the groundhog day project

They could save each other, the way the poets promised lovers should. He was mystery, he was darkness, he was all she had dreamed of. And if she would only free him he would service her--oh yes--until her pleasure reached that threshold that, like all thresholds, was a place where the strong grew stronger, and the weak perished. - Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart So, I wanted to watch all the Hellraiser films this month. However, the rule about sequels that I cited a few days ago is especially proven true by the Hellraiser series. But, I'm a glutton for punishment--and these films are all about punishment--so I was going to slog through it... Then, I came up with a clever notion--watch them in reverse order so they actually get better as I go. Brilliant, right? Except for the obvious catch--I would have to start with the worst of the lot, Hellraiser: Revelations , the ninth in the series, made so cheaply and so quickly (to hold onto film rights) that they couldn't eve...

Guillermo del Toro has a couple modes when it comes to horror films; there are those that prove he is enamored of old gothic horror and those that break the mold and do something a little more original. The former tends to be more predictable, the latter more interesting. Crimson Peak falls squarely into the former camp. Because it is del Toro, though, it is certainly well made, and looks far better than most horror films. It has a solid cast—Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam—and a sound design that is, at its best, an evocative score that brings to mind some of the greatest horror and, at its worst, seems trite and clichéd, bringing to mind the most stereotypical of horror. The plot hinges on common tropes from gothic romance and gothic horror, an isolated house on the English moors—one so old that it is quite literally falling apart—an enigmatic nobleman, an impressionable young woman, ghosts that—MINOR SPOILER—barely affect the plot at all but sugges...

Taking a break from the old, serious, occult movies for--and let's be honest, because it's late at night and I have been up for far too many hours--something shorter. It's not a bad movie, mind you. But, I did pick it because of its length. Re-Animator (or should I say H.P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator ?), Mostly, I might just sit here and enjoy the film. We can be serious again tomorrow.* A movie from 1985 that, for whatever reason, I did not see until maybe the mid-90s on video.                   Spent the day grading papers, playing minecraft, then playing cards with family I don't see very often anymore. And, it surprises me how little I remember of this film. I know I've only seen it from start to finish once, but I've seen parts on cable numerous times.                 * Not to imply that Re-Animator doesn't take itself seriously. Pretty much everything Stuart Gordon has mad...

Skipping the rest of the sequels, wary of decreasing quality and inspiration. Moving on to the remake... because I'm still a glutton for punishment. Yay, misquoting (quoting some odd translation I can't find through google , anyway) scripture right away. Skipping details, too. This is definitely an Omen film. The various interpretations of the signs are a stretch, as per usual. And, I don't like the opening of this film as compared to the original. Lame end-of-the-world stuff at the Vatican, cut to Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) on his way to the hospital, rushed. The original was so simple and bleak, its opening line--"The child is dead"--said without much emotion. Thorn explains that the child was everything to his wife, which is a rather pointless thing to say. Like we were figuring, Oh, she probably didn't want the kid anyway, everything is fine . Emotion is nice but there was something interesting about Gregory Peck's Robert Thorn, picking to repla...

There's a danger in moving forward with sequels--today, The Final Conflict (aka Omen III ). See, I glanced at the film's entry at IMDb and, while the original has a 7.6, the second film--which is quite well done--has a 6.2, and this third entry in the series has a 5.5. (The fourth, a made-for-TV movie, has a 3.8.) (Not misquoting biblical passages this time. Instead, inventing apocryphal texts to quote.) The earlier entries are more... original. More creative effort goes into them. If we're lucky, there's some novel notion that leads to the first sequel, but then it turns into a studio-driven exercise in cashing in. Writing duties are farmed out. Or worse, unrelated scripts are coopted to fit into an existing franchise. (This is what happened with at least one of the Hellraiser sequels, for example.) Sometimes there can be a resurgence in creativity later--I think, for example that Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is maybe the best of the Friday the 13th fi...

A few notes: 1. I don't know enough about Vatican II to really speak to the (apparent) decline of Catholicism in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Longtime reader of this blog, Mal, offered some insight in the comments on yesterday 's entry--he described the sense of it as "either lots of priests, nuns, theologians and laymen throwing off the shackles of dogma and tradition, or else a mass submission on the part of Catholics to the fashions of the surrounding culture" and there was "a sense of disorientation and anxiety." 2. I do know plenty about the counterculture, especially in America, and the impression it had on the older generations. (Brag: I'm published on the subject.) And, I can attest that many of the changes going on in America at the time--the pill giving a nice jumpstart to the sexual revolution, for example--created that same "sense of disorientation and anxiety." The Los Angeles Times , 24 November 1968, called Middle Class Ameri...

The Omen again. That whole parenting thing--leave that to the side for the moment. But, not too far to the side. The changeling child idea--central to the premise of the film-- does tie back into the parenting. But it also suggests a larger notion of fear of the unknown, specifically fear of foreign unknowns, of foreign influence. I mean, this film puts us in the realm of international politics at the start. Robert Thorn is made the American ambassador to the UK not long after he and his wife get Damien in their lives. Father Brennan points Thorn and Jennings to Italy and then Israel to find, far from the modern trappings of the Thorns' life in England. Seriously, compare the excess of Damien's fifth birthday party to the ruins seen in Israel later in the film. But, the real danger here is in the child influenced by... maybe it's foreign powers, maybe just belief systems to which we do not subscribe ourselves. I was wondering why certain religious themes were promine...