Mean Creek

Discussing Mean Creek (2004) is a bit of a challenge for me. It came highly recommended from another movie buff who emphasized that I avoid reading any plot summaries. 

Seeing the movie myself, I can agree that trying to summarize the film or give someone else an idea of what it's about would necessitate divulging certain developments that occur fairly deep into the running time. The best I can do is say I will try not spoil anything, but if anything, Mean Creek is more about its characters and their behavior than the intricacies of its plot, so maybe I'm more worried about it than I should be.

Mean Creek could be described as a cross between Stand by Me and Deliverance. One day, Sam (Rory Culkin) gets beat up by middle school bully George (Josh Peck). Sam turns to his older brother Rocky (Trevor Morgan) to help get back at George, and they enlist Rocky's friends Clyde (Ryan Kelley) and Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) in a scheme to lure George on a rafting trip in the woods where they can humiliate him. Along for ride but initially not privy to the group's ulterior plan is Millie (Carly Schroeder), Sam's girlfriend. The plan eventually sets in motion, but then, things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Reservoir Dogs

Reservoir Dogs might be the closest Quentin Tarantino ever got to making a serious, gritty, straight-up thriller.

True, his debut has its share of his trademark, pop culture-soaked dialogue and quirky, eccentric characters, but at 90 minutes, Reservoir Dogs is lean and mean. The characters have fewer redeeming qualities, indulging in cruelty and violence for their own sake. Innocent people are hurt and killed, and the violence is less surreal and comic and more brutal; it looks like it really hurts, with nothing about it being remotely funny.

When John Travolta accidentally shoots Phil LaMarr in the back of the car and groans, "Ah man, I just shot Marvin in the face," it's hysterical because he's such a doofus and his choice of words tries to downplay the severity of what he did.

When Michael Madsen slices off a cop's ear with a straight razor while dancing to Steeler's Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You," it's terrifying in its coldness and cruelty. Even though we don't see the act, it is uncomfortable to imagine, and famed horror director Wes Craven reportedly walked out of a screening of the movie in disgust.

Travolta in Pulp Fiction plays a screwup; Madsen in Reservoir Dogs plays a sociopath.

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's characters love to talk, and throughout his films, they talk at length about the ethics of tipping, the implied meaning of a foot massage, and the concept around Superman's identity. The dialogue is often profane, often funny, and more often than not, revealing, giving new dimensions to the characters and taking the plots in unexpected directions.

Inglourious Basterds features a lot of talking and enough pop culture references to feel like a Tarantino movie, but there's something else at work. Instead of going just for laughs, the dialogue goes for tension and suspense. Each sentence is another turn of the screw. 

Inglourious Basterds is a funny movie. Like Pulp Fiction, it is a surreal, pop comic world of quirkiness, absurdity, and violence - but it's also incredibly tense and uneasy and not just in the moments of unexpected gore.

Hitchcock postulated the bomb-under-a-table-theory: a bomb that explodes unexpectedly is a surprise, but a bomb, under a table, that the audience is waiting to see go off, is suspense. Tarantino understands this theory, and it's at play throughout Inglourious Basterds. The violence in Pulp Fiction was often a surprise, but here, the drawn-out dialogue keeps us uneasy because we know a bomb, literal or metaphorical, is about to go off; we just don't know when or how.

Pulp Fiction

Reservoir Dogs announced Quentin Tarantino's arrival, but Pulp Fiction cemented his place as a quirky, idiosyncratic filmmaker whose presence was going to be felt in Hollywood for a while.

Pulp Fiction contains many recognizable elements and tropes from the crime and film noir genres - professional hitmen, crime bosses, murder gone wrong, etc. - but the presentation and layout are wholly original. The movie has its moments of shocking violence and sequences of almost unbearable tension, but the overall effect is comedic. Despite the ghastliness and the morally bankrupt characters who commit atrocities, the viewer can't help but laugh (as long as they aren't too squeamish).

A lighter, darker side of George Romero in 'Moonshadows'

George Romero grew up on E.C. Comics, and the influences of those horror comics is evident throughout his work, most notably Creepshow, which is presented as an anthology of tales within a comic book. A certain gleeful ghoulishness underlies much of Romero's filmography, suggesting if nothing else, he always remained a kid at heart who giggled at the grossout.

In the 90s and early 2000s, Romero attempted but failed to make horror movies for children, hoping to broaden his appeal beyond the ultra-gory. Despite a few attempts - most notably Goosebumps and (I would argue) The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - he was unable to make that leap.

Goosebumps understandably has received the most coverage as far as aborted Romero projects for children goes, and indeed, with its critiques of capitalism and living dead threat, it's easy to see why. However, I want to talk about Moonshadows, a fantasy horror script he wrote multiple drafts for, and unlike Goosebumps, it's an original story, not an adaptation of someone else's book.

When Romero portrayed a real-life monster in 'The Assassination'

Before I Wake was the unproduced George Romero script I was most interested in reading when I visited the George A. Romero Archival Collection in October 2024 (click here for more about that), but I read two other scripts, including The Assassination.

Like Before I Wake, The Assassination also came close to production before falling apart. In fact, it actually got as far as casting. Ed Harris and James Coburn had signed on for prominent roles, pop singer Ricky Martin was in talks for a part, and Anthony Quinn was set to play the story's central figure, Rafael Trujillo, the longtime dictator of the Dominican Republic.

Unlike Before I Wake, it's easy to figure out why The Assassination wasn't filmed: Anthony Quinn died. Around the time the film was to begin shooting, the 86-year-old Quinn passed away of respiratory failure, and he was pretty much irreplaceable to the project. 

Hollywood lays Romero to rest with 'Before I Wake'

George Romero was incredibly prolific in the 1970s and '80s, but in the '90s, he hit a rut. Despite being attached to many high-profile projects - including Resident Evil, The Mummy, and Goosebumps - and cranking out a large number of scripts, he only produced one feature film, The Dark Half, which finished filming in 1991 but wasn't released until 1993. He didn't complete another full-length movie until Bruiser in 2000.

One project that came close to being filmed was Before I Wake (This has no connection with the 2016 film of the same name directed by Mike Flanagan). This version was a haunted house movie Romero spent years developing, writing multiple drafts and getting as far as having shooting schedules written, locations picked out, and a budget lined up. So why didn't it happen?