Viewings: November 2022

Mensis horribilis. Poor internet service and Mastermind rescheduled due to the rugby forced me to cotch with a film rather than spend time writing bloviated reviews.

Edward Berger's update of All Quiet on the Western Front was my favourite fresh viewing in November.

 

Film:

Thunder in the City (Marion Gering, 1937)*

Black Friday (Arthur Lubin, 1940)*

Girl Gang (Robert C. Dertano, 1954)

Mr. Sardonicus (William Castle, 1961)

Station Six Sahara (Seth Holt, 1963)*

First Men in the Moon (Nathan Juran, 1964)

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (Ray Dennis Steckler, 1964)*

The Ballad of Tam Lin (Roddy McDowall, 1970)*

Fragment of Fear (Richard C. Sarafian, 1970)*

Torture Dungeon (Andy Milligan, 1970)*

Endless Night (Sidney Gilliat, 1972)*

Deadly Weapons (Doris Wishman, 1973)*

Double Agent 73 (Doris Wishman, 1974)*

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

Snapshot AKA The Day After Halloween (Simon Wincer, 1979)*

The Prey (Edwin Brown, 1983)

Zeder (Pupi Avati, 1983)*

Invitation to Hell (Wes Craven, 1984)

Satan's Blade (L. Scott Castillo Jr, 1984)*

Deadbeat at Dawn (Jim VanBebber, 1988)

Hell High AKA Raging Fury (Douglas Grossman, 1989)*

Red Spirit Lake (Charles Pinion, 1993)*

We Await (Charles Pinion, 1996)*

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (Brett Sullivan, 2004)*

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (Mary Lambert, 2005)*

Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child (Bob Smeaton, 2010)*

Crystal Eyes (Ezequiel Endelman & Leandro Montejano, 2017)*

Trauma (Lucio A. Rojas, 2017)*

Bliss (Joe Begos, 2019)*

All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)*

Barbarian (Zach Cregger, 2022)*

Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland, 2022)*

The Lair (Neil Marshall, 2022)*

Smile (Parker Finn, 2022)*

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Eric Appel, 2022)*

Television:

Red Dwarf - Season 1 - 10 (Rob Grant & Doug Naylor, 1988 - 2012)*

FIFA World Cup 2022 (2022)*

 

* First time viewings.

 

Dada Debaser Notes:

• Top Billin' Black Friday with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi's names was really misleading. They were nothing but supporting roles and they didn' even share any scenes together. Still an enjoyable horror / noir mash-up, though.
• First Men in the Moon is possibly the perfect rainy day film. Victorians and Selenites are a fanstastic concoction from the mind of H.G. Wells. It's absolutely imperial!
  
• Arrow Films proves once again why they're villains in the boutique blu-ray game by not including the three different versions of Edwin Brown's Prey on the standard edition blu-ray.
• Found the French colonial plantation scenes added by Coppola were an unnecessary diversion in whatever new cut of Apocalypse Now I watched. Another example where directors need to quit tinkering with their past classics.
• Had high hopes for Zeder. Heard so much about it, but it was merely okay. Can definitely see why some folks make the Pet Sematary comparisons, though.
  
• Completely loathe the alternative title for Snapshot, it's the reason why I've avoided watching it this long. My loss, as it's a decent Aussie thriller. Also dug Brian May's theme for it.
  
• Peter Strickland tapping into his hellenic routes since Flux Gourmet is nothing more than a Greek Weird Wave film which mostly lost me. Other than a fart joke, it's a big let down, in my opinion.
  
• Despite the controversy, Trauma didn't have the same shock value for me like A Serbian Film (2010) initially did. Not quite ready to revoke my extreme cinema pass quite just yet.
• Who would have thought that the epicentre of the neo-Giallo would be in Argentina? Crystal Eyes is all style over substance (then again, so were many gialli in its heyday), but despite it having the production value of a Happy Meal, it earns some respect for trying.
• Red Dwarf attained its sweet spot around the third season and went downhill after its sixth season. Found it even more painful watching the cast looking older and fatter on the Dave channel episodes and gave up around the tenth season.
• The Lair is objectively an inferior pastiche of Neil Marshall's earlier B-movies. It's still more enjoyable than all the recent mainstream horror films I listed above, which the critics gushed over. Also, props to Marshall for getting engaged with his fit lead actress; which makes him one of life's winners, even if only about five people (including myself) watched his latest film: