nochexxx

harco pronting
horror movies nowadays seem to be propelled forward purely by the charge of tropes. adhering to them or not adhering to them but there's no disregarding them. they pave the roads of the narrative. every scene is a binary 0 or 1 on the trope in question.
overzealous sound design in new films particularly sticks in my craw
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
watched the directors cut of Carnival of Souls, couldn't spot any differences between the OG cut tbh, pretty certain this film has been recommended here before. if anyone knows of any other films of this era that work as a double bill please do recommend!
I think that the one that is normally shown is the directors cut - the main difference is I think (from memory) the bit where she plays the organ and a load of spirits appear... it shows a church organ but the sounds are from a farfisa I understand.
As for a double-bill... how about An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge_(film)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
horror movies nowadays seem to be propelled forward purely by the charge of tropes. adhering to them or not adhering to them but there's no disregarding them. they pave the roads of the narrative. every scene is a binary 0 or 1 on the trope in question.
He means it either sticks to it (1) or doesn't (0) but you are already thinking precisely about that question which affects how you think about the film.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It is a short.... i mention it here cos... well, we'll talk after.
But bear this in mind*
Author Kurt Vonnegut wrote in 2005: "I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read the greatest American short story, which is ' [An] Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' by Ambrose Bierce. It isn't remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius"
 

nochexxx

harco pronting
Enjoyed it, reminded me a little of Rendezvous as both are short films where the protagonists make their way to see their lover. I really like films that move in one straight line. Soundtrack was ace too. I watched an Eastwood movie straight after called The Beguiled (1971), perfect follow up. I was expecting it to be shlock, but fell off my chair at how polished it was.

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Glad to hear @nochexxx. The reason I recommended it particularly cos (as well as being from around the same time and black and white) is cos I really think that, with An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Amrbrose Bierce wrote the first story I'm aware of which has a specific twist that became almost a genre in its own right,

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR ALL THE FOLLOWING (Carnival Of Souls, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, The Third Policeman and Pincher Martin)

that genre being the one where the protagonist dies at the start and then the story is the protagonist having various (often terrifying) adventures which, at the end, we discover are what happened to him after he died. In AOAOCB I think the guy can be understood to have an hallucination in his last few seconds in which he thinks he has survived the hanging and has safely made it home... only for the blow to strike him just as he arrives home and he really dies just before the happy homecoming. In Carnival of Souls it goes a little bit further in that she was kinda fated to die, but somehow climbs out of the water - the horrors which then confront her are the servants of death seeking to catch her and to put the world right (though not from her perspective I guess) by dragging her back down to death.
Beyond those two, the next one that occurs to me is The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. I forget the details of that story, but the gist is that the crazed inventor, desperate to raise enough money to build his insane inventions, tries to kill someone for their money by blowing them up, and it goes wrong, he is then trapped in a nightmarishly absurd world in which weirder and weirder things happen to him and then, finally, it loops round and he has to go through it again. It is finally revealed to the reader that he is in hell, being punished to eternally suffer this insanity, as a result of his attempted murder, the explosion he set off in fact killed only him.
And also Pincher Martin by William Golding, although I've never read it, I think has the same idea behind it.
Then later on you have things like, I guess Shutter Island which is perhaps not quite the same but has something of that unreliable narrator taken to its limits.
Any more suggestions that you have I would love to hear.
 

nochexxx

harco pronting
Nice summary Rich, i will have to find those other films you mentioned. Iirc Jess Franco's Venus in Furs uses a similar plot device.
 
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