October 1, 2007

31 Days.

Night of the Living Dead Launching his 31 Days of Zombie!, Rob Humanick recalls the first time he saw Night of the Living Dead: "In less than two hours, my perception of what movies were capable of had been redefined, several times over." His first actual entry in the month-long series focuses on Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead.

Tom Huddleston kicks off Not Coming to a Theater Near You's 31 Days of Horror by revisiting "David Lynch's most undervalued film," The Elephant Man:

The film is a visual marvel, the flawless, time consuming precision of Eraserhead filtered through Freddie Francis's perfectionist classical aesthetic. This is perhaps the most referential of Lynch's films, the director wearing his influences more openly than ever before or since: the giddy theatre sequence is clearly influenced by a similar set piece in Michael Powell's The Red Shoes, while the carnival escape recalls not only the obvious Freaks, but also the dream geography of Night of the Hunter. Horror film iconography is employed expertly, particularly in the first third of the film before we see Merrick's face in full: the expressionistic use of light and shadow betrays the influence of Murnau and Jacques Tourneur. Interestingly, there are also clear visual cues to just about every other Lynch film: the blurred animal rape which opens the film foreshadows Bill Pullman's transformation in Lost Highway; the grandiose theatre scene presages Mulholland Drive's 'Silencio'; the operatic journey into death, and the absolute ambiguity surrounding this event, conjures up images of Laura laughingly embracing infinity in the closing moments of Fire Walk With Me (and Angelo Badalamenti's 'The Voice of Love' is a clear attempt to recreate Barber's 'Adagio for Strings,' which Lynch uses here). Perhaps most noticeably, the floating face of John's mother in the final moments directly anticipates Dune, which opens with an almost identical shot.

Meanwhile, Moviefone, too, has got "31 Days of Horror" going on; this one's a list, a best-of countdown.

Posted by dwhudson at October 1, 2007 1:54 AM