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Directors
that Warren admires and why.
Overview:
The
feature film directors I like include George
Romero (naturally) , David Cronenberg, Fredrico
Fellini, James Whale, George Waggner, Terence
Fisher, Freddie Francis, Roy Ward Baker,
Jack Arnold, Tobe Hooper, Roger Corman, Roman
Polanski and James Cameron.They
have all made movies that I love.
THE
DETAILS:
FREDDIE
FRANCIS is an Academy Award
Winning Director of Photography, and has done
big movies including David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT
MAN. But the movies he did as director are the
ones I think are fantastic.
He
did a movie in 1966 for Amicus starring Peter
Cushing and Christopher Lee called THE SKULL
which I think is great. He also did one of my
favorite Hammer Dracula movies starring
Christopher Lee, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE
GAVE(1968). His other movies include DR.TERRORS
HOUSE OF HORRORS(Amicus 1965), TORTURE
GARDEN(Amicus 1967), THE DEADLY BEES(Amicus
1966), EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN(Hammer 1964), TALES
FROM THE CRYPT(1972), LEGEND OF THE
WEREWOLF(Tyburn 1974), THE CREEPING FLESH
(1972), THE GHOUL (1973), TALES THAT WITNESS
MADNESS(1972) and others. Though I enjoy many of
his other movies, THE SKULL and DRACULA HAS
RISEN FROM THE GRAVE are my favorites. Freddie
Francis took the genre seriously and knew he was
making adult fantasy movies so never played down
to his audience. He respected his audience and
the material.
TERENCE
FISHER is an excellent director and has
made lots of movies that I think are some of the
best in the genre. My favorite Fisher movies are
THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (Hammer 1958)
starring Peter Cushing, HORROR OF DRACULA(Hammer
1958) starring Peter Cushing and Christopher
Lee, THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF(Hammer 1961)
starring Oliver Reed, THE BRIDES OF
DRACULA(1960) starring Peter Cushing and David
Peel, THE GORGON (Hammer 1964) with Peter
Cushing and Christopher Lee and FRANKENSTEIN
MUST BE DESTROYED (Hammer 1969) starring Peter
Cushing. Fisher has done many others including
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA(Hammer 1962) with
Herbert Lum, DEVIL RIDES OUT (Hammer 1968) with
Christopher Lee, FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER
FROM HELL (Hammer 1974), but the ones I listed
first are the ones that I think are his best.
Terence Fisher took the genre seriously and did
his best to make quality movies and it shows.
ROMAN
POLANSKI is an excellent filmmaker. The
movies that he made that I like are KNIFE IN THE
WATER(1962) and FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967),
his homage to Hammer Horror movies.
REPULSION(1965) was good too, but his most
famous movie I don't really like - ROSEMARY'S
BABY(1967); it bores me to tears. I haven't seen
all of his movies but I have read lots of
interviews with him on the others and have read
books on Polanski movies. Someday I hope to see
more of his movies.
JACK
ARNOLD was brilliant directing one
movie, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON(1954).
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is my absolute
favorite monster movie of all, but his other
movies, like TARANTULA(1955), THE REVENGE OF THE
CREATURE (1955), SPACE CHILDERN (1958), IT CAME
FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) and the INCREDIBLE
SHRINKING MAN (1957) just didn't have the magic
for me that THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK
LAGOON did. Jack Arnold only directed half of
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Two units were
filming it at the same time and he directed all
the scenes with the main cast in LA that took
place above water. Anytime the action shifted to
underwater (and thats almost half the movie),
those scenes were filmed in Florida at Silver
Springs by another director who got shafted as
far as proper screen credit. All those fantastic
3D underwater shots that Jack Arnold took credit
for he didn't shoot - he was thousands of miles
away in LA while they were being shot. Still,
the scenes he did direct were approached very
seriously and the whole movie works great.
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GEORGE WAGGNER
was a
Hollywood Producer and Director
and he made three movies in the
early 1940s with Lon Chaney Jr
that I really enjoy. The
first one was an old Title
originally written in the 1930's
for Boris Karloff and Bela
Lugosi called THE ELECTRIC MAN,
which was rewritten as MAN MADE
MONSTER with George Waggner
Producing and Directing. It was
Lon Jr's first horror movie and
was made at Universal Studios
where his famous silent star dad
had made a legend of himself
as The Man of a Thousand Faces.
MAN MADE MONSTER was a hit, so
Waggner hired Chaney again and
hired writer Curt Soidmak to come
up with a werewolf story and Soidmak
was given a title - THE WOLF MAN -
and a list of the actors who were hired to
be in it and within a few weeks
Soidmak created one of the best
horror movie scripts ever written
with intelligence, psychological
sophistication and well developed
story and gave the all star cast
meatey roles to play. THE WOLFMAN
was a huge hit in 1941 and is
considered a classic today. While
shooting Soidmak's script Waggner
made changes to make Chaney's
werewolf an actual literal monster
and not, as Soidmak had written, a
psychological mystery where the
audience was left guessing if
Chaney was really a werewolf or
just mentally ill. This
"literalness" made for
errors in the movie like why did
Chaney become a combination of man
and wolf while the other werewolf
in the movie played by Bela Lugosi
transformed into an actual four
legged wolf? Chaney transforms
while in a T-shirt at Castle
Talbot, but when seen walking
through the foggy forrest in the
next scene he is dressed in a
shirt...oops. Still, it is a
fantastic movie. The third Waggner
movie he only Produced but was a
sequel to THE WOLFMAN(1941).
FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE
WIOLFMAN(1943) isn't as well made
or written as THE WOLFMAN had
been, but its a fun movie made by basically
the same people who made THE
WOLFMAN. And chaney gives a very
good performance in it. Since I
saw THE WOLFMAN(1941) as a young
kid I always wanted to own the
silver wolf-headed cane from it
that was the key prop handled by
Claude Reins, Chaney, Ralph
Bellamey, Evelyn Ankers and Bela
Lugosi and a few years back I was
able to purchase a recast off one
of the original four canes that
are still in existance at
Universal Studios and in private
collections. So werewolves beware!
JAMES
WHALE was
a wonderful, wildly creative, smart-ass
director who did the best horror
movies of the 1930s -
FRANKENSTIEN(1931), THE INVISIBLE
MAN (1933) and his best movie, THE
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN(1935). His
movies were clever and defiant and
full of imagination and dementia.
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE
INVISIBLE MAN were actually
ghoulish comedies, much like I
tried to make with my first four
feature films. Whale relished evil
and filmed symbolic attacks on the
church for BRIDE, some of which
were edited out before release,
some made it to the theaters. The
one character that was Whale's
counterpart on screen in any of
his movies was BRIDE's Dr.
Pretorius played by Ernest
Thesenger. Pretorius is a very
appealing dark character who just
loves his macabre individuality,
which is at war with polite
society and the church. Pretorius
wants to find the secrets of
creating life and will do whatever
it takes. Whale did such a superb
job on these three classics that
they over shadowed all his other
movies to follow so he retired to
paint pictures instead. He had, in
reality, created his own personal
Frankenstein!
DAVID
CRONENBERG is a canadian
genius horror filmmaker who made
quite a few very good movies like
THE DEAD ZONE with Christopher
Walken, SCANNERS with Patrick
McGoohan, THE BROOD with Oliver
Reed, THE FLY with Jeff Goldblum,
SHIVERS, RABID with Marilyn
Chambers and others. His first
couple of features that he wrote
and directed had a very distinct,
intellectual, original approach to
the horror material. Watching his
movies you know there is thought
behind the gore. I think of him as
an "intellectual savage"
because Cronenberg is a very
smart, deep thinker who tries to
make him movies much more than
simply a roller coaster ride and
yet his taste is for blood and the
macabre. In SCANNERS, by force of
mental energy, a victim's head
explodes in gory splender.
Cronenberg says he sees the
exploding head as a thing of
beauty. I can actually understand
that, because gore and violence is
part of what human beings are
about; this is why so much of our
entertainment and art is erotic
and violent. We humans are NOT
appalled at violence, we are drawn
to it and relish it. BUT we are
not suppose to according to the
bogus rules of civilized society
and so in public we condemn it
while enjoying it privately. A
little more honesty would be nice.
Cronenberg has added a new
demension to horror movies while
sedating our primal needs for
violence, death and sex. Its too
bad he has left horror behind in
the last 5 or 6 movies, which have
dealt more with simply twisted
sexuality, like CRASH and NAKED
LUNCH.
FREDRICO
FELLINI made
a roughly 40 minute segment/short
film back in 1967 which is one of
my all time favorite European art
films,TOBY DAMMIT. Yes, its based
on Edgar Allen Poe's TOBY DAMMIT,
which Poe also titled NEVER BET
THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD. The Fellini
version of the Poe story is an
artistic nightmarish dream-like
translation that I think Poe
would have appreciated. Lush in
colors, weird in lighting and
camera movement, bizzare in set
design, it is very dream-like and
yet Fellini manages to connect us
to the tormented soul of poor Toby
Dammit in a very concrete, real
way. We feel his pain. Toby Dammit
was played by a very good British
actor, Terence Stamp. Stamps face
was perfect to convey the deep
sadness of Dammit, which is at the
heart of the piece. Fellini, an
Italian, turned Rome into a
strange world as if through the
eyes of someone who has never been
there. The story is about a
self-destructive, very unhappy
British actor who has been hired
by Italian producers to shoot a
western in Rome which is a
metaphor for decadent western
civilzation and at the same time a
blasphemous re-telling of the life
of Christ. Fellini is making fun
of art movies with an art film.
Stamp drinks and is drunk through
the whole film, and is treated
like a star despite his condition.
Show biz is shown to be an insane
world populated with bizzare
people. He answers questions on a
TV show with funny, clever
responses until the interviewer
asks if he believes in God.
"No", he says grimly.
When asked if he believes in the
Devil and says yes. "To me
the Devil...is a little
girl". Stamps character is
tempted throughout the movie to
join this creepy little girl
(that only he can see), playing
with her bouncing ball, but Stamp
resists. At a Hollywood style
ceremony Stamps character is asked
to go up on stage and recite Poe.
On stage he emotionally falls
apart, exposing his
tormented soul before the silent
staring audience: "Its not
true. I'm not a very good actor.
My last director said I was drunk.
Why did you make me come
here?" Earlier in the movie,
at the TV station, he asks a woman
"Will you marry me?" and
Fellini has her turn into a
statue. No love permitted for Toby
Dammit. Before he went on stage a
beautiful woman sits near him
saying all the loving and romantic
things Toby Dammit deeply
craves to hear, but she leaves him
too, after saying that they will
be happy together forever. Dammit
escapes the festivities after his
baring his soul before the cold
audience and gets into a sports
car and recklessly rockets up and
down the dark streets of Rome at
night. At one point his stops his
car and slowly lets the emotional
pressure inside him out by
screaming. The movie ends on a
bridge under construction with a
section missing. The little girl
devil appears with her ball and
Dammit rockets his car at her to
kill her. He fails to see a thin
wire stretched across the road. It
slices his head off. The girl
devil, smiling evilly, puts her
ball down and picks up Toby
Dammit's head instead. TOBY DAMMIT
is a must-see. Its fabulous
filmmaking. I've only seen one
other Fellini film, LAS STRADA
with Anthony Quinn, which also had
effective story telling. TOBY
DAMMIT was included with two other
shorts made by other filmmakers
and released as a three story
feature film called SPIRITS OF THE
DEAD (AIP 1967). Vincent Price
even provided an ending
voice-over.
ROY
WARD BAKER made Hollywood
pictures from my understanding and
in the 1960s he shifted to British
films and made a few horror and
science fiction pictures of merit.
To me his best film is QUATERMASS
AND THE PIT(1967) released here in
the USA as FIVE MILLION YEARS TO
EARTH. The movie was the third
feature film made by Hammer
Studios based on Nigel Kneal's
three brilliant British TV BBC
mini-series: QUATERMASS
EXPERIMENT, QUATERMASS 2 and
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, all shot
and aired on British TV before
1958. Nigel Kneal himself
condensed his three hour 1958 TV
script into an excellent 97
minutes for the Roy Ward Baker
movie. The story is extremely
intelligent. An alien space craft
and missing-link type skeletons
are unearthed in London while
working on an underground
railroad. The military think its
an old German propaganda weapon,
but Prof. Quatermass sees it as a
real alien craft. Through his
investigations he uncovers that
the ship unearthed was one of many
transporting apes back to earth
from mars after they had been
altered and martian souls and
intelligence had been instilled in
them; WE are the martians!!!
ESP,
Telekinis, other supernatural
human traits, are inherited from
our Martian ancestors. The
Martians themselves look like
gargoyles and demons. At the end
of the movie the space craft comes
alive, glowing, and you can see
blood vessels all over it. London
is turned into a hellish battle
ground as those most under the
enfluence of the space craft,
those most "martian",
start purging the humans less
under martian control by killing
them using the power of their
minds to cause physical damage.
Quatermass and a friend watch as
the space craft converts into a
giant glowing alien that resembles
the Devil and towers above
buildings. Quatermass watches
helplessly as his friend
sacrifices himself by using a
crane to destroy the creature and
is electricuted in the process.
Hammer Films of England have
always produced lushly colored,
extremely high quality fantasy and
horror movies and FIVE MILLION
YEARS TO EARTH, even by their
standards, is a knock out. Roy
Ward Baker made three more movies
for Hammer - VAMPIRE
LOVERS(1970) with Ingrid Pitt and
Peter Cushing, SCARS OF
DRACULA(1970) with Christopher Lee
and DR.JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE
(1971) with Ralph Bates. Whatever
you think of the titles, the
movies themselves were slick
productions that put many American
movies made on similar budgets to
shame. Extremely well crafted
movies can be stuck with
expoitation titles which suggest
cheap and poorly made movies. Most
of the horror movies made in
England in the late 1950's up
until the mid- 70's were superbly
done and often look like big
budgeted movies with good
directing, lighting, excellent
sets, entertaining scripts and
well rounded performances. Don't let
a cheap sounding title
prevent you from watching and
enjoying these wonderfully made
movies.
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TOBE
HOOPER made TEXAS
CHAINSAW MASSACRE in 1974, in
Texas, in Super 16 film format for
blow-up to 35mm and with a
reported budget of $140,000.
The movie made a fortune in
returns and it is easy to see why.
It's a very effective, go for the
throat, "scare movie"
that managed to be frightening
with a combination of graphic
violence and heavily suggested
violence. After this classic was
completed the real nightmare for
the filmmakers started as
they got ripped off amazingly by
the distributor, collecting a few
thousand dollars out of the many
millions of dollars the movie
grossed (similar to what happened
to George Romero with NIGHT OF THE
LIVING DEAD 1968). Court battles,
lab rip offs, all kinds of
corruption, fast sell offs to
foreign markets, everything that
could be done to prevent the
filmmaker's from getting the money
they were entitled to was done. It
wasn't until the re-release, years
later through NewLine Cinema, that
the people who worked hard to make
the movie and took all the
financial risks, started getting
honest accounting and proper
royalty checks from a distributor.
The movie itself is great and
scary and fun and is perhaps Tobe
Hooper's best movie to date.
POLTERGEIST was awful and I am not
a fan of the remake of INVADERS
FROM MARS or LIFE FORCE. TEXAS
CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 bombed in the
theaters but made a fortune on
the home video release - it is a
weird business. SALEM'S LOT, the
mini-series he directed based on
the Stephen King best-seller was
good too but a TV movie with all
the limitations that CHAINSAW
didn't have placed on it.
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