Welcome to My Study: Halloween Edition
You’re always welcome to enjoy the things that I’ve found. This weekend’s Halloween Movie Marathon [late post]:
1. Repulsion
One detail made this film great: the skinned rabbit rotting on a plate in the salon. Like in Rosemary’s Baby (probably my favorite scary movie), it’s subtle but it creeps you out long term.
But unfortunately there are more differences than similarities between the two films. Rosemary Baby tapped into a fear and anxiety that you already unconsciously hold - the fear of what neighbors do in their private lives. And after watching Rosemary’s, you can’t help but wonder about your neighbors. Its mood lingered. But in Repulsion, the fear is not internal, but it’s outside you and belongs only to the main girl in the film. We don’t share it. It’s the symptom of a psychiatric ailment. This made the film less scary to me than Rosemary’s. I guess you could say it’s a little easier to digest. Speaking of digest, I was just happy that at some point the girl didn’t bite into the rotting rabbit.
2. The Exorcist
This was my first time seeing it - and my wife’s 600th. I heard the writer, a humble and likable guy, on the radio Saturday morning and he said, “I’m not being cute. I really wasn’t trying to scare anyone with this book. It’s a story about faith.” After seeing it, I realized he was right. It really was about faith and love. Good movie, but not really the satanic horror movie that everybody makes it out to be. Yes, a possessed girl masturbates with a cross. But besides that…
I was a little disappointed. To be fair, I realize the effects aged poorly and that scenes that were probably mind-blowing in the 70’s now looked silly. I also realize that my viewing experience was doomed from the start by all of the ridiculous parodies I’ve seen of this movie. But I just didn’t expect it to wrap up so neatly. A good scary movie, in my opinion, should leave you unsettled. This movie wrapped itself up so nicely, you’d think it was a full house episode. Yes, the priest dies. But he dies so nobly. Oops, spoiler alert.
3. Don’t Look Now
I was really expecting big things from this one. While the film had a nice circular structure to it, it left too much unexplained. Basically a couple loses a daughter and moves to Venice. Then they encounter a couple of seers and the wife starts freaking out and returns home to England to check on her son. The husband starts seeing things, including his wife, who was supposed to have left Venice. I won’t spoil the rest.
I was loving the creepy vibe the husband was getting from everybody in Venice as he tried to track down his wife, but it never developed into anything. The film did not age well at all - the clothes (actually, she looked modern, while he, mustachioed and afroed, looked ridiculous) and the crazy 70s zooms were loony. And the sex scene was awwwkwardly long.
4. Eraserhead
“In heaven, everything’s all right…”
The first 30 minutes of this film was awesome. It got a little tedious after that. I loved the scene in the family room where the main character joined his girlfriend’s family for dinner and the man started shouting, “Look at my knees,” and they served those little disgusting oozing chickens. It reminded me how film is the perfectly suited medium for the surreal.
- November 7 2011 | Notes 5 - Permalink →
