Better late than never - it's time for a summary of the pre-Christmas film evening.
Frankenstein (1931). My friend is a gentle fellow. He never complains directly, so you have to interpret the look on his face and his reactions to the movie in order to be in the know. What I saw was not good. You could tell that he had never watched a black and white movie from the beginning to the end before. Most of the time he had a look as if he was quietly asking himself: “What the f*** is this?” He agreed that the make-up still looks great today, but only after I had waxed lyrical about it.
I think there were not enough boxes that he could tick. Action? None. Gore? None. Great actors, mood – many of today’s younger people don’t expect that from a movie. As long as it is ‘entertaining’ and ‘funny’, they’re happy. Low expectations cause poor movies – and vice versa. If you don’t know what you’re missing, you can happily watch modern
torture porn flicks. It’s as simple as that.
How about me? I enjoyed it as much as always. A great early Horror movie, among the very best. Colin Clive was one fine actor, and Boris Karloff the best film monster (is it really a monster?) ever.
Dawn of the Dead. I was sitting there, taking a peek at my friend. Bingo, he likes the movie. Big relief. Apart from him complaining about the fake look of the blood (
SAW generation, I already told you that…), he enjoyed watching Romero’s movie.
A great mixture of Action movie and Zombie flick, spiced up with some social criticism – that’s what we both agreed on at the end.
How about me? I originally had the feeling that
Dawn is overly long. I have to admit now that I had ignored one of Romero’s stylistic devices. There was one single scene in the last third of the movie that I considered too long – I think that Romero wants the viewer to feel the boredom of the characters on the screen. Just my two cents, though.
Maniac. Now that’s difficult. My friend was both confused and amazed, I guess. The excellent special effects and make-up elicited approving sounds on his part more than once. The grim and dark story, on the other hand, and especially the unconventional narrative technique of the movie confused him quite a bit. He really disliked the main actor, Joe Spinell – not because of his acting, but because of his evil character. I could easily see my friend’s discomfort.
How about me? All things mentioned were further proof for something that I had already known for sure: Maniac is an excellent movie. Spinell’s performance is great, the movie’s special effects are still outstanding, and the pace is far better than that of most other ‘Slashers’. Add Caroline Munro, and you know why I like this movie so much.
City of the Living Dead. I’m gonna make this one short and sweet. I love this movie for its moody setting, its gentle pace, and for its trenchant gore scenes – my friend disliked it for the same reasons. He would have loved more action and blood, but less foggy settings and supernatural stuff. Oh dear, I was thinking for quite some time – will I have to watch this movie alone? At some points, he really looked as if he would fall asleep the next minute. But he made it. ‘Quite nice’ were his words at the end, coming close to a death warrant – you should hear him praise the first sequel of
SAW.
This ‘experiment' was not a real success, but it was no total failure either. We had a nice time together, drinking beer and watching movies, but I doubt he will continue watching ‘older’ Horror movies. I would have loved telling you about me turning him into a Horror film addict, but I wanted to stay as close to the truth as possible. After handing him the Arrow catalogue, he showed quite a bit of interest in the Arrowdrome release of
Day of the Dead – after I had told him that this was the sequel to
Dawn. Fulci? Ixnay. Argento? Don’t ask!
You cannot remedy the trials and tribulations of many years of modern Horror film watching – sad, but true.
Greetings!