“A house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living, it can only be borrowed by the ghosts that stay behind.”
A young nurse has been hired to take care of an old woman. This old woman is Iris Blum, a prolific horror author that now lives all alone in her New England mansion and suffering from chronic dementia, and needs to be proper taken care of 24/7. When the young nurse, Lily, starts living there in order to take proper care of Iris, Lily starts experiencing certain things that makes her imagination run wild. With Lily being a bit of a scaredy-cat as well, she tries all she can to re-focus and pretend that nothing is happening…until she can’t pretend any more.
“I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” is a strange dish. While being a haunted house movie, it’s told from a somewhat different angle (from the actual haunting itself, so to speak). The movie starts with Lily herself being the narrator, stating “The pretty thing you are looking at is me. Of this I am sure. My name is Lily Saylor. I am a hospice nurse. Three days ago I turned 28 years old. I will never be 29 years old“. No spoilers to be had there, in other words…we know exactly what will happen to Lily, just not how. That being said, Lily is only part of the haunting: another spectre is already present. A young woman in a white victorian dress, who have a direct connection to Iris and her books…a mystery Lily eventually feels compelled to solve, and will lead to her unfortunate demise. With regards to this movie, I guess it’s fitting to say that sometimes, curiosity really does kill the cat…
I many ways, it’s a little hard to review this movie as a horror movie, because in many ways it’s more like a gothic poem, and certainly more beautiful than scary. It is very slow-paced, and it’s not one that is there to deliver all the answers…however, it does have a pretty good atmosphere and could be well worth a watch if you find yourself in the mood for a slow poetic ghost story.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5059406/
More previews of the upcoming episode of Sally the Ghost Hunter. This will probably be the last previews I’ll post on this blog until the whole episode is published on sallytheghosthunter.com early in 2019. Our Patreon supporters will get the episode earlier.
Earlier previews from this episode:
- http://inkedinhell.tomte.org/sally-the-ghost-hunter/sally-the-ghost-hunter-6-previews-2/
- inkedinhell.tomte.org/sally-the-ghost-hunter/sally-the-ghost-hunter-6-previews/
The movie opens with a group of duck hunters who happens to shoot down a bat. “It’s bad luck to kill a bat” one of them says, before one of their dogs eats it. And no, it wasn’t Nosferatu the dog ate, just a random bat. Then we jump to Venice where Professor Paris Catalano (Christopher Plummer) arrives to meet a young lady after getting a vague letter about Nosferatu. According to the letter, Nosferatu was last seen in Venice during a carnival in 1786, and legend has it that he’s still hiding in the city. Paris Catalano has dedicated his life to study Nosferatu, and is more or less the equivalent of Van Helsing. I assume they had to add a different name due to copyright, who knows. He eats dinner with the same people we saw in the duck hunting-scene in the beginning, where he gives a quick and half-hearted lecture about vampires, before he gets escorted down into a crypt under the tunnels of the city where a casket from Transylvania is located. The legend says that Nosferatu is the one who’s buried in that casket. So why not just open it, put the stake through his chest, and just be done with it? You tell me…
However, Professor Paris is certain that Nosferatu isn’t located in that coffin, and that he is shipwrecked somewhere. He won’t even dare to open it, in order to check if he’s right. So what’s he gonna do next? He gets a medium to summon the vampire. Nosferatu (Klaus Kinski) then stands up from a coffin somewhere on a random, obscure location and starts his journey. He stumbles into a gypsy camp where a fortune teller tells him that he’s been summoned by a young lady. He bites the fortune teller’s neck before he heads for Venice, for some more necks to put his teeth in… I guess…
And as you may have figured out, this movie has no relation to neither Nosferatu from 1922 nor the Werner Herzog’s remake from 1979 in any shape or form. Who knows what this movie really tries to be, but what it definitely is, is a completely incoherent mess. Christopher Plummer looks really confused here, and you can tell he has some difficulty with delivering his lines. That’s probably because there were five directors who came and left, after the first one got fired, so you can try to imagine the chaos and turmoil behind the scenes. It’s a miracle that the movie exists at all. And when even Klaus Kinski ended up directing himself in some of the scenes, then you know that everyone have seriously jumped the ship.
So yeah, this is one of those cases where a two-hour making of-documentary had been far more entertaining and interesting than the movie itself…
Klaus Kinski was perfect as Nosferatu in the 1979-remake and is probably one of his finest roles. Here, its the polar opposite. He refused to wear the same makeup and shave his long, blonde hair and approached the role with only some simple eyeshadow and puts on the iconic two front teeth when he feels like it. All the characteristics and known trademarks are gone; the hand gestures, the long fingers/nails, as if the guy refused to play the character altogether, and rather just not give a fuck and play himself instead. “Kinski in Venice”, yeah why not.. There’s zero Nosferatu about him. He acts more like a disturbed lunatic, high on whatever he can snort and who likes to hunt down and rape young women in Venice’s narrow alleys, than a fragile vampire who needs blood to survive. It’s almost comical…
Just to put it in a nutshell how extremely “off” Nosferatu is in this film: he’s asked if the daylight doesn’t frighten him. He answers: “It’s the night who frighten me.” So, there you have it. “Nosferatu in Hawaii” next? Despite all the retardedness, the film has its share of gothic and gloomy atmosphere and Venice looks really chilling and sinister, and seems like an unique place to shoot a vampire flick. At least, some of the five directors who tried to sail this shipwreck of a movie to the projection screen managed to add some really fine and moody imagery. And the fitting soundtrack by Vangelis isn’t bad, either. So, I’ll have to give some props in that regard.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091651/
Kenneth Winslow (Desmond Harrington) is a socially insecure young man whose life is mostly centered around work, work, and more work. That is, until he one day sees “Nikki” – an anatomically correct sex doll. It starts as a harmless joke from hos co-workers, but evolves into something far more serious as Kenneth decides to check out the website for the producers of the “Nikki” doll. For the stiff (no pun intended) price of 10.000 dollars he orders one of the sex dolls, and while feeling awkward with his own “Nikki” at first, he soon becomes obsessed with roleplaying. Things take a dramatic turn when he becomes interested in his new female co-worker, a real woman of flesh and blood…it’s almost as if Nikki becomes jealous and vengeful…
“Love Object” is a psycho-thriller with a rather interesting concept, where a person has been so separated from a social life that the roleplaying with his sex doll drives him into a state of mind where he can no longer differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. Desmon Harrington’s performance as the socially unstable bachelor is also brilliant.
The movie keeps the suspense up and have a kind of David Lynch-feeling. Udo Kier also has a funny little role as a curious landlord. While it is a low-budget movie that was filmed in only 18 days (!) it sure doesn’t feel like it. And it is a little creepy that sex dolls like “Nikki” actually exists, and for the same amount of money, too. You kind of have to conclude that a person who orders a sex doll for 10.000 dollars must be at least a little bit off their rockers…
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328077/
John Russel is on vacation with his wife and daughter when their car gets some serious engine trouble. John gets to a phone booth and calls for help, while his wife and daughter are playing in the snow nearby the car. Suddenly, a trailer comes speeding towards them and the tragic outcome is unavoidable. Half a year later, John tries patching his life together by moving to Seattle and continue his great passion: composing music and teach piano lessons. He rents a huge newly refurbished house from the early 1900s. But the huge empty house may not be as empty as he first thought. Every morning he hears a rhytmic knocking sound from the walls, and a child’s voice. Instead of being scared away, John becomes determined to solve the mystery. Is it all in his own mind – or is the house haunted?
One thing is certain; a weelchair hasn’t looked more creepier than in this film..
“The Changeling” has everything a good and suspenseful ghost movie should have. The movie has a serious tone throughout and there are no over-the-top special effects to be seen. Instead the focus is on the most important parts in the “haunted house” recipe: suspense and atmosphere. If you enjoy horror movies about ghosts and haunted houses, especially of the “good old kind”, this one is a must-have in the collection. In fact, this movie is what made me interested in the genre back then. It’s now been released on blu-ray with a CD of the soundtrack.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/
Frank Wyler is a three-year-old boy living with his housekeeper Iris in a millionaire-villa in the country. Iris has taken care of Frank since his parents died in a car accident when he was young, and since then, the relationship between Iris and Frank has developed into something… rather bizarre and toxic, to say the least. After growing up living isolated with Iris, she is now using him as a sextoy by giving him a handjob while he sucks her tits like an infant… he’s gotten pretty messed up in his head. But when he finds the great love of his life in the much more beautiful Anna, Iris becomes mad with envy and goes to a voodoo witch/doctor to throw a curse over Anna in order to get rid of her. The curse works perfectly where she ends up in a hospital and dies, and Iris finally gets Frank for herself again.
However, this doesn’t last long since Frank drives straight to the cemetery the night after Anna’s funeral to dig up her body and take her back home. On the way back he gives a random young lady a lift, who falls asleep in his car. He brings his “corpse bride” down in the basement where a pretty graphic embalming scene takes place. The young lady wakes up and sees a glimpse of what’s going on before Frank tortures her by ripping out her nails, then he gets help from Iris who chops her body up in pieces and throws her remains in the bathub with corrosive acid. Iris saves some of the flesh which she and Frank eats for breakfast. Then, Frank goes jogging and meets a another young lady whom he takes home and have sex with. While having sex with her, he imagines he’s having sex with Anna, who lies in the double bed right beside them, covered in sheets. And then, the woman he brought home with him notices his dark secret…
Those who are familiar with sleazy, underground italian horror from the 70’s that were banned left and right around the world, will probably know the name Joe D’Amato, the man with as many pseudonyms as there is gender options on facebook. Buio Omega, or “Beyond the Darkness” as it’s called internationally, is one of his most known works. The film is a remake of “The Third Eye” from 1966, an other italian horror film which I haven’t seen, so I can’t come with any comparisons. But I doubt it is as sick, dark, raw and unfiltered as Buio Omega, which really tests the boundaries on what’s allowed to be shown on screen. Correct me if I’m wrong, though. Mutilation, necrophilia, cannibalism, detailed torture scenes and other taboo stuff with higly convincing gore effects that punches you in the nose.
The film takes itself dead seriously where there’s no room for imagination, which in this case could have turned it into a spectacular turkey, but despite its narrow budget it’s so well constructed that it works fine the way it is. It’s as gory as it is psychological, and explores the darkest corners of the human mind.
Also, great soundtrack by Goblin.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078916/
The movie opens with a guy who crashes his car in the woods and then gets beat to death with a shovel. Then we get to another location where a creepy, disturbed old dude in a bloody shirt looks straight into the camera and says “you’re on the road to hell, my children” (in urdu) and ends it with an evil laugh. Yikes..
Then we get introduced to some teenagers who prepare for a road trip out in the countryside of Pakistan, something their parents are not so happy with. At the same time, the government puts out a warning regarding the water, as it could be infected with some virus that turns people into zombies. After a while on the road, and smoking dope, the kids stop at Deewanas Tea Shop, a real stinky shithole of a place, run by the creepy old dude we saw in the beginning. He drools while mumbling about a place called Hells Ground, while the kids buy some potatoes and moves on. Then the phone signal disappears and the van that had a full tank is suddenly empty, and after getting lost in the woods, they find themselves surrounded by a horde of zombies. If all this was not bad enough, a serial killer wearing a burqa and a big spiked ball is on the loose. Welcome to Hell’s Ground..
Hells Ground (aka Zibahkhana) is known as Pakistan’s first slasher-flick. The film is as much a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-worship as it is a tribute to 70’s horror. The film also works as a kind of a big rebellious middle-finger to Pakistan’s strict authority and religion, so yeah, the film has some huge balls, as huge as the film’s slasher villain uses as the murder weapon.
Otherwise, there’s not much new under the sun here. It’s a straight-forward slasher-flick mixed with some zombies and the same old character tropes we have seen a thousand times. Visually, the film looks great, it’s well directed and has that raw, unpolished 70s-look. The use of dirty, disgusting locations and intense colorful lighting with the environment of Pakistan’s countryside, gives it an eerie and unique atmosphere.
And the scenes with Burqaface alone makes the movie worth a watch.
imdB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887973/
Danvers State Mental Hospital is an old asylum that has been empty since 1985. An asbestos team lead by Gordon (Peter Mullan) and Phil (David Caruso) is hired to do the preparations for the renovation of the old building. With a bonus payment of 10.000 dollars hanging over their heads if they get the job done within one week, the working environment becomes filled with stress and bickering. This is nothing compared to what the asylum has in store for them, however…
Down where the most crazy of the patients were held, one of the workers finds an old sound recording of the interview with Mary Hobbes, a woman with three personalities: “The Princess”, symbolizing her innocence, “Billy”, who is her protector, and “Simon”, whom the doctor tries to come in contact with. Even though Mary’s story belongs to the past, it’s not without consequence for the asbestos workers.
“Session 9” is a psychological thriller that’s at times a bit slow, but builds up to something really creepy. While not perfect, it’s a pretty well-crafted horror movie that manages to keep the suspense up while keeping jumpscares and cgi-effects at a minimum. It’s a movie that plays primarily on the psychological horrors: knowing that there’s something scary there but it isn’t something you can see or touch. The ending puts everything together in a really creepy context, and is prone to give quite a chill.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261983/
Set in 1920’s rural Ireland, “The Lodgers” tells the dark tale about Rachel and Edward: twins that are living alone in a large but crumbling mansion which used to belong to their ancestors. We learn early on that they have strict rules they need to follow: they need to be in bed by midnight, they cannot let anyone else enter the house, and trying to escape might put the other one’s life in danger. The sinister force that haunts them wants them to continue their family’s “sin”, something Rachel is determined to not let happen, and this puts both her and Edward’s life in danger from the wrath of “the lodgers”.
While this movie is mostly presented as a horror film, it’s more of a gothic drama with a rather sad story than a scary one. While the house is beautifully atmospheric and creepy, there wasn’t much of a build-up to keep up the tension. The “sin” that “the lodgers” wants the twins to commit is also too easy to figure out very early in the movie, which doesn’t make it much of a surprise when Rachel reveals it later. There was a lot of potential for some real good chills and scary moments, but in that regard it didn’t have much to deliver. The movie does have strong visuals and good acting, so if you’d go for it and expect a gothic drama instead of an actual horror movie you may not be disappointed.
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4399952/
During the Mexican-American war in the mid 1800’s, Captain John Boyd is sent up in the mountains to Fort Spencer, a secluded camp where a small group of weirdos keeps it guarded. One evening a disturbed, frozen Scottish man named Colquhoun arrives. He tells a horrible story about his gang of people somewhere up in the mountains, who were forced to eat each other in order to survive. Some of the men join Colquhoun and head up to the mountains to look for survivors.
The movie’s tone is set already within its first seconds. You don’t exactly know what to expect, but will quickly realise that this film is one of a kind. The film is known for its black humour, but it is first and foremost a pure horror movie with blood n’ gore where the humour is kept on a more subtle level. The greatest thing about Ravenous is how unpredictable it is, how the tension builds up, and the use of great forest landscapes that adds to the grim, cold atmosphere. It’s always refreshing to see actors actually interact with the real nature instead of standing in front of green-screens in a studio, isn’t it…
It also have top notch actors, but Robert Carlyle as Colquhoun really steals the show here. He does a truly terrifying portrait of his character. Watching his grin with the blood dripping from his mouth as he stares with his crazy eyes…that’s something that just sticks with you.
