DISQUS

Dan Leo · 2 years ago

Dearest Siren: yeah, whaddaya gonna do? There's always going to be an audience for this crap, and God knows I've watched my share of it. But moving on to more important matters, I so look forward to reading your thoughts on 'L'Armée des ombres". I wrote a humble little blurb on it in these parts, but I was so impressed (or incapable) that I didn't really say a lot, one big reason being I just wanted people to see the damn thing, and to see it without knowing any plot points ahead of time. (But then I have a weakness for Melville, ever since seeing a dubbed version of "Doulos" on TV when I was very young.)

Tom Watson · 2 years ago

Yeah, splatter-fests - like Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill, the high-minded, "quality" kill-fests. I'm not a fan.

Though I did enjoy the blood and gore in Monty Python.

Self Styled Siren · 2 years ago

Dan, I think you were responding here even as I posted my Schlondorff quote on your Melville post. :)

Kevin Wolf · 2 years ago

Hell, I'll watch damn near anything. I'm a sucker for genre pictures. Which is why I've seen Saw, Hostel, and one of Rob Zombie's flicks the name of which escapes me.

But I'm in no hurry to see -- and perhaps never will see -- the sequels. Reason being, the first installments just weren't all that good.

Hostel in particular was not as awful as it could have been, and I found the cinematography so dark that it mitigated the gore. But for utter pointlessness, you've got it all here in a 90 minute nutshell. And suspense? Nonexistent.

Siren, I agree with your overall point. Not every movie is going to be The Seven Samurai (personal fave) but that's no excuse to celebrate junk.

Dan Leo · 2 years ago

Dear Siren,

I started to write a comment on the above comments, and it went and turned into my own little confessional piece. See above.

(Incapable of doing the smiley-face symbol, so please imagine one right here.)

Campaspe · 2 years ago

Dan, our minds are on parallel tracks this week.

Kevin, I love The Seven Samurai too. In the spirit of adventure I would like to say I will watch anything but it isn't true. There are certain pictures I just do not want in my head. One of my favorite bloggers confessed to me that he wished he had never seen Last House on the Left, because now those images would be with him forever, ready to jump into his brain whether he wanted them or not.

Lance Mannion · 2 years ago

Don't get 'em. Don't want to get 'em. But I don't get amusement parks either and I think these movies have more in common with roller coasters and tilt a whirls than to do with other kinds of movies. So I guess I understand the flocking to the theaters, since most of the flocking is done in flocks, or gaggles, or packs, or gangs. It's a social occasion. I don't, however, understand people like your roommate who watch them at home and alone. Unless it's like an addiction. I have to have a cup of coffee late at night. Now that's weird.

Dan Leo · 2 years ago

Lance, it sounds to me like you've pretty much hit it with your roller-coaster comparison. Some people just plain like to get the shit scared out of them as grossly as possible. And other people -- perhaps wisely considering that real life is plenty scary enough -- don't. And then you have nitwits like me who really don't like to be grossed out but who every once in a while will perversely watch one of these gore-fests anyway while spending half the time hiding under people's feet or frantically pressing the fast-forward button, invariably followed by the dreaded involuntary gross-scene-flashbacks the Siren's blogging friend referred to. Yes, life would be much simpler if only we humans were rational.

By the way, speaking of disturbing images branded into your brain, I just last week watched the Criterion DVD of Sternberg's "The Scarlet Empress" and there is a montage of torture and decapitation in the first reel of that which I found more disquieting and unfortunately indelible than anything in "Saw". Sternberg obviously slipped that one out right before the Code clamped down.

Self Styled Siren · 2 years ago

Yes, the roller-coaster comparison is spot-on. In fact I am tempted to a do a film-blogger survey and see whether enjoying the wilder reaches of horror -- willingness to watch anything, as Kevin says -- correlates with a willingness to ride things that send you hurtling along upside down and far up into the sky. It can't be coincidence that I turn green on Ferris wheels.

Ha, I remember that Sternberg sequence! It is probably the most accurate thing in that movie, historically speaking. Sometimes old movies can surprise you with how chilling they are. There is a scene in The Big Combo (coincidentally, it's on TCM tonight at 8) where Cornel Wilde is tortured that is quite difficult to watch even in 2007.

Antonios · 1 year ago

Nice!