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Scum of the Earth (1974) a.k.a. Poor White Trash Part II

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BLOGTOBER 10/6-7/2023: X, PEARL

Ti West is so frustrating. His more successful movies have earned him enough good will that I've been willing to wait for him like some war bride while he turns out things I find unforgivable, assuming that someone with his demonstrated talent will right himself eventually. For this reason I wish I liked X more. I find it very watchable and I don't hate the premise, but I also really object to parts of it. Some of it is just half-baked; like I kind of enjoy the movie's conversation about how pornography inflates or injures people's vanity and shines a light on inner moral conflicts, but it's all kind of gestural, I don't know if any real conclusions are reached. And I really don't appreciate the take on hagsploitation here, with sexy Mia Goth under a hundred pounds of foam rubber reminding us all of how scary aging is--which connects to this questionable tradition in horror where the monster is a human who is alienated due to their looks, and we'd better learn to fear such people because being sexually undesirable is a punishment so cruel that it could make you dangerously insane. I'm really interested in this trope, where the corrupting force is just physical ugliness (and/or the inability to get laid), but in the case of X I would have found it more compelling if the villains were played by actual old people.

The movies we think of when we hear the terms "hagsploitation" or "psycho biddie" generally star actual older actresses who bring a certain kind of thoughtful, energetic presence to their roles, and that's why they're so effective; when it's just a young person pretending to be old, it requires the viewer to really be afraid of and repulsed by the basic concept of an old person. I've heard some arguments that X is "sex positive" because of its graphic scene of the fake old people doing it, and although I'd agree that some amount of pity is elicited by that (with the husband explicitly pitying his horny, ugly wife), I think it's a big reach to suggest that that content is celebratory or elevating in any way. Again, I might change my tune if it were real old people, but in the meantime the whole production is just young people telling this story about how old people are gross and you might become a crazed killer if you stopped getting laid, and that's just not good enough for me. Maybe if the old people were more like anti-heroes and less like general monstrosities slobbering in the dark, I would have gotten more out of it.

Meanwhile, the prequel PEARL tells a compelling story about a real monster who is complex and charismatic enough to make you sympathize with her, even though she is unambiguously villainous. I do think this movie is somewhat overhyped, but I'm not mad about it; I'm happy that this happened for Ti West, who I definitely want to make more good movies, and PEARL has a lot of cool qualities. It stretches its $1mil budget a surprising distance to make a period piece (usually inadvisable for a cheap movie) with a lot of style and class. Ti West has a talent for genre pastiche--the present movie is somehow a cross between THE WIZARD OF OZ and HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE--but it doesn't feel like an empty fashion statement, which is the problem I usually have with modern horror productions that do a forced impression of older genre films. Despite whatever is familiar about it, PEARL feels really fresh and original. Tellingly, I don't even feel like enumerating this movie's flaws. It's a charmer and it deserves its success.