What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

[Markgway]

Wes Craven presents...
Wishmaster (1997-USA) **
An ancient djinn (genie) needs geologist Tammy Lauren to make three wishes in order to open the gateway between hell and earth or something...
OK horror has some interesting ideas and strong gore, but could've been much better.

[Markgway]

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1987-USA) **
Nudity and gore dominate this passably dopey parody of film noir and cult horror.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

The Woman in the Window (1944: Fritz Lang)

Fritz Lang directed two in a row with Edward G. Robinson with this being the first. They are two solid film noirs with the second Scarlet Street being the better of the two, though this is the more fun. Both films skirt the Hays Code (something Lang could do quite often like Alfred Hitchcock, in fact a big chunk of this film feels Hitchcockian), especially with the endings (which I cannot discuss without spoilers.)

Robinson stars as a semi-famous doctor who gets involved with the subject of an oil painting when she invites him back to her place (after she found him starring at her picture) to see more of drawings of her. All is well until a jealous patron of her picture comes to kill the professor and instead gets himself stabbed with scissors over and over again (much like the demise in Dial M for Murder.) They make the decision to cover-up this murder which might make things much worse for them.

I do wonder if the ending here negates too much of the movie and/or just makes it easier to take. I am sure this type of ending predates film, though right now I can only think of at least one major film before this that used a similar ending.

Lang is an excellent director and auteur with such films as Metropolis, M, and The Big Heat (often considered his best noir.) He came from Germany at the time of the rise of the Nazi’s who basically destroyed their film industry which once rivaled America. Lang stated he fled after being offered a high position in their political film cabinet, but there is some conflicting information on what actually occurred. He would end his career in Germany though.

Since it is near Halloween M is a good watch for this month.

[Markgway]

The ending of WITW kinda spoilt it for me... a bit.

[Markgway]

The Comedy of Terrors (1963-USA) **
Morbid inky black farce (about grave robbing and murder) from AIP boasts willing cast of old horror pros, but its comedy is laboured and terribly repetitive.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

The ending of WITW kinda spoilt it for me... a bit.

More amazing is the ending he did with Scarlet Street. But that ending was so Wizard of Oz.

[Markgway]

The Beast Within (1981-USA) *½
A woman is raped by a creature in the woods, 17 years later her (their) son picks up the mantle of his grotesque, vengeful father. Exceptionally silly monster movie, written by Tom Holland of all people; his setup is tasteless, the treatment numbingly literal, and the makeup ridiculously over-elaborate.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

I finally got to see the infamous Troll 2. Not one of my favorite bad movies but there's plenty of bad line reading and stupid shit going on to keep it entertaining.

It is one of those films I thought about watching for ages, but always found something else to watch. This is a pretty good month to watch it though .

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

The Cat and the Canary (1939: Elliot Nugent: ***/****):

This often filmed tale originally written as a play in 1922 by John Willard. The most famous version before this was the silent directed by Paul Leni (1927; a must watch for fans of early horror), but this remake takes a comedic turn with Bob Hope as the jocular actor Wally Campbell whom is invited to an “old dark house” in the middle of the Louisiana bayou. The plot points are well familiar to fans of older horror (or TV). Relatives of an eccentric millionaire are all invited to stay the night at this reclusive house to hear the last will and testament 10 years after the death of the owner. A distant relative Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard, Modern Times) is the recipient of the will, but she has to stay of sane mind and alive for at least a month or the will reverts to a second person whose name is hidden in an envelope only known to a lawyer (and one other person.) Will she last the night with possibly plotting relatives, a scheming servant and a wandering psychopath loose from the insane asylum?

Fans (I am one of them) of Bob Hope should especially like this film as he is quite hilarious here, though really no different a character then he would use many times forward. His quips, self-deprecation and cowardly demeanor work well here since it is a comedic and suspenseful movie. My favorite line is his response to being afraid of big empty houses: “Not me, I used to be in vaudeville” though there is a Jack Benny line that was pretty good as well. Gale Sondergaard as Ms. Lu the housekeeper is also quite effective and you would see her again in this type of role several times for example in The Black Cat (1941) and work with Bob Hope again in My Favorite Blonde (1942) and Road to Rio (1947). This is a fun movie that has a brisk pace and perfect for fans of early horror. The film does have some so-so performances (some overacting from Goddard), a well-worn script, but these things are not a big hindrance if you are familiar with films of this era.

Since it is pre-Road films; sans Bing Crosby in any cameo. One of the great in-jokes for many years was the appearance or mention of one or the other between these two actors in either of their films. One of the greatest running gags in all of cinema.

This is available in two Bob Hope sets as well as a DVD-R release, but get the Bob Hope Classic Comedy Collection set which has 10 movies and is the same price as the DVD-R. The Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memories Collection was good when it first came out, but the first one mentioned has even more films and is less expensive, making the earlier set moot.

[Markgway]

The movie was successful enough for them to reteam Hope and Goddard in The Ghost Breakers the following year. I preferred Paramount's CANARY to Universal's (very similar) CAT not least because the former doesn't feature the irritating Hugh Herbert.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

The movie was successful enough for them to reteam Hope and Goddard in The Ghost Breakers the following year. I preferred Paramount's CANARY to Universal's (very similar) CAT not least because the former doesn't feature the irritating Hugh Herbert.

I like The Ghost Breakers as well. I expect to rewatch it this month and have a new capsule review on it soon.. Ha on Hugh Herbert. I'm looking through his filmography and I have seen him quite a bit. But yeah he can get annoying though seems to fit better in the Gold Diggers films. I too prefer it to The Black Cat.

Hope just kept getting more and more popular for such a long period of time (both him and Crosby.)

[Markgway]

The Raven (1963-USA) **½
AIP's Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven...
PG-rated horror-comedy is slightly preferable to A Comedy of Terrors, with Vincent Price and Boris Karloff on fine form as a pair of rival magicians.

[Markgway]

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976-USA) *½
Pedestrian, dumbed down attempt at a Dragnet-style police procedural, based on a series of true life killings carried out in 1946 in Texarkana. The director shoots himself in the foot by casting himself as comic relief in a film which absolutely doesn't not require comic relief.

[Killer Meteor]

The Raven (1963-USA) **½
AIP's Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven...
PG-rated horror-comedy is slightly preferable to A Comedy of Terrors, with Vincent Price and Boris Karloff on fine form as a pair of rival magicians.

No mention of Jack...?

[Markgway]

No mention of Jack...?

There's nothing really to say about him... you'd have to have been psychic to spot star quality

[Markgway]

Return of the Living Dead

My favorite thing about the movie so far is this breasty lady who spends the whole movie naked. I keep expecting her to die any minute, but no, she just continues to be naked. And she's in the movie a lot! It's amazing!!

That's B-movie scream queen Linnea Quigley.

She's naked in all her movies.

[Markgway]

Zero Dark Thirty (2012-USA) **½
Interesting docudrama about the ten-year CIA hunt for Bin Laden; not quite as gripping as I expected, but there's no doubting Kathryn Bigelow's skill as a filmmaker. However, most of the lengthy climax takes place in the dark and isn't much fun to watch. Despite suggested controversy film does not endorse prisoner torture. It's shown to be ineffective and unreliable.

Death Becomes Her (1992-USA) **½
Middle-aged former friends (Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn) resort to extreme measures to restore their faded youth and compete for the affections of weak-willed plastic surgeon Bruce Willis. The trio of leads are fun to watch in this creative black comedy satire... though it runs out of steam a bit toward the end. The make up and effects are clever and amusing.

Cannibal Apocalypse (1980-Italy) *½
John Saxon is a Vietnam vet infected in the jungle by a virus that makes he and his men want to, er, eat people. Back home munching ensues. Marginally closer to a real movie than most exploitative trash with "Cannibal" in their titles... but still cheaply and poorly made trash.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

This is a rewrite of something I wrote several years ago. I had rewatched both of these recently.

Haunted Spooks (1920: Alfred J. Goulding, Hal Roach) ***½/****
The Haunted House (1921: Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton) ****/****

I thought I would compare and contrast two famous silent shorts on the same basic theme: the fake haunted house which is itself an offshoot of the “old dark house” theme. In Haunted Spooks we have an Uncle (Wallace Howe) trying to trick a couple, played by Harold Lloyd and his future wife Mildred Davis, out of their inheritance. They are supposed to live in the house for at least a year, but if they fail in this her Uncle gets the inheritance. To do this he decides to create a haunted house. In The Haunted House we have the more familiar variation of this theme of crooks establishing a haunted house to get away with their nefarious deeds (several Scooby Doo episodes, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken). Here we have local crooks led by Keaton-villain Joe Roberts who created an elaborate haunted house to cover up his counterfeiting scheme. Buster Keaton is the bungling bank clerk who happens upon this scheme.

Harold Lloyd to me is the most underrated silent comedian now next to Charley Chase, though at the time he was with Charles Chaplin the most popular comedians of his era. Here he plays his typical The Boy character, but with a small twisted twist. After a snubbed love affair he decides to commit suicide (much like Keaton would do in Hard Luck a year later and much like he would do a year later in Never Weaken), which he is completely inept at. Luckily he runs into a lawyer (or the lawyer almost runs into him) who is looking for someone for The Girl to marry. He has no issue with this and gives up his current quest for The End sans Burt Reynolds.

There is some controversy as to how racist Haunted Spooks is. While the portrayal of the blacks is stereotypical in the aspect of them being scared by ghosts, the fact is everyone else besides the Uncle as well. However, the use of intertitles in its characterized drawings of blacks is the most racist aspect about the film and the most difficult to defend.

However, the most known fact about the film is that this is the movie where Lloyd lost a thumb, a finger, was blinded for a period of time by a prop bomb that exploded in his face. After this he wore a hand prosthesis for most (probably all) of his work including this film. If you are not looking for it, it is easy to miss his fake hand. All close-ups later on are done with body hand doubles (reminds me of how James Doohan’s hands were often doubled in Star Trek close-ups because of a missing finger he lost in WWII.)

While in The Haunted Spooks the house is more of the end of a punchline since its presence is at the end of the short, the house in The Haunted House is one of the best visual gag themed films of its time. It is an elaborate built, well thought out haunted house. Both films are disjointed in storyline, but neither is hurt by this. It seems like a natural progression within the plot both leading up to the haunted house. However, their approach with it is different and helps make the difference between a good film versus a great film. So much thought is given into the gags of The Haunted House.

Buster Keaton is one of my favorite comedians, so I am a bit biased. But his popularity had endured because his comedy is brilliant. He is appreciated more by critics now than he ever has during his lifetime and like Chaplin the resurgence started near the 1960s and has not stopped since. But I am a Harold Lloyd fan as well. It helps that their films are so much easier to get a hold of in the States and are consistently not that difficult to get a hold of, including several releases from Criterion on both Chaplin and Lloyd while Kino has put out Buster Keaton’s silent and some rare sound films like the Educational shorts (which for the most part I like and prefer them to the Columbia shorts he would do soon after.) I have the R1 New Line Home Video The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection which unfortunately is OOP, while Criterion has the rights and are slowly releasing the films and some of the shorts with additional new extras.

Here is an interesting blog entry on the acting differences between “the big three” while focusing on Harold Lloyd. The reason I was searching this was to try to describe the difference between the acting styles of the two. He correct in that Keaton would elongate scenes if the comedy was there where Lloyd is more plot oriented working off of what comes his way. He believes that this is because of Keaton’s vaudevillian background and Lloyd’s strictly movie background. While Keaton was the more physical of the two, Lloyd had no issue with doing stunts as well. Lloyd was the outwardly more emotional of the two (this is not saying much since Keaton was known as the stoneface – though he did act through the eyes) and often took a more optimistic approach that Keaton. One thing he is not quite right on is that Keaton’s deadpan demeanor is not as apparent in the Roscoe Arbuckle shorts. You can see him cry, laugh and a whole gamut of emotions.

Roger Ebert on Safety Last
Roger Ebert on The Films of Buster Keaton

[Markgway]

Friday the 13th (1980-USA) **½
The second best in the F13 series spends more time on suspense than gore and remains a cut above most of the slasher genre.

Rear Window (1954-USA) ****
A masterclass in suspense from Hitchcock.

The Quick and the Dead (1995-USA-Japan) ***
Stylish pastiche of spaghetti westerns directed with customary flair by Sam Raimi. Gene Hackman is a first class villain.

[Killer Meteor]

Friday the 13th is a great party movie, but a bit of a struggle on my own. It's nowhere near as spooky as it could have been. That final scene though is awesome.

[Masterofoneinchpunch]

The Ghost Breakers (1940: George Marshall) ***/****:

This is the second pairing of Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard with the previously reviewed by me The Cat and the Canary being the first. In between these two pictures Bob had starred in the first “Road To” film. It is safe to say his popularity was certainly rising in the cinematic world. Here he plays Lawrence L. Lawrence, named so because his parents were lazy (reminds me of the Fletch F. Fletch joke in the Fletch film), a radio gossip announcer who has recently stated some rather embarrassing information of a certain gangster and has made himself persona non grata and possibly persona non viva. To make matters worse he thinks he accidently killed a man (Anthony Quinn who was also in the first “Road To” film). Mary Carter (Goddard) has recently inherited an “old dark house” in Cuba, but has recently has been threatened not to go there, offered money to sell it and been warned of the ghosts that haunt that estate. Of course she goes anyway with a certain stowaway hidden in her trunk and his servant Alex (Willie Best: High Sierra) to ultimately visit a haunted castle that not only has corpses, ghosts, some unknown killer, but a zombie as well (random recommendation: 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie). Also Anthony Quinn seems to reappear like Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow II.

Willie Best’s performance is quite good. While his position is a stereotypical one as the valet, how he is used is not. His repartee with Bob Hope is reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit with Will Rogers in Judge Priest though less vitriolic and with Best usually getting the best of him. Bob Hope is his usual solid self-full of wisecracks, topical humor and, well he’s playing himself. Though this is a more self-assured Bob Hope then I am normally used to seeing. He ventures in, often making his usual scaredy-cat jokes, and is often quite brave to the possible determinant of himself. While the romance seemed a little forced, the film is still fun with the best part being the “haunted castle” last act with a great deux ex machina. This should be of special interest to those who like comedic horror and/or Bob Hope from this time period.

The extras on this disc from the set are the same as the standalone R1 release. You get stills, a trailer, a short of him entertaining the troops (which I’m pretty sure has been released on other Bob Hope movies), a cut release of Command Performance from 1944 and a short film "Hollywood Victory Caravan."

[HungFist]

Friday the 13th (1980-USA) **½
The second best in the F13 series spends more time on suspense than gore and remains a cut above most of the slasher genre.

I tried watching this when I was maybe 18 but gave up around 45 min. But I think that was around the time when I had just discovered Dario Argento and lot of Asian genre cinema classics and probably wasn't much in a mood for an American 80s slasher. I've been meaning to give it another chance some day to see if I'd like it better this time.

Rear Window (1954-USA) ****
A masterclass in suspense from Hitchcock.

Agreed, it's probably my favourite Hitchcock film.

[saltysam]

A Haunting At The Rectory 0.5/5 terrible beyond belief british film based on the famous Borley Rectory hauntings.Unfortunately this rubbish ignores the subject matter in the main,concentrating instead on a "Lady Chatterly" style story about the Vicar's younger sex starved wife and the new handyman. the acting is terrible,especially the vicar,couldn't believe when i checked imdb he's got 95 acting credis. this would get an 0 but i'll give it .5 for the vicar's wife getting her small tits out a couple of times.

Holocaust 2000 2/5 daft but watchable Omen rip off with Kirk Douglas chewing the scenery as the industrialist buliding a nuclear plant in the desert.Simon Ward is his son who may not be all he seems.

Knock Knock 2/5 Who'd have thought the little seen 70's Colleen Camp/Sondra Locke cheapie "Death Game" would get a remake starring Keanu Reeves! Well to do Keanu's family go off to the beach for a few days leaving him alone.That night during a storm two fit young girls knock at his door...silly but passable and restrained by Eli Roth's standards.

The Shout 1.5/5 Strange late 70's british film has John Hurt & Susannah York as the childless couple who come across arrogant stranger Alan Bates, he invites himself into their home and ends up staying. He boasts that he can "shout you dead". Really odd but watchable,couldn't believe the amount of times Susannah York gets naked here

[HungFist]

Murphy's Law (USA, 1986) [DVD] - 3/5
A bit odd mix of lightweight buddy comedy and seriously disturbed characters, including Bronson himself and a ruthless villain who happens to be a middle aged woman. Bronson plays a cop who framed for murder and has to escape from jail with a foul-mouthed car thief (Kathleen Wilhoite). The latter somehow manages to be irritating and fun at the same time, while Bronson is his usual charismatic self. Hardly great, but entertaining enough.

Nightcrawler (USA, 2014) [DCP] - 4.5/5
I only had to wait a year for this to hit the Japanese theatres, but it was worth it. Terrific, poignant film, really feels of the moment.

[Markgway]

The Naked Prey (1965-USA-South Africa) **
Not the film I hoped it would be, but rather a plodding manhunt in which the hunted (an ivory poacher) is in his own way as savage as his pursuers (local tribesman). So who cares who kills whom? Not violent enough for its subject matter and with too much time spent on (often real) animal hunting (human and inter-species) you'd be better off rewatching the not-dissimilar Apocalypto.

Harold and Maude (1971-USA) **½
Oddball black comedy in which a disturbed young man finds a kindred spirit in an 80-year old lady eccentric. The characters make this a pleasant enough watch (surprising given aspects the material) but the filmmakers pull their punches making this less edgy than it would seemingly like to be. Hurt by ghastly Cat Stevens soundtrack.