Brilliant Halloween movie marathon, suggested by Dir. Edgar White (Shaun Of The Dead, Scott Pilgrim

[Rabblevox]

vs. The World, Spaced)



This guy knows his horror flicks, and he has a detailed, insightful list for a 24-hour Halloween movie marathon. I won't say it's perfect, but it's good enough that I'm changing my Netflix queue.

Full article here:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/24-hours-of-horror-with-edgar-wright,63920/

Here's one review:

Edgar Wright: I had this crazy idea, which mostly works, and then there’s one film that completely doesn’t work, and I sort of just lobbed it in. I was trying to think, “Wouldn’t it be good to do a 24-hour marathon that was based on the seven ages of man?” So I thought “That’s pretty much 15 films in 24 hours, that leaves about two per age, and then you’ve a bonus round at the end.” That’s my idea. So the seven ages of man, as laid out by Shakespeare in As You Like It: the infant, the whining schoolboy, the lover (or teenager), the soldier (and I’m going to interpret that as soldier/young professional), the justice (or the man/adult), the age shifts (becoming old), and the end of this strange eventful history (death). And then I’m going to add eternal life as the bonus at the end.


My first one, which is a film I think is fantastic, is David Cronenberg’s The Brood. So we’re in our infant stage at the moment. Not to give too much away to people who haven’t seen the movie, but it does climax in a mass birthing scene of sorts. I always think The Brood is an underrated Cronenberg film, because even though he had some famous early hits, there’s a certain portion of critics who didn’t sit up and take notice until Videodrome. The Brood is my favorite Cronenberg film, even though I love a lot of the others. I think it’s the first one of his films where his visuals start to match his ideas. And the concept is really strong, and the metaphor is really strong. And it still really is a bleak and shocking watch by today’s standards. I’ve seen it on video a bunch of times, but when I was in Toronto making Scott Pilgrim, I showed it at the Bloor Cinema. And it was really powerful on the big screen. It really still works. I actually met David Cronenberg and tried to discuss it with him a little bit, and it seemed like the actual subject matter was too painful for him to talk about still.


AVC: I think it was inspired by his divorce.

EW: That’s right. He said it was his horror version of Kramer Vs. Kramer. They’re both from 1979, so they’d make a great double bill. One of the scenes in it that is still extremely distressing is when the… Again, I don’t want to ruin it if you haven’t seen it. It’s a good one to watch completely blind. But there’s a scene where the midget envoys—they’re the externalizations of rage—go to attack a primary-school teacher while she’s in a full class. It’s like one of those things that people said about Jaws, “All bets are off when the dog dies.” In The Brood, when you see a scene with a busy school, you’re waiting for class to finish and the teacher to be on her own before she gets killed, because you think that’s how it usually goes down. They’re going to go and kill this teacher, so the end-of-school bell will ring, and then the teacher will be isolated and on her own, and then she’ll get killed. But no! She gets hammered to death in front of the school kids in a busy class. The scene always scared me as a kid, but watching it recently, I thought about it as a director and wondered, “How do you get the performances out of those kids?” They look so terrified in that scene. The reaction shots of the kids witnessing the murder are pretty intense.


I always remember Leonard Maltin gave The Brood a “bomb” rating, and the only thing he really mentions is the scene in the school, saying, “Midget clones beat grandparents and lovely young schoolteacher to death with mallets.” That’s pretty much the only thing he mentioned in his review, and for me, that was a solid recommendation to see it.


AVC: Didn’t the review end with something like “What a wonderful world we live in”?


EW: Yeah, that’s right. I seem to remember. I think that’s why I’ve done well on Doug Loves Movies sometimes, because I actually remember some specific quotes in his reviews. Usually the more vicious he is about something, the more I can remember exactly what he said. But that’s my No. 1, and I think that’s genuinely a really great film. It’s weird, it’s the film in Cronenberg’s oeuvre that gets left out a lot, and I think it’s the first classic that he made.

And it gets better from there. If you are a horror fan, this is most definitely worth the read.