Halloween Watch-A-Thon

I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.

A vampire comes out of hiding in order to front an up-and-coming band, which draws the anger of other vampires who fear he may expose them to humans.

With Queen of the Damned, I once again question whether I should assume a film with vampires in it automatically qualifies as horror by virtue of their presence. There is certainly something innately horrific about the concept of formerly-human beings who must survive by feeding on the blood of living creatures (especially people), but especially so when it turns out that the ones who last the longest and thrive the most do so by virtue of being supernatural serial killers. The real challenge sets in when you take one of these inherently cruel creatures and try to make them into sympathetic anti-heroes. It made sense for Anne Rice to centre her debut vampire novel Interview with the Vampire around Louis, a vampire who viewed his condition as a curse and refused to feed on humans out of moral convictions - a viewpoint that constantly put him at odds with Lestat, the much less morally-conflicted vampire who originally turned him into a vampire. Queen of the Damned, another story from Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" universe, opts to make Lestat the straight-up protagonist and attempts to repurpose him as a lovable rogue who would re-emerge after decades of obscurity simply to become a rock star. Of course, in order to turn him into even a vaguely sympathetic anti-hero it has to set up a conflict with someone even worse than him, which is where the titular queen Akasha (Aaliyah) comes in after being roused from her own long slumber with her own designs on Lestat. Throw in some stuff about vampires who want to kill Lestat for potentially exposing their world to humans through his vampire rockstar gimmick and a paranormal researcher who becomes intrigued by him and, well, that's where things go off the rails.

Even when allowing for the fact that Queen of the Damned may not always be aiming for straight-up horror (though it still makes time for plenty of graphic scenes involving vampires attacking humans or even each other), its attempts at being entertaining in any way are failures. It haphazardly jumps from set-up to set-up - from rockstar antics to vampire-watchers to old-timey flashbacks and back to rockstars - and doesn't do anything of worth with any of them. It gets to the point where attempts to bring the plot back around to focusing on the actual queen attempting to reign over Earth again (I guess) feel like unwelcome intrusions on the gleeful absurdity of Lestat's rockstar antics riling up the local vampires. I might've actually welcomed a film that leaned into the somewhat comical nature of Lestat having to fend off his fellow vampires in order to continue fronting a nu-metal band, but unfortunately this film is still committed to its apocalyptic tale of ancient curses. it even gets to the point where marvelling at the film's ostensibly campier aspects (such as the motion blur added to vampire speed and flight or the fact that Lestat's singing voice is provided by Korn's Jonathan Davis) does little to actually make this anything other than a dull and painful chore of a film. As such, I can't recommend Queen of the Damned in any capacity. At the absolute least, it looks like it should be goofy fun for alternative kids but it never makes good on that promise so all I can say in the end is that it sucks.

28. The Conjuring 2

I remember this being a big step down from the original, but I liked it more this time. Fun and creative camera work, and several tense and unsettling sequences. The Conjuring universe as whole has been pretty strong for me, with the only film I didn't like at all being the first Annabelle. Note: I haven't seen The Nun, which I hear is dismal.

new top 100 when

The streets of New York City are terrorised by a serial killer dressed in a police uniform.

What had initially drawn me to check out Maniac Cop was the rumour that John Hyams (who I mainly knew for directing two surprisingly good direct-to-video Universal Soldier sequels) was in talks to direct a remake that would be produced by Nicolas Winding Refn of all people. A tantalising prospect, to be sure - enough so that it made checking out the original something of a priority. As if you couldn't tell from the bluntly sensationalist title (which even gets acknowledged as such within the film itself), the original Maniac Cop is as B-movie as they come. A hulking figure dressed in an impeccable NYPD police uniform begins the film by interrupting a mugging not by killing the muggers but instead their hapless victim who comes to him for help. From there, the movie becomes about trying to stop him as one veteran detective (Tom Atkins) tries to figure out what's going on while another police officer (Bruce Campbell) is set up as the fall guy who must clear his name.

I can certainly understand why the prospect of remaking Maniac Cop sounds so enticing - the original definitely strikes me as the kind of film that doesn't make the most of its premise's potential. There are definitely aspects to it that resonate all too well in 2018, though even when it touches on the subject of police brutality (as it can't help but do given that, you know, it's a movie called Maniac Cop), it still ultimately drops that tangent about a third of the way in order to focus on an otherwise standard tale of supernatural revenge (albeit one that still focuses on corruption within the police department and mayoral department). At least it still proves mildly entertaining in that regard, not least because it's buoyed by dependable cult actors like Atkins or Campbell and capable of delivering down-and-dirty B-movie antics all the same. As such, I mildly recommend Maniac Cop. Though I question if I'll bother with its sequels and I still hope that it gets a remake that makes better use of its potent premise than it did, it's got that '80s roughness that can be charming if you let it.

I knew it wouldn't reach the tense highs of the original, but I think they did a decent job with the sequel. Horror sequels are notoriously bad, but this one in my mind manages to stay consistent.

I hated the first Annabelle ad am interested in the sequel. Horror just needs innovated directors behind the camera and not hacks fixated on jump scares. Build some unsettling tension and you have me interested.

A pair of vampire lovers have their relationship disrupted when one of them starts to rapidly age.

Original review found here.

Sometimes I wonder if I try too hard to like the works of Tony Scott. The man definitely threw himself into making high concept movies across his career, though one can readily examine his filmography and question whether he really managed to really bring something overly new to a table that could only be polished so much in the grand scheme of things. Considering how much of his filmography revolved around high-octane Hollywood thrill-rides, it's odd to look back at his solo feature debut and see him do something as anomalous as an extremely Gothic tale of vampire romance (it's comparable to Zack Snyder beginning his blockbuster-heavy career with the relatively small-scale Dawn of the Dead remake). Again, the does-vampire-automatically-equal-horror question comes up and I think The Hunger manages to qualify, at least as far as its actual scenes of vampiric bloodletting go - Scott makes a hell of an opening statement by inter-cutting iconic Goth-rock outfit Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in the middle of a dingy industrial club with the two lead vampires (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) seducing and devouring two such clubgoers. The ensuing film...well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Much of the film concerns Deneuve being a long-lived head vampire and Bowie being the latest in a long line of lovers she's kept and ultimately discarded as they struggle to keep up with her own everlasting life; this is a matter that's only complicated further when a degenerating Bowie seeks out a geneticist (Susan Sarandon) to try to solve his issue.

As my old review will attest, I thought this was very underwhelming upon first viewing but a second viewing has made it easier to appreciate (though not overly so), if only because of altered expectations. No longer was I disappointed that the film wasn't as capital-C Cool as I'd expected (though it still manages quite a bit of that with Scott readily demonstrating the hazy aesthetics that he and brother Ridley favoured so much), but coming to understand the ways in which it defied my initial expectations has helped me to realise its strengths. Knowing that this and Blade Runner were both made in the wake of the premature death of Tony and Ridley's other brother lends both films extra substance as both filmmakers reinterpret their grief through fantastic concepts about creatures with unusual life-cycles (whether it's seemingly-immortal vampires or deliberately short-lived androids). Even when the film opts to divert away from the overtly horrific and focus on the romantic angle (complete with softcore scenes between Deneuve and Sarandon), there's still a recognisable undercurrent of existential dread as the latter is drawn into the former's soul-sucking toxicity. Just when it starts getting a little too easy to forget that this is a horror, it will bounce back with advanced decrepitude here or arterial spray there - the pacing seems practically glacial at times, but not without purpose. As such, The Hunger benefits considerably from a re-evaluation that doesn't quite make it classic material for me but makes it clear that I was definitely missing something the first time around - at the very least, I find myself interested in seeing what Scott would've come up with if he'd kept making films in this vein.

Did you pick those categories yourself?

I feel like this thread is a 3 man show with a special appearance by @Siddon

The original thread starter @Jay Redrum hasn't even posted.