Sarah Hates Your Movie

A mostly formulaic ghost story, Kill, Baby… Kill! looks...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:04:48 -0400

A mostly formulaic ghost story, Kill, Baby… Kill! looks awesome, because it’s Bava, and the last twenty minutes are pretty great. It’s just a shame that it’s such a straightforward and, whisper it, kind of boring story.

It’s a little too long and a little too illogical in...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:02:54 -0400

It’s a little too long and a little too illogical in places, but Bette Davis’s performance is amazing.

Everyone says this movie is brilliant. I expected to love it. I...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:01:05 -0400

Everyone says this movie is brilliant. I expected to love it.

I thought it was crap.

Rubbish.

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:59:50 -0400

Rubbish.

Still love this movie, no matter how many times I watch it.

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:58:53 -0400

Still love this movie, no matter how many times I watch it.

Isle of the Dead is a crazed mashup of every other Val Lewton...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:57:37 -0400

Isle of the Dead is a crazed mashup of every other Val Lewton movie: there’s an aging authoritarian who’s slowly losing his grip on reality; a cataleptic terrified of being buried alive; a young woman plagued by the fear that she’s secretly an evil supernatural monster; a naive young man and a creepy old woman… and a set of circumstances which may or may not be supernatural that bring them all together and cause half a dozen deaths.

It’s nice to look at, and Karloff is great, but there’s a little too much going on for its meagre 72 minute runtime so it ends up feeling a little rushed and garbled.

A scheming wannabe-starlet worms herself into the life of a...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:55:09 -0400

A scheming wannabe-starlet worms herself into the life of a fading star and steals her limelight… only for the pattern to begin all over again once she’s made it. It’s overlong but ace.

Following the events of Cat People, Oliver and Alice get married...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 12:25:00 -0400

Following the events of Cat People, Oliver and Alice get married and have a child. But Amy is a weird kid: a dreamer who can’t make real friends and has to make do with an aging theatre actress and an imaginary woman who may or may not be Irena’s ghost.

Throw in the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, a troubled mother-daughter relationship (where the daughter is the anonymous cat woman from the first film), a wishing ring, and an unhelpful servant (Sir Lancelot, who doesn’t sing anywhere near enough in this movie) and you’ve got… a total mess.

It feels like there are at least two different films jumbled up in here. And there are no cats. It makes no sense. Disappointing.

Donald Fettes is a talented young medical student under the...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 12:23:10 -0400

Donald Fettes is a talented young medical student under the tutelage of Dr MacFarlane. When a mother brings her disabled young daughter to MacFarlane in hope of a cure, Fettes wants to help, but in the course of trying to persuade the great doctor to do the operation, he gets drawn into MacFarlane’s body snatching scheme. And when security at the graveyards gets beefed up, they need to resort to more drastic measures to obtain the bodies they need…

The Body Snatcher is the last film to star both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and really, it’s Karloff’s film. As the rat-like Cabman Grey, he gets to be truly evil, blackmailing and murdering and singing as he goes. It’s a great performance, and a truly creepy film.

Tom Merriam is about to embark on his first voyage as a...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 07:54:43 -0400

Tom Merriam is about to embark on his first voyage as a ship’s third officer when a blind beggar warns him off. The Altair is cursed, he says. Nothing but bad luck awaits. Tom shrugs it off and boards the ship and at first, everything seems great: the captain welcomes him warmly, and tells him they’re going to be great friends. But soon Tom notices that something odd is going on. People are dying, and the captain is a little too obsessed with the idea of authority…

It’s not really a horror film, and it’s a little clunky with its metaphors, but The Ghost Ship is atmospheric and, like every other Val Lewton-produced film, gorgeously shot with wonderful shadows everywhere.

Eat your heart out, Seth Grahame-Smith. Val Lewton and Jacques...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 06:17:00 -0400

Eat your heart out, Seth Grahame-Smith. Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur were busy mashing up Regency literature with supernatural monsters long before you were born, and with much more worthwhile results.

I Walked With A Zombie borrows from a section of Jane Eyre, transplanting the action to the Caribbean and throwing in voodoo zombies. Betsy Connell is a Canadian nurse who’s hired to care for Jessica Holland, a “mental case” living out on a sugar plantation on the island of St Sebastian. When she arrives, Betsy meets and is instantly smitten with Paul Holland, and sets about trying to restore his wife’s mind - first through medicine, and then through black magic. Cue some amazing creepy nighttime sequences, all shadows and menace and intrigue.

Val Lewton was pretty much a genius. This movie is perfect. Fuck Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Watch this instead.

Despite the (wonderfully) lurid poster’s suggestion that...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 06:08:59 -0400

Despite the (wonderfully) lurid poster’s suggestion that there’s some half-man half-leopard creature in this, there… isn’t. Instead, there’s a leopard, and a man. The “mystery” part of this murder mystery is sadly lacking; it’s obviously almost immediately who the baddie is. There are some wonderful sequences in this film, some brilliant images, and excellent use of shadows, but the plot is too clumsy, the dialogue too ridiculous, for it to come anywhere close to the genius of something like Cat People. Disappointing.

Surprisingly dull and by the numbers zombie movie.

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 06:05:30 -0400

Surprisingly dull and by the numbers zombie movie.

Tyler Perry plays Wesley Deeds in Good Deeds, a film written,...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:58:54 -0400

Tyler Perry plays Wesley Deeds in Good Deeds, a film written, produced, and directed by Tyler Perry. Deeds is a rich man with an apparently perfect life, but when he meets a homeless single mother he realises that everything is a sham and he really wants to travel the world and do, um, good deeds. It’s a bit too simplistic, a bit too saccharine, and the ending is totally unbelievable. But it passes the time.

A year after Dracula, Lugosi starred as Murder Legendre, an evil...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:56:36 -0400

A year after Dracula, Lugosi starred as Murder Legendre, an evil voodoo master, in one of the first ever zombie movies. The zombies here aren’t flesh-eating ghouls but obedient slaves, working tirelessly in Legendre’s mill. Even when one of them tumbles into a grinder, work doesn’t stop. When the plantation owner goes to Legendre for help winning the heart of the girl he loves, he’s handed a dose of the zombie potion – and now the only way to break Legendre’s spell over the innocent girl is to kill him. Lugosi is suitably menacing, and the drone-like zombies are properly eerie.

(Part of my feature on 50 genuinely creepy horror movies over at Den of Geek.)

A child murderer is stalking the streets of Berlin and, as the...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:54:15 -0400

A child murderer is stalking the streets of Berlin and, as the police seem unable to catch him, tensions run high. In an attempt to stop the nightly police raids, the town’s criminals decide to catch the killer themselves, and a frantic chase begins. Though there’s no actual onscreen violence, Peter Lorre is amazingly creepy as the whistling killer, and there’s a sense of corruption pervading the whole film. (Since both Lorre and Fritz Lang, the director, fled the country in fear of the Nazis soon after the film was made, it’s tempting to speculate on what M might be saying about Germany at the time, which only makes it all the creepier.)

(Part of my feature on 50 genuinely creepy horror movies over at Den of Geek.)

Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula. With his eerie eyes and...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:49:50 -0400

Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula. With his eerie eyes and wonderful accent, he’s brilliantly threatening as the charming Count, but despite his iconic performance here, he’s not the creepiest thing about this film. Nope, that honour goes to Dwight Frye’s portrayal of Renfield, the lunatic spider-eater under Dracula’s control. He’s amazing, all awkward body language and hysterical laughter. Lugosi’s oddly cadenced speech has been emulated and parodied a zillion times, which takes away some of its power; Frye’s performance, on the other hand, is just downright disturbing.

(Part of my feature on 50 genuinely creepy horror movies over at Den of Geek.)

A dead woman lying on an autopsy slab recounts the events that...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:42:31 -0400

A dead woman lying on an autopsy slab recounts the events that led to her death. Including several conversations she wasn’t party to. Because this is nonsense. (Especially because the idea is that they’re doing an autopsy to find her cause of death. Which is that she was scared to death. Well, duh.) Lugosi is wasted in this nonsense.

In a spooky old inn, Allan Grey is visited in the night by an...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:37:30 -0400

In a spooky old inn, Allan Grey is visited in the night by an old man who leaves him a gift-wrapped book, with instructions to open it only on the occasion of the man’s death. Which turns out to be soon. The book explains that the town is plagued by vampires – and, helpfully, gives instructions on how to kill them. Vampyr is an early sound film, so while there is some sound and a little dialogue, most of the silent film conventions are still in place. It has a fairly straightforward,Dracula-esque story, but the plot’s not the point. It’s a deliberately strange film, full of disembodied dancing shadows and weird dream sequences; there’s something almost otherworldly about it.

(Part of my feature on 50 genuinely creepy horror movies over at Den of Geek.)

Guy Carell is a haunted man. As a child he thought he heard his...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:34:56 -0400

Guy Carell is a haunted man. As a child he thought he heard his father clawing at the inside of his tomb, and as such he’s become terrified at the idea of being buried alive. His fear becomes all encompassing, and he even goes so far as to build a tomb with various escape routes built in. Everyone else in his life thinks he’s crazy, and they try to reassure him… but he’s still afraid.

And with good reason, because everyone else in his life is A COMPLETE FUCKING MORON. This film is a little too daft to be effective, though there are some creepy ideas in there.