The Month of Horror PART IV: dsheinem vs. noiseredux

[Luke]

Mt wife is bringing me Scary Stories to tell in the Dark from our local library this afternoon. Can't wait to revisit/re-read those classics.

On my netflix queue:

TEEN WITCH
THE WORST WITCH

[Ack]

@Ack: So you're expecting every Itialian director to be severely overrated?

But seriously, Opera is one of the finest films to come out of Italy. Susperia is good. Recently Jennifer was pretty good. A handful of others are alright. But for the most part (and I've seen most of his work), I think that Argento is a director who should have just been a cinematographer. He's got a great eye for color, and vision for the way the camera should move. But a lot of the films themselves I'd be fine never seeing again. And the bulk of his output from the last decade is near terrible (Do You Like Hitchcock, The Card Player, etc).

RE: The Beyond... man that is a great movie, though.

I've managed to avoid his more recent stuff, but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage? Phenomenon? Deep Red? Argento may be overrated, but he's still good.

[noiseredux]

I've managed to avoid his more recent stuff, but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage? Phenomenon? Deep Red? Argento may be overrated, but he's still good.

I said "a handful of others," didn't I?

Deep Red is fantastic. Bird is very good. Phenomenon... is not technically good in my opinion. But it is a lot of fun and I do enjoy it.

But I'd say his bad movies outweigh his good ones. I mean... did you ever see his Phantom Of The Opera? Oh man. Just awful.

I think of Argento the same way as I think of Tobe Hooper. He gets a status as this horror master, but it's for a small portion of his filmography. Like I said, I adore Opera. And similarly Texas Chainsaw is one of the most stunning films of the genre in the 70's. But look at, well, pretty much everything else that Hooper made. It almost feels like TCM came out so good by accident despite who's hands it was in.

[Ack]

I've managed to avoid his more recent stuff, but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage? Phenomenon? Deep Red? Argento may be overrated, but he's still good.

I said "a handful of others," didn't I?

Deep Red is fantastic. Bird is very good. Phenomenon... is not technically good in my opinion. But it is a lot of fun and I do enjoy it.

But I'd say his bad movies outweigh his good ones. I mean... did you ever see his Phantom Of The Opera? Oh man. Just awful.

I think of Argento the same way as I think of Tobe Hooper. He gets a status as this horror master, but it's for a small portion of his filmography. Like I said, I adore Opera. And similarly Texas Chainsaw is one of the most stunning films of the genre in the 70's. But look at, well, pretty much everything else that Hooper made. It almost feels like TCM came out so good by accident despite who's hands it was in.

Haha, no, but then I've stopped watching film versions of Phantom of the Opera because I never enjoyed them as much as the 1925 version.

And while I enjoyed Poltergeist, I never really thought of Tobe Hooper as a "master" of anything. He made one great film and a couple of good ones. Argento made a series of great and good films for the first two decades of his directing career. There were missteps, but he gave us a solid 20 years of work.

[noiseredux]

in fairness, I hardly count Poultergeist as a Hooper film. But he had a lot of terrible stuff after TCM like Spontaneous Combustion, Eaten Alive, Funhouse, and so on. His recent-ish remake of The Driller Killer was pretty pointless, so I can only assume that any I've missed in between haven't been worth seeking out.

Argento, again, I'm not saying he's a bad director. But I am saying he's overrated. I feel like the ratio is I don't know, 1:4 or 1:5 when we're talking "hits" vs. "misses" in his career. So while a long career means he's gathered a bunch of hits, it also means that there's a vastly greater pile of misses in there.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Mt wife is bringing me Scary Stories to tell in the Dark from our local library this afternoon. Can't wait to revisit/re-read those classics.

Yes! Amazing books - I have all three here, I'll have to bust them out.

Can you believe they reprinted them with different (crappier) artwork? What a travesty. The art is what made them so brilliant in the first place.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Argento, again, I'm not saying he's a bad director. But I am saying he's overrated. I feel like the ratio is I don't know, 1:4 or 1:5 when we're talking "hits" vs. "misses" in his career. So while a long career means he's gathered a bunch of hits, it also means that there's a vastly greater pile of misses in there.

I adore Suspiria, but I think we can all agree that he is no Mario Bava.

Mt wife is bringing me Scary Stories to tell in the Dark from our local library this afternoon. Can't wait to revisit/re-read those classics.

Yes! Amazing books - I have all three here, I'll have to bust them out.

Can you believe they reprinted them with different (crappier) artwork? What a travesty. The art is what made them so brilliant in the first place.

I actually have these in a hard cover compilation...with the original artwork...which is insanely creepy. I understand why the publisher changed it, but I am disappointed that it did so.

EDIT: Here is the cover of the treasury:

Man...that picture still scares me...

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah the Haunted House picture is one of the best/worst of the series.

I've always been quite partial to this illustration.

I have all three books in a box set. Got it at Border's just before the ones with the original illustrations went out of print. I had them as a kid too, but who knows where those copies went...

[Luke]

^YES!

My wife once dressed as The Girl With the Green Ribbon, and although not many people "got it" those who did loved it. Plus it was sexy but not a tad slutty.

So help me out guys. I'm putting together a Halloween Melody to play on the piano for a party. So far I have Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Addam's Family theme, and the Munster's theme.

Monster Mash sounds crappy on the piano and isn't easily recognized, and a monkey could play the theme to the movie HALLOWEEN.

Any ideas of classic Halloween songs that are easily recognizable or ones you can sing along with?

[noiseredux]

So help me out guys. I'm putting together a Halloween Melody

Medley.

Any ideas of classic Halloween songs that are easily recognizable

How about the X-Files theme?

or ones you can sing along to?

Um... "Nightmare On My Street"?

Ooh! "Mind Playin' Tricks On Me" !!!