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

God I love The Cabin In The Woods.
I have the biggest smile on my face.

It's one of the best horror films of the 2010s for sure. The final act (minus the ending) is one of my favorite things I've seen in horror, in particular.

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I saw it in the theater with my sister and a crowd that loved it, and it was a great experience.

Patience and discipline. Impressive!

Once I bite onto something I have to watch everything available. My wife was pissed when I bought the Universal Monster box sets a few years ago. It was monster night every night for me

Poltergeist (1982) -

It's surprising that the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre made this film. I'm not familiar with Hooper's other films, but it was interesting to see him step outside his comfort zone, even though this felt mostly characteristic of Spielberg's style. However, this isn't a bad thing necessarily as it served as a great showcase for Spielberg's eye for entertainment, like the tree and at the end of the first act, or the final set piece, which somehow managed to top everything else in the film in terms of craft. While the horror sequences felt more entertaining than scary (which, to be clear, isn't a bad thing at all), I also liked how the film fit a couple scary scenes into these sequences. This made for a great blend where the film had plenty to offer for it to appeal both to young kids and older teens/adults. Regarding the parapsychologists, I had mixed feelings on them. I liked Tangina quite a lot, but the other three, especially Martha, ran the risk of being superfluous to the action and, though they at least didn't get in the way of the pacing, this was hanging on me as I watched the film. It might've been a good idea to remove a couple of them. In spite of that, however, I still think this is a truly fine ghost film and it's definitely worth a watch.

Spielberg was very "hands on" during production and by many accounts ghost directed the movie, hence why it feels much more like one of his films than Hooper's.

That makes sense. I had a feeling that Spielberg had more control over the film than Hooper did.

All true, yet there is a certain edge to it that I feel like was Hooper's contribution (a little past what Spielberg was ever willing to do) and probably the reason Spielberg hired him in the first place.

Are you referring to scenes such as Marty peeling his face off in the bathroom or Diane falling into the pool? I also appreciated those scenes and thought they added a lot to the film. Like, Diane walking into the portal to get Carol Anne back felt entirely Spielbergian to me. However, I think some other sequences in the film had undertones of Hooper for sure.

On a side note, I found out recently that Dunne was murdered a few months after the film was released and that O'Rourke died of stenosis 6 years after the film. How tragic.

I watched The Monster (2018) about a mom and daughter terrorized by a creature after their car breaks down. Hey! This was pretty good! It has great cinematography with its use of light and shadow and rain. The monster looks great and is done with all practical effects. And the young girl pulls off some challenging acting. Just a simple well-executed horror movie.

"Throw me that veeskey!"

I'm lenient on genres too, since there's no one objective set of standards when it comes to classifying any film into any category; I mean, at the risk of plagiarizing this vid...



...technically Predator qualifies as being at least half a Slasher. Of course on the surface, a lot of it looks like just another Arnie actioner (albeit a good one), but just think about it; a hideous, hulking, (seemingly) invincible masked killer utilizes bladed weaponry to slowly stalk and kill an isolated group of people one-by-one in gruesome, blood ways, with PoV shots from the killer's perspective, one "final girl" with Arnie, and the one in that group who's spared the most of the killer's wrath being the most innocent, the local woman, as she's the only one of them who never engages in the sin of their violence, which basically makes her the film's "virgin" in a manner of speaking, y'know?

The following 'review' has what can only be technically described as a 'spoiler' in it. It's actually almost exclusively about that. But I am at odds over whether or not something can really be categorized as a spoiler when the 'twist' is completely obvious from the get go, and that I am still not even really sure was meant as a twist in any conventional sense. Still, even though I don't think the film can technically be really 'spoiled' I will admit that my confusion over the handling of the mystery of this detail in the film was a good deal of my enjoyment of it. I have no idea if it is nearly as much 'fun' if you don't just mistakenly stumble into its confusion as I did.

For those curious enough to spend their time as badly as I do, you can watch The Oracle for free on YouTube.

We really need to talk about Farkis. Glowering, round, out of breath, without eyebrows or any apparent gender, and maybe even mistakenly called Fart Kiss once or twice over the course of the movie, Farkis is the worst hitman in the history of cinema. But also undeniably transfixing as she skulks around the back alleys of The Oracle’s opening half hour. Seemingly without purpose, we will wonder what this strange figure possibly has to do with this story of a bored housewife and her spirit board. Does she have nothing better to do than kill prostitutes? Is she really a professional assassin? Exactly how long are we supposed to think she’s a man?

It’s never entirely clear how long we are meant to not notice Farkas is a woman. There are obvious attempts to disguise it, but they clearly don't work. Instead they mostly accentuate her strangeness; pitch shifting her voice into an otherworldly warble, bulking her up with layers of jackets meant to hide her breasts. There is a tragic comic quality watching this schlubby, insecure, bumbling character be treated as a handily employed danger to society.

Over the course of the film it will remain a remarkably curious casting choice, and one that never becomes any easier to understand the ultimate purpose of. Even once the film eventually decides to make a grande gesture of her gender reveal, it comes early, with half of the movie still to go. It neither surprises us nor gives us any inkling why it matters. It just happens, suddenly. It’s almost as if they realized they weren’t pulling their trickery off and it was becoming just too embarrassing for them to continue with the charade any longer.

As for the surrounding film, it remains interesting enough. It involves a persistent spirit board, demon hands, self-mutilation and other kinds of peripheral violence and supernatural goof offs. But the binding agent for the whole thing is the mystery of Farkis, and watching her never quite make her shape fit the hole of the story. In a film that is frequently comically violent, the violence she exudes is rooted in something much more uncomfortable: alienation, self-loathing, ridicule. At the beginning of the film, while she is still being portrayed as a man ,she will be introduced as a violent, bone-eating menace. As we come to bear witness to the incongruities of her identity, her threats of violence are suddenly treated with a laughing shrug. We will watch her forced again and again towards the horrors of physically exerting herself. Farkis fights! Farkis runs! Farkis looks in physical distress as the climax refuses to let her cumbersome body ever catch its breath.

To watch the initially palpable menace of this character unspool across the course of the narrative, while a legion of goofy Ouija Board puppets and latex monster gloves try and claim center stage as the films real villain, can't help but lead to a pretty compelling watch. It’s not often where a secondary character who seems to have wandered in from another movie, can suck up all of the oxygen from the considerably more colorful central plot. But its this peculiar character, and its possibly questionable use of gender incongruency, that gives the movie both a taste of genuine (if not unintentional) empathy, as well as a lot of head scratching and (potentially) cruel laughs at her expense.

It’s possible the casting of Farkas was earnest and unacknowledged moment of gender inclusivity. Of thinking past such binary ways of thinking. Or it is also possible it was nothing but an aborted and cheaply conceived narrative twist. I imagine some may even read into the whole character as some sort of unwanted or outdated comment on the transgendered. As usual, I don’t have the answer for anything. Only a bunch of bad questions about a silly movie and a sudden hankering for a Farkas action figure, complete with kung fu grip. I have already cleared a space to place her, where I will forever contemplate her beautiful strangeness while chanting my Oracle mantra of ‘huhwhathuhwhathuhwhat’

Maybe one day I will be enlightened.

It sounds like the kind of movie you'd get if someone gave "It's Pat" the Banana Splits treatment.

I've been meaning to see something by Roberta Findlay, so I might squeeze that in before the month is over.

Quick! Someone get Julia Sweeney on line one! I've got a pitch she can't refuse!!

I've seen the Flesh Trilogy, which I believe she did with her husband (who also directed Shriek Of The Mutilated). I'm an enormous fan of all of those. But I think this is the only movie of hers I've seen after his death. It seems to have some wildly differing opinions about how stupid and boring/great and baffling it is. I imagine it's pretty clear what side of this argument I come out on.

Definitely, the wrong side.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula - This was ... different. And not necessarily in a bad way either. Set again (after the preceding Dracula A.D. 1972) in modern (1973) London this makes an earnest effort to bypass the fantastical elements of the previous films. This involves incorporating numerous aspects from I didn't find it off putting but some purists might. Lee and Cushing are their rock solid selves even though Lee But anyone who has watched previous Hammer Dracula films will take it in stride. The denouement and well-established showdown between Van Helsing and the Count is also ... different. Again, some may find it subpar but hey, after repeatedly going to the well they decided to try something ... different. I won't fault them for that. 75/100

Has anyone seen "Bloody Pit of Horror"? I ended up buying a bootleg copy years ago. Its the only cheesy Hammer type of film I own. Only got it because of Mickey Hargitay and very loosely based off of deSade's work.

Watched it earlier this month in fact! Cheesy indeed.

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