Horror Movies

[Bear 1817]

Child's Play - I love the original and didn't really expect much from this reboot/remake, but I actually liked it quite a lot. Didn't like how Chucky looked in the movie, but everything else was mostly well done and cool. A bit more comedic than the original, but not so much that it goes into horror comedy territory. Thumbs up! And Aubrey Plaza is amazing.

 

Satanic Panic - Low-budget horror comedy that really worked well throughout. Not too keen on the ending, but everything else was really awesome. Fun shit. Felt very silly and 80's.

[Bear 1817]

Blood of the Tribades - A slow-burning homage to sleazy and trashy 70s euro lesbian vampire movies like those made by Jesus Franco and Jean Rollin, and also with a bit of influences from Hammer's own The Karnstein Trilogy (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil). But the way it's written and filmed is clearly inspired by Jean Rollin, whom I personally love. The main difference here is that it's a very pro-feminist, is about self-identity and stuff like that. But unlike movies from Jean Rollin where the vampires were evil and very, very erotic, this changes that and make the vamps sympathetic and nice, and the males evil basically. And it really works. My main problem with this movie is its modern and digital look, and some of its effects. But the modern look really killed a lot of the fun for me. But recommended for fans of Jean Rollin's surrealistic, dreamy, slow and offbeat lesbian vampire movies.

 

Haunt - A Saw-type of movie set in a haunted house that was surprisingly cool. Could've been a bit more graphic and violent, but it was really fun nonetheless. Recommended if you like Saw and shit like that.

 

The Phantom of the Opera - Hammer Horror's Phantom of the Opera from 1962. Not as good as the Universal Monster PotO, and it's far from Terence Fisher's best movie, but it's really good nonetheless. I'd say it's on par with the 1942 version. But it feels a bit darker and more horror-esque than that version, but both are equally good. The music scenes however are superior in this film, and the overall visual style and choices of colours are gorgeous!

[Bear 1817]

The Curse of Frankenstein - One of Hammer Horror, Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Hazel Court's many, many masterpieces of horror cinema. Probably my favourite adaption of Frankenstein. It's mean, dark and raw for its time, it's beautifully acted by all the involved, it looks gorgeous, it's beautifully shot and the sets are stunning. Fantastic from start to end, and the atmosphere is top notch!

 

The Revenge of Frankenstein - Hammer  Horror's sequel to The Curse of Frankenstein is, believe it or not, close to as good, if not as good, as the original. Christopher Lee and Hazel Court is gone, so is much of the rawness, but it's a really classy movie and director Terence Fisher is on top of the game as usual, as is Peter Cushing. This does tell a better story than the first one tho, and it looks as gorgeous. Amazing sequel with amazing atmosphere!

 

The Evil of Frankenstein - For the third entry in the series Terence Fisher is gone and Freddie Francis has taken over the direction. Which weakens the film a bit, but not much as he's also really talented. Peter Cushing is, as always, beyond amazing, the movie looks fantastic, atmosphere is spot on and so on. It's just amazing!

 

Frankenstein Created Woman - Terence Fisher is back, Peter Cushing continues his spree as Frankenstein and so on. On the fourth movie they start to try something different. Whereas the other movies are about the physical aspect of the body, this movie is all about the metaphysical dimensions of life. The weakest of the four first, but still an amazing movie and very interesting. 

[Bear 1817]

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed - A step up from Frankenstein Created Woman, and this time we get a new side of Frankenstein. He's as charming as always, but we see a much darker side of Frankenstein. A side which is really fucking dark. Peter Cushing is as amazing as always, and the rest of the cast is very good too. Great atmosphere, amazing ending!

 

Annabelle Comes Home - I didn't expect much from this, but as the second Annabelle movie was good I just had to check it out. And it was surprisingly good. Felt very old school, but super simple and straight-forward. Good atmosphere. Good, 80's-esque horror fun.

 

Bloodline - A dark, Dexter-esque horror movie with a truly excellent Seann William Scott in the lead. Dark, twisted, cool, stylish. I liked it quite a lot.

[Bear 1817]

Crawl - Alexandre Aja showed some proper talent early in his career with High Tension, and a decent remake of The Hills Have Eyes and the more than excellent Piranha 3-D, but he's missed more than he's hit. Crawl however is a return to form. It's, for most part, very predictable and you'll know how it'll play out, but it's a really intense and suspenseful creature feature survival horror. It had me on the edge of my seat for most of the movie, and that's proper good like. Recommended!

[Bear 1817]

Draug - Swedish horror movie that disappointed me quite a lot. At times it was really well-made with great costumes, greats sets, an interesting plot and so on. But the acting was, for most of the movie, pretty poor, it looked too digital and cheap, the many attempts at humor were awful and so on. Shame, as this could've been something amazing.

[Bear 1817]

Three from Hell - Rob Zombies latest film, the last film in the trilogy featuring House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, and one of the very last films of legend Sid Haig. So how was Three from Hell? It was better than House of 1000 Corpses and on par, if not better, than The Devil's Rejects. It feels a bit like three movies edited into one, and it really works. It kinda feels like a hybrid between 70's exploitation and video nasty movies, and a 90's Robert Rodriguez movie. Totally motherfucking awesome!

[Tokage 5930]

Been on a bit of a zombie kick lately

 

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie: This one's just great. Can't believe it's so underrated! Feels like you hardly ever see it mentioned anywhere when people talk about euro-zombie films, but in my opinion this one might actually be better than Fulci's much more well-known Zombi 2. The zombies in this one don't look as rotten and grimy as they do in some of the later Italian zombie flicks, but they still manage to be creepy enough all the same. Even though there's comparatively not as many of them as there will be in future zombie movies, the ones that are there still present more than enough of a threat. The whole cemetery sequence is extremely atmospheric and very well done. In fact, I'd say the entire movie's just overflowing with atmosphere, and the rural England setting was a great choice all around. It also helps that the acting in this one's generally of a much higher level than what you'd usually find in your average schlocky zombie flick. The male lead is incredibly charismatic and really helps to carry the film. If you haven't checked this one out yet and you just so happen to be into zombie films, definitely give it a go.  

 

Zombie 3: Another one of Lucio Fulci's many undead films, this one's an INCREDIBLE mess. Fulci apparently camped with health issues while working on this movie and two other directors had to step in to shoot more footage in order to 'finish' the film. In general I found this one an enjoyable ride, but it definitely feels extremely trashy. This is not so much a film to enjoy cuz it's genuinely good, but rather one to watch simply for the extreme trash and cheese factor. The acting is INCREDIBLY hokey, the dialogue feels awkward more often than not and the plot feels like an incompetent mashup of every major zombie flick that came before it. On top of that, it feels like there are no consistent 'rules' as to how the zombie infection works - at one point you have zombie birds which are then never seen again, there's the usual slow shambling zombies, but there's also seemingly more intelligent ones able to talk, use tools and all that shit. It feels like every single director had their own idea of how the zombies should work and they just spliced it all together without care. Nevertheless, despite all its obvious flaws, the movie IS an enjoyable watch. The tropical setting works well, and in spite of the high camp factor I generally enjoyed the film's aesthetic. The action never really lets up for the most part, so you definitely won't get bored as the film moves from one  ridiculous setpiece to the next. 

 

The Dead Pit: Another one that scores high on the cheese factor. It starts out as a film that feels like it owes more to Nightmare on Elm Street 3, feeling like a supernatural slasher more than anything for the first 2/3rds of the film before suddenly turning into a full-blown zombie movie in the last third. It feels like for every nice atmospheric moment the film has scattered around here and there, there had to be like two extremely corny moments to provide some kinda  counterbalance. The asylum setting is nice and provides a good variety of goofy side-characters, but pretty much all of them are paper thin. The lead actress is nothing to write home about acting-wise, but she does spend like at least a good quarter of the movie running around half-naked in an outfit that must surely go against any real life asylum's dress code, so there's that for compensation. The kills are nice and gruesome, especially once the zombie mayhem breaks loose, but it does feel like it takes AGES before it gets to that point. Entertaining enough for sure and hard to hate, but it does feel like another case of a director trying to do waaay too many things at once.

[Bear 1817]

5 hours ago, Tokage said:

Been on a bit of a zombie kick lately

 

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie: This one's just great. Can't believe it's so underrated! Feels like you hardly ever see it mentioned anywhere when people talk about euro-zombie films, but in my opinion this one might actually be better than Fulci's much more well-known Zombi 2. The zombies in this one don't look as rotten and grimy as they do in some of the later Italian zombie flicks, but they still manage to be creepy enough all the same. Even though there's comparatively not as many of them as there will be in future zombie movies, the ones that are there still present more than enough of a threat. The whole cemetery sequence is extremely atmospheric and very well done. In fact, I'd say the entire movie's just overflowing with atmosphere, and the rural England setting was a great choice all around. It also helps that the acting in this one's generally of a much higher level than what you'd usually find in your average schlocky zombie flick. The male lead is incredibly charismatic and really helps to carry the film. If you haven't checked this one out yet and you just so happen to be into zombie films, definitely give it a go.  

 

I wouldn't say it's underrated as it's considered both a cult movie and a semi-classic, but I would say it's incredibly overlooked. Those who sees it, and obviously love the genre, usually end up loving it, but not too many have actually seen it.

 

In general I think the entire Spanish horror scene is incredibly overlooked. Especially the 60's and 70's spanish horror movies. They weren't among the country that produced the most movies, but whatever they did produce were usually of really high quality.

[Bear 1817]

Verónica - I've seen a lot of hype surrounding this movie, but truth be told I didn't get it. It wasn't bad or anything, but far from as good as people say. Well-acted, good cinematography and so on, but I thought the atmosphere was lacking, and whenever it got close to building some proper atmosphere it ruined it with a very, very cheap jump scare. It was really fucking predictable as well. It was OK, but that's it. I don't get the circlejerking around Paco Plaza at all. Overrated as fuck.

 

Also, whoever consider this movie scary should just fuck off right away.

[Bear 1817]

The Giant Spider - Director, writer, producer and editor Christopher R. Mihm have made 14 movies over the past 14 years on budgets ranging from 3500 to 10000, and all of the movies belongs to his own, so-called Mihmiverse. So we're talking low-budget movies that's made rather quickly, just like in the good old days of cinema. As as it happens all of his movies are tribute to different types of movies or directors from the past. The Giant Spider is a tribute to the 1950's big bug movies like Them!, Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis and so on, and, despite a few shortcomings, it really delivers the goods. It's black and white, but does look a bit modern, but the special effects and stuff looks very authentic of the era it pays homage to, the story is solid and silly, the acting is fun, albeit amateurish, and the stock footage bad in a good way. But despite the modern, digital look of the movie it still manages to feel authentic, and that in itself is really damn impressive.

 

I would say that this is top notch! I just have to get my hands on the rest of the movies in the "Mihmiverse". This really is my cup of tea. Awesome stuff!

Edited October 15, 2019 by Bear

[Bear 1817]

Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible - This was an early 2000's anthology horror-comedy series that spoofs popular British horror movies of the 60's and 70's, with emphasis on the comedic side of things, that sadly only laster for one season. Thought this was absolutely brilliant tbh. Really hilarious throughout!

 

Steve Coogan presents each episode as Dr. Terrible, and he also stars in each of the episodes. And he's amazing throughout!

 

And Now the Fearing...  - The first episode spoofs the Amicus anthology movies from the 60's and 70's. It's a solid start to the series, but it's by far the weakest of the six episode. 7/10

Frenzy of Tongs  - Spoofs Hammer Horrors The Terror of the Tongs as well as all the 60's  Fu Manchu film series. This was really damn good, and really fun and silly. Could not stop laughing! 9/10

Curse of the Blood of the Lizard of Doom - Not really sure if it spoofs any movie in particular, but maybe The Reptile from 1966 which was a British/American produced movie directed by John Gilling whow as British. About the level of An Now the Fearing..., which means good but second weakest in the series. Fun tho! 7/10

Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust - This spoofs Hammer Horrors lesbian vampire flicks The Karnstein Trilogy, The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Evil Twins. This was easily among the best episodes. So silly and so much fun. 9/10

Voodoo Feet of Death - Spoofs The Hands of Orlac, and is really fun. Not the best in the series, but it's hard not to enjoy the silliness of it. 8/10

Scream Satan Scream! - Last episode spoofs folk-horror like Witchfinder General, Cry of the Banshee and The Devil Rides Out. This was probably my favourite episode. It's between this and Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust. Really fun, really clever, really fucking silly. Excellent! 9/10

 

I'm really impressed by Graham Duff's writing. It's really fun throughout, and he puts his own twist on it despite spoofing other movies. But his writing is really clever and full of amazing wordplay, especially Scream Satan Scream! 

 

Highly recommended!

 

 

Outpost: Black Sun - 2012 sequel to the very cool 2008 nazi horror movie Outpost. This isn't nearly as good, mostly because it gets a bit silly at times, but the zombies look awesome and it's violent and fun. An inferior but good and entertaining sequel.

[Bear 1817]

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - Finished this cult series today and thought it was truly excellent. This is a horror-comedy that spoofs 80's cinema in general (effects, music, sets, effects, clothing and so on) and it's just fucking brilliant throughout. Hilarious beyond words. This series is a must-see for fans of comedy, fantasy and horror-comedies. Hands down fantastic!

[Bear 1817]

 

 

 

That is so fucking good! I demand the whole fucking song, looped for 10 fucking hours!!! Sooooooo good!!!

[Bear 1817]

Extra Ordinary - Irish horror-comedy that's charming, off-kilter, silly, odd, fun, hilarious, original and really well-made all over. There's a unique warmth and friendliness to the movie that really sets it apart from other horror-comedies. Loads and loads of heart from beginning to end. I can see this becoming a cult movie. Two thumbs up!

[Bear 1817]

Pandorum - Cool deep space action-horror that's like an action-inspired version of Alien, Event Horizon, Forbidden World and so on. When it's just straight up sci-fi horror it's really damn good with fantastic claustrophobic atmosphere and so on, but it really loses some of its edge during the action parts as the action just isn't good enough. But it's quite the underrated movie if you ask me. The monsters looked a bit dodgy as well. But overall I liked it, but not as good as I remembered it as being.

[Bear 1817]

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum - South-Korean found footage horror done very, very, very right. It doesn't offer anything new, and in many ways it feels like a re-imaging of Grave Encounters, which to me is fine. It took a film I liked very much and improved every single aspect of it. It feels more realistic and it comes off as way, way more intelligent. Thought this was a superb found footage horror. Familiar, but creepy and atmospheric as hell!

 

As Above, So Below - A little above average found footage horror that really falls through towards the end. It just tried to be a bit too deep and clever for its own good. Would've been so much better without the supernatural side of it. Wasted potential.

[Bear 1817]

Digging Up the Marrow - Adam Green, director of three out of the four fantastic Hatchet movies, directed, wrote and stars in this found footage horror comedy. Ray Wise, who is amazing, plays a fictional character, while Adam Green and some of the others play fictional versions of themselves. It's kinda original for a found footage movie, but it's clearly inspired by Nightbreed and it totally works. I thought this was amazing!

 

Cabin Fever - Re-watched this and gotta admit that I was wrong about it. This was actually way, way, way better than I remembered. You got the standard, stereotypical 80's characters, but it's all fun, silly, over the top, gory and gross. Watched the uncut version this time and it clearly made a huge difference. Really added to the fun of the movie. Surprised!

 

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever - This too is better than I remembered, albeit not nearly as good as the first one. Setting isn't as cool, the characters are worse and less silly, but it's all fun anyway. Loads and loads of blood and gore.

 

I'm a huge fan of Ti West, and compared to his other movies this is very disappointing. But he did request to have his name taken off this as the producers went on to film additional scenes and recut the movie to the point where he didn't feel as if it was his movie anymore. Would kill to see a director's cut of this. Because the potential is great.

 

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero - Easily the worst of the three. Awful characters, slow, boring for a long time. When it gets going it gets kinda fun, but it takes too long to get there and the movie feels way too serious for its own good. Meh.

 

Girl on the Third Floor - A different type of haunted house movie. First 2/3rd are way too slow for its own good, but I will give the movie a huge plus for great practical special effects. Shame there's not more of it throughout the movie. The main character was annoying as hell too, albeit very well-acted. Ending felt a bit rushed too, which is a shame. But pretty good nonetheless.

[Tokage 5930]

Digging Up the Marrow was really fun. Definitely noticed the strong Clive Barker influence in the plot as well but it wasn't so excessively borrowed that it took anything from the film itself. Overlooked one for sure!

 

Recently watched Tombs of the Blind Dead and hot damn - if all Spanish horror is this rad I might need to start digging deeper into that shit fast as well. This was great! Awesome atmosphere and a lovely setting. The titular Blind Dead looked great as well.. pity they didn't appear as often as I'd hoped, but when they do pop up you know shit's gonna get good. The only downside was that the rip I watched had a kinda fucked audio track, with the audio switching between the English dub and the Spanish version every couple of minutes at random, but that isn't really a fault of the movie itself. Are the sequels worth watching?

[Bear 1817]

The sequels are all amazing, with the exception of one of them. But overall they're all bloody amazing.

 

I wrote about Spanish horror movies and how they're really underrated in general not too long ago. I really recommend digging into the Spanish horror scene, especially from the 60's, 70's and 80's.

[Tokage 5930]

Which one's the exception? Based on what I've seen so far 'Night of the Seagulls' looks quite great so please tell me it's not that one lol

 

Watched Messiah of Evil this Halloween. GREAT movie! Loved it even more than I expected I would. Very nightmarish vibe to the whole thing - I feel like Lynch must've  been influenced by the film w/ some of his works cuz the film kinda has the same energy his works do at times. The supermarket & cinema scenes are both absolutely KILLER. I don't often find myself getting creeped out by movies anymore lately but both of them worked cuz they felt so similar to the shit I sometimes dream about. Really recommending this to anyone who hasn't seen it yet!

[Bear 1817]

The Ghost Galleon is the worst, but even that one is cool. 7/10 imo.

[Jigsaw9 6783]

1 hour ago, Tokage said:

Watched Messiah of Evil this Halloween. GREAT movie! Loved it even more than I expected I would. Very nightmarish vibe to the whole thing - I feel like Lynch must've  been influenced by the film w/ some of his works cuz the film kinda has the same energy his works do at times. The supermarket & cinema scenes are both absolutely KILLER. I don't often find myself getting creeped out by movies anymore lately but both of them worked cuz they felt so similar to the shit I sometimes dream about. Really recommending this to anyone who hasn't seen it yet!

Agreed, excellent movie! For me it's right there next to Carnival of Souls in the "great but less-spoken-of creepy oldie horror" category.

[Licio123 181]

Finally watched The Babadook for this Halloween. Very good; it stems more from psychological distress than an horror entity IMO, but still a harrowing experience. Essie Davis was amazing!

[Tokage 5930]

20 hours ago, Jigsaw9 said:

Agreed, excellent movie! For me it's right there next to Carnival of Souls in the "great but less-spoken-of creepy oldie horror" category.

I remember enjoying that one as well! Coincidentally that one also kinda gave me some David Lynch vibes when I first watched it. I guess it's cuz it also kinda has the weird dream vibe going for it.. Need me more like that