A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

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The Girl on a Broomstick (1972)

This is like a 70s Czech version of Wizards of Waverly Place and was just the kind of fun I needed on this sucky day.

Student witch Saxana is given 300 years' detention due to her poor grades, so she escapes to the world of normies where she causes untold chaos with her spells. (Like turning people into bunnies). Utterly charming.

Currently on Criterion Channel

Mothra is kinda the most lovable kaiju in my mind.

Back to the All the Haunts box set tonight.


First up was Lake of the Dead (1958) which is a very solid ghost story/mystery about a group of friends headed to a cabin for vacation when a missing brother and the ghastly story of the former owner start to make things unravel. The interplay of the characters and their differing takes on the reality of the supernatural are the real draw here. There is some nice tension raised and things largely come together in a satisfactory way.



Next up is Tilbury (1987) a very weird little film, it lays out the folklore immediately which kind of undercuts a lot of what follows in regards to any mystery. While there is some amusing comedy, tragedy, farcial takes on the military and dream stuff going on it's kind of undercut for me in that I never really felt like the characters where fleshed out enough to make any of it connect, the film clocks in at a brisk 57 minutes and could have really used some time to explore it's primary characters more. I didn't really care for it but if you like Folk horror it's such a quick watch that checking it out can't hurt.

I was somewhat underwhelmed by Lake of the Dead.

I watched Strange Darling this morning (woo! snow day!). I quite enjoyed it.

I do wish that the director had resisted a certain (vague SPOILERS) , but nonetheless I enjoyed the ride and the overall unpredictability of it.

Like Takoma, I was underwhelmed by Lake Of The Dead. Perhaps its endurance to reach my eyes 60 years after its creation raised my expectations too much (not that I would call them "high") but I think I would amend your "satisfactory" take to either "merely satisfactory" or even "slightly unsatisfying".

Shit, now I have to re-watch it because we definitely all missed that in the theater.

I'll put it in spoilers in case you want to try and spot it for yourself, but after

I was tipped off by the…



Still among my favorites of the year though

Also agree it was one of my favorite films of the year, hell honestly thought it might be my favorite until I saw Nosferatu.

Pretty much exactly the same here.

Yall are killin' me with the spoiler text. Guess I'll have to spend some money and rent this thing. Tired of waiting for it to show up on one of my subscriptions.

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I got it on DVD from my library.

I liked it well enough and I appreciate the attempt to do something different with some of the tropes we see a lot in horror. I'm not sure it totally works, but I appreciate the effort.

Huh. Wow,

Cap, don't read the spoiler text but watch the movie but also don't go in looking for whatever we're spoiler-texting, I would say, just go in to watch a good movie. Because it's just a good movie.

Would you care to expand upon this in spoiler-text?

Yes, but not right now. I've watched two movies in the last week that were trying to do things that involve that just don't seem to work for me on a fundamental level and I need to take some time to tease out the specifics for myself, because they both have generally really good word of mouth and overall reception.

I do feel comfortable saying that (SPOILERS for Strange Darling) totally fails the sniff test for me.

And I think that what I struggled with would/could have worked with a different vibe/reality to the film, but as is it held me back from fully enjoying the ride.

Saw me some Nosferatu this afternoon.
Not bad.

I'm cross-posting my initial thoughts here from the seemingly-defunct Nosferatu thread.

Well, I thought it was very good.
It started out giving me the vibe that it was going to be well-made but too conventional. Once we get to the village that starts to change and during Thomas' time in the castle Eggers really flipped it on me and I was sucked in enough that I didn't even wanna go to the bathroom for fear of missing something cool (which I eventually did and missed the scene I'd been waiting for the whole movie). The way he used cinematography and edits to make me feel like reality was bent toward Orlok's will in and around the castle and that I was trapped in the castle myself was pretty masterful.
I thought Skaarsgard and Eggars did an excellent job with The Count. I didn't feel like I was gonna buy into him (particularly with a mustache even though that's how he's described in the book) and by the end I was thinking that they had created a great villain.
I really enjoyed how dark and bleak they made the film. Eggars pulls no punches here really (though also doesn't try to throw too many haymakers) in the sense of how much damage The Count can and will do and the way that what Orlok really seems to bring is ruin.
If the film stubs its toe at all, in my opinion that would be Lily Rose-Depp. I haven't seen her before and a third of the way through the movie she had become an actual distraction to me. By that point all I could think was "Nepo Baby". And I'm usually not the police about that. But I thought at times that the other actors must have been cringing inside when they had scenes with her. It seemed to improve a bit by the end and I at least wasn't distracted by it but early on, sheesh.
Overall I don't think I can go lower than 4 popcorns or stars or whatever for it but I'm not sure if it gets more or not and how much.