Green Hell : Random Rambling

Be forewarned: I’m just “thinking out loud” here. Well, that and grousing about a few things that get on my nerves, as usual.

What is it with all these damned remakes? Can’t Hollywood come up with anything original? And why do all the remakes suck, compared to the original versions of the films?
It seems to be worst in the sci-fi and horror fields. For the last few years, I’ve been subjected to remakes of: Thirteen Ghosts, Dawn of the Dead, The Haunting, The Fog, When A Stranger Calls, Rollerball, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Every one of ‘em sucked and gave change, compared to the originals.

There always seem to be attempts to make the characters and scenarios more “contemporary”, and needless changes are often made to the overall story. It’s as if Hollyweird hasn’t merely run out of ideas, it’s bent on screwing up the products of a better time. What’s next? Are two pinheads going to sit down in some office and say:

“I got a great idea! We’ll remake Soylent Green, but the soylent green itself will be made of people!”

“Uh, it was made of people in the original version, man.”

“Damn! Oh wait! I got it! We’ll have it made of cows! Then we’ll have the hero fall in love with an animal rights activist! We’ll also play up the overpopulation angle, and have him chase anti-abortion terrorists all around the city!”

Even some of the “original” offerings of the last few years have been rehashes of earlier fims. 28 Days Later, for example, was enjoyable in its own right, but it was still essentially Night of the Living Dead meets Omega Man. Now it’s common knowledge that Omega Man was a “modernized” version of The Last Man on Earth, and that both were based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. In a sense, Night of the Living Dead could be said to be a slightly disguised version of the same story, and I do wonder if Russo and Romero hadn’t either read the book or seen The Last Man on Earth.

In all fairness, one might wonder if Matheson’s story was in any way influenced by Eugene Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros…

So much for originality.

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I’m a little more partial to “period’ films and to retellings of myths and legends, provided that the filmmakers don’t take undue “artistic license”. That godawful film version of the Iliad -- the one starring Brad Pitt -- mutilated Homer’s original beyond recognition, in many ways, and is a perfect example of the kind of film I hate.

Now I know that even during the middle ages and classical antiquity, people were lifting bits and pieces of Homer’s epic and spinning their own stories therefrom. There are countless examples, actually: Virgil’s Aeneid; Dante’s Inferno; Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde; Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida; Aeschylus’ Agamemnon; Sophocles’ plays Ajax, Electra, and Philoctetes; and damned-near everything proto-pacifist Euripides ever wrote, including Iphigenia in Tauris, The Women of Troy, Hecabe, and Electra.

For the most part, though, all these later poets and playwrights were simply picking up where the story left off, or “taking up the slack” before the war itself, as the Iliad does, after all, begin in medias res. None of the significant details of Homer’s (if indeed there ever was a single poet named Homer) original is changed. It’s a shame Hollywood -- not exactly known for producing art that stands the test of time -- doesn’t have the same respect for the classics.

Now I’m not a complete hard-ass, gentle reader. I too have fond memories of seeing the old version of Jason and the Argonauts years and years ago. I realize fully that certain liberties had been taken with the storyline, but I can’t be too harsh on that particular film, as I was very young when I saw it and hadn’t read the original, and I still love Ray Harryhausen’s early stop-motion animation.

So you see, even crotchety, cranky, purist old farts like me have a sentimental, forgiving side.

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For numerous reasons, I’ve always like John Boorman’s Excalibur. Yes, I know that the events upon which most Arthurian legends are based actually occurred in the aftermath of Rome’s departure from Britain. Yes, I know the armor and weapons portrayed in the film are fanciful versions of styles dating from a thousand years later. In the case of ol’ Arthur and the boys, though, there is a precedent for this. When Thomas Malory was looting the Mabinogion for good material, he brought the events forward into his own time, much as had the composers of the Chanson de Roland or the Nibelungenlied.

I like the way in which Boorman remains true to the spirit of Arthurian legend, while also preserving the violent and often anarchic character of the Dark Ages, in which the roots of said legends lie. In this film, the visuals, the “eye candy” if you will, actually serve to further the ends of the film, rather than serving as distractions. I even like the choice of music, particularly “O Fortuna” from Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana and "Siegfried’s Funeral Music" from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. Both pieces advance the mood of the film wonderfully.

I hope none of this surprises the gentle reader. Yes, as cynical as I often am, even I need my heroes and inspirations, even if I find myself turning to ancient legends to find them. Yes, gentle reader, moody, cynical, oft-pessimistic ol’ Bean is actually admitting to having a bit of a romantic streak. Just because I don’t see that many “good guys” out there, and often note -- rather bitterly -- that they seldom if ever win, that doesn’t mean I don’t wish there were more “good guys” or that they did win, on occasion.

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At one time, I really enjoyed horror movies, up to and including “splatter” films. Even I have my limits, though, and I’ll have to admit that certain scenes from flicks like Anthropophagus (released in the US as The Grim Reaper) are too much, even for me.

Other flicks containing scenes I really find difficult to watch include Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, and that “moldy oldie” I Spit on Your Grave, as well as an 80’s offering entitled Maniac and a later film called Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (loosely based on the life of Henry Lee Lucas). The problem with these films is that they really don’t inspire fear, just queasiness and revulsion. The violence, the brutality are there, but they seem to serve no real purpose, insofar as their effect on the average viewer is concerned.

This isn’t confined to horror films, of course. One of the most disturbing scenes on film, for example is the home-invasion scene from the uncut version of Death Wish II, a stock “shoot ‘em up”, starring the late Charles Bronson. (Interestingly enough, the original Death Wish doesn’t depart from the spirit of Brian Garfield’s novel to an unforgivable degree -- the protagonist‘s name and ethnicity are changed, as “Paul Benjamin“, “nice- Jewish-boy“-cum-vigilante, becomes “Paul Kersey“, architect -- but Death Wish II bears absolutely no resemblance to his follow-up, Death Sentence.) As I’ve said, scenes of this sort serve very little purpose, in the context of the film. Arguably, in DWII, the viewer tends to want to see the hooligans get greased all the more, so in that case, it probably serves some purpose, even if it is a bit too graphic.

When seeing these things in a horror movie, however, the viewer is in fact horrified, but he isn’t really frightened. If I’m going to fork over good money to watch a film of this kind, I actually expect to be scared shitless. I really want to find myself whistling nervously every time I walk across a dark parking lot, or stepping on the gas when I drive past an old, abandoned house. Modern horror films -- especially of this sort -- simply don’t have that effect on me.

Part of effective horror depends on the viewer being able to empathize with the characters, to become concerned with their fate. The character is generally confronted with forces antithetical to our own notions of “good”, and the viewer puts a personal stake in his struggle against said forces. The viewer puts himself in the protagonist’s shoes, as it were, and almost shares his experiences as he watches the film. This, BTW, is why I think Stephen King, at his best, was such an effective writer of horror fiction.

Unfortunately, our culture seems to become a little more amoral and a little more misanthropic every year, which explains to me why horror has lost its effectiveness for me. This particular trend got started in the 80’s with the “splatter” movie, but it continues to this day. The characters are often so stupid, loathsome and two-dimensional that it’s impossible to empathize with them, so when Pimple Faced Smartass No. 18,765 gets shoved into a combine harvester by a loony in a hockey mask, it’s impossible to give a shit.

The characters in most of these movies really are vacuous and stereotypical, to the point of interchangeability. The "horror movie bimbo" is perhaps the most prevalent of these stereotypes. I could say many things about her, but the best, pithiest and funniest description I've ever read was in an editorial in an old issue of Fangoria: "She had 'death' written all over her tits."

An additional complication arises from the fact that by and large, modern horror is designed for the “gorehound” crowd. These folks aren’t watching murder and mayhem to be frightened, but rather to be titillated. For them, it seems, horror isn’t the emotional roller coaster of tension/release, or even catharsis: It’s wish fulfillment. Therefore, in order to satisfy his "fanboy" base, the filmmaker risks alienating other potential viewers. Great, if all he wants to do is portray "top heavy" sorority girls being chased around by a an oversized acromegalic, but not so great, should he ever tire of doing the same thing over and over.

I’ve also gotten to the point at which many offerings in the genre actually offend me. Horror, I would imagine, is often a reflection of the writer’s own fears. If this is the case, Hollywood has been terrified of good, old-fashioned Redneckus Americanus for quite some time. From the last few minutes of Easy Rider up to Wrong Turn in its entirety, it’s clear that the folks who write and produce this stuff really are terrified of us for some reason. I could spend ages theorizing about the causes of this, but to what end? It’s enough to know that people who’ve never even met me loathe and despise me to such a degree.

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And that’s it, as I suppose. When something else irritates me (should take all of ten minutes or so…) I’ll zip off another post.