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

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A very solid 80s slasher. Also featuring Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld) was awesome seeing him in a slasher as a teen.
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Watched Jacob's Ladder last night. Can see how it partially inspired Silent Hill.
 
Revisiting Hong Kong action comedy horror mashups reminded me that the first Mr. Vampire film featured the debut of actress Moon Lee. She was a professional dancer who was recruited by director Ricky Lau for a role because he wanted a "fresh face" for the part. She starred in a lot of action films in the 80s and 90s, and she was in another schizoid HK genre film directed by Lau, Nocturnal Demon where she plays Wawa Choi, a gal from the mainland come to Hong Kong to visit her tow-truck driver cousin and blind grandfather. Unfortunately for her cousin (Albert Cheung) there's a psycho, box-cutter wielding, lighter fluid-sniffing cab-driving serial killer (Wing Cho) on the loose he bears a resemblance to so he has the cops and the killer after him. Talk about mood swings, the movie starts up with the killer driving his cab, getting stirred up by a provocatively dressed female passenger, and his stalking and murdering her. Then you'll have scenes of wacky comedy and "naive country mouse in HK who happens to be a skilled martial artist" antics with Moon Lee, and slapstick and more culture oriented jokes about mahjong, Chinese medicine and Cantonese wordplay that may or may not translate well, if at all. I think years of exposure have caused me to build up a level of tolerance for this sort of thing in HK films from the late 20th century.

One reason you saw so many weird genre blends in this period was that in HK a film could be in theaters for a week on average and needed to appeal to all sorts of viewers to get noticed, hence a lot of filmmakers throwing in as many elements as they could, and it's not the only "wacky movie featuring a serial killer" of the time. So you have fight scenes, choreographed by veteran Yuen Wah, who has a cameo as a jewel thief who runs into Lee, and the final conflict with the killer, who is martially inclined while Wawa's cousin is...not. And for the final conflict, Lee dresses like a potential target for the killer, complete with big-hair wig and vinyl.


But hey, this movie was an HK box office hit in 1990.
 
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There are quite a few Hong Kong horror and action movies from the mid '80s to late '90s that are absolutely wild. The genre-crossing sometimes came out of nowhere. There was one movie I watched some years back that I can't remember the name of, but mainly it was an action flick with gunfights and martial arts with the main characters being cops who engaged in slapstick humor in between the action scenes, but at one point cyberpunk sci-fi elements like computer hacking and evil cyborgs suddenly came out of nowhere.

I'm sure everyone's already familiar with all of the CAT III flicks. I love a lot of those.
 
120 Precursor Orbs said:
just saw Talk to Me and thought it was incredible. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did.
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Really? I didn't find the acting or the writing very good at all. It was predictable, but not in a good way, as well as being a very clumsy metaphor. I just found it artless and forgettable, clumsy and charmless.
 
Doctor of Autism said:
I saw Terrifier 2 and it is a step up from the first one and found it more fun,
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I just found out about this series a couple days ago. Normally not my type of horror movie at all. I ended up watching 1 and 2 in one sitting and then went to go watch 3 in theaters. There were somethings I didnt like, I think kids should be left out of on screen horror in general. I'm not about to go out and have it banned just my personal taste. I also thought he was a bit too mimey and cute at times. Thats all Ill say without going into spoilers but I enjoyed it overall. I think the biggest scare factor in the series is how he goes from cutesy funny clown/slightly scary to genuinely demented/overtly violent in one scene. I just think they dialed it up a bit too much in this one.
 
I watched My Soul to Take (2010). I am convinced that this was the first warning sign for Wes Craven's brain tumor that eventually took him. Whoa boy, what a stinker. All the characters are written like they're 12 in the 1960's and nothing really makes any sense at all. The ending is horseshit. It's almost so bad it's good or at least certain scenes can be entertaining in that way like the scene where the goth girl just beats the shit out of the soy boy. But otherwise, it's one of Craven's worst and almost as bad as Hills Have Eyes part 2.
 
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In general I think sci-fi is shit and I avoid it like the plague, especially in the horror genre, however recently I watch one called The Lazarus Effect: Starring Mark Duplass (Creep 1+2) Evan Peter's (American Horror Story) and Sarah Bolger (Emelie) I'm sure more notable actors are in it for others but for me these 3 are the reason I watched it. Lackluster ending but overall a pretty solid movie for sci-fi horror IMO. p11132251_p_v8_ah.jpg
 
BrunoMattei said:
I watched My Soul to Take (2010). I am convinced that this was the first warning sign for Wes Craven's brain tumor that eventually took him. Whoa boy, what a stinker. All the characters are written like they're 12 in the 1960's and nothing really makes any sense at all. The ending is horseshit. It's almost so bad it's good or at least certain scenes can be entertaining in that way like the scene where the goth girl just beats the shit out of the soy boy. But otherwise, it's one of Craven's worst and almost as bad as Hills Have Eyes part 2.
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Shitty thing about this was there was some considerable talent in this movie but the story and pacing and overall product was such shit it didn't even matter. Had no idea craven had a brain tumor but makes sense why he wrote iconic slasher icons like Freddy and Ghostface and then came out with some really shitty stuff
 
The Nothingness said:
I recommend The Void if you want something that is Lovecraftian, but not an adaptation of his work.
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Definitely second The Void. I need to give that a re-watch honestly, I saw it once, years ago, and still remember being impressed by it. Really over-achieved considering its budget. Shame that the Astron team went the horror-comedy route after that. Even though I enjoyed Psycho Goreman, I'd rather they just went straight horror.
 
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