2 posts tagged “ginger snaps”
When I first rented Ginger Snaps, many years ago, I was unlucky enough to get a disc that was scratched to buggery. I was drawn in by the characters, but once the story kicked in, weird coloured blocks began to dance across my screen, the player threw up its tiny digital hands, and the final showdown was little more than a frustrating flicker of stop-eject-play confusion. Gah! Ever since then I’ve been wary of buying any second-hand copies locally, for fear that I’ll end up with the same accursed disc... but annoyingly the flick, and its sequels, have long since gone “out of print”, so buying a new copy was out of the question. Regardless of my less than auspicious introduction to the series, at the back of my mind there was always the nagging desire to spend more time with the Fitzgerald sisters. Finally that desire has been sated, thanks to eBay and my recently purchased trilogy boxset!
Interestingly, the first film’s disc is the most “well worn” of the set, while the third is near mint. Although I’d agree that the original is by far the best and the smartest of the trilogy, with its brilliant lycanthropy-as-a-metaphor-for-puberty theme, and “suburban-gothic” backdrop... but the sequels are still a lot of fun... and you have to give the various writers credit for making each film so distinct and self-contained, while staying “true” to the sisters’ mythology. Rather like the Aliens quadrilogy (and unlike several other horror franchises), you never feel like you’re watching the same story over again, even though the central characters remain fairly consistent. I thought they handled Brigitte’s deterioration very well in Unleashed, and ended her story on a very bizarre, if slightly unlikely, high. Where to go from there? Well, taking us back in time to meet their identical 19th Century counterparts could have been a terrible misstep, but somehow it works... probably because they play it relatively straight, as a period horror piece in the classic “small band of survivors holding the fort, but not very well” vein.
Generally speaking sequels are looked down upon as evidence of a lack of intelligence and creativity, but personally I’d love to see the series continue. Perkins and Isabelle make a great double-act, and I’m still itching to see more of their work... plus I’d really like to see the sisters redeem themselves somehow. There’s the rather Moorcockian suggestion in Back that the sisters are doomed to relive their fates over and over again, and that the choices they make effect the overall cosmic standing of Good vs. Evil. They are like Eternal Champions... sort of... except that they haven’t quite grasped the “Champion” part yet. It would be interesting to find out what other previous incarnations got up to... or even follow the adventures of their future incarnations! Hmmm...
I know it's wrong to carry around too many regrets about the past... and it's even worse when those regrets are about missed purchasing opportunities. But I do have one, and it gnaws at me from time to time. A few years ago a new DVD rental shop opened up a short walk away from me, and they had a much better selection of titles than our Blockbuster did... but they were saddled with a terrible out-of-town location, and tiny parking lot. They folded and sold off all their stock, and one of the items they had on offer was a brand new Ginger Snaps trilogy box-set, for the ridiculous price of fifteen English pounds. They also had the Harsh Realm boxset, and I was on a major Terry O'Quinn kick at the time, and picked that up instead. Gah! Of course, Harsh Realm was utter, utter tosh, and now the Ginger Snaps boxset is out of print. Only this afternoon on the internets, I saw one rather merciless basterd selling theirs for almost two hundred pounds! Sigh. To be honest, I'm not that fussed about werewolf films in general, but I loved the two lead characters, and Perkins in particular. I was so desperate to see more of them in fact, that yesterday I watched Another Cinderella Story, the Direct-to-DVD teen rom-com in which they appear as the not-at-all-ugly sisters, Bree and Britt Blatt. Perkins puts in another inspiring turn, looking something like Molly Shannon playing Jan Brady's evil twin.... if you can imagine such a thing. The rest of the film may fade from my memory, but I doubt I'll be able to shake out the vision of her crazy dance moves in the finale. Sadly, aside from this entry, the last two film roles on her resume are "Goth Chick" in something called Blood: A Butcher's Tale, and "Punk Receptionist" in the multi-award magnet Juno. She should really be booking more headlining roles by now... but part of the reason why I like her so much is that she has such an intense, off-kilter "energy", and that's not exactly what they look for in the female leads for big mainstream movies. Because they are idiots who are more interested in making money than putting engaging, quirky performers on the screen for me to enjoy... damn it!
