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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 27, 2021 4:37:03 GMT
Home for the Holidays, 1972, dir. John Llewellyn Moxey. Does this movie contain a scene in which the killer drowns a woman in a bathtub by holding her up by her ankles? Yep
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Post by Captain Spencer on Dec 27, 2021 4:47:36 GMT
Does this movie contain a scene in which the killer drowns a woman in a bathtub by holding her up by her ankles? Yep Thanks! I remember seeing that scene when I was 5 years old and it really scared me. It's the only part of that movie I saw, so I never did see the whole thing. It's currently on YouTube and I think I just might check it out.
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Post by theravenking on Dec 27, 2021 14:38:52 GMT
The Last Of Sheila (1973; Herbert Ross) This is a movie I've been meaning to watch for a long time. It enjoys something of a cult standing among mystery enthusiasts being that rare thing: an original whodunit not based on pre-existing property.
It was written by composer Stephen Sondheim and actor Anthony Perkins and inspired by real life scavenger hunts they arranged for their friends. The movie starts with the titular Sheila being killed in a hit-and-run accident. A year later Sheila's husband, the millionaire Clinton Greene (James Coburn) invites 6 people he suspects of being responsible for her death to a cruise on his yacht in Southern France. The guests include actress Alice Wood (Raquel Welch), her talent-manager husband Anthony (Ian McShane), secretary turned talent agent Christine (Dyan Cannon), screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and his wife, Lee (Joan Hackett), and film director Philip Dexter (James Mason). Once the cruise is under way, Clinton, a parlor game enthusiast, informs everyone that the week's entertainment will consist of "The Sheila Greene Memorial Gossip Game." The six guests are each assigned an index card containing a secret (in Clinton's words, "a pretend piece of gossip") that must be kept hidden from the others. The object of the game is to discover everyone else's secret while protecting one's own. Each night the yacht anchors at a different Mediterranean port city, where one of the six secrets is disclosed to the entire group. The guests are given a clue, then sent ashore to find the proof of who among them holds the card bearing that night's secret. The game for that night ends when the actual holder of the subject secret discovers the proof. But on the second day something unexpected happens leading to the game turning even darker. Who doesn't love a good murder game? With a promising concept and a cast like this The Last Of Sheila should've been huge fun, but somehow I found it to be a bit of a muddle. While similar films like Knives Out or Sleuth worked both as a spoof AND a proper mystery, Sheila has trouble in both departments. The humour is rarely witty enough to justify the light-hearted tone and the plot only really gets going in the last act. The characters are rather unlikeable which was probably intentional, but they aren't interesting enough to make one care about their fate. The relationships between them are hinted at, but never quite made clear leaving their motives rather obscure. They were clearly based on real people, mocking these celebrities real-life behaviour, but it's understandable that almost half-a-century later these in-jokes might be lost on modern viewers. Given that they all seem to dislike each other, it's highly ironic that Bette Midler would be singing about friendship during the closing credits. Performances are good but not great. Coburn uses his wolfish grin to do most of his acting for him, Welch was clearly cast for her looks, McShane is underused, Cannon and Hackett are committed without leaving much of an impression. Benjamin and Mason have the most difficult roles with latter playing the only halfway likeable character (who may still be a child molester! Amazing what they could get away with in the 70s!) Perhaps the fault lies with director Herbert Ross who struggles to deliver the promised entertainment. A different helmer might've done a better job transferring the sometimes convoluted script to the screen. There's a sequence set in an old monastery with a lot of things going on at once which comes over as slightly confusing, even though mystery-lovers will likely see through the obfuscation picking up the important clues. I have to say I liked the last act the most when Sheila turns into a proper but rather conventional mystery story with James Mason playing amateur detective. We do get a clever solution (although probably more surprising for people not that familiar with mystery fiction). I think I would've enjoyed The Last Of Sheila more had it not come with such gargantuan expectations.
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Post by Anonymous Andy on Dec 27, 2021 15:50:54 GMT
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71mmYiU3yjL._SL1500_.jpg) What it lacks in style, it tries to make up for in nudity. More of a softcore thriller than a giallo. I enjoyed myself, but it's kind of a flimsy film. 6/10
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 27, 2021 16:04:01 GMT
The Last Of Sheila (1973; Herbert Ross) … I think I would've enjoyed The Last Of Sheila more had it not come with such gargantuan expectations. Apologies if I were in part responsible for those gargantuan expectations: I may oversell this movie, but I really do like it a lot. Did you solve the SHEILA trick? I figured out—admittedly more from guesswork than deduction—Richard Benjamin’s guilt and James Coburn’s being already dead when Joan Hackett bludgeons him, but the Ellery-Queen-esque SHEILA trick floored me. The movie’s biggest flaw, for me, is how Ross shows a bit too much during the abbey scene, cluing the audience in on something too early. As for the humor, it’s more bitchy than really witty, I agree. But I’m a sucker for lines like “Darling, I must hang up now. One of my cast is peeing on my leg, something Garbo never did even at her moodiest.” That light-hearted tone, for me, has the intentional hollowness of many a Stephen Sondheim song—offhand I’m thinking of Company’s “Side by Side by Side.” And I like the performances more than you do: I adore Joan Hackett as the only likable person on the boat, I’ve always been a James Coburn fan, and James Mason, one of my favorite actors, gives such a wonderful performance. Anyway, yeah, sorry you didn’t like this one more. I think we both agree, though, that Ross (always such a journeyman, but a friend of Sondheim and Perkins’s) wasn’t the right director for this material.
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Post by Captain Spencer on Dec 27, 2021 19:43:22 GMT
Home for the Holidays, 1972, dir. John Llewellyn Moxey. ![“](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoHssJnVQAMA6Nn.jpg) Ehh. This picture of a yellow-slicker-wearing serial killer always gets used to promote this made-for-TV, Christmas-set slasher flick, but unfortunately the pic above better represents it. It’s got an illustrious pedigree—directed by the helmer of Horror Hotel (1960) and The Night Stalker (also ’72), written by Psycho adapter Joseph Stefano, starring Sally Field, Julie Harris, and Walter Brennan (!). And it’s got a good premise: Paterfamilias Brennan invites his four estranged daughters to his home for Christmas. There he tells them that his new wife (Harris) is poisoning him. Oh, and we the audience learn there’s also a homicidal loon in a yellow slicker stalking the household. (I’d actually kinda love to remake this and just use the premise.) And the movie’s pretty terrible. I don’t think it’s worse than Black Christmas, but it may be, somehow, even more boring. As with that movie, zero Christmas atmosphere, which raises the question of why set it at Christmastime. No clues, and the identity of whodunit is dumb. And the movie is just boring in that shot-like-a- Columbo-episode-but-without-Peter-Falk way, with loads of dialogue that is not fun or interesting and never gets around to making a point. A young, pretty Sally Field is very good here in a totally thankless part. My favorite part of this was watching her outact old pros Harris, Brennan, Jessica Walter, and Eleanor Parker. But, still, don’t believe those cool yellow-raincoat-killer pictures. This is a dud. I just finished watching this on Youtube and yeah it's not that good. I agree that it's boring, and it often plays out like a melodramatic soap opera. Also, the constant raining and thunderstorms got to be a bit too annoying and clichéd. Considering all the talent involved, you'd think it would turn out much better.
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Post by theravenking on Dec 28, 2021 13:48:43 GMT
The Last Of Sheila (1973; Herbert Ross) … I think I would've enjoyed The Last Of Sheila more had it not come with such gargantuan expectations. Apologies if I were in part responsible for those gargantuan expectations: I may oversell this movie, but I really do like it a lot. Did you solve the SHEILA trick? I figured out—admittedly more from guesswork than deduction—Richard Benjamin’s guilt and James Coburn’s being already dead when Joan Hackett bludgeons him, but the Ellery-Queen-esque SHEILA trick floored me. The movie’s biggest flaw, for me, is how Ross shows a bit too much during the abbey scene, cluing the audience in on something too early. As for the humor, it’s more bitchy than really witty, I agree. But I’m a sucker for lines like “Darling, I must hang up now. One of my cast is peeing on my leg, something Garbo never did even at her moodiest.” That light-hearted tone, for me, has the intentional hollowness of many a Stephen Sondheim song—offhand I’m thinking of Company’s “Side by Side by Side.” And I like the performances more than you do: I adore Joan Hackett as the only likable person on the boat, I’ve always been a James Coburn fan, and James Mason, one of my favorite actors, gives such a wonderful performance. Anyway, yeah, sorry you didn’t like this one more. I think we both agree, though, that Ross (always such a journeyman, but a friend of Sondheim and Perkins’s) wasn’t the right director for this material. The SHEILA trick came as a complete surprise for me, but I did suspect that there was something going on with the wig, with someone else impersonating Coburn's character in the confession booth. "Darling, I must hang up now. One of my cast is peeing on my leg" - I actually had to rewind that to make sure, I hadn't misheard that line. I think it was Kim Newman's recommendation in EMPIRE magazine that made me first aware of the existence of Sheila. They did a Top 10 of best murder mysteries in film, and this was the only one I had never heard of before. And then over the years I continued hearing good things about it.
It seems there are plans for a remake. So far imdb only has the title listed without anything more substantial.
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Post by teleadm on Dec 28, 2021 19:45:00 GMT
Little Monsters 1989 directed by Richard Greenberg and starring Fred Savage ( The Wonder Years kid). Howie Mandel and Daniel Stern. Imagine that it's true when kids say that there are monsters under the bed. That is the premise of this movie aimed at family audiences, but they seems to have stayed away from this movie at the time when it was new, maybe it had a second life on the video market. The premise isn't too bad, Pixar's Monsters Inc showed that years later, it's the way it was executed that is awful. Howie Mandel's monster is so full of manic acting, or whatever you might call it, that get's tiresome after two minutes and seems like an awful rip-off of Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice 1988. Whatever ideas they had after the monster shows itself it, goes downhill from there, spending a lot of time on mean and unfunny pranks on other kids. The underworld of other monsters has some interesting scenery, but those scenes are also filled with mean spirited jokes and things that blows up. I'm obviously not the target audience here, but I wonder if it could appeal to kids... ![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOThkNmZkYWYtMGNhMy00MzcxLThlYzAtMGQ1NjMwOGZjZDdkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTMzNzQ3NA@@._V1_.jpg)
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Post by Anonymous Andy on Dec 28, 2021 20:36:33 GMT
Little Monsters 1989 directed by Richard Greenberg and starring Fred Savage ( The Wonder Years kid). Howie Mandel and Daniel Stern. Imagine that it's true when kids say that there are monsters under the bed. That is the premise of this movie aimed at family audiences, but they seems to have stayed away from this movie at the time when it was new, maybe it had a second life on the video market. The premise isn't too bad, Pixar's Monsters Inc showed that years later, it's the way it was executed that is awful. Howie Mandel's monster is so full of manic acting, or whatever you might call it, that get's tiresome after two minutes and seems like an awful rip-off of Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice 1988. Whatever ideas they had after the monster shows itself it, goes downhill from there, spending a lot of time on mean and unfunny pranks on other kids. The underworld of other monsters has some interesting scenery, but those scenes are also filled with mean spirited jokes and things that blows up. I'm obviously not the target audience here, but I wonder if it could appeal to kids... I want to say I liked this as a kid? But watched it about ten years ago as a full-grown adult and could barely get through it. Seems a relic of its time.
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 29, 2021 17:43:50 GMT
Home for the Holidays, 1972, dir. John Llewellyn Moxey. I just finished watching this on Youtube and yeah it's not that good. I agree that it's boring, and it often plays out like a melodramatic soap opera. Also, the constant raining and thunderstorms got to be a bit too annoying and clichéd. Considering all the talent involved, you'd think it would turn out much better. Yeah, it’s too bad, too, because as you say there’s so much talent behind this. I’d love a remake that just borrows the premise, goes in a different direction with the plot, and is packed with Christmas atmosphere (including tons of snow on the ground instead of the rainstorm).
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Post by FridayOnElmStreet on Dec 30, 2021 2:13:49 GMT
1/10This has to be a joke. OK this is a faith film which is OK. I seen them before. But I was curious on the Bigfoot part. This is easily the worst Bigfoot type film I have ever seen. If not one of the worst films I have ever seen. It reminds me of a modern-day Beast of Yucca Flats. But even that film was better. I mean this has to be seen to be believed on how awful this is.
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Post by FridayOnElmStreet on Dec 30, 2021 2:17:29 GMT
2/10Dreadfully boring and overly dark (lighting wise) supernatural one by one film. Eric Roberts is advertised as starring in this but I didnt see him. He must of been the voice on the recorder.
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Post by teleadm on Dec 30, 2021 19:24:51 GMT
The Killer That Stalked New York 1950 directed by Earl McEvoy (he only directed three movies) and based on real event from 1947. It belongs more to to the Thriller and Suspense part of this thread, though the killer is horrific, a small pox epidemic spreading rapidly through what one person touches. Here played in a noirish thriller way, with treasury agents and doctors hunting down the source, a woman smuggling diamonds from Cuba, at first not knowing they are tracing the same source. While not a classic like like Kazan's Panic in the Streets that covers the same subject, but not too bad on it's own. ![](https://journeysindarknessandlight.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/94c12b0e323410d73c5b81bad9317bbe.jpg?w=703&h=1073)
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Post by Nalkarj on Dec 31, 2021 14:47:39 GMT
Die Hard on a Mountain—I mean Climb Hard—I mean Cliffhanger, 1993, dir. Renny Harlin. ![“](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/9gjoXWTv6KLdEpMzkXp6F9-1200-80.jpg) This is fine. I like ’90s thrillers, and this is a ’90s thriller with every cliché of ’90s thriller-dom, and it’s fine. Two of the action set pieces—the famous opening and the plane hijacking—are excellent, dynamic, and memorable. But, man oh man, is the rest of the movie generic. Basically just copy Die Hard’s script, combine the Bruce (cop who singlehandedly has to take down thieves) and Reginald VelJohnson (blames himself for someone’s death) characters into one Stallone character, and set it on a mountain, and that’s it. But even that wouldn’t be a huge problem for me if the copying were well done, but this movie doesn’t have a single funny line or compelling character. Hammy John Lithgow is fun John Lithgow, though here he’s saddled (or he saddled himself) with a bad English accent. And, without anything fun to say, his character comes off just as a subpar knockoff of Hans Gruber. And, weirdly, the movie never even completes the character arc it starts. No doubt that’s because the point of this movie was the action, not the cheesy character arc, but why set up the arc if you’re never going to give any kind of conclusion? Gah. I said (twice!) that this is fine, and it is. It’s better than most action flicks coming out nowadays, that’s for sure. But at the end of the day I’d rather just rewatch the same director’s Die Hard 2.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 1, 2022 3:55:08 GMT
And a New Year’s movie, End of Days, 1999, dir. Peter Hyams. ![“](https://nofspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/end-of-days-featured-1280x640.png) I didn’t like this movie much at all, but I liked a few things about it. How’s that for generosity? The first act has some cool knockoff- Rosemary’s Baby material, and Miriam Margoyles and Udo Keir would fit in perfectly at the Castevets’ coven. It also has a pretty hilarious, but entertaining, stunt in which Arnie flies through the air with the greatest of ease while hanging from a chopper. The movie isn’t good or scary, but—a more mortal sin—it’s also not particularly fun. Some lines are funny because they’re so bad; they come off as what a middle-schooler would think witty dialogue is. But, after the first act, that’s about it. One major flaw here is, weirdly enough, the Devil. Gabriel Byrne, who resembles Jeopardy champion James Holzhauer, is fine in the role, but showing the Devil just takes some of the fun out of the occult whisperings and arcane prophecies. Also, Keir as an evil doctor is much more sinister than Byrne, so poor ol’ Beelzebub actually comes off as anticlimactic.
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Post by Ass_E9 on Jan 1, 2022 4:13:07 GMT
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 2, 2022 1:37:07 GMT
Add me to the list of people who have been baffled by Hudson Hawk, 1991, dir. Michael Lehmann, a movie whose premise seems to be “What if Bruce Willis starred in Rocky and Bullwinkle?” ![“](https://media.agonybooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/splash_780-225.jpg) This movie has apparently become something of a cult classic, which makes sense because it’s exactly the kind of wacky, turned-up-to-11 movie that becomes a cult classic. But it stinks. It really, totally stinks. It stinks because it changes tones a million times and because everyone exists in a nonsensical cartoon world where nothing matters. People get hurt and die, other people get hurt and then all their injuries magically disappear. We can’t care about anyone, and because the characters are so one-note the jokes (a few of which are decent) can’t hit. As if it needs to be said: Jokes are, above all, rooted in character and characters. They can be silly characters—say, the titular character of Austin Powers, to which Hudson Hawk has a superficial resemblance—but they still have to be characters, not walking jokes. Austin gets that nice little moment with a bit of soul-searching, which doesn’t distract from the jokes but at least shows him as a person who can feel emotions. For God’s sake, even the 2000 Rocky and Bullwinkle movie (which is better and funnier than HH) understood this. This movie, sorry to say, is just a $65 million exercise in lengthy stupidity.
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Post by gspdude on Jan 3, 2022 14:13:47 GMT
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjRiNmRlODEtYTg2OS00OGYwLWI5M2YtMzcxMzU3NjY2OTMwL2ltYWdlL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg) I Bury the Living(1958) B&W horror that has Richard Boone as the new supervisor of a cemetery who is going mad from events he cannot explain. It seems he causes the deaths of plot owners by sticking certain pins in their reserved plots on a map. Not that scary, more a psychological drama. Had a lame ending that seemed like it belonged in a 40s horror. 5/10.
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mgmarshall
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Post by mgmarshall on Jan 4, 2022 7:20:35 GMT
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjRiNmRlODEtYTg2OS00OGYwLWI5M2YtMzcxMzU3NjY2OTMwL2ltYWdlL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg) I Bury the Living(1958) B&W horror that has Richard Boone as the new supervisor of a cemetery who is going mad from events he cannot explain. It seems he causes the deaths of plot owners by sticking certain pins in their reserved plots on a map. Not that scary, more a psychological drama. Had a lame ending that seemed like it belonged in a 40s horror. 5/10. Man, that movie is so good until that ending. Atmospheric, creepy- like a Val Lewton movie, but on a cheaper, grittier late 50's scale. And, come on, how often does the great Richard Boone get a leading role? He's very good here, too. But yeah, that stupid finale really knocks a few points off of it.
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mgmarshall
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Post by mgmarshall on Jan 4, 2022 8:06:13 GMT
Transylvania 6-5000Granted, more of a horror spoof, but screw it, I feel like talking about it. I can distinctly remember when I was a kid this movie had a reputation as one of those legendarily bad movies, not quite in the Plan 9 from Outer Space league, but usually listed next to stuff like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Staying Alive. Y'know, in among the notorious studio-made crap. Somehow though, it's lost even that notability in more recent years and seems pretty obscure nowadays. Maybe it's because it's frankly not all that bad. Oh, by no stretch of the imagination is it good, but I've seen far worse than this. Helmed by Mel Brooks crony Rudy De Luca, one could accuse him of trying to do his own spin on Brooks' Young Frankenstein. But, really the reference point here is older- horror spoof fare like Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein or The Ghost Breakers, with Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley, Jr. as the new double act of the 80's. Honestly, the two of them have some pretty solid comedic chemistry, and they're backed up by a fairly strong supporting cast- a wildly hammy Joseph Bologna; a pre-Kramer Michael Richards, whose pratfalls and lame joke store gags start annoying but got a small giggle out of me here and there; a vampiric, Elvira-ish Geena Davis wearing leather and showing off her cleavage; a bickering Igor-type and wife played by John Byner and Carol Kane; and smaller roles from a crabby Norman Fell, a weaselly Jeffrey Jones, and Donald Gibb in possibly the sh*ttiest werewolf makeup of all time. Still, despite the game cast and a few funny gags, by and large Rudy De Luca is simply no Mel Brooks. (Though I'll take this one over Dracula: Dead and Loving It any day...) This a dumb movie with a dumb, cornball sense of humor. It's pretty harmless, though, and again it's far from worst ever territory. It's not even the worst spoof movie I've ever seen. But if I want an 80's monster mash throwback, you'd better believe I'm going for The Monster Squad instead.
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