h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It ipens Sept. 23rd this side of the pond.

I have heard that it is a bit of a pants filler.

There's a Danish horror/crime movie called 'Nattevagten' (='Night guard') which really scared the out of me. It's about a watchman at a morgue who grows more and more paranoid, and when he gets wrongfully accused of being a necrofiliac... I think the reason this scared me so much, was because I was on a class trip in an un-civilized forest, and at midnight we sat in our sleeping bag watching the movie projected on a white sheet tied between two trees Try watching anything like that, and it will scare the out of ya!

'The Sixth Sense' also kept me awake for some time, but for the general movie I was mostly started at partuclar scenes.

Well, movies don't usually scare me so much - books, on the other hand, is what makes me always check behind the shower curtain at night...

Bits of 'The Kingdom' aren't too well associated with sanity, and scare the willies out of me, I have to say.

Tilly, I think I saw an English version of the Night Guard film, with Ewan McGregor as the main character and Nick Nolte () as the cop. Did he also have a suspicious best friend?

It was a pretty scary film that I saw, Nightwatch I think it was called, though I have no doubt they mucked it up in the translation. They always do.

Nattevagten wasn't that special. But The Kingdom(Riget) was really creepy.

Watching the Kingdom in the UK has always been a bit frustrating here in the UK.
It's NEVER been shown in it's entirety (about six episodes only), and the video people only have the rights to that which was shown on tv. I'd to see the whole thing.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a good film, IMO. Quite disturbing - not the OTT scenes in the house, but the abrubtness of some the killing was unsettling. And the final scene was effective.

I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing, to be honest.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (trans: A Symphony of Horrors)
By modern standards this 1922 silent horror film is more of a comedy, the only thing scary about it now is the fact that any copies of it still exist.

I'd have to disagree with that. It may not be scary anymore, but Murnau was one of the true pioneers of modern cinema, and that film practically wrote the book on a number of techniques that became standard in later years.

And if it's so awful, how come Coppolla nicked so much of it for his vastly inferior (to everybody's) version of Dracula?

I didn't say it was awful, I actually really enjoyed it when I say it a few months back. I just meant that because Florence Stoker (Bram Stoker's widow and owner of the copyright) noted that it was a Dracula rip off, she persued the case and a German Court ordered all copies of the film destroyed. A few slipped the net and weren't discovered again for an absolute age, that's what I was trying to get across.

Sixth sense was good, in the respect that unusualy, for a big budget film, I was actually curious about what would happen to the characters. Oddly, I guessed the twist in the first five minutes, only to forget it again before the ending revealed all.

The Shining was a bugger too. I saw that for the first time when I was in sole charge of a 40 room hotel on the Welsh peninsular in midwinter. Being the only living person in the hotel, which was creaking and banging the way big old empty buildings do, added an extra frisson.
I stayed in my room 'till sunsrise. I don't beleive in hauntings and ghosts, but I *do* believe in self generated fear. What a night!

Croz:

Jaws was scary the first time I saw it.

So was The Birds, especially as my mum sent me to bed before the ending and I wondered for YEARS afterwards what happened (when I did get to see the ending I was very disappointed)

Blair Witch I saw - unwisely - on the return leg of a transatlantic flight, which meant i couldnt sleep a wink

Candyman - have you ever - EVER - had the nerve to say the word 3 times in front of the mirror? Me neither.

Se7en was well done, but maybe "gross" rather than scary.

"Coma" is pretty edge of the seat stuff

The Shining in a lonely Welsh hotel?
That matches my setting for American Werewolf in London. Has anyone seen Jaws on a boat in shark-infested waters?

"Candyman, candyman, candyman." Yes, I have. No appeared.

What's the Wicker Man like? I meant to watch it on New Year's Eve, but ended up instead where another long-banned film was first shown...

You're in luck. Check out A660232 for the low-down on this all time classic of British cinema. Modesty forbids me from pointing out who the author of the piece is.

Strictly speaking, it's not *really* a horror movie (and certainly not designed to 'scare' in the way say, The Blair Witch is), though to be sure, it's not without it's unsettling moments...

Hey Blues - I saw the DVD release in Smith's the other day - it was claiming to be the director's cut. Any comment?

It's the 102 minute cut that Hardy assembled at British Lion's request. It may (or may not) be a truncated version of the original 2 hour running time. Whilst it seems to be true that he whole of the script was shot, which *would* have given a running time of something like 120 minutes, it seems doubtful that a 120 minute cut was ever assembled.

Basically, it is the fullest version you are ever going to see now, as the original film has almost certainly perished, whatever Mr Lee may choose to believe .

It only runs for 99 minutes on British tv because it's mastered straight from the American NTSC video print, which runs slightly faster than a PAL video (25 frames per second, as opposed to 24 fps). At one frame a second, the speeding up is not noticeable but over two hours (or so) knocks a couple of minutes of the running time.

I'm hoping to get round to actually seeing my copy of it this weekend...

It's the 102 minute cut that Hardy assembled at British Lion's request. It may (or may not) be a truncated version of the original 2 hour running time. Whilst it seems to be true that he whole of the script was shot, which *would* have given a running time of something like 120 minutes, it seems doubtful that a 120 minute cut was ever assembled.

Basically, it is the fullest version you are ever going to see now, as the original film has almost certainly perished, whatever Mr Lee may choose to believe .

It only runs for 99 minutes on British tv because it's mastered straight from the American NTSC video print, which runs slightly faster than a PAL video (25 frames per second, as opposed to 24 fps). At one frame a second, the speeding up is not noticeable but over two hours (or so) knocks a couple of minutes of the running time.

I'm hoping to get round to actually seeing my copy of it this weekend...

An answer so good he did he twice.