Guthrie, American Nightmares, and Part One Of A Dissection(Long)

Guthrie. Guthrie, Guthrie, Guthrie, Guthrie, Guthrieeeeeee.

Now that that's out of the way...

Watched an interesting documentary today that is coming to DVD on Tuesday. The American Nightmare is an Independent Film Channel docu(I don't have IFC, so I'm seeing this for the first time) about how the horror films of the seventies were informed by the events of the sixties. The films focused on:

Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead: Night as allegory on the integration fight and to a lesser extent, Vietnam, and Dawn as allegory on the late 70's consumerist culture(one thing I understand is missing from the remake.) Also features some interesting commentary from Tom Savini on how his term in 'Nam led to his splatterific career.
Last House On The Left: Vietnam and Kent State. Not sure I see the connection to Kent State, seems more Craven as early 70's revolutionary.
Texas Chainsaw: The ennui of the hippie children, and also the gas crisis apparently(note the reason the kids get into trouble in the first place.). Tobe Hooper relates an amusing anecdote regarding coming up with the idea for the movie in a Montgomery Ward store line.
Halloween: Backlash of the sexual revolution. All victims are promiscuous and the virgin is the heroine.
The early Cronenberg, particularly Shivers: Also the sexual revolution, and a lot of weird psychobabble.(Cronenberg's a bit wacky.)

Overall, the docu is good, though the focus is narrow. You get the idea that most of these guys, particularly Carpenter, were more interested in scares and gore(particularly Craven) then subtext. But it's definitely worth a watch, though it would have been much better had it been a more fully fleshed out docu, i.e. IFC's 3-hour-long A Decade Under The Influence, which is about how 70's mavericks like Altman and Martin Scorsese bucked the system and made historic cinema.

Now for the dissecton: Over the next couple of days, I will be looking at a list that can be found here. It's a list of 100 so-called underdog movies that deserve more love, and I think it's a load for the most part, because our terms are ill-defined. Underdog means(to me, anyway) a movie that nobody saw, such as Office Space, that has developed a huge cult following on video, not a majorly pushed studio release like Contact. So here we go:

1-25
1. A Simple Plan - Sam Raimi does Fargo his way in an effort to re-invent himself. No real argument here, though The Gift was better.
2. The Devil's Backbone. - again, not much argument here, though Cronos would be a better choice.
3. Mr. Frost - Eh. Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.
4. Nightwatch - What is it about foreign filmmakers who come to the US to remake their own films and end up screwing them up? Between this cinematic abortion and Georges Sluzier's destruction of The Vanishing(which didn't need an American Happy Ending), the last thing I want to see with a remake is the original filmmaker trying to make a US film. A good example of a well done American remake is Insomnia. See that instead of Nightwatch.
5. In The Mouth Of Madness - Great movie. No argument here.
6. Night Falls On Manhattan - Definitely overlooked. Very good film.
7. The Arrival - Charlie Sheen as an astronomer? Puh-leeeze. Next~!
8. Time After Time - Great film, but not overlooked. Very well regarded at the time, and a staple on pay cable throughout much of the 80's.
9. Brotherhood of the Wolf - How could a film with so much genre coverage be regarded as overlooked? I had customers in the video store I work for looking for it before it even had an American release date(much like Shaolin Soccer.)
10. Gattaca - Again, poor box office does not equal overlooked. This had major rental legs.
11. Dragonslayer - A classic example of what you had to work with to do that kind of genre film in the late 70's. A Disney/Paramount co-production that got buried at the box office.(I had the Marvel comic adaptation.)
12. Equilibrium - What a P.O.S.~! Boring, boring, boring post-Matrix action junk.
13. Deep Rising - No argument here. A classic from the director of the Mummy movies.
14. Mouse Hunt - You can't tell the parents at my video store that this is overlooked. Next~!
15. Space Truckers - Um, no. Next~!
16. The Blob - Fun, fun, fun and very gory. A late 80's Fango classic.
17. Contact - Eh. Not that great. Nice effects, though.
18. No Escape - Very B-esque, and supported by a fine Stuart Wilson villain role. Rents a lot.
19. Frequency - Rented a ton, no way is this overlooked. Fine movie.
20. Alien 3 - Fincher came in late, didn't want to do the movie, and got overruled at every turn. It's a terrible, terrible movie, but thankfully, Fox didn't hold it against him, and we got Fight Club as a result. Nonetheless, a sequel in a major film series cannot be called an underdog. Again, I think this is more a semantic argument, but I continue.
21. The Iron Giant - As proved by Disney, no one wants to see flat 2-D animation in a theatre anymore, unless the name Miyazaki accompanies it. That said, this rented a ton, and it's an excellent little movie.
22. Young Sherlock Holmes - No argument here. Great fun that no one saw in the theatres.
23. She's The One - Ed Burns, actor? Good. Ed Burns, writer-director? No thanks.
24. The Cable Guy - Huh? It's got about two good scenes in it, otherwise, it's just awful, awful, awful.
25. The Ref - Oh man, do I love this movie. No argument here.

Tomorrow, 26-50, or more sequels, flat animation, and a few movies that do belong on this list.