Well, you're right - The Haunting movie is a perfect example of horror which doesn't depend on moritification of the human body. Though some might quibble that this places it into more of a psychological thriller/terror mode, I wouldn't.
I'd revise then to note that there is a very large strain of horror movies which depends on buried anxieties about the body. The classic pre-code Horror movies (Freaks, Island of the Dead, Frankenstein, Dracula, Tod Browning's ouevre, particularly The Unknown where the lead cuts off his own arms) are rife with it. But the RKO Jacques Tourneur produced films that I so love (Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, The Seventh Victim, I Walked With A Zombie) dip into the uncanny valley but just subtly and with a big emphasis on the psychological sensation of losing control.
David Cronenburg's entire film career is based in body horror, though.
David Cronenberg's entire film career is based in body horror, though.
I'm mostly in agreeance with that. I think he has done a couple of basically mainstream movies, but
Videodrome
and
The Fly
certainly qualify.
a very large strain of horror movies which depends on buried anxieties about the body.
Oh yes, both personal anxieties and social ones. I always thought it Verrrrry Interestink that in
Halloween,
Laurie defends herself against the monster with a wire coathanger. In the 1970s, kind of a significant tool, when relating to a woman's body.
David Cronenburg's entire film career is based in body horror, though.
The interesting thing with Cronenberg is that his focus has shifted massively over the course of his career. Where his early stuff was very objective and head-on in exploring body horror, his work slowly shifted to deeply subjective. Around the time after The Fly, he started mostly giving up on the gorey stuff (although, as he has said, him being him means you still get healthy doses of the goopy stuff in NAKED LUNCH and eXistenZ) and exploring how perception of reality alters one's reality (which he first really touched on in VIDEODROME).
By the time you get to SPIDER, you're getting an almost entirely subjective movie about what it's like to be schizophrenic. Still a lot of body issues involved, but almost nothing in the way of special effects or gore.
Anyway, the guys one of my favorite director's, and a great interview subject to boot - very articulate and thoughtful.
You saw that Bats is opening slightly earlier than planned, right?
In my quest to re-locate the Superbowl spot (now if only I could recall who I promised the link to), I noticed that there are a gazillion new Batman Begins wallpapers at the official site.
I waffled, saved them all, and am now using the Batmobile.
Zaphod Beeblebrox For President music video.
(Not in the film, but funny.)
There's a picture of Viggo and his crew in costume for Alatriste here. -- Look at the gallery, there are also some very pretty pictures of Andalusia.
Well, but within the framework of an honor society, as posited in Reservoir Dogs or in your basic Hong Kong gangster movie, death or even painful death isn't punishment. The point isn't that the cop dies; that's a given from the first frame of the movie. The point is that, before he dies, he confesses his betrayal. At that point in the film, Harvey Keitel is arguably mortally wounded; help on the way; the cop could just keep his mouth shut for another 10 minutes and die with his secret or survive with it; but honesty is too important in that situation.
But do you think it's really presented as moral? For the characters it is, but for the audience? I agree that the same events could be presented as if he's doing something admirable, but I don't think they were. And I'm having trouble articulating it... Playing "The Lime in the Coconut" over the credits seems like a very deliberate attempt to distance the audience from the characters and say, "Boy, that was fucked up, wasn't it?" I don't come away thinking, "At least he died with honor."
