This is a movie about a Czech circus, and it kinda feels like it’s been financed by the CIA? Was it?
It also feels like Kazan was thinking “now I’m finally gonna make one of those European masterworks” — some scenes are like Herzog 20 years later, or Lang 20 years earlier.
But it’s let down by some really bad performances.
I mean really bad.
Interrogation…
TO THE MAX!!!
A knife thrower practising with his wife, of coures.
Such expressionism.
But then there’s the less fun parts, like this scene, where his bitchy wife is being bitchy, as usual, and he slaps her around, and she goes, Ooooh, you should have done that a long time ago, and then they fuck and live happily ever after.
(Well. SORT OF.)
Somebody’s getting suspicious!
It’s a super duper mega pandering propaganda movie — it was made after he snitched on all his friends to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and I’m guessing this was made to show them he’s really really really Un-Un-American — but the thing is, it works. It’s gross and manipulative, but that final scene is 100% gripping and moving. And the rest is pretty entertaining, too.
Oh! Renny Harlin! He’s a Finnish director who made a surprising career in Hollywood (FSVO), and I found him interesting at the time. He married Geena Davis (who’s great) and made a number of slightly off-kilter action movies before disappearing… Well, I don’t know that he disappeared, but I haven’t seen that name in decades.
I guess he never did disappear. I think the last movie of his I’ve seen is the 1996 Long Kiss Goodnight, which I think famously bombed…
I like Harlin. He did these oddball shots that nobody else would do, because they’re too artificial.
Best. Hairdo. Ever.
Is Harlin expressing all their personalities solely through their hairdos? I think he is!
What a kind-looking nurse.
Anyway, this isn’t as good as I’d hoped. The “Scare Scenes” are really inventive and fun, but then when they have to do the connecting scenes (to get irrelevancies like plot and stuff out of the way), tension just dissipates.
Yeah!
It’s a pretty fun horror movie — but it’s not actually scary at all. It’s also uneven in tone… so what’s the story behind this movie?
In an interview with Midnight’s Edge, director Tom McLoughlin said that after completing Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, New Line offered him the job on The Dream Master. His one caveat was that he wanted creative control. The studio could not adhere to the demand, specifically because they had already begun filming without any director. McLoughlin said,
“When I finished Friday, I was offered Nightmare 4 and went to New Line, met with them, and I said, ‘I love Freddy, I would love to do one of these, but I really want to do what I just did, where I had creative control’,” he explained. “And they go, ‘Well, we’re already shooting.’ ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, we’re already shooting, we’re shooting like two different units for the visual effects’ and something else, puppets or something. And I said, ‘Without a director?’ ‘Yeah, we kind of know how we’re going to make these things.’ And I went, ‘That’s not the way I work.’ So I turned it down, which of course made (Nightmare 4 director) Renny Harlin’s career.”
Heh heh.
I’m now watching these excellent extras on this box set — they’re not the typical “one sentence from one guy and one sentence from another guy about how wonderful everything was” puff pieces. They’re very forthright and talking about how much they hated the other guy’s ideas, and so on. Like:
High praise indeed!
But is this a good movie? Nah.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Renny Harlin. 1988. ⚂
This started off with a voiceover over a bunch of paintings…
… but then the people in the foreground started moving! That’s a lot of greenscreen.
This is from 2001 — I didn’t really know that Rohmer was still directing then, but looking at his imdb, I’ve seen one later movie: Triple Agent.
This is so weird — a horse and carriage on greenscreen over a painting. Was this done for TV?
It’s la revolution.
This is pretty confusing — for me, because I’m an uncultured cochon. So this is like happening at the start of the French revolution, but they’re dropping all these references that I don’t quite get. But that (I’m guessing) any French three year old would understand.
Still, it’s pretty interesting… Not quite gripping, but plenty interesting.
I almost understand that… two months of Duolingo works!
Perhaps not all revolutionaries are as honourable!
I like this movie — but I’m not sure it needed to be this long? That is, there’s really not any scenes that are superfluous or seem gratuitous, but I found my interest flagging a bit… Like, is there sufficient interest in this story for a movie of more than two hours?
