Reel Politique: Links of Interest, Trailers from Hell
Film director Joe Dante had a clever idea earlier this year. It was to celebrate his favorite genre films via their trailers, and invite his friends and colleagues to do the same, providing intros and optional commentary tracks over the trailers themselves.
The result is Trailers from Hell, which launched early in July of this year. As of this writing, there are about 50 trailers on the site, with about three added each week. Curators of the site (i.e., the introducers and commentators) include Allison Anders who covers The Naked Spur, All That Heaven Allows, and Privilege, among others; Allan Arkush, who does Wild in the Streets and House of Bamboo, for starters; Larry Cohen takes on Spartacus and Hitchcock’s Marnie (which he dislikes); Stephen King-specialist Mick Garris broods on Kiss Me Stupid, Dementia 13, and White Zombie; Screenwriter Sam Hamm takes on 20 Million Miles to Earth and 13 Ghosts, among several others; Mary Lambert, director of Pet Sematary, concentrates on Corman, with considerations of House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, among others; John (Animal House) Landis is slightly tonier with his reviews of Sunset Boulevard, Sweet Smell of Success (about which he mistakenly says that director Alexander Mackendrick is British), The T.A.M.I. Show (whose live show he attended as a lad), and The Fall of the Roman Empire (the trailer of which is so long that Landis’s fund of information is taxed); Edgar Wright, of Shaun Of The Dead, who talks about Dario Argeto’s Suspiria and the Amicus anthology film Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, among others; and of course there is Dante himself, covering Mr. Arkadin, The Innocents, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and The Terror, among numerous others. Soon director Jack Hill, among others, will be discussing Bloodbath and Foxy Brown.
The crew don’t review the trailers themselves necessarily (though Ms. Anders does note that the trailer for Privilege is misleading and Dante is frank about how bad the trailer for The Innocents proved to be), and their commentaries range from technical and informative, to highly personal (Ms. Lambert on Village of the Damned). And the trailers seem to come in themes. Currently there is an obsession with the hippie era, with Arkush on Wild in the Streets and Ms. Anders on Psyche Out. The joy of Trailers from Hell is that some of the best current filmmakers surprise us with their enthusiasm and knowledge of films often spurned by the mainstream yet which fueled their own artistry.