My Week in Movies: October 6 - 12
Oct. 13th, 2019 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jetpack_monkeyThis week's horror movie theme was Hammer Horror!
Movies I'd seen previously are in italics.
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
Night Creatures (1962)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Nightmare (1964)
Scream of Fear (1961)
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
A Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) w/sol_se
I love love love Dracula: Prince of Darkness and it's always a comfort to watch.
Night Creatures is not really a horror film, more a smuggling adventure, with the smugglers set-up as the anti-heroes.
The 1962 Phantom of the Opera was a disappointment on so many levels. It's boring, for one thing. The supposed masterful opera is anything but. The Phantom himself is barely involved in what happens. The chandelier falling is an accident. Also the murders, committed not by the Phantom but by his undeveloped henchman, seem arbitrary and random. You didn't have to do Patrick Troughton dirty like that.
Nightmare and Scream of Fear are both of a particular vein of Hammer thriller -- "Let's drive the female protagonist mad in black and white." See also: Paranoiac. Of the two, Nightmare is probably the better one. It does the Psycho thing of presenting one protagonist and then switching tracks at a particularly brutal moment.
I remembered Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires being more fun and funky. Oh well.
Le Cercle Rouge, a break in our regular Hammer programming, was watched at the recommendation ofsaraht -- thanks for that! It's a very cool French heist film, with the heist itself taking something like 27 dialogue-free minutes.
Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is not good. First, there's the racism/xenophobia that goes into most mummy films. Second, the script is poorly constructed. For instance, a valuable piece of information is just sort of dropped in about twenty minutes too late. I also dare anyone to explain to me how the mummy's final fate actually works.
A Vampire in Brooklyn is similarly not good. However, that works to the benefit ofsol_se and I, since we are able to mock and react to the film as it plays.
This coming week, I'm going to attempt to watch all nine Val Lewton chillers.
Movies I'd seen previously are in italics.
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
Night Creatures (1962)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Nightmare (1964)
Scream of Fear (1961)
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
A Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) w/
sol_se I love love love Dracula: Prince of Darkness and it's always a comfort to watch.
Night Creatures is not really a horror film, more a smuggling adventure, with the smugglers set-up as the anti-heroes.
The 1962 Phantom of the Opera was a disappointment on so many levels. It's boring, for one thing. The supposed masterful opera is anything but. The Phantom himself is barely involved in what happens. The chandelier falling is an accident. Also the murders, committed not by the Phantom but by his undeveloped henchman, seem arbitrary and random. You didn't have to do Patrick Troughton dirty like that.
Nightmare and Scream of Fear are both of a particular vein of Hammer thriller -- "Let's drive the female protagonist mad in black and white." See also: Paranoiac. Of the two, Nightmare is probably the better one. It does the Psycho thing of presenting one protagonist and then switching tracks at a particularly brutal moment.
I remembered Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires being more fun and funky. Oh well.
Le Cercle Rouge, a break in our regular Hammer programming, was watched at the recommendation of
saraht -- thanks for that! It's a very cool French heist film, with the heist itself taking something like 27 dialogue-free minutes. Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is not good. First, there's the racism/xenophobia that goes into most mummy films. Second, the script is poorly constructed. For instance, a valuable piece of information is just sort of dropped in about twenty minutes too late. I also dare anyone to explain to me how the mummy's final fate actually works.
A Vampire in Brooklyn is similarly not good. However, that works to the benefit of
sol_se and I, since we are able to mock and react to the film as it plays. This coming week, I'm going to attempt to watch all nine Val Lewton chillers.
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Date: 2019-10-14 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-14 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-14 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-14 09:08 pm (UTC)There's an amazing, troll-tastic 'you're just a critic and no one cares what you think' response on it.