October = HORROR
Yes it's almost time for us all to fall into the scariest month of the year: October! and for all of us here at the After Movie Diner Blog & Podcast it's definitely our favourite month of the year. That annoying sun isn't around as much, that stupid heat is dwindling and it's time for us to tear into our respective horror collections with willful abandon!
To this end I have decided to present this list of a selection of my collection and ask you the listeners/readers which films you'd like to hear covered on the After Movie Diner Podcast.
My intent is to watch as many of the following films below as possible between now and Oct 31st, mainly for my own enjoyment BUT whatever films prove popular between now and October 1st, either in the comments section below, on Twitter or Facebook I will cover them either as 1 minute reviews or as main show subjects in the 4 shows I do in October.
So it's simple - read the list below and let me know what you want reviewing either in the comments section
by e-mail: aftermoviediner@gmail.com
on twitter: https://twitter.com/aftermoviediner
and on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aftermoviediner
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Films (in no particular order):
Maniac Cop Trilogy
Intruder
Waxwork 1 & 2
Drag Me To Hell
Halloween 2-7
Someone's Watching Me (Early carpenter flick)
Prince of Darkness
Vampires
Candyman
Black Christmas
Terror Train
The Prowler
Night School
Slumber Party Massacre trilogy
All or Any of the Nightmare on Elm Streets
Puppet Master 1-9
Demonic Toys
Dollman Vs Demonic Toys
Dr.Giggles
The Hand
Scream 1-4
Deep Red
Sleepless (later Argento)
Eyes of a Stranger
Vacancy
Hostel
Color Me Blood Red
Gruesome Twosome
The Pit & the Pendulum (Vincent Price/Corman)
The Raven (Vincent Price/Corman)
Night of the Hunter
The Hitcher (original - please!)
Alone in the Dark
Society
Raw Meat
Faust
Rosemary's Baby
Demon Seed
Omen 1-3
The Prophecy 1-5
Carrie
Final Destination 1-3
Phantasm 1-4
Deadly Friend (Wes Craven)
From Beyond The Grave
The Crazies (original Vs remake)
The Dark Half
Zombie
The Living Dead in the Manchester Morgue
Return of the Living Dead 1-3
Undead
Dead Snow
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Fright Night
Wolfen
Sharktopus
Black Sheep
Blood Island Trilogy
Q the Winged Serpent
The Stuff
Critters 1-4
Psycho (original - of course!!)
The Birds
Cemetery Man
Aerobicide/Killer Workout
Chopping Mall
Horror Express
Meat-cleaver Massacre
Pieces
Rats (1982)
Shock Waves
Street Trash
The Pit
The Mutilator
The Video Dead
Escape from New York - 17th May 2011
For film snobs there maybe more duds than greats, but they rarely know what they're talking about, for the average viewer the quality may vary slightly but mostly I think they find them enjoyable and for the hardened fan, I would say that Carpenter barely put a foot wrong during this period.
Even if you like some of the films more than the others, it can't be denied that he has one of the most creatively interesting, diverse, artistic and fascinating resumes since Hitchcock.
Escape from New York is his second collaboration with Kurt Russell and both of them have spoken about how Snake Plissken is a character created by and very close to both of them, sharing their attitude, strength and political beliefs. Russell plays him like Clint Eastwood's futuristic 80s love baby with a chip on his shoulder. Every single one of his mannerisms is an education in purposeful cool. The one thing you can say about Snake is Russell is playing him as a hard man without a care rather than necessarily being a hard man without a care. It's almost a pastiche of a performance but I think that's maybe one of the in-jokes, especially considering everyone else in the film from Lee Van Cleef to Issac Hayes comes up to his level nothing feels out of place and the whole film plays like the greatest B-Picture ever made.
It's got the futuristic setting mixed with the decay of the past, it's got the lone gun man with an iconic look who rides into town to do a job he doesn't want to do but he has no choice, it's got ball busting militarised police, crazy sewer dwellers, a bad guy called The Duke, a strong, gutsy leading lady with a low cut dress, a cast that includes b-movie and genre icons Donald Pleasance, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and it's all filmed with a slightly hyper-real comic book style where the fact that everyone is taking it so seriously is the biggest joke in the movie. It's often been imitated and never ever bettered.
As Carpenter's career moved forward so, often, did his role. Occasionally he was just a director for hire, other times he maybe wrote, maybe did the score and in the quintessential, pure Carpenter flicks he did all three. Well just as Escape maybe the best modern example of the B-Movie it may also be the most all round John Carpenter film of them all. From the cast and crew of friends to the oh so recognisable brilliant Carpenter synth score, Escape from New York is perfectly crafted, beautifully shot and interestingly written with intentionally cliche and familiar dialogue set against an original and creative plot.
The thing you realise watching it again is it gives itself time to breathe, it's pace is deliberately slower and more artistic, allowing you to create an eerie, unsettling mood and take in the incredible art direction and set design but maintains interest, intensity and drive by using the time-running-out element.
Nowadays this film would have 50 cuts a second, a charmless non-entity in the title role, utterly redundant action scenes and a hero who, deep down would really care. A modern day Escape from New York would suck big hairless balls.
Unfortunately John Carpenter's films were raided by studios unwilling to fund a Carpenter original and instead made atrociously shitty remakes from his staggering body of work. Why? nobody knows, it makes little to no sense. I could rant, kick and scream right now but I am too tired and I hope, now that the whole Gerald Butler *shudder* remake is not going ahead that they leave this one well alone because it is just brilliant, visually interesting, amusing and cliché while at the same time being seriously original and inventive.
Nothing about it needs to be remade, it looks incredible, yes it says the future is 1997 but that's part of its charm, we don't need to update things for children, they can understand the concept of a film from '81 considering '97 the future, what are we going to do, reprint all the covers and re-do the title sequence of Space 1999 to read Space 2099?
Plus just a little bit more on remakes because John Carpenter's films have been victim to this current irritating disease (as have friend and colleague George A Romero's) so it is sort of relevant. If you must remake films and I have no idea why you must, you creatively bankrupt bunch of childhood rapers, remake old bad films with good ideas that didn't have the money first time round to realise the idea don't realise established classics.
I, for one, will not be allowing my children, if I ever have any, to watch remakes. They will watch the originals as they were intended to be seen. So that there is someone left to spread the word, it's already depressing having to add either the date or the words 'the original' to a film now when you're discussing it, lets not let these remakes take over and re-write a whole history of amazing art for future generations.
There are three main exceptions to this rule: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 70s Don Sutherland version), John Carpenter's The Thing (because it draws mainly from the book and not the original film) and the Coen Brother's True Grit. The reason these ones are exempt from my wrath should be obvious.
Anyway, back to Escape From New York, it's a really great movie, one of my faves, one of Carpenter's best and one of Russell's best. With heaps of independent spirit, a great little politically charged twist ending and even a cameo from Tom Atkins, what more could anyone want? oh and I also like the sequel, haters of the sequel are stupid and have forgotten what it was like to be young and not so judgmental.
9 out of 10 snakes in a baguette
Points from the Wife 8 out of 10
The Thing - 7th January 2011
The print for this particular version was excellent and I have never seen the film looking so incredible.
The wife and I are huge John Carpenter fans and apart from Ghosts of Mars and the last part of Vampires (I always fall asleep) I have watched and can watch everything he's ever done. When John Carpenter works with Kurt Russell, it's particularly brilliant and the two of them have created some of the best fantasy cinema available. While Big Trouble in Little China might be a lot more fun and The Escape movies may have the real cult classic status with an iconic character, The Thing is probably their best film together and the one that can stand head to head with any other Horror or Sci-Fi film out there. Based on the short story 'Who goes there' it is a deceptively simple and expertly executed plot about a research centre in the South Pole that unwittingly invites a shape shifting Alien into their midst and the hunt is on to find out who has been infected and who hasn't. Along the way there are shocks, surprises, twists and turns all complemented in a jaw droppingly inventive and innovative fashion by a 22 year old Rob Bottin's special effect work.
At the time it was released audiences and critics were turned off by the incredible effects accomplishment, that and this dark tale of mistrust in the Antarctic came out the same year as ET. Read what you want into the fact I have seen ET probably once when I was young and have had literally no desire to ever see it again and The Thing I have seen repeatedly and it still surprises, amuses, interests and amazes me every time.
After its initial failure I think, actually, it was the effects that helped it gain in notoriety and find its audience, especially after the acceptance of other effects heavy horrors like Nightmare on Elm Street. I think, when I first got into genre pics it was certainly all I heard about in relation to the flick.
Actually, the effects aspect may have overshadowed what is at the core of this film's staying power and that goes right back to the original story. The idea that there's a group of people, one or many of them maybe your enemy and you don't know which one. The mystery aspect of the film and the subsequent surprises it kicks up is by far what is the most entertaining and important part of this film. The fantastical effect sequences, the likes of which have rarely been seen before or since are what help with constant repeat viewings as they are just so wonderfully artistic and surreal in places but even with repeat viewings I can never 100% remember who gets changed and who doesn't.
The ensemble cast are terrific and it's no one person's movie, yes Kurt Russell gets the cool hat and the cool name but everyone in the film plays their part perfectly. The direction too is fantastic. It's subtle, never showy, always on the mark and builds the tension, telling the central story, perfectly. Also, you'd have no idea watching the film that the interiors were filmed on refrigerated sets in LA, such is the perfect blending of interior and exterior filming.
One surprising thing, for all Carpenter fans is that the music credit goes to Ennio Morricone. Known for writing his own scores to a lot of his films and having a very signature style of doing so, it's incredible that with a composer of Morricone's stature that the score comes out sounding like Carpenter himself could've done it. It's also unusual that Carpenter didn't write the screenplay either and was essentially brought on as a director for hire and yet it is completely and utterly a Carpenter film and, not only that, one of his most beloved and celebrated these days (hindsight, what a wonderful thing).
I guess I don't have to reiterate this but if you ever get a chance to see this eerie and exciting film on the big screen, drop what you're doing and go see it because it's a masterpiece.
I spoke before about Die Hard being the perfect film, the perfect action movie, a film that just came along, did what it said on the tin but did it with style, panache and incredible creativity, well, The Thing is to Horror/Sci-Fi what Die Hard is to action movies, routinely imitated but never bettered.
10 out of 10 frozen dog burgers and a shot of J&B over a game of computer chess
Points from The Wife 10 out of 10! It's one of her favourite films of all time.