Friday, December 16, 2011

Twin Tales of Terror and Madness

"Join us on December 16th – the last day before Cinematheque closes its doors for the holiday! Or else… you won’t live past New Year’s Eve!"

That's how they advertise tonight's film folly @FilmReakter and they are right; this is the only valid plan for such a cold, rainy Friday: let fear freeze you even more.

I will definitely be there and REPORT back to you, soon.

AND...here comes the fright:

Saturday night was more exceptional than one could imagine. We drunk champagne; a couple of glasses; even during the screening. It's because we were celebrating the new year 1980 and saying bye-bye to  oldie 1979 with hats, whistles and similar paraphernalia. No, I'm making no mistake here, it's just that we were tuned in  to the settings of the movie New Year's Evil (1920), back then, trying to evade the serial killer who was obsessed with killing a new victim every time the year was changing. It is changing three times in the States, you know; because of the three different time zones. These people are greedy indeed.

The killer had a seriously spooky face, like always and he had a liking to direct macabriously the setting for whoever would find the bodies later, like always. BUT that was the first time I saw a dead girl's body coming down from the playground's slide; and I am a sensitive girl, so this did quite an impression. I found an old friend playing in that brilliant kitsch film I've never heard of, a more popular one: Grand Cramer whose lips and sheer blondness I did remember from The Young and the Restless, when I was a little girl and had plenty of empty Gb in my brain to retain useless images and information alike.

My friends preferred beer, though, like that girl after sex in Halloween (1978), the second catchy choice of the night, that sent her boy down to fetch her a beer only to have him murdered; she never got her beer, needless to say, and she soon followed him to a better place. That film was a must-see from the slasher genre, though; John Carpenter knows how to orchestrate fright (and I have fever, but it's irrelevant); he composes his spooky music alone and dips us in suspense for some half an hour before he offers us some real blood, after the first murderous event that opens the film. Donald Pleasance, marvellous in Polanski's Cul-de-Sac with an equally fascinating Dorleac, is here the doctor that goes after the evil murderer and never gets him. Literally. What was interesting to see was Jamie Lee Curtis in the very beginning of her career, and wearing hideous wool milk-white stockings for an annoyingly long time towards the first half of the film. I have never seen her wearing her hair long, either; I had her filed in my mind solely under her  sexy Wanda image.

Slasher films are definitely not my type, though; for various reasons: I am tense as a person, which means I am startled more than the rest of the audience; I scream and I shout; I get frightened and I cannot even fake the minimum coolness it takes not to make the rest of them laugh at me; I even admit that I occasionally close my eyes, and I enjoy it. But, once back at home, I fear the worse; especially if the slasher movies of the night were, like the ones above, brutal enough to leave the serial killer at large and not safe behind bars, damn it! Why do you do that, Mr Director? Have some compassion for us, sensitive creatures!

2 comments:

Diogo said...

John Carpenter´s 1978 Halloween is a "must see" terror movie if you want to have fun with your friends!

Very funny when the mad man that was killing everyone couldn´t be killed even when stabed, shot, and fell down from the balcony of a house!!!!

In the end... he disappeared... leaving everything open for a sequel!

Stylianee said...

Hahaha, funny?
I was scared to death :P

We have to get hold of those Halloween sequels, but the first one is usually the best.