I completely agree with your first 2 paragraphs. It's not a ratio I was referring to, it's more about how action movies can get a pass just because they have good action. Take Fast Five. The action in the opening and closing half-hours is pretty good, but the drama in the middle is given too much attention and I ended up mixed on the film. The Italian Job (both versions) had good characters and a great car chase, which is why they are superior films. So it's not a ratio of one to the other, but the quality of both. I swear I reviewed a samurai film where the action was lousy, but it got 3 stars because I liked the characters.
So maybe the confusion is I emphasized one side over the other, you could say the true test of a great drama is the battles between the acting, but that just sounds weird. It probably gets at the problem you had with my original statement, but I felt what I was saying was quite clear. I just find that samurai films, much like martial arts pics, musicals and Summer Hollywood Blockbusters, tend to put most of their energy into the kenetic set-pieces and not so much into the story and characters.
I think my problem is more with the general statement. "Whether
this movie is great or merely good rests on the drama between the action sequences." is a statement that, while I wouldn't necessarily agree with it, I can at least understand. Often, a few great elements or sequences is enough for me to consider a film which is merely OK the rest of the time a great film. An example for me would be the original
Gone in 60 Seconds, which has almost nothing to commend it but its car chases (going so far as to have most of its dialogue exchanges in voiceover, it clearly cares nothing about acting or characters), but is nonetheless one of the greatest movies I've seen in the last year. I have no problem privileging the part over the whole in this way, but clearly not everyone will (or should) see it that way.
I tried to directly answer your addendum, but all the double negatives made it hard to understand. Does it help that you gave me something to think about when you posed that Curse of the Cat People is not a horror movie at all? It's something that's come up quite a bit as I've watched my Shocktober list. Many of my picks are so far outside the horror genre, I've been questioning if they're best explained at as something else.
Certainly. A genre as expansive, long-running and varied as horror is sure to be difficult to use as the basis for determining a film's success or failure. Especially in a situation like with
Curse of the Cat People, where Val Lewton and his directors were pretty much left alone to do whatever they wanted, within their low-budgets, and their films were marketed as B-level horror movies despite their clear artistic ambitions (
I Walked with a Zombie as a
Jane Eyre adaptation for example).
Wikipedia on
Curse:
"Although sharing some of the same cast and characters and marketed as a sequel to 1942's Cat People, this film has little relationship to the earlier one. RKO studio executives wanted to cash in on the success of the first film, and insisted on keeping the title, despite producer Val Lewton's desire to change it to Amy and Her Friend.[4] Lewton had put a lot of himself into the film, integrating into the story autobiographical details from his childhood, such as the party invitations that are "mailed" by putting them into a hollow tree. Lewton grew up not far from Tarrytown, where the story is set, and was fond of ghost stories such as "The Headless Horseman" (Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow") which is cited in The Curse of the Cat People.[3]"