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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 22, 2021 16:58:37 GMT
I am sad to hear of the passing away of Louis Jourdan. A suave man, who was well able to bring his suavity to his acting. As well as the memorable BBC version of Dracula, where he was very good indeed, he starred in a pair of US made-for-TV movies, Fear no Evil (1969) and Ritual of Evil (1970), in which he played a psychologist coming up against cults and devil worshipers in modern-day America. I've known about Fear no Evil and Ritual of Evil for years but have never known them to be shown on TV here. They are now available on a dvd double-set. There's a blurry copy of Ritual of Evil online. And a clear copy too.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 22, 2021 20:21:24 GMT
Michael,
I watched a version of Fear No Evil derived from an old VHS tape several years ago--a friend sent it to me. I have the new disc in the pipeline and look forward to seeing it.
It is very typical of occult thrillers in the late Sixties. I recall a scene where Jourdan, very urbane, presides over a dinner party in his very swanky uptown flat at which the occult is discussed and Carroll O'Connor is cast as an unlikely dinner guest.
This is a story that involves a haunted mirror. I tried watching Ritual of Evil on youtube but couldn't get very far with it, maybe because the quality was so bad. So I look forward to that one as well.
Steve
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 22, 2021 21:28:39 GMT
Michael, I watched a version of Fear No Evil derived from an old VHS tape several years ago--a friend sent it to me. I have the new disc in the pipeline and look forward to seeing it. It is very typical of occult thrillers in the late Sixties. I recall a scene where Jourdan, very urbane, presides over a dinner party in his very swanky uptown flat at which the occult is discussed and Carroll O'Connor is cast as an unlikely dinner guest. This is a story that involves a haunted mirror. I tried watching Ritual of Evil on youtube but couldn't get very far with it, maybe because the quality was so bad. So I look forward to that one as well. Steve I've just watched the good print of Ritual of Evil on YouTube. It's slow, dated and tame. From all accounts Fear no Evil is better, so I'll give it the benefit of a doubt sometime. If I'm spared.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 26, 2021 21:04:08 GMT
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Post by bluetomb on Feb 1, 2021 13:37:10 GMT
After beginning the year mostly watching vintage kung fu movies, have at last got in to some other genre fare. Like Last Shift (2014) in which a rookie police officer is assigned to take lone care of the last shift in a soon to be abandoned station, and is menaced by malevolent ghosts. I enjoyed this for the most part, despite the young heroine demonstrating a frankly absurd stoicism in the face of danger (the film could have been a biting commentary on the bad decision making of law enforcement under personal and systemic pressure if it were interested in more than just being scary). The location is eerie and spookiness is nicely mounted and fairly effectively unnerving at times, and I give particular points for the ghosts being just plain evil and not avengers of past ills. On the other hand this lost a lot of my goodwill with an ending that goes for one of my least favourite tropes in modern horror films.
Also saw The Quiet Ones (2014) from the resurrected Hammer. Professor and students experiment on possibly possessed girl for the benefit of all mankind, with the sort of results you expect. Watchable, with some nice performances, but stretches its material rather than developing it, and this combines with a fast pace and absence of the sort of weirdness that might pop up in proper old British horror to make for a rather thin and uninvolving experience. Adequate time filler with one or two decent moments, but I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did and there are probably rather better proper old British horrors undeservedly languishing in obscurity that are better worth the time to rootle out.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 1, 2021 17:32:45 GMT
Some shots in this 13 minute portrait of Morag, a Cailleach (Old Woman) living in a remote area of Scotland, reminded me of Dr Shrink Proof's photographs. vimeo.com/94642820Trigger warning: extreme close-ups of sheep faces. H.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Feb 1, 2021 18:08:43 GMT
Some shots in this 13 minute portrait of Morag, a Cailleach (Old Woman) living in a remote area of Scotland, reminded me of Dr Shrink Proof's photographs. vimeo.com/94642820Trigger warning: extreme close-ups of sheep faces. H. The thing about Scotland is that there's a hell of a lot of it, and not many people - more folk live in Yorkshire than in the whole of Scotland. There are about 68 million people in the UK, but only 5.5 million of those are in Scotland, which is a third of the UK's whole area. This makes large chunks of Scotland very empty and very lonely indeed. To a degree that many folk don't experience elsewhere. Back in the 1980s, one weekend I went out (alone!) for a winter walk in the Highlands. After several miles the snow became so deep that it was impassable, so I gave up and turned back. Undefeated, I decided to try again the following weekend; it hadn't snowed all week so I thought it might have melted a bit. But up in the cold high mountains it hadn't, and I could only get as far as the same point again before having to turn back for a second time. But what was seriously creepy was that on the second occasion, throughout the whole walk I was walking in my own footprints from a week previously. And there was no sign whatsoever of anyone (or anything) having been there in the meantime...
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Post by helrunar on Feb 1, 2021 18:16:50 GMT
Fascinating and uncanny, Malcolm. And reading your observations definitely helps me understand why whisky is such a significant cornerstone of life in Scotland.
cheers, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Feb 1, 2021 20:57:44 GMT
Every year I try to watch some independent horror movie or two. Mostly I follow Lord P. and his critics for inspiration. Last year I didn't and had to regret it.
So I bought and watched The Isle(2018) . I don't have a problem with a low budget and less than stellar actors, and I truly don't mind slow. But this was just dull. Three sailors in 1841 are shipwrecked and strand on a little isle where most of the settlers have gone or are dead. There is a siren loose or something. The movie poster was better than the movie. The photography looked flat, the characters were unconvincing, and the story was boring and unsuspenseful. I don't understand how this got rave-reviews. Go read Hope-Hodgson instead.
Also got Jean Rollin's Dracula's Fiancée. Rollin is an acquired taste, and I can understand everybody who thinks his work is badly made trash. But I really like his work. The desolate mood, the dreamy atmosphere, the one step beyond reality, the morbid fascination with cemeterys, the nude girls. The iconic pictures he did achieve. The Castel twins as vampires, so lovingly tributed in Newman's Dracula Cha Cha Cha. Brigitte Lahaie and her scythe. Dracula's Fiancée was the last one I was still missing. I liked it a lot.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Feb 1, 2021 21:12:21 GMT
Every year I try to watch some independent horror movie or two. Mostly I follow Lord P. and his critics for inspiration. Last year I didn't and had to regret it. So I bought and watched The Isle(2018) . I don't have a problem with a low budget and less than stellar actors, and I truly don't mind slow. But this was just dull. Three sailors in 1841 are shipwrecked and strand on a little isle where most of the settlers have gone or are dead. There is a siren loose or something. The movie poster was better than the movie. The photography looked flat, the characters were unconvincing, and the story was boring and unsuspenseful. I don't understand how this got rave-reviews. Go read Hope-Hodgson instead. I quite liked The Isle. I wouldn't bother to see it again but it was a decent enough way to pass an hour and a half. Not brilliant but OK. Mind you, I saw it in Inverness at the Eden Court Theatre, where they'd invited along Matthew and Tori Butler-Hart, the husband and wife team who direct and star in it respectively. After the film they spoke a bit about how it was made and answered questions from the audience. Hearing about the struggles involved, especially trying to wring a film out of a miniscule budget, I was more kindly disposed to them. And to the film.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 1, 2021 21:41:09 GMT
I saw it in Inverness at the Eden Court Theatre, where they'd invited along Matthew and Tori Butler-Hart, the husband and wife team who direct and star in it respectively. After the film they spoke a bit about how it was made and answered questions from the audience. Hearing about the struggles involved, especially trying to wring a film out of a miniscule budget, I was more kindly disposed to them. And to the film. I see what you mean. Such an event is always more fun than just putting the DVD into the player.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 2, 2021 21:04:49 GMT
It seems Netflix has produced a mini-series based on Sarah Pinborough's BEHIND HER EYES! Ok, so I am a bit excited.
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 2, 2021 22:00:34 GMT
Netflix is also doing an adaptation of Adam Nevill's No One Gets Out Alive (hooray!), but they are setting it in the US instead of the UK (boo!).
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Post by andydecker on Feb 3, 2021 17:50:07 GMT
Netflix is also doing an adaptation of Adam Nevill's No One Gets Out Alive (hooray!), but they are setting it in the US instead of the UK (boo!). Considering the awful "re-imagining" of Hill House and Turn of the Screw on Netflix I am vary.
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Post by Dr Strange on Feb 3, 2021 19:48:52 GMT
Netflix is also doing an adaptation of Adam Nevill's No One Gets Out Alive (hooray!), but they are setting it in the US instead of the UK (boo!). Considering the awful "re-imagining" of Hill House and Turn of the Screw on Netflix I am vary. Yeah, me too. But they are doing it as a one-off film rather than a series, and Nevill is an executive producer, so maybe they won't mess about with it so much. Not that it will make much difference to me, as I don't do Netflix anyway. Apparently it was filmed in Bucharest.
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