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Stephen3210
Reviews
Vampyr (1932)
DISAPPOINTING
Four years after his visually stunning and moving masterpiece,
THE PASSION OF JEANNE D'ARC (1928), Carl Dreyer's next movie (his first talkie) was this disappointingly weak effort. Aside from several minutes where the camera has us view the world looking up and out a window from inside a coffin, this visual master has displayed none of his genius. The bulk of the film is claustrophobic. Shot with little camera movement in a house of small rooms and short ceilings(not the typical horror mansion) where the scariest thing is the fleur-de-lis print wallpaper . The actors were mainly amateurs and it's painfully obvious. Most people who see this film think they are seeing a "bad print" as I did at first. There are black borders on the side and the film appears grey and grainy. I now know this is the way Dreyer shot the film, purposely exposing the film to light and then under-developing it by necessity for "atmosphere".
Die hard students of early European film may still wish to subject themselves to this. All others beware!
Zardoz (1974)
The emperor has no clothes
In 1974, I went with a group of friends to a small theater on the edge of Chinatown in San Francisco. What was promised to be the hip, new soon-to-be -classic by a wunderkind director, proved to be the worst 90 minutes I ever spent staring at the silver screen. In the ensuing years, I have become a big fan of "camp"film, with a special fondness for early Roger Corman and Ed Wood. Last week I decided to watch Zardoz again. It couldn't be as bad as I remembered it, my appreciation of bad film had grown and all of these seemingly intelligent people thought it was a work of art. Well....it was worst than I remembered, much worst. Give me Plan 9 any day. Zardoz is boring and oh so pretentious. And instead of laughing at its inadequacies, I could only wince and feel sick. Don't waste your time.