The Last Straw: Why was Straw Dogs remade???

    The latest of the endless unnecessary remakes is much more unnecessary than most– Sam Peckinpah’s brilliant, unique Straw Dogs is being transplanted from rural England to the American south to no good effect. Part of the charm of the original film was that it reminded Americans that rednecks are a universal phenomena. As much as the film’s protagonist, David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), tries to avoid violence in his native America, he discovers under the worst possible circumstances that stupid, subhuman scum lurk everywhere and that their only means of communication is through brutal acts of greater or lesser degrees. I reiterate: Why bother remaking it to begin with, and why relocate it to the south? I suppose because the south is the movies’ default location for backwards degeneracy thanks to Deliverance and all of the other ’70s ‘Yankee nightmare’ movies. It also gives ‘consummate actors’ the excuse to speak in unspeakably bad southern accents– non-southerners almost NEVER get them right.
    Speaking of never getting it right, why do emasculated Hollywood executives always remake movies that were damn near perfect to begin with and then inevitably botch them? Why don’t they choose very promising projects that became mediocre movies– ones with excellent ideas that were sunk by poor execution? (Case in point: Byron Haskin’s lame adaptation of Frank Robinson’s excellent science fiction suspense novel The Power.) The only reason that those lemmings probably chose Straw Dogs was because it was– and is– a genuinely shocking film. With American gorehounds’ decadent palettes more jaded than ever, they almost certainly figure that it will make a fine excuse to trot out another hollow,, degraded torture porn movie a la The Hills Have Eyes– call it Saw Dogs. And the original Straw Dogs’ incredible artistry gives the remake a vague patina of quality that a remake of a drive-in movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn’t (for snobs who refuse to the see that latter film’s merits, that is).
    The REAL Straw Dogs was a film, like most movies that get remade, whose disparate elements coalesced beautifully in ways that can’t be replicated. Without Sam Peckinpah’s direction (and overwhelmingly paranoid vision) and the virtuoso editing of Garth Craven, John Coquillon’s note-perfect cinematography (with his usual muted, autumnal palette), the finest English rednecks in film history (led by the estimable Peter Vaughan), a note-perfect cast (foremost among them Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, and David Warner), and Jerry Fielding’s low-key music... IT AIN’T STRAW DOGS.
    Straw Dogs was also very much a product of its time. It was a reminder to the flower children that their notions of peaceful coexistence were naive at best. Human beings have a loooong way to go evolution-wise– some more than others– and as long as that’s true, violence will always be part of the human experience and, in certain situations, the only moral solution. Love, understanding, and misguided humanitarianism didn’t stop Charles Whitman. What special significance does Straw Dogs hold for the twentieth century that the original didn't already eloquently convey?
    The only way that you could coax me into seeing the new Straw Dogs was if it was called Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Straw Dogs and it starred Tyler Perry in the Susan George role, Chris Tucker as David, with Fat Albert in the Peter Vaughan role and Rudy, Dumb Donald, and Weird Harold as his scummy redneck cohorts. In 3D.
    I suppose that some of the improvements in the remake will include having the hellish image of Amy’s hanged cat dangling from her closet’s light chain transformed into David reduced to tears by the sight of his Blackberry suspended in his closet, smashed by the rednecks.

Price 1, Satiemania 0

I'm going to have to hold off on that "Satiemania" entry-- today is the 100th anniversary of Vincent Price's birth and it's my civic duty to announce it. Price starred in what is very possibly my favorite movie, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, along with about fifty other wonderful films (and some fairly dull ones... but NEVER because of him). Art collector, actor, writer, bon vivant, and all-around swell guy, Price is sorely missed. If there was anything like an equivalent to him in the current cinema, I might see more than three new movies in the theater every year. My favorite Price quote is probably "The secret to life is knowing that life is a joke and being in on the joke. And I'm in on the joke." Happy birthday, Vinnie, wherever you are.

Let the pettiblogging begin!

Greetings-- Justin Humphreys here-- I will begin posting soon with a little ditty about one of the finest pieces of animation ever made, Zdenko Gasparovic's "Satiemania." Stay tuned...