vitriol - Horrorphile

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

vitriol - Horrorphile

The (DIS)ILLUSION of CGI effects

May 15th 2008 00:22

Now before I launch into my tirade, let me make it clear that CGI effects in movies frequently look incredibly impressive and justifiably need to be used because there would be no other way to realistically achieve the look the director desires. Movies such as Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World (1997), and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03) and King Kong (2005) are perfect examples.

Peter Jackson's King Kong embraces CGI superbly

What frustrates and, ultimately, disappoints me is the use (and there seems to be more and more of it) of CGI effects being employed in horror movies in place of the “old school” prosthetic, mechanical and animatronic effects. Call me old fashioned but I just don’t buy it. They don’t have nearly the same visceral power or palpable impact as effects which are engineered and executed in front of the camera and filmed!

For a director who says he loves his old school, Rob Zombie used too much CGI for my liking

Take for example the “re-imagining” (Hmph! Re-imagine my arse!) of Day of the Dead (2008). It has some token prosthetic make-up on the zombie faces adding wounds and lacerations, but the camera never lingers long enough to appreciate the effects work (probably because the make-up wasn’t that good in the first place). But virtually all the gore and blood effects have been CGI-ed. It’s abysmal.

You never really feel that horrified, even though zombie heads are being lopped off left right and centre. And the actually colour and consistency of the blood is not realistic enough, it’s this weird hue and looks like kinda gloopy. Okay, okay, so there are dozens of horror movies that don’t get the blood the right colour and consistency and aren’t using CGI. But at least they’re mixing a batch up every day and preparing squibs!

Braindead Elizabeth Moody and Brenda Kendall

Nothin' like a zombie mum slidin' her fingers through a nurse's cheeks!

Damn, I could tell you a few things about fake blood. I worked on Peter Jackson's Braindead (1991) and there was more blood being pumped on set than any other horror movie up to that point, possibly still holds a record. The zombie massacre finale (which took around two weeks to film) left the interior house set stinking something chronic; a sickly sweet smell that if you were unlucky to be hungover on set (and crew frequently were) you were in for a rough day at work.

Braindead Brenda Kendall and Stuart Devenie

Nothin' like a zombie nurse chewin' the lips off a priest!

The blood was made up of a special formula that included corn syrup, starch, and red food colouring. It was quite brilliant actually. It looked damn realistic! But it was a nightmare to clean off anything it came into contact with, apart from skin. Sounds like real blood to me.

One day I was hanging around with the special effects boys and they were setting up one of the pressurised gallons of blood in preparation to pump blood on set. Several of us were close by when the technician fiddling with the gauge uttered a very ominous “Uh-oh!” quickly followed by a, “Everybody get back! Now!” Suddenly the top of the vessel burst and a gallon of blood jetted everywhere. Thankfully I avoided being doused in the red sauce, but boy, what a sight to behold that was; a huge geyser of fake blood exploding like a scarlet volcano!

The chestburster from Alien ... 'nuff said

Movies such as Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1982), George Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985), and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) could not be the brilliantly and viscerally powerful horror movies they are if their special effects make-up work had been digitally generated by a computer. It’s a simple fact. By having the effects work actually there with the actors in three dimensions being caught on film (or on digital video as will be the case more and more) the end result is so much more resonant.

The Thing ... You gotta be fucking kidding!

It should be that when an effect is simply too difficult to achieve convincingly through the use of prosthetics or mechanics, that’s when you employ the digital artists, and only then. But of course, it’s a cost cutting measure these days. It’s actually cheaper to have a couple of people sitting in front of a computer punching numbers and letters into a keyboard and fiddling with a mouse than it is to have a crew of technicians armed with an array of hardware and soft and hard materials, stanind by on-set. It’s software vs. hardware. And the soft option wins.

Hannibal Ray Liotta, Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore

It's what's under Ray Liotta's cap that really counts

I’ll finish with a fine example of when CGI effects are used intelligently: the dinner dénouement in Hannibal (2003). There was no way Ridley Scott could’ve shown in the same wide shot the real Ray Liotta talking and moving whilst Anthony Hopkins sliced slivers of Ray’s brain from his exposed cranium and popped them into a little sauté pan. Bon appetite!

Here's an example of old school effects and just how brilliant they are. They don't make 'em like this anymore:

106

Vote

Comments (23)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

Email this Post to a Friend

Some horrors WILL, some horrors WON'T ...

January 22nd 2008 06:19

… Some horrors kick some bloody butt, and some horrors really don’t.

So what makes a horror a good horror, while so many are bad, in all the wrong ways? Many horror filmmakers think they can get away with a lot; mediocre to lousy acting, cheap special effects, shooting in available light, because they think as long as the movie is “nasty” and “violent” and “hip” and sports some gratuitous nudity then they’ll be able to sell it and have it distributed no probs.

Unfortunately that is the case more often than not. In the last few years as the horror movie became fashionable again, and in some cases (ie the Saw franchise) a serious cash cow, there have been more horror movies released than any other genre. About 70% of them are shunted straight to the video store shelves with a sizeable amount of the post-production budget spent on shooting an alluring DVD cover. And therein lies The Rub.

Turistas has lots of bikini action AND claustrophobic underwater cave sequences

I won’t be the first to admit I’ve been suckered in by the packaging of a movie; the poster art and/or the DVD cover, only to discover (and kick myself for it) that the movie is utter shite! Crap that makes my deep trash guilty pleasures look like works of high art. But then there’s the other side to the coin, which features shoddy-looking cover art, even a corny movie title, and low and behold, the movie actually works, and in some rare cases, actually kicks ass. But these latter examples are a rare beast.

Hatchet sports funny-looking tits and really annoying characters

A couple of choice examples: Turistas (2006) and Hatchet (2007). I passed over the straight-to-DVD release Turistas for weeks, simply because the cover art looked dreadful, the title, for a Hollywood film, seemed pretentious, and the premise sounded tedious. Hatchet I did a teaser post a month or so back, expressing interest in what sounded like (from what I’d read) and looked like (from the stills) a good bang for buck slasher flick.

Yes, you should all die horribly, every single one of you

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turistas turned out to be solidly acted, well shot, and reasonably impressive in the sustained tension and execution of violence. Actor-turned director John Stockwell made his name on the surf’n’derriere flicks Blue Crush and Into the Blue, but holds his own with a tale of gullible tourists finding themselves in a lot of jungle trouble at the expense of vengeful surgeons.

The two lead male actors search for motivation

Hatchet, written and directed by Adam Green, turned out to the biggest pile of crap I’ve had to sit through in a while. Okay, so it had a couple of money shots; the killer axes a fat guy repeatedly through his shoulder, eventually splitting him in half, and shortly after grabs a woman by her head and violently prizes her upper and lower jaw apart causing her head to tear asunder. Nice.

The two lead female actors realise just how scary-bad the movie really is

But that was it. The movie before and after these two moments was dreadful. Tourists in New Orleans go on dodgy swamp ghost tour and are picked off one by one by a hideously deformed, psychopathic man named Victor Crowley. Victor uses his hatchet a couple of times at the most, so the title is almost superfluous. The characters were obnoxious or boring, acting was mediocre at best, the dialogue was adolescent, the huge mutant killer was absurd and very not scary, and the plotting pretty non-existent. This is a movie that supposedly, according to a quote on the DVD cover, was the hit of last year’s Tribeca Film Festival …?! Are you kidding me? What the fuck kind of criteria are De Niro’s judges using?! At the Austin Fantastic Fest actor Kane Hodder, who plays the hulking killer Victor Crowley (he also played Jason Voorhees in several of the Friday the 13th movies), won best actor twice (Jury Prize and Audience Award). They must have all been drunk as skunks.

John Carl Buechler, the man behind the special effects makeup, is a veteran, having done the special effects makeup work for countless, mostly gloopy B-movies, including Ghoulies, TerrorVision, From Beyond, Prison, and a couple of the Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) sequels, to name but a few. His work here is, for the best part, under-used, and he’s no Greg Nicotero that's for sure.

Robert Englund, may a croc bite your butt off

In name Hatchet sounds like classic old school horror fare. Robert Englund (aka Freddy Kreuger) has a cameo in the movie’s opening scenes. He’s quoted on the cover stating words to the effect of; “First there was Jason, then there was Freddy, now a new modern horror villain to join the ranks.” How much did the producers pay you to spout that bullshit Bob?

No one comes close to Michael Myers in Halloween. And no one ever will.

Well maybe Antoine Chugahr, but he’s a whole new kettle of very bitter fish.

Vote

Comments (6)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

Email this Post to a Friend

The RE-IMAGINING of the SEQUEL to the REMAKE of the PREQUEL - THE FINAL GRIPE

October 19th 2007 00:09

I ain’t finished. Not yet. Just wait; no doubt in a couple of months I’ll be writing a post entitled Re-Envisionings: A New Beginning. And the vitriol will be laid on thick with a garden trowel, as savagely as the little girl in Night of the Living Dead (1968).

We are living in dark times, desperate measures, clutching at cinematic straws. Well, not us per se, but the insidious Hollywood machine. The 80s weren’t this bad, but we felt it. It had begun in earnest during the latter part of the 70s, but it went a little crazy during the 80s, then in the 90s it escalated a little more. Now, in the new millennium, sequel/prequel/remake mania has reached critical mass.

Actually one can argue it began in the 60s with the James Bond franchise, followed by the Pink Panther series and assorted other cartoon-esque characters and their hi-jinks adventures. But it was the blockbuster that was Jaws (1975) that spawned the real monster. Three years later Jaws 2 (1978) came out with the tagline “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water!”, hmmm, how oddly prophetic. The movie was a shadow of the original. Then came Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). No comment.

At the same time another horror movie was also capitalizing on the sequel formula of success. The Omen (1976) was followed by Damien: Omen II (1978). Less vacuous as Jaws 2, Omen II maintained the arc of the story, the villian now older and more powerful, whereas Jaws 2 was roughly the same, except with another shark (actually I’m protecting a guilty pleasure, I know).

And then there was Halloween (1978)’s sequel Halloween II (1981), with the tagline, “More of the night He came home!” Halloween II holds a fond place in my horror heart as it was the first truly adult movie I saw at the movies; it was rated R16 and I was only 13 (and lied about my age at the box office). When I saw Halloween a year or so later on VHS I was impressed at how the sequel picked up literally straight after the first film, even re-telling the final moments of the first movie at the start of Halloween II to re-fresh audiences memories.

Sure, Halloween II isn’t anywhere near as chilling and creepy as the original, but it’s a damn sight better than most other sequels, which brings me back to the point of this post, the griping. As a rule of thumb sequels generally suck. There are of course exceptions to this rule; Dawn of the Dead (1978), Aliens (1986) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) to name a few. I’m not saying these films are better than the originals, but they are impressive in their own right (actually, I think Hellbound is better, and I know a lot of people champion Aliens as better than Alien, but as sensational as it is, I’m not one of those contenders).

The sequel and the remake are about making money. It’s never been about the story or the art. I don’t care what anyone says. George Lucas will argue that the Star Wars series is all about the story; The Journal of the Whills to be precise (the name he gave to the entire saga, mentioned at the beginning of the novel of Star Wars), but let’s face it, Empire Strikes Back is impressive, but it’s no New Hope.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge movie poster

Take the Friday the 13th series, or the Nightmare on Elm Street series, or the infernal Saw series. Apparently every Saw movie has made more money than the predecessor, and executive producers are planning to make Saw V and VI back to back. I saw the first one, it was okay, novel premise and dénouement, but the sequel was dire. I haven’t ventured into the third or fourth. Perhaps I will just to be a glutton for punishment.

Sequel-mania won’t go quietly. It will rage hard long into the dark night. Taking down as many of us as it can. Then we have the disease that is remake-itis. Or if the producers fancy themselves as “filmmakers” then it’s a “re-imagining” or “re-envisioning”. This is a pandemic in Hollywood. And it seems to have singled out the horror genre. What did the horror genre do to warrant such injustice?! Oh, the humanity!

But I’d be a hypocrite if I went the whole hog on this one. I love David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly (1986) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is a masterpiece. I’ve enjoyed some of the recent remakes; Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes (2006). And no doubt I’ll enjoy some more to come, although I’m really not looking forward to it. The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades. It should be dark dammit! The list is long, I won’t go into it here, suffice to say some of my very favourite horror movies have either already been remade or are in pre-production. The Hitcher (2007), Halloween (2007), Day of the Dead, The Evil Dead, even The Thing is being remade again.

Not to mention the numerous remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955); Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1993), The Invasion (2007).

I gotta stop; the gripe that is. It’s getting me nowhere, like any vitriol; it only leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But it feels good to spit it out. So, on a dark-brighter note my next seven posts will be a countdown to All Hallow’s Eve, seven of my all-time favourite horror movies, some of which have had sequels or have been remade: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955), Cat People (1942), Suspiria (1977), Phantasm (1978), Alien (1979), Possession (1981) and Videodrome (1982) …

For my complete list of all-time favourite horror movies, check my Orble profile page. I’ve already reviewed several of them. The other significant favourite (and a sequel) Day of the Dead (1985) I will review further down the beaten track, along with Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) … and Zack Snyder’s “re-envisioning” thrown for contentious measure.

But for now, have a bloody great weekend, and don’t let the remake bite!

Vote

Comments (6)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

Email this Post to a Friend

CULT CLASSICS being REMADE ... The situation is OUT OF CONTROL!

August 9th 2007 01:36

Day of the Dead (2007) teaser movie poster

The future looks grim. Hollywood is running out of ideas. They’ve been behind the 8-ball for a couple of decades but the situation is reaching critical mass. Now the rest of world is falling into the same filthy, muddy ditch. Europe and elsewhere are deciding remakes are the way to go.

Many of the following films are bona fide cult classics and should not be touched with a damn bargepole! Some are trashier and perhaps, perhaps, a remake might inject some blood’n’guts juice that the original lacked, although often that trashy element is what makes the movie so much fun in the first place

[ Click here to read more ]

104

Vote

Comments (9)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

Email this Post to a Friend

SEQUEL or PREQUEL ... is that the question?

July 24th 2007 01:49

I come back to this dilemma time and time again. I’m not a stuck record, I’m a stuck pig! Squeeeeeaall!!!! There is no dilemma, there should not be sequels. Well, I guess I’ll admit that there are a handful of exceptions where there has been enough savvy and sophistication employed into a movie sequel, and the audience doesn’t feel like the original has been done a disservice.

There are some which have taken the sequel to utterly absurd lengths. We know the culprits. One dons an ice hockey mask, the other wears awkward gloves. And there have been sequels which, arguably, are at least as interesting as the original, and in some camps they are even preferred over the original. Two examples of the latter are a bunch of eight-feet-tall, dual-jawed, acid-for-blood ETs, and the other is a sociopath doctor hiding out in Italy who indulges his taste for human liver with a nice glass of Chianti

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (17)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

Email this Post to a Friend

HOSTILE at Hostel

June 27th 2007 00:29

I’ve got some flesh and bone to pick. Splinters digging into the palm of my hand that I need to pluck out. Those splinters are righteous social commentators and film critics who miss the point.

In last weekend’s The Sun-Herald columnist Miranda Devine had a short side-article headed up “Sick flick plumbs depths”. In it she blasted Hostel: Part II (2007) as being “the most disgusting, sadistic torture-porn movie ever to hit mainstream cinema”. Further on in the brief article Devine admits she hasn’t seen the movie, but then quotes Paul, an “aggrieved Sydney father” who expressed his disgust in an email saying; “What is Greater Union doing screening [the movie] daily now that the school holidays have started? Do [they] have no respect for suburban families? Am I supposed to be watching Shrek 3 with my kids knowing in the next room there are distressed women being ferociously beaten [on screen

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (10)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

Email this Post to a Friend

[ Horrorphile Home ] [ Create A New Post ]

Moderated by Bryn

Orble

Orble Homepage

Start an Orble Blog

Subscribe to DailyOrble

Receive a daily e-mail of Orble's most popular posts