The Bigass Bravo Horror List!! (Part 2)

Part 1.


Time for the next 19! Let's just jump right in.....


Alice Sweet Alice (1976) 

Brooke Shields's first movie.
...and spoiler, they bump her off in the first act.

I....didn't care for it.
I didn't hate it either, but...eh.

The ending has a double twist, and if Shyamalan flicks piss you off, this certainly will.


Black Christmas (1974)

Talked about it super briefly here.

Very good.
Has Andrea Martin, Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussey, and John Saxon.

The good guys do stupid things though, so that gets frustrating.
One of those "don't go in there! Get out of the house, stupid!", type of movies, but well done for what it is, with likable characters.

A definite cut above the usual slashers of this era.


Blood and Black Lace (1964)

A killer with a faceless mask who looks like The Question is bumping off models, and the expectation of the motive and identity of the killer flips around multiple times.

I liked it okay, but wasn't a huge fan.
The kills were intense though.


The Brood (1979)

Covered it briefly here without having seen it.

Has Oliver Reed, who did a lot of flicks with nudity and gore, so as soon as his mug pops up, you know you're in for a treat.

So, every Cronenberg flick has some little grain of pseudo-science that gets blown up to extremes.
Here, the concept is, if your negative traumas can be brought out to the surface, they literally come to the surface as sores, or scars or..whatever, and that manifesting this is a healthy expulsion.
Oliver Reed is the doctor that invents this therapy.
But Samantha Eggar is so crazy, her hatreds grow out of her flesh as fetuses that rapid-grow into little hissing monster children.

Think the mood slime from Ghostbusters 2, but in your body.

Fuuuun shit!


Blood Simple (1984)

The Coens first movie, and it's a good 'un.

I kept thinking "this is the kind of movie Tarantino likes to do, but the Coens do it here 1000 times better...God, I hate Tarantino".

Yeah, I guess that's my review.
Burn your Tarantino collection, and pop in "Blood Simple".


Them! (1954)

A-bomb tests make ants grow to the size of legged Volkswagons.

The giant ants are cheesey, but the idea of big ants is scary, we would indeed be fucking doomed.


The Stepfather (1987)

Terry O'Quinn puts in a good to great performance for what he has to work with, but overall, this was just 80's thriller/slasher cheese to me.

Pretty tame, this would be a Lifetime movie now.

The dead family at the beginning was unsettling though.
That got me, but it was downhill from there.

JMO, YMMV.


The Black Cat (1934)

Covered it here pretty well.

After having actually seen it, my faking-it review did a pretty good job after all.


The Tenant (1976)

Man, this gets even weirder than the clips on the Bravo show let on.
Long and slow as hell though.
Think it was almost two and a half hours.

I can't even describe the plot, cuz you never know for 20 minute chunks if you're in a dream, a hallucination, if something supernatural is really going on, what's real, what's a paranoid fantasy of the protagonist, just...ugh.

But, Wes Craven drew inspiration for NOES and New Nightmare from this, and I can see that.

Glad I saw it, don't know if I can recommend it.


The Beyond (1981)

Has that one really good infamous head explosion kill, but the rest...meh.
Then the ending I thought was really lame.

I'll spoil it I guess.
They go to Hell, and it looks like a cheap crappy set.
Very lame.

Some cool imagery, and creepy scenes, but as a whole movie, doesn't come together well.


The Changeling (1980)

Yet another supernatural story that trips up on its internal logic.
I kept pausing to say "well, if the ghost can do this and this, then why doesn't it just do this and this?".
All throughout, right up to the end.

Alright, plot is, a millionaire has a crippled son, and can't abide a sickly heir, so kills the kid, kidnaps an orphan, raises him overseas, comes back, and pretends the kid is the dead kid, leaves him his fortune, then the kid grows up into Mr. Burns.
THEN, the dead kid comes back as a ghost to avenge himself on Mr. Burns.

The stuff with George C. Scott's dead wife and daughter is all a red herring.

And that's my biggest "but why...?" if the ghost kid could kill Mr. Burns, then why didn't it just do that, instead of jerking George C. Scott around, and leading him along on a long ass Scooby-Doo mystery?

"Because movie", I guess.


Demons (1985)

Talked about it here, but hadn't actually seen it yet.

My comparison to Deadtites was dead on, pretty much any monster that spreads by infection may as well be a zombie.
So, this is a zombie film set in a movie theater with punk rock hairdos and clothes, and an 80's synth score.
It was fun, but it's no masterpiece or anything.

Glad I saw it, wouldn't collect it.
Worth a watch.


Diabolique (1955)

The ending that the Bravo special spoils is pretty much the best part.
It takes forever to get there, too.
Another two hours and change flick.
You spend that entire two hours wanting that piece of shit husband to finally get his.
I won't spoil if he does.


The Sentinel (1977)

I wanted to like this more, but...ugh.

Okay, one really cool part, lesbians feel each other up, then one of them leaves the room, so the remaining one plays with herself.
We're supposed to be horrified by this, but it's fucking awesome.

Another flick meant to terrify Catholics.
As usual, Catholicism is the only true Ghostbusting religion.
Hey, how about some Ghostbusting Shinto??

Fuck you, Catholics, and your homophobic bullshit.
You're a misery cult.
If Hell is full of lesbians, sign me the fuck up for lava surfing lessons.

Also, same problem as "The Others", the ghosts come right out into roomlight at the end, and  it's like "hi, I'm Satan, pleased to meecha".
Fneh.
Phooey.


The Game (1997)

This was a lot better than I expected it would be.
It jerks you around, and bends reality repeatedly without wallowing in paranoia the way "The Tenant", often does.

Unlike "The Tenant", I was like "wow, I'm actually glad I watched that".

Highly recommended.


It's Alive (1975)

Covered before here, and here, but never sat down to watch it.

Ehhh....if the effects on the baby were better, it could have really been something great, but as it is...eh.

A shame too, cuz the makeup was a Rick Baker joint.


Black Sunday (1960)

Referenced it here, here, and here.

And Hyla did a whole write-up on it here.

His review covers it quite nicely, so I get to be lazy.


Peeping Tom (1960)

Okay, it's good, I liked it okay, but there was outrageous moral panic around this one in its day for some reason, and it ruined the director's career, and I just don't get it at all, because Hitchcock did stuff as edgy as this way before.

Britain has a bad history of moral panic around their horror movies anyway.
I said it all in my "Video Nasties", review though.


The Hitcher (1986)

Awesome.
Except maybe the ending...but I don't really know how else you could have ended it.

But, meh, fuck it, it's a nitpick.
Rent it immediately.
Plot synopsis won't do it justice, just watch it.


And, bam, 19 again.

Tomorrow, the final batch, then the compilation of all 143 in the proper order.