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Part of Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments

So about half a year ago, I got in the mood for horror movies and sought out lists that ranked the top horror films of all time. One of the lists was a lengthy 100 movie list that features the scarier horror movie moments called "Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments". It was a special documentary aired in 2004 on the channel, Bravo. The thing that caught my interest was the amount of classic horror films they featured - very old horror films. It wasn't just a bunch of millennial films stringed together for cheap promotional value. So, that got me intrigued in following that list to have an excuse for watching some classic oldies, and here we are, on the countdown to the scariest horror films. Of course, I would skip certain movies on the list that I've already watched or just isn't interested enough to watch it, especially the ones I could tell are blatantly bad and a waste of time.

 

That said, first up on our list is #99...

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The first thing that comes to mind when people saw the trailer to this film would probably be the classic 1989 HBO TV series, Tales From the Crypt. But I doubt a lot of people would know that it was actually a film (released in 1972) before it became a TV series, or even that it was a comic book.

 

Directed by George A. Romero (the godfather of zombie movies) and written by Stephen King (the master of horror literature), Creepshow was inspired by horror comics of old like TFTC, among other similarly macabre strips produced by EC Comics. Those comics contained very disturbing dark comedies, and ironically enough, kids were their biggest audience. Most of the tales would involve a morality play, where a jerk gets his karmic punishment through some fitting fate related to his sins.

 

I grew up almost a decade after both TFTC and Creepshow were a thing, and my introduction to such morbid stories was through The Twilight Zone, and it was not even the original version, but the 2002 reboot with only one measly season. Thankfully, through the magic of cable TV, I caught Creepshow one day (still a child barely hitting puberty), or the sequel anyway, and I was instantly hooked. In spite of having a playful and tongue-in-cheek tone, both Creepshows were very disturbing and gruesome, not the kind of stuff you would expect kids to enjoy. And yet, kids dig this stuff for some reason, probably due to adrenaline rush you get when you get scared. It also helps that the practical effects of the movie look very believable, but seeing as "Night of the Living Dead" Romero is involved, I'm hardly surprised.

 

The first Creepshow featured five stories and a sixth "wraparound" story serving as the prologue and epilogue. One thing I realized as I started analyzing each story separately was that Creepshow works better as a whole rather than the sum of its parts because each story is short and light on content. They are still frightening, don't get me wrong, but they are just more effective when you see them as a package together to build up a series of consecutive scares.

 

Admittedly, some of the segments did lose their flavor, especially because this was either my first or second rewatch. Some of the surprise elements were no longer there. The first story in particular, Father's Day, did drag the pacing down a bit. A dysfunctional family gets together for a dinner on the same day that the patriarch of the family was murdered, the titular father's day. It doesn't take a spoiler to know where this is heading, but I feel like the father was revealed too soon and takes away some of the suspense.

 

The wraparound story also added a second problem: important details of the stories better kept under wrap were spoiled in the prologue, and again, taking away the suspense. The notable exception that didn't suffer from this is The Crate. Even though you already know there's something dangerous inside the crate, the story is still done well enough to keep you on edge, making you fear the fate of the characters approaching the crate. It doesn't jump the gun and immediately rush to blood and gore, but takes its time to build the tension. It's probably the best story out of the anthology in my opinion.

 

Another noteworthy story is They're Creeping Up on You, a very symbolic tale about an agoraphobic with a hatred for bugs - figurative ones and otherwise. This was the hardest part of the movie to watch because it features the insect I'm most frightened of - the cockroach. Just the sight of one made my skin crawl. Surprisingly enough, when they were all gathered together into one unrecognizable flood of roaches, they actually looked less creepy. Go figure.

 

The epilogue was also quite fun to watch. As part of the unnamed wraparound story, it's about this kid whose father threw away a Creepshow comic book because he didn't want him reading that "horror crap". Naturally, a lot of kids could probably relate this to their own parents wanting to protect their children from the dangers of horror fiction. Being one that isn't always close to my own father, I have to admit it's kinda amusing watching what that kid did to his father. It's something you'll just have to watch for yourself.

 

As you can tell, I had my share of fun rewatching this film. In fact, I was so excited to watch this tonight, and the sequel too. There's just something exhilarating about being horrified that I still don't fully understand today, but it always makes for a fun movie experience, especially with a series as playful as Creepshow.

 

★★★★

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"Five years ago, Stephen King and George Romero, two masters of the macabre, created the hallmark of horror, "Creepshow".

 

Many would argue that nothing of significance has happened since.

 

Until now."

- Monologue from "Creepshow 2" trailer

So they made another one. Unfortunately, much like most horror sequels, it failed to live up to its predecessor, and then some.

 

Directed by Michael Gornick (his first and only feature length work as a director) and written by George Romero and (an uncredited) Lucille Fletcher, Creepshow 2 brings back the macabre humor you love with three brand new stories... Yes, three, stretched out over a single film. Naturally, it feels like a shorter movie due to that, and the stories aren't even as memorable as those from the first film.

 

I know this because I (probably) watched the whole movie on cable, and the only segment I could remember was The Raft, which I found to be the best of the three stories, even though that's not saying much. The Raft is about three college kids trapped by an alien blob monster on, you guessed it, a raft. There's very little build-up, and the segment quickly jumps to the heart of the horror with the pseudo-blob dining on every kid. I remember being fascinated by the gruesome scenes of human flesh dissolving by this strange, uncanny creature. It was horrifying, yet I couldn't look away. Part of this was attributed to, once again, the realistic practical effects that still look very good today. There isn't any cheesy CGI here that ruins the illusion.

 

The other two stories, however, are less exciting to talk about. Old Chief Wood'nhead was a typical morality play you would expect from Tales from the Crypt and similar shows. Much like Father's Day in the first Creepshow, it wasn't the best way to start the movie. It's quite predictable, there's nothing creepy about it, and the horror bits barely lasted 5 minutes.

 

Then there's the third and final story, The Hitch-hiker. It's another morality play about a hit-and-run victim pursuing the culprit, an adulterous businesswoman named Annie Lansing. Since the woman is both a spendthrift and white, while the victim's black and dressed in a ragged outfit befitting a vagrant, there might have been some metaphor here about social class that I might've missed. Much like The Raft, it's quite straightforward, with almost the entire segment about Lansing running away from the horribly scarred victim. However, unlike The Raft, it's more goofy than horrific, in spite of all the bloody injuries the victim has. The repeated line in this segment, "Nice ride you have, lady!" has became a memorable gag among viewers. Personally, I thought both the line and the story were 'okay'.

 

The wraparound story this time isn't even worth mentioning. I'm disappointed that there's barely any live action shots of the giant venus flytraps. It's all animated, and not very good animation either. I understand the homage to the comic book art style of those horror comics, but it still feels cheap and lazy.

 

Considering that (like the first Creepshow) this was my rewatch of the film, the experience might have worn out for me, which might explain why I sound so bored writing about it. Maybe it's like your two dollar funny papers, or those cheap knockoffs of a dirty magazine back in the day. They were fun for a while as a form of taboo you would read behind your parents' back, but as you grow up, the novelty has worn out and the stories have turned stale. Oh well. They were at least good for a time.

 

★★★

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THE MOVIE

 

After the success of the first Creepshow, George Romero created the TV series Tales from the Darkside in 1983, which bears a similar focus on macabre stories as Tales from the Crypt. Shortly after the release of Creepshow 2, a movie based on the series was released in 1990. Rumored to be the real Creepshow 3 Romero had intended to create, Tales from the Darkside features three horror stories with a wraparound story like Creepshow 2.

 

Despite the disappointment of Creepshow 2, I found myself yearning for more twisted stories. I just can't get enough of them! The child in me had returned upon my rewatch of the first Creepshow two days ago and craves for more of such horrifying tales. Thankfully, rather than convincing me that the "Tales" brand of dark comedy is dead, this film actually brought back life to the genre! It's actually much better than Creepshow 2! Rumor or not, this works very well as a spiritual sequel to the Creepshow series.

 

The format of the movie begins (and ends) with a Hansel and Gretel sort of tale, where a paperboy is kidnapped by a modern day witch planning a dinner party. What a fantastic twist on the classic fairy tale! A dinner party! I could certainly imagine that for a modern day witch. I was liking the movie already.

 

Then we start our first story, Lot 249. This was based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story of the same name. Being a fan of Doyle and his most famous creation, the legendary detective himself, I was looking forward to this story and it didn't really disappoint. A graduate student is cheated out of his scholarship by his two classmates. Around the same time, he brought a mysterious large crate into his home, one that's marked with "Lot 249". This segment surprised me with how gruesome the movie went. Like the first two Creepshow, the effects look great enough for the gore to disturb me. The way the victims were killed were done very creatively (and brutally too) that it made for an interesting opening, very much unlike Creepshow 2's first segment.

 

After that, we have the best story of all written by Stephen the King himself, Cat from Hell. This was supposed to appear in Creepshow 2 but got cut out due to budgetary reasons. It's about a hitman hired by a wealthy but aging pharmaceutical tycoon to kill, of all things, a black cat. The story goes that the cat is supposedly a killer who has taken the lives of three people. Out of the three segments, this was probably the most gruesome of all, surprisingly enough considering that it's about a terror-cat. It's quite a straightforward tale where the hitman hunts down the cat through the mansion.

 

While I like this story, especially its minimalist approach, there was something that bugged me: the hitman's incompetence. In the film, he's hailed as this impressive hitman with twenty kills. But when I actually saw how he operated, I just couldn't buy that impressive record of his. He's clumsy, noisy, and has a poor sense of choosing an appropriate weapon (a syringe, IMO, would be much more troublesome than a simple pocket knife). If this was a Hitman video game, he would trip the alarm on Expert difficulty, let alone Professional. That said, I like the twist of why the cat showed up. It's unnerving and exactly the kind of cosmic revenge you would expect from a movie like this.

 

Finally, we have Lover's Vow. Now this one troubled me the most because it's written by someone I didn't know, Michael McDowell. I wasn't sure if the segment was going to be any good. Thankfully, my doubts were put to rest by the end, as this turned out to be quite the tragic love story based on the Yuki-onna. A starving artist finds himself involved in a gruesome murder, one committed by a horrifying-looking gargoyle who forces him to make a single promise in exchange for his life: never tell a soul about the gargoyle's existence. You can see from a mile away where this is going, but the payoff is nevertheless satisfying. It makes for a solid conclusion to the movie, and it leaves me interested in checking out the television show if its quality is any similar to the movie.

 

I would recommend any horror fan to check this one out, more so than the Creepshow films. Like Creepshow, it does have a playful tone as well, but the three main stories here are much more serious and horrifying, so you should definitely check them out if you love to be disturbed like me. :D

 

★★★★

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Saw Wonder Woman today and I loved it. Gotta say that the DCEU is blowing the Marvel EU out of the water. Personally I always liked DC over Marvel, but then again I hate those comic books because of how damn long they've been around. We really need to move on from them. But I loved it, probably the best one they've made.

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Personally I always liked DC over Marvel, but then again I hate those comic books because of how damn long they've been around. We really need to move on from them.

 

Don't really care about either universe, but I agree they have been around too long. The big problem is that, in the US, comic book series are pretty much never allowed to end because they make money for the publishers, hence many reboots and such.

 

Good thing you liked the movie you saw though.

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I really hate watching bad movies. Yet, out of completionist OCD or morbid curiosity, I've decided to watch the third entry in the Creepshow series that rapidly declined in quality with each film.

 

Creepshow 3 follows a similar format as its two predecessors with an anthology of tongue-in-cheek horror. However, neither George Romero nor Stephen King were involved in the production this time - and boy, is it obvious. While Creepshow 2 was rather boring, you could tell it at least has a professional production value. In contrast, Creepshow 3 had really sub-par writing that either fell flat or just went over-the-top to the point of being cheesy. The Creepshow series had always been silly, but this third entry reached the level of self-parody. Due to such mediocre writing, the journey to discover the plot-twist of each tale can be exhausting, and the twists weren't even worth the effort.

 

I would write more if there's any redeeming value in this film, but there's very little entertainment value to be found here, so I feel it's not only been a waste of time watching this, it will be a waste of time writing about it too. All I'll tell you is to stay away from this third entry. Stick with the spiritual sequel instead, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.

 

★★

 

Edit:

Actually, I'll just add something else here: the writing is an absolute insult to the works of Romero and King. It's as if some paid intern wrote this crap. A notable scene I remember involves a professor reminiscing with his students how they used to debate, and I quote, "the theory of evolution". I really can't imagine any self-respecting professor would go, "Hey, remember how much fun we had talking about the theory of evolution?" Seriously, which professor would say it in such an uneducated manner? It just sounds so contrived.

 

Stay far away from this film.

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With that said, I confess, shamefully, that I don't have a whole lot to say about it at the moment.

 

I'll happily say things. It Comes at Night...

 

 

 

was actually just a well made family drama, tbh. I'm not sure why they marketed it as horror when that's really a bit of a reach. It isn't horrifying. It's a very, very, very slow burner with a plot and pacing (and situation) that was reminiscent of The Witch but a stronger movie, imo.

 

My summary is... Despite a magnificent execution of production and cinematography, it never actually manages to take all of the parts and become better than them. Thus, it is a 4/5 and only that. Not a strong one. Some 3/5 movies are better by virtue of their entertainment value, but you still have to respect It Comes at Night for what it tried to do.

 

 

 

......we still haven't paid attention and need to try again xD

 

Yeah, that tends to happen when @zoop and I are watching movies, too. ;););)

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Part of Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments

#98

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"It's hard to take zombies seriously nowadays." That's a sentiment shared by many but the most hardcore horror cult enthusiasts today. With the birth of the steroid zombies (which doesn't make much sense as the living dead, considering how stiff the dead body can be), and especially with self-parodies like Zombieland, we are made aware of the fact how easy it is to outrun a rotting corpse. It's basically the same as outrunning Sadako from Ringu!

 

Still, Zombi 2 made a good case for why we should still fear the zombie. A lot of the deaths here are caused by the victims' carelessness and their lack of awareness. Most of the time, the zombies would pop out of nowhere like daisies, catching you by surprise.

 

But despite these creative monster-kills, there's still a prevalence of cheesiness and budgeted production that a lot of scenes tread the "so bad it's good" territory. While most of the acting is passable, the characters can at times have some really terrible reactions to the zombies that it's hard to not laugh at their deaths. One of them was practically taking her sweet time turning her head towards the zombie behind her! And while the famous eye-penetration scene was just as disturbing when I've actually seen it in the context of the movie, most of the practical effects are incredibly dated and hilariously bad.

 

Of course, I understand that the movie does have certain unique "charms" of its own that led to its cult following. For starters, there are sharks fighting zombies in this movie (try saying that with a straight face). There's also a number of out of place focus on naked bodies, seemingly for shallow eye-candy value. The plot, however, is one aspect that I could truly praise without irony. The involvement of voodoo magic in a zombie movie hearkens back to ancient Haiti legends of the living dead where zombies were slaves raised from the dead by evil shamans, a powerful symbolism of the Haitians' suffering as slaves even after death. Unfortunately, Zombi 2 didn't exactly delve too deep into such black magic lore and merely retreated to more familiar grounds by the end.

 

So as unique as certain aspects of the movie can be, I personally couldn't see it as the instant classic everyone seems to hail it as.

 

★★★

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While playing Virtue's Last Reward, I came across a mentioning of Asimov's three laws of robotics. The first thing that came to mind was this movie, i, Robot. Having those three laws as its central plot was an interesting idea, thus I was curious why the film got such a bad rep from everyone (including myself when I watched it as a kid). A noteworthy fact is that Asimov's short stories series of the same title were referenced in earlier movies too, including Bicentennial Man in 1999, though the three laws were not the central focus of that movie, unlike i, Robot here.

 

From a glance of the production notes described in Wikipedia, it's easy to see why i, Robot can at times feel like a jumbled pile of mess that lacks direction. Initially, i, Robot wasn't even about Asimov's stories, or even his three laws. Rather, it began as an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery with machines as the suspects, titled Hardwired. After a few years of development hell while having the script handed around by a few studios, including Walt Disney and 20th Century Fox, the original writer, Jeff Vintar, was brought back to incorporate elements of Asimov's short stories into the movie. A second writer was also brought in to rewrite the script for the big action star at the time, Will Smith, late in the production too.

 

With such a chaotic production, you would think this would be the cause for the movie ending up a lesser beast than what it could have been. But believe it or not, a lot of movie productions follow a similar pattern. Cracked's Daniel O'Brien explained this better in

: "Few movies pop out of the womb fully formed. It's rare for a movie to start with a clear idea in a person's head and then have that idea translated perfectly. There are script rewrites, studio notes, reshoots, and actor demands that go into every film. The movie you end up seeing is often a hodgepodge of different ideas that have come together at different points of the movie-making process." In other words, i, Robot was a potentially interesting script that just happened to have the bad mixture of bad luck, an unclear vision, a talentless director, and demanding studio executives.

 

There are a number of obvious signs that can tell you that you're seeing one of those big-budget films where whatever passion the writer had was suppressed by studio demands: Out of place one-liners, a heavier focus on action scenes when the story is about a complex subject, a big-name star hired as the lead role, and last but not least, an unnecessary comic relief (Shia LaBeouf in this case). You see these signs, don't expect some passion project like Ex Machina. It's definitely rigged by the studio for maximum profit.

 

For what it's worth, the movie was off to a promising first act, feeding the audience about the three laws as well as discussing the existence of a soul and simulated emotions in a mechanical body. It might be breaking the fundamental storytelling rule of "show, not tell", but it was much better than what comes after - a whole lot of pointless action scenes to make Will Smith earn his paycheck. An important detail about the Agatha Christie-inspired script is that, it initially took place entirely at the scene of the crime, with its only characters being the detective interrogating the machines. That sounded a lot more interesting as a mystery whodunit, rather than having Will Smith jumping around going, "Oh hell no!"

 

So the movie lacks the substance it initially would have, another victim of the Hollywood system. It's a shame, because I rewatched this movie hoping to defend it as an underrated gem that's unfairly hated. But it isn't so. Asimov's stories were butchered here. Unfortunately, even his three laws couldn't prevent corporate greed.

 

Finally, there's also that ending that really bothered me. It wraps up the story nicely in a convenient way that doesn't make sense.

Even if Lanning had ordered Sonny to kill him,

it still had free will, thus it's still considered murder. It's just such a lazy way to end a movie, which brings the final score lower by half a star.

 

★★½

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  • 1 month later...
Cars 3 at the cinema on Saturday

 

How did you like it? I noticed it was in theaters, but was not too sure if it was good.

 

As for the topic, I do not remember, but I will be seeing one tonight.

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How did you like it? I noticed it was in theaters, but was not too sure if it was good.

 

As for the topic, I do not remember, but I will be seeing one tonight.

 

I personally really enjoyed it, was a lot of fun, cool and funny in places too, but then I am a really big fan of the Cars movies as it is anyway so maybe I could be a bit biased, lol! :P:)

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I just watched Thor: Ragnarok and absolutely loved it! I'm not usually into action movies and the like but I'm a major Loki fangirl so ... Yeah. 

Any who, the movie was shot beautifully and each scene was vibrant and exciting. The music was great, the writing was great, I even found myself laughing quite a lot during this movie which is a rare sight since I have a slightly ... Morbid sense of humour. However this movie was brilliantly funny while still having some somber moments. All in all, it was beautifully done and gorgeous film. 

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I just finished watching Your Name with my 69 year-old mother. She couldn't follow what was going on with all the body-hopping and time-skipping, unfortunately. I don't think she liked it much. 

I also saw Justice League at the theatre yesterday. It was okay. DC just can't keep up with Marvel at all.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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