Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon, 1985)

Well, what a treat this film was. It’s classic body horror of the 80s to the fullest, with bodily transgression, cheap sexual thrills and lots and lots of gore. It’s the classic tale of a mad scientist who takes his research too far, and jeopardizes the lives of those around him. In many ways it is the modern (or modern in the 80s, anyway) Frankenstein story. However, when it comes to gore, there are few films of the time which were more excessive than this, but the film revels in its gore, and manages to not take itself too seriously. It’s a visceral journey that is meant to be enjoyed, whether you scream or laugh.

One of the good things about the film is that it centers itself on two scientists, instead of one. There’s the mad, socially inept genius Herbert West, then there is the more reasonable but also curious Dan. Both are students, but both, West in particular, are starting to grow past their teachers. It works well because West is so alienating that the audience would have had a hard time sticking up for him. He’s rude, has little conscience, and basically doesn’t care for other people. However, he needs the help of Dan, who is a much more likeable and normal character. Although their very different, they both see the use in West’s study and research. West has designed a formula that can re-animate dead tissue or beings. However, of course it comes with the nasty side effect that anything re-animated goes mad due to the pain of coming back to life, although both characters seem fairly unconcerned about this throughout the film, which I found strange. After all, what’s the purpose of a serum that can bring people back to life if it makes them crazy? Anyway, shit hits the fan before any of the characters can study further into this. One of the professors turns out to be quite an evil and sadistic bastard, and he will do anything to take credit for the serum himself. The Herbert West character becomes more and more fascinating as the film goes on. For a long time the audience cannot be sure of whether or not he is evil or good. Is he really such a jerk, or just a decent guy who is really obsessed about his work and research? Jeffrey Combs who plays West does a good job at playing with these ambiguities, and until the very end of the film we can’t quite be sure where he stands.

The film is famous for its many set-pieces. The film is incredibly playful and creative, creating crazy situations and visuals that are sure to stick in the audiences minds for a long time. The gore is unprecedented, but never really mean or callous in the same way as the recent Saw films. The film just wants to have a good time, and it brings us along. There are many cathartic moments of transgression that are truly joyful, but also moments that makes you want to cringe because they are so uncomfortable. The film is relatively short, and doesn’t have a moment that isn’t interesting, whether it is playing with the ambiguity of West’s character, creating suspense or just creating havoc on the screen with gore. So it’s a very dense film, and it goes a long way to making it re-watchable. That said, the film is not for the weak spirited. Although the film revels in the gore with an almost childlike fascination, if the audience doesn’t like gore then this film won’t change their opinion, actually more likely it would change it for the worse. Safe to say, if you don’t like gory horror films from the 80s, then there is very little on offer from Re-Animator. That being said, Re-Animator is one of the best films of its kind, and I found it immensely enjoyable. It doesn’t have the darkness of The Thing or the sophistication of Alien, but it takes all the great elements from classic gore films and puts it into one film, creating a wonderful mix of a special effects extravaganza and the all out fun of the 80s horror genre.

If you like the classic horror films of the 80s and haven’t seen this, then you need to see it. It’s one of the best of its kind and offers great re-watch value. It also a great film to watch with a bunch of like-minded friends if you want to have a night of laughs, and would work perfectly as a double bill with Evil Dead 2, or indeed the whole trilogy. I’ll definitely check out the sequels to Re-Animator, so maybe I’ll talk about those later.

It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990)

I don’t usually review films that I’ve already seen a while ago, but I recently re-watched It, and I want to talk about it. It’s actually not a film, but a TV mini-series running for about 3 hours, but I’ve always seen it as one whole, and it often runs on TV, so I always considered it a film proper. The film was one of my favorites as a kid/teenager, but I hadn’t seen it in about six-seven years. I always found the film fascinating then, and on repeat, I still found it fascinating, so I felt like writing about it.

The thing about It is that, it’s actually a really bad film. The thing is, even back then I knew it was a bad film, but I still loved it. On re-watching the film, I still greatly enjoyed it, despite the fact that it is really poor. What was fascinating was that the film wasn’t any worse than I remembered, so unlike a lot of the films I loved when I was younger, I pretty much feel the same about this film as I always did. As I said, the film is bad, but somehow it manages to overcome that. And it’s not one of those films where you say “it’s so bad it’s good”. When re-watching the film, I think I managed to figure out why it is so enjoyable and entertaining, despite its “badness”. The thing about It is that it contains a lot of different elements, indeed, if you cut out a trailer from it you could make the film seem like a film about nostalgia and childhood. It is indeed about that, but you could easily present the film as if that’s all to it. The film is based on the book with the same title, written by Stephen King, and the story goes as such: A crazy being dressed as a clown terrorizes a small American town by killing innocent children, until seven friends can’t take it anymore and goes on a quest to destroy him. Thirty years on and they’ve all got on with their lives, but It returns, and they have to go back and finish him once and for all. The thing that makes It interesting is that it has so many different elements. At times it seems like a coming-of-age story like Stand by Me, another moment reminded me of kids on an adventure, like the Goonies. Yet the film is a horror, mixing body horror “in-your-face” special effects, and psychological horror. But we also see the kids as grown-ups, and the film deals with mature anxieties, women abuse, suicide and fear of commitment. Wow. So there is a lot to this film, which explains the epic 3 hour length. So why does this mish-mash of a fuckup movie work?

Let’s talk about the horror aspect. At times, it’s not scary, it’s just hilarious. Some scenes are just hammy and bring more laughter than frights. Tim Curry, who plays the evil clown is a good example of this, some of his scenes are comedy gold. Now if you haven’t seen the film you’ve probably heard about how terrifying the clown is. So you’re wondering, why am I calling him hilarious? Well, that’s the thing; he has his terrifying moments, like the opening of the film. There are also genuinely terrifying moments, like when the girl character goes back to her old house. The film goes between the lines of being one of the most frightening films ever, to being like a hilarious b-film. It’s fascinating how the film manages to both succeed and fail. So for all the cheesiness of Tim Curry’s performance, there’s also some underlying terror beneath. The film also manages to delve into some of our most primal fears, so it succeeds on that level too, although that can probably be attributed to the original source material. The coming-of-age material probably also helped this film, as it can be really relatable to young kids, but also adults who can look back on nostalgia. For all the horror in this film, there are also scenes that seem right out of Stand by Me (which of course was also written by King). These moments have no horror in them, and seem perfectly innocent. I think the way the film balances between these moments and the scary stuff really makes the film somewhat unpredictable and variable, and thus quite entertaining. The thing is, unlike Stand by Me, the kids aren’t really great actors, and some scenes where they attempt to emote are just hilarious, particularly the “evil” kid with a slick hairdo who actually genuinely wants to murder the kids, although he is in their class. The adults are only slightly better, but again, the performances are far from good. But I think the emotions sometimes are so strong that they even manage to work, even though the execution is not great.

I haven’t read the book, but my impression is that much of what is actually is good in the film comes from the book, and that despite the cast and crew doing and under-par job with the adaptation, the original source material was so good that it still managed to seep through in the final production. This has of course happened many times before, and usually the product is just a mediocre and boring film. But It avoids that, through its eclectic nature and how epic it can feel. The film defies its own bad qualities through this, and is a truly enjoyable film that I can watch many times and never get bored.

In The Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009)

Before I start, I have to say I haven’t seen the show In the Thick of it, which this film apparently was somewhat based on, so I have no previous references. Of course, as always, a film should be able to stand on its own and the audience shouldn’t have to know other sources to understand the film itself. Right? Good.

When the film immediately starts it really evoked the feeling that The Office had, however this seems to go away after a little while, like the film became embarrassed or something. However it does also become quite clear that this is nothing like The Office, particularly in its style and “realism”. The film is a parody of government and bureaucracy. And it works quite well. Indeed, I found the film to be very funny, although some might not like this particular type of British humor. The story goes that some people want to invade an unnamed country, while others don’t. One particularly useless British MP indicates on National television that he wishes for war, although he really doesn’t, he’s just extremely inept at expressing himself. Who’s on whose side? No one really knows. Who wants what? Well, no one really know that either, and the ensuing chaos which goes from the streets of London all the way to Washington DC is what most of this films spends its time exploring.

Although the dialogue is occasionally hilarious, I found the film to be quite dialogue heavy. Like someone said on IMDb, it’s an extremely quotable film, but I think it is too much so. There’s only so many times that I find the though British guy who tells people what sort of assorted items he’s going to stick up their ass funny. The characters, one dimensional as they were, are very funny, and work in the way that archetypes work. I particularly liked one sleazy gentleman who worked in Washington, the kind of guy that always promises you that everything will be alright and he’ll sort it out, then stabs you in the back with the knife your own son made in shop class. And he made it as a gift to you! I also liked how the film showed how Americans and the British really feel about each other. Where the Americans just think the British are a little bit silly and non-threatening, while the British admire the Americans in awe in the same way that a child will admire Superman.

But having said all that, I feel that the film is a bit lazy, lazy in that particular way that it lulls its audience back into a comforting state of paralysis where they don’t think about the world in an engaging way. The film parodies the inner workings of government and portrays everyone therein as either a massive idiot or just someone controlled by someone else, who is probably also an idiot. And so we, the audience, sit back in our IKEA sofa, laugh and point, and say “Yes! Everyone in government is really an idiot; it’s a chaotic mess where no one knows what’s going on. Now let’s eat our lasagna before it gets cold.” Obviously the film is heightened reality, a parody, and all of it is really just the most extreme made even a little bit more extreme. But in its doing so, I feel that it doesn’t quite hit close enough to home, it’s funny, but a little too silly. It doesn’t really take a stance, or come close to making people question the inner workings of political government. Obviously there are a lot of traces of the truth in there, I just feel it creates itself a little too much like a parody, and a little too less as a satire.

Still, the film is entertaining, and at times hilarious. It starts off a bit slowly, but as the plot thickens it gets more and more interesting. Worth a watch.

Sadgati (Satyajit Ray, 1981)

Well, it’s been quite some time since the last post. This is also the 100th post on this blog! Wee! Alright, let’s get on with it.

Sadgati, or Deliverance, is a fairly short film by Satyajit Ray, running at only 45 minutes. However, it is a great example of some of Ray’s best touches and skills, as well as a fine short film in its own right. The story is straight forward, and even though I didn’t understand all the Indian customs and what they implied, the character motivation and desire is very clear.

The story follows Dukhi, a tanner who wants help from a local Brahmin, or holy man, to set a date for his daughter’s wedding. However, it turns out that this “holy man” is somewhat of a lazy bastard, and only through doing some meaningless chores around the house can Brahmin get him to come to his house. Meanwhile, the film cuts back to the home where his wife and daughter are carefully preparing for the Brahmin who they believe will soon turn up. Dukhi does all the chores the Brahmin ask of him, but one is too hard to complete: he has to cut up a log outside the house. However, the log is huge and he only has a small axe. The majority of the film is Dukhi trying to cut up this log, as well as some more scenes with the daughter and wife, as well as a look into the Brahmin’s inner life.

What the film does well, and Ray usually does exceptionally well, is to create such strong drama to small events. It is a simple story and the progression is fairly conservative, but Ray manages to create genuine emotions and a comment on the human condition through this little fable. It’s what really makes Ray such a unique filmmaker. Although this film, much because of its limited playing time, is not quite up to par with his other major films, it has all the touches and elements that makes Ray great, but is worth seeing in its own right, not just because it is a Ray film. It takes a simple set up and runs with it. The emotional impact of the end, and some of Ray’s camerawork, is truly excellent. There are also great moments of subtle comedy, like the first time Dukhi sees the log, walks around it mystified, and you know he’s thinking “what the fuck do I do with this?” Or when he goes into the house of the Brahmin to ask for light for his smoke, and the Brahmin’s wife becomes furious “how dare a commoner ask such things!?” Another great moment is where a young man who is mourning over his dead wife comes to the Brahmin for advice. The Brahmin says it’s okay, he can always get a new wife. He himself is already on his third!

The DVD version I have came with The Satyajit Ray Collection Volume 3 box set. I have yet to see the other two, but I will soon though. I would like to recommend the volume 1 & 2 box sets, as well as the Apu Trilogy box set, they all have fantastic value, and Ray is truly one of the greats of world cinema. Like Kurosawa said, not to have seen the cinema of Ray is like never having seen the sun or the moon. Go check him out.