the groundhog day project

"I fear this is going to be offensive to women everywhere." - my daughter Saer as ginger Snaps begins again. Ginger to Brigitte: "Just so you know, the words 'just' and 'cramps' don't got together." Saer" That's true... story of my life. Nurse tells Ginger to expect the blood and pain for the next 30 years or so. Saer says--sarcastically, of course--"Yay!"         And she wandered off. Gotta love that aisle--"feminine hygiene" products opposite condoms and hair dye.   As the film continues, I'm wondering where the line falls between being offensive and commenting on the stuff that is offensive. Like Ginger's line--"A girl can only be a slut, a bitch, a tease, or the virgin next door." Sure, she's referencing what the world-- men --think about girls. But, the film never quite contradicts what she's saying here. Brigitte remains the "virgin next door" while Ginger quite lite...

Parasocial relationships are not just for fictional characters. For example yesterday Wes Craven died. Numerous individuals online--myself included--posted about him as if they (we) knew him. As if his death matters on a personal level. But, we probably just saw his films over the years. Still, we form an attachment. We look forward to his new films... He hadn't directed a film since SCRE4M four years ago. A couple weeks ago , I got to thinking about Robin Williams dying a year ago. Back when I was still watching Groundhog Day every day instead of just once a month, I wrote three entries in a row ( 207 208 209 ) dealing with the death of Harold Ramis. And, it was personal to me. Groundhog Day was my life for a year, and it lingers still, not just in viewing it once a month but also in conversational references, in lecture references (I use the news clips from Groundhog Day in my public speaking class to talk about delivery), in the way I think about things, about life. Not ...

Note #1 - I skipped a movie on my list today—I will get to it in a few days—because I wanted Day 450 of this blog to be something I knew I liked. I barely remember Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation but I know it had some issues with its release... and I’m using that to move it down the line for this “month” of slasher films. In case you haven’t been paying too much attention, I’ve been going in order of cinematic release (in the US). I skipped that particular film past its initial release to its later release, so that I could watch... Note #2 - Well, so that I could watch Wes Craven’s New Nightmare tonight. And speaking of release dates, I first saw this film before it was released in theaters, saw it at a test screening at the United Artists Marketplace Theater in Old Town Pasadena. At the time, it seemed like New Nightmare was just a working title. But, the prospect of Wes Craven returning to the series was good reason to go see the film as soon as possible. Now, onto...

“Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To the very toes he is terrified, Because the ground gives way under him, And the dream begins...” — Friedrich Nietzsche “Welcome to Prime Time, bitch.” — Freddy Krueger A few credits, then the outline of the US, with Springwood marked, and this: SPRINGWOOD, OHIO, TEN YEARS FROM NOW MYSTERIOUS KILLINGS AND SUICIDES WIPE OUT ENTIRE POPULATION OF CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS. REMAINING ADULTS ARE EXPERIENCING MASS PSYCHOSIS. THERE IS NEW EVIDENCE OF ONE SURVIVING TEENAGER... So begins Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare . Since Robert Englund gets billing above the title here, it occurs to me that one problem the Nightmare films have is personality. Jason and Michael have personality, sure, but Kane Hodder (who played Jason several times) never got billed above the title, nor did anyone who played Michael. The comedic tendencies coupled with, you know, Freddy actually showing his face—scarred, but still his face—mean the numerous victims...

It’s been a while since I’ve watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child . And, I’m pretty sure I don’t like this movie. And so, I turn it on and the logo is different and it starts with some attempt at artistic extreme close-ups of a sex scene... lit in the generic movie orange and blue. From nude to nun, the Alice Johnson story... or at least her dream. Six minutes of nudity without showing anything, she might as well be a nun that’s about to be raped by a bunch of mental patients. Wow, how offensive was that? Seriously, though, it’s a strange juxtaposition starting off with so much of Alice not only naked but having sex, when the usual slasher film lead is virginal and innocent, maybe even tomboyish. Alice not only had sex but had sex on screen, and she’s going to be a mother. Sure, she was already the Final Girl in a previous film, but she’s still the Final Girl here, too. She just doesn’t fit the stereotype. Anyway, I am not as tired as when I watched a couple of the...

As A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master begins, I realize I don’t really remember this movie. I know I’ve seen it, because I watched all of these movies on video in the 90s. It seems to begin with shared nightmares continuing without Freddy, which is an interesting idea. Joey, Kincaid and Kristen from the previous film in the series are back. Kristen is no longer played by Patricia Arquette... Speaking of which, I haven’t mentioned the big names that are in all of these slasher films. Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th , Dennis Hopper in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Patricia Arquette and Laurence (billed as Larry) Fishburne in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors . (Ha, dog’s name is Jason. Wrong series.) Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street , Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter . And of course Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween . All who went on to more mainstream success. Nice shot when Kristen’s mother drugged her so she’d sleep. The camera spins ...

Sleep. Those little slices of death. How I loathe them. — Edgar Allan Poe So begins A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors . Gotta remember this quotation from Edgar Allan Poe, too: The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world... The slasher film, of course, shows us the deaths of numerous beautiful women, but really it’s all about that final girl, the one who will get away. The homicidal pursuit works as a surrogate for a sexual one. We want the girl, but we settle for wanting her dead. Thing is, we get neither of these things. The slasher film is inevitably a disappointment for the males in the audience, but also something quite the opposite. It’s like a gift to the id in us all—but especially the supposedly heteronormative males—twisting our lust and our longing to kill into one primal urge. The obvious question then: why do females like the slasher film? Karanovic (2012) suggests, “For the women, it may not be sexual, but m...

I haven’t seen A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge in quite a while. I can’t remember if it manages to do what the first one did in regards to the usual Final Girl setup, a la Carol J. Clover (1988, 1992)—that is, not have her (Does this one even have a Final Girl? The opening dream sequence suggests a male lead.) not grab some phallic weapon and fight back. The first A Nightmare on Elm Street show us a lot of clocks— this one has already show a couple and it’s only 12 minutes in. The flow of time, or rather the altered flow of time is important to these movies because of the nature of dreams. But, there’s also a notable juxtaposition between the editing of film altering time and the fluid nature of dreams distorting time. If the former is done right, we don’t notice it because it helps draw us in and keep us captivated by the action. The latter may, after the fact, be revealed as very distortive, but during the dream it seems quite normal. Pinedo (1996) suggests that th...

but not too late. it's alredy aftr 1. commentary on the original Nightmare on Elm Steet will have to wait. Instead, I shall try to dream about it, because I need some sleep. [Note, the next morning: And I will leave the typos, because Fred Krueger would want it that way.] [Note, much later: I have written a longer entry related to this film and Wes Craven's New Nightmare ]

And then it gets weird... …because I think I’ve only ever actually seen Prom Night once. There’s no comfort in the specifics here. Still, there is... something nice in the general nature of the film. A regular commenter here, Maolsheachlann said something interesting in response to yesterday ‘s entry; he said horror films made him feel “cozy.” Like me, he has childhood associations with horror films. But, he made a observation similar to some I’ve made... worded nicely: But, sometimes I think it is a strange relief, and release, that you are mentally inhabiting a world where the worst has happened—or if not the worst, necessarily, than a world where it’s OK to be paranoid and fatalistic and you don’t have to rein in your darkest fantasies any more. This won’t connect at first, but bear with me. The topic I had hoped to talk about today was the verisimilitude of slasher films having very specific settings. They tell us the date, the town name. There isn’t much left vague. Psycho ...

...in the Scream trilogy [“hypermodernism”] can be identified in two ways: (1) a heightened degree of intertextual referencing and self-reflexivity that ceases to function at the traditional level of tongue-in-cheek subtext, and emerges instead as the actual text of the films: and (2) a propensity for ignoring film-specific boundaries by actively referencing, “borrowing,” and influencing the styles and formats of other media forms, including television and music videos—strategies that have further blurred that once separated discrete media. (Wee, 2005, p. 44) So, there’s that. I’ve covered most of what’s said there, but given more time, I would love to get into the specific references, say, to other movies. Also, given the movie right now is in the early scene of Sidney alone in her house (she’s about to fall asleep and when she wakes up is the night the killer(s) call her) and I kind of want to deal with set decoration, oddly enough—there is an interesting old fashioned aesthetic g...

“And only I can get him.” - Nancy Thompson, A Nightmare on Elm Street The opening sequence to Scream 2 includes a remake of the opening sequence to Scream under the guise of a film-within-the-film Stab . Heather Graham in the stead of Drew Barrymore is not just sitting around making popcorn, about to watch a movie. She’s still making popcorn but inexplicably, also just getting into the shower, because the film-within-the-film is a bit more stereotypical of the slasher film than Scream was or Scream 2 is. Given how Sidney slept in more girly wear in the first film, it’s notable that she has grown up and at college she sleeps in boxers, just one detail in blurring gender lines, something that comes along with the slasher film. It’s not necessarily a coincidence, by the way, that her name is Sidney, the name alone sitting right on the brink of male/female. Clover (1987) and Keisner (2008), just to name a couple, make a point of the names of the Final Girls of horror: Stevie, Mar...