Movies

I feel that I am coming down with what scientists refer to as the "creeping crud". I don't know if it's the flu or just a sort of corporeal ennui, but it's not pleasant. I can see myself spending some time watching movies today in an attempt to throw off the creeping crud. And that got me to thinking about my favorite movies.

I used to really like science fiction movies when I was a kid, but they were different then. They were goofy, almost joyfully stupid, and fun to watch. Aliens come to Earth. Aliens want our (pick one) oxygen, water, women, '32 Fords, brainwaves. They take some and leave, or, the plucky scientist figures out how to defeat them using nothing more than a can of Dinty Moore beef stew and a radio antenna.

Now science fiction movies seem different to me. They seem heavier and more formal, like I was supposed to read a briefing before watching the movie. I tried to watch the X-files movie and was mystified throughout, but perhaps someone who has never watched the TV show is not the audience they were trying to appeal to. I still watch them, but really, there hasn't been a science fiction movie made since roughly Empire Strikes Back that I've genuinely liked.

And my favorite science fiction movie? Five Million Years to Earth. It has everything. Psychic energy, paranoia, not-so-subtle references to McCarthyism and the other isms of the day, enigmatic metals, Cockney accents, tower cranes, electrical discharges, devils, chunky bearded Englishmen, and best of all, slowly-frying British officers. It's a classic, and it's no surprise it was made in 1967. If they made it today, it would feature 1,203,394,094 computer-generated special effects shots and no slowly-frying British officers. It's actually an interesting cross between horror and science fiction, sort of like a 1960s version of Event Horizon. If you mental edit out the fact that it's a Martian spacecraft, it could easily be a demon-possession movie.

I also like "modern Westerns". I don't much care for the Westerns from decades prior to about 1980, but I generally like Westerns made since Silverado. The older ones are either intolerable on racial grounds or too schlocky, if you can imagine such a thing, but the modern Westerns like Tombstone and Silverado sit pretty comfortably with me - especially Tombstone, which is on my list of desert island movies. "Skin that smoke-wagon and see what happens" indeed!

And then there are horror movies, which I have an apparently endless taste for. I confess I don't really watch the "serial" movies like Nightmare on Elm Street or Freddy Versus Jason or even Jason Versus The Argonauts. They're too straightforward and predictable, and I don't much care for the way anyone who has sex in them is rewarded by being butchered. Why is it always people who have sex are the first to die? Why not people who rob liquor stores or spin doughnuts in the grocery store parking lot at 3 AM?

But I do like the Saw movies, though I've found them to be trending generally downhill since the first one, and what with no Amanda, I may not be back. I don't know what the trade name for movies like this is - Saw, Hostel, Wolf Creek. "Detailed Slashers" maybe? I don't know. But I usually like them in my toe-curled grimacing way. What's interesting about these movies in particular is that there are no aliens, no radiation-induced mutations, no evil spirits, just very sick and twisted human beings.

I'm also quite fond of demon possession and to-the-devil-a-child movies, like (cough) To The Devil A Daughter and Prince of Darkness. Ghosts of Mars gets in under the bar in this category because even though it's technically science fiction, it's written and filmed in such a way that you can just sort of ignore the Martian corn smut and imagine that it's evil spirits doing the deed. And then there's The Exorcist and its various spawn, and even the Omen movies, which I like more than I should. And even that flawed classic, Event Horizon, fits in here. It's sort of like Marooned meets Hellraiser, and that's an interesting mix, and Sam Neill persecuting (or being persecuted by) the woman with no eyes and flipping back and forth between nerdy scientist and demon-possessed hardass, that's pretty cool!

And then there's the greatest horror movie ever made: Raising Arizona. But I kid Nicolas Cage.