Metropolis

"The mediator between the hands and the head must be the heart..."

Yup. I finally saw this one. My town just recently hosted a screening with an extra half hour of missing footage, which I couldn't get tickets to, but I did watch a version that had placards to describe the parts we missed. However, there is still a bunch of dialogue I am convinced is missing.

This 1927 German film is absolutely legendary for it's class-concious message, dystopian style, visionary storytelling and amazing special effects for a movie of it's era. It's also inspired mny other films, including Blade Runner (1982) and the anime Metropolis (2001). The anime was based on a graphic novel by Osamu Tezuka from 1949, which was heavily influenced by the 1927 film. Square Enix's game Final Fantasy VII (1997) may have been inspired by the film or graphic novel.

All the themes are there: A class-concious "Utopian" society in which the ruling class above ground is not even aware of the existence of the working class below ground. Until one young man wanders below ground and sees the destruction, toil, and death. He falls in love with a prophetess who talks of a coming mediator - the heart (guess who that will be?) - until she is kidnapped and replaced by a

 robot that looks just like her.

Much like the Anime successor, there is also some religious themes, as the highest peak of civilization was to build a tower unto the heavens. Called the Ziggarat in the anime, but in the 1927 film they just go straight to calling it the New Tower of Babel. In the anime, they still make very obvious comparisons between the Ziggarat and the biblical tower of fame.

This is the movie that placed sci-fi on the map. It's very difficult to find an english version (the movie is originally German) and despite a post-WWI budget, the scenery is impressive, with many sets, and very extravagent models of both the city above ground, and the workers city below ground. Sometimes the vaudeville style of performance can be a distraction from the believability of the story, but for a black and white horror movie, it works. It takes a bit of effort to suspend disbelief, but it is possible and the payout is well worth it.

If the extended version hits your town, go check it out. But unless they announce that there will be an intermission, avoid drinks and bring adult diapers, because the version I watched was already two hours long. And think, even with the extra half-hour it is supposed that there is still anywhere from twenty to sixty minutes still unnacounted for. I hope that extra half-hour includes dialogue placards.

Future ideas for SAW? Traps, plots, and...song?

If you haven`t seen the new SAW 3D (2010)yet, this post won`t make a lot of sense. That`s okay, because in Dimensions of Fear, very few things make any sense (Meet the Feebles anyone?). But this post will remain somewhat spoiler free, and try to only allude to things most people already know about the movie.

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So Saw 7/EndGame/3D: The Traps Come Alive is supposed to be the final movie in the epic franchise, but we`ve heard similar things about other movies - remember Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter? (1984) - and the producers did say that they will keep making these movies as long as they keep making money. So here are my predictions for SAW VIII.

• Opening Scene: Running short of ideas to keep this franchise going, James Wan and Leigh Whannel wake up in a very familiar bathroom, or at least familiar to Whannel who not only co-wrote SAW (2004) but played the role of Adam in the original film. A telivision set sitting on the toilet turns on and Billy the Puppet tells them they have "sold out" and rejected their roots, and they have three hours to complete a script bringing the franchise back to life.
• Running short of ideas, Wan and Whannel resort to other projects they have worked on to come up with supplementary material, borrowing from Dead Silent (2007) and Repo! The Genetic Opera (2009). Testify!
• A murdered ventriliquist posesses Billy and after singing a song about being trapped in a box, we see Billy perform the kidnapping of Wan and Whannel. Meanwhile, he goes on his unholy mission to use gory death traps to get the other staff at Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate to understand the error of their ways. This way, the persons have to kill themselves as revenge for killing SAW. 
• After the script is completed to part VIII (Titled "SAW VIII: The Dead Silent Musical") all the Saw fans gather in the theatre "Testifying" about how Jigsaw/John Kramer saved them and made them appreciate the value of their lives.
• James Wan and Leigh Whannel, having survived and putting together a script make their way over to the theatre to stop the ghost of the ventriliquist. The film reel is destroyed partway through and the ventriliquist must improvise using live performances, still keeping to the musical theme. While Wan hunts down and destroys Billy, thus taking away the ventriliquist's "channel." But something is wrong. The show must go on, and it turns out the entire time that Whannel was a puppet carved out of a human, and Wan is powerless to stop the show. instead of the usual "Game Over" we hear the ventriliquist say "Who's Playing Games Now?"

And that is how movie VIII would have gone. It's probably a good thing I'm not a producer. And by the way, if you're interested in Vincent Price check out my latest post on HubPages: The Many Faces of Vincent Price! Don't forget to visit my twitter as well, @videorewind.

The Title Says it All

Ever walked through the video store or flipped through the channel guide to where the title says these two things simultaneously?

1. This movie is going to suck. May contain scenes of bad acting, terrible scriptwriting, lousy camera work, and absolutely no plot.

2. You are going to want to watch this movie.

Well here are several movies that do exactly that!

• Bikini Girls on Ice, 2009. Slasher flick about a guy who thinks he's a wolf who kills people, chops up their bodies, and stores them in freezer full of ice to keep them fresh. More specific to the title, a group of bikini clad girls set up to do a bikini car wash fundraiser outside of the abandoned gas station where he lives.
• Zombie Strippers, 2008. Stars Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund. Dude, when you have Freddy Krueger owning his own strip joint, you know things are either going to go very wrong, or very right.
• Santa Clause Conquers the Martians, 1964.  The name says it all. Santa Clause is kidnapped by Martians to save the Martian children from depression. However, one Martian military commander has other plans for him. It is up to Santa, to save the martian children, and up to the children to save Santa. 
• Killer Condoms, 1996. This German film is set in New York where gay-friendly hotels have been stocked with carnivorous creatures that look like condoms as part of a Catholic conspiracy to stop homosexuals.  It is up to an openly gay detective in the NYPD (as if that actually existed in 1996) to solve the case.
• Terror at Blood Fart Lake, 2008. Face it, if you watch as much messed up movies as I do, and you'll know what titles catch the eye. A group of teens go to an abandoned camp ground near a lake called Blood Fart Lake. If that wasn't warning enough to stay away, these teens have obviously never seen a horror movie, because they get stalked by a dude dressed as a scarecrow. Isn't there always one at every abandoned campsite on a lake?

And remember to visit me at HubPages. Check out my latest entry entitled "Remember these Commercial Relics?"

I Always Like a Good Scare...

I have a bad habit of staying up late to watch some kind of scary movie. I don't know why. Last night I was up late watching Triangle and the 1953 version of House of Wax. The former was more of a modern day psychological thriller while the latter was pretty tame by today's standards. I've stayed up late to watch the new remake to Friday the 13th which was also disappointing to me. House of Wax was worth watching just to see Vincent Price, even if the movie wasn't very scary. In another Vincent Price movie, The Tingler - a William Castle masterpiece - there is a creature, in a sort of symbiotic relationship (or parasitic) with humans that live on our spine and it feeds and grows stronger off of our fears. When it grows, we get that "tingling sensation." So here I'd like to list some of my "spine-tingling" moments in horror.

• First, In relation to the spine, is the spinal tap scene in The Exorcist. You can almost feel it for yourself!
• Last October I went to see Saw VI on opening night. But I went to a theatre where horror movies don't do so well, and the theatre was completely empty. This actually frightened me more than the movie itself, since despite the dwindling success of the Saw franchise, the theatres were usually packed when I saw a movie.
• I was about nine years old when I first saw Pet Semetary. Needless to say, I was frightened.

Sometimes it's not the scary stuff that gives us the heeby-jeebies. Sometimes it's the abnormal. So here are some spine-tingling "WTF" moments from the Just Plain Weird category:

• In Hannibal when Dr. Lector has Clarice over for dinner, and he lifts the scalp off her boss. That didn't scare me, but most definitely gave me a chill.
• In May when her home-made doll reached to give her a hug, that was just unexpected. It wasn't even very sudden, but my brain processed it as being out of place.

So I'm still on a search for the ultimate in spine-tingling movies, my personal grail quest. So feel free to drop back in to my dimension and maybe get a good scare or two as well.

If you have any movie recommendations feel free to drop me a line at bekindplzrewind@gmail.com

Also if you like cult and independent movies visit me on HubPages! I assure you, my quality of writing is much better there.