Movie Gadget Friday: The Cursed Video Tape from the Ring
Last week Phillip pinched hit and wrote about
the cube from CUBE, this week
Josie Fraser escapes both 1983 and stuff men put their heads into, and checks out the cursed video tape from The Ring films:
Based on the popular Japanese novels of Koji Suzuki, the story of cursed-movie maker Sakuma has inspired a slew of similarly titled horror movies, including Ringu (1998), Rasen (1998), Ringu 2 (1999),
Ringu 0 (2000), The Ring (2002) and Ring 2 (due out next year).
Many films dealing with technology take a fairly apocalyptic view of the outcomes of increasingly sophisticated developments – usually it ends badly, with computers or robots deciding that the world would be better off without the meddling of foolish humans. The playing out of these kinds of anxieties on screen constitutes a fairly substantial part of the sci-fi genre. The beauty of The Ring series is that it takes a fairly ordinary (& now becoming obsolete technology), the video tape, and uses it to tap into the potential horror of mechanical reproduction as unavoidably endless. The Ring is the perfect horror film for anyone responsible for drafting or enforcing copyright legislation.
In the films, an urban myth is floating about: There?s a video tape that kills anyone who watches it exactly seven days later, in an unexplainable but uniformly horrible way. The victims all die with faces contorted with fear and even photographs of them become smudged with terror. The tape also seems to be in league with the telephone network.
Unfortunately the myth turns out to be true and the characters have to discover how to escape the curse within the week.
You can actually make your own cursed tape, although first you?ll have to develop nensha, the ability to psychically project images of misery onto tape, or I guess, the format of your choice. No doubt we?ll see cursed DVD
and cursed TiVo hard drives in the new movie, and if we?re really lucky, cursed Game Boy cartridges.
?a?t?%?%evelopments ? usually it ends badly, with computers or robots deciding that the world would be better off without the meddling of foolish humans. The playing out of these kinds of anxieties on screen constitutes a fairly substantial part of the sci-fi genre. The beauty of The Ring series is that it takes a fairly ordinary (& now becoming obsolete technology), the video tape, and uses it to tap into the potential horror of mechanical reproduction as unavoidably endless. The Ring is the perfect horror film for anyone responsible for drafting or enforcing copyright legislation.