Blood, that is. As in the above striking image from Claire Denis’ 2001 Trouble Every Day. My friends at MSN Movies, impressed by the prodigious sticky-ick factor of Neil Marshall’s new and fabulous Centurion, asked me to come up with a bunch of pictures with as high if not higher a stock of spilled hemoglobin. The gory results of my research are here. Enjoy?
Not wishing to recommend Jeffrey Wells too highly, but did anyone else see the still from the bloody climax of ‘Taxi Driver’ he posted? Crucially, the still (actually a production photograph) was taken *before* the MPAA-mandated ‘flashing’ of the scene’s colour, and the effect of seeing De Niro soaked in actual crimson, as opposed to the desaturated mud of the released film, is jaw-dropping.
I’m currently having the debate with myself as to whether or not to see Trouble Every Day on the big screen when it plays BAM next month. Have only seen it on DVD, but the experience was… extremely unsettling, to say the least. But it’s a beautiful film in its own way, and Denis is one of my favorite filmmakers, so I kind of feel compelled to see it on film.
Good times. Good article, too, Glenn.
I like how the article smash cuts to a portrait of the Pinkett-Smiths. That’s the scariest still of them all!
Great collection of films my squeamish self has (mostly) avoided. I do love TROUBLE though.
I just thought the Pinkett-Smith thing was me clicking on the wrong link somewhere. Pretty chilling stuff, that.
Oh man would I love to see Trouble Every Day on the big screen. Yes, it’s extremely unsettling, but also so soulful, plangent and beautiful. I’ve never quite gotten the lack of love for this one – though I guess it goes back to how disturbing it is.
One of my nominees for bloody horror standouts would be “Inside” (also with the incredible Beatrice Dalle) – one of the best horror films of the past few years in my opinion.
I would actually argue that the climactic scene of Taxi Driver is more grisly and effective as it is in the finished film – in that still on Wells’ site, the blood looks like stage blood – too pink and the consistency isn’t quite right. In the final version it’s browner, plus the scene as a whole has a dirtier look to it.
I agree with the comparison between the two Last Houses on the Left, also.
Donald, I don’t dislike the film at all. I like it quite a bit. It’s just taken up far more active mental real estate in the past 7 years since I’ve seen it than almost all of the other films I’ve seen since. And quite a bit of that is because of its soulful beauty, and how it flies against much of what I’ve been conditioned to expect in horror. There’s a mental recalibration that has to be made; I’m accustomed to extreme disturbing violence in movies being frequently accompanied by a grimier, often grainier, and for lack of a better term, uglier aesthetic. Trouble Every Day is poetic, beautiful, has amazing cinematography and a gorgeous score. And so for some reason, the extreme violence runs up against that beauty in my head, which makes the movie very difficult to safely categorize as “art film” or “exploitation horror” or whatever categories we give movies to make them easy to file away and forget about.
So, yeah, I’ve probably just talked myself into seeing it in theaters.
I feel like the washed-out, orange‑y blood at the end of TAXI DRIVER has the effect of blasting the film into COMBAT SHOCK/MANIAC territory. MANIAC isn’t even nearly so washed out (or not now that it’s been all restored and whatnot), but watching, in TAXI DRIVER, that one guy’s face coming apart in a hail of bullets through a brown-ish haze makes not only the film, but the environment in which the climax takes place, all the more grimy.
And Glenn, I agree, Roth’s not nothin’. I genuinely think he comes off like a tool in interviews, but the films themselves, or at least the HOSTEL films, and especially (I think I’m in the minority here) the first one, are the work of an actual talent. He just needs more…I don’t know, focus?
Finally, a topic I feel confident posting here about…
“Focus” might be the word. There are genuinely effective sequences in his movies, but his sense of tone is shaky, and both Hostels end on notes that don’t inspire one to take their pretenses to social commentary very seriously. The amount of bile people sling at him is disproportionate to what’s up there on the screen. Yes, the movies are crass, distasteful, and not entirely successful, and yes, he comes off as smug and rather annoying in interviews. But the Hostels are more skillfully made and fun (when they’re not being unpleasant) than most of the stuff that’s been labeled torture porn. They’re infinitely preferable to Saws 1 through whatever.
But when it comes to Saw (if it has to come to Saw), Saw III is the clear victor, to these eyes. Not that I’ve seen all of them (or genuinely like any of them), but III is the strongest draught of the ones I have seen, both in extremity and relative quality. II in comparison is weak, nu-metal tea.
Mr, Kenny, is there no love for Martyrs? If you added up every Saw released so far and held it beside Martyrs, it’d, so to speak, still need a chair to kiss Martyrs’, so to speak, feet.
(Martyrs)
(Martyrs)
MARTYRS is, indeed, um…worth discussing.
Yes, GK should
RECTIFY
(Martyrs)
(Where bloody blood goes to bleed)
.
Seriously though, not that I didn’t expect many of your choices, I was baffled by the lack of this one, Mr. Kenny.
I just watched Martyrs recently, and WOW did I hate it. Probably more than any of the Saw movies (I’ve seen 1–4) which tended to put me to sleep.
Any particular reason why, Jeff?
(thanks for asking)
There seems to be a convergence in French horror filmmaking these days of movies being made with extremely skilled craft and utterly boneheaded concepts. Aja’s High Tension is one example, Ils/Them was another. Martyrs is well-made in terms of staging/gore/cinematography/performances, but it seems to have been made out of about three half-baked ideas: kicking the ‘home invasion’ story up a notch, the ‘demon that exists only in my head’ story, and of course the ‘strange cabal seeking to unravel the mysteries of the universe in a bizarrely roundabout manner’ storyline. Don’t get me wrong, some of the greatest films ever made have been on the subject of suffering, and just last week Ken Russell’s The Devils was playing here in Los Angeles, and it blows me away every time. But this movie seemed to be going for clever shocks first and foremost (and finding intellectual ways to justify them), and an authentic exploration of the meaning of pain and suffering isn’t actually present.
Fair enough, I suppose, except that I thought MARTYRS took some slightly familiar material (maybe I’ve seen fewer French horror films than you have, Jeff, but it didn’t seem that shopworn to me) and made it sort of fascinating. It’s absolutely a flawed movie, but I hated INSIDE and FRONTIER(S) and HIGH TENSION, and thought THEM was merely decent. MARTYRS seemed to have genuine ambition beyond, or by way of, the slaughter.
If you care to read it, I wrote MARTYRS up a while back…
http://wwwbillblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/collection-project-keep-doubting.html