Recommend a scary movie that others might not have seen
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I get the idea the horrorgenre is bigger in theatres than ever. IT, Get Out, A Quiet Place, The Conjuring universe (Conjuring, Annabelle, The Nun), etc. It wasn't like that in the eighties or nineties. In the noughties there started to come a lot more: but it was a lot of remakes, torture films like Saw and Hostel and a lot of Japanese horror and American remakes of those.
I get the idea horror is now taken more seriously, less as a B-genre. Certainly after Get Out.
It's funny how a lot of horror which does the best at theatres (James Wan films, Paranormal Activity) isn't really fully my taste. I do like the Japanese horrorfilms a lot though.
I remember when I started to go to horrorfilms in theatres in the eighties (Hellraiser, Evil Dead, Child's Play etc.), horrorfilms would always only play a few weeks and in the smaller auditoriums. The Stephen King films usually played in better auditoriums - I saw a number of those on the night they opened, like Pet Sematary, and later Sleepwalkers and Dreamcatcher.
And certainly on tv there is now more horror than ever.
Actually what bothers me more and more with films is the way the visual language of the cinema seldom changes or evolves, or evolves at a real slow pace. In Hollywood films are made in a certain way and they always contain the same kind of shots. Every now and then something new is added: for example there now is always that handheld camera feel, where the shot is slightly unstable - I don't know what they call that professionally, but I suppose it's done to create a sense of realism. Most films do that now, although not every one.
But most films don't tell their story in a very visual way. Hitchcock believed in 'pure cinema', where the story is told in a purely visual way. So many mainstream films (like the ones from Hollywood) I find real boring in the way they look - even if the subject is interesting, they're filmed in a standard way.
That's why I'm always on the look for unusual films.
Hitchcock said when he did his first treatment of the story of a film, he imagined what the film is like with the sound turned off. To force himself to think as visually as possible.
Still Hitchcock's films do contain a lot of dialogue, they often have long dialogue scenes. Even Psycho which is a film which has many scenes of people doing something on their own without dialogue, still has that long conversation in the hotel office between Norman (Anthony Perkins) and Marion (Janet Leigh) before the shower scene. Of course, because it's a long, rather relaxed conversation it makes the shower scene all that more sudden and shocking.
I think he saw the dialogue more as part of the atmosphere or ambience than something that was very necessary for the story, but still he put in a lot for someone who tried to think purely visual.
It's hard to find conversations where he talks at length though - I've read the book where François Truffaut interviews him, but I can't remember if he said there what the role of the dialogue should be. But in an interview with him on BBC some nights ago he said that the dialogue was subservient to the visual storytelling.
Often, of course, when he was interviewed in a public appearance he also answered in a joking manner, because he wanted to entertain, but that didn't always give a clear answer. He seemed more serious usually in the one-on-one interviews.
There are still directors who try to tell the story in a purely visual way, but I think it's a minority.
But most films don't tell their story in a very visual way. Hitchcock believed in 'pure cinema', where the story is told in a purely visual way. So many mainstream films (like the ones from Hollywood) I find real boring in the way they look - even if the subject is interesting, they're filmed in a standard way.
That's why I'm always on the look for unusual films.
Hitchcock said when he did his first treatment of the story of a film, he imagined what the film is like with the sound turned off. To force himself to think as visually as possible.
Still Hitchcock's films do contain a lot of dialogue, they often have long dialogue scenes. Even Psycho which is a film which has many scenes of people doing something on their own without dialogue, still has that long conversation in the hotel office between Norman (Anthony Perkins) and Marion (Janet Leigh) before the shower scene. Of course, because it's a long, rather relaxed conversation it makes the shower scene all that more sudden and shocking.
I think he saw the dialogue more as part of the atmosphere or ambience than something that was very necessary for the story, but still he put in a lot for someone who tried to think purely visual.
It's hard to find conversations where he talks at length though - I've read the book where François Truffaut interviews him, but I can't remember if he said there what the role of the dialogue should be. But in an interview with him on BBC some nights ago he said that the dialogue was subservient to the visual storytelling.
Often, of course, when he was interviewed in a public appearance he also answered in a joking manner, because he wanted to entertain, but that didn't always give a clear answer. He seemed more serious usually in the one-on-one interviews.
There are still directors who try to tell the story in a purely visual way, but I think it's a minority.
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Thanks. Not sure if I seen that yet. I saw some very interesting interviews on that show, with Roman Polanski for example. And I believe Spielberg too. The thing with Hitchcock is that he often says the same things and gives the same examples. It's hard to find new things by him.
Of course, Hitchcock started out in silent film, which forced him to be as visual as possible. In the interview segments BBC showed some days ago, he said the only problem with silent film is that when people opened their mouths no sound came out. Maybe he was happy once he could have people talk for real, and that's why he put in a lot of dialogue. But when you listen to the dialogue in his films, a lot of it is actually just banter and not strictly used to progress the story.
Dick had a way of getting some interesting and unexpected answers. Watch the show and let me know if you learned anything new.
Watched it. I think I may have seen it before in parts, but not the whole thing in one go. I notice that interviewers (Cavett also) often refer to something he said before in earlier interviews (for example his comparison of actors to cattle), so that's also why often he tells the same things again.
It's funny that they refer to his films as 'scary' or 'frightening', but he never did real horrorfilms - only Psycho and The Birds would fall into horror (I think it's because of Psycho that eventually the slasher genre started in the late seventies.)
But I think after Psycho especially he became known as a director who made 'scary films'. Before that he also did a lot of thrillers involving spies. Although some of his films before Psycho might be considered psychological thrillers.
The effects in The Birds look pretty dated now, but even though there was talk of a remake many times (with Naomi Watts at one point) it still isn't remade.
Very engaging book and movie. There's been talk about a remake for years now. I hope it never comes to fruition. I can't see that story being handled right in today's overly-sensitive culture.
Hollywood is all about the money. They don't take risks lightly. So you get a lot of the same formula films. Ironically, most of those are box office busts. The disappointing thing about the horror genre is that there seems to be fewer theatrical releases even though they make a ton of money. Even the bad ones do ok. There is a market for it in this Age of Fear that is only being addressed via cheap and often terrible VoD movies. These movies don't have to have a message. They just need to scare people. That is what they did back in the 80s. That is why I liked "The Terrifier". It is just about a scary clown killing people. There is no politics or deep social message.
The problem with Hollywood is that the movies are too expensive. They can't take any risks because there's so much money involved, so they always go for the tried and tested. But it's also basically a factory, movies come off an assembly line and have little personality, they all look the same. Even though some individual filmmakers with their own style (say Tim Burton, David Lynch) have proven to be very successful. It seems there are very few directors willing to find a unique style, most conform to how movies look in general.
Yet, it is the people who do something new, like Orson Welles with Citizen Kane, who make the biggest changes in the cinematic language.
I think a lot of these formulaic films still become box office hits, because people have little choice. They just have to choose from what's playing. But basically they're watching the same films over and over.
I'm also always amazed how poorly written the big blockbusters often are. How professional writers can come up with such weak scripts. I think with many big action and adventure films they think of some setpieces first, some spectacle they think people will like, and then build a (often weak) screenplay around that.
As for horror getting fewer theatrical releases. I don't experience that at all, as I said, to me it seems more than ever - but perhaps it varies from place to place, and from country to country.