/horror/ general megathread - Let's talk about movies and shit.

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I finally got around to watching House of 1000 Corpses to start this spooky season off right… Personally, I like it. Thought it was pretty demented in a funny way but then again, I like Rob Zombie anyway.

Currently watching Little Shops of Horrors atm.
Bill Moseley is great in that, hate how they changed his character in the sequels. He was better as a gothic hippy redneck.
 
I came back from Terrifier 2. Overall, 7.5 out of 10. It may not seem like a glowing endorsement but I was entertained and Art was great.

Problem #1 is that many things were just not explained. Why is Art a demi-god? Not explained. Who is the little gir/mini-me version of Art, what does she represent, why can some people see her but others cannot? Never explained aside from her being one of his victims. What is our final girl's relationship to Art and why is she gifted He-Man powers and can seemingly kill him? Not explained other than her suicidal father saw it all in a vision (?) which raises more questions than answers.

I feel like this was a huge missed opportunity and does bog down the film. Even more so because the director held a Kickstarter to film an additional scene. The goal was 50K and he ended up getting 215K. If you look at the description:


""After being resurrected by a sinister entity, Art the Clown returns to Miles County where he must hunt down and destroy a teenage girl and her younger brother on Halloween night. As the body count rises, the siblings fight to stay alive while uncovering the true nature of Art's evil intent. "

That never happened. You never see anything resurrect him. You see him interact with the female version of himself.


"Without beating around the bush, I wrote an EPIC scene in the screenplay for Terrifier 2 that we currently do not have enough money to shoot. Without spoiling all the juicy, gory details, the scene will involve mass casualties and the destruction of its location, BUT it is the context of the scene that truly makes it so original. We're aiming to create a scene so shocking and iconic that people will talk about it for years to come. Imagine if Art the Clown was in charge of the prom mayhem in Carrie...meets David Lynch...meets Maniac....just sayin'.

If we do in fact reach our goal, the money will go towards the construction of a large set, tons of special effects, stunts and makeup fx....you know...blood and guts! Now the coolest part is - you can be in this scene! Not only can you be in this scene but, YOU CAN BE KILLED BY ART THE CLOWN!! That's right. Become a part of movie history! Seriously, if this scene comes out the way I'm envisioning it, people will be watching your mug get splattered on youtube for a long, long time.

Now although that is one of the high end perks, don't feel too bad because we have tons of other great stuff ranging from social media shout outs, thank you in the credits, custom funkos, blu rays, posters, shirts, props and accessories all the way to visiting the set, becoming an extra, attending the wrap party or even becoming an EXECUTIVE PRODUCER!

ALSO, if we exceed our goal, any additional funds that come in will go towards casting an iconic film star in one of the lead roles! Again, this is something that will bring the movie to another level of quality not to mention adding a touch of that old nostalgia that we love so much. "

The "epic scene" was okay, it went on too long but it was fine.

Problem #2 is the pacing. Terrifier has a very generic kind of premise and stock characters BUT once shit gets real it doesn't matter if the characters are 2-dimensional because it just goes and that doesn't matter anymore. In the sequel, it never gets to that point. It's super gory and gorier than the first by a mile. But it never goes beyond just setting up stock characters and Art appears to kill them. There's no escalation until the last 20 minutes and it's a pale imitation of the first film's finale -owing to the lack of explanation for many things.

So yeah, it was good but it could have been better. The length was a problem and I think a fan-edit could easily fix.

Edit: new Hellraiser is out at midnight tonight.
 
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Finally got around to watching Nosferatu the Vampyre 1979. It was great. Beautifully shot, great unsettling atmosphere throughout that's established from the very first shot and Klaus Kinski is perfect as Dracula. Apparently there are two versions, I had the English version. I'll try to get the German one next time I watch it since it's quite obvious English wasn't the first language of any of the actors so the German version is probably the better one.
It was also amusing realizing that large parts of it were actually shot in my home country.
Anyway, definitely check it out and don't dismiss it as just a remake.
 
New Hellraiser:

You know what grinds my gears? They have a sex scene but don't show anything. I'm not trying to be a coomer but it is so distracting when there's a sex scene but you don't see anything. If you're not going to show anything then don't have the sex scene. It's that simple. It's not just this movie too of course.

The opening scene is great. But then, nothing. A former junkie steals the box and the film just drags it's feet explaining things that's already been explained. It's 2 hours too. The original was just slightly over 90 minutes and got to the point.

I like the new cenobites but I prefer the original designs. It feels like they tried to make the designs super elaborate but then scaled it back due to budgetary limitations. New Chatterer was good but he's felled pretty quickly.

I found myself just skipping ahead. Skipping all the BS pussy footing. There are some memberberries. Like the creature in the walls like in the original but not as visually interesting. The iconic lines from the original are used again as well.

The movie also likes to blue ball you. Aside from the opening scene (which isn't that gory) as soon as you think you're going to see the Cenobites and some souls being torn apart it cuts away. It's not like it's censored but it (you guessed it) subverts expectations.

There's some cool visuals and there was some money behind it but you could tell they shot in Romania or Bulgaria or somewhere. Movies shot in that region just have that "look" once you see enough of them. It's like noticing movies shot in Toronto.

Over an hour in before we finally get to see some significant gore. It brings back the pleasure and pain motif lost in the series.

New Pinhead was fine. There's still no topping Doug Bradley. It is what it is. Doug Bradley commanded authority whereas tranny Pinhead is too passive and feels like just one of the troops. If you completely divorce the original from the sequels you still get the impression that Pinhead is the leader and the guy overseeing everything. I never got that impression from the new Pinhead.

The plot is nothing like the original but has the similarity with our main character making a deal with the Cenobites and leading victims to them. It also brings back that the box is the only thing that can send them back but it's explained a little bit better here. In the original, I will admit, Kristy figuring out the box sends them back was a deus ex machina -especially how Butterball is ungracefully dispatched.

Cenobites being trapped by gates and shit just doesn't work. In the originals, you got the impression that it didn't matter if you were in an iron clad panic room because they're going to get in. It just belittles them (Butterball's death in the first film notwithstanding).

Spoiler but I don't give a fuck: they steal from Hellraiser 4. The rich guy at the beginning set everything up as an elaborate trap to get the Cenobites. Which didn't make a lot of sense then and doesn't make a lot of sense now.

There is some good gore but compared to the earlier film I watched this evening (Terrifier 2) it just doesn't compare and I would say it doesn't quite compare to the original or Hellbound. Compound that with an unlikable female lead as well.

Overall: Hellraiser 1 and 2 are still the grand champions. As far as the other good sequels, namely Inferno (part 5) and Judgement (part 10) I would rank this below those and I'm not being a contrarian. I liked that Inferno was Jacob's Ladder + Hellraiser. And I liked that Judgement did somethings different, has great gore and fucked up visuals (as a Hellraiser movie should), and the opening scene is great. Which leaves the other two "good-ish" sequels part 3 and 4. Your mileage may vary. I enjoy part 3 because of nostalgia and it's a fun B flick with Doug Bradley chewing scenery. It's a fun movie. Part 4 is much more confused and tonally all over the place. But, part 4 has some great moments and the BTS of the production is fascinating and it could have been a great movie.

I will say this: this one scene from part 4 is better than anything in the reboot.


Am I saying this is the worst Hellraiser movie? No. Because there's parts 6-9. But it's still not a great one as it should have been. Cutting down the length would have helped but you still have other problems with it. The last couple minutes was interesting showing the creation of a Cenobite but I'd argue it's still not quite up there with Hellbound.


The same kind of scene that was originally in Hellbound only way more effective.
 
I'm watching Hellraiser now, and the fact I'm on my phone replying to a horror thread tells you how good it is.

Hellraiser was creative, original and visually interesting. This is not.

It cherry picks bits from other movies (there are nods to HR2 and Leviathan).

It reuses the main original Hellraiser theme.

I would rather have seen Doug Bradley have a grand finale to his character. This didn’t need to be made.
 
I'm watching Hellraiser now, and the fact I'm on my phone replying to a horror thread tells you how good it is.

Hellraiser was creative, original and visually interesting. This is not.

It cherry picks bits from other movies (there are nods to HR2 and Leviathan).

It reuses the main original Hellraiser theme.

I would rather have seen Doug Bradley have a grand finale to his character. This didn’t need to be made.
It really makes you appreciate how Clive Barker was operating at a whole other level and -aside from a few short films of the student film level of production value- he was a first time director on top of that. His other 2 films weren't as good as Hellraiser but overall they were still way ahead of everything else.

Edit: Terrifier 2 thoughts part 2:

The name 'Terrifier' is explained somewhat. It turns out it's the name to a carnival attraction where Art killed. Why he's attracted to this carnival isn't explained either.

Another thing I noticed and forgot to comment on is that there's a lack of sexuality in the sequel. Is it the woke disease? I don't know. In the short film version of Terrifier, Art captures the final girl, cuts off her arms and legs and tits, and carves "slut" and "cunt" into her body while she's still alive. In the feature version there's the infamous sawed in half scene where Art saws a chick in half starting from the cunt. You get nothing like that in the 2nd one. There's not even nudity aside from side-titty in a blink and you miss it shot of our final girl. There's even a scene of Art attacking a girl wearing a robe and she's still wearing underwear underneath.

Again, I'm not a coomer but it is weird how they doubled down on the gore but backed off of anything sexual.
 
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New Hellraiser:

The iconic lines from the original are used again as well.
Between this, the music and the references to other movies
even Voight's piston thing in his body felt like a reference to JP Monroe's cenobite in Hellraiser 3
, it felt way more like a memberberry fest than I expected. Who expected this to be a horror Force Awakens?

There's some cool visuals and there was some money behind it but you could tell they shot in Romania or Bulgaria or somewhere. Movies shot in that region just have that "look" once you see enough of them. It's like noticing movies shot in Toronto.\

The credits said Serbia
New Pinhead was fine. There's still no topping Doug Bradley. It is what it is. Doug Bradley commanded authority whereas tranny Pinhead is too passive and feels like just one of the troops. If you completely divorce the original from the sequels you still get the impression that Pinhead is the leader and the guy overseeing everything. I never got that impression from the new Pinhead.

Hearing that effeminate tranny voice delivering Doug Bradley's lines just made me cringe. It just sounded like some tranny on YT trying to be tough and take down some "transphobe". It just didn't work compared to a commanding presence like Doug Bradley.

The plot is nothing like the original but has the similarity with our main character making a deal with the Cenobites and leading victims to them. It also brings back that the box is the only thing that can send them back but it's explained a little bit better here. In the original, I will admit, Kristy figuring out the box sends them back was a deus ex machina -especially how Butterball is ungracefully dispatched.

What I really didn't like is the major change to the mythology.
Changing it from desire that summons the Cenobite to take you to just anyone stabbed by the box turned a chunk of the film into another slasher film.

Cenobites being trapped by gates and shit just doesn't work. In the originals, you got the impression that it didn't matter if you were in an iron clad panic room because they're going to get in. It just belittles them (Butterball's death in the first film notwithstanding).

Spoiler but I don't give a fuck: they steal from Hellraiser 4. The rich guy at the beginning set everything up as an elaborate trap to get the Cenobites. Which didn't make a lot of sense then and doesn't make a lot of sense now.

Voight specifically says that
he wants Leviathan to undo what was done to him or he will keep Leviathan's priests trapped in his house until it is undone.
It really makes you appreciate how Clive Barker was operating at a whole other level and -aside from a few short films of the student film level of production value- he was a first time director on top of that. His other 2 films weren't as good as Hellraiser but overall they were still way ahead of everything else.
I really like his other two films. They are at least visually interesting and creative. And David Cronenberg is in one of them, for extra coolness.
 
Between this, the music and the references to other movies
even Voight's piston thing in his body felt like a reference to JP Monroe's cenobite in Hellraiser 3
, it felt way more like a memberberry fest than I expected. Who expected this to be a horror Force Awakens?



The credits said Serbia


Hearing that effeminate tranny voice delivering Doug Bradley's lines just made me cringe. It just sounded like some tranny on YT trying to be tough and take down some "transphobe". It just didn't work compared to a commanding presence like Doug Bradley.



What I really didn't like is the major change to the mythology.
Changing it from desire that summons the Cenobite to take you to just anyone stabbed by the box turned a chunk of the film into another slasher film.



Voight specifically says that
he wants Leviathan to undo what was done to him or he will keep Leviathan's priests trapped in his house until it is undone.

I really like his other two films. They are at least visually interesting and creative. And David Cronenberg is in one of them, for extra coolness.


I'd say the horror equivalent of the Disney Star Wars trilogy is easily the new Halloween trilogy.

"What I really didn't like is the major change to the mythology. Changing it from desire that summons the Cenobite to take you to just anyone stabbed by the box turned a chunk of the film into another slasher film."

To be fair, the movies played fast and loose with that. Was it desire that made Kristy solve the box in the original? Or how about in part's 3 and 4? The impression I got is that if anyone was "curious" and solved the box they got taken.
 
I'd say the horror equivalent of the Disney Star Wars trilogy is easily the new Halloween trilogy.
Fair point

To be fair, the movies played fast and loose with that. Was it desire that made Kristy solve the box in the original? Or how about in part's 3 and 4? The impression I got is that if anyone was "curious" and solved the box they got taken.
Well in HR2, Tiffany solves the box but they don't take her because they knew it was Channard who wants the box open, but you're right that it's not totally consistent.

Oh, I also did a double feature tonight with Werewolf by Night.

It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't nearly as bad as She-Hulk and it was cool to see
Man Thing
and it was at least kind of fun.
 
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That in-depth review of Terrifier 2 that @BrunoMattei was nice enough to give us reminds me a lot of what happened with Laid to Rest and Laid to Rest 2. The first one was a no-nonsense, old-school slasher with some great gore effects that were made on a shoe-string budget. The sequel, while clearly higher-budget, was bogged down by weird pacing and way too much time spent developing the goofy lore behind the killer. It does have a hilariously mean-spirited ending that is taken verbatim from a scene in the movie Freeway.

Speaking of Freeway, re-watched that recently and it holds up really well. Wikipedia calls it a "black comedy crime film" but it's really a mixture of The Hitcher and Natural Born Killers. Kieffer Sutherland plays a great fucking villain.

Watching the new Hellraiser with some friends tonight. Don't exactly have high expectations after what others have said.
 
That in-depth review of Terrifier 2 that @BrunoMattei was nice enough to give us reminds me a lot of what happened with Laid to Rest and Laid to Rest 2. The first one was a no-nonsense, old-school slasher with some great gore effects that were made on a shoe-string budget. The sequel, while clearly higher-budget, was bogged down by weird pacing and way too much time spent developing the goofy lore behind the killer. It does have a hilariously mean-spirited ending that is taken verbatim from a scene in the movie Freeway.

Speaking of Freeway, re-watched that recently and it holds up really well. Wikipedia calls it a "black comedy crime film" but it's really a mixture of The Hitcher and Natural Born Killers. Kieffer Sutherland plays a great fucking villain.

Watching the new Hellraiser with some friends tonight. Don't exactly have high expectations after what others have said.
Laid to Rest is something I rarely hear about. The 2nd one comes off as a fan fiction sequel to a Friday the 13th movie. I did like the one kill where the director used twin girls. NGL, that's probably one of the most inventive kills in a slasher. Too bad the rest of the movie isn't as great.

Freeway is amazing and the sequel is fun as well.
 
The new Hellraiser is just... too toothless and clean. The original had this sort of sleazy quality to it that the 2022 one completely lacks. Definitely nothing as grotesque and creepy as Frank. Riley, the lead in the new one, is also just completely unlikable and irritating.

It'll undoubtedly be forgotten about within a month, just like that recent Texas Chainsaw movie.
 
The new Hellraiser is just... too toothless and clean. The original had this sort of sleazy quality to it that the 2022 one completely lacks. Definitely nothing as grotesque and creepy as Frank. Riley, the lead in the new one, is also just completely unlikable and irritating.

It'll undoubtedly be forgotten about within a month, just like that recent Texas Chainsaw movie.

I just finished it myself and I'd agree with your assessment. It felt rather bland and safe, which is weird to think when "Hellraiser" comes to mind. New Pinhead really lacks authority, he just feels "meh", I think they did an alright job making him seem more androgynous like he's portrayed from the book but whenever he's on screen he just feels like Random Cenobite#565434, not the one that's sort of in charge of the others (and I can't really say I envy anyone trying to fill Doug Bradley's shoes) and the gore was lacking too but I'm guessing this might've been more because of budget constraints. Overall, I wouldn't say it's total trash but, in a few years, I can't really imagine people wanting to watch Hellraiser 2022 for a night of Halloween spooky fun.
 
Finally got around to watching Nosferatu the Vampyre 1979. It was great. Beautifully shot, great unsettling atmosphere throughout that's established from the very first shot and Klaus Kinski is perfect as Dracula. Apparently there are two versions, I had the English version. I'll try to get the German one next time I watch it since it's quite obvious English wasn't the first language of any of the actors so the German version is probably the better one.
It was also amusing realizing that large parts of it were actually shot in my home country.
Anyway, definitely check it out and don't dismiss it as just a remake.
I'm curious to know if the upcoming remake will name the vampire "Orlok" or "Dracula". We tend to think of him as a distinct character, even though Nosferatu follows the basic plot of Dracula pretty closely, and the other versions of Dracula are themselves sometimes very different from one another.

The soundtrack album for Nosferatu '79 is great, and only a small part of it made it into the movie.

 
Hearing that effeminate tranny voice delivering Doug Bradley's lines just made me cringe. It just sounded like some tranny on YT trying to be tough and take down some "transphobe". It just didn't work compared to a commanding presence like Doug Bradley.
Watched it last night and I just couldn't get past the voice, it even had that slight gay lisp to it, I'd put Pinhead up with Candyman in that the voice is a major aspect of the performance and without it it just looses too much.
Riley, the lead in the new one, is also just completely unlikable and irritating.
All I could think of looking at the lead actress was how much she reminded me of that kid from Stranger Things R (11).jpg
 
This announcement came out of left field, awhile back, to be released in November:

Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome

When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, Dark Lord of the Prolix, the hellish visions inside his head are unleashed for real. Forced to fight his escaping imagination - now leaking out of his own brain - Nick must defend the town of Stalkford from his own fictional horrors, including avascular-necrosis-obsessed serial killer Nelson Strain and Nick's dreaded throppleganger, the Dark Third.

This only caught my notice after revisiting the creation of Matt Holness and company, Garth Marenghi. After years of nothing, to see Holness bring the character back in another medium interests me. Originally conceived for the stage before ending up with a six-episode series on Channel 4 back in 2004, Holness' egotistical author character was a take on narcissistic hacks who think their works are genius.

(On the defunct Marenghi website, there were descriptions of his various works like "Afterbirth"
It’s the year 2050 and everyone can choose the perfect baby. Blue eyes, blond hair, and calcium-rich blood. Everyone, that is, who can pay. (Many people can’t pay). The West Country’s most beautiful woman, Silvie Mink, is certain her newborn will be as drop dead gorgeous as her. But when her baby drops dead, knifed by her own placenta, she knows her DNA modification program has gone too far…

or "Juggers" which was about a killer cargo truck with a mind of it's own stalking a group of prostitutes on a 'working holiday' going up and down the UK's main highway and no, it wasn't just some prurient trash - the truck was a metaphor for AIDS.)

Plus, there was a certain familiarity with the sort of schlocky horror fiction being parodied, the works of the sort of more lurid authors published by the likes of New English Library back in the 70s and 80s, as well as authors like Guy N. Smith and Shaun Hutson. And the sort of low-rent, low-budget UK "genre" tv of years past being parodied as well.

Holness demonstrated this sort of knack of familiarity of parody subjects later with the works of Terry Finch, the main character of Holness' short film "A Gun for George", which took a darker and frankly sadder tack with the premise of a delusional hack writer. Finch was a successful author of violent novels about "the Reprisaliser", a brutal vigilante bringing tough justice to the violent streets of...Kent. Of course, "Men's Adventure" books of the 70s and 80s have practically disappeared as a genre and a broke and delusional Finch has taken to trying to sell old copies of his novels to various disinterested parties while having lurid 70s b-movie fantasies about being his avenging character. The old Reprisalizer website had some brief samples of "Finch"'s work, including his Westerns. The bit with the Westerns got to me because I've read a lot of those sorts of violent UK western pulp novels of the 70s

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