John Landis (Part Two)
The writer/director of An American Werewolf in London (and many other classic films) ponders dreams and nightmares, ghosts and zombies, disaster movies, and the rise of the A-budget B-picture.
by Kurt Sayenga
NO RESPECT
LANDIS: I’ve always loved fantasy and horror and science fiction and there really are a lot of very good horror films. Probably 50 to 100 really good ones. And then there are a couple thousand pieces of shit.
KURT: Isn’t that the ratio for motion pictures in general?
LANDIS: That’s the ratio for everything. For everything.
KURT: Horror movies get singled out as being an embarrassment to “the art of cinema,” like the lunatic cousin the aristocratic family keeps locked up in the attic.
LANDIS: The two genres that historically never really got respect from critics or academics, it’s changed now, but really if you look at the Oscars for instance, The Silence of the Lambs [1991] is the single horror picture that actually won the Academy Award. Every so often there’s an actor like Frederick March, but basically… And what’s interesting is that the movies that got respect were all based on books. Whether it’s Frankenstein, Dracula, …
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