Where Is John Waters?

Sunset Blvd

(The thing about posting every day is that you have to post every day, whether you've written something or not. So I'm posting the damn thing. I promise I shall make up in quantity what I lack in quality!)

Sunset Boulevard is usually described as film noir, and I guess it is - it is very dark, both literally and figuratively. It has a cynical, doomed narrator, and to describe Norma Desmond as a tragic femme fatale is a dramatic understatement. Still, for me, Sunset Blvd is a horror movie.



The story follows the path of the classic horror film - an innocent (basically innocent) man turns down the wrong driveway, enters what he thinks will be an unoccupied house, only to find out (Too Late!) that it is occupied...by monsters and ghosts.

Norma Desmond (look at this vs this) is monstrous, barely human. Remember when Ash's sister was under the trap door, and she changed back from her zombie voice to her regular voice? "I'm alright now, Ash. You can let me out." That's exactly what Norma is like after her suicide attempt. She seems believable and human, but if you trust her for a second she'll shoot you in the back before you reach the swimming pool.

Masters of Horror: Pelts

In keeping with our asserted goal of maintaining not critical distance, but distance from anything resembling quality critical prose, I have not read the short story by F. Paul Wilson that is the inspiration for Argento’s Pelts. Rather, I will cozily accept Wikipedia’s assertion that such a story exists, that it is in any way related to the film, and that the two works can be read as comments on the “harsh nature of the fur industry,” selected for “director Dario Argento’s said-love of animals.” Facts are hard to come by when you’re in the business of glutting the internet with text, and we, the viewers of Pelts, are all desperately scrambling to find some explanation for a film that devotes so much of its screen time to an idolatrous love of a raccoon-fur coat. Argento’s second contribution to the Masters of Horror series lovingly bestows every possible sexualizing gimmick on the raccoon skins, from the inexplicable presence of softly wafting breezes tousling the dead hair to heavenly lighting blurring the characters as they gently caress the pelts to the point of their own demise. My experience with Argento is not vast, but is enough to know how he favors bizarre sexualization of inappropriate objects, and though I would never begrudge a director fascinating meat against which to gyrate, I am a bit saddened to see his daughter replaced with the gore spattered skins of so mundane a creature. We can understand how minks might stretch one’s budget, as would a Chinchilla or two, but this film appears to contain no real animals. There is some ill-developed reference to spirits, and Wikipedia calmly assures me that the raccoon is a beloved creature of Native American mythology, but this sentence has already exceeded the film’s own explanation of its fetishes. The result is a campy love affair with bestiality that combines strippers and Meat Loaf (so aptly named an actor in a movie about butchery) in an environment that’s Badda-Bing meets Davy Crockett. As is always the case with Argento, the movie is all flesh and no sense, but finally in an overt, goofy way that could pass for a Tales From The Crypt Episode were it not for the excess in the death scenes. Watch with a pet and a Goblin CD on hand for that moment in the credits when you realize exactly how much the music dictated to your enjoyment of Susperia.

Mission Statement

This is a place to talk about the movies. We mean to write quick little reviews or comments, on a daily basis. We love watching movies and talking about movies. In fact, we have been accused of talking too much (when discussing movies gets in the way of watching movies, you have to at least consider the possibility that this is a problem).

Because we are beginning the project at the beginning of October, it's only natural we should start with horror movies.