Forgive me for having a lazy day today, but in my defense I’ve already written about The Blair Witch Project in a “Confessions of a Fearphile” entry. The movie that popularized the still surviving and evolving found-footage horror boom had its theatrical wide-release nineteen years ago today, in the oh so wild year of 1999. I’ll have a lot more to say about Blair Witch as well as several other movies released that year when we get into the 20-year anniversaries in 2019, I assure you.
Other horror films released on July 30th include Deep Blue Sea, and if you’ve somehow avoided knowledge of Sam Jackson’s surprise demise in this film up to now, then my bad about the title of this post. Odds are, though, you’ve either seen the movie, seen a GIF of that scene, seen a YouTube clip of that scene (or at least read a title that says “Samuel L. Jackson Dies” beside a thumbnail of Sam in a wetsuit), or watched Dave Chappelle yelling about Sam’s fate in Bill Burr’s ear.
Deep Blue Sea is yet another 1999 release, one entry in a long list of incredibly varied horror films released in a year when the teen slasher revival was still supposed to be dominating the genre. Seriously, I can’t wait for January to get here so I can have a proper, arbitrary round-number anniversary as an excuse to dive headlong into the horror flicks that hit theaters at the close of the millennium.
On the international front, two seminal, pre-Ringu Japanese films share a July 30th release date: 1960’s Jigoku (aka The Sinners of Hell) and 1977’s Hausu (aka House). Tonally, it’d be hard for the films to be much more disparate without residing in different genres. Jigoku, perhaps the earliest horror feature film to indulge in modern levels of gore, eventually takes its characters to a bleak, dark void of Hell where you might get dismembered for eternity. Or get caught in an endless, insanity-inducing mob of the mad damned screaming for loved ones you can’t find. Or might have to try to save the most innocent soul imaginable from an eternal suffering they don’t deserve but are enduring due to your sins. It gets pretty damn grim.
Hausu, meanwhile, mines all the irreverent glee there is to mine from a haunted house scenario. Floating, disembodied heads might cartoonishly bite you on the ass, or psychedelically-flashy pianos might eat a schoolgirl who can’t decide whether to laugh or cry about the situation.
Yeesh. Given the option, I might sign up for the “bleak, dark void of Hell” instead of “loud neon nightmare house.” At least in the former it’s dark enough for me to be able to sneak in an hour or two of sleep in between torments.
