Posted May 11, 09 01:03 PM
"But, I Really Didn’t Like It..."
There are times in life when, three hundred sixty degrees around you, everyone - seemingly like sheep - claps their hands raw (Actually, with sheep it would be hooves, I imagine). Nauseating smiles are glued on noggins. Unearned laughter pilfers the air. And you scan, scan, scan, looking for some illuminated exit sign to escape the frustrating preference of the majority. You feel like the kid on the parade route in The Emperor's New Clothes.
Audiences like this?
Watching deserving work being singled out can be infinitely gratifying. Kathy Bates, near tears, accepting a Best Actress statuette for Misery comes to mind. But when reviews, box office, and accolades fall on movies that grate us (often at the expense of what we feel are superior films), our orange juice juuuuust doesn't taste as good as it used to, does it?
Admit it. I couldn't have been the only one overheard snoring through Sense and Sensibility. The Elephant Man played like a sanctimonious pity party, Moulin Rouge left me nauseous, and The Lion King's Act II crudeness (Ho! Ho! A flatulent wart hog) turned me off. Hey, even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been repeatedly scammed out of its Best Picture Oscars. Take (please, TAKE) The Greatest Show on Earth in all its rubber octopus glory, or producer Mike Todd's con game spectacle-ization that trumped up the cameo-soaked clothesline travelogue otherwise known as Around the World in 80 Days.
But closer to genre home, when reputation exceeds the horror, viewings bleed adrenaline. Expecting the visceral, all that testosterone has nowhere to go.
Purists may now leave the room. And, you know, don't invite them back, either. - The world's a better place without a lot of purists.
I Netflix'ed House of Wax (1953) and got quite a shock - unfortunately, it wasn't the jolt variety. This Vincent Price vehicle - he's strong, absolutely - is the kind of title people think they love without realizing they haven't seen it. Script, direction, and production values are pedestrian. And that 3-D concept? Ech. The movie frequently crashes to a halt to exploit it. "We'll return you to our regularly scheduled plot shortly. Now, kiddies, watch the paddle ball!" For two minutes.
Britain's Hammer Studios earned notoriety for exploiting the more readily economic color stock of the '50s and '60s and the skeletal remains of the production code. The selling points: Onscreen blood (although minimal by today's standards) and lower bustlines (sorry, still minimal by today's standards). The studio's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations are certainly worth a collector's retrospective. But the initial Peter Cushing-Christopher Lee teaming, Horror of Dracula (1958), lacks the eerie theatricality of Bela Lugosi and the seductiveness of Frank Langella. Its aesthetics lag well behind Murnau and Coppola's incarnations and, psychologically, it's nowhere in the league of the Herzog-Klaus Kinski version.
Michael Powell's (1960) Peeping Tom - about a killer filming his victims in their final moments - sounds like a creepy food-for-thought thriller. Indeed, this was a banned film back in the day. But in development circles, the question creative execs always ask is, "How does it play?" The sight of Powell's young, troubled ladykiller's murder weapon - a camera with a blade attached to the front of it - simply looks ridiculous. It inspires neither fear nor attention, but instead one of those chucklehead snickers from Mad Magazine.
Black Christmas (1974) centered its plot around sorority house sisters receiving obscene phone calls - and then getting dispatched. Margot Kidder is superb, and this Canadian cult fav's popularity even led to a super-sadistic 2006 remake. But, for me, the problem was the phone calls. They weren't scary, only disgusting. Hang up the phone, ladies!
And for the life of me, I just don't get Child's Play (1988). The success of the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises pushed filmmakers to create a new iconic villain. Unfortunately, both series began slipping into a repetitive cycle of self-parody where their signature monsters became not only indestructible, but worse: The kind of dangerous someones lowbrow audiences would root for. Building tension or suspense was lazily taken for granted. Instead, emphasis was now placed on the cheap laughs of a merciless, smart aleck murderer with no scare factor and - logistically - no advantage, given his size, in any situation. But even without credibility, Chucky would become a genre staple, even finding his way into Mexican Lucha Libre wrestling rings. On film, this prototype (voiced by Brad Dourif) dispatched undeveloped day players as gore fodder, always with a wink-wink sendoff line prior to a bloody offing. For those of us horror fans who are really about the scares, however, dolls - sorry, even ugly ones with impossible red hair, pursed lips, and too-big eyes - don't incite a solitary goosebump.
Admittedly, I haven't seen Ringu, the Japanese original that inspired the breakout American remake, The Ring (2002). On paper, this successful reworking - starring Naomi Watts, Brian Cox, and Jane Alexander - has all the elements of a beautifully structured mind-bendingly complex thriller. But even after a terrific first ten minutes, the horror fades. For me, the more I know about this mystery, the less it works. Repeating poetic symbols until they're structurally explained - a dilating pupil, a view from the depths of a well, a figure plunging over a cliff - replaces the intangible with the tangible. I've thought about this one for years - a credit to the producers - but here I respectfully remain muddled on their creation. Ah. Got it. You know what it is? It's the elimination of the gray area when psychological puzzle pieces become facts. In horror, the gray area fuels the tension. Substitute definitive, all-in answers and no amount of sneaky, spooky hook endings will compensate.
Now if you'll excuse me, let me find my parade route.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 01:03 PM