Greetings Movie Advocate regulars! Today we continue off our special Christmas present to you, a series of 12 lists for the 12 days of Christmas. We're continuing today with lists of our 7 favorite hand-made movie. Agree? Disagree? Either way we'd love to hear about it!
Ben's List
Note: I didn't really know what criteria to use for "Hand-Made Movies" so I went in a few different directions...
7. The Thing
Though The Thing is a big studio movie, Rob Bottin's effects work are as handmade as they come. Watch the behind the scenes docs about The Thing and you'll see that Bottin was a mad genius, coming up with strangle low tech solutions to effects challenges that look great on screen. Bottin effects have a look and feel all their own. It's a shame the guy doesn't work much anymore. He's a little crazy though, I think. Rumor had it that he slept on the floor of the effects room with all the monsters while The Thing was in production. Despite or perhaps because of his slight madness, Bottin is on the short list of movie people I'd love to have a beer with.
6. Forbidden Zone
Forbidden Zone wouldn't be half the movie it is without the obviously cardboard sets and questionable makeup and costumes. Talk about making lemons into lemonade.
5. King Kong
So handmade you can literally see the fur move from where the modelers' hands moved the monster in between shots. Rather than detract, it somehow comes across as a physical manifestation of Kong's tumultuous soul. I know I'm reading too much into that, but that's how I've always felt.
4. El Mariachi
Though most of Justin and my lists have been about movies with “handmade effects,” I thought Robert Rodriguez’s one-man production was also appropriate. If you ever get a chance to read his production diary, Rebel Without A Crew, you will see exactly how little Rodriguez was working with. Truly handmade.
3. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
I mean, this is kind of a gimme, right? Wes Anderson and crew went to a lot of painstaking effort – not to mention money – to make this look handmade. Hand-made if not homemade, but boy does it look great.
2. The Wicker Man
The homemade May Day masks the townspeople wear during Wicker Man's finale go a long way toward setting the movie's tone of creeping terror. There is no flashy monster or big budget apocalypse effects, just a bunch of meek rural townspeople in creepy-ass animal masks.
1. The Deadly Spawn
The Deadly Spawn is the epitome of a hand-made movie: A bunch of friends getting together with a shoestring budget and making a big, fun, cheesy monster movie with way more imagination and verve than it should be capable of.
Justin's List
7. The Incredible Shrinking Man
An incredible combination of set work and camera tricks makes this one of the better looking movies about the vertically challenged.
6. Jason and the Argonauts
The Ray Harryhausen stop-motion skeletons battling the Argonauts thrills me every time.
5. King Kong
The work on this is so amazing and special.
4. Forbidden Plant
Looks like an incredibly high budget episode from the original Star Trek series. Everything is just right and transports you into another world.
3. The Puppet Films of Jiri Trnka
His stop motion movies combine child-like wonder and sophisticated story telling in a way that few other movies can.
2. Coraline
The mouse circus scene shows exactly why we still need stop motion in the age of Pixar.
1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
The attention to detail in this movie is absolutely ridiculous. The special features on the blu-ray show the depth that Wes Anderson and company put in here. For instance: in the grocery store scene, every label is hand-painted onto each can on the shelves.