I was a bit skeptical about this one…
The Dracula Saga
(★★★½)
Berta (pregnant with her first child) and her husband Hans are heading back to Berta’s homeland to visit her grandfather. When they get to the area, they find that the locals are full of superstitions and maybe even some concerns about her grandfather’s castle. Then, while on a walk, they find a wounded and bloodied young gal in the forest! Once the villagers bring the girl in to examine her, more crazy superstitious talk happens, especially from the priest who’s all up in arms about evil women and temptation!
Finally, they get the ride up to the castle! But, alas, it turns out that her grandfather isn’t just any grandfather… He happens to be Count Dracula! And he is very quite interested in the baby-to-come.
This was actually a pretty interesting take on the Dracula story, taking many of the standard elements (nervous superstitious villagers, Dracula and his three ladies, the crypt at the castle, gypsies, a young and naive couple), but put a bit of a different twist on the story. I quite liked it, though the narration at the beginning and the end was a bit awkward, and the final scene could have been skipped.
Hush
(★★★)
I’m a bit torn between this. It’s certainly suspenseful and the deafness of the protagonist is put to interesting effect, but the whole masked killer outside the window shtick is something that I’m a bit tired off (one of the best ways to disinterest me in a movie is to have the promotional material show the killer in a mask or a costume). And, after watching so many movies, It’s hard to keep a suspension of disbelief when people act like it’s perfectly safe and normal to put themselves into situations that are so clearly (in the movie world anyway) terrible ideas.
That said, it certainly kept me on my toes and was fun to watch.
Vertigo…
(★★★★½)
For the millionth time…
While I do love this movie just in general, and especially the character of Midge… My favorite bit is Henry Jones as the coroner. His snipes at Scotty are just great, especially since Scotty becomes such a creepy weirdo after the inquest.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(★★★★½)
I don’t know when I first saw this… I would guess on TV in the 70’s… But, back then, some of it really stuck with me and I’ve had bits of it that I have thought about recurringly over the years. I assume I’ve seen it since then? But, even so, it’s been too long to have much of a firm memory beyond the general idea and those memorable scenes, so it was great to rewatch it!
In Close Encounters, we follow two stories: firstly, vehicles that disappeared years ago in the Bermuda Triangle are turning up, crew-less, and un-aged, in weird areas of the world. Most odd would be the ship Cotopaxi, which vanished 50 years early in the Atlantic, but turns up now in the sands of the Gobi desert. A team of scientists led by Francois Truffaut (??) and Bob Balaban are chasing these weird occurrences down.
At the same time, weird power issues start occurring in Indiana and some people start becoming fixated on subliminal images or feelings that they are having. Most notably would be Roy Neary. This is a great performance by Richard Dreyfus; watching his weird fixation in piling things into pillars is really pretty interesting, and, once he gets into his “move the garden indoors”, and you see how much he is freaking out his family, you really have to wonder just how far gone he is.
Of course, these threads come together at a very exciting moment!
Honestly, the big UFO reveal is possibly just about the best reveal of anything I’ve seen in a movie. It seems so much different then other alien contact things I’ve seen, and the combination of audio and visual and the sense of amazement really makes it something. Even 48 years later it still resonates well and looks great.
Poltergeist
(★★★★)
Haven’t seen this in 20 years but I think it’s held up pretty good. Especially since I got to see it in a theater this time!
I still like the cast, the TV screen, the whole haunted house bit (which usually is not a genre I like) I think is interestingly done, the build-up to it (from fun with spirits to waaay not fun) is great, and Tangina (the medium) is still one of my all-time favorite movie characters.
Strange World
(★★★★)
Second time through and I still really like this!
The fun newsprint intro, the cool biome “sets”, the floating cars, and just the story in general. The first part of the movie, while it does look great, feels like it’s overdoing the “perfect happy family” background a bit. Maybe it isn’t but just seems like that to me because because I’m ready for adventure!
Because what an adventure it is! The strange world of the title is a wondrous place. Strange, colorful, unusual, varied, just really interesting to look it and to visit. Looking like a cross between HG Wells, Fantastic Voyage (the movie), and No Man’s Sky, I find it always engaging.
And I liked the storyline a lot with the voyages that turns out to be not what was expected. And, again, the whole thing looks great and is filmed with charming characters, even if they turn up the charming a bit too much.
Sputnik
(★★★½)
Starting off with two cosmonauts who, oddly, realize something is moving around on the outside of their space capsule as they are returning from space. One of them survives the reentery and is sent to a facility to be evaluated. The fellow who runs the facility calls in a civilian psychiatrist to further evaluate him and it becomes quite clear that something is very wrong with him…
This was interesting, suspenseful, and exciting! I quite liked it.
June winds down and, I think, this has probably been my biggest movie month so far, like maybe ever…
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The New York Ripper
(★★½)
While it’s pretty spot on with its gritty depiction of the underbelly of early 80’s new York, with portrayals of sex clubs, prostitutes, etc. It’s basically the story of police trying to catch someone who is going around slashing women. And I ended up with the same feeling I had a few months ago when I finally got around to seeing Maniac: I don’t know if I am up for watching movies anymore where the main point is meanspirited slashing and killing women, just because they are women.
Aside from that, not a bad movie, just not my cup of tea. I guess it was a giallo, which is a genre I don’t normally like. In that case, it was certainly more engaging than most of those. And was also one of the more engaging Fulci movies I’ve seen. But I mainly watched it because the idea of “donald duck” voiced phone calls reminded me of the Weepy Voiced killer so I was curious how they’d play that.
Ash
(★★)
The story of a crew who have landed on a distant planet and, well, something went wrong. Not clear at all at first, as everyone seems to be violently dead, except for our main character who doesn’t remember anything (except for in annoying flashbacks). It starts off with a very unclear story, some unconvincing attempts at jump scares, unconvincing scenes of grooviness, and far too many scenes that sound and look like bad Industrial music videos.
Frequently reminiscent of The Thing, with some Alien(s) moment. It’s just not particularly engaging. But, for what it’s worth, I found the second half (once they do the weird maneuver with the rock that starts all the problems and the movie starts being more clear what is actually going on (and we get some pretty interesting gore/creature effects)) to be more engaging than the first half.
Kind of a hodge-podge this last week of June…
Lastly, The Dark and the Wicked
(★★★½)
This was certainly creepy and kept my attention. Maybe even too creepy at times, but I have a hard time with “ghost/unseen forces” kinda movies.
As a creepy movie, I’d probably give it 4 stars, but the whole “the devil wants this one person’s soul and somehow can’t get it without killing other people first” story just doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean, why wait for one person to die to get their soul if you can easily kill a bunch of other people? Feels like a whole lot of supernatural work for a small payoff… Are some people’s souls just worth more effort? I don’t get it.
Oh and pro-tip: if you rush to the old homestead and yer mama says she doesn’t want you there… Maybe you should just leave.
Predator: Killer of Killers
(★★★)
This was interesting. As a general rule, I’m not too into animation (well, aside from Pixar and the old LOTR and Hobbit cartoons), and the story was pretty basic, but there was some nice animation here: I especially found the Samurai portion to look good and the final part was pretty exciting.
The Predator’s, though, looked not too good… Which was a bit distracting.
Heavy Trip
(★★★★)
Now this was great fun! Ridiculous, yes, but Metal and fun!
A group of small-town Finnish metalheads are just riffing around through their days, play cover songs and record their demo. When a chance meeting, awash with reindeer blood, with a metal festival promoter ignites their hopes, they (Impaled Rektum, that is) head off on a road-trip of errors to try for their big break!
A lot of fun, very funny, and with some quite charming characters, this Heavy Trip was also a very memorable and enjoyable one.
And, thinking of the newly released 28 Years later, I re-watched 28 Days Later, for like the 10th time or something…
28 Days Later
(★★★★)
Still a classic, all these 23 actual years later. Still one of the best zombie movies, even without any zombies. And even though I always knows what’s about to happen, it’s still suspenseful… And, sadly, it still has that lame ending tacked on…
But I don’t think I really have anything to add to my old review here: 28 Days Later 17 years ago
Sukkubus – den Teufel im Leib
(★★★½)
A quaint little folk horror film that I was unsure about but I ended up quite liking.
Three herdsmen are living with their herd of cows in the mountains of Switzerland. They’re a funny bunch, The “leader” is a stern and serious fellow who seems intent on everyone doing the correct thing and who says prayers loudly through some kind of a horn. Then the odd fellow is a very awkward seeing guy who is clearly obsessed with sex, or at least the idea of it (even to the extent of trying to molest the boy), and the aforementioned Boy, a young teen who seems more interested in daydreaming and giving his favorite cow more than her fair share of salt.
They seem to do little aside from milk cows and make (and then eat) cheese and they don’t seem to get along very well.
Then one day the boy finds a root that looks (well, kind of) like a face and brings it home. The middle guy decides that they can use it to make a lifesize doll of a woman… And one night, after too much drink, they go a bit too far with their doll. And suddenly, there’s more than just a doll around.
For the most part, it’s an intimate look at the life of old timey mountain herdsmen which is pretty interesting and has some fabulous scenery. The Sukkubus herself is played in an interesting fashion, which I think was good for this sort of being and not like I would have expected from the number of bold vampire movies I’ve seen.
Le Viol du Vampire
(★½)
This right off the bat has more of an artsy feel that the other Rollin’s I’ve watched (I mean, what?)… Black and white with 18th century styled fencers wearing masks… Oh, is that how it’s going to be?
Turns out that the narration is a “modern days” conversation about the legend of four vampire sisters who live nearby.
A lady leaves this talk and goes outside and just walks right to, and into, the house where the vampire sisters live. They begin to undress her (why? Well because it’s a Rollin film, of course) until a gentlemen intervenes.
But they then come and stay at the house? And the guy decides to mansplain their situation to them, though they clearly aren’t listening and it kind of becomes a back and forth between one of the interlopers who thinks that they aren’t vampires and is intent on proving it and others who are like “who cares?”. I agree with the latter.
Then it stays kind of annoying. One overly artsie and silly scene after another.
Then it seems to end and a more interesting movie starts from the remains and an intriguing character of the vampire queen shows up. But no, it’s a ruse. The second half is even more annoying than the first. So certainly the most annoying Rollin films I’ve seen, maybe not as boring as Night of the Hunted, but more annoying. The best thing about it is the poster art, which doesn’t seem to fit with the movie at all, sadly.
And now that I have completed watching the eight Rollin movies that I have, may as well make a list of my favorites of those:
1. The Shiver of the Vampires (★★★★½)
2. Fascination (★★★★)
3. The Demoniacs (★★★½)
4. Requiem for a Vampire (★★★)
5. Living Dead Girl (★★★)
6. The Nude Vampire (★★★)
7. The Night of the Hunted (★★½)
8. The Rape of the Vampire (★½)
Requiem for a Vampire
(★★★)
The second Rollin movie I’ve watched this week that features clown make up. Which is not a good thing, but I won’t ding is too much for that…
This is the tale of two free spirited gals. By free spirited I mean that they seem to wander around with not much or a plan (or even much dialogue) and aren’t concerned with legality or giving thought before shooting at something. Though since it starts out with them being pursued on an automotive gun chase, they must had had some kind of a plan at some point.
Anyway, this meandering about leads to some nice seems in a cemetery and they eventually find their way to a strange and morbid castle where every sign of a person seems to be a dead person, until they encounter a strange fanged woman playing the organ.
Turns out, there’s vampires about!
This was alright, not too exciting, the characters weren’t particularly interesting or fleshed out (the old vampire was certainly the best one), and the red-tinted scenes of the vampire’s minions mauling ladies in the dungeon seemed a bit excessive. But it’s worth a watch (to me anyway) for the visuals of the scenes in the cemetery and the nighttime ceremony.