John D. Hancock
5 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
West wears his influences on his sleeve, deliberately invoking the visual language of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (especially during the early, on-the-road scenes in their van), as well as the long zooms and creepy score that recall “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.”
In the same way that Let’s Scare Jessica To Death embraces a melancholy end of the 1960s, X feels like Ti West looking back on the 1970s with similar sadness as he reflects back on the exploitation, horror, and pornographic films of the era.
Its refreshing lack of prudishness and its wholesale rejection of final girl tropes seem to frame it as a response to our current trend of constant artistic re-litigation of FUCKING EVERYTHING, wrapped in the clothes of Just Before Dawn or Let’s Scare Jessica to Death .
Queen of Earth (2015)
Directed by Alex Ross Perry
influenced by Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Themes Visuals
Queen of Earth uses these themes to pulpy effect, plugging in the paranoid claustrophobia of Rosemary’s Baby and Michael Winner’s The Sentinel, as well as the watery spectre of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, into its wheelhouse.
The calmly eerie house-by-the-lake setting exactly resembles the places where terrible things happen to women in Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, The Last House On The Left and I Spit On Your Grave, and a climactic party freak-out shifts into full-on terror with ghoul-like guests – making the point that a few wrong words can make being ordinarily miserable feel like being trapped in a nightmare movie.
From Pride of the Yankees (1942) to Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) to Bull Durham (1988) to Sugar (2008), dramas about baseball have always been steeped in romance, whether they follow a winner on his way up or a loser on his way out.
It’s therefore disappointing but unsurprising to find Moneyball being analogised to baseball staples like Bang The Drum Slowly and The Natural rather than critics simply asking: is it a good movie?
Die My Love (2025)
Directed by Lynne Ramsay
influenced by Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Themes
Die My Love makes perfect company with films like Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kotoko (2011), The Piano Teacher (dir. Michael Haneke, 2002), Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (dir. John D. Hancock, 1971), and other portrayals of “hysterical” women.
When Helen Grace (Mary-Louise Parker, SHOTime's "Weeds") splits from her husband and finances dictate she must move her family from New York City to her aunt's old run down mansion in the middle of nowhere, teenage daughter Mallory (Sarah Bolger, "In America") is supportive and younger son Simon (Freddie Highmore, "Neverland," "August Rush") goes along, but Simon's twin Jared (also Highmore) reacts with silent rage.
(At this point, Helen has come home from work and joined her kids in battle; Parker wears the very same expression as she does on "Weeds" when the DEA is about to raid her character's grow house.)