Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Trevor]

"Prince of Darkness" (1987)
A Catholic priest (Donald Pleasance) summons a team of University researchers to study a mysterious tube of green ooze that's been discovered in the catacombs of a disused church building. They eventually conclude that the ooze is the distillation of pure evil in liquid form - basically, Satan in a bottle - and it begins to have murderous effects on everyone who's been in contact with it.
John Carpenter apparently considers this bizarre blend of religious horror and sci-fi to be part of a loose "apocalypse trilogy" along with The Thing (1982) and In The Mouth of Madness (1994) - but it's nowhere as good as either of those two. Prince of Darkness spent so much time on talky set up by the time the evil action finally started kickin' in, I was bored and dozing off.
You can safely skip this one, it's one of JC's lesser works for sure.

Banned by our wonderful censor board 

[FatFreddysCat]

"Prince of Darkness" (1987)

Banned by our wonderful censor board 

You didn't miss much. :D They probably did you a favor, haha

[M.10rda]

THE UNDYING MONSTER (1942):
This starts very strong as a 20th century nobleman and his fiancee are apparently attacked by a savage unseen predator outside his estate, and his cute, brassy younger sister ignores the warnings of the servants to remain safe inside, grabs her gun and her dog, and personally drives the carriage  full-speed to the scene of the crime w/ the intent of saving their lives and kicking some monster ass. Unfortunately, THE UNDYING MONSTER devolves quickly from a proto-ALIENS into a mostly standard 40s gothic mystery that (most objectionably) proceeds to complete sideline its badass female would-be protagonist.

I checked this out as it receives a nice review from the Overlook Encyclopedia, which (as I grow older and wiser) should probably become a red flag for me instead of a rec. It's got nice production values and lovely shadowy cinematography but also a willful streak of stoopidity. The inevitable hero is an American (?) forensic pathologist working for Scotland Yard who is whitebread and chowderheaded as hell. (And actually maybe he's not American, maybe he's just a US actor incapable of doing a British accent - the aforementioned nobleman and his sister are definitely British, but she's got an accent and he doesn't, so GOOD JOB, casting director.) The hero also has a female comedic sidekick who gives a quickly grating wacky performance. She looks like Gretchen Kraus from TV's "Benson" and if UNDYING MONSTER was remade today would probably be played by Molly Shannon, yikes. Even if the actors were more compelling, they'd have a hopeless job handling a screenplay that feeds them one moronic proclamation after another. This is the film I quoted recently on another thread where a doctor gives his (presumably psychotic) patient snake venom based on the "theory" that it will help work out his "kink". It doesn't work and of course it's inhumane malpractice. but the lead and the sidekick still chuckle about it and commend the doctor for his efforts in the final scene. Oh brother.

So what's the mostly unseen "undying monster" turn out to be? What first sounds like a werewolf gradually yields clues to suggest something far more intriguing, possibly even an immortal invisible werewolf (!)....... then for quite a while just seems like a dull non-supernatural human criminal conspiracy....... before finally being revealed at the climax to be................ a completely visible, non-immortal run-of-the-mill Lon Chaney wolfman. There, I've saved you 70 minutes of your life!

2/5

[Rev. Powell]

THE MADS: A NIGHT OF SHORTS XIII: Another 70 minutes of shorts from Frank and Trace, mostly hygiene/educational stuff from the 40s-50s, with the most memorable being a live-action version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" with trained bears. Low-key comedian Dave Hill is the Q&A guest, and he's pretty funny. 3/5.

[indianasmith]

RUN RABBIT RUN - This is an Australian film, somewhere between psychological drama and horror, about a mother whose young daughter begins assuming the persona of her long-dead sister.  Is the little girl possessed?  Or is the mother losing her mind?  Kind of a slow burn but worth the watch.  Some very disturbing scenes.  3/5/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Dr. Giggles" (1992)
An asylum escapee with a medical delusion sets up shop in a small town and starts "operating" on the local teenage population.
A fun, twisted little medically-themed slasher sickie with a perfectly cast Larry Drake (L.A. Law, Darkman) as the title psycho and a pre-Charmed Holly Marie Combs as the final girl. Loads of gory goodness.

"Deathgasm" (2015)
A dorky high-school garage band uncovers sheet music to a "forbidden" song that, when played, turns everyone around them into blood-vomiting zombies. Hilarity ensues.
Falling somewhere between "Get Thrashed" and "Evil Dead 2," this over-the-top splatter comedy from New Zealand is funny as hell, gory as hell, and METAL as hell. Horns up.

[Rev. Powell]

EMESIS BLUE (2023): A soldier discovers a conspiracy involving respawning and a valiumesque drug that leads him to question the nature of his reality as he ventures through a series of violent encounters. OK, but the gimmick/kicker is, this entire thing was composed using "Team Fortress 2" video game assets and mods, which makes it an impressive feat of fandom, even if the result is more mood than movie. 2/5.

[M.10rda]

RUN RABBIT RUN - This is an Australian film, somewhere between psychological drama and horror, about a mother whose young daughter begins assuming the persona of her long-dead sister.  Is the little girl possessed?  Or is the mother losing her mind?  Kind of a slow burn but worth the watch.  Some very disturbing scenes.  3/5/5

Is this new?

Also, DR. GIGGLES, highly underrated!

[indianasmith]

RUN RABBIT RUN - This is an Australian film, somewhere between psychological drama and horror, about a mother whose young daughter begins assuming the persona of her long-dead sister.  Is the little girl possessed?  Or is the mother losing her mind?  Kind of a slow burn but worth the watch.  Some very disturbing scenes.  3/5/5

Is this new?

Also, DR. GIGGLES, highly underrated!

Yes, I think it was either from this year or last year.

[indianasmith]

THE CONFERENCE (2023) - A group of developers are holding a professional retreat the weekend before the ribbon-cutting on the big mall they've contracted to build in the rural German countryside.  Personalities clash as they go through a pretty standard set of team-building exercises - but then a masked killer starts knocking them all off, one at a time. This was a fun slasher film with some gruesome kills and memorable lines (albeit I was watching the dubbed version - I know, shame on me for not reading subtitles! LOL).  New choice on Netflix, and definitely a fun watch. 4/5

[lester1/2jr]

Cocaine: One Man's Seduction (1983) - Well it's a tv movie so it's not going to be as exciting as the title implies. In fact, for a story about a stimulative drug it drags quite a bit. Given the chance, I would replace the MST3K level dialogue with mindless nudity and gore and I'd be right to do it.



An older guy in a realty office wants to be able to compete with the young hot shots, so he starts taking cocaine. The best parts are when he acts paranoid and barks at his family and so forth. James Spader as his son seems pretty unimpressed with the whole thing, while Jeffrey Tambor steals the show as his strung out best friend.

3.75 /5

It's solid but a little disappointing. You gotta go for it a little harder with a title like that. Surely there were some out of work Charlie's Angels they could have hired or maybe had a Persian sheik character. The Tubi print was weird looking so I watched on the youtube.

[M.10rda]

Is that Dennis Weaver as the lead cokehead?!

I might watch this just for Jeffrey Tambor...

[M.10rda]

HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964):
Director Robert Aldrich followed up his big hit WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? w/ this quite similar non-sequel, re-enlisting WHTBJ stars Bette Davis and Victor Buono but not notorious pain-in-the-ass Joan Crawford. Again we've got one aging Hollywood star (this time Olivia DeHaviland) conspiring to drive another (Davis again) around the bend into lunacy. Fellow luminaries Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorhead, and Mary Astor add marquee value; Wesley Addy, Bruce Dern (looking extremely young), and George Kennedy (looking about like he always does) play small supporting roles. Buono is only in a few scenes though he's phenomenal... wish he'd done more big roles on the big screen. The film's best performance is by an older British actor named Cecil Kellaway who's delightful in all of his scenes as a curious tourist (?) who gets embroiled in the family drama. Wish he had even more screentime!

Aldrich was a fascinating director who made one unequivocal masterpiece (KISS ME DEADLY) and a bunch of cool. interesting, but imperfect films. DIRTY DOZEN for instance has just about everything you could ask for in a war movie but then wheezes out right at the very end/last couple scenes. Aldrich seems highly invested in some aspects of these projects (certain sequences or shots) yet not overly concerned about each project as a whole. HHSCHARLOTTE similarly has a crackerjack first 15 minutes and several strong scenes or moments after that, but it also takes its very sweet time progressing from beat to beat. I found the plot surprising and involving for a while, but managed to get ahead of the twists quite a bit before the end and then just found myself biding my time. Although it's a Southern gothic, some snappier pacing would've really helped things pick up. This plays more like a late 90s-early 00s Miramax Oscar-bait production than a proper thriller. Maybe Aldrich was goin' for critical praise over thrills...

Also, while there's not a bad actor in the film, ultimately one's interest probably hinges on having sympathy for Charlotte (Davis), and (though she's entertaining in the role) I never really cared what happened to this cranky old rich biddy. All said this is more a collection of nice ingredients than a satisfying mid-October meal. There is a relatively bloody (b+w) behanding and offscreen decapitation, if that floats your hack-o-lantern...
3.5/5

[lester1/2jr]

M.10rda - yes it is he and Tambor appears both with and without hairpiece.

[M.10rda]

M.10rda - yes it is he and Tambor appears both with and without hairpiece.

It's a must-see, then!

Here's the opposite of a must-see:

DUNGEON OF HARROW (1962):
Pat Boyette was a 1960s comics artist for Charlton and other second-tier publishers, mostly drawing quaint, bloodless, or even (errr) uneventful gothic/supernatural tales in a post-Comics Code landscape devoid of much horror excitement. He must've actually enjoyed such tales, as he moonlighted as a no-budget filmmaker of exactly the same kind of sub-Roger Corman's THE TERROR period costume snoozefests. DUNGEON OF HARROW has a shipwreck, murders, a torture dungeon, (ergo naturally) an evil Count named DeSade, romance w/ abused/captive women, and (apparently/maybe) the devil, but... for the life of me, I could barely stay focused on a single moment of it. Honestly this was more of a chore to get through than HACK-O-LANTERM.

I had an internet DL file AND a cheapjack DVD copy of HARROW, and the DVD actually looked even worse than the download. (The download was almost indechipheribly washed out, blurry, and dark.) Apparently Vinegar Syndrome restored HARROW and made it look nice. There are enough splashes of distinct color visible in different shots that I'm willing to believe this film once looked nice, but I've no interest in sitting through it again to confirm. I've read a couple of reviews that wax rhapsodic about HARROW's nonsensical plot contrivances and dunderheaded dialogue in the same way that I often soliloquize about many of Ed Wood's films. To each their own! As for me, I'll stick w/ ORGY OF THE DEAD.

1/5