Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’m never going to see this film.
I’ve just accepted that as fact now. I’m never going to manage to see the movie. Yeah, it’s playing at FantAsia, but it’s playing before I’ll get up there, so I’ll miss it. Maybe I’ll be able to see it at the Egyptian when it plays the SF, Fantasy & Horror Festival there. But I’m betting something comes up and keeps me from that screening, too. So far, every single time Eli Roth has invited me to see this movie, there’s been some reason I couldn’t. I think it’s a curse. In the meantime, I hate the person who did get to see it, even if they did send in a really nice review for us to enjoy:
Moriarty,
In the "Cahier du Cinema" tradition (or Joe Bob Briggs, Joe Lansdale, David J. Schow-traditions), a review of a film that all AICN-ers should see. Of course, the reviews of the film have been so ecstatic, I'm probably preaching to choir. Without any further ado - ahem - the review:
"The Crazies." "Shivers." "Night of the Living Dead." "The Thing." "Evil Dead 2." "The Last House on the Left." "Blood Feast." "Dead Alive." "American Werewolf in London."
To that list of proven horror masterpieces - films that are absolute must-sees for genre completists; films that have crept into the collective unconscious, even if one HASN'T seen them (the latter group always tittering nervously at cocktail parties; trying to pretend like they HAVE seen them) - one must now make room for another title; a film as brash and confident and as ready to "shock the world" as Cassius Clay was in the 1960s:
"Cabin Fever."
In evaluating a career that has spawned such disparate horror films as "Cronos," "Mimic," "The Devil's Backbone," "Blade 2," and the upcoming, "Hellboy," emerging Maestro Guillermo del Toro asserted that all horror films are processed in relation to two archetypal children's games, TAG and HIDE-AND-SEEK.
If Tag is best represented by Carpenter's "Halloween," and Hide-and-Seek by the ethereal horror films of directors like Bava, Cocteau, and such classics as "The Innocents" and "The Haunting" (or, more simply put, if Hide-and-Seek is "Alien" and Tag is "Aliens"), then a warning to all who venture into "Cabin Fever's" dark woods: this film has taken the rule-books of both beloved games, ripped out the pages, and then let what can only have been a drunken madman paste them back together again.
In other words, "Cabin Fever" plays by its own rules. And it doesn't play nice. It's as if some twisted fuck-fest between both children's games has wrought forth a story more warped than the seventh-generation-child from a long line of in-bred rednecks.
If Gordo's theory is true - and I think it is - then "Cabin Fever" has something for everyone. But not compartmentally - nope, that'd be too easy for Mr. Roth. Instead, "Cabin Fever" has something for everyone ALL AT ONCE. Did you ever think you'd laugh uproariously while watching a pretty young woman shave diseased scabs from her legs? No? Not your cup of tea? How about a kung-fu kicking kid screaming "Pancakes!" only to bite savagely into a not-so-innocent's hand? Or a dog that makes Cujo look like Old Yeller? Does all of this sound beneath you? Too outré? Too Grind-House? Guess again. You might not know yourself as well as you think.
"Cabin Fever's" effective combination of such disparate emotions is as fun and as mind-bending as if Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau had made a bumbling cameo in Lucio Fulci's "Zombie." And the amazing thing? In Mr. Roth's extremely capable hands, it works. Really well.
Truffaut said that a director's first film is usually his or her most vibrant one, for he or she has spent an entire lifetime dreaming of the chance to make it. The late great auteur went on to say that all of the director's favorite films, all of his or her favorite shots - everything that he or she can cram into an hour and a half - will be in there, for the world of that film has been with him or her since the dream to make films took shape - IF it's a director worth keeping an eye on.
Well, suffice to say: Mr. Roth, we have our eyes on you.
And you can come out of the woods now.
*****
"Big Daddy Benchpress," 07-08-03
Just keep repeating it, Drew... you’ll see it eventually. You’ll see it eventually. You’ll see it eventually. You’ll... oh, hell, I WANT TO SEE IT NOW!!!
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