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KYGOTC's thread about "pee" and JASE's comment got me to wondering we all know about "feel good movies," 
BUT HOW ABOUT FEEL BAD MOVIES??

I will only name LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT the "inspiration" for this thread. If you've seen this film, you will know what I mean about "feel bad" movie.  One sitting thru LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and you're left feeling a kind of "ugh" feeling. 

I was just recommending this film to someone: Requiem For A Dream.  Fantastic, well made film but it's one that makes you want to commit suicide after watching.

Dead Ringers made me feel icky and dirty for hrs and I couldn't even finish Crash

Last House on the Left annoyed me more than disturbed me.

Anywho, I recently saw Funny Games (original version) and it's an unpleasant experience, although I don't think it's a very good film.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a very well made film, but it's so bleak and brutal that it's kind of a bummer.  Oldboy and Lady Vengeance are great movies and have similar effects but aren't quite so hopeless.

Both BULLY and HAVOC leave me feeling like I need a long shower, Anne Hathaway's general hotness notwithstanding.

COMBAT SHOCK-though a well made z-budget film...it's utterly depressing.
.MANIAC (Joe Spinelli...not Dwan Esper)-hard to stomach this. NOT a party film.
.I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE-the rape scene is waaaaaaaay too sadistic and long....ugh.
.Most nazi exploitation films...you know the type...
. alot of asian torture films are too much for me....

Gore doesn't upset me...but torture...dragged out on and on...ugghhhh....not entertaining. Just depressing.

Cronenberg's CRASH was mentioned...I agree...ug!

Bad Lieutient is a great movie but I felt awful after watching it.

Straw Dogs definitely showcases the ugly side of humanity as well.  Completely agree on Requiem for a Dream although that's brilliantly done IMO. 1984 also in many ways is one of the most depressing films ever produced.

All that Jazz - Entertaining, what got out of it was this story about a guy seeking & finding sympathy, even though both he  & the sympathizers know he doesn't deserve it.

Felini's Casanova - Albeit, I must admit to bias. I was annoyed that they took out all the dirty stuff.

Agreed

I would have to agree with some others on here: Bad Lieutenant and I Spit on Your Grave.


And...

What's that sound?

Is it the rush of fans of this film as they escape from their asylum to defend it?

I believe it is. :tongueout:

Zardoz

Now that is funny... but alas, agin kin gib no karma.   :tongueout:

Cannibal Holocaust- I remember I saw this with my friend and we were just bummed out.

Kids- I hate this flim but when I first saw it I was bummed than thought about how stupid it was. :teddyr:

Pan's Labyrinth. I felt it was unnecessarily brutal. I know it gets a lot of love, and it has its moments, but it is definitely a downer movie. Gilliam's Tideland covers some of the same ground, and while I actually cried a bit during it, it at least offered some positive moments. PL just seemed intent on crushing a little girl.

Vulgar.

Truly unpleasant.

Speaking of ISOYG, They Call Her One Eye is another one that's leaves me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

ALL THAT JAZZ is one of my favorite movie musicals, though apparently not in my top 15 or so...  :lookingup: 
Definitely not a feel good movie, though it has feel good moments, I don't think it's really a feel bad movie... (maybe feel sad...)

They'd showed us this one in re-hab.

Also:

Spun

Zardoz  has spoken!   :cheers:

Also, let me add "Brazil."  I know it's not hentai/torture-porn/etc, but I watched the end of that movie and fipped a big fat finger at the screen for Terry Gilliam.

Requiem For A Dream, Kids, 21 Grams left me feeling bad....but Irreversible messed me up.

The best example to me was brought up on the "sick" movies thread: HATED (1994), the documentary about G.G. Allin, the self-destructive punk singer/performance artist who was determined to kill himself, and was successful.  Full of degrading and self-abusive behavior.  Oh, and it has a "pee" scene...

Early John Waters films (PINK FLAMINGOS, FEMALE TROUBLE) always give me that "feel bad" feeling.   I know they're at least partially intended as comedies, but they convey such a low and grotesque opinion of humanity I find it hard to laugh much.  I got much the same feeling from MEET THE FEEBLES.

 

The Great Silence, nuff said.

That's kinda the same feeling whenever I see Encino Man. That film is just garbage.  :drink:

DEAD RINGERS definitely a groan generator, sat thru it once, it's morbidly riveting, but you'd never want to sit thru it again... perfect FEEL BAD movie.  I don't see how a woman could get through it even once.  I think that's Cronenberg's stock in trade, the complete creep-out.  Think THE BROOD, think VIDEODROME.  Interestingly, I can't say that the films are "bad" in any way.  Nasty is more the word...
Oh yeh, CRONENBERG made a film CRASH in 1996, ironically it's not the CRASH (2004) I believe you're referring to... Man, I wanna see that '96 CRASH with HOLLY HUNTER...

STAR 80. Sad. Expliotation at it's very worst.

Is BELA trying to claw that green wicked-witch-of-the-west makeup off his face?   Poor guy, couldn't appreciate him at that late date in his career under all that glop (but, he did get to say "BLAAAHHYUHNN!!!"   as the Monster.)  :teddyr: 
STAR 80, great job, so horrible to witness.  Reminds me of a couple other "ugh" inducing flix: FEAR and PLAY MISTY FOR ME.  The endings may be a relief, but these films never feel "good." 

Let's not forget this superior "ugh" inducer:
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY 

Ha!  I didn't even notice I was playing the straight man there!

Pink Flamingos gave me a bad feeling.  I still can't eat eggs to this day after watching that film.  It made me want to sit in the floor in my shower fully clothed, turn the water on, and cry. 

Some good downers mentioned here but, as for me, Mark of the Devil was a really really bad one, with base, vile characters torturing and killing innocent and (sometimes) not-so-innocent people under the guise of "witch hunts".

At the end, I just stared at the screen, feeling thoroughly repulsed and dirty.  I've never been able to look at Herbert Lom the same way since.

Reuben, Reuben
It seems everybody thought it was funny but me.

The World According to Garp
The Hotel New Hampshire
Then again, these two always went a little over my head.

Somebody at the sickest movies thread told me that "The girl next door" should be listed here. It's not the comedy with elisha Cuthbert, but a extremely sad and depressing 2007 film. It depicts the torture and murder of a teenager at the hands of her aunt and a bunch of kids. Most of the violence is actually off screen, but it is so methodical and relentless it makes you feel completely powerless.

I agree with tideland.  I love Terry Gilliam, but this movie just depressed the hell out of me.  I have to say The Mist as well.  I truly hated that ending. 

Old Boy, I felt odd after watching that film.

Christmas Shoes, the one about the woman who needs a transplant but unfortunate things happen near the end.  Its all too depressing to take in and its Xmas dammit. 

Event Horizon

and the ultimate winner...

Pet Semetary-there isn't an ounce of joy in that movie/book

Ah, The Girl Next Door.

In my discussion of the books I had read last year, that novel I described as the most soul-crushing. After reading the book by Jack Ketchum (which I read all in one go), I was absolutely devastated. Like my original reaction to Requiem for a Dream, I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. If you really want to hurt yourself, read the book; I don't think the movie did it justice, as some of the acting left a lot to be desired.

The worst part is that it was based on a true story. The author actually toned it down, and the movie was even more toned down than the book.

My vote goes to The Sweet Hereafter, which is about a small Canadian town dealing with the death of all of their children in a tragic accident where the local school bus crashes into a lake, killing all of the children within. It is an amazing movie, but you don't even have the luxury of a villain to root against. It is the saddest movie I've ever seen. Ian Holm hits notes that I can only compare to actual deaths in my own life. I don't think I'll ever want to watch this movie with another person, the pain is that immediate.

THIS is a true feel-bad movie.

RC, if you're reading, the kick at 2:08 is just for you.  =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtzvI7Mtd50

It's a great movie, but I would never suggest showing "Grave of the Fireflies" to a woman whose emotions are already a rollercoaster due to pregnancy hormones.  My wife cried quite a bit after seeing that film with me.

As for films that make you feel dirty, along with being painful, I can name a few that are on my short list:

Candy
Pink Flamingos
Nail Gun Massacre
The Lonely Lady

I agree with you on that.  It's an excellent film and I nearly cried a little bit myself considering I haven't cried in a long time. 

I also agree with you about showing it to a female who is on an emotional roller coaster due to pregnancy hormones. 

Actually, I feel "good," more than I feel "bad," but feeling "good" seems to be a cumulative effect without any defining moment, and thus cannot be identified with any particular part of the film, while feeling "bad" seems to have a defining moment, and it is definitive and can be indentified. Then there are those films that make me feel both "good" and "bad," but we won't get into those.

Thus, here are fifteen films that make me feel "bad."

"Lair of the White Worm"
For the boy scout, of course. But what a way to go. Also . . .

"The Adventures of Mark Twain"
Mark Twain (Frederic March) has two choices. Either he can bankrupt himself by publishing Grant's autobiography, so the dieing man's family can be financially secure after the man dies, or he can avoid bankruptcy by not publishing Grant's autobiography. Twain choses the first option.

"The Champ" (1979)
Billy's (Jon Voight's) death after he has won the boxing match.

"Frieda"
The attempted suicide of the German woman (Mai Zetterling), who has come to England, after marrying an RAF officer, and after she has been rejected by the man's family and friends, solely on the basis that she is German, and they are not.

"Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"
The death of the ant, while battling the scorpion in a successful attempt to protect the four children in the film from the scorpion.

"Kentucky"
Peter Goodwin's (Walter Brennan's) death, just after he has learned that his horse has unexpectedly won the greatest of all horse races, the Kentucky Derby.

"Lady and the Tramp"
Trusty's presumed death, when the causes the dog catcher's wagon to crash, in an attempt to prevent the dogcatcher from taking Tramp to the dog pound, which would mean Tramp's death in the gas chamber.

"Lady Jane"
Lady Jane Grey's (Helena Bonham Carter's) death by headsman's axe for treason. She was only sixteen.

"Mighty Joe Young" (1949)
Joe's presumed death while rescuing a little girl from an orphanage fire.

"Old Yeller"
Old Yeller having to be shot by Travis Coates (Tommy Kirk), because the dog is rabid. Having caught rabies from a rabid wolf, while saving Travis from the wolf.

"The Ox-Bow Incident"
The old black man singing "The Lonesome Valley" "You got to walk that lonesome valley . . ." As the sheriff's posse illegally lynch Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), Juan Martinez (Anthony Quinn), and Halva Harvey (Francis Ford) for presumed cattle rustling and murder.

"Pinocchio"
Pinocchio's presumed death, after he has saved Geppeto, Figaro, and Cleo and  Jiminey Cricket from Monstro the Whale.

"Spawn of the North"
In a battle between Jim Kimerlee (Henry Fonda) and Red Skain (Akim Tamiroff), Tyler Dawson (George Raft) kills both himself and Red by ramming their boat into an Alaskan glacier and saving Jim's life.

"Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight"
Deputy Bob (Gary Farmer) and Irene (CCH Pounder) blowing themselves up with dynamite and the demons along with them. "See ya in hell!"--"Yeah!"

5 Came Back
After everybody who could, have left in the plane, there are still three people left on the ground. And the natives are coming. And these are natives you do not want to meet, as their preferred form of entertainment is inflicting various forms of physical torture on outsiders. So, the political prisoner (Joseph Calleia) says his pistol has three bullets in it. He uses one to kill the professor's wife (Elisabeth Risdon.) He uses one to kill the professor (C. Aubrey Smith.) But the man lied. His pistol only had two bullets in it. So . . .

While these are all some of my favorite films, but except for the first one, you'd have thought I was a waterworks. The tears were just pouring down my cheeks after these moments. I felt so "bad."

"Greater love has no man, then this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

I'm talking about "feel bad" movies, not movies that make you feel both, or that are intended to make you feel good at the very end.  Okay, I have issue with a few of your selections, but also heartily agree with others. 

yes

Yeh, that FREDERIC MARCH pic is sad, but I don't feel bad (afterall, it whitewashed TWAIN's life and didn't show how horrible his personal suffering really was and had that dreamy Hollywood ending... love that movie, sad as it is...)
 
yes
no 

Your mentioning this film is the prime mover of this lengthy response to your post.  How could I have overlooked this film?  (Reminds me of at least one other, completely unrelated).   Hard film to sit through a second time, one of the rarest of films in that it ranks as a must-see, but without doubt also a FEEL BAD MOVIE !!!  :thumbup: 

***SPOILER*** I'll have to think about that and look at this film, that I love, once again.  It's probably been 20 years since I've looked at it, but I do remember being stunned by the terror this animation can evoke, plus the weird-feeling ending when PINOCCHIO becomes "a real boy !!" 

 :thumbup:

Not as much a BAD feeling, but rather a SCARED feeling is what I get at the end of A Clockwork Orange: It's kind of a "What the hell have they done, and why would any forgiving God allow such a person to be inflicted upon humanity" kind of feeling.

I always thought was full of sad, sad scenes.
First, we learn this guy's so low, that he steals his kid's piggy bank.
Then the horse gets injured.

It was the scene where he discretely throws out the teddy bear that always got to me.

Dude, every post by you is the damn truth. If I could give more Karma, I would. :bouncegiggle:



I feel pretty bad at the end of the original Wicker Man. Also in Silent Hill, it's quite sad that after Rose has been so brave and smart and strong and even makes it home, her and her daughter appear to be trapped in a different reality to her husband, and neither of them know it...

Who killed the Electric Car, An Inconvenitent Truth, movies like that are REALLY feel bad movies.  Because after they are over, you still have the feeling that life on this planet is just so screwed up nothing will get us back on track. 

More in the fiction realms The Mist was a pretty depressing movie.

The SAW movies are real feel bad movies  The first one made me feel bad because it was really the first torture movie I saw.   The second one made me feel bad becasue I was begining to realize that Jigsaw's motives for doing this to people were razor thin.  So there was no real justafiable reason for most of those people to go through what they were put through.  I wanted to jump into the movie and shout "YOU'RE WRONG!" at him so many time.  The third one made me feel bad because I paid money to see it.   

I found Deathdream to be a really sad movie, especially the end. When I first saw it on tv late one night, I could've sworn the last line (as said by Andy's mom) was "most boys don't come home". WOW. But after watching it again recently the line was not there. Am I dreaming this or what?

DEATHDREAM, being a Horror film, can get away with feeling "bad" (or "sad" as you put it, but Andy was so creepy, I didn't feel too sorry for him by the end of the film.)  One of my favorite '70s Horror films, I just put the DVD on to rewatch the ending, and there is no line at the end "Most boys don't come home..."    Still a good selection of a watchable film that also feels "bad."    :thumbup:

I bought this on dvd with a kind of reverence, but didn't break the plastic for YEARS, knowing what I was in for. Wife put it on the other day at semi-random and couldn't understand why I felt compelled to hug her when it was over.

 

I recently rented the 'most complete to date' Last House on the Left.

I may actually try to listen to the commentary, because the most "warped" thing about this movie is its time warp. Truly, it is more painfully dated than it is painfully explicit, and I'm shocked that it hasn't been given the treatment here.

One of the killers wears sandles with socks.

Seriously.

Caligula.  Or should I say, Caligu--ugh!

Midnight Cowboy - you might find some messed up semblance of friendship if your life is messed up but it'll be messed up and then die on you.

They Shoot Horses Don't They - bleak.

Plague Dogs - felt numb after this. It was like watching a child wandering into traffic but being too far away to do anything about it. The way the end mirrored the beginning really packed a punch.

When The Wind Blows - if you've seen it you'll understand. An old couple who manage to survive a nuclear war, die slowly of radiation poisoning because they don't really understand what's happened.

Yeh, you reminded me of TESTAMENT, a similar film with the same bleakness.  All good choices for Feel Bad Flix, Spiff.   :thumbup:

You know that cliche 'Must be seen to be believed'? For better but mostly worse, that phrase totally applies to Caligula.

You don't feel bad for the talent, only the investors.

I don't know, there were one or two people in that film I felt bad for, despite the fact that they were only acting.

CALIGULA ranks as a Feel Bad movie (and I own it, I'm nearly ashamed to admit, but it is so gloriously bad...!!) 

I just sat thru CRASH (1996) DAVID CRONENBERG's film "starring" HOLLY HUNTER, JAMES SPADER, ELIAS KOTIAS, ROSANNA ARQUETTE, so, I finally got to see it, and found it as tedious as any of CRONENBERG's other films, but also, even, hideously uncomfortable (and implausible such as the very ending...)  I will say it is unforgettable watching HOLLY HUNTER finger the hideously scarred and handicapped ARQUETTE... the film is CRONENBERG at his CRONENBERGEREST!!!  (If not DAVID LYNCHest) And I will say a film you think about after watching... pondering the horror, intrigue, and absurdity... yet another ''Feel Bad" film.  I will say, not a small feat on CRONENBERG's part; the film is riveting, if not stunning.  I cannot say I like it, though.   :question:

I don't think A Clockwork Orange is exactly intended to be a feel-bad movie so much as a morality tale. That is, although evil wins in the end, good has a kind of moral victory. The message is "Don't let this happen in your country!" and your gut response is most likely to be "Preach it, brother!" Thus you end up feeling morally superior to all these fools on the screen who've just given away their liberties and ultimately their humanity in the unholy cause of suppressing criminals' freedom to choose between good and evil.

The Tales From The Darkside movie had a rather feel-good ending, but some of the stories told in there seemed rather feel-bad in their conclusions, particularly "Lot 249" and "Lover's Vow."

"Lot 249" left me wishing the surviving college student had gone through with his first plan to roast the nerdy young necromancer's nuts on an open flame in revenge for the murders of his friends. Though the necromancer's victims had wronged him, this hardly justified his raising a mummy to murder them, and what he did after he was spared his well-deserved death didn't even have a pretense of justification; it was just plain evil.

"Lover's Vow" left me hating the gargoyle for her pointless cruelty to one random victim and quite calculated cruelty to her husband and children. She had no reason to murder anyone in the first place, and the vow she made her husband take makes her like a female version of the old fairytale villain Bluebeard. She had even less justification for her murders than that necromancer in "Lot 249," and yet she gets away with them too! If some characters in horror stories are stand-ins for divine justice, then she's a stand-in for infernal impunity.

I guess, in the context of "The Wraparound Story" (i.e. the one with the macabrely happy ending) it makes sense that these tales would be so cruel and immoral, since they're the mythology that guides the evil modern-day witch who's planning to cook and eat the little boy Timmy, but I still end up wishing Timmy had tossed her evil book into the fire in the end. Really, those two tales left me feeling rather disgusted.

At the end of that story, didn't the gargoyle and her children get turned into stone?  I always assumed the deaths  and secerts had something to do with what ever magic turned her human. (I'm guessing a lot of that part wasn't explained.)-  I know in certain mythologies, if you know the true name of a spirit/demon/monster you have power over it.  This could be a chase of the opposite.  If the secert is kept, it has the power.

Here's a question.  Do you think horror movies are better with a downbeat ending or (for lack of a better term) a happy ending. 

An ending with the killer defeated gives the auidence that good can win over evil.  A downbeat ending though might seem more in keeping with the tone of the film, and make it seem less Hollywood cliche.

Indeed. It might be more accurate to say they got turned back into stone. The story starts with a pan down between the gargoyle's wings when she's still just a stone statue, and ends with a pan back up to her on a roof, petrified into stone once more, but now holding her two children to her as well. It's a heck of a plot and a heck of a visual--no question about that--but it's still a pretty crappy ending from a personal perspective.


There is indeed a kind of common chord running through the ancient pagan religions that shedding blood--especially by killing--is the way to achieve certain magical effects. To ancient sorcerers' ways of thinking, shed blood was a kind of coinage one used in attempting to wheedle a favor out of various forces of nature, these forces often being personified in the various gods of the local paganism and treated as supernatural vending machines. The greater the sacrifice, of course, the greater the result; a fellow human would be the greatest sacrifice of all. There is a hint of that in "Lover's Vow" in that the poor guy the gargoyle killed might have been a kind of blood sacrifice to transform her into a human, although she isn't shown calling on any specific gods to grant her a favor for doing so. (Ancient sorcerers didn't always call them by name either.)

Of course, human sacrifice is murder, whatever ends it serves, and that's one of several reasons why sorcery was outlawed in most of Rome and throughout all Christendom after the fall of Rome. Even the pagans who practiced human sacrifice seem to have had some sense of shame about it, as they tended not to say anything about it in their writings. It's from the writings of their enemies (Rome and Judeo-Christianity) and archaeological discoveries confirming these writings that we learn about these ritual murders. As such, the magical effect the gargoyle was seeking really just makes her crime that much more atrocious.


"Lover's Vow" may have had a bit of that in it, but Pandora's Box seemed more the relevant mythology to me, especially since it turns up in a more diabolical form in the ancient tale of Bluebeard. Just as Bluebeard's forbidden room turns out to contain the remains of his murdered wives that he didn't want her to see, the lover's vow to the gargoyle conceals her human sacrifice and makes him an accomplice to the murder. Having the tale end with her murdering him was every bit as terrible as ending the tale of Bluebeard with him murdering his wife would be.


I think what you mean is the upbeat ending, which is synonymous with a happy ending but not necessarily the same thing. To give an example, Little Red Riding Hood's story originally had a downbeat ending: the wolf makes a couple of sick jokes about his nose and eyes and teeth, and then eats Little Red Riding Hood; end of story.

Later on, storytellers who didn't like that ending decided to make it a little more upbeat. So they tacked on this ending: Little Red Riding Hood's father finds out what happened to his daughter, and gathers together a bunch of his fellow peasants with axes and pitchforks. Then they go stab and hack the wolf to death. The end.

The happiest ending, of course, is the one we commonly read to our children today: a woodcutter comes along and cuts open the wolf and brings Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother out of him alive and well, and then they fill him up with stones so that later, when he wakes up, he falls into a well and drowns. The end.

Having the good guys live and the bad guy meet his richly-deserved death is the happy ending, but if you can't have the happy ending, having the survivors get revenge on the bad guy is fine with us too, see? They're both upbeat endings, although one is definitely happier than the other. Horror films usually go for the latter kind of upbeat ending, although Tales From The Darkside actually went with the happiest ending (a la Hansel and Gretel) with its "Wraparound Story." (Little Timmy's wisecrack at the end made up for a lot of those bad feelings, I might add.)


Well, as with the upbeat endings, downbeat endings can vary in their effect on the audience too. A Clockwork Orange was a film that definitely had a downbeat ending: the good guys all end up dead or fired or locked away and the vicious young hoodlum gets a great new government position with some villainous oppressors who are even worse than he is. All the same, there is that moral victory for the viewer for having learned the lesson of the modern-day fable.

The book actually had a further chapter before the end in which the hoodlum eventually grows up and leaves his youthful malice behind him and decides to become a responsible citizen, but Stanley Kubrick was probably rather wise to leave that part out, since having that kind of upbeat ending would absolutely have killed the viewer's satisfaction along with the message. Ironically, the upbeat ending there might even have made it a feel-bad movie. Can't you just imagine the viewers leaving the theater saying "Oh, so he's reformed, huh? Bully for him, but what about all those poor flailing citizens who are still suffering under the thugocracy he's helped in its rise to power? What a wretched film!"

I think what makes the downbeat endings of some of the films mentioned here so bad is that they're playing it straight: Requiem For A Dream (the only one of these I've actually seen) ends pretty much the way these tales end in real life: with everyone's dreams shattered, hopes thwarted, and nightmares realized. That makes for a pretty strong anti-drug message, but with our sympathies drawn to the junkies themselves, pity for them really spoils any satisfaction we could otherwise have drawn from realizing they've gotten just exactly what they've deserved. There's also a further bitter pill in that one of the other moral points this film makes is that maybe we really shouldn't dare to dream, because look what that did for these people! The film's worldview isn't just cynical, it's nihilistic and despairing.

With some films, though, even the most downbeat ending couldn't possibly make them feel-bad movies. My example would be the end of the very first Terminator movie. What if, instead of Sarah Connor prevailing over the Terminator, it had succeeded at strangling her to death as it was trying to do? Just as the actual film doesn't end with the Terminator's death, neither would the more downbeat version end with Sarah's death. It would have to end with some logical consequence.

Surprisingly enough, it would be almost impossible to come up with a logical ending to the first Terminator movie bad enough to leave the viewer feeling morally unsatisfied and thoroughly sick at heart. I've come up with two downbeat endings that demonstrate the futility of trying to make it a feel-bad film.



As you can see, I've actually provided more like four different endings. The bleakest, I suppose, would be ending 2A, with the destruction of humanity. While this is really tragic, what would keep the viewer from going away completely unsatisfied with it would be some of what was established earlier in the film. One of the things the writer did earlier, you see, was establish how corrupt and parasitic the society in which Sarah Connor lived really was so we wouldn't feel so sorry for the Terminator's first few victims.

As such, tragic as her death would be in addition to Kyle Reese's, we're actually given a reason not to feel so bad for the many millions of others slated to die, even to feel a kind of grim satisfaction that the apocalypse is a punishment long overdue. The needless deaths of Reese and Connor merely add to the feeling that human society is evil and ought to be scoured from the face of the earth. That's why even the downbeat endings couldn't truly make this a feel-bad film. Each of these endings, of course, is sadder than the original and probably wouldn't leave much room open for sequels, but the fact is that back when James Cameron was making the first film, he wasn't planning on making any sequels anyway; those came later when the film became a surprise smash.

So yes, a downbeat ending can shake up the audience and impress them with the writer's originality. Even in those endings, though, evil can rarely be said to have truly won against good. Requiem For A Dream succeeds at portraying this only because we're encouraged to sympathize with people who weren't otherwise very morally upright from the start, and then they get swallowed up in an even worse form of evil. "Lover's Vow" also has evil prevailing over an extremely compromised kind of good, as we're shown the gargoyle's unwitting lover is pretty much an ordinary guy who's just a bit of a foul-mouthed loser. Our sympathies lie with him because he's the best of a rotten bunch, and the story is feel-bad because his subsequent life and death seem to have reaped rich rewards only for the evil gargoyle. (Now she's mated and gotten herself two children, which seems to have been her goal in the first place.)

I think for a film to be truly feel-bad, blatant evil has to prevail so thoroughly over what's presented as good that we start to suspect the writer is also entirely evil. We're talking Marquis de Sade-style material here.

Case in point: I'll bet whatever that film showed was probably pretty close to what the actual histories said Caligula did. If it didn't show his cruel reign ending the way the histories say it did (stabbed to death by his enraged enemies with some of the repeated sword-thrusts going through his genitals), it's definitely a feel-bad film.

Wow. That's the longest discussion I have ever seen of the Tales from the Darkside movie.

In the case of TFTD, I think the movie was following the time honored tradition of fairy tales in which the protagonist has to follow an arbitrary set of rules. If he then breaks those rules, then he has to pay the consequences. Judged from this perspective, the gargoyle truly loved the man, but she was obliged to follow the rules (as is the case with many mythological constructions). Is it fair that if Orpheus looks back he will lose his true love? No, that's just the way it goes. It's not happy, but it could have been avoided if he followed the rules. Fairy tales are cruel and capricious. Extrapolate that how you will.

I've seen it argued that the true hero in Requiem for a Dream was addiction itself. Any time a movie takes sides for an abstraction of humanity rather than humanity itself, you're in for a rough time.

I still think The Sweet Hereafter is the most emotionally devastating movie I've ever seen. So much naked despair paired with a pitch perfect performance by Ian Holm. I love the movie, but I'm loath to ever watch it again.

A really downbeat ending can wreck a whole movie for me. Let me see,,, recently, The Mist (new ver) from good ol Steve. The end of that movie bummed me out so bad it made the rest of the movie (which I had been enjoying up till that point) suddenly suck. I know it is supposed to be a shocking ironic twist ending, but, ugh..

Indeed, some of the old fairy tales are extremely downbeat. Ever hear of "The Hand With The Knife" and "How Some Children Played At Slaughtering" from The Omitted Tales of the Brothers Grimm? Even the Grimms had their scruples against allowing that much cruelty into their books! "Lover's Vow" did have a strong precedent in tradition; that's one more reason why it's so feel-bad.

Badmovies.org is truely the place for intellectual discussion.  Here we have a story about a man marrying a gargoyle, and it leads to discussions of ancient history, morals, drama. mythology, literature, and even some creative writing.

I think wht "Lover's Vow" is feel bad becasue it seems nobody won.  Not man or gargoyle.  The man is killed and loses the love of his life.  Actuall, he is killed by the love of his life adding to the tradegy.

The gargoyle loses her lover (she admitted she loved him) and at the end of the shot she looks sadly at her childern as they are turned to stone.  Maybe this was her one chance at life and happyness.  Now she and her kids are stone forever. 

I do remember her telling him that she loved him, and that she seemed awfully heartbroken that the jig was up, but there's still no obvious reason why she had to kill him for breaking the vow, even though the deal was that she'd let him live in return for his silence. Saying "Sorry, hon, I really did love you and it breaks my heart to do this, but we had a deal and you broke it so now you have to die!" rings pretty false. She's never indicated to be acting under any compulsion but her own blood lust.

There's also no indication that the gargoyle and her children are petrified forever, since the tale doesn't explain what magic petrified her in the first place or what brought her to life on that particular day. The way these fairy tales usually work, though, she and her children are probably just on an extended vacation--sleeping the next century or millennium or whatever their term is until they awaken once more to find some other poor souls to torment.

Maybe I'm indulging some of Lovecraft's rather crypto-racist fears of interbreeding to say the very existence of such a creature would be a tough break for humanity, but she did seem rather predatory toward humans in more ways than one. Absent any friendlier members of her race for comparison, this kind of gargoyle could only be the invention of a diabolical mind--which, of course, is why the tale turns up in the kind of book the cannibalistic witch in "Wraparound Story" likes to read. Ugh! I bet she'd have a collection of Thomas Harris novels as well, especially the ones featuring Hannibal Lecter.