NoWo600Wo: …
It’s towards the end of the semester, so I should try to get in my monthly post before the next month of my life becomes devoted to writing a research paper on the character of Wemmick in Dickens’ Great Expectations and preparing for finals. Due to the film history class I’m taking this semester, my “10 Most Recently Viewed Films” list to the right has been a bit bipolar: Classic depressing-ending films mixed with mostly terrible horror films or horror film sequels, and a few modern comedies.
This Enzo G. Castellari crime thriller starring Franco Nero can be considered a slightly more realistic version of what happens when a mere mortal decides to become a vigilante. Despite being fairly well-off it looks like, he is not Batman. He’s not even Rorschach. After being kidnapped during a robbery and brutally beaten, Nero’s character finds that the police are of no help apprehending the men who attacked him. After failing to find the men on his own, he blackmails another thief into finding the men for him, so he can have the police arrest them. Hiring the thief is by far perhaps the smartest thing Nero’s character does in the entire movie. He is a normal man, so he makes several, mostly naive, mistakes throughout the film. He doesn’t even start to carry a gun until before the final showdown, and this is a film full of several mini-showdowns. This movie is steeped into what was going on in Italy at the time, where the police were either in with the criminals or just simply no help to the common citizen. It has an amazing soundtrack that my boyfriend and I have been trying to hunt down ever since. This is probably the only movie in this post that I will highly recommend.
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
Is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series the only one where none of the sequels ever even come close to surpassing the original? Not even Viggo Mortensen could save this mess (starting the handsome-crazy chain of the Leatherface family which will be given to Matthew McConaghey in the fourth movie), although I guess Ken Foree came kind of close by being the only intelligent person in the movie. Which also begs the question: if Ken Foree can manage to get into the next Friday the 13th movie and the Nightmare on Elm Street re-make, will he have been in pretty much every major horror movie franchise ever? Re-boot wise anyway. A largely dull and pointless movie, the only way it possibly works with the original is the soundtrack, and the fact that most of the deaths are not shown on screen completely. Although I get the feeling that the latter was due to the backlash against horror movies in the late 80s/early 90s.
I tried y’all, I really did. This time around, I found it mostly boring until the end, and even parts of the end were paced like molasses. All it did was confirm that 1) Most of the deaths were not shown in the original, 2) The deaths were usually not lingered over for too long, unlike the remake, and 3) I guess starting a strip Monopoly game, but then balancing that triply with the wholesomeness of wearing a frumpy nightgown, writing a letter, then reading in bed will still get you killed. Huh.
I can see why this one is a fan favorite. It’s better paced, and has a smarter heroine, and still has some freshness to it. It also didn’t go for the obvious “kill as many people as possible” plot by sending about 3/4 of the camp counselors away for the night in town. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat for this movie, not one bit, but I think I can respect it.
