Originally Posted by
Cataclysm
Everyone pretty much touched on the reasons why I like underground cinema, but I'll give my opinion anyways.
With Hollywood movies, there is no one person making the movie and by that I mean you have the writers version, the directors version, the producers version, the studio executives, the MPAA and test audiences who all have an input on the movie and give us the final result. You have the MPAA deciding what we can and cannot watch, and remove anything they feel is inappropriate since they obviously know what's best for us. The studio executives have their fingers on all aspects of the movie and decide what should be done that will get them the most money. When they have a semi-final product they grab some random people and show them the movie and then adjust the changes based on how they scored the movie. The problem is that these people are not the "voice" of the audience for that particular movie, if you show someone who is conservative, a horror movie of course they are going to give the movie a bad score but they don't care. They've decided these small groups of the people represent the opinions of the populous as a whole and what ever they say they want changed the people behind the movie will change it, for better or worse.
With underground cinema, you get the vision of one person (or in some cases a group of people who share the same vision) , the one actually making the movie. Sure they get input from various sources but in the end they are making a movie they want to make, and one that they want to see and they know that others who share the same interest in movies they do, will probably like it too. Of course there will be people who don't like it, there always are but contrary to Hollywood, independent filmmakers basically tell them to go fuck themselves. They're welcome to not like the movies but they aren't the ones who the movie is made for so who really cares one way or another.
For artistic merit, mainstream cinema has none. I know how everyone talks about how gorgeous such-and-such movie is with all of it's glorious CGI and I will agree it looks good to an extent but for me, at the end of the day its just another movie saturated with expensive computer effects. I want a movie that is visually stimulating to me, a movie that could almost be a piece of art. You'll never see a mainstream flick that looks like Tetsuo the Ironman, or any similar to filmmakers like Jordowsky, Svankmajer, Quay Brothers, Bunuel, etc. Instead Hollywood's idea of having artistic value in their movies is putting colored gel on their lights and slapping a couple filters on their camera to change the hue of the image.
Now there is occasionally a movie that does have this quality like "The Fountain" and "What Dreams May Come" but we see how well those movie did with a mainstream audience...They just blow them off as being "artsy fartsy" and I firmly believe anybody who uses that term deserves to be socked in the eye. (Sorry, I guess that's just the "art-fag" in me taking offense and in general just hating that phrase.)
Then there are the balls-out horror movies like August Underground, Gateway Meat, Gutterballs, 100 Tears, Violent Shit, etc. As someone said these are great movies simply because they have no limits, the only restrictions they have is budget ones. Though most usually find a creative way around these problems and come out with a better, stronger movie that just knocks the shit out of these Hollywood horror films and people like Eli Roth who truly believe that their movies are pushing the limits. Also, without these restrictions we get great horror comedies like "Special Dead" that wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting made because it could at some point in time, in some place offend somebody and we can't have that. Either everyone is happy or nobody can have the movie.
For over priced mindless entertainment I'll watch Hollywood movies, for quality films I'll watch independent ones.
Thanks FrighT
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