Best Universal Horrors

Due to them being mentioned in the Shoutbox, top films

Frankenstein
Creature from the Black Lagoon
The Old Dark House
Bride of Frankenstein
The Man Who Laughs
The Invisible Man
Island of Lost Souls
Son of Frankenstein
Tarantula
Tower of London
Captive Wild Woman
The Black Cat
The Raven
The Climax
Mystery of Edwin Drood
Strange Confession
Murders in the Rue Morgue
Werewolf of London

So how about those Demons movies?

Like the Zombi series, most of these were retitled and actually have nothing to do with eachother.

1. Demons AKA Dèmoni (1985)

2. Demons 2 AKA Dèmoni 2 (1986)

3. The Ogre AKA La Casa Dell'orco AKA Demons 3: The Ogre (1988)

4. The Church AKA La Chiese AKA Demons 3 (1989)

5. Black Demons AKA Dèmoni 3 AKA Demons 3 (1991)

6. The Devil's Daughter AKA La Setta AKA Demons 4 (1991)

7. The Mask of the Demon AKA La Maschera del Demonio AKA Demons 5: The Devil's Veil (1989)

8. The Black Cat AKA Il Gatto Nero AKA Demons 6: De Profundis (1989)

9. Cemetery Man AKA Dellamorte Dellamore AKA Demons '95 (1994)


I've never see The Mask of the Demon or The Black Cat, and I'm not a fan of The Church or Black Demons, but the rest are all worth a watch. Demons 1 and 2 are the only ones that are related, and I consider them both minor classics, and Cemetery Man is an all time favorite of mine.

Remember the Muffin Monster, in 30 Days of Night?

Behold, the glory and the terror:
https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1900581237455991073

Eric Frank Russell, the writer

Anybody a fan of this guy? I used to enjoy at least a couple of his short stories, years ago (Alamagoosa, and And Then There Were None). I enjoyed his sense of humor, and he made me think. I'm thinking about getting back into his books.

Here, this is about And Then There Were None, which is NOT the Agatha Christie story at all, although I guess it has some common ground with it. It makes me think of Firefly and Serenity, in some ways. You could view what he talks about as libertarian, or progressive, or probably other labels. His style is so good-natured that it would be possible to just start discussions, rather than fights, by sharing and talking about his stories. Here, this is a selection from ATTWN, with some analysis and discussion of it.

Vivarium (2019)

I watched this the other day. I thought it was fairly interesting, and it's intended to get you thinking. I think the whole movie makes MUCH more sense if you really pay attention to the first two or three minutes (as is often the case).

It has to do with a young couple finding a home, and making it their own, for better or for (much) worse. I don't know how much I should say about it... just pay attention to everything you see and hear having to do with the birds in the first few minutes, and everything will make more sense, eventually.

One character is a real estate agent called Martin, which is prbably meant to make us think of the bird the "house martin," or very possibly of Martians, or, even better, of both.

I started watching it mostly because I've always thought Imogan Poots is cute. She doesn't really look too great in this though, her character is usually pretty miserable. I bet she, and the other actors, had fun filming it though.

So. Yah. Had to share.

Werewolf Films of 1981

This is a really good video, this guy did a great job on it. I almost just posted this in the shoutbox, but it really deserves a post that people can find easily and go back to again and again, if they want.

Girlhouse (2015)

Anyone here seen this film? I found it recently on Tubi by accident. Had never heard of it or of any of the actors in it. I don't want to say much about it yet in case no one has seen it, but I am curious what anyone who did see it thought about it. It's a slasher film, with homage to quite a few genre classics.

It's not a foreign film but a quick look around revealed that it's not easy to get a DVD or Blu-ray of it.

The 2025 Oscars

I didn't watch. No controversy? Lame. While I haven't seen the movie, I do want to see Anora because Sean Baker made some great films. He won best picture & director.

Nuke poll

Didn't there used to be an option to post polls here?

Anyways What country is gonna get the nuke next

Iran
Japan
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Taiwan

Ukraine

My vote is Japan


EDIT:
Suppose I should add Canada to the list as well or various central & south american countries.

The Hunting Party (1971)

••Moderate spoilers ahead••

I'm sure you're all aware of the recent tragic news, but for those who aren't... Gene Hackman's dog died. I don't know anything about Gene Hackman's dog. How old it was. What breed it was. But that doesn't make it any less of a tragedy. So, as a tribute to Gene Hackman's dog, I thought I'd review a movie starring Gene Hackman's dog's owner, Gene Hackman. It's the least I can do.

Gene Hackman didn't buy into the chameleonic tendencies of his contemporaries, like De Niro or Pacino or Hoffman. Aside from a comedic caricature in Young Frankenstein, Gene avoided broad characterisation and focussed on making each role intensely natural and human. With just a facial expression or a look in his eye, whether it be of steely determination or crippling self-doubt, he infused every role with an inherent depth and turned simple words in a script into believable, 3-dimensional people. Regardless of whether the character was good or bad - from Popeye Doyle to Bill Daggett to fuckin' Lex Luthor — Gene made them real.

Which makes The Hunting Party all the more unnerving, because Gene plays a bonafide piece of fucking shit. He's a rich motherfucker who owns a lot of property, with one of those pieces of property being his wife. We're introduced to his character while he's raping her. In fairness, marital rape didn't exist in 1971 when the movie was made, and certainly didn't exist in the late 1800s when the movie is set. So, from a legal standpoint, he was having marital relations with her. He's still a piece of shit.

Gene and his pals go off on a hunting expedition to test out their new rifles, which can hit a target from 800 yards away. Being a piece of shit, he gets in the killing mood by pooning and torturing some Asian whores first. While this is going on, his wife is kidnapped by a gang of thugs, led by Oliver Reed. Olly is the '˜good guy' in this scenario, although that's relative here. He saves her from being raped by one of his flunkies, before beating her into obedience and raping her himself; a rape that becomes kinda sorta maybe consensual halfway through. The '˜70s were a very different time.

Gene is not at all happy about his wife's kidnapping. As he sensitively states, she'll probably get passed around to 15 or 20 different guys and end up pregnant. He's supposed to take back a turned-out whore and look after a bastard kid? Hell no. Instead, he takes his new state-of-the-art rifles and aims them at a new prey: Humans.

In case you haven't gathered, this is a supremely nasty piece of work. Despite being directed by a dude who mostly worked in TV, it embraces (ie. rips off) the savagery of Sam Peckinpah, and not just in the aforementioned lax attitude toward the boundaries of sexual consent. Gunfights are brutal, bloody and merciless. Death does not come briskly in this film's cruel universe. Pain and degradation are celebrated by the grand tunes of Riz Ortolani, of Cannibal Holocaust fame. There's an almost exploitation-like harshness to the bloodshed. It's easy to forget that mainstream '˜70s audiences had no care for trigger warnings and appreciated a certain level of confrontation from cinema.

It is, however, far from perfect. A random scene of comedic peach-eating is bizarrely out of place. Oliver Reed is fine playing a grizzled badass, but far less convincing when his badass is revealed to be a softy with a heart of teddy bears and flowers. In fairness, the problem lies with an under-developed script, rather than with Reed's performance. Gene, on the other hand, is just excellent all round. We've all seen him play a detestable baddie in his entirely deserved Oscar-winning performance in Unforgiven. Here, he's an even more vicious piece of shit and he commits himself fully, as he always did.

If Gene's dog liked watching horses as much as mine does, I think it would have had a ball watching this. RIP, little guy. As for you humans, if you like westerns or like exploitation or, hell, just like '˜70s cinema, this is a damn good flick, well worth checking out.