Quote:
Originally Posted by idoneus1957
I thought of this when I saw the movie "The little girl who lives down the lane" at a college film society, a few years after it came out.
The movie was marketed to the wrong people. What I mean is, the ad campaign tried to make it seem like a horror movie, when it wasn't a horror movie. So the people who went to see it didn't like it, because they were expecting something else, and they gave it bad word of mouth, and it flopped. And the people who would have enjoyed it didn't go to see it, because they thought it was a horror movie.
Then there are the movies that fall between the genre cracks. I see the movie and think "It's too arty for the horror film crowd, and too much like a horror movie for the art film crowd." That's what I thought of Cemetery Man.
I didn't even know Rupert Everett was a famous actor. For a long time I thought of him as "The guy who starred in Cemetery Man."
Like, the first movie I ever saw Jason Robards in was A Thousand Clowns, so I just thought of him as a funny guy. I had no idea he was a distinguished stage actor who had made his mark in heavy stuff like The Iceman Cometh.
|
Too true. You're in for trouble when you arouse the wrong expectations.
Classic is Halloween III. After One and Two are Michael Myers in direct chronological order, if you want to make Season of the Witch, you better knock off "Halloween". The TV ads for H3 referenced H1 and H2, and wasn't explicit in making known it had nothing to do with Michael Myers. It was partially a bait and switch. Naturally people were pissed. I mean they could have made an ad that said something like, "Michael Myers is dead, but has spawned a horror anthology... but I'd still go with no "Halloween" in the name at all; just say "from the producers of Halloween".
Obviously I didn't see the marketing campaign that the college film society did for Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) (Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen). I don't even recall the TV ad in 1976. But I just watched one on
youtube that I think was from '76 and I think is pretty straight forward as to what the films about... young girl is hiding a secret and it's a dangerous situation. There's a long history of this type of slow burn horror, especially in the 70's. I think of it as a horror drama film.