Chypmunk joins me in the first post challenge count. Pretty sure Zotis, Iro and Jay have as well, just need to know their categories.
Remember if you want your watchlist linked in the first post like me and Chypmunk ask me to do it.
Well, if that's the case, I reckon I'll mark down Opera as my Argento pick while keeping Inferno as my "supernatural" pick. I don't have a concrete list set out - I figured I would just wing it at this rate and fill out the list as I went. I'll let you know if I do settle on a concrete list.
@Iroquois did you make a list? You watched a couple of movies, but didn't get marked off by Camo. It's probably because you didn't mention which category they were for. I might check out Prince of Darkness if I finish everything else on my list in time, to make up for They Live not being horror.
As far as serious Carpenter horror recommendations go, I'd put The Fog ahead of Prince of Darkness - hell, probably even in the Mouth of Madness too. The Fog is a pretty solid ghost story that doesn't fall prey to camp, but if your preference is for religious-themed horror then you might as well go for Prince of Darkness (In the Mouth of Madness is Lovecraft-style psychological horror, which has its merits). Other than that, Christine is an OK Stephen King movie and his "Cigarette Burns" episode of Masters of Horror is alright, but otherwise...not much to write home about.
As far as serious Carpenter horror recommendations go, I'd put The Fog ahead of Prince of Darkness - hell, probably even in the Mouth of Madness too. The Fog is a pretty solid ghost story that doesn't fall prey to camp, but if your preference is for religious-themed horror then you might as well go for Prince of Darkness (In the Mouth of Madness is Lovecraft-style psychological horror, which has its merits). Other than that, Christine is an OK Stephen King movie and his "Cigarette Burns" episode of Masters of Horror is alright, but otherwise...not much to write home about.
I was once hanging out with a band and one of them recommended The Fog. I must have gotten it confused with The Myst, because I checked it out but didn't like it. So this must be the movie he was talking about. Hmm... Okay, I think I'll try The Fog then.
Anyway, I'll keep this as my in-progress list. Will fill it out either as I come up with titles either before or after I watch them (though I think I'll use my blue-red system to denote whether or not I've watched them for this challenge).
Watch one from each of the following Directors:
George Romero The Crazies
John Carpenter Body Bags
Wes Craven A Nightmare on Elm Street
Tobe Hooper to be confirmed
Dario Argento - Opera
Lucio Fulci City of the Living Dead
William Castle to be confirmed
Watch Two Horror Anthologies The ABCs of Death,
Watch a Horror film from the year you were born Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Watch Two Horror Sequels Halloween H20,
Watch a Silent Horror Film Häxan
Rewatch a Favourite Dawn of the Dead
Watch a Comedy Horror Wolfcop
Watch a horror film from three different countries The Wailing (South Korea), Eyes Without a Face (France), Krysar (Czech Republic)
Watch any Slasher Film
A Movie From This Decade Gerald's Game
Watch any Hammer Horror Film to be confirmed
Watch a Universal Horror Film Dracula
Watch a Film that has been banned in a Country
Watch a film from the following sub-genres
Zombie Train to Busan
Body Horror
Home Invasion You're Next
Creature Feature
Supernatural - Inferno
Found Footage
Vampire Vampyr (1932)
Watch the highest rated Horror film you haven't seen: It (2017)
Overall the acting was alright. It wasn't great, but at least it wasn't terrible. There were some issues with the dubbing where the emphasis in their voices didn't match their expressions or the intensity of their acting, and sometimes it didn't match with their lips. They tried to hide it, but sometimes it was just glaringly obvious. The last shot of the film was really tacky. I also had some issue with the plot. Where Argento usually excels in music, use of color, and visuals I found this a bit lacking compared to his other films. This actually felt like a 90's movie.
Nice to see that there's actually a lot of people in this challenge!
Watched 4 films yesterday:
Halloween (1978)
Category: Slasher
01/10 [00:00]
One of my favorites horror films ever! This was the first time that I watched the BluRay version, so you can imagine my happiness!
My girlfriend was a little upset since I made her wait until midnight! But what can I do? I made a pact!
INSIDE (2007)
Category: Home Invasion
01/10 [01:48]
I copied this from camo , I'm not aware of any good Home Invasion movies. All I saw were crap (Panic Room for example ¬¬). This movie was something. One of the bloodiest horror movies I've seen in years. Although the film has satisfied my appetite for blood did not entertain me that much...
The Thing (1982)
Category: John Carpenter 01/10 [19:15]
Just like Halloween, this is one of my favorites!
I almost put it in the "rewatch a favorite" category. First time I've see the Blu-Ray! (Bought together with Halloween last week). The ending is SO damn good!!!
Halloween II (1981) Category: Two Horror Sequels (I'll save the other sequel to friday in the next week since I chose Friday the 13th Final Chapter as my other sequel). 01/10 [22:00]
The emptiest hospital ever!
An ok sequel! Somethings are very good and others are completely crap.
I went by the IMDb genre charts for this one and, after determining that I couldn't guarantee that I would get to watch Diabolique, went with the next viable candidate, which was...this. On a purely horror level, it certainly has its moments - can't say I didn't jump at least a couple of times - but it seems as if it works better on every other level, especially when it comes to the interplay between the main ensemble and the visual approach. That's fine and all as I was certainly enjoying it, but it's clearly playing to different strengths and I had to take that into consideration. Also, between this and Demons 2 I'm now convinced that more films need to put The Cult on their soundtracks.
Category:David Cronenberg Naked Lunch (1991) Director: David Cronenberg
Cronenberg's strange, over the top comedy is based on the William S. Burroughs book, and right off the bat during the title sequence we can see the director has really taken great care to set this up as a pure mood piece. The titles are revealed by multi colored art deco shapes and lines of pale greens and magentas.
Peter Weller's performance is the funniest thing about the film. He is so cool and deadpan that it's as if his eyes take an extra 5 seconds to catch up with his words.
The plot is absurd. A bug exterminator becomes hooked on his own powder, shoots his wife by accident, and goes into the Interzone, an imaginary world where roaches, centipedes and aristocratic writers assign him to certain "reports" about things we don't quite understand.
Many of the themes in this film seem to be about homosexuality. Possibly the writer's own denial? I got many laughs at the recurring insinuations and the way Weller handles them, eventually coming clean in a brief description of his alter ego dancer mada'am. Other aspects seem to linger on sickness, possibly the AIDS virus, and yet again a recurring character is a hemmeroidal butt hole for a mouth as part of an agent typewriter. This movie is absolutely insane!
I'll never need to watch this again. The plot is totally nuts, and the length of the film stays way, way past its welcome. Though it is funny and perverse, I can't say it's a "great" film because it really isn't. If weird is your flavor well then I suppose this movie is a masterpiece, and there are plenty of interpretations and underlying things to try and dredg up into discussion, but even with a very literary spine, I felt like this was just one bad acid trip with some chuckles.
Category:George Romero Land of the Dead (2005) Director: George Romero
The Walking Dead and every other zombie film owes to not only this franchise, but to this 2nd sequel to Night of the Living Dead. From the opening credits, all tattered and stylish, we can see where Darabont took his show running creative direction to implement the Walking Dead opening. The nice thing about this film is that it was, like TWD, shot on film. Fuji film, with digital intermediate. That explains the tricks (DI) thrown in with quick cuts and circus-like effects and staging. There are some fantastic deaths on display here.
John Leguizamo is one of my old favorites, and he is great here. I didn't care much for the lead actor. I thought he was a bit too plain. I really liked the slow sidekick, though. His lines and acting were good. Some scenes were very creepy. Shot at night, Romero really knew how to set the mood and keep the tension on. Lots of darkly lit photographed entrail mayhem. Digital doesn't do these kinds of things justice.
The porous characteristics of film are suitable, and that is one of the circumstantial reasons why Romero's films are far above any extensions of his proprietary genre kind of pale in comparison. That and the fact that he knows how to write good characters who aren't completely one dimensional. Most all characters are given something to play with, and they do. This seemed to be on the edge of the big zombie turn in characterization in commercial cinema. Good old 2005.
I really liked the writing of this chapter. Day of the Dead was gritty and fulked up in all the right ways, but Land of the Dead is a fresh take, and still has a bit of the Harrison score in brief piano bits like when the zombies first start to cross the water. I'm glad he directed that mood to revisit. Too much sonic wall music is boring and actually works against a film being memorable. When will Hollywood learn. The answer is never. But that's OK. They're idiots. Moving on..
Dennis Hopper gives one of his last hurrahs and he's good but not great. He could've been in the film more and I wouldn't have minded at all. Zombies "creep him out", but that's about as far as we get from a usually very outspoken Hopper. Still, the The Nicotero/Berger effects make his death scene Ramboesque enough to at least finish up his job tidy for a film that wants to be more, but doesn;t have the budget to be.
This is the most ambitious chapter in the series yet, and goes the extra mile to make it atmospheric. Some of the make up isn't very convincing, namely the main "Bub" like zombie who seems to lead the pack in revolt. His zombie mask is clearly visible to start at the bridge of his nose and it's distracting. Maybe the effect team figured film would carry on longer than it did, and that the blurriness and saturation of colors would mask this limitation from the unforgiving sharpness of high definition. Who knows?
I did enjoy this movie.It very much deserves it's place within the series.
Directed by: Abel Ferrara Starring: Lili Taylor and Christopher Walken
What a gorgeous masterpiece. Shot in black in white, beautifully composed, and intensely poetic, this movie was artistic and powerful. The acting was great, and the script spectacular. There was a lot of philosophical poetic dialogue, but balanced and contrasted with normal every day dialogue from various different types of people. Sometimes poetic movies lack that kind of realism in their dialogue and have everyone speaking poetically throughout, but this had a nice mixture. The trailer gave me the impression Walken had a lead role, but his role was actually limited to only a few scenes. He still had a terrific role. Taylor was the lead, and I've never been impressed by her the way I was in this film. Her performance was extraordinary. This was also a refreshingly unique take on vampires, especially dealing with addiction. I loved this movie.
As I've learned it's kind of useless to debate genre this much. Espcially with something as subjective as comedy. You may have found the content to be dark and dramatic where as the @Joel may have found it to be dark and comedic. Either way it doesn't matter. Sure if you wanna ask Joel why he thought that it was a dark comedy that could spark conversation and interesting discussion. I made the same mistake with Camo. it's more constructive to try and understand a new prespective on the film, maybe you're opinon could even be swayed.
As I've learned it's kind of useless to debate genre this much. Espcially with something as subjective as comedy. You may have found the content to be dark and dramatic where as the @Joel may have found it to be dark and comedic. Either way it doesn't matter. Sure if you wanna ask Joel why he thought that it was a dark comedy that could spark conversation and interesting discussion. I made the same mistake with Camo. it's more constructive to try and understand a new prespective on the film, maybe you're opinon could even be swayed.
Yeah, that's basically it. I laughed and found the film deadpan funny with moments of slapstick, like when the typewriter starts dry humping Joan and Bill.
Naked Lunch a comedy? a drama? Honestly I couldn't remember what it is, so I looked at my old review. Here's what I wrote, and I'm still not sure what to call it.
About: A bug exterminator in the 1950s becomes addicted to his bug spray, hallucinates and has a wild adventure as a secret agent writing a report on alien-bug activity at a mysterious port in Africa.
Review (spoiler free): If the subject matter wasn't so dark, this would be a fun kids movie, like Mars Attacks!..but instead we get a story that is ridiculously wacky with cheesy looking aliens-bugs. I wanted to shut this off in the first half hour but I hoped it would get better, it never did. The notion of a poor, bug exterminator getting hooked on his bug spray and using it like a narcotic with hallucinations, could have been a clever, fresh idea. But thanks to an overly wacky script written by David Cronenberg, we get a story that waste the talents of Peter Weller by going way over the top to zaniness.
I actually did like the scenes of Weller's talking alien-bug typewriter. That was the best part of the film as the typewriter serves as a narrator and Weller's subconscious too, giving him a chance to interact with himself. Had the script backed off a bit from the extreme hallucination scenes, it might have worked. There's an adage, 'less is more'. This is more, much more.
The sets look great and are fascinating to see. They really give an illusion of a different reality. The art direction uses a rich pallet of warm colors, it's eye popping and that fits the mood of the film.
Even the direction is excellent with one biting exception....the director choice to use close ups of the alien-bug, holding the shots for a long time so that the viewer can easily see the alien is just a cheesy prop. Less would have been more here too.
If you want to see a film of this style by Cronenberg that actually works, watch Videodrome.
Naked Lunch, (the movie, not the novel) reminds me of something Hunter S Thompson might have done, only he would have done it up right. I'm giving high marks to Peter Weller who's always great in his films. And to the sets, art direction, editing, scoring and even directing.
Personally I love debating genre. I do it a lot with music, but not as much with cinema. I don't take the fully subjective approach, but then I don't find as many do as claim to. I think the reason it can be hard to tell is because movies have elements from many genres and are not restrained by their genre. A movie is a free entity. Also we are limited in our perception. But are we free to make up our own definition? Or is it our job to educate ourselves on the meaning established by our predecessors? Who is more qualified to define the genre, the lay person or the expert? We depend on a certain common understanding of what Horror means in order to come together like this. If there was no commonality in our understanding we would be watching any movies without regard for genre.
Anyway, I just wanted to put down some thoughts on the subject. I won't press for debate, and I'm not trying to spark one.
Decent horror comedy. My rating for it is a bit fluid right now as while I liked the comedy aspect, the horror bored me. I was kinder in my rating than my boyfriend, who rated it (oooh, harsh, babe).
Category: This decade
Christine Dir: John Carpenter
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS! God, I love Christine, Totally bitching car.
It's not a spectacular death kind of film, and I know it's not rated as a fav Carpenter by too many but it's always had a special place in my heart, along with the book.
Category: John Carpenter
Sorry if I'm not being wordy enough. I can't really talk right now.
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