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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 166 из 359I can't remember, for instance, anyone who walked out of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde or Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch who didn't look as if he or she had been hit on the head with a very large board. Yet people walk out of other Peckinpah films- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Cross of Iron - yawning. That vital linkage just never happens.
That's all fine, and there is little argument about the virtues of Bonnie and Clyde as art, but let us return momentarily to the pureed arachnid in The Giant Spider Invasion . This doesn't qualify as art in respect to that idea of linkage between audience and character at all. Believe me, we don't care very much about the lady who drinks the spider (or anyone else in this movie, for that matter), but all the same there is that moment of frisson , that one moment when the groping fingers of the filmmaker find a chink in our defenses, shoot through it, and squeeze down on one of those psychic pressure points. We identify with the woman who is unknowingly drinking the spider on a level that has nothing to do with her character; we identify with her solely as a human being in a situation which has suddenly turned rotten-in other words, the gross-out serves as the means of a last-ditch sort of identification when the more conventional and noble means of characterization have failed. When she drinks the drink, we shudderand reaffirm our own humanity. **
Having said all that, let's turn to X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes , one of the most interesting and offbeat little horror movies ever made, and one that ends with one of the most shuddery gross-out scenes ever filmed.
This 1963 movie was produced and directed by Roger Corman, who at that time was in the process of metamorphosing from the dull caterpillar who had produced such meatloaf movies as Attack of the Crab Monsters and The Little Shop of Horror (not even notable for what may have been Jack Nicholson's screen debut) and into the butterfly who was responsible for such interesting and rather beautiful horror films as The Masque of the Red Death and The Terror .
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes marks the point where this strange two-step creature came out of its cocoon, I think. The screenplay was written by Ray Russell, the author of Sardonicus and a number of other novelsamong them the rather overripe Incubus and the much more successful Princess Pamela .
In The Man with the X-Ray Eyes , Ray Milland plays a scientist who develops eyedrops which enable him to see through walls, clothing, playing-cards, you name it; a kind of super-Murine, if you will. But once the process begins, there is no slowing it down. Milland's eyes begin to undergo a physical change, first becoming thickly bloodshot and then taking on a queer yellow cast.
That's all fine, and there is little argument about the virtues of Bonnie and Clyde as art, but let us return momentarily to the pureed arachnid in The Giant Spider Invasion . This doesn't qualify as art in respect to that idea of linkage between audience and character at all. Believe me, we don't care very much about the lady who drinks the spider (or anyone else in this movie, for that matter), but all the same there is that moment of frisson , that one moment when the groping fingers of the filmmaker find a chink in our defenses, shoot through it, and squeeze down on one of those psychic pressure points. We identify with the woman who is unknowingly drinking the spider on a level that has nothing to do with her character; we identify with her solely as a human being in a situation which has suddenly turned rotten-in other words, the gross-out serves as the means of a last-ditch sort of identification when the more conventional and noble means of characterization have failed. When she drinks the drink, we shudderand reaffirm our own humanity. **
Having said all that, let's turn to X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes , one of the most interesting and offbeat little horror movies ever made, and one that ends with one of the most shuddery gross-out scenes ever filmed.
This 1963 movie was produced and directed by Roger Corman, who at that time was in the process of metamorphosing from the dull caterpillar who had produced such meatloaf movies as Attack of the Crab Monsters and The Little Shop of Horror (not even notable for what may have been Jack Nicholson's screen debut) and into the butterfly who was responsible for such interesting and rather beautiful horror films as The Masque of the Red Death and The Terror .
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes marks the point where this strange two-step creature came out of its cocoon, I think. The screenplay was written by Ray Russell, the author of Sardonicus and a number of other novelsamong them the rather overripe Incubus and the much more successful Princess Pamela .
In The Man with the X-Ray Eyes , Ray Milland plays a scientist who develops eyedrops which enable him to see through walls, clothing, playing-cards, you name it; a kind of super-Murine, if you will. But once the process begins, there is no slowing it down. Milland's eyes begin to undergo a physical change, first becoming thickly bloodshot and then taking on a queer yellow cast.