october horror movie-a-day thingy day #4
The Manitou (William Girdler, 1978)
Much like the film I watched yesterday, In the Dark, this is really cool in a lot of ways but its just in a style that has a limit to how much I can like it. Its one of those over-the-top supernatural studio horror films from the era, which can be fun and go way off the rails (like say Poltergeist and, idk, this, I'm not an expert on this style lol) but they seem to always have a distinct vibe that I don't gel with and always feel safe no matter how nuts they go, and this one does go pretty nuts. The big things the film has going against it outside of just the style are the score being waaaay too much (again, something I just attribute to these kind of films) and Tony Curtis is kind of awful. Otherwise, everything else is pretty good. Its shot quite well, mostly in a "getting the job done" kind of way but there's a good bit of flavour in here a points too and just the general premise (an evil Native American spirit being reincarnated into its new body as it incubates attached to a woman's back and does psychic and supernatural mischief) and ideas are big and crazy, sometimes to its detriment but mostly not. Overall its pretty fun, just not really my thing at the end of the day.
The Manitou (William Girdler, 1978)
Much like the film I watched yesterday, In the Dark, this is really cool in a lot of ways but its just in a style that has a limit to how much I can like it. Its one of those over-the-top supernatural studio horror films from the era, which can be fun and go way off the rails (like say Poltergeist and, idk, this, I'm not an expert on this style lol) but they seem to always have a distinct vibe that I don't gel with and always feel safe no matter how nuts they go, and this one does go pretty nuts. The big things the film has going against it outside of just the style are the score being waaaay too much (again, something I just attribute to these kind of films) and Tony Curtis is kind of awful. Otherwise, everything else is pretty good. Its shot quite well, mostly in a "getting the job done" kind of way but there's a good bit of flavour in here a points too and just the general premise (an evil Native American spirit being reincarnated into its new body as it incubates attached to a woman's back and does psychic and supernatural mischief) and ideas are big and crazy, sometimes to its detriment but mostly not. Overall its pretty fun, just not really my thing at the end of the day.