Favorite films

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1985

★★★★ Added

Folies Murtrieres has been covered extensively elsewhere and is something of a minor sensation online due to its disted atmosphere and dreamlike approach. Less remarked upon is Pellissier's debut outing, Les Proies du Mal (1982), a three-hour super 8 excursion into madness set in a damned nursing home that is unavailable in full. From the excerpt I’ve seen, he outdoes himself for hazy candle-lit atmosphere, crafting a story that is both startlingly gory and evocative. His 1985 offering L’Elue des…

1994

★★★★★ Added

Partial as I am to Blood Summer, this might just be the quintessential MSS Films production. Another inversion of the slasher formula improbably shot on 16mm, the real attraction to Skullface is seeing strange people hang out while a Doberman constantly barks onscreen. This is a world where multiple Pantera t-shirts, jarring camera discontinuity, long takes of Victorian baby portraits, and heating vents are all part of life’s essential fabric. I’d still be fascinated if this was nothing more than…

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1994

★★★★★ Added

Ripped from the headlines (though arriving nearly a decade after the infamous case that inspired it), Van Bebber’s short transplants the NY murder of Gary Lauwers by Ricky Kasso to the dead-end Dayton of the early 1990s. Presented as a near-documentary recollection, complete with after-the-fact narration by mostly unnamed participants, this could be Jim’s masterpiece. There’s nothing supernatural or unreal about Ricky, he’s a confused and wayward kid himself who can’t just brush off the pain in his life as…

1988

Liked Watched 20 Apr 2025

Jon Christian Møller’s debut short is a film that gets down and dirty, from the sheer physicality of the victims and killer rolling around in the dirt and leaves, to the ample blood spurting throughout. His most infamous film may be a bloodbath, but there’s little of the pornographic offal fixations of likeminded German efforts; the film is nasty and occasionally juvenile, but not as single-minded as would be suspected from its title. At the same time, it’s as much…

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