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

I liked the first the most but there's not much between it and 1978. 1666 was garbage, though.

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I like this movie quite a bit, really.

I like it as well. Just with some reservations.

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I guess my expectations were fairly low so when they were exceeded by so much I didn't notice any drawbacks.

That's valid. A lot of sci-fi/horror films from the 50's and 60's have this effect on me. In my experience with this film though, I tried to remain neutral going into it. it grabbed me right at the start with the first act, but gradually lost its grip as it went on. I still enjoyed the second half, but to a lesser degree.

Shivers -

Well, I've done it: I've seen all of David Cronenberg's horror movies. The last one I saw is his first, which is set in a modern apartment building where a transplanted organ resembling a Ceti Alpha 5 eel from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is infecting all the residents. It doesn't make them subservient, though - not to Khan, anyway - but to their raging hormones. What makes this a great horror movie? For one, I found myself talking to the screen without realizing it. I also said things like "well, you know this person's doomed" or "they've come to save the day'" and thankfully did not always got what I expected. While the movie is also as claustrophobic as you'd expect, I was more unsettled by how isolated, unnaturally clean and with its in-house store, clinic etc. how sickeningly convenient the building is. Not to put too fine a point on it, but even the slideshow introduction about the property didn't require an eel infection for my animal brain to take over! While not Cronenberg’s best horror movie, it’s a heck of a debut, and since I've seen them all now, I think it's a good place to start. It distills his fascination with human bodies and their not-so-symbiotic relationship with technology into a lean and deliciously indigestible package. All that's missing is more of Joe Silver's pleasantly deep voice.

Well, I think this particular character, The Detached Loner, is a favorite of mine in general, for starters. There are good and bad versions of it, The Motorcycle Boy (from Rumble Fish) being an example of the "good" version and a character I was particularly enamored of in my youth, and here Dafoe plays a "bad" version and plays it well for me. In many cases the character may actually "belong" to a gang but is actually much smarter than the gang and has traits that set him apart, commonly a tendency toward silence and a sense that they are seeing situations on a higher level than the rest of the characters, often characterized by the occasional utterance that seems to come from a greater mind. The Motorcycle Boy sees the bigger picture and feels a sense of sadness for the world while Vance sees the petty morality of a small town (or really morality in general) as beneath him. He is really never caught up in what's happening around him, even if he was the agent of it, and will likely slip away unscathed when it's all over. Vance has a quiet contempt for Society that Dafoe conveys without ever having to say it or resort to dramatic behavior or even facial expressions. It's a really nice turn, to me, from a young actor and a deft hand from Bigelow and Montgomery to guide it that way.
Really, if one doesn't buy into Vance, I'm not sure what the movie would possibly hold. It's about him, obviously, and everything else is there to give his Outsider character something to play against.

Yes!
You're kinda the first person I've read who really reacted to the film the way I did. Others may have liked it to varying degrees but I really vibed with this film from the get-go, really from the presentation of this new marvel of living (seems Cronenberg was never not commenting on something) all the way to the hedonistic end. The early shock that he delivers was so powerful I knew we weren't here to **** spiders and Cronenberg did not let me down. On the budget, I think it's a damn-good and sorely under-rated social-commentary horror movie.

Have you seen this one as well:

Wow, I'm surprised to be the only other one you've known to react that way. I was really struck by how dehumanizing that apartment building is. When you're in a place that meets your every need, encourages you to avoid leaving or interacting with other people, that's going to make you regress a bit, won't it? Even though the song hadn't come out yet, it's sort of like Gary Numan's "Cars" in movie form.

It's on Tubi, by the way, a free-to-watch service I highly recommend. There are ad interruptions, but there aren't that many and they're mostly well-timed.

I haven't. I've seen everything except for Fast Company, M. Butterfly and any shorts, features, etc. he made before Shivers.

I've pretty consistently been on the record as citing Shivers my favourite Cronenberg.. because of course it is

I remember all the way back to the times of the Corrie screenshot game that you said you lived in a notorious low-rent hotel in Toronto. Did it bring you back to those days?

Videodrome brings me back to that. That particular low rent hotel is one of the first shots in the movie (believe it used to be called the Palace Arms, completely renovated by now and the neighbourhood is gentrified to the point that I imagine even the lady who used to live in the bush outside my house was probably relocated a few blocks down to an even ****tier bush).



Oh, but back in the halcyon days of garbage Toronto, it was a real hoot. It was such a ****ty area I got robbed in the middle of the afternoon while I was sitting in the kitchen. Someone just walked into my place and walked out with my VCR. I sat there watching them, almost with some kind of admiration. Classy times.

Ha, that's amazing. Besides a very loud, argumentative couple living above me but that couldn't have been nicer when I ran into them in person, I regret that I have no similarly interesting stories about my time in apartments. I guess big city apartment life is much different than it is in the suburbs.

"To take a perfect movie made by a genius and remake it - that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life." - Rob Zombie

Said before he made Halloween, I assume.

For a good while, he was also in talks to remake The Blob before that fell through. Someone else is now attached to it, and I can’t remember who.

Edit: just looked it up, and Simon West (Con Air), although I don’t see much new information since 2017.

That might have worked. I've only seen The Devil's Rejects, which I found dreadful and made me not want to see any of his other movies, but I at least liked some of the comic relief. He has a decent sense of humor, if anything.

It's from 2014. 7 years AFTER he did what he did. One would assume he was trying to be funny but there doesn't appear to be any irony to his statement.

At least he redeemed himself a bit with his assessment of I Know What You Did Last Summer:
"Dopey teen actors being menaced by... what? The Morton's Fisherman guy? That's not a horror movie, that's barely a Nancy Drew Mystery. Jennifer Love Hewitt would have to be riding on a pony stark naked to make this worthwhile."