#40 - An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Well it is now, as a child I was petrified. The dream sequence with the bed in the woods, the painful transformation and the guy running thru the maze-like corridors of the tube station are scarred into my psyche.
Trying to decide if I should sully my last days of Halloween with American Werewolf in Paris now
Watched both myself earlier in the year. The original was also one of my childhood viewings and deserted tube stations still scare the **** out of me. My wife laughed at me when I suggested it was still scary though.
Paris has not aged well. Some great scenery and Julie Delpy but poor humor and bad CGI.
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"I remember the mud. I fuc*ing hated the mud. A lot of men died in the mud."
In a near future landscape where the street drug Hype has destroyed the city, a gang of drug dealers have their stash stolen by a desperate chick. As they chase her down she seeks refuge in a Vietnam veteran's bar and the occupants aren't overjoyed at the prospect of giving her up.
This has got John Carpenter written all over it. Part Assault on Precinct 13 and part Escape from New York, but with an emphasis on the former, with crunchy electronic music to spare.
As far as talent goes, this is the genre equivalent of The Expendables, with an all-star 80s cast that includes Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove (Cobra Kai's Vietnam vet in chief!) and George Wendt.
Despite only being a year old, there's more grain than a farmer's silo on this picture. I mean Jesus Christ, they went heavy handed with their intentions! It never looks “good” during the 90 minute runtime, but it probably looks the right kind of noisy trash that they were aiming for.
Narratively what we have here is a zombie film without zombies, as the undead hordes are replaced by seemingly endless foot soldiers, trying to break down their defences and snatch their narcotics back.
I really dug this and got on board with the need to take a stand against the bullies and criminals destroying the neighbourhood.
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Midsommar (2019)
Following a personal tragedy, Florence Pugh and boyfriend Jack Reynor join their friends on a trip to a Swedish midsummer festival. Clocking in at just under 3 hours this is a strange one. There's little in the way of plot and the dramatic twists come as little surprise but the delivery, sheer oddness, and passive disintegration of dysfunctional friendships and relationships amidst the acid trip festival makes for compelling viewing. Drugs are bad, cults are not to be trusted and sleeping with a 15-year old is not going to end well for you. People bawling their lungs out, old folk in the buff, stunning visuals interspersed with sudden graphic violence all tells you you're in an Ari Aster film.
Quote:
Dani: What are we makin' here?
Dagny: Meat!
Dani: Oh, wow.
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#42 - An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
Trio of obnoxious backpacking american dudebros head to Paris to bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower and meet up with a simpering local lycanthrope chick. Yeah you're right; this really didn't age well, especially the poorly CGI-ed werewolves and grating 90's soundtrack. Not that it was any good to start with of course. It feels like a forgotten American Pie/Eurotrip film. There's some fascinating lengthy IMDB trivia about how the writer originally envisioned the story which is far more entertaining than the actual flick. Never again.
Ernest Scared Stupid (1991)
Jim Varney's rubber faced redneck inadvertently releases an evil troll intent on stealing the souls of five children to unleash a world destroying troll horde on Halloween night. Cue lots of slapstick, face mugging, entertaining sight gags and a dog actor that steals the show. The effects are by The Chiodo Brothers of Critters fame and are satisfactorily gloopy. The finale Troll battle is pretty damn entertaining!
Quote:
Trantor the Troll: You will die for the disgrace of your forefathers!
Ernest P. Worrell: I didn't have four fathers! I only had one father and I didn't know him that well!
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Sorry guys, just sneaking this in at the end here and only because GP's earlier post mentioning this film reminded me that I needed to watch it, so intended to watch and post about it but became too busy in the end. This film BTW is freely available on YouTube fully subbed. It's a VHS rip though, but quality isn't too bad really, I watched it on a 109" projector screen OK:
Ring: Kanzenban (1995)
The original, slightly saucy, Made-for-TV film adaptation of Koji Suzuki's Ring. This gets a lot of flak online because 99% of the reviews out there are from American horror film fans expecting something of the quality of Hideo Nakata's theatrical adaptation and IMO just about every review of this film I've read demonstrates a clear ignorance of what Japanese TV is about. I'm something of a lapsed J-drama fanboy who hasn't really watched any asian TV in a long while, but because I'm reasonably familar with Japanese TV from the 90s through to the 10s , I came into this film perhaps with more realistic expectations given the fact this was originalls a made for TV film that was then almost Caligula-ised for its home video release (VHS and LaserDisc, it has never been released beyond these two formats, presumably because the TV studio either have the rights and they ain't selling, or the rights have lapsed).
OK, so this was surprisingly entertaining IMO, so long as you go into it expecting a melodramatic cheese-fest that follows a very rigid "genre" dictated formula, which in this case would be the detective mystery, albeit a medical one. I've never read Suzuki's original Ring novel, but I know a fair bit about it and this is by far the most faithful adaptation of Ring made to date, which means it's less of a supernatural horror film and more a race-against-time science fiction thriller as two men work towards deciphering a ghostly virus before the infection kills them.. In short, it's a weirdly appropriate film to be watching at Halloween this year given the state of the world.
The thing about Japanese TV is that it is, or it was (again, not watched much recently) is extremely low budget, often using tiny sets or cramped apartments and offices and extensive outside location shooting to look "cinematic", but for a TV film from the mid 90s this is surprisingly kinetic and the opening sequence alone brings to mind The Exorcist and Argento's infamous Tenebre apartment tracking shot, stylisitic fluorishes that had me thinking about The Evil Dead Trap tbh. Every now and then it feels as if Chisui Takigawa had been hitting his horror collection hard before filming that day and you'll be treated to something stylish before returning to routine TV production values for giant stretches, but it came alive just enough times to maintain my interest throughout the 97min runtime. Your mileage will definitely vary there!
If anything watching Kanzenban will leave you with a new found appreciation for how Hideo Nakata took a pretty melodramatic. pulpy, kind of atypical Japanese "detective" mystery and fine tuned it into a sombre, creepy yurei chiller, because Kanzenban is absolutely none of that, and it's just about as faithful to the source as you're likely ever to get. Gone is Nanako Matsushima's female reporter with a young step son and a pyschic ex, in comes Kazuyuki Asakawa, a male journalist with a pregnant wife and a pilloried friend who happens to be a parapsychology professor who famously may have killed his ex wife. So our lead is a sceptic, the supporting role is a believer, classic TV show setup and thank god they got the always magnificent Yoshio Harada to play Ryűji as there would be some serious hamming up going on in the hands of a lesser performer. The infamous video sequence is less Nobuo Nakagawa and more David Cronenberg, and it represents Sadako's real-life memories more clearly than the film, but doesn't have anywhere near the same impact. The other big difference from Nakata's film is that Sadako is now
inter sex, or more specifically suffers from CAIS: Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (another element that makes this story more appropriate for our times! ),
like she is in the novel and that provides the motivation for the crimes visited upon her.
There's a weird
incest angle
added to the plotline that isn't from the novel and seems to be there as an excuse to shoe-horn in an extra Sadako sex scene so that the assets of ex gravure idol Ayane Miura can be seen for a further five minutes (she doesn't have many scenes that involve clothes TBH). That's where the Kanzenban in Ring Kanzenban comes from. From what I can gather they basically added in one or two sex scenes and released it as the ultimate release, which is essentially what Kanzenban means. Most reviewers talk about this film as if it is basically softcore porn and that is absolutely ridiculous. There's a sex scene early on inside a car which is one of the first victims of Sadako's virus; in Nakata's film you only see the bodies and it's clear they were caught in vehicular flagrante, but here you get the whole sex scene including an inexplicably revealing cunnilingus sequence that was doomed to censorship because of Japanese attitudes towards the exhibition of genitalia and the whole pubic region. Anyway, even this sex scene isn't THAT graphic, and none of the sex and nudity in this film is any stronger than what you will find in just about any slasher film of the 70s and 80s. It really is no big deal, it's just weird seeing all these boobies and shagging in a Ring film, given the almost PG nature of Nakata's adaptation.
Anyway, I enjoyed it as a distracting bit of trash. 6/10. I'd much rather watch this than bleedin' Rasen or that terrible Korean remake of the Nakata film: The Ring Virus.
I haven't seen the White Worm since shortly after release, but recently had an argument about it. Can you please confirm whether or not Peter Capaldi wears a sporran containing hand grenades?
I haven't seen the White Worm since shortly after release, but recently had an argument about it. Can you please confirm whether or not Peter Capaldi wears a sporran containing hand grenades?
Oculus (2013)
Siblings Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites return to the family home where their parents died under the influence of a cursed mirror. Another early Flanagan that could be viewed as almost a Haunting of Hill house prototype in structure and execution. Solid performances, good scares, a couple of icky relatable trauma scenes and plenty of mind ****ery.
Quote:
Kaylie Russell: [to the mirror] Hello again! You must be hungry.
Thanks for everyone's recommendations this year. Despite the binge my horror watchlist has grown longer.
Now for Noirvember!
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My Halloween viewing:
The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XXXI - Not a classic, but certainly funnier than most of the regular episodes have been lately.
The Wolfman (2010)
Remake of the 1941 classic with Benicio Del Toro returning home following the death of his brother, only to be bitten by a werewolf &, well, you know…
I'm still mystified by the largely terrible reviews this got on release. The visuals, the gothic atmosphere, the score, the effects & most of the performances are all great. Yes, Anthony Hopkins is a big old slice of ham, but he has been since he won his Oscar so why anyone expected anything different is beyond me. to the naysayers. I loved it.
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Not really much more to say about this one that hasn't already been said. It's a classic for a reason. It's still scary, still funny, the transformation is still jaw-dropping & Jenny Agutter's still gorgeous. Having only owned it on DVD before, the Arrow 4K restoration on blu-ray is a revelation. Awesome.
The Howling (1981)
TV reporter Dee Wallace is traumatised after investigating a serial killer & is offered a nice relaxing stay at Patrick Macnee's health spa. Alas, the place is largely populated by lycanthropes. Oops! After the relative realism of American Werewolf, this one feels a little cartoony - the hazy cinematography, the colour pallette, the OTT performances - & let's not even get into the werewolf sex scene & the wildly inconsistent score (what's with the comedy clown music during the hunting scene?). Still, it's Joe Dante, so you know it's going to be fun & full of his familiar set of players (Dick Miller, Robert Picardo) & movie in-jokes. Rob Bottin's creature effects are still pretty cool too.
Managed to watch a couple more before the end of halloween...
The Ranger (2018) Shudder original
Trailer...
A fun little movie, nice to see punks are still a scene. Jeremy Holm is fun as the nutty ranger.
Doesnt deliver on the gore front sadly but a solid 6 out of 10.
A Werewolf in England (2020)
Trailer...
Dont let the trailer fool you, this is utter crap. Ive watched all the howling sequels and they are masterpieces compared to this crap.
Terrible acting and script. Just dont waste your time. 1 out of 10
to the naysayers. I loved it.
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