#acidemic

It's death, not space, that's the final frontier. Do we have anything, really, to fear--death may be far less terrifying than whatever space has in store. Maybe it's even benevolent, or at very least, neutral. As the kids all say just before being Rube Goldbergianly sliced to ribbons in the FINAL DESTINATION movies, 'it's a part of life; if it happens, it happens... but it's not an intelligent, scheming force - that's ridiculous!' But Death has always been personified in films, plays, novels. And who's to say those diced kids don't wake up in a better place, or get reincarnated back into the game on the samsara carousel, or better yet, get to sleep forever and never return to this archon-wardened jail we call the material plane? PS - this is the second time I've written this list. Last time it deleted itself and I had a nervous breakdown. Then again, nervous breakdowns are the fertilizer of the soul; the breaking, the destruction of old mores and self-conceptions allows genuine change to occur, they're death in miniature. That's what tarot card readers will tell you should you draw the death card. But are they just kidding you so you don't panic and rip their table cloth?

2. Frederic March as Death in Death Takes a Holiday (1933)

Death has been an inspiration for art since art's inception, but in years after the Great War he was a superstar. Surrealism, Dada, and avant garde metaphysical probing was all the rage at the nationally-sponsored theaters thanks to a plethora of PSTD and grim memories. Here Death poses as a living count for a weekend getaway with a skittish group of wealthy Italian revelers, and there meets a far-away-eyed debutante (Evelyn Venable) who likes him way better than her living suitor. She's death-obsessed enough to make Bella from TWILIGHT seem like Mary Poppins. Love + Death = a cry-in-your-whiskey highball for your dead gunner and hurrah for the next man who dies. Frederic March is a touch mellifluous but deadpan where it counts. Alas, it's unavailable on DVD, except as an extra on the two-disc, Meet Joe Black (Ultimate Edition), which since you can pick it up for under two dollars used is worth getting even if you avoid JOE BLACK itself, like the proverbial plague.

I'll always stick up for TWILIGHT (the films at any rate) because I love the death drive, and what other series is the lead girl allowed to have an unrepentant disdain for life? That's so ninja! What other teen series is it not only sanctioned but wholly recommended to die for love? That's pre-code woman's picture Hollywood, as old and venerated as Lilian Gish and D.W. Griffith. In refusing to be embraced by the positive life energies of the social order that pines for her, Bella becomes an Antigone-by-way-of-Camille tragi-diva. She may be a virgin, but she's not afraid to give it all up for the idea of love. It's important for hand-wringing moralists to remember that most everyone in the world knows the difference between fiction and reality, so these kinds of death drives are meant for films -- films are their outlet. They are death on a stick, 50 cents a seat. In a dream, does it really matter if you live beyond the credits? Doesn't Oscar prefer a gloriously overwrought death scene over a happily-ever-after fade to nothing? Don't we love to pretend to die as children? To achieve true immortality the ideal lover must become only a memory, a twinkle in Gloria Stuart's eye, rather than one who ages into her sofa and squintes at the crosswords through dirty bifocals.

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY (1933)

 Death is played by Frederic March, who poses as a count and meets a far-away-eyed debutante (Evelyn Venable). She's death-obsessed enough to make Bella seem like Mary Poppins and her Edward ain't some deer-blood drinking Puritan but the Grim One himself. Love + Death = Modernism is a cry-in-your-whiskey highball tradition. This isn't available on DVD, except as an extra on the two-disc Meet Joe Black (Ultimate Edition), which since you can pick it up for under nine dollars, is worth getting just for Venable's haunted performance if nothing else (avoid JOE BLACK itself, and I say this as a man who deeply adores Claire Forlani).

From: Subjectivity, Hawks, HALLOWEEN (1978):

"and anxiety it infects us more easily than if they inspired no initial confidence. Even the "Winchester Pictures" logo in the beginning, with the crossed rifles denotes a kind of rock solid safety - strength and solidarity in firepower, frontier-style. But soon enough that image burns away as the title "The Thing (from Another World)" blazes through in unholy light. It's surely no accident that even in the early 80s when I was still too young, alienated, and spooked to watch Halloween, I had seen the The Thing dozens of times. Even now it always works its brotherly magic, but within the mise-en-scene of Halloween, The Thing is metatextually swallowed by the darkness, as if a third screen barrier suddenly slammed down between it and the two kids watching it (in separate houses) and we viewers watching it in our own dark living rooms. The classic overlapping dialogue momentum of Hawks' film becomes trapped in the slower-than-time amber terrarium of Haddonfield, IL. It seems like even this 'comforting' sci fi film is slowly being swallowed up by the suburban melting clock of alienation and immanent threat."

Word of the YEAR, I'd say: