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Drunkboxer posted:I’m on team Leprechaun because Warwick Davis tries his very bestest The first movie also has a really offensive intellectually disabled character and can't decide if Jennifer Anniston is 26 or 14. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Mar 26, 2020 |
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Mar 25, 2020 22:49
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Franchescanado posted:Jennifer Anniston can't figure out her character from scene to scene. It's so inconsistent that the one strong player in the movie besides the monster is actually the weakest. Anniston stands out because she's clearly an actress but is flailing and giving a sub-Friday the 13th performance.
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Mar 26, 2020 01:27
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I think Universal Monsters is my horse in this race and I feel like it isn't really getting the respect it deserves. Monster Squad was Tristar and not really related to the Universal movies right?
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Mar 26, 2020 16:26
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Prophecy and Amityville are both 4 PM background movies on Scfi in 1999. Of the two Prophecy is the more interesting to look up at and doesn't have so many lovely sequels.
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Mar 26, 2020 18:06
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M_Sinistrari posted:Having sat through all the Amityville films in the last October Ironman, I can honestly say that No, not by any stretch are there any 4 films in the franchise that's better than 4 in the Prophecy franchise.
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Mar 26, 2020 20:33
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Does This Island Earth count as Universal Horror? I mean the 30 little Universal Monster bobbleheads I had a kid says yes, but just checking.
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Mar 26, 2020 23:21
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I think both Leprechaun and The Prophecy fill an interesting space in horror. The slasher franchises were either ending or stalling at this time. While I don't think the 90s were that dire, there definitely wasn't a sense of cohesion to horror. It was a genre trying to figure itself out. Like Leprechaun, The Prophecy is not good--although not as bad as Leprechaun. But as a chubby preteen in the late 90s, these films still felt like something. The Prophecy felt like it was sustaining a sense of canon I don't have nostalgia for Prophecy so much as I have nostalgia for this weird period of time living in the shadows of the 80s and finding its way. In a lot of ways, The Prophecy is maybe the most representative of this sort of lost time of horror. It's not as middling as other franchises of the time and has more charm than the Scream rip offs that would try to bring on a new age of horror. It's a movie that has ambition and sometimes shows glimmers of promise. If it was going against a better franchise it should be eliminated, but it's not. It's up against Amityville Horror. We can talk about the bad sequels, but I think we need to be clear: The first Amityville is BAD. It is dour and boring while somehow also indulging in bullshit pseudo-science. It is everything boring about haunted house horror and it would have been easily forgotten if Poltergeist and The Shining hadn't come out a few years later to show how you loving do a haunted house story. It is a lovely movie elevated by both when it was released and the lies of conmen who inspired this lovely movie. There is no reason to vote for Blood Rayne when there is a clear winner for this matchup. Do the right thing.
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Mar 28, 2020 03:57
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I actually struggled with Blair Witch vs Basket Case. But I'm a weirdo because I not only count the original as a great film--I'd say it's better than Basket Case as much as Basket Case is a joy--but appreciate the first sequel and actually like the second one. Not that it impacted my choice too much with Manhunter being counted, but does Hannibal the TV series count in consideration for the Lecterverse?
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Mar 31, 2020 02:09
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Basebf555 posted:Yea that Jaws/TCM matchup is a tough one. Jaws just had such a huge impact on my childhood. First Spielberg and first legitimately scary movie my parents sat me down and actually showed me(as opposed to stumbling on stuff on cable tv). Not that it isn't horror, but I think if the shark robotics worked like intended than we would view it more in-line as a disaster movie of the late 70s albeit a really good one. It's really the Psycho influenced POV sheets and music that really push it into the horror category. I think looking in line with Spielberg's action films like Raiders, Jurassic Park, and Minority Report---Spielberg likes heroes who are not particularly powerful, often barely surviving over hardcore badasses. I think there is another version of Jaws that is more definitively action/disaster, but because Spielberg is copping Psycho and because he tends to favor vulnerable heroes, it becomes a horror movie. And while it is a good horror movie, the original TCM isn't a disaster movie that becomes horror because it's evoking Hitchcock at his most slashery. It's a horror movie that at every turns defines the genre in a way that I'm not sure even The Exorcist does. The aesthetic, the sound design, the grotesque interpretation of the base fear of being eaten, the structure of the friends being picked off one by one, the urbanized fear that anything can be happening in the country... And it's literally doing it by taking the same source material as Psycho and flying in completely uncharted waters with it. Jaws is one of the most important movies ever made. It defined the idea of the blockbuster. But TCM is essential for horror. But also the sequels/remake average out to be better.
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Mar 31, 2020 16:58
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TrixRabbi posted:I think we're due for an upset of the #1 seed and Phantasm is the series to do it. As fun as Freddy is as a villain, the sequels reach a true rock bottom of garbage after a certain point. I struggled with Evil Dead and Sleepaway camp. I love the first one but it's too gross--not in a fun way--of a movie, and Return to... is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I stared at Hellraiser and Poltergeist for longer than I thought I would. I tend to grade on highs more than an average, and I do think that Hellbound is a better sequel than Poltergeist II. I'd probably put Hellraiser III and Bloodlines over Poltergeist III as well. But Poltergeist is a masterpiece in a way Hellraiser can never be and the sequels never dip to such low depths.
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Apr 3, 2020 18:34
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Look I'm going to be real, when all is said and done, there is a really clear winner to this: The Universal Horror Movies. Films that were milestone for not just horror but film in general. I mean Bella Lugosi got on screen and gave the rest of film a crash course in villainy. Frankenstein and Bride are loving beautiful and subversive. The Mummy is a proto-slasher. The Wolfman and the Creature are iconic designs. And that's only scratching the surface. The only thing I'd really be okay overtaking it is Romero Zombies. And I have soft spots for other stuff. Scream is my favorite movie and I'm a Friday the 13th guy. But when we consider horror franchises, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the MOST a franchise. Not in the Witchcraft sense of having too many movies or the Saw sense on losing itself in lore. With a below .500 record, Freddy films may not all be great, but goddamn are they cohesive. Halloween, Child's Play, and Friday the 13th all got lost figuring out what their deal is or how to move forward. Jason isn't really Jason till Part IV. But Freddy is the greatest horror villain ever, a perfect balance of enjoyable and deplorable. There is a clear evolution of the series into demented Loony Tunes for better or for worse, but Englund's performance anchor things. While 4-6 are bad, you go in knowing what you're going to get: Creative and weird kills, a charismatic villain, and a poo poo plot. It sucks Phantasm couldn't have some weaker competition. I'd lover for Jeepers Creepers to go against Friday and Phantasm go against The Conjuring. But that's not what happens man and A Nightmare's quality isn't about counting bad movies against the good ones. It's a movie series with an identity that transcends the sum of its parts.
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Apr 4, 2020 02:40
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STAC Goat posted:To be honest, I think the Universals are kind of a cheat. Its a big wide nebulous range of movies based on a studio and there's like 4 franchises within it. I think there should be a real question of what counts. The problem is Universal branding. Like I don't think Phantom and Hunchback really count, but you also get into the dicey issue of the Creature films which comes out six years after the last big crossover of Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. They never really properly crossover outside of Universal's branding. I would argue considering The Dracula Movies, The Frankenstein Movie, The Wolfman, and all their relevant crossovers as one film series is fair since those are the three characters that actually crossed over consistently. And altogether that's only 12 movies. But that's clearly not how the entry in the competition was made, and it would suck to not see The Mummy and The Creature essentially not even be in consideration.
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Apr 4, 2020 03:55
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STAC Goat posted:But again, I don't really like the whole big blanket over all the Universal films even ones not really connected to each other. So its just more complication. I probably would have gone "The Larry Talbot/Dr. Frankenstein Saga" (as Basebf very cleverly named), Frasier's Mummy alone, and maybe the Dark Universe in its own thing along with like "Universal Mummy", "Universal Invisible Man", "Universal Creature", "Universal Dracula", etc and seen how it shaped out if any of them ranked. But again, I favored some kind of ballots or play in which in that case it would have come down to whether people wanted them in or not. I don't think it's really a big deal since the sub-franchises like the Creature films probably wouldn't make it that far on their own, but could probably beat Critters and poo poo. But I think it's fair to say the Universal Horror includes: Dracula (English and Spanish) Frankenstein The Bride of Frankenstein Dracula's Daughter Son of Frankenstein The Wolfman The Ghost of Frankenstein Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman Son of Dracula The House of Frankenstein The House of Dracula Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein But yeah the OG Universal Mummies+Fraser Mummies+Dark Universe Mummy as well as the Creature films which would have both eventually fell should have their own entries.
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Apr 4, 2020 16:57
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Shrecknet posted:It is thus! Thanks for doing this by the way! I'm a teacher in NYC and things are crazy right now. So this stuff is a fun distraction.
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Apr 5, 2020 01:30
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alansmithee posted:Someone sell me on the original Universal monster movies. I've actually never seen them (or at least not in their entirety, I'm sure I've picked up scenes here and there and they obviously have a large cultural osmosis effect going on). Do they still have any sort of impact today, or is it basically a case where they're classics so people are really valuing them for their historical import? A lot of movies I've seen from that period just have not aged well to me, even compared with some things that aren't that much more modern like a lot of Hitchcock stuff. Dracula isn't as good. I agree with Lurdiak that it's very play like--I'd actually argue that Frankenstein is too at times, but borrows from German aesthetics that make it look more striking--but Lugosi is the star of the film. Freddy might be the greatest horror villain, but I'd argue that Lugosi's Dracula is the most influential. Do you get Hannibal Lecter without his Dracula? Darth Vader? Hans Gruber? So many Bond villains? There are other proto-supervillains, but often depicted as gross racial stereotyped goblins like Fun Manchu. But Lugosi's Dracula is sexy, he's funny, magnetic, and authoritative. Lugosi's performance left a lasting impression on cinema that really can't be overlooked. The rest of the movies are fine. Wolfman's a decent potboiler with decent special effects. None of the Dracula sequels are that good. The Frankenstein movies after Bride are all B movies including the crossovers like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. House of Frankenstein is probably the better of the lot and does a decent job at being the sort of finale for the series despite the other movies that would follow. There is a good closure to the characters. I think that doesn't really do a good job at selling Universal Monsters as the clear winner of this competition because it means that--of the movies we're apparently dealing with--Three are really good with the rest being decent to kinda bad. That's not too dissimilar to Halloween or Romero Zombies' track record. But I think that there is another important part of this that really shows the influence of Universal Monsters: Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It's a funny movie and very well-made, but I think it defines something about horror: It's malleable. Frankenstein started as this beautiful, subversive character study and one of the greatest movies ever made... it went on to star in B-movie matinee silliness that appealed to children... and then when to outright comedy. And the thing if that it all worked. The Universal Horror movies previewed how horror was a special genre. It could be classy and thoughtful or mindless or downright silly and it all works. So like, they are really important. I think they're similar to kaiju movies or slashers where once you get into the swing of things, you get engaged, and even the lesser stuff is watchable and enjoyable on some level. But they're slow and often more gothic than scary. Try to watch Frankenstein and Bride. If you like them then you might as well watch Dracula and Wolfman. If you leave Wolfman being mostly bored--which ya know, fair--you're good to bail on the rest. Invisible Man is worth going back to though because it's a hoot and if you have fondness for 50s B-Movies, checkout the Creature films. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Apr 5, 2020 |
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Apr 5, 2020 14:49
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STAC Goat posted:Frankenstein is good but its definitely flawed in a lot of obvious ways and none of the scares live up to modern standards.
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Apr 5, 2020 16:07
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Darthemed posted:Wait, wait, wait. Back up.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:13
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Man, kind of bummed about Poltergeist. I know it's two good movies vs one good movie, but one of those movies is a masterpiece. And yeah PA deserved to go on. It's good. Ya'll trying to be a bunch of cool kids. This round was a no brainer, but anyone entertaining the idea of Leprechaun needs to go back to the third act of Child's Play Part 2. V 4 might be bad but has a scare involving a Kinect and that's a good type of bad V Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Apr 8, 2020 |
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Apr 8, 2020 01:17
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1. Part 6 2. Part 4 3. Part 2 4. Part 7 5. Freddy vs Jason 6. Part 1 7. Part 5 8. Remake 9. Part 8 10. Jason X 11. Part 3 12. Goes to hell Part 3 is way too mean-spirited
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Apr 9, 2020 15:32
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Friday the 13th Part 6 is them realizing Friday the 13th is for children, and it's better because of it.
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Apr 9, 2020 17:57
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I think the weird thing about Friday--and something to hold against the series--is that Jason is only his platonic ideal in 4. He gets the mask in 3, but he has that sort of hunched over look, is actually kind of nasty, and doesn't seem that strong. 4 is him hulking, unstoppable but still human, and with the hockey mask the whole time. As an aside, one thing I love that his mask has continuity. He has the notch in it from the ax in Part 3 and the side is destroyed in Part 7 and 8 from the motor in 6. They start walking it back in 8.
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Apr 9, 2020 19:48
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Agreed. Re-animator is great, but both Alien and Aliens are on Universal Monsters or Romero Zombie level of being cinema defining. I love Return of the Living Dead, but Final Destination is better as a franchise.
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Apr 11, 2020 19:26
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SIDE-DEBATE: If it came down to Friday vs Return of the Living Dead, is this essentially a dance off? If so, does the tag team of the Part 4 and Part 5 dances beat the Graveyard dance?
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Apr 12, 2020 16:00
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I think it's a little unfair to other franchises to get too precious with the Romero Living Dead films. I'm fine ignoring 3D because it borders on a fan film, but Snyder Dawn absolutely should count. Even if you don't care for it, it's a thoughtful remake in that it takes the premise of the original and actively reworks it. The wet fart Day of the Dead remake also probably counts.
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Apr 13, 2020 15:10
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I'm happy to not die on a hill over Friday Parts 3 and 5 only being ok.
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Apr 14, 2020 15:29
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One thing I'd put against Night of the Living Dead, and it's kind of a weird argument, is that its presentation almost creates an illusion of subversion. NotLD presents itself as a goofy monster movie and then ends in what is probably the mot devastating gut punch of any movie. But because it does go for a corny vibe at first, is black and white, and I believe is using library music, it retroactively seems older than it is. It's easy to forget that it came out the same year as Rosemary's Baby and only five years before The Exorcist. The Twilight Zone was rolling out episodes like "I Am the Night; Color Me Black" with very similar politics four years earlier. You kind of lose over time that NotLD was kind of a throw back when it was released.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:30
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^Remember Hannibal the show counts.^ I think it's important to remember: Tremors is a really good movie. Like it's a silly B-movie. But it has fun characters, cool monsters, but also a really good sense of geography. You always have a good sense of the town, where things are. It's this really important thing that you don't think about, but the film really hinges on it. It's a toss-up, but I went with Tremors with a "what would I want to throw on TV right now?" test. Gonna flip a poo poo if the Universal Monsters get bested by Chucky or Jason though. Also, campaigning hard that Evil Dead or Scream should beat Nightmare.
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Apr 18, 2020 18:54
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I mean honestly at that point you get into the discussion of just what is the best horror movie. Because Scream, The Exorcist, and Blair Witch become a lot stronger. Lurdiak posted:Voting for one movie is not really in the spirit of things. This is specifically about franchises. If this was a tag team wrestling match, Tremors would come out incredibly strong and then the minute the first one runs out of breath the entire team would get bodied. I think Hammer Dracula collectively as a franchise has a lot of good poo poo, but I do think it matters that it doesn't have a single film that's really as good as Tremors. Also, Hammer films are really good Universal Monsters fan fiction while Tremors has an actually original monster. 
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Apr 20, 2020 03:38
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Shrecknet posted:Its honestly just F13, I would venture every other franchise has a consensus best film (usually the first)
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Apr 20, 2020 19:04
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Franchescanado posted:Ghoulies 2, Hellraiser 2, Evil Dead 2, Final Destination 2, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Friday the 13th 2, Critters 2, Leprechaun 2, Child's Play 2, Gremlins 2, Puppet Master 2, Bride of Frankenstein, The Devil's Rejects, Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, Saw 2, Dawn of the Dead are all better than their originals.
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Apr 21, 2020 15:37
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Shrecknet posted:Texas Chainsaw Massacre is good, I gave it that. But I saw it after having seen just so, so many other Cannibal Redneck Murderer movies that it didn't click with me.
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Apr 21, 2020 23:57
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TheBizzness posted:I’ve seen a lot of coming around on Halloween 4 lately and I’m glad of it. It was always my favorite behind the original and now H40.
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Apr 23, 2020 12:30
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Scream is the ending for slashers as a genre. Not that it killed slashers, that would happen regardless. But it is spiritually the ending of what Halloween started. Like there have obviously been slashers after the fact, but I think it was this nice ribbon on that almost twenty year period after the original Halloween. After Scream, anything else seemed like a throwback because Scream is the inevitable endpoint of slashers. It's inarguably Wes Craven's masterpiece. Even Nightmare feels messy and uneven at times, but loving Scream man. Scream is this perfectly sanded piece of furniture. Its themes are both clear, nuanced, and ahead of their time--making the observation that slut and virgin shaming are just the same misogyny with a different name. And that loving ending... I don't know if there is a horror film that has such fun and cathartic ending as the end of Scream. I always have such a huge smile on my face. So yes, the other Scream movies were destined to suffer a similar fate as Halloween sequels. They're never that level of refinement. They're messy and weird, but they're also, ya know, good. Scream 2 is probably the best with very prescient critiques for the bullshit violent media scapegoating that would happen during Columbine. Scream 3 suffers from mostly just repeating Sidney Prescott's arc from the first film and four is a very jumbled critique of social media and found footage but also reboots. But the problem is Scream is such a high bar that the fact that I'm discussing character arcs and thematics is unfair of the sequels. 2, 3, and 4 are all good by slasher sequel standards and it's because they know what made slashers appeal. The Slasher genre has this legacy of sexist stereotypes that are so unfair of the core big entries. Even Friday the 13th, the boobiest of the classic slashers, still has some fun and pretty well-drawn heroines when it's not about Tommy Jarvis. The classic slashers had stronger characters than they get credit for, and Scream was incredibly smart to invest in its main cast and so loving smart for killing Jamie Kennedy in 2. Yes, they never live up to the first film, but sometimes you have to reward the motherfuckers always trying to ice skate up hill.
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Apr 23, 2020 15:35
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Jedit posted:People are voting Scream over Blade who didn't watch the TV series. It wasn't an action oriented show, it was more focused on politics and it took some pretty mean turns. I think Scream also needs to get points for just consistency. There's no change of directions or nonsensical retcons--although I'm sure people don't like the Part 3 revelation although it does feel right from a slasher commentary perspective considering Nightmare, Friday, and Halloween all went down similar roads. Anyway I need it to win this rounds so I can explain why it's better than Evil Dead. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 18:34
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Timby posted:Oh, gently caress off with this. They also did successfully troll a lot of people into thinking that it was an actual psuedo-reboot.
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Apr 24, 2020 03:56
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The caller idea gag, the movie theater murders, the shock of Randy's death, really unpacking the ramifications of Cotton who is not a murderer but still a lovely dude, having the murderer being a parent who blames Sidney's mom as a stand-in for parents blaming the media for their kids's lovely behavior. Scream 2 is great, it's just a sequel to a perfect movie.
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Apr 24, 2020 22:42
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New Nightmare is fine and is a fun meditation on the idea of scary stories and why we tell them. But I think it does bug me that Scream gets pegged as a simply a meta movie, and let's be clear, that's part of it, but it's also not what makes the movie special. Friday the 13th Part 6 also has characters openly discussing horror movie tropes. Scream is something else. If you voted for Blade just on the love for Blade 1, here is why you need to change your vote: 1-- Scream is a fantastic whodunnit. Look at this goddamn piece of artwork. You get the goofy fun of Randy calling out the correct fact that the dad is a red herring and Billy is the killer, but also check Matthew Lillard's performance. First you see him getting anxious as he realizes that Billy is still a suspect, so he transitions to trying to plant hints that the father is the murder, planting the seeds so he can frame Mr. Prescott later. But then he starts to get anxious as Randy is unconvinced and goes on his "Everybody's a suspect" rant. You can see there is both anxiety over being found out and also over the fact that they might have to kill Randy. And it's not even the only scene like that! Watch this scene where Stu openly gloats to Sidney about how he murdered her mother (The only murder Stu was involved in at this point in the film) and Billy subtly tells him to shut the gently caress up. Randy correctly guesses why Stu chose them as victims, and Billy once again subtly tells him to calm the gently caress down. 2-- Scream is a fantastic slasher. The opening scene of Scream is amazing. A great magic trick of recreating and upping the Psycho technique of killing your big name actor, but it also might be the best slasher scene on film? It definitely rivals the Psycho shower scene or the Halloween closet scene. I love and appreciate Blade and even Blade II, but for gently caress's sake. The best scenes of Blade cannot rival the mastery of pacing and tension that is that scene. Or how good a job Drew Barrymore does of getting you invested in her. It's legitimately harrowing and devastating on the first watch to see her die. But the whole thing works like an overture, heightening the sense that no one is safe. The attack on Sidney, the garage scene, and the film's finale are all just amazing. As much as I agree with Scream being the end of slashers, go back to the moment of Stu and Randy bickering and Sidney just legitimately having no idea what to do, who to trust. Halloween and Friday the 13th all have that moment where things are sort of unraveling for the heroine and the bad guy seems unstoppable, but I think Scream does probably the best job at really putting you in the point of view of a heroine who's losing the plot and has no idea what to do. You really have no idea what's going on in that first watch. 3-- Scream is feminist as gently caress-- Scream is the story of a girl who deep down questions if the mean girls in the bathroom were right: Her mother's promiscuity made her deserving of murder. Sidney overcorrects and is wary of sex. This only sets her up to essentially be guilted into sex by a man who reveals to be the actual person who murdered her mother. In the end of the film, Sidney is lectured by the man who killed her mother and essentially raped her by gaslighting her into sex. She sees the game. It doesn't matter if you're a slut or you're a virgin, they'll always be some turd like Billy making you fee like poo poo. So, she takes loving control. She doesn't only emasculate them by robbing them of their costumes and doing their scary voice. She doesn't just completely diminish them by doing the simple act of calling the loving police. She takes control of the film itself. Scream is never from the killer's POV, always the victim. So when Sidney takes control, the film is finally from Billy and Stu's PoV because they're the victims. It even rewrites the Halloween closet scene. Billy the villain is still outside the closet, Sidney is inside, but instead of hiding and cowering, she shoots out and stabs the gently caress out of him. I really don't think that I have such a trained dopamine release from a movie as when Billy and Stu lose Sidney and the phone rings. But of course Sidney doesn't just kill Billy. Gale helps. Gale who is depicted as being a bitch the whole movie and what does the end of the movie reveal? gently caress yes Gale is a bitch and the exact woman needed to shoot a motherfucker. Could Gale Weathers kill Blade? You know the goddamn answer. Scream is not just a meta movie about slashers. It genuinely might be the greatest Slasher ever made, the grand finale of a genre, perfecting and refining it. And on top of that, it just has an amazing batting average. Scream 2 isn't as tight and nowhere nearly as good a whodunit, but it's heads and shoulders above some of the depth of crap that other stuff gets into. Same for Scream 3 and Scream 4. It is a goddamn travesty if the end of this bracket isn't Scream vs Evil Dead. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Apr 26, 2020 |
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Apr 25, 2020 18:27
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TrixRabbi posted:Child's Play didn't exactly have tough competition either, but that one is at least a deserving classic. A-Tier if not high B-Tier franchise. If I had to choose, I think I would rather watch all the Child's Play movies over all the Halloween, Nightmare, or Friday movies. I think it's not going to hang with what look like the the big dogs (Universal, Evil Dead, Romero). But I think it really rides on a pretty strong baseline of quality while never being great outside of like 25 minutes in 2.
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Apr 26, 2020 18:39
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STAC Goat posted:Its really not "The Wolfman Saga", I think we just dubbed it the "Larry Talbot Saga" because he's the most common link. Random reason for why you should vote for Friday the 13th: "What were you going to be in you grew up?" is actually the funniest line in any slasher outside of "Eat poo poo and live."
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Apr 29, 2020 12:53
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When we talk about franchises, I feel like impact has to matter. It's part of what elevates Nightmare on Elm Street despite the lovely sequels. The Exorcist is an outstanding movie. If we're discussing best horror movie... I don't know. But my mind immediately jumps to questions like "Is it better than Bride of Franeknstein?" "Is it more important than Texas Chainsaw Massacre?" It's a novel as film, has a great score, but most importantly, provided language that would define an entire genre. But here's the thing, Alien, as a franchise, did that twice. Alien sits in such contrast of the aesthetics of sci/fi. Its closest cousin is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both films deal with the mechanization of people, but 2001 is a hopeful movie. It's about mankind reclaiming its destiny as seekers and not allowing itself to be dulled by luxury and become tools for machines. Alien offers no such hope. Alien ups the mechanization of people. The crew is represented by blue collar workers, often sleeping away their existence, as they serve a faceless company that in its anonymity is given a level of menace that I'm not sure the Romulans or the Empire ever achieve. They are being secretly monitored by a robot, any agency they feel they have is a lie. They're just a means to an even more perfect efficient mechanized worker. When one of the crew members is raped and gives birth to a monster, the film reveals that this isn't an accident. This is functionally part of the plan. Even the most intimate things like sex and birth are perverted and commodified by the company. This robbing of the natural world is all over the movie with the womb like designs of parts of the ship and Mother as the ship's AI. In short, space travel is not an uplifting force. it's terrifying and fundamentally unnatural. The crew is constantly depicted as childlike in how they awake from their slumbers or in scale to the mysterious alien corpses they find. People get caught up in structure and like to describe Alien as a slasher or haunted house movie. Neither is fully right, but the haunted house description is closest. Alien depicted something fundamentally wrong with the act of going to space, that it possesses a fundamental existential dread. It is a mysterious void that are we are small and insignificant in the face of. It redefined how space could be depicted on film. It also has the greatest movie monster design on film. Then Aliens came around defined what monster movies would be for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. This thread has brought up a lot of stuff that threads the line between action and horror. It's not surprising when the Monster movie has been such a prevalent genre. Monster movies fundamentally have their roots in horror, but they often blend genres. Frankenstein and the Wolfman are closer to gothic tragedies than horror movies at times. Godzilla was discounted despite the OG being very much a horror movie--one that I'd argue is a thematic cousin to Alien. Jaws is more of a thriller. The giant monster movies like Them get thrown into sci/fi. Monsters always sort of throw off questions of what is horror It's often been argued that Alien is a horror movie whereas Aliens is not which is a load of poo poo. The whole trick of Aliens is that you have these soldiers who feel different, like they're not the same as the blue collar workers from Alien. And then they too are hosed over by the Company, finding themselves helpless in the face of something unstoppable. It's definitely horror But I'd argue that Aliens is most importantly a capital M monster movie and defined how monster movies work in modern cinema. Look at Jurassic Park which casts raptors as the big bad over the more traditional giant monsters of Spielberg's childhood to see the huge impact. Jaws was a great attempt at making a modern and actually good monster movie with the more realistic conceit of the killer shark. Aliens comes out in a backdrop of 80s horror movies that are defined by grotesqueness like the Blob or by humor like Gremlins. Aliens presents these monsters that don't have to rely on being gross, funny, or obscured. They are just really, really good monsters who can terrify a grown man with a machine gun as easily as a little girl. The Exorcist sequels are good and more consistent than Alien as a whole, but Alien has TWO of the most influential movies ever made with what might be a perfect monster design. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 19:50 on May 12, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 17:52
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