As some of you have
already noticed, I re-posted a review of All
the Boys Love Mandy Lane earlier this month, with more contemporaneous
thoughts about the film (as much as two years’ worth of reflection allows, at
any rate), so I don’t have much more to add. It’s strange how the intervening
years (Jonathan Levine made the film before the smartphone was a regular
presence in the life of teenagers) make Mandy
Lane more “quaint” than it would be otherwise: the choice in music and many
choices in editing resemble any of the CW-style “modern” slasher film, but the
lack of always connected, social networking makes for strange bedfellows.
It’s a
modern horror movie that isn’t quite modern enough, and not enough of a “throwback”
(as loathe as I am to use that term) to feel different. I understand why people
aren’t responding to it now, but I’m curious how it would fare in the height of
remake-mania seven years ago. I apologize again for not spoiling the end of the
movie – this is the third time I’ve brought up All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
without directly addressing the ending of the film. To be honest, it’s why I
like the movie, and why I think people interested in Final Girls as a horror
trope would find it worthwhile. If this gives you any hint to how it ends, Mandy Lane would have beaten Scream 4’s “twist” to the punch by five
years, and only been behind High Tension
by a year. It’s a newer, if under-examined, development in Final Girl theory.
It’s a
modern horror movie that isn’t quite modern enough, and not enough of a “throwback”
(as loathe as I am to use that term) to feel different. I understand why people
aren’t responding to it now, but I’m curious how it would fare in the height of
remake-mania seven years ago. I apologize again for not spoiling the end of the
movie – this is the third time I’ve brought up All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
without directly addressing the ending of the film. To be honest, it’s why I
like the movie, and why I think people interested in Final Girls as a horror
trope would find it worthwhile. If this gives you any hint to how it ends, Mandy Lane would have beaten Scream 4’s “twist” to the punch by five
years, and only been behind High Tension
by a year. It’s a newer, if under-examined, development in Final Girl theory.
---
Along similar lines, I feel like
I’ve written about A Nightmare on Elm
Street so many times that I’m not sure what to say about it. I appreciate
how grimy Freddy Krueger is in the film, how disgusting and creepy without
relying on puns or horror showmanship. Robert Englund is clearly relishing the
opportunity to make Freddy (really, it’s more “Fred” in the first film) as
sadistic as possible. The more I watch A
Nightmare on Elm Street, the more I notice that, frankly, surprise me that
I didn’t remember from the last time. To wit:
The “dream logic” of the first film is much
more, let’s say “practical” than in the subsequent films. It’s more like actual
dreams are than what people might associate with the series (although Dream Warriors did push it in a
direction that was almost impossible to come back from). The craziest “nightmare”
moment early in the film is a goat in Tina (Amanda Wyss)’s dream that opens the
film, and after that it’s largely limited to things Freddy can do: the
(terrible) extended arm effect, cutting off his fingers, pulling off his face,
etc. When Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) starts experimenting with her dreams, we see
simple things, like the door into her basement leading to the boiler room at
the high school. It’s more of an Inception
level of “dream logic” than what people assume when they think of the series.
They resemble dreams we’ve had, where one place becomes another but it seems to
make sense in the dream.
The “dream logic” of the first film is much
more, let’s say “practical” than in the subsequent films. It’s more like actual
dreams are than what people might associate with the series (although Dream Warriors did push it in a
direction that was almost impossible to come back from). The craziest “nightmare”
moment early in the film is a goat in Tina (Amanda Wyss)’s dream that opens the
film, and after that it’s largely limited to things Freddy can do: the
(terrible) extended arm effect, cutting off his fingers, pulling off his face,
etc. When Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) starts experimenting with her dreams, we see
simple things, like the door into her basement leading to the boiler room at
the high school. It’s more of an Inception
level of “dream logic” than what people assume when they think of the series.
They resemble dreams we’ve had, where one place becomes another but it seems to
make sense in the dream.
This is not to say there isn’t some
nightmarish imagery in Nancy’s dreams – while it’s hard to forget Tina in the
body bag while Nancy sleeps at school, I’d totally forgotten about the second
time she appears later in the film. Nancy is dreaming and Glen (Johnny Depp) is
supposed to be watching her (more on this in a moment), and in the dream Tina
appears again, her feet covered with worms writhing around on the pavement. It’s
an effectively unsettling image, as much so as the trail of blood Nancy follows
in the hallways of school.
Now, speaking of Glen, it’s worth pointing out
that Wes Craven does something in A
Nightmare on Elm Street that would subsequently be picked apart and
reconfigured for the sequels (and, apropos to this discussion, a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment)
that I completely forgot was in the film. Nancy is at home, watching The Evil
Dead, and nodding off when Glen climbs in through the window. She asks him to
sit next to her while she’s dreaming and wake her up if she starts struggling,
which he agrees to do.
Nancy then enters the “dream world” and is
walking down Elm Street, when she turns and asks Glen if he’s still watching
her. Inside the dream, Glen appears from behind a tree with to let her know
that he is, and then disappears again. With the other films, and also The Simpsons in mind, this is an odd
moment, because Nancy is dreaming, not talking out loud, and if Glen is in her
dream, there’s a good chance he’s not awake. Now it turns out he isn’t, but
they aren’t sharing the dream, so either Nancy imagined Glen reassuring her in
the dream or he really was responding to her from the “real” world. I bring up The Simpsons because when Lisa appears
in Bart’s dream, that’s how Bart knows she isn’t awake to save him. It’s not
something that harms the film – as I mentioned before, I forgot it even
happened – but upon reflection, it’s an odd moment.
I also picked up some dumb
details that I’d never seen before, like the poster of a cat wearing a Hawaiian
t-shirt and riding a trolley in San Francisco in Dr. King (Charles Fleischer)’s
office. While he’s monitoring Nancy, you can’t miss it behind him on the wall.
It’s not difficult to spot the
palm trees in the background of A
Nightmare on Elm Street (like in John Carpenter’s Halloween, Craven is doubling California for the Midwest –
Springwood is supposed to be in Ohio and Haddonfield in Illinois), but for some
reason I’d never focused on how prominently a palm tree appears in one scene.
When Nancy and Glen are on the bridge having a conversation about homemade
weapons and giving dreams power, there’s a rather large palm tree right in the
middle of the frame. I guess I’d been focused enough on the story that I
willingly blocked it out, but it’s really hard to miss.
The last one is just an odd
tidbit I picked up, one that only has any relevance if you’ve listened to the
Wes Craven / Heather Langenkamp commentary before: during the bathtub scene,
Langenkamp and Craven point out that the girl pulled into the tub and trying to
escape is a body double. No, fanboys, that’s not a nude Heather Langenkamp you’re
seeing. On the other hand, when Nancy is pretending to sleep so her mother will
leave her alone, she does get up and change shirts, exposing her bare back to
the camera in a shot that is Langenkamp. I suppose it’s a “neither here nor
there” addition to the conversation, but I did know because of the commentary
that she avoided any nudity in the film, so it was a scene I didn’t remember
being in the film (technically it’s not nudity, but it’s a shot that implies it
and doesn’t necessarily add anything to the plot).
Up Next: John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, the middle chapter of his “Apocalypse Trilogy.”
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