not sure of the point

when you remake things like the last house on the left. the original is a pretty stupid movie, but at least the people doing the offensive things are unpleasant people—apart from david hess, who is (to me) weirdly charismatic even though he's as ugly as sin and seems to be equally as unpleasant on his off days as he is in his films—and this helps you when you're watching girls being forced to piss themselves, or to make out with each other at gun/knifepoint, or when krug and co. are disemboweling someone. the doofy tunes (courtesy of hess) and the comic relief cops are annoying, but whatever. the bad guys are ugly people doing ugly things. you see this. you know it.

this new last house strikes me as disingenuous, because everyone in it is pretty. it's dishonest. it takes out all the very unpleasant business—the pissing, the enforced making out, the disemboweling—and replaces it with a rape sequence that, were it not for the filth and the disturbing music, could potentially be seen as somewhat titillating.

i generally don't give a shit about things like this, but this new deal actually comes off as much sleazier in intent, and for me, much more upsetting than the original film. because someone out there will watch it, and buttons will get pushed, and you know, i can't really blame them. it's designed to excite, and then it's meant to make you feel bad for getting worked up. although you know rape is A Bad Thing and you know these people are supposed to be the living embodiment of Really Bad People, they're not even that violent and weird, just sort of libertine and naughty in their perversions.

they're hollywood homely, which is to say not homely at all, and everything is too perfect and pat and ultimately very stupid. it's not like when john vernon as the warden is getting it on with all the chicks in chained heat, and that you can shrug off because it IS grindhousey and goofy and linda blair is a pudgemonster—it would be upsetting if it was played straight but it's not. in this movie it is played straight and it means to upset you for reacting the way you do, because watching good looking semi-naked people in forests in long shot having doggy style sex can be fun to look at. some people may say this is the point, that you're supposed to see that nice looking people can do horrible things, that the swell guy up the block is actually a sexual thrill killer, but this movie isn't that fucking smart and i can't say that i credit any of them with that level of intelligence.

there was an element of 'they went looking for bad stuff and bad stuff happened' in the original; mari and phyllis are on their way to see a band called bloodlust (if memory serves) and they want to score pot along the way which leads them straight to david hess and the awesomely disgusting fred lincoln (who starred in and directed many a porn film after) which then leads them to an untimely end. right in front of mari's house. ooh, snap!

there's one truly brilliant moment in the film, and that's after they've killed the girls, and they all sort of stand around in a daze, looking awkward and fucked up. wes craven has said that this moment is meant to evoke a feeling of 'they were playing with a doll that had somehow become broken, and they didn’t know how to put it back together again.' i think that's a pretty good description of the action on screen, and rumor also has it that shooting that sequence was emotionally and physically draining for the actors, who didn’t talk much that day at lunch and didn't say much when they finally wrapped.

in this new version, mary is just a sweet young thing going to visit her friend, and her friend is the bad influence, and mary's also got an older brother who died and who…huh? who cares about character development? the people going to see this movie know what it's about. i can guarantee you. they don't give a shit if mary has a dead brother who really supported her and went to every single one of her swim team meets. they want to see Bad/Cool Stuff. anyhow, after they stab the bad influence buddy twice in the belly and rape mary the gang just head for the house, don't bother with character beats, this is the new school of filmmaking so fuck taking a moment to see their reactions. i can totally see everyone going and hanging after the shoot and having a beer, because you know, it was martini shot time, and they finally finished the allegedly 16? 17? hour day of rapetastic fun in the woods.

i'm not squeamish, and i'm not overly freaked out by rape in films, having been raised on a steady diet of both bodice rippers and true crime novels, but something about this just annoyed me to a degree that you can’t even believe.

the film goes on to concentrate on the collingwood's revenge, which has again been softened and taken down a notch from the original—mrs. collingwood no longer fellates weasel's dick off, she shoots him instead; sadie is just shot, junior is allowed to live and is in fact speedboated away from the titular house with the still living mary—only krug gets a semi-interesting death, which is that his head goes asplodey in a microwave (don't think that can actually happen). fine and good, i suppose, but i like the fact that in the original, sexual violence is met with sexual violence by the 'good' family and krug eventually gets it with a nice big phallic chainsaw from mr. collingwood. in a not very bright movie it was a nice and somewhat smart note to hit. this film doesn't even give you that, it falls back on the stellar setpieces of goretasmic awesomeness, which is ultimately boring.

even though the original is dumb, it's still better than this, and that's sort of saying something, because i've always felt that the original was given far more credit than it deserved in terms of its place in genre history. texas chainsaw? sure. last house? never so much.

i think that a lot of horror is trying to swing around back to the days of the seventies—the thrill of the sticky floored theater and the shock that you'd get when you'd see this kind of shit play out on the big screen. but the seventies are dead and gone, and there are no more grindhouses, and remaking a movie that has been long since surpassed in freakishness by your local nightly news is just dumb, and it bothered me, and i honestly haven’t felt this fucking aggravated by a movie in a long time.

when i watch david lynch movies i get very excited.

in every sense of the word. it's almost a pervy excitement, as well as the regular kind. i think he knows that people have this sort of reaction to his movies, and if i were to say anything definitive about david lynch that would likely be it. beyond that i am uncomfortable with the very idea of dissecting anything he does or says, because it's like cutting up the frog in biology class so you can see how it works. that may do for frogs, but it doesn't do for art. you either like it or you don’t, and there's really no in between, and you can laugh at people because you think their taste is shit (and it probably is) but that knowledge of 'this is crap' or 'this is great' isn’t entirely useful for anything else, unless you count getting flushed with excitement and pleasure at seeing something so wonderful appearing before your eyes that you could be living inside a dream as being useful, which i do.

this also relates to a very long winded essay i am continually writing about high and low forms of art and culture and how they are essentially equally important, with nothing to separate the high from the low, and this also ties into david lynch, but that's a matter for another essay, because this one is about tender and perverse imagery. (i stole that 'tender and perverse' bit from a jess franco movie and if you caught the reference good for you, you win at movies. seriously. if not, you lose. seriously.)

and now i'm all off the plot. so.

some of my most favorite images in films come from david lynch movies. i'm making a list of all of them now, and all of them cause this perverse excitement. so here we go; but i know i'm forgetting tons of stuff. to do it properly i should be sitting here watching all the films, but i want to get this out there.

the lady in the radiator singing to henry that in heaven, everything is fine

henry poking the baby to death and its subsequent screaming

frank booth wanting everything to be dark

dorothy vallens' obvious pleasure at being beaten the very first time we see frank

ben singing in dreams

sherilyn fenn stumbling along a desert road with half her brains spilling out of her head looking for her lipstick

bobby peru and lula in the hotel room

everything about fire walk with me. i can't stress this enough. it is probably my favorite film by lynch, i never saw twin peaks and don't care about it in the slightest, the movie makes perfect and beautiful sense to me and it hits every button i have wonderfully. everything laura does is enchanting and horrifying. for that matter nearly everything that everyone does in the film is enchanting and horrifying. besides it being my favorite lynch film, it is possibly my favorite film ever made—which is saying a lot, and if you don't like this film then you definitely fall into the aforementioned group of people who are being laughed at because you have shitty taste in life and fail it forever.

the shaky road that--someone--is traveling on forever

the curtains in fred and renee's place

videotapes left on the front steps

fred meeting the mystery man at the party—"you invited me. it is not my custom to go where i am not wanted."

alice's highly enforced striptease

all the fucking in the film

the final 'dick laurent is dead'

the car accident on mulholland dr.

the nightmare become reality behind the diner

mr. roque

betty's audition

discovering the dead body at diane's apartment (which incidentally is right around the corner from my house and i should get on the waiting list for that place good fucking christ)

no hay banda, and the entire performance at club silencio and the shaking and crying of betty and rita

the end—i don't mean like a title card, but the end

inland empire is its own beast; it has so many amazing things going on that it, like fire walk with me, is difficult to pick apart. it tells the story of itself endlessly.

how can i describe this film any other way? it tells the story of itself endlessly.

'what do whores do?' 'they fuck.'

the girl crying in the room

rabbits

the old woman who comes marching over to nikki grace's place to tell her and the audience the story of the movie she/we are in, both literally and figuratively

brutal fucking murder and this, which i had to get the dvd to quote properly: 'i can’t seem to remember if it's today, two days from now, or yesterday. i suppose if it was 9:45, i'd think it was after midnight. for instance if today was tomorrow, you wouldn’t even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. actions do have consequences. and yet, there is the magic.' there aren't words to describe how i feel about this tiny bit of dialogue.

kingsley tells the story about the cursed film, which is the story of…

the runner inside the soundstage

nikki grace's increasing confusion

her run down a dimly lit pathway into full frame

the dingy apartment filled with the slutty girls doing the locomotion

'fucker's been sowing some pretty heavy shit'

'you on high now, love'

the very long story from the japanese girl at the end when nikki/sue is dying on the street about taking the bus to pomona to a blond friend who has troubles with her female parts and is also the story of what’s happening right next to said japanese girl and is also the story of the...

nikki in the theater

nikki shooting the very frightening person with the very frightening face which is also nikki's face

everyone dancing at the end (including the girl from pomona) to nina simone and just laughing and giggling

that's all i can think of right now. did you enjoy this? doesn’t matter either way, really.