Scary tellies

[altariel]

I enjoyed The Idiot's Lantern very much, thought it did all that it should, and Maureen Lipman was perfect. We were spending the weekend near Alexandra Palace with very good friends (hereon the VGFs), which made it all a bit more fun.

After watching the episode, conversation naturally turned to other scary tellies: whenever we visit the VGFs we always watch Ghostwatch. You know, the pseudo-reality TV play hosted by Michael Parkinson where Sarah Greene gets stuck in a haunted house in Northolt. It is ABSOLUTELY FRICKIN' TERRIFYING, and even after multiple viewings, I am clawing at myself in shock by the end.

Other scary tellies: Poltergeist, that Japanese one I've never watched because just the image of the scary girl crawling out of the telly was enough to freak me out, er... I've forgotten what else we came up with. Nineteen Eighty-Four didn't count, that's just propaganda and not the tellybox tricking you by pretending to be your friend ("teacher, mother, secret lover...") and turning out to be the means of transmitting DEATH ON A LARGE AND HORRIFYING SCALE.

I am reading the Stephen King novel about cell phones at the moment, which is why I am using TYPOGRAPHIC TRICKS to COMMUNICATE EMOTION. It'll pass.

Comments

[aervir.livejournal.com]

The Idiot's Lantern was very much a feel-good episode for me, and thus not very scary, although I do love "hey kids, TV will eat your brain!" self-referentialism on TV.

Ghostwatch sounds delightfully creepy, though.

And Ringu (or especially the U.S. remake The Ring) is really not for the faint-hearted. I spent most of the movie gnawing at my fingernails, trying to climb onto my neighbour's lap or hiding under my anorak. I had never been so terrified by a film before. Meep.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Save Ghostwatch for Hallowe'en viewing. I don't think I could sit through Ringu: I saw that bit on a clip show and it creeped the life out of me.

Love the icon :-)

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Save 'Ghostwatch' for Hallowe'en viewing.

Good point. Now guess when I was dragged to the cinema in order to watch The Ring... ;)

Love the icon.

Heh. Thanks! Neil Postman's pseudo-intellectual wanking lends itself so very well to ironic quoting.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to know how Ghostwatch carries - much of its effect comes from knowing BBC presenters and production style... although I think you're very well clued-up on that!

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Um, to be frank, I don't know anything about BBC presenters. I usually watch only the BBC's drama shows and TV movies on DVDs or *cough* thanks to not entirely legal downloads *cough*, and normal presenters of news programmes or talk shows and the like aren't featured there.

Ghostwatch still sounds intriguing to me because it was a War of the Worlds-style "This is all real. And happening right now." sort of film, and I love this kind of production, which is, sadly enough, all too rare. (Still got a tape of the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast at home somewhere.)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Heh, well it'll be interesting to find out how well it works without the cultural baggage. War of the Worlds is a good comparison - it uses all the TV tricks it can to get its effects, and very well it does it too!

[aervir.livejournal.com]

All in all, it does sound brilliant. I think I'll order the DVD as soon as I get my next paycheck. So much for good intentions (like saving more money) then... :)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

There's a phase in the final season of Lexx where Prince exists only within the television. I remember him doing the weather reports.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

:-) I didn't watch past the middle of season 3 of Lexx.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I'm never sure which season is which with Lexx, because of the film-length episodes at the start... I preferred the later seasons (though even those had some duff episodes), but that may not have been the received wisdom.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I watched the series with the musical episode right the way through, and then bits of the one where at least one of them spends a long time on a sandy planet - and packed in part way through that season, because nothing seemed to be happening, quite slowly.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I think it was a series which suffered from the American demand for absurd numbers of episodes. There was some lovely stuff in there, but a lot of episodes were just padding. Had they been allowed to slim it down to, say, eight episodes a season, the result might have been more elegant.

But I loved the Fire and Water season for the music.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

the American demand for absurd numbers of episodes

Exact same problem with BSG.

Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[(Anonymous)]

Ringu rocks. I for once like both the Japanese and the American versions of it. The American one gets points for its absolutely gorgeous color palette, particularly that wonderful red tree.

Seriously, watch it. Watch it, watch it, watch it. If I can do it, as someone living by herself in a studio apartment, with the bed directly in front of the TV, you can do it. Put in "The Quest for the Holy Grail" afterwards until you're able to go to sleep; it works.

Dwim

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit of a wet and a weed - I've still not quite recovered from the end of Carrie (watched alone at 2am nearly twenty years ago). Beautiful colours have a good chance of tempting me in...

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not much for horror films, either, but I've learned to like the ones where things tend to happen more off-screen than on, and which don't rely much on graphic gore to create the fear. I've never seen Carrie or Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Nightmare on Elm Street and I doubt I ever will, but I'll watch Ringu, Juon, Two Sisters, Blair Witch 1, and the like because they don't need to cut someone open or burn someone alive on-screen to scare me.

However, I do tend to need the Monty Python sleeping cure afterward, and I must say, it works beautifully. It also works better when I've not been watching horror films or eerie thrillers by myself, but have been watching with a group.

Let the colors tempt you in. Really, you should do this as a sort of professional service to yourself: how can you resist a film that situates the television as the primary mode of channeling the dark-side of the human psyche? There must be scads of academic publishing opportunities for a sociologist with an interest in technology...

Dwim

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[gair.livejournal.com]

Ooh, though, you should watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which (despite the title) has almost no gore in it whatsoever. What is scary about it is the soundtrack: it's basically 90 minutes of a woman screaming, which is very hard to take.

Sorry for random pimpage, I just really liked that film and now I can't watch horror any more so I want other people to watch it for me.

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think I've watched the very end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - it's the Scooby-Doo one with the guy with the leather face, isn't it?

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Carrie is very strong on the psychological drama and also on shocks (I don't actually remember much gore in it, well, human gore, anyway). Also Sissie Spacek is brilliant. I was forced to watch a lot of slasher films as a teenager by friends as some kind of bonding ritual and don't care for them much either.

Surely the Ringu academic niche must have been filled?!

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[(Anonymous)]

Carrie is very strong on the psychological drama and also on shocks (I don't actually remember much gore in it, well, human gore, anyway). Also Sissie Spacek is brilliant.

Hm. Maybe I'll consult with my local horror buff and see if I can get him to watch it with me. Maybe we should host a "classic horror" night.

I was forced to watch a lot of slasher films as a teenager by friends as some kind of bonding ritual and don't care for them much

Whereas my friends are all at least as wimpy as I am when it comes to horror, so that was never a problem.

Surely the Ringu academic niche must have been filled?!

Not being in that field, I have no idea. But if you have to ask... ;-)

Dwim

Re: Turn on your TV before it turns itself on

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should host a "classic horror" night.

Hallowe'en is a must, if only for the opening credits.

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it too. There's a good view of Alexander Palace out of my Mum's living room window.

It was the facelessness that I found disturbing.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The facelessness was very well done - it was the way you could still make out people's features. I thought the faces onscreen screaming silently for help were also disturbing.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

The TV and the test card girl in Life on Mars were pretty scary, too.

That bit in Ring is really, really frightening. You can see it coming, but you can't quite believe it's going to happen, and then it does.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Can't believe I forgot the test card girl!

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I thought The Idiot's Lantern was very satisfying. About the only bit I didn't like was Maureen Lipman's politely mad, evil laugh. I think a Mona Lisa smile would have been more sinister. Oh, and while Rose telling tha lad (forgotten his name) to go after his father was totally in character for her, I'm not convinced it was the best thing for him. But it had an emotional satisfaction nonetheless. And there were some great quotes, not that I can remember any of them right now.

As for scary tellies, the only other ones that spring to my mind are the ones at the end of The Witches of Eastwick (the film), when Daryl van Horne is enticing his little boys towards him. But then he gets switched off so it's not that scary. On the other hand, it's a whole bank of them, not just a single one.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've been saying, "HUNGRYYYY!" an awful lot, particularly around dinner time. I liked, "Come the hour, come the man... or the lady" a lot too.

I read your comment last night and immediately thought of another scary telly, but this morning I can't remember. Gah.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I've been saying, "HUNGRYYYY!" an awful lot, particularly around dinner time.

This does not surprise me at all. Do you do the polite evil cackle after you have consumed Mr A's latest offering as well.

I have a suspicion there are some more scary TVs in children's shows but I cannot remember any of them.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I did the evil cackle anyway.

'Children's shows' has reminded me: the TV that shrinks Mike Teevee in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Last Saturday was the first time I've enjoyed Doctor Who Confidential more than the actual programme. I did enjoy it more on the Sunday repeat, which I compelled myself to watch, but that may just have been a result of lowered expectations.

Actually it wasn't just that. There was lots of nice little stuff going on in that episode, which I only noticed on second viewing. the thuggish cop discreetly trying to wrap his fingers round his elbow was particularly delightful. None of it, however, managed to compensate for the shockingly clunky "You fought against fascism yet now you are authoritarian oh the cruel irony" dialogue, not to mention some seriously crap acting from the chap playing said authoritarian father. Even there, though, the script shares some of the blame. We needed to see something behind the ranting bully, to make the character real as well as to make sense of the ending. A really good actor could have given us this despite it not being in the script, but that doesn't excuse it not being in the script in the first place. Especially when you end up with a crap actor.

The whole thing just felt thin to me. The only really noteworthy part of it, to me anyway, is that I finally figured out why Tennant is shit compared to Eccleston why the Tenth Doctor's angry bits don't quite work. Tennant does the - characteristically Scottish - thing of raising the pitch of his voice when he gets irate, so that when he really gets angry he is shouting right at the top of his natural range, which tends to rob him of authority. It's much more effective to access the lower registers like Eccleston used to do so as to give the anger a really authoritative force. Going all high-pitched just makes you sound weak. I really like Tennant's Doctor even though he's not as good as Eccleston but he has the same blind spot about acting angry that Sylvester McCoy had.

Still, a proper alien planet next Saturday. Huzzah!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind the performance of the authoritarian father; I thought he did the journey from buffoon to something much more unpleasant pretty well. I did get a sense of a real person behind the bully from the line about him being in the war (also I gather the medals he's wearing put him in Burma). The scene in the house with the family, the Doctor and Rose had a very League of Gentleman feel, perhaps not surprisingly! The episode is in the same place in the season as The Long Game, so I wonder if, similarly, there's been material seeded that will have a pay-off later.

I'm liking Tennant an awful lot more than you - I think he does the humour much, much better than Eccleston. He has a much lighter touch.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

I do like Tennant, he's an excellent actor. I just think Eccleston carried a lot more dramatic weight. Compare (just to pick an example I was recently reminded of) Eccleston's reaction to Rose's apparent disintegration in "Bad Wolf" with Tennant's reaction to Rose having her face and personality erased in "The Idiot's Lantern".

I liked Eccleston's comedy bits. I still laugh whenever I see the bit in "Rose" where he's explaining why the Tardis looks like a police box. There is a quality about many of his comedic moments that suggest the apparent light-heartedness is an artificial construct around a deeply gloomy individual. That may be a deliberate acting choice or it may be the result of an actor overstretching his natural range, but either way it works for me. What makes it come across as part of a coherent characterisation are the moments like in "The Parting of the Ways" when he's on the Dalek spacecraft being all superior at the Daleks, then he gives them a great big wide grin and hops into the Tardis - and as soon as the doors close the mask comes off and he is bowed down with depression, utterly crushed.

In the end, of course, it's all about personal tastes, and individual responses to what actors bring to the role. Don't forget there are Pertwee fans out there. With ten Doctors, we may have enough to see if there are interesting correlations between sets of preferences. I prefer Eccleston to Tennant, and Hartnell to Troughton, despite both the Paisley Ferret and the Mighty Trout being fine actors. I suspect your preferences are the opposite to mine in both cases. Is there a quantitative social science research tool that is good for looking at this kind of thing?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that Eccleston Gave Good Angst. The emotional ride of last season was something special (mmm, tho', 'The Girl in the Fireplace'...).

Don't forget there are Pertwee fans out there.

Christ indeed.


Is there a quantitative social science research tool that is good for looking at this kind of thing?

Hm, I'll have to think...

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for that insight into the Angry Bits: as soon as I read it, it rang true. That's have been a real weakness in the Tenth Doctor for me - which is a real shame, because that was one of the things that was so stunning about Eccleston's Doctor.