Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.
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While you are in the Hammer mood I would suggest a couple of non-monster Hammer flicks - The Gorgon and Plague of the Zombies - both are worth watching.
I bought a couple of collections, and I remember The Gorgon being included in one of them. I'll have to check for Plague of the Zombies* to see if it's also included, or on Tubi/Pluto. If not, I'll get the DVD/Blu-ray.
Thanks for the recommendations!
*This being 1950s-1960s, I assume Plague will involve voodoo-type zombies.
I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I've watched these pictures, but I know that I've enjoyed them all repeatedly for well over half a century. At the risk of sounding pretentious, these films - along with the Universal horror movies - are in many ways the seminal cinematic experiences of my childhood.
This is a very stylish take on the “crops are failing” trope. David Niven stars against type as the Marquis, the latest owner of the vineyard since at least the time of the Crusades. It has failed to produce grapes for wine-making for a third year. It sounds like over the centuries men in his position have died mysteriously, presumably to save the crop. The black-and-white cinemaphotography is great. David Hemmings and Sharon Tate, in her first film role, are both appropriately chilling as a spooky brother and sister mixed up with Donald Pleasance, a Catholic priest, and a group of silent black-hooded men. Deborah Kerr took over the role of the Marquis’ wife, trying to save him, after Kim Novak fractured a vertebrae. A very good movie. I rented this on Prime.
JD DeLuzio > Richard WillisJuly 15, 2024 at 7:01pm
I saw this in 2018 and reviewed it, here and here. I didn't dislike it, but I liked it less than you did.
I did rather enjoy Abigail (2024) today, a Universal sorta-traditional but contemporary horror / monster film. It's derivative, but worth seeing if you like the genre. Universal does these films better when they're not trying to bootstrap some kind of "Monsterverse."
I finally watched Hammer's The Mummy. It doesn't appear to be available on Blu-ray, so I had to get a DVD. Its not a very good movie. The Universal movie, despite being made a decade and a half earlier, had a better script and better makeup.
But you know, I would eaten this with a spoon when I was pre-tween. At, say, age 8, I would have been dutifully memorizing the names, spells and general mythology. This was the sort of thing I loved as a lad. And there sure wasn't much competition!
I finally saw that least-seen of rock 'n' roll films, the rarely-shown-due-to-its-tortured-legal-history Rolling Stones doc, C--ksucker Blues (1972). The Stones were concerned when they saw the results. That's pretty telling, given that their previous documentary ended with a murder. It has a few bright moments-- the Stones playing with Stevie Wonder, the Stones playing pool with the locals at a road house-- and the rest is probably an accurate peak behind the curtain of their lives at the time. Is it worth seeing? I suppose if you're a rock doc completist, or obsessed with forbidden films. Honestly, it plays like someone's home movies, sporadically interrupted by something interesting and by a few things that should never have happened, much less been filmed. They kept cameras everywhere so that pretty much anyone could film anything that caught their mind-- thus presaging our era. The results often make The Blair Witch Project look like a study in thoughtful, steady-handed cinematography.
I could give trigger warnings but, honestly, if you watch something with this title and are shocked to find it rough viewing in places, you're kind of an idiot.
I could give trigger warnings but, honestly, if you watch something with this title and are shocked to find it rough viewing in places, you're kind of an idiot.
This made me laugh out loud.
Watched Brides of Dracula (1960) for the first time Thursday. It's not great -- it's not really Hammer yet, as the violence isn't all that violent, and the girls aren't all that sexy. And Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is kind of an idiot, in that he has exactly ONE CROSS to fight the vampires, which was given to him, and it's basically his only defense. Why doesn't he have dozens? And the movie ends with two vampires completely unaccounted for, which doesn't bode well for Badstein.
But that's all hindsight. I'd have loved this movie as a kid, and as a kid, I saw this image:
... a million times in Famous Monsters, and Monster Times, and other places, and now I know where it came from. I enjoyed checking this movie off my bucket list.
Replies
While you are in the Hammer mood I would suggest a couple of non-monster Hammer flicks - The Gorgon and Plague of the Zombies - both are worth watching.
I bought a couple of collections, and I remember The Gorgon being included in one of them. I'll have to check for Plague of the Zombies* to see if it's also included, or on Tubi/Pluto. If not, I'll get the DVD/Blu-ray.
Thanks for the recommendations!
*This being 1950s-1960s, I assume Plague will involve voodoo-type zombies.
Recently Re-Watched:
I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I've watched these pictures, but I know that I've enjoyed them all repeatedly for well over half a century. At the risk of sounding pretentious, these films - along with the Universal horror movies - are in many ways the seminal cinematic experiences of my childhood.
It's your origin story!
A rewatch that was worth it, one of the best stupid movies of the 70s:
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
Eye of the Devil (1966)
This is a very stylish take on the “crops are failing” trope. David Niven stars against type as the Marquis, the latest owner of the vineyard since at least the time of the Crusades. It has failed to produce grapes for wine-making for a third year. It sounds like over the centuries men in his position have died mysteriously, presumably to save the crop. The black-and-white cinemaphotography is great. David Hemmings and Sharon Tate, in her first film role, are both appropriately chilling as a spooky brother and sister mixed up with Donald Pleasance, a Catholic priest, and a group of silent black-hooded men. Deborah Kerr took over the role of the Marquis’ wife, trying to save him, after Kim Novak fractured a vertebrae. A very good movie. I rented this on Prime.
I saw this in 2018 and reviewed it, here and here. I didn't dislike it, but I liked it less than you did.
I did rather enjoy Abigail (2024) today, a Universal sorta-traditional but contemporary horror / monster film. It's derivative, but worth seeing if you like the genre. Universal does these films better when they're not trying to bootstrap some kind of "Monsterverse."
I finally watched Hammer's The Mummy. It doesn't appear to be available on Blu-ray, so I had to get a DVD. Its not a very good movie. The Universal movie, despite being made a decade and a half earlier, had a better script and better makeup.
But you know, I would eaten this with a spoon when I was pre-tween. At, say, age 8, I would have been dutifully memorizing the names, spells and general mythology. This was the sort of thing I loved as a lad. And there sure wasn't much competition!
I finally saw that least-seen of rock 'n' roll films, the rarely-shown-due-to-its-tortured-legal-history Rolling Stones doc, C--ksucker Blues (1972). The Stones were concerned when they saw the results. That's pretty telling, given that their previous documentary ended with a murder. It has a few bright moments-- the Stones playing with Stevie Wonder, the Stones playing pool with the locals at a road house-- and the rest is probably an accurate peak behind the curtain of their lives at the time. Is it worth seeing? I suppose if you're a rock doc completist, or obsessed with forbidden films. Honestly, it plays like someone's home movies, sporadically interrupted by something interesting and by a few things that should never have happened, much less been filmed. They kept cameras everywhere so that pretty much anyone could film anything that caught their mind-- thus presaging our era. The results often make The Blair Witch Project look like a study in thoughtful, steady-handed cinematography.
I could give trigger warnings but, honestly, if you watch something with this title and are shocked to find it rough viewing in places, you're kind of an idiot.
I could give trigger warnings but, honestly, if you watch something with this title and are shocked to find it rough viewing in places, you're kind of an idiot.
This made me laugh out loud.
Watched Brides of Dracula (1960) for the first time Thursday. It's not great -- it's not really Hammer yet, as the violence isn't all that violent, and the girls aren't all that sexy. And Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is kind of an idiot, in that he has exactly ONE CROSS to fight the vampires, which was given to him, and it's basically his only defense. Why doesn't he have dozens? And the movie ends with two vampires completely unaccounted for, which doesn't bode well for Badstein.
But that's all hindsight. I'd have loved this movie as a kid, and as a kid, I saw this image:
... a million times in Famous Monsters, and Monster Times, and other places, and now I know where it came from. I enjoyed checking this movie off my bucket list.
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