Post by lazario on Nov 23, 2008 15:28:23 GMT -5
Funny enough, since Christmas and Thanksgiving are coming up soon, there'll be a lot of talk about the meaning of things. So that's inspired me to do a little talking about one of the greatest things around: The Horror Genre.
There has been a lot of incorrect assumptions about horror here that I've seen, ignorant statements being made. I'm here to correct them.
Horror is not about being Shocking. As I have already explained, shocking WARES OFF. Movies that only have "shock value" don't work for long. It's not about being shocking in the 1970's okay. By T's account, Saw is good now but will suck later because it won't be shocking anymore. So the same goes with Haute Tension and all these other bullshit movies T and Mal think fit into that description. True horror lasts and works beyond just the time it's made within. Horror films always need to be more influenced by art and literature from outside-film sources than it should ever copy what's already been done or seek to improve upon it. The reason for instance, the 1970's is the greatest decade in horror history is because the filmmakers used the stories to create images. The stories always came first.
One thing horror cannot survive without is ART. Film / cinema is about art and storytelling. Visual and audio art. Horror is about the use of artistic styles to tell a story or portray a series of events. There are no rules that say horror has to be shocking or even scary. Especially when you are smart enough to look at where it began. It began in the silent era. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Golem, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, Waxworks. Were they about being shocking? Fuck no. Horror is not supposed to be "realistic"!! It's supposed to be stylized. You can have brutal style, but realism is for real life. Characters and actors will always do more work than bad cliched "thriller" music scores and lame torture-movie kill scenes.
Shocking and scary are nothing more than added perks. Besides, no one can know what is going to shock or scare a lot of people. So that's why horror can't rely on doing the stupid thing. If they waste their time going "what's gonna shock people?" - they're just going to copy it from another movie. So all you idiots that go "it wasn't shocking," be smart enough to know that you're encouraging movies to just copy each other. If you are someone who feels like you need to be shocked, than go to Iraq and watch people shooting and blowing each other up.
Why is Rosemary's Baby still the greatest horror film ever made in the history of film? Because it is so well-written, well-acted, and well-filmed that you fucking bet it's still shocking today. You want to know what real shocking is? It's not people chained in a room who have to cut off a foot. It's a person trapped in a situation with no one to trust, a person in ultimate desperation, who has nowhere to go. But Rosemary's Baby also has great style, a lot of social relevance, works on a psychological level, and as a film it distorts other genres too. It uses more than one kind of film or filmmaking to its' advantage. There's no way something this amazing can be compared to some piece of shit little torture / survival horror movie just because someone gets cut "realistically" and screams. Is that artistic? No. And guess what? If you saw The Last House on the Left, you don't need Saw or Wolf Creek or Eden Lake or any of that bullshit. 7th rate (AT BEST) versions of films that already came out and are masterpieces or highly outstanding films.
The reason horror as a genre is so freaking amazing is that there are so many different kinds of great horror films. There are serious works of horror that are compelling and highly intelligent, and then there are masterpieces that aren't at all serious. Like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive and Bad Taste. Are they shocking? Hell no. They're silly and completely un-serious. But they're the single best examples of "freaky" horror (think: Lucio Fulci and John Carpenter's The Thing, ultra-over the top splatter movies that were not fully focused or concentrated as films) in the genre. They're the ones that did what the others were afraid to do, yet they were complete films. They had art and a lot of it, personality, dark humor, and an unbelievably creepy vibe about both. True, they kind of resemble comic books or martial arts' films when it comes to pacing, framing, and some of the style. But the films also focused heavily on characterization and story, and observed just as many things slowly as it did quickly.
Of course the template for Peter Jackson would have to be Sam Raimi's legendary The Evil Dead. Is it shocking? Who fucking cares. When a horror movie is this good, this scary, and this hard to take your eyes off of- you know you've struck gold. The thing that makes the movie great is - if you're not too stupid - you get caught up in it right away and when you do, the movie never lets you go. This movie's greatest attribute is that it mixes amazing atmosphere with some of the most impressive camerawork in horror history (probably something Sam and company picked up from Argento's films). The Evil Dead is a leader in a long line of imitators. A true innovator. It takes the horror genre to a brand new level. A level where classic absurdist scenarios are filled with stylistically brutal grotesqueness. It's an original film, T, it's not a copy. I guess you don't like unique works of horror. You just want safe copies of things.
Some horror movies use style as their #1 priority and find a very elaborate, complex world all their own. Suspiria throws characterization right out the window and basically just shows people doing what they do with almost no point to it. Lucio Fulci would go on to rip that off and Stanley Kubrick would try his best to re-capture that quality but neither of them hit it out of the park like Argento and they never could have. Phantasm at its' core has a sappy story. So it uses one of the most incredible visual styles and perhaps the single greatest horror music score ever to fill in the holes and cover the flaws. It's a pretty smart idea and it works very well. Both directors understood the ultimate importance of art to the horror film and how to use it to manipulate the events of their screenplays.
Again, the great thing about horror is it doesn't always have to be good. It just has to be enjoyable. Sometimes characterization isn't important. Taking for instance the Friday the 13th film series. The first 3 films were all about the creepiness of the shrill and creepy music, and whatever suspense could be drained from the isolated woods locations. But they were always doomed to be copies of Halloween or Bava's Bay of Blood / Twitch of the Death Nerve. The later sequels, starting with Jason Lives, took the formula of the film a step further. Not to mention how stale the last years of the 1980's were thanks to bad sequels like Halloween 4 and Halloween 5, Nightmare on Elm Street 5, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and III, Hellraiser II, and others. Friday the 13th, strangely enough, was the series that kept things fresh in terms of style. The early Friday the 13th films, good as they were on their own, were pinned under the trappings of the sleazy, bad early 80's slashers. Style and enjoyability came first. And what made these films legends is what set them apart. Finally the stalker-killer is an honest-to-God zombie. You never see that in Nightmare or Halloween sequels.
More to come.
There has been a lot of incorrect assumptions about horror here that I've seen, ignorant statements being made. I'm here to correct them.
Horror is not about being Shocking. As I have already explained, shocking WARES OFF. Movies that only have "shock value" don't work for long. It's not about being shocking in the 1970's okay. By T's account, Saw is good now but will suck later because it won't be shocking anymore. So the same goes with Haute Tension and all these other bullshit movies T and Mal think fit into that description. True horror lasts and works beyond just the time it's made within. Horror films always need to be more influenced by art and literature from outside-film sources than it should ever copy what's already been done or seek to improve upon it. The reason for instance, the 1970's is the greatest decade in horror history is because the filmmakers used the stories to create images. The stories always came first.
One thing horror cannot survive without is ART. Film / cinema is about art and storytelling. Visual and audio art. Horror is about the use of artistic styles to tell a story or portray a series of events. There are no rules that say horror has to be shocking or even scary. Especially when you are smart enough to look at where it began. It began in the silent era. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Golem, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, Waxworks. Were they about being shocking? Fuck no. Horror is not supposed to be "realistic"!! It's supposed to be stylized. You can have brutal style, but realism is for real life. Characters and actors will always do more work than bad cliched "thriller" music scores and lame torture-movie kill scenes.
Shocking and scary are nothing more than added perks. Besides, no one can know what is going to shock or scare a lot of people. So that's why horror can't rely on doing the stupid thing. If they waste their time going "what's gonna shock people?" - they're just going to copy it from another movie. So all you idiots that go "it wasn't shocking," be smart enough to know that you're encouraging movies to just copy each other. If you are someone who feels like you need to be shocked, than go to Iraq and watch people shooting and blowing each other up.
Why is Rosemary's Baby still the greatest horror film ever made in the history of film? Because it is so well-written, well-acted, and well-filmed that you fucking bet it's still shocking today. You want to know what real shocking is? It's not people chained in a room who have to cut off a foot. It's a person trapped in a situation with no one to trust, a person in ultimate desperation, who has nowhere to go. But Rosemary's Baby also has great style, a lot of social relevance, works on a psychological level, and as a film it distorts other genres too. It uses more than one kind of film or filmmaking to its' advantage. There's no way something this amazing can be compared to some piece of shit little torture / survival horror movie just because someone gets cut "realistically" and screams. Is that artistic? No. And guess what? If you saw The Last House on the Left, you don't need Saw or Wolf Creek or Eden Lake or any of that bullshit. 7th rate (AT BEST) versions of films that already came out and are masterpieces or highly outstanding films.
The reason horror as a genre is so freaking amazing is that there are so many different kinds of great horror films. There are serious works of horror that are compelling and highly intelligent, and then there are masterpieces that aren't at all serious. Like Peter Jackson's Dead Alive and Bad Taste. Are they shocking? Hell no. They're silly and completely un-serious. But they're the single best examples of "freaky" horror (think: Lucio Fulci and John Carpenter's The Thing, ultra-over the top splatter movies that were not fully focused or concentrated as films) in the genre. They're the ones that did what the others were afraid to do, yet they were complete films. They had art and a lot of it, personality, dark humor, and an unbelievably creepy vibe about both. True, they kind of resemble comic books or martial arts' films when it comes to pacing, framing, and some of the style. But the films also focused heavily on characterization and story, and observed just as many things slowly as it did quickly.
Of course the template for Peter Jackson would have to be Sam Raimi's legendary The Evil Dead. Is it shocking? Who fucking cares. When a horror movie is this good, this scary, and this hard to take your eyes off of- you know you've struck gold. The thing that makes the movie great is - if you're not too stupid - you get caught up in it right away and when you do, the movie never lets you go. This movie's greatest attribute is that it mixes amazing atmosphere with some of the most impressive camerawork in horror history (probably something Sam and company picked up from Argento's films). The Evil Dead is a leader in a long line of imitators. A true innovator. It takes the horror genre to a brand new level. A level where classic absurdist scenarios are filled with stylistically brutal grotesqueness. It's an original film, T, it's not a copy. I guess you don't like unique works of horror. You just want safe copies of things.
Some horror movies use style as their #1 priority and find a very elaborate, complex world all their own. Suspiria throws characterization right out the window and basically just shows people doing what they do with almost no point to it. Lucio Fulci would go on to rip that off and Stanley Kubrick would try his best to re-capture that quality but neither of them hit it out of the park like Argento and they never could have. Phantasm at its' core has a sappy story. So it uses one of the most incredible visual styles and perhaps the single greatest horror music score ever to fill in the holes and cover the flaws. It's a pretty smart idea and it works very well. Both directors understood the ultimate importance of art to the horror film and how to use it to manipulate the events of their screenplays.
Again, the great thing about horror is it doesn't always have to be good. It just has to be enjoyable. Sometimes characterization isn't important. Taking for instance the Friday the 13th film series. The first 3 films were all about the creepiness of the shrill and creepy music, and whatever suspense could be drained from the isolated woods locations. But they were always doomed to be copies of Halloween or Bava's Bay of Blood / Twitch of the Death Nerve. The later sequels, starting with Jason Lives, took the formula of the film a step further. Not to mention how stale the last years of the 1980's were thanks to bad sequels like Halloween 4 and Halloween 5, Nightmare on Elm Street 5, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and III, Hellraiser II, and others. Friday the 13th, strangely enough, was the series that kept things fresh in terms of style. The early Friday the 13th films, good as they were on their own, were pinned under the trappings of the sleazy, bad early 80's slashers. Style and enjoyability came first. And what made these films legends is what set them apart. Finally the stalker-killer is an honest-to-God zombie. You never see that in Nightmare or Halloween sequels.
More to come.
