Ghost of Frankenstein is the middle child of Universal's Frankenstein series: not a huge production number like the previous three films in the series, but not a low-rent cheapie like the three to come. (I'm not even counting Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein in that group--it's in a category all by itself.) Ghost has a modest budget and doesn't have Karloff as the Monster anymore--the growling and strangling duties are handed off to Lon Chaney Jr. instead. But these limitations don't necessarily make it a bad movie. It's pretty good, if you can dial your expectations down a bit.
It turns out that The Monster, punted into a sulfur pit at the conclusion of Son of Frankenstein, didn't die after all (surprise!), but he's not really doing so hot. So his buddy Igor (played again by Bela Lugosi), who's still around even after having a gun emptied into him in the previous entry, helps him out of what's left of Castle Frankenstein just before the obligatory Angry Villagers (led by Dwight Frye, who played a crazed hunchback in the original Frankenstein and the crazed Renfield in Dracula) dynamite the joint.
Basil Rathbone's character, Wolfie Frankenstein, isn't around this time--Basil was off doing Sherlock Holmes movies--so this gruesome twosome take their act on the road in search of Wolfie's brother, Ludwig (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). Ludwig, as it turns out, runs a perfectly respectable sanitarium along with his chief assistant, a discredited scientist played by Lionel Atwill (never a good sign).
When Igor shows up with his tall, flat-topped friend, he doesn't ask for much: he only wants a new brain popped into the Monster's head. Ludwig thinks this is a really, really bad idea and would rather skip the whole thing. But when the Monster kills off another one of Ludwig's other assistants who, consequently, can donate a brain to the cause, the operation is on. Igor plays to Atwill's ego, though, and after the Monster accidentally breaks every bone in Igor's body by smashing him behind a door (don't you hate it when that happens?), Igor's brain winds up in the monster's head instead.
Ludwig checks on his patient in the recovery room, only to be horrified by the discovery that Lon Chaney Jr. is now speaking with Bela Lugosi's voice. Hell, who wouldn't be? This new, improved(?) Monster finds, however, that he can't see--Igor and the Monster don't have the same blood type (oops). The sanitarium subsequently burns to the ground, with the Monster getting the extra-crispy treatment yet again.
The acting in Ghost of Frankenstein is solid throughout, especially by Hardwicke. There are a couple of scenes in which The Monster is ready to smash in Ludwig's skull, but instead of cringing or begging for mercy or even twitching a bit, Hardwicke simply looks up as if fully prepared to accept the punishment for the sins the Frankenstein family had visited on generations of Angry Villagers (and upon The Monster himself, for that matter). Ralph Bellamy and Evelyn Ankers are on hand as the requisite love interests, and Lugosi turns his usual spirited effort as well.
The only major disappointment is Chaney's Monster, who lumbers about with little expression and zero personality (pre-brain transplant, of course). It's hard to blame Chaney, though: when a script requires nothing more of an actor than to walk really stiff and occasionally throttle an extra or two, there's not much room for artistic interpretation.
This was Chaney's only full-feature turn in The Monster's makeup, though--Lugosi took over the role for the next entry in the series, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. (What? You really thought The Monster had burned to death? Dream on.)
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Movie Review: Fear (1990)
A young woman sits in a chair. Nervous. Anxious. Twitching with discomfort. Police officers surround her, shooting questions at her. She's a psychic, trailing a serial killer and his next potential victim in her head. She digs for details--something, anything that will tell the police where the killer is, where he's going, what he's doing--but comes up with only trivial bits of information, like the tune the man is humming or the fact that his car radio is broken. Her anxiety increases. The lead detective, an older man with a patch over one eye and a heavy drawl, presses for more details. The suspect passes a police car before pulling off the road and dragging a young girl to a barn full of sharp, shiny tools and implements. Just as the killer is about to claim another victim, the police burst in, weapons drawn, shouting commands, opening fire.
These are the opening moments from Fear, an underrated thriller that looks like it was meant for theatrical release but instead wound up premiering on cable. Ally Sheedy plays the young psychic, who has only a tenuous grip on her abilities but nonetheless uses them to help police track serial killers like the "gentleman" in the opening scenes (played by, of all people, 1950s horror star John Agar).
Years later, after she's become famous for her abilities and has written three books about the cases she's helped solve, she becomes involved in a new case: A killer nicknamed "The Shadow Man" is stalking the Los Angeles area, seemingly murdering at random and writing "Fear Me" on walls (in blood, of course).
There's only one problem, though: The killer is psychic, too. He gets off on offing people using their greatest fears--stabbing, torture, suffocation etc. When he realizes that Sheedy is tracking him, she turns her own abilities against her, bringing her along mentally on his killing spree and REALLY getting off on her fear.
Writer/director Rockne O'Bannon keeps the tension high throughout the proceedings, while Sheedy plays the psychic as shy and terrified by being attacked in her own noggin, but ultimately strong and smart enough to confront the killer. The impressive supporting cast helps as well, with Lauren Hutton as Sheedy's literary agent, Michael O'Keefe as a helpful, handsome neighbor, Stan Shaw as a cop and Pruitt Taylor Vince (he of the perpetually twitching eyes) as "The Shadow Man." There's even a score by Henry Mancini.
The ending is disappointing, though, with a confrontation in a hall of mirrors (done earlier and better in such classics as Lady from Shanghai and Enter the Dragon) and an entirely improbable fight scene on a Ferris wheel. Still, there's more than enough that's fresh in Fear to distinguish it from the raging horde of serial-killer movies that continues to overrun the horror film genre to this very day.
These are the opening moments from Fear, an underrated thriller that looks like it was meant for theatrical release but instead wound up premiering on cable. Ally Sheedy plays the young psychic, who has only a tenuous grip on her abilities but nonetheless uses them to help police track serial killers like the "gentleman" in the opening scenes (played by, of all people, 1950s horror star John Agar).
Years later, after she's become famous for her abilities and has written three books about the cases she's helped solve, she becomes involved in a new case: A killer nicknamed "The Shadow Man" is stalking the Los Angeles area, seemingly murdering at random and writing "Fear Me" on walls (in blood, of course).
There's only one problem, though: The killer is psychic, too. He gets off on offing people using their greatest fears--stabbing, torture, suffocation etc. When he realizes that Sheedy is tracking him, she turns her own abilities against her, bringing her along mentally on his killing spree and REALLY getting off on her fear.
Writer/director Rockne O'Bannon keeps the tension high throughout the proceedings, while Sheedy plays the psychic as shy and terrified by being attacked in her own noggin, but ultimately strong and smart enough to confront the killer. The impressive supporting cast helps as well, with Lauren Hutton as Sheedy's literary agent, Michael O'Keefe as a helpful, handsome neighbor, Stan Shaw as a cop and Pruitt Taylor Vince (he of the perpetually twitching eyes) as "The Shadow Man." There's even a score by Henry Mancini.
The ending is disappointing, though, with a confrontation in a hall of mirrors (done earlier and better in such classics as Lady from Shanghai and Enter the Dragon) and an entirely improbable fight scene on a Ferris wheel. Still, there's more than enough that's fresh in Fear to distinguish it from the raging horde of serial-killer movies that continues to overrun the horror film genre to this very day.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Review: Halloween H2O (1998)
The seventh and--they promised this time!--last entry in the far-longer-than-it-ever-should-have-been Halloween series takes an interesting and significant turn toward the more recent, funny-but-scary slasher movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
How desperately do the makers of this sequel want to jam it into that mold? They brought in Kevin Williamson, who wrote both of the aforementioned movies, as an executive producer. They also brought in young and fresh faces like Michelle Williams (from Dawson's Creek--yep, every one of these movies have one of those damn kids), Josh Hartnett and Jodi Lynne O'Keefe, and a veteran director in Steve Miner, who helmed a couple of those Friday the 13th movies. They even managed to drag back Jamie Lee Curtis, who managed to survive the first two movies in the Halloween series. Throw in a few other recognizable faces like LL Cool J, Adam Arkin and even Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee's real-life mom), and this last, anniversary-celebrating Halloween takes on a veneer of respectability long absent from this series.
That doesn't mean it's good.
One of the most important elements of the hip mad-slasher films is contest to guess the killer's identity. In this movie, no such fun is to be had: we know from BEFORE the opening frame flickers onscreen who the killer is, and so the guessing game is not who's doing the killing but, rather, who's going to get killed. And the killings are particularly nasty, graphic and unpleasant here--kind of hard to get a chuckle out of an ice skate jammed into somebody's face or a nearly-amputated leg dragging along behind a character desperately trying to crawl away from Michael Myers (who still moves in that slow, deliberate stroll that just makes you wonder who'd win in a 100-yard dash--Michael or the Mummy from those old, awful Universal quickies from the 1940s).
No, this is very familiar, by-the-numbers moviemaking, when you get down to it, even though the filmmakers wisely avoid mentioning most of events in the previous entries in this series--which, in total, have managed to make the groundbreaking original look dated and cliched--and return to the main character from the first two films, Laurie Strode (Curtis). She's now the headmistress at a private school and, as a result of her tortured past, a pill-popping, alcoholic control freak who won't let her son (Hartnett) out of her sight, not even to let him hook up with his adorable girlfriend (Williams). Once Michael shows up, though, it's all run-run, slash-slash-just like you'd expect.
And that's too bad. There are interesting aspects to Halloween H2O, most notable Curtis and her take on Laurie 20 years later. After all, we don't often get to see survivors of these teen mad-slasher flicks deal with their demons in adulthood because, well, they don't very often make it to adulthood. But Jamie Lee's Laurie is a nervous, twitchy and, ultimately, strong and determined survivor who won't let any freak in a bleached-out William Shatner mask destroy her world yet again, and she's willing to fight for her life and her son's using any and all means necessary in a climactic battle that give one hope--for a fleeting moment, anyway--that Michael's shuffling reign of terror might finally, finally, finally be over.
But Curtis's performance is overwhelmed and, eventually, swallowed up and spat back out by the formula, which demands that everybody--even the well-drawn, well-acted characters--run through the maze of slice and dice, slash and hack, run and hide, then do it all over again.
Even as formulaic as Halloween H2O is, it would have been a decent ending to the series. Unfortunately, it did well enough at the box office to spawn at least one more sequel, Halloween Resurrection, which was poorly received by critics and audiences alike.
Maybe that'll be the end of the series. Somehow, I doubt it.
How desperately do the makers of this sequel want to jam it into that mold? They brought in Kevin Williamson, who wrote both of the aforementioned movies, as an executive producer. They also brought in young and fresh faces like Michelle Williams (from Dawson's Creek--yep, every one of these movies have one of those damn kids), Josh Hartnett and Jodi Lynne O'Keefe, and a veteran director in Steve Miner, who helmed a couple of those Friday the 13th movies. They even managed to drag back Jamie Lee Curtis, who managed to survive the first two movies in the Halloween series. Throw in a few other recognizable faces like LL Cool J, Adam Arkin and even Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee's real-life mom), and this last, anniversary-celebrating Halloween takes on a veneer of respectability long absent from this series.
That doesn't mean it's good.
One of the most important elements of the hip mad-slasher films is contest to guess the killer's identity. In this movie, no such fun is to be had: we know from BEFORE the opening frame flickers onscreen who the killer is, and so the guessing game is not who's doing the killing but, rather, who's going to get killed. And the killings are particularly nasty, graphic and unpleasant here--kind of hard to get a chuckle out of an ice skate jammed into somebody's face or a nearly-amputated leg dragging along behind a character desperately trying to crawl away from Michael Myers (who still moves in that slow, deliberate stroll that just makes you wonder who'd win in a 100-yard dash--Michael or the Mummy from those old, awful Universal quickies from the 1940s).
No, this is very familiar, by-the-numbers moviemaking, when you get down to it, even though the filmmakers wisely avoid mentioning most of events in the previous entries in this series--which, in total, have managed to make the groundbreaking original look dated and cliched--and return to the main character from the first two films, Laurie Strode (Curtis). She's now the headmistress at a private school and, as a result of her tortured past, a pill-popping, alcoholic control freak who won't let her son (Hartnett) out of her sight, not even to let him hook up with his adorable girlfriend (Williams). Once Michael shows up, though, it's all run-run, slash-slash-just like you'd expect.
And that's too bad. There are interesting aspects to Halloween H2O, most notable Curtis and her take on Laurie 20 years later. After all, we don't often get to see survivors of these teen mad-slasher flicks deal with their demons in adulthood because, well, they don't very often make it to adulthood. But Jamie Lee's Laurie is a nervous, twitchy and, ultimately, strong and determined survivor who won't let any freak in a bleached-out William Shatner mask destroy her world yet again, and she's willing to fight for her life and her son's using any and all means necessary in a climactic battle that give one hope--for a fleeting moment, anyway--that Michael's shuffling reign of terror might finally, finally, finally be over.
But Curtis's performance is overwhelmed and, eventually, swallowed up and spat back out by the formula, which demands that everybody--even the well-drawn, well-acted characters--run through the maze of slice and dice, slash and hack, run and hide, then do it all over again.
Even as formulaic as Halloween H2O is, it would have been a decent ending to the series. Unfortunately, it did well enough at the box office to spawn at least one more sequel, Halloween Resurrection, which was poorly received by critics and audiences alike.
Maybe that'll be the end of the series. Somehow, I doubt it.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Review: Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Director Tim Burton combines elements from his two previous films, "Beetlejuice" (the skewed view of suburban life populated with off-center characters) and "Batman" (the gothic, expressionistic gloom) with liberal doses of "Frankenstein" and "Being There" for a remarkably personal modern fable.
Johnny Depp underplays his way through the title role, a man-made creature who winds up alone in a castle on a hill when his inventor (Vincent Price, in his last big-screen role) dies just as he's about to put the finishing touches on his creation: real hands, as opposed to the enormous gardening sheer-like things Edwards has on his wrists.
One day, an Avon lady (Dianne Wiest) shows up, finds Edward all alone in the hilltop castle and brings him home to live in her brightly colored suburban subdivision with her husband (Alan Arkin) and beautiful daughter (Winona Ryder, who looks kind of odd as a blonde, but I once read that that's her natural hair color...oh, never mind). Once there, he displays talents like making cool topiary animals and trimming the hair of the local housewives, including a ravenously sexual Kathy Baker. Despite his artistic skill and his strong attraction to the daughter, who has a typical asshole boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall), Edward can't find happiness and, in the end, winds up alone in the castle again.
What makes this movie so oddly affecting is how Burton turns Edward into an on-screen surrogate for himself. After all, Edward has wild black hair and pale skin and dresses (at least initially) all in black, much like Burton himself. Edward also comes from the mold of most of the heroes of Burton's films: bright outsiders who, despite their oddness, try to help the "normals" have better lives. And Edward is a talented artist who creates intricate pieces of art but nonetheless not given his due by the masses and is ultimately driven out by the "angry villagers" of old. (Guess not much has changed in 60-plus years.)
It's too bad that Burton doesn't do more with this basic premise. Instead, a lot of time is wasted on sight gags involving Edward's inability to hold things (silverware, doorknobs, etc.) or his penchant for accidentally cutting up things or people. And then, when the film stops being a comedy and gets serious, it starts to show promise (as in the scene in which Ryder asks Depp to hold her, to which he replies, simply but heartbreakingly, "I can't"), only to be overtaken by a final showdown in the castle with the asshole boyfriend that seems to have been grafted on from a mindless action flick, thus undercutting much of what had come before.
Still, the overwhelming loneliness of Edward himself--even when in a yard full of fawning neighbors--and the moments of simple beauty and joy of the artist-at-work--like Ryder twirling under a fall of ice shavings created as Edward carves enormous sculptures--ably supported by a more whimsical than usual score by Danny Elfman, give this movie a depth that overcomes the gearwork of typical Hollywood filmmaking. Just as many moments in the movie are capable of making me cry as other moments are of making me cringe.
And even if "Edward Scissorhands" isn't entirely successful as a fairy tale or a satire of suburbia, Tim Burton must be given some credit for trying to hit buttons most directors don't even try to reach--and, for the most part, succeeding.
Johnny Depp underplays his way through the title role, a man-made creature who winds up alone in a castle on a hill when his inventor (Vincent Price, in his last big-screen role) dies just as he's about to put the finishing touches on his creation: real hands, as opposed to the enormous gardening sheer-like things Edwards has on his wrists.
One day, an Avon lady (Dianne Wiest) shows up, finds Edward all alone in the hilltop castle and brings him home to live in her brightly colored suburban subdivision with her husband (Alan Arkin) and beautiful daughter (Winona Ryder, who looks kind of odd as a blonde, but I once read that that's her natural hair color...oh, never mind). Once there, he displays talents like making cool topiary animals and trimming the hair of the local housewives, including a ravenously sexual Kathy Baker. Despite his artistic skill and his strong attraction to the daughter, who has a typical asshole boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall), Edward can't find happiness and, in the end, winds up alone in the castle again.
What makes this movie so oddly affecting is how Burton turns Edward into an on-screen surrogate for himself. After all, Edward has wild black hair and pale skin and dresses (at least initially) all in black, much like Burton himself. Edward also comes from the mold of most of the heroes of Burton's films: bright outsiders who, despite their oddness, try to help the "normals" have better lives. And Edward is a talented artist who creates intricate pieces of art but nonetheless not given his due by the masses and is ultimately driven out by the "angry villagers" of old. (Guess not much has changed in 60-plus years.)
It's too bad that Burton doesn't do more with this basic premise. Instead, a lot of time is wasted on sight gags involving Edward's inability to hold things (silverware, doorknobs, etc.) or his penchant for accidentally cutting up things or people. And then, when the film stops being a comedy and gets serious, it starts to show promise (as in the scene in which Ryder asks Depp to hold her, to which he replies, simply but heartbreakingly, "I can't"), only to be overtaken by a final showdown in the castle with the asshole boyfriend that seems to have been grafted on from a mindless action flick, thus undercutting much of what had come before.
Still, the overwhelming loneliness of Edward himself--even when in a yard full of fawning neighbors--and the moments of simple beauty and joy of the artist-at-work--like Ryder twirling under a fall of ice shavings created as Edward carves enormous sculptures--ably supported by a more whimsical than usual score by Danny Elfman, give this movie a depth that overcomes the gearwork of typical Hollywood filmmaking. Just as many moments in the movie are capable of making me cry as other moments are of making me cringe.
And even if "Edward Scissorhands" isn't entirely successful as a fairy tale or a satire of suburbia, Tim Burton must be given some credit for trying to hit buttons most directors don't even try to reach--and, for the most part, succeeding.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Review: The Blair Witch Project (1999)
On the day that The Blair Witch Project first opened--which was also, by chance, luck or careful planning, the day I first saw it--I was reading a collection of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft wrote mostly for pulp magazines in the '20s and '30s and has, since his death in 1937, has become quite a literary cult figure and is now generally considered to be one of the finest writers of horror fiction in this century (if not of all time). Lovecraft began one of his stories by saying that "Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places." On another occasion, he wrote that "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is of the unknown."
I wonder if Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, the creative forces behind The Blair Witch Project, are familiar with the works of Lovecraft. If not, they've still managed to craft a horror film in which they follow the concepts that Lovecraft laid out decades ago: That we are drawn unwisely but inevitably to that which frightens us, and that most frightening thing the characters in this film can face is that which they neither see nor explain away.
Sanchez and Myrick have a simple story to tell. Three film students, played by Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams, set off into the woods surrounding Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 with a video camera, a 16mm camera and audio equipment to film footage for a documentary about a local legend, the Blair Witch. (The legend itself isn't explained very clearly, but we gather that she's appeared a number of times over a great span of time and that her appearances were usually accompanied by violent deaths.) The three students never return, but the film footage turns up a year later. What the audience sees is the purported footage, which shows the three filmmakers getting lost in the forest and becoming increasingly agitated in daylight while being terrorized and scared nearly out of their wits in darkness.
What the audience doesn't see is anything particularly explicit. There is one scene with some mild gore, but even it is vague and yields little useful, lucid information. (This scene prompted a discussion after the film amongst our stalwart little band as to exactly which body parts we were looking at--"Was that an eyeball? Did I see an ear?"--but no firm consensus could be reached.)
In an odd way, The Blair Witch Project is a throwback to the earliest sound horror films, in which there was little or no music, and sound and shadow were left to fill the gaps. It would be much more comforting, in fact, if, when the terrified film students come tearing out their tents in the middle of the night, they were to encounter an actor buried under latex appliances or some computer-generated, wart-encrusted hag that they could fight or run away from rather than what they actually encounter: The trees and leaves that their camera lights can pick up and damn little else.
Sanchez and Myrick offer no such common comforts. There is, to be sure, humor in the film. The early scenes show the three cracking wise about their upcoming trip as they gather supplies, interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch, and, finally, drive off into the woods. As it becomes increasingly obvious that Heather, the director of the proposed documentary, has no idea where they are and that none of them has any clue as to what forces they've managed to rouse--Animals? Ghosts? Locals intent on fucking with their heads?--a gallows humor takes over, intertwined with much bickering and bitching amongst the three. (This is probably the only point at which the fictional reality breaks down; the constant arguing during the day scenes gets more than a little tiresome, and the actual physical confrontations among the students show signs of restraint on the parts of the combatants--they don't, after all, really want to hurt their fellow improvising actors, now do they?) Nor do Sanchez, Myrick and the three actors playing the students offer us the dubious comfort of the fake scare, where a series of footsteps snapping twigs in the distance is revealed to be a deer trundling through the forest.
What the makers of The Blair Witch Project do instead is remind us that any horror they can possibly put on screen will be watery stuff compared to the steady, thickening drip of the average filmgoer's imagination--the most potent horror engine of all.
I wonder if Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, the creative forces behind The Blair Witch Project, are familiar with the works of Lovecraft. If not, they've still managed to craft a horror film in which they follow the concepts that Lovecraft laid out decades ago: That we are drawn unwisely but inevitably to that which frightens us, and that most frightening thing the characters in this film can face is that which they neither see nor explain away.
Sanchez and Myrick have a simple story to tell. Three film students, played by Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams, set off into the woods surrounding Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 with a video camera, a 16mm camera and audio equipment to film footage for a documentary about a local legend, the Blair Witch. (The legend itself isn't explained very clearly, but we gather that she's appeared a number of times over a great span of time and that her appearances were usually accompanied by violent deaths.) The three students never return, but the film footage turns up a year later. What the audience sees is the purported footage, which shows the three filmmakers getting lost in the forest and becoming increasingly agitated in daylight while being terrorized and scared nearly out of their wits in darkness.
What the audience doesn't see is anything particularly explicit. There is one scene with some mild gore, but even it is vague and yields little useful, lucid information. (This scene prompted a discussion after the film amongst our stalwart little band as to exactly which body parts we were looking at--"Was that an eyeball? Did I see an ear?"--but no firm consensus could be reached.)
In an odd way, The Blair Witch Project is a throwback to the earliest sound horror films, in which there was little or no music, and sound and shadow were left to fill the gaps. It would be much more comforting, in fact, if, when the terrified film students come tearing out their tents in the middle of the night, they were to encounter an actor buried under latex appliances or some computer-generated, wart-encrusted hag that they could fight or run away from rather than what they actually encounter: The trees and leaves that their camera lights can pick up and damn little else.
Sanchez and Myrick offer no such common comforts. There is, to be sure, humor in the film. The early scenes show the three cracking wise about their upcoming trip as they gather supplies, interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch, and, finally, drive off into the woods. As it becomes increasingly obvious that Heather, the director of the proposed documentary, has no idea where they are and that none of them has any clue as to what forces they've managed to rouse--Animals? Ghosts? Locals intent on fucking with their heads?--a gallows humor takes over, intertwined with much bickering and bitching amongst the three. (This is probably the only point at which the fictional reality breaks down; the constant arguing during the day scenes gets more than a little tiresome, and the actual physical confrontations among the students show signs of restraint on the parts of the combatants--they don't, after all, really want to hurt their fellow improvising actors, now do they?) Nor do Sanchez, Myrick and the three actors playing the students offer us the dubious comfort of the fake scare, where a series of footsteps snapping twigs in the distance is revealed to be a deer trundling through the forest.
What the makers of The Blair Witch Project do instead is remind us that any horror they can possibly put on screen will be watery stuff compared to the steady, thickening drip of the average filmgoer's imagination--the most potent horror engine of all.
Saturday, November 22, 2003
A Bad Day in Dallas
Not haunted in the traditional sense--you won't see a phantom limo speeding past the Book Depository Building, nor a shape in the sixth-floor window holding an Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. But the atmosphere of the place--the weight of the history and sorrow and dreams that died that November afternoon in 1963--is oppressive.
This atmosphere isn't helped a bit by the men standing on each corner of the intersection, hawking commemorative magazines and replica newspapers like they're standing outside a sports stadium selling programs to fans--not at the site of one of the most famous and most public murders in history. And when the men see someone who is obviously a tourist--like, say, a tall, lanky guy with a camera around his neck--they descend like pidgeons on bread.
The area doesn't look that much different than what we've all seen in numerous documetaries, news programs or the infamous "Zapruder Film" (you know, the one that shows JFK's head exploding like a meat-filled balloon). There's the Book Depository Building, which now has a museum on the sixth floor and a plaque that lists Lee Harvey Oswald as the "alleged" assassin (somebody helpfully underlines the word "allegedly with chalk). There's the "grassy knoll," from which a second assassin could have taken a shot at the president. And, in the middle of the road, there's a permanent metal "x" where the third, highly fatal bullet struck the president.
Where that third bullet came from is, to this day, a matter of conjecture.
While visiting the site in 2002 with my hosts, Junebug and Praxx, and taking many photos of downtoan Dallas, Praxx told me about a theory he'd read. It goes something like this (at least as I recall it):
Oswald did indeed fire at the president from the Book Depository building, but only got off two shots--one than landed behind the limo carrying JFK, Jackie and Texas governor John Connally, shattering on the pavement and spraying fragments; and one that hit Kennedy in the back of his neck, passing through (and, in the process, doing more than enough damage to kill him without a third shot being fired) and subsequently hitting Connally, even though the bullet itself looked like it had just come straight out of the box (and hence has since been labeled "the magic bullet").
And the third bullet? The one commemorated by the metal "x" in the middle of the road? Where'd that bullet come from?
This, to my mind, makes way too much sense. Think about it: This would account not only for the odd way Kennedy's head reacts to that last shot, snapping back instead of forward (which has led to the "second shooter on the grassy knoll" theories), but also for the alleged coverup, which wasn't designed to hide the identity of the assassin (who was, in truth, Oswald), but to hide the fact that the Secret Service accidentally shot the president--not the kind of thing the government would want to publicize, even if Kennedy was already essentially dead due to the damage from Oswald's second shot. This theory also accounts for the missing evidence (unretouched autopsy photos, the remnants of the president's brain, etc.).
But this is, of course, only a theory--one of seemingly thousands swirling around the Kennedy assassination. And, when you get right down to it, none of us will ever know the truth. Oswald is dead, killed by Jack Ruby with remarkable ease on live TV. Ruby is dead, too. We'll never get to know what exactly happened, or why.
And does it matter, really? Knowing how and why wouldn't change the fact that it happened. Hell, I hadn't even been born yet when it happen (though Mom was three months pregnant with me, so I did technically exist). So why should I--or anybody else--care about what happened in Dallas 40 years ago this week?
Because the assassination of JFK and the lack of a satisfactory explanation for it peeled away another layer of innocence from the world, with many more events--Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, Iraq--lining up to do the same.
Review: Dracula (Spanish Version) (1931)
In the silent film era, releasing movies overseas was relatively simple: you just had the title cards translated into the language of the country of choice and inserted them into the existing film. With the advent of sound, however, matters became more complicated. It was difficult enough to try and record the actors' voices in their original language, much less replacing those voices with words in a different language. And because dubbing was still such a primitive, inexact science, many studios preferred to shoot alternate versions of their films for overseas markets, using the same scripts and sets as their English-speaking counterparts, but substituting actors who could play the parts in Spanish or German or whatever.
So Universal used the same sets and script and hired Spanish-speaking actors to recreated Dracula for south-of-the-border distribution, with the Spanish version being shot at night while the English version was created during the day.
The resulting film, though, is in some ways superior to Universal's "official" Dracula. There are bits of music throughout the film, and director George Melford seems more aware of space and how to use it than Browning, moving through the sets to give the audience a sense of their vast expanse. He and his cinematographer, George Robinson (who would later work on many more Universal horror pictures), use low-key lighting effects borrowed from German Expressionist films to show Dracula rising from his coffin, which seems lit from within, and in a brief scene not present in the English version in which shafts of light seem to be emanating from the ground as the coach carrying Renfield speeds toward Castle Dracula (Stoker described a similar scene in the novel).
There's also more sexual frankness present in the Spanish version. Eva (Lupita Tovar), the equivalent of Mina in the English version, wears much more revealing lingerie than Helen Chandler did, and the connection between vampirism and sexual penetration is made quite clear in a bit of dialogue (also absent from the English version) in which Eva describes waking up from a disturbing dream and feeling like she'd lost her virginity (though I notice that this language was altered for the DVD release to read as "I felt like the life had been drained out of me"--ah, censorship, sweet censorship).
Some of the performances are better than in the Browning/Lugosi version, especially Tovar's sexy turn as Eva and Pablo Alvarez Rubio's over-the-top-and-back-again performance as Renfield. While Dwight Frye was disconcerting enough with his wide-eyed giggling, Rubio (who looks a bit like Sid Caesar) makes Frye look positively restrained by comparison, turnong Renfield into a screaming, screeching, writhing lunatic. He holds nothing back and makes Renfield's tortured soul wholly believable.
Where the Spanish version doesn't hold up is Carlos Villarias's performance as Conde Dracula. Though few would credit Bela Lugosi with a reserved acting style, he seems downright subtle compared to Villarias, who tries too damn hard to be scary, bugging out his eyes and leering ravenously. His idea of expressing anger is to clench his fists, grit his teeth and stalk off. His movements are stiff compared to Lugosi's smooth, suave ways, and he just doesn't seem that threatening. He does, however, bear a significant resemblance to Lugosi, and this allowed Universal to recycle some of the footage of Lugosi walking along the street outside Mina's/Eva's window. Even on DVD, it's hard to tell the difference between the two unless you really look frame by frame.
The Spanish version of Dracula is an interesting, good-looking alternative to the English version, and it's fun and even educational to watch the two and compare and contrast the different approaches Melford and Browning have to the same material. You might even find Melford's version to be superior.
(NOTE: This version was long considered a "lost" film because the third reel was missing, while the rest of the film was intact and in great shape; the missing reel was found in Cuba in 1989, and despite its relatively poor quality, it was better than having nothing at all.)
So Universal used the same sets and script and hired Spanish-speaking actors to recreated Dracula for south-of-the-border distribution, with the Spanish version being shot at night while the English version was created during the day.
The resulting film, though, is in some ways superior to Universal's "official" Dracula. There are bits of music throughout the film, and director George Melford seems more aware of space and how to use it than Browning, moving through the sets to give the audience a sense of their vast expanse. He and his cinematographer, George Robinson (who would later work on many more Universal horror pictures), use low-key lighting effects borrowed from German Expressionist films to show Dracula rising from his coffin, which seems lit from within, and in a brief scene not present in the English version in which shafts of light seem to be emanating from the ground as the coach carrying Renfield speeds toward Castle Dracula (Stoker described a similar scene in the novel).
There's also more sexual frankness present in the Spanish version. Eva (Lupita Tovar), the equivalent of Mina in the English version, wears much more revealing lingerie than Helen Chandler did, and the connection between vampirism and sexual penetration is made quite clear in a bit of dialogue (also absent from the English version) in which Eva describes waking up from a disturbing dream and feeling like she'd lost her virginity (though I notice that this language was altered for the DVD release to read as "I felt like the life had been drained out of me"--ah, censorship, sweet censorship).
Some of the performances are better than in the Browning/Lugosi version, especially Tovar's sexy turn as Eva and Pablo Alvarez Rubio's over-the-top-and-back-again performance as Renfield. While Dwight Frye was disconcerting enough with his wide-eyed giggling, Rubio (who looks a bit like Sid Caesar) makes Frye look positively restrained by comparison, turnong Renfield into a screaming, screeching, writhing lunatic. He holds nothing back and makes Renfield's tortured soul wholly believable.
Where the Spanish version doesn't hold up is Carlos Villarias's performance as Conde Dracula. Though few would credit Bela Lugosi with a reserved acting style, he seems downright subtle compared to Villarias, who tries too damn hard to be scary, bugging out his eyes and leering ravenously. His idea of expressing anger is to clench his fists, grit his teeth and stalk off. His movements are stiff compared to Lugosi's smooth, suave ways, and he just doesn't seem that threatening. He does, however, bear a significant resemblance to Lugosi, and this allowed Universal to recycle some of the footage of Lugosi walking along the street outside Mina's/Eva's window. Even on DVD, it's hard to tell the difference between the two unless you really look frame by frame.
The Spanish version of Dracula is an interesting, good-looking alternative to the English version, and it's fun and even educational to watch the two and compare and contrast the different approaches Melford and Browning have to the same material. You might even find Melford's version to be superior.
(NOTE: This version was long considered a "lost" film because the third reel was missing, while the rest of the film was intact and in great shape; the missing reel was found in Cuba in 1989, and despite its relatively poor quality, it was better than having nothing at all.)
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