Following up on Lyz’s typically brilliant take on Child’s Play, it’s time switch gears a little to take a look at the ways in which Tom Holland’s groundbreaking film was interpreted, re-interpreted, re-re-interpreted and mis-interpreted by the various cinema industries in India…
The four movies are:
- Papi Gudia (1996), in which something was definitely lost in translation;
- Mantra (2005), which gets a surprising number of things right for a movie nobody seems to have ever heard of;
- Zapatlela (1993), which takes the story in a totally unexpected (and very silly) direction; and
- Ammo Bomma (2001), in which Indian cinema turns to an Indian movie for inspiration… and fails to be inspired.
#1 by lyzard on November 29, 2016 - 11:58 pm
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Oh, lordy—you weren’t waiting for me to post, were you?? – because I very nearly didn’t! By the end of Dead Silence I was close to thinking enough was enough… 🙂
This is wonderful stuff, Will, as usual. I can only greedily wish for more.
And crimeny, those dolls—!
#2 by Braineater on November 30, 2016 - 6:15 am
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No, actually — mostly I was delayed by a horrible cold, on top of a grim work schedule. But it worked out perfectly anyway.
#3 by lyzard on November 30, 2016 - 2:45 pm
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Ugh! I’m sorry. 🙁
#4 by lyzard on November 30, 2016 - 2:45 pm
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While you’re here, thank you again for your brilliant work on the banners, they’re amazing!
#5 by Braineater on December 1, 2016 - 7:35 pm
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Thanks, Lyz.
The Dead Silence banner’s the one I like best: I had to edit together two different shots to get it — they seemed like one shot broken by an edit, which would have been easy to piece together; but since the focus was on a different set of dummies for each shot, the lighting and camera setup for each was ever-so-slightly different. Doing the banner brought home to me how fastidious they were about the look of Dead Silence.
#6 by Jason Farrell on November 30, 2016 - 3:08 pm
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“I have in my collection DVDs of 21st-century remakes of movies as diverse as Laura (1944), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Chinatown (1974), all of which I bought without realizing what they were.”
Can you give me the actual names of said remakes? My Spider-Sense is tingling.
#7 by Braineater on December 1, 2016 - 7:08 pm
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Well, to start with, there’s Rog (2005, inspired by Laura) and Manorama Six Feet Under (2007, inspired by Chinatown). I can’t seem to find Postman… on my shelf. It’s probably in a box in my garage somewhere.
Come to think of it, somewhere I have a Hindi version of The Others, which was also a real surprise… but I can’t find that, either, and I’ve forgotten the title of that one, too. I’ll try to keep looking when I get the chance.
#8 by Jason Farrell on December 2, 2016 - 10:40 am
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Thank you for checking into it. I can’t remember wanting to impulse-purchase something this bad since I was reading the ROLLING STONE ALBUM GUIDE about “a Hungarian clone of Men at Work”
#9 by Doug Hudson on December 2, 2016 - 2:25 pm
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Great reviews, as always–but I have to take exception to the part about not being scared of a muppet. Muppets can be positively terrifying. Many of them are, quite literally, monsters (even Grover!), and some of them are monstrous (Uncle Deadly.) The worst nightmare I had as a child centered on an evil Kermit.
And I hadn’t even seen the Dark Crystal yet!
#10 by Braineater on December 2, 2016 - 2:45 pm
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Actually, in my first draft I had a lengthy digression on the Dark Side of Jim Henson, including a discussion of Crazy Harry (and how Henson harked back to Edward Lear in the way he made a world full of chaos and violence — and explosives — understandable to young children), and Thog, and Sweetums, and Uncle Deadly… and the way Kermit the Frog introduced us toddlers to sex and violence through the Galleo-Hoop-Hoop mating ritual on the planet Koozbane… and so on, up to the Dark Crystal.
I cut it all out, because I thought it was too much of a digression, even for me.
Anyway, my point was that (Dark Crystal aside) even the scariest monster Muppets weren’t designed to be truly threatening. Individual reactions to them might vary, but they were designed to suggest horrors without actually embodying them.
#11 by lyzard on December 2, 2016 - 4:39 pm
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I’m guessing you won’t be surprised to hear that Thog and Sweetums and Uncle Deadly were all early passions of mine…