Horror Roundtable - Week Thirty-Seven
Name a horror movie you didn’t or couldn’t watch all the way through.
Jeff O’Brien
High Tension - I won’t give it away for those lucky enough not to have seen it but what a ridiculous twist in the last act! It absolutely sank the movie for me and I wanted to frisbee it out the window. I later learned that it had been added in post and not originally scripted. Completely torpedoed the events that came before it!
I could not watch the original Hitcher all the way through. I found it improbable that the kid could be considered a suspect for the killing of the whole police force. This situation was not handled more realistically in the new Hitcher.
I understand that movies have to take cops out of the equation so that the heroes can solve their own problems. Also, I understand movies love to set up scenarios where the hero is on the run from both “evil” and “good”, but the Hitcher script was too far fetched and I felt only a pre-teen would by into it.
I am singling the Hitcher out, but actually there are hundreds of tapes in my collection that are in their boxes on the shelf (or closet) stopped somewhere midway through the movie. I have the best of intentions, and I know storing a tape while not rewound is bad for the tape, but the reality is that these tapes will be in that position until they disintegrate or are tossed away after I die.
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
I came pretty close to turning off Bloodsucking Freaks, which I watched when I was an intern at Troma back in ‘99. You’d think its unique combination of terrible production values, reprehensible subject matter, and a seeming enjoyment (if not full-fledged endorsement) of the sexual torture of women on the part of the filmmakers would be a more common phenomenon, but fortunately you’d be wrong. Lloyd Kaufman says it’s the one film in Troma’s library of schlock that he feels bad about distributing, and I don’t blame him.
It’s actually never happened to me, that I can remember at least. I always finish watching movies I start.
But one relatively recent one where I came close to turning it off while watching was Cabin Fever. I remember being excited about it, because I’d read an interview with Eli Roth on, I think, Salon.com, where he seemed to say a lot of reasonable and insightful things about horror movies.
But watching the thing, wow, it’s pretty awful. The script is almost non-existent, the acting ranges from below average to atrocious, and it’s no fun at all. There are one or two moments that have good, gory effects, but that’s not nearly enough to save a movie this crappy.
Eli Roth got at least a bit better with Hostel, which is at least average horror fare, but I’m still waiting to be impressed.
Just this weekend, I tried watching the new horror DVD release with Sarah Michelle Gellar entitled THE RETURN. It was so boring I fell asleep about halfway through, woke up when it was over and didn’t bother to rewatch what I missed before returning it to Blockbuster. Feh!
Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir
As you can imagine, working at a horror magazine means we get a lot of movies tossed on our plate, and that means a lot of bad movies. So I think I’ll just stick to the most recent one I turned off halfway through: Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield. I watched it with some of my Rue Morgue co-workers, and at first we were amused by the ridiculous addition of Michael Berryman to play Ed Gein’s sidekick, then we rolled our eyes at sets that were obviously made for westerns, and then, just as the inane subplot about about the sheriff and his girlfriend bored us completely, there was a scene where one of the characters busted out a rousing rendition of Amazing Grace. That was the fucking deal breaker.
HOSTEL - Human torture scenes make me uncomfortable beyond belief. I am unable to watch them with any sort of enjoyment.
David Z. - Tomb It May Concern
The “honors” go to Gutpile for me. I love backyard backwood splatter flicks-I really do. But DAMN this thing was awful. It actually cured me of ever feeling cuirous regarding anything released by Sub Rosa on disc unless it is directed by Jess Franco or Eric Stanze. An idiot guy goes hunting and pops a passer by instead of an unarmed deer-so he buries the randomly walking in the woods guy. THEN a year passes and idiot guy brings his friends to the same place to hunt. Something hunts them. You can’t hear anything (except camera and crew noises which are clearer than any performance), and though the effects I saw were good enough, the fuzzy viddydupe look sucked so hard it caused my cinematic bowels to unload atop the film and turn it off. I very rarely do this, but you know…I have Bruno Mattei movies to rewatch and this thing was getting in the way.
I have a friend who didn’t watch all of “The Grudge” because she thought it was dumb, but as for me, I generally watch all my movies all the way through. However, the closest I’ve come to this was probably about 19 years or so ago, when my mom rented one of her favorite zombie movies, “One Dark Night”. Now, back at that age, zombies were the only monsters that gave me nightmares (I even had nightmares from seeing the ad for “Return of the Living Dead Part 2″, so when the final events of the movie were happening, I sat with my back to the screen, not wanting to see it. Of course, nowadays, zombies don’t phase me. About a month ago, we rented “One Dark Night” from Netflix, and ended up watching it three different times (regular, with commentary, and a Director’s Cut version).
Does Ichi the Killer count as horror? It’s the only movie I can think of that I have yet to be able to make it through out of being horrified/disgusted, so I’ll say yes. In fact, I’ve tried twice and only made it about 20 minutes in each time before having to turn it off. And this comes from someone who considers Audition one of the best films of the past 10 years. That Miike; such a scamp!
Louis - Damaged 2.0
There are a bunch I wish I could have walked out of, most recently, the abysmal BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE. Usually, I try to finish what I start, no matter how bad. I feel like if I can’t finish a bad flick, I have in some way failed. The last film that I just could not sit through was LIVE FEED. There was a bit of controversy about it on my blog a few months ago when the director took me to task for not finishing it, but truth be told, I couldn’t keep my eyes open past the thirty minute mark. Don’t get me wrong–I love straight to video dreck with an absolute passion, but even I have my limits and, with it’s intense boringness and non-stop darlky lit-ness, those limits were broken. Congrats, LIVE FEED.
I get plenty of crap sent to me to represent the producers and try and get a distribution. For the most part I cannot get through the first five minutes of any of them. I will never get those five minute blocks of time back.
I know this doesn’t exactly answer the question you asked, but there’s a whole subgenre I never even bother to start, let alone try to watch all the way through–all those ultra-nasty “realistic” horror flicks. I’ve explained why here. Short version: if their marketing is any indication, they have nothing to do with anything I love about horror. I remember seeing the trailer for OPEN WATER and thinking, “Why the fuck would anyone want to sit through 90 minutes of that?!?”
For me that flick would have to be PIGS. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was the dark and grainy copy I got or the pacing, but for some reason I can never get past the first fifteen minutes of it. I can somehow make it through the slowest film from the 40’s, yet PIGS seems to be a challenge for me.
If a movie sucks there is no doubt that I’ll turn it off. Same goes for books. I recently made the mistake of attempting to watch I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer on cable. I should have known better. The acting was wooden and the plot was ridiculous. I knew that there was no way I was going to make it through. I think I made it to the 20 minute mark before deciding to view something else. I ended up watching Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story [a relatively low budget mockumentary starring Rob Corddry from The Daily Show]. It wasn’t great but it seemed like a masterpiece after I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.
I also attempted to view Brian DePalma’s The Black Dahlia [not a horror film] and couldn’t make it through it. Even if you’re a fan of DePalma avoid this piece of garbage.
Casey Criswell - Cinema Fromage
Arachnophobia. My fear of spiders has been comedic to many and this flick just cemented the fact. While I was a manly Senior in high school watching this on cable at a friends house I did manage to make it through the entire film. However, backed with the hearty laughs of said friend I had to watch the entire movie from his kitchen peaking around the corner into the living room. I’ve still never watched it a second time to this day some fifteen years later!
The People Under the Stairs (1991). It’s the only horror film I’ve ever walked out on because I was so bored with it. It confirmed that I’m just not a Wes Craven fan. Obviously I’m in the minority since the director has a lot of fans and many people seem to enjoy this film, but I thought it was really tired, unfunny and just plain tedious to watch.
Thanks once again to all the cowards that contributed to this week’s Roundtable. I’ll be taking next week off, so make sure you get your horror fix at all the wondrous blogs linked to above. See you next Friday with the next installment of the Roundtable!
March 10th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Jeff, I’m glad to hear someone else hating on Haute Tension. I think it’s a fantastically ballsy horror trip right up until that twist — one of the dumbest narrative rug-pulls in genre history. I agree that it completely ruins the film. Unforgivable.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Wow.
Looks like you’ve really got your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the horror field these days.
Great stuff here! I just found your blog; consider it bookmarked.
And I’ll have to agree with you on Haute Tension. I was singularly underwhelmed by that movie. As you and the previous post point out, it wasn’t half bad until the ending, which made absolutely no sense at all.