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What did you watch on this Halloween week? (27/10-02/11)


I hope you had a good one!

My week:

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998): I really liked this movie when I was a teen and I got a man crush on Josh Hartnet who wore the same kind of necklace I had! Plus my boy from Third rock from the sun, Joseph Gordon-Levitt made a great appearance. The big problem with this movie is that you have to go through half a dozen cheap-shot jump-scares of random people running into each other before, about an hour in, the real terror begins. And once this terror begins, there is about 0 to 1 scary moments. Overall: this is the Halloween movie of my generation and I like it, especially the first 20 minutes but I can understand people saying that it’s a not-so-good movie. My rating: 6.5-7/10

The crow (1994 TV): This is a real fucked up movie. First things first; it’s strange that it’s the first time for me to see this movie because my brother had a T-shirt that I wore when I wanted to look cool and he owned the movie and told me crazy s**t about a guy who got killed making it. But the years passed and it faded like an old memory in my head and now, as I finally got around to watching it, I realized that Bruce Lee’s son actually died shooting this movie and they had to patch holes with CGI and what not. Now the craziest thing of all is all the innuendos and insinuations concerning life and death in the script. It makes his character even creepy and his death even more peculiar and spectacular. A great movie and a greater tragedy...: 8.5/10

The strangers (2008 TV): Normally, I enjoy horror movies that don’t involve super-natural but this was bad. It sucked big time and that’s about all I can say. I love Arwen and she has some of the most kissable lips in Middle-earth but yeah, this movie sucks. 4/10

The Conjuring 2 (2016 TV): Well see, this one was good! They managed to pull me in what could have been just another possession/haunted house horror film and I was hooked! It was my first experience with the Warren’s but I’ll be sure to track down all of their work. Maybe I will give Annabelle a second chance after all… (see next review) My rating: 7.5/10

Annabelle (2014 TV): I watched it a whole hour. It was as much as I could get and I doubt it was about to get better. I would rather have seen the doll move instead of just sitting there all the frickin’ time, at least it could’ve been funny. 1/10

I Frankenstein (2014 TV): Normally I watch this kind of movie for the action and the special-effects and the story is secondary. Well in this case, The CGI is so bad that the weak-ass story that was offered was the high point of the movie and it was not enough for me to stick around longer than 40 minutes. 1/10

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1. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This was my first time seeing it.

2. Death Ship. Good until the last act, when the movie kept jumping in continuity.

3. House of 1,000 Corpses. Was thoroughly entertained and thought this was better than Lords of Salem.

4. Shutter Island. Pure crap. So angry I wasted my time with this one.

5. It Follows. Same thing. One of the biggest wastes of time of my life.

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Did you like Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

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I liked it but wasn't really blown over by it. I appreciated the many interesting cool shots (the low angles, the close up on the girl's eye, etc.) but I was a little surprised by its status as a groundbreaking cult classic that inspired so many movies. I was left thinking, "Why is this the one that started it all?"

See, everyone credits it as the "first" slasher film, but the Haunted House of Horror came out years before (1969) and was more groundbreaking and violent. Having seen that film, I was unimpressed by TCM, although it was very artistic.

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I love the realism behind it. Boone was coming back from the dead and it didn't take 100 gun shots to kill everyone. And the fact that it was low budget and had that grainy look adds to the mood.

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Unfortunately, I didn't see the "grainy" version, but the super duper restored version where they overdid it on the color saturation. I've never seen the unrestored version, but I could tell that what I saw wasn't true to the film.

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I also saw TCM for the first time 2 weeks ago. It was well made.

Shutter Island was good but when you already reesd the book it does not have the same impact I guess.

It follows was disappointing.

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My problem with Shutter Island is that although it was beautifully shot, it shamelessly ripped off of other mind bender movies. Because of this, I was bored senseless, since I already knew what was going to happen at every plot point. If you've seen Angel Heart, Wicker Man and Jacob's Ladder, then you've seen the movie.

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Greetings!

My ratings of what you watched:
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later 7/10
The crow 8/10
The strangers 6/10
The Conjuring 2 8/10
Annabelle 8/10
I Frankenstein 6/10

My ratings of what I watched:
Silver Bullet (1985) 7/10
Island of Death (1976) 7/10 (this movie was crazy!)
Thinner (1996) 7/10
All Hallows’ Eve (2013) 6/10
The Lighthouse (2019) 8/10 (a special friend sent me two movie passes so I got to see this for free!)
Batman: Gotham Knight (2008) 7/10
Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010) 8/10

I also signed up for Apple Tv+ streaming service and watched:
The Morning Show (first 3 episodes) 8/10
Ghostwriter (first 7 episodes) 8/10
Snoopy in Space (all 12 episodes) 8/10
See (first episode) 6/10
Dickinson (first episode) 8/10

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island of death is quite a movie. trashy, incoherent, unconscionable goat treatment - but i love it and am so sad that it's no longer on shudder for me to watch any time.

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I bought it on iTunes for $4.99.

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None of yours but Lighthouse caught my curiosity.

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The fourth episode of 'Sharp Objects'. It's well made but boy is it a grubby and extremely unpleasant story. Very fragmented narrative too.

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too many flashbacks and red herrings i thought.

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I am too far in to abandon it now but I am hoping it will start to make more sense in the last four episodes. It gets points from me for showing female characters in an unflattering way for a change, and still more for having been written by a woman in that light. It's a wonder the radical feminists and snowflakes didn't shut it down.


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Hi!

I never heard of sharp objects.

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I rewatched bits of:

Hocus Pocus
Adams Family
Adams Family Values
I Know What You Did Last Summer

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Good throwback week you had there!

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i've never seen the crow. i've almost streamed it a dozen times, but i always seem to settle on something else.

i agree with your takes on strangers & annabelle. it seems like lots of people like the strangers, but i think it's dull & really unimaginative. hush & you're next are films in somewhat similar home invasion styles that are a billion times better, i'd say.

i really like that conjuring film.

my week:

tabloid (2010) 3.5 errol morris doc on the truly bizarre story of a beauty queen who goes really off the rails.

i'm 20 minutes in, & i've already heard enough insane things to be the basis of a full length movie.

what are the next 70 minutes going to bring???

well, things did calm down a bit after that initial data dump. but it's still a hell of a story. ridiculous & silly, but made me feel sad. mostly for her. she's a kook, no doubt, but we're not the authors of ourselves, & i genuinely feel sorry for her i guess.

the highwaymen (2019) 2 for some unknown quirk of my brain functioning, i queued this up without doing even a cursory look at its metacritic or letterboxd rating, something i almost always at least glance at before diving into any film.

i thought it had received a lot of praise. & i spent a good 100 minutes getting more impatient & thinking 'what is it people like about this thing?'

& finally i looked it up and found out that nobody actually seems to like it all that much.

that is an 'own goal,' i suppose.

it's very boring.

tucker and dale vs evil (2010) 4 every movie bad guy should have a popped collar.

carrie (1976) 4 yay for those bitches getting what they had coming to them.

teen girls are monsters.

return to horror hotel (2019) 1 10th grade creative writing assignments have more inventiveness.

raging bull (1980) 5 he's awful, but i wish i was like him, at least in some ways.

body parts (1992) 3 strippers are stalked by a psycho. i almost turned it off when i saw the troma logo (they've burned me so many times), but i'm glad i didn't. this is deeply silly, and definitely boring in parts, but it is also goofy & fun and has some truly absurd moments that made me laugh my gd ass off.

don't usually fancy marilyn types, but the girl is undeniably foxy.

nightmare cinema (2018) 3.5 pretty solid horror antholoy.

story 1 - good fun, weirdly unpredictable. a touch confusing at first, but in a very pleasing way.

story 2 - pretty good. contains a fun little twist. first two stories are ok-ish, in the way you'll expect if you wade through a lot of horror anthologies.

story 3 - a bit too much. heavy on swooping cameras, & rather disjointed. confusing, but not in the weird, fun manner of the first segment. has a argento feel in its style and soundtrack, perhaps.

story 4 - really good. has some nightmarish visuals and story elements that remind me slightly of eyes of my mother. a few lines of dialogue are a bit clunky, but all in all this is the standout of this group.

story 5 - dull & plodding & far too long. & predictable too. you'll have seen it before, you'll see it again. tv movie bland-looking as well.

all told, a mixed bag as is always the case with anthologies. but if you stop watching at the end of segment 4, i think you'll have watched a pretty tight, fun 90 minute feature.

dolemite (1975) 3 it's not great, obviously, but if it was great then it wouldn't be so fun.

wild nights with emily (2019) 2 period dramas & poetry are things i do not enjoy or care about.

but i gave it a try because i love molly shannon, & i think amy seimetz is at minimum always watchable.

but i was so bored. that's on me, i'm sure. there's nothing wrong with it. i just didn't care. i don't care about poetry.

all hallows eve (2013) 3.5 i gave this a slightly pissy review when i watched it last year, but looking at it again, i now declare last year's version of damosuzuki to be a tasteless fool, because this is really quite fun.

the second story underwhelms me still, but otherwise i had quite a good time watching this, and think that art is the only clown i've found that is truly creepy. the last segment & the wraparound conclusion are quite good in particular.

it's good, last year's me!

american psycho (2000) 2 first re-watch since the year it was released.
i still don't like it all that much tbh. usually i'm happy to go along with the crowd, pile on the train praising this film or that film.

but i just find this far too on the nose.

equating ruthless, predatory wall street types to serial killers is not great satire, no? it's just a boring caricature.


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the blackcoat's daughter (2015) 3.5 mystifyingly, i only gave this a 2.5 when i last watched it. i don't know why, because it's quite good. it's long on atmosphere & short on story, but that atmosphere is great. weird & unsettling & mysterious. it doesn't quite add up to much, depriving you of the kind of satisfying mental crunch that comes from experiencing a complete story, but there's lots & lots to admire in it.

five easy pieces (1970) 4 i'm not rich, but i kinda knew where this guy was coming from.

conquest (1983) 3 young man with a magic arrow goes on a quest...i think? murky & ugly to look at, dark at times to the point of being almost impossible to follow visually, and if you can figure out who these people are and what they are doing, you have it together in a way i don't.

yet i mostly found this kinda fun. weirdly enjoyable.

halloween pussy trap kill! kill! (2017) 2 filling your movie with foxy & delightfully skanky looking women, making two of them gay, then giving us almost no sex or nudity seems like a terrible tease.

pretty bad, on the verge of parody, but it has a few fun gore moments.

dolemite is my name (2019) 3.5 loads of fun. if you treasure 70s exploitation or diy amateurism in general, you'll find lots to enjoy here.

fyi, quite a few dolemite/moore films are streaming on tubitv. watching the first dolemite will definitely add a bit to your enjoyment levels.

parasite (2019) 4.5 even though i'd been told that it would hold surprises, i was still pleased by how much i was surprised. go in to see it as cold & unknowing as possible.

the devils (1971) 4 ken russell's dramatization of a 17th century french catholic priest's trial for possession. like the other ken russell films i've seen, this was very visually flamboyant, extremely extravagant, amps turned to 11. unlike my previous streaming experience with this film on shudder, criterion has nicely added subtitles, allowing me to understand what all these people & their heavy uk accents are saying.

people who fancy cultish films & mental cinema will find something to enjoy here.

the evil dead (1981) 5 the only flaw in this movie that i can find is that i haven't figured out a way to masturbate to it.

yet.

burning bright (2010) 3 pretty good contribution to the animal (tiger in this case) vs human thriller genre. it's fairly tense & exciting at times, & the girl is very very foxy.

the sadist (1963) 4.5 square teachers are tormented by a goon & his wonderfully trashy girlfriend.

every time i revisit this, i become more & more convinced of its greatness.

it's tight & compelling & frightening.

arch hall jr is a bit much, granted. if the bad guy hadn't been quite so cartoonish, this might have been perfect.

but the square teachers are perfect & sympathetic, & the bad guy's girlfriend is delightfully skanky.

my favourite 60s b movie.

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I’ve never seen the sadist yet. I’ll add it to my list.

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i absolutely love it, & if you have any kind of soft spot for films like this, i think you might dig it quite a bit.

it's streaming on tubitv.
https://tubitv.com/movies/9396/the_sadist

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You crazy Damo! Always a fun read.

Tucker and Dale Vs Evil: 7.5/10
Carrie: 7/10
Raging Bull: 9/10
American Psycho: 6.5/10
The Evil Dead: I saw both for the first time last year and much prefer the sequel/remake. 6/10

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Halloween: H20 is kind of a Scream rip-off, but still the best Halloween sequel, in my opinion.

Apparently no movies this week, unless I was too drunk to remember last weekend.😐

TV Shows:

-Relic Hunter - marathon

-The Bold and the Beautiful - marathon of very old episodes

-Twilight Zone (1959) - marathon

-Murder She Wrote - marathon

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Drink on!

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I watched

Addams Family Values (1993) - still an entertaining watch for the one-liners and chemistry between Julia and Huston, even if their characters are sidelined for much of it. The plot is super thin: new baby, evil nanny bewitches Fester, and the kids go to summer camp - that’s it. The other thing I noticed this time is how much Joan Cusack overplays it, she irritated me. Harmless fun overall 3/5

And four episodes of AHS Freak Show because it’s one of the few seasons I’ve missed. It’s hovering between three and four out of five so far.

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Addams Family Values (1993): been too long but creeped me out as a child

AHS: only saw the firts 2 seasons bu Asylum was one of the greatest tv experience of my life.

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Asylum was peak AHS for sure. I’m still going with Freak Show, the other half hates it so I can’t binge 😤 I have a few issues with this season myself, it’s not my favourite so far.

I also squeezed in:

The Mule (2018) 3.5/5
The Terminator (1984) 4/5
Miss Potter (2006) 2/5
Fractured (2019) 2.5/5

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I bought The mule for 2$ a week ago.
The terminator 7.5/10 (im a child of the 90's and the sequel is one of my fav)

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What you watched:
The Crow (1994)
I saw this when it first came out and I really did not think much of it and I caught it again recently and I must say I have a greater appreciation for it. “Now the craziest thing of all is all the innuendos and insinuations concerning life and death in the script. It makes his character even creepy and his death even more peculiar and spectacular.” You really hit the nail on the head here. :)

What I watched:

Execution Squad (1972)
Run of the mill Eurocrime film about a broken judicial system that allows criminals out on the street who start turning up dead at the hands of an unknown vigilante squad. Mario Adorf gives a standard performance and Cipriani a good score. Only recommended for genre fans.

Plague (1979)
A deadly bacteria escapes a lab and quickly spreads while scientist try to stop it. I saw this as a kid and there is a scene where a child who was my age finds a dead bird and buried it. Next you see the kid twitching on the ground until he dies. This damn scene scared the crap out of me then and is still disturbing viewing it now. Overall the movie is a predictable 70’s contain the germ flick.

Death Wish 3 (1985)
Bronson takes on hordes of punks after his friend is killed. You can’t help but pull for the mild mannered Paul Kersey and the oppressed aging citizens of this ghetto as they wage urban combat against the punk gang that rivals the end of Saving Private Ryan. Well, it may not be that good but Bronson does dispatch crowds of punks with a varied arsenal that includes a belt fed .30 cal. Highly recommended for all!

The Great Silence (1968)
Corbucci directed this beautifully shot western starring Klaus Kenski with a great score by Morricone. This story about bounty hunters just did not live up to the hype to me.

The Bermuda Triangle (1978)
Ship finds a doll floating at sea, brings it aboard and mayhem ensues. Flat acting by Hugo Stiglitz this time. Not recommended.


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None of yours for me this week mister

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Not even Death Wish 3? I’m starting to think your kidding with me. 🤣

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I wish!

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