BY SARAH BATY

This week’s screening I started to enjoy it right in the middle I think! The beginning part was kinda boring I wasn’t giving it my full attention and then it hit around the middle and I was like okay this is kinda good. By the end I think it won me over. It was a cute and chaotic movie. Those two adjectives shouldn’t really go together, but I feel like they are accurate.

Our reading Collective Screams: William Castle and the Gimmick Film, discusses Castle and his nicknames as the “The Abominable Showman” and “The Master of Gimmicks.” It stated how Castle said he modeled his career after PT Barnum which to me is a very interesting role model but to each their own! It describes Castle’s persona as “straddling the diegetic and nondiegetic space” and refers to one instance when he made his entrance by popping out of a coffin. Moving on to his films, I enjoy the line “Castle’s gimmicks attempt to reach out to the audience and incorporate them directly into the cinematic experience.” I think that that is something special. To want to incorporate the audience into the experience was such a cool idea. I have been to a movie at an amusement park or something when I was younger that I now realize was a gimmick film. It was a short film about dinosaurs and it had the seat buzzers, air blowing, and something in the floor that made it feel like the animals were running right over your feet. I thought the experience was amazing and terrifying (my sister found it a little more terrifying, my father had to take her out she wouldn’t stop crying) but for me I loved it! Something it didn’t have was the smell-o-vision. Maybe they could have released the smell of the trees and grass or something!

The presentations were so good! They always are. Starting with Doctor Sleep it looked SO intriguing and I low key want to watch it but I would have to watch The Shining first and I am TERRIFIED OF THE SHINING. One day I will watch The Shining I will, it is a classic and I feel like I am missing out. One part from the presentation that I found to be the most interesting was how they remastered scenes from The Shining and put them in Doctor Sleep. That’s just sick af and I know how good we are at technology now but it doesn’t mean I am not still surprised every time we do something DOPE. One last little thing about Doctor Sleep was I liked the quote from Danny Torrance, “our beliefs don’t make us good people. Our actions do.” That really stuck with me!

Next presentation was The Breakfast Club which is obviously a classic. I am more of a sixteen candles gal but my sister LOVED this movie. It’s one of my dad’s favorites and when he showed us it my sister was obsessed and we watched it constantly. This movie’s influence is just absolutely insane. Bunches and bunches of television shows and movies redo iconic scenes and lines from this movie. It’s influence will continue on for a very long time.