The Brothers Grimm

[poliphilo]

Werewolves are fun, but they're not frightening. Is anyone out there frightened of werewolves? I mean, really frightened?

Didn't they shoot the last "real" werewolf in sixteen hundred and something? In rural France?

So if you're not living in rural France and the date isn't sixteen hundred and something, why should you be scared?

I know, I know, it's an archetype. The Beast within. Yaddayaddayadda.

So I just watched the Brothers Grimm. It has a werewolf in it. And I've been asking myself ever since, "now what was the point of that?"

Why make gothic movies when the gothic isn't scary any more?

The Japanese have a handle on what's really scary these days. What's really scary these days in girls with hair all over their faces climbing out of TV sets. But werewolves? Nah.

The only way to handle the gothic these days is to make it funny. The model is Ghostbusters. Don't you just love Ghostbusters?

I think The Brothers Grimm was trying to be funny. Leastways Heath Ledger fell over a lot.

But a script would have been nice.

And I could have done without the services of Matt Damon. (I had a revelation yesterday; I realised who Matt Damon reminds me of. He's an absolute dead ringer for Doug McClure who used to be in Bonanza or High Chaparal or something- only Doug McClure had more charisma.)

But, all in all, I think the comedy gothic horror has had its day. We want to be really frightened, not pretend-frightened.

Irony will only stretch so far.

Before it snaps *ping* like knicker elastic.

Comments

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen The Brothers Grimm, but I agree 100% with this statement: What's really scary these days in girls with hair all over their faces climbing out of TV sets.

That movie had me sleeping with the lights on for weeks afterward.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the secret is that that particular horror is located- not in some far-off haunted forest- but in the corner of everybody's living room.

Now someone needs to contrive a horror scenario involving home computing. Perhaps they already have.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're right about Matt Damon - I never thought about it till you mentioned it. (it was The Virginian, BTW.)

I always thought Ben Affleck was the more attractive and charismatic of that pair.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He was the Virginian's side kick, right? How odd, I had completely forgotten that show.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000255/

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was going to say I've never seen Ben Affleck in anything (I avoid him like the plague) but I see he had a role in Shakespeare in Love.

Also that he was Basketball Player #10 in an early episode of Buffy.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

really? not that i like matt damon, but i think ben affleck is an idiot. have you ever seen him being interviewed? he is quite a lunkhead. kevin smith cast him well, i think.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I did find American Werewolf in London frightening.

Even though the movie was partly comedy, the tension mounting as the victim felt the changes beginning in his body was handled so well by the director--at a slow pace--that the result was wonderfully creepy!

In fact, my son and I were watching it on TV, and when the man's face began to stretch into a wolf-face, we were both so creeped out that we turned off the TV to recover, then agreed we were ready again, and flipped it back on!

Vampires, now: they terrify me. Scariest book I ever read was Dracula. oooh.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That movie was spoiled for me by that scene at the beginning on the werewolf-haunted Yorkshire moors.

I know Yorkshire, see.

And it's, erm, not like that at all...

I'm afraid I'm not scared of vampires either. Only thing that scares me is ghosts because ghosts are real.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

Vampires bore me silly. Werewolves are okay subjects of fiction, but not terribly scary. I don't watch many horror movies, but The Blair Witch Project scared me a lot. It was filmed in a state park here in Maryland, and I knew those trees, that underbrush, that land. And it had some starkly memorable images--the tree hung with stick figures, the mysterious cairns, the bloody bit of stuff wrapped in flannel, the decrepit house in the middle of the woods. It was really about Panic in its most primal sense--the encounter with Pan, the city dweller's terror of the wild.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like Vampires because they're cool.

But I think they're been rather overdone recently.

And the silent Nosferatu is one of the most compellingly strange, dreamlike movies ever.

Yes, I liked The Blair Witch Project too. Every so often a film comes along that revives and rejuvenates the genre.

[happydog.livejournal.com]

Doug McClure was in The Virginian, which is almost but not quite Bonanza or High Chaparral. Basically, they were all about cowpokes hanging out on a ranch, so it's easy to get them all confused.

He died of lung cancer in 1995, sadly. His performance in At The Earth's Core is classic; I have to give the guy props for even being in that movie, which was total garbage. At one point they are attacked by allegedly carnivorous flying fish, which attack consists of a ton of rubber fish obviously being thrown at McClure, Peter Cushing and the ever-wondrous Caroline Munro. McClure does his best not to die laughing, and for keeping a straight face he deserved some kind of award. At The Earth's Core also featured the deathless line, "You can't mesmerise me, I'm British!" (spoken by Cushing).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They keep showing that movie on Saturday afternoons and I keep stumbling into the middle of it. I don't think I've ever seen it all the way through.

[happydog.livejournal.com]

It's completely really dreadful, but I watched it because it has Caroline Munro in her prime in it. It's not really worth watching all the way through.

I envy you a bit that they show bad movies on Saturday afternoons where you are. These days they seem to be showing a lot of Golf and infomercials on Saturday afternoon TV. Those are definitely not as much fun.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You've answered my question....

Jesus!

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I don't find any sort of horror movies to be scary, so I didn't expect "The Brothers Grimm" to scare me, either. The only movie that has ever really creeped me out was "Blair Witch Project," so I guess for me it doesn't matter what kind of monster or villain you have--if you actually *show* it to me, I can't manage to fear it.

My stepdaughter loves horror movies, and she's always making me watch them, assuring me that "this one will scare you." And they never do. It's really disappointing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love a good ghost story, because ghosts are the one thing I find scary.

My favourite scary movie of recent years is the Devil's Backbone- which has a genuinely (to me) spooky spook.