Thriller #2 - Jaws (1975)

Jaws is pretty awesome. It's another Stephen Spielberg movie (One of his firsts, actually) and it's about a shark. The shark is not named Jaws, no matter what anyone tries to tell you. The shark doesn't have a name. Because it's a shark. So this unnamed shark is attacking the beaches of Amity Island, a vacation town, which isn't really that weird, and later is specifically and repeatedly targeting a group of tree people in the middle of the ocean, which apparently is unusual, sharks not really having the brain power for that. Learn something new everyday, don't you. So the town sheriff and a marine biologist and...this one fisherman...go out into the ocean to hunt the shark - they're the aforementioned three people. The biologist is Richard Dreyfuss who is, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, awesome.

Jaws has grown on me since I first saw it. It's a very slow movie and the second act is very different than the first, and that threw me off at first, but looking back on it, I think I really like it. There were a couple of moments that really actually scared me, and the suspense was really good, and the characters are really great. I actually couldn't understand the grizzled old fisherman most of the time, which sort of made the plot a little hard to follow, but I think I did alright. There's this big scene near the end where he has a huge monologue, and I'm not really sure what it was about - something about sharks and trauma and Illinois - I don't know. But it's cool, I think it was only thematically important, not a big plot device.

I mentioned that the first act is way different than the second act, and it is. The first half of the movie is on the beach and a disaster movie with loads of characters and ethical questions, and the second half is three guys in the middle of the ocean with a mysterious force of evil. It's weird. It's like watching two very closely related movies, and I did not like it at first. However, I do think that it works. The more psychological part is much better as the ending, and the beginning established the horror and the threat of the shark. It's a good balance.

Now, I have heard a lot about how horrendously bad the shark is in this movie. A lot. It's really the only thing I knew about the movie before I watched it - The shark sucks. After all of the hype about it, I was expecting like a sock puppet or something, but the shark is not that bad. I mean, it is awful, yes. Bad shark puppet, that is. It really does not lot bad at all underwater in the dark for short periods of time, which is how they usually shoot it. It doesn't ruin the movie and it gives the impression that the shark is huge and terrifying. It does its job.

So to recap: Jaws: Good movie, now that I think about it. Richard Dreyfuss is awesome. Robert Shaw I can't understand. Roy Sheider is also awesome, even thought I didn't mention him earlier. I really enjoy the way he dramatically takes off his glasses. The shark is not as bad as people say it is. Now you know. It's definitely a classic for a reason, unlike The French Connection, which I cannot imagine anyone liking.

Thriller #3 - The Exorcist (1973)

I have to say, I was disappointed by The Exorcist. It was supposed to be scary. It was supposed to be one of the best horror movies ever made. I was terrified of this movie. And it was not scary. It was often very disturbing, it was sometimes kind of creepy, but as a whole it is not scary. I mean look at the poster: "The Scariest Movie of All Time," please. This movie is roughly as scary as Ghostbusters. I'm not really sure why, either. The concept is really scary and disturbing - especially since it was so random - and it's executed well and most of the special effects don't look so bad - The head spinning has really aged, though, and the movie probably would be a lot scarier without all the vomiting. Regan looks really scary, it's psychological and the acting's good and the music is really terrifying, but for some reason it just does not add up into a scary movie. It wasn't a bad movie, but without the scariness, it was just kind of slow. Nothing about this movie was really terrific - It had a good atmosphere, I suppose. Very blue. Priest was good. Good actor, that Jason Miller.

I sort of have a hard time following this movie too, actually. I read online that there's something about the demon getting revenge on the priest and this all has to do with the dig that the movie starts with - the movie starts with an archaeological dig, I don't know why - but I didn't get any of that while I was watching it. Apparently there's some sort of Captain Howdy face too, but I just didn't see that, either. The movie is undoubtedly good, but I just wasn't that impressed by it. The Exorcist was just okay. The Birds, for example, was better.

And you know what - It's called The Exorcist, but that guy is only in the movie for like fifteen minutes, and then he dies. What's up with that, movie?

Thriller #4 - North By Northwest (1959)

North By Northwest is another Hitchcock, this time with Cary Grant and a different icy blonde, Eva Marie Saint. In case you're not in the know, this is the movie where Cary Grant gets chased by a crop duster - I'm sure you've seen that scene before. Watching that part was kind of surreal - Here was this thirty seconds of film that was so familiar to me because I'd just seen it so many times, right in the middle of this movie I'd never seen before. It made me think a lot of how much of an impact movies have on our culture - I'd never seen this movie and yet this one little section of film has been in my life for years and years. And then I sort of lost that train of thought and continued watching the movie, but for a second I was really on the verge of an epiphany about mass culture and the effect of fiction on our lives. It was pretty intense.

North By Northwest confuses me a little bit - I follow the characters and the overall plot, but I'm confused by the storyline. Cary Grant's character whose name I can't remember is suddenly being mistaken for a spy in an unnamed government agency, is blamed for the death of a man, and is forced to go on the lam - Which only rhymed by accident, by the way. I get all that. What I'm confused about is what Cary Grant is trying to do the whole movie, other than avoid being killed. I think he's trying to find the spy he's being mistaken for, but I'm just not quite sure.

I did like North By Northwest - It was a fun movie and it had a really cool, 50's spy atmosphere. Hitchcock, I've noticed, is really great at atmosphere. Cary Grant was good, of course, and Eva Marie Saint was really cool and icy and elegant. I liked the whole movie and I thought it was cool because they announced the Michigan railroad line in the train station. There was a really big train motif in this movie. I liked North By Northwest, but I wasn't quite as wowed by it as I have been by other Hitchcock movies.

Thriller #5 - The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Thriller #6 was Alien, which I've already watched back in Science Fiction, so the next movie was The Silence of the Lambs. This is definitely the most disturbing movie I've seen so far. It's about serial killers and you see all kinds of corpses and mutilation and it is very creepy. I thought it was going to be scary, though. I thought it was really going to stick with me and keep me up at night and pop into my head in the dark, like that creepy dog-guy in The Shinning, but it didn't. It was definitely very creepy while I was watching it, but that's about it. I thought I was going to have trouble with the movies in this genre, and I haven't so far. I'm a little disappointed, really.

So, The Silence of the Lambs: Clarice Starling, a trainee FBI agent, is trying to catch a serial killer, Buffalo Bill. The FBI decides that the best way to do this is to send her to Hannibal Lecter, a cannibal who's already in prison, and ask him to help. And that works, which just goes to show what I know about crime investigation, because it is not the route I would have taken.

Silence of the Lambs is, justifiably, really well-known for Hannibal Lector. Even though the rest of the movie is good, Hannibal Lector is what makes it really stand out - Sort of like the end of The Usual Suspects. Hannibal Lector is a serial killer and he's always going around just knowing things about people and making hissing noises, but he's also very refined and cultured and elegant. Part of what's so creepy about him is that he's not nearly as creepy as he really should be. He's a serial killer, and they have you sort of rooting for him! That's pretty intense. Hannibal Lecter is really what you come away from this movie remembering, even above the guy making a suit out of skin.

Hannibal is Anthony Hopkins, and he's really good. I've only seen him in one other movie before - Othello, as Othello, which seems like a bizarre casting choice to me, but whatever - and he's way better in this one. He won an Oscar for it, even though he was only on screen for 24 minutes. The Silence of the Lambs is actually the last movie to win all five major Oscars - Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay and Picture - and is the only horror movie to ever win Best Picture. Jodie Foster is Clarice, and she was terrific, but I've seen her in a lot of stuff, and she's always good. Someone tried to kill Ronald Reagan for her, you know.

This movie is actually also famous for, of all things, treating the animals they used really well. All of the moths they used had there own little homes and costumes and not a single moth was hurt. There actually is a real moth with a skull on its back, the Death's-Head Hawk Moth. It looks like this:

It's disgustingly gigantic. The moth on the poster, however, is not that type of moth - The skull is actually a Salvador Dali painting of seven naked women made to look like a skull. And now you know.

I liked The Silence of the Lambs, even though it was disappointedly un-scary. Again. The acting and the story is really good, and it's got a lot of good imagery. And, that hissing thing that Hannibal Lector does? Anthony Hopkins just threw it in, and the whole crew liked it so much that it made it into the movie, even though they were all convinced that it wouldn't. If you watch that part, you'll notice that there's a nice long pause between "Chianti" and "Hisshisshiss," so it could be cut out easily. Fun Fact.

Thriller #7 - The Birds (1963)

So The Birds is an Alfred Hitchcock movie about all of the birds attacking people. Why? We don't know! It makes for a very bizarre movie. It's actually really creepy - You'd think that a movie about birds attacking people would be horrifying and hilarious, but it's not. It's just horrifying. It's not so much the bird attacks that are scary - because of the old technology they are a little bit amusing, and the phone booth scene is distracting because the set is obviously larger than a real phone booth (Gasp! It's a phone booth that's bigger on the inside! Of course a time machine would protect her from seagulls!). But the other scenes - The birds flocking and hitting doors and sitting around watching people - those are really creepy. Shockingly, this Alfred Hitchcock film is very suspenseful.

The Birds doesn't have any music in it - just a carefully composed set of sound effects - which really helps the atmosphere, I think. It makes it seem more realistic - That's what makes most of the movie so scary, actually. Birds won't just start attacking people, but they could. And what would we do? There are all kinds of birds out there - It would be the Bird Apocalypse! That's really scary!

The movie stars Tippi Hendron and Rod Taylor, who I think looks just like Cary Grant even though nobody else sees it, and they're very good. Alfred Hitchcock is in it at the very beginning, and apparently owns poodles, which makes sense, really. I really liked The Birds. It was really pretty scary, and it was well-done, and I've been watching the birds for signs of conspiracy ever since, so it was obviously effective. The acting is sort of outdated though, so seems kind of stiff, and it really needs to be restored. There are all sorts of little blips in the film and the color is really uneven from one scene to another. But boy is it scary.

Thriller #8 - The French Connection (1971)

So you know how police work seems really boring because a lot of it is just sitting around waiting for something to happen? Well The French Connection is a lot like actual police work. It's about these policemen, Doyle and Charnier (Doyle is Gene Hackman, by the way), who are trying to catch a guy they strongly suspect is smuggling cocaine, and the man who's selling it to him - A french guy: The french connection, one might say.

That's really it.

Something about this movie makes it really hard to connect to - Maybe it's because you can't really understand anyone, maybe it's because the storyline is kind of vague - but I just did not ever feel engrossed in the movie. When I watch the other movies, I usually feel like a part of them, even if I don't really like them. This movie, though: It was like the movie was just playing in the room I was sitting. I get more invested in Mythbusters than I did with this movie. There have definitely been other movies like this - Reds, All Quiet on the Western Front, most of The Third Man - but that doesn't make this movie any better.

It did have its good points, though. It was very 70's, which was kind of fun. I was slightly disappointed by the 70's that I got, though - the DVD menu plays this funky 70's cop show music, and there was nothing like that in the actual movie. There's a pretty good car chase with a train, but that was really the only interesting thing that happened the whole movie. It's a shame - it had looked promising. I probably won't ever revisit The French Connection.

Thriller #9 - Rosemary's Baby (1969)

Rosemary's Baby was, once again, disappointingly un-scary. It started off pretty promising - In the beginning, they're considering a new apartment, and at the end of a little hallway, there's a big old heavy dresser. And there's a closet behind it. And the apartment is empty last person who lived there died. But they still buy the apartment! So that was really creepy. There were a couple of other moments like that, but largely it was very un-terrifying. I guess I'll have to wait for The Exorcist.

So Rosemary's Baby is about a woman who's pregnant with the Antichrist. You know that. I know that. Everyone knows that. This makes the end kind of anticlimactic. You already know how it's going to end, so it seems very unexciting. The whole movie is kind of slow. I did like it, but it didn't do anything for me, really. I did like the introduction of the creepy enthusiastic neighbors. They were old-timey and friendly in a really unsettling way.

Good image there. I also liked the part when she was craving the rare meat - that was done well, subtle, but made its point. And hey, fun fact - the apartment building where they shot the movie is the same building where John Lennon was shot. So, not fun really, I guess.

On the whole, I really liked the way the movie looked, I thought it was a good movie overall, the pacing is a little slow, and it's really too...60's weird. Really, really, surreal.