ok lets all shit our pants to something old: pre-2006 horror film thread

I know there are loads of old horror film threads but I wanted a more obvious one for regular discussion of whatever you have seen recently and for recent reissues of older films.

I'll talk again about some of the older films that I mentioned in the other thread. So I'm going to repeat myself a bit.

NIGHT OF THE DEVILS came out on DVD about a year ago and its by the director of Mill Of Stone Women. Early 70s, somewhere between old Bava and more modern gorey stuff. It's about a mostly abandoned forest town with wurdalak style vampires haunting it. I don't think it's a classic but it clearly deserves to emerge out of neglect/obscurity because before it got reissued it seems there was rarely any mention of it and I think it's a lot better than many other 70s Italian horror films. It has some really great images but on the downside it has two vampires dying a screaming death in a laughably unlikely fashion.

Last summer I watched on YouTube two of the 50s versions of GHOST OF YOTSUYA. The late 50s colour version was easily the better version and probably the most glaringly absent film of all the western DVD releases of classic Japanese horror films (such as Kwaidan, Onibaba, Kuroneko, Blind Beast, 60s version of Jigoku, Horrors Of Malformed Men, Lake Of Dracula, Matango, Hausu and Ugetsu). I'd say this was better than most of them actually. Great soundtrack, great ending scenes.
This really needs a proper release, I've heard that Miike's upcoming Over Your Dead Body is a variation on this story that has been filmed roughly ten times. Maybe that'll help this version come out but I wouldn't bet on it. Do you think emailing DVD labels would be worthwhile?

BOXER'S OMEN was another impressive recent viewing mostly for the sheer weirdness and colourful grotesque elements.

MORGIANA is kind of a basic murder mystery plot but it's made worthwhile by the visual styling, great dresses of the mostly female cast and good setting. I'd like to see more of Juraj Herz's horror films but there seems to be nothing available aside from Cremator.

MUMSY NANNY SONNY AND GIRLY was really funny in a way that might annoy a lot of people; it's kind of unique. I love how in America they called it GIRLY and advertised it like a sexploitation film.

Other things I saw not long ago was SISTERS and NIGHTMARE ALLEY, both very good but probably don't need as much introduction.

Saw BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW on tv last night and I'm glad I didn't buy it, I find most British horror films of that era immensely overrated even though I love those gothic and rural visual styles more than anything. Redeeming features are the settings, the odd soundtrack and the lovely dancing naked girl at the end. I think this is a textbook example of conservative horror.

I sort of felt the same way about Witchfinder General, but eventually warmed up to the thing.

Isn't Witchfinder General more anti-conservative? I've never seen the whole thing.

I think IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS deserves way more chat than it gets. It has some really major flaws but I think it's a lot more ambitious, effective and special in places than it ever gets credit for; probably same for Prince Of Darkness but to a lesser extent. Something that strikes me is how Carpenter has always been very pro-showthemonster but you only get a brief glimpse at what was clearly a bunch of monsters that had loads of work put into them. I've never been able to find out about the DVD extras of the film but I remember as a terrified child seeing on tv the special effects studio proudly showing off the monsters and I wonder if that clip is lost forever.

Not about the conservative angle, just the Britishness of it.

Which Sisters are you talking about? It's not obviously bringing anything to mind right now.

Morgiana/Mumsy Nanny/Nightmare Alley all top films. The latter I love a possibly inordinate amount. The former, yeah, it's all about the styling, I see it as high gothic meets Mucha meets late '60s/early '70s surrealism. But then I may be talking crap. I actually went to a costume party as Viktorie recently, though I'm not sure how well I pulled it off (or indeed if anyone knew who I was supposed to be).

Looked up Boxer's Omen - that has gone straight on my 'to watch' list.

I think this is a textbook example of conservative horror.

Not entirely sure what you mean - horror kind of revolves around attraction/repulsion towards what's on screen, but I don't think Brit rural folk horror is noticeably more repulsed by its pagan practices than it is attracted...

DePalma's Sisters. A much better film than Scarface or Carrie I'd say.

I think the whole "conservative" horror and fantasy thing is not as easy to decide as some might say but it has been used repeatedly as a critique. Like Tolkien's orcs; pagans and vampires in films being defeated by puritans. Kim Newman talks about this a lot in his book NIGHTMARE MOVIES.

I think the conservative depiction of vampires accusation is harder to justify because it seems sensible to kill vampires who are destroying your families and are killing lots of people in the process. A vampires bloodlust overpowering their their empathy is a good enough explanation for me. The actions of those in Blood On Satan's Claw make sense inside the film, but there is a feeling among lots of critics that this comes from a unfair worldview, particularly when old Christian dudes are getting the violent victory at the end (but in BOSC the guy who kills the demon seems secular).

The depictions of pagans in particular. Like when Moorcock said that you can't really trust Tolkien to tell you that all orcs are pure evil.
I like Christopher Lee but I recall him in a recent interview talking about pagans as if they were a real threat in the modern world.

Ever since Clive Barkers era I think it's been frowned upon in some circles to depict humanoid monsters as unquestionably evil. Some people have accused Machen's "Great God Pan" being misogynist but I don't see that myself.

hey just fyi this exists too:

sometimes I like to shit my pants oldschool: 1990-1999 horror film thread

Yeah, but the pagans in The Wicker Man are unquestionably the bad guys, but you still side with them over Edward Woodward every time. They're obviously bad, but they're much much cooler and more interesting. So does that make it a conservative film or not?

xp

I'll never forget how as a child, having "good guys" win against monsters made no sense to me, I was horrified when I saw Dracula clumsily falling through cracking ice into freezing water. I think that was Dracula Prince Of Darkness.
Many years later even though my expectations were lower, I was still horrified by a Dracula who was supposed to be "powerful beyond your wildest imaginings" even more clumsily kills himself by getting tricked into walking into too many thorny bushes. That might have been Dracula AD1972.

I've never been huge on Wicker Man, Woodward doesn't deserve his fate but he is annoying enough that his downfall is funny and satisfying rather than difficult to swallow.

In the Mouth of Madness is really really great. Miles better than Prince of Darkness.

Sisters was one of Herrmann's last great film scores and it drives me crazy that it is only available on CD in a shitty sounding noise-reduced edition. Someday I'll buy the LP and make a rip of it.

I managed to download Michael (Witchfinder General) Reeves' The Sorcerers off the internet this weekend and am v v psyched to watch it.

Disappearing doorways department: I bookmarked a bunch of 70s british ITV horror items on Youtube a few weeks ago (particularly the Beasts series of short films) but when I went back to watch them the dude's account had been shut down.

looooool @ the new DVD of "The Visitor" what an entertainingly bad movie

Damn I maybe should have called this thread "pre-2005" because "post-2005" probably includes everything in 2005? I'm sure it doesn't matter too much which thread includes 2005 films.

I'm a huge fan of Nosferatu and the very beautiful Faust (aside from the prolonged romantic comedy section) but I've never tried another Murnau film despite years of opportunity and more complete versions of his other films which has risen their critical standing.
Any recommendations for Phantom or Haunted Castle?

COFFIN JOE COLLECTION is a bargain even if most of the 9 films are very poor...

AT MIDNIGHT I WILL TAKE YOUR SOUL is okay, it has mainly short bursts of gusto and a freshness of approach about it.

The sequel THIS NIGHT I WILL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE is the only one I'd actually recommend and if you bought the collection for only this, it would be a fair price. There is some overly long boring scenes but it is totally unique and has lots of energy; a few good hysterical scenes with strange imagery, really crazy intro credits too. Sadly the film still has censored dialogue at the end to make it appear as if Coffin Joe repented for his sins.

These first two films also have a strange philosophy that adds a lot to their appeal; but sometimes I wonder if Marins has it all figured out or if he just makes it up to be whatever sounds cool at any given moment. Coffin Joe is supposed to be crazily sexist but the way his female victims fall in love with him so easily make the film's look sexist as a whole. The director and his character are a fascinating phenomenon sometimes (worth reading about how he was regarded in Brazil) but I don't know why the later films have such an imaginative decline.

Aside from the documentary all the other films are really challeningly dull slogs with brief moments of interest and oddity.
Awakening Of The Beast has funny little four legged monster with a tree sprouting from its back, some weird hallucinatory scenes similar to the second film and people with faces painted on their shaking buttocks. A later film has a man discreetly fingering a woman to help her look like she is crying at a funeral.
After sitting through them all, I understand why so few people bothered writing about the later films.

I'm curious about his newer film Embodiment Of Evil. Marins has a reputation for making risky scenes of women being terrorized by creepy crawlies and some people have said the women in this film look genuinely hysterical in a deeply worrying way. He had to take his wife to the hospital to get an insect out her ear as she was screaming that she thought it was inside her brain.

There needs to be a proper Corman box set of his horror films. I'm reluctant to get a lot of them because a lot of them are underwhelming but they often have just enough going for them for me to crave more and I think they are better than the similar British films of that era.

THE UNDEAD (not seen it but the trailer has a stunning beauty in it)
FALL OF THE HOUSE IF USHER (okay)
MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (should offend dwarves)
PIT AND THE PENDULUM (easily the best of the ones I've seen, good visuals and Barbara Steele)
TOMB OF LIGEIA (a bit dull)
THE TERROR (Karloff and Jack Nicholson, okay)
PREMATURE BURIAL (not seen it)
TALES OF TERROR (not seen it)
THE RAVEN (not seen it)
TOWER OF LONDON (really dull, not to be confused with Karloff film of same name)
HAUNTED PALACE (Lovecraft attempt with some nice visuals and gorgeous lady)

Not sure about comedies like A Bucket Of Blood and Little Shop Of Horrors. I always thought Oblong Box was by Corman but it isn't. Horror Hotel feels like one of them and I'm quite fond of that.

I'm amazed that Corman is still regularly producing films with titles just like he did in the 50s-60s. Anyone seen his newer films?

Don't get people who are rooting against Sgt Howie in TWM. He may be a bit of a prude but how can you not feel for him? Even on a basic level of empathy for a guy who's clearly trying to do good while all around plot against him.

I guess I could feel sorry for him but my excuse is that I saw that clip "Oh God!Oh Jesus Christ!" repeatedly (people link to it regularly on forums and blogs for comic effect) on tv horror film documentaries that had obnoxious spoilers. It is very funny in isolation.
I think those shows spoiled a lot of films and I hope future viewers can experience a lot of these films more freshly than I did. Luckily when I watched Spoorloos/Vanishing, I didn't realise I had previously seen the ending on a clip show until the film finished. That would have ruined it.
Those clip show bastards showed the endings to Suspiria, Nosferatu, Exorcist and Don't Look Now.

It is sad that books aren't more widely discussed but the big benefit is you can read most of the classics without knowing what happens in them.

Tears of Kali (2004, Andreas Marschall)
German flick about a fictional cult whose meditation methods unleash demons, sounds pretty great. Not great by any means, but intriguing and promising. Unusual ideas, ambitious storytelling and an omnibus structure that keeps things moving. Undercut by distinctly lacklustre cinema. A trial run for something better?

Naked Blood (1996, Hisayasu Sato)
Repeat viewing. An alienated young man invents a serum that causes people to experience pain as pleasure, tragedy ensuses. This film seems known only to hardcore gore & transgression buffs, but I think it's an amazing work of art. A justly notorious (though relatively brief) midfilm auto-cannibalism setpiece drastically limits its potential audience, but I strongly recommend Naked Blood to anyone who thinks they might be able to stomach the gore. Surreal, quietly anguished and strangely haunting. A longtime personal favorite that holds up remarkably well.

Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2001, Naoyuki Tomomatsu)
Repeat viewing. A mysterious disease causes young women between the ages of 15 and 17 to die and then return to life as mindless, bloodthirsty zombies. This cheerfully schlocky, superficially comical splatter movie uses its basic situation to tell a number of related (and in most cases overlapping) stories, with varying tone & emphasis. Beneath the goofy surface, however, lies a cryptic and rather disturbing commentary on Japanese schoolgirl fetishism. Sui generis and strangely heartfelt.

I've seen a fair amount of talk about Naked Blood On this forum. I'm intrigued, I don't think I've even heard the name before.

damn you aren't kidding that tears of kali SOUNDS great! I have to see that despite yr mixed rev.

tears of kali is definitely worth a watch, and yeah, the concept had me sold from the get-go. the director's follow-up, masks, is much more assured & satisfying, if a good deal less original.

re naked blood: i genuinely love the move, but it's very hard to recommend. the worst moments (of which there are few) are REALLY nasty, like "some things you can't unsee" level unpleasantness. my sense is that the yuk factor unbalances and overshadows the rest of the film, to the point where even i have to admit that a threshold has been crossed. with that substantial caveat in mind, an amazing piece of work.

I never go out of my way to seek or avoid violent sickie films; but I've heard a lot of complaints recently about such things and I rarely hear a coherent argument for what is "too far" or what constitutes a unethical way of depicting a reprehensible act.
There are some things I don't like seeing but I can't think of anything that I thought shouldn't have been shown.

i don't mean that naked blood becomes reprehensible as a result of its gore (well it does, but that doesn't bother me in itself). i mean that the nastier moments alter the film's overall tone substantially, perhaps to its artistic detriment. certainly limits the potential audience, which seems a shame.

... I rarely hear a coherent argument for what is "too far" or what constitutes a unethical way of depicting a reprehensible act.

feel you, but i'm not sure that kind of thing should or even can be broken down all logical-like. we all have our limits, and gut-level emotional responses (DO NOT WANT!) are just as valid as more seemingly-coherent intellectual analyses.

I just went to amazon and bought it there. 20pounds, a little bit too expensive but I'm very intrigued. I'll have to watch this when everyone else is asleep.

A few more things I saw in recent times...

SCHOCK/SHOCK
In the music section of this forum I've praised the soundtrack a lot (Libra includes a few Goblin members). When I watched the trailer for this film I decided to not bother with the film because the soundtrack by itself seemed so much more exciting.
But a few years later I got the chance to see it and it was way better than expected. This might even be one of Bava's very best films. A lot of his classic films stand on the strength of their visuals but this is better than most of them as a whole work. This is Bava adjusting to a new era of Italian horror film and he doesn't look remotely out of touch here.
The story is about a dead father who haunts his wife by possessing the body of his son.
Some really strange moments in this film, but really the soundtrack is still my favourite thing about it.

NOROI
Some people rate this as one of the greatest Japanese horror films ever but it barely made much impression on me. It's made in the form of a documentary, with tv show clips and investigative journalism.

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
Aside from the appealingly smokey dark visuals and settings, this is yet another incredibly dull Bela Lugosi film with all the willingness and poor comic relief you'd expect.

MASK OF FU MANCHU
Sluggish boredom and the expected racism. The lightning massacre at the end was kind of good but I could never recommend the film.

NAKED BLOOD
It is weirdly sedate for a gore film, reminds me in some places of Death Powder. I can see how you might think the goriest parts spoil the sleepily surreal parts. The violence is important to the story, so the gore doesn't feel entirely misplaced; perhaps after being warned it didn't seem too bad to me. The naïve quality of the film was interesting.
Looking at the director's filmography there is so many films that got renamed (the director had a different intended title for them all) to sound like taboo pushing rape fantasies, I wonder if they are all porn films or anything like Naked Blood?
There was an advert on the dvd for a film called Sexy Soccer, which looks like the laziest sexploitation film I've ever seen.

DEATH POWDER
This film makes little attempt at being coherent but it has some good stuff in there. Steamy cyberpunk locations, hallucinatory scenes, a humorous music video, groups of scarred people. The version I saw was only partially subtitled.

CURSE OF KAZUO UMEZU
This is really stiffly animated but it works well enough, the background art has some nice dreamy darkness about it. The first story is pleasingly monstrous, surprisingly scary with a pretty cool twist.
Umezu got a lot of his comics made into live action tv/film but I've never bothered with them apart from this.

LABYRINTH OF DREAMS
This is from Sogo Ishii's quiet phase after his early punk films. An elegant soft black and white ghost story that is only borderline horror, really nice stuff. Ishii's frequent actor Tadanobu Asano stars.

From the animation thread, but I properly linked this video because this thread isn't in threat of being overloaded with videos...

Nina Shorina's "Room Of Laughter" here. One of the best films I saw last year. A prime example of what animation can do for horror. If you have ten minutes to spare...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgZZY9K-WIc

Looking at the director's filmography there is so many films that got renamed (the director had a different intended title for them all) to sound like taboo pushing rape fantasies, I wonder if they are all porn films or anything like Naked Blood?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:41 AM (Yesterday)

nearly all of hisayasu sato's other films are softcore sex pictures (though he did direct a memorable segment in 2005's rampo noir horror omnibus). i've downloaded a few of his pinku based on the recommendation of others, but have yet to watch any: survey map of a paradise lost, an aria on gazes and love - 0 = infinity. tbh, i don't know whether the somewhat artful titles here are original or replacements intended to help sell the films to more sensitive western audiences, and i don't really trust imdb on this. he's said to be a well respected director within his micro-genre, an experimental punk artist working at the furthest fringes of commercial cinema. i wouldn't know, and i'm not sure i want to further explore a filmography full of titles like lolita vibrator torture and horse woman dog. he did make a gay pink film called muscle, which sounds intriguing, but i haven't found a torrent.

personally, i see naked blood as an interesting and convincingly anguised peice of outsider art. the fact that the director apparently spent the bulk of his career making sleazy, violent, low budget pornography only adds to the nihilist resonance.

and wow, death powder sounds great! thanks for the tip, will watch.

Anyone been seeing these recent BFI disc releases? Stuff like M R James/Ghost Story For Christmas collection, Robin Redbreast, Gaslight, Sleepwalker, Dead Of Night, Supernatural and Schalcken The Painter?

Most of this appears to be old British tv shows, I'm sceptical but I've seen some extremely positive reviews for them. I've seen one or two of the M R James episodes and they were fine. I read Le Fanu's Schalcken The Painter recently and I am curious how they'd pull it off for screen.

A word of warning: the complete Karloff's Thriller is packaged and blurbed like a pure horror show but really only something like 10 episodes of the 67 are horror; it was really a noir/crime/mystery show. Quite a few people said it was better than Twilight Zone and Outer Limits but I never saw much of them.
It was decent but I never sustained enough interest to watch the whole thing. A lot of the acting is a bit sloppy. The highlights for me were a haunted house story with Rip Torn; a Bloch story about a mirror or glasses that let you see monstrous "true" forms of people; best was a Derleth story with Karloff as a weird pale lethargic scientist covered in cobwebs. But none of this was really enough to justify getting the boxed set.

I super dug the three episodes I watched before it was taken off Netflix. Also: tons of fuckin money ass goldsmith scores on those.

The theme tune was great.

100 bloody acres now streaming on us at least netflix

The Watson/Webber version of Fall Of House Of Usher. I'd say it was among the best silent horror films. Only 12 minutes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPYjrOST-VQ

Any opinions on the 1974 version of Dracula? I guess it's about to be reissued, and Varese Sarabande just issued the soundtrack by Bob Cobert-- I listened to it on spotify today and it's great stuff in the hammer romantic-menace vein (but better recorded than most of the hammer music).

Who was playing that Dracula, it doesn't sound familiar.

Anyone saw Mimic directors cut? Del Toro said he was pleased because he didn't have to disown the film anymore. But I'm still kind of reluctant because unlike Barker's Nighbreed, I never got the sense that it could have been something special if left alone (admittedly based on the opinions of people who saw it before it was butchered). I guess The Keep is another film that people are still hoping for a directors cut.

Just watched my new copy of IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (not a good copy, I think it's Korean, it has way too small a screen size), I hadn't seen it in maybe more than 10 years and it holds up less well than I had imagined.
The light metal music in the intro/outro doesn't set the tone very well. I remembered the film being cheesy with the appearance of the evil writer and the clichéd scary children but I didn't remember the goofy humour at all, with all those wisecracks.
I used to be freaked out by Sam Neill laughing in the cinema but I guess there was nothing wrong with that part, I'm just older. I kept thinking Neill didn't care that much about his performance or maybe he thought this was going to be closer to a horror comedy than it really was. It's unbelievable and funny how he makes a map from the book covers.

What is still quite effective is the disordered reality scenes almost like Jacob's Ladder, a lot of the driving scenes with the tunnels, dark roads and the cyclist; I liked the creatures (especially the main tunnel scene that is very similar to Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness") and the church interior too.

2 taglines: "Lived any good books lately?" and "Reality isn't what it used to be".

I have really strong memories of being very young and even terrified of this films existence, trying to avoid looking at pictures of it. As a young teen finding it pretty scary too.

It isn't great but I don't know why it rarely gets mentioned for quite a long time.

One of my favourite sites heavily recommended an obscurity called Atrapados that sounded really great...
http://www.fright.com/edge/Atrapados.htm

Now he linked to vimeo where the director has uploaded the film...
http://vimeo.com/92413499
I hope I can watch it soon if my internet speed gets fixed.

I'd watch a Keep director's cut out of curiosity, but the film is perfect as is

I think the reason it has never had a DVD release is possibly the difficulty of finally putting together the directors cut. Not sure what is stopping Nightbreed.

THEY LIVE

I got an unexpected amount of pleasure seeing a musclebound hero who is also a convincing, likable everyman (for lack of a better word). Not a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don't mind Stallone but I could do with more big muscle guys who seem approachable in films. Don't think I've seen a film with The Rock in it but he seems nice.

I'm very familiar with the majority of Carpenter's films but for some reason I had never heard of They Live until a few years ago.

Great funny long fight scene. The thing I liked least is the very forced sounding wise cracks and cheesy lines.

Been looking around for Jean Rollin DVDs and some are prominently labelled for being uncut but I don't think any of his films have been censored for decades have they? He seems way too tame to be censored into the DVD age.

Are the Dr Phibes films worthwhile?

I had passed on The Hunger and Paul Schrader's version of Cat People many times because I never bought the hype, they didn't sound interesting to me. I lump them together as very 80s sexy horror films that were very modern and cool for their time, I guess Near Dark might even fit in there. But I finally watched both this weekend and I'm glad I did.

Cat People feels like a radical new interpretation possibly more based on the source short story than the original film (?), I have to agree with the camp that prefers this to the Lewton film (I think there were better Lewton films), there were so many aspects I don't recall in the older film. Kinski was really sweet in this.

The Hunger was a real surprise. I don't have much experience with Tony Scott but I was never remotely attracted to most of his output that I know of (I have heard he has done lesser known great stuff); so I was amazed that this is one of the most visually impressive and stylish films I've ever seen; really beautiful at times. A lot of old makeup jobs look terrible but the makeup for aging Bowie was very impressive. This is the type of surprise that makes me think that sometimes I should listen to hype when I'm reluctant.

first doctor phibes is fun, not great, but a nice period piece, great production design. second is a wash.

dig both the hunger and shrader's cat people remake, moreso the former. other than that and true romance, though, i've never had much use for tony scott.

This might be kind of silly but Angel Witch's Dr Phibes tune made me think "wow, maybe if that film inspired such great music maybe the film is great too".

grow, my flowers of evil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9tu1stPxZw
Litan (by Jean-Pierre Mocky)

I originally passed on this because I thought it looked kind of cool but some of the images left something to be desired. But then I was researching the writer Scott Baker and discovered he had a hand in writing this film and I couldn't turn it down anymore.
Seems unusual to see an action horror film with a leading middle aged couple running for the majority of the film, across really wonderful locations with very uneven grounds. I'd like to see what those places look like today. It was a long time before I grasped what was going on and the video essay on the Radiance bluray filled in a lot for me, it's quite a cool story. Music reminiscent of the rock music in italian horror films. I still wish it looked just a bit better, with a few pushes in the right direction this could have been a favorite, but it's definitely worthwhile.
In the bonus interviews Mocky keeps talking about it as the first french Fantastique film, and I'm not sure how he's defining that, how strict french people are about the definition or if it has changed. I sometimes see it defined as horror and fantasy, or encompassing all speculative fiction or as something having a specific supernatural tension. The film resembles Jean Rollin's Grapes Of Death more than anything, so I wonder if he's ignoring Rollin and the small body of french horror and fantasy films or what? Mocky previously made a film (The Big Scare) based on a Jean Ray novel (City Of Unspeakable Fear) but played it as a comedy.

prompted by discussion of Le Vourdalak (2023) on the post 2005 horror film thread:

After seeing the US version of Bava's Black Sabbath many times, I finally saw the original Italian version, I tre volti della paura, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ic5ZzYWUCo

The three stories of the anthology are in a different order, starting with "Il telefono," a much better giallo than in the butchered/rewritten US version; "I Wurdulak" and "La goccia d'acqua" both look and flow better; and there's a short comic outro with Karloff in his Wurdulak make-up that really ought to have been kept. It appears the running time of the US version is about three minutes longer, but the Italian version feels more complete and coherent and seems to include quite a few beautiful shots I don't recall from Black Sabbath.

Born Of Fire was pretty good but not the easiest to fully understand. The director said people come up with loads of surprising interpretations and I'm not sure he had it all mapped out out either. What did the woman represent? Sometimes she's protecting and other times she's like a demon. Bonus features were good.

Night Tide - I was surprised that I didn't notice the amount of similarities to Cat People until the director mentioned the obvious debt in a bonus interview, it's halfway to being a remake. I liked it but how have I never heard of Curtis Harrington before? Much of his films are low key horror, would anyone here recommend more?

Realized I’ve never seen Poltergeist all the way through.

do it!

I've seen several of Curtis Harrington's made-for-TV movies, none of which is a particular favorite. I think the closest he came to making another really good horror/supernatural film was The Killing Kind (1973), which is at least gritty and disturbing, although there's something off about the tone of it.

Poltergeist ruled, I had no idea it was going to be so Creepshow.

The young guy tearing his face off in the bathroom was gnaaaaaaarly.

There was a clip from Harrington's Killer Bees in one of the bonus interviews and it looked much better than I'd expect from a film with that title. I think the reviewer mentioned Devil Dog (?) and Harrington asked him not to talk about it!

It's not a great movie, but Queen of Blood, which he directed for Roger Corman in order to recycle special effects from a Soviet SF film, is my favorite Harrington.

I've seen Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell. With Richard Crenna? It used to be on TV a lot.

From the interviews it seemed like Games and What's The Matter With Helen? were career highlights.

The original made-for-TV Woman in Black is on Prime at the moment (also on YouTube, tbf). I'd not seen it for years and forgotten how damn good it is - how slowly it unfolds, how little is actually shown. It's proper scary in places. I'm mixed on the ending (it supplants the horse and trap finale for a weird floating woman on the lake thing) but assuming the ending from the book was difficult to film.

Shits on the awful Radcliffe remake, obviously.

The scene in the pub bedroom towards the end. Holy CHRIST.

Nigel Kneale innit

Aye. I'm not mad on the book, tbh. Kneale finds the heart of it.

Ghost Of Yotsuya (Kenji Misumi)
This is probably the 6th adaptation I've seen of this story, it competed with the Nakagawa version in 1959. The most notable difference to every other version I've seen is that Lemon is quite heroic here, as he's usually a heartless opportunist, it's speculated that the star of the film (or the studio?) was maintaining his image this way. There's an interview with Kiyoshi Kurosawa where he says it's the best and scariest version, I think the characters might be deeper but I still think the Nakagawa version has much stronger images, hopefully Radiance releases that one too so more people can discuss this. It has to be the most retold horror story in Japanese cinema but I feel as if there's been more obligation to stick to the stage play, so I feel like they are more similar than the various versions of Dracula and Frankenstein but I think after the 60s they seem to mix it up a lot more. I still haven't seen Over Your Dead Body. I'd love to see how Crest Of Betrayal mixes Yotsuya with 47 Ronin.

Crest Of Betrayal trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU8XA9YUB_w

is that the Daiei Gothic? i hadn't considered it would be a different version of yotsuya.

Yes, Nakagawa's version was from Shintoho, they went quite heavy on horror and science fiction.

Really hoping there will be more Daiei films from Radiance because I think Tanaka's Haunted Castle / Secret Chronicles Of The Ghost Cat is the best film I've seen in that era.

https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/sinumadeni-mitaieiga/imgs/3/0/305fb890.jpg

https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/sinumadeni-mitaieiga/imgs/3/0/305fb890.jpg

https://www.criterion.com/films/33384-demon-pond
Nobody told me! Hope this will come to UK soon

Dogra Magra - I knew nothing about this until Radiance advertised it, so it feels like a very pleasant surprise for me. It's by Toshio Matsumoto (Funeral Parade Of Roses), based on Kyusaku Yumeno's novel about an amnesiac patient piecing together his past in a strange hospital. For a while I was wondering if it was a Edogawa Rampo story because the imagery and themes are similar enough but I guess there might be a lot of people playing in that pool. Strongly recommended if you like people like Rampo, Shuji Terayama and Suehiro Maruo. The laughing bald doctor was very likable and Haruna Miyake's soundtrack was good. There's a nice bonus feature about cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki and shows clips from several of his films.

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/the-high-times-and-hard-fall-of-carl-lammle-jr/
really interesting, goes beyond the horror films

https://badbooksbadpeople.com/episodes/episode-71-vampira-and-elvira-the-real-women-behind-the-halloween-queens
Really grateful for this episode because it's an area of interest but don't know how engaged I'd actually be. Very funny hearing all the stuff that is compared to reading a goth girl's angry blogging about other girls stealing her look. Even Patricia Morrison (Sisters Of Mercy, Gun Club, The Damned) is involved in this and she's on team Vampira.
I'm really interested in tracing the history of vamps/goth queens and these books are at least partly about that, but I'd really like something that traces this kind of style up to the 80s, because after that it's too widespread to keep track of. A very obscure proto-goth was a friend of Lee Brown Coye, the only reason anyone might know her is because he taken photographs of her and based a lot of his characters on her, she had such a fascinating look (might have been in the 1940s too) that isn't really like Morticia.

Woods Are Wet (Tatsumi Kumashiro, 1973)
A while ago I got a collection of 6 or 7 "Pink" films that Third Window released, to my surprise it seemed like almost none of them were interested in being erotic films, if you had a certain amount of nudity/sex, pink film studios would let you make almost any kind of film and that seemed to attract directors who wanted to make really uncommercial films they couldn't make any other way. So they were odd crime films, character studies and political statements (at least in that Third Window series).

Woods Are Wet is a bit closer to what I was looking for, fairly gothic and stylish. It's an adaptation of a segment of De Sade's Justine, twisted aristocrats trap people in their hotel and force them into horrific sexual situations. It's only an hour but pretty good. Someone in the booklet said that the copious black bars over the screen was Kumashiro mocking the censors. The actress who played the rich woman went way off script when dubbing herself (against the will of Kumashiro) and it has a strange effect.

I first heard about Kumashiro in a book about Shinya Tsukamoto, Bitterness Of Youth was in his personal top 3 and Kumashiro might be the most important japanese director of the 70s (even his porn films got a lot of critical acclaim) who hasn't had much of an audience outside Japan? I thought his version of Jigoku is by far the best one. I hope Bitterness Of Youth and others will come along soon.

I knew a lot of people liked Psycho II but it still surpassed expectations, Perkins is really wonderful in it, kind of want to read a biography of him because his wikipedia page is plenty interesting. Curious why he got typecast so hard in his last decade. Want to see Edge Of Sanity soon.

yeah Psycho II is excellent. shame is that Psycho III is so, so bad after it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLQlLxlmQ7s
Legend Of The Eight Samurai - I've never cared for Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale and I was curiously underwhelmed by his version of Samurai Reincarnation (despite it being full of the kind of things I enjoy), I liked this a great deal more. I don't know how many big samurai fantasy films there are but this is probably the best I've seen it done in live action. It has serious drawbacks: it's trying to emulate a lot of past blockbuster films to get a surefire hit and the songs are cheesy crap. But the settings, costumes and action all work and I enjoyed the cartoonish Bathory-esque villainess.
Eureka made a big mistake with the cover art, this film has an old woman who turns into a giant centipede and a man with a Klimt pastiche bedroom with giant snakes in it, but the box art looks like a run of the mill samurai film.

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1931) - Not sure why I left this one so long because I had seen most of the big horror films of this era long ago, it's one of the better ones, it's a lot less staid, the direction is really interesting (all the POV shots and split screens), and Hyde's scenes with Ivy are surprisingly unpleasant (the film was censored for a long time), pretty intense for the time. I'll keep director Rouben Mamoulian in mind.

That's an old favorite of mine. Love all the weird stylistic tricks and the portrayal of Hyde.

I've been thinking about it a lot, I'd rank it just after Bride Of Frankenstein in among the 30s horror films. But I've never seen Mystery Of The Wax Museum and Doctor X. I have owned the latter in a boxed set for many years but never bothered watching, but I seen someone enthusing about it recently.
https://orringrey.com/2024/10/01/my-13-favorite-horror-films/
Very eccentric list (some stuff I like but others not so much) but I'm enticed

Edge Of Sanity was really good, the night scenes look beautiful. Why am I just finding out about this film recently? It's both a Jekyll & Hyde film and a Jack The Ripper film. Really surprising to hear that the director had no real previous affinity for horror.

Anthony Perkins looks so good in it too

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) - This started quite well, Ingrid Bergman is very likable (this is honestly the first film I've seen her in!), the scene where Jekyll imagines himself whipping two women like coach horses is really weird, but ultimately I don't think this adds a whole lot to the 1931 version.

I want to see Mary Reilly someday but I'm all Jekyll'd out for now.

Yeah, the 1941 version's not a patch on the 1931 version and it would have been a horrible shame if that superior Rouben Mamoulian-directed version had gotten buried for all time like MGM tried to do to clear the way for their remake. At least Spencer Tracy looks like he's having fun as Hyde and Lana Turner is pretty cute as the useless heroine.

Why did they try to destroy the earlier version? I know it was heavier but they had already cut scenes from it. Ivy's room looks much the same in both versions and I wonder if they were using some of the same locations.

I see a note saying they didn't want the earlier film to be competition, but they owned the rights to the previous two versions, I don't get it.

MGM tried to bury the earlier version of Gaslight too, didn't they?

are you sure?

Rewatched The Ring, love how of its time it is - CRT TVs, smokers, flip phones, Polaroids, VHS.

Didn't know Věra Chytilová had a horror film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQlTjE3LDPk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB_2CTcj8WE
Nice compilation of Ghost Cat films. I've seen clips of the Takako Irie films but never known if anyone especially liked them, but these clips from them look great, one of the best things about Ghost Cats is the invisible strings they use but here she's making her victims dance like puppets.
I only just started reading the booklet that came with Daiei Gothic volume 1 and it says that Takako Irie had gotten a disease that made her eyes bulge and this taken her from stardom to a long series of Ghost Cat films, would like to know more about this but not seeing a lot of biographical info right now.

Who has seen Snow Woman (1968) so far? I rewatched it today and hoping it finds more fans.

Can't see that the Akira Ifukube soundtrack was ever released but I don't know if this era of japanese horror films has much of a life on soundtrack discs.

there are 10 double cds of his soundtracks available(?) and they might be in there, but all the titles are in japanese...

https://www.discogs.com/release/14799822-%E4%BC%8A%E7%A6%8F%E9%83%A8%E6%98%AD-%E5%AE%8C%E5%85%A8%E5%8F%8E%E9%8C%B2-%E4%BC%8A%E7%A6%8F%E9%83%A8%E6%98%AD-%E7%89%B9%E6%92%AE%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB%E9%9F%B3%E6%A5%BD-%E6%9D%B1%E5%AE%9D%E7%AF%875

of course the godzilla soundtracks make up the bulk of his discogs listing

One of the mid-70s black and white horror films had a Toru Takemitsu soundtrack. One of the most memorable of these films soundtrack wise was Ghost Cat Of Otama Pond, because the themes often sounded like cats singing a sad song.