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amitontheweb
Reviews
Rain: The Terror Within... (2005)
The film is really about a rapist, and his theories of sex and rape, a man who can't differentiate between being a eunuch and being impotent.
A shocking plot secret is thrust on the viewers even as an open mouth kiss between the lead female and her chosen male is on its way -- the male happens to be her enemy, the destroyer of her life.
The theme of the movie appears to be a fear of rain suffered by a blind girl who was raped as a young girl on a rainy night. It is expected to show her sorrows and sufferings. Instead, the film chooses to show us her big, blouse-tearing breasts at every plausible moment. Rain, fear, phobia, blindness -- these are just psychological props used in the story to thrash out the main elements of the script: lust and sexuality.
The film is really about a rapist, and his theories of sex and rape, a man who can't differentiate between being a eunuch and being impotent. He is made to take several guises to cheat the girl -- rapist, social worker, journalist, psychiatrist, and her dream lover. He thinks there is no such thing as 'rape' among animals, where the males impose themselves on the females and make them enjoy sex. This, he claims, was true when he raped the blind girl who in his opinion enjoyed its conclusion, as proved by her growing silence during the act. But she won't admit it now, so he says.
Full free play is given to the male who goes about terrorising his chosen victim with ease, verbalising his thoughts and what he wants. The only thing that can be done in the script is to kill him. Just as it happens among a species where the female kills the male after sex, so says the blind girl, taking the theory of animal sex to its conclusion.
It is a weak argument, for it happens only in that species, and not all. So is the theory of animal sex alright for us? The weak point of the story is that its plot revolves around the male trying to beget a child from the blind girl to prove his manhood, and not lust or sex that both he and the girl are actually shown as interested in. The filmmakers don't appear to have made up their minds, and the story falls down here, for the viewer can't make sense of all this mess. The customary end sees the girl take her revenge and get the final word in -- that force can't be used to obtain favours.
It wouldn't be too far fetched to claim that the blindness of the girl character was exploited by the script, to run the plot around, and the film, to show the actress' body.
A glimpse of the comical and the non-sensical elements in the story:
- The girl's pregnancy is not proof enough of the man's normalcy. - The girl gives birth to a still baby. The male's wife blames the girl. Yet, later the male comes back to the blind girl saying that his wife blames him for the still baby. - It is the male who is engaged in shocking, criminal and aberrant practices, full of lust. Yet the script allows only the girl to be described as 'abnormal' and a 'sex-maniac', when all that she does is explore herself.
The Evil Dead (1981)
The cover blurb calls it the best horror film of the year. The film is really a comedy with some effects of horror thrown in.
The cover blurb calls it the best horror film of the year. The film is really a comedy with some effects of horror thrown in. With children of course it never fails to leave its right impact of morbid horror with its close-your-eyes scenes. But the movie is adults rated, so perhaps Sam Raimi got mixed up with the intended audience. A more appropriate name would be The Comic Dead. So why was it banned ( :-) Ref - the IMDb site in UK and Ireland between 1983 to 1990?) Shot in 35 mm and only 1-1/2 hours long, the storyline contains elements that have been beaten to death in any number of horror movies. A bunch of college youngsters, males and females who are in relationships, proceed toward or get stuck in a lonely cottage somewhere around Tennessee, where one by one each one of them falls prey to demons / ghosts / evil spirits or other inhabitants of the nocturnal, hidden world of spirits. The entire action takes place on a single night, so that daybreak heralds the end of horror and beginning of normalcy.
The background to the action evokes interest. An archaeologist has spent his life away from the "myriad distractions of modern civilization" to research an ancient Sumerian burial and discovered a book - the book of the dead. He leaves behind an account of his experiences in a tape recorder subsequently discovered by the college vacationers. The Sumerian demon lying dormant gets a new lease of life when the tape recorder with evil chants is played back. The film remains silent on the nature of the spirit and all one gets to see are camera shots zooming onto victims. The spirit appears to lurk in trees and vegetation who then tend to come alive and attack the victims.
The comic aspects of the film lie in how the dead victims, with white, morbid faces and distorted voices, go around trying to attack the rest of the group, though never really making an attempt to do serious harm. Their main intention appears to be only to scare - and that works well on children, but fails on adults after a while. Some of the background music actually tries to create comic effects. The makeups though do evoke and generate feeling of horror and revulsion. The main protagonist, well played by Bruce Campbell, supports the action throughout the film.
While watching the film, the reviewer compared the dead creatures come alive in the film to office workers and thought they were quite similar, the latter being more scary than the former. The reviewer first saw the film at a young age and considered it to be the epitome the horror. Recently, a waiter at the local restaurant requested him to get the film, saying his entire family wished to see this film. Such is the popular hold of this film, which on closer scrutiny is really more of a comedy than horror.
From the film:
Ashley (Bruce Campbell) - Is there something in the woods that did this to you?
Cherly - No, it's the woods themselves.
First published on my blog at: www.myvoice.in