Movies

With my daughter still visiting relatives in Tokyo and my wife gone up to her hometown for some kind of school reunion, I've just been sort of kicking around the joint this weekend. I've been in Japan too long now to seriously consider having a drink before dinner (even on days off), and the laundry was all folded and put away (etc.), so earlier today I was feeling a bit out of sorts. I decided to rent a few movies to ease the drudgery of my existence and to kill some time until it was socially acceptable to start drinking (it's that time now, friends!). And I'm here to tell you that, after the crap I've been watching today, I could use a few drinks.

It being the weekend and all, there wasn't much of a selection to choose from down at the local video shop. I ended up coming home with a couple of modern re-makes of classic genre films from the 50's and 60's: The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Haunting. Movie fans will already know that the original versions of both were directed by the great Robert Wise.

[For some reason, my wife has her cell phone set to redirect unanswered calls to our land line at home. I just had to deal (in Japanese) with some drunken woman wondering why the hell I was answering her friend's (my wife's) phone; who the hell was I and what had I done to her friend? It's going to be one of those nights... I'm "fortified," though!]

Where was I...? You know, up until the time they started to really suck, I was always a big fan of horror movies. I got it from my mother, I think. When me and my sisters were kids in Winnipeg, my father often had to leave home as part of his duties in the Canadian Army. In the summer especially, I can remember my mother getting us bathed and into our pyjamas and packing us into the car to go to the drive-in for an all-night horror fest. My sisters were usually asleep halfway through the first movie, but I almost always stayed awake and watched every movie. It's more fun to watch a scary movie with someone else, and those drive-in trips with my mother and (sleeping) sisters are very happy memories for me. Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, all those incredible Hammer Film Productions... I tell you, those "B" movies had it all over the dreck served up (mostly by Hollywood) today.

I'll never forget watching Robert Wise's The Haunting on the TV with my mother late one night. My mother had (I think) a pretty good attitude about letting us watch scary stuff when we were kids. If it got too scary we would stop watching. Well, my sisters would stop. I never would. But we're basically talking about 60's monster movies, so there wouldn't normally be much to leave permanent mental scars on a typical kid. I remember when Psycho premiered on TV she forbade me to watch it. Now that I'm a parent myself, it's clear she was absolutely correct in that decision. I'll let my daughter watch almost anything, but there are certain images I don't want her to see at 6-years old. In fact, I'd probably qualify that a bit: there are certain juxtapositions of images I don't really want her to see. A slashing knife and a naked woman in the shower would be high on any list of examples.

Anyway, it's late one night in the 60's and I'm watching The Haunting with my mother. This movie, I think, somehow slipped under her radar. If she'd known how awesomely scary it was going to be, she never would have let me watch it. By the time she had it figured out, she was both too engrossed and too scared shitless to send me to bed. My memory isn't perfect, but I'm pretty sure that we were both holding on to the other several times through the movie. And what a movie! Lesbians! Heh, my mom had to give some creative "glosses" for a couple of my questions early in the movie! Not a drop of blood spilled--a rarity in a horror movie. No actual (or at least proven) ghosts or monsters. My 10-year-old mind was trying to wrap itself around the fact that a) I was scared shitless, and b) there didn't seem to be any actual entity to be scared of. And the sounds! The fucking pounding in the hallways of the house. Christ, that would drive anyone insane! To this day, The Haunting remains the scariest movie I've ever experienced.

Now, it would be unreasonable for me to expect any movie to re-create the experience I've just described. What's disappointing, though, is that the remake of The Haunting doesn't even try. It's just plain boring. Christ, my daughter wouldn't be scared by this movie. I'm sure somebody out there is making good horror movies, but this isn't one of them. Can't Hollywood scare us any more? Or is it that people are just afraid of different things these days? Is being held prisoner by some maniac moralist who forces you to choose between torturing yourself or someone else such a fear these days? [Damn, when stated like that, maybe it is!] Personally, I'm not really into the Saw-type stuff. The old Hammer movies knew where to draw the line at sadism. In fact, the "Gimp" scene in Pulp Fiction was a lot closer to horror than anything in Saw because it had the stink of reality on it. Nobody (at least no sane, balanced individual) imagines some puppet master manipulating them into some horrific situation. We've all opened the wrong door, however...

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The other movie I watched today was the re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still. It sucked, like most recent Hollywood re-makes, like pretty much any recent Hollywood treatment of classic SF. I watched the original of this movie just a couple of weeks ago on the web (for free). The re-make has the unfortunate handicap of having Keanu Reeves playing Klaatu, the alien emissary. Michael Rennie's Klaatu seemed like a guy who'd actually studied Earth and was able to converse with its inhabitants (from children to scientists). Keanu Reeve's Klaatu, even after a gratuitous scene that shows us he has human DNA, arrives on Earth and acts and speaks just like... Keanu Reeves! If there is a more wooden actor in Hollywood, please advise...

The anti-war theme of the original was replaced with an environmental theme. Bleh. You know, I can't talk about this piece of shit any more. It sucked. Hollywood has sucked the life out of so many beloved pieces of SF that it's not even worth focusing on any particular example. I, Robot, I Am Legend (Will Smith is going for the "played in the most crappy SF films" championship--a shame, because he deserves better), Starship Troopers (has no right to claim any kinship with Heinlein; did you know that the novel may have been the first classic SF book to have a black protagonist? ), and on and on.

I grow weary...