Contradicting Popular Opinion:
A.K.A.
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks: The Blair Witch Project
Last week ended up as “accidental vampire week” here at IP. I talked about them, Lucard talked about them, Robtrain talked about them, etc. This week seems to be accidental werewolf week here, the logical follow-up with the usual suspects. It isn’t really what I was going to talk about, but I will give it a little bit of go.
Crash course in cinematic lycanthropy.
Werewolf of London is really the first notable werewolf movie. But it is basically Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s not a terrible movie, but probably the most over-rated classic horror film. The werewolf angle is one of destroying that which you love most. The werewolves are bi-peds with big widow’s peaks.
The Wolfman comes around and basically cements the werewolf rules. Lycanthropy spreads like rabies, you turn into a werewolf during the full moon, werewolves can only be killed by silver, future victims carry the mark of the pentagram, the “pure of heart” poem, etc. Instead of a wolf, a werewolf is again more of a wolf furrie. Actually it kind of looks like a Lon Cheney’s wearing a coonskin cap.
(2 non-sequitur notes:
1. Lon Chaney Jr. was my favorite actor at age 11.
2. If you write Furrie fan-fiction, particularly of the slash variety, make sure you include Lucard in one of your stories. He would greatly appreciate it)
Now, The Wolfman rules stay pretty solid, with the addition of moonlight’s ability to resurrect a dead werewolf in Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, and a working werewolf cure in House of Dracula. Though that might have been in House of Frankenstein the differences are negligible, and I always confuse the two. At any rate that cure seemed to have worn off by the time of Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein (a film which has inspired the likes of Quentin Tarantino to make movies).
The Mad Monster uses a transfusion of wolf blood to create its werewolf.
Cry of the Werewolf and Teen Wolf have lycanthropy being a family curse, which as a cause is probably more true to lycanthropy’s origins than the supernatural virus normally associated with it.
In I was a Teenage Werewolf, werewolfism was caused by a sort of post-hypnotic regression. Ah evil Michael Landon…
The Hammer movie, Curse of the Werewolf, seemed to disavow the Universal rules and had Werewolfism caused by being the bastard of a bastard, if memory serves. I might be way off; it’s been a while. It is one of Hammer’s more respected films and worth a rental.
The Howling seems to fit pretty closely to the Wolfman rules. Its sequel is so atrocious that it forces me to utter the phrase, “wicked awful.” (But in that film, one Christopher Lee introduces titanium bullets as being more lethal than silver bullets, a fact that has since been ignored.) The third Howling introduced MARSUPIAL WEREWOLVES!!! It is a perversely watchable movie. The rest of the series don’t really add much to the legend.
American Werewolf in London threw out all the rules except for the contagiousness and full moon aspects. In this film regular bullets can kill a werewolf, and werewolves have four legs. It also pushed the metamorphosis as being quite painful in the greatest transformation scene ever. Fuck CGI.
Wolf had the transformation as a sequence of nightly changes, gradually becoming more and more lupine approaching the state of a pretty normal looking wolf. I believe the change is permanent at that point, and no more transformations occur. That is to say, you are stuck as a dog, but not terribly upset by this thing. Michelle Pfeiffer is pretty awful in it. The film is also freakishly uneven. Each scene felt like a different movie. From Dusk till Dawn is a more stable film by comparison.
Van Helsing and Underworld added nothing of interest to the werewolf legend. But they did add a lot more suck and bland to the world. Oh, and the death of joy. They added that too.
Cursed seems to want to follow the werewolf rules of every movie. The film makes werewolves acutely allergic to silver, i.e. it hurts for them to touch it even in human form. It also teases us with the possibility of a Scott Baio werewolf and never delivers. Damn.
I’ve still not seen Ginger Snaps (faulty DVD player). Nor the Company of Wolves(I’m not a girl). I’ve only seen part of Bad Moon and Silver Bullet, and I am in no terrible hurry to see the rest of either of those flicks.
The common thread of almost all werewolf movies is that of id. Lycanthropy is invariably about maintaining
control of the id, especially among hormonal teens. (Sweet repression by the super-ego of natural desires to hunt, f*ck, kill, destroy, what have you.) The only big exception to this rule that I can think of would be with Wolfen. But Wolfen is more of a skin-walker movie, where control of primal urges is mastered to the point of being able to transform at will. It is also one of the few horror movies that really seems to make sense most of the time.
Enough of this thing; let’s get on with it!
Intro to the Column Proper
As we approach Halloween, the thing to do is to talk about horror movies. I’m not going to feign originality here as I do this thing, though I fear losing my status as an iconoclast. So it goes.
Anyway, this week I wanted to talk about a great movie. A film where preternatural forces have turned the woods into something inescapable and something terribly dangerous. A film that was made with virtually no budget, yet still ranks as one of the most important horror films of the last thirty years.
But everybody knows how great Evil Dead is, so let’s talk about The Blair Witch Project instead.
The Blair Witch Project
My wife and I made a terrible mistake last night. We watched The Blair Witch Project at night, alone, in the dark. Man that was something else. After 35 minutes my wife was sound asleep. Thankfully, my loyal dog repeatedly walked over my feet in an effort to keep me awake.
Good thing too, I might have missed the part of the film where they aimlessly sauntered through the woods.
I apologize if this column seems redundant. Enough people have attacked this flick over the years. But it has been staring at me for a while, and I need to get it out of my system.
The Blair Witch Project came out six years ago with the tagline “Scary as Hell.” There is some sort of genius at work here. There must be. Or at the very least, an incredible amount of luck. The film was made for around $35,000 dollars and brought in 140 million at the box office.
That is just ludicrous. That is a 400,000% percent return. That’s like buying stock at 1 dollar a share, and selling it a 4,000 dollars a share.
It reminds me of Nirvana’s album “Bleach.” I believe that it was made for just over $600 by Sub-pop. It then ended up selling over a million copies.
But “Bleach” led to something bigger. The Blair Witch Project led to well… nothing really. One ignored sequel and a sci-fi channel special that can be seen in the 99 cent bins of many blockbusters. It didn’t really seem to launch any careers. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez don’t look like they have completed anything since.
Heather, Josh and Mike seem to be a little busier. Heather was in Boys and Girls. Josh has appeared in a couple of movies, guest starred in some cop shows, and had a starring role in the Fight Club video game. Mike, well, he has shown up in an episode of “Law and Order.”
Of course every struggling actor has had a minor guest spot on “Law and Order.” I’m not an actor, have never been to NYC, but I am still pretty sure that I was in an episode.
So what we have with The Blair Witch is the film equivalent to a one-hit wonder. Some lame novelty song comes out at just the right time, makes a mint, and leaves nothing but a trail of parody behind.
As for the movie itself, it’s rubbish. It’s actually less interesting than most real home movies. It’s like watching the vacation slide show of an elderly aunt who is always a couple of minutes too late to get the picture she really wanted, and then goes to great length to explain what you’re not seeing. Being senile, your aunt isn’t terribly good at explaining things, and mostly repeats a couple of words over and over again, eventually capping each story off with the phrase, “and stuff like that.”
And she keeps it up for an hour and a half.
That is what The Blair Witch Project is like. Pain.
The film, if it can be called such a thing, involves three would-be filmakers, Heather, Josh and Mike who decide that the best way to do a documentary on a local legend is to do an extensive interview with the surrounding woodland area.
They first attempt anxiety by interviewing the townsfolk about random serial killers and hirsute women. At least that’s what the local crazy woman told them to be afraid of in the woods: a woman with excessive body hair. Although, given further thought she admitted that it might just have been Kelsey Grammer.
After interviewing the crazy woman, they decide that it is time to start questioning the flora and fauna of the Burkittsville woods about this somewhat nebulous phenomenon. None of the three are particularly skilled at reading maps or being able to figure out how a compass needle works, so they repeatedly get lost.
Having just seen The Big Lebowski for the 13th time, Josh speaks only in sentences containing the words dude and f*ck. His extensive character development include having an unnamed girlfriend, and some sort of job which he is occasionally required to “go to.”
Mike seems to think that he is in Apocalypse Now and hates maps with the fiery passion of 3,000 lightning bolts. His back-story contains such complicated facts as, “Mike has parents,” and “he dislikes being killed in the woods.”
Heather, unlike the other two characters, lacks a penis and testicles. She is what is referred by many as a “female.” Whereas I think of her as “that annoying bitch with the camera,” others instead think of her as “that annoying bitch with a camera who won’t shut the f*ck up.”
Anyway, between scenes of ambling through the woods and scenes of meandering through the woods our brave three take the time to be frightened by minor anomalies. What brings them to Lovecraftian levels of terror and dread? Apparently small piles of stones, and some sort of primitive wicker/macrame sculpture.
Eventually the ante is upped to them being freaked out by some colored KY jelly.
Then Josh disappears. They search for him for a while, but only find a couple of teeth that Josh must’ve forgotten to pack.
I’m going to let TV’s Michael J. Nelson sum up the rest. From his book Movie Megacheese:
Josh’s trail eventually leads to a dilapidated house in the woods (my friend observed: Why not just follow the driveway out to the road?). They follow his voice upstairs first, then down, where both of them hit their heads on a low ceiling beam, and the movie ends.
After all is said and done, after we all have had years to look back at the experience of the Blair Witch, what do we remember? With what lasting impression are we left?
That huge tear-snot drop dangling from Heather’s nose as she apologizes for being stupid. It’s the “Here’s looking at you, kid” of the 90s!
Random Notes
If you enjoy my columns, see A History of Violence. If you hate my column, yet still understand that which I write, see A History of Violence. After enough of you have seen the thing, I will write about it and why it is so f*cking wonderful to see such a thing get a wide release. And how remarkable it is that Cronenberg managed an R rating out of the MPAA. I might also call out some of the critics who completely missed the point of the film. Like… most of them.
Also, if you are a Hyde Parker like me, Doc films is playing The Day the Earth Stood Still, at Max Pav theater in Ida Noyes this Monday. Some of you will finally understand that reference in Army of Darkness.
Note to Hevia: Wrestlemania tickets were, in fact, impossible to get this past weekend. The pre-sale immediately ran out of tickets. The sale proper, immediately ran out of tickets. With several people I know trying, only one managed to even see a single ticket available in two days of trying. One measly, lonely 200 dollar ticket.
Make sure you check out the culture section. Everyday. Especially Thursday.
