What was the last movie you saw?

[Phyrebrat]

It Follows
Interesting idea, a woman has a sexual encounter then gets cursed by a demon who follows her so it can pass it on.

Well that's an hour and half of my life I won't get back...
God knows how this film got so many awards. I'd give it one for dodgy camera work. Maybe then they could afford to get better microphones too. Mumble mumble mumble, all through the bloody film. We had the fan on because its quite warm tonight and with kids in bed we couldn't turn the volume up high enough to hear all that was said. We normally resort to subtitles but there wasn't any...

You have my condolences and sympathy. It is indeed an appalling film.

I’m a huge horror fan (horror first, sci fi second) and I ALWAYS wonder how this film managed to get so many accolades. And still does. I think it was for people who were blown away by the concept of an STI curse and the moral/societal message. But I felt it more a precept than concept.

And really, I know there’s a link with comedy and horror, but this was a self-unaware farce.

Cabin Fever is the only horror I hate more than Sh*t Follows.

 

[Jeffbert]

THE ENEMY BELOW (1957) Surface ship Vs. U-boat film. Tense drama.




THE DEVIL'S BRIGADE (1968) Higher-ups decided that a unit consisting of U. S. & Canadian soldiers would be a good idea. As might be expected, when the two 1st meet, they clash. Eventually they become buddies, and weep at the deaths of the guys whom they 1st loathed.

 

[KGeo777]

OPEN SEASON 1974 - Not available beyond a very poor quality video release from what I hear. It's Straw Dogs mixed with Deliverance but I think it is wrong to dismiss it as a copycat. It's very well-acted--concerning three All-American family men (Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law, and Richard Lynch) who go on an annual camping trip which involves them picking up isolated couples to torment and psychologically abuse before they finish with them in another way. They find a pair who are cheating on their spouses (Alberto de Mendoza and Cornelia Sharpe). The latter does not have a wikipedia page devoted to her-and I am surprised because she also starred in a female James Bond movie S.H.E. which wasn't good but she wasn't bad in the role. Her acting here is very good. Directed by Peter Collinson who I never heard of until recently but his films are quite well-made from the ones I have seen. Based on a novel. This story is all about toxic masculinity and deconstructing the Vietnam era but is never preachy. The role that William Holden has brings a certain irony to the proceedings. If this had been made during the slasher movie era it would have gone in a completely different direction. There's no nudity or gore in it--the most disturbing moment is when Mendoza refuses a stick of gum offered by Richard Lynch, and to teach him a lesson about politeness, he is forced instead to chew the stringy well-used gum that his captor had been chewing on.

 

[AE35Unit]

Entity 2012
Not based on the Frank de Felita book, this is set in Siberia and concerns itself with historic russian prisoners that were kept in a large facility.
Stars Dervla Kerwin (Ballykissangel)
Quite good.
At the end credits there is a dedication to Tracey Jane Wilkinson (1965-2012) but I can find no reference to her. (Tracey Wilkinson is a current actress so I assume the dedicatee was part of the crew)

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Five Women for the Killer (5 donne per l'assassino, 1974)

Man comes home to discover that his wife has died during childbirth, and that his newborn child is in the hospital. Since this is a giallo, in addition to this tragedy we have a series of murders of pregnant women. Each one of the victims had some kind of connection to the man, so he's one of the prime suspects. Moves pretty slowly, despite the multiple killings and convoluted plot. There's a visual clue to the identity of the killer that plays fair with the viewer, and a sudden twist at the end. Overall, a fair-to-middling example of the genre.

 

[AE35Unit]

Malevolent 2018
Horror set in Scotland about a group of scam ghost investigators. The great Celia Imrie plays their latest client...

 

[Guttersnipe]

A Quiet Place: Part 2

Some say it's better than the first. I think they're equally good.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Scalps (1987)

Late-in-the-day spaghetti Western. Maniacal commander of a Confederate outpost in Texas, besides refusing to admit that the South lost, lusts after the pretty (and extremely European-looking) daughter of a local chief, so he has his men slaughter the entire village and capture the woman. She manages to escape, badly wounded, and winds up at the home of a guy who has his own grudge against the commander. He helps her heal, and the two go on the run from the pursuing soldiers, first as semi-reluctant allies, and eventually as lovers. Plenty of bloodletting follows, as the woman becomes a killing machine, wiping out soldiers with knives, arrows (including some that explode!) and a pit full of sharpened stakes. The man gets captured and tortured, so she comes to the rescue, leading to the final, violent confrontation. It's not a bad example of the form. Yes, plenty of scalps get taken along the way.

 

[Parson]

Scalps (1987)

Late-in-the-day spaghetti Western. Maniacal commander of a Confederate outpost in Texas, besides refusing to admit that the South lost, lusts after the pretty (and extremely European-looking) daughter of a local chief, so he has his men slaughter the entire village and capture the woman. She manages to escape, badly wounded, and winds up at the home of a guy who has his own grudge against the commander. He helps her heal, and the two go on the run from the pursuing soldiers, first as semi-reluctant allies, and eventually as lovers. Plenty of bloodletting follows, as the woman becomes a killing machine, wiping out soldiers with knives, arrows (including some that explode!) and a pit full of sharpened stakes. The man gets captured and tortured, so she comes to the rescue, leading to the final, violent confrontation. It's not a bad example of the form. Yes, plenty of scalps get taken along the way.

Wow, what was the rating on this blood letting jamboree? It had to be at least R I would think. --- I went and looked and all I could find was personal ratings. But 1987 was well after the US started rating movies so they should be easily available. I'm likely unaware of where such would be found. Your review just makes me shutter. My imagination goes wild with the picture of a scene of a person skewered on sharp staves or someone actually removing a scalp.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Yes, an R for violence would be entirely appropriate. The torture of the hero is particularly gruesome.

 

[Droflet]

The Misfits. The worse heist movie I've ever seen. Dreadful, hideous, lousy, in every possible way. A terrible movie that I strongly recommend that everyone avoid. What a waste of time.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary (1975)

Starts in typical scary movie fashion with a woman whose van breaks down in the middle of a raging thunderstorm at night. She seeks shelter in a spooky old abandoned house, only to be scared off by an unseen somebody. Our monster? No, it's a handsome young guy who happens to be staying at the place. Cut to a flashback that reveals that the woman (Mary) is a artist who creates surreal paintings. (Special credit is given to the painter who really came up with these weird things.) She also has a habit of drugging folks, stabbing them, and drinking their blood.

While Mary and the young man have a sweet romance, she continues this little habit. Meanwhile, somebody almost completely disguised in black, as if this were a giallo, commits similar murders and seems to be stalking Mary. He turns out to have a special connection with Mary. (The character is eventually revealed to be John Carradine, but it's obvious that a double covers for him in most scenes.)

It's an offbeat combination of not-quite-supernatural vampire movie, love story, action film (lots of car chases, gun and knife fights, etc.) that manages to be half art film and half exploitation film. Slow-moving but interesting.

 

[KGeo777]

I watched INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU 1968 mainly to see the Hammer film regulars in it--like Michael Ripper, Geoffrey Bayldon, and Katya Wyeth, but I knew it was a comedy dud. I don't normally seek out comedies because if they are unfunny to you, there's not much else to recommend them. And this is one of those cases. Arkin is not the greatest Clouseau, not the worst either probably, but there's no one else providing any humor either. Herbert Lom is seriously missed.

Speaking of westerns with a "Euro-Squaw" character, there's a 1965 one called Rebels in Canada. Canadian Wilderness (1965) - IMDb The description of the daughter of the local chief makes me think of Swa, who leaves an impression. I forgot most of the movie but I remember her character was a dynamic presence.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Firebird 2015 AD (1981)

Remember back in 1992 when the U.S. government banned all private use of petroleum? Remember all those gasoline pumps with signs reading Closed by order of the President of the United States? If not, don't worry; the lousy country-rock song that plays over the opening credits fills us in on the plot. You see, the Department of Vehicular Control (DVC) hunts down the rebel "burners" who insist on racing their muscle cars on the dirt roads of the Canadian Badlands where this thing was filmed. We never see a city, town, or village; the entire movie takes place in this wilderness. The DVC folks live in tents, the "burners" have shacks where they hide their fuel and stuff. What little plot there is deals to a large extent with the romance between the son of the sort of leader of the burners and the daughter of another burner. Darren McGavin is the sort of leader. He and the daughter bluster at the son at one point, giving him a lecture about freedom, the tyranny of the government, etc. Just about the only thing of interest in this cheap little movie is the one DVC guy who is completely insane. He strips down into a loincloth and goes into a whole Billy Jack mystical Native American thing, putting on war paint before he blows up "burners". Not a good film.

 

[CupofJoe]

The Misfits. The worse heist movie I've ever seen. Dreadful, hideous, lousy, in every possible way. A terrible movie that I strongly recommend that everyone avoid. What a waste of time.

Which one? The 2021 Renney Harlin The Misfits or the 1961 John Huston The Misfits?
I thought the 1961 film enjoyable if poignant in that it was the last complete film for Gable and Monroe...

 

[Droflet]

Let's put it this way, Renney Harlin isn't the director he used to be. Yes, the 1961 film, although difficult to watch (for me) was a decent movie but the most recent one ... see above.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Brain of Blood (1971)

Ultra-cheap Mad Scientist movie. The ruler of a fictional Middle Eastern nation is dying of cancer; even "uranium treatments" (?) have failed. The answer: transplant his brain into another body. The Mad Scientist in charge has the expected two assistants: a dwarf and a huge guy with the mind of a child and a deformed face. (In a flashback sequence, we learn how he had a couple of bullies pour battery acid on him.) They need a new body for the brain, of course, but the huge guy botches his assignment to kill a guy, messing up the body. So, the obvious thing to do is to put the brain into the huge guy's body. The plot gets complicated with spy stuff, as there are folks plotting against the ruler, and the Mad Scientist has his own agenda. (He also has a goofy-looking ray gun kind of thing to zap the huge-guy-with-ruler's-brain from time to time.) Did I mention the young women in the basement who supply blood to keep the brain alive before the transplantation? Takes itself very seriously, and even attempts to produce some pathos among all the Mad Scientist stuff.

 

[KGeo777]

Al Adamson sure was busy.

THE MEPHISTO WALTZ - 1971 The first FOX production after many box office duds caused it to take a year hiatus from production. As a horror movie it is not really much for scares--it feels like a tv-movie (and in fact it is a Quinn Martin Production). Bradford Dillman and William Windom who we last saw in Escape From the POTA show up in supporting roles. It's interesting how Hollywood depicted the Devil at this time--generally speaking, with the exception of the Hammer film The Devil Rides Out, the Devil wins. The Devil always wins. You really have to think hard to find a movie where the Devil loses completely. In the Exorcist, the Devil takes the priests, so it's not a complete victory for good. This one also features a child stricken by Satanic forces-in fact, the child actress Pamela Ferdin was the alternate choice for Regan in the movie--but because she had done this one, typecasting was more of a concern then so she was not used despite undergoing a makeup test for it.
The William Shatner mask used for Halloween makes a cameo appearance--worn by a dog.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Firebird 2015 AD (1981)

Remember back in 1992 when the U.S. government banned all private use of petroleum? Remember all those gasoline pumps with signs reading Closed by order of the President of the United States? If not, don't worry; the lousy country-rock song that plays over the opening credits fills us in on the plot. You see, the Department of Vehicular Control (DVC) hunts down the rebel "burners" who insist on racing their muscle cars on the dirt roads of the Canadian Badlands where this thing was filmed. We never see a city, town, or village; the entire movie takes place in this wilderness. The DVC folks live in tents, the "burners" have shacks where they hide their fuel and stuff. What little plot there is deals to a large extent with the romance between the son of the sort of leader of the burners and the daughter of another burner. Darren McGavin is the sort of leader. He and the daughter bluster at the son at one point, giving him a lecture about freedom, the tyranny of the government, etc. Just about the only thing of interest in this cheap little movie is the one DVC guy who is completely insane. He strips down into a loincloth and goes into a whole Billy Jack mystical Native American thing, putting on war paint before he blows up "burners". Not a good film.

My hat's off to you. I remember starting to watch this a couple of years ago and had to give up about five minutes in - I guess I wasn't feeling very masochistic that night because, even as a seasoned bad movie lover, I just found it too painful to watch.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Two on a Guillotine (1965)

Old-fashioned black-and-white thriller directed by William Conrad. The only shock scene happens at the very start, when a guy thrusts a sword through a woman's body. It's just a magic trick. The magician and his phony victim are husband-and-wife, with a tiny daughter. Cut to twenty years later, at the magician's funeral. The grown daughter -- who, in true Hollywood fashion, looks exactly like her mother (same actress) -- is at the funeral. Our back story reveals that her mother disappeared long ago, and she was raised away from her father. In true Hollywood fashion, the magician's last will and testament -- read at the Hollywood Bowl, of all places, per his desire -- stipulates that the daughter must spend seven nights at his spooky mansion in order to inherit a vast fortune, otherwise it will go to a couple of other folks. The movie then forgets it's a thriller, and becomes a light comedy/romance, as the daughter and a reporter fall in love. (Since they're played by Connie Stevens and Dean Jones, the whole thing has a beach movie/Disney film vibe.) After about thirty minutes of this, we go back to scary (but easily exposed as fake) stuff happening at the house. The magician vowed to return from the grave, so is he haunting the place? Are the two other potential heirs trying to scare the daughter away? You'll find out, at the Shocking Twist Ending. Cut down in size quite a bit, it might have made a decent episode of Thriller; the climactic scene isn't too bad. As it stands, it really, really drags.