A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

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Director: Wes Craven

Screenplay: Wes Craven

Cast: Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger; John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson; Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson; Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz; Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson; Amanda Wyss as Christina “Tina” Gray; Nick Corri as Rod Lane

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #124

Out of the main American horror franchises, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the one I've become the fondest of. Even if the sequels are an erratic series of messes, it was a franchise that always had something of interest in each film. Even if the plots started to make less sense by way of contrived, ill thought-out screenwriting, they still contained scenes of pure surrealism where the best of eighties practical effects were allowed to thrive because of the premise. That its premise was entirely based upon dreams immediately won me over, an obsession of mine. My own, even of banal environments, can have a full lucidity where exaggeration takes place. Other peoples' dreams, even the made up ones of Hollywood, are as compelling and entertaining for me to explore. And as someone who views cinema as an oneiric medium, an actual manufactured dream usually viewed in dark rooms be it with people or by one's self, even the lesser sequels for their immense failures had stuff crawling out of the cinematic phantasmagoric to ingest from the franchise.

It helps, that whilst his filmography was erratic, Wes Craven was an intelligent man and at his best he managed to catch a viewer off guard in the horror genre. Based on a real case of people dying in their sleep, there's a tangible horror to how when the characters here in the first film are asleep, they're as vulnerable in their dreams as they are in their sleeping state to the outside world. It taps into the notion of sleep as an experience which leaves one out of control. As much as I adore the dreaming state, I myself as a viewer finds discomfort and ill-ease with the process of falling asleep, openly confessing in this review nights where the prospect of losing consciousness both in discomfort and impatience has led to sleepless nights once in a while. The fragile place one is in sleep is something which Craven was inspired to have tapped into for this film, particularly as it's a state a human being needs to survive, a necessary biological function which eventually wins over baring the most extreme cases of insomnia. Even if the Elm Street the series became absurd with Freddy Kruger cutting a bad rap song and Roseanne Barr making a cameo, it's a series whose premise would survive anything.

From https://gbhbl.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/the-start.jpg

Helping is that the first film is good. Not really a slasher, in a strange nebulous subgenre of horror of its own, and with a cast who despite the flaws in their earnestness are playing interesting characters who are actually likable. In amongst them, Heather Langenkamp is the perfect type of female lead who you are sympathetic to, far from a caricature of a slasher film final girl but one with some personality to her, also with some grit to her when necessary, whilst its strange to see a young Johnny Depp here in his debut, virtually unrecognisable from the older outlaw figure of the modern day with an erratic filmography. And as the villain Robert Englund was the right choice. Whilst he made appearances in genre films before Elm Street like Eaten Alive (1977), he was also a dramatic actor who worked in the theatre. Like Vincent Price, he clearly became comfortable in the horror genre in roles like this because of his innate ability to switch between camp humour and being terrifying on a dime. Whilst later Elm Street sequels failed to get the humour right, here he's as frightening figure shrouded in darkness as you'd want but one with a personality because of Englund.

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The only real negative blip in the film is the ending. How the central conflict is resolved is really just an existential one, coming from a former English teacher, that works more for an art horror movie. Neither is it really the ending demanded on the film by New Line Pictures head Robert Shaye, which has a great ethereal creepiness to it in spite of being a contrived shock ending. Really it's the mannequin at the door which is infamous, which for anyone familiar of the film, can be easily pictured (even in motion) just from those few words. The rest of the first Elm Street film instead is still creepy. The dreams themselves have a sound take on the logic of real ones, grounded realities which are pierced by irrational sights or distortions. Even if they became less like actual dreams but surreal sequences in later entries, it's arguable that their quality was strong throughout the series even for the occasionally dumb one that cropped up in the later sequels. But the first film's have a greater impact for how both subtle they usually are and how the most elaborate, due to the practical effects on hand, become even more striking and scary as a result. Considering as well how low budget the film was and how New Line Cinema were still a small company at this point, more known for distributing John Waters films, the risk on display especially in the dream sequences is applaudable especially as they are still mind-blowing at points, particularly the first death which involved a set that revolved and turned upside down to defy gravity.

From http://www.fangoria.com/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/
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Even the faker moments, such as Krueger with elongated arms in an alley, have the advantage because they are real tangible effects and subtly used, still touching upon what Sigmund Freud called the "uncanny", where like dolls and mannequins being able to unnerve in their likenesses to people, an actor with what could've just been broomhandles¹ shoved up his prop jumper's sleeves are still eerie even if absurd at the same time. (And moments like the infamous blood bed sequence are just gruesome and still powerful in what you both don't see and all the fake gore being hosed across the set at the same time). The cherry on top, which is at its most effective in the first film, is the score by Charles Bernstein, a sinister electronic tinged score which could've easily been used for a grimy shocker set in New York City from the time period but is as appropriate, and dreamlike, for Elm Street too. Combining all this together and the first Nightmare on Elm Street was a damn good beginning for any franchise.

From https://theexportedfilm.files.wordpress.com/
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1) More than likely more than this was done for the effect, to not offend the original practical effects team, but one wonders....

Scream (1996)

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Dir. Wes Craven

No, it's not a flashback to the Halloween 31 For 31 series of the last month, but I did see Scream on the 31st October of this year in a cinema screening at my local community art centre. The screening itself? Due to a mishap with the projector or the disc being played, the film's colour palette was saturated with red. With the actors faces as bright as tomatoes, it wasn't off-putting but inexplicably evoked Italian genre films like Suspiria (1977). It was proof why screenings need to be planned so the viewer can get the closest to what the original form of the film was in terms of image and audio, but as a one-off, with blood red morning skies, pink high school walls and especially the crimson added to the opening set piece, of a young woman (Drew Barrymore) being terrorised by a killer at her home, this technical botch actually added an incredible stylistic tone. The real disappointment is that, including myself, there were only eight of us in the cinema. Yes there was an event on nearby, but one would wish for a screening to have more people. I want to experience a hollering and wild crowd once before I die with a horror film. I wanted more than one person as Ghost Face from the Scream franchise, though I'm grateful for the guy in this screening who did. I'm disappointed by the lack of horror enthusiasm in my small town community. In fact the film finished around ten at night and the town was entirely dead already, on a Friday night, causing one to wonder what's going on with the community when you could drop a pin on a street corner.

From https://khfilm.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/4ed79-scream4-costume_dvd1.jpg

Scream as a film? The film that brought back an entire subgenre from the wilderness of obscurity, the slasher film, back into the mainstream when other pop culture fads of the eighties like glam metal is now nostalgia or a niche audience. It's entirely responsible for the type of young adult horror movies I grew up with in the late nineties and early 2000s, so revisiting Scream means stepping back into my adolescence slowly starting with the origin of it all. This is also significant because, as last month showed, I am curious where Scream's director Wes Craven stands for me as a horror director, and also because slasher films were once one of my least favourite genre of cinema, just above biopics, only for this to slowly change within the last year to the potential for a few gems to appear. Revisiting Scream is tackling the type of slasher films I grew up with, and honestly, were why my teenager self first hated slasher films, which I wonder is going to be the same revisiting these movies. A series of murders befalls a small town. Sydney (Neve Campbell) is in the centre of this, targeted by the killer, especially as there may be a connection to the murder of her mother a year earlier, an event she still is having difficulty coping with. Her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), their relationship fraught already, may be suspicious, and the killer is making fine work massacring numerous people. From there it's your typical slasher film - masked killer murders victims one after another in gory death scenes unless someone finds out who the culprit is. The big difference with Scream from what was before, at least in the mainstream, was that with its script by Kevin Williamson it was a self reflective slasher film, which commentated on its own sub-genre, in the grain of Quentin Tarantino in the early part of the same decade. Characters - especially Randy (Jamie Kennedy), a slasher film nerd who claims the police should've watched Prom Night (1980) to learn how to find the culprit - who know what a slasher film and talk about the clichés and tropes within them.

From http://www.beyondhollywood.com/posterx/scream_3.jpg

The script was what I found a huge weakness in viewings before, viewing it as being too snarky in tone. I took issue to the perceived thought that it mocked clichés of the sub genre but still repeated them, the scene that I always thought of being an example when a female character criticises how female characters in the films are usually running up stairs to escape killers rather than out the door, only for this cliché to take place. This is a non-existent issue on this viewing, no know-it-all mentality visible in Williamson's script. In fact he's intelligent in his writing, and such as the example mentioned above, the cliché happens for logical reasons, subtle details or is part of the joke without looking down on the viewer. In fact now, able to appreciate the slasher films more, the clichés are fun because his script and Wes Craven's direction have macabre fun with them. The characters are clichés but interesting, fleshed out individuals. Campbell as the sympathetic Final Girl, with more depth to her then those she's inspired by. Ulrich as the potentially dangerous Billy. Rose McGowan, utterly charismatic, as the peppy friend. Matthew Lillard  showing how to chew scenery properly as the wise cracking joker character, and Kennedy saying why being a virgin protects you from serial killers in slasher film logic. Add to this as well the characters of Detective Dewey, played by former WCW World Champion David Arquette, and Courteney Cox as reporter Gale Weathers, the later an interesting complicated character as the film goes on, the two of them together having a sweet romantic comedic side to the movie furthered by the obvious chemistry that lead the actors to marry in real life. The story has the right beats and great moments throughout, fun and funny whilst able to be unbelievably dark in tone.

From http://imagescine.critictoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Scream10.jpg

That's not to say the script isn't flawed. That which is the most celebrated in the film by critics, the meta references, are the least interesting aspect of the entirety of Scream. For one, it makes sense and is funny when its Randy or someone whose painted with a nugget of knowledge on slasher films that references them, or the context and characterisation is right, but a character you don't expect to or someone relating their romance abruptly to American film censorship ratings comes off as forced. I hate film references and references to film making and culture in films for the most part because it comes off as egocentric or suddenly entering a tiny club's mindset whose language wouldn't be said by most people on the street. Quentin Tarantino may come to mind but he's actually far from the worse person to do this, especially when he's at his best, using pop culture references, like the "Like The Virgin" speech in Reservoir Dogs (1992) to show the characters' personalities, and has as much interest in having characters just after that particular scene debate about the virtues of tipping waitresses or not. Bad examples just make the references without there being any real context to do so. In Scream, for the references, like the Prom Night one, that do work, there's many that don't, and the meta content is just cute, not deep or profound at all. Any sense of cleverness to it is to be found in what a self awareness gives the basic slasher template in terms of tone. That characters in a film have at least seen one Friday The 13th film, which is realistic and, if there has to be a meta referential side, its better when it's how the killer asks victims about scary movies and torments them with it, character building, rather than out of nowhere from an individual's mouth. That it adds to the film's dark, nasty streak in that the characters reflect on whether killers actually need motivations, the real serial killers in reality which couldn't be ignored eventually. When a motivation is behind the killings in Scream, it adds to the dark nature of the story because in lovingly referencing the older slashers, it still has a seriousness to it that is bleaker despite the humour.

From http://img.rp.vhd.me/2162570_l5.jpg

The Kevin Williamson script conveys a significantly vicious story than I thought it had without losing the humour and becoming grim. Adult themes were even depicted in the likes of Friday The 13th (1980), but there a slashers that have thin bare plots that are merely window dressing, while Williamson here wrote proper story to orchestrate through his interest in the sub-genre. Most of the darker content of the film, the mature emotional content, is through dialogue and back story, but it has a significant effect on the material onscreen because it is the reason for all that happens. Scream is also, as a slasher, incredibly violent despite being partly comedic. Wes Craven as a director depicts violence in his films with much more nastiness, such as a opening scene with Drew Barrymore that, while a perfect opening jolt to get you on the edge of your seat, is unbelievably nasty in how it ends. This was a film that had to be censored for American release, and Craven managed to take his depiction on violence from his rougher seventies films to more mainstream movies like Scream. He's also a very good director. Admittedly, the viewing experience for Scream this time wasn't necessarily the best for judging the cinematic qualities of the film, but the style is effecting and is someone on top of his game.

From http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1996_Scream/fhd996SCR_Neve_Campbell_010.jpg

Whether the film succeeds from there as much about your liking of slasher films. Strangely, my potential issue with the sub-genre now is that the clichés I once hated in the films are now enticing, but the films don't actually live up to them. They might not be gory or cheesy enough despite what fans say, and unless they are unique or incredibly well made, the slasher films may be still of disinterest because this viewpoint. With Scream, its structurally perfect, the content entertaining and has the right ending, but something feels missing for it to be a great horror film. It ends without a big enough impact. Maybe this is one of those cases where the cliché where the killer appears at the end to show a sequel will happen was needed.

From http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb412/cinemania285/357qa8p.png

Cinema of the Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Not a sausage. Though the slasher genre may reveal an appropriate film or two for the list. The Slayer (1982) for one immediately comes to mind, but like said example, the potential candidates are likely not the well known films like Scream.

From https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/
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Personal Opinion:

Honestly, I much prefer I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), another Kevin Williamson scripted film I once hated but liked immensely revisiting this year, a serious and entertaining slasher. Going through these films from my youth is bound to have some complete reversals of opinion from what I originally thought, though it'll be an odd experience to revisit them, especially as their era was a peculiar pop culture in hindsight. Scream isn't bad though, and has a lot to love. As for Wes Craven, time will tell still, as it's as much about the entire picture of his work that says how good he is or not. 

Halloween 31 For 31: The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

From http://www.thebestlittlefilmhouse.com/ekmps/shops/tblfh01/images/
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Dir. Wes Craven

My interest in Wes Craven is still strong from the other film I covered for this season, but The Hills Have Eyes has been a film I'm apathetic to. A family gets lost in the middle of a barren American desert, only to be targeted by another family, living there, of cannibalistic killers, the madman Jupiter (James Whitworth) and his offspring, including the most iconic of the film, Pluto as played by the instantly recognisable Michael Berryman.  It's one of Wes Craven's most well known films, yet it's a film that's been shadowed for me by its 2006 remake which, while it's been a long time since I've seen it, still retains in memory far more of an impact on me out of the two. It's not helped I saw the remake before the original; this isn't necessarily the case with every film against its remake, the "remake" a controversial word amongst horror fans, but here there was something more necessarily vicious and darker in the remake that gave it teeth. Here, with the original, it's a lot more divisive about its effectiveness.

From http://static.uloz.to/cdn/c/9/X/xc9XQUU8.640x360.0.jpg

It's a bold film that's for sure, which helps it out. While a more commercial movie, it has the visual palette and feel of The Last House On The Left (1972), a coarseness with a vérité feel that does transfer here to a more accessible film. It's graininess gives it something that heightens the atmosphere of the film. The setting is perfect for the story, the original version retaining a great attitude to depicting it. A vast empty wilderness desert, the hillside littered with back breaking rocks and drops, characters having to wrap themselves through gaps in the formations. The occasional shot of fighter planes in the beginning, the only sign of life where there are not even many animals, the desert partly a bombing site, adding to the isolation. Wes Craven is a good director between this and The Serpent and The Rainbow (1988) in making good horror and thriller sequences, particularly here with moments that catch the eye, such as moving camera shots on the side of the family car's front wheel as it's travelling down a road, or when the family become stuck, in a moment of great frantic editing to depict the actual crash. It's also an immensely nasty film still in tone. While it's remake pushed this further, since it's first half, including the attack on the family trailer, is taken from this film almost entirely, the vicious side of the original version still sticks out. I can add a thread now in Wes Craven's filmmaking of incredibly sickening, uncomfortable violence, far from trivialising it but instead having a tangible sense of pain even in a more commercial film. With The Last House On The Left as your first ever film, this isn't surprising, but what's amazing is that when he became a commercial filmmaker, Craven didn't scale down the violence in tone by that much. One thinks of an iconic moment from A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), the upside-down-on-the-ceiling murder, or the end of Scream (1996), a prolonged and incredibly bloody ending involving self stabbing and even violence in the humour in someone getting hit by a telephone, and Wes Craven has an uncompromising take on depicting it in his work. (So much so that Scream, while ironically, in breathing life back into horror cinema, lead to more teenager friendly films being made off its back, was censored for American release).

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In this film though the tension and horror around this violence doesn't feel that carefully done however, aspects here not succeeding as well as in other movies I've seen where Craven is at his best. While the tinge of seventies American genre cinema - where everything slows down, and unknown actors start to talk - has an enjoyment in it, here for such a short film there is not enough sense of threat and terror to make the film really work. Moments occasionally do. The family in the centre of the story, including two dogs, have emotionally dark sequences that the actors do their best to convey, which adds a connection to the film beyond mere brutality. The whole dynamic where one of the dogs becomes almost anthropomorphised, out for revenge against the killers, is ridiculous but adds an entertaining dynamic. The problem is a lot of the film can come off as very silly, undercutting its violence and darkness immensely. For once the age of the film does effect it, the seventies flares and hair incongruous against mountain men. The mountain men as well, the eyes in the hills, aren't that scary either. Berryman, while imposing, feels more of a Mad Max character, Jupiter is a burly bearded man, one of the sons covered in feathers and looks like a giant chicken, another a hippy gone off the pot, and the sympathetic female member Ruby (Janus Blythe) looks like a girl next door with her hair ruffled up and soil on her cheeks. The remake completely sidestepped this problem, adding a further twist in having them actual mutants as a result of generations of atomic testing radiation, and going for the lurid, horrifying character designs from this idea. There is nothing really scary about a hippy with a white man's afro even if, in a scene like the attack in the trailer, it's still disturbing to see innocent people brutalised and the events that take place to happen.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5bU6g0rzEVjGVVKdD2K24pwlReZWytYsIejTEx9VFpIK4TQQEVbQmCEDeR9FQcEmc4CgMCqEquF4Ar9LTqskhAFwXAvYlf5geAPtgJtd-16ey_RN_UaBhizPwjMyqRw2DcwzFtMgGNAIv/
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By its end, an abrupt ending, cutting to a red screen suddenly, the necessary tension was not there in this viewing, never feeling as if I should care for the remaining characters. After the main attacks on them, which are impossible not to feel sympathy for them, horror at what happens and Craven creating great scenes, when the tables are turned, the film falters and they are merely average characters played by actors and the film falters in tone. It's not just in comparing the film to the remake that undermines it, but that it's underwhelming by its end by its own faults.

From http://www.cultreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/thehillshaveeyes-6.png

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

No chance of getting on the list.

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A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Well there's the infamous sequel to this film which is silly and was an utter production mess - that may be more interesting in turns of what I do for this site if its anything like I've heard about it. It's prequel isn't a film for the blog - especially in comparison to other films I've seen by Wes Craven or those I've yet to get to that sound the more interesting. In the previous review on a Craven film, I said that it would depend on the finale analysis what my thoughts on him would be, and there's a lot more films to see or rewatch before I 'm going to make a judgement, out of respect and with the potential that my opinion could vary on him with the abruptness shifts up and down of a  rollercoaster. I was left cold by The Hills Have Eyes originally and unfortunately this hasn't changed on a repeat viewing.  

Halloween 31 For 31: The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

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Dir. Wes Craven

Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Easters (1979) - [review here] - brought zombies back to their Voodoo roots, but this film tackles the origins of the folklore, not of "destroying the brain" or gut munching, but Haiti and people being brought back from the grave as slaves to sorcerers. The Serpent and the Rainbow is an adaptation of a non-fiction book of the same name by ethnobotanist Wade Davis, but especially from midway through, its best to see this adaptation as a Wes Craven horror film first. Ethnobotanist Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) is assigned to Haiti by the pharmaceutical company he is working with to investigate an incident of zombism with the help of a local doctor in the region Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson of Mona Lisa (1986)), specifically in the hope he brings them back a biological explanation for the phenomenon that, in chemical form, they can sell as an anaesthetic for medical purposes. As he and Marielle become more closer romantically, and he comes across a witchdoctor, Louis Mozart (Brent Jennings), who may help him acquire a zombie creating powder, he also unfortunately encounters the secret police of the country. The film is set during the last year or so of Jean-Claude Duvalier, son of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, both notorious for being dictators, the main antagonists for this film being a fictionalised version of the Tontons Macoutes, a paramilitary force active between both reigns, personified in the film as Captain Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Morae), leader of the group who are willing to kidnap and torture people, but with an added force in that Peytraud is a black magic sorcerer of immense power who heads a group of loyal worshippers in the dark arts, who may in fact have captured souls of some of their victims and turned them into zombies amongst his various crimes.

From http://www.100yearsofhorror.com/storage/serpent_and_the_rainbow-1.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1394546307233

The obvious issue between a non-fiction novel becoming a horror film which is effectively about scary black magic versus good heroes is that it does sound like typical mainstream cinema where the heroic white male comes in to rescue the minority victims of another country and have the local female character, tough but sexy, fall in love with him. The film thankfully avoids this by having a sense of scale and detail, because of the subject matter, which prevents this from happening. The flaw with the film is that it's a conventional horror film at its core, not necessarily an issue in terms of the results but that aspects of the film aren't as creative or engaging as they should be. What makes it interesting is the subject material itself and when the film becomes more of a horror story at the end. The subject matter lifts the film up immensely. When films invoking zombies usually means the brain eating dead, a rare film which takes them back to their origins is something of interest, especially as they are merely a part of a bigger, real mythology from Haiti and Voodoo culture, which the film takes pains to describe and explain for a curious viewer. The zombies themselves, the few included, are people who seem to have had their minds taken from them, able to commute still to others but in a state adrift from everyone, petrified statues that can still walk. They merely are a piece of a film that is more about the supernatural and occult magic. Of souls being taken by evil witchdoctors and ritual combined with motifs common more to Hollywood cinema - nightmares about living corpses, jump scares - that nonetheless do work. It's a film working with an entire brand of religious practice and mythology rarely seen in the genre, and while it may be slightly dodgy in terms of making it more cinematic rather than the accurate reality, the fact remains that the entirely different set of symbology being used is helpful to the film, reliving it from the dust of more frequently used symbology of other supernatural and religious beliefs that have become dulled from overuse. This is as interesting seeing Pullman's character getting involved with Mozart, and the play between them before the later finally gives in and lets Dennis Alan in on how real zombie powder is made, as it is in him being repeatedly threatened by the Tontons Macoutes. Admittedly the fictionalisation of real life events for more dramatic purposes always has an air of tastelessness in not careful, as the revolution that took place in Haiti in real life ends the film, though in this case it's never trivialised baring a teaspoon of syrup, and the decision to make Pullman unable to stand up to the group by himself, capable of being harmed by them in a sequence with a eye-watering use of a nail that you rarely see male heroes in films endure, adds a nice dramatic tension, both in that the white foreigner is not going to be able to merely get by because he should as the white hero in an Hollywood film, and that it's as much the magic that is of importance for the ending.

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The other virtue is that, as the supernatural and black magic content increases, the film develops the same tone as A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) where a creative dismissal of tangible reality is used in favour of the scares and how the symbology is used in the film. Wes Craven is an odd director in terms of someone who has become a "Master of Horror" cinema, from the same era as George A. Romero or a Tobe Hooper. While with a Hooper a trademark is obvious, and someone like Romero  or John Carpenter has a consistent interest in particular themes, Craven has been all over the place in the type of films he's made - from the repulsive shock of The Last House On The Left (1972) to the meta-slasher Scream (1996) - and does feel more like a working director who follows trends then particular obsessions. I've seen a few films, but there's no sense of a clear through line yet, and it's strange, unless I start giving his career and full overview one day, that he could go from The Last House On The Left, to this, from The Hills Have Eyes (1977), to a musical drama Music of the Heart (1999) aside from the fact that he merely works in films as just a career, a dangerous word to use as it sounds dismissive, but for me in this case means that Craven would probably not care about auteur theory as long as he made films he thought were good. There is one thing, though, that does feel like a consistent trait of his, and it's the creative dismissal of tangible reality that I've already mentioned, the film effectively transforming into A Nightmare On Elm Street as the hallucinations being used against Dennis Adam as a weapon increase when torture isn't enough. Whether the film works as a successful adaptation of a book that was a document of a real case of zombification is really up to debate, that and as a serious dramatic film, but as an entertaining horror film, it does kick up into high gear and a better quality when the hallucinatory and supernatural aspects build up. It's more enjoyable then rather as a popcorn flick, but far from dismissive, Wes Craven has always had a talent for unsettling and creeping out the audience. My inability to find a consistent through line is more because I've yet to see all his work, someone who has dabbled in many types of film, and that doesn't detract from him being a good creator of tension and scariness.

From http://movieboozer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

There was no chance for this to be added. It's more nightmarish sequences certainly have a flair for them, but not enough for the list, and the rest of the movie is a conventional horror film.

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A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

By itself, The Serpent and The Rainbow is an underrated little horror film, not the best but with a lot to like. The really interesting thing for me, with the above question, is this film's place in terms of building up a director, Wes Craven, by what his work is in quality and content. Whether his career has been consistently good is up to me watching everything and seeing what I enjoy, include films that others would be aghast at. Whether any of it has any interest for the blog's theme depends on the films I've yet to see, but as my interest in Wes Craven has become significant, to be able to see how a director can shift over multiple decades in their work is always something of interest. In this case, it's nice to see a topic rarely done being made into a film, and while not perfect, it's still considerably good.