Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Vid: One Way or Another (Slasher movies)

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 01:27:12 GMT

Title: One Way or Another
Song: One Way or Another by Blondie
Source: Slasher movies (1974-1982)
Length: 2:50
Warnings: Violence, gore, some flashing lights, minor drug use

Password: jamielee

Download 19.8MB MP4 (right/ctrl-click and "Save file as...")

This is a terrible vid. I had the idea in the shower and it was probably not well-conceived, but I had a week-long vacation and very little to do, so here we are. Originally it was supposed to be for slasher movies 1974-1989, but I narrowed the timeframe when it became clear I was getting everything I needed (mostly) out of one eight year stretch.

I went through a lot of bad slasher movies so you didn't have to.

Thanks to sol_se who kept cheering me on.

( Full list of sources )

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My Two Weeks in Movies: September 5 - 18

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 21:14:03 GMT

I'm losing track of a lot of things. I finally just gave up on bullet journaling. I don't know how much longer I'm going to keep up with this feature. I don't really check Dreamwidth anymore, so maybe it's time to just let this go.

I watched exactly one movie in the last two weeks:

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster (2021)

I saw this documentary at the Laemmle NoHo 7. I was the second-youngest person there. Not a lot in terms of new information, but nice to spend 100 minutes engulfed in classic horror information again.

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My Two Weeks in Movies: August 15 - August 28

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 02:12:20 GMT

Last week was crazy busy at work, so I didn't have the spoons to post. So here we are with a double feature! I'm feeling kind of down right now, so no life updates or commentary.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Creep (2014)
Free Guy (2021)
Jakob's Wife (2021)

Rifftrax: Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare
Best in Show (2000)
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)

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My Two Weeks in Movies: July 25 - August 7

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 02:31:18 GMT

Oops. Let's not do that again.

I had a miserable week last week when I was off my ADHD meds for five days due to an ever-cascading series of f**kups, mostly not mine. I ended up taking two non-consecutive days off of work, which I'm sure didn't look weird at all.

I've been playing a lot of LEGO DC Super Villains which is cute as most LEGO games are.

This week I'm in Des Moines to see family, so there may not be any movies to post about.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Godzilla 2000 (1999)

Fear Street: 1994 (2021)
The Suicide Squad (2021)
Annette (2021)
Aquaman (2018)

sol_se and I are back on our Godzilla bullsh**t, working through the Millennium series. Godzilla 2000 is a perfectly serviceable entry with no great highs or lows.

I really liked Fear Street: 1994 and look forward to completing the trilogy eventually.

The Suicide Squad is a ton of fun. I'm really glad that Warner is committed to doing hybrid releases through the end of the year, because it's nice to watch these new movies at home sometimes. Margot Robbie is a delight as Harley Quinn as usual. King Shark is deadly and adorable. Be warned, this movie earns its R rating.

Annette. Where to start with Annette. I just felt like Sparks (the musicians who wrote the story and the music) were just screwing with me the whole time. It's a musical where everyone just states what they are feeling and doing in the most banal terms possible. There's some other strangeness that I won't spoil, but yeah. I was never bored, but I think I'm angry at the movie? I hope there's some artistic conceit I'm missing and the movie is secretly brilliant.

Aquaman is stupid fun and there's not much more to say about it.

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My Week in Movies: June 6 - 12

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 04:38:56 GMT

Sorry, running late on this. I just completely forgot this was a thing this week until I went to open Dreamwidth and I went, "Oh yeah, wasn't I supposed to do something with this."

Once again, I spent most of my time playing Mass Effect. Right now I'm playing a male Shepard named Shepard Shepard who is romancing Jack and will probably romance Kaidan in ME3. I'm playing the games as completely as I can in this run (I skipped two missions in ME1, one because it was annoying and one because I just forgot).

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Rifftrax: The Last Shark
In the Heights (2021)
Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

The Last Shark was a delightful Rifftrax.

I saw In the Heights in the motherloving theater. With Junior Mints and Dr. Pepper! I was masked when not eating/drinking and the theater had social distancing in place. I was honestly lucky to get a seat because it was a very last minute decision to go. Lin-Manuel Miranda certainly has a style and it serves him well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Didn't even notice it was over two hours long. I did miss the post-credits scene, so I need to go back into HBO Max and look into that.

On a whim I bought the Universal Monsters complete Blu-ray collection with 30 different monster movies. sol_se and I watched Ghost of Frankenstein because it was the only film in the Frankenstein series she hadn't seen yet. Not a great film, but it does have some good moments.

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My Week in Movies: May 30 - June 5

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 22:59:19 GMT

Still living that Mass Effect lifestyle. Eventually I have to get sick of it, right? Right?

We also finished Steven Universe Future and I didn't cry, but I came damn close. Man, the whole Steven Universe thing is just so good, but Future is really dark and hard to watch in places.

Apparently Critical Role ended its second campaign last week. I feel a bit left out, but that's my own fault for dropping out of the fandom. I'm still in wonderment at how easily I used to be able to just sit and watch four hours of RPG play in a single go. I don't think I'm capable of that anymore.

The Conjuring (2013)
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)
Rifftrax: Dragon Wars: D-War

I'd never seen The Conjuring (although I did see The Conjuring 2), so sol_se and I pulled it up on HBO Max and watched it in anticipation of the third movie. It's pretty good, but I think The Conjuring 2 is probably better.

As for the third Conjuring movie, they really opened things up a lot, which I think was ultimately to the film's detriment. It's fine, but it's the least of the three films thus far.

Dragon Wars: D-War is a love letter to downtown Los Angeles in a lot of ways, if your love letters end in explosions. It has some incomprehensible mythology and roles for some currently well-known actors before they really hit it big.

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My Week in Movies: April 18 - 24

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 21:07:52 GMT

On Wednesday, sol_se and I celebrated the third anniversary of our first date. I took the day off and we ate Cheesecake Factory and watched movies and Project Runway All Stars.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

One Dark Night (1983)
Speed Racer (2008)
Rifftrax: The Amazing Mr. X
Rifftrax: Radical Jack
Rifftrax: To Catch a Yeti
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)

One Dark Night is weird. It's about a dead psychic messing about in a mausoleum terrorizing high school girls who are there as part of an initiation. It sets up a particular twist ending pretty clearly and then just... doesn't do it. Apparently the distributors cut the original ending? I didn't love it.

We watch Speed Racer every year because it's the first movie we ever watched together. It was nice to actually watch it on the anniversary this year, as last year we were delayed by the pandemic and the move.

I typically wake up earlier than sol_se so I watch Rifftrax and catch up on Twitter. Sometimes it's more Twitter than Rifftrax, as when I slogged through The Amazing Mr. X. Sometimes I'm practically stapled to the Rifftrax though, as with Radical Jack. Overall, the Rifftrax Friends subscription is paying for itself.

We're still working through the Heisei/Versus era of Godzilla in order. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is one of my favorites, as it really decides to work in all the goofy stuff and isn't shy about it.

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My Two Weeks in Movies: March 14 - 27

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 01:26:49 GMT

I had a vacation March 12-20, but when I came back, work was a trash fire, so we're doing a double this week.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Rifftrax Live: Night of the Living Dead
Freaky (2020)
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Vampyres (1974)
8 1/2 (1963)
Leprechaun (1993)
Leprechaun 2 (1994)
Leprechaun 3 (1995)
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Toby Dammit (1968)
Zach Snyder's Justice League (2021)
Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)

Rifftrax Live: Octaman
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)
Rifftrax: Catwomen of the Moon
Rifftrax: Honor and Glory

I liked Freaky a lot, although I had less trouble buying Vince Vaughn as a teenage girl than I did as a slasher-style killer.

I hit a stopping point in the Fellini box set. I worry that I spent money on a box set for a director that ultimately isn't for me. Don't get me wrong, I liked La Dolce Vita up until the last vignette and I still love 8 1/2. I just don't think the set is bringing me the joy that, ironically, the Ingmar Bergman set did.

Vampyres is a lesbian vampire film that desperately needs a plot. sol_se and I kept waiting for the plot to kick in. Eventually we realized it just wasn't going to happen and we resigned ourselves to finishing the movie.

On St. Patrick's Day, I remembered that I had a triple feature of Leprechaun movies. They are quite bad. We decided that Warwick Davis is actually playing three separate leprechauns with three separate sets of rules, perhaps in three separate continuities. Of the three, the second one is probably the "best", although it has some rapey subtext, so I can't recommend it. So basically don't do what I've done.

We watched all of Zach Snyder's four-hour cut of Justice League more-or-less in one sitting. I probably like it better than the theatrical release, although I have objections to some of Snyder's decisions, most of them centered around Superman. Snyder does not understand the character on any level.

You may have noticed a lot of Rifftrax. I just put in for a subscription to Rifftrax Friends, which is their streaming service. Yeah, everybody has a streaming service these days. They just have so much of their catalogue on there, it made more sense than waiting for stuff to pop up on Pluto or Amazon Prime.

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My Week in Movies: December 20 - 26

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 22:20:42 GMT

Working through some Christmas-y movies with sol_se for the most part.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek Deep Space 9 (2019)
MST3K: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Bell Book and Candle (1958)
The Howling (1981)
WW84 (2020)

I cried like a baby at the end of IaWL once again. Never fails.

The DS9 doc was weird, but ultimately enjoyable. I thought it was a little odd that it was put together by the show runner, though.

I stand by my assertion that A Muppet Christmas Carol is a top-tier Dickens adaptation and Michael Caine is one of the best Scrooges.

Bell Book and Candle starts on Christmas Eve, so it counts. It's that other film about Jimmy Stewart's obsessive love for Kim Novak.

sol_se bought me The Howling on Blu-ray for Christmas (as well as the special edition of Curse of Frankenstein) because she loves me and wants me to be happy. Still a great movie. Very formative for teenage me.

I think I liked WW84? They spent more time on the emotional beats for Maxwell Lord than they did for Diana, which is an odd choice. There's nothing to approach the battlefield scene in the first one. I think this is probably one that's going to get worse in my mind as time goes on, but for the 2.5 hours it was playing, it kept my attention.

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My Week in Movies: November 29 - December 5

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 01:56:22 GMT

It's December, apparently!

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Our Man Flint (1966)
Holiday (1938)
Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
Scanners (1981)
Whip It (2009)

sol_se hadn't seen the original Little Shop of Horrors, so we watched it. It's a difficult film to judge, because it is so tossed off, but it's fun.

I gave in and bought an HBO Max subscription and Our Man Flint was the first thing I gravitated to. It's a spy spoof starring James Coburn as a secret agent who has all of the answers all of the time.

Holiday, another delightful Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant team-up, was on Criterion Channel, so I had to show sol_se.

I'm pretty spoiled by the Branagh version, so I found Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing middling. Some of the actors just could not get their heads around their dialogue.

HEADSPLOSION

In honor of Elliot Page, we watched a film in his earlier oeuvre. It was fine. Both sol_se and I felt it could have been more tightly edited. Elliot was quite good, though.

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My Week in Movies: November 22 - 28

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 22:54:51 GMT

It was Turkey week!

Movies I've seen before are in italics

The Black Cat (1934)
Addams Family Values (1993)
MST3K: Carnival Magic
Village of the Damned (1960)
MST3K: Night of the Blood Beast
Jason X (2002)
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
The Final Girls (2015)

Thursday for Thanksgiving, sol_se and I alternated between the MST3K Turkey Day marathon and movies.

We finally finished the Friday the 13th series, on a relative high note. Jason X is as fun and stupid as I remember it being and Freddy vs. Jason is probably one of the better films in the series (although admittedly, it's really a Nightmare on Elm Street film featuring Jason).

To cap that off, we watched The Final Girls. If you'd told me that morning that I would be crying to a woman doing a striptease to Bette Davis Eyes, I would've told you that you were clearly mistaken. Oh more fool me.

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My Week in Movies: November 8 - 14

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 18:53:45 GMT

Still adjusting to the new daily schedule, but I think I have it worked out.

I bought Assassin's Creed: Valhalla against my better judgment and was immediately punished for it. The game doesn't work properly. I have some sort of bug that only affects me where the stealth button just doesn't work 97% of the time. In a stealth game, that's a big problem. So now I'm just waiting for a patch that fixes an issue that I haven't seen anyone else report. Yes, I checked if it was the controller and it's not. So I'm back to replaying Odyssey.

Had a tooth extracted Thursday. Whee.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Blood and Roses (1960)
Der Zinker (1963)
The Puzzle of the Red Orchid (1962)
The Inn on the River (1962)
The Door with 7 Locks (1962)
Bay of Blood (1971)
Friday the 13th (1980)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Since I now have a region-free DVD player, I've been working through my Region 2 DVDs, which include Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (striking imagery, but kind of plodding) and a box set of West German crime films based on the works of Edgar Wallace.

In preparation for Friday the 13th, I showed sol_se Bay of Blood, a precursor to the American slasher genre. Good bloody fun.

On Saturday the 14th, we watched the first five Friday the 13th movies. They are not good, but they scratch a certain itch.

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This Week in Movies: November 1 - 7

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 03:35:58 GMT

This week was interesting for a number of reasons beyond the election and Destiel. sol_se started a new job that is... not aligned with my job time-wise. She's also set-up in the living room on video, so I have to stay out, which is interesting because we only have the living room and the bedroom (and the kitchen and bathroom, but these are not really hangout spots). So I'm basically waking up three hours earlier and then fucking around without access to video games for 4-5 hours. On Fridays, when she works and I don't, it's 8 hours (9 less her lunch). Luckily, I had an old TV lying around that I wasn't using. Combining sol_se's Fire Stick and a new, very sketchy DVD player (the box doesn't say DVD anywhere), I have myself a little entertainment center in the bedroom. I'll be watching a lot more movies solo now, I think.

Movie I've seen before are in italics.

L'assassin habite au 21 (1942)
Piranha (1978)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Alucarda (1975)

L'assassin is an early Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique) film. It's a lighthearted romp about finding a serial killer! I found it very amusing.

The new DVD player is Region-free, which I tested out with my Region 2 Piranha disc. Great fish-ploitation from Joe Dante.

Sol_se expressed some interest in revenge-horror, so we watched the Phibes duology. They are both very strange films and Vincent Price is clearly having a ball.

We recently gained access to HBO (not HBO Max) and Death Becomes Her was on. I could have sworn I'd seen it before, but as it turns out, I had not. It's a lot of fun.

Alucarda is a film very dear to me, so I showed it to sol_se. I think this might have been a mistake. Watching it with her, I could only see all the things that were wrong with it. She didn't really care for it, either. Oh well.

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My Week in Movies: October 25 - 31

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 22:10:20 GMT

Spooky season is over! sol_se and I ended up watching 50 spooky movies over the course of the month. Plus, we're still in a spooky mood, so there may be more to come.

I finished all the DLC for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. I started Assassin's Creed III, which came free with Odyssey, but realized I'd rather be back in Ancient Greece. Yes, I started a New Game+ for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

I finally finished The Wicked + the Divine. I'm not sure I fully understood it. Something about stories being traps? I still liked it a great deal.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Tales of Terror (1962)
The Haunted Palace (1963)
Twice-Told Tales (1963)
Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1970)
Halloween (1978)
Halloween II (1981)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Halloween 5 (1989)
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (Producer's Cut) (1995)
Halloween H20 (1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Halloween (2018)
Prom Night (1980)
The Fog (1980)
Terror Train (1980)

We finished off the Corman-Poe-Price series (less The Raven, which we'd both watched before). I think Pit and the Pendulum is still my favorite, followed by The Raven. Tomb of Ligeia, despite being very pretty, is also very dull.

Twice-Told Tales is interesting in that it tries to make a horror anthology out of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The stories are mostly just Twilight Zone tales in the 19th Century. Vincent Price is a bastard in each one.

I really enjoyed An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (which I watched solo). Vincent Price gives some very spirited readings to three Poe tales, one of which (The Sphinx) I was unfamiliar with.

I took Thursday off of work (I usually have Friday-Saturday off) so that we could really binge horror. We watched the entire Halloween (Michael Myers) series (less the Rob Zombie reboot). My ranking:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween (2018)
3. Halloween H20
4. Halloween 4
5. Halloween 2
6. Halloween 5
7. Halloween 6
8. Halloween: Resurrection

For something a little different, here's my ranking of the Michael Myers masks:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween II
3. Halloween (2018)
4. Halloween H20
5. Halloween: Resurrection
6. Halloween 4
7. Halloween 6
8. Halloween 5

Seriously, the Halloween 5 mask had a neck frill. Made him look like a Cardassian.

We finished off Halloween with a trilogy of Jamie Lee Curtis 1980 horror films. None of them are spectacular (The Fog is probably the best of the bunch), but they were fun.

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My Week in Movies: October 18 - 24

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 22:03:55 GMT

Finished The Good Place Season 4. I think I expected more of an impact out of it, given how other people responded to it. I still liked it a lot, but it didn't really eff me up or anything.

Voted on Thursday! If you're an American citizen and you haven't already voted, do so. Make a plan to vote. Go to IWillVote.com. Nothing is more critical than this moment.

Oh, also, sol_se and I have handily met our 31 spooky movies in 31 days goal for October. Everything after this is gravy.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Masque of the Red Death (1964)
It's Alive (1974)
Evil Dead (2013)
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)
The Blob (1958)
Beware! The Blob (1972)
Fall of the House of Usher (1960)
Suspiria (2018)
Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

As you can see, I'm starting sol_se on the Corman/Price Poe movies. We'll see if we can work through the rest before Halloween. These were very formative for me. Of the three we watched, I think we both agree that Pit and the Pendulum is the most enjoyable. This is one of the very first horror movies my mother ever showed me, incidentally.

I really like It's Alive, but man, they needed to replace their sound guy. So much dialogue was unintelligible or too quiet. Still, it's very effective for being a killer mutant baby movie.

I didn't know what to expect out of the Evil Dead remake. I knew there wasn't going to be an Ash character (although there kinda-sorta was). I didn't agree with all the choices made, but overall it was pretty good. It's certainly the most disgusting film I've seen in a while.

A quibble: Criterion Channel listed the Nosferatu remake as Nosferatu the Vampyre, but then showed Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht. These are two different movies! Not substantially different, but the film was shot in separate English and German versions, so there are subtle differences between the two. I don't have a preference one over the other, but I did tell sol_se we were getting the English version before, lo and behold, German. In either version, this is a very ponderous movie and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. It's incredibly deliberate and takes its time saying what it wants to say.

The Blob remains a very workmanlike movie about killer jello. It doesn't add a lot of flair, but it knows what it's about and gets the job done. The same cannot be said for its execrable sequel Beware! The Blob (directed by Larry Hagman(!)). This was mostly a series of loosely connected unfunny sketches that all ended with someone getting eaten by the blob. I kept getting thrown off by the male protagonist, played by Robert Walker Jr, who may be better known as Charlie X from the Star Trek episode.

I do not know if I liked the Suspiria remake. I can definitely say I did not understand it.

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My Week in Movies: October 11 - 17

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 22:50:33 GMT

Finished Assassin's Creed: Origins and hopped right back to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. Bad story choices aside, I'd really missed Ancient Greece. I really think this is one of my favorite games in recent memory.

I've been slowly working through Season 4 of The Good Place during lunch on Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday are reserved for Batman '66 (my bat-time, if you will).

I played a very weird D&D one-shot with settiai DMing last night. Still not entirely sure what I made of it. Didn't cast a single spell or get into any combat at all (which is probably for the best, because my character was built for hugging).

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)

We finished off the Hammer Dracula series with the one non-Lee entry, the horror/kung fu mashup Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. As usual, it's Fine. It doesn't have the best parts of either genre, so it kind of muddles along. Of the eight "major" Asian characters, only two have actual lines, which is ridiculous for a movie made in Hong Kong with Hong Kong financing.

I was going through a box of old DVDs when I ran into Wait Until Dark and even though it's not strictly horror, we watched it anyway. Still a very effective little thriller and Audrey Hepburn is splendid as always. Alan Arkin does a real uncomfortable sociopath.

Slumber Party Massacre is a curio in that it's a slasher film written by a feminist icon (Rita Mae Brown) and also directed by a woman. It's not a particularly outstanding example of the genre, alas. The killer, for one thing, is a real non-entity, despite his hilariously phallic weapon of choice.

sol_se wanted fashion in her horror, so asked about Blood and Black Lace, which we watched on Amazon Prime. It's a giallo, an Italian subgenre of mystery-horror that was, in many ways, the forerunner of the slasher film in America. As with all films directed by Mario Bava, it's very striking visually.

Given our deep dive into Dracula last week, I thought we should do the same for the Hammer Frankenstein series. Peter Cushing (or PCush as sol_se likes to call him) is one of the best actors of all time, fight me. Curse of Frankenstein remains my favorite in the series, but I gained a new appreciation for Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, which fires on all cylinders (with the exception of one regrettable scene that sol_se and I agree Did Not Happen). We skipped Horror of Frankenstein because no Cushing (and also $4 on Amazon).

For those curious, we are currently 27 films deep in our plan to watch 31 spooky movies in October.

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My Week in Movies: October 4 - 10

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 00:03:39 GMT

Lots of movies this week, as sol_se and I were able to pull ahead of our 31 horror movies in October goal.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

The Wicker Man (1973)
Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
Brides of Dracula (1960)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
Grizzly (1976)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Scars of Dracula (1970)
Dracula AD 1972 (1972)
Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

I love The Wicker Man (I vidded it after all) and it was a joy to show it to sol_se for the first time.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death is... not what I expected. I think I expected teenagers from the title, not vaguely hippie adults. The movie is about the effect of supernatural happenings on the mind of someone who recently experienced a breakdown. It's very weird and I'm not sure how much I liked it.

I've been running around singing "Twenty days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Twenty days to Halloween, Silver Shamrock!" I eventually had to let sol_se in on the reference. As a movie, it's Fine. It's really not game changing enough to justify the temporary shift in the Halloween series.

We started on Dracula: Prince of Darkness because it's my favorite in the Hammer Dracula series, but then we just fell down the rabbit hole. The films generally decline in quality after Prince of Darkness. You can also sum up Dracula's motivations thusly:

Horror: Lust
Prince: Lust
Risen: Revenge
Taste: Revenge
Scars: Sadism
1972: Revenge
Rites: Megalomania?

I buy lust, but revenge became a really tired touchstone to come back to over and over again. Also, Dracula should never be driven by base sadism, what the hell is that crap?

Grizzly is Jaws with a bear, but it doesn't hew as closely to Jaws as my memory of it indicated. Still, it's a fun little animals attack movie with some funky bear effects.

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My Week in Movies: August 9 - August 15

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 02:33:32 GMT

Movie-filled week this week!

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Long Weekend (1978)
Phantasm II (1988)
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
Zatoichi the Fugitive (1963)
Phantasm: Oblivion (1998)
Phantasm: Ravager (2016)
The Rocketeer (1991)
Casablanca (1942)
Gravity (2013)
F for Fake (1973)

As you can see, sol_se and I ran the rest of the Phantasm series over the course of the week. My final ranking of the series is Phantasm, Phantasm: Oblivion, Phantasm II, Phantasm III, Phantasm: Ravager. What a weird, wonderful series.

I really enjoyed Gravity. It didn't feel like 90 minutes at all. I was shocked when it was over, because I'm used to movies feeling longer than they are, not shorter.

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My Week in Movies: July 26 - August 1

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 23:58:36 GMT

I played through Until Dawn again, unfortunately getting three characters killed (to be fair one of them is really hard to keep alive). I played Kingdom Hearts 3 up until a point, but there's a whole section that requires you to deftly maneuver your basically un-manueverable spaceship and I'm not doing that. Probably. We'll see where I am in a week.

We also finished Legend of Korra Season 4. What a good show.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Housebound (2014)
Dracula (1931)
Blood on the Moon (1948)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
I Married a Witch (1942)
Daughters of Darkness (1971)

sol_se found Housebound on Tubi and was really eager for me to see it, so we did. It's a neat New Zealand horror with comedic touches about a woman under house arrest, but the house might be haunted. There are multiple twists and it's very tightly edited and paced. I liked it a lot.

Then she wanted to see Dracula's Daughter, but we got about three minutes in before I remembered that it followed directly from Dracula (1931) which she had also never seen. So we watched that first. We watched the sequel the next day. Lugosi is excellent as the Count in Dracula, but you can see director Tod Browning basically giving up for large sections of the England-set portion of the film. Dracula's Daughter is dark and foreboding, but suffers from a lot of talking head scenes. It does have a couple scenes of (accidental, probably) lesbian desire.

I made a resolution to start using my Criterion Channel subscription more, as it's basically been on the wayside since sol_se moved in. So, Saturday morning before she woke up, I caught Blood on the Moon, part of their Western noir collection. I was mostly drawn to it because it's directed by Robert Wise. I don't know how noir it is, but it is a satisfying oater with a complex leading character (played by Robert Mitchum).

I Married a Witch was on sol_se's To Watch list, so we checked that out. I've seen it before, but I was happy to watch it again. Veronica Lake is great fun as the titular witch, weaving a spell on Fredric March (who is much too old for her). It's a delightful comedy.

Since we were already watching lesbian vampire movies, we absolutely had to go to Daughters of Darkness. Such a lush horror film, with some very weird death scenes. Delphine Seyrig is divine.

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My Week in Movies: July 19 - 25

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 01:49:23 GMT

Hello friends. I am currently alternately playing Until Dawn and Kingdom Hearts III. Kingdom Hearts III is... something. It's a series of interminable cutscenes where people either spout nonsense about hearts and bodies or recap Disney movies, with some fight sequences interspersed in. Those fight scenes, in turn, are largely ads for Disney World attractions. And yet I keep playing. I also tried out Pillars of Eternity on PS4, but found it didn't do a very good job as a console game. I'm playing it on my Mac now. We'll see if I keep up with it.

Movies I've watched before are in italics.

Barbarella (1968)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Spirited Away (2001)
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007)
Psycho (1960)
The Exorcist (1973)
Psycho II (1983)

Watching Barbarella was slightly bittersweet. I had it lined up as the movie for Movie Night back in March, but that fell through owing to (flails) everything. It showed up on Criterion Channel, so sol_se and I gave it a watch. Such a trippy film made by people on many drugs. Lots of fun!

Given a choice between the original Frankenstein (one of my favorites) and Bride of Frankenstein, I decided to initiate sol_se into the Universal Frankenstein series with Bride. It's probably the more accessible of the two (and doesn't have the entirely unnecessary third wheel character Victor Moritz).

It was sol_se's birthday on Wednesday, so I took the day off and we stayed in. We watched a lot of Korra, but we also fit in two favorites of hers: Spirited Away and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Of the two, I really liked Spirited Away. It had a real Alice in Wonderland vibe by way of Japan (or just Miyazaki). Very imaginative and cool.

sol_se wanted to catch up on some classic horror, so we watched Psycho and The Exorcist. Psycho remains Very Good, a masterwork of cinematography and editing. The Exorcist remains... fine. It's fine. I've never really understood the whole "Scariest Movie Ever" reputation and I honestly find some of the "scarier" sequences laughable.

Psycho II is a film I have a soft spot for because it really shouldn't work, but it does. A lot of that is thanks to the choice of centering Norman Bates as protagonist, fighting for a chance to stay sane. It makes some small concessions to the slasher genre that don't work, but otherwise it's a solid little thriller.

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My Week in Movies: July 12 - 18

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 01:07:16 GMT

Big news first, I finished The Witcher 3! That took me a very long time. I've now moved on to Pillars of Eternity, which is *interesting* on a console, but it was only $10. Finished both seasons 1 and 2 of Korra as well.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Cat People (1942)
The Old Guard (2020)
Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Ringu (1998)
The Ring (2002)

Wow, feels like I watched a lot more. sol_se was very keen on werecats and wanted to watch Cat People, which still holds up. Great, moody film. We also watched the badly titled sequel Curse of the Cat People, which features no curses or cat people, but does make me cry every time.

I liked The Old Guard. I wonder if I'm capable of being excited about the movies I watch anymore. sol_se was ecstatic about this film and I felt it was pretty good, but it didn't blow my socks off.

I remember Ringu being a lot scarier, but it's just a fine little thrill ride. I suppose it's not really a film that rewards rewatching. We watched The Ring for comparison and found it largely the same, except way more American. The male lead also sucked in the remake.

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My Week in Movies: June 28 - July 4

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 02:43:39 GMT

Spent a lot of time watching Avatar: The Last Airbender and playing Witcher 3. However, sol_se and I made Friday a sort of date day and we watched a bunch of stuff.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Hamilton (2020)
Gremlins (1984)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Hamilton made me cry a lot. I cried once and then I'm like, okay, they got me. Then the end happened and I was bawling. It's so good you guys. I'm literally rewatching it right now.

Sol_se hadn't seen Gremlins since she was a kid, so we did that. Then we rented the sequel on Amazon. Both movies are a lot of fun, although the second one is something of a cartoon fever dream. In a good way!

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My Week in Movies: June 21 - 27

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 21:49:17 GMT

I spent a good chunk of the early week bingeing What We Do in the Shadows (FX). However, this weekend sol_se and I settled down for a couple of DVDs.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Some Like It Hot (1959)
Audition (1999)
All Monsters Attack (1969)

Look, Some Like It Hot is one of the all-time great screen comedies and sol_se hadn't seen it, so that was definitely happening. I love this movie, although sol_se openly wondered how I didn't spend the entire movie cringing due to the chicanery and deception. It's easier when you've seen a movie 8-10 times.

This is my second time seeing Audition and the first in something like 15 years. I remembered certain moments with crystal clarity, but others felt new to me again and at least one moment was deeply repressed until it was too late. A very disturbing movie.

We cleansed our palate with the eminently goofy All Monsters Attack, where Godzilla's son Minya talks like an off-brand Goofy and teaches a little boy valuable lessons about violence (it's good!).

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My Week in Movies: May 3 - May 9

Sun, 10 May 2020 20:37:34 GMT

Fewer movies again this week, as I was finishing up Uncharted: Lost Legacy and starting my (probably ultimately failed) run on Control (it's a very hard game).

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
The Black Sleep (1956) w/sol_se
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)

I had the dentist song from Little Shop stuck in my head, so I went and rewatched the movie. For some reason, I got really emotional whenever Ellen Greene sang. Something something power of nostalgia? No idea. Still a great movie and those Audrey II effects are ridiculously good.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is a drama director's idea of the ultimate comedy movie. What makes it the ultimate comedy movie? Well, it's three hours long and squeezes in cameos from nearly every living major comedian. And for the most part, they are just that, cameos. One moment has a trio of firemen run up and they're the Three Stooges. They don't do anything but stand there. That's the whole joke, that they showed up. Overall, it's not very good, but it does have its moments.

The Black Sleep is momentous. It may be the last Saturday night virtual movie date that sol_se and I ever do. Her Internet is getting cut off next week. Why is it getting cut off? Because she won't need it soon. She has a plane to catch on May 27th to fly to Los Angeles to live! Permanently! With me! OMGYAY! (also the movie itself is fine, mostly notably for the abundance of classic horror actors like Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., and Bela Lugosi, although the last two don't have any lines).

The Galaxy Quest documentary was impressive, largely because they managed to gather everybody still alive (we miss you Alan). I had no idea there were Galaxy Quest cosplayers. I mean, it makes sense, I just never thought of it before. I also had no idea the film was supposed to be PG-13 until the studio said, "Nope, this one goes out to the kids!" Which honestly worked out for the best. As David Mamet said, it's one of those few perfect movies.

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My Week in Movies: October 27 - November 2

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 01:18:49 GMT

This week's horror theme was Whatever the Hell I Want. After that, Criterion Channel has a special collection of MGM Musicals, so expect me to work through that in the coming week.

Films I've seen before are in italics.

The Howling (1981)
Hellraiser (1987)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Carnival of Souls (1962)
Evil Dead II (1987)
Island of Lost Souls (1932)
Halloween (1978)
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
The Gate (1987) with sol_se

Most of these films are either comfort food or films I haven't seen in ages that I wanted to revisit. I almost always rewatch Halloween on Halloween. Call it cheesy, but it is legitimately one of my favorite films of all time and it really does hold up to multiple viewings.

Cabin in the Sky is an all-black musical from MGM. As a time capsule, it's interesting. It's clearly made by white people and leans into a number of stereotypes, but apparently the NAACP signed off on it?

All I can say for The Gate is that you shouldn't dig in the demon hole. Nothing good comes of it.

We're skipping next week because I'll be in Phoenix introducing sol_se to the family. So in two weeks, expect a mega-sized version.

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