The Unseen Masters of Horror

I couldn’t help noticing that - consistent with French auteurism - you don’t mention the author/screenwriter as a key contributor. I think that relating film and theatre and asking how much of the quality of a performance of “Death of a Salesman” is due to the director really hits home the point. It’s often said that the best stage directors are detail-oriented people with good organizational skills who get along well with people. In other words, the stage director is more of a manager than an artist. Is that so different in the film business?

A couple of other comments:

1. Often times a director is also the writer and/or editor. How much of his “style” and contribution actually comes from those roles rather than his directing?

2. An established director is able to pick and choose projects. It could be argued that this is largely what accounts for the fact that top directors tend to produce good films. I think it is safe to say that even an average director could produce a great film if he’s given a great script, great actors, great DP, and a large budget.

Comment by Jeffrey Uhlmann from University of Missouri-Columbia — May 16, 2007 @ 12:12 pm

Solid, solid article.  I love how PopMatters delves into genres with such ease, while giving writers like Marco an easel to setup on.

I just wanted to confirm Marco’s thesis, that the greatest horror requires more imput than just the director, by bringing up a director that wasn’t discussed:  George A. Romero.

For me, Romero’s classic period begins with 1973’s ‘The Crazies’.  Excluding ‘Night of the Living Dead’ makes sense because of the conditions under which it was produced.  For example, it was a collaboration with John Russo, so you see a muddled version of what would become Romero’s style later on.  Second, it was filmed piecemeal under extremely limited circumstances, so the canvas was limited in size and potential colors.

While ‘The Crazies’ was a solid genre piece, it really was 1977’s ‘Martin’ that kicked off a string of unbeatable Romero-helmed projects.  From Martin onwards, he had two key personnel onboard:  cinematographer Michael Gornick and FX guru Tom Savini.  These two understood his style and provided him with the material to create his films.

Romero’s modus operandi is heavily reliant on montage:  there are few scenes are simply shot.  In Romero’s work, they are created in the cutting room by pasting together copious numbers of raw shots: think ‘the house of mirrors’ scene from Martin or the mall invasion from Dawn of the Dead.  (Romero goes into great detail about this on the Document of the Dead with Anchor Bay’s deluxe Dawn set).  This was informed by the conditions under which these films were shot and by his background in advertising.

However, for all of Romero’s craft in the cutting room, his collaborators still had to provide him with quality material to edit from.  Savini understood on Dawn how certain shots could later be created from montage (think machete in the head zombie) and worked with that great tool in mind.  Gornick should be remembered for providing quality photography in difficult conditions and for fostering a proto-guerilla ethic of filming.

When all’s said and done, for a quality a film as Land of the Dead was, it lacks a few key elements of the classic Romero period that, for me, represent some of the most liberating and entrancing moments on celluloid.

Comment by Mr. T — May 17, 2007 @ 1:02 am