What movies are you watching?

[epilogue]

Hedda.

Fucking brilliant. That's the movie I've been waiting for this year.

[BurtReynolds]

Blackhat. Michael Mann is cool, but this one is pretty sterile. The characters are barely there and the ending sucks. Some good shootouts though. 5 bags of popcorn.

[spike]

Eden

I wouldn't call it a particularly good movie, which is too bad, because the story/subject matter is interesting enough.

Ana De Armas was a lot of fun. Sydney Sweeney seems like a pretty good actress, but getting her to do a German accent is a lot to ask.

i didn't know mammaries could speak.

[Farmer John]

Eden

I wouldn't call it a particularly good movie, which is too bad, because the story/subject matter is interesting enough.

Ana De Armas was a lot of fun. Sydney Sweeney seems like a pretty good actress, but getting her to do a German accent is a lot to ask.

i didn't know mammaries could speak.

That's because you're not truly listening

[VinylGuy]

Hedda.

Fucking brilliant. That's the movie I've been waiting for this year.

this is the new Nia DaCosta right? i wanna see it. She is also behind the next 28 years later movie, so super exited for that one as well.

[epilogue]

Hedda.

Fucking brilliant. That's the movie I've been waiting for this year.

this is the new Nia DaCosta right? i wanna see it. She is also behind the next 28 years later movie, so super exited for that one as well.

Yessir

[Ms Harmless]

I haven't seen Hedda yet but I'm glad Nia DaCosta has another "serious" film under her belt

I remember studying Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in college, brilliant stuff

[epilogue]

Ibsen is one of my favorite playwrights -- and Hedda Gabbler one his best. This adaptation is stellar and I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Buby]

Watched “Sasquatch Sunset” last night.
An experience for sure.

[BurtReynolds]

Play Dirty. Shane Black is a crackhead. Amazon slop aside, I kinda love watching to find out what crazy decisions he makes, usually for the worse, but not always. He's like an alien. 8.3 stars.

[Ello Sailor]

I watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters last night. Excellent visuals and sound design, much like with Godzilla 2014. The monster fights were awesome, especially everything involving Mothra and Rodan.

The acting and dialogue, though. Holy smokes. That chode from Lost? Terrible. That dorky sonsabitch from Silicon Valley? Get the fuck outta here.

Really soured the whole thing for me.

[LoathedVermin72]

The Spooky Season festivities have begun:

Spoiler: show

-The Deadly Spawn: Disappointing. The special effects are very impressive but they are all this movie has going for it. It has the worst symptom of incompetent amateur filmmaking: being drastically under-edited and dragging on interminably. This thing is sooooo sloooow.

-Forbidden World (rewatch): This movie absolutely fuckin’ rips and I can’t believe it doesn’t have a huge cult following. Definitely the best Alien knockoff ever. Gnarly gore effects. So entertaining from beginning to end.

-Nightmares in a Damaged Brain: Good lord, this movie is DEPRAVED. And viciously violent. Reminds me of Maniac and Angst in its downbeat, unsettling, uncompromising portrayal of a serial killer. Good stuff right here.

-Dark Places (1973): Enjoyable, lowkey Brit horror elevated by a great cast (Christopher Lee, Joan Collins, Herbert Lom, Jane Birkin, etc.).

-Night of the Demon (1980): Has its moments (mostly the inserted death scenes), but when it comes to wacko no-budget Bigfoot horror, I’ll take Shriek of the Mutilated all day every day.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-The Blair Witch Project (rewatch): I've always been kinda lukewarm on this one but it finally clicked this time. Totally effective, thanks largely to the deeply convincing performances by the three leads (the immersive, experimental way they filmed this has a lot to do with that, I imagine). The new-ish restoration by Second Sight is terrific.

-Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (rewatch): Absolute classic. One of the most batshit wacko of all the '80s Italian horror movies, and that's saying something.

-The Ice House: Total dud. Such an annoying script and directed just as annoyingly, with every line of bafflingly obtuse dialogue delivered with an aggressively sly tone as if each word is loaded with some kind of sinister double meaning. Exhausting, obnoxious, silly, and dull. I love a lot of the old BBC Christmas Ghost Stories but this is probably the worst of the lot.

-Dawn of the Dead (1978) (rewatch): Really nothing left to be said about this. An immortal classic. A movie I watched so much in high school that I kinda feel like it doesn't have many surprises left to offer me anymore, but that's okay.

-Horror Hospital: Never quite finds the right tone. It seems like it was going for comedy, but it only rarely establishes that vibe. Fun and ridiculous Michael Gough performance and one delightfully out-of-left-field scene, but I wish this were better.

-Night of the Living Dead (1990) (rewatch): Didn't like this when I first saw it, but I was ready to embrace it this time. Nope. Still kinda sucks, unfortunately. Too straightforward of a remake but drained of all the original's surreal, nightmarish magic. With Savini at the helm, you'd think there'd at least be a hefty dose of gore to bring something new this time, but you don't even get that. Just a shrug of a movie.

-Return of the Evil Dead (rewatch): A few nice gore moments, one wonderfully shocking sequence, and a lot of boring filler shots. I want to like these Blind Dead movies more than I do.

-The Ghost Galleon: Good fucking lord what a snoozefest. ONE kill scene?! In this whole slog?!

-The Dunwich Horror (rewatch): Another one I was hoping would improve this time. It did not. Fun to see Talia Shire pop up.

-The Dead Next Door (rewatch): Some nice splatter FX here and there, but kind of cloying overall. Worse than I remembered it being.

-The Cell (rewatch): Yet another dud that was even worse than I remembered. The mind-fantasy stuff is nothing but empty visuals with no punch, and the real-world scenes are utterly inert. No juice here at all. Tarsem Singh sucks.

-I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) (rewatch): Finally, something that hits! Absolutely loved this this time around (and Sony's 4K disc is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen). Great cast (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Anne Heche are particularly good), great vibes, with excellent direction and editing - this thing hums along so smoothly.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-I Still Know What Did Last Summer: Well, this has precisely zero of the qualities that made the original good. Plainly a rushed cash grab that turns FPJ's character into an asshole for some reason and does nothing well. I swear they "discover" the same four corpses like three times. That's all you got?

-The Conjuring (rewatch): Still very effective (this and Insidious are two of the few horror movies that actually scare me). Well-directed and well-cast - Wilson, Farmiga, Taylor, and Livingston are all inspired choices. Unfortunately, all the Warren hagiography and weird Christian propaganda still keep me from fully embracing it, but a very strong horror movie regardless. Easy to see why this spawned so many sequels and spinoffs.

-Event Horizon (rewatch): Love this movie forever. Still rips. Though I will say it kinda loses steam in the last 15 minutes. Ultimately a minor complaint considering how much ass this movie kicks overall.

-Demons 2 (rewatch): The first half hour of this is amazing. Gorgeous production design and cinematography assist some of the most fascinating use of dream logic in all of Italian horror as the film's narrative progresses because characters are, essentially, watching their own film on TV. The movie bleeds into itself in a surreal, brain-twisting ouroboros. But, sadly, once the demons arrive and start wreaking havoc, everything becomes routine and the pace slows to a crawl. Too bad. That first 30 is probably better than the first Demons (which is a classic), but the last hour is much worse.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-The Perfume of the Lady in Black: Not what I expected! Always thought this was a ghost story, but it's something much darker, much more psychological. Mimsy Farmer carries this - she's been great in everything I've ever seen her in. It actually reminds me a bit of another of her movies, La traque (which is a masterpiece). Both are very sad films that deal with a woman who is failed by - and destroyed by - the people around her. This is nowhere near as good as that film, but still solid.

-The Resurrected: Immaculate Spooky Season vibes here: set on the East Coast during October, with constant overcast skies, wind, and rain. I enjoyed this a lot despite some of the FX payoff being sorta awkward; the designs are cool, but the weirdly juttery execution is odd. Chris Sarandon is always fun to watch.

-The Haunting of Rosalind: Deadly dull shot-on-tape TV movie with a young Susan Sarandon. It was cool to see so many behind-the-scenes roles here being filled by women (extremely uncommon in the '70s), but I wish the results were more interesting.

-The Horrible Dr. Hichcock: Another deadly dull movie. Gothic horror with no sense of atmosphere, which means it's pretty much worthless. It's filmed almost entirely in one house, but you never get any sense of the geography of the place or the surrounding property. It feels like they were trying to pass off an urban building as a rural mansion and it doesn't work at all.

-End of Days (rewatch): Silly fun. Gabriel Byrne plays a pitch-perfect Satan. Peter Hyams's cinematography is stunningly gorgeous and Kevin Pollak is fun and offbeat casting, but I think they went way too big with some of the action set-pieces, leaving the movie struggling to find an identity somewhere between a gritty supernatural thriller and a big-budget action movie. Doesn't really work but I enjoyed it anyway.

-I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025): Absolutely godawful. Script feels like it was generated by AI. The young cast is uniformly horrendous. Zero vibes at all. Painfully lame kills; clearly directed by someone with no love for the genre. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. both still look great and it's nice to see them again, but it's not enough. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel of nostalgia-bait here.

-The Curse of Frankenstein (rewatch): My favorite Hammer film and one of my all-time favorite films, full stop. I never tire of it. Flawless script, all-timer Peter Cushing performance. I love everything about it. A deeply evil movie. So much fun every time.

-Horror of Dracula (rewatch): Another Hammer classic. What can you say?

-Rasputin: The Mad Monk (rewatch): Christopher Lee's greatest performance, and maybe an all-time top 10 performance by anyone. He transforms his entire physicality and crashes through every scene like a wrecking ball. Barbara Shelley keeps up, though - she's always great too.

-Rape Squad: The kind of brain-twisting relic that could only come out of '70s exploitation: a genuinely sympathetic look at rape culture in the women's lib era that takes the audience through the trauma and humiliation of how sexual assault and harassment is treated...but one that also indulges in titillation and uncomfortable sleaze at the same time. This kind of semi-contradictory, uneasy stuff is what I love about exploitation, and while its Movie-of-the-Week-esque direction keeps me from ranking it among the very best of the genre (Cannibal Holocaust, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, I Spit on Your Grave, etc.), it's still a compelling work nonetheless.

-In the Mouth of Madness (rewatch): Boy did this hit hard this time. Feels like it has some kind of depressing new relevance for America in 2025. The feeling of society somehow losing its grip all around you, the feeling of being alienated from everyone you live among, the absurdity of the human condition run amok - not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or scream in terror. Some of the greatest Carpenter doom vibes ever. Side note: Sam Neill is inspired casting.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-Carnival of Souls (rewatch): Still an outsider masterwork. Surreal, beautiful - a very special movie. Herk Harvey's day job as a maker of industrial shorts brings a singular quality to this. Candace Hilligoss is so good; could not imagine a more perfect countenance for this role. The Criterion Blu-ray is still stunning; this negative must have been in pristine shape. Wish like hell Harvey had directed more movies.

-The Mystery of the Mary Celeste: VERY early Hammer sort-of-horror (1935!). Bela Lugosi is great as always, but this movie is stiff, awkward, and boring. Terrible script, stilted direction. Even the structure is a mess: this clearly should have started with its ending as a cold open before having the rest of the movie take place in flashback. At least it's short, I guess.

-Picture Mommy Dead: Bert I. Gordon is a bad director. The lead girl here is one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen in a movie. Could not imagine a dimmer bulb - it's as if every second she's on screen you can see her trying to squeeze together one single thought. Jimmy Sangster wrote a bunch of similar family-trying-to-drive-heir-insane thrillers in the '60s that were actually good. Just watch those instead because this sucks.

-Repulsion (rewatch): Roman Polanski is the best director who's ever lived. He's made exactly one bad movie: this one. I was a teenager the last time I saw this and my opinion has not improved. Clinical, showy, precious - all qualities I don't associate with Polanski but they're abundant here. It uses over-the-top visual allusions to portray the protagonist's alienation and mental breakdown instead of exploring the causes of her alienation. I gleaned nothing interesting from this. Catherine Deneuve is very good but this material is so thin.

-Near Dark (rewatch): This needs a fresh 4K remaster desperately. I think this movie might be great but it's hard to tell from this ancient DVD master, which really does its best to strangle what is clearly some primo '80s atmosphere. The bar scene is still great (and super nasty and mean-spirited). Rob Zombie definitely lifted the motel shootout for the opening of The Devil's Rejects.

-Countess Dracula: I was immediately deflated when I saw in the opening credits that Peter Sasdy directed this. A total limp hand and my least favorite Hammer director. My deflation was the correct response because this is a dud. Why isn't there a proper movie about Erzebet Bathory?

-Graveyard Shift (1990): Why are there so many theatrical Stephen King adaptations that feel like TV movies? What a weirdly consistent phenomenon. Anyway, this sucks. Maybe one of the worst casts of the '90s? Brad Dourif is only light here but he has limited screentime and seems like he's in a different movie than everyone else.

Continuing:

-The Rocky Horror Picture Show (rewatch): Stills tons of fun. Loaded with committed performances. Loses steam a bit in the last 20.

-Dead & Breakfast (rewatch): Worse than I remembered. Weirdly stacked cast.

-Rampage (1987): Wow, I loved this! I would say it's my third favorite Friedkin behind Cruising and The Hunted. The first half hour is breathtaking, and while the movie certainly peaks there, it still remains interesting and engaging afterward as it wrestles with a lot of thorny questions. (For the record, I watched the original director's cut, not the re-edited theatrical version.)

-Weapons: Wow, I hated this! The structure is a disaster. It has nothing to say about anything. This material barely warrants 90 minutes, let alone a 2+ hour runtime. Scipt makes no sense when you apply even a little bit of thought to it (the high concept Jordan Peele syndrome strikes again). Can't believe we're still doing uncritical "evil crone" horror in 2025. A movie that is so above itself and above genre that it completely forgoes even the basic pleasures of a movie. Spineless, pathetic, worthless filmmaking. Fuck this movie!

-Cutting Class: Lame bore of a slasher.

-Casper (rewatch): Great vibes and production design, and the early CGI ghosts hold up very well and feel like fully realized characters on screen. I will say the pacing/structure is a little odd and cause the last 30 minutes or so to feel like a bit of a mess.

-The Innkeepers (rewatch): Oh yeah, now this is more like it. This holds up so beautifully. A fun script carried by good performances, and when the horror ramps up, it's still genuinely scary. A bit weird how of a different era this already looks and feels; I rented this on VOD when it first came out and now it's almost 15 years old. Fuck.

-Night of the Demon (rewatch): I first saw this in high school, before I had a taste for classic British horror. Now that I've fallen in love with that stuff, I was hoping to love this. I didn't. A perfectly solid and enjoyable movie, but mildly so - about what I remembered, in other words. I think it might be important that Brit horror be made by Brits - a French director and an American star mean this doesn't quite feel like the genuine article. The demon still looks cool as hell, though.

-Dead of Night (1977): A TV anthology film written by Richard Matheson. I had a great time with this, though the second vignette is weaker than the first and third, IMO. The final one - "Bobby" - is actually pretty creepy; kind of a proto-Pet Sematary with a great ending. I could see someone doing a cool remake of it.

-The Possession of Joel Delaney: The terrifying story of how a priviliged white guy befriends a poor Puerto Rican and, therefore, inevitably becomes a communist and a murderer. Watch the horror of a rich white woman as she barely escapes the nightmare of Spanish Harlem! What a piece of shit.

-The House of the Devil (rewatch): Still enjoyable, but a bit more slight than I remembered. And the more I sit with it, the more it bugs me that this script kinda makes no sense at all. Still, it's well-directed and carried by a good cast.

-Guinea Pig: Android of Notre Dame: A bit of a bore. Occasionally the gore effects give it a mild pulse, but not enough.

-Effects: A painful snooze. I was fading fast at this point.

-Blood (1973): If you know Andy Milligan, you know what you're in for: A group of off-off-off-off-off Broadway actors in bad stage makeup and costumes in a run-down old house playacting as monsters and villains. Directed with pure, seething misanthropy. Unhinged, miserable, a little bit wonderful. Milligan was one of one.

-Session 9 (rewatch): A masterpiece. Every time I see it, I find it more textured, more layered, more involving, richer. Everyone in the cast is an inspired choice and they all came to play (the livewire energy of David Caruso is such a brilliant way to stir the ensemble pot and keep everyone on their toes). The early digital cinematography has aged so beautifully and remains so interesting to look at. The horror runs very deep, the dread permeates. A profoundly unsettling work of cinema. I adore this movie.

-28 Years Later: It is commendable that Danny Boyle still tried so hard here, but...I dunno. I mostly found this kind of annoying. Garland's script sucks. When Fiennes shows up, it makes it immediately clear how weak every other actor is (though Aaron Taylor-Johnson is decent; at least he has some gravitas). Thematically, I'm confused about what this movie is trying to say. And the "male child protects his adult mother" thing remains one of the most odious and braindead tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction. This movie just didn't work for me.

-The Woman in Black (1989) (rewatch): Quite creepy, with two all-time great scare scenes that have never left me since I first saw this. A touch too slow and could be tightened, but very enjoyable.

[Ms Harmless]

Session 9! a masterpiece indeed

so is 28 YL

[tree_]

Bugonia. I watched a review about this movie just now, and I like the movie a lot. Highly recommended. I'll probably watch it when it comes to streaming.

[VinylGuy]

There is no way i will see that one.

[epilogue]

There is no way i will see that one.

The movie or the video about the movie that tree watched?

[VinylGuy]

probably both

[LoathedVermin72]

The Spooky Season festivities have begun:

Spoiler: show

-The Deadly Spawn: Disappointing. The special effects are very impressive but they are all this movie has going for it. It has the worst symptom of incompetent amateur filmmaking: being drastically under-edited and dragging on interminably. This thing is sooooo sloooow.

-Forbidden World (rewatch): This movie absolutely fuckin’ rips and I can’t believe it doesn’t have a huge cult following. Definitely the best Alien knockoff ever. Gnarly gore effects. So entertaining from beginning to end.

-Nightmares in a Damaged Brain: Good lord, this movie is DEPRAVED. And viciously violent. Reminds me of Maniac and Angst in its downbeat, unsettling, uncompromising portrayal of a serial killer. Good stuff right here.

-Dark Places (1973): Enjoyable, lowkey Brit horror elevated by a great cast (Christopher Lee, Joan Collins, Herbert Lom, Jane Birkin, etc.).

-Night of the Demon (1980): Has its moments (mostly the inserted death scenes), but when it comes to wacko no-budget Bigfoot horror, I’ll take Shriek of the Mutilated all day every day.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-The Blair Witch Project (rewatch): I've always been kinda lukewarm on this one but it finally clicked this time. Totally effective, thanks largely to the deeply convincing performances by the three leads (the immersive, experimental way they filmed this has a lot to do with that, I imagine). The new-ish restoration by Second Sight is terrific.

-Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (rewatch): Absolute classic. One of the most batshit wacko of all the '80s Italian horror movies, and that's saying something.

-The Ice House: Total dud. Such an annoying script and directed just as annoyingly, with every line of bafflingly obtuse dialogue delivered with an aggressively sly tone as if each word is loaded with some kind of sinister double meaning. Exhausting, obnoxious, silly, and dull. I love a lot of the old BBC Christmas Ghost Stories but this is probably the worst of the lot.

-Dawn of the Dead (1978) (rewatch): Really nothing left to be said about this. An immortal classic. A movie I watched so much in high school that I kinda feel like it doesn't have many surprises left to offer me anymore, but that's okay.

-Horror Hospital: Never quite finds the right tone. It seems like it was going for comedy, but it only rarely establishes that vibe. Fun and ridiculous Michael Gough performance and one delightfully out-of-left-field scene, but I wish this were better.

-Night of the Living Dead (1990) (rewatch): Didn't like this when I first saw it, but I was ready to embrace it this time. Nope. Still kinda sucks, unfortunately. Too straightforward of a remake but drained of all the original's surreal, nightmarish magic. With Savini at the helm, you'd think there'd at least be a hefty dose of gore to bring something new this time, but you don't even get that. Just a shrug of a movie.

-Return of the Evil Dead (rewatch): A few nice gore moments, one wonderfully shocking sequence, and a lot of boring filler shots. I want to like these Blind Dead movies more than I do.

-The Ghost Galleon: Good fucking lord what a snoozefest. ONE kill scene?! In this whole slog?!

-The Dunwich Horror (rewatch): Another one I was hoping would improve this time. It did not. Fun to see Talia Shire pop up.

-The Dead Next Door (rewatch): Some nice splatter FX here and there, but kind of cloying overall. Worse than I remembered it being.

-The Cell (rewatch): Yet another dud that was even worse than I remembered. The mind-fantasy stuff is nothing but empty visuals with no punch, and the real-world scenes are utterly inert. No juice here at all. Tarsem Singh sucks.

-I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) (rewatch): Finally, something that hits! Absolutely loved this this time around (and Sony's 4K disc is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen). Great cast (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Anne Heche are particularly good), great vibes, with excellent direction and editing - this thing hums along so smoothly.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-I Still Know What Did Last Summer: Well, this has precisely zero of the qualities that made the original good. Plainly a rushed cash grab that turns FPJ's character into an asshole for some reason and does nothing well. I swear they "discover" the same four corpses like three times. That's all you got?

-The Conjuring (rewatch): Still very effective (this and Insidious are two of the few horror movies that actually scare me). Well-directed and well-cast - Wilson, Farmiga, Taylor, and Livingston are all inspired choices. Unfortunately, all the Warren hagiography and weird Christian propaganda still keep me from fully embracing it, but a very strong horror movie regardless. Easy to see why this spawned so many sequels and spinoffs.

-Event Horizon (rewatch): Love this movie forever. Still rips. Though I will say it kinda loses steam in the last 15 minutes. Ultimately a minor complaint considering how much ass this movie kicks overall.

-Demons 2 (rewatch): The first half hour of this is amazing. Gorgeous production design and cinematography assist some of the most fascinating use of dream logic in all of Italian horror as the film's narrative progresses because characters are, essentially, watching their own film on TV. The movie bleeds into itself in a surreal, brain-twisting ouroboros. But, sadly, once the demons arrive and start wreaking havoc, everything becomes routine and the pace slows to a crawl. Too bad. That first 30 is probably better than the first Demons (which is a classic), but the last hour is much worse.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-The Perfume of the Lady in Black: Not what I expected! Always thought this was a ghost story, but it's something much darker, much more psychological. Mimsy Farmer carries this - she's been great in everything I've ever seen her in. It actually reminds me a bit of another of her movies, La traque (which is a masterpiece). Both are very sad films that deal with a woman who is failed by - and destroyed by - the people around her. This is nowhere near as good as that film, but still solid.

-The Resurrected: Immaculate Spooky Season vibes here: set on the East Coast during October, with constant overcast skies, wind, and rain. I enjoyed this a lot despite some of the FX payoff being sorta awkward; the designs are cool, but the weirdly juttery execution is odd. Chris Sarandon is always fun to watch.

-The Haunting of Rosalind: Deadly dull shot-on-tape TV movie with a young Susan Sarandon. It was cool to see so many behind-the-scenes roles here being filled by women (extremely uncommon in the '70s), but I wish the results were more interesting.

-The Horrible Dr. Hichcock: Another deadly dull movie. Gothic horror with no sense of atmosphere, which means it's pretty much worthless. It's filmed almost entirely in one house, but you never get any sense of the geography of the place or the surrounding property. It feels like they were trying to pass off an urban building as a rural mansion and it doesn't work at all.

-End of Days (rewatch): Silly fun. Gabriel Byrne plays a pitch-perfect Satan. Peter Hyams's cinematography is stunningly gorgeous and Kevin Pollak is fun and offbeat casting, but I think they went way too big with some of the action set-pieces, leaving the movie struggling to find an identity somewhere between a gritty supernatural thriller and a big-budget action movie. Doesn't really work but I enjoyed it anyway.

-I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025): Absolutely godawful. Script feels like it was generated by AI. The young cast is uniformly horrendous. Zero vibes at all. Painfully lame kills; clearly directed by someone with no love for the genre. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. both still look great and it's nice to see them again, but it's not enough. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel of nostalgia-bait here.

-The Curse of Frankenstein (rewatch): My favorite Hammer film and one of my all-time favorite films, full stop. I never tire of it. Flawless script, all-timer Peter Cushing performance. I love everything about it. A deeply evil movie. So much fun every time.

-Horror of Dracula (rewatch): Another Hammer classic. What can you say?

-Rasputin: The Mad Monk (rewatch): Christopher Lee's greatest performance, and maybe an all-time top 10 performance by anyone. He transforms his entire physicality and crashes through every scene like a wrecking ball. Barbara Shelley keeps up, though - she's always great too.

-Rape Squad: The kind of brain-twisting relic that could only come out of '70s exploitation: a genuinely sympathetic look at rape culture in the women's lib era that takes the audience through the trauma and humiliation of how sexual assault and harassment is treated...but one that also indulges in titillation and uncomfortable sleaze at the same time. This kind of semi-contradictory, uneasy stuff is what I love about exploitation, and while its Movie-of-the-Week-esque direction keeps me from ranking it among the very best of the genre (Cannibal Holocaust, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, I Spit on Your Grave, etc.), it's still a compelling work nonetheless.

-In the Mouth of Madness (rewatch): Boy did this hit hard this time. Feels like it has some kind of depressing new relevance for America in 2025. The feeling of society somehow losing its grip all around you, the feeling of being alienated from everyone you live among, the absurdity of the human condition run amok - not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or scream in terror. Some of the greatest Carpenter doom vibes ever. Side note: Sam Neill is inspired casting.

Continuing:

Spoiler: show

-Carnival of Souls (rewatch): Still an outsider masterwork. Surreal, beautiful - a very special movie. Herk Harvey's day job as a maker of industrial shorts brings a singular quality to this. Candace Hilligoss is so good; could not imagine a more perfect countenance for this role. The Criterion Blu-ray is still stunning; this negative must have been in pristine shape. Wish like hell Harvey had directed more movies.

-The Mystery of the Mary Celeste: VERY early Hammer sort-of-horror (1935!). Bela Lugosi is great as always, but this movie is stiff, awkward, and boring. Terrible script, stilted direction. Even the structure is a mess: this clearly should have started with its ending as a cold open before having the rest of the movie take place in flashback. At least it's short, I guess.

-Picture Mommy Dead: Bert I. Gordon is a bad director. The lead girl here is one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen in a movie. Could not imagine a dimmer bulb - it's as if every second she's on screen you can see her trying to squeeze together one single thought. Jimmy Sangster wrote a bunch of similar family-trying-to-drive-heir-insane thrillers in the '60s that were actually good. Just watch those instead because this sucks.

-Repulsion (rewatch): Roman Polanski is the best director who's ever lived. He's made exactly one bad movie: this one. I was a teenager the last time I saw this and my opinion has not improved. Clinical, showy, precious - all qualities I don't associate with Polanski but they're abundant here. It uses over-the-top visual allusions to portray the protagonist's alienation and mental breakdown instead of exploring the causes of her alienation. I gleaned nothing interesting from this. Catherine Deneuve is very good but this material is so thin.

-Near Dark (rewatch): This needs a fresh 4K remaster desperately. I think this movie might be great but it's hard to tell from this ancient DVD master, which really does its best to strangle what is clearly some primo '80s atmosphere. The bar scene is still great (and super nasty and mean-spirited). Rob Zombie definitely lifted the motel shootout for the opening of The Devil's Rejects.

-Countess Dracula: I was immediately deflated when I saw in the opening credits that Peter Sasdy directed this. A total limp hand and my least favorite Hammer director. My deflation was the correct response because this is a dud. Why isn't there a proper movie about Erzebet Bathory?

-Graveyard Shift (1990): Why are there so many theatrical Stephen King adaptations that feel like TV movies? What a weirdly consistent phenomenon. Anyway, this sucks. Maybe one of the worst casts of the '90s? Brad Dourif is only light here but he has limited screentime and seems like he's in a different movie than everyone else.

Spoiler: show

Continuing:

-The Rocky Horror Picture Show (rewatch): Stills tons of fun. Loaded with committed performances. Loses steam a bit in the last 20.

-Dead & Breakfast (rewatch): Worse than I remembered. Weirdly stacked cast.

-Rampage (1987): Wow, I loved this! I would say it's my third favorite Friedkin behind Cruising and The Hunted. The first half hour is breathtaking, and while the movie certainly peaks there, it still remains interesting and engaging afterward as it wrestles with a lot of thorny questions. (For the record, I watched the original director's cut, not the re-edited theatrical version.)

-Weapons: Wow, I hated this! The structure is a disaster. It has nothing to say about anything. This material barely warrants 90 minutes, let alone a 2+ hour runtime. Scipt makes no sense when you apply even a little bit of thought to it (the high concept Jordan Peele syndrome strikes again). Can't believe we're still doing uncritical "evil crone" horror in 2025. A movie that is so above itself and above genre that it completely forgoes even the basic pleasures of a movie. Spineless, pathetic, worthless filmmaking. Fuck this movie!

-Cutting Class: Lame bore of a slasher.

-Casper (rewatch): Great vibes and production design, and the early CGI ghosts hold up very well and feel like fully realized characters on screen. I will say the pacing/structure is a little odd and cause the last 30 minutes or so to feel like a bit of a mess.

-The Innkeepers (rewatch): Oh yeah, now this is more like it. This holds up so beautifully. A fun script carried by good performances, and when the horror ramps up, it's still genuinely scary. A bit weird how of a different era this already looks and feels; I rented this on VOD when it first came out and now it's almost 15 years old. Fuck.

-Night of the Demon (rewatch): I first saw this in high school, before I had a taste for classic British horror. Now that I've fallen in love with that stuff, I was hoping to love this. I didn't. A perfectly solid and enjoyable movie, but mildly so - about what I remembered, in other words. I think it might be important that Brit horror be made by Brits - a French director and an American star mean this doesn't quite feel like the genuine article. The demon still looks cool as hell, though.

-Dead of Night (1977): A TV anthology film written by Richard Matheson. I had a great time with this, though the second vignette is weaker than the first and third, IMO. The final one - "Bobby" - is actually pretty creepy; kind of a proto-Pet Sematary with a great ending. I could see someone doing a cool remake of it.

-The Possession of Joel Delaney: The terrifying story of how a priviliged white guy befriends a poor Puerto Rican and, therefore, inevitably becomes a communist and a murderer. Watch the horror of a rich white woman as she barely escapes the nightmare of Spanish Harlem! What a piece of shit.

-The House of the Devil (rewatch): Still enjoyable, but a bit more slight than I remembered. And the more I sit with it, the more it bugs me that this script kinda makes no sense at all. Still, it's well-directed and carried by a good cast.

-Guinea Pig: Android of Notre Dame: A bit of a bore. Occasionally the gore effects give it a mild pulse, but not enough.

-Effects: A painful snooze. I was fading fast at this point.

-Blood (1973): If you know Andy Milligan, you know what you're in for: A group of off-off-off-off-off Broadway actors in bad stage makeup and costumes in a run-down old house playacting as monsters and villains. Directed with pure, seething misanthropy. Unhinged, miserable, a little bit wonderful. Milligan was one of one.

-Session 9 (rewatch): A masterpiece. Every time I see it, I find it more textured, more layered, more involving, richer. Everyone in the cast is an inspired choice and they all came to play (the livewire energy of David Caruso is such a brilliant way to stir the ensemble pot and keep everyone on their toes). The early digital cinematography has aged so beautifully and remains so interesting to look at. The horror runs very deep, the dread permeates. A profoundly unsettling work of cinema. I adore this movie.

-28 Years Later: It is commendable that Danny Boyle still tried so hard here, but...I dunno. I mostly found this kind of annoying. Garland's script sucks. When Fiennes shows up, it makes it immediately clear how weak every other actor is (though Aaron Taylor-Johnson is decent; at least he has some gravitas). Thematically, I'm confused about what this movie is trying to say. And the "male child protects his adult mother" thing remains one of the most odious and braindead tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction. This movie just didn't work for me.

-The Woman in Black (1989) (rewatch): Quite creepy, with two all-time great scare scenes that have never left me since I first saw this. A touch too slow and could be tightened, but very enjoyable.

The final few:

-Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (rewatch): For something so infamously horrific (Charlie Sheen called the FBI because he thought this was a real snuff movie), it's interesting how little actual gore there is here. It's mostly just a bunch of cruelty that doesn't translate to screen in a very interesting way. That said, the two big gore effects that cap it are incredible. The hand slicing was so convincing it genuinely had me wondering for a second if they really cut someone's hand with a scalpel (then they brought a hammer in and I could clearly see the effect). Just amazing makeup FX work.

-The Man Who Could Cheat Death (rewatch): I first saw this via a murky, ancient master and didn't like it much. Now, freshly remastered from the OCN in 4K, I had a very different experience and enjoyed it. The big problem remains Anton Diffring; if it had been Peter Cushing, that would probably take this from a 3.5 to a 4.5. Still, the script is recognizably Jimmy Sangster, and the Hammer A Team (Fisher, Robinson, Asher, etc.) do enough to get this movie mostly past Diffring's stiff lead performance.

-The Shining (rewatch): A movie I've seen a million times, of course. My big takeaway this time was mostly how funny this movie is - it's really just as much comedy as horror. And I don't think much of why it's funny would come across on the page. For instance, take the dialogue in the first bar scene. On paper, it could easily play straight. You could get some anonymous actor to play all that earnestly and dramatically and the scene would function like any other. But instead, you get Nicholson choosing the absolute most deranged line readings possible and making every moment into bizarro dark comedy. Nicholson truly is in incredible as Jack Torrance. Or how about the way Kubrick takes sooooo much time to go through all the machinations of getting Halloran to the Overlook (lengthy asides of flights, driving, phone calls, weather, more driving), only for him to (SPOILER) be axed to death almost as soon as he sets foot inside the hotel. The entire subplot is basically a giant prank. Kubrick was a rascal!

-Hocus Pocus (rewatch): Absolutely unbeatable Halloween vibes. No other movie has ever captured the spirt of the holiday so immaculately. Also: this is my favorite 4K UHD Blu-ray transfer. Full stop. Spectacularly beautiful disc.

-The Return of the Living Dead (rewatch): As I just said, there is no better Halloween vibes movie than Hocus Pocus. But this is right behind it. So fun, so creative.

[tree_]

Yes, kubrick was a rascal, for observant people. He's pretty misunderstood I think.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

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