version

Well-known member
Witchfinder General's grotesque. It's got the same feel for me as places like The London Dungeon. This horrible, squalid medical sort of feel. Warts and forceps and thumbscrews. The Devils has a similar vibe. Really turns my stomach.
 

version

Well-known member
The ending of the film's hilarious. Price just getting clobbered with that wooden axe and the bloke running in like "Oh, God!". Apparently the director let him use a wooden axe because he hated Price, so the actor actually smacked him about a bit and hurt him.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Witchfinder General's grotesque. It's got the same feel for me as places like The London Dungeon. This horrible, squalid medical sort of feel. Warts and forceps and thumbscrews. The Devils has a similar vibe. Really turns my stomach.
I was thinking just the other day about this kind of thing. In the context of the amazing film Hard To Be A God, I guess in most of our minds (just lazily) the middle ages or whatever are kinda like today except everyone lived in a castle and moved around in wagons instead of cars... but what that film is good at (amongst other things) is getting across how most people lived, not just in poverty, but in absolute filth... the film is so visceral and dirty and horrible with mud and shit everywhere and, I guess, basically, that cleaning and bathing hadn't been invented and that was life then. Cold and wet and dirty and horrible.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Devils is great of course... it doesn't have that feel to it of Get Carter though to me. Probably I've asked before but have you read the book (The Devils of Loudun)? It's got a completely different emphasis and explanation of what happened to the film but it's fascinating in its own right.
 

version

Well-known member
I'm not on about The Devils or Witchfinder feeling like Get Carter. I'm not talking about Get Carter at all when I mention this squalid, medical stuff. Just the grubby, medieval to 17 or 1800s-type stuff.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I like the bit in WG when the assistant bloke wakes up in a tavern after they've been cavorting all night with wenches and he literally wakes up with his hand on a tit. I mean, where do you get that?
 

catalog

Well-known member
The ending is a bit hammy, but that realistic hack makes up for it. And just how the only good guy gets all mad about it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'm not on about The Devils or Witchfinder feeling like Get Carter. I'm not talking about Get Carter at all when I mention this squalid, medical stuff. Just the grubby, medieval to 17 or 1800s-type stuff.
Sure, but Catalog said so at the start I think. It's all mixed up who is replying to whom but it's all good I guess.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
They're really spoiling us today on Portuguese telly today. Now they are showing Memento, a film I've loved since I first saw it. One of my favourite creepy scenes is when he's on the phone... well, I think he's on the phone for the first half of the film or something, but suddenly he reads the tattoo on his arm that says "Never answer the phone" and he says "Wait a minute, who is this?" and it just clicks dead... genuine hairs on the back of the neck moment.
I think it's a shame that these days most often in films phones are relegated to one scene where they say "I've got no signal" precisely when they need it most. Good old-fashioned phones have often been used really inventively in some scary scenes in the past.... like, er, The Ring for example. Can it be that still directors haven't got to grips with technology that has been around for years beyond thinking it might spoil their plot by allowing the protagonists an easy way out?
There are a few exceptions I guess... Personal Shopper when suddenly all these blocked texts arrive at once and you can see the bad guy has been coming closer and closer and now he's really close. Something like that anyway.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah but he's old school - anyone doing it with mobile phones? I'm specifically thinking creepy stuff, not just things like, say, Uncut Gems, where they are always using them in a fairly realistic (and annoying) way.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Phones are scary afaic, whoever is calling.
What fresh hell is this?
But yeah I totally agree that there is invasion of the unknown into your world, anyone could be on the other end. And I have a feeling that people are not exploiting it as much as they could with mobile phones.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
And I just find phone calls awkward most of the time. So much prefer texting, even though it's probably nowhere near as nutritional.
 

version

Well-known member
I loved the way they used phones in The Matrix. The constant racing to get to them in time, Morpheus directing Neo over the mobile he sends in the post.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The 'Il Telefono' segment of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath is a brilliant evocation of the everyday terror of the telephone.

 
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