Dario Argento and others thrillers/horror movies directors

[Master Ray]

The Company Of Wolves (1984) - Is it horror or is it arthouse?  Don't care, love this film!

I've seen it on BR a few weeks ago, it's wonderful...beautiful looking, haunting.
Neil Jordan is an underrated director, i really like too "Ondine", "Byzantium", "End of an affair", "Interview with a vampire", "The crying game", even "High spirits" was a fun, charming little movie.

You missed out 'Mona Lisa', Bob Hoskins's best performance?     Brilliant film.

'The Company Of Wolves' is, indeed, magnificent and beautiful....

[cthulhu]

..been so busy trying to become a major capitalist and buy an irish pub that i didn't have the mind set to post here. but i did watch some movies...

but first i thank whirlwind for his contribution, a very good suggestion, i will keep an eye out where i can get this strange one.

the suspiria remake will definately be a home screening for me, when its out on blu, and after your reviews i'm even more curious, because it seems to be a fail. a fail with some good sequences, but boy how often do we get that?

Do you know "The Hidden" ? With Kyle MacLachlan by Jack Sholder. I found this on a cheap spanish blu, the quality wasn't very good but acceptable, but the movie was very entertaining and did grow old very well. i saw it once back in the days and was very pleased after this watch. It came to my mind because i watched the whole Twin Peaks series again and wanted to see Agent Cooper in a different role;-)

[Whirlwind]

.but first i thank whirlwind for his contribution, a very good suggestion, i will keep an eye out where i can get this strange one.

It wasn't just I who suggested DEATH LINE on this thread. Guillaume here also highly recommends that eerie film...and he also states that the real pleasure of the film is Donald Pleasance's sardonic performance. Pleasance's interaction with the guy who played The Beatles manager in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT is beyond entertaining.

[Master Ray]

..been so busy trying to become a major capitalist and buy an irish pub that i didn't have the mind set to post here. but i did watch some movies...

but first i thank whirlwind for his contribution, a very good suggestion, i will keep an eye out where i can get this strange one.

the suspiria remake will definately be a home screening for me, when its out on blu, and after your reviews i'm even more curious, because it seems to be a fail. a fail with some good sequences, but boy how often do we get that?

Do you know "The Hidden" ? With Kyle MacLachlan by Jack Sholder. I found this on a cheap spanish blu, the quality wasn't very good but acceptable, but the movie was very entertaining and did grow old very well. i saw it once back in the days and was very pleased after this watch. It came to my mind because i watched the whole Twin Peaks series again and wanted to see Agent Cooper in a different role;-)

Damn, haven't seen that film since the VHS years of my past!  I remember liking it very much... must get on that asap.

You mention Twin Peaks... did you check out last years revival?  One of the most diversive things ever put on television... a few people (like me) really loved it but the majority utterly HATED it, with an absolute passion!  I can see why, it certainly wasn't what anyone was expecting...    Opinion?

No showings of Suspiria anywhere near me, so it's a home viewing as well...

[Guillaume]

"Suspiria" 2018 is at the end of its short career here in France...less than 40 screens this week for the whole country (it started two weeks ago at 140 screens)..and the original Dario Argento movie is showing tonight on french-german tv Arte! 

Do you know "The Hidden" ? With Kyle MacLachlan by Jack Sholder. I found this on a cheap spanish blu, the quality wasn't very good but acceptable, but the movie was very entertaining and did grow old very well. i saw it once back in the days and was very pleased after this watch. It came to my mind because i watched the whole Twin Peaks series again and wanted to see Agent Cooper in a different role;-)

I love this movie, one of the best "B" action/thriller/sci-fi/horror movies of the 80's, it's well acted, written, nasty, funny, so well paced and the ending is a bit weird and touching...the opening chase is also fantastic!! the good old era where the car chases were done real and not thanks to computers!

...and this Concrete Blonde track!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDE4LHpK9dU

[cthulhu]

@ Whirlwind
I didn't mean to exclude anyone, i noticed your post and it just took a while to reply to it. still searching for a good edition of this

@Master Ray
I went shopping and saw that a new Twin Peaks is out. Then i thought, well before that you gonna watch the whole thing again. And it was superb! It did grow a little old and i could notice the tensions and misdirections of the later parts, which i didn't notice at that time. there was a little bit too much of the: "we want to be surreal" thing going on, whereas the first like 8 parts had a continuous mood. they somehow killed the show by telling who the murder was, but anayway great television artistery.

@Guillaume
Exactly. When i watched it again the car chase directly made me feel good and everything else also worked well. The spanish blu seems to be an upscale of a digital version, that's a pity. those old movies look so great when you can watch them again on blu after they had been transformed and scanned from the film-negativ.

[cthulhu]

So, you guys seem asleep while i did watch some stuff;-)

I just took another look on:
Lifeforce by Tobe Hooper.
Well...since you're genre lovers and into this stuff you know what its about. It did grow old a bit, the effects were still superb and better than some of the digital crap nowadays, we don't have to talk about the plot it is like it is, but the characters....i don't feel that hooper is a good character director. all the peole are so flat and define themselves by the clothing they wear, but no charachter. still, a very good watch on blu.

Lord of Illusions by Clive Barker
There is some very good stuff in here and i cannot remember the original theater-version, this was the director's cut. But again, it didn't work as in those days. It's gory, it's disturbing, it's full of imagination and wonderful set pieces, but they do not produce more than sentimentality and wishing that the studios wouldn't interfere so much with their products and let the artists free.

[Master Ray]

As I'm sure I mentioned before, I bloody love 'Lifeforce', cheesy though it is... one of my favourite sci-fi horrors of the 80's!

[Shush]

As I'm sure I mentioned before, I bloody love 'Lifeforce', cheesy though it is... one of my favourite sci-fi horrors of the 80's!

I have Lifeforce on DVD, you know, one of them becoming obsolete shiny silver disk things. Very under rated film for its time

[Master Ray]

DVD's are obsolete?  Yeah, they said that about vinyl records in the early 90's... now them vinyl things are about £25 when CD's are half the price... 

[cthulhu]

Well, there's a big difference here. Vinyl compared to cd is a whole different technology compared to another, whereas dvd vs. blu is just the same technology but 4times better. I have a huge dvd collection but the blu one is growing and i have to get some of the movies twice, because to me it really is a vast improvement for my favourite movies.

And when you guys talk about Lifeforce, you really mean Mathilda May;-) I think at that time, having so much nudity, full nudity, running around as an alien, was one of the targets of the filmmakers. Hard to describe my thoughts here, but i remember that this fact gave the movie more authenticity when showing an alien. To see that beautiful woman fully naked had the same impact like seeing an alien running around. Combined with the superb animatronics it really was a shocker at that time. I totally like that movie too, but when i watched it, i had to notice the lack of characterization and sympathy for the other persons.




 

[Guillaume]

Lifeforce by Tobe Hooper.
Well...since you're genre lovers and into this stuff you know what its about. It did grow old a bit, the effects were still superb and better than some of the digital crap nowadays, we don't have to talk about the plot it is like it is, but the characters....i don't feel that hooper is a good character director. all the peole are so flat and define themselves by the clothing they wear, but no charachter. still, a very good watch on blu.

I like it too, the screenplay is a bit all over the place but it's a part of the film's charm, and the visuals are often striking...and Mathilda May is gorgeous! I've seen a few days ago another fine Tobe Hooper work, "Salem's lot"...it's a tv movie but well done, sometimes creepy, with a cool casting.

Lord of Illusions by Clive Barker
There is some very good stuff in here and i cannot remember the original theater-version, this was the director's cut. But again, it didn't work as in those days. It's gory, it's disturbing, it's full of imagination and wonderful set pieces, but they do not produce more than sentimentality and wishing that the studios wouldn't interfere so much with their products and let the artists free.

I haven't seen this one in years, but i've seen "Hellraiser" on blu ray one week ago...it's still an impressive and unsettling movie, 30 years after its release!

[cthulhu]

After watching Lord i became hungry for an Hellraiser update;-)
I was so glad then, when i could get a good dvd-version of the movie, because on that film they used here in germany the disgusting censor method of darkening the picture. So for example, when the skinned torso appears in the hospital room of Kirsty and writes " I am in Hell" with blood on the wall, you have such a high contrast that everything appears to be more black than red. you almost cannot see anything. not to mention the other dismembering cuts.

What do you think about Hellbound then? For me it's almost like comparing Alien to Aliens. And yes, i do like all of them. But many people have the opinion, that the second ones somehow betraye the originals.

[Whirlwind]

Please tell me some of you have seen this Eli Roth film called THE GREEN INFERNO.



This darn film is on late night cable just about every night and every night I get sucked in to its lunacy. What makes it so great is that it is so hilarious. Do-gooder college student activists are going to save the native tribes from white man industrialization. They fly down to the jungle and are captured by the nice tribe they are going to save...and that nice tribe are sadistic cannibals! I rememeber the reviews when this first came out. It mentioned the hilarious take this film has on snowflake college kids - those silly social activists who really are clueless. That actually is the best part of the film and provides for some great laughs. "I'm vegan" is one of the funniest lines I've seen in films in years. (See the film, I gave nothing away.)

I don't like the excessive gore-porn in the film, but the idea of the film is brilliant. Please tell me you've seen it and loved it, too.

[Master Ray]

After watching Lord i became hungry for an Hellraiser update;-)
I was so glad then, when i could get a good dvd-version of the movie, because on that film they used here in germany the disgusting censor method of darkening the picture. So for example, when the skinned torso appears in the hospital room of Kirsty and writes " I am in Hell" with blood on the wall, you have such a high contrast that everything appears to be more black than red. you almost cannot see anything. not to mention the other dismembering cuts.

What do you think about Hellbound then? For me it's almost like comparing Alien to Aliens. And yes, i do like all of them. But many people have the opinion, that the second ones somehow betraye the originals.

Quite fond of 'Hellbound', personally and pretty much the only Hellraiser sequel that I give a crap about.  Seems to be pretty much uncut in the UK version.  Certainly trying to expand the 'Hellraiser' idea although it didn't have the budget to pull it off.

After this film, it's pretty much a downward spiral into total mediocrity... but maybe some folks like the third one?