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Post by guttersnipe on Jun 22, 2022 0:55:04 GMT -8
Well, hello! I'm just about to disappear with my work for the next three months (until the start of October, appropriately enough), but I'm just swinging by to drop some ratings down for the horror stuff I've been watching lately. I am aware that I've actually barely posted all year, but hopefully on the other side of this season I should have more to contribute.
The Return of Dracula (1958, Paul Landres) - 6/10 The Evictors (1979, Charles B. Pierce) - 6/10 Killers from Space (1954, W. Lee Wilder) - 2/10* The Dybbuk (1937, Michal Waszynski) - 6/10 Dark Tower (1987, Freddie Francis and Ken Weiderhorn) - 4/10 Teenagers from Outer Space (1959, Tom Graeff) - 3/10 Phobia (1980, John Huston) - 6/10 Little Monsters (1989, Richard Alan Greenberg) - 5/10 Mr. Boogedy (1986, Oz Scott) - 3/10** Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021, Kirk Thatcher) - 5/10 The Gamma People (1956, John Gilling) - 4/10 LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales (2021, Ken Cunningham) - 5/10 Vampir (1971, Pere Portabella) - 6/10 Zombi Child (2019, Bertrand Bonello) - 6/10 The Flesh and Blood Show (1972, Pete Walker) - 4/10 Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (1985, Satoru Ogura) - 3/10 Speak of the Devil: The Canon of Anton LaVey (1993, Nick Bougas) - 5/10 Haunts of the Very Rich (1973, Paul Wendkos) - 4/10 Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019, Timo Vuorensola) - 5/10 Zombeavers (2014, Jordan Rubin) - 4/10 Deerskin (2019, Quentin Dupieux) - 6/10 Censor (2021, Prano Bailey-Bond) - 6/10***
* How on Earth is Billy Wilder's brother this incompetent at filmmaking?! ** About fifty minutes long but it felt like it aged me horribly *** Always a tad disappointing when a film manages to work its way under your skin only to go full Wes Craven silly in the final stretch.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 22, 2022 5:24:22 GMT -8
I seem to be in the minority here (notably since the film has garnered something of a cult following in recent years), but I really hated Little Monsters. Genuinely one of the most unpleasant movies I've ever sat through. The entire film was just so cruel, gross, and horrifying - elements made worse by the fact that it was ostensibly marketed to children. Probably fair to say that kids' films in the '80s had a harder edge than they do now, but Little Monsters just felt mean-spirited and needlessly disturbing for the sake of it. (Howie Mandel's ridiculous poor man's Beetlejuice didn't help matters.)
Also, did not realize there was a 1930s film called The Dybbuk. That may warrant further exploration.
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Post by guttersnipe on Jun 27, 2022 14:42:14 GMT -8
I'd genuinely never heard of it until it just cropped up on TV a couple of weeks ago. I guess I'm a little warmer on it than you because I quite liked the idea of using the 'monsters under the bed' trope as a kind of hub system between two worlds, which struck me as quite Calvin & Hobbes (and rather took the edge off the whole roofie-esque idea of manipulating people as they sleep), plus I liked the art direction to an extent (or at least the colours). But yes, Howie Mandel is hard. to. take. as an emotional or dramatic lynchpin, and as a movie itself its only modest objective is to try and satisfy those kids whose parents let them down by not taking them to a Spielberg/Donner/Zemeckis/Dante picture instead. And with that minor accolade in hand, I at least gave it a higher score than recent TSPDT mainstay Toni Erdmann in the same month, a grindingly long Kaurismaki imitation that apparently breathed second life into German cinema, although I had no idea it was allegedly dead.
Oh yeah, The Dybbuk is pretty interesting, and didn't realise I was at least familiar with its concept on a tertiary level from the likes of the parable that opens A Serious Man. I wouldn't claim I knew exactly what was going on (an absence of subs right at the start didn't help), and I can only assume it's regarded as one of the best Yiddish-language films ever made because that's a slim category, but it occasionally evokes genuine silent Expressionism, which helps counterpoint some of the typical sound problems of its era.
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Post by Jeremy on Jun 27, 2022 18:50:40 GMT -8
I remember seeing the preview for Little Monsters on VHS when I was quite young, and being rather terrified by it. Now I was definitely something of a finicky child, and scared by a lot of movies when I was young, but in this case my precautions were probably a good safety mechanism. Had I watched Little Monsters as a kid, it would have probably traumatized me for years. (I did not subject myself to the film till I was a teenager, and even then the creepy imagery and abundant cruelty under the guise of humor.) I will, however, grant that casting Fred Savage as the boy and Daniel Stern as his father is a cute little Wonder Years in-joke.
Jewish-themed horror films seem pretty rare (the only one I've seen is Keith Thomas' The Vigil, which crafted a foreboding atmosphere despite its reliance on loud jump-scares). But it makes sense that one of the pioneers in the genre would center on a Dybbuk, which is probably the most notorious demon in Jewish lore. A little Googling tells me there have in fact been a few Dybbuk movies made over the decades, including a 1960 film from Sidney Lumet(!) as well as a recent version produced in India.
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