Best Horror Film of 1979 (part 2 of a series)

in the future we all live at the disco

http://api.ning.com/files/oc0OdnkCRWnInXU8YjVubFFkyjYivf2oPctdlo7ifD7cvkkbIKo5AYjXYg25FrmFNdPjmblIDvi7l0mehf7AzPzWgcOBdhSm/Logans_Run_560x330_MSDLORU_EC004_H.jpg

hell yes

the future looks like too much cocaine imo

see now i just want to start talking about "the apple" but this isnt the thread for that

I mourn the fact that there actually is an ILX thread for that.

yes, the art direction was topnotch. But I have no idea what the source of the horror is ... pre-Reagan paranoia?

it's all sex & body horror. which is what all horror is about I guess, but alien really amps up the force/penetration/gender role stuff. ian holm's character is a robot programmed by the corporation to help "mother" enable the "monster". when he's found out, he tries to kill ripley by jamming a rolled-up porno mag down her throat. there are some deliberately-placed signifiers to unpack there, it's more than just a william castle cheapie in space.

it is slow-moving, I'll give you that. but if you're digging the set design + aesthetics it gets kind of hypnotic.

ok I just figured out why you don't think alien is scary

The script for the 1979 film Alien was initially drafted by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett.[10] Dan O'Bannon drafted an opening in which the crew of a mining ship are sent to investigate a mysterious message on an alien planetoid. He eventually settled on the threat being an alien creature; however, he could not conceive of an interesting way for it to get onto the ship. Inspired after waking from a dream, Shusett said, "I have an idea: the monster screws one of them";[10] planting its seed in his body, and then bursting out of his chest. Both realized the idea had never been done before, and it subsequently became the core of the film.[10] "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape," O'Bannon said on the documentary Alien Evolution, "That's scary because it hits all of our buttons."[11] O'Bannon felt that the symbolism of "homosexual oral rape" was an effective means of discomforting male viewers.[12]

i bet nobody here ever suspected this, but alien is my favorite movie

i refuse to talk about alien as slow-moving on a poll that contains stalker

lol

and let's not forget it's 'feminist' cuz Sigourney kills the beast in her underwear.

not sure about any purported feminism to the first alien movie, but anybody who doesn't see aliens as an explicitly feminist text has his head in the sand or some other dark place imo

I once read a feminist critique of Aliens that said it's all about reinforcing traditional femininity. Vasquez is the non-conventional woman, totally butch and not feminine at all, so she has to die before the movie ends. In the beginning Ripley is kinda non-feminine too, but she embraces traditional femininity by becoming a surrogate mother to Newt (which leads to the famous "bad mother vs. good mother" final battle), so she survives. No way could've someone like Vasquez been the main hero in the movie.

So yeah, gotta go Vasquez, because she's more classic and has better lines than Chacon, and she isn't foxy at all.

― Tuomas, Monday, April 19, 2010 8:47 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Aliens is all about reinforcing the nuclear family (Ripley, Newt, Hicks, with Bishop as the wacky uncle) and individualist blue-collar Everywoman small town values (i.e. the Colony) against the nasty, rapidly breeding hive-like Aliens (i.e. foreign collectivists) who have been enabled by the permissive yuppie Burke and his company. The ineffectual leadership (Gorman) won't even let the marines use their weapons. Damn.

― The Holy Seefeel (latebloomer), Monday, April 19, 2010 10:02 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And not only is Aliens reinforcing the nuclear family, Ripley literally uses nuclear force (the only way to be sure, after all) to reinforce the family by vanquishing its enemies.

― The Holy Seefeel (latebloomer), Monday, April 19, 2010 10:08 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And of course the reason Alien 3 did so bad at the box office in the USA is because it tried to appeal to a different audience. It's basically about a troubled woman struggling in a hostile all-male workplace (the prison colony), and who wants to get an abortion (the alien queen fetus inside her), all while being pursued by her abusive ex, who wants her to keep the fetus (the alien). It probably hit way too close to home for many.

― The Holy Seefeel (latebloomer), Monday, April 19, 2010 10:23 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

I like the second one a lot. xp

Don't remember much about the Alien score; Goldsmith's for Planet of the Apes I know backwards and forwards, of course.

yay Dave Kehr:

An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction and some handsome, if gimmicky, cinematography. The science fiction trappings add little to the primitive conception, which features a rubber monster running amok in a spaceship. Director Ridley Scott relies on suspense techniques that looked tired in The Perils of Pauline: for the most part, things simply jump out and go “boo!” Under the circumstances, the allusions to Joseph Conrad (Nostromo) and Howard Hawks (The Thing) seem unforgivably presumptuous. Instead of characters, the film has bodies; some of them are lent by Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, and Yaphet Kotto.

disco inspired sets...jeez louise

traditional femininity !=surrogacy! trad nuclear family structure !=surrogacy!

why do I always get on the good threads ten minutes before I have to go to the damn airport

Now on to the non-blockbusters...

so is the Badham/Langella Dracula any good? I had the impression it was only made cuz Frank L ran forever on Broadway with it.

it was pretty common slasher trope to have a female survivor kill the monster by 1979 (friday the 13th, halloween, etc), I think the big diff w/ the first alien is that sigourney weaver doesn't run around screaming her head off like an idiot. she's terrified but poised + resourceful in a way other horror heroines were not allowed to be, something that aliens capitalized + expanded on.

xxxps

never saw langella's dracula, but I actually bought a used dvd of amityville to watch on long drives week before last...not without its moments, but it kinda sucks

nb when I say "drives" I'm just a passenger not actually driving

ok, you want to talk about big budget schlock, badham's dracula is your man

I thought Badham's Dracula was terrible when I was 10, but I remember my mom liked it.

There's a ringing endorsement for you.

nothing against yr mom, but badham's dracula is like some romance novel artwork come to life, they should remake it w/ fabio

Poltergeist is the Goldsmith score of choice. End of discussion.

never saw langella's dracula, but I actually bought a used dvd of amityville to watch on long drives week before last

horror movies don't scare you like they used to so you watch them while driving, that's pretty hardcore

Hawks' The Thing has not aged well, and i don't think its 'unforgivably presumptuous' to allude to it at all. And in fact, Scott's alien movie is much closer to the 1958 movie It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The early scenes in Alien - with the revived crew eating lunch together and so on - remind me strongly of 70s Altman, complete with overlapping dialogue, uninterrupted takes, roving camerawork, lack of close-ups, ensemble character acting etc.

^yes!

Jesus - I was just checking out Jerry Goldsmith's resume. It's insane!

1950s
Black Patch (1957)
Face of a Fugitive (1959)
City of Fear (1959)
The Twilight Zone (1959)

1960s
Studs Lonigan (1960)
Adam Harding (1960)
The Spiral Road (1962)
Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
Freud (1962)
The Prize (1963)
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
The Stripper (1963)
Take Her, She's Mine (1963)
Lilies of the Field (1963)
A Gathering of Eagles (1963)
Shock Treatment (1964)
Rio Conchos (1964)
Seven Days in May (1964)
Fate Is the Hunter (1964)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964)
The Satan Bug (1965)
Von Ryan's Express (1965)
The Agony and The Ecstasy (1965)
A Patch of Blue (1965)
In Harm's Way (1965)
Morituri (1965)
Stagecoach (1966)
The Trouble with Angels (1966)
Seconds (1966)
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
To Trap a Spy (feature film expansion of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s pilot) (1966)
The Blue Max (1966)
Our Man Flint (1966)
In Like Flint (1967)
The Flim-Flam Man (1967)
Warning Shot (1967)
Hour of the Gun (1967)
Sebastian (1968)
The Detective (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Bandolero! (1968)
Room 222 (1969)
Justine (1969)
The Chairman (1969)
The Illustrated Man (1969)
100 Rifles (1969)

1970s
The Travelling Executioner (1970)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
Rio Lobo (1970)
Patton (1970)
Wild Rovers (1971)
The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
The Last Run (1971)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971) (basis for The Waltons)
The Other (1972)
Anna and the King (1972)
The Waltons (1972)
Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies (1972)
Pursuit (1972) (TV movie)
The Red Pony (1973) (TV movie)
Shamus (1973)
Police Story (1973)
One Little Indian (1973)
The Don is Dead (1973)
Papillon (1973)
Hawkins on Murder (1973) (TV movie)
Barnaby Jones (1973) (theme and pilot score)
Winter Kill (1973) (TV movie)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1974) (TV movie)
Chinatown (1974)
S*P*Y*S (1974)
High Velocity (1974)
QB VII (1974) (miniseries)
Take a Hard Ride (1975)
A Girl Named Sooner (1975) (TV movie)
Ransom (1975)
Breakout (1975)
Breakheart Pass (1975)
Babe (1975) (TV movie)
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
The Wind and the Lion (1975)
Logan's Run (1976)
The Omen (1976)
Islands in the Stream (1976)
Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)
The Cassandra Crossing (1977)
MacArthur (1977)
Coma (1977)
Damnation Alley (1977)
Contract on Cherry Street (1977) (TV movie)
Capricorn One (1978)
The Swarm (1978)
Damien: Omen II (1978)
The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Magic (1978)
The Great Train Robbery (1979)
Alien (1979)
Players (1979)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

1980s
Caboblanco (1980)
Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)
Masada (1981) miniseries
Inchon (1981)
Outland (1981)
Night Crossing (1981)
Raggedy Man (1981)
The Salamander (1981)
The Challenge (1982)
Poltergeist (1982)
The Secret of N.I.M.H. (1982)
First Blood (1982)
Psycho II (1983)
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
Under Fire (1983)
Gremlins (1984)
Supergirl (1984)
Runaway (1984)
Legend (1985)
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985)
Explorers (1985)
King Solomon's Mines (1985)
Poltergeist II (1986)
Amazing Stories (1986)
Link (1986)
Hoosiers (1986)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (theme only, re-arranged by Dennis McCarthy) (1987)
Extreme Prejudice (1987)
Lionheart (1987)
Innerspace (1987)
Rent-A-Cop (1988)
Rambo III (1988)
Criminal Law (1988)
Alien Nation (rejected) (1988)
The 'Burbs (1989)
Leviathan (1989)
Warlock (1989)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

1990s
The Russia House (1990)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Total Recall (1990)
H.E.L.P. (1991)
Not Without My Daughter (1991)
Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)
Mom and Dad Save the World (1991)
Medicine Man (1991)
Basic Instinct (1992)
Forever Young (1992)
Mr. Baseball (1992)
Gladiator (rejected) (1992)
Hollister (1992)
Love Field (1993)
The Vanishing (1993)
Dennis the Menace (1993)
Rudy (1993)
Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Malice (1993)
Matinee (1993)
Angie (1994)
Bad Girls (1994)
The Shadow (1994)
The River Wild (1994)
I.Q. (1994)
Congo (1995)
First Knight (1995)
Star Trek: Voyager (1995)
Powder (1995)
City Hall (1995)
Executive Decision (1996)
Two Days in the Valley (rejected) (1996)
Chain Reaction (1996)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
Fierce Creatures (1996)
Air Force One (1997)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
The Edge (1997)
Deep Rising (1998)
U.S. Marshals (1998)
Small Soldiers (1998)
Mulan (1998)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
The Mummy (1999)
The Haunting (1999)
The 13th Warrior (1999)

2000s
Hollow Man (2000)
Along Came a Spider (2001)
The Last Castle (2001)
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Star Trek Nemesis (2002)
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
Timeline (rejected) (2003)
Kingdom of Heaven (2005) (Uncredited; Reused score "Valhalla" from The 13th Warrior)
Basic Instinct 2 (2006) (Uncredited; Reused score "Main Title" from Basic Instinct)

An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction

what disco was dave kehr hanging out in, and what did he take before he went in

wanna dance?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Alien_%281979%29_-_The_Alien.jpg

hey what's your sign?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7HTO3jP-_lk/SfeSVQMIqpI/AAAAAAAACao/Rvof3qzF95g/s1600-h/ht_alien_movie_051018_ssh.jpg

such a gorgeous monster design. so elegant and lethal.

is this the way to the bathroom?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/ht_alien_movie_051018_ssh.jpg

this is definitely not the way to the bathroom

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/interior.jpg

must be the chillout room

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/alien_shot1l.jpg

whereas the villain in logan's run is actually in fact a malfunctioning disco ball (sorry goole)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/logansrun1.jpg

love to love you baaaabbyy

http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/pictures/films/alien/alien2.jpg

The more perceptive ones noted it was an FX-polished haunted-house B-movie.

Maybe it is - though Aliens is more in line with the haunted house genre than the original - but Alien definitely has plenty in common with B-movies. It is a very well made B-movie, and I don't see that as an insult. I'd rather watch a well made B-movie than a poorly-made "A" movie. Would Pauline Kael consider Alien "trash" (as opposed to "art")?

just like xanadu up in this piece

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/alien01.jpg

Aliens is more in line with the haunted house genre than the original

if alien is a haunted house movie, aliens is a war movie and alien3 is a prison pic

I'm just wondering if there's a critical short list out there of the basic "types" of horror movies.

Body · Comedy (list · Zombie comedy) · Dark fantasy · Dark romanticism · Ero guro · Erotic · Ghost · Gothic · J-Horror · K-Horror · Lovecraftian · Monsters (Frankenstein · Vampire · Werewolf) · Occult detective · Psychological · Religion (film) · Sci-fi (film) · Slasher (film) · Splatter/Gore (film) · Supernatural · Survival · Weird menace · Weird West · Zombie apocalypse

can't find Kael's review online, just someone quoting her saying the film contributed to 'the murder of taste' xxp

(she didnt like Cameron's either)

Ero Guro?

(xxpost) + cannibals

these are more genres rather than thematic types though.

never mind, looked it up - seems weird to bother with that one tbh

such a gorgeous monster design. so elegant and lethal.

― Save Ferris' It Means Everything knocked my socks off (latebloomer), Thursday, June 17, 2010 1:56 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

you admire it!

xxxxpost impossible, there can't be a Goldsmith score of choice! You have to split him into categories if you wanna even try something like an OPO with him. Poltergeist-- yeah, that's the killer slab of his early 80s french-impressionist paradigm, but how do you compare that with the high-modernist-caveman trip of Planet Of The Apes, or the Tago-Mago-in-hell of Alien, or the pastorale of Islands In The Stream, or the sonic sign-language of Patton, or the cooly malign synth of Basic Instinct or the blocky harmonic juggernaut of Capricorn One? Dude had apples, oranges, pears, and kiwis in his oeuvre, you can't OPO him.

When i was first getting into film music as a thing I was all 'well of course Herrmann and Morricone are the titans beneath whom etc etc' but within a year or so Goldsmith was as much a figure of awe to me as any composer of the last 400 years. (TBH Morricone is as stunningly polymorphous a genius as JG, but that's about it and JG hits my heart more).

Part of the brilliance of "Alien" is that the monster is a big penis with teeth.

As far as Hooper, "Texas Chainsaw" 1 & 2 are both masterpieces. "Salem's Lot" is not. And "Poltergeist" - come on - is basically producer/screenwriter/(rumored) director Spielberg (and classic Spielberg at that). As for Hooper's hackitude, look at everything the guy did basically between 1982 and the present, "TC2" aside - I mean, "Lifeforce" is incoherent, and the rest is pretty much just TV. Now, nothing wrong with TV, but at least, say, Walter Hill makes great TV. But Hooper? Please. The only reason anyone talks about him at all is "Texas Chainsaw." Which is fine, but hack he remains.

you admire it!

i admire its purity. unclouded by conscience or delusions or morality...