Wankwad of the Month: Peter Hartlaub

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Wankwad of the Month: Peter Hartlaub

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Thursday, 30 October 2008 12:22

The only problem that I have with Halloween, which is totally not Halloween’s fault, is that any wank with a website thinks he or she is qualified to lay down horror film edicts. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you come to my house, you better come correct. Peter Hartlaub crashed my party, stumbling drunkenly around my place, spilling his drink on my guests and generally being bourgeois and boorish. What was his
offense? Glad you asked. He wrote a column recently for the San Francisco Chronicle giving a list of horror films that are not scary. Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that he has nothing better to do with the space given him by the paper than to spew negativity, when he just as easily could have informed his readers about movies he likes instead. One could argue that I only perpetuate that negativity by taking him to task, but fuck that: he started it.

Anyway.

Right off the bat, the first line from his column is, “It’s really not that hard to make a scary movie.” Really? What an interesting tack to take. A quick check at IMDb.com shows that he has had his hand in making exactly zero films. That’s odd. I mean, it is so easy, after all. All you have to do is devise a concept that hasn’t been seen one million times already, something that taps either into the collective culture’s archetypal fears (like clowns or spiders) or something unthinkable to the zeitgeist without going so far as to
alienate them before they even put their asses in seats (like the murder of children). Got your concept? Great. Now you need a punchy script, something that develops the arc of the characters without boring the audience, all the while building your creepy tone up to your startling, never saw it coming finish. That is clearly a snap. Next you get your funding, which is such a simple and straightforward concept that I won’t insult your intelligence by speaking of it here.

Okay, so you’ve got the idea, the script, and the bank. Next you need to spend, what, maybe a day or two holding auditions so you can find the perfect actors and actresses that can convincingly convey a familiarity to the audience in one scene, and then transfer their stark terror to them in the next. Once that trifle is put to bed, you just stop by the Crew Store and pick up a cinematographer with a keen eye for visuals, who also shares exactly your vision for the film, and comes ready-packaged with the producers, assistant directors, light and sound crew, and all the other cogs that make the wheel of cinema turn. I assume you are going to direct it yourself, because it is, after all, not really that hard. Oops, almost forgot, you need to engage one of the plethora of reliable FX houses waiting to make your head explosions and CGI blood happen well within your budget. Just let your fingers do the walking.

And finally, all you need to do, and this is really the easiest part of the whole process, is convince the studio that they don’t need to interfere with your film at all. Make them see that you know perfectly well how to make something scary that will also return them their money, plus profit. They can just sit back, not give you any notes, not force you to make cuts you aren’t comfortable with, and certainly they needn’t to worry their silly little heads about the marketing campaign. You’ll handle that as well. Just to make sure that no one gets the wrong impression about your film. After that you just flip a coin and pick one of the hundred of distributors waiting to put out your film to the masses, exactly as you have shot it. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! I assume Hartlaub is just keeping his master work under close wraps right now, before he is ready to spring his incredibly scary movie onto the masses. I can’t wait!

The second recockulous statement he makes is that he is limiting his list to movies made from 1980 and on, because movies from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s “were so bad that the list would fill this entire paper.” Let’s also disregard that he thinks no horror films were made before 1950, and focus on how he can possibly poo-poo so easily the classic suspense films of Alfred Hitchcock, and the depraved gorefests of Herschell
Gordon Lewis, not to mention a little film called Rosemary’s Baby (60’s). And then there are the totally lame, non-scary films from the 70’s like Tourist Trap and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The fucking Shining. And as to the 50’s, what seems tame now was terrifying then. From giant ants and colossal men (fear of atomic power) to mysterious men from space bearing robot buddies (the xenophobia of the cold war era), we are talking about the whole cultural consciousness thing I mentioned earlier.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, there is his list itself.

Let’s take it line by line:

   1. Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Wha-wha-what! How dare you wipe your muddy feet on a film featuring robots, the occult, the melting heads of children, Tom “Thrill Me” Atkins, and that wonderful Silver Shamrock song. For shame, Mr. Hartlaub, for shame. You wield the craziness of the plot as a weapon against it, but I posit that that bomb will blow up in your face. It is precisely the layered insanity, working as such a delicious counterpoint to the single-mindedness of the other, traditional Michael Myers Halloween films, that makes this the standout entry in the series.
   2. Jaws 3-D. Once again, Louis Gosset Jr., Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, and an underground aquarium being terrorized by a giant shark. This, my friends, is the essence of genius. It would be wonderful even without the 3-D, which clearly only makes it ten times more awesome. He similarly disses the other 3-D entries from the 80’s, such as F-13 3-D and The Amityville Horror 3-D (which boasted not only Tony “Look at my Jew-Fro” Roberts, but also a young Robert Joy getting owned by a creepy demon shooting out of a well).
   3. The Stuff. Yes, not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but how are you going to include a movie whose premise is people being zombified by Marshmallow Fluff on a list of movies that aren’t scary. At what point in time would a rational person assume that it was supposed to be? But it does have Garret Morris and Michael Moriarty, and that, my friends, is good enough for me.
   4. Maximum Overdrive. At this point, if you’ll allow a small indulgence, I must take a moment to snap my fingers, swivel my neck, and say, “Oh no he didn’t!” Stephen King’s sole directorial effort (of which he himself said that the studio gave him enough rope to hang himself) has killer trucks driving themselves, murderous electric knives, a soda machine with an attitude, and an AC/DC soundtrack. How can you sit there and tell me, with a straight face, that the giant plastic Green Goblin head didn’t give you nightmares? Maybe you liked the made-for-tv remake, Trucks, better? I wouldn’t put it past you. Hmph.
   5. The Lawnmower Man. Well, this one I’ll give to him. Not only is it not scary, but it is also an incomprehensible pile of shit. Once again, I question the inclusion of this entry onto the list in the first place. I mean, next you’ll be telling me that Scary Movie 3 isn’t scary either.
   6. The Island of Dr. Moreau. This one had potential, back when it was Richard Stanley’s project. Before he was fired and replaced by John Frankenheimer, who had the script rewritten. The set was all chaos and bad energy. None of these facts appear in Hartlaub’s column, however. Because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He does mention that it is the third film based on the HG Wells novel, without mentioning that Stanley’s original script stuck very closely to the book, an attempt not made by the other versions or, ultimately, this one either. But this one did have Ron Perelman making a triumphant return to prosthetic makeup with his Sayer of the Law role, as well as Faruiza “Ugly Hot” Balk as a kitty-kat girl. Also either fact you’ll see in the offending column.
   7. The Others. This one didn’t scare me either, but then again, I am generally not afeared of the ghosts. To someone who is, this might well be spine-tingling. Hartlaub himself admits that it is a good movie. It was never intended to be a shriekfest, and I know that he knows that I know that he knows that. Just another specious entry into a useless list. He also talks down to Nicole Kidman’s acting, not taking into account at all how good she looks in a nightgown.
   8. The Village. While I’ll agree with Haltraub that the end of this film was essentially Shyamalan giving us all the middle finger, the lion’s share of this film is creepy and quite tense. Not to mention the incredible cast and their great work. From Joaquin Phoenix to Brendan Gleeson to Bryce Howard, there is quite simply massive acting happening. Is it an ultimately disappointing film? Yes. But does it provide some chills along the way? Most certainly. If you must trash-talk some Shyamalan, make it the confused and hectic Lady in the Water.

And there you have it. My long-winded and super-hypocritical rebuttal. Suck it.

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Mr. Majestyk

|71.249.224.xxx |2008-10-30 13:28:15

Well-put rebuttal to a pointless article. It's like, wow, you noticed that The
Lawnmower Man is not very good. You must be a fuckin' genius or something. You
should stop keeping these brilliant observations to yourself, because you are
depriving the world of great insight.

The dude also fails to take into
account that a horror movie doesn't always have to be scary; sometimes, it can
merely be awesome. Like Maximum Overdrive, that perfect-storm combination of Big
Steve King, AC/DC, and Dino "Blank Check" De Laurentis. If you can't see
the appeal of that, I don't want to know you.

And Meg Ryan isn't in Jaws 3-D.
Lea Thompson is.

Zombie Boy

|SAdministrator |2008-10-30 14:49:03

Oh, snap. You're right. She was in Amityville 3-D. I whiffed that one.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 October 2008 19:17 )