| Author | Message | ||
     John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Well we've just completed a marathon of the SAW films, finishing today with parts IV, V, and VI, the last two of which I hadn't seen before. I know these films have split opinion - loved by some and reviled by others (as, dare I say it, all the best horror films tend to be) I have to say that watching all these movies in rapid succession has left me nothing but delighted by a series of pictures that have managed by turns to be thrilling, shocking, exciting, outrageous, convoluted, creative and never, ever dull. Unlike most movie sequels that usually continue timelines on, this series has also managed the impressive feat of being able to turn back and spiral in on itself while stil managing to pull off at least one twist in every picture that I haven't seen coming. Filmed on an obviously tiny budget, with a refreshing absence of anything remotely CGI and a heavy emphasis on good old fashioned prosthetics, mechanical devices and buckets of blood, these films probably summon up the spirit of Grand Guignol more than anything in recent movie memory. I also found it remarkable that they've been able to get so many actors back to repeat their roles and at one point during part VI Lady P observed that it looks as if they've all been filmed back to back. It also feels as if all six have been written and planned as a series even though I find that impossible to believe I've always been a fan of this series but now, having seen all six thus far, and particularly after having sat through some 80s horror movie franchises recently and seen how badly they declined after the first couple, I'm not ashamed to say that I absolutely loved all six SAW pictures. They're the true modern equivalents of movies like The Abominable Dr Phibes and 40 years ago Vincent Price would have played the Jigsaw role. I can't wait to see part VII when it comes out at Halloween. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
I don't know, Lord P. It seems to me that if you SAW I, you've seen them all. ...Thank you, thank you. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.61.177 |
Boo - gerrof! | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Ian - Make a post like that or stay alive. The choice is yours  (Of course if you haven't seen the films you'll think that's a threat) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.108.128 |
I haven't seen any Saws, sir. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.244.144 |
Ian, round where I live they still talk about what the demon seed through the window. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Of course after "Don't Look Now" many staunchly religious objecters to its violence and nudity suggested that it would probably be easier for Donald Cammell to pass through the eye of a needle that for Nic Roeg to enter heaven. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Joel: I try to close the drapes, which also means I need to clean the windows less frequently (although you should see the stains on the curtains! Lordy!) Mick: see note to Joel above about possible results of me getting off. Zed: I've also not seen any of the series. JLP: I rather think you are threatening me! (see note to Zed above) Ramsey: ... [searches for comment from Ramsey in this thread] ... how are you, Sir? | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Ian: Get your Garys straight! | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Oh, and I found this fantastic timeline done by a student who says he was "given an assignment to do an infographic on whatever the hell we want" and so did one of the SAW films.  From: http://bjsparky.deviantart.com/art/Saw-Timeline-Infographic-153752985?q=sort:time+favby:cherrystore&qo=3 I hope he got an A! | ||
| Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker) Username: Patrick_walker Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 91.103.168.21 |
I went to see Saw and thought it one of the worst films I saw or am ever likely to see. I also saw Saw Two too. Do I win £5? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.174.178 |
I saw Saw and was sore, saw through Saw II and Saw III for free, don't know what I saw Saw IV for, then dropped acid and Saw Infinity but told the police I Saw Nothing. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 212.49.212.18 |
Saw the first Saw which started out nicely, but then threw in unintentional hilarity with Danny Glover doing the obsessed cop on the trail thing, which made the whole film sink beneath thr weight of its absurdity. Bad news for horror films in general, especially as the violence quota (and I'm sure they have a 'quota' as they stumble from sequel to sequel)grew more 'inventive' and 'sickening'. Juvenile rubbish. Slick productions and good actors do not a good horror film make. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Zed, where are you?  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.250.150 |
We don't need no stinking Zed - let me state again: the SAWs are great flicks! I've seen I-IV, and loved them all, only wasn't able to see the last two because I realized I needed to refresh my memory and see them all over again: they're wonderfully complex and linked, and, well... if one was to compare serials of yesteryear (FRIDAY THE 13th, FREDDY, etc.) to this lonely one of today, it's easily as iconic, but far more intricate, intelligent, and dare I say deep, idea-laden and discussion-spawning, than those of old.... | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
I just watched the old Prom Night last night and it was awful. While neither Saw 1 nor 2 really did it for me I thought they were at least queasy and polished (1, I thought, was actually a bit leaden tho). As a footnote, slashers of whatever quality ARE best watched in groups. On your own you hear the wind a blowin'. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.61.177 |
Kate - Zed's in France fer his hols... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 212.49.212.18 |
Craig - hmmm. Friday 13th, Freddy, far more intelligent than, iconic, idea-laden...that's hardly something to boast about, I mean the comparison. All of those films were garbage too. The first Nightmare On Elm Street excluded, and even that's dated very badly. These films are the reason horror films get a bad name. To credit them as films which are far smarter than they seem, to be wonderfully constructed jigsaw pieces, films which on closer inspection offer up a whole tapestry of sublime and intricate questions on the...blah blah...sorry, mate, just don't buy it for one moment. If you said a horror film franchise produced for the teenage market, with one or two nods to any adults possibly watching, wearing its 1980's slasher heart on its sleeve, then I might be tempted to agree. And I like all kinds of horror films, I don't sit around waiting to masturbate to some kind of abstract art-house masterpiece to consider something worthy, but I think the SAW movies the junk food of cinema...kind of like the 80's equivalent of action movies, pointless exercises in gratuity, and I'm not necessarily talking about the violence. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 212.49.212.18 |
Apologies if it seems I'm questioning other people's tastes, I'm not. I DO respect other people's tastes. Let's just say its deffinitely a case of different strokes for different folks, etc. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
I think Craig was saying the films were deeper and more idea laden THAN those old movies - I don't know if that's quite the same as saying they really are those things to any great degree! These characters, these slashers. It struck me last night that what we see in these films is the end of innocence, the death of youth itself. I really remember being very moved by the end of Sleepaway Camp, that kid's scream and expression. For some reason to me it was like the scream of the soul, a primal thing. I know it's giving these films more credit than they're due but sometimes we see ourselves in them, and I for one feel that exchange is not with value or significance. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I'm not a fan of the 'Saw' series. Only the first one was worthwhile and even it was overrated imo. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 212.49.212.18 |
Tony - I know that was what Craig was saying. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.252.95 |
Maybe I like the SAW movies too, because I'm such a fan of mysteries - they're very much like mysteries, all four of these films. I'd gone into the last three I'd seen (II, III, and IV) telling myself: I know they're going to pull a twist on me, I will look for it, I will watch and wait for it, and not be surprised... be damned if they didn't get me every time, and not in stupid ways (maybe, cheating a bit, in that IV one, but still...). Indeed, there is a kind of "end of innocence" rite in these films, Tony, that go back to older teenage horror films. Everything's hunky-dory, with the teens, but the real world holds real horrors. In the real world, there's always someone out to "get you," destroy or eat you or assimilate you, just because you exist. It's a dog-eat-dog world. True love, courage, strength, determination, etc., can win you a kind of victory in the end, over those "lesser values" like fear and lust and dissoluteness, entertained by sluts and womanizers and geeks and stoners/drunks/partiers and all the others (let's not bring in the racial element, the fate of those unlucky ones who aren't white). But again, note the shift from earlier decades, to now, in film: In the past, protags started off damaged, broken, wounded, jaded, cynical, and worked their way to a new world of innocence and possibilities. The world we live in now, is the opposite (in film): innocent, wild, happy, care-free, trusting; and after all the tribulations, only ever finding at the end, a damaged but working, hopeful but cautious, burned but tentative happily-ever-after.... | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I understand why they're not everyone's cuppa tea but they're certainly not comparable to the lame later entries in other franchises - ones where it was obvious no one cared what had gone before. The series has got what JLP and Zed bang on about in good horror films - integrity. It delivers on all counts and it doesn't have the contempt for the audience that the 80s slasher franchises did ("Oh, they'll watch any old rubbish as long as it's bloody and they won't notice or care if we said something in Part 1 and then did something else in Part 2.") The Saw films are bewilderingly intricate and complex and it's clear the writers have spent as much time constructing the nesting-box plot as they have devising the torture traps. What's more, there doesn't seem to have been any cheating. (And we were looking!) | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I think it's probably very easy for people to be turned off by the gory bits, almost in the same way some were turned off Hammer's Curse of Frankenstein by the severed limbs and eyeballs. The problem with the Saw films is that you have to get through the 'torture porn' to actually appreciate just how clever the films are. I can thoroughly appreciate that this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but the fact that Part VI has made me so keen (ridiculously so in fact) to see the forthcoming Part VII is an achievement in itself for a franchise movie. I'm a confirmed fan of the Saw pictures now. I would disagree with them being junk food of the cinema though - I would reserve that description for rom-coms such as 'The Rebound' with Catherine Zeta Jones. The only thing I can compare the Saw films with is that they feel like a more extreme and nasty version of the TV series '24' - they demand that you concentrate and that you keep up with what's going on, and if you do you're amply rewarded. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
quote{I would disagree with them being junk food of the cinema though}The problem is one of packaging; when you start with a poster of the female star of #1 flattened against a sheet of glass covered in dirt, and the eventual entrance rating is reduced to "R" after some well-publicized deletions of moments showing nudity / blood / violence / torture / Borat / all of the above, then the subconscious assumption on the part of audience member and avoider alike is one of "single level complexity of violent film". Incorrect or not, this is merely the bed the film-makers (or their marketing department) created in order to get the tickets sold initially. No doubt the writer(s) are frustrated by this, but once you hand the story over to the other artists in the form of director & actors, you've lost your control irrevocably. | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Damn... let's try that again only with better formatting. The problem is one of packaging; when you start with a poster of the female star of #1 flattened against a sheet of glass covered in dirt, and the eventual entrance rating is reduced to "R" after some well-publicized deletions of moments showing nudity / blood / violence / torture / Borat / all of the above, then the subconscious assumption on the part of audience member and avoider alike is one of "single level complexity of violent film". Incorrect or not, this is merely the bed the film-makers (or their marketing department) created in order to get the tickets sold initially. No doubt the writer(s) are frustrated by this, but once you hand the story over to the other artists in the form of director & actors, you've lost your control irrevocably. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Not quite sure where you're going with that Ian, but the poster you've described is for Roland Joffe's "Captivity" which IS awful | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 212.49.212.18 |
If in the first Saw they'd focused on the two men locked up in the basement, I definitely would have come out of that one more than just happy. But the whole thing just rocketed around in an endless helter-skelter of pseudo twist and turns...contradictions abound for my shockingly bad use of description there...which I found rather infantile. And didn't even Zed say he thought Saw III was unnecesary in the extreme - the violence that is. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Yes. Truly abysmal. With Joe Eszterhas-esque delusions about female sexuality.  | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Sorry - my post refers to Captivity! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.0.215 |
Well, there you go, again... I actually liked CAPTIVITY... the look alone of the film, to me, was absolutely gorgeous, tactilely delicious... the story silly, but hardly as bad as the shit I've seen... there's just no accounting for taste, I guess.... | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Ah... yes... I did mean the 2007 thriller film Captivity starring Elisha Cuthbert, and directed by Roland Joffé (with additional editing fiddling by Courtney Soloman who, as founder and present head of After Dark Films obviously is highly qualified to re-edit films by adding more gore). I've also not seen this film. Silly me. I'll go back to my corner and rock back and forth now, quietly murmuring "I know nothing... I'm an idiot... I must learn to shut my trap... I know nothing... I'm an idiot... I must learn to shut my trap... I know nothing... I'm an idiot... I must learn to shut my trap..." | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
I have to say I love these films for the same reason as JLP lists in the first post. I've not seen V or VI yet (but I now own V so I'll be watching it soon) but in parts I to IV, each one caught me out with the twist at the end - even though after No 1 I was looking for it. They may not be great art but they're great entertainment that's capable of delivering surprises. and that's all too rare in today's films. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.241.79 |
Weber, please provide 100% original thinking in your posts from now on: should you refer back to my first paragraph, in my post 11 up from yours, you will see you parrot back what I novelly formulated, right down to the number of films seen vs. not seen. Perhaps you have assimilated my memories, and accidentally spouted them out as your own?... If so, I will be gracious enough to accept an apology from you. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Craig, with all due respect - go f*** yourself  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.251.39 |
That better be "fete"! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvEdQrONP9I especially for you Craig | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Craig and Weber, you have made each other's lives a living hell. Now you are IN hell. You will notice that the floor of this locked room is strewn with first editions of M.R. James, Poe and McMahon. You are both barefoot and standing in dog poo. To your right lies the only door. To your left is the key. You have sixty seconds. Let the game begin. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.2.180 |
The floors are strewn with McMahon?! Not Campbell or King or Matheson or... well, there's not enough space here to list all the names, actually.... Simple: I'll burrow through Weber's body for the key. ... What's that? There is no key there? Hey, don't spoil the surprise! On an unrelated-related note: Weber, today the ants got into the mints. Is this a bit of your evil from afar?... (Send me your address, btw: I would like to send you something, at some point.) |