Identify This Movie

[colinr0380]

If we are going to do a list of "clips from gory horror films used in art films" slightly related is the way that Jess Franco's Bloody Moon (in particular the stone saw decapitation) features as the footage that the main character is, um, enjoying under the opening credits of Almodovar's Matador.

[j99]

I can only remember the ending of the film, but there's a guy in a bedroom, who is an intruder and he hears people coming towards the door. He opens a trapdoor, goes inside, then a couple of people enter and move a wardrobe over the trapdoor and leave the room. He screams while the camera is fixed on the wardrobe, then the film ends. Anyone have any ideas? I think it's a B-movie, in black and white, and I saw it in the 70s on television, but might be from the 50s or 60s.

[HarryLong]

It's a Hammer film called THE SNORKEL.
The guy (Peter van Eyck) had earlier escaped detection after a murder by hiding in that under-the-floorboards place he'd prepared.

[j99]

Thanks Harry. I have wanted to know the name of that film for years.

[HarryLong]

I've wanted to see it again for years.
TCM showed it a few months ago but it was at some inconvenient time.
But I think Sony is looking at it for another Hammer set ...

[j99]

I noticed on imdb that The Snorkel has been shown on TCM but is unavailable on DVD. I looked at some of the posts there and they mention the memorable ending. It's the only thing I remember from the film.

There is another film which may also be from Hammer but my memory of it is vague. All I remember is a gothic looking woman, with long black hair in her 30s, staring out from the top floor of an English manor house. I think she was a double, and may have been looking at herself down below. I'm fairly sure she was playing two women, and may have been haunting herself. A fairly creepy, minimalist film, with little dialogue as I remember, but I'm not certain. Possibly mid to late 60s, in black and white, but again, I'm not sure.

[HarryLong]

That one I don't know. My knowledge of Hammer is pretty solid though, so on the basis of what you've posted I don't think it's a Hammer.

[Jonathan S]

But I think Sony is looking at it for another Hammer set ...

Sony have confirmed in their blog:

Next year, look for another Icons release when we gear up for the Icons of Suspense, the third in our effort to bring forward the great Hammer films in the Columbia library. The titles in this next set will include such masterpieces as Stop Me Before I Kill, Cash on Demand, Never Take Candy from a Stranger, Maniac, The Snorkel, and the great Joseph Losey-directed These Are the Damned. As with the previous Hammer releases, we are dedicated to providing the longest, most original restored versions of these films possible.

[j99]

That one I don't know. My knowledge of Hammer is pretty solid though, so on the basis of what you've posted I don't think it's a Hammer.

Thanks, my description of the film was poor anyway. Look forward to seeing The Snorkel again when it is released.

[George Kaplan]

All I remember is a gothic looking woman, with long black hair in her 30s, staring out from the top floor of an English manor house. I think she was a double, and may have been looking at herself down below. I'm fairly sure she was playing two women, and may have been haunting herself. A fairly creepy, minimalist film, with little dialogue as I remember, but I'm not certain. Possibly mid to late 60s, in black and white, but again, I'm not sure.

It sounds to me like a Barbara Steele film, probably BLACK SUNDAY. She rather specialized in dual-roled gothic horror films, in b&w in the 60s, though generally in Italy rather than for Hammer.

[j99]

It sounds to me like a Barbara Steele film, probably BLACK SUNDAY. She rather specialized in dual-roled gothic horror films, in b&w in the 60s, though generally in Italy rather than for Hammer.

I don't think it's Black Sunday from the description on imdb, but it may well be a Barbara Steele film. I'll have a look at her filmography to see if there's anything which fits my rather vague outline of the film.

[BarryEgan]

Hi guys,

I just discovered this forum, and now i may never see daylight again. Yikes, I thought I was a film nerd!

Here's one from the early-mid nineties, which I saw at a special screening when I was working in film acquisitions. I have no idea if this film even got distribution, so it may be unheard of by all but a few hundred people. Making it even more challenging, I don't remember very much of it.

What I do recall was about a family living in the deep south - the Deliverance-type south - and the dark-haired son was striking up a relationship with an outsider woman of some sort. Eventually, the woman was driven away by the other members of the family, and it turned out that the boy and his mother themselves had a sexual relationship. The whole family, perhaps the whole community, was incestuous and quite literally inbred.

The whole thing was horribly exploitative and stereotypical, but I've wondered ever since what might have become of the strange thing. Someone gonna impress me by recalling this oddity?

[Andrei]

Hi--first post, I just joined.

I've been looking for this movie for over twenty years, saw it one late night in the mid '80s on some local TV station. 1950s American movie, B&W, possibly made for television (production values were not much higher than your average "Twilight Zone" episode).

In a typical American bucolic small town, 1920s or 1930s, a young brother and sister keep visiting their uncle, who tell them tales of a mysterious and otherwise unknown island he knows of or discovered in the Pacific; he even has on his wall a map with that island on it, but no one (except for the kids) believes him, and everybody thinks he's crazy.

Flash-forward to WWII, and the brother, now grown up, is a pilot in the Pacific TO, crash-lands his bomber on an island, and realizes that this unknown island is the one that his uncle had told him about.

[HarryLong]

It sounds to me like a Barbara Steele film, probably BLACK SUNDAY. She rather specialized in dual-roled gothic horror films, in b&w in the 60s, though generally in Italy rather than for Hammer.

I don't think it's Black Sunday from the description on imdb, but it may well be a Barbara Steele film. I'll have a look at her filmography to see if there's anything which fits my rather vague outline of the film.

There is a Steele film where she plays a woman killed by her husband and her own sister (whom the husband also weds) in a blonde wig. The ex-wife does roam about as a ghost ...
The title is eluding me at the moment ... probably because like a lot of these Italian horrors its know by at least ahlf-dozen different names.
I don't recall the particular image cited above as being in the film, but Steele haunting herself fits.

[Ben Cheshire]

Okay, my big childhood horror mystery. I've literally spent hours googling and imdb'ing plot keywords and such to try and identify it.

Basically, its set in a school. I remember it being a sequel. I saw it when I was about ten. It has to have been made before about 1993, or to be safe, before 1995. I remember killings happening off-screen, though some may be on-screen. There's an unseen killer, like there is in a whole mess of Halloween/Evil Dead-inspired movies. I remember Evil-Dead-style tracking shots following the killer, fairly close to the ground maybe, like they're a creature maybe. It felt like a creature flick, with lots of body mutilation, and possibly some cannibalistic aspect where maybe he was eating body parts. I only really remember two scenes:

1) Students are on detention in the chemistry lab. They walk away, or something, and come back and discover they're teacher's body, stretched out on the ground facing away from camera with head and spinal column (and entrails) pulled up through neck and lying a metre away from the body.

2) A trailer on a pebbly beach near the water and a green woodsy area. The killer/creature seems to live here at some point. There is something screwed up that happens in the cabin, where the killer/creature is living in the roof, and one of the students puts their head up and gets it eaten off.

If you can think of a movie that this reminds you off, but doesn't match a certain criteria, guess away, because I might have certain details in the first paragraph wrong. I was young when I saw it. (Too young...)

[j99]

An Australian film which features Nick Tate. I think I saw it sometime in the 80s, and could well be from the mid-80s. I remember Tate befriends a brother and sister who turn out to be in an incestuous relationship, and he only discovers it at the end of the film. I think the brother then kills his sister and shoots himself. I checked his filmography on imdb but couldn't find anything with this plotline.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0851182/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There is a Steele film where she plays a woman killed by her husband and her own sister (whom the husband also weds) in a blonde wig. The ex-wife does roam about as a ghost ...
The title is eluding me at the moment ... probably because like a lot of these Italian horrors its know by at least ahlf-dozen different names.
I don't recall the particular image cited above as being in the film, but Steele haunting herself fits.

When I've got time I'll look through her filmography on imdb, although some of the descriptions of her films are fairly sparse, making them difficult to identify.

[HarryLong]

Well, if you know Italian horror films of the period you probably realize it's best to keep the decription sparse or else you run on for pages trying to explain the muddled plots.
The film where Steele plays a dual role as sisters is THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH, btw.

[dayegomat]

hello everyone, I need some help finding out the name of a movie I saw a long time ago, it¿s a horror movie, what i remember is a guy who is on a train and then a lady sits in front of him and she tells him that there's a crature in his shoulder, an invisible creature wich is vicious and evil, in another scene th guy is in bed with his wife and the creature scratches his wife while asleep. I'm not entirely sure but I think it's a movie about short stories, because I also remember another bit about a teacher that gains somekind of power wich enable him to harm people at distance with just pointing at them, also can set things on fire, anyone recognizes those scenes? please I need help.

[colinr0380]

The first part sounds a lot like one of the segments in From Beyond The Grave with a nice riff on Blithe Spirit's ineffectual dotty clairvoyant!

[Ben Cheshire]

They all sound like Stephen King ideas; or perhaps Tales from the Crypt. Perhaps its a Creepshow sequel; they're all based on Stephen King short stories. Its not the first one, I can tell you that much.

[domino harvey]

It does sound like one of those quickie horror anthology films that cropped up direct-to-cable in the early 90s, but it's not one of the King works

While we're on the subject, allow me to indulge my own "Can't remember the title" here-- At the outset of one terribly middling film anthology segment that shamelessly ripped off the Jon Lovitz Tales From the Crypt episode (this one being set in a mental asylum run by the-- gasp, big reveal -- patients), there was this out-of-nowhere scene of a dog attack that has always stuck with me for its ferocity and realism. In the middle of this totally derivative piece of shit there is a moment of genuine terror as a dog latches onto a man's arm several times while he attempts escape via his vehicle. I doubt I'd ever sit through the rest of the film again even if I learned the title, but it'd be nice to be able to know it all the same.

[dayegomat]

thank you colinr0380 , that the one i was looking for, i'm downloading it right now, the other movie about the teacher is in black and white, it the same format, a series of short stories.

[der_Artur]

Where's this from? More here: http://threeframes.net/page/10" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

Pretty sure that's Larry Cohen's God Told Me To. Very much worth a looksee.

[colinr0380]

I agree, all those frames come from the sniper opening of the film, with actors doing overly dramatic death falls in the middle of streets crowded with people! God Told Me To is a truly bizarre film, even by Larry Cohen's standards - a quest to track down an androgynous religious cult leader talking people into going on killing sprees (including Andy Kaufman playing a gun toting policeman during a St Patrick's Day parade) turns into a strange extraterrestrial revelation, with Sylvia Sidney having abduction and impregnation flashbacks in her nursing home.

But at its heart it's about a cop unable to properly commit to either his ex-wife or new girlfriend, or any woman (albeit it turns out he's a superhuman destined to copulate with his long lost Christ-like twin!)

Here's the trailer