Monstrous - a Swiss film!
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Once upon a time there was a happy, musical family. But then the daughter died in a tragic accident. The mother fell into a deep depression and didn't want to perform anymore.
This caused for financial difficulty. The husband didn't want to give up on his dreams to become a famous singer.
He took his wife to all kinds of doctors and psychiatrists, but nothing could pull her out of the black hole she was in.
He decided to attempt one final, radical effort to pull his wife out of her depressed state. He drives with his wife into the country and dissapears into the woods.
His wife becomes worried and goes looking for him. She gets lost, and later faints in the snow from exposure. She wakes up in wooden cottage,
where a stuttering policeman explains to her that she is in the house of the village idiot, Bruno, who is a cleptomaniac. Bruno brings her a plate of strange looking meat to eat.
The policeman attempts to phone to her husbands cellphone. The cellphone rings in the house, and the policeman orders Bruno to go and get it. He doesn't come back,
so the policeman goes down the cellar to investigate. He doesn't return. What she finds in the cellar is... horrible. Monstrous.
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25 min, 18mb size!!!
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Monstrous - a Swiss film. A dark fairy tale, CH 2004, 25 min.
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An interview with the director West Black over the idea, the origin and the philosophy of the film MONSTROUS.
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| Steven : |
What inspired UNGEHEUERLICH (MONSTROUS)?
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| West : |
As a kid I used to visit my grandfather, and he always told me these macabre, weird stories.
The pictures remained in my head. These stories were very atmospheric, and I tried to capture this atmosphere with UNGEHEUERLICH.
It is an experiment , not really a true film.
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| Steven : |
Why should someone watch MONSTROUS?
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| West : |
UNGEHEUERLICH is an entertaining, suspenseful "dark fairy tale" with a few surprising twists. |
| Steven : |
Why a "dark fairy tale"?
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| West : |
Fairy tales always fascinated me.
Many fairy tales are very brutal. In Hänsel and Gretel for instance,
the parents want to get rid of their children by leaving them in the woods, basically to die; then,
instead of getting help from a seemingly harmless old woman, they are locked into a cage to be eaten,
and at the end the two children kill the old woman with joy on their faces, by burning her alive.
One shouldn’t actualy tell stories like this to children. However children want to hear these stories again and again.
For me, that says that there is something in our brains that likes this kind of stuff. There is something in us that is "dark".
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| Steven : |
You had the idea for the story. Did you also write the script?
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| West : |
No. I had no script. Only many ideas, a couple of notes written down on paper, and the feeling for a creepy atmosphere.
All the scenes were improvised 5 minutes before we shot it. The actual story emerged during editing.
I only shot a few scenes later to fill in the blanks.
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| Steven : |
How long did the total production last for UGEHEUERLICH?
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| West : |
Two days for principal photography, and one afternoon a week later I shot the beginning scenes with Meggie in the forest.
In the editing I saw I could only tell the story up to a certain point.
Then I got the idea with the puppet telling the story, and shot that in one afternoon. Guess you have to make that 4 days then.
The editing took a couple of months, cause I only edited when I was in the mood. It's maybe not good to confess, but I'm actually a lazy son of ...
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| Steven : |
How high was the budget for MONSTROUS?
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| West : |
CHF 36.95, plus for 2 days respectively 4 train tickets, in addition another couple of car trips and two meals for the cast.
Let’s say around CHF 200.
It probably would’ve costed ten million bucks if I had to put into currency the braincells I’ve burned to pull this crazy stunt off.
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UNGEHEUERLICH
