A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I'm not so committed to the "Bone Tomahawk is racist narrative" that I can't see why some might absolve it of this particular sin. I absolve lots of things that I know might be on shakey ground and there is at least some shaky ground in Bone Tomahawk. But I definitely think its potential for perpetuating racial tropes about the primitive savagery of natives is pretty necessary to call out, or acknowledge, even if we don't want to completely brand it as being racist.


As mentioned above, The Searchers also has some good reasons to be challenged, even if my particular take is that it is probably a significantly more woke Western than most that came before it. It at least packages most of its negativity into one particular character, and leaves him wandering off into the desert, a relic of the past, by the end of the film. It's at least self aware of its possible racism, unlike BT, which tries to pardon itself before it even begins.


Ultimately, Bone Tomahawk being a ****ing terrible movie, was more than I needed to dismiss it. Because it's terrible. Really terrible.

I agree with this. Those I impulsively rewatched BT and bumped it up to a tentative “highly flawed but okay.”

I think Dragged Across Concrete is Zahler’s best film by a good margin and it’s still rife with filmmaking issues before we even get to any questionable politics forced into it.

I haven’t rewatched Brawl in Cell Block 99 but I’m convinced I’ll still find it fairly terrible.

Awesome dude I’ll check it out. And I never left. I check this place a few times a day, even if I don’t always post.

Next was Ichi the Killer and I'd say I had the opposite reaction as I was mostly just bored by the end of it. Ichi seemed to really want to be shocking but the more horrible things it threw on screen the more it just all bled together, pun intended. It doesn't help that I just really didn't see what the story was actually going for with any of the characters, it seemed like it was trying to be a serious film but so much of the over the top violence just felt silly next to that content but yet it never actually got crazy enough to be fun or funny. I have no problem with gore if it feels like it's not the only reason the film exists but that's really the impression that Ichi left me with.

This was very much my reaction. The balance between intense violence/sexual violence, dark comedy, and cartoonish sequences never quite felt right. There's an interesting premise in there somewhere, but it all comes out very muddled. Frankly I expected something a bit better from its reputation.

@Wooley
I'm trying to find your Scars of Dracula write-up with no luck. Was that on Corrie? (I'm in the middle of a Hammer Dracula marathon)

That was Corri, sadly.
Scars was pretty bad.

Miike's films often "don't feel right". I'm pretty sure it's a deliberate effort on his part. For better or worse, it's his style. Of course, with such a huge catalog he's done different kinds of films, but it's that (predictably) unpredictable chaos he's mostly known for (I think).

And yeah, I also found Ichi rather mediocre. I don't know if I've really loved any of his films.

Sounds like it compares unfavorably to The Living Corpse, where Dracula drives a car.

For the record, I do like the movie. Always interesting to see a Dracula movie from a part of the world not known for Dracula movies, and it checks the Dracula boxes well enough.

Im not familiar with it. Just found one with the alternate title "Dracula in Pakistan". Is that the one?

I just got the BluRay and had to laugh when I noticed they used that cruddy poster art for the cover. Made me think of your review.



I didn't hate it, but yeah it's not A-list that's for sure. Hard to believe that two years after 2001, sfx guys still couldn't figure out how to do the fake bat thing. Or how to make Christopher Lee's fake knife not flop around while he's stabbing somebody. Also, why is Dracula stabbing somebody??

I thought AD 1972 was actually significantly better than this one. And that was no masterpiece.

I LOVE the Searchers. It may be my favorite classic western and it’s certainly my favorite from John Ford.

I think it walks the line between being about prejudice and racism while still falling into the contemporary pitfalls of the genre. It, along with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, are the closest to revisionist western Ford ever came and wrestling with the myth of the American West he helped cement.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate to have a Native American antagonist in the western, and retaliatory raids did happen on families that had nothing to do with the motivating incident (terror tactics are long since a part of American history) but such an attempt gets a little crossed when that villain is played by a white man in red face and the good hearted “half breed” is played by a fully white guy. There’s also not a great deal of irony in the ethnocentrism on display for the romanticized civilizing European culture, with other native cultures that aren’t villainous being played for laughs.

That said, it is considerably more complex than many of its contemporaries (only Devil’s Doorway really seems to compare) and the level of filmmaking, character building and performances are among the finest in the genre.

It may not be Unforgiven but if I were making a list, there wouldn’t be a whole lot between them.

I tend to be very skeptical of creators who indulge in negative stereotypes about a certain group, especially if across their other work there is no positive (or even neutral) representation of that same group.