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Scare
Me Sh*tless Welcome to another edition of Scare Me Sh*tless. It took a little longer than I expected to sit down and write a column but school finals have been a pain and I have been really short for time. The topic for this column is comparing some of my favorite independent films, which are Halloween, Friday the 13th, Last House on the Left, The Blair Witch Project, and finally the new film The Collingswood Story. First lets start off with Halloween. There is not much I can say about this film that has not already been said. This is the basis for modern day horror. This is the "sh*t". If you ask almost everyone what the most famous horror film of all time is it would have to be John Carpenter's Halloween. The film was made with just under 300,000$ which may seem like a lot of money but really isn't for a movie. This introduced one of the successful horror movie franchises in the genres existence which now includes 8 parts to its name. It also gives us the name Michael Myers as one of the scariest serial killers alive. This film was picked up by a major distributor after its theatrical release. Friday the 13th is much like Halloween except for the fact that it was made with a higher budget and had a lot more gore and less of a plot. Jason Voorhees was drowned at a summer camp while the counselors were out having "too much fun" and Jason's mom decides to go out and take revenge and start killing people. Basic plot and easy to follow. Sean S. Cunninghams masterpiece which has turned into the longest running franchise with 10 films under its belt and come June there will be 11 films. Gave us the term "slasher" film. This film was quickly picked up by Paramount following its theatrical release. The Last House on the Left is probably one of the most underrated "big name" independent films out there. This film was created by Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham and was both of their first movies. It was supposedly based on a true story when it came out but now it has been announced that that was a hoax to fill seats. Shot very much like a documentary and it was the first one out of these three where you could really tell that it was an indie film. The acting was good for the movie and I enjoyed it. It was picked up by a distributor. The Blair Witch Project is probably my least favorite out of these five films. This film was shot mostly on a hand held camcorder and the creators of this film in my opinion just got lucky and scored and made a lot of money on this film which produced a sequel. There were three actors in this film and it was an indie film that wasn't a "slasher" film. There was no killer in this one. Just a ghost who was haunting the three students who were trying to get some photos of "The Blair Witch". The only thing that was really good about this film was the conclusion. Other than that there was a lot of unnecessary cussing and stupid things happening. This film was picked up by Artisan. The last film and one of my current favorites is The Collingswood Story. I found out about this film from a site I used to go to right before CHF.com opened. I was intrigued because this was considered to be a "micro" budget film with a budget under 10,000$. Well it didn't disappoint me. It reminded me a lot of the Blair Witch Project where there wasn't a specific killer but something stalking the victims. I found the conclusion to be excellent and the directing was phenomenal. This film hasn't been picked up by a major distributor as of this writing but it is highly recommended and you can purchase a copy and find more out about it from www.collingswoodstory.com . So what do these films all have in common? They were all made from a low budget and are some of my favorite films of all time. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Last House on the Left have been probably my top three for a while. The Collingswood Story was excellent and I have watched it several times since aquiring it and it is one of my personal favorites of the moment. So what does this show us as fans of the horror genre? To me it shows me that the more money you spend on a film the worse off it does. I am not saying a 10,000$ budget is the way to go but a 10 million dollar project is only going to have one thing. Lots of blood and gore. The Indie filmmakers try to stick to what we all love. The horror and the aspect of being scared sh*tless. John Carpenter knew how to do that. Sean Cunningham and Wes Craven knew how to do that. And most recently Mike Costanza knew how to do that. If more filmmakers had more time to do what these guys did and make their films scary instead of gory the current horror genre would be a lot better off then it is today. Things however are rebounding. Till next time. Enjoy your horror movies and check out these five films if you haven't already. They won't disappoint. |