That Hitchcockian touch

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I just wanted to make a thread dealing with films that have been made that used some of Hitchcock's style and suspence technical bravo and also carry undertones and unique plot twist.

I'd like to start it with Jonathan Demme's The Last Embrace . Demme really put together a tight movie with his pace and tak Fujimoto's camera movements the movie has a rich texture of plot twist and some great character's that so richly where in Hitchcock's films.

tell me some of your favorite Hitchcockian type films that you love Guys & Gals and tell what you thought of this film have you seen it did you like it thanks.



I like Last Embrace, more than most of DePalma's Hitchcockers. But that may be because I'm a Roy Scheider nut. Narratively some of DePalma's are probably a bit stronger.

The label "Hitchcockian" gets thrown around a lot, and very few films actually are worthy of it. But this is different than your first example. Demme's Last Embrace, Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black, Curtis Hanson's The Bedroom Window, Wolfgang Petersen's Shattered and DePalma's Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, and Body Double are all obvious Hitchcock homages, purposefully - and sometimes painfully (I think) - mimicking Hitch. Some of the lower-profile homage entries are Final Analysis, The McGuffin, A Kiss Before Dying, and in the area of comedy Foul Play, Silver Streak, Throw Momma From the Train and of course Mel Brooks' High Anxiety. I will say just about every one of these homages is more successful than any and all of the re-makes that have cropped up since the '70s, mostly made-for-TV throw-aways.

The more general term "Hitchcockian" is usually attached carelessly to just about any thriller of the past thirty years. But as I was saying, very few deserve it.


Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave (1994) is one that I truly think does measure up. Not only is it an ingeniuos thriller about a dead body, a large sum of money and betrayal amongst friends/conspirators, it also has an incredibly dark and sometimes hysterical sense of humor. That mixture of thrills, intelligence and wit is a rare thing, and why so many so-called Hitchesque movies don't compare. This one does it right for once, and without any direct homages or winks to the audience about source material. This is just a damn good thriller, one I would gladly bestow the honor of "Hitchcockian" without reservation.
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Now With Moveable Parts
A lot of people said that What Lies Beneath, was done in the style of Hitchcock...but I don't ever remember being bored during a Hitchcock film.



I haven't seen that movie yet but I basically saw the whole thing on the trailer wow talk about one of the longest trailers of all time and it didn't even look that good. He also gives away tons of scares and plot twists what was zemericks thinking??



What Lies Beneath was another one that has tons of obvious Hitchcock homages throughout. For what it was, I kind of enjoyed What Lies Beneath, because for me by that last third of the picture it had gone so far over-the-top with the Hitch stuff that I found it amusing, half a tone off from an Airplane!-type spoof. Alan Silvestri's score even mimicks Herrmann almost note for note during the finale. I'm not entirely sure if I was supposed to be enjoying the movie that way by complete design of the filmmakers (tough it's so thick, I suspect it had to be), but that's definitely how I got into the flick and how it felt to me.

I'd compare What Lies Beneath to Sam Raimi's The Gift, which came out months later. I enjoyed What Lies Beneath MUCH more than The Gift. Where What Lies Beneath took all of those thriller cliches and seemed to have fun with them, The Gift seemed to take them seriously. The plotting and devices were just as cliched and tired in both movies. However, without the over-the-top style and winks, The Gift became extremely dull and pointless to me. If you're going to tell genre fans in the frippin' trailer who the killer is (as both What Lies Beneath and especially The Gift did), you'd better be having some fun with it and not playing it straight. Inexplicably, Sam Raimi, the man responsible for the clever and funny Evil Dead trilogy, played The Gift straight, and in the process completely ruined whatever chance that movie had of being entertaining for me.

What Lies Beneath made me giggle, The Gift made me snooze.



Another one I'd put in the favorable "Hitchcockian" column is Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again. This one does have definite elements of hommage, to be sure, but the intelligence of the piece and the new angle of Reincarnation and two timelines coming together is fresh and inventive and raises it above the DePalma-type reworking. Had Hitch lived another ten years, he may well have gotten around to incorperating something as unique as actual Reincarnation (rather than just the doubling of Vertigo). Dead Aagin has the kind of wit and invention that I would happily call "Hitchcockian".



Now With Moveable Parts
Originally posted by Holden Pike

What Lies Beneath made me giggle, The Gift made me snooze.
See, I LOVED The Gift. I thought it was creepy and edgy, with a lot of subtle relish. I enjoyed all the dream sequences and the ensamble cast was like a well oiled machine. What Lies Beneath was boring and unoriginal. It was so slow in it's delivery, that I knew everything that was going to happen...there were no surprises. I wouldn't draw a comarison between those two movies anyhoo...they just aren't the same in any way.



I knew everything that was going to happen in both The Gift and What Lies Beneath, from the trailers alone, much less their obvious and well-worn plots. But because What Lies Beneath acknowledged this fact, I went with it and had fun. Because The Gift treated cliche after cliche as somehow new and supposedly suspenseful, I immediately turned off from it.

If anything, Raimi should be flogged for wasting such a good cast on an innane cliche-fest...though I DO sincerely appreciate the Katie Holmes nudity (thank you very much!).

And Sades, as they are both cliche-filled thrillers with supernatural hooks, how do you think What Lies Beneath and The Gift are not the same in any way, other than you personally liked one and not the other?




Of course Hitchcock was not exclusively mined from the '70s onward by the Film School Generation alone. His influence is clear for decades. I think it's more than fair to say many of the high-points of the thriller genre, such as Clouzot's Diabolique (1955), Michael Powell's Contraband (1940) and Peeping Tom (1960), Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946) and The Lady From Shanghai (1948) and Mr. Arkadian (1955), Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (1955), and J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1960), all owe a great deal to Hitchcock, the genres he both created and perfected. Stanley Donen's delightful Charade (1963) is probably the first self-conscious parody and homage to Hitch (not done by Hitchcock himself).



I love "Dead Again" Holden have you seen the DVD what's it like are the comm good I'd like to now please

Here's another I'd like to add The Bird With The Crystal Plumage Dario Argento and Vittorio Storaro cinematography adds layers and layers of stlye to film some in the hitchcockian vien some in the spegetti horror vein.

I've only had the chance to see this on a really bad VHS tape and I still love it. Some of the camera moves are fantastic they had me drooling so i'm definalty going to buy the DVD.

Originally posted by Holden Pike
...though I DO sincerely appreciate the Katie Holmes nudity (thank you very much!).
ahh yes and Holden you've just convinced me too rent this thanks



The R1 DVD of Dead Again is excellent. The commentaries by Branagh and screenwriter Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) are quite good. The widescreen transfer was an improvemt over the old LaserDisc, and it sounds great.



Thanks Holden for the info on the DVD


Play misty for me I think this is one of the smartest Hitckcockian type films in my opinion Surtees darkly lite sets and Clint's style and persona make this at least for me one smart thriller out there to grace the screen. man O man do I gota to buy this on DVD.



Eastwood's directorial debut, Play Misty for Me is another one of the greats. It does purposefully echo Hitch in a few spots, most noticibly the Psycho-like attack on the maid, but this one wears "Hitchcockian" aptly. So aptly that Play Mistly for Me was unceremoniously lifted for Fatal Attraction, with no proper credit given to Eastwood's film. If Clint was a more confrontational guy in his business dealings, I think he could have taken them to court and won. He decided to just let it go.

The Play Misty for Me R1 DVD is excellent too, boasting the first widescreen transfer of the film and an excellent retrospective documentary with interviews of cast and crew.



Now With Moveable Parts
Originally posted by Holden Pike
If anything, Raimi should be flogged for wasting such a good cast on an innane cliche-fest...though I DO sincerely appreciate the Katie Holmes nudity (thank you very much!).

And Sades, as they are both cliche-filled thrillers with supernatural hooks, how do you think What Lies Beneath and The Gift are not the same in any way, other than you personally liked one and not the other?




I guess if "dead girl" nudity turns you on....

How was The plot of The Gift, a well worn story? I also don't think the talents of the actors, were wasted. Hillary Swank was particularly good at her," abused-white-trash" role, as was Keanu Reeves as "the drunken wife beater". Cate Blanchett was very good at her role, as both vulnerable and strong....
I don't know what you didn't like about it.
It was nothing like, What Lies Beneath. Harrison Ford and Michelle Phifer's title roles, had nothing in common with the title roles in The Gift. The only simularities would be the connection with a dead body in water.



Because the settings and characters are different doesn't mean these two films aren't similar and obviously relateable in many other more basic respects. I never claimed all the surface specifics are the same, though as you rightly note the plots hinge on the murder of a young woman in water who somehow is able to contact the living. One isn't a re-make of the other, but both use the same basics of the supernatural thriller.

If you found The Gift new and mysterious, good for you, I'm glad you could enjoy it. But as should be clear to most anybody who has seen a couple dozen of these types of thrillers, it is obvious from the first twenty minutes exactly who the killer is and who the red herrings are. The cliche elements, a clear example being ridiculously going to the murder scene in the middle of the night with a suspect, are annoying to me if they aren't put in the context of, 'OK, we know this is a silly cliche, but we're doing it anyway'. That's the spirit I get out of What Lies Beneath, and what I find completely absent in The Gift.

For some of the many previous entries of Mediums psychically discovering clues to murder, check out The Eyes of Laura Mars, Black Rainbow, The Sender, The Dead Zone, Dead Again, and The Medusa Touch. For similar thrillers where the murderer is so obviously 'hidden', check out Kiss the Girls, The General's Daughter, Jade, Whispers in the Dark, Color of Night, Striking Distance and Dressed to Kill. That's a sampling off the top of my head, I'm sure I could come up with others. After you watch even just four or five of these types of flicks, The Gift becomes painfully dull and obvious, clear from the trailer who the killer is and how the plot will develop.

That's why I say if it was done with some level of self-awareness, some kind of parody bult into it, it could have been fun (as What Lies Beneath was for me). As is, Sam Raimi (who I usually like and respect as a filmmaker) presents The Gift as if these ideas are brand new, not cliches, but that they should be surprising and thrilling. If you haven't seen a lot of these kinds of movies or put your brain on auto-pilot, I guess it could be. But for me there wasn't even one thing in the narrative that was new.

The Gift's cinematography is nice, some of the effects work well, and the (mostly) good cast does the best with what they're given, but for me personally this was an extremely obvious and witless exercise, therefore extremely disappointing. On the other hand, What Lies Beneath was just as obvious, but had fun with it, and was much better than I hoped for - a plesant surprise.


And as for Katie Holmes' nudity, there are some (all-too) breif shots of her naked before she is killed that are mixed into that montage at the end. If you carefully navigate through it with a pause button, her very nice bare breasts can be seen as she removes her shirt. God bless modern technology!



Originally posted by Holden Pike

Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave (1994) is one that I truly think does measure up. Not only is it an ingeniuos thriller about a dead body, a large sum of money and betrayal amongst friends/conspirators, it also has an incredibly dark and sometimes hysterical sense of humor. That mixture of thrills, intelligence and wit is a rare thing, and why so many so-called Hitchesque movies don't compare. This one does it right for once, and without any direct homages or winks to the audience about source material. This is just a damn good thriller, one I would gladly bestow the honor of "Hitchcockian" without reservation. [/b]
i loved Shallow Grave as well, Holden. i also think Dead Again is a terrific, unique and well made movie.

and LBJ, i have never forgotten Play Misty For Me.......and i've avoided watching it again.....because it freaked me out. i'd never thought about the" now obvious-ripoff" of Eastwood's movie by Fatal Attraction! ahhhh yes.......that one freaked me out as well.

and one other movie that was mentioned (by Holden ) that i have always liked.......is The Medusa Touch - very disturbing........and unique.
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Here's another one Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation The theme's of the story is complex and very well woven or put together.

While in many scene it uses Hitchcock's methods of filmmaking which I thought Coppola handled quite faithfullly the story also adds to the genre and to me is more of a character study than a suspence/thriller.

Bill butler was the cinematograher he also framed Jaws as well. The dream scene is some what reminisent of some of the type of dream scenes Hitckcock had done in the past also Dean Tavoularis production design is amazingly real and greatly inhances the characters believeability.

This great film is on DVD and it comes with a fantastic tranfer and a nice behind the scenes documentary and the big surprise was the Audio Commenatary Francis Ford Coppola adds.

This film effected my brain so much so I was still thinking about it long after I had seen it Gene Hackman played his character so convincingly that I felt so many things after watching it.

Please Guys & Gals if you haven't seen this film give it a try don't look at the box and see the 70's style box artwork, which I love but most think is silly take a chance pick it up you'll love it.



The Conversation is a great movie, no doubt about that, but you're also right that it is much more of a character piece than a genre entry. It's not really the kind of thing Hitchcock did, though the basics of a justly paranoid and persecuted man fending for himself while trying to decipher a complicated plot certainly echoes basic Hitchcockian themes. But the style, the tone, and the characters aren't really anything Hitchcockian at all. Still an amazing movie, and might have gotten even more attention and built a bigger reputation (though it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and appropriately enough Best Sound) had it not come out the same year as Coppola's own The Godfather Part II and Polanski's Chinatown.

And I'm not sure what artwork you're referring to, L.B. (the U.S. R1 DVD doesn't use the original one sheet), but I LOVE the film's poster, one of my favorites from that decade. It hangs in my room (along with many others, including Hackman in Arthur Penn's Night Moves and Michael Ritchie's Prime Cut too).

When I lived in San Francisco, I worked downtown in Jackson Square, which is where the opening "conversation" in The Conversation was shot. I could never walk across that open plaza without looking for men with earpieces, parked vans or sound dishes on the roofs.



Now With Moveable Parts
Originally posted by Holden Pike
And as for Katie Holmes' nudity, there are some (all-too) breif shots of her naked before she is killed that are mixed into that montage at the end. If you carefully navigate through it with a pause button, her very nice bare breasts can be seen as she removes her shirt. God bless modern technology!
Holden, you probably do a lot of movie watching by yourself....no girl would put up with pausing on breasts.



Now With Moveable Parts
What?! What do you mean, the right girl? Why should anyone have to put up with that? Not to mention it disrupts the flow of the movie... pff...c'mon Holden, that's ridiculous.



Of course you don't do it while watching the movie - though what possible difference could it make during a dud like The Gift? Rather you go back to that scene after the end credits and enjoy it properly...multiple times if appropriate (and Katie Holmes' rack is very appropriate).

In my opinion, you haven't lived until you've found a partner you can watch "dirty" movies with. As I implied, this is the right girl FOR ME. Not surprisingly, Sades, that's not you, so I don't mind nor am I particularly surprised that you find that notion "ridiculous".