From Fear.net: Making a horror movie can be a surreal experience. You spend long hours performing terrifying atrocities in front of the camera. Then the director yells “Cut!” and suddenly you’re headed over to the snack table to have a cup of coffee with the person you just disemboweled.
But sometimes, the line between making a realistic horror film and finding yourself knee-deep inside one gets a little too blurry and bloody for comfort. Here are ten of our favorite examples:
PEEPING TOM (1960). Here’s the good news: you get to star in your own movie. Here’s the bad news: the director likes to film his stars as he kills them, so he can capture their true expressions of fear. Talk about method acting. But hey, a gig’s a gig
DEMONS (1985). This Lamberto Bava/Dario Argento production is an example of how even watching a horror movie can get you in trouble. A late night crowd enters a cavernous Berlin movie theater to enjoy a special midnight screening of a new horror film. However, thanks to the presence of a cursed mask from the set of the movie, the monsters of the film come alive inside the theater itself, where they bypass the popcorn and start gnawing their way through the audience.
WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994). ”One, two, Freddy’s really coming for you!” While filming the next installment of the lucrative “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise, the actual actors and crew members (Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, director Wes Craven, etc. all playing themselves) discover they’re being stalked and killed by what appears to be a real life Freddy Krueger in Craven’s mind-bending twist on the creative process.
Sequels get a bad rap, and rightfully so – most of the time. The horror genre is especially rife with sequels, with many franchises so heavily spun-off that they have stopped being numbered. Not all sequels suck, and to prove it we found ten that are at least as good as the original – if not better.
Dawn of the Dead
The second of George Romero’s original zombie trilogy, Dawn of the Dead is inarguably the best of the three. A group of survivors take refuge in a shopping mall, but eventually decide to make a break for it. While not a sequel in the strictest sense, it is a damn fine movie.
Hostel II
A surprisingly good follow-up to the unimaginative original (which, in turn, was a rip-off of Saw), Hostel II focuses less on the slaughter of nubile coeds, and more on the men who buy the opportunity to do the slaughtering. While no less violent or gruesome, it offers a different perspective than most slasher flix.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
The seventh installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street series is a case study in twisted post-modernism. Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, and Wes Craven play themselves in the real world. Heather gets threats that echo Freddy Krueger’s M.O., and she needs to reprise her role as Nancy to defeat Freddy. Again. One of the most imaginative horror movies, sequel or otherwise.
In the spirit of Halloween ‘09, we’re breaking out reviews (some new, some old) of some Fall Frights you may want to work into your monthly viewing.
GOING TO PIECES – FANGORIA Archives: Originally Published 10/2006
When a documentary tackles a subject as specific, and with such specific appeal, as slasher films, the challenge lies in conveying that attraction to the unconverted while not simply feeding the fans a buffet they’ve already fully sampled. The Starz original GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM is more successful in offering devotees a gorenucopia of clips and talking heads (still attached to bodies) recounting the subgenre’s history than it likely will be in convincing non-fans that this grisly strain of cinema is a worthy one.
The hour-and-a-half show is based on Adam Rockoff’s book of the same title, which stands as the single best study of stalker cinema ever published. Weaving revelatory interviews with both luminaries (John Carpenter, Sean S. Cunningham) and the less celebrated (Joseph Zito, Tom DeSimone) throughout his text, Rockoff combines the enthusiasm of a fan with clear-eyed assessments of the individual films (it’s nice to find someone else who thinks that SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, for all its claims as a feminist satire on the subgenre, is no less formulaic and exploitative than many others of its ilk). The Starz adaptation, directed by Jeff McQueen, is less critical, but gives equal face time to the filmmakers listed above (including Carpenter, pictured) and others as it tracks the progression from HALLOWEEN through the many holiday horrors it spawned, the supernatural variations of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series and the resurgence in SCREAM and its own derivations.
The interviewees, who also include Fango’s own Tony Timpone (and who are frequently, for some reason, taped while walking toward the backward-tracking camera), relate a number of stories that will be familiar to die-hard fans, but a few fresh nuggets are shared; Paul Lynch, for example, reveals that Paramount was outbid for his film PROM NIGHT by Avco Embassy, inspiring the former studio to go after FRIDAY THE 13TH. And for those buffs, there’s an inherent appeal in seeing faces and voices put to names like MY BLOODY VALENTINE and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME producer John Dunning and GRADUATION DAY director “Rabbi Herb Freed.”
Read the rest by clicking the link below.
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 10:10 pm. Comments
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