It’s one of the biggest laments of most horror junkies – why doesn’t a Scorsese, a Spielberg or a Coen or two direct a monster movie?
Fellow A-list director Sam Raimi doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty with fake blood. He started his career with fright flicks like “Evil Dead” and he returns to the genre May 29 (Friday) with “Drag Me to Hell.”
If the film scores big over the weekend will it convince name directors to try the genre on for size?
That’s the question posed in my latest piece for BoxOffice.com.
(Photo: The new horror film “Drag Me to Hell” was directed by Sam Raimi of “Spider-Man” fame.)
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Poltergeist showed what Spielberg could do with a good story, though it’s not a “horror movie” I guess. Indy IV was a “horrible movie”, but I guess that doesn’t count.
I thought No Country For Old Men was akin to a horror movie. A daylight Halloween — remorseless killer (though not faceless — scarier than Michael Myers); seemingly random killings, people suffering for doing wrong.
Any time Joe Pesci is in a Scorsese film it’s a monster movie.
Heard rumors that Spielberg, who ‘produced’ “Poltergeist,” actually directed pieces of it. But I can’t substantiate that, and director Tobe Hooper is no slouch in the horror genre. Love that film …
That’s right — he did only produce it. I think the thought that he directed it stuck in my head when I was 13 and I never double-checked myself.
It’s the attitude towards horror films that keeps the best people away once they’ve become established, I don’t think it has anything to do with whether a horror film makes money.
A director or writer has to have a taste for them to begin with and no matter how successful they get they’ll occasionally come back to them. Much the same way Speilberg will always go back and make a fantasy film occasionally.
I don’t think we will see a lot of A list directors doing horror but then again who knows. As you pointed out Raimi started out in horror and i still think his best film is in the genre and that is ‘Evil Dead 2′ i think he missed horror and wanted to come back.
A taste for horror … that’s a good point. Not everyone has it … but I think the bad rap the genre has also contributes to big names staying far away from it.
But how could would it be to see someone like Scorsese, and his impressive skill set, tackle a haunted house story?
Spielberg directed a couple of Night Gallery segments and the TV movie Something Evil early in his career. I would classify Jaws as a horror movie, and Jurassic Park contains horror elements.
Jaws counts … and look how great that turned out.
Not sure I agree on Jurassic Park, though …
Jurassic Park is not a horror movie, but it contains horror elements. Think of all the stalk ‘n’ slash scenes.
I don’t think Jurassic Park had any horror elements. Any film that has horror in it at all, no matter how little makes it a horror movie.
Horror is the only genre that you can’t mix with other genres and not have it over take them.
You can have a Western, but have your ever heard of a Western-horror movie? It’d be a horror movie set in the west.
The only other genre that can come close is to mixing with horror and not be overtaken by it is comedy.
Didn’t Toto write something about one last month?
I don’t get your point at all. I don’t see how horror “takes over” other genres any more than, say, science fiction does. Speaking of which, how about Alien as a movie that successfully combines horror and science fiction without the horror elements taking over? Predator does it too, and adds action to the mix.
Are you really saying that you can’t see the horror elements in the ‘kill scenes’ in Jurassic Park?
Actually, I wrote about this subject on one of my first post on his site last year some time. Beyond that, whether I was the first to talk about it, I have no clue. If he wrote about it last month or before, I missed it.
I don’t see any horror elements in the kill scenes in Jurassic park. What I saw was a monster movie that had been sanitized to get a PG rating. However just showing horrific things, blood, gore,violence..etc..etc…doesn’t make a horror movie. A war movie can have all those things and not be a horror movie.
Alien, if you take away the horror you don’t have a movie, the tag line for the film was “In space no one can hear you scream”. They marketed it as a “haunted house that just happened to be set in space.” The sci-fi element was the gimmick.
To my larger point, introduce horror into any other type of film and it changes film. Could you have a picture like….
“High Noon” , add a vampire subplot and still have the main focus of the story be about the Sheriff’s dilemma?
“She’s Having a Baby”, have Elizabeth Perkins character be a cannibal who tortures, kills and then serves the neighbors up on the BBQ and still classify the film as light, quirky romantic comedy?
Horror is such an overpowering element that it overshadows everything.
opus i have to disagree completely with you claiming that horror over powers everything. Yes horror is definatly hard to mix in with other films but horror movies themselves are even catigorized you have your slasher flicks, zombie flicks, psychological flicks and monster movies theres no real difference between say a werewlof movie and a jurassic park movie aprt from the way the director portrays it. Most early horror films were actuallys pgs themselves it’s quite ignorant to say PG, 12 rated films arnt horror films when they are jurassic park is a monster fantasy movie and it incorperates other elements such as action. and a war movie of course uses horror elements psychological elements it doesnt have to be blood and guts and killers with masks or cannibals at all. A war movie incorperates horror elements without over shadowing because like you said yourself its a war movie.