Schlock and Awe

HOCUS POCUS - DIRECTED BY KENNY ORTEGA 1993 LORDS OF SALEM - DIRECTED BY ROB ZOMBIE 2012          Salem Massachusetts has had a long storied history with witches.  The Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693 feel baked into history and foundation of the United States, at least from an outsider perspective.  It is hysteria, puritism and superstition gone awary.  Many different artists since have taken the historical structure and molded it into something else.  For the example The Crucible by Arthur Miller which is about Government and legal corruption, and was also speaking to the Communinist UnAmerican Trials of the early 1950s.  For me History is always a living beast, it never goes away.  One of the way history can be brought back to life is through different artists who recreate and mould it to something else.        The movies I'm looking at, in the Schlock and Awe way, couldn't be more different.  Di...

Watching three movies set in Italy in close succession was an accident.         I wasn't even watching any Giallo.  But what I noticed as I was watching these movies that they all were about travelling to Italy.  An Italian Holiday if you will.  I love travelling.  As a child I use to my finger over my Dad's Atlas, imaging myself in the Lourve, on a bullet train in Japan, looking up at the Empire State Building.  When I got to New York I didn't go to the top, I hate heights.  Most of my travels is me looking at tall things.  Stepping back into the present, I was actually trying to save to go to Europe for my dreaded Fortieth Birthday.  It was the perfect way to escape the general anxiety of growing old and reclaim my youth, the last time I visited Europe I was in my early Twenties.    But since the world has imploded I have gone back to looking at maps again.  For me travelling is about escape, to be in an e...

Watching Wes Craven's early career has been a blast and fascinating .    Like his first theatrical movie, you can feel Craven working how to work his themes into his movies, to varying success.  What has been intersting about tracking Craven's career is seeing how he would weave his favourite prominate themes into his gigs.  Wes Craven was very much a working director, he went where ever the money was, which is why his career is so varied with the horror genre, TV Movies and Antholgies as well as the movies he is known for.  Through watching Craven movies you can really see him experiementing with tone and themes      Because I have already gone into depth on Last House on the Left in my Meeting of Minds Double.  I am going to start my Craven Kick with Cravens sophomore theatrical release, The Hills Have Eyes     THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) The Happiest Place on Earth - The Astor For a sadistic grimy movie, The Hills Have Eyes has ...

 I had a plan but I got distracted......    My plan was to go through all of Master of Horror Wes Craven's filmography I could get my hands on.  But then to avoid watching The Last House on the Left I clicked on the first Mission: Impossible from 1996.  Why not go through this series as well, it's a great action movie franchise that leans into what Tom Cruise does best, be a movie star and be a movie star while running.  The best thing for me about the franchise is that it is a show case for the director as much as it is for Cruise.  Nearly every movie is about how a Director can fit their style into an action setting.  Apart from the Christopher McQuarrie Administration, each Mission: Impossible has a distinctive style and alternating Cruise hair cuts.  Going through the series was a fun experience and I found something to love in each movie.   MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, DIRECTED BY BRIAN DE PALMA 1996 Watching the first Mission Impossib...

THE VIRGIN SPRING - DIRECTED BY INGMAR BERGMAN 1960 THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT - DIRECTED BY WES CRAVEN 1972      This September and October I'm going to be on a Craven Kick.  Wes Craven was the thoughtful Master of Horror.  His movies, not matter how schlocky they seemed were reflective and with an ideas weaved into the spine.  Throughout his career, Craven reinvented Horror multiple times with the likes of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream .  His first full length narrative film, The Last House on the Left has a notorious reputation, one of those movies that leans in too far and presses the thumb on the nerve too hard, but at the same time incredibly important in the shaping of the Horror genre in the 1970s.  It's one of those movies I have been avoiding.  So I decided to have a Schlock and Awe Double with The Last House on the Left and Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring from 1960.  Both The Virgin Spring and The Last House on t...

Well I did I ask Twitter to chose the movies.... CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER - BRIAN CLEMENS,  1974 LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - DIRECTED BY TOMAS ALFREDSON,  2008      Anyone who has watched more than a couple of Vampire movies knows how wildly they can differ.  There are different mythologies and different creators playing around with lore.  From grotesque blood sucking animals to sparkling in the sun immtoral  fantasies.  The Vampire can fit into almost any mold you want.  And on the outset you cannot get two different movies than the 1970s era Hammer Horror Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter and the dark Swedish movie Let the Right One In .  They are night and day, almost literary, one is set duriung the day the other is set at night.  Watching these movies as a Double Feature, it was intersting to see not only how each movie presented not only the Vampire but, also the relationship the protaginst has with each.  It brings i...