Masters of Horror
So we finally got around to watching the first two Masters of Horror mini-films, Don Coscarelli's Incident On and Off a Mountain Road and Stuart Gordon's Dreams in The Witch-House.
I'm surprised that more folks on the Horror list aren't discussing the movies, but it could be that far fewer people have Showtime than HBO/Skinemax. At any rate, I haven't really watched too much horror in the past few years. Sure, a few Asian horror movies, Saw, etc. Most not bad but still more gory than horror. I think the last horror movie we watched was Audition and it was actually a bit anticlimactic. That was months ago, though, and it's my opinion that if one doesn't watch or read horror a lot, one loses the "enzyme" needed to digest it. I used to read/watch a lot more than I currently do. So it was with a lot of hesitation that I went into watching Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. And rightly so.
I think I started off already freaked out to realize that there's a Motion Picture Association rating for Rape, which then had me waiting for the inevitably horrific scene. And it was disturbing but not as horrific as the rest of the movie, amazingly. I don't think this was quite the movie to watch when easing back into the horror genre. For one thing, it wasn't easing. It was full-frontal assault. For another thing, I'm not that fond of gore films, and this was gory. So gory, in fact, that I could almost smell the decomposing flesh. Ugh. And the sound. Blech. Which made it a pretty good cinematic experience, actually. But still, ugh.
There were some predictable things about the movie. For instance, the freaky survivalist husband. You just knew that the skills he was teaching her were going to come in handy. And, like Coscarelli's Tall Man, Moonface, the freak that pursues the wife is freakishly tall although decidedly more inhuman. Coscarelli must have a thing for tall, menacing dudes. What I really liked about the movie was the freaky old man. He was at once annoying, frightening, and silly. Angus Scrimm was fantastic and almost scarier than Moonface. Almost. The other thing I really liked was the part after the traditional "end." It really gave the Final Girl unplumbed depth, and frighteningly so. I expected to admire/feel relief for her. I didn't. I was scared by her.
Happily, the circumstances in the movie are so far removed from my everyday life that the after effects of the movie don't bother me at all. I think. The visuals are really strong, though.
As for Dreams in The Witch-House: yawn. I know people like Lovecraft. I appreciate his work and I think the stories I have read are extremely good at creating an atmosphere of unease and that glimmering of the unseen. But I just don't think his writing can come across on film. And this one didn't work, at least not for me. I ended up laughing and thinking the people in that squalid house were fools - didn't they see it coming? Mostly laughing, because every time I saw that rat-creature, I could not stop singing Basement Jaxx's Where's Your Head At? because those human-faces-on-animals in their video were spookier than the rat-creature.
Now that I've started to build my horror enzymes back up, though, I'm looking forward to viewing the other four we have recorded.
Meanwhile, I am enjoying the second book in Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Arabesk series, Effendi. I can't decide if Grimwood is really good or just really entertaining. Whichever it is, I do find him easy to read, so I guess that's what matters. I really liked reMix, which led me to Redrobe, which I didn't really like. But I picked up Pashazade and quite liked it. That was about 5 months ago, and last week or the week before, I picked up Effendi and Felaheen. After this, I've got The Pillow-Friend by Lisa Tuttle queued* up. And now I'm torn, there's so much to keep me occupied. Do I read? Do I watch tv? Do I play Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, which I am loving? So much to do, so little free time!
Speaking of Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, I am so happy I picked it up. I was feeling sorry for myself because Animal Crossing is only available for Nintendo DS and I have a GBA. I heart Animal Crossing on the GameCube and would love to play it on the GBA. However, I bought Harvest Moon for the GC and found it much more stressful than AC, so I stopped playing it. Too much to do! But I was tired of Tetris and Hamtaro, so I thought I'd give Mineral Town a chance. I wonder if the GBA version will get stressful after awhile? I'll have to wait and see, but so far, it doesn't seem like I have to do as much in a day as on the GC version.
Lastly, but not least important: I received my Max Eider cds yesterday and so have my fix. He's a great man, that Max. I also picked up Peter Murphy's Unshattered, finally. It's a damn hard cd to find - and expensive. But I had a coupon for 30% off, so the cd was mine. I also finally re-visited my half.com wish list from eons back and ordered Tosca's Delhi 9, Ken Nordine's Wink, Cheb i Sabbeh's La Kahena (which I have been putting off for months but I don't know, I have always had a thing for any song with Im Nin Alu in it, ever since Ofra Haza's 1980s club mix), and Anoushka Shankar's Rise.
Things high on the want list right now:
Rotten Soul - JBC
Morningwood - Morningwood (I know, I already have it but I want the official release which is out today)
Cinder - Dirty Three
Evocations - Three
onethreeseven - Zohar
Swinging Mademoiselles: Groovy French Sounds from the 60s - Various
Midival Punditz - Midival Times
*queued. That looks so weird typed out but I know it's correct.
( 10:11 FH | aural pleasures. reviews. silly hooha. )