Busy watch day thanks to a steady flow of menial projects.
Kicked the morning off with a couple of Hooptober challenge selections before shifting into more watchlist items.
Student Bodies came out the year after
Airplane! and you can really feel it. (I say this having recently seen
Airplane! and
Airplane II for the first time — and while I wasn't head over heels for either, I preferred the second.) This send-up of slasher movies sics a killer with a breathing problem on a high school's horny populace. I have to give credit where it's due, because this movie likely had a huge influence on later parody movies like the satirical
Reefer Madness remake and the
Scary Movie series. The comedy leans heavily into cringe, and despite some zingers, it's just not really my thing.
Movie #6 of Hooptober 11. A slasher horror send-up that heavily rides the gaggy comedic coattails of Airplane! Mostly cringey, which is a hard sell for me, but there are some undeniably funny one-liners.
boxd.it
Night of the Cobra Woman is a Corman-produced movie about scientists studying snake venom who encounter a life-sucking snake woman. It plays things pretty straight, which is where it all kind of falls apart for me. So much of this feels like it wanted to be a dark misandrist comedy, and I wish it was.
Movie #7 of Hooptober 11. A bafflingly boring product with glimmers of wasted potential. This so wants to be a dark comedy, but I don't think the filmmaker(s) even realized that. Glad to see how other reviewers have filled in this film's unfortunate blanks on their own and found some enjoyment...
boxd.it
Party Line is a very 80's, sleazy little movie where people who call in to local adult group hotlines start turning up dead. The exploitative sleaze factor is hampered by much of the story being from the cops POV as they deal with petty drama alongside their investigation, which kinda puts a damper on the amusement factors. I enjoyed the babysitters' plot line though, and that was thankfully less exploitative than one might expect for the 80's.
The Ghost Station is a Korean horror movie written by Japanese filmmakers Koji Shiraishi (
Noroi: The Curse) and Hiroshi Takahashi (
Ringu,
Ju-On: Origins). It's adapted from a
short webtoon comic by Korean artist Horang, which serves as the opening scene of the movie. The rest of the movie is very much an ode to J-horror tropes. It's well done overall with empathetic characters and good production, together which help undercut some of the derivativeness. The station setting is used well, too.
Grave Torture is a 2012 short from Indonesian director Joko Anwar (
Impetigore,
Satan's Slaves remake). Watched this because I plan to dive into his brand new feature length rendition of this concept which landed on Netflix suddenly yesterday.
Closed the day out with
Legions, an Argentinian offering. An asylum-bound shaman battles for the faith and soul of his middle-age daughter to protect his bloodline's power from falling into demonic hands. I was expecting more consistent fantasy and supernaturalism given the poster style, but this is a stylistic and tonal hodgepodge. First half is more
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest patients overtaking the asylum all just to get the shaman in position to spend the second half reconnecting with his estranged daughter. Oddly quirky and slightly comedic. It needed to choose a direction and go full hog. I'd have prefered less shallow quirk and more sincere family drama with shaman battles.
