| Virtual All Night Horror Movie Marathon 5 (11.02.24 - 11.02.24, 4 movies) |
| Date Viewed | Movie | Director | Notes |
| 11.02.24 | Sightseers | Ben Wheatley | Grant graciously invited me to his virtual all-night horror movie marathon tonight. He and his friends did it up with putting a handful of movies on google drive sans titles and providing a zoom/slack to watch together and discuss each movie. I thought it was a cool idea then immediately fucked it all up. I downloaded the movies then decided to start early because there was no way I was gonna stay up long enough to watch them in sync with everyone else, except I clicked the wrong file and recognized the movie as this, then realized this was supposed to be the fourth movie not first. So then I started the first film which I didn't recognize but I kept thinking about how I knew this one and would have to make it through three others before watching it, which would likely make me pretty tired which is how I saw this to begin with... so like I said. Fucked it all up. So now i'm writing this in a text file so I don't post it to my journal and spoil anyone else (not that I think anyone else reads this)... sigh. Anyway, now that I've seen a bunch of Ben Wheatley's other work and his career has kind of taken a turn, I always thought back to this as his best movie. Maybe this is just the one that most closely matches my sensibilities though since his more overt psychedelic stuff never really landed with me. It also didn't help that I saw most of his movies at Fantastic Fest where nothing put me to sleep faster than a slow-moving movie with psychedelic music. Hah, I remember trying so hard to stay awake during High Rise just to hear that Portishead cover of Abba's SOS. So it's good to see this again like a normal movie on a Saturday afternoon. I still liked it although it didn't blow me away. I think much of the charm of the movie is the surprise during the first watch of discovering what the film is. I didn't remember any of the details of the film really, didn't remember how it ended, so I was along for the ride for sure. I also picked up this time Tina's dog training skills come into play a couple times dealing with Chris. I liked it... but I dunno, you can see Wheatley's psychedelic stuff start in with the drum circle and once you get it then the movie kind of turns into a comedy version of Natural Born Killers in a way. Something's keeping me from singing its praises too loudly. It's probably down to it being my second viewing. |
| 11.02.24 | The Appointment | Lindsey C. Vickers | It's pretty fun to just get a movie and a "watch this" and go in completely blind. Doesn't happen too often for me... I suppose you could do it any time you wanted by picking a random title on Netflix or something like that... the closest I used to get was picking something up from the video rental shelf but even then I had a box and a title to go from. Here thanks to Grant and his friends I get to do that four times today. The first, out of order by accident, was a chance to see a movie I'd liked the first time again after a decade. This one, supposed to be first, I knew absolutely nothing about. It's British, 80s, pretty low budget. It felt like a TV movie at first but I think that's more down to the 1.44:1 aspect ratio and quality of acting from the girl, but anyway the movie stars Edward Woodward (the police inspector from the OG Wicker Man) and... the premise of the movie is that he has an appointment and therefore has to miss his daughter's recital which she is very upset about. But... I guess she's also gifted and so MOST of the movie is the night before where both parents have strange dreams and dogs appear in the house and then the next day Woodward takes just the most relaxed long commute I've ever seen. Maybe I missed details about how far he had to go or why he was going wherever he was going, but dude pulled over to read the paper in a restaurant, pulled over to phone his wife, lost his watch and turned around to go get it. And we are subjected to all of it. I guess you call it atmosphere, and this is one of those movies where, at the end of it once it's over and the is-it-really-just-ninety minutes is over you can distill the movie down to a few scenes and think back fondly. For one, the beginning is quite nice with this official-sounding voice-over talking about some terrible crime and creepy ambiance as a girl walks through the woods before a dummy of her is pulled so violently and forcefully into the woods that her shoes come off. They really yanked that thing! It kind of reminds me of the end of the first Nightmare on Elm Street when Freddy yanks a dummy of Heather Langenkamp's mother through the window of a door. You know it's a dummy, but just seeing something move that fast is still enough to startle you. And similarly, at the end of the movie when the event you've spent all movie waiting for, trying to stay awake for, when it finally happens it is pretty intense! Probably makes up for the seventy minutes of droning and sleeping and pacing and checking of watches that precedes it. There's not a ton of movie here, which is not uncommon at all with most low budget or exploitation movies, so that feeling creeps in. If I was watching at an Alamo I'd be waiting for the wait staff to drop checks to let me know there's only forty-five minutes left. The actress who plays Woodward's wife is ok but the daughter is agonizing. Every line of dialogue is just painful, contributing more to a made-for-tv vibe. And I'm not joking, really this movie is a dinner, a couple dreams, and a car ride. But, it does end well and that's the most important thing. Between the first few minutes and the last, there's enough here to like. I don't think I would've chosen to see this but that makes it all the more fun to sit down and watch blind. |
| 11.02.24 | Shocker | Wes Craven | I haven't seen this since 1989 (or whenever it hit home video). I remember I rented it and watched it twice because I was an idiot kid. I didn't even love it the first time, I just remember being like "well I rented it, might as well give it another run." All I remember is the plot being all messed up because there has to be a whole mini-movie before he dies then a whole mini-movie after he dies so it was like two movies in one. I did not remember that it basically becomes The Hidden for a while. My memory was he went straight to electricity-town... but I think i'm thinking of that one Gremlin in Gremlins 2 instead. Getting ahead of myself. This movie is about a serial killer who is sentenced to death via electric chair, but as a last request he gets a TV in his room and with some black candles and jumper cables makes a deal with... the tv gods: killer: "Come on! Give it to me!" TV God Lips: "You got it, Baby!" So he doesn't die after he fries and instead keeps killing semi-indiscriminately via Hidden-possession for a while then he beams into a TV satellite and... I dunno, I guess he dies after the whole town's power goes out and the main kid turns off an exploding burning tv with a remote. Oh, and he blows on it like a smoking pistol. I would say this movie is a textbook examples of going off the rails but it at no point was ever on any rails for it to go off of. This is a rails-less movie through and through, a complete mess. I remembered it being goofy but... yeah. I think the only scene I liked was when Peter Berg calmly explains the rules to the possession-hopping evil spirit of the shocker guy to his college football coach as the assistant coach (Ted Raimi) dresses his gunshot wound. That's at the 1-hour mark. Everything else is kinda ridiculous. This is a cocaine movie right? I mean 89 is pretty late but it's still technically the 80s. I'm just kidding... i think this just goes to show that even a Wes Craven, who made the shocking and vile Last House on the left and clever iconic Nightmare on Elm Street and postmodern milestone Scream can both write and direct a steaming pile of shit. "It's like Elm Street but with TV!" I think the whole movie was made just to do the sequence where they're fighting amidst the content of the channels, which admittedly is a novel idea and they put them in Headbanger's Ball heavy metal type footage of nuclear test bomb footage and riots and whatnot. I think that idea was more cleverly explored with more humor a few years later with a John Ritter movie called Stay Tuned (I should re-watch this. it could suck now. I haven't seen it since it came out) and a few years after that with Pleasantville. It's a stand-out here though... you just have to slog through so much stupid shit to get there. A barca-lounger coming to life, John Tesh, Peter Berg oh man Peter Berg. I forgot he was the main kid in this. This was very much still actor-berg and I really can't stand him here. So much berg. It's hard to believe he's only 5 years away from Last Seduction here. Ok that's enough Shocker. It was a fun spectacle to marvel at. Probably didn't need to see it again but that's ok. Maybe I'll watch it again in another 35 years. The one I'm actually curious to give another watch is People Under the Stairs. I remember that one being really crazy. |
| 11.02.24 | Oddity | Damien Mc Carthy | Never heard of this one before either and wound up loving it. This is an Irish horror movie about a Doctor's wife alone in an old house that they are renovating when a patient appears at the door telling her to let him in because he saw that someone's inside with her. Later, her blind psychic twin (i know, but wait) visits to suss out what really happened. She brings a man made of wood like a golem to help her. So it's a little bit ghost story, little bit witch story, little bit horror, little bit revenge. And that's all in basically one location with basically three or four actors. Very economical, very efficient, very effective! It ends well too which is great. They're very different movies but I was reminded of when The Descent started at one of the Butt Numb-A-Thons that I attended. No pomp or circumstance, the movie just started and entertained the crap out of us. This was the same way for me. It's the best possible outcome for an event like this. I don't know if I just missed this or it hasn't had a ton of publicity... oh I see, it played sxsw this year and won the midnighter audience award. Cool. Anyway, I liked this quite a bit. It lets the audience get ahead of it a tiny bit (basically my metric on that is if i "figure it out" or what have you, then it's pretty blatant because I'm usually a dud about that stuff while I'm watching the movie. I still have shame for spending, like, the entire movie not realizing that one of the kids in Goodnight Mommy was a ghost.) But ahead in a good way. SPOILER WARNING I love it when movies position the audience to root FOR the ghost. It's so much fun and there's nothing quite like getting revenge from beyond the grave. This one's a tiny bit different because the ghost is actually more forgiving than the blind witch twin sister but it's the same vibe. So delicious. And the ending of this is great, him getting the haunted service bell, knowing he can't not ring it. Just so great. |
