I read the book of the same title and found it as boring as burned toast, so I understand the need to create drama, shock and horror where there wasn't any to begin with. I understand too that American audiences have preconceived notions about what Vodou really is. They expect snakes and spiders, bonfires and chanting and lascivious black women in flowing white dresses, gyrating madly to bongo drums. Fine, whatever.
I've actually never seen a horror film about "voodoo" that I really liked. The Believers, Angel Heart, fucking Skeleton Key...I mean, all of them have nice ambiance and stuff but somehow, they all just fall short of the mark. They overdo it on the freaky shit and underplay the sincerity of the practice itself.
But I'm veering way off topic here. I'm supposed to be paying tribute to the late great Wes Craven, who unexpectedly died yesterday at the age of 76 from brain cancer. I didn't even know he was sick, let alone suffering from such a vicious form of the ultimate malady. Shit, I didn't even know he was 76. He has - had - a serious case of baby face.
That's okay though because there's really no point to this post. It's not about anything, I just wanted to talk about Wes Craven's films; the ones I hated, the ones I loved and even the ones I thought were just "meh." I really don't think he'd mind. Unlike a lot of people in the film business, Craven didn't strike me as a pretentious asshole. After all, this was the guy who once said: "I thought there would never be a sequel (to A Nightmare On Elm Street). Boy was I stupid."
So, excluding the already discussed Serpent and the Rainbow, here is a list of all of the Wes Craven films I have seen and my unasked for opinion on each one. If it ain't listed, I didn't watch it, so shut up.
Holy fucking shit. I rented this movie when I was 18, knowing nothing about it except that it had been directed by the guy who had done A Nightmare On Elm Street. This is a deeply sick and upsetting movie. It cannot be enjoyed. I can't conceive of anyone actually owning this and watching it numerous times. "Unpleasant" is an understatement. That said, I actually did watch this one twice - once when I rented it at the age of eighteen, and again when I had to review it and felt that too much time had passed to base my review on memory. Both times, I took a long hot shower afterwards. Much like I Spit On Your Grave, this is effective as an anti-violence vehicle by being as unglamorously violent as possible. Even the killers look sickened.
snerk, I accidentally misspelled that as The Hills Have Eeyes and it looked like The Hills Have Eeyores. Now that would be frightening. Anyway,I liked the premise of this one - nuclear family VS. nuked family. Looks really badly dated now and moves a bit slow in places - how long can we sit and watch Papa Jupiter and Michael Berryman jog through the desert? - but still, a strong statement about violence and the illusion of civilization.
The Hills Have Eyes 2
This one gets no accompanying picture.
Because it sucked the fart out of a dead mutants asshole.
Deadly BlessingCraven's mom was a religious nutzoid, hence his abhorrence for strict, puritanical rule.Some of the best things in the world have come from strict religious upbringings, i.e. Maynard James Keenan and...um...Maynard James Keenan. I'll give this one props for the Spider Swallow scene, featuring a very young Sharon Stone. Also for the snake in the bathtub scene, which would be repeated in A Nightmare On Elm Street with razor fingers instead of a garden variety rattler (or whatever the fuck species it was). Interesting premise, although I will never be able to fully scrub the afterimage of a sweaty Ernest Borgnine frenziedly whipping a young man. Yick.
A Nightmare On Elm StreetIt looks dated now and some of the acting has gone from wooden to stone cold petrified, but God I loved this movie. Still do. Such an amazing concept, such an original boogeyman. I had a full color poster of Freddy Krueger on my bedroom wall for years. I was such a diehard, dedicated fan that years later I did some digging that no one else had yet done and wrote THIS article, which went viral (my fifteen minutes of fame, yeehaw) and then promptly got plagiarized. But dammit, I was there first.
He liked the word "deadly" didn't he?
Anyway, this one was cute. I was 16 when this came out and remember renting it to watch at a slumber party with a bunch of girlfriends. Honestly, I only remember bits and pieces of it, and couldn't be fucked to give it a re-watch before writing this, but I do remember the Basketball-in-the-Face being a great highlight. Best part of the movie, actually.
Honestly, don't remember too much about this one, except being disturbed by the fact that Skinner from The X-Files was cussing and not wearing glasses. Also, omg the hair metal! Megadeth's cover version of Alice Cooper's No More Mr. Nice Guy (way too much Republicanism in there for me, considering Craven was a liberal), Dangerous fucking Toys and...does anyone even remember Saraya?
The People Under the StairsDidn't really care for this one. I liked the idea, I appreciated the casting of project dwelling, gangsta-livin', poverty stricken blacks as the heroes for a change, but the whole thing felt like a Tex Avery cartoon. Just a tad too over-the-top. Yeah, I get that it was supposed to be an urban fairy tale, but...just not my thing, I guess. I don't like the style. I didn't like it when Joe Dante did it for his "It's A Good Life" segment for the Twilight Zone movie either, even though I prefer that one to the diabetic treacle that was Speilberg's adaptation of "Kick The Can" (yeah, I got a can you can kick right here).
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
Meh.
So much promise, so little development of the storyline or arc of the mythos.
Oh well.
Even Freddy looks too streamlined and snazzy. I prefer him as a dirty, ragged old pervo bum.
<--- That's better.
I know there are genre fans who hated everything this film represented, which was a total mocking of the horror genre, but I enjoyed the hell out of it the first time I saw it. I was impressed by the brutal Psycho-esque butchering of what we presume is the main character 5 minutes into the film. I appreciated the fact that I couldn't figure out who had done it. I wasn't the horror expert then (cough) that I am now, but I liked it. Fucking sue me.
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| "She's got a bony ass... and fat thighs... and ugly skin." |
I love werewolf movies.
This one was...okay. Glad I had a free pass for it. But it had a lot to live up to, being a female werewolf movie following so closely behind Ginger Snaps, a female werewolf/menstruation film the likes of which hadn't been seen since The Company of Wolves. However, even if it failed to impress me as utterly as either Ginger or Company, it wins an award for Best GIF Ever to Come Out of a Female Werewolf Movie.
I had a free pass to this one too, but I would gladly have paid full price. This one was so much fun, and not just because Cillian Murphy does such a good, cold, smug-faced creep. Strong resourceful female + face-paced unrelenting action + AWESOME chase scene + a deep hatred for retail customers = WINNER.
So, thank you Mr. Craven. I may not have liked everything you did, but I can at least appreciate the ripples you created in the horror pool. You changed the genre forever, at a time when change was needed.
"Horror films don't create fear. They release it."
~Wes Craven
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