Guilty Pleasures

The other thread about "Under The Dome' reminds me of a guilty pleasure of the summer of 89.
Saw "Pet Sematary" at the show with my (second) girlfriend. It was fun, at least until half way, or 3/4 through.
I liked Fred Gwynne and to tell the truth actually looked -away- when the boy emerged from the dead. Scary at the time.
How come I enjoyed movies so much more then? A question not to be answered in this thread.

 

Return to Me, Secret of Nimh, Quigley Down Under, Wild Wild West, Howard the Duck, The Mummy, Elvira, Mistress of the Night, Transylvania 6-5000, The Worst Witch (Tim Curry version), Hocus Pocus, Murder She Wrote, Night Rider, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, Reaper, Herby the Love Bug, and the list goes on... Although, I don't know if they are guilty pleasures because I don't feel guilty for liking these movies or TV shows.

I don't consider The Notebook a guilty pleasure, but have heard it mentioned frequently as one. I LOVE The Notebook and consider it one of my top favorite movies of all time.

 

The Frighteners, Dark City (the Alex Proyas film), any grindhouse movie with a reputation, and there was a romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo that I quite enjoyed. None of them are really guilty, though my wife might laugh at me for the romantic comedy. The Frighteners is seriously my favorite live action movie. Lilo & Stitch is my favorite animated film, though I still have a soft spot for Rock & Rule.

 

No shame in liking Freaks and Geeks. It was a well written show with strong characters and the music of the era was woven in quite nicely. The hippie guidance counsellor was priceless.

 

I still laugh every time I hear Rush... all because of the gigantic drum set.

 

One TV show we loved but never told anyone: "Dirty Sexy Money".

 

"Blame It On Rio".
Michael Caine was funny, but I remember it for Michelle Johnson.

 

On the short list of "most depressing books I've ever read," Pet Sematary is definitely on there. The grief of the father from the loss of his 4-year-old son was just awful. There was one passage in the book where the father dreams that he's chasing after the kid, who has bolted across the lawn after a rolling baseball or something, and this time, the father barely catches the kid before he's run down by a truck. He embraces the little boy... and then wakes up and remembers that, yes, his son is still dead, and the dream was just a dream. Awful, awful, awful moment. I can't remember how they handled this in the movie.

 

do not like stories, movies where a child dies...

 

I'm the exact opposite!

I love it when a director has the balls to waste a kid(s). Especially annoyingly "cute" ones. That's why foreign films have more bite. They are not afraid of breaking taboos.

 

It's just me...it bothered me especially when my son was growing up. I did not want to even imagine losing him...

 

Oh, I understand.

I totally hate real violence though. Only movie violence!

Unfortunately, the real world is way too violent...

 

In the remake of the 'The Blob' (1988) annoying little Eddie gets slurped up by the Blob - and it's great!

 

in the real world violence hurts...Movie violence doesn't bother...just what I said about children.

 

Aww, now I'll have to read the book again, and see the movie too . Not sure how they handled that in the movie either. I just remember the father running as fast as he could to intercept the child and then the little boy's shoe flying through the air after the impact. As I said, I did like the sage-like character played by Fred Gwynne and distinctly remember those scenes of him sitting on his front porch, smoking his Winstons or Marlboros, watching the trucks roar by.
Another thing I really liked about it was that it was the only 're-animation' movie that ever made me scared. Usually stuff like that just leaves me cold. I thought it was genius to have the locus of the undead not merely as a cemetery, but as a 'pet sematary'-sounds innocuous & ordinary enough.
A couple of things about the film: King appears in a cameo as a minister.(Some may find this odd, but he makes it clear in "On Writing" that he was a churchgoer growing up and you can tell from his other fiction that he knows his way around one). I have also read that there may be a remake in the works. Not sure if I like that idea. Think I'd rather view the documentary referred to here on the making of the film:


Apparently the book runs over 300 pages. Huh. It's really been a long time.

 

would love a reunion show!

 

Life force. So bad it's good.

 

It's overblown and overcooked, sure - but still very entertaining. The restoration of 20 odd minutes of material (originally cut from the theatrical release) does help the film considerably, and the score was always great.

I'd nominate Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars as a far worse film - it starts out well enough but goes downhill pretty darn quickly!

 

There's a Top 10 List of "Things You Must Never Do in Movies." High on the list:

1) never kill a small child. [Hitchcock later gave an interview where he said he believed that was one of the reasons why his movie Sabotage was a flop. Blew up a kid on a bus.]

2) never kill the dog. [Turner & Hooch, etc.]

I can count on the fingers of one hand the films where the bad guy wins and all the good guys fail. This is one reason I won't watch the Freddy Kruger or Saw or Hostel or similar torture-porn films: I like my horror movies where the evil demons eventually are vanquished and the main good guys triumph. I have no problem with the Halloween films, where at least the central character seems to win, even though the bad guy comes back in later films.

 

I agree all all accounts; Kids & Dogs...a no! ...I cannot watch SAW and HOSTEL as well...It really freaks me out. Self mutilation does not cut it for me.

 

Well, I'm not sure that's quite true. Hitchcock felt he had erred not by killing little Stevie (which is faithful to the Conrad novel), but by mishandling the sequence with respect to his own logic of suspense - i.e. the audience isn't permitted any measure of relief following the prolonged and excruciating build up to Stevie's death. Thematically, the death of a child innocent is central to the concerns of Sabotage, but Hitchcock felt he had fumbled the staging of the sequence in purely formal terms.

Personally, I disagree with him. Sabotage is one of Hitchcock's most desolate films, but rightly so: it never lessens the death of Stevie by delivering cheap relief for the audience - his death is presented as being beyond assimilation and easy understanding, as it should be. As with the characters played by Janet Leigh in Psycho, Suzanne Pleshette in The Birds and Anna Massey in Frenzy, there is no rhyme or reason in their shocking deaths - they simply fall afoul of a random and indifferent universe. And even though Hitchcock did occasionally throw the audience a bone (the most famous example being the self-assured psychiatrist in the concluding scenes of Psycho), it's clear that he revisited (and restaged) the death of little Stevie time and again in his films.

 

I try to never disagree with Hitchcock, myself.

 

Hitchcock was a great filmmaker - maybe the best - but that doesn't mean he was infallible. Not every movie he made was a perfect work of art - he put out some weak offerings...

 

exactly...unless you can do better! fat chance.