#giving Tetsuo The Iron Man

[videoworm]

like damn

⚠️ big flashing warning though! this is falshy through and through

[yourlocalmissingtexture]

Gender sometimes if I’m honest. Not rn but it still goes ridiculously hard (fACTORY SOUNDSSNSNDKDJDJBFBFN)

This is also another thing I need to watch so I can be Normal about it btw

[call-of-duty-incorrect-quotes]

Price: I asked the rookies to give me a list of 4 gay films to watch on weekends for Pride Month.

Gaz: They picked Call Me by Your Name, Brokeback Mountain, Moonlight and Midnight Cowboy.

Laswell: I admire your initiative, John. It’s a nice gesture.

Price: Not so fast. Then I asked my team for 4 gay films to watch.

Price: They picked Bride of re-animator, Dead Ringers, Tetsuo: the Iron Man and SAW.

Laswell: …

[saturdaynightspecialpresentation]

Poor Things

First of all, Emma Stone’s performance is as good as everybody is saying. Stone takes a very difficult role that easily could have gone very, very wrong and makes it look like the most effortless thing in the world.

I have been looking at the reviews, good and bad, and I think that the minority of people who didn’t vibe with this movie had slightly skewed expectations.

Poor Things starts out at Tetsuo The Iron Man levels of fucked up, but by the end it has dropped to Edward Scissor hands levels of fucked up. This is probably plenty of weirdness for the average movie-goer, but true connoisseurs of mondo cinema should calibrate their expectations.

Second, apparently this is being talked up as a sort of feminist coming of age fable chronicling an everywoman’s sexual awakening and liberation, and it really isn’t that, and I think if you are hoping for that you’ll come away disappointed.

Better, I think, to look at it as an autistic coming of age fable and power fantasy, which I think it does a tremendous job at.

Very minor spoilers under the cut; really, this is more an essay about what I thought the film was about than a review, my review would be that it's somehow simultaneously a feel-good crowd-pleaser AND a movie where an adult woman with the brain of a toddler stabs the eyes out of a corpse with a scalpel and then plays with its penis (I wasn't kidding with the Tetsuo comparison)

Honestly now that I've actually written that out I have maybe underestimated how impressive it is that Yorgos Lanthimos made a movie where that happens on screen but somehow basically everybody loves the movie.

In terms of sex, we do watch Bella discover sex, but she very quickly comes to a conclusion about her relationship with it which never once changes throughout the rest of the movie:

She likes it, she likes it more with an attractive partner, she is utterly lacking in any kind of sexual jealousy, and she doesn't attach too much more to it than that.

This is an odd comparison, but Bella treats sex the way Joey did on Friends. A man acting this way is a sitcom cliche, but a woman acting the same way…

This is a film that is really, really not interested in the real-world consequences of this kind of sex; in fact, given that a pregnancy is the inciting incident of the film, it came off a little weird to me that the possibility of a pregnancy or STD was never really addressed (unless there was a line or two that I missed while I was in the bathroom).

For the most part, though, I was able to get past it by just thinking of it as a heightened world. The sets and settings are extremely artificial, and ultimately I figured, “Hey, if I can buy this kind of thing as harmless and fun in a sitcom, I can buy it in this other kind of heightened reality.

I will say, I don't think Bella is meant to be an every-woman, and that there's textual support for this in the film itself.

All of the women Bella deals with in some way question her approach to sex, making it clear, sometimes through explicit dialog, other times more reading between the lines, that her approach to sex is not for them.

If there’s any particularly feminist message in the film, it’s that when confronted with Bella’s bizarre approach to the world, none of the women get angry at her, and most of the men she meets do.

But Bella’s relationships with other women aren’t really the meat of the film, that’s more about her relationship with men, and particularly the way that they feel, deep in their bones, that they should have control over any woman that they have sex with.

Duncan Wedderburn, when he first discovers Bella and convinces her to go away with him, thinks he is tricking and seducing a beautiful naif who he can use and then discard when he tires of her. Their relationship disintegrates as it becomes clear that Bella hasn’t been tricked at all; she wanted exactly what he was able to give, a chance to sow her wild oats by having some no strings attached sex with an attractive, likable person in an exciting foreign city.

This makes Wedderburn increasingly unhappy and unhinged (He says at one point that he has become what he hates, a “grasping succubus”) much to Bella’s growing consternation. She has no idea why he can’t simply be happy having sex with her and otherwise letting her do what she wants, and he is so committed to a certain vision of gender roles that he can’t even begin to explain it, he can only lash out in frustration.

And that I think is the meatier part of the film; Bella doesn’t so much flout social expectations as she is simply totally unaware that they exist. 

Honestly I think the character isn’t so much coded as autistic as she just is autistic. Bella is a woman who is basically totally unaware of social expectations and constantly taken aback to discover that they exist.

More than that, she has to figure out a way to work around the fact that many of the people who become most enraged by her are also so totally lacking in self-reflection, and view their social situation as so normal, so self-evidently obvious that they cannot explain to her why it is she has made them angry. They suddenly fly into rages that clearly perplex Bella and which they themselves don’t even bother to explain, because they regard their own ideas as self-evident.

Bella is an idealized autistic hero; personally as outlandish as she is I don’t really think the film expects us to take the side of anybody else, and I think there are some fairly subtle and accurate bits of autistic behavior on her part.

She responds to life as a kind of social experiment, attempting to parse out a set of logical rules and, especially in the latter parts of the movie, she often justifies her actions with a perfectly sensible internal logic that the emotional men in her life can’t parse out. Late in the film, when she and Wedderburn are destitute, she prostitutes herself for 30 francs, and with implacable logic, explains the two reasons that Wedderburn ought to be quite happy she has done so: First, her john was much worse at sex than Wedderburn, which ought to satisfy his ego, and second, they now have 30 francs and the potential to earn more.

Wedderburn does not appreciate her logical approach.

Another thing that strikes me as very true is that Bella has a very odd theory of mind for other people. There’s a scene where, traumatized by the unspeakable poverty and suffering she sees in Alexandria, she puts all of Wedderburn’s money in a box and rushes out to give it to the poor. Unfortunately the ship is leaving, but two port attendants tell her that they will be staying on the island, and would be happy to deliver a package. She tells them that she has a big box filled with money and they should give it to the island’s poor, and they agree to do so. Now, the film never tells us one way or another whether they keep their word; but Bella herself retains an iron certainty that they did exactly what she asked them to. Now, we know Bella understands what lying and deceit are, because we’ve seen her trick people before, like when she chloroforms McCandles to run away with Wedderburn. But it never once occurs to her that these sailors might do something similar. Call it paradoxical, but that kind of thinking is common in autistic people.

There’s also the scene where the self-professed cynic Harry Astley shows her the suffering in Alexandria; he admits, when he sees how terribly it has affected her, that he didn’t tell her simply because he thought it was the truth of the world, but that her attitude made him angry, and he wanted to hurt her. A very common part of the autistic coming of age is the slow realization that not everything people tell you is part of a dispassionate, scientific search for the truth.

There’s also a scene in a whorehouse in which Bella argues that it would make more sense to have the women decide who is to sleep with the johns, so that then the john could be more confident that the girl was attracted to him, which he must doubt if he chooses. You can tell I’m autistic because I immediately had the thought, “Well, but the johns would probably be worried that nobody would choose them.”

One of Bella’s fellow working girls instead tells her, “Some of them like the fact that we don’t have a choice”.

[bogleech]

31 Days of Bizarre Movie Monsters Wrapup Tumblr Post

Deep Dark: the monster is a sexy hole and not really the villain.

Vanishing on 7th Street: the world is consumed by darkness, literally.

Vivarium: human cuckoo birds still not sure how to take care of the humans.

Tetsuo the Iron Man: repressed homosexuality might give you rocket shoes.

The Babadook: sometimes trauma is a weird guy.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe: when a dead witch is actually neither thing.

The Empty Man: psychic cults, tulpas and a hare-brained human internet. Ties in with a short comic series that provides more essential lore.

Smile: sometimes trauma is where a weird guy lives.

Little Otik: a piece of wood thinks it’s a baby, but doesn’t get it quite right.

Rubber: a tire kills people in a confounding meta-meta narrative.

Honorable Mentions I: some monsters that didn’t make it in.

The Ritual: a fucked up deer thing might be a norse demigod? This wound up the most normal monster in the list and could have probably stood to be a different choice, but I had fun reviewing it.

Galaxy of Terror: please pick up after your children before going extinct. The only movie I included that’s considered “so bad it’s good.”

Eraserhead: he’s just a little guy :(

Amulet: weird bats, a mollusk goddess of revenge and a truly horrific final twist.

Event Horizon: the famous “spa

ceship possessed by hell” movie. She just wants to go home, that’s all.

In the Tall Grass: this time the Stephen King monster IS the midwest. A field of grass warps space/time to torment intruders.

It Follows: about a sexually transmitted stalker.

Honorable Mentions II: more movies that were left out of the main feature.

Malignant: also just a little guy but also kind of a prick. An atmospheric horror film that (intentionally) becomes cheesy horror-action.

Incarnation: a single mom vs. a forgotten goddess in a heartwrenching and creatively immersive found footage film.

Possum: about a man and his terrifying puppet, but neither are the real monster.

Await Further Instructions: a toxic family are prisoners of their television.

Terrified: ghostly encounters that are really something completely different.

The Tingler: doctors hate him! Local man discovers the weird bug that lives in everybody’s vertebrae.

Oculus: mirror hates people, dogs and houseplants, may be most unbeatable antagonist featured.

Fiend Without a Face: the original “tentacled brain” monster movie and more.

1408: rude customer vs. sadistic trickster god hotel room with multiple, equally canon endings.

Pontypool: the most “abstract” monster in the entire feature.

Ring: a weirder horror franchise than most people actually know, and Sadako to begin with is weirder than most people remember.

Ana and Bruno: like I say at the end of the review, it’s a more touching Toy Story meets an even darker Babadook

[lemainestudio]

i adore your work, can i ask for your inspirations? designers or films or books or music etcetera

❤️❤️ thank you

obviously i’m going to say mcqueen i know everyone says mcqueen but like there’s a reason everyone says mcqueen, galliano, mulger, i actually really like thom browne as well, dilara is fab, peter do is amazing

i tend to look away from fashion when i’m designing tho & i get very pretentious with my inspiration, i have books on the concepts of death, hell, a really cool book on manias and phobias, i like the rossetti’s art & poetry bc they were so melancholic and insane, francis bacon, ken curry, i end up reading a lot of non-fiction on surgery and the human body, specifically about decomposition how our bodies change

body horror films, cronenburg obviously, tetsuo the iron man, titane, raw, the new evil deads are mad, the alien movies, mad god

i listen to sad emo boys whining and screaming, dad rock, riot grrl and heavy metal, also the kind of techno that gives you a headache, lesbians and ethel cain genre religious sad

my Big Advice to anyone looking for creative inspiration is to Go To Exhibits Go To Galleries Go To Museums Go To Shows!!! i live in london so it’s easier to find things but i swear go and support ur local art scene

[porcelain-rob0t]

since you lovely people gave me horror movie recommendations, ill give some of my own!!

Autopsy of Jane Doe (a recent favorite, suspenseful and has supernatural elements but a lot of the scary stuff is done through implication)

Videodrome (for the freaks out there)

The Fly (im a sucker for anything by David Cronenberg)

Phantom of the Paradise (my favorite horror musical, the music and costume design are amazing)

Ginger Snaps (really compelling story about 2 sisters, once inseparable, growing apart. also werewolves)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (really spooky, its a classic)

Frankenhooker (batshit. absolute nonsense. its so fun)

Re-animator (Re-animator)

Altered States (local man takes so many drugs in a sensory deprivation tank that he devolves into a caveman)

Terrifier and Terrifier 2 (not so much a narrative film as it is a showing of the sickest and nastiest practical effects)

Vampire Clay (BONKERS)

Killer Klowns From Outer Space (real good fun with awesome practical effects)

Audition (Takashi Miike is a fucking menace, great film)

The Lost Boys (punk vampires in the 80s, what else do i have to say)

House of 1000 Corpses (i love you Rob Zombie)

The Love Witch (gorgeous, looks right out of the 60s but with a modern twist)

Suspiria (the original and the remake are great but are basically 2 completely different movies)

Teeth (its teeth)

Vamp (Grace Jones is a cool vampire lady)

The Stuff (BONKERS FUCKING YONKERS)

Mandy (Nic Cage goes crazy with it)

Perfect Blue (rest in peace Satoshi Kon you were a genius)

The Brood (David Cronenberg back at it again)

Arabella Black Angel (classic giallo stuff, murders and the most stunning Italian women you've ever seen)

Poughkeepsie Tapes (found footage thats actually scary)

mother! (most anxiety inducing thing ive ever witnessed, i never ever want to see it again. horrifying. be careful, besties)

Tetsuo the Iron Man (the most bizarre body horror ive seen, its great)

Bone Tomahawk (awesome Western horror)

Tenebrae (Italy loves violence)

there's probably more im forgetting but i can always add more later

[misticfog]

Tagged by @autistictransbiankumatora. List 5 favourite movies and let the people decide which one matches my vibes the best. I will give some explanations for these movies and why I like them just because.

I think Shrek was my first favourite movie? I was obsessed with it as a kid: great humour, lovable characters, good morals, memorable music and GOOD POLISH DUBBING. I'm kinda sad it's a meme now.

Lisa Frankenstein is a slasher rom-com 😃 It's great. Watch it.

Loving Vincent is the first movie to be fully painted. The same people made the new The Peasants movie. I love it as an art piece more than as a movie 😅 It looks beautiful!

Tetsuo is a Japanese body horror series. Weird. Chaotic. Metal (literally). Has stop motion in it and it's my type of porn (it's not porn. I'm just too ace for the normal thing).

Howl is here to represent anime and doesn't need an explanation. I watched it for the first time last year so no sentimental value but I still love it.

I'm tagging! @existencebringsonlypain @soypeople @rabarbarzcukrem

[cypriathus]

Updated: September 10, 2024

My anon name is 🦅🦁 or 🦁🦅

For those who stumble upon my account... Hello and how are ya? This is my very first time using Tumblr! You can refer to me as Yume, Dreamy, Floof, JJ, Roving, Gryph or whatever nickname you wanna give me. I'm a genuinely curious individual who sometimes gets obsessed with stuff that I eventually want to get engaged with or stuff that I have no intention of trying out, but I'm very fascinated by it. I'm also just a silly, creative Canadian who's trying to get the most out of life.

My general pronouns are she/her, but I genuinely don't mind you referring to me as they/them and he/him. I will not specify my age publicly due to privacy reasons. If you want to know, just shoot me a DM/message.

Some of my hobbies include writing, drawing, listening to music, reading novels and manga, watching YouTube, occasionally watching movies, TV shows or anime, and baking once in a blue moon. For those wondering what kind of art I do, I've primarily been doing a lot of digital artwork as of now. However, I have been using traditional mediums (acrylic paint, markers, coloured pencils, and regular ol' pencils) for many years now. You can find most of my current artworks that I have shared on my Instagram account (@cypriathus). Before we move on with other stuff about me, some of my interests include psychology, sociology, criminology, law, biology, outer space, mythology, folklore, legends, religion, history, internet mysteries, and lost media.

My Tumblr family!

I listen to a myriad of music artists including:

Muse

Set It Off

System Of A Down

Tally Hall

Citizen Soldier

Fall Out Boy

Finger Eleven

Get Scared

Avenged Sevenfold

Sick Puppies

Hoobastank

Infected Musroom and so much more

I have watched a lot of anime and there are still some I need to get around to watching eventually. Some of these anime include:

Cat Soup

Ergo Proxy

FLCL

Perfect Blue

Tokyo Godfathers

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Kaiba

Haibane Renmei

Outlaw Star

Now and Then, Here and There

Serial Experiments Lain

Summer Wars

Belle

Angel's Egg

Most Studio Ghibli movies

Cowboy Bebop

Metropolis

Steamboy

The Tatami Galaxy

Mind Game

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms

Mononoke and so much more

Non-anine movies and TV shows that I remember watching:

Breaking Bad franchise

Seven

American History X

Coraline

ParaNorman

Mad God

Schindler's List

Final Space

Cliffhanger

Del Toro's Pinocchio

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Possum

The Mask

The Wedding Singer

Labyrinth

The Dark Crystal

Lord of War

Midsommar

Hereditary

Scarface

Monty Python and the Holy Grail & Monty Python's Life of Brian

Silence of the Lambs

Popee the Performer

Mr. Stain on Junk Alley

And many more

Some manga and books that I have currently read are:

Homunculus

Chainsaw Man

AKIRA

The Girl from the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún

The Ancient Magus' Bride

Dandadan

Trigun and Trigun Maximum

Bibliomania

Heads

Goodbye, Eri

Look Back

Yogen no Nayuta

Eden: It’s An Endless World

Keyman: The Hand of Judgement

Shigahime

Rojica to Rakkasei

BLAME!

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Animal Farm

The Green Mile

Salem's Lot

Lord of the Flies

The Catcher in the Rye

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Complete Tales of H. P. Lovecraft and more

Rules:

I would like to stay anonymous for the most part, so don't pry me for certain information that I don't feel comfortable sharing. I'll only share bits and pieces of my life if I feel comfortable with you.

Don't ask me for pictures of myself or I'll block you immediately!

Don't be rudely judgemental

Don't send anon hate

Don't say discriminatory and sexually disgusting things

Don't threaten me

Don't mention pre-existing fictional characters or other forms of media through the comments, reblogs, and inbox.

Don't recommend me pieces of media I should watch and/or read because that gets under my skin really badly as I view it as a threat to my independence and freedom of choice.

If you want to provide constructive criticism, give me more than one thing to work off of because it'll give more of an opportunity to grow.

Do not interact with me if you're one of the following (I'll add more if needed):

Pedophile

Anti-LGBTQ+

Racist

Sexist/misogynistic

Ageist

Ableist

Pro-Israel

Misandrist

Islamophobic

Someone who invalidates a person's pronouns, gender, and/or identity

Someone who supports, participates, tolerates, and/or justifies any of the above.

That's most of the stuff you need to know about me as of now. Anyways, as I mentioned in the description, I plan on using this blog as a way to share various ideas in regards to my personal writing projects. I'm open to listening to your ideas, sharing new ideas, and even constructive criticism! I hope you enjoy your stay here and I can't wait to share my ideas with y'all!

I have a side blog where I roleplay, make moodboards, and post stuff that ain't related to my work: @floofgryph

I also have a Metal Slug blog: @thesilliestrovingalive

Writing Projects:

Masterpost for the Iron Eclipse AU (Metal Slug)

[romanceyourdemons]

i enjoyed tetsuo: the iron man (1989) a lot. director shinya tsukamoto cites videodrome (1983) as inspiration, and the film also puts me in mind of david lynch’s eraserhead (1977); all three films closely entangle machinery, disease, sexuality, violence, and queerness. this film puts more emphasis on disease and queerness than the other two in service of its more central theme of chaos and entropy. whereas in videodrome (1983) the mutation of technology and flesh is carefully designed and controlled, perfect and crisp even as the flesh grows vile to hold it, in this film all the machinery is decaying scrap, imperfect from the start, diseased, causing disease, and a disease itself. the more it appears, the more chaotic it becomes, until the film reaches a final conflict that strongly reminded me of the visuals of akira (1988) in their chaos and alien brutality. the effects effects in this film are a tour de force, a phrase i do not usually like to use; overwhelming, near-impossible-to-parse images give an impression of a world falling apart. this visual impression of entropy is heightened by intense, fast-paced editing and a non-linear, non-logical plot that binds itself not to an easily followable train of events but an ever-heightening gradient of transformation. finally, themes of queerness—particularly gender nonconformity—introduce a human element to the intense physical and societal transformation and unintentional alienation from traditional, respectable society. tetsuo: the iron man (1989) is by no means a traditional film, and it is not particularly easy to watch, but i really enjoyed its contribution to the body horror style and its presentation of machinery and the flesh

[brigitteblackwood]

hiii thanks for rbing my horror recs post! here's your recs! :)

based on ginger snaps i'd recommend let the right one in (2008), the lure (2015), the witch (2015), the living dead girl (1982), stoker (2013), bones and all (2022) and carrie (1976) about (blood thirsty) outcast girls who want to be loved :(. 

based on hausu i'd recommend suspiria (1977), beetlejuice (1988), eraserhead (1977), the love witch (2016), the cell (2000) and the rocky horror picture show (1975) because they have unique aesthetics that they really commit to, and tetsuo: the iron man (1989), brain damage (1988), possessor (2020), killer klowns from outer space (1988), the machine girl (2008) and videodrome (1983) because they're some of the more unhinged batshit insane movies i've seen.

based on we're all going to the world's fair i'd recommend i saw the tv glow (2024), pulse (2001), skinamarink (2022), may (2002), censor (2021), swallow (2019) and eraserhead (1977) which are all strange but beautiful movies with themes of loneliness. 

based on scream i'd recommend urban legend (1998), behind the mask: the rise of leslie vernon (2006), house of wax (2005), you're next (2011), haunt (2019), the final girls (2015), totally killer (2023) and the cabin in the woods (2011) because they're all about (masked) killers starring cool female characters.

based on the blair witch project i'd recommend the ritual (2017), horror in high desert (2021), the strangers (2008), the tunnel (2011) and them (2006) which are all quite simple but effective horrors about something lurking in the shadows.

hope there's some you haven't seen yet! :)

Thanks for the recommendations! Some of these I've seen already, but there are plenty I still haven't watched. In fact, a few have been on my watchlist for a while, so I'll take this as a sign to get to them soon (or, in the case of Let the Right One In, hurry up and read the book since I want to finish it before checking out any of the adaptations).

I thought it might be fun to share my thoughts about the ones I have seen:

The Witch (2015) - I read The Crucible when I was far too young (I stole it off my parents' bookshelf after I got bored with reading Junie B. Jones) and was obsessed with dark fairy tales about witches living in the forest as a child. So this was very much my shit.

Stoker (2013) - After watching this, I spent so many nights just wondering whether India Stoker and Merricat Blackwood would get along or try to kill each other if they ever met. I still don't have an answer.

Carrie (1976) - Love the use of split screen and Sissy Spacek really only moving her eyes during the attack on the gym. Hate the aggressive male-gazeyness of the locker room scene and the under usage of Amy Irving (I thought she was a interesting choice to play Sue, and I'm forever bitter she and Carrie didn't get to have their confrontation at the end like they do in the book).

Suspiria (1977) - The colours! The Goblin soundtrack! Sure, the actual plot barely makes any sense, but I adore it so much!

Beetlejuice (1988) - The last time I watched this was back in high school, so I should probably give it a rewatch soon. I remember loving the Maitlands and the Deetz family but absolutely hating Betelgeuse; I think he's the weakest character and would argue that you could still get a great story without him, but I understand I'm likely in the minority here.

Eraserhead (1977) - God, I always get so mad on the baby's behalf. He cries all the time! Well, he probably wouldn't cry so much if you didn't leave him lying on a hard table 24/7! 🙄

The Love Witch (2016) - I'm conflicted about this one. I thought it was beautifully shot, and I love anything that pays homage to older films. But since Anna Biller has gone full TERF since its release, I've found my viewing experience somewhat soured (which sucks because I was really interested in seeing her upcoming Bluebeard adaptation before I found out).

Videodrome (1983) - Another one I need to revisit. I'm a big Cronenberg fan, but I don't think I really gelled with this one the first time I watched it. James Wood (🤢) being the star probably didn't help.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) - I got to see it at my local indie cinema as a double feature with The People's Joker last month! I bawled my eyes out, but thankfully, so did everyone else around me.

May (2002) - She's so me (minus the murder and mutilation, of course).

Swallow (2019) - Has one of my favourite ending shots in film history.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011) - The script was far too Whedon-y for me to enjoy, but I cheered so loud when they unleashed all the monsters on the staff.

Rocky Horror (1975) - I have fond memories of my mother sneaking 14-year-old me and my 10-year-old sister into our first live viewing (I think the only reason she succeeded was because my sister hit puberty early and looked a lot older). We'd known about the show for most of our childhood because both our parents worked in theatre and would often play showtunes around the house, so we'd already memorized most of the songs (minus Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me, which our parents would skip for obvious reasons).

I'd love to hear some of you're thoughts on these films. If you're comfortable sharing.

[immoralimmortals]

Assigning the Akatsuki movies that tend to really disturb people, because they are a disturbing bunch.

A word of caution: the films mentioned are very intense, some of which closer to endurance tests than narratives. These pairings are not recommendations to see these movies. If you seek any out, research the content. I am not adding individual content warnings for the films themselves since I'm only pairing them with characters (you are free to inquire for those or for spoilers if you want to know more)

General content warning for the post itself for unsavory mentions of various kinds of violence.

Pain: Come and See

Lauded by some as the only war film that is not accidentally pro-war or pro-military propaganda. It is a story about children, children who are vessels of the narrative to, as the title says, show you the horrors and agony of warfare on the human spirit.

Konan: Martyrs

A French extreme horror film that breaks your heart as you watch women's spirits get broken. It is painfully empathetic and gut punches you over and over. It relies on you caring about the characters for its impact and it succeeds. What is the great worth of having suffered?

(Despite having a very spiritual aspect l, it is too heartfelt of a film to give Hidan, though considered)

Obito: Perfect Blue

Twisty, turny story about identities and lies. Plays with the idea of innocence and self control like how a cat plays with a butterfly with a broken wing. It's a beautiful movie but it's also going to make you really unhappy.

Zetsu: Beyond the Black Rainbow

This is a slow, methodical film about invasiveness and brainwashing. The color pallet is stark, contrasted mostly by bright whites and dark shades, with the occasional blood red thrown in to throw you off. Some of the imagery is very unnatural-seeming and nightmarish. This is the sort of movie you'd like to put on if you want to do the opposite of whatever meditation would be.

Hidan: Mai-chan's Daily Life

If you know this movie/manga at all, my reasoning is what it says on the tin. Girl gets dismembered and killed over and over as an immortal. She kind of likes it? It's a really nasty one that jumps to being so over the top and silly. I haven't seen this one and have no deeper thoughts on it.

...I guess if I really want to keep with the theme of movies I've actually seen, I'd then go with The Devils, which is based on a real life event. It's about the interplay between religion, sexuality, and political freedom, and it gets really, really violent and makes me go

Kakuzu: The Night of the Hunter

This one is actually just legitimately a very good movie that happens to hurt you deep in your soul. Two kids of the Great Depression are confided to by their dad before his execution that he stole several thousand dollars from a bank. A priest he meets in prison tracks down the children, worms his way into the love of not only their widowed mother but of the community, and tries to convince them to give the money to him as God intended.

This is a very influential film from the 1950s that while not often recognized by name, has been cited as inspiration for some of the most notable filmmakers in recent time. It is less traditionally disturbing and more that you are made to walk alongside these children as they enter a money-hungry nightmare.

Deidara: Tetsuo the Iron Man

This film is an art piece. I don't mean that in a way which denotes that it is pleasant but in a way where I appreciate and recognize every choice was very, very purposeful. This is a movie with such industrial, inhuman sound design. It is loud and visceral and made to make you feel like you got in a car accident. It's also deeply homoerotic??? So bonus points! Also has some genuinely incredible visual effects. I am sick to my stomach.

Sasori: Audition

I love this movie. Ohhhh it hurts me. It makes me sick. I'm never watching it again. The premise is a man lies about the purpose of an audition, which is not a movie role but to select a potential wife. It doesn't strike him as possible that an actress might catch onto his script that plays out.

The ending scene. This is why it's for Sasori. Such a sweet smile and soothing voice while dismembering someone with piano wire.

Kisame: Ichi the Killer

I'm setting aside the very, very overt sexual text of this movie to focus on what it's trying to say about the enjoyment of violence. It is a bizarrely lighthearted film about two opposites. As YouTuber NyxFears (May Leitz) has put it:

Guy 1: This is a party, I love killing people! Yay! :D

Guy 2: I'm terrified, I hate that I'm violent! Why are we doing this!

It is an incredibly fun yakuza film that also makes you frown really hard at some bits as it becomes really morally questionable.

Itachi: The Handmaiden

Another genuinely excellent movie where the point of it is to throw your soul into a rock tumbler so you can experience the full spectrum of human emotion! It is not only gorgeously made and pleasing to the eye, but it also relies upon your attachment to the regality and poise a character holds, which I think is a similar feeling I give to Itachi when I think about him. It is a cathartic tale that makes you believe love is real by making you, as the audience, suffer to get there as the characters do.

[rainydayscore]

So in Tetsuo the Iron Man, when Salaryman is with His Girlfriend in his apartment, he undergoes a metamorphosis and hides himself in the bathroom, begging her not to look at him, she keeps insisting she doesn't get scared easily and forces the door open. Salaryman flies into a rage (/a lust) and attacks her.

In Japanese mythology, the Japanese archipelago was created by the dieties Izanagi-no-Mikoto and his sister-wife Izanami-no-Mikoto, who give birth to the islands and the rest of the gods. After birthing a god of fire, Izanami dies and goes to Yomi, the land of the dead. Izanagi goes to Yomi also to retrieve her, but having eaten food of the land of the dead, Izanami has become a horrific corpse, despite telling Izanagi not to look at her, he does and she flies into a rage and attacks him.

This is the only scene in the movie I noticed to have specific religous themes and paralels, but my knowledge of Shinto and Japanese mythology is pretty sparse, so it could be a far more present and consistent part of the movie than is readily apparent to western audiences.

[quickdeaths]

muse horror faves vs mun horror faves

Tsubasa:

Pulse/Kairo

Videodrome

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Ringu

Scanners

Tech horror all the way - Tsubasa is way into horror movies that grapple with transhumanism, cyberfuturistic themes, science-fiction. etc. They like their horror media weird and speculative, often with a good dose of body horror.

Shinobu:

Godzilla (1954)

The Host

Ginger Snaps

Tag/Real Onigokko

Jennifer's Body

Sympathetic monster monsters, feminist themes, the young woman-as-monster - Shinobu looks for personal resonance. She feels like a monster a lot of the time anyway, so she likes films that give monsters a bit of credit.

Mun:

Scream/Scream 2

The Cabin in the Woods

[Rec]

Get Out

The Thing

An American Werewolf in London

Audition

Let The Right One In

Alien

Truly no unifying themes. I just like what I like, and I'm probably forgetting stuff, too. I didn't wanna double up, but I like some of the muse faves as well. I picked ten that came to mind, but honestly probably only Scream, Scream 2, The Thing, and Alien are like "locked in" and I could have swapped out the others for any number of other ones. I have a lot of interesting-looking horror movies on my to-watch list, also, that I think I'll like, but horror movies are more fun to watch with other people than alone. Maybe this month tho if I can wrangle my server girlies (gender neutral) into more movie nights.

tagged by: stolen from @suffcring

tagging: whoever likes horror media and wants to! Steal it!

[glitchbirds]

6, 7, 20, 29 for the horror ask game :3

hiii :) took a while to answer this because i was watching alligator (1980) and rewatching william castle's the old dark house. as one does 6: a horror movie you liked but wouldnt recommend to most people (give a reason if youd like to)

-tbh my first thought was killer condom (1996) </3 german comedy-horror adapted from a comic about a gay detective investigating sentient condoms biting ppl’s dicks off. a bit difficult to recommend due to the subject matter (and iirc it has an issue with transmisogyny wrt one side character) but i really enjoyed it and kind of want to rewatch it soon

7: a horror movie you want to recommend to people

- let's scare jessica to death (1971) is my default answer... its on the slower side so its definitely not for everyone but the vibes are immaculate etc

20: creatures you wish were featured in more horror movies

-im starting to realize i REALLY love the concept of alien/sentient parasites in horror (esp ones with mind control/possession/etc capabilities) and would love to see more of that- like in brain damage, baby blood… animorphs…...................

i also like horror movies where the monster is Just An Animal(s) (see: alligator), i feel like that subgenre has started to die out in recent years outside of parody films

29: favorite body horror

-tetsuo the iron man and society!! :)

[rookie-critic]

Rookie-Critic's Halloween Horror-thon: Part 4 - #16-20

#16: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto) [REWATCH]

A cult classic of Japanese cyberpunk horror and the debut film of one of my favorite Japanese directors, Shinya Tsukamoto (if you couldn't tell). The inspirational reach of this film is palpable if you know what to look for, having been cited by directors like Darren Aronofsky for his film Pi, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, and the Wachowskis for The Matrix. It's hard to argue with results like that. I personally love this movie, I have its scant 67-minute runtime nearly memorized and have seen it more times than I can remember. However, I can certainly acknowledge its shortcomings as something that's not accessible to most audiences. Plot is definitely more of a suggestion than a rule here, and a lot of the film is spent in a state of frantic bewilderment as you try to piece together what exactly is going on through the nearly incomprehensible madness onscreen, but ultimately the "why" of it isn't important. It's rare that I say this, but I almost prefer that the film doesn't really give the audience anything concrete to go off of. It gives enough, and for the purposes of its dissection (apropos word choice there, good job, Rookie) of the relationship between man and metal and the growing industrialization of the 80s, Tsukamoto does exactly what he needs to do, and doesn't overstay his welcome in the slightest. It's one of the bigger reasons why this film works better than either of its sequels/reimaginings, and why it's so well-regarded amongst international film buffs. A short, manic, bizarro-thrill ride, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Score: 8/10 Currently streaming on AMC+/Shudder.

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#17: Onibaba (1964, dir. Kaneto Shindo)

This, for a majority of its runtime, doesn't really feel like a horror movie. That being said, there are plenty of pieces of horror in it to where, by the end, I see why it's labeled as such. The suffocation of the grass field that surrounds our main setting from all sides aides the claustrophobic nature of the film, and casts an air of foreboding over every shot. It's an interesting watch that dives into the desperation we feel when we are starved of our base desires and how that can cloud our judgement, especially in times of great hardship (in this instance, war). It's a film that leaves itself wide-open for interpretation, and one I'm still pondering over days later. Score: 7/10 Currently streaming on Max.

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#18: Eyes Without a Face (1960, dir. Georges Franju)

This French horror from the early '60s is another that I've owned for quite some time, and just never taken the time to actually sit down and watch. It's a slow burn (much like a lot of these older, black-and-white films are), and there are moments that feel like they drag on for too long, but the parts of this film that do work, really work. What Franju and his team were able to accomplish with practical effects and makeup in this is exceptional by today's standards, let alone when the film was released in 1960. The acting from Édith Scob as Christiane is similarly excellent considering she acts through the entirety of her screen time with a mask on. To be able to convey emotion without the benefit of facial expressions and have it come through despite that handicap and the language barrier (the film is in French) rightfully earns this film the praise it has received over the decades. Score: 7/10 Currently streaming on Max.

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#19: Ginger Snaps (2000, dir. John Fawcett)

OK, so I've seen Jennifer's Body twice, right? Once back around the time it came out (I hated it then) and then once within the past 5 years because I heard it was underappreciated in its time and is worth re-evalutating (I still don't like it very much). So with the memory of Jennifer's Body still fairly fresh, I'm just gonna say this is so close to being the exact same movie (there's obviously some differences in their story: werewolf not succubus, sisters not best friends), to the point where I out loud in the group I was watching it with said "Jennifer's Body just straight ripped this off, right?" and got a fair amount of agreement. However, this, to me, is a much better film. It has a lot of the Diablo Cody-esque kitschy dialogue without tipping into hard cringe and the practical effects work, while B-movie-ish in nature (we're never, as a society, going to top the transformation sequence from An American Werewolf in London), is really well done. It strikes a good balance between camp and smartly written horror which Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle juggle competently. Isabelle especially steals the show here as the titular Ginger, and provides a good, if not slightly caricatured, depiction of female puberty. Narratively messy, but tonally sound, Ginger Snaps deserves its status as a cult classic. Score: 7/10 Currently streaming on Peacock.

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#20: Opera (1987, dir. Dario Argento)

Opera is largely considered director Dario Argento's last great film before the quality of his output started to drop, and I can see why. It has all of the things that make his movies so good: a compelling main character driven by an even more compelling lead performance, an engaging mystery that unravels itself naturally over the course of the film, and that impeccable giallo style that he is the king of. Cristina Marsillach gives an impassioned performance and easily garners the audience's sympathy. The biggest curiosity of the film is that the murder sequences, which are expertly shot and unique in that the killer always ties up our protagonist and tapes needles underneath her eyes so that she has to watch the horror that ensues, are always cut with this insane, Judas Priest-like heavy metal music playing over them. Let me tell you that the consistency with which that heavy metal music played throughout the film had me confused, and then put off, and then finally fully indoctrinated by the final time it happened at the film's end. So much so that when that final time was about to happen, I was quite literally on the edge of my seat with anticipation, because I could feel it coming, and then when it finally came on I jumped up and cheered. I'm not sure if the desired reaction was achieved, but man was it massively entertaining. It's a little goofy, but I feel like this was about as far as Argento's signature style can be pushed without being a parody of itself, and Opera still largely works in spite of that glaring oddity. Score: 7/10 Currently streaming on AMC+/Shudder.