In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear) began shooting a film with a simple concept. A husband (Serge Reggiani) is so pathologically jealous of his wife (Romy Schneider) that the black-and-white footage of their lives becomes expressively distorted with his color fantasies. Clouzot was going to use all kinds of wiggy avant-garde techniques (including the soundtrack), for which a lot of test footage was shot. When he received backing for an unlimited budget from Columbia Pictures, any chance of shooting the film quickly on a tight schedule seems to have gone out the window as Clouzot slowed down shooting and prolonged the experiments. Reggiani left the project and Clouzot had a heart attack, shutting down production after three weeks.

Later Claude Chabrol shot his own version of the script, L’Enfer (1994), a straightforward bore. On the evidence of the footage revealed in Serge Bromberg’s documentary, if Clouzot’s film had used half the wild techniques and tour-de-force photography on display, the film would have been a psychedelic benchmark on a level with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The shots of Schneider alone, whether “plain” or fantastically fetishized, are uncanny goddess material. Bromberg’s fascinating film relies on Clouzot’s footage and interviews with a several participants, plus a few enacted dialogues from the script.

Granted, it didn’t have a lot going for it at the time. That cinematic Antichrist himself, Shawn Date Night at the Museum for the Pink Panther Levy was set to direct, and while pleasant to look at, Hugh Jackman appeared to be spinning his superstar wheels in yet another grinding action effort. Then the teaser trailer arrived, and suddenly, Real Steel looked like it might actually be pretty good. The premise - a future world where robots fought to the mechanical death for the amusement of a jaded population - had promise (it was based on a short story by genre ace Richard Matheson and was actually made into a memorable episode of the old Twilight Zone) and with today’s ever polished CG, the F/X should/would blow us away. Without more of the plot, Real Steel felt like Stuart Gordon’s underappreciated Robot Jox, except with a splash of improved eye candy.

Then the latest preview hit the Web yesterday, and all genre goodwill just…died. To see what Levy had done to the idea, to see how the entire movie switched gears from a action packed punch-out to a warmed over Kazam was crushing. Who knew that this high tech tentpole for the Fall of 2011 was an interactive video game adaptation of The Champ, complete with a washed up pugilist (Jackman) looking for redemption, an equally out to pasture automaton that everyone pegs as an underdog, and a precious whiny weepy little brat (Dakota Boyo) making sure that everything that happens is a directly result of his desire to have the entire future shock world revolve around his pug nosed snottiness.  Oh course, he’s also the son of a distant and disaffected Jackman.

It’s called “suspension of disbelief.” It’s that desirable commodity that genre filmmakers hope will lead audiences to follow their sometimes specious flights of fancy wherever they go. From a brave new world fashioned out of the shape of things to come to monsters making meals out of hordes of hedonistic teens, if you don’t buy the premise - or in the end, the payoff - you can’t get lost in the narrative, and without said ability to figuratively disappear, nothing works. For the first 45 minutes or so of the unique Uruguayan spook show, La Casa Muda (aka The Silent House), we settle in for a suspense-filled night of dread. But by the hour mark, our terror tolerances are waning, and when the twist ending comes…well, let’s just say that one’s cinematic skepticism it tested to the very limits.

Supposedly based on a true story (from the 1940s) and fashioned in a single take - again, that’s questionable - director Gustavo Hernández tells the story of Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso). They have come to an abandoned home owned by their friend Nestor (Abel Tripaldi) with hopes of fixing it up quickly and putting it on the market. While father and daughter settle in for the next few days, their association goes out for some food. Almost immediately, Laura starts to hear noises upstairs. Having been warned not to venture up there, Wilson decides to defy such a suggestion and investigate. Soon, he goes missing. Laura then hears more strange sounds. Then Wilson turns up bound, gagged and bloody. As she tries to figure out what is happening, our heroine is convinced that someone…or something else is in the house with her. Before long, the truth of said terror becomes all too clear.

For many of us, the only Batman is…Adam West. Yes, those of us old enough to remember the original Caped Crusader phenomenon recall when ABC would actually air its successful TV show TWICE a week, just to satisfy public demand. We smile when considering how campy and kitsch it all was, how our pre-teen personalities melted whenever our superhero donned the cowl, gathered up his “ward” Dick Grayson, and went “SMASH!”, “BANG!” “ZAP!” on aging celebrity supervillians. With his paunchy belly and less than flattering tights, this version of Batman came directly from our collective memory, of a time when characters were carried across generations of ‘funny book’ readers and straight into the mind’s eye.

Now, there are “versions” of Bruce Wayne’s crime fighting alter ego, each with its own considered cult of preference and personality. For many, it’s Tim Burton’s take derived in part from Batman’s late ‘80s graphic novel renaissance.  For others, it’s Christopher Nolan’s modern businessman as genius vigilante update. With each adaptation, new inspirations are added, ways of making old properties “new” for a fading readership. Yet with each one of those changes comes an entire cult of adoration, a personal connection that can thwart even the most noble efforts. Indeed, one of the biggest issues a comic book movie adaptation has to overcome is staying/not staying “true” to the source. However, when there are multiple configurations of same, such creative reverence becomes harder and harder.

“You have made your mother very proud”—for those familiar with Charles Kaufman’s 1980 film Mother’s Day, that seemingly endearing sentence will never have the same innocent and touching quality anymore. It was the punch line that succeeded graphic scenes of rape and violence committed by Mother’s gruesome twosome, framed in what The New York Times called an “absurdist comedy” while the director himself referred to it as a satire.  Kaufman’s version will be released on Blu Ray soon, but that’s not the only thing that gives the film a current twist.

Darren Lynn Bousman (of Saw 2-5 infamy) directed a same-titled remake of the film, or better, a reinterpretation. While there’s no official U.S. wide release date yet, Bousman will attend the Midwestern premiere of the film in Chicago, on Saturday, 7 May at 11.59PM at the Music Box Theater, and the film has been released in countries such as the Netherlands just in time for the commercial holiday. But in this case, most mothers will be happier receiving the standard bouquet of flowers than a trip to the movie theater. For all of you brave people, an intro to both films.