It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
You and I both. I seem to stumble upon it every couple of years and get upset all over again that it never saw the light of day.
The first film, The Slumber Party Massacre, is good enough for 75 minutes of superficial fun with a stalker-killer, topless girls, a final girl, and some half-funny jokes. The killer, Russ Thorn, is nothing special, except that he uses a big power drill to slay his victims.
Both sequels, Slumber Party Massacre II and III, drop the quality level below freezing point. With the exception of the supernatural dream-killer of the second film -- an Elvis lookalike with a drill attached to a guitar --, these two films are incredibly dull. Nothing worse than a boring slasher film in my opinion.
The 2021 film, The Slumber Party Massacre, is pretty good by the series' very low standards. It toys with complete gender reversal, in a very tasteful manner I might add. Its traps, twists and jokes are clever enough to be almost competitive with the average Nightmare On Elm Street film. So yes, it was somewhat worth the effort of working my way through the Slumber Party series again.
But I don't want to oversell the 2021 The Slumber Party Massacre either. As I am writing this, it has a RT score of 100%, based on a few reviews. That's just silly. It's not a 100% film, not even when one grades on a curve. But you can do worse than watch this playful slasher that feels like Sci-Fi Channel had a good day for once.
https://deadline.com/2022/11/cailee-spaeny-alien-movie-20th-century-scott-free-1235174184/
I want that. Alvarez is a promising name to throw around these days, so yes, please!
Funny thing, when I read "Scott Free" my first impulse was thinking that they meant free of Ridley. Silly me. 😉
That is a good point to linger on though! I love his work but his last few Alien films were really rough to me and tonally all over the place.
Lol I sent a screenshot of the news article to a friend and told him the exact same thing about “Scott Free” lol
I'm torn. Prometheus has a few really awesome scenes that belong in a "Lovecraft in space" film, but doesn't overall work for me.
Covenant, however, does. I like the sound, look, acting, music and story of the film. There are also some tense moments during which the film descends into unalloyed monster/slasher mode. As a straight-up terror flick, Covenant is one of the better films in the series IMO. It's more "abrasive" during its attacks; it moves faster, and the horror is "leaner" and less "abstract" than in Prometheus. What I resent, however, is that what was set-up in Prometheus -- Rapace's character and the Engineers -- was done away with so casually in Covenant. If you introduce a grandiose idea or a big concept in a former film, at least carry it over into the next few films.
Overall, I think Covenant is a bleaker and more pristine horror experience than Prometheus. Both films occasionally philosophise us into tedium, but while Covenant narrows that down to a few scenes with Walter / David, Prometheus is a philosophy exercise rather than an Alien film.
Shouting out my love for Covenant... Wow! Between this thread and the GE score thread, I'm doing a lot to smudge my reputation today. ;-)
I saw the film twice in theatres. The first time had let me down, almost to the point where I wanted to tell a friend to find someone else to accompany him to the film a few weeks later. But I went, and I liked the film a lot better then.
I saw the film for the sixth or seventh time last summer. The room was dark, the wife had gone to bed, and I put my headphones on for maximum joy. I really started to appreciate the look and sound of the film, the performances, the music, and the terror. In fact, as far as "creepy monster stalking you" goes, I think Covenant does it best, next to Alien itself, of course. Right now, my ranking is:
1) Alien / Aliens
2) Covenant
3) Alien³ The Producer's Cut
4) Prometheus
5) Resurrection
That gives me the kick in the rear I need then - I'll be sure to revisit it very soon then on your recommendation. Appreciate it!
In fact, aside from Scott's original, I've not seen any of the installments in quite a few years now. Perhaps I should give them all a rewatch to see how they hold up.
That's the thing. I can't promise the effect will be the same for you, but Covenant worked better for me the second time, while Prometheus didn't. And Resurrection keeps dropping lower and lower in my appreciation. It's got Winona, Ron Perlman and Michael Wincott. And a decent score. That's it. Nothing else does it for me in that film. Compared to Resurrection, Covenant is capital-g Great IMO.
Covenant is one of the few films I bought the "Art Of" book for.
I've effectively only seen Alien before these two modern films... I have seen Aliens but it was a long time ago and I remember next to nothing about it.
Yeah I feel both 3 and Resurrection get a lot of stuff really right but the aspects that don't work are very noticeable in a bad way. Those two aren't ones I revisit as often as the first two.
Well, I really like PREY, so I'm game.
I'd honestly be fine with a bunch of Prey spin-offs/sequels/prequels set in varying historical eras and locations.
I just hope it's not some sort of internet hoax. And if it isn't, they had better be taking their sweet time to put together something awesome.
Meanwhile, has anyone seen SMILE? I am more than satisfied with the film.
I am still skeptical that it will ever get off the ground, given the outcome of the trail.
I haven't seen Smile, and I feel like I have fallen so far behind on new horror releases. I can't remember the last 'new' horror film I watched.
I really want to see it, I've heard a lot of good things about it. I don't think I've even seen a trailer. I see it's available to stream in HD now, might have to check it out ASAP.
It's good. Watch it alone and in the dark. Seasoned horror fans aren't getting anything new, but that shouldn't stop us. It has been compared to IT FOLLOWS and THE BABADOOK, but those two add an element of "roughness" which this film unfortunately avoids by looking clean and polished. Thematically, it does play close to IT FOLLOWS and THE BABADOOK, though.
If you are a fan of James Wan's Conjuring/Insidious traps, you are going to have a bit of fun with SMILE. You can spot traces of THE RING as well. Jump scares galore, but hey, a good jump scare is not a bad thing, is it? 😉
Never! I'm all for a good jump scare. I'm very eager to watch it now.
This is my kind of horror, but I know that some people don't think much of it. That's fine, of course. Horror is a multidimensional genre. 😉
The Babadook was so good though. It Follows was good too, although it lost me a bit when there was a person who was thrown aside by the tall invisible man; I kind of wish the concept was a little more metaphorical than a literal invisible tall guy.
I am not a thrill-seeking person in the sense that I'm never going to jump from an airplane or surf big waves, but I love the adrenaline boost that a scary horror film can give me. Combined with the cathartic effects of many horror films, these thrills have the power of therapy for me.
As for IT FOLLOWS... Strong elevated horror films still try to find a good balance between the metaphorical and the literal, at least if they want to be a commercial product. Too metaphorical, and you get some Lynchian material that only a handful people will want to watch; too literal, and the thematic core of the film gets lost. So stuff like THE VVITCH and HEREDITARY have text and subtext, as well as metaphor and explicit scares. The problem is that, indeed as you say, some films break the balance here and there in the eye of the beholder. Some will appreciate more metaphorical content, others more literal content.
Best movie news in a long time as far as I'm concerned. Taking into account Scott's two forays into proto-Alien territory (neither of which I'm a fan of I'm afraid) and the AVPs, we haven't had a straightforward Alien film since 1997. With Evil Dead, Alvarez demonstrated that he can respectfully handle someone else's creation, paying tribute to the original while putting a fresh spin things, and of course his preference for practical effects is only a good thing in this day and age. Very much looking forward to his take on Alien.
I was familiar with Ridley's Scott Free production company, but this made me laugh.