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

Parts of Student Bodies stick with me. It's just so amateurish and weird, but in a good way. Or at least a memorable one. I feel like I'm watching a movie someone threw together with their friends, and put up on YouTube. Some of the jokes don't come anywhere near 'landing', but it's certainly something different.


C+

Triangle is absolutely fantastic, and I liked it even more on a rewatch. And the cast is great!

I really love Severance, though I agree with you that it can be a bit tonally uneven.

I'm almost done watching After Blue, which someone described on Letterboxd as a hornier, dirtier Neverending Story, which is 100% accurate.

Anyway, I am shocked to report that despite watching, like, a man with tentacles in his crotch ejaculate a metal marble out of his nipple, I'm finding the film kind of boring? I think it's just too long (2+ hours).

It is, however, immensely quotable! "I could taste Kate Bush . . . in my mouth." "I'm not going to eat your smelly flowers!" "I'm just a hairstylist!"

I think I like it a bit less than Wild Boys, which also has some great (and often totally not-subtle) over-sexualized imagery, but After Blue starts to drag with the lack of a narrative heft just past the hour mark.

I've only recently become aware of this director and am planning to dive in soon. Looks like he will appeal to my "style over substance" sensibility. In fact, just this morning I almost blind-bought a collection of his short films. We'll see.


I somehow missed your Wild Boys review until this week

I think he might be more effective in short films, just based on the vibes-over-logic style he has. I see that he did a lot of music videos, which very much makes sense.

I also think that there's this balance with the sexual content that eventually has a sort of numbing effect (for me, your mileage may vary!). Like I thought that the first two or three erotic scenes were reasonably sexy, there's a good sense of humor (a "third eye" on a woman's crotch), a sequence of the main character masturbating that's right on the line of pleasure and despair that's interesting, etc, etc.

But around an hour in it stops feeling like there are new ideas and like the sex is just this obligatory thing that happens about every 9 minutes. Again, I think that this would have been a really fun 85 minute movie, but at 130 minutes it dragged for me. (Though characters screaming "Kate Bush" with varying emotion and volume never got old).

At one point in After Blue, the main character is running through the woods and stops to admire and caress a penis-shaped branch inexplicably covered with goo on the end, and it straight up felt like a Wild Boys shout out.

I've had this in my queue for a minute and have never gotten around to it but I didn't know it had tentacle-crotches, marble nipple-ejaculates, and hairstylists.

Have you seen the trailer for She Is Conann (same director)? Looks like it's up my, and potentially your, alley.

Why, those are its best features!

Yeah, the trailers I've seen can only hint at that stuff for obvious reasons, so we'll see how much patience I have for such shenanigans. But the imagery had me thinking of someone like Tarsem, where I won't even care if the movie is dumb if the eye candy is there.

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For me it's more the repetition of what is on display that got a bit old. I'm not going to put on a shocked face and say "A movie just showing the same kind of female body over and over and over?!?!?!?!?" and drop my monacle in my drink. But . . . yeah, the bodies in this movie (with the exception of a few background extras) are the same. The framing of the sex/nudity is often the same. (Though literal props go to the person who did costume design, because I did appreciate the range of "this is comfy and also revealing" and outfits that were clearly intended for sexual impact/power). And there's this thing that particularly male directors do where it's like "Look, the medium height, slim woman with c-cup sized breasts is black in this scene!" that I find a bit cringe.

But also, I've been at the gym a lot lately, spending time in the locker room and the pool and the sauna, and when you've spent time around a genuine mix of women (age, ethnicity, body type, build, height, fashion sense, etc), this kind of cinematic vision of a woman-dominated landscape just comes off as having a very limited imagination.

Again, though, this only started to feel redundant a bit past the first hour. And there's plenty of style and weirdness to keep you engaged. But I always think it's funny that movies that clearly want to be out there and strange and different fall as such an easy hurdle as not being able to create a single significant character who is in any way outside the "hot girl" norm.

It's been a very medical week, so I'm watching my go-to complicated feelings movie, which at this point is Hunted. I know I've already talked about it a billion times, but it is so fun! And upsetting! But mostly fun! And by the time it hits that last act it is SO deliriously unhinged. I love it.

Okay two more random things before I go to bed:

1. I think I may have known this, but forgot, but did you all know that they caught the killer that the film Memories of Murder was based on? This somehow passed me by or I did not fully register it if I did know. I was watching a That Chapter video about it today, and some of the real details were just appalling. Did you all know that he killed an 8-year old girl and the police didn't want to deal with it, so they HID HER BODY?!?! This poor girl's parents spent 30 years not knowing what happened to their daughter and all along it turned out that the police threw her away because they just didn't want to worry about it.

2. I finished listening to I Was a Teenage Slasher and I'd give it a . I liked it enough that I might check out more of Stephen Graham Jones.

That's what I mean. How could they not be? If I'd known it had all that I'd have watched sooner.

I would just like to note that I'm currently watching another movie with a tentacle-penis! Guys! What is happening?!?! And it's not some weird horror/fantasy/sci-fi thing. It's a drama! It's a DRAMA. About GARDENING!

Sleep Has Her House, 2017 (A+)

Sublime movie in every respect. Just a few lines to draw your mind in before letting it wander through these landscapes. There's something truly special in how evocative the mundane can be when you focus on it. It reminded me somewhat of the book House on the Borderlands, except this time it's the viewer that is watching this strange land with no clue as to what lies beneath. Just beautiful.

Night Killer, 1990 (A-)

One of the most bonkers movies I've ever seen. I forgot this was on Redlettermedia, but even they didn't fully convey how insane the whole plot is. Nothing makes sense, everyone is stupid, everyone is just a slave to the story, no matter where it's going. Special shout out to the shrink telling everyone the lady's entire file and history on the news.

Demon Wind, 1990 (B+)

This movie has no plot and goes nowhere at all, but it has a lot to show you on the way. The makeup is good, though repetitive, the zombies/demons are great in their roles, the special effects are very 90s, etc. The plot is pretty much Night of the Living Dead, now that I think about it. It's just that there's no meaningful interactions between the characters.

Translation: Tak ate some funny brownies and is now watching HGTV.

I do not like this new version of Love It or List It where everyone loving it has a tentacle penis.

I've always had a soft spot for Student Bodies being one of the first and only horrors I watched for a while.

You don't need your family. You don't need your friends. As long as you have a horse head bookend.

Haven't seen any of these! Haven't even heard of the first one!

I mean, clearly you have a subconscious thing for tentacle penis. It's OK, we're not judging.