SCFZ poll: Wes Craven

[flip]

The Last House on the Left

therouxx, you can choose our next director if you like!

[therouxxx]

could we check views on S.S. Rajamouli, Chor Yuen, Shyam Benegal, and Hrishikesh Mukherjee? I doubt all of these have the views, but would be nice to know how close we are.

8 - Rajamouli
9 - Chor Yuen
7 - Benegal
6 - Mukherjee

I can watch a few more of any of these to reach a benchmark.

[nrh]

8 - rajamouli
8 (i think, i get the titles confused sometimes) - chor yuen
6 - benegal
16 - mukherjee

[brian d]

rajamouli 3
benegal 6
yuen 8 (or is it chor? not sure which is the family name)
mukherjee 1

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Only 1 Chor Yuen, would gladly up that.

[flip]

could we check views on S.S. Rajamouli, Chor Yuen, Shyam Benegal, and Hrishikesh Mukherjee? I doubt all of these have the views, but would be nice to know how close we are.

8 - Rajamouli
9 - Chor Yuen
7 - Benegal
6 - Mukherjee

I can watch a few more of any of these to reach a benchmark.

we always need at least one viewer who has seen 10+, so we can be sure to get a top ten overall, but just based on the replies so far, chor yuen will work if you're able to watch another in the next couple of days.

if you and nrh haven't seen 10 rajamouli or benegal films, i'd be pessimistic they'll meet the thresholds, and mukherjee would need a couple more viewers who have seen several films in order to work. i'm happy to wait for more replies - i think i'll start the next poll on friday, so no huge rush.

[FLABREZU]

I've seen ONE movie by Mukherjee

[Umbugbene]

I have 11 Mukherjee and 9 Benegal.

[flip]

okay that means mukherjee and yuen both work, i'll leave the choice up to therouxxx, and of course if we find someone with 10+ benegal or rajamouli in the next 24 hours, either of them would work too

[therouxxx]

okay that means mukherjee and yuen both work,

Ok I pick Mukherjee

[nrh]

watched my soul to take, the last movie craven both wrote and directed, and it makes sense that only wba listed it

it's a very odd film. it's the odd teen stereotypes of nightmare and the first scream film and a kind of generic slasher villain combined with a shocker dream logic and small details that seem (and reading interviews after the film confirms that) very personal.

the high concept - a serial killer with 7 split personalities dies, leaving his daughter orphaned (and major spoilers for the movie in the rest of this post i guess) and his son salvaged from the body of his wife. somehow it becomes a town legend that the seven personalities were reborn in the 7 kids born on the day of his death, which they call ripper day and apparently gather after midnight to ritually slay a kind of puppet version of the dead murderer. only the shy kid named bug chickens out on the 16th ripper day, and the killer appears to start killing the kids off one by one.

it actually plays somewhat more elegantly in process than the description makes it sound, even as craven continues to play more story ideas on top of each other and play the whole uncanny is it real or not game (is the lead actor absorbing the souls of his dead colleagues or is he schizophrenic and secretly the killer?). as in scream and nightmare craven does seem to take the wasteful loss of these kids getting murdered to heart even as he plays the please the crowd slasher game, which is a tough line to walk and he does it better to most.

what kills it for me is...i think he is playing the game of late 2000s multiplex horror while creating a system of plot and images that really desperately needs the space for stylization that the popular styles of the 80s (for nightmare) and 90s (for scream) allowed. his dialogue in particular feels really off; i kind of think all the lines would work if you were watching with subtitles somehow there is a strange mix of very stylized dialogue and sort of awkward old man writes teenagers lines, i actually like the directness of it better than the too clever kevin williamson scream dialogue which is more consistent but can't say it didn't throw me off here.

i don't know....feels like the sort of movie i like either a lot more or a lot less after sleeping on it.

[...]

That's one I want to watch since it does seem like some sort of summary attempt by Craven on his career, but I hadn't even known it existed until we started this poll and I checked his filmography. I'm always a bit off on the more current stuff, with current meaning the last decade or so I guess.

[Joks Trois]

That film was hot trash. Even Vampire in Brooklyn was better. WBA is trolling for sure

[wba]

Well, as I mentioned, I'm not the biggest Craven fan: I generally enjoy his work, but almost none of it seems especially good or interesting to me - with the exception of The Fireworks Woman, which I think is exceptionally good, but which gets discussed very little, if at all - so I haven't given his work too much thought. But I'd agree with the idea that "My Soul to Take" is a personal film and a kind of 'old man reflecting on his slasher career' thing. I enjoyed it very much and thought the odd elements (of which there are also some in his other work) helped.

[wba]

That film was hot trash. Even Vampire in Brooklyn was better. WBA is trolling for sure

nah, I really did enjoy it, and was already "forewarned" by a friend that it is a weird film. For me the film works on all levels. It's not like Craven was a good "craftsman" or ever did much in a classic hollywood-way anyways (neither did Hooper, Romero, Cohen, De Palma et al, in my book). So MY SOUL TO TAKE is for me not really trashier than any other thing he (or many other horror directors) did. And I do enjoy it a lot more than VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, which I think is easily his most boring and unengaging work, a film he really seems to have phoned in.

[flip]

That's one I want to watch

i've tallied this poll, but i was wondering greg - you nominated craven, did you want to post a ballot? i didn't see one from you yet, if i missed it, let me know.

[...]

Oops! Thanks flip, totally forgot to post one I guess.

Nightmare on Elm Street
Last House on the Left
Shocker
New Nightmare
and what the heck, Deadly Blessing

[flip]

thanks greg! results are in, some famous films at the top:

results
1. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) —36 pts
2. Scream (1996) — 19 pts
3. The Last House on the Left (1972) —13 pts
4. The People Under the Stairs (1991) — 11 pts
5. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) — 9 pts
6. Shocker (1989) — 7 pts
7. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) — 5 pts
7. The Fireworks Woman (1975) — 5 pts
9. My Soul to Take (2010) — 4 pts
9. Deadly Blessing (1981) — 4 pts
9. The Hills Have Eyes (1977) — 4 pts
12. Red Eye (2005) — 3 pts
12. Scream 3 (2000) — 3 pts
14. Invitation to Hell (1984) — 1 pt
14. Scream 2 (1997) — 1 pt

[flip]

up at letterboxd, unfortunately fireworks woman isn't in the letterboxd db, so i could only include it in the notes atop the list:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-242/

[wba]

...unfortunately fireworks woman isn't in the letterboxd db, so i could only include it in the notes atop the list:

yeah, it's because of that horrible rule to not include porn movies on their site (though thankfully many gay porn films from the 70s are listed).

[nrh]

yeah with most baffling letterboxd systems it boils down to how they use the tmdb database. basically if you edit a movie and hit the button that says "adult" (or "television") it will automatically make it invisible in the letterboxd database. which is how you get bizarre situations like the opening of misty beethoven disappearing and reappearing a dozen times, or all the hisayu satos being up but not the craven and so on.

[wba]

yeah with most baffling letterboxd systems it boils down to how they use the tmdb database. basically if you edit a movie and hit the button that says "adult" (or "television") it will automatically make it invisible in the letterboxd database. which is how you get bizarre situations like the opening of misty beethoven disappearing and reappearing a dozen times, or all the hisayu satos being up but not the craven and so on.

yeah, and films get "corrected" all the time, as some of the films I had added to letterboxd (either TV or adult) have subsequently disappeared cause someone must have changed that stupid tag...
Wahtever. It's just a commercial film database, and not the end of the world.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Wahtever. It's just a commercial film database, and not the end of the world.

or there is https://www.kinometer.com/ database where one can easily add new film entries and tag films to his/her heart's content

[wba]

Wahtever. It's just a commercial film database, and not the end of the world.

or there is https://www.kinometer.com/ database where one can easily add new film entries and tag films to his/her heart's content

I have registered!

[Holdrüholoheuho]

I have registered!

cool! now we are friends even there
don't hesitate to add film entries and tag movies.
i expect (not sure completely) the porn policy is the same as on KG (aka no mainstream porn! - click genre "erotica" there to see the scope) and related to tv-series there is no restriction at all ("tv-series" is an option in "genres").
however, i hope KM will stand out mainly due to its all-encompassing experimental films database.
(btw. as far as i know, within about one month KM will be "officially launched" and before it will be updated (new features). after the update of the site one will have to change the password. so there will be some turbulences in upcoming weeks.)

[cinesmith]

for the records, seen 17

A Nightmare on Elm Street 84

I can't vouch for any of the others. People Under The Stairs and Swamp Thing have very campy qualities but not for any serious reasons