Eli Roth’s History of Horror

[bassman]

On October 14th, AMC will premiere the first episode of it’s new docu-series, History of Horror. I’m not the biggest fan of Roth or his films, but he IS a huge fan of the genre and AMC’s previous series, James Cameron’s History of Science Fiction, was very well done and quite enjoyable! Looks like this could be a great addition to Fear Fest and Halloween in general!

[MinionZombie]

I'm looking forward to this. While Roth's output is kind of all over the place in recent years (The Green Inferno was very good, but Knock Knock was a bizarre mixed bag), Cabin Fever and the first two Hostel movies are really good. Hopefully this'll be upped somewhere as I doubt it'll get aired over here in the UK (the James Cameron series never was IIRC), but this looks good from the clips I've seen (not that one you posted, though, because AMC insist on region-locking their videos unlike, say, HBO). BTW - the Post Mortem with Mick Garris podcast is a good one to listen to. Well informed/considered, and he gets some great guests on to pour over their careers. Worth checking out for horror fans. http://postmortempodcast.libsyn.com/

[shootemindehead]

How does Eli Roth keep getting gigs? I wonder who his sugar daddy is.

[bassman]

I wonder who his sugar daddy is. All signs point to Tarantino. He probably puts on little shows starring only his feet...

[shootemindehead]

Mmmm...somebody is sending stuff his way. Because he certainly would not have survived this long on his own steam.

[MinionZombie]

*sniffs* Did someone spill haterade on the HPOTD carpet? I think he keeps multiple projects going at any one time, so even if a film does poorly for whatever reason or underwhelms critically or commercially, he's already deep into another project. Or he interviews and gets the job on merit - IIRC that's how he got the job directing his most recent flick (which was also a bit of a shift into family friendly chills). Also, if your budget is low enough you can make your money back much easier, so regardless of what the critics say, if you've turned a profit then it's pretty much all good.

[EvilNed]

Mmmm...somebody is sending stuff his way. Because he certainly would not have survived this long on his own steam. Doesn't seem that strange to me. Most of his film do fairly well.

[bassman]

*sniffs* Did someone spill haterade on the HPOTD carpet? It was all in good fun. As mentioned, Roth has indeed started to venture into other genres. The House With The Clock In It’s Walls was recently released and that was a family film. They seriously should have reconsidered that title, though! I wonder if Roth took this series pitch to AMC, or if AMC had the idea as an extension of their Science Fiction series with Cameron? I would be thrilled if they kept this idea going, just every so often it’s the history of another genre and featuring different hosts?!? That would be great!

[MinionZombie]

I wonder if Roth took this series pitch to AMC, or if AMC had the idea as an extension of their Science Fiction series with Cameron? I would be thrilled if they kept this idea going, just every so often it’s the history of another genre and featuring different hosts?!? That would be great! Hmmm ... the thing about Sci-Fi and Horror is that those genres are so wide and varied and have been going for a century or so in cinema (plus their literary traditions stretching even further into the past), whereas other genres might not be able to gain the same kind of interest, especially linked with other genre programming. Now, they could do a series where each episode is a different genre, perhaps (thriller, noir, etc) ... ... or they could do a series that is solely based on exploitation cinema as that, too, has a long-standing tradition that goes way back to the earliest years of cinema in one way or another, but at least since the 1930s.

[JDP]

LOL @ host & guests talking about 28 Days Later as if it was a "zombie movie". Only one of them actually pointed out that he was aware that these are really just people infected by a "rage" virus, not reanimated cadavers, but nonetheless continued with the "zombie movie" nonsense label. However, they did correctly debunk the claim that this movie introduced the "fast zombie" and pointed out that 1980's City of the Walking Dead/Nightmare City did. But they actually forgot to mention that the first movies to fully exploit this idea were the Return of the Living Dead films (which are also the first zombie-movie parodies, something they also failed to mention.) Also, the zombie movie "crisis/decline" did not start in the mid 80s, but in the 90s. The mid and late 80s were still pumping out zombie movies strong, including ones that the show itself specifically discussed, like Day of the Dead and Re-Animator (both of them from 1985.) Bizarre was also trying to blame Michael Jackson's Thriller video for this supposed "crisis/decline", considering that the look of its zombies was in fact what inspired the look of the zombies in Day of the Dead! If anything, Jackson's video actually contributed to keep zombies popular throughout the decade.

[bassman]

Hmmm ... the thing about Sci-Fi and Horror is that those genres are so wide and varied and have been going for a century or so in cinema (plus their literary traditions stretching even further into the past), whereas other genres might not be able to gain the same kind of interest, especially linked with other genre programming. Now, they could do a series where each episode is a different genre, perhaps (thriller, noir, etc) ... ... or they could do a series that is solely based on exploitation cinema as that, too, has a long-standing tradition that goes way back to the earliest years of cinema in one way or another, but at least since the 1930s. Westerns and musicals. Although I’m not sure if those get much attention anymore. I could see AMC milking the idea, but who knows. I totally forgot about this series and forgot to set the dvr. Hopefully they’re running it a lot for Fright Fest....

[MinionZombie]

I would really like to see this, but it's not been *ahem* put up anywhere that us non-US folks can see it. The James Cameron series never came to the UK AFAIK, and likewise there's no sign of this series coming here. LOL @ host & guests talking about 28 Days Later as if it was a "zombie movie". Only one of them actually pointed out that he was aware that these are really just people infected by a "rage" virus, not reanimated cadavers, but nonetheless continued with the "zombie movie" nonsense label. However, they did correctly debunk the claim that this movie introduced the "fast zombie" and pointed out that 1980's City of the Walking Dead/Nightmare City did. But they actually forgot to mention that the first movies to fully exploit this idea were the Return of the Living Dead films (which are also the first zombie-movie parodies, something they also failed to mention.) Also, the zombie movie "crisis/decline" did not start in the mid 80s, but in the 90s. The mid and late 80s were still pumping out zombie movies strong, including ones that the show itself specifically discussed, like Day of the Dead and Re-Animator (both of them from 1985.) Bizarre was also trying to blame Michael Jackson's Thriller video for this supposed "crisis/decline", considering that the look of its zombies was in fact what inspired the look of the zombies in Day of the Dead! If anything, Jackson's video actually contributed to keep zombies popular throughout the decade. I agree with a lot of this ... ... *waits for fellow HPOTD'ers to faint and recover* While 28 Days Later carries various parts of the iconography of the zombie movie (e.g. desolate cities, small bands of humans in peril etc), no zombie worth their salt would die of starvation after four weeks as per the timeline clearly laid out by the end of 28 Days Later and the opening text of 28 Weeks Later. The key to what defines a "zombie" is death, whether it is the classic and original Voodoo zombie or the modern Romero zombie. In both cases death is the key aspect. With Voodoo zombies these are people whose families have witnessed them 'dying' and being buried at a funeral, only to then see them walked around in a trance-like state ... to those family members and people in the community these are dead people who have risen from the grave. They're not literally dead, but the belief that they are dead is the key factor. Then, with Romero's version of the zombie - the one that still dominates our screens to this day - death is very much literal. People die of either natural causes or through bites from a zombie, and then come back from the dead as a literal walking corpse. In 28 Days Later they're literally alive. It's an infection/virus movie ... much like Nightmare City/City of the Walking Dead, for that matter. Umberto Lenzi, the director, stridently maintained until his recent death that the beasties in Nightmare City were not zombies, but infected people. The North American title cashes in on the zombie craze in the fresh wake of Dawn of the Dead, but it's inaccurate, because none of the monstrous people in the movie are dead. Yeah, I wouldn't say that "Thriller" was any sign of 'decline' either. Surely it's much more a sign of 'peak mainstream acceptance'. You've got the biggest music star in the world starring in, essentially, a zombie movie - even getting made up as one!

[JDP]

In 28 Days Later they're literally alive. It's an infection/virus movie ... much like Nightmare City/City of the Walking Dead, for that matter. Umberto Lenzi, the director, stridently maintained until his recent death that the beasties in Nightmare City were not zombies, but infected people. The North American title cashes in on the zombie craze in the fresh wake of Dawn of the Dead, but it's inaccurate, because none of the monstrous people in the movie are dead. I was never fully convinced by Lenzi's "disclaimer" that these are not really zombies. The creatures in that movie can qualify as such, unlike the ones in 28 Days Later. Notice that they can only die by destroying their brains, typical characteristic of the modern (i.e. Romero) zombie. If they were just infected living people they would still die from massive trauma to other vital areas of the human body, like the chest, for example. Destroy their hearts and they should also die, if they are really living humans who happen to be "infected" with something (The Walking Dead dealt very aptly with this detail in the episode where Shane proves to Hershel that the zombies are not "sick people" of any kind but walking corpses, since they can take massive trauma to all parts of the body, except the head, and still continue coming at you.)