![]() It’s an unapologetically B movie with the feel of early Cronenberg - like Scanners and the Brood – and with Guillermo del Toro adding his blessing as an executive producer. There are some groaners, but the story itself is interesting and creepy and scary enough (with good special effects) to keep you watching. Splice is a good (if sometimes unintentionally funny) horror movie. And there, out in the woods, the rapidly growing and maturing Dren, adds a third wheel to the young scientific couple’s relationship. ![]() First scary, then cute (with a rabbit-y cleft pallet), and later, as something else again.Įlsa and Clive are forced to smuggle her out of the lab and up to their cottage – for some home schooling. But as she grows up, Dren’s human and animal parts begin to appear. She even names her: “Dren” - that’s nerd spelled backwards. It’s totally illegal, but Elsa wants to hang on to her new, rapidly growing flesh lump. Their next project has human DNA spliced, on the sly, into the mix to create a new sort of animal. But their big breakthrough – a new life form, a sort of walking lump of flesh, that can mate and reproduce – has a rather dramatic failure. They’re trying novel ways to combine the DNA - the genetic information - of various animals. (Cool story, so-so acting.) His latest movie, “Splice” – starring Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody – is his first big name, bigger budget movie.Įlsa and Clive are scientists who work in a research lab for the N.E.R.D. He directed the science fiction movie Cube – about a bunch of people stuck inside an elevator-like cube who want to get out – which was extremely popular in many countries, while largely overlooked in Canada. Vincenzo Natali, is not all that famous, but I think he’s one of the most successful Canadian directors there is. It shows some of their signature techniques, and captures them shooting their latest production, It’s a hilarious documentary, because you get to see little clips of some of their films – things like cheesy UFO’s, a guy with three foot dangling testicles, a haunting, melodramatic scene of a woman taking out the trash, lots of god-awful rubber puppet monsters – without needing to sit through a whole Kuchar movie. In this fun documentary (which was screened at the Inside-Out festival in Toronto), you see the big names of today – John Waters, Guy Madden, Atom Egoyan – talking about how the Kuchar films influenced them. Later the Kuchars moved to San Francisco where they also participated in the 1970’s underground comics movement based there. They existed outside the Code (though still subject to the law) as a crucial part of the underground film movement that really took off in the sixties. “Low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil” topics were “subject to the dictates of good taste”. The Kuchar brothers were also known for integrating all the “organic” aspects of life that were not previously shown in movies – such as toilet functions, throwing up, blood and guts - that were intentionally left out of mainstream films… because they’re gross, and also because they were banned by the Hays Code – you couldn’t show it. (Maybe they were influenced by the old silent movies – Valentino, Theda Bara with their heavy make up and melodrama – keep in mind, in the early 1960’s those old silent movies were not ancient and forgotten at all – they were as omnipresent and as recent as 80’s movies are to filmmakers today.) The Kuchars make-up and costume their actors in unusual ways - painting enormous, dramatic black eyebrows on all their female characters. Their filmography reads like a haiku written in Mad Magazine: They combined melodramatic, campy stories and extremely broad amateur acting, within the world of B movies: the land of serious exploitation genre movies – horror, monster, thriller, murder, sex… and all the rest. They got their neighbours and family members to play the parts. The Kuchar brothers started making 8 mm shorts as kids in their parents’ basement in the Bronx. They’re interviewed in this documentary, along with some of their actors, and many of their famous admirers. Together - and separately - they have directed hundreds and hundreds of these things. ![]() George and Mike Kuchar are a pair of twins from New York City, who have been making strange, low-budget kitsch-y exploitation movies since they were 12 years old.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |