June 2010
1 post
She Gave Me The Golamine Beads: Ishtar (1987,...
SHE GAVE ME THE GOLAMINE BEADS: ISHTAR (1987, ELAINE MAY)
(For the 4th Annual White Elephant Blogathon, hosted by Paul Clark at Silly Hats Only)
Not to make any excuses, but there’s a reason the last entry in this blog was last year’s White Elephant entry. In case you didn’t know, I am now the father of not one, not two, but three kids. That’s right, I now have a...
May 2009
4 posts
Amsterdamned (1988, Dick Maas)
Some background: when I arrived in Arcata to begin my first year at Humboldt State, there were two theaters, the Minor and the Arcata (known to the students as the Major). The Minor, IIRC, had three small theaters; one “big” one with a balcony, and two shoebox ones, not unlike Seattle’s Grand Illusion. I was told that the cavernous Arcata used to be a bowling alley; I don’t...
On The Air (1992, David Lynch, et. al.)
The first — six, I think? — episodes of Lynch’s TV show after the cancellation of “Twin Peaks”. I recall during the original broadcast a monumentally hilarious bit involving a live TV gaffe, and the rest being uncomfortably bad. I didn’t stick around during the dubbing to verify.
The Penguin Pool Murder (1932, George Archainbaud)
So apparently back in the day, they used to run these hour-long mini-features as part of a doubleheader or what have you, and a number of them featured detectives. (I know the name of one of them off the top of my head — The Falcon, played by Val Lewton regular and George Sanders’ bro, Tom Conway.) This one’s with Miss Hildegarde Martha Withers, and I bet you, the first image in...
The Woman in Black (1990, Herbert Wise)
I was told — by my mother, of all people — that there’s a supremely scary part in this movie, so I hit record and turned off the TV. (Okay, that’s not 100% true. I caught enough to get the visual gist of it — BBC TV, that cold and glassy feeling.) Later, my mom told me that she finally got around to seeing it and the scary part wasn’t all that — she was...
April 2009
1 post
March 2009
23 posts
Your Own. Personal. Netflix Suggestions. Your Own.
About an hour ago, my wife emailed me with an urgent request: a co-worker needed horror movie recommendations! Never one to slack on my purpose in the world, I threw on my cape and came to the rescue. Here’s what I sent back:
ZOMBIES
Dawn of the Dead (original 1978)
Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake)
The Return of the Living Dead
The Evil Dead
ADDED: Dead Alive/Braindead (thx Jose!)
...
The Night Visitor (1970, Laslo Benedek)
At the time, this was the only film I’d reclaimed that looked even remotely professional. Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman will do that for you.
Best "Phantasm" Review Ever.
steveosteve:
…The film moves not with the standard American nightmare pacing, with fright and shock leaping out of every corner, but with the dreamy half-speed motions of a first-rate Eurohorror. Narrative sense is subsumed to atmosphere and a sense of reality irrevocably altered. Coscarelli obviously doesn’t have a big budget with which to work, but he does manage to project a rough-hewn...
The Green Slime (1968, Kinji Fukasaku)
This movie isn’t any good, despite having that great Japanese SF look and a dependable plot hook (alien spore reproduces on space station, spawning monsters, hilarity etc.). In fact, if I were to make a Top 20 of horrible movies I’d love to remake, this would be up there (along with this beauty). The only thing that gives The Green Slime any historical importance at all is that it...
The Evil (1978, Gus Trikonis)
I covered this nearly four years ago, and don’t really have anything to add, except The Evil sounds like a horror movie titled by Kenneth Parcell. Except it would be spelled Th’ Evil.
Actually, Th’ Evil brings up some of the pros and cons of haunted house movies. The problem with haunted house movies is that there never seem to be any rules to how they operate — that is,...
The Vulture (1967, Lawrence Huntington)
So when I stuck this into the VCR and hit record, I was greeted with a TNT MonsterVision intro (remember MonsterVision?), a series of quick monster movie clips, and one of them was a shot of Broderick Crawford picked up, by the shoulders, by two giant bird feet and carried off. It’s remarkably stupid-looking/awesome. Turns out that scene is from this movie. I sorta feel like I don’t...
Cassandra (1987, Colin Eggleston)
Hope this is good, since it’s from the director of the well-regarded The Long Weekend. (Er, well-regarded by Kim Newman at least, who recently defended The Happening, so uh, grain of salt.) The one time I got a chance to look at this while it was taping, I saw two women in a kitchen having a discussion, and damn if one of them didn’t look like a dude in drag. So either I just...
Island of Lost Souls (1933, Erle C. Kenton)
Wait wait wait… this isn’t on DVD? For reals? The hell, man. This is classic. A shame that Val Kilmer/Marlon Brando monstrosity likely ruined the concept for a generation. (Remember how in that movie, the story’s about David Thewlis, until he meets Kilmer’s personal script doctor, and then it isn’t anymore? That wasn’t awesome.)
The House That Would Not Die (1970, John Llewellyn...
Second movie I’ve reclaimed that starts with an oh-so-spooky tracking shot through an eerie, empty house. But while Horror House had the atmospheric benefit of crap lighting and gutter film stock that was all the rage in swingin’ sixties England, this was clearly filmed up in the Hollywood hills, making it look like every episode of Night Gallery, ever. Don’t worry, Ms....
Battle in Outer Space (1959, Inoshiro Honda)
God, I love how these Japanese SF films look. All Technicolor (well, Fujicolor) and comic booky. Why couldn’t the future look like this? When the 70s hit, seems like everyone went grimy, which was great for American cinema, but that was the last of the Japanese SF style, what with the orange jumpsuits and sleek saucers and the loving embrace of artifice. (Or maybe not. I aint a...
1 tag
Screamers (1981, Sergio Martino)
And this looks to be the complete opposite of Horror House, with somebody getting their face clawed off or their throat slashed every five minutes. It’s Alan Clarke’s Elephant, only with mutated fish men.
1 tag
Horror House a.k.a. The Haunted House of Horror...
Excuse me, movie, but does anyone get murdered in your murder mystery? Starts off promisingly, with creepy tracking shots through the titular homestead, and the arrival of callow youths (including, for some reason, Frankie Avalon) ripe for the disemboweling. The transfer is awful, like everything is covered with the grit (and God knows what else) from the floor of a porno theater, but if my...
1 tag
Scalpel a.k.a. False Face (1977, John Grissmer)
Feels like a MOTW, probably is. Flat and 80s looking, which, given its production date, makes it ahead of its time. If ninjas attack in the third act, could be awesome, but statistically unlikely.
1 tag
Dr. Blood's Coffin (1961, Sidney J. Furie)
NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS MOVIE. Seriously. Imagine a Michael Powell movie where Powell keeled over midshot and nobody noticed and they just kept setting up shots and letting the camera run until it used up all the film. THAT’S THIS MOVIE.
(Did you know Sidney J. “Iron Eagle, Superman IV, The Entity” Furie still directs? It’s true!)
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Strangler vs. Strangler (1984, Slobovan Sijan)
In the first ten minutes or so of this movie, we get: an eerily still shot of an orchestra that wouldn’t look out of place in an Argento flick; stock footage of Belgrade, accompanied by a female narrator who seems to be playing it straight, but with a gentle, mocking subtext to her performance; and finally, a series of blackout sketches surveying Belgrade’s criminal activity, again...
Whistling in Dixie (1942, S. Sylvan Simon)
Looks like it splits the difference between the stagy Dark and the more cinematic Brooklyn. The southern mansion is awfully Gothicky.
THAO & THE GET DOWN, STAY DOWN - “WE...
2 tags
Music, Too
Another one of my tasks to finish in the next six months or so is to get all my CDs digitized and then sell (or maybe just give away) the hard copies. Honestly, I never thought it’d come to that. When digital downloads were first appearing, I sneered, thinking I’d always want the physical copy to have and to hold. (This is kind of ironic if you consider the history of the CD in...
1 tag
Whistling in the Dark (1941, S. Sylvan Simon)
Seen this one too. Don’t remember much about it, other than Simon failing to hide its theatrical origins. That pretty much clouds my opinion of it; it might be genius for all I know, but all I’m gonna see is “filmed play”. (See also: Key Largo. Or in my case, turn it off after 20m.)
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Whistling in Brooklyn (1943, S. Sylvan Simon)
Unlike a lot of my Reclamation Project movies, a) this dub is from the eventually-released VHS version and b) I’ve seen it. In fact, I have a bit of a history with this movie, which is kinda odd, since I’ve only seen it once, when I was about 13 or 14.
Even though I don’t think I considered myself a big movie fan back then at that age, I did stay up late watching all sorts of...
The Great VHS Reclamation Project of 2009
For a number of reasons (which I’ll likely get to in the future), I’ve decided to seriously cut back on the number of things that I own, and consolidate, if I can, the stuff I have into something smaller and more manageable. Part of this means taking the 300+ (or whatever it is) DVDs I own, stripping them out of their cases, and putting them in giant binders. (Why? To get rid of the...
February 2009
6 posts
Strange currencies.
steveosteve:
Tonight, I saw a girl get eaten by a piano and a guy get eaten by a six-foot-tall vagina. No wonder people think I have odd taste.
The "Educating Kent" Reading List
If you follow me on Twitter (and if you’re reading this, you likely already do), then you know I’ve recently given up movies for Lent to make more time for writing fiction. The only real problem is that when it comes to the classics the well-reviewed books, I’m functionally illiterate. Oh, I’ll scream through a few non-fiction titles every year, but I haven’t been...
Skandies: #17: Let The Right One In →
Sorry Skandies voters, but this movie is retarded.
Still Not A Player: Three Punishers →
The great, long-lost, unpublished Watchman column! Now yours, for free!
“The hipster part of me wants to turn (this blog) into a Tumblr-style blog, but...”
– Kent M. Beeson, This Can’t End Well, 2/4/09