90 Minutes or Less

[Tarquin]

John Carpenter's initial run has him looking into the fututre, joining this website and then making his first three major films to troll you:

Assualt on Precint 13 = 91 mins
Halloween = 91 mins
The Fog = 91 mins

[Tarquin]

Dark Star exisits in a 68 minute "special edition" a 72 minute "directors cut" put together by the writer and an 83 minute cut by Carpenter - that he hates.

Duel exists in the original - astounding - 74 min TV cut, that is really hard to find, the one we got on ITV. And the far lesser bloated 90 min version.   

[Small Man Big Horse]

John Carpenter's initial run has him looking into the fututre, joining this website and then making his first three major films to troll you:

Assualt on Precint 13 = 91 mins
Halloween = 91 mins
The Fog = 91 mins

Haha, and to think I've spent my life greatly enjoying much of his work, but I won't be doing that again, I can tell you!

Dark Star exisits in a 68 minute "special edition" a 72 minute "directors cut" put together by the writer and an 83 minute cut by Carpenter - that he hates.

Duel exists in the original - astounding - 74 min TV cut, that is really hard to find, the one we got on ITV. And the far lesser bloated 90 min version.   

That's a great call on Dark Star, I'm pretty sure I was the 72 minutes version in my late teens / early twenties, but I wouldn't swear on my life.

And thanks to MySpleen I have a vhs rip of the ITV cut that was aired in 2005 (which comes with the continuity announcer and one ad break) and the running time is 75 minutes 35 seconds. So if anyone would like to see that version please just send me a pm.

[bushwick]

Freddy Got Fingered is 1hr 27mins, end thread!

[greenman]

John Carpenter's initial run has him looking into the fututre, joining this website and then making his first three major films to troll you:

Assualt on Precint 13 = 91 mins
Halloween = 91 mins
The Fog = 91 mins

Although even with those runtimes I certainly wouldnt call him a "snappy" director, the Fog especially is a pretty slow moving atmospheric story. You could argue I spose what makes it a 90 min film rather than a 120 min one is the absence  a lot of typical hollywood conventions, no three act plot most obviously which had they been present would probably have made the atmosphere less effective.

[Keebleman]

quote author=Mister Six link=msg=5527077 date=1707954452]
Bit rich for an Italian to be saying that.

Yeah, I wonder if there is a certain transference of guilt, esp as Rossellini did make a couple of propaganda films during the war (I haven't seen them), but it's not controversial to suggest that the German level of guilt was an order of magnitude more severe.

[Mister Six]

Italy still participated in the Holocaust, and thousands of Italian Jews and Romani were murdered. Germany has a much higher body count, but when it comes to eager participation in genocide, especially in the context of an Italian propagandist saying "Ooh, can't we see the Germans as people?" I don't think there are many hair to be split here.

And I think it's worth remembering that the British had their own fascist party pre-WWII, and plenty of Brits would have participated in the same shit as Germany given half the chance. The scale of the horror created by Germany cannot be underestimated, but I don't think pretending German exceptionalism in anything other than efficiency is worth noting. This kind of shit can emerge anywhere, given the right circumstances.

[johnnyhandsome]

Cold War (2018)

Gorgeous atmospheric romance in black and white. Lots of beautiful locations and lots of nice music. Like Casablanca behind the iron curtain. 88mins.

[Mister Six]

From another thread, not seen it but it sounds good - and only 80 minutes!

The Shooting. Eerie, atmospheric Western from 1966 directed by Monte Hellman, produced by Roger Corman and Jack Nicholson. A prospector (Warren Oates) returns to his encampment to find his brother missing, one of his colleagues dead and the other cowering. Turns out his brother fled just before the other was shot dead by a sniper, in an incident possibly connected to a death in a nearby town. A woman appears and hires the two men to accompany her across the desert to another town, though her story is full of holes, and on the way they are joined by a colleague of hers, a ruthless gunslinger.

I have to admit I missed some of the first half of the very short running time due to a sudden nap, but this was quite strange and interesting. Shot in three weeks on a low budget in the Utah desert, with some incredible scenery but a vaguely menacing tone as the party venture further and further into the wilderness in pursuit of something that is never made clear. Nicholson is great as the gunslinger and there is a supremely odd and abrupt ending that makes the whole thing feel like an influence on Jodorowsky. It's been described as the first counter-cultural Western, but sat on a shelf for two years before being shown on television, despite screening at Cannes, and didn't make it to the UK until 1971, by which time Nicholson was a star. It's on Freevee, so you can watch it for free with an Amazon account, and given it's barely 80 minutes I'd say it was worth it.

[checkoutgirl]

The Old Dark House (1932). This is an interesting little film with Boris Karloff and directed by Jimmy Whale. I'm a sucker for a big house at night with a storm going on outside but once you get into it the script and acting should hold your interest.

It's maybe one of those less know old films but worth a look and at 72 minutes it's nice and lean.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

christ how old is that wikipedia guy

[Mister Six]

The Old Dark House (1932). This is an interesting little film with Boris Karloff and directed by Jimmy Whale. I'm a sucker for a big house at night with a storm going on outside but once you get into it the script and acting should hold your interest.

It's maybe one of those less know old films but worth a look and at 72 minutes it's nice and lean.

I watched this last year and thought it was awful - neither scary nor funny. A big disappointment. But brief, yeah.

[Small Man Big Horse]

The Old Dark House (1932). This is an interesting little film with Boris Karloff and directed by Jimmy Whale. I'm a sucker for a big house at night with a storm going on outside but once you get into it the script and acting should hold your interest.

It's maybe one of those less know old films but worth a look and at 72 minutes it's nice and lean.

I keep meaning to watch that as a friend bought me the novel it's based on by J.B. Priestley a few years ago and the book's pretty great

Spoiler alert

until it kind of fudges the ending.

[close]

I watched this last year and thought it was awful - neither scary nor funny. A big disappointment. But brief, yeah.

Ah, maybe not then!

[Magnum Valentino]

The Old Dark House is one of my favourite Universal films, it is BOTH scary and funny, and one of the most influential films of its type. What are youse on about?!

[Small Man Big Horse]

Well now I don't know what to think!

[phantom_power]

The Beyond is a swift 87 minutes

Maniac Cop is a grotty 86 minutes with added Bruce Campbell

Masque of the Red Death is a fun, colourful Corman/Price romp, 86 minutes

Bottoms is a really funny comedy from last year that is 92 minutes so probably 90 without credits

Carnival of Souls is an eerie, spooky 84 minutes, like an extended Twilight Zone episode

Paths of Glory - another one of the best films ever made and only 85 minutes

Palm Springs - fun spin on Groundhog Day, 91 minutes (so under 90 without credits)

The Belko Experiment - a nerve-shreddingly tense 89 minutes

The Fortune - Great fun with Nicholson and Beatty - 88 minutes

Creation of the Humanoids - ahead of its time but quite stagey scifi from 1962, 75 minutes

Season of the Witch - Not the Halloween one, an underseen Romero classic, 89 minutes

Eyes of Fire - odd, surreal, lethargic folky horror from 1983 about a preacher and his followers trying to settle in the early days of American colonialism. Just turned up on Amazon and 86 minutes

[Magnum Valentino]

Well now I don't know what to think!

Watch it til fuck it's deadly or your money back

[Bad Ambassador]

The Disappearance. An Anglo-Canadian thriller with Roegian overtones and an amazing cast. Jay Mallory (Donald Sutherland) gets home from work to find his wife's vanished, but his employers, who turn out to be some kind of assassination bureau, want him to get on with his next job, even though they're being cagey about what it is. There are flashbacks to Mallory's tempestuous life with Celandine, as his handler (David Warner) is suddenly replaced by another Englishman (Peter Bowles). He eventually heads to the assignment in the UK, meeting his gullible contact (John Hurt) and encountering the wife (Virginia McKenna) of the man his wife left him for, and finally his actual target (Christopher Plummer).

It's told in a very disjointed style, apparently even more acutely in the director's cut, and it's quite slow, but has many moments of intrigue and mystery. The use of locations is strong - wintry, snowbound Canada and Mallory's modern apartment in Montreal's Habitat 67 complex contrasts with the Suffolk countryside - there are great performances across the board and odd sense of dread. Something is happening to which neither the audience nor Mallory is a party, and the mystery is never fully resolved. A tight 88 minutes, and an interesting watch.

[checkoutgirl]

BS you're giving the whole story away. No need to watch the film now.

[13 schoolyards]

Well, if we're just giving summaries now then every film can be under 90 seconds

Avatar: regular guy goes to alien planet, turns into giant smurf, fights colonialism

Avatar 2: giant smurf goes surfing, fights whaling

[Mister Six]

The Old Dark House is one of my favourite Universal films, it is BOTH scary and funny, and one of the most influential films of its type. What are youse on about?!

Looks like I'm outnumbered _{by people with no taste} then.

Is it that influential? It was critically mauled and little-watched at the time, then recalled from circulation for decades. I get the impression it garnered a bit of a mystique because it was lost to viewers for a long time, and then people were so wedded to the idea of it being a missing James Whale masterpiece that when it turned out to be a bit shit everyone felt the need to keep up the mass delusion.

[Oh, Nobody]

The Old Dark House is one of my favourite Universal films, it is BOTH scary and funny, and one of the most influential films of its type. What are youse on about?!

Is that the one with Karloff chasing somebody around a table? Pretty good, yeah.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, that one.

[Ferris]

Just because I'm watching it now and saw this thread - the wicker man is only 94 minutes all in.