OT: Movie Anniversary Overload or not? - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] ElizabethJoestar (930) 2 years ago

For example, I'm really not sure why anyone would *want* to remember inept blockbusters like Batman Returns and Alien 3 from the year of breakthroughs like Unforgiven, The Player, The Crying Game, Husbands and Wives, Glengarry Glen Ross, One False Move, Reservoir Dogs.
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The likely (and sad) truth is probably that a greater number of average readers are likely to have seen Batman Returns or Alien 3 over The Player or Glengarry Glen Ross. The same goes for all the other anniversaries you mentioned, though I'm shocked Lolita squeezed in there.

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[–] jay440 (107) 2 years ago

The Godfather was not just a cultural milestone but the #1 box office grosser of 1972 (https://www.the-numbers.com/market/1972/top-grossing-movies).

I looked up box office results for 1972 to see what other golden 50th anniversaries were coming up, and lo and behold, Happy 50th Anniversary to Frenzy (#12), released June 21, 1972. I guess I missed the fanfare.

We've got The Poseidon Adventure (#2, Dec 13, '72), Deliverance (#4, Jul 21), and Last Tango in Paris (#9, Oct 14) to look forward to, but next up, Deep Throat (#5, Jun 30). Which reminds me, it's also the 50th Anniversary of the Watergate break-in (June 17).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Godfather was not just a cultural milestone but the #1 box office grosser of 1972 (https://www.the-numbers.com/market/1972/top-grossing-movies).

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Yes...that's what really makes The Godfather historic. You might say that, in 1972 the movie was "Jurassic Park" AND "Schindler's List" at the same time. Number 1 box office, Number 1 with the critics, Number 1 with The Academy. And: "Number One in history" (or near it)

And consider: Number One blockbusters that followed The Godfather -- The Exorcist, Jaws, Grease(I think?) could NOT bag that Best Picture Oscar.

Some possible heresy: there is a poster here around moviechat who ranks the movies of movie stars and directors by box office (as one measure) and for 1972, he or she has listed "The Poseidon Adventure" for Number One box office. "I was there," and I recall The Godfather being touted as "the new Number One" (it had displaced The Sound of Music) until Jaws beat that a mere three years later. (And then Star Wars beat THAT a mere TWO years later.)

I value that poster's box office rankings -- very interesting stuff. So here's my guess: somehow The Poseidon Adventure GAINED box office over The Godfather, but over YEARS. How? Re-releases? Do they count VHS/DVD revenue? To quote Psycho, "it must be some kind of mystery."

Perhaps less big a deal, I always saw "The Towering Inferno" as Number One Box office of 1974, but it seems to have been displaced by...Blazing Saddles. Which is fair enough. Blazing Saddles seems much more historic over the years. And I KNOW that Blazing Saddles got several re-releases in the 70's(which was still before VHS in-home service.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I looked up box office results for 1972 to see what other golden 50th anniversaries were coming up, and lo and behold, Happy 50th Anniversary to Frenzy (#12), released June 21, 1972. I guess I missed the fanfare.

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Hah. Yeah...where IS that fanfare for the Frenzy 50th Anniversary? The great Frenzy...why forgotten?

Oh well, it got a (very good) "Making Of" book on its 40th Anniversary, er...10 years ago, yes?

Poor old Hitchcock: so many of his great movies were BEFORE Psycho in 1960. I'd say that, other than "Anniversary" articles for Psycho (60th two years ago), I've only also seen "Anniversary" articles for The Birds(and not many of those) and for Vertigo(which really doesn't deserve them, it wasn't much of a remembered title). And oh -- I've seen a few Anniversary articles in my time for North by Northwest.

Its pretty hard for "pre-1960" movies to GET Anniversary articles. Casablanca sometimes. Gone With the Wind used to...but now its pretty controversial. (So it gets "controversial" Anniversary articles.) Citizen Kane, maybe. The Wizard of Oz. King Kong.

Still, in "Hitchcock World," its Psycho that burst out of his canon and became a worldwide phenomenon and a household word (along with the WORDS, "shower scene" and "Norman Bates.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

We've got The Poseidon Adventure (#2, Dec 13, '72),

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That "other guy" says different.

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Deliverance (#4, Jul 21),

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Wow. That high? Note in passing: Deliverance was a summer movie in big cities(and thus reviewed as a summer movie in Time and Newsweek) but my smaller city at the time didn't get Deliverance FIRST RUN until Christmas time 1972(it went up against The Poseidon Adventure and The Getaway). I was away from Los Angeles for a few years -- and boy did I learn what it used to be to be a "second tier release city." You had to wait MONTHS for some movies to reach that town. Oh, well, I was older and found...other pursuits. Also: I read the Los Angeles Times at libraries and detoured family vacations to Los Angeles to movies that weren't playing in my town yet. Like Frenzy in 1972. I saw that in LA first, but it only took about a month to get to my small city.

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and Last Tango in Paris (#9, Oct 14) to look forward to, but next up, Deep Throat (#5, Jun 30).

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Aha...so Deliverance...Deep Throat...Last Tango...top box office hits? I suppose America enjoyed the newfound sexualization of movies. (We can't forget Frenzy in that regard either.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Which reminds me, it's also the 50th Anniversary of the Watergate break-in (June 17).

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One reason that this being the 50th Anniversary year of Frenzy has some impact on me is that , unlike during the 1960 release of Psycho, I was grown and cognizant of the world and I can REMEMBER that summer of '72. (I'd say "it feels like only yesterday," but it doesn't) For the major Hitchcock fan I was -- Frenzy WAS a big deal(such a comeback.) But I also remember how Watergate "started" in that same month. I will occasionally look up old reviews of Frenzy and the microfiche newspapers usually have "Watergate" stories right there on the front page, with Frenzy back in the movie ads. The two events "merged" in my memory.

Of course, it took a full two more years for Watergate to make its way to conclusion: Nixon resigns. In the 1974 summer of "Chinatown." Funny: in the early 70's, movies like "Frenzy" and "Chinatown"(both very adult) WERE the summer movies. Jaws and Star Wars would change all that.

BTW, I HAVE saluted Frenzy on its 50th Anniversary over at its (very lonely and unvisited) page. My "hook" isn't Watergate; its something else: the music on the radio and on my turntable that summer.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Happy 50th Anniversary to Frenzy (#12), released June 21, 1972.

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#12 at the box office sounds pretty damn good for Frenzy. I don't remember it being all that big a hit. Where it WAS a hit was with like 95% of the main newspaper and magazine critics, most of whom put it on their "Ten Best Movies of 1972" year end lists which, to me, cements Frenzy's status as a legitimately great film -- that didn't happen with Marnie or Torn Curtain. It happened with Topaz...but only at the New York Times(Vincent Canby loved it.)

I did notice this a few years back. In the early 2000's, for about a decade, I frequented a multiplex. While one waited for the movie to start, slides would move in and out with the "three noteable movies" of a given movie year. I think for 1977 it was:

1977

Star Wars
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Annie Hall

but I KNOW for 1972 it was:

1972

The Godfather
Cabaret
Frenzy

I was a bit proud. Whoever dictated that slide picked FRENZY as one of the top three of 1972? Well, it did save Hitchcock's career at the end. Billy Wilder never got those kind of notices in HIS last decade.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

For example, I'm really not sure why anyone would *want* to remember inept blockbusters like Batman Returns and Alien 3 from the year of breakthroughs like Unforgiven, The Player, The Crying Game, Husbands and Wives, Glengarry Glen Ross, One False Move, Reservoir Dogs.
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The likely (and sad) truth is probably that a greater number of average readers are likely to have seen Batman Returns or Alien 3 over The Player or Glengarry Glen Ross. The same goes for all the other anniversaries you mentioned,

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I would tend to agree with Elizabeth Joestar's assessment. These are anniversaries of the "pop films" of a not-too-distant past .

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though I'm shocked Lolita squeezed in there

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From 1962! And here I was thinking that Psycho was about as far back as these Anniversary's could go these days. I suppose there is a "lower tier" historic aspect to that film. The ad line in posters was something like: "How did they make a movie out of Lolita?" (answer: they didn't , really) and this is the Kubrick movie (after Spartacus, which he disowned) that rather launched the Kubrick era (made in London, "special.") Yes, I know that Paths of Glory and The Killing came before, but Kubrick rather "made his name" in the 60's.

1962 could/should have a NUMBER of Anniversary greats:

The Manchurian Candidate
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Music Man(I'm serious)
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lawrence of Arabia

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I recently watched Vampyre (1932) in a beautiful 90th anniversary blu-ray restoration with 2 full commentaries (including one by Guillermo Del Toro) and a whole host of special features. I'd never quite *got* Vampyre before (notwithstanding the obvious great visual ideas in a couple of sequences it just seemed deeply uneven and kind of all over the map even down to being a bizarre silent/talkie hybrid that really doesn't work) but this time with all the assistance the new edition provides I'm won over. Good Anniversary.

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Seems that a 90 year old movie that "still holds up" and can be honored DESERVES its Anniversary.

One thing I keep feeling that doesn't get said often enough about movies is what incredible "time machines" they are. Fictional tales sometimes capture the year of their making better than tinny documentaries of the time. With Psycho and The Apartment, I feel like every time I watch them, I'm going "right back" to that time, and the feeling is great. (Wilder always "dated" his movies more than Hitchcock with contemporary references, but I love it when an exec's mistress complains about his choice for tryst time in The Apartment: "Thursday night at 10? But that's Bob Stack in The Untouchables!!" You are there.)

And as for 90 year old movies? Wow. The wayback machine.

And yet the movies are only somewhat over 130 years old, yes? Just a blink in history.
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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

At the other end of the spectrum, The Guardian has recently celebrated/commemorated (at least - I may have missed some) Minority Report and Bourne Identity at 20,

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Minority Report took a good premise ("Seeing crimes before they happen, so they can be stopped") and rather plunged Tom Cruise into one of the most grim and depressing movies of his career(Spielberg really went violent and depressed for awhile there.) I don't think its a very good movie -- and it stole a big scene from my fave "LA Confidential."

Bourne Identity? A generation loves these movies. They made Matt Damon the star I never thought he could be. For me, its three movies that merge into one -- or "the same movie, three times" --and none of them are very good save for some good fight scenes. The "shaky cam" car chases just seemed incoherent after Bullitt and The French Connection. I've seen the Bournes compared to "North by Northwest" and Hitchcock in general and I guess, for the 21st century they are. That's too bad.

To the good: Minority Report and Bourne Identity being honored for their 20th Anniversary seems "fitting." Do these things on the "0" years: 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th...but 50th is perhaps one that really matters the most.

I'll see things like "On its 15th anniversary!" and I'm like "so what?" I would here like to honor Psycho on its 62nd anniversary. In 2025, I will honor Psycho on the 60th anniversary of its first re-release.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Obviously, The Godfather is the big Anniversary this year (big movie, big round number 'at 50')

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Agreed. As we've noted, it didn't quite get the demonstration it should have at the Oscar ceremony this year (Coppola, Pacino...and DeNiro, who wasn't even IN the first one) but at least they noticed it.

Which reminds me: Will Smith's famous slap not only made its own trouble on the moment, but it came right BEFORE the Godfather salute...so Will inadvertently pissed on the Academy's "big Godfather moment." This can't help him. He also "ruined"(in that tense final 40 minutes)...Jessica Chastain's Best Actress win and the Best Picture win. His own Best Actor win became(fascinatingly) ...something to dread: everybody knew he was going to win(so did he, otherwise he would have left.) Plus, I'm wondering: why didn't 2020 Best Actress winner Frances McDormand show up to give Will the award? They sent out the "Pulp Fiction" crew instead.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

with the principal official memorial being 'The Offer' - a 10 part miniseries on the making of the Godather with resurgent it-dude Miles Teller (after Top Gun Maverick) as producer Al Ruddy. I liked the story when it was a well-researched Vanity Fair article a few years ago but haven't been able to convince myself that it's worth a 10 hour investment as a fictional recreation, esp. when reviews have been so-so. Bad Anniversary?

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I'm intrigued about "The Offer." I don't have Paramount streaming, so I'll have to get that or pay elsewhere.

I SORT of want to watch it. The trailers and YouTube scenes remind me of one other famous "Making Of" movie: "Hitchcock" the one about Psycho.

But what looks BETTER in "The Offer," is that unlike with "Hitchcock," the owners of the original movie have allowed "The Offer" to restage the filming of various famous scenes(the restaurant murders; Al and Diane Xmas shopping) in a way that "Hitchcock" could not (because Universal wouldn't let Fox use the scenes.)

Peter Bart was a Paramount exec (under Robert Evans) back then and has written an article about how "everything is wrong" in The Offer at least in terms of who were the real power players (Al Ruddy? Says Bart...not so much.) Well, Pete...welcome to the club. "Hitchcock" had Alma directing and writing Psycho(she WAS a collaborator but she didn't do that) and the studio trying to foist a B-movie hack director in to replace Hitchcock. Nope.

Still, I may accept The Offer. Watching clips, I'd say that the Brando and Pacino actors are pretty good(though you can never DUPLICATE a great star.) And they've converted writer Mario Puzo and director Coppola into a roly-poly comedy genius team. I LIKE the two guys in those clips, whether it happened that way or not.

Maybe.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I'm a little surprised that "ET the Extraterrestial" at 40 hasn't gotten more press.

It was a BIG deal -- beat the box office of The Godfather AND Jaws AND Star Wars.

Today it seems to be considered a "kiddie movie" but I remember it as having such a walloping emotional impact on everybody of all ages...i waited in long lines(not as long as in the 70's, but long enough) a couple of times to see it, and watched all the teary eyed patrons coming out.

I say that John Williams' music made that movie. I had the album and it could bring me to tears -- almost as if the notes "hit" my tear ducts. It wasn't music, it was an emotional assault.

But Spielberg as a director did something wonderful as well - -he made an "all emotion movie" where the plot didn't particularly makes sense but the emotion did. It reminds me of Vertigo in that way -- and Vertigo had a powerful emotional score too.

And this about ET: no sequels. That's pretty brave of Spielberg, given the money it made. Jaws, Jurassic Park, Indy Jones...sequels. (But no sequel to Close Encounters, either.)

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[–] jay440 (107) 2 years ago

Oops, just rechecked and Frenzy was sweet #16, and not #12 (The Valachi Papers).
So Frenzy just beats out Shaft's Big Score but lags behind Pete'n'Tillie. Sorry Hitch.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Oops, just rechecked and Frenzy was sweet #16, and not #12 (The Valachi Papers).
So Frenzy just beats out Shaft's Big Score but lags behind Pete'n'Tillie. Sorry Hitch.

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Oh, well. 16 is still pretty good. I think there were maybe 50 major movies in 1972.

Interesting at the time: Frenzy came out in the summer of 1972 and by fall, Universal was touting it as "the biggest Universal hit of the year." This, too, filled this young Hitchcock fan with some pride on "my man" making a comeback. Thing was -- it wasn't a very good year for Universal in general. Frenzy. The next year -- 1973 -- Universal's The Sting would edge the 100 million domestic mark. I've seen varying reports on Frenzy as topping out at 12 million -- and 16 million("suspect" Hollywood numbers, they've never seemed right.) Hitchcock told Truffaut in 1962 that Psycho had made 15 million on first release. (Movies like North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much earned in the 5 to 6 million level. "All suspect" to me.)

But whereas Frenzy was a summer 1972 release -- Universal's Pete and Tillie -- Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett in a witty, bittersweet middle aged romance -- came out at Christmas , played into 1973, and IT became Universal's biggest grosser of 1972. I like Pete and Tillie very much -- its during that "peak Walter Matthau period" that also brought us Charley Varrick and The Taking of Pelham 123, and there was no bigger Matthau fan than me at the time.

Still, I felt that Frenzy had more cinematic style and power than Pete n Tillie, more "gravitas," so it rather stung to see the Matthau film beat Hitch. On the other hand -- I was a fan of both men, so, I guess I won with Universal in 1972.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

where IS that fanfare for the Frenzy 50th Anniversary? The great Frenzy...why forgotten?
Oh well, it got a (very good) "Making Of" book on its 40th Anniversary, er...10 years ago, yes?
Poor old Hitchcock: so many of his great movies were BEFORE Psycho in 1960.

The thing is that whereas lots of movies and directors *need* these anniversaries to help them claim any mindshare, Hitchcock and Psycho are so deeply imprinted on culture generally, that they're celebrated every year anyway, e.g., just think that there's a new Hitchcock documentary on its way this year from Mark Cousins, and one of the best currently active directors' S.Korea's Park Chan-Wook had a Cannes entry this year ('Decision to Leave') that looks ultra-Hitchcockian - flies landing on eyeballs! Dario Argento has a 20 film retrospective right now at Lincoln Center in NYC including his (awful!) Do you like Hitchcock? (2005) And, as I've mentioned before, Hitchcock looms over the middle of Karina Longworth's Erotic '80s podcast series.

Its pretty hard for "pre-1960" movies to GET Anniversary articles. Casablanca sometimes....

It's a Wonderful Life, Singin' In The Rain too maybe. But, yes, overall it's sad how many truly great films even prime golden age Hollywood items maintain very little mindshare today. E.g., those great, cynical '50s films that I love such as Sweet Smell of Success and Face in The Crowd and dare I say it Sunset Boulevard and Ace In The Hole are known mostly to film buffs now. '30s and '40s screwball comedies that were still much talked about in the '80s and '90s seem to have fallen completely off cultural radars since then.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Poor old Hitchcock: so many of his great movies were BEFORE Psycho in 1960.

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The thing is that whereas lots of movies and directors *need* these anniversaries to help them claim any mindshare,

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"mindshare" -- I like that term, swanstep, its one of those good "one word concepts" that gets right down to how cultural things MATTER in this world(I'll pick movies, but there are TV shows and sporting events, too.)

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Hitchcock and Psycho are so deeply imprinted on culture generally, that they're celebrated every year anyway,

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Yeah, that's true...i see articles on Psycho pop up often in the wake of articles about NEW horror films. Psycho is seminal.

The AFI got it right putting Psycho at the top of its thriller list, but I rather think the movie should climb higher, over the decades on the "overall" best movies of the 20th Century. What could it displace? Gone with the Wind? Casablanca? (oh, I guess not.) Citizen Kane(oh, I guess not, though both Kane and Psycho have Herrmann scores and cinematic dazzle and Psycho IS scarier.)

I remember one poster here -- years ago, but I have a memory for interesting posts -- contending that Psycho was a better movie than: The Godfather. What?? But, well, maybe. Robert Evans' pal Henry Kissinger said of The Godfather "Its just like my work, a bunch of men in dark rooms talking and negotiating." Psycho is perhaps more EXCITING than that, more cinematic -- and has more meaningful female characters. But darn, Psycho has that shrink scene at the end, and Arbogast's "funny process fall." They don't bother ME but...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Its pretty hard for "pre-1960" movies to GET Anniversary articles. Casablanca sometimes....
It's a Wonderful Life, Singin' In The Rain too maybe.

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Yes, those two do get their anniversaries.

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But, yes, overall it's sad how many truly great films even prime golden age Hollywood items maintain very little mindshare today.

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There's that word again. Love it.

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E.g., those great, cynical '50s films that I love such as Sweet Smell of Success and Face in The Crowd and dare I say it Sunset Boulevard and Ace In The Hole are known mostly to film buffs now. '30s and '40s screwball comedies that were still much talked about in the '80s and '90s seem to have fallen completely off cultural radars since then.

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One problem with all those movies -- all of which I love too -- is that they are classified as "dramas." And dramas don't seem to have much traction anymore. Sunset Boulevard is "borderline Gothic horror," and has a murder in it, but it isn't really a thriller or a horror movie. So these films -- from the gritty 50's -- don't seem to have what it takes to STICK. And the stars in them have faded away , though irony: we only lost Kirk Douglas a coupla years ago.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I return to note:

Surfing the internet recently, I HAVE found three articles saluting Frenzy on its 50th anniversary. That's not exactly "full coverage," but at least somebody cared. It has its reputation now: Hitchcock's Penultimate Film (that's "second to last" for us laymen.) The Best of Hitchcock's Late Films. Hitchcock's late comeback. Hitchcock's return to London.

And: Hitchcock's most brutal film. Or most sick film. Or most disturbing film.

It remains weird how this "last great Hitchcock entertainment" is also a film that -- in its centerpiece rape-murder scene -- is so hard to watch at all, let alone enjoy. Maybe I saw that movie (first run) a little too young, but I have never forgotten the cruelty and embarrassment of that scene to me, as a perfectly nice and innocent woman was chosen for painful death almost at random -- and the rage it created in my moviegoer's heart towards psycho sadist Bob Rusk who -- in a late breaking miracle for movie bad guys -- ends the movie arrested but ALIVE. (If ever a movie villain deserved a really painful death, it was Rusk.)

So much of the rest of Frenzy is so "non-disturbing" that I can shift to memories of THAT: the great Covent Garden setting(with worker ant men shuttling produce to and fro). The Hitchcockian "style motifs"(neckties as the murder weapons; potatoes.) The great shots("Farewell to Babs.") The Oxford meals. The great curtain line("Mr. Rusk...you're not wearing your tie.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Psycho and Frenzy are certainly a pair in Hitchcock. Frenzy could have been called Psycho; Psycho could have been called Frenzy. And Frenzy ended up being the ONLY Hitchcock movie about a psycho killer that he made after Psycho. All these years later, it is a given that however well-reviewed at the time, Frenzy isn't either the blockbuster that Psycho was or the landmark classic that it is. The Psycho murders made everybody jump and scream. The Frenzy MURDER(there is only one on screen mercifully) made everyone very upset (and sad.) Its powerful stuff -- profound, I think, in really making a STUDY of man's inhumanity. But no fun at all.

This was borne out by something surprising that I found on YouTube: a couple of those "reactor" videos(like that sweet blonde gal reacting to Psycho, and all the OTHER Psycho reaction videos)...

...of Frenzy.

The format just didn't seem to work. Its only guys reacting to Frenzy(good, I would not want to subject a woman to it THAT way) and when that , long lingering rape murder of Brenda arrives(EVEN WITH the little jagged fast forward cuts), you can tell that these "reactors" don't know how to react except in embarrassment and revulsion.

Oh, the good shots can be reacted to but...no, Frenzy is its own very disturbing and unique experience. It just doesn't lend itself to a "fun" reactor analysis.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And this: one of the 50th Anniversary articles on Frenzy has something I always love to find: a production still I've never seen before.

Background:

One of my favorite production stills in Hitchcock is from Frenzy: Bob Rusk standing in front of his London apartment building(flat building?) in Covent Garden worker's cap and apron(a disguise), his hands gripping the handles of a wheelbarrow with a potato sack on it. Looking grim. I first saw this photo in the Time magazine review of Frenzy, BEFORE I saw the movie. It gripped me then, and it grips me to this day . (The Newsweek review got the photo of Dead Brenda with Tongue Hanging Out -- one magazine got the killer, one magazine got the victim.)

In the movie, this shot is a "screen moment" with even MORE flavor. We hear the "clickity clack" of the wooden wheelbarrow wheels as Rusk emerges and stops; we sense "the dead of night," we hear bells in the distance and we react superfast: Who's that worker? Its RUSK! Why does he have that potato sack? Its BABS! Boom. Boom. Boom. The essence of Hitchcock. As Billy Wilder said: "Give the audience two plus two...and let them find four.")

So, anyway in this one 50th Anniversary article on Frenzy, we find that Hitch had a SECOND photo of Barry Foster(Rusk) taken on the porch in front of his apartment building where he had posed with the wheelbarrow. (And note the trademark "London black steel spikes" around that porch.)

In this SECOND photo(never seen before by me), the wheelbarrow is gone, Rusk's workers disguise is off, and he is in jacket and open shirt with a VERY bright striped red tie hanging loosely around his neck: The Necktie Strangler, personified. A great shot. "What the movies are all about when they matter."

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

The Frenzy MURDER(there is only one on screen mercifully) made everyone very upset (and sad.) Its powerful stuff -- profound, I think, in really making a STUDY of man's inhumanity. But no fun at all.

It's weird in a way that big horror and thriller scenes or set pieces can have such differing impacts both initially and over the long term. After all, all such sequences portray violent death often with a sexual angle so how can our inner being be (consistently - across almost all viewers) much more disgusted by these terrible acts in some cases than others? Bob Rusk's murder of Brenda in Frenzy is much more disgusting and disturbing than anything in Psycho or Jaws or The Godfather. But why? I suspect that the answer is two-fold. First, Frenzy's key scene has a cool, unsparingness to it, whereas P, J and TG's key deaths are much more highly edited and energetic. This makes them much more aesthetic experiences as our imaginations are actively solicited to connect and integrate the different images. In Frenzy's scene by way of contrast there's much more of a feel of not looking away, of boring in on the specifics of a horrible sexualized death. Any aesthetic layer that protects us, that we can enjoy at least at some level, is stripped away. Second, as part of Frenzy' general unsparing, unflinching, boring in on things, we get horribly close to Rusk's sick mind and perspective, ''Lovely, lovely", where we *really* don't want to be. (Cont.)

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

(Cont.) I've actually been thinking about this sort of issue in relation to a couple of other items that I viewed recently: Stranger Things Season 4 and The Devil's Candy (2015).

1. Stranger Things is set in the 1980s, is focused on kids and teens, and from the beginning has had a lot 1980s Spielberg and Stephen King in its DNA. As the cast has got older, however, and as we've moved into the second half of the '80s on the show, other, darker '80s influences have started to appear from Nightmare on Elm St to Cronenberg &The Fly to Hellraiser and to anime like Legend of the Overfiend. But the show *can't* follow through on these new influences without destroying the foundational vibe of the show. The show wants to, in some sense has to stay always fun and not disgusting/disturbing, but you can feel how its makers are tempted go full disgusting.

2. The Devil's Candy (2015) is a hyper-aestheticized horror that's a bit of mess (it seems confused on a number of different fronts, and, honestly, some decisions to keep the screen almost completely dark struck me as maddening and self-defeating; I literally couldn't see what was going on).*But* it has a number of brilliant key sequences that make it worth seeing. These sequences are utterly horrifying (and could in different hands be too disgusting to watch with any enjoyment), but they stay 'fun' (at least in my experience) because of their aesthetics: the scenes are highly conceptually constructed and then shot and edited with considerable craft. I can't describe these scenes without spoilers. TD'sC has some connections with Psycho. Its main villain, Ray, is a big/fat-guy with child-like affect and intellectual disability, who, it emerges, killed his parents long ago and is out after spending 20 years in a mental hospital. Ray's not a million miles removed from Bloch's Norman Bates only with the twist that he's taking dictation not from Mother in his head but from The Devil. (Cont.)

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

When Ray kills he acts almost like a child which makes him a piteous as well as a fearful and unpredictable villain. One of the big editing scenes in the movie edits together Ray's bathtub cleanup of one of his kills with someone painting with great daubs of oozing paint on a canvas. It's more amazing than it sounds! It's almost like a bizarre attempted remake of Psycho's shower scene with just the raw materials of a bath cleanup and ultra-close-ups of a feverish painting session.

I can't exactly recommend TD'sC but if you're in the mood for a very loud (lots of metal), 80 minute modern horror with both Psycho and Rosemary's Baby influences then TD'sC may be worth checking out. It's uneven but has some great high-points that you won't soon forget.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Frenzy MURDER(there is only one on screen mercifully) made everyone very upset (and sad.) Its powerful stuff -- profound, I think, in really making a STUDY of man's inhumanity. But no fun at all.

It's weird in a way that big horror and thriller scenes or set pieces can have such differing impacts both initially and over the long term. After all, all such sequences portray violent death often with a sexual angle so how can our inner being be (consistently - across almost all viewers) much more disgusted by these terrible acts in some cases than others? Bob Rusk's murder of Brenda in Frenzy is much more disgusting and disturbing than anything in Psycho or Jaws or The Godfather. But why? I suspect that the answer is two-fold. First, Frenzy's key scene has a cool, unsparingness to it, whereas P, J and TG's key deaths are much more highly edited and energetic.

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Yes. The killings in Psycho, Jaws, and The Godfather are "set pieces with a bang," so to speak, and for the most part, of men, and in The Godfather of "BAD" men(in a bad business, so they are at risk for being murdered.

Now Marion in Psycho and "Chrissie"(not a very famous name) in Jaws(the opening nighttime victim) are certainly women and both presented nude(but not fully seen), but even in their cases, matters are so stylized that the dead-eyed, lingering sadism of the Frenzy killing doesn't enter in(this is why YouTube "reactors" can have more FUN reacting to the kills in Psycho, Jaws, and The Godfather(massive blockbusters by the way, and guess one BIG reason why.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

swanstep wrote:

This makes them much more aesthetic experiences as our imaginations are actively solicited to connect and integrate the different images. In Frenzy's scene by way of contrast there's much more of a feel of not looking away, of boring in on the specifics of a horrible sexualized death. Any aesthetic layer that protects us, that we can enjoy at least at some level, is stripped away.

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The effect, in Frenzy, is of Hitchcock "rubbing the noses of the audience" as to their bloodlust. He did his in a different way with the grueling killing of Gromek in Torn Curtain, but Gromek was a "bad guy"(however pathetic) being slowly killed by a "good guy"(however compromised.) This time, an entirely innocent woman , killed by a human monster of a man.

Some years after Frenzy there was a well nigh unwatchable "study" of a real-life serial killer called "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." I saw it once, but once was enough, and I found a review that said it was "the most powerful indictment of audience bloodlust since Hitchcock's Frenzy." This was one of the few times Frenzy was mentioned in a review with another movie, and in writing "Hitchcock's Frenzy," the critic made sure we remembered that Frenzy was Hitchcock's personal concoction.

This "indictment of bloodlust" charge sticks; Frenzy has a whole lot of style and cinematic dazzle to it, but that one scene is what anyone remembers. (Like "that scene" in Deliverance the same year.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Second, as part of Frenzy' general unsparing, unflinching, boring in on things, we get horribly close to Rusk's sick mind and perspective, ''Lovely, lovely", where we *really* don't want to be. (Cont.)

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I read the Frenzy screenplay(finally) just about a year ago, and it turns out that Rusk had another horrible phrase to repeat later in the scene: To match "lovely, lovely" during the sex part, he yelled "pay, pay" during the punishiment part.

It was too much.

Here is a link to the Frenzy page where I discuss it:

https://moviechat.org/tt0068611/Frenzy/612bd65f2ae9663a06ef437e/LovelylovelyPay-Pay

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

There is "style to burn" in the Frenzy rape-murder, what with Rusk's finger coming down on the phone plunger so Brenda can't call for help; and the moment when he removes his tiepin with ceremonial menace to announce that he is the Necktie Strangler. (Its a sad and ironic moment of terror: poor Brenda thought she was ONLY suffering a rape -- which would be survived. But then she realizes EXACTLY who is attacking her.)

The scene is actually more stylized and less graphic than people remember.

I think I would prefer here to "praise the living hell" out of the sequence that begins with Rusk pushing that wheelbarrow out on the porch and ends about ten minutes later on a highway north of London.

The "accumulation of shots" - perfectly filmed(Rusk with his butterscotch blonde hair is Hitchcock's first Technicolor psycho), perfectly cut and timed(in ways that shots in Topaz and Family Plot were not), and the macabre organization of the material here(with little bits like Rusk tossing away his worker's cap and his apron in quick cutaways, or treating himself to a celebratory brandy) are EXACTLY as powerful and classic and entertaining to me as parts of Psycho. I truly DID see Frenzy as a comeback here -- because it felt EXACTLY like other great Hitchcock's.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

(Cont.) I've actually been thinking about this sort of issue in relation to a couple of other items that I viewed recently: Stranger Things Season 4 and The Devil's Candy (2015).

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As I wind down my "series viewing" with shows like "Ozark"(done; terrible), Better Call Saul(more promising) and Animal Kingdom(just not well written enough), it may be time to go pick up on one of those other series I see written about all the time. Stranger Things is such.

1. Stranger Things is set in the 1980s, is focused on kids and teens, and from the beginning has had a lot 1980s Spielberg and Stephen King in its DNA. As the cast has got older, however, and as we've moved into the second half of the '80s on the show, other, darker '80s influences have started to appear from Nightmare on Elm St to Cronenberg &The Fly to Hellraiser and to anime like Legend of the Overfiend. But the show *can't* follow through on these new influences without destroying the foundational vibe of the show. The show wants to, in some sense has to stay always fun and not disgusting/disturbing, but you can feel how its makers are tempted go full disgusting.

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Interesting. Also interesting that the 80's seems to be such a treasure trove of BOTH Spielberg/Lucas adolescent pleasure of Stephen King/The Fly/The Thing/Freddy Krueger horror. Busy little decade...and it saw the "second coming" of Psycho(Psycho II,III, and IV barely into the 90s), which , I suppose opened the door to The Fly The Thing and The Blob(remakes, not sequels.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

A theme I'm kind of interested exploring someday is how North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds is each rather "childish" in some way -- The Flying Dragon(crop duster) and The Land of The Giants(Rushmore); the Haunted House, the swamp, the zombie mother; the attacking birds --- but that Hitchcock retained in all three films enough "adult" material(of character, of plotting, of perversion) that his movies just don't fit the Lucas/Spielberg template at all. Hitchcock's films are a little too sick, a little too sophisticated and a little too "old man formal" to match up with the 80's stuff that followed.

So Stranger Things may be encountering that issue: when does childish give way to adult, or can they co-exist?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

TD'sC has some connections with Psycho. Its main villain, Ray, is a big/fat-guy with child-like affect and intellectual disability, who, it emerges, killed his parents long ago and is out after spending 20 years in a mental hospital. Ray's not a million miles removed from Bloch's Norman Bates

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We are reminded (as so often) that a film of Bloch's novel of Psycho would yield a damn different movie than what Hitchcock made. Not nearly as fun(without handsome Anthony Perkins in the lead) but decidedly more creepy, with much more gory murders and more weird Mother (She wears a head scarf, not a wig, and her head "floats in mid-air" when it sticks through the shower curtain to begin the murder --- that's NIGHTMARISH.)

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only with the twist that he's taking dictation not from Mother in his head but from The Devil. (Cont.)

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In the immortal words of another cross-dresser: "The Devil Made Me Do It!"

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

In the immortal words of another cross-dresser: "The Devil Made Me Do It!"

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I am reminded that had one major classic in which the Devil(we think?) possesses a human being (The Exorcist, of course, and Rosemary's Baby doesn't count here -- the devil there is "inside" his victim, but in a different way.)

BUT: Modern psychology, psychiatry and medicine in general can't ever quite get "right the root cause" of our murderous psychopaths. "Brain damage" or "A change in brain chemistry" is sometimes blamed, without a way to prove it. Family abuse as a child of course...but usually the brain had to be out of whack from the jump to go psycho.

Which is where somewhat of a kind of practical "fear of and belief in the Devil" enters in. What if Norman was POSSESSED? What if Bob Rusk was POSSESSED? Who's to prove otherwise. I'm kidding. Sort of.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I can't exactly recommend TD'sC but if you're in the mood for a very loud (lots of metal), 80 minute modern horror with both Psycho and Rosemary's Baby influences then TD'sC may be worth checking out. It's uneven but has some great high-points that you won't soon forget.

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The older I get, the more I have to "steel myself" for modern horror, particularly if its gory. Pretty ironic for a Psycho fan but...clearly Psycho pulled some punches; Jaws did too.

In some ways, I have collected in my nostalgic mind a preference not only for Psycho, but for the rather dopey William Castle movies that proceeded or followed it -- House On Haunted Hill(the best one); Macabre, The Tingler, 13 Ghosts and then, after Psycho and thus copying it...Homicidal and Strait-Jacket.

Must I consign myself to the schlock of the past rather than confront the well-made gore of the present?

Maybe not...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Since it IS the 50th Anniversary of Frenzy, and since Frenzy DOES have many intersects with Psycho, I didn't want to forget this point.

Part of the terror of the central rape-murder in Frenzy is how the killer here appears not as an "exterior monster" -- like Jason with his hockey mask or Michael Myers with his Shatner mask, or the Scream killer with his Screaming Man mask. Bob Rusk enters that office at noontime lunch hour and he is clearly and plainly: "just a man." A man whom (in a film filled with "non-stars") we had been warming to earlier in the film for his upbeat, cheery manner and his supportive friendship of Richard Blaney when he was down and out.

But THIS Rusk(who is known as "Mr. Robinson" to Brenda -- an immediate tip off that this guy is "wrong") comes on quite strangely and gets more strange as the scene goes on. He isn't a "robotic thing," he is a person, like you or me, having a business meeting(which Brenda had not agreed to, at lunch)...slowly revealing at first, his abominable lusts, and then his more abominable thirst to kill for the sake of killing. (His "reason": the woman doesn't arouse him.)

Rusk forever does NOT get grouped with Jason or Michael Myers or the Scream killer -- or even Mrs Bates -- because we see him as a MAN. A human being with a brain, but one so badly miswired that both lust and murder are given free reign to roam.

Also, this "Frenzy" murder differs from the shower murder in key ways. Marion was killed at night; Brenda is killed in the broad daylight of afternoon. Marion was killed in an isolated backwater motel with no one else around for miles. Brenda is killed in the middle of the workday, with all sorts of people milling about in the streets below(this is made more manifest and "reversed" when Hitchcock later takes us down to those busy streets while the next victim, Babs, is killed upstairs.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Moreover: Rusk as "The Necktie Strangler" is one of those "public" serial killers whose existence is known to all, even if not captured yet.

Norman Bates was a "hidden killer" tucked away in a backwater motel and not known to the public. Though he eventually DOES attract attention when visitors visit the motel and disappear.

Psycho and Frenzy thus serve rather as counterpoints to each other, a yin and yang -- known killer(The Necktie Strangler), hidden killer(at the Bates Motel.) Nighttime murders -- daytime murders (both Brenda and Babs die during the day.)

One historic blockbuster and one very good comeback movie -- both borne of our fasincation with men "whose internal wiring is defective."

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

One historic blockbuster and one very good comeback movie -- both borne of our fascination with men "whose internal wiring is defective."

It's worth mentioning that it wasn't *that* long ago that "being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil" was an all-purpose characterization of defendants of horrible crimes in US courts. For example, the NY Times glowingly reviewed a recent book ('The Sewing-Girl's Tale') about a NYC rape trial from 1793 that has many shocking echoes of our time. Yet in that case the defendant was indicted for “being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil” to “feloniously ravish and carnally know”. To at least the late 19C all sorts of trials of everything from treason [e.g., two years after he shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, senator and presidential candidate Aaron Burr was charged with treason as follows:
https://www.famous-trials.com/burr/159-indictment. ] to infant murder to (sadly) humdrum stuff like rape were often loaded against the defendant with charges of “being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil”. It sort of functioned as defamation of the defendant but it also functions as primitive psychological labeling of the 'internal wiring defective' possibility.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

https://www.famous-trials.com/burr/159-indictment. ] to infant murder to (sadly) humdrum stuff like rape were often loaded against the defendant with charges of “being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil”. It sort of functioned as defamation of the defendant but it also functions as primitive psychological labeling of the 'internal wiring defective' possibility.

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Well, it makes sense that within those centuries, the Devil could well function as part of both legalistic AND primitive psychological analysis. Yet again: "The Devil Made Me Do It."(That was a big line for the cross-dressing Flip Wilson in the 70s and hey -- for network TV he made a rather sexy woman in tight dresses and -- famously -- a Playboy Bunny outfit opposite Bing Crosby as a conventioneer. Interestingly "out there" entertainment from a more tame era.

But I digress. The issue to me is that you simply reach a point -- better illustrated by Rusk (and later, Hannibal Lecter, and later, John Doe in 7even), where you are dealing with a human being like you or like me and something is horribly wrong with them.

I daresay that Rusk is actually "closer to the truth" than the more flamboyant Lecter and Doe (and Norman). He got criticized for that very thing ("No Norman Bates...just a pervert.") But "just a pervert" are where the horror is most these days. Again, that's what makes the attempt on Brenda so very sad -- she "goes along" figuring Rusk is just a pervert and in her last moments realizes he's more than that, and that she is now part of a newspaper series ("Necktie Strangler claims latest victim.") I akin this, without lightness, to the people on those 9/11 flights who realized that "they had won the one-in-a-trillion horror victim lottery." (And Mrs. Norman Bates-- Tony Perkins widow, Berry Berenson was ON one of those flights.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I find it all terribly profound, the psychopath and his motives in Frenzy, one of Hitchcock's great statements(borne of an era where he could make it) and pretty close to a classic. A near unwatchable classic for general audiences.

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Back to "the devil made me do it." I don't much read books about serial killers because the real ones are very gross people, just not worth learning about. I made an exception for the book "Columbine" about our now-seminal school shooters.

One of them was worst than the other, the mastermind (Brandon to Phillip, for Hitchocck buffs.) Came from a pretty good home, had a girlfriend(not a real serious one),worked in a pizza parlor.

But crazy. The internet was in its infancy, and his posts were well -- not too far off from the worst at Moviechat. He would have fit right in. He had a theory: the absence of war and disease(pre COVID) and other "mercies" had left the world with too much population and too many dumb people. And it was his job to take some of them out.

Insane. Possessed? The final chapters of the book(or maybe just one) detail a number of well-degreed psychologists trying to "analyze" the dead psycho shooter and in the end...nothing. "Brain chemistry." A mystery.

Why, Dr. Richmond(or was it Dr. Simon?) knew more.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

There is "style to burn" in the Frenzy rape-murder, what with Rusk's finger coming down on the phone plunger so Brenda can't call for help; and the moment when he removes his tiepin with ceremonial menace to announce that he is the Necktie Strangler....The scene is actually more stylized and less graphic than people remember.

Your point is well-taken, Brenda's death is very well shot and edited, suspense *is* built etc., so the lack of editorial flamoyance I cited before as a reason for Frenzy's scene's disturbingness only goes so far. I still think I'm right but I'd need to refine the argument a lot to make it really stick. At any rate, a couple of other cases that sort of fit my original thesis.

1. The most difficult death to watch in Saving Private Ryan is Mellish stabbed with his own knife by a German soldier who just needs him to be quiet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSRr7wUjLxw
The overall scene is frenetically shot and edited but Spielberg cools things down, just cutting between two angles for about 30s (roughly Frenzy's style too) to maximize the close-up, intimacy (the German soldier shushes Mellish) of the horror.
2. Irreversible (2002) has the most vibrant, swooping camera imaginable for most of its run-time. The big exception is its centerpiece, underpass-tunnel rape scene. This features only a couple of angles and no moving camera. It's in real-time and is horrific, and not everyone can or should should watch it. We see in the background of one of the shots someone else come into the tunnel but flee rather than intervene or even yell out and *we* feel implicated in something similar by continuing watching. It's an awful experience all-told, much as Brenda's scene is for the viewer in Frenzy. And I trace its technique back to Frenzy as well.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The most difficult death to watch in Saving Private Ryan is Mellish stabbed with his own knife by a German soldier who just needs him to be quiet:
The overall scene is frenetically shot and edited but Spielberg cools things down, just cutting between two angles for about 30s (roughly Frenzy's style too) to maximize the close-up, intimacy (the German soldier shushes Mellish) of the horror.

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Yes, this scene joins the Frenzy murder on the list of "unblinking realistic horror scenes." Hard to watch, and also conjuring up some disturbing notions that one must grapple with.

Here: that war sometimes narrows down to two men facing each other ...and one MUST die. No long range bombing, no shooting from yards away(as Sonny "Bada bing!"ed Michael into confronting in The Godfather. " A mano-y-mano grapple with a knife as the killing weapon. And here: the German guy is so demonstrably bigger and stronger than Mellish, Mellish simply tries to stave off the inevitable, and fails.

But there is a more horrific element: the presence NEARBY but unseen of the "cowardly" young guy in the American squad, too terrified to intervene and save his comrade, possibly scared that the big German guy can easily knife HIM, too.

"Saving Private Ryan" in this scene spoke to so many people who no longer have interest in miltary service, the dehumanization it requires and the killing that is often part of the work. "Saving Private Ryan" opens with a battle scene in which human beings are ripped to pieces by the metals of armory and here, near the end, "bottoms out" at the savagery of what war really means: you have to kill somebody, or get killed.

Those of us who never saw military service get to feel a little guilty here, but its still something most of us would like to avoid. Tougher men(and women) who are good fighting and killing dig it.

But as Spielberg himself knew, a generation voluntarily stepped into that kind of violence in WWII because they simply felt that they HAD to. One cannot remove patriotism and self-defense from the equation. (One of my modern qualms in reading a lot is that "Jingoism" seems to have been substituted for "Patriotism" They are two different things, but I'm not sure one of them exists anymore. WWII is a long ways in the past.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing: Hitchcock in his final 16 years of work(less Family Plot) seemed to get more and more into brutal, near unwatachable death. It started with Psycho, continued on through The Birds, added a sexual element in Marnie, and then bottomed out with the lingering realism and brutality of Torn Curtain and Frenzy.

And for awhile there, Spielberg seemed to be going the same way: Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, and Munich all had scenes of realistic ultra-violence.

I pondered seeing Spielberg follow Hitchcock's path: Hitchcock and Spielberg -- both rich, pampered, "un-physical" men who had never served in the military...what compelled each of them to get so gruesome? Guilt over their more "fun" killlings in Rear Window and North by Northwest and Jaws and Indy Jones? A sudden lack of faith in humanity?

Hitchcock "pulled out of it" with the nice Family Plot. Spielberg went back on other tracks and only sometimes got violent(the opening battle in Lincoln.)

But it is noticeable in the works of each man.

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As for Irreversible. I've heard of that movie and that scene -- how weird that a movie which has a big gimmick(the story goes backwards) ALSO has that scene. Its as if one cancels the other out.

I read a couple of articles about Irreversible. One noted that the writer went to a few screenings to confirm something he saw at his first: when "that scene" came up -- a small number of men would enter the theater, stay for it, and leave.

The realities of those who live among us.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

And here: the German guy is so demonstrably bigger and stronger than Mellish, Mellish simply tries to stave off the inevitable, and fails.

But there is a more horrific element: the presence NEARBY but unseen of the "cowardly" young guy in the American squad

There's *so much* going on at once in that scene (which is itself just a chapter within a very chaotic, huge not really even humanly comprehensible battle - message: real war is so big and messy that no one sees or understands the whole thing, all the horror, every dude who's in something like that fights his own war) - every element of which intensifies the bad feelings in the viewer.

Lots of profound thoughts in this post from you ecarle. Thanks. BTW, I think QT borrowed a bit from Mellish's death in SPR for Shoshanna's death in Inglourious Basterds, so if my overall influence/theivery accounting is correct, that's IB exhibiting some indirect Frenzy influence.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The most difficult death to watch in Saving Private Ryan is Mellish stabbed with his own knife by a German soldier who just needs him to be quiet:
The overall scene is frenetically shot and edited but Spielberg cools things down, just cutting between two angles for about 30s (roughly Frenzy's style too) to maximize the close-up, intimacy (the German soldier shushes Mellish) of the horror.

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I return to take advantage of something that I forgot last time around on this most brutal and realistic of stabbing scenes.

The big muscular Nazi stabbing slowly into young Mellish has in its history that much-less brutal but perhaps equally sickening shot of ....Mother pinning Arbogast down on the floor and stabbing him multiple times in Psycho(after his staircase fall.)

Famously, Hitchcock kept the actual stabbing, and Arbogast's face, BENEATH the frame and out of sight, and faded out on him screaming so we didnt have to follow him all the way to "corpse-hood." It was 1960, only so much could be shown.

Not so with Saving Private Ryan. The camera sits back for a medium long shot and watches the knife enter and death take over Mellish's features.

I dont know which version is "better" but the Saving Private Ryan one is certainly more hard to watch.

And yet, the Psycho version had the extra added nightmarish element that the killer was this obscenely super-strong "old lady" whose very strength and speed made her the stuff of nightmares(OK, later we find out this is Norman, but not THEN. And if you really DO picture Norman committing this murder -- its pretty sickening still.)

Even in 1960, the year of Psycho, the also-very-violent Spartacus had gladiator-slave Kirk Douglas jumping on a man, pinning him, and stabbing HIM with a sword, but...warriors, wartime, MEN...it was quite different from Hitchcock's Monster Mother wielding the blade.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Lots of profound thoughts in this post from you ecarle. Thanks.

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Thank you, swanstep.

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I think QT borrowed a bit from Mellish's death in SPR for Shoshanna's death in Inglourious Basterds, so if my overall influence/theivery accounting is correct, that's IB exhibiting some indirect Frenzy influence.

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Yes, and some DIRECT Frenzy influence in the strangling of Diane Kruger by Christoph Waltz late in the film.

This was particuarly shocking, I thought, because it lacked the "context" of Frenzy which is, after all, about a psychotic STRANGLER terrorizing London. Kruger has indeed been proven a spy and a traitor to the Nazi cause, but the "amusing" Waltz's sudden animalistic leap onto Kruger and lingerging strangling of her is just as hideous as the one in Frenzy but weirdly...less motivated?

We must face the fact, I suppose, that since Frenzy is about a strangler..there is none of the "fun" blood that marks movies about stabbings and axe murders and the like, but simply the more mundane and very intimate act of squeezing the life out of someone. There is no blood in Frenzy, just intimate murder, and that makes it all the MORE disturbing than Psycho, where the blood is part of the "boo!" effect (and there's not much blood IN Psycho...around Marion's feet in teh shower, on Arbogast's face.)

When QT offered up his death scenes(of women) in Inglorious Basterds, he caught some of that disturbing quality.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

The Guardian celebrates 50 years of Last House on The Left (1972)!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/29/the-last-house-on-the-left-wes-craven-50th-anniversary

As many of the commenters on the article observe, LHOTL is truly cheap, grimy, and ineptly thrown together, with most of the third act (the parent's revenge) being particularly absurd. Only the fairly ground-breaking gore of LHOTL's earlier nasty scenes really stands out. Texas Chainsaw (1974) is comparatively speaking the height of Hollywood technical and screen-writing polish with real performances, etc.. LHOTL's only real importance is that it happened (i.e.,as part of that bloodiest of all cinema years, 1972) and got Wes Craven his start.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

It's the 65th anniversary of Paths of Glory (1957) (and of all the other great films from that dynamite year for film) and partially in response I've started a thread over on the Kubrick board about a recent shocking NYTimes story (whose text I post) about what the US Navy Seals training program has become - a self-selection machine for monsters, the insane and the psychopathic.

https://moviechat.org/nm0000040/Stanley-Kubrick/630fe1bb7d161071cc66e759/Shocking-NY-Times-piece-about-what-Navy-Seals-Training-has-come-to

I reckon that if the Kubrick of Paths of Glory and Dr Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket were still around he'd jump on this story as a project. Does anyone today have the balls and the smarts and the clout of an attached star (a la Kirk Douglas for Kubrick in Paths) to make the sort of fiercely analytical, downer movie (about a sainted military institution no less) this story requires?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Guardian celebrates 50 years of Last House on The Left (1972)!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/29/the-last-house-on-the-left-wes-craven-50th-anniversary

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Alas the realization that at this time in the 21st century, we've got a LOT of 60th(Psycho), 50th(LHOTL) and 40th(The Thing) anniversaries out there.

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As many of the commenters on the article observe, LHOTL is truly cheap, grimy, and ineptly thrown together, with most of the third act (the parent's revenge) being particularly absurd. Only the fairly ground-breaking gore of LHOTL's earlier nasty scenes really stands out.

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I've mentioned this before, but it remains of some interest that I -- with Psycho so often affixed to my posts -- really had no interest in "gorier" works thereafter. Over time, I DID see Night of the Living Dead and Halloween, but I generally steered clear of movies with "Chainsaw Massacre" in the title or sexual violence on tap. ("Frenzy" was an understandable exception and it STILL bothered me to see it.) I would like to note in passing that Roger Ebert wrote a LOT of reviews of the "Last House on the Left" type movies and was REALLY outraged and disgusted by them and I admit that kind of influenced me, too.

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Texas Chainsaw (1974) is comparatively speaking the height of Hollywood technical and screen-writing polish with real performances, etc.. LHOTL's only real importance is that it happened (i.e.,as part of that bloodiest of all cinema years, 1972)

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Yes, a LOT of blood -- none of it in Frenzy save the tire iron blows to the forehead of an already-dead female victim at film's end.

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and got Wes Craven his start.

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..and Nightmare on Elm Street was HIS Psycho. Never saw a one of those.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

That said, I certainly took in ALL the "mainstream studio gore" of the 80s and 90's and 00s. It was unavoidable, i think, if one enjoyed thrillers and crime movies. Marathon Man. Alien. The Thing. Misery. Silence of the Lambs. Se7en. I suppose as long as the movie had major movie stars, a big budget, a good script and a good director(or at least SOME of those)...gore was OK. Add in The Wild Bunch(Western), Saving Private Ryan(War) and GoodFellas(crime) and I'm in.

But Last House on the Left? I Spit on Your Grave? Even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Nope. (Hey that sounds like a good tile for a horror movie, too: Nope.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

It's the 65th anniversary of Paths of Glory

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Ha...there's ANOTHER anniversary

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(1957) (and of all the other great films from that dynamite year for film)

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You've mentioned 1957 in that context before and...while I agree..I've always been partial to 1959 and 1960 for teh "anchors" of two great Hitchcock films and , to a lesser extent, two great Billy Wilder films.

Hitchcock didn't have a movie in 1957(though officially , The Wrong Man was a late 1956 release that went wide in "57) and I think Wilder's was Love in the Afternoon(problematic mainly because of how old Gary Cooper looked.)

But North by Northwest and Some Like It Hot and Psycho and The Apartment make 59/60 "solid gold" for me, and frankly I think those are Hitchcock's two best and MAYBE Wilder's two best(Sunset Boulevard gets in there, too.)
Not to mention Rio Bravo, Anatomy of a Murder, Spartacus and The Magnificent Seven.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

But what of 1957? More good ones.

Bridge on the River Kwai
12 Angry Men ("Arbogast is here")
Sweet Smell of Success
A Face in the Crowd
Paths of Glory
Funny Face
Pal Joey
Gunfight at the OK Corral

...yeah, that's just what I found. A pretty good year, I'd say...but 1959 and 1960 have "my favorite movies" in there, so they are hard to beat for me (in that "era.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I've started a thread over on the Kubrick board about a recent shocking NYTimes story (whose text I post) about what the US Navy Seals training program has become - a self-selection machine for monsters, the insane and the psychopathic.

https://moviechat.org/nm0000040/Stanley-Kubrick/630fe1bb7d161071cc66e759/Shocking-NY-Times-piece-about-what-Navy-Seals-Training-has-come-to

I reckon that if the Kubrick of Paths of Glory and Dr Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket were still around he'd jump on this story as a project. Does anyone today have the balls and the smarts and the clout of an attached star (a la Kirk Douglas for Kubrick in Paths) to make the sort of fiercely analytical, downer movie (about a sainted military institution no less) this story requires?

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I'm not sure. Kubrick, of course, already made "his version" with the infamous "first half" of Full Metal Jacket(1987) which indeed got into the entire "boot camp environment," playing it at once for black comedy laughs(F. Lee Ermy's DI was FUNNY) and de-humanizing horror(the story is about how an overweight, low IQ guy is practically tortured on a daily basis to SUPPOSEDLY no effect -- except he turns out to be a different kind of killing machine.)

Its funny how we have a handful of rather "sympathetic" movies about boot camp: Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin(1980) was followed by Bill Murray in Stripes(1981) -- both about "peacetime Army" and filled with laughs and romance and a general salute to the boot camp experience as "good for you." Maybe. Way back in -- 1957? -- Jack Webb made a TOTALLY sympatheic boot camp movie starring himself as "The DI" which included, as I recall, a scene where a mother comes in to plead for her son's release from the Marines -- she doesn't get it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

In America, we had what was called "The Great Divorce" when the draft ended in 1973. That could allow Private Benjamin and Stripes to be "low key" (WE weren't forced to serve, us young people, so it was fun watching THOSE people -- Bill Murray enlists because he just lost his girlfriend and his job) . And this could allow Full Metal Jacket to be accusatory and vicious the military no longer had the "required patriotic support" in military movies..

So I suppose that this expose of Navy Seal training could be made today. I'm not sure how to judge the article. It speaks of actionable tortures and medical injuries to the recruits , and at least one death, but I think it quotes the program as having 11 deaths in ...several decades? I dunno...are those "acceptable losses" to a man-killing body of men (and women?)

Has the caliber of trainee declined over decades as more young men opt OUT of the military? Again, I dunno.

What I do know is that I sure was lucky in history not to go through that myself.

Which reminds me: risking a "toe dip" into the political realm. Here in the US , our late night talk shows now feature -- save one -- middle aged men with rather boyish demeanors and with a decided political party(Democrat) and a nightly righteous-beligerant attitude towards their political foes. These are "tough guys." Verbally.

But I will sometimes look at them -- Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden -- and think: could ANY of these guys have survived basic training or boot camp? They're a wimpy, whiny looking lot and yet their stance is "we're tough guys." Its kinda funny. (The conservative one is Gutfeld.)

What they represent, I think, is all of us of a post-draft American environment who never really HAD to put ourselves physically on the line...so we put our selves VERBALLY on the line.

Its funny more than anything else.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I'm feeling I shouldn't leave that post up, but it is how I feel about those guys. There are just so many of them now...and they couldn't find one who looked like, say, Steve McQueen? (the old one.)

Military service and politics and the world in general are way too big of subjects for me to tackle here. And why would I? But somewhere between that article about the horrors of Navy Seal training and the tough guy world of our nighttime TV shows is ...something to think about.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

But I will sometimes look at them -- Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden -- and think: could ANY of these guys have survived basic training or boot camp? They're a wimpy, whiny looking lot and yet their stance is "we're tough guys.".....What they represent, I think, is all of us of us... who never really HAD to put ourselves physically on the line...so we put our selves VERBALLY on the line.

Maybe... but I wouldn't describe Colbert or Stewart as posing as 'tough guys' at all. E.g., here's Colbert telling a great story about trialing for the football team in High School:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0evOdrniIPc
They are somewhat combative at the level of ideas in a recognizably nerdy, theater-kid, sondheim- and springsteen-fan, debate-club kind of way. If the political humor feels more barbed today then it used to, say when Dick Cavett did it, then it's surely due to more polarized state of the country that exists now.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Maybe... but I wouldn't describe Colbert or Stewart as posing as 'tough guys' at all.

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I always find myself wanting to back myself away from talking poliltics. No real good can come of it, and my personal positions are -- to me at least -- a bit cynical and "off the norm." (But not really.)

On poiltics vis-a-vis moviechat, I use the "Los Angeles Coliseum" theory of opinion.

The Los Angeles Coliseum has a capacity of roughly 79,000 people. Of those 79,000 people pretty much EVERYBODY has a position on politics or individual issues like gun control.

And its hard to really feel like one is making any "unique" contribution to political discourse if 78,000 plus others have ideas, too -- most of which break into "pro" or "con."

But consider: Of that 79,000 people , how many know about the 1965 movie "Mirage" starring Gregory Peck and Walter Matthau? Maybe...300 people(old enough to remember it from old TV screenings if not release?) THAT I can talk about with some authority and fewer shared opinions.

So with Colbert, Kimmel, Stewart, etc (and let's pause at Jon Stewart -- his version of the Daily Show rather spawned Colbert, Steve Carrell and others to their OWN success.), they seem to be loved or not pretty much on party grounds, but my issue is elsewhere.

A thought process that takes me from the brutal WWII realities of Saving Private Ryan(where perhaps the "coward" of the movie simply represents all of the nerdy types who "didn't want to be there") to the "boot camp" range of movies -- from comedies like No Time for Sergeants (where Andy Griffith is given "latrine duty" from his DI and takes pride in cleaning those toilets!) to Private Benajamin to Stripes (all of which pretty much SUPPORT basic training and boot camp) to the horror-sadism of Full Metal Jacket to whatever the outcome of this NYT story will be well....we all have some pondering to do.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Could WE survive those gruesome battles in Saving Private Ryan, or that grueling and cruel boot camp of Full Metal Jacket?

(I forgot one: the hit "An Officer and a Gentleman," where Richard Gere pretty much begs to stay in air training because "I got nowhere else to go!")

The answer is: maybe. I grew up around a lot of miliatry veterans and a lot of them seemed to survive just fine, avoid battle, actually ENJOY the cameraderie of the service and missed it when they went hom.

And for some reason my thoughts (self incriminating as they are; I missed the draft) drifted to my personal distaste for this rather critical mass of kind of man-boy hosts who (again, and this is from clips I've seen) like to make tough and angry statements about their political opponents which sometimes, frankly, just sound like "rich kids punching down at the poor." But that's just an instinct...I don't watch this stuff, I don't think their ratings are all that high...but they provide the clips necessary for the political shows.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

E.g., here's Colbert telling a great story about trialing for the football team in High School:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0evOdrniIPc

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That was pretty funny..fairly funny and...it kind of made my case, didn't it? One day -- one PLAY -- and a great big strong guy across the line knocked Colbert down "like Bane breaking Batman...or Alfred."

But we live in more peaceful times, times which have allowed many men simply to skip all that brutality and make their way in other ways.

BTW, I read some of the comments under the video, and even accounting for "network shill bots," it is clear that Colbert has strong fans, chicks who dig him, support for his opinions.

I kinda, sorta like his humor but he's just too annoying for me.

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They are somewhat combative at the level of ideas in a recognizably nerdy, theater-kid, sondheim- and springsteen-fan, debate-club kind of way.

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but they didn't put them If the political humor feels more barbed today then it used to, say when Dick Cavett did it, then it's surely due to more polarized state of the country that exists now.

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Yes...and there's GOLD in them thar polarized politics. Its very much about money. I read somewhere that Jimmy Fallon didn't want to get too political but he was told -- if you want competitive ratings, you better.

I used to watch all the Dick Cavett shows - there were at least three versions of them -- but the early 70's one was very political, very progressive -- it just went about it a different way, like trying to put politicans from both parties on. Cavett, by the way, while a small man -- WAS a college gymnast and had quite the muscled body. Cavett also, of course , got plenty of great movie star/director interviews, famously giving Hitchcock a whole 90 minutes, but also showcasing folks like Robert Mitchum, William Holden, Bette Davis, Kate Hepburn, etc.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

A pretty funny Cavett show to watch is where Hugh Hefner had to debate some pretty rock-hard feminists. Hef's attempts to offer his own "liberal Playboy Philsophy" in his defense just doesn't work with the quite angry(and rather haughty) feminists, a reminder that there are divisions within divisions of politcal thought.

Closing out (because I honestly get stomach ache just talking about this stuff) I think we always had progressive talk show hosts in men like Steve Allen and Jack Paar...Carson just a little bit. (Letterman was openly hostile to Republican politicos on the show, but did call Bill Clinton "fatty" so I guess that was even?)

But these new shows are political shows first -- partisan and unwilling to examine the issues they raise. Just another additive the bombarding mix of political messages that come through all the time now, 24/7 rarely changing in in tone or offering.

BTW, "Psycho" came out in the final months of the Eisenhower Adminstration, and sort of forecast the younger, hipper JFK administration that was coming soon(as well as the violence and horrors that would come with it). Janet Leigh was at the Democratic convention in LA. I would assume that all the candidates saw Psycho to be "in with the times."

To me the only "political" elment of Psycho -- and it is more of a governmental element -- is that the isolation of the Bates Motel from the "new highway" made the motel (and perhaps nearby Fairvale and Sam Loomis Hardware) in financial difficulty ...and reflected the coming of the interstate highway system in America under Eisenhower. In lines cut from the script in the movie when Sheriff Chambers calls Norman, Chambers says: "I'm always telling you - you need to move that motel in closer to the highway."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

PS. Talk show hosts: I used to like that Scottish guy. He projected virilty and flirted well with his female guests. And a young person in my circle introduced me to some pretty funny skits with Conan O'Briean and his "deadpan producer" Jordan Schlansky. One on YouTube about a bachelor party for Jordan is pretty funny.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

I'm not sure how to judge the article. It speaks of actionable tortures and medical injuries to the recruits , and at least one death, but I think it quotes the program as having 11 deaths in ...several decades? I dunno...are those "acceptable losses" to a man-killing body of men (and women?)
Has the caliber of trainee declined over decades as more young men opt OUT of the military? Again, I dunno.

The graduation rate from the Seals program has dropped from 40% to less than 10% in a coupe of decades. I simply can't believe that that the pool of candidates for the Seals has degraded anything like that much in a couple of decades. Indeed you'd expect that the sort of driven, self-motivated people who try out for special forces would be (on average) more pumped up, more scientific in their approaches to fitness and nutritionally sorted out, generally bigger and faster than their previous generations of applicants, more or less in the same way that professional sports-people, especially in gladiatorial disciplines like American Football and Rugby *are* *all* bigger and faster as a group than they've ever been before. (Cont'd)

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

One point from the article that you haven't addressed is the cruel treatment of already-in-the-navy candidates for Seals who fail out of Hell Week: that they do not get to go back to their previous positions where they presumably were superlative, instead they end up working in canteens and other highly unglamorous parts of the Navy. This is a perverse policy, in effect guaranteeing that any previously stellar navy guy would have to be almost literally insane to ever try out for Seals. You've got a 90% chance of failure if you do and part of the price of your very likely failure is that you'll be busted down to menial tasks only. Such a policy is right up there in its malevolence and profligacy with people's lives with Paths of Glory's French Generals shelling their own troops when, after taking huge losses advancing on an impregnable position, it looks like they might be about to retreat in disarray. It was the single point in the report that for me most suggested "This is a project for Kubrick" were he still here.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The graduation rate from the Seals program has dropped from 40% to less than 10% in a coupe of decades. I simply can't believe that that the pool of candidates for the Seals has degraded anything like that much in a couple of decades.

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Hmm...but that drop-off has to have emanated from SOMETHING. If not the quality of the students -- the quality of the INSTRUCTORS? Or the "brass" supervising them all?

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Indeed you'd expect that the sort of driven, self-motivated people who try out for special forces would be (on average) more pumped up, more scientific in their approaches to fitness and nutritionally sorted out, generally bigger and faster than their previous generations of applicants, more or less in the same way that professional sports-people, especially in gladiatorial disciplines like American Football and Rugby *are* *all* bigger and faster as a group than they've ever been before. (Cont'd)

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I take that point. We have bememoths in most sports anymore -- even the "fake"(but painful) sport of professional wrestling, that's why those guys "fly through the air" more than previous generations of grunt'n groaners.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One point from the article that you haven't addressed is the cruel treatment of already-in-the-navy candidates for Seals who fail out of Hell Week: that they do not get to go back to their previous positions where they presumably were superlative, instead they end up working in canteens and other highly unglamorous parts of the Navy.

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Hmm...I READ that, but I didn't think to address it. And again -- it points to the "bosses" (and instructors) as being the real problem here, alllowed for some reason to torture (during training) and belittle (after failed training) their charges.

I'm still looking for a way to get the accusations to where they should belong. I'll get there!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

This is a perverse policy, in effect guaranteeing that any previously stellar navy guy would have to be almost literally insane to ever try out for Seals. You've got a 90% chance of failure if you do and part of the price of your very likely failure is that you'll be busted down to menial tasks only.

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OK..I get all of that. You've got me pondering: WHY? Or HOW did it come to this?

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Such a policy is right up there in its malevolence and profligacy with people's lives with Paths of Glory's French Generals shelling their own troops when, after taking huge losses advancing on an impregnable position, it looks like they might be about to retreat in disarray.

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Brief personal sidebar: I grew up with a military father, but he (and my mother) were also movie buffs, and they had a real taste in movies that showed "the dark side of the miltary". And they trained me from an early age of TWO of their favorite movies, released only a few years apart: "Paths of Glory" (with Kirk Douglas) and "Tunes of Glory"(with Alec Guinness.) I dutifully found and watched these movies, after spending some years not telling them apart. I can't remember much of anything about Tunes of Glory, but Paths of Glory? Unforgettable.

Paths of Glory was on local LA syndication when I was a kid, but the ABC TV network picked it up for a nationwide showing (no commercials, major corporate sponsors) in the late 60's. I expect the idea was to contrast the story to the Vietnam War.

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---It was the single point in the report that for me most suggested "This is a project for Kubrick" were he still here.

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Well, as I noted, Kubrick looked at "the insanity of war" in various ways: Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket...so this would indeed be right up his alley. Odd: Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket are both as FUNNY as they are brutal; Paths of Glory isn't funny at all.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Kubrick's "dark war comedy":

Here's some exchanges in Full Metal Jacket between "hero" Matthew Modine in a helicopter with a muscled grunt machine gunner who is raining bullets down on fleeing Vietnamese men, women and children:

Modine: How can you shoot women and children?
Machine gunner: Its easy...just don't lead them as much.

Modine: How can you tell which ones are Viet Cong?
Machine gunner: If they run...they are Viet Cong.
Modine: And if they don't run?
Machine: Then they are WELL DISCIPLINED Viet Cong (and he still shoots them.)

I know some guys who think those lines are as funny as something from Animal House. Its just the way it is.

So...I'm thinking that Kubrick(or his disciple) would have to tell this Navy Seal story WITHOUT the humor of Strangelove and FMJ, and WITH the seriousness (and outrage) of Paths of Glory. Of which: What better actor than Kirk Douglas -- in a late Hays Code movie -- could scream "and you CAN GO TO HELL before I'll apologize to you!" Kirk really new how to do "fury."

Here's my take. As many miltary comedies told us(Operation Mad Ball with Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs for one) the military is as big a bureaucracy as anywhere else, with as much capacity for "office politics," back-stabbing, CYA tactics, punishment of whistle blowers and slow-moving reforms. Problem is, its a bureaucracy where all these things can get people KILLED. And military en and women have had to dodge those bullets since time immemorial.

So what happened here? Something happened to the LEADERSHIP that is allowing the sadistic training, lack of empahty( a recruit was COUGHING BLOOD for days without getting help?) and punishing demotions for failed training.

Find out who THOSE guys are(hint: the generals in Paths of Glory) and (in real life) go get them and (in movie life) destroy them.

Brian DePalma went after such insanity in "Casulaties of War" -- maybe he could do this as a late age triumph?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Postscript:

While I'm not one, I've had some "tough guy" friends in my life, and one had a brother in the Navy Seals and told me this story -- which has no corroboration, so maybe he made it up.

A Navy Seal went into a bar in San Diego(sounds like a joke opening, but this is the REAL set up) and saw a young man wearing a "Navy Seals" tee-shirt. I guess the young man didn't look tough enough to be wearing the shirt. So the Navy Seal approached the young man and this happened:

Navy Seal: I see you're wearing "Navy Seals" tee-shirt.
Young man: Yeah.
Navy Seal: Are you a Navy Seal?
Young Man: No.
Navy Seal: Was your father a Navy Seal?
Young man: No.
Navy Seal: You have any brothers who are Navy Seals?
Young man: No.

...and the Navy Seal proceed to ram the young man's face into the bar, smacked him around and said:

"Then you can NEVER wear a Navy Seal shirt! Take it off."

Which the young man did.

True story? I have no idea. But I guess its a pretty good metaphor.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

Brian DePalma went after such insanity in "Casulaties of War" -- maybe he could do this as a late age triumph?

That's a good comparison case since, if I recall correctly, that project began with De Palma reading a New Yorker article about some previously unknown Vietnam War atrocities.

Let's face it though. No military (or wider culture) likes having its dirty laundry aired. I remember Casualties of War as a bit of a bomb, more written about and criticized for its more melodramatic elements (I avoided it myself at the time because of the critical furore and because it sounded too damn grim!) than seen. All Quiet on The Western Front was made in the US not France or Germany. And Paths of Glory was essentially banned in France, Switzerland, Spain and a few other places (including on US military bases!) for decades (Wikipedia has the details). It *sounds* like Paths may have just about broken even in its first few years of release but it was no hit. In sum, while posterity may shine on you, nobody making this kind of movie should anticipate making a ton of money at least in the short run.

Still, there's a career-making project for someone young here or, yes, a late super-brave triumph for an established talent. Would a Tarantino or a James Cameron do something as off-brand as this? Maybe the most likely outcome: a multi-part documentary on Netflix about how a fabled special forces program went feral.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Brian DePalma went after such insanity in "Casulaties of War" -- maybe he could do this as a late age triumph?

--That's a good comparison case since, if I recall correctly, that project began with De Palma reading a New Yorker article about some previously unknown Vietnam War atrocities.

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Yes.

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Let's face it though. No military (or wider culture) likes having its dirty laundry aired. I remember Casualties of War as a bit of a bomb, more written about and criticized for its more melodramatic elements (I avoided it myself at the time because of the critical furore and because it sounded too damn grim!) than seen.

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I saw it on first release. It came out in 1989. DePalma "won the right to make" Casualties of War as a reward for the huge hit of The Untouchables in 1987. It was his next film. The Untouchables was my favorite movie of 1987(and would be for the whole 80's, I don't care about the bad reviews) so I showed right up for DePalma's next one.

DePalma sure cashed in his Untouchables chips. THIS one was a big, miserable downer.

Despite having two movie stars of varying wattage -- Michael J. Fox(as the hero) and Sean Penn(as the main villain) and they were an odd mix on screen (Method Penn evidently taunted Fox with the insult "television actor" before scenes to get Fox good and riled.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The story was, indeed, relentlessly grim and cruel, truly hard to watch. The narrative structure as I remember it was thus:

In the terrifying jungle maze of Vietnam, the Viet Cong kill American soldiers in an ambush.
In revenge, a squad of sadistic GIs(all psychotic goons except Fox, and led by Penn) elect -- over Fox's objectinos --to kidnap an innocent and pretty Vietnamese woman(maybe Cong, maybe not) and -- over Fox's objections -- carry her all over the place with them as a prisoner, raping her and beating her. Fox tries to set her free, but fails. She's ultimately killed in a grueling crossfire sequence on a railway bridge -- another DePalma set-piece.
So now Fox must "rat out" his comrades. Military brass comes down hard on him to convince him to keep quiet.
There is a trial.

And..for the life of me...I can't remember if Penn and his psychos all get jail or not. Been a long time. Might have to watch it again.

What I DO remember is the film's sole "audience cheering moment" -- in which Fox, tired of the threats against him by Penn's squad -- slams one of the goons full force in the face with a shovel. Its a "Dirty Harry" moment -- the crowd cheers and DePalma makes sure to cut to "evil" Penn in stunned close--up realizing that he is bullying the wrong guy.

That's about it for uplift.

Decades later -- recently -- DePalma "remade" Casualties of War for the modern Middle East in "Redacted." No movie stars are in it. I haven't seen it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

It *sounds* like Paths may have just about broken even in its first few years of release but it was no hit. In sum, while posterity may shine on you, nobody making this kind of movie should anticipate making a ton of money at least in the short run.

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Well, I'm sure it got Kubrick some critical notice, and "Paths" star Kirk Douglas hired Kubrick to take over for fired director Anthony Mann on Spartacus. So it had its value to Kubrick.

Funny: Kubrick always disowned Spartacus("Its not my movie") even though it is a GREAT movie(and far more emotional and empathetic than the later Kubrick work.)

Funny: Kirk Douglas worked with Kubrick twice, but found him egotistical and self-serving. Douglas called him "Stanley THE-Prick" behind his back. Douglas was no shrinking violet himself.

I'm not sure anti-war movies ever did too well unless they were couched in something "bigger" (like The Bridge on the River Kwai.) A military man I admired said "there is a difference between anti-war movies and anti-military movies." He felt anti-military movies (like Paths of Glory) were justified but that anti-war movies had to be looked at carefully: sometimes war was a necessary evil.

As I noted, ABC network gave Paths of Glory a nationwide special broadcast. I trust some money was paid to SOMEBODY for that.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 2 years ago

All Quiet on The Western Front was made in the US not France or Germany.

A new film adaptation of the underlying novel is premiering at the Toronto Film Festival and has a trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFqgmaO15x4
Looks suitably harrowing/terrifying. The director, Edward Berger, has worked in US TV a bit, e.g., the North Pole adventure/horror w/ Jared Harris, The Terror Season 1. Could be great. Let's see if it wins at TIFF (I'll be watching when it debuts on Netflix at the end of October in any case.).

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