Sections

Despite blood and gore, `Seven' a polished horror classic

By Christopher Corbett
Daily Arts Writer

Remember when you went to see "Seven?" During the ride there, you probably thought of one of the seven deadly sins that your friend (who already saw the film) told you was cool. You thought, "Yeah, so? It'll be just like `Silence of the Lambs.'" And then when you actually saw the fat man in the film, you believed your friend who told you that it turned her popcorn into cream-of-popcorn.

The serial killer in "Seven" kept the fat man chained to a table, forced his face into a bowl full of mush. Naked, the victim looked more like a doughy hot-air balloon than he did a man. You could practically smell the foul, sour stench of his apartment with him rotting in there. You could practically see the cockroaches scrambling all over the slop and the vomit he choked on.

After nearly hurling at seeing the fat man, we went and told other people to go see the film -- so they could feel as pukey as we did. The word-of-mouth about the outrageous film became the main reason for its success. The film didn't explode in the first week and a half and then fizzle like most blockbusters. Instead, it chilled and kicked back at the No. 1 spot for five weeks last fall, helping push it to the $100 million mark.

Yes, we were surprised (and maybe relieved) that Brad Pitt didn't have any butt-shots in the film. But we enjoyed it even more because it relished in its own ghoulishness. Think of the drug dealer, who chewed off his own tongue, whose brain was mush and who resembled a skeleton; he leaped up from his bed after being imprisoned there for a year because he committed the sin of sloth. Because we and our friends thought he was dead, we jumped and felt like hurling, yet again.

Director David Fincher ("Alien 3") proved he could make more people gag than Six Flags. He pushes us into the gloom of "Seven" and holds us there until a monstrous moment comes running up to take a chomp out of us.

In a perverse way, we bought the tickets to see "Seven" because we wanted to feel scared. We looked forward to seeing the dementedly imaginative way Fincher was going to kill off the other victims; we wanted to see how the person guilty of pride, or lust, would die, just as we would look at a carwreck on the highway. Fincher stirred our curiosity and then satisfied it ... big time.

"Seven" was one of the few films last year that gave us our money's worth. We could see that the filmmakers were not pasting some formulaic fluff together, but were as creative and imaginative as possible. To be sure, "Seven" is not as scary as an "Exorcist," but it packs more of a punch than a "Silence of the Lambs," thanks to a faceless killer who darts down dark apartment hallways and rain-drenched alleys like a demon. "Seven" did what so few movies do today -- it delivered.

Fincher, who at one time was directing videos (like Madonna's "Vogue"), painted a terrifyingly beautiful picture of the Armageddon-like world of "Seven." We see filthy, black-as-night apartments with glowing red crosses on dressers, litter-strewn alleys and grainy, claustrophobic police offices, hospitals and restaurants. We see a slick, run-down world that threatens to smother its characters.

The climactic scene in "Seven" seems to have been shot in a nightmare. The characters, tiny black smudges on the screen, are knee-deep in rust-colored prairie grass that seems ready to drown them. We then see a truck speeding down the dirt road at a maniacal speed, dust pluming behind it, the horrible fate of one of the main characters rampaging toward us like that truck.

We haven't seen sequences like these anywhere before. The model, guilty of pride, lays on her bed with the telephone glued to one hand and a bottle of pills in the other -- her nose missing. Later, the man strapped to the bed, wearing the dildo of death, cries, having killed the prostitute who was guilty of lust. The film becomes a euphoric, polished house-of-horrors.

"Seven," in all its loathsome splendor, shapes up as perhaps the best film of last year. This movie is about those moments that you'll never forget. Or, as someone said, "You gotta see `Seven' -- and remember, the fat man. Uhhhh ..."

Also on video:

"Crumb" -- The documentary about the genius who created "Fritz the Cat." Many critics chose "Crumb" as last year's best film, but a few have recently pointed out that "Crumb" is a tad thin on exploring Robert Crumb's artistic abilities and muse. Life is meaningless now.

"Mallrats" -- Two words are going to make you curl your hands into fists and bare your teeth: Shannon Doherty. Boo! Hiss! Death to the Skeezer!

"Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" -- Insanely jealous of Balto, who has wormed his way into the hearts of many young kids, Winnie has hog-tied and gagged his archrival in hopes of reclaiming some of his lost popularity.

"Theremin" -- Another documentary, it tells the story of a man named Leon Theremin who created a device in the shape of a box that helped bring sound effects to several films. One at a time, in an orderly fashion! There are enough copies to go around! No bloodshed! No chaotic riff-raff, please!