Movie Details
| Title: | The Innocents | |
| Director: | Jack Clayton | |
| Year: | 1961 | |
| Genre: | Ghost | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.06.11 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Something Wicked This Way Coes
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.06.11 | DVR | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2011 God black and white scope is beautiful. The early 60s was really a great time for cinematography. Wonderfully baroque images of this huge English estate fill each frame as little creepy kids hop around and ghosts drive Deborah Kerr insane. This is one of those really well-regarded classics that I've never seen and have always felt a need to fill in. As such, it probably seems a bit overrated to me right now just because it doesn't pack quite the punch of The Haunting or Psycho for me, but I can definitely see how people love this movie. Kerr is great and the ghostly stuff is really handled with creepy subtlety. Particularly the hussy lady in the reeds on the far side of the lake. I don't know why long shots of people standing still are so creepy but they totally are. This reminds me of something. Why haven't any movies deliberately re-done the Three Men and a Baby cardboard cut-out trick? Remember that? Everybody got so freaked out that this kid was in the room for one of the scenes and a mythology quickly formed that he had jumped out the window (even though it was an interior set in some studio on the ground floor and I guess the kid was just a cardboard stand-in used for focus testing) and everybody watched it again and got super creeped out. And wasn't whats-his-name accidentally being in the shot the whole basis for the killer Bob character in Twin Peaks? It seems like this technique of leaving random creepy-looking people in the frame is un-mined territory. If i ever made a horror movie, any scene with extras I'd have one looking directly in camera and as much as i could i'd have random people standing still in the background. Free creepiness right there! Anyway, yeah part of this movie creeped me out a bit in an old early 60s way but by the end the histrionics were too much for me and I didn't quite understand the ending. Oh well. Horror movies are a bit like comedies in my mind in that regardless of plot or production quality or how well the film is actually constructed, they either work or they don't. 70% of Caddyshack is pretty boring, but the 30% that works is classic. The few scenes in this were memorable enough for me to call this a good movie even though it was probably a little long and there was a bit much running around at the end. The dude outside the window and the hussy at the end of the lake worked. Next up, later tonight, is the last movie of the fest: an exceedingly random end to a pretty random weekend of films. My DVR is down to 17% full though which is pretty awesome. |
