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.
Drizzle liked Nope and that 2nd Avatar flick? Damn, son.
ReplyDeleteFair play for sitting through various 3 hour movies this month. Closest I came to that was rewatching Goodfellas on BBC2 the other night.
Movies I watched:
The Sadist
Chimes At Midnight
Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde
Hancock
TV I watched:
Knight Rider repeats
Inside No 9 (series 8)
Match Of The Day 1 + 2
What did you think of The Sadist?
ReplyDeletePuzzled by some of his choices, but props to drizzle for including Crimes of the Future and RRR, along with a few of my honourable mentions on that list. Been meaning to check out Something in the Dirt.
Liked The Sadist. Its slow pace ramped up the tension, and Arch Hall Jr was definitely born to play that role. His weird laugh is definitely proto-Archie from Repo Man.
ReplyDeleteI even checked out some Arch Hall Jr & The Archers music. Konga Joe is his best tune IMHO.
That Alan Scouser bloke has got Steven Gerrard's act of peppering every sentence with multiple "erm"s down to an art.
ReplyDeleteThat's a legit choon. Only really knew Arch Hall Jr. from Eegah, directed by his dad.
ReplyDeleteImagine playing a drinking game where you have to take a shot every time Alan says "erm", or "oh yeah!". ��
He reviewed Deep End the other month.
Clearly a man of taste.
ReplyDeleteThe Sadist is definitely a movie which shoulda had The Phantom's Love Me soundtracking a scene.
Wow!!
ReplyDeleteI was just doing a compilation with it for a future post.
What film is that?
ReplyDeleteThe Animals performed in It's A Bikini World for a bunch of Cali teens, while we got a some Yank crusty band in Dracula A.D. 1972 for Caroline Munro and Stephanie Beecham to shake it to, how is that fair?
Pwned on our soil ☹
ReplyDeleteMovie's called Topralli. I've never seen it but I'm 100% certain that scene is its highlight. Version of 13 Women in the movie is better to the one released on 7" IMHO.
Judging by some other clips from the film, I don't doubt it.
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of a German flick called Red Sun (1970)? It's been on my radar since the start of the year as some kind of artsploitation feminist crime thriller. Keen to check it out for the Small Faces being on the soundtrack and Uschi Obermaier. Reviews for it are all over the place, so it's hard to assess whether I should really bother.
Never heard of it but the trailer looks alright on some Herbie Goes Bratwurst type shit.
ReplyDelete😀
ReplyDeleteI’m praying it’s not as bad as that bloke’s parking.