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I've found that people are always jumping to wild conclusions concerning atomic reaction
As of this morning, I have a sore throat which I'm not thrilled about, but I still have a live computer, which is extremely cool. So now that I have my data back, here's the post I was going to make on Friday.
I do not believe the universe loves me and wants me to be happy. Based on the evidence of the last year and three-quarters, it's tempting to conclude that the universe hates me and wants me to disappear. In all reality, I expect it's indifferent. All the same, now and then it manages to furnish me with something that really does improve my mood, like the upcoming Halloween marathon at the Somerville Theatre.
I mean, I enjoy living in a town where the local theaters run this sort of programming. It delights me that the Somerville has been holding an autumnal horror-and-sci-fi marathon for the last two years, even if attendance has apparently been for bupkes. But there's also the fact that even if I didn't want to see West of Zanzibar (1928) and Seconds (1966) and The Lost Boys (1987), even if I didn't want to give Dracula (1931) another chance after being disappointed in college that it wasn't Nosferatu (1922), even if I didn't love Aliens (1986) so much that I've already lost track of the number of times I've seen it, I would still have marked this date on my calendar, because when am I going to get another chance to see a 35mm print of The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)?
I have mentioned this movie before. I love it unreasonably. It belongs to the 1950's atomic monster genre, although instead of a defrosted dinosaur or radiation-grown ants or a nuclear symbol rising from the depths of the sea, its human protagonists have to contend with giant prehistoric sea snails released by an earthquake into the Salton Sea (and made radioactive by irresponsible human experimentation, because this was the 1950's after all). It stars Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, and Hans Conried in one of his rare substantial film roles—a dramatic one, not a comedic, although his lab-coated supporting scientist is pleasingly cranky enough to register as an individual and slightly eccentric person, not just a conduit for the necessary infodump about predatory molluscs. It's not a lost classic of its decade, but I don't care. The creature effects are entertaining and the plot does not require that you switch your brain completely off. I thought of it at the 'Thon this year. I figured I would have to harangue someone at the festival about it.
Instead I owe David the projectionist a lemon cake and I am encouraging anyone in the Boston area with even the slightest interest in any of these films to show up on October 31st and check them out. Attendance for bupkes does not a long-running tradition make and I'd really like to see this marathon continue. Noon to midnight, Halloween. I will no doubt signal-boost it again as we get closer. West of Zanzibar—directed by Tod Browning, starring Lon Chaney—doesn't play anywhere either, I'm told.
I do not believe the universe loves me and wants me to be happy. Based on the evidence of the last year and three-quarters, it's tempting to conclude that the universe hates me and wants me to disappear. In all reality, I expect it's indifferent. All the same, now and then it manages to furnish me with something that really does improve my mood, like the upcoming Halloween marathon at the Somerville Theatre.
I mean, I enjoy living in a town where the local theaters run this sort of programming. It delights me that the Somerville has been holding an autumnal horror-and-sci-fi marathon for the last two years, even if attendance has apparently been for bupkes. But there's also the fact that even if I didn't want to see West of Zanzibar (1928) and Seconds (1966) and The Lost Boys (1987), even if I didn't want to give Dracula (1931) another chance after being disappointed in college that it wasn't Nosferatu (1922), even if I didn't love Aliens (1986) so much that I've already lost track of the number of times I've seen it, I would still have marked this date on my calendar, because when am I going to get another chance to see a 35mm print of The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)?
I have mentioned this movie before. I love it unreasonably. It belongs to the 1950's atomic monster genre, although instead of a defrosted dinosaur or radiation-grown ants or a nuclear symbol rising from the depths of the sea, its human protagonists have to contend with giant prehistoric sea snails released by an earthquake into the Salton Sea (and made radioactive by irresponsible human experimentation, because this was the 1950's after all). It stars Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, and Hans Conried in one of his rare substantial film roles—a dramatic one, not a comedic, although his lab-coated supporting scientist is pleasingly cranky enough to register as an individual and slightly eccentric person, not just a conduit for the necessary infodump about predatory molluscs. It's not a lost classic of its decade, but I don't care. The creature effects are entertaining and the plot does not require that you switch your brain completely off. I thought of it at the 'Thon this year. I figured I would have to harangue someone at the festival about it.
Instead I owe David the projectionist a lemon cake and I am encouraging anyone in the Boston area with even the slightest interest in any of these films to show up on October 31st and check them out. Attendance for bupkes does not a long-running tradition make and I'd really like to see this marathon continue. Noon to midnight, Halloween. I will no doubt signal-boost it again as we get closer. West of Zanzibar—directed by Tod Browning, starring Lon Chaney—doesn't play anywhere either, I'm told.
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I think Nosferatu is the best Dracula adaptation too but omg come on, BELA
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It really helps!
Also, I hate Apple's blanket proprietary attitude, which extends to making it difficult to replace or repair parts of one's own computer at home, so there is something very satisfying about replacing a hard drive with nothing more than the right gauges of screwdriver. The Genius Bar would have tried to talk me into an new computer.
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I've never seen Seconds! I asked David about it and he told me to watch it cold, so that's my plan. I know it stars Rock Hudson and the one other film I've seen by John Frankenheimer was The Manchurian Candidate (1962), which I love. I shall take your all-caps as an additional recommendation.
And I love Aliens and Lost Boys and Dracula but I've NEVER seen any on those on a big screen!
I've seen Aliens on a big screen, because I imprinted on that movie the summer between college and grad school—the night before I moved to New Haven, I stayed up finishing the last of my packing to Aliens—but it's the only one of this lineup. Talk to me about The Lost Boys? It's been vaguely classified in my head with Near Dark as "mid-'80's vampire movie I haven't yet seen."
(That category also used to include Fright Night (1985), but then I saw it last year. Oh, Roddy McDowall.)
I think Nosferatu is the best Dracula adaptation too but omg come on, BELA
What can I say? I had just seen Nosferatu and Lugosi's Dracula was too human for me. I've seen him since in White Zombie (1932), I know he can act! I'm willing to assume the problem, in 2001, was me.
dunno if any of this makes much sense, but
Lost Boys! Oh wow. I don't think it's a....good movie, necessarily, but for me it slots in with Flatliners (I, uh, don't actually recommend that one) and eventually with Scream and Blair Witch Project in the category "horror movies that were about actual people." A lot of it's nostalgia, sure, but I do think movies like this helped pave the way for stuff like Seven and Silence of the Lambs and Sixth Sense where the horror wasn't so much in THINGS GOING BOO! at cardboard cutouts but the reactions of developed characters we cared about. Of course, it's also at least partly responsible for shit like Stir of Echoes and Urban Legend, so there you go. Teenagers were in horror movies from the beginning (especially if you count those fifties beach musicals....//SHUDDER) but these films feel like they're not just about teenagers or young adults as screaming props or family accessories. The young people in them have to make real choices, and often those choices are part of growing up, coming of age. Nightmare on Elm Street Dream Warriors probably kicked this off, altho it has not aged well and its characters are mostly cliches.
....sorry, I can go on a lot about nineties horror as those were my twenties and I grew up on classic horror and the nineties were the time when people who grew up on classic horror made horror movies. This is the Scream phenomenon (which was anticipated in the TERRIBLE Saturday the 14th satire a decade before) but also Troma (it WOUNDS me that Troma got almost none of Scream's giant press). Did I mention I can go on a lot about nineties horror? I can go on a lot about nineties horror. //smiles weakly
Not to imply the nineties was The Golden Age or anything, or rather, that it was as full of brass as any golden age ever is, I mean back then we got Jacob's Ladder and Silence of the Lambs (still two of my favourite films ever) but also Event Horizon and It. (Altho "nineties" is pretty elastic for me, I was twenty when my best friend from boarding school showed me They Live in 1991, for example. Sam friend showed me Liquid Sky. That was a formative experience.)
ANYWAY, Lost Boys is v definitely an eighties movie (THE HAIR), and people typically use it for Spot-the-Past-Hottie cheeziness (Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Haim) I first saw it in the nineties and to me it's still got that kind of personal this-is-my-kind-of-culture glow. It's also interesting in that the vampirism is flipped, from preying on innocent young virginal women to sucking in (heh) lost boys in rituals of Manly Bonding. Also I think that is the film that introduced me to Echo & the Bunnymen, so I can never regard it as less than precious there. (Repo Man was the movie that introduced me to punk.)
Re: dunno if any of this makes much sense, but
SO NOTED.
but these films feel like they're not just about teenagers or young adults as screaming props or family accessories. The young people in them have to make real choices, and often those choices are part of growing up, coming of age.
No, that sounds valuable, and I agree not necessarily a reliable component of horror movies previously. I'm sure we could both come up with earlier examples if given a minute to think, but I'm willing to believe that the '80's saw a sea-change.
This is the Scream phenomenon (which was anticipated in the TERRIBLE Saturday the 14th satire a decade before)
. . . I've never even heard of that. Congratulations.
but also Troma (it WOUNDS me that Troma got almost none of Scream's giant press).
It's also interesting in that the vampirism is flipped, from preying on innocent young virginal women to sucking in (heh) lost boys in rituals of Manly Bonding.
I assume the title is playing off the Peter Pan mythos, which if so would put it way ahead of the curve of darkly retelling childhood classics.
(Repo Man was the movie that introduced me to punk.)
Repo Man has a great soundtrack. I've got it around here somewhere. I heard the Burning Sensations' "Pablo Picasso" before Jonathan Richman's.
Re: dunno if any of this makes much sense, but
TOTALLY TOTALLY SERIOUS. Also it's just a great flick.
This is the Scream phenomenon (which was anticipated in the TERRIBLE Saturday the 14th satire a decade before)
. . . I've never even heard of that. Congratulations.
HAH THAT WAS GROWING UP IN NM WITH SHITTY CABLE. YOU WATCHED WHAT WAS THERE. I think I saw that like three times. A group of friends in college once tried to list what perpetual shitty cable classics there were -- Beastmaster was a big one. Lots of Chevy Chase movies, especially that one where he gets psychic powers. And so on. The first Conan movie. I mean, early HBO was like early MTV, they had like maybe 12 films and over half of them sucked, and they were alllll in rotation.
derspatchel adores Troma. He's got a signed photo of the leads of Tromeo and Juliet in his office.
THAT ONE IS A KEEPER
I assume the title is playing off the Peter Pan mythos, which if so would put it way ahead of the curve of darkly retelling childhood classics.
Oh yeah, supposedly Kiefer Sutherland's vampire character was named Peter, and the mom was Wendy, all these references, I don't know why they changed it.
Repo Man has a great soundtrack.
I still LOVE that movie. LOVE. Unironically. Along with Army of Darkness and other ones. ....not Beastmaster, tho.
Re: dunno if any of this makes much sense, but
I don't think you're joking. I'm taking David's advice and yours.
Oh yeah, supposedly Kiefer Sutherland's vampire character was named Peter, and the mom was Wendy, all these references, I don't know why they changed it.
Seriously, if you're going to keep calling your movie The Lost Boys, run with it!
I still LOVE that movie. LOVE. Unironically.
Never apologize for loving things unironically! I'm not sure I have any books or movies I love ironically, honestly. I'm not even sure how that would work.
Oh yeah here
It is EVEN WORSE than that makes it look.
Re: dunno if any of this makes much sense, but
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That's how I feel!
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I would like to see Dracula (1931) on a big screen. Though what I'd really love to see in a theater is the 1931 Spanish-language version.
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October right now is a huge blank of uncertainty to which I am not looking forward, but I am looking forward to that. It is an unexpected treat.
Though what I'd really love to see in a theater is the 1931 Spanish-language version.
I'd like to see that, full stop. I've heard amazing things about it.
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The first year we attended, I got to see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) on a big screen and was introduced to Tremors (1990). That was enough to convince me.
I wish we had one like it down here, but we don't even have a neighborhood theater to run it; it's all movieplexes in new construction shopping centers.
Agh. I am so sorry. Maybe someday you can move somewhere with both the ocean and a functional arthouse film culture.
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The funny answer is "Lance Henriksen as Bishop," but that's not completely accurate. He is my favorite character in the movie; his nonhumanness and the ways it manifests hooked me at once, to the degree that I've been meaning to write about him for years and still not gotten around to it. But I think there's something about the camaraderie of the cast, the pace of the action, and how neatly the whole thing is put together that makes me consider it a comfort movie. Alien is better horror and better science fiction—Aliens is an action flick from beginning to end. But it's a really good action flick and Sigourney Weaver is deservedly legendary and it's not a stupid movie. And I like Lance Henriksen.
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I like it because I prefer action-adventure to horror. Alien was so creepy I couldn't watch it when it first came out. I went back and re-watched it after seeing Aliens and that was OK.
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. . . strictly speaking, I'm not even sure The Monster That Challenged the World is horror, but I don't care.
I am very glad this is coming to the mighty Somerville. Center balcony ahoy!
How does one attract the attention of
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I have been told it's Rock Hudson's best performance, and I've been told to go into it cold, and I am looking forward.
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I'm not sure I can make enough lemon cake to lure in a theater!
Publicity couldn't hurt, which is part of the reason I'm posting. Again, I'm not sure how much signal-boosting I can offer, but I'm trying.
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OTOH, the English version has Dwight Frye, and also Dracula's unexplained pet opossums and armadillos.
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Nice!
OTOH, the English version has Dwight Frye, and also Dracula's unexplained pet opossums and armadillos.
My definitive Renfield has long been Jack Shepherd, but I just liked that entire production except for Quincey Holmwood. Seriously, what happened there.
(I don't remember the opossums at all! I'll look out for them.)
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Okay, and the giant prehistoric sea snails eat some people. I think of it as more sci-fi than horror, if that makes sense, where Alien is more horror than sci-fi. I recognize these are permeable categories. If horror is a mode, genre is irrelevant anyway. I'm glad it's playing in this marathon no matter what.