The "WTF Horror" Subgenre - Page 2

I just watched THE BEYOND and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD recently and really enjoyed them, specifically for the dream logic element. The gore is great too, and what I like about Fulci is that he doesn't just give you gore, he gives you the anticipation of the gore -- which makes the payoff all the more glorious.

That said I'm not a big fan of Zombi 2 aside from the Zombie vs. Shark scene.

For more great dream logic check out LEMORA: A CHILD'S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

It made sense to me, if you accept the nature of the killer. It resolves the identity of said killer, and closes out with what I think is a successfully creepy ending.

Army of Darkness is nothing new to us, but when you think about it... it has a truly WTF plot to the few people who haven't seen it.

DVD I got in the mail this week. Dwarfsploitation!
Trailer here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AWiO...eature=related

I got that one too! I think I'll watch it tomorrow night.

The Sinful Dwarf is AMAZING. Really, it's impossible not to love.

The latest in outrageous WTF I've seen were Tokyo Gore Police, and Poultrygeist. Not good movies, but very WTF.

Don't think it's been mentioned, or if it counts as horror, but Altered States freaked me the hell out. Especially the hallucinations, red light sex scene, and woman made of sand blowing away in the wind.

Watched Silent Hill for the first time yesterday. Definitely WTF. I was reminded of Jacob's Ladder, and of something that JL started that freaks me out: heads shaking really fast, like that guy in the car. Something about it...

Harry Novak shit always lets me down. It always comes off as so much playacting.

The Beyond was absolutely WTF, but I haven't seen COTLD yet. Is it worth it?

Absolutely. Not as good as THE BEYOND, but damn close. HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY is weakest of the Fulci "Gates of Hell" trilogy.

It's worth it for the vomiting scene alone . . . if that's any kind of endorsement.

Anyone mention Meet The Feebles yet? My best friend LOVES this movie, which makes me back up several feet.

Carnival of Souls (the original) as well as Spider Baby earned thoughtful goatee scratches from me back in the day.

ETA: I remembered an old school one - Tarantula, with Leo G. Caroll succumbing to rampant acromegaly. You get to watch his face slide down off his skull (sort of - this was in the 50's)!

I love these two movies so much. It's possible weed made these movies better for me than they actually are, but I still love 'em.

Don't suppose I could get you to bring that to this year's Chud-B-Q in June. . . ?

Yet, oddly the scariest.

IMHO, Inferno is Argento's most WTF.

I'm surprised I didn't see XTRO on here, I've seen that movie a bunch of times and still don't know what the fuck I was watching.

I'd say Inferno is one of Argento's shittiest, but then he made Mother of Tears.

I dig Inferno, but on the whole I don't really like Argento that much.

He was using the surfer term Grommet--it refers to little kids that are trying to learn how to surf. I guess he thought it looked like a bunch of little kids running around everywhere like they did at the beach.

No, that would be A Cat in the Brain aka Nightmare Concert (starring Lucio Fulci as himself!). Any other Fulci a distant second.

Couple other WTFers I would recommend- Nobuhiko Obayashi's strange and stylish House (no relation), and the Shaw Bros classic Seeding of a Ghost (starts slow, but stick with it and it'll reward you with some epically nutty stuff... there are many decent Hong Kong horror WTFers from around the same period, but few can touch the last 15 minutes of this film, which should be of special interest to fans of Carpenter's The Thing).

I really wanted to be the one guy that liked Cat in the Brain, but man it sucks. And I think City of the Living Dead is a genuine masterpiece.

I bought this at my local Great Escape after hearing about it and it certainly gave me a "What the Fuck" vibe.

The whole weird suck orgy at the end and suddenly I didn't know what the hell I was watching.

I just watched Jeepers Creepers again last night, and I don't think anyone's mentioned that yet. Pretty far from your standard issue horror flick, I'd venture. It's not a slasher (even an impossible to kill, supernatural one). It's more of a flying immortal demon like creature. But it wears clothes and drives a truck? And it comes out into the open at the end & attacks a fully staffed police station, rather than slinking around in the shadows, seen only by its victims & lone, isolated survivors the way most movie monsters seem to do. The thing that made me think of this thread the most was the part where it opens the flaps around its head and hisses at the cops. 'Cause you just know they're all staring down their gunsights and thinking "What the FUCK. . . ?!"

Plus he's a gay demon that likes to sniff young men's dirty underpants.

That's got some WTF overtones, too.

I. . . I guess. . .

I just watched this and was so close to posting a topic on it, but I could only muster 3 words... what... the... fuck.

A quick search of the CC forum and this was the only thread that contained a reference to it - and the title only. Go figure!

Just, wow.

Eh. not a huge fan of Martyrs...something compounded by the fact that if you say you don't like it, you're labelled as someone that obviously didn't "get" it. Which is some kind of weird anti-snobbery. As if I only wanted blood and guts and couldn't appreciate the supposedly subtler, meaningful implications of the whole thing.

And therein lies my issue:

****SPOILERS****















there are no meaningful implications, only ones that people choose to see because the way the picture's constructed it manages to suggest more meaning than it either implies, infers or actually delivers. The problem is that it's all allusions alluding to...ultimately nothing. There's nothing to ultimately "get". It's a picture founded on the notion of "martyrdom" -- commonly defined as sacrificing ones self for faith or belief or cause -- that has as it central character, Anna, someone with no demonstrable belief system. Never is what's at stake for Anna's consciousness (beyond, you know the pain) explored, hinted at or discussed. It's all about the shady group who are perpetrating these outrages. the "martyrdom" is therefore meaningless. It makes the entire conceit hollow and, yes, a little pretentious for anyone that hasn't seen and loved, say, Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc.

I think there's some blurb about "bearing witness" rather than specific "sacrifice" in the film's end scroll, but again, "bearing witness" to what? The entire picture is devoid of spiritualism, the world depicted is pretty secular and Lucie and Anna certainly aren't in anyway defined as devout or spiritual, unless I'm missing something.

Or maybe the whole thing is meant to be an ironic look at what "martyrdom" actually is. In which case that makes it something of a cop-out (not to mention a huge 'fuck you' to people who have died for a cause or belief down the years in real life.)

The whole idea was done far better, with more impact and meaning in the mid-section prison sequence of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's V For Vendetta graphic novel.

Martyrs certainly looks great, is acted with great passion and the basic premise is intriguing to say the least. I just think it's far more hollow when examined closely than its ardent defenders would like to think. It's still just another horror picture. And one that's not as good as Frontiere(s), for me.