So I thought I’d start off Part II with a little flick called Grindhouse. Pals Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez dreamed it up when they realized that they both owned the same double-feature exploitation poster. And being the impulsive guys that they are, they decided to make a double feature (For those who don’t know, Tarantino and Rodriguez are, like, the best directors ever. Like, oh my god.). They each directed one new-age exploitation film (Robert Rodriguez did Planet Terror, and Quentin Tarantino did Death Proof), and then put them together to make Grindhouse. And I was blown away.
Zombie-soldiers, bullets, Bruce Willis, demented doctors, go-go dancers (not strippers, there’s a difference), Tom Savini, testicles…and that’s just Planet Terror. Death Proof features a serial killer who uses a car instead of a knife. Spiffy shit. And I haven’t even brought up the fake trailers. Machete, Werewolf Women of the SS, Don’t, and Thanksgiving, were trailers made specifically to enhance the movie experience, directed by Robert Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth, respectively. I could write a whole other entry on the trailers alone.
In some Canadian theatres, another trailer was also shown. Jason Eisener, winner of the South by Southwest Grindhouse trailer contest, made it. It was called Hobo with a Shotgun. It was the single best thing I’ve ever seen. Jason Eisener lives in Dartmouth, right across the bridge from where I’m typing this very entry. It brings a tear to my eye to know that something so awesome could come from somewhere so close to my own home.
At the end of the day, all I can say is ‘See the muthertrucking movie’.
The fact that there are 4 Saw moviesThe thing about the Saw movies is that the first one was great, the second one was okay, the third one was better than the second but not as good as the first, and the fourth one I haven’t seen yet. But that’s neither here nor there. They’re kind of repetitive, but they’re solid. And there’s a bunch of ‘em.
Back in the day, every horror movie seemed to have a franchise tagging along behind it. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, and Halloween all had their day, but for a while it seemed that this generation wouldn’t see the start of a decent horror franchise. Until Saw came along. Delightfully bloody and even pretty clever, Saw was a wonderful little film that people and enjoyed, but never expected to go anywhere. They were sadly mistaken about Saw’s potential. The movie was a hit and spawned a slew of sequels that have been coming out every year around Halloween for the past 4 years. Talk about being diligent.
And that’s the story of how our generation got its horror franchise. It will probably go on for far too long, but let’s just enjoy it while it’s young…ish. It’s about a pre-teen now, I’d say.
Side-note: I might have missed a franchise that’s started recently, but I’m not looking that hard and not counting series with only two entries. Them’s bitches.
When things happen to eyes
It’s common knowledge that a lot of things have eyes. I do. You probably do too. But what’s a-little-less-common knowledge is that eyes can be creepy as hell. And hell’s pretty creepy.
Picture a guy standing in a dark alley facing a blank wall. Against your better judgment, you decided to see if this guy’s running on all cylinders. You tap him on the shoulder, and he pivots around to reveal that his eyes are COMPLETELY WHITE! (And not just blind-person type white, but possessed type white). Now, picture that same scenario, but replace ‘COMPLETELY WHITE!’ with ‘COMPLETELY BLACK!’ or ‘HE HAS NO EYES!’ or ‘HIS EYES ARE BLEEDING!’. Terrifying, no?
Eyes tend to be a good body part to base disturbing violence around to boot. Check out the videos from our first post: when you see a girl getting a large splinter of wood forced into her eye, you’re watching one of the more gruesome eye-related kills, courtesy of Zombi 2.
White Eyes clearly knows what's good in da hood
Little girls with black hair that move quickly and patternlessly and/or slowly and patternlessly
Microsoft Word is trying to tell me that ‘patternlessly’ isn’t a word. I beg to differ.
Anyway, to most people, the image of a creepy black haired, occasionally inexplicably soaked, little ghost girl is mainly associated with Americanized remakes of Japanese movies. These girls are, yeah, kinda eerie, but they don’t hold a candle to the original versions. Watch Ringu or Ju-On, the original versions of The Ring and The Grudge respectively, and you’ll see what I mean.
Even when watching the American shit-basket remakes of these chillers, you have to remember the first time you saw one of those ghost kids spaz-walking down a hallway. You were like ‘What the fuck, that doesn’t even work!!’, much in the same vein as when Linda Blair upside-down crap walks down the stairs in The Exorcist (see last ‘Best of the Wretched’ post).
, especially when they’re dead and moving in inhuman ways. It just ain’t natural.
Horror Remakes (The concept of such things)
Remakes…I don’t even want to get too deep into this one. It’s sick, it’s morally wrong; it’s not even good.
Some things are best left untouched, like minors, and oh, say, every horror movie EVER! Remaking them just produces films that just about every movie critic refers to as ‘a steaming pile of crap’, thinking that they’re being clever and original. They’re not, but that doesn’t make them any less right. I normally disagree with a lot of things that movie critics have to say about horror movies, but here is where we see eye to eye.
Okay, so maybe I’ve jumped the gun a little. I actually enjoyed the remakes of Cape Fear, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Thing, but that’s about it. Think about every time you’ve started to watch a trailer, and you’ve been thinking ‘This looks awful…but familiar…’. It’s like having a twin brother who’s lost at birth, and later on is scarred in a tragic motorcycling accident, and then you meet him years later at a rave. Can you picture that? Maybe yes, maybe no? Either way, it all amounts to remakes being to horror movies what pissing in holy water is to Catholics.
Now that's an intelligent rating system if ever I saw one
Pancakes (Cabin Fever)
It’s not really grotesque, creepy, or clever, it’s just fucking hilarious.
I don’t know what Eli Roth was thinking, but it was probably influenced by pot. And I’m glad.
John Carpenter
"In France, I'm an auteur; in Germany, a filmmaker; in Britain; a genre film director; and, in the USA, a bum."
If you love horror, thrillers, or action, and you haven’t heard of Mr. Carpenter, you’re sadly out in the cold. He’s great, just great. He’s influenced so many people in so many ways. He brought the slasher genre into the mainstream. He composed awesome synthesizer music for his movies. John Carpenter is, in many ways, the man.
John Carpenter makes movies that everyone else wants to be making. He remade The Thing back before remakes were the annoying ‘it’ thing. And it was genuinely terrifying and became a cult classic. He made Halloween, which defined slasher movies (it wasn’t the first, but it was close). He directed They Live, which had the line ‘I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.’ Which is just awe-inspiring.
Johnny-Boy inspired generations of filmmakers; Escape from New York was the movie that inspired Robert Rodriguez to start making films. He also actually avoids showing gore, which makes the fact that his movies are so macabre all the more impressive. Man, what a guy. I’ve gotta go change my pants.
"Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience."
When the Alien comes out of John Hurt’s chest
You might think it’s over-used, but there’s a reason. This scene stands out to hundreds of people as a defining moment in not just horror, but in cinema as a whole. Ridley Scott’s Alien came out in 1979, and still has what it takes to shock and horrify even today. You all know the scene I’m talking about. If you don’t, then you might as well die.
A clingy alien life form latches onto John Hurt, and it lays eggs or some shit like that in his chest cavity. The catch is that he, as well as the other crewmembers of his space vehicle (this flick takes place in the future, FYI), doesn’t know this. That is until the little bugger decides to make it’s presence known.
In a scene that makes even the worst indigestion seem like mild gas, the alien bursts out of his chest and runs off, leaving the crew to ponder ‘Who’s going to clean this up?’ as well as ‘Where did that speedy little thing that looks like a bloody dildo attached to an R.C. car go?’.
Over the course of the film, the alien proceeds to slaughter the rest of the crew and grow at an alarming rate. Kids sure do grow up quick.
There may be a part III coming soon, ya never know. Maybe this will be my horror franchise.
-Alex
