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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
 Posted - 05/05/2006 : 7:07:30 PM
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A few months ago, in [url="http://www.Jabootu.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2781"this thread[/url], I had mentioned that Dungeons & Dragons director was going to be at it again with An American Haunting. I was hoping that he had learned some craft, but boy oh boy, he did not.
To be fair, he didn't have anything nearly as boneheaded as blue lipstick or the equality McGuffin that drove Dungeons & Dragons. There are plenty of boneheaded things in here, just not quite that bad. ([url="http://www.Jabootu.com/d&d.htm"]Click here for Pip's review of Dungeons & Dragons[/url]) But there isn't an ounce of filmmaking craft in this movie. The whole thing is composed of shocks. Something jumping out at you and you go "augh!" There are no scares and no creepy or suspenseful feeling. Although he has suspenseful music playing almost constantly, especially during the establishing shots of the house. You know, when nothing scary is going on.
The basic action revolves around the young daughter being terrorized by an unseen spirit. At one point, it had her suspended in mid-air and slapping her face over and over like the Three Stooges. I was laughing out loud at this part and flabberghasted that the spirt dragged her around a little and then did it again. Nothing says quality like repeating yourself. And nothing says quality like repeating yourself. Apparently Solomon had seen the Evil Dead movies, because he rips off elements from them like the POV shot and the noises from no place.
The third act has a lengthy sequence that turns out to be a dream sequence. Holy second season of Dallas, Batman! This is a shame since this scene actually represented something of interest. I could actually feel my sails deflating. This is followed by another, shorter scene that also turns out to be a dream. This is followed by what I thought was a dream, but turns out to be a vision that was supposed to reveal something. Problem is, it was shot in a way that i couldn't really tell what was going on. That, and after getting hit with two dreams in a row, I kinda stopped trying.
The movie as a whole is pretty boring. Not a lot is going on in it, although the director trys to hide this by moving the camera a lot or playing scary music or sound effects. It doesn't work, but he's trying.
I found the ending baffling, although when I pieced it together it turned out to be as stupid as the rest of the movie.
It's a pity to see Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek embarrass themselves in this movie. They've done good work and deserve better. |
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Victoria Silverwolf
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
80 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 12:28:03 AM
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Thanks for the review.
This film was of some minor local interest to me, since it is based on the Bell Witch legend, which is pretty well-known here in Tennessee. I note that this film is promoting itself as the story of the only "documented" case of the death of a human being caused by a spirit. In fact, the "documentation" is nil (despite claims of "hundreds" of witnesses, including Andrew Jackson.)
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Witch[/url]
quote:
An investigation by the Middle Tennessee Skeptics concluded that the tale of the Bell Witch is largely an invention founded entirely on later elaborations of the diary of Richard William Bell. Bell's diary was written some 30 years after the events they purport to describe, which took place when the author was a child of 5-10 years old. The investigation turned up no evidence that any of the other alleged participants in the events ever recorded anything of their experiences. In particular, there is no record in Andrew Jackson's journals of his ever having visited the Bells, or of any encounter by him with a supernatural being.
There's nothing wrong with a good ghost story, but keep in kind that it is a story.
Reality is a crutch for people who can't face up to science fiction. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 01:05:10 AM
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NOOOOO!!! No no no no no!! The Bell Witch movie was directed by Courtney Solomon?? Bloody hell!! I live in Chattanooga myself and we were kind of excited by the movie coming out around here. But I will never see another film by that hack again. Hell, I'd go if Uwe boll directed it. But not Courtney. No way. Frell.
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
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Victoria Silverwolf
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
80 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 03:12:47 AM
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Greetings from another person from the Chattanooga area!
There are a couple of other cinematic (or direct to DVD, I suppose) versions of the legend.
"The Bell Witch Haunting" (2004)
Review with images:
[url]http://horrortalk.com/reviews/BellWitch/BellWitchHaunting.htm[/url]
"Bell Witch: The Movie" (2005)
Their own site:
[url]http://www.bellwitchthemovie.com/[/url]
And it's got Betsy Palmer (Game show sweetie and Jason's mom in Friday the Thirteenth) as the voice of the witch!
Reality is a crutch for people who can't face up to science fiction. |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 07:36:36 AM
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Well, there was some hope for this movie as Dungeons & Dragons was a synergy of talentless or sorely misused people all in one project. Such as, the writers are supposedly pretty good, but they didn't know jack about adventure stories, so they wrote a crap script.
It could have been that Dungeons & Dragons was his Piranha II, but such is not the case. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 11:25:44 AM
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Hey thanks, Victoria!! Didn't know about either of those.
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
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hbrennan
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Philippines
1455 Posts |
Posted - 05/08/2006 : 11:00:15 AM
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I work in Memphis, TN and my wife lived in Chattanooga for a number of years. She and the rest of the family went to see "An American Haunting" this past weekend (I knew better). They absolutely hated it. According to them, the only good scenes were the ones showed in the previews.
"...yet it hadn't destroyed his brain."
re: Charles "The Butcher" Benton (1956)
http://henrybrennan.blogspot.com/ |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2006 : 5:28:05 PM
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CHUD has an interview with Courtney Solomon on their [url="http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=interviews&id=6592"]website:[/url]
The part I found interesting was the stuff about the Dungeons & Dragons movie. It sounds like he's just making excuses, but some of that stuff may be true. |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2006 : 9:17:18 PM
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I have to introduce spoilers to justify this, but there is something completely repulsive about this movie.
Spoilers Below!!
Check out the synopsis at The Movie Spoiler:
http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/americanhaunting.html
If the spoiler is right, the kicker is that John Bell raped his own daughter. Wasn't John Bell a real historical figure? Is it too much to ask that movies don't tar actual historical people - long since dead and incapable of defending themselves - as child molesters? |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 05/14/2006 : 06:32:10 AM
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Item #1:
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Where was I? Oh yeah.
Item #1 The spoiler is right. I actually kind of missed it. That was revealed in the vision that I really didn't pay attention to. I didn't mention in my review the rather distasteful scenes of the girl apparently being raped by the unseen spirit. They did that at least twice that I recall. I guess a descendant of John Bell didn't mind according to the link above where Solomon says the guys stated he liked the movie. Some people just don't care for their ancestors, I guess. But it is this element, BTW, that ties the bulk of the movie to the barely-there modern day scenes which depicts a girl being similarly attacked at the begining and then her mother reads the whole account and pieces together that her daughter is similarly been raped by her father and manifesting an invisible ghost. And then they put text up on the screen that was like a dictionary definition of poltergeist that included a meaning that was something an adolescent girl can conjure up in times of stress. Bleah |
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Jethro
Altar Boy of Jabootu
Australia
7 Posts |
Posted - 05/14/2006 : 6:58:23 PM
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The statement of "the only documented case of the death of a human being caused by a spirit", is in itself up to some conjecture surely with the Amityville hoax (oops l hope l haven't ruined that for anyone) also claiming death by evil spirit intervention; the original DeFoe murders!
Now normally l would be very cynical about a Hollywood movie claiming it's based on real events, but since Michael Bay did a remake l find myself forced to total believability. If Mike says it's true, then true it must be. After all he also brought to light certain happenings down Texas way as well, which surprisingly had nothing to do with Ed Gein in anyway. Tsk almost had me fooled Mr Tobe Hooper.
Actually speaking of the Amityville remake, we have invented a game downunder which not only includes watching the movie, but also brings in our other favourite activity ... drinking our own body weights in alcohol. To play you need a group of people who have a firm grounding in horror movies say post "The Exorcist", you will also need a few bottles of decent whisky ... single malt folks, (and kiddies don't try this at home, we're professionals). Anyways for every clear rip from another movie someone identifies everyone is required to take a shot. We actually got to the half way mark before passing out the other night. Though l'm still somewhat unclear whether you can count "The Ring" and "Ringu" as separate rips. |
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