Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Like I said, perfectly good as a movie, I was pleasantly surprised by how well put together it all was. I can’t explain how my brain works but none of that really got in my craw - what tends to go past my comfort level is eyeball trauma stuff, or participatory cruelty, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has neither by virtue of how adeptly they’re cutting around their budget limitations and, y’know, not being a video game. So it was ultimately just… pleasant thrills? I realize how unhinged that’s making me come across, but if it’s any consolation it’s been 15 years and I still haven’t recovered from the head on a pike scene in the original Devilman manga. I can be more normal when it’s in print form*.



*Actually what did really disturb me with similar source material is the nonfiction graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? Something about Eric Powell’s expressive grayscale illustrations of Gein’s flesh suit antics is incredibly haunting and I don’t know why.

 

I am a big horror fan. But I hate torture porn. It's almost like a different genre. To me, the thrill is in the chase in a horror movie. Watching people captured and tortured is not fun or scary imo.

 

See for me the problem with stuff that tends to get labeled torture porn is it… often isn’t fun? At all? I never get the sense that anyone involved had a good time making the film or had much to say beyond “here’s our torture sequences.” Like, I’m sure somebody gets a kick out of Hostel but I find it ponderous and self-serious. And it’s admittedly funny that a movie with such a stupid premise is ponderous and self-serious, I guess, but not so much while you’re actually watching it.

 

That sequence was such an ordeal behind the scenes to the point where the guy who played the hitchhiker thought it was worst than his time in Vietnam.

 

I used to say I was a defender of Hostel, but actually I'm just a defender of Jay Hernandez who I think is genuinely good in the movie. I had the journey of going from finding him unbearably obnoxious to actively rooting for him to survive and feeling like he had become a good person.

But Hostel 2 I am a defender of. I think that film does have some things on its mind. Admittedly, the themes have been explored better elsewhere and the movie still wants to gross you out. But I think the two businessmen in Hostel 2 are really interesting and the way the movie flips the script on them makes both of them commentaries on two very different kinds of toxic masculinity. There's just too much screaming in ugly metal rooms for the movie to be anything like entirely successful; one of the problems with both the Saw and Hostel films is that they're ultimately just so ugly to look at*. I just get tired of their aesthetics. To be so hung up on the visuals of their gore (and sometimes they're actually good effects), they really just don't care about any other visual aesthetic at all. I get that the griminess is part of the point, but, man, does it get tiresome. I think that genuinely plays into the whole general "not fun" vibe you're talking about. I don't mind the look sometimes, but both of those franchises just took them to extremes and you can only look at so many filthy warehouses poorly shot in dim light before it gets boring. But I do think Hostel 2 has a few minor things on its mind. And it is worth remembering that Hostel 2 was actually a huge flop.

*You're absolutely right that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre goes out of its way to try to do some interesting things visually in spite of its low budget and limited technology. Ironically, a lot of the torture porn that came after had more money and better technology and purposely made their movies look like dog**** in order to capture a "low-budget" aesthetic. Which is the last thing most of those actual low-budget filmmakers wanted.

EDIT: And best wishes on your recovery and riding out the storm, @DarkGingerJedi

 

Good luck on your recovery. I've always enjoyed your posts.

 

Yeah, I think that’s a better articulation of what puts me off of those franchises, or at least less nebulous than my vibe check standard. In terms of content a Saw isn’t doing much different from a Cannibal Ferox (admittedly less genitalia are involved), but the latter’s like bright red, clearly more cow and pig offal than could fit in a human body, you’re in a jungle surrounded by offensive stereotypes, it’s just ridiculous **** and I’m having a ball. I’m glad people who like Saw (they must exist with all of those sequels) can enjoy those films; I don’t need to like every horror thing ever. That said, I do love how things as variegated as Frankenstein, Saw, and Death Bed: THE BED THAT EATS can all technically be in the same genre.

Which reminds me:

Frankenstein (1931).

A film that teaches us all an important lesson: if the cast is good, be sure to credit them twice.

 

Well I won't judge people's horror tastes as I'm a big fan of the Saw movies.

Also tonight I watched Predator as recommended by some here. I had seen Prey but none of the originals. Predator was of course silly and ridiculous, but still pretty fun. Although Prey I think is better, Predator is dumb fun.

 

The original Texas Chainsaw film left me speechless on first viewing. I'd never seen anything like that and haven't since, aside from watching it a few years later with a friend who was curious about it.
When it ended he looked at me, staring, then looked back at the screen, both hands a few inches from his ears and shivered while uttering a sound that was a cross between a gasp, sigh, and a descending vocal glissando.

It's a well made and effective movie, and I agree with Rogue, it is harrowing and disturbing.

No recent watches here, but this convo has me thinking about the annual Halloween movie watch. I always watch NOES in October. Predator and Prey are good options too. Awesome movies.

 

@Dagobahsystem I'm always down to watch NOES

 

Let's do it.

 

The Siege. A 1998 action-thriller about a series of Islamic terrorist bombings in New York City and the national-security-state response, this is the kind of movie that people call “prescient,” except that it’s just based off the headlines of the day and it didn’t actually predict anything accurately.

It’s got Denzel Washington as an FBI agent, always a good start (Lance Reddick and Tony Shalhoub are on his team, even better). He’s investigating terrorist bombings and runs across Annette Bening, a CIA operative working the case from a different angle, who seems to know more than she’s letting on. It’s a good setup for a thriller, and the film is good as far as that goes, though a little lackluster, never really taking off.

Where it loses me is when the bombings keep going on, so the president sends in megalomaniac general Bruce Willis to declare martial law, round up Arab-Americans into camps, and generally lead the most cartoonish response to a handful of bombings ever. It’s a deeply silly, hamfisted narrative, made to look even sillier by the fact that we had vastly larger terrorist attacks three years later and literally none of that happened. 9/11 doesn’t make The Siege look prescient; it makes it look foolish, a deeply unserious examination of the serious issues the USA would soon face.

As a result of the farcical martial-law plotline, the third act gets sidetracked away from the investigatory focus, and what the film is trying to do with Bening, which is kind of predictable and cliched but kind of interesting at the same time, doesn’t get enough development to really land properly. A thriller that never got up to full speed to start with really can’t survive the wheels falling off halfway through like this.

 

I'll never understand interest in pure horror films (as opposed to satires or horror comedies, which I can appreciate), but if I enjoyed the genre, I'd say the initial Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the best I've ever seen.

 

Elemental (2023)

Disney/Pixar's latest film involving inanimate objects anthropomorphicized to have minds of their own. Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire all live in separate boroughs of Elemental City. Through a catastrophic event, a water person stumbles into the shop of a fire person and her family. Gradually they hit it off, though not everyone is happy about it. Of course the theme is of racial undertones. There's not really much of a plot. It's mostly about the romance of the two elements that well, don't usually mix well naturally. I guess the movie has a few ok moments, but overall if you never see it, you're not missing anything.

 

The Giant Claw 1957

American monster movie. Hoo-boy, this has all the tropes and cliches. This time the monster is a giant Buzzard thing. The creature is goofy looking but it looks like they put some effort into building it (puppet/marionette) , the face has 'muscles' and it's pretty articulate.
Lots of people running in the streets, generals calling meetings of the joint chiefs of staff etc. the monster even ends up in NY knocking over buildings including the U.N.

 

I love how they passed up Ray ****ing Harryhausen in favor of… that.

 

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961).

A film that teaches us all an important lesson: Vincent Price can yell the word "TRUE!" with more syllables than antidisestablishmentarianism.

 

Love at First Sight (2023)
Pleasant romcom starring Haley Lu Richardson as a young woman travelling to the U.K. who crosses paths with statistics-obsessed Ben Hardy. Not memorable, but I enjoyed it while it was on.

 

why are rom-coms so awful.

 

Because they can't all be adapted from novels by Nora Ephron.

 

Romantic comedies mostly follow the same formula. Meet, fall in love, then hit some kind of sad obstacle 3/4 of the way through, and then get back together at the end.

 

TCM is certainly one of the most effective in the genre I've ever seen.
As I said, I was uncomfortable throughout, and my nervous system felt slightly on edge once that 15 minute chase sequence began. That saying of leaving a bad taste in your mouth, no pun intended, literally happened, probably because watching that and hearing those seemingly endless screams and that chainsaw and just the shockingly depraved violence that followed left me nauseated. Once that movie kicks into gear, it pretty much never let's up off the throttle. It's exhausting really. And I can see why so many rank it highly or even as the best horror film of all time.

It is a very well made film and the score is creepy as hell. The budget and how it was shot and the sets dressed, the editing, all of it, so well done and the rough around the edges aspects make it even scarier. It's kind of a masterpiece, isn't it?
Yet two viewings is enough for me, unless it was like a group or theatrical viewing.

My top 3 are The Shining, NOES, and probably Halloween or The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Very standard choices, I know.