I love old movie posters, or any kind of old posters because they are a sort of a window back in time and can tell you a lot about the culture, the acceptable and not acceptable and what kind of technology was available and so on. Some times I will get an itch to see a movie based on the poster alone (I know i am not alone here :-) )
Anyway, I was out and about on the Internet and ran into this fantastic poster on Sweet Skull for a movie called Flesh feast, staring Veronika Lake, a once Hollywood beauty, way back in the 1940’s, disappearing toward the end of the decade, and making one final movie - Flesh Feast in 1967, that took 3 years to release.She finally passed away in 1973.
I haven’t seen the movie, and even thought what I have managed to dig up about it isn’t all that encouraging, I have several reasons to seek out this movie.. The first is to try to figure out, why Veronica Lake would let a movie like this be her swan song, the last movie that she would ever make - especially since while making this movie she acted as producer as well, and allowed for herself to be depicted in not such a flattering light. Also - it is kind of a vengeance film against the one of the vilest men ever to live - Adolf Hitler - in which the Main Character of the film revives him, in order to through Human flesh eating maggots in his face…(personally can’t think of a better vengeance on the man… especially if he can be revived and then killed again, only to be revived and killed again in another disgusting and terrible manner…but that’s just me :-))
Horror movies, just like anything else under the sun need to be sold to the potential viewers, both to the obvious viewers who will go and see or by every horror movie out there, and to the more relaxed horror fans, who will “buy” seeing a horror movie (like anything else) based on the publicity, hype and advertising campaign it puts out. When ever I buy / rent or go and see a movie, I make a point of seeing all of the trailers - which are often, unfortunately, better than the movie. In fact, trailer making is quite an art form in itself - seeing as you can have a fantastic trailer for a really crappy movie.
If you see your trailers as on a dvd before seeing the featured movie, then all you really need is the trailer. But what if the trailer needs to be sold as well, for example on the Internet. - Click-Here-To-See-Trailer kind of deal? Obviously - They need to sell you on Clicking…
“Get your heart broken.” I don’t know, but when I see those words, I think hokey chick-flick. Nothing could be thought of that was better than that? There’s a lot to do with Valentine’s Day - I’m thinking of something that could involve sending little valentines through the mail with, I don’t know, a severed head? How about something like “This year, dates will be SEVERED.”
Good observation, I never thought of it that way :-)
Pieces, also known as Mil Gritos Tiene La Noche) was released in 1983, it didn’t do to well in theatres at the time but became a kind of a cult movie once it was released on video, and as stayed a cult piece since. I watched it for the first time very recently, and would have a hard time saying that I have joined the Pieces cult along with Dan from Exploitation Retrospect, but on the other hand, can’t completely put it down as not worth the watch. It is, but as far as Pieces I choose as my watch time and time again - this is not one. (I would rather see Sweeny Tod again, or Blue velvet) The background story (if you could call it that ) is that a teenager is repressed by his mother while playing with a puzzle and in return, he kills her and chops her into little pieces with an axe.
Some forty years later there is a series of murders of young woman on a university campus, the killer of course (surprise surprise) cuts his victims up into little pieces, taking a bit of each student (obviously trying to make up a puzzle later)…. Detectives(Christopher George, Frank Brana and Linda Day George) are on the case, with the help of the local amateur sleuth Ian Sera. Their investigation is like Flooring the pedal with the hand brakes on in that is is totally ineffective, the bodies pile up, as do the parts until they stumble on to the killer.
There is no depth in the dialog or in the plot, and the mystery is as shallow as a puddle after a five minute cloud burst - but I do get, funnily enough why it turned cult - it is hysterically funny.
As if funny was the intention and not horror.
The only other movie I can compare it to, is one of the first movies Johnny Depp ever made, called Crybaby, (not from the horror genre at all) that was so bad it had to be intentional, and therefor good, and it to has become somewhat a cult film.
A While back, I did a guest post exchange with Mermaid Heather and her wonderful watery blog. And now, Heather is returning the favor :-), so with out further a-do, Please welcome - Mermaid heather.
A while back, Rachel asked me if I would be interested in exchanging posts with our blogs. I was more than happy to do so with her. The easy part was that I knew what I wanted from Rachel as far as my own blog went. As for my post to her blog, I had no idea what to do. Then comes a movie called Funny Games. Since there are two versions of this film, the original and its remake, I decided to split those reviews. One to mine, and the other to this blog. It took me a little longer to get around to the remake, which came out in 2007, because I have been playing Left 4 Dead, instead of watching movies. Since the remake is almost identical to the original film, I will try not to repeat myself too much.
Funny Games is about a family of three. George (Tim Roth), his wife Ann (Naomi Watts), and their son Georgie (Devon Gearheart). They are heading toward their summer home, where they hope to relax and go sailing. They find their neighbor, Fred (Boyd Gaines), outside his home with some others. They stop and ask Fred if he will help them with their boat. Even though Fred is acting a bit strange, he agrees. Soon after, Fred shows up with Paul (Michael Pitt), whom Fred says is the son of someone he works with. After the boat is back in the water, George and Georgie finish with setting up the boat, while Ann goes back to the house to start dinner. Soon though, she is alerted by her son that someone is at the door. Peter (Brady Corbet) has come over from Fred’s to see if he can get some eggs. After a couple of attempts to give Peter some eggs (which he keeps dropping), Ann realizes something is going on. Paul also shows up, calling Peter by the name Tom, so this also sets off some inner alarms in Ann. Little does she know though, things are about to take a turn for the worse.
Writer/director Michael Haneke admits that he uses this film as a way to express his opinion about violence in the media and film. His target, even though he says Funny Games was never meant to be a horror film, are people that like violent films, which includes horror movies. His complaint? We enjoy the violence in these films. This is why we never see any violence towards the family, only the bad guys in Funny Games. I guess Haneke feels that we like watching good people being killed or hurt. I don’t know about all of you, but I don’t watch horror movies for those reasons. I want to feel scared by these films, that is why they are being made after all. Well, hopefully anyway. Seeing people in these films, that I can sometimes connect with, in danger is part of feeling scared. That doesn’t mean I want to see them killed though. If you can get past the message that Haneke is trying to put over onto us, then we actually end up with a good film.
I have heard that this remake, the original Funny Games was filmed in Austria in 1997, is a frame by frame remake. For all intents and purposes, it is. There are a few scenes that have been filmed slightly different, mostly due to a different filming location. Some of what the characters in the film say is different as well, but that could just be due to translation, since the original film was subtitled. Haneke does manage to do some interesting things here. The most interesting is the breaking of the fourth wall. Paul will sometimes speak to us, the viewer. Another thing that was interesting is a rewinding of a certain key scene. The breaking of the fourth wall was, I believe, to take us out of the reality the film was creating, and make us think about what we were expecting out of this film. The rewinding of the scene was to pull the rug out from under us, so to speak.
Naomi Watts and Tim Roth were both wonderful. I’m a little biased when it comes to Naomi Watts though. She has been in some of my favorite films, and I have always enjoyed her performances. I can’t say the same for Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet though. They were fine, but I couldn’t get into their characters all that much this time around. Corbet’s uni-brow was a tad distracting at times. The special effects for Funny Games are nothing too exciting. One person does get a bloody death, but it is a very quick scene.
I didn’t care for Haneke’s message, but I did enjoy his film all the same. If I had to pick between the original film or this remake, I think the original wins out by just a little bit. That being said, if you haven’t watched either film yet, I would suggest the remake first. The reason being that with the original film being subtitled, I noticed that I missed some thing going on in the film, because I was busy reading. With the remake, you won’t have to worry about such issues. Funny Games has a fan base behind it. Some even have said it is one of the most disturbing films they have watched. I liked this film, but not that much. I do suggest giving this film a watch though, at least once. If you like this remake, give the original a try as well. I wouldn’t suggest watching them back to back like I did though. It gets just a little dull and boring that way, since they might as well be the same film. 3 out of 5 Is a horror film the best place to preach a message?
Jeff Alard from Dinner With Max Jenkle posted this video along with a great post about the remakes of Elm street.
At this point in time, I find the hair styles of the news reporters far scarier than Freddie, who is just about cute in this video - and believe me, I never thought that I would ever say that about Freddie Kruger. I haven’t seen the Nightmare series since the late 80’s, when after watching one of them (I forget which one I saw first) with a Friend of mine - she had to stay the night because we were both to terrified to take our feet of the bed and put them on the ground.
Of course, seeing the rest of the series became a challenge but I haven’t revisited them since.
Robert Englund will not be returning for the remake, which, although it is hard to imagine another Freddie working so well, is probably for the best as there is a time and place for everything, and he has had his day.
The strange thing about Englund is that he is supposedly such a nice guy, and at the same time is so closely associated with Freddie that he practically is Freddie, and the big question is Who will be the brand spanking new Freddie?
Any Way, get over to Dinner with Max Jenkle and read what Jeff has to Say about Robert Englund.
