Gymnasty (1988)
Summary: Path of a professional athlete is full of sacrifice, sweat and blood. But it has never been full of sacrificial blood - until now. There is a single spot for a gymnast at the Olympics left but a strong batch of fierce competitors for that spot. As the time for the final selection in an old palace turned gymnasium approaches, contenders are dying one by one, their blood devoted to a demonic creature from beyond.
Best kill: Full split just became a little bit fuller with a help of a halberd.
Codex Miscellany: Three Dozen MORE Cult Horror Movies!
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The Residents (1992)
A group of urbane university students on a roadtrip from New York to Miami take a wrong turn and get lost in a suburb near an unnamed city. They get lost among the meandering streets and identical houses that seem strangely empty of people until night falls, when the lights come on to illuminate scenes of horrific violence being played out in every window. Having run out of gas the group tries to escape the area on foot, but the residents stream out of their houses and give chase. Becky, the only main character who isn’t horribly murdered, is pushed into a previously empty house where she is forced to relive the murder of her friends over and over.
Best kill: The drawn-out, partially in slow motion death-by-lawnmower of Becky’s boyfriend Kenneth, played out in gruesome detail while the others are hiding in the bushes a few feet away.
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JOHNNY HATCHETSEED (1976) - Another example of the short-lived subgenre of bicentennial American folk horror. Johnny Appleseed’s green thumb gets him marked as a witch by angry Puritans, who burn down his orchards in Roanoke Island, North Carolina, prompting a spree of revenge. BEST KILL: An idler attempting to steal an apple pie from a windowsill is horrified to see the pie’s crust is actually the face of the former Judge Goodman!
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Bones’ Boone (1976) - As one of the more sordid examples of the folkhero horror subgenre, this movie recounts the story of Daniel Boone’s bones, and the horrible fate befalling those that had stolen them from their grave in Missouri to perform black magic with them. The movie plots doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there are are lots of gory attacks by fake animals and horrible traps in it.
Best kill (maybe not the best, but certainly the cheesiest): Jasper Shelby (Whittaker Pryce), a corrupt Kentucky politician, gets mauled and killed by a thing that is supposedly a bear, but is really a man in a horrible bear suit. The contrast between Pryce’s realistic screams, groans and whimpers and the Bear Man’s (uncredited) unenthusiastic growling make the scene especially hilarious.
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Ghosts of Yorktown (1976) Summary: Another bicentennial horror movie, this film eschews American folklore for history. The first 25 minutes of the film is a gory reenactment of Washington’s Christmas 1776 nighttime raid on the Hessian mercenary camp in Trenton (erroneously called “Yorktown” in the film). 200 years later, the ghosts of the slain Hessians re-awaken to terrorize the modern-day city. Best Kill: In 1776, a redcoat holds a Continental Army soldier at pistol-point, as a bayonet erupts from his chest. The redcoat slumps forward, to reveal George Washington himself holding the bloody musket!
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BLOOD TRACTOR (2014) - A struggling farmer finds his high tech tractor bricked because its manufacturer was sold by stock market profiteers and their servers have been shut down. Desperate, the farmer visits the DARK WEB for bootleg tractor software, little realizing they’ve downloaded a CIA trojan program that converts heavy machinery to moving murder factories! Best Kill: The tractor careens into a corn maze and the screen fills with airborne corn scraps, blood, torn clothing, screams, an entire scarecrow, even more blood, etc. while a lady in a straw hat and overalls repeats “Aww no… aww… aww no!” in dismay from a nearby pumpkin patch.
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Cabin in the woods II:
There’s no cabin, there’s no woods, there’s no world, only ancient gods. All seems peaceful enough till Cthulhu and other Great Old Ones start waking up. Spoiler alert: It does not have a good ending.
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Just chiming in to say these are looking great so far! You all are some very talented, twisted folks!
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Wiener Schatten (“Shadows of Vienna”) (Austria, 1933): Summary: Mysterious yet charismatic politician Klaus Baden [Conrad Veidt] rises to power and becomes mayor of Vienna, his career bolstered by former political rivals who suddenly become ardent supporters. Journalist Maria Stern [Brigitte Hornay] investigates, and discovers the sinister truth: Baden is a vampire, who is drinking the blood of his rivals and turning them into undead thralls! This thinly-veiled critique of the rise of fascism was thought to be lost, until a complete copy was discovered in a private film vault in 1962. Best Kill: In the penultimate scene, Maria confronts Baden, holding him at bay with a crucifix. In a shocking twist, Baden smiles, takes the crucifix from her, and quips, “Not even the church has power over me!” He then pulls her into an embrace and sinks his fangs into her throat. [Final image: The front page of the next day’s newspaper with a headline praising the beloved mayor. By-line: Maria Stern.]
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WIDOWMAKER (1976) - Critics consider this entry the oddest, but most compelling, of the short-lived bicentennial American folk horror trend. It’s the story of Pecos Bill’s horse, set during the years preceding its actual team-up with Bill. The film (shot from a horse’s POV) featured avant-garde spectacles such as: 1st-person galloping scenes (with some risk of motion sickness), dream sequences about dancing apples and sugar cubes, and several incidents of cruel hoof-murder. BEST KILL: With a twister approaching, a desperado ropes Widowmaker only to be kicked into the air where their lasso slithers around their neck and also catches a spinning weathercock, which swings them in great gasping circles above the town, their lasso transformed into a noose.
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William Shakespeare Jr.'s MacDeath II (2001) - In the year 4040, scientists revive the director from the original film and force him to teach a group of cyborg criminals the redemptive power of the stage. Riots ensue. Stars Rod Van Hamlet as “Chromeo.” BEST KILL: One of the convict players tearfully delivers the “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” speech before answering in the affirmative and embarking on a shanking spree in the cyber-prison’s cafeteria.
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THE FLICKER (2015) - Featuring silent movie era black and white sequences featuring gruesome murders with the violence itself happening off screen intercut with a 1990’s era suburban pressure cooker of infidelity, drug abuse, and financial peril covered by a thin veneer of success and idyllic marital bliss, The Flicker is a slow burn where tension builds as multiple untenable situations move towards inevitable confrontations only to have the third act explode into a gorefest as the killer from the black and white sequences goes from being a symbolic representation of resentment, regret, and fear to a very real supernatural killer, still rendered in flickering black and white even as the rest of the setting remains drearily naturalistic. Best kill: When failing life insurance salesman Bobby Cormack charges the nameless killer with a pocket knife after losing his wife, his job, his home, and his car in quick succession only to dissolve into a cloud of blood, organs, and bones, the slow motion explosion lovingly rendered from multiple angles in a sudden switch to split screen, a particularly surreal moment in a surreal film.
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Is…is this a reference to my Viennese Urban Shadows game, or just a delightful instance of great minds thinking alike?
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I thought I was being original with Wiener Schatten.
My goal was: 1) Horror movie from the Golden Age of Film; 2) European rather than American; 3) Serious rather than comic/campy.
Thinking about a serious film led me to think of one with a political message… in a pre-WWII Europe that was witnessing the rise of fascism. I then thought it would be cool for the film to be critical of the rise of fascism, which led me to think about portraying fascism as an infectious contagion.
And since zombies weren’t a thing in the '30s, that led me to vampires.
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Extremely cool! Thanks for unpacking that.
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Slenderman ataca #creepypasta (2018)
A medium-length film recorded with a smartphone by a group of teenagers in which appears to be a south european town. Acting is horrible and some deaths seem stolen from other famous films such as Sew or Brunch. For some reason, the few people that have seen it was through YouTube “Suggested videos” and late at night…
Best kill: When slenderman appears in the last minutes of the movie wearing an oddly big suit for that small body and… what was that noise in the next room?
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Gators! GATORS!!! (1986) - Families moving in to a newly minted housing development in the up-and-coming Miami, Florida area find that their new leases didn’t include anything about their neighbors: a congregation of albino alligators with a taste for flesh! BEST KILL: Alfonso, in an open-chest silk shirt, gold chains and alligator boots, sniffs a line of coke off a mirror in the driver’s seat of his Ferrari Daytona Spyder before noticing a gator in the back seat, via the rear view mirror. “Is this about the shoes? … Would a bump make it better?” he asks, offering the mirror to the reptile before the camera pulls back and the interior glass is splattered with blood.
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Ya’ll are killing me with the “short-lived bicentennial American folk horror trend” entries, haha
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We’re closing this thread now. Thanks, everyone!
@Anders @Deckard @dominik @Matt @mcbacon: I need to know how you want to be credited. You can reply here or just DM me.
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As “Anders Gabrielsson”.