Season 4! And at the time of writing we’re on the day before my first anniversairy with youtube! These decriptions may end up thinning out a little bit from here on in, mainly due to the fact that when I started writing these overviews of the episodes there was a 10-11 month gap and I’d had plenty of time to re-evaluate my thoughts and feelings about each episode as they went by whereas I watched and recorded my review of house in late January/early February.
As a result its still fairly fresh in my mind, and this is only going to become more commonplace as things go along. Though “House” has been a bit of an interesting ride of highs and lows since my first viewing of it. In my mind I keep flip-flopping between thinking it was a good bit of fun and that I’d really look forward to watching the sequels, while at the exact same time a part of my brain thinks that it’s just a bit of a rubbish fluff and that I should probably put off watching any more of these for a while because I simply have much more interesting stuff I could be watching.
House isnt a perfect movie but since I watched it I think i’ve leaned more towards being interested in seeing more than I have had moments of wishing i’d never seen it. It reminded me a bit of an adult goosebumps. In the sense that it isnt exactly scary, but it is entertaining and has a spooky quality about it. It may come across to me a bit like a prototype of “The Burbs” but ultimately I guess its an enjoyable little movie in and of itself.
I really wasnt expecting much from “The Bogey man” when I first put it on. The Video Nasties craze of the 1980s was a very sporadic period in the UK with dozens of titles being caught up in the frothing fever of trying to “ban the filth” and this meant that a few titles that really shouldnt have been listed as “Nasties” somehow got sweapt up in the hoopla.
I dont subscribe to the belief that the 1984 video recordings act was in anyway a good thing, I think it heavily censored creativity and drove the interest in these movies into the hands of the underground market where prices ran rampant and quality control was non existent. even if I did accept the act in some capacity (Which I most definitely do not) the consistency was all over the place, with films like “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Maniac Cop” being perfect examples of movies that quite reasonably could justify this act to a degree (They’re both very hard watches that are purposefully designed to be uncomfortable and shocking) through to movies like “The Evil Dead” and “Zombie Flesh Eaters” which while pushing the envelope a bit, were hardly going to “Corrupt the youth”. Conservative drive and a Newspaper driven campaign, only spurred on by the Mary whitehouse brigade only led to further confusion and unwarrented restrictions.
Arguably the most famous being a recurring issue in which police officers would repeatedly seize copies of “The Littlest Whorehouse in Texas” which is a PG comedy movie and copies of “Apocalypse now” which were passed by the BBFC being seized because it sounded too much like a Cannibal movie…only spurring things on and causing a rise in panic, incidents like “The Hungerford massacre” or the “James Bulger” case were sensationalised in the tabloids as being indisputable proof that violent films were corrupting people. In these incidents Hungerfords massacre happened because the killer watched “Rambo 3” (There was no proof of this…The only evidence given was that he’d worn a bandana when he committed the killings), and in the latter “Childs Play 3” was put to blame (Despite the fact that again there was no proof of this and the only evidence was that the killers father had rented the movie, not watched it, and returned it 2 days later) it was this incident that led to one of the “Last hurrah” moments of the Video nasty movement when the Sun ran with the sensationalist front page title “For the sake of ALL our kids Burn your video nasties”
Today barring a few seconds of animal cruelty here and there almost all of the original banned video nasties have not only been released but have been released officially multiple times both in standard and High definition. Theres only one video nasty that remains thats still been denied a classification, that’s “Love Camp 7” but a majority have now been released uncut. And being able to see these films for what they are and realise that a majority of them were purely on the list because of histeria is both eye opening and distressing to me.
The Boogey man is the perfect example of this. This movie has 2 graphic moments in it pretty much, and quite honestly theres much much worse out there. This shouldnt have been on the video nasties list and yet both this and the movies sequel (Which im told is a total and utter raging toxic sludge of a movie) were on the banned list with litte to no justification.
And its a pretty okay movie to boot!, its no masterpiece but I was really genuinely surprised by just how high quality it was when compared with some of the shinola on the banned list. it made it to my “Shelf of interest” as a quirky and slightly unusual oddity. One I’d reccommend you look out for.
(The Posters misleading as well…there are windows, women and shadowy figures in the movie…but not necessarily all at once)
This is quite easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. In fact had I not Let’s ruin dads day this would probably have been THE worst film I’ve ever seen. As it stands it occupies a very tight 3rd place position with the movie “Bikini Model Accademy”.
The biggest problem with this one is that it’s just so dull. It literally looks and feels like a teen comedy movie thats bookended by a horror movie. and the film seemingly forgets that it’s a horror movie about 10 minutes in. I’ve never seen such a blatant disregard for an audience before. This films going to tell the narrative it wants to tell and to hell with anyone who thinks that a film should be interesting or actually have a point.
I rag on this film throughout my review so I’ll save you effectively re-reading my thoughts on this one but since I made this review I can certainly say that my opinion on this one hasnt changed a bit. I still recall it being as dull, boring and a dredge of a watch as it most likely was when I first watched it.
The Mill creek Multipack DVD sets seem like relatively good value for money on paper (I paid £5 for 50 films which included this movie) but unless (Like me) your using these sets for your own personal amusement or for the benefit of a review/analysis series you do end up with a hell of a lot of duds. There are a few gems thrown into the mix (Gammera and Night of the living dead being good examples of this) but on the whole these sets are very spotty affairs.
I didnt know what to expect when watching this movie, I’d not seen or heard anything about it before watching it, and it surprised me in a terrifically bad way. only emphisisng that was when I finally went on IMDB and wikipedia to find terrible promotional material and somehow even worse prints of this movie than the one included on my set (which was pretty ropey to begin with) A disaster of a film that caught me completely off guard. watch it at your peril!
(The film poster in this thumbnail is literally the best thing about this movie…)
This entire review came about entirely by chance and I was very grateful for it. I love old TV ad’s not even english adverts strictly, US ones were my thing for the longest time. theres a youtube channel called “80’scommercialvault” and from about 2011 to 2017 I’d spend most evenings or lunch breaks just cycling through dozens of there videos, having them run in the background or just playing for laughs really…its amazing to see how a different country was handling things from a commercial perspective in the 80’s and 90’s.
It was on this channel that I first saw a trailer for “Fade to Black” and until that point i’d never heard of this film. it took nearly 5 years for me to finally get round to watching it but I’ll tell you this. I didnt half enjoy it!
The films effectively “Scream” before “Scream” was “Scream” its well written, eloquent and quite well put together…apart from 1 or 2 overly padded shots and a random masturbation scene this movies got a very broad and impressive knowlege about it.
Now it’s by no means a perfect movie. but it’s a fun little film that im very glad I’d had the privilage of landing upon. While I dont tend to watch US ad’s as often as I used to (It’s all about 80’s and 90’s Itallian Adverts these days Home boy!) Its one of the few gems I’ve found during my trecks through the swamps of bad movies. it’s most definately shelf worthy 🙂
(His Dracula sequence is my personal favourite of this movie…though I also liked his “White heat” finale)
This ones going to be a short one sadly, just simply because I dont have a whole lot to say about this one. it’s a bad movie. It’s not terrible., it’s competent. but it’s trying harder than it needs to to impress the audience with a “Look how clever I am” attitude. And it completely fails to capitalise on exactly why Giallo cinema is as enjoyable as it can be when in the right hands.
Giallo is all about suspense, all about tension. its about creating the illusion of peril on an almost constant basis. Movies like “Deep Red” or “Tenebre” thrive on being able to create an almost “Slow cooker” esq build of terror and thrills (And it looks damn fine while doing it) that reward the audience in spades. I dont often get surprised by the reveal in Giallo movies. But I appreciate the journey all the same.
Francesca by contrast isnt a slow building, bubbling pot of intreague. it’s a fairly tepid affair that im sure comes from a place of love to the genre but just comes across as a poor photocopy.
It’s a type of film that I catagorize as “Nice video, Shame about the song” (Made famous by the cast of “Not the nine oclock news”) its the idea that the film looks pretty (Which this one sort of does) but that it says nothing, has a poor script or is just flat out badly written. Francesca may have some fantastic advertising designs and some nice cine but its not worth a damn if the plots rubbish to begin with.
I also feel the need to somewhat apologise for this review as theres a glaring error towards the end where I forgot to drop the backing track at a couple of places and I also forgot to add in the “Where to skip to” point in order to avoid spoilers. I only noticed this well after the fact and short of re-uploading and losing all the views and comments associated with the video there wasnt a lot that could have been done. So my sincerest apologies and I hope it doesnt detrimentally effect your viewing experience.
(The “Twist” at the end of this film had me reaching for the Tylonol…bloody rubbish!)
This episode was uploaded “Christmas week” meaning it landed literally days before Christmas day itself. Its quite normal at this time that youtube enters a period of low traffic. Logically you’d think the opposite would be the case as everyone is cooked up at home for the holidays (Which havent even begun at this point) you’d think everyone would be clambouring for distraction on sites like youtube. But you’d be wrong.
Rather surprisingly (And it was a bit of a shock to me) the week christmas happens on and the subsiquent 2 weeks after it are some of youtubes quietest times of the year. I have to assume this is because people are out at parties, enjoying time with the family or just plain too busy to watch stuff. But it kind of caught me off guard and was a bit of a learning experience.
“Christmas evil” would mark the end of my 2nd season. And I really wanted to send the year off with a bang. I’d ummed and ahhd about what movie would be the best one to act as a send off to 2017 and to round my 2nd season off, and I settled with “Christmas Evil” because quite by chance I stumbled on it at random and it actually seriously impressed me at how deep and unusual it was for what is effectively a christmas themed slasher film at it’s heart.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the film writing the script for it was an absolute joy. and at the time I thought it was one of my best pieces (As I work to a schedule i’d planned and edited this episode in late october/early november time ready for it to go live on the 22nd of December) I scheduled an upload for it as I was going to be away from my house from the 22nd to the 24th and went out to spend the run up to christmas with my partners inlaws.
And then…Nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing. The video went live on the 22nd of December and it wasnt until the 26th that it gained it’s first “view” and that was me just checking the video to make sure there wasnt some glaring issue that was preventing it being played…It currently stands as my least watched video review on my channel as of May 2018 it has a grand total of 9 view (3 of which were me as a result of adding end screens and info cards and again a few months later to add translations)
I genuinely dont know why this video just failed immaculately out of the gate but there could be any number of reasons why it failed to pick up. I’ve read in some places that if your video doesnt make 20% of the number of subscribers you have in views within the first 24 hours that it can be dumped by youtubes SEO Algorithm. I’ve also read that youtubes SEO is less favourable to content with trigger words in the titles and descriptions (Words like “Evil” are trigger words) equally it could have been just left too late. uploading a christmas video on the 22nd of December is leaving things a bit to the last minute and it could legitimately be the case that people were just fed up of anything christmassy by that pont.
In either case i’ve thrown everything I can at this video and nothings seemed to have done the trick. I’ve changed the tags, I’ve edited the description, I’ve shared it and shared it and shared it, I’ve tweaked the titles (And tried them in all caps and without caps) I’ve changed the thumbnail…literally short of re-uploading it I’ve done everything I possibly can with it and nothing has changed its status.
It’s “Delisted” it didnt meet its expected targets and because it’s been shown to be an underperformer youtube have effectively taken it out of there search engine. go and try to find it in a youtube search. you wont be able to. it’s only with overly specific search terms like “Christmas evil TYTD Reviews” or “Christmas evil Red triangle reviews tytd” that anything will pop up…even “Christmas evil TYTD” brings nothing up.
Im not angry about this mind; im just a bit sad about it more than anything (as I imagine many people would be if they put a week of evenings into assembling an edit only for automation to decide its not relevent within 24 hours) Im more upset that the film itself is as underrated and relatively unknown as it is rather than the fact people cant hear me tell them why they should go and see it.
At some point in the future I’ll probably cut my losses and re-upload this one wholesale just to see if it helps it get re-listed. but in the mean time here it is the last TYTD Reviews/Red Triangle episode of 2017…and things only seemed to pick up from here on in.
(I’ll let the review do the talking about this underrated classic. but I seriously cant wait for a good UK Bluray of this one)
I don’t really know what went on in my mind when I considered picking this one up. I was hesitant, I remember that much. But with “Arrow Video” being synonymous with quality to me I felt assured that however “Nekromantik” panned out, there would at least be some assurance that what I was buying would have some level of cult or artistic merit
What I wasn’t expecting was just how near the knuckle “Nekromantik” is at times. Since watching this film I’ve since seen the likes of movies like “Cannibal Holocaust” and this movies sequel “Nekromantik 2” so my expectations are a little better managed. Though this film is still pretty high up there.
Since this video was uploaded one of the things that’s really stuck in my mind when reading other reviews of this movie (as I try to avoid reading other people’s reviews until mines been done as I don’t want to feel like I’m subcociously “lifting” other people’s thoughts) is just how few people pick up on the John waters influences in this film. Seriously when you realise that the director of this film was heavily inspired by the likes of movies like “Pink flamingos” and “Female trouble” then the campy undertones of this production really come out in a wonderful flourish.
Is this an extreme movie? Well; Arrow saw it fit to release this film both as a fully restored and a “nasty” era inspired grindhouse cut…So Id say there are excessive elements to this film. But “Nekromantik” to me is one of those special types of films that has somehow managed to perfectly straddle the lines between “cult shock value horror” “extreme border pornographic content” and “art house sensibilities” and I love this movie for that…
As mentioned, I’ve since watched the sequel to this and it’s alright…in some ways it’s a bit harsher than this film in others it’s a bit sillier but I’ll give my full thoughts on this one another time. Though what I will say is I still prefer the original and if your looking for a new challenging watch; I highly recommend checking this one out.
(The main theme to this film was my ringtone for a while…I thought that anyone who recognised it wasn’t in a position to judge)
And so with this, My first set of Halloween specials came to a close. I really enjoyed making these episodes (So much so that I fully intend to do another season of themed episodes this October!) but I was always a bit concerned about what to do with this 5th slot. I was stuck as to whether I should Review this, “Zombie flesh eaters 2 (Zombi 3)”, “Land of the dead”, “Return of the living dead”, the 2004 remake of “Dawn of the dead” or that weird version of “Night of the living dead” that came out in the early/mid 90’s that was literally just the 60’s version of the film with additional 90’s shot on video scenes added into the mix.
In the end I settled on “Shaun” for a few reasons. I thought that it ended the series on a high note, I thought “Shaun” was a good reflection of the zombie movie genre in the modern day and it feels a bit like a continuation of the natural progression of these kinds of films within this series. We started with 2 different versions of “Night of the Living dead” and ended with a 21st century affectionate tribute to those zombie movies.
I also like to think that this is a good “Bookmark” point to end on. While it may not be for a couple of years I fully intend to revisit The Zombie Genre again at some point. And ending it here gives me a nice place to pick up from whenever I decide to reopen this series.
This period of time would also see me launch the first ever “TYTD Horrorthon” a 6 hour live stream of public domain horror films that amassed a grand total of 3 viewers for a few seconds at one point…and then 1 viewer pretty much for the remaining 4 hours and 55 minutes. Though doing this livestream was one of the first times I ever got positive feedback from someone for what I produced. A mother got in touch with me the day after the stream to thank me for giving her children something to watch before they went out trick or treating. and it really made my week. It only reinforced my personal belief that as long as one person comes away from it happy it makes it all worth it. I’ll be doing the stream again this year (Though as of yet I still havent decided what films will make the cut) and if your around and free at that time I’d love to have you on board! but I digress…
In and of itself “Shaun of the dead” is my favourite of the cornetto trilogy and further still is one of my favourite comedy movies of all time. The balance between the comedy and horror here is really quite fantastic and as I mention in my video its a veritable Who’s who of mid 2000’s UK comedians. If you’ve never seen it, even if you dont like horror movies, I highly recommend checking this one out.
Whenever I think about “Zombie Flesh eaters” My mind kind of unfurls a bit. This is because on face value and to any unsuspecting stumble-uponers; “Zombie Flesh Eaters” is just a run of the mill (If not somewhat extreme) zombie movie from the 70’s.
But as soon as I remember that this film is legally (In Italy at least) connected to Romeros original “Of the Dead” movies it feels like the needles jumped on the record that is my brain. Further still when I remember that “Zombie Flesh eaters” is in fact not only legally connected to the “Of the dead” films but it actually sets itself up as the Prequel to “Dawn of the Dead” my mind goes into a bit of a funny shake for a few minutes.
The Balls of the studio that commissioned this movie into existence. The sheer balls of the people who sat down and thought “Hey we have a half finished horror film in pre-production…how can we make this more “Dawn of the dead-eier” It astounds me it really does…
What astounds me even more is that in some regards this film actually surpasses Dawn from a technical standpoint. It may not have Goblin or Romero behind the camera. It may be lacking Tom Savini’s personal touch. But Fulci and his team really put there heart and soul into this movie and it looks great for it. I’d also argue that for a majority of this movie. that the special effects are better than some of the ones seen in Dawn. Purely (As I mention in my video review below) because the effects of the zombies look so much more gnarled and realistic here compared to “Dawns” Pasty Blue/Grey zombies…I can honestly say that in hindsight while I may not be this films biggest fan. I have to give it credit that it surpassed my expectations in terms of what I was expecting.
(Also; that Shark VS Zombie underwater sequence has to be one of the best sequences Fulci ever directed. Astounding work!)
For me, this is the turning point of my reviews. at least in my mind it is. Up until this review I’d found that I just wasnt quite hitting the right vibe I was looking for with these videos. I mean; Im very proud of what i’ve done up to this point. But from here on in I feel like I really finally got to grips with my video making process. I’d got the formula properly down. And while there would be 1 or 2 minor hiccups along the way; I feel that with this video I finally hit a good running stride for a while.
I still find it absolutely bizarre that around the time this video went live I only had about 12 subscribers (If memory served I would hit 13 just before Halloween itself) And thinking that this was only about 6 months ago it really astounds me to see how much I’ve grown since this video went up.
Arguably this isnt one of my most popular videos…it’s not one that gets a lot of attention. But I have a real soft spot for this one. I really enjoyed working on it and I was happy with how it turned out.
I find that the film itself is often terribly underrated by fans and critics alike. Though in recent years it has seen a significant reappraisal. I would argue that to me both this film and Dawn of the dead Jostle for the “Best zombie movie ever ever!”…It all depends on my mood. if Im wanting to watch something comic book-esq and maybe a little silly I’ll go with “Dawn” if however Im in the mood for something altogether more nihilistic then “Day” is definately my go to film. Everything about this movie is a totally bleak affair. it features some of Savini’s finest work and Cine and direction that arguably surpasses “Dawn” for me in almost every way.
Really this is an essential watch in terms of horror films. I can guarentee you probably wont see anything quite like this.
(The soundtrack is absolutely astounding. One of the all time greats!)
TYTD Reviews 