I don’t know who to say was worse regarding Fitzcarraldo vs. the Twilight Zone movie. Landis actually broke laws in order to get those two kids on the set where they died, and it’s always been Landis who came out of the whole mess looking the worst, not the helicopter pilot or the guy whose job was to detonate the explosions. In the case of Fitzcarraldo the real-life guy it was based on didn’t even use pulleys, so it seems like Herzog was kind of doing for the publicity, no? Which I can’t quite accuse Landis of, even though he obviously relished being famous.

I’ve watched a few clips of Stepin Fetchit and have heard good things about Judge Priest, but looking into Fetchit’s filmography isn’t something I plan on making time for, especially since stuff like Song Of The South never turns out to be as horrifying as it’s supposed to be.

Stalker–I just don’t know how that happened, but something about the cold 70s feel…didn’t date it to the 70s. It did with all the other Tarkovsky films I watched. I mean, the opening scenes date to the 70s, and the music does as well (Pink Floyd vibes), but the rest of it feels like a movie that could have been made now. If the slowness and emptiness worked in favor of Stalker, and it did, that has a lot to do with the magic that the movie wrings out of all those dreary beaten-down locations it uses.
There is very little chance I would have appreciated Stalker if I’d seen it in 2005 especially if I didn’t like Nosferatu then. What does Herzog think of Tarkovsky I wonder?