Review: John Williams's 'Jaws: (Music From the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)' "Blood in the Water" Vinyl

It was fifty years ago that a certain movie swam up to make people afraid to go in the water and movie execs afraid to not end their blockbusters with a big explosion. Jaws altered the face of cinema in many ways, some great and some not so great, but I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that at least one element of the film is unassailable: that John Williams score (okay, the dialog, acting, and directing are unassailable too). 

Review: 'Rewinding the '80s'

When I think of the movies of the eighties, I tend to think of a really fun filmography, whether we're talking about horror, teen movies, sci-fi, or fantasy, the genre that tended to most bleed into all the others. Following a decade in which the defining cinematic style was bleakness, eighties cinema seems like a toy box of action, loud music, product tie-ins, and welcome silliness. 

Review: 'Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard (Updated and Revised Edition)'

While many have accused Jaws of wrecking the serious "New Cinema" of the seventies, many others have celebrated it as the movie that rescued the decade from relentless downbeat antihero drabness. They're both pretty right, though you can hardly say Jaws made cinema dumber, what with its superb script, directing, and acting. The film was so story, dialog, and character conscious that barely anyone noticed or cared that the shark looked like a giant rubber pool toy.

Review: 'The Future Is Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982'

Even though pretty much everyone loved it, Star Wars became an easy go-to villain for every dreary movie critic who'd come to complain that it ruined cinematic art by making special effects and bottom line far more important than story, complex themes, and characterizations. Nevertheless, it took a few years for the influence of George Lucas's film to really ripen. Aside from a few stray extravaganzas like Superman, Alien, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Star Wars influence was mostly manifest in grade-Z schlockers like Star Crash and Battle Beyond the Stars in the years immediately following the summer of '77. 

Review: 'E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial' 40th Anniversary Soundtrack

His scores for Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark may have yielded more instantly recognizable themes, but John Williams composed some of his loveliest melodies and most varied arrangements when scoring E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The stirring theme used to euphoric effect when Elliott and his alien companion take flight on a bike, is the most famous and Williamsy number, but the eerie, unresolved main theme, the sparse harp arpeggios that color Elliott's budding friendship with E.T., and the rippling piano piece that introduces the closing credits may be the composer's most enchantingly pretty and atypically reserved music. Despite its reputation for being saccharine, E.T. is actually fairly dark and surprisingly poetic, and Williams reflects those tones with the foreboding piece that accompanies the extraterrestrials' late-night botany hunt in the woods, the eerie drones heard inside their spacecraft, and an ominous theme that shudders as a team of mysterious scientists invade Elliott's home.

Review: 'E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial- The Ultimate Visual History'

Because it didn't spawn an endless series of sequels and spin-offs, because its tie-in merchandise didn't dig itself into the ongoing pop-cultural consciousness with complete success, it's easy to forget what a phenomenon E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was upon its release in 1982. It outgrossed Steven Spielberg's own previous blockbusters and his buddy George Lucas's Star Wars films (which, needless to say, had no issues in the sequel, spin-off, or merch departments). "E.T. phone home" became a catch phrase of "May the force be with you" or "Where's the beef?" ubiquity. Most kids didn't completely kit out their bedrooms with E.T. stuff the way they did with Star Wars toys, posters, and bed sheets, but most of us had an E.T. doll or two. I know I did.

Review: 'The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema's Most Influential Filmmakers'

The auteur theory tends to get overstated when examining the very collaborative art of filmmaking. Nevertheless, the most distinctive directors do tend to have the final say when it comes to the look and philosophy of the films they manage. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of cinema could identify a film that, say, Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick, or Steven Spielberg directed from just a single carefully selected still frame. Other very famous directors, such as Robert Wise and Billy Wilder, are less identifiable by visual style than they are by point of view (Wise: optimistic; Wilder: pessimistic). Plus, directors have flashy jobs that require a certain gregariousness, or at least a big mouth. Hunching over a typewriter like Robert Towne or adjusting a lens like Gregg Toland is not as attention-getting as DeMille shouting through a megaphone in his jodhpurs.

Sloan De Forest's new book The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema's Most Influential Filmmakers celebrates these most celebrated people to work behind the cameras. Like other volumes published in Turner Classic Movies' series of film studies, The Essential Directors consists of short entries each with a bit of background history, a bit of critical assessment, a few recommendations for representative works, and lots and lots of fabulous photos. More so than the series' volumes on horror films and summer movies I've reviewed here on Psychobabble, The Essential Directors refuses to rock the boat too much with its selections, mostly only straying from the household-name canon to acknowledge that white men didn't always helm movies with entries on Oscar Micheaux, Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, and Elaine May. Consequently, those are among the book's most interesting and informative entries. De Forest could have diversified his selection a lot more if he did not limit himself to directors who worked in Hollywood before 1975, but I guess that would have been outside the scope of TCM's programming.

Review: 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' Blu-ray

American teenagers as a culture force came into their own in the 1950s, and as always, the white/middle-aged forces in control were instantly threatened, trying to demonize kids with the over-stated “juvenile delinquency” scare of that decade. However, the combined power of Elvis Presley, James Dean, and the Crypt Keeper could not equal what happened to teens in 1964. They screamed like they were being murdered. They peed their pants. They threw themselves in front of and out of moving vehicles. They lost complete and total control. This crazed behavior was a consequence of three of the things the older generation most feared: sex, Rock & Roll, and foreigners. Those foreigners in question were four youngsters from Liverpool, England, and though The Beatles projected a seemingly wholesome image, teenagers correctly interpreted the licentious messages of Rock & Roll like “Please Please Me”, “Twist and Shout”, and even “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. Consequently, they went cuckoo.

5 Superior Adaptations of Horror Lit

Adapting literature for the cinema is always tricky, and this can be especially true when dealing with stories intended to raise shivers. What is terrifyingly evocative on the page can flop like a sack of wet leaves when realized with a dude in a zip-up monster suit on screen. Acts unimaginably awful when described cease to play on the imagination when depicted with a rubber knife and karo-syrup blood. Some of horror’s greatest literary works, such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, It, and I Am Legend, have never received ideal screen adaptations. Some page-to-screen trips have been more lateral with stories such as Frankenstein and Dracula offering very different yet equally essential elements when turned into movies or ones such as The Haunting of Hill House and Rosemary’s Baby being faithful enough to be genuine cases of “six of one/half dozen of another.” On occasion, a film goes above and beyond, reinventing the story upon which it is based in ways that make the original text virtually irrelevant. Here are five of those superior horrors.

Review: 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History'

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was special in the sci-fi pantheon for the way it invited viewers to contemplate the galaxy and consider that what was out there may actually be friendly. Steven Spielberg’s motivation for making the film was ultimately noble and humane (despite a lead character who abandons his family to go star hopping), but it would not have worked without startling visuals to make us believe there really is something out there worth contemplating. With inestimable assistance from people such as cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, concept artist George Jensen, art director Joe Alves, and special effects-Merlin Douglas Trumbull, Spielberg delivered those visuals spectacularly. So a visual history of Close Encounters seems a natural publication for the film’s fortieth anniversary, and the visuals in Michael Klastorian’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History deliver the goods in the form of stills, Jensen’s impressionistic paintings, behind-the-scenes snap shots, images of deleted and aborted scenes, and clearer looks at the Mothership and  aliens than we get in the film (though these photos reveal why the phony looking aliens had to be muted by creative lighting in the film).

However, what makes Klastorian’s book truly special is access. Spielberg, himself, not only opened his archive of materials for inclusion but also his memories, granting personal interviews and even penning the foreword. Stars Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Cary Guffey, and Bob Balaban, as well as such off-screen magicians as Trumbull and Alves, are similarly generous with their recollections in new interviews conducted exclusively for this book. Of course, Close Encounters is a milestone movie, so it had already been documented pretty well and a lot of the stories they tell won’t be super revelatory to long-time fans, but finer details on the production probably will be, and in any event, it is nice to have the whole story collected in such an attractive package. The idea to stick detachable production notes, art, script pages, storyboards, and other memorabilia onto the pages with gummy glue wasn’t the best one, since these inserts are probably easily damaged and a bit disruptive to the book’s design if they aren’t detached, but as a whole, Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History is a gorgeous way to pay tribute to a sci-fi picture with ideas and images that still instill wonder after forty years.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 282

The Date: July 8

The Movie: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

What Is It?: Spiritual, meditative sci-fi epic about a goofball who leaves his wife and kids after he falls in love with a UFO.

Why Today?: On this day in 1947, the Roswell Daily Record announces that Roswell Army Air Field authorities have seized a crashed UFO.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 278

The Date: July 4

The Movie: Jaws (1975)

What Is It?: Steven Spielberg employed special effects to thrill audiences and drew record-breaking revenue, but its thrills do not make Jaws any less thoughtful or its characters any less complex. And after the kills have lost their shock value with repeated viewings and sophisticated contemporary special effects have rendered “Bruce” the Shark somewhat less realistic, Jaws continues to work wonderfully as a character piece. And what characters it has! Roy Scheider as the conflicted police chief; Richard Dreyfuss as the smart but inexperienced rich kid with an arsenal of shark-finding technology; Robert Shaw as the salty, glib sea captain who has seen more than his share of horror. His account of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the feeding frenzy that followed may be cinema’s most spellbinding monologue.

Why Today?: The 4^th of July is when the shark goes on an all-out frenzy.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 124

The Date: February 1

The Movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

What Is It?: In his quest for the lost ark of the covenant, archaeologist/adventurer Indiana Jones tangles with Nazis, giant balls, face-melting ghosts, and snakes—or serpents, if you will.

Why Today?: Today is Serpent Day.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 93

The Date: January 1

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

What Is It?: Burgess Meredith takes over for the late Rod Serling as tour guide through a series of four dimension-busting tales. John Landis and Steven Spielberg’s stink, but Joe Dante and George Miller’s are most memorable. Landis’s wrap-around starring Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks is great too…especially if you want to see something really scary…

Why Today?: Since 1995, the Sci-Fi channel (now known as Syfy, which is apparently some sort of sexually transmitted disease) has been hosting a “Twilight Zone” marathon that gets started on New Year’s Eve and keeps rocking into the following day.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 32

The Date: November 1

The Movie: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

What Is It?: Steven Spielberg’s boy-and-his-alien love story is often described as “heart warming,” but “poetic” may be even more apt even though the film practically has an outright disdain for spoken communication. A beautiful piece of purely visual filmmaking, though it would not be the same without John Williams's moving score and the Altmanesque overlapping dialogue.

Why Today?: November 1^st is the day E.T. goes home.

Diary of the Dead 2014

Every year I log my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini reviews at the end of every week in October in a fiendish feature I call Diary of the Dead. This year I altered the scheme slightly for a single, season-ending post.

I wrote it. You read it. No one needs to get hurt.

Oct. 1

Rodan (1956- dir. Ishirō Honda) **

One of the most iconic giant Japanese monsters first appeared in a pretty boring movie. Miners discover a baby pterodactyl that looks and moves like a kite. It terrorizes Japan without a smidgen of the moodiness of its forefather, Gojira. Amazing that Ishirō Honda followed that masterpiece with such a lazy picture. Rodan would only become fun when paired with Gojira, as we shall soon see.

We Are What We Are (2013- dir. Jim Mickie) ***

I haven’t seen the Mexican film upon which this cannibal family flick was based, so I can’t make any unfavorable comparisons. Taken on its own merits, the American We Are What We Are is refreshingly atmospheric. It’s also deliberately paced, which I usually like, but this one’s a little too deliberate, bordering on tedious. It’s also a bit empty aside from its fairly subtle critique of the patriarchy. On the plus side, it has Michael Parks, which is worth at least half a star.

Oct. 3

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964- Ishirō Honda) ***½

This is more like it. Since Honda didn’t seem interested in/capable of recapturing the grimness of Gojira he took his kaiju franchise to its logical camp conclusion. Rodan is back and less turgid in mood if not motion. So is Gojira and giant bug Mothra. The old rampaging monsters experience a change of heart when faced with three-headed dragon Ghidorah. They actually have a conversation about whether or not they should assist humanity by offing the new menace! Plus there are those wacky fairy twins, who appear on a crazy TV talk show. Perhaps not great fun, but certainly good fun.

Oct. 4

Review: 'Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career'

By the fourth quarter of the twentieth century, TV had overtaken movies as America’s number one entertainment for good, so it is fitting that the number one moviemaker of that period got his start on the little screen. Steven Spielberg was a TV junkie who’d made his name directing episodes of “Marcus Welby, M.D.”, “Columbo”, and most famously, “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery” when he was still barely old enough to drink. In 1971, he got his first break into feature-length movie making, though Duel was consigned to his usual living room-based medium. Spielberg’s ABC movie-of-the-week adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story, however, revealed a big screen talent. This brutally minimalistic showdown between a suburban schlub and a literal monster truck was filmed with all the consideration and imagination of a major motion picture. That may not sound like a big deal in the day of “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones”, but it was completely revolutionary in an age when TV movies were low-budget, disposable filler between episodes of “The Brady Bunch” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”. In fact, Duel was so high quality that it earned a critically smashing feature run in Europe. Spielberg’s career as a TV director was coming to an end.

Duel is not generally mentioned among Spielberg’s signature films, but based on this above brief history, I’m sure you’ll understand its significance. If you need any further convincing, check out Steven Awalt’s excellent new book Steven Spielberg and Duel: The Making of a Film Career. Awalt gets deep into this film’s creation, from the inspiration for and publication of Matheson’s story to the film’s eventual American theatrical run in 1983 in the wake of Spielberg’s domination of cinemas with E.T. The history is complete, amusing (the “casting” of the automobiles is documented here, as is the Incredible Hulk’s theft of Duel footage), critical (though mostly of Awalt’s fellow Duel theorists), and often just as thrilling as the film it details. The author relates Matheson’s near-death experience that inspired his tale and Spielberg’s boyhood short movie about a head-on collision between model trains with a master storyteller’s grasp of suspense. He also really emphasizes the importance of master storyteller Richard Matheson in this history. Because Duel is so significant a milestone in Spielberg’s career, Matheson’s major role in its creation is often minimized. Not so in this book, which also contains that writer’s complete teleplay for his and Spielberg’s film. So this book functions as both an informative—and very entertaining—resource for students of Spielberg and a nice tribute to the recently deceased Richard Matheson.

Monsterology: Animals

In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, we’ve been looking at the history of Horror’s archetypal monsters.

Richard Matheson On Screen: 10 Essential Works

Throughout 20th century horror’s Pre-K era (i.e.: pre-King), Richard Matheson dominated. Matheson is a tough, clean writer who has composed some of our most unforgettable works of terror and imagination. Without the ornateness of plot and/or language that distinguished his major horror peers—Poe and Lovecraft, Bradbury and King—Matheson writes tales with the punchy immediacy of campfire ghost stories. A scant phrase can instantly conjure one of the many indelible images he created: a man shrinks toward oblivion, a gremlin terrorizes a man from the wing of a plane, a murderous fetish doll stalks a woman through her apartment, a monstrous big-rig hunts a motorist, the last man on Earth fights to survive a plague of vampires.

Matheson’s lean, pointed stories were absolutely ripe for adaptation. His short stories resulted in several of the most beloved episodes of “Twilight Zone”, although oddly enough, there has never been a truly great version of what may be his definitive work, the apocalyptic vampire novel I Am Legend. Be that as it may, there are still plenty of wonderful examples of Matheson on-screen. Here are ten essentials.

(For the purposes of this article, I steered away from Matheson's adaptations of other writers' work, but his scripts for Poe's Fall of the House of Usher and Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out are pretty essential viewing, too)

1. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Things That Scare Me: Case Study #12: Raiders of the Lost Ark

In spite of (or, perhaps, because of) my adult infatuation with all things horrifying and horrific, I was scared of absolutely everything when I was a kid. A television commercial for a horror movie was enough to send me racing from the den in a sweaty palm panic. As an ongoing series here on Psychobabble, I've been reviewing some of the things that most traumatized me as a child and evaluating whether or not I was rightfully frightened or just a wiener.

Case Study #12: Raiders of the Lost Ark

I went into my first “viewing” of Raiders of the Lost Ark with such extreme prejudice that I kept my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears for, essentially, the entire movie. I’m not exaggerating. This “Things That Scare Me” feature is too therapeutic for me to waste time cracking jokes at my own expense. I’m not exactly sure where I got the idea that this movie might terrify me since my seven-year-old self knew virtually nothing about it before my mom dragged my sister, my grade-school best pal Antonio, and me to the theater. I do recall that my parents went on a married-couple date to see it before taking the kids. My guess is that there was some discussion regarding what effect the film would have on their highly impressionable and embarrassingly lily-livered son, which I most likely overheard. Such a conversation would have affected me not only because its topic was the possibility I would see something that might toss more fuel on the eternal flame of my nightmares but also because of the way it probably happened. I could imagine my parents having this discussion in hushed tones, believing themselves to be out of my earshot. These kinds of conversations always hit me as weighty, ultra-serious. What could this Raiders of the Lost Ark movie contain that would warrant such a talk? A graphic autopsy? A monster that turns to the camera and says, “Tonight, Mike Segretto, I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”