@jasensmith said:

I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on Big Trouble in Little China William.  Although it was better than all of the stupid martial arts revival movies of the 80's and I generally liked the film, Big Trouble.. wasn't better than Indiana Jones.

Well it is a matter of taste, but the reason I think it is so much better is it is so funny and hip with cool Chinese dudes and Kurt Russell acting like an irritable John Wayne.  Indiana Jones is totally unhip and just a lot of high-production values applied to a 1940s serial (which I would rather see in the originals).   Big Trouble has some priceless humor in it, with Kurt Russell being ultra macho even though he is totally incompetent and clueless.   Also, great dialogue which you never get in a Spielberg film - such as:

"When some 8 foot tall maniac shoves the back of your favorite head up against the bar-room wall and looks you crooked in the eye and asks "Have you paid your dues?" -   well, you just look that sucker right back in the eye and you tell him what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that... 

"Have you paid your dues Jack?"

"Yes sir, the check is in the mail."

One of the great joys of Carpenter's work is to see what he does with different budgets and actors that are not very well known, over his time as a film director. Sometimes non-existent budgets. Assault on Precinct 13 is an extremely low budget affair - but a great film. The remake is glossy with lots of named actors - but doesn't have the same impact as the original. The scene with the little girl and the ice cream vendor sticks out, for example. Remakes are rarely any good. Because films are very much part of their time and the many reflections of society etc etc. And also because most remakes today seem to have a video game in the back of it's mind. Incoming revenue is the name of the game.

When Carpenter got hold of a budget it could either be great or a straight fold. Critics liked the low budget Halloween - I couldn't stand it - way too many loop holes. He's a great director though and I like his music on the old analogue Moogs etc.

I like the way Carpenter makes Americana. He makes American films pure and simple. He doesn't, seemingly, try to please everyone in the world. That's what I admire about French cinema. They make films for France and to me that's shows a great deal of integrity. Sweden is the same on a smaller scale with great directors like Ingmar Bergman.

The amount of budget available for films shouldn't matter. Most high budget films are fucking crap anyway - so where's the criteria in that. Most low budget films can be even worse. You will make a good film regardless of the amount of money spent in my view.

With Alien, I think Goldsmith's score to that was better than the film. The photography was great and just about everything else - but the film is not in any way original. Just extremely well done. Probably Ridley Scott's best film - which was when - 1979?

@William said:

I like the film that "Alien"  was stolen from - it was called "It the Terror from Beyond Space"

I'm gonna have to look that one up - any film that inspired Alien has got to be worth a watch! The only one I was consciously aware of was John Carpenter's low budget debut "Dark Star" which was written by (and starred) Dan O'Bannon (who later wrote Alien). O'Bannon's idea for Alien came from a small part of the movie where the ship's pet (an alien brilliantly realised by the FX department as a beach ball with feet attached) runs amok in the ships airducts. Be warned though - you'll never be able to take Alien seriously again.

M

@jasensmith said:

The Thing is a well deserved cult classic.  Also, the pulsating electronic score by Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter (uncredited) is one of my favorites.  Thanks to video and DVD The Thing did finally turn a profit and earned its rightful place in the lexicon of classic spook flicks.  On Halloween, here in the states, some isolated movie theaters run The Thing to sold out crowds. 

                                                                                                                  

I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on Big Trouble in Little China William.  Although it was better than all of the stupid martial arts revival movies of the 80's and I generally liked the film, Big Trouble.. wasn't better than Indiana Jones.  I think it was just too gimmicky.  Maybe if they had kept the original screenplay and left it set in the old west instead of contemporary San Francisco it might have made a difference.  On second thought, Big Trouble... is better than Indiana Jones 4, The Curse of the Big Shinny Alien Skull, or whatever it's called.

There are two recent spook movies that I find refreshing in a pretty stale genre.  One is called Wind Chill which has some logic problems and unnecessary scenes but it's a good jump out of your seat old fashion ghost story.  The other one is a British production (I think) set in the Appalachian Mountains called The Decent.  It wasn't that scary and the ending was lame but it sure was creepy as hell.

Oh what were we discussing on this thread again? 

I loved The Thing - along with Alien they were the first films to scare the cr*p out of me. The CD version of the score is Morricone at his best but quite a bit of it didn't make the final cut. Interesting you mentioned The Descent as I did find that good (and creepy).

I think it's a bit unfair to directly compare Raiders and Big Trouble - they're both paying homage to serials but Raiders is played straight and Big Trouble has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek. It might be better to compare Raiders and Escape From New York (and I hesitate to say it but I also prefer Raiders [;)] ).

M

@PaulR said:

With Alien, I think Goldsmith's score to that was better than the film. The photography was great and just about everything else - but the film is not in any way original. Just extremely well done. Probably Ridley Scott's best film - which was when - 1979?

I'd better not bring up Goldsmith's rejected score for Scott's Legend...

[6]

Oh no - too late...

Dark Star was another great low budget film from Carpenter.  Those early films of his were truly low budget.   It aggravates me when some producer says that anything below 5 or 10 million is low budget.  There is a disturbing arrogance about it, as if they are bragging, that to them wasting enrmous amounts of money is impressive in itself.  What is far more impressive is when someone does not spend much money and makes a good film.   Today in Hollywood, you don't figure out how to do something.  You simply hire another company.  That is pathetic, and yet it is how mainstream films are now made. 

I mentioned Ray Harryhausen because he truly did everything in the FX of his films.  On Jason and the Argonauts he had some assistants, but on the others he did all the animation, fabrication of miniature sets, building of puppets, arrangement of lighting and camera work.  Can you imagine that today in Hollywood?  It is absolutely unthinkable. 

Except with a maverick producer like Roger Corman, who refuses to waste money and makes each of his company's films for around $250,000 which is the cost of film stock and processing/post production, and modest salaries for the people who are actually needed to do a film.  His films unfortunately are not very good these days though. 

@William said:

 Well, talking about $11 million is inappropriate, since you are comparing $11 million in 1980 dollars with current dollars first of all, and secondly you are buying into the insanity of union-made Hollywood films which require an entire crew to film anything, no matter how simple, and require hundreds or thousands of people to do what one person...

And they (Hollywood unions) generally require an entire orchestra to perform the score even though an entire orchestra may not be appropriate.  Sometimes, more is less.  What if you just want a small Chamber set up to perform your score?  Or, dare I say it, VSL.  Not that I prefer hearing a sampled orchestra instead of the real thing but these full orchestras is one of the reasons why most big budget Hollywood films are so over scored.  What a waste. 

The horror film writer/director Sam Raimi has recently caught my attention again with the release of his most recent offering, Drag Me To Hell.  I forgot mention it earlier with Wind Chill and The Descent (thanks Mosso for correcting my typo).  I don't know what the budget was to that film but It reminded me so much of The Evil Dead and it's the quintessential Sam Raimi which is no poetic justice and no happy endings (I'm not commenting on his non horror stuff).  For those of you who haven't seen it, The Evil Dead is another classic right up there with The Thing because I think it achieved so much with so little (budget wise).  

 yeah, The Evil Dead - and Basket Case is another great low budget one - both shot on 16mm.  The later 35mm Evil Deads and Basket Cases were nowhere near as good as the originals. 

@mosso said:

I'd better not bring up Goldsmith's rejected score for Scott's Legend...

 That is a great example of the original idea of this thread!    I have not heard it though I imagine it is excellent knowing Goldsmith's music.  The film itself was pretty bad - ludicrous or nauseating in parts - though it had some good production design.   Who in the hell ever decided "Tangerine Dream" is better than Jerry Goldsmith?  That is disgusting!

 BTW Paul, no way is Alien Ridley Scott's best film!   The Duellists is a thousand times better than that squealing dickhead.   

One of Howard Blake's rare filmscores with Keitel and Carradine - I forgot about that one and it is a good film - even before Alien. And do you know what the common denominator of Alien and Dark Star is? Dark Star is a very funny, cynical film and haven't seen that for years.

chhchhshchh - hello bomb?

 Isn't that the previously mentioned Dan O'Bannon?   He worked on both of those I believe.     

Another great score for a HORRIBLE film - The Fountainhead.  Has anyone here seen this film ?   You must see Gary Cooper in this to believe it.  he is the defintion of WOODEN and the movie is the absolute definition of STILTED.   Also, there are some very subtlly suggestive scenes, such as the one in which  Patricia Neal gets hot under the collar while watching Gary Cooper drill some holes in a rock.   His drill is VERY LARGE...

But the music is a great example of music of Max Steiner, who is the previous greatest practitioner (besides Korngold of course) of the leitmotif approach that John Williams mastered.  It is aggravating in the extreme when such powerful, expressive music is SHACKLED to a limping turkey.

@Another User said:

you are buying into the insanity of union-made Hollywood films which require an entire crew to film anything...

I'm not sure why you jumped to that conclusion, next time be more careful about assuming what people "buy into" based on a couple posts.  Personally, I believe in judging a film based on the quality of the finished product up on the screen, not making a knee jerk reaction based on the budget.

To address the other part of your post, now deleted, the funny part isn't that you disagree with critics and audiences, it's that the things you criticize it for aren't really that true of the film (huge budget and tons of effects) and that those same things that you insist make a bad film are just as present (if not more so) in The Thing.  Same goes for the Raiders comparison - again, Big Trouble cost more than Raiders (25 versus 18 million).

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and you obviously think your favorites are better than some other movies.  But maybe you'd be better off just saying you like a movie better and stop trying to justify it with arguments that come off as hypocritical.  I'm moving on, there's not much point in trying to discuss something like this with someone who is convinced that anyone who has different taste is all "effing idiots" or believes that any money spent on something they don't like is "wasted".  (I doubt the producers of Alien who made back about 8 times their budget considered it a "waste"...but there's the dirty spectre of commerce again...)

Cheers.

Sorry Mike, I actually didn't mean to target you with my ranting - I was just set off on pet peeves concerning "Alien" and big budgets.  At the time (though not now as can be seen here) everyone loved Alien and hated The Thing, and everyone loved Raiders and hated Big Trouble, so I am defensive about them. 

Speaking of hated films another one I thought was great is  The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai across the Eighth Dimension.   That had a very cool synthesizer score for it also.  It was a total flop and critics tore it to pieces.   Why? I don't get that.  It was very imaginative and crazy and original I guess. Also, low budget...

@William said:

 Isn't that the previously mentioned Dan O'Bannon?   He worked on both of those I believe.     

Another great score for a HORRIBLE film - The Fountainhead.  Has anyone here seen this film ?   You must see Gary Cooper in this to believe it.  he is the defintion of WOODEN and the movie is the absolute definition of STILTED.   Also, there are some very subtlly suggestive scenes, such as the one in which  Patricia Neal gets hot under the collar while watching Gary Cooper drill some holes in a rock.   

Yes that's right. Dan O' Bannon. Clever and funny guy.

At least with actresses like Pat Neal and most any actress in those days you knew they were women regardless of how old they were at the time of any given film. Not like today where they mostly sound like they're eating hamster food and someone just stuck a 3 foot pole up their ass - while they were texting.