Fantastic Cinema : Small budgets, big ideas

Thees filmmakers do not always possess the necessary means at their ambitions. If the audience can grasp the poetry or the truth of a film’s copyright to the staging, raw and to the artistic direction to be sleek; to budget equal it will tend to be more demanding of a fantastic film, waiting for certainly that the visual rendering is perfectly in service of the atmosphere, and that the special effects that often requires this kind of stories, are quite successful to mark our imagination. Little motivated at the thought of having to sort the productions without a seal, nor ambition, where the incompetence of the technical team competes with the indigence of the scenario, some of the spectators end up tired war by associating the terms “low-budget movies” and “nanars”, and prefer to fall back on the productions in the most prestigious, and believed a little too hastily, that their large-scale technical and business sufficient to ensure their artistic quality. For all those, and for all curious people interested in the works of outputs of the beaten track, here is a list of ten movies, series B, or even Z, which compensate for their small budgets and big ideas.

EXTRACTED

Released in 2013, directed by Nir Panirywith Sasha Roiz, Jenny Mollen and Dominic Bogart

Tom Jacobs has invented a machine to visit memories. He introduces himself in the mind of a drug addict accused of murder to solve the crime.

Change minimalist journey inside a mind tormented (in contrast to the flamboyant The Cell), Extraced took advantage of his lack of decorum technology (in contrast to the laborious Transcendence) in order to gain in realism, and to concentrate its dramatic effects on the interactions between “the intruder” and “the host”. The lack of special effects razzle-dazzle, fantastic atmosphere is driven by the effects of editing and use of the decorations masterful.

DEMENTIA

Released in 1955, directed by John Parker, with Adrienne Barrett, Bruno VeSota and Ben Roseman

The nightmare awake, a woman, won by the madness.

Dare to the formula, Dementia is the David Lynch before the hour. This film bathed in mysteries, as much for its shooting conditions that the director almost unknown, appears to be a ufo in the cinema of the fifties, since there seems to be a heir to the indirect of the expressionist cinema of pre-war, with which it shares a lack of words and a black-and-white radical. Hard to summarize this movie where the movement of the heroine, and the strange gatherings that it causes, not to explain never really the stakes of the plot. The treatment of sound effects and lighting, foreshadowing those of master Lynch, so it is the avant-garde.

PONTYPOOL

Released in 2008, directed by Bruce McDonald’swith Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, and Georgina Reilly

Three facilitators of a radio station in Pontypool isolated by the blizzard, receive information regarding scenes of carnage unexplained. It turns out that a virus transmitted by the English transformed into zombies the inhabitants of the city.

You will tell me, rightly, that the zombies, we had dinner in the last ten years. Yes, but Pontypool is seriously the detour thanks to its concept, marrying it with relevance his political term, and can lay claim to the ancestry of George Romero. The director and his screenwriter, writer Tony Burgess, had the intelligence not to choose the point of view of survivors insipid, to better center the action in the behind-closed-doors of the radio station, with as protagonist a charismatic old veteran of the airwaves, whose personality cheeky serves as a mirror to the plot based on the language.

BITTER

Released in 2010, directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, with Marie Bos, Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud and Cassandra Forest

Ana is faced with the fear and desire at three key moments of his life. A trip to a carnal between reality and fantasies overwhelming where pleasure and pain intersect.

First film a couple of poets visual, Amer is a rare pearl in the fantastic cinema French. Split into three acts, expressing each a sensuality and a haunting atmosphere, the strong personality of the film is explained by its homage to the Giallo, these thrillers hyper-stylized that made the rich hours of the Italian cinema. We thus find references, not to say explicit citations, to the masters of the genre such as Mario Bava or Dario Argento. A sort of fan-movie, yes, but made by silversmiths.

FATHER’S DAY

Released in 2011, directed by Astron-6, with Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy and Conor Sweeney

Since the gruesome murder of his father, Ahab lives a secluded life on the fringes of society. Traumatized, he is since obsessed by the hunt for the killer, named Fuchman, a serial killer with hundreds of deaths, rampant each year on the occasion of the Feast of the Fathers.

By accepting the proposal of the pope of cinema bis Llyod Kaufman to develop a sequel to its first production, Mother’s Day, thirty years after the foundation of the firm Troma, the collective Astron-6 has perfectly understood that it was necessary to leave free court with a crazy slapstick, colored with a patina of post-modern way of grindhouses of Quentin Tarantino and Rodriguez. Each turn the Astron write and perform their segment, thus forming a set of marabout-piece of string that does not ban any references or parodies.

SPIDER BABY

Released in 1964, directed by Jack Hill, with Lon Chaney Jr, Carol Ohmart and Sid Haig

The three children of the family Merrye are suffering from a syndrome of degeneration. The three live in the countryside in an isolated house, until the day when they learn the arrival of other members of their family.

Escaped from the stable of Roger Corman, Jack Hill sign here a comedy-horror unexpected in which we find both the interpreter of the Loup-garou of the Universal and that of captain Spaulding from Devil’s rejects (curious shortcut spatio-temporal). With its generic cartoon and its atmosphere somewhere between Freaks and the Addams Family, this film went unnoticed at its release, announcement yet, the upcoming misdeeds of psychopaths degenerate on the big screen, such as those of the texas chainsaw Massacre or Thehas House of 1000 dead.

TIME DEMON

Released in 1996, directed by Richard J. Thomsonwith Laurent Dallias, Elodie Chérie and Elisabeth Henriques.

A small actor megalomaniac, Jack Gomez, is pursued by the nazis using a time machine… because Jack is the descendant of a conquistador, the possessor of a magic talisman.

Yes I will dare to quote this Z-series touring for less than ten-thousand euros, in which intersect actresses porn and journalists of Mad Movies. Because if its French director galley for twenty years to fund their projects and implement them with professional teams, we can only salute his amateur work foutraque, worn by a real energy and a self-deprecating beneficial. If the producers of comedy or horror films lend themselves a little more credit to the ideas of Thomson, they would find may be a Edgar Wright French.

THE SIGNAL

Released in 2007, directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry, with Anessa Ramsey , and A. J Bowen.

Crossed destinies around a strange phenomenon : the transmission of radio and television programmes transform people into killers blood.

It is necessary to make the difference between a zombie movie and film infected; here we are dealing with a film of infected sharing a critical acid of american society with his elder The Crazies of the maestro Romero. Like Father’s Day, The Signal is a collective work where each of the three directors sign a segment of the film, each with an approach to horror that is realistic and a different tone.

THE MAN FROM EARTH

Released in 2007, directed by Richard Schenkman, with David Lee Smith, John Billingsley and Tony Todd

A scientist at the dawn of the retirement reveals his true identity : he is an immortal over the age of 14 000 years. A revelation that will challenge all the beliefs of his assistance.

Adaptation of a short story by Jerome Bixby, one of the authors of science fiction, the most prolific of american television, The Man from Earth has a concept strong enough that all the tension and emotion through dialogue. The director uses the codes of the theatre more than the cinema, notably by the unity of place, and the ping-pong game of words between the characters, each representing a different point of view. The idea of immortality and of course the messianic is thus fully exploited by the approaches dialectics of the different scientists gathered in the same room : the anthropologist, the historian, the analyst…

THE INCIDENT

Released in 2011, directed by Alexander Short, with Rupert Evans, Dave Legeno and Anna Skellern

Waiting to make it big with their rock band, three friends work as cooks in an asylum. One evening, the security system breaks down and patients are benefiting from the opportunity to escape from their cells. The three chefs then face in the face of danger of death.

The 2000s have brought us a wave of horror films French, more specifically, survival horrors where the audience lived every time an hour and a half ordeal, in empathy with the main characters. If The Incident offers more or less the same program, to understand how it differentiates itself from its elders, it must be remembered that Alexander Short is one of the clippers the most courted in the world, having already worked for Justice, U2 or The White Stripes. It puts its homogeneous design of the sound and the image to develop a nightmare, sensory, worthy of the classics of the genre.