I just bought a book called UNIVERSAL HORRORS, and I recommend it without reservation. It's a big, expensive ($55) volume that goes through each of the movies made during Universal's horror heyday. Double-columned, the average number of pages devoted to each movie is an astounding SEVEN. The making of the movies, their reception, notes on scores and effects...it's like a week of eating nothing but Thanksgiving dinners.
Reading Andy's thoughts on Mummy 3, and thinking about the Lucas-Spielberg movies, I am thinking about how no one seems to be able to make a good entertaining genre flick anymore. The horror movies are all gross-outs, the adventure/fantasies are all trying to be epics.
I think the key is the expense and the production tools used today. There is no place for looseness, no place for lettin' 'er rip and following a storyline down adventurous (aka different, original) paths. All of these Mummy 3-type movies are trying to be Spielberg, all of the horror movies are trying to be either Romero or Freddy/Scream.
I recently saw the original Mummy 3 aka THE MUMMY'S TOMB. I borrowed the Universal Mummy box from the local library branch because I never cared for the old Mummy movies. The first one was, after an atmospheric opening, as disappointing as I'd remembered, but I had things to do around the house and let the set play on. TMT is a really wacky mess about a mummy in New England, the third in the series. In the Universal Horrors book it gets props for photography and an accurate critique of its overall failure.
And yet...I'll be damned if I didn't find this stupid thing terrifically entertaining, primarily because of the photography but also because it just has a peculiar weirdness to it that can't be programmed--a mummy lurching around a New England town, strangling people? Junk, of course, but I have to admit, it was more entertaining than the awful, awful SHOOT 'EM UP, a movie I picked up to watch because it looked like goofy fun but was instead pure torture I had to shut off.
This is all rather meandering, but I'm trying to say that the mode of production for the old Universal horror flicks was such that it created this...this THING which I just enjoyed, whereas a big budget, loud music, name actors and all the trimmings couldn't make SHOOT 'EM UP anything but a massive bore, like a loud machine bearing down on you for a couple hours (I turned it off after 30 minutes or so).
I also just finished reading a book about Jaques Tourneur, who directed several of the best Val Lewton-produced horror flicks. Again, no budget, no FX, just strong scripts and intelligent people working to make something interesting, not a carbon copy of something else (though the Lewton unit was inspired by the success of those Universal flicks).
I dunno, it just seems to me that no one knows how to entertain with genre material anymore. They're interested in "iconic" (HATE that cliche!) material, and trying to ape the Spielberg-Lucas "big effects, big stunts, minimal characterization" stuff which I liked as a kid, but I'm 42 now and expect more--not "depth" but skill, inventiveness.
Thoughts?
Universal Horrors, Lewton and plain ol' entertainment
Hi, John:
Check out "The Monster and the Girl," "Night Monster," "Invisible Agent," and "The Mad Ghoul," all Universal titles that had (at least) a VHS release and may be out on DVD by now. I don't think any of them run over an hour but they all have that 'inventiveness' you speak of in your post. I've also always had a soft spot for "Son of Dracula" and "House of Dracula." (These, I know, are included in The Legacy Series you speak of -- I have this as well as the Mummy box you referred to in your post.) I've always loved these Universal flicks for their atmosphere and agility of storytelling (even if the stories are sometimes on the idiotic side).
Check out "The Monster and the Girl," "Night Monster," "Invisible Agent," and "The Mad Ghoul," all Universal titles that had (at least) a VHS release and may be out on DVD by now. I don't think any of them run over an hour but they all have that 'inventiveness' you speak of in your post. I've also always had a soft spot for "Son of Dracula" and "House of Dracula." (These, I know, are included in The Legacy Series you speak of -- I have this as well as the Mummy box you referred to in your post.) I've always loved these Universal flicks for their atmosphere and agility of storytelling (even if the stories are sometimes on the idiotic side).
Castile wrote:Hi, John:
Check out "The Monster and the Girl," "Night Monster," "Invisible Agent," and "The Mad Ghoul," all Universal titles that had (at least) a VHS release and may be out on DVD by now. I don't think any of them run over an hour but they all have that 'inventiveness' you speak of in your post. I've also always had a soft spot for "Son of Dracula" and "House of Dracula." (These, I know, are included in The Legacy Series you speak of -- I have this as well as the Mummy box you referred to in your post.) I've always loved these Universal flicks for their atmosphere and agility of storytelling (even if the stories are sometimes on the idiotic side).
This is going to sound goofy, but the idiotic stories are in part what I enjoy about these movies. They were obviously written by people who weren't fans the way some of us are, and it's always bizarre how writers who probably aren't very interested in this kind of material try to graft the fantastic elements to their "regular" writing identities.
(Imagine if someone like HP Lovecraft wrote movies when he was around?)
I'm reading the biography of Howard Hawks right now (GREAT book), and it's interesting how Faulkner (and F. Scott Fitzgerald) among other writers of novels really couldn't get it together for Hollywood. Meanwhile, Leigh Brackett, a very competent genre writer, really took to screenwriting.
John