For the next 30 days (or whenever I stop being lazy and finish it), I will be giving my fingers short bursts of exercise by completing the 30 Day Horror Challenge, found here. Hopefully it will give you a bit of insight into what horror is for me. Don't forget to check back every day for a new installment.
Day 25: Excellent use of soundtrack.
The Devil's Rejects use of Lynrd Skynyrd's ridiculously well-known hit, Free Bird. Without spoiling things, the song is used in the climax in the (much better) sequel to House of 1000 Corpses, when our antiheroes are involved in a shootout with the authorities on a desolated road up the sun scorched mountains. Helicopter shots, slow motion, and a looooong drawn out scene to fill a good portion of the song make for a fitting ending to the Firefly family's journey over the two films. The sequence moves in tone with the song, being lazy and contrary until it moves up to the frenetic energy of the machine gun solos. Director Rob Zombie states he couldn't find any use of the song in a film where it defined the use of the song in a motion picture, where, if anyone was to hear the song from then on, would invoke that film. For my money, Zombie has claimed Free Bird. Any time I hear the song now, I see images of beaten up murderers driving through the mountains.
For the next 30 days (or whenever I stop being lazy and finish it), I will be giving my fingers short bursts of exercise by completing the 30 Day Horror Challenge, found here. Hopefully it will give you a bit of insight into what horror is for me. Don't forget to check back every day for a new installment.
Day 22: A frightening child actor
This is a pretty tough one. The obvious choice is the kid from Pet Sematary and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but I thought I'd try a less obvious choice (as has been my wont to do for the entire '30' day challenge), so I am going to go with Daeg Faerch, the young Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake. In a role that was always going to be questioned by Halloween fans, Faerch holds his own and brings an intensity that ranges between sympathetic to all out rage. We are given a look at his troubled childhood, showing us where the darkness began, and we are on his side all the way, from abuse father, to schoolyard bullies. It makes it all that more conflicting when we see him begin his viciousness (which I will refrain from going in to, for those who might still check out the flick). When the boy is institutionalised, we see the poor kid drift further and further away from us and from reality, as he grasps to understand what he has done. Even though we have flat out seen him be a cold-blooded murderer and know he is mentally deranged, we still feel for him as we see him etch closer and closer to the Michael Myers we all know. Through an exploitation by his doctors, and the loss of his mother, the only one who was there for him, we see him become nothing more than The Shape.
And it is amazing!!!
I am writing this before the video has even made its way to YouTube, but you can watch the glorious minute and forty seconds RIGHT HERE.
Watch it. Go on, you won't regret it!
Ok, now that you've checked it out, can we gush about it? Cuz I want to gush about it. I am big in to my Italian horror, particularly liking the more visual work of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, and it is fair to say Lords of Salem not only gives the maestros a nod, but also gives them a run for their money. The storyline is even a throwback to the golden age of horror (70s and 80s, don't dare go on about Frankenstein with me!), with Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie playing a DJ who plays a mysterious record that brings back a coven of witches who were executed centuries before. That always makes me think of Demons, and though that isn't a great film, it is so high on concept.
If you don't think this looks like one of the most unmissable films of recent memory, then you are obviously the kind of person more excited about a sequel to Avatar. We have nothing more to discuss*.
Lords of Salem? Come on, how can you not??
*Please don't leave. I am very insecure. Is that a new haircut? It looks amazing.
UPDATE:YouTube has come through. Here is the trailer, for those who don't like clicking through links above.
