Well, I decided it was long past time one of us reviewed something from that series. See if you can spot it:
Along with Ghosts (1969), in which a haunted swamp is the worst imaginable place to carry out a mob hit…
The Big Doll House (1971), in which the Philippines are the worst imaginable place to go to prison…
Galaxy of Terror (1981), in which of course you’ll have a bad impression of Organthus if you only focus on the doppelgangers and the rapeworms…
House of the Damned (1996), in which human sacrifice makes a lousy birthday present…
Interstellar (2014), in which the Earth is screwed, but that’s no reason why humanity has to be…
Interzone (1987), in which the Earth is also screwed, and humanity frankly has it coming…
The Iron Rose (1973), in which a picnic in the cemetery is a bad idea for a first date…
Night Tide (1961), in which Dennis Hopper’s girlfriend may or may not be a killer mermaid…
Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (1973), in which we see the importance of not getting too friendly with jewel thieves…
and…
The Student Nurses (1970), or as I’ve come to think of it, I Am Curious (Red Cross).
#1 by ronald on February 24, 2015 - 4:20 am
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So, wait, the question is, which of these films is the one that you think has especially dreadful cover art?
Okay, my guess: House of the Damned (1996)
#2 by El Santo on February 24, 2015 - 9:38 am
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No, the question is, which of those movies had its cover art featured in Nathan’s late, lamented “Gives Me Chills” series of blog posts? But your guess is right nonetheless.
#3 by El Santo on February 24, 2015 - 9:40 am
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Oh– and I’ll be reviewing another movie from the “Gives Me Chills” collection in my next update, too.
#4 by The Rev. on February 25, 2015 - 3:47 pm
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I’ve actually stumbled across of couple of those “GMC” movies on the Roku recently. This wasn’t one of them. One was Gravestoned and I’m not recalling the name for the other. Hold on, let me scroll through the “GMC” posts…
Ah. America’s Sickest Home Videos was it. Although I almost want to say I came across With a Mouse (To Your Mouth) as well.
Not that it matters, as I’ve yet to brave any of them.
I started The Iron Rose a while back, but it was too late and I fell asleep early in. I need to give it a proper go.
I did finally see Galaxy of Terror a couple of years ago. That was pretty fun, with all the monsters and Sid Haig and Robert Englund and that dummy going over the railing with a high-pitched shriek and what-not. Good times.
#5 by RogerBW on February 24, 2015 - 7:50 am
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“I’m not going to tell you that it isn’t that bad, because frankly it is.” And that’s why we keep coming back…
“from Contact and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation”. Heh.
And I agree with Ronald. If you have to tell us on the cover that it’s a cult classic, you’re doing something wrong. Even if it is!
#6 by ronald on February 24, 2015 - 7:33 pm
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Oh, okay, because I…didn’t remember the “Gives Me Chills” feature at all. It’s vaguely coming back to me now, though.
Anyway, cool that I was right. 🙂
===
#4.
What so few filmmakers seem to understand is that SETTING OUT to make a classic almost never works. You make the film and it either becomes a classic or it doesn’t.
Admittedly, SF/fantasy/horror films are almost guaranteed at least a tiny place in posterity because that/our demographic is more obsessive than most others — which is, I presume, why so many, uh, shall we say “unduly optimistic” filmmakers try their hands at the genre(s); I rarely if ever hear of first-time filmmakers getting their friends together and turning their basements into sound stages in order to make a legal thriller or a romantic comedy — but still…
#7 by RogerBW on February 25, 2015 - 7:31 am
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Hmm. I think for the microbudget first-timers it’s their own obsession rather than the presumed obsession of their audience. They’re making more of a thing that they love, rather than taking a shot at immortality. At least going by what I’ve seen; I’m not a huge horror fan and there may be entire segments that I’m missing.
#8 by ronald on February 25, 2015 - 12:45 pm
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Which, I suppose, raises the question of why the microbudget film bug seems to bite only SF/fantasy/horror fans. Legal thrillers, romantic comedies, and every other film genre all have their own fandoms, yet, as noted, those demographics produce few if any microbudget films.
Or maybe it’s just that there aren’t nearly as many review sites for legal thrillers, romantic comedies, et cetera as there are for SF/fantasy/horror films; maybe microbudget films in those genres *do* exist but lack an army of internet geeks to popularize them. 😉
Which raises the further question of why that should be. It’s like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel…
#9 by Alaric on February 25, 2015 - 1:00 pm
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“Her name is Mora, which might be a bad sign. This isn’t a vampire movie, of course, but Johnny might want to think twice about pursuing a relationship with someone whose name means “vampire” in Czech just the same.”
“Mor” is also Welsh for “sea”, and is related to various similar words in the Romance languages (mer, mare, mar, etc.), due to the relationship between the Celtic and Italic branches of Indo-European.
#10 by supersonic man on February 26, 2015 - 12:47 am
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Front-loading the sex scenes is pretty SOP in old porn features. They’re expecting half of the audience to leave early.
#11 by Supersonic Man on February 26, 2015 - 1:12 am
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Oh, technical note: I’ve noticed for a while that when I view your site on a phone, certain characters don’t display. These include quote-marks and apostrophes. I finally looked at the reason, and it’s because you’re using the windows-1252 character set, but not declaring it on the page. A Windows computer takes this as a default, but other systems don’t. If you put a tag in your <head> section that says <meta charset=”windows-1252″>, that may help. (The ideal thing would be to use UTF-8 instead, but then you’d have to do a bit of conversion on old reviews.)
#12 by Jen S 1.0 on March 4, 2015 - 2:14 pm
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Night Tide is frustrating for me because I’ve only ever seen it on a local show called Professor Fred’s movie marvels, and the soundtrack is totally out of synch. I mean in that the sound playing over a scene was recorded for a completely different scene! There’s never any explanation for it and I have no idea if it’s supposed to be some kind of surreal choice or if that particular print was just messed up.
#13 by El Santo on March 10, 2015 - 1:34 pm
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That’s definitely a flaw in the print, although I have no idea how so extreme a screw-up might have occurred.. The version they have up on Netflix Instant right now goes berserk with video artifacts for the last ten minutes or so, but at least the soundtrack is synched up correctly.
#14 by Doug on March 5, 2015 - 11:41 am
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The Iron Rose is amazing, for exactly the reasons you describe. In a way it reminds me of the ’63 version of The Haunting, only with an even purer distillation of the essence of fear.
And the graveyard is something else, a true genius loci.