Dr. X will build a creature

[sovay]

And because I have not watched nearly enough movies this year, in a little over half an hour I am meeting rushthatspeaks and derspatchel at the Somerville Theatre for a sci-fi/horror noon-to-midnight marathon. Starts with silent film and progresses decade by decade until we run out of Saturday sometime in the '90's. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to seeing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) on a big screen. Or The Invisible Man (1933). Or The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984). I've never seen Tremors (1990), or even heard of Dr. Cyclops (1940). And there's always time for Roddy McDowall, Yul Brynner, and Robby the Robot. (And one film to run out on to find dinner. This is important.)

I am looking forward.

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

That sounds amazing. I hope you get good clean prints so you can really see the crazy angles on the incredibly deep sets for Caligari. It's been way too long since I saw Buckaroo Bonzai.

[sovay]

I hope you get good clean prints so you can really see the crazy angles on the incredibly deep sets for Caligari.

We got an all right print of Caligari, but it didn't matter: on the big screen it is amazing, eye-filling in a way that sharpens details not only of the sets, but the characterizations. rushthatspeaks pointed out that even for the protagonist of an Expressionist film, Francis is at least two degrees of stylized out from the rest of the cast around him; I love how it doesn't matter that he's a seedy, sinister mountebank with a secret murder agenda, Caligari is totally sympathetic when he's stuck twiddling his thumbs in the self-important town clerk's office, waiting to fill out his permit to exhibit Cesare. And Conrad Veidt. Everything about Conrad Veidt. He's so beautiful, made up like a nightmare. Those eyes, choking-wide in their black diamonds of shadow or immovably locked shut. He's onstage so much less than I remember each time, but it never surprised me that he became the indelible image of the film.

It's been way too long since I saw Buckaroo Bonzai.

I'd never seen it on a big screen. I love that movie so much.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Caligari is an amazing film. I was exceptionally lucky that the first time I saw it was in a private viewing room at Columbia University as part of my undergrad film degree program.

On the other hand, I saw Buckaroo Banzai first on a tiny little television in a room full of people who had all seen it a million times, which was great in its own way.

[sovay]

I was exceptionally lucky that the first time I saw it was in a private viewing room at Columbia University as part of my undergrad film degree program.

I saw it for the first time on the bolted-to-the-wall television in the basement rec room of the Hall of Graduate Studies at Yale, home of the terrifyingly grotty couches, the partially broken foosball machine, and the carpet that always smelled like beer; it didn't matter. It was incredible. I've seen it twice since then on small screens, and am so glad to have finally experienced it as it deserves.

On the other hand, I saw Buckaroo Banzai first on a tiny little television in a room full of people who had all seen it a million times, which was great in its own way.

Yeah. I think my parents showed me that movie for the first time. (And I know I watched it again at Yale, because hans_the_bold was an excellent movie companion.) It is probably infinitely watchable.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

OMG, to see Buckaroo and Tremors on the big screen! If you think that Remors is a hoot, there are the sequel films and the TV show you should watch.

[sovay]

If you think that Remors is a hoot, there are the sequel films and the TV show you should watch.

Actually good sequel films? (I am always skeptical of these things.) I thought Tremors was brilliant; speak to me!

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

they actually are good sequel films, and the TV series was hysterical. If you think Giant Wyrms are fun, then the next stages of their evolution will amuse you. Puny Humans with opposible thumbs can be quite creative.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

Tremors hold a gleeful place in my heart. I wish you merry times with it.
--

c i r o

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

The wrong danged rec room.

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

INDEED.

[sovay]

Tremors hold a gleeful place in my heart. I wish you merry times with it.

I loved it. It was a monster movie where nobody has to be an idiot for the plot to work and the deaths are not moral judgments and people successfully pull together without being symbols of anything and every time I expected a cliché of the genre, Tremors sidestepped it. The little girl with her pogo stick doesn't get eaten as a sentimental shocker (and her mother doesn't get eaten trying to save her), the jerkass teenager doesn't get eaten as a comeuppance, the survivalists don't sacrifice themselves heroically for the rest of the group. The character who's a scientist is a real scientist, but she doesn't have all the answers, because her field's geology, not "underground goddamn monsters." The information she deduces about them—their numbers, their sensitivity to sound—goes straight into the common fund, from which everyone elaborates some plan or theory. Seriously, I think this movie had the largest percentage of survivors of any film of this type I've seen, and it was wonderful. The conventional ending would just have been Valentine, Earl, and Rhonda. Nope.

(Also, the most un-exploitative panty shot I've ever seen in a horror movie. Getting Rhonda out of her jeans saves her life, and as soon as Valentine has finished bandaging the barbed-wire cuts on her legs, she puts on a new pair of pants. It's not used as a romantic or a sexual moment; he doesn't even double-take at seeing her half-naked. She almost died in the same way as one of the linemen and she doesn't; that's what matters. It was really refreshing.)

Around the time the second monster made its appearance, rushthatspeaks leaned over and said on one side of me, "What these people have is a Shai-Hulud problem," moments before derspatchel said on the other, "Motherfucking wormsign," and I was pleased with the people in my life.

[gwynnega]

What fun! I would love to see The Invisible Man in a theater.

[sovay]

I would love to see The Invisible Man in a theater.

It was lovely.