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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 15, 2018 21:58:17 GMT -5
brianf , what about Arsenic and Old Lace, Petrified Forest, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which are slightly opened up as movies, but are still essentially confined to one room? Oh, and how about Das Boot and a few other submarine movies? I haven't seen it, but Lady in a Cage features Olivia de Havilland as an older woman trapped in an elevator for a good part of the movie.
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Post by brianf on Oct 15, 2018 23:41:02 GMT -5
brianf , what about Arsenic and Old Lace, Petrified Forest, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which are slightly opened up as movies, but are still essentially confined to one room? Oh, and how about Das Boot and a few other submarine movies? I haven't seen it, but Lady in a Cage features Olivia de Havilland as an older woman trapped in an elevator for a good part of the movie. All good suggestions- about 15 years ago i went on a Bogart marathon was was amazed at how good The Petrified Forest was, since I had never heard of it before. I think I'm due for a re-watch. And I've had Lady in a Cage on a short list for a while now - thanks for the response!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2018 4:16:16 GMT -5
brianf , what about Arsenic and Old Lace, Petrified Forest, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which are slightly opened up as movies, but are still essentially confined to one room? Oh, and how about Das Boot and a few other submarine movies? I haven't seen it, but Lady in a Cage features Olivia de Havilland as an older woman trapped in an elevator for a good part of the movie. All good movies to boot and I have seen the all ...
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Post by Duragizer on Oct 16, 2018 5:17:54 GMT -5
In the past two days, I've watched these three movies: Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), House of Wax (1953), and House of Wax (2005). I watched all three before, but years apart, and not in chronological order. Felt it was time to revisit them and see how they compare.
Mystery of the Wax Museum
By far the best looking of all three (Of course, I happen to absolutely love two-colour Technicolor; YMMV.). It also has the best female protagonist in Glenda Farrell's Florence Dempsey; she's sassy and sharp as a tack — the type of woman I absolutely adore. Unfortunately, Florence isn't the leading lady; that role's taken by Fay Wray's far less impressive Charlotte Duncan. The film's also not the least bit creepy, and the finale is clumsily executed.
6/10
House of Wax (1953)
Like its predecessor, it isn't scary. Unlike its predecessor, it doesn't have a strong female protagonist on par with Florence Dempsey. It's also pretty much the same movie as Mystery of the Wax Museum; the only significant divergence from the original is the era in which it takes place. For all those reasons, I'd rate House of Wax the same as its predecessor, if not slightly lower. However, this film has a single strong element in its favour: Vincent Price. Lionel Atwell gave a good performance in the original, but Price completely blows him away. His performance is excellence itself, and alone elevates the movie above itself.
7/10
House of Wax (2005)
While all three movies feature wax-embalmed cadavers, this is the only one which makes full use of the concept, and hence is the only one of the three that is in any way chilling. A house of wax that is a literal house of wax? Quite creative (if nonsensical). An entire town populated with wax-embalmed corpses? Unnerving! Unfortunately — and this is a BIG unfortunately — the characters are hateful douchebags; the actors are mediocre at best; the writing makes the worst of the Friday the 13th sequels look like Lovecraft in comparison. On the bright side, Paris Hilton gets impaled through the head in glorious, gory fashion.
3/10
FINAL THOUGHTS
None of these are great horror films — and one of them is outright bad — but they all have elements which, if distilled then pooled together, would make for an excellent horror film. I can see it now:
The charming, erudite purveyor of a wax museum — disfigured by Millennial/post-Millennial assholes — murders a slew of submoronic teenagers/20-somethings/30-somethings in revenge and creates wax figures from their corpses. Hot on his heels, a strong-willed, exuberant female reporter who is pursuing her own investigation into the disappearance of these unlikable non-characters.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 16, 2018 5:52:21 GMT -5
I'm a big fan of movies set (mostly) in one room - Hitchcock had 3 (Rope, Lifeboat and Rear Window). 12 Angry Men may be the most famous. Breakfast Club counts. I'm always looking for more - any suggestions? Michel Deville’s Nuit d’été en ville , as I recall, is even set mostly in one bed! A young couple just talks about life, love and relationships. With Deville at the helm, “people talking about stuff” is always a winning recipe!
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 16, 2018 11:56:37 GMT -5
My Dinner With Andre takes place mostly in a restaurant.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 16, 2018 12:33:53 GMT -5
I'm a big fan of movies set (mostly) in one room - Hitchcock had 3 (Rope, Lifeboat and Rear Window). 12 Angry Men may be the most famous. Breakfast Club counts. I'm always looking for more - any suggestions? I also love CLOSET LAND There's a horror movie that's mostly set in an elevator. For some weird reason, I've always wanted to see a movie set in an elevator. It's called Devil and it's just so deliciously crazy and ridiculous that I have never been able to decide if it's good or not. I love it!
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 16, 2018 14:15:12 GMT -5
brianf, Wait Until Dark, The Odd Couple, Deathtrap and Dial M for Murder (all based on plays), with rare exceptions, are all in one room/location. I'm guessing that Neil Simon's Plaza Suite and California Suite are, too, now that I think of it. Also worth a look is Conspiracy, a dramatization of the Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was discussed and given the go-ahead. And how did I forget My Dinner with Andre? Never saw them, but how about 127 Hours and Reservoir Dogs?
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 16, 2018 23:50:09 GMT -5
brianf , Wait Until Dark, The Odd Couple, Deathtrap and Dial M for Murder (all based on plays), with rare exceptions, are all in one room/location. I'm guessing that Neil Simon's Plaza Suite and California Suite are, too, now that I think of it. Also worth a look is Conspiracy, a dramatization of the Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was discussed and given the go-ahead. And how did I forget My Dinner with Andre? Never saw them, but how about 127 Hours and Reservoir Dogs? Reservoir Dogs does change scenes a few times, as does Breakfast Club. RD starts in a dinner, goes outside, has a crime that goes wrong, then has the scenes with the undercover cop being tortured. Breakfast Club starts outside the school, goes into the library, has them go out in the halls, the bad boy alone with the administrator in another room and then outside at the end. You could add Andy Kaufmann's Breakfast With Blassie ( a spoof of Andre, where he and the wrestling legend talk over a meal at a Sambos Restaurant).
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Post by Farrar on Oct 18, 2018 11:01:11 GMT -5
I saw The Servant (1963) last night. I call it "Whatever Happened to Baby Jeeves?" That brings back good memories of the summer that movie was featured on my local PBS channel one summer when I was teen. I was mesmerized by the film and I watched it over and over again every time it was on TV. I became a big fan of the soigné and sophisticated Dirk Bogarde. I made it a point to seek out his films--at the time there were several local repertory cinemas that regularly played two older films a day, including European films--so I got to see him in a lot of films including Darling, So Long at the Fair, Accident, Sebastian, Modesty Blaise, Damn the Defiant (where he's torturing poor Alec Guinness), Providence (a snoozefest despite its great cast --Bogarde, John Gielgud, Ellen Burstyn, Elaine Strich and directed by Alain Resnais) and of course his two films with Luchino "Senso" Visconti: The Damned and Death in Venice. Lots of music in both, as is usually the case for Visconti (who was a great music lover and was said to have been Maria Callas's favorite director). I was probably too young to grasp the intricacies of The Damned but I loved Death in Venice. That Mahler music! I have to admit though I never had the stomach to see Bogarde in The Night Porter; it's probably too graphic for my taste. Something I just watched on YouTube a couple of months ago was Victim, a movie in which Bogarde's married, barrister character is outed as gay. A daring role to take; normally actors (and I would guess esp. actors who are gay, like Bogarde) were reluctant to portray gay characters onscreen. Victim was made back in 1961 and from what I have read, is said to have been a contributing factor to the UK changing its laws regarding "sexual offenses" some years later in the 1960s.
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Post by Hoosier X on Oct 18, 2018 15:01:34 GMT -5
I saw The Servant (1963) last night. I call it "Whatever Happened to Baby Jeeves?" That brings back good memories of the summer that movie was featured on my local PBS channel one summer when I was teen. I was mesmerized by the film and I watched it over and over again every time it was on TV. I became a big fan of the soigné and sophisticated Dirk Bogarde. I made it a point to seek out his films--at the time there were several local repertory cinemas that regularly played two older films a day, including European films--so I got to see him in a lot of films including Darling, So Long at the Fair, Accident, Sebastian, Modesty Blaise, Damn the Defiant (where he's torturing poor Alec Guinness), Providence (a snoozefest despite its great cast --Bogarde, John Gielgud, Ellen Burstyn, Elaine Strich and directed by Alain Resnais) and of course his two films with Luchino "Senso" Visconti: The Damned and Death in Venice. Lots of music in both, as is usually the case for Visconti (who was a great music lover and was said to have been Maria Callas's favorite director). I was probably too young to grasp the intricacies of The Damned but I loved Death in Venice. That Mahler music! I have to admit though I never had the stomach to see Bogarde in The Night Porter; it's probably too graphic for my taste. Something I just watched on YouTube a couple of months ago was Victim, a movie in which Bogarde's married, barrister character is outed as gay. A daring role to take; normally actors (and I would guess esp. actors who are gay, like Bogarde) were reluctant to portray gay characters onscreen. Victim was made back in 1961 and from what I have read, is said to have been a contributing factor to the UK changing its laws regarding "sexual offenses" some years later in the 1960s. I didn't realize I'd seen so many of Dirk Bogarde's films. I've seen Darling, Modesty Blaise, The Damned, Death in Venice and The Night Porter. Some of them are pretty awesome and all those I've seen are worth watching. Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling are amazing in The Night Porter. And Modesty Blaise … I'm surprised it's not one of the most famous cult movies ever! I've seen it a few times over the years and I love it!
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 18, 2018 15:06:15 GMT -5
That brings back good memories of the summer that movie was featured on my local PBS channel one summer when I was teen. I was mesmerized by the film and I watched it over and over again every time it was on TV. I became a big fan of the soigné and sophisticated Dirk Bogarde. I made it a point to seek out his films--at the time there were several local repertory cinemas that regularly played two older films a day, including European films--so I got to see him in a lot of films including Darling, So Long at the Fair, Accident, Sebastian, Modesty Blaise, Damn the Defiant (where he's torturing poor Alec Guinness), Providence (a snoozefest despite its great cast --Bogarde, John Gielgud, Ellen Burstyn, Elaine Strich and directed by Alain Resnais) and of course his two films with Luchino "Senso" Visconti: The Damned and Death in Venice. Lots of music in both, as is usually the case for Visconti (who was a great music lover and was said to have been Maria Callas's favorite director). I was probably too young to grasp the intricacies of The Damned but I loved Death in Venice. That Mahler music! I have to admit though I never had the stomach to see Bogarde in The Night Porter; it's probably too graphic for my taste. Something I just watched on YouTube a couple of months ago was Victim, a movie in which Bogarde's married, barrister character is outed as gay. A daring role to take; normally actors (and I would guess esp. actors who are gay, like Bogarde) were reluctant to portray gay characters onscreen. Victim was made back in 1961 and from what I have read, is said to have been a contributing factor to the UK changing its laws regarding "sexual offenses" some years later in the 1960s. I didn't realize I'd seen so many of Dirk Bogarde's films. I've seen Darling, Modesty Blaise, The Damned, Death in Venice and The Night Porter. Some of them are pretty awesome and all those I've seen are worth watching. Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling are amazing in The Night Porter. And Modesty Blaise … I'm surprised it's not one of the most famous cult movies ever! I've seen it a few times over the years and I love it! He was very funny in Doctor in the House (1954), too! That movie was a huge hit and made him a star.
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 18, 2018 15:29:54 GMT -5
He [Dirk Bogarde] was very funny in Doctor in the House (1954), too! That movie was a huge hit and made him a star. When I was a teenage Anglophile, I watched the TV version of Doctor in the House in 1972-74. That was my introduction to British TV comedy, followed later in 1974 by Monty Python's Flying Circus.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2018 16:04:39 GMT -5
He [Dirk Bogarde] was very funny in Doctor in the House (1954), too! That movie was a huge hit and made him a star. When I was a teenage Anglophile, I watched the TV version of Doctor in the House in 1972-74. That was my introduction to British TV comedy, followed later in 1974 by Monty Python's Flying Circus. Mine was both Monty Python's Flying Circus and Are You Being Served -- first and later on I did watched Doctor in the House, Fawlty Towers, Mr. Bean, and Benny Hill ... and several others as well.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Oct 18, 2018 20:58:57 GMT -5
Just watched Were No Angels. I forgot how whity funny and charming this movie is. All involved put in 100% and what came out was a great comedy movie that was more along the lines of what The Whole Nine Yards was. Serious events not taken seriously. Wonderful movie.
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