JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 165 из 359In the eminentlyforgettable film Squirm , there is that one unforgettable moment (for all two hundred of us who saw the picture) when the lady taking a shower looks up to see why the water stopped coming and sees a showerhead clogged with dangling nightcrawlers. In Dario Argento's Suspiria , a bunch of schoolgirls are subjected to a rain of maggots . . . while sitting at the dinner table, no less. All of it has nothing to do with the film's plot, but it is vaguely interesting, in a repulsive sort of way. In Maniac , directed by former soft-core filmmaker William Lustig, there is the incredible moment when the homicidal ding-dung (Joe Spinell) carefully scalps one of his victims; the camera does not even leer at this-it merely stares at it with a kind of dead, contemplative eye that makes the scene well-nigh impossible to watch.
*I can remember, as a kid, one of my fellow kids asking me to imagine sliding down a long, polished bannister which suddenly and without warning turns into a razorblade. Man, I was days getting over that.
As noted previously, good horror movies often operate most powerfully on this "wanna-look-at-my-chewed-up-food?" level-a primitive, childish level. I would call it the "YUCH factor" . . . sometimes also known as the "Oh my God, was that gross! " factor. This is the point at which most good liberal film critics and most good reactionary film critics part company on the subject of the horror film (see, for instance, the difference between Lynn Minton's review of Dawn of the Dead in McCall 's-she left after two reels or so-and the cover story in the Arts section of The Boston Phoenix on the same film). Like punk rock music, the horror movie capable of delivering the good gross-out wallop finds its art in childish acts of anarchy-the moment in The Omen where the photographer is decapitated by a falling pane of glass is art of the most peculiar sort, and one cannot blame critics who find it easier to respond to Jane Fonda as a wholly unbelievable screen incarnation of Lillian Hellman in Julia than to stuff like this.
But the gross-out is art, and it is important that we have an understanding of this. Blood can fly everywhere and the audience will remain largely unimpressed. If, on the other hand, the audience has come to like and understand-or even just to appreciate-the characters they are watching as real people, if some artistic link has been formed there, blood can fly everywhere and the audience cannot remain unimpressed.
*I can remember, as a kid, one of my fellow kids asking me to imagine sliding down a long, polished bannister which suddenly and without warning turns into a razorblade. Man, I was days getting over that.
As noted previously, good horror movies often operate most powerfully on this "wanna-look-at-my-chewed-up-food?" level-a primitive, childish level. I would call it the "YUCH factor" . . . sometimes also known as the "Oh my God, was that gross! " factor. This is the point at which most good liberal film critics and most good reactionary film critics part company on the subject of the horror film (see, for instance, the difference between Lynn Minton's review of Dawn of the Dead in McCall 's-she left after two reels or so-and the cover story in the Arts section of The Boston Phoenix on the same film). Like punk rock music, the horror movie capable of delivering the good gross-out wallop finds its art in childish acts of anarchy-the moment in The Omen where the photographer is decapitated by a falling pane of glass is art of the most peculiar sort, and one cannot blame critics who find it easier to respond to Jane Fonda as a wholly unbelievable screen incarnation of Lillian Hellman in Julia than to stuff like this.
But the gross-out is art, and it is important that we have an understanding of this. Blood can fly everywhere and the audience will remain largely unimpressed. If, on the other hand, the audience has come to like and understand-or even just to appreciate-the characters they are watching as real people, if some artistic link has been formed there, blood can fly everywhere and the audience cannot remain unimpressed.