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Here's the old thread discussion from around the time Haute Tension was released.

Regardless of his currency, or lack thereof, in modern-day psychiatry, Freud is, along with Marx, the most important thinker of the last two centuries. Everyone should have at least a cursory understanding of his work.

King Prendergast wrote:Regardless of his currency, or lack thereof, in modern-day psychiatry, Freud is, along with Marx, the most important thinker of the last two centuries. Everyone should have at least a cursory understanding of his work.

Marx is important to...psychiatry?

EDIT: Wait, I reread your statement, and it instead appears as if you are claiming that Freud and Marx are the two most important thinkers of the last two centuries; a claim that is highly contentious. Important, yes, but the two most important?

Person wrote:Don't get me wrong, I'd never stand in the way of another man, woman or chipmunk's fight for freedom, independence and self-reliance. I am an ethical egoist.

Reader, beware, we may have a Randian in our midst.

Person wrote:But Feminism as a propagandised ideology wrecked the American family unit, sent waves of discord throughout the land and confused many a content young woman.

This is funny on so many levels (both PC and non-PC).

Bete_Noire wrote:

Person wrote:Don't get me wrong, I'd never stand in the way of another man, woman or chipmunk's fight for freedom, independence and self-reliance. I am an ethical egoist.

Reader, beware, we may have a Randian in our midst.

Oh, please. That woman was grotesque. Max Stirner was ahead of her by almost one hundreds years, making him ahead of Nietzsche, too. He soundly refuted Marx, too. As for Freud (who went to the cinema often), his prose is exemplary at times, Civilisation and Its Discontents is a withering summation of his pessimistic view of the human condition and its comfort blankets. But I find Jung far more interesting. Freud was a neurotic mess most of his life, was wound pretty tight and wasn't capable of exploring his own mind like Jung was. You get more mileage out of Jungian analysis of films than you do with Freudian. The problem is that psychology deals with the real, or attempts to deal with the real, ie. disturbed patients with complex disorders and neuroses. It's misguided to apply the methodologies of psychology to fictional characters in Cinema, I feel. Jung's concept of archetypes can help one's understanding of works of art, though. But generally, when people get heavy with the psychological readings of films, it usually ends up being a bridge too far and deflating the pretensions of the author has to occur. I have been put in my place many time and look forward to future bitch-slaps.

Bete_Noire wrote:

King Prendergast wrote:Regardless of his currency, or lack thereof, in modern-day psychiatry, Freud is, along with Marx, the most important thinker of the last two centuries. Everyone should have at least a cursory understanding of his work.

Marx is important to...psychiatry?

EDIT: Wait, I reread your statement, and it instead appears as if you are claiming that Freud and Marx are the two most important thinkers of the last two centuries; a claim that is highly contentious. Important, yes, but the two most important?

Paul Ricoeur called Marx, Nietzsche and Freud the "masters of suspicion". All three knew that something was rotten in the state of Christendom and presented to the world bracing, torrential critiques of modern life. They taught humanity things that it will never forget, indeed cannot forget. To view the commercial, capitalist world that we are all embedded in at this moment in a categorically non-Marxist way is nigh impossible. It's hard to get across how the average non-aristocrat/monarch viewed the world before Marx. But riches were indeed being squandered to Heaven, or stolen by the scheming gentry and the Church. However, in the pre-Industrial Age, the forward-thinking skilled mofo had far more social latitude than he did once he was shanghaied into factories undertaking work that he done all his life but now for one-third the money.

So, with me, it's not just cynicism for Feminism that prompts what are, I grant you, potentially offensive remarks. It's a suspicion for all ideologies, all "causes". I only ever see the individual. The individual - the conscious Ego - is real, is the true reality when it comes to motive and action. "Black", "gay community" even "men" "women" are false categories - dangerous categories. Darwin, who was definitely one of the most important thinkers of the last 200 years, actually pulled off something that he never seems to be credited for: he dissolved the boundaries of all living things almost in an Far Eastern manner, though I would argue that Schopenhauer did that long before him. But Darwin only did it in a physical, biological sense. Man-made boundaries remained and continue to remain and it is the duty of all "men" and "women" to rise above the culture and liberate themselves as far as they can. Language and ideas imprison more than they set free, right? The Feminists got that right at least.

King Pentaslash wrote:...stuff about a heterosexual male who doesn't want to be homosexually violated by the penetration of the killer.

aox wrote:

Mr_sausage wrote:

aox wrote: Hey now...

not all men who wear dresses are gay.

I just assumed straight men who've been stabbed to death wear them. You know, beause of the effeminizing?

I see.

Point cheerfully withdrawn.

You know, this is the kind of stereotyping of gays that has got to come to an end sometime in the 21st Century. Not every gay guy has been stabbed to death prior to becoming gay you know. I can think of several off the top of my head who were famous. Some of them may have been stabbed to death before they accepted their gayness and started seeing other men. But many I happen to know for a fact did not. Some idols of mine: Bill Burroughs, Arthur Rimbaud, FW Murnau. They never mentioned being stabbed to death in interviews, and I don't pick up on anything like this in their work, and a lot of times opeople inject their own lives into their work. I went to an artsy high school in midtown and I had some very solid & close gay friends and none of them had been stabbed to death before discovering they were queer. Then i went to an artsy and fartsy art college in a very hibrow liberal arts university and I'm sure many of the gay guys who went there were not stabbed to death prior to my meeting them. Some of them maybe... but it strains the credulity to imagine that all of them had been stabbed to death somewhere along the line beforehand.

How do things like this get started up? If a guy maintains a romantic or sexual relationship with a guy he's got to have been stabbed to death at some point prior? It's tough to prove a negative I know, but must it forever fall to the average gay man to prove he has NOT been stabbed to death at some point in his past?

I mean, sheeeesh!

I just watched John Landis' Trailers from Hell review of Private Parts (Paul Bartell, 1972), which he describes as "very gender confused." Sounds like it could fit into the Cloverian paradigm. Anyone familiar with this film?

King Prendergast wrote:I just watched John Landis' Trailers from Hell review of Private Parts (Paul Bartell, 1972), which he describes as "very gendered confused." Sounds like it could fit into the Cloverian paradigm. Anyone familiar with this film?

Please explain the 'Cloverian paradigm' first. I'd still quite like to know!

foggy eyes wrote:

King Prendergast wrote:I just watched John Landis' Trailers from Hell review of Private Parts (Paul Bartell, 1972), which he describes as "very gendered confused." Sounds like it could fit into the Cloverian paradigm. Anyone familiar with this film?

Please explain the 'Cloverian paradigm' first. I'd still quite like to know!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oh, right.

Clover argues that for a film to be successful, although the Final Girl is masculinized, it is necessary for this surviving character to be female, because she must experience abject terror, and many viewers would reject a film that showed abject terror on the part of a male.

This strikes me as the most sensible part, but surely there are ('successful') exceptions to the rule?

This strikes me as the most sensible part, but surely there are ('successful') exceptions to the rule?

I would argue that most exceptions have come post-'92, i.e. after Clover's book had come out and been read by many genre directors. It was as a response to the lack of abjection of men that we get the graphic raping of Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction. As Ive mentioned: Tarantion claims its his favorite book.

King Prendergast wrote:

This strikes me as the most sensible part, but surely there are ('successful') exceptions to the rule?

I would argue that most exceptions have come post-'92, i.e. after Clover's book had come out and been read by many genre directors. It was as a response to the lack of abjection of men that we get the graphic raping of Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction. As Ive mentioned: Tarantion claims its his favorite book.

But Roger Avery wrote that scene, which anyway comes more easily out of Deliverance.

Mr_sausage wrote:

King Prendergast wrote:

This strikes me as the most sensible part, but surely there are ('successful') exceptions to the rule?

I would argue that most exceptions have come post-'92, i.e. after Clover's book had come out and been read by many genre directors. It was as a response to the lack of abjection of men that we get the graphic raping of Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction. As Ive mentioned: Tarantion claims its his favorite book.

But Roger Avery wrote that scene, which anyway comes more easily out of Deliverance.

Yes, and if anyone would bother to do a little informing of themselves they would know that Clover explicitly discusses the Deliverance scene as evidence of the double standard in presenting scenes of rape of men versus women. The rape in Deliverance is seen in long shots; we mostly see the friends looking on. The rape of women is presented in fetishistic close-ups, Clover cites Hitchcock's Frenzy as a paradigmatic example. Tarantino is subverting this dichotomy in the way that he revels in the abjection of a man in that scene.

You seem to be getting angry that not everyone here has read that book.

In all fairness, I am pretty angry with myself.

cinemartin wrote:You seem to be getting angry that not everyone here has read that book.

It sounds like he thinks I'm practically illiterate. Maybe I should sit down and read one of them there books some day.

I'm still waiting for him to tell us what a "real hip hop film" is...

Black Christmas (1974). (Too bad the 2006 remake drags it's good name through mud.)

This is a remarkable film, but the ending might drive you to ](*,) .

Not sure if these were mentioned earlier, but City of the Dead, The Devil Goll (Gordon), Incubus (the esperanto '65 by Leslie Stevens lensed by Connie Hall) and Seance on a Wet Afternoon-- some of my strongest contenders in this category.

On the opposite end of the category... a film I must watch quarterly for it's rare delights-- The Brain That Wouldn't Die (in the closing credits called The Head That Wouldn't Die). Like a fucking rifle butt in the occiput. The english language contains little in the direction of providing even a little bit of assistance in describing my love for this film. I hafta reach into my ear with a soldering iron and make critical reconnections when the film goes "The End"... connections which throw sparks and poof out all over again when the title fucking changes.

Paradise by the tv light!

HerrSchreck wrote:On the opposite end of the category... a film I must watch quarterly for it's rare delights-- The Brain That Wouldn't Die (in the closing credits called The Head That Wouldn't Die). Like a fucking rifle butt in the occiput. The english language contains little in the direction of providing even a little bit of assistance in describing my love for this film. I hafta reach into my ear with a soldering iron and make critical reconnections when the film goes "The End"... connections which throw sparks and poof out all over again when the title fucking changes.

Paradise by the tv light!

Prefuckingcisely. I have this monstrousity (a $3.99 DVD, I recall), and it never fails to entertain. Genuine suspense results from that whole what-is-behind-the-door bit. I love it when they hesitantly grope each other, and head towards soft porn. The music....oh the music..... This even beats all those epic 30s Pot-Is-Evil flicks. This one has it all: Sex, Monsters, Decapitation, ESP, Psychotic Surgeons, Pathos.....

Damn.....there must be a Killer B thread here somewhere.........

Noiretirc wrote: Damn.....there must be a Killer B thread here somewhere.........

Hee hee, yoh ho, hoo hoo.

You are talking to a man to whom Phil Tucker's Robot Monster, and Cunha's Missle To The Moon mean just as much as fucking Epstein or Mizoguchi. The habitualism is off the hook.

Which brings us here.

"Foolish human-- will you choose the agony of Resistance Death over a painless Surrender Death?"

"This is not in the plan, but I want to see the girl, Al-liss."

"If I were a. man... Would you love me like. a. man?"

To the space platform-- pronto! Waiter!

(Cue David Hare-- "I must but I cannot... I cannot but I must...")

City of the Dead, The Devil Goll

I very much second these two as being among the creepiest films I've ever watched. With CITY OF THE DEAD (aka HORROR HOTEL) the obviously studio-bound "exteriors" of the village and the fog-bound road that leads to it only increases the claustrophobia. The sequences in the chambers under the cemetery are pretty eerie, too. DEVIL DOLL has one of the most unsettling ventriloquist dummies since DEAD OF NIGHT and the scenes depicting the act are like what might have transpired if Samuel Beckett had written a horror film.
And while I'm thinking of low-budget creepiness, the scene where the ghosts (or whatever they are) rise from the lake and waltz around the ballroom in CARNIVAL OF SOULS always raises the hair on the back of my neck.
And how about the dead Templars rising from their tombs in the otherwise Euro-schlocky TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD?

Carol Clover is mentioned in an article on Diablo Cody. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movie ... ref=movies" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

zedz wrote:Paperhouse, by Bernard Rose.

I only read through this thread about a week ago to get suggestions and this is the first one I've watched, and I really enjoyed it. A brief note I wrote about the film...

This is a little gem of a film, it's not a horror film per se (it's intentions are quite different) but for long sequences it manages to achieve a level of chilling intensity rarely found in any kind of simple hide-and-seek horror film (including Nightmare on Elm St). What exactly the film is trying to say or convey is slightly confused (and certainly not helped by the ending) but is a bewitching experience regardless.

zedz wrote:creepy subtext

Spoiler

I don't think the father/daughter relationship was made quite as creepy as it could have been. Sure, he's terrifying in the Paperhouse but this seems to be more be a combination of her anger at his absence, his bouts of drinking and (perhaps) her confusion at burgeoning sexuality (that's a big perhaps though - I may just be thinking this because I reminded myself of Heavenly Creatures and Innocence during the film). The film seemed to do away with any idea that something more sinister was going on with their relationship in the real world being painted as so caring.