QT shares how much he likes Simon Oakland's big scene in Psycho
as part of his general appreciation of Dressed To Kill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vADGveE0RxU
You mean the big exposition at the end? Funny, I read that Hitchcock hated that scene.
shareHere we go. What fun can be had with THIS thread, IMHO.
QT, Hitchcock...and DePalma
I've looked at the clip(thank you, swanstep) and there indeed -- superfast as he usually talks -- QT indeed says "one of his favorite scenes in Psycho is the Simon Oakland scene."
Well, that's nice. Because QT seems to split his opinions on Hitchcock quite a bit.
I found this thread of mine over at the North by Northwest board:
https://moviechat.org/tt0053125/North-by-Northwest/644406d1151e4109dacc2e23/Quentin-Tarantino-Dumps-On-Alfred-Hitchcock-Four-Times
aka "Quentin Tarantino Dumps on Alfred Hitchcock Four Times," and its pretty clear that QT has gone against Hitchcock -- in some mean and dismissive ways -- at least four times.
...calling North by Northwest "a mediocre movie."
...saying that he prefers Psycho II to Psycho. (Just a rank impossibility of comparison to me -- script, dialogue, cinematography, editing, Perkins' performance, music -- albeit by the great Jerry Goldsmith, wrong for the history of Psycho -- EVERYTHING in Psycho II is below Psycho -- .)
... calling Frenzy "a piece of shit"(without saying why...though I have my guesses but hey...QT lifted the profoundly horrific strangulation from Frenzy and "threw it away" to kill Diane Kruger in "Inglorious Basterds" -- only the ultra-violence remained.)
I can't remember the fourth thing he dumped on. Though he has gone contrarian and praised the "false end" of Suspicion(because QT believes that Grant still IS a killer) and he found the berserk carousel sequence in Strangers on a Train to be good(the Mount Rushmore sequence in NXNW? Not so good. Blasphemy!)
I'm on record as really liking QT movies. Thanks to the dearth of entertainments in the 21st Century, I've given him "my personal favorite of the year" votes for these pictures of his IN A ROW: Inglorious Basterds. Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood(tie with The Irishman that year.)
CONT
---
Pulp Fiction is my favorite movie of 1994. Jackie Brown is my favorite QT movie, period - though LA Confidential edged it as my favorite movie of 1997 - and of the nineties.
I didn't really rank Reservoir Dogs when I saw it in 1992 -- My Cousin Vinny(a rare comedy) and Unforgiven were my top two -- but sure it belongs at Number Three.
Indeed, I rank QT's "Los Angeles Crime trilogy" above everything he did after:
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
Jackie Brown
but in this order
Jackie Brown
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
But here's the thing -- with QT so soundly dismissing some of Hitchcock's best work -- often with a crackpot POV and analysis -- isn't the inclination from THIS powerless person(me) to point out HIS shortcomings?
For instance, Hateful Eight is my favorite of QT's "post trilogy work" -- for how it LOOKS mainly, for the Morricone score, for the cast but...the script sure seems "made up on the spot" a lot of the time -- Samuel L. Jackson's sleuthing isn't at the caliber of Sherlock Holmes or even Columbo. And what are we to make of Jackson telling Mexican Bob that "Minnie hated Mexicans" when we SAW Minnie being FINE with Mexican Bob in a flashback? So Jackson just MADE THAT UP? Or the script is wrongly written?
Others disagree with me, but I think that the opening interrogation(by the Jew Hunter of the Dairy Farmer) is too long in Inglorious Basterds (it suffers against the pace of Norman/Arbogast) and so is the long bit in the "basement cafe" before all hell breaks loose.
Not to mention a fairly "sick streak" that runs through ALL QT movies save Jackie Brown and Hollywood, indeed with a fair amount of violence towards women(though in Kill Bill 1 and 2 much of that violence was BY women.) The vehicular slaughter of women in Death Proof. And on the male side of the ledger, what Sam Jackson said he did to Bruce Dern's son in The Hateful Eight. (We are SHOWN it in great detail.)
CONT
And so forth and so on. When QT disses Hitchcock, he does trigger that urge to "what about YOU?" him with regard to his OWN exceses and misfires except...I still think -- if one can stomach the violence, which I can -- QT is the great entertainer of our time, "the total package" -- dialogue(the greatest), visuals(often with the great cinematography of Robert Richardson), "movies star acting" -- rewatchability.
So here is QT praising (real quick like, in passing) the Simon Oakland scene in Psycho(in order to set up how that scene was homaged in Dressed to Kill) and:
God bless you, QT.
CONT
doctor thirteen wrote:
You mean the big exposition at the end? Funny, I read that Hitchcock hated that scene.
---
As the shrink said "Ah...not exactly."
I've found a few interviews in which Hitchcock discusses that scene, and I can't say that he ever evidenced HATING it.
The most "on point" quote I ever read from him was: "Oh, I think in that scene we are just skimming over the facts for the audience."
In another quote, Hitch noted that he could have filmed Psycho "as a straight case study of the killer -- it would have been filmed as what the psychiatrist relates at the end."
There is this story about the day that Hitchcock actually FILMED Simon Oakland filming that scene. After wrapping the scene, Hitchcock approached Oakland, shook his hand and said "Thank you. You just saved my picture." If true, interesting yes?: We can figure that the shrink scene was necessasry to steer Hays Code censors AWAY from Norman Bates being a transvestite for SEXUAL reasons, or, perhaps, gay. No -- "he was simply trying to keep the illusion alive that his MOTHER was alive."
There is also a story from screenwriter Joe Stefano that when he and Hitchocck discussed doing the scene this way, Hitchcock said "that might be a hat grabber" -- audiences of that quaint era "grabbing their hats and leaving the theater." In the book , Sam relates all this to Lila after he MEETS with a shrink and the police.
Getting it right, Stefano in one of his DVD interviews STRONGLY defended the scene, saying with power: "No one left their seats when THAT scene took place."
He knew there are great elements in that scene, and (for different reasons this time) I'm going to lay them out again:
Three things:
ONE: Revealing that Norman poisoned his own mother("matricide, the most unbearable crime of all") and her lover.
CONT
TWO: Revealing that Norman stole his mother's corpse("a weighted coffin was buried"), took it home, gutted it, stuffed it (his taxidermy hobby pays off gruesomely) "loaded it with chemicals to keep it as well as it would keep" (Stefano's writing of the shrinks' speech is a great mix of the well turned phrase and the clinical)...and started talking to it. This VERBAL CONTENT is perhaps the most taboo and in its time, sick element in the whole of Psycho.
THREE: Norman (as as the shrink says "Like I said, the mother") killed two young women BEFORE Marion. Very important. Marion was not his "first time." He WAS a serial killer --whether as Mother or himself.
A bit more detail:
On Norman kililng his mother and her lover. Like all GOOD mysteries, Psycho keeps developing questions we are DESPERATE to see answered, scene by scene.
Norman to Marion in the parlor: "Mother met this man...he died...and the WAY he died...its not something to talk about while you are eating." OK -- what's going on here? How DID this man die? Was it an accident? Was it murder? We NEED to know.
Sheriff Chambers to Sam and Lila: "Only case of murder and suicide on Fairvale ledgers. She poisoned this fellah she was seein' and then took a helping of the same stuff herself. Strychnine. Ugly way to die." Aha -- the WAY he died. But SHE died too? What gives? But now the Sheriff deepens the mystery before we can figure it out: "If that old lady you saw in the window was Mrs. Bates -- who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn cemetary?"(One of the greatest diversion lines in mystery history -- not in the book.)
CONT
Anyway, had Psycho NOT ended with these various questions being answered -- it wouldhave simply FAILED AS a mystery. And I will go to MY grave not understanding why so many critics did NOT understand that the shrink scene not only HAS this important information(critics felt that the shrink told us things we already knew -- WRONG) -- but HAD to have this important information.
As for Norman gutting and stuffing his Mother -- well, not only did that make Psycho "the sickest movie ever made"(in 1960, per one critic) -- it beautifully tied Norman's taxidermy hobby into the story in a very profound way(making the movie GREAT and classic, not just good) and gave weight to lines near the beginning("Why she's as harmless as one of those stuffed birds" and the end ("I'll just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds.")
I suppose Norman/Mother's other two female victims didn't HAVE to be declared, but I think they make the story more interesting. Again, Marion was NOT the first victim, and the others were single young women , too and we can figure that in the ten years Norman has been alone and going mad, three is probably the right number of women to stumble into the Bates Motel alone. He was getting away with his murders til a woman showed up with a private eye on her tail and a loved one nearby.
Sidebar: How about Hitchcock's Frenzy of 1972? How many victims? The movie encompasses FOUR -- a nude dead body floating in the Thames at the opening, the killing of Blaney's ex-wife Brenda on screen, the killing of Blaney's girlfriend Babs OFF screen(save a later flashback), a final nude dead body in bed at the end. That's four. Its almost oppressive, all those murdered women piling up, with neckties round their necks and three of their four tongues sticking out.
CONT
But wait -- that first Thames corpse is blared in the press as "Another Necktie Murder!" -- we've got a serial killer on the loose. So how many victims before HER? One? Two?....Anthony Shaffer's published screenplay denotes that the Thames victim is Number Three...I guess three necktie killings made it for Rusk: he's the Necktie Killer alright! Six victims total, before capture. Just like Norman Bates (his mother, her lover, the two other women, Marion and Arbogast.)
---
On to Dressed to Kill:
ONE: Indeed, the movie rather spoofs the Simon Oakland sceene (DePalma fan Pauline Kael loved Dressed to Kill and hailed THIS movie's final exposition as a spoof of "possibly Hitchcock's worst scene." Says YOU, Pauline!
For, frankly, what the psychiatrist has to say in Dressed to Kill is less interesting("history wise") than what the psychiatrist has to say in Psycho --- we get no personal history on the killer(SPOILER Michael Caine, hah), just an analyis of his transsexual desires (making DIRECT what Psycho could not talk about , and of course now, decades later, much more a matter of day to day discoruse.)
SO: As QT himself notes here, the psychiatrist's speech SEGUES to a later speech from the film's young hero (Keith Gordon, playing the SON of slaughtered Angie Dickinson) to a seasoned hooker with a heart of gold(DePalma's then wife, the sultry and supple Nancy Allen) about the "graphic details" of transexual surgery(and yes, with the gag of a matronly woman nearby gagging upon hearing the info.)
I saw Dressed to Kill in its first weekend in the summer of 1980 and I noted how Hitchcock's single shrink scene turned into two and how the SECOND one got into clinical surgical detail that was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to have written and filmed two decades earlier and...
..well, it was the "DePalma problem" at the time, and QT references it:
Dressed to Kill COULD NOT EXIST without Psycho having been there first.
CONT
DePalma developed his own fan base (Pauline Kael at the time, QT later) who very decidedly PREFERRED DePalma to Hitchcock, mainly because DePalma could "go all the way" when Hitchcock couldn't.
And yet, DePalma "marked himself" for some time given how DEPENDENT his(often self-scripted) paeons to Hitchcock were:
Sisters(1973) a mix of Psycho and Rear Window(with a BERNARD HERRMANN score!)
Obsession (1976) a Vertigo remake(with a BERNARD HERRMANN score!)
Dressed to Kill(1980) a Psycho remake with a Vertigo art gallery scene(but Bernie was dead; Pino Donaggio had taken over for Herrmann starting with Carrie)
Blow Out(1981) Rear Window(remixed for sound), Psycho(a shower murder opening) and Vertigo(our hero causes TWO tragic deaths). Plus a mad strangler and a movie in the movie called "Co-Ed Frenzy."
Body Double (1984) a mix of Vertigo(claustrophobia instead of acrophobia, Rear Window, and Psycho
Four of those five were made by the time SNL spoofed Brian DePalma with these immortal words: "Once a year, Brian DePalma picks the bones of a dead great director, and gives his wife a job!" That would be Nancy Allen, of course, but eventually they divorced.
Though DePalma eventually pulled together his own reputation AS DePalma, that initial series of "Hitchcock re-treads" really hurt him for awhile, I think.
Consider: Scorsese got on the map with the low level Mafia realities of Mean Streets, the feminist realism of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore(Best Actress Oscar for Ellen Burstyn), the "sick reality" of Taxi Driver(a movie DePalma ALMOST directed), a MUSICAL(New York, New York) and a boxing picture(Raging Bull.) DePalma's little Hitchcock knockoffs simply showed no such ambition.
CONT
Consider: Spielberg certainly used Hitchcockian tropes to get on the map("Duel" is like a feature lenghth crop duster scene from NXNW; Jaws is Psycho at Sea) but neiither Duel nor Jaws REMADE a Hitchcock picture. And Spielberg's "first batch" contained movies which had little to NO "Hitchcock references": The Sugarland Express(nice car chases lead to true 1974 DOWNER ending); Close Encounters(a little bit of NXNW in the helicopter chase and the Devil's Tower monument climax, but little else); 1941 (SNL meets Animal House meets Spielberg), Raiders and ET.
Consider: Coppola's script annotations for all the murders in The Godfather say "Hitchcock," but there were NO overt Hitchcock references in Finian's Rainbow, The Rain People, or Apocalypse Now(The Conversation used sound as Blow Out would and thus had some Rear Window similes to it, but not much.)
And so: THAT's why DePalma took a lot of smacking about even as his fellow "movie brats" were staking out new territory(Lucas with American Graffiti and Star Wars, too.)
As I've pointed out before, DePalma ended up surprising ME because I have listed The Untouchables as my favorite movie of 1987 and as my favorite movie of the entire EIGHTIES(so sue me, that's how I feel) and...how'd he do that? Simple: he applied his Hitchcock-learned techniques(and his own Slo-Mo skills) to a great old-fashioned narrative with a great script and great dialogue by David Mamet, with two established stars(Oscar winning Connery and Guest Star DeNiro) and one new one(Kevin Costner) a GREAT score by Morricone(with about FOUR different great motifs) handsome Panavision images and real EMOTION. (Not all of the good guys win.)
CONT
In his book "Cinema Speculation," QT makes the case that DePalma "went Hitchcock" because his first studio film "Get to Know Your Rabbit" was an utter bomb, and thrillers would get him on the map. QT THEN makes the case that DePalma then segued to ACTION in the 80's and I'll agree on that point too. DePalma's three best movies to me are: The Untouchables, Scarface(a remake of a HAWKS movie, and perhaps DePalma's most iconic film) and Carlito's Way. Those movies are all scripted by other people than DePalma (David Mamet and Oliver Stone in two cases), with Big Movie Stars (Connery, DeNiro, and Pacino twice.)
I think DePalma showed his limitations -- and then some -- when his version of Bonfire of the Vanities (a "serious film" from a Tom Wolfe novel) was such a huge bomb, despite having Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis in starring roles. The message was that maybe DePalma should stick to thrillers because he coudn't handle "serious Oscar bait."
But now that his career is pretty much over, DePalma DOES have a run of movies thatalso includes Carrie(not much of a Hitchcock remake at all, even if it does take place at Bates High School and Psycho music accompanies the scream scenes), The Fury (kind of NXNW meets Psycho) and the searing "Vietnam horror movie" "Casualties of War" (which deliciously pits Nice Michael J. Fox versus Evil Brute Sean Penn.)
I'm about to do a "little run" at Dressed to Kill, but I would here like to note that one thing I NEVER liked about DePalma was that: he always seemed to screw up his set-pieces, usually by setting ridiculous action to slow motion that only made the moves look more ridiculous.
CONT
Example: the murder of Angie in the elevator in Dressed to Kill IS a horrific, visceral, far more bloody thing than the shower scene BUT it climaxes with a super-silly bit in which the killer just drops their blade when the elevator door TAPS HER WRIST.
Example: The Fury sports a long slo-mo shootout that goes wrong in ever more silly and ridiculous ways; and a "telekinesis climax"(BEFORE the final scene) that is just a mess. However, that final scene IS great, as our telekinetic heroine makes John Cassavetes simply "blow up." (My beef with telekinesis in both Carrie and The Fury is that it is literal "magiec" -- make your enemies blow up, fly through the air, etc. Silly.)
Example: Body Double features a long, drawn out and -- again -- ridiculous murder scene in which the male killer wields a power drill like a penis from between his legs, to penetrate his female victim. Spoof it may be, but it looks exploitative and stupid at the same time.
CONT
And now: the "Dressed to Kill" run:
ONE: While it owes everything to "Psycho," the film has an entirely different atmosphere and locale: ultra-urban New York City versus rural backwater dusty north-Central California. Much more atmosphere(and that HOUSE , and that MOTEL) in Psycho. I much prefer the setting of Psycho.
TWO: While it owes everything to "Psycho," the film has no Arbogast equivalent, nor a male victim or victims. On that count, I much prefer Psycho, too. (DePalma discovery Dennis Franz DOES play a cop, but he is not killed. Franz DOES get killed in Psycho II and he's the best thing in THAT movie, somehow making atrocious dialogue sound REAL.)
THREE: While it owes everything to "Psycho," the film also has a long sequence homaging Vertigo -- the silent but for music art gallery seduction.
FOUR: About that seduction. Women could fantasize along with Angie's aging sex-crazed house wife as this man scored her for afternoon sex at his apartment -- and men could fantasize about GETTING a house wife like Angie for afternoon sex. BUT DePalma's script makes sure to punish Angie in several ways: first, she learns that her sleeping lover has given her an STD(how Puritanical is THAT?) and then, mere minutes later, she is sliced apart with a straight razor by a transexual maniac in a truly gory scene. The outrage of the VD reveal and the graphic slaying mix in a most distasteful manner.
FIVE: About that elevator murder. As with a lot of R movies, I'm pretty sure the murder I saw at the theater in 1980 was NOT as gory as the one available on cable/streaming now. The straight razor is a horrible weapon -- it slices (Angie's palm) and slashes(Angie's throat and then her entire middle body, vertically) in a way that communicates TOTAL pain to the audience. (I don't think the version I saw in 1980 was so direct about the throat and body slashes.)
CONT
SIX: About that elevator murder. Anyone who has cut their palm on a sharp kitchen knife can FEEL the pain when Angie's palm is sliced (THAT was in the version I saw in 1980.) One is reminded that in Robert Bloch's novel of Psycho, while Marion(Mary) WAS killed with a butcher knife as in the movie, Arbogast gets his throat slashed by Mother's "straight razor." (Actually Norman's, the chapter in the book ends with Arbogast entering the foyer and Norman realizing "Mother had found Norman's razor.") Hitchcock in 1960 realized he couldn't feature such a horrific bladed weapon as a straight razor in a killing. The killer had to make "clean" stabs not shown, but HEARD.
CONT
SEVEN: About that elevator murder. Whereas in 1960, Janet Leigh's wounds weren't shown, and almost all the blood drawn in the murder conveniently "went down the drain" (less some splattered in and outside the tub)...in Dressed to Kill, Angie Dickensen is left a bloody mess on the floor of the elevator. What a difference 20 years in graphic movie bloodletting.)
SEVEN: Michael Caine. I tell ya, when I saw Dressed to Kill, I actually WAS surprised that Michael Caine was the psycho killer. I didn't see THAT direct reference to Psycho coming; I thought he indeed was dealing with a mad patient. Congrats.
Still, let movie history reflect. In one of his autobios, Michael Caine said that he turned down Bob Rusk in Frenzy "because I didn't want to be associated with the part -- a sadistic killer of young women." Well, that was in 1972 when his career was riding high(Get Carter, Sleuth.) Caine said that he took Dressed to Kill in 1980 when his career was tanking, to save his career after four bombs in a row. Might he have taken Frenzy under those circumstances, too?
In Dressed to Kill, not only does Caine's character slash Angie Dickenson to pieces, he later strangles a nurse in the asylum where he is placed. Whereas the elevator slashing was done by Caine's body double(a woman) we see Caine himself strangling that nurse -- full facial, just like strangler Bob Rusk in Frenzy. (But: this nurse strangulation turns out to be nonexistent -- somebody's dream.)
EIGHT. I saw Dressed to Kill opening weekend, June 1980 in Westwood Village, near UCLA, where six years before The Exorcist line snaked forever. For Dressed to Kill, I only had to wait in one long line that went in as soon as the current showing let out.
CONT
As the current showing let out , we all looked up to see -- OJ Simpson(then merely a sports hero) resplendent in skintight white tennis shorts and tee-shirt. Everybody cheered: "Juice!" OJ smiled , turned his thumb at the theater and said "Horny movie, horny movie" (which is is -- far hornier than Psycho, that's for sure).
Years later, after OJ's arrest and trial, I thought of seeing OJ at Dressed to Kill and thought of how the victim dies in that movie. "Inspirational"? A blonde came out of the theater in 1980 with OJ...I think it was indeed Nicole(I looked up the years of their relationship.)
I'm pretty sure the murder I saw at the theater in 1980 was NOT as gory as the one available on cable/streaming now. The straight razor is a horrible weapon -- it slices (Angie's palm) and slashes(Angie's throat and then her entire middle body, vertically) in a way that communicates TOTAL pain to the audience. (I don't think the version I saw in 1980 was so direct about the throat and body slashes.)Yes, QT discusses this, and the following saved webpage gets at some of the changes:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231205045157/https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=1049
The elevator attack as it stands now is too much I think. It's actually hard to watch it without a bit of instinctive eye-closing I find. De Palma's other tweaks, to the beginning and the end of the movie are I think better; they're shorter, less grueling, more shocking (they happen before my eye-closing reaction can kick in) and I find it hard to think of the movie without them. share
Yes, QT discusses this, and the following saved webpage gets at some of the changes:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231205045157/https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=1049
---
Those images of Angie getting slashed: Eeek. The blood -- so bright red(but not "fake looking.") The shot of the long razor blade cutting into her cheek, near that great big EYE(shades of Un Chien Andalou.) And indeed the throat slashes.
Indeed, I DON'T think we got those gruesome details in 1980, but I'm pretty sure most prints include them now.
Its funny. It took only 8 years from 1960 and Psycho to reach the R/X ratings of 1968 and for the movies to get REALLY bloody in 1968(Night of the Living Dead), 1969(The Wild Bunch) and 1970 (the "comedy" MASH -- in which a man on an operating table's jugular vein pumps a spray of blood straight up into the air.)
And yet, here was a movie at the dawn of the 80s -- that "nicer" Spielberg/Lucas decade -- as gory as anything. And 1980 saw Friday the 13th debut. And the "nice" 80's were also filled with gory "dead teenager movies" --- even Psycho II killed off a teenager.
Hitchcock pal John Landis (director of Hitchcock's 1978 fave Animal House) said that he showed Dressed to Kill to Hitchcock. That may be untrue -- Hitchcock died at the end of April 1980 and Dressed to Kill came out in June of 1980. Maybe Landis showed him Sisters or Obsession. For Landis said he told Hitchcock, "this is an homage to you by DePalma" and Hitchcock replied "Homage? More like fromage."
Whether Hitchcock saw Dressed to Kill or not, his death in April somewhat complicated DePalma's promotion of Dressed to Kill in June. In a Rolling Stone interview(I believe), DePalma was asked about the influence of Psycho on Dressed to Kill and he replied "who gives a f--- about Psycho anymore?" and got some bad press(lucky internet commenters weren't here yet!) Of course, in 1980, the more mild shocks of Psycho were a long time ago even then.
CONT
I didn't much like Dressed to Kill. The elevator attack was pretty shocking I will admit, but its "second half" -- the RIDICULOUS slow mo bit of "witness" Nancy Allen seeing the killer and the killer being unable to slash her because the elevator door GENTLY taps the killer's wrist and the blade falls to the ground -- I remember thinking "this DePalma guy just can't help but screw up his own suspense set pieces." (This was only two years after he had similarly botched two or three such sequences in The Fury, and frankly, I had found much of the prom massacre in Carrie to look more like The Absent Minded Professor than horror.)
I also didn't like the dialogue that I think was written mainly by DePalma. I REALLY didn't like the cruel, sick joke of Angie learning she'd just had sex with a man who had STDS(she finds his prescription.) Hitchcock would not have been so crass and it REALLY seemed Puritanical to me -- "don't have casual sex or you'll get a social disease!"(Of course, AIDS was right around the corner or the joke would have been worse.)
What I DID like: Michael Caine(at the time I did not know that he had turned down Frenzy). He WAS a great star and I recall being happy he had a hit, and I was surprised to see he was the killer(at which point I practically hit my forehead: "This really IS Psycho.")
I DID like Angie's sexuality(she took Janet Leigh's underwear-necking and converted it into several lustful sex scenes) and sometimes doubled nudity (also cut somewhat, that website shows us.)
And I enjoyed Nancy Allen both in lingerie -- and briefly nude in the film's cop out "final murder"(she isn't murdered at all -- a cheap ending "dream" I thought -- though I liked the frisson of the empty nurse's shoes -- and hey, DePalma copied HIMSELF -- just two films earlier -- by adding the last shot of Carrie to THIS dream ending.)
CONT
The elevator attack as it stands now is too much I think. It's actually hard to watch it without a bit of instinctive eye-closing I find.
---
Yes on both counts -- especially the more "gory" version that, again, I think is in general circulation now.
When the murder is so viscerallly gory that you have to close your eyes -- the director has left the realm of terrorizing the audience and entered the realm of ...grossing them out.
Its my theory that one reason after 1980 we never had a 'superthriller" like Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws (basically a nationwide, worldwide blockbuster seen by all) is that horror movies got SO graphic, SO gross, SO gory that...a lot of mainstream viewers and non-teenagers refused to come see them. (On the other hand, among the three superthrillers, The Exorcist was pretty gross. it breaks my theory . On the OTHER hand, the grossness in The Exorcist wasn't about gory killings -- it was body horror, vomiting, obscene language, etc.)
(On this "superthriller" thing. I still see Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws as the Big Three, but I'm willing to countenance the gory Alien as Number Four. As I recall, our research here showed that Alien didn't hit the blockbuster box office levels of the other three, though.)
CONT
De Palma's other tweaks, to the beginning and the end of the movie are I think better; they're shorter, less grueling, more shocking (they happen before my eye-closing reaction can kick in) and I find it hard to think of the movie without them.
---
I suppose we can add DePalma to the list of 70's directors who re-worked their films -- Lucas with American Graffiti and Star Wars, Spielberg with Close Encounters and ET; Coppola with all his Godfather variants. But with DePalma, it was mainly this one -- Dressed to Kill -- and mainly the restoration of SEX as well as violence.
Still that elevator hack up(of a nice if oversexed woman) is pretty hard to watch, if at all.
Which brings me to:
Bone Tomahawk.
This is quite relevant here. I've been "catching up" on some movies via streaming in recent weeks, and I decided to "steel myself" to watch three films by a writer director S. Craig Zahler:
2015: Bone Tomahawk(starring Kurt Russell with his Hateful Eight Yosemite Sam beard and moustache ALMOST ready for the latter picture.)
2017: Brawl in Cell Block 99 (starring Vince Norman Bates Vaughn with his entire head shaved)
2018: Dragged Across Concrete(starring Vaughn again, plus Mel Gibson on his redemption quest.)
The movies were made in that order They were all well-reviewed, but warnings were given: the violence was sickening in each of them, beyond the pale.
And nowhere worse than in one particular scene in Bone Tomahawk, the first of Zahler's films of this nature.
So I watched it last.
Alone -- I didn't want to subject anyone else to it. My strategy was: "I will just watch this minute by minute, scene by scene, until this horrific scene appears and then -- I will see if I can handle it or not."
Minute by minute, scene by scene -- it was a pretty good story, with really good dialogue(this guy Zahler joins QT and Sorkin in writing lines that have ZING.)
CONT
A frontier "doctor woman" is kidnapped, along with the young deputy of Sheriff Kurt Russell. Russell vows to go rescue her (shades of The Searchers). Her handsome husband -- Patrick Wilson(more on HIM in a moment) demands to come along, even with a bad leg injury. Russell's "back up" deputy - an old man delightfully played by Richard Jenkins, vows to join up too("Because I'm the back up deputy, and they kidnapped your deputy.") The fourth man is a suave gambler type(Matthew Fox) who has killed many "Indians." He tells the other three: "I'm the smartest man here." Why? "I'm the only one who isn't married."
A very smart Native American tells them they are heading into No Man's Land to face "Troglodytes" and declines to join them. Why? "Because you're all going to get killed."
So we've pretty much got a standard "4 men on a mission" movie for most of Bone Tomahawk -- until they reach the Trogolodytes and then the horror movie starts.
And one captured white human man becomes the focus of: That Scene.
I got the gist of what was happening and -- nope, could NOT watch it. Closed my eyes. Then tried to close my EARS (the sound effects and screams were sickening too.)
With "that scene" over, there was some more gory violence to come, but I could handle it.
When the movie -- very good in my opinion -- was over, I asked myself:
WHY does a filmmaker make a perfectly decent, well written, well acted Western and elect to spoil it with a scene that will surely kill attendance via word of mouth and perhaps ruin the experience for those who DO watch it?
Well: because that's the movie S. Craig Zahler wanted to make. And Kurt Russell(a name enough star) signed on to make it even KNOWING that scene(and a few other really gory ones) were in it.
CONT
Having seen all three of Zahler's films now, I can say he joins QT in my book(and maybe Hitchcock in his Psycho/Marnie/Torn Curtain/Frenzy mode) as "one sick puppy" of a human being. These guys are "entertaining" us in their own very dark way, but are they also entertaining THEMSELVES with such sick expression? (I guess we can add John Waters to that list, I saw a few of HIS visions.)
One thought I've had is: maybe I can WATCH the sick visions of Hitch, QT, Zahler and Waters, but if I were a novice pitching screenplays in Hollywood, I would NEVER pitch a script that had a scene like the rape-murder in Frenzy, or Jackson's treatment of Bruce Dern's son in Hateful Eight, or this scene in Bone Tomahawk, or something like Pink Flamingos. I will take in this content, but it takes a real sick guy to imagine it, write it, film it.
So...on topic within the topic:
Unlike the two scary but not terribly sickening murders in Psycho(though one 1960 critic said the shower scene created nausea in them) -- Angie Dickenson's uncut cutting in Dressed to Kill and this Bone Tomahawk scene are their own kind of markers: you have to be pretty tough of mind to WATCH them -- and a lot of people cannot.
Oh, I said I'd say something about Patrick Wilson.
He's been some sort of star now for over 20 years, I think. I've seen him in enough films that I find him rather unavoidable. But a more bland presence I cannot imagine. He lacks true star charisma -- at least as a star for men to watch.
On the other hand, I've seen him get hot sex scenes in movies with women several times now-- with Kate Winslet in Little Children, with Malin Akerman in Watchmen, and now with the beautiful woman playing his wife in Bone Tomahawk. I guess THAT's his claim to fame? Chicks dig him as a sex symbol on screen?
Must be. I can't figure it out otherwise.
I know what you're getting at with Patrick Wilson... and, well, that slight bland look he has is his casting edge for a lot of his roles I think. I first noticed him as excellent in HBO's Angels in America (dir by Mike Nichols) playing the central pitiable character of Joe Pitt, the self-hating gay Morman lawyer who works for Pacino's Roy Cohn, has Meryl Streep as his mom in denial, and Mary Louise Parker as his wife cracking up. I believe that Wilsom was straight out of Broadway at that time and he more than holds his own surrounded by all that big talent and with acres of showy dialogue to swallow. The point is I suppose that there he has a kind of unthreatening boy-next-door All-American look that makes him very castable and then he's just got all the Broadway-honed chops to do whatever a director wants. He did a Gap ad with Claire Danes ages ago that sorta clarified:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkVDQYD-TTs
A lotta girls and boys are about as good-looking as Danes and Wilson, it's true, but they're hard-working, well-liked pros both. They're normcore sex symbols if you're in the right mood!
I know what you're getting at with Patrick Wilson... and, well, that slight bland look he has is his casting edge for a lot of his roles I think.
---
Yes.. a kind of "All American" type to be sure. And I suppose his handsome face(if bland) and strong body DO send the womenfolk.
---
I first noticed him as excellent in HBO's Angels in America (dir by Mike Nichols) playing the central pitiable character of Joe Pitt, the self-hating gay Morman lawyer who works for Pacino's Roy Cohn, has Meryl Streep as his mom in denial, and Mary Louise Parker as his wife cracking up. I believe that Wilsom was straight out of Broadway at that time and he more than holds his own surrounded by all that big talent and with acres of showy dialogue to swallow.
--
All true..I remember him from that now, and I suppose his STAGE training and expertise(remembering dialogue and delivering it well) earned him his place with those pros.
I know he also got cast in the movie of The Phantom of the Opera musical -- a big deal movie betting on a near unknown. So I guess he can SING, too? (I never saw it.)
AND...I remembered liking him as a tough, Gary Cooperish lawman pitted against all manner of gangsters and Mafia types in Season Two of Fargo. That role MADE him a great hero. That one time. Ha.
CONT
He did a Gap ad with Claire Danes ages ago that sorta clarified:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkVDQYD-TTs
---
Well, that was cute..and he's got those musical skills -- dance wise, here. Her, too.
---
A lotta girls and boys are about as good-looking as Danes and Wilson, it's true, but they're hard-working, well-liked pros both. They're normcore sex symbols if you're in the right mood!
---
I suppose so...I'm ALMOST ready to take it back and BOY does he work.
Meanwhile, Matt Damon -- now an older, tougher but weary model -- keeps on going as a star. I had to get used to HIM, too -- but it took time. He just looks like lots of regular guys. I guess that's key to his success. Also: Bourne.