OVP: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Film: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Stars: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodvine

Director: John Landis

Oscar Nomination: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Makeup*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

While both 7 Faces of Dr. Lao and the original Planet of the Apes won special Academy Awards for Makeup, the category wasn't competitive until 1981.  This was the result of complaints that The Elephant Man (and the extensive work that the artists on it did to John Hurt's face) wasn't going to be honored, and so the category was formed in 1981, despite makeup being quintessential to filmmaking as far back as the Silent Era.  Horror films should be a mainstay for this category-when you think of horror movies, whether it's Boris Karloff's bolted face in Frankenstein or Robert Englund's burned visage in Nightmare on Elm Street, the most iconic movie makeup frequently comes from movies that go bump in the night.  But it's actually relatively rare to see horror movies nominated in this category, which is extra bizarre because the first year of the category, the shiny gold man went to a horror movie.  An American Werewolf in London won Rick Baker his first of seven Academy Awards for Makeup, and would become a groundbreaking film in terms of its makeup.  However, headed into the picture, I knew nothing about what I was getting into and honestly...left kind of surprised at the tone the film takes.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two graduate students David Kessler (Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Dunne) who are from New York but backpacking through northeastern England.  They come across a pub with some satanic signs on the walls, and are warned by the pubgoers to stick to the road if they leave.  Of course, because this is a horror movie, they do wander off of the road, and are attacked by a wolf of some sort...one that right before David blacks out, seems to have turned into a bloody, naked man.  When David awakens in a hospital, he is told that he was attacked by a rabid man, not a wolf or dog, and that Jack was killed.  He insists otherwise, but the hospital says this isn't true, and when he is visited by the ghost of his dead friend Jack, he is told that he is a werewolf.  He starts dating a nurse named Alex (Agutter), and tells her about the werewolf theory, but she thinks he's just delusional from the attack.  As the film goes on, of course, he is not, in fact, lying, and goes on a murderous rampage before ending up in the wolf cage at the London Zoo.  He is eventually shot by the police during a second rampage (unable to figure out how to kill himself in time), a tearful Alex seeing him revert to human form before the end credits.

Here's the deal with An American Werewolf in London.  What I just described is a pretty generic werewolf picture...you could put Lon Chaney's name on it, and you'd basically have the plot of any Universal werewolf picture from the 1930's or 40's.  But the difference is that the 1981 film is genuinely funny.  The movie is less scary than you'd think, and more about gallows humor.  There's a scene where a dead Jack, now a ghost of sorts, introduces David to the people he killed the previous night while they are at a pornographic movie theater, an adult film playing in the background.  This is the kind of juxtaposition that makes this movie stand out.  It's also weirdly progressive when it comes to nudity.  Horror films have a lot of misogyny when it comes to nudity (women are frequently running around topless while the men are fully-clothed), but that is not the case here.  You will see all of David Naughton in his splendor in this movie (there is full-frontal), and a realism given the character is supposed to be naked most of the movie (or in various states of undress).  Kudos to John Landis on that one.

The film's makeup & visual effects are extraordinary.  Much of the work here, and what won Baker the Oscar, is the result of the transformation scene, which honestly...I'm not entirely sure how he pulled it off without CGI.  There are scenes where his actual spinal column expands, cracking and curving.  It's gross, but totally realistic and ingenious.  The bigger question isn't why it won the Makeup Oscar, but why it didn't also get a citation for the Visual Effects Oscar, as they should've gone hand-in-hand.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Makeup (1999)

OVP: Best Makeup(1999)

The Nominees Were...

Michele Burke & Mike Smithson, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

Greg Cannom, Bicentennial Man

Rick Baker, Life

Christine Blundell & Trefor Proud, Topsy-Turvy

My Thoughts: As a rule, the Makeup branch has long been the weirdest branch of the Academy (in terms of the types of films they make "Oscar-nominated"), and perhaps nothing quite illustrates that more than the 1999 Makeup lineup, a four-wide (how they ended up picking eligibility in this era is beyond me as the number seems to change every year) field that contains three movies getting their only nomination, and a fourth that sucked up most of the tech category heat at the 1999 Oscars that wasn't being taken by The Matrix.

That movie is Topsy-Turvy, which despite its love from the Academy wasn't a particularly big deal for audiences at the time until it started to get so much Oscar adoration.  Mike Leigh's film is about the creation of The Mikado, one of the greatest English-language operas, and the formation of the partnership between Gilbert & Sullivan.  Part of your leverage with this film is going to be a tolerance for historically-accurate yellowface, as several of the characters do wear it, but it's representing history rather than actually playing Asian characters, so I think this falls into the Tropic Thunder rule where it feels appropriately condemned within the film.  Take that out of the occasion, this is very good.  The teeth and aging work are both authentic & believable, and it's a rare film that makes the makeup artistry feel like a story within the movie, which is always a plus for me.

Bicentennial Man (I believe) is the first live-action film with Robin Williams that we've gotten to in the OVP (the only other movie I can think of is Happy Feet, where he's obviously not seen onscreen).  Williams was a versatile actor (and is much beloved after his untimely passing), but Bicentennial Man is a good reminder that he made a lot of bad movies.  This is a snore of a film, and in terms of the craft, kind of one-note.  The makeup is more relegated to the film's first half, and honestly it's largely just robotic, which is not what you want with someone like Williams.  By the time he's using his own face, it's not that special, and I feel like this got nominated more because it had makeup than anything else.

You'd assume that was the case with Life, and you'd be right.  Life is a terrible movie (like Bicentennial Man) and despite the presence of Rick Baker (Oscar-beloved makeup artist), it's also not a great example of his work.  The main effect here is watching Martin Lawrence & Eddie Murphy age, but even by the standards we must apply in 1999, the makeup itself is still, lifeless, and should've been better.  It doesn't help that it's also relegated primarily to Lawrence & Murphy, so we don't get a better sense of aging from the other men as most of them are afterthoughts to the plot.  This feels like a default nomination for Baker, to be honest.

Our final contender is Austin Power: The Spy Who Shagged Me, weirdly the only nomination for the entire franchise (despite it having some pretty well-regarded music).  The makeup work here is a combination of the old (we had at this point already seen the looks used for Myers for Austin Powers & Dr. Evil) and the new, primarily the villain Fat Bastard.  I have mixed feelings about fat suits as a rule, but I'll own that in 1999 this wasn't even a topic-of-conversation (that'd come a few years later with Shallow Hal), so I can't hold against those standards today, and it is a very good fat suit. The use of gross-out aspects feels realistically played, and both Austin & Dr. Evil are better with a larger budget.

Other Precursor Contenders: BAFTA gave its statue to Topsy-Turvy, with American Beauty, The End of the Affair and An Ideal Husband getting the remaining nominations (I will say right now, American Beauty up for makeup is maybe the weirdest precursor citation I can remember coming across in a while...what was this for, Bening's suburban mom hair?!?).  The Saturn Awards gave their statue to The Mummy, this time against Galaxy Quest, The Matrix, Ravenous, Sleepy Hollow, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (a reminder that at this point in the Saturn Awards' history, they were pretty much only nominating SciFi, Fantasy, & Horror).  We actually know who was in fifth place.  The Makeup category in 1999 was odd, in that they shortlisted five contenders, and nominated only films that were deemed to have scored highest (they've tried versions of this through the years, specifically with Best Original Song at one point), and the only movie that didn't make the cut was Blast from the Past...so there's your runner-up.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Nominated for Cinematography, Art Direction, & Costume Design, it's hard to complain too hard about Sleepy Hollow missing out on a tech category.  But the ways that the makeup artists create a prototypically gothic look for actors like Johnny Depp & Miranda Richardson (one that Tim Burton would fall so madly in love with he'd use it for the next couple of decades in various films), they should've had room for another citation.

Oscar’s Choice: Against three films that Oscar wouldn't normally touch with a 10-foot pole, this was an easy win for Topsy-Turvy, the only film the larger Academy would be willing to hand a statue.

My Choice: Yeah, it's Topsy-Turvy.  Throwing out that it's the only good movie of the bunch, it's also easily the most impressive of the makeup nominees, and really incredible given its budget compared to some of the other choices.  Austin Powers, Life, and then Bicentennial Man follow, in that order.

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone here in agreement that Topsy-Turvy is the only logical choice?  Was this the point where even the Academy was like "we've honored Rick Baker enough?"  And how bad do you feel for Blast from the Past knowing it was the only finalist that Oscar didn't deem worthy?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Previously, in 1999

Past Best Makeup Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: Makeup & Hairstyling (2023)

OVP: Best Makeup & Hairstyling (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Karen Hartley Thomas, Suzi Battersby, & Ashra Kelly-Blue, Golda

Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou, & Lori McCoy-Bell, Maestro

Luisa Abel, Oppenheimer

Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, & Josh Weston, Poor Things

Ana Lopez-Puigcerver, David Marti, & Montse Ribe, Society of the Snow

My Thoughts: There was once a time when the Makeup category was quite unpredictable, and it would stand out because Oscar would get weird with it.  You'd see random films you've never heard of or box office bombs or movies that are at like 15% on Rotten Tomatoes.  But in recent years, this category has lost a good chunk of its personality, minus the craziness going along with the "everything must be one of the ten Best Picture nominees," and this category isn't an exception.  There are three Best Picture's here, and while there could've been more (we'll get there), the remaining two include an International Feature film, so there's really only one reminder of how crazy this category can get.

This is the first, last, and only nomination we'll get to for Golda in our 2023 OVP.  This is the sort of "transform a movie star" work that they tend to love in this category, and given how little personality the Oscars allow the tech categories anymore, I really wish I liked it, but I don't.  The only piece here that's worth any value is Helen Mirren as the former Prime Minister of Israel, and even that work feels rubbery.  The nomination is for the whole film, not just one set-piece, and if it is for that set-piece (here, it clearly is) it shouldn't look like latex.

We ended up having two non-Jewish actors playing famous Jewish figures in 2023 (make of that what you will), but only one stirred up a lot of controversy around the makeup.  I don't mind biopics that don't mirror real life (you need to bend to make it an interesting movie), but I will say that giving Leonard Bernstein a significantly larger nose than he had in real life in Maestro to accentuate his appearance feels like a choice, and a suspect one.  The more impressive old-age makeup, quite honestly, was what they did to Carey Mulligan in middle-age, with strained lines in her makeup to make her look older than she is, but that's not why this got a nomination-it was Cooper's nose, which isn't all that remarkable.

I was much more taken with the consistent makeup work in Society of the Snow.  Here we have makeup throughout, even if it's just the same effect, but I do feel like we got a sense of the degree of frostbite these men & women endured as they tried to live in the bitter cold of the Andes.  The makeup is subtler, and it grows over time so it feels like more of a consistent tracking achievement the further we get in, measuring the despair from the looks of the actors since the actual environment is meant to be an unyielding constant.

Poor Things is perhaps the film with the "most" makeup in its story.  The headline is Willem Dafoe's Dr. Frankenstein-adjacent work, but we also see the growth of the makeup in Emma Stone and Kathryn Hunter's characters as well.  I think this is also very well-done.  I do think that some of the gross-out choices feel more there to shock the audience (particularly those that are associated with blood or body humor), but Dafoe looks incredible here, totally believable makeup while also feeling quite natural to the picture.

Our final nomination is the first of the mountain of citations won by Oppenheimer, our Best Picture winner for this season (and the leading nominated film).  I'm in the middle on this particular aspect of Oppenheimer.  Cillian Murphy & Emily Blunt are achieving this nomination based on their old age makeup which, I'll be real, isn't that good, especially Blunt's (Blunt's forehead does not look like the age of a woman who hasn't had access to Botox, I'm sorry).  But I do like some of the looks when they're younger.  This category, it has to be remembered, is not just about transformations-it's okay to make pretty people look pretty.  The severe red lipstick of Blunt during her testimony, Benny Safdie's caked-on sunscreen...these are solid touches by the makeup department.  They aren't why it got this nomination, but they're under the technical umbrella of why it's nominated so they get it some points.

Other Precursor Contenders: BAFTA went with Poor Things as its winner, besting Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Napoleon, and Oppenheimer.  The Saturn Awards covered multiple years due to some late-breaking Covid issues where they had a longer eligibility window than usual, but they did largely stick to 2023 films.  The Covenant won (the Saturn Awards have weirdly flexible eligibility in terms of what's allowed to be nominated, but their winners tend to favor horror or fantasy), beating Evil Dead Rise, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Oppenheimer, Renfield, and the 2022 release Prey.  The shortlisted contenders here were Beau is Afraid, Ferrari, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Napoleon, so one of them was in sixth place.  At the time I only predicted incorrectly that Oppenheimer would miss in favor of Flower Moon, and so that's my guess at sixth, though honestly Napoleon isn't a crazy guess either given it did pretty well with the tech categories.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Despite a couple of good nominees, I'm totally upending this when we get to the My Ballot.  Of the five I'll nominate the one that feels the most Oscar-y is Nyad, which is really fascinating prosthetic work on Annette Bening as she weathers literal days in the salt water, and the swelling and sunburn that gets on her face is so realistic (and hard to watch).  It's the Best Actress nominee that deserved inclusion.

Oscar’s Choice: The winner was Poor Things, probably over Maestro and Oppenheimer.  This was the best/only chance Maestro had to win, and given the "spread the wealth" of the past few years, I'm kind of surprised it didn't, and its loss a testament to Poor Things doing quite well in the tech categories.

My Choice: I'm going to start out properly contrarian in 2023 (this will not be the first time) and pick Society of the Snow, a movie I liked much less than Poor Things (my silver), but one that had the better makeup work so I need to give credit in the category itself.  Behind them I'd do Oppenheimer, Maestro, and then Golda.

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to enter the laboratory with Willem Dafoe or go hiking the Andes with me (scratch that-let's all just put sunscreen on Benny Safdie instead)?  Why do you think that clear contenders Guardians 3 and Nyad couldn't even make the shortlist?  And was it Napoleon or Killers of the Flower Moon that just missed here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Previously in 2023

Past Best Makeup Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Makeup (2000)

OVP: Best Makeup (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Michele Burke & Edouard Henriques, The Cell

Rick Baker & Gail Ryan, Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Ann Buchanan & Amber Sibley, Shadow of the Vampire

My Thoughts: We begin our look at the 2000 Oscars, as ever, with Best Makeup.  One of those categories that just sort of bounced from one number of nominees to another until it finalized in 2019.  200 gives us three contenders, one of which Oscar went for in a big way, and is about as engrained in pop culture as you can get (it helps when you're in the #1 movie of the year) while the other two are in films that have sort of entered the "career asterisks" for all involved.  But we don't judge based on fame here, we judge based on the quality of the work in front of us.

The Cell is one of those movies that has a cult following amongst those who read the name "Tarsem Singh" as hallowed, but is otherwise known to the mass public (if they know it at all) as that "Jennifer Lopez in a Nightmare" movie.  The film is not good, in my opinion, but the makeup is considerably better.  The motif of Lopez in flawless drag queen makeup works.  It's not always successful (and some of the more ostentatious moments are the result of visual effects more than the makeup team), but it all looks good and I think is an underrated nominee.

Shadow of the Vampire is also a movie I left underwhelmed by, but unlike The Cell, I don't really get the makeup.  It feels like the hyper-realistic looks sported by Willem Dafoe as a fictional Max Schreck, here an actual vampire rather than a pretend one, don't serve enough of a purpose.  It's too bland (particularly for a film where a vampire is terrorizing a movie set, which is honestly the definition of my horror film wheelhouse), and I wasn't into it.  It doesn't help that, outside of the work done on Dafoe, there's nothing there-it's a centerpiece nomination where the rest of the case feels too overdone, and the centerpiece isn't that great.

The Grinch is a centerpiece nomination that does work.  I have nothing bad to say about Jim Carrey's look in this film, which is completely iconic and works within the confines of the movie.  If everything in this movie was up to those standards, this would be a slam dunk victory, and an all-timer for the category.  But that's not what happens-the rest of the Who's down in Whoville look terrible, like weird combinations of reindeer & bizarre pig noses.  I don't get it-this isn't necessarily copying the cute, pert noses of the cartoon (so you could claim "accuracy"), where they look largely humanoid, and instead just reads as ugly.  It doesn't help that the film itself is not very good, so this ugly distraction feels just gaudy.  So yes to the Grinch, but this isn't "Best Makeup for a Character" it's focused on the whole movie, where it otherwise fails.

Other Precursor Contenders: BAFTA was doing five nominees in this category instead of just one (and they also had it as Makeup and Hair), so they picked Grinch against Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Gladiator, and Quills, while the Saturn Awards (which focus on Horror, SciFi, and Fantasy) also gave their win to Grinch, against Nutty Professor II, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cell, The 6th Day, and X-Men.  In terms of fourth place, we know there were just two shortlisted films, so it was either Bedazzled (a Faust tale with Brendan Fraser & Elizabeth Hurley) and Cast Away (where I'm guessing Tom Hanks look as a disheveled Robinson Crusoe was the point of the nomination?).  Cast Away was actually on Oscar's radar, and likely in fourth.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I oftentimes talk about about Oscar's weird aversion to horror films here, but it's also true for superhero films.  X-Men, for example, has a fantastic look for both Hugh Jackman & Rebecca Romijn in this movie that became definitive looks for major characters in the years that followed, and was completely skipped.

Oscar’s Choice: An easy call for Rick Baker's Grinch, one of Oscar's favorite artists.

My Choice: If Baker's work in The Grinch was just as good for Jim Carrey as the rest of the film, or even halfway as good, this would be his Oscar.  But given I hated the rest of the makeup, I'm going to give it the silver and reward The Cell with the gold.  Shadow of the Vampire is in third.

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you want to go with the holiday-themed prosthetics of The Grinch or are you more on for some fabulous demonic clubbing with J Lo?  Why do you think that Oscar's Makeup branch basically pretends that superhero films don't exist?  And was it Cast Away or Bedazzled that just missed here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2000: Previously in 2000

Past Best Makeup Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Film: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Stars: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 4 nominations/3 wins (Best Art Direction, Costume*, Sound Editing*, Makeup*) 

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

More than any other film monster, the vampire seems to be always a part of the horror & romance genres on the big-screen.  From Nosferatu to Edward Cullen, vampires have taken up the cinematic imagination for over a century.  But no fictional bloodsucker has gotten quite the press of Count Dracula, Bram Stoker's singular creation based on Vlad the Impaler.  Francis Ford Coppola, as a followup to his Best Picture-nominated (but critically-mixed) The Godfather, Part III decided to go in a totally different direction by taking up a romanticized version of Stoker's novel.  In the process, he gave one of the most Oscar-winning horror films of all-time (three statues in his corner, the same amount that would be won by Coppola's magnum opus The Godfather), and a film that is still parodied on television today, especially for the makeup it uses on Gary Oldman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts with us seeing Vlad the Impaler (Oldman) lose his beloved Elisabeta (Ryder) to suicide after she's informed he is dead.  He blasphemes himself in front of a Priest (Hopkins), and turns himself into a vampire by drinking blood pouring from an alter (he's had a day).  Centuries later, Vlad is now known as Dracula, and is meeting Jonathan Harker (Reeves), a young solicitor who is going to help finish a business transaction started by his former colleague Renfield (Waits), who is now insane.  He meets Dracula, and Dracula summons his wives to trap (and presumably kill) Jonathan, so that Vlad can go to London to seduce Mina (also Ryder), whom he believes to be the reincarnated soul of his lost Elisabeta.  While in London, he also seduces Lucy (Frost), whom he turns into a vampire.  Before Lucy is lost & beheaded, her fiancé (Elwes) calls up Professor Van Helsing (also Hopkins) to cure her, and while he doesn't cure Lucy (she dies and is beheaded), he does save Mina.  Mina is turned into Dracula's bride while they are having sex, but she is eventually saved when Jonathan, Lucy's fiancé, and Van Helsing go to kill Dracula.  Mina finishes the job, and reunites Vlad & Elisabeta in heaven, with her vampirism gone now that she has destroyed the man who turned her.

I think the first thing that you should know about Bram Stoker's Dracula is that there's not a lot of humor in this...and it probably needed some.  Oldman is going for 11 here, and that's not the worst approach for an iconic villain, but it does get hammy, as does the dialogue itself.  The movie also miscasts Reeves, who cannot do a proper English accent (something I suspect he'd own up to), and quite frankly neither can Ryder.  The year before she would win her first of two Oscar nominations for another maligned English-accent role...her Bay Area accent is, well, pretty prominent.  I don't mind a lot of overstuffed plotting & acting, as that's kind of the calling card for horror movies (and lord knows the near constant sex was welcome...you gotta love a movie with a bunch of people constantly on the verge of an orgasm), but Ryder & Reeves are bad enough that I just...I struggled.

That said, I admired the look of the movie.  I get why this was doused in Academy Awards.  The sound work is strong (I love how you heard the spilling of blood...the film is into its bodily fluids), and the sets are fantastic.  The scrumptious gardens, Lucy's elaborate (and ridiculous) white coffin, the horny drawing rooms-the movie is a portrait in every way, and that extends to the oil painting cinematography.  The costumes as well, particularly Sadie Frost's post-vampire look, are on-point.  Best of the bunch is the makeup.  I'm not entirely sure what Gary Oldman's gorgon-mutant look is accomplishing by having him look like a freak during the nighttime as Dracula, but, well, it stands out, and looks realistic-within-the-movie.  I think it works-horror movies are about making moments, and this does.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Candyman, Scream

OVP: The Fly (1986)

Film: The Fly (1986)

Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz

Director: David Cronenberg

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Makeup*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

I have come a long way when it comes to horror, especially in the past year.  Films like Nightmare on Elm Street and Child's Play that I avoided for years because I assumed they would be too scary for me, I'm now able to handle.  But the one subgenre of horror I don't know that I'm ever going to actually enjoy is body horror.  This is a type of horror that deals with disruption of the human body that is, to be frank, too much for me, to the point where I don't find it enjoyable even when it's done well.  I didn't like this about me as a film critic (I often say, "all genres are capable of making good movies"), and so I wanted to throw a couple of the biggest body horror films in this month, and we're going to get to two in the next couple of days.  We'll start with one of the rare horror films to not just get an Oscar nomination, but to win one.  The Fly won Best Makeup (which weirdly the Oscars are stingy about handing over to horror despite this being a genre perfect for the category), and is generally considered to be a classic of the body horror genre (some even consider it to be David Cronenberg's best movie), and so with the OVP giving me a "just watch it, you have to eventually anyway" boost I got sucked into the world of Jeff Goldblum's The Fly.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is relatively short, and pretty simple (it's actually a remake of a 1950's horror film starring Vincent Price).  It's about Seth Brundle (Goldblum), a quirky scientist who takes a woman named Ronnie (Davis) back to his lab, and later learns she's a reporter.  She wants to write a story about the incredible invention he's created-a machine that can transport matter from one end of the room to the other.  Inevitably, he starts to move onto live-action matter, first a baboon, and then in a drunken stupor, himself.  When he does this, he's not smart enough to realize that there is a housefly in the chamber with him.  Initially, the change is incredible-he has super strength & his virility increases to the point where he exhausts Ronnie sexually (you gotta love the implied joke that it's Science Fiction if a man can last longer than a woman in bed).  But he starts to change for the worst, craving sugar & showing fits of anger.  Eventually he grows intense amounts of body hair, and drives Ronnie away.  When he finally calls her, he's transformed, now a grotesque mutant figure.  What's worse, Ronnie is pregnant (possibly from post his transformation), and could be carrying a mutant baby.  He kidnaps her to prevent her having an abortion (which given the situation, even Ted Cruz would've told her was the best course-of-action), and tries to fuse them together in a mutant state, before she eventually kills him, the film ending with the man she loves shot by her own hand.

The film itself is impressive.  Borrowing in a lot of ways from Franz Kafka's The Metapmorphosis (shut up, I've read the book, I'm allowed to reference it without it being abysmally pretentious), the movie shows the ways we are willing to give up our own humanity if it means feeding our ambition.  Jeff Goldblum & Geena Davis are both good in their roles.  This is about the most "Jeff Goldblum-y" performance the actor has ever put to screen, and other than Jurassic Park, is where most of the impressions of him come from.  And the makeup design is impressive-the realism isn't quite what it'd be in 2023, but in 1986...it feels appropriately grotesque.

I am not a fan, though.  I'm willing to admit at this point that really well-done body horror will probably never be my thing, because even if this is good...I never want to see it again.  The way that Goldblum's face looks when Geena Davis pulled off his jaw with her bare hands...I've been clutching my chin multiple times since to ensure it's still there.  I also think there are some gaps in the story, perhaps a little bit too much of an ode to the 1950's horror film in that they allow for serious plot holes.  For example, isn't Davis at all concerned about the woman that Goldblum had a one-night stand with also being pregnant...like, is no one thinking that that might be a different kind of horror moment for that poor woman (or is that the plot to the sequel?)?  It's a good movie, I fully acknowledge that...please never put it in front of me again.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

OVP: Makeup (2001)

OVP: Best Makeup (2001)

The Nominees Were...

Greg Cannom & Colleen Callaghan, A Beautiful Mind

Peter Owen & Richard Taylor, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Maurizio Silvi & Aldo Signoretti, Moulin Rouge!

My Thoughts: I am starting out our look at the OVP for 2001, as always, with the Best Makeup category, and we are far enough back now that we're in the era where we had just three nominees in this lineup.  The movies were also, and this is pretty rare for Oscar, all three in the Best Picture field, one of only two times (1998 being the other) that this was solely Best Picture nominees.  So why don't we start out with the film that would eventually win the top prize since we'll be discussing all three in-depth in the coming weeks?

A Beautiful Mind is an odd nominee here, and a good reminder of how much this category has changed through the years.  Today, you're more likely to see superhero makeup or recreations of famous figures on the big screen, but in 2001, one of the best ways you could get a nomination was through prosthetics, specifically in aging famous movie stars.  That's honestly the biggest thing here given that hairstyling was very much secondary to the conversation in 2001 compared to makeup.  While there are classical recreations that look great on Jennifer Connelly & Russell Crowe (both beautiful in the early scenes of this movie), the old age makeup is what got this the citation, and it's the least successful-do you really believe that Connelly is actually approaching 80 at the awards ceremony?

The same cannot be said for The Fellowship of the Ring.  The Peter Jackson films came out at inarguably the perfect time.  Much earlier, and the visual effects would've suffered, much later & the sets would've been wall-to-wall CGI.  Here, we get to have grand makeup that takes hours to recreate, and in particular with the orcs, we see something really special-genuinely unique character creations that feel like they've always been a part of the cinematic landscape (the looks of Owen & Taylor feel like they've always been what Tolkien was going for).  Add in the hobbit, dwarf, & elf iconography, and you've got a movie that's pretty much perfect in terms of its makeup.

That said, so is Moulin Rouge! (this isn't the runaway contest it might've been otherwise).  Here we are a bit more grounded by reality (save for Kylie Minogue's luscious green fairy), but it's fantastic.  Baz Luhrmann bedecks everyone in a sort of a washed-up glamour, including film icons like Nicole Kidman, coming out beautifully against a bunch of can-can dancers with smeared makeup, and a series of faux & crafted mustaches on Jim Broadbent & Richard Roxburgh.  Moulin Rouge! is one of those films where fans of it fall decidedly on one side of the fence or the other, but I'm going to out myself early-it's one of my favorite movies.

Other Precursor Contenders: BAFTA was already starting to use "Makeup and Hair" in 2001 (it'd take Oscar a decade to do it), and they gave the statue to Fellowship of the Ring against Gosford Park, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Moulin Rouge!, and Planet of the Apes, while the Saturn Awards gave their statue to Hannibal (that Ray Liotta brain-eating must have been what did it) against Planet of the Apes, Vanilla Sky, Harry Potter, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Mummy Returns.  Oscar's shortlist in 2001 included AI: Artificial Intelligence, Harry Potter, Hannibal, and Planet of the Apes, and while its reception otherwise would indicate that it was Harry Potter...I kind of wonder if it was Planet of the Apes.  It was widely expected to get a nomination at the time (some thinking it would be the biggest threat to Lord of the Rings), and Rick Baker was a Diane Warren-style de facto nominee during this era.  I'm guessing it was Helena Bonham Carter as a monkey in fourth.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to say Harry Potter a lot in the coming weeks for this, and I'm not going to say Planet of the Apes at all, so I'll just go with it now-this is some of Baker's better work from an era where he frequently made really awful movies look amazing.  No one remembers this remake, but I'd have definitely cited it for this category.

Oscar’s Choice: Without Baker, this was a slam dunk for The Fellowship of the Ring.

My Choice: Yeah, I can't really argue with it either.  The women of the red light in Moulin Rouge! would've made a worthy winner in most years, but I'm not going to deny Fellowship for creating such an iconic look for the big screen (A Beautiful Mind is way in the back).

And those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone onboard with Oscar & myself for the Tolkien crew taking this?  Are you glad that Oscar no longer values old age makeup the way it used to do (or do you wish we'd go back because then we'd be spared the de-aging CGI messiness)?  And who else misses the now-retired Rick Baker?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2001: Previously in 2001

Past Best Makeup Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022