Argento is the saddest film-maker to me
he was a man of extreme genre-brilliance who lost his audience-captivity in the film medium to time
i liked Inferno more than most but Mother of Tears was just another vain attempt at capturing what alluring Horror appeal Argento once had with his fans
La Terza Madre is the result of a tired and worn-out Argento who wanted to top it all off with lots of "modern-style" violence and gore. It can't hold a candle to his old stuff, namely Suspiria, but also Phenomena (director) and The Church (producer/co-director), two quite underrated movies IMO.
I should add that I have a thing for gritty high-level trash...
Ah well, I merely chose Terza Madre for shock effects, knowing my wife we'll end up with another movie after the strangling-with-guts scene, then I'll swap it with Suspiria and the evening will go as planned.
Here, here! There's just something unsettling about Leviathan and the doctor, not to mention the design of Hell itself.
It's a dark and IMO very inspiring movie, watched the VHS tape I had literally to death. Excellent stuff.
"The doctor is in. I recommend... ...amputation!"
You know I love Carpenter, but Fog is a little overrated, imo. I kept waiting for the movie to come together more than it ended up doing. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad or anything, but it's definitely no Halloween or The Thing.
Carpenter and Hill talk a lot in the commentary about how they finished shooting The Fog, cut it together and the movie just didn't work. So they went back and re-shot and re-cut a lot of it. I feel like it kind of shows in the final picture, and that maybe they should have kept going.
It's not that I hate it, but I somehow missed ever seeing it at any point growing up and so just bought the dvd blind, having heard great things about it. It had good parts and I don't want to sound like I didn't enjoy it, but at the end, I had a slight feeling of, "Is that it?" Maybe it would be different if I had grown up with the movie.
In the audio commentary, John tells us that the first version of the movie contained no scenes of violence whatsoever. He and Debra Hill wanted to make a classical ghost story with gothic elements, then Embassy Pictures intervened and asked for more action. All the scenes where the ghosts physically attack people (including worm face) were inserted afterwards and there are a few nasty atmosphere breaks in them.
But that's okay, I mean, without the action scenes, the movie cost less than a Million, IMO it's amazing to see what Carpenter made of it. Instead of most other budget film makers, he chose a widescreen format, lighting and sound are tops.
And then there's Carpenter's soundtrack, made on old detuned analog synths... good stuff.
The Fog will always have a special place in my personal movie hall of fame. Yeah, it's no Halloween but also no Ghosts of Mars, thank Buddha for that.
