Post by No Personality on Mar 6, 2010 8:53:49 GMT -5
Horror and comedy are very hard to put together. A lot of revulsion can come from comedic ideas and many horrific concepts can be amusing. But an idea that's both scary and funny at the same time is incredibly rare. Some fans hate every film that combines the two and need their horror completely pure. Me- I can appreciate a good mix or horror with anything else, if it is indeed good. When I look at the horror films I enjoy most, a large percentage are horror-comedy hybrids. But are they really funny? What is most essential for a horror-comedy is energy. It doesn't matter if the jokes fail, it's the concept that needs to work. Or the filmmaker needs the pace to run smoothly, to keep the viewer entertained.
Within reason, I think the undisputed master of the horror-comedy is Peter Jackson. He knows better than any filmmaker how to make the most disgusting things ever put on screen amusing. Even pushing them as far as they can go, until the film's excesses become pure art. Stuart Gordon is no Peter Jackson. His real inspiration is obviously H.P. Lovecraft, the writer Gordon gets most of his movie ideas from. But that said, how funny were the man's stories intended to be? I hear many Lovecraft fans are appalled at what Gordon has done with his work. I could care less. I've always said- a book's a book, a movie's a movie. And that applies to short stories too. But without him, Gordon would have no career. So right away you have to accept that this is an adaptation. Criticize the film for what it is and I won't criticize the material it was derived from.
On one hand, you have what I'm sure are graphic stories from Lovecraft that were probably a lot more serious than this film is. On the other, you have a filmmaker - and his wacky writing partner, gothic fiction lover Dennis Paoli - trying to in some ways "push the boundaries." With that in mind, I think I would have enjoyed the film being so graphic if the purpose were to shock and horrify. Not to make people laugh a little and cringe a lot. That's what this film achieves and that's pretty much what I'm against. I'm not a big fan of sleazy exploitation-driven gross-outs. That's when you lose grip of horror and move into freakshow territory. The Herbert West character even says at one point- "get a job in a sideshow."
Re-Animator is an excessive film where the excess is used to get a reaction out of people, not to further the story. And always with a kind of childish gag on the end of it to make it easy to swallow for mass audiences. After a short while, the gross-out becomes its' own story. And all the attempts at drama, which are strangely abundant, become intensely awkward and out of place. Which makes me wonder. Not about where the movie went wrong. I know what's wrong- Dennis Paoli is so busy trying to be clever with puns and West's quirky behavior that he's not working at the same pace Gordon is. Though both of them do eventually sync up on the Frankenstein / maternal vibes running throughout. Gordon even talks about the Meg character's existence in the story being about the women's role in creating life. So, the creation of life is the point of this movie?
To be honest, I thought the movie's point was about reanimation of a person's body after they're dead. A medical exploration of what motivates zombies to exist. I'm never as crazy about the how as I am about the why. I don't need to see the characters in this movie searching through rows of cadavers, and discussing theories in a laboratory before they turn a corpse into a zombie. And for all the talk, the most fascinating thing here is West's re-agent chemical serum. We see quite a bit of it, but chemically, what it is is never explained. That's not a flaw of the movie. But again, it gets less attention than the human brain. And if the brain is what's interesting about post-70's zombie movies, this movie also can't hope to beat out The Return of the Living Dead for energy and fun. Can it? The movie that popularized brain-eating as the motivation for zombies attacking people.
No brains are eaten here. But they are lobotomized and removed in endless surgical scenes. All of which are presented with straight-forward matter-of-factness (much like an exploitation movie handles its' subject matter). To be blunt- I can see that kind of thing on The Learning Channel. If I wanted to. I watch a horror film for escapism, fantasy, and something strong and unique. Or just cheap and fun. My kind of fun, of course. Disgusting is very seldom fun. Morbid can be. But again, Return beats this movie out on morbid. Even going so far as to shock and sicken me without boring me. And unlike Re-Animator, it's also a very lively film. With this one, you have to constantly check the pulse of it to make sure it's not dead or over yet.
The film has no dark ambiance- another horror essential for me. No creepy atmosphere. Just a few set-ups where a zombie will go after someone and a lot of gore, almost always generated from an already dead cadaver. A truly wasted opportunity, almost no living human victims are torn apart or eaten in any way. Since it takes place mostly in a medical hospital with a very busy morgue, there are a ton of corpses lying around. Thereby supplying the film with lots of bodies to spew gore from. And then the film shows you people taking those corpses apart. It's disgusting all right, but not at all scary. However, I've seen the deleted scenes from this movie. There used to be a truly, deeply creepy scene involving the Dr. Hill character hypnotizing Meg's father, Dean Halsey. Now there's a novelty that could have added something to this movie! Of course though, Gordon thought it didn't work.
Next on the chopping block: the score by Richard Band, which rips off the theme from Psycho. I like the music from Psycho, but don't think me a rabid fan of the movie or Herrmann or Hitchcock or anything. I just have always been very strongly against filmmakers outright ripping off other movies. Like a scene shot for shot or a piece of music note for note. Band copies Bernard Herrmann note for note. Only, adding an 80's tech beat to it. Not only is it wholly unnecessary to copy another composer's piece (especially since this movie has no real ties to Psycho apart from this stolen music- which plays in several different scenes), but Herrmann's original was just so much better. The music throughout the film as well is very underwhelming. But I will give Band one credit. The piece that plays during the sequence where Meg walks down the hall into Herbert West's room is basically effective.
I would have forgiven any number of scenes that moved too slowly- I think slowness is crucial to horror (if the right music and atmospheric elements are in place). This movie's nauseating blandness could have balanced out somewhat had the characters been less lame and boring and the dialogue so melodramatic. It's like watching a very bland soap opera. Another idea that could have been rewarding- if this to some extent satirized those drippy, sappy hospital dramas and soaps they plastered all over TV in the 80's. There are a lot of opportunities for it. Alas, this movie takes itself too seriously for that. Although, this does create some unintentional humor in the form of down-trodden, pathetically genuine good-guy Dan Cain. On a mission to save flatlining patients, this guy is the human version of superman (a less amusing pre-Scrubs J.D.?).
Considering how seldom men in horror play vulnerable, it is admittedly fun to watch him getting screwed all the time. And this actor Bruce Abbott is intensely vulnerable. And beautiful with his always visible sensitivity and big emotional highs and lows. It's as though his relationship with Meg works because they're both nurturing and keen of bringing their insides out. A first in horror? Though most of the time, he's just too damn frayed and weak. I wish he would just suck it up so we could move on with the show. Meg, on the other hand, is extremely irritating. With her always high-pitched voice and constant whining, she is the definitive Female Victim. Whereas I know Gordon and company see her as a stronger figure. I was able to forgive Dan for his cute hounddog routine, but she drove me up the wall. I desperately wanted her to run away with Dr. Hill.
I used to think David Gale as the evil Dr. Hill easily walked away with the movie's Best Actor Award. He's the only thing creepy about this movie. Mainly because Jeffrey Combs as West is a bit of a heartless sexist and has become a real hero character in cult circles with horror fans. Why cheer any sexist? I personally find most of them worthy of castration (unless they're Ann Coulter, in which case she punishes herself almost enough- let her keep her dick). But, his interplay with Dr. Hill (and the way he bosses Dan around) actually makes his character slightly interesting. Two "mad scientists" in one movie? Dueling mad-scientists none the less. That's a gold idea. And I would say it's great watching Gale lose his head. Anything to shake the movie up, right? It definitely marks the movie as the darkest, least dull scene.
The pacing is languorous and flat. Things never ascend to the showstopper level, not like many fans and the huge hype machine behind the movie have claimed. The score keeps dropping pennies in a bucket instead of pumping blood throughout this cold dead whale of a movie. And though there's one truly cool montage of terrifyingly ghastly zombie face closeups, we also have to see them naked. You ever seen a naked zombie? It's just plain gross. Not entertaining. Gross! The fact that this movie is such a thorough failure by my standards is especially disappointing since I really like Stuart Gordon as a person. In all his interviews I find him to be incredibly intelligent, kind, and fun to listen to. I kept thinking it was his theater background that is responsible for this movie having so little oomph. The debut films by many horror masters often turn out to be this underwhelming. But I will say Gordon definitely learned a few tricks from this when doing his next feature, the surprisingly freaky and very lively From Beyond.
