Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) kills two of his co-workers, his wife and takes his two daughters to a cabin in the woods in plans of killing them also, but is stopped by a ghost living in the cabin. The two daughters are left in the cabin for five years and are being taken care of by the ghost they start calling "mama". Then Jefferey's brother Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau again) manages to track them down and take the daughters into custody with his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). But "mama" doesn't like her children being taken from her, so some cheap scares and plenty of explaining the ridiculous plot follows. I must say I kind of liked the start of the movie and the premise looked good, but unfortunately this movie fails miserably on the one thing it sets out to do, scare the viewer. All the "horror" in this movie was nothing but cheap scares, there was not really any tension building at all. And the "mama" character was unintentionally funny with the wacky face and ridiculous poses. So every time she jumps out from the dark to scare you, you're just left wondering should you laugh or cry. Though I must say the children were quite creepy, especially at the start. So it's a downhill slope from the good start towards the ending which was nothing short of idiotic. Sure there's some good things in the movie like the acting for example, most of the cast is quite great and I liked the flashback sequence shot from "mama's" point of view, but those were not nearly enough to save this movie. So in the end it's a "horror" movie which isn't scary and with a ridiculous plot, that's not much to go with. 33%
Had this one on my shelf for quite some time before I ended up watching it. Heard some good things about it when it was playing on the festivals so decided to buy it but never got around to watch it. Then a friend of mine said I should watch it and the director Ben Wheatley's latest movie Sightseers (2012), and so I did. I really hate trying to describe the story of a movie like this which evolves from one thing to another and yet another. But as it's told in the back cover and in the trailer as well I guess you can't really avoid it and luckily there's more to this movie than just an intriguing story. The movie reminded me of The Wicker Man (1973) in quite a few ways. Obviously the last 15 minutes or so, but also the weird feeling of the movie and the tension building from the start to finish. Not to forget the surprisingly good dark comedy. Of course comparing this to one of my all time favourite horror movies is not exactly fair, but it actually holds on quite nicely by itself. The acting is also great, so there's many things right in this movie. But there are some problems, can't go into too much details to avoid spoiling it, it's the ending mostly and some of the events leading to it. I liked the idea of it, but the actions leading to it didn't seem to make much sense and especially the outcome was weirdly predictable but still didn't really seem to make any sense. I mean the movie clearly wants to leave something for the viewer to think about, but the thing is that more you give it some thought the more ridiculous it seems. Maybe this movie needs a second viewing to get the whole point of it. But wether it's unintentionally confusing or intentionally complex didn't matter that much as this movie plays with tension quite masterfully. It's after all easier to forgive the flaws of the plot if the movie works on an emotional level and this one worked quite well. 72%
This is not an easy movie as it plays on your deeper emotions rather than your rational thinking. So if you won't let yourself go with it, you will only get utter nonsense out of it. It starts out as a family drama where the marriage of Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani) seems to be over. It follows Mark as he struggles to cope with the new life without his wife, it seems that he's slowly starting to lose his mind. But then the movie turns to a surrealistic horror story which builds the crazy plot towards the surprisingly action packed cathartic ending. All the while you are constantly wondering what the hell am I watching here. But the beauty is that it's intriguing, you don't care that the plot makes not much sense or that the acting is at points extremely over the top and even corny. It's shot quite brilliantly and the music fits the mood nicely. Both of the lead characters do a great job at their parts, even though, and partly because, there is so much deliberate over acting. And the supporting cast is not one bit worse. This movie is definitely not for everyone and the first time I saw it I just found it silly, had a few laughs about how bad it was but nothing else. On the second time it scared the hell out of me and on this third time I was surprisinly moved by it. That right there is an indication of a brilliant movie when you can experience it multiple times with completely different feelings. Now there are some things I don't find working in this movie, but to be honest I guess I just haven't figured them out yet, maybe next time they won't bother me at all. This movie has surely grown on me and I think it will grow even further the next time I watch it somewhere in the future, so I will leave the scoring of it a tiny bit of room to grow as well. 95%
Well zombies might not be the technically right term for the infected people in this movie, but they are undead, thrive for human blood and can only be killed by a shot to the head. But that's not all, not even close. They can also run, use weapons like knifes and machine guns, fly airplanes, set up traps, cut phone and power lines and fight rather tactical warfare. But only if it's convinient for the "plot", otherwise they are just reduced to those slow moving rather dumb kinds. So they most certainly are not your everyday zombies and this movie most certainly is not one to be taken too seriously. Even though the movie focuses on the raging zombies, there is a bit of a story behind it. A reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) goes to an airport to interview a scientist about a recent radioactive leak on a nuclear power plant. However the plane carrying the scientist is full of these infected people who are a bit of a mix between zombies and vampires because of their thirst for blood, lets just call them "zombires". These zombires plan to take over the city and the reporter tries to get his wife into safety. Another thing which probably comes from their vampire side is the fact that they seem to haunt some of the people, instead of just eating them like normal zombies. But I guess that self moving lawnmover looked so spooky that they had to fit it in somehow. So yes the plot is thin and I guess so was the make-up budget as the zombie masks are mostly rather bad. The acting wasn't any better, but then again it gave me most of my laughs so I guess it was fine for this movie. The score by Stelvio Cipriani was quite far from his best, but it wasn't that bad, I guess he didn't want to waste too much time on this movie. Which I guess the director Umberto Lenzi was thinking as well as he focuses the movie on the killing and tries to get the stupid plot over as quickly as possible. I have to mention the ending, which was something ingenious in stupidity, if that even makes any sense. It was just brilliant in a corny way. Anyway, this movie is trash, but it's quite funny, so I bet I will be revisiting it again and who knows maybe eventually it will grow on me. But for now it's among the average of it's kind, the bad movies which turn into good movies because they are so funny. 55%
A movie written by Joel and Ethan Coen, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell and Brion James amongst others must be good, right? Well not exactly, but one crazy goofball comedy it surely is. Vic (Reed Birney) is a convict on his way to the electric chair, as the officers are dragging him to meet his maker he is screaming for innocence. Then we are told as a flashback a devious tale of deception and murder, in the form of an action packed slapstick comedy. Sam Raimi himself wants to disown this movie and reading about the troubles he went through while making it, I can't blame him. Having his lead actor, editor and composer replaced by the studio is not exactly a great way to make a movie. Anyway this movie is not as bad as it at start seems. The cartoon-like over acting is a bit tedious and as it's boosted with wacky sound effects it goes so much over the top I didn't know wether to laugh or cry. But as the story goes over the top as well, it turns into a quite an entertaining goofball comedy. The acting is rather bad, though mostly deliberately so. The soundtrack is quite annoying at times and the silly sound effects didn't help it at all. But the movie looks quite good and manages to set a great mood for the crazy things happening on the screen. That's the reason why this movie squeezes above the average of it's kind. 66%
Even though the influences of the genre come from even older movies, this one is probably the first true slasher film which fits the genre completely. Sure this film by Mario Bava is missing the masked murderer but the similarities for example to Friday the 13th (1980) are quite clear. Last time I saw this about 15 years ago I couldn't really understand much from it, the VHS had a horrible audio track and no subtitles, so all I could understand was that some people were getting killed and that of course didn't impress me much back then. Now luckily the DVD by Future Film has nice audio with subtitles and the image quality is good as well. But I must say I still didn't really understand everything. Now sure I understood the motives and the plot, but at points I was quite lost with who's killing who. The movie jumps timelines and there are multiple killers (not a spoiler, so don't worry) so I got lost quite a many times. Anyway that didn't matter much as there's a nice giallo-like atmosphere and plenty of quite graphic kills which kept me entertained. At points the soundtrack by Stelvio Cipriani sounded great, but unfortunately most of the time it was rather dull. The ending is just something special, shocking and absolutely hilarious in a dark sense of humour and that alone is worth watching the whole movie. As a curiosity piece for seeing the baby steps of the slasher genre this is pure brilliance and as a fun late night shocker this works quite well even today, despite the few flaws. 73%
I don't know why so many
people seem to dislike this one, I think it's a great horror comedy,
just what you'd expect from Sam Raimi. Maybe they were expecting
another Spider-Man (2002)
but instead they got a movie in the spirit of Evil Dead II (1987). I guess I can't blame them as I too was starting to feel he's only
making Spider-Men, but luckily this was a blast from the past by him.
It's a story about Christine (Alison Lohman) a bank worker who gets
cursed by an old gypsy lady, played brilliantly by Lorna Raver. As
the curse gets worse Christine seeks help from a psychic (Dileep Rao)
and learns that she will eventually be taken to hell unless she can
find a way to reverse the curse. The comedy is great and there's even
some efforts into tension building, not just the usual cheap scares.
Unfortunately Alison Lohman and Justin Long who plays her boyfriend
are not exactly great at their parts and that's a shame as some of
the supporting cast is rather brilliant. Despite that and the
somewhat easy to guess ending this is a great horror comedy.
This is one of those
movies which divide people's opinions, you either hate it or love it
and there seems to be no middle ground. Well I must say I love it as
it's an atmospheric giallo which builds tension slowly but surely. In
a way this reminds me of The Wicker Man (1973) even though there's no folklore in this one and not really any dark
comedy either, but it's the tension building and the similarities in
the settings that make me quite sure Pupi Avati has taken quite a few
ideas from it. Anyway it's a story about a restorer called Stefano
(Lino Capolicchio) who is called to a small village to restore a
painting in a local church made by an insane painter. As he gets
intrigued by the story of the painter he stumbles onto a mystery and
it seems someone wants him to stop poking around the past. The less
you know the better as the story unravels itself in a nice way. The
camerawork is quite stylish and one of the nicest shots in the movie
was actually a real earthquake caught on camera. A lucky moment yes,
but the way it fits the scene is just brilliant. The acting is
surprisingly solid for a movie like this so no complaints on that one
either. The music didn't really strike me in any way and thinking
about it now after just watching it I can't even remember what kind
of music it was. Anyway this is a great slow paced thriller which
builds tension better than most of the newer movies.
I've never been a fan of Michele Soavi, but I think this one might be his best movie. It's a story about Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), a caretaker of a cemetery somewhere in a small Italian town. Francesco has a problem, the dead buried on the cemetery seem to come back to life after a while and he needs to kill them again with the help of his mentally challenged helper Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro). But that's not all, one day he meets She (Anna Falchi) a griefing widow who he falls in love with. The problem is that Francesco doesn't go out that much or meet any people, the undead keep him too busy for that, so the love becomes quite complicated, especially when She ends up dead. The style of this movie is a surrealistic horror comedy love story or something like that. It has a bit of everything in it and that's a good thing as it surely doesn't get boring. Rupert Everett is good and his character resembled a lot like Clive Owen's Dwight in Sin City (2005), I bet Robert Rodriguez has based at least a bit of that character to this one here. Though who knows as the comic book came out the same year, maybe it was Michele Soavi who based it on the Frank Miller's character, but as it's so different I kind of doubt it. Who knows and to be honest it doesn't even matter. Can't say the same about the rest of the cast, though Anna Falchi was quite pleasing for the eyes. The style as in most Soavi's movies is again great, the cinematography by Mauro Marchetti was at times simply brilliant. There's plenty of comedy and enough twists to keep a constant "what the hell is happening?" expression on my face. So in the end this is a great little horror comedy, well worth watching. 78%
This is the last of the
“animal series” of giallos from Dario Argento, the others being
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) and The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971). This time a drummer (Michael Brandon) ends up killing a man after
an unfortunate encounter. Then someone who witnessed and photographed
the killing starts blackmailing him and soon bodies start piling up
as he tries to cover his tracks. Well the “accidental” killing at
the start was extremely far fetched and the rest of the plot isn't
exactly great either. But as so many times it's the mood Argento sets
up which is the driving force of his movies and this was no
exception. The score by Ennio Morricone wasn't bad, but really it
wasn't used as well as it could have been. The visual side however
was well in hand, the compositions were quite great and the
camerawork by Franco Di Giacomo was pretty much perfect. Some of the
scenes are extremely memorable, whether that's a good thing or not is
for the viewer to decide, I sure loved them. The biggest problem of
this movie is the long and unneeded explanation of the motives at the
end and in this Shameless release of the extended cut it's even
longer than in the American cut. It's a shame as the ending is
otherwise great it just drags on way too long on the explaining part.
Apart from that and the misuse of Morricone's talents, this is a
great giallo.
Right after Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Ruggero Deodato made this nasty little film. Even though the shock values might not be what they were in Cannibal Holocaust, this movie is still very disturbing. There's two kinds of sexploitation, there's the rather childish male fantasies and then there's the sick kind. This being a Ruggero Deodato movie this is of course the latter. It's a story about Alex (David Hoss) a homicidal rapist and his friend Ricky (Giovanni Radice), who invite themselves into a party hosted by a snobbish couple. Alex and Ricky take the group hostage, beating the men and raping the women. So the story isn't exactly great and similarities to The Last House on the Left (1972) are quite apparent. This is a bad movie, no other way of seeing it, but at parts it's so bad it turns into an unintentional comedy. Especially the twist at the end was just hilarious in it's stupidity and it pretty much ridiculed the whole movie before it. I don't know if that was a planned sick joke or just stupidity, but for me that worked very well. So basically it's an hour of torture, rape and torment and the ending makes fun of it all. 51%
Here's the trailer which is hilariously misspelled.
This is one of the most
notorious giallos, right up there with Lucio Fulci's other sleazy
“stab” at the giallo genre, The New York Ripper (1982). Though this time it's not the brutal and graphical murder scenes,
but the targets of the murders which makes this one infamous. In a
rural town somewhere in Italy someone is killing the children of the
village. There are plenty of suspects, a weird mentally disabled man,
a woman who's believed to practice black magic and an ex-drug addict
woman who has just moved there from a big city. Maybe the murderer is
none of the above, but the villagers want justice to be served so
they take the law in their own hands as the police are too slow at
solving the case. I must say this movie has one of the most memorable
murder scenes I've ever seen, it was actually the only scene I
remembered since the last time I saw it over 10 years ago. It
involves chains and most memorable music switch I can think of and it
will imprint itself into your mind forever. Speaking of the music,
apart from that one absolutely brilliant scene the music didn't
really impress me that much, it's not bad but nothing to rave about
either. The cinematography wasn't bad either, but nowhere near the
better ones of the genre. The ending was just hilariously over the
top which kind of turned the otherwise quite intriguing thriller into
a comedy, but other than that it keeps it's form nicely. So all in
all this is a good giallo with some memorable moments.
Well if the last six movies from the Shameless collection were not that great, this movie pretty much makes up for all of them. This movie by Sergio Martino is among the best giallos I've seen. Life is not easy for Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech), she is troubled by nightmares of her violent ex-lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov) and one day Jean returns to haunt her. While her husband Neil (Alberto de Mendoza) seems to never be around a lover, George (George Hilton), steps into her life, but when Neil returns things become even more complicated. Amongst this mess of relationships there is a serial killer on the loose and it seems the killer is also after Jean. Sure as in many giallos the story isn't this movie's strongest point, but in this one it's surprisingly intriguing. That even despite the multiple twists at the end which almost turned into comedy in their out of the blue way of pulling the rug under the feet of the viewer. But like in most giallos, the style and atmosphere make up for what the story might be lacking. The cinematography in this one is pure brilliance and very diverse, even amongst other giallos. That in addition of the great music by Nora Orlandi, which was a surprisingly strong effort from her, makes this one a true beauty. And then there's Edwige Fenech. Probably the best giallo actress in the whole genre and certainly the most pleasing for the eyes. The rest of the cast wasn't bad either and somewhat surprisingly for the genre there were even some great performances in this one. For every giallo fan this is a must see as it's one of the best in the genre. 98%
I just watched two movies
from Sirpa Lane, Finland's gift to the world of sexploitation and
70's B-movies, so here's my brief thoughts on them. I must say I'm
not really a fan of sexploitation movies, so pardon me if I don't
understand the “brilliance” of these two.
Well the camp values
surely are strong with this one. Hilarious costumes, funny cheap
special effects, some weird light sabre ripoffs, a half man half
horse with a big dildo between the legs and a computer robot monster
of some sort with some humanoid robot minions, just to name a few.
Add to that all the naked ladies of course, so the entertainment
values are high. But really even with all that it was rather boring
most of the time, that says a lot about the story of the movie and
the horrible pacing of it all. The story is some nonsense about
people on a space ship looking for some rare material called
Antallum, but everyone seems to be focusing on drinking in the bar
and having sex. Eventually they then visit a planet which is ruled by
some computer monster thing which controls people's minds turning the
whole place into one big orgy. I watched the Shameless release of
this movie which said it's the most complete “softcore” version
with some shots inserted from the hardcore version which contains
additional porn footage added to it. It was rather apparent where the
actual movie switched to the porn inserts as you can clearly see it's
different people having sex than before. And the weirdest part were
the “stunt tits” used in some scenes which didn't look anything
like the tits of Sirpa Lane which of course are already presented
very thoroughly. I mean for example a scene where she is laying on
the ground on a green background while a man rubs her tits cuts to
some other tits being rubbed with a blue background while the actress
is clearly standing and then cut back to the ground and rubbing the
actual tits. What the hell is the point of that? Now I did laugh
quite a lot watching this and wasn't bored at all but still I'd rate
this among the average of it's kind.
Talk about a misleading
name, apart from two scenes which were borderline cannibalism, this
movie has absolutely nothing to do with cannibals. This is nothing
but the usual Joe D'Amato sexploitation romp. Well there is a slight
try for a statement as the movie is kind of anti nuclear energy, but
the focus is of course on the naked ladies and softcore sex. The idea
is that there's a nuclear plant being built on some exotic island and
the natives have a leader (Melissa Chimenti) who seemingly likes to
have sex with the scientists before her minions kill them. Amongst
all this is Sara (Sirpa Lane), whose purpose being on the island in
the first place is rather vague, except for having sex with everyone.
So yes, it's not a great plot and neither is the movie. Apart from a
few unintentionally funny scenes, the only thing I liked about the
movie was the score by Stelvio Cipriani, though that as well was
rather repetitive. Sexploitation fans might get something out of
this, but can't really recommend it to anyone else, It's not even bad
enough to be funny. I have to give some credit to the music and Sirpa
Lane who's always pleasing to the eyes.
23%
Apparently I can't link
the trailer here as it has an age limit on it, so search for it on
YouTube if you want to see it.
Weird would be an
understatement for this movie. I most likely had a constant “what
the fuck?” expression on my face while watching this one. These
“fumetti” (Italian term for comics for adults) adaptations were
very popular in the late 60's and early 70's and this movie is among
the better ones of it's kind. The movie starts out with probably the
weirdest scene I have ever seen, I still can't understand what it was
about, but there's some half naked people playing Native-Americans
and some cowboys driving in cars killing each other and some Jesus
impersonator burning American flag until the police come to stop it
all. I guess it was some kind of reality theater or something, all I
know is I couldn't understand it at all. Anyway that's soon forgotten
after the titles and the actual story is about Valentina (Isabelle De
Funes), a photographer who gets her camera spellbound by a witch
called Baba Yaga (Carroll Baker). The people who get photographed by
the camera seem to end up hurt or dead. Then there's Arno (George
Eastman) a director friend of Valentina and a living doll called
Annette, played by the great Ely Galleani. And then things get very
weird, can't say much about it in fear of spoiling it, but then again
I didn't really understand most of it anyway so I guess it doesn't
matter one way or the other. Anyway I really liked the haunting mood
of the movie and the seemingly nonsense script actually made it even
more intense. The movie looked great and there's some very nice shots
as you'd expect from Italian genre films, but the use of music
surprisingly wasn't that impressive. I mean it wasn't bad, but
definitely not great either. This Shameless release of the film was a
bit confusing as it's a restored director's cut of the movie and it's
made mainly from an English print and the cut parts are added from a
lesser quality Italian print with an Italian soundtrack. So from time
to time the picture quality goes down and people just start to talk
Italian and then switch back to English. It's actually not as
distracting as it sounds, even though it was extremely notable, after
all it's better to see the director's original vision than some cut
done by a studio. Fumetti friends will get more out of this movie
than I did, I was surely intrigued and mostly entertained throughout
it, but in the end it left me with a ton of questions and not much
else to go with.
Antonio Bido is a lesser
known name amongst the giallo directors, mostly because did this
movie, his first feature film, in the late 70's when the whole genre
was starting to fade after it's glory days. That doesn't make him a
bad director, on the contrary, for a first film this is absolutely
brilliant. He has the giallo style well in hand and the music choices
to boost it, hell even Dario Argento would be proud of some of the
scenes in this movie. The plot goes something like this, Lukas
(Corrado Pani) gets mixed up in a murder mystery when his girlfriend
(Paola Tedesco) sees a murderer leave a crime scene. Someone seems to
be after his neighbor as well and it looks like these two cases might
be connected as someone seems to be after the jury members of a
certain court trial. The story isn't half bad, sure there are some
idiotic parts in it as usual, but it manages to stay quite
interesting all the way to the end. I really loved the music in this
one, especially how it's used, the operatic twist in the bathtub
scene was pure brilliance. The cinematography is quite nice as well,
not the most stylistic from the genre, but still some shots looked
great. The biggest problem in this movie is the pacing, even though
the first murder happens before the titles, it takes it's time to get
started. But luckily towards the end it picked up quite nicely. Even
though this movie had most of the things right for a giallo, I was
still left hoping for more, apart from a few scenes it looked a bit
too familiar. But it's still a good movie and well worth watching.
I wanted to watch this one
again after seeing the unbelievably bad Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) to see if this was as funny as I remembered. As there's so many
versions of this one, I got the “Gruesome Edition” which should
be the one Tobe Hooper intended to have. Well it wasn't as good as I
remembered, but it wasn't bad either. It continues some years after
the original, the family is back in business again but this time they
have a lieutenant (Dennis Hopper) after them. A radio station host
(Caroline Williams) gets mixed into the manhunt as she records a
phone call where two yuppies get killed. There's a few twists to the
story, but it's rather simple in the end. The comedy ranged from
horribly bad to very good. The cast was surprisingly good, but no one
really stood out. Didn't really like the music, it was a bit too
repetitive, even though I do understand the comedic aspect of it, but
it just didn't work for me. Without the effects by Tom Savini and the
set designs this would be just an average horror comedy. Funnily
enough the best scene of the whole movie was left at the cutting room
floor and is only on the DVD as an extra without proper sound and
with crappy image quality. That scene is the now infamous parking lot
scene where the family goes to get some “prime meat” from some
youngsters trashing cars in a parking lot. With just that scene in
the movie this would have been a good movie, now it's just an above
average horror comedy.
Patrick (Robert Thompson)
kills his mother and her lover and then falls into coma. Patrick is
thought to be brain dead, but Kathy (Susan Penhaligon), a young
nurse, is convinced that he's still awake. Then weird things start to
happen and sure enough Patrick seems to have some kinds of
telekinetic powers. The story isn't as bad as it sounds, there's
actually some effort in to it. But the movie is not exactly great
otherwise. The acting is just bad, the pacing is off and the plot
takes quite a few stupid turns. I liked the fact that the movie tries
to slowly build tension and a strange atmosphere, but unfortunately
it didn't really work that well. The pacing is off as it focuses too
much on the personal life of Kathy kind of forgetting the thriller
part at times. That makes the movie a bit too slow paced to keep the interest up. The dialogue in this movie was quite special, at times
it was pretty much brilliant and at times it was absolutely idiotic.
But even when it was great, it didn't really help that the actors
were quite bad. There were some shots that looked nice and tried to
push out some style, but then again most of the time it was very
straight forward without any finesse to it. Apparently there is
another shorter version of this movie with a soundtrack by Goblin, I
haven't seen that, but it might be a better version as it should have
less of Kathy's personal life and focusing more on the horror. Then
again the music wasn't that bad in this original one either, it kind
of reminded me of Bernard Herrmann. Anyway there were quite a few of
those “what the fuck?” moments in this one, so it didn't get all
too boring, but in the end it's a below average thriller.
This is another movie that
has sat in my shelf for ages before I now finally watched it while
recovering from a nasty flu. This certainly was an oddity, it's part
documentary, part mockumentary and part fictional horror movie.
There's slide show like graphic presentation, acted story telling and
even some stop motion animation in it. It's divided into seven
segments each of which has a story of it's own but all focused on
different aspects of witchcraft. This movie has a rather painfully
slow start, the first segment with it's illustrations and history
lessons was just simply boring. Maybe if you are more into the
subject matter you could get something more out of it, but for me it
didn't really serve any purpose. The second part was better but not
much, it follows a witch cooking with some surprisingly comic moments
as well. But after that the movie gets going and stays quite
interesting until the end. The last segment with all it's
philosophical aspects is very dated and a bit tedious to watch, but
it does have an interesting point to it. I can understand why this
movie was banned in pretty much every country when it came out, not
because it would be pro-witchcraft, it's actually quite the opposite,
but because it's anti-religious. It basically compares religion and
people who believe in witchcraft to a mental illness. Then again not
long ago I read that some Nepalese woman was burned at the stake for being a witch, so I guess this movie is still relevant today. Which of course it
should most definitely not be.
Anyway even though there are some
relevant points to the story of this film, it is mostly quite dated.
But that didn't bother me much as this movie was pure brilliance for
me as a film history lesson. I must say where people praise Lang,
Eisenstein and Murnau among others for being the early pioneers of
film making, I'd put Benjamin Christensen to that list as well.
Technically this movie is a marvel. There's some movie tricks that
even today look impressive. And the acting deserves a special
mention, the whole movie is rather brilliantly acted without the
usual over acting very common in silent films. The makeup is
surprisingly effective, I mean sure the demons look a bit goofy, but
they are strikingly similar to the old drawing presented at the start
from old history books. But what I loved the most was the
cinematography, every single frame was lit and framed perfectly down
to the smallest details. After seeing this it's not hard to believe
it took three years to shoot it. For anyone even a bit interested in
the history of movies, this is a must see and well people who are
into witchcraft might get something out of it too, but as an
entertaining film for the casual viewer I don't think there's much to
go with this one. Anyway for me this was an eye opener and showed
that some of the early cinema pioneers came from Scandinavia. Oh, and
if you are planning on watching this, beware there are two versions
out there, the original 104 minute version and a shortened 77 minute
version with a narrator. Steer clear from the shortened version as
the music is some crappy jazz which doesn't fit it at all and it's
missing some very nice scenes, so watch the original or not at all.
First a bit of background
story before we go into the movies. The Wicker Tree (2010)
stood in my shelf for over a year before I now finally watched it.
Reason for this was that once it came out I of course rushed to get
it, but I decided to watch The Wicker Man (1973) before it to refresh my memories of it. That was actually a bad
mistake, The Wicker Man is pretty much a perfect movie so it raised
the bar so high that I knew the sequel could never live up to it. So
I decided to give the sequel a better footing and put it back to the
shelf to wait for a better time. Well the “better” time was now
as I'm trapped at home with a nasty flu. But first a few words about
the original and unfortunately the remake as well.
One of the best horror
movies ever made and a movie which would most likely be in my all
time top 10 list if I ever had to make one. I can't praise this movie
enough, it's perfect in every aspect and especially the mood is just
something unbelievable. It does what most horror movies tend to
forget nowadays, it builds up tension slowly but surely until it gets
scary as hell before the absolutely devastating ending. A brilliant
masterpiece that can stand multiple viewings despite the easily
spoilable plot.
Even though the best thing
to do with this movie would be to just forget it's existence, I'll
put it here as well, kind of like a warning to stay away from it. I
haven't seen this since it came out so can't say how it would work
today, but then again I don't want to ever watch it again. It's one
of the worst remakes ever, missing every single aspect that made the
original so brilliant, and all in all just a horribly bad movie.
Sequels are always hard
and nearly every time fail to live up to the expectations. This
however had all the things on paper that could make it good. It's
written and directed by Robin Hardy, the same man who wrote and
directed the original so there was a good possibility it would be
something like the original. Even though I had very little
expectations, mostly just hoping that it would at least be somewhat
entertaining if nothing else, I was still disappointed. This
continues the story of the village 37 or so years later, though it's
left a bit unclear whether it actually is the same town as Summerisle
was on the original as this time it's called Tressock, but it's very
similar none the less. A young American gospel singing couple (Henry
Garrett and Brittania Nicol) travel there to spread the word of the
lord and much to their surprise they are warmly welcomed there. Well
the town's folk of course have other plans for the naively simple
couple and things go along similar paths as the original. The less
you know the better. The story in itself was actually quite good and
intriguing, but unfortunately everything around it and especially the
way it was told didn't work at all. Both Garrett and Nicol were
rather bad, though then again their roles were so one dimentional
that even better actors might have had trouble with them. But that
didn't bother much as that's the way they were supposed to be, it fit
the story and gave it a bit of dark comedy as well. The real problem
acting wise is the rest of the cast, they were all quite bad.
Especially Graham McTavish who didn't fit the role in any way. Only
one who at least tried to put some effort into it was Honeysuckle
Weeks. But the acting didn't ruin the movie it's the story telling
which did it. There's an attempt to a similar tension building as in
the original, but this time all the attempts for dark comedy broke
the tension as in the original they fit right in most of the time
even helping to build the tension. And the mood from the first one
was nowhere to be seen. It just proves how hard it is to recreate the
incredible mood from the original when even the creator of it can't
do it again. Another thing that troubled me was that the movie was
quite amateurishly made, some scenes looked like they could be from
some cheap soap opera. So even though the story was nice, this is in
no way a good movie, rather bad actually. This probably works better
as a book and Robin Hardy seems to be a better writer than a
filmmaker, so I guess I'll give the book a try some day.
Well I decided to make this blog so I can write something about the movies I watch. I'm not going to update all the movies I've seen here as it would take me ages to do that, but the list will grow as we go along. I'm not going to write huge novels about every movie, just what I felt about it, sometimes it can be summed up in few words and sometimes you need more of them. Anyways I hope someone finds this helpful and all feedback is appreciated.
