November 1st 2013. Pick Of The Day.
New York City's premiere resource for classic film screenings in the metropolitan area. Offering reviews, recommendations, venues and a host of links keeping classic film and the silver screens alive.
Bite into any razor blades? Eat any poisoned candy bars? Walk into the wrong torture dungeon? As opposed to the right one? In other words, did you come through Halloween 2013 intact, unmolested, and comfortably floating on a sugar high? GREAT! Then welcome I say to November 2013!
Today the rep cinema circuit offers Lindsay Anderson's debut entry in the postwar Angry Young Man movement, Rod Steiger's lone Oscar-winning perf, and John Badham's stamping of the late-70's disco zeitgeist. New and continuing series include MoMA's ongoing Auteurist History of Film, the Film Society's Scary Movies 7, Anthology Film Archives' Golden Age of Spanish Horror, and the Rubin Museum's awesome Cabaret Cinema. Here be the rundown;
Film Forum
NOSFERATU (1979) Dir; Werner Herzog
MoMA
THIS SPORTING LIFE (1963) Dir; Lindsay Anderson
Film Society of Lincoln Center
CURTAINS (1983) Dir; Richard Ciupka
United Palace of Cultural Arts
DRACULA -Spanish Version (1931) Dir; George Melford
New York Historical Society
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) Dir; Norman Jewison
Hosted by actress/filmmaker Lee Grant and producer Susan Lacy
Anthology Film Archives
VENUS IN FURS (1969) Dir; Jess Franco
THE DEMONS (1973) Dir; Jess Franco
Rubin Museum
THE WOMEN (1939) Dir; George Cukor
IFC Center
THE EXORCIST (1973) Dir; William Friedkin
Landmark Sunshine Cinema
THE THING (1982) Dir; John Carpenter
Nitehawk Cinema
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1978) Dir; John Badham
BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL (1985) Dir; Chester Novell Turner
Today's Pick? I usually leave behind Halloweenish items whence Halloween departs, but as I've been on something of a Howard Hawks kick again, which automatically leads to a John Carpenter kick, I have to go with the latter's remake of the former's THE THING, screening at midnight at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, as one final dose of Dia de los Muertos sugar. Carpenter famously struggled with the retread, as Hawks was and remains his fave filmmaker all-time and he fought to create an entirely different experience from the original. A rethink, actually. Rob Bottin, fresh off his duties as makeup FX expert on Joe Dante's THE HOWLING, brought the director a wild notion; what if the monster could shift not merely into human form, but into any of the forms it'd taken over the centuries? A mind-blown Carpenter asked Bottin if such effects work was even possible under the current technology. An enthusiastic YES was the response, and so work began on the goddamndest creature to ever grace the movie screen.
Bottin's famous boast would ultimately land him in the hospital, as the exuberant naivete of youth turned one year later (without a day off!) into a case of nervous exhaustion, and fellow legendary FX man Stan Winston was brought on to complete one sequence crucial to the film's start. Aside from what remains the most impressive makeup FX work to ever grace celuloid (incredibly ignored at that year's Oscars!) my love for this film is due in large part to just how good Carpenter made on his trib to his hero; this is very much a Hawks film, which is to say it's very much a Carpenter film. Indeed, Hawks had makeup tests done back in 1951 to create the monster described in John W. Campbell Jr.'s source short story, and was excited to the extent of bragging that he was bringing a monster to the screen unlike any the world had ever seen. Sadly the tech of the times wasn't up to his vision, so he "settled" for the Frankenstein from Space he vowed he wouldn't resort to. And still made a masterpiece.
Barring the Hawksian woman as typified by the original's Margaret Sheridan most elements of the Grey Fox's CV are present and radiant in Carpenter's classic; the lack of sentimentality, the meritocracy, the celebration of professionalism, the manly men manliness. Add to that Carpenter's tropes, born of a 70's mindset; the paranoia, the pessismism. Basically, as Carpenter himself put it, the earlier film was the product of a worldview that believed evil was outside trying to get in, while the younger man's vision was quite the reverse. It's rare that a remake gets to be as bold and unique and influential as the film that spawned it. David Cronenberg's THE FLY may claim the same status, but John Carpenter did it first, and showed it could be done. He's just the fucking coolest sonofabitch that ever lived. Well, him and Howard.
For more info regarding these and all NYC's classic screenings in November '13 click on the calendar on the upper right hand side of the screen. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter! Back tomorrow with Saturday's Pick, til then be safe and sound and would it kill ya to check in on yer neighbor from time to time? Be a mensch!
-Joe Walsh
