Last Film You Watched

[fish]

...a cup of cold sick to me...

You're making it sound so attractive.

[Ian]

Scars of Dracula. A young man and his girlfriend go looking for his missing brother, and find he disappeared near a place known as Castle Dracula... Patrick Troughton and a young Dennis Waterman (complete with all la posh accent lol) co-star with Christopher Lee (of course) in this early 70s Hammer Horror that I absolutely loved. This is up there with Satanic Rites as my favourite of the Dracula sequels thus far, kicking off with a bang and just totally going for it as full-blooded Gothic fun. The bats are a bit unintentionally comical, mind (though to be fair the scene where they basically bite the priest to death is actually quite effectively gruesome). I really enjoyed this one.

[Santi]

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Australia), 1994

Very funny

[fish]

...1994...

I had no idea it was that long ago that I first watched it.
Yes, a very funny film.
Lots of "over the top" Aussie characters in it.

[Ian]

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is recruited by a family of young martial arts experts to help them return to their ancestral Chinese village and rid it of the plague of the undead, ruled by seven legendary and seemingly indestructible vampires. This is it, folks, the last in the Hammer Dracula franchise, though confusingly it's not actually the last chronologically because it's back to the past and the original Van Helsing rather than his great grandson in the two 70s-set films we had before this...confused? You won't be!

By all accounts, this is also the worst of the worst. So how come I loved it to bits? Wink To be fair, I do have one major criticism of the film, and that's bringing back Dracula, albeit not played by Christopher Lee. Which sounds insane, and certainly comes off that way. Even more insane is that there's zero need for Dracula to be in this movie at all, so bringing him in for 2 minutes played by a different actor seems even more WTH. The earlier Brides of Dracula was a Lee-less entry that pitted Cushing against a different head vampire, and that makes even more sense here given the China setting, so why do it?!?!?!?

But it's really the only misstep in what is otherwise an enormously fun film. I suspect Hammer fans are as conservative as Who fans and just don't like anything that deviates from the norm, whereas I most definitely do. And this bat**** crazy mix of vampire Hammer Horror, quest/adventure movie (with more than a trace of The Magnificent Seven) and Kung Fu action flick was right up my alley. Great fun from start to finish.

[Santi]

...1994...

I had no idea it was that long ago that I first watched it.
Yes, a very funny film.
Lots of "over the top" Aussie characters in it.

This is the problem that I have when taking films from a site that them doesn't has new ones. But it's also fortunate to be able to discover them long ago.

[Santi]

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Australia), 1994

Very funny

The movie has a link with our Sweden.
The bus that our protagonists travel they bought to a Swedish.

[fish]

...The movie has a link with our Sweden.
The bus that our protagonists travel they bought to a Swedish...

Is it a Volvo or something?
Plenty of Volvo buses in Aus.

I've never noticed.

[Ian]

Asylum. A psychiatrist visits a mental asylum to interview for a job, and is asked to evaluate four patients, each of whom has a very disturbing story to tell. Robert Powell, Charlotte Rampling, Peter Cushing and Herbert Lom star in this creepy early 70s British horror anthology that I really enjoyed. This is by far the best of the Amicus anthologies I've seen so far - Tales from the Crypt was middling, and neither Torture Garden nor Vault of Horror did anything for me at all - with all four stories being enjoyable (the Rampling one, despite being obvious, being my favourite). Very good.

[Ian]

The Odessa File. The diary of a Holocaust survivor leads a journalist in 60s East Germany (Jon Voight) to become obsessed with tracking down a Nazi war criminal who never faced justice, and comes up against a secret society of former SS members known as "Odessa". This mid 70s conspiracy thriller has the grit and atmosphere you'd expect of a mid 70s conspiracy thriller, and even has future Doctor Who alumni Mary Tamm in a major supporting role, but while interesting enough it's slow pace and 2 hour+ running time make it a long haul at times (or perhaps I've just been watching too many Hammer/Amicus horror flicks of late, which tend to be in and out in 90 minutes tops!).

[Ian]

Dracula AD 1972. 100 years after being killed (again) by Van Helsing (again), Dracula (Christopher Lee) is resurrected (again) by a bunch of gullible youngsters looking for a thrill in early 70s (1970s!) London. The man manipulating the youths is their sinisterly-named "friend" Johnny Alucard (never trust a man whose last name is an anagram for Dracula Wink ). Fortunately for London, Van Helsing's grandson, Van Helsing, who just happens to look exactly like his grandfather (conveniently for Peter Cushing!) is on the scene... unaware that he and his grand-daughter (Stephanie Beacham, recast as Joanna Lumley in the next film) are already on the Count's hit-list. This early 70s Hammer thrusts the series into (then) modern era, and works surprisingly well. Christopher Neame works well as second-string villain Johnny, and the final showdown between Dracula and Van Helsing is the most intense and thrilling climax since the original. Though there are two more films after this in the series, this is actually the last I haven't seen, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I have almost all of these. Great fun. I love this series!

[fish]

...(never trust a man whose last name is an anagram for Dracula Wink )...

Damn.
I was thinking of changing my name to "Dracula Wink" too.

[Ian]

Bloody stupid word processor thingy.

[fish]

...thingy...

Ian decides it's not his fault and tries to blame someone else.
Anyone else!

[Santi]

Feuchtgebiete (2013), Wetlands in english.

I will not say anything, because it is so different. I liked it a lot.