What was the last movie you saw?

[Randy M.]

Viy (1967)

Soviet dark fantasy film. Young seminary student, with a couple of buddies, gets lost in the middle of nowhere and is taken in by an old woman. Right away she climbs on his back and they go flying above the ground. Upon landing, he beats her savagely, and she turns into a beautiful young woman. Wisely, the student runs back to the seminary. (No clue what happened to the other two guys.)

The fellow gets a message that the dying daughter of a Cossack demands that he pray over her. By the time he gets there (the film slows down for scenes of him getting drunk with the peasants), she's dead. Her father will pay him richly to have him pray over her, locked in a church with her for three nights.

Well, it's obvious that she's the witch from the beginning, and weird stuff happens during those three nights. The movie is leisurely, to be sure, but it explodes into a riot of spooky, surrealistic special effects during the last ten minutes. Recommended.

That sounds pretty consistent with the source material by Gogol.

 

[Ubergeek]

The Possessed aka Love, Hate and Dishonor (La donna del lago "The lady of the lake," 1965)

Proto-giallo is narrated by a novelist who goes back to a hotel in the dead of winter to revisit the servant with whom he was involved. (To what extent? Like a lot of things in this movie, it's ambiguous. Whether he was just infatuated or they had an affair is unclear. In any case, he breaks up with his girlfriend [just a voice on the telephone] to go see her.)

It turns out she's dead. The death was ruled a suicide, but of course there's more to it than that. Characters arousing suspicion as the narrator begins a remarkably passive investigation are the owner of the hotel, his daughter, his son, and the son's wife. There's also a photographer, who provides a clue, and the dead woman's drunken father.

In true giallo fashion, more deaths follow, and the plot races to a convoluted conclusion. But the story isn't the most striking thing about this film. The black-and-white cinematography is stunning in its starkness. Some scenes appear to be only the narrator's imaginings. At times, the contrast is turned way up, resulting in extremes of black and white. Recommended.

Thanks Victoria , haven't heard of this one . Being a giallo fan will try and track it down .

 

[CrazyKB]

I watched No One Will Save You. The lead actress was phenomenal; the cinematography and sound design were also quite good. It discussed grief and acceptance, however the Alien segments were silly. Heavy on the heart strings, light on the intellectual, which made it (unfortunately) par for the course ...

 

[dask]

American journalist Franciosa accepts a wager from an acquaintance of Poe (Kinski) to spend the night in a haunted mansion. I’d have to watch it again to clear up a few things but I’m not going to. Still, a fun film to watch with a go-with-the-flow attitude on a dark October night.

 

[Jeffbert]

The Story of Mankind (1957) For a film starring not only Vincent Price, but Ronald Coleman, as well as many others in supporting roles, this was rather poorly received.

An outer space tribunal convenes to decide whether to allow the detonation of the SUPER H-BOMB, and thus, the extinction of the human race, or to intervene and prevent it. The Spirit of Man (Ronald Colman) is essentially the defense attorney, who argues for the intervention, while Mr. Scratch AKA The Devil (Vincent Price) takes the other side. More than a dozen actors appear as historical figures throughout history.

The thing went too slowly (I guess) to have been better appreciated. I did enjoy it.

 

[KGeo777]

Viy (1967)

I have been curious about this one for years.
They had avoided horror films in the USSR for decades and the production history was interesting-- they brought in Aleksandr Ptushko, who was compared to Walt Disney and Ray Harryhausen, to do some work on it.

ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS - 1966 - rewatch- I wouldn't call Jess Franco a hack although it gets tempting. I would say he is a decadent artist. He can normal and coherent but he just likes to go nuts and do weird things. This is a fairly normal film for him even though it is about people being turned into robot slaves.

 

[KGeo777]

PENDULUM 1969 - George Peppard is a cop who got a promotion after beating a confession out of a murderer. But due to a technicality exposed by a defense attorney (Richard Kiley), the murderer is given a new trial. Kiley tries to get the murderer to take a plea deal for treatment but when he learns he may be able to get off completely, his client opts to walk free which he does. The next day, Peppard's wife and another man are found dead in their home. Naturally, suspicions fall on Peppard and he soon learns who his friends are in the department (which includes Dana Elcar--how many cop friends of the main character did that guy play?). Peppard hires Kiley as his defense attorney and soon searches for the real killer. The story is about the difficulties in balancing the rights of the accused vs public safety. I don't think it provides any solutions but it does keep one in suspense until the kinetic finale.

 

[AE35Unit]

The Ghost of Hanley House (1968)
A really badly made horror film in black and white. The quality of the filming is shocking. Nosferatu is higher quality and that's really old!

 

[Jeffbert]

Two O'Clock Courage (1945) NOIR ALLEY. A female taxi driver encounters a man with a head wound, & the two begin working to find out who the guy is. He suffers from amnesia, and is willing to risk his freedom to find out just who he is.

The Man (Tom Conway), taxi driver Patty Mitchell (Ann Rutherford) find themselves involved in a murder investigation. A mix of drama, humor, & who done it makes this film just my type.

While I have seen skimpy wiki coverage for films, this one has little more than the cast.

 

[Jeffbert]

I Escaped From the Gestapo / NO ESCAPE (1943) Torgut Lane (Dean Jagger) is a counterfeiter who finds himself broken out of prison by a gang he assumes is just out to literally make money. He finds himself in a prison again, and required to forge documents along with the paper money. Eventually, he realizes he is working for Nazis. Fritz Martin (John Carradine), the gang leader, is eventually identified as a Gestapo Agent. Though in America, they hold the lives of Lane's mother and sister as leverage to force his cooperation.

The title, I Escaped From the Gestapo is inaccurate, because he is rescued.

Ran in a block of John Carradine films. Not great, but I have seen much worse.

Spoiler

Located on a boardwalk arcade, the spies use audio recordings (vinyl records) of Servicemen sending messages to their loved ones, to find items of interest.

 

[KGeo777]

MANIAC COP 1990 -- Seen it before and forgot most of it. Started to come back to me as I watched but I am probably going to forget it again.

 

[Foxbat]

Shin Godzilla (2016)
This offering from Toho left me with mixed feelings.

The plot itself is reasonably interesting and reveals that there are two behemoths in this movie. The first is our eponymous kaiju. It emerges from the sea in a very different form than we are used to. You see, in this movie, Godzilla is still evolving. And this brings us to our first problem. The CGI for the first Godzilla iteration is just awful. Even worse is the accompanying animation. The creature moves with the fluidity of a Thunderbird puppet.
As the movie progresses and Godzilla morphs into something a lot more familiar, the CGI seems to improve in parallel. There is one area that does not improve and that is Godzilla's eyes. Imagine a badly taxidermed (is that a word?) animal with glass eyes that just don't fit the bill and you might get the idea. Normally, I wouldn't bother too much about poor animation or creature creation but this kind of movie needs to deliver a giant Wow! factor to its audience and I found I was saying WTF? instead.

The second behemoth in the movie is the fight with government beaurecracy and red tape as our heroes struggle to get things done. It's always the same when a democracy faces a crisis, its very nature works against itself and is a very slow moving beast initially. There's also a nice sideline in the collective horror of the Japanese officials when a nuclear strike is considered as a response to the kaiju. 'Not again', understandably, is the cry, and it's as if the whole nation enters a phase of collective PTSD brought on by the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I found this, despite it slowing down the pace of the whole movie to be quite intriguing. There is also a very interesting end to the film but I won't say any more than that.

In conclusion, I think this is a movie worth watching but don't expect too much from Godzilla. Just think how you'd react if your partner came home with a new look. Would you really hurt his/her feelings and tell them how awful they looked? Or would you just grit your teeth and concentrate on the good things. Do that with Shin Godzilla.

3.5 out of 5 (4 out of 5 if it had better CGI/animation)

 

[Jeffbert]

The Devil Is a Sissy (1936) Three schoolboys find trouble, when one of them steals to buy a headstone for his father.

Part of TCM's Jackie Cooper day. Cooper, at this point was just a bit too old to be cute, so, the lead went to Freddy Bartholomew, with Micky Rooney as the 3rd boy.

Claude 'Limey' Pierce (Freddie Bartholomew) is in his papa's custody for the next six months, and is enrolled in a NY City public school. But, the boy is from upper-class British family, and is not well accepted by the others.

Being smaller than the two tough boys, he ends up fighting one, and is accepted into the group. Things happen.

A very different type of adventure for these three young actors.

 

[Randy M.]

Two O'Clock Courage (1945) NOIR ALLEY. A female taxi driver encounters a man with a head wound, & the two begin working to find out who the guy is. He suffers from amnesia, and is willing to risk his freedom to find out just who he is.

The Man (Tom Conway), taxi driver Patty Mitchell (Ann Rutherford) find themselves involved in a murder investigation. A mix of drama, humor, & who done it makes this film just my type.

While I have seen skimpy wiki coverage for films, this one has little more than the cast.

I saw this recently, too. Good fun with Conway playing the B-movie George Sanders -- not hard since he was George's older brother. Muller broadens the range of noir and this isn't one you'd watch and instantly think of as noir.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The Thing from Another World (1951) watched with Number One Son who, at the tender age of 14, doesn't like modern scary movies or horror. His sisters would have been happily watching eyeball popping slasher movies by his age - Number One Daughter was heavily into Cronenberg's movies - this is just about his limit. I love the fast paced talkiness and generosity of the script which doles out the heroics and inventiveness to characters almost at random; sometimes leaving the nominal hero scrabbling to catch up as his crew and the scientists identify, and come up with solutions to, problems before he can work out what's going on.

 

[Jeffbert]

Reunion in France (1942) Prior to America entering WWII, Pat Talbot (John Wayne) is a downed bomber pilot evading the enemy in Paris. Exhausted, and wearing civilian clothes he stumbles into Michele de la Becque (Joan Crawford), whose empathy he gains; she, not realizing he is an RAF pilot, assumes he is just a student. Her boyfriend, Robert Cortot (Philip Dorn), is an engineer, apparently working for the enemy, and has thus earned her loathing.

Head of the Paris Gestapo (John Carradine) is nasty, but this role was tame, compared with Hitler's Madman.

So, the film covers Talbot's efforts to avoid the Gestapo. Interesting twists, but the title is about Becque and Cortot.

I forgot to mention this one thing, I thought particularly amusing. Michele de la Becque works in a high fashion women's clothing shop in Paris, & wants to give Talbot travelling money. Money, which had been sewn into the lining of a very desirable fur coat. Which Mrs. Howell (sorry, I forgot the actress' name) of Giligan's Island just will not be denied. So, not only is the loss of the money at stake, but also the Gestapo does not like it when people have such money, sorry, I forgot exactly why. Thus life and death matter. Seemed to lighten the tension, at the same time as creating it.

 

[KGeo777]

Wicked, Wicked 1973 -- Shot in the experimental process of Duo-Vision--we get two panels of the film showing different action. It gets irritating at times--for what is a standard semi-serious psycho killer in a hotel kind of story.

Quark from Deep Space 9 has a brief part as a bellhop. His voice was familiar.

 

[Vince W]

Alien Nation (1988). Classic. Caan and Patinkin are perfect together. This is a film that should remain unsullied by attempts to remake it.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Alien Nation (1988). Classic. Caan and Patinkin are perfect together. This is a film that should remain unsullied by attempts to remake it.

Does contain a couple of pefect examples of Hollywood stupidity though:

Why, when all the Aliens landed in America and learned American English from Americans is the villain Alien the only one to have an English accent? Does being evil turn your accent English or vice versa?
And let's not look too closely at the reletive Ph values of sour milk and seawater...

 

[HareBrain]

Does being evil turn your accent English or vice versa?

You might be on to something with the vice versa. I've never understood before why I turned evil.