A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

Would this standard also apply to Bride of Frankenstein? Because compared to its original film, it uses humor and could possibly be considered the first 'camp horror'?
It certainly isn't played completely straight like Frankenstein.

While I’m always dubious of metrics used to grade films, I plan on eventually catching all three, regardless. I think my brother and I plan on catching Heart Eyes at some point.

Right, I've spent the past 40 years assuming the entire series was like this, so the day I decide to sit down and watch them it'll be because I'm in the mood for such shenanigans. My expectations are so low that I could only be pleasantly surprised if they're NOT excruciating cringe-fests.

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Butting in here to say I probably should've used a smiley emoji or something but I wasn't being serious when I said I wouldn't accept the cheesy 80s direction. As I said above, if I'm willingly watching these things it's because I'm in the mood to confront my intense aversion to the 1985-1991 aesthetic. I'll be fine.

But to answer your question: Yes, I would prefer that Una O'Connor had toned it down about ten notches and I could live without Pretorius' mini-humans. I am not in the club that considers Bride to be superior to the first film. (But I still love it anyway)

I know your predilection towards 80s aesthetic hate. And it's obviously not entirely unjustified. For me, I just find the whole era as equally horrid as it is fascinating.




As for my Bride question, I also prefer Frankenstein, so it's not so much about what we prefer in a horror movie. It's about how the use of humor is so often considered so antithetical to the genre, when to me, the two are inextricably tied together. There was recently a post on here bothered by the notion of Eraserhead being seen as funny, as if laughing were against the commands of its more horrific elements, and it just got me thinking: why?


I suppose it's that many consider humor to be a lighthearted thing to brighten the day, whereas I see humor as a coping mechanism to both survive the world while still acknowledging its basic grotesque nature.


And while Nightmare 3 is probably not the best example of this, as its jokes are deliberately hacky one liners that aren't really a comment on the horrors of the world directly, I think indirectly Krueger's willingness to treat his violent acts with such a basic aw-shucks brand of humor that it creates a different type of horror. One that illustrates how indifferent both he and the audience is to the suffering he causes. Which is the kind of thing I go to horror movies for, even if it isn't your standard meat and potatoes genre piece

Yeah, I think we agree here because regarding Bride, it's just a matter of the execution for me. If Whale had stuck to his more subtle Old Dark House vibe, Bride would no doubt be my favorite thing ever. Horace Femm offering someone a potato makes me laugh much more than O'Connor's exaggerated caterwauling. So I'm not at all against the idea of humor, so long as it doesn't make me cringe.

But I do have one friend that seems to struggle with horror/comedy, as his Letterboxd reviews will often refer (negatively) to "wild shifts in tone" any time a movie tries to be dark AND funny. I often do not consider the "shifts" as "wild" as he does, so you're right that that is an issue for some.

I'm often more upset about movies that I consider squandered potential than those I consider just bad. I went in with decently high hopes, which were then raised by the first act. And then it slipped away as it went on.

The Elm Streets have their pros and cons like any other franchise but it’s worth watching them for their practical effects alone. Especially the entries most people don’t like still have some terrific visuals not to be missed.

Eraserhead had literally one of the funniest moments I've seen in any movie and I think it works so well because of the grim weirdness around it and it's simple but perfect execution in timing and delivery.


Plus I find moments of levity, even in the most grim horror films, can give a soft reset to expectations which actually allows future horrors to work even better. It's a bit of a weird example of something similar but there is a horror table top RPG that I love called dread where action are resolved by pulling from a Jenga tower. It works great because as the tower becomes less stable it raised the tension at the table but also when the tower falls, which usually means a character dies, it actually eases things back a bit which loosens up the players and makes the next build of tension even more effective.

That sounds right though I don't know as much about the 30s, I didn't live through them.
Bride to Dream Warriors... yeesh. Edgy, brilliant, totally unexpected, camp versus "Welcome to prime-time, bitch!" Yes, I can see the comparison.

All's I'm sayin' is there's a hard left between 2 and 3 from serious Horror to 80s kitsch.
The latter is actually amusing but you gotta have your 80s Kitsch glasses from the Time Saver.

As you know, I agree with you wholeheartedly on this, I just thought I'd take another shot at "Dream Warriors > ANoES" for old times sake.
Humor and Horror really can go hand in hand, sometimes in a light and fun way and sometimes in a dark and edgy way and maybe a lot of other ways too. It's just less enjoyable when it's, as you put it, hacky.

The cockroach kill is epic. Totally ludicrous, utterly out of place in the first two films, but pretty epic.

I'm obviously not comparing the quality of the two films. I was just wondering if Bride is a movie that similarly needs to be considered as being 'not entirely horror' before it can be appreciated. Because we could argue it is ground zero for what opened the doorway for humor and camp getting into the bloodstream of horror.


Ultimately, our sticking point in your love of the original Elm Street, and my appreciation of the sequels (some of), is that you viewed the first incarnation of Freddy Krueger as being a proper boogeyman. Whereas I have never been able to take that character very seriously in the first place and so feel the route the series eventually took in turning him into almost a Bugs Bunny type wisecracker as being the logical place to take it.


I don't think it's a coincidence that the greatest scene in the original (or any of the movies) is the murder of Tina, where he isn't even seen and, I don't believe, has even been properly introduced. I simply don't think he's a remotely frightening character (even if the concept of him is)


And Robert Englund is great in these movies (all of them). But it's his characters stupid humor mixed with his menacing body language which is where Freddy actually works, and in Dream Warriors, the darker elements of his character are still very much intact (I feel 4 is where he starts becoming an icon that is more likely to shill for Pepsi than trouble anyone's sleep)

So, Dark City, I'm sure it's been said a million times but, the Fritz Lang vibes and the channeling of Peter Lorre from M and maybe a couple other movies...

I'm glad you shared this, we've had this fun little dance around this movie for years (at least I've enjoyed it) but you've never said this part before and that's a really interesting turn.
For me, for my poor older brother who, I mentioned in an earlier review was a violent sort-of-hoodlum teenager with a gun and drugs and all that, but he could not sleep after he saw the original ANoES and this hoodlum's mommy had to go sit with him. And Freddy did some of that for me but with that weird glee I take in the deeply macabre.
Yes, we do see him during Tina's kill, it's really our introduction to him but it's just these quick shocking moments where he stretches his arms across the whole alleyway, cuts off his own fingers for effect, and his face comes off. That's the level I wanted the whole franchise to maintain. Now not even the whole first film was able to maintain that but they did ok and so did the second one with "You are all my children now." So it's hard for this real horror-show of a character become a quippy, cheese-dick. But, as I said before, I went and saw Dream Warriors in the theater and tried to watch with fresh eyes and i really did enjoy it.

That's right, he's in the dream sequence that precedes her death, but he is mostly or entirely unseen during the actual murder. Regardless, it's the part with her up on the ceiling that works incredibly well. The part where he chops off his own fingers....er....that's the kind of cabaret of the macabre that makes him not frightening to me. He's performing. He's doing deliberately crazy things to frighten which....makes him a performer to me. Which leads me to the, why shouldn't they amp that part up and of course that is where it all ultimately led to. Freddy Krueger as less a boogeyman and more of a carnival barker

Well, it's different performances. Being performative was a part of Freddy's character, obviously, from the very beginning but the performance has a purpose both in-movie and in the audience context. It's showing the victim and the audience how out of their depth they are with him, that his cruelty, his viciousness, and his omnipotence are why you are going to die. Your actual death is just the inevitable, unavoidable climax but his tormenting of you will be a whole story. And it is executed as such. I suppose in a way he is doing the same with the quips and the Ray-bans and the video-game in Dream Warriors and later installments, but it's very much a different kind of performance. It's doing Grand Guignol versus doing Vaudeville. I'll take the Grand Guignol. At least until I reset my expectations for the Vaudeville. And if I have to choose I definitely prefer and choose the former over the latter.
I think of it like Caddyshack and Caddyshack II. Same ideas, same characters more or less, same movies more or less, with the latter being more amped up.

I love Dark City, probably my favorite film and also a big reason I got interested in some of the silent and expressionist films out there as I wanted to see the works that clearly inspired it.

So, I had fairly good things to say about this movie during my Horrothon and it sounded like almost nobody had actually seen it (which surprised me quite a bit), but I just came across Quentin Tarantino talking about it so I thought I'd share and see if it stimulates anything.
This does contain some spoilers but, even though I'm usually the Spoiler Police, I didn't think it was too bad.