With The Crazies remake just around the corner, I figured it was finally time to watch this exploitation “classic” from George A Romero. While I’m not expecting much I figure it can’t be any worse then the last few Of The Dead films he’s put out.
I’ve been on a bit of a Terrance Stamp kick as of late. I’ve been a fan of him for sometime, probably ever since his General Zod showed me the sublimely manicured face of evil all the way back in Superman II, but much of his early work I simply had never gotten around to watching. But after James and I took the time to watch The Mind of Mr Soames for one of our High and Low (Brow) podcasts (Episode 4 – Comas), I decided that perhaps it was finally time to devote some real effort into watching some of his earlier films, which brings me to The Collector, a film that only recently graced my radar after I found out that a very loose remake was being released in theatres last year.
Now, it isn’t often that you see films co-opted, manipulated and outright subjugated to the whims of modern remakes. Wait, let me rephrase that. Alright, so it is common. But in the case of The Collector it has been a very unique form of modern bastardization. You see the title was taken and the idea of collecting people was used (or mis-used as the case may be) and that was the end of it. Complex characters were abandoned for one dimensional stock. The creepy, slow burning plot was replaced with the now standard mess that highlights gore and ignores everything else. It is a thin thread that ties the modern “remake” to the original. Which, honestly, is a good thing.
As a youth I used to live in the shelves of my local video store. Most summers I would spend my days down at the local strip mall (a scant 1.3 miles away) bowling for hours, reading comics off the rack at the drug store, picking out the most essential candy at the grocery store and finally wandering in the stacks, searching for the perfect movie to watch that weekend. All this time spent in the stacks lead to a curious skill of recognizing films based solely by their cover art, and I’d often know the plot of the films based off of the descriptions on the back. Soon it became a bit of a game for my friends to quiz me on what the films were about, but only the films I’d never actually seen and using simply the cover as a hint.
Of course, back then I was still very young and simply didn’t have the time nor the resources to watch every film I wanted to. So I would pick and choose which I would watch, often leaning heavily towards science fiction and fantasy films (my horror obsession didn’t really kick in until my early twenties). So how is it that I never watched a post-apocalyptic film about a nomadic swordsman? Simple, I hated the cover.
I’m not anti-remake by any means, in fact I rather enjoy them quite a bit, but it would be nice if Hollywood took a bit more care in just which films they chose to remake. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one that comes easily to mind, as the original is perhaps a perfect film, and the remake doesn’t seemingly intend to do anything other then tone down the weirdness and ramp up the gore.
I also don’t mind if people take a signature film and attempt to re-imagine it or put their own spin on the material. Take iconic fare like The Wizard of Oz, which has been remade at least 5 times by my count. Even the Judy Garland version was at least 4 tries in. Making it a bit difficult for purists to make a decent argument for one and done film making.
But what I enjoy most are when Hollywood takes lesser known films, or even films that were high on ideas but low on quality production and pump some much needed money and exposure towards them as they come up with a new take on the film. George Romero might have come up with a pretty nifty concept for the original The Crazies, but the film is far from perfect, and not much closer to even being decent. The remake looks like a hop, skip and a jump in the right direction, and it looks like it might be one of the rare recent Hollywood horror films to squarely hit its mark.
While buzz is starting to build for the low budget haunted house/demon possession independent film Paranormal Activity, the odds of anyone actually getting to see the film seem surprisingly low. The film is getting an incredibly limited release on Thursday September 24th, with midnight screenings at 13 different theatres.
But so far that is it in terms of theatrical release. The studio (Paramount here in the US) is trying to increase demand for the film by having a competition hosted by Eventful, where fans demand the release in their local markets with a rather vague promise of “When your city gets enough demands, you WILL be the first to experience the terror!” Yet no mention of just how many demands are required to get a screening.
Knowing from experience what I do about free screenings, you’ll need something in the neighborhood of 1000 demands to convince a theatre to devote a 200 seat auditorium to a screening. And, as of this moment, not a single city has reached that magical number, though LA seems like it will eventually make it. It doesn’t seem very smart to make promises, no matter how vague, to their fanbase only to not be able to live up to them.
Of course we then have the new trailer, which incorporates audience reactions while showing moments from the film, which makes the entire thing look incredibly cheesy to me. The original trailer looks better, and is far more effective, and in the new trailer it is readily apparent they’ve cleaned up the images to make the picture look glossier and thus have more appeal to mainstream audiences. Whether or not the actual product has been cleaned up I have no idea, but the disconnect is now evident. Then you have the previous plans to remake the film with original director Oren Peli helming the remake, and you can’t help but wonder if they simply re-shot the whole film with better equipment due to the stark contrast in the visuals of the two trailers. It has taken two years to release this film after all.
And finally, we have the film’s rumored new endings. I say endings, because word is that there are as many as three endings floating out there in the ether that have been screened for audiences. While I know what two of them are, I haven’t heard anything specific about the latest ending, other than it is the worst of he bunch, which is probably why Paramount chose it.
At this point I have little hope of ever seeing this film in the theatres, which is a shame as the film certainly seems to have as good a chance as any of being a modern horror film that is actually scary, or God forbid, horrifying. But I will be sure to check it out once it eventually hits DVD, and here’s to hoping the film lives up to its rather strange, but intriguing, hype.
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