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Movie of the Day - 2/9/2007 TheCabinet.com Blog - By TheCabinet The Exorcist There are very few horror films that maintain their shock value as time goes by and/or multiple viewings.  The two that come immediately to mind for me are Cannibal Holocaust and The Exorcist.  Perhaps the latter is more noteworthy for being a true Hollywood production by industry vets like William Friedkin, Max von Sydow and Ellen Burstyn.  While the shock value of Cannibal Holocaust was enhanced by the unfortunate use of killing animals on screen and sheer brutality of the violence, the shock value in The Exorcist had more to do with its use of religion, innocence, faith and pure helplessness.  Oh and the split pea soup too. There is little point to rehash the plot of The Exorcist.  Pretty much everybody has seen it by now.  If you haven't, honestly what is the hold up?  There is a reason this film is considered not just a classic, but one of the best horror films ever made. The novel by William Peter Blatty is equally as devastating as the film adaptation.  In the editing process of the film, there were a few scenes for one reason or another.  The end result was a two hour film, which is pretty lengthy in comparison with other horror films.  However, when Hollywood (namely George Lucas and Steven Spielberg) went on a re-cut and re-packaging tour of the greatest hits, The Exorcist was one of the only ones that fell in the horror genre.  Unlike those unnecessary revisions, The Exorcist didn't see a need to make Greedo shoot his weapon first or change all guns into flashlights, but stayed true to the original film.  There were a few additional scenes and a spiffy enhanced film print and sound mixing. When I first saw The Exorcist, I was just a wee tyke that stayed up for a hacked-up, more friendly version on regular television.  Frankly, I wondered what all the fuss was.  A few years later, I caught it on one of the premium movie channels and my jaw hit the floor.  Now I wonder whether the first version I saw clocked in at an hour or so with all that had been cut out.  Lesson learned.  From that day forward, I completely avoided any “edited for television” film and sought out the original.  In fact, I still avoid those viewings, whether I have seen the movie or not, since it compromises the original vision of the filmmakers (see Greedo reference above). I was aware of the differences between the original version of The Exorcist and the “restored” version that was re-released.  Having read the novel, I knew they dropped some scenes involving the police detective building a friendship with Father Dyer in the film, which would later come into play in Blatty's novel sequel Legion that became the very good Exorcist III.  I had a 25th Anniversary edition on laserdisc, so I had seen the excised “spider walk” scene (though I still swear that the scene on the laserdisc was a direct shot of the staircase and not a side-view that the new film showed).  I was living in a small town when the film was re-released and the local theaters didn't pick it up, but I wasn't completely bummed.  Instead, I waited for the restored version to hit cable and then I gave it a watch. What was so astounding about the restored version wasn't the added footage, which I actually believe complimented the film, but how shocking the film still was.  Surely it had only been a couple years since I saw it last, but it still packs a punch.  I've said before here that there is no way that the scene involving the bloody masturbation with a  crucifix would get anything but a NC-17 if the film were to be made today and I stand by that.  But it is not alone.  The sheer hell the girl goes through (even the hell they put her portrayer Linda Blair through in filming the role), as well as the psychological trauma suffered by the mother, is simply astounding by today's standards.  The Exorcist is simply one of the most shocking, yet absolutely fantastic horror films ever made. NOTE: This will be the last Movie of the Day entries.  I will still post the occasional look at a specific film, but I am more interested in using this spot to explore the horror movie genre as a whole, rather than film by film.  There will be an upcoming and long-running series of entries on mock-reality horror, as well as just other random thoughts and observations on the movie medium.  I also want to have a little more time to explore the other mediums that I have been neglecting (literature, radio, television and theater) and broaden the music focus (Track of the Day will continue), which means that there might not be a daily entry here in the Movies section.  Hopefully this will make the site better in the long run. Filed under: Movies, Movie of the Day 02/09/2007, 3:02 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments   Movie of the Day - 2/8/2007 TheCabinet.com Blog - By TheCabinet The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane Here is one of those disturbing little horror films that doesn't have to resort to supernatural plot devices to tell a creepy story.  In fact, part of what is so unsettling about this film is that it is so easy to believe.  The characters and situations feel real and you could still see this happening in today's society. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane concerns a young, independent 13 year old girl named Rynn (Jodie Foster).  Rynn's father, an accomplished poet, has a mistrust for the general population and enough faith in his daughter that it is his wish that she is allowed to continue to live on her own if he were to pass away.  They rent a small cottage out of the way and life continues normally.  However, that peace is shattered when several people start nosing their way around and grow suspicious of this young girl and the father that they never see. The woman who leases the house to the duo is constantly stopping by and making unreasonable demands.  Her nature is to frown upon children (her own son having a troubled past) and she develops an immediate distaste for Rynn.  Even more troubling is her son (played by Martin Sheen) who has a history of committing sexual assault, who stops by alone and develops something of an infatuation for Rynn.  Things get a little tense when his mother disappears and he begins to believe that not only did Rynn have something to do with it, but that she is completely alone and vulnerable. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane really doesn't offer many sympathetic characters, aside from perhaps a young boy that befriends Rynn and wants to help her in any way he can.  Rynn, herself, is a testy and fierce to other characters, as she attempts to convince them of her situation and assert herself as more than capable of caring for herself.  As her world starts to crash down around her, she has to make some hard choices as to how far she is willing to go to maintain her independence. The film tackles the heavy-duty issues of social perception and reality, as well as the good and dark sides of every character.  While you are always sympathetic to Rynn's situation, there are uncomfortable lines that are crossed to maintain one's own stability.  The film doesn't have an answer as to the right or wrong of every choice, but lets the viewers decide for themselves. Director Nicolas Gessner filmed The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane from a script by Laird Koenig, who adapted it from his own novel.  Interestingly, there were a few alterations to the movie version, namely changing the events that led to some characters demise.  There is very little gore or violence in this film, which is mostly set in the small cottage the girl lives in.  Again, this is another situation that the filmmakers chose to develop the characters and tension through simple dialogue and escalating actions.  Perhaps the ambiguity of the morality of the story makes the film as powerful as it does.  You take what you want from the film and are able to make up your own mind.  The beauty of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is that it will stay with you for a long time. Filed under: Movies, Movie of the Day 02/08/2007, 3:05 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 1 Comments   Movie of the Day - 2/7/2007 TheCabinet.com Blog - By TheCabinet Deathdream I mentioned this horror film when I covered Black Christmas at the start of the week.  In all honesty, it is worthy of its own mention here.  The film is typically known as Dead of Night, but has also been released as The Night Andy Came Home or Deathdream at one time or another.  Since the most recent DVD release uses the title Deathdream, I'll stick with that for this entry. The film is yet another horror classic that was helmed by Bob Clark with a screenplay by sometimes Clark-contributor, Alan Ormsby (who also wrote and directed the Ed Gein flick, Deranged and later skewed the genre with self-references and humor in Popcorn, years before Scream attempted the same feat with lesser results).  Clark is one of those directors whose horror works (Deathdream and Black Christmas specifically) are so good that you wish he had stayed with the genre more.  However, then there would be no A Christmas Story or Porky's and that just won't do.  Yet again, his films as of late (usually children's films) really do not have the same appeal of his earlier works.  The good news is that he is attached to direct a remake of his early horror film, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, so maybe there is hope yet that we will get him back. Deathdream takes place during an unspecified war (though filmed during Vietnam) when a family receives word that their son Andy was killed in battle.  The problem is that the son swore to his mother that he would come home from the war and he isn't about to break that promise.  In fact, later that night after receiving the horrible news, the son shows up on the doorstep looking very much alive.  Sort of.  He is there physically, but looks distracted and withdrawn.  Regardless, the family is elated to have him back and attribute his odd behavior to the horrors he faced in combat.  Andy stays withdrawn though and shuns his family and friends, opting to sit in his room most of the day and then ventures out for a walk at night.  His father and sister become suspicious of his behavior, though his mother refuses to believe that anything is wrong.  Slowly, the family comes apart, while Andy seems oblivious or unaware of the trouble he is causing. The truth is that Andy is truly dead and has to feed on blood to stop his body from decomposing.  Initially, the family dog provides what he needs, but as time passes the hunger grows inside of him and he has to have more blood.  Pretty soon, he has to turn to killing people in order to feed that hunger. The social commentary on what war does to soldiers and families is exceptionally strong.  If ever there was a flipside-of-war horror film, this is the one.  Andy returns home from war as a shell of his former self, in this case the allegorical zombie who is still fighting the war by having to kill in order to stay alive.  The changes in Andy rips the family apart or in the case of the mother, leads them directly to self-denial who still believes that things can return to where they were.  Despite being filmed during the Vietnam era, the film's message is as potent as ever with today's conflicts and the sacrifice that soldiers and their families have to make. Deathdream is a depressing film that manages to disturb you in its bleakness.  The film doesn't offer any easy answers or solutions.  The ending is depressingly tragic and unique, though masterfully executed.  There is a lot of theories floating around that the reason for the darkness and brutality of 70's horror films were a direct response to what was happening in the Vietnam conflict.  In the case of Deathdream, that response is undeniable. Filed under: Movies, Movie of the Day 02/07/2007, 3:01 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments   Movie of the Day - 2/6/2007 TheCabinet.com Blog - By TheCabinet The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Continuing our 70's horror theme for the week, let's take another look at this classic.  I have to say take another look, because that is basically what I did a few years back.  You see, back in the old Beta days, the only copy I came across of this film was a horrible print slapped onto a videotape.  The video was really grainy and the sound was almost impossible to hear and had a horrible grating quality to it that was the stuff of headaches.  To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure the dialogue was synched properly.  Yet, for years this was my impression of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Needless to say, it wasn't exactly favorable. So for years I have kind of sat back in bafflement about why this film is considered such a horror classic.  Unfortunately, I associated the technical glitches of the awful transfer with the quality of the film.  After all, surely the company used the best print they could find right?  Oh poor ignorant mind...  Fortunately, I never forgot the awful quality and at some point started to wonder if the print problems might have had something to do with my opinion of the show. Years later, I saw Silence of the Lambs at the theater and again was subjected to a horrible print.  I had waited a little too long to get to the theater and the print was almost worn out and the theater's audio system was on the fritz.  I left wondering what the big deal was with that film as well.  In this case however, I decided to give it another go when it came out on laserdisc.  I was astounded at what a difference that made and now I absolutely loved the film.  I remembered Sam Raimi discussing an early print of The Evil Dead that screened for audiences without all of the sound mixed in.  According to him, the test screening was an absolute failure and the audience called it boring and tedious.  After they mixed the sound in, the response was the exact opposite and the film is now considered a true horror classic.  I figured I would put Silence of the Lambs to the test and tried watching a few key scenes with either the audio or video shut off or distorted.  Try it some time.  It will teach you a lot about the filmmaking process. So back to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  I knew that I had to give this film another try, but continued to let time go by and my memories of the film fade some.  Then one night, I put it and another 70's horror classic that I had similar opinions about, The Last House on the Left, to the test by getting the most recent re-masters on DVD.  In the case of the latter, unfortunately it only further made me question the longevity of that film (Oh, good God!  Just run!  Besides, those original songs for the film were just...  uhh... horrible), but in the case of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I had a completely new appreciation and total respect for that film. It is amazing what a difference it makes just to be able to completely understand the dialogue.  The thing that caught my attention completely this go-around was how the theme of death was established immediately and never let go of.  Despite that it took a great deal of time for the violence to kick in, death was always present in dialogue, imagery and other sorted techniques.  Hell, they even threw in some foreshadowing of slaughterhouse practices, which were later deployed in one of the most unsettling scenes in horror cinema history. I did remember enough about the film that when Michael Bay's company said that their remake of the film would be less gory, I thought to myself, “Did they see the original?  What gore?”  But again, the lack of gore in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was astounding.  Astounding, because you feel like you have seen a lot more than you really did.  The violence is there and it is exceptionally brutal, even by today's standards, but it leaves so much to the imagination that you seem to remember a lot more than was actually shown.  Pretty impressive filmmaking.  For the record, the remake was much more graphic, which ironically made it feel like a remake and more of just a standard slasher flick that happened to be called Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the old days of the site, I used to have people e-mail me and ask me why I didn't talk about this film more.  I was honest in reply.  Honest, but wrong.  To them, I humbly apologize for not giving this film its due before now.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a classic horror film.  For my repentance, I am now spreading the word.  One night, not too long ago, I forced my brother to re-watch the film as well.  He saw the same print so many years ago and had the same opinion as me.  In fact, he was rather annoyed that I was making him watch it again and predicted that it wouldn't change his mind.  At the end of the film, he said simply, “Okay, so that was a lot better than I remembered.”  Surprisingly, the second re-watch was even better for me than the first time I re-watched it.  Definitely a sign of a classic film. Filed under: Movies, Movie of the Day 02/06/2007, 3:07 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments   Movie of the Day - 2/5/2007 TheCabinet.com Blog - By TheCabinet Black Christmas Let's take a different slant this week and look back at 70's horror cinema, which I consider to be something of a “golden years” of the genre.  An era that is getting the remake treatment these days to the point of being sickening.  Black Christmas was not exempt from this surge, but we're not here to talk about that one.  In fact, I have not seen it and am in no rush too.  More on that later. I have to shamefully admit that I had not seen Black Christmas until a few years back.  It wasn't for a lack of trying.  For some strange reason, Bob Clark's horror films (Black Christmas, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things and Deathdream - aka Dead of Night or The Night Andy Came Home) just were not available to rent around the Portland metropolitan area for years.  I was always intrigued.  After all, this was the man that later did the fantastic comedies A Christmas Story and Porky's before heading in the direction of children's films.  I finally broke down and bought myself a copy of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, because with that title, that seemed to be the place to start.  Well, it wasn't really.  Didn't care for it and decided to just wait it out until I could rent the other two films.  Deathdream came first and I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.  Then came Black Christmas... There are times when you stumble across a film that makes you rethink other films.  I thought I had a pretty good handle on the genesis of the slasher films.  I mean there was Psycho that really got the ball rolling and then Halloween took it and crafted it into its own genre.  I thought.  I mean, I knew about Black Christmas and thought it did pre-date Halloween, but Halloween really started it all.  I thought.  I mean, there were other noteworthy films that pre-date both - Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Die, Die My Darling, Dementia 13, Hush... Hush Sweet Charlotte – but the way slasher films were built as we know them was around Halloween.  I thought. Yes, Black Christmas made me totally rethink the slasher genre and, in so doing, 70's horror as a whole.  This little film that very few people had actually seen was really the first precursor of things to come.  Released in 1974, four years before Halloween, Black Christmas set the benchmark for films like Halloween and When a Stranger Calls.  Even more astounding, and this is not meant to take anything away from Halloween which richly deserves its reputation, but Black Christmas was even... gasp... a better film.  Even better, it still is creepy today despite the fact that it was made over thirty years ago. Bob Clark expertly massaged the chills and tension with a real dose of black humor (a real foreshadow of his successful foray into comedies in the future).  The killer, known simply as Billy, is a completely unstable maniac that we only get to know through his very disturbing phone calls and obviously his actions.  On the flip side, you have a very sympathetic lead in Jessica (Olivia Hussey) who is struggling with a very hard decision and a stressed out boyfriend.  Then there is the amusing antics of the binge-drinking sorority girl played by Margot Kidder, who steals every scene she is in.  Trying to manage all the characters and figure out what is going on with the missing people and/or bodies that are turning up is the concerned Lieutenant played by John Saxon.  Black Christmas is really an ensemble piece with interesting characters and sub-plots. Black Christmas also serves as a bridge from those old whodunnit films like Dementia 13 to the standard slasher fare today.  Built as a mystery, the audience follows as the detective works to solve this little mystery and unmask the killer.  It was typical of the period.  What wasn't typical was the way it “solved” the crime and left the audience with nothing.  Given films up to that point, that had to be something of a shocker. Back to the remake that I have not seen.  I was interested and hopeful up until the filmmakers announced that they would be exploring the history of Billy and explain what made him what he was.  Sigh...  And then the commercials show Billy's calls changing from the very disturbing “Where is the baby Billy?” to the much more coherent “What are you doing in my house?”  Gee, where do you think the phone calls are coming from?  Changing the incoherent ramblings of a completely unstable individual to someone with a history and agenda just makes it less scary.  Black Christmas was great because you had no idea who this maniac was or why he did what he did.  That was far more unsettling to know than to know that they were picked on or abused as a child.  Who cares?  Apparently someone, since we seem to be getting the unneeded backstories on all of these 70's bad guys – Texas Chainsaw, Black Christmas and even Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's upcoming remake of Halloween. Black Christmas was one of those personal lessons for myself.  Just when I thought I understood the evolution of the genre, I find a movie I missed that had far more influence on things to come than I could possibly know.  Suddenly, the classics I have missed are much more intriguing to me and take on a greater urgency than today's films.  How many true classics are still out there waiting to be watched?  Well, as long as they are rehashing (badly at that) an era long past, I should have plenty of time to find out. Filed under: Movies, Movie of the Day 02/05/2007, 3:03 pm | Rating: 0/0 | Permalink | 0 Comments

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