CiCi's horror reviews!

Really, what's your top 5 horror films?
Actually, I'd be fascinated to find out actually, but what is everyone's top 5 horrors?

Okay, forget that last post. Deleted!

Rearranged a bit. NOW my top five in general are my top five horror films.

Your first choice is superb definitely my favourite Carpenter

Oh God, not The Beyond again...

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Keep it up, I'll make it #1.

At least it's not being tarnished by some crappy remake (yes, that's both a subtle reference to Quarantine and the impending Suspiria fail)

I'd be more concerned with TCM being #2. I mean, it is number two, but not in the way he means it.

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honeykid strikes again! In a way only a honeykid could do! haha

I got a headstart in that area.

I can't breathe

I'm going to make a full list sometime (I don't want to step on MM's toes, his top 40 horror movies list is excellent and I don't want to be just a copy), but off the top it would be The Shining, Scream, Cabin In The Woods, New Nightmare, and It.

Yeah, I'd say go for it sometime, and I wouldn't worry about that so much, because every list and every reasoning would be very different!

This has been one of my favorite vampire flicks for a while (Let The Right One In being another). It's close enough to Stoker's version to qualify for the name. I also think, that one of the negatives, the over the top melodrama, is in keeping with Stoker's version, which was quite racy for Victorian England. Stoker's story had a life as a stage adaptation too; those versions were also pot-boilers. Given our much greater resistance to scandal and swooning in this age, I'm guessing the Coppola had to take it up a few notches and take it up he did.

Yeah, I think he did that quite well in parts, i.e. the scene in the garden where Lucy, literally, screws the pooch.
I wouldn't rank this anywhere near Let the Right One In I'd even say both the novel and film are better than this adaptation and the original book of Dracula yet I feel as though I missed something significant, but perhaps it's what you mentioned, today some of the scenes that would have horrified Victorian England, just don't really affect me anywhere near as much.

Amazing choices I love The Descent which I think is the most underrated film you mentioned, I totally adored it

I didn't realize how far behind I had fallen with this thread. I last commented all the way back on page 2. Now you're on page 19! It's great to see how popular your reviews have become, CiCi. You have very good taste. You pick interesting films to watch. Your reviews are very well-written. And the most important thing is that you seem to have a very good personality. The fact that you take the time to interact with people and thank them and help stir up discourse is a big reason why this thread has taken off. You've made a strong impact on the forum in a short period of time.

I'm too far behind to comment on every review, but as you know from the truckload of +rep I dumped on you earlier, I've gone through and read almost every review I missed. I think the only one I skipped over was Martyrs. I'm embarrassed to admit that I've not seen that film even though I've had it recommended to me a hundred times. I still know very little about it, so I'm afraid to read too much until I've had a chance to watch it. I was hoping it might get nominated in the European Hall of Fame.

You've reviewed a few of my favorites, like 28 Days Later, The Last House on the Left, The Thing and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. You called the latter a "pure exercise in terror," which is a great description. For me, Leatherface is more frightening than his horror brethren like Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger because he's rooted in our world. There's nothing supernatural about him. He's pure chaos, running and squealing with his chainsaw roaring. Honeykid hates the movie because Marilyn Burns doesn't strop screaming for the last 20-30 minutes, but I think those last 20-30 minute are the finest stretch in all of horror cinema. As for The Last House on the Left, I think the humiliation aspect you mentioned in your review is one of the traits that makes the movie so effective. A lot of horror films have dealt with similar subject matter with a gorier, nastier, more in-your-face approach, yet there's something about Wes Craven's film that captures the heartbreaking cruelty of the violence that I've yet to see duplicated. The unanswered questions you complained about in The Thing is one of the movie's biggest strengths, in my opinion.

Despite the name of your thread, it's cool that you're sprinkling in a few non-horror films to switch things up from time to time. The incest angle in From Up on Poppy Hill has suddenly made me much more interested in watching it. () I've heard nothing but great things about In the Mood for Love. I'm very interested in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, even though I expect it to be terrible. I think I've read somewhere before that Roger Ebert used to review porn very early in his career. Considering his tendency to get on his moral high horse anytime he felt that a film had objectified women, I'm fascinated to see his smutty script in action.

I hated Bram Stoker's Dracula largely for the over-the-top theatricality that others have praised. I think the hate that Keanu Reeves receives is mostly unwarranted. He might be a limited actor, but I've enjoyed many of his movies. The Matrix and the Bill & Ted movies are among my favorites. Point Break is great fun. John Wick is one of the best action flicks in recent years. But his performance in Bram Stoker's Dracula is his lowest point. Just god awful.

I'd rate the original and the remake of Maniac about the same. Both are average, in my opinion. The first-person perspective in the remake was cool and well-executed, but a little too gimmicky. I liked that the remake expanded on all the stuff with the mannequins since that was the most memorable thing about the original. I generally prefer the original's rough and gritty style over the remake's slick polish, though.

Keep up the good work, CiCi!

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Oh wow! Thanks so much of taking the time to write this Captain! That means a lot

Thanks very much though, although in all honesty, I think it was your advice that probably made them popular, so if anything, you contributed a lot more than I did in making this do quite well!

Martyrs was one of the few films I seriously considered nominating for that actually! Although I always get confused as to whether it's Canadian or French, so I just left it out Calvaire, Ils, Deep Red, and obviously Suspiria, were the other ones I was thinking of choosing, and I'm a bit gutted I didn't choose Deep Red to be honest, I think it's quite underrated really, and it always gets over shadowed by Suspiria.

That "pure exercise" phrase was actually something Roger Ebert said about that film, and I thought it was a very apt overview of what the film is, so I threw it in there I agree about the last 20-30 minutes too, Marilyn Burns was really good, everyone else would have come across a bit fatigued or disillusioned by the end, but she sounded absolutely terrified the whole way through, and I think anyone else would have done the same thing as her, she pleaded, she begged, she resisted and finally, she screamed her lungs out when everything else failed, I really liked Marilyn Burns... we even shared the same birthday

He did as well! I read a review of a film called Deep Throat (the producers of that made TCM if I remember rightly) and it was so weird, but actually really funny, to talk about a porno as if it were meant to be a piece of art yeah, that's the one thing I never liked about him, he damned films like I Spit on Your Grave to be the worst film ever made because of the violence against women, saying it should never be shown... despite the fact violence and sexual violence is commited against women every day. Ugh. And yeah, his script didn't represent women very well at all, I bet if you blew in one of their ears, you'd hear a whistling sound out of the other end, it was actually borderline misogynistic, and he also made trans-genderism a joke in that film

I think Keanu will have done some good work, but I've only seen a few of his films and he was Ben Affleck bad in all of them, I will say he was worse in Much Ado About Nothing though.

Once again though, thanks for passing by Captain!

I was going to say the same thing. I think that's the worst I've seen him.

Replace the word Much with Little in the title and I think you have a good reflection of what his performance was like

Well...
I feel...
Queasy. I think that best describes this unusual and unpleasant feeling that has managed to sustain itself for the past couple of hours after seeing this. The tag line of this film is "the most controversial movie ever made" and I would whole heartedly agree with that statement. So, I'll be reviewing the massively infamous Cannibal Holocaust of 1980.

The plot follows an American man who ventures into The Green Inferno in order to discover what happened to his fellow associates. What he discovers is a network of cannibalistic tribes and some lost footage, that details a series of absolutely horrific and malevolent acts.

Positive
It's very authentic, it is not difficult to understand why the Italian authorities believed the cast of this film had perished during the making of this film (well it is, but, it all looks very real ). Therefore, it's shocking, and breathtakingly so, sharp objects are placed extremely close to bodily parts you would not want to be defiled, I really had to re-watch a scene because I thought this giant rock had been thrusted into a woman! Considering this film was also shot on a minimal budget only emphasises the creativity of those responsible for the special effects, because it all looked lifelike, and that was a significant factor as to why this film was so disturbing and sickening, for me anyway.

The underlying metaphors were made to be very obvious, yet that isn't a bad thing at all in this case, because although it's trying to prove a point (that even the most developed and advanced societies are just as monstrous and heartless as these cannibals when you look at them closer), yet it never comes across as condescending or patronising a la 2012, and the point it raises is actually really thought provoking, because when you look at the destruction that the USA, Britain, Europe etc. have created in certain areas, both past and present, as well all of the scandals that occurred in the seventies on both sides of the pond, you manage to identify the validity of the film's message, and it's quite an enriching experience I guess, because it's something you realise slowly as the film progresses.

I loved the soundtrack as well! It was astonishingly good, that retro 80s synthesizer combined with some instrumental pieces manages to emphasises the depression and melancholia over the acts being shown to us, I was really taken aback, it's undoubtedly one of the most memorable elements of this film.

Negatives
To be honest, I had a lot of trouble with the way this film was shot, something that never usually bothers me, because the actors know what they're getting into, and everything is almost always simulated. Yet here, the animal slaughters came thick and fast, and I'm not just talking about stepping on spiders (although a spider does get knifed too) but I mean turtles, monkeys and snakes amongst others are hacked to pieces, decapitated, have their guts ripped out whilst they're still breathing, to me, that isn't acceptable whatsoever. So if you have any vegan, PETA or RSPCA members as friends, keep them well away from this, they'd probably have heart failure after a couple of seconds

The acting was pretty mediocre really, I didn't bother looking up the names of any of the actors involved, like I usually do because there's no variety in this aspect. Everyone's performance is of the same standard, no one is astounding, yet no one is anywhere near being bad either. I will say though, that on the whole, the cast were better than other low budget, exploitation ensembles.

The portrayal of women was... questionable. They're all as weak as dish water, and not a single one puts a up a notable bit of resistance when they're subjected to exploitation and violation. However, when the film crew force themselves, and subsequently gang rape a young woman, Faye is the only one to attempt to dissuade them, and she even tries to forcibly break up the act, but, like I mentioned above, she ends up getting pushed aside with ease. Additionally, Faye was without a doubt subjected the most violent and cruel death, despite her minimal involvement in the destruction of the tribe's community, and I didn't feel like this was because we get more involved and impacted upon seeing women attacked, because there's no counter balance of powerful depictions of women, something that film makers like Dario Argento do. Once again, going on about the ethics of this film, we saw totally naked pre-pubescent girls, which I wasn't comfortable with. Nevertheless, it's trying to remain as authentic as it possibly can, and real life isn't censored, so I can see why they implemented it nonetheless.

Also, the pacing is off, the first half was a bit slow, but I'll forgive that, because the second half more than makes up for it.

Conclusion
An incredibly powerful film, although it crosses a few of my boundaries in order to achieve this effect. However, the writing was pretty good, with a strong metaphor and criticism, that is still very much relevant today, and will be for a very long time, because I think we've all been quite ashamed of our countries at one point or another. I'm not sure how to rate this in all honesty, yet it is better than the majority of most exploitation films, yet it's not good enough to separate itself from this sub-genre into an original piece. I'll give it:



And thanks to Captain Spaulding for nominating this in the European horror hall of fame, it was one hell of a ride!