What movies have you seen recently?

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Fear Street (2021)
A trilogy based on R.L.Stine's book series, Fear Street

Fear Street: Part 1 - 1994

Fear Street: Part 2 - 1978

Fear Street: Part 3 - 1666


The town of Shadyside has a curse on it. People get killed. The story starts in 1994. Part 2 links back to 1978. Spoiler - Part 1 tells you what happens at Camp Nightwing. Part 3 links back to 1666, where it all begins.
There is meaty bits of gore, glistening blood, lots of stabbing and chopping.

There is a fourth film, Fear Street: Prom Queen. I'm going to watch that next.

Yeah they're good aren't they

They are entertaining.

I just finished -
Fear Street: Prom Queen.
It takes place in 1988.
There is going to be the Shadyside High Prom, and prom Queen is between wealth entitled Tiffany, one of her cronies, or poor, other side of the street Lori Granger whose "crazy" mom reportedly killed her dad.
This is a graphic film. Limbs, backs, heads, nothing is sacred, from the cutting gear.

It was okay. I enjoyed the first three. This seems like an appendix to the story. There may be a connection with the 1978 film, that I've forgotten. It doesn't matter. It was okay, but if you think about watching it, imagine a limb on the human body. Now imagine it getting cut off and blood spraying.

GrimTrax Returns (2026)

A collection of shorts the Rifftrax people believe are too grim for individual release.

Credit Report
Two young people, recently married, get their first place, and began taking on debt.
A realistic grim story debt.

Think About This
Safety film. Every shot is a work place accident, finger chopping, body crushing, limb mangling, etc. Painful to watch. I am pretty sure no one was actually hurt during the making of this short.

The Finishing Line
Railway safety film for kids.
A boy imagines a series of events where kids performed "sporting" tasks on train tracks. So many bodies.
Britain, you really know how to make a brutally honest safety films. The last event had maybe a hundred kids racing through a train tunnel attempting to beat the train coming from the other side. Maybe eight made it out, but not unharmed or soon to be deceased. Then the rest of the event were the adult carrying out the bodies.

The Boy Who Liked Deer
They've warned this is even more depressing the bodies being carried out of the tunnel.
A boy with no direction in life makes the world decidedly more depressed.

Apple Dolls
Documentary about a woman that makes doll heads from apples.
She carves them. Let them dry out for a week, and they look like little old people. She sews clothes for them, use cotton for the hair. They look pretty nice.
This is the Apple Dolls video, without riffs, on YouTube. I think someone dubbed over the original soundtrack. Sounds like the same dialog, but a different person narrates.
They introduced this film as a kind of palette cleanser.

Rifftrax: High Treason (1929)

Riff hosts Matthew J Elliott, and Ian Potter

The Apprentice.

A young Donald Trump, just starting his career in New York real estate, becomes the apprentice of the Mephistophelian right wing mob lawyer, Roy Cohn, who teaches young Donald that right and wrong are only social constructs, and that the ends justify the means. The movie explains where we got the Donald Trump we have today.
Very good movie, without any major character to cheer for.

Last night we watched:

Automata [2014]
<=>"Your time is coming to an end. Ours is now beginning."



Mankind has been almost wiped out by disastors and relies very heavily on automata for almost everything. As a safeguard, the automata are configured to obey two protocols:

<=+=+=+=>- A ROBOT CANNOT HARM ANY FORM OF LIFE.
<=+=+=+=>- A ROBOT CANNOT ALTER ITSELF OR OTHERS.

This movie captures when those protocols first begin collapsing.

The beginning of robot independence.


Ignore the movie's IMDb user rating, I think it is much better than the rating indicates. It is also very good visually. But it is dark.



<=+=+=+=> R E C O M M E N D E D 

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kaddath.

Animated version of Lovecraft's dark fantasy world.
Animation nothing special, though an incredibly awesome story!

Dark City

The Hidden Fortress.

Japanese Samurai movie alleged to be the basis of the Star Wars franchise. Two greedy peasants on the run get entangled with a Samurai general protecting the princess of a defeated principality.
Enjoyable movie.

Companion

Last night we watched:

Battle: Los Angeles [2011]
<=>"It's not war. It's survival."



Not a great film. Not a horrible film. Not a profound film. Not a bad film.

We enjoyed it.

Last night we watched:

Diani & Devine Meet the Apocalypse [2016]
<=>"Does everyone have their apocalypse buddy?"



Diani and Devine (the lead characters, not the Diani and Devine that play them) live in California and all of a sudden things go very, very bad. TV, radio and telephones don't explain what is going on but eventually stop functioning...along with all of the other services and utilities we rely on. Businesses appear to be abandoned and looted.

And since Diani and Devine never find out what happened, neither do we. They just try to survive (lacking useful skills and resources) along with a few other survivors they find (who are more interested in their own survival, not Diani and Devine's).

It's fun (for us, not them).


<=> R E C O M M E N D E D 

Carnival Of Souls (1962)

Made in black and white, and I've seen that version, but this was colourized and very effectively done actually. A low-budget 'B' movie, a bit disjointed and inconsistent, but always holds the viewer's interest. The leading part is played by a little known actress called Candace Hilligoss, who apparently survives a car accident only to emerge into a surreal and sometimes nightmarish world which alternates between the everyday and the inexplicable. There were echoes of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), but also maybe some foreshadowings of later films like David Lynch's Eraserhead, Kubrick's The Shining and Don Coscarelli's (frankly awful) Phantasm series.

Diani & Devine Meet the Apocalypse
as reviewed by Double Retired.

I enjoyed it very much.
Spoiler: At least the cat survives. Wait. Did it?

Followed by on TUBI Tv
The Old Dark House (1963)

I thought this would be a remake of the James Whale 1932 film with Boris Karloff, which I've always thought was excellent.
It's not. Some of the names are the same, but the plot is 99% different (not mathematically proven). The family name and the fact that they have their quirks is the 1%.
I'm trying to think of what movies this comedy who-dun-it story. Maybe Spider Baby, but that is a very common film. It is campy and fun.

The film was directed by William Castle. It is a production of Castle Films and Hammer Films.
The opening titles were done by Charles Addams.

Groundhog Day