Skip to main content

The Avenging Conscience (1914) - D.W. Griffith

The Avenging Conscience is a loose adaptation of the Tell Tale Heart and Annabel Lee by none other than Baltimore's own Edgar Allan Poe. The original context of the stories depicted in this film are already scary, so it only serves for the film to be just as scary. right? Well, no. This movie is in no way scary. Not by any sense of the word.

The story is a pretty decent one that shows a man being pushed to his limits. He turns to murder to finally ease his pain. That is the coolest part of the whole story. The movie doesn't ever really take off though. It just sits on the stage failing to ever take that extra step that's needed for a movie to be mildly entertaining. We are still shades away from the Silver Age of Film. Once we hit the 1920's the quality of not only the film but also the story will be apparent. Movies will start to actually be scary, well, sort of.

As far as silent movie story-lines, this one is pretty top notch. I am also going to give credit to the special effects department. D.W. Griffith really out does himself with this movie. If you are a fan of early horror and silent films than this movie is just for you. If you like Freddy Kruger and you want blood and guts, then your going to have to wait for the 50's and 60's.

*for its time.

S!D

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Human Monster (1939) - Walter Summers

Bela Lugosi turns in a fantastic performance. It is right on par with the exact same films that had made him famous like Dracula . My personal favorite being The Black Cat . Like the latter, this film suffered from poor circulation and lack of advertisement. Either that or the public wasn't interested in seeing Lugosi in anything else other than his famous bloodsucker. This film has a broad and well acted plot that was rich with detail.  Lugosi has two sides in this picture. His well loved and compassionate side. The other is a strict, brutal lone shark that acts as a sinister villain to blind and handicapped people. He really brutalizes his victims. It's a macabre message to pay your bills.  The film is slow moving and plagued by the usual setbacks from its time. Most of the nation wasn't really that concerned with horror at the time. But studios knew that they would always have an audience. This film is a prime example of that. It's sad because it's 

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t

Inseminoid (1981) - Norman J. Warren

What can be said for mindless schlock pictures like this one. They were pumped out in droves during the eighties. Inseminoid !? give me a break! It sounds like some pre-pubescent teenage boys came up with the title. On the plus side the movie isn't horrible to look at and it has a decent amount of gore. If you can separate yourself from the political incorrectness, then you might have a perfectly decent Sci-Fi Monster Feature.  A research team exploring caves on Jupiter accidentally awakens an ancient alien that rapes and impregnates one of the team members. She suffers from terrible shock and trauma, leading to a complete mental breakdown as her pregnancy accelerates faster and faster. Feeling threatened she decides to kill anyone she deems a threat. Can the rest of the research team survive or will they all become victims of INSEMINOID! Apparently this movie had a million dollar budget. That's really shocking considering the outcome of the picture. The acting