films

Alex on Film makes a thorough analysis of Hitchcock's Psycho and lobs some brickbats at the Gus Van Sant remake. A few thoughts on his thoughts. He says "Hitchcock had noticed how lousy, cheaply made exploitation movies were making a lot of money and so wondered what would happen if someone tried to do a B-movie well, if just as inexpensively." And in the Van Sant post he adds "Hitchcock filmed Psycho in black-and-white in part because it was cheap but also because it looked cheap and he was going for a low-budget, exploitation aesthetic." And he quotes David Thomson on the abrasiveness or indifference of the characters and how, metaphorically, "the central killing grows out of the grim unkindness of the world we have seen."

Martin Scorsese, a film critic with an interesting side career as a director, made some recent commentary for the 1957 movie The Brothers Rico that touches on both these points, that is, the low budget filmmaking and the grim unkindness. I transcribed what he said (with a few minor syntax flubs intact):

"Many of the pictures shot in the late '50s had this flatness to them. Maybe it really was the influence of fast-shooting television crews -- television production -- and the idea that some of these films would go to television, and have to have the contrast that way. So the idea of the film noir, the looks of expressionistic shadows, and it'll look better on a TV tube. Ah, but maybe it was something else, too, maybe it was a reflection of a certain unease of everyday life that came out almost unconsciously. I mean, you see it in the late Howard Hawks pictures, in the last few American Fritz Lang movies, in low budget black and white comedies, even in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, you can see this, in this flatness -- and some have reacted against the picture because of that -- and you can even stretch it to the point of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which was shot with his television crew. And it's present in [The Brothers Rico], which takes place in the bright sunshine, and where the Mob runs their business in a kind of button-down, real corporate manner."

Scorsese is compressing forty years of black and white film history here and his conflation of expressionistic shadows and bright sunshine is a little careless (Brothers Rico does in fact have both elements). But black and white moviemaking in the '50s was slowly morphing from German Expressionism (angles and shadows) to television flatness, and the content of a lot of '50s movies is unrelentingly grim. Psycho is in some ways a continuation of all this and also turns up the amplifier to eleven, with more overt horror and psychological nastiness. And it essentially ended the era of that type of black and white filmmaking. You had a few more gasps in the early '60s, mostly on television (The Twilight Zone, Thriller, and Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano's uber-creepy The Outer Limits) and then it was over -- a grisaille style to be recycled for effect by knowing directors in the color era (The Last Picture Show, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Lars Von Trier's Europa etc.)

Of course, as Alex on Film notes, the nastiness didn't go away, it only got worse: "The slasher serial killer didn’t just go on to become acceptable, he became the hero while at the same time becoming less sympathetic, more inhuman." However, I see Psycho as more of an end (apotheosis of '50s melodrama) than a beginning of something. I wouldn't dignify the slasher genre by rooting it in Hitchcock's smart, unruly-yet-disciplined film.

“I see filmmaking as a business and pity anyone who regards it as an art form."

--Herschell Gordon Lewis (director of Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, The Wizard of Gore, etc)

"We have not aimed for the single picture that is going to make us rich. We are looking for the business that's like turning out Ford cars or anything else. If there is a certain profit per picture and we make so many pictures, then we have established a business that is on a basis that's economical."

--Barry Mahon (director of The Dead One, Pagan Island, Musical Mutiny, Thumbelina, etc)

“I’d shoot one day on this stuff and throw it together. . . . I was in the business to make money. I never, ever tried in any way to compete, or to make something worthwhile. I only did enough to get by, so they would buy it, so it would play, and so I’d get a few dollars. It’s not very fair to the public, I guess, but that was my attitude.”

--Jerry Warren (director of The Wild World of Batwoman, Frankenstein Island, etc)

Alex on Film continues to tolerate my comments -- here are some more discussion threads (next time I won't wait a year and half before compiling these):

Conspiracy Theory (1997)
The Night Eats the World (2018) (and I Am Legend-based films generally)
The Curse of La Llorona (2019) (my plug for Curse of the Crying Woman (1961))
The Stuff (1985)
Serial Mom (1994)
Hellboy (2004)
Cloverfield (2008)
First Reformed (2017)
The Naked Prey (1965)
Suspiria (1977)
Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Funhouse (1981)
The Meg (2018) (my plug for Deep Blue Sea (1999))
The Equalizer 2 (2018)
The Equalizer (2014)
Baby Driver (2017)
Election (1999)
Rawhead Rex (1986)
The Mummy Returns (2001) (my plug for Monkeybone (2001))
Dick Tracy (1990)
Black Panther (2018) (and "Marvel Universe" films generally)
Ghostbusters (2016)

previous discussions

Such are adjectives used by Netflix and Amazon to push entertainment product. Wait, can everything be "mind-bending"? Below is a sample of recent movies and TV shows with additional categories to classify their mind-bending properties.

Travelers (Showcase/Netflix series)

cult -- Travelers from Earth's future are guided by an omniscient AI "Director"
apocalypse -- Future earthlings live in domed cities surrounded by uninhabitable wasteland
dimensional doorway -- The Director sends Travelers back to "the 21st" via quantum entanglement
super powers -- Travelers are trained for hard combat and communicate via "coms" implanted in their necks

The OA (Netflix series)

cult -- Followers of a blond angel-like woman are viewed as nuts by non-followers
apocalypse -- None
dimensional doorway -- The angel's followers learn ritualistic movements that cause people to jump to parallel Earths
super powers -- Teleportation into "host bodies" in parallel Earths

Another Earth

cult -- Guilt-ridden woman believes doppelganger Earth that has appeared in sky may offer a forked causal path where she is not guilty
apocalypse -- None (miraculously the doppelganger Earth doesn't cause tidal devastation on our planet)
dimensional doorway -- It's hinted that that the "other Earth" is a parallel world but an actual, physical space shuttle is launched to go visit it
super powers -- None

Super

cult -- Psychopathic protagonist receives messages from a superhero character on a Christian TV channel; protagonist has one devoted follower (Ellen Page) who shares his delusional worldview
apocalypse -- None
dimensional doorway -- Protagonist also receives messages in otherwordly dreams, including one bizarre sequence where snakes slice his skull open
super powers -- Protagonist has no powers (a la Batman); instead, he fights crime by viciously knocking wrongdoers on the head with a pipe wrench

Brightburn

cult -- Parents pretend their adopted son wasn't rescued from a crashed spaceship; they convince each other he is a normal kid
apocalypse -- Only the hell unleashed on Earth by the arrival of this bad seed kid
dimensional doorway -- None, but possibly the spaceship receives power and messages from "elsewhere"
super powers -- Superboy character uses heat and X-ray vision, flying, and strength for evil rather than good

The Endless

cult -- Two boys raised by cult and deprogrammed return to the commune as adults
apocalypse -- Lovecraftian demon entity (seen only in charcoal sketches) controls commune territory
dimensional doorway -- Cult members "ascend" in mass suicide but remain trapped in time-loop personal universes
super powers -- The entity watches from the skies and controls humans with teleportation and telekinesis

Split

cult -- In the Unbreakable/Split/Glass universe, it's unclear whether special talents rise to the level of super powers; believers in powers (such as Mr. Glass' mom) have cult-like faith that they exist
apocalypse -- None
dimensional doorway -- The villain has multiple personalities, one of which, The Beast, may have super strength. There is discussion of personalities emerging from "the light" within the host's consciousness. The light is not explained but may be a portal of some sort
super powers -- The Beast can climb walls and bend steel bars; he eats humans to build up strength

Stranger Things (Netflix series - Season 1)

cult -- Kid is kidnapped; initially only Mom (Winona Ryder) knows he is in "The Upside Down"; believers in that scary place maintain a cult-like bond in the face of skeptical normals
apocalypse -- None, except that the Upside Down is a dark, gloppy mirror world of our world
dimensional doorway -- Telepathy experiments in government lab attract beastie from The Upside Down
super powers -- The beastie can move between dimensions, drawn by the smell of blood; girl escaped from government lab has psychic powers

Spring

cult -- Bond of love causes normal man to act as enabler for beautiful woman who periodically transforms into Lovecraftian monster
apocalypse -- None
dimensional doorway -- Monster's huge bulk balloons into normal space, seemingly from the Beyond
super powers -- The woman claims her transformations aren't occult but rather science (stem cell treatments) run amok; she is superhumanly powerful and aggressive after transforming

The Umbrella Academy (Netflix series - Season 1)

cult -- Stern disciplinarian father raises seven mysteriously-conceived children as super heroes
apocalypse -- Preventing the end of world is the main plot driver
dimensional doorway -- Doorways in time and space open and close throughout the series
super powers -- Teleportation, telekinesis, hypnotic suggestion, time travel, super strength, uncanny knife throwing, communicating with the dead, ectoplasmic tentacles

The Magicians (Science Fiction Channel - TV series)

cult -- College campus for teaching magic expels some students; rejects wishing to practice become low-class "hedge witches"
apocalypse -- "The end of magic" is a frequent plot driver
dimensional doorway -- "Travelers" can jump to other worlds. Other dimensions can also be accessed by diving into a fountain on the college campus
super powers -- "Magic" isn't just conjuring tricks but includes teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy, and communicating with spirits. Some characters are gods and have godlike powers