Search

Search only in certain items:

Terror Train (1980)
Terror Train (1980)
1980 | International, Horror, Mystery
7
6.4 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Train Setting (0 more)
Ok early Slasher film
One of the early 80's Slasher films featuring Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis just after she did @Prom Night (2008)
It's actually not that bad for a Slasher film of the time. A few years after pulling a prank on a medical student a bunch of students celebrate New Year's Eve with a costume party aboard a steam train. A lot of the time it doesn't feel like much of a Slasher film, the body count is quite low and the with not a lot of gore. The setting of the film is different and the train adds to the film quite well with the confined spaces. Also featuring David Copperfield. The plot is OK as the killer dons different costumes and there is a surprise as well. Overall a decent 80's slasher film worth checking out. Currently on Amazon prime.
  
The Canal (2014)
The Canal (2014)
2014 | Horror
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Contains spoilers, click to show
The Canal (2014)
Platform: Shudder
Genre: Horror
Country: Ireland (IFB)
Running Time: 92 minutes
Written and Directed by: Ivan Kavanagh
Release Date: April 18th 2014 (Tribeca Film Festival)

 Cast: Rupert Evans; Steve Oram; Antonia Campbell-Hughes; Hannah Hoekstra

 

After found footage, psychological horror films are a favorite of mine. I love how they pull you into the story, how up is down, left is right, I love to be enveloped by the plot. That tingly feeling I get on the back of my neck, the hairs standing up, I know then it has me in it’s clutches. I had that feeling with The Canal.

 

David (Rupert Evans) works as a film archivist, he is given a reel of footage from the police archives to watch and subsequently archive by his work colleague and close friend Claire (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), which turns out to be old crime scene footage of he and his wife’s current home. It was the scene of a shocking crime in 1902, the brutal murder of a cheating wife, their children and the nanny by the enraged father.


David suspects his wife Alice (Hannah Hoekstra) of having an affair, so he decides to follow her one night, only to unfortunately confirm his suspicions. He watches Alice while she is with her lover, and then picking up a hammer, he appears to mull over the idea of using it, only to quickly come to his senses. Walking away, he throws the hammer in to the canal on the way back to their marital home, where he has left their young son asleep in bed, alone in the house.

 
David, feeling sick from what he witnessed, as well as what he had considered doing about it, runs into the (quite dirty) canal-side public toilets. He hears something or someone coming in after him, and then see’s them, their feet, under the stall door, followed by fingers appearing to creep over the top of the door. He then proceeds to suffer from quite nightmarish visions that include the man, the husband, from the 1902 crime scene footage. He seems to be taunting David, whispering things to him. David, in a state of distress, manages to crawl outside, where he then witnesses what appears to be his wife being thrown into the canal; he just can’t see it very clearly or coherently. He later comes round on the floor of the bathroom, unnerved and disheveled, and makes his way home. The next morning, when he realises that Alice has not come home that night, David goes to the local police station to report her missing. Obviously, the police suspect David, “It’s always the husband” says the (inept) detective on the case.

 
The plot twists and turns, is it David? Is it the entity? Some great revelations about the grim history of the house come up throughout. It’s an interesting watch that comes to a disturbing conclusion.

 
A great little scene, that made me believe David was the killer, was during one of his viewings of the old footage. He stood up, in front of the projector, silhouetting him in front of the screen, making him appear to be a dark shadow. To me, this was the directors’ nod to David’s darkness within.

 
The Canal is a great psychological horror; it does very well to dig itself under your skin as you watch, and drag you in to this nightmare that David’s life has turned into. I was really impressed with the performance of Rupert Evans, tormented and devastated, he made David’s pain almost tangible. Watching him seemingly fall further into madness as the story progressed was quite frightening. I really felt for the nanny, she is a totally innocent girl who just wants to protect David and Alice’s son Billy, and can’t leave even when she knows she should. She gets dragged deeper and deeper in to the madness; everyone close to David is brought into this waking nightmare.

 
The ending is well, quite creepy and rather disturbing as I have said earlier. The story feels to me to have come full circle, and you can envision that it is a tormenting nightmare that will repeat itself over and over with future residents of the house for years to come.

 
4/5 – It’s rather worth a look if you like a good psychological horror


Lesley-Ann (Housewife of Horror)
  
AO
Angel Omnibus
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Maybe if I hadn't read any of the <b>After the Fall</b> books I would have liked this better. But I have read them and they are much superior. The stories in this omnibus aren't very interesting, they're passable but nothing special, the dialogue so-so, and the artwork is pretty disappointing. Half the time, I had to use my mighty powers of deduction to figure out who's who. Out of the artists featured, I think David Messina's are the best. However, I did like most of the stories in <u>Spotlight</u>, which featured select characters in small tales of their own, specifically everyone's but Gunn's, which were about Illyria, Wesley, Doyle and Connor. <u>Auld Lang Syne</u> was the best of the "bigger" books in this and had a fairly interesting plot. Truth be told though, I'll probably forget most everything in the book, and while it's worth the read, I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
  
    BBC Earth

    BBC Earth

    10.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

    YouTube Channel

    The world is an amazing place full of stories, beauty and natural wonder. Explore the official BBC...

40x40

Alison Pink (7 KP) rated The Mirage in Books

Jan 15, 2018  
TM
The Mirage
Matt Ruff | 2012
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Mirage tells an alternate version of history. Where the world is rocked by a terrorist attack on the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad on 11/9/01. The planes were hijacked by Christian fundamentalists from the Third World country of America.
Years after the attack on the superpower, a homicide bomber is captured in the United Arab States (UAS) & questioned. He tells a strange story of a mirage. This mirage is one where the UAS is the super power & America is poor & broken. He argues that this is not true reality...that in the real world the USA is the super power & was attacked on 9/11 by Muslims. Gradually the Homeland Security officers in Arabia begin to unravel the story & start to believe this crazy bomber.
The story is very well written & makes you stop & think without at doubt. At times it is humorous (The Quail Hunter from Crawford, TX who takes his enemies out on hunts & accidently shoots them or the crazy man in TX who is always looking for someone or something but can't seem to find it or remember who or what he's looking for or David Koresh leading the reisitance in America or Timothy McVeigh appearing as a protector to one of the invaders). This was well worth the time. The only reason it gets 4 stars from me is that it is a book you can't put down or read in small chunks. You need to read it straight through to keep everything straight, but it is well worth the time!
  
Cube (1997)
Cube (1997)
1997 | Horror, Sci-Fi
8
7.6 (31 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The Traps (0 more)
Inside The Cube
Cube- holy shit this movie was good, i liked it alot. I never seen it before, but heard about it. I heard many things about it, like it was a cult classic, a great twisted psycholgoical horror film and has traps. Than i was confused because i thought their were talking about Saw, the first one. Nope their are two different movies but about the same thing basically. Saw is also a cult classic, a great twisted psychological horror film and has traps. So thats aint cofusing at all.

The Plot: Without remembering how they got there, several strangers awaken in a prison of cubic cells, some of them booby-trapped. There's onetime cop Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), scientist Holloway (Nicky Guadagni), young math genius Leaven (Nicole de Boer), master of escapes Rennes (Wayne Robson), autistic savant Kazan (Andrew Miller) and architect Worth (David Hewlett), who might have more information on the maze than he lets on. The prisoners must use their combined skills if they are to escape.

Its a cult classic and must watch horror film.
  
40x40

John Taylor recommended Monterey Pop (1968) in Movies (curated)

 
Monterey Pop (1968)
Monterey Pop (1968)
1968 |
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Take great care with this documentary film of an all-day concert staged by John Phillips in small-town Monterey, California, for it holds within it the greatest single performance by any electric-music instrumentalist you have ever seen, or are likely to: the U.S. debut of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Known as the man who revolutionized the electric guitar, Jimi Hendrix appears onstage in this film a man possessed. As David Bowie sang in “Ziggy Stardust”: “He could lick ’em by smiling/ He could leave ’em to hang/ They came on so loaded, man/ Well hung and snow-white tan/ . . . He was the nazz/ With God-given ass/ He took it all too far/ But boy could he play guitar.” Never will you see a performance so sensual. There are many great films to be found of Jimi playing, but none to rival this. In Monterey Pop, there are many performances worth watching, seminal, even—Janis Joplin, Otis Redding among them—but they are all just warm-up acts to Jimi, the greatest rock-and-roll star to ever tread the boards."

Source