Showing posts with label The Exorcist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Exorcist. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Tangerine Dream's Betrayal - A Window into Friedkin's Sorcerer



It's only been over the last ten years or so that I've begun to feel a growing obsession with the cinematic works of William Friedkin. The man whose name I once knew solely in conjunction with what I once considered the scariest movie ever made, The Exorcist, began to take on new connotations back somewhere in the murky recesses of the end of our previous decade.  It was at that time I watched The French Connection for the first time since I was an un-interested child, a third-person voyeur's viewing via the method of early film ingestion many 80s children will relate to. During the dawn of the VHS and video store boom, Saturday nights were commonly VCR Nights; you'd trek to the Video Store with your parents early in the day, pick out something to watch during the afternoon or early evening, then after dinner, it was parents' movie time. Sometimes they rented stuff we could all watch, sometimes it was stuff you weren't interested in but you stayed in the front room and played with your toys while they watched, because the nuclear family was still mostly alive and well in the Suburban United States and the units of the family gravitated toward one another, teenage social rebellion having not yet set in. Then sometimes, there were movies like The Falcon and Snowman, or The Deer Hunter, where the folks waited until you were in bed to watch. It is in this second variation that I believe I originally was exposed to and absorbed elements of The French Connection, but what made it to adulthood was little more than the film's grimy tone.

When I did sit down in my thirties and watch Popeye Doyle and the entire spectacle of Friedkin's crime epic, I was floored. I'd just finished reading a book that Mr. Brown had lent me, Stephen Farber's Outrageous Conduct. Primarily a depiction of the events leading up to and the aftermath from the deaths of veteran actor Vic Morrow and two young children during the filming of John Landis' Twilight Zone: The Movie, Farber offered examples of other 'outrageous conduct' by 70s/80s era directors. The French Connection was included; Friedkin's filming of a car chase during actual New York City traffic resonated with me as outrageous, but just the right kind of outrageous. This is the commitment that made Cinema what it was in its heyday. It is also what led to corporate control and the eventual commoditization of Cinema, so that today, good or bad, all we really have with big budgets are franchise movies. The French Connection played out before me, eliciting moments of half-remembered ah-has, but ultimately as a brand new experience, making me realize the rest of Friedkin's work was something well worth engaging in.

Sorcerer was another movie that I believe Farber's book mentioned. Long elusive to digital transfer, I hunted for screenings of this one for a few years, until finally a BR was announced. I tried to order that disc several times; on every episode it eluded me, until early in 2019, when Friedkin's jungle-epic popped back up on Amazon. I ordered it, however, Amazon had trouble fulfilling that order. I received countless emails over the course of several weeks, all assurances the disc would ship soon. Until finally, the final email came and announced a refund had been issued. It seems I was to wait just a little while longer before I could see Sorcerer*.

Finally, last week, a happened to look at my Amazon wish list and noticed Sorcerer on Blu Ray had returned. I snapped that fucker up in a heartbeat and two days later, my disc arrived.


This past Saturday, I sat down to finally watch this much-anticipated film. However, my initial viewing was doomed from the start. It was late, and Sorcerer has, what my good friend and fellow Horror Vision co-host Ray calls '70s pacing.' Now, to be clear, I do not mind '70s pacing.' In many cases, I love it. However, I have to be ready for it. Last Saturday, I was not. After sleeping through most of this attempt, I called it quits around 2:30 AM and left the comfy confines of our new couch for the more appropriate quarters of our bed.

The following day was a frustrating one. This always happens when I fail to meet an anticipated film on its own terms. When a movie is as theoretically this amazing and I don't bond with it, my initial interpretation of that schism is that the problem originates with me, not the film. How many amazing pieces of art, whether song, prose, film, do we encounter in our lives and dismiss, only to reconnect with it years later and realize we were simply not tuned to that piece's specific wavelength upon first encounter? It so happens that, after moping about Sunday, Monday returned from work with the first strains of viral illness washing over me and dug in for another attempt.

This time, Sorcerer worked.

I still had a hard time with the first hour or so of the film, and I'm now leaning toward that being the Film's fault and not mine, but after making it all the way through, I intend to go back and see if completing the journey helps bolster what otherwise feels like pacing issues. Issues caused by a Director's insistence on adhering to a "European" tone that really doesn't do anything but, to reference an infamous scene later in the film, spin its tires in the mud. However, I'm still not sure I won't now see something in the arduous first act that I didn't see before. Regardless, Sorcerer is an achievement of a film, and one I will continue to engage with, analyze, and subject others to for the rest of my life. Because the imagery, the acting, and the cinema verite reality of that acting is of a caliber that's nearly unbelievable, and because, like another movie I wrote about here recently, from the perspective of 2020's Hollywood, it is almost unbelievable anyone allowed a director to be so indulgent as to make this movie. In keeping with this, you'll notice this title card during the film's opening:



That's because a second studio pitched in to help carry the cost of completing the film after money began to wash away in the storm Friedkin had created. You can read about this in length on the Wikipedia Entry for Sorcerer, however there's a wealth of other information out there, most of it coalescing in the Italian Documentary Friedkin Uncut, which has yet to have a release in the states. My own information from the documentary came second hand; gleaned from talking with someone who was lucky enough to see the film on an airplane in Europe.

Also, and there's no way to discuss this film and not mention this, the rope bridge scene is surely one of the greatest realizations of a Director's vision ever put to film. It's outstanding in its tension, almost a bullet hole that kills the rest of the film, if it wasn't for the narratives degeneration into complete, alien madness. For an in-depth discussion of where this film goes visually, HERE is a great article I found while putting this post together.

Another little time capsule that helps illustrate the cultural malaise toward this film upon its release, here's a clip I found online via the Eyes on Cinema youtube channel, which has a wealth of information on it:




Both men are mis-informed about the film's 'Special FX,' and I wonder if that's because during the initial release of Sorcerer, Friedkin had to downplay the dangerous conditions he'd created in order to make the film, possibly because the studio(s) already had displayed the intention to let it die a quick and costly death? Would revealing the methods of madness employed in the Rope Bridge Sequence, the real explosions captured during the Jerusalem Vignette, or the toll the film had taken on its cast helped bring people in to see Sorcerer? We'll never know.

Finally, just to bring everything around full circle, the track that leads off this post is from Tangerine Dreams phenomenal OST to the film, which Waxwork Records just released in their customary fantastic high-end format. You can peruse or purchase that record HERE.

.................

* During this time, several pop up screenings occurred at the likes of the more passionate, independent movie houses in LaLa Land. I could attend none of them.

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Happy Halloween 2019!!!



Yes, I post this song every year. I will continue to do so for the rest of my time on Earth. Nothing sets the Autumnal mood for me like this song, and this album (digipak version). My, how I miss Peter Steele and the boys.

**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)
10/10: Creepshow Episode 3
10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)
10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena
10/13: AHS 1984 Ep 4/In the Tall Grass
10/14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
10/15: Rabid (2019)
10/16: Wounds
10/17: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18: Creepshow Episode 4
10/19: Ed Wood/AHS 1984 Ep. 5
10/20: Sinister/Sinister 2
10/21: Uncanny Annie
10/22: Scream
10/23: Simpsons 666: Treehouse of Horror
10/24: Jennifer's Body
10/25: Belzebuth/The Lighthouse/Halloween
10/26: Murder Party
10/27: AHS 1984 Ep. 6/Arsenic and Old Lace/The Fair Haired Child (Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 9)
10/28: May
10/29: The Exorcist (Theatrical Cut)
10/30: Nightmare Cinema

I felt considerably saddened two nights ago when, for the second time in the last ten years, I watched William Friedkin's The Exorcist and felt nothing in the way of the fear that the film used to evoke in me. If you chart my experiences with Friedkin's masterpiece, there was my awareness of it as a kid; I'm certain I saw parts of it as a child, but I don't think I saw the entire film until somewhere in the early to mid-90s. I don't really remember that viewing, other than as an introduction. My critical faculties for film, in general, were burgeoning at the time, but still largely unsophisticated. Then, in the early 00s, I watched it with a friend, stoned out of my mind in a darkened room, and felt a very real fear that bordered on dread. This feeling stayed with me for at least a day afterward and inspired my oft-repeated axiom, "I don't believe in the Devil, except for three days after I watch The Exorcist."

This used to be exactly true.

I watched the film again in 2004 with the same friend and a few other fellows, all stoned, lights out, in the living room of the house some friends and I used to rent in the Beverly neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. I remember that viewing best because I was so freaked out during it I didn't want to get up and go to the restroom, which was about three feet beyond the television.

Fast forward to somewhere around 2009-2010. Living in Los Angeles now, I invited a few friends over to watch the Director's Cut of The Exorcist, the version I had never seen that contained the freaky and much-hyped Spider-walk sequence. After having talked it up for quite some time to everyone present, this was the first viewing where the film really did not affect me almost at all, certainly not the way it had in the past. That brooding, sustained fear is what I look for in 'scary movies.' I chalked this up to the Director's Cut potentially having different pacing.

After my viewing of the Theatrical Cut again two nights ago, I now find that it's not the film, it's me.

Most Horror films use jump scares, because they're fun and easy. Some use gore or disturbing premises and images to achieve their desired effect. FEW can create the air of menace I'm talking about here. The Exorcist - which although it appears no longer affects me I still consider the scariest movie ever made - definitely does it the best. The original Blair Witch Project also does this and has the advantage of real human fear being captured on film in places (no, I am not suggesting the marketing that the film was real is true. But BWP was partially shot with the three actors operating under false pretenses, and long before the hype of that film began, I read an article that talked about how the directors followed the actors through the woods for several days, employing a magnet to disrupt their compass and actually preying on them by making the strange noises in the middle of the night and, at one point, actually running up and attacking the tent while the actors were inside freaking out). More recently, during its original theatrical run, I was surprised to find James Wan's Insidious had some genuinely scary scenes - the baby monitor and the ghost that walks through the wall, in particular. In fact, several of Wan's franchise films have great moments of sustained fear - think of the two sisters reacting to the dark corner or the handclaps in The Conjuring - but the films usually also take a misstep along the way that neutralizes the overall effect. This year, as part of 31 Days of Horror, I was pleasantly surprised to find Hell House, LLC has some very real fear-inducing moments, and nary a misstep afterward. But off the top of my head, that's all I can think of (always looking for suggestions). They say familiarity breeds contempt, but I've never agreed with that. However, perhaps at this point, I've had the maximum number of viewings one can have with a legitimately fear-producing film before it loses its power. Not to mention, if you add all the lampooning of key scenes from The Exorcist in comedy sketches and pop culture, I'm afraid I may lay this one to rest.

**

Playlist from the last few days:

Type O Negative - Dead Again
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
The Obsessed - Lunar Womb
Boy Harsher - Careful
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Billy Idol - Greatest Hits
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Deth Crux - Pears of Anguish  EP
Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim
The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Ministry - Psalm 69
Black Pumas - Eponymous
The Dead Milkmen - The King in Yellow
The Misfits - American Psycho

Card of the Day:



Is this banging my head against the wall or the edict I should move beyond my frustrations and continue to work toward my goal? Number two, always. 

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Adam Wingard's The Woods is really...


Well, this is everywhere by now but I'm at work so this is the first chance I've had to post about the fact that one of my newest favorite horror directors, Adam Wingard's upcoming film The Woods has been revealed to be nothing other than a new installment in...

The Blair Witch Project.



Words cannot summate just how excited I am. I have always considered the original Blair Witch Project to be the second scariest movie I have ever seen (coming in behind The Exorcist of course). I also really dug the sequel for its tone and pragmatic "we already did that now let's do the exact opposite" approach. And now, well, from what we're hearing after the press viewing, 2016's Blair Witch may enter into the upper echelons of that 'scariest flicks of all time" list.

Also worth embedding is the teaser for The Woods, simply for juxtaposition and, well, I really dig the way they used this version of Every Breath You Take.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Banned Exorcist Trailer from 1973 (via Bloody Disgusting)



Major props to the always awesome Bloody Disgusting for posting this. To me Friedkin's The Exorcist is still the scariest movie ever made. Interestingly enough though last year I purchased the "Version you've never seen before" DVD and it seemed like the editing was waaaaay different, to the point that the same palpable menace did not settle over the room as I watched it. Now, this could have been because I had several friends over for the viewing, although the viewing previous to that one saw myself and at least three friends sit in the dark and watch the film. That particular viewing I remember being too scared to even get up and answer the call of nature, for a time. I'll have to A and B the versions at some point.