What's On Criterion: Classics or Assics?

Someone sexy and cool gifted me a Criterion Channel account so I can watch some actual cinema, instead of the 30 year old nicktoons and 5 hour video game essays i usually watch. Let’s see what's on Criterion and get some culture in here. Starting with a bloody scary maggoty murder movie, of course.

Suspiria

This is one of the coolest looking movies ever made. Nearly 50 years later copying its look is still an easy way for new horror flicks to gain some immediate clout. Argento is practically his own sub-genre, but this one is really Argento, even for him. There’s more cool and funky lighting in this movie than a laser show at the plane’arium.

It feels like the quintessential example of his style, complete with all of his other hallmarks as well. Big, bright, gooey blood, a mysterious killer, loud, insane music, and random yucky bug stuff. All it’s missing is hot Jennifer Connelly from his other yucky bug movie, Phenomena. But it does have plenty of hot babes, and at one point maggots start pouring from the ceiling on everybody. 

This leads to an unintentionally hilarious scene where the dance academy lady has all the girls sleep downstairs in one room. She very kindly says goodnight to everyone right before drenching the room in a terrifying, hellish crimson light, because that’s what Dario Argento thinks darkness looks like. 

Plotwise I think this one ends up being about witches, or something. I don’t know for sure, I was pretty stoned by then and just vibing to the colors and sounds and blood. Shit was rad.

Right away it’s got one of the most hardcore kills of all time, when a chick gets thrown through a stained glass ceiling and hanged while the falling glass destroys someone else below. When a movie starts like that, you know it’s time to smonk some stonk and get taken for a ride, so forgive me if the actual plot beyond that point eludes me.  

I know the important thing. This movie is gnarly and beautiful and totally fucks. I still think Phenomena is his best flick though, because one Jennifer Connely is as hot as a movie full of hot chicks.

Police Story

Hell yeah. That’s really all that needs to be said, but I'll elaborate. Here we have one of Jackie Chan’s early classics from China. He directed this one, and fucked up his hands sliding down a bunch of exploding lights at the end. He also kicks the living shit out of everybody, dangles off a bus, and somehow manages to fight an unconscious man. There’s no point in asking how he does these incredible feats of cunning, he’s a magical man and a mythical creature. 

Right from the very beginning you have cars flying down a hill and ripping right through a poorly constructed shanty town with all kinds of explosions and carnage. That’s the first thing that happens in the movie, and in any other movie it would be the epic finale. It’s so radical you nearly forget you’re about to watch a Jackie Chan movie, you think you’ve seen it all, but only then does the true Jackie Channing begin. 

From there it doesn’t let up, except when it does for a long courtroom scene, and a bunch of parts where Jackie is just getting yelled at by people. But then he starts kicking and punching again so it’s all good. Masterpiece. 

Frankenstein

This fucker’s nearly a hundred years old and it mostly holds up. It’s not at all like the book it’s based on, and the early half feels kinda slow, but once the monster is created, all the stuff that makes it a classic comes into focus. Henry Frankenstein makes the monster, but the monster makes the movie. The look of Boris Karloff is just timeless, and the way he flails around grunting like a big dummy is Hella cool.

There’s a lot to love here. The first time you see the monster’s face, when he backs into the room like a gormless idiot who doesn’t know how doors are supposed to work. Iconic. The creepy lab assistant, Fritz, shambling around and tormenting the monster with fire. What a demented little asshole.

I recommend reading the book because it’s a masterpiece, but the movie is too despite being totally different. The popular idea of Frankenstein today remains completely based in the imagery of this movie, despite there having been plenty of other adaptations since. Both the monster’s famous look and his personality as a gentle but misunderstood dummy originate here. 

In the book the monster is in no way innocent and i fucking can’t stand it when people act like he is. “Adulthood is knowing that the real monster was Dr. Frankenstein for abandoning his creation.” Uh, yeah, no, the monster in the book is a total fucking psycho. Victor’s culpability in abandoning him is certainly a theme of the book, but the monster is absolutely the fucking villain, and anyone who says otherwise is an illiterate poseur. 

Doctor Frankenstein’s scientific hubris making him the true villain is a take more suited to the movie, where the monster does bad things because he has a defective brain and doesn’t know that little girls drown when tossed into lakes. But even in the movie the Doctor isn’t evil. He’s misguided in creating the monster but does show remorse and tries to fix things. 

There is one little thing i didn’t know about before actually watching the movie, it’s not a flaw, but it’s pretty silly. When the mob torches the windmill at the end (one of the coolest shots of all time) the monster starts screaming like a little girl. Seriously, watch it. He’s up there trying to escape the fire going “aaaiieeeeeeeee! EEEEEEEEEEK!!”. It’s kind of hilarious. 

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe

Christ, this was fucking stupid. This self-fellating performance piece would just be a youtube video now, but back then it got away with calling itself a film. Herzog cooks his crappy shoe in a stupid stew and cuts it up with a knife on stage to prove a point of some kind that only makes sense to him. Anything can be a film, or anyone can make a film, or something inane like that.

He goes over the backstory of why he’s eating the damn shoe over B-roll of the shoe being cooked. And when it needs to switch things up he appears on screen in different locations philosophizing to himself and anyone bored enough to be watching

It’s only 20 minutes long but feels like 20 hours. By the time he finally eats the shoe, I've totally zonked out. I don’t even think i saw him eat it. All that build up and then it happened fast enough that i didn’t notice and the fucking credits were rolling. For his next film, Werner Herzog should eat shit.