Wooley's Halfway To Halloween III

The actual f*ck.

Ok.
A couple heads out on vacation leaving their baby boy in the care of the wife's sister. Along the way, the brakes surprisingly fail and the couple is violently killed in an accident, leaving the child to be raised by his aunt.
Fast forward about 14 years and the boy is nearly a young man, a high-school basketball star looking forward to going away to school on a sports scholarship... something his over-protective and possessive Aunt Cheryl doesn't seem too happy about. So when Billy comes home one night to witness her stabbing a man in the throat with a kitchen knife, claiming he tried to rape her, a grotesque drama is set in motion. Complicating things further, the police lieutenant assigned to the case is a hateful homophobe who has already decided that Billy is "a fag" and murdered the man himself in a fit of passion. All these ingredients lead the viewer into a rather icky film carried by a startling performance from outsider character-actor and Academy Award nominee, Susan Tyrrell.


I was going to joke that Bill Paxton’s dribbling is actually the most horrifying thing in this film. It would have been fun if this movie were actually bad and I could just make jokes about that. But this was not the case. The movie is not bad. It's surprisingly good in its own way.
I mean, the movie is icky as f*ck, make no mistake. But it's going for that and it hits it with both barrels. I was uncomfortable from about 4 minutes into the film until pretty much the last frame. I paused it a few times and considered bailing. But I went back to it and was rewarded.
It is a surprisingly interesting movie in how it looks at “sexual deviancy” from 1982. There's this twisted incestuous relationship at the center of it but also the intense homophobia that the film examines is really progressive for the time. It seems at first like Bo Svenson, the police-lieutenant, is gonna be sorta the hero of the movie when you first meet him, but he turns out to be a nasty homophobe with a vicious streak. “He's a fag. He grew up without a father, only women around. It’s a classic case.” And he just gets worse and worse. He's decided from the beginning that these "deviants" are guilty and he pushes that narrative forward in some pretty unethical ways until he gets what he wants. Fortunately the movie makes it clearer and clearer that it does not approve of him.
Really Susan Tyrell really deserves some kind of recognition as off-her-rocker Aunt Cheryl, she's pretty amazing, absolutely all in on this performance in a way you rarely see. Her reactions and especially facial expressions to anything from just walking in on Billy reading her letters to actually murdering someone are just priceless. When she finally becomes fully unhinged, it’s just really something.


She is just really uncomfortable and disturbing as hell. She really made my skin crawl and never let up. She was great in Angel too, a movie I feel gets unfairly maligned, not to mention the wonderfully bizarre Forbidden Zone. What a unique character and talent she was.
The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Movie of 1982.
Yeah, this really is pretty good for what it is, it’s just not like too much else I’ve seen and I wasn’t expecting it… and it’s icky as f*ck. But, honestly, I don't think I can say one thing against it, it's committed to what it is and it doesn't falter.
Strong rec, Tak.

aka, Night Warning.
It's been about 10 years since I've seen it, and now that you mention it, yeah, it definitely seems like a total Tak type of movie.


I did buy it a few years ago with the intention of showing to friends/revisiting, but that day has yet to arrive (I'm very backlogged on that front), but looking forward to when that time happens.

I appreciate the head's up. That screenshot looked pretty cool, so that was the main selling point for me.

What do we know about the 4 sequels?

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Captain's Log
My Collection

It's probably just the one claymation man that many times.

I started BBNM once but about 5 mins in, realized I wasn’t in the mood for such a thing and switched over. Been meaning to come back to it.

The exact same thing happened with me. I started it a few days ago, got a few minutes in and said, "Nope, not right now", and watched Subspecies instead.
Glad I came back, though.

I know they were made in the 90s, which means I probably won't watch them.
But, honestly, I can't imagine they could be that much worse. Actually...

Yay! Glad you liked it!

Yes, it is icky. And for me it stays just on the right side of things. The way that it portrays this incredibly unhealthy intimacy that Billy just doesn't know is wrong is kind of amazing. Like the sequence where they are arguing in the bathroom and he is naked and you can tell that his aunt being in the room while he showers is . . . not unusual.

It's really a movie with two villains and Billy trapped between their different depravities.

They really did a good job of making it feel very real and not dramatized. That scene in particular, where he's just ass-nekkid in the bathroom and he's not trying to cover himself at all and she's not exactly averting her eyes one bit... ick.
The other great one, there's a cut that goes from some other scene to just a close-shot of Billy's bare torso and all of a sudden female hands come into the frame and lay upon him and caress a bit and you really don't know if it's his girlfriend or his aunt who's touching him that way, but you kinda ickily suspect it's his aunt!

Are they purring? Yeah, it's aunt Cheryl.

Ha!
Right before machete-time!

My apologies to anyone who was following for dropping this thread. Bad form on my part.
Unfortunately, while I knew I had Jazz Fest during what should have been the peak of this, I thought I would have evenings free to watch some movies, but I acquired an unexpected house-guest, a friend in need as it were, last week and kinda lost that flexibility. It's possible I'll pick up when this is all over, but it will be mid-May by then so perhaps not.
Again, my apologies.

Unacceptable. I demand the free entertainment I was promised!

Yeah, I feel bad about it, but I just didn't see this coming. Buddy and his fiancee broke up on the even of Jazz Fest and he needed a place to stay.

Your loyalty to your friend is moving.

No, wait.

It's upsetting!

Now put on Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys and get posting.

Ouch

Yeah, not that there's ever a good time for that, but coming out of the pandemic seems to have made everything more intense.

The guy could probably use a distraction from his grief. Like bingeing the Deathstalker series or something. Just spit-balling here.

(Just kidding, Woolz. That sucks)

Something about the image inserted into my brain the image that you had adopted a stray cat and it requires a lot of attention to get it readjusted domesticated life.


Sorry to hear about your friend. I had a friend to whom that happened, they had to do a lot of soul searching for a good while after that.

Well.
That was a helluva thing.
Good for Ti West, finally really bringing it all together and making not only a very good Horror movie but a pretty good movie, period. This is a very talented filmmaker.
I have read a lot of praise for this film, including The New York Times really going to bat for it, so my expectations were pretty high, yet I also knew very little about the plot, and I will keep it that way here as it surprised me in at least a few ways and I think that was part of what made it work so well. And the film should get credit for that because the ways in which it surprises are intentional.
A small group of people leave a dumpy strip club in Houston, Texas to go film the next great porno movie, hoping to either make high art, strike it rich, or get famous. They arrive at a small farm where they have rented a house on the property to make their film, without telling the owners what they're doing.


The owners, an elderly couple consisting of a reclusive wife and gruff, shotgun-wielding husband, live across the property in the house from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so probably everything's ok. And it is, for a while. They make their porno movie and they appear to be making it well with star turns from Brittany Snow...


... and ambitious Mia Goth, who is "special" and has that X-factor, a nice play on the title of the film. Things are going swimmingly and everyone is having quite a time and the movie they're making may actually be brushing up against art after all but the movie we're watching certainly is. A wonderful scene where the male star, played with great ease by Kid Cudi, and Snow perform Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" for the others acts as a kind of tipping point for the film and is really a wonderful moment, as good as in any Horror movie, and frankly a lot of others, I've seen in a while. Having already been chock full of wonderful shots, snappy dialogue, sharp performances, and patience, the film now even has a little bit of heart that feels genuine and earned.
Of course, this is right before everything goes to shit.
And I mean for the characters. For the audience, the payoff begins and it really doesn't end until the credits roll. The movie begins to deliver on the promises it has made and, for the first time I've seen at least, Ti West brings home the bacon. While there is no question this film is stewed to tenderness in homage to grind house-level Horror, and actually skin-flicks too, of the 1970s, it comes with its own story that feels like it may have been taken direct from a 70s grind-house film but is as elevated as the very best of those and many films of a more respected ilk. And it is also tense, and weird, and uncomfortable, and bloody as hell.
This was a real pleasure for me as I am a huge fan of grind house films and I consider The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be a masterpiece, not of Horror (though yes of Horror), but of film, period. And so many films have tried to re-capture that lightning in a bottle and actually some films from the 70s at least got what it was they were trying to capture. But the newer generations that were given permission to exist probably by Rob Zombie's House Of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects have always missed the mark and often widely. But I think Zombie will like this one. In some ways, it is the version of Ho1kC I think a lot of people wish existed (though I personally enjoy the off-the-chain bat-shit craziness of Zombie's vision, despite it's all-over-the-place-narrative).
In fact, though, any filmmaker worth their salt should like this. It is a well-made film from script to final cut. The story really works and pushes the audience a good bit. The editing is especially strong as the cuts between scenes and different shots that exist within the same scene are stylized yet extremely effective, while the movie is also allowed to breathe as well as build tension. The performances, by all participants, really, but particularly by Mia Goth, are excellent. But man, the photography is just aces.


I must have said to myself a dozen times, "Man, that's a great shot." And unlike a lot of more amateurish films by people with good eyes, the shots all have purpose. While many are nice to behold, they all have function and service to the moment, to the character, to the story, over and over again.
Ultimately, I had only one quibble with the film and that was with the homage. While, for the most part West navigates this very well, and this is something so many Horror directors have tried and have been too heavy handed with, to eye-rolling effect, he manages it pretty deftly even when shots are taken almost exactly from TCM, The Last House On The Left, Friday The 13th, and even an obvious allusion to Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive. Hell, even the use of "Don't Fear The Reaper", which really feels like it has been done to death, just seems to fit perfectly here. But once or twice the homage was a little too on the nose and it became distracting. This was never truer than in a moment The New York Times had pointed out as unnecessary, taken from The Shining. I had no idea what the reference would be since I'd read as little as I could about the film beyond their article and I had forgotten about it completely, but when it comes it is like a hammer between the eyes and it really took me out of the moment. Such is the chance you take when you deal in homage, I guess.
Overall, my take on the film is this: Whether or not West has made a new Horror classic I really can't say, I will have to ruminate on it and some time will have to pass, but this is one of the most well-made Horror films I've seen in a long time and is a good film regardless. The last film I think gave me a feeling like this was It Follows and this is a better film all around even if that movie was perhaps more original. Oddly, this film, steeped as it is in the past, somehow feels very fresh. And while the setup may be classic 70s grindhouse, West, who wrote the film, manages to come up with a narrative that feels like we haven't seen it before even if the whole point of the movie is for us to feel like we have.
I feel like there is some hesitancy to properly acknowledge this film, despite some pretty legitimate institutions doing so, so I won't hesitate. West has made what is easily the best film of his career and a movie that should be a real treat for any fan of 70s Horror, grindhouse, exploitation, and honestly for people who just like to see a really well-executed film.