 Posted: Fri 7:19, 13 Sep 2013 Post subject: giubbotti peuterey The Craft Of The Horror Movie |
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and where I have posted opinion pieces and short stories. I have also sold artwork - drawings, watercolours and acrylic paintings and reproductions - on Ebay. Horror movies generally work best in a claustrophobic, or relatively confined setting -- cut off from the wider panorama of society. One thinks of the rundown motel in Psycho, or the small, isolated towns in The [url=http://www.1855sacramento.com/peuterey.php]giubbotti peuterey[/url] Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds, or the sinister apartment houses in Rosemary's Baby and Rear Window. Only a relatively few characters are required. The great horror films don't generally begin with horror. They often start out quietly and innocuously, so that when the horror comes it has [url=http://www.achbanker.com/home.php]hollister[/url] all the more dramatic impact. Indeed an integral part of their power is in the remorseless metamorphosis from the innocuous beginning to the more sinister substance of the movie. Though even in the earlier scenes there are usually some incidents of a jarring and incongruous nature, to suggest the things to come. Just as the evil protagonists can be seen at first in a neutral, or even attractive light. Subversion of expectations is indeed a key ingredient of successful horror films. When first introduced to the viewers in Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, the elderly couple who live next door to the main protagonists -- played by Mia Farrow, [url=http://www.mansmanifesto.com]doudoune moncler[/url] who acted the part of the title character, and John Cassavetes, who played her husband -- seem very friendly, pleasant and forthcoming, if a tad strange and eccentric. Though of course they are a pair of evil Satanists, who nurse the terrible objective of having Rosemary impregnated by the devil so that she can give birth to the anti-Christ. It is only through hints, suggestions and intuitions -- along with the sudden, inexplicable death of a woman Rosemary briefly meets, who knew the old couple that live next door -- that she finds out who her neighbours actually are, and what they plan to do with her. And that her own husband has betrayed her and had secretly joined her two sinister neighbours in executing their plans, in order that he can use their supernatural powers to further his own acting career, at the expense of his rivals; one of whom is blinded in what seems like an accident. Though by the time that she is truly aware of her situation she is heavily pregnant and there is nothing she can do to avoid her fate. If you look at the theme and story line of Rosemary's Baby, it seems an utterly ludicrous and preposterous [url=http://www.rtnagel.com/airjordan.php]nike air jordan pas cher[/url] tale. A coven of witches and warlocks, centred in an apartment in New York, and a plot to impregnate an innocent, unsuspecting woman by the devil so she can give birth to the anti-Christ. It seems completely farfetched and fanciful. And in lesser hands it would have indeed been as risible and implausible as it sounds. But the sheer skill and craft of the film -- the quality of the direction, the brilliant [url=http://www.achbanker.com/home.php]hollister france[/url] script, the sustained, menacing atmosphere of the creepy old apartment house; and the superlative acting of all the central characters, particularly the main protagonist, Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, who we can readily identify with in her vulnerability, isolation, and with her awakening fears of her dire predicament -- give it a credence and immediacy that makes it believable and convincing. It also has one of the most brilliant and compelling dream sequences ever made. All seamlessly coalesce into making a masterpiece of the horror genre. So that even people who wouldn't, under other circumstances, give any kind of validity to ideas about witchcraft and Satanism, found this to be a gripping and frightening movie. Though the theme was fantastic, it was made believable and convincing, above all, because the characters were rounded and three dimensional. You could believe in their motivations, their ambitions, their plight, their weaknesses. Even the two neighbouring Satanists, the villains of the piece, weren't made into the usual stock characters of gothic melodrama. They were shown to be a rather endearing, crotchety, bickering old couple; which made their characters more real and frightening. A sequel to Rosemary's Baby was made some years later, with some of the same protagonists, but it is now mercifully forgotten, since it had none of the [url=http://www.eastscotinvest.co.uk/mulberry.html]mulberry outlet[/url] dramatic qualities of [url=http://www.vivid-host.com/barbour.htm]barbour uk outlet[/url] the original. On the subject of confounding the expectations of the audience, one of the most effective and truly shocking scenes in Psycho, [url=http://www.eastscotinvest.co.uk/mulberry.html]mulberry sale[/url] is where the private detective -- hired by the anxious sister of the absconded secretary to try and track her down, and played by that fine, underrated actor, Martin Balsam -- is murdered, indeed stabbed to death while climbing the main stairway, in the creepy old house by the Bate's Motel. One of the reasons why his abrupt and sudden murder is so shocking is that the elimination of the private eye subverts all our expectations about the role of private investigators in films, indeed in literature itself, that was cultivated over previous decades. The convention in all the Hammett and Chandler tales, and in the movies starring Bogart and Dick Powell, and others, was that the private eye would always emerge triumphant, and that he would bring the guilty parties to book. Indeed the inviolability of the investigator is the convention in all detective fiction going back to Poe. He might have to go down mean streets, and get worked over by heavies along the way, or dodge some bullets, but Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe would see the job through, and bring the villains to book. Indeed that's what seems to be happening in Psycho, when the private eye enters the story. He has all the confidence, experience and professional expertise of the traditional, fictional private eye. He conducts a thorough [url=http://www.materialistanyces.com]louboutin[/url] and rigorous investigation, calls at the Bate's motel, questions the nervous Norman Bates, is unsatisfied by his answers, and senses that the motel, and the old house that adjoins it, holds all the answers to the riddle of the woman's disappearance. It seems that, following all the conventions of the detective story, he will unravel the case, however torturous; but then the tables are suddenly and abruptly turned upon him and he himself becomes another victim, and the plot is thrown wide open. His unexpected death is therefore almost the murder of an entire literary form as well as an individual. Hitchcock, in his sly and mordant way, must have enjoyed this sudden, premature, murderous departure of the detective, seeing that he didn't care for the detective genre -- and never made a whodunit in his movie career. No doubt he would have been happy if it was Spade, Marlowe, Poirot or even Sherlock Holmes himself, who got fatally knifed on the stairway. A horror movie can have a supernatural theme, like Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, The Night of the Demon, or the traditional Universal and Hammer movies about vampires, mummies, werewolves and other creatures of the night. But it is not obligatory. It can be pure psychological horror, as with Psycho, Peeping Tom, The Silence of the Lambs, Le Boucher and Les Diaboliques. It should also be noted that horror is more effective when it emerges from some mundane or everyday setting, that the viewer can readily identify with, rather than some neo-gothic stage set. No direct, graphic horrors, blood on the carpet or monstrous apparitions, or clanking gothic accessories, are required. Horror is best when it is suggested and intimated, rather than directly drawn. Just as it has been said that radio produces the best pictures. No special effects or studio handiwork, however ingenious, can match the spontaneous imagination, when already heightened and stimulated, in its intensity and power. The great horror movies aren't blood fests. On the same basis, things [url=http://www.1855sacramento.com/woolrich.php]woolrich parka[/url] are best when they are underplayed and understated; excepting of course in the final dramatic scenes. This is also why horror films are often better shot in black and white than in colour. The horror film exists on a primarily psychological plane, even if the theme is supernatural. Its end and purpose is to evoke an atmosphere of menace, and a mood of dread and apprehension, so that the viewer is at least relieved to be in the auditorium, at one safe remove, rather than in the drama itself. It relies on subtlety and manipulative skills, on surprise and subversion, on the atmosphere of locality, rather than the special effects department. 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