31 Days Of Horror Day 31: Fright Night/Don't Look In The Basement

Phew.

I made it back home with my sanity still somewhat intact after a night of great horror movie debauchery at the great Aero Theater. A night spent with good friends, with good films in a great theater, what better way to celebrate Halloween?

What's more, I also finished yet another 31 Days Of Horror. When I appeared on On The Stick I was asked if I felt like I was running out of films to cover. Far from it. There's actually going to be a few bits of overflow in early November. Films I couldn't quite sandwich into 31 Days for various reasons. But which I wouldn't dream of not covering.

Still, 31 Days of one genre is 31 days of one genre. And I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was a bit fatigued, as I made it into the final week.

Of course all of that went away when I came in contact with the two afore mentioned movies.


Fright Night, is one of those heartening films that remind you that no matter how thoroughly you've scoured a genre, you've never seen everything. For whatever reason I'd never viewed the horror comedy classic until now and was thoroughly delighted to find it a great little movie. On Par with the likes of Army Of Darkness full of interesting wrinkles (I reserve the right to do a more indepth review of it later. Right Now I'm bushed) as well as some of the greatest practical effects I've ever seen.




The Aero also makes it policy to usually program in some horror movie to which I genuinely have no idea how to react to. (In this case with Blood Birthday as well, two). Whether The Children, the film that features a paunchy country good ole boy sheriff chopping the arms off of small radioactive children or Demons (No explanation necessary).

Of Don't Look In The Basement, I'm not going to say anything, since everyone deserves to walk into this one unspoiled. I will only say that it was one of the most batshit crazy things I've ever seen on the big screen (And remember I've seen The Candy Snatchers) and it worked the audience into a lather not very much seen outside of Pentecostal Prayer Meetings.

The rest of the festival was good as well, the well meaning and ambitious, but ultimately not very good Candyman, the aforementioned Madness of Bloody Birthday, as well as Phantasm, and Cementary Man, a movie I have never liked but I now realize makes perfect sense under extreme sleep depravation.

But beyond all that, I must return to those first two movies. If after 31 Days of force feeding horror, I can still be reached, entertained, and truly delighted, there is no other word for it, by two horror films as polar opposite as those two, well then the genre really does have magic. And I'll happily truck through 31 more days as long as I can.

Thanks for everyone who did 31 Days with me. Particularly those who the feature has introduced to the site. Here's hoping you'll stick around. It's going to be a great November...

Until next year, Happy Halloween, lets close the way we opened...

31 Days Of Horror: Day 29: Just Before Dawn

I’d always heard that Just Before Dawn was a real gem of a movie. A true classic of the genre ripe for rediscovery. I went in with high expectations, and the only part of the above statement I would disagree with is I still think that underrates it.

Call Just Before Dawn the thinking man’s slasher movie. Or rather don’t because it kind of makes you sound like an asshole. Hell I’m sorry I wrote that. My bad.

But affected demeaning of an entire sub genre aside, Just Before Dawn there’s no hiding the fact that Just Before Dawn is “smarter then the average slasher.” A tense moody, well made and shot piece of work that makes real creative and creepy use out of its rural surroundings rather then just having it act as the default horror setting the way so many lazier horror films do.

The film takes a tried and true genre plot. City folk go into the mountain, meet irate hillbillies, hijinks ensue. But the film unlikely finds new things to do with it. In one of the film’s cleverest twists the opening victims of the movie are a pair of Sons Of The South who look and act like the usual perpetrators in a “Good Ole Boys Run Amuck” Slasher. And further more the characters, though somewhat arrogant, are likable and developed beyond (granted perhaps not far beyond) fodder.

Like I said, the woods are suitably creepy and much is made out of their cathedral space. The horror sequences are also a notch above, with much more thought put into their staging beyond how best to frame the next gore shot. The film is actually quite low on violence, and it’s most affective (and justly famous) shot, were we watch as one of the stalkers, far in the background, slips unnoticed into the swimming hole containing our cast, holds none.


The film does have a few flaws, George Kennedy’s always nice to see, but he’s literally playing a walking deus ex machina. The film is well directed by Jeff Lieberman. Responsible for the infamous cult films Squirm and Blue Sunshine. And also the script for The Never Ending Story III. But lets not hold that too harshly against him.

But if there’s one thing that really pushed me over the edge into loving Just Before Dawn It’s that the Gender Politics at the core managed to go beyond being merely not embarrassing as they usually are with a slasher movie, and graduated to being actually pretty righteous.

Gender is a tricky thing to handle in genre fiction. I recently got into a bit of an argument with a reader over Wrong Turn. Particularly about whether Dushku’s role in Wrong Turn qualified as a strong female one. It’s a role that claimed to be empowering, and yet featured her tied to the bed being sexually molested by mountain men waiting for someone else to save her for a large portion of her screen time. Just Before Dawn serves as a potent counterpoint to say the least. You want a strong female protaginist? How about one who stays calm and cool while her male counter part turns to jello (he ends the film sobbing and literally hugging her knees) and when the big bad slåsher comes back for one last scare SHE SHOVES HER FIST DOWN THE MOTHER FUCKERS THROAT UNTIL HE CHOKES ON IT!!! Now that’s badass.

So what you’ve got here is a well shot, well made, well acted film, which manages to deliver the genre goods in spades. Like I said “The Thinking Man’s Slasher Film” might sound pompous. Perhaps the “Guilt Free Slasher Film” would be a bit better.

Foutaises

This post is part of Agitation of The Mind's Jeunet retrospective. Neil Fulwood has been putting up great stuff all week, and if you haven't been reading it thus far. I suggest you start.



There are two conflicting schools of thought on Jeunet. The first being he’s a whimsical genius who makes singular films. The other says that he was only a front for Marc Caro’s genius and once those two split Jeunet began making films so sugary that merely watching them will kill diabetics and give dentists cavities.

While I’ve never thrown in with Jeunet’s harshest critics there’s no denying that the idea is a persuasive one (Given of course, that one sets aside the wonderful Amelie). With Caro Jeunet made Delicatessen and City Of The Lost Children. By himself he made Alien Resurrection a film that makes me break into hives just thinking about it. And A Very Long Engagement and Micmacs. Both fine films (I think. I’m not going to lie I need to watch MicMac’s again before I feel comfortable giving it any kind of objective judgment, when I viewed it at BNAT my brain was pretty much mush), but both lack the focus of his earlier work.

Perhaps the easiest way to explore this is to take a look at the work in the shorts he did pre Caro. There’s not much of it, in fact one of the things that makes Jeunet such an odd filmmaker is just how small his filmography is. You could watch all his films in a day if you had the inclination.

To watch Fountaises is to watch the work of a filmmaker fully formed. Its not much plot wise, nothing more then the Jeunet muse Dominic Pinon saying what he likes and doesn’t, while Jeunet literalizes it, in unexpected ways. The sequence carries a shall we say strong familial resemblance to a few of Amelie’s famous sequences. But this is more proof that Jeunet knew what he wanted prior to meeting Caro and knew what he wanted to do afterwards, then anything else.

If anything what Fountaises suggests to me is Caro is the one who instigated the flights of fancy that, Jeunet is often criticized for. While the film’s tone is certainly heightened, to say the least, it contains none of the out and out fantastical that Jeunet’s films are so well known for, none of the Gilliam style fractures with reality.

There’s not much that can be told about Foutaise, the film is such a quick watch and so readily available that it almost seems silly to try. It’s a short with a crystallized sense of style, a clear feeling of authorship, and whose chief virtue is its energy and off kilter point of view. I believe you can say the same thing about everyone of Jeunet’s films, and certainly of Jeunet himself.