John Landis turns 75 today.
He’s a very interesting guy. People mention him when the subject of great horror directors come up. Sure, he isn’t one of the Big Five horror directors (John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, and George Romero[1]) but he always gets an honorable mention in this field.
But most people think of Landis as a comedy director. He directed (and sometimes co-wrote) many classics including The Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, Spies Like Us, Three Amigos, and Coming to America.
He’s also directed a number of horror films: Schlock, An American Werewolf in London, and Twilight Zone: The Movie. There are a couple of things that take the shine off this. One is that the first two of these films are horror comedies. And there aren’t many of them. He certainly seems to be one of those guys who didn’t care about horror once he could choose not to.
But I think creating horror and comedy are similar. Both are visceral. They need to be effective at a deeper level than the cerebral cortex. And part of that is just craft. Setting up a joke is not much different than setting up a scare. But to me, both genres need immediacy. There can be no distractions.
Even better than John Landis is, to me, James Whale. But in many ways, they were the same. But as with the Big Five above, it is no dishonor to be come up short of Whale when it comes to horror — especially when I’d have to give the comedy prize to Landis.
To celebrate John Landis’ birthday, I recommend watching his first film, the horror comedy Schlock. Frankly, it is barely horror. But it is very funny! Archive has a decent print for free without commercials:
[1] This is just the standard list. Obviously, I’d add Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento. I don’t know who I’d remove. Probably I’d just rename them the Big Seven horror directors.
John Landis by Blather From Brooklyn under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Landis directed two segments of the Zone movie — one being the tragic one where Morrow died.
He also directed the great opening teaser with Ackroyd and Albert Brooks. Which is horror comedy. And it’s really good.
When Landis did straight comedy, like Spies Like Us and Three Amigos, it was awful. The worst “high concept” crap. But his horror comedy isn’t bad at all.
American Werewolf is really great — more horror than comedy — a good blend. I do think Spies is weak but I rather like Three Amigos — but probably mostly because of Martin Short who I find irresistibly charming — always. I assume the coda of Twilight Zone was also directed by Landis. But it could have been Miller. It’s really short. I know about the helicopter crash. But I can’t understand how the story went there given what’s on the screen. But if I really cared, I’m sure I could get a shooting script. Regardless, a tragedy. Vic Morrow was great in the film. And then two kids died too? I suspect Morrow wouldn’t have lived too much longer. He seems like a heavy smoker.
I saw a comedy special with Short & Steve Martin, and it worked for me in a way Martin’s stuff usually doesn’t. Martin’s kind of a pompous dick, just a bit, and Short really humanized him. Martin’s self-conscious over how much money he’s made in a stupid movie industry. Short finds the stupidity of it HILARIOUS.
I’d bet that if you talked to Martin Short about the dumbest crap he’s ever been in, he’d probably tell you stories about how it was even dumber than you could imagine!
I remember recovering from an emergency appendectomy in the hospital and all the hospital TV had was Three Amigos and Spaceballs. I probably watched each a few times. Hating those movies took my mind off how painful the surgery site was…
Like everything Mel Brooks has done since Young Frankenstein, I hated Spaceballs when I first saw it. So I revisited it. As you know, I work really hard to like films. But it was awful. See my review. Every year on Twitter I had to see people bloviate about how great he was on his birthday. He definitely did some good things in his early days. But now I look back on Get Smart and I figure all the good things came from Buck Henry. As a performer, he’s just embarrassing. Of course, I remember when people talked about Lou Reed after he died. It was clear they knew next to nothing about him. Probably the same about Brooks. Oh! Here’s another thing: he’s a terrible songwriter. Yet The Producers was a big hit. People have no taste.