DVD SinBin: 2001 Maniacs August 16, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 1 comment so farOkay, thats it. I’ve had it with horror films. I mean, life is just too short. There’s plenty of great films out there for me to discover, or great, favourite films for me to watch again, but really, I’ve had it with horror films. The genre has been on a slippery slope for years, but it seems its now crashed and burned. I’m just sick to death of lazy excuses for film-making. I imagine modern horror film-makers work with the same bloody checklist- a) a bunch of horny teenagers/college students go to a b)town stuck in nowheresville/abandoned hospital/asylum and c) get preyed upon by ghosts/cannibals/madmen and d) suffer incredibly stupid gorey deaths before or after e) an obligatory sex scene and wrap the film up with f) a so-dumb-it-fools no-one ‘twist’ ending.
I just give up. 2001 MANIACS has just finished me off. It’s just so stupid and NOT REMOTELY SCARY. It’s stupid, lazy, pointless, utterly devoid of any redeeming feature. And it’s NOT REMOTELY SCARY. Can anyone remember when a horror film was actually scary? Can anybody actually direct a proper horror film these days? Can anyone actually write an original horror film? Is the genre really utterly dead and buried? I saw SHROOMS the other week, it was so dire and NOT REMOTELY SCARY I couldn’t bring myself to write anything about it on this blog, and then I saw the dismal Rob Zombie remake of HALLOWEEN that was utterly appalling and NOT REMOTELY SCARY but now, with 2001 MANIACS… well, thats it.
Finished. No more horror films. No more new horror films anyway. Life is too short and there’s far better films to watch. How can anyone waste their time watching all this ‘horror’ tripe?
If ever I want to watch a proper horror film I’ll watch THE SHINING or THE EXORCIST or ALIEN or PSYCHO or THE HAUNTING or Carpenters original HALLOWEEN… I’ll give the modern variant a wide berth. Whatever happened to decent horror films?
DVD SinBin: CREEPSHOW 2 August 10, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 3 commentsThe original CREEPSHOW, back from that golden year 1982, is a fine horror anthology- the stories are short, varied and effective, the casting universally good, the music sublime. The film works very well, and has quite a unique charm that in many ways has been unequalled in the many years since. Indeed, as horror films of late get mired in torture-porn and gore, it seems increasingly unlikely that we will see it’s like again.
I had never seen the 1987 sequel until a few nights ago. To put it bluntly, CREEPSHOW 2 is terribly inferior to the original. It only has three tales, compared to the originals five, and only one of them -The Raft- actually really works. The third story, The Hitchhiker, just seems to go on and on and on, until its one gag wears so thin you just want it all to end. Perhaps if they had tightened up the three tales and added two others to maintain the same number as the original, the film as a whole would have been much better, but it is evident that the film had a very limited budget and little ambition. It almost screams video cash-in, even though I believe it was a cinema release.
Infact the most curious thing about the film is that one of the actresses from The Raft segment goes by the unusual (for a woman, anyway) name of Jeremey Green. A look at IMDB claims she only ever made two films and appeared in one tv episode of a tv show I never heard of. Must confess I’m curious as to how she found herself in the acting profession and why she apparently turned her back on it. Or why the industry turned its back on her. I guess there are thousands of actors and actresses who had short careers like that. Hollywood can be a nasty business, not everyone can be the next Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts; some win, some lose. Just how lives turn out I suppose. Well, there you go, the most fascinating factoid regards CREEPSHOW 2- the short acting career of an actress with an unusual name; the film was that bad.
One to avoid folks. To think they also made a CREEPSHOW 3, which by accounts is even worse… thats frightening.
DARK CITY shines bright. August 7, 2008
Posted by ghostof82 in : Film General , 8 commentsWatched DARK CITY on Blu-ray the other night. Being a fan of BLADE RUNNER and film-noir in general, the film is right up my alley, but apart from the obvious visual similarities, DARK CITY had other connections with BLADE RUNNER I was not previously aware of. I’d seen the film on it’s original theatrical release and found it interesting but flawed, and what do you know, it turns out it had suffered the dreaded audience-preview syndrome that had blighted BLADE RUNNER for over 20 years. Fortunately fans of DARK CITY haven’t had to wait that many years.
The new DVD and Blu-ray releases of the film are of a ‘new’ directors cut, which, much in the same way as BLADE RUNNER’s ‘final cut’ release, actually returns the film to its original, audience-preview incarnation (albeit with tweaked visual fx). As with BR, the changes are actually very subtle, but they drastically improve the film. While there are problems with the film and it remains far from perfect, it nevertheless is a superior piece of sci-fi, and on Blu-ray it looks amazing.
Visually it is a remarkable piece of work, with fantastic photography and production design, and it has plenty of ideas to brood over as well, such as the function of memory in defining us, and what it means to be human, and the nature of reality.
I’m struck, also, by how much it reminds me of THE MATRIX, a film it actually pre-dated by about a year. Visually it is remarkably close, lit in artifical light with a green murky tint, but more than that, the way that DARK CITY’s John Murdoch ‘tunes’ or alters the reality of the Dark City around him, just as Neo gains powers over the Matrix. It’s amazing how original everyone thought THE MATRIX was when so much of it had been done in DARK CITY. When Murdoch or the aliens alter the Dark City, they manipulate it in much the same way as the Matrix is. And of course with the investigations into their reality, the citizens of DARK CITY face similar philosophical ideas that we find in THE MATRIX. I’m not suggesting that the Wachowski Bros ripped DARK CITY off, but when they saw it they must have had quite a fright that they had been beaten to the punch with some of the concepts and visual themes. Turned out a year later THE MATRIX blew everyone away and DARK CITY had already been forgotten, but with this new release some of the balance can be restored. In some ways DARK CITY is actually superior, it doesn’t get bogged down in philosophical ramblings or kung-fu videogame action. Like in BLADE RUNNER the ‘big’ ideas are there but they are under the surface to be picked up on by intent viewers, rather than shoved in your face.
I’d recommend anyone who found DARK CITY wanting in its previous incarnation to give the film another go with it’s new directors cut. Indeed, its superior to most of the dumb ’spectaculars’ we have seen in years since and warrants reappraisal. Some films just get better with age, and I think this is one of them. It’s certainly far better now than I had thought it back in 1998.