13 Nights of Shocktober: The 'Burbs (1989)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 6: Horror-Comedy Night
“I love this street.”

The ‘Burbs (1989)

The ‘Burbs is a spooky fun horror-comedy set in a slightly goofier version of everyday suburbia. Director Joe Dante is right at home in horror-comedy having previously directed 1984’s Gremlins and 1981’s The Howling, both of which played with genre conventions and tropes. The ‘Burbs is no different. With shades of Rear Window, the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” and classic horror movies of the 30s and 40s, The ‘Burbs has a genuine admiration for the movies it draws inspiration from while also having fun with them.

Tom Hanks stars as Ray Peterson, an average, sensible everyman spending his vacation just hanging around the house. He gets bored, as you might imagine, and starts watching his neighbors. Something suspicious seems to be going on at the out of place old, creepy house next door. The new neighbors, the Klopeks, are rarely seen except at night and there are strange lights coming from the basement. Ray and his neighbor friends then start to speculate that the Klopeks killed the previous owner of the house and another elderly neighbor that suddenly disappeared.

The cast of The ‘Burbs is a list of great performers in major and minor roles. Aside from Hanks in the lead, Carrie Fisher plays his wife, Carol, the voice of reason. The great character actor Rick Ducommun—you may not recognize the name but you'd certainly recognize his face—plays Ray’s annoying, not too bright neighbor friend that fills his head with paranoid ideas. Bruce Dern plays the military veteran neighbor that still thinks he’s in the military. Henry Gibson—another great character actor whose face you’d certainly recognize—is the unassuming, but believably sinister, Dr. Klopek. Courtney Gaines, the menacing Malachi from Children of the Corn, is funny as the oddball Hans Klopek. Corey Feldman rounds out the cast as the young cool dude on the block. He also serves as a sort of narrator/guide to the world these people have created out of their block of suburbia. He invites his friends over to watch Hanks, Ducommun, and Dern poke around the Klopek house and sits back for an entertaining show.

The ‘Burbs has a pretty broad sense of humor. It draws on horror movie situations for comedy and never takes itself too seriously. Some of the gags are even cartoonish. When Hanks and Ducommun discover part of a skeleton, the camera frantically zooms in and out on them as they scream in terror. These goofy moments are all part of the fun. 

The ‘Burbs is not quite a meta horror film, but the influence of horror films of the past is ever present. The Klopeks being new, potentially dangerous, neighbors from eastern Europe is meant to be reminiscent of Dracula. Cory Feldman compares what the street is experiencing to the horror film The Sentinel. The score by Jerry Goldsmith is meant to evoke the grand ominous music of horror films of the 30’s and 40’s. The only genuinely scary moment in The 'Burbs comes when Hanks has a nightmare after watching parts the horror films Race with the Devil, The Exorcist, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 on TV. The characters in The Burbs are aware of horror movies, so they know how outlandish it seems that the new neighbors are serial killers. This movie is heavy on laughs and light on actual scares, so even if you don’t like horror movies you’ll still be able to enjoy this horror-comedy. 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Frailty (2001)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 5: Bill Paxton Memorial Night

“The Angel called us God’s Hands”

Frailty (2001)

Actor Bill Paxton made his directorial debut in 2001 with the religious horror thriller Frailty. Paxton was no stranger to the horror and thriller genres having had roles in Aliens, Brain Dead, Near Dark, Predator 2, an episode of Tales from the Crypt, and Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan. Behind the camera he demonstrates an incredible amount of skill at crafting a moody thriller of real substance. Frailty has more than enough to enjoy as a horror/thriller, but there are also more than a few religious and theological ideas to ruminate over.

The opening title sequence is of old newspaper clippings of brutal axe murders set to a creepy violin score. The headlines call the unidentified murderer the God’s Hand Killer. The story is told in flashbacks as Fenton Meeks (Matthew McConaughey) tells FBI agent Doyle (Powers Boothe) that his brother is the God’s Hand Killer and is carrying on the “work” begun by their father. The flashbacks take us to the summer of 1979 when their father (Bill Paxton) receives a vision from an angel telling him that he is to kill demons that have taken on human form. He enlists his sons, Fenton and Adam, in carrying out this mission.

The main tool the angel gives Paxton to “destroy” the demons is an axe. Paxton tells his sons that the angel will give him the names people that are secretly demons and God will protect them from being caught. When he touches the “demons,” he says, their sins will be revealed. The older son thinks their dad has gone crazy; the younger son wholeheartedly believes and claims to see the demons too. The film keeps its distance from stating whether Paxton’s visions are real or delusional until it is most effective for the story.

The key to Frailty's emotional conflict is Bill Paxton’s performance. His character is a loving father even as he has the boys help him with the axe murders. He explains his visions to his boys in calm, gentle tones and never raises his voice in anger at them. There is no change in his personality after the visions begin; he doesn’t become disheveled, he never rants.

Though this is a film about a father that becomes an axe murderer, there is very little blood and no gore. Instead of typical horror violence, Paxton uses the circumstance the characters are in to create unease in the audience. Thanks to the great lived in production design and costumes, this film feels like it takes place in the real world making it all the more unnerving. The cellar where Paxton kills the people on his list and the abandoned community rose garden where he and the boys bury the bodies are just a few visual elements that give Frailty its dark, moody atmosphere.

The original screenplay by Brent Hanley is smart but not too clever for its own good. The plot twists and turns and while you may figure out one twist another will catch you off guard. Bill Paxton, as an actor and as a director, knows exactly what marks he needs to hit and lands each and every one. Frailty feels like a campfire story or urban legend. It tries to explain seemingly inexplicable local occurrences, give you thrills and scares, but also leaves you with thoughts that linger long after the story has ended.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Children of the Corn (1984)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 4: Stephen King Rules Night
"He Who Walks Behind the Rows"
Children of the Corn (1984)

Children of the Corn is not quite as iconic as other 1980’s horror classics like Friday the 13^th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, however, it is still one of those horror movies that everyone knows about, even if they’ve never seen it. The source material is a short story by master of horror Stephen King. By 1984, when this movie was released, Stephen King was an established powerhouse brand in horror fiction and horror movies;this film is billed as Stephen King’s Children of the Corn. With a budget of less than $1 million, it ended up grossing $14 million at the box office and spawned numerous sequels of drastically diminishing quality. The first and only time I saw Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (it wasn’t) was as part of Monster-Vision on TNT, hosted by Joe Bob Briggs. The best part of that movie was the jokes Joe Bob would make just before or after the commercial breaks. I think all of the sequels may turn people away from the original, which while not a masterpiece is a scary good time.

Children of the Corn opens with shots of a quiet, empty rural town. The titles play over a child’s drawings of what has happened to the town of Gatlin and are set to creepy choral music. All the children of Gatlin have fallen under the spell of a mysterious creature that lives in the cornfields and have formed a cult to “He Who Walks Behind the Rows.” One Sunday after church, the children murder every adult in town and begin a new way of life and follow a new religion. Three years later, Burt and Vicky (Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton) are driving across the country so Burt can start a new job in Seattle. While passing through rural Nebraska they runover a young boy that stumbles into the road. They examine the body and find that the boy’s throat has been cut. They decide to drive the body to the nearest town, which happens to be, you guessed it, Gatlin.

The influence of the bloody slasher movies of the 1980’s looms large over Children of the Corn. While not graphic or gory by current standards, there is still a lot of slashing and a lot of blood. The supernatural element (He Who Walks Behind the Rows) doesn’t come into play until the end of the movie. The optical effects at the climax are visually dated, but are still effective for the scene. The climax is an exciting action centric scene, but until then Children of the Corn is a creepy, moody slasher movie. It makes the most out of a low budget: empty streets, abandoned buildings, deserted roads all build a great unsettling atmosphere. But, as you might imagine, the element that Children of the Corn utilizes most, and best, is creepy children. When Burt and Vicky arrive in the ghost town of Gatlin, there are creepy children lurking around every corner. The town is now lead by a twelve-year-old boy named Isaac (John Franklin) who dresses in black and speaks for He Who Walk Behind the Rows. His lieutenant is a teenager named Malachai (Courtney Gaines), who strictly enforces the new laws. Isaac demands blind faith from all the children of the town, but the children fear Malachai since he is the enforcer. Malachai is such a staunch believer in He Who Walk Behind the Rows that he begins to question Isaac. Courtney Gaines is probably the most memorable thing about this movie. He stands out because of his red hair, but much more so for his menacing performance.

This is a well-paced, effective horror movie that finds a good balance between atmospheric creepy horror and bloody slasher horror. It makes good use of handheld camera shots and POV shots, a mainstay of slasher movies. I’ll give you fair warning that Children of the Corn ends with perhaps the weakest final scare ever put on film, but, fortunately, this does not undo everything that came before it and is one of only a couple of missteps the movie makes. Despite all of the blood and death, this is not an especially dark or dreadful film. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw Children of the Corn and hopefully you will be too. 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Get Out (2017)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 3: Social Horror

“I told you not to go in that house.”

Get Out (2017)

You might be surprised to learn that Jordan Peele, of the comedy duo Key and Peele, is the writer/director behind the tense and thrilling horror film Get Out. You might be even more surprised to learn that this excellently crafted thriller is Peele’s directorial debut. Even so, the result is a horror film that broke box office records, earned enthusiastic praise from critics and audiences alike, and even sparked conversations about the possibility of Peele earning Oscar nominations (fingers crossed). Get Out was released in theaters earlier this year (it’s now available on home video) and it will very likely make an appearance on my Best of 2017 list.

Get Out opens with a young black man lost in an affluent suburban neighborhood at night. There shouldn’t be anything for anyone to be afraid of in such a neighborhood, but this is a film about danger hiding behind a benign surface. A car slows down and the young man is abducted. The movie then introduces another young man black man, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), preparing to go on a weekend trip with his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), to meet her parents for the first time. Chris is nervous because Rose hasn’t told her parents that he’s black. She tells him not to worry; her parents are very liberal and progressive. Her parents, Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener), are indeed progressive and are very welcoming and polite to Chris…uncomfortably welcoming and polite. Dean tells Chris that he would’ve voted for Obama for a third term and Missy offers to help Chris quit smoking through hypnosis. Chris declines the offer but then wakes up one morning to find that he suddenly no longer has any urge to smoke. Adding to the strange and unnatural atmosphere are the family’s black servants: a groundskeeper, Walter, and maid, Georgina. Both exhibit strange mannerisms as though they are in a trance.

Though this is Peele’s first film he makes masterful use of the language of cinema. A few film critics compared the style of Get Out to John Carpenter’s Halloween and the comparison is not unwarranted. Peele draws inspiration not only from John Carpenter, but also Hitchcock, and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Like those films and filmmakers, Peele makes the audience squirm in their seats by building suspense. He uses closeups for claustrophobic tension and lets the actors show us how scary a scene is through their performance. He opts to unsettle the viewer through the strange behavior of the characters instead of gory imagery. This approach also underlines the idea that the disturbing horror of modern racism is that it has coated itself in a veneer of deceptive and insincere nicety. Horror movies have always been excellent mediums for indirectly addressing social issues (such as Night of the Living Dead, which featured a black man as the hero and subtlety addresses the Civil Rights movement and counter-protests of the 1960's). In Get Out however, race and racism are at the forefront. Chris has been singled out, “chosen,” because he is black, though the sinister characters say in calm and almost convincing tones that race has nothing to do with it. Perhaps they actually believe that, despite the obvious truth.

Get Out is the kind of horror film that builds and builds tension and then finally has a bloody climatic release. Up until this point in the film, you might have forgotten that you were watching a horror movie. Though the film does get bloody, it is not very gory or explicit. Like great horror filmmakers before him, Peele suggests more than he shows and lets the audience scare themselves. The blood and gruesome imagery of the climax is not the source of the movie’s scares or horror. They are merely set dressing. The horror comes from the situation Chris is in, the characters he is surrounded by, and how believable it feels.

Get Out is not without humor—Peele is a comedian after all—but, the humor does not feel out of place.  Chris’s friend, Rod (LilRel Howery), is top notch comic relief and catches on quick to the situation in which Chris is trapped. Though Rod was able to figure out the secret evil plan, I was not exactly sure how the scheme worked. Fortunately, the details don’t derail the story.  The most important thing is what we understand most clearly. Chris needs to get out of this place, as soon as can, as fast as he can.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 2: Tobe Hooper Memorial Night

Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them?

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Is there a better title in the annals of horror movie history, or non-horror movie history? Comedian Patton Oswalt even has a bitabout how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the perfect movie title because it lets you imagine a mini movie in your head that makes you want to see the actual movie. He’s right. If you know nothing about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know whether or not this is the kind of movie for you just from the title.

After director Tobe Hooper’s death earlier this year, news websites and mainstream media outlets called him the director of the “cult” horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you don’t watch horror movies regularly I can understand classifying The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a “cult” film, but, if you are a horror movie fan The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a classic, highly influential horror film. It’s the kind of film that you certainly know about, have heard other people talk about, and can recognize scenes even from even if you’ve never seen the movie. It’s usually one of the first serious horror movies people see, perhaps as a teenager at a sleepover. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains a highly sought-after movie every Shocktober at Vulcan Video.

The plot follows Sally, her handicapped brother, Franklin, and their friends who become the victims of a family of psychopathic cannibals in rural Texas. The group of friends first pick up a hitchhiker who behaves strangely and cuts himself and then cuts one of the teens. The hitchhiker is a portent of the horrific things about to befall them. As they search for Sally and Franklin’s ancestral homestead they encounter the family of cannibals, including Leatherface, at a dilapidated house. Leatherface, who wears the faces of his victims, makes one of the most memorable first appearances in any horror movie franchise. One of the teens goes into the old, seemingly deserted house. Then in a flash, a steel door slides open, Leatherface appears, bashes him with a hammer, drags him into the other room, and slides the door shut. It all happens in just a few seconds and is jarring upon every viewing. Hooper wanted to keep the amount of blood in the film to a minimum, hoping for a PG rating. Though there is not much blood and practically no gore in the film, it is loaded with gruesome, unsettling imagery. It initially received an X rating, but was later rated R.

Despite the movie’s own claims, it is not based on a true story. Tobe Hooper got the idea for the movie while waiting in a long line at Sears. He noticed the chainsaws close by and thought grabbing one would be a quick way to make the line shorter. Certain aspects of Leatherface and his cannibal family, however, are loosely based on serial killer Ed Gein. 

The slasher movie as we know it had not taken shape in 1974 when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released, but traces of slasher movie elements can be found in this movie: a group of teens are stranded in an isolated area, pursued one by one, the villain is a masked killer, and there is even a “Final Girl.” Like Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a low budget exploitation film that elevates itself from similar films of the era because of the skill and efforts of the filmmaker. Though you may not expect it, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a thick layer of subtext commenting on the state of American society in the early 1970’s. When the teens are told that the gas station is out of gas, this is not solely a plot device. Audiences at the time would have been reminded of the gas crisis of 1973, in which there was quite literally not enough gasoline for everybody. Leatherface’s family of psycho cannibals used to run the slaughterhouse, which satisfied their bloodlust, but industrialization put them out of work and they moved on to killing people. Enhancing these themes, and of course the horror, is the quasi-documentary look of film, a fortunate side effect of the low budget. This movie spawned numerous sequels and remakes of diminishing quality, but the original still packs a punch and is a landmark of modern horror. 

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

by A. J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 1: Silent Horror Night: “Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!”

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

I always like to include at least one silent movie in my Shocktober viewings. While they lack the violence and intensity of modern horror movies, they are rich in eerie, moody atmosphere and spooky visuals. The Phantom of the Opera (1925), is no exception. Though not as widely seen as other silent horror films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), The Phantom of the Opera contains one of the most famous and instantly recognizable shots in film history. Even if you’ve never seen this silent version of the Phantom story, you’ve likely still seen the image of a young woman unmaking the Phantom revealing his disfigured face while he plays the organ. Upon the movie’s initial release this moment reportedly so shocked some audience members that it caused people to faint. Those claims may or may not have been part of a marketing scheme, but, then again, it should be kept in mind that audiences in those days were not accustomed to such visual scares.

Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of a mysterious masked figure who haunts the Paris Opera House and uses sabotage and murder to make the object of his obsession, Christine, a star. Lon Chaney plays the titular Phantom and he created and designed the special makeup effects the character himself. His visual transformations from film to film made Chaney known as “the man of a thousand faces” and with his look as the Phantom he created his most famous face. The big reveal of the Phantom’s face comes at about an hour along and the movie does a good job of building up suspense and mystery for that moment.

Mary Philbin plays Christine, an opera singer whose career is on the rise but her suitor, Raoul, wants her to marry him and give up the opera. Christine does not want to trade the opera for married life and finds herself under the spell of a mysterious admirer. She doesn’t realize that her secret admirer and the dangerous Phantom are one in the same. 

The sets of the opera house and the Phantom’s lair in the catacombs are extravagant and impressive. Color filters were commonly used by all silent movies to convey time of day or setting (yellow for outdoor daytime scenes, blue for night scenes), but in silent horror movies these color filters also add an eerie, surreal feeling to the scenes. This is certainly true for the scenes of the Phantom taking Christine to his lair beneath the opera house. Stylish visuals abound on their descent, from Christine riding on horseback through the catacombs to the Phantom rowing a gondola. The visually impressive scenes above ground come at the Bal Masque de l’Opera, which are in two-strip technicolor. The color looks unreal, especially happening so late in an otherwise colorless film. It also shows off the costumes and sets nicely. There is even a mysterious person in red wearing the mask of a skull claiming to be the Red Death; a nice reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death.

The Phantom causes all kinds mayhem at the opera house for the sake of his obsessive love: leaving threatening notes, lurking in the shadows, forcing the producers of the opera to give Christine the lead instead of the current prima donna, and dropping a chandelier on the audience. This may not seem like the stuff of horror movies, but Chaney’s grand performance as the maniacal, menacing Phantom, along with his makeup effects, create a film of shocks and thrills. If you haven’t seen many silent films, horror or otherwise, The Phantom of the Opera is a good place to start.

Best Pictures #45: 1930-31 (4th) Academy Awards: My Pick for Outstanding Production

by A.J.

Best Pictures #45: 1930-31 (4^th) Academy Awards 

My Pick for Outstanding Production

According to 85 Years of Oscar by Robert Osborne, by the time the 4^th Academy Awards for films released in the Los Angeles area between August 1^st, 1930-July 31^st, 1931 was held on November 10^th, 1931, the awards had gained notoriety beyond the Hollywood community. Winners were still announced to the press before the ceremony, but the time between the announcement and the ceremony was shortened. There seems to be a greater consistency in categories and nominees from the previous year’s awards. The Academy Awards were beginning to fall into a nice groove, though there was still a hiccup or two to work out. Norma Shearer, Best Actress winner at the previous year’s Oscars for The Divorcee, was chosen to present the Best Actress award at the 1931 ceremony. However, she was also a nominee. The uncomfortable and awkward situation of Shearer announcing her own name as the winner was thankfully avoided when Marie Dressler won for Min and Bill. To prevent this type of situation from happening again, at the next year’s Oscars, and every ceremony since, the previous winner for Best Actress would present the award for Best Actor, and vice versa. 

The Outstanding Production nominees do not feel as diverse or exciting as the nominees from the previous year (1929-30). Cimarron and Trader Horn are certainly the biggest and most ambitious productions of the nominated films. Both are about (white) men overcoming wild, untamed lands. The difference between the two films thematically is that Cimarron is about a man conquering and taming a frontier, while Trader Horn is about a man existing and surviving in, but not changing, a wild exotic land. Neither treats the native peoples of those lands well. Both Yancey in Cimarron and Horn in Trader Horn treat the native people well but the overall view of Indians and tribal Africans, respectively, is severely lacking by today’s standards. It likely didn’t even cross the minds of most people at the time. Both films are the type of big budget epic productions that the Academy tends to acknowledge (Trader Horn’s sole nomination was for Outstanding Production), and sometimes honor (Cimarron was the big winner of the night). Cimarron has an edge over Trader Horn because while Trader Horn is simply a big adventure, Cimarron is a dramatization of recent history, Hollywood style. It is the story of the founding of Oklahoma, a state that was hit especially hard by the Great Depression. It is a story of triumph; history told the way grandparents tell their small grandchildren. It’s hard to keep in mind that the time span of Cimarron, from the Land Rush to 1929, from the Old West towns of wood to modern cities of steel and concrete is a period of only 40 years. Many people that were alive at the time of the film’s opening scene in 1889 were likely still around to see the film in 1931. 

I can only speculate on how East Lynne factored into that year’s decision on a winner. It is a period adaptation of a stage play and novel with good performances (according to reviews of the time) and costumes that, obviously, could not go without note. 

The Front Page sticks out amongst the nominees because it is the only subtly subversive film of the bunch. It makes witty social commentary on politics  and the media, showing likely authentic portrayal of both. 

My Pick for Outstanding Production of 1930-31: Skippy

I wasn’t expecting it, but Skippy is easily the film I enjoyed the most of the five Outstanding Production nominees and the one I would most readily watch again. I wasn’t expecting a film with a sentimental, dated tone to have such affecting pathos, especially coming from such a young actor. Jackie Cooper remains the youngest Best Actor nominee at 9 years old. Skippy, the adaptation of a comic strip about a privileged, but mischievous boy, becomes more than a light children’s/family movie as the story progresses.

The Great Depression had fully reared its ugly head by 1931, but none of the Outstanding Production nominees portray the Depression or its effects except for Skippy, though the film does so indirectly. Skippy spends his time is Shantytown, where his new friend Sookie lives. He has no prejudices or reservations about the kids that live in the shacks of Shanytown or spending his time there. Skippy is quick to offer Sookie $3 for the license fee to keep his dog. When his parents stop him from cracking open his piggy bank, he puts his mischievous mind to good use to try to raise the money for his friend. The comic strip on which Skippy is based began in 1925 well before the Depression but I’m sure that the conditions of Shanytown were not dissimilar from those many Americans found themselves in after 1929. Also, I’m sure that Shantytown conjured up the sights of Hoovervilles, a term coined in 1930 to described the shacks people found themselves living in under the term of President Hoover.

Skippy had gags that made me laugh and effective emotional moments that tugged on my heartstrings. It also has a positive message, and, I hope, got across the idea that helping people down on their luck, as Skippy does, should be second nature, as it is to Skippy. This is undoubtedly a simple and sentimental film with scenes and aspects that are undeniably dated, but more than enough of the film works for me now, as I’m sure it did for audiences back then. 1930-31 was not a very strong year for its Best Picture nominees, but Skippy is the film most worth watching and mostly likely to still entertain and connect today. Unfortunately, Skippy is a rare film and is not available on DVD/Blu-ray or streaming services but airs occasionally on TCM. If you should come across it in the TCM schedule I certainly recommend watching this enjoyable and rare classic film.