Harry -
Don’t know if you’re sick of me yet this week but I just saw CURSED one day early, so what the fuck man you know what happens next. A review, some belligerent talkbacks, etc.
This is the new one from Wes Craven, who in my eyes at least still has some small amount of credibility. I know he tries his damndest to piss it away on executive produced projects like DRACULA 2000, WISHMASTER, WES CRAVEN’S SO-CALLED CARNIVAL OF SOULS, etc. And he’s done some bad ones all throughout his career. Like DEADLY FRIEND and DEADLY BLESSING. I forget which one is which. One of them involves a robot. And VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. And THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2.
But every once in a while he “hits one out of the park” as they say in baseball, and in everything else too I guess, but as a reference to baseball in those cases. I didn’t used to like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT but last time I watched it it kind of won me over. It has some kind of horrible, repulsive power, despite (maybe even because of) the occasional out of place bits of comedy, in the middle of a series of long, ugly, drawn out death. He’s pretty pretentious to claim that the movie is about Vietnam, but it sort of makes sense. It’s definitely a movie ten planets away from the sanitized horror we get now.
And then there’s THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Not perfect, like TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, but an enjoyably relentless take on the same sort of deal. I mean, obnoxious suburban family break down their motor home in the middle of a desert missile testing site inhabited by a tribe of vicious inbred mutants, and lose whatever humanity they had fighting for their lives… how can you go wrong with that setup? I’m sure they’ll figure out how with the upcoming remake, but for the first go-round they did well. (more…)
