Horror

Left pane: Suspiria poster; Top right: David Gordon Green; Bottom left: Vibrant lighting in a scene from Suspiria.

Afternoon splatter fans! What is it with remakes that really enrage me this week? Today, Finger Lickin’ Indie has learnt that rising indie director David Gordon Green, known for his 2000 film George Washington and his upcoming flick starring Seth Rogen, Pineapple Express, is planning to remake 1977 slasher-classic Suspiria by Italian horror maestro Dario Argento.

Suspiria is a stylised and overtly expressionistic film which is the first of a trilogy known as The Three Mothers, all focusing on evil/supernatural forces attempting to break through into our world. The film stars Jessica Harper as Suzy Bannion, a young American dancer who arrives at her prestigious German dance school to discover it is actually an evil witches coven. Logical. Honestly though, Suspiria is brilliant, with vibrant colours and dramatic lighting, and while some would dismiss his work as disgusting or depraved, I believe Argento should be considered alongside Hitchcock and Orson Welles.

The news that Green is planning to remake Suspiria is extremely unfortunate as the horror canon is already deluged with crappy remakes that do nothing to reinterpret the original and often copy the films frame for frame. Even worse, some of them attempt to explain the unexplainable. A perfect example being the case of Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween. These films that try to provide a reasonable impetus to a formerly motivationally devoid killer baffle me! Anyway, it is true that these films have had some box office success but with torture porn fans crawling all over the horror scene, this is only to be expected. One thing I can say is that I don’t expect the same expressionistic flare to the lighting because lets face it, that really wouldn’t sell these days. It could only have been the 70s folks!

Finally, I want to leave you with this. Instead of going out and rampantly consuming all these horror remakes. Go online, go to your DVD rental shop, rummage through some old VHS and find the original and enjoy!

Here’s just a taste of what to expect from Suspiria:

And if you’re looking for the full uncut Suspiria experience treat yourself here:

Suspiria
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[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Zombie_2_0]Afternoon finger lickin’ fans. So I mentioned a while ago that horror legend George A. Romero was at Sundance discussing the democratization of filmmaking in a spout.com interview. However, I didn’t really get into the reason why he was at the festival. His latest installment in the “Dead” saga premiered at Sundance and, as any good film director should be, he was whoring the hell outta it. The flick is basically a Blair Witch shakey handy cam take on his other apocalyptic tales. I am a big horror fan but not especially into the living dead stuff I’m more of a slasher man, however this really took my fancy.

The trailer is ridiculous and there’s obviously some jolly good hammy acting going on, but of all the horror remake dirge out there it actually caught my attention. From what I’ve read Romero has always worked in a very independent fashion and his latest film is no different, he’s using web 2.0 marketing techniques with exclusive MySpace goodies as well as tapping into the wannabe-filmmaker You Tube revolution to inspire his craft. I for one wanna give it a chance!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MdqNr0gN4Y]

[digg=http://www.digg.com/movies/Sundance_Distribution_Issues_George_A_Romero]With reference to my last post about the lack of distribution deals going around at Sundance, this seems to be a problem that even veteran filmmakers are noticing. George A. Romero, horror legend and creator of the infamous Dawn of the Dead (1978) is attending the festival for the first time to screen his latest film Diary of the Dead. Interviewed on video, Romero speaks to Spout.com about his work and the festival. Right at the end of his interview he touches on the issues I’ve been talking about. While greater accessibility to cheaper equipment is meaning lots more great independent films are being made, there still seems to be no solid distribution model for this type of work.

Check out their video interview at MySpace.