SterlingBen

In Hell Fest now, only one in the theater.

Suspiria remake looks so devoid of color....

jholmes

That's a shame. Hopefully it's getting decent attendance out there.
I saw a review today for The Little Stranger that had me searching for showtimes, but it's not in my area. Pity. I might go see The Nun later this month. Let us know how Hell Fest goes.

DaveyJoe

Yeah, it's pretty good. It's about an unseen presence keeping people from escaping a cult. It may not provide the type of action/scares you're looking for during the challenge, but I thought it was a solid flick.

Gobear

I want to check out both of those this month. I'm going to see Venom after work today.

I watched a pretty decent flick on Shudder called Thirst, about a group of angsty teens stuck in a wilderness boot camp trying to avoid becoming dinner for an alien that drinks body fluids. The movie neatly subverts expectations by

Darkgod

Part 1 is on Amazon and Shudder. Pt 2 is only Shudder

brainee

About Dark Shadows ... yes, the episodes are so short (~20 minutes) it was easy to squeeze them in here and there. I found I enjoyed watching 2-3 episodes before going to bed. Probably not a ringing endorsement ... but it was comfortable turning off the lights, getting into bed, and watching some Dark Shadows. I liked the glimpse into another time and place. Like all soap operas, you watch as much for hanging out with the characters, being a fly-on-the-wall as they live their lives, as you do for plot.

I also enjoy the feel of the by-the-seat-of-their-pants production. Even though it wasn't a live broadcast, they only had one shot at filming (before another show takes all of their equipment). Even in an otherwise mundane scene, there are little things you can pick out and have fun with. Like how they handle forgotten lines. Jonathan Frid will just start babbling as he tries to find the teleprompter The actor who played Dr. Lang would write his lines on his sleeve. And in one scene another actor sabotaged him by grabbing his arm before he peek at the lines And there was one poor old woman who had the double-whammy of not being able to read the teleprompter or remember any lines. And you can hear someone off-camera loudly say all of her lines before she repeats them.

Of course there are lots of boom mics and crew caught on camera, bad anachronisms for their time-travel scenes (somehow I doubt a bar in the 1700's had electric ceiling lights). In one episode the studio caught on fire, and you can hear coughing, shouts, and fire extinguishers going off in the background (while the cast and crew keep plugging along with the scene).

Many episodes begin with the couple of minutes the ended the previous episode. But they coudn't reuse what they had, so they had to completely reshoot the scenes. Though sometimes that let them fix mistakes. The most unfortunately hilarious mistake was the one episode that was supposed to end with the big reveal of Barnabas showing the vampire fangs for the first time. But poor Jonathan Frid put them in upside-down in his mouth, leaving it pretty confusing what was going on with his teeth. He got it right for the next-day reshoot though!

Undeadcow

I ended up enjoying the jawsploitation theme a lot more than I expected; those are films I probably would have avoided and theme participation paid off.
It's not that I saw an especially good films, more just the mood of it.
I still have high hopes for Suspiria 2018. Even if remakes aren't my preferred method it would be nice to see the main stream pendulum shift towards more abstract imagery heavy horror films.

shadokitty

This talk of Dark Shadows reminds me that somewhere I have a copy of the revival. I just need to locate it. It’s a shame it didn’t last longer, but I remember at least where I lived, it was opposite Star Trek: Voyager , so that likely didn’t help the ratings of Dark Shadows .

Another show that I enjoyed that I used to have on DVD was American Gothic . An odd thing happened to that set. When I was living with an ex, who was my girlfriend at the time, my room had one of those air fresheners that sprayed periodically. One day the spray got all over my discs as I had left my binder open, and being double sided discs, the surface was ruined.

I’ve been thinking about my DVDs today, as it seems I still have basically no internet. Perhaps I can tune into streaming on my phone or tablet, but my Roku still doesn’t connect to the internet.

Chad

I panicked last night after seeing this and had to immediately check, but both of mine are surprisingly still intact. I'm guessing that's because I've always displayed them in the original packaging? And the second one's still screaming.

Chad

Went against my every instinct and watched Unfriended to meet today's theme. Instantly regretted it, and it'll easily go down as the worst watch of the challenge. It was extremely restrained with the absolute worst acting straight out of an After School special. I noticed it was filmed in Salt Lake City, so maybe some Mormon affiliation? Definitely felt more like a morality tale than a horror film. Surprised to hear it was produced by Blumhouse and they gave it a sequel??

Washing it down tonight with Spontaneous Combustion and maybe a revisiting of Repulsion.

SethDLH

Day 3 post is up and consists of a killer knight, mutant babies, a tree monster and a trip to Amityville

http://celluloidterror.blogspot.com/...nge-day-3.html

Chad

Posted at request of sponsor...

Chad

Nekromantic Enamel Pin

Chad

MysterioMan007

Sounds like there's a lot of fun ahead for me. So far, it just feels like 80 episodes of Roger Collins looking down his nose at everyone. Looking forward to seeing what Barnabus brings to the show when I finally do reach that portion of the show.


I have both of those, too. I've never watched the revival of Dark Shadows. I'm going to try and do the original show first. The 2012 movie was a total disappointment as it was played for mostly laughs and the change in tone turned me off.

On American Gothic, I thought that show was pretty good and had a lot of potential to grow going forward. Gary Cole was fantastic. I've had my DVDs out to rewatch this for a while, but can't seem to get around to it. It's definitely got the 90's production value, but I felt that was an underrated show.


While I didn't hate it as much as you, it's probably one of the hardest theater watches I've ever sat through.... usually, at a movie theater, even a bad movie will hold my attention due to the fact that's the only thing you're supposed to be doing. With that one, I was fighting not leaving to go into a different theater and see something else.

jholmes

I watched 4 movies from the elevator horror list today. Down was really good, I thought. I gave it a 7/10. I also watched Patrick (1978), which had a guy stuck in an elevator shaft. Great classic 70's horror. Also watched Tales from the Crypt (72) and Vault of Horror (73). Both very strong Amicus portmanteau films.

The tagline on an old Patrick poster I found is hilarious:
Cruel. Controlling. Comatose.

numbercrunch

All this Dark Shadows talk makes me want to pull out my Blu Ray of The House of Dark Shadows movie. I really like it.

numbercrunch

Also watching The Sleeper 2012 which is a homage to 80s slasher films. I honestly thought it was an early 80s slasher until i looked it up. They did an amazing job recreating the 80s atmosphere. The killer uses a hammer which for some reason really makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. recommended - check it out.

DaveyJoe

It's giving me flashbacks to when we had the Dark Shadows movie as a subset pick a couple of years ago. As someone who had never seen an episode of the show, I had no idea what was going on.

Trevor

Bingo!

brainee

Don't forget David acting like a brat, Caroline acting like a spoiled princess, and Vicky acting pretty much oblivious to everything!

You're a ways off from Barnabas (he shows up in episode 210). But it sounds like you're getting close to where the show morphs from gothic melodrama into horror.

rbrown498

As I've mentioned before, House of Dark Shadows is my favorite vampire film, bar none. It's pretty much got everything--a rainy funeral, a hot vampire chick, creepy yet stunningly gorgeous locations, and a general air of decay and isolation. Maybe it helps that I saw it in the theater, first-run, as a child.

Mondo Kane

This channel finally seems to be running. There's the usual Lugosi freebies, but they've got a dozen or so movies from the 2000s.

WillieMLF

I sat down and watched it last night, and immediately recognized the Resolution scene with the guy chained to the mattress. I really liked both movies.

Indy24LA

I blind bought Ghost Stories (2018) in September and it paid off last night. It was a very well done and entertaining horror anthology.