High Tension on sale NOW

It is impossible to be lucky if High Tension enters your collection, whether late or early.

The luck would come in finding a DVD for another movie in the High Tension case.

Oh, snap! On the deuce!

Not worth a single banknote.

I will go the opposite route in this thread... I thought it kicked ass!

I don't even think about the twist, because really, this movie was so gruesome and intense that it totally kicked me in the ass. This film EARNS that gore... it's chunky and relentless, and satisfying. I thought it worked as being a pretty scary film... I think the twist erases some of the scary elements of the premise, but adds a psychosexual context that renders the film utterly unsettling and grotesque from another angle.

I will definetly purchase this.

I can't wait to watch this. I've been on a slasher kick lately and this will feed my frankenstein nicely.

The twist makes the film completely unwatchable a second time.

A complete cop-out.

Just save your money, go to a library, and check out Dean Koont's Intensity. I swear to god, it's like whoever did High Tension read the book, did a screenplay folling the book, until he ran out of time (which would be about halfway through the book), tacked on a lame twist ending to wrap it up, and called it a day. I was amazed at how much High Tension copped from Intensity. Straight up shot for shot moments. Way too much to be a coincidence. Intensity has a way better story and ending, once you get to the point where High Tension gave up copying the book.

I just noticed the banner ad on the homepage says you can own this on DVD October 1st.

Thats true. The banner ad where it's advertised with Undead (another piece of garbage), the date is October 1. But the other banner ad, where it's only High Tension, states that it's available on October 11th. Hmmmmm.

I can't Netflix it until next week.
Are they starting to reverse things now, making DVDs available for purchase before rental?

I've got to say I liked this movie. I thought it was kind of a homage to italian horror films. I wouldn't call it a classic but definately more of an old school horror than 1000 Corpses was supposed to be.

The splatter effects we´re made by Gianetto de Rossi, who worked on many classic Italian horror films, including The Beyond, Zombie Flesh Eaters and City of the Living Dead.

is this region 1 version of the movie cut, anyone know? I looked on amazon and it doesn't seem to be an unrated DVD...

I think there's an unrated dvd available. I seem to remember somebody saying there was only like a minutes difference between the rated and unrated versions so whatever was missing couldn't have been too important.

I actually enjoyed this thing up until the 'twist ending'. Maybe, it's a testament to how good the first 95% was that it pissed me off so much.

One of the managers at Regal must not have liked it either. She sat in on the showing I attended and then told everyone to wait outside the theater for a moment. She returned 2 minutes later and gave free passes to the 30 or so people there.

Oh and Cécile De France is hot.

Where are these people when JUST LIKE HEAVEN screens?

Ouch, sorry.

I thought the film was decent. It was not the classic or gem that most hailed it to be, but not the piece of trash that others stated either. Worth watching, but I'm not sure if I will actually buy it. Maybe when it goes on sale in a few months.

thanks Beautiful Nightmare. I couldn't find an unrated region 1 version at my usual DVD suppliers, but I'll keep looking. I'd really like to get the full version even if it is just a minute longer.

I found mine at Target. It's got the unrated US cut and the original French director's cut.

i started to read intensity not to long after i saw high tension and i stoped reading it becuase i thoguht that it was based on the book. what i want to know is how this guy was able to make this movie and not have to pay dean koontz some money.

Horrible fucking movie. Definitely takes the most overhyped POS of the year award. The gore was decent but I would have been able to enjoy it more had the plot not been so stupid. Even before the twist it was dumb but afterwards it's like WTF? Completely incomprehensible. A total waste of 2 hours and $5 rental fee. Thank God I didn't blind buy it.

Okay, I'm not sure if this can sway people...

I like the ending because of the issues it brings up. I can't really intellectualize it as well as Walter Chaw, so I'm gonna post his spoilerized opinions... he may over-reach, but I like his viewpoint on it. He gave it three stars, btw.

http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenre...ingtension.htm

"...The twist is that petite Marie is actually the killer (a reveal that should have waited another five minutes, until after the rescue sequence and Alex's would-be inexplicable hysteria) and the manifestation of her ambiguity is a hulking man armed with straight razor and, in its homage-laden final twenty minutes (the picture pays tribute to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, fascinatingly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II), a giant car-wrecker chainsaw. Marie's repressed sexuality--her "dyke-ism"--is therefore represented in the picture as a giant, disgusting male sex killer who uses various weapons as phallic substitutes. Marie's lesbianism, should we extend the trope, is responsible for destroying her object choice's family, for betraying her trust in the most animal kind of way, and for leading to the further castration of a potential male suitor (and potential saviour) whose cigarette dangles impotently from his lips as death comes calling. The battle royale near the end of the picture between Marie and her lesbianism is obsessed with obscuring and damaging the face--enough so that it becomes clear that what's actually at stake in this picture is the self-image of a gay girl tired of the judgment of the majority society and afraid that the girl she has a crush on doesn't swing that way. The twist works thematically, but it doesn't work contextually. (Marie can't move a bureau to get to a telephone, but he-Marie can use a larger bureau with sufficient speed to decapitate/castrate daddy, for just one example; Marie and he-Marie drive two different cars simultaneously on two separate occasions, for another.) It's a reason along with the picture's dubbing and elisions to downgrade the literal experience..."

He words it well but in the end there's no explaining away the irrationality of it all. Like he mentions how does he/she drive two cars. How does he/she know the gas station attendant if she's never been there before and how does she/he have fillatio with a decapitated head while at the same time driving to her girlfriends house in yet another car. None of it works once it's revealed that the girl is doing all the killing. Very weak. I hope this movie is spoiled for people so they don't have to sit through it. Such an injustice.

Now I also thought that the twist in The Machinist kind of ruined a possible second veiwing but it didn't render the entire movie a rediculous mess like High Tension.

Correct. So I don't even bother. I enjoyed it on the same level as a Fulci film. Great themes and images, but it doesn't make a lick of sense. But with such great images as a staircase decapitation and crazy bloody man holding a giant buzz saw in the autumn woods, who cares?
If it helps, think of the entire movie as her own fictionalized version of events running through her mind as she sits in the asylum.

But wouldn't the fact that Marie is the one doing the telling explain how we see such things as Marie watching the father and the gas station attendant get killed, the car chase and fight with the "killer"? Once she is revealed as the killer then we're seeing the whole thing from Alex's POV.

*points up* yeah, what Bob said. :-)

I don't buy it and hey I'm a huge Fulci fan but any Fulci movie has a better and more interesting plot than this. It seems like they wrote the movie as they filmed and at the last minut 3/4 of the way through the movie decided they needed a twist for an American audience and slapped it in their without changing anything before it to help it make sense.

At least some people are getting enjoyment out of it.

Also the chicks are fugly. The worst part is that the masturbating scene would have been great had she been a hot lesbian but an ugly one does nothing for me. Had the chicks been hot I might have enjoyed it a little more. The shower scene was OK though 'cause I didn't have to see her face.

Good point.

Sarcasm?

From Devin's main page interview with the director-
"That was the final twist, and the twist was only saying, ‘OK what you saw was her vision of the story and the truth is another movie.’"
VINDICATED!