Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Before your fun size Butterfinger high wears off, I'd like to offer my assessment of Bravo's "Even Scarier Movie Moments" miniseries that aired last night: Zzzzzz...

I was deeply disappointed in this dull, predictable horror movie round-up, because the initial 100 Scariest Movie Moments that I caught a couple years ago was so great. The flicks were assessed by actual horror veterans like John Landis, Stephen King, and Guillermo del Toro, in addition to film experts like Leonard Maltin. (Oh, Leonard. You and your compulsive movie taxonomy.) And random shmandoms like Debbie Matenopoulos offered such color commentary as this response to the eternally great Poltergeist: "Get your kids, get your shit, get the fuck out of the house. That's all I've got to say." Beautiful.

What was best, though, was that the show didn't just cover the traditional Psycho-The Exorcist-Alien type films, though those three ranked quite high. (As a companion piece, check out J.J.'s blog about his tormented relationship with The Exorcist.) No, "100 Scariest" tackled oldies like "Freaks," foreign films like "Audition," and cult hits / obscurities like "An American Werewolf in London," "The Brood," and "The Wicker Man."

The show nspired me to watch "Suspiria," Dario Argento's beautifully bizarre film about a coven that sets up shop in an Italian dance school. Interestingly, last night's lackluster "Even Scarier" shows a clip from "Saw II" in which a girl is forced to jump into a pit of dirty hypodermic needles. Surely this lovely moment owes much to the scene in "Suspiria," in which a young dancer believes she is jumping to safety, but really leaps into a pit of barbed wire.

The original "Scariest Moments" also led to a party which was dubbed CronenFest and took place at my Maryland apartment during my senior year in college. We watched "The Brood," "eXistenZ," and "Crash" (no, not the L.A. race relations version) and enjoyed some distinctly Cronenberg grostequeries.

But last night, we had no outside-the-box selections, no random pop culture ephemera, no insightful commentary. Instead, we got the lame-o Eli Roth (of "Hostel" fame) yammering about how "Dead Alive" is the only film with enough gore to impress him. Wow, good to know. The list included recent semi-hits like "Cabin Fever," "Slither," and "The Grudge" - the American version! For shame, Bravo. You should have just re-aired your original, brilliant clip show.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OMG Alanna! i totally had to watch Suspiria in Italian cinema freshman year of college. That dance school was molto creeeeeepy. kara