OK, Monday, still some folks left, so viewings continued. We started with Panic Beats, a Paul Naschy film that was sort of a mix (I mean, Naschy films being highly derivative is not exactly new) of Twitch of the Death Nerve and particularly Diabolique. Fun, but I’ll be frank and admit several weeks later now I had to look it up and remind myself what the film was about. Look, we watch a lot of movies that weekend and don’t always get a lot of sleep.
Chad R is perhaps the only other attendee who loves bad dramas as much as I do, and he hadn’t seen Sincerely Yours, and it was newly released on an official Warners burn on demand disc, so…still pretty fun. The sweaty close-ups of Liberace strenuously yet vainly trying to emote are right up there with the sweaty close-ups of the general in Reptilicus as the scientist explains to him for the dozenth time why they can’t just blow up the monster.
Sandy, knowing I’m no fan of communism, showed The Death of Stalin, a black comic retelling of the often murderous shenanigans and panicked maneuvering that occurred in Stalin’s inner circle when history’s greatest murderer passed away. It had to be comic because the reality it presented was so horrible it would be unwatchable in any other way, but man, we’re talking pitch black comic. Really good movie, great cast, but not for everyone naturally.
Finally we ended with the classic Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon), just a wonderful film. It’s in that handful of horror flicks that you can watch over and over and it just never loses anything. And that demon! It’s in that very next tier after The Haunting, which to me is the greatest horror movie ever.
