Tag Archives: Horror

Ghostbusters (1984)

07 Sunday Sep 2014

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Peter Venkman, Ray, and Egon
Study strange phenomena,
ESP and ghostly sightings,
Things to make you drop your jaw.
 
When they lose their college funding,
Business is their next endeavor,
Catching floating apparitions
With devices odd and clever.
 
Soon they get an early nibble
(Which they then put off till later):
Dana Barrett’s seeing creatures
In her home refrigerator.
 
When they capture their first specter,
Calls begin to flood the lines.
New York seems to be attracting
Unexpected eerie signs.
 
He and Dana hit it off,
More or less (it grows with time).
They confine all ghosts they find,
Fighting through recurrent slime.
 
When the EPA comes calling,
Blasting them for violations,
They turn off the storage system,
Loosing phantom infestations.
 
In the meantime, Dana’s fallen
To the demon Zuul’s possession.
She and neighbor Louis Tully
Plan for Gozer’s near aggression.
 
As an otherworldly portal
Helps the ancient god appear,
All Ghostbusters block its way
Until it makes a friend a fear.
 
As a mountainous marshmallow
Wrecks New York, they roast it well,
Rescuing New York and Dana
From phantasms raising hell.
“Who you gonna call” for hauntings?
We all know the famous yell.
________________
 

Many, including my VC, will probably scoff at my not including Ghostbusters in my top 100. I know it’s extremely popular, utterly quotable, and uniquely entertaining, but it simply is not among my top comedies. The best explanation I can give is that I find the film more often amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Nonetheless, the story of apparition exterminators has rightfully earned a place on countless other top lists, including #28 of AFI’s top comedies. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis are in their prime with a clever script by the latter two, and Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, Rick Moranis, and Ernie Hudson add to the prodigious star power. A few rather dated effects are luckily overshadowed by some impressive pyrotechnics and a few haunting effects that look admittedly real (exploding eggs, flying library cards). Amid all the comedy are also some authentically frightening scenes, such as Dana’s armchair seizure. The refrigerator scene even possibly inspired a later horror film The Refrigerator about a chilled portal to hell. (“Generally, you don’t see that kind of behavior in a major appliance.”)

Some may insist that Ghostbusters ought to be higher, but I still enjoy its blend of comedy and bloodless horror, though I don’t care for its more demonic elements. I do have to include Ray Parker’s “Ghostbusters” in my End Credits Song Hall of Fame. Thirty years later, Ghostbusters remains as classic a haunt as ever.

Best line: (Ray, after they accidentally fry a maid cart that startled them) “I think we’d better split up.”
(Egon) “Good idea.”
(Peter) “Yeah. We can do more damage that way.”
 
VC’s best line: (Ray) “What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God-type stuff.”
(Peter) “Exactly.”
(Ray) “Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!”
(Egon) “Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…”
(Winston) “The dead rising from the grave!”
(Peter) “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”

 

Artistry: 7
Characters/Actors: 9
Entertainment: 10
Visual Effects: 7
Originality: 9
Watchability: 10
Other (language, demonic elements): -2
 
TOTAL: 50 out of 60
 

Next: #126 – The Music Man

© 2014 S. G. Liput

198 Followers and Counting

 

#130: Alien (1979)

04 Thursday Sep 2014

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The crew of the Nostromo are awakened from their stasis
To check an odd transmission on a purely routine basis.
When Kane discovers eggs inside an otherworldly ship,
One hatches and attaches to his face with quite a grip.
The creature later disconnects but leaves a hostile guest:
A small, elusive alien that bursts from poor Kane’s chest!
 
The crew, including Parker, Lambert, Brett, and milky Ash,
The science officer with whom one Ripley has a clash,
Attempt with Captain Dallas to detect it and pursue,
But, as the beast matures and grows, some casualties ensue.
Then Ripley learns that Ash is hiding secrets cruel and grim
And, with a little help, succeeds in neutralizing him.
 
Deciding to destroy the ship and flee aboard a shuttle,
The final three are dropped to one by Double-mouth’s rebuttal.
The ship’s computer’s counting down and Ripley cannot stay;
She clears the ship before Nostromo blows itself away.
Though stowaways are sticky, a blown air lock’s all it takes
To rid herself of aliens forever…till she wakes.
________________
 

There aren’t many scary movies on my list, but I couldn’t leave out this classic blend of sci-fi and horror. Ridley Scott’s Alien may have had myriad source materials (The Thing from Another World, Forbidden Planet, etc.), but it’s also terrifyingly original, with an interrupted dinner scene that ranks among the most shocking and memorable ever filmed. With a crew of relatable everymen, Oscar-winning visual effects, and some impressively realized sets for the Nostromo’s interior, Alien also marked the breakthrough success of director Ridley Scott.

When the film was first released, no one expected an alien to pop out of someone’s chest, and no one knew who would survive the frightful encounter, least of all newcomer Sigourney Weaver, who gained much of her fame from this first starring role as Ellen Ripley. The entire film is thick with tension, which slowly builds from the empty corridors at the beginning to the misty alien world on which the crew lands. Once the alien is released upon the unsuspecting humans, almost every scene is suffused with dread that some hideous thing could be around the next corner or camouflaged somewhere in the dark. The ambushes of Brett and Dallas are enough to give anyone nightmare; my VC has seen the film more often than I have, and she was still shaking during those scenes.

Adding to the obvious horror aspects of a hidden monster, many critics also pointed out a sexual subtext that I’d never thought of, namely that the life cycle of the alien tapped into the fear of rape, or more specifically non-consensual reproduction. It was not lost on analysts that it was a man that “gave birth” and that a woman was the hero. This served to frighten men and women alike out of their wits on multiple levels and gave women a remarkably strong example bucking the usually helpless horror archetype.

Though the film is full of language, which, along with the infamous, bloody chest-bursting scene, gained it an R rating, the rest of the movie is actually pretty restrained. Aside from Kane’s, all the other deaths are either off-screen or quickly cut to keep the audience wondering what it was they saw. It’s certainly not for kids, but it’s at least nothing like the outrageous gore fests I steer clear of. I don’t mind being scared, just being grossed-out for the sake of cheap frights.

Though the Alien franchise was run into the ground with Alien: Resurrection and the Alien vs. Predator films, the original remains an icon of both science fiction and horror, a film that countless others have tried to emulate.

Best line: (Ripley) “When we throw the switches, how long before the ship blows?”
(Parker) “Ten minutes.”
(Ripley) “No b***s***?”
(Parker) “We ain’t outta here in ten minutes, we won’t need no rocket to fly through space.”

 

Artistry: 9
Characters/Actors: 9
Entertainment: 9
Visual Effects: 8
Originality: 9
Watchability: 7
Other (language, violence): -2
 
TOTAL: 49 out of 60
 

Next: #129 – Regarding Henry

© 2014 S. G. Liput

195 Followers and Counting

 

I Am Legend (2007) / World War Z (2013)

13 Thursday Mar 2014

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Robert Neville is the last
Survivor of a medicine
That wiped out most three years ago;
The rest are mutants with pale skin.
 
He drives through New York’s empty streets,
His only friend a dog named Sam.
Although he tries to find a cure,
So far his efforts are a sham.
 
One day, while scavenging for food,
He has a close call with the freaks,
Who cannot live in broad sunlight
And only let out yells and shrieks.
 
He captures one of them as well
To test a new experiment.
He thinks his serum doesn’t work
And starts to doubt his efforts spent.
 
A mutant traps him, and, in fleeing,
Robert sees Sam get a bite.
He takes her home to try his cure,
But he must strangle her that night.
 
At first, he’s numb and wants revenge,
Which fails as well, but he is saved
By healthy Anna and a boy,
The company that he has craved.
 
He doesn’t share her faith-filled hope,
But he defends her when night falls
And mutants come to storm his house.
The three then hide behind glass walls.
 
When Robert sees his serum works,
He sacrifices his own life
To stop the creatures and let Anna
Carry it to end the strife.
Or:
When Robert sees his serum works,
He gives his test case back, unsure.
When all the mutants let him live,
The three of them leave with his cure.
_________________________
 
Gerry Lane’s a family man
Amidst a breakout of disease
That turns infected ones into
A zombie horde that will not ease.
 
His family narrowly escapes
A Newark rooftop just in time.
They’re safe aboard a U.N. ship,
But Gerry’s course turns on a dime.
 
If they stay safe, he has to go
And help a doctor find a cure.
They go to South Korea, where
The doc is killed, and they detour.
 
In Israel, a wall’s been built;
They had the foresight to prepare.
But sound attracts the zombie crowd
And makes them climb without a stair.
 
Jerusalem is lost, it seems,
But Gerry saves a soldier girl.
They manage passage on a plane
And fly above the hostile world.
 
But there’s a zombie on the plane,
And things get quite out of control.
Yet Gerry throws a live grenade
And blows the undead out the hole.
 
The plane goes down somewhere in Wales,
But Gerry and the girl survive.
They find a W.H.O.,
Which verifies that they’re alive.
 
Then Gerry wants to test a theory
Which may help with quarantine.
The zombies may ignore the sick;
Disease may keep us all unseen.
 
They have the samples of disease,
But that wing’s filled with the infected.
He sneaks by zombie-crowded rooms
And almost gets through undetected.
 
Trapped within a small glass room,
He gives himself a bad disease.
He opens up the door again
And walks through zombie hordes with ease.
 
Once cured of what he gave himself,
He spreads the news he chanced to find.
This helps the soldiers to fight back
And saves what’s left of all mankind.
_____________________
 

I’m not big on the genre of zombie movies. I’ve never seen Night of the Living Dead or The Evil Dead or The Walking Dead or any movie or show with “dead” in the title (as far as I know). Thus, most of what I know is based on things I’ve read or heard, but one common factor that has mainly kept me from such films is its penchant for violence and gore. The concept of the living dead is interesting to me, but it’s not worth slogging through buckets of blood or body parts. Therefore, I’ve included these films as two of the most restrained members of the zombie genre.

I put I Am Legend and World War Z together because, after seeing the latter, I was struck by several similarities between the two. Both are based on well-received science fiction horror novels. Both involve several startling jump scenes and a worldwide pandemic of a mysterious disease that turns many or all of its victims into mindless monsters that throw themselves wildly against windshields. Both include a sympathetic family man trying to find a cure, and both end with the protagonist locked in a glass room.

I Am Legend is a melancholy picture of an empty New York, starring Will Smith as Robert Neville. Unlike Gerry Lane in World War Z, Neville loses everything in his search for a cure, and Will Smith makes the pathos of his situation very believable and touching. The film includes both one of the most intense and one of the saddest scenes ever, namely Neville’s first encounter with the infected (which feels like an edge-of-your-seat first-person-shooter video game) and his killing of his beloved dog, on his birthday no less. This sad scene ranks up there with Old Yeller as far as traumatic canine deaths.

A main problem with I Am Legend is the end. There was no need for Neville to kill himself, since he could have fit in the little niche in which Anna and Ethan hid. I much prefer the abovementioned alternate ending, which is much less depressing, though it diverges from the book on which the film is based.

World War Z features actual zombies, rather than the more vampiric mutants. While some people have stated that fast-moving undead are a cliché now, the sight of the rushing zombie hordes is admittedly unnerving.

Though my VC refused to see it because of her dislike for Brad Pitt, I thought he did a decent job as Gerry Lane, though not as good as Will Smith’s performance. Yet, while I Am Legend has many scenes that dwell on what he has lost, World War Z is a much more straightforward action movie (with most direct acts of violence thankfully offscreen), the pace of which hardly slows down enough to let the implications of this global disaster sink in. Yet Gerry’s family survive, unlike Neville’s, and so does he, which makes the end a little happier, if equally ambiguous. On the other hand, Neville actually found a cure for the disease, whereas Gerry’s solution is just to prevent its spread, leaving everyone already a zombie to just be exterminated. Plus, unlike I Am Legend and a similar epidemic film Contagion, we never learn where the zombie outbreak came from. (I blame the Sumatran rat monkey.)

Both have some language and violence, and the very concept of a disease wiping out most of the world’s population is inherently sobering, but both manage to excite, thrill, and believably create these frightening what-if situations.

Best line from I Am Legend: (Neville, speaking of Bob Marley) “When they asked him why – he said, “The people, who were trying to make this world worse… are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.”

Best line from World War Z: (Jurgen Warmbrunn in Israel) “Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.”

 
Artistry: 6
Characters/Actors: 6
Entertainment: 7
Visual Effects: 7
Originality: 5
Watchability: 6
Other (language, violence, and subject matter): -6
 
TOTAL: 31 out of 60
 

Next: #297: Horton Hears a Who!

© 2014 S. G. Liput

 

Psycho (1960)

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

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Marion Crane is in love with a man
But has not the money to wed her dear Sam.
So, after a tryst, she endeavors to scram
 
With 40K trusted to her by her boss.
She leaves town before he’s aware of the loss.
While driving, her mind starts to worry and toss.
Her guilt soon becomes an unbearable cross,
 
So she stops for the night at the old Bates Motel.
The young Norman Bates, who can scare or compel,
Checks Marion in to the lodging from hell.
They chat, and he shows her her quarters as well.
 
He tells her his mother is mentally ill.
That night, in the shower, Miss Crane’s cries are shrill
As a figure appears with a knife meant to kill.
When Norman arrives, Miss Crane’s body is still.
 
So both her and her car, Norman sinks in a lake.
Soon, Marion’s sought for her stolen loot’s sake.
Sam and Lila, her sister, think there’s a mistake;
It’s hard to believe she would lie, steal, or take,
 
So she’s being searched for by the sleuth Arbogast.
He finds the motel, where he thinks she was last,
And Norman is spooked by the questions he’s asked.
It seems that he feels he is being harassed.
 
The detective sneaks into Bates’ home, but is slain.
Then Lila and Sam, who grow close in their pain,
Go also in search of poor Marion Crane.
While Sam distracts Norman, who seems less than sane,
 
Young Lila goes into Bates’ house with aplomb.
The tension builds up like a volatile bomb.
She goes in the basement and loses her calm
When she locates the dead corpse of Norman Bates’ mom!
 
Then Bates, dressed as mother, attacks with a knife,
But, lucky for her, valiant Sam saves her life.
A doctor tells them Norman’s internal strife,
 
The death of his mother, which Norman had done,
The messed-up relationship of mom and son,
 
Caused Norman to take on her psyche and traits
And murder, believing he was Norma Bates.
But, now that he’s stopped, an asylum awaits.
___________________
 

Psycho was the new height of violence and shock value when it was released in 1960. While the “surprise” ending is almost as well-known and unsurprising as Darth Vader’s I-am-your-father revelation, this Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece is still as creepy as ever, and the shower scene still just as traumatic.

I haven’t seen many Hitchcock movies, and what I have seen (Notorious, North by Northwest) hasn’t really impressed me. Yet Psycho is not a mostly boring spy yarn but the original slasher film, which, unlike more recent examples, is restrained enough in its violence to still be watchable. Buoyed by unique camera shots that cleverly hide Norman’s schizophrenic secret and an amazingly evil performance by Anthony Perkins, Psycho manages to retain Hitchcock’s artistic touch while still delivering the horrors in which he so reveled. What is it about playing psychopathic killers that brings out the best in an actor, from Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs to Kathy Bates in Misery? Whatever it is, Perkins is certainly the best part of the whole movie.

Best line: (Norman, while in custody at the very end) “I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do… suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…” (one of the best evil grins ever)

Artistry: 7
Characters/Actors: 9
Entertainment: 4
Visual Effects: N/A
Originality: 6
Watchability: 3
 
TOTAL: 29 out of 60
 

Tomorrow: #336: The Perfect Storm

© 2014 S. G. Liput