Movie Recommendations

[The Black Ferris]

Another Dark Carnival winner. Find the full thing if you can. (If ya haven't noticed, I love the shorts)

YouTube - "Of Darkness" Trailer (Now Available On DVD)

[The Black Ferris]

YouTube - American Scary - Trailer 1

[The Black Ferris]

YouTube - ¡Maldito Bastardo! (Damn Bastard!) Trailer English

[Ligeia]

The original story featured Michio, a psychopathic blind sculpture who under the guise of an itinerant masseur roams the land in search of suitable female body parts to construct into the perfect sensual sculpture. In Masumura's hands the plot is stripped down to its basic atoms. There is only one victim here to form the basis of the sculptor's latest work, a shapely young model called Aki, abducted in the initial scenes. The rest of the action takes place in one location, the artist's cavernous studio in the basement of a secluded house, each wall covered in biomorphic swells representing parts of the female anatomy - breasts, eyes, lips. The studio is dominated by two recumbent sculptures of male and female nudes.

Masumura depicts this claustrophobic milieu with an edgy, hallucinogenic intensity that borders on hyper-realism to explore the cloying, all-encompassing relationship between the artist and his art and the obsessive closed world that the artist inhabits. As Michio maps out the curves of his subject in his attempt to reproduce her in clay, the two engage in a continuous stream of dialogue, and as Aki's fear for her capture turns to respect, she eventually reciprocates to his intense tactile fixation on her body. The two enter into a strange sado-masochistic relationship that, in a squirm-inducing finale reminiscent of Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (Ai No Koriida, 1976) and Jennifer Lynch's Boxing Helena (1993), culminates in each of the model's limbs being severed from her torso.

Given the rather static nature of the mise-en-scène, Masumura must be admired for stretching out such an elementary idea to feature length, yet the most overwhelming impression of this film is its deliciously overwrought visual style, conjuring up such a vivid and endlessly interesting, self-contained cinematic world inside the claustrophobic confines of Michio's studio. Yes, Moju really is as outlandish as it sounds, and must rank as one of the most powerful and potently disturbing horror films ever conceived. For anyone with any interest in the horror/fantasy genre, this is quite simply mandatory viewing. A classic.

[Jeff Coleman]

'Damnation' by Bela Tarr

YouTube - Kárhozat (1988)

[Ligeia]

The story is about a blind girl who undergoes a corneal transplant and is pleased to discover that she can see once again, However, because she has essentially lived her entire life in the dark, her eyes need time to properly focus on distant objects,Unfortunately that’s how she starts to see spirits.....

[MorganScorpion]

No pictures to link to, I am afraid.

But some bloody good movies.

The Nameless aka Los Sin Nombre. A dark and harrowing adaptation of Ramsey Campbell's novel of the same name.

The Dark Hour aka La Hora Fria. In an underground bunker a boy makes a home movie about his life. A post-apocalyptic zombie survival movie; with class. The end is a bit like being hit in the face with a shovel.

Session 9. In spite of the fact that this movie stars David Caruso and plays like a soap opera for the first half and hour. In spite of the incomprehensible and incoherent at first hour and twenty minutes. This movie so rocks. Once the pieces start to fit together, it is terrifying.

Crazy as Hell. Eriq la Salle as a mental patient who claims to be Satan mindgames a celebrity psychiatrist, and vice versa. Who will win?

Uzumaki. A weird and twisted fairytale about spirals.

Coming Soon. In which a young projectionist, desperate for money agrees to make a pirate version of a movie about a real-life serial killer, only to REALLY wish he hadn't. Available along with Uzumaki, Noroi the Curse, and many others at http://www.asian-horror-movies.com/

[Ligeia]

YouTube - Old Boy Trailer

No comments....

[Ligeia]

I've seen Session 9, MorganScorpion!You're right, it rocks.

[Joe Pulver]

Quote Originally Posted by Cyril Tourneur

as there is already a book recommendations thread, there should also be a movie recommendations thread; now this is done and here is my first entry... here's an excerpt... YouTube - Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages, Black Mass What was it about 1922? In the same year Nosferatu showed the world how to make a vampire movie and Dr. Mabuse took a near-supernatural journey to Berlin's criminal underworld, a film opened in Sweden that was to become notorious for its bold depictions of torture, madness, carnality, and — most memorably — horrific acts performed by and for bestial, nightmarish demons, including Satan himself. But while Nosferatu and Dr. Mabuse presented their stories as fiction, filmmaker Benjamin Christensen's Häxan appeared in the guise of a documentary, its very realism at the heart of its hypnotic allure and its scandalous notoriety. Officially banned outside of Sweden for decades due to graphic imagery and an unabashed anti-clerical theme, Häxan has grown into a cinema legend one hears about but rarely, if ever, gets a chance to actually see. Is it true that it displays witches cavorting naked with lusty devils? Is a baby really drained of blood before it's tossed into a stew pot? What's this about women lining up to kiss Satan's bulbous ass? Inquisitional torture? Flying on broomsticks? Hysterical nuns? Sacrilege and perversion? Demonic orgies? Otherworldly monstrosities emerging from between an old crone's legs? And it's a documentary? And is there really a version narrated by Beat generation writer and hipster icon William S. "The Naked Lunch" Burroughs, complete with acid jazz soundtrack? It's all true. Häxan (pron. "hexen," meaning "witches") was long available only in rare, diminished forms, the most well known being a 1968 re-edit given the title Witchcraft Through the Ages. That edit sports the add-on Burroughs' narration and an anarchic musical score featuring Jean-Luc Ponty. Few versions of either incarnation have been released on home video, but restorations have appeared on VHS through Great Britain's Redemption label and, in 1999, Home Vision Entertainment's pairing of the Swedish Film Institute's restored Häxan and (unrestored) Witchcraft Through the Ages. Now this infamous curio is finally available on DVD under the Criterion Collection folio. Criterion offers a strikingly beautiful print of the fully restored and re-tinted Häxan and again pairs it with the Burroughs version. Its superb audio track features a new score recreated from the original list of musical cues. Plus, Criterion maintains its reputation for delivering a generous assortment of supportive supplemental material — including an audio commentary by Danish silent film scholar Casper Tybjerg, outtakes and test shots, and click-through selections from the centuries-old documents writer/director Christensen used for his diabolical source material. It's presented in an attractive and mindfully produced package. and here is a link to get the criterion edition Häxan (1922) - The Criterion Collection

I 2nd this rec. Criterion did a wonderful job w/ this film.