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Schlocky Horror Picture Show

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ackblom12:
April Fool's Day (1986):

In the 80's there was a trend of naming and/or basing your horror film on a holiday. Friday the 13th, Halloween (technically 70's, I know), Mother's Day and so on. They were usually terrible as I'm sure you can imagine, with a few stand out gems of schlock. This is one of the gems. Also Biff is in it!

A bunch of obnoxious, rich, white college graduates go to the home that one of them has just inherited from some rich relative or another, to celebrate their graduation. Of course this is all happening around April Fool's Day and the pranks start early. They all start finding some rather 'interesting' things in the house left over from the previous residents and after the first night, the pranks seem to turn deadly, with people disappearing or turning up dead at a pretty swift pace. It has some impressively terrible dialogue and everything else you could love about 80's horror movies. It's not the best bit of schlock out there, not everything can be Night of the Lepus or Re-Animator after all, but it's definitely in the category of good schlock.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hrss-EBK10

ackblom12:
Black Sunday (1960):

Black Sunday (aka The Mask of Satan) is a wonderful bit of Italian horror history starring Barbara Steele (she is also in Shivers) with her super creepy and sexy eyes. She is a witch/vampire/devil worshiper who is put to death during an Inquisition. Before she dies, she places a curse on the family of her killer and 200 years later, she is awakened to exact her revenge. It's great fun throughout.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qBfKffMuw0

ackblom12:
Audition (1999):

Anyone familiar with Takashi Miike's filmography is aware that he is very very good at making movies that are incredibly uncomfortable to watch. Audition is no exception to this. Miike loves his revenge films and he especially loves to frame them as a form of karmic backlash. In many cases not just against the person who did the deed, but those they love and innocents who had nothing to do with it. Their actions and decisions are not made in a vacuum and the films are pretty brutal about reminding you of this. Revenge is an ugly and terrible thing, regularly just as bad or even worse than the original sin and he does not shy away from it. Terrible people do terrible things, and people who were previously 'normal' become terrible, even if only for a short time. There are no heroes in Takashi Miike's films.

The story is about a widower named Ryo who has realized that he's lonely and wants to re-marry. He confides in a friend of his who is a movie producer and is convinced to use the auditions for a film that may get funded to search for a new wife. Ryo's friend is sleazy, and the movie makes no bones about this. He is also well aware that what he's agreed to do is, at best, morally questionable, but he gives into temptation and does so anyway. He becomes enamored with one of the actresses, Eihi, and they start to see each other. One day, she disappears and he begins to look for her. The problem is that all of her contacts, jobs etc. all lead to dead ends. They either never existed, have died in some horrible manner or are missing. She comes back one day and I imagine it's a really tough thing to watch for most people.

The last 12 minutes or so of the movie are why people regularly label this film as Torture Porn and I have a hard time arguing with it. But Miike doesn't deal with it like some films such as Hostel does. Rather than focusing on what she's doing to him (It's not terrible gory, though he does do that just enough to make you squirm), it instead focuses on Eihi and her very obvious sadism. Every time she does something to him you can tell she loves it, and that's far more disturbing than any typical gory torture scene.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXDWh8UqGvA

ackblom12:
The Woman (2011):

Directed by Lucky McKee, The Woman is a movie about a middle class white man who discovers a Wild Woman while hunting and decides to 'civilize' her. I'm sure that you can make some guesses as to what his methods are. The longer the film goes on, the more disturbing the story gets in. This movie has a lot to say about patriarchy, misogyny, rape culture, domestic abuse, as well as those that stand by and let all this happen. What's really surprising is it manages to do it pretty damn well in a borderline gore hound package. If you think you can stomach the gore that eventually comes up, I would definitely suggest checking it out.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5zvtGHsZTs

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