Movie Details
| Title: | Dark Age | |
| Director: | Arch Nicholson | |
| Year: | 1987 | |
| Genre: | Horror | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.21.08 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.21.08 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2008 Day whatever starts with watching this again because I figured I should see at least one of the Ozsploitation retrospective movies of this fest. I still liked it about as much as Pirahna or something like that; a solid Jaws knock-off (although I learned today that apparently this was more a Razorback knock-off than anything else, huh!). Yes, the croc did look pretty crappy on the land, but I still think it's pretty effective the first few times you see it just due to its immense size. I also love how he eats a kid's head. It caught me by surprise yet again because the scene so totally reflects the one in Jaws where Brodie's son narrowly escapes death. Not this poor crying tike. HEAD CHOMP'D Anyway, good times. Next up were the animated shorts. My favorites were the one with the video game recreations, the film noir one, the one where it repeatedly zooms into the changing photograph, and the French one with the mail order body... oh and the bubble wrap one. that one was genius. I think my favorite though is the graffiti one. That was just amazing. I still can't believe they did that. |
| 09.11.05 | Alamo Downtown | This Screening is part of event: QT6 Technically, QT showed an episode of an old Australian TV show called Riptide in between Four Desperate Men and Dark Age, but since it was only an hour and a TV show, it doesn't get its own entry. It was cool though, and had a car chase, as does every Australian movie according to QT. He did a great near-stand-up bit about Australian filmmakers confused by a script that didn't include a car chase. It was really funny. What was interesting about the show though was that the lead is an American... so I guess the show was all about how badass this one American is in Australia. Kind of odd and somewhat correlitive with an aspect of Dark Age which... ...RULED. First off, it's a giant Croc movie. Secondly, it's shot by Andrew Lesnie of Lord of the Rings fame. QT's print of this movie was pristine. I swear i would believe this movie came out this year if only the fake croc was CG. Instead, it was made in 1987 which makes it really... sweet. OK, the movie does parallel Jaws rather a lot, at least in the first half or so. Replace the shark with a croc and the stories become pretty similar. BUT, there's just a quality going on here that seeps out of the frame and into your head. It's the kind of subtle-but-consistent quality that's almost subliminal... you just at some point realize that this is a really good fun movie. there's one scene though, where the antagonistic boss character tells the Steve Erwin character that all these croc-related deaths are making the Japanese businessmen nervous and there's a danger that they wont come down and build high-rises. Coupled with the American protagonist in Riptide, I wondered if there's a little brother type of need for outsiders to come in and be the hero rather than homegrown Australian pride... probably not but then again they ARE all criminals. Now, the fake Croc, which is really huge... like 25 feet long... looks pretty good as long as it's in the water. There are some shots where it surfaces that are designed really well to emphasize the massive size of it relative to humans... how a human could basically park a chaise-lounge and sip a daquiri comfortably inside its belly, except for all that nasty digestion of course. However, once it gets on land, particularly in the end, it doesn't move enough and sort of breaks down into a big lump of plastic on screen. Most of the time though, I was really impressed with how they used it. One thing which must be noted is a scene in which a kid gets eaten. There is a shot where you see the kids head inside the croc's mouth chomping away. It's so totally and utterly badass, no one in the theater could believe it. It's a real quick shot, but it's in there, man... and it's unspeakably cool. So two really sweet movies to wrap up Australian night. So i guess RZA was at the horror-thon but I didn't see him. Since I sit so far up front and the VIP section is toward the back i miss most of the celebrity... on the first night i sort of made a decision to be here for the movies instead of the audience and sat where i wanted to sit rather than close to Quentin. In the same vein, I'm writing just my thoughts and reflections down here. A couple other sites are doing the more conventional reportage on the event but hooey to them. this is my journal and I'm writing what i want to. |
