The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[colinr0380]

I don't know if this is the proper thread for this question.

I've kind of ignored or not kept track of the several box set releases over the last several years of B-(or C-)movie grindhouse/drive-in auteurs' collected works and am trying to work out right now a list of what those were/are. So far I've taken note of the Andy Mulligan, the William Grefe, the HG Lewis, the Bill Rebane, and the Ormond Family, in addition to the less ambitious set release(s) of Paul Naschy. What am I missing? (Not counting here Mexico Macabro, which I've pre-ordered of course).

Ray Dennis Steckler and Al Adamson are the other big Severin releases. For UK B-movie directors there is Indicator's "Bloody Terror" set devoted to Norman J. Warren, and the upcoming 88 Films release of Pete Walker's films.

[Rayon Vert]

Thanks Colin! Seeing the names, I now remember seeing those threads, but was having difficulty knowing where to look to get all that info gathered again. Pete Walker I'd definitely taken note of on my personal blu-ray release calendar, and your posts about the director got me interested (I did see House of Whipcord recently, downloaded with a bunch of other films from an online source of 70s grindhouse films). It's that prospective purchase (and the Mexico Macabro set) which is making me consider perusing some of these other sets, if they're still available. Does anyone care to share their personal rating of these, from best/must-own to worst/avoid?

[Rayon Vert]

I guess the full list would also have to include Michael J. Murphy.

[therewillbeblus]

If I resubmitted a list, that Norman J. Warren Indicator set would feature prominently, and though I'm still only like 1/5 of the way through the Indicator box, there are at least two Michael J. Murphy films I'd consider as well.

[Rayon Vert]

That's good to know, TW. The Warren set is OOP, but the films are available individually I see.

[therewillbeblus]

That's good to know, TW. The Warren set is OOP, but the films are available individually I see.

To be fair, I think I love them way more than most, but I've documented why extensively in its thread starting here

[colinr0380]

This is quite a nifty 'liminal horror' short: The Backrooms.

This seemed more indebted to the kind of indie horror video games Markiplier has made a good career out of playing online (no idea why these started showing up in my algorithm either), in that we’re in a weird 3D render of a quasi-liminal space, punctuated by jump scares and hidden details that constitute “lore” (plus a dash of the finale to Cube at the end). As such, I don’t really recognize this as a short film at all, just a demo for a game you can’t even play!

These “Backrooms” videos and their imitators have been consistently popping up in my algorithm since watching the above linked and morbid curiosity/boredom leads me to watching some, which leads to more appearing and so on. That said, I actually really enjoyed this one, which contains no stupid monsters or artificial spookiness and arrives at something weirdly unsettling nonetheless, like navigating a space created for humans by someone who doesn’t quite understand their subject or how we use spaces/places like this

I am not sure whether these are Backrooms related or an entirely new project (especially now that the creator is apparently signed up to a Hollywood-produced movie of the Backrooms that may prevent them doing any more shorts in that series for a while, and the way that these new videos are grouped into an all-new playlist), but this "Oldest View" video recently popped up on the Kane Pixels channel that does the unsettling liminal space-meets-urban exploration thing without resorting to some of the more obvious jump scares.

SpoilerShow

With perhaps a fun nod towards the Dan Bell "Dead Malls" series at the very end!

[therewillbeblus]

I Know What You Did Last Summer: So this is a very stupid and dull horror movie, but in revisiting it for the first time in like twenty years, I was able to appreciate a few things the film attempts to do (or, more often than not, accidentally postures at), even if they don't amount to much.

It's thematically interesting for this kind of slasher to bring revenge beyond karmic cause, and into a more allegorical scenario for one’s internal burden of guilt being insufferable and inescapable. I like how the one-year time jump passively depicts the effects of a traumatic event breaking down normal social and motivational functioning with pervasive depressive symptoms, at least if they're not completely repressed like Phillippe. But there's also a reading of inverted-allegory that devalues the specific incident entirely, where an extremist narrative must be concocted to detail, process, and perhaps justify that loss of 'self' that comes with the broader jarring transitional phases of emerging-adulthood development, like going off to college.

Isolation is a significant theme here - the constructed 'togetherness' one feels prior to that 18y/o-jump into independent adulthood (i.e. imposed order of a family system, familiar surroundings, peers going through the same stages, a track of forced K-12 education mapped out, etc.) is obliterated by that change, isolating the individual and demanding that they suddenly practice unlearned skills to adjust to this uprooting from the nest. The movie isn't very direct in naming its key socioeconomic component, but it's there: Between students, the degree of flexibility they feel towards their role in determining their life path, and birthing resentment when they perceive fatalistic trappings next to the kids with options; the sacrifice of morality due to the male members of the quartet attempting to preserve their resources (the rich boy protecting his status and the poor one knowing that to tell the truth will mean cashing in his last ticket to opportunity); the privileges of these youth 'getting away with it' while the lower-class victim and his partner are forgotten about, the murder not even investigated properly with care by the law...

However, the film goes to great lengths to show two ironically antithetical truths: That trauma and associated empathic traits transcend class (barely, but Gellar’s part in particular supports this, and we know Hewitt is financially privileged as well from Prince Jr.'s comparative statement early on) and yet classist resentments cannot be equalized by these commonalities. The film even posits that perhaps they shouldn't be - that privileged classes might not 'deserve' the catharsis they seek because the systems still favor them.. That this discomfort is not the burden of 'other'd demographics to take on, just because the rich have been conditioned towards a more egocentric worldview and been given less skills to cope with aggressive humbling forces. This in particular is a wonderfully ironic turnaround from the pattern of typically-rich communities refuting the sociopolitical need for lower classes to receive resources, labeling them as "handouts" because of bootstraps-logic - so when the vulnerabilities of dominant groups struggling with inexperienced sufferings are exposed, the shoe's on the other foot!

There's a lot of this existential distress and subtle recognition of socially-contextual barriers to acceptance hinted at by the dialog, particularly amongst the well-meaning and sympathetic central duo of women between Gellar and Hewitt. Gellar's acute straw-grasping utterances during a car ride at the midpoint feel like an exhibition of the Valium Demographic, begging to 'please just make this dysphoria go away with an easy fix'. In response to Gellar's desperate propositioning of a simple solution, Hewitt says, “We’re not that powerful,” and when Gellar decides upon a delusion, “If that will help you sleep at night.” This lack of humility is at once revealed without compromise, and sympathized with given those lack of skills. In a vacuum, it's sad that without as many exposures to accepting life on life's terms, there's been no recognition of a higher power to help these youth salvage their energy. This is a culture that's been expected by their parents and school systems to critically think themselves into locating solutions at all costs, and so there's no spiritual outlet to admit limitations and truly connect over that shared human deficit.

To go back to the earlier point about an inverted allegory, the film can serve as a both cheeky and sincere exposition of privileged youth's conditioned burdens, where the world’s narrative revolves around their egocentric guilt/trauma, and so they need external vehicles to aid their own therapeutic self-actualization by serving up fatal consequences in order to help them find catharsis, connect to their peers, validate that engagement with foreign vessels (lower class folks, mystical occurrences that can't be sized up and solved through a liberal education's critical thinking skills) is scary and unsafe, and so on and so forth. But they also don't exist in a vacuum, and the movie's objective removal of that kind of surrogate involvement paints a larger picture of these ideas, hence the imprudent tone common in these slashers that, by design, invalidate the Big Problems of the central characters' myopia with a You're Not That Important prescription of death and destruction. This slasher specifically feels like it's ripe to metaphorically resemble a solipsistic nightmare, glanced at from an oscillating perspective that joins the protagonists and studies them in a right-sized degradation.

But... it's mostly just a dumb movie, that's not doing anything particularly compelling with these ideas. Kinda a shame - if there was ever a modern mainstream slasher to do this well, this seems to be the one with the most ingredients sown into its narrative fabric. At least Gellar gives a surprisingly great performance, though, especially during her best scene where she manages to get away with calling a cop a "little shit-stick-mayberry-ass reject!"

[colinr0380]

Part 3 of "The Oldest View" is up

Apart from generally being impressed by the skill on display here (EDIT: and that we get more lovingly detailed close up shots of tactile carpets after his most famous Backrooms video! I'm kind of hoping that aspect may become Kane Parsons' key aesthetic motif!), the more specific question I have Is that I think there may be something behind the tree near its base at the 2 minute 50 second mark. Something that looks suspiciously like the bunch of flowers being made at the end of the first video in the series, and which may have been something that was entirely missed by Wyatt approaching the tree from that angle?

EDIT: By the way, whist this video is a CG creation it was apparently based on a real mall! Which was wiped from the face of the earth (i.e demolished) last year. Which I guess explains the impressive sense of the geography of that entire location being extremely well thought through (I particularly love that we go down one corridor during the 'first exploration' of the area that seems to enticingly briefly show a pathway off of it and then at the mid-point just after the first chase sequence we see Wyatt darting across the corridor from one shop and into the pathway! That's a great set up and pay off moment that isn't too heavy handed and makes the area feel more 'real'), and suggests that the "Dead Malls"-vibe from the end of the previous video was an intentional one!

[TechnicolorAcid]

Part 3 of "The Oldest View" is up

Apart from generally being impressed by the skill on display here, the more specific question I have Is that I think there may be something behind the tree near its base at the 2 minute 50 second mark. Something that looks suspiciously like the bunch of flowers being made at the end of the first video in the series, and which may have been something that was entirely missed by Wyatt approaching the tree from that angle?

Colin if I may recommend 2 series that are sorta in the vain of Kane Pixel, I would like to bring up Midwest Angelica and Vita Carnis, both fantastic little projects similar to the way Kane makes horror that are both fantastically directed works, especially Angelica which sadly doesn't have nearly as much recognition as it deserves.
Also of note is the fantastic Muse ARG which is probably the most well planned, well directed, and in depth piece of content maybe in the entire history of the Internet. Been following the creator, Alex Bale for a while and was with this project since the start and it's crazy that it all started from Spongebob theories. There's a massive document compiling everything here which should help you out: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kuf ... 89XeI/edit

[Mr Sausage]

In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994)

My least favourite of Carpenter's so-called Apocalypse trilogy, but a movie I return to from time to time. I think this is my fourth viewing now. I was more aware this time of how comic the movie is, especially Sam Neil's performance and line readings. He delivers everything with comic timing. The movie's essentially a black joke. Where it falls short is, funnily, in the horror. There are some fun ideas, like finding oneself in a fictional town dreamed up by a horror writer, but so little is done with it and none of it develops any real tension, let alone scares. No, the film works better as a genre version of A Serious Man, with Sam Neil as the cosmic victim of a pulp horror writer endlessly visiting indignities on him in a bid to crack his sanity. Clearly part of Carpenter's downward slide in the 90s, but the most enjoyable of his late-period work.

Children of the Corn (Fritz Kiersch, 1984)

The movie has entered the pop culture lexicon without anyone seeming to hold any affection for it. The story's not told correctly, right? It shouldn't start with the outbreak of violence, it should start with the couple finding the deserted town, observing that only children seem to live there, and slowly discovering what happened and why. That way there's mystery and dread. You foreground the inciting event, that's half the mystery gone, with the only reveal left being the pretty stupid one that the kids are in a religion that worships some burrowing monster in a cornfield. The movie is packed with plenty of naff ideas that go nowhere, like the little girl who can draw the future (reminded me of the pointless fortune-telling ghost in Pet Semetary, so I'm going to blame King for that one), an internecine religious struggle that just kinda happens, and a random voice over from one of the kids. This is a bland movie.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (Jonathan Levine, 2006)

Almost immediately a more interesting movie than any other mid-2000s slasher, and it keeps that up until a twist that isn't so much a narrative shock as conceptual clarity. Other members in the thread have explained how the ending works much better than I could. I'll only add that I thought the film's direction let it down somewhat. Some of the stylistic choices show their age (the quick cut shaky stuff), and the decision to ape the visual style of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is weird. The desaturated colours and harsh, nerve-wracked atmosphere fit oddly with a script that's playing a game with its genre and making a satirical point. The style should be more fun and colourful, I think, and there should be a bit more humour. I actually think the style of modern Gen-Z horror would be a better fit, eg. Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, Sissy, or the Fear Street films, all of which play with this genre in similar (but less incisive) ways, but do so with more visual colour, verve, and awareness of the absurdity of the material. Mandy Lane is more interesting conceptually than it is in execution. You can think about it for hours, but I don't see any reason to rewatch it.

Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001)

A bizarre, sleazy, impossibly violent, mostly incoherent gangster story about the ultimate masochist in a collision course with the ultimate sadist. So much of this movie doesn't work: the horrid special effects, the poorly told story, the excessive length, the absence of character or explanation. It's a mess. The movie is really a collection of strange, vivid moments that never fail to conjure something you've never seen before (usually horrible). It's hard to know in what context to even judge this movie. I can't call it sui generis since it's based on a manga, but it's a singular experience.

[colinr0380]

Thanks for the recommendations TechnicolorAcid and I'll check them out!

MrSausage, regarding strange and vivid moments in Ichi the Killer I particularly liked that it may be the only film where the villain purposefully deafens themselves for the climactic fight so that they don't have to hear the hero's incessant crying!

[domino harvey]

I haven’t seen the movie adaptation but as I recall, King’s short story does what you propose (and has no seer children) - the couple arrives in the abandoned child town and are lured into the corn field while various hints at what’s going on become clearer

[therewillbeblus]

Maybe they felt compelled to switch things up after Who Can Kill a Child? already did it perfectly

[Mr Sausage]

MrSausage, regarding strange and vivid moments in Ichi the Killer I particularly liked that it may be the only film where the villain purposefully deafens themselves for the climactic fight so that they don't have to hear the hero's incessant crying!

I called Ichi the Killer a singular experience, but having just watched Shinya Tsukamoto's Tokyo Fist, I now see a lot of Tsukamoto in Miike's movie, from the hurtling shaky-cam style, to the ugly city-scapes, to the sadism and masochism, to the bodily transformations, to the horribly violent male characters often reduced to weeping messes. So it's appropriate that Miike cast Tsukamoto in his movie, an acknowledgement of the debt. I didn't see the connection originally because the Tsukamotos I was familiar with, the Tetsuo films, are so cyberpunk in their themes and imagery that you don't immediately think of them when seeing Miike's images.

[colinr0380]

There looks to be a really strong connection to be made between the films of Shinya Tsukamoto and Takashi Miike. Bringing up Tokyo Fist is a really good point since that also co-stars Shinya Tsukamoto's younger brother Koji as the other guy in the love triangle of that film, which was his first film role. He went on not just to appear in more of his brother's films (Bullet Ballet, Gemini, Nightmare Detective and Killing) but straight after Tokyo Fist appeared in a small role in Miike's astonishing exploitation mash-up straight-to-video film Full Metal Yakuza (along with the Iron Man himself, Tomoroh Taguchi, playing the mad scientist!), and then goes on to appear in Miike's Ley Lines, Silver and Agitator as well.

So there is a lot of crossover there. Miike for example directed the making of documentary for Shinya Tsukamoto's 1999 film Gemini, just before Tsukamoto turns up as an actor in Ichi the Killer. And I have a suspicion that the same kind of approach to seeing how another director is working by collaborating with them on a project is probably behind why Tsukamoto many years later auditioned for a role in Scorsese's film Silence (and played an important role in the film, along with the lead actress in A Snake of June!), much to the surprise expressed by Scorsese in the making of for that film that such an auteurist seeming actor-director would be wanting to do such a thing in someone else's film!

[domino harvey]

It being Friday the 13th, I indulged in La cité de la peur (Alain Berberian 1994), a cult French comedy spoof of slasher films set at the Cannes film festival. I knew co-star/co-writer Alain Chabat had a sketch comedy background, and this is the only film output of Les Nuls, the troupe he belonged to. It's not hard to see why Chabat ascended far higher than the other two members of the troupe here, as he has star presence that the other two simply do not posses (and Dominique Farrugia in particular is quite awful). The story here seems ripe for Arrow or Vinegar Syndrome et al to license, and I'm rather surprised they haven't yet-- someone is killing the projectionists for an anti-communist horror movie called Red is Dead using the same sickle and hammer killing device of the film's villain. The parody of slashers opens the film and it is... broad, and a grim portent of things to come. I didn't realize going in that this was going to be in the ZAZ mode of throwing everything at the bloody wall, and like the worst of the ZAZ imitators, the hit to miss ratio gets to be rather pathetic as the film wears on. That said, early on there is one inspired extended gag riffing on the ubiquitous miniature golf set found in every executive's office in countless movies and TV shows that gave me false hope that this movie could deliver additional big laughs derived from good comic ideas such as this. No such luck. As always in these sort of films, there's a few seemingly random cameos (Jean-Pierre Bacri, Eddy Mitchell, an inexplicable non-sequitur walk-on by Dave, &c) that add very little beyond distraction. Add to this a lot of body function humor (I hope someone told poor Bacri what he was walking into when he agreed to his cameo) and by the end I felt I'd seen more than enough of the troupe to not want to see more.

Fun fact: On a side note, I learned that Chabat and Farrugia rewrote Wayne's World's dialogue for the French dub... I'm guessing Wayne and Garth are a lot more focused on bathroom humor in that version

[TechnicolorAcid]

So I have recently realized that because I’m too busy nowadays catching up on classics I don’t really watch that much horror so basically I’ve created a challenge where I shuffle a bunch of horror films and pick what comes up first.

ENTRY 1: BACK FROM THE DEAD
My first film of this challenge is a film from Tasmania and boy what a way to start.
The basic premise is a guy named Corbett is doing some tests where his mind is sent back to his past life as a serial killer before he himself becomes a killer. The film is obviously low budget and I’m pretty sure an SOV film but this is a bolt of energy compared to what’s typically labeled under that genre. The film is technically a comedy, even if a lot of it is crass though it has it’s moments and everyone is generally giving great performances and having fun. The gore is actually very inventive and almost gives off an early Peter Jackson vibe in how it’s executed on top of the silly little absurdities put in for good measure like the little tapeworm that comes out of the Mom. Speaking of the Mom, I got really huge Glenda Jackson vibes from her which just added some bonus points for me as I do love me some Jackson-esque performances. The film has this high energy as mentioned earlier which makes it so even when it gets a bit unfunny (something I’m sure most people who watched it would agree on), it never gets to the level of something like Queen Kong where jokes last forever.
Overall, recommended to those who are especially fond of Australian/New Zealand comedies and/or those who don’t mind a brigade of fart jokes and sounds every minute and willing to look past it to appreciate the genuine talent of the crew.

[TechnicolorAcid]

ENTRY 2: HAND OF DEATH
When viewing this film I couldn't help but just think, "So this is where Joe Dante got his idea for Mant in Matinee." Like honestly it's the same structure except the guy doesn't turn into a giant ant by the end of it, he turns into something sillier. It's almost like if the antagonist from The Curious Dr. Humpp got measles and had his eyes stung by bees. I will say this though, it's not boring. It held my attention, it kept me entertained, and it had an interesting monster. The problem though is that it did all those things poorly. Like the rampage that the monster goes on (supposedly since he does next to nothing during the big climax) is filled with so many hilariously bad moments that ruin any sense of suspense because John Agar is just often times stumbling about like he's in a Three Stooges short, in fact he even lies on the beach and takes a nap for a little bit. It's a primary example of so bad it's good and to me it doesn't even drag at all because it's under an hour and everything does seem to have something in it, which believe me is harder than it seems. Recommended with friends or a drink.

[brundlefly]

Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001)

A bizarre, sleazy, impossibly violent, mostly incoherent gangster story about the ultimate masochist in a collision course with the ultimate sadist. So much of this movie doesn't work: the horrid special effects, the poorly told story, the excessive length, the absence of character or explanation. It's a mess. The movie is really a collection of strange, vivid moments that never fail to conjure something you've never seen before (usually horrible). It's hard to know in what context to even judge this movie. I can't call it sui generis since it's based on a manga, but it's a singular experience.

I treasure the run at Miike I made c.2001-5 and that I made it without any context. It was easy enough to assume (wrongly, probably, but wrong assumptions are their own entertainment) someone making material that unhinged that quickly was channeling unchecked id, and picking through the pulp of his ongoing splat was gloriously unsettling. Ichi was the one film -- even more than Visitor Q, a nasty bit of business -- my system rejected. Would not allow myself to relate to any of it on any level and was shocked it was one of his his more embraced works. It's the one I've always felt I should give another go while also being sure I never wanted to go there again.

Someone needs to pluck Gozu out of his catalog and give it the high-profile love it deserves. Saw that in a theater and the climax inspired one of the most enjoyably prolonged mix of audience responses I've ever heard.

[Mr Sausage]

I remember in the mid-2000s that Ichi the Killer, along with Audition and Noe's Irreversible, were huge with film bros. I have vivid memories of having to endure film bros wasting 15-20 minutes of my introductory film class in university with their awed, breathless summaries of why cinema will never reach the pinnacle of those movies.

[TechnicolorAcid]

I remember in the mid-2000s that Ichi the Killer, along with Audition and Noe's Irreversible, were huge with film bros. I have vivid memories of having to endure film bros wasting 15-20 minutes of my introductory film class in university with their awed, breathless summaries of why cinema will never reach the pinnacle of those movies.

I wonder how much they’d like Visitor Q then

[therewillbeblus]

I remember in the mid-2000s that Ichi the Killer, along with Audition and Noe's Irreversible, were huge with film bros. I have vivid memories of having to endure film bros wasting 15-20 minutes of my introductory film class in university with their awed, breathless summaries of why cinema will never reach the pinnacle of those movies.

In college I remember frat bros finding the rape scene in Irreversible “insane,” showing fellow men for shock value and laughing at the disgusted response - of course because it didn’t hit them in a triggering sore spot. So I showed one of those kids AntiChrist with no prep, and he was not pleased with me to say the least

[TechnicolorAcid]

Okay so I just realized something about Hand of Death, it has a Stooge in it, Joe Besser, meaning that my initial passing comment about the monster walking like he’s from a Stooges short just very ironic. Also apparently this was lost until 2002 and the more I think about this movie the more I wonder, maybe it should of stayed lost.

[colinr0380]

You know that AI generated burger ad that we talked about in the Chris Cunningham thread?. The channel is back with an even more disturbing burger-based video.