John Rozum's Blog, page 58

Next Saturday...

Don't Ask

This is the first Monday of the month which normally would mean it's time for "Ask Me Anything." However, I have a heavy schedule this month, so I'm putting it on hiatus.  This month you can expect some posts pertaining to things I did not post during October so that they would not get lost amidst all of the Countdown to Halloween material.

"Ask Me Anything" will return the first Monday of December.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31 - Movie 2

Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) is convinced by his psychiatrist (David Cronenberg) that he has been murdering people during blackout periods. Boone seeks refuge among the Nightbreed, a civilization of monsters that live beneath a necropolis called Midian. Boone learns he's innocent, and in an attempt to rejoin his girlfriend in a normal life, accidentally leads humans, intent on destroying the monsters, to Midian. 
I've been waiting for the director's cut since I saw the movie opening night at a movie theater in New York City and noticed that scenes from the trailer were missing from the actual movie, and subsequently learned about the studio interference which led to reshoots that completely reversed the intentions of the film, which were to portray the monsters as heroes and the humans as monsters. The director's cut is not much longer than the theatrical cut and there aren't any "holy crap" new scenes added to the movie, but more time is spent on cementing Boone's relationship with his girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobby) and turning the movie's perspective back to one in which the monsters are definitely the sympathetic, peaceful, people that Clive Barker intended them to be. I always hated the exploding bloodbath that was the climax of the theatrical cut, but here a lot of nuanced scenes are woven into the fabric of Midian's apocalypse, that the feel of the climax completely changes. The restoration of the newly reintroduced footage is pretty seamless, especially considering the poor quality of some of the footage when it was rediscovered. I also sprung for the deluxe edition blu ray which has lots of extras in the form of making of documentaries, still galleries, and further deleted scenes that were not reintroduced back into the movie. I have only tapped the surface of the extra features, but it's a treasure trove I look forward to diving into completely.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31 - Movie 1

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) is Hollywood's second spectacle based on Victor Hugo's novel.  The 1923 version, starring Lon Chaney, was a hard act to follow. In terms of spectacle, this version matches its predecessor. The sets are glorious, the crowd scenes populous, the cinematography beautiful. This time Charles Laughton plays the titular character, Quasimodo under Perc Westmore's impressive make-up. Laughton's Quasimodo is less animated and acrobatic than Chaney's, but is able to get across a great deal of pathos in his reserved performance. Cedric Hardwicke makes for a nasty Frollo, and Maureen O'Hara, while not quite convincing as a Gypsy girl, makes for a beautiful Esmeralda.

It's an excellent movie, but not quite at the level of the 1923 version. The script hits all of its notes really broadly, and practically underlines key bits of exposition and dialogue to make sure the audience doesn't miss them. There's a much more optimistic feel all the way throughout that doesn't really match the situation unfolding on screen, even ending with a happy, if bittersweet ending, not true to the source material. It's somewhat like the difference between the 1943 Phantom of the Opera and the 1925 original. The silent versions were energetic, dark and mysterious. The romance was tinged with doom. The sound versions were too busy trying to cement themselves as audience pleasing costume melodramas, and completely blunted their dark edges. This remake of the Hunchback excels where the remake of Phantom didn't. Even if it were only for Laughton's performance, this movie would be well worth seeing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 31

Barbara Britton, Ella Neal, Eva Gabot, and Katherine Booth, 1941.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30 - Movie 2

 Soon after turning her lover, Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) is faced with a visit from her unstable sister, Mimi (Roxane Mesquida), that not only threatens her and Paolo's safety, but the entire extended vampire community.

Kiss of the Damned (2012) is more of an exquisite mood piece than a plot driven film. Visually it's a bit of a throwback to another era, which combined with the exotic, cosmopolitan foreignness of its cast of characters gives it a timeless quality, or at least a feeling that the vampire world exists outside of time as we know it. It's even tempered and mostly even paced, and more concerned with new relationships and the intrusive nature of any third party paying a visit while these relationships are being forged. While Djuna, and Paolo seem to be embracing the idea of forever together, Mimi seems to be striking out against what stability over long periods of time means to her; boredom. Her behavior is not only willfully self destructive, but dangerous to everyone around her. While Kiss of the Damned, doesn't really bring anything new to the vampire genre, it was still a welcome change from how the vampire story typically unfolds, and extremely well done, too.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30 - Movie 1

A pair of lesbian vampires, lure men to their enormous, out of the way, home, promising sex, but using them for sustenance. Meanwhile, a young married couple camping nearby get pulled into the mystery of what is happening in that supposedly abandoned house and find they should have left well enough alone.

Vampyres (1974) is a a really uneven film. The bulk of the movie is spent on erotic encounters that on the surface seem to be hungry and fierce, but are actually incredibly chaste and superficial. These encounters fall into a repetitive pattern of the vampire women pleasing each other, then luring a man to the house for additional pleasures. There are three types of characters here, the predatory vampire women, the horny male victims, and the nice married couple, one of whom is suspicious of the behavior of others, and the other who is too trusting. There are some nice visuals, and the house itself is magnificent, but too much of this film passes by slowly, and the only real ferocity and horror doesn't come until the end. This is perhaps worth a look, but not a revisit.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 30

Gale Robbins

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Movie 2

The staff at an oil company's remote Alaskan base, find themselves under siege by a series of strange events that seem to be connected to global warming. One by one, they die in peculiar ways, with much speculation on what's happening. Central is the idea that nature is striking back against the planet's human infestation. Here, in the arctic that attack is being brought on by the spirit of the Wendigo in the form of ghost caribou.

The Last Winter (2006) is an environmental horror film that leaves plenty of room for ambiguities, much like Larry Fessenden's previous films. Like his other films, this provides the viewer with a smart, ambitious movie that isn't entirely satisfying. That lack of satisfaction is possibly the result of wanting a film that is trying to give so much to succeed completely and spectacularly, which The Last Winter doesn't. I found myself completely enmeshed in the story as it unfolded, and was happy to see that a horror film set in an arctic research facility could completely separate itself from any version of The Thing. I'd also gladly trade in half the movies I watched this month for one ambitious, if not quite successful Larry Fessenden film.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 29 - Movie 1

A monster is terrorizing the countryside of Gevaudan, France, and no one can stop it, or a wicked secret society connected with it. While barely a horror movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) is loosely based on events pertaining to my favorite real life monster, the beast of Gevaudan. This movie plays fast and loose with the facts, but makes for a beautiful looking historical action movie. There are a number of preposterous things on screen, but I was willing to roll with them. The mystery plays out nicely, and the actors and the characters they play are all engaging. This was my second viewing of this movie, and I still like it a lot.