Movies: Horror Movie Discussion

[Praetorian Caps]

Going on a big Terrifier kick. Part one is still the best but three has turned the franchise up to 11! Second best movie out of the three.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Pin (1988) - 7/10

An isolated youth finds comfort in a medical dummy.

David Hewlett stars as Leon, who along with sister Ursula (Cynthia Preston) are the children of two unusual parents - a regimented doctor (Terry O'Quinn) and a clean freak housewife (Bronwen Mantel). The siblings find solace in each other and also in Pin (voiced by Jonathan Banks), a medical dummy in their father's office. Dr. Banks knows ventriloquism and uses Pin to teach his children various medical lessons. For Leon, the isolated lifestyle eventually becomes too much for him, and he forms an obsession with the dummy...

Pin was wirtten and directed by Sandor Stern. The film is based Andrew Neiderman's 1981 novel of the same name. Neiderman is also known for writing The Devil's Advocate, which was later adapted into a 1997 film starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. Stern, who was previously a doctor himself, took interest in the plot due to its focus on a medical dummy. The film was scheduled to be the final New Worlds Production to hit theaters, but at the last second was pulled and was released direct-to-video instead. How does Pin fare?

Really well. Pin is a psychological slow burn of a movie, with many disturbing elements and deeply unsettling scenes. None of this has to do with the doll itself. The scenes that make the audience uneasy instead tackle real-life issues, like emotional abuse, mental illness, and sexuality. Pin (the medical dummy) is just a plot device helping to tie all of this together.

Being vague, though this is a horror movie, there's not a lot of outright horror. There are some creepy scenes, but as mentioned, a lot of that comes from how unsettling certain situations are. Pin (the film title) is a character-driven story, and a lot of the time the audience is likely feeling pity more than fear.

I do have one small critique. There's a scene where a character (sorry for the vagueness) witnesses something and it seems to rattle them to their core. Though it is unsettling, logically that character should've had an idea/been clued into the situation based on previous events in the film. It's a small nitpick, but a nitpick nonetheless.

Overall, Pin was a very good movie. I'm on the fence about whether my rating is too low, so this one has the potential to go up after repeat viewings. My review is purposely vague and I recommend this hidden gem of a movie, though it's not necessarily the greatest choice as a Halloween season watch. I couldn't find any budget or earnings information for this direct-to-video (Canadian) movie.

Awesome write-up here bud. Instantly added to my list. Definitely looking forward to this one. I bet I can even talk the old lady into watching it, since she picked the last couple. Right up our alley of creepy and unsettling f***ed-up-ness.

 

[shadow1]

Razorback (1984) - 6/10

A massive razorback boar stalks the Australian outback.

Bill Kerr stars as Jake, a hunter whose family is attacked by an unnaturally big razorback. With the locals not believing his story, Jake becomes a pariah and dedicates his life to hunting down the boar. No one else believes the boar exists aside from Sarah (Arkie Whiteley), a local who tracks boar activity. Meanwhile, American wildlife reporter Beth (Judy Morris) - on the eve of her anniversary to Carl (Gregory Harrison) - heads from New York to Australia to film an expose about a pet food processing plant, but soon meets Jake and discovers his story is true...

Razorback was directed by Russell Mulcahy and written by Everett De Roche. The film is based on a 1981 Peter Brennan novel of the same name. The story is believed to be loosely based on the death of Azaria Chamberlain, the infant who was killed by a dingo. How does Razorback fare?

It's good... but often feels like it's on the cusp of being something more. Even with the frustratingly low-quality digital version I purchased from Apple, Razorback's strong visuals stand out. A lot of the "sets" in this film are the desolate outback, with the memorable cinematography including the use of flashlights cutting through the dusty and foggy landscape. Apparently, even Steven Speilberg called director Mulcahy to ask him how one particular shot was created.

Speaking of whom, is Razorback a Jaws (1975) rip-off? No. There are similarities here or there - including a dollar store version of the dolly zoom (it's not really a dolly zoom shot but feels like a weird homage). But for the most part, Razorback does its own thing. Being vague, this film has brass ones. It takes a big chance in the first 30 minutes or so, and while its not the first movie to do what I'm talking around, I thought it was effective and it got me more invested in the events.

Even with those strengths, Razorback is held back (no pun intended) by being too by the numbers. Didn't I just say this film takes a big chance? It does, but after that happens, things become a little too formulaic. Being that this film is centered around a reporter, our characters are investigating what's going on. But we always know more than they do, so there's never any drama when they unearth discoveries the audience has known about for 30+ minutes. Furthermore, the razorback boar seems to take a back seat for a lot of the film. It doesn't feel like an omnipresent threat that can strike at any time and that's terrorizing the region. On the contrary, Razorback's body count is very low, and for much of the movie only targets people that are actively targeting it.

Overall, I had an okay time with Razorback. I wouldn't go as far as calling it a hidden gem, but it's a good movie that I'd never heard of. Razorback was a box-office dud, reportedly earning only $950K against its roughly $3.6M budget.

 

[shadow1]

Awesome write-up here bud. Instantly added to my list. Definitely looking forward to this one. I bet I can even talk the old lady into watching it, since she picked the last couple. Right up our alley of creepy and unsettling f***ed-up-ness.

Thanks, I hope you both like it!

It's on Youtube. The video quality isn't the greatest, but I'm a fan of this channel:

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Thanks, I hope you both like it!

It's on Youtube. The video quality isn't the greatest, but I'm a fan of this channel:

Thanks for the tip buddy, will probably be watching it tonight.

 

[Osprey]

Overall, I had an okay time with Razorback. I wouldn't go as far as calling it a hidden gem, but it's a good movie that I'd never heard of.

I just looked up my review from two years ago and saw that you gave it a like. "Never heard of." I feel so forgotten.

 

[shadow1]

I just looked up my review from two years ago and saw that you gave it a like. "Never heard of." I feel so forgotten.

My bad! I probably have that Liam Neeson memory loss thing going on...

I actually look up previous reviews a lot (which was difficult to do with the next review I'm going to post). I didn't bother with Razorback, figuring it was so obscure it'd be the apex of horror reviews on this hockey forum. How naive of me.

 

[Osprey]

The House That Screamed (1969) - 7/10

A teenage girl arrives at a boarding school that's run by a domineering headmistress and where several girls have mysteriously disappeared. It's a Spanish film (in English, reportedly the first ever) that has many of the hallmarks of Italian giallo--murder, mystery, psychological terror and eroticism--and reportedly inspired Dario Argento's Suspiria 8 years later. It's more conventionally shot, however, and looks and feels a lot like a 1960s period drama or Hammer film with lavish sets and costumes. I liked that and the widescreen cinematography. As conventional as it looks, there's a subtext of sexual frustration that runs throughout it that reminded me that I was watching a European film. There are a few kills and it's considered an early slasher, but it felt more like a psychological thriller with atmosphere and tension for most of its length. It ends in true horror fashion, though. It's a twisted, memorable ending that's reminiscent of a later horror film that no doubt ripped it off. That and a surprising narrative turn 20 minutes earlier really elevated the film for me because I wasn't expecting either. It may be tame by modern standards, but it feels like it was ahead of its time for the 1960s.

---

Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) - 6/10

A vacationing British couple takes a boat to a secluded Spanish island and finds that the town on it is overrun by a mob of bloodthirsty... tweens. I wonder if Stephen King saw this and was inspired by it because it might as well have been called "Children of the Coral." It's another Spanish film in English by the writer/director of The House That Screamed. The Mediterranean setting is beautiful and contrasts with the eeriness of the seemingly deserted coastal village. There's good atmosphere, mounting dread and an interesting moral dilemma: could you kill a child to defend yourself? A few things did bother me a little, though. For one, the husband repeatedly leaves his pregnant wife alone even after he's discovered dead bodies and is slow to realize that they should probably leave the island. He and even she got to be little irritating as the film went along. There are also a few moments when characters are loud when they should be quiet and vice versa. Such things took me out of it a little, but weren't enough to ruin it. Overall, I found the film engaging, creepy and better than I expected from one that I'd never heard of before.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I too finally watched a few horror films... with no success - zero, nada, rien pantoute.

The Black Phone (Derrickson, 2021) – I had never seen this and for some reason thought it was considered an effective scary flick. It's not. The best thing is the scene where the father punishes his daughter, later echoed in the boogeyman waiting upstairs for her brother to misbehave. There was something there that could have been interesting (the phone worked when the abductor was a kid, he used to be a victim of his own father, etc.), but I think the phone as a connection to the other victims was just a lazy idea. 3/10

The Dark Half (Romero, 1993) – Hadn't seen it since its original theater run. I know I read the book, I don't remember, but I can just hope it was better. It's clumsy (there's one scene with a guy trying to run away from the killer and falling in the hallway that is just some of the worst acting ever put on film – not that the rest of the cast is doing really any better), it's dumb (I'm sure there was an interesting story to tell about the Richard Bachman pen name, but that was not it – it's a film about writing and writers that would have really needed a complete rewrite), and the second half is so boring... The Romero and King pairing ends up very disappointing. 2/10

Lalupa mannara (The Legend of the Wolf Woman or Werewolf Woman, Di Silvestro, 1976) – This one is harder to rate. On one hand, it's an absolutely ridiculous amateurish sexploitation. The opening sequence with the “werewolf” (really a unibrow and a hairy nose), the repeated exposition for the spectators (how many times do we need to be told that she looks exactly like her werewolf ancestor?), the pseudo-science sexual garbage, and the main character's weird libido, all scream “so bad it's good”. On the other hand, it was made one year prior to Romero's Martin which to me is a no-budget masterpiece (nothing to do with the Romero film just above), and it weirdly has some of the same ideas. It clearly was the most fun of these three films, but it's still a disaster and I can't go higher than 2/10.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

The new Salem's Lot was a disappointment. They cut out all the character and mood building from the novel and just jumped from big moment to big moment like a book report. Someone needs to do this adaption right and make a true miniseries with 5+ episodes to properly tell the story. Other shows have shown audiences will love a slow burn series that does great world building (see season 1 of Stranger Things)