Last movie watched...

[SmallBlueThing]

POLTERGEIST III (1988)

Oh, I'm so sorry Poltergeist III, for years I've done you a disservice. For years I've had you down as a pointless piece of shit which delivers not a single memorable sequence and places some horrible show-offy 'wax' effects technique above the squishy yuck and latex, while favouring clever-clever reflect-o-fx over monsters and goo and corpses, like the earlier films. That, and Julian Beck's non-appearance as Reverend Kane have over the years cemented P3 as the really, really bad one of the trilogy.

Surprise! It's not at all. 24 years on it seems to have weathered the intervening decades quite nicely. And if Julian Beck hadn't gone and died a couple of years previously, necessitating a rubbish makeup Halloween costume version of Kane never seen in close-up, it would probably be remembered with a lot more affection than it is.

Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allan are likeable, the plot is obvious but necessarily-so if they were going to do it this way, and little Heather O'Rourke- who died after principal filming and before post (the final shot of her coming 'out of the light' is a double)- takes the character she created to the logical next level, becoming sassy and smart-mouthed, but clever and funny with it.

My boys, who have enjoyed the whole of the Poltergeist series, really liked this one- naming it the "most frightening of them all". The eldest cuddled up to me very tightly throughout, proclaiming each effects sequence more terrifying than the last... then doing that brilliant thing (when it becomes obvious that we've got him and he is forever like us) moaning when he thought it was all over, "Ohhh, that's disappointing, I wanted more!" and then shrieking when it started again.

So yes, much better than I remembered. And the mirror effects are genuinely well put together and realised. Just a shame about Beck's earlier death and the over-reliance on dry ice and wax/hot air in preference to latex and gooey monsters. And of course, a shame about the death of twelve year old O'Rourke- who would have been thirty-seven this year.

Oh- there's a brilliant credit at the end: "Reverend Kane originally played by Julian Beck". I'd like to know the story behind that!

SBT

[vzzbux]

Fucking fuck you, you fucking bunch of fucking fucks.

Cheers

Jim

(Not fucking jealous, at fucking all. Oh, no.)

What no Cunt in there. I am dissapointed.




V

[MR. ELIMINATOR]

I watched an ace film called 'Wild Zero'. Anyone seen it?

It is the best rock 'n' roll jet movie I have ever. Basically aliens come to earth to turn people into zombies, and it's up to Guitar Wolf to use the power of "ROCK AND ROLL!!!" to kill them.

The rest of his band spend most of the time combing their hair which is also pretty funny.

Also some guy who has a beef with Guitar Wolf, (because he stole some fake gold off him) is hunting them down in his underpants while he takes loads of drugs.

Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_D9OjDoQ0

Or, watch the whole movie here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_D9OjDoQ0

Check it out. Seriously.

[MR. ELIMINATOR]

Woops, this is the whole movie link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Zezwkb58g

[GordyM]

I love Wild Zero far too much.

Fave bit: Guitar Wolf jumping out of the exploding building, striking a chord on his guitar and shouting "ROCK N ROOOOOLLLLLLLL!!!" as he does so.

[Greg M.]

I love Wild Zero far too much.

Fave bit: Guitar Wolf jumping out of the exploding building, striking a chord on his guitar and shouting "ROCK N ROOOOOLLLLLLLL!!!" as he does so.

For my money it's hard to beat the classic line: "Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders! DO IT!"

[W. R. Logan]

Dredd 8-)

[Spikes]

Ill let you know in a couple of hours, 

[Professor Bear]

The Monster That Challenged the World, a B-movie I came across in my travels while doing research on the Salton Sea, a fascinating area of California that used to be a thriving tourist attraction until the unique nature of the "sea" caused it to become increasingly toxic and incapable of supporting life - there's a five minute movie here that bullet-points it pretty well and makes a great visual case for going there if you ever plan on scouting locations for a post-apocalyptic movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otIU6Py4K_A - and presciently, this schlocky flick supposes a mutated sea snake that threatens to escape the confinement of the area and threaten the world with its man-eating nonsense.  Oddly for the time, the enemy here isn't the commies in allegorical form but runoff from the then-popular tourist and agricultural spots, so it's a mid-50s monster movie where excesses of consumer society - capitalism - is the true villain rather than something from without.
It follows the usual horror movie formula of missing people, strange wildlife activity, monster attacks, but then that's half the fun of these old films.  The monsters themselves are pretty ambitious for the budget FX of the time with their bug eyes and mandible jaws, and there's a couple of decent man vs monster setpieces and - also unusual for the time as it stepped outside the aforementioned formula - a final reel runabout after the monsters are supposedly dead.
Surprisingly good fun for a b-feature, it helps to also consider it's a film about a tourist hotspot lake where monsters are created by toxic runoff - that's basically every other SyFy movie right there, but this old-fashioned take on the material has a lot of charm that comes from being so dated and earnest, and bonus points for having an actual physical effect for the creature rather than now-ubiquitous super-cheap CGI.

[rog]

DREDD and jolly good it was too

[NapalmKev]

Just got back from watching Dredd. Really good film, it went well beyond my expectations. Brutally ultraviolent. Quality 

[Professor Bear]

Oh, there's a Dredd movie out?  I hadn't noticed.

[Alski]

DREDD

http://cool-stuff-you-will-like.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/dredd-3d-film-review.html

[WhitBloke]

Dredd 8-)

I knew you'd say that.   

[Keef Monkey]

The last two movies I watched were Dredd