Homework Movie - Night Moves (1975)

We've learned about double crosses and back stabbing moves in this class before now. Only thing that's different is that this week's movies were in color. Gene Hackman stars as Harry Moseby in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975). He plays a private detective much like Jack Nicholson from Chinatown from a few weeks ago. After some success with divorce cases that he's snooped and made a name for himself. Then he gets hired for a case of family discord.

            Also staring a very young Melanie Griffith in her first supporting role as the subject of the investigation and retrieval Moseby is assigned to. Her free-spirited Delly is the link to both sides of her very dysfunctional family. Going back home to her mother's place is the last thing she wants to do. When she is convinced to go, it is the last thing we see her doing. Days later, her character is not heard from again and this sends Moseby on a second trip to the family estates to figure out what happened to clear his conscience.

            What he finds is a trail that leads to everyone involved pointing fingers at everyone else until the climactic ending. There were some plot twists that I wasn't expecting and I was surprised to see Melanie Griffith so young that I really enjoyed this film.  This weeks films were really good, from the Mean Streets to Point Blank.  But my favorite film we watched this week was the original Get Carter.  I really liked seeing Michael Caine as Jack Carter on a rampage to find out who took out his younger brother.  Mike Hodges made the leap from television to movies with an amazing cast and story, which he wrote himself from a novel.

Homework Movies Saw Series (2004 - 2011)

"I want to play a game."

Sitting in a dark room, sometimes the lights flicker on and there are puzzles to solve on the walls with clues to the next puzzle. This is what it takes for me to get ready to watch this series of movies known as Saw. In 2004 Director James Wan and Writer/Actor Leigh Whannell began a journey with their franchise starting entry into the life and death of reported serial killer named Jigsaw, played by Tobin Bell in every film in the series. Over the next 7 years at Halloween you came to expect to see a Saw movie coming out depicting some sort of violence carried out by it's own victims.

Each of the subsequent movies connects victims and their killers to another "Game" or sequence of events in the previous movies until the Final Chapter, where after several months of investigation, the accomplice to Jigsaw's masterminded crimes of imprisonment and torture is put down, not by the law, but to the other "rehabilitated" persons under the tutelage of Jigsaw is complete.

From the drug users, adulterous doctors to the criminal judge that didn't give a criminal a worthy sentence for murder, no one that has a disregard for human life is without reprieve. By the time we get to the fourth installment of the series, we learn that on top of an inoperable cancer, Jigsaw and his wife lost their child due to one of the first victims in the puzzle that Jigsaw devised. With a death sentence like cancer, you get the impression that Jigsaw wants to see people living their lives with better intentions.

From a business standpoint, these movies made Lionsgate a very large amount of money. The 1st movie was made for only 1.2 Million dollars and grossed over 55 million in America alone. Built on a good business model, the series was made on a very limited budget and was released during a season where it was expected to do well and it didn't disappoint. From beginning to end the series gave just enough information to get the audience interested and left enough time between movies to keep them waiting, salivating for more.

"If you're good at anticipating the human mind. It leaves nothing to chance"

That statement describes the fans of this series as much as it is a quote from John BKA Jigsaw to one of his disciples of torture. From the first movie to the second, there was a huge following for each movie afterward. Audiences bought tickets and waited in lines for hours before the movies started during the Halloween season in costume some times. It wasn't hare to tell the victims from the mastermind. A lot less blood on the Jigsaw characters than the slashed up people waiting to see the films.

The movies we watched this week were mostly slick bigger budgeted Horror films that gave the studios that produced them an edge for the youth market. Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead takes the original Night of the Living Dead and the 70's movie of the same name and combined them for one big blockbuster. Even seeing the zombie that was pregnant give birth to a zombie baby was unpleasant, but not scary.

Homework Movie - Training Day (2001)

When the opportunity arose to change homework movies, I took it. Having missed the chance in class to watch Training Day directed by Antoine Fuqua, I asked to watch it at home, rather than The Departed for more than one reason. Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke star in this gritty urban Neo-Noir about the corruption in the police department that Jake Hoyt (Hawke) is trying to get into and Harris (Washington) is the lead Detective of. Watching this movie was like watching every gangsta movie from the 90's from the lens of the criminal because even some of those bad guys wouldn't do the things that Harris was having Hoyt commit.

From the beginning, Hawke was on the straight and narrow while Washington was giving lessons to his rookie to behave in a manner that the crooks they were supposed to be busting wouldn't suspect they were police, walking a very thin line between cops and criminals. As each lesson came up, they were quickly reviewed and dismissed by the Det. because he "Ran these streets". But every time there was a gray area, Hoyt would say no because of the book he learned from until his Det. partner busted his chops for it. The crimes got bigger, and the cover-ups came at a higher cost to their lives or their reputations on the streets, which is a big deal for police trying to infiltrate criminal activity undetected.

Choosing to utilize their past experience in filmmaking, Fuqua chose the cast and put them in very comfortable roles that each has played before. Hawke was in several movies including Lord of War, a firm hand of the law that went by the book. Washington has always been able to flow between characters that were good and bad very well, with believable justifications for each.

Because we missed The Departed, the movies we watched in class are on two very separate sides of the fence for me. I'm not a big fan of David Lynch's work, and therefore Blue Velvet drew little interest to me. I did observe it for it's story and I found it hard to follow because he was looking for something that had already been found by someone else. However, the Stephen Frears movie, Grifters held my interests well. John Jusack and Angelica Huston play son and mother thieves making their income on hapless victims until the mother tries to steal from her own son. The banter in that movie was well worth seeing it again after more than 20 years.

Homework Movie - Cure (1997)

            When I first saw the movie title, I thought the 1997 movie Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa was going to be a routine psychotic killer movie.  What I witnessed was anything but.  The beginning starts out a little bit comical with a dark twist, and it continues from there.  Most of the victims aren't suspecting their fate and the murderers are aware of their crimes, but can't seem to stop themselves.  And it seems that one person is able to travel between victim and murderer without being captured for almost the whole movie, that is until the Inspector played by Kôji Yakusho gets his man with good old-fashioned police work.  The only problem with that is, the pattern doesn't stop there.

             At the time of filming this movie, Kôji Yakusho had already been an accomplished actor for several decades in his home country, much like his director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who is not related to Akira Kurosawa.  This movie marks the first time these two men worked together, and they have worked now on six films together since.  After this film, the two made the 2001 film Pulse, which later got an American version in 2006 starring Kristen Bell and several other up and comers in Hollywood.

            I found it interesting that some of the sets were very large spaces with perfectly placed props that people used.  After such a long time making movies, there should have been more planning involved to make more sense of things like perfectly placed seats and objects to use as weapons.  There were some clever bits when using light sources for triggers of the killings and then the Inspector's constantly finding need to look at similar light sources.

            Over the years in Japan as with any country, the storytelling has improved.  Cure takes a supernatural twist over movies such as Jigoku, which we watched in class.  The levels of Hell are depicted over a man's guilt for a crime he wanted to report, but didn't due to peer pressure not to.  In a twisted manner, the movie Suicide Club's beginning is similar to Cure's in which there is some serious moments and then a wide angle shot of something that strikes me as funny.  The way the students jumped into the oncoming train in their suicide pact was shot in a way that although horrifying, looked really strange and made me laugh, not shriek in horror.

Homework Movie - Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966)

The French Heist movie Le Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) has everything you can ask for in a film noir heist film. A criminal that has escaped prison, police following the moves of the major players with such a cool attitude, a femme fatale who's in love with the hardened criminal, and a score that's worth the risk. It's the way the Jean-Pierre Melville crafted this movie that makes it a must see for anyone that enjoys crime stories.

In beautiful black & white film, Melville composes wonderfully long scenes of flight from prison, sets the mood in both planning scenes with the gangsters and the romantic interlude with Gu (our main protagonist played by Lino Ventura) and Manouche (his love interest played by Christine Fabrega). The cool Inspector Blot doesn't skip a beat when in the room with criminals covering for their partners in crime nor does he break a sweat when interrogating them once he's got them in custody.

Melville cleverly goes between the criminals telling what they are going to do and the police showing where things might be happening to give a duel narrative for the audience to follow the story along without seeming to spoon feed the material. The whole time line for the story takes a little over a months time and the title cards tell us when everything's going down to keep track. The added time on the departure is worth the risk for Gu as he needs the money to travel, so he decides to do one last score for a large sum of money. However, he doesn't know all the players until it's too late.

We watched another Melville movie in class that had similar subject matter. In Le Doulos every character in it was two faced. Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot showed the desperation of a man that was released from prison and couldn't find any other work but manual labor. The struggles he had to make ends meet were the least of his worries in the field. Every turn he had issues from the co-workers to the location itself being dangerous.

Homework Movie - Suspiria

I think the legend of Suspiria is much larger than the movie itself as a horror film. Looking at it today with more advanced FX technology and a wider perspective of the horror genre, there really isn't much to be terrified about in this movie. Directed by Dario Argento, it's rather campy nature makes it all the more entertaining and fun, more so than scary. A new student getting adjusted to dance school life and then the stories she's told perpetuate the myth of the school's infamy. As the story unfolds, Suzy Banyon, played by Jessica Harper finds out there's much more to her school than was in the brochure. Cat fights and gossip about other students is a pre-requisite and a tough head instructor a given. Creepy staff and the weird nephew are a different touch but don't hold much weight in scaring.

The atmospheric music by Goblin makes the movie suspenseful and moody, but the weird dubbing of the dialogue makes it a little choppy most of the time. Telling most of the story in exposition seems to be the norm from this generation of movie making, so this movie isn't alone in doing this. The staff and doctors outside of the school tell most of what is going to happen rather than showing the audience in a different cut that would have to be longer of this film.

Much to my dismay, this film doesn't live up to the reports of friends that have seen it before. I've given it more than one viewing before making this review. It has elements that would work in another film and it has things that I have seen in other movies, such as the students having something that ruins their rooms and then having to put up a makeshift living quarters in the Dance studio (Much like in Revenge of the Nerds) where all the girls are tossing and turning overnight and our subject/victim notices a strange visitor that plays a part later on in the story.

We watched several movies that had similar efforts for the time period they were filmed in. Cheesy dialogue, blood that was obvious it wasn't blood, and somewhat interesting soundtrack design. The stand out film from class was Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to Night of the Living Dead by horror master craftsman George A. Romero. He was given a place to stay with Suspiria's Argento to write the script for DoD, which he did in three weeks. Although not a masterpiece worthy of AFI top praises for best films ever, DoD does exemplify the genre and with it's comic book feel, doesn't diminish like Suspiria does, taking its story too seriously.

Homework Movie - Written on the Wind (1956)

"A whiskey bottle is about all you'd kill"

For our examination of the Suburbs Gone Haywire, we took a look at some movies that showed how house wives sleep with their bosses or husbands friends, guys that are stepping out on their wives, spending their family's inheritance before the parents are dead, and a lot of the mixed bag of other Noir topics. Written on the Wind is a family of wealthy siblings and their relationships with the parents, and themselves. We've got an alcoholic, a straying wife, a frisky sister and the best friend that has to endure it all with a strong sense of friendship.

Douglas Sirk directed Written on the Wind about half way through his career, and it shows. The whole movie is very well crafted from the story to the settings and the casting. This was done for Universal Studios, which might mean that he was able to have a larger budget. With the cast he had, Including Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall which both already had very successful movie careers before starting this picture, led this wonderful yet tragic look into people with more money than sense.

Movies like this one prove that even when times were supposed to be simpler, there was understandings that people didn’t all have it together. Along with movies like Crime of Passion, where a young woman leaves the family business to find love with a detective then to feel unsatisfied when he's not moving up in his career, Written on the wind shares a look into complacency or the lack thereof.

Be careful not to take a slug to the belly, be happy with what you

Homework Movie - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

"What if they make a monster in their dreams?"

"They turn their back on it. Take away its energy, it disappears"

Falling asleep is never a good thing in the theaters, but I can only imagine that when audiences across America saw this movie, sales in coffee and NoDoz shot up quickly! A Nightmare on Elm Street takes the typical horror monster and puts him inside his victim's head. The story centers around four teenagers, and more specifically Nancy Thompson Played by Heather Langenkamp, and their quest to find out who's killing their friends while they are asleep.

In the waking world of Nightmare, the adults are clueless to what's happening to their own children due to the parents mistakes earlier in life when they murdered a man tried of murdering children, but due to a technicality, let go. His lynching brought on this story's killer spirit to exact revenge on the families, including a young Johnny Depp in his first role as Glen Lantz. The special FX are creative and the way the deaths are designed is also.

Wes Craven directed this movie in 1948 after several others in the horror genre that he both wrote and directed. This movie was such a success that it spawned several others in the series with the same characters, but the only other directed by Craven was the New Nightmare a decade later. As a master writer in the horror genre, Craven later designed the Scream series to make fun of the supposed rules of the style he helped define for a generation of moviegoers.

This movie not only created a series that is still popular today, but had also elevated the career of Robert Enguland, who had been acting for 10 years before this series made him a household name as Fred (or Freddy) Kruger. Along with Friday the 13th, this movie stands as a new generation of horror that sees both the good and evil sides of life in the genre. Mrs. Vorhees is a distraught parent that saw her child neglected in Friday, however her actions were a bit extreme in justification.

Recently there was a remake of the popular Nightmare franchise produced by controversial producer/director Michael Bay, that has butchered not only Nightmare on Elm Street, but Texas Chainsaw and he's gotten his hands on TMNT for the 2014 calendar.

"He's dead, honey, cause mommy killed him"

Homework Movie - Chinatown (Revised review)

When someone wants to get dirt on his or her spouse affairs or someone they are doing business with that they don't trust, the call Jake Gittes. So when JJ is confronted by not one, but two woman as Evelyn Mulwray, he gets just a bit confused and wants to get to the bottom of this. So begins Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Solving that case of mistaken identity wraps Jake up into a messy case of murder and politics.

Roman Polanski directed this movie in 1974, twenty years after making his first movies. By this time Polanski had crafted a great storytelling technique and a great visual style that was very imaginative. The use of long camera shots and mirror tricks gives the audience the impression that they too are watching someone as a detective.

When everyone's a suspect, there's no one to trust. Everyone in this movie has an agenda involving the water and Gittes has to sort it all out before he loses his whole nose. Fingers are being pointed in every which direction and Gittes complicates things when he get personal with the real Mrs. Mulwray late in the story.

Detectives and reporters work in the same way in the movies we've watched this week. They check their facts against news clips and photos, talk to the right (or wrong) people, and then they get their big payoff in either a check from their employer (people of interest), or by capturing the correct person for the now solved murder. Each protagonist is obsessed with solving their crime (Chinatown) or getting their story (Shock corridor) so much that it takes over their life.

Homework Movie - Don't Look Now (1973)

Looking over one's shoulder isn't the best idea to do when the title of the movie is Don't look now, however Donald Sutherland was constantly doing so as John Baxter in Venice. He's on an assignment to restore a building for the Church. At first I thought that he too was seeing things but wasn't telling his wife. Then, like so many other movies directed by Nicolas Roeg, the mood and story shifted to John Baxter's search for his wife who seems to have run off with some women that she met in town that communicate with the Baxter's deceased daughter.

Some of the double exposure shots in this movie are really impressive. I'm sure that at the time the movie was released for the first time it was really innovative. I'm sure Roeg's time as a cinematographer helped in choosing the locations and shot selections for this movie to compel the suspenseful tone and the disconnected feeling of the film.

I was surprised to see how well Donald Sutherland's character changed over the course of the movie. His crass dismissal of the two women as crazy and non-sense was later revealed to him as something he was afraid to understand. When he took the blind sister home it was a really nice gesture.

Of the movies we watched in class and Don't Look Now, there was some veiled attempt to place some sexual encounter in the story for what seemed a random scene. It didn't lead to anything in Don't Look Now, other than to follow in some unwritten rule that if you have sex in a horror movie, you would die. Sex in films show the immorality of the culture with men chasing their secretaries or friends of wives in some way. If it has no other bearing on the story, why put in in? This helps ticket sales and recognition of the actresses, right?! Yes, Julie Christie has had a wonderful career in film, however this film came 10 years after Julie's first movie and by then she was already in her 30's. She has gone onto a long and varied career in film, only returning to horror/thriller territory a handful of times.

Homework Movie - Vertigo

When your old friend asks you to watch his wife to find out where she's going, you know something's going to end up all wrong. Such is the case for detective John "Scotty" Ferguson played by James Stewart in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958. I've had such a hard time following the muddled plot to this movie, now matter how many times I've watched it, it still takes too long to get the point across why Galvin Elster has his friend watch his wife to observe her behaviors. Is it a plot to rid Ferguson of his Vertigo issues? Does Galvin's wife really die?

Making a duel appearance is Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster, the wife of Ferguson's friend and then later as Judy the plant that looks exactly like Madeleine. In the climax of the film I was not sure if it was Madeleine or Judy that threw herself off the bell tower. No matter who it was, it sure made an impression on Mr. Ferguson, as he was completely infatuated with her looks, despite having to figure out which woman she is.

His quest was doomed from the beginning as his friend knew his condition would impair his ability to travel to anywhere with heights. On top of that, his relationship with his best friend and former fiancé was more than enough female interaction he should have needed, however his attraction to Mrs. Elster led her to her ultimate demise.

I've enjoyed more of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, but for some reason this doomed man story just doesn't hold up like the others. As for the other clips we watched in class, I was more interested in how the doomed character was involved with artistic choices in The Big Knife than Stewart's obsession with someone

Homework Movie - Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Up until the early 70's the horror genre had been mostly creatures from another place that have come to take over the humans. It was in this time period that films took to the streets, local communities, and neighborhoods that the audience grew up in. With movies like Roman Polanski's Repulsion and Rosemery's Baby, the audience was getting into peoples homes to see what goes on when the doors are closed. In Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, we're seeing a group of friends on a road trip that come across a home that they shouldn't have been anywhere near them.

This movie didn't have any well-known names as stars and most of them have done few movies after this. The star of the show was the story about a demented family catching their meal for the evening. That meal would be comprised of several college aged kids going to visit a family member's grave in connection to a recent grave robbery in town. Once there, the group find they are stranded and out of gas to get home. It continues to get worse from there, but all the while, there isn't a bit of gratuitous sex or violence much like today's "Torture porn" style movies such as Saw or House of 1,000 Corpses which were inspired in part by Chain Saw. The sole survivor is never naked, and for a horror genre movie that's a completely rare occurrence.

For future films, there is a reverence for films like Chain Saw that shows a side to the horror genre that most people don't realize. These movies are also funny if you think about them for any length of time. Who runs up stairs when you've got a sadistic, chain saw wielding killer on your tail? Right. But in movies like Shaun of the Dead or my favorite of recent European horror Severance, these scenarios are usually one or two people being chased that go somewhere that they would end up being caught.

This movie had inspired so many others to create films, even some comedy writers in the 90's had to put a reference to Chain Saw in a movie called Summer School. The two characters that were horror geeks were determined to share this great film with the foreign exchange student and one of them went by the name Chainsaw in the whole movie. Not to mention the three sequels before Michael Bay got his hands on the franchise. His big budgeted version hold no candle to the classic.

Homework Movie - T-Men

You're probably thinking a movie about currency is going be pretty boring, huh?! Well, aside from the opening statement from the real treasury department, the movie T-men is anything but boring. Anthony Mann's 40's crime noir is peppered with humor that you wouldn't expect, intrigue at every corner, and an intimate cast that's very engaging for it's time or any other decade.

We get to look into the lives of two federal treasury department agents lives as they circle a crime ring that's been smuggling fake bank notes into circulation. Dennis O'Keefe and Alfred Ryder star as the two agents, who when given the assignment, have to start infiltrating the criminal organizations they are "stinging" as entry level hoods looking for work. It takes a little work on their part to fit into the group as they go up the ranks to gain trust, and all the while sending word back to the federal department as to their status for progress.

Once the two agents gain the trust of the criminal organization, they start a plan to bring down the whole operation by finding out who’s in charge. At one point they seem to figure out who is on top by how many orders someone takes over the phone. This part was one of the moments that stood out to me as a very funny point to make. You can really tell who's in charge by how much someone has to take down info and what they are told to do. It was a surprise to me for a movie made in the late forties that they would mention the photographer from the club as a possible kingpin, but she did give a lot of orders to the Schemer until towards the end.

Crime dramas today have taken a bit of a cue from movies such as T-Men, in that they show how the operations of both sides of the law get their information through networks and how much goes into every bit of planning. Similar in it's quest to find corruption in society was Force of Evil where a lawyer tries to go strait and becomes tangled into the local numbers racket because of his brother. It challenges morals and ethics, but ultimately, good triumphs over evil.

Homework Movie - Black Sunday (1960)

When you start off messin' around on your significant other, you just have to know that something wrong is going to come of it. Such is the case in Black Sunday Staring Barbara Steele and directed by one of Horror's best-known directors, Mario Bava. Barbara plays multiple characters that can't seem to keep their hands off the other men in her life when she's supposed to be married as both characters. In both cases it ends very badly for more than one guy. Infidelity doesn't just end with Mrs. Steele's character.

Dr. Gorobec is messing around with the older woman in the beginning, who it turns out to be a younger woman later on in the story that wants the Dr. to take over the estate of the wife/Jenny characters. He then hires a competent doctor that has been looking after Jenny at an asylum before the story takes place and has him move in for a while to study Jenny's behavior to see if she's suitable for the estate or if Dr. Gorobec should watch over and inherit the money/property of Jenny's.

This movie marked the first of many horror genre films for Barbara Steele, including in the 80's the original Piranha for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Steele has worked on everything from dramas to some comedies, but she's always made time for the horror genre.

Starting off as a cinematographer, Mario Bava didn't rise so quickly into the role of the director until almost 20 years into the business. Sure he'd directed some documentary films and shorts in that time, but his first major film being Black Sunday, this makes watching this film especially fun to see his style start to emerge on the scene. Since the 60's, Bava has rarely strayed from the horror genre, being named one of the godfathers of the modern horror film.

Watching some of his other works in class, Black Sunday is a good start to anything he's done over the years. The whip and the body we watched in class and it was cheesy is some parts and somewhat laughable. Thinking about Black Sunday in the terms of when it was made, it could have scared the pants off of you if you weren't keeping track of where people were in the house.

Homework Movie - On Dangerous Ground (1952)

On Dangerous Ground starts off with a very rough and tumble look at a sharp but very tough police detective on the force named Jim Wilson. He been suspended a few times for being too rough with the captives and his captain is about to kick him off the force when a case comes up that will get Wilson out of the city for a few days on a errant case involving a murder suspect. Robert Ryan plays Wilson, a man who's not afraid to get into it with the bad guys, comes off as a bad guy himself, even to his partners.

Mostly known for his directing of Rebel Without a cause, Nicolas Ray had made over three decades of movies with a darker, underbelly of life, approach. This movie takes our hero from his place of business in the city to the mountainous country of Colorado to find a killer on the lose. When he gets there, Wilson is teamed up with the local father of the deceased to find his daughter's killer. This brings him to the cabin in the snowy mountains of Mary, who's own brother is the prime suspect in the case. It's Mary's strong will and determination that convinces Wilson to hear out Mary's plea to capture her brother, rather than killing him on the spot. Never once did her disability come into the thought of Wilson when it came time to tell Mr. Brent to back off.

The major contrast of the city from the mountains played a part in softening the hardened police detective. He was genuinely concerned for Mary's safety once he learned that she was blind, despite her reassurance that she would be fine. She even went to search for her brother once she realized he was their suspect.

In all of this week’s movies, the bad guys were nicely captured and the story wraps up neat at the end of each movie. It wasn't until later on when crooks would be able to get away and that would be how the movie would end. Justice was served in this case, as in the rest of the weeks movies. Even in the Big Heat where the crime spread into the police force, the straight cop finds a way to figure out just who to trust in the department and smoked out the crooked cops all the way to the top.

Homework Movie - A Bell From Hell (1973)

After seeing several different countries horror genre films as well as other genres from the 70's time period, I came to the conclusion that "A Bell from Hell" was a bit clunkier than it could have been for a horror film. The story involves a young man coming home to his family estate to get revenge for his imprisonment in an Insane Asylum. Some of the subplots don't help move the story along and feel unfulfilled to me.

The young man is played by Renaud Verley, who's a French native working in Spain on this and a few other productions. His character plays a few jokes on people during the course of the movie that don't feel like they belonged with this story. The only reason they're in the movie is to serve their purpose and they don't add anything. He enjoys a few prosthetic gags early on and has a life-sized model of himself sent to the house which later on someone believes is Juan (or John in the English dubbed version) and it's destroyed. It doesn't make any sense when Juan tries to save a young woman in a boat then not much else comes of it other than a bandaged Juan. Maybe it's to give his character an alibi, but it's unclear even after watching the movie a few times to pick up things I may have missed the first time.

Having a bell sent to the local church gives us the title of the movie, and it plays a very small part in the film. For a brief moment the bell doesn't ring when the church alter boys pull the rope. Not much else comes of it and even now, I never really got a clear reason for it not working.

A good deal of the camera work in the movie also doesn't help with the story. There's a lot of unnecessary shake in the camera, to me suggesting that it wasn't on stable ground when they shot. Those things could and should have been adjusted when they shot, not left in for the audience to be taken out of the film with.

About half way through the movie is when the real story begins to unfold. Juan starts to seduce one of his cousins which is disturbing at best, and begins a game of cat and mouse with the rest of the family to begin killing them. His home becomes sort of a petting zoo during dinner one night which is funny, but again it doesn't pay off anywhere else in the story, unless you count the bees used to kill his Aunt, which had no part of dinner.

One redeeming point to the movie is the way the girls get away from Juan in the end. They help each other out as one slips their bonds but doesn't leave the rest. All the while in the background of the place they are all staying at is running clips from the childhood of the five people.

Of all the clips we've watched this week and A Bell from Hell, I couldn't pick a really good movie out of the bunch. Alucarda had a good story with a little bit of blood (okay, a lot of blood) and some possessed people. The Black Pit of Dr. M has some funny moments that were supposed to be scary. Dr. M had a split in personality that seemed comical, not very scary. In all, this generation of import horror didn't terrorize more than it made me laugh. It would be the director, Claudio Guerin's last film, so he couldn't scare us any longer.

Homework Movie - Night of the Hunter

"They abide and they endure" - Mrs. Cooper in The Night of the Hunter

Being born at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Laughton's career was largely as an actor. He has worked in movies as early as the 1930's, with a few short films earlier in 1928. He has been credited for a handful of writers credits as well as producing credits. His directing credits have gone more often than not uncredited. This is the only movie he has worked on as director that has been credited to him in his 30 plus year career. With a writers credit also, Night of the Hunter stands to be an amazing testament to his abilities for story telling through film.

Based on the Davis Grubb novel of the same name written in 1953, this movie portrays a murdering priest that finds his victims while in prison listening to death row criminals about their remaining families. This story and subsequent movie was based on events taken from headlines from Grubb's hometown of Moundsville, West Virginia.

As for the headliner, Robert Mitchum, he was the show's main attraction. As the underhanded Harry Powell, he got to play the worst type of bad guy in my opinion: a crooked preacher that kills women for their dead con husband's stolen money. If there's an example of two wrongs don't make a right, it's certainly this one. The children in the story are fully aware of this from the beginning and Father Powell doesn't want to have anything of it. When anyone is around he and the children he's just as nice as a summer's day, but get him alone with the boy and he's on him to spill the beans as to where the stashed money is with dangerous results. Mitchum has been on both sides of good and evil in other movies, but this character was such a memorable bad guy, with his tattoos on his finger and the story that he told to go with 'em, that I really felt for the kids.

When the kids take off down the river alone, their story seemed hopeless til they came to the old mother hen, played by Lillian Gish. She took in the kids as if they were her own from the moment she saw the two. This wasn't her first time taking in stray kids. She was very skeptical from the moment she heard of Mr. Powell's appearance. It took one word from John to get her to see what a wicked man Powell really was.

This story of good versus evil takes it's twist at the end with a juxtaposed picture of the evil preacher signing sweet songs staring down the house where Mrs. Cooper sits with a shot gun in hand to protect "Her" children from harms way. And just like a mother duck and her chicks, they all fall in line walking home after the trial of Mr. Powell just in time for Christmas.

Of the killers we've seen this week, Mitchum's character didn't favor the gun as did others, including Arthur Frantz's The Sniper. He used the switchblade when he wanted to do his dirty work. But as a whole, there was something very sinister about each of the men hunting down women or children in these films. As a part of film noir, the heavy dark aspects are played til the end of the movies teetering the balance of good versus evil until the very end, where the audience is never quite sure who's going to be the victor. In the case of Night of the Hunter, the children (innocence) wins as they are rewarded with a new family.

Homework Movie - Peeping Tom

When you have been living with the idea that your life is completely normal being terrified by your parents, the thought of harming someone else doesn't seem to enter your mind. That is the first impression I got from the movie Peeping Tom by Michael Powell in 1960. Upon further viewing, this movie is so much more than that, as the main character is attempting to become more main stream talking to Helen.

His torment began when his father would capture him on camera after throwing a lizard at him or catching him watching someone else in a romantic interlude over the fence. We never see Mark's father during the action in the movie, but his work is seen through Mark's actions and reactions to the terror in his victim's faces. The difference between Mark's victims and Helen is that Helen was never scared of Mark, only fascinated in his upbringing.

Mark knows what he's doing is wrong, but it's something that has haunted him since his father's passing. His plan to end his own life on film was creative and very clever for the time when this movie came out and to see it now, it's still remarkable that there hasn't been a movie today that has used his demise.

Of the movies we've watched this week, Peeping Tom seemed the most realistic. Quartemass 2 had an interesting story, but the devices were a bit clunky and ill fated for horror. Especially for today's audiences, the monsters of these early films seem to be more laughable that terrifying. The Crawling Eye gave me a few laughs in class as it lurched towards its victims. With Peeping Tom, the character of Mark could possibly exist, which makes the film more grounded and therefore more horrifying.

Homework Movie - Straight Time (1978)

Makin' it on the outside isn't easy when all you've known is a criminal way of life. Dustin Hoffman's character in Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time has been scrutinized since he was 12 years old. Being in the slammer for 6 years before being let go, only to be back in again, he seems to not be able to catch a break. But all the while, he has this attitude as if he's got a chip on his shoulder, so he really doesn't make you feel sympathetic to him either.

Getting out and meeting back up with his old criminal buddies isn't the best idea either, but that doesn't seem to stop him from doing it. Breaking a pattern of crime is the only way to really do the straight time the title of the movie suggests. There are some really strong performances from Gary Busey, Kathy Bates, and Harry Dean Stanton as well as the guys he's worked with in the past and their families.

So what does a career criminal do to get by? His paying job isn't much and having to get his girlfriend to help pay for dinner sends him into this recurring spiral back into his old life real fast. With a parole officer like M. Emmet Walsh as Earl Frank, there's no wonder there aren't more repeat offenders in today's prison systems. Earl doesn't hold a candle to Hume Cronyn as Captain Munsey in Brute Force. Munsey has more ambition than simply messing with one convict. He wants the Warden's job in his prison.

Straight Time is the most recent of the films we've watched this week. With advancements in story development and acting techniques, this movie is more believable than Brute Force and their way of trying to escape. Showing more than just a one sided story of prison life, Straight Time includes a more accurate picture of someone who's involved with a convict in Theresa Russell's Jenny character. She's much more believable than the "Women on the outside" in Brute Force as well. She's excited to be involved with someone from the inside, until he scares her towards the end, but ultimately she still loves him.

Homework Movie - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The year Invasion opened up, Peter Pan is televised on national TV, Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show for his 1st time, and the Yankees won the World Series. Horror movies were becoming more sophisticated with their stories and the acting was always improving, as was the special FX. But Don Seigel's Body Snatchers took a different approach. Based on a magazine's serial story, this movie took a group of normal people and had their brains and bodies taken over by aliens.

Mind control had become the focus of this story from the get go. People began to see things about their family members that didn't seem right away and the good doctor was determined to find out what was going on, no matter what the outcome. All of this was talked about in narration recounting the story to another group of medical and police folks we see in brief scenes in the front and tail end of the movie because a sort of test audience thought the movie was too much a downer for the mainstream film going community. Kevin McCarthy plays the convincing Doctor come back to his hometown to find the mystery already unfolding in front of him and there are very little townsfolk to speak of until they show up to try and cause trouble for the Dr.

Body Snatchers set itself apart from the rest of the film clips this week because most of the clips we watched were of genetic mutations or alterations made by accident (or on purpose) by a doctor or scientist. The Doctor in Invasion of the Body Snatchers was trying to find out what happened, with no clear definition as to the outcome. This movie spawned two official remakes in 1978 and in 2007, then a few spoofs or parodies.

Homework Movie - The Wolf Man (1940)

The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney, Jr. is one of the Universal Pictures legendary monster movies from the 1940's. As a morality tale of promiscuity, this movie begins with a young man returning home to live and then he takes notice of a woman that is already betrothed to another. After finding this out, Larry still continues to pursue her even after being attacked by a wolf, stirring up panic in the gypsy camp that foretold of danger.

I enjoy the classic horror films when they began to use special FX makeup because they were so primitive and yet they still horrified people of the day because it was something they had never seen before, and only read about. Noticing the different camera setups for the transformation is something that nowadays we see because we are so tech savvy that it's obvious. Although there are only a handful of scenes with the monster makeup, they really used them the their advantage and were careful to only have one or maybe two others in the scene with the Wolf Man.

Of the early morality tales, The Wolf Man was the least upfront about the sexuality that is the nature of the beast. With Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Spencer Tracey was overly devious when it came to women. In the movie Cat People, Irene Reed was afraid of stories from her home culture about turning into a cat person once intimate with a man. These were warnings to young people to keep from being promiscuous out of marriage.

Homework Movie - David Lynch's Wild at Heart

At film school there is a standard to which our movies are judged. For directing, David Lynch is supposed to be a high standard for artistic movies with avant garde tones. I for one have a very hard time stomaching his films in general. Not for any grotesque notion, but because there's always an element of, "Here, since there's an old woman nearby, let's have her stand close to camera and wave her hands across the screen" feel to the movies. Adding elements that are nearby to the shots because he wants you to look at the film as an artist, feels pushed to me.

Looking for set photos for this movie, I came up with two shots of Isabella Rossellini and none for Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, who are the main actors because half the movie the two main actors were naked. It seemed there was a sex scene about every five to ten minutes and not much else happening. Sure there was traveling from city to city, and the main characters were being chased by several different groups of individuals, but it didn't hold the story together enough for me to want to care about anyone. It was set up as a tragic love story where the mother of Laura Dern's character didn't want them together because she didn't like Nicolas Cage's character, but that was even flimsy because I think she wanted to be with Cage at one point in the movie somewhere.

From start to finish, I examined this film with an open mind to see if maybe this movie would be like Lynch's "A Straight Story", but with no success. That rare moment didn't happen here where the story was cohesive and simple. Lynch saved that for his one Disney movie that I actually like. Yes, Lynch directed a movie for Disney at one point!

Among the other Fatal Love genre movies we watched this week, Wild at Heart ranks in as my least favorite, hands down. Movie greats such as Bonnie & Clyde are a much more solid narrative story that holds my attention at least. The characters are seperated for a time, they want to be together, and when they do, bad things begin to happen around them until their tragic demise. It's straight forward and yet still delivers a punch at the end.

Homework Movie - Bride of Frankeistein - James Whale

Continuing on the Universal franchise, Bride of Frankenstein follows the monster back into the village to find Doctor Frankenstein in order to create a companion for his original creation so they can live together outside of the regular world's way. Boris Karloff in this movie plays the Monster for his second time of three movies, with only the House of Frankenstein made in 1944 being his only in the series where he's not the monster. I was impressed to see that he was taught to speak in the role this go around, since the first Frankenstein all he did was grunt for the most part.

With only four years separating releases of these titles, the advances in makeup FX was noticeable to me as that's something I look at when watching a horror movie now. The Bride had smaller but still noticeable scarring on her neck where the good doctor operated on her that didn't look fake, but like someone skilled made careful cuts to keep the skin in tact and easily reapplied.

Something that is fascinating to me is that this was a pre-code horror movie, as were much of Universal's films at the time. Horror movies didn't get much Code attention until sound was added because the terrified screams and the chilling soundtrack made the audiences squeamish. The other movies out during this time that showed graphic violence and sexual undertones got more attention up to that point.

Comparing this movie to the clips from class, I reviewed The Island of Lost Souls again at home to get a full feeling of Dr. Moreau's, played extraordinarily creepy by Charles Laughton. Of the two doctors, there was a lot more remorse for his wrongdoings out of Frankenstein in Bride than Moreau had up to his demise. It was only through The Monster's urging did Dr. Frankenstein agree to create another so hideous to keep him company.

I did enjoy both as I could watch them more than once and still find new things in each movie. There wasn't an over stylized or graphic violence to either movie and what violence there was is now considered tame in comparison to today's gore for the sake of gore films. Back in the days of the first screenings of these films, however, the story might have been different.

Homework Movie - Fury - Fritz Lang

At every turn in this movie, it seemed to go from bad to worse in no time at all. The couple start at a separation that was supposed to be temporary that lasted longer due to a misunderstanding. As the movie progressed, so did the game of telephone that was happening between townsfolk and the authorities. It doesn't stop there when the town begins to form the furious mob (Thus the title, Fury). Spencer Tracy plays the wrongfully accused Joe that turns his calm demeanor into a vengeful protagonist when he is suspected of being burned to death by the town that took actions into their own hands for a crime that Joe didn't commit.

What I saw in this movie was a town full of people that wanted nothing more than to busy themselves with other people's business and when that wasn't enough, they took it to extremes and it got out of hand. To make matters worse, the protagonist doesn't even try to make things right for himself with the town after escaping what was supposed to be his death. Instead he gets his two brothers to file a lawsuit with the DA to charge them all with the murder of Joe that never happened.

I enjoyed this movie for the pacing of the action. It didn't really ever stop. There was always something going on that had me actually catching myself trying to keep up. The story was easy to follow, as were most of the films of that day, looking back now. Fritz Lang didn't attempt to use any fancy camera tricks in this movie, not to say that he hadn't before or since. This movie happened to be a more straight forward movie and didn't rely on them for the affect on the audience.

Homework Movie - Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages

There are several sections to the movie Haxan that I understood the first time I watched it. This documentary style movie was made in an age where superstition was related to things from the various religious practices of the time. The film maker even goes to the lengths of describing how people saw the world during medieval times as a flat surface with the stars hanging close by Earth because we happened to be the center of the universe. We know, however, that isn't the case any longer.

Some of the camera exposure techniques for this film were amazing for the time and even hold up still today, albeit in a more sophisticated fashion. The double exposures were a great tool here to trick the audience into believing that there were flying witches. Also, some of the reversing of the film to show things coming back out of the room and other clever segments were a surprise to see in a film from back then. The one thing that stands out to me the most of this film is the pleasant music that scores the piece. It sounds like a happy frolic through the picture, when the subject matter was anything but friendly. It sounds like something taken from a Disney movie.

I did enjoy the transition from medieval times into what would have been modern for the twenties. This brought the "modern medicine" and techniques of the doctors of the time to be able to diagnose for hysteria rather than suspecting people of being witches.

Upon doing a small bit of web searching, I came to find that Christopher Lee, made famous in Hammer Films such as Count Dracula and later on as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings Series, was born the same year as the release of Haxan.

Of the films for this weeks clips in class and our homework, I enjoyed watching Vampyr again at home along with Haxan. Although the two are vastly different in structure, both must have been terrifying for the time. The unknown of the supernatural of those days must have had the audiences screaming up the aisles.