Climbing Mount Criterion XXV
The (Japanese) horror! The (American) horror! The (British) horror!
Films:
Masaki Kobayashi, Kwaidan (#90, 1964)
Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr., The Blob (#91, 1958)
Arthur Crabtree, Fiend Without a Face (#92, 1958)
My initial instinct is to write off Kwaidan as too formal--two genuinely creepy ghost stories bookending an uninteresting middle pair--but formalism is part of the point of genre fiction. And in horror, it's a good deal of the fun--because the good stuff is always commenting about our worst fears about ourselves, the pleasure's in how well it nails our anxieties. Kwaidan is more enduring because it cuts to essential notions about identity and love, but it's also draggy, and it can't compete with the great themes of The Blob (Those Damn Teenagers Are Up to Something) and Fiend Without a Face (We'll Be Blowing Ourselves to Smithereens Any Minute Now, Thank You). I've spent zero time googling the argument that the blob is a representation of America's fear of juvenile delinquency in the 50s, but I'm sure it's out there--all those adults punching their hands over those lawless kids, who can understand what they're on about? Making out, mostly--after all, it's what Steve McQueen would've kept on doing if he didn't have an alien invasion to give him a chance to process himself into an adult. And you have to love the presicence of the ending, where the chilled blob is dropped onto the polar ice cap and the end title reads "The End . . . ?" What else could the question mark imply but global warming?
Fiend Without a Face is a funny little essay on the dangers of nuclear power and what happens when our brains begin running free from our bodies--unattached to our own mortality and hubris, we cause all sorts of chaos. Nuclear paranoia is an overworked theme in horror and sci-fi (and even noir, if you want to count Kiss Me Deadly), but Fiend gets over by having more than the usual amount of well-drawn personalities and tensions--farmers versus soldiers versus Canadians versus Americans versus men versus women versus nuclear reactor workers who keen about pushing the plant into the danger zone but who chirp "It's your funeral" when ordered to comply. (Dude! It's a nuclear power plant! It's your funeral too!) Plus there's some nice stop-motion animation and sound editing as well--that horde of brains and spinal cords makes the best creepy-squishy noises when it finally attacks our American soldiers and Canadian love interests. The Canadians try to think things through, while the Americans do what they do whenever they're confronted with something that's foreign to them--keep shooting.
Films:
Masaki Kobayashi, Kwaidan (#90, 1964)
Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr., The Blob (#91, 1958)
Arthur Crabtree, Fiend Without a Face (#92, 1958)
My initial instinct is to write off Kwaidan as too formal--two genuinely creepy ghost stories bookending an uninteresting middle pair--but formalism is part of the point of genre fiction. And in horror, it's a good deal of the fun--because the good stuff is always commenting about our worst fears about ourselves, the pleasure's in how well it nails our anxieties. Kwaidan is more enduring because it cuts to essential notions about identity and love, but it's also draggy, and it can't compete with the great themes of The Blob (Those Damn Teenagers Are Up to Something) and Fiend Without a Face (We'll Be Blowing Ourselves to Smithereens Any Minute Now, Thank You). I've spent zero time googling the argument that the blob is a representation of America's fear of juvenile delinquency in the 50s, but I'm sure it's out there--all those adults punching their hands over those lawless kids, who can understand what they're on about? Making out, mostly--after all, it's what Steve McQueen would've kept on doing if he didn't have an alien invasion to give him a chance to process himself into an adult. And you have to love the presicence of the ending, where the chilled blob is dropped onto the polar ice cap and the end title reads "The End . . . ?" What else could the question mark imply but global warming?
Fiend Without a Face is a funny little essay on the dangers of nuclear power and what happens when our brains begin running free from our bodies--unattached to our own mortality and hubris, we cause all sorts of chaos. Nuclear paranoia is an overworked theme in horror and sci-fi (and even noir, if you want to count Kiss Me Deadly), but Fiend gets over by having more than the usual amount of well-drawn personalities and tensions--farmers versus soldiers versus Canadians versus Americans versus men versus women versus nuclear reactor workers who keen about pushing the plant into the danger zone but who chirp "It's your funeral" when ordered to comply. (Dude! It's a nuclear power plant! It's your funeral too!) Plus there's some nice stop-motion animation and sound editing as well--that horde of brains and spinal cords makes the best creepy-squishy noises when it finally attacks our American soldiers and Canadian love interests. The Canadians try to think things through, while the Americans do what they do whenever they're confronted with something that's foreign to them--keep shooting.
1 Comments:
It's not that the kids are up to something, it's that the kids are wiser than the adults - that other '50s standby. And wise about what, you ask? Commies! The big, red, squishy, all-absorbing, ever-expanding blob of Communism, which can only be defeated by ... a Cold War.
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