Classic Movie Picks: November

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies Now Playing guide for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

"Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood"
11/1, 8 PM - Episode 1: Peepshow Pioneers
11/8, 8 PM - Episode 2: The Birth of Hollywood
11/15, 8 PM - Episode 3: The Dream Merchants
11/22, 8 PM - Episode 4: Brother, Can You Spare a Dream?
The big news this month is the premiere of this seven-part documentary series produced by TCM and airing Mondays and Wednesdays through Dec. 15. Moguls & Movie Stars chronicles the birth of American movies in the late 1880s to major industry shifts of the 1960s, including Thomas Edison's kinetoscope, the studio system heyday, and the rise of television. Each episode is followed by related film programming which was either from or about the featured time period. Check the spotlight article on TCM.com for a full schedule of related films and encore presentations of each episode.

11/6, 9 AM: Remember? (1939)
Fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) may feel a sense of deja vu when they hear the plot of Remember? Robert Taylor and Greer Garson play a bickering couple who each take an amnesia potion so that they can forget they ever met. However, unlike the couple in Eternal Sunshine, Garson and Taylor want to rediscover each other and fall in love again.

11/7, 8 PM: Metropolis (1927)
11 PM: Metropolis Refound (2010)
One of the most anticipated screenings at this year's TCM Classic Film Festival was the North American premiere of a new version of director Fritz Lang's Metropolis which included newly found and restored footage. Metropolis is a must-see film for anyone who enjoys studying film history because the imagery and themes pop-up again and again in later films. Metropolis Refound is a documentary about the discovery of a print of Lang's film in Argentina, which contained several minutes of footage that was thought to be lost.
BONUS: More films by Fritz Lang
12 AM - Spies (1928)
2 AM - M (1931)
4 AM - The Woman in the Window (1944)

11/9, 10 PM: Local Hero (1983)
Some films you watch for academic curiosity and some you watch for pure enjoyment. I would put tonight's selection by Guest Programmer Michael J. Fox in the latter category. It stars the underrated, but always welcome, Peter Riegert as an American executive who falls under the spell of an idyllic Scottich village. Peter Capaldi, so hilarious in last year's In the Loop, and classic film icon Burt Lancaster play supporting roles.

11/13: Starring Teresa Wright
8 PM - The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
11 PM - Mrs. Miniver (1942)
1:30 AM - The Little Foxes (1941)
3:30 AM - Enchantment (1948)
5:15 AM - Casanova Brown (1944)
Someone in the TCM Programming Department must be reading my blog (please don't suggest otherwise; it will ruin my illusions of grandeur) because this month they've devoted an evening to one of my favorite actresses (and my avatar), Teresa Wright. Wright began her film career at age 23 with an Oscar-nominated role in The Little Foxes and during the next decade followed up with an impressive string of films, two more Oscar nominations, and one award for Best Supporting Actress. She was pretty and petite with a girl-next-door charm, often playing characters who were spunky and resilient, yet sensitive. However, she lacked the glamour of the era's top stars and by the 1950s she was playing character parts. Tonight's line-up begins with my favorite Wright performance in one of my favorite movies, The Best Years of Our Lives. That is followed by her Oscar-winning turn in Mrs. Miniver; her film debut, The Little Foxes; and Enchantment, an odd film which benefits from the enjoyable performances of Wright and David Niven. The final film of the night is the only one I haven't seen before, Casanova Brown co-starring Gary Cooper. I'm looking forward to this one since Cooper and Wright had great chemistry as husband and wife in The Pride of the Yankees (1943), a film which isn't showing tonight, but is scheduled for January 1, 2011.

11/14, 3:45 AM: Hearts and Minds (1975)
5:45 AM: Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Two superb, Oscar-winning documentaries from the 1970s. Their subjects are the effects of war and economic hardship on Americans in the 70s, topics which are still quite relevant today.

11/19: Directed by Peter Weir
8 PM - The Last Wave (1977)
10 PM - Gallipoli (1981)
12 AM - Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
During the late 70s, the Australian film industry experienced a surge as many talented directors began creating unique work which gained the attention of a worldwide audience. Peter Weir made such an impression with the haunting, atmospheric Picnic at Hanging Rock, which tells the story of a mysterious disappearance during a picnic in the Australian bush. The two other films showing tonight also deal with stories of "Oz" - the trial of five Aborigines in The Last Wave and Australian soldiers fighting in WWII in Gallipoli.

11/21: Mr. and Mrs. Cary Grant
8 PM - Room for One More (1952)
10 PM - Every Girl Should Be Married (1948)
These two curious little films with a decidedly retro, domestic bent star then-husband-and-wife Cary Grant and Betsy Drake. I was surprised to find out that Betsy was only 25 when she made Every Girl, since she looks older, probably due to a hairstyles and clothing which look matronly to my modern eyes. According to that film's credits, the story was inspired by an idea submitted by a home economics class. Makes you wonder what exactly the curriculum was in that school...man-hunting?

And since I'm posting this on October 31...Happy Halloween, everybody!

Horror Movies As of Late...

The latest trend in horror cinema is movies presented as video footage shot by a character in the movie. I've been calling this sub-genre "reality horror" because these movies are less like documentaries and more like an extended reality TV show episode. The movies are shot on handheld cameras that shake way more than any untrained person with an unsteady hand would shake the camera and they are edited as though it's uncut raw footage.

I have recently seen Paranormal Activity. I was skeptical when the film became a phenomenon and everyone that saw the movie said how scary it was, how they haven't been that scared by a movie, and so on. If this film was as scary as everyone said it was, then it wouldn't be scary only at midnight screenings with an audience that's agreed to be scared. A good scary movie is scary no matter when you see it, so I watched it in the middle of the day. There were some scary scenes, all of which involved the night vision bedroom camera, but as movie it's sub par. As far as I can tell Paranormal Activity is about a demon trying to get Katie to break up with her a-hole, tool of a boyfriend Micah (in which case, is it really a demon?). The main problem with this movie is that the scary and creepy scenes of, well, paranormal activity are buffered by day time footage of the couple arguing and Micah doing things he's been specifically told by his girlfriend not to do and making things worse. They bicker and fight; at one point they argue to the point that Katie runs upstairs, falls to the floor, and cries. Micah apologizes to her, while still filming the entire thing. There is no question about what is happening, Katie is being harassed by some supernatural force. There is tangible evidence of this, and her boyfriend seems to believe and accept this but just doesn't care. How serious can a demon that's been following your girlfriend since she was 8 be? There's a lot more I can say about the movie but most of it wouldn't be positive. I'd recommend this movie for the creepy night vision scenes but then you'd have sit through awful scenes of a couple on the verge of breaking up. As for if it's legitimately scary, I'll admit, yeah those bedroom scenes and the ending scared me, just like I'm always startled and scared by sudden loud noises, and screaming things popping up in front of me.

Of the reality horror movies I've seen Quarantine has been the one I enjoyed the most and was least frustrated with. A news crew accompanies a crew of firemen on a call to an apartment building and get quarantined inside with the tenants and people infected with a highly contagious rabies-like disease. The filming of everything happening in the building makes sense (that's what news crews do). It's a monster movie and you can tell where it's going, who's going to make it to the end, and how it's going to end, but I had good time watching it.

Out in theaters now for Halloween are Let Me In, which left most theaters in Austin rather quickly so I don't think I'll get the chance to see it; Wes Craven's My Soul to Take which is, thank God, an original work, but it's in 3D; and SAW 3D. It's supposed to be the last of the series, but I think we're all skeptical. Even if it is the last SAW movie, it won't be the last one like it since it seems the other trend in horror movies today is to be as gory and graphically violent as possible.

The last horror movie I really enjoyed in theaters was 1408, starring John Cusack. It's a pretty good adaptation of a Stephen King short story. The film naturally expands on the story but it doesn't feel stretched out and no scenes feel like just filler moments. There's a good mixture of surprise scares, effects scares, creepy image scares, and "is this all in my mind?" scares. It's essentially a one man show and Cusack gives good performance. I haven't seen 1408 in a while but I remember it not missing any notes it aimed for and being an effective horror movie.

People always do a double take and ask "really?" when I say I've enjoyed the films of Rob Zombie. He draws a lot from horror films from the 1970's like Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The first part of his 2007 Halloween feels like it takes place in the 70's but we know it doesn't since when the film jumps to 15 years later it's in present time. While I can't say I like the ending, it goes down the well traveled killer chasing after the girl path, I do enjoy the rest of the film very much. The movie is structured like a novel (or a series of short films) since it's broken up into different chapters, each telling it's own story and having it's own lead characters. Michael Myers is the central character, the movie follows him more than any of the other previous films, and though he's given human motivations for his evil actions we're never asked to sympathize with Michael Myers. He kills every person he comes in contact with indiscriminately. Laurie and her friends in the present day segment titled "Trick or Treat" are very convincing as modern teenage girls.
The movie goes on a bit too long at the end and I feel like Rob Zombie missed the perfect moment to end his movie on in favor of more scares. Zombie's Halloween II is severely lacking however. It tries to be it's own movie with a tone and style different from the first movie and I admire it for that but it misses the marks it sets to hit. After a while you get flat out tired of Michael Myers killing everyone he sees and the sequel is a lot more violent and gory than the first. There is, however, a lot of great imagery that is haunting and creepy and fitting of a movie titled Halloween.

I think I'll spend this Halloween weekend with some classic and not-so-recent movies. I've really enjoyed the Hammer horror films that aired on TCM and Peter Cushing is now tied with Anthony Hopkins as my favorite Dr. Van Helsing. I've got the Hammer Frankenstein movie cycle queued up on the DVR and I'm excited to see how Peter Cushing is as Dr. Frankenstein. Whether you end up watching newer horror movies or classic ones, scary ones or silly ones, have a happy Halloween!

From the Vault: Hellraiser

There are certain movies that, good or bad, make their foothold in our cinematic consciousness. On the other hand certain movies, good or bad, can slip to the back of our consciousness. Each month I'll be taking a look back at a movie that since it was released has fallen through the cracks, been completely forgotten about, or just hasn't been watched in a while. This month, for Halloween:

Hellraiser

John Carpenter's Halloween, The Exorcist, and The Shining are examples of good horror movies that are also good cinematic works. Friday the 13th (1980), Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the movie I saw for the first time this month, Hellraiser, are notable horror movies that, as cinematic works, are just good, not great. But these movies have hung around throughout the years because of how they scared audiences, the memorable villains/monsters they had, and they, like better cinematic works, leave an impression on people when they are watched for the first time. Clive Barker adapted and directed Hellraiser from his novella The Helbound Heart. It was his first time directing and it's a very decent debut movie.
Hellraiser certainly has memorable villains. I remember every Halloween the "Pinhead" mask was in stores and in catalogues and it scared me a lot more than any of the other masks of deformed monsters. I still find the image unsettling. It's not the face of a hideous monster; he looks like a regular person, albeit with albino skin, but the grid pattern impressed on his head and the nails, or pins, at each corner has unsettling implications about body mutilation that stayed with me long after the images of the other monsters faded from my mind. The movie is like that too.
As I got older and watched more horror movies I learned that the scariest thing about most of the movies down the horror aisle is the picture on the box. That's not true for Hellraiser. With monster movies there's always a chance that when we finally see the monster it will be unimpressive or laughable. That is not true for Hellraiser. A lot of monster movies tend to follow the trend set by JAWS and hold off on showing the monster for as long as possible. In the first 3 minutes of Hellraiser we see a man torn to pieces by hooks and chains. We also see the otherworldly Cenobites. When we see the Cenobites we see them bathed in light. We see every detail of their forms and S&M inspired costumes. You get the impression that these are not the kind of monsters that hide around corners or stay in the shadows. But the Cenobites and the puzzlebox that summons them are the background of this movie. The plot concerns and unhappy couple, Larry and his wife, Julia, who move into a house where Frank, the man torn to pieces in the movie's opening, lies under the floorboards of a room upstairs. Larry cuts himself and bleeds on the floor and his spilled blood, later on, regenerates Frank into a skeletal shell of a man. Frank used to be Julia's lover and he convinces her to lure men back to the room and kill them so he can use their blood to further regenerate himself. Julia is still very much attracted to Frank. It's a sick love story. Larry is clueless to all of this because the plot requires him to be, but his character is supposed to be the passive husband. Caught in the middle of all of this is Kirsty, Larry's daughter. She's in her late teens or early 20s presumably, and though she seems like a marginal character at first she turns out to be the film's protagonist. Despite the attention Pinhead and the Cenobites receive, the real villain of the movie is Frank. He gets his ex-lover/sister-in-law to murder for him, wants to kill his brother, and kill and have sex with his niece. Pinhead may be a demon, but Frank is a real monster.I really like character of Kirsty, played by Ashley Laurence. She's the only innocent character in the movie and, unlike many female characters in horror movies, she's not just a screaming girl. She gets pissed off and fights back. She's smart enough to run away when the monsters show up; she runs downstairs when the monster is upstairs, she only runs upstairs when she's chased up the stairs. At the climax of the movie, her boyfriend shows up while she's being chased all over the house by monsters, and she deals with them herself. At one point she even pushes him out of the way when he tries to help her close the puzzle box. The first time she encounters the Cenobites she's even able to negotiate a deal with Pinhead to let her go. Now that's a heroine.

You could interpret Hellraiser as having a moralist, conservative stance against sex, like so many teen slasher movies are accused of having. But the subject matter and images are so messed up that it really never occurs to you while you're watching it. If you think about it you'll realize that the movie has a "you reap what you sow" message and not a "sex will destroy you" message. All of the characters lay their own paths of destruction except for Kirsty whose only mistake is thinking that the puzzle box is just a puzzle box. You'll also realize that the Cenobites are indifferent. They don't care who you are or what you've done. You opened the box and now they're here to do what they do and tear your soul apart.

I wouldn't recommend watching Hellraiser unless you're a horror movie fan or want to see something crazy and twisted. It's not nearly as graphic and gory as today's Saw and Final Destination movies. There are gross, repulsive images but the movie's not a geek show; there's a story and reason for what you're seeing. Hellraiser is the kind of movie that probably won't scare you the way you expect horror movies to scare you, but the images and the ideas that go along with them stay with you and make you think about all kinds of things you'd rather not think about. Most of the acting isn't stellar, it's as good as it needs to be, but this isn't the kind of movie you watch for the acting anyway.

There's certainly a cult around this movie. A Google Image search of Ashley Laurence returned a lot of photos of her at conventions and signing autographs. Clive Barker receives fan mail from women wanting to bear Pinhead's children (now that's a social fringe) and in a featurette on the 20th anniversary DVD he begins by saying that this is the last time he'll talk "about that son-of-a-bitch movie." There's a performance art group called Puncture that draws on Hellraiser for inspiration for their shows (they puncture and hang themselves by their skin and do other forms of body mutilation). People say there's an S&M element to this movie, but I think it is more implied than shown; if anything it just makes you think about it. But you don't have to be a freak to watch or even like this movie. It's the kind of horror movie I prefer; one that relies on mood, atmosphere, and ideas more than gore and pop-up scares. There are just a few surprise scares but the movie hardly relies on them. There are impressive visual effects and makeup; and while I can't quite say that it doesn't rely on effects (the main villain, Frank, is a skinless body for most of the movie), that's not where the movie draws it's thrills. The big special effects scene is when Frank regenerates from tiny pieces. It's really impressive and gross and it reminds me of the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London. Some of the optical effects however, such as the lights the accompany the appearance and disappearance of the Cenobites, seem dated and even cheesy.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what the appeal is of a movie that makes the words repulsive, sick, twisted, dark, unsettling, and disturbing all come to mind. Hellraiser isn't really a movie about hell and monsters and pain and pleasure. It's a type of haunted house movie. It's about people misusing each other and misguided desires and curiosities. Ashley Laurence has her own idea about the appeal of the movie, and I think she puts it quite well, "People, I think, like the intimacy and the danger and the rawness and the ugliness. It's so grotesque that I think it's really beautiful, if that makes any sense. It's so human and so flawed that it, I think, makes it more easy to relate to because it's damaged and it's wounded and it's open."

Vampires Used to be Scary

It's Halloween season and one of my favorite times of year. The weather finally cools down and it's time to watch scary movies. That means I won't be watching any movies (or TV shows) with vampires because vampires aren't scary anymore. What's happened to the vampire is rather undignified for a creature that has haunted and terrified but also intrigued every civilization for hundreds if not thousands of years. They've gone from demons of the night to PG-13 leading men and heartthrobs. I've never really been a big vampire fan but that just seems wrong. It's a well known fact that anything 12 year-old girls fawn over can't be scary.

I remember not wanting to watch movies like From Dusk Til Dawn, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even The Lost Boys because they had vampires and vampires were the stuff of horror movies. I recently watched The Lost Boys and while it's not scary like you typically think of a horror movie being scary, it is an entertaining movie about vampires. The third act where the vampires attack the house the main characters are holed up in is like a demented version of Home Alone. The teenage vampires act how teenagers would act if they were immortal, had superpowers, and pretty much no consequences for their actions. They enjoy being vampires and don't act like moody emo kids. The gang of vampires in The Lost Boys has the allure and intrigue that makes teenagers turn goth, sells Anne Rice books, and was first put on the screen by Bela Lugosi. Lugosi is the ultimate Dracula; dangerous, but appealing in spite of, or because of, that fact. But even before Tod Browning's 1931 version of Dracula, the vampire appeared as a monster, not a lover, in F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu. If you haven't seen Nosferatu, I highly recommend giving it a watch. It's not only one of the first and best of the horror genre, but also one of the great movies of the silent era. It's creepy and haunting and perfect for watching late at night.

Despite the German poster shown above giving it a 4 fedora rating, I think Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Coppola's 1990 version) is largely underrated and overlooked. Of course it won't hold up when compared to Tod Browning's 1931 classic version, but it does just fine as its own version of Bram Stoker's novel. In this version especially, we see the vampire as both a monster and alluring lover. I don't find the presence of Keanu Reeves or Winona Ryder distracting and I think Anthony Hopkins' performance as Dr. Van Helsing is so over the top it's great; it makes Van Helsing an eccentric jerk which is a great spin on the character. Coppola's Dracula uses a lot of in-camera effects and old fashioned, low-tech special effects and it gives the movie the creepy, spooky feel of older horror movies that had to rely on mood and atmosphere to effect the audience. It also has one of the spookiest and craziest movie scores I've ever heard.
Interview with the Vampire is where the vampire becomes less of a monster and more sentimental - which is the point of the movie: how do you deal with going from life as a human to life as a vampire? It's an effective movie that again relies on mood and atmosphere, which is helped by the period setting. It lets us in on the "realities" of life as a vampire that other movies don't touch on. The vampires are still fearsome, though the emphasis is on the allure of the undead creature. I don't view 2008's Let the Right One In so much as a vampire movie as a movie about two lonely people, one of whom just happens to be a vampire. I thought it was one of the best movies of 2008 and was disappointed to hear that an American version was being made. The TV spots make the remake look better than I was expecting it to be and I'll probably check it out before Halloween, if only to see how it was adapted for American audiences.
For my money, the last good vampire-as-monster movie was 2000's Shadow of the Vampire. It tells the fictional story of the making of F.W Murnau's Nosferatu, in which Murnau (played by John Malkovich) hires a real vampire, Max Shrek (played by Willem Dafoe) to give his film a truly authentic feel. Dafoe gives an incredible and chilling performance as the monstrous vampire and even received an Oscar nomination. Shrek begins to feed off of the crew and cast and Murnau struggles to gain control of the undead beast and finish his movie. It's a great vampire movie, but it's also a movie about making movies, a favorite genre of mine. Shrek can't help being a vampire which is jeopardizing the movie production. Murnau keeps the production going even though he's risking the lives of his cast and crew because he can't help what he is either, a filmmaker.