Dario Argento and others thrillers/horror movies directors

[Guillaume]

was very impressed by "laissez bronzer les cadavres" and feel that they, the filmmakers, are deeply inspired by argento

Yes, so many directors were and are influenced by his style...Cattet/Forzani obviously, Tarantino, Scorsese, Lynch, De Palma, Carpenter himself who is a friend of Argento said many times in interviews that he "stole" shots and bits of music from Argento's movies.

still waiting patiently on master rays carpenter "huldigung"

i'm waiting for that too!!

And, yes, I promised my big overview of John Carpenters career, but his works cover so many of my favourite movies, it's something i keep trying to write and get too caught up in... it will come, one day, I promise!   

[Whirlwind]

1)
...if you really mean it then stop watching any movie harvey weinstein had produced or directed. such as:
- smoke
- blue in the face
- true romance
- pulp fiction
- pret-a-porter
- jackie brown
- good will hunting
- the cidre house rules
- lord of the rings-fellowship of the ring
and hundreds more...

2)
stop watching any hitchcock movie. he was known to be a sadist and women torturer. any movie by or with kevin spacey, mel gibson, charlie chaplin...the list would go on. any art inspired by the catholic church, or visit a church itself as a building, because it's known that they have grown a bunch of insane men in stupid uniforms calling themselves priests and molesting childs. the buildings were build by slaves.

3)
it's really totally not fair to say a woody allen movie was made alone by woody allen. by not watching it you discredit all the persons who worked on it too.

4)
how can you watch or listen to art, music when you don't know yet, that the artist has done something bad?

5)
and what about woddy allens movies he did before he commited a crime? can you watch them?

1)
Of those films I have only seen PULP FICTION and LORD OF THE RINGS. The others I refuse to watch not because of an ethical position, but because those movies suck. GOOD WILL HUNTING? My God, that's a TV movie of the week. An after school movie for teen agers.


2)
Hitchcock never molested children, nor did Chaplin, or Gibson. Spacey movies I will not watch. Movies inspired by the Catholic church? There are none. If you think BEN-HUR or any Jesus movie was "inspired by the Catholic Church" you'd be wrong. Jesus was a Jew, also an historical figure. Catholic church has nothing to do with Jesus.


3)
Excellent point.

4)
When I find out the artist is a scum bag, I stop watching. Example: I used to read just about every Michael Crichton book. Then he wrote a racist anti-Asian book called "Rising Sun." I stopped reading Crichton. Same with Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventure novels. Cussler, too, wrote a racist anti-Asian book ("Dragon")...I stopped reading Clive Cussler.


5)
Yes, I can and do watch all the old Woody Allen movies. Two reasons: 1) he wasn't molesting his step-daughter then, and 2) those movies are his greatest works. Funniest movies ever made.

[Master Ray]

Aw, you guys awaiting my JC retrospective... to be honest, I'd totally forgotten about it...  I will do it this weekend, promise!  Be warned, it might be a bit of an epic.  Anyone know if there's a word limit on these posts here?

[Guillaume]

Oooh, Dario Argento is a master filmmaker.

What is your ranking of his movies (or at least the ones before 2013..) ?

[cthulhu]

whirlwind you made your point and before this goes in circles only a few things.
i chose weinstein as an example for someone who was involved in hundreds of movies and i picked some. it's not about the movies, but about the person involved, the bad person, which for me does not make the movies suddenly unwatchable because of some revelation of that persons crimes. i'm against your opinion of hitchcock in this matter, because i wouldn't dare to downplay sadism, torture of women against child molestation. horrible anyway and if you think straight, there you have movies seeing the tortured women on screen, because he also did it to get his reaction. with your, i call it pseudo attitude, how can you watch actual footage of someone being tortured but don't want to watch a work of someone who comitted a crime in his personal life, not while producing art. it all comes down to point three for me, a movie is not only a directors work, it's team work . i do see thing differently when i read those names of the fallen in the credits, but the movie is the same as before for me.
so let us leave this behind, you can stop watching those movies but don't tell me that i have a lesser moral than you. and if you had read the thread a little closer with interest, then you would have noticed that we all also love john carpenter and it will be dicussed here. your thread about him is nice, but since master ray was about to write something about it its kind of redundant



so i watched amer. well..this was an intense experience, a movie almost without dialog, beautiful camera work, totally like a dream, a metaphor, mysterious, cruel, the sounddesign like a protagonist and it left me just thinking: what the hell did i see just now? i liked it, but i cannot explain it.

[Guillaume]

so i watched amer. well..this was an intense experience, a movie almost without dialog, beautiful camera work, totally like a dream, a metaphor, mysterious, cruel, the sounddesign like a protagonist and it left me just thinking: what the hell did i see just now? i liked it, but i cannot explain it.

It seems that Cattet/Forzani are making much more experimental (arty?)/abstract movies than Argento's ones, or am i wrong?
I haven't seen their works, at least for the moment, but they seem to be love/hate reactions from the audiences who watch their movies..critics often wrote that Argento's plots were illogical, non sense but in most of his movies there are plots! Cattet/Forzani works from what i've read seem to focus on feelings, sensual imagery than on character driven plots, it seems.

[cthulhu]

yes, especially amer is a pure surreal plot, almost no dialogue and very cryptic in its story. i loved it. their latest movie has a plot, a familiar one, like a western stand off where a police man enters a hideout of bank robbers, but its full of surreal moments and sequences and i totally like that style. its more watchable then amer and maybe a good start into their works.

[Guillaume]

their latest movie has a plot, a familiar one, like a western stand off where a police man enters a hideout of bank robbers, but its full of surreal moments and sequences and i totally like that style. its more watchable then amer and maybe a good start into their works.

ok, i will give it a watch sooner or later! 

I've changed a bit the title of this thread...so what do you think of these three great directors that left us  these last years:

George A.Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven!

Opinions and rankings of their works are welcome on this thread! 

[cthulhu]

Yes, the new title now fits the discussion here better, well done. (or medium-rare?;-))

i will come back later, now it's time for some nachos with cheese from the oven and salsa and michael mann's "heat", which i will watch now with my son (he's 16 i should say, before some morally challengig questions arise;-).
wasn't mann a fav director of yours?

[Guillaume]

i will come back later, now it's time for some nachos with cheese from the oven and salsa and michael mann's "heat", which i will watch now with my son (he's 16 i should say, before some morally challengig questions arise;-).

 
good choice!
"Heat" is a great film about modern life and relationships...like Carpenter's best movies, endlessly watchable!

Here's the dedicated thread about Mann if you want to share your thoughts about "Heat" and his others works :

http://board.newmodelarmy.org/index.php?topic=8218.0

[Master Ray]

OK, here we go... my big JC retrospective that I promised ages ago but forgot about...  and I'm not going to do it in one big post, just in chunks with possibly a bit of personal relevance added in (because I am arrogant enough to think that the world revolves around me....) 

It's my opinion that between 1976 and 1988, John Carpenter rarely put a foot wrong.  During those wonderful VHS years there was classic after classic.  After that, things got a bit patchy (but still much to enjoy)... I'll stick to his films as a director for cinema (never seen the Elvis TV movie but I rather liked 'The Eyes Of Laura Mars', which he wrote and is a pretty decent flick)...

But, hey, Dark Star came out in 1975 and it never really struck a chord with me, it was an extended student film that, to be honest, looked like some guys smoked a lot of weed, got hold of some movie-making equipment  and decided to make a movie. It's not terrible, there's a certain charm that might resonate if you've been imbibing some of that same substance, I've seen it twice but I see no reason to investigate further.

Doesn't matter because the awesome 'Assault On Precinct  13' followed.  Bloody love this film.  Low budget as heck but all the better for it, stripped down, great characters, often funny and occasionally nasty (hell, they shot a cute little girl in cold blood about twenty minutes in!) and still my favourite John Carpenter theme ever.  So dark and creepy.  And why the heck did Darwin Joston and Austin Stoker never become big stars, they were both great!

I'll add a personal  reason why I love this film... my Dad, during his copper days, worked the Miners Strike in the 80's and he must have worked at one of the quieter pits because he said he rarely saw any 'action', him and his fellow police officers just spent the days watching videos (and a heck of a lot of VHS porn, he recently admitted to me  ) but when he came home one weekend, and knowing what a massive film fan I was, he raved about AOP13 and insisted we watch it together... we found a copy in the local video store and watched it together the following night.  My Mum was elsewhere for some reason.  A lovely memory of me and Me Dad, just hanging out and watching an awesome film.

I'll follow with more JC movie memories... please feel free to tell me to stop babbling on if it gets too much. 

[Whirlwind]

Viv, mods...this poster is posting about a subject in which a thread already exists. Why do we want to clutter the boards and also burn up bandwidth?

[Master Ray]

Carrying on...

'Halloween' is an interesting one on that it was so influential in subsequent films that it now looks like a total cliche.  I saw 'Friday The 13th' before I saw this and, to be honest ,as a daft teenage boy, I preferred FT13 because it had more gore and tits in it.  See also the various 'slasher' movies of the 80's like The Burning, Rosemary's Killer, Happy Birthday To Me, etc.      These days, I can see what a magnificent stripped down thriller it is.  No frills, just a hardcore story about a killer chasing down three teenage girls with the awesome Donald Pleasence  thrown in.  Great, great movie.  Shame none of the sequels were worth a damn except, oddly, 'Halloween 3 - Season Of The Witch' which had nothing to do with any of the other movies but was quite a fun sci-fi horror flick.

Seems like there's a new Halloween movie out this, yes, Halloween, that completely ignores much of the series continuity and has Jamie Lee Curtis fighting Michael again... didn't this happen before, about 20 years ago?  And didn't Laurie die?  Oh what the heck, here's the trailer. I know damn well I'll be watching it... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek1ePFp-nBI


Now, 'The Fog'... this is a personal favourite.  I first saw it when it showed up over Christmas on the BBC in the 80's.  I was a bit disappointed when I realised it wasn't an adaptation of James Herberts book of the same name, but ten minutes into this films lovely, creepy atmosphere I was hooked.  Great soundtrack too.  One of JC's most under-rated flicks... IMHO.

'Escape From New York is next but I need some time collect my thoughts about that cavalcade of awesomeness...   

[Guillaume]

It's my opinion that between 1976 and 1988, John Carpenter rarely put a foot wrong.

When i think about all these great directors of horror movies...Carpenter, Argento, Romero, Craven, Hooper, Cronenberg...their golden age, most inspired stuff is mostly in the 70's and 80's..

See also the various 'slasher' movies of the 80's like The Burning, Rosemary's Killer, Happy Birthday To Me, etc.   

I saw for the first time some months ago  "Happy birthday to me" and it's quite fun...i'm not really a fan of slasher movies but i like "Jason lives" for example, the 6th part of the FT13 series.

Shame none of the sequels were worth a damn except, oddly, 'Halloween 3 - Season Of The Witch' which had nothing to do with any of the other movies but was quite a fun sci-fi horror flick.

"Halloween 3" is really good, it has Carpenter's stamp on it, the Scope visuals, the cool soundtrack...same for "Halloween 2" which isn"t as striking as the first one but still ok...Carpenter recut the movie and shot two new scenes, because he wasn't happy of what the director Rick Rosenthal did.

[cthulhu]

i think i posted this before and i think you will know it, but if you don't you have to see "the american nightmare" a documentary about the early movies of carpenter, craven cronenbergm romero and hooper. let's begin with the last. texas chainsaw is brilliant. the sequel is is also very good but has more the ambition to "entertain" and give the audience what they want. and then... i don't know.

i bought a box with all the nightmare movies because it was cheap and of coures those directed by craven are superb movies, the others are just a vehicle to show of freddy and some effects. craven has a skill to tell a story that is more than just to shock the audience. to make a movie with the original cast making another freddy movie is just brilliant. he also played with all the expectations to the genre of the audience in scream which i very liked. haven't seen other movies by him but maybe red eye could be good.

romero invented the zombie genre, night of the living dead is a masterpiece, dawn of the dead also and day of the dead just keeps it on. land of the dead, diary of the dead were good movies but lackes a litlle bit of the straightnes of his earlier ones. martin is fantatsic and the crazies i just watched once in a third generation vhs copy, i cannot remember. the bruiser i found when watching not as bad as everybody said it was but it didn't stay memorable.

i totally agree to all whats written here about carpenter. i just think that dark star is also a fantastic one by carpenter, just love the staire in it and the student-movie feeling.