 2. I was not much of a monster teen, and big plastic faces were a big hurdle for me back then. So, even though I think its pretty established that the original cut isn't any good, I probably wouldn't have given it much of a chance back then even if it had been the supposedly better directors cut.


I should probably rewatch it at some point. The same for Basket Case 2.

I'll be honest, for Nightbreed, I watched in two halves, and found I was gelling to it a lot more in the second half, once I got used to the designs.


Basket Case 2...I dunno, something about the tone Hennenlotter struck really put me off, but perhaps I owe it another chance later on. I didn't like the first one either, but can see myself warming up to its roughness these days. I do see it's on Tubi, so perhaps a rewatch is in order. But weird that those movies did so little for me when I remember really enjoying Brain Damage (that one is overdue for a rewatch as well).

Ok, looks like this is on Tubi but the aspect ratio is out of whack. Also on Youtube in the right aspect ratio but a washed out transfer. Hmmmm.....

I've never really liked the original Basket Case that much either, but I haven't seen it for ages.


Brain Damage is all class. Frankenhooker, even classier.

I love Brain Damage more every time I watch it.

I wouldn't sweat it. The soul-crushing boredom will be intact no matter the aspect ratio.

Rewatching Near Dark (it recently popped up on Shudder and everyone is gabbing about it so it made me want to watch it, despite having it on Blu-ray and being able to have watched it at any point whilst it was MIA) and…

It’s still phenomenal and a top 10 vampire flick but I think the…



Really keeps this out of the running for favorite vampire flick. It stinks because Bigelow really brings the style and effectively merges neo-western, neo-noir and vampire film. It’s a blend close to my heart as an influence on my own work too.

But man, it’s just a dang cool flick overall. Love it. Just so close to perfect it hurts.