HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 25
Six decades: 1st of 2 films from the 2020's

Uhr, I'm so sick of movies just being set in some older decade and using all the music and making everything look neon and stuff, it's so unoriginal.

Ha ha, nah, fuck that, thank God I'm not that cynical yet!

This movie was a barrel load of fun fun fun, as far as I'm concerned. I was impressed by Leigh Janiak's frenetic style - it was almost too much stuff thrown in my face all at once, and it took me a while to get in the groove because, to be honest, the first few scenes had me feeling a bit curmudgeonly about it all. But then I started to fall under its spell a bit and revel in all that exuberant nostalgia-tinged modernist riffing on the Grand Guignol aesthetic and I was well and truly on board for this. 

It looks really nice, it's packed with teen horror atmosphere of the like not seen since 1986 (and yes for all its 90'sness this is more like an 80's horror movie in itself), some great kill scenes (including a genuine world-beater involving what I think is a bread-loaf slicer?) and a whole extra star for needle-dropping The Pixies' "Hey", which is my favourite Pixies song and although technically from the 80's they were most cool in the 90's and that's when most folks would have discovered Doolittle anyway, so I would argue era-appropriate.

Yep, genuinely loved this and totally happy I picked all three of these for HoopTober.