Must write more…no time…must see more movies….
Need more coffee to go faster….
Well, I am now 4 days behind in my writing, so I made myself write today. My body clock is on a noon to 4 Am sleep schedule. I am going through body transformations. My brain has now split into two distinct hemispheres. Experiencing nausea. I have extreme headaches. The xenon light from the projector cuts through the upper reaches of the auditorium and journeys straight through the prism of my mind and onto the silver screen in full color. I feel like Eddie Jessup in Altered States. I wonder if in my sleep I revert into a primordial state and roam the streets at night eating carrion and trash. I am not the same. I am not the person whom you knew before. I am transcending this body, this flesh, this earth, these chains that bind me. I am becoming something else…..
On Thursday, October 11th I subjected myself to 2 screenings, Vampyr the 1932 silent masterpiece with a live score by Steve Sevrin (Siouxsie and the Banshees) and the Video Nasties series screening of The Burning. Both at the Cinefamily theater on Fairfax.
Vampyr is a genuinely creepy film. There are few films from the pre 60's era which still hold up as scary today. The fact there are movies from the 30's that still have impact to scare at all is quite remarkable. Check out the trailer and I think you will agree.
VAMPYR TRAILER WITH SEVRIN SCORE:
Try to imagine seeing that in 1932! It must have given people heart attacks! Watching it is like walking through a misty nightmare dreamscape. This film is far scarier than the popular Universal films that followed, at least in this humble narrator's opinion. Not that I dislike those films, but they just don't have impact like this one. The only other film in it's time that matches its level of fear and dread might be Nosferatu which came 10 years earlier. Hitchcock declared this as the only film worth seeing twice.
I am extremely fortunate to have watched this for the first time with Steve Sevrin's score. The music matches the tone of the film beat for beat. I can't picture any other music. It's like Sevrin collaborated with the director, Carl Theodore Dreyer and keyed into his idea perfectly. Watch the trailer above to get a feel for his score.
Directly following Vampyr was the Video Nasties screening of The Burning. Again, yet another film that doesn't feel like it should have been banned. Sure it would still get an R rating today, but banned. Really! The one scene that probably did it in was the infamous raft massacre, but even that is not that graphic, certainly no more graphic than Friday the 13th. OK, maybe slightly more graphic, but it's all done in quick cuts. What I am learning from this series is that basically the snooty old folks in Britain during the 80's were a bunch of weak wussies! To censor these films is absolutely ridiculous. I mean some of the later one's in the series like Cannibal Holocaust and Last House On The Left you can at least start to somewhat understand why they were banned, not that they should have been or that they had the right to, but you can see why. They are pretty brutal and graphic.
The Burning was a gorgeous 35mm print! The movie is like, half Meatballs and half Friday the 13th. I can guarantee some producer pitched this film in a pitch meeting, "OK, it's Meatballs meets Friday the 13th." Here's the thing though, this film is BETTER than Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th is exactly what its critics accuse it of being. That is a bunch of teenager stereotypes getting offed one by one. I liked the Friday the 13th films when I was a kid, but when I rewatched them as an adult they had lost their appeal to me. I still want to go back and revisit them again as it's been 15 years and even then I only watched part 1 and 2 as an adult and never watched the other sequels.
The Burning characters are more real. They have personality and don't just seem like the generic "Jock" or "Geek" or "Virgin". It certainly helps that the cast of kids are all solid. Jason Alexander and Helen Hunt both in early roles here. Yes Jason Alexander has hair! The movie still plays with the genre staples of teen age kids having sex and getting killed, but at least you are a little more invested in these kids than the Friday the 13th bunch. Maybe I am being too harsh on the Friday movies. I should go back and revisit.
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| Jason Alexander with hair |
If you like slasher films. If you like summer camp movies. If you ever wanted to see Jason Alexander with hair, then you should watch The Burning. The plot is pretty basic. Bunch of kids try to pull a practical joke on their mean alcoholic camp councilor but it goes drastically awry and ends up with the councilor burning nearly to death. He spends 5 years in the hospital, gets released, and goes to get revenge on camp kids. Pretty basic, but fun, has some good gore fx by Tom Savini, and has some solid performances. Check it out.
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