continuing the trend of watching disparaged (but re-evaluated since) 2009 horror films (and they were shot on film!) i watched jennifer’s body ln… really liked it. it’s nice to see a movie that like idk… captures some of what’s gone on in my friendships and relationships… barely subsumed sexual obsession between like “besties” etc. amanda seyfried’s character is literally named needy but she’s the one with the easier time letting go.
probably way too screenwriterly in a way i usually associate with hbo shows or whatever now but i thought it was good overall… the climactic scene in particular had some really cool slow motion shit that did a lot to underline whatever is obviously going on with those two girls
seeing this page in chainsaw man inspired me to also watch the texas chainsaw massacre part ii… another really good one. comes at what is obviously a really different point in tobe hooper’s career and is totally different type of production from the first but has some totally maniacal hard as hell filmmaking you would expect from him.
watched ginger snaps which i really really liked… would be a great double feature with jennifer’s body!!
also toolbox murders, another tobe hooper film… if tcsm and tcm pt. ii are tobe hooper at two different places in his career then toolbox murders is him at a third—totally mercenary work, extremely late period vibes, extremely low rent production and more than a little gialloish id think… not bad at all.
watched the evil dead ln that was cute… i like sam raimis style i never saw any of his movies except for spiderman as a kid wasnt really thinking about like axial cuts and pov shots back then. i just like cool like trick shot photography stuff kind of reminds me of hark tsui or whoever (worth noting that siu-tung ching who is a wuxia film director and action director on some woo and tsui films was involved with the production of spiderman!)
i didnt realize the 2nd one is a remake of this but with like a budget and stuff lol maybe i would have just skipped to it if i had
anyways horror movies were never really my thing and idt i ever sat down to just watch one on purpose til i saw alien a few years ago… notes on horror stuff ive really connected with the past few years:
the texas chain saw massacre and the rob zombie halloween movies are the most like effective slasher type movies i think ive seen, obvs worship kiyoshi kurosawa and love pulse and cure, really liked jennifer’s body and ginger snaps (theyre both about Girls and like attachment style type stuff lol), also really love the production design and in-camera special effects work of the thing and event horizon
idk what else there is… oh the empty man was like a really neat / vibey sort of mystery-horror a bit like cure… some striking digital cinematography (also notable in that you can only see it on ur torrent client—never got a home video release and got lost in streaming between the disney fox acquisition). def generally (kiyoshi) kurosawapilled but obvs not as good as his stuff.
idk why i never got that into horror movies i guess when i was a kid it was kind of idiotically sadistic bullshit like hostel (which isnt even that like gorey or hardcore just dumb af) that i kind of found to be pointlessly upsetting. i keep going on about those rob zombie movies but i really admire their lack of sadism… theyre extremely violent but not meanspirited
I think The Empty Man just went up on Vudu, so it’s not entirely lost. Still weird that’s it’s not more readily available, though!
It’s too bad the later TCM movies go downhill after the second one. I haven’t mustered the time/courage to go through the fourth movie (the one where Matthew McConaughey has a steampunk leg and terrorizes Renee Zellweger), but I can sadly confirm the third movie does not live up to its incredible promotional trailer.
I thought Empty Man was just like an ok movie, but I really liked this article about its production hell and how it was powered through to minor cult status by the sheer will of its writer-director:
It did actually come out in theaters, and bombed. I dunno, knowing the story of it makes me like it better. Scrappy film
Speaking of scrappy movies and Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell’s autobiography If Chins Could Kill (which I own of course lol) has extended sections about the making of the Evil Dead trilogy. Real hard nosed stuff
Great auto-bio. I love how Bruce Campbell has no illusions about the business of making movies. I read it in the 00s and it was a big influence on how I look at game industry work.
saw blue sunshine on @HAMSALAD’s rec and holy shit. was that brion James with NO LINES in one scene just flapping his arms and screaming like a bird of prey? AND THEN HE JUST DISAPPEARS WITH NO EXPLANATION IN THE CAR?
its an mk ultra movie about people who went to Stanford in the 60s selling lsd that makes your hair fall out and makes you a MURDER BEAST WITH THE STRENGTH OF A DROWNED MAN ten years later. of COURSE the dealer was running for congress. of COURSE
and the guy who made chromium blue is the main character. it’s so fucking weird. there’s a scene with children chanting about Dr pepper that’s forever burned into my brain
Saw Caddyshack, thinking it was so terrible that it must be Caddyshack 2. but no. It’s the “funniest movie of all time”. Chevy Chase is so fucking slimy, how did this man have a career? You could cut out every other part of the film except for the scenes with Rodney Dangerfield and it might be an amusing movie.
I am now watching Happy Gilmore, and I’m not convinced that Adam Sandler knows how jokes work.
phantasm iii - feels like the point where coscarelli & co really commit to their bong hit mythology, which is perversely what lets them get even more miscellaneous with what they include (incl an extended home alone parody, a joe lansdale karate lady trying to fight the spheres with a nunchuck, some death wish punks driving round in a pink hearse, more sex comedy with reggie). definitely a movie where i had no idea what the next ten minutes were going to contain at any point. but they must have known people would miss the high budget gore from part ii though since they include the eyeballs exploding in the prologue!
stagefright - like everyone, i got permanently onboard with this movie in the first five minutes when the owl stated to dance. good giallo stylings, i would probably have liked it more but for the claustrophobic escape-room feeling i get from movies about people being stuck in the one location (eg in die hard where there’s something offputtingly schematic to me about the narrative back and forth between bruce willis and the terrorist guys). i’m glad they ended on the shot of the lady enthusiastically playing saxophone at the start, having correctly identified it as key to the movie’s appeal.
the senritsu kaiku file kowasugi series - will take a break from my koji shiraishi binge after these, at least until the next one’s translated, but i really liked these a lot - listing them in the movie thread bc anything over an hour long is “a movie” but best watched as an episodic serial about sleazy direct-to-dvd found horror film documentarians and their continuing adventures. the first two are kind of barebones but the appeal is how they keep building on themselves - a cursed artefact from the first one becomes a recurring tool used to beat on ghosts with, the level of cg weirdness keeps increasing, the main characters have an ever increasing pile of dvd titles that they’re trying to hock on camera. it does the tv thing of using the groundedness of earlier episodes as a way to get progressively goofier than a movie could get away with and by the “final chapter” it feels truly delirious, a crazed sitcom sequel to Occult which picks up some of the same visuals and runs with them. also they fight a kappa! really good stuff
this year felt like the first time in a while that my desire to watch horror movies actually synced with the appropriate season… looking forward to segueing back to hallmark mode for xmas soon
It turns out that you can just go to the Roku Web site and click a button to watch that new Weird Al Yankovic movie for free, and there aren’t even any ads (unless my ad blocker just took care of them).
I discovered this late last night and ended up watching the whole thing. It’s no UHF, but it has its moments. I had forgotten about this short film if I ever saw it
but it’s true that the new movie is a longer version of the same thing. However, I found that the parts where they try to be a little edgy (but not too edgy) don’t really work that well. I think the best scenes are those featuring Yankovic’s absurdly supportive roommates. The earnestness you see there I found a lot more charming and funnier than the parts where he’s going down the wrong path with Madonna.
I enjoyed the movie, overall, though it frequently skirted the edge of being a little too forced and maybe crossed that line occasionally. Would I have a higher opinion of it if I saw it for the first time at the age I first saw UHF? Hard to say.
