31 Days of Halloween

I agree, but for different reasons.


The Elephant Man (1980)

You have to give David Lynch his due. This is only his second film and it is a masterclass in directing. Stunning cinematography. Authentic and lived-in sets and costumes. Industry changing makeup effects. A wonderful score by the highly underrated John Morris. And yet, I hesitate to call this one of the best movies of its decade.

The Elephant Man stars John Hurt as John Merrick, a late 19th century freak show attraction who comes into contact with an empathetic London surgeon, played by Anthony Hopkins. The film contrasts between the lower classes disgust and mistreatment of the deformed Merrick and the high society use of him as a charity case. The movie doesn’t shy away from this, but it also does nothing with it. All I got out of the Elephant Man is that this poor bastard lived his life as a “monster.” Stray animals got treated better than he did. The film would have benefited from switching its focus to the very people that judged, attacked or used him. It’s a cruel world and this was an opportunity to address that.

I was wong.


Day Eight: The Elephant Man (I guess)



The "I am not an animal scene" may be more iconic, but for me, the emotional lynchpin (ha!) of The Elephant Man is when John Merrick finally returns to the hospital and Dr. Treves silently but hurriedly rushes over to hug his friend. It's such a simple yet poignant way to show how their relationship has grown and it kills me every time.

This might honestly be my favourite David Lynch movie. That's perhaps a milquetoast opinion, choosing the sentimental "based on a true story" heart-string pulling drama over the man's many surreal fascinations, but part of The Elephant Man's brilliance is how it combines Lynchian horror with deep emotional resonance. The film has all the beats of Hollywood uplift, but it doesn't feel like a conventional Hollywood movie at all and that's largely due to what Lynch brings. Movies about supposedly monstrous characters where "society is the real monster" are not exceptionally unique, but in so thoroughly emphasizing the grotesque industry and heavy machinery of 19th century London through imagery and sound, Lynch imparts this theme with great sophistication.

Beyond Lynch, the film also boasts an amazing collection of performances. John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins are of course the heart of the movie, but Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, and Freddie Jones also do great work. The movie is also beautifully shot and the editing from Anne V. Coates is fantastic. Much of the presentation here feels like classic Hollywood filmmaking, but Coates will often cut in odd ways, immediately following a line of dialogue or sound which gives the film a real urgency. Great score too.

A+

It's a messy movie. And despite having the right ingredients, George C. Scott, and some love from the Letterboxd crowd, yeah it's not that good. Compared to The Heretic, sure it's a huge step up. But compared to the original it doesn't come close.

I don’t know where my Invisible Man post is. Maybe I never got around to it. My recollection is that it was competently made. Obviously, 70’s & 80’s John Carpenter is the man in his truest form. But he did some solid studio work too.


Here’s Dracula’s review.

How was Reed Farrington's performance?

Not bad.  Doesn't have any lines but is something of a focus of attention, would not have known he was an amateur.

Doomsday, we’re waiting.

The years 1979 and 1980 seem to have been a real point of conflux for movies about alligators and crocodiles, and it’s probably not hard to guess why. Jaws had hit cinema in 1975 and within the next five years the imitators started to roll out and it wasn’t too hard to predict that they’d give these aquatic predators a try. This particular Jaws-alike was the Italian contribution to the world of Crocodilia cinema and it seems to be one of those B-movies that got released under a whole bunch of different titles. Its Italian name is Il Fiume del Grande Caimano, which translates to “The Fire of the Great Cayman” if Google Translate is to be believed. In the English world it mostly seems to go by “The Great Alligator” but in various places it also goes by “The Great Alligator River,” “Caiman,” “The Big Alligator River,” or “Alligators” among others. That original Italian title strongly implies that the creature at the film’s center is supposed to be a caiman rather than an alligator, which certainly makes a lot more sense given that the film is set in Africa and tue alligators are only actually indigenous to the southeastern United States and some parts of China, though the film’s dialogue (or at least the English dub I saw) does frequently call it an alligator while lampshading this with a line about the scientific inaccuracy.

The movie was made by a guy named Sergio Martino, who’s probably best known today for making some noteworthy giallo films like Torso and the nicely titled Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. He’s not as beloved as someone like Mario Bava but fans of Italian genre cinema do have a soft spot for the guy. This movie on the other hand, well, it could have been worse but I’m not sure I’d say it indicates incredible talent behind the camera. The movie stars Barbara Bach (the Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me) and is set at a resort in an (I think unnamed) African country which gets attacked by a giant Alligator/Caiman who the natives believe is a manifestation of one of their gods while the owner of the resort tries to cover things up to avoid a panic that would hit his bottom line. It’s plainly a complete ripoff of Jaws with only this issue of the natives versus the white resort dwellers as an added element to the formula, one that I would not say is handled particularly sensitively. The film clearly did not have a particularly good fake croc to work with because it diligently avoids wide shots of the creature, instead mostly using quick shots of it in extreme close-up to hide the limitations of the special effects. Of course Jaws also rather famously did this to hide their own effects shortcomings but, well, doing that is not as easy as it looks and this movie isn’t able to pull it off as well. The locations look reasonably good for a B-movie though and the acting is… acceptable. I suspect there were worse Jaws ripoffs out there but I can’t really put my stamp of approval on this.
** out of Five

Thailand is not a county with the long history of crossover genre cinema that places like Italy or Hong Kong have, but they did have a bit of an industry and did occasionally get some movies that were seen in the west including this Jaws-alike crocodile film. The film was directed by a guy named Sompote Sands, who was a gonzo filmmaker of genre films in Thailand and this may well be his most widely seen film in the west thanks to a dubbed and edited version brought over to the grindhouse circuit by producer Herman Cohen. That was the only version of the film I was able to find, and in addition to those modifications the specific copy I watched looked very bad, to the point where I almost feel like my viewing was compromised to the point of not having a super clear judgement of the film, so take this review with at least a bit of a grain of salt. The film’s basic plot outline won’t surprise you much: an alligator starts eating people, one crusader starts looking for ways to stop it, eventually he forms a crew and goes out to sea to hunt it down. It’s straight-up Jaws. This film incorporates a bit more stock footage of real crocodiles than some of the other movies I’ve been looking at, blended into the film with varying levels of effectiveness. The shots with the fake gator puppet look pretty bad though and the whole movie is pretty inert and shoddy, at least in the form I watched it in. Not recommended.
*1/2 out of Five