262. Suspense Movies – Part 2

 

Sorcerer – Came out in 1977.  Adapted from the novel The Wages of Fear which was made earlier in 1953:-)!  A gangster, a crooked banker, a hit man and an Arab terrorist are stranded and on the run in a small village in South America. Their only chance of escape is to drive two trucks filled with unstable dynamite (leaking nitroglycerin) up a long and rocky mountain road in order to plug an escalating oil refinery blaze. With their deadly cargo likely to explode at the slightest bump, the four men must put aside their differences and work together to survive.

Trivia - Director William Friedkin initially wanted Steve McQueen to star in the film. McQueen accepted the part, but on one condition--he wanted a co-starring role for his then wife, Ali MacGraw. Friedkin would not accept his conditions, and McQueen dropped out of the film. Friedkin later went on record, regretting not accepting McQueen's conditions. He tried to get Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson, but neither wanted to travel at that time. He stated that casting Roy Scheider in the lead was the worst casting decision he has ever made. Although he felt Scheider is a good actor who did a great job, he is only interesting in a film as a "second or third banana, he's not a star." Amidou, who played the Arab Kassem/"Martinez", was Friedkin's only real first choice--all the other actors were "fourth, fifth and even sixth choices."

One of the reviews from IMDB...

Friedkin claims this was the toughest film to make of his career, and it isn't hard to see why. The balance of this film takes place in some woe begotten Latin American country. You can just feel the poverty and desperation in the air as the only work is for an oil drilling firm who doesn't exactly seem bent on worker safety. The elements are intentionally brutal and they only add to the tension. And thats even before this story really gets going.

Early on, we are introduced to four characters who are all guilty of doing something terrible in one corner of the world or another. Roughly a half hour into the film, all four find themselves in a tiny impoverished Latin American village trying to eek out a living and forget the troubles they left behind. Not only is the local economy weak, but the place is socially on the verge of revolution. It's amazing the kind of jobs men will volunteer for to get out of these circumstances. Anyway, these four men are given the chance of transporting some highly explosive dynamite through rugged terrain in crappy old trucks so it can be used to put out a massive oil fire some 200 miles away. It is noted by one of the men that more than enough explosives are being transported. Obviously, at least one of the trucks is not expected to make it! Not only do you have an explosive cargo with unreliable trucks, but also there are armed rebels along the way who probably won't just let you pass right on through. Still, the reward for completing this job is just too much to pass on.

The film is very, very good. In fact the skill that it took to make the film is responsible for most of the stars I'm giving it. The story itself is often just not believable. The journey these four men take is ludicrously perilous. They drive their vehicles over rickety bridges that nobody in real life would have tried to get over in those trucks. Like in other Friedken films, no character is completely likable, but that only makes it tougher to figure out who will live and who will die. There are a few nice twists here and there, right up to the very end to keep you guessing. The acting is exceptional. Scheider was Friedkin's fourth or fifth choice for the main character. Steve McQueen originally wanted it badly, but he demanded a part included for then wife Ali McGraw. Friedkin balked at this and then later regretted the decision. He later stated that he never thought Scheider was a good enough leading man. This is an error, however. Scheider is a terrific actor and his performance here is outstanding.

The film bombed badly at the box office. Heck, if you weren't in line to see Star Wars that year, you were in line to see Smokey and the Bandit! This is definitely one of Friedkin's best, and it has somehow almost been completely forgotten. The film apparently got a PG rating but it is filled with violence and all manner of evil goings on. You'll have to suspend your disbelief for some of the scenes, but you'll be glad you did. I'll give it 8 of 10 stars.

  

The Night of the Hunter – Came out in 1955.  Based on the novel by Davis Grubb. Murderous ex-convict Harry Powell misrepresents himself as a prison chaplain upon his release from prison. Acting on a story told to him by his now-dead cellmate, "Reverend" Powell cons the cellmate's widow, Willa Harper, into marrying him in hopes that her children will tell him where their father hid the money from his last robbery. After killing their mother, he embarks on a hunt for the children, who have sensed his evil and are running from him.

One of the reviews from IMDB...

Extraordinary, unparalleled, breathtaking ... that's how I would appraise the film's visuals, from DP Stanley Cortez. The images are all in B&W, and many have a noir design straight out of German Expressionism. Sharp angles, high-contrast "hard" lighting, and deep shadows amplify form, or rather distort reality, and as such project human experience as an exaggeration of the emotional.

Some of the images in "The Night Of The Hunter" are so enthralling that they will live on in the collective mind as long as cinema exists. Who can forget that famous underwater scene wherein a dead woman's body sits upright in a car with her hair flowing along the current like seaweed, accompanied by background music that is so dreamlike? One of my favorite images is the one wherein Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) lies in blissful repose on a bed as Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) stands by a window in an unadorned room with angular walls that slope upward, as if in a church.

One of the most haunting, and famous, sequences has the two children, John and Pearl, in a rowboat, as they make a Homeric odyssey down a river, lorded over by giant spider webs, frogs, and rabbits. And then there's that electrifying scene with Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) in silhouette, sitting in a chair, holding a shotgun, as Harry Powell sings "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms". Cinematic brilliance extraordinaire!

Consistent with its expressionistic visuals, the story is presented from the POV of a child's nightmare. John and Pearl symbolize innocence, and the bogeyman comes in the form of an adult, a godlike man who cons the gullible townsfolk including the children's mom. Our good reverend Powell is less interested in saving souls than he is in finding all that loot stashed away somewhere. Thus, the film's underlying theme is at least as relevant now as it was fifty years ago; the film has not aged one bit.

Production design is sparse, true to the film's visual style and to the setting in Depression era West Virginia. The casting is perfect. Robert Mitchum has just the right look and voice for the part of Harry Powell. I like how he calls to John and Pearl ... "chill-drenn?" Lillian Gish is well-suited to represent ... reality.

And those two kids likewise are ideally cast. Love the way Pearl, with her round face and those rag-a-muffin curls refers to herself, in that Southern drawl, as "Pell". And the film's horror combines with humor in many scenes, one of which has "Pell" sitting on the ground with scissors in hand nonchalantly cutting up paper currency into paper dolls.

Acting is generally exaggerated, again consistent with what one would expect in a nightmare. Evelyn Varden, as Icey Spoon (love that name), hams it up in a gossipy, mother hen sort of way. And Shelley Winters effectively jitters her way through the film, ghostlike, her character lost in delusion.

The film's original score is haunting and mournful, and could hardly set a more appropriate tone: "Dream little one, dream; dream my little one, dream; oh the hunter in the night fills your childish heart with fright; fear is only a dream; so little one dream".

With its brilliant photography, its unpopular but deeply truthful theme, and its nightmarish story, Charles Laughton's "The Night Of The Hunter" is high up on my list of twenty best films of all time.

 

The Vanishing – Came out in 1988. Dutch fim. Original title - Spoorloos.  Based on the 1984 Tim Krabbé novella Het gouden ei, translated into English by Claire Nicholas White as The Golden Egg. In 2003, mainly due to the continuing reputation of Spoorloos, the novella was republished in a new translation by Sam Garrett under the title The Vanishing.

One of the reviews from IMDB...

The dry subject matter turns into the most horrific movie I have ever seen. Absolute genius.

This is not a token 10 out of ten to try and inflate the ratings for a movie I like. This is one of the few perfect movies I can honestly say I have ever seen.

I'm a huge horror fanatic and I put off seeing this despite it being recommended time and time again because the subject matter is so mundane. This move is the only horror move I have ever seen move that transcended scary to downright shocking to my very soul.

It was a very unique experience that no movie has ever duplicated before or since. Once it was over, i actually just sat there for about 10 minutes thinking about what I had just seen, it was only after pondering it for a bit that i realized that the pacing and just sheer implications of what i had just seen was probably the most disturbing and awful yet utterly brilliant and in a strange way beautiful thing I had ever seen because as others have stated, it couldn't have possibly ended any other way. The viewer won't want it to end any other way.

Through impeccable pacing and direction George Sluizer manipulates the viewer in a way I never thought could be possible, it would be criminal to spoil ANYTHING from this movie but I found myself in the same conundrum the protagonist Rex finds himself in at the ending and rooting something yet at the same time dreading to see it's result, but I must see. I can't think of any ending to any movie that was more fitting and a better conclusion than the ending of Spoorloos.

Fans of psychological horror, this more than anything is required viewing. I await the day that a film can make me feel the way this one did and frankly I doubt it will ever come.

Bravo, and shame on you George for the abysmal American and Americanized remake that absolutely ruined this movie for so many people I know. This movie is a masterpiece and half the people I know will never be able to enjoy it.

Cheers till next time😊!!