White washing: business savvy, smart storytelling or just plain prejudice?
Quick—answer this question in 30 seconds: name 5 actors of non-white ethnic descent that have starred in leading or supporting roles that require more than 20 lines of dialogue? If you’re having difficulty, don’t feel bad. It’s not you. It’s Hollywood.
According to UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report, minorities claimed only 12.9% of lead roles in 2014 in English cinema despite making up 40% of the US population. Systemic exclusion of minority actors is not a secret. It’s a result of a dominant thought process for many studio executives:
In order for a film to bankable, its actors must be white.
In the last few months, general media has put this this assumption under fire and accused films of being whitewashed—a phenomena in which white actors play the role of non-white characters and/or a story is transformed or shifted to greater appeal to the white experience. The most timely examples include Scarlett Johansson’s casting as “The Major,” a Eurasian cyborg, in the film adaptation of the Japanese anime “Ghost in the Shell,” and Tilda Swinton as “The Ancient One,” a mystical, Tibetan sorcerer in Marvel’s “Doctor Strange.”
So, what’s behind this behind this phenomenon? 11&more weighs up the factors.
Blame Hollywood or our culture?
Neha (Asian, arts enthusiast, grew up watching way too many movies with white leads): In response to the public vitriol to Johansson’s casting, Max Landis (screenwriter of “Chronicle” and “Victor Frankenstein”) released a YouTube response explaining the reasons behind her casting. It essentially amounts to one point: There are only 5 movie female stars (all white) that audiences will go and see and thus get a movie distributed and green-lit. In other words, there are no Asian female stars at an international level that a studio would be comfortable with.
Blame the culture not the film industry since the industry is operating on fear.
Joy (white; graduate student; sci fi and fantasy nerd): I like Landis (met him at Comic Con) and enjoy his rants, though I often disagree with him. In this, I actually thought his point about culture was fundamentally right, although I’d put a little more blame on the industry than he does.
So much of the discussion seems to start and end with getting faces in movies and not looking more granularly at the incentive structure of the industry, and how it interacts, specifically, with the constraints of dominant culture. It might be an okay place to start the discussion, but limiting our condemnation to movie execs seems a bit myopic.
Neha: One of the issues that I have with Landis’s argument is that he blames Hollywood’s culture but doesn’t put blame on any of the figures that contribute to it—studios execs, actors, and the film industry in general. Rather, the implicit group that he’s putting blame on is the audience who supposedly doesn’t want to see films with minority leads or supporting characters. And that is fundamentally wrong. UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report has shown that relatively diverse casts have generated above average revenue in the box office as well as higher TV ratings.
It seems that the film industry is operating on a fear that doesn’t exist: audience will go see diversely casted films. I would go as far and say that white washed films have failed in part because they were white washed.
The most immediate example that comes to mind is “Aloha” that casted Emma Stone as a half Hawaiian, half Asian character and “Gods of Egypt” that casted an entirely white cast for a story that took place in Ancient Egypt. Both were ridiculed because of their inauthentic casting, and while there were absolutely other factors that came into play, the casting undermined the film’s profitability.
If we can’t even give roles that have minority characters to minority actors, how can we expect Hollywood to cast diversely in roles that are essentially color-blind?
Casting should be based on story, not cultural politics
Jia Jia (Asian; innovation consultant; loves sci-fi and fantasy): I LOVE Ghost in the Shell. And I got to say, the casting of Johansson is disappointing, though not because Johansson is white. Major Kusanagi is so iconic and exemplifies the unique nature of anime —somewhere outside the exact racial classifications that dominate our physical reality—that it makes no sense to “taint” it with the baggage that a known star brings to it.
The issue here is less about skin color and more about authenticity to the material. There are times when the racial and cultural origins of a character are defining traits, and it really matters if that person’s white or not, like Pocahontas. But more often than not, the skin color of the character isn’t the main thing—it’s the personality.
That is where simplifying the argument down to race alone is, in its own way, as racist as a casting a white actor for a supposedly “ethnic” role.
In the case of “Ghost in the Shell”, the appearance of “The Major” is Eurasian in my mind—conforming to classic anime types. But I’m really not that fussed. What matters about the Major is her pragmatic, tough and enigmatic persona; she exists in a global dystopia where differences of nationality, race, and gender are much less important that contrasting allegiances to corporations and global institutions.
To live and breathe in this world, I need to see an unknown who IS the character—not Scarlett Johansson, the star, acting the part. For that matter, Lucy Liu would be equally distracting.
My main issue is that the actor cast is not an unknown. That said, I do think that it would be easier on my eye to have this character be of more “ambiguous” ethnicity, simply because that’s how the original anime looks.
Story-based or no, non-white actors simply aren’t valued as much
Neha: Whitewashing—in my eyes—becomes systemic when Hollywood fails to recognize, celebrate, and reward its minority actors for their work. Landis claims that there isn’t an Asian Scarlett Johansson counterpart to cast; this is in part because Hollywood very rarely identifies minority actors as the top of their field and gives them the platform to truly become superstars. The industry’s boycott of the Oscars—#OscarsSoWhite—because of a lack of minority nominations underlines this issue. Only 1% of actresses and 9% of actors to win an Oscar have been people of color, and that’s quite frankly pathetic.
It’s not good enough to just say, “Well, they should act better or pick better roles.” Unless you are Denzel Washington or Will Smith,
there just seems to be a dearth of good roles that minority actors can audition and be in reasonable contention for.
Regina Hall is a good example of an actress who suffers from this predicament. A Washington Post article released last year profiles Hall and calls her the best actress you’ve never heard about; directors compare her to Meryl Streep and Lucille Ball, but she’s only what the article calls “Black-famous,” failing to crossover due to a lack of mainstream roles.
Charly (playwright and performer): I do know Regina Hall. I’ve seen many movies with her in them and honestly, I think it has to do with the fact that I am Black and go to see movies that are sometimes portrayed as “Black movies.” Just the other day, my ex-boyfriend (who is not Black) and I were chatting about this. He mentioned that when we were together he saw, and enjoyed, a number of movies (and actors) that he probably would not have watched otherwise. When I asked him why, he mentioned that he just didn’t know about them. Like I said, I do know Regina Hall. She’s great and is not utilized as much or as well in both “Black movies” and “mainstream movies” and consequently, I am not surprised that some may have never heard of her.
Alienated by the industry; aliens on-screen
Neha: It seems that even minority actors that are recognizable names—think Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, and Zoe Saldana—seems to have difficulty booking or being considered for the same buzzy roles as their white counterpoints. When Elba was rumored as the new Bond, James Horowitz—the new James Bond writer—dismissed Elba as “too street” and “too rough” based on no real particular reason. Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that thought has crossed the mind of executives in charge.
A recent article by entertainment news outlet “Vulture” underlines an interesting trend: minority actors tend to be placed in voice-over roles, roles that require motion capture technology, or roles where the are so made-up that they are unrecognizable. There seems to be some truth to this: out of the 6 films Elba stars in 2016, 4 are voice or makeup heavy. For Nyong’o, out of the 4 movies she’s been booked after her Oscar, she portrays a human in only 1.
Jia Jia: Minority actors have very little opportunity no matter what they do. I’m not sure that they have a much better shot at getting meatier roles in non-live action roles since their white counterparts are also competing for the same roles. If we were to tally up actors on-screen and in voice-over/makeup-heavy roles to see how the white/non-white ratio stacks up, I think the tally would still be overwhelmingly white.
It’s also worth putting out there that minority actors may in fact self-select or gravitate to roles in sci-fi or voice-over roles because they offer a space to broaden identities for minorities through the idea of aliens or other fantastic, out-of-this-world characters.
Zoe Saldana reasons for picking sci-fi films essentially boils to down to one thing: race or gender don’t seem to matter in sci-fi: “I can sit down with so many filmmakers for so many projects and play so many actors’ girlfriends or wives. But in sci-fi, I can play Gamora.”
Progress isn’t a zero sum game
Neha: One of the things that strikes me about Saldana’s predicament, though, is that she should be an A-list actress with her choice of interesting roles beyond the niche genre of sci-fi. She’s starred in enough box-office hits but has failed to star in a “human,” meaty role like those that have gone to relative unknowns to the public such as Rosamund Pike (Amy in “Gone Girl”) or Alicia Vikander (Ava in “Ex Machina”).
It’s frustrating that I have yet to see an Oscar recipient like Lupita Nyong’o as herself on screen despite her win. Moreover, it’s frustrating that minority actors have to look through different artistic mediums to find roles worthy of their time. Nyong’o mentions that her choice to star in the Broadway drama “Eclipsed” stemmed from the fact that it was an “opportunity to share in the incredible (and too rare) freedom of playing a fully rendered African woman.”
The unsaid accusation is that there aren’t any equivalent roles in film right now for her. That should be shameful for the industry.
Jia Jia: Moreover, in general, Hollywood is quick to re-write minority roles to make them white and never the other way around. I suspect that executives hearken back to an ancient and over-simplified marketing framework of “white stars sell.” Living in NYC, the monochrome of Hollywood actually jars with my daily experience of seeing people of many races around me. If ever Hollywood needed proof that stars white AND non-white can sell, just look at the music industry. Back in the early 80s, MTV wouldn’t play black artists because they didn’t sell…well the likes of Prince and Michael Jackson proved them to be very very wrong.
I think that people fundamentally crave good narratives, and good narratives can handle a wide roster of human characters.
Neha: Despite my misgivings about whitewashing in the industry, I will say this: there’s no doubt that its an industry problem, but progress admittedly cannot come overnight, and studios like Disney should be applauded for their diverse casting. It’s not often that a studio is willing to cast a Black man, a Hispanic man, and a female (all minorities in the industry) as leads of a major film like they did in “Star Wars.” And while that property will always be greater than its stars, it was still a risk that people inside and out of the industry maybe take for granted. Marvel (another Disney subsidiary) has also broke ground through it’s 2018 film “Black Panther,” casting a mostly Black cast.
Perhaps other studios will view Disney’s diverse casting as a practice to follow after seeing the studio’s amazing success at the box office. Perhaps that’s the first step.
Tags: diversity fantasy Hollywood identity inequality multicultural politics race sci-fi whitewashing


AdDOC is the first high school documentary festival organised by teenagers. During the month of May 2017, the films were screened in 25 high schools from 12 Romanian towns and were followed by discussions with the directors and producers.
AdDOC Fest appeared thanks to the initiative of the One World Romania Film Club's coordinators from several cities. The teenagers participated in an intensive training about the importance of social responsibility and learned about event planning mechanisms at a national level. Together, they selected ten recent Romanian productions which present the everyday society with the good and the bad and they divided them in three categories based on the subjects they approach and the questions they raise.
The fest was developed around the "Truth and dare" tagline. They changed "or" with "and" because our society has truths and if they cause pain, we are challenged to change them starting with the documentaries.


A B-Movie fanatic learns to appreciate Quality Cinema, one Oscar® nominee at a time…
“It has been brought to my attention that I have poor taste in film. Bad taste, really. Bad.”
So begins Project Film Geek, a program of self-improvement masquerading as snarky and entertaining film reviews of every film ever nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Picture. Starting here with the first Awards, presented in 1929, B-movie fanatic Rachel Hyland attempts to cleanse her cinematic palate by studying the Good and eschewing the So Bad It’s Good.
All she wants to do is join the cinematic intelligentsia. The cintelligentsia. Is that really so hard? Well, the 1929 nominees are all silent films, so what do you think?


I’m having a really difficult time with this final post, denizens. Watching Scream 4 really brought home the fact that this truly is it. This was the final film of Wes Craven’s career. It’s a painful truth to assimilate on many levels, least of which is the reopening of the sorrow that I have felt ever since learning of his untimely death. I’m not going to lie: When I saw “Directed by Wes Craven” pop up in the credits, I teared up as it hit yet again that we will never see that for another new movie. It feels like we have lost so many incredibly talented people recently. To mourn each and every one of them as thoroughly as I have with Craven would pretty much become a full-time career. However, let it be known that the creative space within this existence has a lot of vacancy signs in the windows at the moment. We desperately need to see these vacancies filled. The world can be an ugly, cruel reality. Those who provide us with the safety of escapism, no matter how brief, are invaluable.
So, let’s get this final show on the road, shall we?
Like I said, I won’t rewrite history. However, I also wrote of my second viewing that “the movie puts forward some truly salient points regarding what happened to us as a society, not just in horror but in general culture, within the more than 10 years between the third and fourth movie. And the author of the book I read even gives a convincing defense of what I felt on original viewing was a tacked-on cop-out ending. I still feel as though it’s a bit of a cop-out…but viewing it with the author’s defense in mind helped me to see it as the castigation against remakes and reboots that he proposes it to be.”
Re-watching this film twice for this series (yes, Craven gifted us one final director’s commentary) made me realize further that this movie shouldn’t stand with the original trilogy at all. That trilogy is a complete telling of the nightmare that Sidney, Gale, and Dewey endured and survived. That book is closed. This fourth film truly kicked off a new book completely
I’m going to make really quick work of this review, denizens, simply because I don’t want to think about this movie more than I have to.
I’ve spent so much time with this particular series, trying to give each of the films that Wes Craven wrote and/or directed as much credence as possible. I have tried to find worth or enjoyment in each movie. Sometimes, this has been a struggle. My Soul to Take has made the struggle insurmountable.
This film felt almost as if Craven printed up a collage of posters from his previous movies, posted it to a dart board, and then just started throwing darts to see which films he would pilfer for recycled ideas. My guess is that the darts hit Shocker,A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. Then he decided that such a combination would only work if he made mental illness a key plot element. And then? Then he decided this would all look best if in 3-D. Seriously? Maybe focus on giving it even one layer of dimension before trying to focus on the third.
Sorry. Sorry. I just need to vent, and if it saves any of you from making the mistake of watching this film, all the better.
I struggled to get through even my one obligatory viewing of this film (which is okay, since the rental version of the movie blocked me from being able to listen to Craven’s commentary; as if I’m going to go buy a copy just to hear that). I’m not terribly surprised that I didn’t like this movie. I remember seeing the previews and feeling absolutely bereft of desire to see it. Watching it for this series confirms that I was on-point with that reaction. I am, however, terribly disappointed that Craven thought this movie was worth his time and effort. Did he feel like he needed to give horror fans something (anything?) to appease us since he hadn’t made a genre film in 5 years? Was he pressured into making this? Or was he just bored and decided that this would be a good way to pass some time and get paid? Whatever the reasons, I wish he’d ignored them all and continued to enjoy a well-earned break from film-making.
In fact, I found this movie so distasteful that I officially recant what I wrote about Chiller.This is my least favorite Craven film. At least Chiller contains some enjoyable camp. This movie tried so hard to take itself seriously, which is quite difficult when it’s so dogmatic to horror cliches. It’s such a shame, too. This was the first movie that Craven had written and directed since his 1994 New Nightmare and his first full-length directing gig since 2005’s Red Eye. Both those movies are examples of Craven at peak performance, which makes this entry all the more preposterous and derisory.
Don’t look to this post for a review. The story is banal, the cast mostly unmemorable (of course, this might be the ultimate sign that I’m getting old; I recognized absolutely no one from this film). Craven clearly hit the auto pilot button on this one and ended up flying us all into a mountainside. Now we’re stranded and I’m not above volunteering this DOA cinematic sludge for hors d’oeuvres.
I debated a long time whether or not I would include this movie in my Cravenous series. First, it’s clearly taking me a while to get through all of Wes Craven’s films. It’s a matter of timing, really. My work life hasn’t pulled punches in a very long time, so my time to do things I enjoy, like write long-winded blog posts, is very, very, very limited.
Then there is the fact that Craven didn’t direct this film, as originally planned. If you remember from my Craven quote in my review of Cursed, he mentioned that he was supposed to direct the film but the undying nature of that terrible werewolf movie made it impossible. Because of that and other “cursed” kerfuffling, Dimension ended up pulling the plug on Pulse. I have a feeling that the Craven/Dimension relationship really soured with the behind-the-scenes fiasco that was that horrible werewolf movie. In the end, (still) virtual unknown Jim Sonzero ended up directing Craven’s script while Craven went on to make several non-Dimension films.
So why did I decide to review this one? Basically because Craven did write the screenplay. I made a decision at the beginning of this series that I wouldn’t include the movies that Craven produced, since he didn’t really have a whole lot to do with those beyond ponying up the money to make them. Ultimately, I considered Craven’s writing and directing contributions to the horror genre to be the two most important from his career. I even strongly debated the inclusion of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, since Craven was listed as part of the writing team for that film. However, his original screenplay was so overwhelmingly rewritten, reworked, reshaped, and revised by numerous people that I didn’t really think it was fair to include it in this list. Pretty much the only thing that I think was left from Craven’s ideas for that film was the idea of Freddy having grown so strong by that point that a whole group of teenagers needed to defeat him rather than just one. Oh, and it was Craven’s idea to bring back Nancy.
For the American remake of Pulse, however, Craven was only one of two writers listed in the credits. The other credit (minus Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who wrote the original 2001 Japanese film, Kairo) is Ray Wright. He had one credit prior to this movie, and only has three more since, so I’m going to assume that he would have been the second-string writer on this script. Maybe Dimension brought him in to make changes to update it or make it more in line with what the Weinsteins wanted. Who knows. The bottom line, though, is that the script is definitely a mostly Craven product.
Unfortunately, it’s also one of his less well-made products. True, he might have been able to work some miracles with the script had he gotten to direct it as he had wished. He would have had say in casting, in locations, in filming choices, in rewrites as he went along
I’m going to start off this review by doing something that I’ve tried to avoid until now (pretty much because I can’t control what YouTube keeps and what they remove): I’m going to post the movie trailer.
Pretty spiffy, right? It’s why I couldn’t resist. I’ve spent so much time in these reviews talking about how Craven wanted so very much to break out of the horror pigeonhole and direct something else. And then he got his wish with Music of the Heart, which showed that he could actually do more than horror when given the chance.
Of course, this confused the hell out of everyone. Craven followers didn’t understand why he wasn’t doing horror. Non-horror people didn’t understand why his name was associated with a movie about violins rather than violence (“What’s all this fuss I keep hearing about violins on television?”). Next thing you know, up was down, night was day, left was right, cats became needy and dogs became aloof, and then all of society imploded.
Okay, not really. But I loved how this trailer kind of toyed with the fact that there no longer was certainty that Craven’s name would guarantee horror. But a rom-com? Duke! Don’t you toy with my emotions!
Of course, we didn’t get a romantic comedy, but I give total kudos to the person who cut this trailer. It’s fantastic in all the best ways. And, of course, we didn’t get another horror movie with 2005’s Red Eye. Instead, Craven gave us his best take at a Hitchcockian thriller, which to be fair? Is a pretty damned good take.
Don’t get me wrong: The overall premise of this film is totally hinky. You kind of have to ignore the main goal of the plot. It might be hard, but ultimately, it’s really good advice.
What should you pay attention to in this film? The fact that this is possibly the most technically precise film of Craven’s entire oeuvre. True, many films throughout his career have critical technical merit. However, this film is so streamlined and so precise and so very focused. It’s definitely Craven’s leanest film, not even hitting the 90-minute mark. However, that just means that every scene, every line, every look (especially every look) has poignancy and purpose.
I mentioned already that this is Craven’s most Hitchcockian movie. Honestly, this could have been called Strangers on a Plane if you wanted to be cute. It’s funny because screenwriter Carl Ellsworth’s next movie after this would be Disturbia, which is basically Rear Window for millennials. Clearly, Ellsworth had a Hitchcockian sensibility in mind when he wrote this script. It’s got that great sense of pacing and purpose, plus killer character interactions that become the everything of this movie.
Honestly, the casting of Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy as the two leads, Lisa and Jackson, could not have been more fortuitous
Re-watching Scream 2 for this series made me realize that it’s been a long time since I watched this or the third film. I love the first movie (duh). Clearly, I have all the time in the world for it. And I have owned the trilogy in every iteration it has appeared in (VHS? Check; DVD? Yup; Blu-ray? I bought a Blu-ray player just so I could buy and play the trilogy, ISYN). However, as time has passed, I have slowly convinced myself that the sequels are not worth watching. As the second film even addresses, very rarely do sequels prove their worth. However, the horror genre in particular seems to thrive off the existence of unchecked and often unwarranted franchises.
That being stated, are the Scream sequels terrible? No. As sequels go, they actually are quite good. In fact, this re-watching of the first sequel, again focusing on the technical merits of the film, has made me realize how strong it was on several different levels. This and the third film (we’ll get to that fourth one in a little while) also have elements of enjoyment and intrigue and, after pondering this a bit for this series, I would posit that they ultimately do add merit to the horror genre for doing to the horror franchise trope what the original did to horror in general.
First, though, I’ve been pondering why Craven was so amenable to the notion of participating in sequels for Scream when he was so adamantly against them for Freddy Krueger. I think a few things went into his decision this time. First, writer Kevin Williamson always had sequels in mind [insert predictable Stu Macher quote about sequels here]. So the option was always on the table, even when Craven first started hearing about the script, as opposed to how Craven wanted his original Nightmare on Elm Street to be a one-shot film with a definite ending. Second, I think it would be fair to surmise that Craven probably learned a valuable lesson with Freddy. If you don’t want others botching your creation, then you need to be the one driving (even if you’re driving from someone else’s map). With Scream, he realized that he could be conductor for Williamson’s death train, from start to finish, and I suspect that appealed to him, especially after the first film blew up so massively and rapidly in popularity.
And then there is the unique focus of this horror franchise. Other popular horror franchises hinged upon the killer always being the same. Not this time. No, this franchise’s focus was the exact opposite of most horror films. This time, it’s all about the survivor. Sidney is the character who doesn’t change (although let’s not forget the other survivors, two of whom stay by her side through the whole series like a Holy Survival Trinity #spoilerz). Sidney is the keystone.
[Loba Tangent: If that concept sounds familiar, it should. Craven granted the same level of power to Heather Langenkamp in his New Nightmare.]
Craven had already made a career of presenting strong female characters in many of his films. In fact, he had made a career of presenting unlikely heroes/heroines from several diverse groups, not just strong women. His last two films prior to taking on Scream, in fact, showcased casts comprising not just Black heroes/heroines, but also largely Black casts. This was practically unheard of from a serious film-making perspective at this point in the horror genre (I say serious here as opposed to horror spoofs like what the Wayans brothers were doing with their Scary Movie spoofs). Horror was a Hollywood holdout of predominantly White casts, White heroes, White villains, made for predominantly White audiences. Was that because horror is mostly preferred by White audiences? Or was it more likely because diverse audiences weren’t interested in a genre that showed no interest in them? I think Craven tested this latter theory most successfully with The People Under the Stairs, which was a genre success that very few anticipated.
[Loba Tangent: I think this was part of what made the opening sequence with Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps even more spectacular. Pinkett’s character’s lament about how the movie they were getting ready to watch was “some dumb-ass White movie about some dumb-ass White girls getting their White asses cut the fuck up” not only was a poignant castigation against several horror tropes but also made her character’s ultimate, shall we say, intrigue in the telling of that “dumb-ass” movie even more humorous.]
Therefore, a man who had spent several decades building his reputation as a Master of Horror (I think it’s time we started using that as an official title, don’t you?) through the construction of complex, complicated, and often unexpected horror heroes/heroines would naturally be drawn in by a series of movies that eschewed the traditional horror franchise route of focusing on (glorifying?) the killers for the unconventional approach of focusing on the survivor(s).
There’s also another aspect that seemed particularly prevalent and important to this sequel that I think must have attracted Craven by dint of reason that it had held such a disturbing fascination for him throughout his career: the reality of human brutality. Again, let’s think about the movies that started Craven down his path to Master of Horror status. Those movies sprang up from Craven’s desire to examine the darker sides of human nature in the most realistic ways. And now he gets this script that hinges upon examining the reality of what transpired within the first movie.
These survivors from the first movie? They’re all damaged, emotionally and in many ways physically. That “fun” first movie carried weighty consequences, which we watch play out throughout the unraveling of this and following sequels. There is still humor all throughout this sequel, but Craven and Williamson did an extraordinary job in balancing it with weightier truths for these characters, particularly Sidney. We’ll get to her in a moment, though.
First, I’d like to take a moment to talk about the opening of this film. I already mentioned that Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps bring us into the new world of Scream 2. They are heading in to a free preview of Stab, the movie based on Gale Weathers’s book on the events of the first film, The Woodsboro Murders. So basically we end up watching a movie about people watching a movie of events we’ve already watched. The continuing beauty of this is that what they are watching is both very close and incredibly far away from what actually happened in the first film. Again, Craven and Williamson are taking collective digs at the tropes of their trade in exquisite fashion. What they are also doing, and it comes through with such unsettling perfection, is juxtaposing the “reality” of horror movies for its fans against the true reality of horror.
I’m referring, of course, to the murder of Pinkett’s character, Maureen Evans. I still can recall the collective silent horror shared throughout the audience I was in when we watched that murder play out. Whereas the majority of the kills in the first movie all came across in electric ways that pumped up the audience to cheer or scream or laugh or yell at the screen, this time…this time was utterly different. Craven knew precisely how to make this one of the most discomfiting deaths from the entire franchise. Whereas it was in many ways similar to the first death from the first movie, this time Craven and Williamson pulled it out of the expected solitude of a typical horror movie setup.
This was not the “girl alone in a secluded setting” predictability akin to what Heather Graham’s character was facing in the Stab film (or that Drew Barrymore’s character faced at the beginning of the first movie). This was a young woman being brutally murdered in a theater full of people. In so doing this, they not only upended the trope but they also made us uncomfortably and unwillingly that much closer to her murder. In essence, we became one with the on-screen audience, all of us watching as Maureen climbed to the front of the theater, bleeding, dying, crying out for someone, anyone to take note, take heed of what was happening. Craven had always made a point of trying to invoke a sense of moral uneasiness in his audiences, and this opening did not disappoint. I remember the disgust I felt at the opening of this film; I realize now that this was precisely the reaction I should have had.
Skipping ahead slightly in the movie but focusing on another instance in which Craven beautifully shows us how to get away with murder in a way that breaks the horror tropes apart, let’s talk about Randy. Poor Randy. All he wanted was for the geek to get the girl. Instead, he’s brutally, savagely murdered by Ghost Face in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded college quad. That was the beauty of Craven’s directorial acumen. He knew how to upend and audience. He lulled us into a sense of complacency. It’s a sunny day. People are all around. They’ve all got each other’s backs on this, right? Besides, it’s Randy! Nothing is going to happen to Randy. And then the blood began to run and we all knew, there is no understanding of sacred beneath that Ghost Face mask.
Interestingly, even the MPAA finally got on board with Craven’s focus on realism and consequences. Craven stated in interviews that he purposely made this film as bloody as he could, expecting the MPAA to come back and tell him to cut it down for an R rating as they did with the first film (and myriad other films from his career). Instead, they left the original cut of the film untouched. According to them, the violence was okay because it carried consequences. Kind of like all Craven’s other films, but never mind.
[Loba Tangent: I’ve actually not only seen the original cut of Scream but I also used to own it on VHS. It’s the version they made the director’s commentary for on that weird VHS double set I bought. I’m kicking myself that I don’t have it anymore. I’ve never seen that original cut anywhere else, not even the special edition DVD set. Craven’s original cut actually made the consequences of Billy and Stu’s actions more prevalent. The MPAA’s insisted-upon cuts took away that level of realism and left instead a false sense of invulnerability for our killers.]
And then there’s Sidney.
We watch as she starts out this round prepared, defiant. She’s armed with a caller ID and a BFF roomie and a new boyfriend and Randy (for now). She’s got this. She is ready for whatever the premiere of that stupid movie based on her chaotic life has in store. Even Tori Spelling.
[Loba Tangent: Good on ya, Tori, for having a great sense of humor and for playing along with the continuation of a line from the first film. Also, this is one of the moments from this film that falls soundly into the hilarity camp. I love how Craven is able to get the absolute worst performances from “Sidney” and “Billy” in the movie based on the first movie, thus poking fun at the original film in such a wonderful way.]
Oh, Sidney. We want so much to believe in your tough girl ruse. But Craven will not let that happen, and you know it. That moment when Sidney realizes the horror is starting again, Craven gives us this beautiful shot composition of her off-center and alone before slowly pulling in closer to her, thereby pulling us into her horror. It was so simple and yet so right.
And in case you haven’t picked up on this yet, I love Sidney Prescott. Just like Nancy Thompson, she is another one of Craven’s quintessential Warrior Women, faced with seemingly insurmountable odds but willing to dig in and find a way to survive. She refuses to lie down and accept her victimization at the hands of others wishing to make her their personal scapegoat. However, we also witness that these events harden her, to trust and to emotional stability. Her inability to place faith in anyone after her betrayal by Billy leads to the deaths of two of her closest confidantes in this film and, I believe, kills her ability to function in any publicly acceptable fashion. It actually worked out that Neve Campbell wasn’t able to be in the third movie for long, because limiting Sidney’s time in the third movie helped solidify that the damage she absorbed in this film may not have killed her, but it came pretty close to destroying her. It certainly destroyed her ability to allow herself to feel. That moment at the end when she shoots Debbie Salt/Mrs. Loomis through the forehead without even flinching? Even Cotton and Gale flinch (Gale! Flinches!), their expressions revealing their respective horror at realizing not only what Sidney has just done but also what she has just become.
Wow, this is a long review. And I haven’t even gotten to things like the soundtrack and Marco Beltrami…or the roll call of Hollywood’s young elite who clambered to appear in this film…or the ones who were actually picked. Like Sarah Michelle Gellar. Even though she was in the middle of filming Buffy, she made time for a cameo in this film. I mention all this only for one reason: Craven’s sense of humor. See, Gellar’s scene included moments where she was watching television, and then moments where she was moving about her sorority house while the television just played in the background. Like in this moment:
Yes, denizens. That would be Nosferatu playing on the television behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
However, the one final thing that I would like to focus on for this film is the play scene. There is a moment in this film in which Sidney has a dress rehearsal for a play she’s in at the college. The significance of this scene from a Cravenous perspective? Craven wrote this scene and the play. The original script that Williamson wrote included some kind of generic Our Town-esque play, according to producer Marianne Maddalena. Craven, however, knew a way to write a scene that would integrate a play perfect not only for the film but also for Sidney. Let’s not forget that he was once a professor of literature or that he had a master’s degree in philosophy and writing. If anyone could come up with the perfect theme for a play suited to Sidney Prescott, it would be him.
[Loba Tangent: Also, making the play a Greek tragedy was Craven’s subtle castigation of the MPAA for their denouncement of violence of horror movies. Craven was basically pointing out that violence and horror have been a part of entertainment since the Greek tragedies. Hello, Oedipus and Medea. And yet now they are lauded as classics.]
I have to admit, the play scene is one of my favorite moments in not only the Scream trilogy but also horror in general. The way Craven not only beautifully draws the parallels between Sidney and Cassandra but also utilizes the Greek tradition of a masked chorus in such an effectively chilling way
I’m going to cheat slightly with this review, denizens. I recently reviewed this film elsewhere online, and rather than reinvent the wheel at this point, I’m going to use a lot of what I wrote in that “other” place, for this review. For posterity, yo.
I guess I also should finally point out that I probably will have a lot of spoilers throughout this and other Cravenous reviews. I don’t know why I never thought of mentioning this before. So, yeah. Spoilers.
So now that Wes Craven was (kind of) able to scratch that itch of wanting to direct anything other than a horror movie and found it to be less than the pleasant break he’d hoped it would be (thanks, Eddie…no, really…thank you), it was time once more to turn to what he knew and did so well. It wasn’t an instantaneous “yes” decision, mind you. It took a bit of pushing from Bob and Harvey Weinstein as well as a few of Craven’s close associates to finally convince him that it would be worth his time to take the reins on what practically everyone in Hollywood was convinced was going to be a huge horror hit. The Weinsteins were so convinced by the end of the day, in fact, that they scheduled a Christmas release for the film. A Christmas release? For a teen slasher flick? In the mid-90s?
God damn it, Gump! You’re a goddamned genius!
Seriously, though, with Craven coming on board as director, this turned out to be the “perfect storm” of a horror film. It was a brilliant script filled with admiration and adoration for a genre that, to tell the truth, had seen better days. Horror was, forgive the pun, nearly dead in the mid-90s. Fans had lost interest in tired sequels and cheesy scripts and horrible plots. It took Williamson to come along to remind us what we fell in love with and to show us that there was still life in the genre yet. His story was clever, his lines were catchy and quotable, and his characters were cliches to a point, but cliches with twists and unexpected complexities.
Combine this with a cast filled with up-and-coming young actors just starting to make an impact on Hollywood as well as a couple of established actors who were either making a successful comeback or who brought a delightful sense of nostalgia with their presence, and like I said: perfect storm.
Watching Scream again for what truly has to be beyond the 20th time I’ve seen the movie, I made a special effort to focus primarily on the look of the movie
After his success with The People Under the Stairs, it was time for Wes to come home. Time for him to reclaim his greatest creation and put the dream demon back into his proper context. And so, in 1994, Wes Craven went back to Elm Street, and he brought several members of the original cast with him. The end result?
I’ve already written here about Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, so I don’t necessarily want to make a new post for it. However, I will reiterate that it was a brilliant return to Elm Street for Craven and a beautiful denouement to Freddy Krueger. Yes, I know that they brought him back for his battle with Jason, but I feel as though that’s an incidental addition. An appendix, if you will. This film felt like a solid conclusion to Freddy’s journey as well as Craven’s homecoming and reconciliation with Bob Shaye and New Line Cinema.
So what could possibly be next for Craven now that he had come back into his own as a “Master of Horror” and taken back his dream demon?
A comedy, of course.
Well. Kind of. A comedic horror? A horrific comedy?
Truthfully, the only thing horrifying about 1995’s Vampire in Brooklyn is how it both failed at horror and funny. Based on a story idea from Eddie Murphy and producer friend Vernon Lynch, and a script written by Murphy’s brother Charlie (along with the guys who wrote Mulan II), the movie tells the story of Maximillian, the sole-surviving Caribbean vampire, who comes to Brooklyn to find the half-vampire mate who will help him keep his line from ending.
I know what you’re thinking: Don’t vampires just make more vampires by biting someone and turning them into a vampire? That’s kind of what I thought. I also stand by my theory that vampires can’t procreate the way humans can. It’s the whole freaking point (pardon the pun) of why they have to penetrate their victims with their teeth after roofying them with their sexeh stares.
I know what else you’re thinking: Half-vampire? What the hell is that (besides Blade or Vampire Hunter D)? I’ve always questioned the idea of “half-vampire” because I question the procreation efforts of vampires. Also, it’s always sounded a bit silly to me (even though I do enjoy some of the genre stories that use such a creature). Do they only burn really badly in sunlight? Have slightly pointy teeth? Do they have a translucent reflection? Whatever it’s supposed to be, Angela Bassett plays the half-vampire, so I’m okay with letting some of those questions go.
Really, it’s Murphy who is the problem for me with this movie. I’ve never really enjoyed him as an actor. I loved his time on Saturday Night Live and I respect what he did during his stand-up days. However, most of his movie career has left me utterly cold. This movie wasn’t an exception.
Plus there is the fact that you can tell that Murphy is not really all that interested in giving a compelling performance in this role. He later stated that the only reason he agreed to this movie in the first place was because Paramount agreed to release their hold on the rights to The Nutty Professor to Murphy if he finished his contract with them. He also had the audacity to blame the wig he wore in the movie for why people didn’t like it. I totally disagree. That wig worked for Eriq La Salle in Coming to America! You just didn’t try hard enough, Eddie.
Problems compounded with the fact that Craven was excited to finally have a shot at directing a straight comedy only to find out that Murphy wanted him on board because he wanted to do something other than comedy and thought taking a crack at horror would be fun. And when your leading man is also one of the producers on a movie he came up with the story for and his brother wrote the script? There’s not a whole lot you can do besides say, “Good idea, Mr. Murphy.”
They did try to meet in the middle, and there are a lot of comedic moments to the film. We also get Murphy doing his shtick of putting on a lot of make-up and playing other characters. This time, he played a perpetually perspiring preacher and a failed Wise Guy. They were kind of funny, but also kind of stereotypical and cringe-worthy. I’ve always had a problem with a lot of the dress-up roles that Murphy did. If he were punching up with the joke, as he did on SNL, then it might be different. However, most of the time, he was only playing up stereotypes for comedic effect. That’s kind lazy comedy for no real effect other than to make fun of groups of people for assumed shared behavior. But whatever.
It was lovely getting to see Angela Bassett in this film. Craven must have appreciated her participation in his short-lived television series Nightmare Cafe (and by “short-lived,” I mean it lasted six episodes…but they featured actors from Craven’s many films, including Bassett, Brandon Adams, and Robert Englund. Oh, and Trinity, Cigarette Smoking Man, and Ishara Yar show up as well, for you genre fans). Bassett’s career at this point was starting to really pick up, with her Oscar nod securely in place for her turn (heh) as Tina Turner and Strange Days helping to secure her as a player in the genre fiction realm.
[Loba Tangent: Sad trivia, really. Sonja Davis, the stunt woman who doubled Bassett on Strange Days, followed her to this film only to die during a failed stunt that put her in a coma for almost 2 weeks before she passed.]
Her performance as Detective Rita Veder in this film was absolutely one of the standouts. She clearly was willing to embrace the ludicrous lunacy of the story and her role, and she played every moment with a refreshing dedication that I’m sure pleased Craven, particularly on this film. Other than Bassett, I’d have to say that Kadeem Hardison was probably the best part of this movie. Playing Julius Jones, the Maximillian equivalent of Dracula’s Renfield, Hardison brought a zeal to his role that was (sadly) unmatched by his main foil. Also, he did quite well in a role that was both a throwback to and departure from his most iconic role, Dwayne Wayne.
Remember, I did say that when an actor impressed Craven, he made sure to be loyal to that actor. Just ask W. Earl Brown, who appeared in this film and may or may not appear later on in this blog series. Isn’t that right, Kenny? Now get off my windshield.
Even though it wasn’t the complete break from horror that Craven had longed for, this still was probably the first of his films to integrate other-than-horror elements into the story blatantly (rather than subtly, as Craven had often tried to do with other films) without getting blow-back from producers or the movie company in charge. Of course, the movie didn’t even make back what it cost to make it, so I’m sure that wasn’t the resounding success that Craven had hoped for with his first non-horror horror movie.
Guess there was really only one way to go at this point. Back to horror…
Remember the time that Wes Craven decided to make the most absurdist, Lynchian, unhinged, over-the-top, satirical, this-is-your-acid-on-acid social commentary in the guise of horror movie? No? Clearly, then, you have not seen his 1991 classic magnum opus to all things WTF, The People Under the Stairs.
Oh, yes. I have been waiting to reach this film in Craven’s oeuvre. And while a couple of films that I held in fond remembrance didn’t really survive the light of reality that my re-watching shone upon them (sorry, Kristy,Bill, and Mitch, but your movies did not hold up well at all), revisiting the Robesons and their freakish clan beneath the stairs did not disappoint.
For those needing a refresher: We start by meeting our protagonist, Poindexter “Fool” Williams, who lives in the L.A. projects with his mom and sister and his sister’s kids. His mother has cancer but barely enough money to pay their rent…which doesn’t matter at this point anyway, because the landlord of Fool’s building has evicted them. Fool’s sister’s boyfriend decides to draft Fool on a…fool’s errand to rob the landlord of a rumored coin collection as a means of helping Fool and taking back some of what the landlord has been taking from the tenants he is summarily evicting from all his properties.
Once Fool is inside that house, though. Oh, that’s when Craven just lets it all go. The shit? It gets supremely real.
I feel as though this film was Craven finally returning to and accepting the fact that, for better or for worse, he was a master of the horror genre…while also introducing into his regimen even more of his sublime gallows humor as well as some incredible allegorical outlook on the state of affairs. Craven, who had made a career of examining the most uncomfortable truths about humanity, clearly decided to do this once more. However, the horror scene had shifted its dynamic away from the intense and inescapable realism of those late 70s films that Craven and his counterparts had made. As I wrote in my review of Shocker, shock had given way to schlock by this point. Making a film akin to Craven’s early offerings would have been a death knell to a story that Craven obviously felt was important enough to get out there. So, rather than fire his missive directly at viewers, Craven took it over the top.
WAY over the top.
He also had a great deal to say about the state of affairs at that moment in our history. We were coming out of the era of divided decadence known as the 80s, where the Haves ruled the realm while the Have Nots slipped further and further into the class chasm that Reaganomics helped excavate. We’d just gone through the Persian Gulf War at the beginning of the year this movie released. In fact, if you check out the televisions running throughout the house that Fool breaks into, you’ll notice they’re showing footage from that war. Oh, and did I mention that the house belonged to two supremely demented and disturbingly inbred people who are hoarding loads of money and harboring even more secrets within the confines of their home? But we’ll get further into that in a moment.
Oh, and clearly Craven found the public’s televised participation in warfare horrific in its own right. This was the second movie in a row into which he integrated televised images of war and destruction. Whereas this film made it part of the background motif, Shocker brought it well and truly to the forefront, with Craven having his protagonist and antagonist fight each other while running through some of the more infamous images broadcast from war zones. I’ve talked about this before in various places, but the televised impact of the brutality of war helped to shift the focus of horror in many ways. While for some horror makers, the actual participation in war was what shaped their ideas, others like Craven only witnessed what was shown to them via news reports from the front lines. And that was more than enough.
Now, back to our review, already in progress.
Yes, there are elements of class warfare and racial warfare. The Robesons are White while the majority of their tenants are…not. The Robesons are extremely wealthy. The kind of wealthy that exists for those privileged enough to be born into the (debatably) right family. They inherited wealth and property and the ability to abuse those with less than them because of this privilege. They also inherited some supremely deteriorated genes thanks to the family clearly not allowing outside guests into their gene pool.
Yeah, the Robesons, who refer to each other as “Mommy” and “Daddy” are actually siblings. And apparently years (decades?) of inbreeding have left them unable to have their own kids (evidence that there might actually be a deity out there, balancing out the universe), so they steal children and try to mold them into suitable heirs. Unfortunately, that obstinate vein of free will that humans possess and cherish so deeply leads to inevitable failure with nearly all the kidnapped kids. So what do the Robesons do? First, they eradicate the “problem” areas (Have a habit of talking back? We’ll just lop off that pesky tongue!). Next, they lock the children up.
Under. The. Stairs.
This ain’t no Harry Potter fairy tale, kiddies. And this ain’t no drill. There are literally people under the stairs. Placed there by this dynamic duo of debauchery:
Genre fans will instantly recognize these two as Ed and Nadine Hurley, those crazy kids-in-love from Twin Peaks. Well, maybe not instantly…unless Nadine were wearing her eye patch and working on her completely silent drape-runners.
[Loba Tangent: Damn, I need to re-watch that show.]
Craven specifically sought out actors Everett McGill and Wendy Robie to play Daddy and Mommy. He could not have been more on-point, as both McGill and Robie brought with them the quirky chemistry they had developed together during their tenure in Twin Peaks as well as a frenetic, unstable energy and an ability to devour the scenery around them in massive, heaving gulps. Simply put, it’s primarily because of McGill and Robie that Craven’s story played with the level of success that it did. Not to say, of course, that the rest of the cast didn’t bring their A games as well. Brandon Adams was wonderfully cast as Fool, it was great getting to see an early era Ving Rhames, A.J. Langer brought a certain degree if discomfiting fragility to her role as Alice, Sean Whalen amused as Roach (although I wonder how this would have played out had Hilary Swank won the role instead), and it was fun to see Craven pilfer from an NOES sequel for Kelly Jo Minter.
Still, McGill and Robie. Those two relinquished all pretense for their roles in this movie and the end result was magic. In fact, I would rank The People Under the Stairs as one of Craven’s best offerings to the horror altar, thanks in large part to their delivery of his story to audiences. Solid insanity, every step of the way. May they burn in hell. Forever and ever in hell.
And while their performances are almost beyond absurdist, there always is a level of fear and danger to their characters’ actions that keep them rooted to the truth that these two are the villains of the day for more than just horror-related reasons. They are what is wrong, not just with the deteriorating neighborhoods surrounding their gated, secured home, but with everywhere and everything. Craven’s commentary? IMHO, it’s that the greed and deranged decadence of the preceding decade had deepened the class and race divides to an unbelievable level. No, the wealthy were not eating their victims or getting away with debaucheries that would make Buffalo Bill blush, but they were getting away with a certain degree of disconnectedness to what the rest of the nation was enduring. Craven’s Mommy and Daddy epitomized the dearth of sympathy that swelled within the hearts of those who had no idea what it was like outside their enclave of entitlement.
Sadly, this all still sounds disturbingly familiar…perhaps even more so now.
Mommy and Daddy might have been satirically unhinged, but not by much. Neither possessed compassion for those with lesser means. They instead viewed them as threats to be contained or eliminated. Out of sight, out of mind. They hoarded their wealth and cared only about acquiring more…simply for the purpose of having it. Not spending it. Not sharing it. Just keeping it locked away. They behaved with utter assumed impunity, which local police reinforced simply by reason that these were well-established, upstanding (read: wealthy and White) members of the community; and don’t forget that Daddy oozed a sexual predatory nature that left no doubt that young Alice was most assuredly not safe in Wonderland.
With this film, Craven was castigating the upper classes for their lack of compassion while reminding the rest of us that things would only change if we became more aware, stopped turning a blind eye to one group or judging another because of appearances and assumptions. Neither is a true bellwether. Craven’s talent in getting this message across with these characters was in being able to make us laugh at their behaviors up front, but to cringe as the reality of their existence and actions settled into our brains. These were deplorable monsters, made that much worse by their attempts to hide their insatiable deviance from an outside world that, honestly, wasn’t really trying all that hard to spot it because of their assumed upstanding positions in the community.
Conversely, young Fool proved his merit by returning to the house he barely escaped, to save Alice and the other children hidden within, thus tipping all assumptions right on their ass. And that moment when Mommy gets ready to launch a racially explicit invective against Fool’s family, who have come to find him and help him, and is instead forced to face the residents she and Daddy were summarily sticking it to on a regular basis? That’s such the perfect encapsulation of Craven’s wish to force a similar face-to-face between the wealthy and those they have disenfranchised. And her subsequent “eat the rich” moment would have made Steven Tyler so very proud.
It had been a slow slope downward in Craven’s oeuvre since A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Craven wanting to explore other cinematic genres and fighting unsuccessfully against a tide of consensus from critics, production companies, and fans alike to keep him locked into horror. However, I truly believe that this film was a successful return for him to that insightful prowess into the human condition that put him down the horror path in the first place. I’ve also realized that I don’t yet own this film. Thank you, Cravenous, for bringing this to my attention so that I can rectify it post-haste.
[Loba Apology: I nearly left this movie out of my Cravenous reviews. I honestly don’t know what happened. I guess I got so excited about getting closer to The People Under the Stairs that I lost my focus. Oversight rectified. You’re welcome.]
Sorry for the miniature nature of the poster art for this film, but this was all I could find. With as misogynistic as the imagery is on the artwork, though, I’m kind of okay with this being the largest version I could find. Also, that’s pretty risque for a made-for-television film, eh?
That’s right, after the three-in-a-row lackluster performance of Wes Craven’s theatrical offerings, he decided to head back to television. Maybe he thought he could find his mojo there. Maybe he enjoyed working on those Twilight Zone episodes so much that he wanted to recapture some of that. Or maybe he just wanted a break from being bullied and berated by critics, producers, and fans. He wanted something easy. A palate cleanser, so to speak.
Whatever the reason, we ended up with 1990’s MFTV movie Night Visions. I almost didn’t end up reviewing this film, as it’s unavailable for rent anywhere I looked. However, as luck would have it, someone has posted it to YouTube. Oh the lengths I’m willing to go for a review series.
The bonus we get with this film is that not only did Craven direct and produce it, he also co-wrote it with Thomas Baum. Baum, by the way, was quite prevalent as a screenplay writer back in the day, writing The Manhattan Project, several episodes of Deadly Nightmares (originally called The Hitchhiker), and Nightmare Cafe for Craven. My OMG moment from his credits is that he wrote the screenplay for The Haunting of Sarah Hardy, which is one of my favorite Sela Ward movies and also can be found in its entirety, much to my girlish delight, on YouTube. Prophets bless YouTube.
But I digress. What else is new, right?
The most telling thing about this movie is that you instantly know two things: Who the killer is and what the purpose of the movie is. The former was painfully obvious to me and led me to believe that it was secondary to and in support of the primary purpose: This was meant to be an introduction to a television series. Given that Craven would try again in a couple of years to launch a different series with Nightmare Cafe, I think it’s safe to assume that he really was growing weary of making movies. He wanted to do something different. Maybe just produce for a little while, with the option of writing and/or directing if he chose to.
Unfortunately, this was not going to be the E-ticket that he wanted it to be. There were simply too many questions unanswered and not enough fresh intrigue about either of the main characters for this to incite the interest needed to convey it from MFTV movie to series. Even Craven’s directing was on-point but mostly predictable with this film. It just felt like a paint-by-numbers effort on his part and another indication that this was definitely a point in his career when he was struggling with what he wanted next.
That being said, this was still better than Chiller. I’m telling you, Chiller is going to end up being my least favorite of all his films, denizens. I can feel it.
Seriously, Night Visions was a good enough effort from everyone involved that I didn’t mind watching this film. I wouldn’t seek it out again, but I’m not going to slam people for the attempt. Especially James Remar, who seemed to be giving his all to what was unfortunately a predictable cop character. Loryn Locklin did her best, but her character was the less interesting of the two (which was strange since hers was the more damaged and more complex of the two leads; Craven again was showing his interest both in strong female characters and in the complex dynamics of mental turmoil). Also, it was great seeing Penny Johnson in another Craven film (remember, we haven’t seen her since her stint as Sue in The Hills Have Eyes Part 2) as well as Horace Pinker Mitch Pileggi, working on perfecting his hard-ass law enforcement official in charge of two rogue agents. Gee, wonder when that kind of expertise would ever work in his favor…
As if we (and Craven) didn’t learn this lesson with Deadly Blessing, here comes another example of how outside involvement in one’s creative process is bad, mmmkay?
Funny that it would be with the second movie Craven directed with the word “Deadly” in the title (although the title was originally the same as the book on which the story is tenuously based). I speak, of course, of 1986’s Deadly Friend. Based on Diana Henstell’s novel Friend, Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the screenplay for this story about teenaged computer genius Paul and his robot BB, and how they moved to a new town, where Paul fell in love with pretty blonde Buffy the Vampire Slayer Sam, who ends up dead at the hands of her abusive father around the same time that Paul loses BB to a blast of rifle shot from the neighborhood hermit who was just trying to be hermit-y. So what does Paul do? Implants BB’s A.I. chip into Sam’s brain, of course. Hilarity…didn’t ensue. Just a whole lot of WTFery.
Oh, also, Rubin’s most famous other contributions to Hollywood are that he wrote Jacob’s Ladder and Ghost. That kind of lessens the sting of this train wreck. Although, again, this is all about the damage of outside demands.
So what happened with this movie? A whole lot of wrong. See, Warner Bros. was delighted to have snagged the director who had been riling up the horror crowd for more than a decade at this point and had just dropped Freddy Krueger on audiences to continuing success for New Line Cinema. They wanted to channel that power into their own pockets, which translated to they wanted Craven to deliver something as horrific or worse than A Nightmare on Elm Street into their movie collection (see the movie’s poster above, which claims that this movie was Craven’s “most horrifying creation,” which was kind of right, but for all the wrong reasons).
Craven, however, had a completely different idea. He was tiring already of being known only as a horror director. With this film, he was hoping to do something more like a sci-fi thriller/love story. Something sweet and intriguing, not disgusting and unsettling like most of his other movies. Neither Warner Bros. nor his devoted fans were feeling this. When he finished the first cut of this movie, which went through title changes from Friend to Artificial Intelligence to A.I. and finally to Deadly Friend, everyone but Craven was disappointed. Fans wanted gore. Warner Bros. wanted gore. Also, WB VP Mark Canton wanted an ending that makes absolutely zero sense but that ended up being the new ending because no one tells the emperor that he looks stupid naked.
Craven ended up going back in and adding a bunch of gore and a few minuscule scares throughout the film to satisfy the fan demand, and re-shot the ending to match the upper echelon request…and what we ended up with was what I would now categorize as the kind of movie that is enjoyable when you’re young, but that contains far too many plot holes and questionable decisions to continue to be enjoyable to an adult with a hyper-critical mind.
It actually surprised me in all the bad ways how much I couldn’t enjoy this movie anymore. Not really scary, not really sci-fi, extremely dated, and with tons of questionable choices, I at least can say that Deadly Friend is still fun to watch for two reasons: catching all the anachronisms and poor choices; and one of the greatest horror death scenes ever. Think basketball versus head.
Otherwise, I spent much of the movie, including the increasingly more ridiculous end half, asking all kinds of questions that detracted from the story immensely. Questions like why did Sam have to look like a raccoon after she died? Was there no budget for a decent make-up artist? Couldn’t Craven bring some of his crew from NOES to help him out on this film? After being spoiled by the makeup for Freddy Krueger, going to this movie’s idea of “dead” makeup was more than jarring. It was just silly. See Exhibit A:
Seriously, I could come up with a better corpse makeup than this. Then again, was she a corpse? Was the A.I. processor taking over the functions of a living entity? Or was it merely animating dead flesh. That was never really addressed, but something needed to be touched upon to explain this ridiculous makeup.
Then there is the question of Sam’s robotic movements. BB’s A.I. processor was having difficulty integrating into her brain. He wanted to keep moving the way he remembered moving. However, he had no trouble integrating enough to use her legs to walk even though he shouldn’t have known how to use legs. Why, then, couldn’t he just as quickly figure out how to use her hands the way they were meant to be used? Because the pincer hands were a little distracting. See Exhibit B:
She just walked around like that for most of the time that the character was “BB/Sam,” until it was no longer convenient but literally made no sense that she started to function normally toward the end only to…well, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Back up to the fact that, in addition to moving like BB, Sam also sounded like BB. Which meant that Sam sounded like a demented Roger Rabbit, because Charles Fleischer made the annoying noises attributed to the robot. Why? She only possessed BB’s A.I. processor. Not his vocal chords. Of course, they never really specified how BB made any noise in the first place. Still, there should have been no way that his voice could have come from her larynx. That was just silly, and made all the sillier when she then started to sound like herself at the end.
Even sillier than this? The ending. Ugh, the ending. So Sam meets her second ending from a bullet from a deputy’s gun after causing a whole bunch of death and destruction. Paul, still unwilling to let go of probably the only girl to ever show any interest in him (and for some reason not in a cell of his own for stealing a dead body and re-animating it for this death trek through this once-quiet town), breaks into the morgue to steal Sam again, only to find that somehow a robot has grown beneath Sam’s human skin, breaking through at just the right moment to start choking Paul before the film mercifully finally fades to black. Oh, but not before we hear that Sam once more sounds like BB.
This seriously was one of the worst endings possible for this movie. I don’t care if Canton was one of Warner Bros.’ VPs at the time. This ending makes NO SENSE. How would a robot grow? And what happened to Sam’s bones and organs and blood? Paul stole her body from the hospital before she could be embalmed or prepped in any way for burial. Everything was still there. Only now it transformed into robot parts. Never mind the fact that, right before Sam is killed again, she’s starting to show signs of returning to a more normally functioning human, with normal human movement and normal human speech (or that, when she’s shot, she bleeds and we don’t hear any tin ricochet noise or something equally ridiculous). What was that all about? How could she be going full human only to then turn into a robot at the end?
Logic, you are completely MIA from this film.
Still, with all the terrible, I’d still rather watch this than Chiller ever again. I’m not sure that’s saying much, but it’s all I’ve got at this point.


New Hampshire native, Kaleigh Cronin, fell in love with performing when she first
played the title role in “Annie” at eight years old. Since then, Kaleigh has been lucky enough to
sing at the White House, Fenway Park, The Waldorf Astoria and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Hall,
perform on theatrical stages across the country, and be cast as a series regular
on the PBS children’s television series, "ZOOM."
After receiving her BFA in Acting/Musical Theater from Carnegie Mellon University, Kaleigh spent two
years on the road as "Lorraine" in the National Tour of Jersey Boys
before making her Broadway debut in Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall's revival of Cabaret at Studio
54. In addition to her role as “Lulu/TwoLadies," Kaleigh understudied Michelle
Williams, Emma Stone, and Sienna Miller as "Sally Bowles." The success of Cabaret led to subsequent
performances on The Today Show, The 2014 Tony Awards, and as the first Broadway cast to perform
on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where she nearly died of excitement. Since then, she originated the
role of "Marie" in the Broadway musical "A Bronx Tale" before leaving to play "Giorgio Moroder" in the all new
"SUMMER - The Donna Summer Musical" on Broadway.
When Kaleigh is not on stage or in front of a camera, you can find this fiery red head entertaining friends
with her spot-on impersonations, having impromptu 90s dance parties in her kitchen or spending time
with her one true love, popcorn. (She loves you too, John!)
Kaleigh's aspires to build a long and successful career in all areas of the
entertainment industry. Some other goals include cooking her husband one meal without
setting the kitchen on fire and becoming the face of Skippy Peanut Butter.


Well, the movie I choose is Mean Girls, I’m going to write about the general information, general outline, and of course, my opinion.
So, this movie was directed by Mark Waters, the protagonists are: Linsday Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, and Amy Poehler. The greatest music of the movie are: “One Way Or Another” from Blondie and “God Is A DJ” from Pink. And there’s no special effects, it’s just not necessary.
Well done, this movie was basically about a girl, Cady [Linsday Lohan]. Her life was lived totally in Africa and she came to Chicago. Her life was pretty delighted, she was VERY, VERY happy there. So she was included in the “mean girls” group, who transforms her life. It was a dream, but now became a hell, a real hell. But she just started walking with them because she was like obligated to, by her first friend, which was a girl who hated Regina [Rachel]. Than they started spoil her life [Regina’s] and the story is basically that, in the entire movie.
My opinion about this AWSOME movie, is just that I really love that, is just perfect, talks about the real life in high school, talks about what really happens to us, high school girls, I got nothing to say anymore, I really say the truth when I say that this movie IS JUST PERFECT.
By Yohanne Auana.
5 Comments »
The story is about a woman called Frances Mayes, a writer who lives in San Francisco, and has a perfect life, ’till her separation from her husband. She’s depressed, and has a text to finish, so she moves to Tuscan and begins a new life, reforming a little farm. She learns new thing about love, life, and friendship.
It’s in fact my favorite movie, and I do recommend to anybody who asks me about it. It’s an intelligent movie, because makes you think about yourself, your life and what you want for you. It can happen us to face our problems and to take the best decision.
3 Comments »
Before Harry Potter became a sucessful movie, it was a literay sucess. Harry Potter was written by Rowling, she spent ten years writing the whole serie, but just in 2001 the fisrt movie was produced, all the movies sequence were directed by David Yates, and Daniel Radcliffe was the leading actor. While 325 milion Harry Potter’ s books were sold in 64 languages, the movies pocketed 3,47 billion.
The story describes the Harry Potter’s life, he’s a orphan and his parents were famous wizards, with a parent’s inheritance he starts to study in a wizard’s school. All the plot envolves his important last name and the wizard’s learning. Harry Potter was recognized not only by his teachers but too his enemy as a special wizard. All the adventure’s developement envolve this special aspect of Harry Potter; his special power.
The Harry Potter series doesn’t have a great dramatic or sentimental context and we do not expect you to cry with its story, but it’s a wonderful entertainment with a story that envolves all our child’s fantasies, I woukd recomend the Harry Potter series to anyone who likes a great adventures movie with a great special effects.
2 Comments »
At Play in the Fields of the Lord’ is a beautiful and moving movie. The main scenes were filmed in Belém do Pará, Brazil, but it is a co-prodution organized by the august director Hector Babenco (Brazil) and the French actor Jean-Claude Carriére. Daryl Hannah, Tom Berenger, Aidan Quinn, Kathy Bates and John Lithgow were in the cast.
Adapted from the 1965 novel of the same name, the movie is a drama and tells the story of two aircraf pilots. They were flying on the Amazon Forest when they had to land in the small city of Madre de Deus There was a very nasty police captain and he tried to made the pilots to bombard an Indian tribe called “the Niarunas”. The problem is that one of the pilots was an Indian descendent.
I saw this film when I was a teenager but I remember that I was deeply moved me by the story. The pictures were beautiful, too; but, the most interesting were the old Brazilian songs playing like soundtrack. It is a great movie, despite that did not use good especial effects. In my opinion ‘At Play in the Fields of the Lord’ is an unmissable movie.
5 Comments »
Wicker Park is the most curious film I have ever seen. It is about love and intense psychological drama. Paul McGuigan is the director, Josh Hartnett and Rose Byrne are the leading actors. The movie is not famous and also the cast, but all the comments and critics are the best.
Chicago was the set to the movie. A man fell deeply in love with a woman, but she disappears. So, he caught in an obsessive search for her. Two years after, he finally found a trace and decides to discover what really happened.
Cilff Martinez was the musical producer. The soundtrack is wonderful. His compositions mix sampled instruments with acoustic performances, living all the scenes very exciting.
5 Comments »
In February, the movie Cast Away was see by me. Tom Hanks is the main actor. This movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis in 2.000. The music os Cat Away was created by Alan Silvestri. In the story, special effects aren’t see by us.
The movie tells the story of a man that was traveling when his plane fell. Chuck Noland was the union survivor. His family and friends were thinking that he had died because nobody has more information about him. Chuck Noland lived in a desert insland for 4 years and the union company him was a ball.
I’m sure that Cast Away is recommended by me. It’s a very nice and intelligent drama. I’m sure it’s a nice movie to be seen by everybody.
From Renata, 2008/05/31 at 11:55 AM
7 Comments »
The movie 50 First Dates was directed by Peter Segal, and the music more important is Over the Rainbow was composed by E.Y. Harburg e Harold Arlen. Adam Sandler(Henry Roth) and Drew Barrymore (Lucy) are the leading actors. The film is comedy/romance.
The movie is set in United States. Henry Roth is a man afraid of commitment up until he meets the beautiful Lucy. They hit it off and Henry think he’s finally found the girl of his dreams, until he discovers she has short-term memory loss and forgets him the very next day.
50 First Dates is a wonderful movie. The best think about it is the story romance. The situation is more beautiful, and different. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes romantic story and surprise all days.
2 Comments »
American Beauty is a movie which was directed by Sam Mendes. Kevin Spacey is the leading actor. In the movie have many songs, but the mosto f them are instrumental, the songs were composed by Thomas Newman. American Beauty hás a famous cover Picture for the movie, is an American woman on the “bed of roses”.
The movie is a drama is set in one American city. It´s about one man. He hates the daughter of his wife and he doesn’t love his wife any more. He changed his life because he thought that doesn’t had anything to lose and motivated by loves prohibited. The man finds freedom and got diferent with himself and with his wife. Lester is the name of this man. His experiences showed which freedom isn’t a “bed of roses” it seems.
In my opinion, American Beauty is a good movie because it has one story and one moral. I recommend this movie to all people. But in particular to young, because they like freedom without limits.
By Flaviane Beatriz
7 Comments »
The movie that I loved was CRASH NO LIMITE. this a American and German movie of drama directed by Paul Haggis. the first appearance was in the Festival of Cinema of Toronto in September of 2004 and was launched internationally in 2005.
The film speaks of preconception and tensions racial and social.The history about the movie happens in Los Angeles and show many people with many history that they meet throughout the film. the personages of the movie are wronged for its etnia or social level, where they examine its propious preconceptions. the movie has many famous actors as Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon and the actor and rapper Ludacris.
This movie earned many prizes as OSCAR 2006 of Better Film, Better Original Script and Better Edition. Crash no limite is exelent movie.
by Allan Lima.
10 Comments »
Donnie Darko is a movie of 2001. At the time, it was launched without much racket, it did not have much success and it was called movie “cult” for the critical for to have an original and intriguing history about what it exists after the death and on the possibility being able to change our future. The movie was conquering the public with passing of the time for having a firm history and a different script of that until then the North-American cinema it makes. But it is not only therefore that the film is one of my favorites. Donnie Darko is also the name of the protagonist of history. Adolescent of middle class of U.S.A. and living in the decade of eighty, Donnie Darko fights to survive in its melancholic and sad world, to the times, to the cost, of remedies to sleep and to control its riots of mood. After an airplane turbine accidentally falling in top of its house, more necessarily in top of its room – but Donnie he survives because he has sleeplessness and in the night of the tragedy he had left sleeping for the neighborhood – it starts to have dreams with a Giant Rabbit that the alert one for the day of the death of Donnie: what he will happen inside of 28 days, six hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds, or either, in the night of Halloween, the 30 of October of 1988. From there, the Giant Rabbit starts to give tips Donnie Darko to commit some small delicts in its city to disclose some hypocrisies of the people most popular of the place. With passing of the time, Donnie starts to perceive that the Giant Rabbit also can have the key it to escape of the death being moved its future. But for this it has of discovered a way to travel in the time to change the future.
by Wederson Santos
3 Comments »


£58.25 inc VAT
Tuesday 30th July
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Set against the majesty of the Serengeti Plains and to the evocative rhythms of Africa, Disney’s multi-award winning musical The Lion King will redefine your expectations of the theatre.
Brilliantly reimagined by acclaimed director Julie Taymor, Disney’s beloved film has been transformed into a spectacular theatrical experience that explodes with glorious colours, stunning effects and enchanting music.
At its heart is the powerful and moving story of Simba – the epic adventure of his journey from wide-eyed cub to his destined role as the King of the Pridelands.


I was at my neighborhood cocktail lounge last night (everybody should have one!) when a friend of mine brought up Barry Levinson in conversation, which reminded me that one of my favorite film scores of all time is from a Barry Levinson movie.
Randy Newman’s lovely music for Avalon (1990) is heartfelt and elegiac, which also perfectly describes this deft, observant, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking study of three generations of Polish Jews in Baltimore in the early and mid-1900s. (Listen to audio samples of the score here.)
This semi-autobiographical story of immigrants (and children and grandchildren of immigrants), which won Levinson a WGA Award for Best Screenplay, will no doubt hold resonance for anyone who has or who knows someone who has adopted America as his or her new country.
Avalon is a loving portrait of the large Krichinsky clan and its pursuit of the American dream, but that dream comes at a terrible cost. For all its humor and generosity of spirit, the film wants to explore the disintegration of the family, asserts that progress has dark consequences, and blames television of all things for destroying the cohesion that had always been central to the collective identity of the Krichinskys.
Near the end of the film, a character says, “If I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better.” Avalon is a clarion call for us to remember our roots, a plea for us to make storytelling—to make oral history—an integral part of our lives once again.
(By the way, you can watch the trailer here, where you’ll get a glimpse of two terrific actors on opposite ends of the generational spectrum: Armin Mueller-Stahl and a startlingly young Elijah Wood.)
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Award winning poet, playwright and novelist
Nick Drake joined Cape Farewell’s 2010 Arctic Expedition sailing around Svalbard, an archipelago 500 miles north of Norway. The Farewell Glacier, his poem and a collection of poetry published under the same name, grew out of this journey. Poetry by Nick Drake also featured in High Arctic, an installation by UVA shown at the National Maritime Museum in 2011/12.
Nick Drake, born near London in 1961, has published several volumes of poetry including The Man in the White Suit, winner of Forward Prize for best first collection) and From The Word Go. He wrote the screenplay for Romulus my Father starring Eric Bana, which won Best Film at the Australian Film awards. His plays include To Reach The Clouds (an adaptation of Philippe Petit’s account of his high wire walk between the Twin Towers) and Success (National Theatre Connections). He is finishing the third in a trilogy of historical novels set in 18th dynasty Egypt, and also adapting them for TV. He is adapting the play Baghdad Wedding into a film, working on an opera based on the Philippe Petit play with composer Tansy Davies, and writing a play about young climate change activists for the National.


Toni-Leslie James didn’t cry 25 years ago when she received her first Tony Awards nomination. She did today, however, when she received her second.
James, associate professor and director of costume design in the Department of Theatre in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, walked into the theater department this afternoon as a newly minted Tony nominee for Best Costume Design in a Play for her work on “Jitney,” the critically praised revival of the August Wilson play. She immediately encountered such an onrush of congratulations and genuine elation from her colleagues and students that she broke into tears. She couldn’t help herself. They seemed about as happy about her honor as she was.
“I’m so lucky to work with the people I work with,” James said. “The kids are so excited. We’re basically having a lovefest over here.”