Some Movies That I’ve Watched Recently…

I haven’t been good for a lot, these last few days, (work and so on) so have spent the last couple of evenings crashed out in front of the TV, trying to find something decent to watch. Okay, you’ll see in a second that I wasn’t too fussy about finding something decent… ;o)

Quick thoughts on four movies then. One brilliant, one ‘not bad’ and the other two… Lets just say that they weren’t great (fun but...) I really will watch anything sometimes :o)

‘Saint Maud’ (2019)

A pious nurse becomes dangerously obsessed with saving the soul of her dying patient but is it her own soul that is in true peril?

I’m not entirely sure what led me to watch ‘Saint Maud’ but I’m really glad that I did. It’s beautifully shot, Morfydd Clark is excellent in the title role and just when you think you know what’s going on, ‘Saint Maud’ delights in pulling the rug from under you and sending you in a different direction entirely. I’m thinking about certain bits of the movie and trying to puzzle out what really happened; I suspect I’ll be doing this for a few days yet.

Highly recommended.

‘The Midnight Meat Train’ (2008)

A photographer's obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of a serial killer who stalks late night commuters, ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways.

I found a copy of Clive Barker’s ‘Books of Blood Omnibus’ just recently and thought that while I was reading ‘The Midnight Meat Train’, I’d see if it was free to watch anywhere. And it was, so I did ;o) Vinnie Jones makes for a terrifying Mahogany and Bradley Cooper does a fine line in ‘bewildered terror’ as the world beneath the city opens up into something else entirely. All that, set against an appropriately bleak cityscape. I can see myself watching this one again :o)

‘Uncle Sam’ (1996)

A dead ‘Desert Storm’ veteran rises from the grave, on July 4^th, to kill the unpatriotic citizens of his home town.

I’ve seen a few dodgy slasher movies in my time but an undead slasher who kills people for not being American enough…? The concept was crazy enough to hold my interest but the execution (no pun intended) didn’t match up to that early promise. This was literally 90 minutes of actors lining up to be unpatriotic with ‘Uncle Sam’ waiting in the wings to do the necessary. There were a couple of decent kills but absolutely no tension whatsoever.

‘Primal Rage’ (1988)

At a Florida university, a scientist accidentally creates a ‘Rage Virus’ whilst experimenting on baboons. One nosy journalist later and the virus spreads, just in time for the Halloween dance…

Think ‘28 Days Later’ but in a Florida University in the 1980s, Jocks and Nerds getting infected and a massacre at the dance. A mad enough concept to get me watching and when ‘Primal Rage’ is on form, the story wasn’t bad but there were far too many moments when the plot took its eye off the ball and meandered when it should have been a lot tighter. Not a bad movie but it felt like it could have been a lot more than it was.