Mia Farrow being haunted by a malevolent ghostly child in the supernatural chiller Full Circle (1977) is the crème de la crème for me this month.
Other notable highlights: J.P. Mawra's politically incorrect, lesbian themed mondo, Chained Girls (1965); MTV's The Real World meets Argento splatter, Kolobos (1999); and the Irish creature feature, Unwelcome (2022/2023).
With the exception of Strange Days on Talking Pictures, I didn't really watch any TV; other than snippets of the news, weather and a couple of minutes of the crown being plonked on Charles’s bonce.
Film:
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (Joseph Green, 1962)
Chained Girls (Joseph P. Mawra, 1965)*
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri, 1970)*
Full Circle AKA The Haunting of Julia (Richard Loncraine, 1977)*
Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)
Two Orphan Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1997)
Kolobos (Daniel Liatowitsch & David Todd Ocvirk, 1999)*
Funky Forest: The First Contact (Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine & Shunichirô Miki, 2005)*
The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2016)
The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022)
Enys Men (Mark Jenkin, 2022/2023)*
Tár (Todd Field, 2022/2023)*
Unwelcome (Jon Wright, 2022/2023)*
Evil Dead Rise (Lee Cronin, 2023)*
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski, 2023)*
Plane (Jean-François Richet, 2023)*
Renfield (Chris McKay, 2023)*
Scream VI (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, 2023)*
Sisu (Jalmari Helander, 2023)*
* First time viewings.
Dada Debaser Notes:
- One year later and The Northman still rules. Looking forward to Nosferatu.
- Deadstream (2022) being the spiritual successor to the Evil Dead franchise rings true after seeing Evil Dead Rise. However, the final act is admittedly fun, and I liked the Romper Stomper girl in it.
- Kermode ought to be flogged for picking such a boring dud like Enys Men for his BFI Player choice, but he redeemed himself a week later by covering Tenebrae.
- Sisu is a repetitively one note film. The gory action gets stale very fast. Mentally checked out by the middle of the film.
- The Grieg concerto sketch from the 1971 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show is way more entertaining than Tár's joke ending, which requires nearly three agonising hours for its build-up. Pretentious as a brioche burger bun.
- The John Wick films are essentially condensed down to neon lit action set pieces, accompanied by EDM and synthwave. The latest instalment is almost three hours and feels like a series of music videos.
- Funky Forest: The First Contact is way too long and underwhelming. Its only real legacy are the gifs from it that used to be posted on now dead forums.
- The Dracula (1931) callback was the biggest highlight from Renfield.
Other stuff I enjoyed this month: The Martorialist's favourite songs dicovered from other blogs; drizzle's best films of 2022; and Alan Scouser's ten worst Horror film traitors.