. . . but your budget is not large enough to hire even one make-up artist to create blood effects (and your circle does not include any crew person or actor willing to do this for free)? PICNIC suggests that you can still picture a lot of characters lurching around extremely slow, and throw in a wicker basket including regular food to entertain the viewers Hellbent upon seeing some actual chewing. Because the lack of blood means that your zombies cannot BITE the heroine in distress, it recommends that your lead carnivore carry her off for a midnight snack. After all, picturing brain-eaters practicing delayed gratification adds something new. PICNIC also advocates filming the walking dead man as he staggers up a bunch of stairs, but showing him eight or ten times mounting the EXACT SAME FLIGHT (not unlike the Myth of Sisyphus). Then you can picture a hero who never catches up, because he trips on the sixth step and stays down for the longest count in death fight history. When this hapless dude sees that the cannibal is gone, he can then immediately leap to his feet, sprint up the stairs two-at-a-time--and fall off a five-foot "cliff" at the top to wash up dead in the surf. Sure beats NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, since it has everything but the chocolate syrup and the little girl with the cake knife!
7 Reviews
What can you do if you want to make a zombie flick . . .
oscaralbert9 January 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Surreal Short
Michael_Elliott18 August 2015
Picnic (1948)
*** (out of 4)
Ambitious and surreal short from Curtis Harrington shows an older couple and a younger couple going on a picnic. Once they begin eating the younger man notices a young woman dancing along the beach so he goes to follow her but no matter what he does he can't quite reach her. This film shares a lot in common with the director's FRAGMENT OF SEEKING, which was released two years earlier. In this film the settings have changed from the streets to the beach but both pretty much deal with the same thing. I thought this was a pretty good film, although like many of the director's films, a hundred people could view it and come up with a hundred different explanations as to what is happening. There's some nice atmosphere throughout the film and there's no question that it has a surreal touch to it. Another plus is the nice music score and the cinematography. It should also be worth noting that a Frankenstein like monster appears in the highlight of the film dealing with some stairs. This certainly isn't going to be mistaken for the work of Luis Bunuel but it's worth watching.
*** (out of 4)
Ambitious and surreal short from Curtis Harrington shows an older couple and a younger couple going on a picnic. Once they begin eating the younger man notices a young woman dancing along the beach so he goes to follow her but no matter what he does he can't quite reach her. This film shares a lot in common with the director's FRAGMENT OF SEEKING, which was released two years earlier. In this film the settings have changed from the streets to the beach but both pretty much deal with the same thing. I thought this was a pretty good film, although like many of the director's films, a hundred people could view it and come up with a hundred different explanations as to what is happening. There's some nice atmosphere throughout the film and there's no question that it has a surreal touch to it. Another plus is the nice music score and the cinematography. It should also be worth noting that a Frankenstein like monster appears in the highlight of the film dealing with some stairs. This certainly isn't going to be mistaken for the work of Luis Bunuel but it's worth watching.
Weird and a waste of time!!
kwells-249623 July 2021
Not William Inge
boblipton3 July 2021
Four people go to the beach to hold a picnic. One of them, a young man, is lured off by a blonde girl dancing in gauzy clothes by the water's edge.
It's not clear what this is about with its assortment of Christ imagery, Frankenstein monster imagery and so forth. There's clearly a psychosexual component to it, but like many works that claim to be "surrealistic", it turns movie-watching into a game of "what number am I thinking of?". My surrealistic reaction is a clip of Artie Johnson in a German military outfit, saying "Very interesting!!"
Which this movie is not.
It's not clear what this is about with its assortment of Christ imagery, Frankenstein monster imagery and so forth. There's clearly a psychosexual component to it, but like many works that claim to be "surrealistic", it turns movie-watching into a game of "what number am I thinking of?". My surrealistic reaction is a clip of Artie Johnson in a German military outfit, saying "Very interesting!!"
Which this movie is not.
ABSURD IDIOCY
theonekaz-443913 July 2021
Deeply meaningful
gbill-748772 August 2021
As post-war white America was about to enter a phase of conformity and project an image of the clean-cut nuclear family, Curtis Harrington was making shorts like this one, revealing his angst of trying to fit in to that kind of heteronormative world.
The setting is the base of a cliff by the ocean, where a young man is having a picnic with his family. In a dreamlike state, he sees a woman dancing along the shore in the distance, and pursues her. Along the way, he sees a well-dressed man carrying an umbrella and walking in the opposite direction, and is distracted to the point of having the waves wash up over his shoes. As he returns his attention to the young woman, he climbs the cliff, wanders through a barren landscape and then through brambles, and finds her at last. The pair have those whirling moments of connection when you feel when you first fall in love with someone, and yet things soon freeze emotionally, and he remains distracted, the imagery of which is an open umbrella in the swirling mist.
It's a bit like 'Fragment of Seeking' and I suppose it's pretty obvious what Harrington is trying to say, but I'm not sure it was so obvious in 1949, and while Hollywood studios were toeing the line to the reactionary Production Code, to have a film like this made by a 23-year-old is deeply meaningful. I found the imagery in the film at the top of that staircase to be particularly powerful, with the feeling of a spiritual crisis and annihilation of self really coming through. The 22 minute runtime could probably have been tightened up a teeny bit, but be patient with this one, it's worth it.
The setting is the base of a cliff by the ocean, where a young man is having a picnic with his family. In a dreamlike state, he sees a woman dancing along the shore in the distance, and pursues her. Along the way, he sees a well-dressed man carrying an umbrella and walking in the opposite direction, and is distracted to the point of having the waves wash up over his shoes. As he returns his attention to the young woman, he climbs the cliff, wanders through a barren landscape and then through brambles, and finds her at last. The pair have those whirling moments of connection when you feel when you first fall in love with someone, and yet things soon freeze emotionally, and he remains distracted, the imagery of which is an open umbrella in the swirling mist.
It's a bit like 'Fragment of Seeking' and I suppose it's pretty obvious what Harrington is trying to say, but I'm not sure it was so obvious in 1949, and while Hollywood studios were toeing the line to the reactionary Production Code, to have a film like this made by a 23-year-old is deeply meaningful. I found the imagery in the film at the top of that staircase to be particularly powerful, with the feeling of a spiritual crisis and annihilation of self really coming through. The 22 minute runtime could probably have been tightened up a teeny bit, but be patient with this one, it's worth it.
Poignant
dk-088674 August 2021
Warning: Spoilers
To me it seemed to be speaking about a man who's attracted to men in a world that demands he be attracted to women, and he is coping with that terrible pressure from all sides. So he pursues her though it is the man who distracts him, walking the other way.
He tries to reach her and indeed finds the joy of friendship but not more, not a love or a mate. He struggles after what his society wants him to want; society's notion is to him but a corpse. The needless self-hatred, instilled into him like an infection or a bullet by others' notions of sexuality, apparently accepted on some level, drives his great push against nature itself until he reaches his reward for the aggravation, at the summit.
He tries to reach her and indeed finds the joy of friendship but not more, not a love or a mate. He struggles after what his society wants him to want; society's notion is to him but a corpse. The needless self-hatred, instilled into him like an infection or a bullet by others' notions of sexuality, apparently accepted on some level, drives his great push against nature itself until he reaches his reward for the aggravation, at the summit.
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