Hitchcock: The Legend Begins

In a weak moment (on 5/9/11), I picked up the Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins collection, which may have been a mistake.

The set includes 20 Hitch films, most of which are in the public domain, giving companies like Mill Creek Entertainment the ability to put 20 old movies together in a set for pennies on the dollar. They did the same thing with John Wayne.

Of course, most of these films are in shoddy condition, and the Amazon reviews are mixed, pointing to faulty DVDs that won't play properly. So far, I haven't noticed any playability problems, but as for print quality, these appear to be U-matic transfers — mediocre but watchable.

Four DVDs of Hitch for $5? Count me in. I'll look past flawed prints if I can get 20 films outright and watch them on my own entertainment system and at my own pace. Renting 20 films on Netflix would take me weeks — way more expensive and time consuming, and that assumes Netflix has all of these films available (not sure there and don't feel like checking).

Enter reality. This comes on the heels of picking up the Masterpiece Collection, another 14 Hitch films. Then I found the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection, which adds another eight to the pile (two of those films are also in the above 20-film set). Then I took the plunge on the Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection, adding nine more. I've suddenly added more than 50 movies to this project, a few of which are downright clunkers to which I have no personal or academic attachment, and most of which I've never even seen. Oops? What am I supposed to say about them all?

Hitchcock's film work largely has been a black hole for me over the years, so I don't have buyer's remorse, exactly. I've seen several of his greats — Psycho, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, The Lady Vanishes — but I don't count Hitchcock as a real influence, and I'm not satisfied with how much I've seen of his work.

I may have overcompensated.

Most of Hitch's films are lessons in character development, pacing, maintaining suspense, and structure. I still fancy myself a screenwriter with a lot to learn, and Hitch seems like a teacher whose classes I've always seemed to miss until now.

All that said, this set presents some logistical problems. I'll treat the 14 films in The Masterpiece Collection normally, watching each title as I get there alphabetically because those films are truly masterpieces and I have stuff to say. I'll do the same with the 9 films in the Signature Collection and the 6 films in the Premiere Collection.

As for The Legend Begins set, maybe two of these films are truly "masterpieces" (The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, if you're curious) so I don't need to write 20 individual entries for a mixed bag of mostly awful looking and sounding films I've never seen and may never watch again, and about which I feel nothing but curiosity and satisfaction for finding a bargain. So one entry is all you get for the entire collection, filed under "H," and this is it.

Highball

Highball is a Noah Baumbach film that nobody's ever heard of, and even Noah Baumbach doesn't put his name on it (he uses the pseudonym "Ernie Fusco" as director and "Jesse Carter" as writer).

I failed in my attempts to find adequate DVD artwork to pilfer for the benefit of this post. The above shitty image is the best my Google searches yielded.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for this little '90s film. I could try to write such an endorsement, but this guy did that already. Read that and come back. I'll wait.

...

I mostly own this film because I have all of Noah Baumbach's films on DVD, and even his lesser films still have merit. Also, I'm a completist and I can't stop.

I have to look past the technical issues — the awful lighting, the jump cuts, the tinny soundtrack — and focus on the writing and acting. Do that, and this is a solid little independent made on a shoestring.

I've been to some parties like the ones depicted in this film. The formula is pretty easy: Create a mixed company situation, introduce a guest or guests who has/have some insane perspective perfectly rationalized (I'm suddenly remembering the woman I once met who confessed that she stops taking birth control when she meets a new man), and see what happens when they spout their bullshit madness in mixed company. "Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan makes a lot of sense!  What do you mean, you need a Constitutional Amendment to implement that? Sounds like a liberal conspiracy!"

Honestly, I think there's such a thing as a sociopathic party host, and they collect batshit crazy friends who don't get along. And then they invite everyone to the same party.

You know when a friend tells you, "I have to introduce you to my friend so-and-so, because you guys would really get along great."  This is the opposite — this is a party host not telling you anything, and instead ambushing you with an asshole. "I don't really like you, so I'm going to introduce you to this other asshole I don't really like, because you'll hate each other and that is funny to me."

[They don't really say that. But they think that.]

Having suspected this sort of thing for some time, I sometimes look for the batshit crazy person when I'm at a party. Maybe someone walks in with an ironic hat or eyewear or facial hair (dead giveaway), or keeps insisting we turn off the music and put on his or her band's new bullshit EP instead, or maybe he or she brings the single most disgusting dish of sweet smelling nastiness full of cat hair and shame. You know, for sharing.

If I can't find him or her, I just assume it's me.

If you've been to enough parties, you've seen the usual stuff:

• Someone inevitably drinks too much and makes a total asshole of him or herself. With any luck, there is crying involved, and I get video of it.
• Somebody says something political or homophobic or racist or sexist or just generally ignorant, and other people get pissed off and clam up or leave the room. Even better, someone gets pissed off and stays in the room to speak up. "Hey man, that's not cool — my sister is a leper."
• Someone else tells a story about some local yuppie bullshit for which they currently have a chub. "I brew all my own beer, make all my own clothes, and of course, all of the food you're eating was created from the molecular level using only the finest locally grown organic molecules that I picked up at the molecular farmer's market at 5 o'clock this morning while walking the labradoodle. Did I mention I'm an asshole?"

Or, you know, "All of the products you're eating and drinking are Amway...as well as that couch!  Here, let's watch this quick DVD and I'll show you all how you can make a fuck-ton of dollars!"

All that well-deserved ranting and ridicule aside, I've also met some great friends this way, had some great food, and made some great memories. We've even thrown a couple of our own parties here at Chez John, and no one even got food poisoning!

So dinner parties aren't all bad. Far from it. Go to enough dinner parties, and you run the risk of having a good time, and maybe even making new friends that are the kind of people you want to invite to your own home, because they're on the level, and they can cook, and they're smart, and funny, and they're not class warriors or elitists or helicopter parents or furverts.

[Side note: What's up with furverts?]

A great party doesn't have to be an all-out happy fest wherein everyone walks away fast friends. People go to parties to relax, have fun, and meet people. Of course, there are your awkward moments even at the great parties, because that's what happens in mixed company. It's not a big deal, though.

This isn't the best place for personal shout-outs, but suffice to say, if I've been to a party at your house in the last couple of years, I definitely want to come back, and I don't think that you're a sociopath or a bad cook or host, and I don't mind your pet(s) or your friend(s) as long as they don't mind me.

Also, that cajun bread you made was fantastic, Matt Lasher.

High Plains Drifter

In the first 16 minutes of High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood's character visits a town called Lago, where he kills three men and rapes a woman. By the 20-minute mark, if we're still watching, we get an idea of why.

Through a flashback/dream sequence as Eastwood's character sleeps, we see several outlaws brandishing horsewhips, beating an unarmed man to death in the street.

As the townspeople look on, the man begs for someone to help him, but all the townspeople — their faces wrapped in shadow — just stand there and let him die. Among the townsfolk, we see familiar silhouettes of characters the stranger has met so far, including the woman he's already raped.

Finally, we see Duncan's face — a slightly younger, clean-shaven Clint Eastwood. Somehow, this unnamed stranger in town and Jim Duncan are connected. 

But Jim Duncan is dead. 

When the stranger wakes from his dream, he goes out again. The town sheriff approaches him with an offer. Seeing as the stranger shot and killed the town's hired guns, the sheriff wants to hire the stranger to help with a little problem. The town needs protection from three gunfighters who are getting out of prison and heading straight for Lago. They're the same three gunfighters that killed Jim Duncan.

The sheriff insists that the stranger pay nothing for any goods or services in Lago. The stranger accepts the offer, and immediately goes on a town-wide shopping spree. He gets free boots, free drinks (he "buys" a round for the house before the barkeep knows the stranger isn't paying), and recruits a town militia, which he offers to train. He tears down a rich man's barn for the building materials. He evicts everyone in the town hotel so he can have the whole place to himself. He even names the town dwarf as acting mayor and sheriff — at the same time.

In short, the stranger pretty much does what anyone would do if you got an all-expenses paid shopping spree in a town full of assholes. He paints the town red — no, literally, with the townspeople's help — and re-names the town "Hell." Here's another good examination of the film.

Hello, revenge fantasy! Pretty much every character who was either complicit or directly involved in the killing of Jim Duncan gets his/her just desserts.

Wait...so rape is justified? That's not what I'm saying. But maybe the film is saying that.

One could argue at great length about the rape scene. While neither sexually explicit nor as intense as the rape scene in Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (which came out two years previously), there is a disturbing connection between the two films that gets at the worst of misogyny. Of course, neither Straw Dogs nor High Plains Drifter pre-date another classic film that depicts rape as something a woman eventually enjoys. Dr. Zhivago (1965) did the same thing. 

What's more, during the rape scenes in all three films, the female fights at first, then submits, then appears to enjoy herself. In High Plains Drifter, when the rapist goes back to her for more, she welcomes him — and sleeps with him again! 

But in High Plains Drifter, this is a protagonist committing the rape. Only despicable characters do that, right? Protagonists maintain that moral high ground, so they're always better than the villains. High Plains Drifter takes on that old saw.

High Plains Drifter appears to take a rather blithe view of violence against women, with only the flimsy justification that this woman somehow "deserves" this sort of thing because of her complicity in the murder of Jim Duncan. Here's an interesting thread on the topic.

The film's thesis appears to be that any punishment up to and including rape or death, regardless of the damage emotionally, financially, or otherwise — is justifiable when the original crime is murder. Say what you will about that. I'm not certain I agree with that thesis, but I'm trying to understand how the filmmakers got there.

Eastwood's stranger is an avenging angel with no morals who has returned to Lago to enact justice. In High Plains Drifter, in order to deal with the amoral, one must abandon all morality. In order to enact revenge, morality disappears almost altogether here. Some characters in the town get a free pass — the meek, for example. The stranger treats all of the town's minorities — Mexicans, Native Americans, and even the town dwarf — very well. The stranger is not entirely without morals. He doesn't rape every woman in sight — he rapes the one woman who watched Jim Duncan's death and did nothing. Agree with his method or not, he does have a motive to commit the crime.

But does the stranger really get revenge? That's the part I find most interesting. In "The Cask of Amontillado," Edgar Allan Poe's short story, Poe clearly lays out what the narrator believes to be the tenets of revenge:

"I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong."

Using that as a guide, does the stranger get revenge?

1) Yes, he gets away with punishing the town and townsfolk, leaving destruction in his wake. 

2) No, the retribution does not overtake him. He leaves town unscathed and disappears into the ether. 

3) He does not fail to make the town aware of his identity and motivations...sort of. Several characters allude to Marshal Jim Duncan and appear to recognize him, but the stranger doesn't confess, and no one outright identifies him. 

But when he kills the outlaws in the film's climactic sequence, one of the gunmen repeatedly screams, "WHO ARE YOU?" but the stranger remains silent. Only when he leaves town and passes Mordecai, the town dwarf, who is carving the name "Jim Duncan" into a headstone, does the stranger even remotely identify himself. Mordecai says that he still doesn't know the stranger's name. The stranger simply responds, "Yes you do," before riding off. That's all.

Is that true to how Poe defined revenge? Did the outlaws who murdered Jim Duncan in the street realize who had come to kill them? Even if the complicit townsfolk eventually realized who the stranger was, at best, they simply learned a valuable and violent lesson. The killers themselves were the ultimate target of the stranger's revenge. 

Did the killers know? The stranger hangs one, whips another to death (okay, maybe that one understood what was happening), and the third is shot to death in the street. Do they know what hit them, as they die? That's unclear. Poe might argue that the revenge is incomplete.

However, the stranger rode off into the ether anyway, satisfied with his work.

High and Low

At 143 minutes, finding time for High and Low has been difficult, and after watching The Bad Sleep Well a while ago and finding myself bored to tears and perpetually confused, I was reluctant to watch High and Low.

Today I decided to devote my afternoon to High and Low. The film is set in 1960s Japan, and longtime Kurosawa collaborator Toshiro Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, a footwear magnate on the cusp of taking over his company, National Shoes. When he gets a call that his son has been kidnapped and the abductor demands 30 million yen, Gondo's plan to assume control of the company is scuttled. 

Ah, but his son is fine — the kidnapper took the boy's friend by mistake. So now Gondo has a choice, sort of: pay the ransom and save the child, even if the child isn't his own, or ignore the kidnapper's demands and let the boy die (and face the PR fallout when such a story goes public).

I'm watering down the plot a bit here, but suffice to say the film pits rich against poor, those who live high on a hill vs. those who live in a squalid valley below, or those who maintain moral high ground vs.   the purely immoral. In ways both literal and symbolic, Mifune's character struggles to maintain that high ground throughout the film, and the film examines the cost of doing the right thing.

Part mystery, part police procedural, and part family drama, High and Low is a deeply satisfying film worth spending an afternoon to enjoy. While watching, I noted several moments in the police procedure that Hollywood films have since appropriated.  For example, recording phone calls and analyzing background noise is a device most famously used in The Fugitive, but Hollywood has beaten to death many times.

The comparisons and contrasts with The Fugitive don't end there. You've got the kidnapper working in a hospital (rather than the protagonist).  The kidnapper has both arms, sure, but he has a prominent scar on his left hand denoting some limb injury that is never explained. The police investigation is headed by a relentless detective (rather than a relentless federal marshal) whose experience and tenacity comes in handy many times as they track down the kidnapper and bring him to justice. The kidnapper is involved with drugs; the villains in The Fugitive are involved with a pharmaceutical scam.

Rather than convicted murderers riding a train to prison, it is Gondo and the detectives who ride a train to a predetermined point where they must throw out the ransom — thereby assuring Gondo of a "life sentence of debt" as the relentless detective puts it.

The connections to The Fugitive are pretty consistent throughout.  Whether Kurosawa directly influenced David Twohy and Jeb Stuart when they were developing the script for The Fugitive is unclear.  Still, the mere fact that these two films can exist 30 years apart and have so many connections speaks to the enduring power and influence of Kurosawa's work.  Or maybe I just watch too many movies.

Much has been written about Kurosawa's influence on George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese, especially when considering Kurosawa's large body of films set in feudal Japan.  Relatively speaking, not much has been written about how his more modern-set films continue to influence Hollywood today. That's worth exploration. Having said that, this is worth reading.

High Fidelity

I've been stuck on High Fidelity for months.  Too much to say.

Perhaps more than any other film, I distinctly feel how much I've changed since the first time I saw this one, way back in that little movie theater in Nelsonville, Ohio more than a decade ago.  

Back then, I sat there with the girl I was seeing, and over and over, I saw myself on the screen.  At 24 years old, I needed a film to tell me that what I was feeling and thinking about women and music was normal.  Other people were out there, and they were like me.  (For the record, I screwed that relationship up pretty badly.  So it goes.)

Now I realize that yes, other people like Rob are out there — and mostly they are all self-involved dicks who don't deserve much more than superficiality, and probably wouldn't recognize much more if they got it.  They are doomed.

I like to think that I've made progress.  I see Rob as a sad protagonist that I can't stand.  Watching him is like looking at a home movie of myself from years ago and wishing I could reach through and strangle the sullen little kid on the screen (or at least give him a decent haircut).  

He's a calculating misogynist — the kind of man who can't stand the idea of someone else sleeping with his ex, so he goes out and sleeps with someone, as if he's in a race to move on, or enact some sort of revenge...by striking first?

Once he sleeps with someone else, he immediately goes back to obsessing about his ex sleeping with someone else!  Then he flips out when he learns she's slept with the new guy!  But...look at what you just did, asshole!  AAARGGH.  

And because John Cusack is so damned likable, what his character pulls on screen is...okay?  Funny?  His redemption is...earned?  What did he do to earn this, other than going to his ex-girlfriend's father's funeral?  He's an asshole!

That's the first time I've gone off like that about this film and this character.  Ten years ago, I understood him — I felt his pain, even.  Bitches, man!  Women — especially ones who had the audacity to dump me (when I probably deserved it) — were the enemy, and I had so much stored up anger that I should've stayed away from women altogether, but I didn't.  I kept going back out there, and taking that darkness with me.  Baaaad.

These days, I'm still obsessed with collecting music, sure, and I spend a shitload of time and money in record shops and on eBay looking for stuff, and yes, I'm still self-involved (hello...blogging?), but...would I pull this shit?  No.  

I'm not perfect.  I still make plenty of mistakes with other people, but somehow I found a girl who stayed, and accepted all the faults and obsessions and stupidity and mistakes.  She stayed.  But more on that in a minute.

If not for the demise of physical media and my own canny move to stay in grad school through pretty much the entirety of George W. Bush's first term in office, I likely would be running my own record shop into the ground these days, hoping beyond hope that digital downloads and the death of physical media wouldn't be my undoing.  Of course, owning my own record shop also depends on if health care were affordable and if I could afford to pay myself a living salary and if the bullshit of owning and running a small business weren't so soul-crushing.  That's a lot of "if," but whatever.  

Mostly, record stores seem like a good life, but they're not.  "It's retail hell," my friend Stevie Ray used to say.  He went out of business a few years later.  But record stores are still cool, you know?  I idealize them.  They're fucking great.  They're my church.  Not like in Empire Records, which was nothing like any decent record shop I ever knew (more like a Sam Goody or the like).  No — record shops have an allure, a palpable attitude about them, and that hazy, nicotine and vinyl and incense smell.

Record stores are a fantasy that doesn't really deliver — at least not for me, anyway.  I know plenty of people who work in shops and have great lives and are happy.  I just couldn't get there, for whatever reason.  Loved the free music and the conversations.  Hated the retail drudgery.  But no job is perfect.  If record shops paid $60k a year, we'd all work in one.  Maybe.

Still, as a customer, I can't stay away from them.  Tangent: I once heard my dad telling someone about when he was maybe my age, and he'd work all week, and wake up on Saturday morning with this itch, like he had to go out, because there was a bargain out there.  He went out some weekends and would come back with all this stuff — a lawnmower, a car, a piece of furniture — never records.  Dad doesn't give a crap about music.  But I feel the same pull a few times a week — like if I don't check the shops regularly, I'll miss some amazing bargain, like when I found The Jimi Hendrix Concerts for one damned dollar, or both Traveling Wilburys CDs for $2, or when I found this for $90.  You miss stuff by staying home.  I don't club.  I don't karaoke.  I don't camp or climb rocks or ride a bike or take some martial arts class.  I dig around in record shops.  I might love that more than I love writing.

I'm Rob's age now.  But aside from the obsessive record collecting and the occasional (mostly harmless) navel-gazing, I like to think I'm a different guy now.  What changed?  I watched as my friends married off, had kids, bought houses, etc., and I didn't understand.  I kept collecting records.  I kept blowing money.  I kept having these aborted relationships with women.  Two dates, maybe even three, and then nothing.  Flameout.

Eventual solution?  Self-imposed exile.  Done going through the motions, telling the same stories, doing the same things.  I kept going with my gut: "Maybe this new girl is the one."

Finally, I had the same epiphany that Rob has around the 1:40 mark in High Fidelity: "I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains."  The film helped me get there.  I sort of traversed the same arc he goes through.  On New Year's Eve, 2005, I hung out with some friends, had a great time, and felt hopeful about 2006.  My friends would later say that something about me had changed.  They'd never seen me that way.  What way?  I'm still not sure.  Maybe I was just at peace for once.

And then, along came my wife, our life together, our home, and Rufus, our little house rabbit, who is a total asshole, but we love him anyway.  Boom, almost all at once.

The thing about High Fidelity is in the epiphany.  Music and the messages therein shape how Rob views the world and the people around him, and it's all just fantasy.  And after a while, it's easy to get tired of the fantasy, because the fantasy doesn't deliver.  The bitch about fantasies is that they're perfect, and you can't have that.  

Record stores sound great, until you have to actually do some work or listen to shitty music or stock something you know is awful.  Takes a real adult to work in a record shop and not be an asshole to everyone who buys something you don't like.  That stuff never shows up in the fantasy of sitting around listening to music all day and talking to people about Bowie or whatever.  How cool is it that Nick Hornby sets this book in one of the most fantasized, romanticized places?

High Fidelity isn't really about music.  High fidelity is just another phrase for commitment, and the peace that comes from letting go of the rest of what doesn't matter.  I'm sure there's some Buddhism in here somewhere.  

When you commit to somebody — really, really commit to something real and steady, you get something that transcends the fantasy (even if you get worn out women's underwear occasionally hanging in weird places in the house, or endless piles of shoes placed near virtually every door, or half-full glasses of water left on virtually every flat surface).  

What at first seems like less than the fantasy actually ends up being more than the fantasy, and by miles.  You get to come home to something.  (I say this with the utmost respect for people who come home to an empty home for whatever reason, and do not intend to brag or whatever.  I've done the living alone thing, and by choice, even, and although I like my current situation better, if my marriage doesn't work out, I'm living alone in a shabby apartment for the rest of my life.  Living alone was great, too.)

Yeah, you might still slowly piece together all the deleted Bowie albums on Rykodisc (the ones with the bonus tracks you can't get anywhere else), or maybe you suddenly start putting together the Stones' discography on SACD, or maybe you go through a phase wherein you spend so much money on music at the Borders going-out-of-business sales that you actually wonder whether you'll single-handedly resuscitate the company and/or the entire record industry.  Or maybe that's all just me.

But that doesn't mean I want any of that superficial, material stuff more than the person, the rabbit, the house, the kids (someday), and so on.  All that collecting, that obsessing, that itch on Saturday mornings to go out and find a bargain even as physical media sits on life support...it's all just providing a great soundtrack for a pretty good life.

The Hidden Fortress

George Lucas freely admits taking inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, a film about two meek, bickering peasants who meet a tough general and set out to help a princess. Sound familiar?

The last time I watched this film, in 2007 (I think), I had a flatscreen tube television. I remarked at the time how good the picture was, with just the right amount of grain and flecks of age that add rather than detract from the viewing. Now that I have a much bigger, flat panel HDTV, I'm pretty amazed at how good the DVD looks. I spend most of my time thinking about that when I watch this film.

Simply put, Criterion's 2001 DVD edition looks great. Sharp detail is evident throughout, but especially in scenes that take place in rocky areas (which comprise most of the film's locations). You can see textures in the rock, individual pebbles, clouds of dust, and fine grain in the film. I'm geeking out a bit at how amazing this DVD looks — a DVD, not a Blu-Ray, mind you.

From what I've read, The Hidden Fortress is Kurosawa's first widescreen film. Here's a good blog post on that, if you're interested. He's watched and written about each Kurosawa film in a bit more scholarly way than I'm doing here.

I'm fortunate to have the Criterion release with the 3.0 "Perspecta Sound" mix, which gives the soundtrack a bit more room to breathe. Other Criterion DVDs are plain old mono. If you're a purist who likes old films in mono, that might not bug you. (That track is an option on the 2001 disc, too.) I just prefer the breathing room.

My relationship with Kurosawa films seems to be on and off. I go in phases where I'll want to watch a bunch of his films in a week or two, and then I'm done for a while. I do that with all my favorite directors. Kurosawa is interrupting my Hitchcock phase right now, but I'll get back to Hitch soon enough.

As I watch Kurosawa's films and write about them, I get more interested in other Japanese filmmakers, but don't really know where to start. I've only seen one Yasujiro Ozu film (Tokyo Story), and virtually nothing else. Much of Japanese cinema is a blind spot for me. I need to fix that.

Herzog-Kinski and The Burden of Dreams

Werner Herzog is the kind of madman I can get behind. (For that matter, so is Klaus Kinski.)

Herzog was part of the New German Cinema, which was marked by younger filmmakers working on shoestring budgets but tackling large ideas and drawing a distinct influence from the French New Wave. This era of film is a bit of a blind spot for me, as I've only seen some films by Herzog and Wim Wenders. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films have been on my agenda for some time, specifically World On A Wire (1973). I'll get there someday.

My wife got me the Herzog-Kinski DVD set for my birthday this year. Ever since then I've been stuck, because I kept waiting for that chance to go back and do Aguirre, The Wrath of God, followed by Cobra Verde, followed by Fitzcarraldo, in order to get back to alphabetical order again.

But then I felt compelled to pick up Burden of Dreams, which is a documentary about Herzog's struggles in making Fitzcarraldo, much like Hearts of Darkness is a documentary about Francis Ford Coppola's adventures in making Apocalypse Now. As soon as I bought Burden of Dreams, I screwed up everything.

In an effort to get back on track, I'm watching the whole Herzog-Kinski set in the order Herzog filmed them, squeezing in Burden of Dreams after Fitzcarraldo, and combining them all here. That's not exactly alphabetical order, but that is seven films in all, people. I'm Herzog-Kinski crazy! (And if I don't get through them all at once, I might never blog again.)

First, Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) —

Aguirre, The Wrath of God is the first collaboration between Herzog and Kinski, and in many ways sets the tone for the DVD set. None of Herzog's films are particularly easy to watch, but the ones with Kinski really tap into insanity.

Various stories and legends date to the production of Aguirre, with tales of Kinski and Herzog threatening each other with firearms, and at least one incident when Kinski fired a gun into a tent full of actors and crew members, shooting off someone's finger.

Aguirre is second in command on a small expedition to find El Dorado. In short order, he usurps command of the expedition by encouraging a mutiny, then naming a fat patsy, Don Fernando de Guzman, as the new "emperor" of El Dorado.

Ah, but Don Fernando gets to like his power, and Aguirre can't have that. Aguirre and his men also can't have Don Fernando eating all the food and throwing the expedition's only horse off the raft (it swims to shore). The film is a slow burn as Aguirre slowly takes over and quietly lets his madness loose.

The first time I watched Aguirre, maybe a year or two ago, I was struck by how Herzog got such a muted but maniacal performance out of Kinski, who was famously explosive. Here, he's under control, but just barely. Off-camera, the two were a volatile mixture, but on camera, they somehow made great films together.

Aguirre was shot entirely in English, which sort of gives me a weird choice when I watch. Do I let it go in Herzog's native German and disregard the bad looping, or do I watch it in English, as it was shot, and enjoy mouths synched to dialogue? I chose the latter. If Herzog shot it in English, then it was meant to be viewed in English by English speakers. One day, if I learn German, I'll go back and watch it that way.

For the record, I've noticed a bizarre tendency toward animal cruelty depicted in Herzog's film. Aguirre is no exception. Pushing the horse off the raft? That's brutal and savage behavior. Seeing the horse standing on the shoreline, watching the raft as the men float away...it's heartbreaking. But I'm a softie. For some reason, the shot with the monkey at the end (Kinski literally throws it into the river) doesn't bother me nearly as much as the horse. I don't know why I feel this way. I can't tell you everything.

Second, Nosferatu, Phantom Der Nacht (1979) —

Betcha didn't know Herzog and Kinski teamed up for this 1979 remake of the F.W. Murnau vampire masterpiece, didja? All those people doing remakes (and those decrying remakes, for that matter) in the 21st century could learn much by looking back on the remakes of the previous century. This one, however, is entirely in German, and isn't exactly Herzog's best film, so most Americans don't even know this one exists. (I didn't until I put this one on my Amazon Wish List two years ago.)

Herzog is pretty faithful to the Murnau adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel (what does that even mean?). Seeing Herzog's take actually makes for a neat comparison to Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 adaptation of Dracula, and really serves as a nice bridge — a kind of missing link between the Hammer Films series of Dracula films and Coppola's. (Read: A quality film popping up amid a series of B-movies.)

Kinski's vampire makeup seems great. The ear prosthetics look pretty good, and his fangs are fine, but his fingernails...

...is he wearing Bugles on his fingertips?

Oh, before I move on, you should know that Bruno Ganz plays Jonathan Harker here. When Ganz was young, and especially in this film, he looks a lot like Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. See?

(Ganz, at left, German.)

(If Harker had one of these, Nosferatu wouldn't have fucked with his woman.)

Who is Bruno Ganz? You might know him as Hitler:

The third film in the set is Woyzeck (1979) — 

This is Herzog's very low key film based on an incomplete morality play by German playwright Georg Büchner, who died before finishing the script. The film centers on a hapless soldier who is a victim of poor leadership, abuse, and dishonesty. He also earns money by participating in experiments — you know, like a grad student.

Woyzeck has a child out of wedlock with Marie, who loses interest in him and entertains (somewhat ambiguously) a hunky drum major — not like college, but like military instead. Woyzeck gets wind of this and confronts her, but...you know what? I'm giving too much away here. I will say that the animal cruelty thing comes back here. Some guy slaps a monkey on the head really hard around 2/3 of the way through. It's a bizarre scene.

Woyzeck is another Herzog-Kinski collaboration in which Kinski depicts a character who is unstable at the outset and subsequently falls apart. Kinski spoke at length about his experience making the film immediately after Nosferatu. More madness, but not more of the same. That's what I'm finding is the strength of this collaboration — all the shades of madness laid out together like some macabre palate.

That brings us to Fitzcarraldo (1982), which is my favorite Herzog film —

Here, Kinski plays Fitzcarraldo, an opera lover so passionate, so irrational, that he decides to bring opera to the rainforest. He's convinced that this goal is worthwhile, and that people — not just the natives, but his opera-loving bourgeois acquaintances — will come if he just built a magnificent place. He's like a Christian missionary crossed with Ray Kinsella from Field of Dreams. 

Among other things, I think of the Santa Fe Opera House when I watch Fitzcarraldo. Outside Santa Fe, out there in the high desert, away from everything, there's this opera house where my wife used to work. She spent a summer stock season there in the costume shop. Since then, we've seen two movies — Crazy Heart and The Tao of Steve (odd double-feature) — that prominently depict the Santa Fe Opera. Anyway, when I visited her, we never made it out there, but many, many other people came out — and from miles away. People will come. So to whatever madman had the idea to put an opera house in the middle of the desert, I'll say this: you were right.

Fitzcarraldo, on the other hand, had a jungle to deal with, as well as a string of terrible circumstances that amount to a combination of bad luck and bad planning. Even the premise sounds waaaay more ridiculous than building an opera house in the desert. Opera in a city in the jungle? Funded by rubber harvesting? What are you, crazy? Don't answer that.

I mean, just look at that movie poster. Klaus Kinski, hair everywhere, blank stare into the distance, pointing at a boat that men are attempting to drag up a mountain. The Sisyphean parallels are obvious, and much has been written paralleling the two stories.

I watched Fitzcarraldo on Netflix, but I can't recall how I arrived at the film. I just heard about this film about a crazy man who tried to haul a boat up the side of a mountain to save time going down a river and then up another river. There's a point in South America where two rivers come within a few hundred yards of each other, and nearby is a sizable piece of land on which unclaimed rubber trees grow. Fitzcarraldo sets out to claim them, make money from them, and build his opera house. He concocts a plan to drag a boat up a 40-some degree incline, over land mind you, and get it to the other river so they can get to the rubber.

The cinematography, in combination with that Popol Vuh soundtrack, just captivated me. (Popol Vuh also did the soundtrack for Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Nosferatu, and Cobra Verde, as well as Heart of Glass, so if you're into Krautrock soundtracks, here you go.) Listen to the Popol Vuh tunes and tell me you can't draw a straight line from that to the post-rock wanderings of Explosions in the Sky. It's gorgeous, soaring stuff.

I actually found myself wondering whether the film would have an ending at all, or whether the whole thing would fall apart, as Herzog's ambition parallelled Fitzcarraldo's in many ways. Herzog has written and spoken extensively on the troubles he faced while making the film — and much has been written by fans, scholars, and critics lauding Fitzcarraldo.

I've never enjoyed watching someone fail (okay, that's a lie — I love watching sports teams fail if I can't stand them). But in this case, Fitzcarraldo's journey and the collapse were so painstakingly orchestrated that I couldn't look away. I still can't. The sheer operatic ambition of it all just breaks my heart and I can't help but connect to about a million other things in my life and tip my cap to Fitzcarraldo for trying and to Herzog for succeeding, because even in spectacular failure, Fitzcarraldo's got my respect, and Herzog definitely earns it here.

I suppose the reason why Fitzcarraldo is my favorite is in the madness. We're not watching a cruel, sadistic madman, or a jealous soldier coming apart, or a bloodsucking killing machine, but the kind of madness that comes from reaching too far with no apprehension and expecting nothing but success. Hubris is a form of madness, I think. That's Fitz.

I'm inserting Burden of Dreams (1982) here, as it seems fitting to watch a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo immediately after watching it.

Herzog was 37 — my age at the time of this writing — when he made Fitzcarraldo. What have I done with my life? Yikes.

I'd heard that Jason Robards was originally cast as Fitzcarraldo, but didn't know much else about the production. I didn't know, for instance, that Robards got dysentery and couldn't continue with filming, and I didn't know that Mick Jagger was originally Fitzcarraldo's sidekick in the film, but couldn't continue with the picture because of his commitments to some rock band recording their 1982 album Tattoo You. Enter Klaus Kinski again to save the day, and Herzog starts over filming from scratch.

Behind the scenes, the film production was just as fascinating as the film itself (if not more). Rumors plagued the production — locals thought Herzog's crew would do one or more of the following:

1) Rape and murder everyone.
2) Dig a canal and sever a portion of an isthmus so that it maroons everyone on a man-made island.
3) Rob everybody and leave.

So Herzog wasn't just faced with the logistical issues of making a full-length motion picture in the middle of the Amazon jungle in the late 1970s, but he also faced political issues and general mistrust from the locals. Oh, and then Robards and Jagger dropped out of the picture. 

I look at Burden of Dreams in much the same way as I see Lost in La Mancha, the documentary of Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to film Don Quixote. Of course, Herzog succeeds while Gilliam didn't, and the two stories are so different, but a large-scale film production is a large-scale film production. Seeing them struggle to make something that looks so effortless on screen is fascinating.

I was hoping to see some document of the Herzog-Kinski relationship in Burden of Dreams, but I'm nearly 35 minutes in and so far, nothing. They appear to have gotten along swimmingly. Of course, with about an hour left in the film, that could change.

In one scene, we see Herzog and his assistant director working with locals — non-actors — and filming a couple hundred of them approaching in canoes. They're smiling, giggling, awkward, and completely screwing up the shot by looking directly into the camera and smiling. Of course, Herzog's insistence on shooting everything during "magic hour" doesn't help matters. 

He's often accused of doing things "the hard way" on purpose, but he's got this vision and he's undeterred and doesn't want to hear excuses. He'd be a great boss, I'm sure. 

He even hired prostitutes for his film crew, to keep them from co-mingling with the natives after so many months of filming. He knew it would present serious cultural problems, so he found Dominican hookers. I'm not sure what to make of all that.

"I don't even miss him," Herzog says in reflection on his collaboration with Kinski — one of the bonus features on Burden of Dreams. He's got a point, that their collaboration spanned five films, but Kinski did hundreds of movies and Herzog more than 50 himself. 

"I don't have dreams," he says moments later. Then how does he know what dreams look like? He frequently refers to events of dreams, the visuals of dreams, etc. Well, maybe he's not having sleeping ones, as he says. But he's been a busy, busy man trying to visualize what they might be.

The final film in the Herzog-Kinski collaboration is called Cobra Verde (1987) — 

Cobra Verde is the last collaboration between Herzog and Kinski. Prior to owning this set, I'd never seen this one — just heard and read about it. Kinski is Cobra Verde, a bandit who is hired by a sugar plantation owner to oversee his slaves. Instead, Cobra Verde impregnates all of the plantation owner's daughters. Yeah, he's virile.

As punishment, he is sent to Africa to resuscitate the slave trade — a certain death mission. He succeeds somehow, and then leads a revolt against the local king, a brutal man who preaches death to the white man. He leads a revolt by amassing an army of women — who are more brave than their male counterparts. He also fathers more than 60 children. Hello!

Cobra Verde is a pretty film with gritty subject matter, and the last narrative film in the Herzog-Kinski set. This DVD apparently comes from a pristine transfer of the source, with only a few flecks and scratches. The toughest part of watching this film is the soundtrack. You get the German 5.1 track, a German 2.0 track, and an English 2.0 track. 

Kinski and several of the other actors spoke most of their lines in English, while many of the other actors spoke whatever their native language was (much like Sergio Leone's Italian westerns, which were often shot in Spain). So if you want to watch the film in English, you don't get 5.1. But if you want to watch badly synched German, you can have 5.1. I don't get it. The film sits in this weird gray area between languages, which would be fine if the English track was in 5.1 also. It's a minor quibble.

Finally, My Best Fiend finishes the collection. This documentary about the Herzog-Kinski relationship is the perfect cap to this marathon (and the DVD cover says a lot):

Watching all the films in one week has been pretty grueling. Of all the films, my favorite is Fitzcarraldo for its sheer audacity of spirit, but Aguirre is a close second. I love Herzog's work and admire him very much, but too many of his films in rapid succession can be quite heavy on the soul. I look forward to watching something a bit lighter soon.

Hellboy/Hellboy II: The Golden Army

I'm pretty sure Guillermo Del Toro would've screwed up Middle Earth.

After watching much of Del Toro's work, and re-watching the two Hellboy films tonight, I'm convinced that no one in The Hobbit would've had eyes, and if they did, their eyes would've been in screwed up places.

Every damned scene would be preoccupied with gears and machines and cranky whirly things with sharp bits, and all the beasts of Middle Earth would've been far hairier and about 10 times more macabre than Tolkien ever envisioned.

Things have a funny way of working out. Del Toro left work on The Hobbit, leaving no one except Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to do the films. You know, the way it should've been in the first place.

Del Toro is perfect for the Hellboy films, though.

I enjoy the Hellboy movies, even though I never read the comic. You don't have to be a fan of the comics to enjoy the films, though.

I've been a comic collector since the early '80s, usually picking up copies of The Amazing Spider-Man and whatever else caught my attention, but stuff like Hellboy was a blind spot. I had a tough time with the comics of the '90s, which were often far darker and more violent than my Marvel heroes. Sandman, Hellboy, Preacher, Hellblazer, and others were a bit too much for me and my upbringing, all fire and brimstone and going to Hell, etc. I got over my hangup, read Preacher and most of Sandman, and never got around to the other two.

Both Hellboy films are spectacles of Guillermo Del Toro's and Mike Mignola's imaginations. Few directors could take Mignola's Hellboy story and infuse his own distinct vision as organically as Del Toro here.

All the attention to the inner workings and gears of things such as time pieces and other machines are distinctly Del Toro (for more of that sort of thing, check out his earlier film, Chronos). Maybe the most organic combination of Del Toro's and Mignola's vision is represented in Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, a blend of maniac and machine who won't die and must be wound like a clock.

My only real complaint with Hellboy is they used Pete Yorn's weak-ass cover of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand." Seriously, what a perfect song for this film — if they'd gotten the original version instead of Yorn's watered down effort. Maybe they couldn't get Nick Cave's version, or maybe they wouldn't pony up the dough. Tragedy either way.

Okay, two complaints. Most of the wire work in Hellboy is awful. That gets better in the sequel, though, so I'll let that slide.

Three: Hellboy and Liz are both fireproof, but how come their clothes don't burn up? Nomex?

Okay, one more. Rasputin. Why does a man with glass eyes need to wear shades?

I'll stop.

How about Ron Perlman as Hellboy? Has there been a better casting choice in any comic book movie yet? Here's a guy who couldn't get arrested except for B-movies, random supporting roles, and video games for the bigger part of 25 years in Hollywood. But he had Hellboy's jawline.

I understand why Agent Myers was created for the first film — audiences who've never read the comic need to have that character through which they can experience this universe for the first time. They need a character to ask the audience's questions about the film world. I also understand why the character is gone in the sequel. If you've seen the first film, you know the drill, so you don't need a character to ask all the questions for the audience. Both creating the character and dumping the character are good writing choices for these movies.

As for special effects, although the first one is showing some age, I watch that climactic sequence in the first film and wonder why no one has done a competent film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu." Why hasn't Del Toro, for that matter?

The second one, made four years later, obviously has better special effects and is much funnier — I mean, Hellboy and Abe Sapien sing Barry Manilow together. But the plot isn't as interesting, and the villain looks like Tom Cruise in Matrix makeup. I'm over it.

Seen as a double feature, liking both films is easy, though.

Harold and Maude

Took me a while to get around to Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude. A film about a guy who attends funerals for fun and fakes his own suicides to torment his domineering mother hasn't seemed all that appealing lately.

I've been stuck for a couple of months, actually. Chalk that up to the grieving process, I guess. My mom's death continues to weigh on me, and I don't want to post some hand-wringing, navel-gazing stuff every day. I just don't feel like watching my movies much, but I'm not quitting. I've just slowed down.

Tonight, though, I put on Harold and Maude, and felt relieved when I watched the scene with the marching band parading by the funeral procession, and I couldn't stop laughing. Maybe I'm gonna be okay after all.

I'd never heard of Harold and Maude before taking that film genres course at Ball State in 1997ish. Although I had heard of Cat Stevens, whose songs comprise the entire soundtrack, I'd never paid much attention to his music.

After watching the film in class, I was a fan of both for life. Within the first 10 minutes, you get three Cat Stevens songs and two of Harold's faked suicides. Talk about a hook.

When Harold finds himself in therapy, he seems to be going along with the process; he's well behaved, soft-spoken — but look at what Harold is wearing on the left, as opposed to the therapist on the right:

This isn't Harold being compliant or active in his own therapy, but more of a "fuck you" to the therapist. Harold seems to make a comment on the superficiality of it all — dressing like a therapist doesn't make one a good therapist. This is what a rebellious young man would do, as he struggles with the adult world and all of those compromises, hypocrisies, and ironies.

Harold's uncle, Victor, "General MacArthur's right-hand man," according to Harold's mother, doesn't actually have a right arm. He salutes a poster of Nathan Hale by pulling on a string in his lapel that brings up his starched right sleeve. Ridiculous.

Of course, for all the commentary on death, there are several moments that take life quite seriously — Maude's concentration camp tattoo, for one. This isn't a film that deals with life and death in a flippant way, but contemplates the meaning we find in both. At one point, Harold and Maude find themselves together, their relationship blossoming like new life, and they're here:

Much has been written about this film over the years. Film scholars love Harold and Maude for the deft contemplation of life and death combined with moments that are still hilarious and disturbing 40 years later. You can read the film in the context of early 1970s American independent cinema, or you can recontextualize the film as a kind of comment on the modern tendency for people to get wrapped up in shit that isn't important at all, so much in fact that they forget how to enjoy life.

However you see the film, just see the film. Harold and Maude is a classic black comedy — the kind of film I don't return to much, but one that reminds me, abundantly, of who we've lost, how much we've lost, and all that's left behind.

Hard Eight

Before There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, or Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson made a film he called Sydney, and later renamed Hard Eight.

Much has been written about how Robert Altman's films influenced Anderson. Even Anderson has discussed this at length. Hard Eight seems to be the most Altman-esque of Anderson's work — even casting Philip Baker Hall in the lead role.

But touches of Stanley Kubrick's work appear in the cinematography as well, along with French New Wave films. I'd go on citing other influences, but that's not the point — and you can read.

Hard Eight was one that I had to track down on glorious VHS, after I'd seen Magnolia and Boogie Nights. Even later, I picked up a copy on DVD at my local, dying Borders store. Unfortunately, I never got around to re-watching the film until tonight.

I've written a lot about films that impressed me long ago, but don't seem to sit the same way now — maybe they don't disappoint me, but I feel differently about them. I've also written about films that are just as good as I remember — ones that haven't aged a day.

Occasionally, a film is even better than I remember. Hard Eight is like that — great characters in complicated situations, with a cast that feels just right. I don't know why I don't watch this film more often (I probably say that about my whole collection). The film isn't Anderson's best, but looking again was totally worth the time.

Hannibal

Perhaps the most surprising thing (to me) about Ridley Scott's Hannibal is that I own a copy of Ridley Scott's Hannibal. The film really isn't that great.

The film just misses greatness by feeling a little too much like airplane reading — you know, the formulaic type sold in airport bookstores and meant to be consumed quickly and without much thought.

The story gets wrapped up in fine details of fine things set in fine places, and even after several viewings, I still feel the presence of Thomas Harris trying to impress me with how much he knows about hand cream.

Further, and probably more obvious, is that Jodie Foster isn't here. Julianne Moore does an admirable job stepping into an iconic role, but I still can't get past it. She's not Jodie Foster, and no amount of southern accent can make her a different person, even if the film is set 10 years later.

But I went through a Hannibal phase a few years ago anyway, picking up The Silence of the Lambs first, then Hannibal, and finally Red Dragon. Sometimes, obsessive completist tendencies got the best of me regardless of quality.

Of course, I've seen the film that started all this Hannibal Lecter stuff — Michael Mann's Manhunter, but that film feels terribly dated and inconsistent compared to the films featuring Anthony Hopkins.

Just as Brian Cox does not feel right as Lecter in the first film, Julianne Moore does not feel right as Clarice Starling. Maybe for thinking this way, I'm one of the Philistines that Dr. Lecter rails against. I hope he doesn't find me rude for saying these things.

p.s. I should note that I do not own a copy of the prequel, Hannibal Rising. That film is garbage.

Halloween

Alphabetical order brings the occasional happy coincidence — Groundhog Day coming up in February, for example. But Halloween is next, and this is March. We soldier on.

The first time I watched Halloween, my family caught the televised version at some point in the '80s. I was maybe 8 or 10 years old — far too young by today's standards, but my parents let me watch anyway. I've mentioned before how they rarely prevented us from watching anything except sex scenes (which were often just fast-forwarded — comical to watch and to contemplate as an alternative to watching at regular 30 frames per second).

I'm thankful my parents let me watch whatever, because I was exposed to so much great cinema at an early age. I often romanticize the weekends when Dad would bring home a pile of VHS tapes from the local video store, and I attribute much of that to a lack of money in those Reaganized '80s, but there's also a twinge of sadness when I look back, because as a family we really aren't that functional. We don't talk and when we do, we don't have much to say. We get along okay, but sometimes there are long silences.

We watched movies well, though.

Not surprisingly, Halloween scared the living shit out of me — the breathing noises, the "eyehole" perspective, the over-the-shoulder shots of Michael wandering around Haddonfield in broad daylight, the creepy music, the scene when Michael kills the German shepherd, and that moment in the night when he is standing across the street, silhouetted in the porchlight, and then...gone.

John Carpenter's script simply referred to Michael as "The Shape," which is pretty much the freakiest descriptor you could put on a killer stalker type in the late '70s/early '80s. This "shape" picked the one night of the year that he could walk around Haddonfield acting creepy, walking from place to place wearing a mask, and no one would suspect him (except Loomis).

Halloween is credited as the first "slasher" film, as well as inventing a host of other horror film cliches and spawning much discussion:

"The film set in motion the Puritanical, psycho-pathological principle that one's survival was directly proportional to one's sexual experience. It also asserted the allegorical idea that sexual awakening often meant the literal 'death' of innocence (or oneself). With the title character Laurie (Curtis) a virgin, she is able to escape mostly unscathed (as does the asexual Dr. Loomis and the young pre-teen Tommy Doyle), but others who are more promiscuous and sexually-charged are less fortunate and suffer deadly consequences as victims. In this film, murders often occur after sexual encounters when victims are distracted and off-guard."

Surprisingly, in addition to scaring me half to death, Halloween brought out my empathy. I remember feeling a strong sense of sadness and pity when the bullies knock the little schoolboy to the ground, shattering his pumpkin. I was sort of that same picked-on boy back then.

As an adult, the film doesn't work as a horror film for me anymore, but as a classic John Carpenter film, oh yes. As I get older, I appreciate Carpenter's efforts more, because I see how technically sound his work is now that I've studied film and watched thousands of terrible movies. For me, films don't get much better than Carpenter's work from 1978-88.

The Carpenter geek in me loves seeing the tribute to The Thing From Another World on televisions on this Halloween night. Carpenter would go on to make his own version of the film, a modern reimagining/tribute/sequel/somethingeruther that's not only a great horror picture, but just great filmmaking (not a surprise).

I didn't realize what I was watching then — Carpenter seemed to blend in with a lot of the cinema of the time, and I was too young to really know the difference (or associate names with films — but when you put Halloween, Escape From New York, The Thing, Christine, Starman, Big Trouble in Little China, Prince of Darkness, and They Live up against most modern excuses for filmmaking (especially genre pictures), you really can see a difference. Look at what John Carpenter was able to pull off without a lot of money but with a ton of creative control. He should be a hero to aspiring indie filmmakers.

I didn't want to watch this film lately because I wasn't feeling particularly Halloween-y in March, but I'm glad I forced myself to push through. Thankfully, I don't have any of the sequels to choke down (though Halloween II isn't bad). I've seen all the films in the original franchise, and they just get worse and worse.

And don't get me started on Rob Zombie's version, which took Michael Myers, the horrifying, unstoppable, mad killing machine, and made him a whiny little boy with flowing hair for the first half of the film. Basically, Rob Zombie did to Michael Myers what George Lucas did to Darth Vader. Not cool.

Somewhere along the way, filmmakers, writers, and audiences became obsessed with origin stories — and generally wanting to know how a madman is created. Okay, here's the challenge: Find one of those films where the madman origin prequel story is more terrifying than the actual, original film.

I contend that knowing how a villain got here is not nearly as scary as a villain who exists from nowhere, with little motivation. (Witness Heath Ledger's Joker for an example.) That's far more terrifying than knowing that a character was molested or abused in some way a la Zombie's interpretation, or fed "sister stew" a la Hannibal Lecter.

Madness comes from a deep, black void that defies description. The original Michael Myers personifies that void; we're looking off a balcony and seeing nothing but darkness and space where a man should be.

Groundhog Day

I wanted to get to Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day, but that didn't work out. Then I figured I'd just settle for getting to this film during the month of February. Here you go.

I heard of Groundhog Day shortly after the film's release in 1993, when I saw my neighbor, Chris, wearing a "Groundhog Day -- the movie, not the holiday" t-shirt (or was that a hat?). I don't remember when I ended up seeing the movie for the first time, but for some reason, I remember that shirt/hat. Okay, it was some kind of article of clothing. Or maybe a coffee mug. Okay, it had the name Groundhog Day on it somewhere.

Anyway, the point isn't when I saw the movie, but that I saw the movie.

After maybe 15 or 20 viewings now, I can't hear Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" without laughing. I can't hear the name Ned without following with "Ned the Head." I can't hear the name Punxsutawney Phil without affecting a Brian Doyle Murray voice.

Like all great American comedies, Groundhog Day stands up well to repeat viewings mostly because of great dialogue and brilliant comic moments. Every Groundhog Day brings out this DVD in homes across the country, including ours.

My wife and I watch Groundhog Day every year on Feb. 2 -- like many people, we like our little traditions, even if this one has an annoying moment or two. (Every year, at the 29:00 mark, I see David Pasquesi and tell my wife that I once took a class with him at The Second City in Chicago. The first few times, I didn't remember saying as much the year before. Now I just do it to annoy her.)

At least one part doesn't work at all — when Larry and Rita identify Phil's body in the morgue. Phil kills himself multiple times, only to wake up instantly at 6 a.m. to repeat the day. To spend time with his dead body indicates that the rest of the day goes on without him, and that's a little plot inconsistency that's always bothered me. Then again, maybe the whole day goes on without him and resets at the same time each night regardless of whether Phil is alive. I've never really understood this part. The older I get, the more thought I give this movie.

A couple great articles contemplate how many days Bill Murray spends living the same day over again. Here's one, and here's the other. Even Harold Ramis responded at one point. Great reading while it's still February.

There's even a film now with a Groundhog Day-inspired title. This is one of those films, like so many of Bill Murray's, that gets a little better every year, as nostalgia and anticipation play their part to make this film a classic.

I wonder if tonight is the last time I will watch Groundhog Day on DVD. I picked up a copy on Blu-Ray this year, and obviously the picture and sound quality are so much better. Knowing that, I nearly sold off my DVD copy this month, but I just couldn't skip blogging about Groundhog Day in February.