Good write up. Let me know when you watch the others
Essential The Official Coli Horror Film Thread: Discussion, Recommendations And Murder.
- Thread starter Dominic Brehetto
- Start date
I can’t sticky it but yeeeeeears ago, we had way too much stuff stickied. So hex made it this an essential thread. That was his solution to a problem that was getting out of handWhy isn’t this thread stickied?? Can we get a Sticky please oh please @hex @MartyMcFly ?? We’ve worked hard for our right to sticky. I’m tired of searching for this in the randoms - thread is over 636 pages?? And there’s always something that we need to talk about. We need our official sticky
This movie, VFW reminds me of the movie “Roadhouse” with Patrick Swayze with all the fights and violence. What’s up with all the current movies having the purple/pink overlay in the back.
Oh ok
Everyone wants to get that neon 80s feel. Same reason synth scores are back in vogue.
Why isn’t this thread stickied?? Can we get a Sticky please oh please @hex @MartyMcFly ?? We’ve worked hard for our right to sticky. I’m tired of searching for this in the randoms - thread is over 636 pages?? And there’s always something that we need to talk about. We need our official sticky
I'm not opposed to it but the Admins don't like perpetually stickied threads unless it's something general, like Netflix or Disney+. I've asked about this before, for another thrread.
Fred.
Piff Perkins
Veteran
What should I watch tonight brehs and brehettes?
Midsommar
Get Out
Us
IT (first of the new ones)
Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark
Midsommar
Get Out
Us
IT (first of the new ones)
Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark
Get Out and IT....if you got time, Us.
Watched this weak ass shyt
This was decent tho
You saw it? I’m gonna assume you have & the others too? if so what did you think?
I’m in Chicago all week so I’ll probably watch all three back to back when I’m back in the UK next week, But yeah I’ll let you know
storyteller
Superstar
My Masters of Horror run is still going. I watched what was left of season one, minus 1 episode that I couldn't find. So four episodes of which I liked 3 and didn't enjoy 1.
I watched Deer Woman, Sick Girl, Pick Me Up and Haeckel's Tale. Purely ranking them...I REALLY liked what they did with Pick Me Up. Second place is Deer Woman. Haeckel's Tale was an okay third. The weakest of this bunch was Sick Girl, but I'd still rank it above Jenifer, Chocolate or Dreams in a Witch house. That means 3 of my least favorite episodes from season 1 happened in the first five episodes while two standouts weren't until episodes 8 and 11 with the third not even airing because of controversy (that was Imprint).
Anyway in order of best to worst...
What I liked about Pick Me Up is that it took a pretty typical horror set-up and just added a bit of spin to it. A greyhound style bus breaks down and the passengers have three options; stay and wait for help, ride with a random trucker who saw them and offered transport or walk to a nearby motel. But the real play conceit here is that two different killers are targeting the entire group and competing with each other for bodies. One is a hitchhiker who targets drivers and the other is a driver who targets hitchhikers. It's campy fun in terms of the kills (a roadkill snake becomes a weapon early on for example) but also has some of the creeping torture concepts that were big in the Hostel era mixed in (not my favorite type of horror). That causes a bit of clashing tones at times but never enough to take away from a pretty fun battle between two awful personalities.
In a more comedic lane we got Deer Woman. A cop who picks up all the "weird" cases gets an especially strange one when men keep turning up pounded to a pulp with hoof prints on them as if they were trampled in their bedrooms. This ridiculous situation plays out two ways..the cop and his sort of partner investigating the case and watching a femme fatale of sorts luring men to their deaths. But it's all played for comedy. The dialogue has some really sharp moments that I enjoyed and no one shies away from the fact that this plot is crazy. The femme fatale is gorgeous but never says a word, which winds up making for some funny scenes where guys do all the talking while she just nods and smiles. It's really a comedy on top of a horror plot than vice versa, but actually wound up being one of my favorite episodes of the whole season.
Back to legitimate attempt at horror, Haeckel's Tale took a shot at gothic horror. I have a soft spot for Victorian Gothic settings and this one goes all in. A doctor who has been trying to revive the dead using science comes across a necromancer achieving the feat with magic. As he tries to find out more on the magic, he winds up at a house on the border of the living and the dead where a beautiful woman lives with an old man. The couple has a dark secret; the doctor's curiosity gets the better of him, yada, yada, yada...if you know the genre, this fits the tropes pretty well. It's a solid affair but also visualizes some things that probably work better in written form. The tension and weight of finding out the secrets ends up being more absurd than surreal which hurts the serious tone. Still, it's solid and hits all the bases for a unique story compared to the rest of the season.
My bottom of this batch; Sick Girl aimed more for comedy than horror like Deer Woman, but minus the quality. A woman who studies bugs falls in love and shacks up with a female co-worker, but when a specimen bites the co-worker, it causes a transformation that's one part Kafka and one part possession movie. There's a neat little allegory for rushing into love and what comes after the honeymoon phase lurking here but it doesn't quite land. The character interactions are mostly awkward so there's never chemistry to build up the romance angle and the comedy only relies on that awkwardness. It might have hurt that I'd just watched Deer Woman which is just a sharper horror-comedy. The ending is supposed to be a twist but they barely laid any groundwork to get there, so it just feels like a Macguffin that they tacked on right at the end to give the plot a reason for happening.
Celebrity appearance notes: Fairuza Balk really does a great job as the main protagonist of Pick Me Up. Derek Cecil from HBO's Outsider series shows up in Haeckel's Tale.
I couldn't find Fair-Haired Child. But the incomplete power rankings for season one:
Top Tier (worth watching for any horror head):
1. Cigarette Burns...really good!
2. Pick Me Up...Fun concept and at its best when it goes full camp.
3. Imprint...easily the most memorable from a visuals standpoint and it's the darkest the series gets in season one.
4. Dance of the Dead...Robert Englund is worth the price of admission but there's a solid dystopian story too.
Second Tier (good enough to throw on for a horror head looking for something they haven't seen)
5. Deer Woman...it leans into the craziness for a legitimately funny horror-comedy.
6. Homecoming...the deeper message might get too preachy for some, but that they nailed it in a horror setting is notable.
7. Haeckel's Tale...solid for gothic horror fans but without ever reading the short story, I'd guess the written version is better.
8. Incident on the Mountain Road...I'm not the biggest slasher fan, but if you like slashers this might be good for you.
Bottom Tier (Not episodes I'd even suggest unless you're a completionist for the series)
9. Sick Girl...the nice allegory doesn't make up for weak execution on every other element.
10. Jenifer...maybe the letdown is that it's an Argento but honestly, nothing about it worked.
11. Chocolate...memorable for accidental comedy more than anything.
12. HP Lovecraft's Dreams in a witch house...don't invoke Lovecraft and come this weak, my run away winner for the weakest episode.
I watched Deer Woman, Sick Girl, Pick Me Up and Haeckel's Tale. Purely ranking them...I REALLY liked what they did with Pick Me Up. Second place is Deer Woman. Haeckel's Tale was an okay third. The weakest of this bunch was Sick Girl, but I'd still rank it above Jenifer, Chocolate or Dreams in a Witch house. That means 3 of my least favorite episodes from season 1 happened in the first five episodes while two standouts weren't until episodes 8 and 11 with the third not even airing because of controversy (that was Imprint).
Anyway in order of best to worst...
What I liked about Pick Me Up is that it took a pretty typical horror set-up and just added a bit of spin to it. A greyhound style bus breaks down and the passengers have three options; stay and wait for help, ride with a random trucker who saw them and offered transport or walk to a nearby motel. But the real play conceit here is that two different killers are targeting the entire group and competing with each other for bodies. One is a hitchhiker who targets drivers and the other is a driver who targets hitchhikers. It's campy fun in terms of the kills (a roadkill snake becomes a weapon early on for example) but also has some of the creeping torture concepts that were big in the Hostel era mixed in (not my favorite type of horror). That causes a bit of clashing tones at times but never enough to take away from a pretty fun battle between two awful personalities.
In a more comedic lane we got Deer Woman. A cop who picks up all the "weird" cases gets an especially strange one when men keep turning up pounded to a pulp with hoof prints on them as if they were trampled in their bedrooms. This ridiculous situation plays out two ways..the cop and his sort of partner investigating the case and watching a femme fatale of sorts luring men to their deaths. But it's all played for comedy. The dialogue has some really sharp moments that I enjoyed and no one shies away from the fact that this plot is crazy. The femme fatale is gorgeous but never says a word, which winds up making for some funny scenes where guys do all the talking while she just nods and smiles. It's really a comedy on top of a horror plot than vice versa, but actually wound up being one of my favorite episodes of the whole season.
Back to legitimate attempt at horror, Haeckel's Tale took a shot at gothic horror. I have a soft spot for Victorian Gothic settings and this one goes all in. A doctor who has been trying to revive the dead using science comes across a necromancer achieving the feat with magic. As he tries to find out more on the magic, he winds up at a house on the border of the living and the dead where a beautiful woman lives with an old man. The couple has a dark secret; the doctor's curiosity gets the better of him, yada, yada, yada...if you know the genre, this fits the tropes pretty well. It's a solid affair but also visualizes some things that probably work better in written form. The tension and weight of finding out the secrets ends up being more absurd than surreal which hurts the serious tone. Still, it's solid and hits all the bases for a unique story compared to the rest of the season.
My bottom of this batch; Sick Girl aimed more for comedy than horror like Deer Woman, but minus the quality. A woman who studies bugs falls in love and shacks up with a female co-worker, but when a specimen bites the co-worker, it causes a transformation that's one part Kafka and one part possession movie. There's a neat little allegory for rushing into love and what comes after the honeymoon phase lurking here but it doesn't quite land. The character interactions are mostly awkward so there's never chemistry to build up the romance angle and the comedy only relies on that awkwardness. It might have hurt that I'd just watched Deer Woman which is just a sharper horror-comedy. The ending is supposed to be a twist but they barely laid any groundwork to get there, so it just feels like a Macguffin that they tacked on right at the end to give the plot a reason for happening.
Celebrity appearance notes: Fairuza Balk really does a great job as the main protagonist of Pick Me Up. Derek Cecil from HBO's Outsider series shows up in Haeckel's Tale.
I couldn't find Fair-Haired Child. But the incomplete power rankings for season one:
Top Tier (worth watching for any horror head):
1. Cigarette Burns...really good!
2. Pick Me Up...Fun concept and at its best when it goes full camp.
3. Imprint...easily the most memorable from a visuals standpoint and it's the darkest the series gets in season one.
4. Dance of the Dead...Robert Englund is worth the price of admission but there's a solid dystopian story too.
Second Tier (good enough to throw on for a horror head looking for something they haven't seen)
5. Deer Woman...it leans into the craziness for a legitimately funny horror-comedy.
6. Homecoming...the deeper message might get too preachy for some, but that they nailed it in a horror setting is notable.
7. Haeckel's Tale...solid for gothic horror fans but without ever reading the short story, I'd guess the written version is better.
8. Incident on the Mountain Road...I'm not the biggest slasher fan, but if you like slashers this might be good for you.
Bottom Tier (Not episodes I'd even suggest unless you're a completionist for the series)
9. Sick Girl...the nice allegory doesn't make up for weak execution on every other element.
10. Jenifer...maybe the letdown is that it's an Argento but honestly, nothing about it worked.
11. Chocolate...memorable for accidental comedy more than anything.
12. HP Lovecraft's Dreams in a witch house...don't invoke Lovecraft and come this weak, my run away winner for the weakest episode.
