Flowers in the Attic
by Jeffrey Bloom
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ben Ryan Ganger, Jeb Stuart Adams, Kristy Swanson, Louise Fletcher, Victoria TennantDirector: Jeffrey Bloom
Brand: SMK
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-04-24
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of Flowers in the Attic
Movie Review: Good Film But Untrue To The Epic Book
Summary: 5 Stars
`Flowers in the Attic' truly rates right up there with `The Beguiled' and `Lipstick' as one of the most disturbing films ever made. The intriguing thing is I must admit it is very entertaining.
The plot: A Stepford family is turned upside down when dad dies leaving the family penniless. They go to stay with grandma and grandpa whom they've never met. The four children are locked in a bedroom for one year, this is where 99% of the film takes place.
It seems that grandma and grandpa want to erase the children since they were the result of incest. At first their mother is their savior who promises to free them from the room as soon as she gets grandpa to write her back into his will. But as the months drag on she ignores them and is wrapped up in herself.
After about a year of minimal food and water they kids start to look like the undead.
Incest is the main focus of the film as the teenage brother and sister sleep in the same bed, bath each other, and leer over each other. Their grandmother played by Louise Fletcher-defends her title as the meanest witch in the history of Hollywood-accuses the teens of sinful acts. Maybe she shouldn't have locked them together in a bedroom for a year.
The teens also comment that incest should result in birth defects, yet they turned out OK.
Kristy Swanson also mentions her "special relationship" with her father which he "didn't have with any of the other children". In one scene as he gives Kristy a snow globe her mother looks on angrily.
If all of this was not messed up enough the children resort to vampirism when they run out of food, the younger children drink the teens' blood.
`Flowers In The Attic' truly rates as one of the most FUBAR and disturbing films EVER made. But it's the only one on that list that I can recommend as devilishly entertaining.
Or maybe it's just the idea of being locked in a bedroom for one year with Kristy Swanson when she was 16 that's entertaining.
...that was me two months ago before I read VC Andrews' `Flowers In The Attic,' now I feel like a totally different human being. As I said in my review of the book `Flowers In The Attic' is the greatest epic in the history of story telling. Hence adapting it to film is an IMPOSSIBLE task.
The primary reason no film could live up to the book is that the story is told through the eyes of 12 year old Catherine. How can film get us to understand what she is feeling? Although the movie is narrated by Kristy Swanson, narration in film often comes across as cheesy.
A faithful film adaptation would also be impossible because the movie would have to be a mini series 10 hours long and be rated X due to the teen sex.
I must say the film did have a good production quality. The nightmare of Foxworth Hall was pretty much as described in the book. The cast was also well chosen. Louise Fletcher was perfect as the villainous, and the four children were just as I pictured them, good looking to the point of being ridiculous. (I'm reminded of another film `Who Gets The House' where the 4 kids also looked like they were bread in a eugenics lab.)
Where the film fails the most is what they could have done better, show Cathy and Chris falling in love. I can't believe this was TOTALLY left out of the film so it appears as though Cathy and Chris are merely two horny teenagers in heat. It would be like simply showing Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler as simply Civil War refugees. The romance is the meat of the whole story.
We want to see Cathy stare longingly into Chris' "cerulean blue" eyes and say, "You look just like Dad." And we want to see the two play with each others' hair as two school children in love for the very first time. We do not see them kiss even once or say, "I love you." Instead we see Chris leering at Cathy as she bathes and the two in bed together making the viewer wonder, "What the hell is going on? Was this happening before the attic?"
The violence against the children is also toned waaayyy down from the book.
One should not confuse the film with the book. It's a horror story with tame horror and a love story with NO love.
I envision what a faithful film version of this book would be like. I'd make it a 10 hour version of the video from `The Ring'.
And I have been recently surprised by film adaptations. `Sin City' was a story I swore no one could make into a movie. But Frank Miller did the impossible by moving from author to director. His film worked because it was 99% faithful to the original story.
In conclusion `Flowers In The Attic' is an entertaining film I would still give 5 stars, but it is NOTHING like the book. If they had aimed for a more faithful adaptation it could have been 10 stars.
Summary of Flowers in the Attic
Dreams of an inheritance turn into a nightmare for four innocent children who are locked in the deserted north wing of the family mansion, beaten by a vicious grandmother and tormented by a menacing caretaker.Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: NR
Street Date: 04/24/01
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
Language: ENGLISH
Foreign Film: noSubtitles: no
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve
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