Films You Have Watched (2018)

[Neon Ignition]

It's a difficult one to hate as much as it's dated Englund just revels in it. From that god awful stretched arms scene in the back alley to the ridiculous rubber dummy Mum getting fragged through the front door, the effects are a bit like the music - no suspense just video nasty shocker type stuff. We're going to slowly pick through them all again I think, I can only imagine how mad the later entries are now.

[Dogg Thang]

Oh, I still love the movie but it's very hard to disagree with it not being scary. It will be interesting to see what you make of a rewatch of all of them.

[JazzFunk]

A couple over the weekend, The Grudge (US version) and Wolfcop.

The former was OK but predictably meh, 12 rated 'creepy but vastly uncreepy' ish, the latter was disappointing but predictably so.

Yeah, had seen the DVD in the horror section at HMV a bit back, loved the excellent 80s-style cover and I think it was on a decent cult label so it intrigued me. But not enough to pay the £10/£15 it was selling for. Having seen it now, I wouldn't buy it at Poundland. It could've been OK and is kinda OK in some ways but it just goes out of its way to be too dumb when it could've maybe been a fun B-Movie. But alas it's rubbish...though I never really thought it would be anything else.

[Dogg Thang]

Have you seen the Japanese Ju-on films?

[Brad]

Batman vs Superman

Or as I now call it, Moron vs Bigger Moron.

->Open Spoiler<-

Lex played them like a fiddle but not in any kind of really clever way

, I kinda enjoyed it still though. I liked Afleck's Batman, don't like Cavil at all or Jesse whatshisname as Lex and am undecided re: Gal Gadot.

[JazzFunk]

Have you seen the Japanese Ju-on films?

No, but watching this I was assuming the original version was much more effective, having seen both the east and west versions of The Ring. And it felt weird the entire movie focusing on Americans living in Japan, just felt odd.

[Dogg Thang]

No, but watching this I was assuming the original version was much more effective, having seen both the east and west versions of The Ring. And it felt weird the entire movie focusing on Americans living in Japan, just felt odd.

Thing is, the American one was directed by the original Japanese director and it makes it a really interesting case study. Almost every scene in the American one was taken from either the first Ju-on movie or the TV movie (which is brilliant) and recreated almost exactly. There were only two key differences. One was the casting, which I honestly don't think was such a big factor even with the shift to the US characters. The other was the big one: the pacing. All the stuff is the same, but every scene just happens faster. And it kills it.

There is so much tension in those original movies, and you've seen pretty much everything in them already, but the slow pace of the originals makes all the difference.

[Cassius_Smoke]

It's a difficult one to hate as much as it's dated Englund just revels in it. From that god awful stretched arms scene in the back alley to the ridiculous rubber dummy Mum getting fragged through the front door, the effects are a bit like the music - no suspense just video nasty shocker type stuff. We're going to slowly pick through them all again I think, I can only imagine how mad the later entries are now.

Last year I watched all the Freddy films in order. It was a slog. Englund is great and has screen presence, but the films aint good. Freddy 6 is possibly a contender for worst movie ever made. Its in a league of its own it really is.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, Freddy's Dead is a special kind of hell. I saw that in the cinema. New Nightmare is mostly good though, although it goes a touch goofy in the later parts. And obviously Freddy Vs Jason is one of the great cinematic classics up there with 2001, Citizen Kane and Fast Five.

[Neon Ignition]

Here's another WTF movie

The Predator

Not the original, the new one. You have to assume that this was some ironic creation by Shane Black who fooled studios into letting him create an entry into a franchise he secretly despises by pretending he loves it. The film is a tonal and content mess, it's strangely watchable simply because it's brisk and a bit like looking away from a car wreck but it does the astounding job of making Predator 3 look like a seminal classic. Misjudged and at best like an action movie remake of Alien vs Predator 2, I could go cross eyed at just how much of a franchise killing disaster this movie is. On every level, they called it wrong on every level.

[QualityChimp]

I was relatively late to the party with Nightmare on Elm Street.
It was on telly once with some preview piece talking about the film and I liked the idea of setting booby traps to catch him.

The film starts pretty good with that amazing sequence of the finger blades being made and the sinister grunting.
As we meet the characters, there's a sense of dread, but then we see the long arm on the wall and all tension was lost (for me).
Made it to the end, but was underwhelmed for the rest of it and the doll shot was ridiculous.

I've never seen another film apart from Freddy Vs. Jason and I can't remember a single thing about it.

[randombs]

When I was younger, I saw number 5, Dream Child.

Bits of it stayed with me for a while because I was young. I watched the original one as an adult, a long time later.

I think the idea of the films is scarier than the films themselves.

With older horror films, I find the ones I saw as a kid still a bit freaky now because I remember how I felt when I saw them back then. I've tried watching a few 80s horror films I'd never seen before and some are still decent. Stuff like The Evil Dead and Friday the 13th.

It's funny to think that I now have access to all of them but I've missed the boat in a lot of cases!

[Dogg Thang]

5 is pretty terrible too. And yeah, you're right - often the idea is way scarier than the execution. 5 is really goofy but I was totally into it back in the day because I got interested in makeup effects and the Elm Street movies of the time (3, 4 and 5 especially) were great in that regard. I remember getting Fangoria specials on 5 and studying the behind the scenes pics. What was always apparent at the time is, like the Friday films, they often had to cut back on what was shown. Every now and again you'd see a behind the scenes shot that was way nastier looking than what made it to screen.

[Dogg Thang]

No, but watching this I was assuming the original version was much more effective, having seen both the east and west versions of The Ring. And it felt weird the entire movie focusing on Americans living in Japan, just felt odd.

FYI, the original TV version (The Curse) is on YouTube with english subs. Skipping through it, I'm now amazed at how cheap it looks. I remember it being brilliant but I also remember it looking better! Anyway, if you ever want to give it a go, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx1O_OHTQwY

The movie version would look better but I remember the TV version being really effective and it also has Chiaki Kuriyama from Battle Royale in it, so that's cool.

[JazzFunk]

Cheers, I will give that a look when the broadband stops playing up, it's a stuttery nightmare at prez. Would be curious to see the effects though.