Movies

[moon_custafer]

Over the last couple of weeks, green_trilobite's been playing his collection of 1950s and '60s SF movie classics - yesterday we watched Them!, which like George Pal's War of the Worlds has a script that takes into account that monsters are scarier when their victims don't fall through stupidity.

Anyway, I did a little sketch of one of the scientist characters (who dons a more practical outfit a few scenes later, but I sort of like the image of her in her 1950s suit and hat, and protective goggles). I've submitted a larger one as a possible cover for Sol Rising (the Friends of the Merril's newsletter.)

Right now we're watching The Time Machine, which has some good scenes, but I can't help but wonder: who cuts and styles the Eloi's hair? I can't see the Morlocks allowing them to have scissors, except maybe those little blunt kindergarten ones. OK, Weena's just asked how the women of the Wells' time wore their hair, so I guess she's interested. He has no idea, just a vague sense that women wore their hair "up." One person's frivolity is another one's technical skill.

Comments

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

One of the best things about the first "Tremors" movie is that people are reasonably intelligent. The first bunch get immediately eaten by surprise. There's a reasonably amount of time before people actually figure out that there's monsters around. Then there's an escalating battle of wits as people figure out counter-measures and the monsters start working out ways around them.

The other best thing is that it's a new kind of monster so you have to figure it all out along with the characters. Plus the nature of the monsters allows all sorts of scenes: suspense as the characters are trying to sneak by them with one mishap meaning disaster; chase scenes when the mishaps happen; horror when they catch people; and dynamite-and-shotgun action when the people counter-attack.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, most people in monster movies don't assume there are monsters around until they get some evidence; and handful_ofdust has praised horror flicks where the protagonist simply can't afford to listen to their gut and move out of the spooky house/quit the creepy job.

It's more the "hey, there's a known killer on the loose so let's all split up" characters whole make one's eyes roll.

Them! has one of the protagonists, a cop, blaming himself for leaving his partner alone at the crime scene while he gets reinforcements, only to have his boss point out (a) one of you *had* to stay, it's police procedure, and (b) the guy who stayed was a crack shot, and the other victims were armed and experienced too -- whatever we're dealing with seems to be bullet-proof and have more than human strength.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I think the original Val Lewton Cat People opens with a mom sending her four-year-old daughter to the store for a loaf of bread, immediately *after* a radio announcement that an escaped leopard is loose in their town. Then again maybe she secretly hates the kid and is trying to get rid of her (if so, it works).