After Thoughts...The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [1974] (spoilers)

Anyway you look at it, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a brutal, grotesque and horrifying movie.  It is also funny.  Well, sort of.  In a movie filled with psychotic torturers, chainsaws and meat hooks, director Tobe Hopper finds a way to shed some humor onto this densely laughless circumstance.  The humor of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes in the form of satire.  It is subtle, neatly positioned under what I would argue to be the most horrific scene in the entire movie.  Given its context, the terror erupting out this scene overwhelms anything “funny” about what is going on.  But it is still there.

The “funny” scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes in the movie after Sally has been captured, tied up to a chair made of human bones and seated at the table.  When she awakes to find herself here, she gives out a blood-curling scream.  There’s clearly nothing funny for her.  But still, in a sick way, this is also the funniest and probably only funny part of the movie.  Let me explain using this picture-

The Killer B's...Dawn of the Dead [1978]

When does an excessively violent zombie flick from the 1970s permit itself to be something more than a low grade horror movie?  I know it seems a bit counter-intuitive to begin this post describing the movie’s retraction from B status, but for as bad as some of the selections of The Killer B’s have been so far, I'd say it’s a far better start than most. 

Admired both as a great cinematic achievement and a terrific midnight fright, George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead received almost a universal appeal on its release backed by both critics and horror junkies alike. Even to this day some 30 years later, the movie still has a marvelous showing, despite the many remakes it has produced and itself being a sequel.  Romero’s classic zombie piece consistently remains towards the top of many lists concerning the greatest horror movies of all time.

Our fascination with the living dead is nothing new, even at this movie’s release.  Dawn of the Dead is in fact a sequel to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead released ten years prior to this one and still we can dig deeper.  White Zombie, considered the first true zombie picture ever made, came out in 1932.  But even before this so-called invention of the cinematic zombie there were precursors of the zombie craze, most notably the stiff, muted somnambulist of The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1921).  Dawn of the Dead provided nothing particularly revolutionary or innovative in its story or zombie depiction compared to previous movies of its kind.  There’s not much you can do actually.  When zombies enter, it always becomes a struggle for survival.  And other than Danny Boyle giving zombies the ability to run in 28 Days Later, the creativity of one such creature is limited.  Despite the rather atypical and unoriginal formula left for these movies, Romero’s second installment of the zombie trilogy was a huge success.  Many consider Dawn of the Dead to be the best zombie movie ever made and I would certainly agree.   So to circle back to the initial question posed, what makes Dawn of the Dead such a spectacular movie?

Why See This...The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920]

With a month of horror movies ahead, I decided to start the month off right with a classic, one that is often considered the first horror movie ever made.

Think back to any of the mesmerizing and lucid worlds crafted by David Lynch or a psychological thriller from David Fincher, and it is certain that these two great directors watched, or more likely, scrutinized The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari before making any one of their own.  For Lynch, the obvious influence comes from the bizarre setting and backdrop of this early German expressionistic film.  Taking place in the fictional quaint mountain village of Holstenwall Germany, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is not set in some far off, distant land or even the future, as it may appear.  Though the director has placed the film into a seemingly normal German town, the subjectivity of its “realness” is certainly called into question.  Tilted walls, slanted rooftops appear as if a strong wind just came through the town and almost, just almost blew everything over.  The townspeople are real people inhabitating a real town, yet there is something just not right with how it all looks.  Holstenwall is surreal in every sense of the word.  With one glance, any avid David Lynch fan can recognize the obvious influence this movie has on the surreal and decrepit world of Eraserhead or even Inland Empire.  These movies deal with real people, yet the existence seems to take place somewhere far off from our thinking of reality. 

Inside the realm of a David Fincher thriller like Se7en or Fight Club, the characters of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are hardly molded caricatures.  This is really something considering the fact that we are dealing with a somnambulist and a mad scientist.  Short in stature, hunched back and always wearing a lab coat, Dr. Caligari looks like nothing else.  His counterpart, the stiff Frankenstein-like looking somnambulist named Cesare has been sleeping in a coffin for twenty three years and can tell the future.  At the arrival of the town fair, Caligari decides to display Ceasre as an exhibit.  Along with herds of people fascinated by the premise of the somnambulist, two friends arrive, Francis and Allen.  Upon learning his powers, Allen quickly shouts out to Ceasre asking how long he has to live.  The response: until dawn tomorrow.  Early the next morning Allen is dead, murdered in his own room.  Francis instantly puts the blame on Caligari and Ceasre.  But after an entire night perched outside their window, Francis finds nothing, expect that his has been abducted, all while the pair were sleeping.

Useless Clatter...October Horror Special [and My Defense for the Best Holiday Ever]

There comes a time every year, as the leaves turn a new hue and air becomes crisp, when we must finally admit that summer has come to an end.  Of the four season, Fall tends to get the short end of the stick, usually best identified as the end of good old summer and the onset of a seriously cold winter (depending on where you live of course.)

And Fall is generally not a special time for movies either.  The summer season's blockbuster have all released, and most of the Oscar-worthy flicks don't come out until Christmas time.  So there tends to be some time to kill for cinephiles.  Fall TV is just o.k. and I have never meet someone who consciously awaits the Emmys. [Did those already happen?]  But I personally hold nothing against Fall.  It happens to be my favorite season for a number of reasons, and the biggest reason growing up was the coming splendor of Halloween.  

I always considered myself a pragmatic kid growing up.  Sure I loved Christmas just like any other little Catholic kid, but Halloween was always the best holiday and the reason was quite simple- candy, and lots of it.  What Halloween had [has] over Christmas was the simple guarantee of hundreds and hundreds of sweet and neatly wrapped little gifts.  As long as you were willing to hike around the block for a few hours in a dorky mask, you would be rewarded with a pillowcase full of candy, regardless if you had been naughty or nice.  Santa and his elves could never promise that.  The only thing I could guarantee from him was a new pack of underwear, socks and a toothbrush.  I never new what else to expect, if anything more.  Maybe another Nerf gun, but what if it wasn't the cool one that everyone else had?  With Halloween I never had a growing fear that I would open my pillow case full of candy and find 500 Almond Joys.  

Unfortunately to this day, I no longer enjoy the chocolaty bliss of trick-or-treating.  It is sad, yes, and if it was socially acceptable for a 21 year old to go door to door and ask for candy would I go out there and do it?, you bet I would.  But its not socially acceptable  so I have to get by other ways.

So as we soon reach the month of October, I write this not just to prove that Fall doesn't completely suck and that Halloween is better than Christmas, but to present the ensuing month-long celebration here at FILMclatter.  All posts of the month of October will be devoted to the horror season's best and certainly worst movies, past and present.  From delightful treats like Psycho and Jaws to some tricks like Basket Case 2, no horror movie, good or bad (or even really really bad) is out of discussion.  Sure its not the most original movie blog theme for October but what could be sweeter, and without a pillow case full of candy, its all I got to chew on.