Snobism, zombies and the loss of emotional speed,

I consider myself a snob. Not too the extent that I believe I am better than anybody else, but to the extent that I have trouble understanding or really believing that anybody can lack having experienced what I have experienced and still call themselves a cultured human being. Thus, if someone expresses to me the fact they believe they are a cultured human being, I immediately assume they will have seen every movie I have ever seen, listened to every song I have ever listened to, and eaten the same food in the same restaurants I have eaten them in. Not only that, but I take for granted that they have taken the same thing from all these experiences I have taken from them. The basic result of this is the situation where I will start quoting and rehashing and suchlike, and when I am met with the customary blank stare of my conversational partner, who almost inevitably never really paid that much attention to the dress worn by the second interviewee in a movie they didn’t really like five years ago, I immediately assume this conversational partner is full of shit and not worth talking to. Snobbery, thy name is Kevin.

This is not to say I only do or see those things I consider high-browed, as can be evidenced by the massive amount of people who saw me trying to masticate a hotdog last Saturday, while simultaneously trying to hide the evidence of doing so with all the verve of an elephant trying to hide in a mouse-hole.
In light of my ongoing quest to never miss a culturally important development in the realms of schlock-horror and bad exploitation, I have done something yesterday I have not often done before and more than likely never will do again. I have sat through what was effectively a zombie movie. And I despise zombie-movies. Why? They give me nightmares.

But as soon as the silver sneak screen yesterday flashed the opening credits of “Planet Terror”, Robert Rodriguez ‘ contribution to the double feature escapade set up by him and Quentin Tarantino, two things happened:
1) Boyfriend assured me that he would protect me from the zombies
2) I remembered that even though I hate Zombies I do love Rose McGowan, and the idea of her with a gun for a leg did it for me, in a completely platonic move way

So we stayed, and watched, and retched. Yes, retched. Without giving away even a single quark of the plot, this movie has gore. Good, fun, wholesome gore. Gore that befits the set-up of a seventies flashback really, which is the general idea behind the Grindhouse-double feature, the other half of which consists of Tarantino’s “Death Proof” which also has plenty of gore, even though it lacks somewhat in the zombie department.

Because for me it is almost impossible to talk about a movie without spoiling it like a tomato left out in the sun, I want to talk about the double feature idea itself, and more specifically about the moment where both movies lose some of their speed. And I am going to do this after this short introductory interlude that will seem to have nothing to do with the plot of this blog so far.

There is an meme running rampant in the mind of the horror aficionado that one should never “open the door”, for what I can imagine behind the door will always be infinitely more frightening than what is going to actually be behind the door. Suggestion, swift flashes and shadows hinting at the monster are more effective in many ways than the actual image of a slobbering pile of well animated plastic. Thus the build up to the reveal of what is behind the door should be a slow and subtle process, reminiscent of the best works of H.P. Lovecraft and Alfred Hitchcock. If the monster is shown to soon, the tension leaves swiftly to be replaced with scared little jumps whenever it appears suddenly again. That said, the monster should at some point be seen and explained, or there is no emotional investment in surviving the horror, which, after all, is not absolutely there.

To my mind the current spate of wet-little-ghostly-kids-in-long-hallways-style J-horror flaunts the rule above like there is no tomorrow, often staging a good part of the action after we have had a graphic and lengthy close-up of whatever is animating the little kid in all her glorious wetness. To me this means I am full of tension for about half an hour into the movie until we see the tentacle puppet master and then I sit there for an hour more thinking “Bah”.
I have started describing this as Emotional Speed vs Actual Speed, where ES is the swiftness of the emotions inside me and AS is the speed of what is actually happening in the movie. As long as I am investing in the development of the movie in my mind, the ES is quite high, but it is likely to happen during character build up and development, which means AS is usually low. Then, when shit hits the proverbial fan, the ES goes down and the AS starts up, with ES running steadily along in the background because I know these people now and want them to survive. Or die horribly if I find them truly annoying, which happens often.

The two “Grindhouse” movies lack nothing in AS, but quite a bit of ES. Strangely enough, and much as I would like to deny it, the Tarantino flick moves along at a pleasant to a swift pace in both cases for the first half, leaving a little of in the second one as far as ES is concerned, but in an entertaining and rewarding way, I would almost say. “Planet terror” Started of swiftly, stayed swift, and used characters and situations so darned swift in set up and movement it was almost impossible to invest emotionally. The few characters that were set up calmly and nicely instilled nothing so much as a “good on her” feeling in myself and Boyfriend, and the rest of the movie just invited to be torn apart.

All in all, choosing between the two is not something I would do, personally. They are enjoyable in their own right and work well together. If you are however looking for the better movie, see “Death Proof”. Not because it is excellent, but because I spent some time after the movie talking about it with people, dissecting it to some extent and wondering about it’s inner workings. With “Planet Terror” all I said was “That was gross, and I hope I don’t get nightmares”. Which I didn’t, by the way.

Well, it is late now, and I need my beauty sleep,

Till next time, stripes at “any nightmare free zombie is a good zombie”
Kevin