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chatty-goat · 7 months

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Catching Up, Four Movie Special!

The Changeling (1980)

Tragically I know myself better than I used to. When my mental health is a certain sort of sickly, too much horror ends up making me feel terrible, and though it’s my favorite genre and the season is what it is, I’ve had to cut back. This was the Real One I allowed myself, it sounded familiar, apparently a classic. Later on Tubi recommended Burnt Offerings (1976) based on it, which I understand now but I greatly preferred the latter. I found out (while looking into it partway through, forgive me) it had some cult following, considered one of the most influential?? Canadian films?? Source?? I didn’t think it was terrible, but that felt like damning with faint praise. I do wonder if it’s the sort of thing where everything’s been influenced by it so it doesn’t hit like it used to for the modern viewer? Or maybe I just wasn’t in the headspace for it. Can’t really tell. Mildly enjoyed the protagonists, and the idea of the erm… I’m not sure what you’d call the senator here. Concept for the murder honestly wigs me out more now than it did during the watch, yeuch. My favorite scene took place outside of the haunted house, the main protagonist finally got Out There socially for the first time since his wife and daughter died, went horseback riding with the secondary protagonist, but when they stopped somewhere, something reminded him of his daughter, and he was about to cry, so out of sorts, very moving, except that the horse did not appear to be a very good actor and was chomping on the greenery voraciously just out of frame. If it was intentional then I think that is great use of tonally different elements to make the protagonist feel divorced from what’s happening around him, but it didn’t seem intentional, so I just had me a good laugh.

Victor Frankenstein (2015)

Tubi is my worst enemy but mostly my best friend. I’d never heard about this one, giving Igor the protagonist treatment seemed like just the kind of stupid I was in the mood for, and I’ve just loved every performance Daniel Radcliffe has given as an adult? He just decided to never be in anything normal again, and I love that for him. It scores pretty poorly it seems, and I get that, it’s not a Good Movie, but thoroughly enjoyable. Just hit me in most of my particularities regarding what makes “so bad it’s good”. Much more bisexual than I was expecting, made me cringe but mostly intentionally (not the bisexuality, the characters), somehow managed to throw in a love interest I liked?? The practical effects were lovely when we got them, the cg wasn’t too shabby, except in the editing, some of the editing especially in the circus was bad, as was some of the shit they made up for this movie, but for the most part those things were pretty funny. Almost completely skip over the grave robbing, give Frankenstein a sadboy reason for the obsession (my friend, when I talked about this, suggested they were trying to make him “a meowmeow”, yeah…). The worst part was this inspector character they threw in to shoehorn the affront to god thing, annoyed me every time that character came on screen because it meant I was about to listen to an atheist and a zealot be equally unbearable for a while. The guy who played Moriarty in that one Sherlock show was the inspector, shame he was so intensely unenjoyable whenever he wasn’t monologuing alone. All in all I really liked it though. I’m going to make my best friend watch it with me sometime soon, we’ll see if it’s Just Me or if the people of 2015 just weren’t ready to have a little fun.

Guilstein (2002)

It’s apparently just Frankenstein week for me. A friend and I were browsing anime movies and were intrigued by the promise of cg elements in this. It’s not a good movie. It’s not good cg. We watched it in pretty poor quality, looked like it had been ripped off a vhs, which honestly only helped it. The designs are like, godawful but in the way where I’m sure if I had watched it when it came out I would have thought some of them ruled. The tony hawk ass music was a highlight (I found an ost video on youtube, will be combing that soon), and honestly the main monster’s design grew on me by the end, but the real appeal has ended up being the process of digging up information about it. I often check out whether there was a fanfiction scene for anything I’m checking out, and I knew there was something about this when there was nothing to find. Silly monster stuff has a way of attracting attention, idk, something was up. From all I can tell, there was a Russian dub/sub?, but there were no English fansubs as late as 2020. The only people who saw this (there were not many) just like, either knew enough Japanese to warrant it or were the kind of people to watch any anime movie because It Was Anime, regardless of comprehension. Another era. Not that there was much to comprehend, but still. There are some very funny old reviews about it online. One called it a hipster movie and I’ll take it, there’s something special about getting to take a peek at something that just didn’t make the cut. And how lucky were we to find it so soon after someone finally made subs for it? It’s honestly not bad enough that I can easily pinpoint why, but such is how it goes. This was actually the thing that made me commit to the whole journalling thing, my friend said he was likely to forget about this one pretty soon, which I figured would be the same for me, but what a shame.

Other notes: one of the crew members looks like every human Equius ever, I will never be free. His girlfriend was cute (fucked up how shoehorned she was), and the monster design they made with her… Aside from the titty situation I like it a lot. I think there’s a lot to say about the designs of female monsters, how rare it is that they ever escape being feminine and sexy, but the way they do it in this one reminds me of a certain type of it that blends the human and the inhuman in a way I’m fond of. It’s just kinda fun. Reminds me of Andariel from Diablo 2 for some reason. Maybe it’s just Red Monster Lady idk. Something noted that it was “hastily” removed from potentially broadcasting, just so many funny little details.

A Wind Named Amnesia (1993)

This!!! This!!! Watched it after Guilstein with that same friend, we had spent the evening skipping through older things to avoid committing to a second movie (like an ancient toei Sinbad movie, gorgeous, a lovely musical that felt so of its time despite not being from the same place as the ones I’m familiar with, a chicken or the egg question I don’t feel like diving into right now), but I saw the poster and thought it looked fruity. Turns out that character was not an effeminate man but in fact a woman (the screen was far away and it was small…), but I was in luck anyway because I’m right and Wataru and Johnny were in love. What a treat! The only thing on this post that was both Actually Good and I Actually Loved. Imo it has the quality of a sci fi short story, something that just punches you with a premise and a thousand strange things you just have to get into so they can tell the story they really want to tell. And some of that stuff is Weird, but I was both in the mood for Weird and also it seemed like it was supposed to be making you uncomfortable? Or maybe that was just me projecting my sci fi brain onto it. Idk, some things just have the charisma to make it work. It was a joy, really tugged on the heartstrings and drew us into its little mysteries. My absolute favorite manga is YKK, and I have a soft spot for apocalyptic road trips and peering in on humanity. The love behind it, the aimlessness. Johnny’s contribution to why Wataru is the way he is hurt my heart in a unique way. Idk I’ve read a lot of shit like this in my day, but nothing that told the protagonist “Hey, there’s no Point anymore, I know you can’t be any kind of savior and don’t expect it of you, but I want you to live. You don’t have to do anything with that life. I just want you to be able to see what there is left to see, and if you happen to find out who did this, tell them the shit you’ve seen, and ask em to fix it.” Just. No expectations, and by god Wataru doesn’t pick up anything else. I really like that. The world truly cannot be his problem. A few misses to be sure, a racist design, the ending is divisive but I would have liked it were it not for the no-chemistry random sex, but overall this was endearing. Exactly up my alley. Another one I’m going to make my bestie watch.

About the short story comment: I was closer than I expected! It’s based on a novel by the guy who wrote Vampire Hunter D, which I’d heard of as a Big Deal but I’m not familiar with… But anyway, I read up about some differences between that movie and the book, and looked into the book itself… I have a little collection going of books I really had to hunt for. It’s just something I enjoy doing, and I keep independently ending up interested in things that are hard to find, and then when I talk about them it’s part of the story. Oh it took this long to find this whole series and I had to go to x and y place and I never would have even found out about it if I hadn’t picked the first one up in the dollar bin or seen a pretty small tumblr post or- ok so I’m a little book hipster I treasure the little things like that. But anyway this was apparently one of the less popular works of his, and also it’s a translated japanese novel from the 80s like, there’s not too many copies and they’re old but have a big name attached to them- what I’m saying is they’re too expensive for me, but I think I’m going to make it the target of my next hunt, keeping an eye out for them and seeing if it pops up locally and, christ, for less than 40 dollars. Or maybe my hunt will go on for so long that it’ll reach a point where I can justify that to myself. We’ll see. But it’s nice to have things to shoot for, and my last hunt was a great success so I’m eager to get on another trail.

Anyhow, those have been tumbling around in my head and I’m now free. Hopefully catching a few more z’s,

#movies #horror #<3

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