October 2004
|
|
Peter Jackson's Scariest Movie Moments: Part One
By ANTHONY TIMPONE
Everybody loves talking about their favorite scary movies. Over the last year, I found this out first-hand while producing THE 100 SCARIEST MOVIE MOMENTS with Kaufman Films for the Bravo cable network, which will broadcast the special October 26-31 (see www.bravotv.com for the five-hour documentary’s complete airdate schedule and go here for previous news item). From horror all-stars (Dario Argento, Wes Craven, George Romero, John Carpenter, Rob Zombie, Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper and Bruce Campbell, to name a few) to the Olsen Twins (!), each expert witness had a choice recollection of sitting in a darkened theater and having the popcorn scared out of them.
New Zealand Oscar boy Peter Jackson grew up with a deep love of fright flicks, so when it came to talking terror for THE 100 SCARIEST MOVIE MOMENTS last January, he readily agreed. Despite a punishing Academy Awards publicity push for THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, Jackson, barefoot and in shorts, met director Kevin Kaufman, producer Patrick Moses and myself at his swank Beverly Hills hotel for the interview. Since only a small portion of his comments will make it on the show, the following is a lengthier transcript of his top terror picks.
NOSFERATU (1922)
"I actually saw NOSFERATU on Super-8 the first time. I used to read Famous Monsters of Filmland and look at all those pictures and hear about/read about these movies, but in New Zealand they were never screened. So when I was a teenager, there was a company in England that used to sell silent movies in Super-8: PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and NOSFERATU. I had to buy them, and they were quite expensive. NOSFERATU’s creepy. I’m not in love with the movie, but its most successful element really is the makeup on Max Schreck. It established an original look for the vampire that so affected people that you keep seeing it in modern films today."
PSYCHO (1960)
"PSYCHO is one of those movies where it obviously has a collection of scenes which are particularly freaky. The one where Arbogast gets stabbed and that great shot that Hitchcock did of him falling backward is almost surreal. It turns the murder into something of strange beauty in actual effect, because Hitch suddenly takes us away from the violence and into this very surreal, dreamlike moment which is quite remarkable. The strongest part of PSYCHO, though, is not the specific moments, but the overall creepy effect of the film that just draws you in, and the mood and atmosphere. It’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking."
THE EXORCIST (1973)
"THE EXORCIST made me feel sick when I saw it at age 18 on a rerelease. I came out of THE EXORCIST that night, and I got the flu, or some terrible sickness or fever, and I spent the next day or two in bed, and the film was so strong that I was a little worried that I caught some plague off the movie! I was physically ill afterward, and it wasn’t related to actually feeling ill in the cinema. It was two hours later, and I thought I’d been struck down by some punishment for seeing the movie. It’s just a masterful film. That’s the most brilliant example of never seeing the villain. If they’d attempted to actually show the devil in THE EXORCIST or portray him in any physical way, then the film would have just not been scary at all. And it was only because of all the use of imagery and symbolism to represent him that he became possibly the most terrifying villain that has ever not been seen on film.
"I can’t really remember specific moments. I mean, obviously the candle and the projectile vomiting and the head turning and everything else. THE EXORCIST’s a movie that for me is not really about the moments; it’s actually about the overall impact. That film transcends its moments and creates an experience that’s just so disturbing, especially the last half. I’m not a particularly religious person, but when I came out of the movie and got sick, I thought that I probably should have been [laughs]."
THE WICKER MAN (1973)
"THE WICKER MAN is probably the best Christopher Lee film, and it is a truly great horror film. It’s the first pagan horror movie. The entire tone of the film is unlike everything you’ve ever seen before. It has a pagan creepiness that keeps building. Obviously, the most memorable moments from THE WICKER MAN which everyone has ingrained in their mind are those final scenes with Edward Woodward being trapped and put into the body of the wicker man and set on fire. It’s creepy, horrifying and unexpected; it’s an ending that you’re not used to seeing in a film. I mean, that should never have happened. And because it did, and you’re just watching it horrified, it just suddenly makes it feel more like real life."
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)
"My first experience with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was kind of strange because in New Zealand, when I was young, the film wasn’t available. It got banned actually, and this was before the time of video and there was just no way to see CHAINSAW. But a company in England released it as a feature-length Super-8 film, so my first experience was actually projecting it in my bedroom that way. It was up there on my screen—on my bedroom wall—and I remember being so affected by it that as soon as it was finished, I wound the reels back and I started it all over again and just watched it straight through immediately afterward.
And there’s no doubt that the scene where Leatherface just suddenly comes out of that doorway… It’s a classic sense of boredom before the sting where you’ve got this slow creepy exploration of the house and up the hallway and it’s really naturalistic, and you’re kind of getting bored and you think, ‘Come on, what’s going to happen?’ And then suddenly [makes chainsaw noise] and bang, he gets whacked on the head with a hammer! And the impact is much more than what it should be because of the slow build. All of these shocks in these movies are often constructed in a very similar way. It’s like creating a period of boredom where the energy winds down and becomes very natural and you are just totally settled in this lull, and then wham!, the shock comes."
JAWS (1975)
"JAWS has lots of freaky scenes. I saw JAWS at the absolute perfect age, because I would have been about 14 years old and it was summer in New Zealand, and it just had a profound effect on your ability to actually go swimming. And the scene that is the most memorable one, which is even scary today even though you know it’s coming and you’ve seen it 20 times, is when Roy Scheider is chucking the offal off the back of the boat and he’s talking. And again, Spielberg just constructs that with a very naturalistic kind of approach, and it’s just not giving you any clue whatsoever that something’s about to happen, and he doesn’t even give it away with the camera framing. He kind of leaves room for the shark to suddenly thrust out of the water, but it’s only the barest amount of room. It’s shot in a way that leaves you no real clues about what’s gonna happen. When that [shark] comes up it’s scary today, no matter how many times you’ve see it.
"With the passing of time, the shark looks a little bit mechanical. Sure it was good that you didn’t see the shark, it added to the mystery, but when you did see the shark it was still frightening and quite remarkable. It didn’t lose any scariness. The other great shot in JAWS is in the sequence where the shark is towing the barrels and suddenly its face just goes right past the camera. And the other shot in JAWS that I find really creepy is the overhead shot looking down at [the fisherman hanging onto] the small boat, and you see this outline of the shark silently gliding underneath. It was the first time in the movie that you really get a sense of the shark’s size and scale. It was just creepy, that feeling that there’s this monster under the water making no sound, and you don’t even realize that it’s there. The shot just gives the secret away, and it’s really scary."
CARRIE (1976)
"CARRIE’s got the classic moment which has almost become more famous than the movie. People remember the moment more than they remember the movie. The sting at the end in the cemetery, with the hand coming out, is the classic slow build and just really innocent and sweet, gentle sort of shock construction and pacing, and then the hand comes up. That was obviously the first time that we’d really seen that type of shock, which today seems rather clichéd, but it’s only because everybody has copied CARRIE."
HALLOWEEN (1978)
"HALLOWEEN is the scariest movie I have ever seen in my life. It’s not particularly frightening now when you see it, because you’re sort of used to what happens. But when that film first came out, I had never seen anything as scary. It was just absolutely white-knuckle stuff. It was the first time I’d ever seen the Steadicam, which right from that opening shot just dragged you into the film; it just built up this incredibly sinister and strong feeling of suspense which just gripped you and it never let you go. It just somehow retained its suspense and tightened and tightened and tightened to that climactic pursuit of Jamie Lee Curtis through the house. The one moment that got me completely, and the rest of the audience, is where you think it’s over and you think he’s dead and he just sits up in the background. That was absolutely terrifying."
DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979)
"DAWN OF THE DEAD was a movie that had a big impact on me. I saw it when it first came out, and it was the first movie I saw that I rushed back and saw four times in a row at the cinema. I just had to keep watching this movie. It was thoroughly entertaining: scary, suspenseful, funny, very imaginative and it had good characters. It was solid drama within the structure of the zombie movie. There was one moment that no matter how many times I was watching it, I would cringe. It was very early in the movie when they find a very small room, and there are zombies feeding on a corpse. And there’s just a moment where a zombie rips flesh with her teeth, and it was the first time that I’d ever seen that particular makeup effect. I’d never seen the prosthetic skin and the ripping, and it was so disturbing that as I watched the film two, three, four times, I was dreading that moment, because I knew it would disturb me when I saw it again."
