Yeah... And the president is gonna make me Secratary of Pussy.

So a few months back I went on a John Carpenter kick, due to BAM showing a bunch of his movies. But this week I went after Carpenter's prime rival in the genre business of the 80's, Wes Craven(Cronenberg could be tossed around with these two, but his stories are so unconventional he deserves to be in a class by himself). Best known for the Nightmare on Elm Street and the Scream movies (which were essentially a send up of Carpenter's Halloween and it's imitators) I recently watched what I believe to be his two best films. The Serpent and the Rainbow, and The People Under the Stairs.

The Serpant and the Rainbow is a hard film to watch... it's slow, yet maniacal in its delivery. What I love about this film is there is a little bit of everything that other horror movies build themselves around. There are images as creepy as anything you'd see in a J horror ghost movie, there is a touch of torture... nothing shown graphically but every guy in the room will swallow deeply... There's endings within endings and a sense that one might not know what is real and what is fantasy. All done with a filmmaker's sensibility, not the quick cuts I'm used to seeing from the music video directors who make films these days.

The People Under the Stairs is a little harder to appreciate cause it's so clearly a white man (wes craven in this case) attempting to write for an "URBAN" audience. You end up with ridiculous lines of dialogue... the only thing saving them is they are coming out of Ving Rhames' mouth.

"Thirteenth birthday is unlucky anyway. Too old to get tit, too young to get ass... fucked either way."

"We done popped this house's cherry."

And my favorite.

"Yeah, and maybe the President will make me Secretary of Pussy."

Once you get past the silly attempts at sounding "black" you can really enjoy this flick. It's fairy tale like in its plot, but more like the original Grimm versions. Basically there are some sick people that live in a house being robed by our hero (fool... a thirteen year old kid) who is trying to get money for his mom's operation. These sick folks just happen to be fool's landlords... It's good to see evil white folks and good black folks in a movie for once.