This is more coherent and a bit better shot than later, more famous Argento movies and very Hitchcock-y. I don't remember what happened in it very well (but I do remember that "bird" refers to a girl, not an actual bird) but if it's the tackiness or overblown gory deaths from other Argento movies that gets you all hot and bothered, you may be a bit disappointed with this. I thought it was good though, as it's better to explore Argento towards the beginning of his career than towards the end!!
>The Blob (1988)
The one with the chick from the Saw movies (or at least the first two or three)? I remember it as being really weak.
>Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Just a couple of films into his career and Argento was already starting to lose his coherence, though still not as gaudy and gory as he would be by 1975. I guess this was okay, but it's not one of his classics. I remember what the title referred to as well.
>The Haunting
If you're talking about the 1999 film directed by the Speed/Twister guy, it's terrible crap and deserved the critical drubbing it got. And I don't have to be a Shirley Jackson expert, which I'm not, to know that!
>Near Dark
Bad. Kathyrn Bigelow started her career (she had codirected a Willem Dafoe motorcycle movie several years earlier with the cowboy from Mulholland Dr., but nobody cares about that film) with some style, but it was very 80s MTV-infected style--this film is far closer to The Lost Boys, from the same year, than its fans would have you believe, and that's the film that ended up being the "success." Using a metaphor like "vampirism = being a miserable junkie," casting a bunch of cool people from Aliens and making a hip cult movie can be kind of disappointing sometimes, y'know? I wouldn't have ever guessed she was even that talented from watching this, which mostly just ends up seeming corny and overblown. I went back through a number of Bigelow's films after she won her Oscar and this thing is overrated as hell.
>Phantasm
Entertaining enough stuff from the very young Don Coscarelli and starring such amusing semi-actors as Reggie Bannister, Michael Baldwin and Angus Scrimm, this film is a little bit too beloved by its fanbase, sort of like some of George Romero's lesser flicks, but it's still fun.
>Phenomena
This is okay, but Argento was nearing the end (Opera is the cutoff point, IMO.) The overblown prog score (some of which was by Bill Wyman!), now with an 80s undercurrent, was still pretty fun, and there's plenty of gross and stylistically gaudy stuff to be found, but the actors aren't so hot--Jennifer Connelly wasn't actually that talented when she was young and Donald Pleasance was predictably phoning it in.
>A Serbian Film
Do people actually watch this whole thing, or do they just want to see the bit with the baby? I didn't watch it.
>Sisters
Very good stuff, De Palma's first big Hitchcock rip and a reminder of what Tarantino was talking about when he said all of De Palma's films were biting black comedies. This is where he really "begins."
>Troll 2
One of the few hilariously awful movies to deserve its reputation as being hilariously awful. Be sure and watch the documentary Best Worst Movie afterwards, which has an undercurrent of sadness to it.
>When a Stranger Calls
First twenty minutes are immortal--of course I'd think so, since the first fifteen minutes of Scream wouldn't exist without it. The stuff after that is of varying quality (and depends on the idea that a guy who murdered children would be turned loose.) You gotta watch those first twenty minutes though!
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