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

I survived a stressful week at work so I rewarded myself by ordering Malatesta's Carnival of Blood on BluRay, as one does.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

Woot!
I am very happy for you.
One of my favorite nightmare sequences in all of movies.

Anyone checked out Cuckoo? I liked Luz alright, but the trailer for Cuckoo looked like it was trying a little to hard to be wacky.

Hey, these tentacle penises are finding me, not the other way around. And as is the nature of the rule of threes, well, I will try to find a way to scan and show you all a child's drawing I found while prepping my classroom today. It's supposed to be a man riding a bike. It does not just look like a man riding a bike.

New Horror movies I've seen starting from August 1st to August 19th

(First time watches)

Graduation Day (1981) - Slasher -

The House on Sorority Row (1983) - Slasher -

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) - Slasher -

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987) - Slasher -

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) - Slasher -

The Stepfather (1987) - Psychological Horror -

Hide and Go Shriek (1988) - Slasher -

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) - Slasher -

Cutting Class (1989) - Slasher -

Sleepy Hollow (1999) - Gothic Supernatural -

Stake Land (2011) - Vampires -

Slumber Party Massacre Remake (2021) - Slasher -

__________________
Moviefan1988's Favorite Movies
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...?t=67103<br />

Welcome to the Dance: My Favorite 20 High School Movies
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...02#post2413502

This one was much better than I expected it to be.

While I quite enjoyed Stakeland, there is a sequel and it is not good.

Jeez, what a hardass.

Well... when I was like 11 years old, this movie was on HBO a lot and I was too young to be able to tell that it was not every bit as good as Airplane... but with Horror!


So tonight I decided to see if it was the Horror-Comedy masterpiece that I remembered from my 11 year-old brain.
Imagine if the Zucker Brothers had half the talent (not none, half) and, apparently, almost double the budget... and made a Horror-movie spoof that looked like it had half the budget of Airplane. That would be hysterical. Or, rather, that would be Hysterical.
It would seem they spent the money on the cast, which includes Julie Newmar, Bud Cort, Murray Hamilton (in a sad reprisal of his role in Jaws and Jaws 2), Richard Kiel, Keenan Wynn, and a young John Laroquette.
That said, I was not miserable either. As a curio, it is tolerable. Your mileage, as we say, may vary.

https://bloody-disgusting.com/tv/382...-this-october/

And I cant wait for them to show the same stuff over and over!

__________________

Wow, this one has completely missed my radar for the past 40 years.
I notice The Hudson Brothers were the stars/writers. Lil' Cap was a dedicated viewer of The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show back in the day. That show was painfully unfunny so I probably would've loved this too. Don't know how this one escaped me all this time.

Full movie is on YouTube.
Like I say, it's hardly Airplane quality but I was not harmed by watching this movie. Again.

I've seen Cuckoo, but not Luz. I thought it was fun, but I don't recall it trying too hard to be wacky, for the most part. It felt like it lost track of why some characters were in the movie (and their motivations) and they just kind of disappear.



Dear, Penthouse...

Havent seen Cuckoo but its definitely on the list.

Gotcha. The forced wackiness might have been just how they cut the trailer.

Nope, I hit my rule of three, so I should be done. Knock on . . . wood.

I'm in the middle of a long work week (my second 12-hour day in a row), so I'm rewarding myself by eating nachos and watching Predators for the billionth time. The cast of this movie is so awesome, and the premise of the film is such a great departure for the established format.

Also, I will now confess that I tried to watch Malatesta and just got kind of sad about an hour in? Like, this is maybe a depressing horror movie? I was not prepared and was expecting something a bit more Vampire Circus in terms of vibes.

Immaculate -

As Ray Barone puts it in Everybody Loves Raymond, "nuns, huh? What's going on?" This is another pretty good horror that exploits your suspicions about just what happens in those convents. Who knows, maybe they all run like clockwork? Not this one, though, as its effectively unsettling cold open indicates. Initiate Cecilia (Sweeney, who also got this project off the ground) is just the right innocent audience surrogate for our trip into this world, and as the things that are not quite what they seem pile up, we get a horror movie that also satisfies as a mystery. Fellow White Lotus alum Simona Tabasco and Alvaro Morte also impress as seemingly her only allies amongst the Italian convent's old, traditional and suspicious populace. Will Bates' unnerving score also deserves credit for how well it keeps you on edge as does director Mohan for not skimping on the blood and viscera when necessary.

I'd like to say more about what left an impression on me, but I hesitate to do so out of fear of spoiling the mystery. I'll at least say it does a good job of showing the consequences of asking for the entire story and never getting an answer, or at least not a clear one. Another reason is that there is not much that left an impression on me. It's a movie that defines "good enough," in other words. If nunsploitation is your passion and not just a genre you dabble in like I do, it may be more worth your while. Regardless, if you have not seen the other popular movie in this genre from 2024 yet, The First Omen, see it first.

mmmmmm Nachos. How long ago was your Malatesta attempt? I think Wooley probably said it first, but in terms of vibes I'd pair it with Messiah of Evil before Vampire Circus.

I think it was like two years ago?

I definitely had misread the kind of movie it would be. I'll go back to it with adjusted expectations in terms of mood.

Yeah, as Cap said, I did have this paired more with Messiah and Lemora (but even cheaper!).
It is not a laugh at all nor is it whatever we would call Vampire Circus (which is secretly a pretty mean film but still has some camp to it, I guess?).
That said, once the movie really gets going, and particularly in the second half and third act (you do the math), it is wonderfully nightmarish.
You know how I feel about films made for no money that manage to make you willing to suspend all of your disbelief and this one suprised me in doing just that.
I mean, there is a lot of bubble-wrap in this movie that is not supposed to be bubble-wrap. And not only am I not mad about it, I kinda love it.

Edit:
Some website had this to say, which I thought summed it up well...

"Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (1973) feels almost defiantly handmade. You can sense the extreme efforts its makers went to in designing the film in every frame. Its trippy, candy-colored sets are constructed out of little more than bubble wrap, styrofoam cups, and an assortment of glittery and doomed recycled objects. The production’s lack of resources became its greatest asset. The film owns its artifice. The atmosphere created on screen feels like a junky craft store was willed to life solely to fuel your nightmares."

When you pair that with how bought-in it is on its own sense of doom... well, I'm all in.

Yes, it's not that I thought it was bad or didn't like it. I had just expected something, I don't know, something where despite what happens there's going to be a generally happy ending and at a certain point it was clear that Malatesta is just not that kind of movie.

The mistake was probably just me not reading closely. When I haven't seen a movie yet, I tend to just skim what people say (even if they aren't being that spoilerish), and so I think I just had it miscategorized in my mind.