Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie

Director ~ Tim Burton

Writers ~ Tim Burton, Leonard Ripps

1984, b/w, USA

Stars ~ Shelley Duvall, Daniel Stern, Barret Oliver

Tim Burton’s 1984 short shows that his approach was already clearly determined: he’d been making shorts since the Seventies, including an adaptation of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘Vincent’, about a boy that wants to be Vincent Price and succumbing to his taste in fantasy. Burton was the one to turn to for cookie dark fantasy and made him a poster boy for fun Goths. This sensibility is perfectly epitomised in ‘Frankenweenie’s central image of what appears to be a mini-golf course in a pet cemetery.

‘Frankenweenie’ features Shelley Duvall and the kid from ‘The Neverending Story’, Barrett Oliver, and a young Sofia Coppola. There are several distinctive shots, not only the mini-windmill and the car bearing down on the dogs-eye-view, but my favourite being young Victor’s brainwave framed between two electrically stimulated frog’s legs. 

When his beloved dog is hit by a car and dies, all Victor wants is his late dog back. Through the influence of Mary Shelley, James Whale and old Universal horrors, Victor brings his dog back to life: the attic laboratory made from ordinary household appliances is a treat. Instead of defying God, Victor here is simply defying grief and the true villain being not the cute dog-zombie but he hysteria of suburban America. In that, it is very much in the trend of the Eighties that the picket fence of slick Americana being sold and dominating screens across the globe was not necessarily to be trusted. But mostly it is a fun gateway horror that packs a lot of genre vibe in its short running time.

Disney judged it too scary and fired Burton. Of course, Burton had the last laugh as his sensibility proved perfect for capturing the camp and horror of Batman. Grown in reputation, ‘Frankenweenie’ hits that sweet spot as a gateway coming-of-age horror for melancholy outsiders: grim, funny, quietly subversive, sugar-coated bad taste, a little freaky and a little innocent.

 

Frankenweenie

Director ~ Tim Burton

Writers ~ Leonard Ripps, Tim Burton, John August

2012, b/w, USA

Stars ~ Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short

In adapting his renowned short, Burton’s expansion incorporates many more horror Easter Eggs and grotesqueries, including ‘The Munsters’, ‘Gremlins’, Kaiju amongst others. It embraces the freakishness far more than the original, wallowing in the otherworldliness and excess that animation allows. This isn’t grounded in the reality at all, and yet the emotional core is still relatable as coming-of-age concerns. This time, though, it is notable that Vincent (voiced by Charlie Tahan) is less an outcast – because how could he be with this menagerie of classmates? – but a wilful loner, taking solace in his genius. And this time, there’s room to give all the other misfits their own amusing subplots: highlights being the rooftop DIY rocket and the precognitive-poop cat.

The black-and-white stop motion is gorgeous, of course, sharp and clean and excellently lit, with Burton’s designs being typically pointy, rounded, ikky-cute. Even Victor simply walking home through the suburbs in the rain is impressive as a visual. How Burton balances between the wholesome and grim is quite the marvel and at the core of his talent and crossover success.

As always, there are gruesome details, like bolts inserted into gaping scars and the patchwork zombie dog wagging his tail off. The lynch mob hysteria is somewhat toned down to greatly disapproving locals and the tone less melancholic. It may all turn out okay in the end, and there’s certainly the essence of Burton being genre comfort food, but there is always a thread of real danger with the detail and fun always beguiling. ‘Frankenweenie’ is also agreeably, declaratively pro-creativity and pro-science, as proclaimed by the Vincent Price-ish teacher Mr. Rzykruski (Martin Landau). One minute you’re making a home-made space invasion movie; next, you’re reviving your dead dog with household accessories. 

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Director ~ David Lynch

Writers ~ David Lynch, Robert Engels, Mark Frost

1992, France-USA

Stars ~ Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Mädchen Amick

Begins with Lynch’s imitable humorous non sequiturs and eccentricities and notable cast/cameos (Isaak! Bowie! Sutherland!) with only the discordance of Badalamenti’s score to hint at what’s to come. Then, when this set-up is over, the twang of Badalamenti’s iconic theme tune kicks in and triggers a rush of instantaneous bliss for Twin Peaks fans as that beguiling Americana suburban rock’n’roll-retro-fantasia kicks in. This being a film (yes yes, it starts with the declarative destruction of a television set), there’s extra gore and the nastiness is less oblique as Laura Palmer mood-swings and spirals her way down to the inevitable. On the way, several series regulars stop by to make appearances and there’s a pitstop to a sublime Julee Cruise number. For all the dream-like and nightmarish textures, there’s always the sense that we’re only a thin layer away from the worst, from ugly neo-realism. Even the unknowable motivations, enigmas and violence of this ugliness is dressed up in the otherworldliness of the red room. Or, as Michael Wilmigton called it: "horror kitsch".

Widely critically panned at the time of release, actually it always seemed within Lynch’s spectrum. Perhaps people were expecting his more comedic, goofy side after ‘Wild at Heart’ (which I consider Lynch’s comedy), but its tone was no surprise if you were familiar with his earlier works. And for all its eccentricities, which had served him well for the series, ‘Twin Peaks’ was always about the ripple effect the murder of Laura Palmer had on the whole community and focus on her story is not a nice one which goofiness would serve well. Rather, having enticed the audience in with oddball humour, it descends into in increasingly claustrophobic nightmarishness with little reprieve. As befits the tale of a murdered girl. Lynch took the opportunity in film to show what could only been alluded to in the show ~ drugs, breasts, blood, general smalltown degeneracy.

Lynch’s insistence that dreaminess and nightmarish are interchangeable, or at least divided by a wafer-thin membrane of dissonance, is integral to his particularly unique grasp of tone. Lynch has always conveyed bleakness through this dreaminess, with the uncanny and the supernatural the only way to articulate the nightmarish forces against you and within you. Or at least to represent the cognitive dissonance plaguing the characters such as Laura Palmer. Lynch’s projection of this liminal space through both a fetishisation-homage of the mythology of an American Rock’n’Roll era and a modern horror sensibility creates something singularly appealing and disturbing. ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ certainly shed the more superfluous Lynch fans as he headed into increasingly nightmarish supernatural cryptograms, ‘Straight Story’ excepted, and finally landed in the near-impenetrable ‘Inland Empire’.

Sheryl Lee gives a great performance, veering from wholesome to off-the-rails to traumatised as demanded by the troubled Laura Palmer. While Moira Kelly makes for a rather unmemorable Donna Hayward, it is Ray Wise that is never to be forgotten, following Willem Defo and Dennis Hopper as another Lynchian almost cartoonish portrayal of violent, unhinged, toxic masculinity. And just a glimpse of Bob clutching a chest of drawers remains an indelibly unnerving ‘Twin Peaks’ tableau.

 

 

‘Twin Peaks’ surely holds the unique position in TV history as even the dream sequences in ‘The Sopranos’ seemed permitted by Lynch’s wilful weirdness and play with the repressed. For a while after the initial series, everyone tried to be “weird” and “eccentric” (my favourite is ‘Eerie, Indiana’), but arguably it was only when the freedoms of the initial streaming age occurred that the legacy of ‘Twin Peaks’, which showed just a little loosening of the tie was popular, would reach full fruition. We have a lot to thank Lynch and Mark Frost for, even as ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ can be seen as Lynch reiterating his more oblique agenda.

And, of course, we now know there was more to come.