Friday, October 5, 2012

Defanged: Edward Bass and today’s less frightening movie beasts

Edward Bass
Edward Bass Image Credit: 4.bp.blogspot.com


Edward Bass is a producer who has mastered the technique for inspiring fear among his audience. His movies often play on a person’s deepest insecurities—fear of pain, of death, or of being placed in a precarious position. The fear of the unknown is also one of these fears, and he is not the only producer, director, or writer who incorporates this fear in the art of camerawork.


Ghosts and entities of the paranormal and of legend are often effective tools of bringing across a message laced with fear. The most popular characters include vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and witches. For producers like Edward Bass, these are film characters full of potential.



Edward Bass
Edward Bass Image Credit: collider.com


However, recent years have seen a change in these concepts. Vampires have evolved to portray beings with a human-like conscience. Werewolves have also become kinder and in control, far from their established characters as violent, beastly creatures.


Genre often has a lot to do with it. Vampires and werewolves were often featured in adventure and horror films. They used to be frightening even in comedies. However, today’s creatures of the dark are no longer as terrifying.



Edward Bass
Edward Bass Image Credit: wired.com


Count Dracula returns to his native Transylvania in Disney’s Hotel Transylvania, this time with a teenage daughter named Mavis. Mavis is being pursued by a teenage human boy named Jonathan—but far from plunging a stake through her undead heart, the pursuit falls on the romantic side. In Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, Barnabas Collins is portrayed as an imprisoned vampire who returns to straighten out his dysfunctional family.


Vampires being portrayed as fathers or patriarchs is indeed strange, detached from their original image of being soulless bloodsuckers who take lives without much ado.



Edward Bass
Edward Bass Image Credit: pluggedin.com  


Read more about Edward Bass and his movies at www.edwardbassfilms.com.