Watched Dune for a second time and I still think it’s great as a book reader but I kinda think he should have just gone the whole way and re-written some of the stilted lines from the book. I would bet a lot of the bad acting/lack of agency crtiques itt stem from where lines are delivered word for word without the internal dialog or extra exposition in the book. You can also contextualize some of the deterministic elements of the book a little better by turning internal monologues into external dialog as well.
Once you decide to deviate from the book in the first place it’s not like it’s really crucial that every line delivered is a direct quote. Like Paul could have easily said to Jessica, “I thought my hand burned off.”
I have finished my epic quest to watch all the essential slasher movies that I was too cowardly to watch as a kid, my rankings are as follows:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
By far the most frightening and disturbing of these movies. Some of that is due to over-the-top gore, but also there is legitimately great cinematography here. I scoffed when I first heard that this was inducted into the Criterion Collection, but after watching this I have to agree.
Halloween
Not really all that scary, but this was a blast to watch and I’m hyped to see it again. Unlike so many of these slasher movies, Halloween takes a little bit of time to give us a reason to actually care about the teenage girl in danger, which a lot of these don’t do. Jamie Lee Curtis and Stavro Blomfield are always wonderful actors. Also great pacing and sound design.
Friday the 13th
If you imagine all the quintessential components that a teenage slasher flick ought to have, this checks off all the boxes. Horny teens, gore, grainy filmography. good times. If you need to explain to space aliens what a teenage slasher movie is, this is the film you’d send them.
Nightmare on Elm Street
By far the most interesting premise for a slasher movie; characters who don’t know if they’re in a dream world or not taps into a lot of primal anxiety and prefigures movies like The Matrix and Inception. There are some great practical effects that must have been extraordinary at the time. The hat and ugly sweater are so surreal and wild, I love it.
Scream
Didn’t care for it at all, honestly. Wanted to be both a slasher movie and a cozy murder mystery without doing justice to either. It has the essential above-it-all Gen-X energy that nobody really likes except other ironic aging Gen-Xers.
I worked in a video store around 1989ish and have thus seen just about every horror movie produced prior to that time. In general I found supernatural stuff to be scarier than slasher stuff. I remember The Amityville Horror (1979 version ldo) being pretty scary, and I have a soft spot in my heart for Poltergeist. Also, given that I was 16-17 in my video store days, it should come as no surprise that a pretty strict requirement for a horror film for me back then was boobs aplenty. So it is probably for that reason that I remember Slumber Party Massacre as one of my favorites.
I also liked the over-the-top ridiculous/funny genre. Re-Animator and Toxic Avenger come to mind. Oh, and Dead Alive (aka Braindead) is fucking amazing - directed by Peter Jackson! Rabid Sumatran rat-monkey ftw.
Dead Alive is incredible. I still randomly think of the line, “I kick ass for the LORD!” frequently.
And Poltergeist holds up really well. Showed it to my kids last year and was very pleased as to how good it still is. The first time we see things happen in the kitchen is fantastic.
My memories of Scream and Nightmare are much better than your review, which makes me wonder what I’d think of them on a rewatch. Problem is that it would only be appealing to one of my three kids.
This rings true to me, particularly the “horror films=boobs” notion. I also remember Slumber Party Massacre, but I have no idea what the plot was other than some dude with a big drill. The one movie that stands out in my memory is an early 80s horror parody called “Student Bodies”. My 10-12 year old self thought it was hilarious, but I’m confident that it’s not very good. Would love an updated review on it from people in this thread.
My wife doesn’t like horror movies because they give her nightmares (they’re doing their job!) so she almost never watches them. Most of the horror movies I’ve seen since we’ve been married have been while she isn’t in the house.
But, since it was Halloween, she wanted to watch one. I was willing to watch some that I had seen before, so I showed her The Cabin in the Woods. Did not disappoint - she very much enjoyed it. At a few points, she was commenting on dumb decisions the characters made and what not, and I was just thinking, “Just you wait.”
It’s definitely a harrowing movie. I just meant the killings themselves were all surprisingly bloodless and tame to me considering the reputation of the movie.
Originally, the scariest part of TCM was that they were killing people during the day.
In all of these films that invoke the terror of being isolated in a small midwestern/southern town you usually can depend on the sanctuary of daylight.
Poltergeist was good but should have ended a half hour before it did. I just can’t get past the fact that they go back into the house another night. Everything leading up to it was solid but act 3 nearly ruins what leads up to it for me
You got Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto but I didn’t find it very entertaining. The twist requires a bit too much of suspension of disbelief to really hold up.
We’re supposed to believe Leto’s character gets off so much of being a crime junkie that he’s goading the police multiple times and in multiple ways, eventually goading Malek’s character into taking a trip with him alone to the middle of nowhere, but also is innocent? At some point a innocent guy is going to be like, “hey umm perhaps don’t break into my house without a warrant and leave me alone” instead of being ‘nana boo boo’?
Just saw the new Bill & Ted movie and it fucking blows ass despite an 82% rating on RT.
IDK what is up with movie criticism these days. Every other movie I look at has heavy disagreements with audience ratings and when I watch the movies the ratings seem almost random.