Pet Sematary Two

WHY THIS MOVIE (things written before watching Pet Sematary Two):

Edward Furlong and Anthony Perkins I think of in roughly the same way. It's to do with creepy sexiness and troubled interiors. They're pretty boys who seem broken in some vague way.

In real life they never achieved huge success but starred in famous movies. They add a quality of incompleteness to the characters they play, and their incompleteness seems related to a kind of existential misery and an overabundance of feelings. Like they're too trapped in themselves to be what other people want them to be. When they're on screen I feel somehow close to them. They're actors I identify with to a degree I feel uncertain about because I've never investigated their real world lives, it could be total fantasy. What I'm describing is how I feel when I see them in movies.

Pet Sematary Two was directed by Mary Lambert. Thankfully. Like Barbara Peeters with Humanoids from the Deep, or Kathryn Bigelow with Near Dark and Point Break, Lambert is a female who treasures the particulars of masculine pop movies. Lambert gets it. She gets what's fun and interesting about horror movies, and she imprints her strong personality onto the movie, offering contributions to the horror vernacular. This is cool because it means she's not trying to outdo horror movies, or whatever, i.e. she's not placing herself above the tradition, but instead she's trying to make an interesting and good horror movie. And the reader of Inner Genre knows I love love when an outsider interprets Hollywood formula because the outsider, if confident with oneself, will invariably expose interesting and exciting details about the outsider and about the formula.

Lambert also directed Pet Sematary One, a movie that is one of five movies that scared and scarred me as a child (the others being the original The Blob, original Night of the Living Dead, Leviathan, and a Nightmare on Elm Street movie not sure which one). And she directed early Madonna music videos, e.g. Material Girl, Like a Virgin, and Like a Prayer. Imagine if you were the person who directed those videos. I sincerely hope Lambert wakes up each morning feeling good about herself. She also directed an episode of the Rebel Highway series, but unfortunately I tired of the series before I made it to her episode.

THIS MOVIE (things written after watching Pet Sematary Two):

Cool.

Pet Sematary Two blends elements of teenager movies with horror movies, resulting in an emotionally charged and rock fueled movie.

Jeff Matthews (Edward Furlong) loses his mother and he and his father (Anthony Edwards) relocate to her hometown, which is the Pet Sematary town. Jeff is bullied in and out of school by badboy Clyde Parker (Jared Rushton) and has only one friend, chubby Drew Gilbert (Jason McGuire). Drew's stepfather Gus Gilbert (Clancy Brown) is the sheriff of the town and an asshole to Drew.

Pet Sematary Two made me think about Tamra Davis and Guncrazy because it used family drama as narrative impetus, bolstered emotional beats with rock music, implemented music video-like visual tools, showed compassion to the downtrodden, and piggybacked on an established genre. Then I thought about how Davis and Lambert both began their careers as music video directors and I began to see them as precursors to moviemakers like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Richard Ayoade. Similar to contemporary David Fincher, Davis and Lambert's movies adhere somewhat closely to traditional ideas about movie form, while it seems later music video directors turned movie directors are more likely/expected to explore new methods of execution -- or more blatantly explore them. Interestingly, Alien³, Guncrazy, and Pet Sematary Two are all movies from 1992, and the first two were directorial debuts. Menace II Society was released in 1993. Was this the first wave of music video directors turned movie directors? I'll figure out a way to research that question and write about earlier examples if they exist. But this was definitely a wave.

The not-great news is I feel like genre formulas operate as restrictions in Lambert's Pet Sematary Two, and that the movie fails to escape the trappings of its genre. I had this problem with Guncrazy too. And I know that at the beginning of this piece I complimented Lambert on her affection for the horror genre and for not placing herself above the genre and now it seems like I'm contradicting myself maybe. Pet Sematary Two is a good movie even.

The thing that bothers me is the movie fails to answer essential questions about its characters because its loyalty is to genre above its characters and their emotions. And that's where it fails me. Richly layered and interesting characters can't help but interrupt the flow of a genre movie, and I think Pet Sematary Two begins to develop its characters and their unique motivations/desires, but ultimately abandons the complexity of their makeup for the safety of genre formula.

In this way I think my perspective differs from other genre fans who are more interested in tight narrative structure and traditional methods of storytelling. It can be said that themes and ideas are of more consequence than character and emotion -- and I don't fully disagree, it's possible for all these things to co-exist. But even a purist would probably be disappointed by Pet Sematary Two because its resolve is one-noted and its logic insular to the movie. It'd be hard to extract meaning or philosophical content from the movie's ending.

Although I'll say the movie has a nice last touch, a little tribute to the characters who died during the movie (not pictured).

Teen Wolf ('85) and some Standing Ovation

Teen Wolf begins with a great sequence: Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) approaches the free throw line. His team, the Beavers, are being crushed by rival team the Dragons. I can't remember if he makes his shot, probably not, but what I remember is the sweat on his face and the intensity of the moment. Heart beats may have been emphasized on the soundtrack as well, but if not then, definitely later in the film. Coach Bobby Finstock (Jay Tarses) wants to forfeit the game, but the Dragons' coach doesn't allow it, since this game will increase his players' league stats. The Beavers get womped! Seriously, they lose so bad, and Scott even misses his buzzer-beating final shot.

This is a movie that gets going right away: during the first sequence you know Scott will become a werewolf. Because the titles begin the movie, but also because he growls at archenemy Mick McAllister (Mark Arnold). You're like, whoa. It surprised me to learn that director Rod Daniel came from television! Teen Wolf's cinematic touches made this film way more enjoyable than, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Rod Daniel knew how to have fun. Stephanie and I were cracking up during his movie, and I think maybe high-fived a couple times, and once, I swear, she said, while watching Teen Wolf, "This is why I love movies," or something like that, maybe "The only movie I'll ever love from here on is Teen Wolf. Oh Teen Wolf, you have won my heart and it is yours forever." I can't remember the exact phrasing.

When Scott's eyes turn red and he speaks in his wolf voice to demand a keg of beer, the movie entered my heart. It's such a silly, perfect scene. I believe the keg scene is directly followed by Rupert 'Stiles' Stilinski (Jerry Levine) surfing on top of the moving van. At that point I was really getting excited and was having thoughts like "Don't make 'em like this anymore," which is a thought that made me think I need more movies like Teen Wolf in my life - maybe they still make them like this, where are they, please let me know.

I watched Standing Ovation recently, and that was a lot of fun. I don't think it's the same thing, however, because when I recommended it to a friend he texted me, "And why am I watching standing ovation? Im 7 minutes into it and am more confused than ever why you thought of me. Im gonna try to sit with it." I'll have to recommend Teen Wolf; I really don't think this person could say the same thing about Teen Wolf. But maybe, there's just no accounting for taste.

One thing I was confused about was Teen Wolf's message. In the movie Scott decides to be his human self and not showboat his werewolf side, so I guess the movie is saying he should like himself for who he is and not for who people want him to be, but he is actually a werewolf. In the movie he's actually a werewolf. So why shouldn't he be a werewolf all the time? Doesn't that mean the message is really that we should accept mediocrity and never reach for higher aspirations because doing so may affect the status quo and possibly shatter our complacency? There's also something about how becoming a werewolf gives Scott confidence but he learns by the end of the movie that he doesn't need to transmogrify in order to have confidence. And he ends up with his friend Lisa 'Boof' Marconi (Susan Ursitti), the girl who liked him all along and liked him for him, not for werewolf-him. That still seems like the message is things are fine the way they are and we don't need to ask for more or want alterations in a life that's livable as it is.

That's stupid. Personally, this movie made me want to be a werewolf. I think that's a perfectly fine message to send to kids, and I don't understand why the movie wanted to complicate things in the end. Other evidence of normalcy brainwashing: when Stiles (pretty much the coolest guy in the movie because people seem to really like having him around and he brings genuine joy with him, and he wears sunglasses in a lot of scenes) gets back a D- test grade and he shows it to someone with a bit of pride, presumably because it's not an F. I guess the movie had to cut into him like that and imply that he's a person of limited intellectual depth, because it supports the subplot about his opportunism, but also because it reinforces the central motif about normalcy being the best option. It's like, he can't wear the brightest and best shirts and be a smart guy, no way, this movie wouldn't allow it. This sensibility flatters the Normal Kid who sees Teen Wolf in the mall or wherever, and Normal Kid leaves the theater thinking he's perfectly cool the way he is. Teen Wolf is like, yep, just be Normal Kid, you're fine, get out of here (buy some soda on the way out). I just think the better message is about not being afraid of change and exploration of your internal and external possibilities.

Sure they win their final basketball game due to inner powers, but that's not realistic, that doesn't usually happen, and if it does it's an unusual circumstance and becomes some Yahoo News headline. They didn't even have to work to become better at basketball. There were no practice montages, and I don't think Chubby (Mark Holton) ever went on his diet, not really. That tells kids miracles occur, it goes full-throttle on a stupid movie miracle, so why not on a great movie miracle like lycanthropy. Have werewolf Scott eat a kid's head, who gives a fuck?

Of course, you can forgive the film for this conservatism because of its great scenes, like the wolf dance during prom.

You can also forgive the film for having actors in their mid-20s play high schoolers, no suspension of disbelief required: they're all in their 20s; they've stuck to high school because they don't believe there's reason to move on or go forward, life has nothing special to offer them. Their lives are frozen. Then, Scott turns into a werewolf, and they all begin to believe, and you know they're on the cusp of graduation into adulthood and an acceptance of unlimited possibilities. See, that makes the movie even more magical. And if you want to see Michael J. Fox nearer the correct age and in high school, there's always Class of 1984.

Notes on Rubber

NO REASON, SOME REASON, LOTS OF REASON
There is a kind of narrative that must be played out as long as the wheelchair bound spectator (Wings Hauser) lives, and a narrative is a kind of waterfall of reasons, fundamentally (this movie has many of those rocks which jut out from the otherwise smooth surface behind the waterfall). Things can make sense without being sensible, or as a friend told me after watching Rubber a second time, "There are parts of this movie I like without knowing why."

The movie begins with a series of chairs set up for no apparent reason that are destroyed for no apparent reason by an oncoming car along the desert road, but one of the spectators later questions why the chairs were destroyed when they could have been sat in - this joke begins a series of internarrative logic based paradoxes which expand in humorous and interesting ways through the movie's duration (by the way, the movie begins not with this car, but I believe with the man holding the binoculars, which is a weird image, later given reason when the spectators use the binoculars in an impossible way made possible by internarrative logic: it's how they watch the movie they create by watching it).

IS ROBERT INNOCENT OR MALEVOLENT?
The #1 reason I went to see Rubber a second time was to have a good time. The #2 reason was to investigate an alternate interpretation of Robert's character which was proposed to me over roasted bone marrow at the Little Bird Bistro on my birthday. Attempting to describe the movie for a friend, I began by stating that it's "about a malevolent tire that emerges from the desert without a past and embarks on a senseless mission of violence." Whether it was the special day, the bone marrow, or naive arrogance, I remember feeling that I was at the beginning of a pretty good description, which is sometimes difficult to do on the spot and unrehearsed. Only, then a friend across the table interrupted me, "Ahhhh. I don't know," he said, perhaps wagging his finger, "I thought Robert was an innocent." "Me too," someone else said. "[Something about a tire's destructive nature and the fulfillment of natural urges]" my first friend said. "[Something about lions in the wild hunting for food,]" another friend said. I defended my position okay enough, but I don't believe I changed minds just then. Later of course there were things I wished I'd said, but didn't say then, but said, with appropriate conviction, in muddled whispers to myself while showering or aimlessly walking. Many people don't appreciate other people stirring misunderstandings or conflicting viewpoints, however, and so it's been my own battle since then.

Robert’s a pretty malicious character, but he’s also likeable. What was your inspiration for that?
Quentin Dupieux: Honestly, when I wrote it, it was only supposed to be an evil character. In my mind it was like, ‘Okay, it’s just the bad guy,’ but then, when I started to shoot it, I had to deal with a tire and there’s nothing evil about a tire. So I had to change my mind a little bit (laughs), and when we did the first tests with the remote controlled tire – I had the camera attached to a stick – and it was just following the remote controlled tire in the field and, at this point, the tire was like a dog. The way it was rolling and behaving in the field, it was like a dog. So I decided, ‘Okay, it’s like a dog. It has to be like a dog.’ That’s why there’s shots where it drinks water, things like that. Suddenly, it was not just an evil character. It was more like a stupid dog. That was the inspiration.

Dupieux's answer seems to validate both interpretations to some extent. I wonder how different it would be if Robert had a face, or at least eyes, and what that face or those eyes would make us believe, or rather, how those eyes or that face would strengthen the force of our beliefs. Ultimately the answer is that Robert is fictional and neither malevolent nor innocent, but rather a character obeying laws appointed by a writer constructing a narrative, and given the facelessness of Robert and the multiple original concepts for the inanimate object, it's the best answer. I also submit that this answer is no fun.

EVIDENCE OF MALEVOLENCE (can I say I'm so, so pleased with this note's heading?)
1. Robert explodes heads.
2. There is a montage of people with destroyed heads. These people are strewn about streets and sidewalks and seem unconnected to the narrative trajectory, i.e. the love story between Robert and Sheila, which motivates many of Robert's actions.
3. Robert doesn't attempt to destroy trees, buildings, cars, etc., and if he was truly innocent wouldn't he not be making these types of distinctions while expressing his inborn state of destructiveness?
4. It's true that tires are kind of destructive, but a) it's not like their principal purpose is destruction, like a bullet or missile or something, and b) if you view a tire as destructive it's only because of the way humans use them (they put them on their cars and drive over surfaces and sometimes minor obstacles), and hence it's a nurtured or acquired state, because if you see a tire just fucking lying on a store shelf not on a car or anything and like shiver from fear of personal injury caused by the lifeless tire you're a fucking weirdo.

THIS IS TOO CONFUSED TO COUNT BUT
My initial confrontation with the question of Robert as like a lion was to quip, "A lion doesn't seem innocent when it's attacking you," which was good enough to cause the group to consider, but upon review it really seems more like fate or circumstance is the malevolent force and not the lion, because the lion continues to behave as a lion, lacking aspects of self-awareness and premeditation that enable its action to be labeled malevolent, or at least its kill to be called murder. But for me this opened a rabbit hole into other considerations, primarily I began to wonder what animal first ate another animal, what was the first one with teeth that bit into another living creature, and whether the witness sensed on a primal level (which was just the normal level at that stage I guess) something wrong about carnivorousness, and like signaled with unspoken emotional communications that an abrupt change in the perceptions and realities of relationships and communities was taking place, if the animal witness thought, even without advanced levels of self-awareness and certain reasoning faculties, "this is going to lead us to horrible long-term consequences, this single act here" and if the animal trembled, really trembled. It seems to me the origins of senseless killings are tethered to the origins of purposeful killings, because when no one is eating anyone else, and then someone eats someone else, isn't that the beginning of malevolence? It would benefit the conversation to offer definitions of the words on trial:

malevolent |məˈlevələnt|
adjective
having or showing a wish to do evil to others

and

evil |ˈēvəl|
adjective
profoundly immoral and malevolent
• (of a force or spirit) embodying or associated with the forces of the devil
• harmful or tending to harm
• (of something seen or smelled) extremely unpleasant
noun
profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, esp. when regarded as a supernatural force
• a manifestation of this, esp. in people's actions
• something that is harmful or undesirable

and

innocent |ˈinəsənt|
adjective
1 not guilty of a crime or offense
• [ predic. ] ( innocent of) without; lacking
• [ predic. ] ( innocent of) without experience or knowledge of
2 [ attrib. ] not responsible for or directly involved in an event yet suffering its consequences
3 free from moral wrong; not corrupted
• simple; naive
4 not intended to cause harm or offense; harmless
noun
an innocent person, in particular
• a pure, guileless, or naive person
• a person involved by chance in a situation, esp. a victim of crime or war
• ( the Innocents) the young children killed by Herod after the birth of Jesus (Matt. 2:16).

An animal is harming the other animal it eats, even if it's within its nature to eat it, though it's free from moral wrong, and as it doesn't know the potential depths of its own consciousness it can't be expected to grasp the potential depth of another consciousness. The thing about mankind is we've brought efficiency and numbers to the act of killing, and introduced the term murder - which I definitely don't think animals do, murder, given the premeditation aspect (though it's kind of cute to imagine lions hunched over a table covered in blueprints, cigars in their lion mouths) - but I reject the claim that this makes us extra evil, or only extra evil, because we're also capable of extreme tenderness, compassion, empathy, mercy, rectitude, etc. We're simply extra capable creatures who possess sufficient reasoning faculties that we hope will eventually win the battle over our extra harmful potentialities. The thing about the cycle of life and nature and shit is that advancement and evolution entail injustices that must be balanced by nature, and I think it's interesting that human self-awareness and reasoning allow us to kill plentifully, but also love exceptionally and to amazing degrees. Robert demonstrates an advanced degree of self-awareness, a component of humanistic reasoning, by loving Sheila for purposes beyond evolutionary or survival advantages. She doesn't pet him, take care of him, etc., though she doesn't attack him either. Robert's consciousness lacks a sense of morality, perhaps, but I believe his knowledge of love is superior to, for example, King Kong's. Robert's story is like the story of King Kong - Robert is taken from the jungle of unconsciousness into the civilization of consciousness - and they're both captivated by a single woman - but King Kong behaves like a real animal, and is only violent in animalistic senses, while Robert demonstrates several human and superhuman qualities that could potentially result in culpability for his actions, which extend beyond self-preservation. I'd have dinner with King Kong, but not Robert.

EVIDENCE OF INNOCENCE (AND EXPRESSIONS OF PERSONAL BIAS)
1. Well, it's not like lions confusedly attack trees and buildings (please link to appropriate article w/pictures if they do). They attack things which pose a threat to them, and Robert makes peoples' heads explode because they are his potential threat (but was the water bottle a threat, was the glass bottle, and was the goddamn bunny?).
2. As Dupieux discovered when he began to consider the tire as an evil entity, a tire is not inherently evil. Think of the lion again, and think of training a lion to attack, which is weird so downgrade and think of an attack dog: the dog takes on a violent purpose due to conditioning and training. Robert is trained to destroy through a past life as a car's tire (as seen, in fact, during a flashback after the pool drowning incident). The lesson of destruction is forced upon it through prolonged experiences that shape its view of reality, made to absorb violence at the center of its being, its nature corrupted by man. I think Robert demonstrates signs of advanced consciousness and self-awareness, for example emulating Sheila by showering (to shower, Robert must have used his mind powers to turn the water knob), swimming, and watching television, and I think these evidences of advanced consciousness rule out this consideration, but maybe not.

EVIDENCE OF THE NARRATIVE BEING THE CORE OF ROBERT'S ESSENCE AND THE SUBSTANCE OF HIS DESTRUCTIVE NATURE
1. Robert becomes inert (at the bottom of the pool, though, a kind of multiply motivated inertia I admit) when the narrative is believed to be concluded due to the deaths of the spectators. Once this is disproved and reported, he re-animates and kills the hotel owner.
2. Seems like, in the same scene, he should have exploded the head of Lieutenant Chad (Stephen Spinella) to eliminate the brunt of his woes.

EVIDENCE THAT ROBERT COMES TO EXIST ON THIS NARRATIVE PLANE AS A CREATION OF THE NARRATIVE AND THEREFORE HAS INTRINSIC CHARACTERISTICS WORTHY OF DISCUSSION
1. Robert, in his new form, explodes the head of the wheelchair man and continues his journey (towards Los Angeles!).

Rubber

Last night I saw a movie about a killer tire, and the audience was wild (many people were enjoying themselves).

It would be great if Robert, the killer tire, was the face of modern cinema. When wanting to verify his name as Robert, I checked the cast section at IMDb. When I didn't see Robert mentioned, I clicked "Full cast and crew." His name was not listed there either, and not until I began to scroll around the page did I remember tires are not listed in the cast section at IMDb. And then I appreciated Rubber.

The story of the film is familiar, a killer without a past emerges from the desert, but the hero is a first: the first Dadaistic protagonist of the 21st century (and the Dada movement of the 20th century led to the Surrealism movement of the 20th century[!]). The film celebrates the glory of pure nothingness, nothing for the sake of nothing. The sheriff, in the beginning and end, calls the movie a an homage to no reason.

I'd be very delighted if the casting tapes for Rubber were released to the general public, and also the letters written to potential investors and between producers. They all those involved should be given medals, and the largest medal should go to Quentin Dupieux. He is the type of independent filmmaker who furthers the concept of auteurism, not only because he is the writer, director, cinematographer, camera operator, and composer of his film, but because the film is a personal vision pursued to audacious ends.

Basket Case (1982)

"But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES."

- from Frank O'Hara's Why I Am Not a Painter, because this could be Why I Am Not a Critic, as it's only tangentially a discussion of Basket Case:

It's difficult for me to imagine a mainstream one-thousand theater rerelease of Basket Case, mainly because it's never enjoyed such mammoth distribution. The film, even in its time of production, was self-consciously executed from the margins. Made by a certain type of movie fan, it's dedicated to Herschell Gordon Lewis, for a reciprocating audience familiar with its rote of camp and humor infused gore and horror, it has fared better than some of its contemporaries that didn't make it to dvd and don't enjoy reputations. The lifespans of this film type are entirely dependent upon fans of the movies, as the film is released by an independent distributor, Something Weird, and has only a sliver of cultural relevance. If not for its esoteric demand it could easily become lost, and, more terrifying to me, people could easily question the relevance of its disappearance. While films by Orson Welles are still underseen and underreleased, who cares about Basket Case? I care about both, and think everyone else should too.

The question of its perpetuation is for me a matter of social self-censorship, a matter of the merits of Basket Case versus the reality of Basket Case. Films like this are now rarely ever made, supplanted mostly by films of ironic self-consciousness, and far better produced films, and distribution for independent films is ever diminishing. Within Basket Case, for example, shot in New York City, 1982, the protagonist strolls by a kung-fu theater playing a triple feature next to a grindhouse with its own set of features. In John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Ben Gazzara takes his dancer girlfriends to a kung-fu theater and has to ask the girls to leave because they're still sitting after three movies! Three kung-fu movies! This culture, even in its time marginal, has mostly disappeared. Its lingering presence can be relished in revival screenings, in youth populated revival screenings, wherein the majority excitedly see the movie for a first time or attend for an "experience," and especially in random encounters with aging film fans. Nothing reminds me of the shared, universal condition of human suffering and longing so much as encountering a genuine fan of a movie after a revival screening, someone seeing it for the second time since its initial theatrical release, even better if it's a non-cinephile, and only loves the particular movie and had to see it again. For me, the more esoteric the film, the deeper the connection, because I often have meaningful conversations about popular films, but rarely have the chance for passionate conversation about the obscure, and treasure when I do. The conversation can be of a delicate, personal nature, the kind prone to evaporate with time.

Films from the margins often show or appeal to the marginalized. For example, their actors are often less talented, less perfectly beautiful, or never became well-known enough for their looks and talent to receive popular validation. Sometimes they are unappealing, sometimes despicable, sometimes outrageous. In this way outsider independent films can depict overlooked characters in a society, people not usually on screens, screens more and more reserved for manufactured, big-budgeted entertainment. So in time an outsider film can come to be defined by what it does show, the particular forms of personality and character it exhibits.

Cities well-known for filmmaking often tend to depict shifting populations. Think of the shades of urban character that flourish and vanish through decades of Los Angeles film, and the continuing near-eradication of particular forms of eccentricity that used to be a striking characteristic of New York City's personality. Bright, imaginative, fresh-thinking NYC films still exist for a different type of minority, one that has always blossomed in the film community: the sophisticated, cultured film fan. Recent NYC movies like Momma's Man, Frownland, and Tiny Furniture prosper because their subjects are members of the viewing cadre, and they're great films, but it's hard to imagine Gazzara's dancers sitting through them in succession*!

Diminished and homogeneous genre films, and other forms of esotericism, are partially to blame for the receding scope of independent films. The baby has been thrown out with the bath water. As smaller independent theaters, production companies, and distributors leave the stage, theatrical options narrow, and with them the potential for diverse encounters. Quality levels have risen, in theaters and films, but the curious and unconventional continue to die out^. All film fans have recently heard the repopularized "I'd rather stay home and watch television (!)" The reason for this get-the-fuck-out-of-town comment's revitalization is that television has begun to surprise its audiences, while cinema only flatters.

Cinematic taste has turned the corner while fleeing from Basket Case and films like it, and that's too bad. The progress of narrative variety and the evolution of filmic curiosity shouldn't be slowed to accommodate the safe or familiar. It's not that I want Basket Case to be remade again, the solution Hollywood suggests with their surge of remakes, it's that I see a necessity for an environment of creativity that allows for films like it to be made. In order to sustain the legacy of Basket Case, the outer boundaries of the imagination must continually be sought by filmmakers of all types. While continuing to ask for honesty, I also ask for invention, and gratefully welcome the intrusion of dreams.

* Momma's Man, Frownland, and Tiny Furniture, while not portraying an audience generating minority, due of course portray the statistically marginal, and are made deliberately non-mainstream in order to appeal to a certain group. They don't have well-known actors and they receive limited distribution. Like Basket Case, they sometimes challenge your reasons for watching them with either poor or atypical decisions and processes. The films' specific tones and points of view alienate audiences seeking comfortable inclusion, but reward the curious. I love them, and love that they get shown, but they're not the subject here. They should stay the same and in addition there can be other types of films.

^ If I must mention Internet alternatives well here I have, but it's not really the subject.

Silent Night, Deadly Night.

The same way you can call a delightful day with lots of relaxation and intimate pleasures a perfect day, despite perhaps the absence of extraordinary moments like lottery wins or moon landings, it's acceptable to call Silent Night, Deadly Night a perfect genre movie.  The film fully executes the splendors of its concept, and, as is often the case, the filmmakers' total conviction and commitment to the idea contributes to the film's charm; think also of Corbucci's Django and Ferrara's Ms. 45.

 This film's success is its delight in the wicked, its joyful subversiveness.  The children are sweet, Coca-Cola type doe-eyed children:  completely innocent, perfect for corruption.  The script revels in the absurdities and obscenities of its central character's descent into madness, and is tailored to the shape of their filthy ambition, his destiny as a murderous Santa.  It's reminiscent of a John Waters movie, the way it casually introduces the most insane plot elements and then uses those elements as the impetus for even stranger insanities.  The minor characters are made to pop out, be memorable.  Beyond killer Santas:  grandpa's ominous warning, mischievous sled thieves, pool-table love-makers, and a tyrannical head nun are each given humorous, indelible scenes.

"To protest the film, critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel read the credits out loud on their television show saying, 'shame, shame, shame' after each name."

What the fuck is that about, did Ebert and Siskel work for a greeting card company?  Ostensibly Christmas is a religious holiday - as I often, sometimes to my social embarrassment, forget - and certainly this Santa fellow shouldn't be sacrosanct; he just breaks into children's homes.  In fact children should be urged to see this movie, so that as they grow into adulthood they spend less money on Special Edition Christmas Oreo tins with a Limited Edition Hand Painted Santa.

Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 1.12, "Faith Healer"

astral |ˈastrəl|
adjective [ attrib. ]
• of or relating to a supposed nonphysical realm of existence to which various psychic and paranormal phenomena are ascribed, and in which the physical human body is said to have a counterpart.

If you remember, my last encounter with Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 3.3, Crippled Inside was about a high school girl who possessed a magical and cursed wicker wheelchair that allowed her to astral project and commit physical acts of revenge on a villainous gang of high school boys.

Well this one, Episode 1.12, Faith Healer, was directed by David Cronenberg, and is about an evangelist who claims to heal the diseased and dying. Despite common sense I initially hoped it was going to be the same Crippled Inside story, told again. I hoped the whole series was just variations on that concept. It wasn't, of course, though the first scene features a young blind man in a wheelchair. He's in a church and the evangelist circles him as he explains to the gathered crowd how the ethereal hand of god will heal the boy, using the evangelist as a vessel of course, and but then just as he's about to demonstrate a party-pooper intervenes and accuses the evangelist of being a fraud. He pops a contact out of the boy's eye and asks the audience: why would a blind man wear contacts? As the crowd gasps, the evangelist dashes out of the church...

CUT TO:

In the alley an old man in a wheelchair, angry from betrayal, verbally lashes out at the evangelist. Old dude's pissed because he wanted to be healed. The lying piece of shit evangelist simply runs past the wheelchair bound old man; but despite the geriatric condition of his aggressors, he's frantic, and he falls into some trash ditch at the end of the alley. Among the garbage is a Roger Rabbit kind of cartoony oversized white glove, which for some mystical reason the evangelist immediately wants to stick his hand inside.

BIG MOMENT:

A diseased woman approaches him - her disease is a melting face of sores. Very Cronenbergian. She's pissed like the previous wheelchair man and accosts the evangelist regarding his deception and amorality and wickedness, etc., false advertising etc., and but do I have to tell you that the goddamn glove really fucking heals? Swear to God it does. He touches the woman and she turns middle-aged and red-headed and cured. The evangelist is stoked - his luck really turned around in short order.

CUT TO:

SHIT, the woman's affliction is in the glove! You can tell because it's full of sores now, too, and when the evangelist goes to pull the glove off parts of his skin rise up with the glove, exposing a bloody fleshless interior in his forearm, very Cronenbergian. The guy understandably freaks out, which attracts the attention of a policeman who is serendipitously across the street.

NO SHIT:

The fucking glove can pass on the disease to other people! And not only that, but through the science of this process, the disease is magnified and worsened and the gloved victim dies of horribleness in complete agony and terrible, ultimate suffering. Adios officer.

DUDE'S REALLY EXCITED:

Because his shtick just went legitimate. You don't see him fist pumping the air though (because this is fucking Cronenberg), you see him on a television commercial, advertising his real-deal healing powers. Those kids with their bullshit whatever recurring plot line which ties together the series see him on tv. And in this season the uncle is around with the bullshit kids and anyway for some reason I forget they need to get the glove, which is this episode's cursed object!

SOME DULL SHIT ABOUT THIS OR THAT:

Anyway the uncle, Jack, is old friends with the skeptical party-pooper from the first sequence, whose name is Jerry. And anyway Jack and Jerry

GO UP THE PLOT HILL, UNTIL:

Jerry confronts the evangelist for a second time. The evangelist is mortified at first, because of their history, but the glove has bolstered his confidence so he accepts Jerry's challenge: he'll heal whomever Jerry selects to be healed, in order to prove to Jerry that now he's authentic.

Jerry reveals to Jack, whom he's tied up, that HE suffers from a fatal disease; Jerry himself has some melted chocolate colored puss sores on his stomach. That disease is called Very Cronenbergian. HE's going to be the one to be healed.

DRAMATIC CULMINATION:

The evangelist tricks Jerry and doesn't heal him! Dead serious. Well, Jerry's pissed, and he starts firing his Marine pistol, which I forgot to mention. A security guard gets shot, and the evangelist does too. He escapes after Jerry shoots him twice.

HE (THE EVANGELIST) HEALS HIS OWN BULLET WOUNDS USING THE GLOVE:

But while running away crashes his car. Stuck in his car, he has no one to pass the disease (the disease of being shot) onto this time. This passing on of the ailment was demonstrated again before, besides the lady, which I forgot to mention. It was another lady, in an alley, and it involved a poodle in flight.

Also, Jack is tied up because Jerry double-crossed him because using cursed objects for personal gain is very morally reprehensible, and although Jack and Jerry are best friends, there's still no reason for Jack to allow Jerry to fucking use the devil's powers for personal gain, for Christ's sake. Forget about that for a moment though, because the evangelist is in the car and can't move, and Jerry is on the hunt.

CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE:

Jerry makes it to the car in time to see the evangelist die from internal gun fires, and the evangelist expires in front of Jerry's eyes.

WHICH IS FINE WITH JERRY, WHO TAKES THE GLOVE FROM NEXT TO THE DEAD EVANGELIST:



And then Jerry plans on healing himself and passing the disease onto Jack. Thankfully the cousins show up in time though.

OH FUCK:

Earlier, in that second demonstration of the glove's powers I forgot to mention but then mentioned, there's fucking pulsing face sores on a woman in an alleyway. Very Cronenbergian.

Thanks again Vendredi Antiques for the image.

Friday the 13th: The Series, Episode 3.3, "Crippled Inside"

Image borrowed from Vendredi Antiques, a website devoted to cataloging and discussing the episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series, a show I had little knowledge of until last night, but now today could totally understand why there is this website and probably other websites constructed as memorials. Again, the image is:



I don't know enough about myself to be able to explain why this stands out over all the other movies I've consumed since Police, Adjective. Last month, in the 28-day February, I saw 68 movies theatrically, and for some reason I've already ordered more movies from Amazon at this point in 2010 than I did in the whole year of 2009. So I've been plenty busy, seen a lot of great movies, and been enjoying movies at an insatiable rate, but it's Crippled Inside that brings me to the computer. I read this Mel Books quote recently, a variation on a popular definition of comedy, that said "A man cuts his finger, that's tragedy. He falls down a manhole, that's comedy." This episode, to me, is about a woman falling down a glorious manhole.



Now, the girl on the left is a quadriplegic. The wheelchair remote control attached to her chin is a fantastic indicator. She enters this physical state at the beginning of the episode: attempting to escape a gang of teenage rapists (one wielding a nasty no-bullshit switchblade) she runs into the road and is struck by a car.

Then this old man, on the right, offers her a wicker wheelchair, telling her that it cured his post-stroke paralysis and is definitely the wicker wheelchair for her. It doesn't have a classy chin control, but the girl, being either a great admirer of old men or of antique wicker, convinces her mom, who is opposed immediately to the wicker wheelchair (being a middle-aged suburban housewife I assumed she was a dabbler of spiritualism and read the wheelchair's negative aura, but this isn't stated, nor is it stated if the old man embarked on his own personal journey of vendetta, as the girl will, but both these assumptions strengthen the dark currents of this episode), and so the wheelchair is brought home.

Before I continue, the premise of Friday the 13th: The Series is (roughly - I'm not an expert, yet) that an uncle who sold cursed antique goods died and went to a hell described as an endless fall. The inheritors of the antique store, a pair of cousins, want to save the uncle and also feel a tremendous weight of personal guilt, so they begin to collect the cursed objects from the unwitting purchasers. The cursed antique in this episode is the wicker wheelchair.




When the girl sits on the wheelchair, she "astro-projects." My friend Dennis tells me that what she does is called astro-projection. Maybe one word? Astropojects. Astro projects. Regardless, the term is entering my permanent and conversational vocabulary. This is what happens: a ghostlike double of herself stands up from the wheelchair.

She kills the would-be rapists one by one. The killings restore her body. The first boy is so surprised to see her, walking around, that be backs into a cabinet in the chemistry classroom (he's there to steal a test - these guys are no fucking good) and acid falls over him. His body dissolves. Being the first, everyone assumes he "dissolved himself." Well, almost everyone, because the other would-be rapists enter the room just as the boy's face is disappearing, and they hear his last word: the girl's name!

The second boy throws himself off a building.

The third boy, thinking he's going to get some fuck action from the suddenly mobile girl, lays down on the ground with her. While seducing him she ties his arms so that he cannot move, pulls out her own switchblade, asks "How does it feel??" and drops an electric chandelier on him.

The fourth boy, the worst of the worst, the wielder of switchblade, first attempts to shank one of the central characters of the show, one of the cousins collecting the antiques. This is when the cousin has come for the wheelchair, and he finds the suspicious and rapist boy (driver of red convertibles) in the girl's bedroom. He, being nearly shanked, becomes royally pissed and makes the rapist boy promise to stay away. He runs out of the house, past the old man (window peeping?). The old man has been acting as a kind of spiritual mentor for the girl, and he convinces the cousin that the girl should have a little more killing fun, and the cousin agrees. The old man says, "This is the type of boy who will always come back".

So the final rapist boy does indeed soon return. The girl (who can now move her top-half and has feeling in her legs, owing to her successful killing spree) astro-projects and strangles the boy. Just then the cousin arrives, sees the boy, and wants to take the wheelchair back. Sure, I've killed enough, says the girl, who stands up, assuming her body fully restored. But wait, she can't walk....the boy isn't dead! He rises from the floor and lunges at the girl, knocking her down a flight of stairs. They fall together, both dying by the bottom. Fucking cursed antique wicker chair, noooooo!

The cousin returns the antique wicker wheelchair to the shop. The old man comes and asks for it, saying more people need its healing powers. The cousin disagrees and takes an axe to the chair. Only the cousin never realized: wicker is forever, and the chair will never be destroyed!

True Stories/Stop Making Sense/Demons.

We have cocktails and appetizers at Bar Mingo until 6:40, and I don't want to run the twenty blocks so we take a cab to the theater. Someone with us knows the cab driver. We make it just in time: the girl walks toward the camera down the two-lane road hugged on all sides by fields, great open Texas fields. Byrne begins his narration, introducing the town. His voice is mostly relaxed, with undulations of terrific joy and puzzlement.

John Goodman works in a microchip plant. He wants to find a wife. Sad music causes him to lie down on the floor. He can remember kids' names if they sit in alphabetical order. He dances (there're musical pieces, frequent but spontaneous, for example a great moment has Byrne in a field, reflecting with a real estate agent on the curious nature of housing developments, and as the camera tracks with Byrne a group of kids appear screen right; they carry instruments and burst into song). Goodman is Byrne's traveling companion through this mostly relaxed narrative tapestry (it also has undulations of terrific joy and puzzlement). Byrne's car is not leased, it's privately owned. He's a crazy driver.

It's an easy to like movie. It's critical but affectionate, and it's more curious than critical. It's more perceptive than curious. It's more funny than perceptive.

Ten minute intermission. We avoid security cameras. The movie has started when we re-enter, so we crouch as we cross the front of the theater to our seats. We're front row. I want to dance but I'm too self-conscious about it. There's seriously a dance floor in front of the screen. I notice the guy next to me keeps shaking his leg, and then I notice that I keep shaking my leg. I think that in our heads me and this guy are the purest dancers here, the real dancers. I stop shaking my leg, my theory being that the energy will grow and I will explode into a dance frenzy on the stage. Sometimes in bursts I hear the audience singing along. Sometimes they clap after the songs. I stare at the screen, mesmerized.

On the way back I call a lamp pole a lamp post, but no one says anything to me about my mistake.

We arrive twenty minutes early. The previous movie hasn't let out. We wait on the sidewalk.

It's more gory than I remembered. I try to keep a list of the types of brutality: eye gouging, face tearing, throat slashing, bulging sores erupting with green puss. I think next time I'll bring paper if I want to keep a list of types of brutality featured. Terribly creepy and visceral fang sequences. My favorite moment used to be the helicopter breaking through the roof, but now it's the girl pushing the theater screen with her hands, an effect reminiscent of Videodrome.

I keep yawning during the movie. Am I tired (later, I'll come home and watch thirty-forty minutes of Man of Aran, waiting to fall asleep), or am I bored? Maybe you can't follow Stop Making Sense with Demons. I blank out for about twenty minutes, after the pimp dies.

Shaun of the Dead, Cont.

If you haven't read part one yet, then, you know, read part one first.

After Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead makes the best use of the zombie-to-death horror relationship, and the meaty symbolism the zombie state represents. If you haven't read Simon Pegg's essay on Why the undead should never be allowed to run yet, then, you know, read that before you read this. It'll begin to demonstrate how much the writers of Shaun really cared about what they were writing, really thought about the subject and material, and it'll settle all debate as to whether the humor was biting or affectionate, if that question lingers in your mind (if it does, you should watch Shaun before reading, you know, anything, period.).

If you count the high points in Shaun, from an emotional perspective, three of them deal with the sadness of death and fragility of life. There are five high points total. The three deathcentric ones would be Philip's essentially unearned death scene, the first burst of brilliance from the movie, Barbara's inevitable demise and the consequent conflict, and Ed's heroic and redeeming final stand. The two remaining points are the Shaun/Liz reunion, and the Shaun/Liz David/Dianne love dynamics. The latter enjoys a partial appearance in the film's death theme, but it's earned so hard and fast, and by such different means, that it doesn't really count in my book. The book that I keep for my personal records. For me the David/Dianne death scene falls into the category of eradication of dispensable characters.

The first half of Shaun establishes the absurdity of the zombie scenario, and the second half highlights the bitter tragedy of absurdity. If it strives for too much and extends itself too far, the more the film should be appreciated. An attempt to unravel the fears and repressions of a person is the basis of the most exciting and engaging genre films, and if Shaun doesn't explore new territory, it does stick faithfully and effectively to its material. It gives itself entirely to its material, which is what a film of its nature must do.

There is an element of double-layered symbolism to Shaun because of its fetishistic treatment of popular culture. In the second sequence of the film, right after the hilarious bar scene, the inhabitants of London are filmed as zombielike creatures, and it's unclear if at that point they're even zombies or not. Wright and Pegg riff on one of Romero's other contributions to the zombie symbolism, the zombification that is a result of commercialism and materialism. This statement is made clearer by the fate of Ed and the lack of substantial difference between who he was alive and what he's like as a zombie. Furthermore, Shaun could and I think should be read as a wishful rumination of the zombie universe. Although the characters in the film cannot choose their deaths, Wright and Pegg chose for each of them to die a zombie death. Beyond a horror staple, the message, in the context of the film, is that zombie death is a great death to have. I think they could have killed all the characters and still it would have been a happy ending, because of the positivity and enthusiasm that Wright and Pegg portray the gruesomeness within. It's a rather tame horror film, and if it wasn't for the investment of characters Wright and Pegg corner you into this would be even easier to see.

What about the skill of execution? Beyond differing thoughts on the subject material, Wright is clearly a gifted director, and one of the few working today who can craft a movie that fires on all engines. It's a rare breed of film that finds success in the horror/comedy field, and it's even rarer for it to have identifiable characters. Wright's films also have the energy and tactility that so many modern films endeavor toward, and it's achieved effortlessly. His films are enjoyable and easy to watch. They don't make too many mistakes, and they sometimes land on brilliant moments (as discussed).

Wright is also gifted at giving his films over to his audience. His fans become fanatics, true believers. He's the Paul Thomas Anderson of genre films. People decode Wright's films, they study them, they search out their influences, they hunt down Wright's interviews, Wright's early films, Wright's breakfast menu, etc. Wright is probably the furthest you can get from the self-indulgent and self-satisfying type of filmmaker. He's one of the few filmmakers who has retained his original beliefs despite a typically souring successful career. His blog is like a 16 year old's blog. It's like the blog of someone who yesterday discovered films. His movies are like that too. His movies have the pulse of movies, they're real movies, the kind you look forward to seeing.

Shaun of the Dead.

The difference between fine-tuned and contrived is a thin one, based on feeling and intuition, and even beginning to make the distinction requires a degree of reflection and contemplation. Artists are regularly subjected to criticisms of their ability to succeed in accomplishing the mechanisms of naturalism, and there's a definite sphere of criticism that has a major concern with these qualities, in film and other areas, but in film there's a condemnatory voice frequently raised against a filmmaker whose films exhibit characteristics deemed movie fantasy material. A towering example is Steven Spielberg. Even the allmovie.com mainpage used to have that Alex Cox quote where he says, approximately, "Spielberg is not a filmmaker, he's a confectioner."

When I worked as an usher in a Dayton Ohio dollar theater, around the time my love for film was truly burgeoning, my manager was a graduate of the Wright State film program and had received his degree in a period of fierce criticism over the films of Spielberg. There was a large group of snobbish people who reacted strongly against the Spielberg design, and my manager found himself regularly defending the likes of Jaws and 1941. At this time I had a bit of affectation built into my mindset, I would pass judgments based on either partial personal exposure or simply the opinions of others, and I vividly remember saying something to my manager and his friend like, "Well you know, that's because his only good film is Schindler's List." A frankly bullshit proclamation that I was no doubt spontaneously fabricating. My manager and his friend rightly glared at me like I was a moron.

If this attitude towards Spielberg still exists I don't encounter it much anymore. Or I ignore it. Point is, many younger filmmakers begin with the opposite point of view. Everyone from Kevin Smith to Bryan Singer names Jaws one of their favorite movies, Jurassic Park is now called the final of his 'good films' (when it was initially deemed the nail in the coffin, which goes to show how opinions on his work shift over time), and writers like Edgar Wright and Diablo Cody very much carry on his torch, deliberately or not.

As this edges closer toward a discussion of Shaun of the Dead, and the obvious manipulative aspects of the film, there's a Frank Cottrell Boyce quote that should pose as a background, one from an interview with Roger Ebert. "A while back, I was on Radio 4's Film Programme the same day as Simon Pegg. We were asked what we thought of screenwriting manuals. I dismissed them as get-rich-quick compendiums of cliche. Pegg said he thought they were really useful. Our films opened that weekend. His vacuumed up money. Mine tanked. It may well be, I thought, that I've been missing something."

In a dream-type situation, where I am a studio executive and am allowed to fund whatever films I want, I would want to finance a Frank Cottrel Boyce film. Welcome to Sarajevo, The Claim, 24 Hour Party People, and A Cock and Bull Story are some of my favorite movies. Millions is absolutely my second favorite kids movie (only just behind Free Willy). I'm partly bullshitting now though too, projecting the same airs I did with my previous theater manager, because on opening day, with Boyce's film opening against Wright's film, let's be honest, I'm going to see Wright's film. There are external factors, for example Wright's films are better audience material, while Boyce's films work big and small, and I'm probably going to have an easier time talking a group of people into seeing a Wright film with me, but the point is, like when QT talks about taking satisfaction in Inglourious Basterds being the most widely anticipated film at Cannes, movies are easier to digest than films. And when I say movies, in this instance, I'm meaning the type of film you watch and say, "That never happens in my life."

Shaun of the Dead is basically an orgy of that feeling. It's a movie lover's fantasy, a popjunkie's paradise, and there's hardly a moment in it that isn't part of some overarching construct meant to elicit a specific reaction. In Shaun, as in Hot Fuzz, it's all about the pay-off. Wright's strategy is to be comically high and narratively straight-faced for about half of the movie and then deliver on all the set-ups in roughly the second half. I think it's euphemistic to say that he plays it safe in the beginning of Shaun, and in an angry or impulsive mood I'd say that the whole thing is essentially movie bullshit, a pack of dirty lies.

The beginning humor and exposition gradually build into the fabric of the film. The word exacerbate, Timesplitters 2, the Night of the Living Dead named mother, Barbra, the asshole roommate, and the pub/gun Winchester are some examples from Shaun. Wright is the kind of filmmaker who doesn't leave loose ends, and every piece of his film is either referential, trivial, or character building. Movie lovers see this as a way of adding depth to a film, but detractors interpret it as a way of resiting or inhibiting naturalism. Wright places reality into his film, and there's an obvious contradiction in this style.

Or is there, right? What artists, besides the non-fiction filmmaker or writer, and even they are often accused of steering the emotions of the audience, deal in reality? You know this conversation, of course, the one about nature vs. naturalism, the Bresson debate, the Neorealism angle, the vérité style, etc etc etc. Most people have heard the debate a million-trillion times, and I guess some people won't even have it anymore.

Wright's sin is that he uses filmic devises to reveal his characters' emotions, which means that the emotional high-points are grounded in basically a bedrock of falsity. He's a child of movies, and he's a moviemaker. The question I find myself asking myself is, am I, while watching his movies, again being that usher in front of his manager, disliking a film based on obscure and irrational pretext, or am I a matured filmwatcher, disallowing the unnatural and the unsubtle to affect me?

Drag Me to Hell.

Recent from Moderate Revolt:

If I studied linguistics I know it'd tell me that embedded in the construction of our words, phrases and general articulations, our verbal habits and idiosyncrasies, are portals into which our personalities can be peered. I've heard about this. It makes sense. An erudite linguist could uproot many of my personality traits through an examination of the sentence structure in this blog alone. S/he could tell me the meaning of my usages and the implications of my syntax. I think about this a lot: it goes beyond education because to a certain extent I have to write the way I do because I am the way I am.

I don't study linguistics, but I study film. And I know certain filmmakers pretty well. It was nice to see Sam Raimi again this year. He was all over his new film Drag Me to Hell, which is a terrific genre film, theater experience, and reentry into one of American cinema's most imaginative minds. His impact on filmic creativity through camera and narrative could be discussed separately, but I won't now, although I will really quickly remind the readers of the kinetic, impulsive, and bold style found in his Evil Dead films, and his Quick and the Dead and Darkman films. To an extent everything he directs bares his mark, but a director's mark is far different from a director's soul. Raimi is one of the lucky few (compared to the unlucky many) who found a way through his artistic medium to expose entirely his human soul, and that soul I haven't felt to the extent I felt it in Drag Me since the Quick and the Dead, which wasn't a very good movie. Drag Me is.

Drag Me to Hell comes to us from out of the depth of the idea Raimi lives by, and I was there at Century City to experience the mingling of laughter and shrieks, the unease of the audience, the unpredictability of the screen and the adventurousness of the narrative. There's ostensibly a moral center to the film, like any great genre film, but like any great genre film that moral center is only there to glue together the separate elements and to insulate the narrative. It should have nothing to do with didacticism or sentiment etc. It doesn't here, so forget it. I don't want to hear it. The nexus of Drag Me is Raimi; the film is comprised of ideas Raimi has formally presented, beginning with his Evil Dead series, subsequently in his other films, and certainly in the horror films he has produced over the last several years.

The horror films he has produced take flack in the film community for being PG-13, and no less than Clive Barker has come out and positioned this mass-audience approach as an insincere alternative to making 'adult' horror films (I don't really believe in an 'adult' or 'mature' horror film, really, because the best audience for a horror film will always always be a child, for reasons we can speak of later but are pretty obvious). I kind of thought Barker was right too, but then again I was one of the few unfortunates who had seen Boogeyman. We were wrong. Drag Me is PG-13, and it's the most exhilarating, unnerving, entertaining, and effective horror film I've seen in years. I know I'm right because I saw it in the theater, and I heard the laughs and I heard the screams. The audience, all adults, became one unit tethered to the screen and sharing the experience of one long moment of agonized enjoyment. Raimi reminds us with Drag Me that there's a craft (!) to the horror enterprise. His tools were character, narrative, and structure, not exclusively gore, immorality, camp, gimmick, or nudity, the components which alone are meant to describe the mature horror film. They're mostly all present though, too.

I know I'm not really talking about the film, but describing a horror film is exactly like describing a joke. In fact, comedies and horror films are almost inseparable by nature and critical panning (didn't one reviewer, quoted on IMDb, say something to the effect of "The film is good but Raimi could be doing better things"? And what the fuck does that mean? It seems to imply that Raimi could be doing better things than making good films, which I don't know if the critic wants Raimi to enlist in a different trade or what). Maybe you wouldn't like it, I don't know. I doubt you wouldn't.

What I want to say here is that Raimi made me feel, and he penetrated the numbness I hope to be penetrated when I enter the theater. What film can go beyond that and what other purpose can film have? I wish someone could explain to me that the way I fear is different from the way I suffer, or the way I enjoy, or love or laugh or whatever whatever. It seems that a chamber drama which exhibits all these emotions together will be well received, but a film that offers chamber horror won't be. Why not? Emotions exist freely and fluidly together. A certain mark of admiration is given to films that make us feel dramatically and deeply sympathetic, but not to films that make us feel frightened or giddy. Bullshit to that. And bullshit to the notion that this idea perpetuates because the latter are single-dimensional. Here are the dimensions: the dimension of Raimi as a filmmaker exposing his fear and laughter, the dimension of the film itself, and the dimension of the audience responding. You're a moron if you think those are three dimensions easy to control, I mean it (if you wish to dispute that you are a moron, or think I wouldn't call you a moron in person, you can leave your number in the comments section and I'll call you). (Just kidding we're all friends I'm just tying up here with a certain amount of hyperbole, anyway you probably all have my number!).

It's basically my goal to accomplish what Raimi accomplishes in Drag Me, which is the accomplishment of erasing one's presence from the narrative and establishing oneself as the narrative's receptacle. Most great fiction and non-fiction do this to an extent anyway, even the truly great autobiographical stuff which simply uses the narrative as a doppelgänger (copy and pasted for the dots above the a).

P.S. I know I'll never get around to writing about it, but I think an excellent paradigm for what I'm talking about could be found by modeling the "white-trash" (as I hear it called) Escape from NY against the white-collar (we'll call it for the purpose of contrast) CQ. I believe these two movies ride virtually the same train of thought, the key difference being that Roman Coppola allows himself a surrogate character who defuses and interprets the filmic peculiarities. I also believe this method might make CQ more believable and palpable, but not more natural, honest, or artistic. Coppola writes himself as an observant arbiter. That's fine. I like CQ. I love Escape from NY. I love it because Carpenter participates in his apocalypse. He doesn't write himself into the movie. He doesn't need to because if you know Carpenter, and you can know him by watching his movies, you'll know that Carpenter's personality is the vessel through which we are receiving his film. A great visual symbolism for this would be to imagine Coppola sitting next to a projector, spooling the machine. Imagine Carpenter then projecting the film through his eyes (an image not too dissimilar from a certain scene in his Cigarette Burns, oddly). America's general failure in perceiving this is testified by our overall refusal to call Carpenter anything above a genre filmmaker, while in France and England etc they call him what he is. An auteur.

Carpenter's The Thing plays midnight at the Nuart, coincidentally. Great fucking movie.