My Favorite Movies

Starts off quite slowly, almost boring for a while ... then the shocks start.
What the f**k is in the bag?
How come at a murder scene they found remains of 2 dismembered bodies, but when they put them back together they had an extra 2 fingers, an ear and a tongue ...?
I've uploaded the trailer.

Totally hatstand! OTT violence, sick humour and oddness abound: see a man suspended by hooks through his back have hot oil poured over him, see a cut-off face slide down a wall - BONKERS!

Killer kids & witchcraft - what more do you want?. Mario Bava's beautifully shot shocker is so carefully crafted you won't want to miss a single shot.

Dario Argento's breakthrough film was banned in the UK as a 'video nasty'. It's actually a beautiful and very clever film about a dance student who uncovers a coven of witches, led by one of the Three Mothers (based on Thomas De Quincey's "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow"), Mater Suspiriorum - Our Lady of Sighs. Argento studied under Mario Bava, and here it really shows as he pulls out all the stops - and colours!

My favourite Argento film until I saw Profondo Rosso. A serial killer seems to be stalking author Peter Neal on his tour of Italy, and killing off those around him. He figures out who the killer is - or does he?
Superb cast (Daria Nicolodi & John Saxon) and my favourite murder scene in ANY film (clue: arm+axe+window+ monochrome scene splashed with scarlet)

My all time favourite film of any genre. Late, great David Hemmings witnesses the murder of a neighbour through her window. He gets into her flat, but is too late. When police question him, he feels sure that one of the many paintings in the place has been moved or stolen. Not realising that the killer is stalking him, he begins to investigate, and those connected with the case begin to die in terrible ways.
Talk about convoluted plot - this really keeps you guessing, and has fab music and architecture to boot - and Daria Nicolodi's in it!

One of Miyazaki's best. A simple plot, charming characters and beautiful settings. The animation and artwork are stunning. I've uploaded the trailer. this is a brilliant tale for for anyone of any age :)

I've uploaded the trailer to this. Imagine working in a huge dark building at night, on your own. Every couple of hours you do your rounds, which includes the mortuary. You have to walk past all the sheeted bodies on slabs.
There's a killer on the loose who's targeting prostitutes, and all there remains are at the mortuary.
One night the alarm goes off, and when you muster up the courage to go and look, one of the bodies is gone. There are bloody footprints leading around the corner, and there is the body, propped up against the wall.
Now what do you do?

Commissioned to restore a church fresco in an isolated village, Stefano finds the locals less than friendly, and they seem to regard the paintings with some terror.
He begins to piece together the history of the artist, and discovers that the graphic images of tortured young men depicted on the walls were not conjured up purely from the imagination.
Start off rather slowly, but builds tension nicely as it goes, leading to a striking denouement.

Lamberto (son of Mario) Bava's finest hour.
A very weird little film about a woman who keeps a memento of her dead lover in her flat. The (very cute) blind guy downstairs is in love with her but cannot figure out who she's smuggling in to make love to her; he never sees anyone coming or going (but he can here HER coming - if you understand me!)
The horrible ex-husband and creepy young daughter add nicely to the mix, wherein you end up not particularly liking any of the characters at all! Features a nifty little twist at the end.

Had I seen this in the 80s I would have had a heart attack. It features something very rarely used in films - telekinesis.
The killer makes dolls and mannequins move (always freaky), and knives etc fly about, and he wears masks - one of the creepiest of which is shown on the cover.
Not much of a plot, and some of the acting is awful, but I really enjoyed it.
The wife's shrine is hilarious, since the girls keep saying "ohh, wasn't she beautiful" about a mass-produced window dummy!
Entertaining in a trashy way

I have given grown men (2 in 1 viewing) nightmares by making them watch this (nyeh heh heh): Bruce Campbell in his icon-making debut.
Five teens(?) go to a deserted cabin in the woods, play a tape of demon-raising Sumerian and get possessed one by one, turning into veiny faced pop-eyed devils and torturing each other. Only chopping them up seems to stop them, until Ash (Campbell) is the only one left.
The pencil-in-the-ankle scene is the one that put this on the DPP's 'video nasties' list.
If you haven't seen it, you haven't lived!
Even my hubby loves this one!

Fabulous film! (Alison, you have my copy & I want it back!!) It's French, it's black & white, it's bloody tense!
A wife & mistress team up to bump off the awful husband. They dump his body - then it disappears, then shows up again somewhere else. Is he dead? Is someone else manipulating the women? Is it supernatural? - WTF is going on??!!
Acting, script, cinematography, direction - everything is top notch. Ignore the shitty remake with Sharon Stone (in the Simone Signoret role - Christ!) and grab this if you get the chance.
Clouzot was not known as the French Hitchcock for nothing.

Nice little thriller ... but not as good as was made out to be

Don't believe the hype: "Based on a true Story" my bum! Quite tense towards the end, but I've seen it all before. Save your cash and watch 'Antibodies' or 'The Vanishing/Spoorloos' instead

It's a pity this wasn't made before the advent of DVD, in that it purports to be taped over a rental video of a film called 'The Last Horror Movie'. You get the first couple of minutes of a naff horror film, then the 'taped over' bit begins.
A very difficult film to watch. Similar to 'Man Bites Dog', in that a bloke is following a serial killer around with a video camera, with direct-to-camera asides from the killer, explaining about technique, why he feels the need to do this, etc.
It's very realistic, and you kind of like the guy, who has a certain amount of charm, and there's even a deeply black comic element to some of it.
If you're sick of the elaborate set-ups and unrealistic plots of crap like the 'Saw' movies (stop asking me if I've seen them people - I saw the first one and HATED it!) get a load of this - you'll be checking the doors & windows are locked before you go to bed.
Oh, and it's English-made BTW which makes it closer to home for us Brits :)

************* That's how many stars I want to give this film. I've never been so tense as I was at the end of this - I was nearly falling off my chair!
Another very difficult to watch film - but my god is it worth it!
A serial killer is caught, but won't admit if he was responsible for the death of a young girl years earlier. He starts playing mind games with the investigator and everyone around him.
You never know which direction this is going to off in. You never know who to trust - was the killer responsible? What is happening to the investigator? Is he going to carry on where the killer left off? Is someone else involved?
Creepy, clever and ever so involving - the best modern thriller I've seen lately.

At last - one of MY kind of films. I just adore Guillermo Del Toro's Spanish films; Cronos, The Devil's Backbone and this make a fine threesome. They're unrelated except by the director's vision (Backbone's still my fave though!)

One of the most beautiful films ever made. An eerie and otherworldly tale of an all-girls school picnic to the titular landmark where, after falling asleep in the sun, they awaken to find three pupils and a teacher are missing.
The following attempts to find the girls transform the Rock into an almost supernatural entity.
Haunting, lyrical and quite breathtaking. It deserves ten stars.

Classic - though I prefer Blatty's own Exorcist III. Watch the two back-to-back (ignore the 2nd one - pooh) for the full-on experience

One of my favourites!!
Brilliant cast, fabulous script (despite the holes). You'll laogh, you'll cry. As Dolly Parton's character Truvey says "Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion"

I nearly died of fright the first time I saw this. If you like frights but not gore and violence - check this out!

Excellent: Tense, high energy, cleverly written ... Franke Potente at her best. If you haven't seen it - where have you been??

Support you local actor I say. Hugo Speer is from the town where I live. I don't know him but I know people who do. Great fun - haven't laughed so much in ages

CLASSIC! Anyone who hasn't seen this should get out and buy it - it's one of the funniest films ever!!

He hee! Great fun

I'd been wanting to see this for years (the original, not the 2007 US re-make), but never quite dared to buy it. Fortunately a friend lent it to me after reassuring me that it wasn't too nasty - he was wrong. It IS nasty, but not in a graphic way.
Similar in vein to 'Last House on the Left' , this is a film about emotional torment and torture.
Answering the door of her family's holiday home, a woman is asked by two excrutiatingly polite young men - dressed all in white, including gloves - if they could borrow some eggs for her neighbours, whom they are visiting. They leave with the eggs, then come back - they've dropped them, can they have some more? This goes on until there are no eggs left.
When they come back AGAIN the woman asks them to leave. They refuse. The husband comes in and does the same - they whack him with a golf club.
Thus begins the tale of a family of three trapped in their own home with these two - who proceed to play cat-and-mouse with the couple and their young son.
This will have you on the edge of your seat, and breathless when the whole thing is over.
Highly recommended.
Apparently the re-make - by the original director - is shot-for-shot, so watch that if you can't be doing with subtitles.

Possibly one of the most disturbing stories ever committed to celluloid. The ending will haunt you forever.

Sick of trite Hollywood glitz? Then watch this. Funny, scary, moving and hardhitting. Paddy Considine is God! Everyone should see this - this is how all films should be. The realism almost sears the eyeballs.

Classic creepiness. You'll identify strongly with poor Rosemary as her longed-for pregnancy makes her ill, and paranoid - that old couple that live next door, they're just eccentric, right? She soon finds out that things couldn't be worse. Excellent.

3 good short films, but the best (and most famous) is 'A Drop of Water', the moral of which is "don't steal from the dead". That face will give you nightmares

I adore this film, but many people hate it. It veers into the arthouse genre, which some people feel is pretentious.
It's so clever, a great script pulls you into the plot, whereby you identify with the characters, then uses cinematic devices (animation, slo-mo b&w) to slap you round the face & say "hey, it's just a movie". Stone's crowning achievement in my humble opinion.

Ostensibly a vampire tale, the heart of this is the touching relationship between an old man and his mute granddaughter who takes care of him after the Cronos Device changes his genetic makeup.