Post by loverofbeers on May 26, 2013 2:25:18 GMT -5
So I watched four "The" movies: The Changeling, The Thing From Another World, The Woman, and The Phantom of the Opera.
The Changeling (1980). So some bloody Limey-Canadian named Tony won't shut up about this movie and how he watches it every year, but this same man boycotted watching the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre until he was in his mid-thirties: Lame, lame, lame. So I figured this movie would be a silly little creampuff (Creampie?) of Horror, and lame, lame, lame. Nope, good and smart freaking stuff, and George C. Scott was perfect in his performance. Anyway, this was a freaky movie, and actually the most "chilling" Horror movie to me on a personal life-experience level, that I have ever watched. I felt like I understood that haunted house more than any other film's hauntings, and expected nastiness to follow, and it did in ways I predicted, but this was not a predictable movie at all, I just expected things to happen that did. Maybe the paramount person responsible for this film's story had been haunted in the same way that I was years ago, but you don't forget details and feelings, let's say. You see, I was always a skeptic about ghosts even though I did live in a fucked up haunted and evil house once at the age of twenty-five. Took me five years to realize that it was most likely as haunted as my friends, roommates, and neighbor across the street (a seventeen year old girl the sleazeball one of the roommates was waiting to bang someday) claimed for years. It took me working in a bar haunted with a pestering, pussy-ass, pathetic, loser of a poltergeist, five years later, to make me a believer in ghostly things and things that "go bump in the night". The bar's ghost made it's presence known to the staff on a fairly regular basis and targeted me, annoyingly and not at all scary to me, almost weekly at times over a three year period, because as one manager put it so sweetly to me when I complained about "The Knife Incident" that had occurred the previous night, "You are an asshole to the ghost". I almost was stabbed by a bouncing knife in an empty room and that was her response, not that I was crazy, because she too had had many experiences there, but she "liked" the ghost, and probably vice versa, while I on the other hand frequently disrespected and relieved myself in the spot where he hung himself, thus I was the asshole, but that is a story for telling in more detail another day and time, but I swear on my left testicle, 100% real. Period. My house that was haunted, well, now that I am familiar with the term "Shadow People" from listening to Coast to Coast and realizing that was what my decent long-hared hippie roommate was seeing, well it still spooks me fifteen years later. I hate that house and I fear it. I swear I can see children being killed someday by that house itself. "The "Shadow People", well one of roommates described them as black and somewhat shapeless and chattering/giggling in his doorway at nighttime while he would try to fall asleep. Let's just say of all ghost movies, this is the only one that reminded me of that old house I lived in, both of my roommates experiences and mine, and it's actions towards all that walked in. I do believe buildings can be evil, and murderous in intent, now. Well, that is why "chilling" would be the word for The Changeling as a film for me and the ghost's dislike of people inside it's home. Been there, done that, and it sucked and scarred. But I recommend this great movie, but I do not recommend living in the striking red-brick house at the corner of 32nd and Harris Park around the campus area of UT Austin. Bad Mojo.
Second I watched The Thing From Another World (1951) which was produced by Howard Hawks during the period just a few years after the press coined the term "Flying Saucer", and mysterious events, possibly, occurred during WWII including The Battle of Los Angeles, the reporting by BOTH Allied and Axis pilots of "Foo Fighters", balls of fire flying around their cockpits and pacing their planes, and stories out of Aztec and Roswell, New Mexico as well as thousands of other American citizens' sightings in the skies. This was the period right after the first atomic explosion - The Trinity Shot in New Mexico, two weeks later followed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a few years later, like rubbing salt in a Japanese atomic wound, the American atomic testing in the Bikini Atoll and a Japanese fishing boat named "The Lucky Dragon" nearby that was not lucky at all that day, but that is our history, parts of it bad. The Atomic Age's birth out of the ashes of war was like some great and fiery Phoenix rising up to the sky ushering a scary new dawn to humankind, and it changed how people viewed science fiction and Horror. So the period of the Universal Monsters ended with a great boom and mushroom cloud in the sandy New Mexican desert and was replaced with invading aliens from Mars, radioactive mutants, giant irradiated insects and spiders, incedibly shrinkng men and growing women, being replaced by a replicant pod, and the real bone-deep paranoia that was the lovely 1950s in America and our patriotic "red scare" years (kinda what we let happen to us again post 9-11 as a nation living and controlled by fear). It also changed comic books and led to "The Marvel Age of Comics" aka The Silver Age in the comic industry by the first years of the sixties with Mutant teens, irradiated spider-men, space travel and cosmic rays, and a green behemoth born from a Gamma Bomb explosion in the lonely deserts of New Mexico, like a living green, walking, smashing, Atomic Bomb. "The Bomb" changed how we viewed the world and the contents of our nightmares. Anyway, enough American history. John Carpenter payed homage to this film in Halloween, and I'll take that as a recommendation from a Master of Horror. I did prefer John Carpenter's The Thing, but this classic movie is just that, a Classic. There are differences between the two movies starting with location, here in the Arctic of Alaska, not Antarctica, which right there makes the set more desolate and thus more effective as a suspenseful 10 Little Indians-style extraterrestrial nightmare in Carpenter's masterpiece. Both movies have a scene with the camp's dogs. This one does have a woman in the cast, not needed, but I guess movie execs wanted light romance and racy yet funny comments between the hero of the pic and a lady. Anyways, the monster-alien is surprisingly effective in the fifties original, but barely seen clearly until close to the end. Like John Carpenter, I recommend this movie.
Than I watched The Woman (2011) which I heard discussed recently by two cool Canadians talking Jack Ketchum movies, one being a big fan of Jack Ketchum's books. I found this movie more disturbing than The Girl Next Door. It is a sequel to Jack Ketchum's Offspring, this time co-written with Lucky McKee, directed by McKee, and co-starring his favorite actress from his wonderful Horror film, May, Austinite Angella Bettis, my favorite modern day Scream Queen. If you understand what "The Cow" was from Offspring, well, the third dog in this movie tops that. Wow that was a viscous and horrific animal. And a swerve that amps up a movie that to begin with is already amped up. The movie is about a captured wild cannibalistic woman tied in a basement by a successful lawyer and kept by his family in order to "civilize" her. That lawyer couldn't civilize shit, he is a monster. And like his mom says, the son is a "little rapist". I will say no more, but this is a fucked up and dark movie that I dug and recommend, and like The Devil's Rejects manages to turn the antagonist into the protagonist by the end of the tale. And Jack Ketchum is not a misagonist, his titular character is treated with respect and awe by him here. I first heard of this movie in a review, and I take my four points from that review from DreadCentral.com (I think) which I remember as being just shocked, disgusted, and horrified. Gonna have to look up that review now, dammit. But I think I read the negative and first review for the movie there. 4 points
Last, I watched The Phantom of the Opera (1962) from Hammer in jolly good England. I like all the Hammer films I have watched so far, and judging purely on the basis of Horror itself, they are superior and more gory than the earlier Hays Commission censored Universal films. Somehow before the days of Video Nasties, the Brits were kicking ass and taking names in the Horror genre via Hammer and Amicus. This is now my second Phantom film watched after watching the Lon Cheney 1925 classic in the last year or so in one of these competitions. I prefer that movie's make-up, but prefer everything else from the Hammer version just like Dracula and the Mummy films. But I still prefer Universal's Wolfman and Frankenstein Monster efforts, but I do dig the Hammer versions too, but barely less. Recommended by a Limey-Canadian and some guy known as "Kingstown" Ted. An atmospheric classic.
Drinking a Sierra Nevada Summerfest Crisp Summer Lager, and that makes me hoppy. And cheesy. Cheers!
LOB-27
The Changeling (1980). So some bloody Limey-Canadian named Tony won't shut up about this movie and how he watches it every year, but this same man boycotted watching the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre until he was in his mid-thirties: Lame, lame, lame. So I figured this movie would be a silly little creampuff (Creampie?) of Horror, and lame, lame, lame. Nope, good and smart freaking stuff, and George C. Scott was perfect in his performance. Anyway, this was a freaky movie, and actually the most "chilling" Horror movie to me on a personal life-experience level, that I have ever watched. I felt like I understood that haunted house more than any other film's hauntings, and expected nastiness to follow, and it did in ways I predicted, but this was not a predictable movie at all, I just expected things to happen that did. Maybe the paramount person responsible for this film's story had been haunted in the same way that I was years ago, but you don't forget details and feelings, let's say. You see, I was always a skeptic about ghosts even though I did live in a fucked up haunted and evil house once at the age of twenty-five. Took me five years to realize that it was most likely as haunted as my friends, roommates, and neighbor across the street (a seventeen year old girl the sleazeball one of the roommates was waiting to bang someday) claimed for years. It took me working in a bar haunted with a pestering, pussy-ass, pathetic, loser of a poltergeist, five years later, to make me a believer in ghostly things and things that "go bump in the night". The bar's ghost made it's presence known to the staff on a fairly regular basis and targeted me, annoyingly and not at all scary to me, almost weekly at times over a three year period, because as one manager put it so sweetly to me when I complained about "The Knife Incident" that had occurred the previous night, "You are an asshole to the ghost". I almost was stabbed by a bouncing knife in an empty room and that was her response, not that I was crazy, because she too had had many experiences there, but she "liked" the ghost, and probably vice versa, while I on the other hand frequently disrespected and relieved myself in the spot where he hung himself, thus I was the asshole, but that is a story for telling in more detail another day and time, but I swear on my left testicle, 100% real. Period. My house that was haunted, well, now that I am familiar with the term "Shadow People" from listening to Coast to Coast and realizing that was what my decent long-hared hippie roommate was seeing, well it still spooks me fifteen years later. I hate that house and I fear it. I swear I can see children being killed someday by that house itself. "The "Shadow People", well one of roommates described them as black and somewhat shapeless and chattering/giggling in his doorway at nighttime while he would try to fall asleep. Let's just say of all ghost movies, this is the only one that reminded me of that old house I lived in, both of my roommates experiences and mine, and it's actions towards all that walked in. I do believe buildings can be evil, and murderous in intent, now. Well, that is why "chilling" would be the word for The Changeling as a film for me and the ghost's dislike of people inside it's home. Been there, done that, and it sucked and scarred. But I recommend this great movie, but I do not recommend living in the striking red-brick house at the corner of 32nd and Harris Park around the campus area of UT Austin. Bad Mojo.
Second I watched The Thing From Another World (1951) which was produced by Howard Hawks during the period just a few years after the press coined the term "Flying Saucer", and mysterious events, possibly, occurred during WWII including The Battle of Los Angeles, the reporting by BOTH Allied and Axis pilots of "Foo Fighters", balls of fire flying around their cockpits and pacing their planes, and stories out of Aztec and Roswell, New Mexico as well as thousands of other American citizens' sightings in the skies. This was the period right after the first atomic explosion - The Trinity Shot in New Mexico, two weeks later followed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a few years later, like rubbing salt in a Japanese atomic wound, the American atomic testing in the Bikini Atoll and a Japanese fishing boat named "The Lucky Dragon" nearby that was not lucky at all that day, but that is our history, parts of it bad. The Atomic Age's birth out of the ashes of war was like some great and fiery Phoenix rising up to the sky ushering a scary new dawn to humankind, and it changed how people viewed science fiction and Horror. So the period of the Universal Monsters ended with a great boom and mushroom cloud in the sandy New Mexican desert and was replaced with invading aliens from Mars, radioactive mutants, giant irradiated insects and spiders, incedibly shrinkng men and growing women, being replaced by a replicant pod, and the real bone-deep paranoia that was the lovely 1950s in America and our patriotic "red scare" years (kinda what we let happen to us again post 9-11 as a nation living and controlled by fear). It also changed comic books and led to "The Marvel Age of Comics" aka The Silver Age in the comic industry by the first years of the sixties with Mutant teens, irradiated spider-men, space travel and cosmic rays, and a green behemoth born from a Gamma Bomb explosion in the lonely deserts of New Mexico, like a living green, walking, smashing, Atomic Bomb. "The Bomb" changed how we viewed the world and the contents of our nightmares. Anyway, enough American history. John Carpenter payed homage to this film in Halloween, and I'll take that as a recommendation from a Master of Horror. I did prefer John Carpenter's The Thing, but this classic movie is just that, a Classic. There are differences between the two movies starting with location, here in the Arctic of Alaska, not Antarctica, which right there makes the set more desolate and thus more effective as a suspenseful 10 Little Indians-style extraterrestrial nightmare in Carpenter's masterpiece. Both movies have a scene with the camp's dogs. This one does have a woman in the cast, not needed, but I guess movie execs wanted light romance and racy yet funny comments between the hero of the pic and a lady. Anyways, the monster-alien is surprisingly effective in the fifties original, but barely seen clearly until close to the end. Like John Carpenter, I recommend this movie.
Than I watched The Woman (2011) which I heard discussed recently by two cool Canadians talking Jack Ketchum movies, one being a big fan of Jack Ketchum's books. I found this movie more disturbing than The Girl Next Door. It is a sequel to Jack Ketchum's Offspring, this time co-written with Lucky McKee, directed by McKee, and co-starring his favorite actress from his wonderful Horror film, May, Austinite Angella Bettis, my favorite modern day Scream Queen. If you understand what "The Cow" was from Offspring, well, the third dog in this movie tops that. Wow that was a viscous and horrific animal. And a swerve that amps up a movie that to begin with is already amped up. The movie is about a captured wild cannibalistic woman tied in a basement by a successful lawyer and kept by his family in order to "civilize" her. That lawyer couldn't civilize shit, he is a monster. And like his mom says, the son is a "little rapist". I will say no more, but this is a fucked up and dark movie that I dug and recommend, and like The Devil's Rejects manages to turn the antagonist into the protagonist by the end of the tale. And Jack Ketchum is not a misagonist, his titular character is treated with respect and awe by him here. I first heard of this movie in a review, and I take my four points from that review from DreadCentral.com (I think) which I remember as being just shocked, disgusted, and horrified. Gonna have to look up that review now, dammit. But I think I read the negative and first review for the movie there. 4 points
Last, I watched The Phantom of the Opera (1962) from Hammer in jolly good England. I like all the Hammer films I have watched so far, and judging purely on the basis of Horror itself, they are superior and more gory than the earlier Hays Commission censored Universal films. Somehow before the days of Video Nasties, the Brits were kicking ass and taking names in the Horror genre via Hammer and Amicus. This is now my second Phantom film watched after watching the Lon Cheney 1925 classic in the last year or so in one of these competitions. I prefer that movie's make-up, but prefer everything else from the Hammer version just like Dracula and the Mummy films. But I still prefer Universal's Wolfman and Frankenstein Monster efforts, but I do dig the Hammer versions too, but barely less. Recommended by a Limey-Canadian and some guy known as "Kingstown" Ted. An atmospheric classic.
Drinking a Sierra Nevada Summerfest Crisp Summer Lager, and that makes me hoppy. And cheesy. Cheers!
LOB-27