Moviedrome #6: Fear Factor
Loading …“Oh mother! Blood. Blood!”
I’ve always had a thing for horror. Part of it was growing up in a family with older sisters who regaled me (= terrified me) with stories of the latest scary films they had seen. Psycho was legendary in our house and my sisters never stopped talking about Hitchcock’s classic tale of mother-love and murder. Another was Salem’s Lot. My (decidedly non-taxidermied) mother, in a surprising fit of sadism for an otherwise gentle woman, had scratched on their window one night (as the vampire boy does in the movie). I don’t think they ever recovered.
Being allowed to finally watch Psycho was like a rite of passage. I think we forget how terrifying this film would have been in 1960. As horror it surpasses much of the drek that defines the genre today. It was also the first film to show a toilet flushing, a real milestone in cinematic history. Oh, and Janet Leigh in a bra.
You’ll get more horror films for Moviedrome, but choosing them is going to be difficult. Here are some random faves: The Ring, The Silence of the Lambs, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (probably the best), Alien, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Blair Witch Project, and…
The Sixth Sense. For its utterly novel approach to the comic book, Unbreakable is actually my favourite M. Night Shyamalan film, but I-See-Dead-People is a classic in the Hitchcockian vein of psychological horror. It’s absolutely terrifying. When Cole is in his tent and the door starts to open…BLOODY HELL! The Sixth Sense is a wonderful, pant-pooing movie, just don’t admit to having guessed the ending because I won’t believe you.
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Moviedrome Winners so far:
Spirited Away
Blade Runner
Hero
Citizen Kane
Rushmore
Hmm…is there really any question? The Sixth Sense was kind of a neat trick the first time I saw it, but Psycho is nearly perfect and arguably Hitchcock’s best.
Comment by BTD Greg — April 27, 2006 @ 8:08 am
Greg,
Maybe there isn’t any question, but it’s an interesting test of whether we can still “make ‘em like they used to.” Who is the heir to Hitchcock today?
Comment by Ronan — April 27, 2006 @ 8:43 am
“Who is the heir to Hitchcock today?”
Michael Bay.
Comment by Supergenius — April 27, 2006 @ 9:52 am
I predict Psycho in a blood bath.
I love Sixth Sense. I really loved Unbreakable and Signs. Definitely, there’s only one contender for heir to the Hitchcock throne, and that’s Shymalan. The question is whether he’s worthy of it. He would need several more really good movies before he could even be thought of as in the same league as Hitch. He would have to stop with the twist ending thing. He would have to make some films with some different moods, maybe some romantic thrillers or suspensful comedies. If he can’t do those things then he’s no Hitch. He can have some bombs and missteps along the way, but he can’t be a one-trick pony.
Comment by Tom — April 27, 2006 @ 10:07 am
Oh, and he doesn’t have to write all of his films. It would probably be good for him to collaborate with some writers to do some different kinds of movies, like romantic thrillers and comedies.
Comment by Tom — April 27, 2006 @ 10:13 am
I hear his new movie doesn’t have a twist-ending.
Comment by Ronan — April 27, 2006 @ 10:26 am
Thanks for giving away the ending, jerk.
Comment by Tom — April 27, 2006 @ 10:28 am
I think of Shymalan more as the heir to Serling than Hitchcock (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way).
Comment by BTD Greg — April 27, 2006 @ 10:44 am
I understand Shyamalan as asking the same question over and over again: What if this weird thing we make movies about was to actually happen? The ookiness of his movies is that he does his best to set weird stuff in a real-world setting. This is why Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were great, why some aspects of Signs were good, and why The Village just didn’t work so well. It looks like this is what he is after in the next one, so I’m looking forward to it.
Horror in general never happens anywhere real. It is always a stereotype house, suburban neighborhood, or deserted wasteland/bayou. The people in horror movies never behave like real people do. Hitchcock shared Shyamalan’s interest in setting real people (albeit, exceptionally witty people) in unreal situations. So, yeah, I can see calling Shyamalan the bearer of the mantle.
Comment by HP — April 27, 2006 @ 11:01 am
Hmm. I don’t think anyone is worthy of Hitchcock’s mantle.
I love both of these films, but I think Psycho will have to win. Also, be careful about lumping something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Nightmare on Elm Street together with Psycho or even Silence of the Lambs. I think they’re really two different genres, one being “thriller” the other being “horror” or “splatter.” Yuck. One of my faves in the former category would have to be Rosemary’s Baby. I accidentally saw it when I was about 6 or 7 years old at a drive-in (I was supposed to be asleep by the time it came on), and it .. well.. sort of defined who I am today!
Repulsion, also by Polanski, - (but difficult to find on DVD) — is also S.C.A.R.Y. Really scary.
Comment by meems — April 27, 2006 @ 11:51 pm
Meems, some splatter is good… Actually, the original Chainsaw has very little splatter — it’s all off camera. It’s Leatherface’s pig-squeals that are horrific. Anyway, I think “horror” is a wide genre; for example, Brit horror fan and movie critic Mark Kermode considers the Passion of the Christ to be a horror movie.
I’ve never seen Rosemary’s Baby. I hear it’s brill.
Comment by Ronan — April 28, 2006 @ 6:17 am
“The Sixth Sense” creeped me out in the movie theater. I had to leave and go duck in to “Runaway Bride” (which was also scary, but for unrelated reasons). But then I rented “The Sixth Sense” on DVD, and thought it was kinda lame. Same thing happened with the movie “The Ring”.
The scariest movie I ever saw was “Watcher in the Woods”. It was a Disney movie (with Bette Davis!), and I watched it when I was in fifth or sixth grade. I was sufficiently traumatized by it that for years and years afterwards I couldn’t look into a mirror at night, and would have feelings of sheer terror remembering the story of Karen who inexplicably disappeared into another world (behind a mirror) and the dog Narek. (Yes, the name of the dog was Karen spelled backwards. Sheesh.)
Comment by Elisabeth — April 28, 2006 @ 7:44 am
BTD Greg (#8),
Now that I’ve done my Serling homework I can disagree that Shymalan is the (or a) modern-day Serling, even though I haven’t seen much of his work besides Planet of the Apes and a little bit of Twilight Zone.
I do think you’re right that Shymalan’s writing so far is more Twilight Zone than Psycho or Notorious or Vertigo or . . .
My biggest objection to the comparison, though, is that it ignores Shymalan’s considerable skill as a filmmaker. Even The Village, which is my least favorite of his post-Sixth Sense movies, was very well done in terms of direction, camera work, mood, look and feel, etc. The weak element was the story. From what I gather, Serling was principally (exclusively?) a writer.
Also, Shymalan hasn’t really (yet) demonstrated a knack for coming up with good stories like Serling apparently did. Since and including Sixth Sense he has three really good ones to his credit and one not so good one. Maybe this summer we’ll find out whether The Village was a momentary lapse or a sign of an imagination run dry.
Comment by Tom — April 28, 2006 @ 8:08 am
Speaking of Bette Davis movies that are scary, how about the original “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Two scary ladies.
And Ronan, Rosemary’s Baby is brill. It’s creepy and scary, but not gross like The Exorcist. I like my evil subtle.
Comment by meems — April 28, 2006 @ 7:21 pm
So vote for the best creepshow. (Speaking of Creepshow, that was a fun series…)
Comment by Ronan — May 9, 2006 @ 12:31 pm
Come on kids! Hitch vs. M. Night. Someone break the tie.
Comment by Ronan — May 10, 2006 @ 6:17 am